Dark Souls II

Dark Souls II hit PC in April 2014 and StreamerHouse in 2016 (peaking at 883 viewers), the black sheep of the Souls trilogy that hardcore fans love to hate. Directed by Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura after Miyazaki moved to Bloodborne, DS2 featured more polished mechanics, improved netcode, and power stance dual-wielding—but the world design felt disconnected (elevator to lava castle still makes no sense) and the difficulty leaned on mob spam over clever encounter design. Critics were divided: some praised the improvements to online play, build variety, and NG+ changes; others mourned the loss of Miyazaki's environmental storytelling and interconnected level design. The Scholar of the First Sin edition in April 2015 reworked enemy placements and added DLC, splitting the community between vanilla and SotFS. StreamerHouse's 2016 coverage came during the post-Dark Souls III period when players revisited DS2 to appreciate its strengths—best PvP in the series, longest main game, most build diversity. Dark Souls II is the Souls game for people who love Souls mechanics more than Souls atmosphere, a mechanically superior but spiritually lesser sequel that's better than 90% of action RPGs but will always live in the shadow of its predecessor and successor.