Dark Souls 2 Cool Depressing Game Review

Dark Souls 2 Cool Depressing Game Review

Today, I wanted to review the totally amassing Dark Souls 2. I have been too busy playing the game in order to review it. Basically, this game picks up were the other one left off… more or less. In my first file, I was a rogue. I ended up starting a new file because my girl became a dude. I found out later, if you stayed hollowed for too long, the character forgets what it looks like. Call it an annoying handicap. In this game, we find out the source of the undead curse. As usual, Dark Souls is a bit ambiguous of the storyline. So, I will work in themes.

First, I will discuss my current character. As usual, my second file I call my character Pride. She was a mage girl. I figured I would go for magic all the way since; I won the last Dark Souls game easily as a mage. As of now, I am a quasi-mage/ monk/magical warrior. I usually hang around a lot in the Sinner’s Rise. The place was my favorite training spot up until recently. By ascenting the bondfire, I got to level 200.

Anyhow… the tutorial for this game was less brutal than the tutorial in Dark Souls 1. In that game, they had you kill an ugly, fat boss with a broken sword. They did not let you level up until you killed that horrible monster. This time the tutorial seemed more like a tutorial, with some half backed monster for you to beat up to raise your self-esteem. You can still die in the tutorial, if you are careless. Since I got the Black Armor game thingy, I got some extra gear of sorts.

Frankly, I did not like too much the intro movie. In the first part, they showed you an epic final battle between Lord Gwyn and his allies vs. the Evil Dragons. This one gave you a little too much info about your past. You had a wife or mother and then you went Hollow. You forget about your past and you don’t even care.

From what I gathered from the storyline, the new King Vendrick was a Lord Gwyn’s replacement. One day his kingdom was attacked by giants that came out of nowhere. Around that time, King Vendrick got a new hot wife. He was attracted by her dark beauty. Little did he know his Queen wanted to become a king. In order to gain power, she gave the king the undead curse. In order to fight the curse, King Vendrick used the powers of the Giant’s souls.  

In the end, the King concluded he was cursed because the fire was dying. Indeed, the curse became stronger as the Flame died. Since the King could not recreate the fire, he decided to bring the dragons back to life. Though that experiment failed, he was still able to make a dragon like creature. The mock dragon did not work. It looked like a dragon. It breathed fire like a dragon, but it was an utter failure. In all respect, the so called dragon was a glorified Drake and nothing more.

In response to this failure, the King went to plan B. He found an ancient dragon egg and was in the process of hatching it when I came along and stole it. Then again, by that time the King had lost all his humanity. The Queen’s curse had succeeded. Since the king was indisposed she became Queen Regent. All was well, until, other Undeads started showing up to claim the throne she believed belonged to her.

 

Needless to say, successions are quite bloody in Dark Souls. These undeads were led by the Emerald Herald, aka Shanalotte. Based on her aged feather, she was probably an ancient dragon which escapes the onslaught. She might also be Syth the Scaleless brat. If I remember correctly, Syth had feathers in his tail, just like the girl from the painted world. She probably escaped after Lord Gwyn went bye, bye.

 

Dark Souls 1 hinted at the fact of a Dark Secret society which was trying to put one of their own on the throne. I think when Nashandra made the curse worse than better; it came time for a change in management. Some talks speculate, the dark magic existed at the time of the dragons. The undead curse was probably a warped version of an immortality spell. After all, undead’s inability to die makes them akin to Gods… if only they could stop losing their souls.

If you think about it, Nashandra’s curse was different than the original undead curse. This one kills the undead.  She found a way to kill what could not be slain. She did this to avoid another Dark Souls 1. Heck, she even went as far as to pretend to be a cat to monitor the process of her competition. Methinks she was modeled after the general trend of winners from Dark Souls 1. According to stats, the best players from Dark Souls 1 were magical chicks. Perhaps, Nashandra was the winner of Dark Souls 1, the one who became queen of the brontosaurs. When she did not kindle the flames, the Darkness grew. She had been ruling from the shadows ever since.  

I suppose that is enough on the storyline. I could not follow most of it. Frankly, the first part was a lot more depressing and the world was a hell of a lot bigger. Then again, it may have felt bigger because I had to walk on foot most of the time. In this new Dark Souls, they give you less Estus flask. You sorta have to struggle a lot to get the maximum amount, being 12 flasks, improved to the 5^th level.  Monster wise, the knights were smaller and the monster a tad less varied.

Boss wise, I found the bosses in Dark Souls 1 a lot harder. Let us take Lord Gwyn for example; he was a think fast kinda boss. My favorite part was when he kindled the fire in you. Unlike the first Dark Souls I played this one with online help. I got online around the Sinner’s Rise.  Because of the experience I got from the boss, this spot became my training ground. At lot of players usually circulate around that spot. There are usually not a lot of invaders, since they prefer to hang out in Belfry Luna. There I earned most of my sunlight metals.

Covenant wise, I settled in the Dark Covenant. I liked it because it made my dark spells stronger. I killed most of my bosses using the spell affinity. The irony was that the final boss was immune to darkness. It was a good thing I had my back up lightning. Between my online pals and me, we killed Nashandra in less than 30 seconds. I started panicking when I got too closed to her Evil Curse sprites. Around the end, I lost a bit too much HP. When the online players saw my HP dropping, they redoubled their lightning efforts. With Nashandra, speed is the key.

