what a game... my first souls game that i have played and while i look at it with rose tinted glasses at some parts, it still is a good, solid Fromsoft game. it lore and everything surrounding it is truly something special, i genuinely got enjoyment from reading item descriptions and wiki pages on the lore (sad ik) but the way it is portrayed makes you want to (at least for me anyways). its combat has aged compared to other soulsborne games like ds3 and elden ring but it still offers an enjoyable experience, with jank included. its bosses are alright, some memorable and some gimmicky. where this game really shined for me tho is the dlc, from the setting to the bosses and ost. overall solid souls game but has aged a bit, not so much that it is bad tho

This game is a bloody masterpiece. If you keep dying, you need to git gud.

There is no bull#$%& in this game. You just suck. So prepare to die. A lot.

That's the fun.

I actually plan on fully reviewing this entire game, dedicating an insane amount of editing and effort to make sure I cover almost every part of this game. It's a deeply profound, beautiful, poetic, silly, emotional, evocative, breathtaking game with arguably the best level design in the series so far.

However, for the time being all you need to know is that this game changed my entire life, and without it I may not be here today. I know that sounds dramatic but at the time I played it, it was my therapy.
I had never experienced anything like it, and to this day I still think it's 1 in a million and million. I adore it with all my heart, and no it isn't my favorite number 1 game, but it'll never stop being the thing I thank every single day of my life.

Thank you so much everyone who helped make this game possible. I am forever grateful. I spent thousands of hours of obsessing, crying, and fumbling through this game time and time again because this showed me life was beautiful in a way I wasn't ready for.

Many are saying Dark Souls is very hard of the videogames variety. Many are saying "prepare to die!", including the devs. I'll die a lot! I don't know what that means. I don't understand why that's always the first thing anyone says about "DarkSouls: Prepare to Die Edition".

There's a fine balance to strike somewhere between random obtuseness, long walks along the beach of jank, and keeping the sense of accomplishment. Personally I think this is way too far on the bullshit scale. I don't think my experience would be any less rewarding by having a spawn point 20 seconds near a boss instead of 2 minutes. I don't think I would have beaten this game if I didn't refer to my Council of 6-7 Friends Who Have Played Dark Souls Many Times (we all have them) - not for any lack of mechanical skill, but just because the amount of random bullshit systems and non-recorded directions are enough to fry the brain of anyone trying to go in truly blind, which is what I did the first two times I tried to get into this nearly a decade ago. Partially that's by design - I feel like much of this game is meant to run on word of mouth and playground rumors, which, yknow, is cool, but it also means once that word of mouth dies out (and the devs turn off online lol) it feels insurmountable to process with only 1 brain.

My least favorite bits were menuing through 8 layers of PS3 UI to understand shit, shuffling through weapons to spend extra time trying to avoid spending other more extra time going through 7 caves of enemies I've already killed to get to the same boss again. I didn't like that. Interacting with any part of the inventory, be it items or equipment, feels extremely unpolished. It's like it was one guy coming up with one idea for a menu and them just implementing it without ever trying it out. I don't get that. I still feel like I barely understand half the stats or equipment systems. "You need to get some soft humanity bro" - actual sentence uttered by a Dark Souls Player, who expected other human beings to understand. Imagine my bewildered face when I press the Kindle button and some asshole dares tell me I don't "have the Rite of Kindling" - why the hell that button there then! Who made this! What the hell is "poise"!?

My favorite bits (aka the bits that are good, and if you disagree you are stupid) were the one that encouraged exploring, interacting with the world and feeling like an adventurer. Seeing vistas for the first time, connecting paths in your brain via shortcuts and understanding mechanics unique to each area. That's what was really good. I played this almost in spite of the core gameplay. To me they should make Dark Souls Prepare To Look Around edition! Just kidding. Ehe. (｡･ ω<)ゞ

There's also like entire areas that feel just kinda... uh.. like a bit cancerous... like.. unfinished cancer tumor... in my brain. At one point I one-tried 3 bosses in a span of 20 minutes just kinda running through an area that looked like a GM in an MMO had spawned monsters as a prank - specifically 50 dragon asses standing around in a lake. I didn't really like that. I can't really say I hated it, because I was in and out of the whole area in less than an hour, but it definitely wasn't a "good videogame" moment.

The first thing people should tell you about this game is that it's beautiful and pretty, and that it has cool bosses. Not how hard it is or how you should only be allowed to beat it naked with big club or it wasn't real. That's my hot take of the day.