Dark Souls: You'll Die and You'll Like It… Mostly

As a player who never played From Software's Demon's Souls and grew up with turned based RPGs (most heavily based on Dungeons & Dragons), Dark Souls comes as a breath of fresh air, if inhaled through the blood filling your mouth from the game punching you in the face for the dozenth time.

The Short Verdict:

An excellent if challenging and sometimes frustrating single player fantasy RPG. A deep but vague story stands as a puzzle for players to assemble for themselves should they choose. The graphics are impressive and only suffer from minor problems. All in all, an excellent game offline marred only for its poorly implemented integrated online features and the occasional frame rate problem.

Story:

You are dead. That is how Dark Souls begins. You might even be able to recognize the character you built in the creation screen moments before underneath all the rotting and shrunken decay that currently makes up your face (don't worry, you'll be pretty again soon enough). The walking undead are banished to an asylum in the north to "await the end of the world." Given that you still seem to have your mind intact, at least more so then the shambling legions walking into the walls outside your cell door, waiting might not seem like such a great prospect and so you make your escape. Before leaving, you're told of the prophecy that one day an undead will leave the asylum on pilgrimage and learn the truth of the curse of the undead in the land of the gods. Guess where you're getting whisked off to upon walking out the front door?

For a game so determined to not let its story get in the way of the game play experience, there is a surprising depth to it for those willing to dig. Dark Souls primarily practices environmental storytelling, letting players puzzle the tale out for themselves through rare voice overs, sparse and brief cinematics, and the moods infused into the environments themselves. Most characters encountered are either mad or on the verge of it, so ridiculously long expository dialogue dumps are not something you have to brace yourself for, though the corniness of a merchant's maniacal laughter may grate after awhile. History tends to be gleaned through item descriptions, and your goals almost always begin vague only taking on more meaning as you progress toward them. There is almost always something new to learn in the depths of this world, giving it a great degree of replayability for lore junkies.

Graphics:

With gorgeous landscapes, detailed armor and weapon models, well designed boss creatures, and a plethora of other pleasing sights, Dark Souls can be counted as a pretty game for this generation's hardware. The monsters can be considered well designed because they actually behave in the manner their appearance implies. A giant big enough to simply pick your character up and toss you like a rag doll will have no qualms about doing so if you come within reach. A dragon whose entire underside is made up of a gaping maw of rows of razor sharp teeth will rear up and try to grab you within that wide area, giving you far more then it's swiping claws to worry about. The environments will also set the stage. A dank and crumbling trap laden fortress will set you on edge at every turn, whereas a remarkably well kept up city immediately following it will lure you into a false sense of security before its indifferent guardians try to cleave you in two with halberds because you strayed too close to them only to go back to passive guard duty if you flee.

The collision detection is also surprisingly accurate in most cases, though mostly to your disadvantage. Trying to use a broad swinging blade in a tight corridor will result in nothing but clanging off the walls and leaving you open to attack, making a thrusting weapon a better choice for those situations. You can cut down swathes of enemies with those same broad weapons though in wider areas. There is some spotty clipping, particularly when using special attacks, and the hit detection can sometimes lag in PvP, but these issues are not frequent enough to hamper play. Bad frame rate drops in some of the more impressive areas can be a bigger problem though. The area Blighttown is cited as the biggest problem child given it's an expansive zone with a lot of verticality and a perilous design that revels in chucking you off rickety platforms into poisonous waters.

Sound:

Bang on sound design adds to the immersion well. The variations on each sound based on material are fabulous, with subtle changes depending on what materials are striking each other: metal, stone, wood, leather, decaying flesh, explosive magic, and more. The soundtrack has the occasional sweeping score moments but is mostly atmospheric and this is in no way a bad thing. The arrangement is what you'd expect from a fantasy game but is appropriate and classic.

Playability:

Dark Souls is following the trend away from turn based to live combat. This is where its vaunted difficulty lies. Part of the trick of survival is learning the timing and range of each weapon and each enemy. Combat is surprisingly methodical for a live combat game, but satisfying. Death is handled as a respawn rather then a reload, and encourages players to learn. Boss battles revolve around studying tells and learning weaknesses rather then grinding levels. It makes the fights feel surprisingly fair. The few cheap shots it takes are spaced far enough apart to not induce a rage quit, but rather are just frequent enough to keep you from feeling invulnerable and keep you paranoid.

While it is possible to build your character badly and spread your attribute points too thin while leveling, it's actually pretty difficult. You can't be a jack of all trades unless you're an obsessive grinder (there is a HIGH level cap), but you are not nailed down to your starting class at all. Allotting enough points to do low level spells won't hurt you at all as a fighter, but you will reach a point late game where specialization will give the most benefits. In other words, don't split yourself between the three different types of magic, or suddenly decide as a melee fighter that you want to hit as hard with a bow as you do with that gigantic 40 strength requirement sword and be able to sprint in heavy armor. Feel free to experiment until you get a feel for your preferences, then focus.

So why after all this praise is there a brutally, "meh," score at the top? As a single player game I'd give it a 9 but when taking the entirety of the game into account, Dark Souls is marred by its interestingly conceived but poorly executed online play.

The game automatically launches in online mode, and there is no visible option to turn it off or toggle it in any way. You need to either not be connected to your account or to the internet. Oddly, being in live party chat also bars you from online mode (which by all accounts was foolishly purposeful and not a glitch), though I cannot attest to this also being the case on Playstation 3.

