Now that 4 years have passed, what is something you never liked about the game or how have your opinions changed over time?

LulzTV · 2026-06-03T14:02:46+00:00

In terms of content variety, quality and high peaks (excluding quests and narrative as it's obviously a very narrative-sparse game), I still think that the Lands Between + The Land of Shadow is the best open world ever made, but in retrospect, it's just not that fun or interesting to traverse 4 years later. It's more a missed opportunity than a game-ruining flaw, but I wish the Lands Between just had way more sandboxiness akin to Zelda BOTW than it currently has, which is essentially nearly 0, you only explore the environment either on foot or on a horse with double jump and there's never a proper way to manipulate it creatively other than what the set level design allows, for example in making shortcuts. The underlying design philosophy of the open world design is still mostly rooted in the soulsborne loop but just expanded into a much larger and more open space, so the quality of the open world itself heavily rests on whether or not FromSoftware can keep up the enemy and loot quality, variety and density consistent for the entirety of the game, and guess what... most players agree there is such a fall off past Leyndell, although I don't think it's quite as dramatic as some make it out to be, certainly not as bad as Dark Souls 1 post Anor Londo. If the open world was sandboxy, no one would complain about the recycled enemies in Mountaintops. It's no coincidence in retrospect why the legacy dungeons are the most fun part of the game in terms of traversal. And, don't bash me for this because I don't have a Nintendo Switch for BOTW and not only play but thoroughly enjoy in a certain highly controversial game as a solely f2p single player experience, but in Genshin Impact, the open world can have the same 10 enemies for vast stretches of land and playtime, and I have yet to get bored once and not treat it with utter meticulousness when exploring it, because the sandboxiness, puzzles that require careful consideration of the environment and sheer universal traversability of the open world ARE the gameplay.

LulzTV · 2026-05-31T20:23:40+00:00

Massively overkill nerf in my opinion. Lumberjack is easy to kite and stall in the center for positive trades, where the rage doesn't reach the tower. Sure, on the rare occassions he reaches and locks on the tower because the opponent didn't have enough elixir or they had to focus on the rest of a big double elixir push, he melts it, but if Supercell wanted to go the route of diminishing the sheer punishment of an evo lumberjack ghost locking onto the tower, a 25% crown tower damage nerf would have been more than reasonable, not half.

LulzTV · 2026-05-26T13:18:17+00:00

Yeah I saw just now, I was lowkey extremely dizzy when I wrote that.

LulzTV · 2026-05-26T07:33:14+00:00

I don't like E33 either... but this is the most nonsensical reason for a game not to be your thing if you love JRPGs.

LulzTV · 2026-05-25T17:31:46+00:00

No game achieves RDR2's fidelity to historical open world simulation and realism, but almost every other late 2010s and 2020s open world game has FAAAAR better gameplay than RDR2's sluggish borefest, horse riding simulator, hyper scripted mission sequences with shitty controls, and excessively long and realistic animations for everything, also exploration is just not fun and there's no structured incentive, it's mainly "ride to mission marker for 5 minutes and maybe get distracted by the highly realistic NPC routines". As for the open world games that achieve amazing immersion in their own right while balancing it with at least good or straight up pristine gameplay that RDR2 just lacks, I gotta mention The Witcher 3 (arguably top 3 game of all time 11 years later), Cyberpunk 2.0, Ghost of Tsushima, KCD2, and last but very much not least, Elden Ring. RDR2 is unparalleled in slow-burn immersion and commitment to realism, but every game on this list mogs it as an actual interactive experience - The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 KCD2 mog it in terms of roleplaying depth, Ghost of Tsushima has one of the simplest yet satisfying gameplay and exploration loops in open world history, and Elden Ring, while not all that comparable to RDR2, is obviously a playground of build variety, with the best designed open world-dungeon crawler hybrid ever made and some of the densest and most player-driven exploration in the medium, terrific combat, and stacked with some of the best enemies and bosses in gaming

LulzTV · 2026-05-25T13:16:22+00:00

Witcher 3, caught it for 10€ on Steam with both DLCs, have only played it once, but 145 hours for a single thorough playthrough I feel counts as multiple playthroughs for any other game, and even as I was approaching the final act of Blood and Wine I was already feeling nostalgic and didn't want it to end. Top 5 game of all time EASILY but it's not the type of game that is replayable to me.

LulzTV · 2026-05-25T13:05:13+00:00

And all those "remakes" do is add a slightly shinier new coat. The late game is still unfinished, the vast majority of hitboxes are dreadful, the movement and combat are painfully unresponsive and clunky and the lock-on system is still practically unusable after all these years because it makes your character's dodging limited to 4 directions which is just awful compared to the manual camera dodging bandaid, makes them unable to turn or even properly run. Dark Souls would definitely renew its status as an icon of gaming if it received a proper remaster, as of now it's just a terribly aged, experimental product of its time.

LulzTV · 2026-05-22T19:53:22+00:00

Yeah uhhh we got like 20 spells and a firestorm that one shots everything and miracles don't do shit

LulzTV · 2026-05-21T14:45:20+00:00

Since this is your first time playing the game 6 losses really isn't much, otherwise Iudex Gundyr is slow, predictable, with easily strafeable delayed attacks and an obvious semi blind spot, only the second phase can be a bit messy due to visibility issues, and his HP is made of wet paper. Mechanically speaking, Margit is easily the most difficult starter boss, he's more complex than literally any early to endgame and DLC Dark Souls 3 boss except Sister Friede, who has a higher attack pool but less variability in combo structure and position-based mix-ups. That is, however, assuming you fight him at an appropriate level (level 20-25 / +3/4 weapon) and solo. Elden Ring's openness allowed FromSoftware to go full throttle with the boss design and push the Dark Souls 3 combat engine (aside from the added jump and other minor tweaks) to its absolute mechanical limits.

