Dark Souls II

reviews
Eurogamer	9/10
IGN	9/10
PC Games	92%
VideoGamer.com	10/10

Dark Souls II

Original title

ダークソウル II

transcription

Dāku Sōru Tsū

Erstveröffent-
lichung

PS3, Xbox 360 March 11, 2014 March 13, 2014 March 14, 2014 Windows April 24, 2014

platform

PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 , Microsoft Windows , PlayStation 4 , Xbox One

genre

Action RPG

Game mode

Single player , online multiplayer

language

Japanese, English with u. a. German subtitles

Dark Souls II ( Japaneseダークソウル II Dāku Sōru Tsū ) is an action role-playing game from the Japanese developer From Software . It was released in March 2014 for PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 and Windows computers , with versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later to follow . It is the successor of Fantasy - video game Dark Souls .

background

The game was announced on December 7, 2012 as part of the Spike Video Game Awards . Hidetaka Miyazaki, who was already involved in the first part , acted as supervisor . The lead producers were Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura. After some delays, the game was finally released on March 11, 13, and 14, 2014 in the United States, Japan, and Europe.

action

Main game

Dark Souls II is a direct sequel to Dark Souls , but takes place many thousands of years after its events. At the beginning of the story, the player is again an undead , which is why he visits the destroyed kingdom of Drangleic , where there is supposed to be a cure for the curse of the undead. The Emerald Herald gives him the task of collecting the four great souls (soul of the lost sinner, soul of the depraved, soul of the Old Iron King and soul of Freja, the dearest). When he has done this, she tells him to find the King of Drangleic. After the player has defeated the rest of the king's guards, he meets Queen Nashandra , who says that the king has failed to fulfill his duties and has left his throne locked by his ring. She asks the player to kill him and give her his ring so that the player can take the place of the king. At the end of this task, the player learns that the fall of the empire was not the fault of the king, but that of the queen (who is a descendant of the stealthy dwarf from Dark Souls ) and wants to ascend the throne himself. Emerald Herald later asks the player again to kill Nashandra and claim the throne of Drangleic for himself.

Scholar of the First Sin

A patch called Scholar of the First Sin adds another NPC and boss, Aldia, pupil of the original sin . This is the brother of the King of Drangleic. Together they explored the history of the game world and discovered the seemingly never-ending cycle of the Age of Fire , followed by the curse of the undead, until a new king sacrifices himself to renew the Age of Fire . Additionally, the king learns of Nashandra's true intentions to usher in what appears to be an even worse age of darkness . Both findings prompt the King of Drangleic to seal his throne and go into exile. Aldia herself sees Gwyn's sacrifice ( Dark Souls ) as the original sin, as the curse of the undead and the cycle could only arise through the binding of people to the beacon.

An alternative ending was also inserted through the patch. Now the player has the choice to sit on the throne of desire after the queen's death and thus start the Age of Fire again or to fight against Aldia, who appears after the defeat of Queen Nashandra. To do this, however, the king must first be defeated. If Aldia is defeated, the player leaves the throne instead of ascending it. It remains unclear whether this will end the cycle.

The plot of Dark Souls II continues in the third and final part of the series.

reception

The game received mostly positive reviews. The magazine PC Games described Dark Souls II as almost perfect and as "one of the hardest role-playing games"; she gave a rating of 92%. The GameStar editorial team criticized the fact that the game had to be linked to a Steam account. In addition, it was criticized that the game was "technically hopelessly out of date" and that the mouse and keyboard controls still did not work perfectly despite the noticeable improvements. At the same time it was referred to as a "great role-playing cinema for hardcore gamers capable of suffering". Overall, the magazine awarded 85 out of 100 points.

successor

The third part of the series, Dark Souls III , was officially announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2015 in Los Angeles for spring 2016 and was released in April of that year in Germany . The series was completed with the third part.