Dark Soul is an excellent example of how games should be! Demon Souls and Dark Souls are the main reasons to get a PS3.
Since I got the game, I have spent countless hours playing it, I have over 150+ hours. This is what I do expect from games, not an expensive 60 euros for only 3 or 4 hours of gamplay as many games are now days.
Dark Souls can offer you a true challenging hardcore RPG experience, where anything you have accomplished feels rewarding and satisfaying, including multiplayer Coop or PvP, with an intriguing adventure in an open world full of surprises. Also it gives you the options to make decisions (like killing a NPC, or trusting one NPC) that can affect your progress of a certain chain of events,story, etc. and the most important part is that you can join any of the Covenants that Dark Souls offers.
Covenants just doesn't give you extra items in PvE, it affects the entire multiplayer experience and PvP. For example there is one Covenant in the Forest that when you join, you will be summoned to battle other players that enter the forest and are not part of this Covenant. Another Covenant gives you the option to put a sign in 3 different player worlds, making their world harder, and for them, to get rid of the curse, they need to find where you placed the sign so they can invade you back to try to kill you in order to get their world back to normal. Of course you will get rewards when completing tasks for your covenant, you can level your covenant for more extra items or abilities, there is always a reward :). Be aware , each covenant have their own rules that you cannot break, otherwise, the punishment can be expensive and you may be kicked out of the covenant for the rest of the playthrough.
The multiplayer experience is the main reason I give this game the classification of Innovative. For example you are fighting your way to get to the boss area, and you can find other player signs on the floor that if you touch them, they will be summoned into your world for Coop play, and at the same time, another player can invade your world to kill you, also this player may be part of a covenant that have special abilities like stealing humanities with a special move etc. This, plus the covenants options, makes the experience unique, it is very competitive and coop at the same time. I must say is amazing ,the PvP is intense, when people are invading you never know what is coming or what will happen, it is total suspense and fun, maybe you can hide in a room and wait for the invader and try to back stab him, maybe you want to confront the invader directly, or lure him to a place with traps, etc. From Software did really a good job again.
Dark Souls is a true candidate for "Game of the year" title, it excels in every area, but (yes there is a but) it has a few problems:
-First, with Frame Per Second rates in some areas, sometimes it drops very low making it kind of slow motion, lucky it doesn't last much.
-Second, some ingame textures seems very blurry, I think they could do better with the overall graphics.
These are the only reasons I found to give this game 9.5 instead of flawless 10.
Another thing to mention, is that this game is not for everyone, there are people that cannot play this game because is very hard, and you die a lot, people can get really mad up to the point of destroying the game disc and/or the controllers. But yes, this doesn't affect the score, and doesn't mean that the game is not good (I think I would do the same if I play a Hello Kitty game for example, lol) tastes are tastes, nothing more to say here.
For people giving this game a 1.0 score, I have read you are grinding in the starting area in order to get better stats and equipment? the starting area, really? Sorry to say this, but you guys lack of skills ,this game is definitely not for you guys. The only part I grinded in the game is the Forest and that is quite far from the starting area and not even necessary for finishing the game.
If you are a true hardcore gamer, what are you waiting for ? go and buy the game asap, doesn't matter the price, this game probably will be the game of the year and you wont regret.