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Mopquill's. throwaway562205's Guide to. eur0pa's. raymondhill'sRelated SubredditsTrophy Requests. I'm sure you've all seen this argument a million times, but I've never been able to really participate in them until now, because I never tried to beat DS1, where as I've beaten DS2 several times.First comes my stance; I don't understand why DS1 is so highly revered. To me it just seems poorly designed; filled with annoyances and artificial difficulty instead of actual challenges.
I very quickly got sick of being sucker punched by things in this game the first time I got cursed when I had no idea what that bar was. 'Toxic' was stupid in blight town because it's just over powered poison. It's difficulty for the sake of being annoying. I got to Quelaag and thoroughly enjoyed the fight because I was allowed to move around and observe her patterns and was given queues for attacks and could react cautiously. And then I went to Sen's Fortress which was just a hive of bullshit.
Traps everywhere, which trained me to watch the floor to look for pressure plates, but then they'd still put enemies right around corners to kill me anyways. And after being insanely frustrated by the level, I got to the boss and killed the boss EASILY without even a remote threat. Anor Londo was even a big deal compared that Sen's Fortress, Anor Londo was pretty fun, looking through doors and fighting through corridors and getting through all the silver knights and white ninjas. And then you get to Smough and Ornstein! That was great too! You have to learn their movesets and how to react to them and when to attack/dodge/block and where and how to move. That was a truly awesome fight.Then I got the Lordvessel and went to the catacombs.
Alright, not that big of a deal; having the 'mages' reviving the skeletons isn't that bad but it's still pretty annoying. Die several times on the way down, have to formulate paths. Kill Pinwheel boss without too much problem.Oh, okay, no bonfire. This is a huge pain in the ass.On top of the Tomb of the Giants being a huge pain in the ass by itself. I finally fight through all the bullshit and get myself to Nito and now I'm confronted with an army of bones that are nearly impossible to dodge while I have to hit Nito and it seems like my only reasonable option is to abandon my main weapon and make a divine weapon so I can permanently kill the skellies and then fight Nito mano-e-mano.NOW. When I played DS2, I never felt like I had to deal with outrageous amounts of bullshit.
I never felt obligated to move forward; I always felt like if I put my mind to it and practiced enough, I could get it done.With DS1 I feel like I'm rolling the dice every time unless I build toward a specific thing to counter a certain boss or level/enemy. On the contrary I never raged harder than I did in Dark Souls 2. However, I am not going toa dress that so much as the flaws in your argument. Ye sits your opinion and all. That said:.No bonfire in the Catacombs? There are like 2 man.Poorly designed? In which you contradict yoruself by praising the level layout.
Artificial difficulty? There are a few mobs in Dark Souls but the enemies in them are weak; there's only once instance when an elite group of enemies are thrown at you all at once and that is the part when you're trying to reach the large divine ember. Otherwise, it's an optional area and not needed to proceed.I don't understand why you're perfectly OK with the floor being trapped but not with enemies aorund corners. By the time you reach Sen's you'd think you'd have gotten that into your system.As for Nito, you can always try poise and tanking their hits. The games forces you to make a decision, to try a different strategy.In the end, you still were forced to go forward and to think up of new plans in order to proceed.
The game gave you that freedom and you can either use it to your advantage despite some extra ahrd work, or you can try harder with what you have. Yes, there are two bonfires in the catacombs and through which it never stops being mind numbingly annoying to navigate no matter which way you approach if you want to go towards the Nito fight. You have to literally memorize exactly where and how to move even after feeling confident you can kill everything along the way. THAT is bullshit.I went with a full strength build because I found that the Demon's Greataxe gives the best STR scaling and I like balls deep builds.
But at the moment my Black Knight Great Sword deals the most damage.As for tanking the skellies hits during the Nito fight. Yeah I tried that about 5 times. It's just not fun. It's not rewarding. It's a pain in the ass. Please talk to me about game and level design.So like this?There are a few mobs in Dark Souls but the enemies in them are weak; there's only once instance when an elite group of enemies are thrown at you all at once and that is the part when you're trying to reach the large divine ember.
