Confirmed Kill: Dark Souls II

Title: Dark Souls II

Original Release: March 11, 2014 (Multiple)

Finished Release: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PS4, 2015)

*Very mild spoiler warning*

Okay, so it's not overly difficult to see what led (immediately) to this one.  I had conquered every challenge Bloodborne had put before me, but I'm not really a "play again right away" sort of guy, so I opted not to pursue New Game+ for the time being.  But that left me in a quandary, since I was still dying (heh) to play more, but Nioh wasn't quite what I was looking for.  And so, with nowhere else to turn, I decided to finally try Dark Souls.  But which one?

Well, it might make most sense to start with the the first one (or Demon's Souls), but I thought that may be too extreme a shift from Bloodborne.  Dark Souls III was (and still is) the most recent, and apparently took a lot of its cues from Bloodborne.  But, after some research, I found that most people suggested that the story in III, such as it is, is fairly connected to the original Dark Souls, and best served as a follow-up to the latter.

And so we come to Dark Souls II.  It's (relatively) disconnected from the other two games in the series, it's Bloodborne's direct predecessor, and it had been on the receiving end of an updated PS4 release.  All of these things appealed to me for various reasons, not the least of which being that I got to use the Dualshock 4 rather than the inferior Dualshock 3.

Taking all those things into account, I decided that was the way to go.  How did it turn out?  Well, let's just see.

We open with a fantastic cutscene, full of dark fantasy goodness, and ending with our faceless character doing a belly flop into a portal in a lake (bear with me).  We come to... somewhere else.  It's a grassy area with little imps that just watch you as you explore your new surroundings.  It's a fairly straightforward path that eventually leads to a small house, wherein we meet three elderly women known as the Firekeepers.  It's here where we create our character and choose our starting stats, and it's also where we get some unusually direct exposition.

My character is a knight by the name of Aldyn (more on him later), and it turns out that he's been stricken with a serious case of the zombies.  That is to say, he's slowly becoming one.  He's traveled to this place, the fallen kingdom of Drangleic, in search of a cure.  The Firekeepers mock him for a bit, then offer him what aid they can before sending him on his way.

Before long, and after killing some monsters, Aldyn comes upon the settlement of Majula, and it's here where his journey truly begins.  Majula serves as the equivalent of the Hunter's Dream in Bloodborne, a base of operations where you're (mostly) safe, and you can purchase and upgrade your armor and weapons.  It's also the home of this game's equivalent of Bloodborne's Plain Doll, the Emerald Herald.  She's the most important person in Majula, since you can turn in your collected souls to her to level up, and she can also upgrade how many healing flasks you can carry.

We'll be returning to Majula constantly throughout the game, but for now we begin our adventure in earnest, as Aldyn sets out to uncover the secrets of Drangleic, and hopefully cure his undeath, preferably by bringing actual death to lots and lots of enemies.

So let me say this right away: Dark Souls II is a flawed game.  Depending on what you're willing to forgive, you could even call it a severely flawed game.  I'll get into the various reasons why in just a minute, but I wanted to make that statement before making this one: Dark Souls II is my favorite Dark Souls game.

Now, to be fair, I have not yet finished either Dark Souls I or III.  I started both but unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) experienced series fatigue.  I'll come back to both in the near future, but for now Dark Souls II has, overall, been my best experience in the trilogy.

Dark Souls II is the only game in the series (including Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) to not be directed by series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, and it's easy to see so.  Maybe it's just power of suggestion, but there's a definite feeling of "That's just how things are done" as the reason behind a lot of the design choices.  At the same time, paradoxically, so many decisions were made that seem to show a complete lack of understanding as to just what makes these games so enjoyable.  Let's look at some details.

The story, for example, is just as mysterious as ever, but it almost feels mysterious for the sake of being mysterious.  Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it immensely.  There are some seriously great ideas on display here, and some of the characters featured are among the most interesting the entire "Soulsborne" franchise has to offer.  I loved Bloodborne's Plain Doll, but the Emerald Herald is far and away my favorite "helper lady" character.

