RollingMelon

This game changed my perspective on the world. Nothing will prepare you for the masterful ways Cory in the House incorporates philosophy into the gameplay. After playing this game, I spent days questioning every belief I hold. That's how much this masterpiece changed my world. This is not for the weak minded. After playing this game, the weight of the truth will either crush your mind completely or allow you to ascend far beyond what you could comprehend before. Typing this review is agony because it is impossible to translate the knowledge of God into human words. I am so happy I played this game.

This is a really fun platforming game, especially for the price. I love the visuals and music, although I'm not big on the later levels where the background visuals become overwhelming, it's still a great game.

This is just a much worse version of the original. It's a cash grab. Changing enemy positions and adding more of them is cool for a new game plus mode, but not as an entire new game. There are rare instances of improvements such as the lore references added, and the graphics are definitely improved. Other than that though, the level design and enemy placement is just unfun now. This is probably half the reason Dark Souls II gets so much hate, because people played the inferior version.

Dark Souls 2 holds a special place in my heart because it was the game that got me into the Souls series. I remember going into it with high expectations of how difficult it was going to be, and boy was I bad at first. I made good use of that mechanic which makes enemies despawn after a certain amount of deaths to get through Forest of The Fallen Giants. Then, on Heide's Tower of Flame it took me several hours practicing against the stone knights to learn how to play properly. World/Story/Atmosphere: 10/10This is one of those areas where FromSoft never really misses. They always do an amazing job coming up with a story that is exciting to experience both for a casual player and for someone who watches all the YouTube videos deepdiving into the story, or even combs through the story yourself. Aldia is probably my favorite character in the Dark Souls trilogy. Build Variety/Balance: 10/10Now we're talking, this is the area where even people who hate Dark Souls 2 will praise it. Dark Souls 2 gave us powerstancing, and the amount of build variety added is truly amazing. Up until Elden Ring FINALLY did what I wanted for years, Dark Souls II was the only game where you could play a viable bare fists build. On top of this, magic is by far the most fun in Dark Souls 2 compared to the other games. Hex builds are an amazing addition and I will never understand why they aren't implemented the same way in future games. Int/Faith builds are just left in an awkward spot in every game afterwards. There's just a ton of unique options and ways to play Dark Souls II, and that's a big part of what makes Dark Souls II so replayable even when compared to the rest of the trilogy. Combat Mechanics: 5/10Alright, I wish I could sit here and keep praising Dark Souls II but I had to get here eventually. You don't have to do a deep dive into Dark Souls II combat to understand the issue. If you go from Dark Souls I to II, you will notice a strange lack of weight to your attacks. On top of that, adaptability as a stat is poorly communicated and leads to dodging feeling broken at the beginning of the game, and ridiculously slow healing. Yes, I know it's possible to beat Fume Knight at SL1 with 6 adaptability, no parrying, no shield, no rolling, and naked while playing Bohemian Rhapsody with your feet. However, having low adaptability just feels bad. On top of this, adaptability just makes the game laughably easy if you can get enough of it. I don't really love the healing system either, but it's not offensively bad, lifegems do give you the ability to trivialize the game if you want to so do with that what you will. I think when you fully understand the combat in Dark Souls II, it's better, but regardless it just doesn't feel right. It's still Souls Combat at the end of the day, so I'll give it an average rating. But this is easily the worst of the games for combat mechanics.Level Design: 5/10So the level design in Dark Souls II is pretty mixed. The quality is definitely not up to par with Dark Souls 1 with most of the areas. There are some amazing areas such as Heide's Tower of Flame, The Gutter, Shrine of Amana, Dragon Aerie, and Shulva Sanctum city. But the really terrible areas were saved for the DLC. They're mostly optional areas, but I still wish they were better. The saving grace of the horrible areas is the mechanic where if you kill an enemy enough times it despawns. It's nice to know that there's a guaranteed end to the suffering eventually. Most of the areas, though, are really just average. There are just a lot of areas in Dark Souls II that I can't remember without looking up "Dark Souls II areas" despite it being the FromSoft game I played through the most. There's a focus on gank fights in Dark Souls II, which I actually don't mind too much. Gank fights do fit in with a slower combat system. There's still way too many enemies in some areas. Boss runs are suffering.Bosses: 7/10I don't think the bosses in Dark Souls II are all that bad. Yes there's a lot of mediocre bosses, but it also has more bosses than any other game in the series aside from Elden Ring. There are bosses that are as good as the best of Dark Souls 1 such as Darklurker, Fume Knight, Elana, and Sir Allone. It's much the same as Dark Souls 1 in the sense that I think "Wow, good thing this game got a DLC because otherwise this boss roster is mid." At least there's no boss that's as offensively bad as Bed of Chaos. I am not including boss runs, that was considered in the level design portion. I am including an extra for fun category for SL1 runs, this doesn't affect the overall ranking, but I decided it would be interesting to compare the quality of an SL1 run to the normal game. SL1 Run: 3/10The issues in a normal run become much worse in an SL1 run, the good bosses are really fun on SL1 but aside from that it's just a bad experience. Don't do it.

The only game to make me cry with joy over finding a bottle of water in a trash can.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I would like to preface my review by saying I am not someone who generally enjoys horror games. Or at least I wasn't until I played this game, and discovered just how good horror can be when the focus isn't just on disgusting the player or suddenly putting a screaming demon in front of your screen. I actually had a tough time getting into the original trilogy, I started with Resident Evil 5 and then went to Resident Evil 4 which became one of my favorite games of all time. I tried to play the originals of 1-3 after that and I just didn't enjoy them. At that point I concluded that while I may enjoy games with aspects of horror in them, fully dedicated horror games just weren't for me. What I've come to discover, and this game was the beginning of that, is that the best horror doesn't just try to make you scream by surprising you. Rather, the best horror will slowly creep into your mind so that you're thinking about it even when you're not playing the game at all. A true masterpiece can stay with you even years after you're done with it, and that is how this game has affected me. The gameplay will mainly revolve around walking The Spencer Mansion avoiding or killing enemies, solving puzzles to progress, and discovering more about the story. Picking your fights is even more important in this game than in the others, if you try to kill every enemy you will be punished for it. I had to end my original playthrough because I tried to play that way. I'm not trying to spoil anything, but if you only played the original you're in for a surprise let me tell you! The puzzles and item management are made easier, since you can now see which general areas you're missing items in. The days of missing an item and having to search the entire mansion to figure out where it is are gone, and this is one of the main reasons why I was able to get myself through this game over the original. The story of this game is nothing short of phenomenal, I don't generally play Resident Evil games for the story but this one is the exception. It's really the only one that doesn't feel like they're continuing just because it has to continue, and that's probably because this was originally intended to be the only Resident Evil. The Remake even adds the most tragic character in the series, and it's a shame she doesn't exist in the original because she really drives in the tragedy of the Spencer Mansion. The voice acting and graphics are just amazing too, and they stand up even today. This is the best way to play Resident Evil in it's original style. And although I enjoy the new remakes, I'm glad that we got to see them flesh out that style fully. Resident Evil Remake is a masterpiece, and it made me learn to love horror.