Dark Souls 3

From Software - 2016 - PC/PS4/XboxOne

When I finished Dark Souls II earlier this year, I criticized it for having lackluster level design and a dull story especially when compared to the amazing precedent that was set with the original Dark Souls. Hidetaka Miyazaki, who directed Demon's Souls and Dark Souls was busy making Bloodborne while Dark Souls 2 was in development and I think his presence was missed. DS2 wasn't terrible, but it didn't quite have the magic of the first game. Miyazaki's magic, while difficult to describe, was something I immediately felt when I started Dark Souls 3. I think it's most noticeable in the level and enemy design. From Software in general has an unrivaled expertise in 3D level design. If you ever want to see video game level design's version of the Mona Lisa, you need to check out some of From Software's offerings from DS1 and DS3

Not only are the environments created in a very mechanically and structurally pleasing way, but the visuals are top notch here as well. As much as DS3's world in concerned with killing you, it's also just as concerned with having you admire its beauty. DS3 has some of the most breathtaking mountains, valleys, lakes and castles I've ever seen in a video game. It can be hard to admire the scenery with the constant threat of death right in front of you, but if you have a chance to stop and take it in, Dark Souls 3 is quite a sight to behold. It's also quite proficient at one of my favorite things to see done well: environmental storytelling. Want to get an idea of how old DS3's Firelink Shrine is? Head below the shrine and see the massive crypt filled with the remains of past fire keepers. Stuff like that really helps with player immersion and bringing the game world to life

The game mechanics are mostly what you'd come to expect if you've played any of From Software's similar offerings. It does seem like the team made a decision to push the combat mechanics more in the direction of DS1 than DS2. Gone is DS2's health bar reduction on every death. Enemies now respawn indefinitely like DS1. Also "humanity", which is now called "ember" is a binary state, again just like DS1. The primary new mix up to the gameplay formula comes in the form of weapon arts. Weapon arts are unique skills that are tied to your left hand item and can range from temporary buffs to entirely new unique moves. Often times your left hand item will be a shield which may have a shield bash or shield parry as like the previous Dark Souls games, or your shield may even default to your right hand weapon's weapon art skill as is the case when you have nothing at all equipped in the left hand slot. Most weapon arts consume your magic meter as well which also gives non magic classes incentive to put points into leveling up their magic bar. I found weapon arts to be a welcome addition to the Souls formula that adds interesting and unique skills and abilities and makes experimenting around with different equipment load outs even more fun and interesting

The strange and alluring mystique of Dark Souls' lore is back in full force. As I wandered through the Dark Souls 3's various mysterious locations, I found myself reading the item descriptions of various weapons and armor I picked up for additional lore. I was even drawn to watching several YouTube videos explaining the backstories of several bosses and NPC and theorizing on their connections. There are also several tie ins and reoccurring characters from the first Dark Souls so veterans of the series are in for a few surprising pay-offs especially for those who are deeply invested in the lore.

Summary
If this truly is the last Souls game we get, it is certainly a worthy send off for the series. Level design, audiovisuals, gameplay and lore are all top notch here and in some cases arguably the best we've seen of the Dark Souls series. This is one of my favorite games of the year so far and a must play for fans of these games who are up for one more challenge.

Dark Souls II

FromSoftware - 2014 - PS3\PS4\X360\XboxOne\PC

I started playing Dark Souls 2 immediately after completing the first Dark Souls game as I couldn't get enough of the first game. It's tough but fair action RPG combat system had taught me to pay attention to enemy attack patterns, be wary of traps and to frequently praise the sun. I needed more. On the surface, Dark Souls 2 appears to be a very safe "more of the same" sequel to the first game. However, there are some notable departures from the original formula once you dig in to the game.

Firstly humanity and hollowing are no longer a boolean "yes" or "no", you're either human or you're partially hollow. The more you die, the more hollow you become and the more your maximum health decreases. This can be reversed by using a consumable "human effigy", which are thankfully quite plentiful in this game. But if you're human or close to being human, the more susceptible to invasions you are. But you can still only summon a friendly companion to battle if you're 100% human.

I know Hidetaka Miyazaki, who directed both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls was busy making Bloodborne during Dark Souls 2's development. I think the lack of his presence is felt when examining some of the details of Dark Souls 2 up close. For example the level design of the first Dark Souls game was something I really loved. All of the levels looped back on each other so that as you progressed, you would unlock natural paths and shortcuts back to earlier levels in the game. Not so much with Dark Souls 2. The level design is much more linear and you'll need to just keep progressing in a certain direction until you can't progress any more, then warp back to another bonfire, which is an ability you have from the get-go in this game. Another really strange design decision is that you can only level up in one particular bonfire by talking to a nearby NPC as opposed to leveling up at any bonfire as was the case in the first game. In practice this becomes rather annoying as you have to warp back and forth to level up and suffer through loading screens each time which seems unnecessary.

