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- Bandai Namco Games
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- Bandai Namco Games
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- Bandai Namco Games
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- Bandai Namco Games
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
Released On: Aug 24, 2012
85
7.8
All Platforms
Metascore
Generally favorable
Based on 42 Critic Reviews
85
86% Positive
36 Reviews
36 Reviews
12% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
2% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally favorable
Based on 42 Critic Reviews
85
86% Positive
36 Reviews
36 Reviews
12% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
2% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
A bare-bones port can't sully one of the outstanding titles of this generation.
Technically maybe not the best port, but who cares, as the game is pure diamond. [Sept 2012]
User Score
Generally favorable
Based on 2,522 User Ratings
7.8
74% Positive
1874 Ratings
1874 Ratings
9% Mixed
225 Ratings
225 Ratings
17% Negative
423 Ratings
423 Ratings
User Score
Generally favorable
Based on 2,522 User Ratings
7.8
74% Positive
1874 Ratings
1874 Ratings
9% Mixed
225 Ratings
225 Ratings
17% Negative
423 Ratings
423 Ratings
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is a fantastic experience, and one of the best games I've played this generation. Even with some graphical hiccups, it remains superior to the console counterparts, offering more content, better graphical options and a frame rate that is steady throughout. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is an experience like no other that will invoke a multitude of emotions while keeping you planted on the edge of your seat.
This Prepare to Die Edition is far from what the game should have been on the PC, but it still is a masterpiece, a game designed for hardcore players.
Dark Souls returns the hardcore elements back to action RPGs – heavy focus on uncompromising fight mechanics and absolute freedom in hero profiling. The price of this game is not for everyone. [Oct 2012]
True Survival-RPG without peaceful moments, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition will convey either fascination or hatred, being an terrible hardcore game. Players that were looking for a simple Action-RPG title will have difficulties to appreciate its tough gameplay, whereas the ones looking for the ultimate challenge will welcome Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition with open arms. It's a shame the PC version doesn't bring any particular features compared to the console versions.
This Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is not only the worst console port I've ever played (and I play most of them), it's also one of the worst designed. I mean literally, this game is one step above my character having "lives" and when I run out of those, I'm told to jam quarters into my PC to continue playing. If this is what constitutes a "good console RPG", then I'll sleep soundly at night with the knowledge that I'm not missing a damn thing by not owning a PlayStation 3. I guess I'm alone in understanding this, but supposed difficulty is not a substitute for intelligent design. Dark Souls proves that.
This review focuses primarily on boss fights, combat, and leveling. The game has 26 bosses, including 4 from the DLC.
Great boss design encompasses the following: easily learnable mechanics, counter-able bosses, most if not all setups will be viable against them. Dark Souls does very well in the easily learnable mechanics realm, is moderate in the counter realm and does terrible with build viability for bosses, there are some setups that will just NEVER work against certain bosses. My favorite boss is still Artorias, my least favorite Black Dragon Kalameet.
Dark Souls could have been a 9/10 game if the game had focused on making fights more interesting rather than just punishing. A fight should never feel impossible and can still be challenging to overcome.
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PC
Frustrating, challenging, and a nightmarish pc port. Bad controls, framerate, and a camera/lockon mechanic that betrays you oh so much and the primary antagonist in this game. That is.... It's still dark souls man. There is still fun to be had with its outstanding combat.
It can be fun. Probably best enjoyed in its other iterations though
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PC
Intro:
Dark Souls is one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. The game sold very well and has created the current Souls series which includes Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III. Dark Souls was created by Fromsoftware it was to be the spiritual successor Demon's Souls which was worked on by the same team. People praised the game for its difficulty and thick atmosphere. I have been told by many people to play this game. I finally played it and beat it in a few weeks. I frankly did not enjoy that much. If you are expecting a positive review you can look at another review now. I felt that Dark Souls was a flawed janky game that was hamstrung by its difficulty but had well designed levels and ambiance.
Presentation:
Dark Souls has a passable presentation. The graphics are decent for a game that came out in 2011. The game's visuals as an overall package can look quite excellent in times and give you the feeling of hopelessness and oppression. The menus are design can be a bit clunky with your inventory filling up too much. The levels are designed with a high level of detail that greatly increases the immersion. Overall Dark Souls has a presents quite well.
