Dark Souls greatly stands out in these stagnant and repetitive modern games.
The story of Dark Souls, much like that of Demons Souls, isn't shoved in your face, there is no narrator or clear vision of things that are actually going on, instead it's up to you to find all of the juicy details however you can. The exploration plays a big role in what makes Dark Souls so engrossing, all of the environments are seamlessly connected without any loading screens in between. Dark Souls has hidden goodies and mysteries at almost every step, and the curiosity to see what's around the next corner will make you play without every stopping.
Yes the game is quite difficult, there are deadly traps and enemies everywhere you look so it all takes quite some trial and error to learn the clever ways of Dark Souls. Unique online features offer player created messages to be written around the levels, these often reveal hidden treasure or give out clues and hints for anything that you are about to witness soon.
The combat is slow and methodical and is all about learning the enemy patterns. Stamina management is essential, every time you swing, run or jump you take up a bit of your available stamina, so staying on your toes and planning your every action is crucial if you're planning on staying alive. You get to keep all your items when you die, so all is not lost, and every time you die you can clearly see why such a thing happened and learn from your mistakes. You can feel yourself getting slightly stronger after each encounter and doing well in Dark Souls feels quite satisfying. Wearing heavy armor grants you higher protection from damage, but greatly slows you down, limiting your ability to dodge and evade. Spells have been balanced a bit, no longer is there a mana meter which you can recover to spam powerful projectiles, instead you have a limited amount of spells castings at your disposal, until you rest and recover. This means you can no longer just rely on these to beat everything, instead they are more like an ace up your sleeve, a buff or a particularly powerful attack that you might use once or twice, but you are quickly faced with melee combat after that.
The amount of equipment and armor sets has been greatly improved from that of Demons Souls and this offers some intense ways of customization as you can mish-mash different gear to create. Thanks to the new humanity system it is now possible to manipulate when you will be in your human form, despite dying often. The human form offers you some cool advantages, but also bring some misfortunes as well. You are able to summon other players into your realm to help you take down difficult enemies and bosses, but when you are alive other players can also come in and assassinate you. Thanks to the new way online play now works it is possible to join and/or invade players more often, because everyone is now tied together instead of being locked into regional servers. Since there are quite a lot of people online, the server is divided into little randomized instances of who or what you will see, this also means inviting your specific friend becomes that much harder.
One of the new cool and quite mysterious additions to the formula are covenants. These are pretty much like guilds or factions of NPCs with certain ideologies which you can join. Being a member of a certain covenant gives you certain items and open up new possibilities and also reward you for doing certain things, however these conditions, as well as pretty much everything else in Dark Souls is very mysterious so looking up a Wiki for detailed information at some point is a must.
Overall Dark Souls is easier than its predecessor Demons Souls, that's mainly thanks to the new checkpoint system. Strategically placed around the levels are bonfires which you can use to rest and recover, however doing so also revives all enemies in the entire game, apart from bosses of course. This means no longer will you have to replay the entire level every time a boss brutally murders you as there are usually about 3 checkpoints in one level, not including unlockable shortcuts which also make things quite easy. Despite it's gruesome difficulty, Dark Souls becomes more than manageable thanks to online play, and often it's so easy that it will make you feel as if though you are cheating.
It has been quite some time now since a game has made me feel like this, unable to stop playing at any time, losing track of time and playing though all night, not even Demons Souls. The amount of intriguing mysteries, exploration, challenges and sense of accomplishment are all just some of the things Dark Souls nails perfectly, and when your 70 hour journey comes to a finale, you are able to transfer your entire character and progress onto a new game and experience new challenges as everyone becomes twice as powerful.
Replay value is more than decent, playing a different character, raising different attributes or using a different class of armor drastically changes the way you approach every encounter, but ultimately there is no denying that after a couple of full playthroughs everything becomes stale, as all mysteries will eventually be revealed and that special itch you got to struggle on fades away. Nonetheless Dark Souls is an incredibly enjoyable adventure that rewards you at every step is worthy your time and effort.
Basically Dark Souls is Demons Souls all over again, but improved in pretty much every aspect, it greatly stands out in these stagnant and repetitive modern games and offers an immensely deep experience that will keep you thinking and talking about it for a long time to come.