(Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/12/2021)
[Image from igdb.com]
Dark Souls
Developer: FromSoftware
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Genre(s): Action RPG, Soulslike
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3
Release Date: September 22, 2011
My first experience with Dark Souls was definitely a very trying one. Before playing it, I was no stranger to games that were notorious for their high difficulty levels. Hell, this wasn't even my first FromSoft game, as I had just finished Bloodborne a month before playing through this game. However, the first Dark Souls still proved to be very formidable. Almost every moment of this game felt like an endurance test. Whether it was because of the shrewd level design, the cryptic progression, or the strict disciplinary methods to dying, the game always had a habit of presenting different obstacles to hurdle over. It was almost as if the game was intentionally throwing curveballs at me even when I got the slightest bit comfortable with it to keep me at a level of tension and frustration. Despite all of this, the first Dark Souls is still my favorite Souls game by a large margin and is one of my favorite games of all time. Even with all of the aspects of this game that made me want to chuck the controller at the TV, I never lost the will to overcome the seemingly impossible odds. Any other game of this difficulty would've made me question my choice to play video games as a hobby. However, there is something special about Dark Souls.
Dark Souls is not for everyone. Not everyone is willing to face a game that feels like the developers are putting someone through an experimental project to test the limits of a man's patience and what he will put up with from a video game. For those willing to be battered and bruised, we know that there is more to Dark Souls than just the difficulty. It's not as if every Dark Souls fan is a masochist (although if you are, we completely understand the appeal). Dark Souls is like the video game equivalent of a Tarkovsky film. It requires an extraordinary amount of patience to get through, but it certainly pays off in the end. Like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Dark Souls has so much to offer in its esoteric presentation. Underneath the surface of a difficult video game, Dark Souls is decadently atmospheric, broodingly melancholic, poignantly symbolic, and emotionally striking. Dark Souls is a beautiful work of art.
Dark Souls is also admittedly pretty fucking hard. Most games will ease you into more difficult territory as you progress through the game, but the beginning of Dark Souls is just as brutal as the end. The main thing that makes Dark Souls so difficult is its lack of facilitation when guiding the player through the game. This comes as early as the tutorial level when the first boss suddenly drops down on you, and you aren't even equipped with a weapon. You'll notice that if you try to fight it with your fists that the damage that you'll do to it amounts to practically nothing, and you'll probably get trounced by the boss in a matter of seconds. You then realize that perhaps what you're supposed to do to overcome this obstacle isn't clearly displayed, and you must take another route. You'll realize that you find weapons, armor, and shields to equip along with health items called Estus Flasks in an area directly left of the boss. Once you acquire all of those things, you can even take a giant chunk out of the boss upon reentry as if to bombastically signify that you have a clear advantage over him now. Why doesn't the game give you all of these things initially to tackle the boss? Because that wouldn't feel gratifying enough once you finally overcome the odds. One of the biggest appeals of Dark Souls is the utmost satisfaction you get after conquering anything in this game. Nothing in this game is handed to you, and you must figure out how to do absolutely everything on your own. To uphold this sense of individual achievement, FromSoft made it so you can't even pause the game to look up what to do online. It seems almost cruel, but because of these tactics, no other game series has given me the same sense of achievement. The infamous YOU DIED screen may get discouraging after seeing it several times, but the one attempt that doesn't follow those two words and a loading screen makes you feel so accomplished. It makes you feel confident no matter how many times it takes you to do it.
Every single level and boss in this game is incredibly unpredictable, and you have to get through them without the slightest margin of error. Dark Souls relishes in being a "trial and error" difficulty type of game. The levels will constantly give you new obstacles to overcome like poison pools, darkness, mismatched jumps that make you leverage fall damage, and boobytraps that I'd be surprised if any first-time player would foresee coming. I certainly didn't. Not to mention that every type of enemy in this game is a ruthless, bloodthirsty savage that will hack at your corpse even after they've done you in. Each level is packed with a myriad of different enemy types, and all of these enemies, more often than not, will work as a team to bring you down. You cannot underestimate even the most unassuming enemies because FromSoft knew that you would and have made these seemingly timid creatures the most catastrophic of curveballs. One does not forget the first time they encounter the Basilisks in the Depths, the goofy-looking black frogs with big, red balloon eyes. Once they ambushed me by spurting their purple mist, I was cursed indefinitely, which meant my health was permanently halved until I found a cure. It was then that I knew not to fuck around with anything in this game and became alarmed after any Basilisk sighting.
