This is gonna be long, so I apologize in advance xD
Demon's Souls was so f***ing cool. I remember when I saw the trailer for the first time, and thinking to myself "I bought a PS3 for this...what, no EU release?...FFFFFFFFFUUUUU****!". When the game started to get the unreal praise it has today, some hope rised inside me. Because this is the kind of game that deserves the most support, and it's a shame it doesn't sell as much as other mainstream tittles like CoD or BF...but it never will, because this game stands against everything wrong in the mainstream. Stupid tutorials that treat you like an idiot? GONE! Excessive use of cinematics and cutscenes? GONE! Attempt on targetting the most profitable audience for better sales, while at the same time dumbing down the gameplay? F***ING GONE!! Demon's Souls basically said F*** YOU to mainstream, and delivered a truly unique experience with some of the best gameplay in years. It didn't cater to everyone, but who said that's a bad thing? Thanks to that, Demon's Souls delivered an experience to a specific kind of gamer: action-adventure, RPG purists.
So ok, about the game. Demon's Souls' whole experience relied on the player feeling the weight and the loneliness of the main character. Which isn't really a character, what you're controlling is basically your avatar and the game does an absolutely brilliant job in making you feel the overall sense of despair, sucking you into this world in a matter of seconds. The game's difficulty was pretty much the whole "theme" of the game, maybe not the fitting word, but this game was all about you, in this world, trying to live. The world is slowly dying, and the only hope is you. This alone scares the s*** out of you, because even before you start Boletarian Palace the game establishes what's going on, why it's going on and what you're gonna go through (not entirely, but gives you a glimpse of the evil it unleashes). So you realize that the game throws all sorts of enemies at you, with alot of boss battles as well. First thing is everything is so well designed, you believe you're facing these horrible beasts and that not only builds up your sense accomplishment, it also immerses you further in because of it's near perfect controls. It controls so smoothly and beautifully, you sometimes forget that you're controlling someone else. IT WAS F***ING GREAT! The combat was incredibly rewarding, complex and crafted, the atmosphere is some of the best ever made, fully immersing you in this world of intimidatingly looking monsters, the few music in the game was used perfectly and added alot to the experience because of how rarely you listen to it and how well made it is. Demon's Souls was just amazing, and it set standards on how to make not only Action RPG's, but also immersion, tone and atmosphere in general.
So a sequel came out, named Dark Souls. The sequel implemented the same basic elements (with it's own tweaks and unique stuff, of course): haunting atmosphere, dark tone, sense of accomplishment and immersion, high level of difficulty and spot-on controls. But now there are 3 things that completely change the overall experience, even if not everyone agrees:
1 - Estus Flask. This gameplay change was B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T, and it's pretty much obvious why. In Demon's Souls you had multiple items that were used for healing your character, and if you were patient enough you could have 99 of each. After playing Dark Souls and loving the Estus Flask mechanic, I can't help but feel that the grasses in Demon's Souls feel a little contrived to the experience. After a few playthroughs, the sense of danger and despair decrease drastically because you know you can always grind on grasses and doesn't make you feel all that helpless. The Estus Flask completely corrected this, the game gave you that amount of healing and THAT'S IT! You feel like WAT DAH F***, OWH AM EYE GUNNA SURVIVZ?!?! Simple...play the game. This made the whole atmosphere, sense of immersion and difficulty so much more potent in Dark Souls, because now you have to think ahead and carefully decide when and how to use your limited supply of Flasks in order to stay alive. The mere thought of "another way in" could not exist, because the goal of the game demanded for the player to feel helpless...ok you get the idea...
2 - Bonfires. So yeah, Demon's Souls had archstones that served like check points for whenever you defeat a boss and you're allowed to continue through the level. The archstones lead you to a place we can call a "hub world" where you have everything you need to stop and breath for a little to relax from the tiring and dangerous world out there. You had a smith, a bank, mages that teach you s***, a way to level up your character, etc. It's a calm place, and it eases your mind for a little...DARK SOULS DOESN'T GIVE A F*** ABOUT THAT! Bonfires were scattered around the world for you to find, and they serve a similar purpose to the Nexus in Demon's Souls: level up your character, upgrade equipment, store items, stock magic, etc. You're doing all this WHILE you're surrounded by enemies and all sorts of s*** that wants you dead. Bonfires don't make you so calm as the Nexus did, because you know the danger is out there. It's right over there three feet from you, and to get out you have to go through and survive. Again, making the entire goal of the game more effective...so...yeah...that's number two...
3 - Open world. I could put this on the bonfire section, but I wanted to explore the difference it has on the experience in comparison to the hub world in Demon's Souls. In that game you had the multiple archstones that lead you into the multiple areas of the world, kind of like Super Mario 64. And it made sense, considering what the game established in the beginning and your character's current situation. But in Dark Souls the developers decided to make the entire world interconnected, with all areas accessible through exploration. What does this add? Mystery. Since you have no idea what this world's gonna throw at you, the exploration made it all more powerfull and meaningful. As soon as you walk into uncharted territory, you become all the more carefull all of a sudden. You take in a deep breath each time you pass through a narrow place, or door, or passage because you don't know if it's loaded with traps or monsters to kill you. This also existed in Demon's Souls, but Dark Souls' level design was made more accordingly to this. Since Dark Souls was marketed as harder, scarier and all that, the designers wanted to correspond to that feel by adding a mystery element to the world itself and forcing you to explore it in it's entirety. You don't have little teleport thingies to do the hard work for you, you're the one who has to go to that place for yourself without any kind of transportation or help. This helped alot to make the world feel scarier, and more intimidating...and also the more fascinating, because the level design is so well done you WANT to go out and explore...and die too.
Everything in this series is about making you feel helpless, alone and defeated. It's atmosphere was key to make the games work, and also reason to why they're so special to begin with. Both these games delivered what games in the past 5 years couldn't, and they should be acclaimed and recognized for that. Two of the best games of this generation, and I believe that they'll be hugely influential in the future.
So yeah...if you're excited for Dark Souls II, and haven't played the previous ones...go and buy them now. NOW! Like i'm f***ing serious, they'll change you man and it's worth it. We all should be blessed for having From Software making these games for us...
@McGregor @XyekenvortI'm not hating on COD, objectively their well put together games. Modern Warfare (COD4) was revolutionary, but what came after was just regurgitaded, uninspired knock-offs of it's success for profit...
@linthes999 @Stebsis @Xyekenvort @Fastphase1 Deeper story? What? None of them had any in depth story, they were pretty basic and straightforward. The difference was XIII eliminated most exposition because it made sense considering the characters, while X just had Tidus act stupid just for the sake of explaining shit that didn't need all that much explaining either. X is worse, alot worse...
@Stebsis @Xyekenvort @Fastphase1 Therefore, making it better? What about the bland and unthoughtful battle system? The offensive difficulty? The downright despicable cast of characters? The wretched storytelling?
Don't get me wrong, XIII wasn't that great of a game and it fell flat on better ones in the series, but X was just a much worse experience overall...
You know what's also inconsistent? The criticism and bias towards XIII.
I only played the first one, so I can't really talk about the trilogy as a whole. The hatred towards the first game makes zero sense, considering X had most of the same flaws (which was WAAAY worse, by the way). Don't get me wrong, XIII is not that great of a game and it fell flat in comparison to the great ones in the series, but the game gets so much unjustified and nonsensical hatred I can't help but feel people just like to hate it even though they don't have a real reason for it...
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