Review

The first of the Soulsborne series that I got into, as I'm sure aligns with most others. Dark Souls is certainly old. There is jank. But it never really bothers me. I think in large part that's because certain obtuse mechanics of the game don't in any way really hamper you from just playing it. Bosses simply don't take enough hits for optimization to ever be that big a concern. Up your strength sometimes, add some intelligence and dabble with magic. Drop all that and start leveling dexterity when you find a funny scythe that seems fun. The stats and each of their effects being non-obvious really will not hurt you.

I do kind of dislike some of the silly NPC questlines. BUT, I don't really hold it against the game because when I think about the vast majority of them, they consist of you finding an NPC out somewhere. They come back to firelink (which you are bound to return to). You talk to them and they say that they're gonna go out and explore a particular place. And most importantly, that place that they go is somewhere ahead of you. So if you do want to follow their questlines, just talking to the people when you see them is enough to get you through a pretty good portion. There's some obscurity about, but I think some of that also comes from the odd need to relaod areas to get things to move along. That's not me defending the experience per se. More just me mentioning that they are not intentionally adding undue friction. Whereas that happens in spades by the time we get to Elden Ring. I think one very easy fix for a lot of the NPC jank would be implementing Okami's system of just displaying a little symbol when an NPC has more to say.

Dark Souls to me followed up on Demon's Souls in the perfect way. Where enough of the old jank had been excised to we're able to just have fun. We have this beautifully designed world. (That you can actually make a goddamn mental map of...) You have these really memorable boss fights (Artorias my beloved). And you have an interesting story of a dark and lonely world where every now and then you come across people like you just trying to hold on.