Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be seen as a set of observations over a genuine review.


Dark Souls is one of those titles that does so much right: visually it's fantastic, the boss fights are great, the music phenomenal, and it boasts some of the best-realized combat I’ve ever seen in a game. It cemented FromSoft as the premiere developer for difficult RPGs, a label they’ve since used to generate critical acclaim and lucrative bank.

It’s unfortunate, then, how Dark Souls chooses to wrap-up these traits under some genuinely frustrating design schemes, and yes, I use the word frustrating because my problems with Dark Souls have less to do with objective difficulty and more to do with artificial flavors tossed in for no other reason than virtual sadism.

Of course, one can’t criticize Dark Souls without incurring the wrath of apologia its fan base has accumulated over the years, and while I’ll abstain from stereotyping thousands of gamers, you don’t have to look far to see the worst of their rhetoric. From their perspective, it’s easy to shut down any criticism under the banner of “git gud,” and I’ll acknowledge upfront that I’m not the best at video games: I sucked at Horizon Zero Dawn’s combat and my favorite titles are ones that are relatively-easy to master(+). But there’s a difference between a challenge and an irritation, and Dark Souls inclusion of both has unfortunately led to fans and critics alike intermixing them, when the truth is they should be viewed as separate elements.

Let’s start with the bad: the backtracking. Dark Souls is an action RPG best described as an 80s platformer in light of its atrocious checkpoint system. Every area contains two, let me repeat, two save points in their entire vicinity, and, as a result, you’re going to be wasting cumulative hours(!) re-running through the same paths again-and-again-and-again. The issue isn’t the lack of an autosave but the employment of an outdated save apparatus we all agree was only done to deceptively-elongate past releases, so why anyone thought to bring it back into the 21st century I have no idea. Plenty of modern video games have limited waypoints, but the difference is they’re smart enough to place them in areas advantageous to the player’s progress, such as, you know, after a major endeavor or right before a boss gate. Forcing gamers to spend minutes, I kid you not, minutes on end returning to a boss’s entrance or past a set of dangerous traps is beyond idiotic and commits the cardinal sin of wasting player time.

Of course, the arguments in favor of Dark Souls’s checkpoints are how it encourages obstacle circumvention by either “teaching” players to methodically-approach situations or learn the terrain for quick bypassing, and the fact that both these notions contradict each other should indicate the level of intelligence apologists have put behind them - if you’re meant to run past every critter, what was the bloody point in even having them revive? And if they were intended to be engaged with, why stack them with cheap shots, RNG, and extraneous numbers the player would be fundamentally unable to master (more on these later)? Dark Souls isn’t the kind of game about farming enemies for drops or experience, nor is it about clearing areas for long-term safety, making the two prospects very confusing.

To reiterate, I don’t have a problem completing a difficult section or two to “earn” a respite, but Dark Souls is rarely interested in providing that equity and outright boneheaded when it comes to logical placement. No seriously, there are so many areas where an additional save space or two (bonfires) wouldn’t have conflicted with enemy placement, yet the devs didn’t bother adding them for no other reason than maintaining director Miyazaki’s nonsensical 2-Bonfire rule. The trail from the sewery Depths to the Lovecraftian Blighttown, for example, forces you to run through a door, down some stairs, across a tunnel, and then down a long ladder….why not just put a bonfire at the end of that ladder? Why make players redo the same course when they’ll (inevitably) die to Blighttown’s new slate of enemies prior to reaching the first official Bonfire there anyway?

Another notable instance of this occurs in the grand city of Anor Londo, wherein your spawn point is separated from the next objective via a long dash to an automated elevator and spiral staircase followed by ANOTHER long dash down a platform….why not just place a bonfire at the halfway point of said platform? The idea that simple additions like these weren’t considered says a lot about the kind of griefing FromSoft gleefully indulged in during development.

I’m not done ranting about the bonfires as there are two extra qualms associated with them that make an already-faulty system laughably frustrating. For starters, FromSoft went out of their way to hide some of them! No, I’m not joking: if I wasn’t semi-playing with a guide, I wouldn’t have discovered half the pyres out there, and that alone speaks to the callousness guiding FromSoft’s approach to game design: the idea of deliberately ensconcing an already scarce resource for no other discernible reason than sh!ts and giggles.

The second quandary is less-egregious, though still objectively annoying, and that’s the lack of fast travel between bonfires. Now, to be fair, Dark Souls is very good at connecting sites through story progression; however, there’ll be situations in which you may have to return to a previous area for some reason or other(++) and will consequently have no choice but to backtrack like a caffeinated hare.

And this whole schematic is the main reason why I abandoned Dark Souls. I’ll get into the other problems for sure, but understand that, unless you’re willing to put-up with the limited save points, you won’t have fun with this game. True, you only lose souls upon death, but that can be really vexing in the early stages of the journey when you’re trying to increase stats or upgrade weapons (+++).

