Niahak's Place

The following is a much-abridged review of Dark Souls; a fuller review can be had here.

Dark Souls is an indie RPG, created in the much-maligned RPG maker.  Aside from its oversized font (compare its font and The Spirit Engine 2’s), you wouldn’t be able to tell so easily; it runs quite fast and despite being locked into tiles, it looks good, feels natural, etc.

(Ahh, the difference a font makes.  See how much more natural TSE2’s looks.  One aspect of TSE2 I hadn’t appreciated until now was its use of different fonts, as appropriate, for dialogue, skills, names, etc.  Both games run at a low resolution, windowed, by default; a font of appropriate size makes a huge difference.)

Dark Souls has a pretty good plot, which offsets its soul-crushing difficulty (seriously; in some random battles, if you do not play optimally, you can die the first round).  It’s dark, but not so dark as to be unbelievable.  The main character has been there and done that – rather unusual, particularly since he maintains that attitude throughout – and between him and a pair of the other party members, there’s enough veteran to go around.  The Wild Arms series has been largely unique among commercial games in that it usually has a 30+ character who acts as mentor and guardian to the group (FFX did similar with Auron); but TSE2 and Dark Souls joined that group and took the idea further; in the latter, Gauly takes center stage, complementing the traditional naive-priestess female lead.

Though it’s not perfect, it’s worth experiencing – and fairly short.  Try the demo out and see if you like it (unless you’re a certain someone to whom I lent Baroque.  Play it already!)