Dark Souls is a game like no other, it does away with quick time events, hand holding & the cinematic characters we're all so used to these days. It reminds me why I play games in the first place, for the reward, the atmosphere & the adventure. It reminds me that us as gamers, should change to fit the game, to improve. Instead of the games catering to us. For me at least, It was a glimmer of hope amongst a sea of shooters. A deep rewarding experience that wasn't aimed at the masses, but was clearly created with passion.
After creating your character, and personalising them with a few hair and facial tweaks, one who can be many of your usual RPG classes, be it a mage, knight or miracle user. You play as the chosen undead, a poor soul destined to live in the Undead Asylum until the end of time. You are however, given a little bit of help to escape your cell. And you set of on your adventure to bring pilgrimage to the land of the ancient Lords, Lordran.
You're then taken to the firelink shrine, here is where your journey truly begins. This is the closest thing you'll get to "Home" in what is otherwise a rather bleak world.
In an industry now prone to taking the controller off of you, & showing you the story through cut-scenes, this game is pretty much the exact opposite. The story is there, but like everything else, Dark souls isn't going to bend over backwards to make sure you understand it. The main plot is told through a few pieces of NPC dialogue, and the voice over at the start. Everything else you'll have to learn on your own. Any background stories of the wonderfully weird NPC's you'll have to piece together yourself. Through subtle hints in their dialogue, to vague descriptions of their sold items. Dark Souls' plot is the video game equivalent of a jigsaw, for better or worse, you'll get as much out of it as you put into it.
After being told to ring one of two bells, you'll soon learn Dark Souls combat is based largely on accuracy & precision. Timing your attacks right and exploiting an enemies weakness is the key to success. Fighting too offensively at times will get you killed, where as doing the opposite at other times will end in the same outcome. Defeating one of the many strange & occasionally disturbing enemies will give you souls. Unsurprisingly, souls are everything in this game, your currency to buy arrows from the oddly camp merchant in the Undead Burg. As well as levelling up your character to suit your magic, vitality or endurance needs. Levelling up your character is incredibly satisfying, you will always feel your character's benefits. To increasing your Intelligence stat for that more powerful magical spell, to rising your strength to use that one obscure weapon you retrieved from a boss. Armour sets are really detailed & abnormal. It's clear Dark Souls has had a Japanese influence & it is entirely beneficial for it. Items are mysterious & weapons are bizarre.
You'll accompany your character through some incredibly varied and beautiful environments.
The Darkroot garden, a wonderfully green forest home to strange bush monsters, large fierce cats & unofficial gathering place of "no rules PVP". Anor londo, a huge city bathed in sunlight, with an almost eary sense of artificiality with it's unstained and sanitary architecture. The crystal cave, a cave concealed in bright blue rocks, a place hard to admire by the habit of getting wacked in the face by a crystal golem.
All of this is partnered with the fact that the world is intertwined, it's all to scale. You can sit atop sens fortress and look down upon where you previously fought the Gargoyles, you can look up from atop the undead Parish Church & view what you'll later learn to be the Dukes Archives. All of this comes together to make Lordran an entirely immersive world.
The online in Dark Souls is in my opinion, revolutionary. Not every JRPG needs online, but Dark Souls proves the genre can benefit a lot from more player interaction. Players can leave each other messages, be it a warning or tip. Or a downright lie, to help/fool other players. You'll often find "Bonfire ahead" near a bonfire, or a "Be wary of blacksmith" before meeting a friendly blacksmith. You may sometimes find "Amazing treasure ahead" right before a fatal drop though (seems legit), so don't put too much trust in these messages. Nevertheless, they help remind you that you're not entirely alone on your quests, and other people may be facing the same hardships as you.
Which brings me to the CO-OP, players can use an item called Humanity, a black sprite which doesn't look entirely unlike a vagina, to turn human. Turning human allows you to summon fellow Dark Souls players to help you face that particular areas boss. Phantoms who are successful in helping you with Jolly co-operation, are rewarded with their own humanity sprite. Which in turn lets them turn human.
