[UPDATE - April 21, 2026] Modder Ganaboy has now released a public beta of the Dark Souls II path tracing mod. Check out this article for instructions on installing and setting it up.
[ORIGINAL STORY] Dark Souls II is perhaps the most controversial game in FromSoftware's beloved trilogy. It actually received the highest average review score from critics, but fans had a mixed reaction to it due to several key weaknesses:
- The new Adaptability (ADP) stat controlled the player's invincibility frames (i-frames) during rolls, unlike in DS I and DS III, where i-frames scale automatically with the player's dodge. This meant that players who did not invest in ADP experienced unreliable rolls, leading to frustration heightened by the game's lack of explanation.
- The map design was considered a step back from the first Dark Souls, which featured an interconnected world, whereas Dark Souls II was much more linear and felt less like a real place.
- The bosses are widely considered the weakest in the trilogy. The game has more bosses than any other entry, but many are forgettable multi-enemy gank fights (where players fight two of the same enemy at once), several are directly recycled from the previous game, and others are used repeatedly as minibosses throughout the game.
It didn't help that it was the only recent game made by FromSoftware (except for Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon) that wasn't directed by president and game designer guru Hidetaka Miyazaki, who served only as a supervisor in the development of Dark Souls II.
To top it all off, there was also a memorable controversy related to the game's graphics downgrade. In pre-release footage, FromSoftware demonstrated an impressive dynamic lighting system that, however, was completely absent from the final version of the game.
On PC, modders have been trying hard to improve upon the game's default flat lighting. "Flames of Old" specifically tried to recapture what was lost from the pre-release footage, but the newer Dark Souls II Lighting Engine mod goes beyond, adding volumetric fog, ground truth ambient occlusion, and, more recently, even path tracing.
PT is being tested in a build that's not public yet. Still, the results are already impressive enough to be worth showcasing. X user Musashi | 武蔵 shared the following screenshots captured at 4K with DLSS Balanced, Path count 3 (samples per pixel), and a frame rate of 60FPS on an RTX 4080 graphics card.
There's no release date yet for the path tracing build of Dark Souls II's Lighting Engine mod. However, you can follow the official X account to receive the latest updates directly from the author.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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