It will swallow your Soul

Never has a video review taken so long. In perspective, I used to make a video review in a day. For a while now, I've been taking a little more time and effort to make a video. So normally they take between 2-6 days to make. 

"this is the story of the curse of the dark souls"

I started filming the review for Dark Souls at the beginning of October. The 9th to be precise. But it was put on the back burner while I produced the Dragon Castle and Paper Tales videos. As these were Essen releases. I did get time to go back and carry on DS just before Essen, then continue when I got back. Then things went black...

I had my car break down. I had a windows update that went wrong. I had a memory card give out after filming, loosing an hour of recordings. I had a new memory card that made an unreadable file. And the worse was I had a very ill Player 4, who I had to babysit for over a week. Then I fell ill for two days. On top of that, I broke a nail.
​
So little by little, I have been working on this video (which is in two parts) trying to get it finished for you. And now that it's done, I can crack on with other (hopefully shorter) videos. Plus some interesting Kickstarters...

Dark Souls is a dungeon crawling game that is supposed to replicate the video game series of the same name. Not that I know that it does, as it is a video game that I have wanted to try but never got around to buying. Even when it was on a reduced price. I was using all my time and fun in the world of Skyrim. Also know my temperament as a gamer...

I did not want to risk getting a game that would end up with a controller being thrown around the house.

​​Yes, I have a habbit of getting frustrated. For example:

I play a game and I mange to get 60% of the way through. Cool.
I play the same game again and I get 70%  the way through. Excellent.
I play the same game once more but get stuck around the begging 20%. What the fudge!
​
Something is not right. From now on, I can't jump to a platform or kill a mini-boss that I found easy before. The game has not changed. The player has not changed apart from he should be more experienced than before. Something is not right! Hench a control gets it's pilots licence.
​Therefore I didn't pick up a copy. Although I did watch may reviews that praised the game for capturing the difficulty of arcade games from the 80's and 90's. 

The board game does capture the same feeling as the video game. It is hard...
​and sometimes too easy.

Dark Souls the board game has some great mechanisms and some good components but it is not balanced. 

Your team of heroes will be waltzing around a practically straight line dungeon. Fighting programmed enemy monsters, who will charge at you in one turn. Then ONE of your heroes has the chance to charge back. Before the monsters make another charge at you all. This is where the difficulty comes in. As the game is designed to be hard. But if you have a great puzzle solving team, you will predict the actions of the enemy's, therefore prepare in advance your strategy. Choosing which of you will be the one to take all the damage and which of you will sneak in the back and sting the pesky monsters.

This is a strength of the game. Puzzle solving and advanced planning. And when you get to the Mini-Boss or (for those of you who like to spend 3-5 hours playing the same game) the Main Boss, this puzzle becomes more interesting and even fun!

But it's all the work that you put into the game before you get to that fun that is a little dull and repetitive...and luck dependent.

You have to do, what in RPG terms is called "grinding." This is doing the same action, over and over again so that your character becomes better and doing those same actions. Something that doesn't work with me if you look at my video game experiences above. 

This game rely's on that. The more rooms you clear of monsters, the more souls you collect. The more souls you collect, the more items you can buy. Problem is, each item is not bought from a selection...It's bought from the top of a lager deck of cards. Cards that you will be drawing and saying, "That's too powerful for me, I will need to level up 6 times." Or "another attachment, but none of us can attach anything!"...Frustrating. 

In a game that has a timing mechanism that puts pressure on the players as they loose their lives, much like an arcade game, randomness is either your friend or not. There is dice combat. That could screw you over. You could encounter a room of monster and traps that are too powerful for your team and that too, screws you over. The only thing you can rely on being the same is the proclamation of these creatures. Who move in the fashion each time and deal the same damage each time. 

Once you know how to clear a room of these pesky beasts, if you ever come back that way again and you use the same actions, it's a walk in the park. Again, if luck be with you, you have been blessed with wonderful arms and armour, you will clean a room out like a hotel maid cleans the dust from a hotel room.

​Now I shouldn't moan too much about a game that was designed to be hard, because that is what it's supposed to do. If you wish to find out some of the great things your money will get out of this game, check out my video review...