After I finished Dark Souls, it was only a matter of time until I played the second one. I actually didn’t play it right away because, unsurprisingly, I wanted to take a break from Dark Souls.
That all ended this recently, when on a bad Saturday I decided to just check it out, to get my mind off things, and oh boy didn’t it do it for me.
The beginning of this game is so punishing when you haven’t played Dark Souls in a while, that I started thinking that I was trash. I was stuck on some of the first couple of bosses for more time than I expected. The mechanics of 2 are a bit different from 1, so it took me some time to get used to it.
The Ruin Sentines were my first look at the soul of this game. I so hopelessly stuck on them, that I had to read the wiki, only to find out that there is a hammer in this zone that makes the fight easier.
Though things turned around, and after that, the bosses were actually the easiest part, while the enemies in the zones were the hardest part. This is a big difference to the first Dark Souls. The bosses in 2 were sometimes laughably easy, and the challenge usually was to get through the zone (looking at you Iron Keep).
Things took a dark turn in the DLCs, though. Not only the zones were hard, but the bosses were a real pain in the ass. Nevertheless, the DLCs were my most favourite part of the game. Maybe because of the challenge. The earlier game feels a bit unbalanced, while the DLCs just don’t take prisoners. I was stuck on the Blue Smelter demon for days. The last boss fight was the cherry on the top, what an entry this boss does, one of the best.
Overall, it was not as bad as people say it was. Definitely suffers from some shortcomings, but I enjoyed it. One negative was that I was too stressed due to pushing myself to finish it in a week because I didn’t really have spare time. I wanted to be done with it as quick as possible, and with such challenging zones and more than 40 bosses – it wasn’t easy.
Don’t listen to people who say “skip it”. Try it yourself.