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Dark Souls 2 Review
Review Format - PS3
Other Formats - Xbox 360 & PC
Intro
Death, Destruction, Pain, suffering - words you can associate with “From Software's” soul series of games. Known for an incredible challenge in patience and misleading new players for being unfair the series has become known as one of the hardest modern games of this generation.
To continue the legacy of the series we received Dark Souls 2 for PS3 & Xbox 360 a few weeks back which I've been playing pretty much none stop and have recently completed the game and unlocked new game plus
This is only the beginning of the game for some, since the true difficulty will unlock new enemy spawns, new loot, a deeper understanding of the world and encountering more players in the multiplayer aspect of the game.
Have From Software been able to rekindle this fire or should they have smothered the flames of creations and not have made a sequel to their critical acclaim series.
It is important to note that I’ve played both demon souls & dark souls to completion meaning I have a deeper understanding of game play mechanics that is used within this series and will be referencing to them a lot within this review.
Story
You are undead, cursed to walk the world and the only way for you to cling to your humanity is by claiming souls. If you don’t, you will become a mindless husk and will attack anything that is still living.
You have come to Drangleic in hopes of restoring your humanity and that is about all the setup you will get to this game. You’ll be task by the emerald herald to kill the four lords of the land, so you can seek the king and overthrow him.
Carrying over the story telling technique of the last two games, the story is pretty much left to your interpretations and you will have to dig deep to discover what is happening in each locations from talking to the NPC multiple times, reading item descriptions and feeling what the area and monsters have in relations to their locations.
It’s a bold move that will either inspire players to fill in the gaps themselves but has the chance to become forgettable if the world doesn’t grab them. Without going in to spoiler territory I just have to say the ending was a bit disappointing since I didn’t feel like I had connection with the over all story and why I was doing it in the first place.
I guess since I had done this all before in the last two soul’s game I was expecting maybe something more from the story. In the original Dark Souls game the evil lords of that world were shown at the beginning which gave you a purpose of who the end game baddies were.
Here, you didn’t have that and when you came across one of these lords you didn’t relies till they died, I just assume a lot of them were normal boss fights.
However this may be just me and it will be different for everyone because like I said, a lot of this can be left to interpretations
I should also mention that these two games are connecting in some ways and souls fans will get slight kicks out of all the hidden items & enemies in the game.
Design
The Souls games have always been vague, misleading and not descriptive in their overall design. It’s quite frightening looking at those last two games to see how scary the interface, stats screen and descriptions were back in the day.
From Software were always criticized for this and it seems they have taken it to heart and have really gone out of their way to explain what everything does this time without losing the RPG elements which have always made it stand out.
Now when equipping gear or leveling up you actually know the benefits of each stats and how it relates to your chosen character build. However they is a lot of hidden depth as well that new players may miss, leveling a stat pass 20 points now has diminishing returns so balancing your stats is more important now.
To do any self improvement to your character you will need souls, the currency of the game. You acquire souls by defeating the many horrific enemies that inhabit Drangleic and consuming them. But do be careful, because like in all other soul's games, if you die. All the souls you have gathered will drop on the floor, all monsters would re spawn and you will have once chance to reclaim them.....if you don't. Well say goodbye to all your hard work because they will disappear forever.
This wasn't as much as an issue in previous souls games since you could just keep farming areas for souls since monsters would keep respawning. This has changed so you may only kill a monster 12 times then it will disappear forever!
This could be a blessing or a curse since you now lose access to key items & souls but it also enables easy runs to bosses if you’re continually dying to them over and over again.
Dying also comes with its own side effect as well. Harkin back to the demon souls dying mechanics, you will lose 5%-10% of your maximum health to a minimum of 50%.
You can restore this by using human effigies which is a rare item within the game world which will restore you to 100% and will gives you access to summoning phantoms or other players to help you with the many bosses in the game which is one of the key multi player aspect of this game.
The other is the return of Covenants which offer interesting and different ways to interact with other players either as a friend or foe. They are 9 in total and unlike the previous Souls game are more easier to access and present unique scenarios to take part in, especially the PvP side of the game.
