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How are you liking DS2, anon? A lot of people dislike it because it's too different from the other titles, and it's very unfinished.
Personally, it's my favorite in the series and definitely a top game for me. Despite that I'm still aware of the sheer amount of cut content and ridiculous stuff the game is missing. Really, DS2 just makes me sad. It was so inspired, so unique, so engaging. It had big ambitions and even bigger ideas. Unfortunately it just couldn't pull through. If things had gone differently, nobody would be arguing about its quality. That doesn't mean it's bad at all, but it's the worst version of something great we could have possibly gotten.
Have you seen some of the concept art from the art books? It's so evocative and atmospheric, I truly wish we got to see these versions of these areas rendered fully in-game.

>>48
DS2 has strong lord of the ring, action adventure vibes (both in a positive and negitive way)
Not a fan of how lesser the lore is overall where areas like new londo ruins have a important story to tell which can be gathered from looking around and item discriptions. It feels like it almost doesnt matter like there wasnt any forethought behind some areas besides just means of progressing the story forewards. The big reveil that the four lords where reincarnated was clever and i loved the lost sinner bossfight. (just beat her recently) and i feel like theres more i can hopefully look forward to. i also kinda enjoy the combat, it feels much more fluid and i like how weapons and armor disentigrate more then ds1 making things more frantic.

sweet saliqour is the best cat, better then alvania in ds1. will there be a cat in ds3?

>>48
Anon, could you please explain to me in detail why DS2 is your favourite? I'm not trying to be rude or anything here, I've just never understood how someone could prefer it over all the other games and I'd like to hear from a fan of the game.

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>>50
When I first played DS2, I noticed the lore problem too. That is very well because of how fractured the game is. Different disparate pieces had to be glued together to create the illusion of a cohesive whole. DS2 DOESN'T have a cohesive, complete world. That's just the nature of the beast. I still cope by saying that's what the Darksign does-- fracturing the world from the ground up. The flow of time is convoluted, at best.

>>54
That's a complicated and big question. I can't answer it entirely because I don't have the time or energy to write a big whole essay or whatever. To put it simply, despite the fact I also think it's the most fun and mechanically deep, it's probably just because of the sheer emotion the game evokes.
The tale of its development is one of tragedy and loss. The director didn't want to step on Miyazaki's toes so he tried to make his story completely separated from DS1. The entire game is meant to be separate and "different" from the Miyazaki games. It's no secret that the development of the game was a total nightmare, and the amount of content and ideas lost would be enough to make an entire game out of them. I'm not even going to mention that "How the Gutter Got Gutted" video. The developers had such ambition, but due to corporate factors they were constantly barred and prevented from seeing it through.
The actual game itself is reflective of this. You can see the ideas-- the little kernels of hope and light surrounded by low poly environments and shitty textures. It still has unforgettable moments of awe, like seeing Castle Drangleic or the Shrine of Amana for the first time. The raw game design is actually pretty solid, it's just everything else that isn't up to par. DS2 is a game of raw, unfiltered yet unrealized potential. It could have been so much better, we could have gotten a more fleshed out game with a more expansive world, but we just didn't. It's like a tree that was forced to stop growing just as the first shoots of green started to sprout from the ground.
For me, DS2 is what I think of when I think of "soul" in media. Despite everything, the devs tried to salvage what they could and put it all together into a playable game-- and that game isn't even that bad. 99% of people just hate DS2 because it's so different from DS1 and 3. It just makes me sad. DS2 is a game that I mourn. For all its beauty and joy, it also carries a heavy burden and it will never get the recognition it deserves.
I love it despite and because of its flaws.

>>55
I appreciate your response, but I'm not sure it really clears up any confusion I have, in fact it just confuses me even more.

>For me, DS2 is what I think of when I think of "soul" in media.
So when the introduction to the game are some old ladies laughing at me saying, "You'll die over and over again and lose your souls because Dark Souls is like THE HARDEST EVER GAME PREPARE TO DIE AMIRITE???", is that soul? Does soul, this love and care that went into the game, show up when I need to find a key for a dude to get inside his workshop, despite the fact he can just go through the open window, or the giant gaping hole in the ceiling? The first thing I noticed when playing the game was that my movement was locked to 8 directions. Is that soul? The inability to make basic fucking movement in a 3D game? These are all things in the first 15 minutes of the game!

