Dark Souls 2 Review

[SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE INTENSIFIES]

Adventure. Think about that word for a moment. What does it mean to you? It's probably a lot different than what it means nowadays. Remember when the term adventure was something MORE than just a media buzzword tossed around to sell you on a game? Remember when a game wasn't so much about the marketing behind them and instead about creating an experience to satisfy the player? The industry seems to have forgotten this, but FromSoft is making sure the kindred spirit of adventure stays alive with the Souls series.

I'll admit, my mind was being riddled with doubt the nearer we got to launch night and my fears only worsened as I began through the beginning of the game eventually turning hollow from sheer disappointment once I ended up killing every NPC within a 10 mile radius. Then I started a new playthrough from scratch, found myself enjoying it a bit more. Then I reached a point in particular about eight-ish hours in and began yet another playthrough finally deciding on my build as the game had finally lured me in and I was ready to commit to it. The game starts out rather slow compared to either of the previous game so be patient with this one. Dark Souls 1 did take me up until the Gargoyles to reel me in and that took me longer because I couldn't find the damn ladder leading up to the bell. I'm not a smart man, guys.

If you're thinking the game starts out slow in a modern gaming sense where you are riddled with endless text boxes and excruciatingly long tutorials. That's not what I meant. In fact, you can skip the tutorial all together in this one. The only slow occurrence in Dark Souls 2 is the way NPC's speak this time around. Like a four year old trying to formulate a thought but keeps interrupting itself due to how jubilant they are about their new useless factoid they just learned, or an elderly person with dimentia. In order to spare you the harsh winters it takes for an NPC to finish a single line, press A once their done speaking a line. This will immediately inject them with a small amount of caffeine allowing you time to see the rest of the millennium off after speaking to one of the NPCs.

The Lore this time around seems to lack the same amount of depth Dark Souls 1 had. Where you would once hang on every single NPC's remarks, Dark Souls 2 certainly has all this but it feels shallow in comparison, there's no real reason to care about many of these characters. Sure, maybe you'll learn to like a few, but none match up to that gross incandescence Solaire had. The man had flair, these NPC's seem like they aren't even trying. I'M LOOKING AT YOU EMERALD HERALD. Unless you're trying to get me to hate you, in which case good on ya!

There's been quite a few changes to how you go about things. While I applaud FromSoft for taking the idea "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and shoving it up the ass of Bert Lance himself, I can't say this is my idea of the "best" way to go about things. It's not bad but rather unnecessary and inconvenient for the player. Oh, you think Dark Souls cares about your convenience? wot r u c4sul? Yes and shoo. The thing about DS1 is everything you needed was at the bonfire and when it came to early embers you were within striking distance of the blacksmith's hammer and it wasn't much of a issue and only if you even cared enough to make the trek. Not only that you can even reduce the necessity of a blacksmith by buying the various smith boxes and repair boxes. All of these little tiny design decisions kept the world of Dark Souls 1 feeling connected that mimicked that same old pleasing charm that keeps Super Metroid the swan song of ingenious level design for Metroidvanias everywhere. A feat that hasn't been achieved since then. Metroid Prime did it in 3D first, but I wouldn't consider it particularly...planned out well. I would have to check the map constantly to keep a bearing on where I'm headed, whilst the design in both Dark Souls and Super Metroid I could recite to you backwards and forwards.