The Rat King Covenant will allow you to summon another player to your world if they are killing rats in a certain location. You can then set traps and more before they arrive to punish them for killing your subjects.
Another is the bell keepers covenant which task you to ring the bell in the belfry or kill other players who are attempting to ring the bell in their world. Both these areas are very optional and to the side so if you have no interest in doing PVP you can avoid it all together.
Then they are the anti PvP covenants called the Ways of Blue & Blue Sentinels. If you are part of the way of the blue, you can automatically summon the assistance of any of the blue sentinel if your world get's invaded by another player.
I got a kick out of multi player this time and the game is far more balanced now so your world won't get invaded by high level players since the match making system will only connect people with similar progression in the game.
They are of course some more but this a couple of examples and I think it's a major improvement over the last Dark Souls Game.
The game also has changes the item progression of healing over the last Dark Souls game. Instead of having access to 5 or more refillable estus flasks at every bonfire you now start with none. You will have to discover estus flask around the world and the only other to heal at the beginning of the game is consumable life gems that restore your life over a period of time instead of instant heal.
A lot of these changes I actually personally enjoyed but they are a couple that I didn't enjoy such as the worlds overall structure.
In Dark Souls the world had been crafted perfectly to interconnect with each other that made it a joy to see you stumble across previously traveled locations and see how it was all connected together.
The first time I experience this in Dark Souls was the long treacherous travel to blight town which had you tackle rats though the sewers, the cursed frogs, the horrific shanty wooden city of blight town itself and finally it's poisonous swamp.
At this point all felt lost and I had no idea how you would escape this place until I discovered a lift that took you back to the surface to breathable air and sunlight.
You don't really experience that here within Dark Souls 2.
I think this design choose was made since they let players fast travel between any discovered bonfire that they had rested at right from the get go instead of being an end game unlockable.
The world is still amazing to travel through, but if you asked me did I revisit any previously traveled locations...not really. This also made me missed items since I never had a reason to travel back through areas since I had unlocked the latest bonfire / checkpoint.
The game does feel 50% bigger than Dark Souls and areas will keep going and going and you’ve got no idea when it will end and where you're journey will take you.
Another design choose that was a big part of the original concept of the game was darkness playing a bigger role and having the player to carry a touch instead of a life saving shield but the mechanic seems to have been removed . Now areas which were initially pitch black in the trailers for the game are now bright enough to see things quite easily.
I can understand if it didn't test well with players & the developers or it was causing too many graphical issues but it was something I was really excited about playing around with.
Strangely enough though, you can still carry a torch and light the many scoffs around the world, but to this date of recording they seems to be no reason to do so. They are only two areas in the game where using a torch is extremely useful which make's two bosses slightly easier to tackle.
The series has also been known to not telegraph to players and they were a few times within this game that I got completely lost and have no idea where to go. Speaking to people on forums on the inter web everyone seem to have got stuck at similar locations which I think could of easily been solved with some simple NPC text dialogue that could of guided people players better and maybe a better crafted story.
Overall design will feel similar to most souls fans but different enough to be fresh while letting new players have an easier time getting in to the game and makes it less intimidating than previous games.
Gameplay
The Soul’s games have always been considered hard for the reason you can die in just a few hits and that each new area can hold many different ways that you can die which in all honestly is quite true.
This has scared people from the series and people who haven’t got the patience to take their time and charge in will die. Not because the game is hard but because they weren’t paying attentions or just being over greedy in combat.
Act like this is real life, if a sword hit's you, you will more than likely be wounded or dead and that goes the same for Dark Souls 2.
You main two stats are health & stamina. Health dictates' how much damage you can take and stamina which regenerates over time enables you to roll, block, attack & use magic. It’s up to you to identify your enemies attack pattern and discern what is the best way to take them down.
Should you dodge a certain sword swipe or block it. Have you got enough time to cast a magic spell after he finished a combat animation or striking back with your own weapon
It’s very rewarding especially when you're facing the many bosses in the game with a diverse range or attacks & abilities you need to learn, avoid and counter.