In addition, an unintentional casualty of the whole shebang is how it diminishes any motivation to explore - there were tons of places off the beaten path I genuinely wanted to check out, but ultimately absconded from in light of fears of either losing all my souls on hand, or drifting too far away from the nearest beacon and subsequently getting sucker-stomped by some new behemoth that would force more, you guessed it, backtracking to where I died. To anyone curious, yes, there are quicksave mods out there for PC players; however, I personally don’t recommend downloading them as they’re a pain in the @ss to install/use courtesy of Dark Soul’s online component (more on that later).

The second biggest setback you’ll run into is the skill system as it is very atypical by RPG standards. Those familiar with the genre know that, in most titles, everytime you level-up, you earn points that can be funneled into a variety of stats for the overall purposes of getting stronger.

Dark Souls retains that basic premise, albeit with some changes for better and for worse: on the plus side, you’re not earning experience towards an arbitrary bar, but souls to then shovel into 8 different categories, with each upgrade concurrently raising your hero’s base level. On the negative side, though, the devs made the bizarre decision to scale soul requirements to the highest one you have, and I genuinely don’t understand what the thought process behind this was - if you’re at 20 Strength and 12 Attunement, for example, you’ll have to spend the same amount of souls upgrading Attunement as Strength, with every other requirement also inflating in the process. I’ve heard fans claim this was done to encourage builds; however, that argument falls flat when you realize universal attributes like endurance and health are afflicted by this system as well - if FromSoft was really intent on distinguishing Dark Souls from other role-playing titles, why not meet in the middle via categorizing skills for the cap (i.e., have the scaling for strength apply only to dexterity, or Faith to Intelligence)? As it stands, this all-or-nothing approach will definitely nag at you during the beginning stages.

The third quandary is how Dark Souls doesn’t bother explaining a number of its more intricate components. On my end, for instance, I never figured out how the magic system worked, and frequently had to look-up things like factions, the purpose of different items, how to do summons, and so forth. I fully concede these may have been located within the title, but by no means were they ergonomically sited.

In terms of the game’s general difficulty, I agree with fans that patience is a virtue. Dark Souls combat is based around the idea of attack-and-response: every enemy has memorizable patterns you can either block or strafe around in the hopes of exploiting openings for your own hits. The key to everything is managing your stamina, this bar dictating your capacity to strike, dodge, or defend, and only replenishing when doing nothing. There are growing pains with each new foe encountered, but that’s also a part of the fun, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the skirmishing system FromSoft created.

Unfortunately, as much as I liked the combat, it’s also where you’ll find the last rung of unfairness due to it involving several enemy advantages I alluded to above: first, even when blocking, monsters will occasionally get a hard hit on you that saps you of your endurance (or health if unable to shield), and it didn’t appear to be related to any specific move but good old-fashioned RNG. Secondly, weapon-based creatures occasionally get stuck in this everlasting strafe wherein they’ll continue to circle about you without breaking their guard or lunging, making for some really annoying encounters since they turn too quickly to be flanked nor attack themselves. Thirdly, you sword strikes can ricochet off walls-and-barriers, yet this same limitation is conveniently absent for foes, who instantly recover; and finally, just like with Gothic, Dark Souls’ fighting is inherently built around 1v1 bouts, and just like with Gothic again, it still tosses multiple thugs at you. I will never comprehend the logic backing these decisions as it results in players (like myself) engaging in cheap tricks to cheese the game ala inching closer to trigger individual enemy aggros(++++).

To clarify, nothing about these four combat hitches is game-breaking by any means, but when taken in conjunction with those prior two macro flaws, you’ll find them getting under your skin more than they would’ve in any other product. And that sums up Dark Souls issues in a nutshell: individually, they could have been tolerable, but when cruxed together, they add up to a thoroughly-unenjoyable experience.

It’s a shame because, again, the game does so much right - graphically, it stands as prime proof of how a solid art style will always age well, the gothic romanticism here blending well with some of the best texture meshing I’ve ever seen in a video game: seeing cracks on different pieces of armor or the visceral rotting of wood or the slimy residue on subterranean slabs goes a long way towards showcasing the kind of love that was poured into this game. Much like the second God of War, Dark Souls warps familiar locations like sewers and wooden villages under a unique skin, and it consistently blew my mind whenever I’d enter a new locale purged by these aesthetics.

I’m not going to delve into excessive detail about said aesthetics as I didn’t enjoy or play the game enough to do so (plenty of walkthroughs and screen caps exist online that I encourage you to look-up), but what I will highlight are three major achievements, beginning with the varied elevators you’ll utilize. See, FromSoft was so dedicated to their in-game cultures, that they literally crafted multiple unique assets for something as simple as an ascension apparatus: in the medieval-inspired Undead Burg, you have a creaky chained shaftbox; in the wealthy Anor Lando, a beautiful-floating tile; and within Blighttown’s plague-scoffed planking runs a rickety waterwheel amidst the muck. I’ve always had a deep love for architecture, and the fact that FromSoft thought to build engineering feats specific to their various cultures was beyond mesmerizing.

Second is the gorgeous dynamic lighting that not only bounces well off plate armor and metal grooves, but offsets the need for a torch via your avatar generating a bioluminescence.

