Dark Souls

[J4MES OX4D 10,035]

Been playing the remastered version since the lockdown and it really is such an incredible game. I didn't get round to playing it back in the day but the popularity of the series over the years has been evident so I decided to give it a shot rather just watch and read about it and it's just been a fascinating experience throughout. 

 

I really like the minimalistic narrative approach and the lack of hand-holding as you are placed into a mysterious world and have to fend for yourself knowing you have to 'ring two bells'. There are no checkpoints, waypoints of saves on the fly - the risk/reward nature of the gameplay can be punishing but equally rewarding. You kill, collect souls and use this to level up at Bonfires you light but in doing so you respawn every enemy. Sometimes you may hold a high number of souls but aim to push onwards at the risk of dying or you may want to head back to the nearest bonfire and 'bank' your souls only to see everyone come back alive. It never feels tiring or repetitive and if you die, you can still retrieve your souls as long as you don't die again in doing so. 

 

The level and world design is some of the most varied and unique I have ever seen with endless secrets and mystery. Learning each area, how many enemies there are and simply the layout of the lands is just so satisfying. The controls may seem clunky at first and the attacks are brutal but once you adapt and improve your character build things become much better and you 'git gud'! The bosses are also incredible spectacles and defeating them feels so good especially if it's a difficult fight. You can essentially move around the world and fight anything but doing at the right time, at the right level and with the best attributes is the best way and earning that is part of the incredible experience.

 

This is definitely one of the best RPG's I have ever played and I can't wait to go through Dark Souls II and 3 next. The game also seems to have substantial replayability as well as coop and PVP. 

[phil bottle 9,761]

Nice, I played Dark Souls on Xbox 360. Man it was tough and I got invaded by other players a fair few times...so I may have quit it in rage[emoji848][emoji38]

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[Spacedeck 920]

You reminded me I needed to reinstall the Remastered edition, so thanks!  These games are incredibly difficult to get right.  You can be wiped clean before you even know what hit you, and the bosses are such dicks unless you have really learned the patterns.

[J4MES OX4D 10,035]

7 hours ago, Spacedeck said:

You reminded me I needed to reinstall the Remastered edition, so thanks!  These games are incredibly difficult to get right.  You can be wiped clean before you even know what hit you, and the bosses are such dicks unless you have really learned the patterns.

I accidentally walked into a boss fight which consisted of two dogs and the boss himself in an area the size of a bathroom. I was hit the second I walked in and lost 75% of my heath and before I could get my bearings due to the camera not readjusting, I was dead😂

 

Very tough game but incredibly rewarding and once you level up and improve your build, you can become very powerful and then go back to sort out all the enemies that took you out in one hit before! 

[Venom 105]

Just finished an all boss run of Dark Souls remastered on PlayStation. This is my 3rd fromsoft game after er and bb. Overall it has been a fun game and I am looking forward to playing the next one in line ds2.

 

First of all the bosses. Compared to the later the games the bosses in the base game are very simple gameplay wise. Most of them can be done quite easily without ever having to learn specific attackers and dodges/punishes.
Despite this they where still a lot of fun because the fights are a lot more varied in the theme and design than later games. Almost all the boss look really cool and have an interesting gimmick.

My favourite of the bosses is the 4 kings. It is one of the coolest boss arenas I have ever played and the gameplay is relatively interesting. It can be difficult if you don’t play aggressively.

Quelag was another one I liked as the design was cool and it was a boss you had to learn some moves for. 

The hardest bosses in the game are Gargoyles which is a difficult early game dps check. The main problem with this boss is it’s a poorly balanced duo fight. The intended method seems to be to melt the first gargoyle. If this isn’t achieved then this is way to big a difficulty spike for the game. The attacks constantly overlap and you have the same zoning issues with the fire breath as you do in er and the poison breath. 
Next up is Nito, he is hard because you can get wrecked by his skeletons and the boss run is really long and really  hard to do without a lot of damage. Overall a great boss and probably my second favourite out of the lords. 
Fittingly Gwyn is also a very hard fight. Mainly because there is no good time to heal and he does a ton of damage. This fight is more interesting than a lot as learning his attacks is beneficial in knowing when to heal. Whilst punishing him is still very doable just on sight.

 

The hardest base game boss is by far Ornstein and Smough. This is a duo fight done horribly. I have seen a lot of complaints about the duo fights in later games that people where saying where terrible in comparison to this one. This fight is one of the worst examples of a multiple bosses fight I have played so far. There are 2 main ways you can play this fight. If you are playing passively that resorts to running around the arena keeping both bosses in front of you. You wait until Ornstein  lunges or dashes far enough for you to get a hit in. Then you hope smough isn’t charging and you repeat. This is extremely boring to play. You can often wait minutes in-between openings. Further more Ornstein dash is extremely glitchy and can get stuck on stuff for random amounts of time. This can be close to unavoidable due to its glitches. Smough can also make openings impossible by spamming his charge attack that is extremely tight to dodge if not impossible in some circumstances. The other method of play is aggressively. This is much less boring but it is incredibly unbalanced. You can never see what attacks Ornstein is doing through smough so you have to guess what he is doing. Not only that but your punish windows are still governed by rng and you can still be waiting large periods of time inbetween punish windows just now it’s increadibly intense. 
The only fun method I found of playing phase 1 of this fight was by attacking both enemy’s And playing aggressively. Playing like this is much harder than either other method but you don’t have to rely on rng to get punish windows. You can almost constantly be attacking. This makes the fight much harder and more enjoyable. Unfortunately when you kill 1 the other regains all there health so this is pointless to do. 
 

