@jg4xchamp said:
@JangoWuzHere said:
I always play as a heavy armor dude in the souls games, so I never experienced the broken dodging in DSII. I mainly just block and manage stamina while waiting for an opening.
The issues in Bloodborne totally waste my time. They had a perfectly fine health system for years, so it's even more insulting that they managed to totally **** it up. It goes completely against the flow and core design of these games. Forcing people to grind if they're struggling on a boss is just fucking terrible. I wasted hours of my life farming bloodvials just to have a chance of progressing. Never had to waste my time like that in DSII, **** Bloodborne.
It also doesn't help that I find the environments drab, the NPCs boring, and feeling of accomplishment to be completely lacking. I mean, if we really want to be honest here. DSII and BB are hardly great games compared to the original Dark Souls. Both are shitty sequels, but at least DSII isn't a slog to get through.
Which still wouldn't make that or its idiotic hit detection less lame. Bloodborne adds unnecessary tedium, no disagreement, but that shit has been patched to be a non-issue. So the blood vial complaint is a bit dated sunshine.
The environments in Bloodborne have far more going on in terms of selling atmosphere and setting though, the moment to moment level design in Dark Souls 2 is quite poor. Both visually in terms of establishing a setting as it's completely disjointed unlike Dark Souls 1, and pure combat design as it's just fucking lazy about turning everything into tedious slogs of mobs between you and boss fights. All meant to sell the whole franchise mantra of "challenge", except Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne are fair, until they do gimmicky levels (which yes, historically suck sans an exception or two). Dark Souls 2's moment to moment level design is abysmal because it routinely relies on the "throw more dudes" to the point where you don't even pull people 1 v 1, the way you do in other souls games, you're just dealing with groups, in a game where the combat system isn't as well suited to groups.
And because of that when the previous 2 games use groups, they have an actual sense of pace and spike, Dark Souls 2? Nah, no rhythm. Bloodborne in contrast is better suited for dealing with mobs, because of the nature of that dodge.
Dark Souls 2 gets shat on, because you can't patch out the things wrong with Dark Souls 2, you feel on need to redo the entire philosophy behind how that game was made.
You aren't getting Dark Souls II. Yes, its more disjointed than its predecessor, however, it makes up for it by its environment being far more unique and its desolate open design plays to its advantage. The first Souls game was very cramped compared to the environments of the sequel. Hell, even the Gutter makes Blighttown feel cramped.
And no, DS2 is by far the most fair of the souls games, with DS3 being second. Why? Because it relies less on "gotcha" and more on more reasonable uses of the level design. It is the first game that has the gimmicks, especially the second half, and the third game brings back some of these annoyances (such as the swamp). The only true gimmicks I see in the sequel are the statues in the Gulch/Shulva path as well as the completely optional Shaded Woods ghost forest. And please, just "git gud". Groups of Tier 1's and 2's (if I tier Souls enemies 1-5 as ankle biters, troopers, elites, super elites, and bosses) are handled easily, which DS2 does throw at you. However, DS1's enemy design is uninspired when it comes to tier 1 and 2 enemies, and when it did make good use for them, they also attacked in groups, where they couldn't be baited into 1v1 situations. The combat system isn't supposed to be well suited for groups, and thats realistic. The key to combating groups is to kill each member as fast as possible or use the environment (for example, the gunpowder to take out the swordsman swarm in the Lost Bastille). But DS2 works because when there are group attacks, its Tier 1's and 2's, enemies that are killed in 1 or 2 hits, and if you pull multiple Tier 3's, you're dead.
And Dark Souls 1 has very little sense of pace and rhythm, especially second half areas. The sequel has far superior sense of pace and rythym, especially the DX11 version.
And the DX11 version of DS2 crushes DS1 when it comes to level design.
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