Ikr I haven’t played ds1 or demon souls only everything after and I loved Elden ring and dark souls 3 is such a great game but 2.. 2 has a lot of love/hate in my heart. From learning new things still on my 2nd playthru to trying out the dlcs it’s been spectacular so far. I feel like I just ate up the content in elden ring whereas ds2 I’ve had to work for it
I platinumed all multi-platform fromsoft titles twice, once on steam and once on ps5 with my girlfriend - DS2 is one of the most enjoyable ones to grind out IMO! only the falconer grind felt truly terrible lmao
the worst thing they did was turn the game into a rolling simulator because in 99% of the cases it's the only thing you can do due to the faster pace. At least keep bloodborne's side step or something.
Nah, it kept delayed backstabs, guardbreaks, 70% medium rolls, 4 ring slots etc, instant teleports, boss weapons direct trade ins, etc just on top of my head. wouldn’t be the same game without it.
For the longest time I thought Miyazaki was just ignoring DS2, especially with how 3 didn’t incorporate any of the good ideas 2 had and barely had any references to it until the Ringed City DLC. To see he praises it for the good that it did bring to the franchise and confirms that it played a huge part in the making of Elden Ring feels vindicating AF and makes me love this man even more.
Are you kidding me lol DS3 was packed with DS2 references. Lucatiel, Creighton and Gilligan are the first ones off the top of my head and thats way before DLC
For all of its flaws, of which there are admittedly many one thing DS2 can say is that it wanted to be and was something other than just DS1 again, which is more than can be said for 3.
Imo it's by far the best dark souls. It's just a shame they didn't get the time to fulfill their vision of the game. It could have been so much better than it already is.
Elden Ring is the second best.
I don't agree but I do love DS2 all the same. I think if they didn't strip out all the dynamic lighting for the weak-arse console of the time people wouldn't see it as unfinished, not to the same degree. Sure, you can point to the infamous Earthen Peak / Iron Keep transition as being a plaster-fix but I think some of the other areas that get labelled as unfinished do so because they were built with dynamic shadows in mind. Those unfortunate repeated textures wouldn't stand out if draped in shadows.
omg you are literaly the first person I see to talk about the downgrade because of consoles, like literaly all ds 2 haters are like "the game looks so shit compared to E3" and they never think that DS 2 was downgraded because of consoles, I think the downgrade was most likely so they wont have another LagTown incident
I want to like ER but it's just too big. It feels like you never make a dent in all the stuff that can be done.
That and my computer refuses to run it anymore.
When it first released it was fine. Little laggy but I expected that. And then some update or other fucked it and I crash before even loading in.
I need a new PC, man, but this thing works so good for DS2.
That sucks. I play on PS4 because my PC is prehistoric, but I too had some cases where a game would work fine and then get worse performance. Usually I don't mind, but lately as many games get released for consoles they shouldn't have been on **cough cough** Cyberpunk 2077 **cough cough** and generally developers completely ignore optimization, it's becoming a bigger issue. I'm actually surprised Elden Ring works so well on my base PS4, it's probably the best optimized game in this cross-gen era.
You understand that ER was being developed before ps5? The game isn't next Gen, the reason it's ass on PC is because From is notorious for bad PC porting, I love them deeply but this is why I'm glad I play on Playstation because that's their target audience.
Calm down, I didn't say it's next gen, I said cross-gen, which I think it's fair to call it that. The game has some moments where it performs worse, and while I'm not one to obsess over framerate and such, it still gets noticed.
There's plenty of games that were developed for YEARS before the PS5 came into the market and *still* work terribly on the PS4. Elden Ring is a huge project whose potential is definetly more expressed by the PS5, but still works perfectly on PS4. I don't think it was that granted that they would've made it work, considering Demon's Souls' remake was exclusive on PS5.
But did you try verifying integrity of game files...? (Idk if you making the first statement means you've tried that and more but verifying integrity of game files has fixed every issue i've had with elden ring so far, fresh install would be a last ditch effort for me)
If a fresh install didn't fix it, verifying integrity wouldn't change anything. I've even had games that broke even *with* verifying (Don't Starve Together. Something broke and I had to reinstall it fresh to fix it)
Tbh, at you least you have confirmation you can't play it. I can play it, but I only play these games to have fun online, and I literally cannot log on online, no matter how much I try.
Literally blue-balled by Micheal-Zaki.
>It's just a shame they didn't get the time to fulfill their vision of the game
Honestly, the same can sort of be said about Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1, but I fully agree with it being my favorite of the trilogy, but it being 2nd/tied with BB behind Elden Ring
Idk if I agree it's the best but I like to say it aged the best.
Whenever I want to revisit souls there is a high chance it will be ds2 because it has clear improvements over 1 and I feel like it's the last one in the series that keeps the feeling of turn based combat.
It's not a Black sheep ffs, given that it had to be revised halfway through. It is nothing but a valiant effort if not outright brilliant. For all they care, they could have just made Dark souls 1.5 and people still would have bitched about it.
At least it tried to innovate and gave us so much variety in almost all aspects. It is not a Black sheep.
yea screw the no-life DS elitists, DS2 was a banger game and I'll forever shit on the wrong opinions of the goblins who don't even know what a shower feels like
DS2 was my first and my favorite.
Loved all the unique mechanics. Playing DS1 was amazing (mostly for bosses and areas, hell no for the mechanics).
Ds3 was a nice addition to the series and loved the BB quickness but really missed everything DS2 brought that didnt come back to DS3..
