Keep in mind that this is my first Dark Souls game and I have very little knowledge about Dark Souls I or the original Dark Souls II. With that said, let's get down to business.
Not sure if story is its strong point, but there is a fair amount of lore behind a lot of what you experience in the game. Most of these lore and background stories are revealed to you in dialogue with NPCs you meet throughout your journey, or sometimes in item descriptions. If you are hungry for story from this game, you will have to do a lot of digging around to get any details.
Needless to say, story is probably not your driving force to continue on in this game.
Gameplay - Alright, this is where things get serious. I'm going to break this section further down into different elements of Character Building, Combat, Exploration, and Multiplayer.
Character Building - The first thing you do after watching the intro cutscene and walk around the beginning area to get a feel of the controls, is to create your character. Customization of your character includes remembering what this human's name was, and what they looked like before turning Hollow.
The level of customizability of your character in this game is a bit limited, but a fairly good amount of detail can be put on their face. The number of face customization sliders is definitely on par, allowing you to create a decently wide range of different faces. Body types, not so much. There are a few to choose from, but not much can be done beyond that other than skin color. All characters will end up being the same height, and depending on the armor you will be wearing, the body type may not matter much either.
More importantly, you can choose from 8 different classes. Warrior, Knight, Swordsman, Bandit, Cleric, Sorcerer, Explorer, and Deprived. However, the only way they differ is the starting stats and items. Beyond that, you can raise your stats freely, allowing you to deviate from what class build you may have started with to go a completely different, or even opposite builds if you want to. Experimenting with your build is encouraged, thanks to Soul Vessels, a rare item that lets you re-spec your stats.
Each level you gain by spending your hard-earned souls will allow you to allocate one point into a stat of your choice. The stats are... . However, all stats have diminishing returns after they reach a soft cap, so you would have to decide on whether if you want to continue raising your main stat, even if it gives less bonuses each level, or to raise your other stats to gain more benefits on your off-stats. At level 838, you would max all stats, although the grind for souls to get to 838 must be ridiculous and not necessarily beneficial as doing so will raise your Soul Memory, your total souls accumulated, will be so high that you will only be able to play multiplayer with other people with similarly high Soul Memories.
Finally, your weapons and armor depends purely on what you have equipped, so if you have a certain cosmetic attire that you like, but want the stats of another armor, you will have to compromise one or the other. On the flip side, if you were VS someone, you might be able to tell what sort of build your opponent has by their equipments. Equipments can be upgraded as well, although you will need to collect enough upgrading components and souls to do so, and they do have a max upgrade limit.
Combat - Moving on to Combat, let me first say that I played this game with a PS3 controller on PC. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't recommend playing this game with a keyboard and mouse. Controlling your character isn't that hard once you get used to the controls, but it is something some people may have trouble getting adjusted to.
The most common build involves having a main weapon on your right hand, and a shield on the left. You can switch your weapons on both hands with Left and Right on the D-pad if you have them equipped, allowing you to switch from one weapon to another in mid-combat. Using your right hand weapon is done the R1/RB and R2/RT buttons, and your left hand weapon with L1/LB and L2/LT. In the case of a shield, your L1/LB will be your block or to raise your shield. Circle or B button would be used to run/dodge/back step. Square or X button is to use your selected item; usually to heal with your Estus Flask. Jumping is done by pressing in your left joystick, which is also used to walk/run with, which is one of the awkward control scheme the game has. Locking on to a target is done by pressing in the right joystick, which is also used to move your camera around your character.
Locking on is one of the first things I have noticed as a major flaw in Dark Souls II. Locking on can be very helpful for aiming your attacks, especially ranged attacks from bow and arrows or by spells. However, it isn't as useful as you would think for range as you would have to get relatively close to your target's aggro range in order to lock on to them, making it useless for sniping. Even worse, you have no way of aiming your spells like you can with bows and crossbows when not locked on, so spell casters have no way of effectively sniping targets that are far off in the distance, even if the spell can travel the distance.