I certainly think Dark Souls 2 has done level design better than Metroid Prime but that's really only based on the merit that you can fast travel to any bonfire you've lit right out of the gate. Not bad design, not at all. I personally simply think going about it like Dark Souls 1 was simply much more satisfying to know exactly how the world is connected without need of a map system. Now how is it inconvenient and unnecessary you ask? Well, again Dark Souls 1 created a seamless world that negated all sorts of loading screens that felt unnecessary unless the player died. Creating a world like that is an incredible feat in my eyes as I feel restrained everytime a loading screen appears. It's the same in Mario Galaxy and it's why I myself don't enjoy it in Dark Souls 2. It's not forcing me to use the fast travel system of course, but it is there and it influences me to use it. I mean I used the LordVessel first chance I got in the original, but in that game not all the bonfires are listed and thus you had to have some idea of the land from that bonfire on. Again Mario Galaxy asked me to save after every star and why wouldn't I save at that moment? Because the game influences you to do so, the same way DS1 influenced players to understand the intricacies of Dark Soul's labryinth. Think of Dark Souls 1 being a spider web every single strand of that web was interconnected to other strands in myriad of ways and you could get to places much faster on that web once you understood how the web twisted and turned. Dark Souls 2 is more like that of a tree, sure the roots splay out in many different directions sometimes warping in among themselves and growing more and more complex the further down you went. Firelink Shrine was the center of the web with many strands leading back to it. Firelink DS2 Edition is the trunk of the tree. By using this analogy it's obviously much more easier to simply fast travel back to the trunk of the tree than to head back all through the land you just scowered and toiled through. Of course you CAN, but there's really no reason to. As there really aren't any shortcuts leading back into other areas. There are still plenty of secrets and hidden passages but none of this have the intent of allowing you to traverse the world that FromSoft has created as fluidly. These feelings are only amplified by the fact that you HAVE to travel back to the Majula bonfire if you want to level up your character, upgrade your weapons, and often buy things. Throw in an extremely annoying NPC who won't shut the fuck up because you just want to level up and you have a recipe for disaster.

Environments this time around are incredibly more varied and plentiful compared to Dark Souls 1. Areas are as awe-inspiring as they are expansive. You may find yourself coming to a dead stop just to enjoy a few moments of sight seeing among the chorus of despair you and your foes will be giving off. There are many more environmental hazards to look out for than in previous iterations and it'll take some amount of wit to overcome these harsh landscapes. There's nothing quite like finding a bonfire with a pocketful of souls and the knowledge that the area you just finished up is now behind you. You feel relieved and yet even still you grow all the more anxious just to see what abominations may lie ahead. They seem to be designed more like Demon Souls rather than Dark Souls as they are riddled with all manner of traps for the invaders or even host to fall victim to. As I was traversing through these areas I was simultaneously thinking up strategies to employ were I to get invaded whether it be taking a huge leap of faith to narrowly escape death or something as simply as having the platform falling down into a pit of lava. If you're into PvP as much as me, you'll know exactly what I mean.

I should note something here that's going to be rather nitpicky, but regardless it must be said. Remember those illusory walls that were in DS1? The ones you had to hit the wall with and it would reveal all manner of secrets? Well in DS2 you now have to press A in order to interact with said illusory walls, hitting them doesn't work this time. It's all fine and good when you know that, but I had gone through about 20% of the game without knowing this little tidbit. I had summoned a phantom to help me traverse through a particularly tricky area. And they were trying to communicate to me that there's an illusory wall by pointing at it, naturally I try to hit it with my sword and nothing happens. This goes on for a little while until the phantom sends me a message to press the A button. Lo and behold it worked! I can't even begin to imagine all the things I had missed out on at that point. It wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't so inconsistent to all video game design. I mean, usually in games you interact with objects by utilizing the games core mechanic unless otherwise specified. Mario activates ? Blocks by jumping, Dante interacts with switches by doing insane combos to keep the Stylish meter going, Dark Souls 1 had you simply hit the wall to interact with it, levers in Dark Souls always had a big ol' HIT A RIGHT HERE box popup. I understand keeping the illusory wall hidden by not having a box popup, but what was wrong with simply hitting every single wall? Originally, I thought all those messages that said illusory wall ahead were simply lying. It's nitpicky but I feel I'm at least not in the wrong about this one.

Bosses this time around are much more fun to fight. Instead of the usual hug the bosses crotch until they start to raise their weapon in a threatening manner. These bosses will actually employ different tactics to keep you at bay and make you think about your approach. And there's actually a TON more bosses than in Dark Souls 1. I've beaten the game at around 40 hours and I've recently found out that I missed out quite a few more boss battles than I had originally thought.

