Some periods of my life, I identify with the Undead burg portion of the game--the sense that there's always something around the corner, the constant threat of the firebombs, the ways you can diverge off the beaten path and hit Blighttown, Darkroot Basin, or touch some of the Catacombs before anything. I also enjoy how openly some of the problems are positioned--there's a dragon torching all of the bridge, how are you going to get across? Just solid video game logic.
At other points of my life, I've identified the most with the darker, openly antagonistic areas of the late-game. The spookiness of Tomb of the Giants, the literal PS3 CPU scorching lava Lost Izalith, the deception of the Duke's archives; it's a game that assumes you're capable of handling it's more ambitious, difficult ideas of not just level-design, but also of narrative through level-design--even if New Londo Ruins is frustrating, the stillness that comes through the game in this section is so palpable, it feels only natural that there's just a black abyss at the bottom of it all.
At all points of my life though, I've always enjoyed Anor Londo, Sen's Fortress, and Ash Lake. The first two are self-explanatory, those two sections have more or less defined the Soulsborne genre, but Ash Lake also slaps just cuz it's got that rockin melancholic beach vibes that are hard to come by.
At no point of my life though have I fully enjoyed Dark Souls front to back though, there's always some point of 'disconnect' between what I'm feeling and what the game wants me to feel. Sometimes the early game just bores me to tears and I give up, other times the noticeable quality drop of the 4 Lords section slowly saps my will to keep playing, and other times I think "well, I haven't gone through Blighttown legit since my first playthrough, it can't be that bad' and immediately regret that thought as the framerate hits the floor. I can't really fault Dark Souls for this, its kinda how ambitious projects go, but it's a game I think everyone should play at least once, even if I have no specific drive to experience all of this again.
At other points of my life, I've identified the most with the darker, openly antagonistic areas of the late-game. The spookiness of Tomb of the Giants, the literal PS3 CPU scorching lava Lost Izalith, the deception of the Duke's archives; it's a game that assumes you're capable of handling it's more ambitious, difficult ideas of not just level-design, but also of narrative through level-design--even if New Londo Ruins is frustrating, the stillness that comes through the game in this section is so palpable, it feels only natural that there's just a black abyss at the bottom of it all.
At all points of my life though, I've always enjoyed Anor Londo, Sen's Fortress, and Ash Lake. The first two are self-explanatory, those two sections have more or less defined the Soulsborne genre, but Ash Lake also slaps just cuz it's got that rockin melancholic beach vibes that are hard to come by.
At no point of my life though have I fully enjoyed Dark Souls front to back though, there's always some point of 'disconnect' between what I'm feeling and what the game wants me to feel. Sometimes the early game just bores me to tears and I give up, other times the noticeable quality drop of the 4 Lords section slowly saps my will to keep playing, and other times I think "well, I haven't gone through Blighttown legit since my first playthrough, it can't be that bad' and immediately regret that thought as the framerate hits the floor. I can't really fault Dark Souls for this, its kinda how ambitious projects go, but it's a game I think everyone should play at least once, even if I have no specific drive to experience all of this again.