Dark Souls Remastered (PS4) Review

Prepare to die again.

 Dark Souls has had a reputation of being one of the hardest games of the last decade when it was released back in 2011. Packing tough bosses, a gloomy premise, and a handful of environments that are waiting to kill you made it a memorable game and was considered a success, spawning two sequels. It also launched developer FromSoftware's reputation from making obscure mech games to becoming an industry powerhouse overnight. It follows the adventure of an undead protagonist as they explore a medieval kingdom filled with deadly creatures. The game received a remastered edition in 2018 bringing some visual updates, how does Dark Souls fare on the current generation of consoles and is it a good entry point for newcomers? Let's find out.

You follow the adventure of your undead character, as they must journey to the kingdom of Lordran in an effort to preserve the "Age of Fire" while battling enemies ranging from dragons to giant knights, and a slew of other disgustingly creepy monstrosities. As with the case of the Souls series, the storytelling is kept to a minimum, with much of the lore being tucked away in item descriptions, observations, and in conversations with NPCs. I had a tough time figuring out what the hell happening after my playthrough, but that being said, I still had a lot of fun and will mostly likely watch a few story videos on YouTube. The wide cast of characters that you'll meet were all interesting with the likes of the jovial, sun-loving Solaire of Astora and the ditzy, onion-clad Siegmayer of Catarina being my favorites. 

 Dark Souls is a third-person adventure game with a huge emphasis on RPG elements. After creating your custom-made character and choosing your starting class such as a knight, mage, or pyromancer, you're free to explore Lordran's wide-range of environments, battling enemies, looking for treasures, and facing a boss fight at the end. Unlike its predecessor Demon's Souls, the levels in Dark Souls aren't linear and if you choose the right starting item, you can access late-game areas well into your first hour of playing, though it's definitely going to be a bumpy ride if you choose so. Anyway, slaying enemies yields "souls", the game's currency. It's an essential commodity as you'll be able to level up your characters by increasing their stats like strength,health, and stamina. A mechanic pioneered by the Souls series is that souls is lost upon death, and the only way to retrieve them is to go back to your last place of demise and collect it. However, die while you're on your way and they'll be lost forever, so tread carefully. Though if you equip the often rare "Ring of Sacrifice", then it'll save you from losing your souls upon death once, then it'll break...

Prepare to die... a lot.

 You'll often come across Bonfires during your exploration and these act like a safe heaven from all the danger, by completely restoring your health, curing most ailments, filling up your Estus Flasks (which are basically health potions), and giving you the ability to repair and reinforce your equipment. You can also restore your human self by offering another rare commodity known as "humanity" at the bonfire. Aside from looking like a normal human being, humanity allows you to summon other players either online or in the form of NPCs by interacting with their summon signs near boss doors. Later in the game, you'll have the ability to fast travel to previous areas by warping to discovered bonfires. In a sense, bonfires are like checkpoints that are scattered across levels, but beware that resting at them will respawn most enemies back to their places so make sure you're prepared to fight them again.

Home is where the bonfire is.

 When exploring, you'll come across a plethora of souls, chests, and enemies, though what you'll slowly start to notice is that areas are actually interconnected! It was fun discovering that a secret passageway in a specific area actually led to a previously visited one, thus cutting down on the backtracking you'll be doing. This encourages you to go out of your way and explore more and searching for new shortcuts. Speaking of areas, some of the major one like Blighttown and Sen's Fortress truly live up to their notorious reputations and will put everything you've learned to the test, so it's best to be prepared. It kinda sucks that late-game areas like Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith felt rushed as they were low on exploration, featured reused enemies, and the last couple of bosses felt generically slapped together to quickly move onto the end boss, which was disappointing. Like many fans, I wished that the remaster could have done more with remedying the original game's shortcomings, but this one's purely for visuals.

 The game's online mode has you playing with up to six players as you explore and beat bosses together. If you're still planning on going solo, then you'll come across bloodstains of fallen players, warning you of what's to come as well as mostly helpful text messages letting you know of incoming enemies and secret walls. Some of them were plain malicious with them telling to jump of a cliff, which got me laughing. I felt that the online mode, while minimal if you're playing alone, added a humorous charm to the game's gloomy atmosphere.

You're not entirely alone.

 Dark Souls took me close to 60 hours to finish, with me leisurely exploring most areas and beating some of the optional bosses, so it's a lengthy adventure. The game has a New Game+ mode where you can restart the adventure with your present gear and doing it all again, which is neat if your going for the second ending. The remaster packs the Artorias of the Abyss DLC that was released for the original game featuring a new area to explore as well as new enemies and characters too. A minor annoyance for me was the camera, which tended to obscure things from view and was a major pain to navigate in Blighttown. That said, I enjoyed some of the boss fights with the intimidating Gaping Dragon, deadly duo Smough and Ornstein, and creepy-looking witch Quelaag, which were the games most memorable fights for me.

 Dark Souls has definitely aged considerably ever since its release nearly a decade ago. Still, I'm happy to write that the world design holds up well and places like Anor Londo still look great to this day. The remaster introduces new visual upgrades like 1080p resolution and 60FPS to make the game feel a lot more modern. That said, some of the remastered textures and chatterer models definitely look low-quality and could've use a bit more work. The voice-acting is solid as you'd expect from the series and I enjoyed hearing the performances from the narrator, Andre the blacksmith, and Siegmayer. The soundtrack was fantastic, including many over-the-top orchestral tracks like Seath the Scaleless' theme and pretty eerie ones like Pinwheel's theme.

The game's art direction is stunning.

 Overall, Dark Souls Remastered was an epic 60 hour ride packed with challenging enemies and many old trial and error deaths. If you can get around the cryptic story, then you'll find that there's an intriguing world waiting to be explored. The gameplay doesn't feature the refinements of newer Souls games yet it's still fun to play and get immersed in despite its chunkiness. The presentation holds up well, with the world design being a big highlight as you'll be looking forward to the next jaw-dropping scene while listening to some bombastic tracks as you take down some tough as nails bosses. Dark Souls is an intimidating game initially, but once you've wrapped your head around its mechanics, then you're bound to love the game and want more in the form of new game+ like I did. The remaster polishes some of the bugs of the original while adding the DLC chapter, it's not the best compared to other remasters out there but I'd recommended for newcomers playing on consoles, who should obviously expect a challenge.