Best Souls game ?

[Arnust]

DS3's only "non linear" elements are if to do the optional areas or not, and some of the seeemingly optional areas are mandatory to progress anyway. And considering they don't connect to anything, that ends up being just as linear except with some extra paths. The rotunda in the Forest of the Fallen giants has more options than pretty much anything in DS3. The one time I can think of that you needed something from an optional area to progress in another is with the Path of the Dragon gesture to get to Assdragon Peak.

And don't get me wrong, I don't mind linearity. But the world design is for dogshit in every sense but the "ooh, pretty view!" you get every once in a while of awfully rendered far buildings. It makes every attempt at running for specific equipment the SAME run every time because there's no other way to do it than to sprint past everything. Added to that, while the levels are about as big as they get (not always) and are pretty well designed by themselves, shortcuts are completely obvious from the get go givng it a really predictable and gamey feel, whivh isn't helped by plain just the small amount of things to DO in them that aren't just clearing the gauntlet of enemies. Besides the occasional NPC and that one piece of equipment you actually may want, there's really... nothing. No unique merchants or NPCs that won't just become your servnts over at Firelink, no unique mechanics and goals, I don't know. The "optional" parts of the levels themselves usually are actually a shortcut. To me, even areas like Black Gulch got a pass because of how there was a sizeable amount of tasks to be done there. Lucatiel. The second bonfire. The *other* two Last Giants, and the subsequent key to the Dark Chasm of Old. That's already more going on that isn't clearing the level than in most of 3's levels. And again; it'd be okay if that action actually was REALLY fantastic and have no qualms or whatever, but it's hardly a replacement.

 

[Socur Toxanarosa]

Dark Souls is winning because it's multiplatform game, but Demon's Souls is AT LEAST as good as it and both are on a league of their own.

 

[Ash]

The number of disappointing/bland/derivitive levels here is too damn high.

Anor Londo = inferior version of DS1 Anor Londo (minus the cunting archers). Well, the area after Pointiff's arena is alright, complete with archers that are actually a little more fair. Yet once you go up the rotating tower and into the DS1 area it's mostly rehashed shit.
Grand Archives = Grand Archives but...well probably better than DS1 Grand Archives from a gameplay pov. Nonetheless, it's a derivative rehashing of assets and too familiar like so many DS3 levels.
Catacombs of Carthus = very shitty version of catacomb levels in both previous DS games. Except the scripted bridge event at the end with the army of spooky skeletons.
Smouldering Lake = Demon Ruins but shit.
Farron Keep = Blighttown but not as good. This is being a tad unfair. It's the concept of Blighttown's poison lake but expanded to a larger area. Probably exempt from criticism. It's not a bad level at all.

Church of Yorska/Cathedral of the Deep were rather boring, slashing through infinitely spawning zombies that pose no challenge then rolling around in the sludge with annoying jellies. Also Pointiff's beast is an asshole dropping in on you in that room. And fuck Patches putting you back down the bottom again with the bridge switch. His traps are fun in the other games because he knocks you down to where you've in all likelihood never been, shit scared and surrounded by enemies. Here he just knocks you down and forces backtracking. And fuck the tapdancing on the rafters above which is a long trek needed to be done at least twice, but will inevitably happen more.

Profaned capital? it's OK. Very small. Boss is shit.

Consumed King's Garden? Yes because everybody just loves fighting those mutated hydra head enemies. Tiny level.

Untended graves? YET MORE REHASHING!

Lothric Castle was shit, rehashed assets galore. Two dragons that simultaneously die when you slash at one of their feet. Generally boring mostly linear level design.

Best locations: Undead Settlement, Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, Irithyll Dungeon, Farron Keep and Archdragon Peak. The swamp area of Road of Sacrifices is also half-decent though not particularly testing when it's so easy to escape enemies here. The rest are either very mediocre by comparison to most levels in DS1 and 2, or a goddamn rehash of them.

 

[Ash]

And there we have it. Irrefutable proof that it's inferior to DS1 and 2. That in addition to ditching of many improvements made by DS2 (because they likely based the game off of DS1 codebase as opposed to DS2), and the annoying asf hydra head enemies littered throughout the game that would only be fun if they were used a very small handful of times, not something stupid like 15.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

2 is my favorite. It has the deepest combat system, the most diverse and badass weapons arsenal, has a greater number of interesting environments than the others, and lastly it has some of the best boss fights in the whole series. No contest for me.

 

[Wunderbar]

Lothric Castle was shit, rehashed assets galore.

Wall of Lothric and Lothric castle are basically rehashed Boletaria Palace.

Best locations: Undead Settlement

Straight outta Bloodborne.

 

[DoomIhlVaria]

The best Souls game is actually King's Field II.

 

[Ash]

Straight outta Bloodborne.

