I finally did it. I beat all three entries in the Dark Souls trilogy. I went from hell and back, beat every colossal foe that stood in my way, died again and again, and in the end it was all worth it. Before we start this review I would like to congratulate the geniuses who made this fantastic series, Bloodborne, and more. Thank you FromSoftware for making this fantastic franchise. You not only created a universe full of depth and history, but you also proved that challenging games can still exist in the video game market. You made a genre defining title, one that will truly stand out to the test of time. Now, forgive me and everything I'm about to say with this game.
Dark Souls 2, what is considered to be the black sheep of the Dark Souls series. After the massive success of the first Dark Souls, FromSoftware planned on making a follow up to one of their most successful games. Problem was the lead director on the first game, Hidetaki Miyazaki, was busy working on another project which you may all know as Bloodborne. So instead FromSoftware had to choose another person to lead the direction of Dark Souls 2. The direction for Dark Souls 2 began with Tomohiro Shibuya and later had to be swapped over to Yui Tanimura. That’s mistake number one right there. Swapping directors mid development is what leads your project consistency being all over the place. Second problem was that FromSoftware planned Dark Souls 2 to be wider in scope than the first game. They wanted the game to run on a shinier engine, contain better lighting, and have a world more vast. However, FromSoftware had forgotten that the game was being developed for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The engine they created at the time was really hard for both consoles to process, so they had to downgrade certain elements, shrink down the world, and rush certain sections of the endgame to get the game running. Let’s hop on over to the audience’s side for a second and see what cancelled out some of the hype for Dark Souls 2.
FromSoftware revealed the game in 2013, showing off the new assets the game had and what the engine it ran on was capable of. Fans of the first game were impressed by the announcement, they thought the second game would surpass what the original did in every way. Little did they know that their expectations would be let down, slightly. Remember, FromSoftware had to downgrade many aspects of Dark Souls 2 during development so the final version was different from what other people saw during the gameplay reveal. When Dark Souls 2 finally came out in 2014 reception for the game was somewhat mixed. Critics stated that the game was a hit and while it downgraded some aspects from the first game it was still a worthy sequel which delivered more of what they love. Hardcore fans of the series were highly let down by Dark Souls 2. Due to it's world design not having the interconnectivity the first game had, how it messed with the series lore, and that somehow the game felt more awkward to play than the first Dark Souls due to the controls and how combat lacked impact. What made the problem worse was the release of the Scholar of The First Sin edition one year later. While it improved Dark Souls 2’s performance it rearranged the location of items and enemies throughout the game and made certain areas in the game even harder than the original version. If you were to ask a Soulsborne fan to rank each game from worst to best they would probably say Dark Souls 2 is the worst.
Recently I just played through Dark Souls 2 since I already played the other two games more than three times each, and I wanted to finish the entire collection. Even though I didn’t like Dark Souls 2 as much as the other entries I still have to admit that I enjoyed my time with the game and that the changes it made to the series was an interesting twist for the franchise. Sure it has a lot of problems, but the game is not that bad. It's actually pretty good. Also to let you know I played the Scholar of The First Sin edition, because I wanted the most definitive version of the game and I played the rest of the Soulsborne games on the Playstation 4. So today we'll be talking about why I believe the highly anticipated and disappointing sequel wasn’t that bad, and what made it so different from the rest of the series. So sharpen your blade and prepare to dive into the Kingdom of Drangleic. Ignite the fires far, sisters of solace singing!
Story
Before we dive deep into the game’s main story we must first talk about the world of Dark Souls. Long before the age of man there was no light, only darkness, but one day out of nowhere came the First Flame and with it came light. The First Flame bestowed upon mankind souls and with souls mankind was given tremendous powers and abilities they never had before. Mankind began to rise up from the rubble and establish societies of their own, but little did they know the First Flame was fading and an age of darkness was upon them. Four powerful beings with great souls were chosen to reignite the first flame, but seeing how they refused their position Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, decided to artificially reignite the First Flame himself and what came was the undead curse. The curse rapidly spreads throughout the world slowly turning anyone it touches into an undead, people who are bound to the flame and can’t truly die. If an undead loses their sanity they turn hollow and it's only by acquiring four great souls that the First Flame can be reignited, continuing the age of man and ridding of the undead curse. Or so they thought, thousands of years have passed and many adventurers have journeyed to the Kiln of the First Flame over and over again.
