Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 2 is the last game I ever thought I’d love, let alone review. Real life though, just like a Dark Souls game, throws a thousand curveballs at you. There are many lessons to be learned here besides expecting the unexpected.

Never give up, always persevere, check your corners, watch that ledge, and if you’re going through hell, don’t panic — it’s totally going to be worth it in the end. Even if it wasn’t, you’ll enjoy the journey a lot more than you expect. These are all of the life lessons I learned while tearing my way across Drangleic.

I was never a fan of Souls-like games. The concept was so puzzling for me. Why would anyone choose to endure and persevere through all of the rage inducing boss fights? Voluntarily? It wasn’t until I tried it for myself, that I finally understood how beautiful the world of Dark Souls really is.

The Kingdom of Drangleic

The game is anything but simple. After a lengthy cutscene that sets up the mood wonderfully, you’re thrust into the unforgiving kingdom of Drangleic. During your playthrough, you will go through a myriad of eerie and creepy locations, fighting off all kinds of abominable monsters. From disfigured frogs, to creepy undead, to heart-shaped vases. Each encounter in the game is intense and heart pounding.

You’ll develop a bloodlust as you mow down all of the small fry enemies one by one. At times, you’ll even feel indestructible. That is before meeting the next boss fight that crushes your very soul.

Not lacking in class

From the get go, you have the ability to set up your character as any of the handful of classes available. You have the option of being a dexterous warrior that uses his wits and his bows to eliminate enemies from afar, a mage that obliterates his foes with the spells he casts or the old classic shield and sword knight that gets up close and personal in the demons’ faces, among many others of course.

While the dexterity and strength focused classes are the most beginner friendly, you’ll do fine in whichever class you choose. After the introductory cutscene, you come across this obscure tutorial area, which I completely missed on my first run.

Test Your Patience

Dark Souls is so consistent in its difficulty and obscurity that completely missing the tutorial area is a possibility. It quickly introduces you to the basic controls, but in no way prepares you for what comes next.

The gist of the game is that you’re playing as an undead who’s slowly turning hollow, and the only way you can reverse the curse is to kill the four old ones that are divided across the land in order to gather their great souls.

All About Those Souls

The game’s souls act as both the game’s currency for buying new swords and armor, and your only method of levelling up. You gain souls by killing enemies and you lose all of your souls on death. However, there’s a catch, you have a chance of regaining the souls you lost by going back to the location you died and touching your bloodstain.

Dying while trying to regain your souls makes you lose them permanently. Ironically, I’ve never tried this mechanic in a Souls game before. I’ve played Hollow Knight, which I highly recommend, and I’ve tried The Surge, both of which have many similarities with the Souls games and have the same mechanic.

In order to punish you even more, dying renders you hollow. Which means that you will lose your maximum health, the game punishes you for dying by making you die even more. The only way to reverse the hollowing is to use an item called a human effigy, which to be fair, is quite common.

The constant risk of losing all of the souls you accumulate makes it extremely tense to walk through the same corridors in which you previously died. The abominations that roam Drangleic are brutal, even the weak ones can sneak up on you and kill you in a hit or two, forcing you to stay on your toes at all times.

Generic Corridor Number 435

The game’s locations are often bare, despite the interesting gothic-like art direction. Some chambers and rooms are literally empty, which often ends up feeling as if you’re playing a prototype or a tech demo instead of a fully-fledged AAA game. It’s clear that this was an intentional design choice, and not a technical limitation.

The identical and interconnecting hallways and corridors all help in making you feel lost and confused. Don’t worry though, after dying more times than you can count in one area, you’ll soon memorize every enemy placement, every pattern of attack and every ledge that you can fall off while locking on the enemies.

Watch Out For That Ledge

That’s my biggest pet peeve with the game, the ledges. One slip of the finger on that Left Stick and you’ll find yourself falling to your death. You have the option of locking onto your enemies by pressing the Right Stick. This lock on is extremely helpful when fighting one on one against your foes. However, it makes it difficult to check your surroundings, meaning you’ll often end up dodging straight into a dark bottomless pit.

The amount of things that you have to be aware of constantly in this game is stupidly high. Your health meter, your stamina bar, your equipment’s durability, your surroundings, the enemies that suddenly creep up on you and your equipment’s weight, just to name a few.

The game punishes you for equipping more than you can carry. Equip a heavy shield or a great sword that your character isn’t ready for, and his swing will be extremely sluggish. Or even worse, his dodge will be awkward and slow, leaving you constantly vulnerable to fatal attacks. It’s an interesting mechanic that ultimately forces you to level up your character’s ability to equip bigger weapons at the expense of attributes that are much more useful.

So Many Stats To Learn

The game’s confusing menus and stats often force you to seek the help of the internet. If you hate going online to look up guides and tips on all the different mechanics of the game, then you’ll get frustrated easily. The game does deliberately at times misguide you and confuse you. One moment that really had my blood boiling was when I opened a door and walked through it only to find myself plummeting to my instant death.

The door turns out leads nowhere, they only put it there to give you a cheap death. With that said, Dark Souls demands your attention. You’ll often find enemies lurking around corners waiting to ambush you with the two hits that they can kill you with.

The Dark Souls games don’t have a proper linear storyline. Instead, it’s up to you to seek out the lore that is presented in the game by interacting with all of the peculiar characters you meet along the way.  I was never a fan of sprinkling the story like that in tiny bits of pieces across a game, but then again the lore isn’t the focus of the game.

The abominations that roam Drangleic are brutal, even the weak ones can sneak up on you and kill you in a hit or two

Overall,

Dark Souls 2 is enjoyable; its high difficulty is the reason for that. I’ve read a comment online that stated that if you take away the difficulty, then all you’re left with is a mediocre game. I agree with that statement. However, I can’t pretend that the only thing I enjoyed about the game is that it’s challenging.

The atmosphere and the overall tone of the kingdom of Drangleic are wonderful. Levelling up my character and carefully picking the next stat to improve is also a delight. Not to mention collecting all of the impressive looking armor and weapons is a treat as well.

Even if you take away the difficulty, Dark Souls is still an impressive game. If you’re willing to push through the hundreds of YOU DIED screens, you’ll enjoy the time spent slaying the beasts of Drangleic.

Running at a buttery smooth 60 fps on the PS4, this remaster is a joy to play. Scholar of The First Sin also contains all of the DLCs previously released for the game. We’re also happy to report that during our playthrough, we didn’t encounter any bugs or glitches.

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