Este fue un antes y un despues en mi vida. Es el juego que me enseño a nunca rendirme ante un reto y es, simplemente, una joya de los video juegos... Aunque solo sea medio juego. Porque si, dejando de la sus temas, jugabilidad y el delicioso, DELICIOSO DLC, el primer DS es un juego hecho por la mitad. Una vez se pasa Anorlondo en juego base, el mismo va en picada (sin contar las caidas de Frames que tiene esta version en especifico del juego). La pelea de Gwyn y el DLC ayudan a pasar ese mal trago, pero aun asi esa parte en el medio es tan pesada que me cuesta olvidarla. A pesar de todo, DS es hermoso en su imperfeccion y lo recomendaria a cualquiera que me preguntara.

I spent the better part of half a decade in my teen years trashtalking this game. "It's artificially difficult just for tryhards and sweats to be able to lord over people who enjoying gaming as a casual hobby and say git gud" was my usual talking point when the game came up. My friend even bought me the game on Steam, which I tried beating the tutorial boss on Mouse+Keyboard before promptly quitting and whining about my lack of a controller.

Fast forward a few years; the technology has been developed to make Dark Souls PTDE accessible for even MKB players, even if only barely. A streamer I watch had swapped off of the game I found him through at the time and turned out to be a speedrunner of these games. I like speedruns, I thought, so why not. It actually even looked kind of fun! So I reinstalled the game, got DSfix and the MKB mod, and for the next forty hours I learned a valuable life lesson.

Turns out this game is peak.

This was the day I also discovered I love the sweet release of adrenaline and dopamine produced by triumphing over sometimes bullshit difficulty and repetitive tedium in pursuit of perfection.

There's a lot more I could say about this game. How it's a perfect analogy of depression, how its about triumphing over the self, and that it's okay to let go and to never lose sight of yourself. I think those topics have all been thoroughly covered before, so nah.

The moral of this story is teenagers are fucking stupid and never listen to them and especially not their opinions. They don't know what they're talking about ever. They just be making shit up.

When I criticise anything I try not to weigh the pros amongst the cons. I try to trust every intention of the creator/artist and consider how much it affects or resonates with me. Dark Souls is the perfect example of why I view art and media like this.

If you call this game perfect you're lying. A lot of it feels objectively fucking stupid. But how often do you get something as outstanding and influential as Dark Souls. The environments are like nothing I've seen before in video games, nor is the tone or the storytelling. I love the janky combat and the icky graphics. The builds can range from complex enough to satisfy a dedicated run, and simple enough to carry a casual to the finish line.

The first time I approached the notoriously difficult final boss, I figured I'd try to parry all his moves (despite having no experience with parrying or its timing) and to my surprise I parried all his moves with ease and beat him first time no stress. This may sound like bad boss design, but I felt rewarded for thinking outside the box, and it only happened because Dark Souls allows those type of things to happen. The combat and bosses are hard but rarely overpowering, they can best you quickly but you can best them just as quickly, you can outsmart almost every obstacle or even luck or cheese your way through it.

For every part that may be completely unfun is compensated for all the times I've thought about the game and realised how thankful I am for its existence. It's flawed but I don't care because it means too much to me.

Entiendo porqué éste juego es tan especial, he incluso de los souls es el qué aún me sigue pareciendo el mejor, una jugabilidad increíble y llena de opciones (aunque poco equilibrada), un diseño de nivel espectacular, una dirección de arte aunque inconsistente es realmente sobresaliente y una banda sonora qué Aunque repetitiva tiene temazos.
Dark souls es más qué solo un videojuego, es un juego de altos y bajos, pero qué lo qué hace lo hace tan bien y de forma especial.
La narrativa se llega a dejar mucho del lado, aunque me parece de las mejores historia contadas en una obra de fantasía oscura, sorprende la influencia y lo importante qué esté juego ha Sido.
Éso sí, éso de qué es justo es bastante mentira xD, tiene zonas diseñadas del culo y qué a veces morir no es del todo tú culpa.

