From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[ERYFKRAD]

Being the master of ancient mysteries, capable of creating literally a mini sun and throwing at the enemy(Forbidden sun), a geyser of soul energy(soul geyser), throw lightning like Zeus or create 5 quasi-sentient mass of a mysterious black energy who can act like a homing missile and each one hits like a ballista shot(affinity) is very cool

No

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

It amuses me how people are still incredibly butthurt over Frigid Outskirts.
I don't really like playing through the Outskirts, but I do respect the devs making an area that makes self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers" cry like games journalists. That's some nice trolling.
Yeah its a miserable area, that's the point. What part of "Challenge" do they not understand? :D
Its not even mandatory for the DLC. They could just not do it and swallow pride, but nope they have to carry on like IGN journalists and act as though they were forced to go through it at gunpoint.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Frigid Outskirts is not the worst area of DkS2.
Iron Keep is. Shrine of Amana and Gutter and Gulch are, in this order.
But Iron Keep takes the crown. After playing recently through it again, all doubt vanished. It is the most bullshit area in the game. Placement of enemies, number of them, aggro range, number of invaders and phantoms, the route you have to take including the super narrow one which lets you be flanked by NPCs from the front and the back with one turtle literally blocking your way out of that narrow passage, all of these make it the shittiest area in the whole series.
And you know what? The 3 or 4 zones that I mentioned above are mandatory, you have to go through them in order to finish the story whereas Frigid Outskirts isn't.
On top of that, Frigid Outskirts is wide open allowing you to sprint and better maneuver yourself during combat and you have 3 summons you can rake with you.
Iron Keep on the other hand? It's closed, narrow, whatever open area you get to is extremely dangerous because there are Alone Knights literally everywhere you look shooting at you from a distance, their armor textures help them camouflage with their surroundings making them harder to see from a distance, hell sometimes even from up close. It barely matters if you go slow or fast. I learned Speedrun tactics to get through that shit but even then it's a coin toss.
It's one of the places on DkS2 where the devs had no idea what to do due to lack of time or resources or whatever.
DkS2 is my favorite but these 3 areas, particularly Iron Keep, can go to hell and stay there.

 

[Caim]

Fe fi fo fum
I smell the blood of casual scum

 

[Child of Malkav]

Fe fi fo fum
I smell the blood of casual scum

Lol casual? Is this an insult or what? Like I said, DkS2 is my favorite, but I'm not gonna defend what is indefensible and should not be defended. I'll call out bad game design wherever I see it.
Loving something doesn't mean I can't criticize it.

 

[NJClaw]

Iron Keep is. Shrine of Amana and Gutter and Gulch are, in this order.
But Iron Keep takes the crown. After playing recently through it again, all doubt vanished. It is the most bullshit area in the game. Placement of enemies, number of them, aggro range, number of invaders and phantoms, the route you have to take including the super narrow one which lets you be flanked by NPCs from the front and the back with one turtle literally blocking your way out of that narrow passage, all of these make it the shittiest area in the whole series.
And you know what? The 3 or 4 zones that I mentioned above are mandatory, you have to go through them in order to finish the story whereas Frigid Outskirts isn't.
On top of that, Frigid Outskirts is wide open allowing you to sprint and better maneuver yourself during combat and you have 3 summons you can rake with you.
Iron Keep on the other hand? It's closed, narrow, whatever open area you get to is extremely dangerous because there are Alone Knights literally everywhere you look shooting at you from a distance, their armor textures help them camouflage with their surroundings making them harder to see from a distance, hell sometimes even from up close. It barely matters if you go slow or fast. I learned Speedrun tactics to get through that shit but even then it's a coin toss.
It's one of the places on DkS2 where the devs had no idea what to do due to lack of time or resources or whatever.
DkS2 is my favorite but these 3 areas, particularly Iron Keep, can go to hell and stay there.

Caim look at this dude, not even powerstancing his two maces. What a chump.

One-shotting all those dumb Alonne Knights with a single L1 is one of the most satisfying parts of the entire game.

On a more serious note, I understand your complaints about the number of enemies and their aggro range, but that's only a problem in the big open courtyard. All the other areas are very easily manageable. Complaining about the bridge with the corridor blocked by the turtle sounds really strange to me. It can be a "gotcha!" moment the first time you get there, but how can it be a problem once you know what is going to happen?

 

[Child of Malkav]

It's not a problem if you kill every knight so that there's no one to follow you in that corridor so you can bait the turtle and play it smart but killing everyone in that place becomes very tedious on repeated playthroughs especially if you go all the way to Ng+7 and beyond.
Powerstancing maces gets boring after a while, you try out other weapons since DkS2 has the largest arsenal in a From game. The problem however remains and the area is complete and utter shit. Frigid Outskirts pales in comparison.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

That's something I noticed about the Scholar version of Amana and Iron Keep; they feel more tedious to play though.
I do not recall Alonne knights being so aggressive in the original, and I know there weren't corrosive bugs in that tunnel in shrine. I'm pretty sure the magic missiles were less annoying as well in the original.

