git gud or git crushed, scrub

Playing Dark Souls 10 Years Late or: How a Scrub Got Good and Learned to Stop Worrying About the Dark

1. INTRODUCTION

Much has been said about Dark Souls in the nearly ten years since its release in September 2011. So much so that this essay may seem superfluous, indulgent, and ultimately just unnecessary. And it is. Still, the collective glut of content surrounding the game, comprised of memes, endless lore videos, wikis, parody twitter accounts (like Noun Verbed), and actual games, including re-releases like Dark Souls Remastered and the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls, attest to the game’s staying power and cultural relevance even nearly a decade on. Its discussion in gaming circles is reverent and omnipresent, forum signatures littered with “if only I could be so grossly incandescent,” and mocking “git gud” posts filling twitter threads and subreddits. Everything for the last decade has been the “Dark Souls” of something. So what more is there to say about Dark Souls? I don’t necessarily want to discuss the lore, or the implied story, or my favorite builds or armor sets (it’s the Brass Armor, fyi) though these may come up. I want to take you on the journey I took, from the first time I tried playing Dark Souls nearly a decade ago to when I finally understood and beat it for the first time amid the all-consuming miasma of 2020. It’s part review, part critique, part diary. Just as meandering and confusing as the almighty Lore itself. This is going to be a long one, folks.

2. HISTORY

Way back in 2010, a friend of mine started singing the praises of some weird dark fantasy game called Demon’s Souls. He said it was the hardest thing he’d ever played and that he couldn’t get enough. After watching him play for a few hours — a frustrating cycle of dying, replaying the same area again, dying again — I decided it probably wasn’t for me. I’m just not usually that kind of player; I don’t like grinding, I usually don’t like replaying areas, I don’t like backtracking, I don’t like getting stomped by bosses in two hits. I play games to unwind, to be immersed in worlds, to experience stories, or to interact with fun characters. If I wanted a fantasy game, I’d go for a Zelda or a Dragon Age; if I wanted a challenge, I’d bump up the difficulty in Persona 4 or try not to save scum to preserve my favorite characters in Pyre. If I wanted to explore a bleak, dying world with a glimmer of hope at its center, I’d be dragging out Ico. I just didn’t like challenging games. In gamer parlance, I was a scrub.

A year later, the same friend told me I absolutely had to play its successor, and offered to lend me his copy for PS3 so I wouldn’t even have to pay for it. By this point, Dark Souls had been out for a bit, and I’d heard a lot about it and seen some gameplay, but it was all sort of disconnected and without context. I knew that Blighttown sucked and that I should praise the sun or something. I decided to give it a shot, since the internet seemed to be in love with it and I wanted to know what the buzz was about. I like games, I thought, surely I’ll like this.

3. STARTING OUT

I was told that my first time through Dark Souls, I should try not to look up much about it. If I wanted the full Souls experience, I should explore each area on my own, figure out strategies and boss patterns by myself, and summon someone else only as a last resort. It would spoil the experience if I knew too much beforehand. So I put in the disc and was introduced to the first appearance of Dark Souls’ opaque design: the character creator. Classes? Okay, I already understood that from other games. You’ve got mages, fighters, thieves, clerics, and so on. Appearance? Easy enough. But what were these gifts? Would I miss out by not taking one? It was hard to tell based on the cryptic descriptions. And what did any of the stats do, exactly? I’m predisposed to play stealth classes in games, usually choosing dexterity builds over strength ones. I prefer avoiding combat or picking off enemies one at a time rather than charging in and cleaning shop. So I went with the Thief. This was my first of many mistakes, most of which weren’t entirely my fault.

In Dark Souls, there is no real stealth (aside from a few rings and spells that make you harder to detect). Oops. There’s very little benefit from what I can tell, at least for a brand new player, to using a dex build. Unless you can master parrying and roll timing early on, you’re gonna have a bad time for a long time. And I did. I kept my equipment load light and my weapon lighter so I could take advantage of the quick rolls and hoped my weapon damage would be decent enough. I quickly found myself outclassed by most enemies and could only take a hit or two before dying. My defense was low and my damage output was poor. I paused, thinking something clearly must be wrong, and resorted to looking up some things online. Hey, weapon scaling is a thing! That’s good to know. I’ll switch to a weapon with higher dex scaling. Wish the game had explained it, though. And some shields just straight up block 100% of physical damage, I should get one of those instead of parrying everything, then boost my strength and endurance a bit. So I got a falchion and a heater shield, grinded (ugh) to upgrade them a little, and made my way through the early stages of the game without reading more. I nearly quit at Blighttown, partially due to the frame drops and partially because the poison morass full of mosquitos just wasn’t fun to deal with (more on that later). But I toughed it out. I wanted to see what everyone was fawning over. I cleaned up Blighttown, crawled through Sen’s Fortress, chilled out in Darkroot Garden, and dropped into Anor Londo. Then one of the giant guys squashed me before I could do more than a quarter of his health. Then he did it again. It had been a brutal grind up until this point, and when I realized I still wasn’t prepared for this area, that was all it took. I quit on the spot and didn’t come back.

