A Measured Response to "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" - General

[B]Boy howdy, abandon all hope ye who don't have 7 hours of free-time.[/B] This is a multi-part (very) long-form response to HBomberGuy's "In Defense of Dark Souls 2". I personally like to treat long ass analyses like these as podcasts, and I know a few people here do the same. [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzKasf4_x34[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YJe6E_Z1jM[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67S5LIHEbI&t[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htCXnr9o-O4[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yADl6Kxdo[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrSRHgZYeHg[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-uhlUzjZoI&t[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IHOAJiSLwE&t[/media] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR3hbaKTVBs[/media] (An addendum) For context, here is HBomberGuys much more manageable 1.5 hr video: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRTfcMeqhig[/media] Enjoy :v:

I always felt like Dark Souls 2 garnered way to much hatred, sure it had some flaws like every game in the series but it provided loads of content and varied locations. Honestly, I thought that Dark Souls 3 was rather shallow and uninspired.

When there's such a page-scrolling amount of hour-long videos i just can't help but anticipate it like i'd anticipate a nice and juicy 700g broccoli steak... Surely there must have been a way to turn his essay from a Filibuster into a rebuttal instead.

Oh man now I know what to listen to get through the work day :v: I enjoy analysis videos about games I like, good or bad.

[QUOTE=Bomimo;53172159]When there's such a page-scrolling amount of hour-long videos i just can't help but anticipate it like i'd anticipate a nice and juicy 700g broccoli steak... Surely there must have been a way to turn his essay from a Filibuster into a rebuttal instead.[/QUOTE] I'm on part 3 at the moment, and it's actually a deconstruction and critique of his script. Right down to color-coding individual segments of the script to the level of agreement he has with them, and providing rebuttals to each individual argument highlighted with a multitude of examples spanning every game in the Souls series Example: [img]https://preview.ibb.co/jN4DCn/Ex1.png[/img] In this case, Blue represents segments he both agrees and disagrees with, red represents something either contrary to a previous argument in hbomberguys video, or something the creator fully disagrees with.

[QUOTE=Bomimo;53172159]When there's such a page-scrolling amount of hour-long videos i just can't help but anticipate it like i'd anticipate a nice and juicy 700g broccoli steak... Surely there must have been a way to turn his essay from a Filibuster into a rebuttal instead.[/QUOTE] I've watched this series already, except the addendum, and it's more a breakdown of how HBomberGuy acts hypocritically in his defence of Dark Souls 2, how his smug attitude pushes away people who would otherwise agree with him and alienates everyone else, and how he praises Dark Souls 2 for doing things he condemns Dark Souls for. Notably he points out that the video entitled "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" spends a significant portion of its time not defending DS2 but attacking DS1 and trying to make it out to be a bad game while DS2 is some perfect masterpiece. It's also a point by point rebuttal of HBomberGuy's video. Also HBomberGuy is British but he uses the American spelling of Defence, which is unforgivable.

This probably should be an essay essay instead of just a video essay tbh. It kinda seems like self-sabotage and poor writing to go beyond 2 hours for video/audio content and it also makes a response to it pretty difficult.

I got about a quarter of way through both videos and I'm being met with semantic arguements. Help me. I want to watch more.

Oh my god, I love these kind of long long analysis videos Especially when I haven't play the game in question, for some reason it makes it more fun to me

While I don't dislike any of the game, I definitely put 2 at the bottom, that's not to say the others are perfect. 3 introduces a shitload of random stuff to the lore and does nothing with them, is missing a third act entirely, and has some just fucky mechanics for no reason everywhere. 2? 2 is probably the most obviously unfinished. Enemy placement seems completely random, the lighting was taken out, there's an entire zone which is fullbright and like, two textures, the primal bonfire rooms are embarrassingly bad (Fucking ONE TEXTURE CUBES). That, and DS3 acts as a direct sequel to 1, but for some reason in 2 they just kinda, at the last minute, seem to have rewritten [I]everything[/I] to connect it to DS1 even though the game doesn't reflect this at all. Don't you know that the spider has the soul of Seath? Because reasons? They then tried super hard to awkwardly make the DLC connect to this part, which turned out well in the end, but in the base game it was comically awkward.

