From Software 'n such

[Blinge]

Now they've added the same mouse BS to king's field. sigh.

oh man heavy builds are always effective in DS1. poise is super useful
with enough poise (elite knight+ wolf ring) you can literally just walk in spamming and kill the dogs vs capra without even worrying.

[Lander]

often coupled with instructions for modern soyboy gamers on how to remap using emulators.

Right on time lol
https://mobile.twitter.com/vinciusmedei ... 6867261443

By Duckstation users as well *spit*
The scrub's choice of PS1 emulator.

Mouse injectors in general can be an interesting curio, so long as they're taken with the appropriate grain of design-intent-obliterating salt.

[Blinge]

Wait.. what's your choice?
I just started using duckstation.. was always an ancient epsxe before

[Lander]

I'm a shameless Libretro Beetle PSX supremacist

It's got all the good stuff; low-lag runahead, fancy CRT shaders, schmancy HW-mode upscaling for when you're in an impurist mood, all the GTE stabilization hackery you could want, etc.

The catch is that you have to spend 10 hours studying and configuring Retroarch or some other frontend before the "share all your settings across emulators and have easy playlists" factor starts to pay off. Worth it though - I think Dolphin is the only standalone emulator I have on my machine these days.

Also, on another Fromsofty note: How 'bout that Elden Ring DLC eh?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Made it to Sen's Fortress. I've been messing about with a Lucerne and Halberd, and I'm pretty sure the Halberd's the better of the two. The range on the poke is insanely good. Lucerne's 2 handed light swings have absurd width though and tend to hit anything around you in a crowd, but its 1 handed light attacks seem much more limited. Decent, but not quite as good.

I need to invest in arrows. There's a lot of dangerous stuff to snipe down. I stumbled on the giant at the top of the castle (it's the first secret door I've found you have to attack and can't just roll through?).

I actually found Quelaag first by going in the back way once Darkroot was opened up, then went back and explored the Depths properly. I only discovered how to reach the enemy at the top of Gaping Dragon AFTER I'd killed the thing with manually aimed crossbow shots. Oops. Gaping Dragon wasn't too tough, as it the attack you want to bait (it's charge attack) is telegraphed well and has a lot of time to safely attack it. The trick is not to try and fight it at long range, but instead focus on getting behind it any time it stops moving.

[Blinge]

Ranged attacks are for pussies, Roo, and you are above this.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I cannot emphasize how much of this run has involved me solving my problems by chucking firebombs at them, lol

Once I know the enemy patterns better I totally plan to do meme runs, but until then I don't know how else to handle the snakies shooting lightning bolts at me ;w;

[Lander]

Otogi: Myth of Demons

Decided to boot this up in XEMU over the weekend and give it a second chance after bouncing back on the original Xbox.
Turns out it emulates rather nicely once you patch proper not-a-number handling into XEMU's fog routines, and even has a 60FPS hack on top of the expected widescreen modification.

I like it much better this time round; stylish Wuxia Shinobi by way of From's signature misery.

The Good
The higher framerate makes it feel much closer to a conventional character action game, with the various moveset properties easier to lab out absent the sense of input floatiness.
The mission structure is very nice - it feels more varied in terms of objectives than something like DMC (almost to the point of evoking Mario 64), though pays in cohesive feel since the maps rarely come off as connected.
And the stage persistence's implied 100% goal of demolishing ancient japan in its entirety - at least in theory - is pure fun, leaning heavy into the signature wall crash combat mechanics it makes me think of Katamari for some reason, even though those games aren't persistent as far as I know(?)

The Bad
Unfortunately in practice, that 100% quickly goes out of scope once you realize how many levels there are, how skewed the baddie-to-breakable ratio is, and how awkward some of the stage gimmicks make hunting down every last object.
There's obviously a really cool concept in here with good presentation, but the back half is crammed with filler, some of the stage gimmicks are just downright clangers, common late-game mooks perfect-parry your moves at random, and there's a lot of grind around the edges.