Defeating a boss with another player or two is a journey, an experience no other co-op game has given me. You'll form a temporary bond with these phantoms. A brief moment of companionship before braving the twisted enemies of Lordran alone. A feeling Demon's Souls players will likely remember. There is no online chat, that's not how Dark souls rolls. Instead players communicate in gestures, be it a shrug, a bow or a point. This creates some amusing moments, like a gleeful jump when defeating a particularly tough enemy. Or a synchronised shrug, when a fellow phantom accidently rolls off a cliff to his death, in his haste to dodge a sword wielding skeleton.
There are downsides to being human though, being human allows other players to invade your world, in an attempt to kill you. This is the player versus player aspect of Dark Souls. If successful in killing you, and probably screwing up the 2 hours you just spent trekking through Blighttown, the Invader will take your humanity. If a player is successful in defending against an invader, the player will be given humanity, as well as a horde of souls in accordance to the invader's level.
This creates for some heart racing moments, as there is so much to lose. There are few moments in gaming that get your blood pumping as much as seeing "Insert Japanese Name Here Has Invaded" to then meet a bright red phantom flipping at you, holding a magically enhanced katana. Possibly using some kind of spell that you have yet to encounter.
Adding more depth to the already fantastic multiplayer is the ability to join covenants.
Covenants provide certain item's and open up certain possibilities to multiplayer. For example, to help a further range of people in Co-op, or to host a PvP duel. Players can join or leave any covenant at any time, though some will have consequences. Covenants are found across the whole of Lordran, some will take effort to find, some will be there right in front of you. It is entirely possible you will go through the game without finding certain ones.
The music is always stunning & always very relevant to the atmosphere. You'll hear a variety of tunes on your travels, for the "safer" more calm area's the music will be in accordance, the Firelink shrines theme is almost relaxing. The boss battles on the other hand are a different story, being a big part of the game they demand more powerful and memorable themes, and they always deliver. Ornstein and Smoughs theme is particularly memorable, a dread filling theme with effective Organs, Violins & what I can only describe as "HUUUURRRRRR HUUUURRRRRR". Also, the ending theme is beautiful. An elegant & delicate theme which somehow manages to capture the emotion I felt from completing the game.
However, no game is perfect. Unfortunately there are a few framerate problems in certain area's of the game, luckily though the framerate is relatively solid & the only issues you'll find are in these few places, which can be completed with relative ease & hold no hotspots for online play. There are times when the game throws it's "firm but fair" rule out the window, and just likes to surprise you with an almost unavoidable death, which can result in an almost instant ragequit. Online can hold a few troublesome issues too, PVP can occasionally lag, and you may be victim to the infamous "lagstab". A critical hit which may feel like you've been cheated out of a potential victory. Summon sign's can sometimes fail too, though this is a rather small issue. Overall, these are minor problems, and should not discourage anyone from attempting any portion of the multiplayer options.
To put it short, everyone should play Dark Souls. The atmosphere, armour design, unique monsters, deep RPG mechanics, NPC's, vast world, music, secrets & online play all come together to create a masterpiece of the genre. A game I believe is worth a place in any gaming history books. Praise the sun!
The PlayStation 3 is Sony’s most interesting home console ever, but what’s most interesting of all is trying to nail down the very best games on a console with hundreds of incredible games. Let’s give it a shot.
We desperately need Motorstorm back. Evolution is no more though and this makes me sad
Sly Thieves in Time
Stay the Party
Portal 2
Dj Hero
Demon’s Souls
God of war Ascension
2 of those games got railed through the “gaming media” during release.
Sly and god of war.
Both of which were fantastic games.
Yes it’s a decent list of popular games with a heavy hand on FPS and no Warhawk or Starhawk 2 of the best games (not sale wise) on ps3.
