Dark Souls Review - Short and Sweet

( Because this game does not deserve a long, lengthy, and graphically beautiful article, I will simply post my review notes for the game and leave it at that. )

Dark Souls is a game for Masochists. People that simply love pain. It's hard only because it's frustrating. Not because it's a game of the mind and tactics.

Combat is boring and stiff, not flexible and easy to use. Slow combat can be fun, like in Mount and Blade, but DS is not slow combat, it's stiff and boring and unresponsive.

Lack of proper saving forces players to REDO levels in an attempt to increase game time artifically. Dirty tactic game developers use to give a game the perception of being long, without ACTUALLY providing content.

Some games that limit saves still have many autosave areas, but in Dark Souls they are few and far between. Seeing one is like looking at heaven itself. Save points should not be THAT rare and lack of proper saving only makes the game FRUSTRATING, not HARD.

True hardness involves very strong enemies with intricate tactics, special weapon setups needed to be effective against bosses, lots of grinding and training needed to be strong enough for bosses, or SOMETHING that the player can control but CHOOSES not to do and as a result PAYS for it.
Being hard simply because the game mechanics are made childishly and haphazardly only means the designers artificially made the game annoying and frustrating, not actually CHALLENGING.

Lack of proper tutorial and explanation. No idea if souls are useful or not, and only later find out it's used as currency.

Gameplay

Very linear gameplay. Must follow a set determined path. Limits creativity, control, and exploration when forced to follow a singular path. Feels like a rat maze and being led on. Very childish. New games should not be so linear. This is the year 2011, those games should have died ages ago.

Luck involved in killing enemies. By sheer chance two mobs may hit you at the right time in which case you can't defend and will die very soon since healing is so restricted in this game. Sometimes LUCK is all you need to beat bosses or get through areas, not skill.

Lots of cheap deaths. Areas are littered with traps that can only be avoided once you've fallen in them or set them off. No way to avoid them without being psychic and knowing the future. Cheap deaths also add to the game difficulty, but not in a productive way; it simply makes the game frustrating for no reason. All the knowledge, patience, and tactics in the world cannot help you avoid cheap deaths in Dark souls.


Authors Note: Again these are just my writers notes for the article I wanted to write. But I found that this game did not deserve the time or energy it takes to write a longer article. So these are simply my short hand notes of my review.