Ryan McKenzie finds Dark Souls a mixed bag of fun, enjoyment, frustration and rage
> Dark Souls
From: Namco Bandai
For: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Dark Souls is a mixed bag of fun, enjoyment, frustration and rage.
It is hard - really hard. The game's motto is "Prepare to die", and indeed you die, a lot.
Killing most enemies earns you souls. These souls are used in two ways: levelling up your character, and as currency in shops/vendors.
When you die, any souls you might have are "dropped", so when you respawn you have to go and recover your souls from where you last died.
Die before you recover them, and they are lost forever. Very frustrating.
Dark Souls has a very steep learning curve, because the developers have chosen to give the player very little in the way of directions or tutorials.
The best you get is in the form of messages written on the ground. These messages can be written by yourself and other players.
The story takes a back seat to the gameplay. What I did pick up is that your character, created from a variety of classes, is in a mythological world full of demons, ghouls and large rats, and they all want you dead.
The controls generally work fine.
Two weapons/magic can be mapped to left and right on the d-pad, which works well in combat. There are no one-button skills, only one-button magic. You have to manually do skill moves instead of a simple press of a button.
A stamina meter is normally reserved for skills and magic, but in Dark Souls it is used for everything from normal moves to skills, to running and jumping.
Mashing away on your buttons will quickly deplete your meter and leave you open to attack. Choosing when to attack and defend is crucial in defeating your enemy.
The game auto-saves often, so it is unlikely you will lose any progress you have made to your character, but in-game progress is saved through bonfires. Here you can replenish your health and magic potions for free, but it comes at a very big price in terms of gameplay, as all your enemies respawn. This makes it very hard to progress from point A to point B.
Many times I have come close to the next bonfire with quite a few souls to my name only to die, then respawn at the previous bonfire, only then to die again without recovering my dropped souls. This process is repeated too many times for my liking.
There are no objectives in the game, with the aim being to run around and explore the world.
That sounds great; the problem is enemies don't have ranks above their heads like most RPG games. Exploring a new area only to stumble across much stronger enemies can happen without intention.
No-one in their right mind would take on a level 20 enemy with a level 6 character - but in Dark Souls, you often have no choice but to fight.
Boss fights are so over-the-top that they will kill you in two or three hits if you don't figure out their attack pattern. This is the game being constructively hard, which is fine because it becomes a challenge, not a chore.
If you have plenty of patience, then give Dark Souls a crack. But be warned: you may end up in a fit of rage.