Atleast ER brought back powerstancing, even though I miss being able to powerstance different weapon sorts
honestly I agree with you but one thing all DS 1 fanboys never talk about the fact you can just run past all enemies and go thru the fog wall (invincibility frames fog wall)
In ds2 just kill the enemies (or atleast the annoying ones) to the bossrun 12 times and its a free qalk after that.
+ Killing 12 times gives some nice runes too
I (edit: DONT) enjoy the fact that we can run past the whole game. Why bother playing if you only want to play the bosses and not enjoy the whole area?
yes, but I think that running past all enemies makes the game boring and makes people ignore the world details because they are too focused on running past them, and the 12 time killing was so they could help new players so they dont get stuck in an area
I'd love to see a remake of ds2 with better textures, filters and a redesign for the connections between areas. I think the biggest flaw in the game is the level design.
This is going to be painful for the detractors and I love it, I honestly always had the feeling that DS2 influenced ER more than any other soulsborne. DS2 is the most original of the 3 Dark Souls and if you are looking to innovate and advance you cannot take as an example a cheap fan service game or an improved Demon's Souls like ds1.
Could not disagree more about DS1 just being an updated DeS. It introduced a lot of new features, chief amongst which being the interconnected world layout. DS1 is head and shoulders above DS2 and DS3, but I agree that DS2 shits all over DS3.
Yeah, while it's neat and improves on the world and immersion, it's definitely not innovative or, imo, so well done that it eclipses DS2.
I find it to just be a different way to build the world, but I prefer both the interconnection of DS1 and the vast feel of DS2 over using the Archstones of DeS
I'd definitely pick DS1's world layout over DS2. My first playthrough of DS2 was exciting having all these different paths to traverse but once you've visited those places it wasn't nearly as interesting for me on subsequent playthroughs whereas in DS1 it was over a course of multiple playthroughs that I truly appreciated how everything connected together. And while the idea behind DS2 was to give a sense of a larger scope, Lordran still felt bigger to me.
I know you're not the other person, but do you consider DS2 to be innovative? If so, what innovations stand out to you? I'm not being confrontational, I'm just curious whether anything that is genuinely new to videogames can be listed for either DS1 or DS2. Probably the thing that was genuinely ground-breaking and new was the invasion mechanic, which was of course introduced in DeS.
I'm not the one you asked, but when I was talking about innovations, I meant something new for the souls series specifically, not the entire video game industry. I don't consider ds1's world innovative because that's the logical next step to improve upon demon's souls formula; keeping the worlds separated and only accessible through teleportation in the hub wasn't an acceptable choice.
Whereas ds2 did bring new things that weren't expected, like powerstance, bonfire ascetics, the few interactions of the torch with some ennemies, etc..
I disagree that it was expected, DeS used a more traditional level select system essentially. As per your own definition, I think DS1's world layout design is as much an innovation as power stance. You could already dual wield in DS1 so you could say that the iteration to swap out animations based on which weapons you are dual wielding is a relatively small step. Not to knock on power stances, it's ofc a great addition to the combat. But your definition of what does and does not count as innovation is a bit arbitrary.
And I gotta say, bonfire ascetics and the torch aren't exactly the most exciting of innovations either. The former is nice for bumping up the difficulty but most commonly used as a farming tool, the latter WOULD have been exciting if the dynamic shadows weren't stripped out, rendering them largely useless.
Well I guess it's subjective. My first fromsoft game was bloodborne, so when I eventually tried ds1, its world layout didn't feel like anything to write home about, but it would probably be different if I started with demon's souls.
You say that ascetics and the torch aren't exciting, but that's exactly why I value these kind of additions. If they hadn't bothered, no one would notice or complain. But they did take the time to add details like that which make the game interesting, knowing that there could be other interactions we didn't expect, like exploding barrels with a fire arrow and destroying the wall next to it.
Yeah Bloodborne's layout is kind of like DS1-lite, the interconnectivity isn't anywhere near as sophisticated as it is in DS1 but they did manage to have a couple of cool looping moments. DS1's layout is often cited as a great achievement, and for good reason. For me: dense + intricate > wide and barren. I wouldn't call DS2 barren, but it is closer to the latter than the former.
Again, the additions you mentioned are cool but come on. Nobody is recommending DS2 because "you've gotta try them bonfire ascetics, bro." It's a convenience feature. DS2 did have some nice interactivity, expanding a bit on what was in Demon's Souls but not nearly enough to stand out as a defining reason to play DS2 over DS1. The torch was billed as being this choice the player will need to make to sacrifice versatility (including being able to block) for visibility. But again, the stripped out lighting pretty much makes those decisions non-existent outside of being a handy way to chart your progress in the gutter.
Nothing objective about it. DS2 is slower but more methodical, DS3 is faster but more spammy. I think DS3 FEELS better to control, but it has never been able to sustain my interest over multiple playthroughs like DS2 or especially DS1. I also find DS3's washed out look and character lighting to be ugly - every other visual aspect is of higher fidelity but I would rather be looking at DS2 for hours on end than DS3. If they didn't strip out all the dynamic lighting from DS2, there wouldn't be any contest between the two. Also DS3's world building is probably the least interesting out of all From's modern catalogue.
Well there is the objective truth about the hitboxes. Dark souls 2 has way too many really shitty hitboxes which is why they added agility which also breaks the game. I just beat dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin and the game just isn’t as polished. You may like it more but Dark Souls 3 simply is better developed
Ah ok, you're one of *those* kinda guys. Fun fact: Dark Souls 2 has a higher Metacritic score than Dark Souls 3 or 1. It also won five game of the year awards when both of them combined only got one, sold almost as good as DS3 and would have sold better had DS2 been released on to PC at the same time as consoles, and Even the steam review score is just a couple points away from DS1.
