Developer: From Software
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Release Date: Out Now!!!Running through
You slay a hollow. Slowly but surely, you hold your shield to your chest, clinging for your life, and take a corner. Around that corner, a Black Knight greets you, with a spear to the stomach. You fall to your knees, your body losing all feeling, and gradually, your vision fades to black. This is Dark Souls. You will find this situation happening to you, time after time, and you will love every second of it.
Dark souls is the “spiritual successor” to Demon’s Souls. Code named project dark, Dark Souls has a lot of hype to live up to, due to the success of the sleeper hit Demon’s Souls. It’s very hard to make a game better, when it is already near perfect. From Software made numerous changes. Almost all are for the good, which is great. There are still a couple issues with the online, but when it works it is one of the most unique experiences you will ever experience.
First off, you don’t level up with experience. You gain souls for every monster you kill. You use these souls as currency, and as experience points persay. You buy your attributes with souls. Every level you buy, the cost for the next level goes up. Late in the game, you can expect to see yourself needing almost a million souls just to gain one attribute point. This may seem like it would become annoying very quick, but you will be surprised at how the game makes it fun, and entertaining.
This game is hard. VERY HARD. Sometimes unfairly hard. However, when you finally defeat and enemy, or a area that you have been dying to, you get a unmatched feeling of accomplishment. This is what makes Dark Souls such a great experience.
Expect to see this a lot. A whole lot.
The visuals are breathtaking. Some views in the game, are absolutely jaw dropping. The colors are great, and the textures look great. The game is dark and gloomy, but that is intended, and is used to great effect. It’s not all praise however, as there are certain spots that make the game chug very slowly. (I’m looking at you Blighttown.) This can sometimes help you, but is mostly a annoyance, and is apparent on all versions of the game. The music and sound effects, along with voice acting, is top notch. You can’t say much more about it.
This is a long game. A VERY long game. You will spend at least 50 hours your first play through. The sheer amount of weapons and armor you can use is massive. Every single weapon is different. Every piece of armor has a strength and a weakness. You can use miracles, pyromancy, and sorcery. This allows for numerous character builds. You can literally make any type of character you want. Do you want a warrior that tears through everything with a sword? You can do that. Want a battlemage? You can do that too. The sheer amount of things you can do with your character is limitless.
As far as what enemies there are in this game, you name it, it’s in here. Undead, zombies, golems, trees, plants, wolves, mushrooms, and much more. All of these enemies bring a different challenge to the table, and are a blast to figure out it’s weakness. Some fights you can cut off a certain part of the enemy, and you receive a item for doing it. That’s awesome!
Some of these fights are crazy intense. You will be tested like never before.
Online is a really interesting aspect to this game. It improves upon Demon’s Souls inventive and refreshing take on online play. You still need to be “alive” to summon fellow players into your world, but now you also have the choice of summoning NPC players to help you out in certain boss fights. Also introduced are covenants. Almost every covenant has perks that helps define your online experience to what you want. Do you want to be a savior to others? A hero? Or would you rather be a villain, making other players hate your very existence? With these covenants, you can learn new spells, and bring a whole world of pain to your foes.
Overall, Dark Souls is a complete package. While not as ground breaking as Demon’s Souls was, this is a worthy sequel, and was definitely one of the best games of 2011. You owe it to yourself to buy this game, and play it. I don’t usually praise a game this much, but this title definitely deserve it.
To end this review. GIANTS WON THE SUPERBOWL!
Score: 10 Giant helmets/10
