Dark Souls

There's not a lot to say about Dark Souls that hasn't already been said. It's a fantastic all round experience, from sound design, art direction, gameplay, story and lore, and its the way they all tie together that makes Dark Souls stand out as one of the greatest games ever made. No game has ever made me experience a theme or a feeling like Dark Souls has made me feel its atrophic decay.

As an ardent fan of the King's Field series (excluding 4/The Ancient City), I've always been wary of touching From Software's new games, partly because the fanboys of the Souls games are very annoying online, especially when they cite the King's Field series as "The Granddaddy of Dark Souls" when the games seriously have nothing in common. I know that especially now that I've tried this game.

After fumbling through the controls, dying several times not knowing where to go, attacking an NPC (and miraculously not soft-locking myself, because apparently if you attack them, they stay mad, but the one I attacked was not that tough so I was able to kill him), and even conversing with friends asking for advice, I made it through at least a good maybe 5% of the game. I figured out that killing the enemies was tedious due to them respawning after you save or die, so I assumed that it was intended for you to "speedrun" through them to the next area. Apparently that wasn't the case, as having more than 1 enemy run up next to you is a death sentence. Extremely bad game design in my opinion.

Anyway, I made it to the gargoyle boss, and I thought it wasn't that bad until I learned a second one shows up in the middle of the fight. That turned maybe a half an hour of trying to beat it into 2 hours. And that's where I dropped the game. Looking online for tips on the boss, most people are saying to either summon some guy to distract one of the gargoyles (I had no idea you could do this) or use the "Gold Resin" item which makes your sword shoot lightning or something (which I also had no idea you could do). Oh, and I forgot to mention the fact that every time you die to the boss, you have to run through the church place to get back there, and actually getting past all the zombie enemies without dying is like rolling a die. Whether you try to fight them or not.

Now I know what people are going to say to me. They're going to say "The game is hard", or "You just need to get good". The thing is, I actually love hard games. I've beaten games that are harder than any game a Souls fanboy will ever play. Kamilia 2, Boshy, other IWBTG fangames, really hard Roblox Obbies, 1cc'd some Touhou games, some arcade games, other indie freeware games that probably weren't even meant to be beaten (Kubus games for example). Dark Souls is not a hard game. It's a bad game. You can't just do a boss or level over and over again and learn it from muscle memory, because sometimes what the enemies choose to do is completely random. Every single weapon has too many complicated attacks that knowing what to do against an enemy—when you don't even know what the enemy is going to do—is completely impossible.

When you need guides and/or friends to tell you exactly what to do in a game, and they actually disagree with each other, and when you try all the options most of them don't even work half of the time, I don't think your game is good. Sorry From Software. I shouldn't have touched this game because now I feel like a dick. You've been going downhill since King's Field 4, and people just eat this stuff up. Guess it's back to retro games for me.

Wow, what a fucking game. I played this game originally on PS3 while my obsession for Demon's Souls was still on-going and I was always convinced this game was inferior. I felt there was a lot of cheap shit in the game like "how would I know that without dying to it?" etc. and it frustrated me a lot, even compared to the even harder Demon's Souls. I beat Demon's Souls and pretty much gave up interest in Dark Souls completely. Fast forward to the Steam Summer Sale of 2013, I bought Dark Souls on PC due to it being 75% off, a deal I couldn't resist. I installed it, and started over again.

As I started playing, memories of originally playing it were flying through my head. Quickly falling in love with it, I started playing non-stop. The opinion that this game was merely "decent" had been diminished. Demon's Souls is much different than Dark Souls considering it's linear level design, the complete opposite of the seamless open world feel of DaS. DaS is only a "spiritual successor" to DeS but the gameplay is pretty much the exact same. If you like one, you'll like the other, I guarantee it. The bosses are just as amazing, the npcs are unique and intriguing, and of course, the difficulty is very satisfying.

My favorite part of this series is how you can interact with other players: messages which give warnings or hints, black phantoms which come to your world to wreak havoc, and white phantoms that come to aid you in your journey. The lore is deep and the world is immersive, there's just a LOT to love in this game. I've beaten the game, but I probably know about 40% of what the game has to offer. The replay value is very high as there is so much more to discover. I'm sure I'll have much more to say as I get more familiar with the material, but for now, the review ends here. Try this game anyway you can and give it an honest try before you give up completely, this won't be an easy journey.

Update: beaten all bosses explored all areas, gonna stay a 10/10 probably forever

Dark Souls astounded me with it's masterful level design, it manages to pull so much depth from simple concepts - it's level design isn't revolutionary or particularly massive but it accomplishes an interconnected world with various paths of progression that urge exploration.

Each subsequent encounter you experience trains you for what to expect with FromSoftware, at the beginning of the game I would constantly be startled by the hidden enemies and foreboding and ambiguous signs people would leave, but once I had been grandfathered into the process I began to expect the unexpected and that's when the developers would often perform their double bluff.

Levels are designed with a plethora of shortcuts and hidden passages to open and explore which keep repeated visits of areas fresh and without the monotony of having to trudge through miles of re-counted steps. It also provides for many combat opportunities due to the ability to knock enemies from ledges and the plunging attack being particularly useful.