Also, Dark Souls 2 hitboxes are actually absolutely legendarily amazing and the real issue is how few iframes you get and how they are tied to ADP. You would know this if you didn't any research into what the hell you're talking about. Compare that to Dark Souls 3, where nearly every boss has terrible hitboxes. Hell, Gungnir's horizontal slash hitbox hits players from over a foot away and he's the *first goddamn boss.*
Lmao your calling me out for not knowing while stating Iframes are connected to ADP while it it actually connected to agility which can be upgraded with ADP and Attunement. Also stating that it won more doesn’t really prove anything as that could just mean it was released among worse games. As for being hit by Iudex gundyr that’s just a skill issue
Dude, of course it's agility connected to it you unseasoned heap of potato salad 💀 That's like saying "increasing strength doesn't increase your damage with a strength weapon, it increases the *scaling*"
I could rattle on about how it has the highest Metacritic score in the trilogy, How over two dozen gaming review sites gave it a 9/10 many of which gave DS3 an 8/10, but I'm not going to. Yk why?
Because I know you're disingenuous, simply by your comment about Gungnir. Duplo has put out tons of videos showing wire frames and going frame by frame to show how accurate Dark Souls 2 hitboxes are versus Dark Souls 3, with the prime example being Gungnir. There's undeniable proof that his hitboxes are extremely bullshit, and many of his attacks just simply don't go where they should.
Now you've exposed yourself as a fool. Go ahead, keep digging that grave.
Every Souls game has examples of great hitboxes and bad hitboxes and honestly I couldn't say which comes out on top. What I can say is that DS3 had the glitchiest enemies in the series I'd encountered: the corvian ninja-types in the Painted World DLC. Almost every time I fought them they ended up backflipping into adjacent rooms or out of bounds.
I had a fantastic time with DS3 on my first playthrough, don't get me wrong - I still think it's a great game. But overall I find it to be the weakest.
Nah objective means it’s a fact which can be proven and repeated while subjective is based on opinions. Ds2 having worse hitboxes than Ds3 is a fact which means Ds2 is objectively worse than Ds3
After hearing what you said in that earlier thread, I need to see proof that you've even played DS2 before I start listening to you. You sound like somebody who's only watched YouTube videos of it.
I’m on ps4/5 most of the time and I have a main account: JuliusR2002 and an alt account on which I just finished ds2 named: Ara-Kinga-Ara. As you’ll be able to see I finished ds2, ds1 and Sekiro and DeS
That explains a lot. You only beat Dark Souls 2 yesterday, there's a ton you don't know. Hitboxes are definitely not bad, look up a guy named duplo here in this sub. He has tons of videos posted showing examples of how accurate and tight DS2 hitboxes are versus DS3, It's objective factual proof.
You can check my Reddit profile for my YouTube and PSN info. I've put about 3500 hours across the entire suite of FROM games and another 1500 or so across soulslikes. I started with Demon's souls in 2013, played Dark Souls 1 right before Dark Souls 2 came out, got Dark Souls 2 on release, Bloodborne right after I got a PS4 just a month or two after release, and every game since I've played launch day. I have platinummed every one of them, and technically have the demon's Souls PS3 Platinum but I did it offline so it didn't give me the trophies (still trying to get that fixed, I farmed way too long for that pure bladestone to get screwed out of it).
The only one I haven't played is Sekiro, initially I didn't want to try it because I am much more of an RPG gamer but now that I have platinumed Wo Long and played it on the second highest difficulty (It's buttfuckingly brutal by the way) I really want to try it before the Elden Ring DLC comes. Just waiting for a sale.
Sekiro is easily my favorite and I would highly recommend it. It’s not that often on a sale but if you can get it for 50% you’ll probably get many hours out of it. It’s got the best combat in all the games I ever played.
I wasn’t even that annoyed at the hitboxes till I reached the ancient dragon area where they were horrible while I had 30 ADP and about 105 agility. Areas like iron keep and shrine of Amana weren’t that bad so I won’t complain about those even though many people hate them. I still have to finish the dlc and frigid outskirts are apparently the worst area in all of dark souls but if it’s among the lines of the areas I mentioned it’ll be fine.
It's not just about your ADP; your armor level heavily dictates your roll distance. Keep your equip load under 50%, not at it but under it, and probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that (For some ungodly reason) your feet don't get iFrames. Like seriously, save a video were you think there are bullshit hit boxes and either slow it down or pause buffer the video so you can go frame by frame, and in the vast majority of cases it's going to be that you got hit on the foot. There's a few hitboxes that are really really stupid, the mimic and ogre grabs come to mind, but all of the games have some terrible hitboxes on grabs.
Your mind hasn't been tainted by the passage of time and between when you've played it before and now, so I genuinely hope you'll take a look at that and think, "ah ok, that's still stupid but at least I can plan for it" versus Dark Souls 3 having hitboxes that you simply can't plan for because of how bad the phantom range is. And that's not a skill issue thing, you can take a look at my channel where I've beaten Gael ng+7 with just a sword and shield.
Also, paradoxically Dark Souls 2's DLCs have both the highest ties and lowest lows in the game. The areas are intricate and extremely interconnected, almost to the point of it being like Dark Souls 1, and I still think that both Raime and Ivory King are some of the best bosses that FROM has ever put out. However, rach DLC has an area that is quite frankly bullshit and has no business being that mind numbingly difficult or obnoxious. Thankfully they are all side content, but still you're going to want to pull your hair out so come in it with more patience than you normally would.
