Dark Souls II is a horribly dumbed down mess.

Before fanboys start attacking me, let me tell you that Dark Souls is one of the best games I've ever played, and I loved every bit of it, barring the graphics. Now DS2 was supposed to improve upon this aspect and every trailer and the demo I played showed off amazing lighting, as good as Battlefield's, and some really impressive particle effects which are Crysis 3 level. Then, one of the articles today lead me to these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykbT03r_9Zo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFQoLN89_j8

Just look at it. They removed all the epic wind effects, all the great lighting and effects, and the textures are just bland and undetailed. They even somehow messed up indoor lighting so the torch is basically the most useless item in the game, with light just mysteriously appearing EVERYWHERE. I wouldn't have complained if they didn't lie to me that the gameplay footage was on a console, but this is just false advertising.

Now, graphics aside, gameplay on its own is pretty good, but when compared to all the demos, the response is abysmal. The controls were way more responsive in the demo. Also, remember how they blabbered about 'perfect timing' and 'smart AI' with the axe-throwing dwarf? They replaced it with a normal hollow. Remember how they were bragging about 'fiery lizards you can jump down on'? There are hardly any of them now and they don't even look the least bit fiery or scary. How they showed dragons swarming around a bridge? There's only one low-res lizard flying about now andyou don't fall off the bridge, because of course, creating another route for the player would have taken too long and would be too much strain on From Software's resources.

I'd really want them to patch up these things in the future. Of course, From Software can never achieve good graphics, but they can at least put in those creatures back and fix the lighting. I was looking forward to this game, and I'm very disappointed with how ugly and toned down the end product is compared to gameplay footage.

dont play it then? graphics arent the greatest but that doesnt take away the fact that its still a great game

its masterpiece for me i love die and die again on DS2 graphics on DS2 not big deal for me its good looking game

the graphics do seem toned down from the demo but i'm still enjoying dark souls 2 a lot more than most games

"Dumbed down" implies simplified gameplay. Yes, the graphics for the console version aren't what they were originally supposed to be but this was known before release and we've had a lot of threads about this already.

-Byshop

Fromm Software already released a statement on this.

You want a game with sick lighting effects that runs at an unacceptable frame rate? No..

You want a game that has two different lighting engines? I don't.

For the Souls games frame rate is king by far.. Maybe the PC will have that fancy lighting engine though.. We will see.

What about how bad the excellent art direction looks just because of the graphics? The game's inconsistent lighting and textures (ie. ground textures are nice but the rock textures aren't) makes it look even worse than DS1. How about all the so called 'improvements' upon DS1, such as networked areas and smarter AI and parrying giant axes? You must be really stupid if you think that I'm concerned about the graphics alone, and let me add, badly done graphics=less immersion, something I never had to deal with in DS1.

The game already runs at an unacceptable frame rate, even with stripped down visuals, sometimes it breaks 45 FPS and as soon as you turn around, it dips back down to < 30. If I'm going to already have to deal with below 30 frames, then I better get the exchange in graphics.

Or maybe it's just that you consider the ridiculous 20 frames 'king' and playable.

@LordTrexGuy: I'll be playing locked at 60 the whole time on PC. But yeah, that is my point, the frame rate on ps3 is already not great, you would want it to get considerably worse for better lighting?

What I'm trying to say is that they either give me sub-par graphics with a perfect 30 FPS or they rather give me the pre-release graphics if they are going to give me a constantly terrible framerate (nothing like Blight Town though), as is the case with Crysis 3, Tomb Raider or Far Cry 3. All three run at consistently low FPS, but they all have amazing graphics. I can't stand bad graphics AND bad framerate, and just to make the game playable, they removed so many awesome things like the dozens of dragons flying about Dragon Shrine, the actually fiery lizard pit and the area in which the Skeletal Dragon Head attacks you is BARREN, no bits of detail and completely washed out textures.

Bad move on From Software's part, not releasing this on current gen consoles.

@LordTrexGuy: Yeah, Dark Souls 2 is going to be awesome running at 1080P native and 60fp/s on PC. If graphics and frame rate is that important to you, you might be playing on the wrong platform... PS3/360 are from 2005/2006, such old hardware! Dark Souls 2 on PS4/Xbox One would of been neat with the built in streaming capabilities, but From is a small developer and Namco is a small publisher so they don't have a ton of resources available to them. :(

From Software doesn't have the money for the level of polish that a Ubisoft, SquareEnix or EA published game has. Just seems a little bit unfair to try to compare them.

I do get your point, and I know very well that From Software aren't global giants and are somewhere between mainstream and indie, but they can't falsely advertise features and visuals that they never bothered putting in the final software at all. I'm not asking to boycott FS, but at least they can listen to our complaints and do something about the missing enemies, lighting, completely whitened out textures, using the beautiful particle effects more and patching the unresponsive controls. They can't just go all out and say "We know our product is subpar, but we were forced to do it" and say nothing on whether they'll bother fixing it or not. Selling their games almost 33% cheaper than other releases and not cutting out for DLC is great and all, but selling a vastly toned down product compared to the beta isn't.

Hardware limitations. Ds2 is another fabulous game in the series

Yeah because you play graphics huh. Don't get me wrong I'm as much of a graphics whore as the next guy, but sometimes we need to stop, and look ourselves in the mirror and ask "What have I become?". When it comes to the point of not enjoying a game because of it's graphics (Now Dark Souls 2 is not even a bad looking game) we need to sit down and take a long hard look at ourselves.

You say you loved Dark Souls, and it's one of your favourite games you've ever played -- Hypocrite! If that's the case you'd also be able to enjoy this game, it looks far better than the first. Don't you dare play the false advertising card, oh no sir!

First I'm not graphic whoring, I'm saying that they cannot advertise amazing graphics and then sell me something from last last gen. And I cannot help but laugh when you say that DS2 isn't a bad looking game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVqUmE3sUZ8

It makes Skyrim look like a next gen game. And when I say I enjoyed a game, it isn't etched anywhere in God's high heavens that I should love the sequel.