This modder's 'final love letter to Dark Souls 2' is a massive mechanical overhaul and just the excuse I needed for a Majula homecoming

Dark Souls 2 fight
(Image credit: FromSoftware)

Even before the ascent of Elden Ring, Dark Souls 2 was all too often overlooked—and unjustly maligned, according to the brave, intelligent, and very cool souls who are defending Dark Souls 2 to this day. One of those devoted few, modder AoiYozora, just released what they call "a final love letter" to FromSoft's black sheep sequel: Bearer of the Curse Edition, a "faithful DS2 conversion" mod that refreshes Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin with a suite of mechanical overhauls.

Bearer of the Curse Edition's goal isn't adding new content or entirely redesigning how it plays. Instead, the mod's main focus is on providing quality-of-life mechanical changes to bring Dark Souls 2 more in line with design conventions from later FromSoft games, add convenience, and sand down some of the friction that might've obscured its appeal.

As an example, Bearer of the Curse Edition uncouples dodge roll iframe duration from the Adaptability stat, addressing an oft-reviled mechanic that made it mandatory for most players to drop a handful of their hard-won levels into the stat just to get their rolling up to basic functionality. Now Adaptability is entirely optional, unless you're particularly interested in being able to swig your Estus flask faster.

Speaking of the Estus flask, Bearer of the Curse Edition lets you chug your healing juice while moving instead of planting your character's feet while they quaff, providing the same manoeuvrability while recovering that Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring allow. Also like Elden Ring, the mod gives a dedicated jump button that doesn't require sprinting, which should help when you're trying to get to a treasure chest on the other side of a tricky chasm.

Stamina drain has been slightly retooled: Attacking and rolling will use the same amount of stamina, but sprinting will drain much less. It's a change that leaves combat mostly untouched, but cuts down on travel time.

AoiYozora has added additional clutter to fill out empty areas, and has made visual and lighting tweaks throughout the game in an attempt to improve the atmosphere. NPC, enemy, and bonfire locations have been adjusted, too, and additional shortcuts have been added to provide more routes for circling back to earlier areas.

There's a lower delay between actions in Bearer of the Curse, and not just for the player: AoiYozora's ramped up the difficulty in boss encounters by increasing the pace at which they'll throw out their attacks, too. Great. However, the mod also lets you parry and riposte a lot of bosses, which will help even the odds. Not for me; I'm incompetent. But for someone, surely. You'll apparently be rewarded for the effort though, as the mod description says "A lot of boss weapons will have more diverse movesets as well as additional weapon arts." Neat.

Bearer of the Curse Edition makes far more changes than I could cover here, but its Nexus Mods page has the full list of features. All in all, it seems like a thoughtful, considered effort to make the magic of Dark Souls 2 accessible for players who might've bounced off it before.

News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 11 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

Read more
The creator of the Elden Ring Seamless co-op mod is now infusing unlimited multiplayer into Dark Souls 3
Ten planks of wood from Dark Souls, responsible for my nightmares in Blighttown.
The co-creator of Dark Souls' most ambitious mod resurfaces to inform me that Blighttown, source of my nightmares, was cobbled together with '10 bits of wood'
The Dark Souls 3 seamless co-op mod is here, letting you further hone your teamwork skills before Elden Ring Nightreign launches
Nightreign knight holds his fist in menacing fashion
Elden Ring Nightreign is FromSoft looking at nearly 3 years of mods and fan demands and going 'Hold my beer'
Dark Messiah duel
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic gets co-op mode and extra content thanks to the mod community's collaboration with Ubisoft: 'To see it all come together has been very emotional for us'
The great shinobi blade - owl moveset mod for Elden Ring
Here's an Elden Ring mod to give you the rad moveset of Sekiro boss Great Shinobi Owl
Latest in RPG
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs
New art of Harry and Kim from Disco Elysium, with Harry holding a lit molotov cocktail.
Despite Disco Elysium Mobile aiming to 'captivate the TikTok user,' it looks surprisingly decent—but it's still insulting to Disco's ousted creators
A cold-looking gameplay shot of Fate: Reawakened
Fate: Reawakened gives the nostalgic 20-year-old action RPG series a new lease on life
Latest in News
Sony RGB LED panel tech
Sony's fixing the wrong panel problems while showing off its new 'RGB LED' backlight tech with outrageous colours and brightness
Super Mario World
Super Nintendo consoles appear to be running ever-so-slightly faster as they age and speedrunning detectives are hot on the case
A photo of an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor surrounded by DDR5 memory sticks from Corsair, Kingston, and Lexar
Fresh leak suggests Intel's on-again-off-again Arrow Lake CPU refresh is back on the menu (boys)
A Colorful RTX 5080 and its box
Three lucky folks in India can win the dubious honour of buying an RTX 5080 GPU at Nvidia MSRP
The Facebook 'Like' emoji logo is seen in this photo illustration on 22 August, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Get ready to argue with your weird Uncle on Facebook again. Meta is rolling out its new fact checking solution to it's 190 million users in the United States
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Go ahead and complain the discounts aren't as steep as they used to be, but Steam just had its biggest year ever for seasonal sales