First of all, this game is really good and figuring out the mechanics or where to go next is mostly a really pleasant and rewarding activity. Many of the boss fights were fun, the npc's are great (most are better than the npc's of its predecessor Demon's Souls), the parallel the game makes with depression is beautiful and Firelink Shrine feels like home... It's such a beautifully executed concept. But... I hate to say it but i agree with most people when they say the second half of the game is inferior to the rest of it.
After Duke's Archives the game had worn me down; I was tired and saturated - I just wanted to finish the game as fast as possible at that point. And besides that, this game is not as inventive as people praise it to be, since a substancial part of its core characteristics and mechanics came from Demon's Souls - they are basically a copypaste of it. There are a repetition of some enemies, bosses, areas, npc's and even lore elements; the thing that is completely original about Dark Souls is its "open-world" and interconnectivity, which is pretty cool and helps a lot with the execution of the games themes, but at the same time, it gives me a feeling of a very small world so I wouldn't say it is perfectly executed.
Dark Souls, in my vision, wanted to be a improvement of what Demon's Souls was, and in many ways this was achieved - but this is where the problem lies: in many other ways it wasn't.
Demon's Souls was still way more experimental and inventive with bosses for example - every new boss felt like a puzzle to be solved (which I personally like more)... and once solved it would give you an enormous advantage against that boss - Dark Souls on the other hand standardized boss encounters to a single type of boss fights (Bed of Chaos was a poorly executed exception).

Anyway, sometimes I think that maybe in that final stretch of the game when I started feeling fatigued and tired with the game narrative, areas and bosses - my head was in the wrong place for personal reasons. And maybe I should've taken a break to finish the game some time later. Maybe if I had done that I would've enjoyed the second half way better, so I'll keep that in mind and will complete the game a second time someday in the future. Maybe I'll change my opinion, I don't know...

At long last, this is still a great game, better than most things you can find in the game industry nowadays. It has some unique traits and atmosphere, a very rewarding gameplay style, greatly executed themes and a beautiful message.
To everyone that played the game and may be reading this, whether you agree or not with my opinion, don't you dare go hollow!

Dark Souls is a pillar of gaming that reinvigorated the discussion of difficulty in modern AAA games, on top of presenting one of the most beautifully realized and intricately plotted game worlds ever designed.

The game very much intentionally obfuscates things like navigation and certain gameplay mechanics, leaving just enough hints in the game itself to point the way, with the novel player message and player ghost systems to try and allow players to help each other through shared knowledge. Without that knowledge however, the game is rather obtuse at times, which will be frustrating to people who want a more curated experience, exciting to those who like to explore, and terrifying to anybody looking for a casual experience.

For those willing to approach the game on its terms, there is so much to enjoy. From the beautiful game world, the teeth gritting combat, and the spectacular boss encounters, Dark Souls has earned its place of respect, despite the flaws that existed at release and the blemishes that are more visible past the rose-tinted glasses.

Not for the PC version: The game is a notoriously bad PC port, so if playing this version, you will be better off having the DSFix mod installed to improve stability. If playing the Remastered version, the fix is already included, and the port is much better.

[Main Story] + [DLC] + [100% Achievements] + [Run Challenge] - [All Bosses]
**
Oh boy, what a game. I don’t even know where to start. The player starts by choosing which class to start, where the game teaches what to do step by step as the player progresses through the first zone, until having his first fight with the first boss of the game. From this point, the player is free to go wherever he wants, where he will see various scenarios as well as enemies, fight optional bosses, except for those that are mandatory to progress in the game where each one has its mechanics.

The level of gear and weapons can be upgraded if the player talk to Blacksmith as long as they have the necessary materials for this purpose. Pay attention that everything or almost everything the game presents is the player’s enemy, except for the NPCs that can be killed too, so be careful. There were some NPC’s who will ask if you want to join their faction, where they will get some bonuses if the player evolve in the faction rank.

In the game there are two endings where the player can make his decision at the end after defeating the last boss of the game, where after completing the game he can immediately proceed to the second round of the game. Unfortunately the game’s online mode is still disabled until you see it.

If you are thinking about giving this game a chance, remember that this game was designed to die A LOT of times, so take it easy.

I don't consider myself a pro at the game, in fact I had help defeating each boss, I just wanted to play this game again and the best "excuse" I came up with was doing all the bosses.