I recommend the first one to practice, and yes, a controller would make the game 100 times better.

Don't play 1. If you get a chance to play Demon's at some point. But Dark 1 has nothing on 2 in the gameplay department. Every friggen weapon is worthwhile experimenting with, upgrade materials are abundant, so you actually can, too.

But Zevvion is making all the points for me. One thing I would like to add is that as an alternative route for the bosses in 1, drop the heavy armor, don the ninja flip ring, jump-hit-jump-hit-...

@tobbrobb re 5-2 vs amana, neither area is bad in my mind (although the cleaver phantom is one of the few enemies I have never beaten in a fair fight, arrowed, yes :)) Every area in Dark 1 post lord vessel is crap though. Not annoying but uninspired and off atmospherically.

@haniball: I could not possibly agree less with you. But let's leave the area design as subjective.

Sure. Purely personal preference.

That said, If you like T-Rex'es I recommend Far Cry Blood Dragon ;)

Eh you can cheese all three games to some extent. Best to just play how you want and enjoy. I do agree that most area's after the lord vessel are pretty crappy though. However I think the worst offender is still anor londo if only for the largest piece of cheese out of all three games (the archers, I shouldn't need to explain why they are ass), that and I actually don't mind Old Londo Ruins at all really. The lava crap and the crystal caves are ass though, the caves especially if you play offline. Online I imagine all the paths are littered with messages so finding the route is a non issue.

Fair enough. If you want to really cheese Dark 1 don't install any patches and create the crystal shield once you get to Anor Londo. And put a good strong weapon in your right hand. Can even be a crystal weapon since you won't really be swinging it very much :)

And yes, the archers are a bad joke but the overall feel of that area was probably the best in the entire game.

Now that you mention it, I didn't play online very much at all in Dark 1. So, yea, it would have helped with the falling off. But those snowy walkways are completely out of sync with the feel of the game. Or maybe coming from Demon's I just didn't expect a teenage Fantasy novel design. And T-Rex'es. XD

Edit: I should add again that the DLC for Dark1 was excellent. Best bosses in the game by far.

Actually by the time the DLC hit I tried to push through but I was so burnt out on Dark 1 I just didn't have enough drive to bother so never played it. I really didn't like Dark 1 near as much as Demon's or 2, it makes too many design decisions I didn't like and feels too out of context with Demon's and the King's Field series for my taste.

Let me be more specific. The only two post lordvessel areas I actually like.... are the Londo Ruins and the Dukes Archive.... literally just he archive itself not the cave. The rest of them I think are varying levels of suck. Which is another reason I prefer Dark 2, there is not a single area in the game I outright think sucks. Some of them have their drawbacks and aren't "great" but they don't suck. Dark Souls 1 there was quite a few.

You never played the DLC? Never fought the Guardian(s), Kalameet, Manus and most importantly Artorias himself?

I envy you :) But seriously, play it when you get a chance. Unlocking it is a bit of a chore (I had to run through ng++ to unlock it) but very worth it.

@haniball: For a second I repressed that Izalith existed. That is undeniably a terrible area. So perhaps we aren't eeentirely disagreeing.

Fucking T-rexes man. At least the patch lets you run past effortlessly.

They were annoying but once you killed them they stayed gone.

I'm down with Demon Ruins and New Londo, which are supposed to be post Lordvessel areas but I usually accessed them earlier. Likewise with Tomb of the Giants, which I know I liked at some point but after some time spent with that game I found myself bolting through. Like @karkarov I'm into the Archives but the Crystal Caves are just stupid. What's the deal with all those Moonlight Butterflies? It was such a waste of time trying to fight those things in there. I was a couple months late on Dark Souls, did those guys aggro at some point? It might have made the area a little more interesting (and potentially infuriating) to have a half dozen nearly unstoppable monsters blasting you with magic. And I could see why they would patch that out lol.

