So, I finally caved and bought Scholar of the First Sin (SOTFS). I actually achieved the platinum for the original Dark Souls II back in 2014; When I looked at PSN Profiles, I saw that I achieved the original platinum in 2 months and 3 days. This time, I achieved the SOTFS platinum in 1 month and 3 days. Who knows? If there is another remake then I might get it done in 3 days...
Stranger things have happened
Without further ado, here is my review of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin...buckle up because this is going to be a big one.
The Game
Well, where do I start? SOTFS boasts a "complete rework" of the enemy placement, AI, and invasions (amongst other things). I was originally excited to see these changes but I quickly came to realise that after 6 years, I had completely forgotten the fine details of enemy placement and the only big surprise for me was the new invasions. I'm sure that there were a lot more inclusions but the time gap was too large to remember!
So, let's look at the graphics first.
The game has had an overhaul for current-gen systems and to be fair, the game does have its moments. There are some areas that look beautiful (Majula, Lost Bastille, Heidie's Tower of Flame, Brume Tower) and some of the enemy design is fantastic. Sadly, these plus-points are not enough to disguise the fact that the game has some serious gristle when it comes to a coherent visual experience. You can forgive the fact that it has traveled from the PS3 but I remember finding the graphics for Dark Souls to be better than this second outing.
One serious issue for me too was the level design. In other Soulsborne titles, I often found myself in awe of the level design but unfortunately, I did not find this with SOTFS. The starting hub is too big for my liking, most of the levels are lacking in wonder/lore execution, and some of the levels are just designed to infuriate you (SHRINE OF AMANA!!!!!!!) Another factor that plays into this disdain of mine is the enemy placement. Whoever designed SOTFS apparently needs a hug as some of the areas were plain evil. "Git gud" you say? Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge and sometimes, a gank is what I need to get the blood pumping. This does not mean that I want to take two steps into an area and get rushed by 3 soldiers, 5 archers, 7 dogs, a giant, and the entire cast of Glee. I found myself despising some levels and this is something that I have not done before in a Soulsborne game. Disliking? Yes. Despising? No.
Another big thing to talk about is the bosses. I, (like most Soulsborne fans) love bosses. They are what makes these games great and SOTFS boasts a massive boss roster which you would think is a good thing? Sadly, this isnt the case. SOTFS contains some of the most "meh" bosses in the whole series. Also, the design was something that I found was quite all over the place. Take for example:
- Bosses that look great - The Pursuer, Darklurker, The Rotten
- Bosses that almost look great - The Lost Sinner, Ruin Sentinels, Old Iron King
- Bosses that do not look great...at all - Dragonrider, Giant Lord, Skeleton Lords
The game had a big issue with consistency across the boss experience and I wish more effort had been taken to rethink some of the boss fights. There was also a huge problem with boss-run-up-fatigue syndrome. I have no idea why SOTFS insisted on having such problematic runups leading to bosses. Take for example:
- Smelter Demon - A horde of Allone Knights and archers that can 2-shot you
- Blue Smelter Demon - The same but with spellcasters and a smaller tunnel
- Sir Allone - Another horde of Allone Knights plus fire salamanders
- Afflicted Graverobber and Co. - A literal cave of nightmares
- Lud and Zallen - The frozen wastes of the seventh layer of hell
I am firmly against this idea of having a huge runup before a boss. Why should you punish players for learning by dying when there is already is a health-cut mechanic for punishing death? With some bosses, I would find myself dying 3/4 times on the run-up before I even got to the boss! Even if I didn't die, I would use half my resources to stay alive. If you want this done right, look at Fume Knight: Bonfire by the boss, optional 2 big-boy enemies, Nice. This placement gave me an opportunity to get to learn the boss with only the frustration of dying to that boss.
The Platinum
This platinum, like most Soulsborne titles, is long, frustrating, and full of opportunities to screw up. You have to get all of the Sorceries/Miracles/Hexes/Pyromancies which now include the DLC areas (which to be fair, are very fun!). You also have to do certain things for NPCs or risk getting locked out until the next playthrough. Also, there is a significant amount of grinding needed to get some items without having to play online/ do PVP. This, plus a clunky gaming experience amounts to a difficult platinum. You have to really love the Soulsborne series to want to take this on.
