Beaten on: 3/24/22
Hours Played: 28
Rating: 7.5

I think by now everyone knows what Dark Souls is. FromSoftware made a cult-ish classic in Demon Souls and created an entire genre with Dark Souls.

I’ve played Dark Souls 1 a decent amount, but never gotten into it. Until this playthrough, I’d never made it into Sen’s Fortress. All told, Steam shows I have 92 hours in game, and that isn’t far off from my in-game-time, but this playthrough my trusty claymore and I beat the game and it was actually a pretty smooth experience.

I started as a theif, because I love the master key and then it was a pretty typical Dark Souls 1 playthrough from there, so there isn’t a ton to talk about story wise, but I will mention a few high and low points for me as I played the game.

I love the level design in FromSoft games. One of my favorite things about any game is when there’s a lot of environmental storytelling and foreshadowing. Things like being able to see ambushes before they happen, like in undead burg. Or being able to see part of the centipede demon before you enter the boss area.

The platforming in the game is abysmal. It’s wild to me that it took them until their 6th Souls game to introduce jumping (not counting Sekiro). The amount of times I died trying to traverse weird terrain is just silly; it wasn’t ever challenging, it was just frustrating. In the crystal caverns especially, holy shit. The main path wasn’t horrible, it was pretty straight forward, follow the sparkly bits, but there’s a side area behind the tunnel with the 3 loot bugs and I think I died there 6 times. Yes, they give you the little marbles to drop, but I didn’t have enough to make it across the whole bridge confidently. And what if you had uses some earlier in the cavern??? Yes, you can buy them at a vendor, but without knowing the caverns were coming, why would you waste your souls on them? I guess one redeeming quality is that the platforming isn’t usually required for the main game, but it’s a mostly open world, I want to explore.

The bosses were actually way easier than I was expecting. I died way more getting to and from the bonfire to the boss than I did at the bosses (which was also super frustrating by the way). I’m sure I was leveled more than I needed to be most of the time, but for the most part, even though I was relatively low hp, the bosses didn’t take me more than a couple tries, and I actually got about half of them on the first try.

The hardest bosses for me were actually Centipede Demon and Bed of Chaos. Centipede Demon because the area you can fight in without running across lava is so small. And beating them was just unsatisfying, because it ended up being a loop of overhead smash, dodge roll, swing, repeat. And Bed of Chaos was hard just because I kept getting knocked into the pit when you have to run across a set path. Eventually I just put my shield up and tanked the hits, but what fun is that?

I feel like I’m saying a lot of negative things despite really enjoying my time with the game, but it’s such a generally positive experience that the lows really stand out.

There are only a couple more points I want to touch on. The first is combat. The combat in Dark Souls isn’t anything earth shattering, but I love how many different playstyles there are just by having a variety of weapons. Someone running around with a dagger is going to have a way different experience than someone with a giant axe. The way you play the game with each is just so functionally different. Using the claymore, I felt was a pretty good balance between the melee styles: Decent range, not horribly slow, a slash and a thrust attack, and the ability to still use a shield. I know it’s one of the best weapons in the game, but it’s awesome just how balanced it feels.

The last thing I wanted to mention is the ending of the game. I wasn’t going into the game expecting any kind of profound story, but the last level of the game is so boring and anti-climactic. The path is super linear and the enemies are all the same, basically. Yes, they have different weapons, but they all move slow and you can literally just circle strafe them and backstab. Like, they could have done so much more with the environment or the enemies to make it interesting. And then when you actually get to Gwynn, it’s the most boring fight. Most of the Dark Souls bosses, there’s an easy way to beat them, and then there’s all the other ways and you can do whatever you want, but if you’re not doing the dev intended strat you’re probably going to have a rough time. With Gwynn, half of his attacks don’t even hit because of the terrain. I was dodging until I realized if he was on any kind of terrain higher than me I could just stand there and wail on him. My first attempt at the fight I almost beat him just by dodge rolling and only lost because I mistimed the grab. I ended up taking off my armor, putting on the hornet ring and parrying 5 attacks in a row to kill him. It was just silly. Again, I know I was probably over-leveled, but that’s just ridiculous for a final boss.

Oh, one final gripe (I know I said 2 more points, but oh well). FromSoft, please just care about PC players. Holy shit. The Prepare to Die edition was released in 2011 and the PC options are almost non-existent. Yayyy, I can toggle anti-aliasing and full-screen, just what I’ve always wanted in a game! Seriously, for probably a huge share of their market, they just didn’t care.

Overall, though, the game was a fun 30 hours. I enjoyed learning patterns for enemies, getting into and out of tough situations either by skill or luck, the fantastic level designs, and some of the bosses. They have a hard time walking the line between unfair/frustrating and challenging a lot of the time, but the game spawned an entire genre for a reason. I know a lot of people didn’t like Dark Souls 2, but after finally beating 1 I’m excited to see how they tried to change the games. They’re definitely not something I’ll play back-to-back (I play games for fun, not stress), but I’m definitely planning to play through the whole series now (Bloodborne on PC when?)