Why Dark Souls 2 Deserves Respect

Reading time: 13 min… Yeah it’s a long one, buckle up!

Dark Souls 2 has been the punching bag of the franchise since launch. The running joke. The “black sheep.” The game everyone trashes to fit in at the SoulsCool Kids table.

And why? Because it wasn’t Miyazaki’s baby. Because it felt “different.” Because gamers — bless their fragile little hearts — panic the second something doesn’t match their nostalgia.

Here’s the reality: Yui Tanimura actually tried to innovate. He didn’t just slap new paint on DS1 and call it a day. He added mechanics that made sense, deepened the combat, expanded the builds, and gave us systems smarter than half the crap in DS3 and Elden Ring.

But instead of applauding him, people whined like toddlers. So let’s tear this myth apart.

Here’s the first tired meme: “The E3 demo looked better than the release!” Yeah, no shit. Tons of games get visual downgrades between demo and release. And in Dark Souls 2’s case, the Scholar of the First Sin edition fixed the hell out of it. Better lighting, improved textures, shadows that actually stick, and enemy placement that makes the game way harder but also way better.

Majula in SOTFS is one of the most beautiful hub areas FromSoft has ever made. That golden horizon still kills half of DS3’s washed-out gray landscapes. But no, let’s just keep crying about E3 lighting from 2013 like we haven’t touched the actual definitive version since.

ADP is the most misunderstood stat in Souls history. People still cry: “It’s just for rolling!” No, genius, it’s not.

It speeds up actions. Faster estus drinking, quicker recovery, better timing on items. You survive because of it.

It boosts agility, which adds i-frames to rolls — but not for free. Without ADP, rolling feels sluggish, so you’re forced to actually think about spacing.

That means you’re encouraged to use your legs — strafe, reposition, fight smart instead of panic-flopping on the ground every two seconds.

It rewards using a shield. Remember shields? Those round things you can block with?

And the cherry on top: parry. In DS2, every weapon has parry frames. Unlike Elden Ring, where parry is duct-taped to specific shields or ashes, here it’s universal. You can fucking parry with a dagger, a sword, whatever.

ADP didn’t break the game. It forced players out of their one-dimensional “roll through everything” comfort zone. It made you use all the damn tools the game gave you. That’s not bad design — that’s brilliant.

Soul Memory is another mechanic that got dogpiled for no reason.

DS3’s matchmaking ties to gear level and character level, punishing you for experimenting. Elden Ring nerfs you to hell the second you invade someone, leaving you as cannon fodder for 3v1 or 4v1 gank squads. That’s not PvP — that’s hazing.

DS2’s Soul Memory? Logical. It matches based on total souls collected. Meaning it tracks your actual journey, not just your level number. If you’ve played more, spent more, you fight people on that level. No twinks. No nerfs. Just fair progression-based matchmaking.

Was it perfect? No. Nothing is. But it was smarter and fairer than what came later. And if you actually knew how to play, there were ways to manipulate Soul Memory brackets to land right where you wanted. Options. Flexibility. Something DS3 and Elden Ring spit on.

The salt never stops with Vitality. “It’s just equip load!” Wrong. Again.

In DS2, Vitality gave you:

• Higher equip load.
• Small boosts to defense and resistances.
• And yes — even a tiny bump to HP. Not as much as Vigor, but it was there.

That means Vitality wasn’t a throwaway stat. It made you sturdier, let you wear heavier gear, and gave you survivability all at once.

Every swing felt heavier. Every hit landed with weight. DS2 combat didn’t feel like cosplay lightsabers sparking off each other. It felt like weapons connecting with real force. DS3 felt like anime. DS2 felt like medieval brutality.

Oh, durability. The mechanic casuals hate because it made them actually think.

Weapons and armor wore down in DS2. You couldn’t just swing endlessly like a maniac. And guess what? That made sense.

That unkillable Havel monster? Smash his armor until it cracks. Now he’s mortal.

Build focused on breaking gear? Entirely possible.

Scared of maintenance? Don’t be. Bonfires fully repaired durability, Repair Powder existed, and the only real bug was the 60fps PC issue, which got patched.

Durability added realism, depth, and counters to bullshit. That’s not annoying. That’s good design.

But nah, apparently asking players to carry repair powder is oppression.

DS2 has one of the largest arsenals of weapons and armor in the franchise. Straight swords, ultra greatswords, katanas, spears, halberds, twinblades, whips, bows, crossbows, staves, chimes, pyromancy flames, and on and on. And the armor selection? Massive.

The builds were wild. Strength freaks, dex maniacs, hex lords, miracle tanks, poison psychos, gear-breaking trolls, hybrid paladin-sorcerers — you name it, it was viable.

