The worst thing the internet ever did to me way back when was selling me on the idea of Dark Souls as this SUPER HARD GAMER series for GAMERS! GIT GUD and PREPARE TO DIE! When in reality it’s this really offbeat and interesting interpretation of an RPG where even though it’s entirely skill-based, and it can be pretty hard, there’s still more than enough to form personal attachments with outside of the gameplay itself. It’s very light on narrative but fosters mechanical storytelling through its nonlinearity and some of its wonkier mechanics. Getting cursed in Depths and having to climb my way out, having my weapon nearly break halfway through a bossfight and having to swap around on the fly; two emergent situations that aren’t really all that significant, but were memorable enough to hold onto and help my playthroughs feel ‘mine’. Working towards the Dragonslayer Spear only to realise I just transformed my only good weapon into something I’m 10(!!) levels away from being able to use would probably come off as cheap in any other game, but I found myself eager to work around this sudden frustrating wrench in my build when the whole game builds itself around putting you in uncomfortable situations and telling you to deal with it.

It’s a vibes game to me, really. It’s hard for me to imagine there’s many of that GIT GUD crowd still grinding out DS1 when games like DS3, Sekiro and Elden Ring exist because it just doesn’t offer the same mechanical depth or extreme upper limit of challenge compared to them, and it only gets easier when you realise you can deal with most of the enemies in the game by circle strafing and backstabbing where possible. But that’s not the point, right? It’s more than just a set of challenges, it’s a world to be explored and overcome. Combat encounters aren’t just enemies to be killed and walked past; they’re part of the world they live in, to transform threatening environments into dangerous ones and communicate the hostility of the world. “Easy” sections lighter on combat allow themselves to exist in order to punctuate the danger for feelings of peace, introspection, foreboding; Kiln of the First Flame, Lost Izalith, the empty space in Anor Londo. Challenge is part of the aesthetic, but it’s not *the* aesthetic.

Something I noticed even when I was playing DS3 as my first Souls game, and have only grown more vindicated on as I’ve gone back, is that the slow combat is much better to emphasise the games’ stellar visual design than the faster-paced lean the newer games have taken. Taking DS3 as the example, most combat encounters with anything too much harder than basic Hollows take a lot of focus to the point where it’s hard to take in anything that’s around me until they’re done, and in bossfights I’m spending too much focus on the attack cues to focus on really anything else. Not that DS1 doesn’t take focus, but there’s enough downtime *during* combat to take in everything else; to focus in on bossfights, there’s only one fight in DS3 - Gael - who I’ve been able to appreciate for anything except for the kinetic feel, whereas one of my favourites in DS1, being Gaping Dragon, I love for practically everything *but* the gameplay.

It’s probably not that surprising from this to hear that I have more of a strained relationship with From’s later titles, but this game really hits such a good blend of atmospheric exploration and slow and simple yet punishing combat that I just can’t get enough of, even when it’s not putting its best foot forwards. Anyway I can’t wait for King’s Field to beat my ass

i think i can finally accept this as the definitive version of dark souls, particularly when fixed up with the original armor textures (which were horribly flattened in this one, for reasons i cannot fathom), a reshade profile which adjusts the lighting and contrast to be a bit closer to that of the original game (gotta have that heavy chiaroscuro and golden glow), and a mod which augments and meshes with the game's own online functionality to cycle through each location for possible invasions whether within the limitations of your own soul and weapon levels or infinitely upward. i haven't waited more than a minute or two to invade with this mod, and for me this is an absolute godsend since i am far more interested in 'organic' invasions, world pvp style, than i am in sweaty arena duels at the oolacile township bonfire.

i hadn't actually played this game at all since moving back home to michigan (from portland, oregon) at the end of 2019, and... well, "it feels like going home again" isn't what i want to say: it's more like a refreshing reminder that i haven't lost everything, though sometimes it feels that way. i don't think of too many video games as being mine, made for me, but this is one of them.

It feels weird to try and review one of my favorite games of all time - if Baldur’s Gate is the game of my childhood, the Souls games are certainly the games of my “modern” era - as there are so many feelings and thoughts and ideas just wrapped up and tangled on top of one another, like a giant ball of yarn that’s been growing for years. It becomes hard to unpack everything without turning either into rote descriptions of “I like X thing about game,” or spilling out saccharine word vomit and dumb shit like yarn ball metaphors and “modern gaming eras” escaping, when they should be locked up permanently. Regardless, I wanted to try and tackle the challenge of reviewing my favorites, or at least unpacking my experiences with them for myself, so here I am. I’m not going to go into some ontological or Derridean critique of Dark Souls. I think enough people have deconstructed this game for a lifetime. This is just my perspective on my experience with the game, all cliche and platitudes included.

For a long time, I didn’t really think I liked hard games. I grew up playing NES and all that, but I don’t really think that crossed my mind back then; I would gladly smash my head against something over and over without the thought of it being too hard. It was just the game. So when Dark Souls came out and all I ever heard about it was how hard it is and punishing and impossible, it was a definite no - I didn’t want a hard game, because, after all, I played games for fun. The games I enjoyed were all adventure and discovery, full of blasting enemies with magic, exploring fantastical worlds, and slicing my way through a story whether heroic or grim. None of these things were ever how Dark Souls was described to me, even by friends who loved the game, so I just ignored it and passed it off as something I would never play.

In late 2019, I saw a commercial for a game called Sekiro. I impulse bought it. I knew Sekiro was supposed to be a hard game, but it reminded me of the Tenchu games that I used to rent from Blockbuster as a kid and nostalgia won me over. It destroyed me, but I loved every second of it. I found out it was from the same people that made Dark Souls, and I finally decided that, what the hell, if I can beat Sekiro I can beat Dark Souls. So after a few months, I bought that too. Then I lost my job.

Compared to hours of LinkedIn and Indeed every day, I found that Dark Souls did not measure up in difficulty. It was my reprieve, and I devoured it. I huddled on my couch playing handheld on the Switch, well into the night almost every night. I could not put it down, and while, sure, I did find the game to be difficult, I approached it in the same way that I approached my NES games when I was a kid. I just took the game for what it was and ran with it. Shockingly, Dark Souls wasn’t just a combat simulator with reflex checks and hair-pulling moments - it was an adventure and a new world to explore, and I wanted to see and experience everything.

Obviously, looking back with hindsight, it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at myself being surprised or shocked by the game, seeing as exploration is one of the pillars of Dark Souls’ design, but I just didn’t know. I think that’s one of the things that made the game and experience so special to me, as I was just able to enjoy this gaming cultural behemoth without any of the white noise contamination that I have now. Everything was unexpected, and I was just able to connect with a new world on my own terms and at my own pace, making the entire experience an exercise in solitude and intimacy - further driven home by the same themes being woven throughout the landscape of Lordran and my time spent there. Immediate and total resonance with a piece of art or media is rare and one of the most powerful things a person can experience, and I guess, in a very crude way, that’s why I love the Souls games - they just make sense to my brain in almost every way. That isn’t to say I don’t have criticisms or flaws towards these games, on the contrary, the games I love most are the ones that I can be the hardest on. However, all those things fade away the moment I hear that haunting menu theme.

This is my introduction to the FromSoftware franchise.
I've wanted to play this series for so long, but I always felt left out due to the difficulty of those games. I've actually tried getting into it 2 times in the Past, but got my ass kicked both times, and gave up out of frustration.
The first time was when I tried the same game over a year ago, and the second time was when I tried Elden Ring at its release. This time, I wanted to give it a serious shot, asked for advices on Discord, Reddit, etc... and I was definitely more prepared to take on this adventure.

I liked how connected all the areas were. I was often surprised to find an elevator or a gate that would lead me directly to a previously explored area. Since you're so focused on trying to survive every enemy encounter, you don't immediatly notice that you eventually always loop back to another region that you've already traversed.
The world has a lot of verticality, which is very enjoyable and offers a lot of surprises during the exploration. I needed to be very observant cause there were a lot of paths & treasures that were viciously well hidden.
The lack of map & teleporters for a good part of the game obliged me to have good spatial awareness and memorization. It was somewhat difficult to remember all the different pathways & shortcuts connecting each location, but it gave a nice feeling of accomplishment when I eventually got used to it and managed to navigate from place to place without much issue. This eventually goes away once you unlock warping tho, but I didn't mind!

The World is full of ominous & otherworldly locations that really left a mark on me. Whether it's exploring Anor Londo for the first time; discovering Ash Lake deep under the earth of Lordran; meeting the Daughter of Chaos in Quelaag Domain; or entering Kiln of the First Flame to defeat Gwyn... The atmosphere surrounding those places is always top-notch, and the lack of music works surprisingly well. I liked the contrast with the epic themes you hear during most Boss fights.

For the first few hours, I only had the Longsword, until I found the Claymore and kept it till the end of my adventure, making sure to upgrade it regularly.
Once I found Havel Armor, I also kept it till the end, but I often switched with a lighter armor such as Gold-Hemmed for many of the Boss fights. Fast rolls are so useful.

I feel like the game doesn't encourage you to try out different weapons/game styles. If you went with a melee build and want to try a pyromancer or mage build midway through the game, you just can't, since you can't reset your caracteristics.
Even simply wanting to change your sword can also be discouraging, because you need to upgrade it all the way to +15 again, which is long & costly.

Beating Bosses was the most rewarding part of the game. My favorites are of course Smough & Ornstein with how challenging they were, and considering what happens after you beat them.
Nito was SO memorable to me. Not necessarily gameplay-wise, but he was by far the most intimidating Boss in the game. His aura, his theme, the fact that you traversed an area that is completely pitch-black to reach him... I was so frightened when the cutscene started!
Chaos Witch Quelaag and Sif are also some of my favorites because of their importance in the lore of Dark Souls.
I also want to point out that I didn't kill Priscilla. I mean, who would even attack her upon seeing her for the first time?
She is so nice with you and just politely asks you to leave her alone. I hope you didn't kill her!

