Dark Souls II for PC: a review update

Last week, the PC version of Atlus’s impossibly difficult fantasy action game Dark Souls II was finally released. How does it stack up to the console versions?

I’m not going to do a full review of the PC version of the game, because it’s essentially the same as the console version, which my colleague Iain has already reviewed. If you want to know about the story, the gameplay, etc. you can read Iain’s review.

There are a few things you might want to know about the PC version of the game, though. To begin with, it’ll take up just 8.2 GB of hard-drive space—pretty small for a modern PC game. And in my time with the game (playing it through Steam on the Southeast Asia servers), I found it to be very stable. I never experienced any crashes, game-breaking bugs, or connection issues.

The PC version of the game does include a variety of graphical options, but even with everything turned up to the highest settings, the game sometimes looks pretty bad. There are moments (see the image above, for example) where Dark Souls II on PC looks as gorgeous as any modern PC game, but there are also moments where it looks like something that was developed for the PlayStation 2. Unfortunately, the latter moments are much more common than the former. Even the game’s menus and UI look pretty bad.

Still, the PC graphics do look a bit better than the console versions, and it’s worth considering that the PC version of Dark Souls II can also be modded. There are already some graphical enhancements available and there will likely be more as time goes by.

For that reason, if all other things are equal, I’d suggest you pick up the PC version of Dark Souls II. But if you prefer playing on consoles or already bought the console version, don’t feel bad! It’s the same game on both platforms, and the PC version doesn’t look good enough to warrant you spending any more money on it.

Long story short: Dark Souls II on PC looks a little nicer, but it’s still the same mostly-ugly monster-mashing murderous mayhem that’s been causing console players to smash their controllers in frustration for the past few months. If you’re a PC gamer looking for a challenge, this port is definitely worth picking up.