The- oh no it's broken
However, this opinion comes with a catch; recall that 60FPS patch. Well, Otogi isn't a game where you can just double the framerate, halve the game speed, and call it good.
No sir, what we have here is a case of selective framerate dependence. It's initially somewhat obvious, because the jump goes from elegant wire-fu gliding to a frenetic DMC leap.
Manageable enough - if utterly impurist - and an interesting tradeoff of mobility for more responsive neutral. Nothing else obviously busted, so alright, give it a go for the sake of smoothness.

Enter Stage 25: In which our hero must smash 8 things before the flocks of homing hitboxes they spawn deplete his magic gauge, because the following chase sequence cannot be completed without a working dash.
As it turns out, the spawn rate on said hitboxes is also framerate dependent, resulting in massive swarms that render the stage nigh un-clearable without dropping back to the original version.

Which leaves me wondering just how much of the rest of the game is broken by this hackery.
It seemed tough but fair-ish up until the hard wall, with the same janky bits that I remember from my last playthrough of the first half, but that still leaves a lot of stuff that could go either way.
What's more annoying is that I'm now accustomed to this busted 60FPS version, so going back feels like gliding through treacle.

In Inconclusion
I'm now stuck on Stage 28 - a.k.a. the penultimate boss gauntlet - because spinny bastards keep instakilling me with a lucky wallsplat.
At this point I just want to move on to Otogi 2, since the tiny bit I played previously seemed a lot more polished, so I suppose I'll have to keep trying.
Apparently there are ~10 more character levels I could grind out to ease the pain, but that's the last thing I want to do at the tail end of a hack and slash Curse you, Action RPG genre!

I actually found Quelaag first by going in the back way once Darkroot was opened up, then went back and explored the Depths properly.

That's the route I tend to take by default. New Londo Ruins' menacing aura is generally enough to make me tactically forget the shortcut (or front entrance, if you like ) until I'm beefed up and packing the requisite consumables.

The trick is not to try and fight it at long range, but instead focus on getting behind it any time it stops moving.

With that knowledge, you're more or less set until the Bloodborne Flail starts creeping into later entries' enemy design. The bigger bosses are visually intimidating, but often fall in the face of tactical heel-nibbling.

Once I know the enemy patterns better I totally plan to do meme runs, but until then I don't know how else to handle the snakies shooting lightning bolts at me ;w;

You gotta Rush That Shit Down

Spoiler

Or just slowly castle forward with a shield and deal with the chip damage if they're hiding behind a stage hazard.

[Blinge]

Radahn

Man.. I was waiting for my Elden Ring tournament arc.. ahaha. I was disappointed, but then very not.

Spoiler

I did a deliberate fail run where I rode around summoning fucking everyone. all the bros. all the warriors.. to take him on. The festival of combat. That looked pretty damn fun.

Then we all got wiped out by a fucking meteor.. I was one shotted.. my girl screaming as she went up in flames.
I'll have to upload the video at some point, it looks like an atrocity caught on an old nokia

I genuinely fucking howled with laughter that PATCHES joins the fray
He just stands atop the hill watching, then peaces out.
Reliable as always, trust patches.

Eventually I decided to just keep going at Radahn with my spellblade antics.
What a fucking cool boss
https://youtu.be/2YwsEE5P648

[Stevens]

Started Elden Ring again. Put three hours in and realized I would rather be playing Bloodborne.

Gotta fix the PS.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I've made a fair bit of progress in DS1. Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo's church really are dizzying to navigate, but I made it through them without too much trouble!