In the intervening years, I saw all of Dark Souls in snippets. I would put on some walkthrough in the background. I heard some lore stuff by proxy. I knew most of the bosses’ names. But some time around 2015, I got a PS4 and picked up Bloodborne. Its combat was quicker, more intense than Dark Souls. Its story was as engrossing and mystifying, but I could follow what, and who, was important. It toyed with some of my favorite genres, peppering in gothic architecture and cosmic horror elements. Its world was dark and unforgiving, but kept luring me back. I fell deeply, frustratingly in love with it after a few near-quits at Cleric Beast. Its combat was more on my wavelength, its lore and story less inscrubale. I could understand the stats, the fewer weapons, the strategies. More than anything, the setting and story kept me coming back to see what would happen next. I still resented Dark Souls in the back of my mind though for its plodding pace, vague lore, and endless upgradable loot. Now, in 2020, with a lot more time on my hands due to working from home and a lot more patience after beating Bloodborne years back, I figured it was time I plunge into Dark Souls Remastered. This time, I was going to play a Sorcerer, not a Thief. This time, I’d go into it informed. This time, I’d use every wiki, every forum post, and every walkthrough to my advantage to finally beat it. This time, Blighttown would stay above 30fps. Just as From intended.

4. GETTING GOOD

When you’re having difficulty with Dark Souls and look online for help, the refrain you’ll often hear from the Dark Souls community, either as a cheeky in-joke or a serious suggestion, is “get good.” Basically, they suggest that there’s nothing wrong with the game, it’s not actually cheap or unfair, you just need to practice and get better at the game to proceed. In my time playing Dark Souls in its entirety for the first time nearly a decade after its release, I’ve found this to be partially true, but not in the way they mean it.

This playthrough, any time I struggled or encountered something knew, I would look online for answers. Armed with the knowledge accumulated by millions of Souls scholars, the game became surmountable — enjoyable, even, at times. In this way, I’ve realized that Dark Souls is not really about managing resources and prevailing through tense boss fights. It has those things, yes, but it’s really a game of knowledge. If you’re playing Super Mario World and keep dying in Butter Bridge 1, it’s probably because you misjudged a distance, or didn’t see a koopa paratroopa coming. It’s rarely because there’s an item you’re missing. If you’re playing Dark Souls and come across something too hard for you to handle, the problem is often not that you’re insufficiently skilled at engaging with the mechanics of the game, i.e. that you haven’t “got good.” The problem is that you’re missing some vital information you didn’t know you were missing. For example, if you’re slogging through the poison swamp in Blighttown and keep dying on your way to Quelaag, it’s probably not because you’re bad at running or dodging boulders or whatever. It’s likely because you don’t have the Rusted Iron Ring, and you don’t have it because you don’t know it exists. You don’t know that running slowly in the swamp is a puzzle that can be solved instead of an environmental detail or challenge. My first time playing Dark Souls, I was advised to play it blind, to explore it for myself and figure things out on my own. This is a fundamental mistake, a great misunderstanding of the design of Dark Souls, and a good way to ruin many new players’ experiences with the game.

Dark Souls may be a game of knowledge, but it plays very coy with that knowledge. It obfuscates information with vague item descriptions and useless stats, it hides items in areas you didn’t know you could get to — hell, it even hides entire areas, content knowing you may never find them. In other words, it wants you to earn its knowledge by engaging with its more arcane flourishes and sharing your findings with the community. In this way, the game not only expects you to look things up, it almost demands it. For new players who don’t look anything up, who don’t read any guides or wikis, the Rusted Iron Ring might as well not exist. Getting it requires you to take an elevator up, jump off at the right time, make another tricky jump onto a rooftop that looks like it may not be accessible, climb up some narrow stairs, curl into a ball in a giant raven’s nest, wait a long time with no indication that anything will happen, and then be carried back to the Undead Asylum at the beginning of the game. From there, you need to head back to a door that was previously locked, and get the ring. Plus you need the key from the rooftop you jumped on earlier, so don’t walk past it. There’s no way you’re supposed to know about this yourself, and it seems highly unlikely you’d just find it on your own as a new player, especially before visiting Blighttown. Even if you do figure out how to get back to the Asylum, how do they expect you to know about this ring in the first place? I think Dark Souls knows that you won’t know all of this. The developers leave messages and hints in the game, and they give players explicit tools to do the same. And if someone leaves a useless or harmful note, you can vote it down. From expect players to leave helpful messages, talk online, chat with friends, discover and, importantly, share these things together. These puzzle-piece acquisitions of knowledge are both Dark Souls’ greatest strengths and its biggest hindrances. The number of times during this playthrough that I thought to myself, “Well, when you know where to go and which items to bring, this area is actually pretty easy” made me entirely rethink the series, for good and ill.

