In 2009, FomSoftware released a game called Demon's Souls. Known for its difficulty and unique systems at play, the game went on to become a cult classic. In 2011 FromSoftware did a follow up title. One that would be harder and ask more of players. Marketed with the tagline "Prepare to Die," Dark Souls was an unusual game being released at a time when videogames catered more toward making the experience approachable and their stories more straightforward. Dark Souls, however, opted for a less approachable experience and a story that gave more vague hints to its lore than actual answers. If you'd asked anyone in 2011 if Dark Souls would become one of the most influential games of the last generation no one would've believed you. It flew in the face of the direction the medium was headed at the time. Dark Souls prided itself on its difficulty, it's vague lore and constantly taunting the player with how much they were going to die. If anything Dark Souls sounded like it would repel audiences more than invite. Yet the challenge Dark Souls provided was exactly what the industry was looking for at the time. It felt fresh and unique and became a very incredible sleeper hit. By the end of 2011 Dark Souls was up for an unusually large amount of Game of the Year Awards and had acquired critical success and a cult following most games simply do not achieve. This was enough to grant Dark Souls two sequels and a spiritual successor in Bloodborne. It is now not that unusual to see critics refer to games as "Soulslike," in their execution, nor is it unusual to see a few games embrace their difficulty. And while Dark Souls did not, by any means, invent the difficulty curve or anything of the sort, it's influence in the gaming industry is unmistakable. Despite two other entries, neither of them ever felt as special as that first trip to Lordran. Dark Souls Remastered allows us to step back into this familiar and terrifying world. Does it hold up as well in 2018 as it did in 2011? It turns out that it mostly does.
Dark Souls has players controlling an undead character that they will create and name. After escaping the Undead Asylum they'll be thrust into the world of Lordran, a world where things look rather bleak. The fire is dying and as the chosen undead you will fight various monsters and old heroes to either reignite the flame and keep the age of fire going longer, or thrust the world into darkness for a new era. There is this misconception that the only appeal Dark Souls has is its challenge. If that was all there was to its success and fandom, however, Dark Souls would likely not be as popular as it is. A large portion of is fanbase comes directly from those trying to decipher its story and lore, and just being in the world it takes place in. Lordran is a very dark and mysterious world and this has become just as synonymous with Dark Souls as the difficulty has. Though Dark Souls story seems simple on the surface, much of its story is deliberately vague, leaving the player to piece bits and pieces together on their own. In fact, once you're about halfway through the game it helps to watch the first cutscene again because it suddenly makes sense. Dark Souls is not a game known for holding your hand in any capacity and this includes the story. Much of the story is communicated to the player through the various environments, cryptic NPCs who have either lost all hope or gone mad in some way, and various items around the world. Unlike most games, reading the item description is imperative to understanding the story and the lore of the game, and even that won't provide you all the answers. Some things you're still left to collect and interpret for yourself. Of course, if you are in this just for the challenge then there's that as well. One can get a lot of enjoyment from Dark Souls without basking in the lore.
Dark Souls is best known for being challenging. When the game was marketed with the slogan "Prepare to Die," that's not just a warning. It's a promise. You will die. Over and over again. For players who accept this as an inevitability they'll quickly adapt and go forth. For players easily frustrated, however, this may not be the game for them. Especially because Dark Souls is far less forgiving in death than most games. This is still true today. Throughout the game the player will collect souls which are used as not only experience but currency. Any time the player dies they will drop their souls. You always have one chance to get your souls back, but if you die on the way, they'll be gone forever.
Sure enough, death lurks around every corner. But Dark Souls is not unfair in how it distributes death. Yes, there will be times when death is inevitable, but Dark Souls is more of a stern teacher rather than a cruel one. If an enemy kills you, the enemy placement never changes. Once you know of the threat lurking nearby you'll always know of the threat lurking nearby, and as you play you'll slowly learn their patterns, movements and placements that Dark Souls goes from being rather difficult to slowly being manageable. The game is designed for you to learn from failure, adapt and succeed. This is shown greatest in the games many boss fights. The hulking demons you fight throughout the game are always a challenge at first, but as you continue to die you'll eventually learn. There's nothing greater in Dark Souls than the feeling of landing the last hit on a boss that gave you trouble. And in that moment the game celebrates your success. Bosses explode in a flash of stardust as the words "Victory Achieved" show up on screen and you're rewarded handsomely with a ton of souls. Each victory feels like an accomplishment and even though I've played through the first game numerous times, I still feel a sense of joy whenever this happens.
