Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

I don't like comparing games to others very often, but with the hate that Dark Souls II receives, I had to lean into it a lot here.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin came out in April 2015. It’s a semi-remaster of the original Dark Souls II, but not a lot was changed, so SotFS is considered on par with the original. In the context of the whole Dark Souls trilogy, however, Dark Souls II is considered to be the worst one, the “weird middle child” of the series. It introduced new mechanics that were seen as bad game design, tarnishing the name of Dark Souls, after the success of the original. There is a community of players out there who hold it in regard as the best of the three, and a larger community that views it as the worst one. After playing through the game over a four month period, I looked back and thought if the game was actually worth the distaste it receives from the community. And my conclusion was that Dark Souls II is absolutely so much better than I expected from a game with its reputation. Here’s why.

As of writing this review, I’ve played through Dark Souls II about twice. Due to the same hard drive wipe that removed a lot of reviews on this site, I lost all my progress in the game when I was only three bosses away from the finish. When it happened, I had lost a lot of hope for my enjoyment of the game. But after the friend who I streamed the original Dark Souls to offered to play through the game co-op with me, I found a new appreciation for the game. We would kill all of the bosses together, and by the time where we caught up to the point where my progress was lost before, I would finish off the game on my own. This review will mostly focus on my thoughts during the first playthrough.

For the first dozen or so hours of the first playthrough, I thought that Dark Souls II felt a lot clunkier and jankier than Dark Souls Remastered. The new hollowing mechanic felt like bad game design to me. This must be why, I thought, that so many Dark Souls fans think that Dark Souls II is the worst one. When I continued, I found myself actually growing fond of hollowing. As I started to see the game’s greater focus on the curse of the undead, and the story constantly bringing up curses, it started to make sense to me why the mechanic was added. The other thing about why hollowing doesn’t take too much away from the game is because of the human effigy items. It’s easy to make the mistake that humanity from the original Dark Souls is the same as human effigies in Dark Souls II, but they serve different purposes. Yes, you still need to be human to summon players or access a few things, but human effigies, unlike humanity, will raise your max HP to its regular amount. People tend to be annoyed by having to constantly use human effigies to bring their HP back up, because they feel like it’s a waste of resources. Whenever someone says this to me, I respond by asking them what the main purpose of humanity is in the original Dark Souls, and then the main purpose of human effigies in Dark Souls II. In the original Dark Souls, I found myself only ever using humanity when I wanted to summon someone. Because of this, getting humanity always felt like something I felt I would need, but never actually ended up using it very often. In Dark Souls II, human effigies were always a good item to receive as a reward, because I would never stop needing them. Another reason I enjoyed how human effigies and hollowing worked is the fact that most of the time, you’re not at your max. Because multiple deaths can be expected before you get to the entrance to a boss arena, you won’t be at your strongest for your first try. I figured this out pretty early on in my playthrough, and I used it to my advantage. I would repeatedly practice difficult bosses with lowered HP, and when I felt ready, I would use a human effigy to increase my max HP back to its regular amount, which would give me a greater margin of error for the bosses.

Speaking of the bosses, Dark Souls II has the most out of any From Software game. I’ve heard a lot of people say that a large number of the bosses in Dark Souls II are not creative, unique, or very cool at all. I couldn’t disagree less. If you ask me, there are only about three bosses that I wouldn’t consider good or fun. Bosses like Velstadt the Royal Aegis, the Pursuer, the Giant Lord, and Sir Alonne are some of my favorite bosses in all of gaming. With over 30 bosses in the game, not all of them are going to be as perfect as ones like Knight Artorias or Great Grey Wolf Sif, but I would definitely say that the height of bosses in Dark Souls II is, at the very least, on par with those of the original Dark Souls.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin definitely does not deserve the harsh criticism and hate it gets from players, and it’s hard for me to think of it as inferior or superior to the original Dark Souls. People say that Dark Souls II is the worst big game by From Software, but I will defend it as one of my favorite games to date.