Each player has their own instance of the world to play in, but players can choose to try and "invade" other players for the purpose of competitive combat. While level caps were added in an attempt to stop trolling, a serious glitch destroyed this aspect of the game for the most vulnerable low level players. There are no restrictions on what armor you can wear in the game, the only thing holding you back being if you've progressed far enough to actually discover the better gear. Likewise, there are no level caps on weapons though there are stat requirements. It is possible through a glitch to duplicate all of one's fully upgraded end game armor and weapons from a high level character onto a brand new one. Thus the newest and most vulnerable players are the most likely to have to deal with completely impervious trolls looking only to be a pain in your backside. This glitch has been in use for a very long time and has not been fixed by any patch.

Covenants are an interesting idea, adding a depth to the multiplayer by giving a motivation, but also suffer from poor implementation. For example, the "Forest Hunters" are set to protect a zone and any player not of the covenant can be invaded by these players when they trespass on that area. The problem arises when you take into account that passage is necessary for completion of the game and should you log on during a busy time of day you'll have two to three invaders dumped on you within 10 yards into the forest every time. Even the ever helpful "Warriors of Sunlight" break the game, a covenant dedicated to helping other players by encouraging you to summon them as co-op "phantoms." The world does not scale according to number of players though and the most challenging and rewarding fights become piffling matters, sometimes even more so with a Warrior of Sunlight due to their covenant bonus being the allowance of a wider level gap between themselves and the hosting player. The last thing you want is for the last battle of the entire game to be over in less then a minute after five sword swings and be left wondering at how anticlimactic the whole experience was.

There is also no way to separate the co-operative and competitive play from each other. You must be "Human" (fully fleshed, and receiving multiple bonuses for going through the effort to maintain that state) as opposed to "Hollow" (fully undead and lacking bonuses) in order to participate in both co-op gameplay and PvP. No one can invade you while you are Hollow, but you won't be able to summon your friends. In addition, the same penalties for dying at the hands on a creature apply for dying at the hands of an Invader and can actually be worse depending on their covenant. Everything from rare items (such as dragon scales) to other things like your hard fought humanity bonus can be stolen by Invaders, whereas the instigating player actually suffers surprisingly few consequences. Couple this with the trolling of low to mid level players and the fact that some people out and out detest PvP in all games, and you have a recipe to drive new players away from the game entirely at worst and away from online mode at best.

Speaking of summoning your friends, best of luck doing so. There is no party system, no ability to join a session in progress, no way to send an invitation, or target a particular player at all. Players are summoned by placing a "sign" that then shows up in the game worlds of the others on their server. If someone needs help, they activate the sign and summon the player. If you want to play with a friend, you'll have to pre-arrange a location for one of you to inscribe your sign and then proceed to spam it until the other can see it: not too fast though or you may pull it away before it has even had a chance to fully load into their world, but not too slow or you'll be wasting all your time with it potentially sitting on a different server and lying out where another well meaning player may call you for help and interrupt your plans. Some days I was able to find my preferred co-op partner near instantaneously, others we wasted 45 minutes on our attempts until one of us had to give up and go to work.

The issue I must judge most harshly for however is the fact that online mode quite literally has the potential to wipe out all your progress. We are all familiar with the, "Do not turn off your console during an auto save, or you may lose some progress," messages, but I suffered a glitch in which some ended up meaning all. A power outage occurred just as I was being invaded by another player. I expected I'd be reset to my last autosave, lose a bit of accrued experience, and maybe be missing a piece of gear I'd recently picked up. I was not expecting my save file to be corrupted to the point where even trying to view its details from the menu would cause my Xbox to crash and require me to delete is from the console system menu. The plus side is that Dark Souls is such a learning experience that redoing any portion of it is much easier once you know what's what, but it still stung to lose 22 hours of gameplay even if I made it up in 8 (with a liberal application of cooperative assistance). This issue is supposedly rare, though a friend's save file suffered the same fate about two weeks later due to accepting a party invite and not realizing it would unceremoniously boot him from the game with force.

Any other complaints are piffling next to those. Like many games these days, it flirts occasionally with the idea of platforming and fails to do it well. The upgrade system has no integrated walkthrough, but experimentation is not too costly. "Parameter bonuses" are not explained, so some players don't understand how to get the most out of their gear and skill point distribution. It's not a game in which there is any shame in consulting the wiki.

Entertainment:

Dark Souls stands as an entertaining hack and slash for those willing to pace themselves and not button mash. Its abusive nature and high degree of challenge make it a game I would not recommend to an easily frustrated friend, but would pass on to anyone looking for a sense of accomplishment in overcoming its trials. The journey may be important, but that sweet sense of victory is a pretty nice destination to enjoy.

Replay:

High. "New Game Plus" features are included, with progressively increasing difficulty and experience rewards as well as a high level cap accessible no matter how many play throughs you are in to the game.

Great review. I might not agree with the score, but it was very well written and engaging. I picked the game up at it's midnight release, and traded it in two weeks later. The online infuriated me... I was stuck on a boss and could not summon anyone to help me for some reason. I recently heard that a patch had been released that fixed online issues, so I picked it up again, and decided to give it a go. Now I am obsessed... I finally beat it for the first time and am in love with the pvp. But, anyway, just wanted to say awesome job here.
One thing I thought I would mention is that on Xbox 360, at least, you can party chat with one player. Thats how me and a friend have coop-ed... and it worked all the time for us.

I bought this game because so many people told me I would enjoy it. After 3 hours of being killed by the monster you run into and not understanding that I couldn't beat him, the game tells you eveidently to run away and running away has never been my thing. I was just looking up reviews done by people I know and this is a great one. I think I might give Dark Souls another try when I get some free time. So June 2014 sounds like the best case