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Darksiders II

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

This page is for the original release. For the Deathinitive Edition, see Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition.

Darksiders II
Darksiders II cover
Developers
Vigil Games
Publishers
Original THQ
From 2013 Nordic Games
Russia Buka Entertainment
Engines
Phoenix Engine
Release dates
Windows August 14, 2012
Reception
Metacritic 81
IGDB 86
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, DLC
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Adventure, ARPG
Art styles Stylized
Series Darksiders
Darksiders II on HowLongToBeat
Darksiders II on IGDB
Darksiders II guide on StrategyWiki
Darksiders II on MobyGames
Darksiders II on Wikipedia
Darksiders
Darksiders 2010
Darksiders II 2012
Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition 2015
Darksiders Warmastered Edition 2016
Darksiders III 2018
Darksiders Genesis 2019

Darksiders II is a singleplayer third-person adventure and ARPG game in the Darksiders series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Icon overlay.png
Windows
GOG.com (unavailable)
DRM-free
DLCs are sold separately in one pack.
Windows
Humble Store (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Origin (unavailable)
Origin
[1]. A Digital Deluxe version was also available, which bundled Darksiders II with Darksiders.
Windows
Steam (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows
No longer available digitally. Replaced by Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition.
Owners of Darksiders Franchise Pack or Darksiders II with DLC on Steam and Darksiders II with DLC on GOG.com before November 5, 2015 received Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition for free.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Season Pass
Windows
Abyssal Forge
Windows
Angel of Death
Windows
Argul's Tomb
Windows
Deadly Despair
Windows
Death Rides
Windows
The Demon Lord Belial
Windows
Fletcher's Crow Hammer
Windows
Mace Maximus
Windows
Mortis Pack
Windows
Rusanov's Axe
Windows
Shadow of Death
Windows
Van Der Schmash Hammer
Windows

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Delete/rename video files[citation needed]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\media\video.
  2. Delete or rename 2011_THQ_Logo_FadeOut_720p.bik and Vigil_Logo1280x720.bik.

Save Game File Corruption Prevention

Patch EXE to fix late-game Save File Corruption issue[citation needed]
  1. Download Save Game Corruption Fix
  2. Extract to where the game is installed and execute ds2fix.exe as an administrator.
  3. You must re-apply this patch if you ever verify the integrity of the game in Steam/GOG etc.

Stutter fix

Instructions
  1. Disable Vsync in the game.
  2. Force Vsync via video drivers (AMD Catalyst/Nvidia Control Panel).

Game data

General settings.
General settings.
UI settings.
UI settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/50650/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\darksiders 2\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/50650/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud
Approx. 100 MB available.

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.
Settings are only available after the cinematic introduction displayed when starting a new game. No real "main menu" before starting/loading a game.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Causes broken minimap. Widescreen Fixer is recommended over native support.[2]
Ultra-widescreen
See the WSGF topic.
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Unknown post-process anti-aliasing. Low, Medium, High options.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
No frame rate or refresh rate cap.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.
Ray tracing (RT)

Input

Key map settings.
Key map settings.

Remapping

Key bindings menu can be found via the inventory menu: press O, then navigate to the Move List menu.

Some keyboard keys cannot be mapped to game commands, like Delete, or num_del, Insert keys. Also, Arrow keys, END, HOME, Page Up, Page Down, etc. are displayed as "UNKNOWN KEY" then setting it again displays as NUMPAD keys. The "UNKNOWN KEY" can only be bound once. Arrows are functional still after this binding as NUM keys, but any NUMPAD keys cannot be binded as it is seen as already bound. I is hardbound to PAUSE, so that is also not remappable. E is hard-coded and cannot be bound to certain actions (e.g. Move Horse Forward). Additionally if a key is already bound, the action using that key has to be remapped before it can be used.

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Fan translation, download.
Russian
Spanish

VR support

3D modes State Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision
Use Helix Mod: Darksiders 2 for the best experience.
vorpX
G3D
Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Issues unresolved

Phasewalker can't be used at the first portal after Lilith

Return to the main menu and resume the game.

Karkinos does not react to eggs thrown

Get closer before throwing the egg at the soft part.

The game takes a lot of time to get into main-menu

This is reportedly an issue with one of the online services that no longer responds[3][4]. Disabling online connection can help to speed up the process.

Alt+Tab causes the game to crash

Redemption can't be used

Issues fixed

Freezing while exiting pause or inventory screens on some Nvidia GPUs

Enable adaptive vsync[citation needed]

Force adaptive vsync in the Nvidia Control Panel.

Stuttering

Caused by uncapped frame rate.
Enable vsync[citation needed]

Enable vsync in the video options.

Use a frame limiter program[citation needed]

High System Temperatures

Caused by uncapped frame rate.
Use D3DOverrider[5][citation needed]

Refer to D3DOverrider to force vsync to limit frame rate and temperatures.

3D Vision effects not rendering correctly

Using 3D Vision in the game is subpar to what it could be, with effects and shadows not rendering at the correct depth.
Use Helix Mod[citation needed]

Use Helix Mod to improve the 3D effects.

No dialogue voices or subtitles

Region locked copies may lack voices and subtitles when language is changed to anything other than language native for their region.[6]

Change language in Steam[citation needed]
  1. Open the Steam Library.
  2. Right click on Darksiders 2.
  3. Click Properties.
  4. Go to the Language tab.
  5. Change language.

The game crashes when going into menus when using Proton

Install d3dcompiler_47 using Protontricks.[7]

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c
Shader Model support 3.0, 4.0
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Physics Havok
Audio Wwise
Interface Scaleform
Cutscenes Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP SP3, Vista SP1
Processor (CPU) Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz
AMD Athlon X2 2.0 GHz
System memory (RAM) 2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 20 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
512 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible
Shader model 3.0 support


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/50650/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (50650) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. DARKSIDERS II - last accessed on 7 June 2022
  2. Darksiders II - The way it is meant to be played (almost) - WSGF - last accessed on May 2023
  3. ProtoDB report by Soerensen - last accessed on 2023-03-05
    "The game will soft-lock trying to connect to some offline service when going from titlescreen to main menu (this is also a problem on windows)."
  4. Verified by User:Suicide machine on 2023-03-05
    This is however not a soft-lock, but it takes over a minute before the game finally goes into main menu
  5. Temp problems - Steam Users' Forums (retrieved)
  6. Verified by User:Suicide machine on August 13, 2016
    Polish works without problems, but when changed to English - game lacks both subtitles and voices.
  7. {{Refcheck|user=Suicide machine|date=2023-03-05