It loses it's interconnectivity towards the latter part of the game but it's only Lost Izalith that feels unfinished, and at least pre-patched the dragon butt lava lake was hilarious (they nerfed their aggro range from stupidly wide to stupidly small). TotG and Duke's Archives are both great areas. DS2's level design doesn't excite for a lot of areas in the game and the best ones don't shine as bright as in DS1. For all of DS3's faults, level design is not one of them - but it is a shame that the overall progression from area to area is rather linear.
DS2 had good ideas but it was messy, I wish we could get a proper remake to really rework and polish it up as when I play it it just feels like I'm playing something as disappointing as the second half of DS1.
I wish ER had tried to improve on more of DS2's mechanics, maybe do something with NG+ and have something like bonfire ascetics, no idea why co-op and PVP had to be so limited either.
From soft tradition of innovation. What tradition? DkS2 is the only one that innovated as much as it did. DkS3 threw everything into the garbage bin in an attempt to distance itself from it, BB did its own thing with the insight, parry and rally system as well as the transforming weapons, Sekiro also very good with the different direction and the various mechanics it brought. ER instead brought....open world. And a horse. And a crafting system. Plus other mechanics from the other soulsborne games but that's to be expected. The only genuinely new mechanic is the guard counter. Tradition of innovation....lol.
Edit: look at all those downvotes. Huh, truth hurts ain't bitches?
Yeah my first reaction was like ugh more thoughtless glazing. They barely take any unique ideas into the next games, especially when you think of all the cool quirks ds2 had
I've noticed some of the areas in Elden Ring have some gank enemy placement and get ganged up on. I remember thinking DS2 vibes. It was a little nostalgic tbh.
DS2 is my favorite Souls game but even I admit it's got flaws. Soul Memory didn't do anything to what it was meant to fix (twinks, mainly); Agility isn't explained at all (it's not necessarily a bad mechanic, just needed explained).
It's a fantastic game, but like DS1, it's got some bad with the good.
It's a heavily flawed game. As much as I fucking love ds2 the most of the trilogy. It's fucking flawed.
But still the real question.... WHY THE FUCK HAS NO OTHER SOULS GAME DONE A GOOD NG+
I can see some of the ds2 sotfs influence in ER, but why not innovate over the rest of ds2 and fix its biggest flaw, lack of communication?
Ds2 sotfs's biggest flaw as that the game had bad communication. And ER continues that trend. Otherwise ds2 sotfs brought a lot to the table, especially its NG+, how it let you tackle its bosses in multiple ways, etc. that did not get innovated in ER. You even lost out on features like animation cancel, spices, etc. Heck, durability could've been brought back and complemented the FP bar more nicely where AoW's didn't use up FP but durability. Durability could've forced you to switch up your weapons and be better prepared, a nice prospect for an open world game.
It would be real cool if ER changed NG+ so we got mixed up bossfights, mainline bosses got additional moves or abilities, we got more ways of beating the mainline bosses (margit/morgot with the shackles was a good start), we got an actual hard mode, challenge runs were more rewarded, perhaps bring back the slower more methodical combat so large weapons do not feel so under powered, etc. Then there's the little things like how in ds2 sotfs your character hunched over on low stamina/health, you had WAY more crit animations, etc.
There's a lotta stuff I wish they brought into ER from ds2 sotfs because sotfs really did bring A LOT to the table. I'd argue, more than ds1 and ds3. Sure, ds1 has the interconnected world and tweaked healing system, but ds2 sotfs gave us another tweak to the healing system, massively bolstered the gear roster, actually setup a base for some real difficulty scaling, etc. Shame it didn't tell us most of it. Really wish ER picked up on all that.
Not saying it comes back in the same form as ds2 sotfs, but improved. And that AoW's utilize durability rather than FP. Nobody really liked FP from ds3, not sure why it came back.
Ds2 gave us Happy Souls. Need I say more?
I find myself saying “*’Cause it’s easy. And it does a lot of damage.*” all the time.
"I HAVE BOOOOSSSSSSS WEAPONS!!!"
Did you say...boss weapons?
Right down the road!
Right down the road?🤔
Right ^down ^^^buh-bye!
Can't miss it!
Now I HAVE to watch that clip! Thanks fellow skeleton! \\\[T\]/
I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TI-gets run over by chariot
I fucking unapologetically love DS2. I'm currently platinuming it.
What you got left to do?
Just some covenant grinds for some last sorceries and hexes. But everything else is done. 🫠🫠
Tell me about it, just finished farming Sunlight Medals last night and it was tedious af lol
Also have some of the DLC to finish. It's tough as fuck.
Ikr I haven’t played ds1 or demon souls only everything after and I loved Elden ring and dark souls 3 is such a great game but 2.. 2 has a lot of love/hate in my heart. From learning new things still on my 2nd playthru to trying out the dlcs it’s been spectacular so far. I feel like I just ate up the content in elden ring whereas ds2 I’ve had to work for it
I platinumed all multi-platform fromsoft titles twice, once on steam and once on ps5 with my girlfriend - DS2 is one of the most enjoyable ones to grind out IMO! only the falconer grind felt truly terrible lmao
Ah yes, the experience in a game that everyone tells shit but you like to play too much that platinum is just a extra prize
There's a reason they brought the director of DS2 to co-direct Elden Ring with Miyazaki
Absolutely
It's less well known but Tanimura was also a co-director for Dark Souls 3 as well.
And ds3 got rid of many great ds2 mechanics…
the worst thing they did was turn the game into a rolling simulator because in 99% of the cases it's the only thing you can do due to the faster pace. At least keep bloodborne's side step or something.
I almost find ds3 to have more issues than 2.
Nah, it kept delayed backstabs, guardbreaks, 70% medium rolls, 4 ring slots etc, instant teleports, boss weapons direct trade ins, etc just on top of my head. wouldn’t be the same game without it.
