Yeah, I would be mostly inclined to agree with this; it’s part of the reason I said neither version is definitive. I brought it up as a potential + for your sake specifically, not necessarily as a broadly applicable incentive.
The more I sit here and think about it right now, though, the more I’m considering at least some of the changes to be a sincere [and sometimes successful] attempt to add dynamism and thematic distinction to environments that were dry/sparse or combatively redundant previously. Like most of Dark 2, there are a lot of choices that are well-intentioned and just as many that are bafflingly aloof.
scholar is definitive imo - people don’t like the game enough for me to realistically recommend both, multiplayer is much heartier in scholar, and there are many other minor little things that make it better
i don’t think it makes vanilla completely obselete, but if you only play one, make it scholar 100%
you get more out of it if you’ve seen the vanilla layouts, but i just straight up prefer the layouts in scholar regardless
my favorite difference between scholar and vanilla is so minor and tiny and most people won’t even see it and i don’t even want to spoil it because seeing it was one of my favorite moments in the game
Re: PvP/multiplayer: i have no doubt that the DS2 PvP is better & more balanced than in the first game. I had a decent amount of fun messing around in it, for sure (the best thing about it is that you can actually do it most of the time). I also beat 1, 2 and Demon’s completely offline my first time through each. That’s where a lot of my perspective on how they each play comes from, multiplayer just isn’t the draw for me (and i prefer co-op anyway, all things weighed equal).
I think it’s great that there’s a “balanced” multiplayer-centric Souls title (though boy even in that respect it’s a bit sloppy (soul memory lol)). I wouldn’t take that away from anyone if i could! Buuuuut it’s just not for me. I don’t really think the multiplayer in the Souls series was ever intended to be balanced or equal in the first place.
I really like the levels in late-game 1 (even Izalith! Hell even Demon Ruins!!) but the bosses are a real drag. 3 of 4 are best beaten by wearing Havel’s armor and just mashing R1 (and the fourth one is Bed of Chaos).
If you count the DLC though you still get 3 of the best bosses in the game (and the fourth one is Manus, who is a 10 minute endurance match where one mistake gets you killed. Unfortunately it sounds like the Bloodborne/DS3 bosses are a bunch of Manuses. Yikes!!)
I played DaS1’s DLC when it came out and I still don’t know what people see in Artorias.
He’s kind of the boss that explicitly exists to chew you up if all you know how to do is hide behind a shield. Otherwise you just roll and counter at appropriate times and he eventually goes down? Can’t even back yourself into a corner because the arena’s round. It’s kind of a long walk back so you have to memorize where you can/can’t poke on the fly.
The actual areas are cool, but tbh the bosses that are actually supposed to be tough instead of gimmicky generally just aren’t that interesting in any Souls game. Demon’s Souls basically had a Zelda-like design philosophy for bosses and basically all of them are memorable in some way.
Capra Demon was rad because it was “here’s a relatively easy fight, in a broom closet, with murder dogs chasing you,” not because the boss itself was interesting. (in JP they have nicknamed that fight the Dog Demon, for obvious reasons)
It’s simply the pinnacle of the dodge-em-up boss fight type, which i generally agree isn’t the most interesting (i too prefer the bosses from Demon’s Souls). But I’ve always found Artorias (and sanctuary guardian and Kalameet) pretty fun for bosses of that type, because they’re hard enough to keep me on my toes without any bullshit. I know “tough but fair” is a cliche, but it genuinely applies to those bosses.
Dat chariot in ds2 owns. I agree, gimmicky bosses suit the series much better. In general i feel like final bosses/lords of domains in most games shouldn’t be as difficult or straightforward application of skill as their closest guardians.
Relevant to this thread: there’s a big priest in the DLC who summons archer ghosts, forcing you to run behind cover, and that would be pretty cool if it didn’t come so quickly after having just dealt with angelic specters that shoot beams of light at you, forcing you to run behind cover.
I do appreciate the American Gladiators influence though – I didn’t expect that from a Japanese studio for sure.
yeah this boss is easily my least favorite but i get it and it sort of makes sense
but of course, being the sort of person who loves ds2 above 1 and 3, that makes sense, no? chariot doesn’t play to the game’s strengths imo. it’s neat but too gimmicky
chariot is exactly the patch of the game i’m not looking forward to going through again, but at least you can cheese the shit out of him. it is cool conceptually but unenjoyable, personally, to actually play
what about gimmick of two swords that can hit you from entire screen away instead of one sword that can hit you from 80% screen away and a fire spell and it screeches slightly louder than the last one
honestly I don’t mind Final Duel bosses as much as diplo; probably the thing that frustrates me more than the mechanical flatness is that they’re all so tonally and similarly e.p.i.c.
It’s why I’m kind of a disproportionately big fan of dark3’s Dancer
the underappreciated thing about demon’s gimmick bosses were that they were also such successfully coherent extensions of their concomitant environments