The bosses are the pinnacle of the "trial and error" type of difficulty. None of the bosses have obvious weak spots, and finding out how to conquer them requires patience and attentiveness. Most of them are gigantic and can take away almost all of your health bar with a single blow. A lot of them will probably take so many attempts that you will start to forget what the rest of the game was like, but that sense of satisfaction upon beating them is something that hasn't been topped by any other game. It's even more satisfying when you devise your own methods to take down each boss. No one told me that the Gaping Dragon doesn't have eyes, so I could take advantage of it when it steamrolls itself in one direction. No one told me that the Capra Demon is most vulnerable after he takes a dive off of the staircase. No one told me to focus solely on Ornstein to make the second half of the fight easier. I figured out my own way to defeat every boss, and my own tactics have worked for me since. Someone might scoff at my methods claiming that something else worked for them, but that's the wonderful thing about combat in Dark Souls; whatever works for you is fine as long as it garners the same positive results.
Since Dark Souls is an action RPG, it naturally comes with the standard RPG trope of offering different classes to play. These different classes do not determine your experience for the rest of the game, as each offers simple base stats for first-time players. Your unique Dark Souls experience is rather determined by aspects like your armor, weapons, magic, and fighting tactics. Whether or not you will use a shield is also a vital aspect to your Dark Souls play-style. While resting at a bonfire, you'll use the souls you retrieve from defeating enemies to level up different attributes. Leveling up health and endurance is a must for any player, but other attributes like strength, dexterity, faith, attunement, etc. will contribute to your own individual play style. My own personal play style that I've become comfortable with is a dexterity build with a shield in one hand and a Uchigitana in the other hand. It's not a guilt-free build, as I had to kill a merchant to get it, but the Uchigitana has become my Dark Souls crutch. The weapon does a ton of damage, and I can combine it with a shield to alternate blocking attacks with dodge rolling. I also love feeling like I have a free range and fluidity of movement because heavy armor feels so awkward, especially when dodge rolling. I never use magic because it requires sacrificing attributes in other areas. Magic can also only be used sparsely, but there are plenty of powerful spells that can carry a player through the game. My build may seem inadequate to some people as their build seems uncomfortable to me, but as I've stated before, there is no right answer when it comes to playing Dark Souls. It's all a matter of what works for you. Some people bulldoze through the game using a broken sword and wearing nothing but a loin cloth.
The fluidity in Dark Souls doesn't stop at the gameplay. The land of Lordran is a sublime world filled with grassy plains, castles, forests, swamps, abandoned settlements, etc. It may have given me a few headaches trying to traverse it, but I'll be damned if Lordran isn't my absolute favorite world in any video game. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has expressed numerous times that the focal point of Dark Souls is the world it takes place in, and I wholeheartedly believe it. The way that Lordran is designed is absolutely brilliant. The design philosophy in crafting Lordran is a very unique approach to something of a 3D Metroidvania. Typically, Metroidvanias are 2D games, and the sub-genre has seldom been shifted to a 3D space, but it has been done before. Metroid Prime is an example of this. Unlike Metroid Prime, Dark Souls doesn't have the same limitations in exploring the space. Many routes in Metroid Prime are still blocked, and you have to acquire an ability or weapon to proceed. This is naturally par for the course in the Metroidvania sub-genre, so it makes sense that Metroid Prime would adopt this. Dark Souls did away with the Metroidvania constraints and made the boundaries between sub-areas of Lordran practically seamless.
I wouldn't go as far as to say that Dark Souls is an open-world game as there are still constraints on where you can go. However, there are plenty of instances where you can wander off the beaten path. This starts as early as your first arrival to the Firelink Shrine, the cozy middle-ground between the other sections of Lordran. I, like everyone else, had no idea where to go, so I ventured off to a certain place with hoards of skeletons that hacked me to bits. I then realized after over 20 times trying to overcome the skeleton hoards to look around the Firelink Shrine. Over yonder, I found enemies with flesh on their bones and responded a little more to my sword hits. I then realized that I was supposed to go in this direction and go up to the Undead Burg. Of course, there weren't any walls keeping me from going deeper into the Catacombs. If I really wanted to, I could've endured the pain and gone through the entire level even before the Undead Burg. Why anyone would WANT to do that is another thing to ponder, but I absolutely love the fact that you can. In fact, you can go to several different places deviating from the standard route. You can fight several bosses like Ceaseless Discharge and Sif way before intended, you can immediately pick up some rare items in New Londo Ruins, and you can even ring the bell of awakening in Quelaag's Domain before ringing the one in Undead Parish. I don't recommend doing this at all if you're a first-time player, but doing so prevents the game from getting stale upon future playthroughs.
