Where the Crown of the Sunken King took us to the mysterious and monolithic underground city of Shuvla, Crown of the Old Iron King takes us to a far off land filled with endless fields of lively volcano fields. If there truly ever was a king in these lands he ruled over little, save for a few towering spirts that overlook the fields of lava and char. His kingdom has long since crumbled to ruin and is now nothing more than an ash covered abandoned ruin of its former self. The mighty volcanoes spew forth ash that clings to everything like snow, and the entire zone reflects a bright white to make a change of visual tone from the rest of the game. Ashen corpses protrude from the mounds of ash, still in the positions they were when the fires consumed their lands.
What happened here? Who were these people that would live here, and who was the King that ruled them?
Though the previous chapter in this DLC trilogy did a much better job of explaining what had happened to the Sanctum City, here we are left to speculate that this old kingdom lost out to its surroundings and fell into disrepair. Nothing can beat back mighty nature, and it’s a theme that permeates this latest slice of content’s visual design.
The King himself was said to have wielded powers to shape the earth, and with his magic he forged great metal works and machines. His forges rose high into the sky to tower over the fields of lava that fueled their fires. How he came to poses these powers has yet to be known, but so far it would appear that the devastation here was of his own greed and not that of a woman playing the puppeteer. Which has been the case with all of Dark Souls 2’s various plots. All we do know is that he had somehow been turned into a large hulking beast who served as one of the four major bonfire bosses of the main story line.
The Brume tower is the new area added to the game and its design is vertically laid out and there are many nooks to discover while you revive the forges to bring the machines back to life. Where Shuvla feels like a throwback to a Dark Souls level, Brume seems to be invoking Demon’s Souls and its level design.
However, the entire area is considerably smaller and more compact that that of the vast city featured in Sunken King, and for the most part the main path is reasonably straightforward to navigate. There’s more or less a straight path that winds and bends it way through the entire tower area, though it does sprout off a few off shoots. Furthermore, there is only one zone here instead of the three found in the previous DLC, with a much smaller side zone that is really only a small gauntlet with a boss at the end.
Shuvla had its multi-layered three zones that each had several pathways between them, and several “ah-ha!” moments when you discovered the connections. But Brume Tower has little sense of discover as most paths are blocked by a locked door that will wait patiently while you locate its sister set of keys. The moving platforms and hidden switches of Shuvla are a hard act to follow, and I mentioned that before when I didn’t think that From Software could live up to their first DLC for DS2. Often developers will put their best foot forward when looking down a three DLC release cycle, and that is further punctuated by how short the Crown of the Old Iron King is.
However, there is value here that I felt was lacking with the rest of Dark Souls 2, and that is the DLC’s difficulty. Just like Crown of the Sunken King, there are new unique enemies for the zone, but this time around their placement makes them much harder to tackle on your first run through. There are also several “trap” rooms which have enemies hidden in ambush in the ash and their numbers will easily overwhelm you. The tower is filled with the remains of the King’s former lover, her soul has been split into multiple fragments and placed into idols that radiate healing power to resurrect the fallen ashen soldiers. The idols can be destroyed by Smelter Wedges, but you are only given a limited supply before you must embark on a treasure hunt to find more.
Standard enemies are fairly straightforward, but it’s the bosses in Old Iron King that stand out and lend this installment its high level of challenge. They’re noticeably tougher than most of the bosses in Dark Souls 2, and on par with any of the bosses in Dark Souls. As before there are three bosses, but this time around two of them are smaller humanoid-sized creatures who tend to be more difficult to overcome for less skillful players than the larger bosses. They rely on speed and hard-hitting attacks to quickly break your guard and kill you before you’ve recovered. They may even be as difficult as Atorias from Dark Souls, and that is saying something.
The Fume Knight held me up for a few days, and I’ve not been that stuck on a Souls boss since my first encounters with Sif. It felt right to return to this level of difficulty again, but at the same time it was incredibly frustrating as a lot of my deaths were the result of control inputs being delayed or not registering. The responsiveness of the controls - or lack thereof - has been one of my major bugbears with Dark Souls 2, and I know Dark Souls had initially started with these problems before they were patched out; but here and now these issues make a skill-based boss fight much harder than it has any right to be.
Furthermore, there is yet another Smelter Demon as one of the bosses, which would put the generic boss fight up to about four appearances now in Dark Souls 2. While it’s better than making another generic trio fight, it still feels like a lazy design choice by From Software. The Demon is also placed at the end of yet another uninspired gauntlet that is reminiscent of the one in the Sanctum City.
Once again the ending is ushered in rather unceremoniously, and with the crown in hand I stood around asking myself if there was anything left. And there is as this DLC is a treasure hunt filled with secrets and is very much designed for the more skilled player base to enjoy. But at the same time, those same players will be able to breeze through the tower in under a few hours.
However, there is one notable new feature that I welcome to the formula, and that is the scaling difficulty of the bosses as you summon in more allies. The more friends you bring to a fight the less damage a boss will take, and the fights go from you being able to overwhelm them with numbers to a more skill based experience. This is surly to compensate for the fact that most of the bosses in Dark Souls 2 are easily defeated by summoning in players and NPC characters, and most of the player base breezed through the game with this. Those who didn’t learn how to properly solo a difficult boss and dodge their attacks will find that they have a tougher go through this DLC.
While Crown of the Old Iron King brings back the difficulty, it does so in a rather uninspired way. With the tower being easily traversed and the Smelter Demon making yet another appearance, I never quite got the sense of discovery that I did from Crown of the Sunken King. But the two other bosses are easily more memorable that before, and at least there aren’t any more trio boss battles here.
Generally I’m more critical of the Souls games that I am of most other games that I play, and there is something to be said about it taking me over a week to finally beat the DLC. Admittedly I’m not the best player in the world, but I am one of those that feel that Dark Souls 2 is on the easier side. It is refreshing to see that none of the bosses were a one shot kill, and they’ll take some practice to get their timings down – I don’t see any way to sword and board them.
There is only one more hidden zone left in Drangleic, and no apparent story connecting the three DLC areas together. I’m starting to wonder what the point of these DLCs is but to tie up loose ends for the bonfire bosses of the main game. What is the purpose of collecting the three crowns and having all four kings accounted for? Hopefully time will tell and that the final DLC will have an overarching story that ties the entire experience together and explains more of the main game.
Time will tell.
Brian Kale
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