The original Dark Souls on PC was undoubtedly a disappointment out of the box, with a 1024x720 native resolution and a 30fps cap that stuck agonisingly close to its console counterparts. Dark Souls 2 is certainly a big improvement on that, offering a generous range of visual options, but does that make for a dramatic improvement over the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions? And are there any catches?

The original game had a toggle for anti-aliasing (a simple blur filter) and another for motion blur, leading to a flood of complaints, but the sequel nips a lot of problems in the bud immediately by adding proper support for resolutions and refresh rates, going as high as your monitor allows - right up to 4K if you're so inclined. For the purposes of our testing, we run the game on patch 1.01 at 1920x1080, which immediately gives the game a marked leap in visual quality compared with the 720p image on consoles.

There's no sign of From Software reverting the PC version's lighting model and textures back to its alluring alpha build, but we do get a hefty graphics menu. Among the choices we have are quality options for textures, shadows, effects, anisotropic filtering, water shaders and character model detail. On top of that, we get toggles for motion blur, screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and depth of field. The anti-aliasing method of choice is FXAA, with no official means of enabling more taxing post-process techniques like SMAA in-game.

Running Dark Souls 2 at its high preset, with all effects enabled, we see very obvious differences to the console releases in some areas and less obvious changes in others. To see the breadth of the visual spectrum here, we add the lowest PC preset into the image zoomer comparisons far below - showing us where the two consoles fall in-between - but first we match up the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions in head-to-head videos, and also produce a lengthy 66-shot Dark Souls 2 comparison gallery.

"Even on low settings the PC version holds up admirably against both consoles, while high settings adds significant pop to textures."

This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view. Manage cookie settings The PC version of Dark Souls 2 matched against the PS3 release, with all settings at high. Use the full-screen button and 1080p resolution setting for the best viewing experience.

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Let's start with texture quality on PC, the biggest improvement by far. For the Forest of Fallen Giants area in particular, we see a complete overhaul in asset quality for the leafy floors and a big reworking of normal maps on rocky outcrops. Even with the lowest texture setting engaged on PC - which in this case curiously bottoms out at "medium" - the look of this area is a clear upgrade over the simplified PS3 and 360 assets. It's also impossible to revert the PC release back to this console-grade appearance, which may well have once stood for the absent "low" quality setting.

But this upgrade doesn't apply across the entirety of Drangleic. Facing the larger Majula area shows only minor bumps in texture quality, using familiar console assets running at a higher resolution. In the end, anisotropic texture filtering has a bigger impact here, lifting a veil that blurs over the floors on PS3 at near distance, and more so for the 360 version, which lacks anisotropic filtering entirely. The PC's highest filtering setting aces both consoles, with floor details still popping out on the horizon, while the lowest, blurriest implementation is a direct match for that used on Sony's console. Removing filtering altogether, meanwhile, generates results that are identical to 360, causing unwanted noise artefacts across textures just a few steps ahead.

Even on the most basic settings though, the PC version holds up admirably against both consoles. Low shadow quality, for example, produces the exact same degree of aliasing as PS3 and 360, while the highest option entirely smooths out the outlines of fireside silhouettes, addressing one of the console version's rougher visual quirks. Unfortunately the PC game's ambient occlusion toggle applies the flickering, approximated method used on consoles, although it's slightly bolder indoors.

Looking to effects, the PS3's shortcoming - the lowering of alpha resolution for bonfires - is impossible to replicate using the PC menus. At its worst setting, these elements still run at a full resolution to match the 360, with extra particle effects when the quality slider is moved upwards.

While not a complete overhaul on PC, areas such as the Forest of Fallen Giants use completely altered textures. No console-grade texture setting is available - the lowest option is medium. Shadows are hugely improved too for PC at high settings. The aliasing we see on consoles can be replicated on low for PC, especially where shadows have a wide spread. Character details are like-for-like across all three, though fabric textures do get a minor bump. The highest-quality character models appear during cut-scenes, where PC matches the facial animation seen on consoles. Geometry pop-in is reduced on PC regardless of your selected setting, which is mainly an issue when traipsing around the Majula hub area.

