Dark Souls Review
Game Emblems
The Good
The Bad
This game is one of the hardest games i have ever played yet one of the most fun games i've ever played. Hurry up #2
Dark Souls is an extraordinary role-playing game that transports you to an awesome and menacing world you may never forget.
The Good
- A gorgeous and frightening world you won't want to leave
- Abundant, amazing bosses test your skill and determination
- Superb combat in which every attack feels powerful and precise
- Fantastic online aspect lets players both cooperate and compete
- Covenant system and other features lead to constant surprises.
The Bad
- Frame rate gets choppy in certain areas
- Finicky target lock.
Any game can deliver a few cheap scares. It takes a special one to terrify you. Dark Souls is such a game. It's a thoughtful, atmospheric, and mysterious role-playing adventure that challenges your mind and your mettle. It takes the concepts of deadly environments and unflinching difficulty introduced by 2009's infamously tough Demon's Souls and cranks up the challenge, the fear, the frustration, and the eventual triumph. Dark Souls' enormous world is vast and dangerous, filled with terrifying fire demons and homicidal lizardmen, all with a single goal: to annihilate you. And so you die, over and over again, as you make your way through this strikingly fearsome land. But in Dark Souls, death and resurrection is a core mechanic, not a roadblock, and because the combat is so precise, you ultimately feel in control of your destiny. Dark Souls plays by its own rules, and in doing so, provides an unforgettable adventure that seeps into your being and invades your thoughts. It's a landmark game, destined to be loved and talked about by anyone who has the pleasure of unraveling its mysteries.
Like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls is a third-person dungeon crawler with precise and responsive combat. You create a character, select a class, and enter a bleak kingdom populated by undead horrors, shrieking gargoyles, and iron-clad knights. The tutorial introduces you to the impending terrors in fine fashion. You fight a gargantuan ogre, get rolled over by a giant ball, and encounter a sad fellow who issues you a warning in his final moments. After this sinister and enthralling introduction, a giant raven flies you to the shrine that serves as your initial hub. And so begins your exploration of Lordran, where non-player characters offer a few vague notions of where you are and what you must do, but little else. NPCs muse on their undead conditions and emit disturbing giggles, but Dark Souls doesn't focus on plot, character development, or questing in the traditional sense. Rather, it provides you with a captivating world spiced with narrative details, and encourages you to craft your own tale. You might expect that such thin storytelling might lead to aimlessness, but Dark Souls is anything but aimless, in part due to the structure and design of its large, seamless world.
Demon's Souls was a collection of large levels attached to a hub area; Dark Souls is a single, massive realm, separated into distinct regions. You can't explore with impunity, however: certain areas open up to you only when you beat bosses. Watching a giant closed gate swing open after a nail-biting battle is a fantastic reward for proving your dominance: You are filled with trepidation and excitement at the prospect of investigating a mystifying new territory. That region might contain dim forests, crumbling castles, dilapidated bridges, and ominous fortresses. Each area has its own defining visual characteristics, yet feels like it belongs to the same melancholy medieval universe. A giant red dragon perches above a stone bridge and breathes fire upon you. Undead knights clad in capes charge at you. Ghostly figures descend on a murky village. Dark Souls is beautiful and terrifying all at once--yet as horrifying as it is, it draws you in. No one should ever want to reside in a land in which death lurks around each corner. Yet once you're there, Dark Souls convinces you to remain, promising new vistas to ogle and new creatures to slay. The biggest blight on this land is the inconsistent frame rate. It isn't a pervasive issue, but things get choppy in certain areas. The slowdown isn't likely to affect your exploration, but it's noticeable enough to stand out.
