players who can stomach the intense difficulty and absence of direction will find an incredibly rewarding game.
User Rating: 9.5 | Dark Souls X360
Understand, this game is not made for everyone to enjoy. It is hard, unforgiving, it never holds your hand. Hard is not a bad thing, it's what makes this game so addicting and rewarding. Gameplay is so fine-tuned and fair, if you grasp the fundamentals and put them into practice, nothing is too hard. The game never gives you more than a slight hint as to where to go next, leaving it up to the player to explore everything to find out where they can go. Here's the genius behind this, after you've played the game thoroughly, when you play it again, you realize you can go pretty much anywhere you want at anytime, the key is just being good at the game and knowing where valuable items are. Theres no level grinding necessary. For your first time through however, with the experience system the way it is, that being earn xp from killing things, use it at checkpoints to level up, lose them all if you die, it makes every inch of the world dangerous and tense. Bosses are incredibly fun to fight. They are epic, challenging, and awe inspiring, just what boss fights should be. The gameworld is so enigmatic, it does a fantastic job sucking you right in. online functionality is creative as well. Players cannot talk to each other, there is no party chat while playing this game. Everyone is a stranger, another lost soul stuck in this purgatorial hell. Players can leave somewhat cryptic notes anywhere in the world to help guide or mislead other players on their journey. You may also summon other players into your world to give you a much needed edge. Or you can invade another players world and hunt them down and kill them for their experience and humanity, making the world all the more frightful. For hardcore gamers who welcome challenge, this game is one of the most rewarding and exciting games out there. I haven't truly loved many games in the last several years, but I LOVE this game.