The second issue I've found with the Lock on system is particularly with a melee fighter. When you lock on to a target that is very close to your character, the camera does such a good job of keeping both of you within the frames that you end up looking down on the two of them from above. Being able to see your target clearly is certainly important as you would need to be able to see their choreographed animations to see what they are about to do and how you should react to them, much like in fighting games, except with many more frames to react to as combat in Dark Souls II feels fairly slow. More on this later. However, this camera angle creates a great problem of you not having any clue of what is happening around your character, leaving you blind and open for ranged attacks or surprise attacks from behind. Why the camera has to zoom in so close to fill the screen with your character and your target, especially in a game where getting ambushed is a relatively common thing, I haven't the slightest clue. I ended up not locking on very often, especially in the presence of more than one target to fight easier targets, but this is still not a fool-proof method either. Without locking on, your character will face whichever it is moving instead of strafing when moving around to the side of your target, which makes your shield useless as you would not be raising your shield at your opponent to block any attacks when you would want to re-position yourself around them. The camera and locking on system is something that is desired to be better, especially when many other games can handle this better, such as Devil May Cry 3 and 4, among other action games.
Next, you also have a Stamina Bar which is used for most of your combat-related actions. You cannot use an action that uses the Stamina Bar if it is completely depleted, leaving you open and vulnerable when you cannot dodge roll or block without having your guard broken with an attack heavier than what you can block with your current stamina. This makes the game's combat effectively a punishing game, where you bait your opponent into making a mistake such as missing with their attacks, or waste their stamina by rolling unnecessarily and then counter-attacking when they are vulnerable. However, your options for baiting is rather limited as you cannot cancel a move once you start it. There is very little you can do to feint an attack due to this, making a stare-down with your opponent a very common occurrence. Who will be the daring one to attempt to land a hit on the opponent and most likely miss when the opponent is ready to dodge roll and try to counter attack while you are still trying to recover from your attack? The punishing game also becomes a waiting game because of this, kind of like in pro-scene Street Fighter IV games where both fighters are constantly spacing each other, keeping a safe distance to not get hit confirmed into a damaging combo, but in a much more slower and duller pacing than that of fighting games. This is just not fun, IMO.
These points are probably better addressed by Egorapter in his Sequelitis video regarding Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
What Dark Souls II DOES that Egorapter has pointed out is that it uses its environment along with the enemy to make combat more interesting than what Ocarina of Time did, but mostly to your disadvantage more than for your advantage, such as forcing you to overcome the waiting game in a situation where you have to also avoid other enemies shooting projectiles, or the small stage that the fight takes place in where if you fall off, you will just die. It's cool that these challenges are here, and it feels great when you can conquer these challenges the first time. However, due to the nature of Dark Souls' notoriously famous system of dropping your souls when you die, as well as occasional situations where the game has you backtrack for things that you may have unlocked or perhaps missed the first time, these "challenges" can get bothersome and annoying when you have to go through them again and again. Thankfully, I didn't die too often in the game so I was spared the frustrations of losing your hard-earned souls if you died a second time before you got to pick up your dropped souls from your first death. But even then, going through these areas many times in order to check out other paths or for backtracking was made more of a nuisance with these enemies and the slow combat.
I would also like to know the frame data on all weapon attacks, mostly out of curiosity, from the start up animation, what frames the hitboxes exists, and how long the recovery time is, much like how fighting games are handled by the hardcore community. This data can be helpful in identifying the pacing of combat, and what other games it compares closest to.
Exploration - Now the exploration in the game was where I enjoyed the most in Dark Souls II. The world this game places you in is relatively big and a lot of exploration is encouraged as many items and treasure are often hidden throughout the maps. Each area has a fairly distinct feature or environment that makes each map different from each other. You could be in one area where it is a large fort in daylight with many soldier type enemies about, and another area could be a dark port where unknown creatures of darkness that hates light from your torch lurk. One area could require a lot of spacial cognition or help from messages from other users in order to solve a puzzle, while another may be a gauntlet of obstacles that you need to safely pass through. Seeing all these new environments kept me interested in seeing what each path contains as the level design throws many elements at you in different places. More about the environment can be said in the Graphics section below.
Multiplayer - Multiplayer is another aspect of the game that interested me the most in this game. You can choose to play this game solo and tackle all obstacles by yourself, or you can summon an ally player or NPC to help you through the trials of traversing the map to fight the boss. Doing so gives the player a pretty good advantage as a lot of the enemies in this game tends to target a single character with their attacks, including bosses, which means the other players that aren't being targeted is free from enemy threat and pressure, giving them breathing room to heal as necessary or even support the targeted player with an easy backstab on the enemy. However, due to how much easier the game can get just by having another person in the area may make the game a bit underwhelming. It does speed up the process of the slow combat and allows people to farm for souls faster.
