Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

Demon Soul's was one of the best games of 2010, and Dark souls is, no doubt, even better. It has improved Demon Soul's in several ways but retains a couple of the problems present in the first, a fact that will no doubt cause some frustrations amongst the more casual gamers.

The combat gameplay is very similar to Demon Soul's, but its better now. You cannot spam spells anymore, instead, you have a set amount that you have to replenish by going to a bonfire (checkpoints in Dark Soul's.) I like this fact, because though you don't have mana, you have to use your spells much more wisely. In many other ways the gameplay is similar which isn't a bad thing but I wish they had added stuff like class specific abilities (like sword abilities for warriors and etc.) However, I guess this would over complicate things and Dark Soul's combat, while quite simple, is wonderful. Still, my main problem with Dark Soul's is the consistency and balance. Some builds will beat all others easily, and only a couple weapons are actually useful. The game does not award you for trying something different.

The difficulty is, like Demon Souls, very hard. A casual gamer shouldn't even bother. However, despite the fact that you die often, you get a lot of pleasure seeing your character become stronger slowly. That said, there are several cheap ways you can just fly past the game, and I would have rather seen these shortcuts removed as it defeats the point.

Cults, some new online features and the open world are some of the other changes in Dark Souls. For the most part, From Software does a good job in improving the core game and delivering more high class gameplay. Fans of demon souls shouldn't miss out. Those frustrated by Demon Soul's difficulty should no doubt skip on this game.