Dark Souls 2: The Underappreciated Gem of the Trilogy
Rhapsodizing about the game’s merits and achievements
The Dark Souls trilogy has always been renowned for its demanding difficulty, intricate game systems, and abstruse lore — a designation which has garnered it an inherently high level of prestige in the industry — and yet the installment that honed those pillars to their most immaculate degree is also the most forgotten.
All of the kingdoms you explore in the trilogy — Lordran, Drangleic, Lothric — are war-torn hellscapes of desolation and tragedy. You’ll trudge through murky swamps with souls mired in viscous, flesh-eating gunk. Surreptitious monsters and demons lurk within battered castle ruins that lost their purposes long ago. Gods languidly decay in caverns and throne rooms, filled with malaise. Humans stumble from place to place, their histories and emotions leaking out of the very fabric of existence. The worlds swirl in a tumultuous cycle of light, dark, disparity, order, death, and rebirth. Chaos reigns.
Your character trudges out into these kingdoms, malnourished and ailing, in a futile attempt to unravel their cryptic pasts. Along the way, the odds are stacked against you in an atypically unkind fashion. Eccentric characters will betray you. Traps will be sprung. Bosses will harbor unforeseen powers that will catch you in your most vulnerable state. It’s all an uphill battle; you’ll feel like the games are writhing in fury against every step you take, contorting themselves into odd new patterns to catch you off guard. It’s a delicate, strained dance of patience and finesse, where you’re battling to overcome the challenges and learn the logic of the games’ worlds. Along the way, you’ll unearth the blood-tinged pieces of lore from the past, wielding abstruse and compelling mechanics to work your way deeper into the dark reaches of each of the kingdoms.
That’s the essence of these games. And, unequivocally, Dark Souls 2 seems to follow these principles the best, expanding and refining them to create an adventure that’s rife with tension and meaning.
Build Variety and Combat
One of the most compelling aspects of any Dark Souls game is the customization. Your characters are always exceedingly malleable. Whether you’re stomping around with an inordinately sized sword or you’re spryly flicking two daggers about, there’s a myriad of different ways to build your hero. You can be a paladin, reliant on strength and faith, or a sorcerer who’s imbued with the latent power of intellect. Or you can forgo any elegance whatsoever and tap into the inexorable elements of pyromancy, a personal favorite of mine.
As you move through the games’ worlds, you’ll find a bountiful trove of helpful knickknacks like rings, items, and armor sets, all stashed away in far-flung places that are perilous and brimming with traps. The incandescent, undulating whisp balls that designate these items’ locations grab your attention, pulling you steadily through the environments. Their luminous glows tend to take you off the beaten path. And the act of chasing after them and seeking new upgrades becomes a compulsive act of joy and excitement.
Every step forward engulfs you in a new sea of hurdles to overcome, but that challenge is counteracted by the player’s growing collection of items and their knack for using them to adapt on the fly. It’s an addictive formula.
Dark Souls 2 takes that formula and pushes it to new heights. The kingdom of Drangleic is a sprawling, eclectic domain of terror — far bigger than either Lordran or Lothric — and it makes good use of the real estate. Every nook and cranny of the landscape is teeming with ample amounts of weapons and armor that all have niche roles within the meta. And across the board, it’s almost unequivocally true that any weapon that’s lackluster for player-versus-environment content will thrive in player-versus-player scenarios, and vice versa.
Daggers are exquisite for critical attacks like backstabs. Rapiers thrive when it comes to counter attacks like parries. Straight swords are intended for very reliable performance in close-range encounters, whereas great swords are slow and methodical, specializing in delivering an atomic bomb’s worth of damage to opponents from afar.
Dark Souls 2 provides more sub-class weapons than either of the other two installments, too. Lances are another form of rapier that have their own niche. Scythes have a whole category dedicated to them, called reapers, which excel in different ways than other curved weapons such as the curved swords. And then there are the twinblades, a weapon class utterly unique to Dark Souls 2, which have combo synergy and eclipse all other weaponry when it comes to their stagger potential.
