Baud Attitude

Yes.  Yes, I did.

Dark Souls II is one of those games that is a little divisive among fans of the series.  It’s a little less free-form and a little more linear than the original Dark Souls, and there are some systems (like weapon durability and reduced health while hollow) that feel less like being challenged and more like the game just wants to annoy you a little.  It also adds a ton of not-terribly-well-explained character stats and forces you to go back to the game’s hub zone every time you want to spend souls to level up.

On the other hand, it’s absolutely gorgeous by comparison (and I played the original DX9 release, not the Scholar of the First Sin re-release with the upgraded graphics), HAS a hub zone that you can always go back to without having half of the NPCs mysteriously killed, drastically simplified armor and weapon upgrading, and keeps the same general sense of progression from feeling like a complete loser to an unstoppable bad-ass.

…not that “unstoppable” is ever an adjective you want to break out for a Souls game.  Pretty much every single boss managed to make me stoppable AND vincible at least once.

The biggest change for me was getting into the game’s co-op multiplayer (and, just at the surface level, the PVP components as well).  I barely even used NPC phantoms in the first Dark Souls, but I found myself frequently summoning co-op partners and putting down my “hey, I’m available for jolly co-operation!” sign in this game.  It’s not perfect (DS2’s “Soul Memory” system for determining who you can group with is pretty dumb), but it worked really really well to help me learn zones and boss fights.

I did get invaded five times (in 50-odd hours) by other PCs, and lost three of the fights, but I think that’s a pretty good ratio when you consider that someone who is invading is someone who has prepared their equipment and their spec for PVP and I don’t get the same luxury.

More to the point – and this is ENTIRELY subjective – stumbling into the Souls series came at a very good time for me.  I work for a company that is going through some very uncertain times and I don’t really feel in control of my life as a result.  When I play a Souls game, I know that I CAN beat everything trying to kill me, even if it does manage to kill me a few times first, and that whether I win or lose is entirely up to my ability to adapt to the game. I’m in control, and that is a really comforting feeling.

Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy.

While the Souls series is somewhat famous for its approach to multiplayer, I managed to get through the first two games barely interacting with anyone else. Demon’s Souls is, after all, pretty ancient and doesn’t have a lot of people playing it on any given day, and I played Dark Souls during the period where the servers were almost always offline due to Namco issues.

So Dark Souls 2 was a little weird in that, once I got out of the starting area, the “summon signs” that let you pull another player into your game were scattered all over the place.

And I was feeling a little overwhelmed so I figured that I’d put my own sign down and see if I could be of any use to someone else.

You know, mostly just to say that I’d done multiplayer once and could check it off the list and move on.

3 hours of non-stop co-op play later, I forced myself to stop putting down my summon sign and get back to, you know, actually killing a couple of bosses and progressing in my OWN game.

I also got invaded a few times and even won once.

I didn’t “get” Souls multiplayer before.

I get it now.

Praise the sun.

Yes.  Yes, I did.

So, for the record, I made it a full 24 hours between finishing Demon’s Souls and buying Dark Souls from Steam.  I had grandiose plans to wait for a sale, but it turned out that I really, really needed some more of the same sort of game.

Technically I could have started a NG+ game of Demon’s Souls, which is “the same game, just 70% harder”, but I’m not sure I have the mental fortitude for that.

Anyway.  Dark Souls turned out to be a rather longer game than Demon’s Souls, and quite a bit more obtuse in points.  The hub structure of Demon’s Souls didn’t always make it clear WHICH world to go to next, but it made your starting points pretty obvious.  Dark Souls likes to hide paths from the player, which is a bit frustrating until you start learning how the zones slot together.

The canonical example – and it’s done with such obvious intent that it’s hard to take too much umbrage at it – is the paths out of Dark Souls’ hub zone.  One of the exits is initially unavailable (it’s an elevator that needs to be repaired, and you need to get to the other end of the shaft to do so), two other exits are hidden by topology, and the remaining exit is a very obvious path that leads you into a graveyard.

Taking that path will get you killed in a hurry, because the undead in the graveyard are nasty sorts indeed.  They’re not invincible, and I was even able to win a couple of fights, but they are there to show you that the obvious path isn’t always the right one and to teach you that if you’re dying repeatedly you’re probably somewhere you shouldn’t be just yet.

Learning how to get from point A to B without dying is one of the small ways the game rewards you.  Much like Demon’s Souls, there’s a constant feedback loop of incremental self-improvement that is profoundly satisfying, and that’s what I wanted more of after finishing the older game.

So.  Now for the really controversial statement:

Dark Souls really isn’t that hard.  I mean, it’s pitched as the Most Manly Game Ever by its fans, who can be incredibly helpful one moment and only slightly more obsessive than Vegan Amway Salesmen Who’ve Recently Discovered Crossfit the next, but it’s really just a game that rewards patience and experimentation.  It’s also a game that demands community interaction, and you will NOT get far without having a bookmark to the associated wiki, if only to occasionally check whether you are dying repeatedly because you don’t understand how a boss fight works or if you’re dying repeatedly because you know how the dance is supposed to go but you’re getting the steps wrong.

I never had a controller clenching moment like the ones I got while playing Ninja Gaiden, for example, or Gunvalkyrie.  Those are games that demand a high degree of manual dexterity and the ability to pull off complex inputs, and they usually have One Proper Way to kill any given opponent.  Dark Souls gives you a ton of tools and sometimes selecting the right one for a challenge is the hardest part.

So anyway, I’ll probably be picking up Dark Souls II in the near future, and if THAT goes well… well, the third and final game in the series is already out, so there’s no Half-Life-esque risk of getting invested in something and having it go nowhere.

When I come back to you, a broken man, feel free to point out the bit where I downplayed the series’ difficulty and laugh.