Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Old Iron King review: Pack mentality

Even in a franchise bathed in brutality, the second installment in developer From Software's downloadable content trilogy contains the most punishing hours I've ever experienced in the action role-playing series. Unlike its predecessor, Crown of the Sunken King, it focuses not on changing the environment through puzzles but on surviving the environment itself. In that sense, it is a return to the formula established by the original Dark Souls, where astute players can use the quirks of the world to their advantage.

But that landscape is teeming with herds of powerful enemies and inhumanely powered bosses, and they will crush anyone unprepared for Crown of the Old Iron King's unrelenting mercilessness. If you arrive underprepared, as I first did, the difficulty is likely to tarnish an otherwise excellent expansion.

Like the previous DLC, Crown of the Old Iron King’s world is connected to but separate from the landmass in which Dark Souls 2’s campaign takes place. You begin high atop a monumental fortress overrun by murderous vestiges of a bygone era and make your way into its depths. Not only are its freakishly powerful enemies new, but they tend to travel in packs. Managing these herds is a welcome twist on an established formula. I not only had to learn the rhythms of fighting singular enemies, but how to prevent my would-be murderers from overwhelming me as a gang.

After taking turns avoiding and blowing the creatures up without a goal, I realized that they weren’t a direct threat. They were, in fact, scared of me, and I could use that knowledge to my advantage. In a section of gated rooms filled with nearly insurmountable sorcerers, my very presence turned the barrel carriers into living puzzle pieces. I herded them toward my enemies, where they walked into the flames. There, they ignited and exploded and killed everyone but me. On my first playthrough, this new, oblique way of interacting with characters allowed me to dispatch enemies that I could barely damage with my regular weapons, hexes and sorceries.

On my first playthrough, I spent more than nine hours fighting two different bosses. I burned through more than 30 Human Effigies and was summoned into countless other games. Not once did I or any of the dozens of players I teamed up with succeed. Yes, the difficulty was ratcheted up, but I also made the assumption that my teammates had the experience and the desire to embrace the extra challenge. Yet we all failed, over and over and over. The Souls formula, in which you learn a little more with each failure, evaporated into annoyance, replaced by nonsense so masochistic that it halted my progress. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back.

Stalled and frustrated, I decided to complete the NG+ campaign and return to Crown of the Old Iron King in a much more powerful form. Starting over from the first bonfire, my journey was easier — but not in any sense easy. Even at level 250, where nearly 300,000 souls separated me from my next level, I needed help with the DLC’s three bosses. But I overcame. They fell at the blunt end of my Dragon Tooth in probably less than an hour, combined.