I wrote about Dark Souls II/Scholar of the First Sin (SotFS) yesterday, and I have more to say about it. I don’t think FromSoft could win when it came to making the sequel because the original was so beloved. It only came out on consoles at first and took some serious campaigning on the part of PC players before it was ported to the PC. And the port was shit. Utter and complete shit. It took a modder named Durante to offer dsfix to make the game playable. In fact, if you were thinking of playing the game on PC, you were counseled to not even think of it if you didn’t include dsfix with the specific specs he recommended.
There was a love for the first game that was unparalleled. Yes, there was an appreciation for Demon’s Souls, but it was definitely not as loud as was the fanfare for Dark Souls. Because of it, expectations for the sequel were at an all-time high. Simultaneously, Miyazaki was working on Bloodborne with what is known in the community as the A team. Or at least that’s what the community started calling it after the two games came out. Implying, of course ,that Dark Souls II was made by the B team (or flat-out saying it).
Here’s the thing. There are many things wrong with Dark Souls II/SotFS. I’m not going to deny it. Playing it after playing Elden Ring makes me see all the flaws in high relief. I absolutely hate the unfairness of the mobs where there’s usually an enemy hidden somewhere who jumps out at you or is located in an area that is juuuuuust out of reach. I did No-Man’s Wharf yesterday, and all the hatred for this area came flooding back.
Not because it’s hard, per se. I expect FromSoft games to be hard, obviously. The mantra of ‘hard, but fair’ is very uneven in this game. And this area is a prime example of From trying too hard to be difficult.
First, let me say, I forget how fragile I am at the beginning of every From game. This one especially as I play as a Sorcerer because there is no Pyromancer. Why? To be different, I think. You can get Pyromancy later in the game, but you cannot start out with it–which still irks me to this day.
Sorcerer is a really weak class. I don’t care what anyone says. It starts with puny stats for everything except Intelligence, and you don’t even get a real weapon or a shield to start with. You get a staff and a puny dagger. 30 Soul Arrows, which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. I can’t tell you how fragile I felt the first time I played. It was agonizing and felt artificially hard.
No Man’s Wharf is a huge area with many different paths.
Oh! Side Note: Dark Souls II had durability of weapons as a thing. It was also present in the first game, but was not really noticeable because the weapons got ‘healed’ when you rested at the bonfires. This was also the case in Dark Souls II, but on the PC, there was a bug that made the durability go faster with a higher frame rate. It got to the point where you could not go with one weapon from bonfire to bonfire.
Even with the bug being fixed, however, there is still the risk that the weapon will break during a long session. And No Man’s Wharf was a very big area. Plus grueling. Let’s put archers with flaming arrows all over so you can’t go two steps without getting hit by a flaming arrow! And have no way that you can snipe them from afar! There is one area in which there are three dogs, and one visible Hollow Varangian–the standard enemy of the area. Not too bad, rig9ht? Except there is another Hollow Varangian above who is shooting said flaming arrows at you–and I could not reach him with either my bow or my Soul Arrows. Then, when you move forward there is a Hollow Varangian in the house behind the one with the dogs. To the right is a Pharros’ Lockstone (receiver), guarded by a Hollow Varangian with a bow (with, yes, flaming arrows). And depending on what you did beforehand, there may be another behind him. The thing is, you cannot see all of these enemies at the same time, so one is going to surprise you.
And in many of the houses, there are three or four of the Hollow Varangians sleeping. It’s hard to just draw one because you’ll wake up at least two at a time. God help you if you wake up all four. Plus, there are narrow walkways over water, which is my bane. I have spatial issues that make it difficult for me to gauge what is safe and what isn’t when it comes to narrow walkways.
At this point, you’ll probably have 4 or 5 Estus Flasks. Because I know that I’m going to rest at the bonfire before tackling the boss, I can drink Estus with impunity because I know I can top up again before the boss fight. I had a mace, upgraded a few times, and I had to keep an eye on it because I didn’t want it to break as I went through the area. In the vanilla game, you had to go through the whole area and straight to the boss without a whiff of the bonfire. Which meant going in with very little resources.
From put out Scholar of the First Sin a year or so later as a remake of sorts. They strove to balance the game and tone down the brutality that they had made in DS II. One thing they did was add a shortcut to this area, a tree that you kick down and get you back to the beginning of the level. Even with the shortcut, though, it’s a long and grueling area, tedious beyond belief. Even having played it a dozen times, I still died several times because of the enemies jumping out of nowhere and ganking you. Even knowing they’re coming doesn’t mitigate it.
The negatives of SotFS are even starker after having played Elden Ring. It’s hard to go back to clicking in the left thumb stick for jump when now I have a dedicated jump button. By the way, I refuse to go back, FromSoft. Now that you’ve shown me the wonder that is a dedicated jump button, there is no way I’m accepting anything less.
I am one of the people who thinks Dark Souls II/SotFS is a good game, if not a good Souls game. I have maintained that if it wasn’t called Dark Souls II, but something like Seeking the Sun, it would have received more praise than it did.
I’ll write more about it in another post as I’m running long yet again. I have so much to say about Dark Souls, Elden Ring, FromSoft, and life in general.