The problem that can arise with this game of knowledge is that it’s often recursive. You need one item for this area, but to get to the person selling it you need this other item. Reading a thread on how to get through an area in Dark Souls often feels like a mad spiraling staircase of a wikihow article: “The Sullied Library is pretty easy if you have the Mist Ring. It’s in the pit at the bottom of Arnaud’s Pasture (yes, you can jump there). Bring a +5 Spirit Axe for the Tin Squires surrounding it. To get a Spirit Axe, upgrade a regular axe to a Spirit Axe with Spirit Gum from the black swamp in Fucksville, but make sure you wear the Wide Brim set to slow toxin buildup. The Wide Brim is dropped by Cardinal Sylvain in the…” and on it goes, tumbling down. Where do you even start? Another From Software title, Bloodborne, requires far fewer pieces of information like this to get through it, which is a blessing for someone like me but could hamper replay value for others. A Bloodborne thread on how to get through an area could easily read, “You can parry it,” or “Use a charged R2.” From the outside, Dark Souls looks like a dark fantasy RPG about timing your rolls and swinging just right, but it’s really a metagame jigsaw. It’s less a test of button prowess and more a stubborn Rubik’s cube, one replete with missing stickers, traps, interconnected blocks, and secret compartments. The cube’s intricacies wouldn’t be too hard to solve, if only you knew they were there. This is very reminiscent of early adventure games, like those put out by Sierra and LucasArts, where missing a single item in the beginning of the game can lead to a game over. However, in those cases, the games were significantly shorter and easier to get through, even if you mess up.

It can be tough for veteran players who know all of From’s tricks and all of Dark Souls’ secrets to remember just how much information is needed to safely traverse its world. Even just knowing that, say, Blighttown has poison is a piece of knowledge in this puzzle that makes the game easier. Dark Souls is fundamentally a game of reading, not just literally reading the game’s text (although that is important), but a game that requires study of its systems, mechanics, items, story, etc. It requires study outside of itself as well. It’s a game that simply can’t be skimmed, and I think this is why it’s so rewarding for longtime players and often daunting for some new ones.

For newcomers, playing in the dark without using this vast resource of community knowledge (or not knowing it even exists) can be deadly. If I were to give succinct advice to new players trying out the series for the first time, one tip to help them “git gud,” I’d encourage them to just look everything up. Don’t worry about spoiling anything. You’ll still enjoy it, or you won’t, but knowing more won’t change that. Oh, and do Tomb of the Giants last.

So now that I’ve set up what I think is Dark Souls’ broad conceit (in addition to finally beating the game for myself), I’d like to give my thoughts on some of the specifics. Since my first fruitless playthrough, I’ve come to appreciate Dark Souls, to really finally get it, to have read and known it, and even like it. But I still think there are criticisms and discussions to be had even this late in its life.

5. SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF LORDRAN

Ten years after its initial release, Dark Souls is still a gorgeous, haunting game. From Software’s environments are largely second to none, with some major exceptions noted later. Graphical fidelity is overrated, often touted by graphics card makers and publishers, and ages quickly. Dark Souls looks great due to the stelar art direction, and good art direction don’t age, babey. Traversing the Undead Burg, finally taking down the Taurus Demon, and exiting the tower near Solaire as the sunlight radiates through the hazy clouds is almost an enlightening experience. Listening to the chirping bugs and the gentle hum of the steamy Darkroot Garden lulls you into letting your guard down, immediately before being ambushed by trees. The game is simultaneously beautiful (Anor Londo, Oolacile Garden) and repulsive (Blighttown, Depths) but always has a sense of purpose, an air of respect for its vile denizens and dilapidated buildings. It’s these moments of quiet beauty and reflection that give Dark Souls its alchemical magic. Lordran is a world long-abandoned by the living and left for the dead, a dying god’s dream perpetuated through the suffering of commoners, a crumbling, decaying shell of a society. But it sure is a treat to behold its fall. The game is so sadly beautiful that I wish there was a mode that removed all the enemies and NPCs so that I could explore the environments at my own pace and really take it in without worry. I would love to wander Lordran’s halls and valleys without constant threat. It reminds me so much of Ico, and without enemies, it could evoke the same forlorn feelings. As it is, it works very well, I just wish it went a little further and gave the player a bit more space to breathe.

The act of resting at a bonfire is a magical experience. When you rest, there’s a whoosh of flames as the fire grows and an iridescent haze covers the screen. The roaring flames give way to a reverberating synth that sounds like some dark choir. It leaves the player in a liminal space briefly, giving them a moment to rest and reflect before the enemies respawn in the surrounding area. The effects compound and enhance the relief of knowing you’ve found a checkpoint.

I’d like to especially note the excellent design of Firelink Shrine. It feels like an encapsulation of the entire game’s aesthetic. It’s sparse, austere, and cold. The last of its worn bricks seem like they could fall apart at any moment, leaving nothing but rubble. But its glowing fire, mottled sky, hidden alcoves, and (ahem) fine company, are alluring. I just want to take a seat in front of the flames on the moss-covered stone and rest, but I’d still feel like I’d need someone watching my back. The audio perfectly matches the visuals, too: the crackle of the fire, distant ringing of bells, and the somber, ethereal strings make the whole tableau feel ghostly, yet somehow romantic. The minor strings swell at just the right moments and know when to back off and let the rest of the sounds breathe. It feels safe…almost. Luring you in, tempting you to continue your journey, after just a short rest. It’s the perfect look and sound for a place like Firelink.