It's almost as if there isn't a concrete route through Lordran and the players collectively formulated the easiest route to take through trial and error. It's almost as if Miyazaki created this world long before he thought about implementing it into a video game. It's masterfully crafted, but it is very unconventional in terms of level design. It felt like the way you progressed through the game was circumstantial. Miyazaki had his world planned out, and all video game conventions be damned. If it's a tad askew in execution, then so be it. It might also explain why playing Dark Souls can feel so irregular at times. You'll find yourself on cliff-sides so narrow that you'll be hugging the wall, wondering if you're exploiting the graphical space you have to make it across. You'll find yourself jumping across broken bridges and onto platforms like you're Mario except for the fact that the jumping mechanic in this game is so rigid that using it never feels like the natural conclusion to progression. The bonfires, the checkpoints in this game where you can refill your estus and level up, would naturally pop up fairly often whenever you came across an unexplored area or just defeated a boss in any other game. Of course, Dark Souls is different. You'd be lucky to come across a bonfire on accident, as several of them are off the beaten path. There are also around only one or two bonfires per area, and some areas don't even have any. The scarcity of bonfires always makes preserving your well-earned souls borderline panic-inducing, especially if you don't know where they are. I don't think this was meant to stress the player out. Rather, I think it's another way of making the world seem organic. The bonfires are mostly found in tight, cozy crevices off the beaten path. This makes it seem like these bonfires are a natural part of the world, like other warriors have nestled here after a long journey far before you came along.
For a world as impressively organized as Lordran, it doesn't even grace us with the ability to see it all on a map. Having a map as a reference point would have been nice at some points, like navigating through the Depths or the Tomb of the Giants, but I think the game benefits from not having one. I rely too much on video game maps when they are available because I don't have a lot of confidence that I know where I am going, and I dread getting lost. Because Dark Souls doesn't have a map, I now know the areas like the back of my hand, and the world feels more immersive. Not having a map also doesn't sacrifice the spectacle of Lordran's world design. One of my absolute favorite aspects of any game is the attention to detail when mapping out the game's landscape, and Dark Souls accomplishes this in great strides. I remember at one point in the Darkroot Garden, I discovered a tower across from the pond with the hydra (and ran right the fuck past Havel. Don't worry, I came back for him). At the top of the tower, I unlocked a door that led me right back to the Undead Burg. It blew my mind that after all that progress, I was only around the corner from where I started. While traversing the darkness of Blighttown, you see the Undead Burg off to the side. The glowing lava of the Demon Ruins is visible from the Tomb of the Giants, AND you can even make out some of the familiar architecture. It feels as if I could map out the world of Lordran through my journey. The attention to detail is that impressive.
Video game tropes presented in Dark Souls never seem shoehorned in for accessibility. Dark Souls is mapped in such a deliberate fashion that it begs you to acclimate yourself to its standards rather than submitting itself to the normal conventions of other games. Like every other aspect of this game, Dark's Soul's approach to storytelling is also rather unusual. At the time, it seemed like video game developers were more readily focused on storytelling than actual gameplay. This was the era in gaming in which the industry figured that the best way to compete with the medium of film was to emulate it. Needless to say, Dark Souls decided not to do the same. Instead of having a story with a traditional progression in the narrative, Dark Souls tells its story through the player's progression through the game's world and interacting with its inhabitants. The only contextual information you are given about the game's world is presented with a beginning cutscene. It explains that Dark Souls' world is a mythical place called Lordran.
At the beginning of Lordran, dragons roamed the land, but their reign as the prime beings of the land was quickly usurped by Lord Gwyn, a human demigod with extraordinary powers and an army of knights. With the assistance of three other lords, they overthrew the dragons, and Gwyn was free to create his own powerful reign of Lordran thanks to The First Flame. After years of prosperity, The First Flame started dissipating and is now on its last legs. If the flame goes out completely, it will usher in a new age known as the Age of Dark, which will bring darkness and terror to Lordran (or at least darkness and terror compared to what is already happening). This weaker flame brands Lordran's denizens with a Darksign, which puts them in a limbo-like existence between life and death. If they die, they don't cease to exist, but it makes them more hollow and more inhumane in body, mind, and soul. Keep in mind that this is only the background lore presented as early as the first cut-scene. The rest of the game gives little to no context to the weight of your journey.
