When I finished playing Dark Souls, I immediately started judging the game overall in comparison to its predecessor, Demon's Souls. That game was fresh in my mind, and I couldn't help thinking about it as I played Dark Souls through. Of course, it's not wrong of me to compare the two; in many respects Dark Souls feels like a re-imagining of the original, and they do share the same combat system and engine. That said, perhaps it's unfair of me to say I felt Dark Souls was the lesser game because it was slightly disappointing in certain ways. Had I only played it, I might think completely differently. Such is the danger of writing reviews without taking years to mull over the work in question. In fact, thinking about this review has led me to wonder about why anyone would read one of my reviews in the first place. Would they be looking for recommendations? Trying to see if I agreed with their own thoughts on something? Interested in my prose (I hope not)? I write these things for my own amusement, to try and qualify why I enjoy things, why I don't, and the stand-out reasons for both. For this game, I'll attempt to judge it without mentioning Demon's Souls so much--if you want to know my opinion on the matter, simply put I think Dark Souls is almost as good, but misses out on a lot of what I think made Demon's Souls work. Either game is a fine starting point if you're curious about them, and due to the differences in structure, everyone's going to have a different opinion about which is better in the end.
Dark Souls is an action RPG released by From Software in 2011, the follow-up to Demon's Souls. The game is brutal, challenging, and will make you work very hard to reach its ending. One of its greatest strengths, the one that sets it apart and turns it into something special, is the amount of options offered to the player. Whether it's the array of choices for creating characters, the silly amount of weapon upgrade paths, or the mostly open-ended nature of the adventure, you rarely feel like the path ahead is set in stone and the route taken shapes a unique experience for each player. For example, I played through Dark Souls entirely skipping a major area of the game, upper Blighttown, without even knowing that most new players struggle in this section. Sometimes choices are made clear, like the fact that you can take on the final four regions of the game in any order, but often it's a very subtle thing. Granted, players who do not start with the Thief's Ring may be stuck on a more linear path, but there is still flexibility available since only certain sections of the game are blocked off.
This implementation of game design reminded me, of course, of Super Metroid, which is still in my opinion one of the greatest games ever released. The nonlinearity has some drawbacks. Players will have to backtrack and memorize the lay of the land with no maps or hints to guide them. Unfortunately, the game does not offer teleportation between save points until about halfway in, which would have cut down on much of the early game's tedium. However, the benefits of a large, interconnected world are pretty significant: Lordran feels well-realized and makes sense geographically, and it's great to plow through an area you had trouble with a long time ago while en route to somewhere new. If I could alter this aspect of Dark Souls, I would allow warping from the start of the game and have perhaps a few more bonfires (save points) to travel to.
Dark Souls's story seems a bit thin, though since I didn't see every single area in the game during my experience and I am probably forgetting some dialogue from near the start, I probably didn't learn everything there is to know. You're a chosen character being manipulated by someone or other to... you know, I was never entirely clear. That right there is the problem I have with the game's story. While I'm not against stories being vague or having to dig to learn all the juicy details, it would be nice to at least have an established motivation for my actions. This is one area where I must, unfortunately, compare the game to its predecessor. While Demon's Souls was not the zenith of storyline perfection, it did have many more easy to find characters who would divulge information about the world and its inhabitants. This helped establish Boletaria as the game progressed and made the objective clear and meaningful. In contrast, Dark Souls is much lighter on interaction with minor characters. The lore of the world is likely more interesting than the plot itself, which was true of Demon's Souls as well, but that's an aspect of the game I can barely scratch the surface of and is ultimately more interesting when you're in the world of Lordran experiencing it for yourself. I wouldn't say the lack of much story in Dark Souls was a deal breaker, though. It did allow me to focus on the gameplay, which requires plenty of attention.
Combat in Dark Souls has been mostly improved from Demon's Souls, adding new elements such as Poise (resistance to hit-stun) and common-sense moves like jumping attacks. There isn't that huge of a difference between how the two play, but it feels more refined. One of the more interesting changes is that spells and your main healing item, the Estus Flask, work on a Final Fantasy I style charge system. When you rest at a bonfire, you restore all charges, and if you run out in the field, you're out until returning to a bonfire. It's interesting to see a system that was once almost completely booted from RPGs return and actually work better. I would say this approach to limiting healing items in particular is among the best I've ever seen; it prevents the player from hoarding millions of heals and sets a timer on the amount of exploration possible to perform safely. In truth, it also made me take much needed breaks from the game at times since I had to rest my character anyway. When a game is as stressful as this one, this can only be a good thing.
One area that I think Dark Souls falters in is its difficulty curve. I've talked about how difficult the game is, but in truth, only a few key parts of the game are what drove me up the wall, and most of those parts have to do with questionable boss designs. Many areas of the game are cakewalks. Carrying a divine weapon makes two areas of the game completely harmless. Anor Londo is nowhere near the end of the game and is by far the most difficult segment. Blighttown and the Bed of Chaos are difficult because of technical issues like lag and camera angles. Honestly, the game never feels like it's giving challenges in the right order, which may be another result of nonlinearity, but still just seems strange at times.
Another thing that concerns me is the game's online features. The most infamous, the battle against Ornstein and Smough, had me trapped for quite some time unable to progress. (In short, you have to defeat two strong, very quick enemies that can easily gang up on you. Only somebody who is a master at action games can win this battle without saying it was difficult) To win this battle, I had to do what I suspect the designer intended: summon another player to lend me a hand. I am very torn about this. Make no mistake: I think the online aspects of the Souls games are great and help make them stand apart from others. On the other hand, what if I want to play this game again in seven years? Will anybody be online to play co-op with? Will there be any danger of being invaded by other players? It seems to me that Dark Souls will be gutted at that point. I played Demon's Souls with very few online interactions, and it still works well as a game, but it didn't feel as if the creators wanted you to go it alone all the time. Still, nothing in it gave me as much trouble as the battle described above. Balancing co-op play with making a beatable single player mode must be an extremely daunting task for a designer, and it's one I feel I can't criticize as much as I'd like since I play most games on my own.
I'm left feeling like I didn't get everything I wanted out of my experience with Dark Souls, but I did play it for over sixty hours and had a good time throughout most of it. It's a game I know I'll be playing again and learning more about on the side, which is always a good sign. In time, my appreciation of Dark Souls is likely to go up. For now, I'm content with saying it's simply a very good game that anybody who is up for a challenge should try, especially since it's so cheap on the PC (and easy to fix its issues with a simple mod). Praise the sun.
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