A little bit about my history with the Souls series first. I played a bit of Demon Souls back in the day, but never finished it. The last boss I remember beating was the flamelurker. I thought it was fine, but ultimately just got distracted and never finished it. I tried playing Dark Souls a while after it released and never finished it either. I remember fighting the Taurus Demon, but can't remember if I beat it or not. I thought the game was fine, but never really got into it. Can't explain why, but at the time it just wasn't doing much for me. Then Bloodborne came out and I got obsessed. Played it to completion twice, easily one of my games of the generation.
I've been thinking about giving Dark Souls another try for a while now. The game is old as dicks now so I've heard quite a bit about it, and one of the things that always appealed to me was the interconnected world. One of my favourite things about Bloodborne was finding a shortcut and seeing just how all the areas connected to one another, and from what I'd head Dark Souls was the best at that. So recently I decided to buy the Remaster and see how it went.
And I'm bloody glad I did. What an absolutely fantastic game. I think knowing roughly what to expect going in this time helped, but I was hooked from the get go. It's a game of very few faults. I'll try to highlight what I feel are the good and bad points, as well as some of my own memorable experiences.
The Good
- The atmosphere. Everything about the game feels so oppressive and dangerous in a way that no other game I've played has. Everything from the lore, location design, enemy design, the lack of music and the enemies all play into this perfectly.
- The level design. Coming from Bloodborne I had high expectations here and they were more than met. The first time you take that elevator down from Undead Parish back to Firelink Shrine was utterly mind blowing.
- The difficulty. The game was definitely challenging at times, but rarely did I feel it was unfair. Once I got to grips with the combat (started getting a feel for it around the first Black Knight, going for back stabs over parries) most deaths felt like mistakes on my part. I knew that it was because I didn't read an incoming attack right, or got greedy or went for an extra hit when I should have backed off, or I didn't pay attention to how much health I had left. I died a lot, but dying never felt like failure. Respawning at a bonfire and having to fight back to where I was really helped with cementing the level design in my brain.
- The bosses (most of them). They felt more like puzzles than combat encounters for the first part. I quickly got over that fear of stepping through a fog wall once I went in with the mentality that I was definitely going to die the first couple of times. The first attempt or two was like studying, seeing what their attacks were like and what I had to work with in the arena.
- The online elements. I know you can play the game offline but I'm really not sure why you'd want to. Messages from other players pointed me to so many things that I would for sure have missed other wise. Calling in summons to help with a couple of bosses (which I probably could have beaten alone if I'd persevered) was always a joy. Giving each other a little soundless gesture before charging through a fog gate felt really good. Like there was a mutual camaraderie there with something I'd never met before, and would never meet again. And I really like the way it tied into the lore. I only got invaded once or twice because I spent most of the game in Hollow form, and even then I managed to beat the invaders each time. I also really enjoyed dropping a soap sigh by a boss gate after beating it and helping out others who were struggling.
- The lack of direction. No map, no quest log, no objective markers or anything like that. You find where you need to go either by stumbling along and getting lucky, or by speaking with NPCs and actually listening to what they tell you. There's occasional cutscenes to guide you (like after ringing the second bell) but for the most part, you're just following queues in game and I loved that. Made every discover feel like an actual discovery. I played a good chunk of this game while referencing a wiki, but I feel like the game was almost designed to be played like that way. Some of the stuff is so obscure that they were clearly relying on the community working together to figure out the game as whole.
- The combat. I played mostly as a Knight focusing on strength. I ended up going all in on the butches knife. I loved how deliberate and unforgiving it was, but landing a good parry or back stab never got old.
The Bad
- Some of the bosses. The Bed Of Chaos is the obvious one here. It wasn't difficult, but it was pretty poor and the run to it was one of the longest and least interesting in the game. Pinwheel was also disappointing, he died in about 1 stamina bars worth of hits before I even realised. Fighting the asylum demon 3 times was also a let down. The Capra Demon was the only boss that I felt was legitimately bullshit, and the difficulty came entirely from the dogs that just got in your way and didn't attack/behave consistently. I died to some other bosses much more than I did to the Capra Demon, but the Capra Demon just felt unfair to me, like I was relying on getting lucky and being able to take out the dogs early.
- Wasn't a fan of the crystal caves. It's a super short area but the idea of entirely invisible walk ways just doesn't sit well with me, even if they didn't cause me as much trouble as I thought they would
- I wish NG+ gave you the opportunity to respec your character. I also wish the game let you continuing exploring your current run after beating the final boss, just to tie up loose ends, but I get why it doesn't from a story perspective.
Immediately after being the game, I started a NG+ and a new character. I wanted to play around with magic since I didn't even cast a single spell, miracle or pyromancy on my first run. My NG+ run was just for fun, decided to plough through the game and see how far I could get without dying. Didn't light a bonfire after Firelink, and managed to get to the Gaping Dragon before dying. Just a fun little hour or two of being OP and destroying everything.