The notable exception to this splendor is the decidedly poorer second half of the game. While the first half feels meticulously detailed and excellently rendered, everything after placing the Lordvessel feels rough. Anor Londo has a few moments that gave me pause. Looking closely at the silver knight statues shows they’re flat and weirdly elevated. The wooden archway to Orstein and Smough is decorated with photos of obviously real statues passed through a photoshop filter or two. The rooftops and outdoor areas feel a bit empty and sterile, but it’s overall pretty good. New Londo Ruins and the Duke’s Archives mostly look and sound up to snuff as well and have their own distinct feeling (despite some perhaps over-used enemies in the ghosts and undead crystal soldiers), but the others suffer significantly in the art department.

Tomb of the Giants is initially a bit hard to judge. It’s almost totally dark with just a few little pebbles shedding small halos of light. On the one hand, it’s just dark. That’s kind of it. On the other, it’s an oppressive darkness, a darkness with some weight, and one that makes you dread each step forward. Ultimately, that dread is almost entirely created by the extremely hard-hitting skeletons hiding in the dark, not the dark itself. After lighting the area and exploring it more thoroughly, it is far less visually and sonically interesting than its predecessor, the creepy Catacombs, to say nothing of its actual gameplay. The darkness is effective, but overstays its welcome and feels flat after some time.

Crystal Cave seems like an afterthought to Duke’s Archives. The giant crystal formations and the graceful butterflies are initially stunning, but it’s solidly one-note and very short. Seath’s arena is neat, though, especially if there are cursed player bodies around to hint at the fight’s gimmick. Plus it’s hard to judge the aesthetics of invisible walkways. Ash Lake has some truly stunning views, but it — along with the Great Hollow and Valley of Drakes — feels empty and lifeless. These areas aren’t terrible, but they feel less alive, less lived-in than the previous areas.

Where the game truly starts to fall apart begins in the Demon Ruins and continues through Lost Izalith. The texture of these areas feels flat and bland outside of a few of Izalith’s buildings. It’s mostly dirt and lava, and the color palette is just red and brown. The lava is garish, though a little less so in the remaster, and most of the enemies are reused bosses from earlier in the game or little statue demons repeated ad nauseum. The place doesn’t feel real, it feels like an arcade level, especially when you see 5 Taurus Demons or 50 dragon butts just standing around in bright red lava, or find out one of the bosses is yet another reskinned Asylum Demon. The sound design here is truly dire, too. There seems to be no ambient noise in the entire area aside from an occasional breeze or breath, I’m unsure which is it. It’s totally silent. No sounds of lava flowing, or demons roaring somewhere far off. Nothing. These areas don’t just feel rushed like the others, they feel totally unfinished. While I know this shoddiness is due to a lack of time and budget to finish, I would like to judge the game on what is there, not what I wish was there, or what they intended to be there. These places look and sound pretty poor, and hamper the second half of the game overall.

The DLC areas significantly up the ante in terms of visuals and sound, and rival even the base game. Oolacile is lush and inviting, until the abyss slowly starts showing up, hinting at what’s to come deeper into the dungeon. The enemy variety is still a little lacking, but it makes up for it with its environmental detail and sound design. The laughter of the Oolacile Residents echoing throughout the township is one extremely unsettling and effective example. The boss arenas are even distinct and interesting to poke around in, too.

6. THE PLACES YOU’LL GO

Here I would like to highlight a few of my favorite and least favorite areas in the game.

FAVORITE: NORTHERN UNDEAD ASYLUM

Ahh, the Northern Undead Asylum. An introduction, tutorial, and deathtrap in one. The game starts by dropping you into a dank prison cell with another corpse, but giving you the key for the door nearby, almost as if your jailers are taunting you to escape. You’re introduced to a lot of concepts at once as you explore the claustrophobic, oppressive maze of a jail: orange notes on the ground guide your way and teach you the controls, you learn combat, how to equip items, what items on the ground will look like. You’re taught combat with a broken sword and single enemy. They give you your first bonfire, a much needed little boost of confidence just before crushing it, likely quite literally, with the giant Asylum Demon. The Asylum Demon is a wonderful first boss encounter: he’s huge, tough, and scary as hell at first. He’s an imposing figure with his bared teeth, huge stature, massive weapon, and horns and growths seemingly made of stone. If you’re not flustered the first time you fight the Asylum Demon, I commend you. If you manage to get past the demon, you eventually get a shield, a real sword, and fight a few tougher enemies. You speak with a vague, fallen hero who notes that you’re not a Hollow, unlike the others here. You’re different. He has an old family saying for you: the undead are chosen, and should leave the Asylum on pilgrimage to the land of ancient lords, then ring the bell of awakening, whatever that is, to know the fate of the undead. He has a precious flask for you. He notes that he’s failed, and that soon he will die, then lose his sanity. So death appears to not be the end of things in Lordran. This dialogue helps guide you in a game that otherwise gives you very little direction. He also sets up your expectations for future NPC encounters, most of which share his vague musings towards things beyond your knowledge.

The Undead Asylum is not content to just have you duel enemies. They throw an ambush your way and drop a rolling boulder trap on you that opens a new path, just so you know what to expect in future areas. Then you find a fog gate, a barrier between the boss and you, and teach you one of the few iffy moves in the game that only sometimes works (alongside kicking and jumping): the plunging attack. The plunging attack — if it works — chunks the Asylum Demon’s health down quite a bit, and now with your full sword and shield in hand, you have to take him out for real. You put all you’ve learned in the Asylum together and take out the Demon, who just not long before seemed impossible to defeat. Looking back on the Asylum Demon after killing him, he is a little silly looking despite his size and big butt slams don’t help that at all.

