There is a part in Square’s seminal PS1 RPG Final Fantasy VII where shortly after leaving the starting city of Midgar and venturing into the open world for the first time you encounter a huge snake, way bigger and more powerful than your current team. You can fight him for a while but you are only delaying the inevitable, no matter what you do; the snake will eventually beat you and leave you limping off with your tail between your legs. Later on in the game you get the opportunity to face the snake again and avenge your earlier death, only this time you are a higher level, have better equipment and weapons, this time you have a chance. It can still be tough but with the odds evened the snake can now be defeated and if you manage it you will be rewarded with a great deal of satisfaction and some nice shiny loot. So what has this got to do with Dark Souls I hear you ask? Well this short gaming analogy sums up why despite being so difficult, hostile and sometimes downright evil Dark Souls is one of the most satisfying (and frustrating) games I have ever played on the Xbox 360.



Dark Souls is a dark fantasy RPG developed by From Software as a loose sequel to critically acclaimed PS3 exclusive Demon Souls, there isn’t much of a plot save for a brief prequel which explains why the world is filled with murderous beasts and that there are four great demons that need to be slain. After this you are dropped into the world as your chosen avatar and are pretty much left to work everything out for yourself.
Gameplay is from a third person perspective and in many ways follows the standard action RPG format, as you roam unfamiliar castles slaying enemies and searching for loot. The main currency In the game is souls which are earned by defeating enemies, these souls can be used for levelling up your character as well as purchasing equipment from vendors and repairing your items. These souls are dropped when you die and if you get killed on your way to picking them back up they will be lost forever.



When the game begins you are go through a basic character creating process where you can customise the look of your character a choose a starting class, these follow the standard fantasy RPG roles such as rogue, warrior, mage etc.. but the real customisation really comes as you play the game as nothing is limited, magic classes can use heavy weapons or armour and warrior classes can cast spells so you end up creating your own custom class based upon your playstyle, likewise if you get bored of playing a certain way or are struggling with a certain section of the game then a quick equipment change is all that is needed to change your approach.
From software sensibly limit your use of special talents such as magic or ranged attacks so eventually you will need to master the excellent melee combat system. The combat is fairly simple, you have a light and a heavy attack along with a block and a parry. The complexity comes from the timing, each enemy has its own set of moves and they tend to hit hard so you need to watch them and learn their patterns before striking back with an attack of your own. If you are feeling particularly confident you can attempt a parry, if successful this will set you up for a counter which kills most enemies outright, but if you get it wrong you will take a big hit and may end up dead yourself.



Checkpoints in the game come in the form of bonfires that you can light, once lit you will become your respawn point when you die, bonfires restore your health and magic as well as replenishing your ‘estus’ flasks, these act as health potions and give you a set number of health top ups per life. The kicker is that every monster that you have killed since your last bonfire will come back to life, with the exception of bosses and mini bosses. This gives the bonfires a tactical significance and they tend to become a kind of home base where you can adventure from, gradually increasing your characters power and improving your equipment until you feel it is time to venture into the unknown as push forward towards the next big boss or objective.
Dark Souls is designed as a single player experience but there is an element on online play, players can leave notes for each other around the world warning of impending traps or treasure or leaving hints about upcoming enemies. Players can also invade other players worlds to cause harm or be summoned as allies to help with bosses, the conditions for this are strict and costly in terms of in game consumables but it does help and is useful to have some human help in an otherwise desolate and lonely world. Other players sometimes manifest themselves as ghosts in your game giving a brief glimpse of what other people are up to or bloodstains which you can touch to get a replay of how another player died and potentially warning of imminent danger



Graphically Dark Souls is a bit of a mixed bag, the world has a superb consistent vision and is sometimes breathtaking in realising it but at the same time the developers ambition outstrips the current hardware and in some boss fights the frame rate can drop to a dangerously low level, it rarely intrudes on the experience and on the whole I would consider Dark Souls to be a well realised and good looking game.
Achievement wise you are looking at a long and difficult slog to get 1000 with this game with a minimum of 3 complete playthroughs at around 30+ hours each.
The key defining feature of Dark Souls is its difficulty, there is a constant danger of death which leads to you treading carefully and treating the world with respect, death is a regular occurrence and is more often than not a learning experience, the game sometimes oversteps the mark seemingly being tough just for the sake of it but in general the difficulty serves as Dark Souls greatest asset. Nowadays we have become accustomed to being spoon fed every aspect of an experience from Fable’s breadcrumbs to the rewind mechanics in driving games. In bucking this trend Dark Souls is unique, it makes you think and it forces you to explore and against such difficulty even simple triumphs give a huge amount of satisfaction, whereas beating one of the games many difficult bosses feels like a real achievement.
It’s not for the feint hearted but if you have the patience and dedication to give to it, then Dark Souls will reward you with the most satisfying role playing game in recent memory

9 / 10