I would buy a Starhawk again even if it didn’t have a graphics upgrade hell I would even take a new one with micro transactions 😱🤯
I've noticed a recent nostalgia for the PS3 and I don't get it for me it's been my least favourite generation to date and I've been gaming since the NES I just feel like the ambition of the developers outweighed the capabilities of the consoles so I remember lots of games running in the lower end of 20fps range and I remember for the first time ever actually disliking the duelshock 3 and it's curved triggers
Sure there were some standouts and great games but that's the only gen I switched entirely to PC gaming
Maybe the recent nostalgia is because pretty much all of its games are trapped on that console. People want to play them on more modern hardware. hell... if XB can do it then so can Sony. there are competent emulators out there that can run on PS4/5 hardware but Sony just wont let them become official... why is that?
If we are talking least favorite generations (personally) then this one is certainly mine. i had more fun playing 8th, 7th and 6th gen stuff than 9th. And it isnt like i dont have access to do so... the heavy hitters just havent shown up anywhere close to those previous gens. The few here and there just doesnt cut it compared to the likes of constant good games that showed up in 6th, 7th and 8th gen. hell.... I'll even throw in 5th gen has been better than this one.
I tend to agree there's lots of amazing games locked to the PS3 like GTA IV or mgs 4 but then again my issue was never with the content the PS3 had but rather it's performance many other people have said the PS3 felt like it couldn't walk and chew bubblegum at the same time using PSN and downloading a game could take a few minutes to just start a download.
I typically don't worry all that much about performance I've never had a problem with games that run at 30 but games like crysis 2, Skyrim are good examples where the performance was so unstable you would never even touch the top of the frame cap and the hitching was worse than say Goldeneye on the n64
I think emulation is more than possible on the ps5 though it's just that Sony has no incentive to rush it's development it will likely be a ps6 feature if it ever happens at all.
But yeah the 9th gen has been so bad from a content perspective thats a given I see constant articles where people are frequently expressing their disappointment around the industry as a whole right now to much live service competition that sinks longstanding studios and consumes Devs time less ambition and games cost so much to make they have to play it safe.
The 5th gen was easily better than the 9th we had some all time greats crash, Spyro, Tony hawk, mgs, Mario,64, Goldeneye, Mario kart 64 the list goes on. The 5th gave us a new dimension and I remember being blown away by how much more open gaming had become the 4th gen with the mega drive and SNES was great and very easy to still revisit some of the greatest games of all time came out like earthbound, secret of mana, sonic , Mario world etc but saving our games was still not a standard function or a given so gaming was still evolving but it was very impressive to see some of the tricks Devs used like dithering to give us new experiences those earlier gens limitations bred innovation.
if XB can do it so can sony? I didn't know xbox had a cell processor in their older consoles, that's the reason why ps3 was so cool, but also the reason why games are hostage there and no, xbox did nothing similar even though their backward compatbility is good, they always had a similar architecture to their consoles.
Sorry Michael... I guess you missed the obvious part where i said there are already emulators out that do this. and that is what XB is doing... emulators for OG and 360 games. Its why the full slate is not BC on XBO/Series.
Former SIE president Yoshida explained that Sony wanted to work on the sequel to Demon’s Souls with FromSoftware, but the developer turned it down and instead decided to work with Bandai Namco on what would become Dark Souls.
Not sure what Sony was thinking. Wrong people testing the game. It was my favourite game from the PS3 days. Had to import it from Canada because it wasn't available in Europe at the time. Then I bought it again when a local version was available. It was fun to play online and get two separate platinum.
I understand, sony acting so cocky when it came out. But they quickly realized what they were missing on. I remember an interview of Yoshida saying clearly he hated the game.
"But they quickly realized what they were missing on."
So they've been sleeping on Bloodborne too
Sony didn't realize what they had with Demons Souls. It happens. Marvel approached Xbox to make Spider-Man before they went to Sony and Phil Spencer said "thanks but no thanks". You win some, you lose some. Personally I wasn't THAT bowled over by Demons Souls either when it launched on PS3. I thought it was slow and clunky. The remake on PS5, however, is fantastic! So I get why Sony was lukewarm on the franchise. I dont know if anybody could've foreseen what From Software would eventually become.
To be fair, not even From Software knew the huge success it would become. Their revenue target was tiny, as already confirmed by Miyazaki.
Exactly, these nipple head 'journalists' trying to spin this into a story to wield against Sony are ignoring the fact that hindsight is 20/20.