During this time new kingdoms were established, one of them being the Kingdom of Drangleic ruled by a man named Vendrick. Drangleic was in a time of peace until one day Vendrick declared war on an army of giants who were threatening to destroy the kingdom, and soon afterwards Drangleic fell to the undead curse. City streets crumbled and anyone who survived transformed into mindless hollows. You play as a nameless undead who comes to Drangleic to seek answers. To see if anyone has found a cure yet. after all these centuries. You reach a town overlooking the ocean named Mejula and through the town's firekeeper, The Emerald Herald, you discover that you're the Bearer of The Curse. A chosen undead who will one day rid the land of the undead curse. Your task is to seek four beings with four great souls, slay them, make it to the Throne of Want, and rid the land of the curse once and for all. Go forth fellow undead!
Gameplay
Dark Souls is Dark Souls, and as all souls games go you journey through each area fighting enemies, picking up new weapons, taking down bosses, and dying countlessly until you learn from your mistakes. During combat you can attack enemies with your weapon of choice, and dodge whenever they're about to strike you. The thing that makes the Souls games difficult is the stamina meter. Everytime you swing your weapon, dodge, or run, stamina is consumed. When the meter is empty you have to wait until it refills so you can continue attacking. If you're not careful your stamina can run low and you will be open for a hard hitting attack. Remember to strike at the right time and adapt quickly to enemy attack patterns, but don’t be too greedy with attacks.
If you do take damage though you can heal using the Estus Flask, a bottle of fire that refills every time you rest at a bonfire. Bonfires are your main checkpoints throughout the game. They are scattered everywhere, well hidden, and it’s where you respawn every time you die. And you're gonna die a lot, because unlike most games where a huge explosion will only remove ⅛ of your health bar, simple enemy attacks will kill you within seconds. However, unlike the first Dark Souls where by spending humanity at a bonfire you can heal more with the Estus Flask, here in Dark Souls 2 you have to find shards to upgrade your flask. This gets quite tedious early on in the game, but once you upgrade your flask you can increase the amount of times you can heal with it. One thing I hated about the first Dark Souls is that every bonfire had to be upgraded to carry more flasks, and humanity was a really rare resource. Here in Dark Souls 2 you will be able to carry a high amount of flasks across future areas and playthroughs.
Another new feature is that there is a new way of healing now, lifegems. Lifegems can heal you slowly over time and you can carry multiple of them at once. By using more powerful life gems you can heal yourself faster, and unlike the Estus Flask where you have to grind to halt to use it Lifegems can be used on the go. This is a nice mechanic for Dark Souls 2, especially since a majority of my deaths in the first and second game were mainly due to me not being able to heal fast enough with the Estus Flask. As you die throughout the game you begin to hollow, and when you hollow you lose the maximum amount of health you have. You can reverse this effect by using a rare resource known as a Human Effigy, which turns you back into human form. Not only that, but while in human form you can summon other players and NPCs. They can be used to fight off enemies and make the toughest encounters much easier. Be wary that other players will invade your world and try to steal whatever souls you may have.
There are numerous weapons and abilities in Dark Souls 2, allowing the player to create whatever playstyle they want. Attack quickly with daggers or rapiers, hit hard with axes and greatswords, pierce through foes using spears and halberds, or you can fight from afar away using spells. Whether that be using sorceries, pyromancies to burn foes to a crisp, miracles to support, or the newly introduced hexes to deal dark damage. Anything that knocks the enemy's health away. With the souls you collect and the powers you gain, you should be able to rid this place of the undead curse.
Thoughts
Dark Souls 2 is a game that I had a good time playing through, but obviously found flawed at times. Some of the design choices Dark Souls 2 made became core staples in Dark Souls 3, but the way they were introduced in Dark Souls 2 felt very iffy. For example weapon durability is replenished at bonfires which is much better than having to constantly fast travel back and forth between a blacksmith, but in Dark Souls 2 weapon durability is extremely low so your weapons can break really quickly. So this goes against having to fast travel back and forth to a blacksmith, because now your weapons break like plastic tools. The Estus Flasks can be upgraded by finding shards throughout the world which is good, because I have to admit a lot of the early sections of Dark Souls 1 can become cakewalks if you get the Rite of Kindling by darting straight down to Pinwheel and soon pack enough flasks. In Dark Souls 2 the upgrade shards were hidden in areas you were least likely to check out or revisit, so when it came to Dark Souls 3 they made it so that they were in areas the player were most likely to visit.
