I first played dark souls 2 about 3 months ago. First playthrough was a really rough experience especially coming off of dark souls 1, a game I still consider to be a flawed masterpiece. I considered dark souls 2 to be an abysmal game that fails to live up to its original work, the sluggish feel of everything combined with the lesser level design and boss design really turned me off from it, and despite killing every boss in the game, I told myself I would never touch it again.

But for some reason, this didnt sit right with me, I played dark souls 3 and bloodborne combined with a second playthrough of dark souls 1 and demon souls and I started thinking about this game again, and if it was as bad as I believed. After this playthrough, I don't have the same opinion. Dark Souls 2 is a good ass game that is held back by its mediocre area design, poor bosses, and broken mechanics.

I do wanna talk about some of the positives first though because I actually found plenty to like about this game this time. I played with a pure strength greatsword build and beat the game in around 8 hours (I did not do dlc and missed a few base game bosses). the playthrough felt wildly different, despite using an insanely slow weapon, it was able to crowd control super well and was also just insanely strong allowing me to just blitz through the game.

this game theoretically has the highest amount of replayability of all the souls games, because of how many weapons and spells are given to you in this game and how much more accessible they are, the build variety is super high especially given how many more souls you get in this game and the ability to respec, you really can just make any character you want whenever you want and I really appreciate the amount of options. i also noticed that despite its linearity, you can tackle stuff in pretty much any order up to drangleic castle. i took a wildly different route through the 4 lord souls this time around and I found the experience to be surprisingly fresh combined with my much different playstyle and prior experience. dark souls 2 really gives the player a lot of choice, more than the other games in a lot of ways, making it so both playthroughs felt radically different as opposed to bb and ds1 which felt similar on my 2nd runs just with more experience so I got through them faster. I found myself much more entertained with combat and the variety of locations you visit (despite the poor world design) keeps the game interesting, at least for me. I also noticed a lot of areas are actually surprisingly well designed, forest of fallen giants and lost bastille are great early game areas that are reminiscent of some of ds1 and bloodborne's strong levels, and drangleic castle is a pretty solid endgame area (altho it might be a little too easy).

but this game is still a mess, for many reasons. obviously its broken as hell, enemy ai is laughably stupid, controls feel weird and restricted compared to ds1, levels and bosses usually leave something to be desired, and the hitboxes were programmed by masahiro sakurai while drunk as hell, theyre VERY bad. the game as a whole is super replayable, but level design generally leaves a lot to be desired. Remember those areas I mentioned earlier, those are outliers. The majority of levels in dark souls 2 are very mediocre or straight up god awful (Iron Keep, Shrine of Amana, and The Gutter/Gulch come to mind). Combine this with the underwhelming bosses that are either too easy to be fun or too annoying to be fun, and despite this game's strengths its not really worth going back to as often. The enemy spam is also still a problem, if you have a weapon for crowd control, fine you can deal with it. But if you don't areas are gonna be absolute hell, and some like Iron Keep pretty much require you to kill everyone so you dont get bottlenecked in a hallway and ganked to death. This combined with the low amount of iframes and slow healing basically requires you to level up adaptability to actually play the game, making early game super annoying, and this is even worse in the dlc where the developers seriously had a fetish for spamming overpowered mobs everywhere ESPECIALLY on boss runs (some of the boss runs in this game are fucking INSANE).

I have so much to say about this game and despite all the garbage it has, its still dark souls and I think dark souls is just inherently a fun as hell game, 2 included. But this game is not good, not anywhere close, really just a disaster of a game that has good ideas with poor execution. Despite all that, theres a certain charm to the jankiness and broken mechanics and world of ds2, so much so I feel compelled to someday far in the future, go back once again to the world of Drangleic. Theres something about it that just feels so distinct within the soulsborne series. While dark souls 2 is a garbage fire, i still enjoyed myself this time, and I consider it a guilty pleasure, but definitely skip it unless you feel you HAVE to play every souls game.

