>dark souls 1 and 3 are the only games to play in the franchise

>>377772312
because its too easy

>>377772312
Because Miyazaki didn't direct it. It's basically eceleb logic.

Dark Souls 2 does not even feel like it's from the same franchise. It's so fucking ugly, filled with irritating design decisions, and is ultimately just not fun to play.

It's bullshit, that's all it is. It's a fine game that does some things better and worse than its predecessor but as usual the niggers here could just focus on what was worse than in their holy DaS1 in the first 2 months and the meme, in the actual sense of the word, was born and cemented.

Similar, DaS3 didn't get the same treatment because all these parrots were convinced it has to be way better than DaS2, a shitty garbadge game, when it was again just as much of a fine game that did things better and worse than its predecessors.

>>377773042
wait miyazaki wasnt involved with 2?

>>377773738
He was involved, but he was not the main director the way he was with the other games.

I'd also argue that demons souls and bloodborne are worth a try but I agree that dark souls 1 and 3 are the best by far. I've heard good things about DS2 SotFS though.

In the end, even the worst souls games (DS2 and bloodborne IMO) are better than most other games.

>>377773738
Bloodborne team made DaS 2.

>>377773690
This, it's absolutely pathetic how people are unable to form their own opinion and simply let hyperboles convince them

I fell for the bloodborne meme. people here shilled it like it was on par with DAS3 so that's what I went into it expecting. What I got was a short base game, with a confusing plot, and literally the same color palate throughout the game. It was all black and dark purple and red.

>>377774215

I grabbed it because it was 20 bucks at Walmart. It doesn't have a tenth of the depth that souls has, or any of the nuance and customization.

>>377773058
>Dark Souls 2 does not even feel like it's from the same franchise. It's so fucking ugly, filled with irritating design decisions, and is ultimately just not fun to play

This %100

>>377772312
Dark Souls 2 felt sluggish. The movement didn't feel as tight as DeS or DaS, the bosses were boring for the most part (Undead Giant and Pursuer were rad though), the areas were really bland (can't really explain why, something just felt off about them), and overall the game was really ugly. Majula and that one rainy castle area were nice, but the rest of the game wasn't plesant to look at.

I've tried to beat it three times by now but I just kept getting bored.

>>377772312

because it is trash

>>377774305
>Depth
Until you go bloodgem farming. I love Bloodborne but all the cool customizeable shit (weapon variants, advanced bloodgems) was hidden away in the god damn chalice dungeons.

>>377772312
>Ugly animations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Th96wgegHw
>Ugly graphics (it looks worse than Das1)
>Level design ranging from decent to complete shit
>Completely lacks atmosphere
>Fucking SM
>Despawning enemies
>Invading was almost non-existant
>Unbalanced as fucking shit right up until SOFTS
>Disappointing bosses

It had some good going for it as well
>Dual wield/powerstance
>DLC's mostly good
>Some really cool weapons

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I loved DS1 and completed the whole game. Played DS2 recently and it's fucking garbage. I came in biased, wanting to like but it's honestly terrible.

Super repetitive right off the bat, same enemies over and over again. Excess use of "off-timing" enemy attack animations. No weapons merchants in the first several locations, I have no idea when you would even get access, this is bullshit because what if I don't want to use some gayfag 1 handed sword and want a proper 2h weapon?

you can only spend souls in one location and it takes unskippable dialog to activate. Excessive focus on multiple enemies in tight spaces, getting poiselocked is common from multiple hits.

It feels like they just chose mechanics, monsters and encounters that killed people the most, regardless of whether it was fun or interesting design, seems like they really bought into the "le epin hardest gaem ever ur gonna die lmao". I beat no man's wharf, quit and uninstalled shortly after. A fucking shame really, DS1 is one of my favorite games.

It's really not. If you're going to be autistic then DS1 is the only one truly worth playing. Otherwise there's no reason to include 3 over 2 unless you REALLY love boss fights and for some reason can put up with 3's god awful regular combat

The Dark Souls franchise is garbage.

