These games are kind of hilarious if you imagine the "Violent games are corrupting the children" crowd looking at them.
They'd probably have a stroke looking at the gore.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
No, it has better overall gameplay, primarily due to better boss and level design. The combat itself in 2 is better by virtue of its greater variety alone.
I never played it, but everyone compared it to Demons Souls all the time.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
What are you defining as combat, exactly? Yes, Dark Souls 2 had a ton of build variety, and all sorts of permutations not only existed, but were able to be made viable. That's not in dispute.
But the janky movement? Walling off i-frames behind the ADP stat? What about the clumsy hitboxes that consistently allow enemies to hit you from a meter away? And why are you counting the boss/enemy design as something separate from the combat? I'd argue even the level design is relevant. The lack of enemy variety, plus the tendency to pack rooms with obnoxious numbers of them to artificially increase the difficulty, doesn't that also factor in to your combat experience?
Dark Souls II has a special place in my heart, and I hate to hate on it since it's already grossly underappreciated, but better combat than DS1? I can't get behind that. Maybe if we restrict it to PVP.
If no one has played the new version, why wouldn't they make the combat better than any souls type of game in existence? You'd think that graphics quality wouldn't be the only thing reworked, or at least I'm hoping it isn't. Must have this game. It's one of the reasons that I'm getting a PS5. Well that and GOW.
That's pretty much largely all I consider when talking about combat. That Dark Souls 2 is a worse gameplay experience has little to do with the combat and more to do with the problems I'm sure you've heard people have with it, be they the railroaded level design or the uninspired boss design.
Acknowledging that the PVP is better is just an admission of it having better combat IMHO. When it's just two players fighting each other and you're not forced to deal with the inferior enemy design and level design the combat alone has to carry the gameplay experience and I think it largely does compared to 1, at least when you don't get lag-stabbed by the enemy player.