Video Game Review #220: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

Even if you haven't played a Dark Souls game, I'm sure you've heard about the series' steep difficulty level. Every time a tough, challenging game comes out, people immediately compare it to Dark Souls. I'm all for being challenged by video games. Who wants to play anything that is so easy it doesn't offer any kind of challenge whatsoever? Not me. But I also don't want to play anything that's so frustratingly difficult that it makes me want to shout at the TV and throw my controller out the window. I remember playing the 2004 version of Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. It was such a frustrating and difficult game that I didn't have one tiny bit of fun playing it. That's what I was worried Dark Souls was going to be like, so I simply never bothered to give it a chance. Until now.

My work buddy Dominic - shout out to my guy! - has been trying to get me to play Dark Souls (Dark Souls II in particular) since I got a PlayStation 4 over two years ago. He told me it was his favorite game, and to not let tales of its legendary difficulty intimidate me into not giving it a shot. I felt bad because he loaned it to me for several months and I never bothered to play the game. I ended up giving it back and saying "maybe later." Two years passed and finally the time just felt right to give the game a chance. I can't say what exactly changed in my brain to suddenly want to play Dark Souls II, but I wasn't going to argue it. I was going to tackle this game whether I liked it or not. If I hated it, at least I'd know that these kind of games weren't for me. If I loved it, it would open up a whole new series and a whole new genre of gaming for me.

Which would it be? Spoiler alert: I liked it. A lot.

Story:

I guess I shall start with the part of the game I enjoyed the least: its story. Things start off in a very abstract manner. You are introduced to your character and told that you are cursed. You jump into a giant, foreboding black pit and wake up on some kind of big stone circle thing. Shortly after waking up, you encounter a group of old hags who speak cryptically about your condition and offer vague words of advice before laughing at your misfortune.

That's really all you have to go on. You take control of your character and off you go. I was very confused about the game's story at first, because I couldn't tell if my character was dead, undead, if this was supposed to be taking place in hell/the afterlife, if this was supposed to be taking place in some kind of mystical fantasy world, or what. Nothing was ever explained. What was I even supposed to be doing?

Eventually I made my way to a nearby town, where I talked with a few NPCs who rambled in riddles about the world of the game and what they were doing there. Everything had kind of a weird, dreamlike feel to it. I still had no idea what was going on. The next day I had to ask my friend about it, he gave me some clarification that you basically control a character who is a cursed undead, and that he has journeyed to the world of Dark Souls II in an attempt to find a cure for his curse. So yes, this took place in the "real world" and no it was not the afterlife. Luckily, that cleared things up a bit for me. It's too bad the game itself does such a poor job at explaining things. I hate when you have to look outside a game to figure out what is going on inside of it. To me, that's just bad writing.

But no matter, I quickly learned that the story of the game is not why people play Dark Souls. They play it for the exploration, the sights, the collecting of items, and most importantly: the combat. Once that became clear to me I stopped expecting great things from the game's storyline and to just enjoy things as they happened.

Gameplay:

Here lies the strength of Dark Souls II: its gameplay. This game won't blow you away with its graphics or its storyline. No, no. What kept me hooked was how fun the world of this game is to explore.

You take control of your character from a behind the back perspective. You can equip your character with weapons and armor. There is a quick select option to cycle through weapons and items on the main screen. The left shoulder buttons control the weapons you have in your left hand, the right buttons control the right side. I found the best configuration for my character was to have a sword or axe in the right hand and a shield in the left. I also kept bows and crossbows in my "left side" inventory so that I could easily switch over to them when I needed to perform a ranged attack.

You aren't given much direction as to where to go when you start playing the game, so you have to figure things out on your own. There are multiple branching paths for you to take. You've got to explore and find out where to go next. Gameplay mainly consists of entering a new area, fighting its enemies, moving on to fight the area's boss character(s), and moving onto the next area. Areas are intertwined and connected all over the place. There are secrets everywhere. You are going to be backtracking quite a bit to find things that you couldn't before. I don't want to use the generic Metroidvania term to describe Dark Souls II, but I can't lie and say that this game doesn't follow a very similar formula.

Now let's talk about the game's difficulty. Like I said before, even if you haven't played any of these game's you've likely heard about how tough they are. Is it as bad as people say? Yes and no. I will be honest and say that there were several times I got very frustrated. The game's currency is "souls". You earn them by killing enemies. You can also find them in other ways. But one of the twists of the game is that if you die, you drop all of your souls right there on the spot. When you respawn, you have to return to where you died and collect the souls. If you die on your way there, the souls disappear forever. You need these souls to buy things and level up. You have NO idea how frustrating it is to die when you have a great number of souls, and lose them. To make matters worse, each time you die, and you will die a lot, your health bar slowly gets smaller. So your reward for dying is that they make the game even harder for you. Lovely. There are items out there to restore your health bar, but they are somewhat rare and I always got worried about overusing them and running out of them when I needed them the most.

