Dark Souls 5 Stars Worthy Creepy RPG Game Review

Dark Souls 5 Stars Worthy Creepy RPG Game Review
by Teresita Blanco

When I bought the Dark Souls game, we had a love/hate relationship. Up until that day, I had never played any Dark Souls game. As a matter of fact, Dark Souls is the second part of Dark Sign. In any case, I did not know what to expect when I started playing Dark Souls. Like most RPG games, I was able to design my main character. For my first personage, I choose the thief class. That choice I grew to regret as I ventured more into the Dark Souls world. Needless to say, the Thief class was considered a tough class for beginners.

After choosing my girly thief, the storyline began. The overview was based on the first part of the game. It introduced five main bosses, or was it four. I think there was lord Gwyn, the Witch, the Death Guy and a Scaleless dragon. From there, the game switches to the Undead Asylum. There is where they keep all the undead folks. They cannot function in normal society because they might go Hollow (or insane) at any second.

From what I heard of the game creator, his game theme is overcoming adversity. In this game, the main character is an undead. He must learn to live with his malady, until he finds a cure.
The cure comes in two forms. You either die when, you kindle the last fire or you become the lord of the brontosaurus. In either case, it is not a pretty ending per say.

The storyline of the game is not very clear.  You sorta have to piece it together by reading the info on the weapons. All the gamers on the internet have their own unique interpretation of the storyline. I suppose I should tell you what was my take on the storyline. Once upon a time, there were some cool dragons. When they breathed fire into the ground humanity came into existence.

Some humans were stronger than others. The lords were able to absorb more flame from the dragons upon their conception. Since they were children of dragons, they shared the same arrogance. They did not like the idea of dragons lording over them. As such, the four lords banded together to defeat the dragons. The secret of their success came about thanks to the Scaleless Dragon.

Since he was scaleless, he was seen as a defective dragon. Naturally, this alienation made him sympathetic toward the humans. He taught the lords the secret to defeating the dragons. He trained each one according to his and her skill. Lord Gwyn developed miracles and lightning. The Witch and her daughters mastered fire. The Lord of Death mastered pestilence. As for Seath, the scaleless dragon, he was a curse master. His existence was a curse upon the dragons. When they fell, only he remained.

After the Lords won, they became the Gods of the new world. The decedents of the furtive Pigmea, 4th race to be born from the dragon's fire, became the Lord's followers. There was a prolonged period of peace, while the Lords reigned. However, one day the flames began to fade. Unlike the dragons, the Lords could not create fire, at most they could only kindle it.

The witch and her daughters tried to recreate the original fire, using magic. However, their tampering created magma. As a byproduct of their experimentation, many of the witches daughter's got turned to demons. The main witch herself became a burning bush. Her other daughters turned to broodmothers. These gave birth to the Capra demons and other varieties of demons.

The only daughter that did not turned into a beast was Quelana. Instead of turning to a monster, she developed pyromancing. She used her inner flame as a catalyst to create a flame hand. She divided her flame with her first student, Salamander (or something). The only problem with pyromancing is that over time, the pyromancer's flame gets progressively weaker.

On the Death's side, he started lording over the dead. Due to the dark sign, many of the dead reanimated. Others simply were born dead. Despite these issues, his presence provided for his followers the illusion of a peaceful rest. In the end, even the lord of Death is not truly dead, for he is animated.

As for Seath, having betrayed his dragons pals, he went to rule over the humans. He imparted upon his followers the gift of crystal weapons. His home also served as a prison for whoever went Hollow. When he was not crystallizing followers, he was developing beautiful butterflies chicks. Those beautiful maidens also served as his brides. From them, we got the clamp, the reptiles, the weird blue octopuses and the Priscilla the Crossbread.

The last guy worth mentioning is Lord Gwyn. Unlike the other lords, Gwyn made Pygmies into knights. When the battle was over, he shared part of his flame among his most trusted generals. When things finally settled down, Lord Gwyn became a family man. He was able to produce a decent amount of kids.

What these four weirdos have in common is that they are all in on the joke. They may not appear to be working together, however, each is trying to make the player sacrifice themselves to the flame. When the flame is rekindled, the cycle will start all over again, with the Lords coming to life. Should you keep the Lord's Vessel, the world goes dark. As such, you have to choose whether to perpetrate the Lord's rule, or become the Lord of the Brontosaurus.

