The content addition felt solid, although I would have appreciated either of the two challenge paths to have been made a bit longer, since they are basically two rooms full of enemies leading into a boss, unless you decide to explore to pick up a few non-essential items; they didn’t feel as rewarding as the main path in my opinion.
Outside of the repetitious boss, there’s very little to complain about with Crown of the Old Iron King. As you descend deeper in Brume Tower, there’s much to uncover and you’re often given multiple paths to explore. Regardless of how you progress, that familiar sense of dread will plague every step. Crown of the Old Iron King only gets more insidious as it goes on and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
One of the best Games known to mankind.
From Software is a safe heaven for the Gaming community.
Especially in times where big Developers dissapiont us with theyr fraudulent intent.
Praise the sun!
Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Old Iron King gets the formula right, but only if you’ve invested the time required to match its level of difficulty with your own and you’re willing to listen to what it’s trying to tell you.
Crown of the Old Iron King is a showcase of Dark Souls II's aggressive enemy encounter design. It folds a few other cards in favor of its ace, but such is the endearing nature and defining risk of inspired post-game content. Applied to Dark Souls II, Iron King stands as a thoughtful one-off that fits neatly alongside Sunken King.
The actual run time of the DLC is short, too. Too short. Perhaps because the puzzles and level structure of Sunken King provided more trial and error and time spent experimenting with the layout, it took me longer to work through that one. So, while this expansion is still fun, it's the least worthwhile addition to the Souls experience to date.
The Crown of the Old Iron King fits nicely into the world of Dark Souls II.
For the second of a three part expansion, the player gains access to the Brume Tower. This tower is an abandoned iron foundry surrounded by an ashen exterior and containing intricate passages within it. These halls are not empty, however, as they are home to the long-forgotten iron soldiers of the King's past. Alongside them are twisted, flaming effigies which hold soul fragments of Nadalia, Bride of Ash. Destroying these angry statues will cease their attack and give the player a piece of Her soul. The many dim corridors that stretch throughout the iron towers allow for freedom of exploration. From the start there are several possible routes for the player to venture towards, packed with enemies and loot along the way.
At the end of each route there is a real fight to be had. Both of the main bosses in this DLC are noticeably challenging. They will test your skill and maybe even have you rearranging your specs just to stand a chance. And as it goes with Souls games, the feeling of gratification will come after a hard-earned success. The bosses also connect into the lore of the Iron King and his rule, for those interested. The third (optional) boss fight is at the end of a co-op dungeon area as seen in the previous expansion. Disappointingly, the boss here is a re-skin of a boss already in the game but, because this is analogous to the 'gank squad' from the Sunken King DLC, it is forgivable. This is also not the say that the player won't be challenged by this bonus area.
Overall, the Crown of the Old Iron King challenged me with its labyrinthian level design and brutal enemies. On NG++, one boss fight took me several hours to complete. Factoring in the time for exploration, this DLC seemed longer than the previous expansion- and certainly harder. FromSoftware yet again adds an exciting realm to explore and difficult obstacles to overcome. I can hardly wait for the final part next month.
Good DLC, bun not as good as the first one locations design-wise and atmosphere-wise. There are some cool shortcuts though. New enemy types are nice and the new bosses are good too (except Blue Smelter Demon... he's just a re-used boss from the original). Overall, the DLC is worth money/time.
Disappointment. Definitely worse than The Sunken King. Theoretically about the same value, so 10 bucks for 5 hours of gameplay including some co-op and pvp, so still questionable, but compared to the previous DLC, the quality is even weaker here. It's still hard, especially if you're playing on NG+ and more, so at least you'll get a good amount of combat challenge, but Souls series is not just about the difficulty, the main reason why I love original Dark/Demon Souls is the atmosphere, story and the level design, and all of that is lacking here. Level design looked promising at first, but in the end it's mostly a vertical mess filled with elevators, atmosphere is ruined by constant annoying sounds of those elevators or lava flow and the lore behind all that is quite minimal. (No new NPC's whatsoever again). Another big let-down were the bosses, even less inspired than the ones in the main game and even though this was my criticism with previous DLC, here it's even worse - a big knight with a big sword, an overgrown Shiva and the blue Smelter Demon? Is this really the best you can do? I still liked some parts, the whole ash theme and the ashen idol mechanic for example, but for the first time in the Souls series I found that I wasn't really enjoying myself, I was just plaything through. It's a pity, because The Sunken King was pretty decent DLC with many interesting ideas and I was hoping for an increasing quality level and eventually an impressive trilogy, but the Crown of the Old Iron King feels more like a Dark Souls 2 outtake/b-side/leftover. 5/10
The DLC is not bad, it has interesting game mechanics and a lore part. But the locations are monotonous. There is also a very large number of mobs. There are just a lot of them, why? And the boss color change is annoying.
Probably the worst thing of From Software. Hellish areas, artifically difficult, poor level design infested with tons of ennemies, this dlc is **** and carried by Fume Knight and Sir Alonne. Never playing it again, and if it wasn't for the 2 bosses it would be a 0
SummaryCrown of the Old Iron King features an entirely different world within the Dark Souls II universe where players will venture into a massive tower swamped by black mist where flames, smoke and sorcery sadistically lurk.