Dark Souls is an action role-playing video game that was originally released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2011. It quickly gained a reputation for being one of the hardest video games in recent memory due to it's slogan YOU WILL DIE. The game is true to its word and the player will quickly discover that they will see the game over screen hundreds of times through their run. In August of 2012, the game developers released a PC version of the game called the "Prepare to Die" edition. All that basically emphasizes the difficulty of the game.
I recently bought the game because I had heard great things about it and wanted to see if maybe I could join the broad group of Dark Souls masochists. After playing for only 3 hours, I took the disk out of my Xbox 360, put it back into the game case, and returned it to GameStop. For a week I had been scrounging up spare coins and saving up to buy what is possibly the hardest game series in recent memory. For a week, I had been mentally steeling myself for the utter rage that I knew would fill my body. And after that week was over, after I had Dark Souls in my hand, I realized that it just wasn't the game for me.
Dark Souls focuses primarily on how difficult the game is and not really on telling a story, which is what I play games for. The lore is deep and vast, but I found myself googling a lot of terms and wondering where the merchants are. The story felt lacking but not because there was no story but because Dark Souls aimed for and achieved a minimalistic plot. When you finally leave the prolog, you're given your next mission: ring two bells; one's above you while the other is below you. That's it. It doesn't tell you which bell would be easier to ring first (totally the north bell). I don't want my hand held, but I don't want to be totally confused either. I wanted Dark Souls to have a rich plot alongside the challenging combat. I LOVED the difficult battle. I just didn't like how simple the story was. It was barely there and, if you did find pieces of the story, it was just as hard to create. Nonetheless, Dark Souls is an excellent, sadistic game that everyone should try at least once in their life.
