Final opinion of Dark Souls 2 after finishing the game and 2/3 of the DLC (50h+ total playtime)
I started my journey with the Fromsoftware games with Elden Ring which I bought in a sale a bit after it came out but only first played it around half a year later. I got addicted to that game and played it a ton. I loved the whole game and the DLC as well that came out later. I spent over 500h in Elden Ring and got 100% achievements on Steam. After that I played DS3 but did basically know nothing about Dark Souls so I just played through it fairly fast and that was it. I did enjoy it but I will definitely play it again now after finishing DS1 and DS2 because now I get a lot more of what's actually going on. After DS3 I started playing Dark Souls 2 sotfs and got around 35h into the game and then basically rage quit because it was very frustrating to me. Back then I did not level ADP at all because I didn't know you needed it so I got a bit past the shrine of amana and then quit the game.
Quite a while after all that recently I've first played and then continued to 100% achievement Dark Souls 1 Remastered. It was way better than I first expected from a game that old and I had a great time fighting the bosses, traveling through the areas and discovering the original lore of Dark Souls for the first time really (I went into Dark Souls without any knowledge of the story really, I wanted to watch all lore videos etc. after finishing each game in order. I loved the games atmosphere and general vibe as well. Ofc it was not perfect but DS1R is a really good game in my eyes.
Coming out of that great experience that was DS1 to me I then went to try playing Dark Souls 2 again since I really just wanted to have played and finished all the DS games for having done it but also for getting to know more of the lore of Dark Souls etc.
I started a new character, this time going into Dex instead of Strength like I did my first time around playing DS2. For around the first half of the playthrough I used the Winged Spear and Rapier and later switched to the Santiers Spear because the weapons I used before just did not work for bigger enemy groups (which are present in like 95% of the game) and were extremely frustrating to play with given the enemy encounters. The Santiers Spear worked better against normal enemies with its wider attacks but the game was still pretty frustrating to play to me. After finishing most of the game (going in blind besides my experience from the previous run I did in the past) I wanted to finish all the DLC before going to the main boss but only ended up finishing 2/3 of them(Sunken King and Old Iron King), or well maybe 1.9/3 because I didn't kill Sir Alonne at the of the Old Iron King DLC because the run there was just so damn frustrating with so many enemies just spamming at you in the 2 rooms you have to pass to get to the boss.
After that I decided to just go to the endboss of DS2 and finish the game because I really just wanted it to end now. Before playing DS2 this time around I kind of wanted to 100% achievement every DS game like I did with Elden Ring and Dark Souls Remastered but during my playthrough of DS2 I realized that it just will not happen with this game if I don't completely hate myself and want to have more of the same miserable time I've had during big parts of this game.
Here are the points I did not like about DS2 :
- There are some trash bosses that are just stupid like for example the Skeleton Lords, Royal Rat Authority (FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU) or the Blue Smelter Demon which was just a cheap reskin of a previous boss that was annoying asf to fight.
- In 95% of all game areas you are flooded with hordes of enemies plus sniper archers or mages. This is in my opinion just plain lazy difficulty design and annoyed the living shit out of me especially when I still used the Spear and Rapier. This does not get better in the DLC either and is one of the worst things about this game in my opinion.
- The previously mentioned sniper archers and mages have literal aimbot which makes avoiding them annoying which is multiplied by close ranged enemies also just rushing you all the time. It's like the two archers in Anor Londo but there are tons of them spread over the whole game in the most annoying places possible spamming at you with aimbot while you get gangbanged by their whole family tree at the same time.
- ADP is an unintuitive stat which should not exist. I realize that this was the devs attempts of remaking the Adaptability from DS1 but more useful but they would've been better off just removing it altogether. Without a guide or other prior knowledge you can't really know that ADP changes your iframes while rolling or how important it is to level it (like I did not in my first 35h playthrough attempt). The later games do a way better job than this in my opinion.
