Dark Souls 1: A new players perspective (Part 1, Introduction)

Hello Dark Souls Community!

I don't know if there is any interest in this and I also feel like I am posting this in the wrong community. I am going to heavily criticize the game you love so much.

I am fully prepared to receive negative feedback and see this post die in new, but I still want to share my thoughts. In some way, I am writing this more for myself than for you since I feel like reflecting on the game.

If you choose to read this, thank you. If you don't, I understand.

It is hard to structure a post this long so I want to start with general information to help you decide whether or not you feel like this post might be worth your time. I also had to split this into three parts because I overshot the character limit. (there's roughly 80500)

1. Preconceived notions

I bought this game as a person who hates corpse running and long boss walks. I consider it bad game design and I expected a lot of this in Dark Souls.

I also heard the game was always fair and that it is always your fault when you die, which is the core thing that intrigued me about it.

I love Metroidvanias. It's my favorite genre by far and I felt like Dark Souls has the potential to be a 3D Metroidvania done well.

I am not somebody who gets that sense of relief or accomplishment when they overcome a difficult obstacle in a game. I remember beating the Pantheon of Hallownest in Hollow Knight after weeks of trying. I thought it would be the greatest feeling ever. I ended up just feeling glad it was over. (yes, this is a humble brag)

I also perceived the Dark Souls community as an elitist group of gamers, who shut down any criticism thrown it's way. The people I knew who liked Dark Souls were also the people who told me I wasn't allowed to prefer Fallout 3 over New Vegas and that the fact I'm preordering a game is killing the gaming community as a whole etc. In other words the sort of people who consider their opinion objective fact.

2. How I rate this game

It's a 7/10 for me. I'll put this upfront so you know what to expect. At the point I beat Ornstein and Smough I was pretty convinced it was going to be a strong 8/10 and I was going to justify that it can't be a 9/10 because of how unfinished the game is but that I can also see how people can think of the game as a 9/10 or even a 10/10.

This changed after receiving the Lord Souls, every negative preconception I had before starting the game was confirmed at this point. The game became tedious and I often wished I had simply stopped after Ornstein and Smough. I still kind of wish I had. I can't bring myself to rating the game higher than a 6/10 at this point, which may very well be quite low, but it's especially the contrast with what the game was, which makes it feel so much worse.

I should also say here, that I disagree with the notion that the game is always fair and the idea that every death is your fault is almost an outright lie but I'll get into that more closely later.

I also think the game is weirdly easy to break. It almost asks you to do challenge runs as ranged attacks and certain types of armor regularly break complete areas.

2.1 The Gameplay

2.1.1 The Combat

There has been a lot said about the combat in this game and I mostly agree. The stamina system is fantastic, the variance in playstyle the games allows is also incredible and the tactical, slow nature of it is something I never experienced before and really enjoyed.

Most enemies are fantastic, some do barely anything and I would only consider very few outright bad. (mostly enemies that feel impossible to hit, Foxes the weird fly thingies in Blighttown)

I should probably state at this point that it is hard to write excessive amounts of praise and it is easy to criticize in detail. So please take my overall extremely positive view of the combat into account as I am about to complain about it from now on. I have to point out that I didn't use any ranged attacks during the game. I was told it breaks too much of the game. Think of that what you will, it is a limitation I put on myself.

Hitting walls when your enemies can hit through them is incredibly annoying, it mostly wastes time luring enemies to locations where you can fight them and adds an incredible amount of tedium. I also have no real solution for this as too many fights would break if the same rules applied for enemies. Maybe at least fix the bugs. (sometimes attacks even go through solid walls with no visual contact at all)

Enemies being able to shoot through each other is bs. I was okay with it until I played through Dukes archive. Getting shot in the back by two archers hidden behind a Summoner and instantly dying from full health without being able to see either one is one of the reasons why I hesitate to call the game "always fair".

The controls aren't ideal. Kicking is often important if you don't want to wait around forever and it is really easy to get a wrong input and take damage as a result. Similarly, it is easy to trigger the kick on accident with the same result. I'm also not sure dual-wielding a weapon really needed a button as I usually chose either-or, but I can imagine a playstyle where that isn't the case.

I considered making an entire paragraph just about the camera but I'll just put it here. It's not terrible and switching between locking on and freeroam feels intuitive. However, a couple of things really rubbed me the wrong way.

Most importantly I do not think that the camera should ever, under any circumstances, EVER switch targets without an input. To the end of the game, I didn't understand what triggers a change in target but it almost always resulted in wrong dodges that lead to significant damage. The camera also fails to properly deal with very large bosses. Looking up or down is limited severely and I don't entirely understand why.

