Dark Souls II - Old Iron King DLC Review

IncGamers Peter Parrish posted a new review of the new Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Old Iron King DLC, and gave it a final score aof 9/10. Here is a small sample of why.

Crown of the Sunken King showed that the Dark Souls 2 team were willing and able to address level design criticisms, and Old Iron King furthers this commitment to more expressive structures in its ashen and vertically themed environment. It also provides two tense and challenging boss fights, alongside (mostly) interesting enemy placement. There are infrequent missteps along the way, but in the main Crown of the Old Iron King shows FromSoft are capable of nudging the bar higher in the difficulty arms race without resorting to underhand tricks.

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More information.

incgamers.com said:

Crown of the Old Iron King shows FromSoft are capable of nudging the bar higher in the difficulty arms race without resorting to underhand tricks.

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Yeah, this is something I'd noticed about the base dks2 game. Gone are the days of those Souls instant death traps you have to know are there to avoid. Things do pop out and surprise you but give you enough time to react. No demon souls dragon flying overhead burning your path or even the classic indiana jones rolling boulder trap. (i suppose there's one in Forest of Giants, but its so slow moving I've never died to it.

The other impressive boss encounter takes place within a memory, and while the run to reach him is on the tedious-but-fair side, the fight itself is fantastic. A proper one-on-one duel of skills in a terrific location, with a lovely soundtrack. It’s never possible to frame Souls boss fights as a universal experience (some will always find them easier or harder than others, depending on fighting preferences and builds,) but both of these brought me back to the sweaty-palmed anxiety of being a hit or two from victory or defeat.

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Yeah, those bosses... They're up there with the best of them. The final dragon from the first DLC is pretty sweet too. Plenty of summoning going on for co-op (on PC) and the little PvE streches to the boss fights are great fun too.

I'd happily rate the new content 9/10 too. If you were to get only one of the proposed three DLCs this would be the best one…. So far.