And it’s done! I finally completed Dark Souls after a series of on and off attempts ever since buying the Prepare to Die edition a number of Steam sales ago. The biggest hurdle for me to overcome was gaining mastery over my gamer rage from the many deaths Dark Souls throws at you. A lot of those deaths will be from stupid shit like pressing B when backing out of the menu and unintentionally rolling off a cliff or falling off a narrow walkway because from flicking the stick in the wrong direction. Greed will also kill you when angling for those few last swings against a low health boss only to have said boss butt slam. Being patient, methodical when exploring, and observing enemy moves is the key to getting through a game like this. It’s much like the locker room scene in Top Gun when Ice Man tells Maverick it’s not your flying, it’s your attitude; a good chunk of getting through this game is all about having the right attitude of accepting the fact that Dark Souls will kick you in the grown and laugh in your face as you’re writhing in pain. It’s okay to fail in Dark Souls and it’s even ok to take a few days off if you for R&R if you can’t defeat a tough boss. If my 13 year old self had adopted the same approach years ago I would not have had my NES taken away when I almost destroyed it because of Battletoads.
Another thing that helped was watching Kay Plays Dark Souls on YouTube. I found her channel through this thread and upon first glance her LP is rather unremarkable. No flashy intro animation or slick editing, no face in the corner of the screen like a traditional Twitch stream, just a regular casual gamer playing Dark Souls at the urging of her boyfriend. Little did she know that her Dark Souls let’s play would become widely respected among the Dark Souls bro community. Here was a filthy casual playing a balls to the wall hardcore game and succeeding at it. In fact her Dark Souls LP even got a shout out from Kotaku and I frequently see it recommended for new players to the series. Her Dark Souls upload was the first ever let’s play I watched from start to finish. I learned a lot by adopting her patience and inquisitiveness in exploring Dark Souls. In all of her 80 something uploads I think I only heard her swear under her breath once or twice from dying. Contrast that to your typical G@m3R bro who lets out expletives every 15 seconds.
FROM Software did one hell of a job crafting a provocative world that ranges from the haunting Painted World of Ariamis and its impaled bodies to the LotR inspired orcish dwelling of Blighttown and its rickety scaffolding and wobbly bridge that only a Trump-era OSHA would approve of. The introduction of the visually stunning (!) Anor Londo (Calrissian) and its medieval architecture along with the discovery of Ash Lake via the giant ass tree in Blighttown, ranks up there on my personal list of greatest moments in gaming. Likewise the audio in this game has this rich and foreboding ambience that I haven’t experienced since the first Thief nearly 20 years ago. I can’t get over the sense of scale in this game. The bosses in Dark Souls are huge and even some of the run of the mill enemies are impressive in stature. I logged over 150 hours and the most enjoyment out of those hours comes from carefully exploring for traps and hidden walls (hello Sen’s Fortress). Defeating a tough boss is a reward in its own right but I would gladly spend more hours taking in the sights and sounds of this twisted world.
If there’s one thing I could ding Dark Souls for is that it was too cryptic for its own good especially when it came to Solaire’s. Unless I’m completely missed something the game gives no hint that something bad will happen to him and once it does you lose him as an ally to summon. Using a Fire Keeper Soul to heal was another thing that got me because I had no idea it was in my best interest to save those for upgrading Estrus Flasks. In some respects it felt like this was made by Paradox in which I had to frequently consult a wiki on making sure I was doing something right or that I wasn’t going to waste a rare and hard to find in game resource.
Easiest bosses:
Pinwheel and Ceaseless Discharge:
Hardest bosses:
Firesage Demon - similar to Asylum Demon but with lots of roots to get snagged on when trying to flee a butt slam.
Centipede Demon - mostly due to camera controls. Whenever he got close the camera would flip out like Wang Chung’s Everybody Have Fun Tonight music video. Holy shit I’m surprised that made out of testing.
Bullshit boss:
The Bed of Chaos - the collapsing floor and the center jump felt very gimmicky.
Boss that gave me the most trouble:
Kalameet - that bastard easily took more than 20 or so tries before I managed to take him down. Kalameet was the only boss where I had to take a break from the game for a few days to get my head clear. I went with a STR build so up close and personal was the only way I could take him on and no matter how hard I tried to dodge I would invariably end up in his tractor beam.
Of course this is not to say I found O&S, Manus, Nito, and Gwyn easy. All of those took several tries, but Kalameet made me his bitch.
First game boss to evoke pity from me:
Sif. Oh those insidious devs at FROM. Not that I’m entirely a people hater, but nothing evokes more feelings of compassion and sympathy from me than a wounded animal.
On a related note, I never felt bad about killing minor creatures or monsters in a game until I encountered those mushroom children in the Darkroot Garden. I needed gold pine resin and they are the only creatures in game that can be farmed for it. Dear god, they let out this shrill cry when you deliver the death blow. I can’t recall off the cuff of another game that evoked such a response from me before. I can admit to blowing up kids in Fallout with the lock pick skill but those were just simple sprites whereas the mushroom kids are fully 3D objects who mimic human toddlers in gait and balance. When they are aggro’d they waddle towards you only to fall flat on their face. It’s absolutely adorable and makes killing them that much harder.
I’m currently playing Dark Souls 2: Sins of the Scholar and after about 20 hours in I’m not feeling the love. It feels like a dramatic departure from Dark Souls and it lacks the charm and soul that the original had. The level design and bosses so far are shit, IMO. It feels like a generic action/RPG designed by a team that never played Dark Souls. I’m trying to stick with it but if I had a physical copy of the game I would be inclined to give it away for free here.
