Don't think going above 30 attunement was really needed though.
|I don't see why not. Casting speed increases and at 43 you get one extra cast on all your spells. AND you also get agility.
How much points would you give DS2 vanilla out of ten?
About 8 out of 10. It's not as bad as i though it would be, essentially still a Souls game, just has some rough edges that in a lesser game would have dragged the score at least to a 6 but flawed or not DS2 is still not popamole trash so i can't give it a low rating (i guess this is why people say that despite everything DS2 is still way better than all the Souls clones out there). I'd say the part that won me over is that the levels are still very good. When i heard the level design was garbage i was worried as that was one of the things i liked best about DS1, but it's still actually good, at least as far as the individual maps go. The problem with the level design is more about the overall than the individual maps. When you take the game as a whole it kinda feels confused and disjointed, but the maps themselves are still good. Also, the fact some areas look ugly probably didn't help, but that has nothing to do with gameplay.
Actually, a good way to put it is that i don't feel the difference between the base game and the DLCs is that drastic. The DLCs are better thought out for sure but they are not so superior as to make the base game unplayable, which is what i sort of expected considering the reputation of the base game. The base game is definitely inferior but not so much as to feel like a completely different game.
The thing i liked the least are bosses. One, there's just too frikking many of them, and then over half of them are not that interesting and a couple are just rage inducing (like the Ornstein shit. What were they thinking). With the DLCs its even worst, despite the improvements in design, just because by that point you are just sick of boss fights and now you have to do multiple bosses within a short span of time and they are all harder than the bosses in the base game. It's not the fault of the DLCs but man the burn out is real, especially since now bosses are in full "git gud" mode where you have to make sure you dodge shit at the exact right time and they introduced shit like delayed attacks to trick you and weird hit boxes that can only be avoided with the invincibility frames and it's starting to feel like routine at this point. Like, i know i'm going to wipe dozen of times so why bother even trying pretending. On the last boss in the second DLCs, that samurai guy, i made all the mobs on the way extinct just so i could focus on the boss in peace.
I should have probably taken a pause before tackling the DLCs but then again from experience when i leave a game alone without finish it for a while i tend to start from scratch so i gotta finish it now or i'll never do it. Shouldn't have played DS1 and DS2 back to back i guess, bad idea.