Dark Souls: A Review to End All Reviews =P

First of all, I have to say up front: I am a gamer. With very limited play time. I feel writing this review is the very least I can do for this GOTY material, and so I decided to spend some time on this. Forgive me if at some stage I sound like in a hurry, cos it's game time! =P

In general, most reviews I have read/watched have been giving quite high scores to Dark Souls. Nothing wrong, of course, they all raised key points and issues and scored based on them and their experiences with the game.

But I feel that in actual fact, they have not touched the heart of the game (or most of them havent). If you've noticed, they are mainly just highlighting the pros n cons that can be observed, and most likely mentioned by developers during pre-release Q&As. Add that to a few hours of interaction just to experience themselves and be able to churn out a decent review. And lastly this is definitely for sure: they have had NO CHANCE to experience the wiki pages contributed by the ardent Dark Souls fans themselves. At this very minute the wikipages are just ~20% done up...

If Demons Souls introduced the gamer to a fresh new set of features, Dark Souls has effectively introduced us to a whole new WORLD of never seen before features.


The world of Dark Souls is very believable. Every inch of grass, every ounce of soil is marked with the caring touch of the developers as you roam around the world, every bird tweet, every grass rustle.. it is purely an enigmatic experience.

Now let's try to break down this 'world of features':

The world:
The Dark Souls universe resides in a very intricate level of map design. I have not seen anything like this before. There is no HQ, like the Nexus in its predecessor, where everyone is friendly to you and no one will attack you (that is if you don't accidentally press R2 on a NPC, lol). It is purely a huge world littered with 'pitstop' to recuperate and do admin. In actual fact, the game is basically a journy of pitstop to pitstop, but not in a linear fashion. Each bonfire (pitstop) can be shared by a few neighbouring areas, such that when you think about accessing to one place/boss/merchant, you actually have to plan which route you would want to take.

There is no loading screen, everywhere is wonderfully chained up perfectly by the design and engine of this game. There is a wide variety of map types: from standard castle, forest, swamp, sewer, village, hills, etc. And many of them are laid with treasures, traps and secret passages.

AI:
If I say the enemy can riposte you, e.g. counter your attack and backstab you, will you be pleasantly surprised? I did, as I suffered my first riposte by the highly poised estoc caped knight.

Like a professional fencer, he held up his weapon up high in a defensive posture and started circling around me (imagine that!), waiting for me to strike. Not knowing, I casually tried a soft attack, hoping to bait him in, STILL WITH MY SHIELD UP (spears can attack with shield up), and I got caught. Off my spear bounced harmlessly out of his way, and he literally tripped me to the ground. By the time my character animation recovers, he was already behind, going for the damage multiplying backstab. At that moment I just let out a very very wide grin. What a beautiful game!

The enemy will catch off guard while you cast your spell, thinking he's just a sitting duck. From a raised shield spear skeleton, you can suddenly see it drop down its guard and run towards you for the strike. That experience is simply an "Oh SH*T!" moment, I tell ya!

He can even evade your counter (get this - COUNTER), dodge your spells, block your shots, and do backstabs (for very fast enemies).

The boss design is simply amazing. You get not just size, shapes, but variety of attack forms. There is normally no gay way out (shooting arrows from safe spots), and they just come out at you the second you enter the boss fog. It's face to face, but there's always a way out. As you die more, you see more, you learn their weaknesses, and you triumph. Those are very satisfying moments, and rarely provided by a game. You will realise why the gesture feature is there in the first place, to let you express your shiok moment!
(In fact, I heard one boss can negotiate with you, one of them fights you invisible. LOL.)

Overall, Dark Souls is filled with engaging NPCs with their own storylines all chained up to form a focused universe for you to reveal and appreciate.


Weapons, Armour and Magic:
There is a huge array of weapon types, and each of them provides a different offensive and defensive animations, which varies in milliseconds of precise action that result in different kinds of consequences. Only to indicate the wide variety of approaches a player can adopt during combat. Naturally, each has its own weakness and strength, and any player will be able to find a weapon he/she is comfortable to use.

The upgrading tree is deliberate and deep. Very deep. There is a network of weapons and armour upgrades
never seen before upgrades, not just fire/magic, but chaos, raw, crystal, demon, etc. For certain upgrades, only specific blacksmiths can help and they can be found at different stages of the story and map. With boss souls, special upgrading can be done, and the possibilites are just endless. Personally I feel the tendency to wait for my complete guide to arrive before I proceed any further in case I upgraded wrongly =P it takes deliberate but satisfying planning if you are such type of player :)

There is also no lack of variety in magic, miracles and pyromancy. One of the spell lets you turn into an inanimated object to hide against enemies. Another one turns you invisible. Pyromancy is interesting such that its performance does not scale with your character stats, but is dependent on the upgrading of the catalyst which he casts his spells with.

The class system is actually not strict class system, as Demons Souls players will know. It is merely a starting 'background', with starting stats, that enable players inclined towards a certain build to proceed with more ease. It is absolutely possible to allow a mix of builds, dependent on the gamer preferences.

Online:
Yes, Dark Souls do not have 4 or 6 player coop, each talking through the headset while the group trash past the entire world. That will sound easy, isn't it? =P I have to fully agree with the developer's decision to make online gaming maintain the grimness and bleakness of the world that it is. It seems to be the only fitting way. They even took out the Xbox 360's cross game chat if the gamer is playing DS, LOL.

Yes, although the world may seem very bleak and lonely even when you're playing online, but actually it is not. Everyone is somehow interweaved in each other's world, not just by the simple mechanism of Demons Souls' silhouette system, but a few more very interesting and good concepts. Take for example,
- when you rest at a bonfire, someone who's also resting at the same time will appear in a much more solid form, like you're sharing the same camp. iirc, his estus flask effect can also be shared by you.
- When someone beat the boss and rings the bell, you from another game will be able to hear his bell chime of triumph. I heard it once, and really felt happy for the guy :)

- when you leave an item on the ground, it will bait enemies in another person's world. The level of enemy depends on the rarity and cost of the item you drop.
- some of the quests require you to invading and coop
- the Gravelord pyromancer spell enables the pyromancer caster to just place a source of black phantom spawns in other people's games, until that player can find the source and eliminate it.
- Covenant system have you swear your allegiance to certain gods and bosses, and you are imbued with special gifts (or something along the line =P) When you invade, you invade players who is in opposing covenants, making engagement more meaningful. And if you ever break a covenant, be prepared to pay the price!

Let me tell you, I have never heard of any of the above online features before this game.

So basically these are what make the game, and the sum of them lay out beautifully to form a very convincing, dark, engaging and challenging title. I have nothing else to say since you guys probably know by now Dark Souls is my personal GOTY, even though I havent finished the game, LOL. Go ahead, take a discount off my views then, there's still much more left after that =P

Of course, every game has its cons. Quite honestly, as of now, there is no game breaking elements (glitches progressively fixed by dedicated developers). The only two key things are the dead body physics inherited from Demons Souls, and interestingly dropping frame rates during multiple engagements. But it's still not game breaking.

And because of this game, there is one more 'award' to present: Hidetaka Miyazaki, for being the Story Teller of The Year =) 

*Latest update: apparently, what I've covered is only ~60-70% of what this game has. The covenant system looks to make online experience much much much more fun and challenging, and once again, I take my hat off to From Software. I cannot put a grade to the world design, items and their linkages to the main story plot, the relationships between the 'factions', and so much more. There's even a 'painting world' that you can enter. The developers have really gone GREAT LENGTHS at making this world very very rich and interconnected.