And this works for Dark Souls, as the game’s story revolves around Undead slowly losing their minds after dying over and over again. The game built its reputation on the idea that dying over and over was something players were just going to have to get used to. There’s a reason why “Prepare to Die” was the tagline for the majority of Dark Souls’ marketing. In Dark Souls, most players will experience their first death at the hands of the Asylum Demon, having only a broken sword to defend themselves the first time they meet the business end of its club. Demon’s Souls required the player to be literally stomped by a demon before being sent to the hub world of the nexus. In the early Souls games, death and failure were hammered into the player as an inevitability. And removing the shielding option may seem minor, but its significance requires a look back at where the series began. But considering how relatively late it is discovered and its lackluster combat application, it serves to be more of a tongue-in-cheek joke than a genuinely useful item. Well, there is a single wooden shield that can be found in-game. Yes, in Bloodborne there is no shielding option, with the offhand option being replaced by a gun used for parrying. In Bloodborne, From Software removed an element that many would consider integral to the Souls games up to that point: the shield. One of the foremost things Bloodborne does to differentiate itself from the rest of the Souls games is so brilliant that it borders on insanity, considering the roots from which it was borne (pun very much intended). That game is Bloodborne, and even among its highly decorated brethren, it manages to rise above them all. A game that contains such brilliance it managed to flip the formula of From Software’s games on its head while still maintaining the pure ‘feel’ of a Souls game. And yet, there’s another game that takes the essence of what makes the Soulsborne games great and distills it to its purest form. Nostalgia factor aside, the first half of Dark Souls is still one of the most tightly paced, well-constructed examples of game design that holds up even a full decade after its release. With an interconnected Metroidvania-style of world traversal, combined with a satisfying combat system that masterfully straddles the line between frustration and triumph, Dark Souls is nothing short of an icon in gaming. Demon’s Souls may have been the first official title in the collection of games most often referred to as ‘Soulsborne,’ yet it is often Dark Souls that is credited with catapulting the series into the gaming mainstream.
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