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.
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.