The game’s combat is far more meditative and strategic than the other two games. Player movement has a hefty amount of weight to it, and things like Estus Flasks — health pots — are far more time-consuming and sluggish to use. You can’t just reflexively heal yourself whenever you’re low on health; since it’s now a heal-over-time item, a single swing from an opponent will likely strike you down mid-animation if you’re not careful. You’ll also generally deplete your stamina bar far more quickly than intended if you’re just swinging and rolling aimlessly in combat.
This alleviates the frustration of player-versus-player fights from the other two games. Players in those ones could simply spam their rolls and heals — a problem that reached its zenith in Dark Souls 3 — which turned the battles into tests of endurance. They weren’t exhilarating or strategic. They were exhausting.
The slower combat of Dark Souls 2 also significantly opens up the armor and weapon meta, placing a greater emphasis on player choice and strategy when designing builds.
A magic caster, for example, isn’t at a disadvantage in player-versus-player like they are in the third game. In Dark Souls 3, magic is more of a minor hindrance that can easy be nullified via roll spam, but in the second game it takes precious stamina to dodge the magic attacks; this can make them very grueling and relentless to avoid, but it keeps the combat fair for both players. Multiple factors are present to make sure that level of fairness stays intact. Magic casters have a limited supply of magic, meaning they can’t just erratically toss out their spells while hoping to secure a kill. The more oppressive and destructive spells also tend to have fewer uses and take up more attunement slots, the game’s version of mana. Melee users have the advantage of unlimited attacks, but they need to close the gap to dish out the damage. They can also take advantage of bows and throwing knives to sprinkle a little ranged combat into their routine while facing casters.
Armor also has a far more essential role in players’ combat strategies. Heavier armor encumbers them more, but with the boon of increasing their poise. This is great for players wielding heavy weaponry like great swords, because it allows them to swing through damage without getting staggered; since their great swords do so much baseline damage, they’ll usually win these damage trades. You can contrast this with Dark Souls 3 where poise is a neglected stat, and most of the great swords usually have “super armor” built into their swings. That creates a far more static meta where it’s more about the weapon of choice for the player, and the actual armor set is almost entirely an aesthetic decision.
Lighter armor sets usually come with a whole array of tantalizing effects which are emblazoned into their fabrics — passive health regeneration, bow range increases, poisonous auras, reduced falling damage, increased casting speeds, headshot damage reductions, item discovery bonuses, and so much more — at the expense of physical damage resistance. Sometimes, even players with heavy weapon builds will make use of the lighter armor sets due to their vast utility. This is a level of complexity and variety that just isn’t present in the other two games.
Dark Souls 2 also features the most diverse range of stats in the series. The most notable of these is the adaptability stat which actually allows you to alter the amount of invincibility frames you have on your rolls. Players who rely on agility and dodging, such as casters and dagger wielders, might choose to pump a lot of their soul currency into this one, whereas tanks with high defensive resistances and bulky sets — like the Havel’s Set — tend to forgo the stat and invest in strength and stamina.
With the stats split up between all the game’s main components — damage types, spell uses, roll frames, health, and stamina — it really feels like the stats in Dark Souls 2 are incredibly versatile, and the players always have far-reaching choices to make with their decisions. A scarcer supply of souls and a new mechanic that tracks player’s total soul level — soul memory — means that you can’t just grind out an infinite number of levels. You have to really ponder where you’re allocating your souls. One of the things I’m most reproachful about with the other two games is that most players in end-game content have all their key stats maximized; this, once again, tends to spur on a very stagnant meta.
The last thing I’ll mention here is one of the game’s greatest features, and it’s one that’s entirely absent in both the other installments: the power stance. This is a system that allows you to dual wield any two weapons in the game as long as you have the proper stats, making it possible to swing them both simultaneously. You don’t have to ponder this very much to realize how this feature adds an incredible layer of complexity to player builds. In Dark Souls, trying to dual wield weapons would never really work, because you could only ever swing one of them at a time, making it almost useless. And in Dark Souls 3, the only dual wielding available was very limited and specifically attached to paired weapons.