I tried to examine the painting as I was clearing out the room, and OH SNAP got pulled in. What followed was one of the more stressful hours I've had in DS1 but in an exhilarating kind of way. Because you can't just Homeward Bone out of the Painted World (it sets your destination to the bridge when you enter) you're forced to progress to proceed and it's a hell of a trip. Between the giant blob dudes in the middle, the scary but surprisingly frail crow things, KING JEREMIAH and his fire storm that nearly oneshot me (yikes), the undead dragon... I'm alarmed I didn't get killed, though the underground section nearly did me in when I ran into BONEY BOYS ON SPEED. Jeez, what the hell's up with them? I don't know what the correct way to deal with them is, but after running like hell when I stumbled into a room of like 5 OF THEM WHAT THE HELL and made it to the ladder with like 20 HP left, I went to level up.

This place is INSANELY good for grinding. The enemies are squishy, and drop tons of souls. I levelled up enough that I went from using an Eagle Shield to a Tower Shield, and slowly tanked my way through them, attracting them from a distance.

I wasn't sure what the hell the thing at the upper end of the bridge was (a second undead dragon? It didn't react to my arrows) so I worked my way to the boss room under the bridge... only to find the nice lady just let me leave. Not sure I agree with her impression of how peaceful everyone round here is, but with all the levels I gained I can't complain!

I also smashed my way through Ornstein & Smough, going after the big, obvious target first. Ornstein solo isn't too tough, but his longer wind-up lightning projectile is insanely strong, and his "grab but looks like a spear poke" took some trial and error to discover you can just roll backwards to evade it reliably.

Got put in jail by what I've been informed is an unwinnable fight. Oof. Made it out of the jail without too much trouble, the library is a lot nastier with all the channelers around. Their outfit is uh... interesting, and at some point I picked up a Mimic head. Mimics aren't too scary fortunately, BUT WHAT'S WITH THE SPINKICKS? Seriously, that's up there on the "I was not expecting that" scale of DS1 experiences. >w>

Seath was dead in a couple of tries after I just stood in front of him and beat him down between laser beams. Getting smushed by his tails is a bigger threat it seems!

[Blinge]

Grinding!?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Ranged attacks are for pussies, Roo, and you are above this.

Pride? In my initial Souls run? Nein. Just get them dead.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I've made a fair bit of progress in DS1. Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo's church really are dizzying to navigate, but I made it through them without too much trouble!

I tried to examine the painting as I was clearing out the room, and OH SNAP got pulled in. What followed was one of the more stressful hours I've had in DS1 but in an exhilarating kind of way. Because you can't just Homeward Bone out of the Painted World (it sets your destination to the bridge when you enter) you're forced to progress to proceed and it's a hell of a trip. Between the giant blob dudes in the middle, the scary but surprisingly frail crow things, KING JEREMIAH and his fire storm that nearly oneshot me (yikes), the undead dragon... I'm alarmed I didn't get killed, though the underground section nearly did me in when I ran into BONEY BOYS ON SPEED. Jeez, what the hell's up with them? I don't know what the correct way to deal with them is, but after running like hell when I stumbled into a room of like 5 OF THEM WHAT THE HELL and made it to the ladder with like 20 HP left, I went to level up.

This place is INSANELY good for grinding. The enemies are squishy, and drop tons of souls. I levelled up enough that I went from using an Eagle Shield to a Tower Shield, and slowly tanked my way through them, attracting them from a distance.

I wasn't sure what the hell the thing at the upper end of the bridge was (a second undead dragon? It didn't react to my arrows) so I worked my way to the boss room under the bridge... only to find the nice lady just let me leave. Not sure I agree with her impression of how peaceful everyone round here is, but with all the levels I gained I can't complain!

I also smashed my way through Ornstein & Smough, going after the big, obvious target first. Ornstein solo isn't too tough, but his longer wind-up lightning projectile is insanely strong, and his "grab but looks like a spear poke" took some trial and error to discover you can just roll backwards to evade it reliably.

