So I recently acquired the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition during the Steam Summer Sale, on the basis that I have yet to hear a review about it that hasn't recommended picking it up. From what I could tell looking around the forums, it really is one of those games where everyone you talk to will have a different story and anecdotes of getting literally pounded into the pavement. I wondered for a while if it was the kind of game I should bother reviewing; for starters, it's notoriously ginormous (a quality that, while generally attractive in games, makes it a bit difficult to get through in a week to review. Secondly, everyone already knows that it's good, and reviewing it now would be akin to trying to review Half-Life in the sense that it would be a colossal waste of time. At the end of the day, I decided that I probably should review it given that it was the only game I actually got around to playing this week that I haven't already reviewed, and I didn't want to just do a rant for the second week in a row.
I started off playing Dark Souls with only a minimal amount of knowledge about the actual combat: I'd seen the Zero Punctuation review, which described it as the kind of system where "dodge rolling always works", and I'd watched a let's play of DS3 that was able to confirm that much. I rolled a Pyromancer with the Skeleton Key as my special gift, because none of the other classes seemed to have decent ranged attacks in a game where most enemies are melee-focused, and the other gifts seemed like they wouldn't be much use. After this, I was given a cut-scene that filled me in on the plot so far: the world was apparently ruled by dragons, until 4 beings somehow got their hands on 'Lord Souls', which granted them the supernatural powers necessary to overthrow their dragon overlords (with the help of another dragon that betrayed its own people). Somehow this resulted in the world being trapped in a cycle of ages of Fire and ages of Dark. The end of these ages is heralded by the dead rising from their graves to enjoy the consequent fireworks, which is where the player comes in. As an undead 'Hollow', I was dropped into a locked cell in an asylum with half a sword, because that's apparently what they do with undead people around here.
I was able to successfully open the cell door with my Skeleton Key, before turning around and seeing the big glowing orb that represented the key I was supposed to use. Feeling a bit guilty for not examining the room, I proceeded down the dimly lit corridor ahead of me for all of 30 seconds before turning the brightness up so I could actually see where I was going. After learning most of the basic controls (except for 'Jump', which I still haven't learned after 3 hours of playing), I set about killing as many things as I could in an effort to get an axe, which I apparently had class proficiency in. After a while I managed to acquire one, and set off to do whatever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be doing here. The next half an hour was a crash-course in how this $5/~500 hour investment was to operate. One of the things that I had to learn the hard way very fast was that getting hit was bad; and whilst that may generally go without saying, allow me to clarify.
Getting hit with a shield is fine, unless the game rolls a d20 and your shield gets knocked away. If you get hit without your shield, you get stun-locked, and have two options: either mash 'B' to dodge-roll away as soon as you stop getting cut up like the juiciest roast in the butcher's, or just Obi-Wan Kenobi it, put your sword up and wait to get smacked back to the last bonfire. That last one becomes more of a recommended strategy when you come across one of the hollow soldiers who don't do a bunch of damage per swing, but manage to get one of their long BS combos off and the damage adds up. It's even worse considering that the hit-boxes feel like they're plotting against me; several bosses needed to only have their attack hit somewhere in the same postcode to do a frankly ungodly amount of damage, one boss was able to glitch through a wall after trapping me down a laneway that I couldn't attack it from or escape to the regular battlefield from, and once I managed to get hit by a firebomb through what was clearly a rather thick concrete wall.
The second thing I learned was that the Steam page really wasn't kidding about a controller being recommended; I can't imagine trying to play with a mouse and keyboard. Because it got ported to PC, it doesn't actually change the button tutorials, and the target-lock would be an absolute pain without a controller, and that's not even taking into account how bulky the left hand/right hand weapons would be, with two attacks each and the standard mouse (that is, the tool generally used for the attack button) only containing two buttons of the necessary four. Thankfully, this all meant that I was able to justify my recent acquisition of an Xbox One controller for my PC, so that wasn't so much a big deal. What was a big deal was, given that heavy attack is often a luxury one cannot afford in Dark Souls combat given that speed seems to be valued significantly higher than damage, the right bumper starts to press rather painfully into the palm when you're gripping onto it for dear life for two hours straight.
This leads me to my third point rather nicely: It's a game that relies on assumed knowledge. I normally say in my pieces that "this is one game where there's officially no shame in looking up the wiki", but here the wiki is basically mandatory reading because the game seems to be allergic to directly stating anything. It works well with the whole 'subtle storytelling' thing, less so when you're trying to figure out how to use the Estus Flask without having to first navigate three menus, or use the jump at all (as it turned out, the jump requires you to sprint and then tap the dodge button). The other part of assumed knowledge is that it's best played in long stretches, because every time you pick it up there will inevitably be several very embarrassing deaths at the hands of low-tier enemies as you get warmed up again. So, that all being said, back to anecdotes.
I eventually managed to get to the first boss, for which my strategy seemed to consist entirely of "jump-attack him at the start, and keep mashing RB until they start to wind up their attacks at which point you dodge roll like your life depends on it." After this, I was given a brief cut-scene depicting a big-ass bird taking me from the tutorial area to the first big area. From here, I went up some steps, got into a brief melee with several skeleton soldiers, before getting firebombed from above by a skeleton I didn't see and dodge-rolling off the cliff to avoid it. Attempt #2: killed the skeleton, dodge-rolled toward the mountain instead of the gaping maw of the abyss, went up to the reverse-fireman skeleton to kill him, and proceeded to get beaten into a bloody, stun-locked mess by him and two of his mates. Okay, lesson learned: don't get into fights with large groups of enemies at once. By attempt #25, I've got it down to a fine art. Up the stairs, lure out the two skeletons on the balcony, deal with them, up the stairs, wait so that the fire-bomb misses, sprint up to the skeleton and give him two swift knees to the bollocks, shield up in preparation of his rowdy mates, deal with them, back down to deal with the knight, proceed.
