Dark Souls 2 - Season Pass (DLC)

The Lost Crowns Trilogy is the complete season pass for Dark Souls 2, bundling three separate action-RPG expansions: Crown of the Sunken King, Crown of the Old Iron King, and Crown of the Ivory King. Each chapter drops you into a self-contained region with its own visual identity, enemy roster, weapons, armor, and bosses. They are designed for players who have already put serious hours into the base game, and they are not gentle about it. Crown of the Sunken King sends you into Shulva, Sanctum City, a green-hued underground kingdom of Aztec-style stepped pyramids. The level design here is the trilogy's clearest argument that FromSoftware had unfinished business with Dark Souls 2. Large architectural segments shift, rotate, and rise at the press of hidden switches, and the whole thing loops back on itself in ways the main game rarely managed. The bosses are the weakest point of this chapter, a criticism that follows the trilogy throughout, but the act of just moving through Shulva is genuinely rewarding. Traps, poison-emitting enemies, and a demanding optional area called the Cave of the Dead will remind you repeatedly that the game has no interest in being fair. Crown of the Old Iron King takes you to Brume Tower, a massive iron spire wreathed in ash and black mist. You enter via a chain bridge on a nearby mountainside, then spend most of the DLC descending its many floors, unlocking elevators, and dealing with enemies that appear in groups and hit very hard. The verticality here is both the attraction and the frustration. Sir Alonne is the standout boss, widely considered one of the better single-enemy encounters FromSoftware produced in this era. Magic-focused builds will run into a real problem across all three chapters: casted spells take a significant damage penalty in the DLC areas, so physical builds and bows carry more weight than your spell slate might suggest. Crown of the Ivory King is where the trilogy lands its best punch. Frozen Eleum Loyce is a blizzard-swept fortress city where navigating the opening snowfield while being battered by a disorienting storm is itself a designed obstacle. The level structure is deeply interconnected, and the central boss encounter has a clever wrinkle: you can fight the Burnt Ivory King alone, or spend time exploring the map to find and rescue Loyce Knights who will fight alongside you. That optional co-op layer, earned through exploration rather than handed to you, is exactly the kind of thing that makes a FromSoftware area feel like it rewards attention. NPC Red Phantom invasions also evolve across the trilogy, peaking here with a particularly pointed sense of humor from the developers. The lore payload is real but restrained. Each crown ties back to King Vendrick's story, and collecting all three plus speaking to Vendrick unlocks his blessing, which prevents hollowing on death, a mechanically meaningful reward for finishing the full arc. Do not expect walls of dialogue or rich NPC storylines. The writing communicates through item descriptions, environmental staging, and the occasional post-boss monologue. If you came to Dark Souls 2 for narrative depth on the level of the Artorias DLC in the first game, temper those expectations. If you came for world design that feels genuinely hostile and alive, the Lost Crowns are the best version of Dark Souls 2 that exists.

Monika · Scout Team

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