I did. I dropped it twice before giving the third shot. I finished it. Still think it’s an ass game with lots of annoyances. Worst in the series by a long shot.
For me yes, I feel incredibly frustrated while dying countlessly to the same boss, but the victory and the rest of the game make it fun for me. In ds2 neither victory nor anything else felt fun, more like a chore to go through it to see if it was really bad or actually good
It really isn't. What is great to you about it ? I played it to see if it really is that bad and i wasn't dissapointed. 50 hrs later i finished it with the last DLC and i could count on one hand the things that were actually good.
Majula is a great hub area, amazing music, atmosphere, nice Emerald girl.
Heides Tower was the only area that was good.
The Frigid Outskirts were even worse than i heard.
In terms of bossfights, there were like 5 in total that were fun/good and most were from the DLC.
Personally, I love most of the levels. They’re packed full of gimmicks, secrets and little pieces of progression that make them really fun to traverse. Also, a big chunk of the base game bosses are really good imo
Sarcasm or no, I just now realized that while Fromsoftware obviously never went back to DS2's movement system for the player character, riding around on torrent does kinda feel like DS2's movement. Especially when doing a 180 at a cliff edge yeets you off of said cliff.
I don't have any problem with Torrent, mind you. I can't enjoy Red Dead 2 after Elden Ring.
I think I died more times from Torrent jank than I did attempting to beat the Tree Sentinel at the start. Night's Cavalry was not a fun learning curve.
Luckily, I still enjoy RDR 2 as they are very different games and scratch a different itch. I honestly would've expected the opposite as I thought the horse gameplay in RDR 2 was very good.
I was going to do an exhaustive, 2nd playthrough of RDR2, was feeling pretty immersed and happy, accidentally pointed my gun at a lawman by tapping a trigger, ran away on horseback, tried, for 3 seconds, to steer away from a tiny rock while riding, horse gravitates directly into it. Dead horse. Sad Arthur. Rage-quit by me.
Personally, I'll take the double-jumping goat horse over immersion.
While I can't find the data for Bloodborne (probably because it was only ever released for PS4), DS2 does have different axial dead zones/movement than DS1 and 3. They used a square dead zone instead of circular, and I personally really didn't like it since it made directional inputs borderline 8-direction and not as intuitive as it should be. It was a common enough complaint that there are actual mods to change the axial dead zones for DS2. I have to post the images one at a time, so I apologize in advance for the borderline spam you're about to receive.
I think it's great you preferred the movement in DS2. I, and if the available mods are any indication, many others, did not enjoy the movement for DS2.
All of that said, I mentioned movement in a different comment, not the one you responded to.
ETA: I legitimately don't hate DS2. I joke about it plenty, but I don't actually hate it. I have no problem with others preferring DS2 over the others. For me, DS2's greatest sin (ha) is being the weakest out of a fantastic trilogy. It's a very solid game in a vacuum, it's just not as good as the others IMO.
Mods don't indicate anything really. People have preferences.
All of that said, I mentioned movement in a different comment, not the one you responded to.
Not sure if this is ragebait. You know what I'm talking about. Movement is a primary way to engage with a video game, I simply used it as a term to reference game feel.
Not bait. I legitimately wasn't sure if you meant to respond to that comment since I did address movement directly in that one.
I've spoken to multiple people IRL (yes, I do in fact go outside and touch grass) and the movement was a common complaint. It's also a common complaint online (from what I've personally seen). Yes, different people have different movement preferences, but I see multiple dead zone mods for DS2 and not the others. Admittedly, I haven't looked super hard for DS1 and 3.
Also, if you haven't seen it, please see the edit to my first response. I don't actually hate DS2, it's just the easiest for me to make fun of.
Alright, my bad. I'm used to people on Reddit being incredibly rude and dishonest so I have a low tolerance for dealing with that. Sorry.
Idk it's the first time I've heard about to this complaint. I've heard people complain about movement speed, character animations, and stamina but not so much deadzones, especially considering this is the first time in the series we get 8-Direction Dodge instead of 4 like in DeS and DS1.
I see this complaint more similar to people who prefer CRT vs. OLED monitors. Not bad, just different and people prefer one over the other, may even dislike the other, but there's nothing inherent to it that I think could be considered truly bad, just something not up to someones taste.
I personally haven't noticed it till you brought it up and I do see how the character locks on a bit more than the other games.