I think Yarnham woods and Undead Settlement differentiate themselves from one another enough to be considered unique and worthwhile. Yeah Undead Settlement also has the "20 dudes around a bonfire" Sctick, but it's overall a decent level with non-linearity, good layout and enemy placement, cool secrets, the danger zone with the troll tossing spears (which can also be allied to your side). The troll tower with onion knight of catarina getting confused by the lift (which you yourself have to figure out). p. decent level.

 

[MajorMace]

Haven't played Bloodborne, but DS1 is objectively the superior Souls games. Yet Darks Souls II has a special place in my heart. I have no idea why, mind you. Maybe playing with GeDoSaTo on back then, to restore that original lighting effects, turned it into a very peculiar experience. Like a survival game in a sense. The level down the pit in Majula for instance, went from wtf is that retarded level to holy shit holy shit holy shit that way. Like Tomb of the giants, but better. No man's wharf and the lost sinner were completely transformed as well.
Long story short, mod DS2 and make torches a tad bit more relevant.
Special mention to Demon's Souls for starting incline in a rotten industry back then, and which managed to pull out fairly different bosses from beginning to end (compared to the others, especially DS2).

Now the only reason I didn't play bloodborne was the ps4, if that shit was on PC I'd have bought it right away, its art direction looks really good.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The map for DS2 looks nice in theory, but what it amounts to is 4 very very linear paths to the lord souls radiating out from majula. And 2 of those are basically locked away from the start. Like, the bullshit at the forked road. Thats not really a three way path. You can't access more than one of those at a time unless you're doing some bullshit like spamming ascetics on the blob boss.

You basically have two paths to pick at the start that both converge on sinner's rise. Which is a good start. And you get another meaningful branch if you exhaust the dialogue of that stupid bitch in Heide. But maybe you didn't. In which case your only path left is to Tseldora, which is totally linear. And then your only option left is to grind souls for the cat ring to jump down the well, which is again, totally fucking linear.

Also, acting like Cathedral of the Deep, a huge sprawling main area, is equivalent to the Blue Cathedral or any of those other tiny fucking covenant areas, is a fucking joke. Blue Cathedral isn't a 'branch'. That'd be like putting a branch off the undead settlement just for the Rotting Greatwood. (Which in my mind it was for a while, because I didn't do that boss until much later, and thought it might unlock a new area.)

And the worst part of DS2 is that after you get the 4 lord souls, you have a completely linear progression to the endgame. 8 fucking bosses in a row. EIGHT. Most of them with their own areas to slog through. Once you get that 4th lord soul, DS2 becomes more linear than anything else in the series by a mile. At that point you just don't get to explore jack shit for the remaining third or so of the game. And that's not a random thing that may or may not happen depending on your progression. It's definitely going to happen.

Anyways, they're both a totally joke compared to DS1, which had like, 10 different bosses you could fight straight after the asylum demon (and no, you don't need the master key to do it.)

 

[Damned Registrations]

What really bugs me about DS2 is that since they went so, so fucking gamey with it, they could have made it by far the most non-linear of the entire series. If you're going to put an ocean of lava on top of a windmill, you may as well forget about connecting anything in a logical way at all and go for broke. Give me like 8 areas blatantly accessible right from the start, with a few more unlocked once you've completed any 3 areas and the final boss once you've completed any 6. That would have been fucking awesome. Don't give me your bullshit attempt to forcefeed me a badly written plot by making me visit a million NPCs in a linear order.

 

[Multidirectional]

As a full package of single player/multiplayer DS2 is best. As a strictly single player explorefag game DS1 is the clear winner. I started DS3 three times but always get bored and drop it. Not a bad game but it only makes me wanna replay first two instead.

I tried Nioh a little and it did seem to have a fun combat but because every other thing about it looked bland as fuck I uninstalled anyway. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood for it and will try again sometime.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Dark Souls 2.

I like that the combat makes the weapons and armour feel like they have weight to them. You're not moving like some anime crackhouse but when you swing your sword you're committing to it. It may be clunky, but fuck it, I like it. It also has the highest replayabiltiy of all the Souls games just from the sheer number of builds you can do and how easy it is to run a playthrough of. If you hate certain portions of the game you can either entirely ignore them or fast track through them to get to where you want.

Story/lorewise, I think it's actually pretty good. The implication is that you're in a world that takes place hundreds of years or so after DS1 and because the world goes through this constant up-and-down cataclysmic struggle, nobody has time or care to keep much record of history and as such a place or person that seems familiar to the player is barely acknowledged by the game because time has moved on. Think about Ornstein in DS1 vs. DS2. In DS1 he has a name and proper title and everything. In DS2 he's just "The Old Dragonslayer" and is never even called Ornstein directly, but is given a slight nod to being reminiscent of an old legend. I like that nothing in DS1 really mattered or amounted to anything but completing a cycle, and it's the same thing in DS2. You don't link fires or any of that to inspire hope, you sit and wait for the corruption of the land to consume you. This would've been way better conveyed if they could get the lighting engine and necessity of using the torch more prominently to work like they originally hoped. It also doesn't fall into the whole, "hype up some king, eventually have an epic clash with the king." You go through all this trouble to find him, going through his castle, beating his two best sworn knights, and then you get greeted by him completely hollowed out and barely functional. He's not some great force that serves as a final climatic challenge, he's a shambling piece of undead trash that wanders aimlessly in his tomb.