As for the level design in DkS2, it's not that the areas are worse they just don't evoke as much awe as some of the areas in its predecessor. I actually really liked Drangleic Castle. Amana can be challenging but I never found it to be cheap and I love it's aesthetic. The Forest of Fallen Giants and the Lost Bastille are as well-crafted as any location in Dark and Demons Souls, while still being quite different from the fortress type areas in those two games. I think I could say at least one positive thing about every area in the game! Although nothing in DkS2 was as cool the the Painted World, we still have some DLC coming and parts unknown to experience. I suspect they won't disappoint.

That's because it's not cheap. It never was cheap. What it was, was people unable to adapt. Refusing might be a better word. 'My shield barely works' and then they just give up and call it cheap. The Dark Souls way of 'the tactic you used in the first hour will work for the rest of the game' just doesn't apply to Dark Souls II. At least, significantly less. A lot of people were just unable to deal with that. They should've never nerfed Shrine of Amana. It is a joke now. I'm not playing Dark Souls to reach the finish line, I'm playing it to earn crossing it. They might as well have taken Amana out entirely. It's just filler at this point (good looking filler though).

@zevvion: It's a cheap and arbitrary trick to limit the ways the area can be played. I can adapt just fine. But it still sucks that I have to play in a way I don't enjoy to get through an area. Limited movement is so much fun guys! Great design!

And those armor breaking shrooms or whatever the fuck are complete bullshit. No reason to put them there.

I'll agree on nerfing it though, way to make the area even less interesting. Now it's shit AND easy. Super.

@tobbrobb: Would be a valid point, if I was unable to bring up Blighttown. Limiting movement much more harshly, in addition to having it kill you. Not to mention the poor framerate.

For me, I enjoyed the slowed movement. It was a nice change of pace. The area is relatively short and it looks rather unique compared to other stuff. It has its own identity and I like that. I don't see how it limits the ways the area can be played any more than other area's do though.

@zevvion: Blighttown sucks too. But at least it doesn't have wizards spamming magic across the entire swamp.And poison damage is just lol. Might as well not be there.

Did you ever try to kill every enemy in amana melee only? That's what I did in every area of the game, except amana. Trying to have proper melee brawls in that are was just straight up ridiculous. You had to do some pitch perfect dodges with amazing timing to avoid the missile spam and the melee attacks of other enemies simultaneously, and enemies took enough hits that you had to use a lot of the very limited attack windows just to kill one thing. This is quite obviously not the intended way to do it, even if it works everywhere else.

On the flip side, taking off all your clothes and running through it took all of one try. The movement is limiting when you want to have fun with the game and fight, but it sure let me run like a coward real well.

I did it pure melee every single time and it is easily doable. If it's not the 'intended way' then it sure looks like it is. You just dodge stuff and then kill stuff. It used to require some timing, but since the nerf it just requires time. I still don't understand why people suddenly had a hard time melee only in Amana. It's on par if not easier than all the other area's to do pure melee.

@tobbrobb: The area is simply challenging your play style by restricting movement and forcing you to check your footing. Your options for melee would be to get a shield with magic resistance, which is not difficult, or gain some skill in dodging (ie. invest in adaptability.) This area pushes something I believe Dark Souks 2 as a whole encourages, which is dodging and maneuvering opposed to limiting your options to the whole "sword and board" thing. Besides, the increased viability of crossbows combined with the power of thrown consumables gives "melee only" characters plenty of options if your style isn't cutting it.

I'm gonna beat a dead horse and bring up the Anor Londo archers. That shit was cheap. Amana is challenging.

Well said. I agree also with @zevvion that the Amana nerf was too much. It was tough before if you went pure melee (I am not above using a bow as my let's play frequently shows) but it was doable. If you want to approach an area with a less than optimal strategy it SHOULD be harder. Instead they just nerfed the area and that is a little disappointing considering I feel Dark Souls 2 over all is probably the best balanced and least cheap of all the souls games.

@karkarov: Yeah at least everyone more or less agrees that nerf was unnecessary. Didn't the patch reduce the damage AND the homing of the soul arrows? One of those changes would have still made it a lot easier, implementing both turned it into a cakewalk.