The multiplayer aspect of this game surrounds the experience in a gothic, post-death, gritty RPG world with a joyful, idealized communitarian journey. The summoning and messaging encourages the community to create the game inside the game, this is one of the many avenues through which the game earns character. It's many NPCs are brief and remain mostly in the background, but are memorable with their little dialogue and often can assuage the heart that this game rarely shows (Solaire in particular).

Combat, for the time it was released (an even now) is impressive - the standard RPG stats married with Poise and the critical hit mechanic, staggering, magic, weapon type, one-handed/two-handed stances - this combination of simple rules creating a complex system works very well to ensure that there are many viable weapons and weapon types to use, enemies are varied enough to where each one must be learned before they can be defeated comfortably.

I had previously not attempted this game as it's reputation professed it as stressful, overly-difficult boss grind. This could not be further from the truth, the bosses have their strengths and weaknesses and are there to be learned, once you delve further into the game, you begin to understand that deaths will teach you lessons and learning an enemies move set before you engage is necessary for knowing how to capitalize on opportunities and avoid unnecessary damage.

This was my first FromSoftware game, which I only began this year after a decade of avoiding it for the pointless headache I had been promised it would provide. Thankfully this was not the case, it's really hard not to give this game full marks - I left this experience thinking "Why can't more RPG's be like this?".

Genius decisions at nearly every level of design here combined with some truly incredible writing build up to one of the most uniquely satisfying gaming experiences of all time, truly feels like the Zelda series growing up.

Obviously compromises were made with keeping the impressive scope balanced with the ambition here, and it mostly succeeds. Can be nitpicked to death but that isn't gonna stop this game from pioneering in so many ways from level design, world design, enemy design, weapon/AI balancing, NPC interactivity, sound design, etc....

Also The Catacombs and Tomb Of The Giants are massively underrated levels that take FULL advantage of this being a truly 3D game.

Dark Souls is a good damn game, but it takes a lot of time to understand in the form of walkthroughs (which I recommend). I don't think it's possible to get through the early stages blind unless you've been gaming your whole life and you like puzzles. Stuff like shooting the dragon with arrows or jumping down on the demon with your sword wouldn't occur to people who don't have time for gaming.

Other than that, my first 'play' was with DSREMASTERED. I want to play this version again but on new console/next gen Playstation just to see how it looks, and I will at some point. But on XBOX One I thought this looked pretty epic.

I bought this game for a second time, THAT'S my level of respect for this game. I think it's an all-time legendary game of its own caliber, one to compare other games to. Dark Souls I is a masterpiece.

Don't just the take the words of nerds and trolls on that one, I, a normie, also must concede that Dark Souls is a cultural touchstone in gaming AND a masterpiece, because it is. I have confirmed this by playing through a few times.

Its strengths come from its grimdark atmosphere, but especially the introduction of Souls gaming, which basically means starting out on the lowest level so you can build up your character. This lets you play as liberally or conservatively as you want to. Normie players will want to gain souls over and over again to get a high enough level to transcend their current setpiece: in other words, the current world-level of the game you have yet to find your way out of.

On the other hand, there are absolute nutters out there who beat the game on Souls Level 1 and are WAY better gamers than me--but I've never really had the time or access to game properly. When I was much younger I would let other people play games because I was not allowed to own a gaming console. And later in life I've spent my attention and focus on other passions.

I want to beat more games and become a better gamer because I feel like I've missed out on some pretty nice things. Fair to say Dark Souls made me want to give up on modern gaming but with the help of a certain walkthrough artist (Fightin Cowboy of course) I was able to get out of the first area, with skeletons on a castle, and the black knight (the obsidian demon with a sword), and of course the fire demon and dragon, all the way to Mr. Sun himself, Solaire.

Frankly, I'm excited to play this game again as a wizard this time, maybe even work on a faith build. Strength is recommended to all new players and is always fun.

I remember spending hours watching walkthroughs for the game and don't mind being spoiled if I can just get the help to play--because I intuitively just don't understand how to beat modern gaming puzzles. With Youtube and such for help, gaming can be a fun breeze.

I'm happy I spent the time playing and learning this game so I could get through the other Souls games, and there's still yet more I want to play. FromSoft did a terrific job developing this game--it's the first real time where I said, "Ah-ha! I get it!"

Games hardly get more masterpiece in modern games than Dark Souls, and you wouldn't imagine it from a silly skeleton sword game, but oh it's so much more, the challenge is comradery, beating and playing the game is a secret club, and it's always fun to reminisce about getting lost in some dungeon.

There's still a lot of games I haven't played, but Dark Souls has made even considering the other ones possible. However, the combat depth of DS makes other games sometimes pale in comparison, its level-building/power scaling for the player's character and vis a vis bosses (big ones) is so perfect that I'm constantly let down by other games. Even if they're not as challenging (since I cheat with walkthroughs) I actually find myself missing the acrobatics of FromSoft designs (the pain is addictive).

So the other downside is definitely that nothing lives up to Souls combat, nor their backgrounds or world, I consider the moth-eaten medieval world of Souls to be without parallel in modern gaming--but I could be surprised here.

However, Dark Souls I stands out--it's terrific fun to put your self through this pain and it's addictive, I just wish other studios would put in half the effort FromSoft does.