A lot of other things happen in the middle, but that is the gist of the storyline. My favorite world was the Painted World of Arriety (od Priscilla). Priscilla was part of a conspiracy to overthrow the Lords. Like the undead, she did not fit into the Lord's new world. Since she was a crossbreed between a witch and the dragon, she was treated worst than an undead.

Since her conspiracy failed, she was thrown into the undead Asylum. In her loneliness, she was drawn inside a painted world. The weird doll her hollow carried was the key to her world. Even though her conspiracy failed, her brontosaurus followers kept the ball rolling. Like her, they did not fit into the perfect world created by the Lords. They wanted their own ruler.

I think that is enough plot. Aside from the odd storyline, I found the Dark Soul weapons pretty interesting. Each kind had its own combo and style. Early on, I fell for the Drake Sword trap. The Drake Sword is a good start up weapon. The problem is that it does not scale with your level. Plus, improving it requires dragon scales. Ironically, I managed to get a lot of dragon scales early on. I had the habit of biting on more than I could chew.

Eventually, I settled down on Iato for a weapon. It was really hard to get that samurai blade. You had to give a lot of odd turns to get it in Anor Londo. I liked that sword because of the bleeding damage. For a shield, I kept the knight's shield. It had the highest defense points. I ended up ruining it pretty early by giving it some fire.

Armor wise, I got the heaviest, strongest armor I could find. I ended up using the heavy knights armor. For light armor, I got the black pyromancer armor. I liked it because of the curse defense. Also, I found it cute whenever I saw the pretty feet of my fragile lil thief girl. Another armor that I liked was the red mage armor of the sealer. It was a pretty strong armor that you could get if you ran pretty fast.  

I think that is enough on the weapons. The most important part of the game are the boss battle. The first boss battle in the Asylum was pretty hard, specially with the crappy knife. The monster killed me like three times. Then again, it was my first boss battle. The first boss that truly frustrated me was the Capra demon. He would jump me the second he saw me. I would try to run away, but his zombie dogs would catch me. That boss made me stop playing the game for quite a while.

However, the hardest bosses in the entire game were Hammer and Nails. The first time I fought him, I had no humanities. Heck, I had a hard time not dying the first time around. In any case, the odd pair kept killing me. Because I had saved the game into the XBOX, Nails used to overclock. Needless to say, he was a tad faster than what he was supposed to be. It took me like a month to defeat Hammer and Nails.

After that part of the game, the bosses did not felt too hard. My brother was the one who slew the final boss... without me, twice. He told me that the second time he slew him, he trigger Gwyn's kill with one strike attack. The first time he won, he kindled the fire. The second time he became the rulers of the brontosaurs.

Frankly, my best file was the mage file. I became a mage in my second file. I gave most of the first levels to magic. Thanks to the catylist her magic was pretty strong. This mage file also taught me how to dodge. Since I invested all my pecks for magic, my character had no defense. Still, defense was irrelevant when I was able to slay the bosses after one or two magical shots.

In my mage file, I practically slew everyone. I wanted to see what they were carrying. Plus, via the magic I was finally able to survive most battles. I defeated pretty early a lot of bosses. I only had problems with the drakes, the hydras and Ceaseless Discharge. My only regret was that I slew the forgiver of sins. Because he croaked I was not able to learn the lightning shooting miracle. Still, I was able to manage with the magic that I learned.

The hardest battles were mostly against the little humans. Since they were a small target, I had a hard time shooting them down. In my mage file, I was able defeat pretty easily Hammer and Nails. I had a lot of humanities, thus I was able to summon Solaires.

The last file I made was one with a pyromancer. I choose a pyromancer because he started in level 1. I liked that the form started in level 1 because it gave me more control of the levels. That file I left it on hold because I got a new game. Plus, there was nothing else to do in the game. I had literary found everything in my first file.

The last thing I want to mention is a very annoying cliche. You remember the pendulum knife joke. You see them in a lot of Indiana Jones movies. In any case, what frustrated me for a while was that I kept loosing to a cliche. Boy, I spent a whole month trying to get across. It almost made me stop playing the game all together. Long story short, my brother got across the traps and I was able to continue playing the game.

On a final note, Dark Souls is one of those games that is hard for the sake of being hard. The story line is not that far out there. It is also designed like a memory game. You can win the game pretty easily if you remember the location of all monsters, traps and items.  For those with poor memory, I wish you luck. Because this game was so hard, I finally learned to dodge. That ability helped me in my new game. If you want to become a better gamer, then get Dark Souls. The game will teach you the true meaning of dodging. For teaching me the true meaning of Christmas Dark Souls deserves 5 stars rating.