What I don't understand here, is that you have an emotional attachment to this game, despite the fact that it's just plain lazily designed. I'll agree with you that, as whole, it's not an awful game or something, but, as a sequel to Demons' Souls and Dark Souls, it's extremely disappointing. The main follow-up question I have is: how? How did this game convey this "soul" to you? How did this game leave such an emotional impression on you? You're entire post is very melodramatic and full of emotive and descriptive language, which, at the moment, makes it seem like you've got a gun up against your head to try and tell me this game is actually good.

I know this post is a bit angry but that's just because I'm very confused. I just don't get it. I doubt you could change my opinion on the game but at the very least I'd like to understand why you are able to speak about the game in the way that you do.

i liked the humanity system in ds1 where every liquid humanity is a sort of soft level up where collecing humanity early on is quite essential to survive and if you need estus you'd have to sacrifice that humanity for that short (or potentually long) term gain. hollowing is cool cosmetically but its not like it weakens you or anything to add some type of penalty to dying (besides losing your liquid humanitys and souls) where i kinda enjoy the health cap and your appearance slowly atrophying although humanity is kinda useless in ds2 and i miss the old system. actually the health cap and the healing gem thing reminds me of demons souls.

>>56
It seems like both of us are eternally confusing the other because your post is practically incomprehensible drivel to me. Really, it just sounds like you're angry that DS2 is "too different" and you can't understand it, which is not out of the ordinary. I'm not even going to dignify your "8 directions" argument because not only is that somewhat irrelevant, but DS2 was the first game to including 8-way dodge rolling as well, which was an immense improvement.
What I mean by "soul", anon, is that the game had rather creative and unique ideas and tried to pull through in their execution, both in terms of story and setting as well as game mechanics. Every game after DS2 has had a sort of "Mario Mandate" feel to it, where the physics and feel of the game need to be exactly the same every single time.
Armor MUST be useless
Weapons MUST have cool shit limited exclusively to Weapon Arts
Estus and Miracles MUST be the only way to heal
Poise MUST be useless
Dodge spam MUST be the only way to play the game
Leveling up MUST use the same scale that Demon's did
Weight classes MUST work the same way they did in DS1

So on and so forth.
Demon's and Dark Souls had a sort of "soft playstyle" decision the player could make. It was very simple, just "heavy and slow" vs. "fast and light". As DS2 came out, it kind of changed that in a lot of ways. The player moved faster and the dodge had fewer I-Frames, focusing the emphasis on "dodging" to be more actually maneuvering around the opponent than just spamming dodges at them. You can simply walk around your opponent many times due to the faster move speed. More effective armors generally got lighter as well, however there was still an abundant of extremely heavy stuff for the "heavy and slow" players. Due to the change in weight classes, you could wear heavier armor and still get away with dodging, thanks to the previously mentioned speed boost.
I'm not even going to get into the magic system, but what I will say is that no Souls game before or after has had such a well thought-out set of classifications. Elden Ring can fuck right off, I'm a Miracle user and that game sucks balls.
To put it all in a list, DS2 has completely unique
>Level scaling
>Soul scaling
>Weight classes
>Poise systems
>Magic systems
>Stamina systems
>Health systems

Not to even mention things like
>Armor pieces having unique modifiers or bonuses
>Weapons having "merged" movesets such as the Puzzling Stone Sword

After DS2 came out and was a total goddamn mess, Fromsoft were scared away from having good or unique ideas, and are simply trying to force the gameplay of Sekiro and Bloodborne into Dark Souls while nostalgiabaiting the fuck out of DS1. Not only is DS2 the single most unique Souls title, it's also the most experimental. DS2 had ideas, and it tried new stuff. It put a twist on the formula, tried to add extra depth or options to areas that might have been lacking. Even if it didn't work all the time, they TRIED to do NEW STUFF. If that's not "soul" to you my friend, then I'm sorry but you don't have one.

