Dark Souls Remastered may not bring a lot new to the table.
But what it does do, is give an excuse for fans to go back and play this game again.
Or, it maybe for people who have never explored the lands of Lordran before, and give them
a new reason to try it out.
Either way I'm going to review this game, from my perspective.
I'm a fan of series, but I haven't actually played the original before.
(And I'm not talking Demon's Soul's- I mean have never played Dark Souls One).
So I'm going to review the game in full, without any previous experience with it- and so will
probably die a lot.
But first, for those of you out there, who just want to hear what the remaster's like.
Well, here's a list of things that have changed.
Number one, graphics.
The game looks pretty good.
But anyone who's expecting it to now look like Dark Souls III has to remember that this
is a REMASTER and not a REMAKE.
It's taking an old model and sprucing it up a bit, but it's never going to look amazing.
But there is a nice improvement.
Number two, 60 frames per second.
Now this isn't really something that I usually care about.
I think my old eyes must broken from 25 years of gaming, but I often don't really notice
frame rate that much.
It's never something that I really care about, as long as it remains consistent.
But this was the first time when I really appreciated a silky smooth 60 frames per second.
I think the reason is that it creates the illusion that the combat is faster than it
actually is.
Dark Souls has always been considered kind of slow and ponderous, but now, things appear
to be moving a little faster.
And it's a good thing too, because timing is so important here.
Dodging, blocking, attacking has to timed perfectly- otherwise, well, you die.
Number three, Blighttown.
From what I've seen and read, the area of the game called Blighttown used to be atrocious.
It would chug along, making it, what some people would describe as unplayable.
But now, it seems to be fine.
Most of the time.
Number four, Online play.
Essentially, the online play has been boosted up to the levels of other, more modern Souls
games.
So you can now have six players in arena battles, rather than four.
Matchmaking is better, so the level of an invading phantom will be adjusted to make
things more fair.
There's a few other changes from the original, but they're the main ones right there.
So is it still a great game?
Well, yeah.
But could they perhaps have done a little bit more with the remaster, to really treat
die-hard fans.
Possibly.
After all, Dark Souls' fans are some of the most loyal fans you'll ever get.
And to be honest, I can't blame them.
It's great.
The game starts off small, not afraid to throw you in at the deep end.
There's no hand holding here as one of the first enemies you come across is a boss that
most likely will wipe the floor with you.
And that's the tone set, right from the beginning- if you expected an easy ride, you may as well
turn off the game now and trade it in for, I don't know... Knack.
But pretty soon the world opens up to become this vast, interconnected web of horror locations.
The irony being, that the graveyard's one of the brighter locations in the game.
Where you go and what you do is largely up to you.
It creates these truly memorable locations, that you'll get to spend a lot of time in,
exploring hidden chambers, looking for rare weapons and creating routes that you become
familiar with, so that you can farm away for those precious souls.
And there are plenty of disgusting, evil, but creative enemies for you to kill.
There's often deliberately no music, making the atmosphere kind of drab and gloomy, but
in a good way.
In a way that makes you feel less like a heroic knight going off on an adventure, and more
like a violent, pest control guy, trying to clean up this world and that no-one has any
faith in.
The characters that you meet on your journey, come across as almost comical, always laughing
at you, at your pitiful attempts to survive.
It's like the whole world's in on the joke, except you, with traps and surprises around
every corner.
When you approach a fog wall, you never know whether it's going to be safe to pass through, or if your
walking into one of the game's many, many bosses.
My only real criticism with this first game, is that a lot of the areas don't have these
amazing wide views, that you really want to stop and take a closer look at.
Sure there's a few, and these look better now than ever, with the improved lighting
effects.
But I think a handful more would have been nice.
Gameplay is tense, satisfying, rewarding and tough.
At least at first, before you begin to level up, but more importantly, before you start
to learn how to take on each individual enemy type.
They all come with their own moves and ALL of them pose a threat, no matter how high
your health is.
But by almost studying them.
By learning their patterns of movement, you get more and more skilled at beating them
without taking a hit.
Take this boss for example.
My first attempt, did not turn out so well.
Third or fourth attempt, I knew when to stay back, when to close in.
And by playing it cautious and not getting too greedy, it was no longer a threat.
And you're rewarded with not only items, weapons or souls, but access to new areas to explore,
so you can repeat the whole process over again.
And the now famous souls mechanic, where dying means that you drop whatever unspent XP you
have on you, always creates this dilemma of do I carry on and see how far I can get, or
do I go back, play it safe, level up, but re-spawn all of the enemies, meaning I have
to fight them all over again.
"OK, I'm going to... think I'm going to jump over that but...
Did he just push?
Oh, you're getting it now!
Bye-bye!
You can make the jump for me.
See you!"
Before wrapping this thing up, I will say that I don't like how, early on in the game,
the items dropped by a lot of the enemies is the same armour or weapons, so you end
up with like ten pieces of the same set of gloves.
It would have been more useful if they dropped a few more usable items, like throwing knives
or bombs or something like that.
But anyway, Dark Souls has gone on to become a lot of people's favourite series of all
time.
It's spawned countless memes and has even inspired many other games to follow in it's
footsteps.
So it was great to finally get the chance to get a taste of where it all began.
As always, thanks for watching.
Bye.