I love Dark Souls 2, and I’m not ashamed to say it anymore. Yes, it was developed by FromSoftware’s B-team, and yes it contains some of the worst level design and boss fights in the entire series, but I don’t care. The odd one out Dark Souls 2 may be, but I just can’t help myself. I’ve played through it dozens of times (both the original and Scholar of the First Sin) and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon. In fact, I was just finishing my latest playthrough recently when I had a sudden epiphany.
I played the crap out of Dark Souls 3 when it came out, and have run through it once or twice since then. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Dark Souls 3 too, but I have to admit, I love Dark Souls 2 a lot more. I know there are a lot of people queuing up right now to tell me I’m crazy, but give me a chance to explain myself.
Hitbox, Schmitsocks
Simply put: Dark Souls 2 wins out where the nuts and bolts of the gameplay are concerned. We all know how bad the hitboxes are, and Dark Souls 3 is much smoother and tighter in that regard. The first sequel was always a little bit clunky, and I’m not so blinded by my affection for it that I’m not willing to admit that. What gives Dark Souls 2 the edge for me is actually what I suspect a lot of people don’t like about it: it feels nothing like the other two games in the series. That’s not the only reason I like it, but it’s a good place to start.
Both Dark Souls 1 and 3 have fairly similar vibes: decaying, dark fantasy worlds with just a hint of weirdness to them. The mushroom men, the talking cat, or those spider things that live in the sewers. For the most part, both games stick to cathedrals, dungeons, and ruined cities or abandoned cities. That’s fine, but I remember feeling that at times that Dark Souls 3 was beginning to feel more like a Greatest Hits album than a fresh, original game in its own right.
Dark Souls 3 has a few oddballs in the mix, but does it have an army of marionette dwarves sworn to protect a bell that is a symbol of forbidden love between a princess and her prince? I don’t think so.
The Smouldering Lake borrows heavily from Lost Izalith. We get to visit another snowy castle inside a painting (or a piece of a painting anyway), and Anor Londo makes another appearance with some new mood lighting and a giant slug man. Dark Souls 3 is a knowing swansong for the series, but even so, I was a little disappointed. I have a slightly abnormal craving for novelty and originality, and as much as I like the original Dark Souls, I really couldn’t care less about how much “respect” Dark Souls 3 paid it. I wanted something original. Not the same old characters in the same old places.
Step forward Dark Souls 2. Right from the very beginning, it has a feel all its own. Get this: there’s no Firelink Shrine. You get Majula instead, a small village that grows as you play the game. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So many of the areas, even the ones that aren’t very well designed, are so bizarre, beautiful or original that I can’t help but love them. No Man’s Wharf: a smuggler’s cove filled with pirates and strange beasts that are afraid of light. Earthen Peak, a giant windmill full of poison (makes a nice change from the poison swamps in the other two games). Aldia’s Keep, a spooky mansion where a mad scholar has imprisoned all manner of hideous creatures. The list goes on and on.
A lot of people have criticized Dark Souls 2 on the grounds that its world lacks the cohesion and connectivity of a typical FromSoftware game. While it’s true that the connectivity between areas is non-existent (we all know about the Iron Keep elevator by now), it does feel deliberate. They went for a more level-based design sure, but that’s not inherently a bad thing. I like the fact that you never know what’s around the next corner. More importantly, there’s a surreal, dream-like quality to Drangleic that I think is actually enhanced (in a good way) by how disjointed the world feels at times. There isn’t really any logic to how the world is laid out, but that works in the game’s favour.
Right from the very beginning, it is stated outright that Drangleic is a strange land where people forget who they are. The very first line of the opening cutscene is:
Perhaps you’ve seen it, maybe in a dream.
Little references like that make me think the developers knew what they were doing with the whole ‘sea of lava on top of a windmill’ thing. Even further than that, most of the characters you meet start to lose their minds and forget why they are even in Drangleic, and the rest are so strange they feel like something straight out of the most feverish of dreams.
There’s a man whose entire business is placing ladders into a pit, a man with a keyhole for a face, and a decapitated head that warns you to watch out for its body, which is off somewhere else on a violent rampage. Sure, Dark Souls 3 has a few oddballs in the mix, but does it have a small army of marionette dwarves sworn to protect a bell that is a symbol of forbidden love between a princess and her prince? I didn’t think so.
I love how weird and twisted Drangleic can be, but it’s far from the only reason I rate Dark Souls 2 so highly. Everyone loves to talk about everything it got wrong, but they often overlook all the new and interesting things it got right, in many cases things that no other game in the series has done. I’ve gone so far in the past as to argue that it wasn’t until Elden Ring that we saw some of Dark Souls 2’s best ideas used again.
Take the approach to New Game Plus (which unfortunately Elden Ring didn’t copy). Dark Souls 3 goes back to formula, and just like in Dark Souls 1: NG+ is just the same game (bar one or two minor differences) with the difficulty ramped up. Enemies have more health and do more damage, that sort of thing. Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, really shakes things up. There are new enemies, and new items, and even some of the bosses are modified in interesting ways, like The Duke’s Dear Freja, who can appear in a completely new location, and The Lost Sinner, who is joined by a pair of red phantom pyromancers. Even better, the bosses all drop new souls, which means a whole new suite of boss weapons unique to NG+.
I really don’t know why Dark Souls 3 abandoned this idea. It makes new game plus a much more interesting proposition and injects some life into new playthroughs. it’s nice to have the extra challenge, but I much prefer having new content and gameplay to explore.
Bonfire ascetics really seal the deal. They’re an item that has only ever appeared in Dark Souls 2, that the player can use to transform a single area into its NG+ version. If you can handle the extra challenge, you access items and areas that allow for all kinds of sequence-breaking fun. You can find late-game weapons long before you’re supposed to have them, and you can farm bosses to access Drangleic Castle without having to acquire all the great souls. You can do all kinds of interesting challenge runs that extend the game’s longevity significantly. Once again, I really don’t know why this mechanic was completely dropped.
Power Play
I like to experiment, and Dark Souls 2 accommodates that in ways other Souls games don’t. Power stancing, the ability to dual wield particular weapons and unlock a whole new moveset, is also absent from the other games in the series. Power Stancing only ended up returning in Elden Ring; it made dual-wielding a hell of a lot more interesting, and if it’s good enough for Elden Ring, it should have been good enough for Dark Souls 3!
The one area I do think Dark Souls 3 wins out is in overall boss design: the visuals, narratives, and general gameplay are of a higher standard for the most part. I will also admit that Dark Souls 2 has the worst bosses in the series, Prowling Magus and Ancient Dragon. However, it’s a much closer-run thing than I think many people are willing to acknowledge, and Dark Souls 3 has its fair share of duds. The Deacons of the Deep, Ancient Wyvern, Crystal Sage and Curse Rotted Greatwood all left me nonplussed. Even some that didn’t, like Yhorm and High Lord Wolnir, are too gimmicky to be truly great boss fights. They don’t compare to Darklurker or Sir Alonne.
I will defend Dark Souls 2 to the hilt; it’s a hill that I have chosen to die (and die and die again) on. So often the game is dismissed as an experiment gone wrong, or a sub-par knock-off, but I don’t think that’s true. Beneath the (many) rough edges there are flashes of real genius that shouldn’t be ignored. I may well be wearing the very rosiest of rose-tinted spectacles, but I think Dark Souls 2 is a special game, that deserves a lot more credit than it got.
