Dark Souls 2 in 2025 – Why It’s Still My Favorite Souls Game

Reading time: 9 min

So here we go again. Another Souls blog. And this time, I’m going to say something that will make half the internet grab their pitchforks and storm my house:

Yep. The so-called worst one. The “black sheep.” The game everyone loves to dunk on in YouTube essays for clicks. I’ve played every Souls game — Dark Souls 1, 3, and Elden Ring. The only one I skipped was Demon’s Souls because, honestly, I’m not about to sell a kidney for a PS5 just to play the remake. And after all that, I’m still here, in 2025, saying with a straight face that Dark Souls 2 is the best of them all.

I didn’t even come to this conclusion after years of nostalgia. I bought DS2 purely out of curiosity — first the basic vanilla version, then Scholar of the First Sin (the polished edition with all the DLCs). My plan was simple: “Okay, let’s see why everyone hates this game.”

Instead, what happened? Best. Steam. Purchase. Ever.

The other Souls games reward reflexes. They want you to dodge at the exact millisecond, react to crazy combos, and basically prove that you’ve got gamer DNA coded into your bloodstream. DS2 flips the script. It rewards patience.

It’s not about rolling at light speed like a cocaine-powered squirrel. It’s about tactics. Positioning. Understanding your weapon’s reach. Reading your opponent instead of panicking. And when you finally land a hit? It feels weighty. Real. Like an actual person just swung fifty pounds of steel instead of a cosplayer pirouetting at Comic Con.

Running, rolling, swinging — everything feels grounded. It’s slower, heavier, deliberate. Which makes your victories even more satisfying. When you roll in DS2, it’s not a ballet dance. It’s a desperate body-tuck to avoid death. The movement feels like a human trying not to die, not Sonic the Hedgehog in knight armor.

One of my biggest gripes with Elden Ring was how much it stripped away DS2’s brilliance. Guard break? Gone. Now it’s replaced by some sad little “kick” Ash of War. Universal parries? Forget about it — FromSoft locked parrying behind certain items like they suddenly decided to treat it like a paid DLC.

But DS2? If you’ve got a shield, you can parry. If you’ve got a weapon, you can probably parry. Hell, you can parry with your bare hands if you have to. It didn’t matter what gear you were running — the game gave you tools and said, “Figure it out.” And guard breaking in DS2 wasn’t just a gimmick; it felt satisfying, tactical. Break a shield turtle’s guard and punish them into the dirt. Simple, effective, genius.

And don’t even get me started on powerstancing. DS2 let you dual-wield in a way that was actually meaningful, giving you special move sets if your stats were high enough. You weren’t just holding two weapons for style points — you became a death blender. That mechanic alone made DS2 endlessly replayable, and I still don’t get why more people don’t scream about how amazing it was.

Then there are the bosses. People love to meme about DS2’s “boring bosses” or “copy-paste fights,” but those people clearly didn’t spend much time actually playing.

Take The Pursuer. The guy is basically Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. He shows up again and again, stalking you, forcing encounters when you least expect it. And just when you think you’ve finally beaten him for good? Boom — Drangleic Castle drops two Pursuers on you at once. Surprise!

That kind of relentless boss design doesn’t exist in DS1, DS3, or even Elden Ring. In those games, a boss fight is a one-and-done event. Beat them, move on, forget them. The Pursuer? He’s burned into my brain as the defining presence of DS2. The fact that a boss can feel like an actual stalker makes the world terrifying in a way the others just don’t replicate.

Even the sillier bosses — like the “fat thing” people love to clown on — actually make sense in the lore. DS2 has this way of making even goofy designs feel intentional once you dig deeper. It’s a world where nothing is wasted, where even the joke bosses have a role to play in the bigger tragedy of Drangleic.

Speaking of Drangleic — let’s talk lore.

DS1 and DS3 are structured. They’re grand tragedies, neat little packages of mythology. DS2? It’s chaos. It’s fragmented. It’s contradictory. And that’s exactly why it works.

The world of DS2 feels like a dream falling apart. You don’t piece together a clean story — you clutch at fragments that crumble in your hands. The timelines, the characters, the kingdoms… it’s all hazy, overlapping, unreliable. And isn’t that exactly what a cursed, decaying world should feel like?

Majula alone is worth the price of admission. That hub isn’t just a “safe zone.” It’s melancholic. The music is haunting. The NPCs you gather there feel more lost, more human, than any other Souls hub. It’s not Firelink Shrine’s “gathering of legends.” It’s a collection of broken people trying to survive, and you’re just one of them.

