Introduction
Dark Souls is a franchise known for being hard, after playing them myself I personally disagree and think that it is simply challenging and misunderstood by people who have not played it (except bed of chaos, that shit just plain sucks.) Playing through these games has made them easily land among some of my favourite games of all time, and they’ve been some of the most fun I’ve had with games for a long while (even if it may not seem like it from what I write). I thought after shitting on the franchise for so long, I at least owe it some positive words on the internet now that I have actually played them all myself. For full disclosure, some of this will be repeated later on, but I did not play the DLC of 2 or 3, when pyromancy builds in 1 and 3, and swordmaster into hexxer in DS2 so by all means take my opinions with a grain of salt, this is about my experience playing the games, and not an absolute universal truth about them, they are all great games in their own right, and all should be played, in my opinion, to the end.
My First Experience
I was around 20 days from turning 12 when the first dark
souls game was released, and about 3 years away from owning a platform that
could competently run it, but a lot of my friends owned consoles that could
play it, and their parents being irresponsible and not seeing the massive red
18 on the box bought a few of my friends the game, and I saw quite a few
complaints here and there about how hard it was, that was the first thing that
made me think “I never want to touch that game franchise with a 10 foot pole.”
Some time went on, more games getting released, hearing my friends talk about
how hard they were but beating them, in a way made me feel incompetent, I
wanted to stick to games like pokemon, and kingdom hearts, but here my friends
were, beating these games that they were making out to be impossible, I was
still getting used to playing FPS games on a PC that could barely run
Minecraft. Eventually, I just developed this mentality of “why would I play a
game that is near impossible, that will just make me mad, clearly a bad game,
games are meant to be fun.” I wasn’t far off with that last part; games are meant
to be fun what I failed to see, is that fun is subjective, some people like a
challenge, eventually I would come to like that challenge too, just not for
several years, which I would spend insisting they punish you for even daring to
turn the game on.
My First Time(s) Playing
It was 2021, I had recently started watching Hbomberguy on
youtube, and came across a video explaining the brilliance of Dark Souls 2,
that video alone made me want to fight my pre-existing bias and play them, due
to my living situation at the time, I couldn’t set up my PC to play with a
proper controller, all I had was my switch I had to pay in handheld mode, not
the most fun way to play, that was in fact one of the most off-putting things
to me, it felt like someone had handed me the bias confirmation I craved for
years without needing to put the effort in, but thanks to some wonderful
friends who call me out on my bullshit when I really need it (they will be
mentioned in the special thanks section at the end) they insisted I was
wrong, so a few months later, my pc all set up, I see dark souls on sale, in
fact they all were, it was the steam summer sale, so I bought the remaster of
1, scholar of the first sin, and 3 with all it’s DLC, hoping it would be a
better experience, it was about the same, because I went about it the same way,
the wrong way. I then proceeded to call my friends wrong for even enjoying the
games because, for those of you who know me, I can be a bit of a pissbaby when
it comes to games, and believe my opinion is objective fact, when it is not,
and not only that, is oftentimes incredibly malleable. Little did I know, that
second time had left a little brain parasite growing in me, every now and then
I would go back and rewatch the Hbomberguy video, and eventually he made one
about speedrunning where he spoke about dark souls speedruns which made it
grow, and surrounded by much better friends, who just had a raw passion for the
games made it fester, and finally, in 2022, it arrived, Elden ring, seeing my
friends play that, and have fun, and talk about it, it had taken over my brain
and wanted out, I wanted to play dark souls and I wanted to enjoy
it.
Feeding the parasite
I explained the situation to my friends, and realised, Dark
Souls is an intense RPG, and I had learned quite a bit about dungeons and
dragons, which depending on your DM, can also be an intense RPG, but I only
learned as much as I did, because of friends, so I realised, if I wanted to
finally play these games that stared me down every time I opened steam, right
at the top of my “Play Next” queue, I would need friends to hold my hand and
swing me down the street like a toddler… metaphorically speaking… so I
recruited them, that is why they are getting a special thanks, they could have
responded with just “get good” but instead, as they usually are, they responded
with “yeah sure, but don’t force yourself if you don’t like them, it’s totally
fine” so we got to work, I had heard pyromancer was an easy build for DS1 and
its mainly what I went for in these games (except in DS2) so they sat down,
looked at what I had, told me the do’s and do not’s, if information I had was
wrong, or at least not advised for first timers, and away I went, playing dark
souls 1, it took me 4 hours to beat the first boss, but eventually I did it,
many deaths, lots of frustration, but I did it, I did that, I had moral support
but the servers were down so no summoning friends to help, (they were down for
all 3 games for maintenance whilst I played them) and the accomplishment I felt
was enough to keep me trucking on.
Dark Souls 1 (Praise the sun)
After beating the first boss, I kept going, got stuck for a
while on the gargoyles, but every time I got stuck, my friends were there offering
advice, and what I learned was the game wasn’t unforgiving, it was intentional.
