3/5 ★ – Poefred's review of DARK SOULS™ II: Scholar of the First Sin.

This is the first soulslike game I've beaten. Thing with these games for me is that they always make me wish they were just a little bit more than they are. I genuinely don't find them THAT difficult. While I do find there's a lot of arguably bad design decisions that artificially make these games seem more brutally challenging than they really are... I can get past that and make steady progress in any souls game. My problem is how disappointing the story and music are. I'm so close to being a huge Dark Souls fan. There's so much I love about them. But I always hit a point about halfway through these games where I stop playing for the day and just never get the drive to open the game again. But I finally pushed through that and finished DS2. (Perhaps playing it on Steam Deck helped a bit) Digging into the online for the first time and coming back to do optional content even after I beat the final boss, I now have even more of an appreciation for Dark Souls as a game. But the series insistance on its beyond minimalistic approach to music and storytelling makes it impossible for me to get invested and truly fall in love with it all. 95% of the game being literally silent beyond your own footsteps gets so dreadfully boring really fast. Especially when every other dark souls game and demons souls and bloodborne do the exact same thing. I understand fans will defend the decision because it's supposed to feel empty and lonely and that's just the kind of world it is. And I understand it makes what few songs are there REALY stand out more than they would otherwise. But I just really don't buy that the presence of music would inherently ruin the mood. Somber, depressing, and subtle music can be written. The no music route just blankets the entire dark souls universe in a thick layer of literal nothing and makes it REALLY hard for me to care about the world and lore they're barely attempting to tell me about anyway. Of course too much music wouldn't be great either but the inverse is also true. If complete silence was used in very intentional moments it would be felt so much more. But used for almost the entire game (and series) you become numb to it. Silence and minimalism in the soundtrack is a powerful tool but if it's the only trick you do for 6 huge games you've overused it. Something like the Arbiter's Grounds theme from Twilight Princess would add so much just dropped into almost any location in the series. Or Misty Menace from Donkey Kong country...Because the series about the funny monkeys trying to get their bananas back on the SNES cared more about invoking a harsh, visceral, and somber aesthetic for its world than Dark Souls. And beyond that, the sound design also fails. Drangleic castle is one of the most strikingly cool locations I've experienced in a video game in quite a while. A dark, almost monochromatic, massive castle with a thunderstorm happening around it. The harsh environmental sounds of a rainstorm could have easily replaced the need for music here for me. And yet you can barely even hear the rain. I get what they're going for with the lack of music even if I don't agree. But there's no excuse for the actual environment to be almost equally as silent. And funny thing is this was also a deliberate choice. They kick up the rainstorm sounds during the Looking Glass Knight boss. They feel the need to prop up the bosses over EVERYTHING else by making everything else as lame as possible even if it doesn't make sense whatsoever. The rain making proper rain sounds outside of the boss room wouldn't ruin the pretentious minimalist aesthetic they insist every game in this series needs. What's worse is if you're not directly standing in it, the rain makes no sound at all. Even if you're functionally standing under a canopy the entire already downplayed and weak sounds just go away. So many other games get so much mileage out of the rainstorm aesthetic but Souls just doesn't want an aesthetic. I have less to say about the story. I actually really liked the bit where you go into the giants memories and you play through their war sequences. And how the King was used and thrown away by the Queen. Seeing him aimlessly walk around an empty room as a completely optional boss is really cool. (Also his room is one of the only areas in the game that plays music go figure) Got nothing else whatsoever from the story or characters or item descriptions. most of the time Dark Souls lore feels like you're in the most flavorless history class imagineable. I don't think I've ever cared less about the universe in a video game. I love subtle storytelling but you need to have a story to tell if you want to go for that approach. Like dude the entire series is just a bunch of lifeless husks standing in empty rooms waiting for you to come close enough to aggro. There's no story and while there is lore it's almost more boring hearing the bigger picture a lot of the time. It's just so hard to feel like I'm missing something, which is what leads me to always drop souls games. I could go on about some actual gameplay ideas that don't really vibe with me but story and music are the main sticking points here. Sure I think not getting your items back on death makes it feel like you can't experiment, leading to you feeling like you gotta just die repeatedly to a boss you could easily beat if you went all out. Coupled with you losing max HP every time you die to a minimum of 50% of your health. Bosses that aren't even remotely challenging tended to kill me because I didn't want to waste the resources on what was probably going to be another failed attempt. But I found a ring that dramatically limits how much max HP you can possibly lose on death and basically never had to use a human effigy again and breezed through the rest of the game with very few snags. There's some questionable bits imo but ultimately they're all wrinkles that make the game all the more satisfying to "git gud" at. And Dark Souls really needs those wrinkles considering how intentionally slow and unsatisfying the combat mechanics are. Beating this game has hooked me into wanting more. Perhaps I'll finally try out Elden Ring, which I ignored because I already had 3 other souls games I started and put down before it. It's just that as long as the music and story (Almost the most important parts of an RPG right next to mechanical depth) continue being so intentionally nothing, these games will keep being missed opportunities to me. Games that reached the last step to the masterpiece pedastle and decided it would be cooler if it took a 200 year long nap on the ground instead. Which is lame to begin with let alone when there's 5 other souls games on the ground next to it that all decided to do the exact same thing.