The fate of undead |Review Dark Souls

Dark Souls, no matter how many years it goes, and the desire to make a review on this series of games has not subsided. On the contrary, from year to year, the more I knew this world, the more my desire to collect everything and make a similar series of video.

In June 2020, I once again decided to double my favorite first Dark Souls, which was the last straw and I took up writing this text

Since you read it, or watch a video review, it means that my efforts have not gone into the void and the review I did!

Today we have the first game from the Dark Souls series

2009, the year when Demon’s Souls came out. The Japanese action RPG, which immediately from the moment the critics liked it and came to the taste of many players. Good sales against the background of an almost complete lack of marketing surprised many. The game was literally bought up on a mouth. What was the case in Demon’s Souls?

If you believe the reviews of those years, then this is the honest complexity of the gameplay. Everyone characterized DS as a gift “Fans of the old school”, How “A game that teaches to fight and overcome difficulties”. Many counted the “souls of demons” with a sip of fresh air in a slightly stagnant industry.

And this is all true, because the game was very much like the old RPG early 2000s. The very games that did not drive the player by the handle, but only gave him funds to fight with the world and left one. Because of what the games had a fairly large scope for studying themselves.

Demon’s Souls perfectly gave these feelings. And due to good success in a couple of years, an ideological continuation awaited us all, it was called Dark Souls

Launching a new game, we are greeted by the screen of the creation of the character. There are sufficiently limited appearance settings and the choice of class with gift.

Classes here are a starting set of equipment and distribution of characteristics. This choice may not at all affect further passage. Things that are in these starting sets can be found further in the game, and stats to pump.
So, taking at the beginning of a conditional warrior, it will be possible to calmly redo him into a magician, pyromancer, bandit or anyone else through several levels.

The gift of the character is a separately selected object that we will have at the beginning of the game. Personally, I noted two gifts for myself as something interesting.

The ring of an old witch, which can be useful for interacting with one character and obtaining a small share of Laura.
A Load will allow you to open some doors and get into some places before we can find the key.

Although all gifts one way or another can be obtained during the passage of the game, though often not the most obvious ways.

I think we figured out with the starting set of things and it was time to plunge into this world.

Entrance video from the game

The introductory video will tell us an important part of the history of the local world.

Previously, in this world, everything was in fog and darkness, the earth was gray, and dragons dominated here.
But then fire appeared in the world, and with it everything broke up into two sides. Those who found in the first flame of the soul of the Lords came out of the darkness and gained force with which they were able to challenge dragons.

Dragons were exterminated, and the era of fire began in the world, but the flame has the ability to go out.

The game itself begins in the dungeon of undead. We are in the cell, where we must languish to the end of the century. But fate has a different plan and we are helped out by an unknown knight who dropped a corpse with a key from the camera into our camera.

From this moment, control is transferred to the player’s hands.
In our hand we have only a handle of a sword that can help little. But the local inhabitants do not show any aggression until you touch them.

Climbing the stairs, we will find a bonfire, a local type of checkpoints, to which the game will return us after every death. After the fire, we open the gate, passing part of the next room, a huge demon will suddenly fall from the roof, who wants to destroy us.

Oddly enough, this moment was the final point for many players, which started acquaintance with Dark Souls. After all, if you start fighting with this demon, then we will inflict scanty damage to him, and he will kill us into two blows. There are no ways treated, and the meaning? Just picking this enemy with bare hands will take a lot of time. What if the whole game consists of this?

In fact, it is not strange, the developers are not fools. There is a fairly noticeable passage in this arena, illuminated by a torch, if we go there, then we will avoid this battle for a while, and we will study the refuge of the undead a little more.

Ahead of us is the next bonfire and our starting weapon, which will depend on the class that we chose at the beginning of the game. Now our character poses a threat and can calmly cut local undead, especially since they are now acting aggressively.

The first dead people do not pose a particular danger, but still it is worth being neat, a couple of missing blows in an instant will be sent to the gaping player to the last fire!

Having moved on and avoiding death from a large boulder, we will meet a knight who at the beginning of the game gave us the key and helped us escape from the dungeon. He will tell you that we are chosen undead. And that we have an important fate and the fact that we need to go to the lands of ancient overlords – Lords. There we will need to hit the bell and then we will recognize the fate of the undead.

