Looking at: Dark Souls 2

The Old Guard

The odds will often be stacked against you, you'll need patience to get through.

The first Dark Souls has been called a masterpiece, one of the most important games ever released, and one of the best RPG games ever made. Accolades have been heaped on it for nearly every aspect, from the brutal difficulty, open ended nature, interconnected world, and sparsely told plot threads. Indeed, between the PS3 version and the PC re-release (which was recently FINALLY moved off of the terrible Games for Windows Live) I've put dozens up dozens of hours into fighting and dying in Lordran. Clearly a sequel was inevitable, and early 2014, Dark Souls 2 was released upon us. Is this a dungeon worth delving, or was this death in vain?

The Darker Soul

occasionally you'll have a chance to indulge your inner firebug to solve puzzles.

Like it's predecessors, Dark Souls 2 is a game about dying, fighting, and dying some more. You've come to the land of Dranglaic to seek treasure and fortune and have instead become cursed to stay there forever, trapped between life and death. To heal yourself you'll need to kill the four guardians and rekindle the primal fires before slaying the land's monarch and claiming the throne. In order to do this you'll suffer through a series of challenges killing all sorts of monsters and bosses along the way in your campaign of destruction.

DS2, like Dark Souls and Demon's Souls before it, keeps it's plot purposely obfuscated, and likes to deal out small amounts of plot or lore through background osmosis, rather then hand it to you straight up. It's easy to miss the entire plot of DS2 and you'll often need multiple play throughs to understand some of the finer points of the lore. It's not that the game is poorly written, quite the opposite as there's a wealth of backstory to be found if you go looking for it. Rather DS2 is content in letting you piece together the world yourself, giving you the ability to do this and letting you figure it out. It can be disorienting at times, as you try and figure out what your goal is, but it's oddly refreshing in the face of modern games that just give you everything without leaving anything to the imagination.


Killing in the Name

Fighting with others can make any challenge just that much easier to handle.

This idea of letting you figure things out extends out to the gameplay. DS2 is a tough game, but it's a malleable game as well. Theoretically the entire game can be beaten with the starting equipement, as long as you get good enough to work within that parameter. That's one of my favorite things about the Dark Souls games, is that despite their intense difficulty, you really can play whatever way you want. For instance, one of my characters was named Punchy Joe. He never wears shirts and only fights using a pair brass knuckles. Using this hilariously underpowered character I've cleared about a quarter of the game with minimal issues, all because I adapted to how to play differently.

That's the trick of DS2, is that you'll need to adapt to win. Every fight is memorable, from your first zombie swordsman at the start, to the elephant man I just killed 20 hours in. All of these are constantly fresh in my mind because they have to be if I want to succeed. I learned quickly that the elephant man's pike has a long range, so I learned to stay even further away, just like I learned that the swordman slashes twice then stabs. Learning from your mistakes is the only way forward in DS2, and lord knows you'll make a lot of mistakes.

There's another reason the fights in DS2 are memorable, and that's because like it's predecessor they often lean towards quality and less to quantity. A level might only have a few enemies in it, and some of the areas are so small you can see the end of them from the beginning. The trick is that you'll suffer for your finish, and while there may only be five enemies in your path, it'll take you forever to chip away at them. Fights like this are often the norm and it's rare to see you facing a crowd, save for one particular boss fight. You'll need to conduct fights like an opera, making sure to only fight what you can handle at any given time and leaving room for a quick pull from your healing flask or breaking open a slow-acting life stone.

Accidental Death 

There are some truly gorgeous vista, but they often hold untold horrors. 

DS2 is a bigger and more ambitious game then the first one, and while this means that certain aspects have been improved upon, there are also numerous parts of the game that just don't work as well as the first one did. There are more then a few issues that didn't come up as much in the first game and, while none of them are necessarily game breakers, they do dampen an otherwise fantastic experience.

The first and most notable issue is the enemy AI. Dark Soul's AI has always been problematic, ever since the first entry Demon's Souls. The enemies only know to charge you and use their set of attacks, and don't bother with self preservation. While that means you can occasionally draw enemies into traps meant to kill you, I noticed that their AI was particularly inconsistent in DS2, often teetering between devious and dumb, flanking me one minute and walking into my obvious attack the next. Even more inconsistent was how the enemies fought me, lunging straight past me with one attack only to stun-lock me with the next three strikes. The simplest foe became a mini-boss fight when he managed to get me into a corner with attacks I couldn't block.

That brings me to DS2's biggest issue over the first one: your ability to avoid damage. In Dark Souls avoiding damage was all about dodging or blocking. You either had to be quick with a roll or carry a good shield. Either way it was possible to make it through much of the game while avoiding damage, making the few times you did get winged all the more strenuous because of how much they hurt. In DS2 something feels... off with the whole ordeal and it's largely due to some tweaks to the hitbox detection. More then a few times I've noticed the game subtly adjusting enemy attack patterns just so to make sure their hit lands, and the dodge-roll seems to have far fewer invincibility-frames then the previous game. You'll get hurt a lot in DS2, and sometimes it doesn't feel like a fair fight because of it.

Japanese Gothic

Each new area is introduced as you step into it, inviting you to explore it's secrets. 

Levels in Dark Souls had this interwoven feel to it, like the whole world was slowly unfolding before your eyes as you explored. Even with the most bizarre areas there was a logical progression to it all and there were plenty of secret passages and shortcuts to uncover. The world wasn't all that large on reflection, but what it lacked in size it made up for in spades with it's detail.

