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Dark Souls 2 is definitely better than the general consensus thinks.
This would be my rating of the souls games. Sekiro > DS1 > Bloodborne > DS2 > DeS > DS3 > Elden Ring
Out of interest, why is 3 so low in your ranking?
For me a ds3 run just feels very quick and you cannot take as much optional and different routes as in the previous games, it's more linear. But also ds3 bosses are peak, only topped by sekiro, and imo everyone crying about artificial difficulty (e.g. the guy above) has skill issues. Like, demons souls, ds1, ds2 (except the snowy outskirts, fuck that area) are pretty easy to beat in comparison.
I agree on the ds3 bosses. They are phenomunal and the best in the souls movement set. Sekiro is tough to compare it to as that game just plays differently IMO.
I replay all dark souls games and even mods are enjoyable, but I don't bother with other games. I started Bloodborne but it just doesn't hold my interest anymore? I just really like dark souls universe I think.
If you haven't heard of it (probably have, but anyway) try the Archthrones mod for ds3, it's insanely well done with basically a new game on top of the ds3 engine, with new areas, overhauled areas, completely new bosses and bosses with move sets from other souls games.
And yeah I love soulsbourne, rarely anything else scratches that itch, Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen were pretty cool but other than that...
Level design and exploration is the weakest and the bosses start having the Elden Ring issue of damage sponges and animation manipulation, like heal counters and roll catches.
Wait why do people hate Elden ring? For context I've only played 3/4 of DS1 and 1/2 of DS2.
Took everything good about souls games, copy pasted and spread it out so thin to cover an entire open world with no content. Destroying the pacing and exploration of a complex designed world in favour of a flat large plane of repeated enemies and the same dungeon over and over again.
I can go on.
I was going to ask why you think it got so much hype, but you're basically describing why I hated BotW.
Did they not add other rpg exploration elements to the game to compensate?
Elden Ring is nothing like botw. The latter being an amazing open world but with literally less than 10 enemies or something, just different colors. Elden ring has a ton of enemies, mechanics, bosses, etc etc. the people in this thread are just mad it’s become a more main stream thing and they have to find another game to play in their mom’s basement.
Bwahahahah, they added a horse that doesn’t work in multiplayer.
So no, they did not.
Took everything good about souls games, copy pasted
That's true for all of the games on your list. These games are (and always have been) innovations on each other. The erd tree bosses are improved stray demons, which is an improved asylum demon, which are improved adjudicators. Even if they weren't innovative, the new bosses and mechanics would still more than make up for it IMO.
and spread it out so thin to cover an entire open world ... Destroying the pacing and exploration of a complex designed world
You never found any of the areas that take you off of Torrent and stop being open-world? They're the same as all of the previous games, and there's loads of them.
no content
Did you even make it out of the starting area??? Ever seen a minor erd tree? Or stop one of the roaming carriages with loot? You really didn't find any of the puzzles? Paintings? Notes pointing to things to do? Never found any good loot tucked away in an obscure part of the map? Never found a notable place to get useful crafting materials? Never found the churches, golden seeds, or the physick flask? Never encountered a story invasion? Never encountered a boss roaming in the overworld? Never found an evergaol? You didn't find any NPCs or try to do any quests/miniquests? Not even any merchants? Didn't find any underground open-world areas? Didn't touch any teleporters or dubious chests?
I can go on.
in favour of a flat large plane
Blatantly untrue when you leave the starting area and look literally anywhere.
repeated enemies and the same dungeon over and over again.
The only thing the caves and dungeons have in common are textures. Repeat bosses are definitely a thing though, but repeat enemies... I don't see how that's an issue. They're used in different combinations and contexts that mix things up, and it's no different than any of the other games on the list.
I never like to dismiss someone's criticism of things because they're generally subjective, but so much of what you said is questionable... if not just objectively wrong.
Ok. So stfu about calling reused assets innovation. It’s not. It’s reused old materials because you are strapped for time and are padding the game for release.
I also platinumed the game and can confidently review every aspect having seen and beaten it all.
Go through the main game and dlc and count how many locations are just big flat areas with no items or content. Just fields of padding to wade through. Or a location to grind for the pointless crafting system.
The open world activities that you listed break down to go to place in the open world and fight a dude or pick up an item. It’s all just repackaging the same fucking quest structure. Entirely copy pasted fetch quests that reward you with an item that is most likely not for your build. So on repeat play throughs you just go online to find the gear you need and go straight to the main quest. Or you get another item for upgrading your flask that’s already maxed out. 🙄
The open world is a empty padded space meant to kill time between the only good content in the game “the legacy dungeons”
This entire game world could be cut down by more than half and it still wouldn’t have enough content worth exploring.
Your user name is very apt because you are acting like a huge fanboy simp for clearly a watered down version of a souls game.
I love FromSoftware but I hope they never tackle something this big again and go back to making bespoke game worlds that are intertwined and fun to explore.
I also platinumed the game and can confidently review every aspect having seen and beaten it all.
Me too. And getting hostile doesn't make your claims any less questionable if not demonstrably wrong. I understand the game bent you over its knee and pounded your cheeks but you don't have to make shit up to criticize it. It's really easy:
A lot of the quests and endings STILL practically require a guide and can break if you progress too fast, and that's been an issue since Demon's Souls for crying out loud... The lack of vertical depth on the map often doesn't do a good enough job of telling the player that there is no path to climb from below to obvious points of interest. And why tf aren't our waypoints and map markers unlimited? A handful of bosses read your animations and react like a robot, and it not only breaks immersion but feels cheap to fight against. Idk about on console, but PC had some pretty bad optimization issues in certain areas for several months after release, and the DLC now has the same issue. It's a little frustrating that the FPS is still capped at 60 like their other games. To this day there is still an issue with decorations/foliage over-culling the shading behind them, giving it an ugly glowy effect. The light reflections in things like water are still tied to the camera like in the other games, making it look like you can move light sources with the right stick. It probably should have been more clear that Ria's hug debuffs your HP. Messages and other interactables being too close to each other disables your ability to switch weapons, which is really annoying when you're trying to buff yourself before a boss fight and can't switch to a talisman, and on rare occasions can screw you over in combat. Dismissible notifications like the doors opening in legacy dungeons bizarrely disable your attack buttons, and can screw you over if you happen to be under pursuit or if you forget to dismiss it and walk into a fight. The PVP arena gives you no rewards and there's no incentive to do it rather than invading. When invading, it's way too likely that it'll get canceled by the host walking through a fog wall the moment you load in. They should have fixed that during the DLC pre-patch by removing areas next to a fog wall from the pool, but they didn't. Summon signs will constantly fail when the demand is too high because they don't disappear immediately after another host swipes them from you. Players can hide in places only reachable with Torrent and then invite invasions with the taunter's tongue, which wastes the invader's time and incentivizes hosts to do this by giving them a constant stream of runes while AFK, making it the easiest farming method in the game.
More subjectively: Malenia's life-stealing would have been better paired with almost any other boss, because her waterfowl attack is already hard enough to deal with. Maliketh's burning attacks that lower your HP cap are way too frustrating, and it would've been nice to have an item or a physick tear that could help counter it. The mimic tear is a great idea, but it's wildly unbalanced and makes the other spirits not worth bothering to try. The run-back to the final boss to the grace is unnecessarily long and should have a stake of Marika next to it. Split damage is still somewhat of an issue, so physical damage is still "meta." Bosses that summon other enemies are annoying and feel almost as cheap as DS2's horde fights. The caves and legacy dungeons reusing textures, models, and decor might be narratively consistent and understandable from a developer perspective, but it makes them feel too same-y, and the diversity in layout and challenges to tackle don't do enough to counteract that. They also use the same small pool of enemy types for caves and legacy dungeons, and they could have been improved by expanding that pool. It's way too easy to hide from invaders and waste their time just to gank them after 10 minutes. They blew the spells of their previous games out of the water but in PVP they make it far too easy for hosts to demand invaders to drain their whole stamina bar while they spam spells, all while their partner is chasing them down.
All that and I didn't have to misrepresent the game in ways that can be proven wrong the moment you reach Limgrave.