I got reset to Summoner Level 1?

For every one thing that Dark Souls 2 does better than its predecessor, it does 5 things wrong.

And that's being generous because, what does Dark Souls 2 actually do better than the first? You can select how many souls you want to consume instead of one of at a time? Yeah that's better than the first, but what else?

  • In terms of visuals, the game looks worse than the first. This is, to me, unforgivable. The developers/publisher outright lied about the finished product: they showed a demo promising that's what the game would look like on release and they did not deliver. The lighting just looks like complete horse shit compared to the first one. I legitimately thought I got like the prototype version of the game but it turns out that's actually the finished thing. How can you support this?
  • Still on the topic of visuals, the game introduces torches but this is made completely useless because none of the areas are even dark enough for you to even consider using torches. There were no torches in Dark Souls 1 and that game had the Tomb Of The Giants, an area which is perpetually pitch dark.
  • In terms of world geography, Dark Souls 2 just abandons everything Dark Souls 1 did right and it doesn't even care about making the world look consistent. I don't know about you, but to me one of the best aspects of Dark Souls 1 was going through an area and finding shortcuts and hidden pathways to other areas that make complete sense geographically. This is genius map design, something that Dark Souls 2 doesn't have. The first Dark Souls makes it so areas usually have a quick way around to the entrance or a shortcut to another area when you're done with them. In contrast, Dark Souls 2 areas are just long ass hallways with no connection to eachother because the game lets you jump between areas (bonfire warping) right from the get-go. This is stupid and probably the reason why the game sucks so hard.
  • In terms of story, there's not much to say here. It's kind of a repeat of the first game. I will take this point to address the NPCs, though. Like everything else in the game, they're ridiculous and stupid. In the first Dark Souls, you encountered interesting NPCs like Knight Lautrec and Big Hat Logan, just to name 2. None of the NPCs feel like they're there to serve you. They do help you because you helped them so it makes sense that they have goods for sale. However they also seem very natural: this is shown by NPCs actually leaving Firelink Shrine after certain points because they have their own lives and stories. NPCs in Dark Souls 2 will stay in the main hub for the rest of the game. They don't seem to move or have any new lines after advancing through the story. There was a point in Dark Souls 1 where the Firekeeper in Firelink was killed and you couldn't rest there anymore until you had resurrected her (something which is completely optional in order to beat the game). This was one of the ways the first Dark Souls was genius.
  • In terms of gameplay, hoooo boy this game is shit. In case the previous points haven't discouraged you from the game (after all, why should they? You only care about killing monsters), the monsters in this game are equally as disappointing. Almost every single enemy is humanoid. There are a few that aren't, but most of the ones that aren't humanoid were in the first game already. This is so dumb. Dark Souls 1's enemy design was amazing but it definitely felt like they could have more cool monsters if they wanted to. I could mention more like how ridiculous the enemy tracking is and how the enemy placement just seems to be completely at random, as opposed to Dark Souls 1. Oh and how the hitboxes this time around are even worse than the first.

Also, I haven't played the DLC yet but I read that they added a dragon enemy very close to the area where you fight The Dragonslayer. ... yeah I'm not playing the DLC, no thanks.

/r/leagueoflegends Thread Parent