Dark Souls II: Crown of the Ivory King

The Ivory King

this one is my favorite visually, a big open frozen palace and courtyard. lots of frozen spiked enemies, snowy vast lands, medieval architecture and interesting level design. theres a boss on a bridge that is pretty difficult until you do something specific, forget what but that had me stuck for awhile. in this one you go around rescuing various knights sitting in chairs to aid you in the final boss battle (where you fall into a hole and drop into a fire arena) that entire part is very memorable and awesome with a tense team vs team arena battle until the boss fight. there is another optional boss in a giant snowy barren area with horses that chase you , pointless to attack them. eventually you get to a boss arena with 2 tigers, really challenging / difficult / frustrating fight. the tigers have a tight moveset though and it was fun to learn and eventually overcome. this dlc is definitely the best and most memorable.

7/10

Ivory King is the final of the Dark Souls II DLCs and its really a mixed bag which is fitting of a game like Dark Souls II. The DLC takes place in a snowy outdoors ruin and you must go through the ruin while rescuing knights that will later help you face off against the final boss. After getting through the ruins you clear up the snow and are able to see everything. The DLC basically just loops around in a big circle. There are 3 bosses in this DLC as well.

The first is a giant tiger who is invisible but once you clear the snow he becomes visible and is fairly tough, but not that difficult. The main boss is a knight who isn't too tough, especially if you have the guys you rescued helping you distract him. The final boss I really don't even want to talk about. In fact I'll talk about them later since that is my biggest complaint about the DLC.

So the main part of the DLC is great, it is designed fairly well, has a decent variety of enemies, secret areas to explore, and tons of items to discover, although the porcupine enemies are a bit annoying. After you've cleared the main area and explored that and the indoor area, you have the option of going into a coffin that takes you into a giant snowy field with tiny buildings that are spaced far away from each other. The snow will clear up every 15 or so seconds and you have maybe 10 seconds or less to see where the next building on the horizon is you need to run to before it starts snowing heavy again. Now this is annoying but thats not even the worst part. It takes around 1 minute of running to reach every new building and there are probably around 5 or 6 of these buildings. Then to reach the boss in this area you have to sort of just take a guess and run in the general direction away from the buildings towards the horizon and hope to God you are going the right way, especially since you can't see at all with the snow. And here's the worst part, while you are hear ice reindeer come out of nowhere and if you aren't prepared they ram into you and knock you over and can shoot projectiles at you. Sometimes you'll get lucky and only one will come out which is annoying but manageable. It takes about 4 or 5 hits with a fully upgraded high strength weapon, which makes these some of the most annoying enemies. However sometimes up to 2 or 3 will come out, and if that happens you are essentially screwed if you have nobody summoned with you. You can't run away since they are too fast and can knock you down by ramming you and fighting back against more than 1 is just frustrating since they can shoot projectiles and take too many hits to kill.

So basically you have to run through a giant snow filled area where you cant even see anything in front of you and guess the general direction you are running. Eventually after a few minutes you will hit a path that leads to the boss. Now okay, I could maybe forgive this horrible walk to the boss and grind if the boss was interesting or offered a unique and fun challenge. But From really had to mess this up and make this the most hated area in all the Souls series. Your reward from trekking through this giant snowy area where you can't see and don't know where you're going while killing off dozens of powerful ice reindeer on the way is a rematch against the giant tiger you fought earlier in the DLC, only once you get him down to about 1/3 health another tiger joins in to fight. That's right its another bullshit 2 on 1 fight, and the tigers are super aggressive and hardly give you time to attack. Most of the fight once 2 tigers appear is just running around and waiting for them both to synchronize their attacks so you can get 1 or 2 cheap hits. This fight is even more bullshit than the darklurker. Even once you defeat one of the tigers, the second tiger has the power to then start buffing and becoming super powered which makes it even more powerful. This is easily the hardest boss in the entire game.

Now I'd have less issue if there was at least some sort of bonfire near the boss, but there is not even a single bonfire in that big snow area, so every time you die to this boss you have to go back in the coffin and wait for the area to load, then go through the entire snow field to the boss again which on average takes around 10 minutes, maybe a little less if you summon the NPCs at the beginning of the area to help you distract the reindeer. The strategy I eventually ended up coming with after dying at least a dozen or more times to this boss was summon the 2 NPCs at the start of the area, rush through the area and using the NPCs to help distract the Reindeer, then when I reached the boss area I would dismiss the summons since they made the fight harder by giving the boss more health. Then I'd go in, sometimes trying my strength build with a club, sometimes testing out a dex build with a rapier. I eventually got a lucky run where I had a good amount of estus flasks going into the fight and managed to take out the first tiger and the second one then wasn't much of an issue. It still was frustrating and took me around 20 or so tries and it got annoying having to run back and forth between this area over and over just to reach an unfair boss who could destroy you in a matter of seconds. At least they could have just put a bonfire before the boss. Then it would at least make it somewhat manageable. But because they don't this area becomes even bigger bullshit than anything else in any Souls game.

Outside this area the DLC is pretty good and the good thing is that area is optional and the boss soul from that boss doesn't even give you anything interesting. The boss fights in this DLC are pretty weak, the tiger is an okay fight but hardly anything great and the Ivory King is somewhat fun but didn't really offer a lot of challenge. This DLC makes up for that though in design and having some of the better designed enemies of all the DLCs. Its just that one area does taint the DLC a little.