Out of all the games in the trilogy, Dark Souls 2 is the only one where a rigid meta never gelled together. All of the armor sets are purely situational and thrive in a vast array of different kinds of circumstances. Almost all of the weapons, due to the slower and more methodical pace of combat, have a place they can thrive in. You’ll find casters using heavy armor. You’ll find knights with great swords and loincloths. There might be a few “ninja” players within the arenas with daggers, critical strike rings, and maxed out invincibility frames on their rolls. It’s not even at all implausible that you’ll stumble upon a player who’s cosplaying as a chef with a soup ladle as their weapon of choice.
It’s basically a ginormous sandbox. You’ll feel like a kid again while playing, your eyes bulging with wide-eyed astonishment as you’re crushed yet again by some novel, unexpected build you’ve never seen before. And that happens more often than you’d think.
World Design and Level Design
Before diving into this section, I think it’s essential to discern the differences between world and level design in relation to the Dark Souls series.
For level design, it’s the general flow and gameplay of an individual area. Anor Londo in Dark Souls, for example, is a self-contained area where we can begin to discuss the way they constructed the level itself.
World design is the way these individual areas are connected together and the general flow of the game’s entire playable map as a whole. Using Dark Souls again, a great example of world design is the way Firelink Shrine is connected to multiple other areas: Undead Parish, New Londo Ruins, Undead Parish, and The Catacombs.
I’m going to come out with a very audacious statement and say that Dark Souls 2 actually thrives in both these areas, with a well-paced flow that feels diverse, epic, and totally attuned with the design philosophies guiding the game.
Let’s look at Dark Souls first as a point of contrast. Many of the most celebrated and illustrious levels in the game are entirely linear such as Anor Londo and Sen’s Fortress. These areas have a strong focus on certain gameplay concepts that make them feel noteworthy and indelible to the players. Anor Londo has the infamous Silver Knight snipers and all the runs along the precarious rafters and castle buttresses. Sen’s Fortress has the narrow bridges, swinging axes, and booby-trapped claustrophobic corridors. Both of these areas are beloved for the inimitable experiences they deliver in spades. The levels in Dark Souls begin to morph into a lackluster experience, however, when the level design deteriorates due to the focus on hyper interconnected world design. All of the end-game areas — Lost Izalith, The Duke’s Archives, and so on — begin to feel shallow and emblematic of the game’s problems with level design. Lost Izalith is simply a straight path through a sea of retina-searing lava with a lack of enemy variety or environmental hazards. There are only a few standout areas, and then the rest are just bland semi-open spaces that lack defining gameplay features. It’s commonly agreed that the second half of Dark Souls is incredibly insipid, and that’s because its shoddy level design is put in the spotlight, with all traces of world interconnection forgotten.
Dark Souls 3 has the opposite problem. The levels themselves are generally rife with exploration and intricate, multi-layered design. A lot of it is very vertical, with shortcuts overlapping and snaking back and forth to singular safe zones. The Cathedral of the Deep is a fantastic example of superlative level design. Sadly, however, the sublime level design gets overshadowed by the extreme linearity of the world design. There are never more than two paths to go down in the game, and one of those paths always leads to a dead end. At the end, the players are funneled into a consecutive barrage of three levels. All of this has the negative effect of making each playthrough feel the same. The items you can pick up, along with the bosses you face, are restrained into being roughly the same order for every single forthcoming playthrough.
Dark Souls 2 manages to deftly navigate the rocky waters between these two conundrums of design philosophy, emerging with a congruous final product that perfectly harmonizes the level and world design into a form that works well together.
Let’s start with the level design. Dark Souls 2 levels, besides a few stand-out exceptions, are mostly linear dungeon crawls. This gave the developers a level of control that wasn’t really present in the first game. Areas could now be precisely designed to offer up distinctive and engrossing gameplay features, rather than just being a spatial supplement devoid of any uniqueness like many of the levels in Dark Souls. Let’s list a couple of the areas in Dark Souls 2 that exude that sense of uniqueness:
The Gutter: It contains extreme verticality along with a complete dearth of light. The darkness is discombobulating, which emphasizes the use of the torch and brazier mechanic. This place also constantly necessitates appraisal of vertical falls, because the heights can sometimes be deceiving and lead to death.
