One more for today. Not sure if I'll be able to get through the rest of the games tomorrow, since I'll probably be quite busy, but we'll see.
#4
Dark Souls (PS3, PS4)
YoY: =
So, what exactly should I say about Dark Souls that countless other people, myself included, haven't said thousands of times before. It's difficult, but fair. If you die, it's most likely your own fault. The lore is deep, fascinating, and often hard to decipher. The gameplay is satisfying and requires patience. All of those things are true, but it's all been said so many times that it starts to feel pointless to repeat them. I suppose I'll just talk about my own experience with the game.
I initially bought Dark Souls back in 2012, before the DLC had come out. I had heard a lot of people online talk about what a great and rewarding game it was, but that it was also very challenging. So, I started the game, created my character (a pyromancer if I remember correctly), and set off into Lordran. The opening cinematic was suitably epic, even if parts of it were quite difficult to figure out without any other knowledge of the game's world, but it set the scene perfectly and got me excited to start playing. The game started, some random knight dropped a dead body into the cell where I was, and off I went. About 10 minutes later I was dead for the first time, trying to beat the first boss with the dinky, broken sword I had on hand, because I hadn't realized you weren't actually supposed to fight it yet.
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I beat the boss on my 3rd try I think, and then I was on my way to Lordran proper. Then I was told by a weird knight that I had to go and ring two bells. Still not entirely sure why, but at least I had a goal now. Again, off I went, picking a direction and ending up in a graveyard a moment later. Death #3 soon followed. After a little more experimentation I finally figured where I was supposed to go, slowly making progress, frequently dying, but still moving forward at least. The Taurus Demon took a couple of tries, but it wasn't too bad. I met a friendly knight who really seemed to like the sun. He at least seemed nice. The drake that had announced his arrival some time earlier in Undead Burg had taken residence on the bridge and seemed very reluctant to let me pass. I died to it too, having long since lost count of the number of death. I got through though, but I was still kinda lost and confused about why I was doing any of this. And screw those rats under that bridge. The boar enemy took a few tries to figure out, but I did eventually managed to whittle its health down, before it ran into nearby flames and killed itself, leaving me feeling both happy and annoyed at myself for not figuring that one out for myself.
I found a huge cathedral, and a seemingly-friendly blacksmith nearby. There was also this weird knight sitting by a huge gate, but I couldn't really do anything about that at that point. The demon down the stair from the blacksmith pretty much sealed that path off for now, so up to the Cathedral I went. I did find a way back to the Firelink Shrine with an elevator, which was a cool touch. Slowly, and very painfully I made my way up the cathedral, and I eventually came across a knight in weird golden armor behind bars. I had found a key earlier, so when he asked me to, I freed him. What could go wrong there? Further up I went, and there was the familiar boss fog door.
Now, for some context. At this point I hadn't realized how summoning help for the bosses worked. The humanity items seemed like they had some interesting uses, but I hadn't really figured out what its purpose really was. So, I simply walked into the Bell Gargoyles boss fight like I had into the previous bosses. I did reasonably well for a first attempt, until the second gargoyle joined the fight. I died. And I tried again, and again, and again, but could never finish this one damn boss off. Eventually I started looking for other paths to take, but I just ended up in another dead end. I still had no idea why I was doing any of this, outside of some vague hints and allusions to what might happen once I rang the bells. This is where my first journey through Lordran ended. Me bashing my head onto a gargoyle-shaped brick wall and getting nowhere doing so.
I left Dark Souls behind for a few years at that point, telling myself that I'd return to to try again later, and moved on to other games. And for quite a while the game box sat on my shelf untouched, and whenever I picked a new game to play, I passed it by. Eventually, a Youtube Let's Play channel I follow began uploading their first playthrough of Dark Souls, and after watching them make their way through the game in much the same way I had done a few years earlier. After a few episodes, I decided to finally give the game a second chance. I made a new character, took my time with the game, and slowly it began to open up to me. I began to puzzle together the intricacies of the gameplay, while also putting together a better picture of the story and lore.
Something had suddenly clicked in my mind, and playing the game felt very different than before. The deaths to the bosses no longer felt so demoralizing. They were often frustrating, sure, but no longer in a way that made me want to stop playing. The various locations had a logic I hadn't noticed before, and gameplay that had felt slow and clumsy now felt deliberate and tactical. I had finally understood how the game worked. Some 80 hours later, Dark Souls had become one of my favourite games of all time, its world, lore, gameplay, music, and atmosphere near-unrivaled by any other game. It just took me a while to get there.
This turned out quite long it seems.