You eventually unlock shortcuts between regions and make good use of them, especially when trying to best Dark Souls' immense and numerous bosses. They include twin gargoyles atop a parish roof, a giant fire demon, a huge wolf with a sword in its mouth, and a deceptively beautiful butterfly that sings a soothing lullaby when it isn't trying to murder you. And there are minibosses too, such as a blue dragon guarding a narrow path and a giant diseased rat skulking in the sewers. Every boss looks gruesome, and each plays differently enough to keep you on your toes. Even standard foes are wonderfully hideous in Dark Souls and are suited to their environment. Each enemy attacks differently from others, with some taking advantage of openings to whittle away most, if not all, of your health bar. However, smooth animations and clear sound effects signal the most powerful moves, allowing you to block properly or roll out of the way. Yet each dog and demon has enough different attacks to make every encounter a surprise; it's a great mix of consistency and unpredictability. And with so much combat variety, you might find use for multiple weapons and sets of armor, each with its own attack and defense benefits (one for fending off poison, one for fire protection, and so on). One moment, you might look like a hooded wraith in your gold-trimmed cloak; the next, your gleaming armor gives you the look of a virtuous silver knight.
Fortunately, the combat is weighty and exact, which is why Dark Souls feels fair and rarely cheap. In all but a few instances, the collision detection is flawless. When your blade makes contact with a shield, it glances off; when it meets flesh, it sinks into it. If you hit a wall rather than the flaming minotaur rising above you, he will take advantage of your error. These might seem like small details, but without such accuracy, Dark Souls wouldn't be such a triumph. Combat isn't perfect: a drake might clip into a mountain and get stuck, or you could perish due to mistakes caused by the finicky lock-on mechanic. But such issues are easily overlooked, and more apparent than they might otherwise have been, because the action is usually ultraprecise.
Thank goodness for such precision. Without it, you could never survive in this wild world. On your travels, you cross narrow beams and avoid deadly swinging blades. Evil shrubs spring to life and pierce you with their branches, and the bones of skeletons you just defeated reassemble themselves before your very eyes. And so you die. Often. Afterward, you resurrect at the most recent bonfire you rested at. These bonfires are scattered around the world, though they are far enough apart that you don't feel totally secure in your travels. Resting at one saves your game, replenishes your health and your supply of health flasks, and restores the number of times you can cast a particular spell. (There is no mana bar in Dark Souls.) The catch: every enemy, apart from bosses, respawns when you rest.
Death also means losing the souls you have in your possession. Souls are the game's currency and are used to level up, buy equipment, improve your weapons and armor, purchase new spells, and more. If you want to retrieve those lost souls, you must return to the bloodstain that marks the ground where you expired. And so you must ask yourself while exploring: Is it worth the risk to press onward, and accumulate more souls, or should you spend them now? It's a more difficult decision than you might think. With so many beautiful and terrifying possibilities waiting out there, you will feel yourself drawn to continue, even knowing you might sacrifice your very lifeblood.
By
Kevin VanOrd, Senior Editor
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
85 comments
The game was definitely good, but not for everyone. The very nature of the game is incredibly repetitive, and even though I don't mind all that much, it can get to be quite tedious. Still enjoyed the game.
Just to clarify, the head parasite DOES NOT come from breaking the chaos servant covenant! It comes from being infected by a certain attack from the parasite guys near the entrance of the demon ruins. They are pretty close to the quelaag's sister (covenant leader), so that might be why he attributed the parasite to the covenant.
Why do people whine that the game is sooo extremely difficult? It's not. Be smart, don't rush enemies and you will progress quite smoothly. This game is simply amaizing, I can't wait when the 2nd instalment gets out.
The only problem with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls is that after you struggle to get through a level, you memorize enemy placement and traps and you never have a problem with that area again. NG+ doesn't really fix this problem.
1 Like @unbentonslaught The true experience: don't level up past soul level 100, and beat the game until NG+7, where the difficulty maxes out... GL HF
I have to say, when my friend said that this game made him rage quit in an hour, I did not believe him. Nor did I believe it when it happened to me. After a day of bitter sulking, I picked my controller back up and had the most insanely fun playing experience I have ever had in a game. (Even though I died around one-hundred times in the first two hours.)
@I_are_Cake again¨? so you did not like the 1st game, it is true that is too difficult at some points but at the same time it s the reason you wanna keep playing it ! and yes this one is gonna give you th best headache of your life my friend
@kratospete @I_are_Cake He wasn't referring to demon's souls. the "again" was a sarcastic kind of "could you repeat that" referring to the reason. It points out how no one said a reason. It's like saying "could you show me how that works again?" It doesn't mean how did it work more than one time, it meant show it again.
