Dark Souls 2: My New Favourite Game

What have I been missing all this time?

Never did I consider for a moment that after playing Dark Souls for only a few weeks that it would become such a source of excitement and - for lack of a better term - mild obsession in my life. But there it is. When I'm not playing, I'm thinking about where I'm headed next in Drangleic. When I am playing, I'm utterly enthralled by the visuals, the sense of impending death and the almost ghostly notion that every inch of the world I explore - and every item I obtain - is steeped in vague history. And when I sleep, it's to the voice of some Youtube narrator telling me about the lore of the universe itself and the denizens within it.

I'm absolutely gripped and only wish I'd discovered it all sooner!

So what is it that makes Dark Souls so obscenely good? I had to answer this question for myself upon reading a Youtube comment on one of my DS2 videos that read: "Boring. You just swing your sword over and over..." or something to that effect. It hurt my brain to read such a comment, but there it was, in all it's irritating absurdity.

Such a remark ignores the simple and yet challenging combat mechanics of dodging, blocking, parrying, deciding whether to use quick or powerful attacks, poise, encumberance, stamina management, item usage, weapon choice and Estus timings. But then perhaps many of these things are only evident to the player once they've actually tried the game for themselves? Perhaps... We'll give our commenter the benefit of the doubt for the sake of moving on. For combat aside, Dark Souls is still laden with brilliance at just about every turn.

The boss battles. Damn, the boss battles...

I'd forgotten how it felt to attempt something in a game, fail horribly, and feel completely at a loss. I remember thinking multiple times during my earliest weeks of Dark Souls play that a set task was impossible, or that there was some 'trick' or 'secret' that I was missing to an encounter. I thought this of The Pursuer boss, for example, only the second boss of the game! I threw myself at him 3 times and was annihilated every time.

It was, in my mind, an insurmountable task.
But I tried again, made adamant by an equal mix of frustration and adrenaline. I died, and tried again and again and again.

On my 8th encounter with The Pursuer, I defeated him and took his soul.

I hadn't looked up a guide and I hadn't gotten lucky. Over the course of 7 deaths, I'd been growing as a player - even if I hadn't realised it at the time. I'd been studying his animations, and knew which attacks I could safely block without being crushed under the weight of his gigantic sword, which I should dodge and which I could counter-attack upon avoiding. I learned how to better manage my stamina. I learned that 'thrust' and 'slash' damage types have a big impact on the amount of damage you deal depending on your opponent's armour type.
But above all else, I started to learn that there is something visceral about Dark Souls, something that forces you to improve. And that's that you, the player, have everything you need to succeed provided for you within the game. And if you die? Well then, time to buck up your ideas, because you probably deserved it.

That's refreshing to me. It's odd, because it really shouldn't be. It seems intuitive that overcoming difficulty on the back of your own merit is a rewarding thing, and yet many games favour trivializing encounters as if afraid that players will abandon their game at the first sign of real adversity (while I'm of the opinion that the opposite is true. Unless for the story, why game if not for the challenge?)

Another gargantuan part of Dark Souls that deserves a mention is the world itself. I've mentioned already how every location, weapon and armour piece is drizzled in specks of lore, little droplets of history that can be pieced together to give you an inkling of what the world was like hundreds - maybe thousands of years before your character ever set foot in it.

And the characters?

Just like Drangleic, it's denizens offer hints and whispers relating to the world and it's past, pebbles and chippings from the mosaic. Many of these characters are utterly without hope, drowning in the despondence all around. Some of them are a hair's breadth from losing their sanity, while others seem eerily at ease with the encroaching corruption. None of them are 'information dumps'. They are all one with the rotting kingdom of Drangleic and serve as believable whisperers of it's years gone by.

The Merchant Hag Melentia is one such whisperer, a character one stumbles into early in the game. There is something ancient and, more clearly, demented about her character, with haunting voice lines such as:
"Drangleic's been a pile o' rubble since the war fought long, long ago...When the giants crossed the sea..." and "Poor folk like myself had nary a place to sleep. That's why I keep all my things right with me..."
I'll point out that the old mare has a basket the size of a large kennel strapped to her stooping, crooked figure. And her hissing remarks about giants crossing the oceans spooked me for days after speaking with her. It's this kind of character that sticks with me as a player. If I had to choose between saving the life of Thrall or Melentia, I'd save the hag in a heartbeat. The world of Dark Souls is just that real.


And I've perhaps began to ramble. But there it is. I could go on about Dark Souls for hours, however I really have to sleep! Typing this up at 5am just now. I just had to share my affection for this game, and am looking forward wholeheartedly to Dark Souls 3!

Cob