Now if you're into epic and grand stuff, I can see why DS2 would be a big "fuck this game" but the fact it's such an unapologetic subversion of expectations is why it's a breath of fresh air -- especially in retrospect now that DS3 has been released and did barely anything fresh from a narrative standpoint. DS2 has the ugliest areas with some annoying obstacles in your way. You're thrown into a world that through an endless repeating of being torn asunder you're experiencing the absolute nadir of it. You still see flickers of greatness such as Heide's Tower and moments of opulence like Drangleic Castle that suggest that civilization once thrived here, but it's also surrounded by a lot of catastrophes and other devastation which makes the rest of the land look like hell and sells you that it's only a matter of time before everything else crumbles.

There are still flaws with the game and some design philosophies that were stupid but overall it's the one that dares to stand on its own and not repeat the same song like DS3 did.

Also, I'm going to commit heresy that will piss off a lot of people but I found the Looking Glass Knight fight to be way more enjoyable and fucking awesome than Artorias. I love that the area you fight has a thunderstorm going on that he's using as a conduit to empower his attacks and that with how awful the place looks compared to the rest of the castle he's clearly been fucking up guys for a good long while. But I'm more into environmental storytelling than, "This guy has a HUGE dick, you should be scared" that Artorias had associated with him.

This is easily the best post in the entire thread so I'm quoting it for posterity's sake. Dark Souls 2 is a great fuckin sequel folks, believe it.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

Why isn't Salt and Sanctuary an option? Shit poll.

 

[Silva]

Dark Souls 2.

I like that the combat makes the weapons and armour feel like they have weight to them. You're not moving like some anime crackhouse but when you swing your sword you're committing to it. It may be clunky, but fuck it, I like it. It also has the highest replayabiltiy of all the Souls games just from the sheer number of builds you can do and how easy it is to run a playthrough of. If you hate certain portions of the game you can either entirely ignore them or fast track through them to get to where you want.

Story/lorewise, I think it's actually pretty good. The implication is that you're in a world that takes place hundreds of years or so after DS1 and because the world goes through this constant up-and-down cataclysmic struggle, nobody has time or care to keep much record of history and as such a place or person that seems familiar to the player is barely acknowledged by the game because time has moved on. Think about Ornstein in DS1 vs. DS2. In DS1 he has a name and proper title and everything. In DS2 he's just "The Old Dragonslayer" and is never even called Ornstein directly, but is given a slight nod to being reminiscent of an old legend. I like that nothing in DS1 really mattered or amounted to anything but completing a cycle, and it's the same thing in DS2. You don't link fires or any of that to inspire hope, you sit and wait for the corruption of the land to consume you. This would've been way better conveyed if they could get the lighting engine and necessity of using the torch more prominently to work like they originally hoped. It also doesn't fall into the whole, "hype up some king, eventually have an epic clash with the king." You go through all this trouble to find him, going through his castle, beating his two best sworn knights, and then you get greeted by him completely hollowed out and barely functional. He's not some great force that serves as a final climatic challenge, he's a shambling piece of undead trash that wanders aimlessly in his tomb.

Now if you're into epic and grand stuff, I can see why DS2 would be a big "fuck this game" but the fact it's such an unapologetic subversion of expectations is why it's a breath of fresh air -- especially in retrospect now that DS3 has been released and did barely anything fresh from a narrative standpoint. DS2 has the ugliest areas with some annoying obstacles in your way. You're thrown into a world that through an endless repeating of being torn asunder you're experiencing the absolute nadir of it. You still see flickers of greatness such as Heide's Tower and moments of opulence like Drangleic Castle that suggest that civilization once thrived here, but it's also surrounded by a lot of catastrophes and other devastation which makes the rest of the land look like hell and sells you that it's only a matter of time before everything else crumbles.

There are still flaws with the game and some design philosophies that were stupid but overall it's the one that dares to stand on its own and not repeat the same song like DS3 did.

Also, I'm going to commit heresy that will piss off a lot of people but I found the Looking Glass Knight fight to be way more enjoyable and fucking awesome than Artorias. I love that the area you fight has a thunderstorm going on that he's using as a conduit to empower his attacks and that with how awful the place looks compared to the rest of the castle he's clearly been fucking up guys for a good long while. But I'm more into environmental storytelling than, "This guy has a HUGE dick, you should be scared" that Artorias had associated with him.

