My Favourite Least Favourite Game
Once upon a time back in the mists of 2018 I had never beaten a Dark Souls game, sure I'd played them though. I'd tried the broken Prepare to Die Edition of Dark Souls on PC, beat the Asylum Demon and kinda gave up after that (I do that a lot.) I'd even played Dark Souls 2 before on PS3, but I just couldn't get the hang of it, somewhere in my peanut brain I was CONVINCED that deep down that this washed-out pain simulator was actually God Of War in disguise and I got spanked by Dark Souls 2 as a response. But one day I got accused of being bad at videogames, I was shocked. Me? Could I be bad? Well, I'll prove them all wrong! I'll beat Dark Souls! And... I did! After 80 gruelling hours I beat the game, I drove my sword into Gwyn and watched in silence as the credits rolled. I went into the experience to best the game and prove myself but I gained something magical along the way, I grew to love it. I was... sad it was over. I swore relentlessly at it and died at least 30 times to Ornstein and Smough, but each crippling defeat was followed by a daring victory and it's world design and characters had ensnared me, it's atmosphere had charmed me, I was weak and vulnerable and it (and Patches) betrayed me by making me fall in love with it.
In the same way how I can never stop after the first helping of cheesecake, there's something about Dark Souls that also made me want more, so I got to work on the sequel. (Sorry this is where the real review begins).
Dark Souls 2... does not take the same approach as the first game. You can look at the box of DS1 with it's proud "Prepare To Die" edition slathered over the front like it's some kind of warning sign, but the game itself devoid of such propaganda. When you play, it'll kick your ass... but it won't mock you afterwards. Dark Souls 2 sets itself apart from the first game (and all the others) by having characters tell you that you'll die, it has achievements for dying, it has a death counter in the game's main hub for the worldwide number of deaths, this is much less of a warning sign than "Prepare To Die" this is more of a... promise.
The odds have never been more stacked in the game's favor with an overwhelming plethora of problems from wonky hitboxes that made me lose my mind, to ganks, relentless NPC invasions, tonnes of enemies blocking the boss door and even really basic things like the MOVEMENT was somehow a downgrade from the first game?! How do you downgrade movement? Well picture 360 degrees of movement, now picture 8 directions. It's honestly like they planned to use the controllers D-pad as the main movement device and were shocked to find the analog stick was something players preferred to use to control the game.
Dark Souls 1 tested my skill, my patience, my strategies, my cunning and my determination. Dark Souls 2 just tested my determination and patience. It felt like a deliberately broken version of the first game, there were so many things that didn't make sense or were just plain bad. Area's like Shrine Of Amana and Black Gulch will continue in my mind as the worst places in any videogame ever, because of the amount of purely frustrating game design that was put into it. I cannot begin to explain how much I hated this game, it didn't tell me essential information, it felt poorly designed and the bosses were lackluster and cheap, the enemies were annoying and the game mechanics themselves either felt useless or excessive, who used torches in a game that wasn't that dark? Falling damage was EXTREME because otherwise you could jump down to a late game area right at the start (which was something Dark Souls 1 just let you do because it trusted you would know when to turn around). There were glaring story and world design problems, the Shrine Of Winter is where you either deposit the souls of the four most powerful being's in the land or a million souls, so that it'll open up and let you walk around a few bits of rubble blocking a doorway. I'm not kidding, half of the game is there because your character can't climb. Other things included the volcano at the top of a windmill and the fact that Castle Dranleic just straight up moved when you walked through a tunnel. The story was so vague that you had no idea what you were doing or why you were doing it and hey, at least the opening cutscene told you that you'd feel this odd sense of confusion, not that it helped. I felt so betrayed by everything I experienced, the fairness seemed to have abandoned me in favour of getting messed up by as many enemy hitsquads as they could throw at me and all I could think all the way through this game was "Why?".
When I beat the game, I felt hollow. Empty. In a stark contrast to the first game... I was glad it was over. I waited a few months and then played Demon Souls and Dark Souls 3 as well as some Bloodborne. But I was consumed with disappointment for this game, I eventually wrote a 9 page review of what it did wrong and you don't want to read that, I was going to make a video on it and went back to play it again for video footage... but again.. something magical happened after the fourth time playing the game.
I grew to like it. I wanted to capture the game with different builds and played through the game with a greatsword build, a mage build, a twinblade build and I realised after defeating Vendrick that fourth time, that I wasn't doing this for footage anymore, I'd captured that ages ago, I realised that I genuinely liked it now. I just didn't hate the game anymore, I'd learnt it. I knew levelling ADP was something VERY important this time around, I knew where the good items were, where the NPC invaders were at, I knew the weaknesses of bosses and everything. The game isn't kind to new players and it isn't Dark Souls 1, it's almost nothing like it. Only in it's subtleties is this game similar, it's atmosphere, that dreamlike state, there's a sense of despair that hangs over it, it FEELS so similar. It's still got those glaring flaws but somehow they've become... tolerable? There is no denying there are a tonne of problems with it, my refined version of the original 9 page review had over 44 paragraphs of my points on different things, but I let it go for the same reason I let my hatred of the game go, they were both kind of irrelevant. I'd still rather play Dark Souls 2 than most other games because it's still a Dark Souls game.
Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome? When you grow to love the sensation of playing a game that you should probably hate... but here it is, my favourite... least favourite game.