Prepare to Die Again - Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

[estragon]

Finished this over the weekend. The final bosses were underwhelming after the DLC and probably would have been even without the extra levels. They just kind of sit around and languidly attack you once in a while. I don't really care about that and honestly was just ready for the game to be over (with DLC, it's maybe a bit overstuffed), but the non-DLC content in this game definitely is not the one for people who come to this series primarily for challenging bosses. Luckily, I do not.

Overall I liked this a lot, for the reasons I've already stated. Nothing really changed my basically impression of the game all that much. Maybe I just never noticed it, but I'm surprised this game doesn't come up more often in Dark Souls Difficulty Discourse. I feel like Dark Souls 2 Sucks Discourse and Difficulty Discourse are mostly going on in parallel tracks, but in many ways DS2 with its de-spawning enemies, much easier bosses on the critical path, frequent bonfires, unlocked from the start fast travel, infinitely purchasable health recovery consumables, tons of offline NPC summons offered, intuitive equipment upgrades, and wide range of viable builds seems to be an already existing answer to the "What if they made Dark Souls easier?" question that seems to get treated as rhetorical.

Apparently I also missed a whole area with a boss called Darklurker, I think because I never accepted or followed up on the sidequest/covenant of the old man in the chair I ran into a few times. That's fine. It seemed like something that would pay off for mages, and my character was dumb, unfaithful, and never had a single spell slot. I guess I'll try this if I replay it with a spellcaster of some sort, which I hear is very fun to do in this game.

 

[Adrenaline]

that boss is hard to get to if you don't use a guide.

 

[Patrick]

Yeah, both getting to and beating Darklurker are significant challenges.

One other unique DS2 feature that I don't see brought up that often are Bonfire Ascetics. You can basically force a specific bonfire and the surrounding area into NG+ whenever you want. And DS2 has a lot of unique scenarios and items in NG+, so it's worth doing. Plus you can farm bosses, etc. It's a great idea that just never shows up again in the series.

 

[Regulus]

Overall I liked this a lot, for the reasons I've already stated. Nothing really changed my basically impression of the game all that much. Maybe I just never noticed it, but I'm surprised this game doesn't come up more often in Dark Souls Difficulty Discourse. I feel like Dark Souls 2 Sucks Discourse and Difficulty Discourse are mostly going on in parallel tracks, but in many ways DS2 with its de-spawning enemies, much easier bosses on the critical path, frequent bonfires, unlocked from the start fast travel, infinitely purchasable health recovery consumables, tons of offline NPC summons offered, intuitive equipment upgrades, and wide range of viable builds seems to be an already existing answer to the "What if they made Dark Souls easier?" question that seems to get treated as rhetorical.

I think a lot of the things mentioned make the game more approachable and perhaps less punishing, but there are also some changes to the general design and base mechanics that I would argue make the combat more difficult. Almost all of the main defensive options are worse off in 2; there's a dearth of good shields in the first half of the game, the dodge roll is more vulnerable than previous entries without significant stat investment, parry timing is more difficult (mostly due to startup frames), and the poise system is harder to take advantage of. Additionally, the new Estus mechanics make healing in combat riskier, hollow form comes with health penalties now and the game is much more eager to throw swarms at players. There are some beneficial changes, of course - omnidirectional rolling is great - but given most of these other examples, I don't think 2 is a very good answer to that "What if the made Dark souls easier?" question.

Personally, I've always felt that each successive Souls game was more difficult than the last, at least until DS3 came out.

 

[estragon]

Okay, so I won't have the time or mental energy to start another game that I've never played before anytime soon, and so I started a leisurely replay of the original Dark Souls to kind of meander through when I have some gaming time, because I know it well enough that a long break won't get me all confused about what to do next. And one thing that immediately stood out to me that is making me reevaluate DS2 is how much better it just feels to move your character about the space in the original Dark Souls. I didn't notice it really while playing DS2, but going backwards immediately from 2-->1 was like having a weight removed from my shoulders in terms of responsiveness.

On the other hand, it is also emphasizing how much better most of the weapons feel in DS2. My initial idea was to take the spear/bow setup I enjoyed so much from DS2 and do that in the original Dark Souls, but it turns out that spears all feel much, much worse and so I don't think I'll be doing that. It would be nice if there was a game where movement felt as good as DS1 and the weapons felt as good as DS2.... (Is this game maybe DS3, Sekiro, or Bloodborne? I'll find out, someday, hopefully....)

 

[Oathbreaker]

I'd recommend the Partizan. It's a bit on the weak side and still doesn't feel like DS2 weapons but it functions a little differently than other spears and I had a lot of fun using it in my most recent DS1 playthrough.

Dark Souls 3 I feel definitely found the sweet spot for the control feeling you're looking for. Sekiro is even more responsive but is also much faster paced, and Bloodborne sits somewhere between DS1 and Sekiro, though BB's weapons imo feel a lot better to use than in any Souls titled game.

 

[estragon]

I'd recommend the Partizan. It's a bit on the weak side and still doesn't feel like DS2 weapons but it functions a little differently than other spears and I had a lot of fun using it in my most recent DS1 playthrough.

Dark Souls 3 I feel definitely found the sweet spot for the control feeling you're looking for. Sekiro is even more responsive but is also much faster paced, and Bloodborne sits somewhere between DS1 and Sekiro, though BB's weapons imo feel a lot better to use than in any Souls titled game.