All of the skills and ideas you learn here (other than the plunging attack, which is only really useful in a handful of circumstances) will accompany you through the rest of the game. It’s an excellent tutorial area, suitably challenging and distressing as an introduction to the world, but it can be a bit hard for newcomers. It would be perfect if it had explained just a little bit more to the player about leveling up, stats, equipment load, etc. It’s a bit hard to find information on these things or to even know that they exist without looking online. After you’ve made your way through the Asylum, you’re spirited off to Firelink Shrine. There, you can rest for a moment, explore, and speak with the cryptic Crestfallen Warrior, who tells you there are actually two bells of awakening, and that you ought to go ring those.

LEAST FAVORITE: THE DEPTHS

After the catastrophic beatdown that Capra laid on me and countless others, The Depths takes the claustrophobia of the Asylum and ratchets it up, putting you through very tight, slimy hallways filled with basilisks, rats, falling blobs, sewage, and missing floors. The curse status inflicted by the basilisks will feel cheap for new players, especially if they don’t know what it is, what it does, or how to cure it. It seems overly punishing to leave you with a fraction of your original health when they already send you back to the bonfire and take your souls with every death. It certainly puts the fear of basilisks in you, though. The shortcuts can be hard to parse, leading you places you’re not sure you’ve been before, and the whole thing is very difficult to navigate. It’s easy to miss the bonfire and several shortcuts. It’s dingy, dark, dull, and a chore to explore. The Depths is an extremely unpleasant place, both to look at and to play, and I hope to never return. Much is made of Blighttown, but for me, the Depths is one of the worst areas in the game. If you know the way to go and know about curse, it’s tolerable, but it’s too monotonous, winding, and cramped to be really fun. Compared to the Depths, Blighttown is a breeze (especially if you have the master key and your game isn’t running at 10fps).

FAVORITE: SEN’S FORTRESS

What can I say about the meat grinder that is Sen’s Fortress? It’s one of the few areas that gets a cutscene when it becomes available, as if the game is inviting you in to come play. The first thing that will happen in Sen’s Fortress if you’re not super observant is that you’ll be shot with arrows out of nowhere and then chopped up by snake people. Sen’s Fortress doesn’t hide what it is: it is a house of traps and snakes, of swinging blades and lightning bolts, of giant boulders and demon pits. It may be challenging for players new to the game: the Man-Serpents hit pretty hard and there are a ton of traps to look out for. The walkways with the swinging blades get narrower as you progress through the winding tower of death. If you get hit by a single blade or get knocked off a ledge by a snake, you’ll probably die. Sen’s Fortress is cruel, but it’s also strangely forgiving. The bonfire in the Undead Parish is very close to Sen’s, making the run back quick and painless. There’s also another bonfire in the Fortress itself, and a very handy shortcut. On top of this, nearly every trap has a visible trigger (looking at you elevator), usually a raised stone, that will activate the trap. Then there is a sound, followed by a brief delay, allowing the player to get out of the way if they’re quick enough before they’re hit. The traps can also hurt the Man-Serpents, so they can be used to your advantage. There are lots of good items to scrounge around for in Sen’s Fortress, and an encounter with my perfect angel Siegmeyer of Catarina. It’s tricky, but it’s upfront with its trickery. Once you get to the rooftop, it drops a little in my estimation. The view up top is great though, finally escaping the red-brown brick and blue-black pits that fit the setting well. Seeing the giant actually loading the boulders into the trap and finding the one that opened the gate in the cutscene are highlights as well. But the huge explosions all around the start of the roof aren’t very well telegraphed and the boss is a disappointment. These are small things in the grand scheme though. I have to believe that Sen is short for Cenobite, because there are plenty of sick delights to be had in this house of pain.

LEAST FAVORITE: THE FOUR SOULS FOR THE LORD VESSEL

After placing the Lordvessel, you’ll be tasked by one hideous giant serpent or another to collect four powerful souls that collectively will rival Gwyn’s own and become the new Lord of Cinder. You must travel to New Londo, the Duke’s Archives, Lost Izalith, and Tomb of the Giants to slay their inhabitants. From here on out, the game suffers dramatically in gameplay compared to the first half. Anor Londo had some hints of this, with its empty vistas and long runs back to bosses. None of the areas really prepare you for how gimmicky each final area would be, though. Each area has some sort of contrivance that makes going through it more difficult, and each contrivance is basically countered by a single item.

