Dark Souls

 

 

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I read a bunch of reviews on this game clamouring about the extreme difficulty. They are correct. This game will mess you up. It will defeat you over and over but you will persevere, and when you finally conquer that boss you will rejoice. But remember to not be too happy... there's a bigger and badder boss around the corner! -- The challenges in this game are legendary. At times you will feel like the game has beaten you, but you will not give up.

You need souls for everything in this game. Buying items from merchants, levelling up, reinforcing weapons and armour, and so forth. You earn souls from defeating any kind of enemy (or friend!). The ease of losing all of your hard-earned souls adds a little more difficulty to the game, which some people think is unnecessary, but it adds to the reward you receive from playing the game and being successful. Let's face it, people who negatively review this game are most likely stuck in the Undead Asylum (this is where the tutorial takes place) or Undead Burg (recommended area to begin the game).

The control system is one of the best I have ever experienced in an action/RPG. It is NOT a button-masher. If you passively enter a battle at an early point in the game, you will die. You will lose all of your hard-earned souls. You will feel cheated, but you will not stop playing. There are many rage-inducing moments of the game, but that rage just fuels your desire to succeed.

Okay, the story is a little lacking, but that's what makes it so much more interesting. The extreme mystery mixed with the difficulty is intriguing... you'll find yourself dying over and over again and thinking to yourself, "Why the hell am I even doing this?" -- The story can be pieced together through item descriptions and dialogue from the NPCs (non-player characters), but much is left up to the imagination of the player. Upon completion of the game, I would recommend checking out 'EpicNameBro' on YouTube; his lore series explains a lot that may have been missed on an initial play-through, and it is also quite interesting and humorous. He does a great job mixing information with hilarity whilst being professional.

If I could think of anything negative to say about this game, it would be the frame-rate issues in Blighttown, the questionable camera controls, and being invaded by players that are much more skilled than you. If you are in human-form and concentrating on the game then this can be very annoying. They should have allowed you to remain a human if you are killed by an invader. I can't tell you how much humanity I have wasted... However, you don't stay human very long because eventually the game itself is going to kill you. Humanity is useful for summoning other players or NPCs for boss battles you just can't complete yourself (you can, but you lack DISCIPLINE!), or kindling bonfires (which boosts the amount of Estus Flasks you can carry; estus flasks are used to heal yourself, so pretty useful indeed).

Another flaw with PvP is people that invade and exploit the critical hit method (mainly backstabbing). There is an easy method to combat this: a) DO NOT LOCK-ON TO YOUR TARGET, and b) swing away with RB (right bumper on the controller). Locking-on allows the invader to effortlessly "glitch" behind you and get the easy backstab. Most of these invaders will (very) likely have progressed through the game at a low level, which means they have had access to powerful weapons and upgrades. Basically, one backstab from one of these players will instantly kill you. Swinging at this invader without discourse catches them off guard and can usually score you an easy kill if you are careful enough; it is necessary to keep your shield down when performing a backstab, so they will be much more susceptible to damage.

For the Next D- Souls game, they really need to focus on improving the multiplayer/invading/summoning system.

One final note, PATIENCE IS ESSENTIAL. The angrier you get, the more mistakes you will make. The more mistakes you make, the more souls and humanity you will lose. The more souls and humanity you lose, the harder this game will be. If you are easily angered in other games, I might not recommend this to you. However, that is what others told me. Other games have me scream profanities, but this game... is different. I die countless times, but it just makes me want to win. I expect to die, which may be the proper way to approach it.

When you first look at the back cover of the game case, you see the following words printed in bold and capitalized: PREPARE TO DIE. I couldn't say it better myself. But you should also prepare yourself for an amazing journey.

Dark Souls.

Amazing game, completely worth the money, however it is really easy to miss something incredible or important and a walk-though is almost necessary, a stable internet connection while in game provides helpful tips from other players and although a couple may be malicious but many are helpful tips or rather humorous remarks.

Dark Souls is the spirtual successor to the PS3's notorious Demon Souls Game, a hardcore JRPG that is unforgiving in every sense of the word.

