Short answer: It’s not. Long answer: The game doesn’t hold your hand, and it rewards you for using your head. How many games can you say do that besides puzzle games? There’s no waypoint in the middle of your screen telling you where to go. There are no checkpoints every five seconds. There’s no regenerative health bar.
Basically, we’ve all been riding bicycles with training wheels without realizing it until our figurative father sat us on a mountain bike, removed the training wheels, and pushed us down the road into oncoming traffic while screaming: “You suck!” and we loved it.
In all seriousness, though, I’m going to explain what made Dark Souls different to other games and how those changes don’t necessarily make the game more challenging, while also enhancing the experience by providing a thrilling ride.
The Setting
Dark Souls is tailored toward giving agency to the player. This is why we have no minimap, no compass, not even a pause screen map. The world was created in such a way that it would make sense for the player to explore without having to resort to such tools.
The world in Dark Souls intertwines with itself. Levels lead to each other and back to the main hub, Firelink Shrine, in such a seamless way that you’ll often be surprised to have gone so far to then end up where you started. With landmarks and places so different from each other, players can explore at their own leisure without worrying about getting lost. By the time you find yourself in a situation where you could get lost, you’re given the ability to warp between bonfires.
This is a feature that subsequent games in the series adapted from the beginning. Whereas in Dark Souls 2, the areas felt disconnected from each other, giving the world a more disjointed feeling, you could still remember the paths you took. And that’s because none of the Dark Souls games is open perse, they’re linear.
This is most obvious in Dark Souls 3, but it is present in all of the titles in the franchise. In Dark Souls, you can go down to ring the bell in Quelaag’s Domain first, and then go to the Undead Parish, but you still have to do one or the other, and the path to either is pretty straightforward. Although, the path you’re supposed to take first is pretty obvious. Gaming blog Kotaku said it best: “Following the path of less resistance will bring faster progress, while going down will take you to encounters that range from painful to impossible.”
Same happens in Dark Souls 2, you could choose to go through Heide’s Tower of Flame first, but then you’d get obliterated. If you have any ounce of self-respect, go back to the Forest of Fallen Giants and go from there. And don’t even try to go down the well in the beginning, you’ll just be asking for trouble.
My point is that even though the world feels big and open, there are clear paths that you can’t deviate from. Granted, you can choose which path to go to first, but most often than not, you’ll have to go back to the one you avoided at the start and advance from there.
This can be intimidating for new players because, as I’ve said before, Dark Souls doesn’t feel linear. It gives you the illusion of a grand world, and I believe that’s something the developers should be praised for. But the game never tells you where to go or what to do, not in an overt manner, at least.
Basically, everything you need to learn about the game is laid out in the Undead Asylum. The messages tell you the basic controls, the first encounter with the boss demonstrates that you’re going to die and that’s fine, the boulder teaches you to be aware of your surroundings, the corridor leading back to the boss shows you that you can use a shield to defend yourself and, finally, going back to the boss will tell you that no matter how big the enemy or how much the odds seem to be against you, you will try again and you will win. And the beauty of it all is that everything I just told you is learned only through level design.
Enemies
Another reason Dark Souls can be considered hard is because of the enemies. They’re relentless. This is not like the Batman games, where if you’re surrounded by a group of enemies, you’ll only be attacked by one or two at the time. Nor is it like a generic shooter where the enemy’s aim is as good as the Storm Troopers.
Here, even the lowest level scrub with the goofiest weapon can get the best of you if you let your guard down, and he won’t hesitate. If you’re surrounded, you better run or find a way to crowd control. Otherwise, you’re screwed.
And that’s without considering the fact that most enemies will do a good amount of damage if given a chance. This means that every mistake you make could be the last, which forces the player to think ahead and try to take the least amount of hits as possible.
Then, the developers extrapolate this to the bosses. Bosses are these behemoth beings with massive health bars, weapons that are often bigger than you, and unique move sets that may change throughout the fight.
It may seem unfair, but Dark Souls found a sweet spot to balance this out. You can either block or dodge most attacks, giving you the tools to beat every single enemy. But the success of that task will depend entirely on you. The game also likes to throw you curves that are, at times, unfair ones, like the mimic chests or a random wave of fire swallowing you whole when trying to cross a bridge.
But these moments serve a purpose: to teach you to be careful. And even though you wouldn’t have been able to see a lot of those moments coming, you can be sure that you will next time if you’re careful.
Checkpoints
Checkpoints are another element prevalent in triple-A games. So much so, that nowadays it is expected that games save your progress every few minutes. I can count on one hand the number of modern games that require me to save manually, and most of those only have the option to do so in the higher difficulties. So, under that premise, it could be argued that having to rest at a certain place before you can continue makes the game harder than the rest.