Dark Souls 2 isn't bad. It's weird, and there are a lot of bad things about it, but there are also a lot of good things. The problem is it just isn't Dark Souls. Originally the game was conceived as a near farcical parody of medieval and fantasy literature. Halfway through production the director ended up being sacked, and they had to figure out how to make something Dark Souls-y with the assets they had. The result is a game with no real characters, no consistent tone, and a completely nonsensical world. I almost suspect that DS2 was never even intended to be a Souls game. It looks like they had some completely different dark fairytale game in mind, and since Miyazaki and the rest of the DS1 team was working on Bloodborne, they decided to turn it into a Dark Souls sequel to capitalize on its popularity. I just can't fathom anyone who's played Dark Souls thinking Don Quixote and his dwarf squire Sancho Panza fit in that universe. Considering how consistent the fairytale theme is in so much of the game, I feel like that [I]must[/I] have been the original intent. honestly if they had kept going down that path and called it something other than dark souls I probably would have liked it a lot more [editline]3rd March 2018[/editline] actually the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that this is some Starfox Adventures thing and Dark Souls 2 was originally called Dark Tales or some shit and the decision to rebrand it was 100% decided by executives for marketing reasons it would explain literally everything

Holy fuck I knew hhhbomber's video was bad and all...

The only remarkable thing about 2 was the DLC and having the best multiplayer of the series.

[QUOTE=Boaraes;53173028]The only remarkable thing about 2 was the DLC and having the best multiplayer of the series.[/QUOTE] Powerstance NG+ content Fun items that were more cosmetic than gameplay focused (Invisible weapon rings) Varied movesets, unarmed actually being viable. Re-balanced certain things (Dark Magic, Wrath of the Gods) Lots of areas have good atmosphere. Did original things with the lore, Miyasaki has been rehashing the same ideas for four games now. Dream-areas. Good armor designs. Also remember when people bitched about Dark Souls 2 reusing one boss from Dark Souls 1? Well now you get entire rehashed / reused areas in Dark Souls 3.

[QUOTE=minilandstan;53173051]Powerstance NG+ content Fun items that were more cosmetic than gameplay focused (Invisible weapon rings) Varied movesets, unarmed actually being viable. Re-balanced certain things (Dark Magic, Wrath of the Gods) Lots of areas have good atmosphere. Did original things with the lore, Miyasaki has been rehashing the same ideas for four games now. Dream-areas. Good armor designs. Also remember when people bitched about Dark Souls 2 reusing one boss from Dark Souls 1? Well now you get entire rehashed / reused areas in Dark Souls 3.[/QUOTE] power stance caestus made me moist

[QUOTE=ThatSprite;53173065]power stance caestus made me moist[/QUOTE] I will never forgive Fromsoft for not bringing the Bone Fist over to DS3. Unarmed combat was a blast to play with. Does DS2 has its issues? Sure does, but every Souls game does. I'll admit, this video is not Hbomber's best video but DS2 is far from what I would consider a bad Souls game. To me, every Souls game is great in its own way.

[QUOTE=minilandstan;53173051]Powerstance NG+ content Fun items that were more cosmetic than gameplay focused (Invisible weapon rings) Varied movesets, unarmed actually being viable. Re-balanced certain things (Dark Magic, Wrath of the Gods) Lots of areas have good atmosphere. [B]Did original things with the lore, Miyasaki has been rehashing the same ideas for four games now.[/B] Dream-areas. Good armor designs. .[/QUOTE] People keep saying this about DS2. Fucking explain it to me. Really. The plot is a half-assed continuation of DS1 but in name only, where everything else is half finished interesting ideas that go nowhere. Mad Scientist who is the brother of the king? Awesome concept, terrible, one hallway zone that leads to a nonsensical but awesome area. Giants coming to reclaim something? Awesome, never explained or elaborated on. What the fuck is the Kinship. What the fuck is the Throne of Want, why the fuck is the player character doing this. What was that intro of you like teleporting through time and space to go to Drangleic?

[QUOTE=Zeos;53173134]People keep saying this about DS2. Fucking explain it to me. Really. The plot is a half-assed continuation of DS1 but in name only, where everything else is half finished interesting ideas that go nowhere. Mad Scientist who is the brother of the king? Awesome concept, terrible, one hallway zone that leads to a nonsensical but awesome area. Giants coming to reclaim something? Awesome, never explained or elaborated on. What the fuck is the Kinship. What the fuck is the Throne of Want, why the fuck is the player character doing this. What was that intro of you like teleporting through time and space to go to Drangleic?[/QUOTE] Whether or not it was well executed is a different matter, but at least it tried something different before Miyasaki just came back and just copy pasted a bunch of shit from DS1 into 3 so everyone can talk about what a genius he is. Why are people so mad that the Old Dragonslayer is a thing in DS2 but just plonking Anor Londo awkwardly next to another city is totally fine.

[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;53173172]Whether or not it was well executed is a different matter, but at least it tried something different before Miyasaki just came back and just copy pasted a bunch of shit from DS1 into 3 so everyone can talk about what a genius he is. Why are people so mad that the Old Dragonslayer is a thing in DS2 but just plonking Anor Londo awkwardly next to another city is totally fine.[/QUOTE] Because a sequel implies a continuation of the previous game they fully explain why Anor Londo is there. Dark Souls 2 doesn't expand on anything in 1 while 3 does

The reason the lore in Dark Souls is important is because it makes you think differently about the game. Because even small pieces of information in very obscure places can tell you a lot about the meta narrative, it conveys a sense that everything in the game is intentional, and that there's a greater history and story behind everything you see. The goal of art design and writing and voice acting is to make your brain think about something as though it were real. That's what makes a game truly compelling. Sif is interesting because Sif's design and animation, as well as the world around Sif, hints at Sif being a character with a rich history and personality. And if you dig for it, you're rewarded with a rich history and personality. Yeah, there are some interesting ideas in DS2's lore. But lore doesn't exist to be interesting. The lore is there to reward inquisitiveness. Which means it's only of use if the world inspires inquisitiveness in the first place. Dark Souls 2 is extremely fake. It has no internal consistency, no consistent tone. Its characters are bland and one dimensional. There is nothing to be inquisitive about. The bellkeepers are in the belltowers because that's the only place where they felt the Sancho Panza model would make sense. Lucatiel has a mask because they didn't want to waste the Don Quixote armor.

Pretty much everyone I've talked to outside of here has come to this overall agreement regarding the trilogy. DS1 = Best PvE DS2 = Best PvP DS3 = Jack of All Trades, Master of None None are bad games really. They all just each excel in different areas and fall in others (or in DS3's case, kind of just meander around "standard" for its areas).

DS2's PVP would be above and beyond perfect if the game didn't have the overwhelming trashfire that is Soul Memory.

Jesus christ, I've seen a lot of praise for DS3's PvE but I feel like there's something really wrong with just about every ""hard"" encounter in the game, and a very, very bumpy difficulty curve that makes absolutely no sense. Everything designed to be "hard" are these constant pressure mobs that will keep spamming and spamming until you get out of breath IRL and end up commiting to something you shouldn't. In Demon's Souls you'd get the thorn knights and the red-eyed spear motherfuckers, but even then, they're just a matter of keeping calm and executing the strategy as they do go down in a timely fashion if you're not desperate. Most of the tougher fights just seem... unfair. EDIT:: Also don't get me started in how many times I got absolutely destroyed because the camera decided to release the lock and turn me asswards the enemy that, in turn, proceeds to stab me in the back. Or because the enemy jumped, or because the enemy moved, etc, it just can't fucking track shit right

