jk my friend convinced me to play the worst Dark Souls which is Dark Souls 2. i am currently only finding value in it wrt how it turned something so amazing into something so bad. please help me endure this bad game.
consider this: it’s good actually
10 Likes
On my latest replay I realized DkS2 has the best encounter design (by which I mean how enemies, walls, pits and ledges are placed to create interesting “combat puzzles”) of the entire series. It was probably already the best in vanilla DkS2 and then SotFS polished that even further. So I suggest bringing your attention to that facet.
5 Likes
Majula is lovely
5 Likes
Best game for giant club build.
5 Likes
The archer encounters are so tight in this game. The rooftop area in the Forest of Fallen Giants is a really good balance:
6 Likes
In a strange way, thanks to the contrast with DkS3/Sekiro I even started to appreciate the trivial, basic knight bosses of DkS2.
In From’s latest games full of multi-phase bosses with all kinds of complicated juke attacks, when I reach a boss it’s like, “welp, better strap in for 2 hours of grinding this guy”. In DkS2 it’s more like, “lemme just clear Smelter Knight real quick to unlock his optional bonfire”. Refreshing.
10 Likes
i never minded all the knight type bosses because one, “big guy with weapon” is a very fair and readable silhouette for an action game boss fight, and two, i enjoy very specifically themed knights and appreciate that this series is replete with them
4 Likes
Referring to “learning unique boss patterns” as grinding is hilarious. I mean, I get it. Like… you know how to learn the boss pattern, so it just takes time… but even then describing it that way hurts my insides
— To be clear — I get that “learning boss patterns” definitely feels like a grind. That’s 99% of why once I get annoyed w/ self learning I just look up strategies on my own and never felt bad (and now feel double justified). But like… still kinda hard to accept
3 Likes
imo it’s a grind when every boss is a wall of HP that ends your attempt in one or two hits
fromsoft plz bring back the clever demon’s souls gimmick bosses, it’s fun learning something other than your incomprehensible hitboxes for a change
7 Likes
The one boss which felt most like a grind to me is also the only boss in the entire series to have three, full health bars. Sister Friede. It took me months to finally beat, dozens of hours. Nothing else except for maybe Orphan of Kos proved to be as difficult, but certainly nothing else felt like a grind in my experience.
I don’t like the phased bosses.
The first phases are either watered down and therefore gradually trivialized to the point where they may as well be an extension of the run from the bonfire, or completely distinct, which can be pretty frustrating if the first phase is, I dunno, a dragon that just fucks with your camera all the time.
6 Likes
Right, a first boss phase is inherently the same thing as a run from the bonfire. Time you need to waste doing something you already know how to do before you can get to the part where you can learn. It’s ironic that From seemed to decide that long runs from bonfire are player-hostile and put the bonfires closer and closer to bosses over time, and at the very same time started their obsession with multiple phases.
I like the identical-two-phase midbosses in Sekiro, though, those are something different. It maybe just happened because they didn’t have time to introduce different moves for every boss in the game, but I like that the second half doesn’t blindside me with new moves, and finishing off the first half is still satisfying. (Genichiro’s and Sword Saint’s final phase being superficially menacing, but secretly easier than the next-to-last, is also a nice touch.)
6 Likes
After playing Monster Hunter World I demand all bosses
- Have multiple ways to engage
- Be dynamic and have palpable emotional states
- Have giant rooms to fight them in (fuck those sad arena battles)
Dark Souls bosses are cool and all, but they’re way, way too linear.
9 Likes
Yeah at some point Souls battles just turn into programming of “hear/see cue, perform X input(s) after Y delay”. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, or a child quizzed about multiplication tables. Or a karate student performing kata, which is a part of why it didn’t bother me as much in Sekiro.
But the Dark Souls fantasy is about exploring a rich fantasy world. Turning myself into a dodge-rolling robot in a tiny arena wasn’t so fun there.
8 Likes
I’m still by my archstone wondering when combat became a core appeal of this series and not just a necessary inconvenience to survive a hostile world bathed in fog. I much prefer using adventurous ingenuity to overcome a boss than memorising phases and janky hitboxes.
13 Likes
mm, yeah, im with all these boss takes. i like the bosses in this series to present novel, and seemingly insurmountable challenges. That can include actually tough bosses that are just badass guys you duel, and i think they’re good as part of a mix, but they’ve never been my favorites and From/the “hardcore” fans seem to love them. Like i think my favorite boss in the entire series is Storm King just for how awesome and memorable it is, and it’s a very easy fight. Bed of Chaos is a way worse fight than Nameless King but i still find it cooler in every way
Sekiro worked much better for me because it placed its emphasis squarely on the challenge bosses, and made the exploration/stealth a fun, easy way to level up and gather supplies for the combat. i enjoyed studying the blade for two dozen hours because that was the point
Though Sekiro’s lowkey triumph is that it blurs the line between gimmick bosses and “proper” duels. they have more mechanical space to play around in so they can fold in stuff like the armored warrior or divine dragon and not have it feel like a janky setpiece (divine dragon is basically “what if dragon god was almost a real boss fight?”)
8 Likes
Good point. Even Four Monkeys feels only a little bit gimmicky given that the game has a whole bunch of stealth and traversal mechanics that get exercised there
The giant snake is twice as interesting as Souls’ fatigued “a dragon periodically scorches the zone” thing for similar reasons
5 Likes
folding screen monkeys is almost implemented too well considering you can skip half the tricks and just nibble on stealth candy. (i still really like that fight)
kinda weird that Sekiro boss rush got announced not a day after bosschat! i’ll be happy to be able to refight owl dad and failgrandson without having to speedrun through the game first
2 Likes
dks2 has some of my favourite content reuse in the series. somehow it seems natural when you find bosses straggling around as regular mobs later in the game, where in dks1 it came across phoned in. there’s an early sense of what they did more in sekiro, training you to reflexively internalise a few basic fights, so that they can be thrown at you later in new contexts. you fight the guardian dragon in an enclosed arena only to emerge into a rocky habitat full of its brethren, travel into the past to confront a more fierce version of the last giant, find dragonriders guarding the king’s crypt and even an honest-to-god palette swap of the covetous demon in eleum loyce. it feels cheap but in the best way, the throwing shit at the wall because you can way. why does pursuer show up for a rematch in the smelter demon arena (dropping a unique ring) (and two of them in the throne room on NG+)? why the hell not?
6 Likes