The final thing on the bosses in this game is that they are very rng based. Almost all the bosses can be trivialised with good rng on there moves. For gargoyles if the first doesn't start flying when the second arrives it’s extremely easy. If he does fly the fight is very hard. If OandS spam jumó attacks or separate they are easy. If they spam charge attacks they are impossible. If quelagg combos lava breath into aoes it is much harder. If she sticks to melee she is trivial. Lots of online discussion about this game seems to not realise this. To the point I think people don’t realise they didn’t just click with a bosses moves and that’s why they went from sucking to a completion. They just got bad rng then good rng. Rng determines the difficulty of almost all ds1 boss fights by a order of magnitude.

 

This was a bit of rant on the bosses but mechanically they aren’t offensive and they are very cool visually and conceptually. 

[Venom 105]

Next up is the levels. 
Holy shit this was a step up in difficulty compared to Er and Bb. These levels where so much harder especially early game. This is complemented with some of the best level and world design in any game I have played. Both visually and mechanically the levels and world in this game is great. (At least for the good parts). Undead berg/Parish has an insane amount of interconnectivity. There are always new shortcuts to open up. Early on a lot of the difficulty comes from having tough enemy’s in tiny spaces. This was boring as a concept for difficulty but a lot of these encounters are optional challenges so it’s not to bad. When descending through the depth or into blightown the game is terrifying in a way that is captured In Er or Bb. It feels like a maze full of creatures that can easily end your run. Any progress on findings a bonfire or shortcut or just the boss comes along with a huge amount of relief. Sens fortress is an amazing level with all the traps and routes to do. The combination of the view of Anor londo is also realy cool. From this point the gameplay of the areas start to deteriorate. The visuals and variety remain amazing throughout the game but the looping back nature of the levels stops. With the exception of new londo which may be one of my favourite areas. 

[Venom 105]

Finally the dlc.

The levels in the dlc are okay. The abyss looks cool and the enemy’s are decent. But compared to the base game the levels in the dlc are a bit better than some of the late game stuff but much worse than the early-mid game stuff.

Where the dlc shines is with the bosses. The dlc bosses are much closer to the style of bosses I have come to know from the other games. Where different moves require different responses and you can improve by properly learning the bosses. For the most part the dlc bosses are harder than anything base game. Except whilst the hard base game bosses are hard for bad reasons the dlc bosses are hard for good reasons. The sanctuary guardian is a cool introduction to this and is pretty unique as a boss. Artorias is just a relay good well made duel. Learning you can interrupt his buff had a nice risk reward balance to it. The process to actually fight kalameet is very cool and he is the coolest dragon fight I’ve played. Manus is in my option by far the hardest boss in the dlc. He has a lot of health, he does a lot of damage, he is very aggressive and lots of his moves have very different responses. He is the closest of the dlc bosses to being unfair but once you learn the tells you can be pretty safe. His most unfair attack being his ramapage (grab style) attack. This isn’t to bad as you can easily dodge most of the damage and either way it does deal to much and gives you room to heal after. 

[Tar-Eruntalion 511]

12 hours ago, Venom said:

Next up is the levels. 
Holy shit this was a step up in difficulty compared to Er and Bb. These levels where so much harder especially early game. This is complemented with some of the best level and world design in any game I have played. Both visually and mechanically the levels and world in this game is great. (At least for the good parts). Undead berg/Parish has an insane amount of interconnectivity. There are always new shortcuts to open up. Early on a lot of the difficulty comes from having tough enemy’s in tiny spaces. This was boring as a concept for difficulty but a lot of these encounters are optional challenges so it’s not to bad. When descending through the depth or into blightown the game is terrifying in a way that is captured In Er or Bb. It feels like a maze full of creatures that can easily end your run. Any progress on findings a bonfire or shortcut or just the boss comes along with a huge amount of relief. Sens fortress is an amazing level with all the traps and routes to do. The combination of the view of Anor londo is also realy cool. From this point the gameplay of the areas start to deteriorate. The visuals and variety remain amazing throughout the game but the looping back nature of the levels stops. With the exception of new londo which may be one of my favourite areas. 

even though i haven't finished the game yet i have to agree that the levels etc pre lordvessel are great, after it they become much more linear and there isn't that much fear of going the wrong way or getting lost and ending up in the catacombs early for example

[Antpool84 1,109]

I definitely need to try these games. When i first got my ps4 I got Bloodborne with it but only lasted 15 minutes before having to eject the disc and put it back in its case for good lol. I've got more patience with games now so feel that it would be a perfect time to try Elden Ring or Bloodborne again. Really good write up about the games too @Venom , it's cool to read about your progress through them 😊