K-SCORE: 88
Developer: FromSoftware
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
Director: Hidetaka Miyazaki
Art: Makoto Sato
Spoiler Level: Uh... I wouldn't know how.
“I... sank deeper and deeper into the violent shadows of its sickly beautiful world”
Hardcore, borderline… too… Asian, vast open-world RPG. Know that going in. I wasn’t going to play the game at all because I didn’t love it’s predecessor, Demon’s Souls enough to feel like I wanted to dive into the franchise, but then Dark Souls II came out (I’m always way behind on my games) and it received great reviews so I thought I’d commit to the series. Anytime a developer is improving their series substantially with each entry, I’m inclined to try them out. Usually there’s a good idea at the heart of games, and gameplay takes a long while to refine. It’s why video games tend to get better as more and more sequels are released and movies to tend to get worse. Of course, being the guy that I am, I could never skip an entry, so I opened the door to Dark Souls and sank deeper and deeper into the violent shadows of its sickly beautiful world.
“The story is a pile of tattered rags that the developer I guess wants to call clothes.”
I’m happy I did, but the notion that I would have missed something if I’d just jumped to Dark Souls II is patently absurd. The story is a pile of tattered rags that the developer I guess wants to call clothes. There is just nothing there. The ‘undead chosen one’ player character travels around the dangerous world of Lordran killing enemies, ringing bells, and lighting fires for reasons that aren’t even close to adequately explained. I’m fine with minimalistic story in games (and other mediums) but to do it well, you have to choose objects, locales, and characters carefully, very subtly hinting at story. There is a lot of friendly, evil, and in-between characters in Dark Souls and they have quite a bit to say actually, but none of it makes any damn sense or connects to other pieces of it.
Subtitle: To achieve your fate, fill the vessel with powerful souls. ... ?
Subtitle: I did not find my own sun, not in Anor Londo, nor in Twilight Blighttown. ... note the spelling of sun.
The best story moment was one of my creation. In the game, when you die, you become a “hollow” undead with a gross red face (usually covered by a helm). So I designed my character’s face at the beginning a couple weeks before I’d end up finishing, and I made him happy with a big nose and dark green hair. Then I never saw it again because you die all the time and rarely regain your “human form” and even when I did, I had gear covering my character’s weird visage. Then I progressed and toiled and came face to face with Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, and put on a helmet that actually revealed my big dumb smile. I beat him without dying. Human. Don’t you see? It took me that long to come to know myself. Full circle and poetic that was, but I can’t credit the game too much. The rest of it is creepy laughs and mumbo-jumbo about kilns and flames and souls and giant snake heads.
Despite having the same kill or be killed, get better at this game or play something easier, concept as Demon’s Souls, the gameplay is an improvement in a number of critical ways that actually make it far more fun. Then again, there are a huge number of carry-over problems too. The menus and item management systems are brutal yet again in this entry. Because I wanted to collect everything, I spent a long time paging through screen after screen of gear lists lumped into far too few categories.
“gear... that can’t be understood let alone mastered in a reasonable amount of time.”
I like the appearance of all the weapons, armor, and shields (more on that later when I talk about the art), but FromSoftware never wanted to give a direct upgrade to a weapon or armor. Every piece of gear might have been useful in certain circumstances if you got used to its moveset or bulkiness and invested resources into it. A fine policy, except that the problem then becomes there is way too much gear and way too many of those options. Way too many! We’re talking hundreds of pieces of armor, dozens of swords, axes, spears, halberds, clubs, hammers, maces, rapiers, whips, shields of all kinds… and everything has a million stats. A single piece of armor can fit the head, chest, hands, or legs, and then has a number denoting its physical resistance (subdividing into slashing, thrusting, bludgeoning, and normal resistances), also its magic resistance, fire resistance, lightning resistance, bleed resistance, poison resistance, and curse resistance. Then it has a certain weight and poise. And then, to be good, it has to be upgraded five to ten times. Do that with a couple hundred pieces of gear and you have a system that can’t be understood let alone mastered in a reasonable amount of time.
So by necessity I spent a lot of time on the Dark Souls wiki, figuring out what I wanted to use, how to make it good, and how to get everything. I wasn’t on their as much as when I played Demon’s Souls though because thankfully Dark Souls has fewer opportunities to make game-breaking mistakes. Mistakes are harshly punished, but generally not with: “play-through the whole game again, you worthless screw-up.” I could redeem myself in this one. So taking out the stupid, “Hey, you just missed the only crystal lizard that drops that flawless upgrade stone. You’re fucked!” kind of moments was the first and most-vital improvement FromSoftware made. I could explore and play Dark Souls on my own with only crippling fear of the enemies I faced and not the hidden gameplay mechanics about “world tendency,” limited respawns, and secret NPCs that kill each other before you’ve gotten everything you need to out of them, which make no sense and result in irreversible errors.
These kinds of issues and not-so-special highlights make Dark Souls sound just terrible as I’m writing about it, bordering on broken. Scott kept saying as I was playing that it sounded more awful every time I talked about it. Yet the game kept me engaged, having fun, and satisfied. How? Two truly amazing triumphs. Where Dark Souls excels, it kicks the ass of all other RPGs being made today.
