Dark Souls

by Namco

• Extremely Deep, Dark & Difficult - Unforgiving in its punishment, yet rewarding for the determined
• Fully Seamless World - Explore a completely integrated world of dark fantasy where dungeons are seamlessly intertwined, with great height.
• Mastery Earns Progression - Player success depends on their eventual mastery of how and when to use the magic spells
• Players may cross paths with one another, interacting with each other throughout the game even as each player plays their own game.
• Flexible Character Development & Role Play - As the player progresses

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B004NRN5EO
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 4, 2011
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (358 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #8 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > Games > Role-Playing

Product Description

Platform: PLAYSTATION 3 | Edition: Standard

From the Manufacturer

Strategize and use your mind to conquer seemingly impossible challenges. View larger.

Live Through A Million Deaths & Earn Your Legacy
Enter a dark world filled with despair and threaded by hope where your ability to creatively strategize, learn and overcome unpredictable and unique challenges determines your fate. Dark Souls will demand your absolute concentration, unflinchingly punish your mistakes, but reward your ability to learn from death. Each challenge is a mind game met with endless combinations that will test your ability to creatively strategize a way to conquer unimaginable monsters and progress deeper into this bleak and forbidding environment filled with the un-dead.

Key Game Features

• Extremely Deep, Dark & Difficult – Unforgiving in its punishment, yet rewarding for the determined – learn to strategize freely and conquer seemingly impossible challenges. You will organically design your own gameplay style by developing your character and continuously trying different strategies to finally achieve successful progression.
• Fully Seamless World – Explore a completely integrated world of dark fantasy where dungeons are seamlessly intertwined, with great height.
• Mastery Earns Progression – Contains 60 hours of gameplay, with nearly 100 uniquely despair-inducing monsters & an incredibly nuanced weaponry & magic spells system, the effectiveness of which is determined by combat situation, fighting style and character attributes. Player success depends on their eventual mastery of how and when to use the magic spells, choice of armor, the number of weapons, the types of weapons, and the moves attached to the weapons.
• Network Play – Players may cross paths with one another, interacting with each other throughout the game even as each player plays their own game. Networked play allows users to cross paths with one another to enhance the single-player gameplay experience without destroying it.
• Flexible Character Development & Role Play – As the player progresses, they must carefully choose which of their character’s abilities to enhance as this will determine their progression style. Players can choose to play as a sword master and a wizard, for example.
• Community – See other real players and empathize with their journey, learn from seeing how others died, find and leave messages for your fellow players; helping them or leading them into death.
• Symbolic of Life & Hope – The Beacon Fire is an important feature of Dark Souls for many reasons. Though in gameplay it serves as a recovery and re-spawn point for players whose health gets low, it is also where players can emotionally share experiences with other players, and is the one place in the dark world where players can find a fleeting moment of warmth and calm.

Additional Screenshots:

Will your fellow peers steer you from evil...or lead you to them? View larger.

Cross paths seamlessly with other adventurers during Network Play! View larger.

Savor the few moments of warmth and calm in a world of darkness. View larger.

Explore a world of fantasy and evil lurking around every corner... View larger.

Product Description

Dark Souls (PS3)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 76 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a love/hate relationship June 20, 2012

By Meghan E. McCullah

Platform for Display:PLAYSTATION 3|Edition:Standard

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

Months ago, the boyfriend called from Gamestop while returning a couple of Silent Hill games we foolishly bought one weekend. "Google games & tell me the first one that comes up that looks good."

For the next few weeks I sat beside him & watched in awe as he struggled to get through the Asylum Demon (the very first boss, maybe 10 minutes into the game). As time went by the two of us had our weekends consumed, him playing & me watching. I eventually started sitting with my laptop constantly on & at the ready in case he needed help finding items or wanted recommended strategies from the multitude of Wiki material available online. I rememeber at one point I actually started telling him he was doing things wrong, criticizing his play! Me who had never even played the game. I would tell friends about it with great enthusiasm, encouraging them to play too. These conversations grew awkward though, simply due to the fact that I had nothing to back it up. I had still yet to play..

