LogFAQs > #976187629

Here's some good things about DS2.

It works right out the box on PC, unlike the old version of DS1 (and maybe ripoff remaster from a few years ago).

The best Poise system, which no other game has gotten right.

Enemy variety (though all the games are pretty good about that to be fair).
Boss variety (same as above).
Environmental variety (same as above).

Moveset variety. (Santier's Spear has moves from like 4+ weapon types for instance, same with Yorgh's.)
Weapon and build variety for both PVE and PVP, for a wide variety of reasons.
STILL has the best PVP in the series.

Has tons of armor with unique effects, which is something DS3 and ER have been weird about.
It was the first to have 8 way rolling while locked on, and sprinting away while locked on, which are MASSIVE changes for the better.
Is the only Souls game to have a built in hard mode, which frankly should've come back in DS3 and ER.

Has actual changes in NG+ instead of it just being a universal stat bump, including NG+ exclusive items that are actually worth acquiring instead of Rings+3 that are just a 2-4% increase over the previous (and as a cherry on top if you don't want to do NG+ you can just use Ascetics. Speaking of which...).

You can refight/respawn the bosses and elite enemies you like an unlimited amount of times without having to redo the entire fucking game. Technically this also means you can redo entire areas the same way if there's one you particularly like clearing through for whatever reason.

It was the first to have respecs, and you get a pretty good number of them per NG cycle (DS3 limits you to 5 because L O R E and ER gives you like 14 per cycle).

It has the best covenants, with the best rewards (and those rewards all either have really easy fallback ways to farm them that won't take a full fucking workday like farming ears in DS3, or let you get the rewards by going to merchants in NG+ and NG++), and STILL has the best online rules (allowing invading into people on their own by default, and letting people be invaded and co-op even in areas they've already "finished", and if people don't want to be invaded then they can turn it off without having to turn off their online connection entirely) to actually facilitate progressing in those covenants regardless of how far you've progressed.

The connection system they use also actually fucking works (and I'm pretty sure it's the same one they use for DS3 and ER), unlike DS1 where it was notorious for you trying to summon someone using their sign that's right there on the ground and then making you wait for 10+ seconds and then telling you it couldn't bring them in. And despite the bitching about SM and no unlimited cracked eye orb, I was invaded more on my first run in DS2 than in my first run in every other one of these games combined. Even now when I go revisit I'm still able to find people in the arena and invasions within minutes at most, sure as fuck can't say the same's ever been true for DS1.

Powerstancing (which DS3 imitated with paired weapons, except there was like 6 of those total, and ER brought back in half baked way that doesn't allow for the freedom DS2's version had).

The weapon upgrade system, weapon infusion system, and boss weapon system all became something actually sane and were brought back in DS3 and ER.

It did a bunch of creative shit I wish would come back like having rickety wooden doors that you could break down instead of finding the key, or that one door in the basement of the Forest of Fallen Giants where the only way to open it is to hit it with a weapon so the enemy inside aggros you and opens the door for you, or how Santier's Spear is normally a mediocre spear that's abnormally heavy and is the only thing not liable to break with 10 minutes of combat, but if you DO break it then it becomes an absolute blender of a weapon.

SoTFS adds even more like the invisible hollows you need torches to see, or how the Aerie "forces" you to do a bunch of honor duels with the enemies there if you don't want to get ganked by all the dragon cultists (which is a reference to how the Dragon Covenant PVP works), or how there's (pretty basic admittedly) environmental puzzles.

It has trapped chests that aren't mimics, so even hitting a chest doesn't mean it's safe, which keeps you on your toes and it has wooden chests to punish you for mimic checking with something too big. And the traps come in multiple flavors like crossbow shots to the gut, an explosion, a AoE enemy aggro, and poison fog.

In addition to the usual "pay for your sins to be forgiven" mechanic it has the gravestone mechanic where if you kill a NPC, after X amount of in-game time has passed a gravestone will show up where they were and you can pay a fee to let you interact with them in case you need to for some reason, but it won't let you progress their quests or whatever because, you know, they're still dead. This is a mechanic that's never shown up again and that most people don't even see or realize is in the game even if they HAVE been killing NPCs.

Its lore is actually really coherent (at least with itself, unlike DS3 where it's a top to bottom complete fucking mess) and a lot of its ideas were reused in Elden Ring. For example, Quella, the god of dreams that's associated with the Spirit Tree items. (In fact, ER has a lot of specifically DS2's influence in it, originally DS2 was supposed to be a more open world game and have all sorts of things that ended up having to be cut because they realized the hardware wasn't there yet and they'd bitten off more than they could chew and had to panic restructure and fire that director you've never heard of because he was botching it so hard).

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And here's a "hot take" that's completely true. It has the most complex boss design of the PS3 gen games and it's not even close. DeS boss AI trees are fucking JOKES, they're lucky when they have 5 attacks they can do at all, and their gimmick (if they have one, which they mostly do) is usually completely 1 dimensional. False Allant is easily the hardest and most complex boss in DeS and he's got less going on than a single Ruin Sentinel, let alone something like the Pursuer or Flexile Sentry.

Meanwhile in DS1 (without DLC) you top out at Gwyn, who's still fucked because he swings and moves so fast that most mage builds have to cheese him by getting him caught on geometry, has too much poise for light weapon builds to stagger, but turns into a total joke (just like the rest of the game) if you use poisetank builds because you can just mindlessly heal-tank him to death because of how the Estus flask + poise systems work. Not to mention how the entire reason he's so easily parried (and the only boss in the entire game that can be parried IIRC) is because the devs literally admitted that they ran out of time to balance him and couldn't think of any other way to make sure he'd be beatable by anyone regardless of which type of build they were running.

The DLC bosses aren't gimped though, but they're the exception. Those still hold up even now, FROM plateaued on that front and they've just been using the extra power in the new gens to make the trees bigger (ER's got enemies branching mid-combo on the regular now) even though the AI is still just as dumb.

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I could go on about how the average level quality of DS2 is actually pretty standard for the series, or more in depth about how the majority of its mechanics are superior to DeS and DS1, or debunk any number of stupid shit that's said about it like "boss reuse" or "too many dudes", but I won't because I've done this song and dance way too many times already and it always goes the same.