- The healing system with Lifegems is just bad because you never know if you can use Estus Flasks which you get very few of or if you should save them and just spam small Lifegems to get through areas because you might need the Estus Flasks later. This just leads you to spamming Lifegems while you could've sometimes used Estus Flasks instead but you weren't sure if you had to save them for later. This addition coming from DS1 was just stupid and was thankfully removed for the later games too.
-The tons of NPC invasions which often repeat the same enemies also are pretty annoying. Those enemies just get a ton of HP and unfair iframes and can avoid backstabs constantly just dodging out of the animation. They might be there for lore reasons or whatever but they just are not fun to fight imo.
- Hitboxes in this game are often pretty bad too. Especially frustrating when you are using poke weapons or other weapons without a large aoe attack. For example if you're using a spear or rapier you literally can't kill the Titanite crabs or whatever they are called because your weapon just cant hit it no matter what you try.
- There are some just plain bad areas. For example the underground poison area where you get shot at by a quadrillion statues at the same time inflicting you with the poison status within 2 shots. That area is annoying and frustrating to play through and is also ugly asf. The cheap Blighttown copy and the Shrine of Amana are other terrible areas in my opinion. At least the Shrine of Amana looked good visually.
-Item durability is also often annoying in this game. I personally don't like gear durability in general but in DS2 its definitely worse than in DS1. There are many areas in the game where if you roll into something or step on certain things (while also trying to fight the usual crowd chasing you around) your gear takes a lot of damage which can break your gear very very quickly which is just annoying since you then have to get back to a blacksmith and get your stuff repaired there. If at least your gear would upgrade in durability when upgrading it itself but nope, it doesn't.
The armor pieces you have to upgrade with Twikling Titanite do have a lot more durability too for no reason even if the armor piece doesn't fit the durability compared to normal heavy armor for example. E.g. the Dark Mask which is just a Skull Mask with a cloth hood as 90 durability while the Old Knight Helm from one of the heaviest sets in the game which is upgraded with normal Titanite has a durability of 20 like what? (I could've probably found a better example than the Skull Mask but I did not want to launch the game again for that).
- Often Boss runbacks are terrible as well compared to DS1 since you cant just run back to the boss and dodge enemies but it's like the game is actively trying to force you to spend 10min per boss runback tediously clearing every mob in your way again because they just spam snipers and groups of enemies onto you in those runback areas (well not just in those areas, basically in the whole game but it feels like there was 0 consideration on how to design the runback areas sometimes). The runback to Sir Alonne was the final straw for me to stop the 2nd DLC short of 100%ing it and straight up not starting the 3rd DLC but instead just finishing the game and be done with it.
- Sometimes the camera is very bad during bosses especially. For example if you get pushed into a corner you often just can't see anything anymore because it zooms basically into the boss which often leads to your death.
Besides all that there are still some things I liked in this game :
- Cool looking Armor Sets and Weapons
- Great lore
- I really liked the Soul Memories, they really added to the lore of the places you previously went through. Especially the area of the Pursuer fight is cool to see after going through that memory.
- Some areas look very nice
- It introduced Powerstancing which is now also in Elden Ring and is a pretty nice feature in general
- Majula OST
- Emerald Herald
- Epic Backstab animations
- Sliding down ladders (I missed that in DS1)
- Bonfire ascetics are a really nice, I wish we had them in Elden Ring too (havent played enough DS3 to know if they're a thing there)
- The ending credits OST
Conclusion :
In my opinion you should play this game if you really want to or if you like me just want to complete all the Dark Souls parts for lore reasons or whatever. It's 100% the weakest Fromsoft game I've played so far and is very frustrating in large parts of the game but it also has its moments and strengths even though those don't lie in the gameplay at all to me. Overall I would say I had an ok to often bad experience playing the game and I would say it was pretty frustrating overall gameplay-wise. If DS1,3 and Elden Ring are all S or A tier I would personally put DS2 into the D or E tier.
I do not regret playing through it because I really just wanted to finish it and learning more dark souls lore is great (can't wait to watch ds2 lore videos now.
What is your opinion on DS2 and what were the things you liked or disliked about it? I know this is a DS2 subreddit so there are probably only people here who liked the game but I wanted to share my opinion on it after finishing it.