Gameplay --

Dark Souls at first will come off as an extremely boring game with rather dry combat and lack of atmospheric music. Fighting groups of enemies is nothing short of suicide in this game, so for players who like to run-and-gun, this game will require you to approach situations a little more strategically.

This is a trial and error game more than a difficult game. It is essentially about learning to recognize boss patterns then utilize them against your enemies. However, once a player has enough health and stamina and a heavy set of armour it's possible to heal and tank through anything most bosses will throw at you.

Players acquire currency in the form of souls - you can repair equipment, buy weapons, armour and components to upgrade your equipment. It can also be used to level up various stats. However, Dark Souls relies more on strong equipment and balanced stats than just purely stats. You'll find yourself farming souls on your first playthrough frequently. Dying however, causes all your souls and humanity to be lost where you died. These can be recovered if you do not die in the process of trying to recover them, however.
Humanity is a second form of currency that provides resistences once hollowing is reversed, increasing the drop rate and resistences to certain ailments, and allowing you to kindle and get more estus flasks. Humanity also allows players to summon other players or AI controlled NPC's to help them in boss fights or other aspects of the game. However, being in human form can lead to a player being invaded by other players/NPCs that will try to kill them for their souls.

Players find checkpoints in the form of bonfires. These bonfires allow players to restore their empty estus, warp after a certain point in the game and a number of other things. Dying sends a player to the last bonfire they rested at. However, resting at bonfires also resurrects all enemies in an area except for mini bosses and bosses, or specific enemy types.

A player can approach the game as a cleric, a mage or a pyromancer, or any other number of approaches. The game allows broad choice in how you complete it's objectives - which is essentially just kill everything.

The downside to Dark Souls is really how strong enemies are - while the AI is borderline retarded, even the most basic enemies are capable of half healthing you and even one shotting you. Some boss fights simply begin to feel unfair in the sense that enemies like the Bed Of Chaos will simply make approaching nigh impossible and you'll find yourself being swept into gaping holes in the ground. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if the bonfires were placed a little closer to the boss fights, as opposed to being forced to run for five minutes simply just to get back into the area. That's if there's no enemies in the way.

The framerate on the Xbox 360 is horrificly bad in many areas. Blighttown, The Great Swamp being the worst of these. These two areas are almost unplayable due to the drop in framerate. To make it more annoying, these also happen to be some of the darkest areas in the game. Areas like Lost Izalith are impossible to see in due to the glow from the lava you must forced to traverse and does nothing but add to the frustration level when you run into giant pairs of legs that'll gladly stomp on you and kill you.

The utter lack of explaination of even the most simple controls, the enemies who will one shot you even with your shield raised and the lag is what makes this game difficult. They could have done a lot better with this.

Audio and visual -
Dark Souls music is fantastic, but due to the compression of the data for the disc, it isn't quite as good as the PS3's version, yet still manages to satisfy. However, it's clear that they invested little in the voice overs, which, are for the most part horrible and many characters sound the exact same. Given there are few characters in this game to begin with, this is a problem.

Storyline -
The story line in this game doesn't deserve a section here because there isn't much to be had. The game has a story - yes, it is there - in the far back where no one can see it. If you want the story of dark souls you have to read the description of every item, and even then it's all very vague. But what is there you'll want to know more. In the end however, the conclusion to the story isn't very satisfying.

Despite Dark Souls glaring flaws in development the formula applied is incredibly addictive. Defeating bosses feels something of an achievement by itself, after you've spent two hours trying to kill one, and nothing beats the relief you feel. The level of difficulty becomes almost nonexistant once you understand how to play the game; however you will still die plenty. Some areas are frustrating to the point it feels the game is simply punishing the player, and for those players who are cursed and unable to remove it, this can be especially frustrating. The game is a direct port to the 360 and the data was compressed, so in terms of visual quality and lag issues, the superior PS3 version of the game may be the way to go for those lucky 360 owners who also happen to own a PS3.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this game
this is one of the hardest and most visually dull Xbox game i have ever played. its like a bad Skyrim. if thats even possible

Published 3 months ago by Jordan

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