With every greater power comes new responsibilities
Does this game do a better job challenging players and fans of Demon Souls alike in this spiritual successor? Let's find out.
Presentation and Storytelling:
The presentation here can be found either good, frustrating, or abysmal. From the get-go, you'll get into a cut scene and it's the only cut scene in the game after that, you're left with creating your character. From that point, it's all pure game play. With every boss encountered, there is a cut scene introduction, but other than that, you won't see any cut scenes. The main menu is really nice and easy to use this time around unlike Demon Souls where I had some difficulties in how to use the menu properly, but because it's real-time menu meaning you can't pause the game while browsing your menu so you have to find a safe place to browse with a peace of mind.
The story is …. Well, it's non-existed. I've played approximately for 51 hours so far and I don't have a clue what the story is and why I'm here. In my humble Opinion, I think every RPG needs to have a strong plot and story to tell. It's what makes RPG games different from other genres. Again, like Demon Souls, you're a human that became an undead, sent to a hollow world filled with monsters and NPC like you to free and save humanity from this dwelling world.
Score: 6.5/10
Graphics:
If you've played Demon Souls before Dark Souls, you'll notice a little bit polishing here in Dark Souls. Animations tend to take its time too much, but that sometimes it's not big of a deal. The game is an open world just like I mentioned in the presentation category; the environment looks gorgeous, sometimes I'd go near high bridges or climb a ladder just to look at the view. Software should be commended for the beautiful design, however they shall be punished for the slow downs and graphical glitches that the game has. Sometimes, you 're stuck inside a wall, sometimes out of nowhere; you fall down and die, but you never took a single step to your own death. There's a little bit of frame rate issues when the game slows. However, you ignore those issues "if you can" you'll have a good time.
Score: 8.5/10
Sound, Music, and Voice Acting:
If you've got the limited Edition, you'd definitely want to listen to the soundtrack. Music is superb here. It takes to an atmospheric feeling while fighting bosses. It makes you anxious, it terrifies you in the heat of battle, but it's all over and you listen to the firelink shrine's music, it all goes away. It's calm and beautiful and most importantly, it sets the mood right.
Sound effect is also nice, you can hear the sound of your weapon, equip load weight, enemies screams and howling at you, to nearly everything. The sound, for me, is a big concept of Dark Souls because when you explore, there's no music being played or anything, you're left with the sound effect that your character makes. The sound effects interact with you overall and that's awesome.
Voice acting is very identical Demon Souls, it uses the 14/15 Century English which for the most times I can't comprehend. I'm not an English native speaker, it's my second language. I'm Arabic "Saudi Arabian" and I find it extremely difficult to understanding words from Uncle Shakespeare like "thou art something">> anyone?? I don't know about native speakers if they can understand that or not, but for me it's a communication barrier with the game.
Score: 9/10
Game Play Mechanics:
The similarities between Dark Souls and Demon Souls are NOT a lot. The game plays the exactly the same as its predecessor. From the moment you create your character and pick up your first weapon until you're fully ready to play the game on your own.
You start off with creating a character by choosing a class. Classes differ from one another, there's thief, bandit, knight, wanderer, sorcerer and many more. This time around, there are more classes to choose from, but the best I've seen so far is the Wanderer because it has low level and balanced status.
After you've created a character, you immediately start exploring the immersive world that will make you scream, cry, and in the end, it'll harm you in both ways, physically and mentally.
You kill the undead, the monsters, for souls which serve as a currency which lets you buy items, weapons, armors and rings from NPC you encounter or save along your journey. You can upgrade status by grinding. However, with each upgrade the cost of leveling up goes higher and higher and that's why with every greater power you gain, comes new responsibilities because each time the cost or the price for a single level goes higher, you'll need to put more time grinding for souls. You'll be forced to enter dungeons you're usually afraid of or fight bosses you're not ready for.
The style of the game wasn't changed from before, but with every new area, new types of enemies appear, therefore, the strategy of gameplay changes over and over again. But that being said, once you reach a suitable level, you'll just hack your way through just like any Action RPG and that brings some repetitive in it. Leveling up status should be balanced as well, because there are areas where miracles, sorcery and pyromancy "magic in general" are need more than the strength and dexterity and so on. Unbalancing your status could cause your character to be useless and you may have to restart the game and no one wants to do that.
Also, hitting the NPC WILL make them your permanent enemy.
The only complaints are minors "some of the are vital the gameplay", there are slow downs in many areas, graphical glitches like mentioned before, and the most annoying flaw is the locking up system. The locking up system is very clunky to the point it will cause you many deaths and lose your hard-earned souls.
The online system is the biggest flaw in this game knowing Namco BanDai know about this issue and still won't do something about it.
Let me tell you something my friend, if you're planning to play Dark Souls with a friend, I'd suggest you don't "don't give the F word just yet"
Dark Souls uses P2P servers "Person to Person" that is changed automatically every time you start off the game. Suppose your game's region is 1 and so is your friend's. The game has some sort of lobbies inside the whole wagon server that swap players back and forth every time they play. It's impossible to play as a party. I've tried with a friend, we spent 2 hours meeting at the same spot while talking on Skype none of us managed to get online together.
So, thumbs down to DarkSouls when it comes to playing online with friends.
Score: 8/10
Conclusion:
I could make a 45-minute class for the gameplay category, but in the end that won't make less different that Demon Souls.
Replay Value:
There are stuff to do that will last for more than 100 hours, I'm 51 hours and I have many things to do. You can strive for more souls to grind, upgrade your weapons and armors, you spend more time invading others.
Score: 8.5/10
General Pros and Cons:
^_^ Great Environmental Design
^_^ Open world is balanced
^_^ Awesome Boss fights
T_T Clunky locking system
T_T Graphical glitches
T_T Slow downs
T_T Very bad online functionality
My final Conclusion:
I'd say Dark Souls is a solid game when playing solo and worthy successor of Demon Souls. However the flaws it has are somewhat ignorable not if you spent 80$ on the limited Edition with your friend to play. Then you have the right to be pissed off. "which we did get the limited edition and yes we are pissed off"
Which game is better? Honestly, it's safe to say Demon Souls is a better game overall.
Overall Score: 8/10