Top Ten Dark Souls 2 Innovations

Summary

The video argues that Dark Souls 2 deserves recognition for ideas that made the series more flexible, convenient, and experimental. The creator also highlights several honorable mentions before presenting a ranked top ten.

Honorable Mentions

• Invisible Hollows and moths: Casting light reveals their shadows on nearby walls.
• Lifegems: The creator sees them as a useful counterbalance to the game’s many difficult, enemy-heavy areas.
• Using Human Effigies away from bonfires: Players can restore human form when they choose, rather than risking it immediately after resting.
• Boss weapons through Straid: Players can give Straid a boss soul to make a boss weapon without first extensively upgrading another weapon.

Top Ten Innovations

1. Respecing characters: Players can reassign their stats instead of starting a new character to try a different build. The creator calls this their favorite innovation and notes that it later appeared in Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring.
2. Power stance: With 150% of the required stats for both weapons—and weapons with the same attack type—players can enter a stance that attacks with both weapons together.
3. Dual wielding: Players can equip a weapon in each hand, allowing combinations such as inflicting poison with one weapon and bleed with the other.
4. Bonfire Ascetics: Burning one raises an area’s difficulty by one New Game cycle and respawns its enemies, boss, and treasure chests. This lets players refight bosses, farm them, or obtain additional boss souls.
5. Useful torches: Torches do more than illuminate areas. They can light braziers, ignite oil, frighten the dark-dwelling creatures in No-Man’s Wharf, activate McDuff’s forge, and summon dark spirits in the Undead Crypt.
6. Pharros’ Lockstones: These activate hidden mechanisms that may reveal treasure, open routes, or trigger traps. The creator compares them to Stone Sword Keys in Elden Ring.
7. Enemy despawning: Enemies can stop respawning after being killed repeatedly, except while the player is in the Covenant of Champions. The creator calls this a helpful, if imperfect, remedy for difficult runbacks and enemy-heavy areas.
8. Environmental hints: In Scholar of the First Sin, a phantom NPC’s brief gesture near the windmill can hint that players should set it on fire. The creator notes that later games, including Elden Ring, use clearer ghosts to guide players toward secrets.
9. Warping from the start: Being able to travel between bonfires early saves time on backtracking and lets players revisit areas to explore or speak with NPCs.
10. NPC tombstones: If an NPC is killed, a tombstone appears in Majula, where the player can pay to bring them back. This prevents a mistake from permanently removing access to an NPC, such as a blacksmith.

Games and People Mentioned

• Games discussed or compared: Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring.
• Supporters thanked: Deal Dough, Lost Boco, telemrack, Last Bulbasaur, and Hyper Kira. The creator also thanks viewers, stream chat participants, and subscribers.