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Dark Souls detailed review

Dark souls Review (Xbox 360)

-£40.00 at launch

-Prepare to Die edition £30.00 at launch

--Artorias of the Abyss DLC £10 at launch

PEGI 16

-Developed by Namco Bandai

Available for PC, 360 and PS3

Dark souls. Even the name imposes fear, disparity, and a deep sense of foreboding. A name that would strike fear into the hearts of even the most hard core gamers.  You beat Halo on Legendary difficulty? Cute. This is a game that has been called vicious, murderous and sadistic. This is the absurdly addictive dark fantasy RPG experience you have been looking for. This is no normal game, not just another 3^rd person Hack ‘N’ Slash. This is the tyrannical beast that will consume your free time. This is Dark souls.

Dark Souls is available on 360 and PS3 with a PC port released one year post launch. But honestly, Dark souls is best experienced on the Xbox 360. The PS3 version suffers from the odd frame rate drop and online lag, and the PC port suffers heavily, as the game was built with a remote in mind, not a mouse and keyboard. The up coming Dark Souls 2 is staying on current generation consoles, with a next gen port planned post release.

I mentioned that this was both a hard-core RPG and a 3^rd Person Hack ‘N’ Slash. This doesn’t quite do the game justice. It is most defiantly hard-core, but we’ll get to that later. Dark souls is essentially a gritty fantasy game with extensive RPG elements. These elements include an impossibly large inventory to house your expansive collection of beautifully detailed weapons, ranging from simple curved swords and brutal clubs to the Tooth of a great, immortal dragon and the blade of the Dark souls equivalent of the grim reaper. That doesn’t even cover the massive collection of armour. And of course, the thing that really cements dark souls into the RPG genre is it’s levelling system. A classic XP based levelling up system, truly reminiscent of classic RPGs.  All levelling and inventory management takes place at bonfires, Dark Souls checkpoints. These will become your best friends as you progress throughout the world.

The last part of the formula is the gameplay. You know what genre Dark Souls Is, but what is it’s gameplay like? How does it play? Well it is here that Dark souls is truly exceptional. Dark souls plays like a dream, and to call it a Hack ‘N’ slash would be an insult. It is not. Dark Souls has some of the heaviest, most measured and weighty combat to date. It never pits you against horde upon horde of foes for you to easily cleave through like butter. Dark souls will pit you against few but powerful enemies, some of which pose little threat, and some of which will kill you in a flash, sometimes before you even realize what your up against. Combining light and heavy strikes to take down your foes is rewarding. The parry system allows those of use with quick reflexes and excellent timing to deflect some of the enemies’ blows and counter them with a devastating back stab or more deadly riposte. Yet, it goes even deeper. Every weapon has unique animations, and is rendered in lavish detail. Every hit bears weight. Gone are the days of swinging your blade and feeling like your merely striking air. Dark souls makes you feel like you are swinging a blade and it is striking a target. But your weapon is only half the battle, for is it not said that the best offence is a good defence?

The armour is a big part of Dark Souls combat formula. Not only will this determine the look of your character, but also their whole play style. Armour is split into light and heavy sets; the effectiveness of each is determined by your strength and dexterity stats respectively. Light armour sacrifices defence for mobility, and heavy armour turns you into a hulking mass of steel plate and chain mail. The difference in play style between the two classes is phenomenal.  Are you the quick and nimble type, relying more on your quick reflexes and well-timed button presses? Or are you (like me) not confident in your ability to time it all correctly, and opt instead to raise you shield and stand strong against the oncoming storm? To put it in more technical terms, The light build is all about skill. The cloth of you armour flutters in the breeze, but you ignore the cold. Your amour is light, and in terms of protection is useless, but that’s no problem. The enemy wont get the chance to hit you. Drawing your duel daggers, you rush toward the enemy, a black knight. He swings for you, but a well-timed tap of a button has you back flipping out of his way, only for you to hurl yourself at him a second time while he recovers, this time severing his throat. But be warned, the punishment for failure is high, allowing the enemy to effortlessly slice through your light armour. The heavy build however, doesn’t mess around.  Those fancy backflips, cartwheels, backstabs, no. Leave all of that to those light builds. Raising your heavy shield and unstoppable great sword, you wreath yourself in the black steel armour that has served you for so long. A hollow swings for you, only for his strike to bounce off your huge shield. Swinging your sword about yourself, you smash it into the hollow’s back, breaking its spine and hurling it across the floor.  

Did I mention that this whole experience is backed up by a stellar sound track? I didn’t? Well it is. The mix of orchestral flares and voice quires make for some truly dramatic music, ranging form the explosively loud, to the subdued, emotion educing themes for those heart-breaking moments that crop up form time to time. These are mostly reserved for the stunning and spectacular boss fights of which there are plenty.

Do you like the picture I am painting here? Trust me, this is just the start. 

