Absolutely loved this game, the first in the trilogy. It's such an atmospheric experience; I enjoyed every second of it, except maybe the Bed of Chaos, that "boss" really sucks! Its everything but a test of skill.
The soundtrack is full of bangers. Even the character creation theme goes crazy and gets you in the mood from the start. My favorite track is the Ornstein & Smough theme, which also happens to be my favorite boss fight in the game. The music during this encounter amplifies the intensity and epic scale of the battle, making it an epic fight.

Yes, the game feels a bit rushed in the second half, especially in areas like Lost Izalith, which seemed less polished compared to the earlier parts of the game. However... the DLC really redeems it. The additional content was excellent, with top-notch boss fights that were challenging and well-designed. The Artorias of the Abyss DLC stands out with its deep lore and intense battles against tough opponents like Knight Artorias or Manus, Father of the Abyss.
The graphics may be a bit outdated even for 2011, but the game still features some stunning locations that look beautiful, such as Anor Londo with its majestic, cathedral-like architecture, and Ash Lake with its eerie, otherworldly ambiance. These environments contribute significantly to the game's immersive atmosphere.
Additionally, I loved the story and the lore. The narrative is subtle, requiring players to piece together the plot through item descriptions, environmental storytelling, and character interactions. This method of storytelling makes the game's world feel alive and encourages players to explore and discover its secrets. The lore behind characters like Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, and the tragic tale of Sif, the Great Grey Wolf, adds depth to the experience and makes the journey all the more compelling.

Overall, despite a few flaws, this game remains a masterpiece in its genre. It offers a deeply engaging experience with its challenging gameplay, atmospheric world, and rich storytelling. It's a game that stays with you long after you've put down the controller.

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.

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!

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.

(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.

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]/

”But soon, the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain.”

What’s there to say about Dark Souls? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played. It’s brutal, but rarely unfair. Oppressive, yet oddly encouraging. Terrifying, yet magical. Like the deceptive warmth of the First Flame and the unearthly chill of the Abyss, Dark Souls strikes a near-perfect balance of tension and reprieve.

Every death you experience feels like a proper punishment for screwing up. As soon respawn at the bonfire, the first thing on your mind is basically, “Alright, let’s do this one last time.” That’s what makes Dark Souls so addicting. The cycle of trying your best, dying, learning from your mistakes, and trying your best “one more time”. Because despite the punishment, you can tell that the game wants you to succeed, so it feels like every respawn is just another chance to get it right this time.

The combat is awesome and probably the best in any game I’ve played. It’s slow, but it’s deliberate, intuitive, and masterfully executed. There’s so much depth thanks to the different types of weapons and how they scale with your stats, allowing you to craft your fighting machine, your perfect undead warrior. Every successful encounter feels like a victory, whether it be one enemy or a room full of them.

The bosses. Oh man, the bosses. Not all of them are winners, but when they hit, they hit home fucking runs. The Asylum Demon is the perfect introductory boss. The Taurus Demon builds off of that. The Bell Gargoyles ramp up the challenge. Ornstein and Smough are the ultimate test to prove your worth as the Chosen Undead. Sif may not be difficult, but the whole fight is one hell of an emotional gut punch. The Four Kings are a mad dash to kill them before they kill you. Knight Artorias is a frantic sword duel against the greatest hero in Lordran’s history. Manus is darkness incarnate and holy shit does his fight feel like it. And Black Dragon Kalameet is the perfect optional superboss to prove that you have finally gotten gud.

The story takes the Metroid Prime route of “minimal, yet deep”. You’re basically just wandering across a kingdom killing whoever you’re told to, but the sheer level of detail present in the item descriptions, backgrounds, and NPC dialogue gradually expose the sheer tragedy of Lordran and its fallen leader, Lord Gwyn. I won’t go into details because it’s confusing as fuck, but it’s an appropriately dark and brooding tale that perfectly fits the game’s tone and leads to an inevitably bitter conclusion, regardless of what path you choose.

Oh, and the LEVEL DESIGN. The world of Dark Souls is intricately designed and takes a Metroidvania style approach by having the entire kingdom be interconnected. You gradually unlock shortcuts, keys to new areas, fast travel, and new powers to help you progress. Not to mention, there are tons of great individual areas, with Anor Londo, Sen’s Fortress, the Duke’s Archives, the Painted World of Ariamas, and basically everything in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC being some of my favorites. Hell, I even liked areas that most people hate. I thought all the ex-bosses littering the Demon Ruins were a great reminder of how far I’d come in my journey (also, the sight of an entire canyon full of Taurus Demons just standing there is incredibly funny to me). I also kinda liked the limited visibility of the Tomb of the Giants and how it forced me to manage my resources so I could keep my lantern in hand. I get why other people hate it, but I’m not other people, so I liked it.

However, Dark Souls, like any game, isn’t perfect, and it definitely suffered due to rushed development. The Crystal Cave and three of the Lord bosses feel undercooked. Lost Izalith is a boring as fuck area that I simply cannot defend. And don’t even get me fucking started on the fucking BED OF CHAOS!!!!

Nevertheless, the highs of Dark Souls are so high, so numerous, and so frequent that they completely drown out the lows. It’s just too much fun, and I’ll definitely be having even more fun playing it over and over in the future.

Eu, muitas vezes, me pego querendo poder compartilhar minhas experiências pessoais sobre alguma obra, muitas vezes isso é concebido por meio da fala, outras vezes, por meio da escrita, mas, muitas vezes eu sou incapaz de simplesmente começar a dissertar sobre. Você me pergunta: ''é por que é complexa demais?'' e eu até poderia responder que sim, porém, eu, mesmo compreendendo tudo em sua magnitude, não me encontro hábil para poder tecer uma narrativa capaz de transpor aquilo que experimentei.

Dark Souls é um jogo mundialmente conhecido, com jogadores de todas as partes e com inúmeras reviews e opiniões diversas sobre. Mesmo eu querendo muito falar sobre como o jogo é, literalmente, genial e astuto em tantas camadas, ainda acho que seria mais do mesmo.
Então, como prosseguir?
A comunicação entre o escritor e o leitor é algo que eu, genuinamente, me importo bastante. Eu gosto de escrever bastante, não tenho dificuldade nenhuma em sintetizar minhas experiências em palavras e, normalmente, quem está do outro lado me acompanha. Para mim, isso é prioridade.
Mas, com Dark Souls, sempre me pego em um desafio.

Naquele velho reino em ruínas, é onde a jornada se passa, nós somos um cavaleiro. Somos jogados, abruptamente, em um local totalmente desconhecido após o asilo, local este que sempre faríamos o nosso retorno, mas ainda não sabíamos disto. A Firelink Shrine é o ponto de partida, lá, assinamos um contrato com nós mesmos de enfrentar aquele ofensivo mundo. Um reino já em decadência, em destroços, cheio de amargura, tão grande, mas tão vazio, a jornada não é rápida ou muito menos simples.

Nós não temos uma meta desde o início, mas, como jogadores, somos livres para poder explorar nossas possibilidades. Em uma tentativa desesperada de podermos encontrar luz em algum lugar naquele apertado reino.
Um ponto crucial dentro do jogo são as fogueiras, pequenos vestígios de calor que são acesas por nós, os jogadores, entretanto, não fomos os únicos a acendê-las. Essas fogueiras são o savepoint do jogo e é genial o quão absurdo é a sacada delas serem, justamente, o savepoint.

Nós desde o começo somos encaminhados a enfrentar aquele reino extremamente sujo e feroz, começamos do zero e temos que continuar seguindo em frente. Passamos por uma paróquia imensa, em um burgo cheio de mortos-vivos, uma floresta escura e traiçoeira, uma catedral imensa, catacumbas, um inferno e muito mais. E, em todos esses lugares, há uma fogueira, local este, que você, se debatendo completamente, busca conforto e pode se reerguer para continuar enfrentando os desafios daquele reino. Ao sentar ao lado de sua brisa quente, é possível ver inúmeros jogadores descansando e passando por perto dela, eles são como um guia em sua jornada, por meio do caminhar de muitos, você faz o seu próprio caminho. Você é impulsionado por todos eles, todos os que vieram anteriormente a você, agora, fazem parte de você. Cada pedaço daqueles que se foram ou um dia já ousaram trilhar aquele árduo desafio, agora formam o que você é.

Há vezes que você não tem certeza do que está fazendo, você muitas vezes é obrigado a avançar no completo escuro, mesmo se opondo a ideia. Porém, após aquele desafio, há sempre uma fogueira para poder descansar. Mesmo no abismo mais denso, há uma fogueira. A chama nunca pode ser apagada, você deve acender aqueles comburentes reunidos de pequenos destroços. Não ouse em se tornar vazio.

É incrível como a Firelink Shrine passa de um local de início de jornada para a sua própria casa, o seu refúgio. Todos os locais acabam culminando em você retornar na Firelink, isso é mágico.

A grande maioria dos oponentes que você encontra nas áreas que explora, são seres vazios, seres esses que perderam a esperança e sucumbiram a perdição. Eles são um lembrete do que lhe aguardará se não ter determinação.
Essa metáfora do jogo para com a vida é muito precisa e sutilmente encaixada em cada detalhe daquele mundo brilhante. Independentemente da época em que vive, seja escola, seja faculdade, seja trabalho, você terá que enfrentar diversas adversidades no caminho. A temática dark fantasy com uma ambientação hostil é só uma representação que lhe imerge na ideia. Toda uma estética, todo um cenário, toda uma ousadia, enviesando uma construção de mundo hábil, inteligente e inacreditável.

Ao completar tudo que o jogo lhe propõe, chega a ser surreal o caminho que trilhas. Tantas áreas estupidamente emblemáticas, tantos inimigos que apunhalou, tantos bosses que teve que ultrapassar. Foram muitos desafios, foram muitas conquistas. Você encontrou muita gente no meio da jornada e muitos acabaram caindo. Mas você continuou. Você persistiu. Você almejou a vitória e a teve. Assim como outros já tiveram, Gwyn é um boss formidável, mesmo sem um único diálogo, você o conhece tão bem. ''Por quê?'' Oras, você é que nem ele. O escolhido.

Totes feel seepy whenever I play this now, lol. Guess I'll come back...once more some day? I really liked what all I played of Dark Souls. I liked this game a lot more on the second playthrough, too! My first time around I rushed through on a strength-dex combo build that was awful to play as, but this time around I went full-dex and used my half-remembered first playthrough to inform my second playthrough. I loved a lot of it! Can't really follow the story again, as I suspected, but damn! What a lovely set of incredible aesthetics. I got up to the end of the DLC after constructing most of the final Boss Souls this time around, and it took nearly a hundred hours. Compare that to my 60 hour playthrough all the way through to the end of the game, and yeah, I think I really took my time and enjoyed it more this time. Dusk of Oolacile my beloved.

A definição perfeita para esse jogo é OBRA DE ARTE. Um puta jogo foda que com certeza não é para iniciantes mas ao mesmo é para alguém que quer começar nos jogos souls-like. Dark souls é um jogo que te dá muita liberdade e eu amo isso nos jogos, por essa liberdade também é muito fácil se perder e eu odeio estar perdido nos jogos, a maneira que é proposta para você saber por onde tem que ir é tu indo se fodendo por onde anda até descobrir se deu certo ou não, o jogo te dá sinais mas se tu não pegar esses sinais tu fica morrendo e perdido (o que aconteceu comigo).
O que me incomodou não foi muita coisa, os chefes do jogo não são tão difíceis o que quebrou um pouco a minha expectativa é que em alguns eu pensei que seria uma luta foda mas era só achar um lugar e dar um hit de dano e pronto matou, outra coisa que incomodou, era o caminho MUITO longe que você tinha que fazer para chegar nos chefes, eu preferiria que o chefe que eu iria enfrentar fosse um puta de um apelão que não tivesse um caminho tão longo e lotado de inimigo inútil no meio, onde era perto da bom fire mas compensava a dificuldade no inimigo mas mesmo com isso o jogo fica foda do mesmo jeito.
Quando eu descobri a história do jogo (eu pesquisei) ficou muito foda de se jogar, as batalhas com os chefes elas te dão muitos sentimentos onde alguns é uma trilha sonora foda e outros é uma musica melancólica que te faz ficar calmo. Então dark souls é um jogo bem marcante com diversas possibilidades de você fazer diversos outros caminhos, realmente é um jogo que merece a fama e os elogios que tem.

vtnc bandai, remaster lixo de um jogo incrivel

Inferno Plus resume bem tudo que me irrita nesse video aqui

4/10

If you will allow me to count the Demon's Souls remake, I have finally beaten every post-Demon's Souls From Software "one of these"! (Demon's Souls, DS1, DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, and I kinda count Armored Core VI because of its boss fights).

This is the fourth or fifth time I've attempted to beat this specific game. I don't know why this is the one I've struggled with most -- even more than DeS or the latter Dark Souls games. Heck, I beat Sekiro twice last year, which some would call the hardest "one of these" games.

Having beaten it now, I think the reasons I've had a harder time with DS1 are:
-Its trademark From obtuseness is arguably more obtuse here than DeS or any game that came after
-Getting where you need to go can take a long time since some bonfires are full 90 second sprints
-I often play heavier builds across the board, but even by that standard this just feels slower to me than the rest of them. Might be same thing as the second point.

These aren't strictly bad things -- I think a lot of the games I mentioned above are either a 7/10 or a 10/10 for you based on what you like about these games/want from them. For me, I've realized by this point that the faster, high-intensity From action game -- Bloodborne, Sekiro (my favorite), Elden Ring (I count it), and ACVI (my GOTY right now I believe) -- is what I click with most. That, plus it being a 10+ year old game that shows its age, meant that I had a good time and could appreciate it for what it was but it didn't click with me as much as it probably did for others.

Some of that is unmistakably my own fault. I didn't summon but this is the cheesiest Soulslike playthrough I've ever had. Glitched out two bosses, looked up strategies for half of the late game bosses, looked up upgrade material locations. I know it's not the purist way of doing things, but I had attempted this game too many times and just wanted to see it through. I'm married and almost 30, dammit! I have a lawn to mow. I can't do the 60 hour grindfest on every single one of these.

And to be clear, I had a fun time. It was nice having experience with Souls pattern bosses so fights like Ornstein and Smough weren't that tough for me. The world design is still awesome, sharpened to a fine point. Great visuals and sound (ran great on Steam Deck too!). Sick bosses. I've also played half of this game on three different occasions so the run only took me 18 hours.

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

Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be seen as a set of observations over a genuine review.


Dark Souls is one of those titles that does so much right: visually it's fantastic, the boss fights are great, the music phenomenal, and it boasts some of the best-realized combat I’ve ever seen in a game. It cemented FromSoft as the premiere developer for difficult RPGs, a label they’ve since used to generate critical acclaim and lucrative bank.

It’s unfortunate, then, how Dark Souls chooses to wrap-up these traits under some genuinely frustrating design schemes, and yes, I use the word frustrating because my problems with Dark Souls have less to do with objective difficulty and more to do with artificial flavors tossed in for no other reason than virtual sadism.

Of course, one can’t criticize Dark Souls without incurring the wrath of apologia its fan base has accumulated over the years, and while I’ll abstain from stereotyping thousands of gamers, you don’t have to look far to see the worst of their rhetoric. From their perspective, it’s easy to shut down any criticism under the banner of “git gud,” and I’ll acknowledge upfront that I’m not the best at video games: I sucked at Horizon Zero Dawn’s combat and my favorite titles are ones that are relatively-easy to master(+). But there’s a difference between a challenge and an irritation, and Dark Souls inclusion of both has unfortunately led to fans and critics alike intermixing them, when the truth is they should be viewed as separate elements.

Let’s start with the bad: the backtracking. Dark Souls is an action RPG best described as an 80s platformer in light of its atrocious checkpoint system. Every area contains two, let me repeat, two save points in their entire vicinity, and, as a result, you’re going to be wasting cumulative hours(!) re-running through the same paths again-and-again-and-again. The issue isn’t the lack of an autosave but the employment of an outdated save apparatus we all agree was only done to deceptively-elongate past releases, so why anyone thought to bring it back into the 21st century I have no idea. Plenty of modern video games have limited waypoints, but the difference is they’re smart enough to place them in areas advantageous to the player’s progress, such as, you know, after a major endeavor or right before a boss gate. Forcing gamers to spend minutes, I kid you not, minutes on end returning to a boss’s entrance or past a set of dangerous traps is beyond idiotic and commits the cardinal sin of wasting player time.

Of course, the arguments in favor of Dark Souls’s checkpoints are how it encourages obstacle circumvention by either “teaching” players to methodically-approach situations or learn the terrain for quick bypassing, and the fact that both these notions contradict each other should indicate the level of intelligence apologists have put behind them - if you’re meant to run past every critter, what was the bloody point in even having them revive? And if they were intended to be engaged with, why stack them with cheap shots, RNG, and extraneous numbers the player would fundamentally be unable to master (more on these later)? Dark Souls isn’t the kind of game about farming enemies for drops or experience, nor is it about clearing areas for long-term safety, making the two prospects very confusing.

To reiterate, I don’t have a problem completing a difficult section or two to “earn” a respite, but Dark Souls is rarely interested in providing that equity and outright boneheaded when it comes to logical placement. No seriously, there are so many areas where an additional save space or two (bonfires) wouldn’t have conflicted with enemy placement, yet the devs didn’t bother adding them for no other reason than maintaining director Miyazaki’s nonsensical 2-Bonfire rule. The trail from the sewery Depths to the Lovecraftian Blighttown, for example, forces you to run through a door, down some stairs, across a tunnel, and then down a long ladder….why not just put a bonfire at the end of that ladder? Why make players redo the same course when they’ll (inevitably) die to Blighttown’s new slate of enemies prior to reaching the first official Bonfire there anyway?

Another notable instance of this occurs in the grand city of Anor Londo, wherein your spawn point is separated from the next objective via a long dash to an automated elevator and spiral staircase followed by ANOTHER long dash down a platform….why not just place a bonfire at the halfway point of said platform? The idea that simple additions like these weren’t considered says a lot about the kind of griefing FromSoft gleefully indulged in during development.

I’m not done ranting about the bonfires as there are two extra qualms associated with them that make an already-faulty system laughably frustrating. For starters, FromSoft went out of their way to hide some of them! No, I’m not joking: if I wasn’t semi-playing with a guide, I wouldn’t have discovered half the pyres out there, and that alone speaks to the callousness guiding FromSoft’s approach to game design: the idea of deliberately ensconcing an already scarce resource for no other discernible reason than sh!ts and giggles.

The second quandary is less-egregious, though still objectively annoying, and that’s the lack of fast travel between bonfires. Now, to be fair, Dark Souls is very good at connecting sites through story progression; however, there’ll be situations in which you may have to return to a previous area for some reason or other(++) and will consequently have no choice but to backtrack like a caffeinated hare.

And this whole schematic is the main reason why I abandoned Dark Souls. I’ll get into the other problems for sure, but understand that, unless you’re willing to put-up with the limited save points, you won’t have fun with this game. True, you only lose souls upon death, but that can be really vexing in the early stages of the journey when you’re trying to increase stats or upgrade weapons (+++).

In addition, an unintentional casualty of the whole shebang is how it diminishes any motivation to explore - there were tons of places off the beaten path I genuinely wanted to check out, but ultimately absconded from in light of fears of either losing all my souls on hand, or drifting too far away from the nearest beacon and subsequently getting sucker-stomped by some new behemoth that would force more, you guessed it, backtracking to where I died. To anyone curious, yes, there are quicksave mods out there for PC players; however, I personally don’t recommend downloading them as they’re a pain in the @ss to install/use courtesy of Dark Soul’s online component (more on that later).

The second biggest setback you’ll run into is the skill system as it is very atypical by RPG standards. Those familiar with the genre know that, in most titles, everytime you level-up, you earn points that can be funneled into a variety of stats for the overall purposes of getting stronger.

Dark Souls retains that basic premise, albeit with some changes for better and for worse: on the plus side, you’re not earning experience towards an arbitrary bar, but souls to then shovel into 8 different categories, with each upgrade concurrently raising your hero’s base level. On the negative side, though, the devs made the bizarre decision to scale soul requirements to the highest one you have, and I genuinely don’t understand what the thought process behind this was - if you’re at 20 Strength and 12 Attunement, for example, you’ll have to spend the same amount of souls upgrading Attunement as Strength, with every other requirement also inflating in the process. I’ve heard fans claim this was done to encourage builds; however, that argument falls flat when you realize universal attributes like endurance and health are afflicted by this system as well - if FromSoft was really intent on distinguishing Dark Souls from other role-playing titles, why not meet in the middle via categorizing skills for the cap (i.e., have the scaling for strength apply only to dexterity, or Faith to Intelligence)? As it stands, this all-or-nothing approach will definitely nag at you during the beginning stages.

The third quandary is how Dark Souls doesn’t bother explaining a number of its more intricate components. On my end, for instance, I never figured out how the magic system worked, and frequently had to look-up things like factions, the purpose of different items, how to do summons, and so forth. I fully concede these may have been located within the title, but by no means were they ergonomically sited.

In terms of the game’s general difficulty, I agree with fans that patience is a virtue. Dark Souls combat is based around the idea of attack-and-response: every enemy has memorizable patterns you can either block or strafe around in the hopes of exploiting openings for your own hits. The key to everything is managing your stamina, this bar dictating your capacity to strike, dodge, or defend, and only replenishing when doing nothing. There are growing pains with each new foe encountered, but that’s also a part of the fun, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the skirmishing system FromSoft created.

Unfortunately, as much as I liked the combat, it’s also where you’ll find the last rung of unfairness due to it involving several enemy advantages I alluded to above: first, even when blocking, monsters will occasionally get a hard hit on you that saps you of your endurance (or health if unable to shield), and it didn’t appear to be related to any specific move but good old-fashioned RNG. Secondly, weapon-based creatures occasionally get stuck in this everlasting strafe wherein they’ll continue to circle about you without breaking their guard or lunging, making for some really annoying encounters since they turn too quickly to be flanked nor attack themselves. Thirdly, you sword strikes can ricochet off walls-and-barriers, yet this same limitation is conveniently absent for foes, who instantly recover; and finally, just like with Gothic, Dark Souls’ fighting is inherently built around 1v1 bouts, and just like with Gothic again, it still tosses multiple thugs at you. I will never comprehend the logic backing these decisions as it results in players (like myself) engaging in cheap tricks to cheese the game ala inching closer to trigger individual enemy aggros(++++).

To clarify, nothing about these four combat hitches is game-breaking by any means, but when taken in conjunction with those prior two macro flaws, you’ll find them getting under your skin more than they would’ve in any other product. And that sums up Dark Souls issues in a nutshell: individually, they could have been tolerable, but when cruxed together, they add up to a thoroughly-unenjoyable experience.

It’s a shame because, again, the game does so much right - graphically, it stands as prime proof of how a solid art style will always age well, the gothic romanticism here blending well with some of the best texture meshing I’ve ever seen in a video game: seeing cracks on different pieces of armor or the visceral rotting of wood or the slimy residue on subterranean slabs goes a long way towards showcasing the kind of love that was poured into this game. Much like the second God of War, Dark Souls warps familiar locations like sewers and wooden villages under a unique skin, and it consistently blew my mind whenever I’d enter a new locale purged by these aesthetics.

I’m not going to delve into excessive detail about said aesthetics as I didn’t enjoy or play the game enough to do so (plenty of walkthroughs and screen caps exist online that I encourage you to look-up), but what I will highlight are three major achievements, beginning with the varied elevators you’ll utilize. See, FromSoft was so dedicated to their in-game cultures, that they literally crafted multiple unique assets for something as simple as an ascension apparatus: in the medieval-inspired Undead Burg, you have a creaky chained shaftbox; in the wealthy Anor Lando, a beautiful-floating tile; and within Blighttown’s plague-scoffed planking runs a rickety waterwheel amidst the muck. I’ve always had a deep love for architecture, and the fact that FromSoft thought to build engineering feats specific to their various cultures was beyond mesmerizing.

Second is the gorgeous dynamic lighting that not only bounces well off plate armor and metal grooves, but offsets the need for a torch via your avatar generating a bioluminescence.

Finally, you’ve got the Monster designs, their composition ranging from standard enemy tropes to absolute nightmare fuel, and as a result of that berth there’s admittedly a bit of a hit-or-miss effect in terms of memorability - catching wind of skeleton warriors or giant rats, for example, doesn’t quite evoke the same sense of dread as bug-eyed frogs or Deep One-esque critters. Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s movements, skin textures, and groans are exquisite - I just wish the game had been less generic-fantasy at times.

These same criticisms extend to the few bosses I fought, which, to repeat, are fun, but which sometimes leave more to be desired as far as visualization: on the one hand, you could get a disturbingly-alluring specimen in the spider queen Quelaag, only to have her followed-up by a regular iron golem literally called the Iron Golem.

Thankfully, what consistently elevated even the more-drab titans was the score by Motoi Sakuraba, and I can’t believe this man hasn’t achieved greater notoriety as his tracks here were consistently amazing. Dark Souls may stand as the only game I’ve played where you could strum a boss’s theme and I would be able to tell you exactly who they were by virtue of the music alone: that’s how perfectly-done the OST is -- by-and-large, my biggest regret from dropping the game is knowing I’ll never hear Sakuraba’s other compositions juxtaposed against their synced monstrosity.

SFX, I won’t go too in-depth in either other than to say that this is unfortunately a headphones-favored title: you’ll miss out on a lot of intricate aural details like the breathing of fake chests or stomping of underground monsters without a pair of buds. That said, the primary beats surrounding weapon usage, walking, and armor chinking are top-notch, with FromSoft even programming in individual footstep dins for each leg (an aspect you’re liable to noticing in light of the variegated surfaces you’ll literally run across).

With regards to technical issues, the only quibs I ever saw were some weapon clipping, a lack of cloth physics for certain suits (e.g. Silver Knight capes), and sudden color palette swaps when shifting between interiors, all of which were ultimately minor stuff.

I’ll touch on the story briefly because it’s another case of a genuinely bad aspect being praised to unworthy heights. See, Dark Souls shoves the bulk of its narrative into flavor text: while there are narrated bits and some NPCs you can chat with, you won’t understand a single thing about the world you’re in unless you take the time out of your day to read-up on the item descriptions laden in tools, weapons, boss drops, or merchant wares, and I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t play video games to read books. Optional lore is one thing; supplementary material a second thing, but this tactic FromSoft utilized right here is outright lazy. It literally comes across like the video game equivalent of the Marvel Method wherein artists for the eponymous company would do all the work crafting the story, only for writers to come in and add their own selfish scribbles atop the panels. To be fair, Dark Souls’ tale isn’t anywhere near a focus of the game; however, that doesn’t diminish the fact that it was a wasted opportunity to really make something immersive.

Some people may be curious about the multiplayer component, a facet that’s infamously led to FromSoft foregoing pause screens due to the insistent need to stay online. The truth is I didn’t engage with it a lot, so I can’t say whether or not it’s worth fielding -- it is kind of cool seeing dead phantoms and left-behind messages by players, but the culture shock wears-off the second you realize how idiotic 90% of these messages are. Worse yet, if you ever undergo Internet issues (like I did), you’ll find yourself getting booted out of the game at a moment’s notice (luckily, you are loaded back into your immediate position, but it’s annoying nonetheless). As such, unless you have a solid bandwidth, I’d recommend playing the game offline to avoid potential tech surprises.

I say that last sentence with a clump of salt as, while I obviously didn’t like Dark souls, everyone should form an opinion for themselves at the end of the day. Dark Souls continued the revolution wrought by Demon’s Souls by creating a new genre, and I’m happy many have found joy….or so I hope….

See, I want to end this review by asking Soulsborne enthusiasts a genuine question, which is, are you sure you’re having fun? One of the biggest criticisms towards Ubisoft titles, for example, is the concept of dopamine exploitation: how players aren’t actually enjoying what they’re doing, but being deluded into believing they are courtesy of small achievements (like finding collectibles) auto-triggering the release of the infamous neurotransmitter.

I wish to apply a similar concept here, albeit under the guise of cost-sunk: playing Dark Souls, backtracking repeatedly, and dying constantly, I’m curious if you actually enjoy what you’re doing, or if it’s a case where, having invested so much time & energy into an endeavor and finally overcoming it for the dopamine, that you’re simply overvaluing the factual task at hand?

Just food for thought.


NOTES
+An exception being the Donkey Kong Country games.

++The two times it happened to me (both of which occurred in Blighttown ironically enough) involved having to repair my weapon with a Smith; and having to gather a ring that would allow easier traversal of the swamps.

+++Please prioritize upgrading weapons over leveling-up. The game doesn’t tell you this, but weapon stats are more important for damage output than personal dexterity.

++++Enemy aggros can be SO bipolar - there are some where standing five feet in front of them won’t do anything, while others are prone to charging at you from a long ways away.

-As the Remaster was my first incursion into this series, I can’t comment on any specific differences from the vanilla release. From what I understand via a quick Google search, though, they stayed very faithful to the OG (compared to DS2’s equivalent Scholar of the First Sin) and incorporated some natural resolution and framerate bumps.

-Puddles have reflective surfaces!

-Dark Souls is officially the only game I’ve played where you can control an undead specimen wearing a thong.

9/10.

Não sinto o apelo que a maioria tem por essse jogo, apesar de eu claramente ver as virtudes e as qualidades que o põe em um pedestal.

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.

Virei buda, alcancei outro nível de paciência extrema com esse jogo. Esse foi o meu primeiro contato com o gênero souls, e gostei bastante do que eu vi, é um jogo difícil? Com certeza, mas não é impossível.

Eu pensei que sendo um dos primeiros jogos do gênero, DS1 remastered podia ter decaído em algum quesito, mas no geral ele é um ótimo jogo. Meus únicos pontos negativos dentro desse primeiro DS serião, o seu personagem conseguir deslizar facilmente em alguns lugares perigosos do mapa, normalmente isso acontece em algumas pontes, ou em uma quina ingrime do mapa, também tem a hitbox do personagem e dos inimigos que não são tão boas, você pode passar um grande sufoco por conta disso se estiver em um local apertado, além dessas coisas que citei, para mim, as fogueiras seriam bem mais interessante se algumas estivessem mais próximas dos bosses, umas das coisas mais chatas desse jogo é ficar passando dois ou três minutos apenas correndo para chegar até o boss (dois ou três minutos se você ignorar a penca de inimigos no meio do caminho que quer tentar te matar...), também fiquei um pouco perdido depois que coloquei aquele bacião lá embaixo aonde o Zé Dentadura joga a gente, mas depois de uma boa pesquisada na internet e ter pedido algumas dicas no Reddit eu consegui tomar um rumo na minha gameplay.

Recomendo bastante esse jogo, mas lembre-se, tenha paciência ou aprenda ter, senão você vai dropar esse jogo rapidinho. Como é o meu primeiro jogo do gênero souls, eu não tenho uma base sólida para dizer em que nível ele está dentro do gênero souls, então eu recomendaria vocês pesquisarem caso fiquem em dúvida se compra ou não esse primeiro jogo da trilogia de Dark Souls.

E para finalizar essa review, eu quero dar um conselho para vocês que estão começando a jogar o gênero souls... "SE TÁ NO JOGO VOCÊ PODE JOGAR, SEU CU DE APITO!" ou também, "SE ESTÁ PASSANDO SUFOCO EM ALGO OU EM ALGUM LUGAR, PODE PEDIR AJUDA NA INTERNET! VAI FICAR SE ESTRESSANDO À TOA ATÉ QUANDO?!", vai por mim, Isso vai fazer sentido para vocês lá na frente, fique tranquilo kkkkj.

I was hosting a party for all the video games I've played and this one came in with it's guitar, shouted around, and then vomited all over the living room floor right in front of Bugsnax and Viva Piñata.

I was no stranger to facing challenges in a video game, but for the longest time I just didn't get into this series for whatever reason and it started to feel like a weird skin tag that needed to finally be taken care of. So, I started with this one, and I'm glad that I did. Everything in this game felt like pure torture, from getting my ass split wide open from the same boss for hours to just simply walking from point A to point B.

Everything feels like it's in slow motion and it just grates me to my core. I could not stand having to get through a country of enemies between areas and I just do not care for your counter-opinion, xXPuzzYSlayurXx, there is nothing that will convince me otherwise. Some bosses are completely fine, others are just straight up ass? But most of them are a worthy challenge. I will say even despite feeling like my legs were being torn off slowly, it was quite the dopamine hit to finally defeat a boss on your own. You know, until you instantly lose your 40,000+ souls from a random skeleton immediately after.

I do think part of what turned me off from these games initially is that most of the plot and backstory is hidden in menus and item descriptions. It's quite literally just "Read the Wiki" the series. I am illiterate, please stop doing this.

I am not put off by this series after playing this game. It was not my favorite thing ever, but I do think just from my playstyle alone. I will probably enjoy the later entries more than this one. It's just fine for me, and I felt good beating it.

i shoulda never smoked that shit, now i'm in anor londo

for a game that's centered around suffering, despair, and defeat, it sure as hell makes you feel that. this game is just sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, only to fall all the way back down once you reach the top.

the entire game is a gauntlet. i hope ornstein and smough get strapped to a missile that's aimed directly for sen's fortress. i hope the four kings get four bullets put in each of their heads. i did not ask for a side of fucking tinnitus with my video game so tell me why the fuck kalameet is screaming in my headphones. blighttown can just fuck off. why the fuck do i need 4000 souls to buy an item to attack some ghosts please fucking explain fromsoft. CAN SOMEBODY TURN THE LIGHTS ON IN THE TOMB OF THE GIANTS I CANNOT SEE A FUCKING THING.

the absolute torture of having to backtrack your steps across multiple parts of the map for the first ~50% of the game is already enough to make you want to give up, but ironically this is actually the better half of the game. this isn't even accounting for the tediousness of running for minutes back to a boss encounter after you inevitably fail time after time. i shit you not i could probably run from the 2nd anor londo bonfire to the ornstein/smough fight with my eyes closed due to pure muscle memory.

this game is so unforgiving in so many different ways. if you get hit and knocked down, just take your hands off the controller/keyboard because you are fucked buddy. trying to find an opening in the chaos of some of these boss fights just to get a single heal off feels like just as much of an insurmountable task as the boss itself. i could take a shit and even wipe before i am finally able to move again after using an estus flask in this game.

some boss fights you could do on your first try, but others are genuinely some of the most unfair experiences i've encountered in any video game in my entire life. this is where you say "git gud" and i tell you to go fuck yourself. some of these fights are artificially difficult through either being programmed like shit (you know exactly what i'm talking about) or having attacks that have probably 5 frames between when it starts and when it hits you for 70% of your hp.

the second half of the game kind of just felt like it was scraps they tossed in. they must have made lost izalith barred off xanax 48 hours before the production date or something cause that area was so pointless and the boss was the dumbest gimmick fight i’ve ever fucking seen.

i'm too stubborn to give up, but that doesn't mean i didn't want to at multiple points throughout my playthrough. the game makes me hate myself even more, but despite the absolute fucking anguish that is experiencing this game, i hate that i still appreciate it; i appreciate it's existence for the sole reason that it led to some of my favorite games, even if this isn't one of them.

Dark Souls is Dark Souls, and Dark Souls is the hardest and bestest game ever made.

Well, so I hear. You see, the thing about DS1 is it is far messier and more purely enjoyable than the online circlejerk may lead you to assume. It’s by no means easy, but I think the original Dark Souls is a fun and fair challenge that still feels legitimately revolutionary when placed in the context of its initial 2011 release, and not some bone-destroying grindfest where you’ll need every ounce of your being to succeed. It’s also not a perfect object. I’ll spend plenty of time on why its so great, but cracks begin to show all over the game, especially in its back leg. Ultimately, it’s the best kind of flawed game, one that pushes the boundaries of its style and budget to such extremes that the stretch marks are still visible in the final product.

Let’s start with the difficulty. Difficulty is such a, well, difficult thing to manage as a game designer, and to the credit of Miyazaki and his team, they do manage to strike a strong balance. Most of DS1’s bosses pose a decent challenge that’ll force a handful of attempts, but every attempt feels like an active learning experience towards your victory. Exploration is never free and maintains this incredible sense of tension in which every fight against even the most lowly of foes could lead to your end. I think this gives the ‘runbacks’ (as the kids call the between boss attempt traversals from a bonfire to a fog-gate) this excellent sense of mastery, as you gain total dominion over the environment to the point that you’ve turned it into a kind of obstacle course. Speaking of the environments, especially in the front half of the game, they are just a joy to traverse. Even (especially) Blightown. Trust me we’ll get to it.

But at the end of the day, despite the reputation, it's never unnecessarily tough. Even the most infamous of fights (especially the two separate times you fight a 2v1) aren't realistically going to take more than a half hour of your life. My theory on where this gets its ‘prepare to die’ name, is in its first few hours. Most people hit a hard brick wall early on (from my preliminary research this is most often Bell Gargoyles, though for me it was actually the Taurus Demon, rat bastard), where the skill floor of the game rapidly rises, and your ability is simply forced to match it. Of course, this is just a matter of this series’ trial-by-fire approach to preparing its players for later challenges, but I truly stand by the idea that DS1 spikes too high and too fast. Far too many players who absolutely would not find this game to be unmanageable will get turned off by the early difficulty spike and may never return. I’m only so sure of this because it happened to me multiple times! I’m stubborn and I wanted to like it, so I came back, but achievement data shows many do not. This is a damn shame only because once this thing properly gets into its extended second act, it sings.

One part of this is the much-praised interconnectivity. I’m well aware of how much I’m preaching to the choir when I say it but how can I brush past the fact that every moment the game loops back on itself both surprised and amazed me? Every conspicuous elevator ride into Firelink Shrine music beginning into “holy shit I’m back here again how the fuck” is one of the best moments you’ll ever get in a game. The level design is some of the best ever in immersing the player into a fantasy world because it allows it to feel so lived in.

You know what, I’ll even extend that to two of the most maligned sections of this game. Blightown and Sen’s Fortress are delightfully evil masterclasses of traversal, in which my favourite dickhead in the entire world Hidetaka Miyazaki forces the player to 3D platform in tight obstacle-heavy and projectile-ridden areas, with a character that can only jump insofar as they can perform a jump roll while sprinting. These sections are a total blast and have some expertly placed bonfires (though Sen’s is slightly hidden) to make the experience far more doable than it may immediately appear. I will concede that these sections were very close to too much (e.g. if the Poison Dart guys did notable knockback and/or respawned we might be having some issues [though the most twisted part of me kind of wished they did respawn]), but the needle is just barely thread. Allow yourself a little bit of patience, don’t get hit by the slowly moving and easily dodgeable axes more than a few times and you’ll find these sections far more fun than many do. To be honest, the only actively weak sections are all post-lordvessel, but we’ll get to that.

Even at its weakest, this game looks stunning. I played the remaster and while I did notice the overbearing bloom that many have discussed, I thoroughly enjoyed the almost smudgy look of the whole thing. The environments are gorgeous (especially the forests MY GOD) and you find yourself sinking even deeper into this world with how of a piece the art direction and enemy design is. I adore that you can essentially always travel to a place if you can see it. It never quite sunk into me before, but this is a seriously amazing aesthetic achievement.

And the bosses! Perhaps the most famous element of this series. Unsurprisingly, the first leg of bossfights is really fun. Once you get past your first proper roadblock, you’ll find yourself cutting these guys like butter. Surprisingly enough, the bosses in DS1 are rarely intensely tough but are always welcome challenges that fit to theme and cap off their areas superbly. There's also this incredible sensation that the game is stacking the deck in your favour with the boss arenas. So much of the geometry is useful! You can position them above you to sneak a heal or position them around a pillar to avoid attacks or plunge that fucking Capra demon to hell off a staircase or watch that dickhead Taurus Demon jump off the ledge like the idiot he is and so much more. It's incredible how effectively the game maintains the illusion of 'unfairness' despite this, and I love how you end up with these light-bulb moments where (e.g.) the O&S fight suddenly feels like a 2v7 when you notice how powerful your pillar friends are. It's a real magic trick. But when I said always welcome, I meant mostly, and even then I only meant the first half. There are some serious issues to put a pin in for later regarding some of these guys, and DS1 does have a surprising amount of actively weak fights, but on the whole it’s certainly a positive. How could I possibly pretend to dislike the boss fights in a game where you get to fight Ornstein and Smough? Come on.

Before I get to my quibbles, I’d like to quibble instead about Gamers. That’s right, you guys. Ornstein and Smough is an awesome fight, no doubt about it, and certainly one of the more challenging in the game, but by no means the backbreaking time waster I thought it would be based on the decade-plus of YouTube comments I’d seen. It was not the first boss I felt this way about. Same with the Bell Gargoyles, and same again with the Capra Demon (though I must clarify I'm not insinuating this fight isn't complete dogshit), and then I started to spot a pattern. Do other people stay locked on all the time? This is something that’s haunted me throughout my entire playthrough, and a legitimate issue with the way this game teaches its players. That’s right, this was a quibble the whole time, I got you! The lock-on feature is useful, undoubtedly. I found the most mileage out of it against airborne enemies (the bug thingies in Blightown, The Bell Gargoyles’ first phase) just because I couldn’t quite spin the camera around fast enough to keep up, but that was it for me. My problem with lock-on is that it massively disincentivises players from learning proper camera management and how to aim their swings consistently IF (and only if) you get into the habit of always using it. This is no big deal until you get to these bossfights with multiple targets that you simply have to deal with (unlike say Nito, whose skeletons will just get epically owned by him) but when you do, you will be at a massive disadvantage. Not because you can’t simply press the button to stop locking on, but because when you do, you’ll be ill-equipped to utilise the radically changed abilities of your character. For me, locking on basically never happens, and I much prefer to contort my right hand to be able to always move the camera and sprint in all directions. I found myself much more mobile (and my view of enemies much more dynamic) than I think many players do. So that’s my one piece of advice for you, lock-on sure, but do so sparingly, or you’ll set yourself up for failure with the multi-character bosses. To attempt to wrangle this rant into a point, I don’t think the game tries at all to teach players early on not to lock on all the time, and it allows the players to fall into bad habits with it too easily.

While I’m complaining, we simply must address the elephant in the code. Post O&S, this game properly nosedives, not to say it becomes unfun to play, or that it’s lazy or anything like that, but the bossfights become noticeably weaker, asset reuse becomes palpable and that delectable interconnectivity vanishes completely. Also, you have to play through Tomb of The Giants now. Not cool guys.

I think these problems are best demonstrated by the best of the Lord Soul fights, the Four Kings. These fellas reside in an area known simply as ‘The Abyss.’ Getting there requires exploration through a very cool and distinct area. The runback is an obstacle course in the truest sense, and the titular Abyss is seriously intelligent design. Its void leaves you entirely without depth perception, meaning you can’t ever quite nail down how large or far away the boss is until you're suddenly getting skewered by it. Very cool stuff. Additionally, this boss encourages a rush-down heavy playstyle that is very distinct from most of the duck-and-weave gameplay that I was used to (shields are for cowards after all, two-hand all day, dodge under everything etc.), and I enjoyed a challenge that forced me to push up against the generally slow pace of gameplay. What you may not notice, amidst so much awesome stuff, is that this boss is the same asset copy-pasted a bunch of times in a featureless void. It’s an incredibly creative example of it, but it’s still blatant scrambling from a development team fresh out of time and money. That’s not so bad, but when you get to the Crystal Caves or especially Lost Izalith, you noticeably feel the game suffer a little. These sections are pretty pathetic, feeling underrealized while containing a boss that just doesn’t stack up to the rest of the game. Seath is such a pushover it’s not even funny, and the Bed of Chaos is less a boss fight and more a low-tier Mario Maker troll level. It’ll kill you once or twice, but it certainly is not earned.

Then there’s Gwyn. A mad king in a desolate dying world. It seems only spiritually right that his fight would be both one of the harder ones and just that little bit too easy. Any sense of an epic conclusion is long gone by the time you enter the gate. Then the music starts. That melancholic piano is still ringing in your ears when the final cutscene plays, and it leaves the game on such a wonderfully bitter note that it reverberates back through the final few hours. It’s yet another artistic justification for lacking resources, but they pull it off in spades. I said it before, but even when stretched too thin, this game achieves so so much.

Dark Souls remains as weird, inconsistent and idiosyncratic as the day it was released, and I sincerely hope that people aren’t dismissing it out of hand for later projects. This is an excellent starting point for getting into the FromSoft canon, and my only real problem with it is that it tries quite hard to disguise that fact. Play it, love it, hate it, complain that it isn’t as fast-paced as Elden Ring, do whatever you like, but recognise that it has earned its place among the universally recognised best of the medium. Right behind Angry Birds Epic.

I don’t know when (or if) I’ll get to finish this game, so I might as well just review it now.

Dark Souls is unlike any other game I’ve played, to the point that I couldn’t give it anything other than 5 stars. The game isn’t perfect— there’s some dick-ish enemy placement and I don’t like having to trek across long portions of the map just to get back to a boss that I’m about to die to again— but on the whole, the game is just phenomenal.

The story is interesting, yet told mostly through flavor text and context clues. A tragedy about a king who refuses to accept the end of his reign, and inadvertently draws out the suffering of his people. Your character is just caught up in this mess, forced to die over and over to achieve the goals of higher powers that don’t actually give a shit about you. But what else is there? Are you going to just let the kingdom die or prolong its suffering? Fascinating stuff.

But I didn’t pick up Dark Souls for its story. Nah, I wanted that sweet, sweet gameplay, and DAMN does it deliver. Dark Souls has a slow, yet deeply satisfying combat system that tests your skill, your resolve, and your intelligence when leveling up your character. Dark Souls may be tough, but it’s damn fair; you absolutely can conquer the devastated streets of Lordran, as long as you learn from your mistakes and press on. Upgrading from struggling against the most basic enemies to plowing through the Undead Burg and one-shotting everything in my path with my Halberd +5 and Eastern Armor set while using the souls of my fallen enemies to restore my health is BEYOND satisfying. Likewise, defeating every boss feels like a major accomplishment, like you’ve just proven your worth as a warrior of the undead.

The world design is just… sexy. If Lordran was a person, I would fuck it. Every single level and area is seamlessly interconnected. The entire map is like one big Zelda dungeon that loops back around on itself, contains a shit ton of shortcuts, and is filled to the brim with secrets and items. Man, there’s nothing like finding a secret passageway or unlocking a mysterious door, and discovering either an entirely new level or a way to travel to an old one in a faster manner.

I don’t know, I kinda love this game, even if it’s got some issues. I’ll keep playing it and see if this score changes, but damn is it awesome. I’m looking forward to playing Elden Ring, as I think an open world would not only improve upon this game’s format, but also minimize or outright eliminate most of its flaws.