Dark Souls II - Prepare to Die, Again

[Captain Kelsten]

Harvest Valley and Earthen Peak cleared. Nothing too troubling, so far. 
 

Stats wise:

 

Level 93

 

12 vigor

10 end

10 vit

25 atn

12 str 

10 dex

8 adp 

40 int

21 fth 

 

Using a magic mace + 6 for smashy bashy and a sorcerer’s staff +5 for casting. Wearing the full hexers set, which some guy gave me for free. Spells wise I’m using dark orb, greater soul arrow and greater heavy soul arrow. 
 

I genuinely don’t know how I got to 62 hours played on my first character and only got to level 89. 

[CheekyMonkey]

There's something about DS2 that I just love - its clearly not quite the game that DS and DS3 are, but it has this ethereal almost dreamlike quality to it that just gives it this amazing ambience.

 

I don't get the hate for it at all, it's an absolutely cracking game - and I haven't even played the (supposedly better than the main game) DLC! 

I might have to rectify that once I finish Elden Ring. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

Stop it. Y'all are making me want to give this game a fifth chance. 

 

 

I refuse to accept that Spainkiller was right. That would mean that eventually we're going consider Resi 6 the pinnacle of that series.

[Captain Kelsten]

39 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

 

 

I refuse to accept that Spainkiller was right.

You fling enough shit at the wall, eventually some of it will stick, right? 

[Captain Kelsten]

8 hours ago, CheekyMonkey said:

There's something about DS2 that I just love - its clearly not quite the game that DS and DS3 are, but it has this ethereal almost dreamlike quality to it that just gives it this amazing ambience.

 

I don't get the hate for it at all, it's an absolutely cracking game - and I haven't even played the (supposedly better than the main game) DLC! 

I might have to rectify that once I finish Elden Ring. 

Yes! Lots of people moan that it’s not all interconnected like DS1, and I definitely prefer that, but if you think of this place as like some kind of fever dream, then of course it makes sense that you take a lift down into the ocean and when you get out you’re somehow still above the ocean and there’s a prison in the distance that wasn’t there before! It’s like that film, The Adjustment Bureau, where you use a magic hat to open doors and have no clue where you’re going to pop out. 

[Captain Kelsten]

Playing this on a series x…yah, yah. So nice. So smooth. 

[kensei]

12 hours ago, Doctor Shark said:

Harvest Valley and Earthen Peak cleared. Nothing too troubling, so far. 
 

Stats wise:

 

Level 93

 

12 vigor

10 end

10 vit

25 atn

12 str 

10 dex

8 adp 

40 int

21 fth 

 

Using a magic mace + 6 for smashy bashy and a sorcerer’s staff +5 for casting. Wearing the full hexers set, which some guy gave me for free. Spells wise I’m using dark orb, greater soul arrow and greater heavy soul arrow. 
 

I genuinely don’t know how I got to 62 hours played on my first character and only got to level 89. 

 

How are you rocking just 8 ADP  rather than upping it and massively abusing iFrames?

[Ste Pickford]

I really enjoyed DS2.  I think perhaps because I played it when it came out, rather than much later like the others, and it was a bit easier for me, with the disappearing enemies and stuff.  I think objectively it's the worst one, and doesn't have the magic of the first, but I still think it's a good game.

[Captain Kelsten]

I’d agree with that. A “bad” dark souls from game is still way, way, waaaaaay better than any other company’s best “souls like”. 

[BitterToad]

5 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

I really enjoyed DS2.  I think perhaps because I played it when it came out, rather than much later like the others, and it was a bit easier for me, with the disappearing enemies and stuff.  I think objectively it's the worst one, and doesn't have the magic of the first, but I still think it's a good game.

It was the first one I played and I really really love it. It is, as you say, probably the worst one but it always felt the biggest to me. Maybe because it was the first Soulslike I finished so everything felt bigger, maybe it just is the biggest, but it's this enormous, varied world that I've always loved going back to and dipping into. I shamefully never played the DLC and never quite made it through enough of the game to get a good enough character to start any of them. I'm assuming my first character was a useless hodgepodge with no ADP because I didn't know what it was or what it did first time through. 

 

Actually can you respec? You can right? At the witch ladies? Maybe I'll go back in and spec out an awesome character and play through the DS2 DLC once I'm having Elden Ring withdrawals...

[Captain Kelsten]

36 minutes ago, kensei said:

 

How are you rocking just 8 ADP  rather than upping it and massively abusing iFrames?

I dunno. I forgot it was a thing in this game, it’s been so long since I last played it. It’s not been an issue so far. I just mace stuff or dark orb things to death. 

[CarloOos]

The second half of DS2 is miles better than the second half of the original. It also retains the same nasty, scary edge to its design, proper Sens Fortress vibes all over the place, which are almost completely absent from DS3 and Elden Ring.
 

Dark Souls 3 is boring af, 2 is a far more interesting game. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

42 minutes ago, Doctor Shark said:

I’d agree with that. A “bad” dark souls from game is still way, way, waaaaaay better than any other company’s best “souls like”. 

This. Even though I bounced off DS2, it's a bazillion times better than any wannabe Souls-like. From does it so much better than anyone else.

21 minutes ago, CarloOos said:

 

Dark Souls 3 is boring af, 2 is a far more interesting game. 

Hi, Spainkiller.

[Mr. Gerbik]

I fucking love DaS3 fwiw

[Captain Kelsten]

Dark Souls 3 I definitely haven’t got far in (I got an achievement the other day for killing the cursed tree boss which is about 20 mins into the game!) so that’s next on the list to complete. 

