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saltypiss · 5 months

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Like, DS1 makes you go, Oh there's alot of neat things to explore that I haven't yet, and while I'm stuck here, I'll explore those things!

You're pushed to learn, unconsciously, because the game makes you THINK. It makes you STOP and CONSIDER. If you run in without a clue, you die.

DS2 does this in reverse, except it doesn't, it just does "run in without a clue, you die, then you know" not "learn" just "know" there's no growth to DS2's gameplay. There's nothing pushing you to keep going.

Lemme put it to you this way, when a seemingly impossible task is put forth in DS1, what's pushing you to get past it? What alternatives can you take?

What's in that tower behind the bell gargoyles?

What's behind this gate-door in undead parish?

What does "Divine" do?

How does this weapon swing?

That's right, there was an area I passed on the way here, I should go there!

I wonder where this wide opening in this elevator takes me?

I wonder what this spell does!

Is this armor better? Is it better fully upgraded?

Ooo, I wonder what this person says or does!

Oh that's right! There's a guy in that place I can still go to!

Oh yo, I just found someone and saved them! They're gonna come back to firelink? I gotta go back there!

What's the massive butterfly doing up there?

I wonder what's behind this door that needs a seal...

I wonder what happens if I help this spider lady.

Bro I can't wait to level up this skill so I can (X)

You have genuinely hundreds of ideas for what to do in Dark Souls and none of them feel barred off or useless. There's a plethora of things to get you Interested in Learning More. It's CONSTANTLY feeding you concepts and thoughts to have with yourself. The obstacle? Oh yeah, I was busy doing literally anything but just fighting.

DS2? Like...they drop the torch idea real fucking fast, it's purposeless as far as I know or care, and even then, it's so damnably poorly designed I'm honestly embarrassed. Uh. The...the uh. Shit man, there's nothing. Never at any point are you like, Oh shit, what's that!? Oh shit, Where's that!? What's behind them!? How does this mechanic work!?

it inspires literally NOTHING. You've got no checklist of shit in your brain, you're just numb, mindlessly going through hoping to god, eventually, something of worth happens, something retain attention. It's brainless and demands more than you're ever willing to give to any game.

It really boils down to this, DS2 was made to reward the player for "beating the thing" not for learning, not for growing, there's nothing gained by "beating the thing" you just feel good, that's their real honest to god philosophy, you're not even a better player for "beating the thing". The main guys constantly repeated "The bigger the challenge, the greater the reward" without having anything more than that as their entire philosophy throughout. If it's hard, if it's frustrating, but you can beat it, then it's rewarding! Right?

No. What's rewarding is checking the stats of a weapon and experimenting to see if it works better for this enemy than the last. What's rewarding is upgrading my weapon to lightning after learning my lightning spell did extra on this enemy compared to the other spell. What's rewarding is preparing items and armor for a boss, alongside learning their moves to overcome them, the arena, their patterns, THAT'S rewarding, because learning is the gameplay! It always has been! LEARNING! not just 'beating the thing"

Learn, to Overcome. Not "getr cherleng big bord!"

And that's literally, been the philosophy of every Souls-Like since DS2. DS3 exemplifies every problem of DS2 while fully abandoning absolutely everything from DS1, apart from shamelessly copying some assets, not artistry, in a vain effort to make you forget that DS1 is good and DS3 is objectively worse than DS2.

If you think I'm harsh on DS2, I literally have nothing to say about DS3 except it's a genuine embarrassment by Fromsoft, a total non-experimental piece of lazy work, and for the entire gaming industry, a failure of design top to bottom. It's a sad, sad product manufactured from beginning to end with nothing crafted for it's own identity to even exist. An entirely forgettable experience that has even less of a clue on hard design than DS2.

It's genuinely depressing that, all Fromsoft and the fans of souls-like have taken from DS1, has been it's FuckAwful Combat which has always been the weakest element of Every Souls-Like. Not because it's bad, but because literally, everything else, is so much better than the combat. Music, sound design, boss design, artistry, exploration, world design, enemy placement, mimics, leveling up, losing souls, spending souls, characters, theming, you name it, it's always and will forever be, better than the combat, which again, isn't bad, it's just not the point of this series, just a (small) part of what made DS1 good. The challenge was never the combat, but your knowledge you grew on your own fucking terms, not from in-game tutorials, or youtube videos, but you, and the game, and you learning from it.

Whatever's marketable, really, you see that with DS2's shadows n shit, like bruh, the 360 had that much in megabytes for ram, you sure, at any point, anyone was certain this marketable aspect solely that affects gameplay absolutely fucking none, was going to work, on a console, released in 2006...?

Watch those trailers, and notice, it's not about anything but the fucking combat, the fucking visuals, and then boring embarrassing CG trailers.

That's because DS2 focused on shadows before literally anything the fuck else. So hampered by such a dumb fuck idea, that the rest of the game feels this one dumbfuck's decision reverberating throughout it.