>>377774638
>No weapons merchants in the first several locations
There's two in Majula.

Lost in the shuffle of this is that Dark Souls 2 plays like shit. The animation for even basic things just look and feel fucking weird, with everything feeling overall slower. It looks and feels second rate, not that much better than Lords of the Fallen. Might be a weird way to describe it, but feels like your character in doing everything underwater. Just slow and awkward.

Oh, the hitboxes are the worst in the entire series too on top of it all.

>>377773941
This isn't true. Bloodborne was in devolpment at the same time as DaS2

>>377774813
There is an armor merchant, easily found. There is also a blacksmith who is locked out of his shop requiring a key. Which I'm assuming you get the key at some point during after no man's wharf.

So no, there are not any weapons merchants you can purchase from during the first 4 locations at least.

>>377774638
>stopped at No Man's Wharf
Good on you. What you described was basically the rest of the game PvE wise. The scorpion bro helping you and the chariot were cool but I digress.

Also, From literally admitted themselves (essentially) that it's the ugly duckling of the series.

http://peterbarnard1984.tumblr.com/post/113163062955/dark-souls-2-design-works-translation

Interview if you care.

Game was totally fucked midway through development and they salvaged what they could out of it.

DS2 plays and is designed like the Chinese knockoff of Dark Souls.

>>377772312
2 is the best one.

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>>377772312
You play all 5 games and make your own fucking opinion, that's how it should be done.

>>377775007
You buy the key off the old woman in Forest of the Giants, it's right there in her inventory

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>>377772312
3 is the only one in the series that I cannot enjoy.

Its so irritating. I really want to like 3 and I keep trying but I legitimately hate this one.

it took me a while but i adapted to das2 eventually

I'm a huge pvp fag though so take it as you will.

DaS2 put too much effort into trying to be difficult which was never what miyazaki intended. The sheer number of bosses with multiple enemies is crazy as well as just constantly being swanped with enemeies in general.

>>377772312

That's not true though, the entire trilogy is worth playing.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne.

>>377775680
>hey man how come u din't kno ur spose to just mundanely buy a key item from a random NPC you may not run across to access a regular merchant

Fucking retarded design. I beat no man's warf and I don't think I had gone through forest of the giants yet.

>>377775918
>I'm a huge pvp fag
My condolences.

>>377772312
For one the second game has basically nothing to do with the overarching story and has items drop off completely unrelated bosses telling you "Hey, remember when you did this in DS1, Yeah. Good times." It's like the team behind it literally had nothing to go on so they just threw a bunch of random shit together and retold you everything you did in the last game.

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because DaS 2 didnt have characters like this

>>377775918
>1024x638
Well, at least you wont notice the terrible graphics in ds2 on that toaster you play on.

>>377772312
Shockwaves

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>>377776328
I was in windowed mode with a single monitor.

I was watching other things.

>>377775948
Soulsfags are so retarded when it comes to difficulty. Do you honestly believe that he didn't intend the games to be difficult and it just somehow accidentally happened? What delusional nonsense, especially since he called the players and himself masochistic in interviews.

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>>377776423
sure you did gringo, sure you did

>>377776326
L U C A T I E L
R A I M E

don't even get me started on Vendrick and Aldia

I thought the "DaS 2 is bad" meme died after DaS 3.

>>377776428

Well I know in Demon's Souls it was supposed to help the oppressive atmosphere of the game rather than be for its own sake.
Never really read too many interviews from him though, especially on the later games.

>>377776428
He's stated himself that the intent was to create an interesting world and the difficulty stemmed from that. Then people played Demon's Souls and the public opinion formed that the game was hard. Then The spiritual successor was about to come out so what did Namco do? PREPARE TO DIE.

>>377776428
DS1 isn't difficult, in fact it's main test is forcing you to stay calm and patient, which if you do you can pretty handily beat the game. Whereas Ds2 threw that out the window and just tried to kill the player as much as possible.