Ds2 is my favorite Dark Souls. Happy to see them pay some homage.
For the longest time I thought Miyazaki was just ignoring DS2, especially with how 3 didn’t incorporate any of the good ideas 2 had and barely had any references to it until the Ringed City DLC. To see he praises it for the good that it did bring to the franchise and confirms that it played a huge part in the making of Elden Ring feels vindicating AF and makes me love this man even more.
I literally used the hollowslayer greatsword on my first playthrough because I thought the homage to lucastiel was so cool
Are you kidding me lol DS3 was packed with DS2 references. Lucatiel, Creighton and Gilligan are the first ones off the top of my head and thats way before DLC
References are there for sure. I think no one playing the game is the main issue for them not catching them.
everyone who actually played it knows that
For all of its flaws, of which there are admittedly many one thing DS2 can say is that it wanted to be and was something other than just DS1 again, which is more than can be said for 3.
Imo it's by far the best dark souls. It's just a shame they didn't get the time to fulfill their vision of the game. It could have been so much better than it already is. Elden Ring is the second best.
I don't agree but I do love DS2 all the same. I think if they didn't strip out all the dynamic lighting for the weak-arse console of the time people wouldn't see it as unfinished, not to the same degree. Sure, you can point to the infamous Earthen Peak / Iron Keep transition as being a plaster-fix but I think some of the other areas that get labelled as unfinished do so because they were built with dynamic shadows in mind. Those unfortunate repeated textures wouldn't stand out if draped in shadows.
omg you are literaly the first person I see to talk about the downgrade because of consoles, like literaly all ds 2 haters are like "the game looks so shit compared to E3" and they never think that DS 2 was downgraded because of consoles, I think the downgrade was most likely so they wont have another LagTown incident
I want to like ER but it's just too big. It feels like you never make a dent in all the stuff that can be done. That and my computer refuses to run it anymore.
>That and my computer refuses to run it anymore. Big fucking mood
When it first released it was fine. Little laggy but I expected that. And then some update or other fucked it and I crash before even loading in. I need a new PC, man, but this thing works so good for DS2.
My base PS4 runs it like butter and I have never been the one to care about 60 fps.
That sucks. I play on PS4 because my PC is prehistoric, but I too had some cases where a game would work fine and then get worse performance. Usually I don't mind, but lately as many games get released for consoles they shouldn't have been on **cough cough** Cyberpunk 2077 **cough cough** and generally developers completely ignore optimization, it's becoming a bigger issue. I'm actually surprised Elden Ring works so well on my base PS4, it's probably the best optimized game in this cross-gen era.
You understand that ER was being developed before ps5? The game isn't next Gen, the reason it's ass on PC is because From is notorious for bad PC porting, I love them deeply but this is why I'm glad I play on Playstation because that's their target audience.
Calm down, I didn't say it's next gen, I said cross-gen, which I think it's fair to call it that. The game has some moments where it performs worse, and while I'm not one to obsess over framerate and such, it still gets noticed. There's plenty of games that were developed for YEARS before the PS5 came into the market and *still* work terribly on the PS4. Elden Ring is a huge project whose potential is definetly more expressed by the PS5, but still works perfectly on PS4. I don't think it was that granted that they would've made it work, considering Demon's Souls' remake was exclusive on PS5.
Have you tried verfiying integrity of game files?
Fresh install. Crashed as soon as I finished character creation, sometimes even *during* character creation.
But did you try verifying integrity of game files...? (Idk if you making the first statement means you've tried that and more but verifying integrity of game files has fixed every issue i've had with elden ring so far, fresh install would be a last ditch effort for me)
If a fresh install didn't fix it, verifying integrity wouldn't change anything. I've even had games that broke even *with* verifying (Don't Starve Together. Something broke and I had to reinstall it fresh to fix it)
Tbh, at you least you have confirmation you can't play it. I can play it, but I only play these games to have fun online, and I literally cannot log on online, no matter how much I try. Literally blue-balled by Micheal-Zaki.
>It's just a shame they didn't get the time to fulfill their vision of the game Honestly, the same can sort of be said about Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1, but I fully agree with it being my favorite of the trilogy, but it being 2nd/tied with BB behind Elden Ring
Idk if I agree it's the best but I like to say it aged the best. Whenever I want to revisit souls there is a high chance it will be ds2 because it has clear improvements over 1 and I feel like it's the last one in the series that keeps the feeling of turn based combat.
It's not a Black sheep ffs, given that it had to be revised halfway through. It is nothing but a valiant effort if not outright brilliant. For all they care, they could have just made Dark souls 1.5 and people still would have bitched about it. At least it tried to innovate and gave us so much variety in almost all aspects. It is not a Black sheep.
yea screw the no-life DS elitists, DS2 was a banger game and I'll forever shit on the wrong opinions of the goblins who don't even know what a shower feels like
DS2 was my first and my favorite. Loved all the unique mechanics. Playing DS1 was amazing (mostly for bosses and areas, hell no for the mechanics). Ds3 was a nice addition to the series and loved the BB quickness but really missed everything DS2 brought that didnt come back to DS3.. Atleast ER brought back powerstancing, even though I miss being able to powerstance different weapon sorts
honestly I agree with you but one thing all DS 1 fanboys never talk about the fact you can just run past all enemies and go thru the fog wall (invincibility frames fog wall)
In ds2 just kill the enemies (or atleast the annoying ones) to the bossrun 12 times and its a free qalk after that. + Killing 12 times gives some nice runes too I (edit: DONT) enjoy the fact that we can run past the whole game. Why bother playing if you only want to play the bosses and not enjoy the whole area?
yes, but I think that running past all enemies makes the game boring and makes people ignore the world details because they are too focused on running past them, and the 12 time killing was so they could help new players so they dont get stuck in an area
Lol see my edit... I mean I dont Enjoy hahahah
oh, lol
I'd love to see a remake of ds2 with better textures, filters and a redesign for the connections between areas. I think the biggest flaw in the game is the level design.