I became so intruiged that I finally decided to give it a shot. Though I was sure I would fail, as games that required manual sight control (ie; Skyrim) historically have defeated me almost instantaneously. I struggled & got insanely frustrated trying to wildly maneuver around both joysticks just so that I could see where in god's name I was going, let alone try to fight something, hah! My journey ended shortly after it began in the Undead Asylum. I owned up my initial defeat to a combination of my struggles with the controls, my complete lack of practice, & not knowing when some scary monster might come around a corner & attack me! My level 2 Pyromancer forever sits at that bonfire.

A while later I got a bit angry with myself for quitting so quickly & mustered up the courage to try again.... This game was just too cool to give up before I had even gotten to the first boss fight. I spent hours & hours in the Asylum just running around killing Floppys, (or Hollows, as they're referred to) but I prefer Floppys. I finally realized by accident how to LOCK ON to an enemy! Oh my god! I can actually fight now! Aghh I'm so awesome! Oh god the boss. And I'm dead. Omg plunging attack AGGHH!! And I'm dead again. Ok I'll stop.

Now.

After creating many new characters from scratch I think I've finally settled on one I can be happy with. The directions that you can take your character are endless & require careful planning & strategy early on, otherwise you, like me, may end up having to start over with a new one in order to get on the right track. Visually this game is stunning. It is so captivating & you allow it to draw you in without question. Dying becomes a bit less heart-breaking every time, & the run back to regain what was lost can vary between a slow strategic trek, to an all-out crazy, flailing sprint! This game will get your heart pumping. It will keep you up at night, which is why, fellow students, I recommend purchasing it over the summer. It will make you mad, FURIOUS at times! Furious enough to wake the neighbors. But when you FINALLY defeat that especially difficult boss, or that particularly annoying invader, with your very last shard of humanity, with only a fraction of your health left, I guarantee it will bring you to your feet for an immediate victory dance Tiger Woods style.

Sorry for the somewhat disjointed review. There's just too much to explain in order to create an adequete non-bias review of this product in its entirety, so I tried to create one that depicted the way the game made me feel when I play. Hopefully you feel the same way. It's definitely a ride worth taking! :)

To those considering this game, I would give it 100 stars if I could. Expect a challenge, & buy it. If a noob like myself was able to get the hang of it, anyone can.

Praise the Sun! Read more ›

195 of 215 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars You only live twice (with a million deaths in between) October 4, 2011

By A. Dent #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Platform for Display:PLAYSTATION 3| Edition:Standard|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

Well, these are exaggerations on both counts but... you get the idea.

I do not consider myself a hard core gamer but there were a few grand games that I played hard and long on the PS3: Oblivion, Fallout, Grand Turismo, Demon's Souls. Of these, Demon's Souls was the only Platinum I've ever earned and it clocks at over 500 hours of pure fear, strong anxiety and intense frustration punctuated by brief moments of pride and joy brought by the hard earned sweet victories.

I started talking about Demon's Souls because to us, PS3 gamers, Dark Souls is NOT the first coming of unspeakable terror onto our consoles. Dark Souls is the SECOND coming. And what a visitation this promises to be :)

Okay, here it is, after the first few hours. I am going to post updates (not spoilers) as I progress through the game.

THE COMMONS

Deomon's Souls has many, never-seen-before, amazing innovations. We hoped and we expected to see most of them again on 'chapter two' and Dark Souls does not disappoint even though Dark's seems to be a Universe unrelated to Demon's. It's not even a parallel Universe (I like to think of parallel Universes as those in which the other fellow Dark Souls players exist - if running around as a hollowed-out soul you can call 'existence'. It's a different world but a lot works in seemingly familiar ways.

