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Horrible news for Dark Souls II heads (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 week ago by RION@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net
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The frame stutter issue that progresses throughout a session until it renders the game unplayable can apparently only be fixed by downgrading steam to a version from 2024?? crazy that that sort of thing can just happen and there's no recourse. Although maybe if I play it on a powerful enough machine I can just brute force past it?

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[-] UrsineApathy@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

Is this only present on the release version of the game? It could obviously be hardware specific, but I run randos on the SotFS version once or twice a year and I've never run into this on that.

I do remember a similar issue on the og ps3 Demon's Souls version though. It was a progressive memory leak that made the game unbearable to play towards the end of a playthrough.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

Oh I meant SotFS, haven't played vanilla in years. And I've only experienced it on steam deck because that's where I typically play it. I'll try it on my other rigs and see what happens

[-] mrfugu@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh I played through about 80% of the game on my steam deck but never encountered this issue as far as I could tell.

Unless you’re talking about the issue with the steam frame limiter. If you have it on at all (even at 60fps) the game runs like absolute trash, but I never had much issue running the game without it, even at a limited TDP.

If that’s not it maybe playing around with the proton versions could help? I never had to do it but unless I just have a weirdly golden install of the game you might just want to reinstall the game (back up save files!) and see if that helps at all.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Going offline has actually worked in my limited testing, which is curious

[-] UrsineApathy@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

Ahhhh, I haven't tried it on my steam deck yet. I've only played on PC. That's worse than I was imagining because I was going to suggest setting up a vm with a downpatched steam version so you didn't have to go through the hassle more than once but that makes it tougher/more annoying.

Sorry you're dealing with that. DS2 is my comfort game when times are tough.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

I think the going offline trick someone else mentioned might actually be working for me but will have to do some more testing.

Any suggestions for an interesting build or challenge run? I've recently done full mundane, and historically a few SL1 attempts that peter out when the DLC opens up. Not sure if I've properly done CoC actually...

[-] UrsineApathy@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

Nice! Glad you found something that works for now at least. Hopefully something more permanent gets released though. I'm sure modders will find something eventually, but it might take a while.

Like I mentioned, I'm partial to randomizers. It keeps things fresh and the shenanigans can range from trivially easy to downright impossible for some areas. It does get a bit tedious in the beginning of the game if you don't get a good start and then turns into more of a key item scavenger hunt after a while though.

I've had the same experience with SL1 runs because the dlc is just an obnoxious slough of high health enemies and weapon durability management. It kind of stops being fun. Challenge builds for me typically end up being magic or faith builds because I'm more of an unga bunga gamer(specifically dex with curved great swords usually) and it forces me outside of my comfort zone. I don't like trying to "force" weak weapons to work.

Funny enough I don't think I've ever done a legitimate CoC run either. It's just not interesting to me because I'd just use it to farm souls where I otherwise couldn't, which removes the challenge. The ring is really fun for a strong fists build though.

[-] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago

Some good news however is Fromsoftserve has been doing more work on the lighting mod that makes the game look amazing, especially the DLC because all the textures have an alpha channel

[-] Datz@szmer.info 7 points 1 week ago

Apparently it can be fixed by turning the game while offline, and then turning online ingame, since it's an issue with Steam servers/overlay. I just played offline the whole time last time I played, but obviously it's not ideal.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

People in some of the steam threads were saying this didn't work, but it does seem to work for me. The frametime graph is pretty consistent, though maybe my play sessions weren't long enough for it to show up

this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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