Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

I never into Demon Souls, simply because neither my Xbox 360 nor my PC get hold of that title. I recently heard of Dark Souls, and I heard it was as infamously hard as Demon Souls. As a casual player, i was automatically turn off cause of the difficulty. And because my Xbox 360 was shared, I don't use XboxLive after 3 months of subscription due to the disappointing support in my country. I decided to leave that to rest.

After a while, Dark Soul: Prepare to Die Edition was out, and it was a Steam game, which I excited, but then it turned out that the bloody game is not available in my region, but lucky me, I was able to get a GFWL version when the store was offering it, it was a whopping RM169.99, but man, once I'm into it, I was literally felt that money was well spent.

Dark Soul is a role playing game, with real time combat with a open world exploration, despite it actually divided to few area, but these area are littered with foes, big and small, melee and ranged. This game is a difficult game, yes its a very different game from what I used to play. I was stunned when simple skeleton was able to rip me apart within seconds as they outnumber, out"blade", outmenuever, and actually defeat me as though it was nothing. But after a while of insane crawling my way to the first boss, the Pinwheel (surprisingly easy boss for an area with insanely hard minions) and into the Tomb of Giant, I realized I was stuck and helplessly drifting around with no objectives as the door to Nito was sealed by a powerful force, I was forced to look to guide online and discovered I did not have the requirement to get through that seal (No Lord Vessels, no Entry), which made me crawling back from the last bonfire in the Tomb of Giant back to where it all starts, the Firelink Shrine and then to the top.......

This is a game which literally dump you into a world, and let you figure it out yourself on how to complete the game, despite the game actually has a sequence of keys and puzzles which only allow you to truly progress the story. And I swear I was scratching my head after hours and hours of blindly going around lock doors to find keys, only venture somewhere else and forgotten what was I suppose to do. This is a game which needed someone's guide and help, and thankfully, whenever I was online on Window Live, people were helpful in giving me directions on where should I go. This is a game that have a community divided into 2 group, 1 is the helpful-pro, which came to aid me in boss fights and show me the direction, the 2nd is, you guess it, people who just want you humanity and will kill you for it. I was invaded so many times that I sometimes remain hollow to avoid being invaded, and boy there are more humanity-thirsty Dark Killers than helpful SunBros. Which is a good thing, it made the game more lively than majority of the RPG as you actually can interact with another character and not just chat online.

The PC control is one often biggest flaw in this game, but after a while it rarely bothers me as I was able to dodge, block and slowly walk around my foe, and yes, there is no less foe in this game, for every bonfire you rest, you are making backtracking and exploring difficult, cause between bonfire there is a lengthy amount of places, where bottomless pits, swinging blade and insanely hard minions are between you and the boss you are going for. This game encourage you to sneak, or utilized cheap tactics or exploit the enemies weakest point to get around rather than hacking your way through, I only fight them when they are easy pickings and never go head to head when they group together. Which surprisingly, majority of the online buddies encourage me too. Some sections are intentionally serves as a major discouraging barrier, i died in the Sen's Fortress more times than I can count, but once the bonfire is located within, relieved! Yes they said 95% you will grind your teeth trying to crawl your way to victory, and that 5% is the time when you just said, holy **** i made it, hell yeah I made it!

Well despite the control is a total mess, the game itself is different, it was pretty despite I did not have my anti-aliasing on, and detail was made even better when I inserted HD mod into the game which allow stuff like vegetation to have more detail and enabled me to display PC control button to be displayed instead of the usual Xbox controller button they so hastily port from. The game atmosphere was impressive compared to many RPG, from the chilling cold and then hot green of Blighttown, to dark and murky depth of the The Catacomb and Tomb of Giants, lighting of this game in my mind is the most hostile in any game, it is so dark that I had a hard time figuring out where is a step and where is a pit of depth when giant arrows kept flying at me, and there is always a mistep, which sometimes can be an annoyance as one time in Blightown I died falling to a rock surface just inches above the plank and treat me as if I fall to a bottomless pit just because I slip my control, and some places provided the false sense of safety(SPOILER ALERT), just because its dark and there are nothing but chest, doesn't mean is safe. (yes, I dare you inside Anor Londo for the very first time), And just because its a big empty space, doesn't mean that the developers are not putting foe that made full use of that space inside a painting world with undead and not having skeletons with swords.(SPOILER END)

Once I've gotten Pyromency, I felt this game was a little easier, as I was able to be a armored knight while having a fire magic which I can use, Pyromacy is a spell that I can said breaks the game difficulty, as long as Bonfire is within reached, a armored warrior with Pyromancy is a very strong character, I was able to waltz through the Tomb of Giant far more easily then I was previously as I use a Shield and Spear while throwing fire and make short work of the otherwise nightmarish Giant Skeletons. After 30 hour, I still got a long way, and so far, my experience of this game is positive, despite it is still a very hard game, trust me, it is 100% impossible for someone to progress this game without dying, so fitting it was its name, Dark Soul: Prepare to Die!

I enjoy the game so far, and wish for more form the company that bring this amazing game: FROM SOFTWARE, awaiting you to do something more!