Story:
Here is the part where I begin to not like Dark Souls. Dark Souls has a highly convoluted story that follows the theme of light and dark. Dark Souls has a minimalistic plot. Historical events in this world and their significance are often implicit and left to player interpretation rather than fully shown or explained. Most of the story is given to the player through dialogue from characters within the game, flavor text from items, and world **** opening cutscene begins in primeval times, with a world shrouded by grey fog and ruled by Everlasting Dragons. In this world, Gwyn happens upon the First Flame and finds a Lord Soul, and with his allies, use their power to defeat the dragons beginning the Age of Fire. But all flames must fade, so after thousands of years, the Age of Fire was dwindling. With the dwindling flame, the undead curse appears, where certain humans become branded with the Dark Sign and continually resurrect upon death, losing a small piece of their humanity and sense of self with each death. The player begins as one of these cursed undead, locked away in an undead asylum "To the North". After escaping the asylum with the aid of the knight Oscar, the player ventures to Lordran attempting to follow a mysterious prophecy, given to them by Oscar. From there the story takes off. I feel that the game's story is too convoluted and minimalistic to tell a great story I understand that many will disagree with me on this.
Gameplay:
Dark Souls most lacking aspect is in the gameplay department. The game seems to be more focused on difficulty than eljouablbilty. Many deaths in the game can be unfair such as the games poor hit detection and physics which can cause your character to sometimes corrine off a cliff. I feel that Dark Souls has created a nasty tread in this area of creating difficulty as the center of the gameplay which can greatly take away from the experience. I believe that games should be enjoyable experiences and not frustrating ones. I believe that Dark Souls difficulty would be much more fair if it had a difficulty setting so players can choose how hard they want the game. The very well respected game critic Jim Sterling agrees with this and has wrote and said in the past that he wouldn’t mind Dark Souls having an easy mode so it would be acceptable to less experienced players. The game uses a basic action RPG combat. The game also uses a basic leveling system where you choose a class and build it from there. The game also features many frustrating level designs especially Sen’s Fortress which features many cheap and unfair traps that makes you often have to restart the area many times. The game also features some of the worst platforming in video game history even worse than the original Half-Life. Dark Souls combat I mostly found boring frustrating and repetitive and incompetent. Overall Dark Souls gameplay is far more frustrating than enjoyable.
Technical:
Dark Souls suffers from many technical problems and crashed on me many times in the middle of playing. The game also experienced many strange glitches as well. The game also had a terrible physics system which would glitch in and out and ruin the entire experience.
Overall:
Dark Souls is poorly made game. I don’t understand the praise this game gets. Maybe I am not the demographic for this game. I see Dark Souls has a bad influence the game industry. Bloodborne when it came out was praised for the same reason by critics but I hated it as well and they claimed it was a true survival horror game. As a survival horror fan I see it infest and ruin recent horror games to focus on difficulty to “scare” the player vs. genuinely trying to scare player in creative ways. I am greatly looking forward to Resident Evil 7. And so far from the trailer and demo it looks great but I hope that it takes influence from horror games like P.T. and SIlent Hill that focussed and real storytelling and scares over cheap difficulty to stress the player. I feel that games are made to be fun and Dark Souls is not that game. I give Dark Souls a very disappointing 4/10.
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PC
This game for all its potential depth and story does a few things that are cardinal sins in my opinion. First off, it has very fiddly controls combined with a 3rd person camera that make the blocking and striking mechanics harder than they need to be. Secondly it combines punishing difficulty with a lack of a save/load function, so if you try something and mess it up, there's no trying it again - e.g. the sleeping dragon at the start with the items you're supposed to be able to sneak up, steal and get away with (or die but keep). In my game the fiddly controls had me smashing A for my character to pick up the 2nd item before the dragon murdered me only to find that it just wouldn't register the command, and now the game is saved with the dragon awake.
Frustrating design combined with huge difficulty and punishing auto saving? You get to meet my friend called the steam refund policy!
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PC
Summary With tense dungeon crawling and fearsome enemy encounters, the seamlessly intertwined world of Dark Souls is full of extreme battles, rewarding challenges, nuanced weaponry and magic, and the flexibility to customize each character to suit any desired play style. The innovative online component allows gamers to draw from the collective ...
Rated M
for Mature
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Aug 24, 2012
Developer:
- From Software
Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
Genres:
