This video provides a critical review of Dark Souls 2, comparing it to its predecessors, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. The reviewer, while acknowledging the game's overall quality, expresses significant disappointment stemming from various design choices and their impact on gameplay and overall experience.
Poor Introduction and Character Creation: The game's introduction poorly handles character customization, prematurely revealing the character's gender despite the option for player choice. This alienates players wanting to create female characters.
Misunderstood Difficulty: The game overemphasizes difficulty over engaging gameplay, leading to frustrating and memorable boss fights. Multiple-enemy boss encounters frequently overshadow skillful combat, prioritizing arbitrary challenge.
Lazy Level Design and Enemy Placement: Level design is criticized for its linearity, lack of shortcuts, repetitive enemy encounters (especially large, humanoid enemies with similar movesets), and poor item placement. The reviewer points out that multiple enemy encounters often promote cheap tactics over skillful combat.
Weak Narrative and NPC Interactions: The plot is poorly presented and convoluted, lacking a strong sense of purpose. NPC interactions are static and lack the depth and dynamism of the previous games. The reviewer specifically cites the blacksmith's daughter as an example of missed opportunities.
Inconsistent World Design: The world lacks internal consistency, both geographically and thematically, undermining player immersion. The reviewer cites several examples of illogical transitions and spatial inconsistencies between areas. The Shrine of Winter is highlighted as a particularly egregious example of poor level design.
The most important gameplay-specific criticisms the reviewer makes in his Dark Souls 2 critique are:
Overemphasis on Difficulty over Engagement: The reviewer argues that Dark Souls 2 prioritizes artificial difficulty through excessive enemy numbers and cheap tactics (e.g., multiple enemies in boss fights, enemy tracking, and enemy placement designed to force ganks) rather than creating interesting and memorable boss fights and enemy encounters that reward skill and strategic thinking.
Poor Level Design: The level design is criticized for its linearity, lack of shortcuts, and repetitive enemy placements. The reviewer highlights how many areas, while visually impressive from afar, are ultimately underwhelming and consist of long, narrow corridors with little room for exploration or strategic maneuvering. This directly impacts gameplay flow and player experience.
Misuse of Multiple Enemies: The frequent use of multiple enemies in encounters is a recurring theme. The reviewer asserts that the game's mechanics are built for one-on-one combat, making multiple enemy encounters frustrating and often requiring the use of cheap tactics (like kiting) rather than skillful combat.
Excessive Bonfires: While seemingly positive, the abundance of bonfires diminishes the tension and risk-reward dynamic present in previous games. The close proximity of bonfires removes the sense of accomplishment in reaching a new bonfire after a challenging section and makes the game feel less punishing (in a negative way).
Healing Changes: The reviewer notes that Dark Souls 2 undoes significant improvements made to healing in Dark Souls, reintroducing easily accessible healing items and a regeneration ring, thereby reducing strategic decision-making regarding health management during exploration and combat.
Inconsistent and Unfair Enemy Behavior: Many enemies exhibit unpredictable and unfair behavior, such as excessive tracking, instant attack recovery, and inaccurate hitboxes. This makes combat frustrating and diminishes the feeling of fair challenge. The reviewer specifically mentions the Maces wielding knights in the dragon area as an example of particularly unfair enemy design.
These gameplay criticisms are interconnected, all contributing to the reviewer's overall feeling that Dark Souls 2, despite being a good game, falls short of its predecessors due to a fundamental shift in design priorities.