3 Like Please stop that "unimaginable difficulty" circus. Both games - DS and DKS - are played okay and you feel like a master of situation as soon as you master the basics of these games; then you just walk freely in the well-known levels and just kill everything that confronts you as the king would beat the impudent serfs. Yes, the bosses are quite difficult, but not as difficult as MH monsters, and Dragon's Dogma has something to say, too.So please tell me why is there a hysteria over Dark and Demon's Souls difficulty all over the internets?.. Why do many reviewers say smth like "you'll brake many gamepads while playing this game" - omg really? I never broke a single gamepad in my life and not going to. (sorry, exactly this example has nothing to do with exactly this review).
@Atermi dragons dogma was really one of the easiest games I've ever played just unlock the mystic knight, put on your big boy armor, grab your holy sword and sling your dark shield over your shoulder and go to work
Or use magic like maelstrom and meteor
4 Like As big as Skyrim seems, Dark Souls is a much stronger RPG in almost every aspect. In Skyrim it is never really a question of "What quests do I want to do?" but rather "What order do I want to do them in?", and instead of "How do I want to develop my characer?" it's "How can I get him to the max level with maxed daedric armour and weapons quickest?"
In Dark Souls souls however there really is no right answer to these questions, and so who you roleplay as is completely down to you. Do you want to go ware heavy equipment and go around like a tank, absorbing every hit you take and smashing everything in your path to the group, sacrificing your speed, or so you want to use light armour and weapons to doudge attacks and catch people off their guard? Perhaps you want to go for something a little different and were spiked armour with a shield with a great big spike in the middle, so you can hurt people just by jumping at them? Perhaps you want to go for a weapon with long reach instead, or go for one with poision or bleed so you can use more abstract methods of taking their health down?
And then there's the covenants, in Skyrim there's only 4 guilds of which the game's achievements encouage you to become a master of all three. In Dark Souls there are 9, and you can onle be a true follower of one. Do you want to become a Chaos Serpent, get a pretty niffty chaos fireball spell and eventually the awe-inspiring Chaos Storm, whilst also unlocking the gate to the demon world, or would you rather follow the Path of the Dragon, transforming yourself into a fire breathing human/dragon hybrid? Maybe you want to become a Dark Wraith, gain the powerful red eye ord and dark hand to steal people's precious humanities, gather enough and you can start to look like the Grim Reaper himself, or perhaps you would rather become a Blade of the Dark Moon, charge your weapon up with holy power and take revenge on those swines that killed your beloved princess?
Then there's that one part that makes up the "role" in "role playing game", the class system. Do you want to be a warrior and start with one of the best longswords in the game and slam it into monsters with your outstanging strengh, whilst being useless at magic, or settle with a Theif to start with a mater key that gets you access to all the starting loot early on, as well as a second starting gift of your choosing. Maybe you want to venture for a Cleric and be the only class who can carry up to 10 castings on your healing spell whilst also being able to defend yourself in combat, or maybe a Pyromancer is more up your street, starting the game one level ahead with great offensive skills, but specialising in a type of magic that doesn't scale with any or your stats. You could even chose the deprived class to give yourself an extra challenge, and to be granted the chance to reach the highest level there is.
All this is what makes a role playing game a role playing game; choice. Sure Skyrim has a large expansive world to explore but it means nothing without any relevance to who's exploring it. It may as well be a large white rectangle with random monster and item placement; you're still going to end up with the exact same character, all that would change is that your stats would be a little higher because you wouldn't have spent so much time looking at all the pretty waterfalls. And another thing, I don't like the way Skyrim just puts a giant "go here" arrow up for you whenever you get a quest and then talks you through every action you must do like you're some kind of braindead kid who's getting trained how to use the toilet, I much prefer Dark Souls do it yourself approach here as it gives you all the info you need to know and if you don't read it, then tough, it's your own damn fault, and if you can't get through an area without dying it's up you to figure out how you can get around the problem, whether that be using a different weapon, fighting the enemies in smaller groups, using a spell to sneak past or distract them, looking for a shortcut to boycott that part of the game altogether, or whatever else your imagination can think up. It's all down to you, not the game, but you.