First, the fighting mechanics and enemy encounters are amazing. I grew a deeper appreciation for the depth of the skill-based combat every time I killed an enemy. It’s fast. Some guys will kill you in one hit. Yet as you get better, you can kill them by dodging all their attacks, gaining the ability to survive a mistake or two, whittling them down to dead, and getting stronger until eventually you’re the one killing things in one hit. Unlike other games that have fragile characters, triumph doesn’t come to the “hero” with the twitchiest reflexes. There’s a ton of strategy. And even better, the strategies make sense based on your choices. If I use my big heavy sword, I do more damage, guys I hit stumble, and my attacks are harder to block, but I swing slower and missing leaves me vulnerable. If I use magic, I have to find times to cast spells in between dodges and slashes, and figure out how to safely stay at a distance. My katana might make my enemies bleed, but it breaks easily. A hammer knocks my foes to the ground, but I have to be strong enough to carry it. Certain shields weigh me down more, making me move slower, but they are more stable when blocking. For some enemies, blocking is the key. For some, it’s far better to roll away or just charge in using your weapon with both hands, which does more damage. Yes, it’s fantasy combat, but there is a logic to it based in reality. Through that I developed preferences that felt like they had to do with something about me as a person. I’ve never really experienced this in a game before. I don’t like using axes. I know that about myself now. They’re too slow. But I understand the advantage of it all too well when some ogre drives ones through my thick armor. I can see why others would cope with the downside of the slowness so they don’t have to spend as long taking weak pokes at heavily armored foes. All of these clashes of style, ups and downs of fast-paced melee warfare with balanced magic tossed in make the fighting in Dark Souls tremendously fun, even when it’s just you against your run-of-the-mill blue-eyed knight adversary.
“I don’t like using axes. I know that about myself now.”
The bosses are even better. Dark Souls has a ton of bosses, all distinct and interesting, challenging and enjoyable to fight in that intense, atmospheric, even frightening way. I developed a pattern for them. I went in very cautious, kept running away or kept my shield up or both, just studying the attacks and vulnerabilities. Usually on my first attempt, I did pretty well before death arrived, and I’d think, “okay, I got this,” and go in the next time cocky and careless and get slaughtered. In the subsequent attempts, I really learned the patterns, developing new strategies and overcoming obstacles I didn’t rightly understand in my first attempt. Each death sent me to a bonfire, usually really far away, giving me time to reflect as I ran and fought my way back to the boss room. The bosses that took me the longest, namely Sif, also gave me the greatest sense of accomplishment when I finally emerged victorious. The triumph of surviving something that used to kill you in three seconds is only present in this franchise as far as my experiences goes, and is the deservedly-lauded selling point of the Souls games. It is an incredibly fulfilling experience, to die to a minotaur, not understanding how he shredded you so quickly, and think, “I’m ill-equipped, too slow, and can’t see properly. I’ll never kill him,” and then to keep trying and getting better and realizing that the game gave you the tools and you learned your own set of custom tactics and style that can, indeed, give you the edge over that giant vicious monster. It’s a great accomplishment, and one of the reasons I’ll live through those brutal downsides.
“Because the world demands study so that you can get between the areas efficiently, and because there’s so much backtracking because the levels aren’t laid out linearly, but rather sprawled across a huge continent-esque region, you end up admiring all of that fantastic detail that went into the world.”
The world itself though, shines more brightly in the dark of Dark Souls than even the combat. The art of everything is beautiful, unique, and vivid. I found myself stopping in hopefully safe places just to admire the details on the tiniest of weapons or to gape at the vastness of the terrain. Everything is cool-looking, every zone is special, and they’re all interconnected. I came to love that the game has no map. It forces the player to learn the huge world, to pay attention to landmarks, shortcuts, turns, safer paths that take longer versus more perilous ones that will get you there more quickly or maybe without poisoning you a little bit. Because the world demands study so that you can get between the areas efficiently, and because there’s so much backtracking because the levels aren’t laid out linearly, but rather sprawled across a huge continent-esque region, you end up admiring all of that fantastic detail that went into the world. No one, neither magical systems nor NPCs, tell you where to go. You explore and realize how to advance slowly. It’s not frustrating. It evolves naturally, and gives the whole game this great blend of discovery and growing familiarity. I wish someone would make a real model of the Dark Souls world, because it couldn’t be mapped well, but it could be pieced together and built, and I’d love to have a huge glass display-case housing it, looking on as if God and his creation. This, this is the world I conquered, when once I was such an underpowered littling thing.
I learned Dark Souls in addition to playing through it, and I love learning, so that suits me just fine. Hopefully in future entries the game does a better job of simplifying the gear, explaining the by-the-numbers systems, and organizing those annoying RPG details. Also, a story that makes any kind of sense might be nice. Don’t listen to the psychotic fanboys who think they’ve figured out who the Primordial Serpent, Kingseeker Frampt, really is. You made a bunch of hot crazy-Asian nonsense. Great and beautiful nonsense at times, and I loved it, but I too, might be a little too Asian, for a white Ohioan. It’s strange though. Here’s a game that I loved, yet I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that I actually know. I think it speaks both to the intensity of the experience and the diversity of personalities in my small circle of friends. Know this too: Dark Souls is likely not for you. You will die - and you will keep dying unless you commit yourself to understanding why.