Well, I've completed Dark Souls II and it took me about 10 hours less than the original. Since I beat it and it's still fresh on my mind, I just want to compare the two.
In terms of gameplay, they're exactly the same. You still need to be patient to take the tougher enemies. You still level up by acquiring souls from enemies, upgrade weapons with various stones and fight tough as nail bosses. Well, at least you do in the first one.
One of the biggest things I noticed about my time in Dark Souls II was that there was no real boss that really threatened me. Let me explain. Dark Souls I was easily the hardest game I've had the pleasure of playing through and completing. There were many bosses in the game where I felt despair and felt like there was no way to beat them, bosses like Chaos Witch Quelaag, Capra Demon and of course, Orstein and Smough. I spent hours on those bosses, especially Quelaag. I remember playing the whole morning just trying to beat her. In DS2, I spent at most on a boss I couldn't beat, 30 minutes. The only boss I really was frustrated on was Royal Rat Authority because it was cheap. You start off facing those stupid dogs that can poison you. And it doesn't matter if you defeat them, the boss will jump down and start his barrage on you. It took multiple tries, but I finally beat him with my handy pyromancy glove. Besides that, no boss really gave me any trouble. Not even Queen Nashandra herself. No boss in this game EVER felt unbeatable, unlike in the original, where I was ready to give up many times.
Maybe it was because I was more accustomed to Dark Souls brutal difficulty or maybe because the difficulty was dumbed down a bit, whatever the case, this game isn't near the difficulty of the original or even of Demon's Souls. Demon's Souls was so hard, I gave up. Seriously. While the game wasn't as hard, it didn't diminish its overall quality. Dark Souls II is going to be hard to beat. It really set the bar for sequels and games in general this year.
Now that DS2 is completed, I'm going to finally go back to Lords of Shadow 2. I never finished it since Souls just took over my life and poor Lightning Returns. I'm thinking about trading it in before it loses its value. I think I would get either the South Park RPG or Earth Defense Force. I think have plenty of games on my backlog so I'm pretty good. I think the next BIG release is Watch Dogs in May but there are some games I'm still looking forward to before then, like Child of Light. I need a good turn based RPG that's different. I still haven't played Bravely Default yet. One day.
In closing, Dark Souls 1 and 2 are basically the same game, but the original is better due to the higher difficulty and better sense of accomplishment. Just my opinion!
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