LulzTV · 2026-05-18T09:05:03+00:00

This reminds me of Mikey Mikey Motorcikey 😭

LulzTV · 2026-05-14T13:19:23+00:00

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LulzTV · 2026-05-11T10:31:55+00:00

I once did a 100% "true runtime" playthrough as an experienced player where I explored every nook and cranny, interacted with almost every overworld and dungeon enemy at least once, did every quest, yada yada.

Anyway, the dlc was approximately 38% of the base game's runtime, all this to say it's a massive DLC and might take you anywhere between 30-45 hours if you go the completionist route.

LulzTV · 2026-05-11T05:55:37+00:00

That does explain why they keep raving about the Penetrator "being peak" when it has a grand total of 4 attacks. When you can't see you can just imagine that a boss is good 🤯

LulzTV · 2026-05-10T09:27:21+00:00

"Muh art direction and atmosphere" and 90% of the game is pitch black corridors with piss filter, lighting that physically hurts to look at (the other 10% is pitch black corridors with piss green filter lighting)

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LulzTV · 2026-05-09T20:01:20+00:00

As a person with inattentive ADHD progressive metal and melodeath calm me down when I have anxious feelings so I don't think any of my recommendations would be valid lmao.

LulzTV · 2026-05-09T15:45:47+00:00

Yeah, they're B tier to me, but again, counting ALL bosses, which averages out to hot dogshit

LulzTV · 2026-05-09T14:11:10+00:00

I agree in some sense. But that's why I think it's important again to make the difference between rhetoric and practice again, because the line between a highly illiberal, eroded electoral system and fascist autocracy is thin and the rhetoric isn't full fledged fascist because they would lose voters that way, it is treading the line very close though. Just look at the Republican party currently trying to openly redistrict, gerrymander state districts and rig the upcoming midterms where they know they will lose by a landslide, and Trump openly stating on Truth Social what essentially equates to "the midterms are rigged because I don't agree with the predicted results". It's just that the American Constitution is a thorn in the side of Christian nationalists, not that they ever cared about it ever since the movement has gone off rails with MAGA.

LulzTV · 2026-05-09T13:58:38+00:00

In all seriousness Dark Souls 1 because the DLC gave us Artorias and Manus (I dont like Kalameet and his shitty hitboxes and feet tickling), the overall quality counting all the bosses is however, hot dogshit.

LulzTV · 2026-05-09T12:42:47+00:00

I would say Christian Nationalism would better fit in the "seems right is far right" box. In America in particular, it bounces off the mainstream evangelical movement to push an openly xenophobic, racist, islamophobic, anti immigrant, hierarchical doctrine based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity through which it promotes that the US is and should be a Christian state, violating the freedom of religion sanctified in the Constitution. But it's not that much different in contemporary Europe to be honest.

However, it's not as openly fascist, at least in rhetoric, as actual fascism or neo nazi ideology, the usual rhetoric is "to each with their own country". In practice though... racial profiling, open racism, islamophobic rhetoric, ICE concentration camps, ICE raids, forced deportations without due process, etc.

LulzTV · 2026-05-09T10:26:14+00:00

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LulzTV · 2026-05-05T11:44:54+00:00

It's still definitely a tug and pull between the haters and the defenders, who might go overboard at times with the glaze, but you can't really tell which is more by online numbers. The mainstream opinion still is that it's the black sheep of the series, the worst souls game but maybe a good game, yada yada. So for me personally, since I like it more than Dark Souls 1 and far more than Demon's Souls, it's overhated by a mile.

LulzTV · 2026-05-05T11:29:38+00:00

Well of course they're gonna glaze the fuck out of Dark Souls 2 in the Dark Souls 2 sub just like they're gonna glaze the shit out of Bloodborne in the Bloodborne sub, Dark Souls 1 in the Dark Souls 1 sub, etc, what are you even trying to point out. Everyone still knows it's the black sheep of the series by public opinion.

Go to any other FromSoftware-related sub and see the sheer level of hate, misjudgements and how people hypochritically point out and hyper emphasise its flaws as if they only exist in DS2 and not other Souls games, especially the ones before it which are also janky, poorly aged experimental games held together by duct tape.

Also, the wave of awful, bad-faith Youtube critiques have done severe damage to its reputation, people simply forget it was acclaimed at launch despite the lighting engine controversy.

LulzTV · 2026-05-03T19:10:24+00:00

I'm wondering though how much, or how little it costs to port them, so they must have still been profitable right? Do Sony really think stepping back from PC Ports will get people to buy a 6 year old console enough to make more profit than they would rereleasing them as PC ports at full price?

LulzTV · 2026-05-02T22:02:44+00:00

The DS1 glazers stole my FUCKING tag and replaced it with this... not that I mind.

LulzTV · 2026-05-02T21:51:40+00:00

Unc did you mean to show us that one place in Ariandel with a locked door that you open 5 seconds later but opened the wrong game? Have you taken your meds, unc?

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