why i love dark souls

this game in a weird way reminds me of Mario bros. or Castlevania, dragon warrior, metal gear. it reminds me of old school nes gaming. remember when you could play for weeks and just make a tiny little bit of progress?

i mean sure it's arguably one of the hardest games. but wasn't metal gear? it took me months to beat that game. and when i did i felt like the king of the world. or dragon warrior. when you finally find that edricks metal. the final boss in dragon warrior was such a technical battle, attack attack heal (before being hit) or you where dead....

and now you can pick up metal gear or dragon warrior or Mario bros and beat it in just a sitting.

dark souls reminds me of the classic technical video games from the past. i dunno just thought i would share, maybe i'm just getting sentimental in my old age.


thanks for tolerating my rant.

You aren't the first one to think this

that is awesome!

@ reaperfan great link, read it loved it. @Joeclone, it has an oldschool quality about it for sure, however I must say I think the hype of dark souls being so hard is a bit played up by the manufacturer. I really think after thinking about those old games that some of them were much more unforgiving.
Dark Souls is challenging but....

For example in the post of reaperfan, limited life, often in the eighties you ran out of your 3 lives so thats it, start completely over. Now if dark souls said "hey, lets give the man 3 lives and then he has to start from undead asylum everytime" (completely in original gear and soul level)that would be about as hard.

I applaud from for having created such a great tough game but I do like the idea of limited lives and complete restart. Maybe throw a couple of hidden 1ups in too (green mushrooms of course).

that would be an insane idea for a play through. just giving yourself 3 lives. you could use firekeeper souls as 1 ups.

i am nowhere near ready to try that.

but think about how much more scary it would be to know your death is worth so much. The highs twice as high and the lows twice as low, just like old nes sidescrollers. = )

siegfried78 wrote:but think about how much more scary it would be to know your death is worth so much. The highs twice as high and the lows twice as low, just like old nes sidescrollers. = )

yes!!!! just like dragon warrior!

I'd have smashed the game a long, long time ago.

And imagine how horrifying getting invaded would be. Holy ****. Haha.

I agree. I love the challenge of the old school games. I am an old school gamer. There is a great SNES game called "Out of This World" that it reminds me of.

The first two castlevanias were wicked difficult, at least back when I had them many years ago. Someone else mentioned battletoads, also wicked hard. The thing was, your timing had to be 100% perfect or your toast.

I think this game succeeds in providing a sense of drama and weight behind everything you do. Of course there are elements that remind you that this is, essentially, a game: you might get staggered but your shield never shatters for example, you can't get attacked in the midst of a backstabbing animation and etc being good examples. But those things aside, this game really provides a sense of meaning behind what you do and the punishment for a mistake is delivered in a very neutral tone. If you attack and kill an NPC like Rhaea, the game doesn't end. The world continues, but you deprive yourself of a storyline and you don't get certain items that make your character more capable.

This game isn't the hardest one I've played, though. The game isn't as difficult or randomly lethal as a good roguelike, and death isn't permanent, so once you know what to do, suddenly you don't seem so powerless even at level 1-7. Many players have just been conditioned to have everything given to them and have no patience to learn most enemy attack patterns.

It's a great game and could be made even better.

yeah cant wait for the DLC!!!