On the flip side, you can also VS other players as well by invading other players or by being invaded. Unfortunately for people who don't like PvP or VS games, there are no real way of avoiding being invaded other than playing the game on offline mode. With that said, PvP can be one of the more exciting events in Dark Souls II. The rewards for winning a PvP can be rewarding with lots of souls or useful items like Human Effigies. With the various character builds players can have, combat with another player often tends to be a completely different experience than that of PvE. However, sometimes being invaded can be an even greater nuisance depending on your situation.
Being invaded after having died, and while you are making your way to your dropped souls can be extremely frustrating as your dropped souls would be on the line of the outcome of this fight. When the stakes can be high in case things go south, it can be very stressful for the player. Another issue with being invaded is not being able to use your bonfire, whether if it is to heal or even to travel, forcing you to finish the fight. Trolling can be possible if the invader simply runs away and hides from the player as the person you are invading would be stuck in the area, preventing them from doing anything else outside of the area. Due to how invasions are handled, these PvP experiences can vastly vary from person to person.
One of the major problems of PvP on Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin however is similar to many action VS games online; lag and hackers. Laggy opponents were my greatest bane in Dark Souls II as combat was just straight up unfair. Even if I swing my weapon at a standing opponent, next moment they are mid-roll, dodging my attack. Even if I were to dodge roll myself, the opponent would somehow stop me mid-roll and pull off a backstab on me when my back was never shown to them on my screen. Situations like this made PvP completely unplayable and unfun.
Then there are the hackers. Who knows what they're doing to hack the game, but I had encountered a person who would be somewhere completely different within the map, trigger a backstab on me, and warp/pull me to where he was, and leave me stranded in some random, different place than where I was. Maybe this will get patched or the hacker will get banned from online play, but until then, this is yet another nuisance that you would have to endure while playing through this game, if you are unlucky.
Aside from that, you will find blood pools and messages on the ground where you can touch them to see how other players have died in that area or get hints from other players. The most useful cases for these are when there are illusory walls nearby where you have to examine the wall to find a secret room or path, when a treasure chest is booby trapped, or if there is an enemy ambush waiting around the corner. Other times, the messages may suggest you to "Praise the Sun!", or "but hole ahead. Therefore, try tongue."
Either way, multiplayer keeps the game more eventful and breaks the monotony in an area.
These points are probably better addressed by Egorapter in his Sequelitis video regarding Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
What Dark Souls II DOES that Egorapter has pointed out is that it uses its environment along with the enemy to make combat more interesting than what Ocarina of Time did, but mostly to your disadvantage more than for your advantage, such as forcing you to overcome the waiting game in a situation where you have to also avoid other enemies shooting projectiles, or the small stage that the fight takes place in where if you fall off, you will just die. It's cool that these challenges are here, and it feels great when you can conquer these challenges the first time. However, due to the nature of Dark Souls' notoriously famous system of dropping your souls when you die, as well as occasional situations where the game has you backtrack for things that you may have unlocked or perhaps missed the first time, these "challenges" can get bothersome and annoying when you have to go through them again and again. Thankfully, I didn't die too often in the game so I was spared the frustrations of losing your hard-earned souls if you died a second time before you got to pick up your dropped souls from your first death. But even then, going through these areas many times in order to check out other paths or for backtracking was made more of a nuisance with these enemies and the slow combat.
I would also like to know the frame data on all weapon attacks, mostly out of curiosity, from the start up animation, what frames the hitboxes exists, and how long the recovery time is, much like how fighting games are handled by the hardcore community. This data can be helpful in identifying the pacing of combat, and what other games it compares closest to.
Exploration - Now the exploration in the game was where I enjoyed the most in Dark Souls II. The world this game places you in is relatively big and a lot of exploration is encouraged as many items and treasure are often hidden throughout the maps. Each area has a fairly distinct feature or environment that makes each map different from each other. You could be in one area where it is a large fort in daylight with many soldier type enemies about, and another area could be a dark port where unknown creatures of darkness that hates light from your torch lurk. One area could require a lot of spacial cognition or help from messages from other users in order to solve a puzzle, while another may be a gauntlet of obstacles that you need to safely pass through. Seeing all these new environments kept me interested in seeing what each path contains as the level design throws many elements at you in different places. More about the environment can be said in the Graphics section below.
Multiplayer - Multiplayer is another aspect of the game that interested me the most in this game. You can choose to play this game solo and tackle all obstacles by yourself, or you can summon an ally player or NPC to help you through the trials of traversing the map to fight the boss. Doing so gives the player a pretty good advantage as a lot of the enemies in this game tends to target a single character with their attacks, including bosses, which means the other players that aren't being targeted is free from enemy threat and pressure, giving them breathing room to heal as necessary or even support the targeted player with an easy backstab on the enemy. However, due to how much easier the game can get just by having another person in the area may make the game a bit underwhelming. It does speed up the process of the slow combat and allows people to farm for souls faster.
