Dark Souls 2’s Greatest Strength Is The Way It Abandons Soulsborne Norms
Dark Souls 2 is celebrating its 10-year anniversary today, March 11, 2024. Below, we look back at how the unexpected sequel broke with traditions to stand as one of the most unusual Soulsbornes from the studio that created the genre.
Dark Souls 2 has, since shortly after release, been an odd duck in the franchise. It is the only From Software game in the Souls lineage that Hidetaka Miyazaki did not direct. Bloodborne, which came out the following year, stole its thunder (though it is hard to argue unfairly). By the time Dark Souls 3 rolled around, its predecessor’s reception had distinctly cooled. It often, though not always, fills out the bottom of “Every Souls Game Ranked” lists. However, if you push past your assumptions of what a Souls game must be, Dark Souls 2 offers an elegiac and illogical sense of place, in contrast to the tightly constructed ruins of other FromSoft games. Dark Souls 2’s plentiful pleasures derive from the ways it is most distinct from its predecessors.
To talk about those pleasures, it is best to start at the beginning. All of the Souls games (plus Elden Ring) start with a cinematic that sets the stakes. Although most of their runtime is about the dead or dying gods and kings that once ruled the world you are about to enter, the player-character is usually introduced. You are one of the corralled undead, an unkindled, or a tarnished. Even if your character is from a distant land, you occupy a specific textual place in the world. There is a prophecy, or a religious order, that involves you. The path to a throne is laid out before.