Dark Souls is a game series that many people have very strong opinions about. Tons of people (including myself) love the game, and praise it's innovation in an otherwise stagnant triple-A gaming world. Others despise it, claiming it is "too hard" or not intuitive enough for the normal gamer to jump into. Whatever your stance on it may be, here is a list of mechanics that, for me, are entirely unenjoyable in an otherwise amazing game series.




PvP

The Player VS. Player mechanics of Dark Souls are the elephant in the room when it comes to bringing up unenjoyable mechanics. It works by one player using an in-game item, and then "invading" the world of another player, who may or may not be in a position or mood to fight. The invader then attacks the unsuspecting player, along with all of the enemies currently alive in the player's world. The only way to banish the invader is by winning or losing to them, and losing comes with it's own host of problems. Moreover, people are INCENTIVISED to come wreck your game by getting exclusive items from coming in and doing so. This is the in-game equivalent of your little brother ripping your Game Boy out of your hands and hitting the power switch right before you beat the Elite Four... it is not fun no matter how you slice it.

The worst part is that the only "opt-out" of the system is to play the entire game offline, which prevents you from using other mechanics within the game entirely, as well as on console, removing chat functionality entirely.

Typically this is the situation: You are low on health items, but have fought your way to an area's boss. You are almost to where you need to go, when an enemy invades your game and blocks your path. It's been a while since the last checkpoint, and so you struggle to fight someone who is better equipped, has all of their healing items full, AND has a poor connection, so they consistently hit you when it looks like they are swinging in thin air. The game also blacks out all "quit game" options during the invasion, so to leave the game, you need to power down the console or force quit and hope the auto save does not corrupt your character data.


The Co-op System

The Co-Op system for Dark Souls works extremely well when you just want someone random to play with, but in any other game except the latest one, it is near impossible to get your friends in on the game with you...so much so that the original Dark Souls on Xbox 360 BLOCKED party chat, so you could not coordinate with anyone! Even in Dark Souls 3, the process is tedious.

First, the player who wants help has to use an consumable item, which they may or may not have. Next, the other player needs to place a marker down in their game, and hopefully, it shows up in the host's game in a timely manner. The party then gets to play until either one of them or the boss for the area dies. The Co-Op player is then sent back to their own game, where they have to try and meet up with their friend again. Dark Souls 3 added a "password matching" system, which helped the servers pair people who want to play together, but in the first and second games in the series, you are at the mercy of the servers whether or not someone else's sign will even show up.

In addition to all of this frustration, the area boss (you know, the thing you need help with) gets more health! If you can't do it on your own, why would they make it harder?! This difficulty increase, seemed arbitrary, as compared to the rest of the game, and it feels out of place.


Clipping / Glitches

I cannot count how many times I have been hit through walls in Dark Souls, but the problem does not stop there. Dark Souls does an amazing job of maintain hit detection of all of the walls, ceiling, etc with regards to your character...but a horrible one with enemies! This creates sections of the game where an enemy gets to benefit from some sort of cover, while you stay there exposed to their attacks. This tends to bleed it's way into PvP as well, as the invader may not have a stable connection to you, making it all the more frustrating.


Spells

I really enjoy the spell system in the Dark Souls series. That is why it pains me so much when they keep rebalancing it, destroying what once was a viable gameplay option and reducing it to small pokes and prods. Each Dark Souls game has an impressive set of intricate and useful spells in it at the time it launched. Over time, balance patches (again, caused by PvP concerns) have the developer grabbing a large baseball bat and beating the spell system over the head with it until it is completely useless.

For example, I played Dark Souls 3 the first week it came out, and built a sorcerer. I finished the game and had some pretty neat spells. I came back to that character once the DLC for the game came out to find all of his spells did significantly less damage and took more time to cast. My highest level damage spells did less than a wooden arrow from a shortbow! All of my progress was essentially stripped and my character rendered useless, which ultimately left me frustrated. Changing the game's systems so drastically really took me out of the swing of things.


Storyline Breakpoints

Dark Souls is a game that does not have a lot of explicit story, which is not a bad thing. What is bad, however, is that you can miss or mess up whole parts of it just by talking to NPCs in the wrong order! Many NPCs will not continue their storyline unless a task is met by the player (that they do not tell you about) and if you miss the task, whole characters can vanish from your game forever.

Some storyline hooks are simple, like talking to someone out in the world. Others are more complex, like jumping off a moving elevator, searching an abandoned well, or even doing game areas in a completely different order than traditional.

Dark Souls may be hard, but all of these issues confound an otherwise brilliant game. It is a real shame that such a magnificent experience is marred by such imperfections. Hopefully (but not likely), the developers will take some of this into consideration next time around...assuming we get another Souls game at all! Until then, enjoy the ones we have now, despite all of the shortcomings. The fun and enjoyment I get from the series far overshadows all of the negativity, and hopefully it will for you as well.

Until next time, Praise The Sun!
~Neo

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