A big indication of the source the these problems appears almost immediately after starting the game. The very first character you meet essentially breaks the 4th wall to tell you "you'll die again and again and lose all your souls, lol (actually laughing out loud at the player along with the rest of the room)". In other words DS2 was designed to be a hard game. This is different from DS1, which was a hard game, but not at all designed to be a hard game. DS1 was designed to be a fair game in a hard world. This is an important distinction. To compare, it would be like the difference between a fair but brutal Warhammer 40k game playing a guardsman and making Kaizo Mario. DS1 is difficult because it's a horrendous world doomed to slowly die with gods walking the earth devouring souls to stay alive. DS2 is hard because the devs decided that DS1 was hard and therefore they needed DS2 to be hard as well. Just to be clear, it's not that they tried too hard to make DS2 a difficult game. It's that they were overly concerned with the overall game difficulty rather than the overall game quality. If anything the hard parts of DS1 are harder than the hard parts of DS2, because DS1 was a game where some parts happened to be hard. DS2 is as much an over-balanced game rather than just an overly-hard game, remember this for later.
Didn't mention it in my last post but there's very clear level-spacing problems in DS2. All levels in DS1 were interconnected properly, as if it was a real world that you could theoretically have fully-loaded in game and see all the details from Blightown looking down from Firelink Shrine. In DS2 there's none of these, areas would clearly overlap if loaded at the same time and there's huge discrepancies between levels where things that should be seen are not (e.g., take an elevator up from a tower in a level that clearly has open sky only to arrive at a castle sitting entirely in lava). Very clearly the DS2 devs didn't pay any attention to the world they were making, they just created a bunch of individual levels that looked cool and stapled them together with elevators. Might as well be playing Doom.
Back to the difficulty. There's too many enemies in lots of areas, and 90% of the time this means the player plays entirely the same way: inch forward, aggro as few things as possible (either by bow or by crossing the magic MMO-esque aggro circle around them) and back off immediately to fight in relative safety. This is the ideal strategy in DS1 as well, of course, but in DS1 playing in a more gung-ho style only meant fighting 2, maybe 3 enemies max. In DS2 it's effectively enforced constantly by making other methods suicidal. It's very clear that this intended because the levels specifically allow the player to retreat away and de-aggro enemies in every encounter I can think but barring one (Iron King DLC, dropping down the trap door into a half dozen enemies). The Shrine of Amana is a particular offender, the player is heavily encouraged to fire a single arrow at melee enemies then run 300 feet through water to find cover behind which the aggroed melee enemies can be fought, because ranged casters with homing soul arrow are firing roughly once every 5 seconds. Both the melee and the ranged attacks will take off roughly 1/2 your health in a hit so good luck charging in water. It's a cool area, great concept, but a horrible slog designed to kill you unless you fight through it using the lamest, slowest method possible. Areas like these consistently feel like an artificial puzzle with the object being to figure out how to aggro as little as possible. DS1 areas were a puzzle, yes, but DS1 was always about exploring and dealing with the environment + the enemies. In DS2 puzzles are about figuring out where the arbitrary "please rape me with 5 enemies at deal half my health in damage if I don't immediately start running backwards when I cross this line" points are.
There's also a lot of areas that are clearly unfinished/underfinished and just involved planting a dozens of enemies in the center of relatively open areas to attack the player when they enter. Heide's Tower of Flame, Iron Keep, Belfry Sol, Shaded Woods, Memory of the Old Iron King (by far the most egregious example). As mentioned previously, Dark Souls thrives on facing both the enemy and the environment simultaneously, fighting the same enemies over and over in wide open rooms just get tedious. DS1 certainly had it's own underfinished areas (most notably Lost Izalith), but DS2 has far, far more. The lead up to the Sir Alonne in particular is one of the worst, most obviously unfinished area I've seen in a long time. It would deserve a 1/5 star rating if submitted as a amateur's first Doom wad.
