3/5 ★ – Silabus's review of DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED.

Dark Souls... GARBAGE GAME 0/10. THROW IT IN THE BIN. No. That’s not how I feel. But it is how I felt going into it. I enjoy games that are lighthearted, whimsical, colorful, with lots of catchy music and slice of life character dialogue. They are a nice way to relax after a day of hard work. Dark Souls is the polar opposite of games I like and after 100%ing it... It still is the polar opposite of everything I like, but I’m fond of some aspects of it. AUDIO – For the most part there is no music. You are alone with the ambient noise and gross sound effects of swamps, clanging armor, or the wind from towers. When there was audio, it wasn’t too remarkable, I can’t remember any of the tracks but when I heard the beginning notes of Firelink shrine I felt at peace, so I liked that. Though if you asked me to hum it from memory I couldn’t. GRAPHICS – It’s fine. They aren’t standout for the generation but also not awful to look at it. One thing I like about the graphics, is that from the outside, it just all seemed like castle stuff. However, after playing it, Undead Burg is wildly different from Sen’s Fortress for example. Palette-wise its similar but aesthetic wise each area is incredibly different which keeps new areas feeling fresh throughout the first playthrough. Where Dark Souls shines is its aesthetics. Look at Anor Londo and tell me that ain’t gorgeous. I had such a big dumb smile on my face when I first got there. I also really freaking liked Duke’s Archives. The idea of floating staircases and magical libraries is really cool to me, whether they are in Dark Souls or Harry Potter. If you wanted to RP as a Game of Thrones or Berserk OC, there truly is no better game than a Souls game. STORY - Story doesn’t make no god damn sense and that’s the way Miyazaki intended it. I’m not watching an 8-hour YouTube video to have it explained to me either. That’s what the game is for! “oh, you want the story to hold your hand” Yes. Either hold my hand because I’m a big baby about content I consume or give me pieces of lore that make me want to investigate more on my own. Nothing in Dark Soul’s was interesting enough to make me want to research past what was presented to me. Fans tell me to read item descriptions. Now hold up. I’m old enough to remember when FF13 got shit on because you needed to read data archives in the menu to understand what any of the fucking words meant. And rightfully so. If I need to read things in menus to understand your story, You are telling more than you are showing. Why are you telling me Seath is the last Dragon and there was this awesome conflict and how badass all these former generals are. SHOW ME! Let me play that! Instead, I get OH THEY WERE SO COOL here’s this weak version of them. Granted they are hard as shit even while weakened but I don’t get any sense of narrative satisfaction from beating them. It’s like if I got into a boxing match with Mike Tyson when he’s 60 and I won. Granted, he could probably still send me to Jesus with a stray right hook but winning won’t mean anything. It doesn’t make me a prodigy boxer; it makes me an asshole picking on senior citizens. Oscar is like “I let you out of your cell, ring the bell” So I do that to pay back the bro, then I find out there’s more than 1 bell and that people have been doing this to fulfill some prophecy. Now at this point I’ve already fulfilled my promise to Oscar, But I wander around and ring the other bell cause fuck it I got nothing better to do, I guess. After I kill an innocent spider woman who was trying to do good things for shits and giggles, I get a vision of Sen’s fortress, I mean how else would we explain why MC knows to go there? We then go to the place designed by Satan. (Which is really well designed TBH as it prepares you for Anor Londo IMO) We get to the top and kill a giant for no reason and then friendly birds take us to the next area. We soon find out they aren’t friendly...except those specific birds are friendly. I don’t fucking know. We enter the hall and get jumped by Weinstein and Fat. We evaluate our life choices both in and out of the game and push past them and meet a giant booby lady. She says Go kill my dad lol. Gaining the power of teleportation through boobs we go back to Firelink Shrine and realize there’s a big fucking snake there. Everything I know about literature ever tells me don’t interact with the snake, and gameplay wise I don’t want to fight a big fucking snake, it’ll end up like the dragon incident in the Valley of Drakes. So, I go back to Andre and buy the expensive thing cause it’s the only thing I can think of. A dog shanks me with a sword and then when I shank him back, he limps. This is sad because he’s cute and he limps, I guess? This appears to be a dead-end so I go to New Londo since this is the only place I haven’t fully explored. There is no bonfire. N o n e. We jump into black with the abyss ring on that some lunatic told us about earlier and find 4 Kings. Well actually it is 1 king but then he becomes 2 and th.., ya know what never mind. After the fight, we are jumped by a big snake, but its actually a different big snake and now that other big snake won’t text us anymore because his friends and my friends are not friends! New Snake lore dumps on us how our identity is that of Mr.Dark Soul and I need to kill Boob Ladies Dad. I was going to do this anyway because boobs but apparently he took my shit and cursed humanity because he wants to rule forever and it’s up to Mr.Dark Soul to send his ass to the shadow realm. I then get another vision of the 3 spots I’m supposed to go to. I go there and beat up his friends. After, I teleport to his layer and kill him. After I do, I can choose to become King Dark Soul or just kill myself and let fate decide what happens next. The story is ridiculous, and I never felt invested in anything going on. It was after Anor Londo but before I came to the conclusion of fighting Sif that I looked up a guide on where to go. It was then I came to a revelation. There are 2 types of people. The type that look up stuff during their first playthrough of Dark Souls and the type that don’t. I was playing alongside someone who was also doing his first playthrough of Dark