GB Feature: Dark Souls II: Crown of the Ivory King Review
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In order to round off our review coverage for the entirety of From Software's The Lost Crowns DLC trilogy for Dark Souls II, we've just finished publishing our full review of Crown of the Ivory King. As usual, I'll leave you with a paragraph to sample:
Crown of the Ivory King offers a mix of some more and less conventional enemies that closely mirrors the other two DLCs, and also uses a lot of the same tricks in terms of encounter design. What's more interesting in the DLC approach to monster design and placement, though, is the way it also bucks some of the other trends the previous two DLCs and the main game had set. For example, most humanoid enemies come equipped with ranged attacks this time around, even if they already had melee attacks in their repertoire, making retreats a trickier proposition. There are also some enemies with interesting mechanics attached to them, like giant golems that come alive if you kill other enemies near them, spiky rodents that fill a similar role as the "bonewheels" of the original Dark Souls, and even enemies that purposefully fish for a backstab. In other words, the DLC is more than capable of offering welcome surprises even to someone like me who is already well aware of the design of these games, though nothing an attentive player can't overcome. In a more disappointing turn, though, a few optional areas' enemies reuse assets from the main game in an incredibly blatant way. I wouldn't mind if it was done tastefully, like with the invader NPCs who are just as creative and hilarious in this DLC as they were in the other two, if also slightly annoying for not adhering to the game's established rules, but this is stretching it.
