Dark Souls II is considered by many fans to be worse than either Dark Souls I or Dark Souls III. The lore/themes of DS2 imply that its setting/world is a degenerate, broken down reinterpretation of the setting/world of DS1. The story and characters of DS2 try to warn the player against repeating the mistakes of the past, but the game is both thematically and literally a bad version of Dark Souls I.
Dark Souls II Syndrome is this phenomenon: a work is bad, but the creator(s) try to justify its badness by explaining through story/characters/themes why it is bad; in explaining why it's intentionally bad, someone might think the work is actually good because it was meant to be bad, but the work is actually just bad and not clever.
Dark Souls II Syndrome is this phenomenon: a work is bad, but the creator(s) try to justify its badness by explaining through story/characters/themes why it is bad; in explaining why it's intentionally bad, someone might think the work is actually good because it was meant to be bad, but the work is actually just bad and not clever.
I couldn't stand Mike from RedLetterMedia doing his review of The Matrix 4. He thought it was bad on purpose and that made it clever, but that movie just has Dark Souls II Syndrome.
by TurdusonFerguson March 22, 2022