Shaded Woods: It’s a zone that’s blanketed in mists that obscure your vision, and which conceal spectral-type enemies that are translucent. This is where you’ll find the only enemies in the whole series which can’t be targeted with the auto-lock toggle. A whole new form of gameplay is created via that gameplay feature which takes many players out of their comfort zone. Now they have to focus more intently on aiming their weapon swings, and ranged attacks from bows and magic become a lot more grueling to use.
Shrine of Amana: An area that’s drenched in knee-high water and brimming with mage-type enemies. Melee users are forced to use line-of-sight tactics to reach these ranged enemies in the water which slows their movement speeds considerably. This place also emphasizes the use of distraction items like Alluring Skulls.
Shulva, Sanctum City: This dilapidated, water-logged subterranean kingdom is filled to the brim with an ample supply of enemies that will throng you and beat you to a pulp. There are devices scattered all over the place, however, that can be struck with arrows to turn the tides of battle. They’ll raise platforms that can act as cover to disrupt enemy fire, construct bridges that open shortcuts to create flanks, and so much more. The environment forces the player to be as perspicacious as possible, looking for ways to give themselves the upper hand in all their engagements. It’s an environment that’s constantly in flux.
Undead Crypt: It’s a dingy labyrinth that’s intentionally claustrophobic. This area is a nightmare for any players using wide-swinging weapons like swords and twinblades. If it swings horizontally in an arc, then there’s a high chance it’ll just get stuck on the myriad of walls and gravestones in the area; poke weapons like spears and piercing swords are the optimal tool of combat here. Another unique gameplay mechanic in this area are the bells which summon more enemies when struck. The bells are congruous with the claustrophobic design principles of the area, because they’re hidden behind gravestones and walls; this further emphasizes the need for poke weapons which limit the chances of striking these bells, an error which generally leads to overcrowding and inevitable demise.
Drangleic Castle: The castle is full of ominous statues which spring to life out of nowhere, along with hulking golems which amass the souls of the nearby deceased to animate themselves. This does two things with the gameplay. It forces players to move slowly and thoughtfully through the environment to avoid aggroing multiple enemies at once. And it also makes them think about when and where to kill the enemies. There are also many secret doors that open when enemies are killed close to them.
Do you notice the trend here? All of these levels, along with a plethora of unmentioned ones, have idiosyncratic mechanics that help them to stand out from each other. The mechanics are there to rearrange the gameplay elements that the players have gotten acclimated to, forcing the gamers to remain on their toes. There’s really never a dull moment in Dark Souls 2 for this reason.
The biggest oversight with levels in Dark Souls is that once you’ve reached the end portions of the game, you’ve already mastered the core fundamentals of the combat, and yet the new areas have no permutations to befuddle the adventurer and pique their curiosity. This leads to a pervasive sense of desultory “sameness” which is hard to shake.
Now let’s focus on world design.
Dark Souls 2 manages to nestle itself between the two extremes of world design seen in the first and third installments. Right from the start of the game, the player is able to trek down four different progression routes from the hub: Forest of Fallen Giants, Heide’s Tower of Flame, Shaded Woods, and The Gutter. Other areas such as The Lost Bastille can be approached from two entirely unique directions and entrances. Along these routes are areas that are totally optional such as The Grave of Saints and The Blue Cathedral.
This amount of variety significantly eclipses the progression diversity seen in Dark Souls 3. The positive of this is that there’s a greater array of items and weapons available to the player right from the start of the game. It also opens up more possibilities for challenge runs and other new playstyles. And, although it doesn’t surpass the non-linearity of Dark Souls, I still feel that Dark Souls 2 has a couple strengths that allow it to surpass the first game.
There’s a plethora of progression routes in the game, but they’re all very controlled and linear in the way they branch out. If you choose to go to Heide’s Tower of Flame, for example, it will always funnel you into No Man’s Wharf and Lost Bastille in that order. This was actually very propitious for the developers because it allowed them to build an inherently well-paced game in all directions. All of the four starter routes have a good variety of areas connected together that feel fresh and novel, with no two of them feeling trite when juxtaposed.
