MLB's review on Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition

Originally released exclusively to the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011, Dark Souls came to the PC platform the year after following a large fan petition. Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to the 2009 game Demon's Souls, although it has almost nothing to do with Demon's Souls, besides being developed by the same company and being on the same engine. Ergo, comparisons between Dark Souls (DaS)and Demon's Souls (DeS) are mostly trite, as Dark Souls can just as well be compared to almost any modern 3D action roleplaying game. Note also, that although Dark Souls is advertised and presented as a roleplaying game, there are very little roleplaying elements present within this game, and those that are present are either shallow at best or entirely pointless at worst. Dark Souls plays almost entirely as a very shallow action game that anything reminiscent of an RPG. In fact, considering this game an RPG is preposterous; likewise to considering something like Call of Duty 4 multiplayer an RPG because of how it has a degree of player choice and statistics present.
That being said, I feel I should state that I feel Dark Souls does a fairly adequate job at doing what it is supposed to using the things it's given. The game still has a lot of issues and bad design decisions that take away from the experience, but also has a few positive aspects that make playing it worthy under certain conditions.
The biggest issue I have with Dark Souls as a whole is that the game lies. Pretty much everything about the game, from both game design and meta perspectives have something untruthful about them to attempt to trick you into believing that it's something it isn't. I'll just lay this out right here so that no one misunderstands me: Dark Souls is not a step forward in game design or the gaming medium. Dark Souls is not an "epic RPG experience" that can be compared to the established titans of the RPG genre. Dark Souls is not "one of the hardest games of all time" nor is it anywhere close to being among the more challenging of the video gaming medium. You should probably automatically disconsider the opinions of anyone that tells you that DaS is a hard game, as they have most likely never played a legitimately difficult game and have likely only been playing video games in general for a very short time. IE they don't know what the fucҝ they talkin about.
Now, all that bullѕhit aside, let's get down to brass tacks.
What is Dark Souls?
Dark Souls is, at its core, a relatively simple action game which is for the most part undeserving of the reputation and popularity it has. Basically, it's a modern AAA game, albeit one that has adopted a very pompous and pretentious attitude from both its fans and its creators. The only thing that makes this game distinct from all the other garbage in the market is its reputation. Any big budget AAA game with a marketing campaign that spouts "This is the hardest game ever" or "It's not CoD so it has to be good!" could be successful, even if the game itself is mediocre. But when you really cut into it, a reputation is just that - a reputation. And when something can't live up to their reputation then it becomes a fabrication. Either way, I'm reviewing a game, not a reputation. The reality that Dark Souls is overrated is significant if looking at the modern day video game industry at large, but it has no bearing on the quality of the actual game.
Dark Souls features an inventory system as well as a stat system. The player has a choice between weapons of several types, and also the ability to gain levels by investing souls (currency dropped by enemies) into specific attributes/statistics. The only real impact of levelling any specific stat is that you'll be able to use different equipment/abilities as your stats climb to certain required levels. You can choose a "class" at the beginning of the game, but it really is meaningless as every character can eventually do anything as well as any other given enough souls spent into levels. Basically, the statistic mechanic is fluff meant to delude players into believing they're playing a roleplaying game. "Baby's first RPG" indeed. Well, given the definite lack of roleplaying (and choices (and meaningful mechanics)) that Dark Souls has, it occurred to me that the only reason the game has a levelling system at all is so that it can have a currency system that players can use to level it, so that players are given something that they can lose when they die which therefore adds an element of risk or punishment to death in this game. Besides being made to respawn at a bonfire and regain your progress when you die, there would be no real effects or consequences upon dying were Dark Souls to not have its ѕhitty shallow levelling system. Sure, Dark Souls faɡs have a strong tendency of touting how "punishing" or whatever their game is, but besides potentially being forced to grind a bit to regain some lost souls, there is no real consequence to dying in this game. There are no perma-death mechanics, no effects left upon the world or even upon NPCs following the player's death, nothing. Hell, even Demon's Souls had tangible consequences if the player died too often, in the form of World Tendency and Player Tendency. Those mechanics weren't like the marina trench of depth of anything, but they were something at least.
The core of Dark Souls's gameplay relies on the player killing enemies efficiently without themselves being hurt, as the player can only carry a limited amount of healing items and resting places are rare and spread out. Basically, "Hit it until it dies" and roll often. The problem with this comes from the garbage enemy design that most of the enemies in the game have in common. Although most enemies are relatively simple once their patterns are learned, most still have an abundance of actions they can do, and are often unpredictable and require exploiting some sort of gimmick to be able to beat them efficiently. My personal favorite enemies (AKA the ones I fucҝing hated the most) are the "Stunlock Skeleton" Wheels that can literally lock the player in place while they roll into them and drain most of their death/outright kill them, the "Fat Baѕtard" Sentinel of Anor Londo, which can only be beaten by waiting for them to miss with their exaggeratedly prolonged attack animations and reveal their weak spots, and the cornucopia of "spaz" enemies that will periodically spaz the fucҝ out and attack everything around them for a while as you strafe around them and hit them in the back. Because of the game's usually poor and oftentimes obnoxious design of enemies, most players usually opt to acquire an extremely overpowered weapon and wipe the floor with the enemies rather than engaging them fairly. I know that the only time I really enjoyed Dark Souls was when I crafted and upgraded this unique scythe that I then used to 1-2shot almost everything besides bosses.
