Dark Souls II review: fan service

I read a lot of Dark Souls II reviews just after the game was released, but many of them seemed off the mark. This is a tough game, but not impossible. Yes, it’s hard but that’s to be expected from a title like this, the third game in the Souls series (it follows Demon Souls and Dark Souls). Dark Souls II is a teaching experiment in pain and perseverance. You either love it, or you learn to love it from the hundreds and thousands of deaths you’re going to experience. What many reviewers didn’t understand or realise, more than likely because they had to rush to finish the game, is that Dark Souls II is not about death, it’s about the digital cycle of life. Dying is the core mechanic of all Souls games but not in the arbitrary manner that’s gleamed from a rushed play-through. After fighting the same boss for days and then beating it because you learned to roll from its sweeping sword attack is a thrill like no other. Or, you summon a player dressed in some as-yet-unseen garb carrying a sword the size of a table and they distract the boss long enough for you to chip away at the health bar and conquer it. This is the Dark Souls II experience and it’s random, filled with impossible moments created by other players online or, for the majority of the time, by the world of Drangleic itself.

What I’m convinced about and that few seem to have picked up on is that Dark Souls II was made for the fans. Despite an expanded tutorial section, this is still one of the most impenetrable games ever made and quite frankly, you’re going to get less enjoyment out of this game if you haven’t played either title before it. Sure, new players can hop in and post on Reddit about how difficult the game is after muddling about for a week or so, but they’re going to get less fun out of it than someone who’s sweated through Anor Londo, been forced to mine Titante Chunks for days on end just to create rare weapons, or parried Gwyn to death simply because that’s how skilled they are now. Those are some of the thousands of experiences I gleaned from Dark Souls on PS3, a game which took me well over two years to finish when it first released in 2011.

This isn’t really a new game, it’s the older titles remixed into a greatest hits album that’s ten times longer than it should be. But it’s no less better for it. Yeah, the graphics are much improved – there’s precious slowdown and framerate drops in comparison to Dark Souls (remember Blight Town?) and the new lighting system adds a great heap of atmosphere to the proceedings but after a few hours of play, the graphics become as meaningless as the difficulty.

Your progress in Dark Souls II is made by inching across the battlefields of war, dying and reclaiming your souls to level up, upgrading weapons, purchasing gear and trading information with NPC’s. Nothing is signposted and you’re expected to, shockingly, make your own way across the sprawling world without a waypoint or blinking dot. But for those raised on the rock-solid difficulty of Nintendo games such as Mega Man and Castlevania II (a game which has much in common with Dark Souls II), this will all be par for the course.

It’s not as if you’ll be wrestling with the controls. On the PS3 version, I only died because of my mistakes, not from input-lag or an error in the game (I’ve yet to find a bug, but some graphical glitches have been noticed). The controls are slick and virtually unchanged from the first Dark Souls. The only noticeable difference is that now, jumping has been remapped to a click on the L3 button, so it’s far easier to be the acrobatic angel of death you may have only seen others playing at in YouTube videos. The new, less-prone-to-lag graphics engine helps tremendously in this regard, with fights seeming less protracted and more natural. In Dark Souls II, you need to account for the amount of time it takes for a weapon to swing once the button is pressed and after roughly forty hours of play, I can say that it feels a little bit better than the previous title. I used to be able to pinpoint the exact moments frame-by-frame and I knew if a sword swipe or javelin thrust would land or not. It’s a little more difficult to predict in Dark Souls II, but this just adds to the organic, weighty feeling of combat.

The story, despite it being expressly more accessible to new players, isn’t as engaging or mysterious as the previous Dark Souls, but that could be because the community is yet to dig up the nuanced tales surrounding it. It’s still fun to play an eternally cursed warrior and the lack of any direction or plot (so it seems) allows us to create our own story as we go alone. Why is Majula bathed in an eternally setting sun? What’s the deal with the Lost Sinner and the bug that crawls into her eye and why is there a cat selling me rings? Who is this King and the souls of old and how does it all bloody piece together? It’s left up to your imagination, or Wikipedia if you’re keen on spoilers.

Dark Souls II has an online component which was all but hidden back in 2011. Now, it’s been brought to the foreground and the biggest change is that you can be invaded in hollow or undead (human) form. This time there’s no hiding from invading players, with their glowing red phantoms an ever-present menace after you’ve levelled up enough.

Online play also delivers the most emergent experiences that Dark Souls II has to offer. My favourite moment so far is after joining the Rat Kings covenant. The setup is a grouping of tunnels whereby traps are activated and the arena pulls in random online players which you torture with said traps. The game sucks in online players, draws them into a world you created and says “here, enjoy the show. You’re completely in charge by the way.” My mage-fighter spent most of this time disguised as a pot, jumping out at enemies when they least expected it. I laughed every time. This and a million more moments like it await you. There’s summons, invasions, jolly co-op, random fights, it’s incredible. Dark Souls II is the best online experience there is, or the best I’ve ever come across (save for Journey, nothing beats that).

Verdict: A score is meaningless. This is the best version of a Souls game yet, that’s all there is to it. It’s not a bad game, or a good game, because for me Dark Souls II is the personification of gaming itself. It’s not about binary choices in an arbitrary setting filled with hand-holding. It’s a deeply personal experience crafted by the world around you and the choices you make moment-to-moment. Do I go left, or right. Climb the stairs to face the knight, or descend back into the forest and level up? Dark Souls II won’t tell you what to do, and it won’t care either. You either love it or you learn to hate it so much that you think of it during yet another meeting at work. You think of that time you rolled off a ledge and died, or when you got the boss down to one last sword swipe but died from button mashing out of a frenzied notion of success. You think of all these moments and hate it so much, that you can’t help but love it. Most other games are big Hollywood blockbusters, loads of explosions with no real pay-off. Dark Souls II is the antithesis of these games, an indie darling that made it big and one that’s welcoming you back into it’s open, thorny arms. There’s only one game I’ll still be playing in 2016 and beyond, and it’s Dark Souls II. Praise the sun.

Dark Souls II was reviewed on PS3