The narrative of Dark souls is something else that the game does uniquely. The intro video sets the scene. Before all things, the world was unformed, shrouded in fog, ruled by the everlasting dragons. But then there was fire. And with fire came disparity, light and dark, heat and cold, life and death. And the four Lord souls. These were claimed by Nito, first of the dead. The witch Izaleth, and her daughters of chaos. Seath, the Albino dragon who betrayed his own kind. And Gwynn, lord of sunlight and his 10,000 faithful silver knights. With the power of lords, they challenged the ancient dragons, overthrowing them and ushering in the age of fire. But this leaves the fourth Lord souls, more commonly known as the Dark soul. This was claimed by the furtive pygmy, and it was split into a million shards, these shards were called humanity, and each shard became its own life form, forming the race of Man. Once the dragons were defeated, the age of fire, or the age of lords began, and the lords enjoyed a long age of prosperity. But now the power of lords is dwindling, and the flames themselves are fading. Even now there are only embers, and soon the dark age of man will begin. Unwilling to end his precious age of fire, Gwynn sacrificed himself to the flame in a desperate act to artificially extend the age of fire. This prompts many of his knights to desert him, and an inexplicable madness begins to plague the other lords. Seath creates the art of sorceries, but soon turns mad,  turning his mind to grotesque experiments instead. The witch Izaleth attempts to recreate the first flame, but it backfires and she instead creates the race of Demons that now plague the land, her own body becoming the Bed of Chaos. Nito retreats to the grave, entering a deep slumber. And the furtive pygmy is lost to the ages. But these sacrifices are nothing. The true price for extending the age of fire is the un-dead curse. Humans are granted eternal life, but at a massive cost. Every time they die and revive themselves, they become more and more insane, relying on the fragments of the dark soul to reverse the madness, a process known as hollowing. But eventually their minds cross a point of no return, and they go into a permanent state of madness.

 And that’s all. That is all you will know. What is your quest? Are you possibly the chosen un-dead? Where should you go? Who are these people? Why are there monsters everywhere? Dark souls tells its tales through minimalistic NPC dialogue, item descriptions and even things as easy to miss as a carving on the wall. It lets the player decide what a certain symbol, effigy or item really symbolises, allows the payer to chose who the true heroes and villains are, and even forces the player to question their own motives, right up to the final moments of the game here (without spoiling anything) you are forced to make a morally grey choice that really forces you to decide what is right and wrong, as there is no clear indication. This is not a world of heroes and villains. This is not a story in which there is a clear hero fighting a bad guy. This is a world where everything just…exists. And some situations leave you feeling like the villain. The fight against the demented Knight Artorias bears particular weight., as well as being an incredible boss fight. He is a powerful and honourable man, unmatched with a great sword.  He was dispatched to stop the spread of the abyss, but after having his arm shattered by a great monster, he used the last of his power to save his companion, Sif the great grey wolf, he is forcefully transformed into a corroded, decrepit version of himself. And then, many years into the future, you arrive to put the Abyss walker down. But not until you are forced to kill his companion who will not let you enter the Abyss. But the thing is, even though it is a boss fight, Sif is merely trying to protect you. He saw what happened to Artorias, and he would die before he let that happen again. Killing him gives you no pleasure. Pay attention to Dark Souls; you wont want to miss a thing.

But Dark Souls has it’s negatives, and sadly they cant be skipped over. Dark souls has a bit of an issue with frame rate drops, especially in some of the larger, more crowded areas such as blight town. While not game breaking, this does hinder the experience, creating some annoying situations.  The online has some serious problems too. No dedicated online servers mean that online features are often finicky at best if not entirely un-usable. The camera sometimes clips through the walls or a piece of scenery, creating yet more frustration as you can lose sight of your character completely the biggest issue comes purely from the PC port. Being made primarily for consoles, the PC port suffers from extremely wonky controls and porting issues. Even when patched the game's control scheme was specifically designed for remotes, making it a much less enjoyable experience for PC gamers.

So that’s all you need to know right? An extensive look into the lore of the world, its characters and tools. The best (and worst) of the in game elements and a quick walkthrough of what the game actually is. All done.

Oh wait. I forgot something. Something important. Really important.

So I mentioned earlier that Dark Souls was defiantly hard-core? I lied. It exceeds the term, ‘Hard core’ video game. Did I tell you what it says on the back of the case? No? it says in big, bold letters, the words that challenge all gamers to take on Dark Souls:

Prepare to Die.

These words may sound like the height of hubris, the developers getting to full of themselves. But they were carefully chosen. Not only is it a challenge to entice gamers to see if they can best Dark souls. But listen to what I am about to say.

Prepare to Die. No really. You are going to die. Again and again and again and again. And again. You will die, revive, die again, revive again. Over and over again until you (not your character, you personally) go insane, tear your disc out and attempt to snap it. But you wont and do you know why? Because its just too much fun. You don’t want to stop. It draws you into it’s sadistically dark and twisted fantasy world of death and sadness and keeps you there. But there is a simple theme behind Dark Souls. Its that there is more suffering in life than anything else. Pretty dark, but it also illustrates that we should hold onto the things we have, take every moment of joy, no matter how fleeting it may be. Dark souls manifests this beautifully. Whether your sat at a bonfire, admiring the sun or talking to an NPC, you will come to savour these beautiful moments of solace amongst the chaos and pain that drenches the rest of the game.

Look, basically Dark Souls is for 3 types of people: people who love a challenge and people who are looking for an old style game and people who just want to play a fun 3^rd person RPG.  Dark souls is every bit a throwback to old platform games when it comes to difficulty, forcing you to memorise traps and monsters. It is an intense, 3^rd person RPG experience that you should not pass up. Go out; buy a copy and, well, Prepare to Die. A lot.