Otherwise, it's an optional area and not needed to proceed.As for Nito, you can always try poise and tanking their hits. The games forces you to make a decision, to try a different strategy.I don't understand why you're perfectly OK with the floor being trapped but not with enemies aorund corners. By the time you reach Sen's you'd think you'd have gotten that into your system.I mean, you can't just ignore things just because you disagree. If you really want to talk about game and level design and etc, I'll respond to a few of your points.To me it just seems poorly designed; filled with annoyances and artificial difficulty instead of actual challenges.Artificial difficulty is such a loaded term that you could mean a lot of things. Do you mean 'difficulty that doesn't challenge skill, the opposite of true difficulty' or 'difficult things I dislike'?I very quickly got sick of being sucker punched by things in this game the first time I got cursed when I had no idea what that bar was.Two things: While I agree that cursing can be a sucker punch, the whole status effect bar thing is shown off a little in the Lower Burg with bleed, coinciding with hits, so you probably should have understood. Also, Also, haven't you played DS2? While cursing isn't the exact same, you really should have understood that bar raises = bad.
Secondly, getting cursed is supposed to be a potential part of a new players playthrough: You get cursed, Crestfallen tells you about Ingward, you head there. It's supposed to be a detour to get you to explore the world.' Toxic' was stupid in blight town because it's just over powered poison. It's difficulty for the sake of being annoying.It's supposed to get you to rush down the blowdart snipers. It's annoying, but they don't respawn.Traps everywhere, which trained me to watch the floor to look for pressure plates, but then they'd still put enemies right around corners to kill me anyways.Yeah, they want you to pay attention to more than one thing at a time.Kill Pinwheel boss without too much problem.
Oh, okay, no bonfire. This is a huge pain in the ass.The bonfire is almost immediately after Pinwheel. And if you miss it then, the game essentially forces you to loop around back to it after Patches kicks you. You really shouldn't complain about the level design if you're not willing to look about three feet to your left around that point anyway.On top of the Tomb of the Giants being a huge pain in the ass by itself. I finally fight through all the bullshit and get myself to Nito and now I'm confronted with an army of bones that are nearly impossible to dodge while I have to hit Nito and it seems like my only reasonable option is to abandon my main weapon and make a divine weapon so I can permanently kill the skellies and then fight Nito mano-e-mano.They're not impossible to dodge, there's three of them that aggro at first which are the same enemies as the ones in Firelink and the Catacombs. Hell, there's a good chance you have a weapon to fight them with. The Silver Knight Spear.and attack small points of my post to make me sound like an idiot.Don't say something blatantly incorrect if you aren't okay with someone telling you otherwise.
Well, I think the issue is your presentation of your argument, which is very ranty and unfocused. Because of this, all these small points add up into your entire argument; Sen's Fortress being bullshit, Nito being a pain in the ass, and no bonfires in the catacombs (which is wrong).I havne't played DS1, so I won't talk about that game. But DS2 has some bullshit as well, but not bullshit that makes you feel good about when you succeed.
Frigid Outskirts? I don't feel like I beat it, I just feel like I tried enough times that dumbass reindeers stopped spawning. Skeleton Lords?
I didn't handle the mass of skeletons while juggling the bosses, I just kinda ran in circles and killed them off one by one. Covetus Demon? Oh, I don't NEED to fight her with all that poison ass bullshit, I just can completely remove that element.I think DS2 sacrificed some of the fun of strategizing and player improvement by adding in these fights that don't test your skill in fun ways.
Kiting the skeletons in Skeleton Lords shouldn't be a solution; it's boring and not fun, and you should be punished for it. I love the map layout of Dark Souls 1, where it's more vertical which allows for clever shortcuts and being able to see parts of the map from other seemingly unrelated parts.I hate that they made the ability to dodge skills something you have to level up in Dark Souls 2.
In order for the game to play properly, you have to play long enough to level adaptability which seems like the artificial difficulty you were talking about. Also, the bosses are less memorable for me, which is probably just since I like 1 more, idk.
The layout of the 'levels' is something I love in DS1. How the bonfires are placed, finding elevators, unlocking doors, being able to run from one place to another in a relatively short amount of time. I think that's very well designed; the only thing hindering it is that half of these are placed inconceivably or in positions of stress. You either have to hit a fake wall or tumble over a ledge. Bonfires and shortcuts are easy to miss, and that shouldn't be the case. The places where it's streamlined and straightforward is very nice.I don't have much to comment on 'agility' or whatever they called the stat for i-frames on dodge rolls, I never leveled it in DS2.
I just played and overcame obstacles at a fairly steady pace until I beat the game. I actually disagree with the point, you can almost think of the game in two ways.