The game seems to give no indication as to which area to tackle first, so knowing little about the late-game, I chose the Tomb of the Giants. Tomb of the Giants is perhaps the worst area in Dark Souls, and I hope I can explain why in a way that doesn’t result in a hundred “git guds”. Yes, it’s pitch dark, and the enemies here are also strong, aggressive, and plentiful. The bonfires are easy to miss, and so are the narrow ledges you’re supposed to stay on. If you’re observant, you’ll notice you may have picked up a skull lantern that can help illuminate the area, but at the cost of your precious shield. My initial thoughts on this place were, “this sucks,” followed quickly by a few deaths and “this really, overwhelmingly sucks.” I hunkered down with my little lantern and made it to Nito, low on resources and irritated. I died quickly, and when I realized the run back would be through several giant skeletons and some bone towers, I figured there had to be some trick I was missing. So I looked it up and, of course, there’s a light spell that Dusk of Oolacile can sell you that lights the area and leaves your hands free. So I warped out of the Tomb and visited Darkroot again. To speak with Dusk, I had to kill the crystal golem imprisoning her. So I did that, but when I reloaded, her summon sign didn’t appear. It was time to search the wikis again, I guess. Apparently she’d been kidnapped since I already placed the Lordvessel, and I needed an item from Duke’s Archives to get the spell. I shuffled over to the Duke’s Archives, killed another crystal thing, and got the pendant. Then it was back to Darkroot, and on to Oolacile. Immediately after the bonfire, it was boss time. Luckily it wasn’t bad for my level, so I beat the guardian, got Light from a mushroom, and warped back to the Tomb. This is just one chain of recursive knowledge that makes late-game Dark Souls often tedious for new players. There’s an entire web of things to know and things to do, and if you do them out of order, you’re going to have a bad time. I would get stuck, read about one thing that could help, but then need another thing from earlier to get that thing, or have already missed the trigger for that event, and so on until 2 hours later I’m just starting to explore again. Apparently this could have all been avoided if I just did Lost Izalith first and got the Sunlight Maggot. Huh. Nowhere in the game is this suggested. Returning to the Tomb with the Sunlight Maggot made finishing the area significantly easier, and I beat Nito solo first try this time thanks to my divine longsword and crystal soul spear. So Tomb of the Giants maybe isn’t inherently the worst area, but it’s the one that can cause the most grief if the player isn’t properly armed with the knowledge needed to get through it. The run back to Nito still isn’t great, though.

I actually enjoyed the Duke’s Archives overall, though again I had the Sunlight Maggot problem. The enemies there were a bit tough, and fighting them all drained my resources as a sorcerer and when I tried running past, I got stuck on scenery. Looking up hints, it turns out that the Ring of Fog helps avoid gaining the attention of most of the enemies. But where is the ring of fog? You have to go back to the Undead Asylum again and trade a skull lantern with a talking bird. Okay, sure, I definitely would have figured that one out. Thanks. Good thing I had an extra skull lantern and the Sunlight Maggot. The Crystal Cave is not great though, largely due to fighting big enemies on small platforms (especially if you’re a sorcerer) and the invisible pathways. The giant clams in front of Seath are tedious but if you pull them one at a time, they’re fine. They just feel unnecessary. Seath himself was a decent fight that, once again, was made way less awful due to knowing beforehand that I would need curse-resist equipment. I played it badly and still won.

New Londo Ruins were fine. Once again a gimmick area: there are ghosts that can go through walls, and you can’t hit them unless you’re cursed. This is solved by the use of the transient curse item. Enemies drop the item often enough and they’re cheap to buy at this stage that it’s really not a problem. It’s so easily circumvented that I don’t really know why this gimmick exists at all beyond a feeling that each final area needed one. The darkwraith knights are cool enough and the Four Kings fight feels tense and fair, but the run back through all of New Londo to get to them and the need to waste a ring slot on the Covenant of Artorias are both really unnecessary. I fell to my death in the pit twice before I realized I needed to equip the ring. Nothing in the game had really prepared me for the idea that I’d need to equip a ring to go somewhere, and it never happens again, so it feels a little pointless.

And finally, the less said about the Demon Ruins and Izalith, the better. The enemies here are mostly reskins, the area is unpleasant to look at, and traversing it is basically just a plain straight line through Ceaseless Discharge and the Demon Firesage. I will admit that my patience was short by now and Izalith majorly bored me, so I looked up the shortcut to the Bed of Chaos and took it, skipping the Centipede and the whole walking on lava bit entirely. If I had needed to get the Orange Charred Ring and fight all those dragon butts, my opinion on the area would be even lower and I already wouldn’t give it a passing grade. The Bed of Chaos fight was a just puzzle fight. It’s fine. I died twice trying to roll on to the middle branch instead of just walking onto it, but otherwise it wasn’t the worst boss. Not fun, but not as bad as its reputation might suggest. If you don’t know what you’re doing, I can imagine this fight being frustrating; another case of a little foreknowledge about the game making it significantly easier.

Throughout these four areas, Dark Souls’ strengths began to disappear, and all I was left with were the flaws: the unfinished areas, the gimmicky bosses, the items that were only useful once, the long runs and long grinds. I understand why Dark Souls is so beloved, and I think the goodwill from the first half obscures discussions of how precipitous the drop in quality is after getting the Lordvessel. It almost feels like a different, worse game. For me, nothing gets better or more memorable than Sen’s Fortress, and you can pretty much quit the game after finishing Anor Londo without missing much.

The Artorias of the Abyss areas and the fight with Gwyn himself significantly improve, however, and help the game end on a more positive note if you’re playing with the DLC.

