From Software once again proved its inability to produce a stable PC game

May 4, 2014 21:01 GMT  ·  By

Dark Souls 2 launched on PC a few days ago and, to the surprise of very few people, it was plagued by quite a lot of problems and issues, just like its predecessor.

However, with Dark Souls 1, Japanese developer From Software at least had the excuse of this being the first PC title made by the studio itself. As such, given the studio's experience only with consoles, from the PS3 and Xbox 360 to PS2, PS1, Xbox, or Nintendo GameCube, it was obvious that some issues would appear.

With Dark Souls 2, the team already had some experience with the platform and even had extra development time of around a month to make sure that the game works well on the platform and doesn't end up being affected by game-breaking issues.

Unfortunately for all those who pre-purchased and invested their hard-earned money into the game, that wasn't so.

Right at launch, Dark Souls 2 issues started popping up all over the game's Steam forums. From not being able to start the game, to not having the game recognize input from mouse, keyboard, or controller, to many other severe issues, the game quickly disappointed a lot of people.

After reporting on the problems, plenty of angry fans started commenting on the article, explaining their disappointment with From Software and the fact that they regret ever buying the game.

While I'm not trying to bash the quality of the role-playing game, I'm trying to at least draw attention to the inexperience of From Software with the PC platform.

The Japanese game development scene has been historically reticent towards the PC, so maybe it's time for Kadokawa Games, the publisher who apparently purchased From Software, to just partner up with specialized studios for PC ports of the team's projects.

Square Enix already has such a partnership in place with Nixxes, the Dutch studio who brought to the PC games like the new Tomb Raider or Thief. Many other examples can be found around the games industry, and it's not a shame to recognize that a studio can't perform well across all platforms.

The act has been consumed, however, so it's time for From Software to work hard and start releasing more and more patches for the game. Steam, thankfully, has no restrictive policies in regards to updates, so the studio can release as many as frequently as it wants, unlike the PS3 or Xbox 360 platforms.

Just one patch has been released so far and, while it has fixed some crashes, like the White Screen one, there are new crashes reported by players, like black screen one.

Thankfully, the community of players is still quite active and has already posted some workarounds on the forums. Unfortunately, not all of them work and it's unclear when a new patch will debut for Dark Souls 2 on the PC.

So far, how has your Dark Souls 2 PC experience been? Have you encountered problems with crashes or controls or did everything work flawlessly? Share your experience below.