Here's what I would call the Demon's heritage:

- One-save only. And this is a BIG thing because the game saves itself every couple of seconds. Once you get hurt or you hurt someone you didn't mean to you can't go back to the previous save because there's no such thing. Unless you have one hand on the power cord ready to pull it, everything you do has consequences and you can't go back and try again.... Be VERY careful when you talk to them merchants or blacksmiths because one unintended slap and they will never deal with you again.
- Human vs. Soul form. Can't be invaded by other players while in Soul (Hollow) form. As a Human you can invade other words, help others, seek help.
- Classes. You pick yours from 10. Not exactly the same as in Demon's though.
- Stats. Again, 10 different categories, some differently named, some totally new like 'humanity' and 'attunement'.
- The ability to seek help and to help others. I believe that you can have up to 3 others helping.
- The Stones. They are of different colors but they have uses not unlike the Demon's stones, possibly more: to seek help, to leave messages, to invade.
- Souls as currency of the land and the price price you must pay to level up. And you lose them all every time you die so... use them (buy, uplevel) before you lose them.
- Every time you rest all non-boss enemies respawn.
- The ability to play nasty and invade other players' worlds.
- Blood stains. You can see how others died.
- Second (and ONLY second) chance. You can recover lost souls if you can touch your own blood stain before you die again.
- Messages. Can leave messages but don't expect to be able to type away detailed clues. You pick your message from a pre-approved list.
- Incredibly precise combat. Each class of weapons acts differently and you can see/feel the difference between hitting flesh, bone or armor.
- Uchigatanas!!! Need I say more? These are by far the coolest katanas you'll ever swing in any game and probably the best you can get through this one at least through mid-game. Demon Souls most terrifying black phantoms (invading players) where the 2-Uchigatana dudes. Most, possibly all of the Demon's weapons can be found in Dark: Claymores, Halberds, Clubs, Axes, Estocs and so forth.
- Practice makes perfect. Like Demon's Souls, this is a struggle for perfection because in most instances only perfect or near-perfect attacks and defenses will save you from yet another horrific death.
- Continues the Deomon's tradition of no difficulty levels. Like its predecessor, there's only one difficulty level on Dark and that's 'very easy', as in 'very easy to get yourself killed'. Seriously, for anyone who played Demon's, Dark feels like the second or third playthrough only you start at a low level, have no weapons or armor and find yourself in completely unfamiliar territory now so it takes a little bit of dying, observing and experimenting before your learn the ropes.

THE DELTAS (new and never seen before)

This, I'm sure, is going to be a growing list and I'm going to update it as I progress into the game. If what's going on in this game can be called 'progress'.

- One-world design. This appear to be a huge world but gates, bridges and passes are all well guarded so be prepared to shed a lot of blood and die a lot to earn your right of passage. Unlike Demon's which had a hub that was the only connection between the several separate 'worlds', Dark's world regrions are very much interconnected and much of the fun and mystery is your gradually discovering and unlocking sometimes secret doors and passages.
- The healing system. The role of 'grasses' is drastically reduced (there are some mosses that you can still use to cure ailments) but Dark doesn't make it as easy when it comes to your ability to recover health. It's no longer near-unlimited.
- The Covenants. Each of the 9 will open new play modes and, as always, every action brings about consequences. Joining may appear an easy decision but separation can be painful and costly.
- Pyromancy as a THIRD class of magic, joining sorcery and miracles. For anyone who likes fire and explosions... it's awesome.
- The Gifts. Interestingly some seem to have no effect while others such as the Magic Key you get if you pick the class of Thief is quite useful.
- Danger times 2. It may be just because I'm a little rusty playing Souls or because I know Demon's so well now it's like a walk in the park but Dark appears to be a lot harder. But... we play, we learn. We shall see :)
- More color. Can't imagine Demon's with colors but in this world the occasional bright splashes blend well and don't subtract from the feeling of danger.
- No Luck. You COULD get lucky in Deomon's Souls but that's no longer the case. That particular stat has disappeared, replaced by your ability to hold 'humanities' which you lose every time you die.
- Sweet revenge. One of the covenants mission is to hunt down and kill those nasty dark phantom bullies.
- And, of course, Dark Souls does away with all the gentleness and hand-holding occasionally found in Demon's. It really does. Remember that nice Russian lady in the Nexus that you must kill if you want your Platinum? Gone! My first impressions: don't trust anyone because everybody seems to be either evil or insane.

