Dark Souls 2: Not as hard as people claim?

[A-D.]

Those complaining about tracking and hit boxes. I am not saying youre wrong. You arent. But try getting your agi stat to at least 98 and you will start to roll through a lot of the attacks that you couldnt before.

110 AGI, thats the cap. 45% encumbered from equipment. Enemies will still track the shit out of you. Looking Glass Knight will still track perfectly up until a split-second before his attack hits, he will track you even mid-air during his jump-lunge. Vendrick will do the same though circling his right to avoid the overhead attack can safe you from that, alternatively roll away. Drakekeepers will track relentlessly, so do the Old Knights in Heide.

Then there's ghost-range to weapons which is especially obvious during pvp when the animation and the actual hit-box dont match up, causing you to get hit even though you just evaded the attack, or get hit because the weapon has a bigger hitbox than its size suggests. This can also affect PvE on occasion though its very rare.

Having 110 AGI doesnt mean anything because all Agility affects is how many invincibilty frames you have during a roll, therefore the higher the Agility, the more frames you are invincible. However i have had problems where i was hit despite being within the invincible frames because the enemy still "pulls you along" with its mass and applies damage later. Demon of Song's belly-rush attack for example, i got caught on its leg several times, pulled along while "rolling" and the damage was applied once it came to a stop since by that point the invincibilty had worn off and the damage was applied anyway. You dont exactly roll through the enemy or anything, you can dodge through the hitbox of an attack but thats it. You cant physically roll through parts of the enemy though.

Sadly even if you ignore the problems of PvE, since they can be ignored or used to your own advantage, PvP is utterly broken. I have recently met several hextana's (hexers with katanas), dual avelyns and similar utterly cheap builds that are so utterly broken that when you see one, you may as well use the black seperation crystal instantly.

 

[joest01]

Those complaining about tracking and hit boxes. I am not saying youre wrong. You arent. But try getting your agi stat to at least 98 and you will start to roll through a lot of the attacks that you couldnt before.

110 AGI, thats the cap. 45% encumbered from equipment. Enemies will still track the shit out of you. Looking Glass Knight will still track perfectly up until a split-second before his attack hits, he will track you even mid-air during his jump-lunge. Vendrick will do the same though circling his right to avoid the overhead attack can safe you from that, alternatively roll away. Drakekeepers will track relentlessly, so do the Old Knights in Heide.

Then there's ghost-range to weapons which is especially obvious during pvp when the animation and the actual hit-box dont match up, causing you to get hit even though you just evaded the attack, or get hit because the weapon has a bigger hitbox than its size suggests. This can also affect PvE on occasion though its very rare.

Having 110 AGI doesnt mean anything because all Agility affects is how many invincibilty frames you have during a roll, therefore the higher the Agility, the more frames you are invincible. However i have had problems where i was hit despite being within the invincible frames because the enemy still "pulls you along" with its mass and applies damage later. Demon of Song's belly-rush attack for example, i got caught on its leg several times, pulled along while "rolling" and the damage was applied once it came to a stop since by that point the invincibilty had worn off and the damage was applied anyway. You dont exactly roll through the enemy or anything, you can dodge through the hitbox of an attack but thats it. You cant physically roll through parts of the enemy though.

Sadly even if you ignore the problems of PvE, since they can be ignored or used to your own advantage, PvP is utterly broken. I have recently met several hextana's (hexers with katanas), dual avelyns and similar utterly cheap builds that are so utterly broken that when you see one, you may as well use the black seperation crystal instantly.

I said you werent wrong, but truth be told if you have trouble at 110 agi evading mirror boy or singing frog i have to do the inevitable and suggest you git gud practice rolling late, the iframes are at the end of the animation.

Pvp is broken, no more so than in dark 1 though. But there are tournaments emerging and decent builds can be spotted occasionally. But demons it aint.

 

[A-D.]

I said you werent wrong, but truth be told if you have trouble at 110 agi evading mirror boy or singing frog i have to do the inevitable and suggest you git gud practice rolling late, the iframes are at the end of the animation.

Pvp is broken, no more so than in dark 1 though. But there are tournaments emerging and decent builds can be spotted occasionally. But demons it aint.

So your reply to the fact that bosses have mass, in fact all enemies have mass with which they can push you physically, example vendrick can push you along with his left leg if you kite him during his swipe and the fact that you can actually get caught IN or AT bosses, i.e. between the frogs body and leg during its belly-rush is to "git gud"? Your reply to LGK tracking you perfectly all the time to within half a second of its attack actually hitting you is to "git gud"?