Another place where Miyazaki's absence is felt is with the story. Yes, the first Dark Souls game had a sparse and cryptic story as is the case with the second game, but there were memorable characters and bosses and locations. They were made memorable through repeated mentions and given weight by the way they the characters referred to them. Even though the story was sparse and cryptic, it felt plausibly real. Dark Souls 2's story is just simply sparse and cryptic. New locations are discovered and conquered without fanfare or reaction by the game's story. Fighting a boss in Dark Souls 2 is not an epic clash with the legendary creature you've heard so much about. It's just another boss. Even the "greater soul" bosses seem unremarkable from both a story and gameplay perspective.

Speaking of gameplay, the combat is still pretty solid. It's a bit more balanced and polished, and there seems to be more a few more valid builds now. However, I will say that the difficulty curve does seem especially wonky. There are a few pain points in the beginning and middle of the game, but everything else including the end of the game is a relative cakewalk. I've talked with a few friends who have played this game about their experience with the difficulty curve and have had some conflicting reports, so which parts of the game you find challenging may partially depend on your character build and playstyle.

Summary
It may not have the brilliance of its predecessor, but Dark Souls 2 is still a solid game for those people looking for more masochistic fun. Story and level design aren't quite what they were in the first Dark Souls game, but this game is still solid enough to warrant a recommendation. I've now moved on to Bloodborne to satiate my love of these games and have so far been enjoying this same style of game with a fresh setting.

Dark Souls

FromSoftware - 2011 - PS3/PC/X360

I did it! Praise the sun! I've finished Dark Souls! Good Lord this game is mercilessly difficult. And also one of the best designed games I've ever played. If you've heard people tell you how good this game is, it's true. It's also no exaggeration how difficult this game is, so this is definitely not a game for everyone. I think if you're an seasoned gamer who's up for a challenge and you approach this game with patience and an open mind, you'll be able to discover the fun in building your character, experimenting with the game's systems, exploring the masterfully designed levels and discovering this game's hidden lore.

This game simultaneously does the best and worst job teaching mechanics I've seen in a video game recently.The Northern Undead Asylum where you begin the game serves as the game's tutorial. It teaches you how to move your character, to read messages on the floor, and that shiny things and bonfires are good. It teaches you how to defend with a shield by forcing you to walk down a narrow corridor with a guy on the far end shooting arrows at you. The only way you'll make it is learning to use the shield. It then throws a fairly difficult boss at you, teaching you that Dark Souls will be hard and that running away is a valid option and is sometimes the best one. You eventually have to kill the boss to complete the tutorial, but if you manage to scramble across the boss room before he kills you, a better weapon can be found and the game also gives you some hints for dealing more damage. The tutorial also teaches you what is probably Dark Souls' most important lesson which is that you cannot hack and slash your way through this game. You must pay attention to enemy attack animations, learn their tells, and understand when it's safe to attack them. It's an excellent tutorial for the game and teaches you all of Dark Souls' basic mechanics... but it doesn't address or teach its more complex mechanics at all. It's also easy to be overwhelmed by the spreadsheet of statistics presented to you on the player stats page, which isn't explained in detail. Dark Souls is a game that expects its players to learn its more complicated systems by experimentation or trial and error. Or just google everything, which is probably what most people do.

After completing the tutorial level, Dark Souls opens up quite a bit and becomes very non-linear for the rest of the game. You can take any path in any order you want, some paths are easier and intended to be taken first, some paths are harder and intended to be done later in the game, and some paths are completely optional and never required to finish the game. But you don't know which paths are which until you take them. Trial and error is another one of the design themes found throughout Dark Souls. Yes, it's frustrating at times, but the joy of exploring and discovering new paths or new secrets offsets the frustration of accidentally taking a path intended for later in the game and getting your butt kicked.

You can level up your character by spending the souls of the enemies you killed on upgrades while at a bonfire. If you die, you lose all of your accumulated souls, so you're encouraged to spend them often. Mercifully, if you can make it back to where you died, you can recover your lost souls, but dying twice in a row without recovery will see your unspent souls lost forever. It creates a sort of system where even when you're dying over and over again, you feel like you're making progress both through leveling up, and also by learning from deaths, memorizing enemy patterns and remembering level layouts. Progress in Dark Souls can be marked by killing bosses or discovering shortcuts that lead back to previously explored areas in the game, giving the game a bit of a metroidvania feel. You'll find that a lot of the weapons and armor in Dark Souls are not really statistically better or worse, just different. Some weapons may have comparable stats, but differing swing arcs or varying ranges. It's not so much a matter of finding the best weapons and armor in Dark Souls, but finding the ones that best suit your playstyle

