I'd been sitting outside the final boss for a good year so it was time to put this to bed; I was never going to go back to any DLC or secret portrait worlds any time soon.

I finished my first Dark Souls, my first proper Soulslike. That's a crazy feeling. I didn't always do it the hard way; I fought with NPCs, I fought with friends, I got guided to shortcuts and found bonfires I would have refused to have played the game without. But it still feels very special. Maybe for the next run, I'll try and play blind.

I doubt it. There's a shared experience that makes this invaluable to me, and my run feels like a shared achievement, and I'm genuinely like privileged to not have done it alone.

It's janky. The boss runs suck. i-frames are franky a ridiculous mechanic. It's too dense in its secrets; too much undiscovered, too much too complicated. Levelling feels pointless, upgrading equipment isn't obvious. I never saw a legendary weapon, I never wore a single piece of cool armor because slow-rolling was ass. Level design ranged from outstanding to incredibly, incredibly poor.

But it's an unforgettable experience in an unforgettable world. And I did it.

A unique game and an instant classic, Dark Souls is a game oozing with atmosphere and challenges. What Dark Souls seems to stand out in is environmental storytelling, the environments you inhabit are well designed in terms of connectivity, ambience, and especially lore. The lore is told through implications with casual NPC dialogues and item descriptions which help the player connect the laws and relationships of a rich world. This boon however comes shorthand into the one main issue with Dark Souls which that there is no story. It is mostly a disconjointed series of events reliant on atmosphere but that atmosphere is so excellent it creates an entirely unique experience. An interesting mechanic of DS is death, upon which all of your unspent experience points are left at the area you died and you respawn at a save point which the opportunity to reclaim your points, however dying again nullifies your points entirely. This leads to a gameplay style that is ‘High-Risk, High-Reward’ which is compounded by unpredictable enemy behaviour, booby traps, difficulty spikes, and a clunky combat system. There is a thrill of exploring the unknown and also knowing that you could lose everything if you’re not careful. It is also one of the few games where dying becomes an incentive rather than a deterrent to continue playing, which is a fundamental difference which should not be understated.