7. AMBIVALENT WORLD, AMBIVALENT CHARACTERS

There are so many enigmatic characters in Dark Souls, all of them interesting in their own ways. Most of them rattle off lore and laugh eerily, but they all seem to have their own motivations and arcs. They’re often some of the few spots of hope throughout this bleak world, and usually signal temporary safety after getting through a tough area. Seeing Solaire after Taurus lets you know you can relax for a minute. Talking with Siegmeyer gives the game a little bit of comic relief, which is a very welcome change of tone. Speaking to these characters helps you learn about them, their homelands, the gods, and more. So many of them are incredibly interesting, and some of my favorites include the Darkmoon Knightess, Siegmeyer of Catarina, Sieglinde, Big Hat Logan, and Dark Sun Gwyndolin. These characters help drive home the uncertainty of Dark Souls’ world. Very little in the world of Dark Souls is strictly good or bad, and there is a certain ambivalence both to the world and the characters within it. The world doesn’t care if you live or die, and many of the characters don’t care either. They’re vague with their goals and backgrounds, and many actively lie or mislead the player.There’s little fanfare for killing bosses or completing areas. Boss arenas are empty and quiet after the fight, as if you’ve sucked the life out of the area by destroying its denizen. You are a destroyer, relentless in your chosen task, and a willing participant in the destruction of unique creatures.

The problem with these great, ambivalent characters, though, is that it’s extremely difficult to follow their stories. It seems like the game also doesn’t care if you get to interact with these characters or not. You’ll talk with someone at Firelink Shrine and next time you stop by, they’re gone, with no clue where they went. There are certain triggers you have to activate to move their stories along, usually numerous obscure steps in a very specific order at very specific times. If you don’t do it exactly right, you’ll come across their corpse somewhere, or fight them after they’ve gone hollow. In my own playthrough, I wanted to see Reah of Thorolund’s storyline, which involves numerous steps, backtracking at specific moments, not finishing certain bosses, buying all of her miracles, and then backtracking once more to Duke’s Archives only to find her hollow. This is basically the case with every NPC in the game: some require you to buy all of their items, some just move along on their own, some will kill the others if they’re not dealt with. The triggers for their story moments are so unclear and often unrelated to the character themselves that seeing how their stories play out requires following a guide for the whole game.

Another character I wanted to meet is Darkstalker Kaathe. I didn’t know much about Kaathe except that he is another primordial serpent like Frampt, and I never got to see him during my first attempt at playing. So when I was ready to go to New Londo Ruins, I looked up how to find Kaathe, only to find out I had already missed the opportunity. In order to talk to Kaathe — who is never mentioned in the game and is totally absent from it unless you follow these exact steps — you must:

Obtain the Lordvessel, but do not place it with Frampt. You can then go to New Londo Ruins and talk to Ingward. Ingward will give you a key that will eventually lead to the Four Kings boss. To fight the Four Kings, you first have to defeat Great Grey Wolf Sif to obtain the Covenant of Artorias so you can traverse the Abyss. After defeating the Four Kings, Darkstalker Kaathe will appear in The Abyss.

After missing out on Kaathe, I decided I would follow a guide for Big Hat Logan, since I did not want to miss his story (or the great items he drops for sorcerers). There are four sections, each with subsections full of clauses that need to be fulfilled before his storyline is complete. It’s completely baffling, and even following a guide, it’s easy to miss one step and lose it all. So seeing all of the NPC stories or even all of one NPC’s dialogue will likely take numerous playthroughs or strict adherence to a very thorough guide. This is probably great news for Souls devotees who want to spend hundreds or thousands of hours in the game, but it’s very frustrating for someone who just wants to see what Dark Souls has to offer without sacrificing huge chunks of their time to do so. It was extremely disheartening to look up a character and realize I already missed them and will never see them, or they had already died and I didn’t even know it. This was not a one-time occurrence. Since there’s no way to load a previous save or anything, the only option if you want to finish these NPC arcs is to start a new game.

8. THEMES AND TONE

The world of Dark Souls is desolate and tragic, with tiny moments of tranquility sprinkled throughout. Its theme is similar, in that the world is full of decaying landscapes and civilizations frozen in their moment of collapse, constantly experiencing catastrophe with no end. But there is still a spark of hope that can survive, as long as you hold on to it. Here is where the game resonates even more now than it did upon release. This state of constant catastrophe, of watching social collapse in slow motion with no way to stop it, is one that many of us have experienced this year and will continue to find relevant in the coming decade.

Dark Souls has you explore a ruined society, one whose destruction was abetted by an aloof, aristocratic group of ancients who care little for the commoners. This land is full of endless suffering and death, and the only path forward is carved with more suffering and more death; you either kill your way to the top or lose hope and go hollow. In our real world, it’s made all too clear that our ancient, wealthy overlords have no goodwill toward us, and will continue or worsen our suffering for even a modest profit. They use our bodies to fuel their flames for just a few more years before our ecosystem collapses. And you, chosen undead, you’re a hard worker, you’re a smart citizen. You may work through endless hardships, but someday you could be the ruler too, you could be the boss. You can even succeed Lord Gwyn! But of course, it’s all a ruse: you’re the pawn in a game of chess played between dying gods and ancient snakes. It’s a set up to further perpetuate the age of flame, the prolong the lives of these beings, which necessitates the suffering of those below. In the end, you can feed the flame and restart the whole process, just as Frampt and the others intended. You’ll kindle the fire for who knows how long until another undead kills you and begins the cycle of pain again. You can also choose to snuff it out, to burn the whole damn thing down, and try something new without the gods. This course may fail, too, but I know which one sounds more appealing to me.