Enemies seem to have also been given an upgrade as they now easily overwhelm the player that isn't paying enough attention or isn't GiantDad enough. Something that FromSoft has decided to test the waters with is enemies now have limited respawns. Yes very strange. The theory is that they wish to discourage grinding for levels, but they could have easily gone with normal RPG mechanic of "enemies give less EXP the higher level you are". I understand why they do it, but it really isn't the best way to got about discouraging grinding. The community seems to have taken this way out of hand and started a petiton to change the limited respawns. They hold good intentions but the way they go about it seems so feral and barbaric. CHANGE THE LIMITED RESPANWS OR WE BOYCOTT FROMSOFT!!!!1!! It's not game breaking you can bring back the enemies by throwing in a bonfire ascetic, a new mechanic that makes enemies surrounding that particular bonfire much tougher. The bonfire ascetic actually makes a significant difference on the surrounding enemies giving them more health and able to dish out some serious damage. My problem with the enemies lies solely with that they seem to reuse many designs from previous enemies from other areas so instead of having unique encounters around every corner keeping things fresh you'll find yourself saying "Oh this guy again."

For those looking to make an even greater challenge out of an already challenging game there's actually a few ways to go about that. There's actually a covenant built around making the game harder and restricting you of your summons. Which is a no go for me, I personally love the unique multiplayer interaction of the Souls series. While getting invaded is definitely one of the better components in my opinion helping other's via another covenant by repelling phantoms from those who would desire protection just sounds like the perfect fit for me. Something Dark Souls 1 didn't really deliver too well on comparatively.

Speaking of the multiplayer, it's actually been enhanced a bit to make connecting with other phantoms much less of a pain in the ass. Now when you try to connect to another player the game will tell you within seconds if the connection was able to be completed or not. It's still a bit laggy, but given the fact that the servers are under a ton of stress I'm willing to let it slide for the time being. I'm told Dark Souls 1 was way worse than it is nowadays so it'll probably just take some time for things to settle.

And what of the combat? I consider it to be way better than Dark Souls 1, it takes some getting used to at first, at least for me. Because in Dark Souls 2 they made it a point to increase the quality of the game and gave much smoother animations to practically everything. Of course this comes at the idea of committing to your actions rather than being able to cancel into a roll everytime when things get risky. Rolls have less i(nvincibility)frames but as such everything has much tighter and accurate hitboxes to keep it fair, so now you can't as easily abuse iframes to keep you safe. You now have to actually avoid the attack entirely. They were going easy on us the last time! Another thing, healing items do not automatically heal they are a bit of timer some items heal faster than others and others still allow you to move while consuming them. This allows for even greater decisive strats on which heals you decide to use mid battle.

As for the different tactics you can employ if you aren't particular to simply being a melee build, pyromancy, miracles, magic, and even a brand new category hexes (i. e. dark magic) can be built into your repertoire to give you that intangible edge when it comes to putting distance between you and your opponents. They aren't particularly limited this time around either! There are several new spells for each class that can provide for unique styles of play. Some spells are more practical than others allowing you to repair your weapon with a simple spell cast, or even give you and your fellow phantoms a boost to your attack and defense bonuses. Some are straight damage dealers like the traditional lightning spear for faith users and the always conventional firestorm spell for pyromancers.

There's quite a few ways to outfit your arsenal, from time to time you could find a shield that allows you to cast spells without need of a catalyst but by relinquishing you of your parry.  Some swords will allow you to cast miracles but thus leaving you without a heavy R2 attack. I definitely recommend not minding about 100% physical defense reduction in a shield and experimenting with the many choices the game throws at you.

And trust me you are going to die a lot...again. I find Dark Souls 2 to be much harder than the first game. Including NG+ mode, which seems to have added more enemies and tons of new surprises keeping the second playthrough feeling as fresh as the first. For a while I still figured Dark Souls 1 was still the better game but now that I've finished my first go through, I can confidently say that it isn't really. In fact I think Dark Souls 2 is better than Dark Souls 1 even if I still favor the first from a design perspective. There is sooo much content to this game it's staggering. If you're considering relighting that familiar warm spirit of playing that childhood favorite game for the first time and are still on the fence about these games. Don't be, get them, buy them, love them. Every single one of the Souls games are incredible experiences and each stand on their own merits. If you're wondering which one to start with I recommend Dark Souls 2. It's more accessible than the first two, but don't mistake accessibility for easy going. This is one adventure you don't want to miss out on.