Dark Souls: A Latecomer’s Perspective

Tom Roberts from Cultured Vultures is playing the original Dark Souls for the first time, documenting his experiences. By the looks of it, he went in blind, tried a lot of different builds and is now, a 100 hours in, getting the hang of it. It’s quite an amusing read.

An excerpt:

My wife keeps telling me to relax, and you know how irritating it can be when you’re obviously worked up about something and someone comes along and says: “Relax, bro. It’s all good. Turn that frown upside down.”

Just the thought of it makes me feel increasingly tense – something no amount of back rubs is going to shift, although my wife keeps offering them – and it’s not like I’m going to be able to relax until I reach the next bonfire. And even then, it’s only going to restore all the enemies I’ve spent the past hour hacking my way through. And all in the pursuit of being able to say I beat the game.

[…]

Dark Souls is the game embodiment of “hard but fair”. It doesn’t punish you, it lets you punish yourself. And you know what? I think that’s why it’s got such a devoted fan base. You have to work for it, and the satisfaction is a key driver of persevering. But even when you accomplish something, the game doesn’t celebrate. It just sort of goes: “Great, here’s some souls and other bits, crack on.”

How far am I through this self-imposed grind? Not far. I’ve just beaten the Bell Gargoyles – yes, I know that’s right at the beginning, but it’s taken me a long while to try out different classes before settling on a Warrior. I tried Pyromancer, but ended up relying too much on the fireball and got rightly punished for it because I neglected everything else. I tried the Knight, but the slow roll just made me feel too sluggish. The Bandit was too light, the Thief too sneaky, and, well, you get the idea. I was hard to please.

So, many different attempts with all the different classes means that I can now get right through to the Gargoyles in relatively quick order, and I feel slightly more prepared for whatever comes next. I don’t feel safe, but I’ve had a really good time getting to know the classes and their various strengths.