SymbolicSalad
Active Member
- Jan 7, 2020
- 510
- 383
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While yes, I do think you were greatly unfair to the game I don't really think you'd like it just from the sheer amount of vitriol you had talking about it, majority of which was completely unprompted and unwarranted.
Though I also don't really know you as a person so I'll leave a few disjointed thoughts about the game to give you a greater idea of what it actually is and addressing some of what your criticisms were outside the scope of your review, then leave the decision up to you.
First off, this is a sequel, and it's a *true* sequel, this isn't like jumping into The Witcher 3 without having played The Witcher 2 where it's either disconnected, the characters are re-introduced, or what happened in the previous games are just explained to you. Starting on Black Souls 2 first is like opening up a book to the halfway point and starting from there. Without the knowledge of the first game you won't know who the returning characters are because they aren't reintroduced, you won't know what the deal is with the main protagonist, and you also likely won't be able to connect why the events in this game are even happening without the context of the first one. The problem with this is while I like the first game a pretty good amount, it's definitely worse than this game. The art is a lot rougher, it wears the dark souls inspiration even more directly on its sleeve and straight up takes the Pate Vs Creighton questline from DS2 and just puts it into BS1. All the endings of it are canon and I find the C ending to be especially good and C and D manage to be very relevant going into BS2 especially. It's really hard to recommend you start there when it's an inferior product in almost every way, though once again emphasizing that I do find it interesting, it's also a lot easier and simpler. On the bright side the first game has no talking animals! (minus one VERY lore relevant character in the hub) which you really seemed to dislike.
Speaking on animals and furries, you seem to think this game is full of furry hentai and likely yaoi depending on how you called Holmes a "fuckwolf" and this isn't true. Almost all the true furry animals, such as Vernai and Holmes just are NPCs with questlines, there is no hentai of them though they do manage to be somewhat relevant throughout the game. Characters like Cheshire Cat do exist though, there's a lizard but the only furry aspect is a big tail, there's a bird who is all human except for wings, about the equivalent of what you'd see in something like Nekopara, not really *True* furry. Almost all the full furry characters were just to represent wonderland, since as like I mentioned before Wonderland is a land gone mad, animals can talk. This is, except for a decently easily missable prostitute who lies to you, and in the third DLC which the developer did actually get into furshit, with one character having full fur and snout, but that's also the DLC where you can have sex with a vat of acid so I think that speaks more to the playable character's mental state by that point than anything else. There's one yaoi h-scene and there's a trans MtF rep in this game that has H-scenes but I wouldn't consider those yaoi.
Leading from that, majority of the hentai in general is completely optional and mostly separated from gameplay and ignorable if you want to ignore it. The cycle of it usually goes 2 covenant scenes and 2 rape scenes. You get a covenant scene you can actively choose to initiate at-will when you level up characters throughout the world for a stat boost if you have their covenant equipped, and then a 2nd one when you level them up to max. The rape scene is just the normal rape, and then something happens to them and there's a 2nd new scene which is usually a lot shorter. There are scenes that differ from this mold and for the most part they're the ones that are relevant, though there are some lore drops in rape scenes. There's also multiple occasions where you're actually punished for doing the covenant scenes, two off the top of my head both with loli characters. For the most part I don't really find the h-scenes which fall under the covenant or rape cycle interesting at all, though i'm also not really into rape. A lot of them can come off as cheesy and I usually just like the ones that are done to show character growth or about how the protagonist is reaching his mental breaking point, which are interestingly all outside of the h-scenes with the covenants.
You complained about the art not quite being up to snuff for you and i'll say it's a MAJOR improvement from the first game and you can also actively see the developer improve throughout the game, by the time you reach DLC 3 the art is really good and the CGs he posts on Twitter for the next game look amazing.
You had a rant about how you don't think any of the pedophilia would be portrayed negatively and in the first game this *is* the case (minus the general vibe throughout that you're being manipulated), though in both games rape is almost always portrayed negatively with lots of characters crying and suffering because of it, the only exceptions to this a few of the female antagonists and the two bunnygirls However, it's hard to get into the main details of how everything goes down without BS1 and DLC 3 spoilers about the protagonist's nature but the protagonist is definitely considered an awful person throughout the game and specifically does try to recontextualize all the loli shit and how it's part of his fucked up nature of existence.
I'll also state that since I don't think you actually know what this game is going for, it's lovecraftian horror, lots of eldritch beings are introduced throughout the two games and the entire series is essentially just about them using the protagonist as their toy.
I don't know if I've forgotten anything but I can try to clarify anything if anything is unclear and in conclusion, I do think Black Souls as a series is a good game, I don't really care about the h-elements all that much but I also don't think the game could work without them as well. It isn't just a seque from h-scene to h-scene and I'd say almost all the value comes from what's outside of the h-scenes to start with. There's some nicely written characters, the world is very interconnected and feels good to go through, creating your own builds and going through the gameplay is fun and you aren't required to grind ever, though it would make it easier, and the writing, especially in DLC 3 is good. My personal favorite character from the game is Hein The Black Conductor, whose male and has absolutely nothing sexual going on with him. This game isn't on my Video Game 3x3 but I'd consider it pretty far up there, I like it and I am hyped for the sequel, there's a lot more than you give it credit for.
