Review: Dark Souls

Prepare to... yep.

Here we see a Dark Souls player burning his controller in rage.

Dark Souls is such a hard game, that even reviewing it is a difficult process, it attracts such a unqiue crowd, and sits proudly in such a niche market, that there’s very little to compare it to, no real benchmark for the ‘Frustratingly Difficult Dark Fantasy’ genre. I’m not a big fan of sports games, but I can still play and review them, commenting on the improvements and possible shortcomings in relation to other games in the genre, but when it comes to Dark Souls, there’s so little out there to quantify it against. So, I’ll approach this review as a long-time gamer, a fan of the fantasy RPG, and someone who enjoyed the fresh, challenging gameplay of the game’s predecessor, Demon’s Souls.

There’s no hiding the fact that, while this game doesn’t share the title of its forebear, the similarities are countless and clear to see. Simply put, anyone who enjoyed Demon’s Souls will feel right at home here, and for those of you who deemed the first game a frustrating, rage-inducing experience that you never want to live through again, well, you might want to steer clear of Dark Souls. If reviews were nothing more than advice on what to buy, this one could end right there. The game retains plenty of the features and style of Demon’s, and while it does bring an awful lot of new things to the table, the core structure remains the same, and it’s doubtful that any of the additions will prove meaningful enough to win over those who couldn‘t find enjoyment in the first game. The series is designed in a very specific way, and attracts a very specific crowd, providing something of a unique flavour in the game market, that most players will either love or hate.

Most things are weak to fire... not everything though.

Almost everything about the game is unique in some way, right down to its visual style. This is a fantasy game through and through, you’ll be battling skeletons and zombies, making your way through forests, dungeons, and castles, but there’s much more to it than that, plenty of unique environments, straight-lines and jagged-edges are used to great effect, and some wonderfully grotesque and original enemy designs give Dark Souls its own morbid stylistic flair that you won’t find in traditional fantasy games. From Software somehow manage to make no area ever look welcoming, every single path you walk down gives the impression that you probably shouldn’t be walking down it. Castles are cold and overbearing, forests are so dense and dark that you’ll wish you could leave a breadcrumb trail for fear of getting lost, even the brightly-lit areas--of which there are plenty, the game isn't excessively dark throughout--can fill you with dread. One of my biggest complaints about the first game was the lack of originality in environments, castles, caves, dungeons, it felt like typical fantasy fare and I hoped for more unique areas to match the original and varied designs of the enemies and gameplay. Dark Souls very much addresses this, while From Software are still confined by the limitations of the genre, and you will still be making your way through swamps and caverns, there are plenty of exciting new environments to explore, a lush valley, a grand ancient city, lava-filled ruins, a giant hollowed-out tree, and much more. Variety is a big part of the game, and the number of different areas is staggering and will keep you hungry for more. Overall, Dark Souls is a good-looking game, it won’t win any awards for graphics, and the frame rate suffers from time to time, but From Software have captured a very unique, dark look to their world, and use it well, every area you visit feels different from anywhere else you’ve visited in other games.

Some of the environments are breathtaking. As in they will suck the breath out of you and leave you a lifeless corpse.

Probably the biggest change from Demon’s Souls, is that this is an ‘open world’ game now. I use that term loosely, because I don’t want people to think this is something like Skyrim, you can’t exactly wonder off wherever you like, but you are given free reign over where you go next. You won’t be picking and choosing levels to warp to, and then teleporting back to a safe hub at the end of each area any more. You are literally dropped off in this world, and free to explore it. Well, ‘free’ might be pushing it a little, some areas will have to be unlocked as you progress, and others will be far too difficult for you to journey through without some experience, but there is no one set path through the game, and it really is up to you to both choose where you would like to go next, and to figure out what on Earth you’re actually meant to be doing. The game provides very little guidance, as you would expect I suppose. You’ll always have some vague instruction about what you should be doing, but it’s left to you to figure out how. For example, at the outset, you are tasked with ringing two bells and given a rough indication of where they are, you being the classic ‘Chosen One’ who will free the world of evil or some such cliché. The story, like with everything else in the game, is mainly left for you to figure out yourself. There are NPCs to talk to, but very few actual cut-scenes or exposition to speak of, even the ending scenes, of which there are two (good or bad), are incredibly short and don’t explain much. It’s a unique style of storytelling and not one I particularly enjoyed, while the story wasn’t really the reason I was playing the game, I would’ve liked perhaps a little more time dedicated to explaining the world, a little extra motivation to play through a game never hurts.