You play as the "chosen undead", the being that has been said to one day rekindle the first flame and bring light back to Lordran. However, it's not as if you are Link from The Legend of Zelda destined to stop a corrupting force from plunging the world into darkness. The world here is already hopelessly engulfed in darkness, and the real heroes have all gone mad or abandoned Lordran altogether. The darksign that brands you is not like the Triforce on Link's hand, and it does not elevate your importance. The fact that every other being in Dark Souls has one just makes you all the more insignificant. You are not chosen by destiny to rekindle the flame; rather, you are the only undead soldier willing to do it. You're like a glorified janitor assigned to mop up the remnants of the once mighty kingdom of Lordran and put them out of their misery. The dreary atmosphere that permeates Dark Souls is caused by the fact that any positive change you'll make to Lordran is weighed down by the inexorable death and decay. You're not bringing Lordran back to a time of light and prosperity, but rather prolonging the inevitable to make what is already hopelessly bad not get any worse, or at least for a while. It gives you a sense of borderline nihilism that is felt by every NPC you come across. They all have this awkward laugh after every line of dialogue which either signifies that they are all going mad or they are merely coping with their inevitable demise. Your existence and everyone else's is fleeting, and there is only so much you can do about it. There is no such thing as an incredibly hopeful outcome to your goal. There is only a spectrum of despair.
A common assessment is that this game is divided into two halves. This isn't technically true, but I can see why everyone says this. After Anor Londo, the objectives and progression feel completely different from what you've been doing. The first half is also perceived as the monumentally better half, and I'd have to agree. The first half of the game gives you a great sense of contextual evidence of the history of Lordran as you journey from the pristine heavens to the dingy bowels and everywhere in between. It showcases a poignant dichotomy between the areas of Lordran: life and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, beauty and ugliness, the bourgeois and the impoverished, etc. Wherever you are in this game, whether on either side of the coin, it is all a part of Lordran. It shows me that the reign of Gwyn, which is perceived as Lordran's prime of prosperity and growth, was only pleasant and prosperous for the chosen few. All of Lordran may have depreciated over time, but I think that certain parts of Lordran were always destitute. It shows that even in times of hope, there were still ugly sides to Gwyn and his reign that make you question your goal to rekindle his flame.
The first bell of awakening is located in the Undead Parish, which is accessed through climbing up the Undead Burg. The two areas are both designed like medieval-esque castles with rooms filled with wooden chairs and barrels. Undead soldiers are attacking you from every angle with spears, broken swords, and firebombs, but every individual enemy is easy to defeat if they don't ambush you. The defenders of the first bell are a pair of gargoyles that will introduce you to a "gank boss" in which you tackle more than one enemy with its own health bar simultaneously. It's a formidable fight and is often the first real challenge block that people struggle with. I know I sure did. It's a mix of having to pay attention to more than one enemy matched with their fire damage and not accidentally falling off the roof. Conceptually, the Undead Burg and Undead Parish are the middle ground between the two great juxtaposing areas of Lordran. The landscape feels depleted, but sunlight shines on both areas, and you can even hear birds chirping. It's a domestic area to ease the player into what will come in the future.
After ringing the first bell, you find a key that unlocks a door that will take you into the Lower Undead Burg. Immediately, there is no sunlight and no melodious chirping. This is where the descent into hell starts to take place. After defeating the Capra Demon, it unlocks the door that takes you to the Depths, a rank, labyrinthine sewer filled with rats of all sizes and the dreaded aforementioned basilisks. The only light in this place is the torches which give it a creepy, dank aura. The guardian of this place is the Gaping Dragon, an abomination with nothing but a gigantic mouth of over 200 teeth scaling its entire body. Those unfortunate enough to reside here drop raw meat down a convoluted series of tubes to the big area with the Gaping Dragon. They don't do this because they want to serve it, but because the sewer monster's hunger is insatiable, and they might be the next meal.
What could be more perilous than the Depths? Well, it gets much worse as you descend into a little place called Blighttown. Blighttown is infamous for being the bane of every player's existence. It's essentially the ghetto of Lordran, a shanty town built on a poisonous swamp that moved right past the crack epidemic and immediately started on bath salts. Every aspect of this level is frantic, including the darkness, infinitely spawning blood flies, the rickety, unstable structures you have to walk on, and the poisonous swamp that you CANNOT avoid being poisoned by. The worst aspect is the shoddy frame rate that pops up often. Blighttown was absolute hell the first time I played this game that almost made me give up. Note to inexperienced players: please, for the love of god, pick the master key as your initial item, so you only have to endure a fraction of this cesspool.