You tell someone who has breezed through the game, gone to SL250, played a shitton of pvp to.."git gud"..because i point out that the game has deficits? That there are actually issues which require some slight adjustment? If all you can say to ridiculous auto-tracking enemies, some of those bosses, which can do a 180° spin, without moving their legs or anything, they simply turn 180° in an instant, is to "git gud" rather than actually seeing that this might be a problem with the game and might need a slight fix..then i got no idea why you are even in this thread. Go play Dual-Avelyn or whatever with the rest of them.

And i have yet to see "decent builds". So far i've seen Uchi's, the usual Affinity Hexers, Hexers with Katana, Hexers with Dragon Tooth, Full Havels with Claymore, Faraam with Claymore, Resonant Weapon cheesers and Dual-Avelyns. Oh..yeah occasionally i see a few spell-spammers with their soul geyser, soul vortex and homing soul mass. Basicly anything that requires utterly no thought to pull off. Its actually ironic that i see less of those when im doing Belfry PvP than when i do red soapstone fights or get invaded.

 

[joest01]

I said you werent wrong, but truth be told if you have trouble at 110 agi evading mirror boy or singing frog i have to do the inevitable and suggest you git gud practice rolling late, the iframes are at the end of the animation.

Pvp is broken, no more so than in dark 1 though. But there are tournaments emerging and decent builds can be spotted occasionally. But demons it aint.

So your reply to the fact that bosses have mass, in fact all enemies have mass with which they can push you physically, example vendrick can push you along with his left leg if you kite him during his swipe and the fact that you can actually get caught IN or AT bosses, i.e. between the frogs body and leg during its belly-rush is to "git gud"? Your reply to LGK tracking you perfectly all the time to within half a second of its attack actually hitting you is to "git gud"?

You tell someone who has breezed through the game, gone to SL250, played a shitton of pvp to.."git gud"..because i point out that the game has deficits? That there are actually issues which require some slight adjustment? If all you can say to ridiculous auto-tracking enemies, some of those bosses, which can do a 180° spin, without moving their legs or anything, they simply turn 180° in an instant, is to "git gud" rather than actually seeing that this might be a problem with the game and might need a slight fix..then i got no idea why you are even in this thread. Go play Dual-Avelyn or whatever with the rest of them.

And i have yet to see "decent builds". So far i've seen Uchi's, the usual Affinity Hexers, Hexers with Katana, Hexers with Dragon Tooth, Full Havels with Claymore, Faraam with Claymore, Resonant Weapon cheesers and Dual-Avelyns. Oh..yeah occasionally i see a few spell-spammers with their soul geyser, soul vortex and homing soul mass. Basicly anything that requires utterly no thought to pull off. Its actually ironic that i see less of those when im doing Belfry PvP than when i do red soapstone fights or get invaded.

I am sorry of i offended you, i put a smiley behind the git gud for a reason. Mirror and singing are two of the bosses i have helped a lot of folks with and dont remember dying to ( a lot of masters died to the frog., mirror only when pvpers invade, which is kind of a cool mechanic i thought..). But sometimes bosses have your number. A friend of mine got stuck with rotten, a boss that is imho put there for soul farming

I did have similar complaints before i pumped my agi. Then it completely turned around and i felt with all the additions to dual stancing, stamina consumption, weapon i fusion etc its just way beyond the first two games from a gameplay variety perspective. Demons is still my favorite game in the series. I just struggle to see why people are so fond of dark 1. To me, that one was the letdown. The pvp there was pure gimmick. Glad to hear btw that you do put the stone down. I never considered invasions pvp. I am not equipped for pvp when i play the game. But actual tournaments are a different story. And there is some of that surfacing now. Lets see if they fix the game enough for it to take off. There is hope.

 

[Sande45]

-The expanded hitboxes.

Spoiler: Dks1's; smooth, silky, exact, and incredibly responsive/rewarding for well play

Spoiler: Dks2's; ..... an excuse to make the game harder

I really hope the guy's behind the hitboxes get demoted...

The cherry picking to make one look good and the other look bad works both ways. Besides, the Pursuer hit that guy in the gif, it's just the teleporting to "correct" position for the follow-up animations that's bollocks. That said, DS does have better hit boxes but DS2 isn't nowhere near as broken as people make it out to be.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

pursuer

Do you want the dumbest advice as how to defeat the pursuer in the bossfight encounter?

Parry him in the perfect spot right in front of a ballista. Kill him with ballista.

... This is so fucking dumb. Why? Because my very first thought was "can I kill him with those things" when I entered and I spend 2 fukken hours practicing his parry timing just to execute that. 2 hours for a fight that lasted less than 30 seconds. I never summoned anyone to help me. I thought "if I can't do that with 50% health than why even bother with this game".

Next time I'll throw lightning at his ass.

I just kept circling him to the right/shield side and hit him with a sword. It's amazing how easily this strategy applies to almost every other boss in the game.