Compare that to DS3 where half the player base defaults to a boring straight sword. DS2 was a lab for experimentation. DS3 was a uniform.

Haters love to harp on the elevator from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep. “It doesn’t make sense!”

Newsflash: you climb into a mountain, fight Mytha, then take an elevator up into a volcano. That’s literally how volcanoes work. Lava at the top, genius. It’s not hard to figure out unless your brain is off.

And outside of that nitpick, Drangleic is massive. Forests, towers, swamps, castles, crypts — sprawling and messy, but alive. DS1 is elegant. DS3 is safe fanservice. DS2? It feels like a whole collapsing kingdom. You feel the ruin. You feel the decay.

Yeah, DS2 had jank hitboxes sometimes. You know what else does? Every other game in history.

• Monster Hunter Freedom Unite had garbage hitboxes. People still call it legendary.
• Fighting games constantly have phantom hits. Nobody screams for 10 years straight.
• DS3 and Elden Ring have halberds that hit you from five feet beyond their swing arc.

But DS2? That’s the one people screenshot forever. Hypocrisy, plain and simple.

DS2 throws groups of enemies at you. Correct. That’s intentional. It forces you to think, lure, space, and manage crowds.

But go play Elden Ring. Half the mobs have horns and can summon 20 enemies at once. Entire caves and fields are swarms of trash mobs. Nobody calls that “bad design.” They call it “open world scale.”

So three hollows in a room is unfair in DS2? But 30 horn-blowing mobs in Elden Ring is fine? Cut the crap, get real.

Let’s talk invasions. DS3 and Elden Ring turn every invasion into a gank fest. Hosts get phantom buddies, estus sharing, nerfed invaders. It’s unfair, unfun, and predictable.

DS2? Soul Memory meant invaders weren’t nerfed into the dirt. The odds felt even. PvP was chaos incarnate. You never knew what build would invade — poison lad, dual-greatsword freak, hex spammer, parry god. It was wild, and it was alive.

DS2 has 41 bosses with DLC. Do they all hit? No. Some are filler. Some are memes.

But the highs? Unmatched.

• Fume Knight — still hailed as one of the hardest, fairest fights ever designed.
• Sir Alonne — a duel so cinematic it feels handcrafted for honor.
• Burnt Ivory King — a battle that feels like storming hell itself.

Meanwhile, DS3’s lineup is “knight, knight, knight again” with occasional spice. Polished, yes. Memorable? Less so.

Here’s the criticism DS2 gets hammered with all the time: “The bosses are just copy-paste.” And sure, there are repeats. Let’s be honest: DS2 has about 41 bosses total, and maybe 10–12 of them are repeats or variants.

• The Pursuer shows up multiple times, but that’s literally his job — he’s meant to stalk you.
• Dragonrider fights pop up more than once, including a double version.
• Ruin Sentinels are fought as a group, then reappear as normal enemies.
• Flexile Sentry has variations.
• Old Dragonslayer is Ornstein with a lore twist.

The key thing is that DS2’s repeats are usually deliberate. They fit the theme of being hunted, of encountering echoes of the past, of a cursed world recycling its horrors.

Now let’s look at Elden Ring, which somehow gets a free pass. Elden Ring has over 150 boss encounters, and no joke, 60–70 of them are copy-paste.

• Erdtree Avatars / Putrid Avatars (how many Erdtree asses do I have to kick, really?).
• Tree Sentinels / Draconic Tree Sentinels (they basically guard every damn gate in the Lands Between).
• Crucible Knights (great the first time, exhausting the tenth).
• Godskin Duo (infamous for being the most copy-paste-y fight in the game).
• Deathbirds / Death Rite Birds (four reskins).
• Ulcerated Tree Spirits (stuffed into dungeons like Pokémon in tall grass).
• Bell Bearing Hunters (spawn in multiple merchant spots).
• Mad Pumpkin Heads (at this point they’re practically mascots).

And unlike DS2, Elden Ring doesn’t use repetition as theme or narrative — it’s just padding for an oversized map.

So if we’re going to sling mud at DS2 for copy-paste bosses, let’s at least admit the truth: Elden Ring is far guiltier. DS2 made repetition part of its design. Elden Ring made it a content strategy.

One of the dumbest complaints I’ve ever heard about DS2:

“What’s the point of a big sword if I can’t just poke with the tip from far away? Doesn’t that kill the whole idea of range?”

No, it kills the whole idea of being brain-dead.

Listen — if a massive slab of steel caves into your ribs, you’re done. If the tip just grazes your arm? That’s not death, that’s a scratch. DS2 actually had the balls to code this in with sweet spot mechanics. Hit clean with the blade, you get full damage. Nick somebody with the tip like you’re giving them a love tap? Congratulations, you’ve just given them a paper cut.

