Dark Souls II

Dark Souls II is an action role-playing game by FromSoftware and the second main installment of the Dark Souls series. The journey takes you to the ruined kingdom of Drangleic, whose inhabitants suffer under the curse of the undead. The focus is on demanding battles, exploring interconnected areas, powerful bosses and a progression system in which collected souls serve as both experience and currency.

Like its predecessor, Dark Souls II combines a largely solo-playable campaign with online features. Other players can be summoned as phantoms for help or appear as invaders; messages and other asynchronous elements also connect the worlds.

The original console versions of Dark Souls II were released in Europe on March 14, 2014 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The PC version followed on April 25, 2014 on Steam.

In 2015, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin followed as an expanded edition. It includes the base game and the three Crown DLCs; on the then-new console generation, it added among other things a revised presentation, changed enemy placement and expanded online features.

The original Dark Souls II was released natively for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Scholar of the First Sin additionally brought the expanded version to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as a separate PC version.

The PS4 version is playable on PlayStation 5 via backward compatibility; accordingly, it is not a standalone native PS5 version. The same applies to the Xbox One version on newer Xbox systems.

Dark Souls II relies on precise, stamina-based melee and ranged combat, in which positioning, timing and knowledge of enemy attack patterns are decisive. Souls are used for leveling up and as currency; whoever dies leaves the souls they carried at the place of death and can only reclaim them by returning successfully.

Weapons, armor, spells and attributes allow for different builds. In addition to single player, cooperative summons and PvP invasions are part of the core structure. Scholar of the First Sin expands the possible online sessions to up to six players and changes matchmaking compared to the original console version.

Dark Souls II received three major DLC chapters: Crown of the Sunken King, Crown of the Old Iron King and Crown of the Ivory King. The expansions add standalone areas, enemies and bosses and together form a coherent Crown trilogy.

Scholar of the First Sin already includes all three expansions in the bundle.

The original PC version dates from 2014 and accordingly lists historical hardware requirements. As minimum, Steam lists among other things 2 GB RAM, a GeForce 9600 GT or Radeon HD 5870 and 12 GB storage; recommended are 4 GB RAM, a GeForce GTX 750 or Radeon HD 6870 and 15 GB storage.

The Windows versions listed there reflect the original release. The current Steam client itself now only supports newer Windows versions.

Scholar of the First Sin is more than a pure DLC bundle. On PS4, Xbox One and the corresponding PC version, enemy placements and parts of the game balance were reworked, online sessions were expanded and the technical presentation was improved. PlayStation lists 1080p at 60 frames per second for the PS4 version.

This edition is the modernized complete version of Dark Souls II, while the original PC version continues to exist as a separate DX9 version.

For the PC version of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, the unofficial mod Seamless Co-op by Yui has been available since September 2026. It enables a continuous co-op session with up to six players, without boss kills, area changes or the death of a teammate automatically ending the group's session.

The mod syncs progress, NPC dialogue and bonfire states and uses Steam's newer networking API. The first release is explicitly marked as alpha, so the developer still lists known synchronization and session bugs.