Got put in jail by what I've been informed is an unwinnable fight. Oof. Made it out of the jail without too much trouble, the library is a lot nastier with all the channelers around. Their outfit is uh... interesting, and at some point I picked up a Mimic head. Mimics aren't too scary fortunately, BUT WHAT'S WITH THE SPINKICKS? Seriously, that's up there on the "I was not expecting that" scale of DS1 experiences. >w>

Seath was dead in a couple of tries after I just stood in front of him and beat him down between laser beams. Getting smushed by his tails is a bigger threat it seems!

This is very enjoyable to read.

Sen's and AL are truly the two most majestic areas in the game I feel.

O&S is a great boss fight. I think it's incredibly fair but some people seem to struggle on it. The unwinnable fight you are talking about is in fact unwinnable. Worst area in the game honestly, even the one some people say is the worst clears it.

[Lander]

I wasn't sure what the hell the thing at the upper end of the bridge was (a second undead dragon? It didn't react to my arrows) so I worked my way to the boss room under the bridge... only to find the nice lady just let me leave. Not sure I agree with her impression of how peaceful everyone round here is, but with all the levels I gained I can't complain!

That's an enemy known as Arse of Undead Dragon. It'll stand up and do nothing if you Forward + R2 it with a melee weapon, which opens up an alternate route to the lower bridge leading to the boss. I don't know if that's intentional - feels like one of those "we left it in" bugs seeing as it's completely passive to everything except your highest-stagger move, and doesn't retaliate after waking up.

And wait, you're saying you didn't cold-bloodedly murder the peaceable last-of-her-kind dragon lady for her soul and unique drop? Outrageous levels of magnanimity!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Grinding!?

Hey, those boneyboys on wheels can get fucked as far as I'm concerned. In record time I scored an extra 10 levels and have a new shield to show for it. ;3

Pride? In my initial Souls run? Nein. Just get them dead.

Throwing weapons are supremely useful as far as I'm concerned. Tons of stuff is made easier early on by chucking firebombs at them including the various black knights you run into, though once you're able to upgrade your weapons you can quickly develop something that seems to hit quite hard.

Poison arrows are also fabulous against an absurd number of targets if you can't work out how to otherwise safely engage them. I haven't brought myself to chucking Dung Pies at stuff yet though...

O&S is a great boss fight. I think it's incredibly fair but some people seem to struggle on it. The unwinnable fight you are talking about is in fact unwinnable. Worst area in the game honestly, even the one some people say is the worst clears it.

It's the first duel boss in the game that forces you to immediately deal with both at the same time, and it really puts your character build to the test. But I agree that there's lots of ways to quickly kill one or the other, which honestly makes it easier once it's a 1v1 fight. I blew through Smough easily enough by using Magic Shield to help tank his hits and then tearing him up when there was an opening. Making sure Ornstein wasn't behind me where he could blindside me when I attacked helped, but I've since discovered Power Within is exceptionally strong and long lasting (compared to Magic Shield) and could likely be used to blaze right through them too.

I'm curious to see what happens if you just Homeward Bone out of the unwinnable Seath fight. I've heard there's a skip that you can do involving the elevator, but if the bonfire destination is set when you enter the boss room, it might be possible to avoid the death by just using a bone the moment you enter the room.

And wait, you're saying you didn't cold-bloodedly murder the peaceable last-of-her-kind dragon lady for her soul and unique drop? Outrageous levels of magnanimity!

What really confused me is going under the bridge and looking back up, I couldn't see the undead dragon from below, as if it had disappeared. Oh well, it wasn't too bad to just open up the lower passage.

I'll admit to trying cold-blooded murder when I went back through the painting again, because hey, she's got souls to nab right? ;3 I rudely smacked her from behind to start the fight and was alarmed when she turned invisible but I still somehow beat her on my first attempt by running frantically until I felt I'd run into something solid, then smacked her around with +4 Gargoyle Halberd with Lightning, my current go-to choice of weapon. Made quick work of her apparently. It's got the Halberd's poke range but with the wider hitbox of the Lucerne).