>>57
>Reminds me of Demons Souls
That's actually not too far from what their intent was I think. I remember hearing at some point that the idea was to evoke the same idea of the Demon's Souls spirit/ human thing, but in a less punishing manner. Ironically enough, a lot of actual babies complained about it being "unfair" or whatever, completely forgetting the kind of game they were playing.
Funnily enough, DS3 would implement practically the same mechanic in a way that players would accept a lot quicker. By using one of those Ember things, you could gain a 33% health boost. The only reason people are okay with that is because of the fact that its presented as them GAINING health when using an item, rather than LOSING health when they die and needing to get it back by using that item. By simply removing the UI element that showed how much health they were missing, the game completely sidestepped that problem. It's an elegant solution, I'll give them that.

is there biblical theology in dark souls? at first there was nothing but grey skies and archtrees and dragons and then there was fire, light and dark and so on. dragons can be seen as angels and their not even reptillian but actually creatures of pure energy but it seems to imply they existed before the fire came into being. men also existed before the fire in a hallowed state but had a form of civilisation, kings and such. the fire is what made time flow and people actually human. but is it god? apparantly it had a soul. manus aka the furtive pigmy is the primevil or "first man" like adam but i dont know how. much like the forbidden fruit the fire was defiled thanks to a talking snake by the "lords" who gained control over reality and became "gods" much like how adam and eve ate the forbidden fruit and became like god by having knolidge of good and evil.(actually seith made gwyn attack the dragons but still he had to steal the lord soul in order to attack them in the first place)

kinda fucked up that the chosen undead was no more then a pig being led to the slaughter. the undead exodus story was faked by gwyn and all the bosses where just placed for you to kill and fatten up so you could be just right to kindle the first flame. cant kindle the flame if your weak. joining kaath is no better since he fucked over artorias and the people of new londo by making darkwraith and the "dark lord" would probably be no more then a tool at his disposal.

>>59
>It seems like both of us are eternally confusing the other

I can see that, so I’m going try to explain where I’m coming from first so that hopefully there won’t be any confusion. The main thing I want to respond to is a particular point you make which really does not sit well with me, but before that I’ll quickly go over some of the other things you said.

>I'm not even going to dignify your "8 directions" argument because not only is that somewhat irrelevant, but DS2 was the first game to including 8-way dodge rolling as well, which was an immense improvement.

Now, I played the Scholar of the First Sin version, so I'm not sure if this issue is not in the original release. The movement tries to snap you to one of the 8 directions relative to the camera. If a walkway you are going across lies between the 8 directions, it is extremely difficult to get your character to move in the correct angle, despite moving the analogue stick correctly. This means that unless you adjust the camera, you have to do a zig-zag pattern to go across this walkway. Why does this game not have proper analogue movement that even very early 3D games like N64 titles have? I understand you could just adjust the camera every time, but it just feels awful to control and having to babysit the camera is pretty annoying. What makes this even more frustrating is that it’s not like none of the members of the team had ever created a system like this before. Not only would they have had access to prior code, but if you are a game's programmer, being able to make movement should be a basic requirement to get the job. I do agree that the 8-directional rolling is a good change though.

>Every game after DS2 has had a sort of "Mario Mandate" feel to it, where the physics and feel of the game need to be exactly the same every single time.

I agree that later titles in the series have been getting stale, and I think that the series has done very little to iterate over previous entries and has instead simplified or removed nuance from a lot of mechanics. I believe this started with Dark Souls 2, however, but I guess that is where we will differ.

>The player moved faster and the dodge had fewer I-Frames, focusing the emphasis on "dodging" to be more actually manoeuvring around the opponent than just spamming dodges at them.