After this monologue, the knight will give us an Estus, a local therapeutic drink and keys that will reveal to us the passage further. As soon as we move away from the room where the knight was located, you can hear how he died. Entering the room again, there will be no one there

And then the demon awaits us with which we are already familiar. But this time it is much easier to defeat him, because we have weapons.

Here I want to talk a little about the combat system. It is arranged quite simply, we have strong and weak strokes, the ability to put a block, parry and roll.
Accordingly, if you are a conditional magician, then instead of strokes there will be a spell castor!

On all these actions, Stamin will be spent and if it ends, then within a couple of seconds we will be literally defenseless.

In general, in the base, the combat system in Dark Souls is quite simple. In most cases, we only need to inflict damage and competently evade opponents’ attacks.

All difficulties are mainly that this system, although simple mechanically, it requires the player to have the ability to manage his stamina and understanding the enemy paternal of movements. Often one small mistake of you, of course, will not send you to the next world, but it will cost you a decent amount of HP.

But at the same time, the game is fair enough, so enemies are not superpower. Most of them will die from 2-3 strokes, and single enemy is actually a lot of damage, and then these are usually bosses or mini bosses.

We will talk about this to everything, but for now we will return to the first boss.Overcoming our first boss, the only thing for us to go to the edge of some ledge, where we are already waiting

Approaching the edge of the cliff, a huge raven will fly and grab us with its tenacious paws and fly away into the distance!

An unknown bird brings us to the next bonfire, near which some person sits. This place is called the Temple of Fire and from now on we can say that this is our hub

It is here that various characters will come, which we will meet during the passage of the game, and this place can also be called a link between many locations, so you will have to return here more than once or twice.

Also bonfires will now allow us not only to relax near them, but also pump or turn our devastation.

With pumping here, everything is quite simple and understandable, each level costs a certain number of souls that we receive for the murders of opponents or find on locations in the form of objects. In one level, we can raise any status to one item.

These same stats give us different improvements:

*Survivability and endurance will improve strips of hp and stamines.
*Strength and dexterity will strengthen our blows, and will also allow you to take weapons requiring stats.
*Intelligence and faith is almost the same as strength and dexterity only related to magic.
*Resistance will improve our protection against different types of damage
*And scholarship that will increase the number of slots for spells.

In fact, they have a little more properties, but this is the most basic that you should know at the beginning of the game.

And what is the conversion of devastation?
Well, if we have humanity, then we can use it, and then by applying the “appeal” we will become a person. In addition to a pleasant appearance, this condition allows us to use the signs of the call of other players and NPC. Subsequently in the game we will more than once meet such signs, and by applying them you can call on your partner and pass the locations will be easier.

But so that life does not seem like honey, there is an opportunity not only to help other players, but also to invade their worlds in the form of a dark spirit. The red aura clearly shows not the most friendly mood, and so it is. Such invaders have only one task, find you as the owner of the world, and kill you.

So every time you decide to turn devastation, think about the fact that this can harm. Moreover, for my personal surprise in Dark Souls, there are still a lot of players and during my broadcasts with the passage of the game, there were several cases when people came to fight.

But back to the temple of fire.

At the moment, we have not yet seen the https://play-jango.co.uk/ signs of the call and the invaders, the only thing we have is a depressed knight near the fire. If you talk to him, he will tell us that Bells are actually two:

*One – upstairs, in the churches of undead.
*Another-far, far below, in ruins at the base of the plague city.

Also, during the dialogue, the knight will note that we are no longer the first undead that came for the sake of the “fate of the undead”.

Since this is our goal then you will have to move and thus we will find ourselves in the next location “City of undead”. Here we are waiting for already familiar hollow warriors. They are not stronger than what was in the “refuge of undead”, but there are a little more of them.

And here I can’t help but say about the study of the world in DarkSouls. Here we have no cards or something like that, because of which the locations will have to be studied, looking into each during. Again, we return to the first boss, here attentiveness will save our life if we pay attention to the door and Just leave the arena.

On open locations of various hidden or simply non -obvious places will be much larger, and their search will be more interesting.