This is the equivalent of a Chuck E Cheese in Dark Souls world.

So guess what? This game is hard. The number of things that can maim, impale, shock, burn, poison, curse, and just plain old kill you is insurmountable. There are lethal traps, treacherous paths, poisonous swamps, and, well, lava pools filled with dinosaurs. Death waits for you around every single corner, ready to strike just as soon as you mistime a sword swing, sprint a little too far, or take one more swig from your potion than you really needed. It really is that brutal, everything has a measured pace to it that you must learn and master if you ever hope to make it through. Timing is probably the most important factor in the game, it's all about knowing the right moment to strike or block, or the precise time to jump to make it over a treacherous gorge rather than falling to your doom. You’ll end up naturally learning animation routines, and even have to carefully plan out when to start casting your spells or swigging your potions, since every action takes a second or two to actually play out, and you’ll be granted no temporary immunity while trying to recover or preparing to strike. The gameplay essentially consists of a long string of learning experiences, first you must become accustomed to the heavy movement controls and timing-based combat, then you will learn how to pace yourself in fights and exploration, mastering each area and battling hordes of enemies as you go until the feel of the game becomes second nature. It certainly takes time to get used to, but after enough time with the game, you'll figure out the tactical combat and carefully-paced progression.

The open world nature of the game doesn't change it as much from Demon's Souls as you might think, since there is still a general hub area you’ll return to, and safe areas throughout the world in the form of bonfires; you will learn to love these little beacons of joy, providing you with an opportunity for a breather and the ability to level up and repair weapons, with the bonfires themselves also serving as checkpoints. From Software deal well with the transition to ‘open world’ style gameplay by including these little safe spots, if you buy the right equipment, you can do all the things you would normally have to do at the hub, right there at any bonfire in the game, removing the need for constant backtracking which would only add more needless frustration. Having said that, there is still a lot of backtracking throughout the game since you never quite know if you’re heading in the right direction, and will sometimes find yourself exploring a whole area, only to be greeted with a dead end and be forced to make your way back. The game does things to make this much easier on the player later on, but in the early going it can be enough to put some people off. The auto-saving checkpoint nature of the bonfires can also pose problems at times, since you’ll respawn at the last bonfire every time you die, so, in the worst case scenario, you could find yourself constantly respawning at a dead end bonfire, forced to try and make your way back through a difficult area and wishing you could just teleport to the hub. But of course, this is all part of the Dark Souls experience, everything you do is a risk, even resting at bonfires can backfire, and you have to consider every choice you make, whether it’s going left at a fork in the road, resting to refill your potions, or taking on a boss.

Enemy designs are one of the best bits about the game, even the gross ones like this scaleless dragon.

Boss battles make up a big part of the experience, there are around two dozen bosses, almost all of which must be defeated if you wish to complete the game. Most of them provide a great challenge and will have to be taken on in a variety of different ways, with a lot of the fun of the game coming from working out the perfect strategy to take down a boss. They all look great, the enemy design throughout the game is inspired, and every creature you face looks and acts differently, giving you even more of a reason to proceed with caution, never knowing what horrendous abilities the next foe might hide. Despite their fearsome appearance and, often devastating power, you’ll want to kill an awful lot of these enemies to acquire the currency of the game; the titular souls. Souls are everything, experience points and money all rolled into one. You’ll spend them on spells, weapons and armour, while also using them to repair and upgrade your equipment, and even level up. It’s a simplistic and interesting currency system and works well. Soul management and careful spending becomes key, particularly early on, and knowing that at any moment you could be struck down and lose everything you’ve earnt gives players added incentive to stay on their toes when carrying a horde of souls.