While shadows and textures are much improved, there are some missed opportunities in this porting effort. 2D skyboxes are the same resolution as on console, for example, sticking out like a sore thumb at 1920x1080 or more. There's also minor pop-in for terrain in the distance of the Majula hub area - if only slight. Fortunately the threshold for switching geometry quality is now much farther away, making it harder to spot than on console. Oddly enough, despite setting character model rendering to maximum, the PC game still also uses half-frame-rate animations on enemies far away. It's an odd technical concession given how noticeable it can be.

This all links through to performance in Dark Souls 2, which across the board is brilliantly handled even while maxed out. It's an easy ride for most PC setups, for which our Intel i7 3770K CPU clocked at 4.3GHZ, GTX 770 and 16GB of RAM is clearly overqualified for the task of holding 60fps. We can't push this GPU to drop below that figure, but given the £220 price-tag of the card we'd hope this to be the case.

PC optimisations for £100 cards though, such as AMD's HD 7790 or the HD 7850 (each configured with 1GB RAM) are also very impressive. We again achieve a perfect 60fps throughout, but this time Dark Souls 2 takes exception to alpha effects such as resting at the bonfire or enduring multiple bombs. Here we see drops to the 42fps and 56fps marks on the 7850 and 7790 respectively - both momentary, but smoothed out by tucking the effects quality setting down to medium. The difference in image quality isn't appreciable as a result, and with everything else set to maximum, the entire game is playable at full frame-rates on even budget GPUs.

A comparison of screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) switched on and off. When enabled, the effect appears sharper indoors, but still flickers and blurs as on PS3 and 360. The Heide's Tower of Flame area brings out a massive ocean view and castle complex architecture. Unfortunately the skybox used in the background is based on the same low-res console asset, which now stands out at higher resolutions. Shifting water shader quality down a gear to low cuts off all reflections on PC, while the highest setting is a pure match for consoles. The resolution increase to 1080p makes it possible to catch the texture boosts from a distance - where consoles struggle with a 1280x720 framebuffer. Texture filtering is the PS3's strong suit in comparison with 360 - but the PC's top-most anisotropic filtering setting betters them both on long stretches of ground.

This performance overhead shows a massive leap forward from the original Dark Souls' 30fps lock on PC. It also suggests there's room to experiment with settings above and beyond those provided officially. While there is no .txt file to edit settings, modding legend Durante (of Dark Souls' "DSFix" fame) has plumbed the depths of Dark Souls 2's code to produce his own advanced settings menu. It's early days, being in an alpha 0.1 state, but is already very effective in allowing users to downsample from much higher resolutions. For example, we can avoid the in-game FXAA, and instead super-sample the image by rendering at 3840x2160 (also known as 4K) before outputting the image at our monitor's native 1080p.

The return is an impeccably smooth, crisp image that's well worth checking out. It's demanding though, cutting performance down on the HD 7790 to around 30fps in most outdoors areas. This is where a higher-end card like the GTX 770 comes in use with its wider 256-bit memory bus, reliably carrying this super-sampled experience at 60fps.

Other options include a bespoke ambient occlusion setting, SweetFX-style post-processing to saturate colours, and also a taxing bokeh depth-of-field effect. Unfortunately, overlays such as Steam achievements or FRAPS cause this to malfunction and over-brighten the image, while minimising the window causes the game to crash altogether. As a day-one unofficial fix though, this is very impressive, and we look forward to seeing what other tweaks lie in wait.

An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image. An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image. An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image. An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image. An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image. An early build of Durante's mod, dubbed GeDoSaTo. The left two images show the game's standard FXAA setting on and off, while the right shows the mod downsampling from 3840x2160 to produce a superior image.