Let me tell you: DS2 has the best build freedom in the series, hands down. Powerstancing was revolutionary, but it didn’t stop there. You could be a sorcerer, a pyromancer, a cleric, a hexer (yes, hexes were god tier), or some hybrid monstrosity that slapped together every school of magic with a slab of iron.

Want to dual-wield ultra greatswords? Done. Want to make a pure faith build that shoots lightning bolts the size of trucks? Easy. Want to cosplay as some spoon-wielding lunatic just for the memes? Why not.

And the stats actually made sense. People whined endlessly about Adaptability — the stat that controlled your roll i-frames and agility. But here’s the thing: once you understood it, it was logical. You want faster, more reliable dodges? Invest in it. You want to tank like a walking fortress? Ignore it. The system gave you control. The only people still crying about it are the ones who never actually read what it did, or worse, just echoed whatever their favorite YouTuber said.

And then there’s NG+. Oh boy. In DS1 and 3, NG+ is basically “same thing, but harder.” In DS2? Enemy placements change. Ambushes appear where you thought you were safe. Boss fights can have new twists. It’s not just harder — it’s genuinely different. Which means every new run feels fresh instead of just recycled.

One thing I love about DS2 is that the journey actually feels dangerous. In other Souls games, once you learn the map and the enemy placements, the fear fades. It becomes routine.

DS2 keeps you on edge. The level design might not be as elegant as DS1’s “interconnected masterpiece,” but that’s fine by me. DS2 feels like wandering through a nightmare carnival. One second you’re in a poisonous swamp, the next you’re in a haunted castle, then you’re suddenly fighting pirate skeletons on a ghost ship. It’s absurd, but it keeps you guessing.

Every step feels like a risk. Every encounter feels like it could be your last. That danger makes the victories sweeter. It makes the exploration feel earned.

Here’s the part that really shocked me. People love to call DS2 ugly. Back in the day, everyone screamed about the “downgrade” from the early trailers. And yeah, vanilla DS2 had its rough edges. But Scholar of the First Sin? Man, booting it up in 2025 was eye-opening.

I was expecting to see some blurry PS3-era textures and jaggy lighting. Instead, I sat there in Majula yesterday just staring at the ocean, shocked at how beautiful it actually looks. The way the light bounces, the way the environments feel textured and alive — it’s gorgeous. Drangleic Castle lit up in Scholar still punches way above its weight. Honestly, it holds up better than a lot of modern games that are too busy chasing photorealism and end up looking sterile.

The graphics aren’t just serviceable — they’re timeless. DS2 has that slightly surreal, painterly quality where your brain fills in the gaps, and that’s why it still works. The fact that I can play a game over a decade old and say, “Damn, this is beautiful” tells you everything you need to know.

Here’s the kicker: so much of what made Elden Ring successful is rooted in DS2. The open variety of builds. The NG+ surprises. The world design that keeps changing tone and theme. Even things like powerstancing quietly resurfaced in Elden Ring without fanfare.

But FromSoft is smart. They knew if they admitted how much they lifted from DS2, people would’ve fled in terror screaming, “Wait, is this a DS2 sequel?” So they just quietly recycled the best parts and pretended it was all new.

Newsflash: it wasn’t. DS2 walked so Elden Ring could run.

Dark Souls 2 isn’t perfect. It’s messy, experimental, even clunky at times. But you know what? That’s what makes it beautiful. It doesn’t try to be elegant. It doesn’t try to impress you with flashy polish. It throws everything at the wall and somehow makes it work.

It’s the only Souls game where I feel like I’m constantly discovering something new, even years later. It’s the only one that makes me slow down, think, adapt, and really engage with the mechanics instead of just rolling through on instinct. And it’s the only one that has the guts to be different, even if that difference pissed people off.

And now, a decade later, it’s not just the mechanics or the lore that keep me coming back — it’s the fact that the game still looks good. Majula’s sunsets, Shaded Woods’ eerie fog, Iron Keep’s hellish glow… they still impress me more than half the “next-gen” worlds I’ve seen this year.

So yeah — Dark Souls 2 is my favorite Souls game. And if you’re still out here parroting YouTubers about how “it’s the worst one,” maybe put down the pitchforks and actually play it with an open mind. Or don’t. Stay in Anor Londo, polish your nostalgia. I’ll be in Drangleic, powerstancing giant spoons, laughing my ass off, and admiring how good this “ugly” game still looks in 2025.

You know, Dark Souls 2 deserves a lot of respect, wanna know why? Read this: Why Dark Souls 2 Deserves Respect