Most bosses in the game are pretty boring or uninspired in everything but artistic design, with a distinct lack of interesting mechanics or encounters between them all. The only bosses I found to be truly enjoyable/well-designed were Ornstein & Smouth, and Quelaag. The rest were mostly some variation on "Dodge their lengthily-telegraphed attacks and then hit them while they're recovering." Gaping Dragon is a really good example of that, because on top of being incredibly slow and having a disgustingly high amount of health (compared to the damage that the player can output at that point in the game) he also has a grand total of about 2-3 attacks throughout the fight. The fight literally amounts to "Stay away from the quarter of the map he's currently in and hit him in the legs when he gets stuck in a wall." In the game's credit though, the way that bosses drop specific items that can be turned into unique items is interesting, but there's no real way to know all the items that you can turn each boss's soul into, and Demon's Souls did that same thing first anyway. More cryptic bullѕhit in Dark Souls. Who could have guessed?
And let me tell you, Dark Souls is VERY proficient at being full of cryptic bullѕhit. A number of entire areas in the game are locked behind arbitrary secrecy, with proper instructions nowhere in the game, even after you finish it. A lot of these hidden areas are simply preposterous to imagine as being probable to be found by any player not using a guide. Seriously, here's an example of some of the ѕhit present in this game: "Jump off this specific elevator to this rooftop that there is no actual indication that you can even be on, then make this specific jump to another rooftop that there is no indicator that players can stand on so that they can climb to the top of the building and find and stand on a bird's nest, after which they are carried by a giant crow to another part of the game." That sounds an awful lot like an infamous cryptic part of another game, that went kind of like "Get the red gemstone and crouch in a corner by a specific cliff until a tornado comes in and takes the player to another area." Worse yet are the side quests in this game, which you can actually fail without even knowing that they exist or that you're on them. I mean seriously, just look at some of this fucҝing ѕhit: http://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Siegmeyer+of+Catarina How would the player possibly be able to get a positive outcome on something like that without prior knowledge of the game? I'm not saying that Dark Souls is a highly trial and error based game, but these side quests are incredibly badly designed, and feel like they were simply shoved into the game with little testing or thought. Dark Souls is actually very apprehensive to properly explaining anything to the player. The game expects the player to either have already played it, or to make use of the multiplayer message-leaving gimmicks and get vital information from other players. I don't think I need to explain how bad of an idea that is, since a concept like that is incredibly unreliable.
Not all things in Dark Souls are so badly designed, however. One of the very few genuinely good aspects of the game is its artistic design. Goes without saying of course. It's the first thing that every moronic casual gamer faɡgot spouts when they talk about the game, after all. Although looking pretty average graphically due to its console origins and focus (without mentioning the strange porting issues on the PC version that pretty much make a mod required to be able to play the game), many areas in the game are extremely beautiful to look at and play in, because of the game's very unique and fabulous art design, especially on levels. Many enemies are great looking as well, although the game does make somewhat high use of common fantasy tropes, such as skeletons and rats for instance. Weapons are more of a mixed bag when it comes to design, but there are so many different weapons present in the game that you're bound to find some that you'll like, regardless of your tastes in weapons.
Two more aspects that many people bring up as good things about Dark Souls are the game's lore and soundtrack. I disagree with both of those, however. The game's "lore" (or backstory) is very cryptic, vague, and poorly implemented in the game. The devs neglected to put a real story into the game and played it off as saying "Everything is explained if you just read the descriptions on items you find through your journey." The thing with that is that although every item in the game has some kind of minor history or describes something else within the game's universe, none of the things have any actual bearing or impact on the player or the game at large. You will never go to any of the places described as existing within the game world, nor will you meet most of the characters described in historical contexts. Outside of the mostly vapid backstory present throughout the game, there does exist some semblance of a story in Dark Souls, albeit it is poorly explained and mostly exists only to provide context to the levels that the player visits and the enemies that they fight. Dark Souls's story is not an evolution in the storytelling medium, nor is it a subtle, well-done and unique tale among video games. It's just another forgettable fantasy narrative that belongs in the trash can, along with every Final Fantasy and D&D knockoff that have been flooding the medium almost since its conception. There's also a soundtrack in this game apparently, but I almost never heard any music playing. Only during boss fights and in a few specific areas in the game did I hear any music playing. However, in all fairness, the silence helps the player to hear specific audio cues that warn the player of upcoming threats, so it's most likely a design decision rather than simple incompetence. Still though, you really can't say that a game has a good soundtrack if it has pretty much no soundtrack.
Also, the game has a player vs player system but it's balanced like dogѕhit, even more so than the rest of the game. It's a fun concept but it doesn't really work, and ends up as being more of a gimmick and an inconvenience rather than a comprehensive part of the game.
Anyway, Demon's Souls was better, and if you played Dark Souls before playing Demon's Souls or without playing Demon's Souls at all, then don't say another god damn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say ANYTHING else - ONE word - I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the Master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this FEAR ENGINE will bore a hole between this world and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of NOTHING will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark world will begin. I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.
Also, I advise you not to use the bonfire after you parry the final boss to death. Just a tip.