The combat is more challenging than ever, but feels awkward at times even more than Dark Souls 1. Sometimes the attack button responds later than when you press them, your character turns wide and doesn't instantly move towards the direction you point the left joystick to, attacks lack impact and feel like a knife cutting through butter rather than metal clashing against armor, and is it me or are the invincibility frames offered while dodging lower than usual? I found out that your invincibility frames are controlled by a certain stat. At no point in the game do they ever tell you this. That’s a pretty poor move made by the developers, because now players who gravitate towards learning an enemy’s attack pattern and striking after dodging will find it very hard when they get hit by attacks during a roll. The hitboxes are very wonky compared to Dark Souls 1 or Bloodborne. The graphics are somewhat of an advancement from the first game, but the somehow they f*cked up the lighting to many areas of this game. This kind of goes back to how FromSoftware had to downgrade the game’s engine.
Bosses seem to not be well thought out or intriguing like the original, but if it’s anything Dark Souls 2 convinced me to love it’s fighting dudes in armor or foes of equal size. These fights seem to be really fun, they require high amounts of reactions but never seem too frustrating. It’s like being in an actual sword fight, exchanging hits and finding windows of opportunity. The problem is that Dark Souls 2’s knights in armor are just uninteresting. When Dark Souls 3 came around they introduced bosses that were awesome and were actually incorporated into the lore and history. The Abyss Watchers, Pontiff Sulyvahn, The Nameless King, etc. We’re getting off topic.
I liked Dark Souls 2 and saw the influences that would be carried over for later entries, but I wouldn’t say it stands out like Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne because the changes it introduced took some time to properly execute. If I were to personally rank the FromSoftware games from most to least favorite I would say Bloodborne is the best out of all of them. Then I would say my second favorite is Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 1, and finally Dark Souls 2. Just for the sake of it might as well say why Dark Souls 3 is the most favorite of the Souls games. First things first, the more I played Dark Souls 3 the more I began to love it. Sure it’s quite linear and leans farther away from the design philosophy of Dark Souls 1 but it’s easier to control, learn one or two things from the fast paced combat of Bloodborne, makes sense of the lore from the first and second game, and provides the most streamlined experience of the bunch. Welp we’re getting off topic again, let’s just sum up my overall thoughts on Dark Souls 2.
It’s not brilliant, but it's not terrible. I think the game is misunderstood. Dark Souls 2 still maintains the sense of wonder the series is known for and contains confusion when going to each area, but in a good way. It's in a way where the world doesn't make sense and you take the many twists it throws at you because it's a fantasy game and you're supposed to feel lost. While some areas aren't fun to traverse across, the ones that are great are highlights of the sequel. Heidi's Tower is not too far off from Mejula and overlooks the sea with its many spires. Taking an elevator high up into the world to only appear in what seems to be a castle surrounded by lava. There's this one point where you end up in this peak full of dragons and you discover that they have been repopulating ever since the events of the first game. The dragon you speak to at the end doesn't even attack you. He literally states attacking humans is meaningless now.
The bosses aren't as easy to exploit as the first game and lean more towards a reactive playstyle. There are still interesting characters and bits to pick up while traversing the world. The story is still really good and maintains that theme of cycles that spread across the series. Across your journey you are constantly told of how great a ruler Vendrick and the power he held. When you encounter him in the Undead Crypt as a mindless hollow who has given up on hope you feel something. He doesn't even try to attack you or get agitated when you pick up the king's ring lying in the corner. It reminded me heavily of Gwyn and how a once faithful ruler was brought down by the madness of the world. The ending is still satisfying as you are given the choice to either rule over a world despite it being in shambles, or leave it behind and find a new destiny.
Dark Souls 2 is still a great game and stands up even better than some of the other major games that came out in 2014. It’s worth playing through if you just want more Dark Souls, or want to see what it did and didn’t do well. I believe Dark Souls 2 deserves a 8/10 for being pretty good. May seem really high with everything I just said, but trust me it's still good. It's Dark Souls, and Dark Souls holds a place in many hearts.
Comments