Dark Souls 2 has just been released on the PC and it’s time to see whether or not FromSoftware has learned from its mistakes. Before starting, let’s get one thing straight; no. The lighting system that wowed everyone when Dark Souls 2 was initially introduced is nowhere to be found. Yeap, FromSoftware removed that lighting system from the PC version too, something that does not surprise us. While FromSoftware claimed that the PC version was the lead platform for Dark Souls 2, it is obvious that this was a lie. If the PC version was the lead platform then there was no reason to remove it. After all, the lighting system was removed from console versions because the game could not run acceptably on them, something that is not an issue at all on the PC.
As always, we used an overclocked Q9650 (4.2Ghz) with an Nvidia GTX690, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7-64Bit and the latest version of the ForceWare drivers. Dark Souls 2 is not a demanding title, especially when it comes to its CPU requirements. Our Q9650 was not stressed at all and was able to provide a constant 60fps experience. Moreover, we did not witness any slowdowns even when we simulated a dual-core CPU, meaning that those with older CPUs will be able to enjoy this new Dark Souls title.
When it comes to its GPU requirements, Dark Souls 2 can be quite demanding when you combine Nvidia’s ‘Quality’ ambient occlusion with really high resolutions. Unfortunately there is no SLI profile for Dark Souls 2, meaning that only one of our GPU cores was being used. Therefore, a single GTX680 will be able to handle the game with all its bells and whistles enabled at 1080p. A GTX680 is also able to provide an amazing 4K experience, as we tested the game at 3840×2160 without any performance drops. Yes, contrary to its predecessor, Dark Souls 2 does not suffer from any resolution limitation. And while the game comes with a locked framerate, it’s not as low as the one found in the first part of the series (60fps versus 30fps).
As said, Nvidia owners can enable higher levels of ambient occlusion. The downside of this, however, is that this tweak comes with a huge performance impact. Following Durante’s guide, we managed to enable ‘Quality’ AO for Dark Souls 2. Unfortunately though, the game had major performance issues at both 3840×2160 and 3200×1800. We were able to play the game with constant 60fps at 2560×1440, however there was noticeable aliasing (we had the in-game AA disabled as it was blurring the textures). Given the fact that the difference between the default and Nvidia’s Quality AO is minimal, we strongly suggest avoiding this new AO technique. After all, it’s way better playing the game at a higher resolution than enabling a more demanding AO effect.
Back in 2012, we honored Dark Souls with our “Worst PC Optimized Title” award. Thankfully, Dark Souls 2 is not as half-assed as its predecessor. FromSoftware has included a nice amount of graphical options to tweak, and players can bind almost all keys. There is a slight mouse acceleration side-effect (can be easily noticed while moving the mouse really, really slow), though it’s not as annoying as in other titles. Thankfully, the overall mouse support is better this time around, meaning that the game can be played with keyboard+mouse. Hooray.
Still, things could have been way, way better. Let’s overlook for a second the fact that there are a lot of low-res textures. FromSoftware claimed that it has used really high-resolution textures on the PC version and while this may be partially true, most textures look as blurry as those found in most multi-platform titles. But that’s not of a big issue as PC gamers can use SweetFX to improve things. What will certainly frustrate you – especially if you want to use keyboard+mouse – is the fact that the game displays the X360 icons instead of the keyboard keys you’ve been using.
So imagine yourself, playing the game, going through the tutorials, and being asked to push the LT in order to parry. LT? What does LT do? So you hit “ESC” to bring up the main Menu, and start looking for that LT. Most games feature an X360 layout so there must be something similar here, right? Nyah. Nothing. Zip. Now at this point, most will say that Dark Souls 2 was developed to be played with a gamepad. Well, that’s because the developers are at fault. Dark Souls 2 requires precision, and the keyboard+mouse combo is ideal for such titles. The ability to move quickly and accurately the camera is essential. It’s not like there haven’t been third-person RPGs on the PC before, so let’s not pretend that the keyboard+mouse combo is not suited for them. The problem here is that FromSoftware decided to remind us how stubborn most developers are when porting their games from consoles.
If you still don’t get what we’re talking about, here is an example: Imagine playing a game on X360 (or PS3). During the tutorial, the game asks you to press ‘F/B + Right Mouse Button’ to perform a move. Would that frustrate you? Of course and it would, especially when there is no explanation of what F, B and RMB actually do.
