I saw a lot of vtuber clips and tweets about streaming Dark Souls recently. Naturally I wanted to add to these conversations. What did I think of this game that sparked a phenomenon within the gaming community?

Disclaimer: This review of Dark Souls will contain spoilers about the game, and possibly even the series. I feel they have been out long enough to warrant a full look at the game and what I appreciated about it. All art shown will be official art or unedited screenshots of in game footage and I do not own any of them.

My relationship with Dark Souls.

My relationship with gaming is a unique one. To keep it brief, since I was not the oldest child I just got to play whatever my brother got for his gifts. Meaning for the longest time I only had Nintendo consoles, and I lived in an area where there weren’t any real gamers. Hence I had not heard of Dark Souls until well into the release years of Dark Souls 3. I got a hand me down laptop from my older brother once I hit high-school, and proceeded to buy Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition on a steam sale for 2 dollars. To this day I still think this was the greatest deal I have ever gotten on anything, which is quite a claim seeing as there have been some pretty good deals on steam and just through my life in general. I played it at an un-optimal 20ish frames per second and beat it and absolutely loved it. Later I got a better computer that could handle all 3 souls games and I went on a journey with them. I’ve beaten each multiple times sense and 100 percented Sekiro. Now then what did I think about the first game? What did I like? Lets check it out.

Gameplay.

The first and foremost I think of when describing a good game. When I play a game I expect to have a good time, after all gaming is a medium for enjoyment and entertainment. That looks different depending on who you ask but as for me it is definitely the gameplay of a game that most often reigns supreme. This is something that Dark Souls does masterfully.

There are few games out there that I believe have as good of gameplay as the souls series. Dark Souls is a tough game that relies on the player trying again and again to learn and improve. It gives them a challenge that is intricate enough to have more than one approach, and it lets them take the initiative in finding out how to defeat said challenge, whether that is a tough boss or a finicky room. There are millions of builds that can play to a players strengths and weaknesses, and styles of gameplay. They implement a great system of offense and defense and are great at just letting the player play. I always felt spoiled on other action games after having played the souls series because of how tight and good the combat mechanics are. There is nothing like it, except the hundreds in the soulslike genre, who take inspiration directly from the former.

Art style and world tone.

Just a quick glance at this screenshot and you can see that the game definitely has a dark feel to it. The art direction of the game is very heavily Romanticism with a dash of gothic to it. It has a doom and gloom feel, which normally in games wears me out as I want to have fun, but not here. It builds on the world so well, especially when the theme of the game in general is a dying world with none too enthusiastic about the outcome. The world they build through this art direction is none more so than fighting the depressed feel with a glint a hope.

They also build on this through the side characters. Even in a safe haven, you find immediately that one side character who is just depressed and downtrodden. Dark Souls has the worst of the three, where he seems to have no salvation and little personality besides being a quitter. Every dialogue option makes you want to leave him there to rot with his depression, as he actively tries to dissuade you and bring you down with him. Even upon showing your progress with the bells all he does is try and set that mood. I love it.

Boss fights.

If a game has great boss fights, it can be difficult to slight it. This again is something that Dark Souls does so well I have to talk about them in their own section. The bosses, their behaviors, their patterns of fighting, their mid-fight quotes, their arenas, all of it sets a perfect mood and tests the player as they progress perfectly. They beat you mercilessly, unless they are pinwheel of course, and se the precedent that this is a harsh world that you will have to learn, try, and struggle to succeed in. They beat you down to test you as a player and make you grow more with the mechanics of the game. Then you get fights like Ornstein and Smough, who decide to put you in your place right as you are getting used to the game and feeling confident.

The bosses make you brainstorm and think. They make you question your technique and make you wonder if there is a trick to them, which sometimes there is. Others like Ornstein and Smough simply just make you keep trying until you get the muscle memory and reaction time down, making their fight like learning a difficult instrument in a sense. They make you feel accomplished and they bring all the hype to these games for sure.

Music.

Dark Souls takes an interesting direction with music. Their music fits the theme of the game so well and sounds so amazing, yet it is hardly there. I really am unsure of how to feel about this because for one I love great music playing all the time, but on the other hand it makes the music you do hear special. Every time I hear a boss theme or the one time I go to ash lake and have constant music, it makes everything seem that much more magical, intense, dangerous, or special simply by the presence of music alone. They created a masterful score that I am always craving and excited to hear once it starts up.

Closing.

The Dark Souls series is my second favorite series ever, and I can find hardly any flaws with them in my own personal experience with the games. I love them to death and play them almost yearly ritually simply because of how amazing and fun they are to play. I was really happy to rant and share what I feel about the games. The only sad part, is that I can’t experience that first play through feeling again without mods of the games, which I will most likely try and rate them here for you all. Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition gets a 10/10 from me as it is truly one of the masterpieces that will always stand the test of time.

Thank you all for reading this. I understand that this series and game are so big there is a lot of noise for it out there already, which makes me really appreciate all your reads of this. If you like it, please like and follow me here for more in the future and follow me over on twitter if you wanna get updates about me. till next time.