Recent reviews by Ringating

If you've never played a fromsoft game, start here. It might still not be for everyone, but it's the closest the souls formula has ever been.

UPDATE - 20 SEPT 2018

they've finally implemented reasonable mouse aim that won't make you want to vomit as you look around. I can now easily recommend this game, regardless of your preferred input device. it's pretty good.




original review:

cannot recommend if you plan to use mouse and keyboard. key binding options are good, but camera movement with mouse is almost dark souls 1 levels of gross.

edit (sept 13): still no fix for the mouse controls. you can try adjusting a value in an ini file to increase the max turn-rate cap, but doing so ruins smaller, more precise movements (as it proportionally increases the deadzone meant for joystick input...).

it's cod, it's an arena shooter disguised as something more serious. the gameplay is no better or worse than it's ever been, and considering the transient nature of the cod playerbase that's not even necessarily a bad thing.

that said, my one main issue with the game in its current state is its mouse sensitivity sliders (one for vertical and one for horizontal). they have 50 steps of granularity each, but only the bottom few are of any use to me with my mouse (1000 dpi). I image anyone with a mouse over 2000 dpi is probably gonna have a hard time getting a sensitivity they're used to when they effectively have 2 reasonable options to pick between...

that all said, I like the over the top sound design, the available maps seem decently laid out, and the perk system has some interesting choices to be made. I definitely recommend it, since it's a free beta and it'll let you form your own opinion before the game's actually out.

the open world is well designed, but small.
move finding and combat deck building are satisfying forms of progression and customization.
the "seamless" online play can be buggy sometimes, but when it works it's great.

my two main gripes are that too many graphics options are bundled together (so you can't get rid of motion blur without also making it look gross in other ways) and the defensive abilities can't be rebound (so if you're using kb+m, have fun swiping your mouse to parry).

it's what you'd expect out of an action rpg. just make sure you play it on hard, anything lower is just trivially easy.

play the demo.

Combat.
you get an initial choice of 3 basic classes:
fighter (sword and shield)
strider (daggers and bow)
mage (uh magic)

the combat consists of light attacks and strong attacks, as well as up to 6 abilities that consume stamina when used. many abilities have much higher potential for damage than either of your basic attacks, but many of them are also more defense/utility focused.

abilities are important. initially i had issues with the combat, as i was trying to get by just blocking and attacking as a fighter. this works on basic monsters, but anything tougher will break your guard and take little damage if you use this strategy. you need offensive abilities to deal significant damage and break guard, and you need defensive abilities to effectively block or tank or dodge anything substantial.

Pawns.
you create a NPC character (pawn) in addition to your own character, and you customize his/her class/abilities/gear as well. you can also take on up to 2 other pawns for your party. these additional pawns are taken from a database that stores every player's main pawn. you're probably gonna want at least one pawn to heal you (tho you could just wharf down curitives like a madman instead).

Fast travel?
mentioning this here because it took me a bit too long to realize this myself. there is fast travel, but you need to place the travel points (portcrystals) yourself. it also apparently required a consumable items (ferrystones) in order to fast travel to these locations, but this updated version of the game grants you an "eternal ferrystone" (that can be reused indefinitely) very early on.

So.
this wasn't really much of a review, just an overview of what you're getting yourself into. the game's pretty good. I hope they make a second (and that it's on pc). seems like a perfect game for co-op, but it doesnt have any. oh well.

it's pretty good. if you want a first souls game, ds3 is really only best once you've played ds1, so ds2 is a decent place to start if you don't want to deal with the hassle of setting up ds1 (but if you get hooked on ds2 you'll probably be fine with dealing with that hassle to get more dark souls). Just don't start depraved in ds2 if this is your first souls game...

combat wise, this game feels a little more deliberate with your rolls than ds1 or ds3, kinda like always having a somewhat faster ds1 mid-roll. rolling while locked on targets isn't angled relative to the target, which is really nice (no more rolling off cliffs just because you had the audacity to try to roll while locked on).

level design wise, the individual areas seem well designed, but the overall world isn't nearly as impressive as the interconnected world of ds1 (ds3 also suffers from this, but perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent).

lore wise ds2 is somewhat off on its own compared to ds1/ds3, but it's sufficient to make the world feel fleshed out.

If you have a 360 pad this game is great. I've heard there's a mod that makes mouse control not suck, but you'll have to look into that yourself.

If you have a good computer, you're gonna want to install dsfix. It allows for 60 fps and quite a few other visual improvements.

the world is deep and the story isn't