Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

I personally go with the original on my replays now. I find the new enemy placement and petrified statue re-arrangement to be more frustrating than anything. But that’s just me. I know people say that scholar is the way to go, it was Miyazaki’s interpretation of the game. I don’t get it. The original is fine.

I’d ideally still like to have the multiplayer features so not sure if mods would ruin that either.

Some mods like the lighting engine (DS2LE) are fine to play online with, while others might get you a ban.

I don't see the point of modding Scholar to be like vanilla if you haven't tried Scholar yet. Sounds like you've been spooked by the online hivemind. Scholar is great and it includes the DLCs.

I say just play Scholars version.

I started with Scholar. I think it's better in some technical/graphical ways? And also the dlc key items are placed in the world rather than being in your inventory from the start of the game, which is how I think it is in the original. I'd suggest starting with Scholar and not bothering with mods.

I managed to play through Scholar just fine. Yes, there are a shit ton of enemies in every area. So, so many. Ganks around every corner. All of that is true. But here's the thing: DS2 is a fundamentally different game to DS1 and DS3. You have to play it differently. You can't run past enemies, basically ever, you have to kill most/all of them. The bosses aren't the hard part in DS2, broadly speaking they're absolute pushovers. Getting to the bosses is the hard part. You have to change your mindset, instead of running as quickly as possible through an area to get back to getting flattened repeatedly by a boss, you need to expect to have your teeth kicked in by the enemies scattered around the map and then the boss will take you, at most, a handful of attempts.

There are some other fairly substantial gameplay differences which it is very good to research before you start, such as the Adaptability stat, the way weight and encumbrance work, the way weapon upgrading and elemental weapons work, how invasions and human effigies work, torches, and strategies for dealing with the (frankly very annoying) way the usable health bar shrinks with each death. You also don't want to be using the camera lock-on very much at all, you should almost always be free-aiming, at least with melee weapons. Oh, and don't join Covenant of Champions unless you know what you're doing. And definitely do hop in the random coffin you might find in Things Betwixt.

DS2 rocks, but you have to approach it as though it's its own thing, loosely connected to other Dark Souls games, but quite different from them in important ways. Also, the people still playing DS2 multiplayer are a weird bunch. Be prepared for a little trolling from invaders. Nothing mean-spirited or truly shitty, at least in my experience, but expect to be murdered in hilarious (usually slightly annoying) ways by people wearing the weirdest shit. And don't always trust the bloodstains or notes