

To progress in Souls, you need to practise, to take note of the environment and commit to memory enemy positions and attack patterns. It’s this very aspect that allows Dark Souls to provide some of the most rewarding experiences in video games, if you’re willing to come along for the ride. Dark Souls is incredibly unforgiving in it’s brutality, and no amount of upgraded armor is going to save you from your own recklessness or inexperience. Progression of power will come mostly from forging, upgrading or scavenging new weapons and gear, and from your development as a player. That said your character stats are relatively unimpactful in comparison to many other RPGs. You’re by no means locked into a particular style of play based on the class you choose, but your stats will give you a little bit of a head start in a particular direction. You begin by creating a character, choosing their physical appearance as well as a class which determines the stats and gear your character will begin with. Beautiful and brutal, frustrating and immensely rewarding.ĭark Souls is at its core an action RPG. It makes no accommodations to appeal to a wider audience but absolutely excels in being exactly the kind of game its designers sought to create. It’s the kind of game that you’ll either love to death or find utterly unenjoyable, and it’s a game which pays no mind whether it’s to your taste. What you might not know if you haven’t played the game though, is that far from making Dark Souls a badly designed mess, these aspects combine with some masterful world and enemy design to create something immensely polarising. You’ve probably heard it’s wildly difficult (it is), that its mechanics are obtuse (they are) and it’s narrative vague and ambiguous (yup). If you’ve paid attention to the mainstream gaming scene anytime in the last decade, you probably know about Dark Souls.