Speaking of murder, after I beat O&S I was annoyed that Frampt conveniently forgot to mention the existence of Gwynevere. Was I just supposed to wander Anor Londo until I stumbled on it? She obviously knew of the serpent, but why is neither of them telling me what exactly linking the fire entails? I already have an inkling that "linking the fire" is A Very Bad Thing for the people involved, given one of the loading screens spoilered the Black Knight Helm's description: "The knights followed Lord Gwyn when he departed to link the flame, but they were burned to ashes in newly kindled fire, wandering the world as disembodied spirits ever after." Oh, good, they all decided to wage war on the dragons for unspecified reasons, and all of Gwyn's knights died when he did the flamey linkey thingy, but nobody seems to want to tell me this when they're sending me off to be the next sacrifice?

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that I, being the mature and sensible person that I am, decided to shoot Gwynevere with an arrow to the tits to see how she'd like the trouble I went through to get to her. Instead of an "oops please don't hit me by accident" like typical NPCs (I've accidentally landed on poor Griggs multiple times jumping off ledges), she deflated like a balloon and we UNCOVERED A CONSPIRACY whereby all of Anor Londo's splendor (and murdery knights) turns out to be just an illusion by some dude named Gwyndolin? Ex-friggin-scuse me?

Fortunately the giant blacksmith's still very real. He's a bro. One of my fave NPCs for sure. <3

Several people did accost me on the way out who were none too pleased, but were also none too sturdy as I introduced their faces to the halberd. The fire keeper was especially perturbed, but clearly this was the correct move as she gave me an Estus upgrade for my trouble! And I didn't miss the spooky wall that opened up to good ol' Gwyndolin himself who, despite his best efforts to smack me with laser beams, got his ass handed to him on the first try easy peasy (I ate a hit from the giant laser beams trying to hide behind a wall with a shield but I wised up quickly that the walls do nothing for those).

Concerningly, Frampt hasn't noticed or commented on the fact that I've just murdered all the remaining gods in Anor Londo (or just the one technically? WAS GWYNEVERE EVEN REAL??). The temptation to bash his disturbing teeth in is real.

Lautrec of Carim might be a murderer but at least he's respectable enough to have a honest maniacal laugh, no hidden intentions from this dude! He's upfront about his feelings too about not wanting to get too close, I can tell he's a sensitive chap who knows his murdery ways are unsavory. I was confused at first by the eyeball thinking it was an online only item I couldn't use, but I've since recovered the fire keeper's soul for firelink, hooray! I was actually really worried he was gonna murder Solaire, which woulda made me rather sad. >w>

[Durandal]

Also the jank added by REmake ez controls in no way outbalances the fact that Chris/Jill can now run rings around the enemies like they never could before.

People play REmake with the Modern controls without vomiting? I tried it for a bit but ended up feeling massively disoriented whenever the camera shifted. "Up is now left, or was it right, wait no I meant to move backwards..."
If anything the inclusion of such an option is actually the best possible argument for the original tank control scheme, now you get to experience the alternative yourself and see first-hand why it's a bad idea for a game with fixed camera angles.

[Air Master Burst]

If you play resident evil with modern controls you never get to see the utterly fantastic "slowly backing away from an advancing zombie" animations they lovingly craftee for each character.

RE4's awful hybrid tank controls with follow camera can die in a fucking fire, though. The best part of that whole game is the ashley section in the japanese version with the classic fixed camera angles.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Bed of Chaos dealt with. While being able to tackle more Taurus Demons and Capra Demons is fun, there's way too many of those firebreathing statues in Lost Izalith. I'm not sure what the hell that giant tentacle thing at the top of the stairs was but it was relatively easy to circle around it and batter it to death. The spellcaster that showed up with Kirk again was pretty fun though!

