Dark Souls II: What GamesRadar Wants to See

Now that a Dark Souls sequel is officially confirmed and a few preliminary details have been leaked, GamesRadar has taken it upon themselves to put together a fourteen-page feature describing “what they want in the next death-filled adventure” so that we can compare it to our very own lists. A few of the items that hit home for me:

So, yes, combat is incredibly important to the Souls franchise–but Dark Souls suffered from a few technical hiccups that made it unfairly grueling at times. For instance, a side effect of building such a gorgeous, giant world was that a lot of processing power was required to render it. That became problematic when a mammoth undead dragon suddenly lunged at you full force while the frame rate dipped into the “oh god this is unplayable” range.

To make matters worse, the targeting system worked sporadically at best when Dark Souls launched, making already tough encounters all the more difficult. And for fans of online PvP, nothing killed that human-slaying buzz quicker than a hefty dose of lag. Thankfully, Dark Souls II will have dedicated servers, which should alleviate that issue–but ensuring the frame rate and control elements are in perfect working condition will make the game a far more enjoyable experience.

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There are tons of awesome weapons in the Souls games, most of which can be upgraded to become more effective so long as you have the required materials on hand. To boost the effectiveness of your weapon of choice, you can imbue it with one of several special properties–lightning, enchanted, chaos, etc. Not only do these often add elemental or magic damage to your otherwise physical attacks, but certain properties scale a weapon’s attack damage with specific character stats. The brilliance of this system was that it allowed you to create a powerful weapon tailored to your character build, regardless of what stats you’d dumped points into. But what if that system were taken one step further?

We’d love to see some new paths for weapon upgrades–maybe ice or other elements could make an appearance here–or, perhaps, a duality system that lets you to imbue a weapon with multiple properties. This would produce nearly limitless possibilities when it comes to crafting the perfect weapon for your character.

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After lots of petitioning by PC gamers, Dark Souls finally received a PC port–unfortunately, it shipped with virtually no settings options, and it was poorly optimized for the platform. It wasn’t until player-made mods added a bevy of configuration tweaks to the game that PC players were able to tap into the game’s full visual potential.

Hopefully FromSoftware has learned from its past mistakes. Seeing as the developer announced a PC version of Dark Souls II right from the start, we can only assume that the developers will spend more time creating a fully functional PC edition of the game, one that won’t require player mods to enjoy.