Dark Souls - Review

After 55 hours I have finally exited the hazy underbelly that is Dark Souls. I believe I have improved my skill at From Software's "souls" series as the last game took me 65 hours, and it was a shorter game overall.

The follow up to Demon's Souls was something none of its fans saw coming. We were all pretty sure Demon's Souls was a one shot, a cult favorite if you will. Hell, the game starts up with a warning that the online service could be cut at ANY time, and we were given specific dates over the course of the game's first few months when exactly they were going to cease the online service since they didn't want to plug in more money than they had to on a game even the developer didn't really believe in. And rightfully so, I mean here we had a game that went against every convention known to the successful video game formula learned over the past decade.

1. Gamers like their hand held and not to be frustrated.
2. Gamers like maps that tell them where to go.
3. In RPG's gamers like many easy encounters with semi challenging bosses.
4. Death is not a punishment, and is mostly a meaningless occurrence.
5. Gamers like having many NPC characters assist throughout the game.

Demon's Souls, and Dark Souls are not this type of game at all. They are the exact opposite, and yet they gained quite a following. While that was all well and good for Demon's Souls, Dark Souls wanted to take that to the extreme. It may have went a LITTLE too far in not wanting the gamer to like it sometimes, like evil curse frogs permanently halving your HP and enemies that break all your equipment. Despite that however, Dark Souls does an even bigger disservice to itself by being a technical tragedy.

Story:

Demon's Souls never really weaved a good yarn, but what we were given was enough and the atmosphere really shined through and it all felt like a dream of sorts. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy and ready to dive into a new game plus. Dark Souls starts off with an amazing opening cinema making me think they tried even harder to insert some kind of nifty plot. The first cinema tells us there was a war between 4 powerful humans and the dragons which culminated in the destruction of the world for the most part, but also the extinction of the dragons...except only 1 hour into the game a large red dragon lights your shit on fire. Wtf?

Okay, fine, whatever. I wanted to fight dragons anyway so good for me then. From there we are not given any real story direction until near the end where a giant...um...demon brontosaurus head tells you to light some flames or some shit. Then you do...and the ending is literally 10 seconds long and doesn't explain anything at all. I was extremely disappointed with the end of this game. Putting in 55 hours for absolutely no ending was a letdown.

I get that From Software doesn't care about a plot, or characters, or anything like that and I'm ok with that. I wasn't expecting anything amazing, but I expected SOMETHING. They went through all this trouble to create this large world filled with atmosphere and history, with kings and demons, monsters and heroes, a broken world you set out to fix and then...nothing. Why was I here? Even the most simple of explanations would have satisfied me for an ending. Just something, anything, to make me feel like the actions I made in the game meant something to that world I was so wrapped up in for over two days of playing time.

Even Nintendo understands that a gamer should feel like they are playing for some reason. Mario is out to save the princess, and he does. That was always good enough for me. But you know what would have ruined even that most basic of plots? Beating a Mario game, and then not seeing Mario actually save the princess. That would be the equivalent of what Dark Souls did. I beat the game, never saw a conclusion, and then boom credits. To make it worse, after the credits which I was holding out on something happening, they show the opening in game cut scene of the game where you immediately begin your new game plus....terrible.

Gameplay:

The gameplay of Dark Souls is the crux of the enjoyment. The system was perfected in the first game, and they didn't change the formula which is fine by me. Everything about the combat itself is great, it all works in theory...and I'll explain more on that in a bit.

You are given a stamina bar which can be broken by enemies if you block to much, or dodge too much, or attack too much. The stamina bar is more important than even the health meter in this game. It also lends itself very well to allow the player to change their style of play. If you want to play a heavy defense character then you can't roll well or avoid enemies and it all reflects back to the stamina meter. Want to be speedy and fast? You can, but you won't do as much damage as you are using lighter weapons. So with that playstyle you have to know every enemy to avoid them as much as possible.

The game itself is predicated on the idea that you have to learn every path, every enemy, every shortcut, and every boss in the game as you play. As the game advertises, you will die all the time. But with every death you learn where you went wrong and try again, or change your strategy. This was the case in Demon's Souls, and SHOULD have been the case with Dark Souls. While in theory, it is the case with Dark Souls, the technical shortcomings of the game means you have to fight the bugs while fighting the programing bugs if you get my meaning.

There are so many problems with this game it really hinders the experience. This game was not finished in my opinion, problems were not ironed out.

The first issue I began noticing is the input delay, or something I came to call input memory. The game seems to employ an input memory, and I don't think it's on purpose because it isn't consistent. The easiest way to explain this flaw is if you are fighting an enemy and press attack, then press attack right away after doing that or sort of "mashing" the attack if you will, your character will do a second attack despite you wanting to roll away after the first attack.

At first, I thought this was a way to hinder mashing and make the player think out every button pressed. But many times as I adhered to this button memory policy the game would just randomly NOT remember my next input like I thought it was doing. I would OFTEN attack, then heal knowing I'd have stun time on my enemy to do so. Then I would just sit back and wait for the heal....and it wouldn't come and boom, death happens. Other times I would mash heal and it wouldn't come then either. However, I would have times where I would attack then mash dodge roll and sometimes he wouldn't roll, or he would roll then roll IMMEDIATELY again even though I only wanted one roll!

Even STRANGER issues would happen while holding block. Sometimes I would be indecisive and roll after an attack but quickly change my mind and block. My character would hold up his shield for a good 10 seconds or more, and then I would attack. However, pressing the attack button would cause him to ROLL! What the hell?? This would happen more times than not, and enough times to realize it wasn't my fault.

