Sounds like fun. (I do apologize if this is too long. I got started typing and kind of couldn't stop.)
Dark Souls
I'll go ahead and state right off the bat I love this game to death. What started as kind of an uncertain purchase very quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. And for good reason, Dark Souls offers a very interesting and unique game play experience I haven't encountered in other RPG's before or since. This is a game that has the rare trait of being subtle, and I do mean that. It's very easy and likely you'll miss 90% of the intricacies of this game at first and maybe even on a second playthrough. But enough gushing, let me explain myself a bit.
Let's start off nice and easy: Gameplay. Gameplay in Dark Souls is simple, adopting a slow but tight control scheme that allows you all the basics of any RPG. You have your fast attack, your slow but strong attack, your dodge, your interact button, your item button, your block button, all the basic moves of any 3D RPG. Though while other games like say Dynasty Warriors or Kingdom Hearts uses all these to make you the single most over-powered being to ever exist ever Dark Souls opts for the more realistic approach. For all intents and purposes your character controls like a regular human, not counting the stuff he fights of course. It's not lightning fast and places a lot more emphasis on reading your enemies and reacting strategically rather than jumping in headfirst. The controls are tight enough that when something bad happens to you it's not the game's fault, it's your fault. I can tell you from personal experience almost every enemy in the game can be handled if you pay attention, be careful, and most importantly, be patient. Dark Souls is very methodical, if you try to go through things at your own fast pace you'll get killed hundreds of times before the first boss.
The game also features several different meters. There's the standard health meter, durability for your equipment is important to keep note of. There's a humanity counter in the corner (Humanity's an item, just role with it). And most importantly, a stamina bar. Stamina is exactly what it sounds like, every time you do something other than casually run it uses stamina. Stamina management is a crucial part of this game otherwise you'll be too weak to block an attack and that'll be the end of that.
The game also has a unique player interaction system: The Summoning system. Essentially you can summon NPC's or Players to help you with whatever you need in the world if they want to be summoned. This can make a lot of the most challenging parts of the game a breeze if you're lucky. But be careful, because there's also PvP. PvP in Dark Souls is pretty good though it's got a lot of flaws. I've run into many hacked players on Xbox who maxed their stats, plenty of cheap players, and even on a couple occasion "Twinks". Whom are players who've beat the game low-level so they can use end-game equipment at their low level to slaughter actual low-levels in PvP. Lot of flaws but also a lot of fun.
Another interesting gameplay mechanic is the jumping. There isn't a traditional jump button in Dark Souls. What you have is a run button, and should you release it while running you'll do a jump. I'll get more into why this is interesting when I mention the environments. But for now let's talk sound.
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I say Sound instead of music for a reason as Sound plays a pretty big role in the game whether or not you realize it. I've already said you have to be careful in Dark Souls and not run into danger head first and listening will often be as rewarding as looking before you leap. Some enemies have sounds they make or sound cues during attacks that'll help prepare you so you won't be surprised. And should an enemy ever be following you and you don't know it (It'll happen) sound will be your only savior from a backstab.
Then there's the music; now, you can be forgiven if you honestly don't realize that there's music in Dark Souls at all. The music in most areas is very low and subtle, more atmospheric than traditional video game music. And when you're in a situation where loud music is playing there's a good chance you aren't paying any mind to it because a boss is smashing your face in. The game's soundtrack does a great job of blending in seamlessly into the world, helping immerse the player into whatever setting they're in at that moment, and the tense tracks of the different bosses help give you the suspense and tension that makes this game so addictive. Special mention goes to the Final Boss theme though, which perfectly captures (In my opinion) The entire feeling of the game in a very simple, but sad song.
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So the music is all good but what about the actual environments you visit? Well glad to say these are pretty great too. Dark Souls does something fairly unique in that all the areas of the game are connected. You go up into the Undead Burg and ascend to Sen's Fortress or descend into the Lower Undead Burg and proceed to the Sewers and ultimately to Blighttown. A feature I very much enjoyed was how whenever you progressed to a new area you could open a shortcut that connected it to a previous area (Often times Firelink Shrine) and provides easy access for future visits. Another subtler touch I loved was how if you ever just stopped to look around you can often see other areas of the game from where you were. Go to the top of the Undead Parish Church and look down to see all the Undead Burg you crossed to reach there. Or maybe peer deep, down the cliffs to see the Darkroot Basin or turn your head to see Sen's Fortress or even peer up and see Anor Londo looming overhead. It helps make the world feel very grand and connected, help but the lack of loading times I might add (Seriously, none unless you teleport).