Speaking of bosses, the worst Boss I had to fight was the Charioteer. The presentation and the dead were so cool. He was mostly responsible for me to switch my tactics all together. Because of him, I used 90 levels on defense based stats. I got the basic 20 of all stats and then some. The second time I fought for real, I fought him with my Havel armor. I used my dragon shield as a weapon to kill the dead and their casters. After his helpers died, the rest was easy. I started worrying around the end, when his chariot broke. I almost half expected the bastard to come at me from behind.

When I killed this boss, I got assess to the bloody covenant.  I joined for a bit because I hoped it would make my Uchigatana’s bleeding attack stronger. Too soon, did I learn bleeding sucks in Dark Souls 2. Seriously! In Dark Souls 1, I used to use the blade as my secondary weapon. It was a way to preserve my spells for the bosses. The Uchigatana in Dark Souls 2 sucked! Heck, most of the Weapons sucked in this game. Only recently did I make a weapon which did not suck.

My weapon of choice as of now is the Moonlight Blade. This one scales with magic. It is also fast for a greatsword. It also has a big attack. Pity it breaks after 5 big shots… For a fiddle stick, I use a staff dropped by a witch. It uses Magic and Miracles. Recently, I started improving the Dragon Chime, to shoot bigger lightning.

For a while, I tried to go wear mage armor. However, an invader attack and few beatings got me to wear the Havel’s Armor indefinitely. My favorite mage armor was the Xantus armor. I was disappointed to see the hat had been shrunk. In the last Dark Souls, it was a ridiculously huge bandaged. I liked to wear the armor because it made my girl look like a lunatic. Those were the days; overall, all armors and warrior weapons suck.

I did not like the randomness of the level. They added too many variables. Somehow, I ended up having proficiency for darkness.  I obtained the Soul of Darkness from the dead dragon. This leaves me to believe the Dark Magic originated from the Dragons. World wise, there was not a dungeon I liked in Dark Souls 2. They were all so iffy. I worst dungeons, if you can call it a dungeon was Belfry Sol and Luna. A lot of jerks liked to hang out there to beat you up if you try to ring the bell. I usually get through that place like by ringing the before the enemy has a chance to establish a connection.

The last things I want to mention are the computer weirdoes. You get most of the storyline via conversations or by the vibes of the souls you keep. I liked a lot the story of Lucatiel. She was a pretty depressing chick trying to fight off the undead Curse. I think she got cursed in her job as a knight. Those who worked closets to the King and Queen developed quite the Dark Souls. Get it! Dark Souls! The second weirdo which I liked was the crazy chaos mage who told me to kill people. He was a riot, with his creepy evil voice.  

According to my psychology book, there is no such thing as multiple personality disorder. The closet’s thing to it is bipolarism. Still, it is a popular modality in the fictional world. Psychology wise, the chaos mage was simply pulling your leg by pretending to be good when you were human. He was obviously sealed away for being a jerk. 

He only showed his true colors when you were hollowed because he thought you would be more influential, being brain dead and all. The human effigy only makes you look and feel human. The evil cat said you smelled rotten flesh, and reclaiming your humanity did nothing to fix your rotting brain. Then again, humanities were in short supply in Dark Souls 2. All you had to work with was a stupid human effigy that sometimes got the gender wrong.  The thing relied on your ever fading memory.

On a final note, I did not like the ghost in this world. I also did not liked to getting a beating from the mock dragon, hollowed Vendrick, the Lost Sinner level 10 (when my internet helper died for being reckless), the ugly rotten, and the wheel angel skeletons. When it comes to online playing, it was an interesting experience. I did invade a few people. The experience was overrated. I heard in Dark Signs the server could handle a lot more weirdoes. 

I did assist kill a hell of a lot of bosses. I was able to get enough sunlight medals to get the covenant up to level 2. Pity, I went over to the Dark Side. Still, that did not stop me from lending a hand. Fidelity Token wise, I have about 17. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I have only played for 107 hours. Most of the assisted kills were against the Lost Sinner, the armored triplets, the Mirror Knight and King Vendrick’s Shadow Lover Knight. I think he was the reason the King did not produce an heir.

Well, this is all speculation on my end. Dark Souls’ storyline is ambiguous enough for you to get creative with the storyline. Call it an old Final Fantasy 7 trick. Usually queens are less jerky when they have a little puppet prince. She must have wanted a kid seeing as though she made the weird little guys at Belfry Sol and Luna. In the old days, sterility was what usually screwed up marriages. Perhaps the Queen went evil because the King went Henry 8^th on her, by threatening to divorce her. She being a zombie could not get a brat. To make it seem like it was the King’s fault, she turned him into a zombie like her.

While she conquered her curse, King Vendrick fell into despair and was consumed by it. He lacked the will to power to master the curse. Instead of fighting it, Vendrick isolated himself. Then again, most undead go hollow when their nose falls off.  Undeads must always live in the present, for they have no more past, and their future is ambiguous.  It takes someone with a strong will to see the undead condition as a gift and not a curse. Well those are my final thoughts on Dark Souls 2. I hope I humored you a little bit. Truly, Dark Souls 2 is a 5 stars worthy games.

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