Recent reviews by Jac of All Trades

Mildly unimpressed.

I've seen several YouTubers play this game years ago, as has much of this game's audience, and now that the game is in my possession, I must say that I'm a little underwhelmed. Survival elements and self-care mechanics are whatever, but the main issue with the game that I have run into consistently is that your character disobeys you. Anytime there is something even mildly inconvenient that you want to render convenient, like a tunnel with only one enemy, your character will refuse, then give you a poor excuse why.

You can clear whole dark hallways full of hordes of enemies, but one dark tunnel with only one enemy is too much for your character. The game will stop you from going down a dark hallway, it will give you the option to read books outside of your home, then tell you that you have to go to your home to use them, but it will happily allow you to chow down decaying, maggot-ridden chunks of meat. There are so many instances of this that it made me wonder whether or not I should even bother with half the game and not just go in as straight a line as I could manage, until I'm told the next hallway is too scary for my character.

I'm sure there's some thematic reason for this, but in a game where my character's name is "You", I can maintain myself however I like with varying consequences, and said maintenance has several different endings to be achieved, there are better ways to present "I can't do this" than "because I don't feel like it". Other than that, the game is average.

Criminally underrated.
Dark Souls 2 is definitely more than worth playing, even if you aren't a Souls fan. Wherever there's a powerful obstacle, there's always a just reward behind it. I absolutely do not understand all the hate around it, other than it was hated at the time of its release because it was different. Allow me to address some common problems that people seem to have with this game.

- Usual Complaints
“OMG THEY ADDED SOUL MEMORY” The Agape Ring is in the Lost Bastille and you can buy the Engraved Ring from Shalquoir, and maybe if we didn’t have twinks, soul memory wouldn’t be a thing. Besides, if you do PvP or co-op recreationally, it's not like you'll ever meet the same people again unless you actually mean to. In which case, it's not a hard work-around at all.

“OMG THEY NERFED BACKSTABS” Correction, they FIXED backstabs. It was the only way to fight in DS1 and now you’re actually having a classic swashbuckling sword fight in DS2.

“OMG THEY CHANGED HOLLOWING” To mirror Demon’s Souls’s Spirit Form in a fairly more forgiving fashion, with health that gradually decays rather than immediately getting halved. Plus, it's supposed to make you hate being hollow, which is said to be a sad and miserable existence by the game itself. You want to be human again? You want to not be hollow? Then be careful and don't die. Work smarter, not harder, so to speak.

“OMG ENEMIES DESPAWN NOW” Because it’s unreasonable for you to struggle against the same enemy over and over again when you probably just want to clear the area. This is DS2’s way of throwing you a bone for having suffered enough. Plus, the thing that makes them spawn forever can be found right when you enter Majula.

“OMG ENEMIES ARE JUST EVERYWHERE” But now that DS3’s doing it, that’s suddenly okay? In DS3, they either blend in with the environment, they're out of view, or they're positioned in a way where they WILL sneak up on you, without you ever getting a chance to survey what's ahead of you and plan your approach. In DS2, you absolutely can. Something to acknowledge right off the bat is that this game punishes compulsive charging into a fight or swarm of enemies, but it will always directly reward a careful and calculated approach. It's literally the decision to make the game easier for yourself. Heck, there's one late-game area where you can more easily pass through it by fighting a series of one-on-one duels against these large knights, but if you just try to rush ahead, you'll get swarmed and most likely killed by the spectators.

"OMG ADAPTABILITY" Well, in terms of the story, it's unreasonable to expect some untrained schmuck of an undead who barely left Things Betwixt to suddenly be as agile as an Olympic gymnast. In terms of gameplay, if the two stats that improve your ability to USE your weapons are here, then I have no problem with there being a stat that improves your ability to AVOID them, too. ADP also does a little more than enhance your dodge potency; It slightly enhances the speed at which you drink your estus, and it also improves the tracking radius of your rolling attacks (which is a big plus from me, as an avid rapier user). If I had to pick a stat to be mad about, I'd be more upset about the casting speed stat, when dexterity enhanced your casting speed in the past. (But I'm also not a mage so that's not my problem :D)

- Story Criticisms
In terms of the story, there's a certain theme with the end goal of Dark Souls, and it's all some variation of "Become king of the world", except in DS1 that means throwing yourself into a glorified fireplace, and in DS3 it means being the king of a world that'll be dead in five minutes, regardless of which ending you pick. DS2 is ironically the only Souls game that presents that opportunity to you on a silver platter and gives you exactly what it promises.

Maybe it's a little on-the-nose, but since DS2 is the only game to directly acknowledge how difficult it is (the achievement "This is Dark Souls" is earned by dying for the first time and you get two special rings for beating the game, either without ever visiting a bonfire, or without ever dying), it gives you something to look forward to, and lets YOU choose if you want it. Whereas in DS1, it's hidden from you, which is okay in terms of its story of the prophecy being a lie, and in DS3 it won't matter because everything and everyone will be gone soon.

