Dark Souls 2 haters… please stop. Its been ten years

So I opened up YouTube just a moment ago, and as I looked upon my recommended videos, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There amidst a sea of uninspired, rehashed topics, and reaction videos to someone else’s reaction of another person’s video, I saw something amazing. The creator of this outstanding work had really done it. They had dared to take a deep dive into a topic so controversial, so taboo, so utterly unique amongst the gaming community, that merely uploading it seemed to be a calculated act of social (media) suicide. I will now reveal the topic of this upload. If you don’t want your persception of the world as you know to be uprooted, then now is the time to click off of this post. You have been warned.

The video was an hour long video-essay. And the subject matter revolved around a video game released in 2014, developed by a Japanese company called FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco. The video game was released under the title: Dark Souls 2. To say the game was a massive success, is an understatement to say the least. In terms of sales it may not have reached the heights of the game industry’s best selling titles. But up until that video was uploaded, as far as I know, there was one thing that was universally agreed upon by anyone who has ever played the game; it was perfect. It was truly a flawless game above all criticism and reproach. From professional game critics, to little brothers that grabbed the controller to run around for a few brief seconds while their elder sibling went to the kitchen to get more diet Mountain Dew, not one person that played the game was able to cite a single negative claim about it. That is, until today. This individual claimed that they did not like the game, and went into great details about aspects that they perceived to be flaws in a game that was once ubiquitously accepted as the only perfect game ever created.

Alright, no but seriously. If you are making an hour long video about why you don’t like Dark Souls 2 in 2024, the YouTube algorithm should immediately delete your channel. I don’t know why it takes these people an hour to say, “I don’t like Dark Souls 2 because I played Dark Souls 1 and this game is not Dark Souls 1” and no I did not watch the hour long video. I did however humor it for 5 minutes, and the “DS1 did this, and I like that, but DS2 did not do that, and I do not like it” theme to reveal itself, and that theme was about to carry the next 55 minutes of a goofy video showcasing the pursuers’ grab attack, that would not have hit the player, had they properly timed their dodge, and it’s just the animation that looks wonky, because the game registered that the player had been hit, but did not lock them into the grab until the roll animation finished.

People like that are the reason that modern gaming sucks, and likely the reason why everything that sucks, sucks. Why? Because Dark Souls 2 deviated from the original game in a lot of ways. Were all of the systems and executions perfect? Of course not. Were all the systems and aspects of DS1 executed perfectly? Absolutely not. Many being arguably worse. But regardless of if you enjoyed Dark Souls 2 or not, I am glad that we have it today. It is the most unique game in Fromsoft’s souls-like catalogue (barring Sekiro) and that is because they experimented and tried new things. Which is good.

Not saying that I believe that Fromsoft would even do such a thing, but what do such people want? The souls games to be an Assassin’s Creed-esque series that releases the same game for 15 years straight? They tried a lot of interesting things in DS2 and a lot of the ideas were really cool and interesting, but likely were never explored or expanded upon with later releases, because everyone cried about DS2 and some people are evidently still crying about it 10 years later. That is likely a big reason why developers don’t take chances or experiment with unconventional ideas. Because people cry when something is different or unfamiliar. Isn’t that one of the reasons we all loved Dark Souls in the first place? Because it took the conventions of most other games of its time and said “Nah screw that, we gonna do all this weird obscure stuff instead”

That’s all I have to say, other than, love you DS2. You sweet, misunderstood, admittedly rough around the edges, gem ❤️