The actual designs of the environments are something nice to behold to. This game isn't any Crysis or super-high graphic ultra-mega game but it more than gets the job done. The environments look great and look like stuff pulled straight out of fantasy...Which I'm pretty sure is the point. I'll just link this picture of Anor Londo to demonstrate what I mean when I say the settings look incredible.
http://static.squarespace.com/static/500...ondo_2.jpg
I want to stress that's not a cutscene, that's all In-Game.
Something I've seen unique to the Soul's Franchise though is the non-linear platforming. What I mean by that is generally games have taught us most of the environments are just glorified backdrops to the very clearly defined platforms or paths laid out for us but not in Dark Souls. There are areas all over the game only accessible but using the jump to your advantage and the places are designed so that if you aren't used to thinking like this then you'll just skip right over them. Even five playthroughs later I find new areas I can jump to and new items to obtain.
I can't just mention the good without the bad though and there are some less-than spectacular areas depending on how you want to look at it. Lost Izalith for example is a great sight to behold and all, but all the lava gives a hard-to-look-at orange sheen to everything and makes it hard to see at times. Then there's Blighttown where everything is laggy and there's a putrid green hue to everything that makes it hard to see. Though thankfully these bad cases are far and few between.
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But what's environments and music without baddies? Let's talk enemies. Thankfully the enemies of Dark Souls got as much design work as the levels. You still have the standards, skeletons, zombie-knights, actual knights, minotaurs, Dragons, the works. Though the unique designs of the game are a true sight to behold, being strong and unique in design.
One problem though, the AI in Dark Souls is kind of dumb. And by that I mean it is very easily exploitable. The AI in Dark Souls goes about as far as hit the thing closest to it, and if you're far away either close the distance or use a ranged attack. If you ever use the game's summon feature to summon another player you can exploit just about any enemy with ease. Or hell, you can just exploit them yourself. Most enemies tend to leave themselves wide open for back stabs or get stuck in a loop by a player manipulating them (Sadly the Final Boss is probably one of the most guilty of this). Though should you take on the enemies "Fairly" without exploiting the AI then you're in for the challenge the game is known for.
...Most of the time that challenge is fair but the game can be kind of a dick at times. Specifically three bosses come to mind. The Capra Demon is the first, unless you know what's coming this boss will kill you at least once. After that no problem. Then there's the other two...The Four Kings and Bed of Chaos. The Four Kings boss battle has always been a personal trouble spot but many players agree it's a boss where unless you tank damage you're going to have a hard time. And Bed of Chaos...No one likes Bed of Chaos, not even the developers. Let's leave it at that shall we? Moving on!
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And now characters...This is actually kind of hard to talk about without spoiling much. At a glance characters in Dark Souls are incredibly simple and even may come off as bland. This is intentional. It's all about subtext here, you got to pay attention to the details if you want to know all there is about these characters. And when you do that you view all of them in a totally different light. A character who seems like a sociopathic murderer may in-fact turn out to be an unknowing victim of a cruel Goddess' temptations. A man who seems good and holy may in fact be a cowards out for his own. Nothing is as it seems in Lordran.
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And that brings me to the Story. I saved this for last because honestly I consider this to be the best element of Dark Souls. From Software have a unique method of storytelling I've never seen anywhere else and when I found out about it it elevated this game from good to great. There are almost no cutscenes in Dark Souls, you get one in the beginning that pretty much tells you the plot of the game. There are some bosses who have intro cutscenes. And you have ending cutscenes. That's it. And no expositional dialogue either. The best you'll have on a blind run of Dark Souls is a vague idea of what you're doing most of the time. Again, this is intentional.
It's meant to make you dig deeper into the world and discover the body of lore held within. And if you do...Ho-Boy. The game can be appreciated at a surface value, but if you decide to look deeper you'll find out a lot of things about everything in the game you never would have imagined. I won't spoil it but let me put it like this. There isn't a single thing in this game, hostile or not, that doesn't have some tragic element to them. There are certain bosses I gleefully fought at first but now I cringe because I know. This is a very sad game, a very very sad game. Not sad in the sense you'll break down and cry, just...sad. I couldn't explain it and do the game justice.
Of course not everyone is going to investigate item descriptions or stop to think about what they're doing or look up Lore videos (Which is the fastest method) so this factor is kind of moot. It's a huge plus for the game but it's easy to miss.
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That's actually a very good way to summarize a lot of this game. It is enjoyable on a surface level, but should you look part it it becomes something else entirely. I was scared at first when I got this game two years ago because I thought it would be too hard or an unfair kind of hard, thankfully that's not the case. It's difficult to be sure but this game is very well designed and I highly recommend it.
So there's my review of Dark Souls. I apologize for the length I kind of really love this game.
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