Why was the map/level design so fucking god awful? Because they were banking on it looking pretty, not playing well. It's why none of the game's explorative design existed until halfway through, because they made a bunch of maps for trailers with minimal design. That's why they had to connect random maps together, because again, they were making a marketable game, not a good game. A good game requires a creative mind and no corporate-greed restrictions, just creative restrictions that direct the flow of the game. Having to work around much less than half a GB of ram, while the idiot in charge is forcing expensive fuck off shadows into the mix, means these maps never stood a chance at anything but being set pieces for a tracking camera shot. Not to be played.

Why is the combat so fucking bad? Because they were banking on it looking good in trailers and youtube videos. Not playing well or feeling well, they were banking on "the game is meant to be hard" to cover the bases of their poor design. They made it poor, because controlling poorly = hard, right? Like NES games, right? Right?

Why is the game so fucking grey, or green, or orange, or vaguely blue but mostly grey-blue? Because they were banking on Skyrim's visuals interesting consumers. Because yes, this was the period of time where every company wanted one of their beloved IPs to be direct copy-cats of whatever was popular due to marketing mostly, like COD, or Skyrim.

Why does the game have none of the charm or feel of Dark Souls? Because again, they weren't making a good game, they were capitalizing on Fromsoftware's first breakout hit. It's loosely based on it, because the guy in charge's brilliant plan was Shadows. Fucking Shadows. Not character design, not artistry, not any true visual design, just fucking real time shadows. On the 360. The fucking. 360.

Graphics are still a ridiculously bloated excuse to make for games being "expensive" in any way, but the fact remains is this: The focus on graphics, and their philosophy of "bigger hard, bigger cum" show that Dark Souls 1 was an absolute fluke, the second half of the game feeling like DS2 often. Elden Ring goes to show in exemplary fashion they still don't know how the fuck they made DS1.

The hyper-focus on visuals or marketable aspects, the focus on garnering more consumers, the focus on difficulty but not design, it really goes to show, Fromsoftware's Dark Souls was a god damned fluke, it came at the perfect time, before they were household names, and right after the experiment of Demon's Souls worked out despite the company in charge being against such a game in the first place.

Because Demon's Souls did so well despite expectations and efforts to kill it, Miyazaki and the entire team was given the golden opportunity, to be far more unfettered by corporate-greed, and further grow Demon's Souls still widely unrecognizable formula into something greater.

DS2, started without Miyazaki, or some/most of the team, was being HEAVILY monitored and influenced by the company, and when it became obvious, oh, the dipshit in charge wasted all this fucking time and resource on god damned SHADOWS for a 300mb ram console, they had to bring Miyazaki back, that's when shit hit the fan again!

Because now he's on for DS3, and because DS2 did so fucking BAD in every angle, now, he's gotta make ANOTHER marketable piece that hits it big with all the corporate meddling and influence that both DS's did not fucking deal with.

Just bothers the FUCK out of me how corporate the series has become, I became a fan through Elden Ring, and I can honestly say it's the closest we'll ever get to another DS1 from Fromsoft, and it's still, hot, fuckin', garbage, just a MISERABLE experience top to bottom that will not fair well to the tests of time, new players will enjoy it, returning players will lower their opinion every single playthrough.

Dark Souls genuinely isn't that hard to figure out, it takes time, sure, years even, but the simple fact has ALWAYS been this;

Dark Souls 1's Philosphy is Learn to Grow to Accomplish your Goals.

That hits hard, because it NEVER tells you SHIT about ANYTHING, but makes it ENTIRELY possible to learn through literally any other way than directly telling the player. YOU. Learned the mechanics. The game never held your hand, because in real life, when you're learning something new, it's hard, but when you're good at it, you're good at it! Dark Souls isn't hard, because you've played the SHIT out of it, you BEAT THE FUCKING GAME, THE PHILOSOPHY IS COMPLETE, THE EXPERIENCE, THE INTENDED ONE, IS COMPLETE. YOU WON! YOU DID IT! And that translates to the rest of your life! It's not impossible, you just gotta take the time and trust there's a design to it! If someone else did it, you can too!

Everything after it: Duuuuurrrrr git gud! haha! you died! haha! hahahaha! But when you win! Bigger Cummies for everyone! The pain was worth it! Because....you...got...nothing. But the feeling of satisfaction! You Beat The Thing! Yayyyyyyy!

Kill me.

#Dark Souls 2 #Dark Souls #Fromsoftware #Elden Ring #Rant #DS2 critique #fromsoft critique #I don't get the love for the company honestly #First of all they treat DS1 like fucking SHIT #The PC port was purposefully bad #then they take down the original version #specifically for a worse version #that doesn't require DSfix #aaaaand that's it #it's also a game from 2011 #that's currently being sold for 40 fuck off dollars #so is the sequel #and DS3 is 60 #despite being god only knows how fucking old #Bout the best they do is not being absolutely scummy with DLC/microtransactions #otherwise they REALLY fucking do not give a shit about you #like the servers #the servers were down for like #god years???#years #for Dark Souls #the online components of Dark Souls stopped working for years #and then they pulled the plug on PTDE servers entirely #like fuck you #you didn't even give previous purchasers the fucking game back

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