Last updated on May 13, 2014
…since that’s all that I have been doing lately anyway.
From playing the previous two games, and then playing this one fairly regularly, they certainly wanted to echo design elements of both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. Mostly this comes through in the level design, which combines the linearity of Demon’s Souls with the “open world” nature of Dark Souls. Technically, there’s no arbitrary gating to most areas (except for the end-game stuff), which means you could enter areas out-of-order if you want. The “death” system works similarly to Demon’s Souls as it decreases your health by 5% whenever you die, and the bonfires actually function more like Archstones that take you to Majula (Dark Souls II’s version of the Nexus). I think the design works to the series’ strengths in some ways by forcing you to encounter obstacles in a straightforward way. At times, though, it tends to feel like Final Fantasy XIII in its linearity.
Add the combat system to that, and you can see them crib liberally from Demon’s Souls. Multiple enemy encounter appear all over the place, and it feels like more than half the boss fights require some sort of multi-target juggling to complete. The ones that don’t have it underwhelm by being so straightforward, and the ones that do turn into extended kiting fests while you wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. I recommend you don’t summon any phantoms or help for bosses, as they almost immediately trivialize any boss fights just by existing . Now, I don’t mind them doing this over and over again with combat, but most situations devolve into several target fights, several target fights with archers, or bosses – not exactly the huge variety you expect from a Souls’ game. You still need to be careful as you explore, but most bosses turned into a pushover the moment I upgraded anything.
There’s a problem at the very basic design level here, and it has a lot to do with the dreaded “accessibility”. Quite literally, the problem is that the game’s far too easy. Bonfires appear in ready supply, but the areas between those bonfires aren’t obstacle-ridden death-traps; most of them just annoy you with the tedium of combat listed above. Some of them plaster stupid obstacles (like unavoidable damage or poison) throughout without understanding what they actually teach the player (Black Gulch teaches you to run really fast).
The combat’s well-designed, but there’s only so many times you can throw the same enemy groups and ambush sets before I can see right through what the designers planned. Furthermore, the punishment for death simply isn’t enough to make it a big issue, and “grinding” for any length of time will make you overleveled (believe me, it can happen). You can buy a ring that lets you keep all your souls when yu die, but it doesn’t disappear when used; you can simply repair it for 3000 souls later. The game lacks a true notion of weighty consequences.
I contrast this to the previous games, simply because their design meant your decisions mattered. If you overleveled, you ran a risk of invasions (which hasn’t even happened to me once). If you used crafting materials, you might not find them again. If you wandered too far into an unknown area, you might panic and not find your way out. Here, everything’s laid out too neatly and clearly. I rarely needed any help from NPCs to find out where to go (due to the aforementioned linearity). The hostile, obfuscated world of previous Souls games has disappeared, replaced by a game which copies the form and loses the spirit.
To use a music related analogy, it’s the difference between Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play. Both of them are one song long albums at and around the 40 minute mark, and both of them hit number 1 on the American Billboard charts. However, the former’s hailed as a masterpiece of the genre (which is also funny!)and a catchy tune to boot, while the latter suffers from the worst overblown, under-cooked pretensions of the progressive rock genre. Of course, the band thought they “fixed” the format, and to their dismay their mainstream popularity immediately evaporated.
Course, that isn’t a perfect analogy: Dark Souls II will make the series much more popular than it ever was by being a rather friendly game experience to the newcomer. Unfortunately, it will also lose what made Souls games unique in the first place. I am pretty disappointed so far!