All in all an easy 10/10 for me. I'm glad I waited for the remaster because I've heard stories about the performance in some areas in the original, but as far as I can remember I didn't run into any bugs or performance issues. Would highly recommend to anyone and strongly suggest people don't be put off by the legendary difficulty. I didn't think the game was much harder than any other game once I got into the swing of it.
I've been thinking about giving Dark Souls another try for a while now. The game is old as dicks now so I've heard quite a bit about it, and one of the things that always appealed to me was the interconnected world. One of my favourite things about Bloodborne was finding a shortcut and seeing just how all the areas connected to one another, and from what I'd head Dark Souls was the best at that. So recently I decided to buy the Remaster and see how it went.
And I'm bloody glad I did. What an absolutely fantastic game. I think knowing roughly what to expect going in this time helped, but I was hooked from the get go. It's a game of very few faults. I'll try to highlight what I feel are the good and bad points, as well as some of my own memorable experiences.
The Good
- The atmosphere. Everything about the game feels so oppressive and dangerous in a way that no other game I've played has. Everything from the lore, location design, enemy design, the lack of music and the enemies all play into this perfectly.
- The level design. Coming from Bloodborne I had high expectations here and they were more than met. The first time you take that elevator down from Undead Parish back to Firelink Shrine was utterly mind blowing.
- The difficulty. The game was definitely challenging at times, but rarely did I feel it was unfair. Once I got to grips with the combat (started getting a feel for it around the first Black Knight, going for back stabs over parries) most deaths felt like mistakes on my part. I knew that it was because I didn't read an incoming attack right, or got greedy or went for an extra hit when I should have backed off, or I didn't pay attention to how much health I had left. I died a lot, but dying never felt like failure. Respawning at a bonfire and having to fight back to where I was really helped with cementing the level design in my brain.
- The bosses (most of them). They felt more like puzzles than combat encounters for the first part. I quickly got over that fear of stepping through a fog wall once I went in with the mentality that I was definitely going to die the first couple of times. The first attempt or two was like studying, seeing what their attacks were like and what I had to work with in the arena.
- The online elements. I know you can play the game offline but I'm really not sure why you'd want to. Messages from other players pointed me to so many things that I would for sure have missed other wise. Calling in summons to help with a couple of bosses (which I probably could have beaten alone if I'd persevered) was always a joy. Giving each other a little soundless gesture before charging through a fog gate felt really good. Like there was a mutual camaraderie there with something I'd never met before, and would never meet again. And I really like the way it tied into the lore. I only got invaded once or twice because I spent most of the game in Hollow form, and even then I managed to beat the invaders each time. I also really enjoyed dropping a soap sigh by a boss gate after beating it and helping out others who were struggling.
- The lack of direction. No map, no quest log, no objective markers or anything like that. You find where you need to go either by stumbling along and getting lucky, or by speaking with NPCs and actually listening to what they tell you. There's occasional cutscenes to guide you (like after ringing the second bell) but for the most part, you're just following queues in game and I loved that. Made every discover feel like an actual discovery. I played a good chunk of this game while referencing a wiki, but I feel like the game was almost designed to be played like that way. Some of the stuff is so obscure that they were clearly relying on the community working together to figure out the game as whole.
- The combat. I played mostly as a Knight focusing on strength. I ended up going all in on the butches knife. I loved how deliberate and unforgiving it was, but landing a good parry or back stab never got old.
The Bad
- Some of the bosses. The Bed Of Chaos is the obvious one here. It wasn't difficult, but it was pretty poor and the run to it was one of the longest and least interesting in the game. Pinwheel was also disappointing, he died in about 1 stamina bars worth of hits before I even realised. Fighting the asylum demon 3 times was also a let down. The Capra Demon was the only boss that I felt was legitimately bullshit, and the difficulty came entirely from the dogs that just got in your way and didn't attack/behave consistently. I died to some other bosses much more than I did to the Capra Demon, but the Capra Demon just felt unfair to me, like I was relying on getting lucky and being able to take out the dogs early.
- Wasn't a fan of the crystal caves. It's a super short area but the idea of entirely invisible walk ways just doesn't sit well with me, even if they didn't cause me as much trouble as I thought they would
- I wish NG+ gave you the opportunity to respec your character. I also wish the game let you continuing exploring your current run after beating the final boss, just to tie up loose ends, but I get why it doesn't from a story perspective.
Immediately after being the game, I started a NG+ and a new character. I wanted to play around with magic since I didn't even cast a single spell, miracle or pyromancy on my first run. My NG+ run was just for fun, decided to plough through the game and see how far I could get without dying. Didn't light a bonfire after Firelink, and managed to get to the Gaping Dragon before dying. Just a fun little hour or two of being OP and destroying everything.
All in all an easy 10/10 for me. I'm glad I waited for the remaster because I've heard stories about the performance in some areas in the original, but as far as I can remember I didn't run into any bugs or performance issues. Would highly recommend to anyone and strongly suggest people don't be put off by the legendary difficulty. I didn't think the game was much harder than any other game once I got into the swing of it.