I can't believe I didn't notice this until tackling the DLCs in my 2nd game, but DS2 has a huge problem with healing item resource management. That is, there is none. You can buy 99 lifestones from the starting merchants. This is so insanely dumb it boggles the mind. Even the dullest of the dull, namely video game journalists, managed to understand that it was a good thing when Dark Souls 1 removed buyable healing items and limited players fairly strictly to estus (humanity existed but wasn't spammable). This is a clear sign that the DS2 devs simply didn't care about overall difficulty as it pertains to surviving from one bonfire to the next, only about the difficulty of individual fights. It's a lot like how recent RPGs just auto-heal players after all fights, that's what lifegems do. It means the area designers aren't interested in tricky areas or encounters that only injure players, every fight is designed to be do-or-die. I ended up resorting to this in the DLCs, which are universally monster-infested and bonfire-sparse to the point of it being a rather tedious grind to get through and backtrack through areas.
Let's also take a detour to talk about some basic game mechanics that were screwed up for no reason. Armor is good in DS1. You can read how it works here (
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/396507-dark-souls-stats-i-damage-formula-and-analysis). But the TL;DR is, armor in DS1 has both flat damage reduction and percentile damage reduction properties. In other words it worked like armor in Fallout 1/2 work, and armor in FO1/2 is awesome. Dark Souls 1 is slightly less awesome in terms of letting you be immune to everything but crits to the eyes, but just as awesome in always feeling effective whether you're taking lots of small hits or a few big hits. Dark Souls 2 decided to screw this up for reasons I can't understand. Physical armor is now purely a flat damage reduction (like Damage Threshold from FONV), and it sucks ass. It's .1 DT per armor rating, and with the max armor at around 1500 your flat 150 damage reduction does jack shit to shrug off common enemies dealing 800 damage by the mid game. Why? I dunno, I guess they wanted to make the game harder by nerfing all of the tank builds? On the other hand, DS2 decides to make Elemental resistance fully percentile. You start at 10% and every 100 elemental armor adds 10% more. 900 fire resistance? Take 0 damage from all fire attacks. Period. Thanks to this Vitality (increases max equipment load, yes I can't remember which is which between this and Vigor/Endurance either) is a useless investment. ~45 levels of Vitality to *maybe* take 3 hits instead of 2 or 4 hits instead of 3 is a joke, and the game is laughing at you as you still have a shitty roll. 30 points of vigor will give you 600 HP and give you 15 to spare somewhere else. Robes that protect against elemental attacks weigh virtually nothing and half the endgame enemies have some combination of normal damage and elemental damage on their standard attacks anyway, so sometimes you're being protected more by robes than armor when impaled by a frozen spear or what have you. TL;DR #2 almost all the armor in DS2 is useless, the only sensible options are to wear robes (elemental resist), nothing (slightly faster rolls/stamina regen) or +souls gained armor (kill the armor merchant in the starting area for it, you're not buying anything from him are you?). Dodge or block everything, don't rely on armor to do anything unless it's a dragon breathing fire.
Poise (the other part of armor) and poise damage (the thing strength weapons are for) also kind of sucks. It's not actually broken for the player or really changed in any way I can tell from DS1, it's just not suited for DS2's PvE. Poise is entirely about being a tie-breaker in 1v1 combat. You and your opponent swing together, you both hit, they stagger because they suck and you combo their ass to death. It keeps you swinging through 1, maybe 2 hits at most. But because DS2 is all about groups of enemies everywhere trying to just bully your way through with a strength weapon is suicidal. You take one hit, you stagger your attacked target and in return his buddies all get their hit in to stun you and then lol now you're stunned while in the middle of 3-4 enemies ready to rape you. GG no re. Additionally almost every boss is nigh immune to poise damage as far as I can tell, so those big strength weapons dealing 700-800 damage are literally useless jokes compared to dex weapons hitting 3x as quickly for 500-600. This is a real bummer, in DS1 almost every boss could be stunned by a good two-handed strength weapon (even lowly maces and clubs), leading to a lot of free time to get hits in. I did manage to stun a few bosses with the high-level pyromancy Fire Whip (in particular Mytha can be stunlocked to death with it) but I'm pretty sure that's so far above the level of poise damage that strength weapons deal out that there's no point bothering. There's also a ring that gives +poise damage, faster weapons end up as good or better than strength weapons with it on when fighting the things that can be reasonably stunned. Everything still kind of works and feels balanced for PvP, it's just the PvE environment that poise is messed up in.
