So I dunno what it is right, I hate Dark Souls I hate it SO much that if you let me get into it, we'll be here for 15 paragraphs. I hate indie games that vandalize themselves with Myizaki's horse shit (in my opinion, smiley face, tee hee) approach to game and boss design and I'll never not bring up Dandara, Death's Door and Tunic as the most tragic examples of games that break their own legs just as they're about to step over the 10/10 threshold just cos of uncritical game worship. HOWEVER then why is that games, AAA and Indie, that just want to copy Dark Souls outright, are so fucking good? Like from Nioh to Blasphemous like they're all so good tho??? Like even if they're too difficult for me to complete or whatever, I still have a really good time with them? And it feels like every single time they are good, like an uncanny strike rate with me, someone who hates Myizaki Fromsoft games with a fiery passion. I don't get it! And here's Bleak Sword another one of those!!! It's so good!!! How!?!?!?!
All your favourites are here, dodge rolling, parrying, a currency you lose when you die that you can reclaim, it's a Souls! It's an arcadey 10 stages a world, where you fight a horde of enemies on a little diorama, it has a satisfying system of momentum: So the long you go without losing your EXP, the more likely you are to pick up temporary stat boosting items. And if you ever die you can start your run again at any point from stages of the past, so your run can be as long or as immediate as you like. It's like the Gradius problem, but very obviously on purpose.
Just a heads up before playing, this is the original Apple Arcade game and it's DLC. But it does the weird thing of not like presenting itself like that? Like it was one big game the whole ttiimmmmeee, but you can kind of tell it's not. So the first 9 stages are the original game and the rest is DLC. I think pace-wise it does the game service for you to view it like this imo!