First of, i'll let you know that i LOVE Demon's Souls and Dark souls, got platinum in both of them and still play them nowadays. So, please don't downvote me just because of score.
I was waiting for this game since i saw it's first trailer. Like i said, loved previous games. Even bought the "Black knight edition". At first, i noticed some changes in Ds2. Starting with the frame rate and graphics, which are pretty nice. It's nice to see the clothes moving with the wind in different directions and you could break walls. Breaking walls sounded like a great idea and i expected for it to be well implemented in the game. Unfortunately, it wasn't what i expected. You don't really have a lot of "secret" walls to break. Besides, most of them you couldsimply pass without noticing them. You wouldn't lose nothing. The same thing can be said about interacting with the enviroment to get some itens, like interacting with a well so it rises a bucket with an item. I really liked it but there isn't many examples that use it. Pity. But ok, that's fine on it's own. Then you notice that you can jump waaaay more easily in this game, which was pretty good, since you use it a lot and in belieavable ways. Online gameplay works better, you can summon and invade more easily and the covenants can still offer some fun and are more varied than before (altough i really thought that 2 of the covenants were more useful than the others and one it's REALLY unfair for whoever is unfortunate enough to engage it's followers. And one is completly useless). And... That's it. Those are the only stuff i thought they did better in this game than in the previous titles. Some of the changes were nor bad nor good to me, like parry and backstab, and using lots of itens to recover health (altough i was indifferent to this because of one point ill soon explain. Normally this would be a step back.). The rest of the changes are simply BAD!
First of all, ill start with what annoyed me most: The bosses. Jesus, the bosses from Soul's series were possibly the best thing in the games for me. I enjoyed learning their pattern and have a very challenge and FAIR fight. This isnt the case in dark souls 2. Besides the fact they really copy and pasted from previous titles. You'll see bosses that resemble Sif, Garl Virland, Artorias, Ornstein and Smough, Queelag... And the worst, they USED Gargoyle and Ornstein AGAIN (I mean it! These two they didn't even change the skins!!). But ok, the problem with bosses is just copy and pasted? NO. The problem is that they couldn't make the fights interesting, they didn't know how to make a fair and challenge boss fight. The idea from director to make "hard" fights (not only with bosses, btw) was just to increase enemies in the area and increase the number of fights that has 2+ bosses, which makes you want to summon a friend or npc to aid you in the fight. you want to play this game alone? Prepare to be frustaded, since lots of boss fights are designed to fight with more than one player (i f* hated it, since i like to play on my own) and there isn't really other reason besides this, encourage to play co-op. That's it. Not really some new ideas and no boss that will stay in your head like Garl or Sif or Kalameet. There isn't a boss that will make you want to know who are they or why they're fighting or their importance to the lore. And you can't cut tails neither (why, man? Cutting off parts of some bosses from Dark Souls 1 were pretty excited, rewarding and challenging, But it isn't here, which just shows how the devs didn't want to really IMPROVE fights with the bosses). You'll fight FIVE Gargoyle at the same time attack with INFINITE stamina, for example... Or Sif 2.0 with poison rats (for real). It is a shame, really. Imo, Dark souls 1 bosses had a leap in quality compared to the already great bosses from DeS with adittion of cutting tails , plunge attacks (it was used only twice on ds 1, sure, but still it was so epic that would be awesome to have it back and better implemented) and more interesting background for some bosses. So, i was really disappointed at this topic to see that Dark Souls 2's bosses have much lower quality than even Demon's Souls, which is the first entry and has better boss fights in every aspect. Even the latter has a far more innovative and fresh boss fight than the former, where you are introduced to a new mechanic of the game that you only use during the fight. Ds2 has nothing of that. When you aren't fighting a copy pasted boss, most of them are just humanoids with armor with big weapons and similar attacks, and NONE of them aren't interesting to fight. Hell, DS 2 manages to have the WORST boss battle of the series (even WORSE than Bed of Chaos, which was at least justified because the devs reached a deadline and rushed it in the first game) which is the Rat Vanguard, which is the best example of how the devs didn't have many new ideas from bosses besides tossing a lot of enemies in the area. A sequel is supposed to be better or at least have around the same quality in one of the most important part of the gameplay of a series, not to make it completly forgetful, specially when the same series already offered spetacular mechanisms that could be improved and added to the game but yet, the devs decided to make the boss battle as basic as possible besides the "extra difficulty" thing. And there isn't really a particular boss fight that i liked in Ds2, while, if you ask me, i can say lots of bosses i loved from ds1 or des. But that may be more about opinions so i won't say anything more. Sad, really sad. Also, there's another point of trying to be "harder" that ruins boss fightes as well specially if you are meele.
