Dark Souls II is one of the more divisive Souls games, although it has many fans who believe it is the greatest of the series.

Dark Souls II provides glimmers of hope and illumination, but they are always just out of grasp. The appeal of Dark Souls II resides in scratching just beneath the surface to take on the difficulties it has in store for you. The game may not be for everyone, but it is a rewarding experience for those who are prepared to take it on.

Dark Souls II is a follow-up to Dark Souls, a 2014 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware and released by Bandai Namco Games. It is the third installment in the Souls franchise.

Despite the fact that they are both situated in the same universe, the first Dark Souls and the sequel have no storyline connection. The game takes place in the kingdom of Drangleic and includes both PvE and PvP gameplay, as well as some cooperative elements.

Dark Souls II follows in the footsteps of its Souls predecessors in terms of gameplay mechanics. Both bosses and normal enemies have the ability to defeat your character in only a few hits, and most of them penalize poor performance brutally, which is why the game is famous for its difficulty.

You may choose your character's gender and physical characteristics, as well as select a beginning class, which affects your starting stats and gear, and a starting gift. You explore a continuous, open environment from a third-person perspective that is about the same size as the first game, but with more choice in how you can proceed and progress.

Health recovery options are limited, and, like in Demon's Souls, your maximum health is decreased with each death. This is known as hollowing, and it only goes down to a certain level until you use a special item to reverse it.

Souls are a type of shared currency utilized in the game that can be used as both experience points for leveling up and currency for buying stuff from merchants. Your whole collection of souls is dropped when you die; however, they may be recovered by going back to the area where you died, but if you die before picking them up, the souls are lost completely and forever.

Dark Souls II multiplayer follows the same model as its previous game, with you having the option of cooperative play or player-versus-player. Both multiplayer modes are pseudo-random, with matchmaking methods employed to group characters of comparable levels together.

The difficulty of the game may be changed using built-in mechanisms. Early in the game, the game developers put specific items that allowed novice players to have better basic damage and protection than they would typically have.

The developers also included higher skill cap items early in the game for more experienced players, which cause greater damage if done correctly.

With the use of some items, many penalties such as the health decrease on death can be considerably minimized. Rather than using a menu choice, this lets you customize the game's difficulty depending on their previous experiences with it.

Dark Souls II has a new game plus mode, similar to the other games in the series. The player's levels, souls, and most equipment are retained with each playthrough.