Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

I love the beginning of this game it sets the tone perfectly. You are person without name or past who will do things, they will not understand why they are doing, and you will die over and over again but feel nothing.

I love the world of Dark Souls. It feels so old like it has existed for such a long time, that people have forgotten what it meant. The world is slowly losing memory of itself.

The world has so many secrets and just small details that I'm still figuring out. I have played this game for three years and I still don't know if I see everything about it. It's just such satisfying mysterious level design. The level design constantly forces you to get a pit in your stomach when you have to jump from one corner to another corner it always nerve wrecking but God it's so good.

The combat is good and the different weapon and enemy design works well, but everything has a feeling of floating is to it, like it leg some real Power behind the animations. Everything is a bit too smooth.

Dark Souls 2 has two very big weaknesses in my opinion.

1: The game has a lot of bosse, but most of them are okay. Some of them are really bad, and a few really good bosses. It just kind of devalue the boss bar experience, when most of them are just meh

2: adaptability, When you're understand it, is kind of easy. Just get it to 39, and then you can roll through most things in the game, but you're kind of have to know it. I cannot figure out how you would know this without Googling it.

The Dark Souls 2 DLC is very good. Just the level design and how fun it is to explore we have the brume tower that is about going up and down.

A more Mayan inspire DLC that forces you to use bow and arrow to traverse. The frozen Wasteland that you play through two Times, to see the differences that the Blizzard does to the environments.

I really enjoyed Dark Souls 2 and think that the ending where you leave the throne room is one of the best in the franchise. It is lacking in gameplay department, but in the exploration it the best in the series.

I had a lot of fun playing it. Leveling up my character and weapons and perfecting my build (I went with hex and melee). So many great weapons that you can infuse. So many spells, hexes, staffs, pyromancy, etc. There's so much variety to how you want to approach the combat here.

The story wasn't very clear or interesting tbh, but the overall atmosphere and gameplay kept me hooked. And overall, the game wasn't all that hard. I hardly encountered any moments where I was like "wtf thats bs!".

The map and world design is were great for the most part. With some beautiful imagery throughout the game.

The bosses were okay. Probably some of the weakest ones in the whole series. But there were some really good ones (Pursuer, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne)

I guess my biggest criticism is about the story or what brings everything together, everything just seems kind of scattered. You're not really solving a puzzle here, but you can still enjoy all the individual pieces.

When I was done with, I felt a bit sad having to turn it off the last time.

Would definitely recommend it to Soulsborne fans.

Ohhh yeahhh, this was a long time coming. I can't even say how long ago I started this game; probably around 8+ months ago, which in turn, took me another 3 months to finally finish the game. Now, I think I me and my friend beat the first dark souls and like 2 weeks later we started this one, so there was barely any kind of breather in between. My first reactions I remember was that the game definitely seemed like it was trying to be more player-friendly than the first game, with a tutorial and plenty of easy tho ya to kill.

With my character, I decided to go a full strength build because after the first game, I desperately wanted to be the big bonk guy that could take a hit or two. And man, this build was so much fun. Actually able to go 1v1 against these scary bosses without feeling like I'm about to get wiped off the face of the map was such a pleasant surprise. Now, the story is about as non-linear as the first game, with this one presumably being set thousands of years in the future from Dark Souls 1, with certain areas that feel somewhat similar, although still keeping its dark fantasy setting. Now, I can't remember everything I did within this game, so I can't give much details that I want, but I do plan on replaying the game. I do remember most of the bosses being fairly more easy than the first game, maybe because of my build, but once we got into the 3 The Lost Crowns dlcs, I started to clutch a little more. Definitely enjoyed all 3 but this is definitely the most challenging part of the game. After killing all 3 kings, you get an awesome crown, but since all I needed was to kill Nashandra, it didn't feel like it was used to its potential. I think it only took us one try to beat her, but it surely was a finale to remember. Now, because this version of the game includes extra and reworked material from the first game, I won't review each dlc individually like I usually do, and because this game offers a New Game + that's apparently vast in its new enemy and weapon/gear placements, I will definitely revisit this game eventually. So for now, after over 100 hours played and reaching I believe level 180, I called it quits... for now. Once I play and beat this game again, I'll come back to update this review.

I am overall a fan of the From Software games but this one can literally be wiped off the face of the earth. It is plagued with terrible issues, overall feels clunky to play and the story compared to the others isnt that great either. The game feels more hard for the sake of being hard as the other games are great games that are hard. Every chest you open you will get ambushed which removes the hole point in an ambush. And the scholar of the 1st sin it's like they went over the original game and thought, how can we make this harder rather then focusing on the issues like why you stand still for a second after swinging your weapon? It's just sad that the core levels actually look nice and have a half decent layout. But it's just plagued with annoying stuff like locking on breaks the combat and the game plays better completely not using it. Even the estus flask has been made redundant by the use of life gems. And if you can make it through the hole game without being hit with an explosive barrel then you would get a DNA check with Jesus. It's almost like someone went over the levels had glue holding down ctrl + v placing barrels all over the place. But the best part is if you or an enemy hit them they explode. You can be walking round then out of nowhere you'll explode loosing all your health cos an enemy jumped into a barrel. And AI in this game is broken aswell. I've had enemies attack me then just stand still for ages wondering whats gonna happen next almost like they are trying to say sorry. The enemies glitch out constantly. Like how do you go from Dark Souls 1 which is mostly a solid experience with a few smaller issues to Ds2 which was a complete mess to Ds2 sotfs which overall made the game even worse.

If I was you I would skip this game unless you completed every other soulsborne game and you just wanna complete this 1 just to say you have completed all of them. But being honest I don't think anyone would actually care if you just said that you skipped this one cos its terrible. They will likely understand why. The only memorable things are it are a couple of things. The cringe opening cutscene or the clunky combat mechanics.

If you wanna cheese the hole game. Use life gems and level up agility as much as you can. Use life gems instead of estus.