Dark Souls 1 and 3

(Full spoiler ahead for Dark Souls 1 and 3)

It's a few weeks away from the release of Elden Ring, so I decided to try out Dark Souls 1, which was named the ‘Ultimate Game of All Time’ at the Golden Joystick Award. I have played Bloodborne, Sekiro and Dark Souls 3 prior and was warned by my friends I wouldn’t like it because of how old and slow it is, so let's compare!

Combat is obviously slower and clunkier than the newer games there is no doubt about it. Your character is harder to control especially when locked-on, you have to be very careful with your movement as the camera sometimes spins around too much and suddenly you walk backward off the ledge. Speaking of cameras, many areas are just too tight which causes the camera to get too close and you end up not being able to see anything. Many of my deaths were camera zooms in too close in tight areas and I was hit by enemies that I cannot see, that's especially frustrating when it happens. This is clearly improved in Dark Souls 3 as many areas are much bigger, corridors are now at least 2 times wider which helps with the camera issue. Some enemies’ hit boxes are deceptively big which does feel a bit unfair sometimes. There seems to be less of these technical issues in Dark Souls 3, so I can overlook these issues as just problems with old engine/old game design.

Map design wise Dark Souls 1 is very open from the get go, with areas such as New Londo and Demon Ruins available at the start even though you are meant to come back to a later point, these are already accessible from the start. While in Dark Souls 3, the game made it quite clear where you should be going. Downside to this being if you start a new game, they are little alternate paths you can take to make the game fresh. However it can also be argued that the two paths that Dark Souls 1 lay out for you(Undead Parish and Blighttown), the route to Blighttown it's clearly more challenging than the other. So how much choice you have depends on your skill and your levels

At the same time, areas from Dark Souls 3 individually gives you a better sense of progression as most of the time, when you enter a new area you can spot the shortcuts you will have to unlock. Say if you saw 2 shortcuts, when you unlocked the first one the player would know they are about 30% done with the area. That allows the player to gauge how many resources they need for the remaining portion of the area. However in Dark Souls 1, sometimes it's not very clear where the limit is for a certain area, later areas do a better job as you can see the fog gates fairly early on. It keeps the player on edge because they don’t know when they are getting another checkpoint.

Dark Souls 3 came out right after Bloodborne, it is clear that they have adopted the design philosophy of Bloodborne bosses with many of them being fast and aggressive. There are however low points such as High Lord Wolnir and Ancient Wyvern, but generally bosses are pretty fun to fight against. Having played Dark Souls 3 before, Dark Souls 1 bosses are definitely slower. But bosses such as Sif, Gwyn, Artorias and Manus are a good change of pace, with the latter 2 bosses being in the DLC, it is no surprise that they feel very different compared to the rest of the game. Some bosses are annoying and feel less thought out, especially Capra Demon which I suspect it's a early game headache for a lot of people. There are also bosses like Pinwheel and Moonlight Butterfly which just feels boring and not very challenging. The aforementioned 4 bosses are the highlight in my opinion, but there are other bosses that are pretty decent.

From Software games often get a bad rep for being ‘super difficult’. That is partly due to a portion of the fandom that hail the franchise as something that is super challenging and only real ‘gamers’ can't beat them, which is simply not true. From Software game offer so much more than just difficult game, such as the sense of exploration in an interconnected world, uncovering secrets of every area, fighting against enemies with cool designs and interesting lore. Dark Souls 1 is still worth a play even to this day, not to prove you can beat a so-called ‘difficult game’, but for a game with deep lore, fun bosses and well designed world.