Every action you made had to be intended, you had to think and plan, but
this leads to a very trial and error style of gameplay. It also meant that when
you were going the wrong way, they game didn’t pop up with an invisible wall,
or sign saying wrong way, if you wanted to try going that way, and had the
skill to, you could, but if not, you would die, repeatedly, till you took the
hint. It was a refreshing game to only be limited by skill and in some rare
cases plot progression, D&D being by far my favourite RPG due to its
openness, it was hard to capture that in video games, Disco Elysium I felt
captured the RP elements of it immaculately, and I believe that in terms of gameplay,
Dark souls is amazing and captured the openness of thoughtful combat I had
experienced and enjoyed so much in D&D. My main struggle was the first 2
bosses but after that the game opened up, it felt like I knew where to go most
of the time and what to do, with the occasional discord message to friends
asking what I needed to do next and what I should go for next, and very
swiftly, like a switch had been flipped, my opinions changed. Dark souls is
certainly challenging, and a lot of things it doesn’t outright tell you, but
that shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing, it creates a more convincing world, and
yes its frustrating to die tens even hundreds of times to the same boss, or
enemy, or weird unclear level design because the servers were offline so there
weren’t messages telling you to walk up a weird part of the level and through a
window. Figuring that out, is part of the fun, it makes you feel like this
character walking through an apocalyptic civilisation trying to save it with
just a sword, and that is where the appeal comes from.
Dark Souls 2
This one was my second favourite, It had a lot of
interesting ideas, some of which I liked but they did get incredibly tiring
after a while, and also I did spend about 6 hours on one run I ended up
restarting because I had ruined the build that badly it was a borderline
softlock. Where dark souls 1 had felt like it started to ease up after the
first boss or so, and really open up, dark souls 2 really kept the pressure on
me the whole way through, it was nice, but I was very inconsistent with
parrying the whole way throughout, and some areas were very unclear as to where
I had to go. After around halfway I was really starting to get burnt out
enemies did start to feel very samey, areas started to feel bland, and although
difficulty wise it remained consistent, another way to put it was stagnant, and
I just started to feel like I wanted it to be over, and I started to sprint to
the finish line, I still at the time of writing this haven’t finished the DLC,
I don’t know when or If I will go back, I do wish that they had more time to
flesh out those cool new ideas and expand upon them in a sequel, instead a lot
of fans of the previous game weren’t fond of them, so 3 would end up being
closer to 1 in terms of gameplay than 2. All in all, this was my second
favourite in terms of overall experience, but the fact it tried something, was
willing to experiment, and leaned into a lot of what made the first one great,
I doubt we will see something like that again within the franchise, if we ever
get another dark souls that is.
Sekiro – Shadows Die Twice
This isn’t a dark souls game so is excluded from my ranking,
I did play it immediately after 2, came nowhere close to finishing it, not a
fan personally aside from the movement mechanics, ultimately it was too
challenging for me, I just felt it was worth mentioning that it is still a well
made game, just not for me, so if you like the more skill based aspects of dark
souls, highly recommend picking this one up if you haven’t yet.
Dark Souls 3
Of the souls games, this was by far, my least favourite. I’m
told it is considered “the easy one” but that did not make me like it more,
there were a few irritating bosses but a large amount of them just melted, it
felt like the challenge was more in not getting hit by the gauntlet of enemies
between the last bonfire and the boss than the boss itself, and a lot of the
areas just felt bland and repetitive, more so than in two. Part of my feelings
on this were most likely due to burnout from playing all these games in a 2-3
week period. Full disclosure I didn’t pay attention to any of the lore in any
of the games, aside from things my friends told me, but this one felt like a
rehash of the first game, going to firelink, anor londo, a few recurring
characters and concepts, heck the final boss is even just a guy with a fire
sword, I did enjoy bits here and there, but ultimately, I doubt I’ll be playing
it again, or returning for the DLC of this one. It was by no means a bad game,
but it was far from my favourite, especially in the souls franchise.
Conclusion
I learned a lot, that my opinions don’t matter, but also, at
times neither do other peoples, you can be arguing something is hard or easy,
bad or good, something that is seemingly a binary, yet ultimately, you can both
be wrong. Dark souls is, a challenging, yet fun and rewarding franchise, and I
urge anybody who thinks they are unfair or punishing to give them a try, and
the whole “get good” mentality although is partially true, I feel is largely
untrue, I’m an idiot and still think I suck at them, yet I managed to beat
them, and although I wasn’t the biggest fan of all of them, I am now a fan of
the franchise and they are among my favourite games of all time, and I cant
wait to play the other 3 games made in this style by fromsoftware.
Special Thanks
I’d like to thank my friends Phil and Travis AKA "Scholar of the Javelin" for helping me
with this, without them I wouldn’t be sitting here writing something for the first
time in 2 years, wouldn’t have played these games to completion and found some
new favourites, and there is so much more to thank them for that isn’t dark
souls related because they are honestly just amazing friends, so thank you
guys.