I wholeheartedly believe that this amalgamation of choice and linearity greatly benefits the game as a whole. You have the flexibility of being able to pick which bosses to confront first, along with the freedom to acquire items in an order that’s suitable for the players’ builds. And yet, despite that latitude, the game never loses its sense of forward-moving energy. All four of the main progression routes are meticulously controlled, and they all funnel into an end-game deluge of levels that coincide directly with the story; Undead Crypt, Aldia’s Keep, Dragon Aerie, and Drangleic Castle are some of the best levels the game has to offer.
Dark Souls 2 knows when to be linear and when to be non-linear. Compare this to Dark Souls where the end-game content quickly loses its sense of drive and energy. The four end-game levels are arbitrarily concealed behind impassive barriers until a certain progression milestone is reached, and they are very linear and devoid of arresting mechanics, lacking any sense of urgency that was exuded in the early game.
The world of Dark Souls 2 never has this drop-off of quality. The initial game is non-linear but rife with linear levels packed with quality, whereas its end-game areas are a tour de force of epic mechanics and vistas that culminate in a final boss battle beneath Drangleic Castle’s towering Gothic spires.
In a way, you can almost call Dark Souls 2 less linear than the first one, because a huge swathe of its end-game levels are hidden behind a door that can be opened without boss progression. The player just needs to farm enough souls to open it. Again, compare this to Dark Souls where it’s mandatory for the player to defeat the Ornstein and Smough boss to access the final levels of the game.
Lore
Dark Souls 2 distances itself from the stories and lore of the other two games, instead choosing to carve a new path in the mythos of the series. And, at least to me, it manages to chronicle a far more engrossing tapestry of tales and histories.
Whereas Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 are fixated on the metaphysics of the games’ universe, the second game chooses to focus its energy on humanity itself and all the personal stories it’s brimming with. The game weaves the histories and legends of multiple kingdoms together, with a focus on their leaders and inhabitants, that manages to feel simultaneously epic and intimate all at once.
In Dark Souls, we learn all about the Undead Curse, The First Flame, The Abyss, The Gods, and The Great Souls. We learn about the primordial state of humanity, known as Hollowing, where they’re caught between life and death. We learn that The First Flame brought disparity into the world for the first time, with Hollows morphing into Humans, but that The First Flame is known to fade, time and time again. The Universe is an inexorable spinning circle of cycles, fluctuating between ages of Light and Dark.
The first game can be viewed as a very compelling and abstract depiction of human depression and existentialism, but it sadly gets way too caught up in the metaphysics of its universe to ever strike any emotional chords. The third game has the differing dilemma of feeling derivative; It simply takes the concepts of the first game and alters them in a superficial way in an attempt to pay homage, but it ends up feeling trite and unoriginal. There’s nothing new to decipher in its world.
With Dark Souls 2, we’re swept away into an area of the trilogy’s universe that’s utterly unique and stands on its own. Similar concepts are still around, such as the Undead Curse, but they’re being used as a tool to spotlight new stories and ideas.
I love that Drangleic has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the trilogy. It allows the story of the game itself to have room to breathe.
There is a plethora of characters you’ll get to meet along your journey — Benhart, Gavlan, Lucatiel, and so many more — who are all rife with a sunny ray of earnest personality and angst. Their stories are more personal than the other two games. Lucatiel, for example, is simply a knight who’s fiercely striving for a cure to the Undead Curse so she can remember her past. Your character, another forlorn individual whose memories are slipping away, bonds with her along the way. All of the joys of life — family, love, friendship — have been coldheartedly ripped away from both of you.
The game chronicles a bleak tale of loss and futility. It’s replete with personal stories like Lucatiel’s quest. Rather than focusing on higher concepts like gods and the universe, it turns its eye to the humans of the Dark Souls universe and their suffering; we examine the reasons that humans go Hollow: their losses, the atrophying of their very purposes and sanities. The true insatiable brutality of the Undead Curse is finally laid bare for us to witness.
And the theme of futility is really hammered home as you delve deeper into the murky depths of the game’s world. You soon learn that even the highest forms of humans, such as Vendrick, the king of Drangleic, aren’t immune to the curse. Your entire quest revolves around meeting the king. And it’s long and arduous. You persevere through all the grueling obstacles and bleak vistas, and when you arrive to meet Vendrick you learn the truth: that he’s nothing but a tattered, zombified corpse lumbering about in a sun-starved cavern.
