Dark Souls II - Scholar of the First Sin

The pitch

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin is FromSoftware's definitive re-release of 2014's Dark Souls II — the sequel that traded the original's tightly interconnected world for a collection of individually designed levels, while keeping the series' signature deliberate, punishing combat. This edition bundles all three DLC expansions and reworks enemy and item placement throughout.

The bug that became a legend

The most-cited technical complaint in this game's launch-era reviews is specific enough to have become part of series lore. "At the time of release, weapon durability was mistakenly tied to framerate. This meant that at 30fps, your weapon degraded as usual. At 60fps, your weapon broke twice as fast. FROM Software took over a month to patch the issue," reads the most-upvoted negative review on the page, with over 1,200 votes. The bug's absurdity — a modern PC running the game better was mechanically punished for it — is exactly why it's remembered this specifically, years later.

When the fix became a bigger problem than the bug

What compounds the story is what happened next. The same review continues: players used a community-made mod called "DS2Fix" to work around the durability bug while waiting for an official patch, and FromSoftware's anti-cheat system reportedly "soft banned" a number of those players into a restricted matchmaking pool. A separate, detailed review makes the scope of that ban policy explicit: "If you have anything like SweetFX (graphics mod), or even DXTory which is a video capturing software, you will get put into a[n online] game where you can only play with cheaters." Whatever the intent, reviewers describe a policy that treated cosmetic tools and legitimate bug workarounds the same as it treated actual cheating — catching content creators and frustrated players in the same net as hackers.

"The same game again"

A separate, smaller complaint cluster concerns the release itself rather than any bug: existing owners of the original 2014 Dark Souls II and its DLC felt this "Scholar of the First Sin" re-release amounted to selling much of the same content a second time. "A cash grab," reads one 1,017-vote review bluntly, describing it as the PC version of a pattern the studio had also followed with the original game's own late PC port. This is a smaller thread than the durability bug or the ban policy, but a real one, particularly from players who felt the graphical improvements alone didn't justify a full new purchase.

The "black sheep" reputation, examined rather than assumed

Dark Souls II's status as the trilogy's least-loved entry shows up directly in this corpus — "black sheep" and similar framing appear repeatedly — but the reviewers making that comparison are often careful about what they mean by it. "Buy it if you prefer the individual levels to the overall world or the bosses. If you prefer the gameworld, buy Dark Souls 1," reads one detailed, 816-vote review that treats the comparison as a matter of taste rather than a verdict. That's the more common framing than outright dismissal: reviewers acknowledge this entry took a genuinely different design direction, and split on whether that direction works, rather than treating it as simply worse.

Where sentiment sits now

Recent English review sentiment — the 100 most recent reviews, spanning early to mid-August 2026 — runs 84% positive, in line with the 82.4% lifetime figure. Achievement data shows healthy ongoing engagement: the median across 38 achievements is 35.95%, notably higher than this library found for Dark Souls: Remastered, consistent with a substantial share of buyers seeing the game through.

Value

At NZ$64.99 with all DLC included, this is reasonably priced for new players getting the complete package in one purchase; the "already own it" complaint applies specifically to returning owners of the original release rather than to the game's value on its own terms.

Verdict

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin carries real, well-documented launch-era baggage — a framerate-linked durability bug and an anti-cheat policy that reviewers say punished legitimate players alongside cheaters — both now years in the past. What's left is a genuinely different take on the series' formula that a large, engaged audience still defends on its own terms rather than apologising for. Judge it as its own game, not as a lesser copy of its siblings.