3.5/5 ★ – jk26's review of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin.

Played on a PS4 Pro, 60-70 ish hours, most bosses beaten, DLC abandoned, guide used extensively. I shall begin by addressing the elephant in the room that Dark Souls 2 is not as good as the first, now this is not a crazy thing I am saying here, the game is oft-regarded as the black sheep of souls games, and while it’s still a solid game in it’s own right, it’s just not as good as it’s older brother. You still get the same great obtuse lore, I like the kingdom of Drangleic, some people take offense that the game moved towards a fast travel mechanic, I’m good with that as it is time efficient, and as an adult who games that’s great for me. I’ve also heard people complain about the world feeling less interconnected then DS1 or that the scale of the world is off, that never really bothered me and I never found it game breaking, I’d just come upon the new area and in the case of an interesting one I’d ooh and ahh at the vista, at the poison worlds I’d typically go, “F*** another poison world I have to deal with!” Majula is another wonderful part of the game, it’s a great looking hub to be based out of, and I love that you are filling it up with misfits as you go along on your adventures. I also enjoyed the classic Dark Souls meta-ness as in the opening sequence you are told you’ll one day stand before a castle not knowing why, on a quest you won’t understand and the original intent of your journey into Drangleic will be lost. I will say that does indeed happen as by the end of the game you are accomplishing the quest the Emerald Herald lays out for you, and as the player I didn’t really know why I was there or remember what my original mission was. I also enjoyed reading into some of the development woes. One can tell this came out between console generations, I wish the developers had the ability to use the full ideas they had around the torch system and lighting engine, I’ve also read they had some crazy time travel ideas that were scrapped when Miyazaki, who was working on Bloodborne at the time came back in to tie the game together as it had become quite the jumbled mess. I think if they had the opportunity to run with those ideas we would have had some interesting story beats I would have liked to explore. As far as mechanics go I don’t mind the move towards health items and having a set number of estus flasks you seek out. I played as a Great-sword user so much of my combat experience was mondo smash, which I had great fun with. What was frustrating is the way in which difficulty was scaled, often it felt like just add more enemies was the method for scaling difficulty, and at times this felt unfair or just was uninteresting. On that same note 99% of the bosses it seemed felt like humanoid people with some armor, nothing really memorable or cool, none of the bosses in the main game really stood out to me as particularly inspiring. I know the DLC for the game is solid and has some of the best boss experiences of the sequel, but I just burned out a touch and needed a break, I’ll most likely revisit at some point and tackle the DLC, and if I do I’ll update here, but the backlog is long so we shall see when and if I get around to that. All in all if you like Dark Souls you will like this, they tried some new mechanics that make this game stand out and a touch different from the other From games, sometimes these mechanics work and sometimes they fall a bit short. It’s a good game, but it by no means feels like it’s doing anything groundbreaking for the series, playing without a guide would have added another level of challenge to the whole experience and I’m not sure I would have had the patience for that, as it was I would try to sweep an area sans guide and as I would get stuck I’d refer to it and figure out what I was missing. It has me excited for the other From games I have yet to play and very pumped to move out of the 360/PS3 gen and into the PS4 gen with Bloodborne next, a game I have put off for far too long. One good thing about playing through this series has been using a guide less as I go through, so here’s to tackling Bloodborne with just the Future Press collectors edition guide I managed to score on a random sale. In closing, worth playing if you love From Software games, if you don’t this probably isn’t going to change your mind. From a series standpoint it is cool to see where they tried new things, and to ponder what the game could have been had some of it’s original ideas been allowed to thrive.