As you correctly point out, Demons Souls was incredibly niche at the time so it's not a surprise that Sony were cautious about investing huge amounts into advertising and support etc.
You can't just find the RIGHT people. This kind of thing didn't exist yet. FROMSOFTWARE started something huge and you could never see it unless you happen to get someone who not only gets a gut instinct but also the will and authority to act on it. You can't look back from 2025, you have to see it in a 2009 landscape. And Demon's Souls didn't even hit big, it wasn't until Dark Souls that it all started hitting, shortly after it's release in 2011.
Hey sometimes you just can’t see the potential.
It’s like the Chicago Bears moving up in the draft to take Trubisky over Pat Mahomes.
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I bought the Japanese version of Demons Souls before US release. Me and my friend heard about it from an online friend in Japan. It took a while for it to become popular in the US. It was a new IP with nothing like it at the time and it wasn’t easy to play obviously. Eventually word of mouth spread about it and sales picked up after launch. I don’t think anyone could have seen how big it would be at the time. It was considered very niche and hardcore games were minimal.
I do wonder if we'll ever see Demon's Souls 2. Sony clearly wanted it. FromSoftware's subsequent releases penetrated the mainstream in ways the developer likely never imagined. Any stigma or negative perception around the original game's release has long passed. Bluepoint's remake sold very well on PS5. I think the time has come to visit the IP that started it all.
With Sony now firmly in bed with Kadokawa now. I think a Demon's Souls 2 and/or Bloodborne 2 is fairly likely.
They also seem to not want to get on Fromsoft's bad side or undercut them in any way. I think it's completely up to FS. (which is kinda funny cause FS themselves makes weird moves with their games whenever it's not Miyazaki helming the project. ie DS2 and Nightreign)
Today marks the 30th birthday of King's Field, a PlayStation title with an incredible legacy – and one which some Western players might be unaware of.
I still have my original release PS1 long box King's Field right here on my shelf. Great game., Looks better on a CRT than you can really appreciate in emulators or screenshots too, or Im just nostalgic. Note: actually it would be kings field 2 in japan but released here as kings field, so I guess its the second game. Great none the less.
It was great. I always wondered what happened to the series/developer. Wasn’t til a few years ago I found out they moved on to the souls games. It’s nice to see them get the appreciation they deserve.
Damn, I didn't even know that Motoi Sakuraba did the music for Dark Souls, it's so different from what he normally does. Look at his Star Ocean tracks for example. I wonder if Dark Souls would suffer if he had put at least one heavy guitar track for a boss fight. Might be epic.
"Ornstein and Smoughs theme is particularly memorable, a dread filling theme with effective Organs, Violins & what I can only describe as "HUUUURRRRRR HUUUURRRRRR""
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Oh and, thanks a lot for the awesome review. Praise the sun!
Nice review Blastoise.
You described the game very well.
I personally liked Demon Souls more than Dark Souls but they are equally as good for different reasons.
I hope to read a Dark Souls 2 review from you in the future. I would like to know how you feel about the changes since it won't have Hidetaka Miyazaki directing the game.
You do not know what the word "imminent" means.
You are looking for this word.
http://dictionary.reference...
Whenever someone asks me what my fave game of the generation is I always reply with Uncharted 2, Super Mario Galaxy and a few other titles. However, my play time on Dark Souls is quite high and is probably my most played game. I would have to say that it is probably my best game this gen (but Uncharted 2 is sooo awesome). The only thing I didn't like about the game is the fact that there isn't much need to invade people. In Demon's Souls I think they balanced the risk / reward for playing in human and soul form a lot better. Loss of HP in soul form, potential loss of ring slot to remedy the situation a bit. You want your HP and the ability to summon others? Either be evil and invade or be good and coop. It worked perfectly.
Needless to say my gripe is very tiny. I think Dark Souls is better than Demons Souls. I can run through the game now and learn new things. The more you put in to the game will decide how much you get out of it. A lot better than most games today where you put little effort in and see the whole experience in 6 - 10 hours (the industry has a place for these games, but does it have to be nearly every single title?).
Good review :-)