Multiplayer is present, but not in any traditional sense, just like with everything else on the game, From Software add a unique twist to the way they handle multiplayer. As with Demon’s Souls, players can leave messages for each other dotted about the world, warning of any traps ahead or offering small messages of encouragement. Ghostly shadows of other players will appear from time to time, reminding you that there are others facing the same peril. Co-operative and competitive multiplayer do exist, and work as intended. Players can join up together to face bosses, or invade others’ worlds to do battle. Various items and conditions are required to engage in this multiplayer, which help to limit the potential for excessive invading. The multiplayer side of the experience is not something I have personally taken much interest in, but it certainly is available and functional, and the more ‘passive’ side of the multiplayer, i.e the messages and ghosts of other players, are a great feature that certainly help to ease new players into the game. Even the tutorial is built using these messages, quickly getting you into the habit of checking them all for useful information.

Believe it or not, he's one of the good guys.

The game is really an adventure, that's the one thing I will always keep coming back to. Forgetting about the difficult gameplay, and frustrating elements, it really is a fantastic fantasy role-playing adventure. It drops you off in the world without force-feeding you reams of dialogue and exposition, and lets you go about your own journey however you like. Other games have done this in the past and will do it again in the future, but the way Dark Souls simply lets you loose in this world really can't be compared with anything else. Despite the linearity of some of the progression, and the complete lack of side quests or a branching storyline or any of the traditional 'open world' tropes, they manage to make the game feel like your own personal adventure. You have to figure out where to go, you have to learn how to fight, you have to make every choice and find every soul and explore this world in your own way. Despite my criticisms of the lack of story and guidance, in a way I really appreciated that part of the game because it grants players the ultimate freedom to go about their story and take whatever they like from it. There's a lot to be commended about the game's somewhat minimalistic story and lack of hand-holding.

All in all, I had a great time with Dark Souls. The challenging gameplay and dark design appeal to me, but I accept that I am part of a very niche market. There are certainly plenty of criticisms that people can throw at the game, not necessarily from a technical standpoint--aside from the frame-rate issues the game stands up well--but from a design perspective, it can certainly be argued that this game was made to frustrate. The story isn’t really ‘told’ in any traditional sense, and only the faintest suggestions of guidance are available to let players know what on Earth they’re meant to be doing. The sluggish combat controls can be frustrating, the camera is clumsy, the inventory system could be better, and frankly, the addition of a pause button wouldn’t go amiss. Yet, I would still rate this game as one of the best of 2011 so far, and loved the adventure it took me on. It is a very difficult game, but that can never be a criticism because the difficulty level was an intentional design choice and worked out just as From Software wanted. They set out to make a tough, oppressive game, and they succeeded in every aspect. This won’t appeal to everyone, but it was never really meant to.

Dark Souls will make you love bonfires in ways you never imagined. No, not like that. 

As I have stressed throughout, and fans of the Souls games will continue to stress, the game simply appeals to a certain crowd, it's an acquired taste. The gamers out there who revel in overcoming challenges, who get the biggest thrills from beating the hardest levels, who have spent hours grinding away at a frustrating game just for their own personal satisfaction and triumph upon beating it, these are the people who Dark Souls is made for. From Software have very much mastered the art of appealing to a particular audience. The game isn’t for everyone, I’m sure they’d be the first to admit that, but if you’re one of the people who it is meant for, then you’ll love Dark Souls.

For me, the experience might best be compared to one of those old 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' books, everything is set in stone and you'll always ultimately be doing the same things, but every time you play it feels like your unique story. Also, like the old books, a lot of the choices you make will result in horrible death. 

For the purposes of this review, the Xbox 360 version of the game was played.