Demon’s Souls was on its arrival quickly tagged as an insanely difficult game, for that reason it both drew players to it but also kept many away. Now a few years later comes the following title in the series, but this time regardless of the high difficulty level gamers are finding it nearly impossible to stay away. Dark Souls is not just more of the same unforgivably hard dungeon crawling it’s a refreshing breath of innovative strategy and brutally punishing death that will satisfy even the most hardcore Demon’s Souls fan for a long time to come. For those of us who stuck with Demon’s Souls to the bitter end there was a tremendous sense of achievement that no other game could replicate. Dark Souls is no exception, it’s equally rewarding and equally hard. If you are up to the challenge and ready for the fight of your life then read ahead.. and prepare to die.
You start the game by building your own custom character, much like Demon’s Souls you are given a choice of classes such as knight / cleric / wanderer / thief / bandit and pyromancer. Each class determines your ability and overall power at using particular weapons and magic spells, as well as your various strengths and weaknesses. It’s a good idea to read through the stats first and judge the character you want but even if it doesn’t go right the first time there is always the opportunity to customize your abilities by levelling up. Oddly enough there is a new class in Dark Souls known only as deprived, you start off without armour and proper weapons instead you have a plank and must build yourself up with any equipment you happen to find – it’s a perfect example of the games unique styling when it comes to putting together a real challenge.
As for the story itself initially it’s rather bare, all you know is you have awoken in an old decrypted asylum and things are about to get a hell of a lot worse. Though you won’t be following a story as such there are tips scrawled into the floor and a very short but to the point tutorial that teaches you the basics of combat and survival. If you take the time to read the tips and master everything from blocking to parrying you will survive a lot longer in your quest, longer but not forever. Dark Souls is all about learning from past mistakes to conquer the next pitfall, that pitfall could be anything from a squad of heavily armed undead knights to a gargantuan demon hell-bent on pummelling you into the ground. Thankfully the combat in the game works exceptionally well so each player is given a fighting chance, constantly pressing the attack button won’t get you far ..if anything it will get you killed even faster. Combat in the game whether it be with mindless foot soldiers of hulking bosses depends on you knowing how to fight, learning to block effectively and with the right shield is paramount to defeating your foe. If you fail to learn an enemies attack patterns or they are strong enough to break through your defences while your stamina is low the result will most definitely be messy. The good thing is most of the enemies are easy to read so getting fatal blows in can easily be dished out in an even flow, not only that but the enemies always respawn in the same locations making it even easier to plan and execute your attacks more precisely.
To help you dispatch the many legions of demons there are all manner of weapons and magic spells available, if that’s not enough armour too can be found all over the game world making it that little bit harder for the forces of darkness to annihilate you. Wandering through Dark Souls you won’t just find swords spears and bows, you will find many magically enhanced weapons that when coupled with the right skills and stats will provide you with invaluable killing tools. Demon’s Souls had so many weapons and sets of armour that in order to use them all you would have to play through the game numerous times, many people did and again in Dark Souls the tradition continues. Since dying is common place and you will die over and over again many people start the game all over again with a different class, I originally started as the thief class then switched to the knight it’s all part of the learning process.
Dark Souls never lets up or apologizes for its unrelenting abuse of the senses, but there are ways to even the odds. When you kill an enemy in the game you are rewarded souls, it can start off low and you have to take out area bosses to gain enough to make a substantial amount but by farming locations you will soon be on your way to going up a level. The catch of course is if you die while carrying your unused souls you will lose them all, they can be gained back if you find the place where you died and touch your bloodstain ..die on the way and they are lost forever. You can also find the slightly more rewarding souls of knights/heroes and warriors on some bodies but its rare so you have to keep your eyes peeled when you are exploring a new area or you could miss them. Souls can also be used as currency to buy weapons/upgrades/spells/armour and so on, just like the weapons and other items in the game there is no shortage of vendors willing to trade their wares for your precious souls. Vendors can be found all across the gaming world and there does seem to be a lot more of them than in the previous game, depending on your current status the items and materials they sell can come in very useful. You could always decide to just concentrate on getting all of your weapons and items off corpses on the battlefield but it’s always worth checking a vendors wares because you never know what they might be selling. Weapons and armour can be upgraded by visiting one of the many blacksmiths you will find, initially they will only make light improvements but once you start finding the right stones and materials more powerful weapons with magic properties can be made.
