i have played some dark souls 2 (scholar of the first sin to be more specific). haven't finished it (i'm at the last bosses) and i kinda don't care; finishing the game won't alter thoughts i want to share here anyway, i think. granted, many more experienced and wiser people have written about these games throughout years; i just want to write down my observations, simple as.

i'm not too acquainted with souls games; i had a brief experience with demon's souls (the ps3 one), the first dark souls and elden ring, but it's dark souls 2 that i have spent substantial number of hours with. somewhat of a black sheep of the series apparently, but i didn't really delve into that matter. as far as i know, it had a kinda rough development? with stuff changed and unfinished, janky transitions between locations, and locations themselves, not that good bosses. i saw someone saying it's more heavy on the rpg stats thing. and slower. and maybe the story being more pronounced? and enemies being more relentless in chasing you, someone on the internet said so. and miyazaki wasn't a director.

at first i tried to write about more aspects of the game, but it turned out to be kinda ass and they weren't my focus anyway.

so. it's partly about the game, and partly a self-reflection. uh.

my brain is fucking fried so let's try to put it relatively short. dark souls 2 isn't necessarily keen on guiding the player and has a non-linear structure (probably the most non-linear out of pre-elden ring souls games?). i think that's cool. alas, this approach isn't that compatibile with my minced brain.


there's one thing - not being an idiot. like, item descriptions can be helpful, you know? but for some goddamn reason for a very long time i didn't consider *full* descriptions. like. am i a fucking moron? well, for sure i am. and there's another thing - getting help.

some stuff isn't really that intuitive. or maybe it's me being a moron again. however, there's a remedy for that, integrated into the game - the message system. players can leave messages on a ground using some predefined words. some are misleading. some are goofy. and some are helpful.

granted, they aren't that useful as some wiki, but that's kinda the point - you still have to figure out some things by yourself. (there's also the summon system for help in combat, but for the most part i didn't use it, and when i used it, it was an npc companion).

despite this system i still resorted to wiki at times, and i feel that i kinda spoiled my experience to some degree. like, i consider exploration to be the best thing about this game - hell, it's a thing that i value the most in all games, i think. i had the best time at the beginning, exploring first location on my own. (well, maybe it just was more fun. but the point still stands). and, like, idk. probably it would be more fun to figure out some stuff by myself. alas, i'm too unfocused, too impatient, too stupid.

and it's not limited to bideo james, unfortunately, and it's way worse outside them. when you are impatient in a game and check something online, the outcome remains the same - you advance. it doesn't work that way in case of learning a skill. it works absolutely different. actually, for the most of my life, maybe still i am, i was way too stubborn (in a negative sense) and proud (in a negative sense...) to *check* how to do something, and way too impatient and dense to be able to figure out stuff on my own. so shit was very stupid. very stale. very unambitious, even if my pride wouldn't allow me to think so. i guess there was also some fear involved, but still, it boils down to being an unambitious, densely proud idiot.

ahem. anyway. i also think it's cool that the game is, idk... free-form? not only being non-linear, but you can either deceive or guide other players, invade them or assist them with bosses, be a fucking twat and kill npcs or, well, be a non-twat... because of this it's not really surprising that these games spawned elitists, because they could choose to be that way; the framework kinda supported it. but the very same framework shows how important is help of the others and advancing by any means you have.

i guess you can say similar thing about mmos, and you can interact with people to a greater extent there. but people are scary and mmos are ass.