On the flip side, you can also VS other players as well by invading other players or by being invaded. Unfortunately for people who don't like PvP or VS games, there are no real way of avoiding being invaded other than playing the game on offline mode. With that said, PvP can be one of the more exciting events in Dark Souls II. The rewards for winning a PvP can be rewarding with lots of souls or useful items like Human Effigies. With the various character builds players can have, combat with another player often tends to be a completely different experience than that of PvE. However, sometimes being invaded can be an even greater nuisance depending on your situation.
Being invaded after having died, and while you are making your way to your dropped souls can be extremely frustrating as your dropped souls would be on the line of the outcome of this fight. When the stakes can be high in case things go south, it can be very stressful for the player. Another issue with being invaded is not being able to use your bonfire, whether if it is to heal or even to travel, forcing you to finish the fight. Trolling can be possible if the invader simply runs away and hides from the player as the person you are invading would be stuck in the area, preventing them from doing anything else outside of the area. Due to how invasions are handled, these PvP experiences can vastly vary from person to person.
One of the major problems of PvP on Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin however is similar to many action VS games online; lag and hackers. Laggy opponents were my greatest bane in Dark Souls II as combat was just straight up unfair. Even if I swing my weapon at a standing opponent, next moment they are mid-roll, dodging my attack. Even if I were to dodge roll myself, the opponent would somehow stop me mid-roll and pull off a backstab on me when my back was never shown to them on my screen. Situations like this made PvP completely unplayable and unfun.
Then there are the hackers. Who knows what they're doing to hack the game, but I had encountered a person who would be somewhere completely different within the map, trigger a backstab on me, and warp/pull me to where he was, and leave me stranded in some random, different place than where I was. Maybe this will get patched or the hacker will get banned from online play, but until then, this is yet another nuisance that you would have to endure while playing through this game, if you are unlucky.
Aside from that, you will find blood pools and messages on the ground where you can touch them to see how other players have died in that area or get hints from other players. The most useful cases for these are when there are illusory walls nearby where you have to examine the wall to find a secret room or path, when a treasure chest is booby trapped, or if there is an enemy ambush waiting around the corner. Other times, the messages may suggest you to "Praise the Sun!", or "but hole ahead. Therefore, try tongue."
Either way, multiplayer keeps the game more eventful and breaks the monotony in an area.
Graphics - Dark, beautifully detailed, and efficient. As I've mentioned in the Exploration section, there are many environments in the game which is a great display of what Dark Souls II can offer in terms of graphics. The textures of both the environment and character/equipment models are nicely detailed, often having a gritty feel to a lot of what you see. The lighting plays a fairly big role in Dark Souls II's graphics as it becomes heavily important in certain environments, and the way your torch lights the area and how shadows are cast is very well done.
The character's and the enemies' animations are nice, fluid, and looks very natural and realistic. Each actions portray what they represent, down to the start up frames of an oncoming attack, to the horrible ways your character can get impaled, lifted off of their feet while they struggle in pain, and then thrown off of the weapon with a swift swing. Most attacks that happen will always have a fairly clear tell, whether if it's an obvious swing that is coming or a change of the enemy's stance. Avoiding these attacks is fairly easy, especially once you've learned their attack animations. Of course, none of this matters if they aren't on your screen because of the lock on issue mentioned previously.
With that said, the game doesn't have the most impressive graphics I have seen either. I don't think this game really had much of a "wow" factor... at least, not in awe of its graphical capabilities.
Perhaps this is a nitpicky thing to complain about, but in multiplayer, everyone aside from the host of the world will join as a phantom of some sort. This means that your character will appear as a brightly illuminated, white/yellow/red/etc, translucent model, making the detailed texture of your character moot as you barely see it as a phantom. Character customizability feels pretty pointless in terms of multiplayer for at least one person at a time due to this. This can be remedied with the Ring of the Living, if you care enough to use one of your ring slots for aesthetic purposes, and have already done one of the late-game DLC content the game comes with.
Another thing that is probably not so important is how enemies or players off in the distance will have very low frame rates, which is done to reduce the graphical strain of rendering things quickly and efficiently. However, when looking around an open field, especially when you're looking to snipe enemies, this is something that really sticks out as odd-looking. The frame rate of the models from that distance will probably not have any impact on the combat, however.
