Whereas Crown of the Sunken King amplified the dynamic complexion and intricate layout behind Dark Souls II’s environments, Iron King puts the bulk of its strength behind a simpler task; ripping the player apart. Iron King also boasts a considerable amount of new gear, a requisite triumvirate of bosses, engrossing art direction, and all of the implicit lore you can handle, but experimental combat scenarios are a theme Iron King carries until through its resolution.
Accessed via the Iron Keep and following a literally hellish battle, I expected Iron King’s environments to look and feel scorched by the fire of a thousand suns. This turned out to be true, though not necessarily in the way I expected. Brume Tower, Iron King’s de facto hub area, is one-part machine forgery and one-part white ashen wasteland. Mountains of ash looked and felt like snow, providing a nice contrast from the brash machinery and dark corridors occupying the tower’s interior. Of course, all of these ash piles are ripe with obscured enemy encounters and populated with the burned remains of other unlucky souls, but, at the very least, Iron King imparts some neatly contrasting visuals.
Level design, while not as interesting or versatile as Sunken King, is another strong suit. Verticality is Iron King’s theme, and its specialty is challenging the player to properly descend its labyrinthine depths. Scaling huge chains to optional areas is a visual knockout as well, but the bulk of Iron King involves the player navigating tight corridors, avoiding trapdoors, and searching for the least-lethal manner in which to drop down into tight spaces. Many of Iron King’s basic enemy encounters involve properly positioning yourself before you make an entrance, making areas feel like they were designed for encounters rather than their logical and organic purpose in the game’s world. When examined closely Dark Souls’ levels have always been like this, Iron King just isn’t quite as adept at concealing its intent.
Enemy design and encounters are where Iron King shines. Basic enemies retain the typical skeleton/humanoid form, but seem oppressively tall and ludicrously armed. Double axe-wielding maniacs and more basic spear and shield enemies comprise most of Iron King’s “fodder,” but what’s interesting is their deceptive pairings. There’s rarely just one around, and whether another one is waiting behind a corner, or one is content to pop up out of the ash behind you must be taken into consideration. Complimenting these guys are Fume Sorcerers, oddly purple and nicely dressed undead specializing in ranged assault. Mechanically, neither of these foes are all that different from anything encountered in Dark Souls II proper, though their aesthetic dissimilarity and relative frequency render their emergence notable.
Of greater concern are the gigantic headless fire-spouting demons and other less-aggressive fire-wielding weirdoes. Excuse the lack of proper nomenclature (I’m not sure if it exists as of this writing), but these two can be a huge pain. The larger one indiscriminately breathes/emits fire every so often and is usually flanked by smaller enemies. I rarely stuck around to kill one, instead usually opting for the “throw a switch and run like hell” method of progression. The other new guy, in addition to wielding a fire sword, specializes in attacking from a downed position. If you knock him down he’ll start wildly slashing his sword around, suggesting ground-based combat is actually his specialty. He’s also got a rather quick spear attack, giving second thoughts to any sort of ranged attack by the player.
Iron King has no problem distributing combined hoards of undead, but it also gives the player a few different ways to turn the odds in their favor. Harmless, exploding-barrel wielding hollows are either positioned by fire-breathing wall spaces in the environment, or near trap-doors that drop into combat arenas. On the first couple of tries you’ll inevitably fall victim to close proximity encounters and either blow up once fire hits their barrels or drop into the trap door yourself, but a bit of patience can work the odds properly. These barrel guys can be manipulated into existing as an explosive item, easily doing huge damage to anything within reasonable proximity. One particular encounter even has the player running an axe demon through a maze populated with fire and barrel-hollows. Based on your skill, it’s either a fun game of explosive cat-and-mouse or a tiring descent into scorching madness.
Another source of manageable anxiety are the Ashen Idols populating the Brume Tower. You can always tell you’re near one because of the haunting whispering that starts to break into the audio mix, but more terrifying is their effect on the environment. When they’re not automatically reviving downed enemies or slowly inflicting the player with curse, Ashen Idols can throw out fire spells or buff up surrounding enemies. They can be destroyed if you can find the time and distance to shove a Smelter Wedge inside of them. This in itself is a challenge, as the number of Smelter Wedges you’re granted at the beginning of Iron King isn’t enough to cover the number of Ashen Idols populating its environments. More are out there, but they’re not exactly easy to acquire.
Boss encounters are another facet of Iron King that step away from Dark Souls’ tradition. One is a buffed and pallet-swapped repeat from Dark Souls II, which is a surface level disappointment, but the journey there is augmented by a gauntlet of tightly packed enemies. Merely getting there, especially for non-ranged builds, presents a significant challenge. Another boss carries significant lore implications and obliges the temperamental gauntlet of enemies on the way there, and he’s not beset by the crude facsimile of Dark Souls’ past. Interestingly both of them are completely optional, or in as much that they’re not required to claim the DLC’s endgame prize.
Iron King’s ultimate boss actually felt quite special. Without revealing too much, adjustments to both the environment and anyone you might summon into your game can have dramatic effects on the bosses’ abilities. In the end I found it best for my melee/dex build to solo him, but I can see where a bit of coordinated teamwork would also have impressive results. In terms of bosses that wield big god damn swords, this guy’s up there with the best of them, but wither proper timing and pattern recognition, he’s not that bad (it only took me twenty or so tries, after all).
Iron King stands as a solid, if not slightly routine piece of Dark Souls content. It doesn’t invoke the sense of wonder issued by Sunken King’s playful environments, and the A-to-B of traversal isn’t difficult or complex, but its contributions to enemy encounters and boss runs deserve appreciation. Iron King’s combat is as much of a puzzle as any piece of its environment, and it’s neat to see Dark Souls II briefly sidestep tradition in favor of a vicious experiment. That’s the nature of DLC, right? What’s the point if not to create a cool one-off to field test ideas that didn’t fit into the proper game?
