In Defence of Dark Souls II…
I am going to presume that anyone who is reading this has played, or knows a fair amount about the Dark Souls games, so if you haven’t this is your SPOILER warning.
In case you are unaware, the ‘Dark Souls’ games have become very popular over the years. The presentation in lore and story, at the time, was incredibly original. Very little in these plots are made very clear for you, and you are left in your own to piece together what might have happened in these games.
There is also the combat, which either makes or breaks the player. When you press the attack button, you haven’t committed to an attack, but you have committed to a long, laborious process of the swinging your weapon/casting a spell. The result is not immediate. On top of that, instead of your attacks and dodges being an infinite resource, you have a limited amount of stamina that you may invest in at any given time. You have to be careful of your choices. If you push the wrong button, you can’t mash your way out of it, neither can you cancel said action by performing another. You just have to tough it out. This style of combat creates frustratingly beautiful friction between you and whatever it is your fighting. You can’t stab willy-nilly or dance around waiting for an opening, you have to actually learn the move-set of your foe, preparing and observing their actions. Whilst not as fast paced as other Action-RPGs, its deliberate pace makes each victory a meaningful one.
These are the basics as to why the Dark Souls games are deemed as good as they are. Everything else is just personal preference.
I have a weird piece of inspiration for writing this blog as it is one that technically arrived a couple of years ago. Being an introvert, I have never had many friends. Whilst at uni, I made friends with one particular guy (who I will call ‘Mr X’) who was, and still is, very enthusiastic about the Dark Souls games. As was I, and we spent a lot of our spare time talking about anything and everything ‘Dark Souls’.
One night, he invited me to meet some friends of his, all of which so happened to be fans of the Soulborne games. It came to a point in our conversations when somebody asked what our favourite games in the series were. Mr X’s was the original ‘Dark Souls’ and mine was ‘Bloodborne’. One of his friends (who I will refer to as ‘Lady X’) very confidently admitted that hers was ‘Dark Souls II’. Whilst the rest of them scoffed at the very thought, as so many people would. I too was rather confused by this statement, but unlike the others, I was intrigued about what led her to that decision. I turned to Lady X and she simply said. ‘You’ve played Bloodborne, right? Play Dark Souls II exactly how you play Bloodborne.’
So I did just that. I made a new character on ‘Dark Souls II: Scholar of The First Sin’ on my PS4 with this new mindset and I have to say, Lady X was onto something. Despite its many flaws, I have a different opinion on ‘Dark Souls II’. Through this one change, I was able to appreciate the game, it’s mechanics and so much more. Hopefully, I can convince you as well.
Every game in existence presents a different way that it wants you to play it. Some are very obvious with pop-up boxes that tell you that pressing this button and this button tells that for example. That is not what I am referring to, however. I am talking a bit more than that, as there are often very subtle design choices that play a bigger part in your gaming experience. For example, in ‘Demon’s Souls’, the first boss is a large three-eyed, winged turd of a thing called ‘Vanguard’ that will probably kill most casual players on their first playthrough. It has a large pool of health and its attacks will probably one-shot you. If you die, you wake up in the Nexus (the hub world) and begin the game properly, but if you beat Vanguard you are punched by a large dragon (I am not joking), die and wake up in the Nexus. ‘Demon’s Souls’ teaches the player two things with either result of this boss fight:
- You are going to die…a lot, so you better get used to it
- All victories, no matter how great you feel about it are pretty meaningless as you could easily be killed by whatever is around the corner.
‘Dark Souls’ has a similar, but less difficult setup. You kill easy enemies with a broken sword, and quickly a large, hideous winged demon called ‘Asylum Demon’ drops down from above and probably killed you on your first go. You are however encouraged to run to a gate to the side, wander through a dark corridor and back into killing weak enemies with a broken sword. The very first item you are given is a shield, which seems sensible you may think but what the game actually tells you is to hide behind said shield in order to survive. Its predecessor is very similar to this, which is probably why many YouTubers and players on forums didn’t get the appeal of these two games when they first came out. Lots of critics however did, which I always found rather interesting.