Becoming a lord isn't even really the only end goal either. The game's hub maiden, The Emerald Herald, literally asks you if you came to be a lord or if you just happened to show up when the world needs one, because in the background, you're literally in a cursed land where dreams and memories go to die. People all around you are slowly forgetting who they are and turning hollow. This is the only game in the Souls series where the curse of the undead is at the forefront of the story, and is presented as an ever-present threat, where in DS1 it was a metaphor for the player's decision to give up, and in DS3 it was a footnote.

Basically, your initial mission is to find a cure for the curse, and you see how it affects the people around you first-hand. As a would-be lord, it's also your decision whether or not to help these people, whether it's letting them fester in their own suffering or helping them make the best of it. The best part is that if you decide to go off the main road and do the DLCs, you inadvertently set yourself on the path of doing just that. So not only do you get to do what you want, and feel that you did it for yourself if not for the good of the world around you, but enduring the headache of the DLCs (Trust me. They're very hard. Especially the optional gauntlet sections they all offer.) and finding the cure to the curse means you've actually accomplished what you set out to do, which is kinda rare for these games.

- Multiplayer (present server-related circumstances make this hard to experience unless you're playing on console)
Speaking of rare, DS2 offers a PvP community that isn't toxic, and you'll always find people trying out more than just two weapons and spells for once. It's also a lot harder to run into cheesier players, since no single weapon is the deadliest thing in PvP. Plus, if you want to still find players based on their SL and not Soul Memory, try the colosseums that come with the base game. For as often as PvP is said to be the lifeblood of the Souls games, DS2, the most hated entry in the series, somehow offers the liveliest PvP experience in the entire franchise. Even better than Elden Ring's PvP, where all you'll find is either dual bleed greatswords or Rivers of Blood.

As for Co-op, there was nothing ever wrong with the series's co-op. It's as good as it's always been, and there are even two soapstones to let you choose what your priority is; The normal white soapstone will be found by less people, but once you're summoned, you stay in the host's world until they or the boss die. Whereas the small white soapstone will be easier for more people to find, but you're on a timer, which means your mission is to help the host clear the area as quickly as possible. If you play with a normal white soapstone, you can earn a token of fidelity, which can be used at the cathedral of blue to get Blue Sentinel rewards, or can be used to directly heal your hosts from a distance while in co-op. Meanwhile, if you use the small white soapstone, you're playing for smooth and silky stones, which are trading items for the crow's nest in Things Betwixt.

TL;DR, not worth the hate it gets, go play it, the single player experience is good, the story is good, your struggling is always appropriately rewarded, and the multiplayer experience is the best in the series.

I dare say this game is overrated.
- Difficulty is not determined as much by skill as much as it is by your enemies' numbers being bigger than yours. I'm not saying there's NO skill, but I'm also not saying the game will demand your skill any more than it will demand your patience.

- It was made at the stage of FromSoft's lifecycle where difficulty and dying a lot is the only thing that matters because Miyazaki gets $10 for every time a game journalist says "[insert game here] Is the Dark Souls of [insert genre here]", and it definitely shows.

- 90% of the game's bosses are fought the exact same way; They get close and rush you down while you roll around and maybe hit them once, twice if you're lucky before you go right back to Fred Durst'ing it until the boss's meter hits zero. Plus, the bosses who actually have unique gimmicks like Rykard and Radahn overstay their welcome long after you've figured them out. My favorite bosses in the game are Morgott and Hoarah Loux, but the fights themselves aren't cool, just the CONTEXT of them is cool (more on this later). I consider this to be a failure for the game; for its defining trait to be the least interesting part of itself.

- Despite the presence of a Souls-style leveling system, most enemies can kill you just by acknowledging your existence. And before some wise guy comes to this review and says "bUt vIgOr", it doesn't matter if your vigor is 17 or 70. There are enemies that will flatten you like a steamroller no matter how big your meter is, and the only time you will ever notice any difference with your stats against the area's enemies is when you come back to an area that hasn't been your problem for three weeks.
“What if you were using the soreseals though? They’re good but maybe they were getting you killed”
I never used the soreseals, since magic isn’t my primary source of damage. The closest thing I’ve had to a self-inflicted debuff was Fia’s blessing.

- The open world is a joke. All it fundamentally is is just Dark Souls with buffer zones that take a long time to cross. So basically you spend $60 on Dark Souls 3 with even more filler. There's nothing to do in the open world, and the closest thing there is to "something to do" is the mines and the catacombs which, if anyone has ever played Bloodborne, are fundamentally Chalice Dungeons, with no unique bosses, in dungeons that can't be randomized, with your reward being some Enemy Spirit Ash you'll never summon, or a trinket you could get in bulk anywhere else.
On top of this, Torrent changes nothing. He only exists to justify having these buffer zones in the first place. Does he change the pace of the boss fights? Sometimes. Does he ever change the pace of UNIQUE or ESSENTIAL boss fights? No. There are too many places where this "staple of Elden Ring" can't be used, and there are even more places and events that could have been made better by his presence, such as during the final boss fight, which alone was terrible from a design standpoint because of how out-of-nowhere and chaotic it is. You can't even summon him during multiplayer, or while a Spirit Ash is active.