Magic is also rather trash as mentioned in my previous post. Because you're constantly fighting groups and overall magic damage is rather weak outside of uber spells, you're always ending up in melee range before you can kill them all. Once you're there, do you want to spend 2s casting a spell (3s for any of the better spells) unable to dodge or .75s stabbing for the same damage? Bosses also have the same problem, since all of them have very clear gap-closing moves designed to punish a player who tries to back off and cast a slow spell from a medium distance. If you're going to end up in melee with them and dodging just the same as a melee character would, why cast a spell rather than attack with a much higher DPS melee weapon? There's simply no reasonably difficult boss fight in which magic is anywhere near as good as melee, and relatively few areas in which it excels. Again, nerfed because DS2 devs decided that there was a right way to play (quick, active melee) and a wrong way to play (virtually everything else)? I hear magic used to be more like DS1 and was nerfed because it made the game too easy, I guess that answers that. Game needed to be made harder, so make something good suck.
Anyway, lets talk about bosses. I'm just going to list a few categories of sins and the relevant bosses that commit it.
- Generic humanoid melee bosses.
So many bosses. Shit, let me pull up a list. Pursuer, Dragonrider, Old Dragonslayer, Flexile Sentry, Ruin Sentinels, Lost Sinner, Smelter Demon, Looking Glass Knight, The Rotten, Velstadt, Throne Defender/Watcher, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne, Burnt Iron King.
Now these aren't neccesarily all bad bosses. The problem is that there are too many and they are often too indistinguishable in how their moveset works. Most of them are visually great and all but as soon as you start fighting them it takes 5s to figure out what they are about and 20s to learn their specific timings. They run up to you, do a 3 hit combo (almost always coming from the left, so if you roll to the left through them you'll easily avoid the rest by strafing), and you punish. Then there are the gimmicks. The gimmicks are consistently really bad, basically a fatal weakness of the boss. Pursuer? He stops and spends 10s firing dark magic in front of him, you circle behind him and spend 10s smacking his shithole. Velstadt's gimmick is literally the same. Looking Glass Knight does the same except to spawn an enemy. Other gimmicks just don't matter. Smelter Demon does a very small amount of damage to you while you are close to him. Fume Knight changes to a slower sword halfway through the fight (becoming arguably easier). Flexile Sentry sometimes switches to a weapon that does more poise damage. The rest generally don't even half a gimmick and would be indistinguishable if not for the different 3d model.
This list needs to be condensed and there needs to be more distinctiveness. The part that differentiates a boss from the rest should be obvious and powerful. DS1's Artorias was the insanely aggressive boss that was agile and leaping all over the place like a giant rabbit on crack. Manus was the boss with really killer dark magic and short/mid ranged melee attacks, able to threaten you at any range. Ornstein and Smough were the tag team with completely different archetypes that made for the most difficult fight in DS1. Four Kings was the boss rush, go DPS or go home. Gwyn was the "fair" fight, almost like a powered-up player. Priscilla was arguably the weakest gimmick with invisibilty, but it works and at least it isn't a gimmick that ends up a fatal weakness like DS2's bosses. Stray Demon and Taurus Demon are the gimmick-less ones, basically there to help train the player. They appropriately come early in the game rather than at the end or in post-endgame DLC areas like several DS1 bosses. DS2 bosses needed to be distinctive like this.
- Overly simplistic bosses.
This is unfortunatenly a good portion of the rest. Last Giant. Covetous Demon. Old Iron King. Demon of Song. Giant Lord. Nashandra. Ancient Dragon.
These bosses are all woefully underdesigned. They have glaring weaknesses and painfully easy to recognize and dodge moves. Now this isn't unusual for the series, Dark Souls and Demons Souls have a number of dud bosses. The unfortunate part is that these bosses are quite unique and it's a shame for them to suck or lack truly threatening abilities. Was development time lacking, or was the team too inexperienced to be able to come up with a unique boss that was threatening without charging into melee with their 3-hit combo?
- Bosses that were clearly meant to be harder.
Skeleton Lords. Royal Rat Authority. Prowling Magus & Congregation. Duke's Dear Freja. Looking Glass Knight. Throne Defender/Watcher. Darklurker.