You can see for yourself that many first time players on YouTube were overly cautious hiding behind their shield and poking at the enemies with a javelin or similar weapon (because you can use them with the shield up). You can parry for the chance to do more damage, but you can easily mess this up and get hit. Why take the chance when you have a shield? You can also roll and jump out of the way of attacks…but you can still be hit for a few frames. Don’t risk it, just use your shield! There is also the option made available to two-hand your weapon to deal extra damage, but no one ever does that in Dark Souls because they don’t have an arm for their shield. In short, why take the path of most resistance when you make things easy for yourself with a shield?
‘Bloodborne’ is fundamentally different from Dark Souls in many ways, but one of the biggest differences is the lack of a shield. Instead, you have a gun which is mostly a means to parry, unless you build your character a certain way. Dodge, parry, attack or die, those are your options. There is actually a shield in this game (two if you have the DLC installed), but it is presented so late into the game that you should have grown used to the game’s mechanics by that point. It is also made very clear that you shouldn’t use the shield in the game through its description:
The wording of that is wonderful, isn’t it? ‘They engender passivity’. It’s as if the developers are admitting they were wrong about the implementation of shields in the previous games! Or rather, the attachment the fanbase has for such items.
By removing the ‘safety’, ‘Bloodborne’ cleverly introduces what I believe is the fun way to play the other Souls games. Like the first Dark Souls, ‘Dark Souls II’ has many shields to choose from, most of them are very good and both games have different classes you can pick to start your adventure through Drangleic. Out of the eight starting classes in ‘Dark Souls II’, only one of them gives you a shield, but has a broken sword, which is a massive handicap if you are rigid to the way you intend on playing this game the way you may have played the first Dark Souls or ‘Demon’s Souls’. I will admit I was one of those people, and that was why I probably sucked at the game and didn’t enjoy it very much.
My rigidness to change meant I didn’t do particularly well with ‘Dark Souls II’ style of combat, which was dealing with hordes of enemies which I thought at the time was a lazy way to make something challenging. Whilst I still believe that to an extent, I feel that less with ‘Dark Souls II’ because of one's new way of playing the game. There are loads of ways of dealing with hordes of enemies, the most obvious of which is not to use the lock-on feature and move the camera around, something I did quite a lot of in ‘Bloodborne’. That said, I wasn’t glued to the lock-on feature during group fights such as the one with Prowling Magus and The Congregation, Royal Rat Vanguard and the two Dragonriders in Drangleic, something that a YouTuber called ‘Matthewmatosis’ didn’t do and looked quite stupid because of it. There’s actually a lot of things he mentions in his video about ‘Dark Souls II’ that I disagreed and laughed at then as much as I do now, but I shan’t go into that because I feel I will get myself into trouble.
Despite my new(ish) opinions about the way ‘Dark Souls’ should be played, one thing that has never changed is my thought on the bosses, most of which I believe are pretty underwhelming. What I’ve never agreed however is the criticism that ‘Dark Souls II’ has ‘too many dudes in armour’, either in boss or standard enemy form. Yes, many of the bosses are similar and don’t have as much variety as the former Dark Souls game. That is not to say the bosses of ‘Dark Souls II’ lack variety, because there is quite a lot of it. I have always thought that the best fights in games are with someone on similar footing. There is something satisfying with people using the same skill set as you. To use an outside example, the final boss fights in ‘Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’ and ‘Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots’ have you square off with people on a similar level as your own.
The Dark Souls franchise is filled with moments like this as you have various fights with NPCs (standard and summons) who move and wield weapons which you can own and fight within the exact same way they do. It is one of the things that make PVP in these games so exhilarating because chances are you are going to fight someone who is about the similar level to your own and has access to identical resources, making things a fair fight (unless you are a Faith build in ‘Dark Souls II’ then you are inherently fucked). To prove my point, some of the favourite bosses in the Soulsborne games (in no particular order) are Knight Artorias, Gehrman The First Hunter, Sir Alonne, Lady Maria of The Astral Clocktower, Soul of Cinder and The Abyss Watchers. They can be all be described as ‘dudes in armour’ (for the most part) and own weapons that you can wield for yourself in similar fashions they do.