The guardian of the second bell is Chaos Witch Quelaag, and what better example to support my juxtaposition claim than her? She's a beautiful woman with smooth milk-white skin and long, silken brown hair covering her soft, bountiful bosom. The catch is that the rest of her body is a hideous, fire-spurting spider demon. The cut-scene that introduces her is even supposed to catch you off guard, making you think it's just another grotesque being in an area with nothing but. This all leads to an area past the second bell that is quite literally fire and brimstone and filled with demons. Your descent to Hell has been completed for now, but you will only know Hell if you can contextualize Heaven.
Once the two bells have been rung, you return to the Firelink Shrine and find a monstrously ugly serpent creature where shallow water used to be. This is Kingseeker Frampt, a Primordial Serpent with an unexpectedly polite demeanor and a voice that sounds like Patrick Stewart. He tells you that you must now go to Anor Londo to acquire the lordvessel. To get there, you must go back to the now unlocked gate behind Andre the blacksmith in the Undead Parish and endure Sen's Fortress. Sen's Fortress kicked my ass the first time I played this game. It's a dark obstacle course of booby traps ranging from pendulous axes, giant boulders, and switches that shoot arrows at you if stepped on. It doesn't help that this area is dark as the pits. Out of every level in the game, Sen's Fortress is the most brilliant in terms of individual design. It's the only area that can prove its worth as an individual level separated from the collective nature of the rest of the world without breaking that immersion. It's also hard as nails and signifies to me the onslaught of obstacles one has to endure to achieve anything great in life. In this case, what you achieve by conquering it is a flight to Anor Londo.
Anor Londo is the area directly on top of Sen's Fortress that the gods once resided in and looked down upon its denizens. It functions like the capital of Lordran in this way and the first time you encounter this level feels so well deserved. It's a great contrast to the dirty depths you had to traverse to get here. The architecture is immaculate and goes on for miles. The tangerine-colored glow of the sun is beautiful as it gleams off the architecture. The enemies are towering knights with gold-plated armor and gargantuan-sized shields. At the center of Anor Londo are Ornstein and Smough, two loyal knights to Gwyn and the guardians of the lordvessel. They are my favorite boss fight of the game as fighting both of them at the same time is never overwhelming, and both of them complement each other magnificently. Once you defeat them, you take an elevator up to see Gwyevere, a goddess that is also the daughter of Gwyn. Her presence is angelic and feels like a reward for a long journey. After going through hell, you have finally reached the apex of heaven. It seems like this is the only place that hasn't been sickened by the miasma of decay like in the areas below, but as it turns out, this is all a mirage. Anor Londo is actually perpetually dark as all gods jumped ship a long time ago, including Gwynevere. Her facade has been kept by her brother Gwyndolin who has managed the upkeep of Anor Londo since the time it started to fall. It shows the weight of the overall depression of the world in that a mighty place like this could succumb to the same level of despair.
Your journey through Lordran in the first half of Dark Souls runs the gamut of contrasting areas. It brings the question of what this world was like when the first flame was still growing strong. Was the entire kingdom as bountiful as Anor Londo and merely suffered greatly from the dwindling flame, or was it always wild and chaotic? Was Anor Londo ever great? The game's lack of a concrete narrative never elucidates these questions but can be supported if you explore the world inside a painting in Anor Londo. The Painted World of Ariamas is an optional area in the game, but one that I implore you to visit. It's a snowy land with architecture reminiscent of the Undead Burg. It also has an unsettling, creepy aura. Did you notice that there weren't any familiar enemies in Anor Londo? No dragons? No rats? No undead soldiers? Well, they are all here with some undead soldiers having poisonous growths protruding from their faces. It's an uncanny nightmare that is ironically so close to land that is so immaculate. That's just it. The Painted World puts everything into context. It's where all of the untouchables of Lordran are sent to when they get too close to the magnificent Anor Londo. Everywhere else is so far away from Anor Londo that it can't seep in, so Gwyn just lets it decay even during the height of his power. The most powerful presence in the Painted World is Crossbreed Priscilla, a demigod dragon crossbreed who is the daughter of Gwyn. She is condemned to the Painted World because she is seen as an impure abomination like the rest of the supposed filth of the land. It shows that before the flame was depleted, Anor Londo was the only great place about Lordran, and everywhere else was swept under the rug. Whether this was because Gwyn wanted to keep the illusion of Anor Londo being grand or because he's a tyrant, either theory could be supported. It certainly makes you question the morality of your journey and whether or not you want to renew something that is ultimately just a means to restore Gwyn's ego. It's almost as if the dwindling of the flame is a form of karmic retribution. Fortunately, you don't have to be the successor to Gwyn. If you give the lordvessel to another Primordial Serpent named Kaathe, you can bring about the Age of Dark. Frampt will get pissed and leave for the rest of the game, but there is no real dilemma to this decision. The game will support you either way.