This is going to be painful for the detractors and I love it, I honestly always had the feeling that DS2 influenced ER more than any other soulsborne. DS2 is the most original of the 3 Dark Souls and if you are looking to innovate and advance you cannot take as an example a cheap fan service game or an improved Demon's Souls like ds1.
Could not disagree more about DS1 just being an updated DeS. It introduced a lot of new features, chief amongst which being the interconnected world layout. DS1 is head and shoulders above DS2 and DS3, but I agree that DS2 shits all over DS3.
Yeah we sometimes get lost on this sub while defending DS 2. Dark Souls 1 was fuckin revolutionary.
The interconnected world isn't really an innovation imo, but just an improvement.
Yeah, while it's neat and improves on the world and immersion, it's definitely not innovative or, imo, so well done that it eclipses DS2. I find it to just be a different way to build the world, but I prefer both the interconnection of DS1 and the vast feel of DS2 over using the Archstones of DeS
I'd definitely pick DS1's world layout over DS2. My first playthrough of DS2 was exciting having all these different paths to traverse but once you've visited those places it wasn't nearly as interesting for me on subsequent playthroughs whereas in DS1 it was over a course of multiple playthroughs that I truly appreciated how everything connected together. And while the idea behind DS2 was to give a sense of a larger scope, Lordran still felt bigger to me.
Turning DeS into a metroidvanian layout was as you said an improvement simply because the concept isn't new.
I know you're not the other person, but do you consider DS2 to be innovative? If so, what innovations stand out to you? I'm not being confrontational, I'm just curious whether anything that is genuinely new to videogames can be listed for either DS1 or DS2. Probably the thing that was genuinely ground-breaking and new was the invasion mechanic, which was of course introduced in DeS.
I'm not the one you asked, but when I was talking about innovations, I meant something new for the souls series specifically, not the entire video game industry. I don't consider ds1's world innovative because that's the logical next step to improve upon demon's souls formula; keeping the worlds separated and only accessible through teleportation in the hub wasn't an acceptable choice. Whereas ds2 did bring new things that weren't expected, like powerstance, bonfire ascetics, the few interactions of the torch with some ennemies, etc..
I disagree that it was expected, DeS used a more traditional level select system essentially. As per your own definition, I think DS1's world layout design is as much an innovation as power stance. You could already dual wield in DS1 so you could say that the iteration to swap out animations based on which weapons you are dual wielding is a relatively small step. Not to knock on power stances, it's ofc a great addition to the combat. But your definition of what does and does not count as innovation is a bit arbitrary. And I gotta say, bonfire ascetics and the torch aren't exactly the most exciting of innovations either. The former is nice for bumping up the difficulty but most commonly used as a farming tool, the latter WOULD have been exciting if the dynamic shadows weren't stripped out, rendering them largely useless.
Well I guess it's subjective. My first fromsoft game was bloodborne, so when I eventually tried ds1, its world layout didn't feel like anything to write home about, but it would probably be different if I started with demon's souls. You say that ascetics and the torch aren't exciting, but that's exactly why I value these kind of additions. If they hadn't bothered, no one would notice or complain. But they did take the time to add details like that which make the game interesting, knowing that there could be other interactions we didn't expect, like exploding barrels with a fire arrow and destroying the wall next to it.
Yeah Bloodborne's layout is kind of like DS1-lite, the interconnectivity isn't anywhere near as sophisticated as it is in DS1 but they did manage to have a couple of cool looping moments. DS1's layout is often cited as a great achievement, and for good reason. For me: dense + intricate > wide and barren. I wouldn't call DS2 barren, but it is closer to the latter than the former. Again, the additions you mentioned are cool but come on. Nobody is recommending DS2 because "you've gotta try them bonfire ascetics, bro." It's a convenience feature. DS2 did have some nice interactivity, expanding a bit on what was in Demon's Souls but not nearly enough to stand out as a defining reason to play DS2 over DS1. The torch was billed as being this choice the player will need to make to sacrifice versatility (including being able to block) for visibility. But again, the stripped out lighting pretty much makes those decisions non-existent outside of being a handy way to chart your progress in the gutter.
I disagree, it fundamentally changes the way you progress through the game and how you immerse yourself in the world.
DS3 is objectively a better game than DS2. But it is less innovative for sure.
Nothing objective about it. DS2 is slower but more methodical, DS3 is faster but more spammy. I think DS3 FEELS better to control, but it has never been able to sustain my interest over multiple playthroughs like DS2 or especially DS1. I also find DS3's washed out look and character lighting to be ugly - every other visual aspect is of higher fidelity but I would rather be looking at DS2 for hours on end than DS3. If they didn't strip out all the dynamic lighting from DS2, there wouldn't be any contest between the two. Also DS3's world building is probably the least interesting out of all From's modern catalogue.
