"Dark Souls is a masterpiece. Every game I play has to compete with this action role-playing game from 2011. Now I can finally immerse myself in Lordran on the go.
When I flew the family nest over 15 years ago, I suddenly had to cook for myself. But it wasn’t long until this necessity became a virtue. Today, rattling those pots and pans is a fundamental part of my life. I’m a true foodie and devour everything from junk food to star-awarded cuisine. Literally. I eat way too fast.
"You're the worst gamer on earth" seems to be constantly rubbed in your face by "Dark Souls". The game destroys you. It makes you doubt yourself and your existence. It punches you in the face, laughs at you and kicks you when you're down. And that's exactly why you want to beat it. You are David. "Dark Souls is Goliath. On steroids. While in modern games you are fed all the game mechanics bit by bit in nice tutorials, "Dark Souls" throws you into an arena with an overpowering boss and you die. "You died" then appears in red letters on the screen. Get used to it already...
Oh. Hello!
If you can't get to grips with Dark Souls, it's always because of one thing: you. The game is never unfair. Every opponent has a set of attacks that you can recognise quite easily. There is always a way to dodge or parry the attacks. Sure, there are surprises lurking... but when you walk into a room for the tenth time, the zombie that suddenly appears from behind the shelf will no longer scare you. This happens quite often because "Dark Souls" punishes you over and over again and you keep facing the same enemies. That's how the system works. You get souls for every enemy you kill. On the one hand, these are XP, on the other hand, the souls are currency at the merchant. If you die, you leave all your souls by your corpse and start from the last checkpoint. The enemies will all be back. If you die again on the way to the place where you last died, the souls are gone. Bye-bye. Finito. And this happens to you often.
Yoga by the campfire.
This repetition almost has a meditative character. You first explore the world with complete curiosity and then get into a repetitive pattern, learning more with each new attempt. You don't just wander through "Dark Souls", as is standard in triple-A titles like "Spiderman" or "Uncharted" today. "Dark Souls" demands tactics, tactfulness and strategy from you. There is no difficulty level that you can set. There is no mercy for the AI if you fail to defeat a boss for the twentieth time. Either you can do it, or you fail.
Like the combat system, the fantastic world of "Dark Souls" only opens up to you slowly. NPCs speak in riddles, there is little dialogue and the story is often only told through the description of mysterious items. There are no quests. You are simply thrown into the world and left alone. You will also search in vain for a map. You explore the world for yourself, it tells you the story. Suddenly, for example, after a long and arduous hike and a short lift ride, you end up back at the starting point of your adventure. The familiar surroundings give you a sense of security and you ask yourself: How did this happen now? Piece by piece, you draw a map of Lordran in your head. I even picked up a pen and paper and drew the levels! The last time I did that was with "Zelda" on the NES. This is how intelligent level design works!
We're enjoying our holiday in Lordran. glg
And finally, even the multiplayer mode is not just a lobby with co-op or PvP mode, but a unique feature. You can use an item to get help from other players, who will leave you again after a certain amount of time. Or your world is populated by another player who challenges you to a duel. You cannot enter an arena and can only play PvP. You can also not race through the levels in co-op. The multiplayer component remains just as much of a mystery as the story, the levels or the combat system. It also needs to be discovered and only reveals itself late in the game. And here, too, you will look in vain for a tutorial.
After an original release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and a lousy port for the PC, "Dark Souls: Remastered" was released in spring for the current console generation and now finally for the Switch. A few small adjustments compared to the original and the option to change the controls at will make my absolute favourite game even better. Known framerate problems have been fixed, the graphics have been polished up a bit and the bottom line is that this is the best "Dark Souls" ever, because I can finally let off steam in Lordran on the go.