THE STORY

Not quite sure what's expected of me yet and I don't think I should spoil anyone's fun anyway. There is a prologue, of course and, clearly, terrible things happened that caused this not to be a happy world. Need to investigate some more but I'm not sure who's to be trusted, who should be used, who can be a friend.

MY RATING

If Amazon's 5 stars stands for 'I love it', what would be the star count for "I love it, I fear it and, 80 hours into the game I'm obsessed by it"? Well... 5's the limit :). I expect to spend hundreds of hours playing this game and, hopefully, with a little or maybe a lot of help from my friends and a lot of priceless advice from some of the game-focused sites - I will name my favorites on a comment to this review.

__________________________________________

July 2012 Update:

Several months and several hundreds hours of gameplay later, I'm still playing Dark Souls.

Sure, I 'beat' the game so many times already but finishing the game the first time is only the beginning. Then you play 'new game plus' (NG+), then NG++, NG+++ and so on where everything gets harder and harder. Can't get the platinum trophy unless you go through the game at least twice.

And there's the PvP (player vs. player) which is where, with your most deadly or your most fun character built to much your skills you can face other players in everything ranging from helping out a fellow player beat a boss or a fair 1v1 fight where players bow to each other in the beginning and pay their respects to the defeated one once the fight is over to no-rules melees where magic and poison knives fly, buffed greatswords or halberds hit hard and you may face up to 3 players plus whatever the game may be throwing at you at the same time. The fun never ends, the variety is almost endless and it's addictive.

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>> Brush your teeth, it's the law! << Read more ›

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Death has got to be easy because life is hard November 3, 2011

By Unit543

Platform for Display:PLAYSTATION 3|Edition:Standard

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

(300 hours in) I am a Demon Souls warrior. So going into this game I knew what I was getting into. Now I want to get one thing out first,this is 10 times harder then Demon Souls hands down. I won't make this an extensive review just pros and cons.

Pros:
Giant Bosses which are beautifully designed
Beautiful Open World of Death and Despair
Music is Amazing,never in a game the music sets the mood just right
Battle Mechanics
Tons of Secrets
Endless gameplay

Cons:
Enemies that are harder then bosses
Flasks instead of herbs
Being cursed(a pain in the a$$ to get rid of if you are broke)
Cheap sometimes
Losing souls but that comes with the territory

All in all this game can be GOTY. It's well crafted and difficult but not to a point it's unbearable.. Just grind and level up..Also a tip,be sure to save after you defeat bosses,you may go in a area that you won't make it out with your souls.10/5 Must buy

UPDATE: I am now level 193 and all I can say is wow. This game is on my mind all day,I'm at work and all I can think was kicking a$$ in the forest and invading the guilty. This game is massive and kept me so infused with it I don't care to look at the past exclusives that released. Like crack this game has me addicted. Beautiful,Amazing,Masterpiece and captivating. Dark souls will suck you in with no remorse. GOTY!

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sophomore Slump November 7, 2011

By H. A. Lopez

Platform for Display:PLAYSTATION 3|Edition:Standard

Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

Dark Souls . . .How does it stand up to the Legacy of Demon's Souls?

Some background; I absolutely LOVED Demon's Souls. I plat'ed it and still put at least another 100 hours in it. I was counting the minutes till Dark Souls came out. That being said, I didn't want to post a review till I played it through at least once. Since I have, here it is -

Dark Souls - The PROS:

*New combat abilities! Demon's Souls combat remained largely unchanged (see cons tho) but they added the plunging attack and the kick. Both moves have huge strategic implications and, when utilized correctly, add a lot of fun to the game.

