I’ve waited so long to write this review, so goddamn long. You probably know the story by now since I already stated it in my recent review of Bloodborne, and it has been stated by dozens of other people who are fans of the game. A studio in Japan known as FromSoftware spent the last few decades developing weird games like Armored Core, King’s Field, Metal Wolf Chaos, and a bunch of other titles. While some of their games were good, not many of them were commercially successful and weren’t even released outside of Japan. In 2009, FromSoftware developed an action RPG known as Demon’s Souls and published it exclusively to the Playstation 3 due to a partnership deal with Sony. Demon’s Souls wasn’t popular at the time, but it was considered a landmark title. It’s twisting level design and aggressive enemy behavior kept the player on their toes, constantly rewarding them for overcoming the toughest challenges. Demon’s Souls became a cult classic and was considered one of FromSoftware’s greatest achievements up until that point. Shortly after the success of Demon’s Souls, From Software wanted to improve upon all the problems the game had.
They wanted to expand the level design, improve the combat variety, and incorporate a universe the player could dive into. After two years of development, FromSoftware released a spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls with a similar title known as Dark Souls and by now you should know what happens next. Dark Souls became a massive hit with the public, selling more than a million copies after launch and becoming one of the greatest games of all time. It inspired a rapidly growing community, future titles by FromSoftware, and even an entire genre. Walk up to anybody who has at least heard about Dark Souls and they’ll tell you the game is hard. That seems to be the most common reason why Dark Souls is remembered by many? Because of it’s punishing difficulty. Well Dark Souls is more than that. The reason why Dark Souls is so important is not only because it told developers that challenging games can still find a place in the video game market, but the game could effectively build up a deep and interesting universe without holding players by the hand to show them everything. It’s the experience, trial and error, sadness of the world, depth and history, and sacrifices that makes playing through the original Dark Souls so memorable.
I got Dark Souls and Bloodborne by the end of last year for my Playstation 4, and I haven’t properly sat down to finish them until recently. I finished Bloodborne first and I absolutely loved it! It was unlike any game I have ever played and it’s shaping up to be one of my favorite games of all time. So having beaten Bloodborne, I decided to step into the world of Dark Souls. By the date of this review it took me more than six months to finish the game. Originally when I picked up the game and started getting beaten up by tough enemies I stopped playing and tried finding something else to review. With enough confidence I decided to take the time to sit down and actually play through the game. I have to say, I finally figured out why so many people love Dark Souls. It’s an extremely well made game with a maze-like world filled to the brim with lore. Personally I don’t think Dark Souls is as good or refined as later entries like Bloodborne, but it’s certainly convincing me to replay both of them in the later future just to see what I’ve missed during my first playthrough. Dark Souls is just well… majestic. Today we’ll be talking about why I believe Dark Souls is a timeless masterpiece and why it deserves your attention. So fill up your Estus Flask, participate in some jolly cooperation, and prepare to journey to the land of lords.
Story
Might as well provide you a little bit of lore about the world of Dark Souls since the only way to fully understand the story and where you end up is to at least know the history behind some of the characters and locations. Long ago during the Age of Ancients, dragons ruled the land dominating anything they came across. The land was covered in ash and stone and mankind was surely struggling. Until the First Flame appeared and gave them new power and hope. The First Flame brought with it light and creation, along with death and destruction, but the humans cherished it as a symbol since it brought them hope. The First Flame soon gave mankind the Lord Souls, souls that contained massive amounts of power, and with it came four beings to claim them. Gravelord Nito, The Witch of Izalith, Gwyn the Lord of Cinder, and the forgotten pygmy who claimed the last one known as the Dark Soul. With the help of Seath the Scaleless, a smart dragon who betrayed his own kind, Gwyn figured out the dragons were weak to lightning and led an army of silver knights to fight against them and stop them once and for all. After the ferocious battle a new age was born, the Age of Fire, an age where mankind can exist with the help of the First Flame.