The combat in Dark Souls is meticulous. Unlike most action RPGs, Dark Souls is a methodical combat experience. Your attacks have obvious wind up and cool down times and so do your enemies. Every attack every enemy uses is telegraphed enough for you to figure out how best to approach that particular situation and react accordingly. This is also true of bosses. However, the player is also tasked with managing a stamina gauge. So long as the gauge has a little juice left they can act. Stamnia depletes with each swing of the weapon, block of a shield or (as is the most common tactic in many situations) rolling. Learning these moments and exploiting them is the key to victory. Most failure in Dark Souls results in the inability to be patient. If you're used to games such as Bloodborne it may take time to relearn. This is particularly true as the engine in the first Dark Souls is not as fast as that of Bloodborne or Dark Souls III.
Though this is also not always in the game's favor. While combat is fine in and of itself, the combat is more refined in other games that came after. None of the combat quirks of Dark Souls II or III make it in here. Duel Wielding isn't a thing you can do here and if you loved that a lot it's an adjustment here. None of this is bad, mind you, and I certainly didn't expect FromSoftware to retrofit these mechanics into the game. After all, some of the future mechanics would make Dark Souls just a bit too easy and that isn't what the game is going for. Nevertheless, the combat actually holds up surprisingly well.
One area that has been vastly improved, however, is the multiplayer experience. Dark Souls is unique in that players can cooperate and go against each other in various ways. Players can join covenants that allow them to travel to other worlds and best others in PVP combat, but perhaps the most well known aspect of Dark Souls is the engagement in jolly cooperation! Not only can players invade to kill each other, but they can team up to go and challenge bosses together. In the original game the intent was to get help from a stranger. There was no way to set up local play with friends without going through tedious convoluted methods to do so. This is now simplified by allowing players to share a password and this allows for them to connect and play together far more easily. The multiplayer has also been expanded to allow 2-6 players to run around as opposed to the 2-4 previously. Dark Souls also still retains its message system. Throughout the game, you'll find messages on the ground that can provide hints (or tricks) as to what to do. If you ever feel lost, this system can give you some help.
Another aspect where the game shows noticeable improvement is that it no longer suffers from some of the frame issues that plagued the original release. This is especially good for places like Blight Town, an area where the framerate notoriously dropped considerably making an already difficult area that much more difficult. Blight Town alone will make you reconsider going back to the original PS3/360 release. The game runs at 60 frames per second, and while the frame does on occasion dip and lag can settle in it's never anywhere near as bad as it used to be. The downside to all of this, though, is that making the environments look better graphically does have the drawback of making more of the blemishes stand out. Everything is sharp and crisp and that's nice, but it also means that some textures reveal themselves to look rather ugly. Also of note is that some graphical hiccups such as floating destroyed barrels and crates are far more noticeable this time around.
That's not to say everything about the game has aged well. Some bosses aren't as memorable as they used to be. Some of my personal favorites are still as awesome as ever. I never tire of fighting Sif or Ornstein and Smough, but other bosses like the Moonlight Butterfly or the Bed of Chaos are not highlights for the game. Bed of Chaos in particular feels like a boss that the player needs to have a lot of luck in fighting. The game itself is still rewarding, but I'm reminded some parts of it I truly do not miss. On the other hand, though, most of the games other battles and locations hold up. Anor Londo, for instance, is still just as amazing here as it was the first time I played it in 2011, including some of its notorious difficulty areas.
On the other hand, it is something of a shame that FromSoftware didn't offer up a chance for players to remix the game if they so choose like how Dark Souls II's remaster did. If you played the original Dark Souls to death everything you've done will still work here. And as Dark Souls is a game about learning and mastery you'll have already done that. This doesn't mean there isn't much of a reason to play it if you've already mastered it, but it does mean that there isn't much new being offered to you. At the very least it does come with all the DLC from before packed in as well.
Is Dark Souls Remastered worth getting if you've already played it? Mostly it is. There are some aspects that haven't aged as well, but quite a bit of it has aged remarkably well. The more consistent framerate and easier time playing with friends in multiplayer make experiencing it worthwhile again. The game is also pretty gorgeous, for the most part. If you've never played Dark Souls before there is absolutely no reason to go with the original PS3/360 version. If you have and you simply want to step back into the world Lordran then this is a worthwhile investment.