Graphics wise, Dark Souls 2 is at least better looking than its console counterpart. Thanks to the ability to use higher resolutions, PC gamers can enjoy crisped visuals. There are a lot of low-resolution textures, and the lighting system has been degraded. Seriously, there are occasions where the lighting is simply awful. Still, PC gamers can use SweetFX to improve the image quality of the game. Below you can find a comparison between the vanilla (left) and our SweetFX version (right).
All in all, Dark Souls 2 feels like most multi-platform titles. While it is not as bad as its predecessor, it’s not up to what Nixxes, Crytek, DICE and United Front Games have offered. And while there is a nice amount of graphical options to tweak, the game suffers from mouse acceleration side-effects. Furthermore, there are X360 button on-screen icons that are not explained at all in the main menu. Moreover, the PC version does not sport any major feature to justify Namco’s claims of it (a.k.a. the PC) being the lead platform. Dark Souls 2 is ‘functional’ from the get-go and once you figure out its control scheme, it can become really enjoyable. And while it is the definitive edition of Dark Souls 2, it’s not up to what we hoped. Well, at least we can give kudos to FromSoftware for avoiding this year’s ‘Worst PC Optimized Title’ award.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Has anyone tried RadeonPro’s ambient occlusion with this game? It’s an awesome little program, loved it with my 6870 and it makes me miss having an AMD card. Some elements work with my GTX760, too (like higher-quality FXAA than the Nvidia control panel gives). Not sure if its ambient occlusion would perform better than Nvidia’s, and I’m not sure it works with Nvidia cards. AMD owners should try it, though. I think there are different quality settings so there might be a sweet spot so to speak.
I love RadeonPro and can’t wait for its New Version 🙂 cool thing and not every game is “happy” with it. but i will try when i get DS2
Is it worth the Gaming Evolved app? Because i installed 3 times and i delete it after some time of use.
Its OK when you like tracking Games and Have every Game track in one place in Order and of course the Raptr Points and Free stuff
Really? About time someone picked that guy up. And AMD definitely needs some help, their base driver options have been a bit behind Nvidia, that’s why I loved RadeonPro so much
level 71 add me on steam qpmk
Thank you DSOG for being straight, cause PC gamer and Durante, the very famous modder are just the FROM Software best friends, trying to fool everyone saying that this is the definitive port of DS2.
Well, it could be better, yes. But it’s still the best version out there.
Yeah, exactly. As definitive as it gets at least.
The stupidity of your comment made me laugh so hard.
PC is the lead platform, lol.
By the way, Boris (ENB) said many bad things about Dark Souls, so I doubt we will see a ENB mod for this game, unfortunately.
I used mouse and keyboard for about 5 minutes before switching to my 360 controller.
SweetFx is really nice in all my games 😉 even the Crysis 3 i give you the Mod which is compatible with all Games -> https://www.mediafire.com/folder/svwnicwhggky8//User
playing dark souls with a keyboard even if it did work well is lol
I’ve seen a few people claim they’re running the game at 1440p, 8x SGSSAA and forced HBAO+ while still maintaining 60 fps. I don’t know how the hell that’s possible because whether I run my 770’s in single card or AFR2 mode I cant even do 2x SGSSAA without the fps plummeting. Right now I’m using Durante’s new program and I only have post processing, VSSAO and SMAA turned on and I still get drops in some areas.
well, i play from laptop with HD7650 1gb and go with 60 fps on high/normal settings, so dont care GTX680 can handle dark souls 2 woow 😀
i heard someone runs it on 8600GT.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/pc-games-have-surpassed-console-games-globally/033849
PC GAMING IS DEAD111!!!11
doesnt matter, consoletards like Dan will keep saying pc gaming is dying and will be replaced by tablets.
You cant win.
Worst port of 2014, stay far away from this console trash!
LoL. It runs great even on low-end hardware. Far from being the worst port.
If it runs great it’s a bad port because it’s not using enough PC features.
If it looks great it’s a bad port because it’s not “optimized” well enough.
Devs pretty much can’t win because someone will always complain no matter what they do.
worst control scheme i;’ve ever seen. Shift right click to accept keybinds? (and NO WHERE is that even documented) give me a fucking break!