The character's and the enemies' animations are nice, fluid, and looks very natural and realistic. Each actions portray what they represent, down to the start up frames of an oncoming attack, to the horrible ways your character can get impaled, lifted off of their feet while they struggle in pain, and then thrown off of the weapon with a swift swing. Most attacks that happen will always have a fairly clear tell, whether if it's an obvious swing that is coming or a change of the enemy's stance. Avoiding these attacks is fairly easy, especially once you've learned their attack animations. Of course, none of this matters if they aren't on your screen because of the lock on issue mentioned previously.
With that said, the game doesn't have the most impressive graphics I have seen either. I don't think this game really had much of a "wow" factor... at least, not in awe of its graphical capabilities.
Perhaps this is a nitpicky thing to complain about, but in multiplayer, everyone aside from the host of the world will join as a phantom of some sort. This means that your character will appear as a brightly illuminated, white/yellow/red/etc, translucent model, making the detailed texture of your character moot as you barely see it as a phantom. Character customizability feels pretty pointless in terms of multiplayer for at least one person at a time due to this. This can be remedied with the Ring of the Living, if you care enough to use one of your ring slots for aesthetic purposes, and have already done one of the late-game DLC content the game comes with.Another thing that is probably not so important is how enemies or players off in the distance will have very low frame rates, which is done to reduce the graphical strain of rendering things quickly and efficiently. However, when looking around an open field, especially when you're looking to snipe enemies, this is something that really sticks out as odd-looking. The frame rate of the models from that distance will probably not have any impact on the combat, however.
Sound - The sound department does a pretty great job at portraying information. The footsteps of approaching enemies, the whooshing of swinging your weapons and the sound of slicing flesh or hitting a wall, the screams of dying enemies and their souls escaping their body, a lot of it is very satisfying to hear. A lot of times, this is all you hear as most areas do not have any background music, and strangely, few ambiance in some places as well. Perhaps part of the dullness I've felt while playing through the game was due to the lack of a background music.
In areas that DO have music like the main outpost of Majula or where singing can be heard in the area, it is very mellow and fits in well with the environment. The other areas with music are often during boss fights, which does a pretty good job of portraying the intensity, fierceness, danger, and other qualities of the boss and the fight they bring to you. In both situations, they certainly add to the immersion of the environment and situation you are in, just as much as silence can for some of the areas without any music.
Despite all this however, there aren't many compositions from Dark Souls II that sticks out as a catchy tune or something you would want to listen to on your free time. Which is a shame because I am a personal fan of Motoi Sakuraba's works in many of the other games that he has worked on.
In areas that DO have music like the main outpost of Majula or where singing can be heard in the area, it is very mellow and fits in well with the environment. The other areas with music are often during boss fights, which does a pretty good job of portraying the intensity, fierceness, danger, and other qualities of the boss and the fight they bring to you. In both situations, they certainly add to the immersion of the environment and situation you are in, just as much as silence can for some of the areas without any music.
Despite all this however, there aren't many compositions from Dark Souls II that sticks out as a catchy tune or something you would want to listen to on your free time. Which is a shame because I am a personal fan of Motoi Sakuraba's works in many of the other games that he has worked on.
Replay Value - Dark Souls II offers the New Game + feature for those that wish to continue playing the game with a challenge, even with their leveled up character. In fact, the difficulty can ramp up up to +7 times. The benefits of this include enemies with higher stats, newly placed enemies in an area, item drops that only drop from higher difficulties, and greater soul drops from killing enemies. Everything that you would want for your character that you wish to raise to a very high level. Scholar of the First Sin also offers two different endings, so you can work towards seeing the second ending as well.
Overall - Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin is definitely an interesting experience to be had, especially if you are new to FromSoftware's Dark Souls series. However, what it offers is definitely not for everyone as I feel its formula appeals to a niche group of gamers.
In terms of combat, I feel that the game lacks greatly in options. There may be many different weapons with different movesets, but something as basic as a feint attack or moves that create a new dynamic such as a fast gap closer or some other mechanics, it lacks too much action. Action games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and even Kid Icarus: Uprising offers much more satisfying action and combat with many options. Even better, play fighting games for a more action-packed 1 VS 1 combat.
