Let’s talk more about sequels in video games. I wrote a post yesterday intending to get to Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, the sequel to Cozy Grove. I took a hard detour to Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin) instead, and I’m going tos stay there for the moment.
I mentioned how most hardcore From fans did NOT like Dark Souls II and/or considered it a failure. It was so intense, From actually re-released the game a year later with several fixes. The biggest one is that they changed the ending by adding one more boss after the final boss. Which, in and of itself, is…ah…how to put this diplomatically–utter horseshit. Why? Because depending on how you play it, you can face three bosses in a row without a break. Fortunately, if you kill one, they are dead for good. It’s still annoying, though, to have to babysit your souls through three boss fights back-to-back-to-back.
I have said for years that it’s not a gerat Dark Souls game, perhaps, but it’s still a great game. It’s better than 90% of the games out there. I have slightly amended that first statement. And, I’m going to say something that has caused much angst and drama. I enjoyed the second game far more than I did the first game. There is one major reason for it–it had fast travel from the start. In the first game, you had to beat Ornstein and Smough, which is roughly halfway through the game before you got the ability to fast travel. And even then, there were only specific bonfires to which you could travel. Very few and far between.
I understand the thinking behind this approach, and I can say that I know the layout of the first game so much better than I I do the second (or third). Why? Because I was forced to traverse the areas over and over again as I died so fucking much. So. Much. Dying.
However. By the time you get to the second half of the game, any charm that plodding along the same areas again and again and again might have had has definitely worn off. Add to that the fact that the second half of the game is decidedly and markedly worse than the first half, and, well, this is my least-played of the three Souls games. And my least-favorite.
Dark Souls III is my favorite, in case you were wondering.
A friend in the RKG Discord mentioned that one thing she really liked about the second game was that there were several animal-based bosses/enemies. Which I thought was funny. Another thing I liked is that in one of the optional boss fights, there are two completely different ways to beat the boss. The conventional way to do it (by pulling a lever) and the nonconventional way–which is what I did during my first playthrough.
Let’s discuss it because it was so clever. Was it on purpose? I’m not entirely sure, but I have a hard time believing it happneed on accident. The optional boss is the Executioner’s Chariot. Getting to this boss is a nightmare. One of the worst boss runs in the game. Then, you face the boss which is a skellie in a chariot.
The way you’re supposed to beat the boss is to run from recess to recess as the chariot lumbers around the track (and does massive damage to you with the spikes sticking out from the wheels if it hits you). Ther are two necromancers in two different spots who are constantly resurrecting sekeletons. If you kill them, then you can kill the skellies in their area for good. Otherwise, obviously, the skellies keep coming back.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the Scholar of the First Sin edition included the three DLCs, too.
Anyway, once you take care of the two necromancers, you reach a lever. Pull the lever and a gate comes down. And a hole in the ground appears, I think? It’s a bit fuzzy. The horse crashes into and through the gate, and the chariot plus the skellie fall down the hole. Then, you fight the horse until it dies.
As I said, that’s how you’re supposed to fight the boss. The way I did it the first time was by hiding in the recesses and killing the necromancers. Yes, that was the same, but the difference was that once the hores passed by me, I would pop out into the track and set up one of my exploding pyromancies. (Lingering Flame). That would take off a chunk of the boss’s health, and I would run back into the recess to wait for the chariot to come thundering around the track again before doing the same thing. I didn’t even know there was a lever in the boss room the first time I faced it because I killed the boss with my pyros without ever having to face the horse.
How did I learn that there’s a lever in the room? I don’t even know. I just thought it was really cool that there were two ways to kill the boss. This ties in with another neat thing that Dark Souls II did–they made NG+ interesting by adding enemies to key boss fights. This is one of my biggest complaints about From games–there is really no reason to play NG+ and beyond. I’ve done it (and am doing it), but it would be nice if there was a reason to do it other than it’s there.
This is the thing about the second game–there were innovative sparks there. In NG+, not only did they put extra enemy in key boss fights, they give you the boss souls for the four big bosses from the first game as the boss souls of the big four for the second game. And you got to see and battle one of the bosses before you got to the boss fight proper.
Unfortunately, it felt very half-baked and could have been fleshed out so much more fully. But I have to give them credit for trying.
I think the biggest issue with the second game was that FromSoft was trapped by the success of the first. And this is the tension that continues throughout their games. They have such a rabid fan base, it’s a losing game to try to appease them.
I remember when Elden Ring came out, there was a very well-known FromSoft content creator who was not having a good time with it. The reason was because he, like many FromSoft content creators, liked to solo the bosses. Elden Ring‘s bosess were designed to be fought with a spirit summon. This guy did a video a few months after the game was released in which he said that Elden Ring will go down as the worst FromSoft game when it was all said and done.
I had watched his videos casually before that, but that was the last one I watched because it was so myopic and whiny. And, quite frankly, ill-informed.
I have more to say about that, but I’m ending this post here. More tomorrow.