A year ago, I attempted to play Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC. It was a nightmare and I'm not talking about the difficulty of the game. It is a shoddy and piss poor port from console to PC and I was unaware until actually playing it. Thankfully DSFix, eliminates most of the problems in the base game to make it playable.
The world was shrouded in a grey fog and ruled by the dragons. Lord Gwyn finds the First Flame and Lord Soul. He and his allies use the newfound power to defeat the dragons and usher in the Age of Fire. Over time the flame begins to die out and he sacrifices himself and his soul to prolong the Age of Fire. With the flame going out, the undead curse begins making humans continually resurrect after death. The player character is one of these cursed undead locked away in an asylum that escapes to succeed Lord Gwyn. For more story details, that is left to personal interpretation as there are no cutscenes to dump exposition on you.
The main game tales place in a continuous open world that is connected through a single main hub called Firelink Shrine. This is where most characters you come across will return to in order to set up their shops to purchase weapons, items or spells. The most important thing in Dark Souls are the bonfires. These are essentially checkpoints you return to after dying and they refill your health potions, called Estus Flasks and your spells. Dying will be a common factor of multiple playthroughs. When you die you lose your humanity and all the souls that you have acquired and become hollow. You are given one chance to go back to the place where you died and retrieve them but if you die again, they are permanently lost. Losing souls especially hurts because not only are they required to increase your stats they are also used to buy items and dying effectively bankrupts you.
Combat in Dark Souls is a very fickle mistress. Most times its a very slow waltz with enemies and bosses, circling around them to find openings and punish whiffed attacks and baiting and parries. Other times are brutal, all out flurries and none of my fights are the same. Each new enemies forces you to take a moment to watch their movements and attack patterns and punishes you for overextending and being greedy.
Level design in Dark Souls ranges from being amazing constructs like Anor Londo or absolutely terrible and confusing messes like Blighttown. There's character and vibrance in each area that sets it apart from one another to convey different moods and atmospheres like the murky and dirty Depths or the tight claustrophobic and hellish Sen's Fortress.
I recommend trying out Dark Souls for yourselves. It has actually been recently makde available on backwards compatibility for the Xbox One. After actually learning how to play the game and make a proper build around my stats, I began to really enjoy it despite how tough in can be at times. The level design is really good save for a few hiccups. I will definitely be doing a new game plus for this.
