I really wanted to like Dark Souls 2. I really did. Darks Souls 1 is one of my favorite games of all time and Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of this generation. Fromsoftware did an excellent job combining high difficulty with expansive worlds brimming with atmosphere, creative bosses, and compelling lore that made me want to keep playing despite dying over and over again. However, despite all this, I can safely say that Darks Souls 2 is one of the most disappointing sequels I have ever played. By stripping away the environments, simplifying the storyline, and focusing too much on the difficulty, the game is proof that if a developer fails to understand the basic tenets of what makes a game work, then it can spell failure for the remaining structure of the game.
The story of the game is overall a step down from the previous one. The opening cinematic gives us an idea as to what we're in for in regards to the story which involves the curse of the undead, and going to the land of Drangleic to find a cure. However, the issue here is when they introduce the theme of forgetting about oneself within this first cinematic. A big deal is made about how thee player character is at risk of forgetting about who they are and what their purpose is, but this concept itself is almost immediately dropped for a rehash of the plot for Dark Souls 1 wherein the main character had to link the fire. This feels like a lost opportunity as it would have been an interesting take on a new theme and new ideas. However, it instead turns into just a repeat of the plot from the first Dark Souls.
Basic combat is almost exactly the same as it was in Dark Souls 1, as the controls have not changed much from the first installment. Weapons still have a feeling of weight to them and it is incredibly satisfying to strike an opponent and weapons have a satisfying crunch to them. However, there are several areas in the gameplay department that feel like a step back. A new attribute has been added in to the game called Adaptability which affects your character's agility, which affects your character's invincibility frames while performing a dodge roll. As a result, it is far too common for a character to try to roll out of the way of an attack only to be struck by a weapon that should not have hit them at all if you haven't been leveling your adaptability. Another change comes in the form of humanity. While being human determined whether or not you could be invaded in Dark Souls 1, in Dark Souls 2, you can be invaded at any time and humanity works more like it did in Demon's Souls, where being human gave you a health boost. One thing that hasn't changed is that being human still allows you to summon aid from another player, so on the bright side, you can go to the nearest summon sign near a boss and call for aid there after using a human effigy. Healing has also received a change and, in my opinion, not a good one. In the previous game, after receiving the Estus Flask, the main source of healing, the flask automatically began with 5 charges that the player could use at anytime. However, once the charges ran out, the only way to recharge was to get to a bonfire. The charges could also be increased up to 10 or they could be increased even further after getting an item from a certain boss. In Dark Souls 2, however, the player starts off with a one Estus Flask and can only increase the charges by finding Estus Flask shards in the overworld that can be used to increase the amount of charges, As such, the Estus Flask is borderline is useless in the early game and instead, the primary form of healing comes from lifegems, which function similarly to the grass in Demon's Souls. However, the result is that healing is incredibly unbalanced. This can often result in a late game scenario wherein the player can have an almost infinite source of healing if they pace themselves properly. Fighting enemies in-game is also an issue. Several of the enemies have a problem where they are hyper-aggressive to the point where the AI seems to enjoy swarming the player in an attempt to create more difficult scenarios which end up coming across as more frustrating than like a well put together challenge. This is ultimately the biggest issue with the game as a whole, as the game's combat is designed to deal with enemies one at a time, so whenever groups of enemies with a large amount of health show up, it can be difficult to deal with them all it once. Aggroing these anemies one at a time also proves to be ineffective as it is very easy to accidentally trigger one group of enemies to attack you as opposed to having the group come after you one at a time. Another change is that enemies will frequently track the player's movement, which makes it almost impossible to find an opening when going in for the backstab. Not only that, but some enemy's attack patterns are set up to the point where it can be impossible just to find an opening such as the turtle-like enemies encountered early on. On the positive side-however, enemies will stop showing up altogether after they have been killed a certain number of times. While this may make it easier to reach some areas after having died multiple times over, it also encourages the player to recover their souls as soon as possible, for as soon as these enemies disappear, so does the player's chance to grind for more souls.
Presentation-wise, the game is all over the place. The music is mostly uninspired and forgettable and many of the enemy designs are either just regular knights in armor or some type of other bipedal humanoid. The bosses suffer from this as well, with many of them being straight-up copy pasted jobs from Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls or feeling like oversized versions of normal enemies. The environments also feel like they are lacking something with many of them feeling like either genric hallways or boxed rooms stacked on top of each other, poorly organized together, failing to form a cohesive world. However, some of the environments look absolutely breathtaking from offer and it makes me wonder why the same level of polish hadn't been applied to the whole game.
Dark Souls 2 feels like one giant misstep. Every time the game had a chance to do something creative with itself, the game felt the need to remain anchored to the past. With uncreative enemy designs, a poorly developed story, and questionable changes to the basic mechanics, I highly recommend sticking to the original Dark Souls over this one.
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