This way of dodging is still how it's done prior to Dark Soul 2 though, a little more so in Demons' Souls than Dark Souls I would say, but anyway it's not like Dark Souls 2 did anything different here. In fact, I would say that Dark Souls 2 is actually worse in some cases as there are enemies that force the player to dodge instead of manoeuvre due to the amount of tracking they have. A good comparison would be the Adjudicator from Demons' Souls versus the Rotten. They are both similarly shaped enemies with similar moves, but the Rotten will spin and face the player for most of the windup of its moves whereas the Adjudicator will mostly stay in place, allowing the player to move out of the way instead of having to dodge roll. Another culprit is the armoured tortoise enemy that has a very powerful downward slam attack. They will spin to face the player perfectly for the entirety of the windup, which means the player must dodge roll in order to avoid the attack instead of being able to walk around.

The increased move speed is fine, but the way i-frames are tied to a stat is a downgrade from the weight classes in my opinion. This really devalues light armour early on as you don't get the increased i-frames you would expect for a dodge-focused play style. I also don't think the starting value is high enough. This leads to ADP being a very important stat to level compared to other stats as otherwise you will get caught out by attacks even though it looks like you correctly dodged them. Basically, there wasn't anything wrong with the existing system and changing it only had the potential to worsen things, so I'm not sure why they did.

>>64
>Not only is DS2 the single most unique Souls title, it's also the most experimental. DS2 had ideas, and it tried new stuff. It put a twist on the formula, tried to add extra depth or options to areas that might have been lacking.

This is the point I was referring to in the beginning of my post. This, along with what you consider to be “soul”, are what I fundamentally disagree with, so I hope you bear with my very long explanation.

If we are talking about pure experimentation and innovation, then Demons' Souls has to be the winner of the series. Not only does it establish all the unique mechanics the series is known for, such as the messaging system, phantoms and other online mechanics, and the stamina system which sets its combat above previous action-rpgs, but it also has unique setups and gimmicks which offer a unique experience for the player. The boss fights are the most obvious point for this. Of course, the game has its fair share of traditional boss fights, but it also has a lot of interesting gimmick fights. Maiden Astraea is a fantastic setup for a memorable moment and is probably my favourite boss in the series. The Storm King is a great encounter where you get to use a unique weapon just for the fight. The Old Monk is something that I don't think any game had ever done prior to or maybe even since Demons' Souls. That's not considering some of the lesser gimmicks given to other bosses, such as Maneater, Old Hero and the Fool's Idol. Even the final boss has a grab move that literally delevels the player. There is also the NPC interactions to consider, such as Patches' trick and of course Yurt, who murders all of your NPCs behind your back. Then there are other mechanics such as your health being cut in half as soon as you die, and the player being forced to retread entire sections of the level in order get back to where they died.

The worst part about all of this, is that practically all of the more experimental features have been reused countless times over and over again throughout the entire series. The Maneater, Tower Knight, Storm King, Patches and Yurt have all been reused at least once in subsequent games and these are just setups I can think of off the top of my head. That’s also not considering that the online systems have had very little changes since Demons’ Souls with really the only major change being the covenants, which have kind of always been a bit half-baked, and the games including more ways to have pvp duels, which seems like a complete waste of time to me when you could be playing a game with more combat depth.

When you consider that this game is the first entry in the series, and borrowed little of these mechanics from other games, it seems obvious to me that it would be the choice for most experimental.

An important point to consider is why Demons’ Souls bothered with these sorts of mechanics. The appeal of the game, to me at least, is that it asks you to take its world seriously and wants you to approach each level and situation cautiously without rushing in head-first. It establishes itself as being a grim world but one that has clearly had lots of care put into it. The levels manage to not only have interesting layouts, but they also have practical layouts, almost as if they were real places. A good example would be the shortcuts in each level. In Boletaria, you open up barricades because it's a castle. In Stonefang, you use a lift which would've been used to transport ore from the mine down to the blacksmith. I think this helps to draw you into the game and take it seriously, because it takes itself seriously. These immersive qualities help it to really feels like there is danger lurking around every corner, and the game throws curveballs at you every once in a while to keep you on your toes. This, along with the unconventional aspects I mentioned previously, let the game offer a unique experience more so than anything else. I would put Demons’ Souls alongside games like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, where the gameplay itself is quite serviceable, but the real strength lies in this experiential approach.