Gotta agree with that and gamedevelopment is pretty complicated nowdays.
This site is simply one of the worst examples of “journalism” I’ve ever encountered.
“While FromSoftware claimed that the PC version was the lead platform for Dark Souls 2, it is obvious that this was a lie”
A lie in what way? I’ve had the pleasure of having in depth discussions with individuals with more knowledge of the game’s inner workings and one who was close to the game’s development and they’ve concluded/confirmed that this game was in fact developed with pc in mind from the getgo.
The lighting changes were done for many reasons, most specifically (three important reasons in fact), reasons I’m not even going to go into. That’s what “journalists” do, look for facts and back them up with sound evidence, instead of spewing tripe obviously dripping with pc elitism.
More examples of bullshit journalism:
“Dark Souls 2 requires precision, and the keyboard+mouse combo is ideal for such titles.The problem here is that FromSoftware decided to remind us how stubborn most developers are when porting their games from consoles.”
The game was designed from the ground to be played with a controller, Rts games are designed to be played with keyboards and if you’re too young to remember, several pc exclusive games from yesteryear were designed to be played first and foremost with joysticks.
I wouldn’t play arma 2 with a controller anymore than I’d play dark souls with a keyboard. Different games are suited for different control methods, and the pc gives you that choice to pick what’s best for the game. Pc elitism mentality won’t help you.
Learn to write objectively, that’s an important thing if you intend for this website to even grow. I get that you want to stand out from the rest , but the key is to write objectively with no personal prejudice or bias, otherwise you’ll lose potential readers who are looking for something fresh and new.
Otherwise, your site will only be populated by elitist and people who don’t even realize that even Once upon a time, you needed joysticks to play some of the best pc games, or needed a decent knowledge of ms-dos to even get a pure pc game to run properly.
PC Games never work for every possible combination of hardware at any point in time, and even today, that hasn’t changed different.
I don’t know, I was expecting some kind of aimless rant but, actually, you are right in this and I agree on your points.
I do respect guys behind this site and I think they do a much better job when it comes to gaming journalism than some of the high-profile gaming sites out there, but sometimes they just go out of their way and say silly things like in this case.
However, they can be forgiven because even when they write something subjective there are good intentions behind it and in most cases (clearly, not all), they are right.
Both “Die By The Sword” and “Severance” featured similar combat mechanics (hell, Die By The Sword had an even deeper combat system) and worked wonderfully with keyboard+mouse. Actually, they were ‘built for keyboard+mouse’ and we are talking about really, really old third-person titles. Seriously, we’ve had a lot of third-person games these past 20 years and all of them worked great with keyboard+mouse. It’s not a new genre or a genre that did not work with keyboard+mouse or a flight sim or a sports game with 360 movement (for which a gamepad is a must).
If a developer is incapable of offering proper controls for games that have always worked great with a specific combo (especially when they are claiming developing a game with PC as a lead platform), then that’s something that we should blame them for. Plain and simple. Or else we can start saying “This game does not use PC hardware properly. Oh that’s because you need more raw power as it is single-CPU threaded. It’s not the game’s or the developers’ fault.” Well, no thanks, that’s not how we work. We were the first who did not defend FromSoftware when those awful official screenshots got released (and criticized them for being ugly). We were the first that did not defend Ubisoft when AC4 got out and was messed up. And we will keep saying what is what, no matter what.
As for the port. There is mouse acceleration that is due to emulating the analog movement of a stick (guess it was THAT hard to have 1-1 movement for a game that has the PC as a lead platform). There are X360 button indications on-screen (something that most console ports suffer from. Again it’s not that hard to change them. Hell, it was a big issue when that started happening back in the early days of X360). I mean, seriously now? You’re telling me that a company went all the trouble of including a new mouse control scheme (something that can be easily made in most console ports, despite the fact that most developers are not even bothered with) and ‘decided’ to emulate the analog stick movement of a controller?Or did not include proper button/key indicators? That’s idiocy.