With a slightly different perspective, it is clear that the devs didn’t just run out of ideas. They developed and exploited on the missed opportunities of the previous games and I like that. The constant rematches with The Pursuer in ‘Dark Souls II’ were always fun, despite being incredibly frustrating, as he would always show up at the least convenient moment and give me a massive headache. The same could also be said about my life at college…
The interconnected world of ‘Dark Souls’ is loved by many fans of the series as you can access many areas from other areas that loop around each other making it look really clever with its many shortcuts. The lagfest that is Blighttown is a good example of this. That said, this choice in world design also lessens the overall design as compromises have to be made because of the possibility of entering Blighttown from many different routes, which is probably why the Blowdarts do not respawn once you kill them, thus removing some of the challenges and fun of the game. A better example of this is a large chunk of Anor Londo, as it is only designed to be entered one way, such as the first encounter with the Silver Knights. ‘Dark Souls II’ interpretation of Blighttown, The Gutter, is far more entertaining. It has jumps and drops down with the purpose of being travelled through once in one direction. If you die, you have the ability to travel to any of the many bonfires that you have discovered from the offset, a skill you had to earn in the previous instalment, you don’t have to worry about spending five minutes running to where you died, you can simply warp there (unless you died at the boss fight then you have a lot of fun ahead of you)! However, I will admit that having this feature made available from the very beginning made a lot of ‘Dark Souls III’ very forgettable, but yet the world of ‘Dark Souls II’ didn’t suffer this problem.
I describe as ‘Dark Souls’ as interconnected and not non-linear because you have clear objectives that can only be done in a certain order. You can technically kill Quelaag before killing the Bell Gargoyles if you are a madman (or woman) but you still have to ring the two Bells of Awakening, grab the Lord Vessel, get the Lord Souls in any order and then kill Qwyn. It is a choice of which linear path you can take first cleverness disguised by the interconnectedness and the running around as bonfire warping wasn’t properly developed in the first game. In ‘Dark Souls II’, you technically don’t need to defeat the four major bosses to progress to Drangleic. You can just get a shitload of souls! ‘Dark Souls’ contrives itself in needless magical fog, stopping you from exploring certain, more obvious paths because fuck you (for example, Anor Londo to The Great Archives and Quelaag’s Domain to Lost Izalith). The only lord soul you can get first before doing anything else is the Lord soul belonging to The Four Kings…but only by defeating Great Grey Wolf Sif, so there still isn’t a lot of freedom for the player.
‘Dark Souls II’ has a similar mechanic to Dark Souls magical fog. ‘Dark Souls II’ special magical doors off the beaten path that don’t block the most obvious path of progression. It is possible to forget about them until obtaining the special ring. You also have far more freedom in which of the four opening areas to explore before the game becomes far linear than its predecessor.
The set up of the story in the original Dark Souls is very dramatic and is fairly straight forward to understand. Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight and his squad destroy many of the dragons, build a massive kingdom with a powerful soul, his people begin to turn crazy and somewhat undead and a magical flame begins to burn out and Gwyn and said squad fuck up trying to light it again. There is little interaction the player can have in this world. It is mostly empty and you pretty much kill whatever is left, which is pretty dull when compared to the war between dragons and gods. Where it excels is it’s lore, through item descriptions and little poetic snippets through some of the more NPCs you encounter on your journey. There isn’t really much of a narrative other than a strange saying you hear from a dying man in the tutorial level, a guy and two massive snake things telling you to ring some bells and kill Gwyn’s friends. You are not that important in the world. If anything, you are just picking up the pieces.
Whilst I had to go back and discover the fun the lack of shields in ‘Dark Souls II’ could bring, I found it’s story and set up far more meaningful because you are someone branded by the Undead Curse and have bared such curse for so long that you don’t remember the family you once had. It has a setup to ‘Dark Souls’. You have to fight a King Vendrick and collect some souls. It is not the only parallel, as there are many bosses and areas that are very close to bosses and areas of the original, but not quite. Some paths are cut off for one reason or another, not often very clear.
When you arrive at Drangleic, it is dark, gloomy and there is a lot of rain, so really feel that you are at the climax of the game. You find Velsdat, a loyal companion to Vendrick, who is guarding the king. Once defeated, you make your way towards Vendrick. ‘Demon’s Souls’ and ‘Dark Souls’ had corrupt kings as their final bosses and I was expecting this to be a similar sort of premise, mentally preparing myself for a big showdown. Instead, you see this giant shadow of the former king he has often been described throughout your playthrough. He is dragging his sword on the ground, not interacting with you, probably not realising you are even there. You needn’t fight him. You can just pick up The King’s Ring and access the final areas of the game before meeting The Ancient Dragon who is also not interested in fighting you. He gives you the Ashen Mist Heart which allows you to travel into the memories of giants (weird I know) and see several parts of a large battle between man and giant play out. Your actions have an effect on the lore of the game as well which I loved.
