Dark Souls Remastered - Review

Gamingrespawn checked out the remastered version of Dark Souls:

Dark Souls Remastered Review

I remember the first time I played Dark Souls, it put me, and certainly a lot of other players, off when I kept getting my ass handed to me by the towering Asylum Demon you battle at the very beginning. It was a true test of reflexes and patience, giving you an insight to what’s to come if you manage to survive. I traded it in the next day; my journey into Lordran was over before it even began. That was 7 years ago, since then I’ve honed my skills, proudly finishing the second and third games, so it’s only right that I go back to the first game to finish the trilogy.

Well, there is no time like the present and, to my delight, recently Dark Souls has gained the remastered treatment, and rightly so, with a fresh lick of paint and smoother gameplay, I was stoked to jump back in and try it again. For those who missed out, Dark Souls begins the tale of the Lords of Cinder who band together to defeat the ancient dragons in a mystical time where magic and the undead were commonplace. An introductory cutscene sets the tone perfectly as a creepy voice-over tells the tale of how it all played out and what has become of the land of Lordran. Imprisoned in the Undead Asylum, it’s up to you, as a created avatar, to end the Lords of Cinder and bring light to a darkened world. There are characters scattered across the game that give you a smidgen of insight to the lore of Dark Souls, but it’s the imagery that tells you the most. The creepy halls of the Asylum and onto the ruins of Blighttown, they tell a story themselves alongside the brutish and grotesque inhabitants that wander the halls. Dark Souls doesn’t hold your hand, both story-wise and gameplay-wise, and it’s all the more awesome for it.

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Summary

Now is the time to revisit Lordran in Dark Souls Remastered. The enhanced graphics increase the immersion, and the better implemented multiplayer aspects make it easier to find help or ruin other players. A true classic in every sense.

Good

• Tight and responsive controls
• Enhanced graphics make the breathtaking environments even prettier and creepier, regardless of which system you own
• Punishing difficulty remains but is made a little easier through more accessible co-op
• Every area, enemy and boss has a story
• Outstanding boss fights

Bad

• Some textures still noticeably muddy

Score: 9.5 - Amazing

More information.

awful review.

Awful post. Seriously? How about elaborating and actually trying to analyse the reasons why you consider it so bad? Getting sick of these kinds of throwaway posts without any real thought or substance.

this game is so hard and frustrating that i dont dare to do a replay. it will cost me a new keyboard

First can you identify which platform he is playing? Second can you identify exactly what changed in the game besides the textures. From reading the review I'm not even sure he played the remaster version rather he seem to list the description of what the publisher claim they were going to do and he never really elaborate the differences. As a single example he list tight control as a feature - but no where does he describe how the controls change or are different from the original.

Did you even bother reading the review before making a comment ?

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Awful post. Seriously? How about elaborating and actually trying to analyse the reasons why you consider it so bad? Getting sick of these kinds of throwaway posts without any real thought or substance.

If you look at the Steam reviews people are saying they didn't fix any of the haks in multiplayer. People come into your game and insta kill you. I have not played these games but many say these haks should have been fixed years ago or at least for the remastered edition.

I'm not much for hacking games (though I have a friend that did it to pokemon - go figure); but it might take a bit of effort depending on the skill level of the developers. I'm begining to think that many game developers are very poor coders - esp for things outside of graphics. From what friends have told me most use un-secure un-validated connections and if you really want to cheat (for the sake of cheating) you don't even need to play the game - just whip up a client and inject your favorite whack'em commands to the server. Having said that I'm not claiming this is the case with dark souls but rather a lot of games are as unoptimized/unsecure with regards to network usage as they are with regards to rendering. Take this as heresy as I'm personally am too lazy to tcpdump a game; though there other things worth a bit of packet capture.

Originally Posted by Hastar
If you look at the Steam reviews people are saying they didn't fix any of the haks in multiplayer. People come into your game and insta kill you. I have not played these games but many say these haks should have been fixed years ago or at least for the remastered edition.

Originally Posted by ikbenrichard
this game is so hard and frustrating that i dont dare to do a replay. it will cost me a new keyboard

Playing DS with KB&M is like trying to walk a tightrope wearing snowshoes. There's a reason the Steam page for the original DS stated that using a controller was highly recommended.

Originally Posted by Hak'n'Slash
Playing DS with KB&M is like trying to walk a tightrope wearing snowshoes. There's a reason the Steam page for the original DS stated that using a controller was highly recommended.

yeh. but no, i dont want a controller. but you are right. kbm sucks with this game.

I finished the DS games with kbm. This "remaster" is a stupid joke. Buy the original and install the community fixes. You'll be missing out on a graphics upgrade but seriously that's not the lure of the game anyway.

Also review is terrible. I'm betting he didn't even play remaster. He just found it an easy slam dunk review because he already played the original game then goes on to list expected features by reading them off the store page. Even his pro/con… ugh…

Originally Posted by ikbenrichard
yeh. but no, i dont want a controller. but you are right. kbm sucks with this game.

Japanese developers haven't grasped how to make a decent kbm interface for ported games. Good news is certain developers have started taking ports more seriously.

vc-3 was a very good port but not sure that was Japanese. A lot of xseed ports have been pretty good but i guess none of these are action games. DS could have been a good port and people are saying the kb/m interface in the mastered version is improved - not perfect (dodge or roll - i forget which - is suppose to be problematic but everything else works much better than dsfix stuff - this is from the steam forums - i don't own it).

This whole "remastered" endeavor was to port the game to Nintendo Switch.

It's a fairly old game and releasing it on a new platform is a sort of cash grab move already, but the quickly finished and barely changed PC version is a huge cash grab. It's crazy how much Dark Souls fans want to throw money at the franchise! Sure, I've bought Dark Souls 2 three times but I'm going to pass on this one.

I am interested to see how the real project for Switch turns out. I don't know much about the Switch hardware but I think it's quite weak and couldn't quite run Dark Souls, as old as it now is. Most of the work is probably on downgrades to the graphics that were not needed for the other platforms.

While the remastered version of Dark Souls will still launch on May 25th on PS4, Xbox One and PC, the Nintendo Switch version is being pushed back to a vague and unspecified summer release date.

"The new release timing gives the development team the time needed to make sure Nintendo Switch players can fully appreciate the true DARK SOULS experience anytime and anywhere, thanks to the unique portable nature of the Nintendo Switch console," Bandai Namco said in a statement.

I had no idea this was also coming out for the Switch. This is one game I will not ever need to get for my Switch!

Every area, enemy and boss has a story

this made me laugh a lot

ps 3 times i finished it and 3 times with k&m, its perfectly playable with the fixes