Inspired by Rain's The Evil Within Thread.

After all the hubbub that was surrounding Dark Souls III last month, I decided to go out and play Dark Souls II, as I hadn't beaten the game yet, that and I am still waiting for III to go on sale on Steam.

Anyways, I finally beat the game last night, and wanted to give you guys my impressions.

The Good

-The settings in this game are overall amazing and varied. The main hub Majula is the only real area in the game where you don't need to be hostile, and as such, give an extremely strong sense of peace. Besides that, you all have heavily forrested areas, castles filled to the brim with lava, giant cliffs where dragons roam, and many more. It's overall a game with grand settings, and just gives off the impression that you are in this massive world.

-Overall, the game gives you a lot of customization options of the kind of character you want to be in the game. You can be your average warrior who wields a sword and shield, or maybe you wanna pack more of a punch, and dual wield a giant axe or hammer with heavy armour, or perhaps you like projectiles, and you may end up wielding a bow and arrow, or a magic stave in order to cast soul arrows. You can even be like me, and be a hybrid between using a sword and magic stave. You'll have to make sure to level up certain stats for the character you want to be, but the overall customization here feels great, even more so than the first Dark Souls.

-The secrets in this game are pretty cool. There are many cool things hidden in this game with can provide with great rewards, including illusionary walls, invisible enemies, Fragant Branches of Yore, and Pharros' Lockstones (although the game will try to troll you will useless locks.) You don't need to bother finding every secret in the game, but the rewards can give you a nice edge, which is a good bonus.

-The bosses are epic. With an exception with a few bosses, I don't feel that they deviated too much from the types of bosses from the last game, but that doesn't change the fact that they're adrenaline pumped fights, some of which really require you to focus and perfect your timing on rolls and attacks if you want any chance of winning. The bosses were my fav part of the first Dark Souls, and this game delivered on that regard.

-Speaking of the bosses, the music is amazing. While the game is usually silent in regular areas where not much is happening, it still delivers. Like I mentioned, Majula is the only area in the game where you can really relax, and the accompying music certainly helps with that. It really is a comforting area. Besides that, the music for every boss is just phenomenal. It helps pump your adrenaline when you are dodging and trading attacks with the enemy, and it only makes it so much more satisfying when you deliver the final blow.

The Bad

-Honestly, this is my on;y major problem with Dark Souls II, and that's that the game seems to be trying WAY too hard to be the first Dark Souls. For the most part, I feel that the game doesn't try to change it up too much with the first one. Yea, there are more areas and more bosses, cool, but The most of the areas feel like cop and paste jobs at times, like the Forest of the Fallen Giants giving me Undead Burg vibes at the beginning. The game also seems to have added a lot of various melee weapons, but honestly, none of them felt super substantial, and if they were completely removed from the game, I wouldn't have missed them personally.

-This was a minor promblem as it wasn't that prevelant, but I swear the hitboxes in this game are weird. There are enemies where I will hit them, but then it's like Super Smash Bros, where after they fail to tech the ground, I suddenly can't hit them, like what the hell, they're just lying on the ground, why can't I hit them?

Final Thoughts

Anyways, while I feel that Dark Souls II played it a bit safe, and simply tried to add upon Dark Souls without changing up the formula drastically, the game is still amazing, and easily a game worth replaying. Definitely gonna get Dark Souls III now as soon as it gets a discount on Steam.

This was my first attempt at a review BTW, so apologies if this ends up being super rough.

My least liked "Souls" game, and yet one of the most engaging and entertaining games I played the previous generation; I'm not sure if that makes much sense, but it is how it is. I think that in terms of simply having pure, unadulterated fun, I enjoyed this game more than Dark Souls 3, even if the later is a much better developed game.

The "Dark Souls 2 trying to be Dark Souls 1" complain is definitively legit. Sometimes it just felt like lazy copy/pasting from the devs rather than a great rendition while at the same time being a fresh sequel. Also, bosses for the most part were much easier than Dark Souls 1. And things like Bonfire Ascetic definitively break several aspects in the normal structure of the game, instead of just plain normal NG+.

And there were just some secrets that made zero sense at all, both gameplay and lore-wise. The cracked eye orb was just copying what DS1 did with it on the original game, but here serves no purpose save for piting your against an NPC - which honestly you can do it without the cracked eye in the first place -.

Majula rocks, though. I definitively agree with that sentiment.

Am I the only one who got some weird The Legend of Zelda vibes in certain points of this game?