29th December 2011, 7:13 PM
Incredibly so, brutally so. It's the kind of game that really is not forgiving in the slightest, except, perhaps, in that you don't lose any items you gained since the last time you visited a checkpoint. That's the only bone that developers throw you, since they're more than content to throw you headfirst into battles where the margin of error is razor-thin and victory will require you to die at least 5 or 6 times.
Having said that, it's also a really, REALLY good game. The combat is deliberate and requires carefully-honed skills, even in battles against regular enemies. The game world is a dark fantasy nightmare, drawing on a kind of dark depressing that Tim Burton only WISHES his cartoonish visions could match. Massive castles and broken ruins dot this landscape, existing on a scale that is almost unimaginable. And the world itself is populate by undead souls damned to forever wander in this blighted existence, to say nothing of the nightmarish abominations that have oozed up from the deepest corners of Hell.
There are no bustling towns, no safe havens to take break from the despair of this world, only determined souls that have carved out a tiny niche for themselves and who will help you along your way...for a price. And that price is in souls, souls pulled from the corpses of slain enemies.
The game is all open from the start, barring some areas closed off behind locked doors. You're not led along by helpful markers or convenient quests. You being with a single directive: to find and ring two bells. One bell is up high and the other is in the depths of the earth. That's all the information you're given. So it's up to you to find your way, to determine whether you're going the right way or not. But it's easy enough to tell which is the right way and which is different: by counting how many times you die. It's actually quite easy to stumble upon a area populated by enemies that are far beyond your level and they'll dispatch you in single hit, but even the right way is far from safe. You'll die in Dark Souls, a lot, and the only way you'll get better is by continuing again and again.
Dark Souls is a top-tier Japanese RPG and one of the top RPGs of the past decade.
Having said that, it's also a really, REALLY good game. The combat is deliberate and requires carefully-honed skills, even in battles against regular enemies. The game world is a dark fantasy nightmare, drawing on a kind of dark depressing that Tim Burton only WISHES his cartoonish visions could match. Massive castles and broken ruins dot this landscape, existing on a scale that is almost unimaginable. And the world itself is populate by undead souls damned to forever wander in this blighted existence, to say nothing of the nightmarish abominations that have oozed up from the deepest corners of Hell.
There are no bustling towns, no safe havens to take break from the despair of this world, only determined souls that have carved out a tiny niche for themselves and who will help you along your way...for a price. And that price is in souls, souls pulled from the corpses of slain enemies.
The game is all open from the start, barring some areas closed off behind locked doors. You're not led along by helpful markers or convenient quests. You being with a single directive: to find and ring two bells. One bell is up high and the other is in the depths of the earth. That's all the information you're given. So it's up to you to find your way, to determine whether you're going the right way or not. But it's easy enough to tell which is the right way and which is different: by counting how many times you die. It's actually quite easy to stumble upon a area populated by enemies that are far beyond your level and they'll dispatch you in single hit, but even the right way is far from safe. You'll die in Dark Souls, a lot, and the only way you'll get better is by continuing again and again.
Dark Souls is a top-tier Japanese RPG and one of the top RPGs of the past decade.