Been playing more Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin and it's been a mixed bag: there are some concepts that are unique to this, at least compared to DS1 (I haven't played DS3 yet), and with innovation comes risk, ups, and downs.
To be honest, I don't see any issue with most new things, but they're all very specific and niche, I don't really use anything new but I can see the appeal, most of the time it's just DS1's concepts explored even more, which is quite interesting, while others are original.
But even though this game is deeper, overall these changes don't change the game. What does change the game is the new enemies, areas, and bosses, and I think those are a major step down from the first game, there are so many bosses, and yet they feel very weak, not in strength because the game relies a lot on that, but in actual content. all the bosses I've killed so far felt empty, boring, and annoying more than anything else.
In DS1 each boss fight felt unique and epic, each death would make you feel teased and excited for the next attempt and each victory felt rewarding and earned and made you wonder what the next challenge was going to be. Here, each boss only has a few moves, with bad hit-boxes, forgettable music, and uninspired designs.
There's a lot of core mechanic changes as well, but I feel like they were only used to make the game artificially harder, like giving most enemies fast attacks, lots of poise, more I-frames, and fast recovery from stagger, making most of the player's attacks slow, making parry super slow, taking I-frames away from rolling, not giving any I-frames after being damaged allowing for the player to be stun-locked without any escape.
This game also suffers from the same issue as Bloodborne, it tries to be surprising all the time, which is just not possible, but while Bloodborne tries to be dark all the time, DS2 tries to be an asshole all the time, by placing enemies around every corner, having traps everywhere, etc. Every time, it never surprises me that an enemy is there, it's surprising how even me knowing, the game always manages to be broken and hit me even with me taking every precaution.
I'm not the best DS player in the world, but I'm not bad at the games, I know what I'm doing, and yet I seem to struggle every step of the way. Both DS1 and Bloodborne managed to make it feel like every time I died it was my problem, I either didn't do well enough or didn't try hard enough, but 85% of the times I die in DS2 it feels unfair, it feels like I'm not playing the game, the game is playing me. it's exhausting, trying just to be met with an unfair failure, it's disappointing and not fun, it doesn't make me question my ability, it makes me question whether or not it's worth playing.
Now, this next part is just speculation, I was basically a baby gamer when DS1 came out, I'm not familiar with its history in marketing and how it was received, all I know is DS1 was well received by Demons Souls players and got very popular with other people as well, and I assume it's when Fromsoft got the reputation of making hard games and in an attempt to hang on to that fame they made DS2 "harder" and longer, and that's clearly evident with the achievement "This is Dark Souls" which you get when you die for the first time, it's such slap in the face, why would anyone want this achievement, it's funny, but just for the devs, it means nothing, it's just an attempt at humiliating the player.
I love DS1's narrative, a story that continuously gives you hope just to rip it away and make you question yourself, your goal, and your methods, it's a beautiful adventure that I'll never get tired of praising. but here, the act of pushing you down is not a test, not a challenge, it's just trying to humiliate you, which I would get if all DS players were the "GIT GUD" type of players, but we're not all like that, and it feels tiring being such a great fan of the first game for giving me an excellent balanced experience and then having the second game spit in my face as if I'm being punished for something I didn't do.
And that's my main issue with the game, it tries too hard to be hard but it ends up just being annoying, playing this doesn't feel fun most of the time, it feels like a chore which is not what playing a game should feel like and that's a big issue.
That's all I have to say, for now, I'll keep playing until I've killed every boss and finished the game, I might write more updates regarding this game in the future and possibly a review when I finish it, but I'll figure it out later.
Have a good night. Sincerely,
Spoon.
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