This time around instead of visiting the nexus and finding herbs to regenerate health you visit bonfires that when lit serve as resting points, while rested you can fill up your health flask and upgrade your skills by spending souls. Be warned that once you rest at a bonfire all of the non boss enemies in the game will automatically respawn, this might sound unfair but it’s a plus because you can keep killing the same enemies over and over again to collect up even more souls. Eventually by progressing through the game and buying certain items from blacksmiths you will be able to do all manner of things from bonfires such as upgrade your weapons and store everything in a bottomless box, given that you pick up so many weapons and armour sets while playing the box soon becomes invaluable.
It’s not always a lonely road in Dark Souls, just like before there is a complex co-op mode that allows players to drop in and out of your game. In most games co-op comprises of a friend helping you out in those tricky moments where the odds really are stacked up against you and though that’s true about Dark Souls it also allows for more sinister opportunities. Playing the game online means you can and will interact with others playing the game, some will leave messages on the ground offering strategy on what’s around the next corner / some will leave summoning signs for you to activate thus drawing them into your world to help you slay the next demon / and some more deviant will use the opportunity to invade your world and kill you so they can steal your souls. The same system was paramount to Demon’s Souls online experience only this time the emphasis is on helping others rather than terrorizing them, by implementing a system where you can report the invading player the game actually punishes wrong doers and makes for a more interesting gaming experience.
Making your way through the gaming world is much more fluid than I expected, from the very start you are given the option to just start exploring not only at your own pace but also in the direction you choose. One thing I really liked was opening connecting areas by unlocking sealed doors or gates that I previously hadn’t got the keys for, the world of Dark Souls can be vast and dangerous so opening doors and activating elevators is something that really shouldn’t be avoided. As for the levels themselves quite a few do remind me of their counterparts in Demon’s Souls, Blighttown for instance is a lot like The Valley of Defilement but its different enough to feel fresh and unseen. The levels are expertly constructed and contain lots of secret rooms and pitfalls that will test you at every turn. Each part of the world has its own specific look and feel, Blighttown is dark and toxic, Undead Burg is a lot like the first area in Demon’s Souls surrounded by high castle walls and crumbling battlements, the Darkrook Gardens are lush and green but contain deadly secrets all of their own, there really are so many painstakingly detailed areas to explore that I can’t possibly talk about them all.
The detail and graphics really are highlighted in every step of the way, each area has a certain glimmer of authenticity that integrates itself seamlessly into the vast environments you can and will explore. There is a seriously accurate atmosphere to Dark Souls, the threat of defeat and pulverizing death around each corner really radiates from your surroundings and makes you feel that little bit more on edge. The sound effects are nicely done and really don’t seem too different than they were in Demon’s Souls, but then why fix something if it’s not broken. The music does play a bigger part this time and the score is exceptionally well written fitting the game perfectly, though at times it will seem as if there is no score present it manages to sneak up on you right as your combat situation escalates.
The enemies in the game are the second star of the show and command a serious presence around every corner. At first you will tackle mindless undead who are for the most part a pushover, as the game progresses the legions of demons and undead escalate in difficulty to the point where you are up against a serious challenge. Just as the first game had a whole host of infernal demon’s guarding the passages to the next area so too does Dark Souls, and they won’t let you pass without a fight. For the most part it did feel like the bosses were a little easier than those of Demon’s Souls, because not only could I summon up help online I could also summon up the help of offline characters I met by joining special covenants. That said even with the extra help some bosses can be quite the handful and can do more than their fair share or damage to your character. There is a catch in summoning help, since your character is undead you must find and use humanity sprites to restore your human self and interact with other players willing to help you slay an undefeated boss or minor demon.