I definitely get what you mean about trolls that double down on the dumbest crap and just insult you. That's why I added the bit explaining that I'm jokingly hating on 2 and a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek. I do have legitimate complaints with the game and it's not my favorite, but I still recommend playing it if you like any of the Souls games. It's at the very least worth an honest try.
Dark Souls 1 is actually really weird about the directional movement. When you're locked on you only have 4-directional movement, but you have full 360 degree movement when you're not locked on. There are some bosses in Souls games that are easier when you're not locked on (cough cough Nameless King, Midir), but it's doubly true for DS1. DS3 has full-time 360 degree movement which is why I prefer the controls in that game. Elden Ring does the same square dead zone as 2, but the zones aren't nearly as fat so it's not as problematic for me.
Funnily enough, I didn't know why DS2 felt clunky to me until I complained about it to a friend and he was like, "Oh yeah, the dead zones are weird af for 2, that's why it feels so clunky for a lot of people. Here, look at these charts to see what I mean."
For real, kinda wild it took until now for the community concensus to be that a game that at its worst is like 70% as good as one of the most famously great games is still not a terrible time. The hate is very overdone.
I think people just let the disappointment linger, but now with 4 follow up games theres really no reason to not just let DS2 be the way that it is. And the way it is is very different and compelling than the other games. Did no one learn the lesson of the ugly duckling?
I dunno, I spent a lot of time with DS2 and had a lot of fun with it. It had great areas, plenty of cool armor and weapons, the best dual-wielding in the Fromsoft Games, and Majula is my favorite hub area. There was also a ton of upgrade material being thrown at you so you could try tons of different weapons in a playthrough.
The game is trash and is getting its rim glazed unfathomably hard now the deluded people who like it are mostly the only ones to still talk about the game.
Almost as if it's a sub that encourages irony and exaggeration, and that outside of it, most people will take memes literally.
Also, since you want to hate, list every reason why you do, and I'll prove that, at least for the more objective things, you are wrong and always will be. Let's chat.
I was a long term DS2 hater but if you play it offline and try to forget all the negativity you heard but instead try to experience it for yourself it's not too bad, still my least favorite of the three but not too bad
I got raided multiple times by people just throwing acid pots at me and I didn't have the souls to get even my rings fixed so I quit the game for two years after that. Idk if that was a common occurrence for other people too or if I just got unlucky but that and especially the lag and people teleporting behind you for backstabs made me play offline
I've been playing DS2 PvP for a long while and I've only come across the equipment breaking spell once and never seen the pots, and that was in the Arena mode.
As for teleporting behind you and backstabs, DS2 has a much better designed backstab system than DS1 that accounts for latency and player orientation so it was probably a hacker lol
Yeah that's just a bad string of luck, could also be the region you play on too aswell as device. I play on Playstation, I'd imagine PC would be worse for cheaters.
I've experienced taht people who stood beside me attack and suddenly my play model does an instant 90° turn with my back towards them.
Playing on PC so it might be cheaters but it was so consistently only with people who were almost nude that I think it's a game problem but who knows.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit after I decided to play offline and I don't think I missed any major content with that
Honest opinion time: it's fine. Some things are really cool (e.g. bonfire ascetics), and some things you couldn't pay me to try (e.g. frigid outskirts).
I think it's a 6.5 to 7/10 with the DLC, and a 5 to 6/10 without. But every other game in the series for me is a 8, 9, or even 10/10 game.
Dark souls 2 is better than other games from other series, but i don't think it's a good dark souls game when you compare it to the other games.
This is just an immature take imo, if you don't enjoy it you can stop talking about it. I don't talk about how much I dislike the show friends, I just watch other stuff instead
Dark Souls 2: SotFS was actually the first Souls game I beat. I don't hate it, and it's not really a bad game overall, but it falls flat in comparison to the other Souls games. It's like a nugget of copper surrounded by gold: not bad by any means and still desirable, but surrounded by better stuff.
Dark Souls 1 certainly has plenty wrong with it (devs running out of time for Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith so they're unfinished hot dogshit being a big part of it), but there are so many redeeming qualities in the rest of the game that it makes up for it for the most part.
Dark Souls 2 is still worth playing at least once despite the janky-af controls.
I can't believe I'm defending Dark Souls 2 from slander when it is the most slanderable Dark Souls
I played the trilogy over the course of 2 months and had heard how rough ds2 is to people, at the beginning I really didnt enjoy it and the world vibe felt wrong but by the end of it i found i actually really liked it as a souls game
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u/Difficult-snow-2 Feb 04 '26