A lot of these issues occur mainly in laggy situations. Yes, this game is TERRIBLY laggy. Demon's Souls was a very smooth game, but they made Dark Souls an open world game where it basically loads shit as you go. Clearly this was the first time they've ever tried this and I do not recommend they try again until they get it right. But seriously, this game lags hard, nearly all the time. At one point I was fighting 3 large Cats in a forest and my PS3 started crying! What I mean is the framerate went down to like 5 frames per second, it was atrocious. I have NEVER witnessed a console game lag quite that hard. I have had Fallout 3 dip to maybe 15 FPS during the Broken Steel DLC and that was awful too, but Dark Souls has quite a few moments that destroy any Fallout 3 mishaps I had.

The lag really destroys a lot of the fun that could have been had in this game. I died more times to lag than my inability to play correctly. From boss battles, to basic catwalk crossings the lag has murdered me in ways I never thought lag could. A simple walk across a long plank turns into a guessing game with the wonky lag and input delay issues. What I learned is never try to run along narrow areas in this game. The run button is the same as roll, which would normally be fine, but with all these technical issues sometimes you never know if a run will randomly turn into a roll if the camera suddenly veers toward a large set piece that didn't fully load yet...

It is a damn shame too because all of this could have been avoided if they followed the same style as Demon's Souls. If this game was level based it would have been lag free like the first game was. And really, why wasn't this level based? Sure feeling like you are in one large interconnected place is cool and makes navigation far more of a gamble and exciting but if the overall experience is ruined because of it, then it's not worth it. In the end the game felt level based anyway as every area is distinctly different from the next. It is sort of like if you were playing a Mario side scroller and at the start you are in a desert level and halfway through you enter a jungle. It is jarring, and unnecessary.

The positives of the game are many though, and for the most part outweigh the bad. The bosses are many and varied, they are all fun and interesting too. The levels are large and confusing, and nothing feels inviting. As you progress the areas consistently feel less and less inviting which is really nice as it goes well thematically with the game. The best aspect to the game is the atmosphere which is unlike any other game out there. The atmosphere this game creates really puts you in a place that feels alive with death and darkness. It is not a friendly feeling but that is part of the game's charm. Venturing into the constant unknown becomes an addictive prospect. Never knowing what challenge lay before you, and in one area that is pitch black you REALLY don't know what to expect. This is largely what makes the game still enjoyable over the technical issues.

Another positive is the upgrade system. Grinding for materials is a LITTLE easier this time around as the basic upgrade material for most weapons is something you can buy. Although, on the flip side the upgrading is also a little more annoying since this is an open world game the blacksmiths are all scattered around. So if you want to get to one, and you're halfway across the world...well too bad. Or spend hours backtracking to get to one...which happens often. Luckily the developers took away the carry limit from the first game too. How annoying would this game be if you had to backtrack to the start to shift around your inventory constantly? Glad that isn't the case here.

Oh, and this game has a Covenant system where the player can join factions of NPC's and carry out smaller tasks that are all REALLY poorly explained. I never understood any of it and I think I did a lot wrong. By the end nearly all my NPC's that I had at the start were gone, or killed by someone, and I had a 160,000 soul sin debt to be cleared (which means I did a lot of bad things apparently and to clear my sins I'd have to pay out the ass in souls). But what the fuck did I do? I have no clue. It's not clear, it's not explained, it makes no fucking sense and I hated it.

Music:

The music is probably the biggest improvement made over the previous game. The music is much more profound and varied here. It fits and improves the atmosphere most of the time. I don't understand the choice of music for the final boss though...I mean I like it but I don't understand it. The song is very light, and almost sad, and is all piano. But why is it like that? Is the boss a tragic figure? Is he holding onto or defending some ideal that is being threatened by the player? We don't know, and never find out but that is an issue with the story not the music. But the boss LOOKS super evil and mean so again I question the choice. There was not much direction given in the story department. It's like the composer had his own idea and just went with it. Props to him then for giving more character through music to the characters than the writers did.

Multiplayer:

Dark Souls employes the same aspects of multiplayer as Demon's Souls for the most part. There are no longer any world tendencies but being able to invade or assist other players is all still there. I don't think that it works as well in this game though as it did in Demon's Souls. Because Demon's Souls was level based it was easier for players to get to a boss door in ten minutes or so and camp there to find allies for assistance. Dark Souls being a large open world players are spending more time traveling around than plunging into boss fights. It was VERY difficult, and often impossible for me to summon assistance.

I managed to summon help once...and I thought I was getting online help and all was well. However, I later discovered that the help I summoned was NPC's programmed to assist in that fight! Also, early on I got invaded and won...but I later discovered that invasion was a planned NPC! Apparently, there are quite a few moments like this throughout the game where you can summon NPC assistance. I legitimately got invaded ONE time in 55 hours (and I won hahaha) but that is ridiculous. In Demon's Souls I got invaded SO many times that eventually I turned off the online just to get through the story unimpeded. Dark Souls online just plain doesn't work as well as Demon's Souls.

Conclusion:

Dark Souls was a let down overall compared to Demon's Souls. It could have been just as good if they added an ending to the game, fixed the lag, and handled the placement of merchants a little better. Demon's Souls was a game I could find no flaws in aside from boss AI being really susceptible to long distance bow attacks with no repercussions...but that was amusing not really a flaw. It is still a very good game though. But if you never played either of them play Demon's Souls first, and not for any continuity because they don't have any, but because it is the better game.

*Died again......died again......died again......died again.......died again......*