Of course not all fires burn forever, as the First Flame begins to fade over time. Gwyn, fearing an Age of Darkness that would shortly come afterwards, sacrifices himself to temporarily rekindle the first flame and continue the Age of Fire. However his soul is not strong enough to rekindle the flame and only continues the lifespan of mankind for a short amount of time since the flame is still fading. Other beings with the Lord Souls soon became corrupted, filled with disastrous ideas and slowly turning themselves into monsters. Along with Gwyn’s artificial rekindling came the Undead Curse, which started spreading rapidly across the land turning the citizens of Lordran into Undead. Undead are individuals who can’t truly die and are bound to fire. If an Undead loses his sanity he turns into a Hollow. A husk without a soul. However there is a prophecy that a Chosen Undead will one day make his way to the kingdom of Lordran and rekindle the first flame to continue the Age of Fire, but that tale would soon seem like nothing more than a myth. Until you, an unlikely undead, arrived on the scene.
The player wakes up in the Undead Asylum to notice that you are being released from your cell by a kind knight named Oscar. You later find Oscar injured who tells you that you shall carry on the prophecy as the Chosen Undead and rekindle the first flame continuing the Age of Man. You escape from the Undead Asylum and coincidentally a giant crow carries you to the land of Lordran. However rekindling the First Flame is not easy, as once you escape the asylum and make it to Lordran you figure out you have to ring the two Bells of Awakening to open up the gates to Sen’s Fortress, journey through Anor Londo to be gifted the Lord Vessel, collect four lord souls, and then you can finally do so. So being the Chosen Undead, you gear up and prepare for your treacherous journey through the ancient land of lords. Once more to the first.
Gameplay
Dark Souls is a pretty challenging game, mainly because of the many obstacles thrown at you when you are not paying attention. You traverse each area in the game avoiding traps, collecting items you come across, and fighting numerous enemies along the way. Each enemy is unique and comes with several different attacks and abilities, so you’ll have to quickly understand how to effectively take them down if you want to survive longer and venture forward. You can obtain and equip numerous armor sets and equipment throughout the game, each with their own playstyle and traits. With the wide array of tools you can create whatever playstyle suits you best. You can be a fierce barbarian who slams a mighty axe down onto his foes. A sorcerer who fights from afar using magic projectiles. A tanky knight who protects himself with iron plating. Or just run around naked with a greatsword but have the tradeoff of rolling around easily. The choice is yours. No build in Dark Souls is bad as long as it works.
Be warned about how much equipment you have on you, because you have an equip load meaning if you equip so much heavy equipment you begin to dodge slower and it’s harder to perform attacks. Speaking of dodging and attacks; you have a stamina bar which is used whenever you run, dodge, or swing your weapon. Once you press the button to perform said action you can’t cancel out. You have to wait for the animation to be played before you perform another action. You can see why this game is pretty difficult by now, since you have to figure out when it's the right time to attack and save up your stamina just in case something bad is about to happen.
Everytime you kill an enemy you gain souls, and souls can be used to purchase new items, upgrade your gear, and level up your stats. You mostly level up at the bonfires which are your checkpoints, and the stats you level up can affect the efficiency of certain items. Maybe putting points into strength and dexterity can help attacking and dodging with heavier equipment much easier. Maybe intelligence and faith can help with that magic or pyromancy build you have been making. Try not to wander around aimlessly with a large number of souls, because if you die while exploring you’ll lose all the souls you currently have on you. However there is a way to get your souls back. If you backtrack to the area you died at you can pick them back up, but if you die again while trying to retrieve them they're gone forever. It’s the game’s way of punishing the player for refusing to learn from their mistakes and get better over their journey.
There are a lot of shortcuts located throughout the game. Some of them can make backtracking through tough areas much easier, and other shortcuts can lead back to previous areas. Most people compare the world design of Dark Souls to a metroidvania, mainly because of how areas loop back into each other using shortcuts or elevators. You know what, I somewhat agree with that statement. It’s amazing how you end up going from one place to another within a short span of time or through loading screens.
At the end of each area there is a boss and these are some of the biggest challenges Dark Souls has to offer. Each boss tests your skills, understanding, and memorization so it’ll take several tries before you can beat one. Once you beat a boss you obtain a huge amount of souls, and sometimes a boss soul to forge a special weapon. The fog gate to the next area will open and you’ll be allowed to progress. Besides that there really isn’t much else to say about Dark Souls and how it works. There are those moments you can’t predict like the dragon in the second area of the game, but it is something that forces the player to memorize and prepare for. It’s what makes them play carefully and adapt with their surroundings. With your sword and shield in hand, and the many companions that stand along your side, you should be able to fulfill the prophecy and rekindle the First Flame.
