Dark Souls and Dark Souls II are both games made by From Software, the makers of the Armored Core series. Both games are renowned for their difficulty, their dark and alternatingly horrifying/ beautiful worlds, and their many ways to play. With Dark Souls III coming up fairly soon, these games have been on my mind. There’s a lot of discussion over which game does what better between 1 and 2, and some of the design choices in each game are kind of confusingly bad. Here, we’re going to look both games and take some examples of good and bad from each and do a little compare and contrast.

Dark Souls has a lot of interesting combat mechanics, but one of the most useful ones is the parry-riposte combo. You can knock aside an enemy’s weapon if you parry at the right moment, and then you can riposte by pressing the attack button. The riposte is an attack that does a larger amount of damage then a normal attack and knocks the enemy down, if it doesn’t kill them outright. While performing a riposte, you are locked into an animation and invincible for a second or so. In Dark Souls II, the mechanic was altered a bit. The parry works the same, but now when you parry an enemy, they fall down. To riposte, you must be standing in the exact right place in front of them, and you must wait for the enemy to fall down. Once that happens, then you can riposte. This really breaks up the game. First of all, you can be hit inbetween parrying the enemy and the riposte, which will knock you around and cause you to miss the riposte. In Dark Souls, if you knew what you were doing, you could tear through large amounts of enemies in almost no time by constantly parrying and riposting. In Dark Souls II, you are forced to wait if you want to do anything besides hiding behind your shield. This might seem small, but parrying and riposting is a huge part of these games and to put a barrier in-between the moves really screws with how you can use them and the timing of the combat.

Dark Souls 1 Parry/Riposte

Dark Souls II Parry/Riposte

Dark Souls has a unique “level” design, to say the least. All of the areas are connected and there are shortcuts between them. In the beginning of the game, you can go in pretty much any direction and do things that you need to do. Towards the end of the game, things get more linear, but you get the ability to jump between the different levels at checkpoints.

In Dark Souls II, the levels work in the opposite way. The path is very linear until near the end, and you start with the ability to jump between levels. There’s a central hub that you level up at, and head to each level from. The level design in Dark Souls II leaves a lot to be desired. By giving you a home base, it really depreciates the feeling of adventure, and the difficulty of the journey you face. The ability to jump between worlds also makes them feel like “levels” rather than areas that you travel from. The Souls series has a general feeling of hopelessness, and I don’t think that holds up as well when you can head home for hot chocolate.

Dark Souls II added some very interesting things to combat that you might not expect. In Dark Souls, dual wielding was pretty much useless, except for some weapons that allow you to parry a little better. This was kind of frustrating, since it meant you only had one or two melee options (shield or no shield). Wielding two weapons was actually bad, as most of them removed your ability to parry. Dark Souls II gave weapons different moves when placed in the right or left hand, added a number of different kinds of weapon types, and added something called “power stance.” Power stance lets you use both of your equipped weapons at the same time, and actually makes dual wielding an option. You need 1.5x the stat requirements for each weapon, but you can do massive amounts of damage. This was a really great addition that gives you more playstyles than Dark Souls, which is awesome.

Finally I can recklessly use two swords. No more sensible shield wielding for me!

Dark Souls had a pretty wide variety of bosses. There were monster bosses, people in armor bosses, dragons, and more.

They're not this cute in the game. I guess people spend so much time getting absolutely murdered by them, you get a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing, and start to love them a little.

Dark Souls II pretty much just had people in armor, and one boss that was a literal color-changed version of a boss from Dark Souls. Not to say that none of the Dark Souls II bosses were interesting (I’m a big fan of the Pursuer and The Last Giant), but it’s a definite step down in terms of variety and creativity. Bosses in the Souls series are a lot like Megaman bosses, actually. Each level is themed around them in some way, and almost every area ends with a boss. When the bosses get very generic, I think the level design suffers as well, since there’s not as many unique themes to use. There were some really interesting areas of Dark Soul II, but it seems like the creativity stopped after the new weapons.

Worth Playing?

Yes and maybe. Dark Souls is a very good game. The combat is enjoyable, the areas are interesting, and there are so many different playstyles. Dark Souls II has a lot going for it, but the changes in the combat, level structure, and boss design are aggravating. I think the weapon types and dual wielding in Dark Souls II are superior to Dark Souls, but almost every other area is a huge back step. What do you think? Why do you prefer Dark Souls or Dark Souls II?