Dodge rolls for whatever reason only go in four directions. This killed me a lot in the early game, mostly by happily rolling off cliffs, but I got used to it by the end of the game.

Backstabbing is so inconsistent that I stopped actively attempting to use it. I think this has to do with the generally pretty inaccurate hitboxes, but it is probably for the better in this case because it is broken.

Lastly, parrying is completely and utterly broken. The skill in parrying isn't the timing (to me at least) it's just figuring out when to parry and then repeat it all the time. There is no logical timing to this, I have seen animations show my shield perfectly hit enemy swords and still take damage, I think it's a simple "x amount of time before damage is taken" System. This made the game so easy at one point that I had to resort to a no parry rule that I didn't break until Gwynn. (I have no idea how else to dodge his initial charge attack)

2.1.2. The learning by doing effect

I heard this praised an incredible amount. "Dark Souls isn't one of those games that hold your hand at all time", "Dark Souls respects the player's ability to figure things out themselves", "Dark Souls doesn't cater to the mindless masses" etc. I generally agree with this. Dark Souls doesn't waste your time with endless tutorials and it introduces many mechanics flawlessly.

However, this only goes so far. The most egregious offense in this imo is the invincibility frames right after dodging. This isn't communicated in any way and it is hard to figure out because of the hitbox issues. I am fairly certain many bosses require this to be beaten without taking damage and I didn't figure it out until Ornstein and Smough. I think it is too much of a core mechanic for many encounters to keep the player in the dark about it.

The game also fails to properly explain Magic, ranged Combat and Covenants (still don't know why I joined them, just for the item they gift me?). I also wish it was better at describing what items do. I still don't know what many are supposed to be for.

Another thing I want to mention here is something I concede as "my fault". I didn't know how to run until Sen's fortress forced me to learn it. The note in the Asylum said to "hold (left stick) (B) to dash". So I held the left stick and pressed B. I saw my character roll away and figured that's what they meant. Had the game used the word "run" instead of "Dash" I probably would have noticed my mistake. I'll also concede that I should have noticed that by the time the game explicitly explained the dodge roll, but at this point, I had already forgotten about the first notice. The problem with a system like Dark Souls is that it's hard to go back and learn things that you missed. I also would like to vent and say B is a horrible button to press while controlling the camera.

I also want to point out that the game is using this effect for Boss fights. Many bosses simply use trial and error to learn their moveset and you will often die if you don't guess right. Whether or not a death in that case is "your fault" imo is decided by whether or not you think losing a coin flip is "your fault". I don't want to call this out as negative, I think it's a fair mechanic to use. It just didn't match what I was told about the game.

I hate games that make you skill into stats without telling you what exactly they do. It's incredibly outdated and frustrating imo, but I do understand that a lot of players miss that aspect of old games so I won't complain about it too much. There are also other things I think the game should have explained at all or better but didn't, like equipment load, Humanity, jumping, etc. to help out new players, but I consider none of them a big deal.

2.1.3. Inventory Management

It's not very good now, is it? It suffers from being a console UI and cluttering you with an incredible amount of garbage. The game also doesn't allow you to pause, which I get considering switching armor can break the game, but I really just want to be able to accept that one phone call or open the door without losing all my progress. Pausing doesn't have to mean menuing. I also want to take this opportunity to talk about the time my character gleefully jumped backward off a cliff because I had pressed B one too many times to close the inventory. Fun times.

Another thing I just don't understand at all is why breaking equipment is a thing. All this does is make you go back to the blacksmith or a bonfire if you bought the repair kit. It's basically free and adds nothing but worthless tedium. I probably wouldn't point this out so harshly if my weapon hadn't broken right after the scripted death against Seath, which made me frantically run through the area in search of an exit. I bought the repair kit after that. I thought it was a one time use thing before and didn't see it worthy of investment. (Yes this moment rubbed me the wrong way so much that I made an entire paragraph about inventory management)

2.1.4. The World and Corpse/Boss Running

I will go into this in more detail in Part 2 when discussing the levels one by one in case anybody values their time so little they actually read my terrible writing.

2.1.4.1 The World before Ornstein and Smough

Remember when I said I love Metroidvanias? This was even better. It is hard to describe how excited I was when I realized how much the world looped into itself. While in Metroidvanias you usually notice areas you can't reach yet and might want to return to, in Dark Souls you make your way to that location through a different path and then open a shortcut to get you to where you were before. It's fantastic. I genuinely cannot praise this enough. I haven't had that much fun exploring a world since 12 years old me got his hands on his first Zelda game.