Often the developers will tease us, showing somewhere lying loot, and often the distance to it is scanty, for example, an object can lie on a ledge just above the character. How to get there by itself will not say and will have to carefully study the location and find the same, non -obvious path to the cherished subject.

But objects are still okay, often in this way you can find different characters.
Specifically, in the city of undead you can find a merchant, the path to which was closed by boxes that had to be broken. Moreover, this character himself is quite unimportant, just a merchant. But he can buy a key, which in the future is useful for meeting with another person who even has his own storyline.

In this regard, the keys in Dark Souls are always especially useful. Indeed, quite often they will open the way to any chest or useful things, and sometimes to something more interesting, new passages, locations or characters.

A competent inspection of the terrain by the way will come in handy at the local boss, which is located nearby. Entering the arena, we will not see the main enemy. You can only notice the staircase on the side, where there are a pair of crossbits.

And if you kill them, before the start of the battle, we will not receive bolts in the back. But this is already obvious.
If we return to the first boss again, then there we were taught an attack from the air, which inflicts a lot of damage.
Using this, knowledge can be falling to the new boss right on the head from the perspective of annoying crossbowkers.

After the battle with this “Demon Taurus”, we will meet a new character, knight, Soler from Astora. If we listen to him, he will give us a white chalk, which will allow you to leave signs of a call for other players, and also offer help in this difficult path.
San will appear on some bosses and will become our first comrade in this unfriendly place

Well, right after such a pleasant meeting, it will rain from the flame, because the wyvern lives here.
It must be clarified here that for the player this moment, of course, is unexpected, but we were already showing this Wyvern early, so it was worth expecting something like that.

This red thunder is a local mini boss. Or not to kill it, the player will have to decide. Her murder will open a good passage with a bonfire, from which it will be easy to move on. But in extreme cases it can be circumvented if you look around again, and look also Short-cut to the main fire will open.

One way or another, after this test, we will fall into the “Undezer of the Life”, just here is the church with the first bell, But first, it will be necessary to break through the new hollow with the rapiers, the Bolshoi Berenik knight, who protects something, and the room with a crowd of hollow and a medium that always casts his spells.

And as soon as we get to the top, we are waiting for a battle with another boss and just here it will be possible to call our faithful assistant to Soler.
After this battle, we will finally be able to hit the first bell.

Ways to the second bell two.
One canonical, when we must go to the lower city of non -life, defeat the Demon’s boss, get a key and go in the depths.

The second path is very shorter. If you have a master key, then in the Temple of Fire you can go down to the ruins of the new Londo, and then open the locked door.

One way or another, both of these paths will bring us into one location, which experienced players remember with a special not love, plague city.

I love this place.
Do not understand wrong, I died here dozens of times and hated every local enemy.
Fiery dogs, fast ghouls and the same cattle that always shoots poison from darkness.

Everything in this place wants to send you to the next world. The entire location is shrouded in darkness, because of which you can see not much further than 5 meters, and sometimes it is not at all clear whether it is possible to pass there or not?
In addition to all this place does not look as much as possible to all the locations that were before. And now I’m not talking about visual, because all the locations have their own visual style and this is normal.

Here, the game design is not built in the most familiar way. Before that, we constantly moved along simple and spacious locations. Stone walls, sewage, the roof of the church, all these places, although different in terms of location and design, have a common feature, it is easy to move along them

In the plague city, we can meet the moving floor, which is striving to get out of the feet. Forever incomprehensible as constructed structures, where nEuchene step is accompanied by a long fall and death. The location itself is generally vertical, which is also not familiar. Before that, of course, there were climbs to the church, for example, but there it was a simple climb up the stairs, but here this very staircase seems to fight with you in the process.

Here we are not happy to see, we are in this place alien. Enemies show us this fierce attacks, which they drive us to the next world. And the game shows us this location device, which seems to be not designed for the Muvset of our character and there is a feeling of heavy movement.

Many threw the game in this place, because this place is literally unbearable.
This place does not seem to be a game of the game for any location of those where we were, but at the same time the rules of the game actually remained the same.
And the one who did not try to run on the break, but studied this place in order, tried to understand his device, often went on

The plague city is an important test and the one who passes it will be able to fight the boss at the end and break through the second bell and finally finds out the fate of the undead.

Catcins with bells

Having broken into two bells, we will see Kittsen, there a certain giant opens the gate near the church. Before we go to the gate, we will still have to go through the temple of fire and a new character will appear there, Frampt.

Frampt Royal Seeker, it is he who will tell about the fate of the chosen undead. We are destined to become the heir to the great master Gwin and to disperse the darkness. To do this, we need to go to the anor of Londo and get a great bowl.

If you talk to him, he will mention that we should keep the path through the fortress of hay, but it is full of deadly traps. We have no choice, we will have to move into a new location. Here I want to tell about the blacksmith and the opportunity to improve our weapon.

Yes, all this time near the church was this place with a bonfire and a blacksmith Andre. With him we can first sharpen our weapons and thereby increase his physical damage.

To do this, we need a titanite, local material. The easiest type of titanite can be bought from Andre itself, and for more powerful sharpening you will have to look for a rarer material. We will meet a few more blacksmiths for the game. All of them will specialize in various improvements. Someone improves fire weapons well, someone crystal.

We will not linger with Andre for a long time, the fortress of hay is still waiting for us.
This location is the second important test for the player, after the plague city. This fort was specially erected by the gods to protect the passage to the anor of Londo and the test of uninvited guests.

The fortress is teeming with dangerous opponents, snakes-soldiers and snakes-magi are able to absorb a lot of damage, against the background of most of the past enemies, they can also cut us in half and throw lightning.

The enemies, although strong, seemed to be quite overcoming. The fortress itself is actually a particular danger, because it Tempens deadly traps. An imperceptible pressure plate meets us right at the entrance, stepping on which we will receive a few arrows in the face.

And then we will find pendulums with blades on a narrow passage over the abyss, skating balls that will easily turn us into a cake and other troubles of this place.

And most importantly, there are no bonfires here. The entire location will have to go once without breaks in the middle of the way. And of course this is real, the fortress is quite small, but the local traps and enemies will not have a nerves to you, and then there will be a battle with a boss, which is very simple, especially against the background of all past tests.

Exhausted after such a heavy location, we will be alone on the roof, but suddenly flying demons will come from from nowhere, grab the hero and take away. So we will get into one of the most beautiful locations of the game, Anor Londo

The abandoned city of the gods immediately meets us with incredible beauty. At this moment, you immediately feel that you have passed all the tests not in vain. But do not let yourself be deceived, although the place is beautiful, but no one will stand on ceremony with us, there will be enough enemies here.

Huge but not particularly rotary guards, along with silver knights, can create problems, but still passes anor Londo easier and calmer than a plague city with a hay fortress. At the end, one of the eminent bosses of the first Dark Souls awaits us. Ornstein and Smog, at one time, this couple was considered almost the most difficult boss in the game.

And it is clear why, we already had to fight early, for example, with Capra’s Demon, from whom improvised dogs ran on the battlefield, which interfere with the battle during the battle. Here it is not just a boss with improvised mobs, but Two full -fledged opponents with which you need to fight at the same time.

And even if you defeated one of the two defenders of the chambers of the princess, you will begin the second phase during which the remaining enemy will receive additional forces from his deceased partner.

Many players immediately came up with the tactics to kill Ornstein first, he is a quick and fairly straining enemy, and Smog even does not particularly strain in the second phase. But the developers were clearly guessed about this, so the soul of the enemy farts from this boss that we killed the last.

And here it is worth mentioning that special souls fall from some bosses for passing the game. We can use them and get a certain number of ordinary souls that can be spent on pumping or purchases from merchants.
But you can also make weapons from the souls of the bosses. The blacksmith can create it, he lives just in the anor of Londo.

This weapon is distinguished by a special appearance and different features. So if you looked at the spear of Ornstein, you will have to leave it to the second phase.

After the boss, we will go to the chambers of the princess, where Gwinery is located, the daughter of Gvin. She gives us a great bowl that the snakes asked us to get. In dialogs, she reports that she was waiting for us, she wants us to continue the work of her father and bring fire to their world, put an end to the eternal twilight.