This is easily the best post in the entire thread so I'm quoting it for posterity's sake. Dark Souls 2 is a great fuckin sequel folks, believe it.

No it's not. It failed to understand what made DeS and DS such masterpieces and so it fails as a sequel.

It's a fun little game, I give you that, but the series is more than just build variety and funny customes.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

It failed to understand what made DeS and DS such masterpieces

But are they really RPGs?

 

[Deakul]

nier automata was pretty good

 

[Socur Toxanarosa]

I didn't like the change of pace the combat in the series got after Bloodborne, shit got too animu. I like Bloodborne, but not only the combat is too fast, i also think that a lot bosses are overdesigned, barely could see what Ludwig actually was, much prefer simple and clear designs.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Dark Souls 2.

I like that the combat makes the weapons and armour feel like they have weight to them. You're not moving like some anime crackhouse but when you swing your sword you're committing to it. It may be clunky, but fuck it, I like it. It also has the highest replayabiltiy of all the Souls games just from the sheer number of builds you can do and how easy it is to run a playthrough of. If you hate certain portions of the game you can either entirely ignore them or fast track through them to get to where you want.

Story/lorewise, I think it's actually pretty good. The implication is that you're in a world that takes place hundreds of years or so after DS1 and because the world goes through this constant up-and-down cataclysmic struggle, nobody has time or care to keep much record of history and as such a place or person that seems familiar to the player is barely acknowledged by the game because time has moved on. Think about Ornstein in DS1 vs. DS2. In DS1 he has a name and proper title and everything. In DS2 he's just "The Old Dragonslayer" and is never even called Ornstein directly, but is given a slight nod to being reminiscent of an old legend. I like that nothing in DS1 really mattered or amounted to anything but completing a cycle, and it's the same thing in DS2. You don't link fires or any of that to inspire hope, you sit and wait for the corruption of the land to consume you. This would've been way better conveyed if they could get the lighting engine and necessity of using the torch more prominently to work like they originally hoped. It also doesn't fall into the whole, "hype up some king, eventually have an epic clash with the king." You go through all this trouble to find him, going through his castle, beating his two best sworn knights, and then you get greeted by him completely hollowed out and barely functional. He's not some great force that serves as a final climatic challenge, he's a shambling piece of undead trash that wanders aimlessly in his tomb.

Now if you're into epic and grand stuff, I can see why DS2 would be a big "fuck this game" but the fact it's such an unapologetic subversion of expectations is why it's a breath of fresh air -- especially in retrospect now that DS3 has been released and did barely anything fresh from a narrative standpoint. DS2 has the ugliest areas with some annoying obstacles in your way. You're thrown into a world that through an endless repeating of being torn asunder you're experiencing the absolute nadir of it. You still see flickers of greatness such as Heide's Tower and moments of opulence like Drangleic Castle that suggest that civilization once thrived here, but it's also surrounded by a lot of catastrophes and other devastation which makes the rest of the land look like hell and sells you that it's only a matter of time before everything else crumbles.

There are still flaws with the game and some design philosophies that were stupid but overall it's the one that dares to stand on its own and not repeat the same song like DS3 did.

Also, I'm going to commit heresy that will piss off a lot of people but I found the Looking Glass Knight fight to be way more enjoyable and fucking awesome than Artorias. I love that the area you fight has a thunderstorm going on that he's using as a conduit to empower his attacks and that with how awful the place looks compared to the rest of the castle he's clearly been fucking up guys for a good long while. But I'm more into environmental storytelling than, "This guy has a HUGE dick, you should be scared" that Artorias had associated with him.

This is easily the best post in the entire thread so I'm quoting it for posterity's sake. Dark Souls 2 is a great fuckin sequel folks, believe it.

No it's not. It failed to understand what made DeS and DS such masterpieces and so it fails as a sequel.

It's a fun little game, I give you that, but the series is more than just build variety and funny customes.

I'd rather not all Souls games resemble DS1 (DeS I didn't play) as a rule. I know it's great, but I prefer these games going out doing new things. They may not totally succeed, but DS2 was a fair attempt. DS3 dipped into the same well as DS1 (except where it mattered - interesting world design) and came out a more boring game for it.

 

[funkadelik]

Demon Souls was the best. The game definitely benefits from a hub rather than a strange pseudo-open world that doesn't make any sense.

 

[Zlaja]

It's ok to like Dark Souls 2:

 

[Deflowerer]

THE FUCK?

 

[Arnust]

Yup. It's even a viable strategy if you feel more comfortable with the second phase moveset.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I think it's easier because then you only have to learn one moveset instead of him changing it halfway through.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

It's ok to like Dark Souls 2:

But hey, DS2 is shit... because muh volcano on the top of a mill!