So I Finally Played DARK SOULS

DARK SOULS: REMASTERED is [expletive redacted] brilliant! I'll make no bones about it. With its production helmed by now-renowned videogame visionary Hidetaka Miyazaki, DARK SOULS blossomed into a beautifully challenging (if a little rushed at the end) masterpiece, one that I am sad to admit to having experienced only very recently. However, after having fought my way through to its bitter conclusion — prolonging the Age of Fire, as I was destined to do — the game quickly earned itself a coveted spot on my top games of all time list. Honestly, though, there was a time when I felt very differently about it…

So, I am traditionally a “normal” difficulty enjoyer and am someone far more likely to dip backwards into “easy” rather than spring forward into “hard” territory. I have just always reserved tougher difficulties for replays of videogames that I am very familiar with. For this reason, DARK SOULS scared me! With critics and players alike not only speaking candidly about the game's brutality but often praising it, I felt overwhelmed and defeated before I had even booted the game up. All the chatter (written and spoken) concerning DARK SOULS planted a seed of doubt in my mind, and the more that I heard, the more it grew. Eventually, it developed into a raging beast, one that I greatly feared would squash with ease any ill-prepared (or more likely incapable) attempts I made to topple it. To me, DARK SOULS was a literal impossibility.

So what changed? Honestly, I knuckled down and got to work learning and improving; I simply refused to live in the game's long, dark, and intimidating shadow any longer! I hit back and I hit hard (a +15 Great Club will do that), and to my genuine surprise, I was quickly finding repeated success. Boss after boss fell with relative ease to the unshackled might of my bare-chested barbarian. And when coupled with a newfound admiration for the game's deep lore and general obtusity, I soon became a thrall to it.

That is not to say the game presented no challenge at all, though — on my trek, I fell both in battle and to stupidity countless times. I just had to git gud. Well, there was that, and there was Rorschach’s emboldening quote from Watchmen perpetually circling my brain. Yes, DARK SOULS was a vile prison; however, I was the real monster, and the poor inhabitants of Lordran were trapped in there with me! It never failed to give me a second wind and helped me to unleash further rounds of clobbering time.

However, simply improving was not all that I did to progress. In fact, I made a pleasant discovery, which revealed that I had more control over the difficulty than I had been led to believe. Yes, I know, you read that correctly. There may be no slider or selection related to it, but difficulty can be nudged in your favour based on your decisions. Remember, every conceivable approach one might take — including all gear and attribute combinations — is genuinely viable, and therein lies a part of your difficulty selector. Now, I am not just saying throw on the “best” armour and equip the “best” weapon because those things are somewhat subjective; what I am saying is find what works best for you. If you can do that then you'll find yourself having a much smoother time of it. For the longest time, I wore only a basic Hollow helmet and the pants that I had spawned into the Asylum with, and I did well. Hulk smash!

Following that, the only other thing holding you back is your mentality. This one was the hardest for me to alter because I didn't know I needed to; I had heard that DARK SOULS was supposed to be hard — for so long — that I had made myself believe that the experience should be borderline miserable. But no, dear reader, that is not how it should be: you need only apply some positivity to your journey (like any real adventurer) and the whole thing will immediately become far more manageable. Rework how you address your failures and learn how to relish opportunities to improve, and you'll soon have FromSoftware’s tough-as-nails RPG cowering in the corner. It won't break you if you break it first, and thus, no amount of fatal beatdowns will ever deter you from getting back on the horse. If you can do that, then those hard-fought victories will always go down like a glass of cold pop on a sweltering summer's afternoon. DARK SOULS will never work your success into some throwaway and shallow non-triumph. No, it will always be genuine and satisfying if you can achieve it…

Enter, the Bed of Chaos. Oh, the frustration! That boss made me want to eat my hands right off my forearms. Sure, it is very doable, it just relies far too much on RNG to be fun and to learn. Not to mention the runback through the Lost Izalith ruins, which is a sure-fire contender for worst in the entire game.

Now, I bid thee farewell, fellow undead. I must take my leave and return to the land of Lordran, where the foulest of all foes: the dreaded and devious lock-on feature! It shall certainly aid in my demise far more times than I will care to count.