Following the surprise suc cess of the first Dark Souls, developers From Software managed not only to recre ate what made the first game fun and challenging, but have also brought new ideas to the game and ironed out issues from the first. Dark Souls II mixes challenge with the thrill of discovery to keep players hooked and continu ing onward no matter how many times they die.

Dark Souls II is set in the same world as the first game but isn’t necessarily related. The game revolves around an undead, the player, searching the land of Drangleic for a cure to the curse the charac ters are inflicted with.

The story of Dark Souls II is not a strong point, but a lot of lore and backstory are hidden in the game if play ers wish to learn more about the world. Many items when examined have a description that sheds light on the world and the characters in it, creat ing a rich history just below the surface.

The world of Drangleic is incredibly varied and features many different, unique and fun locations. Though not all the areas feel like they should be in the same world, and there is not a lot of cohesion between the areas. The world is vast and creative.

A new addition to Dark Souls II is fast travel from the beginning, which is the ability to travel from bonfire to bonfire a in game. Bon fires serve as checkpoints throughout the game, auto matically healing the player and restocking spells and cer tain items, but also causing enemies to come back to life.

Though the ability to travel makes the game flow better and allows players to return to the main city, home to shops and to the character, which allows leveling up, it also adds to the disjointed feel of the areas in the game. Ar eas start to feel like random levels the player finds, not an entire f luid world, like the previous game.

With such an open world, Dark Souls II does a very good job of giving the player choices of where to go next. If a certain boss or area is too hard, the player can eas ily find another area that is similar or easier to conquer and then return to the harder area.

Dark Souls II is just as chal lenging and punishing as the first game, with a general for mula of the player exploring and using death as a learning tool. If the player runs into a room that looks empty but has three enemies hiding and dies, for example, the player knows next time how to han dle that room.

Death in Dark Souls II hap pens often and normally car ries little penalty. If the player dies, he or she loses the souls collected, the game’s cur rency for items and leveling up, but keeps items that have been found. Souls can be retrieved at the site of death unless the player dies another time.

This low penalty for death worked well in the first game; however, Dark Souls II has added a tweak that becomes more frustrating than chal lenging. When the player dies now in Dark Souls II a certain percentage of health is lost upon reviving which gets larger every death.

The health loss can be re versed with a certain item, but this item is very hard to find through the first fourth of the game. The health loss can also be capped at 75 per cent with a certain item ear lier in the game.

Even with these two ways to combat the permanent health loss with this addition, Dark Souls II teeters on the edge of challenge and frustrating enough to stop playing the game. Thankfully the re wards for exploring and per severing through death turn the health loss into a minor annoyance.

Dark Souls II rewards the player for continuing on and exploring with an incredibly satisfying amount of treasure and new things to experi ence. Some of the best items and weapons in the game are found through exploring or challenging new enemies.

The boss battles in Dark Souls II are where the chal lenge really shows itself and are a fun component of the game. Each boss battle works differently, and each boss has different patterns the player must get used to in order to defeat them.

One great reward to explor ing is finding new covenants to join. Covenants are groups a player can join to get items and affect his or her player-versus-player experience.

Player versus player, on a basic level, means that at cer tain times during the game, a player can summon other players to help fight a boss or randomly be invaded by an evil spirit (another player) and be forced to fight it off. Covenants modify and add to this experience, and Dark Souls II makes it easier than before to join and keep track of covenants.

In the hub city there is a character who will help the players see their covenant and leave it if they so choose. Cov enants modify player versus player by doing things such as allowing their members to invade “guilty” players, be helped when invaded and be able to find more players to summon for help.

The easier-to-understand covenant system is a welcome addition and can make player versus player, even at an early level, more fun for players. The player versus player sys tem augmented by covenants adds a lot of replay value to an already 60 or more hour-long game.

The player-versus-player system is not the only reason to play the game more than once. New game plus is a fea ture that allows players to re turn to the game with harder enemies but the same items and levels they had before adding more challenge.

Dark Souls II also boasts improved graphics and a bet ter frame rate than the first game. The first game expe rienced a few slowdowns in some of the more detailed areas, and Dark Souls II shows little to no slowdown throughout the game.