And while I do agree with that, I see it as more like an opportunity to make the game more fun rather than more challenging. Technically, you can manually save in Dark Souls from anywhere. It’s just safer to do so near a bonfire. And bonfires introduce a neat pace to the game.
You see, each area has maybe two or three bonfires, at most. Forcing you to go through the game the way the developers intended, and giving you chances to correct your mistakes by giving you the Estus Flask, which has a limited number of uses before you reach the next bonfire and it refills. This gives the player another layer of decision making.
Imagine that you’re almost out of Flasks, maybe you only have one or two, maybe none. You’ve cleared out the area. There are no more enemies where you are, and it’s been a while since the last time you’ve seen a bonfire. Do you continue to press on? You may be risking running into an ambush or a tough enemy. Do you head back? The path is long, and once you rest in the bonfire, all enemies will respawn. Not to mention that the next bonfire might be just around the corner.
This gives the game a pace and a dynamic between the player and the world that not many other games out there are capable of doing.
The Story
This is debatable and more on the subjective side of things, but it’s still worth pointing out nonetheless. Most games have a straightforward narrative that gives context to the world you inhabit and what you or your character is doing in it. Dark Souls does have a story and a context to the world, but it’s not blatantly laid out in front of you. Instead, it is fed to you in crumbs, given like pieces of a puzzle that you can choose to solve or not.
There’s a lot, and I mean a lot, of players that didn’t realize that most of what you do in Dark Souls is attributed to Oscar at the beginning of the game. If you’re one of those people, no shame, I didn’t notice either until I fell into a YouTube hole of Vaati videos.
But basically, the knight at the very start of the game in the Asylum, the one who gives you the Estus Flask and then dies, is the one who gave you the mission to link the fire. He’s the one who gave you a purpose, which in turn, exponentially lowers the risk of you, the main character, of going hollow.
You see, in the world of Dark Souls, people who have the Undead Curse and lose their way, either through despair, horror, sorrow, or grief, lose their purpose, making them forget who they really are, and turning Hollow. In fact, throughout your journey, you’ll see a few of the characters you interact with go Hollow, becoming nothing more than an empty shell of their former selves. And that’s probably what would’ve happened to you had Oscar not freed you from your cell and given you a purpose.
Then, when you reach the Firelink Shrine, you encounter the Crestfallen Warrior, who gives you instructions about how to complete your task. It sounds vague and cryptic, but it’s understandable enough. Ring two bells, one above and one below.
These two pieces of storytelling are not force-fed to you. They’re not hovering over your screen, reminding you to go to the Parish first or anything like that. The characters don’t tell you these things in a cutscene with extreme closeups to make you understand that this is essential information.
In fact, you can skip the dialog in your first time around and have no idea how pivotal these two characters are to the context of the story. And it’s for that reason that a lot of people think that Dark Souls doesn’t give them directions or instructions because they’re not as blatant as most other games they’ve played before.
Gameplay
Bonfires are part of the gameplay, they are a mechanic of it, but I figured it deserved a place on its own separate from this one as it affects a lot of different elements, as I explained before. Here, I’m talking about the elements of the gameplay that set Dark Souls apart from other games. And while some of these may be found in many other games, the way they are used and mixed together turn the experience into what we know as a Souls game.
The first of these elements worth talking about is the Poise. Which is the invisible bar that determines how much an enemy attack will stagger your character. You can raise your Poise depending on what armor you’re wearing, usually meaning that heavier armor will make it less likely to stagger against enemy attacks, but it may hinder your mobility.
The hitboxes. This one is kinda tricky since, let’s be honest, everybody who’s played Dark Souls has died at some point due to crap hitboxes. However, the game is usually pretty fair in terms of how enemies hit you, their speed, and strength relative to your ability to dodge it or block it.
To the point where you could complete the entire game without leveling up your character, providing you know how the game works, and have completed it at least once. This is not something that a lot of games can do, especially RPGs, where your points and stats mean everything to be able to advance. And while they’re of extremely importance in Dark Souls, they’re not exactly necessary.
And the third element that sets Dark Souls apart is also the one that has the potential to make it harder or easier. And it doesn’t depend on you, but rather, it depends on other people. The online aspect of Dark Souls is unique in a way. Other players can leave messages where they please. These messages can be as helpful as to show you a secret passage to a treasure or tell you there are enemies nearby, or it could be as deceiving as to trick you into jumping to your death.
Not only that, but if you find a particular boss to be too much of a challenge, you can summon another player to help you in your endeavor. The other side of this, however, is that while in the state that allows you to receive help from other players, you also run the risk of getting invaded by another, not-so-friendly player.
You mix all of this together, and most game developers would’ve thought that it was a recipe for disaster, but FromSoftware instead went with it when they realized that Demons’ Souls wasn’t the disaster they thought it would be. And not only that, it was praised by its difficulty and unique mechanics. This is what allowed them to refine and perfect certain aspects into its spiritual sequel.
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