Talking about Smough & Ornstein, I loved the part in Anor Londo. Defeating them felt so fulfilling. And your reward for defeating them is an encounter with Gwynevere, and the ability to warp between bonfires. The music in the princess chamber sounds so triumphant. This was really a high point in my adventure, probably the best part of the game.

Some areas were a bit tedious, and on the really stressful side. Blight Town comes to mind. No bonfire between the top and the very bottom of the area where the swamp is located, and the blowdart snipers are a pain in the ass. But in retrospect, the area isn't THAT terrible.
By far the worst area was Tomb of the Giants. You can't see shit, you have to switch between your lantern and your shield regularly, and the enemies make you fall off the ledge quite easyly, since like I said, you can't see anything. It simply wasn't fun.

I enjoyed the online features. The messages from other players giving advices along the way (or just being trolls), and the fact that I could regularly see their ghosts fighting or resting at the bonfire. It added a nice touch to the game, and made me feel less lonely. I really felt like we were helping each other and doing this adventure together.

While the music is absent most of the time, there are still a few ones that were really memorable to me: Daughters of Chaos; Great Grey Wolf Sif; Ornstein & Smough; Gwynevere Princess of Sunlight.

Duke's archives & Crystal Caves were my favorite regions. I prefer brighter & more colorful areas, and this place looked amazing. The reflections of light on the tiles in the archives were so nice to look at. Plus the area was easy to go through, including the Boss Seath. So yeah, best part of the game purely in terms of exploration.
New Londo was also one of the best places. I enjoy the atmosphere with the spooky ghosts, and the Abyss realm where you fight the Four Kings was very haunting.

The ending felt really abrupt. When I was fighting Gwyn, I didn't even realise it was the final boss fight, and I was surprised to see the credits roll.
I was disappointed to miss out on the DLC content. Finishing the game automatically started a new NG+ file, and I couldn't go back.
Since I missed on it but didn't want to replay the game, I watched a playthrough of Artorias of the Abyss on YouTube. Maybe I'll play it myself one day, but I had enough of Dark Souls 1 for now!

After I finished the game, I watched several videos of VaatiVidya to learn more about the lore of Dark Souls 1. Despite paying attention while I was playing, there were still many story details & subplots that I didn't understand during my adventure.
Especially to learn more about the fate of some important characters, such as the Witch of Izalith & her 7 daughters, Nito, Gwyn, Siegmeyer, or even Solaire.
DLC aside, I also missed some other content like Gwyndolin Boss fight and Solaire side quest, nor did I try to attack Gwynevere in Anor Londo (I watched what it does on YouTube tho)

The replay value for this game must be great. You can do another playthrough by adding some challenge to your adventure: trying a less conventional build, not upgrading your weapon & armor, taking a different path at the beginning... There would be tons of ways to make your adventure different!

As I said at the beginning, it was really hard to get into this franchise, but I'm glad I finally managed to break this glass ceiling. There are a lot of FromSoftware games, so I'm really excited for the future! My next step is gonna be Dark Souls 2.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on November 25th & finished on December 11th 2023]
Playtime: 50 hours
I got the "To Link the Fire" ending. I didn't do the DLC unfortunately... The game doesn't tell you how to access it, and I don't want to replay a big chunk of the game in NG+ just to do it. Maybe next time!

A list of reasons for why I chose Dark Souls 1 over all the other souls games:

Starting as an underdog and growing up

Hub world - You're never sure in 1 who is actually your friend or not. Even if they are in the hub world they could be evil and turn on you. 2 and 3 basically have you as the lord already and people who gather in the hub world are all your subjects. Everyone in 1 seems like they are/could be equal to you at least at some point. They might even be someone you look up to. At the very least, they aren't coming to the hub world to be your subject which is basically what happens in 3. Seriously, this is one of the best parts of this game. This isn't even counting the interconnectivity.
No clear starting path - You could go to the burg, new londo ruins, catacombs, etc. in 1. 2 does this fine as well, but 3 starts out basically linear.
Perfect tutorial area - The asylum is great because it fits perfectly with the narrative and is not too hand-holdy but not too vague at the same time. The atmosphere is great and meeting the knight who saved you and seeing him go hollow introduces you to that theme early and in a powerful way. It's even cooler that you can go back to a powered up version of the area later.
You can learn smithing etc. - The ability to get the repair box and smith kit in 1 made me feel so much more like I was progressing to becoming more self-sufficient. It was also just so much more satisfying to not have to go back to the hub world for stupid stuff like basic upgrades. In the same vein it made bigger upgrades feel more special because you had to go to the right smith in the right place and have their specific ember etc. It didn't feel tedious and it actually felt more fun and adventurous. 2 at least had 1 other blacksmith.

Hollowing balance

Humanity - Best item. I love that it can stack and there are pros and cons to doing so (item discovery but you have more to lose when dying). It working as a healing item is understandably a little broken, but the stacking/risk/being able to recover them with souls made them sooo much more fun to use. Also it was easier/more fun to farm them. Also being able to use humanity to buff bonfires was way more rewarding than just finding estus shards in random places. You always have to be strategic with your humanity.
Summoning - Connected to humanity is your ability to summon/be invaded which is carried on except in 2 you could still be invaded whenever. I don't like 2s approach because it only gives you one path that you can take whereas in 1 and 3 you can take the risk of going through with humanity and experience the bonus of being invaded but decide to play it safe by staying hollowed if you want.
Losing health - Yeah it does up the stakes in 2 when you lose health as a hollow, but it was not as fun as it was in say Demon's souls. You already lose the ability to summon as a hollow so why make us fight alone with less health than we have earned by leveling up? I think there is a "the more you lose the harder it gets" mentality behind these games, but everything is better when that isn't implemented fully.

Lore

Basis of everything - I don't know if there's much to say here other than 2 and 3 are just trying to copy what was good about 1's lore and feel much less original. They also feel a lot less developed and interesting.
More realistic - This connects to what I mentioned in the hub world. Every character feels like they have their own agenda and could easily backstab you anytime. Bosses also have much more of an agenda then: "you come in my room I kill" which seems more prevalent in the other games. I never felt bad about any bosses I killed in 2 or 3 except for maybe the old hollowed king in 2 but the stupid giant souls mechanic mostly made up for that. 1 is the only game where I could see myself as actually playing the villain.
Character backstories - Were actually emotional and meaningful if not difficult to keep track of and execute properly. It was crazy to see characters that had helped you end up chasing something only to end up hollow. Fighting them afterwards was brutal. Then you have all the betrayers like I talked about above. Everyone is so memorable. There's also a good balance of mysterious characters that are not explained as much, making them fun to speculate on. Domnhall of Zena for instance is my favorite.
Meaningful consequences - Kill Gwynevere or Gwyn? The bois are mad at you now. You even get dark Anor Londo. Failure to kill the gold boy means you lose your bonfire at firelink. Yeah you can still kill friendlies in the other games with consequences but they didn't feel as meaningful and were a lot more completionist in nature. Also you can get indicted for invading etc.
Covenants - While their mechanics are for sure improved in other games the covenants in 1 felt much more real and were clearly connected to the world. This is enhanced by the fact that you meet lots of npcs associated with a lot of the covenants. Also you always have a living entity that you make your covenant with. It's never just with an item you find. There is the exception of sun bros covenant which is just the statue, but Solaire's prevalence helps to make up for that easily. Also there hasn't been a covenant that affected normal gameplay quite like gravelord servant ever since. Covenant special items were also a lot of fun (gravelord sword, darkhand, etc).

Connected map

Not much to argue here

Balanced fighting

Rolling isn't your only option - This was improved in 3 but 2 basically nerfed shields and parrying into the ground. Parrying is so freaking satisfying and although it is kinda cheap that is what makes it fun. Same with backstabs but I am more indifferent to them. Rolling is awesome and 100% necessary, but I always felt like I could choose different options when taking on enemies and bosses (and I don't mean magic vs melee which is always present, I mean melee approach variety) by using shields or using different timing etc.
Poise - It could be learned in 1. 2 and 3 do have some kind of poise mechanic, yeah but it is undecipherable to an average player and just feels like it was completely removed. In 1 it was easy to see "Ok if I use x weapon it will stagger y enemy after z hits" based on enemy type and weapon heaviness and it allowed you to calculate when you could take risks. 2 and 3 this is much less transparent and lots of enemies/bosses just have moves that you can't interrupt no matter what, not to mention random invincible sections. Your own character also has poise which you could clearly adjust with your stats, armor, and shield choices.
Fair but hard bosses - There are plenty of these across the series but I felt like there were the least cancer bosses in 1. Bed of chaos is cancer for sure but everyone else had pretty fun mechanics for the most part. 2 and 3 add in more bosses that introduce bed of chaos style pits and ridiculous timing dodging not to mention invincibility.
Stamina - This of course depends on your build and weapons but I felt like I did a lot more strategizing with stamina in 1 than the other 2 because I usually had a lot to spare in 2 and 3 but that might be hard to confirm and based solely on how I played each game.

Stuff that still sucks

Great Hollow - Nothing fun about the terrible platforming here. Challenging platforming is done well in blighttown and that is enough.
Spell uses - FP in Dks3 is a huge improvement
Rings - You can only wear 2. I honestly don't mind this though because individual rings were better
Matchmaking - It's basically impossible to play with a specific friend unless you get lucky although I've never specifically tried so it's hard to say
Blocking is a little too good - Should eat stamina more I agree

Stuff I'm on the fence about

Weapon infusion - On the fence about this in every game though
Farming - I actually kind of enjoyed it here though
Pacing in second half - Feel like it's a trade off for making things more open ended
Useless stuff - crossbows, whips, etc

BONUS CONTENT


DKS1 BEST BOIS: GIANT BLACKSMITH, DOMHNALL, ANDRE, VAMOS, SOLAIRE, GOUGH, BIG HAT LOGAN
DKS2 BEST BOIS: GAVLAN, SCORPION BOI
DKS3 BEST BOIS: …….IDK YET

During rough periods in my life I always find myself coming back to play through the opening hours of this game; there's just something cathartic about the first few hours of Dark Souls 1 in how it reminds me that facing adversity is not hopeless. So despite the notoriously unfinished back "half" of the game, I find it difficult to not love the game. FromSoft's action RPGs are at their best when they allow you to form meaningful personal narratives within their worlds, not through dialogue trees or arbitrary event flags, but through the unconscious tapestry of synapses forming from both the strife and triumph you experience within their titles -- and the first Dark Souls, in my mind, is undoubtedly the best at providing a canvas for those memorable experiences to be made (at least during its strongest moments).

I don't say that last bit to devalue anybody who does find meaning during their time within Lost Izalith or the Tomb of Giants, I guess I just feel like I'm playing some weird ass experimental PS2 game during those points. Which don't get me wrong, that's cool as hell in its own way, it just feels wholly disconnected from the grandiose adventure I experienced for the first 50% of the game. And really, I can't blame FromSoft for really taking those big ass swings post-Demon's Souls. That game already hit like 15 homeruns within its more confined scope, so I can see the situation they were in and how confident they must have felt to attempt to actualize a version of that game with a fully connected 3D map and even cooler setpieces.

Likewise, it's easy to see why they kinda hard pivoted away from that when moving into Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III, with each of those game having their own set of priorities separate from the unachievable ambitions of the first Dark Souls. It really wasn't until Elden Ring that they were able to attempt a more actualized take on a similar large scope 3D map concept thanks to what appears to be an increased budget and elongated dev cycle, though that obviously came with its own set of pretty severe sacrifices that I'll talk about in its own review.

Either way, regardless of its technical and structural hiccups and its failing to perhaps really achieve what it set out to do, it's undeniably a special game that I think about a lot and will probably keep returning to -- even if my playthroughs do seem to mysteriously taper off shortly after completing Anor Londo. Also I just gotta say, Blighttown is a really cool fucking level and anybody who tells a new player to pick the Master Key as their starting gift is depriving them of an extremely important and formative experience.

A game surrounded by a cult, called a legend, professed like a religion. A game that has gathered around it people who hate it, but also people who love it. Considered the peak of location design and repeatedly mentioned when discussing RPGs. Dark Souls took the definition of the genre even higher, spread the brand and caused a veritable "boom" in this type of game. It is considered a legend or even already a classic for good reason. Dark Souls should be known, it should be played at least once. But why all this phenomenon and is it really that good?

A long time ago, the world was not fully formed. It was shrouded in mist, and the only landscape were Archtrees and Everlasting Dragons. Eventually fire appeared, and with fire came heat and cold, life and death, and light and darkness. Then four lords appeared - Nito, the First of the Dead, the Witch of Izalith, the Daughter of Chaos, Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight and his loyal knights, and the furtive pygmy, so easily forgotten... The lords defeated the dragons, which gave rise to the Age of Fire, which was prosperity and a good time for the Lords. Eventually, however, the Age of Fire will end, and only darkness will remain in the world... This is how we are introduced to the history of the world, or rather its description. Our protagonist, the Chosen Undead, travels through the lands of Lordran at the end of their existence. We meet the Lords, but they are already on the brink of death. The world is collapsing, falling into darkness, and our task, as the Chosen One, is to prolong the Age of Fire by linking ourselves to the fire. In the meantime, however, it turns out that people have not been treated very well in this world, and the Age of Darkness does not necessarily mean bad times - quite the opposite. Are we just soulless messengers of the gods who want to use us to extend their prosperity? Are the heroes we meet along the way really that pure? That's something you already have to discover for yourself.

The plot is amazing - dark, complicated, multithreaded and not obvious. The world is very original and it is difficult to find another universe as enigmatic. The story clearly shows inspiration from Arthurian legends or ancient Norse poems, and more inquisitive players will find references to Tolkien's classic works in this game. However, despite these inspirations, the world is unique. It does not give the feeling of derivativeness - on the contrary, for me, as a die-hard fantasy fan, Dark Souls is a real gem in modern fantasy creation, because, contrary to appearances, the story is very down-to-earth and real. The setting of the imaginary world is actually an illusion to give us comfort in what we experience.

The next point will be the narrative, which is hated by as many people as it is loved by. But from the beginning - the game is carried out in a non-obvious way, the characters speak in riddles and metaphors - they do not give us a complete picture of the world. Many facts have to be guessed or inferred from the outstanding environmental narrative, which, if we are observant enough, explains a great many theoretically contradictory things. It is also crucial to read descriptions of items, which often present more information than dialogues with side characters, who are also not often eager to talk. Unfortunately, the average player won't get much information out of this game, on the contrary - he or she will probably know nothing, and even if he or she is eager to learn this secret knowledge, he or she may get tired of the fact that the plot is a scattered puzzle. Fortunately, to the rescue comes YouTube and Reddit, where fans share their thoughts, theories and facts from the world of the game. In a way, the game forces us, as the Dark Souls community, to share what we've noticed in the game world and connect all the dots together. Personally, I think this is a phenomenal trick, but I am well aware that not everyone will like it.

The most recognizable element of Dark Souls is probably the gameplay, which today is already considered iconic and whose elements can be found in many, really many different productions, such as 2018's God of War or The Witcher 3. The fundamentals are simple - attack, strong attack, block and the famous rolls. The strength of the attack depends on the base damage of the weapon, its scaling and the level of upgrade, which we can successively increase as the story progresses. The tools of murder are divided into the larger and slower ones, which are related to our character's strength statistic, and the smaller and faster ones, which are centered around characters created with the dexterity statistic in mind, or weapons that are something in between and benefit equally from both stats. In addition, there are also spells and various wands, but I'll admit frankly that I've never been interested in such gameplay, so I'll refrain from describing the game with this style of combat. Melee weapons are really interestingly designed, they have their own particular playstyle, to which you either have to get used to, or you have to search for that perfect weapon to no avail. The choice is huge - from halberds to huge swords leaning against our character's shoulder. It is also interesting to note that there are, for example, swords that are made to play under a hybrid of strength and intelligence, or magic, and a great example of such a weapon is Moonlight Greatsword. I am of the opinion that the combat system is phenomenal and there is something for everyone here.

As for the famous rolls, the matter is quite clear - depending on the equipment overload you have, you move and perform rolls slower or faster and increase the number of "invincibility frames", that is, the time during which you are invulnerable while rolling. This way, with a loadout of 25%, the character is very fast and agile and hard to damage, but at the same time you give up heavy armor and higher resistances. Alternatively, you can take the complete opposite approach and bet on full heavy armor, while giving up agile dodging, but having enough "poise" that increases our balance and resistances. The game leaves the choice to us, the players. I find this system phenomenal, because it forces you to think strategically and allows you to experiment a little with parts of your equipment so that you can fit within the limit of the so-called fast roll, putting on the heaviest armor possible and pushing your equipment limit to the maximum. Great stuff!

Worthy of praise are the bosses, which are still very impressive to this day. Fights such as Ornstein & Smough, Artorias, Manus and Kalameet will remain in my mind for a very long time. Adding to the atmosphere is the amazing music composed by Motoi Sakuraba and Yuji Takenouchi, which is serious, mostly atmospheric and extremely operatic. It adds such "uniqueness" to the boss encounters, making them more special.

The most important aspect of Dark Souls, however, is the game and location design, which is unique compared to other games in the series. Until about halfway through the game, the player does not have the ability to teleport between different bonfires, which forced the developers to cleverly and very intelligently connect all locations in the game to the main hub, the Firelink Shrine. This leads to some truly surprising moments, during which it turns out that we weren't that far from our resting place after all, and everything actually happens side by side. This is unique insofar as no future From Software game has repeated as much attachment to the connection of locations as the original Dark Souls. My fondest memory of the first blind playthrough of this game is that it is very impressive and frankly surprising.

Unfortunately, it is not without its downsides - the most important point is the clearly unfinished "Lost Izalith" location, which is derivative, annoying and repetitive, and the boss of this location itself is simply mediocre and probably the most ridiculously designed boss in the entire trilogy. The visuals of the remaster are also NOT worthy of praise. The studio from Poland didn't make an effort when remastering this game and the only thing they really changed was to slightly improve the lighting, add keyboard key mapping, increase the number of players in PvP and increase the resolution. Dark Souls begs all the more for a thorough rework on the scale of Demon's Souls, but, unfortunately, the remaster was done on the line of least resistance.

Nevertheless, I consider this game to be perfection. How much fun it gives, how intelligently thought out it is, and how well it is remembered is amazing to me. It is enough to overcome the unfounded fear of the mythical difficulty level of this production. It really isn't that bad, you just have to enter this world, this universe and get into the gameplay to fall in love with it all. Dark Souls taught me to overcome in theory impossible things in real life. It is a game that has had a real impact on my life, and I thank it for that. Dark Souls not only entertains, but also teaches.

Praise the Sun! \[T]/

I can't stand this game. It makes my blood boil. I actually had stress-induced damage from Tomb of the Giants. A horrifying, twisted, tormented experience that I never want to see or hear from ever again, in my entire life.
8/10.

No but for real, this game tore me apart. And yet I couldn't help but come back to it, try a new idea, see if anything could break the cycle of failure after insulting failure. It's a broken and toxic relationship that I grew addicted too, and even as I finished the final battle, I couldn't help but be drawn into New Game Plus almost immediately after - but I doubt I'll finish it again.

Dark Souls strikes an uncanny balance. Enemies, even the most basic kinds, do absurd levels of damage, and can stunlock you to death instantly. How is this fair? Well, they can often be stunned just as easily by a combo of your own. Wait, but how is THAT fair? Oh, your attacks (well, good ones) can take a second or so of wind-up, and mistiming it means certain death. That's not fair! Yes it is, because so do the enemies. It's a brutal machine where death awaits you any second if you're unprepared and on your first run through, but you begin to notice those patterns.

It's a well-oiled machine, but like any machine, if you remove one part, the whole thing stops working right. There is no appendix here - if the designers misbalance one thing about this arrangement, shit gets nasty. And I'm of the opinion that there are several parts where this design does indeed fall apart. Anor Londo has many brutal encounter setups that can be a game-ender. The second half of the game in general presents a difficulty spike and a general downturn in design quality. Nowhere is this worse than in the Catacombs, and the Tomb of the Giants.

The Catacombs isn't clever or impressive, just a tedious and boring corridor of enemies. Tomb of the Giants is the same, but you can't see shit. It's the absolute low point of the game, and the bosses don't help matters. And how about those boss fights? Most of them are genuinely solid encounters, but others are detestably unfair and punishing - and one feels like it was just mistakenly programmed. There's dying from a mistake, or from being taken by surprise. But several deaths are genuinely cheap and shitty.

Looking from the outside in on the Souls fanbase, it's especially scary that they (particularly the subreddit) have this odd stance where their beloved games are completely above all criticism (except DS2). Anyone who even implies that several aspects of the game are poorly thought out is buried with a swathe of insults and the same "git gud" rhetoric. The idea that "getting good" is all there is to this game just feeds this elitist, toxic mindset that put myself and many others off from even trying this game. There's really a lot more to it - you might be trying the wrong weapon, or simply specced your character wrong and might need to start over. Not everyone can "git gud", and there's nothing to be ashamed of if you can't beat this game. It is not "easy", just like how bear wrestling isn't easy just because you in particular have done nothing but wrestle bears for the last 30 years. It's an obscenely hard game that beats you into the ground enough until you can see its tricks coming through the blood and tears.

I think the combat rules, in all honestly, I just wish that (especially in the earlygame) there was any room for error (minus grinding forever and speccing entirely into vitality). One mistimed dodge or swing can see you die instantaneously, having to make a long trek back from a checkpoint. The tedium really stinks. And don't ever fucking go human unless you know what you're doing, unless you like getting repeatedly attacked by no-lifers who know more about the game than you ever will, and are dead-set on setting your progress back. At least one of those guys was funny about it.

I'm tearing this game apart because I don't think enough people do, but in spite of all of that it still deserves a lot of praise. When the balance is just right, the design of the game nails the risk/reward like very few other games before or since. Getting backstabs and parries feels amazing, and hunting for secrets never gets old.

Also, world design. Easily, for me, the highlight of the game. A gorgeous fantasy world with a good variety of environments, almost all of which are imposing and feel vaster than they really are. The way in which it wraps around and is almost entirely organically connected, metroidvania style, makes me drool. I don't even like fantasy that much, but this place rules.

Story is what it is - lots of hidden lore you can go out of your way to drown in, but if you just want to kill big angry things you can tell the NPCs to shut the fuck up. Or just fucking kill them! That fucking rules! I mean, I (almost) never did out of fear that I'd be messing up something further along (plus some of them are really nice) but the sheer amount of variation that each run can have depending on your actions around them is really impressive.

Altogether, this is a great game, but one I will never recommend. I hated so much of my time with it, and I might've even suffered dangerous health issues had I have not changed my loadout so drastically to get me through the second half. This game could've killed me, and for that I should detest it. And I do! Fuck this game, fuck what it put me through, never touching it or the Souls series again. In the meantime, I'm going to read up on what I need to know before starting Dark Souls 2! Later.

Unreal fucking game. From the height of seething highest anger to the most tender understanding. An absolute golden game. I went from despising and stupidly fumbling through this title to enjoying the walks, the many sights, the many enemies, the many fights, the history, and everything the game had to offer. The complete switch I made from when I started playing compared to now is really something. But I really came to appreciate and love this game from the bottom of my heart.

(More writing soon, might make a full blogpost instead.)

(This review is specifically for co-op in ds1r)

The only time i have ever managed to play online in a dark souls game before obtaining a steamdeck was on the switch version of ds1. Needless to say, i went in with a pretty poor opinion of it since the switch's middling internet connection did little for pvp, as every interaction was basically someone teleporting behind you and ending you with a backstab. I actually believe some of the weird, aggressive pvpheads played the switch version purposely for this reason, because the experience i had there was a hundred times worst than just playing it normally on steam.

I had a shockingly fun time playing co-op with hilda here. It was pretty seamless and we were able to do most things together, even if i would sometimes rather not look at hilda's new, hit character "Smelly Elmo". I dont think i ever got too mad at an invader, and they werent doing weird shit like running away and wasting our time. No one had a bad name or anything either, and i even had a pretty high rate of winning pvp encounters. It might of also been to my advantage that no one wanted to get near Smelly but i will take what i can get.

As i grow older i am starting to become disillusioned with fromsoft's work in general, though. Every idea Miyazaki has just seems to be taken from either Beserk or Ghibli and its kind of deflating to look at something and go "oh..ash lake is just the toxic forest from nausicaa". There is also quite a bit that is genuinely unfair in terms of the design, youll likely run into a lot of little things that add up over the course of the game. Like for me, i chose the lifehunt scythe as my main weapon... no matter how much you level up, your character moves like they can barely hold it. They use the scythe like a pickaxe....its very strange. Its also supposed to do massive bleed damage to enemies as well as build up your own meter as a tradeoff, but 90% of bosses are immune to bleed and players have such high resistance that it just doesnt matter. It also makes dps battles like the four kings borderline impossible as every three hits you take damage.

I also chose to do a miracle build, specifically wanting to use gywndolins spell. I spent a long time grinding ears to get it, only to find out that my weird pickaxe is just simply too special to be buffed with spells. Ok then, i wanted to use bountiful sunlight to help hilda during pvp. I put 36 points into faith- which nothing else even comes close to requiring by the way- only to find out yet again that you cant actually use it unless youre in gywnevere's covenant? Despite the game giving it to you like a normal spell, and never stating as such? Shit like that just deflates your excitement for the game and makes it feel clunky

Doesnt help that the remaster just sucks. They added nothing and fixed nothing, not even being able to warp to any bonfire or having an extra slot for essential/summoning rings. Ds1 ng+ is also horrible, for some reason. The damage enemies do to you is insane. Those stupid little crystal bow idiots were taking out 80% of my level 140 ass somehow. It makes playing with others absurd as one of you is likely to die from some stupid shit like that, and the game sends the summoned all the way back to the bonfire as if they died in their game so thats another time waster there.

I spent a long time complaining about the game and not talking about co-op but i think thats all i have to say. I would like to thank smelly elmo for taking a break eating wood chips to play with me. It was fun attempting to cut off kalameet's tail for 3 hours. Miyazaki is a bit of a hack.

This game is fright with souls that died,
So, try as you might to run and hide,
For suicide would leave the more satisfied,
Than to stride down in hollow plight,
To big, Blight Town tonight.

I've heard about Dark Souls my whole life from the internet and my older bro but haven't touched because I was scared of the difficulty, but i've finally got up to playing and beating this and just Wow.

Just an absolute great game all around. Great bosses, world, gameplay, music, and just SO much depth too.

I finally get where the hype comes from and how revolutionary this game is. Only gripes are long run-ups between bosses and bonfires and some level designs, other then that though..

Yeah this game kicks ass 🥶

𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯!

A obra responsável por ressignificar todos os conceitos que tornam um jogo "ser difícil", servindo como base de comparação pra qualquer jogo que se propõe a ter um nível de complexidade acima do padrão.

"O Dark Souls dos jogos de luta".
"O Dark Souls dos jogos de plataforma".
"O Dark Souls dos jogos de corrida".

Os exemplos são muitos.

O fato é que Dark Souls é uma das franquias mais importantes e imponentes da história dos videogames, e seu primeiro jogo é considerado por muitos um dos maiores de todos os tempos. Não é de se espantar.

Dark Souls é estupidamente fantástico em tudo que se propõe. A forma com a qual o universo é convincente, vivo e rico é impressionante até para os dias de hoje. Nunca presenciei um level design tão genial e conectado como o de Dark Souls.

Apesar do sofrimento passado principalmente em áreas como a Cidade das Moléstias e a Fortaleza Sen, ou em bosses que nem deveriam ter passado pela equipe de desenvolvimento como o Berço do Caos, nada se compara ao prazer e sentimento de satisfação após cada desafio vencido.

A morte como aprendizado e fortalecimento, é disso que se trata.

São muitas camadas a se explorar quando se trata desse universo, e quanto mais fundo se mergulha no contexto da história de cada lugar ou personagem, cada história que os cenários contam por si só, cada choque de realidade que nos lembra de que estamos nos aventurando por um mundo sem heróis, onde a corrupção é o preço de suas ambições, maior a recompensa. Tudo torna a experiência completamente inesquecível.

Dark Souls é, indiscutivelmente, gigante.

O "vazio", tanto citado durante o jogo, agora se espalha a mim mesmo, visto a certeza de que não jogarei algo equivalente por muito tempo.

Absolutely loved this game, the first game in the trilogy. Its such an atmospheric game, loved every second of it, except maybe Bed of Chaos, that "boss" really sucks:))
The soundtrack is full of bangers, even the character creation theme hits like crazy, my favorite track is the Ornstein & Smough one, also my favorite boss fight from this game.
Yes, the game feels a bit rushed in the second half of the game but the DLC really saves it, it was very good, the DLC boss fights were top notch. The graphics were kind of outdated, but it still had some awesome locations that looked beautiful (Anor Londo, Ash Lake)
Also, loved the story and the lore.

Archaic and mythic in a way that even Bloodborne couldn't quite muster to this extent in its boldly horrific perfection. Though while that game is superior, it being far more focused and accessible (and frankly more personally appealing) in its approach to the FromSoft formula, there is something deeply boundless and near avant-garde about how epic this feels; an accumulating influence that trickled into subsequent titles in the developer's work. An abstractly fantastical vertical climb and descent from the heavens to hell and back again through a dilapidated and diseased kingdom. While the layered mythology calls for intense analysis, I firmly believe this is a game that asks to be felt and experienced rather than put under scrutiny. There's no shortage of praise that is thrown at this game but despite my past encounters with the franchise, I was consistently humbled and fixed into place by this in more manners than one. It is hard to believe this exists at all and in such existentially despairing and bittersweet form. An evocative representation of the politics of defiance against past generations, the cruel cycles of depression, and interlacing the meaning of existence with twisting power struggles between greedy Gods and petty mortals.. the living and the dead... the tangible and intangible. Through vast ruins built on top of ruins resting atop inter-dimensional tree trunks, a sort of connected system of 'Garden of Eden' clones where all creation was sprouted, the brooding and broken civilizations of Dark Souls unfold to us. These dynamics are sprawling, intimidating, a little silly, and most probably flimsy in how it weaves all them together but undeniably absorbing. After all, the metaphysical essence of these ruinous spaces are tied intrinsically into the nature of life itself as it pertains to the Chosen Undead. We are one with this world for better and worse and we can choose to wield that power with greed and malice or with fairness and embrace of the darkness within the light. Dark Souls understands however that this is not a binary affect but a deeply moralistic play in our own interpretation of what it is to be chosen.

I would like to start out by stating that I would have played Prepare to Die Edition on PC, but there's no easy way for me to obtain it legally and key sellers have it at absurd prices. I get that this version uses a new lighting engine that makes everything too bright, but it's not the worst change. It's not completely butchered like in Bluepoint's Demon's Souls "remake". The actual game is fantastic. Finely tunes some of what Demon's Souls established and removes some mechanics entirely like the grass system with the estus flask which allows game flow to go on uninterrupted. The need to grind for grass is completely gone. The areas after Anor Londo do kinda stink, but the bosses save them from being terrible with the exception of Lost Izalith and Bed of Chaos.

This is the Dark Souls of video games.

A grander take could probably be made than what I will do, but what has been said in the discourse of Dark Souls and the Fromsoft Formula over the last twelve plus years that hasn't already been mentioned? This game is difficult, but not for the reasons I like games being difficult. In Bloodborne and Sekiro, for better or for worse respectively, I felt like I was being challenged upon the contents of me versus boss, or me versus world enemy. Previously, my encounters with the toughest elements of those games, Elden Ring included, boiled down to my skill against a meticulously crafted combat experience. I like that to an extent. You don't necessarily feel cheated if you lose, rather pursuant of a methodology to improve. In Bloodborne when I found myself fail-rolling against gravestones when fighting Father Gascoigne, I told myself "Git gud" and was able to overcome the fight after a few more tries. In Sekiro, I bit my lip, yelled an obscenity, and buckled down my parry timings to win the duels. In Dark Souls? I threw my hands in the air like a confused ape wondering what jape had wandered upon my nape.

I named my character Chunky Thomas... there is no real etymology here, but after playing thirty-three (afk time included) some hours of Dark Souls I think Clunky Thomas would be a better moniker. I came to the conclusion after defeating the lava-spider boss (leaving name out as a spoiler) that Dark Souls did not feel more difficult because of its bosses than other Fromsoft games, but rather that the game was more difficult overall. This is due to a plethora of reasons that can be mostly boiled down to archaic overworld design and resoundingly poor hitbox tech. Now when I speak on the overworld design I don't mean the environments, because for 2011 they are phenomenally detailed and deep, but rather the corpse runs, enemy placement, and contrived sequencing of "objectives" to name a few. Legendary Youtuber VideoGameDunkey's "Thank You Dark Souls" quip isn't just a silly gag, it's a great dig at the cheap tricks this game pulls on the player when simply trying to enjoy going from A to B. Blight Town should be called Indict town because of how much of a sour mark it jumps the game off with. Nothing says "fun" or "weehee" or "yahoo" like jumping from the top of a cliff down to the bottom while fighting through enemies that you can't see, corners that abruptly end, easy places to trip and fall and have to restart progress, and status effects galore. Blight Town is simply the easiest place to point a finger at, but this happens in multiple places in the game, most annoying when you are trying to take on Dark Souls' large collection of bosses. Corpse Runs are no stranger in FromSoft games, as Demon Souls had you do it from the BEGINNING OF EACH LEVEL, but with Dark Souls they are incredibly sinister. It sucks to die in any game sure, but you kinda know it comes with the Fromsoft territory. Though it's unfair to judge games after their successors made positive changes, I really missed Elden Ring's statues of Marika and respawning you right near boss rooms. There was a boss (named after four enemies,) that I'd die to and have to make a two to three minute trek each time across some seriously dangerous ground to even make it back to the boss arena. Now I coulda "gotten gud" and beaten the boss much earlier sure, but having to retrace my steps to that extent soured my experience greatly. This happened time and time again, where even if I wasn't dying to the boss a lot, the amount of times I did coupled with the journey back made the experience excessively tiredsome.

I remember playing Dark Souls as it released in 2011, I didn't quite understand it but I had a blast playing through and observing my buddies back then on their PS3 take on this mysterious world for the first time. Ever since watching them play, I tried it myself a few times and it never took because of its aimless exploration and lack of upfront story. I was the Fallout and Elder Scrolls kid that liked having a game that said "story here" and "objective roughly in this area" and I haven't really ever gotten over that. It's the way my brain works and has since, I operate very well in a space that offers me a general sense of direction in lieu of a formless endeavour. Do I like games and media without a said "goal?" Absolutely. Minecraft is one of the greatest games of all time in my opinion. Even in another Fromsoft title like Elden Ring, which is one of my favorite titles ever, I enjoyed it despite not having a clear "go here" mantra. But what Elden Ring did do that Dark Souls didn't was give you even a modicum of a hint. I get that the sequences of Dark Souls could be formulated on one's own after a good amount of careful deliberation, but I simply don't have that time anymore and my brain sure dislikes the conflict of trial and error in such an unfair world. In Elden Ring I could explore an area and not no where to go, but it would be okay because the general placement of enemies was less opressive and I could traverse the world with ease. In Dark Souls, getting from place to place is a hastle and a non-guarentee in the manner of having your souls/humanities survive. I loved looking at the world but had a strong disdain for moving through it. Another dislike I had in this regard was not having each bonfire be a warp spot, the decision making is clearly to make the game feel less "safe" but to me felt more like a headache as a result. Not having any kind of map or reasonable connection between realms of interest is inexcusable and dejecting toward a players time and wherewithal.

Combat felt jank, full stop. This is absolutely a product of the time but woah nelly did I have a rough time understanding the ways I was perishing to enemy combatants. I ran a full oonga boonga strength build, as I often do in games of this nature (or most action/RPG's) and attempted to operate under my knowledge of enemy moves and roll timings. I quickly learned after a few bosses that this wasn't going to work the whole way through, as each boss seemed to have their own hitboxes that were made up and impact upon my hp that didn't matter. It felt like I was always in 2-3 shot range, and that was frequently tested because the bosses would have an AoE that got me in the hitbox despite nothing indicating that I was actually hit by the bosses move physically. Many a time did I think (and this happened especially in the DLC) that I had succesfully timed a roll out of a move just to look up at my health bar and see a declining yellow bar make an appearance. Like I mentioned above, this is definitely due to the age of the game and hitbox technology not being near what it is today and in Fromsoft's magnum opus Elden Ring, but it feels awful to go back and experience. My takeaway was that I felt more cheated by encounters than I felt that I was playing the game poorly, I didn't get good feedback on many fights as to what I could do better, moreso just what I could survive.

I know this title is intentionally cryptic, and I also Know that my favorite Fromsoft releases are guilty of this too, but the lack of any cohesive story element left a sore spot for me. With the intro cutscenes big lore dump and some self searching on the good ol' interwebs, I was able to put together what the story means and why I was doing certain things towards the end of its narrative, but it could have been told in a much better and easier to parse way than what it did. Fromsoft seems to have learned this with time; as Bloodborne drips the narrative in front of the player a little more with Gehrmann, Sekiro is completely narrative driven, and Elden Ring has SIR GIDEON OFFNIR, THE ALL KNOWING giving out his lore dumps and information on the Elden Lords. Not having any of that in Dark Souls made it unfortunately difficult to know the "why's and what's" of my actions as the main character.

Dark Souls wasn't all bad, but it felt bad for me to play. I thoroughly enjoyed the aesthetics and tropes that would make their way through Fromsoft's games to follow. Locations like Anor Londo and the Royal Woods were really neat. Everything felt like it was meticulously designed to craft a once lived in fantasy realm. Bosses, while they didn't play so cool, looked real cool and had that charm to them that makes the series and company as special as it is. The music for these fights, and especially for the final (which was hilariously easy) boss was a good touch to make them feel memorable.

Dark Souls is clearly one of the more influential games of this milennia (Blade of Miqullla?) but it feels dated. I can't recommend this game to anyone because of its dated map design, hitbox tech, and lack of narrative cohesion, but I do understand why it exists and why people have such an affinity to it.

P.S: I began this review at around 4AM, thinking I'd offer a few sentences and then depart to bed, but it's nearly 5AM and I think I overstepped my intentions.

9/10.

Um tanto superestimado.
Um tanto genial
Ainda assim uma gloriosa reflexão vos aguarda a aqueles que finalizarem tal jornada, a compreendendo-a.

Percebo como esse jogo além de muito bom, amplifica em lore e temática e ost tbm tudo em dark souls 3.

Realmente devo muito a dark souls 1 pela magnitude que pude experiência nele e nos seus sucessores., certamente um diamante.

Eu só joguei o Remastered, mas essa review é mais dedicada ao Dark Souls 1 clássico e também aos outros Dark Souls (principalmente o 3). Uma franquia que junto do seu antecessor Demon's Souls, praticamente criou ou pelo menos aperfeiçoou um gênero inteiro, o souls-like, e se um jogo inventa o próprio gênero, você sabe que ele é revolucionário e único, e é isso que Dark Souls é. Ele é um RPG com elementos de ação e hack and slash, mas com uma estrutura completamente diferente, essa mecânica de travar a mira, esquivar, bater na hora certa, ter que administrar sua estamina e seu HP, um combate cadenciado, esse tipo de gameplay é uma coisa que nunca tinha sido explorada da mesma forma. E o Dark Souls faz isso de uma maneira maravilhosa, é um combate extremamente desafiador, mas extremamente recompensador, as mecânicas são difíceis de dominar, mas quando você aprende, você domina o jogo e isso te traz uma sensação de recompensa inexplicável. O Dark Souls / Bloodborne / Sekiro / Elden Ring / Demon's Souls foram os jogos que mais me fizeram ter um sentimento de teto de habilidade de todos. Ele é a experiência do desafio e recompensa na melhor forma possivel. Fora isso, a história é sensacional, a direção de arte é incrível, a trilha sonora é simplesmente magnífica, a atmosfera é muito boa e etc. Quando eu comecei a jogar eu não conseguia parar, eu queria continuar, e continuar e continuar, e por mais que ele fosse difícil, dificilmente eu conseguia me estressar (claro que em alguns casos não tem como), já que ele me cativava tanto, que ao invés de eu ficar irritada, eu pensava como eu superaria aquilo. E é literalmente isso, Dark Souls é treinar, superar e ficar bom, e isso é a melhor sensação que você pode ter em um jogo, pelo menos pra mim. Uma das minhas franquias favoritas de todas, simplesmente maravilhoso!

Playing through Dark Souls for the first time is such an emotional experience. There is no feeling of dread quite like being far from your previous bonfire, running low on estus, unsure when your next warm, momentary salvation will appear, just like there is no feeling of relief quite like when you finally find that next bonfire, spotting it in the corner of your eye, and you know that rest is near if you can just manage that final, short leg of the journey.

The thrill of narrowly dodging an attack as you just barely cling onto life, the terror of fighting close to a precipice knowing that the slightest misstep spells doom, the curiosity and caution with which you approach nightmarish creatures whose capabilities you don't quite know yet, the sheer joy, elation, when that boss you've struggled against a few times now, that you've put in time and effort trying to learn and understand, finally succumbs to your blade. Dark Souls understands how to not be difficult for difficulty's sake, but instead how to use difficulty as a way to instil very specific, powerful emotions in its player. A big part of the reason some of these locations are able to make you feel so vulnerable is because you quite literally are.

This emotionality is aided by quite how immersive the setting is. The world of Lordran is just so evocative, the way all these areas manage to tangle together into one cohesive whole via myriad shortcuts, views into far-off places that you can almost certainly reach and more broadly a sense of the map as a whole and how all these places relate just making sense. It feels like so many of these places have their own stories to tell, the characters you meet have their own lives apart from just what you see, and there's a deep sense of history here dripping from near-everything; by the end of the game it's hard not to find yourself reading through the flavour text on the various equipment and items you find just to gain even an inkling more of an idea as to how everything fits together, seeking insight into what stories existed so very long before your arrival.

Dark Souls is far from a perfect game. In a broad sense I think some of its systems could do with being explained at least a little more than they currently are. On a more specific level, the game definitely derails in quality in the last third of the core-game as you hunt the Lord Souls. I don't think this is nearly as disastrous as people often claim, mostly just Lost Izalith and Crystal Caves come out looking very unfinished and gimmicky respectively, but there's definitely a sense that the well thought out and almost playful enemy placement up until this point starts to slip away. By then I was already so in love with this world though, its sheer imagination and the discoveries and secrets that feel like they wait around every corner, that I was left in a very forgiving mood towards any missteps, and frankly the DLC that follows this up is so incredible that it does a lot of work redeeming things regardless.

I think the only thing that makes me truly sad about Dark Souls is that I won't get to experience this world for the first time again. This world has a potent mix of horror and wonder to it, with so many mysteries begging for you to try and wrap your head around them, and whilst I can fully believe that other games may have iterated on the mechanics of this game in very effective ways, it is this sense of discovery and the extraordinary worldbuilding that enables this which makes this game endure.

Alright guys, cards on the table – Dark Souls represents so much of what I love and aspire to in videogames that not loving it felt like some kind of divine prank. In 2018, I finally got my hands on this Super Metroid/3D Zelda/Classicvania hybrid, complete with immaculate, intertwining level design, nuanced environmental storytelling, and a deep respect for the player's curiosity, persistence and attention span, and my impression was all the way down the middle of the road. Was it the jank? The stagnant, entropic world? The overblown expectations from myself and others developed over years of game design-y conversations with friends? Was it just too hard? Most of Dark Souls went by with a sigh instead of a smile, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to puzzle out exactly why. After beating Ornstein and Smough by waiting an eternity for their recovery animations to line up enough times, the game simply lost me, and not without some hard feelings.

Just so you know in advance, this review is going to be terrible. It’s going to be long and rambling and nitpicky, because I’ve struggled for years to figure out how to articulate my opinion on this game. However any of this may come across, I’m not trying to tell you you’re wrong, I’ve just gotta work this out for myself.

I think I was afraid of what it could mean for me to not resonate completely with this pillar of a medium I've devoted so much of myself to. If Dark Souls was not for me, was I in the wrong place? If I diverted from the lessons of this biblical text, could I make something of worth to anyone but myself? I had to pick it apart and ascertain some reason. Sounds ridiculous when I put it that way, but Dark Souls seemed to haunt me no matter where I went. The series' values turned up time and again in discussions with my professors and peers. Like the game's map, there seemed no topic that couldn't bend back around to Dark Souls, so it was inevitable that I'd be drawn back to Firelink Shrine myself. After all, it's a synthesis of so many textbook design concepts that it has become the textbook, but for me, this leads to some of the game's bigger problems.

Before we unpack any of that, though, let me first say that I found more to enjoy this time around than before, but a lot of that has to do with the amount of knowledge I had going in. People online like to make a big stink about how cryptic the first Zelda can be, but I struggle to imagine how I might've learned half of Dark Souls' mechanics just by playing the game. Noah Caldwell-Gervais' excellent video about the trilogy centers around how deceptively accessible it is, and perhaps I went in with the wrong mentality, but I didn't quite find this to be the case. From kindling bonfires and summoning spirits to unraveling the nature of the game's equipment and stat mechanics, Dark Souls either mires its details in maximalist menus, or leaves them to the birds. I want to emphasize that I don't have an issue seeking out external sources or making use of prior knowledge when it comes to delving into a game's deepest depths (I'm one of those weirdos who replays games an awful lot, often a great game only truly blossoms after the first experience), but without a foothold in the nature of the system or what it expected of me, it didn’t seem possible to make interesting decisions. Dark Souls’ solution is to bring the internet into the world, allowing players to offer each other tips and hints through messages left on the floor, but, as with most internet-related things, your mileage may vary. Having said that, I absolutely respect the confidence of this approach, and the intention to get people talking about its systems. The experience of discovery on a first playthrough sometimes equals and even outweighs the joy of making decisions with knowledge of a game’s intricacies on a replay, but in Dark Souls’ case, I don’t know if that applies for me. Maybe that’s an ego thing, I don’t want to have to ask someone what “kindling” is and what it does, I don’t need someone telling me how “poise” works, or what the magic system entails, or that kicking can be used to bypass enemy defenses, I’d like to be able to learn at least most of this stuff on the back of my own perseverance. Yes, one of my problems with Dark Souls is also one of my problems as a human being – I’m very bad at asking for help, and I’ll sooner resign myself to a challenge I don’t enjoy than swallow my pride and reach out to others (yes, I have seen Neon Genesis Evangelion). Dark Souls knows it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and I know that’s one of its strengths as a cultural artifact, but I think it’d be a little more considerate if it didn’t make me confront my personality flaws in the process. Jokes(?) aside, I’ve often heard the game compared to Super Metroid, but in this regard, I’d say they’re almost polar opposites. On a first Metroid playthrough, the process of learning where everything is through discovery results in constant upgrades and lessons which keep the player almost too powerful in an effort to teach them the lay of the land. With that knowledge, they can take the game’s challenge to beat it in faster, tougher, and more creative ways on subsequent attempts. This isn’t quite the arc that Dark Souls is after, but the resulting effect on returning playthroughs is similar.

Using the Master Key and some persistence, I skipped the Capra Demon and the Gaping Dragon and rang the Bells of Awakening in just a few hours. I charged up Sen's Fortress and slammed my head against Ornstein and Smough for a second time. Having accumulated some suspicions about Frampt's intentions (both intuitively and having gathered a few tidbits from outside sources), I avoided him and decided to seek out another way, and somehow managed to actually find it (though it’s a bit of a shame that the objectives themselves aren’t any different, only the sequence). However mixed my feelings might’ve been, I wouldn’t have been caught dead deriding Dark Souls’ level design even in 2018. It really is a triumph of digital architecture whose exploration is, for me, the game’s greatest joy. Watching it always manage to somehow loop back around to Firelink Shrine is almost a running gag, and navigating its ever-increasing network of shortcuts to tear from one side of the map to the other in search of leads to new discoveries is engrossing. I’ll take its tightly wound approach over Elden Ring just about any day for the rest of my life. Its sense of total seamlessness never fails to amaze me, as is its Symphony of the Night-like seeming endlessness. Each individual area plays more like a classic, straightforward Castlevania level in the moment, but fits into the larger world in a more intricate way. When Dark Souls is immersing the player in its creative variety, its shortcut-full pathways, its internally logical spider web of a world, it’s at its absolute best. I often viewed Dark Souls’ setting as a pastiche of dark fantasy tropes, but Lordran always manages to take ownership over whatever cultural touchstones it swipes, both in its lore, and the ways they’re implemented into the game design. The skeletons in the graveyard to the left of Firelink which pummel every unsuspecting player are the videogame skeletons, as is the dragon which makes its powerful entrance in the Undead Burg. Mario Odyssey’s dragon will forever be known as the “Dark Souls Dragon” (despite having as much in common with the one from Shrek), because Dark Souls owns videogame dragons now, that’s just the world we live in. Every archetype is presented with a sense of grandeur and scale, both visually and mechanically, which unites them under Dark Souls’ banner. That creative variety extends to so many of its scenarios and locations as well. Ceaseless Discharge, Sif, and Priscilla all go out of their way to provide memorable experiences beyond simple tests of skill, as do the trickery of Sen’s Fortress and the horror of The Abyss (and it seems obvious to me now that Ornstein and Smough are trying to get the player to bring their own buddy along to even out the odds). The Hydra is an incredibly clumsy encounter, but I’ll be darned if it won’t forever reverberate in my brain as the hydra for the rest of my days. As I became comfortable with the game’s systems and its medium-speed rhythm, and accumulated enough resources to expand my breadth of possible strategies, all of these things became far easier to appreciate. Prior knowledge of the map allowed me to make interesting decisions about which areas and objectives to tackle and in what order. It’s satisfying to develop plans and map out routes, develop my character and make progress on my own terms (which goes to show just how much Dragon Quest III is hiding in Dark Souls), but the satisfaction of actually overcoming the obstacles within this world varies wildly.

Dark Souls' combat generates a lot of praise for its sense of weight, the balance of its stamina system, and the satisfaction of overcoming its punishing enemy design, but it's a pretty passive affair. The level of punishment only further prolongs the process of waiting for the enemy to attack and retaliating yourself, and a good lot of the rogues gallery isn't receptive to the game's only two counter tactics, it's inconsistent. I can't say so with any kind of authority, but one on one systems like this most resonate with me when they're tugs of war between contenders for moments of dominance, but that sense of back and forth only vaguely applies against the most lowly of foes. The system is serviceable for most encounters (at its best, it's about provoking the enemy to leave an opening at the cost of making the environment itself more perilous to navigate (see: Quelaag)) but the dearth of depth is felt as the game grows long. There's little means of pressuring the opponent and they only occasionally react to taking damage, so encounters scarcely branch out of a neutral state. To be clear, I'm not defining this as some sort of hard and fast rule. After all, Hyper Light Drifter is also about dodging and attacking enemies who hardly flinch, but the perspective and player moveset allows any given moment to be far more active, enemies don't have to rotate to track the player's movement, and every opponent can be designed with the knowledge that they'll be responding to the same set of tools. It's particularly because this system relies so heavily on animations that it feels lacking in this way. Against most enemies, the best method of responding to an attack animation cycle is by rolling, and, with the exception of some environmental obstacles, that's about as dynamic as it ever gets. You roll at the right times and punish, but not so much that you'll run out of stamina and find yourself unable to roll away. No doubt this is a consequence of the level of build variety on offer. The game is more interested in delivering a swiss army knife than a singular, refined tool – you can cast spells and wear different kinds of armor and wield any combination of weapons in both hands – but as Dark Souls' most pronounced form of interaction, it doesn't have much going for it.

(As an aside – I’ve heard it compared to Punch-Out!!, but that game better rewards successful attacks by retaining the player’s stamina and causing hitstun, and mastery requires counter-punching and acting on even the slightest tells. Weighing whether a body-blow, face punch or star uppercut is the right move in any given situation is a more impactful decision than any light or heavy attack in Dark Souls, and the right move at the right time allows the player to press an advantage. Some attacks are best dealt with by blocking, countering, or ducking underneath them. Even a wayward punch at the wrong moment incurs a response from the opponent, rather than being ignored outright. Of course, this aspect of Dark Souls’ combat has the effect of evoking helplessness in the face of insurmountable odds, but it makes for a repetitive and tedious dynamic)

By and large, I'd say the game is well served by its degree of punishment. It lends a real sense of credibility to every obstacle the player comes across, but where difficulty often reveals the deepest nuances of a system, the one-dimensionality and tedium of the combat is only exacerbated by this decision. I'm only waxing on about it because Dark Souls leaves so much in the hands of this system, it wouldn't bother me to the same degree if it weren't such a significant focus. Thirteen years out from Demon's Souls, I'm sure this is old news for a lot of you, and yeah, I've come to agree that it's most charitably viewed as a vehicle for Dark Souls' method of delivering atmosphere and varied situations. If there's any benefit to be had from this prioritization of breadth over depth, that's it, and its best areas know this. The aforementioned Sen’s Fortress isn’t made of difficult combat encounters, but awkward walkways and hidden traps. Like so many of the game’s best setpieces, it doesn’t feel designed for the player’s convenience. The boss of the area is more like a climactic punctuation mark than a punishing fight meant to keep the player stuck for hours on end. The Iron Golem is one of the few who can be severely staggered, and given how easily the nearby bonfire can be missed, the tension comes more from the threat of having to navigate the entire tower again than the battle itself. The Painted World of Ariamis is peppered with damaging, but squishy groups of enemies who can be deftly dealt with if the player keeps a clear head and some distance. It’s one of the most architecturally varied and visually enthralling environments in the game, and it’s capped off by a boss who requests the player leave her in peace. When all of the pieces align in just the right ways, Dark Souls achieves an immersive quality that just sings and keeps me arrested in its setting. I could just as easily romanticize many of the game’s other moments using this kind of language (the Bell Gargoyles, the Four Kings, the Capra Demon, the Tomb of the Giants, etc.) because it isn’t hard to make the process of overcoming punishing challenges sound glamorous, but that would be disingenuous, because the moment to moment experience can feel clumsy and unrewarding. Dark Souls is often best served by foregoing the traditional methods of challenge scaling, because while it does contain moments that reveal the potential of the combat system, It only works so well as a straightforward action game; I was best able to appreciate it when I stopped viewing it through this lens.

Dark Souls is very much cut from the cloth of its RPG forebears (the likes of which I have far more experience with today than I did at the outset), which should’ve been obvious, but I felt it best when I hit a wall in the form of The Four Kings, and ventured across every corner of the setting in pursuit of treasures, routes, and resources that could strengthen my character. The game put me up against several of what I could only describe as Dungeons and Dragons parties, and the more of them I encountered, the more I began to feel like I’d been doing a solo run of Dragon Quest III the whole time. I’ve never exactly felt that action games benefit from these kinds of progression systems, and frankly, I’m still not entirely swayed, but if we view Dark Souls’ stamina system as some iteration on Chrono Trigger’s ATB mechanics (it’s better compared to Secret of Mana in this respect, but let’s make like Dark Souls and roll with this comparison), all about taking turns and exchanging numbers with the added benefit of being able to avoid damage through positioning, it clicks together a little more nicely in my mind. Still not an entirely favorable comparison, since the most interesting feature of any RPG combat system is the management and development of multiple characters who all balance out each other’s weaknesses, though the multiplayer features do make an effort to close that gap. Given the prominence of Humanity (the resource), the online features, and the game’s inclination to punish death with the removal of the player’s Humanity, I’ve gotta wonder if the intention was to incentivize players to make use of multiplayer as often as possible, using Dark Souls as a digital D&D campaign. There are multiple boss encounters which might support this, but, conspiracy theorizing aside, that’s simply not how I’ve played it (or how the community treats it), so I can’t provide much insight either way.

Whatever the case may be, Dark Souls’ most basic progression system remains divisive in my mind, and for a number of reasons. Legend has it that Yuji Horii’s theory in implementing the concept of grinding experience in Dragon Quest was that the player’s hard work would always be rewarded with some gains. The player levels up immediately upon reaching the experience threshold, and doesn’t lose those points after dying, so they’re always making some sort of progress. Dark Souls punishes the players who need those experience points most, and best rewards those who don’t. Souls have to be retrieved after death at the spot where the player died, and that spot can be locked behind a boss door, at which point the only way to keep them is by killing the boss. If a new player manages to reach a boss door with a whole lotta souls, their best option is simply to turn back and level up their attributes. Of course, they’re not going to do this. At its worst, this mechanic disincentives players from leaving an area for later and pursuing another which might be more manageable for their skill level, because they’ve already invested so much in their current run (I consider this an issue in Hollow Knight as well, because it undermines the game’s breadth of exploration with an incentive to stay in one place).

The risk/reward aspect can be compelling, but I’ve gotta question how effective it is when the game has to offset that system with collectible items which contain large quantities of souls. Of course, losing experience points forever is a staple feature of the series, and I don’t consider it a misguided concept for a game that prides itself on developing an oppressive atmosphere through challenge and punishment, but some of its quirks don’t seem to be implemented to the benefit of the game’s progression system, or the player’s engagement with it. Yes, that’s part of the intent, and those aforementioned soul items and boss drops might make up the difference, but at that point, the motivation to engage enemies begins to erode somewhat. Several areas have sharp enemy placement which deeply discourages players from ignoring threats, but just as often, it’s optimal to run directly past them and get to the boss, and the risk of gaining souls by fighting punishing enemies isn’t worth it when the player is endeavoring to learn the boss’ patterns across various attempts. It might’ve been possible to mitigate this problem by applying some sort of multiplier to the boss’ souls for every enemy killed along the way, maybe with a cap to prevent the optimal strategy from becoming too tedious. It’s not impossible to bank experience in the boss’ room by repeatedly retrieving one’s souls on arrival, but that’s not particularly better than grinding the area’s enemies at any point after the boss’ defeat, so you tell me.

It’s taken me a while to come around to the lore, mostly because of how often fan culture seems to fixate on trivial details and factoids rather than the broader meaning of a work, but the effect of distributing the game’s story throughout its item descriptions, environmental design, and occasional NPC dialogue is a potent one. Even if I only gathered a fraction of Dark Souls’ background on my own, the cohesion between the game’s rules and its themes is admirable, and even without explanation, the aura of rot is palpable. This isn’t the last time FromSoft would explore stagnation as a result of undeath, a rebellion against the natural order which prevents the world from moving on and highlights the importance of death in the cycle of existence. It might not even be the best exploration of that particular idea, but this method of storytelling, the process of archaeologically piecing together the history of Lordran, feels more appropriate here than in any of its successors. In the past, I’ve derided Dark Souls’ lore for ultimately amounting to little more than explanations for why bosses are sitting in rooms, just waiting for the player to kill them. For me, that quality undermined the verisimilitude of the setting, but that fails to account for the plots running underneath this basic structure. Solaire and Siegmeyer are on similar quests as the player, as are the various other travelers which can be confronted along the way. There are character motivations which drive subplots throughout Dark Souls, and that their quests parallel your own and similarly orbit around this stagnant setting serves to highlight that quality even further. The world is trapped in the Age of Fire, and the only people left with any kind of agency are those seeking an end to the curse of the undead (and more often than not, they succumb to the madness as well). It’s a no less convenient premise for a videogame, but it’s also uniquely suited to being conveyed through this medium. Its greatest disappointment is that either ending or prolonging the Age of Fire requires the same set of steps, simply shuffled around. These actions don’t reflect the differences in motivation behind them, and one might say that’s indicative of the fact that both goals are equally suspect, but that seems a little generous. Still, I’m willing to forgive that concession for the sake of providing an equally engaging experience regardless of the player’s decision. At the very least, it’s not an unreasonable solution.

Here’s the twist that, for some of you, might discredit that whole heap of words you’ve so generously combed through (thank you for that, by the way, you’re looking great). Right now, I’m sitting in the Tomb of the Giants, right in front of Nito’s fog door. I’ve been sitting here for the last two days, without progressing, just trying to unpack everything I’ve felt over the cumulative fifty nine hours I’ve spent with Dark Souls. Am I going Hollow? I used to play this game while listening to “Boy Oh Boy” from LISA: The Painful, because its dedication to silence bored me as much as its combat. I don’t do that anymore, I don’t even hate the fighting system now. Dark Souls is a whole lot of ancient, timeless game design principles swimming in a vat of acid. They rarely coalesce into something greater, but on the rare occasion that every ingredient is balanced just right, there’s a real magic that can’t be denied. Almost everything that Dark Souls attempts is done better in other places, but its level design and premise and its best moments are worth the experience, and, if nothing else, seeing those ideas come together in real time, through uninterrupted gameplay, is thoroughly novel. I’m not certain I’d have returned to Dark Souls at all, though, without the knowledge that every last one of my nitpicks and criticisms would be validated by a certain other FromSoft game. As far as I’m concerned, Sekiro was Hidetaka Miyazaki’s gesture to me, personally, that I wasn’t a moral failure for dropping his most famous game. Maybe we’ll talk about that one some other time, but for now, I stand before Nito, weighing my options as Anubis weighs hearts on a cheap kitchen scale. Do I care enough to see it through? Has this long and rambling inner monologue spilled out every last drop of Dark Souls-related emotion in the depths of my own soul? Is this Age of Fire destined to burn on interminably, never to confidently reach a decisive verdict, or will I put it to rest and allow the Age of Dark to begin?

Does it matter?

POST-SCRIPT

After some time, I did finally find it in me to dust off the ol' save file and see it through to the end. Within an afternoon, the gods were slain and I was left staring down the credits — from Seath, back to Nito, and through the Bed of Chaos (with a bit of a detour taken to see what all this "Artorias" business has been about), before, at last, putting Gwyn out of his misery. Seems I'm far from the first to recognize how...shoddy this last leg of the journey feels. I'd always considered its surrounding gameplay systems a mixed bag, but there's a confidence and unity to Lordran's layout and aesthetic which begins to slip away, and the deeper I went, the more flummoxed I became that this was the same "Dark Souls" so often whispered about in the tomes. I never stopped respecting its desire to maintain visual and mechanical variety (so many works would kill for this level of creativity) but, even as someone who doesn't particularly love this game, it was a bit sad to see it reduced to a parody of itself. Running back through long, boring zones to engage in half-baked boss fights again and again, I had to wonder if anything was cut from the final product. These areas aren't without their moments, but at this point, it seemed Dark Souls was struggling as hard as I was to stay awake.

This is, of course, with the exception of the game's DLC and final areas. In the Sanctuary Guardian and Artorias, it's already possible to glimpse Hidetaka Miyazaki gearing up for Bloodborne and Dark Souls III (heck, Bloodborne himself is hanging out close by), with timing specifically built around acrobatic light rolling, tight windows for retaliation, and little opportunity for recovery. I've still not been converted into an outright fan of this highly evasive style of 3D combat, with its unflinching bosses and more or less prescribed moments for offense and defense (which isn't to dismiss the game's build and weapon variety so much as it is to highlight the nature of the game's enemy design and stamina system), but I'd be lying if I said that the pace of these meat and potatoes heavy action setpieces weren't (quite literally) more my speed than almost anything else in the game (and it was especially cool to recognize that Sif had adopted many of her owner's techniques. That's Dark Souls for ya). Yeah, I do hold that the game is at its most engaging and interesting when it’s doing away with “traditional” methods of challenge scaling, but the Artorias gang makes a clean case. Their wind-ups and telegraphs were excellently done for the most part (and both have striking designs, even if one is just a straight-up Manticore), but I did note that both of these bosses had the ability to sometimes extend otherwise normal attacks into combos. This isn't anything insane on its own, but the severity of the game's stamina management and the inability to cancel actions once committed made this feature a little more questionable than it might've been otherwise. If the player can't reliably know when damage can be dealt and has to guess at whether the boss is finished attacking after every swing of the sword, attacks which can kill immediately and look identical to their single-hit variations, then every time the player waits for a combo that doesn't come, they've given up on some amount of progress through the fight, and every time they don't, they're putting themselves at risk. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, Artorias does always open up at the end of his combos, whenever they may arrive, but I found myself wishing those extended chains were given more distinct telegraphs to plan around and reward observant play. Gambling can be a welcome addition to a combat system, but I can't say I was thrilled to find it here, where I lacked a moveset dynamic enough to switch up my responses, and the stakes can involve immediate death and an inordinately long trek back to the arena. I don't consider this as big a problem against Artorias as, for example, the Margit boss fight in Elden Ring (where his combos will sometimes only come out if you decide to attack), but it was surprising to find this early in the FromSoft canon. I still had a good time against these bosses, but I thought I'd be thorough, since I spent so much time discussing my thoughts on the combat mechanics back in my last write-up. I'm aware there's more DLC stuff to be found beyond this point, but, for me, that may be better left to another life. It was time to leave.

The Kiln of the First Flame might just be one of the most striking pieces of visual storytelling in Dark Souls. Mounds upon mountains of grey ash surrounding a man too far gone to know just what he's wrought, or even what it is he's so bent on defending. Here, I wouldn't have needed the guidance of Darkstalker Kaathe to realize that Frampt and Gwynevere's cause was more than a little questionable, that linking the fire and continuing this age of stagnation and rot was nothing but a mad conservative dream. After finally managing to parry Gwyn's sword a whole fifteen times in a row (I didn't count), the future was left in my hands. In one last bit of gameplay/story integration, the act of linking the fire is identical to lighting a bonfire anywhere else in Lordran, only with a different text prompt. It tempts the player forward with a familiar sight, but I had no love for this place. I turned around and walked out of the chamber. Maybe this whole mess could've been prevented if I'd done so earlier. Then again, if the immediate start of New Game + is any indication after the credits, perhaps not.

And that was my Dark Souls. For all the time and attention I've given it in-game and in writing, I don't love this game. Some of the time, I don't even like it. More than anything, I'm fascinated by it as a work of world design, and as a cultural artifact. Fascinated enough to head down to Quelaag immediately after finishing the game and ring the second Bell of Awakening on New Game +, if for no other reason than some subconscious, poetic desire to leave this playthrough where it began. Still, I never did quite get to feel out and achieve a sense of oneness with the rhythm of Dark Souls' moment to moment gameplay, and only flickers of its emotional highs ever managed to truly land. To me, there's no question that From and Miyazaki would go on to make stronger, more consistent games which resonate more deeply with me (or at least one), but, as far as the rest of The World is concerned, they will always live in the shadow of this one. I'm glad I experienced it for myself from front to back, but I think it's high time I extinguished this weight from my mind and finally found it in me to walk away, even if I've gotta do it alone.