Second point. I talked about how the lots of recovery itens would be bad but it isnt. I'll explain why. It's because of bonfires. You'll start with 1 estus, sure and you recover your estus with each bonfire's rest. But when you upgrade it's quantity, it's for all bonfires (unlike in ds1, since you could upgrade a particular bonfire and only the upgraded one would give extra estus). Sure, so, what's the problem? The problem is the bonfires locations. It's simply WAY more common. I swear i found a bonfire just 2 minutes after the previous one! I didn't fight any boss or mini bosses. It's that way. And to add with that, you can travel to each bonfire from beggining. It wouldn't be that bad if it was well implemented, since backtrack can be tedious. But you simply won't feel "safe" and "relieved" when you find a new bonfire or shortcut to a previous one like in dark souls 1, instead, you'll feel like "oh, another bonfire". So, it takes away that feeling that you have to use your estus only when you really need it so you could manage what you have. Sure, you could say "You only start with one" but you can farm lifestone gems on one of the first areas of the game (you probably won't need it, but you can do it) until you manage to get more estus. Then you can use your estus without worrying so much. and if you run out of estus between one bonfire to another, you'll still have many lifestone gems. So yeah, it came back with a problem i had with Demon's Souls but worse, since you have a whole lot more of checkpoints as well. Lots of recovery itens that are easily farmable or you could keep with not a lot of difficulty. That's why i said that the return of more recovery itens would be bad, it is overshadowed by the bonfires locations that are far too common, so you can refill your estus much more easily and don't use your itens overall. Btw, there's a particular shortcut that is ridiculous... It is simply pointless. You find the shortcut and what you see in it's left? Tadaaaam, a bonfire. You find a bonfire on a shortcut to another near bonfire. Wtf. Yes, it is really in this game...
Third point. Level design. Ill tell some spoilers ahead this one.. Not that it is a 'huge" spoiler. It's just to adress how bad the level design in this game is. Man, one boss you fight in a pool of toxin inside a tower with some wind fans like a windmill. You WILL be poisoned. Simply as that and it decreases your health fast. Then i thought "Well, let's see if we can fight the boss in a clean area." I searched ALL the map for a lever, for shortcuts, for anything. I got all itens and i couldn't see how to fight the boss without the poison in the arena (which is bs). I gave up already until i tried to connect to internet and try to summon a phantom. Then i saw a message near the fans of the windmill to "burn" it. I burnt and bam, the poison from the boss area was gone. But here's the thing: HOW THE **** WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?! THERE SIMPLY WAS NO WAY TO KNOW IT WITHOUT BEING CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET! AND HOW CAN YOU BURN METAL PIECES FROM WINDMILL MECHANISM WITH A SIMPLE TORCH?!!! Oh, the torch, btw? You won't use it except in one area, which, btw, resembles blightown. Pity, since i wanted to use the torch more... And this is not the only case of bad level design. Other case was when i reached an area with infinite poison spitting statues. Again, no matter how well equiped, how well you dodge... You WILL be poisoned. No matter what. And it builds pretty quickly and eats your health fast, you can't even compare to plagye town in Demon's souls. Oh, you thought that was bad? No, my friend... Just wait (i didn't like the plague town from des neither, but at least you could see the swamp and prepare yourself to not fall into it. Plus, the fact they did a flaw from the first game WORSE here it's a problem). And here's the thing, how can you avoid the poison? Just run to the boss. that's it, go straight to boss. there isnt any trap, hole in the way. If you are fast enough, you'll avoid the mobs and reach the boss, recover from toxin and fight it. And there isn't any good item nearby to reward for you stress so you can complete ignore them on this part. Btw, there's a very near bonfire in the area (like less than one minute from boss if you run like i said), so don't worry about dying... Or you could break the statues, which there are lots of them and you'll waste a lot of your time and weapon durability, which forces you to go back to bonfire or your weapon will break, all of that to reward you nothing. Your choice.