As a sequel, Dark Souls does a lot of things to improve the moment to moment gameplay, while also putting a spin on the formula by setting the game in a single, interconnected world. In terms of providing the experience of exploring a hostile environment where you are left entirely to your own devices, I think it's unmatched in the series. The inability to warp in the first half of the game really helps to draw you in, and the excellent level-design really helps heighten the enjoyment of exploration. Although a lot of things are reused from Demons' Souls, such as Yurt and the Maneater setup, I think there are still a decent amount of unique areas and bosses to offset this. My favourites being the part where you are taken away and locked in a cell and must escape in the Duke's Archives and how Sif limps after you get his health low enough.

Neither of these games are perfect, but I think they managed to identify their appeal, and they rolled with it quite well. Both of these games understood that it was the experience that they could provide that was the most important aspect. This is where I feel like Dark Souls 2 is lacking.

>your post is practically incomprehensible drivel to me.
With all of this explanation, I am going to bring up the two points I made other than the movement again in the hopes that you can understand why I made these complaints.

>The old lady introduction
This also goes in hand with the statue which shows the total number of deaths in Majula. The issue I have with shoving the fact that you will die a lot into the player's face is that it's just tone-deaf with the other games and takes me out of the experience more than anything. "Prepare to Die" is a marketing slogan, most likely produced by Bamco, but I would hope that Fromsoft would not also shove this crap into the game as well. I don't think difficulty is the focus of these games and this complete lack of subtlety is kind of like the developers are laughing at you like, "check this out, your going to die a lot". The previous entries are certainly challenging games, but if you approach them in the cautious manner they expect you to, their challenge will dissipate quite quickly. I think this focus on the difficulty shows up in a couple of other areas. Some of the bosses just have random fodder enemies thrown in to make it more difficult, while also lacking a lot of the gimmicks and variety found in the previous games' bosses. There are a lot of sections where multiple enemies just aggro you at once, many having shields or powerful weapons which just makes it annoying to deal with rather than being an interesting challenge. I think that fairness is quite important with these games too, so things like the trap chests that don't have a tell just feels kind of cheap. In other words, it feels like the developers were more focused on providing a game that would fit the snappy marketing phrase rather than something that truly reflected the strengths of the series, which is why I brought this up as not having “soul”.

>The guy who needs to get inside his workshop
As I said before, something that these games do quite well with is having a very believable world as this helps to draw you in and take it seriously. This guy just made me roll my eyes because, realistically, he could just pop through one of the many open holes in the building and continue working, but instead he sits outside like a retard and asks some random guy to help him. I bring up this particular instance because it was right at the beginning of the game, just after the intro, and both of these soured my mood very quickly.

This last point, as well as the point about fairness, could easily be turned around on the previous two entries as there are some parts of these games that do not meet my standards. The difference is that other parts do, and I think they more than make up for these shortcomings, but there is also the fact that Dark Souls 2 is a direct sequel: an opportunity to fix problems with the previous games. It doesn't have the believable world or the unique, novel mechanics from Demons' Souls, it doesn't have the well-designed and interconnected levels of Dark Souls, and it has shortcomings of its own that extend beyond these issues. I did not find it to be an immersive experience, and I could not take it seriously. Some parts of the game were such obviously poor decisions that could have easily been fixed or just not implemented in the first place, yet they decided to throw them in anyway. This is the main reason I don’t understand why you think this game has “soul”, because the lack thereof is the chief reason why I didn’t like it. This is an issue I have with the other entries in the series, but they at least have some kind of other redeeming qualities. Bloodborne has excellent art direction and atmosphere and some of the most intricate level-design in the series which still manages to draw me in, despite taking a more action-heavy approach. Elden Ring is not a game I think I could bother to finish, but I think the open-world is, at the very least, decently well executed and some of the traditional dungeons have interesting layouts. This is on top of the fact that the build-variety and stats at offer are arguably at their best. The only reason I like Dark Souls 3 more than 2 is because I think some of the core mechanics are a bit better, such as the improved Estus system, and I prefer its art direction.