...And then there's the second half of the game. I don't feel the overall game dips in quality to the point where you should stop playing like some people, but it does feel more underwhelming. Your objective is to gather the souls of the four main entities that helped Gwyn take his throne to power. In this, you venture to four different areas blocked from going to that stem off of familiar places. This and Sen's Fortress are the only times when the Metroidvania restrictions are implemented in the game's world, but it doesn't matter anymore. Every area you explore ultimately results in a dead end. Even the optional area of Ash Lake, breathtaking as it is, is just a dead end. Instead of backtracking, the game allows you to finally warp between bonfires. It's certainly convenient, but I feel it cheapens the impact of traversing the world a bit. Most of the areas in the second half are as painstakingly brutal as Blighttown and even feel a bit unfinished. It's not terrible, but compared to the first half, the progression is kind of flat-lines. The good news is that you can pick the order in which you tackle the Lord Souls, but every area has its own awkward quirks.
The second half of Dark Souls mainly falters due to gimmicks more than anything else. Whichever order you tackle the Lord Souls, every route will be filled with levels that are either totally dark or so jarringly bright that you could turn your TV off, and they would still be an eyesore. The Duke's Archives and Crystal Caves are the only exceptions, but Crystal Caves has a weirdly executed invisible platform gimmick. For some reason, several of these places require an item to traverse through. To traverse the abyss where the Four Kings reside, you need to get a ring from defeating a boss in Darkroot Garden (poor Sif). To endure the hardships of the excruciating Tomb of the Giants, you need to kill a maggot in Lost Izalith and wear a part of it on your head as a light source. Good fucking luck trying to get anywhere in that jet-black hellhole without it. The cheapest of all these gimmicks is in Lost Izalith, where you equip a ring to walk across the lava, only sustaining a middling amount of damage as if you're walking on some hot sand. I'd argue against the popular assessment that the second half of this game is unfinished, but it's hard to defend the design of Lost Izalith. Approximately 70% of this area is lava, with architectural islands serving as resting points for your feet.
The bosses in the second half range also range from being gimmicky to borderline insufferable. Seath, the Uncle Tom to the dragons of Lordran, seems menacing from the opening cutscene. The fact that you have to die to him upon your first encounter also seems rather foreboding, especially if you know that Seath has made himself invincible. In the real fight against him, the only thing standing between immortality and death is a glowing, paper-thin crystal that shatters in one hit. After hitting it, Seath is one of the easiest bosses in the game. The clam that often interrupts the fight is a more formidable foe than Seath. The mother of all Dark Souls gimmicks lies at the end of Lost Izalith in the Bed of Chaos, or as it is commonly known as the "Bed of Bullshit." It's an interesting experiment that went horribly wrong in execution. A Dark Souls boss that requires heavy use of the rigid jumping controls should have been scrapped immediately. On the other side of the coin, The Four Kings and Gravelord Nito are my two least favorite bosses in the game. The Four Kings can amount to a gank boss of overwhelming proportions if you dawdle. The only problem is each of them can take a while to destroy, and they deliberately fuck around by initiating practically unavoidable magic arrows and AOE blasts to prolong the fight. How clever of them. As for Gravelord Nito, it's hard to determine whether I hate his fight because of the area it takes place in or because of ridiculous factors from his actual fight. Between the hoards of skeletons killing me, the sodomizing long-range stab he does, or the fact that the fall to enter this fight depletes most of my health, I'd say it's due to several reasons.
What happened, FromSoft? It's not even a contest as to which half of this game is the better one. In fact, the game shouldn't have felt like it was split between two halves anyways, but it really does. The first half was arguably the best journey in any video game I've played, and the second half just feels underwhelming by comparison. Either the developers intentionally shoved all of their experimental flairs to the second half, or they ran out of time and cheaply implemented gimmicks to pad the game. Given all of the material in the second half, I think the latter is more likely. However, as a whole, it does not diminish the integrity of Dark Souls. It still feels organic and still has a great spectacle to it. Either that or the first half of this game is so damn good that it doesn't matter.