>>377776026
>hey man how come u din't kno ur spose to just mundanely buy a key item from a random NPC you may not run across to access a regular merchant
>Fucking retarded design
If you're playing a Souls game and not buying every key or unique item you can, how the fuck do you consider yourself a fan?

>>377776694
That doesn't mean anything. Difficulty is never there for its own sake, no such game exists.

The only people who complain hardcore about DaSII being "unfair" are completely shit at playing the game and just want to run through and tank damage until they can get to a boss. No wonder everyone cries and whines about Shrine of Amana--good luck pulling that off.

It's a damn fine game with a great direction and take on the lore

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>>377776547
Don't talk shit about my toaster. Its a brave little toaster

>>377776834
>Difficulty is never there for its own sake, no such game exists
Dark Souls 2. This is literally one of the main complaints about the game in that the developers completely misinterpreted what people liked about 1.

>>377776834

Dark souls 2

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>shit zones
>uninteresting bosses
>feels like a slog
>adaptability
>hitboxes felt worse for me than any other souls but debatable


All it has going for it is the combat variety.

At no point in II besides the DLC did I not feel like I was just slogging through enemies to hit a boss and get it done. The level designs felt very dated, those paths through the woods that are literally ditches felt like I was playing Medal of Honour or something.

People that think it's the best are contrarians or PVP faggots.

>>377776734
Fuck off retard, you never had to buy anything from a merchant like that in DS1, there was no precedent, it doesn't even add anything either. Additionally, I never even ran across the merchant because I didn't go that direction, another glaring indicator of awful design.

>>377776951
>I didn't play Dark Souls 2
Ok.

>>377776728
That's blatantly wrong though, almost all of the easy strategies are still there among new options. Each encounter can be solved with some basic strategy. It did make some changes but I have no idea what else you expect since it's a sequel. Just a retread of the same thing you've been doing in DeS and the first game? What's the point?

>>377776951
>game has multiple branching paths that affect your experience
>SHIT DESIGN
Heide's Tower of Flame and No Man's Wharf are dripping weapons anyway

>>377776949
>The level designs felt very dated

Those petrified guys in that very zone that block paths

That's exactly how they felt to me

>>377775017
Chariot was cool for the minute it takes you to run to the switch, then it becomes another boring DS2 monster boss.

>>377776997
Yes I did, you dumb piece of shit. I'm >>377774638

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LMAO NO TWINKS


BUT
BUT
BUT

SL120vsSL800 late game
thats why.

>>377776925
>>377776927
Nope, the difficulty there is to give the player a sense of achievement and mostly comes from deliberate encounter/level design which encourages strategy and using all the tools at your disposal (of which there are many)

>>377777114
Wrong.

It's kinda linear but I dunno, I find it super comfy. I love playing it when I'm ill, not having to focus much. Also, it's super easy to remember everything about the game, hell after my first playthrough I knew where every enemy was pretty much. Just feels nice and simple, I guess.

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I'm replaying Dark Souls 2 for the first time since launch, SotFS first time playthrough actually.

Its really not as bad as i remember. Its still EASILY the weakest entry in the franchise but its 100% worth experiencing.

>>377777186
That's the quality of argument I've come to expect from souls babbys

>>377777114
>the difficulty there is to give the player a sense of achievement
Considering the fucking marketing and first cutscene with the hags, I can't believe this. It's there because they wanted the game to be hard because people called the first 2 hard so this one has to be even harder.

Even if it was, it fucking failed. I felt accomplished in all the others, but DaS2 felt like a fucking chore.

>>377775918

How could anyone enjoy the pvp in these games? It is totally beyond my understanding, the mechanics are so bad for pvp.