The slow approach and possibly intimidating enemies also give you a good sense of direction in a world that already starts very open. All of this is further enhanced by the dynamic design: Breakable walls or furniture to hide things behind, ambushes hiding behind corners keeping you on your edge at all times.

The variety found in the world is also incredible. The standardish design of Undead Burg and Parish, the frantic, intimidating feel of Blighttown, the convoluted death traps in Sen's fortress (well they're pretty basic, but they felt convoluted to me). It all feels connected in an organic way. I don't know if I've mentioned how good this is enough. It's genuinely so good that I could forgive the game so many flaws and so many bugs.

I also had a worry taken away from me. Corpse and Boss runs weren't nearly as bad as I thought, especially because there's really not that much punishment for failing to recover your souls (I didn't ever use Humanity, no idea what it does exactly even after reading up on it). Boss runs were not the best but I didn't mind too much because I enjoyed the level design so much. I also didn't die nearly as often as I thought I would, so my opinion might be different if I had.

I still generally think wasting time is an inappropriate punishment for death, but I'll get into this a bit more later. There are very few instances of poor Design and I'll get into those in more detail later.

2.1.4.2 The World after Ornstein and Smough

This is the point where the game started to feel unduly punishing and frustrating. Every level had to use some sort of gimmick and instead of fighting enemies, a lot of the time I just ran past them because the fights took too long to justify and it was way too easy to take damage.

The world also didn't loop into itself anymore. I was incredibly disappointed to beat a boss and find a single Bonfire that expected me to teleport away. No clever shortcut, no interlocking world, just a Teleport Station. Enemy variety was low and many places simply had them spammed all over the place without much challenge (looking at that lava place here)

It was also fairly random with bonfires. When entering the Lava place there are 3 bonfires in short succession and the most important one hidden behind a fake wall. New Londo, on the other hand, doesn't have a bonfire (I was certain I had missed it and looked it up after the fact) and an insultingly long and boring Boss Walk as a result. It really adds to the unfinished feel the entire game has even before this last 3rd.

I grew increasingly apathetic to the game by the end of it. I was still quite tolerant of Dukes Archives and overall and even thought New Londo was great. The Giants Tomb and the Lava place thingy completely broke me however and I just mindlessly walked through these areas with no care whether I'd die. I just tried to minimize time waste at this point and the game wasn't enjoyable at all anymore as a result. In Fact, I seriously considered quitting many times after repeated Boss attempts. I'll go into the bosses more later of course, but they were also mostly disappointing.

I should probably shout out New Londo more for being one of the best levels in the entire game despite the lack of bonfire. My problem was that I went there after the Giants Tomb and was in the wrong mindset to truly appreciate it.

2.1.5 The Bosses

Considering I will go over every single Boss in more detail I will keep this short here. I know the Bosses are the standout highlight of Dark Souls for many people. I know the stories about the joy of finally beating that one incredibly difficult boss after all this time. I personally am fairly indifferent to the Bosses.

I would only consider 5 as great. (Queelag, Gwynn, Asylum Demon+ Variations) A lot of them are fine, nothing special but a good way to inform you that you have in fact beaten that area. Some, however, are so unbelievably terrible that I don't understand what the developers were thinking.

Ceaseless Discharge, Capra Demon (despite the fact that I beat him first try) and the Bed of Chaos just seem indefensible to me. They're either cheap, bugged to no end or both. I genuinely hate these bosses with a raging passion.

As I already mentioned I think most of these are trial and error, a lot of them become easy after figuring out their attacks and few remain a challenge. As I said, I think this is not bad design. I just refuse to take the blame for many of my deaths here. A couple of examples are Gaping Dragons' ability to completely crush incredibly sturdy-looking pillars without even slowing down, killing me instantly for hiding behind it.

In general, I don't think it is realistically possible for anyone to deal with the second Bell Gargoyle on their first try without looking at a guide beforehand. Ornstein and Smough are so horribly bugged that I had to spend several attempts just learning to manipulate the AI in a way that avoids them. They are also incredibly good at one shot combo kills. There's more but that's all I'll say for now.

I can absolutely see an experienced player beat all bosses with severe handicaps and without taking damage. I do think the bosses are fair after learning them. Saying all of my deaths to these Bosses are my fault however is something I won't accept even though I'll happily concede that the majority of them were.