At this point, Dark Souls is viewed upon as legendary among the gaming community for it’s unapologetic difficulty. Taking heavy cues from action and adventure games of yesteryear, it brutally punishes mistakes and is a rather obtuse experience to comprehend. With virtually no context given, the game gives you a key to free yourself from your cell and it’s essentially up to you to figure out the rest.
This style of game is generally not my thing. Even as a child, my tolerance for difficulty was relatively low. However, it’s crossed that point where as a gaming enthusiast, I just have to play it in order to experience first hand what everyone’s been talking about. Also, I started playing ZombiU, which many people say takes influence from Dark Souls, and I didn’t have that experience under my belt to say otherwise. Did I make it out alive?
Though the game starts simple enough with not much in the way of context, it did a great job of drawing me in. It’s visuals are pretty good and the world is extremely well realized. Though these areas are primarily areas for combat, there’s a definite sense of place in the first few areas that I explored.
I also respect the game’s approach to combat. Moves have a definite weight to them, which means that every move has a notable amount of startup time and recovery time. When you’re attacking, you always have to be cognizant of whether a move will get countered before it comes out, or if a potentially bad swing will leave you open to attack. Though it can be rather disorienting to get the hang of it, there’s definitely a reward to learning every nuance of the system.
You’ll definitely need every tactic in the book, as the enemies I faced early on were tough. They would actively dodge, heal themselves, and go for the most ideal attacks much of the time. If you’re careless, an enemy can take you from near full health to dead in one fell swoop. If you master the nuances of the game, every fight can be thrilling. If you’re not going to invest the time to not suck at it, you’re in for a world of hurt.
The combat ultimately became one of my major hang-ups for me. I admittedly suck at it, and felt like my progression as a fighter did not move very far. It didn’t take me long before I felt like forward progress was nigh impossible. Adding to that stress are the save points, which are intentionally sparse in nature. Once I hit the wall, I couldn’t make it to any new save points. In my final session, I played for a good hour and made zero forward progress.
One other aspect of the game that rubbed me the wrong way was how obtuse the experience can be. It doesn’t really explain how any of its systems work, how items work, and in the case of the starter items, there’s a typo on one. The item I chose said it grants regenerating health, which just isn’t true. There were other things that should have been simple that I struggled with, such as how to equip a shield. I understand that they want the game to be challenging, but I’m not sure that it needs to be this obtuse in order to maintain its integrity. I can deal with it being hard, but being unnecessarily confusing is an issue worth griping over.
There are a lot of things that fascinate me about Dark Souls. I love the world, its core premise, and how it sticks to its guns when it comes to making a hard game. Unfortunately, I think I just don’t have the skills or the drive to push through it. I’m certain that I’ll try and chip away at it at some point, but it definitely won round 1.
In Third Person 