3/5 ★ – crimson2877's review of Dark Souls: Remastered.

Abandoned: Nov 9 2021 Time: 20 Hours Platform: Switch I've never felt so defeated by a game who's design I broadly like. I like the dingy fantasy aesthetic, the deliberate combat, the fatalistic darkness, and (being a crpg nerd) the character progression too. When it's good, it's satisfying and cohesive and striking in a way not many games are. Vignettes like fighting gargoyles under the orange sun of Anor Londo are really unforgettable (really all of Anor Londo is unforgettable, though not always for the best reasons ha). Beyond the broad strokes and intentions though, I find the details to be kinda spotty. Whether it's the first couple bosses having absolutely tiny arenas that make getting cornered inevitable, or areas like Blighttown and Sen's Fortress pitting you against very thick (albeit slow) enemies when you can't maneuver around them and can't deal enough damage to take them down quickly. I understand that the challenge is deliberate, but these parts never felt satisfying to me, even when I got through them. I just felt glad to be done with them. This all kinda came to a head in Anor Londo, where the footholds get absurdly tiny and the sights get *gorgeous*. I managed to fight through the entire area, even that part with the archers *twice*, but the boss broke me. Ornstein and Smough is one of the more famous bosses in DS1, and usually it's mentioned in reverent tones, and I just completely don't understand why. Rather than the arena being too small this time, there's just two bosses in the room with you, and for me at least this was an exercise in feeling overwhelmed. I'm not sure how to manage them, how to take care of one while taking out the other. It feels like the kind of thing where there's *one way* to do it, and I just haven't stumbled upon that way. Lots of Dark Souls' design feels like that actually, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I understand that it's supposed to be a challenge, an obstacle course of sorts, testing your skill at dealing with one or another type of situation, but so often the solution just isn't remotely clear, even after tens of tries. I think I got around halfway through, and the fun I'm having is so often broken up by throwing myself painfully over and over again at destitute situations. The satisfaction of beating these tough parts almost never feels like it makes up for the stress and frustration I feel playing, and instead of the game feeling like a challenge that begs you to beat it, it felt like bits of relative ease bookended by tremendous jumps in the level of strategy and timing it's asking of you. That's why I'm done with it.