At long last, every Lord Soul is counted for, and you can fight Gwyn in the Kiln of the First Flame. The area is strikingly beautiful and covered with ash-like snowfall. It's a long route to Gwyn, but it lets you take in the scope of your journey. Your fight with Gwyn carries a plethora of emotions with it. It feels gratifying to finally get to him after all this time. It feels hectic because he's a relentless foe who will not let up and even let you heal. It feels sad because the once mighty king of Lordran has been reduced to being surrounded by the ash of his former greatness. This feeling of sadness is definitely elevated by the somber piano track that accompanies the fight. Once it is over, you have committed deicide, and it is your turn to take his place. Depending on your route, you either immolate yourself in what looks like a sacrifice to keep the flame or a group of Primordial Serpents gather around you to welcome the age of darkness. Either decision bears a great weight to it that makes you question your final actions. Is it better to claim something that isn't rightfully yours just to elevate your being to a fraction of what Gwyn was for minor preservation? Is it better to put this dying land out of its misery? At the end of the day, darkness might be scarier, but death is sometimes not the worst option.
A flawed masterpiece? A savior of the video game medium? A work of art that is heavy and dense enough to compete with any art house film? Perhaps it's a mix of all three. Since its release, Dark Souls has become one of the most celebrated games in recent history. It deviated from the conventions of all of its contemporaries and brought us a world and a type of gameplay that hadn't been seen before. Since then, it has spawned a genre of video games that is still widely popular. It's a game in which being more unconventional and esoteric benefited it. Whether Dark Souls had you immersed in its world, gameplay, bosses, etc., or all of these factors frustrated you, it was an experience that resonated with you all the same.
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I have to mention that the optimal way to experience Dark Souls is the remastered version. It comes with a glorious frame rate (even fixing the issue in Blighttown), upscaled visuals that make the game gorgeous, and it comes with the DLC. Buy this version if you don't already have this game.
(Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/14/2021)
[Image from igdb.com]
Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss
Category: DLC
Release Date: October 23, 2012
DLC is still a relatively new concept in the world of gaming. It's been around for several gaming generations and is generated consistently for most modern video games. I guess there still isn't a concrete purpose for DLC content, or at least there isn't a strong consensus for why it exists. Is it to artificially prolong the longevity of a game to keep people playing it? Is it cheaper to produce than a full sequel? Is it to add content to a game as an afterthought? All the same, it's not a simple update. DLC still costs money. It's not the price of a full game, but everyone always feels cheapened when they don't get their money's worth. Great DLC should expand on the base game while having its own merits. It shouldn't feel tacked on or like the developers are tricked into buying a piece of the full game separately. Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss is definitely not a cheap add-on. It's an exceptional portion of the game. Some even say it makes up for the lackluster second half of this game. I'm not one of these people, but it stands up with some of the best areas, bosses, and lore building from the base game.
To access the DLC content, you must do a few extra steps in the base game. Off to the side of the Darkroot Basin where you fought the hydra, there is a crystal golem on the water. The only difference between this one and the ones at the base of the area is that this one is orange. Once you defeat it, a woman named Dusk appears, thanking you for freeing her from her prison (the orange golem you just defeated, if that wasn't clear). She claims to be a princess from a far-off land and from a time long, long ago, and she hopes that you will aid her in helping her land. Once that is done, you must kill a strangely placed crystal golem in the Duke's Archives to acquire an amulet. Once you have that, you return to the same place in Darkroot Basin and find a strange purple wormhole where Dusk once was. Once you approach it, a hand pulls you into the wormhole, where you are transported to the mysterious land of Oolacile.
Immediately as you warp to Oolacile, you are greeted by a boss. If there is anything that would make a Dark Souls DLC worth your money, it would certainly be the bosses. Fortunately, each boss in this DLC is a grand titan starting with the Sanctuary Guardian. There are no gimmicks or artificial gank bosses, only mighty foes that will test your skills to their limits. The Sanctuary Guardian is fast and has an arsenal of skills ranging from long-range lightning to short-range poisoning. He's quite the challenging foe and a great way for the DLC to begin.
Oolacile is very strange. Places like the Royal Wood feel like something out of a Lewis Carroll novel or from a quirky 1970s progressive rock album. I feel like Genesis-era Peter Gabriel would sing about the disjointed tin men that come at you with pitchforks and hedge clippers. The Royal Wood is also as dense as Darkroot Garden and has an unnatural feel. The sun is (literally) setting on Oolacile, but the light isn't reflected on any area of the Royal Wood. It's like an ominous setup for the darkness to come.
When you are playing the base game of Dark Souls, you get the impression that the depleted land of Lordran was once a mighty kingdom. When you explore it, it is obviously past the prime of its former glory, and the game revolves around the premise of you extinguishing Lordran step by step to mercifully put an end to everything. Between the glory days of Lordran and its more barren days of decay, there is a time in the middle that isn't explored: the point when everything started to go to shit. It is set in a time that hasn't quite reached the point of layers of inexorable despair stacked on one another. This is a time when at least people had a sense of hope that everything would patch itself up nicely. However, Artorias, the hope of this world and the character in the DLC's title is your next boss.
