For those of you who have played through Demon’s Souls, or managed to survive the hellishly hard Dark Souls, Namco Bandai hopes that you still love a good challenge because Dark Souls 2 is going to be even harder than either of its predecessors.
According to Gameranx, the Game Director Yui Tanimura alongside the developers at From Software have chosen to make things even more challenging in the next addition to the Souls franchise by introducing death penalties to the game. Now, if you love of being able to run around as an undead, dying as much as you need to in order to map out an area, then you are going to need to rethink your strategy. Every time you die in Dark Souls 2 instead of simply becoming an undead, you will lose a fraction of your health as soon as you resurrect. If you keep dying then it will keep doing down to a maximum of 50% health at resurrection.
For those of you thinking this is a ridiculous move, or can’t stand the high anxiety of online play where you can be invaded at any time, then they have added perks for being alive and retaining that humanity. For example, if you die while you have a humanity score, there is a new item called ‘Human Effigy’, which you can use as soon as you die to revive exactly at the spot you died. This not only will keep you from getting irritated at restarting the same section over and over, but will help you to progress through the game at a more expedient rate. While this sounds carebear, From Software’s promise to make the minute-to-minute experience even more grueling should make you think twice.
These aren’t the only changes that will be made to the game, so keep be sure to keep an eye out on CraveOnline for more information on what is to come in Dark Souls 2.