Dark
Souls

Dark Souls (2011) is a fighting game with an emphasis on precise timing and extreme difficulty. You navigate through labyrinthine ruins and ancient kingdoms, defeating monsters with your weapons and magic. A spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, it takes the difficulty of that game and pairs it with a mythological fantasy story and worldbuilding to make for a novel and weighty adventure.

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In a dark fantasy world, four deities have defeated the dragons to usher in the Age of Fire. Now though, humanity has become cursed with a disease that brings the dead back to life until eventually, nothing remains. You play one such undead hero and must ascend to the realm of the Gods to fulfil an ancient prophecy, either dooming or saving your race.

Play involves moving through each area by defeating enemies. You choose your character from one of ten classes, each with different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. As you progress you slowly level up and choose new skills and improvements to your stats. Combat is intentionally very difficult, requiring you to parry and dodge at just the right time and carefully look for openings to attack. Central to the game is dying to learn how to react in hostile environments and having the resilience and belligerence to repeatedly face the same foes, slowly learning from mistakes.

The result is a game that combines immense combat hurdles with a high-stakes fantasy story and rich worldbuilding to create an experience that derives its fun both from the satisfaction of beating each new challenge and from witnessing the grand story unfold.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Dark Souls 8 months ago. It was re-examined by Ben Kendall and updated 8 months ago.