man i love dark souls! i beat dark souls remastered a couple months ago and just beat dark souls 2 last night (minus the dlc which i've started) and it just makes me so happy. i've been so stressed out recently and dark souls has kinda taken over ffxiv fishing as my decompress and relaxation game. it's so meditative to just run around and try things and practice things and see myself get better and better at the game as time goes on even if the mechanics don't really change. it's frustrating for sure if u go into it thinking it's supposed to work like most games who guide you through a whole singular cohesive experience, but it doesn't feel that to me! it feels more like the experience of playing a single player fighting game they just put in a 3d world and gave rpg mechanics. it's not "you're here to suffer for the sake of suffering, git gud asshole", it's "you're here to "git gud". you're here to run around the world and pay a lot of attention to it and practice the game's mechanics".
dark souls 1 and 2 really feel like an indie game that got a fuck ton of money to take what they were trying to do as far as they could. im such a huge sucker for beautiful worlds that are still beautiful no matter how much they're dying. i'm such a sucker for games where the devs are clearly just playing pranks on you sometimes. i'm such a sucker for being able to run around and swing a huge ass sword. i'm such a sucker for games that feel like they're not meant to be beaten in the way that you're not meant to be led through them. i love how ambivalent dark souls is to your existence as the player character. it's just: here's this world, it's fucked up and dying, you're fucked up and dying, everyone around you is either trapped in limbo or also fucked up and dying. engage with it if u want but know that we're just having fun here. i feel like a guest in dark souls where fromsoft is just kind enough to let me stay as long as i want
i'm so hyped to play the ds2 dlc cause i accidentally stumbled into the ice area early and it's SO COOL the things they do with the environment changing and that big boss fight at the end which i have yet to beat but am so stoked to. also so hyped to play elden ring and see it's dlc after i finish ds2's dlc and ds3. i've already beaten elden ring but i want to start a new run and go thru and play it like i've been playing ds1 and ds2, and really pay attention to it in a way that i didn't on my first run through. elden ring really feels like they took the "dark souls is too hard" complaints and tried to solve it without compromising on the core bit of "this is their game you're just playing in it" by making it even more open and non linear and having so much more to it that a lot of people will just straight up miss, and i wanna run through and see it all. i wanna get fucked up and pay a lot of attention to what's happening and try to understand why. i'm going to try and keep a paper log of what i hear and what i understand so i can like. really get what's happening. hell maybe i'll buy a webcam that isn't broken and stream the whole process?? i could do this for dark soul 3 when i get to it too... ouagh i love these games they're such an inspiration