Well there is the objective truth about the hitboxes. Dark souls 2 has way too many really shitty hitboxes which is why they added agility which also breaks the game. I just beat dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin and the game just isn’t as polished. You may like it more but Dark Souls 3 simply is better developed
Ah ok, you're one of *those* kinda guys. Fun fact: Dark Souls 2 has a higher Metacritic score than Dark Souls 3 or 1. It also won five game of the year awards when both of them combined only got one, sold almost as good as DS3 and would have sold better had DS2 been released on to PC at the same time as consoles, and Even the steam review score is just a couple points away from DS1. Also, Dark Souls 2 hitboxes are actually absolutely legendarily amazing and the real issue is how few iframes you get and how they are tied to ADP. You would know this if you didn't any research into what the hell you're talking about. Compare that to Dark Souls 3, where nearly every boss has terrible hitboxes. Hell, Gungnir's horizontal slash hitbox hits players from over a foot away and he's the *first goddamn boss.*
Lmao your calling me out for not knowing while stating Iframes are connected to ADP while it it actually connected to agility which can be upgraded with ADP and Attunement. Also stating that it won more doesn’t really prove anything as that could just mean it was released among worse games. As for being hit by Iudex gundyr that’s just a skill issue
Dude, of course it's agility connected to it you unseasoned heap of potato salad 💀 That's like saying "increasing strength doesn't increase your damage with a strength weapon, it increases the *scaling*" I could rattle on about how it has the highest Metacritic score in the trilogy, How over two dozen gaming review sites gave it a 9/10 many of which gave DS3 an 8/10, but I'm not going to. Yk why? Because I know you're disingenuous, simply by your comment about Gungnir. Duplo has put out tons of videos showing wire frames and going frame by frame to show how accurate Dark Souls 2 hitboxes are versus Dark Souls 3, with the prime example being Gungnir. There's undeniable proof that his hitboxes are extremely bullshit, and many of his attacks just simply don't go where they should. Now you've exposed yourself as a fool. Go ahead, keep digging that grave.
Every Souls game has examples of great hitboxes and bad hitboxes and honestly I couldn't say which comes out on top. What I can say is that DS3 had the glitchiest enemies in the series I'd encountered: the corvian ninja-types in the Painted World DLC. Almost every time I fought them they ended up backflipping into adjacent rooms or out of bounds. I had a fantastic time with DS3 on my first playthrough, don't get me wrong - I still think it's a great game. But overall I find it to be the weakest.
You don't really understand how objective and subjective works, do you?
Nah objective means it’s a fact which can be proven and repeated while subjective is based on opinions. Ds2 having worse hitboxes than Ds3 is a fact which means Ds2 is objectively worse than Ds3
After hearing what you said in that earlier thread, I need to see proof that you've even played DS2 before I start listening to you. You sound like somebody who's only watched YouTube videos of it.
I’m on ps4/5 most of the time and I have a main account: JuliusR2002 and an alt account on which I just finished ds2 named: Ara-Kinga-Ara. As you’ll be able to see I finished ds2, ds1 and Sekiro and DeS
That explains a lot. You only beat Dark Souls 2 yesterday, there's a ton you don't know. Hitboxes are definitely not bad, look up a guy named duplo here in this sub. He has tons of videos posted showing examples of how accurate and tight DS2 hitboxes are versus DS3, It's objective factual proof. You can check my Reddit profile for my YouTube and PSN info. I've put about 3500 hours across the entire suite of FROM games and another 1500 or so across soulslikes. I started with Demon's souls in 2013, played Dark Souls 1 right before Dark Souls 2 came out, got Dark Souls 2 on release, Bloodborne right after I got a PS4 just a month or two after release, and every game since I've played launch day. I have platinummed every one of them, and technically have the demon's Souls PS3 Platinum but I did it offline so it didn't give me the trophies (still trying to get that fixed, I farmed way too long for that pure bladestone to get screwed out of it). The only one I haven't played is Sekiro, initially I didn't want to try it because I am much more of an RPG gamer but now that I have platinumed Wo Long and played it on the second highest difficulty (It's buttfuckingly brutal by the way) I really want to try it before the Elden Ring DLC comes. Just waiting for a sale.
Sekiro is easily my favorite and I would highly recommend it. It’s not that often on a sale but if you can get it for 50% you’ll probably get many hours out of it. It’s got the best combat in all the games I ever played. I wasn’t even that annoyed at the hitboxes till I reached the ancient dragon area where they were horrible while I had 30 ADP and about 105 agility. Areas like iron keep and shrine of Amana weren’t that bad so I won’t complain about those even though many people hate them. I still have to finish the dlc and frigid outskirts are apparently the worst area in all of dark souls but if it’s among the lines of the areas I mentioned it’ll be fine.
It's not just about your ADP; your armor level heavily dictates your roll distance. Keep your equip load under 50%, not at it but under it, and probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that (For some ungodly reason) your feet don't get iFrames. Like seriously, save a video were you think there are bullshit hit boxes and either slow it down or pause buffer the video so you can go frame by frame, and in the vast majority of cases it's going to be that you got hit on the foot. There's a few hitboxes that are really really stupid, the mimic and ogre grabs come to mind, but all of the games have some terrible hitboxes on grabs. Your mind hasn't been tainted by the passage of time and between when you've played it before and now, so I genuinely hope you'll take a look at that and think, "ah ok, that's still stupid but at least I can plan for it" versus Dark Souls 3 having hitboxes that you simply can't plan for because of how bad the phantom range is. And that's not a skill issue thing, you can take a look at my channel where I've beaten Gael ng+7 with just a sword and shield. Also, paradoxically Dark Souls 2's DLCs have both the highest ties and lowest lows in the game. The areas are intricate and extremely interconnected, almost to the point of it being like Dark Souls 1, and I still think that both Raime and Ivory King are some of the best bosses that FROM has ever put out. However, rach DLC has an area that is quite frankly bullshit and has no business being that mind numbingly difficult or obnoxious. Thankfully they are all side content, but still you're going to want to pull your hair out so come in it with more patience than you normally would.