My go-to guide for this was:
https://www.trueachievements.com/game/Dark-Souls-II-Scholar-of-the-First-Sin/walkthrough/1
My roadmap consisted of:
- Play through the game with the walkthrough, noting where to pick up key items.
- Get to the "Throne of Want" and move onto the DLC
- Complete the DLC (with walkthrough) to see the fastest route for collecting DLC key items
- Complete the DLC bosses (optional)
- Kill 3 final bosses in Throne of Want
- Complete the covenant requirements for items (except Warriors of Sunlight)
- Make sure I have collected everything that I can in this NG cycle (including Vendrick)
- Move to NG+
- Play through the game while collecting missing key items
- Farm 30 sunlight medals (tips below)
- Move to NG++
- Rush to "The Rotten" boss and farm kills until enough souls to open Shrine of Winter early (see tips below)
- Get to Drangleic castle and buy final items from the NPC
- Forget about the blacksmith trophy and have to go to Lost Bastille one more time to get it...
Platinum Tips
As you can see, this is not a "playthrough once, collect things, win" type of game. If it will help, I have some general tips that may assist you with this platinum:
Build:
I have always played a melle/dexterity character during my Soulsborne experience (yes, I know) and I was not planning on "going heavy" for this game. After some research, I ran with a "Hexterity" build. This build was commonly referred to as the ROB/FLYNN build (which I originally thought was a Machinehead joke but apparently not!). This build relies on a few principles:
- Get a standard rapier and upgrade it to +10 ASAP
- Infuse the rapier with Dark
- Get your Adaptability to 20
- Do not go above 9 vitality (and use Third Dragon Ring to keep your max load under 60)
- Use Ring of Blades
- Use Flynn's Ring
- I used the Sunset Staff to use Hexes
- I then used Dark Weapon to buff my rapier and Dark Orb as a ranged filler
As long as you prioritise leveling Dex, Faith, and Int equally (as dark damage scales off the lowest of the two stats) then you will find yourself cutting through most bosses with relative ease. The rapier has some immense stamina preservation, has a beautiful poke, and the dark scaling with the infusion is gorgeous. As a plus, most bosses are not resilient to dark so you can chip away until a boss wonders why it just got poked full of dark, swirling holes.
It took me a little while to get this build up and running to its full capacity but it was a welcome change to the clunky feeling that I got from most weapons in this game.
These were my stats after beating Fume Knight
Covenant Grinding:
The two covenants that are worth noting are the Bell Maniacs and the Sunbros. Both need a significant grind to get the required items/kills.
With the Bell Keepers, I went to Belfry Sol, equipped the ring, and went to work. After a while, I was finding that my summon rate was roughly...0 (give or take) and that this was going to take forever. It turns out that there is a small chance that you can be invaded by an NPC which counts as a player kill! So, I ran the Belfry 10 times to kill every enemy and then did this route:
- Go up the ladder
- Check on the Northwest side (by the staircase towers)
- If the red phantom is there: kill, then Aged Feather back to the bonfire
- If the red phantom is not there: Aged Feather back to the bonfire
I thought that this would take years but it only took me around an hour to get the kills required. Was RNG was on my side? Maybe lady luck was in a particularly good mood that day? Who knows!
Warriors of Sunlight:
Now, this is a trophy that almost made me give up the platinum at the final hurdle:
Have you heard of soul memory? It is the number of souls that a player has picked up throughout their journey. Kill a boss? Consume a soul? Kill enemies? These will all add to your total Soul Memory. Now, this may not seem relevant but it is HUGE when it comes to achieving the 30 sunlight medals (as you need to match with players online to help them with bosses.) If you have amassed a ton of soul memory then you might struggle to match with players who may be out of your range (up or down). I was on 5 million soul memory when I attempted this and I was not finding anyone to match with. I read online that you can farm the medals offline by killing the Falcon mobs in Things Betwixt. Hurray! Cue two hours of grinding without one medal...Boo!!!
So, I did some more reading and I found this tactic:
- Look on the map of locations and see if there is an orange border around an area. This means that there are a high number of players in your soul level here.
- Go to a high-traffic boss and put your summon sign down.
- Kill the boss.
- Praise the sun.
Now, I skipped all of this faff and stayed static next to the bonfire of Fume Knight. Why? It is a bonfire that has one of the shortest runs in the game to a boss, the boss is challenging enough that players need help, and it contains a lot of high-level players. All of these reasons made for a decent summon rate. Now, the problem with this tactic is that Fume Knight is no pushover and I found myself only beating the boss one in every 3 summons. This was mostly due to inexperienced players not destroying the healing totems and/or getting one-shotted during the fight. I am fortunate to be able to work from home so I put my summon down, got on with work, and hopped in whenever the summon notification popped up. All in all, this added roughly 15 hours onto my platinum. If not more. I also equipped the Gape Ring to not increase my soul memory.
This may seem like a big thing to commit to but it did remind me how much I love being a Sunbro and the feeling of helping a fellow player is always great! Still, this aspect of the trophy will put people off.
Shrine of Winter Skip:
This one was easy to work out once I saw some tips. Firstly, KEEP ALL OF THE BOSS SOULS THAT YOU DON'T NEED. Once you hit NG++, Look at your soul memory (mine was 5 million), write it down. Now, consume every single soul you have (you should have a lot) and then make your way to The Rotten. Kill him, use a bonfire aesthetic and repeat until you have 3 million more than what you started with. This took around 15 kills to achieve. Walk to the shrine and tada! It will open.
Notable trophies
Oh, Lucatiel. I loved her lore, her dedicated service to you, and her relentless optimism. What I don't love is having to make sure that she survives during each fight that you summon her in! I also am not much of a fan of having to stick to a guide to make sure that you don't miss every interaction with her. As long as you nuke the boss that she is helping with then she should survive. If not, then be prepared to die and bring her in again.
In my opinion, all of the "collect all..." trophies should be notable but I feel that I have covered enough of them in the review. The hex trophy is notable as it requires you to traverse the Dark Chasm of Old (in three locations). These chasms can be incredibly frustrating and the enemies inside can kill you in a heartbeat. Combine this with needing to use a Human Effigy every time you enter and this can cause you a lot of problems. Oh, did I mention Darklurker? No? Well, you also need to kill the boss at the end of the third dungeon. Darklurker is an awesome boss but he is also one of the hardest in the game. Guess what happens if you die? That's right, you will have to spend another effigy, re-traverse through a chasm and fight him/her/it again. I killed Darklurker on my fifth attempt but that was enough for me to be already tearing my hair out.
I like this one as Vendrick is a lore boss done right:
"Go on, and see the King. He who made Drangleic what it once was; he who peered at the essence of the soul."
Ok... a big, scary king. Gotcha.
You visit his castle, you see his queen, you hear the tales of his conquest over the giants, you travel far and wide to the Royal Crypts, you beat Velstadt (Vendricks loyal guardian)...and you are met by a shambling, mindless shell of this once-great monarch. This surprise is a perfect way to bait you into thinking that he isn't an absolute unit of a boss! Vendrick hits harder than any other enemy in the game and has a health bar that rivals any Soulsborne boss. Big tip, make sure that you have at least 4 Giant Souls (5 if you kill the Ancient Dragon...he isn't that hard). This will knock his base defense down to a manageable level. If you don't do this then you may as well be trying to stab a skyscraper with a butter knife. Luckily, he is slow, predictable, and stupid. You will enjoy this fight.
This was a part of the game that was quite fun to mess around with. One playthough saw Rosatiel dressed in the finest caster garb, one saw her decked out in tattered rags, and my final playthrough saw her as a full-blown allone knight (that was weird, I didn't like that). A fun trophy with an interesting gameplay mechanic.
I originally laughed at the simplicity of this trophy but I managed to achieve this almost instantaneously (I rolled off the edge in Things Betwixt). I would love to see someone get this as their last trophy before the platinum. If you have done this then let me know!
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