I will try again… One day. I promise.
DaS2 is a great game that happens to be in the unfortunate position of being situated in between the game that defined the genre and the game that perfected it.
DS2 will always have a special place in my heart.
After dying 13-15 times to the Fume Knight and giving up in the lone wolf strategy and inviting some strangers to help me to 1 year later replaying the game winning the fight in the first try barely tooking damage was the most exciting gamer moment ever.
The only thing that come closer to me is the final boss in Sekiro.
People be like “Errr, the elevator to the lava castle.”
Okay, sorry the game took you somewhere interesting. Go to DS3 if you want the brown village to take you to the brown swamp that leads to the brown catacombs.
The problem isn’t that the game took you somewhere interesting. The problem is that the game completely forgoes any geographical consistency by having you take an elevator at the top of an windmill that goes up and you exit inside a lava crater. The brown village with the brown swamp and brown catacombs in DS3 may look visually less interesting but they’re at least geographically consistent.
And that example in DS2 isn’t the only one, it’s just the most blatant one. It’s also a significant difference DS2 has over other DS1 and onward titles. Other From titles try to keep the geography of locations consistent. DS3 is an excellent example of that because it doesn’t matter what area you’re in, if you look into the distance and see something of interest in the distance you can be 99% sure it’s a different area you will visit. For instance if I’m not misremembering I’m sure you can see irithyll from the undead settlement. In DS2 if you see something in the distance it might be an area you’ll visit but it also might be just something in the distance. For example in the Iron Keep (the lava castle) if you get to the boss area you can see a temple or a village or something of the sorts in the distance, I don’t really remember what was in the distance because you never get to visit it anyway. And that’s assuming there is something to see in the distance, a lot of the areas in DS2 you can’t even see into the distance.
The ability to recognize your surroundings is what made DS1 world interesting. I still have a fond memory from looking into the distance in the Tomb of Giants and recognizing Lost Izalith. I have similar memories for DS3, Sekiro and Elden Ring. I don’t have such memories for DS2.
I love Dark Souls 2 and I don’t care what anyone thinks otherwise. It was a joy from start to finish.
