Dark Souls II – Review

The world in ds2 feels like one independent hallway after another. Ds world felt like one huge connected world.

Awesome game c:

Lol getting Pantene commercials with Selena Gomez on a DS2 review.

it's funny that this is the only game in the series with a teen rating

It appears that the only weapon you have is a sword? Mouse clicking that sword over-and-again looks to be boring.

"Carefully planned enemy placement" I'm sorry did you mean ganks around every corner? And nice looking areas ruined by ganks? Or the constant poison statues–Complimented by you guessed it–Ganks. Seriously Dark Souls was renowned for its emphasis on unique one on one combat, learning attack patterns and interesting enemy/character design. Dark Souls II, however, just slaps hordes of enemies with archer/mage spam in high places to force a certain style of play every run-through. Not to mention cramming huge enemies with stupidly high poise and big damage output right next to each other. Also the blatant reuse of enemies and bosses throughout, and incredibly annoying overuse of cliff's, narrow bridges/hallways that are packed with handfuls of enemies at once just to punish the player for–Well playing the game? Dark Souls II put way too much time into making the game "hard" with artificial difficulty in the way of gangbangs, use of previous bosses as basic enemies in later areas, dark as dicks areas and overly bland-stereotypical stages/enemies like No Man's Warf, Harvest Valley, Madusa, etc. Oh and what–five poison levels?? It just screams frustration with little reward. You spend ten hours clearing the annoying ass area and surviving the ganks and overused boss just to unlock the next area that's a copy-paste with more enemies and a different boss.

In conclusion, the game had potential, like Heide's Tower of Flame (Really awesome looking area, pretty, good enemy placement, challenging but fair at early levels with badass looking knights and an awesome castle resting on the sea, with the sun setting on the scene.) but falls short in favor of boring dark, grimy, mundane areas filled with endless ganks and hordes of plain inconvenient enemies that are just not fun to play against.

If the developers had focused on what made Dark Souls an amazing game, instead of just "difficult", Dark Souls II could've easily been a great sequel, especially if more areas were as enjoyable to play, creative and aesthetically pleasing as Heide's Tower of Flame. Sadly they chose to make the game difficult in the worst ways, instead of the player learning what they did wrong and trying against the next time with more knowledge of the area, they had to learn "don't get poisoned and ganked idiot". Meh, a 9/10 is just plain deepthroating the game that doesn't deserve it. I'd give Dark Souls II a 6/10, it was fun until it wasn't.

worthy succesor????

I love this game

So which is best? I’m looking to get one and I’m not sure which.

Where are you Kevin, I miss ur reviews.

One of the worst issues I've had with DS2, is how incredibly SLOW it takes to drink your estes flask. I cannot count how many times I died due to not drinking estes quick enough. That with the relentless A.I hit detection was what made this game hard for me.