In previous Souls games players found using backstab & parry were a great way to overwhelm enemies but the timing to achieve these stagger like attacks has been reduced so you need to be perfect with your timing. You can now even be hit while performing backstab animations by other enemies, you are not longer invulnerable during this state.
Blocking has also been changed where you will be staggered if the last of your stamina is used as a shield block leaving you open for some brutal damage.
Weapon types are more important this time round, un armoured & light armour creatures are weaker to slashing /piercing weapons while heavily armoured creatures are weak to blunt weapons. The game encourages you to try many different weapons now and it's encourage to carry a few since durability of equipment is much lower this time round.
Magic makes a welcome return to Souls and has had a quite a few changes and a whole new spell school called hexes that joins the likes of Sorcerer, Faith & Pyromancie.
Sorcerer is the school for those wizard types who like to keep thier distance with powerful direct damage spells and controlling the environment with distractions and stuns. Pyromancy is the school goes off causing massive fire damage while inflicting poison like attack. Faith is about buffing & healing yourself as well as using the light as a powerful weapon.
Hexes is now the advance school of magic that uses a combinations of Faith & Sorcerer to cause Dark Magical attacks that get's past most magic resist creatures and cause devastating damage and debuffs.
For new players to the game Magic is always a good school to try first time through because of the range superiority it gives which can make the most daunting of enemies easy.
All in all, the combat is pretty much the same and is one of the strongest aspects of the game.
What may hurt this game more is that experience players like myself will feel like the game isn’t offering as much as a challenge since we used to all the tricks and attack types enemies are more than likely will have.
Bosses seem to fall in to this pattern as well and they isn't anything out of the ordinary here apart from one to two bosses that use more magic or the room being more of a puzzle. Thankfully they learned their mistakes from the original Dark Souls and they are no annoying jumping puzzles bosses like the bed of chaos.
One way the developers try to offer a challenge to players is by overwhelming them with many enemies and this becomes a tactic for a lot of the bosses by having a lot of minions or with two or three bosses attacking you at the same time. This is fine but when this is used repeatedly though out the game it can get repetitive and could even frustrate new players.
If we ever get another game in this series I’m hoping for some more interesting enemies / bosses we’ve not seen before and maybe more anti range classes other than just charging you or having magic resist. Such as a vortex spell or slow moving spell to stop us kiting.
Presentations
The world of Dark Souls 2 is a beauty to behold with its dark undertones spread throughout. Yes we are currently pushing these current gen consoles to their maximum and you will discover a fair few bland textures here and there but for a game this big it is to be expected. But I dare you to tell me Majula isn't beautiful, because you will be a cold stone liar if you do.
Bosses, creatures and player models are all fantastically detailed and weapon design is fantastic and makes you feel powerful whenever you find a better upgrade.
Music is phenomenal as always portraying a dying world with harps, violins and more. A particular highlight is the music for Majula that you will be visiting quite often brings warmth & job back to the player after exploring the darkness of the world.
Music is rarely heard and only creeps in during boss fights and key locations, the rest of the time you will be listening to the ambitions of the world from the growns of monsters to your foots steps echoing off the corridor walls.
A UK cast has been used again for this game and gives off the medieval feel off that time period really well.
If you can hold off for a while longer and have a high spec PC the rumors going around the grape vines is the PC version will be spectacular, if it isn't - I'm sure the modding community will get behind this much loved game.
They are a couple of issues on PS3 with frame rates dropping which was the platform I played on but it didn't bother me as much and was no way near as bad as the last two games, I'm looking at you blight town.
Reports that the Xbox 360 version has been causing screen tearing but no of the frame rate issues.
Final Verdict
Dark Souls 2 is a phenomenal achievement by the developers From Software. Being able to create a new world and improving on many of the things the games have done right in the past.
The only thing that let it down was that the story isn't as appealing as the previous two games in the series and you don't feel quite as fulfilled once you finished it.
New players will have an easier time getting in to this game while veterans have a lot to look forward to new game plus with new mobs and covenants playing a bigger role this time round.
This game is well worth picking up and the best advice I can give new players is take you're time, don't feel bad reading up on the game if you get stuck. This is a community base game and people will help you.