Combat controls are reminiscent of the original Dark Souls, and I cut down my first hour of demons with ease. Traversing the different areas through the mist, I encountered my biggest, game-breaking issue.
I found a small path with a warrior sitting on the side of the road and noticed a ton of flashing lights. It didn’t look like an intended part of the game and it turns out it wasn’t. When you speak to the man, he tells you of an inconvenient statue blocking the way ahead. I saw no statue. All my screen showed was a sky full of unrendered particles, floating, popping and flashing indefinitely…
…I decided to press forth, only to have this creature toting his grotesque, massive ballsack walk THROUGH an iron door and smash me to bits. I then regenerated as a Hollow, and my entire game started to display those unrendered particles. Hell, I even tried restarting my Xbox, but no— my game broke. Unfortunately, the epileptic flashing was too much for me to keep playing.
While I would have liked to review the new co-op feature, online play doesn’t go live until 3/11, so I’ll have to omit that part of the review for now. Here’s hoping there’s a patch in the near future so I can actually try it out.
As this is an unfinished review marred by technical difficulties, I truly can’t say I feel this game deserves the score I’m awarding it. But as it stands…
Bandai Namco’s Dark Souls II in stores everywhere now for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Please, Templar Knight— please tell me Elder Scrolls Online was a better use of RPG time.
(ESO Beta review on next page!!!)