First, I’ll give you something Dark Souls never does: a warning. Brought to PC by From Software, this port of the Japanese fight-heavy action-RPG is just that: a port. A straight port.
It plays like someone took an Xbox 360, packaged it up small, and slid it into your PC when you weren’t looking. The HUD is huge, the textures muddy, and such luxuries as control over field of view and vsync are nonexistent.
Ask yourself how you pronounce ‘PC game’. If your emphasis is on the ‘PC’, then run. Run far from Dark Souls and don’t look back. There is nothing for you here.
There are many reasons to run. The twisted, shrouded, uneasy medieval fantasy land of Lordran stretches away like the darkest night. Go the wrong way, probe too deeply into the inky depths, and the things that lurk there will get you.
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Dark Souls is a game entirely about combat tactics, and it succeeds in making a vast range of them viable. As well as my Hunter and my friend’s sword-and-board Warrior, I’ve seen spell-spouting Sorcerers and Assassins so quick they can parry (left trigger on the 360 pad, timed perfectly against a foe’s strike) every incoming attack, opening a window for a lethal critical hit. There’s real choice in the way you can battle your way through the game, as well as choice in the kit you can do it in. Your starting gear, once levelled up with the right equipment – dropped by certain foes – is competitive with gear found much later in the game. There’s no set alpha-tier equipment, simply what suits a player’s style – be it play-style or aesthetic style. My Cleric wore a skirt and leather boots for the manoeuvrability bonus it offered her; my Hunter dressed as Death himself with an oversized black cloak hiding his face for the confidence boost it provided me.
There’s a similar range of choice in exploring the game-world. Like my dark, clanking house, the realm of Lordran – and later Anor Londo – seemed to open up beneath me. No corner of this world is inviting, but almost all of it is open to exploration in any order.