But I digress. The build-up to Vendrick’s encounter is pivotal to the story and what makes ‘Dark Souls II’ utterly brilliant. It is one of my favourite gaming moments, something I have documented before. I’ll leave a link for you to read about that at you own leisure.
Upon defeating the final boss, and sitting through either ending (in the base game, you only have one) the game doesn’t go immediately to NG+, but puts you back at Majula (the hub area) and lets you decide when to do it all again. The game is all about cycles, focusing on how all of this has happened before. Humanity keeps repeating the same mistakes and thus gets the same results, but with different characters. Dark maybe, but very true and for a game with beautiful buildings, landscapes and characters, the image of the Darksign is perhaps the most perfect and simple one to describe this. It is a circle, a loop. Those who are branded with this are doomed to keep coming back to life, slowly losing their mind. Humanity is stuck in this very loop. This game has you realise that is not the monarch’s problems you are dealing with, but the people who did not escape the mistakes of the previous game. This isn’t the first repeat, but potentially one of thousands. You meet a man called ‘Straid’ who is trapped in stone in ‘Dark Souls II’ (which you may choose to save if you so wish) who refers to the kingdom of Drangleic as Olaphis. Drangleic did not exist during his time, which he makes very clear. Many kingdoms rose and fell, and you are playing in its latest reincarnation. It is unclear what civilisation he came from or how many were before and after him, which makes the world of ‘Dark Souls II’ feel utterly huge and wonderfully vague and mythological. There are many kingdoms mentioned in this game, some of which you explore but all of them lay in ruin due to some monarch. The Forest of The Fallen Giants is Vendricks doing, but the Iron Keep, Earthen Keep, the kingdoms in the DLC fell on their own bizarre and beautifully human terms. In a way, beginning NG+ is a bad ending, as the horrible cycle starts all over again.
More mysterious is hidden in the base of Majula which you may not have noticed, and that is the sight of the broken Lord Vessel, a key item in the first game that is mentioned many, many times. Here, that is not the case. There is no explanation of the item from anyone or anything, it is just some large broken bowel as far as you’re concerned. ‘Dark Souls II’ is about not being able to fully piece (pardon the pun) the whole picture as the whole world loses the plot. It builds its own unique story and morals that I have come to appreciate far more than either Dark Souls game.
One of the bosses in ‘Dark Souls II’ is called ‘The Old Dragonslayer, which many have said is a rip off of the fight with Ornstein & Smough of the original Dark Souls, but with just ‘Ornstein’. Dark Souls I & III do a really fine job at pumping every important name and item in your face, including Ornstein, but our character does not know of the legends of old as it were. Gwyn and his buddies are never mentioned in this game, creating the impression that hundreds or even years have passed since the first game (which is why I believe ‘Dark Souls II’ is set after ‘Dark Souls III’). He is not remembered by the people of Drangleic’s time, and it won’t be long until Vendrick’s people forget him…
Coda
There are many things I could add, such as the ability to respec your character, a better PVP experience, the ability to dual wield weapons and highly superior/improved soundtrack. These are things that have been discussed before by a multitude of people over the years (one example can be found here) but the points I have mentioned I don’t think have been noticed by many, let alone discussed.
I enjoy writing all of my blogs, but this one I have particularly enjoyed because I have been able to look back at a previous version of myself and say I was wrong about stuff and be a better critique and appreciator of video games. I can confidently say that I actually prefer ‘Dark Souls II’ over the third instalment as my main problem with that game has (for me at least) is that none of it is particularly memorable, especially it’s bosses which is rather bad, given how fantastic boss encounters are a staple of the series. Sure, I still have many gripes with ‘Dark Souls II’ and the series as a whole, but that doesn’t mean one cannot find the diamond in the ruff.
I will leave you with some of my favourite cues from the game, most of which was composed by Motoi Sakuraba, who has been the main composer throughout the Dark Souls franchise.
Which is your favourite Dark Souls game? What is your favourite Dark Souls boss? Mine is Slave Knight Gael, who is a boss in The Ringed City DLC in ‘Dark Souls III’. Which game has the best DLC, in your opinion?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
