My first impression of this game was definitely not a good one. I was having a much harder time than I was with DS1, and a lot of the challenge felt so unfair that I almost quit the game completely.

However, after the first major fight with the Pursuer, everything started to click, and before I knew it I found myself really loving the game. The weird, disjointed setting of Drangleic was so captivating, and it really made me want to keep diving in to find out more about this sad, desolate world between worlds.

There are certainly some ambitious changes made here that don’t quite work in my opinion, but much like some other folks out there, I learned to love Dark Souls II, and I hope that anyone having a hard time with it pushes past that difficulty curve and finds beauty in that despair the way I did.