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>>377777257
no cute waifus

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DS2 has the best pvp mechanics and actual variety, and waifus !
DS3 has the best bosses and "rest" zone !
DS has the best "lore" with of course, no recycled bullshit (obvious since it's the first) and no boring lore like DS2 !
BB has also best bosses, almost no variety but it has the best gameplay !
All soulsborne have great OST
Yay ! If you agree post Yay ! Or your mother will die in her sleep !

>>377777194
>can pick between 8 different bosses for "first boss"
>linear
uh

Bosses, enemies and areas just felt incredibly random and not too interesting. It's pretty much the opposite of what interested me in Dark Souls, Dark Souls III was linear as fuck but at least the somewhat consistent enemies and areas kept me interested.

Dark Souls II just felt like a generic fantasy video game from the 90s where you kill random shit in random areas.

>>377777301
you're a fucking idiot

>>377777257
Who cares about the marketing and a throwaway line by an npc? The actual design of the game is still very similar to how it used to be with very easy execution, very small amount of randomness and all about planning. Once you figure out a strategy you can beat any encounter consistently and effortlessly, that's the definition of a difficulty curve designed to give an easy sense of achievement rather than constant challenge.

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>>377776883
>keeeeeeeeell meeeeeee...

>>377777114

I'm not sure how that is possible since the hardest parts were also the most inconsequential or enemies that just had certain moves with bad hit detection.
Then many of the bosses and main paths were complete push overs.

>>377777432
this is what we call a "bias", since the difference and variety between Dark Souls and II results in DaS actually being the more standard dark fantasy

>>377777356
What I mean is that each level is linear. Sure you can choose loads of different levels but each level is practically a hallway to the boss.

>>377777448

Do you play the pvp? I gave it a shot and found it so fucking stupid that I can't believe that anyone honestly finds it fun. Not to mention the absolutely shit balance, which is bound to happen when you've got literally hundreds of weapons and spells.

Don't even get me started on the stupidity of "dueling" either.

Why do good games always have the worst fans?

>>377777525
So it wasn't actually more difficult overall and just had some awkwardly implemented sections? Yet it was still made to just be difficult for its own sake? Solid reasoning.

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>>377777301
After beating the game I like to pit myself against other humans rather than a scripted npc whom I can already read like a book after so many encounters.

Playing through the game to make more builds to fight other ppl gives me enjoyment and re-playability. Broken mechanics or not.

I bought DS2 in the PSN sale yesterday and I'm having a blast. Just beat the Persuer who was a piece of piss. The combat definitely feels less weighty and I don't like how sluggish taking an estus is, but so far I'm having a blast

>>377777559
every single one of these games funnels you towards bosses since you have to beat specific ones to progress through each area and the overall game. And many of them tend to have basically one path to the boss with some branching dead ends or loop around.

Can you even think up an example where tha tdoesn't happen in any souls game?

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>>377776951
>Forest of Giants supposed to be the first place new players go
>Stick the tutorial's "New Players Keep Out" monster right at the entrance
What were they thinking when they did this?

>>377777487
>The actual design of the game is still very similar to how it used to be with very easy execution, very small amount of randomness and all about planning.
The same could be said for Osu!, but you can't possibly pretend that there aren't maps in that game designed with difficulty as the first priority.

They piled on the challenge (i.e. number of enemies) not to make the game enjoyable, but to make it hard.

>Who cares about the marketing and a throwaway line by an npc?
When you're trying to find out why the devs designed a game the way they did, those factors are pretty fucking important.

>>377777749
>playing SOTFS
HAW HAW

>>377777746
I never claimed that isn't how it works. Levels in DS1 and 3 aren't just straight lines to the boss, though. That was the point.

The problem with Dark Souls II difficulty is that the bosses for the most part are easy where as it's random enemies or badly placed enemies that can offer difficulty.

No one wants to slog through a tedious load of enemies to then fight a pushover boss. I died most simply because fighting generic pack of enemies number 120 just made me brute force and not pay attention. One shot most bosses in comparison, I can't even really remember most of the bosses.