Thoughts
I think I know why a lot of people adore Dark Souls so much. It’s not because of the balls to the walls difficulty curve where people flex off just because they overcame it, I personally believe it’s the journey. The environments the player ends up exploring, the several challenges they learn to survive through, and the many stories they create while powering through. Almost every location, character, major boss fight, bit of dialogue, and item offered me insight in the world I was exploring. From the first empathetic character you meet Solaire of Astora to when you finally reach the cloudy Kiln of The First Flame. The world of Dark Souls is actually more depressing than you think. It’s a dying world slowly coming to an end. The world is overrun with demons and the undead, everyone has gone completely insane amongst all the madness, and the only reason it’s continuing is because of heroes making sacrifices for those not willing to bring order. Plus the once mighty lords of the world who were basically gods have all gone mad as well. Should you continue the Age of Man which grows corrupt overtime and really doesn’t have much else to live on for, or bring upon an Age of Darkness which will cleanse the earth of it’s rotten filth and hopefully change the current state of the world. It’s a universe where even you the player aren’t a hero. You’re just someone trying to make things a little better only to harm others. It makes sense why Dark Souls is hard, because it needs that difficulty for the dying world to make sense.
The design philosophy of Dark Souls and future entries is clever in a numerous amount of ways and kept me more engaged than half the games I've played. You are given the opportunity to learn from your mistakes through how experience points can be lost, and you are punished if you are not willing to do so. That’s how most games should be rather than baby the player and just keep giving them more things they don’t need. The amount of customization options and tools in Dark Souls is jaw dropping to me. You can be a sorcerer, a pyromancer, a knight, a quick swordsman, and much more as long you get your gear and stats in the right place. Some locations were really cool like the gleaming city of Anor Londo, the never ending view of Ash Lake, and the glowing ruins of the Lost Izalith. Almost eight years later, I would say Dark Souls perfectly represents what a video game can be, a work of art. It’s not amazingly good as Bloodborne and I still prefer it more, but the environments and art design has aged pretty well.
Now there are a few complaints that I have with Dark Souls, but most of them are nitpicks and don’t deteriorate the overall experience. The world is interconnected with later areas looping into previous ones and still making sense, but the game doesn’t truly open up until later on. A majority of the time it’s a choice of what linear path you want to go down first. Compare this to Bloodborne which I think is more linear, but rewards you for exploring optional areas or going off the beaten path. It’s the maze-like design constricted, but it doesn’t block you off as much for exploring. Bloodborne even tricks the player into doing so by making these optional areas easy to end up in. This does make sense why Dark Souls would block the player off, because you don’t want the player to wind up in areas with enemies being way stronger than the player. Also you don’t want them to unlock powerful gear that breaks the early areas of the game, or gain a high amount of souls just by killing one powerful late game enemy.
While the level design is good for the most part there are sections in the game that feel poorly thought out. Lost Izalith specifically was rushed during the end of development, as stated by the developers. Compared to the combat of Bloodborne, Dark Souls 1 is much slower and not as responsive. It’s clunky at times, but we have to remember this is the first game in the series. It was four or so years before Bloodborne would improve the combat. It is still fun though and it’s more about preparation and playing patiently. I don’t like the humanity system in this game. It's not because you can only summon in human form, but because I never felt encouraged to use it besides getting more flasks for any boss fight troubling me and nothin else. The weapon upgrade system was more complex than it needed to be. To create a fire weapon you need to understand the forging tree and know where embers are. Bloodborne has a great modification system where you insert gems in and out of your weapons whenever you want. Without having to spend souls or extra material. The bosses aren't terrible, I mean for the most part they are good, but the quality of them is constantly dipping up and down. You have great boss fights like with Great Wolf Sif, Orenstien & Smough, and Gwyn. Then you have fights like Pinwheel, Capra Demon, and Demon Firesage which felt lazily designed.
Overall, while I don’t love it as much as Bloodborne and find it flawed in certain areas the original Dark Souls is still amazing and it’s no wonder why it spawned a trilogy that stands up tremendously. It’s a timeless masterpiece that everyone needs to play once just to understand its impact on the gaming landscape. In the end I give Dark Souls a 9.5/10 for excellence at best. Like a fine glass of wine mixed with a hint of citrus.
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