It feels so much more engrossing when the game actually explores the effects of these concepts that were discussed in the first and third games. Rather than acting like a game of show-and-tell in kindergarten where items are superficially flaunted around for all to see, we’re given a hands-on demo of the concepts that really dives deeply into their genuine meanings.
To give an example of this, let’s juxtapose how the act of Hollowing is represented in both the first and second games.
In Dark Souls, we’re told that it’s the primordial state of humans. And we’re shown a range of characters that have all gone mad due to the curse. They ramble about being forsaken and appear crestfallen, and that’s about it. Dark Souls 2 ventures into territory that’s far more resonant and meaningful. It uses the kingdoms and their rulers and inhabitants to explore how different people reacted in different ways to the Undead Curse. The Iron King, for example, was dictatorial in the way he subjected Hollows to brutality and imprisonment. His kingdom feared the curse, so the stigmatized undead were crammed into jail cells and hunted down via chariots and archery. The Sunken King’s kingdom turned to religion and dragon worship, hoping that the purity of the Ancient Dragons’ immortality would shield them from the enigmatic distress of the curse. And Aldia, a scholar and brother to Vendrick, began to perform twisted experiments in the hope of remedying the strange illness once and for all; he sought salvation from the curse while undermining his own moral compass.
Dark Souls 2’s approach allows you to wiggle your way into the shoes of the worlds’ inhabitants. It feels less abstract and more grounded. This applies to every facet of the trilogy’s lore and the way the game handles it. It just feels like we’re experiencing the game through a more personalized lens that makes the story feel more consequential. I found myself caring for the characters more often. And I definitely found myself poring over the prolific sources of lore in item descriptions and dialogue boxes more hungrily.
It’s also miraculous that the game manages to weave together such an elaborate and expansive compendium of history and story while maintaining its intimacy. All of the kingdoms merge together over the course of the game. You learn of all the ways they interacted, whether it be trading armed fighters and knights or supplying new technologies. Along your journey you’ll unearth remnants of other kingdoms in the one you’re currently trekking through. Pharros’ Lockstones, for example, are ubiquitous in Drangleic, but they were invented by an eminent explorer from another kingdom whose backstory brought him to Drangleic in search of answers to his riddles. Or you might notice that the Ironclad Warriors from the Iron King’s domain have a presence at the coastline of Drangleic; if you unearth enough of the world’s history, you’ll learn that they were supplied to King Vendrick in a bid to reinforce the continent against the might of the giants who were invading.
The whole game amalgamates together in a deluge of examples just like those two. And it all feels organic. Among all the interconnected tidbits of lore and history are the personal stories and emotional chords that tie it all together. It’s epic and intimate. It’s heartbreaking and uplifting. It’s chaotic and refined. And it’s truly immaculate and thoughtful in a way that the other two games could never really reach.
To end things, I’ll also state that Dark Souls 2 was building to a far more compelling future for the series than the other two games. It realized the true potential of a universe orbiting around cyclical narratives. Whereas the other two games are constantly diving back and forth between the cycles of Light and Dark, the second installment was more interested in what could be found outside of those areas. The canonical ending of the game ends with the player’s hero walking away from the throne and choosing a new path. Rather than choosing to let the First Flame dwindle to embers or alight it anew, we were given an interesting question to ponder: is there more to the games’ dire universe than cycles of light and dark? And, honestly, I found the potential within that narrative utterly alluring. It’s a shame they threw it all away in the third game for a retread of the first’s overplayed ideas.
Game Depth and Replayability
Out of all the areas where Dark Souls 2 shines, this one is unequivocally the space where it’s indisputably and objectively superior.
When you start a new playthrough in Dark Souls 2, you aren’t just thrown out into a copy-pasted world from your first time through with scaled-up enemies; the game actually commits to drastically altering the state of its world. Some bosses have new attacks and phases. The levels are dotted with new enemies to take on. You’ll unearth brand-new sets of armor and weapons that weren’t in the base game. And there are new events to witness such as bosses spawning in new areas and ambushes that weren’t there the first time. This adds a level of suspense and anticipation that was absent in the other two games. Baseline health and damage increases are an inherently artificial way to spike the difficulty, and Dark Souls 2 managed to triumphantly sail past those derivative design choices.
