Not a single normal review on the site.
None of the commentators beat the game in any way. We're not even talking about soloing all the bosses, ALL of them. They didn't even find them.
Until you have completed the game from the Froms, your score does not matter.
So . After 2 full playthroughs of all the DLS of all the bosses, including the one-shot of the ancient dragon and the one hiding in the darkness, one was on a pad and the other on a keyboard-mouse.
+ I completed half the game on ng+ and am sure that I will reach ng+2.
So . This game is the most disliked by fans of the series of games from this studio.
But since the average ai kyu of the CIS countries is 97, what exactly should we expect? People who have no idea about game design and game mechanics think in extremely simple terms.
And samsara is an eternal matter here, like everywhere else. There will always be fans of the first who will say that the 2nd one is not very good, they, in turn, will be annoyed by the PS3 owners who will say that everything is nonsense and DS 1 has lost everything that was so good about Demon Souls and it is she who is a true masterpiece, and ultimately old people over 30 who are not I understand all this hype about Souls, because they saw all this in 2001 in Blade of Darkness, and in general Hidataka is not a genius, he just took a well-laid old one.
This whole company is extremely far from the truth. Because the arguments, this was earlier, therefore it is more important, at least lose sight of the entire structure of the games, their improvements and developments from the previous part, and in general, without going through the entire line of games, it is extremely difficult to give a sane analysis. Since the progression of this studio occurs rather in relation to its own works since they have no analogues in 3D, in 2D there is, of course, Hollow Knight, Dark Divozhen, Blasemous and Sol, but I have not played through all these games except Dark Devooshan to give any advice on them then analysis.
Having read the review on the site and seeing in the minuses of the game (God give me strength)
the high barrier to entry, I was honestly taken aback. Give a game with deliberately Darwinian complexity a minus of this kind? Um, well, you might as well deduct a point from the race for whatever it is that you have to do in the corners.
GUIDE who has a keyboard mouse, we reassign the keys and BE SURE
to set DOUBLE CLICK ON, IN ORDER FOR THE SETTINGS TO BE SAVED BE SURE TO PRESS BACKSPACE AND NOT ESCAPES, only then EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD.
So, after a ton of text, let's move on to our sheep.
Gameplay
A very important nerf to dark magic and pyromantic flames.
Thank the gods they allowed us to dual build in the normal way. Those when each hand has the same weapon (which requires one and a half times more stats than usual), while holding down the key to take in both hands, our hero receives an excellent motion set of attacks (different from the usual one), which allows us to press one button and strike with both hands at once instead of Separately press each key with the default terrible motion set as before in the 1st DS where everything was “better”.
Finally the camera shows us what we need. She doesn’t spin around like a spinning top when the boss is nearby, she makes the columns and walls transparent behind us, which allows us to die from enemies and not from the crooked camera. By the way, DS2 is the only game from the Froms with a normal camera. Dimon Souls Ds1 Ds3 Bladik and even the last Ax are still sick in places from the disgusting camera. That's it.
Game design
I agree that in DS1 and Dimon Souls the transitions between locations were much smoother and they themselves were gigantic in size. Which created a kind of superbly functioning anthill. All locations were connected to each other and often unexpectedly connected during the passage. In Dark Souls 2, due to the sharp transitions from level to level (for example, from the hazy transition to Drangleic Castle from the spring forest, we are instantly thrown into a gloomy black castle under pouring rain and moonlight) which allows the player to perceive the world of DS 2 more as a set of intricate levels rather than a single system.
But there is one big BUT.
In the 1st part, the game design is overly praised. Yes, he does an excellent job, but you are fans of the 1st part. Is endless running around Izalith and Anor Londo really the height of game design? Or the passage through the cemetery to Nito in the dark?
Let me remind you of the invisible road to Naked Sith with crooked hitboxes.
I just want to say that now, having all the From games on hand, they eventually abandoned the hour-long aimless running and crooked hitboxes, moving to a new level while maintaining the scale and adding unprecedented density of action and detail to the locations. And it was the density of action due to intimate locations that gave us Dark Souls 2.
Apart from everything else, Dark Souls 2 simply perfectly highlights each of them.
I love it when each location has a bunch of mechanics unique to it. Explosive barrels - Vault of the undead + pyromancer enemies with the ability to use them. Poison mills + have poisonous areas that make us move and fight faster. Pirates' Bay has very dangerous enemies - creatures that are afraid of fire, but at the same time, if you scare them with a torch for a long time, they will go crazy and become much more dangerous. And this is not even 1% of the total interactions and mechanics at levels. It was in this game that the number of mechanics and creativity reached the Fromov peak.
Graphics
Indeed, perhaps the weakest aspect of the game. But Graphics is not only the work of technicians but also the work of artists. And everything is drawn at the highest level.
Not to mention the fact that the studio was compressed by the framework of Box 360 and PS 3. And on PC the game worked more than well on virtually any hardware.
Plot
For me personally, the plot gives a lot of narrative and the opportunity to think out part of the story myself, imagining the events the consequences of which you see already in the current world - this is a tower. Not to mention the fact that the touching story of Lucatiel excites the player much more than the side quests in any triple game. Because she went through everything with you, and NPCs, even in good games, alas, do not evoke such a response.
Controls
Gamepad10
Keyboard for the fact that you have to customize it yourself, and double-click turned off (which is idiotic in principle, why even turn off double-click, why this function?) minus a point for each aspect, otherwise everything works great.
Sound and music.
It is enough to hear the theme when entering Majula to understand everything.
Multiplayer
The best in From games and has not yet been achieved by any From games.
Localization 7 . Thank you for the subtitles this time. No thanks to the fact that the game was translated by people who do not understand the series, and quite often this leads to a unclear understanding of the meaning of the characters' phrases. Overall tolerable.
Conclusion and final: Personally, I think that the best game from From is not one of them released today. Each of them is a powerful work with a very deep system both in gameplay and game design.
The most vivid sensations will certainly be from the game of Fromes that you complete first. And the rest, whether you like it or not, will be an easier test for you. Since you are obviously already ready not for everything, but for many things when launching a game from this studio. In Dimon Souls there is a thick atmosphere and love as a test of the master's pen, for Dark Souls as a game that finalized the Dimon Souls system in the form of a single seamless world that gave us normal fires and estus.
Dark Souls 2 as reducing the size but significantly increasing the number of mechanics and density of action, dual build a normal camera and high-quality multiplayer.
Bloodborn as a game that reinvented the battle mechanics souls like again, giving us unprecedented dynamics, encouraging an aggressive style that makes it possible to restore part of the lost health by responding to a missed blow.
A completely new level of darkness and mystery. Incredible location design and simply amazing detail of everything.
DS3 is like a wonderful but not ideal symbiosis of games from previously released games.
Excellent combat dynamics and detail migrated from Bloodborn. But the bosses themselves, as for me (taking into account the DLS), in Dark are still more interesting than in Bloodborn itself. But unfortunately, along the way, DS3 lost the mechanics of armor and its improvements,
and in terms of seamlessness it still does not reach the 1st part, although in general, as a symbiosis of Bloodborn DS1 and DS2 in game design, DS 3 is still at the top.
And Sekiro is perhaps the best game in terms of physics and response in the world, not to mention the fact that this level of development of the bosses is simply incredible and one can only hope that Miyazaki will at least be able to repeat this level of performance, let alone surpass it.
Dark Souls 2, together with all the DLC, is not only one of the most hardcore tests. It is also one of the most complex, and in the end it leaves the same incredible feeling of completing something more than a game.