Fourth: The enemy's attacks. Say goodbye to you well timed rolls. All enemies track you in their attacks. I mean it. Even if the enemy has already STARTED the attack, it will track YOU. Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, know that almost NO enemy is one time spawn, like dark knights on undead burg from DS 1. So, yeah, before i continue, first imagine fighting a group of those giant black phantoms from plagye town in this game, all together ganking on you, with extra invisible reach and tracking attacks. Imagine fighting a group of black knights from dark souls 1 all on you the same way. Does it look bad? Well, it manages to be worse. Let's say you kill all the enemies but one. If you die, i'll feel sorry for you because you have to fight a long tedious and unfair battles again. That's the BRILLIANT IDEA the devs found to make the game harder. Just put a lot of enemies and with heat seeking attacks. Oh, and it is really bad it's broken hitbox. Just search it on youtube about the (s)hitbox. Enemies's attacks seem to have like an extra invisible reach. There are enemies that are simply a pain to fight against if you are meele. It's not fun nor fair. It's simply boring. There's one area that has an enemy that takes a lot of damage, deals heavy damage, you can't circle it (even if you manage to get behind it, it will sit on you...) and has a stupid grab attack that has a pretty high chance to catch you EVEN if you manage to dodge. Really, i'm not lying, it has an extra invisible reach even if you aren't between the monster's hands. Oh, and the funny part? Is basically one hit kill... And it's not over, you can fight THREE of this guy at once. Do you remember that you had to fight groups of cheap enemies all at once on Dark Souls and Demon's souls? Me neither. So, yeah. It's so much fun and FAIR to fight it with meele... And that's not the only part of the game that happens for you to fight tons of cheap enemies at once. If you plan to do a full meele character (please,don't do it, you'll really regret it), prepare your self for a stupid turn based combat where you have to wait the enemy to stop it's attack animation to kill it. If you get hit, use a recover item while it's attacking and you are in a safe distance. And rise and repeat! It really doesn't look like it tests your skills. At least, i don't think so. Anyone can wait behind their shield in a safe range for a chance to attack. Oh, and like i said. Most of the enemies respawn if you kill them. There are very few monsters that you kill once and won't respawn. Which means, lots of cheap enemies will respawn when you rest on a bonfire . Yay, so fun... Lots of areas i didn't want to explore just because of this. Having to fight tedious battles. I could kill the monsters. I could hit 700 easily in first playthrough with one hit, without enchanting my weapon against some monsters to do it. But i still had to wait even though i could kill the hardest enemies from Demon's Souls and Dark souls with rolling and backstab, making the battles more fun and actually skill based. (And i really don't understand why they put some enemies to attack from back to avoid backstab, since they can rotate 360 easily even when they are attacking so it couldn't be backstabed anyways. Useless change. And i was looking forward for it to be well implemented) and it's even worse when you fight a lot of cheap enemies together which means that you have to wait more time to attack without being raped (did i mention that poise is useless in this game? You'll get stunlock easily even with the best heavy armor sets) or you will die. when you die, you have to fight long and tedious battles again and again. I prefer to run from mobs. Not because it was hard (most part it even isn't since you carry tons of recovery itens). It's because it's just boring and unrewarding. And it manages to be worse on ng+. For example, a boss fight will add enemies to fight agains you while you fight the boss. Yeah, like the devs didn't already showed to be lazy enough with the design. Really, i would LOVE to see a ng + with extra features, like better AI, changing enemy locations, adding different attacks to enemies, not ADD enemies to the screen. With this, it was pretty obvious to me that the devs didn't understand what made the first 2 games so special in the combat. It wasn't the diffuclty, it was the challenge and reward. And both managed to be great doing it without relying to lazy design of "let's add more enemies". So, it's no wonder a lots of people relied on cheese tactics way more here or co-op. Because the combat here obviosly isn't for 1 vs 1 pve. At least, if you are meele.