I get to the next are after about an hour of playing, and proceed to get mauled to death by my first (but certainly not last) skeleton stun-lock combo. At this point, I'm getting kind of overwhelmed with it all, so I play some Overwatch instead for a bit before turning it off. Don't judge me, I just want to get my $75 worth. Fast forward to the next day, I decide to give it another shot. After a brief warm-up period, I manage to get past the stun-lock skeletons and to the next bonfire. From here, I ran across a bridge that was being overlooked by a full barbershop quartet of reverse-firemen skeletons, into a room small enough that fighting the three skeletons inside started to feel like a chore after the 30th attempt.
From there, I went exploring: I found a room with a chest in it guarded by a skeleton (which thankfully wasn't a mimic), and a balcony which I promptly dodge-rolled off of, onto another balcony. This balcony turned out be guarded by a black knight that was easily twice as big as myself armed with a sword that was easily as long as my character was tall. At this point, after taking a moment to avert from pissing myself in terror, I proceeded to run like hell away from there. Unfortunately, that black knight must've been going through some stuff at home and was all too eager to chase me to the ends of the Earth in order to take out his frustrations on me. It didn't help that in my efforts to escape him, I had to run past a squad of skeletons hanging out on a different balcony, who were also eager to join in on this game of deadly Tag that I'd inadvertently started. Needless to say, I did not make it out of that fight alive.
However, I was able to at least get far away enough from any enemy spawns that I could safely collect my souls, so I went over to where I died and was immediately savaged by the aforementioned squad of skeletons. After about a solid minute of staring at the "YOU DIED" screen with my lower jaw trying to reunite with the floor, I respawned and managed to make it past that squad with minimal damage. I looked up at where I was: a giant tower that could only really be described as 'phallic' loomed over me. I entered, and was faced with two spiral staircases: one going up and one going down. I knew that typically, Up is the direction that the rest of the game is in so I decided to give downstairs a shot. That, in retrospect, may have been a mistake. I was greeted by a figure located somewhere inside of frankly ludicrously sized suit of armor, wielding a club easily as big as himself. Upon realising that mistakes had been made, I attempted to leg it in the opposite direction, hoping that he might not be as committed to my erasure from the planet as the black knight had been. As it turned out, this club that he was wielding had an insanely large margin of error for him to aim with, and could rather easily one-shot my wimpy pyromancer ass at that point. After a brief trip to the wiki, I discovered that this was Havel the Rock, and that one of the better strategies for defeating him was to run up the stairs and hurl firebombs at him from a distance.
I decided to give it a shot, given that I'd been picking up a bunch of firebombs that I had no use for (given that pyromancy was something that I could more reliably target and could bind to a bumper, as opposed to 'X'). Upon my return to the phallic tower, I discovered that firebombs were even more useless than I had first anticipated, because aiming them was like trying to herd cats, except the cats were lions who mauled me at the slightest provocation. Once again, he smacked me back to the last bonfire and I decided to leave him for now. Since then, I've also learned that one of the more feasible strategies involves simply running up the stairs, jumping off, and repeating until the fall damage kills him, and he also drops Havel's Ring (which is apparently really useful) so I'll probably go back for him after I've successfully gotten the Undead Parish bell.
So, I managed to get back there again with minimal damage, and this time took the stairs leading up. Got some titanite for the first time in the game, which I'm given to understand is the kind if thing that's actually useful for weapon upgrading. Then I reached the top. I stepped through the fog in the door and was faced with a long-ish section of empty, slightly crumbling bridge. After I finished admiring the view, I took a few steps forward to discover that the tower behind me was home to two skeleton archers. I had no ranged attacks that would reach them, and I couldn't see any way up, so I decided to just keep sprinting and hoped that they wouldn't be able to lead their shots enough. Then I reached the halfway point of the bridge, and Satan jumped up in front of me. Satan also had a very large health bar that took up the entirety of the bottom of the screen, so I quickly surmised that this was an actual boss fight as opposed to one regular dude that had just finished training for an Iron Man marathon. At was at this point that Dad walked up, intent on talking. So after several minutes of trying (and failing) to both fight Satan and listen to Dad telling me that one of his backup hard-drives had crashed, I finally became one with the pavement.
After a quick trip to the wiki to learn that a) there was a ladder to reach the skeletons and b) Satan was weak to lightning and getting jump-attacked, I was ready to take him on again. After a few more tries consisting of me using Gold-Pine Resin to charge my weapon with lightning and then jump-attacking Satan from the tower where the skeletons were shooting me from, he was dead and I could safely cross the other side of the bridge. It was here that I met Solaire, a knight who was looking for the Sun that I could apparently summon for help in boss-fights. I saw a bridge with a bunch of enemies on it that looked like it was the only way to proceed, so I started to run along it when a flipping Dragon showed up and mowed everyone down with fire. I somehow survived, and was left staring at the charred remains of around 10 enemies. Then the timer ran out, and I had to stop playing for the day.
So, this has been Dark Souls Journal #1. One quick piece of housekeeping before I go: Updates are now on Wednesday/Thursday so that I have the full weekend to play whatever game I'm reviewing and don't have to make judgments based on most but not all of a game. That, and the fact that I've managed to muck up my update schedule so much that it's drifted forwards by nearly half the week. As per usual, anyone with a game recommendation, rant topic, or just wants to say 'Hi!' can do so at pressxtoreview@gmail.com or in the comments section below.
-Harry
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