My first day playing this game made me reconsider if I even wanted to continue with it. There are several small creatures at the beginning of the game that are likely just there as fodder for you to practice on. But I couldn't even beat them without dying. I wasted all my arrows and all my items and at least a half hour of my time trying unsuccessfully to kill these things. Eventually I just said screw it and ran past them, but shortly afterwards I encountered a giant troll creature that I also could not beat. I died so many times, my health was only at a half-bar (thankfully it doesn't go any lower than that). I was also out of arrows and items. And the game had only just begun! How was I going to do this?

But I plowed on. Even still, the game didn't really grab my attention right away. It took me at least a week of playing it before I got into a groove and started to really understand how the game worked. Once things clicked, however, I really, really began to have fun with the game. My basic strategy consisted of clearing out the enemies so many times that they would stop respawning, all the while leveling up as much as possible. When I was super leveled-up and I had the layout of the stage memorized, I could run through the empty stage to the boss character, and take him or her OUT of the equation.
 
The combat of Dark Souls II is pretty deep. I liked it. I found that the key to success was dodging and blocking enemy attacks. I put everything into leveling up my shield so that my enemies couldn't hurt me. If they struck my shield, all I'd lose was a little bit of stamina, and they would leave themselves vulnerable to a counterattack. Once I got to where enemies couldn't penetrate my shield defenses, I really started to feel in control of the game. I stopped playing in fear. I started to go on the offensive more often. I'd found my Dark Souls groove.

And that is when I really started to fall in love with the game. I'd play, I'd explore, I'd fight, I'd work my way deeper into the world of the game. Things are challenging enough where I became addicted to beating just one more enemy, just making my way a little bit deeper into each stage, just uncovering one more bonfire, just beating one more boss, just leveling up one more time. I was hooked. Once I'd hit my Dark Souls groove, there was no turning back.

Graphics:

This game looks good, sure. But as far as I know, Dark Souls has never really been renowned for its graphics. What I like most about the game's look is the atmosphere it creates. Dark, foreboding, otherworldly. The setting of this game is haunting and beautiful at the same time. Is this game eye-popping and gorgeous like God of War or Horizon Zero Dawn? Absolutely not. In fact, this could easily pass for a PS3 game. I am not holding that against it, though. This could look like it was made for the Sega Saturn for all I care. As long as the gameplay remained unchanged, however, I wouldn't care one bit.

Sound:

The game's music and sound effects match its visuals wonderfully. The music is subtle, and helps add to the rich fantasy feel of the game's world. The ambience that is created for this game is so dark and haunting. Whether it's the roar of a fire, the echo of your footsteps, the rattling of chains, or the cries of a distant enemy, you will feel like you are a part of this crazy Dark Souls world. The clangs of swords and shields when you are in combat is spot on. What voice acting there is is very well-done.

Kudos to the game's sound designers because they really nailed it with this one.

Overall:

If you would have told me that I would like Dark Souls II as much as I did, I probably wouldn't have believed you. But I did. I had a really fun time with this game. I found it fun and challenging and immersive and overall just a really enjoyable experience.

Not to say the game is without flaws. The story sucks. Some of the stage designs are a bit questionable in my opinion. It's easy to get lost. The game is also very vague with what to do or where to go next, at times. ESPECIALLY towards the end of the game. I was fortunate to have the internet to help me out whenever I'd get stuck. There are some really obscure things you have to do that are never explained in-game. Remember in Castlevania II when you have to equip some random jewel and duck near a wall for several seconds to unlock the next portion of the game? There's stuff like that here. A lot of it. I don't know how anyone could have figured out how to beat this game without the help of the internet. As a result, I felt no shame searching for help whenever I'd get stuck.

And then there is the frustration factor. For the most part I thought the game was fair in its difficulty. Whenever I'd die, normally it was my fault. I'd let myself get surrounded, or I'd fail to block an attack, or I'd roll when I shouldn't have rolled. This is a hard game. You have to accept that you're going to die a lot. But what always got me was the unfair deaths. The enemy who randomly breaks their pattern and cuts through your defense. The random projectile from 900 feet away that somehow hits you RIGHT before you can duck around the corner. When you roll way from one enemy and are a microsecond away from freedom and another enemy hits you from off screen. When the boss you're fighting has the tiniest sliver of health left and all you need to do is hit him one more time, but you need your stamina to recharge and the enemy hits you and kills you while you're jamming the attack button. Stuff like this happens CONSTANTLY and it can be very frustrating if you don't have any patience.

Even with all that being said, it still wasn't enough to make me hate the game. There's just something so addictive about Dark Souls II. The more you play, the more you want to uncover. It's like each area is a challenge, and each bonfire is a reward for completing that challenge. I couldn't help but feel very satisfied or accomplished whenever I would clear a particularly challenging area or beat a particularly challenging boss character. This game nails that rewarding feeling 100%.

All in all, Dark Souls II was a pleasant surprise. Not only did I have a great time with this game, it also made me very thrilled to realize that there are three other Dark Souls games out there (if you are counting Demon Souls as one of them) and also Bloodborne for me to play. This is very exciting news.

I'm late to the party, but at least I finally made it.

Overall:

A

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