From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[KIss My Ass]

Dark Souls 2 doesn't need anyone defending it. You either recognize it as the masterpiece that it is or you're retarded. The guy in the image above has some serious insecurities.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I don't know that you can claim the "measured response" high ground for anything if you're recording 7+ hours of sperging out.

How the hell does that have so many views? Kids need to find better things to do with their time. Even smashing your dick with a hammer seems like it'd be more productive.

 

[cvv]

How the hell does that have so many views?

Same reason videos of slow train crashes have many views.

 

[cvv]

 

[Max Damage]

Decided to try out vanilla on a whim, and holy shit, the beginning feels much better than "definitive" edition. Actually reasonable enemy numbers, no random exploding barrels, and there's 1 turtle guy in the whole castle. The other version plays like shitty "mod" made by tasteless idiots.

 

[Zeriel]

SOTFS is trash from what I heard unless you are a turbo autist who has already played the game through once. A very strange idea for anything short of an optional difficulty mode--building a whole sold product around it was peculiar. Or rather it's got a mixture of acceptable additions with autistic design decisions. They really should have separated out the "challenge" stuff from the non-challenge changes.

 

[Multidirectional]

I couldn't even get into DSII until I played SOTFS. After demo'ing that for about 10 hours I got convinced to buy it, it was the first game I ever bought full price and didn't regret it. I don't know what you people always bitch about. This game ain't that hard.

 

[Zeriel]

Muh "if people don't like it it's because it's too hard". That's not the criticism. Retarded shit you can beat is still retarded. SOTFS is like someone selling you a fridge that is supposed to keep your food fresh longer, and then when you complain that there is a gigantic whirring chainsaw on the door facing towards your hand, they retort: "What? Are too much of a PUSSY to handle it?!" That's not the point. This is not what was asked for, nor marketed.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I couldn't even get into DSII until I played SOTFS. After demo'ing that for about 10 hours I got convinced to buy it, it was the first game I ever bought full price and didn't regret it. I don't know what you people always bitch about. This game ain't that hard.

I prefer SOTFS to the original version, but I played the hell out of both. I think it's true though that the technical improvements SOTFS brought should have been baseline and the enemy placement redesign should've been an option or something so you could toggle it, depending on your preference. It's weird how drastically different certain areas are, so if you really prefer the vanilla version for whatever reason, you're basically SOL if you want the changes to lighting and such.

 

[cvv]

SOTFS is trash from what I heard

My brother in Christ, you've heard wrong.

 

[Surf Solar]

I like SOTFS just because it gave me more of a game I already enjoyed. Guess I am that easy to please

 

[Elttharion]

All I remember about vanilla is that Shrine of Amana was hell at launch. Pretty fun place for invasions tho.

 

[Bendu]

The best version of DS2 is the original with the SOTFS patch. Fuck that different enemy and item placement in the SOTFS version.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

SotFS is a "hardcore" remix of DS2
And it's clearly aimed at experienced players, not first timers

 

[Dadd]

Vanilla DS2 had the best pvp of all Souls games

 

[Dadd]

Shrine of Amana wasn't bad if you played methodically and had adequate camera control

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Only played Sotfs, it was fine ignoring some obvious jank, mostly hitboxes activating too fast compared to the animations.

 

[Caim]

Started out with the base game just as SotFS came out (had a system that couldn't run the game's version of DirectX at the time), then moved to SotFS and never looked back.

 

[RoSoDude]

Having looked over most of the enemy/item placement changes in SotFS (which is the only version I've played), I probably agree that the base game designs were generally more coherent. The Flexile Sentry in Sinner's Rise was particularly dumb, as were all the changes to Drangleic Castle. There's some stuff in there that seems like it should have been relegated to NG+ remixing rather than the default encounter designs. Plus, there are too many powerful weapons laying around for the taking right at the start of the game.

However, the base game patches completely gutted the Shrine of Amana casters to have so little projectile homing that you could dodge their spells with a slow walk, which was pathetic. SotFS restored the projectile homing, albeit with reworked enemy placement, and made Shrine of Amana one of my favorite Souls levels of all time.

 

[Multidirectional]

SotFS is a "hardcore" remix of DS2
And it's clearly aimed at experienced players, not first timers

I'm glad I wasn't aware of this when playing for first time so I ended up loving it. If I only knew I was supposed to bitch and moan about it things might have turned out different.

 

[cvv]

SotFS is a "hardcore" remix of DS2
And it's clearly aimed at experienced players, not first timers

I'm glad I wasn't aware of this when playing for first time so I ended up loving it. If I only knew I was supposed to bitch and moan about it things might have turned out different.

This exactly.

Also back in the day the common wisdom for soulslikes was stiil "the moar you suffer, the moar better". So I really thought SofFS was a masterpiece coz I suffered a lot, especially in the DLCs.

Nowadays it seems even the souls community has pussified rapidly, probably due to the huge influx of normies starting with DS3 and culminating with ER. People endlessly complaining about "artificial difficulty", prattling about "it's not really difficult you know, just frustrating/annoying/tiresome" etc. Mobs always hit too hard or are HP sponges or there's too much mob density, levels are too confusing, bosses unfair and unbalanced and anyway, we really need that easy mode.

I'm way beyond making fun of whiney bitches like this, by this point I can't fucking stand hearing this shit anymore.

 

[Max Damage]

The "am so h@rdc0r3" is probably most cringeworthy part when someone has to wedge into every talk about anything in DS games, bitching about people bitching is tiresome in itself. Anyway, just reached Iron Keep, game's mostly fun, even if unpolished in many parts. Lock on feels unusable with weapons like Greatsword, you can somehow simultaneously whiff sure hits and fall into pit just attempting to land a hit that would connect manually.

 

[Dadd]

You need to manually aim slower weapons like UGSs and great hammers and estimate where your enemies would be at the time your weapon strikes.
Also, with such large weapons, I often found it better to play without the lock-on, though with the numerous patches this might have changed.

 

[Bester]

This is me. Other than more Heide knights, I couldn't name a single difference between them. They're both great, I just can't remember the minutia, nor can I believe some people seriously find minor differences and base their entire life around them, calling them "broken" or some other stupid shit. It gives away the fact that you've got no sex life.

 

[D_X]

Plus, there are too many powerful weapons laying around for the taking right at the start of the game.

Firstly, what weapons would you consider those to be? And secondly, why would that be a negative? If anything, it's an improvement.