Finally, you’ve got the Monster designs, their composition ranging from standard enemy tropes to absolute nightmare fuel, and as a result of that berth there’s admittedly a bit of a hit-or-miss effect in terms of memorability - catching wind of skeleton warriors or giant rats, for example, doesn’t quite evoke the same sense of dread as bug-eyed frogs or Deep One-esque critters. Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s movements, skin textures, and groans are exquisite - I just wish the game had been less generic-fantasy at times.

These same criticisms extend to the few bosses I fought, which, to repeat, are fun, but which sometimes leave more to be desired as far as visualization: on the one hand, you could get a disturbingly-alluring specimen in the spider queen Quelaag, only to have her followed-up by a regular iron golem literally called the Iron Golem.

Thankfully, what consistently elevated even the more-drab titans was the score by Motoi Sakuraba, and I can’t believe this man hasn’t achieved greater notoriety as his tracks here were consistently amazing. Dark Souls may stand as the only game I’ve played where you could strum a boss’s theme and I would be able to tell you exactly who they were by virtue of the music alone: that’s how perfectly-done the OST is -- by-and-large, my biggest regret from dropping the game is knowing I’ll never hear Sakuraba’s other compositions juxtaposed against their synced monstrosity.

SFX, I won’t go too in-depth in either other than to say that this is unfortunately a headphones-favored title: you’ll miss out on a lot of intricate aural details like the breathing of fake chests or stomping of underground monsters without a pair of buds. That said, the primary beats surrounding weapon usage, walking, and armor chinking are top-notch, with FromSoft even programming in individual footstep dins for each leg (an aspect you’re liable to noticing in light of the variegated surfaces you’ll literally run across).

With regards to technical issues, the only quibs I ever saw were some weapon clipping, a lack of cloth physics for certain suits (e.g. Silver Knight capes), and sudden color palette swaps when shifting between interiors, all of which were ultimately minor stuff.

I’ll touch on the story briefly because it’s another case of a genuinely bad aspect being praised to unworthy heights. See, Dark Souls shoves the bulk of its narrative into flavor text: while there are narrated bits and some NPCs you can chat with, you won’t understand a single thing about the world you’re in unless you take the time out of your day to read-up on the item descriptions laden in tools, weapons, boss drops, or merchant wares, and I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t play video games to read books. Optional lore is one thing; supplementary material a second thing, but this tactic FromSoft utilized right here is outright lazy. It literally comes across like the video game equivalent of the Marvel Method wherein artists for the eponymous company would do all the work crafting the story, only for writers to come in and add their own selfish scribbles atop the panels. To be fair, Dark Souls’ tale isn’t anywhere near a focus of the game; however, that doesn’t diminish the fact that it was a wasted opportunity to really make something immersive.

Some people may be curious about the multiplayer component, a facet that’s infamously led to FromSoft foregoing pause screens due to the insistent need to stay online. The truth is I didn’t engage with it a lot, so I can’t say whether or not it’s worth fielding -- it is kind of cool seeing dead phantoms and left-behind messages by players, but the culture shock wears-off the second you realize how idiotic 90% of these messages are. Worse yet, if you ever undergo Internet issues (like I did), you’ll find yourself getting booted out of the game at a moment’s notice (luckily, you are loaded back into your immediate position, but it’s annoying nonetheless). As such, unless you have a solid bandwidth, I’d recommend playing the game offline to avoid potential tech surprises.

I say that last sentence with a clump of salt as, while I obviously didn’t like Dark souls, everyone should form an opinion for themselves at the end of the day. Dark Souls continued the revolution wrought by Demon’s Souls by creating a new genre, and I’m happy many have found joy….or so I hope….

See, I want to end this review by asking Soulsborne enthusiasts a genuine question, which is, are you sure you’re having fun? One of the biggest criticisms towards Ubisoft titles, for example, is the concept of dopamine exploitation: how players aren’t actually enjoying what they’re doing, but being deluded into believing they are courtesy of small achievements (like finding collectibles) auto-triggering the release of the infamous neurotransmitter.

I wish to apply a similar concept here, albeit under the guise of cost-sunk: playing Dark Souls, backtracking repeatedly, and dying constantly, I’m curious if you actually enjoy what you’re doing, or if it’s a case where, having invested so much time & energy into an endeavor and finally overcoming it for the dopamine, that you’re simply overvaluing the factual task at hand?

Just food for thought.


NOTES
+An exception being the Donkey Kong Country games.

++The two times it happened to me (both of which occurred in Blighttown ironically enough) involved having to repair my weapon with a Smith; and having to gather a ring that would allow easier traversal of the swamps.

+++Please prioritize upgrading weapons over leveling-up. The game doesn’t tell you this, but weapon stats are more important for damage output than personal dexterity.

++++Enemy aggros can be SO bipolar - there are some where standing five feet in front of them won’t do anything, while others are prone to charging at you from a long ways away.

-As the Remaster was my first incursion into this series, I can’t comment on any specific differences from the vanilla release. From what I understand via a quick Google search, though, they stayed very faithful to the OG (compared to DS2’s equivalent Scholar of the First Sin) and incorporated some natural resolution and framerate bumps.

-Puddles have reflective surfaces!

-Dark Souls is officially the only game I’ve played where you can control an undead specimen wearing a thong.