In terms of RPG elements, the game is very linear with limited content compared to wide, open-area Western RPGs. The stat builds may be fun and interesting to work with at first, but after you've hit several soft caps, your later levels feel like it adds very little, making smaller and smaller impact on your character's build. Not to mention the minimal story and character development the game has. Maybe comparing this game with other RPGs is questionable, but with good portion of the game being about character building and working towards becoming stronger, I feel that there are plenty of RPGs out there that does this better. In fact, there's a whole genre of MMORPGs where you have character customizability, raise your character with RPG elements, and also have multiplayer that just feels a lot more interactive and less secluded, although seclusion might be part of Dark Soul's appeal.
The only other games that I can really closely compare Dark Souls II to are adventure games like the 3D Legend of Zelda series, and... well, at least Dark Souls II doesn't have Navi or Fi. The only hand-holding is provided by other players via messages on the ground that you choose to read. You still explore 3D dungeon environments, look and solve for puzzles, and collect treasure.
It's not a bad game by far, and provides a fairly unique experience that not many other games do currently, which is a pretty amazing feat considering the growth of the video game industry. The game does have its flaws like the camera and lock on system and laggy invaders making fights unfair, and some of the things that I have pointed out may be done so by design and is purely my personal preference getting in the way such as the lack of music and the phantom appearances. Perhaps the game is trying to be too many different genres of games at the same time.
In the end, I'm genuinely confused as to what makes Dark Souls so popular. The common misconception of the series is how hard it is, but after having played through the game and all of its DLCs, it isn't necessarily hard if you were to utilize all of the tools the game provides you. In fact, people purposely restrict themselves of certain items and features to create a challenge for themselves in this game, which certainly raises the difficulty of the run, but also an artificial difficulty. Perhaps the setting draws people in who are looking for a dark, gloomy adventure of regaining your humanity. Or perhaps they wish to test their patience and build with other players to see who is more patient and can pressure their opponent into making mistakes. Or maybe it's just a great place to troll people. Who knows. Whatever it is, I couldn't care much for it as I would prefer to play other games over this.
- I will add more screenshots to this page as I take more if I ever get around to getting on DS2 again.
In terms of combat, I feel that the game lacks greatly in options. There may be many different weapons with different movesets, but something as basic as a feint attack or moves that create a new dynamic such as a fast gap closer or some other mechanics, it lacks too much action. Action games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and even Kid Icarus: Uprising offers much more satisfying action and combat with many options. Even better, play fighting games for a more action-packed 1 VS 1 combat.
In terms of RPG elements, the game is very linear with limited content compared to wide, open-area Western RPGs. The stat builds may be fun and interesting to work with at first, but after you've hit several soft caps, your later levels feel like it adds very little, making smaller and smaller impact on your character's build. Not to mention the minimal story and character development the game has. Maybe comparing this game with other RPGs is questionable, but with good portion of the game being about character building and working towards becoming stronger, I feel that there are plenty of RPGs out there that does this better. In fact, there's a whole genre of MMORPGs where you have character customizability, raise your character with RPG elements, and also have multiplayer that just feels a lot more interactive and less secluded, although seclusion might be part of Dark Soul's appeal.
The only other games that I can really closely compare Dark Souls II to are adventure games like the 3D Legend of Zelda series, and... well, at least Dark Souls II doesn't have Navi or Fi. The only hand-holding is provided by other players via messages on the ground that you choose to read. You still explore 3D dungeon environments, look and solve for puzzles, and collect treasure.
It's not a bad game by far, and provides a fairly unique experience that not many other games do currently, which is a pretty amazing feat considering the growth of the video game industry. The game does have its flaws like the camera and lock on system and laggy invaders making fights unfair, and some of the things that I have pointed out may be done so by design and is purely my personal preference getting in the way such as the lack of music and the phantom appearances. Perhaps the game is trying to be too many different genres of games at the same time.
In the end, I'm genuinely confused as to what makes Dark Souls so popular. The common misconception of the series is how hard it is, but after having played through the game and all of its DLCs, it isn't necessarily hard if you were to utilize all of the tools the game provides you. In fact, people purposely restrict themselves of certain items and features to create a challenge for themselves in this game, which certainly raises the difficulty of the run, but also an artificial difficulty. Perhaps the setting draws people in who are looking for a dark, gloomy adventure of regaining your humanity. Or perhaps they wish to test their patience and build with other players to see who is more patient and can pressure their opponent into making mistakes. Or maybe it's just a great place to troll people. Who knows. Whatever it is, I couldn't care much for it as I would prefer to play other games over this.
- I will add more screenshots to this page as I take more if I ever get around to getting on DS2 again.
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