As beloved as it is for its interconnected world design, I found this to be the most unnecessarily cruel and poorly designed Souls game. Even Demon's Souls didn't let me die with 10k souls from a boss before reaching the next bonfire (thanks Tomb of the Giants). Each successive FROM game has been better about explaining obfuscated mechanics and onboarding new players, but Dark Souls relishes in never telling you what kindling a bonfire does or the difference between hollow and human form. In my obdurate quest to avoid looking things up for the sake of experiencing this paradigm shifting game with fresh eyes, I had a miserable time getting stuck in dead end level design and mechanical time wasters. The pinnacle of which was getting the curse status effect while fighting one of the four lords – a status which persists after death and requires trekking across the world map to remove. To that I said, "f*** this," and put the game down for good.

Ornstein and Smough were pretty neat though. A shame the runback is so irritating.