RipTen Review: Dark Souls (Xbox 360)

Patience is key, without it, you're nothing.

Souls are also used as the game’s currency. Anything you want to buy, repair, or upgrade will require souls. This creates even more of a test for gamers.  Should you spend those souls to wield a new deadly weapon, or upgrade your health because you’re dying too quickly?  To make things even harder, if you die, you lose all your souls and you can’t store the damned things either. Upon death you’ll leave a glowing green soul where you died. Once you respawn at your last bonfire you visited, every enemy in the game also repspawns -besides bosses- and you must make your way back to that exact spot where you died to recover your souls. Die again, and they’re gone forever.

If you haven’t realized already, Dark Souls isn’t a simple walk in the park. One of the reasons Dark Souls is so satisfying is because of it’s difficulty, but at the same time, some points in the game are more tedious than they are actually challenging, rewarding or fun. There’s nothing challenging about powerful skeletons that keep putting themselves back together after you “kill” them. To make matters worse, they will follow you for quite some time, and you’ll eventually have around 10-15 invincible skeletons chasing you. That’s not challenging, that’s tedious, annoying and downright preposterous.

To all you Demon’s Souls “vets” out there, I’m not “crying” about that particular issue because it makes the game hard. I love the challenge aspect, which is why I’ve put around 30 hours into the game and I’m still going. There’s just a line between challenging and unnecessary. Thankfully, there’s very few of these lines, while the rest of the game is actually challenging and more rewarding. However, Dark Souls suffers from one major issue that plagues the game and makes it even more difficult. The framerate.

Looks amazing right? Too bad the framerate suffers tremendously.

Even with the entire game installed on my Xbox 360, Dark Souls suffers from some of the most unbearable framerate issues I’ve ever encountered. I’m talking about the game slowing down to a mere 5 frames-per-second for 5-10 seconds at a given time. This particularly happens when adjusting the camera into areas with a huge draw distance, or when too many enemies are on the screen. Come face to face with one of the games most antagonizing creatures, a dragon, and expect to be in slow motion for a good 15 seconds. One of the worst occasions is when you reach Brighttown. This section of the game can almost be classified as unplayable. You’ll have to worry about falling off multiple ledges, narrow walkways, poisonous enemies,  and fire breathing dogs while the game runs at almost a constant 5-10 FPS. It doesn’t completely ruin the experience as a whole, but it certainly does hurt it.

That one huge gripe aside, Dark Souls also offers some of the most innovative multiplayer features around. For Xbox 360 users, don’t expect to sit in party chat while having the online mode enabled. Dark Souls doesn’t allow it, which is disappointing. However, with online mode enabled, you’re never playing alone… even when you are. You’re not on this adventure by yourself, you’re playing with the entire world. Players (including yourself) can leave written messages anywhere they please to help others out. These can be used to help identify a weakness for a boss, a secret path, enemy ambushes, and much more. Dark Souls does offer co-op and you can request help, but only at certain parts like a boss battle. So don’t expect to play the game from start to finish with a buddy by your side. If you’re feeling a little evil, the competitive side of things allows you to invade another player’s world as a black phantom if you so choose.

Prepare to Die

Dark Souls is a game with many merits that appeals directly to a certain sadistic breed of gamer.  It’s not a game you come home to, to sit back and relax.  It’s a game in which you test yourself and your patience. While most of your time with the game will be spent cursing at your television, your overall sense of satisfaction, completion and progress will serve as its own reward.  You can’t go wrong with a game like this if you’re up to the challenge and love dark twisted fantasy role-playing games.  Framerate issues aside, Dark Souls is a must buy for any hardcore gamer who thinks they have what it takes to step up to the challenge.

Here’s the rundown:

+ The most rewarding game you’ll ever play

+ Epic boss battles

+ Fantastic combat once you learn to master it

+ Huge world with hours upon hours of gameplay

+ Unique approach to multiplayer features that enhance the single player 

- Horrendous, unforgettable, unacceptable frame rate issues  

- Sometimes the game is more tedious than challenging

- No proper tutorial for new comers

Learn more about the RipTen scoring system and what this score means. Visit our review scoring page

Dark Souls was developed by From Software and published by Namco Bandai . It was released on October 4th on Xbox 360 and PS3 for $59.99.  The copy used for review was provided to us by the publisher.  Campaign was played for around 30 hours through harsh and frustrating scenarios that made Chris want to snap his controller in half.