Before wrapping this up, there is one point that you made that I have a fleeting suspicion you will use to disregard everything I’ve said.

>Really, it just sounds like you're angry that DS2 is "too different"
>and you can't understand it

Yes, I don’t like that Dark Souls 2 is different from the previous titles, but that way of wording it doesn’t fully explain it. Dark Souls 2 is different in that it doesn’t understand what make the previous games great. It’s the start of the series’ stagnation, and focus more on its very basic core gameplay rather than the overall experience, and compared to later entries, it has very few redeeming qualities of its own. If you seriously turn around and say “you don’t understand it” after I’ve laid out everything I’ve said, I will not be willing to accept that.

Even if you do not agree with anything I’ve said, I hope you can at least understand where I’m coming from. I recognise that my first response was a bit angry and not very well thought out, so I hope that this time I can make up for that. If you bothered to read till the end of this post admittedly very long post, then I thank you for your time, and I’m eager to hear your response.

>>65
I don't have the time or energy to write a big long essay like we've been doing unfortunately, and I'm getting a little tired of this argument, so I'll try to make this quick.
I understand your points better now that you've laid them out in a more orderly manner and all I can say is that I disagree. I don't think the 8-way movement is all that big of a deal, and while it is a valid point I just don't think it's super detrimental to the experience. Your points about 'soul' still continue to confuse me in some ways, but ultimately I think that comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding and disagreement between us on what 'soul' actually means.
DS2 is very far from being perfect, and its flaws are blatant and obtrusive, that much is true. I just don't think that many of those flaws outweigh everything else. While I acknowledge their presence as a stain on what could have been an even better game, I don't believe they make the entire thing worthless.

I love how interconnected dark souls is, It made backtracking fun because you think you know everything then BOOM a hidden wall connects two areas together and it makes traveling much more convenient yet connected. Kinda reminds me of retro zelda.

Looking back at my playthrough last year I have two memorable moments with dark souls.
The first one happened after going through the catacombs. I'm not sure why, but that area was starting to get boring for me after a while. Something about just tunnels in the walls. After completing it I went to blight town, and that place evoked a sense of mystery and wonder in me. In particular, I remember early on reaching one of the dead end planks of wood, and just staring into the void... Something about that stuck with me.
The other one happened in the giant's tomb. At some point, after all the darkness, I got to the ash lake view. I was getting pretty deep for what I was able to handle, but somehow I was successfully avoiding death while slowly burning through the estus flasks. And still I marched on to the caves. Eventually I was forced to return, but I really enjoyed the feeling of getting so "deep" into the world, there was a sense of adventure to it. Like, it wasn't easy to get to the point I had gotten to, it made it feel special. It's hard to explain.

That feeling you get while exploring the tomb of the giants is pretty unexplainable. ESPECALLY without a lamp and you have to just freehand it,

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Say what you will about the other games in the series, but the original Demon's Souls is drastically underrated. It wouldn't be inaccurate to call it a "beta" for Dark Souls 1, as there are MANY areas and design choices that clearly have an evolution and a direct tie to stuff in DS1, but still.
Atmospherically it's impeccable, the tone and visual design of everything is also flawless. All of the individual levels are extremely unique but still come together to form a cohesive and believable hole. I wish I could spam post more screenshots because I was constantly thinking "man this looks awesome!" while playing the game. The Tower of Latria has to be one of my personal favorite areas in any videogame ever, let alone any Souls title.
I'm not finished with the game yet but I'm definitely getting there because I can feel certain areas getting much easier. I approached the levels going from left-to-right so when I got to the Valley of Defilement and beat the first boss for ~8K Souls, I knew that I was way overleveled for the area. Even the Shrine of Storms was piss easy-- I nearly instakilled just about every enemy there and it took me about a 6th of the amount of time that the Tower of Latria or Stonefang Tunnel did