6/10

the boss was good ig but idk this didnt do it for me besides that, theyre lucky the boss is like a 4th of the dlc quest lol, and even then it was only difficult because it had three attacks that hit you for like 90 percent of your health bar, think that i may just be a lil jaded on a lot of the decisions made in ff16 since beating it for the first time

otherwise this is just another dungeon but with a p boring storyline

hoping the next dlc is much better and im sure it will be

After playing this the first time, I thought this was MUCH worse than Dark Souls, and now after playing through it again on New Game +. I think it is MUCH worse than Dark Souls, but still p good actually :)

Its a pretty solid start to a good ass series, still having good combat and usually really solid level design

However you can absolutely feel this game being the first of its kind, the bosses are EXCEPTIONALLY weak for the most part, especially after playing games like dark souls 3 and bloodborne. Every boss is either way too easy or way too annoying, with only around a couple being any good or serving a real challenge, sure its the first game but on average it might have the worst bosses. The boss runbacks are also absolute garbage, areas do not have checkpoints in demon souls, and some levels do not have ANY shortcuts that mean anything, some runbacks are absolutely unacceptable and for this playthrough I started cheating by quitting out of the game fast just so I did not have to deal with like 3 of the runbacks (idc if its cheating its not fun). It also does not help that every time you die, you lose half your health and pretty much cannot have your full health bar as a human because when you die, the world tendency gets worse and the game gets 10 times harder. Its a really badly explained mechanic that sounds cool in concept but just seems counterintuitive with the whole human mechanic.

I also think some of the areas are just SEVERE blocks to funtown, especially the depraved chasm in the valley of defilement being one of the worst areas in soulsborne with worse enemy spam than dark souls 2 and terrible level design. You can definitely feel this being the first souls game because of stuff like this, but despite its flaws theres something about this game that makes it sooooo easy to replay. The more segmented and open approach and very short length in comparison gives this game a lot of replay value, and just like the other souls games, making your build and becoming stronger is just inherently satisfying.

Overall a solid start to the series, with mostly great level design and the same very solid gameplay souls is known for alongside being very replayable. But its absolutely one of the weakest in the series and can be sooooo frustrating despite it easily being the easiest souls game overall. Solid/Good game for sure, but I def respect it way more than I like it

did not get moon presence because i forgot to eat the fucking umbilical cords (something i never thought I would say)

besides that tho, did all bosses and every area in about 37-38 hours including dlc

easily one of the greatest games ever created, level design, aesthetic, music, enemies, world building, lore, perfection, pretty much the only issue is the slump in boss quality in the midgame/endgame and having to farm blood vials at some points if ur bad, think that is a bit too harsh a punishment for death (when I was farming for dlc bosses cuz they were shitting on me LMAO), also 30fps is less than ideal but I did get used to it at least and it never effected gameplay too substantially.

besides that this game was actually incredible

now to take a break until finals are done and maybe I will play elden ring idk i doubt anything is gonna top this for me cuz holy shit man

props to that dlc too, the best dlc expansion I have ever played by far, incredible level design and boss fights, so fuckin good bro

now i wait for that pc port with 60 fps so i can force all my friends to play it, it really is as good as people say

FINALLY got around to playing this after years of it just sitting on the shelf, did it over last few weeks

The good parts are REALLY good, being spider man and swinging through the city never really gets old, and I doubt it will in the sequels, the final couple of bosses are also a real treat and the climax in general is soooooo fuckin cool and well done

the problem comes with almost everything else, this game is bloated out the ass with side content comparable to mario odyssey and breath of the wild. At first its a lot of fun and it didnt seem like there was THAT much stuff, so I was okay with it at first. But it just keeps piling up, constant shit that is just there and is boring that by the time you get to endgame there are 20 CRIME BATTLES in each district that are all the same and are not worth it

The sections where you play as MJ and Miles are also guilty of this, they feel like they were put in there to make the game longer and nothing more. They aren't that terrible, just mindlessly dull and boring for the most part, really just makes you want to keep playing as spider man. Except even then combat got fairly repetitive for me because of lower enemy variety than I would like (ik it makes sense within the game but whatever) and how the combat does not really "evolve" past a certain point, its still fun I could just feel the repetition later

But as for making you really FEEEEEEEEEEEEL like spider man, yeah it does that beautifully and if I was still the mega spider man fan that I was, I probably would have passed up a lot of the filler and boredom for how you can be spider man and fight the cool bad guys

Good game for sure, but I always felt the "sony" in it throughout unfortunately and it felt too bloated for its own good, I suppose when I get around to the sequel I will try and avoid most of it

i think it says something about me that this was the only game I played in 2023 to actually make me cry like a bitch

a game i played for the first time in like 2013-14 or smth

yeah its over for me LMAO

nintendo please make another new good mario rpg game again i need some good fuckin food

bro we are so back

minus really awful boss fights (minus the last one) and a lack of power ups, this is a super good mario game that stands up with world as the highlight of his 2D career

if we can expect this kind of creativity for mario in the future count me tf in, also please keep daisy playable forever :)

one of the best games of the year