I think you may find that Dark Souls II to a lot of people is not as hard as Dark Souls. I am one of those people myself, actually. I still found the game challenging and fun, but it didn't seem to kick me in the teeth like Dark Souls did.

but there are some i really struggle with and haven't been able to do without help yet (pursuer, ruin sentinels, gargoyles). there have also been a lot more situations where mobs have actually killed me in DS2 as well.

Oh, that Gargoyles fight can suck and die. That is, by far, the hardest fight in the game for me. I still have yet to beat them without help. Four at once is nigh impossible for me, so I feel your pain on that one. If fact, I think that may be the hardest fight out of either game.

What kind of build were you sporting? I watched my little brother attempt the fight multiple times using an Arcane build as a mage and struggle horribly with them. Meanwhile I used a straight up warrior build and managed to kill each gargoyle in 3-4 hits with a Drangleic greatsword without much difficulty. Although in both our cases we never saw more than 3 gargoyles attack at a time, is that some sort of balancing mechanic when fighting with a group?

 

[sanquin]

Dark souls 1, the only one I've played so far, wasn't as hard as the hype claimed it to be. Yes the initial learning curve was killer, but that's about it. The rest of the game is challenging, not hard. The challenge seems to come more from learning attack patterns and weak spots so you don't get hit, and being patient with attacking yourself.

From what I've gathered so far, DS2 is less difficult. But instead it has a lot more cheap shots in it. Being unable to pull 1~2 enemies as a whole group will always be pulled together. Enemies sticky-following you while they're telegraphing a big attack, as if they're standing on a turning table. Enemies that you had no way of knowing were there so they get a hit off on you first time you run by. DS1 was much better in that. You could generally pull 1~2 enemies if you were careful. Telegraphed attacks had proper animation, and part of the challenge was finding the weaknesses in them to get attacks off. And I can't recall a single enemy being in a place where you got no hint at all that he was there.

I could be wrong of course as I haven't played DS2 myself yet. But it seems like DS1 was about challenging but fair combat. While DS2 seems to give enemies an unfair advantage, or even multiple unfair advantages.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

I'd say some people just have the patience to adapt if they're new to the series so the lauded difficulty isn't as noticeable, and others have already played other Souls games so they know what to expect.

I guess I'd call 2 the easiest Souls game, but there's not really any way to know how I'd react to it if it were my first. I'd still agree with the sentiment that there is some dumb as hell enemy and bonfire placement, and level design can be very haphazard to the point where situations are just plain unfair, but it just hasn't given me as much trouble as the first Dark Souls did.

 

[Skin]

I guess I'd call 2 the easiest Souls game, but there's not really any way to know how I'd react to it if it were my first. I'd still agree with the sentiment that there is some dumb as hell enemy and bonfire placement, and level design can be very haphazard to the point where situations are just plain unfair, but it just hasn't given me as much trouble as the first Dark Souls did.

I have no issue with people calling DS2 the most difficult Souls game, because difficulty is not the point. Instead of asking "is it difficult?", the question should be "why is it difficult", and this is where falls completely flat and makes a complete mess of itself. The MatthewMatosis critique is spot on when he says the game tries to be more difficult for difficulties sake. The game may not be difficult at all for Souls veterans, because we have our work arounds (for example, I straight up just ran past alot of enemies this game. This made the game easy for me, but makes the game incredibly difficult for someone who is playing a Souls game for their first time and wants to be slow and patient).

In my opinion, the game lacks vision, direction and has way too much pandering than what should have been. Making the game accessible should have NEVER been a priority, because it compromises alot on the vision of a Souls game. This game has not shipped a single unit more than it would have even if had not been as "accessible". Word of mouth advertising was the name of the game for Souls series and instead the developers have reverted to stupid modern day AAA mindset and dumbed down the game play. This video sums up alot of my thoughts on this:


On top of this, the developers wanted to make it hard because as we all know that's all the Souls series is about /sarcasm. So what did they do? MOAR ENEMIES. MOAR TRACKING. MOAR TRAPS. MOAR DEATHS. DEATH COUNTER.

The joys I had in playing Dark Souls and Demons Souls was learning about the game and its mechanics and never once having the game try and teach me a damn thing. For the most part, I was free to do whatever I wanted. The bosses and areas having a sense of relief or joy when completing them was a good feeling, but it wasn't what made the game so great. It was the larger picture. Things like me deciding whether to invest in a repair box or get an extra level of endurance with my last 1000 souls before making my next journey, things like trying to discover the difference between raw weapons and normal upgrading, things like discovering there was an alternate path to Blighttown and that same path could take me to the forest.

Dark Souls 2 to me feels like Dark Souls: Electric Boogaloo, Prepare to Die edition.