The bowl gives us the opportunity to teleport between the fires, so now we can immediately transfer to the temple of fire and find out the next task.

When we arrive at the Fire Temple, you can immediately go to Framt. He, as soon as he sees that the cup is with us, will immediately transfer us to the altar of fire. Here we can place a great bowl in its place, and then hear what is required of us.

Frampt asks us to kill creatures with powerful souls to fill the bowl. Creatures are the lord of the graves, the witch Isalit, the four kings of the new Londo and Nagoy Sith. All of them are in different parts of the world and with proper study, we are most likely to know where to go.

*Right near the temple of fire is a cemetery with the entrance to the catacombs, there it will be logical to expect the Lord of the graves.

*Under the plague city, we could already see the lava types of ruins of demons, from where the path leads to Isalite.

*New Londo was when leaving the plague city, right under the temple of fire.

*About Nuga Sight can be heard in the anor of Londo, the Knight of Klinkov can tell about him after receiving the bowl. So we learn that he settled in the archives studying materials about the scales of immortality that drove him crazy.

Great bosses are four small quests with a different approach. Here the game will noting the player’s attentiveness well.

For example, having come to New Londo, ghosts will meet us. They fly through any obstacles and crush in number, but the main problem is that we cannot hit them, because they are ghosts. In order to normally pass this location, it is worth reading the description of the subject “short -term curse” which lies before entering the location. This item will just allow us to fight ghosts.

And this is normal, the enemies and before that demanded their approach. But then after passing the entire location and jumping to the boss, we will die, the abyss will absorb us. And on the location we will meet a character who will give us a hint that we need to know the secret of the arthorias, how he fell into the abyss. We could hear about the artias by the blacksmith Andre, more precisely, see the key called “Symbol of Artias”

And as a result will have to go straight to the grave of the traveler of the abyss to find his secret. It seems like a simple way to the boss, but it turns into a small quest in which we at the same time learn more information about the world and different characters.

This is very good arch of the murder of great bosses. Since we have already explored the world, they give us a quick movement on the bonfires, and how many ordinary bosses we scored, then 4 great people are all special.

Four kings from the abyss They demand to study a little story of one of the characters and find a way to get to them for a location, so the battle with them is unusual in that in the abyss there is no sensation of space, there is simply an endless darkness in which it is difficult to feel how close the enemy is.

Bed of chaos from Isalite In general, it is rather a puzzle than a boss, because there are no fights in the usual form, rather a series of evasions from unpleasant blows and jumping through unpleasant holes in the floor.

Nito master of graves from the crypt of giants, Perhaps the most similar to the usual boss is the enemy, because you just need to fight with him. His only feature is that he revives skeletons in the midst of the battle and we must competently fight without falling under the blows of ordinary enemies.

Nagoy Sith from the archives of the Duke, Perhaps my favorite. After all, first, having made a break with a battle through the archives, we will reach the boss and immediately go to the next world. He can’t even damage him during the battle. The game will even beat our death and put us in a prison camera. And here it is worth recalling the story of the secret of immortality, which we also have to reveal and then fight again.

All great bosses are living stories that can tell a lot about the world of the game.

But there is still something important in this arch, the second snake, the Kaas, which is located in the abyss. There we will meet him if we kill the four kings before Frampt’s order and before we place the cup of the altar of fire.

KAAS will tell us a fairly interesting story.
A long time ago, our ancestor found the fourth great soul, which was not like others. It was a dark soul. He began to wait for the fire to go out, so that only darkness remains and the age of people began. But the lord Gwin was afraid of darkness and people, wanting to return the era of fire, he sacrificed himself to fire and ordered his children to direct people.

Frampt who told us our fate lost his mind and sided with the lord of Guin, thereby deceiving us.

And at that moment the player is at a crossroads. After all, what Kaas says very truthfully, the whole path that we have done as the chosen undead is not true?

This dialogue is one of the most important in the game, because in fact it will become a guide for a player who will choose either to extend the era of fire, or become the fourth lord and build the arrival of the era of darkness, as well as the era of people.

But regardless of whether we will meet the Kaas or not, we will have to defeat the four great ones, and then fill the great bowl, which will lead us to Gvin.

