100% of the few good ideas DS2 had were utilized better in their other games, and without any of the numerous issues that DS2 introduced.

Took everything good about souls games, copy pasted

That’s true for all of the games on your list. These games are (and always have been) innovations on each other. The erd tree bosses are improved stray demons, which is an improved asylum demon, which are improved adjudicators. Even if they weren’t innovative, the new bosses and mechanics would still more than make up for it IMO.

and spread it out so thin to cover an entire open world … Destroying the pacing and exploration of a complex designed world

You never found any of the areas that take you off of Torrent and stop being open-world? They’re the same as all of the previous games, and there’s loads of them.

no content

Did you even make it out of the starting area??? Ever seen a minor erd tree? Or stop one of the roaming carriages with loot? You really didn’t find any of the puzzles? Paintings? Notes pointing to things to do? Never found any good loot tucked away in an obscure part of the map? Never found a notable place to get useful crafting materials? Never found the churches, golden seeds, or the physick flask? Never encountered a story invasion? Never encountered a boss roaming in the overworld? Never found an evergaol? You didn’t find any NPCs or try to do any quests/miniquests? Not even any merchants? Didn’t find any underground open-world areas? Didn’t touch any teleporters or dubious chests?

I can go on.

in favour of a flat large plane

Blatantly untrue when you leave the starting area and look literally anywhere.

repeated enemies and the same dungeon over and over again.

The only thing the caves and dungeons have in common are textures. Repeat bosses are definitely a thing though, but repeat enemies… I don’t see how that’s an issue. They’re used in different combinations and contexts that mix things up, and it’s no different than any of the other games on the list.

I never like to dismiss someone’s criticism of things because they’re generally subjective, but so much of what you said is questionable… if not just objectively wrong.

Who told you you can’t criticize politicians and work within the existing system?

And players who need (effectively) infinite heals to get through a Souls game

It takes control away from you by snapping your left stick to angles, they frequently resort to enemy spam and horde bosses, the animations and models are cartoonish compared to any of their other games, thrust attacks can’t be aimed up or down far enough to attack small enemies without locking on, a significant portion of the game is trivialized by effectively infinite / spammable heals, iframes are tied to a stat…

It sucks.

Also coming from dsr the movement felt very soapy if it makes sense.

You’re feeling the angle snapping. The game tries to wrestle control of your left stick away from you to try to get you to walk at one of 8 specific angles relative to your camera.

It’s the sole reason I haven’t bothered to grit my teeth through the rest of the game’s atrocities.

Edit: somehow I misread “soapy” as “sloppy” lol

It makes so much more sense after reading this lol. Thanks for your wisdom and hard work!

Because nobody is saying

“Clearly all articles about AI should be about how it will turn the world into a utopia where everyone is well-fed, healthy and able to do whatever they want with their time and for god’s sake, no one mention the massive ecological catastrophe they’re making a huge contribution to.”

The guy you’re responding to is criticizing the article for being *"*one-sided and pessimistic" and your response is basically “you just want everyone to fellate AI corpos all day”? That’s just another one-sided take, for one, and for two, the only time I ever hear it is from comments like yours.

I’m tired of reading articles that, rather than having any semblance of nuance, opt for one of the two extreme ends of the debate because they know it’ll get them more clicks, even if it’s at the cost of further polarizing the internet.

And in the comments it’s as if people believe the only valid takes are the ones handed down to us in the media written by corporate shills and emotionally charged creators. It’s possible to think AI is a cool step forward for computer science and that it’s severely flawed in its current state. It’s possible to think that corporate data scraping has raised major privacy concerns and we should train AI more ethically. It’s possible to think AI is consuming a concerning amount of power and resources and we should find better ways to do it.

But the lack of nuance is better for engagement 🙄

He was talking about theism, but regardless this is a “tu quoque” argument. Believing things without evidence or reason is bad whether they’re a theist or an atheist.

Edit: Wait I think I see what you meant now. You’re making a semantic argument and yeah, you’re right lol. Replace “atheist” with “skeptic” and it still works, though.

Plenty of people say the same thing about horoscopes and crystals, and at the same time plenty of my family members believe in those things wholeheartedly.

They’re two different groups, and if you pay attention to the first words I wrote it’s obvious I’m not talking about the former.