There's also an ever-present multiplayer component to Dark Souls. You basically always play the game online, seeing ghostly glimpses of other players and reading the sometimes helpful, sometimes trolling messages left by them. You can also optionally opt-in to a cooperative multiplayer component to get assistance from another player to take down a difficult boss. The thing is, when you opt-in to the cooperative multiplayer, it also makes you susceptible to hostile PvP invasions from other players. It's a really cool mechanical tradeoff and another really smart design decision

The story of Dark Souls is communicated very unconventionally. Often NPCs will reveal very little about themselves or the world around them, so most of the narrative is communicated through environmental storytelling and also reading the item descriptions on new things you pick up. Don't be mistaken, there really is a lot of lore in Dark Souls, it's just hard to find and it's very open ended. The story purposely poses a lot of interesting unanswered questions and leaves it up to the player to fill in the gaps with their own imagination and interpretation of what happened.

Dark Souls Video Review

Summary
Dark Souls is probably the hardest game I've completed. It's also one of the best designed games I've played recently. If you can approach this game with a certain amount of patience and endurance, you'll really enjoy it. The feeling of finally killing that boss you've been stuck on is a feeling of reward that is unmatched in any other game. Even the little rewarding moments of finding a new weapon, or discovering a new shortcut or learning something new about the game's mechanics you didn't know before feels awesome. It's not for everyone, but the people who it IS for will find Dark Souls very enjoyable.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Moon Studios - 2015 - PC/XboxOne

You may remember this game from its brief demo at E3 last year (2014) where a white squirrel thing was shown jumping through beautiful scenery. It was one of the most visually memorable trailers I saw at E3 last year. And I'm happy to report the game is just as strikingly beautiful as its trailer. Ori and the Blind forest is a Metroidvania style platformer and is the first game from indie developer Moon Studios. I suspect Moon Studios is comprised of at least a couple industry veterans as this game is beautiful, very well designed and oozes quality.

Before being published by Microsoft, Ori and the Blind Forest was developed in the Unity engine over the course of four years. Moon Studios cited the Rayman and Metroid franchises as influences for these games, and that's immediately obvious in both the high quality artwork (Rayman) and gameplay (Metroid). I'm personally a big fan of Metroidvania style gameplay, but since the Metroid series is somewhat MIA right now and Castlevania seems to be content making God of War clones, I've had to turn to other games like Ori to get my Metroidvania fix

If you've never played a Metoidvania style game before, the game is usually set in a large, non-linear game world with an emphasis on exploration and finding secrets. They often feature some sort of blend of platforming and combat, and often have light RPG elements where you can progress and improve your player character. Ori chooses to go somewhat light on the combat aspect (most enemies can be defeated by simply mashing the attack button), but instead focus most of the difficulty in the game around platforming. I didn't find the combat in this game that engaging or challenging at all, but there were a few segments that demanded perfect execution of precision platforming in a limited amount of time and messing up required repeating the entire platforming segment. It never felt TOO frustrating, but it was close.

Aside from this game's striking visuals, the first unique thing I noticed about it is that Ori will let you save nearly anywhere you like and at any time you like, provided there are no enemies nearby and you also have enough "spirit energy", which this game uses as currency for saving. Since the player can save anywhere and anytime they wish, Ori is free to ramp up the difficulty of the platforming to a pretty high level and also introduce enemies and hazards that can kill you in one hit. But it never feels unfair because you only lose as much progress since you last saved. I found I had enough spirit energy to comfortably save about every 30 seconds. It's kind of the Super Meat Boy effect. The game is quite difficult and you'll die often, but it never becomes too frustrating or feels too unfair because you only lose about 5-10 seconds of progress and then the game immediately brings you right back to try again.

Ori and the Blind Forest Video Review

Summary 
If you like Metroid or Castlevania styled games, or games like Guacamelee!, for instance, you may want to give Ori a try. Or if you dig really artsy and visually striking games, Ori also applies. I really enjoyed my time with Ori and the Blind Forest and am looking forward to see what's next from Moon Studios

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Konami - 1997 - PS1/Sega Saturn/PSP

Symphony of the Night was an important departure in gameplay for the Castlevania series. Games in the series had previously been all 2D platformers, like the ones I was referencing in the Shovel Knight review. While SotN has some platforming elements, I don't think most people would describe it as a platformer. Rather, SotN helped give birth to the term "Metroidvania", which is used to describe gameplay that is exploration focused with a large, non-linear game world, often involves a good amount of backtracking, and revolves around discovering or unlocking upgrades to your character which are then to get to previously inaccessible areas. An example of this are the red doors in Super Metroid. They're introduced early in the game, but the player can only pass through them once they unlock Samus' missile launcher and realize that the missiles will open the red doors. Recently, Konami has put out games in the Castlevania series like Lords of Shadow 1 & 2, which are 3D action games similar to God of War or Devil May Cry. But when I think "Metroidvania", Symphony of the Night comes to mind as an example of one of the best games made in this style.