>>377777653

Yeah, making something spin 180 mid air and slamming three times past its weapon for an entire health bar is hard to justify.

>>377777801
>The same could be said for Osu!
No it can't, Osu is low depth high execution. You will have memorize the maps long before you can actually consistently pull them off because it's a demanding game. Souls requires some very basic timing at most, which you can bypass in most cases by using the rpg mechanics or tools the game gives you. The large number of enemies makes it more dynamic and strategy-heavy because 1v1 fights always boil down to simple timing and don't require any thought. Marketing and a line by NPCs would be important if you for some reason couldn't just look at how the game is structured, which you can.

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>>377777837
>SOTFS is announced
>"we fixed the enemy placements!"
>SOTFS is released
>it's 100% worse

>>377776949
>People that think it's the best are contrarians or PVP faggots.

Even the pvp was terrible desu

SM was cancer, everyone agrees on that. But combined with the fact that you had to farm for fucking invasion items, it meant you fucked up your SM, and even if you had plenty of invasion items, SM meant that your low-level invader was on borrowed time anyway. I hardly got invaded in Das2, except for the bell areas.

Secondly, it was unbalanced as fucking shit. Dark infused, resonant weapon, 500 buffs OHKO climax shit was the "meta" for a long, long time. Even right up until the end magic infusions were superior.

Powerstancing really added very little in terms of strategy and variety. Except some meme-combos like Helixadon, it was mostly crap.

>>377778095
Only iron keep is worse, everything else is better

>>377778095
What the fuck were they thinking?

I think the worst of DaS2 design philosophy shows in NG+. They don't need to add randoms to the boss fights, but they did because it makes it harder. There's no thought involved, just toss some random mooks in to make things harder, because DaS has a reputation for being difficult. The adds don't make the fight more interesting, only more tedious.

>>377778095

The run to Sir Alonne is one of those moments in games where I just cannot relate to what the devs could have possibly been thinking.

>>377778193
BUT ANON PEOPLE LIKED DARK SOULS 1 BECAUSE IT WAS HARD RIGHT XD PREPARE TO DIE LOL! DON'T YOU WANT MORE MOBS????

Fuck Dark Souls 2.

>>377778193
They did it to make NG+ more interesting than just a stat increase since it changes the whole dynamic of the fight. Now simply better stats COULD be called difficulty for difficulty's sake since it adds very little to the games.

>>377778328

They also could have added some moves for the boss, or changed up it's AI. Instead they toss in some extra guys. It doesn't even change up the fight all that much, it just means you need to spend a minute or two to kill the extras before the boss fight actually begins.

It's the laziest way to make a fight harder.

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The Manikin Mask. Trust your feelings. You're still mad about it.

>>377778261

That run is a perfect example of why Dark Souls II level design aesthetics are shit. You go into the memory of the king and it could have had an interesting design like Alonne's boss room but no, it's a generic fucking inside of castle with garted floors and fire breathing salamanders in the walls for reasons?

Most of Dark Souls II feels like they didn't give a fuck about the level design beyond gameplay elements.

>>377778452
They could have yeah, but they've already done more to make the NG+ mode interesting than the previous games ever did. And compared to just a stat increase it's a massive change

>>377778624
And guess what? It ended up being a shit change.

>>377778624

But it's not an interesting or worthwhile addition. It doesn't make the fight any more memorable, it only serves to make subsequent playthroughs slightly more tedious.

>>377778665
Opinion. I disagree, but that wasn't really the point of discussion here to begin with. You were using it as an example of the devs adding difficulty just for the sake of difficulty when it clearly wasn't that, they were adding enemies to make NG+ fresh for players instead of making them repeat the same exact thing but slightly more difficult via stat tweaks.

>>377778050
>look at how the game is structured
I did and most of what I saw was comprised of gank squads, in both bosses and generic mooks, far more than any of the other games had to do to make you feel accomplished. It didn't make the game better, it didn't make me feel a sense of achievement, it just made me loathe every encounter I had to deal with. DaS2 was more difficult in the most shallow, annoying way.

