Dark Souls: Scholar Of The Second Sin Is The Sequel We All Deserve

FromSoftware’s Dark Souls II has just gotten even better, all thanks to this fantastic fan-made mod that’s available to download for free right now.

When it comes to challenging RPGs with brutal gameplay, gorgeous but sinister worlds and wonderfully crafted stories told within its environment, it doesnt get much better than what’s offered by FromSoftware.

Often intimidated but never replicated, no words could be truer with the likes of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and more. Though, to be fair, there have been some fantastic soulslike games over the years, such as Life of P, Nioh 2 and Lords of the Fallen being a few solid picks.

Dark Souls was first released in 2011 on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and in 2018, it received a decent but not mind-blowing officially released remaster.

The sequel arrived in 2014 with Dark Souls II, and this, too, later received an official remaster, which wasn't exactly groundbreaking. It’s just a good job that each new game in the series has continually knocked it out of the park in its own right.

At the time of writing, 2016’s Dark Souls III has yet to get an official remaster, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

To be honest, if you were to ask any Dark Souls fans what their favourite game in the series is out of the three, you’d probably get mixed answers, which is a reflection on how strong this series is.

That being said, the topic of today’s discussion is about the aforementioned Dark Souls II.

“Dark Souls II brings the franchise’s renowned obscurity and gripping gameplay innovations to both single and multiplayer experiences,” reads the synopsis of the game. “Join the dark journey and experience overwhelming enemy encounters, diabolical hazards, and the unrelenting challenge that only FromSoftware can deliver.”

If official remasters leave us feeling a tad underwhelmed, the talented modding community always has us covered. One such mod is called ‘Scholar of the Second Sin Visual Mod’ created by fromsoftserve, and it’s available via Nexusmods.

“This mod upgrades the textures of the game intelligently, while also utilising the feature set of DS2LightingEngine, like volumetric lighting, light shafts, shadowcasting, SSGI, tessellation to many meshes, and much more!” explains the description of the mod.

Sadly, as is the case with most mods, this is a PC exclusive. For the rest of us, we can play Dark Souls II as intended on modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles.