I loved Dark Souls. It was an experience that is still fresh in my mind months after playing it. Since Dark Souls 2 came out so soon after I finished the original I was looking forward to it with anticipation. The fact that I'd be able to go through the new game with a sense of discovery was something I was super excited about. Discovering everything with the entire world at the same time was a really cool experience. The issue is that I can barely remember any of it. In order to understand that I had to leave myself to ruminate on the experience for a few months.
Leading up to the game's release info about the new and differing mechanics were being trickled out. Word on the street was that the game was a lot harder, which it was in the beginning. By the end I was walking through the game with little to no issue.
Darker?
Many people play the Souls series for the challenge it provides. While I liked the challenge in Dark Souls, it was never really my main draw. Yes, I did feel good about myself when I overcame a challenge. I'm just not a huge fan of games being hard for the sake of being hard. Dark Souls was punishing, but it was often my fault if I died. I'm not in the majority with my thoughts though, so people obviously wanted the game to be more challenging.
Initially I found the game to be much harder. The main contributor to that is that when you die, you lose a percentage of your max health. So now you lose all of your souls, and have less health upon death. You can still reclaim your souls, but it's not quite as easy to reclaim your lost health. In order to do that you need to use a consumable effigy. Early on these items are very scarce, so I found myself often walking around with around half my max health. The early game difficulty is exacerbated by the lack of healing available to you. At first you only have consumable healing gems of varying sizes, which are also far and few between for a while.
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| The creepy old witches give your your first effigy. |
Eventually though you get your very own Estus flask, which you can upgrade until you have 11. Unlike the previous entry you don't have to kindle each bonfire. Your upgrades are permanent, and like the previous game the flasks refill at each bonfire. Dark Souls 2 has far more bonfires and areas than its predecessor, so refilling is never a difficult task. It also helps that you can fast travel between all bonfires you've come across right from the start of the game. This had to be added, since you can no longer level up from any bonfire. You need to talk to the cloaked woman near the bonfire in the game's hub city Majula.
Another change is that weapons degrade much faster. This would make the game more challenging if they didn't get fully restored at every bonfire. If your weapon does end up breaking you'll need to repair it at a blacksmith, but it never costs a whole lot. Your rings can break now as well, and those do actually cost a lot to repair, because most of the time their effects are amazing. They did however, make it so you can wear four rings now, which will net some pretty insane stat boosts. One ring in particular, the cling ring, makes it so you can't drop below 75% max health from death. Needless to say that's a pretty good one to have.
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| There are so many more bonfires now. |
Leveling in Dark Souls 2 comes much faster as well. By the end of the game I was a way higher level than I was at the end of the original. Granted, the stats are changed up a bit to compensate for the greater amount of souls available, but there was a point where I started to feel overpowered. In this game I took up the slower moving great sword, and sometimes I would also have a shield to block. A lot of people say that this makes the game easy, but I don't believe in sacrificing my enjoyment of a game in order to make it more difficult.
The thing that really made the game harder at first though was the difference in movement. I'm not a huge fan of the movement in Dark Souls 2. To me it feels way less sensitive. You really have to push the stick in order to get moving, where as in the original you could lightly touch the stick and creep along. It made the player character in the original feel much heavier, whereas the character movement in Dark Souls 2 feels kind of light and floaty. This much is just personal preference, but it definitely took me a while to get used to. If you don't know how your character is going to move, it's a huge issue when you need to make precise dodges and attacks.
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| This was basically me the entire game. |
Dark Souls 2 is much different, but it's also largely the same. It's the same franchise that people have come to love, with some differentiating features in order to make it more difficult. It was harder for me at first, but by the end I was crushing everything I came across pretty decisively. There was certainly no Ornstein and Smough moment of sheer frustration in this game. At most I got stuck on a boss for three or four tries.
Much Less Soul
Before I get into this section I want to say that I enjoyed my time with Dark Souls 2. It was a well crafted sequel that was very much meant for fans of the series. They tried to do all the right things and a lot of them worked in favor of the gameplay. So now I'm going to get into exactly why I liked Dark Souls 2 way less than its predecessor. I'm willing to admit that the gameplay is improved overall, but the way the world design was nowhere near on par with the original.
I have come to terms with the fact that I didn't like Demon's Souls, because of its level based structure. I did however, fall in love with Dark Souls because of its open world nature. The entire world was connected in a logical way, and it was even connected in physical space to boot! I loved the fact that you could turn a corner in a new area and find yourself in an area that you had visited hours before. It was truly a well planned out world that felt like so much time had been out into it. I don't want to say that Dark Souls 2 was less thought out, but it certainly was not as well designed from a world building perspective.
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| This map is not possible if you go by the way everything is laid out in the game. |
The town Majula acts as a central hub, much as the Firelink Shrine acted as a hub in the first game. From Firelink you could go to one of a few areas, which were all interconnected. From Majula you can also choose to go to a few areas, but none of them are connected at all. Instead of being a huge interconnected world Dark Souls 2 consists of several spokes that all come to a close in a dead-end. There's nothing less appealing to me than coming across a dead-end in what is essentially an open world game. My issue goes much deeper than that though. In the original you could see everything in the world. You'd be on a mountain top and be able to see other explorable areas. This is not the case in Dark Souls 2, and it bothers me because of how completely different each area is. Yes, it's cool to have a ton of different terrain types, but when you can't see the fiery volcano that's insanely large from anywhere else in the world it really breaks the experience for me.
The physical world isn't the only issue I had either. Let's take the bosses for example. There are a ton of them, but if you asked me to recall any of them I'd only be able to think of a select few. In the original Dark Souls whenever you came across a boss it was a crazy encounter and each one felt unique. In Dark Souls 2 there may actually be too many bosses and far too many are humanoid. It's like someone saw how much people liked fighting Artorias in the first game and decided to do throw a ton of humanoids in. If they were all interesting it wouldn't be an issue, but many of them are very straightforward fights. There were a few cool ones though like the fight with a giant spider for example.
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| Hmmm why can't you see this insane lava wasteland from anywhere? |
I know I'm in the minority, but I really like the story of Dark Souls. Finding out about each individual character and boss was interesting. The world was very well built and had a ton of backstory. I feel like a tool saying that Dark Souls 2 isn't as well built, but it definitely seems to be lacking something that the original had. I had barely any idea what was going on with the plot of Dark Souls 2, and I was actively looking for it a majority of the time. Maybe it's something I needed to dig deeper for, but the fact that you just suddenly kind of appear in a new world isn't exactly the best plot setup.
Perhaps it's the fact that Miyazaki didn't have a direct development role, or maybe my experience with the original game is something that can't be replicated. I just can't help but feel that some of the magic of the first game has dissipated in the second.
On to the DLC
With all of this being said I can't wait to try out the DLC. It will be coming in three episodes, all of which involve looking for crowns. Maybe this will have the interesting story I was looking for in the game, or maybe it will at least fill out a lot of the gaps. At the very least it will be interesting to see if I can get right back into the way the movement works, or if I'll have to get used to the way everything works again. I liked the game, but I just can't help but feel like it could have been so much more.
Dark Souls 2 was a fun experience. I enjoyed it while I was playing it, but that experience has almost completely faded from my mind at this point, which is extremely disappointing to me. I could still tell you about the story of the original game. If you set me down in the world of the original I could still give you directions and tell you exactly what you need to do. I could tell you where bosses are, and what strategies worked for me. It's an experience that is solidified in my mind, which rarely happens anymore. I just wish Dark Souls 2 could have replicated that.
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