Bed of Chaos itself is a bit silly. The camera angle and inability to lock onto anything make it tough to see what's going on as you're moving around, but because the red orbs you target don't respawn, it wasn't too much trouble to retry the fight until everything was dead. It's very much designed as a trial and error exercise, but I imagine it's not all that annoying when you're aware of what to do?

I've avoided the Catacombs for a while due to how obnoxious I've found the skeletons, but time to change that and finally explore...!

[Air Master Burst]

It's very much designed as a trial and error exercise, but I imagine it's not all that annoying when you're aware of what to do?

I've avoided the Catacombs for a while due to how obnoxious I've found the skeletons, but time to change that and finally explore...!

No, Bed of Chaos is always stupid and frustrating no matter how many times you've run it. It's just staggeringly terrible game design.

Catacombs are a pain without a decent light source, but you've done enough other stuff by now you should be levelled enough to steamroll most of it. Fortunately it's pretty short.

Lost Izalith and Demon Ruins are where the time and budget crunch really becomes obvious, don't feel too bad about ignoring large empty chunks of them.

[drauch]

Bed suxxx. Even the director regrets it, if that helps seal the deal.

[Sima Tuna]

Bed of Chaos is the proof the back third of Dark Souls was unfinished. The design is so piss-poor and lazy you can tell they cobbled it together to pad out runtime. Lost Izalith as a whole is just reused assets copypasted on a big open plain, like an asset flip game. And every unique enemy introduced in Lost Izalith has terrible AI and wonky-as-fuck animations.

Crystal Caves is another area with strange moon logic that doesn't apply anywhere else in the game. The invisible platforms aren't the problem. The visible ones are. Which angles you can stand on and which will cause you to instantly die? Trial and error to figure out.

DS1 is a great game and probably the Souls game I've played the most (that or DS2.) But From definitely ran out of time or money there at the end. DS2 feels like it has the opposite problem, with all the shittiest levels/enemies frontloaded (Ogres especially) and the best stuff (Amana, DLCs, Lost Sinner, Mirror Knight) placed at the end, where many players won't see them.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Ahh, good to know. It's a shame because Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith geographically look pretty neat, but yeah, the enemy selection and placement once you get to Lost Izalith is strange. The Bounding Demons are just an obstacle to navigate and the statue demons in Lost Izalith just clutter the area more than actually serve as an interestingly placed threat.

I've picked up DS2 on PC and I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl. It's good to know to stick with it and that the best bits are at the end, I've heard Sumez say the same thing about it.

[guigui]

... DS2 ...

Gotta get back to it one of these days, was not that bad in my memories. Can you confirm this is the game where

Spoiler

you climb at the top of a windmill, still running sometimes, then find an elevator at the top that goes ... up ... to a fortress drowned in lava ?

[Sima Tuna]

Levels don't fit together logically in DS2. Best to think of them as individual, unconnected areas a la Demon's Souls.

Spoiler

I swear, I could "fix" DS2 and make it so much better if Fromsoft would let me.

-Revert enemies to vanilla DS2 placements
-Remove Ogres from the game entirely
-Modify the world design to be less connected, since the connections don't make sense already
-Remove the shittiest levels and bosses outright (giant rat boss)
-integrate the DLC better into the main game, since it's the best content IN the game anyway

It would cut the runtime but you'd be left with mostly the areas like Shrine of Amana that feel properly fleshed-out. DS2 is a buffet of ideas. Some of them work and some don't. The forest with all the invisible backstabbers is another idea that seems fun in concept but doesn't work. The zone is too flat and ugly, plus the invisible enemies aren't easy to see (obviously.) The result is you squint very hard while running through a zone that looks like shit.

But hey I'm just spitballing here. The main thing I'd do is remove the god-awful SotFS romhack-tier enemy placements. Random fuckoff dragons and ogres everywhere is stupid design. Ogres just highlight the whole "bad hitboxes" issue, which isn't even present for a lot of the other enemies. I bet half the time when people bitch about DS2 hitboxes, they're complaining about either Ogres or Pursuer's grab.