DS2's world is bigger sure, and there's a lot more to do, but all of this comes at the cost of logic and reason. There's an abundance of pointless areas that serve nothing more then to transition you from one dungeon to another, and the flow of the game often doesn't make much sense. Why does a ruined tower lead me to an underground shipyard? Why does a mining town lead me to a volcano fortress? It's confusing and seems much more piecemeal then the first game, like the levels were designed separate then made to fit regardless. The individual levels themselves are great, offering challenges and puzzles galore and are often a joy to explore, but getting between them often feels boring and it's a good thing fast travel is unlocked from the start.

Graphically DS2 is impressive, albeit not as good as it's own E3 trailer some time ago. The lighting does a good job of selling the somber and dark mood, while obfuscating traps or enemies. The texture work is decent, although falls apart upon closer inspection, and everything has a purposely ugly and ruined look to it. The various pieces of equipment all look fantastic and unique from each other, and there's a myriad of ways to make your character stand out, from the crazed jester to the noble knight and anything in between.

The audio work is similarly well done, with a great soundtrack of dark and moody music, just quiet enough to fit any scene while just loud enough to be heard over the clang of weapons. Weapons all have a distinct sound to them and everything from tearing through flesh and armor to smashing down doors sounds weighty and bombastic. Enemies often have their own unique soundbites letting you know their around the next corner, but rarely giving them away.

There's only a small handful of friendly NPC's to talk to, but the voice work is decent enough. They manage to sell their lines, often with an air of uncertainty, either about you or their current predicament. More entertaining are the souls completely lost to the madness who really just have fun with their characters. There's no one as charming as Solair or Patches, but the characters of DS2 are memorable enough. It's especially handy that the majority of them move to the central town during the story, meaning they're easy to track down and talk to again.

Mass Grave

You're not really the hero, more of a janitor come to clean up the mess. 

Multiplayer returns in DS2, largely unchanged from the first game. You'll be able to summon other players to your world, or be summoned to other worlds, through the use of in-game items, allowing you to team up and take down bosses. The changes this time are in how the humanity system works. In DS2 you can turn human at any time, no longer reliant on bonfires to do so, but the trade is that every death while not human lowers your overall health, down to a possible half bar. This makes staying human that much more important as you'll often need as much HP as possible, even just for the purposes of exploring.

The other big change in terms of multiplayer is the idea of Souls Memory. Rather then lock multiplayer summoning to a certain level range, it's now based on your soul memory, that is, the total accumulation of souls (in-game universal currency) you've gained with your character. That means a level 80 character can play with a level 20 character, so long as they're both in the same Soul Memory Bracket. It's a bit confusing at first, but it simultaneously makes it easier and harder to play with people, based on how much of the game they've played as well.

Once again, DS2's multiplayer is an all-or-nothing game, meaning that if you want to play with other people you'll also have to be willing to allow other players to invade your game. These encounters are often both the best and worst part of the game as I lost count of how many times I was backstabbed because of a bad connection between me and the invader. There is now an option to play offline hidden within the game, but it removes much of the best parts, meaning you'll have to take the good with the bad.

Sins of the First Scholar

The Pursuer Knight, a formidable foe that will chase you throughout the game.

The original DS2 came out in early 2014, and was a moderate success. There were three DLC packs released, each containing a new dungeon with new challenges and items. Seeing as it's 2015 and publishers are money sucking scum, DS2 has received the HD update/game of the year treatment in the form of Sins of the First Scholar. This version collects DS2 and all of it's DLC while changing the graphics over to DirectX 11 and changing up enemy placement for a new challenge.

Right off the bat the best thing about SotFS is the 60fps lock. I've never been one to get into arguments about frame rates, but it's undeniable how much better DS2 plays at 60fps. It's a fast and fluid experience that really enhances the experience. There is some concern about weapon durability falling faster due to a glitch, but From software have already promised to fix that in an upcoming patch.

As for the new enemy placement, while it does balance out certain areas, From seem to have made the same mistake as Hotline Miami 2 thinking that more enemies equals a better challenge. It's unfortunate to see a game like this take such a terrible misstep and while it never ruins the game, it does make certain areas feel like a slog rather then proper challenge. Worse, with some of the new challenge it's difficult to recommend SotFS to a new player, despite the upgrades and multiplayer stability because the level of difficulty in some areas goes above and beyond to be annoying.  It's not a bad upgrade and I'm glad I got it, but it doesn't really do the Dark Souls name proper justice.

Dead and Buried

From shaded forest to rain slicked fortresses, DS2 is a big game.

It's unfortunate that Dark Souls has earned a reputation as one of the most difficult games ever made for a few reasons: First, it means that any half-baked indie game promising a challenge refers to itself as "Dark Souls-like". Secondly, it's just not true. Sure, there is a challenge to the Dark Souls games, but only if you fail to adapt to the game and begin to play with it as it would you. Dark Souls isn't just a game to be beaten, it's a game that dares you to embarrass it, make it feel sorry for ever trying to pick a fight with you. That's when it's at it's best and you truly begin to enjoy it.

I've never liked the idea that a sequel cannot be better then the original game, and saying a sequel isn't good because it's not the original annoys me. Unfortunately, that's simply not the case with DS2, as it's just not as good of a game as the original was. Maybe if it had the original director, or maybe if AI scripting was just a little bit better, or even if the levels were a little more concise this would be a better game. The fact is DS2 just has a few to many issues with it, and that's what keeps it down. Still it's still one of the best RPG's in recent memory, and definitely worth playing for anyone looking for a great challenge. At the very least, it's more Dark Souls, and that's exactly what I wanted.