Dark Souls 2

[Kreekakon]

I've currently just gotten the King's Ring (Around 27 hours in), and am nearly almost done with NG I must say. I'll probably have to spoil myself as to when, and how the game ends to prevent myself from accidentally ending my run before that happens.

I'm hesitant to make a lot of judgment calls on what I think about the game, because it's only my first run, and many of my complaints may very well be void just because I haven't found the things which nullify them yet.

As someone who's played the original Dark Souls quite a bit, I can safely say that this game is giving me a much harder time than Dark Souls 1 gave me on its first run. It is in no way easier than the first. Although there were more than a few bosses who were complete pushovers than I was expecting although that may partially be part of the "ushering completely new players in phase" which I had already conquered in the first Dark Souls.

I'd say my current biggest gripe with the game is that the bosses don't seem as memorable as in the first one. I can hardly name any bosses which particularly stood out in their own way to me whereas in the first game many of them left a lasting impact on my memory even if it was my very first time meeting them, and I hadn't fought them so many times over.

Another thing which is a bit of a more personal preference which I wished to have seen is the lack of the game hyping up the important boss fights before-hand. In the original Dark Souls all the four lords had previous character backstory, and dialogue given to you to let you know these were big figures in the lore. At the very least Frampt/Kathee would give you their names, and at most Seath even had a sort of mini story-arc with you fighting him, failing, and then being taken prisoner by him.

In Dark Souls 2 I frequently went up against the lords without any sort of previous knowledge that this was going to be one of the powerful old lords. It makes the encounters far less impactful the first time you go into them. If I've missed something though feel free to tell me.

The PC port I'm happy to say runs extremely well for the most part, although I will say that the biggest problem I've had technically so far is mouse input lag, especially when it comes to my character raising his shield. There is a very noticeable 0.5 second delay to when you click the mouse button to when the character will raise their shield which has gotten me hit on numerous occasions.

I won't say much more for now, since like I said before I need to dwell deeper into the game before knowing anything for certain, but I still will say that Dark Souls 2 is a jolly good(?) time which was worth every cent of my purchase, and time spent with it!