Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (2015, PS4) - A Second Chance for a Cursed Undead

From Software's 2014 follow up to Dark Souls was a solid game with a few disappointments when compared to its predecessor and to 2009's Demon's Souls. Dark Souls II presented a much larger, but less focused, world with a handful of great boss fights but a multitude of mediocre ones. It took a few steps forward and a few back, and while it was one of my favorite games of the year, I never found it quite as compelling as the previous title.

With Scholar of the First Sin, From gives DS2 a new injection of life, with all of the previous game's DLC areas included, a major rebalance, new enemy layouts that feel much more well designed, new secrets, a new NPC, and a new final boss and ending that can be found under the right circumstances. For the PS4 and Xbox One versions, the game now runs in 1080p and features some pretty new visual effects, along with a much nicer lighting engine. Dark areas lit by torchlight finally look right and aren't washed out and messy. The frame rate's higher and and the game's clearer, making it a much nicer visual experience, even if the character models are sometimes still kind of clunky.

Dark Souls II (2014, PS3) - Great Game, Weak Sequel, Talking Cat

Dark Souls II is the third game in From Software's Souls series, following 2009's Demon's Souls and 2011's Dark Souls. The series has a reputation for being ridiculously difficult and unforgiving, when in reality it's a challenging but extremely fair series of games that rarely uses cheap tricks (and the ones it does use rarely happen more than once) and rewards slow, careful play. I love these games; I picked up Demon's Souls shortly after release and played through it several times in a row, and did the same with Dark Souls two years later. This is the finest series of games to premier in this console generation, and their meticulous design is unmatched. Dark Souls II had a lot to live up to.

Review - Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss DLC

When From Software announced a PC port of their hit action RPG Dark Souls, they also announced that new content would be added to the game, as well as a few balance changes to existing content. The PC port was released in August 2012, and this new content remained exclusive to the PC version for a couple of months before being released on PS3 and Xbox 360 as a $15 downloadable content pack, Artorias of the Abyss. While that's a little more than I generally like to spend on DLC, this expansion pack is among the best I've seen in a modern game and was well worth the wait and the price.

This review is meant solely to cover the new content introduced in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC, and thus is intended for players already familiar with Dark Souls. For a more general review of the main game, please see my previous review.

Review - Dark Souls (PS3, 2011)

Dark Souls, like its predecessor Demon's Souls, is an action RPG by From Software notorious for its unforgiving difficulty and wall of a learning curve. Both games are set in sad, desolate worlds and have a very 1980's fantasy aesthetic. In many ways, they feel like throwbacks to an earlier age, both stylistically and difficulty wise, but there's nothing dated about them; on the contrary, I feel that Dark and Demon's Souls refine action RPG combat in a way no other modern game has. A lot of the general statements in this review can be applied to both games, but I'm here to talk about Dark Souls, which I honestly feel is the best game of this console generation.