So, I’ll start off with saying I’m not the biggest fan of this series because I had a pretty rough experience with the first Dark Souls. No, not Demon Souls, which is technically the first in the series. I’m referring to the first Dark Souls game that came out for the PS3/XBox 360/PC several years. That game has the single honor of making me either nearly break or actually break a controller. I can’t remember if it actually broke, but I feel like I did.
Now if you don’t know anything about this series I will just say that the first Dark Souls was probably the hardest, and most frustrating, game I’ve ever played in my life. The games in the series are designed to kill you, but in the process make you better at the game. It’s all about trial and error and learning what works. If you’ve played Witcher 3 you kind of get the same thing in that you can’t go in swinging your sword around like your playing a Hack ‘n Slash game. You have to be very precise, be aware of everything around you and know that some fights are just meant to break you.
I’m not good with photoshop, sue me.
So you may wonder why I would subject myself to this again, and to be honest I’m not sure. I didn’t finish Dark Souls 2, and I’ve yet to play Bloodborne. I just wanted to play a challenging game and have been trying to hype myself up for for the last few weeks. The thing is that From Soft/Bandai Namco sent out early press copies to a lot of streamers so there had already been videos going up on Twitch/YouTube that I could watch. Not to mention the game came out several weeks ago in Japan, but only this week here in the US. I’m not sure I agree with that, and at least one of the streams I was watching ended up buying the JP version on Xbox One because it would automatically localize to English even if you bought it from the JP store. But tangent. The reason I got the game was I wanted a challenge and what better game to do this then a game in a series that I know will challenge me in a way no other game can.
That being said, while I’m not far in to the game yet I’ve been enjoying it so far. I’ve only just passed the second boss in the game, so really I’m only out of the tutorial area. From what I’ve played though the controls are pretty solid, but might take some getting used to. Several of my deaths up to this point have just been for getting careless and making stupid mistakes. While I would want to say this game feels easier I have to remind myself I am not that far in to it yet, and from what I’ve seen from uploaded videos things will get a lot rougher pretty soon. My only real issue with the game up to this point is the camera system. It’s just not really good when you get in to a tight spot, otherwise it is not that bad.
Now I wouldn’t say that this is the “prettiest” game I’ve played on the PS4 so far, but it is still absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could play this on PC because from what I understand the graphics there are even better when you’re playing on Ultra. Playing on the console is probably the equivalent of playing on medium settings on the PC. The other thing is that the soundtrack to the game is also really amazing. So far it has been all orchestral which I enjoy. You get the right amount of tension while exploring new areas while being creeped out by the ambient noise and the soundtrack adapting to the action.
I’ve made the joke that the real me is probably in a pod somewhere because if you’d told me a year ago I would be playing Dark Souls 3 I would call you a liar. I’ve even picked up Dark Souls 2 for the PS4 since my biggest issue with the PC version was the controls and I’ve also picked up Bloodborne and the DLC that has since come out.
I don’t know if I’m going to attempt to platinum these games because come on.