Not that anyone cares, but I just did my first playthrough of Dark Souls with the help of the
Dark Souls Input Customizer It has a number of nifty features, chief among them being the implementation of proper mouse+keyboard controls by way of the (included) mouselook mod.
It's funny -- I read through the first page of this very thread, and there were a number of people espousing the typical view that M+KB just makes
no sense for Dark Souls, game isn't designed for it, etc etc. That's obviously true of the PC port, which featured perhaps the worst version of mouselook I've ever experienced (and the original DSMfix unfortunately wasn't much better, since interpolating mouse movement as joystick input leads to
negative mouse acceleration) but it isn't true of the actual game design. I'd even go as far as to say that using proper M+KB almost amounts to cheating, as it has several obvious benefits:
- Direct camera input allows for improved navigation especially on precarious cliffs and ledges, as well as improved versatility in combat -- locking onto enemies is now purely optional, as circlestrafing and dodging can be done effectively if not better with ordinary movement. Aiming a bow is now effortless as well.
- No need to claw grip a controller or some other such nonsense to perform any action -- I can attack, aim, dodge, cycle through equipment, and so on without ever moving my hands from their resting position
- Dedicated inputs for kick/dash/jump/leap attack make every option easily accessible in combat
There is only one legitimate drawback, which is that you only have 8-way movement on WASD. I can see why a lot of people might be more comfortable with a gamepad, but that's not an actual advantage, that's just personal preference. As someone far more used to M+KB, I found the game played flawlessly with that control scheme, no worse than any other 3D action game. Pretty much exactly what JarlFrank said years ago