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Tough But Fair
If you have paid attention to gaming journalism and marketing since Dark Soul's original release in 2011, no doubt you've seen the phrase "X is the Dark Souls of Y. " This serves as a signifier of the game's difficulty. These comparisons, however, end there and are strained at best and reductive at worst. Possibly the most infamous of these flimsy comparisons is GamesRadar's review of the 2017 Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy. The point I'm trying to make here and this review in general, are where these games differ in how they present their difficulty. Crash comes from a time that was still very much informed by the quarter stealing coin-op games of the arcade scene, and thus derives its difficulty from very acute attention to spatial awareness and timing. Playstation 1 era controls and systems, while at their core simple, are not what today's gamers are used to and don't help with the former. The platforms/shooter Cuphead has been called "Cup Souls" for its immense difficulty, despite it being derived from the intense influence of Japanese bullet hell games. These are renowned for their immensely twitchy gameplay that relies on, like Crash, spatial awareness and timing.Dark Souls is another beast entirely. While it is comparable to the coin-ops in that most enemies kill you in 3 hits, the comparisons mostly end there. Unlike other RPGs such as Skyrim, you have to understand multiple systems at work, and button mashing will not help you. There are no magic map markers or fast travel systems (in the first 2/3s of the game at least in the latter's case). The only form of checkpoint is the game's bonfires, bases spread across the map (at max 3 in an area) that allow you to heal, restore your estus (the only way to heal outside of the bonfires besides magic spells), and spend souls in order to level up. There's no regenerating health or magic. This game does not hold your hand. It makes you explore, go slowly through the game, and use trial and error to find out what style of play works for you. The former games don't have this malleability. They have to be played in the exact right way to get from place to place. Dark Souls, however, lets you make your own path. There's no one solution to the many seemingly insurpassable obstacles that the game throws at you and the tried and true solution of most western RPGs, button mashing, is really the only patently wrong answer. The game gifts all the tools one needs right from the start. The parry, riposte, and backstab techniques are a very intuitive way to deal with a majority of the game's mob. The game stresses that enemies should be dealt with 1-on-1 and groups will often split up to help the player out with this. There is no all encompassing class like Skyrim's infamous Stealth Archer, you build your character the way you are comfortable with and it will work for you. The game awards trial and error. That's why the soul recovery system is so fantastic. If you weren't aware, once you die in Dark Souls you leave behind a glowing green pile of the souls that you have collected up to that point. These souls are a dual purpose mechanic that functions as both the game's currency for shops and XP for leveling up. I offer a 3rd function for them though: motivation to learn from your mistakes. You have to embrace the "You Died" screen; you should be learning from each death. If you don't, you lose the souls you worked so hard to get. The game awards endurance and hope. These two tools will be more powerful than any weapon on your way to the end of this game.It suffers from a third act that was rushed for time constraints. This part of the game doesn't capture the tense feelings and dread of the former part of the game, you are likely way more than powerful enough for each boss. All in all, it keeps aesthetic and requirement for strategy all the way through, so this 3rd act isn't a chore or boring. It just isn't as captivating as the earlier portions. I'd recommend this game if you have patience and a little time on your hands; a normal first time play through takes anywhere between 50 and 70 hours on average.The multiplayer in this game is really unique. If you have humanity, you can sacrifice some to unhollow yourself. This allows you to summon the help of certain NPCs and other players at various points of the game which can help for particularly tough bosses. On my first play through I had a lot of trouble maintaining humanity though and I didn't get to utilize this feature much, I had to beat Ornstein and Smough all by myself. That tested my will. Some real life assistance will surely be helpful in this game. However, reversing your hollowing also sets you up to be invaded by other players, in line with this game's faction systems. Various factions give you access to benefits such as new weapons or magic as you level up your affinity with that faction. This leveling system is based on items that you can recover from either helping or invading other players, and occasionally found in the world as loot. The invasion system is where a lot of the role playing comes in. There's a certain forest area that is guarded by a certain faction. Joining that faction and murdering incoming players is a great way to mine humanity and souls and faction items and also makes the forest hunters not attack you once you enter that area. While it does add more depth to the experience, it can be frustrating when you're in a bind nowhere near a bonfire with no idea of what to do next just to be invaded and have all your hard work erased. This isn't common but when it does happen, it can be quite the setback. However, you'll be used to setbacks with this game. The matchmaking is based on what your strongest weapon is, so if you're still trying to orient yourself in the game, maybe don't try to level up your weapons early on to avoid highly experienced griefers. That all being said, the multiplayer isn't very active as of right now.In terms of content, this is a 1:1 port of the Prepare to Die edition that includes the game and DLC. This version fixes frame rate issues that blighted Blightown and various other portions of the game. The textures are updated and are noticeably nicer than the last generation versions of this game. I originally had this on PS3 in 2014 but I "didn't get it" and dropped it after failing to get past a certain early boss that I must have tried upwards of 50 times. Even with that little bit of time spent, the graphics are noticeably nicer. Its nothing amazing; current gen games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 look a lot nicer on their native consoles than this does, but the aesthetic is still here in all its gothic and depressing glory. If you played on PC, however, most of the function updates included in the mod DSFix cover the issues that console gamers had no solution for. This remaster is purely for console gamers who missed their chance last gen or those that want a more consistent and less buggy experience than what they had on PS3 or Xbox360.Good luck, Chosen Undead.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2018
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Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2023
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