I primarily play DS2 on my xbox 360. That version of SotFS has the old vanilla enemy placements + all the DLC. It's quite enjoyable. I wouldn't say DS2 is unplayable with SotFS enemies but you will be annoyed by more Kaizo style traps and random weird shit that feels out of place.

[Air Master Burst]

Ywah, 360/PS3 SotFS is as close to a definitive version of DS2 we're likely to get. Unless you can mod the PC version to be that way?

Majula is also a much better hub than Firelink Shrine.

[To Far Away Times]

I think the problems with Dark Souls 2 are pretty well known. It's still a decent game at the end of the day, but some of the main things I noticed.

• The targeting system is busted, randomly causing you miss enemies by 90 degree angles. Must be a glitch? Very noticeable playing with the rapier.
  
  Enemies track you too closely when you try to walk around them. Like they're spinning on a stick.
  
  The healing system is dumb, at first making it too difficult at when resources are hard to come by, then too easy when you can buy unlimited healing items.
  
  Capping your HP when you die was stupid in Demon's Souls, and it remains stupid here too.
  
  Levels don't have a sense of place, you can climb a ladder inside a castle tower that leads to ground level lava pit. What?
  
  Animation quality took a step back. Everything is slow. Stun animations carry a very heavy penalty.
  
  The hit boxes on the ogres are stupid. Their grab can miss you by several feet and it'll suck you in for an instant kill. Trash enemy and design.
  
  The combat system is clearly designed around 1v1 combat. The prior games are built around this. DS2 wants you to engage multiple targets at once. Which means you just lead them into narrow hallways.
  
  Lot's of "gotcha" moments. A lot of souls game have one or two early on to set the tone or teach you a mechanic. But that's it.
  
  Generally, the game just lacks the carefulness and thoughtfulness that it asks of the player.

[Volteccer_Jack]

The targeting system is busted, randomly causing you miss enemies by 90 degree angles. Must be a glitch? Very noticeable playing with the rapier.

DS2 allows you to manually redirect attacks while locked on, it's janky but it's a feature not a glitch. Whether that feature is desirable is up for debate.

The hit boxes on the ogres are stupid. Their grab can miss you by several feet and it'll suck you in for an instant kill. Trash enemy and design.

Hitboxes are terrible across most of DS2 unfortunately.

The combat system is clearly designed around 1v1 combat. The prior games are built around this. DS2 wants you to engage multiple targets at once. Which means you just lead them into narrow hallways.

Disagree. The prior games had tons of group fights. One of the first bosses in DS1 is a dual boss. Ornstein & Smough is a fan favorite. Ruin Sentinels is one of the best (least bad?) boss fights in DS2. The problem is not the number of enemies. The problem is simply awful encounter design.

Lot's of "gotcha" moments. A lot of souls game have one or two early on to set the tone or teach you a mechanic. But that's it.

In Demon's and DS1, this stuff was meant to get you to pay attention and stay engaged in the environment. If you're on the lookout for traps they won't catch you by surprise; you can always see obvious signs of them before walking into them. The later games just shove booby traps in at random with no understanding of why.

Generally, the game just lacks the carefulness and thoughtfulness that it asks of the player.

This is where I make people mad by saying the same is true of DS3 and ER.

[Blinge]

The combat system is clearly designed around 1v1 combat. The prior games are built around this. DS2 wants you to engage multiple targets at once. Which means you just lead them into narrow hallways.

Bollocks.

you're just regurgitating almost verbatim the talking points from matthewmatosis' shit ds2 video.
not impressed.

[Air Master Burst]

I'm convinced the DS2 combat system was tuned for PVP at the expense of PVE.

In theory taking on multiple enemies isn't too bad if you aren't just blocking your way through everything, but the SOTFS enemy layouts are early 00s Mario romhack levels of toxic.