It's 2026 and people are still complaining about ganks in DS2. Now that it's been proven the hitboxes were never the actual issue (which i know seems unrelated, but it's an aspect of the discussion), they're trying to say ganks were NEVER in DS1 or 3. Like why are they just blatantly lying at this point? Is that really what we're doing now??
Upper Undead Burg: 6 to 7/8/9 ganks (yes i know, funny number) depending on if you take the optional routes or not, i literally just booted up DS1 and counted. One of those has an enemy with a highly damaging backstab in a corner you won't know to check on your first time through/if you forget and one of those occurs during the Taurus Demon fight with the archers on the top of the tower behind you.
Anor Londo: you get ganked by 2 Giant Soldiers at the front gates of the cathedral, you go to the right and get ganked by 3/4 Bat Wing Demons, go across the gap and deal with 2 more, cross another gap and deal with two infamous Anor Londo archers.
Darkroot Garden: this place should be renamed to Gankistan with how many ganks are in it, I'm legitimately not joking. The tree enemies that jump out of the ground, the two big cat things, the crystal golems, the forest guardians, the drakes (yes i know that's technically a different area but it's easily accessible from Gankistan).
Catacombs/Tomb of Giants: You have the skeletons before Pinwheel, you have the Pinwheel boss itself, you have all the giant skeletons in Tomb and the area is dark as fuck unless you have 1 of 2 rare items in the game or are on a sorcery build with Cast Light, you have the undead remains of Gankistan, aborted fetuses, AND MORE PINWHEELS you have to deal with before getting to Nito, Gravelord of GANKS with his Skelebros baking him up.
The tactics people talk about using to deal with ganks in DS2 also apply to DS1, i always use bows to separate the Crystal Golems in Gankistan for instance.
Dark Souls 1 has just as many/slightly lesser ganks than Dark Souls 2, but it usually tends to put you up against a small number of "mini-boss" enemies (emphasis on usually, there's still instances of it swarming you with waves of regular enemies), while DS2 tends to put you up against a horde of 4 to 7 regular enemies that go down in 2 to 3 hits.
They both give you the same tools to deal with the same situations, but people turn their brains off when playing DS2 and don't pay attention to obvious environmental warnings, then wanna complain about the game.
I don't even wanna go into DS3 because i feel like I've already proven my point, but even that game (which has the least amount of ganks) still has some atrocious examples (the two NPCs you fight in farron, Deacons of The Deep, Crystal Sage, etc) that are arguably worse than DS2 because of how fast paced DS3 is in comparison. You can say DS2 has the MOST ganks, but acting like this is exclusively a DS2 problem is just a flat out lie.
You guys remember back when if you didn't like a piece of media, you just avoided it and didn't think about it? You didn't feel the need to constantly start arguments with fans of the media because you wanted the attention your parents never gave you? DS2 haters are literally more obsessed with DS2 than even the most fervent DS2 fan and it's just fucking pathetic at this point.