I have a odd suspicion that the devs pulled a Hideki Anno and made those two areas more egregious for the players as revenge for being crucified over the game's release. Think about it, you're a dev team trying your best with the limited resources you have, and despite releasing something that given the circumstances came out alright you still got lambasted. So given the opportunity, one might be tempted to do a little trolling, much like Anno took the opportunity to do a little trolling with End of Evangelion after getting flamed over the ending of the Evangelion series, which similarly also suffered from time and budget constraints.

But yeah, fuck Iron Keep. At least you can skip Outskirts.
Butthole Smelter demon is pretty cool though, would have preferred him as the boss instead of Old Iron King.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Yeah, Scholar changed things, for the worse in my opinion, when it comes to enemy placement. I don't remember Iron Keep being this tedious in the original DkS2.

 

[pakoito]

 

[Adon]

Never played Vanilla DkS2, but I would say that the Alonne Knights in Iron Keep are very manageable because they're so aggressive. It doesn't take much to aggro them one at a time, and progress whenever it's necessary to get rid of them.

 

[Caim]

Never played Vanilla DkS2, but I would say that the Alonne Knights in Iron Keep are very manageable because they're so aggressive. It doesn't take much to aggro them one at a time, and progress whenever it's necessary to get rid of them.

Yeah, that's how I do it. Early on it's managable, but once you hit the big room with all the archers you need to gain their attention one by one without being Anor Londo'd by the rest. This works best if you're a caster of some kind, but even as a melee you can pull it off if you're careful and methodical about it.

 

[NJClaw]

Time to slay some pussy:

 

[Adon]

Never played Vanilla DkS2, but I would say that the Alonne Knights in Iron Keep are very manageable because they're so aggressive. It doesn't take much to aggro them one at a time, and progress whenever it's necessary to get rid of them.

Yeah, that's how I do it. Early on it's managable, but once you hit the big room with all the archers you need to gain their attention one by one without being Anor Londo'd by the rest. This works best if you're a caster of some kind, but even as a melee you can pull it off if you're careful and methodical about it.

A single arrow (to the knee) is enough to do the trick so you never even have to go that far into the open area that leads into the Smelter Demon fight.

 

[deem]

Time to slay some pussy:

Leave Shalquoir alone.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Frigid Outskirts is stupid. The area was designed with co-op in mind just take some summons with you, there's a couple in the beginning for a reason.

 

[NJClaw]

Frigid Outskirts is stupid. The area was designed with co-op in mind just take some summons with you, there's a couple in the beginning for a reason.

All the DLC challenge areas (Frigid Outskirt, Iron Passage, Grave of the Dead) have been designed with co-op in mind. The only difference is that the Frigid Outskirt's gimmick actually works and makes going through the area so fucking painful.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I mean, there's an old saying, be careful what you wish for.
The hardcore players asked for difficulty, and they got it. Just not in the way they wanted.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Is Elder Ring going to be Dark Souls 2 all over again? Lmao.

Wonder if "Covid" development might have done something to the game as well.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Frigid Outskirts is stupid. The area was designed with co-op in mind just take some summons with you, there's a couple in the beginning for a reason.

All the DLC challenge areas (Frigid Outskirt, Iron Passage, Grave of the Dead) have been designed with co-op in mind. The only difference is that the Frigid Outskirt's gimmick actually works and makes going through the area so fucking painful.

It's not that bad once you know what to expect.

If you are autist enough you can actually clean all the horses you just need to kill like 20 each before they despawn or some shit lmao.

 

[Cryomancer]

Played the original game now. In a very old XBOX 360. OMG. The SotFS improved the game a LOT.

 

[Beggar]

Played the original game now. In a very old XBOX 360. OMG. The SotFS improved the game a LOT.

By throwing in 50 additional trash mobs into every corner?

 

[Cryomancer]

Played the original game now. In a very old XBOX 360. OMG. The SotFS improved the game a LOT.

By throwing in 50 additional trash mobs into every corner?

No. And trash mobs aren't a problem. Just use a black knight halberd and hit multiple enemies with a single attack. SotFS improved by making parts like Iron Keep better and Shrine of Amana better.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I don't see how putting a bunch of corrosive bugs in a narrow tunnel that you can't even run past because of that big fucking one is an improvement.

 

[Cryomancer]

I don't get why people complain so much about trash mobs in DS2. You have halberds capable of hitting dozens of then with a single strike. Firestorm, soul greatsword, ultra greatswords, greataxes,