The males of the first flame. It was here that there was the first fire around which the temple was erected. The dark heavens, melted stones, this place is gloomy, but at the same time everything here speaks of the former greatness of the first fire and how weak the flame is now.

The path to Gvin is short -lived, but the black knights, the faithful warriors of Guin, whom we could have seen earlier in the game, will stop us to stop us, but then they were mini bosses. Now these are the most ordinary enemies.

But we are no longer that weak from the beginning of the game, All the experience that we gained in the course of the game stayed with us, and the conversation is not about the pumping of the stat, but about the player’s personal experience. A sense of timing, an understanding of how to move in battle and all the like. If at the beginning the battle with the most ordinary soldier could cause small difficulties, now everything is completely different.

And having made his way with a battle through the knights of Guin, we will meet with the lord of ash himself.

On the background, calm peaceful music plays, which contrasts greatly with the usual music of the bosses of the game. Gwin starts a fight with a sharp attack. His attacks are fast and dangerous, and the Muvset does not look like any boss before.
A little distant Gwin looks like a player with a katana or saber, his movements are somewhat similar to our.

This is an honest duel and gvin is the opponent that is most close to us as possible, which is more dangerous than all previous ones, but we can still defeat it.

Battle with Guin is a good final point of history. We have heard a lot about this character in the course of the whole game and understand the significance of this place and the entire era of fire for him. Also, in terms of the gameplay, Gwin gives us a good challenge, a duel is really impressive with him.

And in the end, when we still overcome it, we will have a choice, light a flame or just leave.
The whole game led us to extend the era of fire, but at the same time there were also characters who let us know that everything was not as clear as it seems.
Maybe the era of fire is not so good? Or maybe our minds tried to cloud the followers of darkness?

These issues are interesting in the context of Dark Souls, but unfortunately, we all know what our hero will choose in the canon, shrubs. After all, otherwise the second and third games of the series simply would not have come out. Therefore, so that you do not solve, but in this case there is only one correct answer.
And if I make a review of continuation, then there the issue of choice will be raised much more details.

In the meantime, our hero is covered by a flame that intensifies. The crucible is again filled with light.

Dark Souls interesting work.
In 2011, when the entire industry was full of casual console games, the Japanese from from From Software took and made a kind of RPG beginning 00x. A game in which no one leads you by the handle and does not show markers where to go. The game in which you need to think about the story. A game that encourages training and builds a gameplay around the player skill, and not around a beautiful visual.

Personally, dark souls resemble as a kind of Gothic as much as possible, only modern. Here no one will bother with you, you will either pass all the trials, or will come a new undead that will replace you.

In this review, I tried to dip you into this interesting game experience, but at the same time I left a lot of things behind the scenes so that people who have not knew nothing about the game, can still be very surprised when passing.

If this article will receive a response and maybe even positive assessments and constructive criticism, then it is quite likely that I will come for writing a review of the second part, where most likely this will take more the format of the “History of the series”, with a more detailed story about the game and events around it.
But all this already depends on you 🙂

Thank you for reading

The best comments

In general, in the base, the combat system in Dark Souls is quite simple. In most cases, we only need to inflict damage and competently evade opponents’ attacks.

All difficulties are mainly that this system, although simple mechanically, it requires the player to have the ability to manage his stamina and understanding the enemy paternal of movements.

No. In a couple of hours you want, you don’t want to start to understand all the boots, iPhrams, rolls, protection, weight, etc.D., because without understanding these mechanic it will be stupidly uncomfortable and stuffy to play.

Suitable, thanks for the work done.

With a uprote approach, yes, most likely it will be so.

But I watched a more realistic script, a more ordinary player.
As practice shows, most of these players who have passed the conditional Souls for the first time, do not even know what the iPhram is.

And so, of course, the mechanics are very complex than described in the text. But I did not set myself a goal in all the little things to describe everything and everything.

About such little things I wanted to focus on the story about the second part greatly. There, the same iPhrames have greatly redone, attaching their indicator to a separate stat.

As for me, it was not worth writing a review in the spirit: “Now I will retell almost the whole game and make a couple of conclusions”