>>377778804
>You were using
I'm not the other guy. Change for the sake of change does not automatically mean it's good because something is different. They tried something, and it ended up not being a good addition. I wonder why such a change didn't make its way into BB or 3.

>>377778924
It did make the game better by removing brainless cheesy tactics everyone used in the first game and replacing them with actual strategy. To help that it threw so many weapons, titanites and items at you that you had a fuck ton of options to deal with any gank squad that comes your way. It's not "difficulty for difficulty's sake", it's them bringing out the better aspects of Souls combat by stopping you from spamming parry or fishing backstabs.

>>377778924
>DaS2 was more difficult in the most shallow, annoying way

This. I never felt like exploring a new area was simply tedious on the first run through in any other souls game or bloodborne.

>>377779130
>replacing them with actual strategy.

It would be good if this was for bosses, not for generic packs of boring enemies.

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>its too hard

/v/ shits on it

>its not hard enough

/v/ shits on it

fuck off you normies

>>377779130

Are you high? You can still cheese the shit out of everything, and in fact it's encouraged even more in DaS2 because they're constantly throwing groups of enemies at you. At no point did I ever feel like I was employing a strategy, and found myself annoyed more often than not at what felt like cheap encounters meant only to kill me.

>>377779326

It's not hard, it just requires a lot of fucking about and time to progress through areas. It's just tedious.

I'd rather fight one very hard enemy than have to dick around baiting enemies again and again because they thought Strongish enemies in large groups was a good idea. It's just boring.

>>377779342
You can cheese it of course but that involves tedious unfun playstyles like drawing enemies out one by one with a bow, yeah. If you avoid the biggest cheese tactics however it does encourage and reward strategy a lot though, even getting you to use different melee weapons for different scenarios which DS1 never really encouraged at all.

>>377779130
>stopping you from spamming parry or fishing backstabs.
Instead they limited your options to "roll in, R1, roll away, repeat ad infinitum" (case in point, Throne Watcher/Defender). Or just learn how to speedrun the entire level so you don't have to fight anything. That shit's not cheesy at all.

>>377779623

Not really though. When I mentioned cheesing, I meant fishing for backstabs because those give you I-frames. It's easier to simply circle around a guy and dodge his friends attacks and wait for your opportunity to get big damage. I rarely used backstabs in DaS because I didn't feel it was necessary.

the pve is trash aside from the dlc's but the pvp is wayyy better than ds3 aside from soul memory, but i just use a mule to make legit builds so that doesn't bother me. i can punish hosts for chugging, i dont invade a 4v1 every tyme, you don't have infinite rolls to abuse, stamina is something that actually has to be managed, and i can find arena duels and invasions just as fast as 3 on pc in many areas

>>377779802
It's not easier at all though, what are you talking about? Since there's multiple enemies that attack independently you can't just hold your shield up and circle the enemy you want to backstab, you have to pay careful attention to their position and attacks, then take advantage of their recovery. It makes backstabbing into a proper mechanic instead of a cheesy tactic that's effective no matter how bad you are at the game.

Dark Souls 2 was not as good as the good parts of Dark Souls 1 but was a more consistent experience and felt like what a sequel to a Dark Souls game should be.

Dark Souls 3 has a lot of very good gameplay moments, but suffers the most from being unfinished and from difficulty inflation.

In terms of how well-realized each souls game is (as in, how much it felt like a complete and finished experience) I'd rank it Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 3.

Honestly, the more time goes by between me and Dark Souls 3, the more I realized the lost potential, and the more I appreciate Dark Souls 2.

>>377780173
>Honestly, the more time goes by between me and Dark Souls 3, the more I realized the lost potential, and the more I appreciate Dark Souls 2.
The Zelda cycle is real.

