Dark Souls II: Crown of the Old Iron King

Old Iron King

this one is basically inside a big fortress, with a ton of annoying fucking elevators. elevator simulator. it has some nice areas such as the snow area which is visually appealing and fun to navigate. some interesting new enemies. definitely has challenging sections. it really is just a lot of running around in a big fortress pulling switches and levels, its just ok. the bosses: smelter demon is a generic reskin, sir allone was a really fun fight, something like ornstein 1v1. fume knight was very difficult and took dozens of attempts. rewarding but fucking frustrating. very hard movesets.

6.5/10

After he first Dark Souls II DLC, this one came about a month or so later and it was a lot different. The DLC you are in giant towers and most of the DLC you are going up and down vertically through the towers and going into dungeon looking areas. This DLC is probably the most challenging the of the 3 in terms of enemies and design. There are a ton of tough enemies who team up against you and there are big guys who shoot lava from their armpits and can make quick work of you, and lets not even talk about those annoying teleporting sorcerer assassin guys who can backstab you.

Iron King is a bit bland looking in design to be honest and none of the areas really stand out. This DLC has 3 bosses like the previous. The first is basically a beefed up version of Smelter Demon only this one is blue and hits for a lot more damage. The other 2 are at the end of the DLC, the first is the Fume Knight, who some consider to be the hardest boss in Dark Souls II. He's a giant knight who uses a giant flaming sword and hits like a truck. The final is a samurai guy who is quick and mostly lunges across at you. He's actually pretty easy and only has one attack that can really mess you up.

Overall Old Iron King is a mixed bag. Some areas in this are really horribly designed, the path to the Smelter Demon 2.0 fight is just full of too many tough enemies who are too difficult to run past and is just so tedious and luck based on whether you'll make it to the boss without getting hit. The bosses are good except Smelter, who is just frustrating with how he can chip away your health just by being close to you. It does tend to throw a lot of enemies at you as well and gets into that annoying and unfair territory. Iron King I'd say is the weakest of the 3 Dark Souls II DLC's, it has the best bosses but at the same time has some of the worst design. Its definitely the one I have the last fond memories of though.