Entry tags:
[Gaming] Dark Souls 1
My dad picked up Dark Souls for me around Christmas, which was really thoughtful of him because I haven't really bought anything like that for myself in well over a year, now and the last game we got as a household was Mass Effect 3 way back when it actually came out, and that was for Kay. Since Christmas, then, hardly a day has passed that I haven't played for at least an hour or so, and I've got some brief thoughts about it. These really aren't organized in any way, but I think that the game itself is pretty noteworthy, so here's what I've noticed.
When I first started playing, I was messing around with character creation, and I ended up opting for a female character model this time. There really isn't anything sexualizing about the armor in Dark Souls, and I really appreciate that. A character's sex is often impossible to even determine, and Inanna is currently swathed in un-sexy, badass plain chain links.
The scale of the game is somewhat epic. Fighting more than one monster at a time is almost always dangerous, no matter how powerful you are, many monsters are downright huge, and both combats and environments are frequently precarious. The scale of the levels is huge, and they developers specifically worked on making levels with large differences of vertical height that you can see. The result is surprisingly immersive, and often visually impressive.
Equipment sticks with you a long time. Upgrading is often expensive, and differences of equipment are often differences of type rather than quality. Aside from occasional named pieces (which you will often forgo in exchange for your current weapon), you don't start with a longsword and then find another longsword that's simply better than the one you have. There are few merchants or smiths. They will sell you equipment, but it's a matter of availability - it's not qualitatively better or worse than the occasional drops from enemies (who tend to drop equipment that they personally wear, so their equipment value is predicated on what kind of enemy they actually are).
Dark Souls is 'hard'. I put it in quotes because the game can be technically difficult and bosses are especially tough, but the term 'Nintendo hard' is pretty applicable. Leveling up makes things easier, but problems are usually approachable as puzzles or patterns to recognize and solve. It's possible to lose what you've gained, but it's not that difficult to retrieve it. You will occasionally have to back track or re-do effort, but progress save points aren't unreasonably rare. Basically, yes, Dark Souls can be difficult, but it's not really that difficult.
It does remind me a little of a really old school Dungeons and Dragons game. The levels can be dangerous, there's a story but it's not constantly launched at you from every angle, it's fairly lonely - it's clear you're in a little inhabited and perilous area in a larger world, and the environment is a character. There's a depth of lore that's hidden from you, but comes out in the few characters you meet and item descriptions. Dark Souls is not a pandering game, but what it gives you is interesting and, to me, quite fun. I've spent about 55 hours on it so far - that's the difficulty speaking and the fact that the game feels very large, and I'm not given all that much direction on what I need to be doing or what all these zones on the map are for. There's a lot of exploration and doubling back, but the game is pretty enough that I rarely am bothered by it.
I might talk about it more if I feel like there's anything else to say. I unreservedly recommend it if what I said sounds attractive to you.
When I first started playing, I was messing around with character creation, and I ended up opting for a female character model this time. There really isn't anything sexualizing about the armor in Dark Souls, and I really appreciate that. A character's sex is often impossible to even determine, and Inanna is currently swathed in un-sexy, badass plain chain links.
The scale of the game is somewhat epic. Fighting more than one monster at a time is almost always dangerous, no matter how powerful you are, many monsters are downright huge, and both combats and environments are frequently precarious. The scale of the levels is huge, and they developers specifically worked on making levels with large differences of vertical height that you can see. The result is surprisingly immersive, and often visually impressive.
Equipment sticks with you a long time. Upgrading is often expensive, and differences of equipment are often differences of type rather than quality. Aside from occasional named pieces (which you will often forgo in exchange for your current weapon), you don't start with a longsword and then find another longsword that's simply better than the one you have. There are few merchants or smiths. They will sell you equipment, but it's a matter of availability - it's not qualitatively better or worse than the occasional drops from enemies (who tend to drop equipment that they personally wear, so their equipment value is predicated on what kind of enemy they actually are).
Dark Souls is 'hard'. I put it in quotes because the game can be technically difficult and bosses are especially tough, but the term 'Nintendo hard' is pretty applicable. Leveling up makes things easier, but problems are usually approachable as puzzles or patterns to recognize and solve. It's possible to lose what you've gained, but it's not that difficult to retrieve it. You will occasionally have to back track or re-do effort, but progress save points aren't unreasonably rare. Basically, yes, Dark Souls can be difficult, but it's not really that difficult.
It does remind me a little of a really old school Dungeons and Dragons game. The levels can be dangerous, there's a story but it's not constantly launched at you from every angle, it's fairly lonely - it's clear you're in a little inhabited and perilous area in a larger world, and the environment is a character. There's a depth of lore that's hidden from you, but comes out in the few characters you meet and item descriptions. Dark Souls is not a pandering game, but what it gives you is interesting and, to me, quite fun. I've spent about 55 hours on it so far - that's the difficulty speaking and the fact that the game feels very large, and I'm not given all that much direction on what I need to be doing or what all these zones on the map are for. There's a lot of exploration and doubling back, but the game is pretty enough that I rarely am bothered by it.
I might talk about it more if I feel like there's anything else to say. I unreservedly recommend it if what I said sounds attractive to you.