Duders. Dark Souls 2 left me kinda cold when it first came out, and I didn't quite understand all the praise it got. To me, it felt like a far less successful version of the first game. Anyway, now with the new DLC out, I decided it was time to give it another chance. Who knows, maybe I just wasn't in the spirit of things the first time around.
Alas...
I picked up on a save file around 15 hours in, and I played it for a few hours. I came as far as to the serpent lady in the windmill, spiteful queen or something like that. In the hours I played, I did not have a good time. So I decided to boot up Dark Souls 1. Was I crazy, or was I right? I'd say I was right, but I guess every crazy person says that.
First off, you just get way too many souls. I feel like my choices don't matter at all, because I just get tons of souls anyway. It undermines the whole idea of leveling up. Maybe this changes later on, but I'm less than 20 hours into the game, and I'm soul level 90 already. That's just silly.
Then there's the movement of it all. I feel that everything is slowed down, and that makes the game feel more sluggish and less precise. Moving around, striking, rolling and using the shield all feel far less responsive than in the first game.
And let's talk about the lore. In the first game, the lore is delightfully ambiguous, if a bit silly. But it feels inspired. I remember seeing the trailer for Dark Souls 2, and I was super hyped. It looked like a kind of Dante's Inferno story in the Dark Souls universe, but 20 hours in, I've seen nothing of that. I'd like for the past of my character to be further explored.
While I'm on the subject of my character, what the hell happened to the character creator? It's impossible to make a cool looking dude in Dark Souls 2, they all just look so amazingly stupid.
Lastly, the most important difference, the world map. The first game feels so cohesive. I truly buy the notion that this is one world. Dark Souls 2 however, feels like patchwork compared to the first game. It feels like they just stitched together random areas, and it's just so jarring to go from one area to the next.
All of these things, combinded with tons of small differences the online play, encumbrance and other things, such as useless mechanics (read; torches), makes Dark Souls 2 feel like a huge step in the wrong direction. I love Dark Souls 1, and I loathe Dark Souls 2. I don't get how they could fuck it up that bad.
Fuck that, I'm gonna run through Dark Souls 1 again.
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