Souls. He refused to use a guide as much as possible, and as such he hated the cryptic nature of the game, which tainted his experience. (He was also streaming soooo). I thought of it more like the weirdly obscure stuff in Zelda Majora’s Mask or a really well-hidden star in Mario 64. At that time, you had to ask your friends on the playground or buy a strategy guide. Since asking children on a playground could lead to my arrest these days, the modern-day equivalent is using the internet or asking friends on discord. It was through doing this that I went back to the prison and to painted world. I got more souls and leveled up more which helped ease the difficulty curve and I experienced a lot more of the game in my first time. (Still missed the Hydra and Ashen Lake tho) I don’t think these areas added anything narrative-wise but I don’t think their hidden nature detracted from the game either. They (and the DLC) were kinda just..there? GAMEPLAY – At no point during my playthrough did I ever enjoy the gameplay. I took active steps to avoid it as much as possible. I used poisoned arrows in Anor Londo on those 2 asshole knights after getting fucked by poison arrows in Blighttown. I found a table that the iron boar got stuck in during the Duke’s Archives and I smacked it. I summoned an NPC on Pinwheel so that he could tank the bottom layer enemies and after I killed pinwheel, he walked into the boss room. It was funny. I used Havel’s armor on 4 Kings and Manus, stood in the fire and DPS’d higher. I was “forbidden” from using magic, so I used a Katana Bleed Dex build in true weeb fashion. I wasted so much time poking the slimes in The Depths that when I found out they are weak to fire, I invested heavily into pyromancy and did a mix build which was fun to roleplay as. I later learned this is considered magic so fuck me, I guess. Down with the restriction machine! I kept waiting for the game to stop me from playing like an absolute degenerate. It didn’t. I beat the game. It’s actually easy as long as you don’t listen to the internet and just play the game and use everything in the game. The game cheats at times. (why do the knight’s swords in Anor Londo go through walls and can damage through walls but my sword can’t??) So, if you find a way that bugs out the game in your favor, do it. The PVP is glitch city, fucked, unbalanced, and a meme. Same rules apply. I’m sure if you played when it first came out and are used to the intricacies it’s fun but if I show K style from Gunz to an outsider and explain the mechanics behind it, it still looks like bullshit and it feels like bullshit to play against. Familiarity does not make it good. COMMUNITY - The DS community is odd. On one hand a lot of people on twitch or discord helped out. (shoutout crunchy, whole chat was awesome!) In-game. I’d get invaded and killed in the most bs ways. I was doing O&S, became human to light bonfire because I’m struggling, get to outside the boss door, get invaded and die. Back to Bonfire. Very OPM “...OK” vibes. Also, that forest with the cat. People in-game had no mercy. I was just trying to get through the game. I learned later you can turn off online, but you can’t add a pause button. This also led to 2 or 3 backtracks. I didn’t lose because of lack of skill. I lost because I had responsibilities outside of the game, and it’s hard not to feel like the game is cheap because of that. I feel like, if you frequent the right spaces, the community genuinely wants to see you succeed. There is also a portion of the community that are absolutely dickheads that if you don’t play in a certain way then it doesn’t count. So actually, 7 pages in, you can find out that this rant is, in-fact a clever ruse. I never actually beat Dark Souls. I just played 80 hours and got all the achievements for shits and giggles. CONCLUSION – I didn’t dislike my time with Dark Souls. This is a game that is truly more about the journey rather than the destination. While I didn’t watch videos about Dark Souls lore, I did watch videos about the creation behind it and the “Dark Souls saved my life” style videos. When I played Dark Souls, I made sure to play it as cozily as possible. I had lots of comfy pillows and ice cream and the room temperature just right. I wanted to give myself the best possible chance to like it. While I didn’t particularly *like* my time with the game, I appreciated my time with it. I enjoy talking about it. The creation and the mindset behind the game makes it an incredibly inspiring game to play. In terms of originality, its an oxymoron. It’s the most original game I’ve played in years and Dark Souls basically created a genre. That genre is the least original and most boring type of game that only learned DODGE ROLL AND HARD from Dark Souls and didn’t pay attention to the charm and subtle ways the game is trying to help you succeed. I played Dark Souls in March which was a huge low point in my life for a variety of reasons. Dark Souls was my distraction from the difficulties I was facing. Instead of being stressed about life, I was stressed because THAT GOD FORSAKEN FIRE SOUND WON’T SHUT THE HELL UP AND I JUST NEED TO GET TO THAT CORNER AND GET MY SOULS BEFORE THE BOSS ATTA...FUCK!!! It served its purpose well. No matter how hard Dark Souls is, life is infinitely harder and succeeding in Dark Souls absolutely can give you the springboard of confidence to face your demons in the real world whatever they may be. Video games can either be a tool of escapism or a tool to enhance your life and that is determined by the whims of the player. I find Dark Souls a convenient reference point that most people can relate to in one way or another, both mechanically, “You know how in Dark Souls if you wear too much armor...” and feelings wise “You know the feeling you get when you learn about Solaire..” This flexibility in the discussion is the strongest point in Dark Souls favor. I think it gets everything it needs to correct. There are some things I think it does better than most games like map design (up until O&S and then it falls off a cliff) and enemy placement (up until O&S and then it falls off a cliff) It is truly a jack of all trades game. But you know what they say, A jack of all trades is a master of none but oftentimes better than a master of one.