Magic in every single souls game drops off in the late-game. Especially in Elden Ring, magic doesn’t deal enough damage to justify standing still, casting, and managing your FP bar when every boss is charging straight at you.
The only one of these games where you can magic 'til the end without suffering is Dark Souls 2. Therefore, DS2 is the best souls game. I rest my case.
Specced almost exclusovely into magic and attunement in my (first) DS2 playthrough. Then found a battle axe and thought ‘no way’. Upgraded it with fire damage and it was immediately more powerful than all the spells
My Dark caster build was by far the most obscenely powerful DS2 character I ever made and I bet I beat that game a dozen times.
At release, a Faith build could complete the whole game with a couple copies of Lightning Spear but that got nerfed into unusability. Dark Orb and Resonant Soul have no such weaknesses.
I will never forget the patch that nerfed lightning spears. One day I woke up, opened Reddit, and read “reduced lightning spear amount from 11 to 3”. I did a triple take but it was real, they suddenly destroyed my build mid-playthrough.
I escaped that nerf in my first playthrough for playing a fully offline copy of the game in the 360. On my second playthrough (first time with dlcs) on my pc, I felt very disappointed when the massively powerful lighting spell I was hyped to get had been reduced to nothing.
The only one of these games where you can magic 'til the end without suffering is Dark Peak Souls 2. Therefore, DS2 PS2 is the best souls game peak. I rest my case.
Viable as in you can win with it I guess? Late-game you do worse damage than just using a regular sword and it’s way harder to get a hit in. That’s why magic runs usually boil down to ‘just use a melee weapon with magic scaling’
![[Multiple] "I'm going to actually play a caster this run!" Me, 5min later:](https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.world%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F3d1a5962-120b-4304-a65a-757ca12405f6.jpeg){kind=link}
Magic in every single souls game drops off in the late-game. Especially in Elden Ring, magic doesn’t deal enough damage to justify standing still, casting, and managing your FP bar when every boss is charging straight at you.
The only one of these games where you can magic 'til the end without suffering is Dark Souls 2. Therefore, DS2 is the best souls game. I rest my case.
Specced almost exclusovely into magic and attunement in my (first) DS2 playthrough. Then found a battle axe and thought ‘no way’. Upgraded it with fire damage and it was immediately more powerful than all the spells
My Dark caster build was by far the most obscenely powerful DS2 character I ever made and I bet I beat that game a dozen times.
At release, a Faith build could complete the whole game with a couple copies of Lightning Spear but that got nerfed into unusability. Dark Orb and Resonant Soul have no such weaknesses.
I will never forget the patch that nerfed lightning spears. One day I woke up, opened Reddit, and read “reduced lightning spear amount from 11 to 3”. I did a triple take but it was real, they suddenly destroyed my build mid-playthrough.
I escaped that nerf in my first playthrough for playing a fully offline copy of the game in the 360. On my second playthrough (first time with dlcs) on my pc, I felt very disappointed when the massively powerful lighting spell I was hyped to get had been reduced to nothing.
I did a run of DS2 with a staff in one hand and a sword in the other. Felt like Gandalf. Good time. Highly recommend.
ftfy
What about Dark souls 2 TWO, rise of the Ringed Elder?
It didn’t fall off, it just got boring. Magic is perfectly viable through all the games. Therefore, DS2 is shit.
Viable as in you can win with it I guess? Late-game you do worse damage than just using a regular sword and it’s way harder to get a hit in. That’s why magic runs usually boil down to ‘just use a melee weapon with magic scaling’