Dark Souls 2 Review after Full Playthrough: (No Spoilers)

Dark Souls is an action-RPG game series made by a Japanese developer based loosely on European medieval fantasy settings. The settings are bleak, the enemies are difficult and the game is hard. Prepare to Die is the games' motto. I’ve played the entire game solo and killed all bosses including optional bosses. These are my final impressions from my complete playthrough of the game.

This game is the best in the series.  

The relatively open world concept and punishing game mechanics remain. However this iteration of the series showcases improved locales, more boss fights, longer gameplay and better multiplayer. It is, however, hurt by its pathetic story, poor item distribution and underwhelming magic system. 

First, let's talk about what a Souls game is. The game is basically an action RPG (roleplaying game). You pick a humanoid character and equip him with various items like swords or maces or wands. You level up using the game's currency, souls. As you level up you improve numerical statistics such as strength or vigor that describe your character's power. You use spells or direct physical hits to defeat enemies that are in your way. 

You’re largely free to explore one of a handful of pathways from a central hub. You’re offered very little guidance about the gameworld except that you are undead and cursed and need to acquire souls.  You largely play as a melee or sorcery hybrid as the task requires, though you’re not really forced to commit to any one technique. The game is punishing, and when you die you respawn at “bonfires” without any souls. You have one chance to recover those souls which are placed at your point of death. If you can backtrack to where you died from a bonfire without dying, you regain those lost souls. If you die again before reclaiming those lost souls, those souls are gone forever. The thrust of the gameworld is overcoming the enemies and environments which utilize all manner of traps, tools and trickery to destroy you. Often skill and planning is more important than sheer brute force. Some enemies fire projectiles at you form a distance. Others excell at close combat and need to be circled around to their backside. You die often, but you slowly learn about the gameworld and your skills grow. The reward is the journey not the destination. By the end of the game you gain a sense of appreciation for your character’s growth and development across the game.

You are often confronted with impassable terrain and its your job to figure out a way forward. The game does not hold your hands. (Source: http://www.darksoulsii.com/us/)

Better locations

Dark Souls 2 sports better surroundings than ever before. Engrossing settings, colorful locales and varied enemies make the trip through Drangleic mesmerizing and entertaining. Even the starting town of Majula contains fascinating distractions. The game does not simply rehash the poisonous swamps and undead prisons of its predecessors (though those settings do exist). Many of these environments conjure distinct emotions. Some are frightful, others are frustrating, and some just plain inspire awe. The music, particularly during boss fights, is thrilling and appropriate. You will not be dissapointed by the varied and memorable settings the game has your character traverse.

More Bosses than ever Before

Additionally, Dark Souls 2 presents the largest and best lineup of bosses in the Souls series. Some of the bosses are influenced by previous bosses. The game also has a varied array of sword and shield humanoid bosses. While these were entertaining, they were often too weak to magic and not all of them had strong methods of punishing long-range spellcasting or circle strafing melee. The Souls games are best when they stray from stereotypical fantasy. The strongest bosses present monstrous unique encounters.

Additionally, the failed “concept” bosses from earlier games, like the Dragon God of Demon Souls and Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls, have been reworked.  Dark Souls II successfully weaves non-melee mechanics into a multistage boss fight. Without spoiling anything, one gripping boss fight has the player running through a gauntlet to operate a device to move the fight into a second tense phase.  It is entertaining and a competent evolution of gimmick fights from prior games. On the whole, Dark Souls 2 steps up and delivers a higher quality boss experience than its predecessors. 

Fights are often designed to take place in dramatic locales with tense backdrops. Even the weather ups the drama level. (Source: http://www.darksoulsii.com/us/)

Gameplay mechanics are Improved:

The gameplay itself is an evolution, not a revolution from previous games.

The largest change is the finite spawn limits on mobs. After you kill an enemy a certain number of times, they stop spawning in the gameworld. This can make that particular level easier to navigate, but it means you can't keep killing mobs for souls to level up. Despawning enemies discourages grinding and accentuates the value of souls as a finite currency. Each death becomes intensified knowing that lost souls can’t easily be recovered by farming respawning mobs. Items called Bonfire ascetics allow you to respawn enemies at a raised difficulty raising the risks and potential rewards.

Like Demon Souls, your permanent health decreases every time you die. However you can use items to decrease the health loss. Unlike both its predecessors, when you die you can still be invaded by online players, making death very unattractive.

The game also returns to the mechanic of Demon Souls of being able to warp between any two bonfires. This is a welcome change. While Darksouls interconnected world is endearing, non-warping was a tedious mechanic that created repetitive gameplay as you retread your steps to get to locations you already visited before. Dark Souls II correctly prunes away tedious and unnecessary gameplay by committing to teleportation as a universal game mechanic. Other unreasonable mechanics from Dark Souls, such as cursing, have been vastly toned down. Your health is not permanently halved every time you are cursed. Rather you merely lose a small amount from your health bar consistent with dying.  

Covenants are focused and useful:

Throughout the game you can leave written messages on the ground to guide other players in other worlds. Additionally you can read messages on the ground left by other players. Not all of these messages are helpful. You can also summon other players as "phantoms" to assist you with challenging areas or put down a sign that allows others to summon you. Lastly you can be invaded or invade other worlds as a hostile enemy to try to kill a host player. The basic multiplayer mechanics have not changed. I was dissapointed that weren't specific environments or bosses that were meant to only be done by multiple people. 

Previous games had "covenants" or clubs your character could commit to. Upon completing certain kinds of tasks your character ranked up in said covenants and gained various rewards. From software has made most of the covenants in this game PVP (player vs player) oriented and it actually makes sense now to join them depending on your playstyle. Dark Souls contained obscure covenants that were too cryptic for most casual players but here covenants are relatively easy to understand. 

You just don't know what's going to be around the corner. (Source: http://www.darksoulsii.com/us/)

Criticisms: Plot is worst of the Souls Series

Plot was never a strong point in the Souls games. In Dark Souls2, the plot is less fleshed out than even Dark Souls and far short of Demon Souls. A half-hearted attempt to reheat portions of Dark Souls’ plot provides a weaker plot than the vast majority of games on the market. The game would have benefited from a more coherent, central unifying plot that was fleshed out in occasional cinematics and NPCs (non-player characters). To a new entrant to the series, Dark Souls II’s plot is disjointed and a bit of an afterthought.

Criticisms: Item Distribution is broken 

Moreso than in any previous game, major upgrades are hidden and inconsistently distributed throughout the game. Almost all the major item upgrades are in obscure hidden locations off the main path. Meanwhile the items you get from using boss souls have absurdly high stat requirements and are underwhelming. I used an item I found on the first level through the entire game including on the last boss. You could easily go through most of the game with the large leather shield you get in the first level. In fact a major shield upgrade is found in an out of the way location in the same starting level, which can easily take you to the end of the game. Disturbingly, a key item that lets you use fire spells is easy to overlook, meaning you could be easily locked out of an entire gameplay style if you don't look carefully. Important items just aren't distributed evenly in a way that matches their difficulty of attainment and point in the game. Fans will be dissapointed to know that the Collector's Edition items are in fact very powerful and very hard to find in a plain-vanilla playthrough. The items should have been more evenly spaced in the gameworld with major upgrades along the main path (albeit less powerful than “secret” items).

Criticism: The Magic System is Underwhelming

The magic system is still bare bones. The game also fails to experiment with novel crowd control spells or venture far beyond the banal spell trees of fire balls, poison fogs and magic arrows. There are a large number of fairly useless, poorly designed spells with few casts, but your bread and butter spell remains the same. Clearly I would have liked to develop a broader arsenal of uniquely animated spells as I progressed through the game.  I found myself relying on the exact same blue colored projectile spell, great heavy soul arrow, the entire game.

Final Judgment: 9/10

Simply put, the larger number of bosses, interesting areas, superior covenants and streamlined elements make this the best game in the series. It provides a very strong, long gaming experience. However, three games is starting to make the playstyle sour. Fromsoft is going to have to evolve the series and move forward if it wants the next Souls game to be as central to gaming as the first three have been. That would involve upping the plot and experimenting with different multiplayer and spell mechanics. 

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