PVP is where Dark Souls 2 really shines, if we ignore soul memory. DKS2 has the largest list of builds which are actually viable, and it's the only game where being a pure caster is viable. [editline]3rd March 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=JohnnyOnFlame;53173350]Jesus christ, I've seen a lot of praise for DS3's PvE but I feel like there's something really wrong with just about every ""hard"" encounter in the game, and a very, very bumpy difficulty curve that makes absolutely no sense. Everything designed to be "hard" are these constant pressure mobs that will keep spamming and spamming until you get out of breath IRL and end up commiting to something you shouldn't. In Demon's Souls you'd get the thorn knights and the red-eyed spear motherfuckers, but even then, they're just a matter of keeping calm and executing the strategy as they do go down in a timely fashion if you're not desperate. Most of the tougher fights just seem... unfair.[/QUOTE] This is because Dark Souls 3 has a larger focus on positioning than the other games. In Dark Souls 1 you learn the enemies, bait out the attack that leaves them vulnerable, then attack them. Rinse and repeat. Dark Souls 3 it's more about recognizing their movement patterns in addition to the actual attacks they're doing, so that you can be standing in the correct physical spot at the right time. The pace of the game is fast, so if you're not in the right place you'll miss that small window of opportunity that's so large in the other games. Midir is a great example of this. If you try to fight him like a Dark Souls 1 boss you'll have an incredibly difficult time, but if you know how to position yourself he's actually super easy.

I've always felt that DS2 doesn't reach the highest highs of the others, but it never hits their lowest lows either. It's the one I have the fondest memories of and will always defend to the death. I love them all, but it might be my favorite, it got an unfair hateboner start it didn't 100% deserve mostly thanks to reactionary streamers looking for epic views and reddit and never fully shook it even when some of the complaints were shown to be exaggerations or just false. Plus, DS2 was in that great spot in the middle of having all kinds of awesome gear and spells that hadn't been ruined by ~competitive balance~ that means PVP bleeds into the actual PVE 90% of the game and ruins the fun for everything.

Christ, Hbomberguy is a cunt in the 3rd video.

[QUOTE=Xion21;53173375]I've always felt that DS2 doesn't reach the highest highs of the others, but it never hits their lowest lows either. It's the one I have the fondest memories of and will always defend to the death. I love them all, but it might be my favorite, it got an unfair hateboner start it didn't 100% deserve mostly thanks to reactionary streamers looking for epic views and reddit and never fully shook it even when some of the complaints were shown to be exaggerations or just false. Plus, DS2 was in that great spot in the middle of having all kinds of awesome gear and spells that hadn't been ruined by ~competitive balance~ that means PVP bleeds into the actual PVE 90% of the game and ruins the fun for everything.[/QUOTE] I do think the hate for 2 is overblown a lot of the time, but I have to disagree with it not hitting the lowest lows. Of the three Dark Souls games, 2 is the only one to have areas that actually made me mad with how frustratingly designed they were. Shit like the Dragon Aerie, where you have to be completely naked and the best way to do the area is to not engage enemies at all, just sprint past them because killing all the durability bombers is more trouble than it's worth. Or the Belfry Luna, where you will be invaded by three minmaxed twinks the instant you take one step towards the boss, with no way to prevent it short of disconnecting your computer or console from the internet entirely.

DS2 is just like any other souls game, does some things great, Does others terribly. Ornstein is just a sticking point of bad because there's no very good or justifiable reason for him to be there other than "Hey, Ya'll remember this fella right?????Pretty cool ehhhh???". You don't get the same response with Anor Londo in DS3 because there's reason it's there, there's a reason you go there, and it serves a purpose in the plot and world setting of DS3 as a direct continuation of the DS1 story line.

I don't think dark souls should have had sequels, both 2 and 3 just end up watering down the story of ds1

[QUOTE=Bridger;53173857]DS2 is just like any other souls game, does some things great, Does others terribly. Ornstein is just a sticking point of bad because there's no very good or justifiable reason for him to be there other than "Hey, Ya'll remember this fella right?????Pretty cool ehhhh???". You don't get the same response with Anor Londo in DS3 because there's reason it's there, there's a reason you go there, and it serves a purpose in the plot and world setting of DS3 as a direct continuation of the DS1 story line.[/QUOTE] The reason why Anor Londo is in 3 is lazy fanservice same as the dragonslayer being in 2. Only 3 is completely shackled to its insistence on putting tons of shit from the first game in regardless of whether or not it works. Everything new they created for 3 is half baked and goes nowhere because it has to stop every minute to remind you that the first game was a thing. Hey the boreal valley is cool I'd like to learn more about it oh remember anor londo look its over there behind that cloud I clapped when I saw it.