I think the Partizan is a really good recommendation, because it's closest to a DS2 spear in its move set. After being disappointed with the regular spear I looked up other spear move sets and made a beeline for Darkroot Garden for that reason (or, more like, I had even more reason to do this, because I also wanted the Longbow). But coming straight out of DS2 it just feels so much worse. I'm sure it's absolutely viable, but I've already done a playthrough of Dark Souls where I forced my way through while thinking about how much more fun my build was in another game (Mace Cleric in Demon's Souls-->Mace Cleric in Dark Souls, whoof) and I found it frustrating.... I'm going to just abandon my spear plan, I think. Still enjoying using a bow for the first time, though. Will stick with that and the general Dex based approach.

Luckily, I don't have to make a decision about what to main quite yet, because I realized the other thing about using a bow in DS1 is that you can easily get the sword from the red dragon's tail, which I'm now using for the first time. So, I have a bit before the lack of scaling there forces me to figure out what I actually want to main... In any case, if I continue to post about this run in more detail I'll move it into the thread for that game.

Glad to hear that about DS3! I really, really want to start DS3 it now, but I know that I'll enjoy it more if I want until I have the time/energy to devote to a new game...

 

[Patrick]

Note that while DS3 does feel good to play, it's super linear and has a few builds that are way better than everything else. So, I found that it's way less fun to replay than other games. It's my least favorite in the series because of that. It's still pretty fun the first time through.

 

[Regulus]

Dark Souls 3 ditched most of the motion-capture based animation from DS2 and instead brought back of DS1's old hand-animation, so it tends to feel a lot snappier. It did retain DS2's omni-directional rolling (when locked on), though.

 

[estragon]

Okay, so I won't have the time or mental energy to start another game that I've never played before anytime soon, and so I started a leisurely replay of the original Dark Souls to kind of meander through when I have some gaming time, because I know it well enough that a long break won't get me all confused about what to do next. And one thing that immediately stood out to me that is making me reevaluate DS2 is how much better it just feels to move your character about the space in the original Dark Souls. I didn't notice it really while playing DS2, but going backwards immediately from 2-->1 was like having a weight removed from my shoulders in terms of responsiveness.

You know what, I take it all back. After my pokey playthrough of DS1, I came back for a pokey playthrough of DS2 and it feels different but honestly it's fine.

This was true for me for both Demon's and Dark Souls 1, but I really enjoy re-playing these games so much more than playing them. I think that's more true than ever for DS2, because its extremely open design really allows you to chart your own course on a second playthrough when you already have a feel for each area and when it feels like it would be a good time for your build to tackle it.

I've been playing with a fairly standard sorcerer progression, moving from a glass cannon casting various soul arrows early on, to a glass cannon that mostly hits stuff with the Moonlight Greatsword late in the game, to now being a not so glass cannon with late game investments in carry weight for real armor (Faraam's because it looks cool) and vitality for HP. I've done everything at this point except Aldia (just saving this for last, did Nashandra already to get enough Benhart of Jugo summons to knock off his quest, which I neglected the first playthrough) and the DLC areas, which I'm on the fence about whether or not I even want to bother with again.

Two big strategic discoveries for me:

(1) I've never seriously used a dagger in these games, and I was really surprised by how effective the basic dagger was in the early game. I thought it would be a real struggle to have so few spells and only a dagger with sorcerer stats if/when they run out, but honestly the dagger is completely OP until you get pretty far in the game and more enemies start having real poise. You can basically button mash anything to death except for the obviously poised up enemies.

(2) I really struggled with the Ancient Dragon doing various "cheese" tactics I saw online on my first playthrough and again here, but I think the received wisdom about this fight you find online really sucks! The "run for the tail" advice when he does flying fire breath barely ever seems to work. In theory you can get the dragon into a safe-ish loop if you stand at certain points between his toes, but it's really finnicky and it's hard to read his tells from under him! I died so many times doing this.

But honestly if you just relax and think about positioning, learn the dragon's tells, and are careful to be aware of your positioning in the space, it really is a totally learnable encounter, because his tells are very slow and obvious. Instead of following the run for the tail advice, I found it to be so much safer to think about our relative positions and run to the furthest edge of the room. Sometimes running toward the tail just brings you closer to the AoE attack. I do still think the Ancient Dragon probably does a little too much damage, but I found that treating it like a gimmick battle like most online advice suggests was way harder than just treating it like a normal boss encounter where you use normal Souls skills.

 

[Paul le Fou]

(Faraam's because it looks cool)

Hell yeah

 

[estragon]

I was on the fence about whether or not to bother with the DLC, but I ended up finishing it all again and having a great time. A big problem with my bad experience last time was not realizing which areas/boss were intended to be co-op'd until I'd also brute forced my way through 2/3rds of it already. This time I didn't hesitate to pull up NPC summons for those punishing boss runs and had a blast.

Dark Souls 2... it's good.

I still think the received wisdom that you should dismiss the NPC summons for Lud/Zallen would just make it harder, at least on NG. Kept them around on this run too and it made the fight extremely easy. It doesn't matter that the second tiger comes in sooner or that you do less damage if neither of them are ever really targeting you. It's much easier to do damage alive than stunlocked or dead.

I've seen a lot of people refer to Fume Knight or Allonne or Blue Smelter as the hardest DLC encounter, but I think it's maybe Burnt Ivory King? The NPC mobs before he appears really wear you down even if you found all the allies to close the portals, and I found the timing on his lightsaber-esque sword buff swings much harder to learn than the other three bosses people bring up as DLC difficulty spikes. I think a lot of it comes down to how much health the final remaining knight on your side happens to have when he shows up. It's much easier if the first half or so of the fight is 2:1 in your favor, so you have a lot more room for error...

Still think it's funny how the new final main game boss they added for SotFS just kind of sits there and waits to die, but not in a final encounter of Demon's Souls narrative way, just in an extremely easy boss encounter way.