So, there you are folks. That's why Dark Souls is better than Skyrim.
@robo37 Different people like different games for different reasons.You like DS more than Skyrim than play it.Just because they both have dragons don't make them the same.
@robo37 you needed a 60+ lines essay to prove that Dark Souls is better than Skyrim? Who the hell is going to read all of this xD Here is my proof: I bought Skyrim first, played it for about 19 hours and found it awesome. Then i bought Dark Souls...and never touched the Skyrim or any of my games' disc case again ;)
Hey where is the PC review by the way excellent game though at first it did not attract me as after dying for the six time at that demon in undead asylum but after got used to it and starting using different strategies it got fun the PC version is somewhat better as well as with a monster PC you can move through the areas where the console versions lagged a lot quite smoothly. All in all a rare gem in this generation of games.
2 Like The only game (along with demons souls) that I feel perfectly okay checking out the wiki to learn strategy for certain enemies and areas. Even knowing exactly how to beat an enemy doesn't make it an easy fight. There is enough fun and challenge in just BEATING the enemies and bosses for me, let alone learning how to do that on your own.
2 Like Boring game ever. It's not even RPG, it's a some kind of monoton-adventure-survival game. Producers know how to take attention so they made this crap, and everybody knows how difficult game is but it's also nothing more than difficult. Gameplay, sounds, menus, graphics everything is a joke. Game is a kind of joke. If you want to play a game which is about making things almost impossible for you, try it. I also don't understand Dark Souls fanatics out there. Skyrim is x5 better than this cheap bullshit game. Even Oblivion beats this RPG called crap. Real score is 5.5/10. (I don't give a sht if you agree or not)
@Warmuro fuck skyrim. skyrim is a piece of shit casual-centric, watered down, SIMs copying cash grab. its a total joke. i dont give a shit if you agree or not.
1 Like @Warmuro I can understand the comment about the game looking cheap, but understand they weren't going for impressive graphics, or dazzling menus, like Skyrim. They made a bleak grueling game with precise controls and challenging combat, unlike Skyrim which seemed to have hit and miss controls and at times laughable challenges. Every one has there preferences, I've enjoyed both games immensely, but I can't remember the last time a game grabbed my attention and dragged me into it's world like Dark Souls.
2 Like @Warmuro If you don´t give a shit about the opinions of others and are content enough to live inside the circumambient idiocy of your own brain, don´t post messages in forums.
@UniversalSigh I respect people's opinions but in this subject i don't give a shit if they AGREE OR NOT. I don't have to give a shit, and others don't have to either. No one can limit my opinions and i can't limit others' opinions either. I have right to write my opinions about games right here and i write and you can't tell i should do otherwise. I don't want a personal fight or an arguement in front of monitor screen, we don't need to give a shit about each other bro. Also, this is not a good area to have an arguement, i've seen a lot of bullshit like we're about to make now -which is off the topic and it surely looks like cheap crap. Have a nice day bro, good gaming.
1 Like @1375alireza no but there is a level glitch you can use......to find it just look for it in the "answers" section on this page. hope it helps.
@ChoppinBrockl33 How bout the old SNES games where you only got a certain amount of lives... like Super Ghouls and Ghosts..... THAT game was hard. I've beaten Dark Souls completely... Super Ghouls and Ghosts.... unless I did it and forgot... never beaten.
This game requires inhuman levels of patience and persistence, but it was easily my favorite game of 2011.
Guys! This game is gonna see the light in PC! 24 august on Steam! the only problem is theyre planning to add Games For Windows Live to? the game... Please sign this petition in order to have Steamworks instead of GFWL!
PC gamers dont want to have such a masterpiece of game like Dark Souls with that broken DRM called GFWL... Lets sign so devs know!
Search in google: Dark Souls gfwl petition
Its the second link (the site is named change)
Thanks for your time and support!
is this game worth getting i have been looking at it for a while, is the online play good?
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Dark Souls
Not Following
- Publisher(s): Namco Bandai Games America
- Developer(s): From Software
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
- ESRB: M
Also on:
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