Dark Souls

[Stoner]

Allow me to begin with...

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

First things first, this isn't one of those "I'm gonna learn everything in a few minutes and have the game mastered within an hour" type games.  Hell.  Fucking.  No.

In fact, the VERY FIRST ENEMY you come across is a boss monster.  This is before you have anything like "weapons" or "spells" to fight it with.  So the game teaches you right away that you are going to do one of two things very often.

Run.  Or die.

Once you get the swing of things(which WILL take a while) the game becomes much easier.  There is a lot of subtlety to the combat in this game.  Button mashing will get you nowhere.  Every fight, even the ones against mook type enemies, are very methodical.

The mechanics are pretty simple.  When you kill things, they leave behind Souls that basically work as both Experience Points and Currency.  Scattered throughout the game are camps that you can rest at, which is also where you do your leveling.  When you gain a level its by investing a number of souls into a stat point.  One point equals one level, but each point does a number of things.

When you die, you lose all of your souls.  All of em.  But if you can get back to where you died without dying again, you can get them all back.  There was one boss I fought half a dozen times, killing everything along the way each time and getting my souls back before fighting the boss each time because you had to trigger him before  he would appear.  So by the time I ended up killing him I had a nice number of souls built up with which to level and buy shit.

This game is NOT for people who mindlessly want to blow through things.  This is my third attempt at playing it, and the furthest I've gotten thus far.  Its definitely a fun game, but its hard as all hell.  I can honestly say its one game that I feel like I've actually accomplished something, even if that something is getting to the nearest camp without dying so I could level up.

[Black Death]

in other words


prepare  to die ....



a lot