In addition to including "Metroidvania" style gameplay, SotN also includes RPG elements. Each enemy killed rewards a small amount of experience points. Primary weapons and armor can also be swapped out and upgraded. Some of the weapons and armor have unique bonuses or functions which lets your character configuration be very customizable. There are giant two handed greatswords which swing slowly, but have great range. Then there's one handed rapiers which swing quickly, but have a limited hitbox. Even the armors have unique functions such as restoring HP while walking or increasing the power of the alternate weapons. Speaking of which, the Castlevania staple alt weapons like the axe, holy cross or dagger make a return in SotN, further adding to the combat customization. 

Aside from being a departure in gameplay, SotN was also notable for being the first game in the series where you play as a member of the vampire hunting family Belmont only in the short prologue to the game. For the rest of the game you'll be playing as Alucard, who is actually the half vampire son of Count Dracula himself. Yes, "Alucard" is "Dracula" spelled backward. It's so campy and silly. I love it. You might think with dumb names like this, SotN would be a little self aware and have a bit of a sense of humor. But it kind of doesn't. SotN is actually features some pretty hilariously terrible voice acting and dialogue. The writing and VO work are about the only things in the game that aren't top notch though. The rest of this game is just so solid. 

If you do end up playing this game, I would challenge you to do so without referencing a guide. Discovering one of the castle's many secret rooms for yourself is immensely satisfying. And there are a lot of secrets. A lot. This is kind of a spoiler for those who haven't played the game but if you didn't fight Dracula as the final boss, you didn't really finish the whole game. There's actually a completely different second half of SotN that can be unlocked by finding special secret items in the castle. It's nuts. And finding all of these secrets and unlocks by yourself is just so rewarding. Besides, if you get stuck, you can usually consult the in-game map and figure out where you need to go just by closely examining the layout and flow of the castle. There's so much attention to detail in SotN from the combat and secrets to the enemy design and animations. There are so, so many unique enemy sprites with unique attacks and animations in the game. There are some enemies that appear literally one time in one room and then never again for the rest of the game. The amount of polish on the gameplay in SotN is one of the most impressive things about the game. 

The excellent soundtrack to SotN compliments the game very well. When you discover a new passageway and the track changes to something new you haven't heard before, it adds to the excitement of exploration. Composed by Michiru Yamane, the SotN soundtrack demonstrates Yamane's proficiency in a wide variety of musical styles. There's the jazzy upbeat Wandering of Ghosts, the gothic epic Final Toccata, the classical Wood Carving Partitia, the horrifying Door to the Abyss, the operatic Prayer, and the rockin' electric guitars of The Tragic Prince. The soundtrack is musically kind of all over the place and I love it. It gives each area of the castle a unique feel.

Summary:

If you've never played a Metroidvania game or a Castlevania game for that matter, start with Symphony of the Night. Even though the game is 15+ years old, the excellent gameplay and sprite art style allowed SotN to age very well. I hope Konami will return the Castlevania series back to this style of gameplay rather than the silly God of War clones they're trying to make right now. That's just not what I want from the Castlevania series. I'm not sure why the transition from 2D to 3D wasn't as graceful for the Castlevania series as it was for the Metroid series, but I'd love to see the next Castlevania be a 3D exploration game similar to Metroid Prime. Exploring a 3D castle with the amount of secrets and polish as the one in SotN would be amazing. Actually as long as the next game in the series is a Metroidvania, I think I'd be happy.

Guacamelee!

Drinkbox Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Guacamelee! is a Mexican-themed beat em’ up platformer with puzzle solving elements and a very silly sense of humor. I don’t usually dig beat em’ up games, but I’m glad checked this game out, it’s pretty awesome. You play as Juan Aguacate, a Mexican farmer who dons a magical luchador mask to become a superpowered wrestler in order to save his kidnapped girlfriend.

The game can be played solo or co-op, a second player can assume the role of the female wrestler “Tostada”. I played through the game both solo and co-op. The co-op makes the platforming sections a bit more frantic, but makes the beat em’ up sections and boss fights quite a bit easier.

The game has some Metroidvania elements as well: as you progress through the game and unlock new wrestling moves, you’ll gain access to areas you previously unable to reach. As mentioned before, Guacamelee! also has a very silly sense of humor. It’s chock full of “nerd jokes”, internet humor and direct references to other video games. It was kind of a fun “can you spot them all?” subgame within Guacamelee!; trying to catch some of the more subtle video game references. There was even a Zelda II reference in there! How many people are really going to get that one?

Summary:
Guacamelee! is a bit on the short side, but it’s quite good. Check it out.