Majula too is, in my mind, the best hub area in the whole franchise.  This was the first game in the series to feature the ability to teleport between bonfires, thus making it easier (and more common) for you to come home.

And you'll be coming home frequently since, as mentioned before, most of the game's merchants reside in Majula, as does the Emerald Herald.  I know some people dislike being required to go to a specific location to level up, but I honestly prefer it.  The Emerald Herald is your ally all along the way, always there to remind you what you're fighting for, and so the act of increasing your character's level feels that much more special.

Add to that the fact that more characters come to Majula over the course of the game, and by the end it feels like a community of people you've come to know and, at the very least, feel attachment to.  Sure, most of them are fairly cynical, and some are mildly psychotic, but it still feels like a home.

A large swathe of the bosses are also fairly interesting, with a small handful of them being downright awesome.  I won't go into too much detail, but my absolute favorite boss was Fume Knight, from the Crown of the Old Iron King DLC.  I had heard horror stories about this guy, and he definitely lived up to them.  But, like any good boss, I learned his methods and adapted, and I overcame him.  It actually led to developing a new fighting style for Aldyn that's more focused on dueling, which in turn just added another facet to the story I was already creating for the character in my head.

There's also an absolutely fantastic bait-and-switch moment with a late-game boss that I did not see coming.

But the fact remains that the story is not without flaws.  As I mentioned before, it's a typically mysterious Souls story, but the hand responsible for weaving this tale is far less deft in its motions.  It's as if the writers didn't even know the answers to the questions, and it happens more often than I can really forgive.  Also, from what I've heard, a lot of it is more or less retreaded from the original Dark Souls.  Still, credit where credit's due, since it can't be easy to be handed something so unique and to be told, basically "Just do it like that."

Something that gets less of a pass from me is the game's selection of locations.  I hate to say this, but most of them are awful.  I didn't really get to mention it in my Bloodborne review, but my most hated area in that game is a place called the Forbidden Woods.  I won't go into it right now, but there's a stretch in Dark Souls II of about five to seven (depending on how you view them) areas that essentially feels like if you took Forbidden Woods and stretched it out over that many areas.  I was frustrated and miserable for hours on end.

It doesn't help that the areas weren't at all nice to look at.  Some places, like Heide's Tower of Flame, are unique and dynamic, clearly springing from an interesting idea.  But most of the locations in the first two-thirds of the game rely on some variation of green, brown, and later black.  It doesn't look gritty or muted in an appealing way, it just looks muddy and washed out.  And the absolute worst thing about these sections is how cliche a lot of them are.  Oh, here's a swamp full of undead.  Oh, here's a crypt.  Oh, here's a forest, I totally didn't just deal with one of those earlier in this exact game.

Thankfully, the areas that don't subscribe to the "rule of boring" are mostly fantastic.  There's a sweet castle in the rain, a town overrun by spiders (which is a pain in the ass, but at least it's unique), all sorts of stuff.  There's a later area called the Shrine of Amana that everyone hates, but I actually found pretty enjoyable.  It required a weird mix of patience and quick reactions.  And a crossbow.

There's also the areas in the three DLC expansions, Crown of the Sunken King, Crown of the Old Iron King, and Crown of the Ivory King.  While the Old Iron King stuff is a bit too similar to an area in the main game, it's also the location of Fume Knight, so it gets a pass.  The other two sets of DLC, however, feature some pretty great areas.

Sunken King takes you to (what else?) a sunken city with a sort of Mesoamerican feeling, full of ziggurats and stone buildings.  The later areas here aren't quite as interesting, but it makes one hell of a first impression.  It's just unfortunate that the gameplay here features so many of the problems the game is plagued with.  But more on that in a bit.

Finally we have the Ivory King DLC, featuring the frozen kingdom of Eleum Loyce.  From a pure visual standpoint, this is the absolute best area in the game, at least for me.  Never have I seen the idea of a kingdom covered in snow and ice executed so well.  There's this strange sense of quiet and peace, but it masks a brutal deadliness that will sneak up on you if you aren't wary.  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that it's beautiful.  I have a painting of this place as the background on my phone.

