Dark Souls 2 is a Soulsbourne game that the audience was split into 2 sections for people who like the game and people who don’t like it. There was a lot of controversy about whether Dark Souls 2 was a good game or not but you can’t really tell if it is a good game because everyone has their own opinions on the matter. There are always going to be two sides to every story out there when it comes to games.
But why exactly do people think that Dark Souls 2 is a bad game? Well, I am going to go over some basic questions about the game and you as a person can see what your opinion is when it comes to this game. Here are some questions that will show you if you like Dark Souls 2 or not.
Related: Check out this Dark Souls 2 guide on Amazon at this link here.
Why do people say it is the worst in the series?
The main reason that a lot of people did not like the game was that the director of the game was different from the director of all the other Dark Souls games. Because of that reason, all the mechanics and the way you do things was a lot different from the other games too. It also seemed that there were a lot more mob enemies in the game that were clustered together very closely and it was very hard to defeat them all at once.
Another reason that people did not like the game was because of the Humanity system and the health bar drops. If you want to know more about the health bar mechanics go to this article to read about it https://gamevoyagers.com/why-health-dropping-dark-souls-2/ . The more you learn about the game, the less confusing it is going to be for you the next time that you play.
How are the mechanics?
The mechanics are very clunky and simple when you compare it to all the other Dark Souls games. I can’t tell you how many times I correctly dodged out of the way of a boss or enemy and then I lost health and it did not even hit me. The hitboxes in the game are total trash and the movement in it feels very delayed to me, and I even play with a controller. If you ever play the game, or you have already played it, you will realize the difference in movement from all the other games.
What my thought was, the game just threw everything that people hate into it just to make it hard. That does not make a game good. At one point, you walk into this large room, and just as you walk in, tons of spiders fall from the ceiling and start attacking you. It is not about quantity, it is about quality.
What are the pros of the game?
- Power stance system. Makes dual-wielding way more fun than Dark Souls. It’s a very flexible system that everyone should try out when they play the game.
- Graphical upgrades. Textures look better on a technical level.
- More interactive levels. There’s more stuff like knocking over trees or lowering bridges to access new areas, finding levers to open doors, and being able to use ballistas in a few levels.
- The torch system. It lets you light up dark levels better than any option in Dark Souls, and being able to light sconces adds a new dynamic to dark levels that weren’t present in DS.
- Huge amount of boss fights.
- Warping from the beginning of the game.
- NG+ changes way more things than in Dark Souls.
- More spells, weapons, and armor sets, with many from Dark Souls carrying over.
What are the cons of the game?
- Less connectivity. There are a few different paths you can take, but they’re all pretty linear. The individual levels are fun, but the way they mesh together is uninspired at best, and outright terrible in the case of Iron Keep.
- Adaptability is horrible, can’t be emphasized enough. Using Estus Flasks takes a year too unless you upgrade your health bar.
- Movement feels clunky outside of the ADP issues. In Dark Souls 2, if you attack after you roll, you’ll attack in the direction you rolled instead of towards the enemy. Melee combat feels slow and clunky at times as well
- Certain areas just don’t feel fun, they feel tedious more than anything. It seems that the faster you get through an area, the better you feel because that area was just plain annoying.
- Many bosses are complete garbage. Some of them are too easy, and running to them is tougher than fighting them. Few bosses in the game are memorable and challenging.
How does it compare to the other Dark Souls games?
In my opinion, it does not really compare to the other games because it feels like a completely different game. It has that Dark Souls vibe to it, but it does not live up to the name. Not saying it is a bad game, but it is good in its own ways. Dark Souls 2 can be fun in some areas in the game, but most of the time I found myself raging over little things like the mobs of enemies and the small linear worlds that the game has.
Often I found myself getting stuck on things and the camera angle messes up. The lock-on system kinda ruins certain fights because of the new type of rolling they added to the game. I mean some people like the game the best out of all the games in the series, so it is really up to your interpretation.
Are there too many bosses?
There are a total of 42 bosses in Dark Souls 2 including DLC bosses. If you have the SOFTS edition of the game, all the DLCs are built into it and you don’t have to worry about the Season Pass and all. If you want to read about all the Dark Souls 2 bosses, go to this article https://gamevoyagers.com/dark-souls-2-bosses-ranked-by-difficulty/ . As I said before, it seems like there are too many bosses in the game and most of them aren’t even memorable in the slightest.
The only memorable bosses are the Looking Glass Knight, Nashandra, Burnt Ivory King, and Fume Knight. All the other bosses seem to just drop off the radar for me because they were too easy. King Vendrick seems hard before you get the Souls of a Giant, but once you get them, the boss fight seems like any other boss fight.
Do the NPCs seem a little bit boring?
Was it just me, or did any of the NPCs in Dark Souls 2 seem actually interesting? None of them really had any cool backstory or anything interesting to say. It seemed like they were only there to help you not seem lonely in the game. Havel the rock has more of a backstory than any character in Dark Souls 2 and he did not even say anything.
Most of the NPCs dialogue was just for time filler and it was just straight-up boring. With the exception of the Emerald Herald and maybe Nashandra, everyone else seemed like they did not care about you at all.
How is the world design?
The world is what brings the game to life. Sometimes the game can be huge and you feel like you could go anywhere without anything stopping you. That is the exact opposite of what Dark Souls 2 makes you feel like. The worlds are very boring, and there is always one single path to the next area. There was never an area in the game that just amazed me because of the details put into it. Most of the time I just felt like everything in the world was there to kill you.
In Dark Souls 1 and 3, the worlds felt like you did not belong in them, which made for some fun exploration and discoveries, but Dark Souls 2 just felt like another mediocre game that I wanted to beat. As I went through, it was just a chore for me to beat the game, I really did not have much fun while playing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Dark Souls series is one of the best series ever made, and I never said Dark Souls 2 is a bad game, I just said it is the worst in the series. All of them have flaws, but I feel that Dark Souls 2 has the most and it is not as polished as the other games. I just wish that FromSoftware could do a remastered version of Dark Souls 2 and try to fix everything that the people don’t like about the game. If you are going to play Dark Souls 2, I would recommend the SOFTS Edition because it is more polished than the regular game.