How they hurted the builds variety. Some fans can say they actually helped but i disagree. Poise is useless, you will get stun lock many times. but the monsters no, they can quickly recover from an attack that takes more than 70% of it's life. Along with poise, I saw many guys playing without any armor at all and geting about the same damage of full set with the highest defense of the game, so armor is useless. And dodge is almost useless. I really don't understand why to change the invicible frames roll. Was it op? I don't think so, since you couldn't really begin and starting dodging perfectly all attacks. You needed to master it. It's not like the game has "Hey, you reached x level. Congrats, now you can have the op invicible roll!". But ok, if they only reduced the invicible frames of the roll, i would understand perfectly. But why do it along with put broken hitboxes? It makes it completly unfair and it hurts builds variety (why the hell will you want to be meele when you can be one shot since poise it's useless in this game and you can get stun lock easily even with the best armor and you can't dodge easily even if you see that the attack didnt reach you?). So yeah, if you are meele, know that armors shows no difference, you have lower invicible frames on your roll AND the enemies have insane hitbox. The best thing you can do is to create a ranger build. One more thing, you can respec your atributes when you use an item and i don't regret becoming a char that could attack from a safe distance. Trust me, i always played as meele on demon's souls and dark souls and i can assure you it's not worth to create a meele in dark souls 2 because of the issues i adressed. No wonder you'll see more guys using hexes or ranged attacks than meele chars. Great job offering build variety, devs!
Ok, and there's lots of stupid traps in this game. No, i don't mean the traps like mimics and arrow from previous souls, which you could avoid carefully even in first playthrough (btw, there's a mimic that you don't have any way to prepare yourself for the first time even if you're careful. You'll have to open the box and get a surprise attack. YAY! And he can fall from plataform and you lose it's item. Double YAY! Just to warn you how good are the traps of this game.). I mean others that YOU will take damage with NO way to even suspect! How would you like to open a door and a monster breaks it and takes almost all your health? There's no way to know about it! It was very annoying.
4,5° point. I talked about a great part of the combat without talking the pvp. Well, i didn't play pvp much. But there's one thing that bothered me: The rat Convenant. What's it's problem? Well, imagine that you can play in an area without having to worry with it's monsters since they become your allies and will attack whoever invades you. And i mean TOUGH monsters. That looks nice, right? Now imagine if you're the one who's the invader... You can fight an army and can die without the host engaging you. i actually felt this was a missed opportunity. The idea of the covenant is good. You use itens to open doors that can kinda be "traps". But you get an army instead. Imo, they should make the host being able to use smartly what he can use that the covenant offers to him but it falls short and became unfair against the other side, who fights alone against tough enemies excluding the host. And the covenants btw you lose it's penalty system. I didn't like the way you changed convenats on dark souls 1. Have to go back to an area just to clear your "sins" could get boring quickly since there isn't a quick shortcut just for that. But in dark souls 2 they simply removed it's punishment. You can join the covenants anytime and how many times you want. I don't say they "fixed" the problem, instead, they simply "cuted it out". What i mean is "Hey, i cant think a good way for players to leave their covenants and being punished for it. Instead, let's just let them leave and join covenants whenever they want". So i don't call it fixing, i just say they cuted it out. and it hurts immersion. like, you can betray your group whenever you want and if you want to go back and be accepted back with no hard feelings. Btw, 2 covenants stand out for me as being the most useful ones. The bell covenant and the rat's. The bell since it provides a pretty good way to farm a craft item and rat's an item that can unlock some passages in the game. And the useless one, the blue covenant. It's idea is that you help your members when they get invaded by responding to their calls. Well, i never was called in almost 8 hours of gaming and nor i saw someone geting aid on internet. Besides, will you really use a covenant that it's just to call for help for something that won't happen too much? I didn't got invaded so many times while playing online so it becomes useless when you have the Bell convenant and the rat's. Oh, and the sunbros convenant are back (because why not?) and even with it's sunlight spear. But i can say that the covenants offered more variety because they still "rewarded" much different from each other and they had different ideas from each other. Like Pilgrims of dark, which you could even fight an exclusive boss.