But enough good stuff, let's complain some more.  What in the hell were the developers thinking with the enemy placement in this game?  I really can't figure it out.  See, it's one thing to have an enemy sneak attack you, or force you into a fight in a disadvantageous location.  Those come with the territory, and they're part of the challenge.  But this game has some sort of strange fascination with throwing multiple enemies at you at once.  And I don't just mean two soldiers or anything like that, no.  I genuinely had situations where I would be fighting four or five enemies at once.  And some of these enemies are a challenge on their own, nevermind being backed up by three other dudes, possibly ones just as tough as they are.  Some of these situations can be mitigated with patience and careful enemy pulls, but sometimes it's just downright unavoidable.

In a game like Bloodborne this wouldn't be such a problem, because that game is built for it.  The fastest Dark Souls character is still nothing compared to the speed and agility of a Bloodborne character.  Bloodborne is all about dodging and being in control of the pace of the fight, and even then it was relatively rare to fight large groups of enemies, usually just in optional areas or shortcuts.

Dark Souls just isn't built for that kind of fighting.  Your typical sword-and-shield character is built around waiting for an opportunity to attack, but it becomes increasingly difficult to do that when you're surrounded by enemies.  You can only block from the front, and when one enemy isn't attacking, another one is.  And this problem isn't limited to regular enemies, either, since there are several boss fights where you're actually fighting two (or more) bosses at once.

Oh, and sometimes people throw bombs at you while all this is going on.

And now I have to talk about what is the biggest problem with Dark Souls II.  Remember how I complained in the Bloodborne review about the hitboxes of the attacks from some of the Chalice bosses?  Well take that and expand it a hundredfold here.  I swear to Bob, some of the hitboxes are absolutely ridiculous.  And look, I'm not the type of guy to make excuses, I'm prepared to own up when I make a mistake.  I wish I had a way of recording this stuff, but perhaps I can make do with an explanation.

See, there's a follow-up boss to Fume Knight, a guy by the name of Sir Alonne.  He himself is pretty damn cool, he's a silent samurai and his boss fight is, again, like a duel, it's pretty great.  But at least a couple of his attacks are absolutely borked, and none is so bad as his flashiest one.  Basically, he charges forward and impales the player (poor Aldyn) on the point of his sword.  It does pretty good damage, then he flings you away for more damage, and he'll quickly follow up on it.

For the most part I was able to get by against Sir Alonne using Aldyn's new, more samurai-like fighting style, which was actually partially inspired by the trouble I had with Sir Alonne's mooks, the Alonne Knights. Basically it focused on staying out of the way, but staying close, pressing the attack whenever possible.  But whenever he would whip out that impaling attack, I would have to drop everything and run as far away from him as I absolutely could.  Why?  Because the point of contact for what should be the thrusting tip of a katana was actually a 180 degree radius in front of Sir Alonne.

I kid you not, I'm being dead serious here.  I genuinely had this experience.  Sir Alonne goes to stab Aldyn, Aldyn dodges deftly to Alonne's left, coming to rest near Alonne's left shoulder.  Aldyn takes damage from the tip of Alonne's sword after it's already gone past, then teleports over to his own left, somehow now impaled on the sword.  I know it must sound like I'm making this up, but I give you my oath as a former Cub Scout.  This happened.  I still beat him though.

So yes, Dark Souls II is a very flawed experience.  It gives the player a distinct feeling that it wasn't crafted so much as thrown together.  What's good here is great, it's just unfortunate that it's weighed down by so many problems  But I still had a great time with it, and I may very well play it again.

And besides, I was able to continue the new tradition from Bloodborne and add my player character to my stable of original fictional characters.  His name is Sir Derek Aldyn Gerhard.  He can heal people, his sword is coated in lightning, and he's Léon Reneaux's BFF.  Oh, and he learns to fight like a samurai.  You're welcome.

Until next time!

Current interests:

Listening - Various

Playing - Final Fantasy IX (2000)

Reading - Rhett & Link's Book of Mythicality (2017)

Watching - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (2017)