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This game really lacks breadth of viable builds. It was awesome on the first playthrough, but any consecutive runs leave me completely underwhelmed with the stat system and the general variety of builds that are comparable in power to the generic warrior type. I'm missing what games like the Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights or Elder Scrolls series had, i.e. the ability to play through the game 4-5 times on wildly different character archetypes and get completely unique but equally rewarding gameplay experiences. This game has melee attacks and nukes, everything else feels like a partially developed system tacked on to optionally supplement one of the two. Archery is useful, for instance, but can't carry a playthrough. The pool of equally viable choices is so small and feel mostly the same that it really compromises the replay value for me.
DS2's stat system doesn't lend itself to natural build diversity, and since its spellcasting system is criminally awful and belongs in something from 1997, an entire archetype of characters is rendered too shitty-feeling for me to even tolerate playing irrespective of its actual viability. I don't feel like I could make an archer, a cleric, a thief, a spellsword or anything like that. I can make melee characters where the only real difference is in my choice of weapon; I can add a splash of magic for utility and buffs, but there's so little of this; or I can make a sorcerer type for which the mechanics are so horrendously unbearable that it feels like an alpha test. A few more builds exist for PvP exclusively, but they're worthless in PvE.
They really could have done more with the class system to promote alternate playstyles. The leveling scale is also disappointing as the point of leveling is almost completely gone by level 150-200ish, which is especially strange given how much effort they made to encourage multiple playthroughs with one character through the NG+ system. It's like they made the game support leveling into the several hundreds but provided no real benefit to doing so. Stat softcaps occur so early that continued leveling is largely worthless, and mechanical limitations severely restrict the extent to which one can combine combat and magic. While there's a lot of weapons and armor, a small selection is superior to all else.
Lol. Nope
