Dark Souls 2’s first piece of DLC, Crown of the Sunken King, is a remarkably tough trek down to the bowels of Drangleic. It provides some of the most interesting and difficult challenges that From Software has ever created. Your gorgeous adventure takes you to forgotten cities, labyrinthine tombs, and ancient lakes, all of which are predictably littered with a slew of things wanting you dead.

Loading

Check out our full review of Dark Souls 2 here.

As the first chapter in the Lost Crowns Trilogy, Sunken King makes Dark Souls 2 tougher than ever, and that’s saying something. The ledges are narrow, a huge number of enemies carry poison weapons, and the entire thing is infested with giant insects that spew corrosive mist. More so than ever, you’ll have to juggle each encounter with managing your inventory and curing status and equipment ailments.

The combat’s just as tough, but fair as ever, but make no mistake – this DLC is going to squash anybody who isn’t comfortable with being outnumbered five to one. Crowd control and the ability to draw in enemies one at a time is key to your survival.

The Sunken King took me about four hours to complete, though one of those hours was devoted entirely to a particularly nasty boss. Speaking of, the big baddies do not disappoint – they’re crazy tough, and range from groups of human warriors to something far more ancient and dangerous. I won’t go into too much detail, but let’s just say this guy’s up there with some of the toughest bosses in the whole Souls series.

The biggest addition in this DLC is the introduction of puzzles in the form of dozens of pillars that you can raise and lower using their corresponding levers. These pillars can be used to access new areas, provide cover from enemy arrows, but haphazardly throwing every switch can also remove the only obstacle between you and a group of ghouls. It’s a level of environmental interactivity that hasn’t really been seen in the Souls series, but certainly a welcome addition.

Loading

But while the interactivity is great, the environment itself doesn’t enough visual cues to make puzzle solving fun. I felt like I was stumbling across the solutions, as opposed to discovering them by figuring something out. This is particularly problematic in the second area. Even once I’d cleared all of the enemies from the aforementioned tomb, I was consistently lost thanks to the ocean of gray and unremarkable rooms. Nothing takes me down from the high of killing a few dozen ghouls quite like having to draw a scratch-paper map to find the nearest bonfire.