And people hated it. Why? Because it punished lazy play. It told you: “No, you don’t get to sit ten feet away and cheese kills with the very edge of your weapon. Step in, commit, and swing properly.”

If you think a paper cut should do the same damage as being cleaved in half, then what you’re really asking is for the game to treat a papercut like a decapitation. That’s not “range,” that’s clown logic.

DS2 made you fight like you meant it. Not flail like a moron and expect the hitbox fairy to bail you out.

DS2’s stamina rules exposed button mashers. Heavy weapon? Big stamina cost. Heavy armor? More drain. Everything tied to the same bar: blocking, rolling, attacking, sprinting.

You don’t get to swing a 50-pound ultra greatsword like it’s a Nerf bat. DS2 made you fight with patience and discipline. DS3 turned stamina into a joke, letting you chain anime combos like a lunatic.

DS2 fights were slower, heavier, and more brutal. You felt every decision. Every swing mattered.

This is the part where DS2 haters prove they didn’t even play the game. People love to say torches were “pointless.” Wrong. Torches were one of the most creative mechanics in the series.

• No-Man’s Wharf: Enemies fear light. Carry a torch and mobs literally hesitate instead of dogpiling you.
• Shrine of Amana: Water edges are invisible. A torch lets you see where the ground ends so you don’t die like an idiot.
• Things Betwixt: Light all the sconces, unlock the meme weapon Handmaid’s Ladle — the soup spoon of doom. Peak Souls humor.
• The Gutter: Can’t see shit. Torches are mandatory. Light sconces, make it survivable.
• Black Gulch: Light the tar pits to reveal those tooth monsters before they ambush you. Torch also helps with the giant fight at the bottom.
• Harvest Valley: Poison mist in tunnels is blinding. Torch cuts right through it.
• Earthen Peak: The genius move — burn the windmill with a torch, and you drain the poison from Mytha’s boss fight. Environmental storytelling meets practical advantage.
• Drangleic Castle: Some rooms are pitch dark, torches make them playable.
• Undead Crypt: Absolute masterpiece. Carry a torch, piss off the guardians. Light sconces, trigger red phantom invasions. Agdayne himself turns hostile if you disrespect the dark.

Torches tied atmosphere, enemy AI, mechanics, and boss fights together. That’s not fluff. That’s next-level design.

Another lie: “DS2 NPCs are disconnected.” Wrong. DS2 NPCs are the best embodiment of the curse in the entire franchise.

• Lucatiel literally forgets who she is.
• Benhart rambles on about his sword while his mind rots.
• Vendrick, once a king, reduced to a hollow pacing in circles.
• The Emerald Herald, repeating her lines endlessly, cursed to guide you over and over.

They’re not disconnected. They’re tragic. They are the curse. DS2 nailed the theme harder than any other Souls game.

But Nah! In DS3 you get “the flame fades again, here’s Anor Londo again” and everyone starts clapping like a damn seal.

DS2 isn’t perfect. Some hitboxes were off. Some bosses were filler. The graphics weren’t always consistent. But it was never lazy. Never soulless. It was ambitious, logical, and brave.

• ADP made you adapt.
• Soul Memory made PvP fairer.
• Vitality tied weight, HP, and defense together.
• Durability made combat gritty.
• Build variety exploded.
• Sweet spots and stamina punished lazy spam.
• Torches linked gameplay and atmosphere.
• NPCs embodied the curse like no other entry.

And Elden Ring — the golden child — owes half its DNA to DS2. Warp bonfires? DS2. Build variety? DS2. Big sprawling mess of a world? DS2.

Dark Souls 2 doesn’t deserve the hate. What it deserves is respect. Respect for daring to innovate, respect for punishing lazy players, respect for being different.

People hate it because it demanded thought. Because it wasn’t just Dark Souls 1.5. Because it made them uncomfortable. And because Miyazaki didn’t put his name on the box, they wrote it off.

But here’s the truth: Dark Souls 2 isn’t the black sheep. It’s the wolf. The one that didn’t care what anyone thought. The one that bit back. The one that made systems that actually made sense.

So stop parroting the same tired meme that “DS2 is the bad one.” It isn’t. It’s the boldest one. The smartest one. The one that dared to do shit differently.

And honestly? That’s exactly why it deserves more love than it ever got.

Verdict: Dark Souls 2 didn’t just deserve better. It deserves revenge.

Hey! Wanna know why Dark souls 2 is my favorite souls game? Read this: Dark Souls 2: My Favorite Souls Game