Fifth: The lore and immersion. It's uninstering. There isn't any memorable boss fight to begin with, (copying and pasting a lot of them didn't help). At least, for me. And i didn't feel immersive enough to search for the game's story. While in dark souls every boss you could see they have a major or minor role, like Sif, which protects it's friend's grave, the 4 great souls, Queelag, which protects her sister, Ceaseless discharge, which makes you wonder why he doesn't attack you until you grab someone's gear, gwyn, the fallen god... I simply don't know what i'm fighting for. sure, the Soul's series always made the story obscure and i liked that. But in dark souls 2 it's simply WAY obscure (or non existent, i don't know). So, you liked the backstory of dark souls 1? I have bad news for you... Oh, the locations. You find a castle sinking in the earth's until it reached lava. Where do you think it is? Underground? Oh, no. It's in the sky. REALLY! They put a castle sinking in lava... In the sky! WTF?!!! If you think this would hurt the game's immersion, know that there's an even worse issue on that matter right in the beginning of the game. You see, before you create you character, you will watch a small intro and then play a little. The intro shows a man who loses his wife and son and then travels to where the game starts. But here's the thing: It will ALWAYS be a man. ALWAYS. You're a woman or you want to create a woman char? Sorry, you'll have to be a man in the first minutes of the game and you won't have a cutscene for female background, that's only for men. But can you create a female character in the game? Yes, you can. But only after the intro and playing around for 2 minutes. During this time, you can even undress yourself and you can see that you really start as a man. But later, you'll create your char and if you chose to make a woman, it will transform into a woman. Is that too "wtf"? Oh, i can imagine it is. People can say that it's because it's story driven. So why offer the sex change option in the first place? And before your character creation, the small gameplay part is so useless that it really wouldn't make a difference if you cut it off from the game. Unless you think walking from point A to point B with nothing else to do besides grab 2 itens is fundamental to a game. Even the man's cutscene turnt out to be a filler, since you won't ever see anything more about your past again. For a series that always did excelent job in create immersive atmosphere this is such an amauter mistake. It's one more example that the devs didn't pay attention while making the game.
Well, there's more in this game that i didn't like or didn't enjoy like i did in previous titles. Like musical score, wich pales in comparison to ds 1 and to DeS, even though i don't like most of the musics from the latter. Besides that BS with the graphics. I forgave FROM SOFT for DECEIVING me with those graphics. But it's still BS That you know about the turn down of the graphics just when the game was released. Yeah, i didn't get angry because of the downgrade. I got angry because they just "warned" about it when the game was released! But still i just wanted a good game, nevertheless the graphics, so i could forgive that if the game was as near as good as Demon's Souls or Dark souls. BUT i got a bad SOUL Game. It really looked like they made good looking gameplays vids and trailers just to deceive their fans (myself included) about how the game is beautiful, copy paste to avoid create new animations and rushed the game with lot's of problems just to make most profits they could. Ffs, i had so much hope for this game, since it got more investments and WAY more time to make the game (If i'm not mistaken, dark souls 1 was made in 9 months while i waited dark souls 2 for 1-2 years. Most of the flaws of the previous game i could forgive because of this fact: low budget and small time to develop). But no, they lied about the graphics, turn down the builds variety, made the system combat a turn based combat where you have to poke and pray you don't get hit by the invisible (s)hitbox, made bosses WORSE than worst one from Dark souls 1 (and that's saying something) and didn't fix the flaws from previous games at all (some they managed to do even worse)! I expect a sequel to have at least around the quality from previous game but dark souls 2 managed to be way worse than DS and DeS! Not to mention it was pretty obvious they focused way more on trying to make the game hard, not challenging or fair, which were what made the previous game so praised. And the game can even be easy, since you can carry tons of recovery itens and even use some of them while walking, plus using rings that protect you from death. F*** YOU FROM SOFT.
To end this review, if you have read it to the end, thanks for reading it. I meant no trolling. English is just not my native language. If you want to DISCUSS the game, we can discuss, just please no bs fanboyism around with "nostalgia goggles" argument. Btw, i liked Dark souls 1 way more than demon's souls, so that argument won't work anyway, and like i said, i loved both Dark souls 1 and Demon's souls. 1000+ hours in each of them. I didn't feel like playing this game for fun nor challenge because it really felt unrewarding to fight monsters when you could get killed easily many times (mainly because of the stupid hitbox) even when you played it right. I always liked to learn from my mistakes in the series. But all i learned playing Dark souls 2 is that ranged attacks characters are the way to go and meele sucks. Many times i just put down the controller and went to do something else. While in dark souls i just turnt off the game while i had anything urgent or needed to sleep. i really tried to like this game. But i couldn't avoid the points i wrote about... It's a huge dissapointment. And as a fan of the series, if they continue it with copy and paste extravaganza and bad difficulty, i hope it dies quickly.