>>138
I actually just beat it a little while ago, so I'll post about it again.
Really, I'm speechless. What a beautiful, fun, expansive and though provoking game. Typically From games have really shitty and weak endings but this one just blew me away. I kind of forgot the whole overarching plot over the course of my journey but I'm so glad I did it the way I did because it just hits harder really. Fighting Maiden Astraea as the last Demon was also a mistake done perfectly. The way that she didn't even seem like a "demon" or malicious being of any sort, the way she pleaded and begged for her life while you killed her after slaying her obviously blessed Paladin defender. The way that NG+ ties into the story and makes sense within context, all of it.
Real weird. Real unforgettable. I already knew the game was good about a third of the way through it but now my opinion's just set in stone

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>>139
Upon doing more research into the remake, I'm very disappointed. It's such a shame how the remake completely defiled this game without any understanding of what makes it good in terms of atmosphere, visuals, or music. Modern Fromsoft in general is just a pathetic, childish flanderized version of what Demon's and DS1 were. They don't understand the quiet simplicity and respect of these games somehow. DS2 was really the "last" game like this I would say, and even then it was already morphing into the bastardization of classical Dark Fantasy their modern stuff is now. Demon's - DS1 have a sort of elderly storybook fairytale sort of vibe to their stories and worlds, but after that everybody got obsessed with THE LOOOORE and fucked it all up. The music in particular pisses me off in the remake. The original had a really subdued, simple and humble soundtrack, but the remake of course goes for the overly bombastic """dramatic""" horse shit that's plagued these games since 2. Don't even fucking get me started on songs like Maiden Astraea or Old King Allant. I don't know how but they managed to make the songs more lame by making them "more dramatic". I'm so glad I played the original, because I can guarantee you the remake is worse in every single way

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Some weird shit's been going down in my most recent playthrough of DS1. I've been playing this game basically since it came out, and while the game has always been a little different every time I play it, this time it's just blatantly obvious.
Somehow, for some reason, the enemy aggro ranges have increased massively. Webm related, the enemy in the far back with the torch used to NEVER notice you from this far away. There have been countless other examples but this one was the most convenient to capture. In the same area, the butcher on the floor below you becomes instantly aggro'd as well, but I've already killed them so I couldn't record it.
This seems to just be a Remastered thing, because I looked around online and it seems that around 2018 people were complaining about the same stuff except this is the FIRST time I've ever noticed it. I remember playing Dark Souls on the Xbox 360 and I remember it very vividly-- these enemy aggro ranges were significantly smaller back then.
It's frustrating that From keeps fucking with this game instead of just letting it be. Damn near all of the changes made to the game have been negative in some way

i found two decent dark souls fansites that both offer interesting perspectives about the lore
https://lokeysouls.com/tag/dark-souls/
https://shetanislair.com/en/posts/lost-in-translation-dark-souls-one

For some reason i became burnt out of ds2 and i was thinking of playing ds3 then backpedaling. am i retarded? should i beat ds2 first or does it even matter?

>>282
DS3 has some tiny references to DS2 but for the most part they're completely disconnected. 3 is a direct sequel to 1 but in terms of mechanics it's more of a regression of 2.
You can play the games in whatever order you want though, it doesn't matter unless you care about following the lore

I had basically went against advice from an anon and basically grinded until i maxed out my stats for my zwihander build and I also damn near fully upgraded my elite knight set and i pretty much blazed trough the game without any problems lol. two/three hits killed every boss but i did sweat with kalameet. getting to the boss area was hard enough with him KOing me within seconds and then battling him was insane, i had to be real quick and it took 5 hits overall to kill him. manus spooked the hell out of me but was trivial. its a build to play on a second playthrough but it didn't ruin my experience overall.

>>427
My only problem with this approach is that magic one shotted me so basically i had to be on my toes. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

I liked how Oolacile was actually that wood area in dark souls. It was a neet revelation. It was sad to see that Sif recognised you as the person who saved her and slain Artotias. It was interesting to enter a world that had just became an apocalypse and was still bright and clean. Kinda like the beginning stage of a zombie apocalypse, everyone was infected but life was still there. The chimney fire was still burning in the houces you enter and the people there was freshly infected by darkness.