[K]

I'm a huge fan of Dark Souls II as well. I really like the way that it strikes out in a completely different direction to the first game - it's huge and broad, rather than tall and intricate, and at the end you've got a sense of having explored this vast landscape, rather than really intensely examined this relatively small chunk of land. I like the way that there are almost no references to the first game, other than a few names and places that imply a huge amount of time has elapsed since Dark Souls; you find the Solaire covenant at one point, the Heirs of the Sun, and it's an obscure, toppled statue in a dank corner of a poisonous swamp. All the important things in the first game have not only lapsed into myth and folklore, but have fallen even further to the point where even the myth has been forgotten.

 

Majula and Forest of Fallen Giants are some of the most evocative areas of any of the games, and the music from Majula is absolutely spellbinding. FoFG is particularly beautiful, in the way that the forest gives way to overgrown ruins, which in turn give way to a crumbling coastal fortress. 

[mr_woo]

I must get around to replaying this, never played the SOTS edition or the DLC.  Thinking about it I've not played the DLC for Dark Souls 1,2 or Bloodborne as I played them at release and never went back.  I love Dark Souls 2 though, always did. You can tell how patchwork it feels at times but there's certain elements I always liked like bonfire ascetic.

[Captain Kelsten]

More good progress tonight, with many bosses killed:

 

Belfry Gargoyles

Scorpioness Najka

The Lost Sinner

Royal Rat Authority

Royal Ray Vanguard

 

 

All first try. Sorcerer with hexes is goddamn EZ mode

 

 

[Lovelyman]

Yeah there is something about 2 that gives it a certain atmosphere that i feel like is maybe the most eerie and weird and evocative. 

[Captain Kelsten]

The Duke’s Dear Freja dead first go, too. That whole area was both awesome and fucking annoying. Light a torch and all the spiders run from you, and it’s like your delving into a forgotten civilisation, but those necromancers spam a very painful spell that’s hard to dodge when you’re trying to cast back yourself! 
 

Not even sure how far through I am, but I’m level 100 and something, maybe 20 hours played or so? 

[Captain Kelsten]

Just when you thought Blight Town was the worst zone in Souls…BLACK GULCH

[Hanzo the Razor]

12 minutes ago, Doctor Shark said:

Just when you thought Blight Town was the worst zone in Souls…BLACK GULCH

 

I love The Rotten. Now and again I use a Bonfire Ascetic just to fight him again.

[Captain Kelsten]

Yeah his design is super gross and cool. Just a shame the (thankfully short) run to him is so guff

[Captain Kelsten]

I actually enjoyed navigating around the gutter trying to light all the torches, it was like a cool environmental puzzle. 
 

Also really really enjoying a hex build (got 40 int 40 faith). Gutted that it isn’t something they carried into dark souls 3  it’s far more interesting than sorcery. My dark souls 3 guy, when I continue my playthrough after I finish 2, will be a pyromancer. 

[K]

Lighting torches was such a satisfying mechanic - it’s a shame none of the other Souls games used it again, it would work really well with current gen engines. It felt really great being able to permanently light a torch, and bring a bit more order to a decaying world. 

[Ste Pickford]

16 minutes ago, K said:

Lighting torches was such a satisfying mechanic - it’s a shame none of the other Souls games used it again, it would work really well with current gen engines. It felt really great being able to permanently light a torch, and bring a bit more order to a decaying world. 

 

I think there was a video about DS2 (well, it was mainly about how great DS1 was) that mentioned the torch lighting was meant to be a more fundamental mechanic, but was relegated a one-level kind of thing due to a re-design of the game towards the end of development.

 

Found it.  Everyone's probably watched it already, but it's always worth a rewatch:
 

 

[K]

54 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

 

I think there was a video about DS2 (well, it was mainly about how great DS1 was) that mentioned the torch lighting was meant to be a more fundamental mechanic, but was relegated a one-level kind of thing due to a re-design of the game towards the end of development.

 

Found it.  Everyone's probably watched it already, but it's always worth a rewatch:
 

 

 

Yeah! I remember watching that. I seem to recall that there were quite a few places in the game where you could light torches, but there was only that one level where it was a fundamental mechanic. The rest of it was just for atmosphere, but it was still quite satisfying.

 

I thought it'd work really well in Elden Ring, as they at least kept the mechanic where you can carry a torch around with you (although I can't remember if that was in Dark Souls 3 as well). There are loads of dank tunnels and ruins in the Lands Between where you need to carry a torch, I think it'd work really well if there were areas you could light up permanently.

 

Come to think of it, Elden Ring does remind me a lot of DSII. The Lands Between sounds a lot like Things Betwixt, and the overall structure of the game where you explore a huge, broad continent is very familiar.

[El Spatula]

The giants are also very, very familiar...

[K]

I thought that too. Odd that DSII is the game in the series is the one that Miyazaki had the least to do with, but has so many echoes in Elden Ring. 

[Captain Kelsten]

1 hour ago, Ste Pickford said:

 

I think there was a video about DS2 (well, it was mainly about how great DS1 was) that mentioned the torch lighting was meant to be a more fundamental mechanic, but was relegated a one-level kind of thing due to a re-design of the game towards the end of development.

 

Found it.  Everyone's probably watched it already, but it's always worth a rewatch:
 

 

Watched that thinking it’d be an interesting behind the scenes of development issues, instead got pretentious wankery about meta physics and the nature of the soul