Humanity is an interesting enough concept that seems to work, it also restores your health so it can be used as an alternative method to staying alive a little bit longer when your flask has run empty. The undead and demons in the game don’t just do physical damage with slashes of swords and spears, some have the ability to curse you which can be devastating if you don’t have the proper tools to reverse it. When cursed you lose a substantial amount of your health and stamina bar and you won’t get them back until you find and take the cure, the first time this happened to me I felt cheated but it helped harden my skills for survival and there was a tremendous sense of accomplishment when I finally had the curse lifted. It’s these little moments of fear and progression that really propel Dark Souls above and beyond the realms of all other games, they are all victories in their own right as everything you work towards is for a reason and it all serves to toughen you up for even more hell raising encounters.
To really grasp the Dark Souls experience you have to play the game with the proper skill and respect it deserves, if you come to it expecting a simple hack and slash romp then the chances are you won’t last very long. Each enemy requires you to learn an attack pattern so you can dispatch them with enough skill that they can’t in turn drain your health or kill you, this takes time effort and above all else strategy. If you go about playing the game properly you will find progression comes much quicker and death comes more sparingly, you can’t escape death because it’s a core element of the learning process and needs to be experienced to toughen you up. The controls for the game are solid and extremely responsive, fans of the previous game will be happy to know what your character has a few new moves such as jumping and plunge attacks that give the combat a more balanced approach.
All that aside there were a few times where I felt the game was tipping the scales too high against me, one particular time involved two armoured archers on either side who had direct line of sight and were able to hit me every time making me plummet to the ground below. It didn’t matter what my skill level was nor what my characters class was the only way across was to not get hit and then take out one of the archers, there was no room to really navigate and the ledge was about a foot wide – it took over 10 tries to finally roll forward across the ledge dodging incoming fire and then dealing with an archer. I knew to expect a serious fight when I started the game because I had played Demon’s Souls long before Dark Souls was announced, but the archer section was a case of the game using a cheap trick to push the difficulty level up another notch and though examples like that are few and far between a lot of players will find those moments unacceptable.
In certain areas of the game you may find the camera can get you killed as you manoeuvre your way through the darkness only to find you are now on your way either off a cliff or into an enemies ambush, though it’s rare that this will happen when it does it can be very frustrating especially if you were carrying a lot of unused souls. Ironically enough the same area where the camera can be tricky is the only area I ever noticed any substantial drop in frame rate and it all was over so quickly it didn’t impact my fun. Those are the only negative points I ever noticed about the game and they are minor in comparison to the epic scale of what Dark Souls has to offer, every little detail is perfectly suited and expertly executed. This is not the kind of game that overloads you in story and lore, instead it distances you from other characters keeping you on a constant battle of survival and strategy.
The difficulty level is continuously adjusting itself so as soon as you beat one enemy you start to encounter more that force you to fight even harder and with more skill, to make things even harder if you die in an area the enemies fight even harder and are more brutal than ever – unfair? That’s just how the game plays out. Its clear Dark Souls aims itself at a specific type of gamer and if you don’t fit the bill you might not last very long, it’s immersive and deeply overpowering with enough lifespan to satisfy even the most hardcore gamer. Demon’s Souls was and still is only available as an exclusive to the ps3 so many 360 gamers could only rely on their expectations and not have the raw power of the original to compare it to, having played both I can say that all of my expectations were more than met in every possible way. It’s not rocket science what the game does but it manages to effortlessly exhaust and drain your senses without skipping a beat, in short it’s a serious dose of psychological warfare that is more than worth the ticket price. I loved every minute of Dark Souls, it rarely frustrated yet managed to keep me motivated enough every time to keep pressing on even when I was getting annihilated by creatures three times taller than me.
It’s rare I give a game serious top marks because realistically they all have some flaws here and there, Dark Souls is quite the opposite it doesn’t apologize for the extreme difficulty but it does reward you for persisting even when the odds are stacked against you. I’m giving the game a well deserved 10 out of 10, the minor issues that I experienced were minimal enough to not result in any hampering of game play. If you liked Demon’s Souls then you will lose your mind when you play its brutal predecessor, if on the other hand you haven’t and are up for a serious challenge then Dark Souls just might be the game for you.