There are other interesting things to dig into in Dark Souls’ world. The fires that dot the landscape of Lordran are fueled by the bones of the undead. These flames are tended to by the Fire Keepers, all of whom are women. The fire keeper below Firelink Shrine is kept in a dark cave with its entrance barred, her tongue apparently removed. She may be imprisoned here, but the bars could also be there to prevent others from killing her and taking her soul. Given the rest of the game, this could be a critique of the gendered roles that are thrust upon women, that of the default caretaker for example, and the suffering and silence they are put through. Though the game could be a little clearer on this point, as some firekeepers like the Darkmoon Knightess seem to have an esteemed role rather than being imprisoned and mutilated. It’s a conflicted depiction, and the way that women are described as “writhing and squirming” with humanity further complicates that. It others them in a way that seems at odds with many of the other themes of the game.

It’s also a bit disappointing that the humanoids with armor that resembles a fat body are not actually fat. Smough, Siegmeyer, and Sieglinde just have stylized armor according to the lore and are not actually that heavy. It doesn’t help that two of the three characters wearing this armor are a total doofus (whom I love) and a cannibal. Whether the representation of these bodies is made better or worse by the characters actually not being fat, I can’t really say. But the symbolic tying of fat bodies to incompetence and immorality/gluttony is old and tired, and Dark Souls is far from the first or last to do it.

8. ON ENDINGS

Dark Souls has often been misrepresented, even by its own publishers. The embrace of the whole “Prepare to Die” aesthetic and the “get good” mentality really undercut what’s special about the game. While I may not love Dark Souls, I now recognize that there are things in it that few other games offer. Of those things, being hard isn’t necessarily unique among them. There are plenty of hard games, and tons of games in which I’ve died way more often. I probably die more in a typical Mario game than I did in my time with Dark Souls. I died a lot more in Bloodborne, too. What many other games can’t replicate, though, is the world, the tone, and the systems of gaining and sharing knowledge that Dark Souls facilitates. While I may not always enjoy it, how many other games require you to follow a very specific walkthrough to see how a character ends up? I may criticize it, but it’s certainly unique. I was misled myself, years ago, into believing that I had to get good at the game if I wanted to finish it. That I would have to practice and memorize boss moves and come up with strategies. I couldn’t remain a scrub forever if I wanted to see the end, after all. Really, what I needed was an education, a crash course on what Dark Souls actually is. I’m still not very good at mechanically playing the game, but all of the knowledge I gained has made it significantly easier. I was taught how to better read the game, not necessarily play it, and that made all the difference. I realized I should stop worrying about whether something was spoiled for me, or whether I was ruining the game for myself by playing certain classes or not exploring on my own. I understood that the dark is not something to be feared, but illuminated, and this light should be shared.

Playing the game almost ten years late means that I had access to so much information about the game that almost any question I had could be answered with a quick search. The downside though is that while there’s a massive library online of Souls knowledge, there are fewer people actually playing the game now. Dark Souls is clearly designed to be played together, but this aspect is slowly dying. Even playing the remastered version, there were fewer summon signs to help with tough bosses, fewer messages pointing out secrets, fewer phantoms appearing beside the fire as you rest. Over time, people have dropped off and moved on to other games, leaving the world empty and still. What was once a vital aspect of the game is dwindling. In time, the servers will go dark, and all of this interplay will be lost. I encourage veteran players to link the flame, just one more time. Give new players the communal experience you had the first time you played. Leave helpful notes, drop humanity or upgraded armor, and put down your summon signs in front of the Capra Demon please I’m begging you please god I hate that guy so much.

My rankings:

Asylum Demon — B

Bell Gargoyles — C

Capra Demon — F

Ceaseless Discharge — D

Centipede Demon — skipped

Chaos Witch Quelaag — A

Crossbreed Priscilla — I’m not heartless

Dark Sun Gwyndolin — B

Demon Firesage — C

Four Kings — B

Gaping Dragon — B

Great Grey Wolf Sif — S

Gwyn, Lord of Cinder — A

Iron Golem — C

Moonlight Butterfly — C

Nito — B

Ornstein and Smough — A

Pinwheel — D

Seath the Scaleless — C

Stray Demon — C

Taurus Demon — C

The Bed of Chaos — D

Sanctuary Guardian — B

Knight Artorias — S

Black Dragon Kalameet — A

Manus, Father of the Abyss — B

Northern Undead Asylum — A

Firelink Shrine — A

Undead Burg — S

Undead Parish — B

Depths — D

Blighttown — Remaster: B, Original: D

Quelaag’s Domain — B

The Great Hollow — D

Ash Lake — B

Sen’s Fortress — S

Anor Londo — B

Painted World of Ariamis — A

Darkroot Garden — A

Darkroot Basin — B

New Londo Ruins — C

Duke’s Archives — B

Crystal Cave — D

Demon Ruins — F

Lost Izalith — F

The Catacombs — B

Tomb of the Giants — F

Valley of Drakes — D

Kiln of the First Flame — A

Sanctuary Garden — C

Oolacile Sanctuary — A

Royal Wood — B

Oolacile Township — B

Chasm of the Abyss — C