Total Newbie plays Dark Souls III; A Quest to Git Gud
I’ve heard a lot about this particular franchise and have seen many memes and parodies of it. Everything from its notorious difficulty and praising the sun. This has gone for years although I’ve never actually played the game myself. I know the mechanics are somewhat similar to Monster Hunter which a friend of mine said is the training we all need for Dark Souls.
Though personally, I couldn’t really get into Monster Hunter even though all my friends were playing it. At the time, it was too complicated for a simple-minded gamer like me. After a while, I finally decided to actually buy the game Dark Souls III and see what all the fuss is about. Now it stands as the most expensive game in my Steam library. It didn’t help that my internet was so slow that I actually had to wait months before I was able to fully download those excruciating 17.4 gigabytes while being fully aware that I’m definitely going to die a lot. Difficult or not, I’m just hoping they won’t patch the thing too often.
You are a soul looking to be “enkindled with the fire”.
The thing with Dark Souls is that there isn’t a very solid plot. You’re kinda just thrown into this world and you’re expected to just piece everything that you find together and make your own interpretation out of it. It starts off with a rather cryptic but gorgeous intro that sets up the world that you are in called Lothric.
From what I understood, you are a soul looking to be “enkindled with the fire” that everyone seems to be so obsessed about in their realm. Keep in mind that I’ve never played any Souls games before—unless you count Titan Souls which is a totally different game—but I was told that each installment could be enjoyed on its own without risking canonicity.
I started playing simply with just a keyboard and a mouse on my laptop. The frame rate was... decent, to say the least. It wasn’t 60 fps but it was still playable for me somehow. Unfortunately, I couldn’t record my gaming session since the game just overall hangs if I do so. Mental note: remember to buy a high-end PC or at least set the graphics to low and the graphics card performance to high.
So you wake up in this place called “Cemetery of Ash” which is pretty much the tutorial level. Playing as a female knight, I walked through this ashen wasteland. The game is kind enough to let you learn the controls along the way. The enemies first encountered are easy but still satisfying to defeat. One thing about Dark Souls is that it’s almost always a bad idea if you rush through the level. I remember dying a few times because I didn’t see all the hints scattered in the area.
While wandering around I come across this path with a hint that simply says “Turn Back”. Keeping an adventurous spirit, I press on forward and encounter this monster which I can describe as a giant ice crystal dragon.
It was very intimidating and it only had to hit me twice before I had to start over. And it was at that moment when I said to myself: Welcome to Dark Souls.
The game is kind enough to let you learn the controls along the way.
So I obviously wasn’t supposed to go that way since my character is still very weak and I’m inexperienced as of now. I traversed another path that led to a more open area with more relatively weak enemies and lit my first bonfire. If you didn’t know, bonfires are essentially checkpoints that refill your health and healing items. Moving forward, I walk through a gigantic door leading to a heavily armored figure impaled with a giant sword; kneeling in the center stage; waiting for me. If that doesn’t scream “boss fight” then I don’t know what does.
Before I continue, let me tell you right now that it’s hard to play this game with a keyboard and a mouse especially when it’s not running at a proper frame rate and the camera moves so fast even with the sensitivity and speed set down to low. I can imagine a few people would have no problem with this but I’m unfortunately not a part of that population. I had a bad time aiming at enemies, barely made progress, and I died a lot as expected.
Moving on, I had my character pull out the sword from this figure and sure enough, it comes to life and begins to attack me with a giant halberd. It’s easy to dodge the attacks since you can pretty much roll to safety as long as you get the timing right. What made me think this boss was impossible is because of how vulnerable I was after doing an attack. It didn’t help that I kept missing the enemy. It’s an unholy combination of inexperience and bad frame rate.
I remember my friend that encouraged me to play Dark Souls III told me that another buddy of ours actually gave up on playing the game just because of this first boss; a tutorial boss even. So I put the game down and called it a day.
A couple of days later, I managed to buy a new gamepad and I was able to play a little bit better. Remember when I said that it’s a bad idea to rush through the level? I didn’t realize that until I started a new game. I wanted to start fresh. Two days ago, I didn’t know I could use target lock-on to make the battles easier. It was a blessing to have such a forgiving feature. Being able to do a variety of actions with only a few buttons, I think that’s very intuitive. Something easy to learn but hard to master.
Absurdly enough, I was finally able to defeat the tutorial boss after an hour of many a trial and death. Once the enemy had fallen, a bonfire had appeared in the center stage where the boss had originally knelt. I lit the bonfire, saved my game, and felt proud of myself.
So my first impressions of this game so far?
I love how it gives you the simple controls in the beginning but it’s up to you to figure out how to utilize them.
All the techniques you can do with minimal user interface and a few buttons makes you think. It also does a good job at establishing future encounters you will have later on.
Walking in blindly, I’m absolutely curious as to what the realm of Lothric will offer me. Looking to be enkindled? Well it certainly ain’t gonna be a cake walk.
But hey! That’s Dark Souls for you and I’m definitely looking forward to playing more.