>>377772312
Dark Souls 2 didn't have the same feeling of wonder when encountering its settings for the first time.
That's coming from someone who played Demon's Souls before Dark Souls, so I'm not sure we can really blame that on it being the second one.

That said, shockwaves did come up a lot in my playthrough of DS2.

Still enjoyed it.

>>377780171

You can just circle with your shield up though. Alternatively you can just run without lock on and get behind them that way. Backstabbing is far easier than trying to fight them normally, especially when there's always 3 guys trying to hit. It's certainly far less tedious too, which is a running theme in DaS2 encounters.

>>377777749
Well, that fat fuck isn't hostile as long as you don't get too close. You don't have to kill it to proceed in the area.

>>377780486
Not when a lot of enemies are nearby you can't, backstabbing's only easy when enemies are spaced far apart and have little tracking, and even in that case it's far more interesting than it was in the first game. And it's not even a very good way to take out groups of enemies. You can't compare chipping away at their health with the rather shitty backstab damage to sending a whole group flying with a single swing of a greatsword for example.

>>377772312
- polished gameplay
- terrible world building
- too much blokes instead of weird shaped monsters

At the end of the day, if in DS1 you felt like stepping into something dark, unpleasantly goopy and unknown, the DS2 for most fans felt like strolling through the park with lots of medieval bullies in it.

Level-design-wise, DS1 is like a five storry wedding cake and DS2 is like a big barren tortilla with occasional seasoning on it

>>377773058
This and the controls are just clunky as fuck. It could be argued that DS1 was clunky too, and you wouldn't be totally wrong saying that, but DS2 feels like playing DS1 underwater. Absolutely no quick responsiveness or fluidity whatsoever.

>>377780756

What enemies other than starting enemies get sent flying? The only time I wasn't abusing the shit out of backstab i-frames was when I was forced to engage in a narrow corridor, which was often. You can't deny how tedious many of the encounters in DaS2 are, due in huge part to the multiple enemies.

>you know what would make fun pve?
>running away from player like bosses continuously until you have an opening

How did gank squad make it into the game without a single person pointing out that this just isn't fun at all?

>>377780757

inb4 >food analogy

>>377780921

They weren't thinking about fun, only in how to make things as difficult as possible.

Dark Souls 2 was a game about being a sequel to something great, and that awareness elevated it a whole lot for me, while Dark Souls 3 was a lot about sucking the player's dick in a way that made it feel very un-Souls.

I mean fuck, there's even evidence that Dark Souls 3 was going to do something similar to Dark Souls 2 with the whole metaplot about being a sequel. In Dark Souls 3 there's tons of people who are trying to escape, whether that's through the Deep or the Profaned Flame or turning into a dragon or painting a world or by going full hollow, and if they'd wanted to, they could have made the story and world more clearly about the idea that being stuck in a cycle (i.e., in a series) is stagnant and you need to change things in order to escape it.

Instead Dark Souls 3 ends with the biggest wet fart of the entire series

>>377780920
The Lost Bastille knights everyone always complains about for example. The only times I felt the encounters were tedious was in SOTFS Iron Keep (not really ganks though), before Mirror Knight and the hallway leading up to Velstadt. Overall I quite enjoyed it, and the group fights in the DLCs are really good.

>>377780921
>>377781031
gank squad is meant solely to be a co-op boss, and all those optional DLC areas were just thrown in to give people who didn't own the DLC a chance at DLC items

>>377781047
>the group fights in the DLCs are really good.
This is probably the 2nd worst opinion I've ever seen. Congrats, dude.

>>377781132
>gank squad is meant solely to be a co-op boss
So were O+S, but they managed to be leagues better than gank squad.

I legitimately can't think of any bosses I enjoyed fighting other than Fume and Alonne.

And Alonne has quite a bit to do with his arena actually looking interesting.

>>377781256
Co-op areas aside I mean, those were shit. O&S were terrible as a co-op boss.

