I think a lot of the perception of DkS2 having bad hitboxes is inflated by Agility/Adaptability, and the visual disconnect it creates between your dodge always looking the same but your i-frames changing if you have more AGI. When i play a character w/ 95+ AGI i don’t notice as many cheap hits.
The only times i run into bad hitboxes are when fighting enemies with explosion AOE attacks, which is why flamelurker and stray demon are two of my least favorite bosses
Yeah i have never found the Earthen Peak → Iron Keep elevator either as irritating or as fascinating as others seemed to. I certainly like the idea of boundaries between areas deliberately frustrating your sense of space, Heide’s Tower → No-Man’s Wharf being another somewhat plausible example, but it’s just not consistent enough to hang my hat on. Maybe if those transitions weren’t 90% some kind of elevator or bridge or slowly opening gate. Like, if i just stepped through a door and suddenly was in a wildly different place, that’d be cool as hell, but…
The one thing that did bug me about Dark Souls 2 is that some of the enemy layouts felt a bit lazier compared to Demon’s, 1 and eventually 3. The one minor example I can name off the top of my head is that the series has a set piece concept that basically boils down to a long room or path with a large number of often-fortified enemies that usually symbolizes a high priority or “big” boss/encounter immediately past this.
1-3 in Demon’s is basically the original/stereotypical version of this. The lead up to Lothric in Dark Souls 3 is the most recent one. Usually From keeps this as a one time per game occasion, to sell the magnitude of things. Dark Souls 2 I believe does it at least 3 times. I unfortunately can only recall two off the top of my head as it has been a few years, those being the lead ups to Velstadt and the Ancient Dragon. Those extra occurrences made them feel progressively less important.
Of course, a lot of the levels in the game end up feeling and likely being a lot more linear than what you see in the other games, so the fact that they had to lean on some ideas more because of this isn’t surprising. It is probably why it is my least favorite of the four though, I enjoy the games best when the levels and paths are folding in upon themselves.
Lost Bastille is probably one of the stronger areas in DS2 (my favorite one is the one with all the dragons for likely superficial reasons), I really enjoy how there are two distinct ways to get there. It also has a fairly meaty hidden area right there as well.
Dark Souls 2 still has a number of solidly designed areas, it’s just that the ratio of the kind I like to the kind I like less is a bit below what the others offer. Plus it has the Shrine of Amana, my least favorite thing from has made.
The aggro range on the homing magic missiles was really annoying at release, yeah. Made it frustrating if your character didn’t have much for ranged attacks. I ended up putting a piece of post it note on my monitor to act as a “reticule” for shooting my own magic from outside lock on range.
The area with the hard to see instant death pits, populated with enemies who magically attack from a distance, is short on cover and isn’t really designed for melee builds at all? The one that is also mostly covered in water that slows you down and makes it even harder to close distance on said enemies?
Like if I were describing why I think it’s an interesting environment I’d list those attributes and describe them in the exact same manner (although I don’t think that the instant death pits are that hard to see, nor are they that prevalent). I think you have to go a bit further than basically saying “This area prompts me to adopt a different playstyle, and I don’t like that”, especially when I’ve only ever played melee characters myself.
I would say, having played the four main Souls games sans DLC, all of them as a melee build, that I have come across plenty of areas that required a shift in tactics or playstyles. The fact I am not naming several areas would show that there is something wrong beyond just that here.
Of course I checked online and it appears that the area was adjusted across several patches, so it appears that From agrees with me. If you played through it after the patches then perhaps they managed to better balance it. I played through the game at release and it was, again, the worst area I’ve had to play through in any of the four games.
I recently went through Scholar after giving up on the original game at release at the Shrine of Amana and my impression of it improved a lot this time around.
I think, more than anything else, playing on PC with a higher resolution, and my eyes right next to my monitor helping me make out the death pits transformed it from peak tedium to one of the best areas in the game. I was running a hex/dex build that only used magic to buff my weapons, too. I believe my initial build heavily relied on my bow and spell casting so there’s that, as well.
The area is not all that great as far as gameplay is concerned. It’s a beautifully designed environment, but you’d never know it due to the enemies (and their homing attacks) within. Having played the game as both a mage and dex build, the kind of charging I did in that space was completely different from the rest of the game and deaths felt much more cheap, due to the staggered nature of the spellcasters’ attacks.
I weirdly agree with diplo, in hindsight, that I like the area, but not for the enemies within, even if they make sense within that area.
At least some of my complaints about Bloodborne are for similar reasons - and diplo, I recently restarted playing Bloodborne again, and I take back my previous comment about the hitboxes. They weren’t really that bad, but playing as a Threaded Cane character vs a Kirkhammer character is also probably coloring my experience. Your own hitbox seems to change based on the weapon you’re using and it seems like the Threaded Cane is more affected by that than most due to its wide range while transformed. The Threaded Cane is possibly one of my favorite weapons ever, and I used it in most of my runs until recently (occasionally switching to Ludwig’s Holy Blade or the Moonlight Sword). I’ve started replaying some of the Souls series/Bloodborne using Strength builds, which I tended to shy away from. The experience is quite different, just from noticing the differences in where you can get hit alone, as well as how movement changes (am playing aggressive two-handed builds mostly).
