Souls has come far since the awkwardly pronounced Demon’s Souls, expanding its fanbase and raking in the plaudits for its industry-leading design. The Ringed City might be the last piece of content in this seminal series, so the pressure was on FromSoftware to go out with a bang. Unfortunately the result is not quite so explosive, but thankfully not a whimper either.
Starting in a charmingly-named place called The Dreg Heap, the DLC is essentially a romp through Dark Souls’ past, hitting a few of the highs – and lows – along the way. What will be obvious to any fan by now is that the visual design is fantastic, with gothic architecture that demands the controller be put down for a second and creatures that demand it be picked up again very quickly in a panic.
Disappointingly, the normally astounding environmental design isn’t quite so impressive this time. Much like the previous DLC offerings, the levels are far more linear than the developer is capable of creating. It’s a strange choice, considering the Metsoulsvania design was once a defining feature of the series.
This would not be so much of a problem if your opponents weren’t such caricatures of Souls enemies. Brilliant looks aside, the enemies of The Ringed City are more of a chore to fight that a challenge. These are often dumped into quite honestly, poorly designed (by Souls standards) encounters which just throw a lot of tough enemies at the player.
Of course they can be overcome, either through attrition or by other means. But that’s not good enough. This series made a name for itself with tough yet fulfilling combat; learning by experimentation. Not raw attrition. Also, those “other means” usually involve running past the enemies, often suicidally, to stop them from bothering you.
This kind of combat design feels more like an amateur attempt at creating a Souls game, making it hard without realizing that difficulty alone is not what makes it satisfying. One-on-one (or two) combat is still very enjoyable. Even against groups, there are chances to get behind or above enemies, which turn the tables almost instantly. Perhaps its just the sheer quality of the main games that spoils the experience, but in the final adventure, that shouldn’t be a concern.
Boss fights are also a bit of a letdown. The four bosses are almost all slightly tweaked archetypes of previous kinds of bosses. That’s not really a problem, just a mild disappointment, again seeing as these are the last bosses we’ll get. What is more of an issue are the ridiculously long health bars that make the battles feel tedious, long after their pattern of attacks has been identified, written down and sent via carrier pigeon to your grandma who’s probably better than you at Dark Souls, scrub. Git gud.
Loot, which in Souls DLC is traditionally as disposable as Breath of the Wild weapons, is a little better this time. There’s some unique stuff, with a few weapons of note, like a dagger that’s basically a lightsaber. The best and silliest item is probably the Giant Door Shield, which basically is just a massive double-door and can be used as a battering ram, like something out of Dead Rising.
Something of a footnote is the story of the DLC. That should be weird given its the last ever bit of content, but actually isn’t very shocking given its Dark Souls, which reveals its narrative as transparently as a fortune cookie. It is however interesting thematically with a kind of light and dark, angels and demons thing going on, but its all vague without an encyclopedic knowledge of the lore. There certainly isn’t an obvious revelation about anything that’s happened before or could happen later, but there’s more than a few cryptic hints about such things for those that follow it to be at least somewhat satisfied.
All of this sounds very negative, but it’s not really a bad bit of content. It’s just that there’s not all that much genuinely great stuff to talk about. Everything is just sort of decent. For Dark Souls, decent means still pretty damn good. But for a final expansion to an incredible series hoping to go out on a high, it’s a little sad.
Summary
The Ringed City is a totally competent but uninspiring end to the brilliant Souls series, embracing many of its best and several of its worst traits. It’s beautifully macabre and frustratingly tedious, yet isn’t close to being bad enough to take the shine off a wonderful game, offering subtle nods to the series’ past and its probably nonexistent future. The sun finally sets but it will always be praised.
Dean was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 39 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @SpookyWomble.