Dark Souls is the peak of gaming. Nah, just joking. Funny enough actually, like most masterpieces it still has a few flaws, but Dark Souls 1 is easily one of my favourite games and one of the best games of all time.
The biggest thing it has over its contemporaries is story and world. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 are the only Souls games where I really care about the story, unfortunately. I want to care more about them but they lack the same cohesion, clarity, themes, and impact as the first 2. And while Demon's Souls is very very interesting in its own right, Dark 1 knocks it out of the park.
And as far as the world goes, I feel like I don't need to reiterate what everyone know about it's Zelda/Metroid-like open world. It's a real shame they never repeated that.
But that only scratches the surface of why it's so much better, of course. There are all sorts of things big and small that really make it stand out. I think, one big thing is that aside from Pyromancy, it has the best overall balance with stuff. Discounting Bloodborne, which has less and different variables (but also very annoying Runes and Gems). The Estus system is perfect in Dark 1, all builds do a really solid amount of stuff, it has the only poise system that really, truly works, there are overpowered things, but most are fine, some are fun, and they're not as annoying as some stuff in the other games...
I'm not gonna sit around making the ultimate case for Dark Souls 1 or anything, but the game really really changed my view on video games and stuff in dramatic ways, and it really does click with me with a magic that none of the others really have as much.
The biggest thing it has over its contemporaries is story and world. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 are the only Souls games where I really care about the story, unfortunately. I want to care more about them but they lack the same cohesion, clarity, themes, and impact as the first 2. And while Demon's Souls is very very interesting in its own right, Dark 1 knocks it out of the park.
And as far as the world goes, I feel like I don't need to reiterate what everyone know about it's Zelda/Metroid-like open world. It's a real shame they never repeated that.
But that only scratches the surface of why it's so much better, of course. There are all sorts of things big and small that really make it stand out. I think, one big thing is that aside from Pyromancy, it has the best overall balance with stuff. Discounting Bloodborne, which has less and different variables (but also very annoying Runes and Gems). The Estus system is perfect in Dark 1, all builds do a really solid amount of stuff, it has the only poise system that really, truly works, there are overpowered things, but most are fine, some are fun, and they're not as annoying as some stuff in the other games...
I'm not gonna sit around making the ultimate case for Dark Souls 1 or anything, but the game really really changed my view on video games and stuff in dramatic ways, and it really does click with me with a magic that none of the others really have as much.