Dark Souls II: Crown of the Sunken King

“From Software looks to the original Dark Souls for inspiration in the first of three announced expansions to Dark Souls II.”

If you’re a fan of the Dark Souls series then I really don’t have to say much. Crown of the Sunken King offers an extra 5-6 hours of enjoyment and takes us back down the FROMSOFTWARE rabbit hole, slashing and hacking away with a host of new enemies and some much needed new areas to traverse. As an added bonus the DLC seems to have upped the difficulty a notch or two which will satisfy those Dark Souls purist as there were complaints that the sequel lacked the harder difficulty that was found in Dark Souls 1. However, some will find that the increased difficulty may be perhaps a bit too hard an...

Dark Souls II begins its major downloadable offerings with The Crown of the Sunken King, the first installment in a trilogy of DLC for From Software’s action/RPG. It provides 4-6 hours of additional content deep below the Black Gulch, giving players three new areas to explore. These new surroundings make particularly good use of vertical space, twisting environments, and deadly traps. Travel is exceptionally dangerous, since walls meshing together can throw off even expert players, leaving their exact location hard to pinpoint.

It's a strong start for this series of add-on chapters for Dark Souls 2, then. There are no standout battles - save, perhaps, for the grim final encounter - but the cumulative effect of its fights, puzzles and secrets is memorable: Sanctum City and its offshoot areas lodge in the mind like so many of this series' locales. It's exciting to see the team return to the ingenious, interlocking layout of Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls and there are enough novel ideas to be found in this shantytown of pillars, temples and chipped blocks to reassure you that this is a team that has run out of ...

Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Sunken King is a brutal, but entertaining opening to a coming trilogy of DLC. Though I wasn’t wild about some of the level design, the emphasis on puzzle solving added a welcome new layer to the already-deep Souls gameplay. Within its four hours, I played through a handful of encounters that were as tense, challenging, and rewarding as anything in the entire Souls series, and that’s saying something.

Is the first part of the Dark Souls II DLC worth your time?

The Crown of the Sunken King is a very promising start to a challenging trilogy. The added puzzles, tougher bosses, and unique environments make this DLC a must-have for any Dark Souls fans and a welcome addition to a game that already offers so many unique challenges. While there weren’t as many new items as I would have liked, and some of the added difficulty seemed like cheap shots, these issues don’t hold Crown of the Sunken King back from being one of the most enjoyable add-on experiences I’ve had in a long while.

Dark Souls II: The Crown of the Sunken King is not a “must have” add-on, but it does its job of delivering more Dark Souls. As always, I advise you to skip out on the Season Pass until all three of its pieces are out so you can judge it by the strength of its parts. However, hardcore Souls fans will want to at least buy Crown simply to experience a challenging new area that’s worth trekking through.