Remember the giant sword from the Sif fight in the base game? Remember how there was a giant gravestone? Well, it turns out that the gravestone and the sword both belong to the grand knight Artorias. During the time of the DLC, he was a strong, courageous knight who confronted Manus, the father of the abyss and the cause of the darkness surrounding Oolacile. If there's any indication that he failed to stop the abyss, he's skewering an Oolacile citizen with his mammoth of a sword when you encounter him. He also emits an oozy, darkish purple glow and roars like a beast when he sees you. Whatever force the abyss is, his presence makes it seem terrifying. Artorias the great warrior is long gone, and now you must put him down. It's not an easy task, however. When you fight Artorias, you'll soon learn why everyone relied on him to save them. His attacks do a ton of damage, and he's as relentless as Gwyn. It's a great fight that will test your patience and reflexes.
You might notice that the progression in AotA is awfully linear compared to the base game. The only exception lies in the one optional boss, Black Dragon Kalameet. You encounter Kalameet once in the Royal Wood as he establishes his gigantic, looming presence. To make him more formidable, the giant Gough gives more insight into his legend and states that even Gwyn never dared to fuck with Kalameet. That's how fearsome he is. Even though all of this is meant to intimidate you, you can fight the legendary black dragon. After all, you want to get your money's worth out of the DLC, right? Taking him down isn't that simple. Kalameet is so strong that Gough needs to wound him by shooting him out of the sky with a gigantic arrow before you can fight him (which is the coolest moment in the game). You then find a route off the beaten path and see Kalameet emerging from the waterfall with a limp. Thank god for Gough because even when he's wounded, Kalameet still proves to be the hardest fight in the game. He's unpredictable, fast on the ground and in the air, and his magic is almost as unavoidable as the Four Kings. He also has this move where he lifts you up with telekinetic power that makes you take double the damage. If he successfully executes this move on you, it's time to restart. It's really something that the only optional boss of the DLC is also the most difficult in the entire game. It's almost a test to see which Dark Souls players are the most hardcore, the ones that will endure the most pain even when they don't have to.
The epicenter of the calamity in Oolacile resides in the Township. The citizens have morphed into what can only be described as emaciated apes that look like someone with trypophobia's worst nightmare. They are a little more deranged and spunky than the pitiable hollow soldiers, so I guess this means that curse that brands them is a relatively new one. Also, like the undead soldiers, their strength lies in overwhelming you as a group. The sorcerers are a different story. Their purple magic meteor spell is guaranteed to take out more than 80% of your health if it hits you, and I swear to god it sometimes homes in on you. The worst part is that these bastards cackle every time they kill you. They are definitely my least favorite part of the DLC. The Township is a long endurance test where you will encounter hoards of both of these enemies at every single corner.
The Chasm of the Abyss caps off the DLC at the bottom of Oolacile. It's another dark area after a tiring slew of dark areas. Unlike those areas, the darkness isn't a negative aspect. The darkness here gives the area a sublimely creepy and ominous feeling. It also helps that this level is short, and the only enemies are slow walking shadows (with a few enemies from the Township). At the pits of the Chasm lies Manus, the father of the abyss. Everything about his fight makes you feel trapped. The arena is suspended above total darkness, and Manus is so intimidating that it never feels as if you're far from him enough for comfort. The only indication of how close you are to him is his multiple bulging red eyes. Nevertheless, he is my favorite (solo) boss in the game. As perilous as his fight is, he's very learnable. He is somehow a challenge of your strength and endurance without ever seeming unfair. After vanquishing the scourge of Oolacile, you'd expect the skies to clear up and have a celebration. That is, you'd expect this from any other game that wasn't Dark Souls. Princess Dusk appears in the arena, lying on the ground, weeping inconsolably. She is surrounded by nothing but darkness, and it seems like even though the menace is gone, it didn't matter at the end of the day. The harrowing doom that surrounds her kingdom cannot be stopped, and it will only worsen. It's a very devastating scene to end on. It almost makes me feel bad that I can teleport out of here back to the base game.
Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss is practically the best DLC content. I'm not speaking in terms of the series but in terms of DLC content in general. The content provided here is just as solid as anything from the already fantastic base game, and it feels totally separated from it all the same. The levels, bosses, and world-building are all incredible, making this worth every cent. It's almost as if having the DLC is essential for any Dark Souls experience.
