What is Dark Souls II?
The trilogy’s middle game, and its only change of director: Drangleic, built while Miyazaki made Bloodborne.
Dark Souls II was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 7, 2012, and released in March 2014, North America on March 11, Japan on March 13, PAL on March 14, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and, a month later, Windows. It is the only Dark Souls game Miyazaki did not direct: he supervised, while direction fell to Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura. The designer, in a nice closing of a circle, was Naotoshi Zin, FromSoftware’s founder.
A new kingdom, Drangleic; a new curse to cure; a denser, more freely-routed world. It won Game of the Year at the 2014 Golden Joystick Awards and the critics’ scores were high, and it remains, in the series’ own summary, the entry the fanbase argues about.
DRANGLEIC, IN PARTS
The second game · 2014
Dark Souls II · 2014
The Bearer of the Curse walks away from the camera, into the grey. The cover’s restraint matches the game’s: a sequel about echoes, fragments, and a throne everyone wants and nobody should sit on.
Hollowing, taxed
Each death shaves your maximum health toward half. The first game punished death with a walk; the second punishes it with a smaller life bar, the mechanic reviewers singled out, for and against.
Soul Memory
Multiplayer matchmaking by total souls ever earned, not level: a II-only experiment, debated as long as the game has existed, and never repeated by the series.