Dark Souls II: The Pinnacle of a Franchise

[Vergil]

Dark Souls II is the unfairly maligned middle child of the Dark Souls games (and fromslop games in general). It absolutely has massive faults particularly in the way it continues the artificial pumping up of difficulty over good game design for marketing purpose. However, when it comes to the story and other design decisions its the most interesting and ambitious the games ever got and its a shame it's reputation left the rest of the games all the way to elden ring ignoring it in favor of further sloppening the franchise.

[Vergil]

[Zothique]

Was the best until Elden Ring, yes.

[Brother Michael]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

[rusty_shackleford]

They're all ****.

[wndrbr]

Dark Souls 2 was probably the last non-derivative-slop Souls game.

No poison swamps, no Patches, no edgy and nihilistic end of the world plot, gamey as hell areas (lava castle! yay!) instead of boring copypasted gothic cathedrals. People ****-talk ADP, but it was a decent albeit flawed attempt at balancing the game away from the usual 'roll like a ******' combat system. People ****-talk sluggish movement, but at least in made spacing matter (as opposed to subsequent entries where you can roll 20 times in a row and chug estus in a fraction of a second). Tons of cool magic spells (some of which were removed in the sequels), bonfire ascetics, challenge run covenants, best armor sets in the series, best environmental hazards in the series. And the most important thing - bosses weren't multi-phased tryhard anime clones of Artorias on cocaine doing backflips and spin-to-win uninterruptible combos.

Probably the most fun to replay game in the series too.

[Zothique]

I think it's hilarious on here no one likes Elden Ring when it is objectively a good ******* game (if you're into "Souslslop" that is).

EDIT: If you guys aren't careful, I'm going to start posting my Ranni romance fanfic.

[Vergil]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

Dark Souls 3 has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

[ArcaneLurker]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

Dark Souls 3 has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

Did you like the Royal Rat Vanguard?

[Vergil]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

Dark Souls 3 has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

Did you like the Royal Rat Vanguard?

Dark Souls II also has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

[Brother Michael]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

Dark Souls 3 has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

That’s bait

[Vergil]

Dark Souls 3 has consistency and best bosses, Bloodborne has the aesthetics and X factor, and Dark Souls 2 has a kind of magic.

Dark Souls 3 has some of the worst bosses I've ever played in a video game.

That’s bait

I just remembered what Dark Souls 3 did to Gwyndolin and Im seeing red

[Reichspepe]

The best Fromsoftware game is Sekiro anyways.

[Vergil]

The best Fromsoftware game is Sekiro anyways.

*leaves zero cultural foot print and is completely forgotten*

[The_Mask]

CAN YOU IMAGINE HAVING A STAT FOR I-FRAMES LMAO

[Vergil]

CAN YOU IMAGINE HAVING A STAT FOR I-FRAMES LMAO

Which woman did you get this opinion from?

[Finarfin]

[Reichspepe]

The best Fromsoftware game is Sekiro anyways.

*leaves zero cultural foot print and is completely forgotten*

Don't care amazing game.

[Vergil]

The best Fromsoftware game is Sekiro anyways.

*leaves zero cultural foot print and is completely forgotten*

Don't care amazing game.

I know Dark Souls II is amazing

[rusty_shackleford]

dork souls was never about the bosses, the game could have no bosses and it would be mostly unchanged

[Vergil]

dork souls was never about the bosses, the game could have no bosses and it would be mostly unchanged

Wrong, it would be better.

[Vergil]

The core theme of Dark Souls II is that women are evil.

[Vergil]

Aldia is the Kreia of Dark Souls

[Element]

I liked it, though I played Sotfs edition and I think it went overboard with some of the trash mobs. Some of the locations were memorable, like the pirate cove with the mutants that were afraid of fire, the old castle/prison etc. The DLCs were very good and had some of the best levels arguably in the whole series (up there with the best from DeS and DS1). In spirit it is probably the closest to DeS of all the souls game, which is good. It's also the last game in the series where the combat was not entirely fixated on testing your reflexes. DS3 is a horrible, cheap BB knockoff in comparison.

[Vergil]

Unfortunately DSII is not immune to the "prepare to die" marketing meme and has plenty of encounters that are deliberately sabatoged for artificial difficulty so gay youtubers can make videos about how hard they creamed over the difficulty.

[Stack of Turtles]

Imagine liking a dark souls game

[Vergil]

Imagine liking a dark souls game

Apparently you're my alt so you need to agree with me unfortunately

[Vergil]

Last Giant

Not any shock here. It's the first and easiest boss. Even with that and two NPC summons I still got humbled a few times and was very sloppy over all. This boss is pretty much made to heavily forgive mistakes that later bosses with absolutely rock your **** for. Have to relearn a lot of things when it comes to timing and not getting too greedy. Going from Lies of P to Nier ironically I had to unlearn some soulslike stuff and now going from Nier to Dark Souls II I need to relearn it again. :lol

[Breathe]

DS3 at least looks and feels like DS1. Without direct input from Miyazaki, who was basically making Bloodborne already, they couldn't even copy simple aesthetics and mechanics correctly.

[Vergil]

DS3 at least looks and feels like DS1. Without direct input from Miyazaki, who was basically making Bloodborne already, they couldn't even copy simple aesthetics and mechanics correctly.

Correct instead of making a lazy soulless copy (Dark Souls 3) they made something fresh, original, and cool.