- To go over some story issues, we need to understand what makes storytelling work. "Show, don't tell" is the golden rule of storytelling. What happens in Elden Ring is that the most interesting parts of the lore are notes you read in some random article of gear, and 90% of it has nothing to do with how you play. For example, the name "St. Trina" has no relevance to you, the player, than to tell you what items are related to the Sleep ailment, but it shows up in the written lore as frequently as trees in a forest.
Another example involves Mohg, a boss who has the power of "Blood Fire", bright-red flames that inflict the Bleed ailment. This is said to be done by "lacerating the body of the Formless Mother". This info is completely useless because it does not change how this magic works in any way. One may expect blood magic to be cast by using your HP as an alternative for MP, but it simply doesn't. It works like all other magic in the game. As someone who plays FANTASY RPGs to get invested in a FANTASY world, this mundane gameplay with outrageous lore reminds me of working retail, how there's this long eventful story of how a store you work in came to be, but the actual work you do asks nothing of you but your ability to listen, follow directions, and put up with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that comes with it.
Dung Eater is supposed to be scary because people tell you he's scary. Rykard is supposed to be evil because people tell you he's evil. Marika is supposed to be great because people tell you she's great. Godrick is supposed to be a worthless failure because people tell you he's a worthless failure. There are way too few moments where the story or personality of a character is SHOWN, and not TOLD.
To give an example of GOOD storytelling in a Souls game, look at Solaire from Dark Souls. He's a knight who governs a self-founded guild that believes brilliance is achieved by aiding others. This is expressed by Solaire's summon sign appearing the most frequently out of every NPC in the whole game. The only character to ever have this potential is Melina, and she doesn't even do it with the correct boss because of dumb plot reasons. Hoarah Loux? Radagon? Elden Beast? Nope. She shows up for ONE boss; Morgott, who's basically just there to guard a door he doesn't even have the key to. After that, the story writes itself in such a way that prevents her from ever doing this again, despite her only gimmick allegedly being LITERALLY FOLLOWING YOU EVERYWHERE.

- Compared to past games, multiplayer is even more pathetic here than it ever was before. To understand why, let's review some of the basic multiplayer rules established by past games. All Souls games before this one have had 'alive' and 'dead' states. Said states grant certain benefits and caveats. They also dictate what is possible in terms of multiplayer action.
In Demon's Souls, players had to be in their dead form to enter other peoples' worlds, while players in their alive forms can be found by said dead-form players.
This rule was much the same in Dark Souls, though it removed the hassle of having to be dead to cast a co-op sign.
In both games, being alive granted players host privileges as well as occasional HP buffs, depending on the game, but at the cost of unconditional vulnerability to invaders.
In Elden Ring, for no reason at all, the two functions of the games' resurrection charms have been split up into separate items, which completely removes the stakes of granting yourself a substantial buff.

- Speaking of low-stakes multiplayer, invaders previously appeared in past games to play the role of the enemy, which is remarkable for a ROLE PLAYING GAME, for players to present as much a threat to each other as the rest of the game. However, in Elden Ring, these "invaders" need the host's permission to invade them.
In regular gameplay, without an item called the Taunter's Tongue, it takes the presence of a friendly phantom to make invasion reception possible, which already stacks the odds against the invading party.
Couple that with a competitive community that has no qualms with over-optimizing the fun out of the game, and you'd be lucky to invade a single world without getting annihilated in a nanosecond by solar flares, weapon pairs tuned to inflict Bleed nearly instantly, decay-inducing fog, and mega-lasers. That's no exaggeration.

There probably were or are good qualities of the game, but after having spent as much time on it as I have, and after beating the game MONTHS AHEAD OF MY FRIENDS WHO ACTUALLY LIKE IT, I am just sick of this game and everything to do with it. The base game has inspired too little faith in the DLC to ever consider coming back. If you STILL want to blast $60 on this game, all I can say is that you brought ALL of the ensuing frustration upon yourself.

Only purchase this if you have extensive knowledge of controller-to-PC adaptability. I previously had an issue where the camera moved very slowly, despite all my sensitivity settings being up at max, and I don't even remember how I solved it.

Now I'm having a recurring issue where the game doesn't seem to register heavy attacks while locked-on, despite the game presenting it as a possible move that the player can do.

The only way I was ever able to do attack chains or special moves where a heavy attack is done is by doing a few light attacks or getting into a stance and then backing out into the free-aim camera to input a heavy attack, and then locking back on before it would land.

This is especially an issue when trying to do executions, and there are certain heroes with moves where the ability to perform a heavy attack while locked-on is a requirement.

I've tried resetting the game, I've tried fumbling with Steam's Big Picture mode controller configurations, I've tried playing with another controller, and none of it seems to work. If anyone has a solution, PLEASE let me know. I want to love this game, but this is a critical error that has only continued to become more and more of an issue in the time that I've been playing.

If you can figure out how to circumvent all of this with ease, then I'm sure you'd love the game, potentially toxic community aside, but I've barely even gone through the Warden's Story Mode because the mission where you play as Apollyon's second-in-command, Holden Cross, has a segment that's very early-on where you have to perform a move that requires doing a heavy attack while being locked-on, which I simply can't do because the game doesn't register it as a real move despite all the controller settings I put together.