>>377781047

I don't understand the praise the DLC of DaS2 gets. To me it's just more of the same tedious design, with bosses that aren't that much more interesting than the base game. 90% of the enemies in the game can't be sent flying, and many will poise through your attacks while initiating their own.

If you enjoyed it, good for you, but it's a terribly designed game. This is not up for debate, and even the director of the game has acknowledged how poorly it was designed compared to other games in the series.

>>377773058
This. Also in 3, the storyline completely skips over 2. It's like it never even happened. 3 feels like the perfect sequel to 1 in every single way. It's the perfect Souls game honestly. Even though I had more fun with 1 when it was in it's prime, 3 is objectively a better game by a long shot.

>>377781256
No, O+S can be fought pretty effectively on their own. They're a lot easier with co-op, but it's not required, and that's good because they're not an optional boss like the gank squad.

I played through DS1 after finishing the end of the DS3 DLC to get the bad taste out of my mouth and I was impressed how O&S managed to be tough, but surprisingly manageable. If you've got a decent weapon you can take like an eighth of their health off with each strong attack, which is bonkers compared to how bullshit bosses are in DS3 in particular.

>>377781350

I think it's mostly down to Brume tower actually looking interesting and there being a few boss fights that weren't completely forgettable.

>>377781350
They can't but almost all of the encounters have something interesting going on whether it's in the way they're matched up with other enemies or in the level design itself. Iron King has a lot of traps you can take advantage of to take out enemies easily, and even makes enemies themselves function in a similar way (big guys who spill lava occasionally), a lot of really entertaining crowd management such as the section when you go downstairs and get ambushed by the ashy knights and other entertaining playful moments.

>>377781634

You enjoyed the cheap ambushes? They were overused to the point where I was rolling back after stepping out from around a corner every time. Also, crowd management like you mentioned only exists in the places that you mentioned, and only in specific situations. Far more often than not you're simply running into a group of guys who crowd you into a corridor and then you slowly kill them one at a time. There's nothing interesting about that, it's simply tedious and boring.

>>377781491
Honestly that's one of my complaints about Dark Souls 3, that it for the most part completely ignores Dark Souls 2 and tries to go and do its own thing, and yet it fails at doing its own thing too. So much of the lore is either half-baked, nonsensical, or just plain unimportant. Nothing in Dark Souls was concerned with who's related to who, but Dark Souls 3 is obsessed with trying to draw these tiny connections. Every time Dark Souls 3 dredges up something from Dark Souls, they manage to do it worse and miss the entire point of what made it memorable to begin with. Siegward is like the worst example of this, they took this story that's actually really interesting about taking someone's purpose away from them and turns it into "friends are good". They couldn't even do the most simple inversion of Siegmeyer (i.e., Siegward is the one who helps you out of tough situations) which, while still shallow, would have at least been an invention on the formula.

Dark Souls 3 repackages so much nostalgia for Dark Souls without understanding what it is that made Dark Souls interesting as a fictional world. It took a game that made a point of utter indifference to the player and turned it into a game that sucks the player's dick at every moment and tells them how special and important everything they did was.

>>377777339
Yay !

>>377772312
Everyone has difference opinions there is no right or wrong since people like different things, dark souls 2 is good if you play it and deem it to be, vice versa

>>377781845
Crowd control exists all over the place, I honestly can't think of many bits where you're forced to fight in corridors. There's some but they're certainly not more common than open areas with a lot of bits of geometry you can use to your advantage. The only two instances in Iron King that come to mind (shitty co-op area aside) are the corridor with the exploding enemies and staircase near Maldron. I don't mind ambushes much, they're not ideal but they also almost never caused my deaths, what it comes down to is how interesting the encounter is the first time around and then on repeated playthroughs. Honestly the Joseph Anderson video on the DS2 dlc does a decent enough job at explaining the appeal of the levels so if you actually care why people like them then you should watch that.

>>377772312
AGL WAS A SHIT STAT THAT RUINED DODGING

no sunbro in ds 2 no buy