This version is meant to entice, a Cheshire smile shared between From Software and all players, old and new, that can't hide its newly sharpened teeth. And it's a welcome extended to me, someone's who's gone into each of these games determined to slay the beast, and found myself cowed each and every time. It's a welcome extended to the people who've been mired in Bloodborne these past few weeks. It's a welcome extended to complete newcomers who've never played a Souls game. That's a welcome extended to the folks who've sunk hundreds of hours into the game who think they know what they're getting with this version. With that in mind, the Scholar of the First Sin Edition is what it looks like when that monster puts on its best, smiling face, and tries its absolute best to be warm and welcoming to one and all. These games are brilliant, tedious, exhilarating, soul-crushing monsters, all. This is the Souls series-as well as its cousin Bloodborne-encapsulated: grand trials by fire in which other games, with their boundless forgiveness, their comprehensive tutorials, and hand-holding linearity may be lifted and praised for their mercy or condemned for their patronization, qualities we have never received from the Souls games and likely never will. GameSpot has already published two Dark Souls II reviews, one triumphant and effusive, and one disheartened and defeated.