Also, there is no proper AA option (I guess again that it was too hard to include them for a PC game). The lighting system was removed, despite the fact that the PC platform was powerful enough to keep it (and we’ve already shared the official announcement from Namco Bandai regarding this so unless you are a member of the development team, we can all conclude that that statement was valid). Because we can all play the ‘I have sources inside the team that told me this and that’ act (no offense). So let’s stick to facts. There is no feature (apart from some higher resolution textures) that makes this “PC version” any different than the latest console ports. The game welcomes you with a “Press Start Button” screen (do I really have to remind you what happened with Crysis 2 and that “Press Start Button” that forced Crytek to release a patch to rename it to “Press Enter”? Do I? Or let’s again pretend that FromSoftware had no idea what to include and decided to ‘borrow’ the message from the console version.)
All signs are there guys. It’s not really hard to find them (I’m sure there are even more than those I mentioned). It’s really easy to say “Oh it’s not a console port because I love that X company” or because a game is good, but all facts are against such a thing. And although I don’t really feel the need to – though it saddens the whole team a bit that people are still hesitant believing us – I can point you to Digital Foundry that writes ‘However, certain technical hiccups do overshadow this port job.’ and ‘While shadows and textures are much improved, there are some missed opportunities in this porting effort.’ and ‘It’s a tedious hurdle before an otherwise-appealing PC port then’
If you click on “Franx’s” name, he/she/it has only one comment, a strong indicator that his/her/its account was created just for this post.
Considering the recent Facebook debacle, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this is someone with a vendetta against you and this site.
(And the content of their post is pretty much nonsense; I will point out how as time allows.)
What a lot of nonsense, any third person game is perfectly playable on a mouse and keyboard and your Arma comparison is stupid to say the least. Since when do reviews or journalists write subjectively? Most of the time it’s their opinion and based a lot on their platform of choice, go watch Total Biscuit, he does the same thing.
Also, “PC is lead platform” so we expected good mouse and keyboard support which it turns out is mostly good but Bandai bullsh*itted us just like the graphical downgrade on their big bag of lies E3 video.
Yeah when do critics and such write reviews without personal bias? All i read from ign and gamespot is full of bias.
Everyone has biases, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t tell the truth.
John does a great job with this site. It’s not his fault that PCs are the absolute best platform for consumer gaming.
It’s like calling the NFL “elitist” because they hire only the biggest, strongest, and fastest football players.
Franx is suffering from PC envy, not PC “elitism.”
i know but most critics are full of it. Thats why i stopped reading their trash.
(Heretic II is great with MKB.)
“Learn to write objectively, that’s an important thing if you intend for this website to even grow”
Hmm reason i check this site is becauese it is infromative on what was the original promises of the developers, what they actually delivered and how the game runs and controls with indepth analysis rather typical bs “journalism” with the likes of sesslers or gamespot/ign, id say thats the reason it stands out from the rest and got a good following, no reason to follow the site if it is like the rest.
A journalist can be objective while at the same time doing all those things you mentioned.
bait n switch the game. not even worth pirating. wheres that lighting system? game looks terribad. textures look like early last gen console games
Now you’re just being stupid. Here is a nice comparison in textures from the console game to the pc version. Obviously from did put effort into higher res textures from the start then scaled them down for consoles.
https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5556/14029279955_b6d7c4f411_o.png
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2909/14026114271_1b9bdcc29e_o.jpg
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7227/14001174381_1225424ef7_o.png
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7174/14001146282_5f2e93d0e0_o.png
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7140/14004788294_ae24436fe5_o.png
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2935/14001148332_b6db651a00_o.png
i already have like 28 hours played, game runs great, looks great, enviroments are nice, some of them realy cool, combat is better than ds1 with more advanced moves, online works very good and fast for me. It has a couple of poor boss fights, but that is kinda it. Sure lights were changed but it is a really good game, i am glad to have paid money for it, i already got my money’s worth in these 28 hours so yeah, stop hating.
I like the infromation about the controls and the menu issues thank you for your great work.
now mods are out and DarkSoulsII nexus is now open. try Enb v.0253 for DSII and combine it with wickfutENB+Grim and you can see the magic, or use his “Pretty ENB” to see even more magic but game become unplayble with Pretty ENB. i’m going to try both of them today. they add some new effects, more dark to darksouls, and nice DoF and AO etc…
I didnt know if I should buy Dark Souls 2, because I’, not really into this sort of games, but my firend reccomende it to me. And now I’m addicted. I bought it at http://www.kinguin.net check it, they have the lowest prices!