This game is simply amazing and is the purest game I've ever played. From Software didn't cut corners, and provided us with an experience like

This game is simply amazing and is the purest game I've ever played. From Software didn't cut corners, and provided us with an experience like no other.



I feel that Dark Souls has one of the best melee combat systems ever. You don't just fight enemies, you duel them to the death. Every little mistake can be crippling or even fatal, which creates uniquely tense moments as you're fighting enemies. Every new area has a treacherous feel to it, and the further you get in to the game, the worse it gets (in a very good way). The game is true to itself and holds no punches in the difficulty. There is no difficulty to choose from, and you are simply tossed in the world. The only tutorial you are given consists of the basic controls via readable messages laid on the ground in the beginning of the game. After that, you are absolutely at the mercy of the of the game's brutal world.



Your character's level doesn't determine your combat prowess, it depends more on your equipment. You have to equip your character according to the area you are in, or what boss you are about to fight. There is a HUGE selection of weapons in the game with a pretty extensive upgrade system to back it all up. If you gear up right, you can save yourself a lot of grief (but you will still probably die a few times).



The learning curve for Dark Souls is very unforgiving. New players will often be frustrated and give up after dying over and over, but it never hurts to take a break. That's the most provocative thing about this game for me; despite its brutal difficulty, I always want more.





While Dark Souls is a very challenging game, there are a couple of aspects in the game that create "unnecessary" difficulty. Extremely wonky player collision often causes you to fall to your death over the stupidest reasons, and the occasional unresponsive or delayed input during fights tends to get you killed. The recent patch to the game claims to have fixed the issue of delayed input, but as far as I can tell it just made it worse. Though it's been mentioned in probably every other review, there are also some areas in the game that experience nasty framerate drops which can detract from the experience at times. Blighttown and Lost Izalith are the most notable suspects for bad frame rates, but it's tolerable. I've seen a lot of console games that have slight frame rate drops in very complex areas, like Halo Reach, but they're not as noticeable.





The lack of tutorials isn't missed in my case, but others will be at a total loss when trying to figure out character parameters like strength, dexterity, etc. Certain weapon types require a specific parameter. Large weapons like great swords require a higher level of strength, whereas spears and halberds (and bows) require higher dexterity to wield. There are even a few weapons that need some in both. Lastly, spells need intelligence, and miracles need faith. There's a lot to examine when looking at weapon/armor stats and your character's stats, but you will pick it up in time. You can actually hit the select button when in a menu and it will highlight elements in the menu and give a simple explanation for what it means. I highly recommend you use that if you're confused.





The only real issue I have with this game is the PvP. I honestly hate the fact that you can be invaded at any given time by other players if you've reverse-hollowed. 99% of the time I get invaded by someone who has WAY better gear and is WAY higher level than me and I just get rolled. There's no level-matching involved so someone with the best gear can invade someone who is just starting. It wouldn't be as bad if back stabbing wasn't so frustratingly buggy due to latency. I've been backstabbed when the person invading me was standing directly in front of me, and another occasion, they were 10 feet behind me and magically teleported behind me and back stabbed me and killed me. They honestly should have completely disabled backstabbing in PVP in my opinion. It doesn't help that there was a glitch in the game originally that allowed players to duplicated souls and max out their character and upgrade their gear all the way, so now there's all these level 500+ players in their first playthrough running around with incredible gear and spells, invading other players and destroying them.





Anyway, this game really isn't for everyone. It's a hardcore RPG rather than an action-rpg like Dragon Age. If you just game to have a little fun, then don't buy this game. If you want a rich experience that's really challenging and rewarding (yes, it is rewarding, despite what the negative reviewers say), then Dark Souls is your game.



And if Dark Souls is too easy for you, then play Demon's Souls. It's much harder, and arguably better. It's too bad they're shutting the servers down for Demon's Souls later this year.

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