Dark Souls 2 is much better than you remember

DARK SOULS™ II: Scholar of the First Sin

DARK SOULS™ II: Scholar of the First Sin brings the franchise’s renowned obscurity & gripping gameplay to a new level. Join the dark journey and experience overwhelming enemy encounters, diabolical hazards, and unrelenting challenge.

Look, Elden Ring is potentially still years away, which means Souls fans on PC could be in the middle of a very long wait for more brutally difficult FromSoftware goodness. The perfect remedy for this restlessness? Revisiting the dark horse of the Souls trilogy: Dark Souls 2.

I know this is going to be tough, but deep down you know that Dark Souls is a deeply flawed game in places. Blighttown, the Depths, Lost Izalith, Tomb of Giants, and (glorious architecture aside) Anor Londo are all just horrendous slogs that you have to endure. I don't have to explain the first three, you probably already harbour a deep hatred for them, born of curse-spewing frogs and falling to your death. Tomb of Giants is bad because the only thing that makes the area challenging is that there's no light. That's not a challenge, that's bullshit.

Anor Londo is slightly more contentious, because it's gorgeous and Ornstein and Smough are rightly regarded as one of the best duo boss fights around. But even if you give a pass to the dodgy rafter sequence, which has no place in a 'tough but fair' Souls game, you're still left with a Titanite Demon crammed into a tiny chapel and the pair of Silver Knight archers with magical homing arrows. Again, not fair challenges, just nonsense.

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