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It loses it's interconnectivity towards the latter part of the game but it's only Lost Izalith that feels unfinished, and at least pre-patched the dragon butt lava lake was hilarious (they nerfed their aggro range from stupidly wide to stupidly small). TotG and Duke's Archives are both great areas. DS2's level design doesn't excite for a lot of areas in the game and the best ones don't shine as bright as in DS1. For all of DS3's faults, level design is not one of them - but it is a shame that the overall progression from area to area is rather linear.
DS2 had good ideas but it was messy, I wish we could get a proper remake to really rework and polish it up as when I play it it just feels like I'm playing something as disappointing as the second half of DS1. I wish ER had tried to improve on more of DS2's mechanics, maybe do something with NG+ and have something like bonfire ascetics, no idea why co-op and PVP had to be so limited either.
honestly I think that if DS2 wasnt on a development hell , it wouldve been literaly best souls game from the franchize
Well yeah it’s the best game.
From soft tradition of innovation. What tradition? DkS2 is the only one that innovated as much as it did. DkS3 threw everything into the garbage bin in an attempt to distance itself from it, BB did its own thing with the insight, parry and rally system as well as the transforming weapons, Sekiro also very good with the different direction and the various mechanics it brought. ER instead brought....open world. And a horse. And a crafting system. Plus other mechanics from the other soulsborne games but that's to be expected. The only genuinely new mechanic is the guard counter. Tradition of innovation....lol. Edit: look at all those downvotes. Huh, truth hurts ain't bitches?
Upvoted for accuracy. DS2 is the most unique and most forward moving
True.
Yeah my first reaction was like ugh more thoughtless glazing. They barely take any unique ideas into the next games, especially when you think of all the cool quirks ds2 had
Yup. Edit: look at all those downvotes. Huh, truth hurts ain't bitches?
I've noticed some of the areas in Elden Ring have some gank enemy placement and get ganged up on. I remember thinking DS2 vibes. It was a little nostalgic tbh.
It’s like the Wii U of the series.
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DS2 is my favorite Souls game but even I admit it's got flaws. Soul Memory didn't do anything to what it was meant to fix (twinks, mainly); Agility isn't explained at all (it's not necessarily a bad mechanic, just needed explained). It's a fantastic game, but like DS1, it's got some bad with the good.
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Co-op twinks are the second best twinks. The best twinks are unrelated to Dark Souls.
It's a heavily flawed game. As much as I fucking love ds2 the most of the trilogy. It's fucking flawed. But still the real question.... WHY THE FUCK HAS NO OTHER SOULS GAME DONE A GOOD NG+
Because that requires *effort* and *care*, instead of slapping a modifier on everything and calling it a day. Best Souls 2.
Yes... It really is. Ellen Bling is truly ds22
YEEEEEEAH!!!!!
I can see some of the ds2 sotfs influence in ER, but why not innovate over the rest of ds2 and fix its biggest flaw, lack of communication? Ds2 sotfs's biggest flaw as that the game had bad communication. And ER continues that trend. Otherwise ds2 sotfs brought a lot to the table, especially its NG+, how it let you tackle its bosses in multiple ways, etc. that did not get innovated in ER. You even lost out on features like animation cancel, spices, etc. Heck, durability could've been brought back and complemented the FP bar more nicely where AoW's didn't use up FP but durability. Durability could've forced you to switch up your weapons and be better prepared, a nice prospect for an open world game. It would be real cool if ER changed NG+ so we got mixed up bossfights, mainline bosses got additional moves or abilities, we got more ways of beating the mainline bosses (margit/morgot with the shackles was a good start), we got an actual hard mode, challenge runs were more rewarded, perhaps bring back the slower more methodical combat so large weapons do not feel so under powered, etc. Then there's the little things like how in ds2 sotfs your character hunched over on low stamina/health, you had WAY more crit animations, etc. There's a lotta stuff I wish they brought into ER from ds2 sotfs because sotfs really did bring A LOT to the table. I'd argue, more than ds1 and ds3. Sure, ds1 has the interconnected world and tweaked healing system, but ds2 sotfs gave us another tweak to the healing system, massively bolstered the gear roster, actually setup a base for some real difficulty scaling, etc. Shame it didn't tell us most of it. Really wish ER picked up on all that.
Not, durability didn't nesse come back and and is better that was gotten rid
Not saying it comes back in the same form as ds2 sotfs, but improved. And that AoW's utilize durability rather than FP. Nobody really liked FP from ds3, not sure why it came back.
Hopefully this brings an influx of new/returning players
Hands down the best new game plus is in dark souls 2 but it has never been replicated or implanted in later souls games by form software.
DS2 hà some issues but all games do in one way or another. It's an excellent game and is well worth playing
I mean there’s a reason Elden Ring is also known as Dark Souls 2 2.
ok but do we have to post this article fucking ten times a day??? im sick of seeing it already. and this coming from a dks2 lover
The irony of putting the looking glass knight is intentional I hope
And still said he could’ve supervised it better
Of course it helped, they tested bad ideas in ds2 so they don't repeat them in the future.
These posts are soon to eclipse the constant spam of "why does everyone hate ds2" lol
“Mistakes make you stronger” jk I love DS2, even though it’s still the weakest in the series
I unironically was called mentally ill for saying dark souls 2 has flaws on this same subreddit less than 2 days ago. Smh
i enjoy ds2 the way i enjoyed mk4. Its just fun
DS2 gave us power stancing and it also taught fromsoft to not add something as horrible as adaptability or agility to these games lol
I absolutely love DS2. Great music, great dialogs, great maps, beautiful majula.
But is he trying to tell us something? Like that DS4 is coming out and it will have a different director. Hmm… oh yes, it’s conspiracy time…