old DS2 review

(copied from my Steam review)

Saying that this is a poorly made game is an understatement. It is the antithesis of what made Dark Souls so amazing, to the point where I almost wonder if the devs were deliberately trying to have the game to sabotage the legacy of its predecessor. A lot of fans like to cry out "DON'T TREAT IT AS A DS1 SEQUEL!", and yeah, you shouldn't. I didn't, but that doesn't excuse what's in the game.

There's no "real" difficulty in this at all, it's substituted by terrible enemy placement and/or enemy spam, to the point where an area without gank is seen as a break. Armor weight is pointless now, since your roll i-frames are tied to a stat, forcing you to cough up 20-30 levels just to have a DS1-level midroll. And you're gonna want to learn to roll, too. Parrying is weirdly floaty, and the riposting has to happen after an animation that will be nullified if you attack too early, so it's not even worth the effort. The bosses are all either forgettable, boring, or annoying, more akin to minibosses, with one exception. Fume Knight is a fantastic boss, reminiscent of Artorias from DS1, but one good boss out of 41? Come on, now. Not only are they terribly designed, a good number of them rip off of DS1 bosses, with one encounter literally being the exact same boss as the Bell Gargoyles, except not as fair. That's the biggest example of incompetency in this game to me, when they copy-paste an old boss into the game and mess up the formula that was already written for them.

There is barely anything I can compliment in this game. Anything I could, you could find better in either of the games before and after it. If you're a completionist, I guess you might enjoy this, since there's a lot to do, but it's not really enjoyable. I hear it's good for PvP (as literally any DS2 defender will list as their main point), but I don't care for PvP, so that's gone too. I will choke out a compliment and say that I can at least respect that they 70% tried... kinda? No, not even, really. So many designs are bit from DS1, any sword-wielding enemy has the exact same moveset, multiple NPCs follow the same format in their interactions, hell, they even ripped off the final boss of DS1 for Vendrick. If you're a hardcore Souls fan and want to put yourself through this, you can go ahead, but don't expect anything on the level of any other game in the franchise. Don't expect anything over a 6/10 (at its peaks) in general, really.