A curious part of DS2 is that there are a number of bosses that should be incredibly difficult but ended up being a joke. My guess is that they were more difficult in development, but then playtesters complained and they were unceremoniously nerfed into the ground, because as I mentioned at the start DS2 is a game overly concerned with difficulty rather than just letting an overly difficult boss exist. The sad thing is that this includes most of the fights in the game that would be very good. They are also all multi-enemy fights.
What happens in these? Well, the AI is very clearly neutered and will flat out not pursue you in order to let you get free hits in. This is most obvious in Skeleton Lords, where being in a room with 30 skeletons should be insanely difficult. Instead the skeletons are almost passive, only slowly coming after you and rarely mobbing you up. Royal Rat Authority? The rats fucking WALK. You can just run back and forth between them without a problem. Freja's the same but has a rather annoying and bloated HP bar just to annoy you with. Prowling Magus and Congregation flat out have no HP. Darklurker doesn't clone until half HP and by then he's a few taps away from death. Throne Defender/Watcher will decide to take a break once in a while and back off to let you wail on the other. Looking Glass Knight barely comes after you while you are dueling whatever he summoned.
This really breaks the realism of DS2 and makes the game instead feel akin an over-balanced boring mess. Want a good fucking fight? Ornstein and Smough are a good fucking fight. They are deadly, they are powerful, and they are 100% relentless in aggressively getting in the player's face to fuck them up. Gargoyles are a similarly good fight, hence DS2 had to copy it in order to get the only good multi-enemy fight next to Ruin Sentinels. Enemies that are clearly pulling their punches have no place in a Dark Souls game, period. It's absolutely disgusting and makes DS2 feel like Fisher Price presents Dark Souls whenever you realize a fight is just completely trivial.
- Just to be fair, let's list the good bosses of DS2
Pursuer is a good introductory boss, his surprises throughout the rest of the game are enjoyable, the throne room 2v1 is great. Pity that the 2v1 requires you to beat the game first, but it's the closest the game has to Ornstein & Smough. Gargoyles and Ruin Sentinels have already been mentioned as good. Chariot is unique, I can dig it. Mytha is mobile with some hard-to-read attacks, some quick spells, a decent room gimmick. I didn't list her under generic humanoid melee bosses because she's unique enough to stand out. Najka is almost a copy of Quelaag but gets credit nonetheless. Elana is tricky if you don't cheese the fight by leaving just 1 skeleton alive, basically a Darklurker/Nashandra done right. Sinh is a good dragon fight. The adventuring trio is fun even if it isn't terribly boss-like. Aava is an example of a high-aggression melee boss that manages to not suck. The dual pet boss is insane and would be awesome if it didn't take forever to get to.
To conclude, a mini-review of the DLCs:
Crown of the Old Iron King is decent. The main area is, in total opposition to the base game's simplistic corridors, almost overdesigned and too complex. There's really just not enough to distinguish the different levels within the tower and help players get their bearings, it could use more variety. Bosses are all mediocre, falling in the generic humanoid category. Also significantly HP-bloated which makes them take much longer than most base game bosses. Enemy abundance is truly ridiculous in some parts, some of the worst examples of stuffing a bunch of crap into a small area to annoy players. Needing to run back and forth to the ashen idols is a bad way to artificially extend gameplay.
Crown of the Sunken King is well designed all-around. Great area gimmicks, great bosses. Really no complaints, only positive impressions all around. A bit of enemy number bloat but more subdued than the other DLCs. Also the trio is a bit anti-climactic, they should have come before Sinh.
Crown of the Ivory King is pretty good. Areas are a bit too long with a bit too much time between bonfires. Definitely necessitates lifegem spamming here. Also way too many enemies in general much like Iron King. Bosses are good except for the Ivory King himself, another generic humanoid melee boss, but he's still alright on account of just how badass his entire fight goes. Forcing players to retread through so much crap is, again, a poor way to artificially extend gameplay.
Anyway, I've definitely said enough by now.
Crooked Bee wanted a review of Dark Souls 2 a few years back, guess I can deliver something of the sort now. Dark Souls 2 did manage to hit that specific point of making me mad about something I want to like such that I had to type all this out.
.