The 'first playthrough' Dark Souls, where you hit all the obvious stuff, then the exploration/completionist Dark Souls where you find all the hidden stuff like Ashen Lake.I think Dark Souls could have afforded to have more hidden features, as long as it didn't hinder the ability to play through the main storyline. It adds replayability and fun secret hunting that the Dark Souls PvE community love.To the second point, I was always more of a 2-hand dodger instead of blocker, so I was really annoyed with the starting adaptability. It made the game feel clunkier, which once I got to around 20-30 it was extremely smooth.
It's very subjective, but personally I would give DS1 the edge over 2.Dark Souls 1, I believe, has the best world of any of FromSoft's games up to this point. For as long as I live, I'll always remember the first time I arrived at Ash Lake. Same for Anor Londo. Dark Souls 1 has a sense of place for the player. You can figure out where locations are and it's the absolute coolest thing when you realize that you can see other sections of the world (i.e. Levels) while exploring.Dark Souls 2 is a wider map, but I didn't care for the overall layout. It felt like it was designed for a video game, whereas Dark Souls 1 felt more organic.The world is the difference maker for me.
I felt each game had its share of fair and not-so-fair challenges. But honestly, they're both excellent games, so giving one the edge over the other doesn't change the end reality that they're both top-tier games in general.
Personally, I found Dark Souls 2 to be too. Easy and somewhat bland. If you were in a multi-boss fight they generally slapped it right in front of you and said 'Well, this is it'. Examples are the Ruin Sentinels and Gargoyles, where they were just copy pastes of one character. Did they have this in Dark Souls 1? Absolutely, but if you go in blind to the Gargoyles, I remember thinking 'Wait.
I have to fight ANOTHER ONE?!' , the Four Kings could spawn more than four of them if you take long enough. I love the Ornstein and Smough fight. Fighting 2 very different kinds of bosses at the same time, and then once you kill one the other changes. I liked to hate the Capra Demon fight since they have the slow-ish Capra and 2 annoying as fuck dogs.Also, in Dark Souls 1, there are ways to where you can just insta-kill a boss if you know how. You can have the Taurus Demon leap back off the bridge if you position him right.
Ceaseless Discharge can be lured to the fog gate, climb on the ledge, then be knocked off. Iron Golem will die immediately if he falls back and is near a ledge. Hell, Gwyn, the final fucking boss, can be parried and riposted if you have the balls to do so.I also fondly remember freaking the fuck out when the Asylum Demon first jumped down and was all 'Sup, bitch?' It kind of set the tone for Dark Souls 1. Oh, fight 3 enemies that don't fight back, generic tutorial stuff. Then a boss drops down on your unsuspecting ass.Dark Souls 1 also had a much larger emphasis on observation.
If you were aware of your surroundings, there were so many shortcuts and little secrets that you could clearly see when standing from a different angle. Such as the Sen's bonfire, when you're standing on the bridge to the Crestfallen Merchant, you can clearly see the bonfire. Or in New Londo you can see the small bridge that lays behind the illusory wall to get to the Darkwraith and chest holding the Titanite Chunk.Back to Dark Souls 2. For me it didn't have that initial impact. I remember when I first played it and thought 'Oh shit man, what's going to pop out at me this time?' And was severely disappointed when nothing did.
It was a really generic tutorial segment. The first boss you fight is 'The Last Giant', ooogaboogaa, so scary. You could easily tell that 'Oh, behind this fog wall is the boss'. Yeah, the Pursuer is kind of interesting because you have the option of fighting him early. But it's only optional.
It would've felt more Dark Souls-esque to me if they MADE you fight him and didn't let you flee. Or if you tried to flee, he'd live up to his name and fucking chase after you.And then all Great Soul bosses: Lost Sinner, Freya's Spider, Old Iron King, and The Rotten. You have no idea who they are or why they would be a big deal.
In Dark Souls 1, they made it clear that 'Yeah, these guys are kind of a big fucking deal' and for me it made it that much more satisfying. Even the bosses that weren't the main ones, such as Artorias, you've heard and seen his name before with Sif and the Covenant of Artorias. So you knew he was a big deal too.So yeah. For me, it had to do with the tone of the games, the feeling that they provided. Do you die in Dark Souls 1 and think 'that was kind of bullshit'? Sure, because the world is brimming with demons, hollows, and other abominations.
And you expect some form of kindness?.