And it doesn’t stop there. From Software imbued the game with a multitude of reasons to return to it time and time again. The reward track was greatly expanded and refined. Now there were rewards for alternative forms of gameplay such as challenge runs. You can acquire rings that turn your weapons invisible, for example, by endeavoring to finish the game without dying or resting at bonfires. This was a sublime way of converting casual players into devout fans that would engage with the game in new ways.
Dark Souls 2 is also ingenious in the way it hands players the tools to manage their game’s difficulty and changeup the pace of content. There’s a covenant they can join at the beginning which drastically upscales the health and damage of enemies. And items like Bonfire Ascetics allow players to reset bosses and transform them into their new-game-plus forms. This is a great way to farm souls on your playthrough, and it also allows players to obtain multiple boss soul weapons without needing to switch over to a new playthrough.
That’s the sort of depth of variety and replayability that the game is replete with. From Software managed to take the new-game-plus mode of the first game, which was at times static and dull, and suffuse it with such an essence of new life. They realized that the Dark Souls games have more to them than a single journey. There are challenge runners. There are people who specialize in player-versus-player content. There are speed runners, and memers, and those who pore over every little detail and cherish them. With that knowledge, they crafted a game in the trilogy that would sustain itself over the years due to its expansive nature and satisfy the needs of a diversified swathe of gamers.
Final Thoughts
The most admirable quality of Dark Souls 2 is the fact that it truly endeavored to pioneer its own path. It’s a game that took multiple ambitious risks. And, in my opinion, that’s far more inspiring and exciting than any sort of retread, no matter how high-quality it was, that we were given in the third game.
You have to marvel at the sheer quantity of refinements they made to the first game’s formula while crafting the sequel. The health depletion mechanic upon deaths, with the health bar shrinking to half its size over time, added tension to the game that was thematically apt for what it was striving for. It reinforced the lesson for players that they should learn from every single death, rather than throwing themselves aimlessly against all the hurdles to eventually overcome them. The mechanic that allowed enemies to despawn after being killed a certain number of times was a two-pronged improvement: it prevented the non-stop soul farming that plagued the first game and trivialized its end-game content, and it gave struggling players a method of simplifying the route to the boss they were currently fighting.
A plethora of other elements were also significantly ameliorated. Players could now switch between covenants with ease. New healing items were introduced that were farmable and allowed struggling players a new path to victory. A more playful level environment was achieved with peculiar mechanics like booby-trapped chests, torches, environment-altering lockstones, and interactive hidden walls. The arena stages were greatly expanded for the player-versus-player community, with an eclectic mix of different places to test your combat prowess.
All of those refinements and updates were phenomenal, and yet they’ve been constantly overshadowed by trite counter arguments focusing on an alleged lack of quality and vision. It’s common for people to fulminate about the unpolished animations and hitboxes, which does hold a lot of merit as a complaint, but that shouldn’t be the only thing they focus on. Dark Souls was bursting at the seams with glitches and uneven design, and most people tend to equip their rose-tinted goggles to ignore that; for that reason, I’ve always found arguments focusing on those little details of quality disingenuous. There’s also the fact that Dark Souls 3 is incredibly polished, but it lost the spiritual heart of the first two games in the process. It feels more like a Bloodborne successor than an actual Dark Souls game.
I’ve watched numerous people do blind playthroughs of the trilogy over the last few years, and I’ve noticed a correlation between their opinions on Dark Souls 2 and how much they’ve been exposed to popular opinions on the internet. Quite a few of the ones who had never dabbled in discussions on the trilogy came out of their playthroughs with the second game being their favorite of the three. And I think that says a lot about how superficial internet discourse can really be. You’ll just hear the same opinions parroted over and over again until the point you can’t construct an opinion of your own.
To that end, I think it’s imperative for anyone who’s interested in the trilogy to try and distance themselves from any preconceived notions. Approach the games with an open mind and some bright-eyed wonder. And you’ll likely find yourself smiling from ear to ear while trekking through the wondrous world of Dark Souls 2.