*humanity - Its complicated but once you know how to use it and, more importantly, where to farm it>>SPOILER ALERT-skeleton babies before Gravelord Nito fight: souls farming + humanity farming = W!N!!!<<, it adds an awesome spin on gameplay. Boost humanity and use a Chaos flame weapon for quick kills!

*No more leaving gear behind because of encumbrance. You can carry all the gear you can find.

*open world - I liked Demon's Souls Nexus structure, but the open world feels so much more foreboding. Its also more colorful and vibrant.

*No more playing with half a hitpoint bar![unless, of course, you get cursed lol]

*Boss fights are largely fair, with some exceptions (I'm pointing at you Smough!)At least none of the bosses suck away your levels, like the King in Demon's Souls haha....

*Kingseeker Frampt - Not only is he a great NPC(He's the Primordial Serpent btw), he is EXTREMELY useful (figure what I mean on your own, no spoiler for you this time :P)

*Farming stones is not nearly as hard as in Demon's Souls (I'm pointing at you, flawless Bladestone:P)

*Covenants - A great direction for multiplayer. Could have been implemented better but the core concept is great

*Difficulty - Its still the barometer from which all other games are measured. There is no way a person is going to play through this game without equal parts skill and patience. Casual gamers, stay away!

CONS:

* targetting - omg, what the heck happened here? You knock down a mob who is targetted, the target drops off . . .even if it is still alive! I died a few times because of this shortcoming alone. I strongly suggest you get used to re-targetting as soon as they hit the ground to avoid blocking issues. This was perfect in Demon's Souls, a definite step backwards . . .

*Limited spell casts - lets say you have 4 casts of Great Fireball and you use them up. The only way you can get them back is to go to a bonfire, which re-spawns all mobs! It makes it really difficult for you to play a caster character and go forward. You absolutely need to know how to melee.

*Uneven amount of Bonfires in different areas- Who the heck planned this? You have 3 bonfires in Anor Londo, which is pretty close together and then you go to a wide open New Londo (with all the ghosts)and there are none. NONE! I'm sorry, but thats just ridiculous and cheesy.

*Story - The story is pretty muddled and confusing, so if you are looking for compelling storytelling, look elsewhere.

*multiplayer - invading other worlds can be fun and being in different covenants determines the awards you receive, but playing co-op with a friend is extremely difficult.

All being said, there are some worthwhile innovations in Dark Souls and the playthrough will definitely be punishing and rewarding. I would definitely say its worth playing through for the experience at least once but it falls short of being as compelling as its predecessor. I may continue for the Platinum, then again I may not. I feel like I am finding it harder to work through the second playthrough, not because of the difficulty, but the interest isn't as strong as it was when I played Demon's Souls. Then again, Battlefield 3 may have something to do with it :)

UPDATE: I have been playing off and on and got the Platinum Trophy this weekend. Some additional observations -

*Smithing trophies are hella easier in Dark Souls vs. Demon's Souls! The slabs, which are needed to achieve the highest smithing, are ground spawn in different areas or even accessible from lizards! You may have to play through 2x to get them but if you are going for the plat, you'll have to play thru 2 times anyway

*The Four Kings battle in NG ++ is IMPOSSIBLE to solo with a melee, from what I can tell(This is a DPS battle). I used a Pyromancer/Melee hybdrid with 8 spell slots and got them down to 20% health spamming spells and swinging a max level Chaos Lucerne w/ 26 humanity. I had to relent and ask for assistance to finally beat them. Luckily I got a caster, who killed them so fast we had to wait on respawns lol.

*The Weapons trophy (something of a knight) hardest drops are Priscilla's Dagger and Seath's Moonlight Greatsword. Priscilla goes invisible and has a small tail and Seath spins like a spaz. The Dark Hand USED to be difficult, because you had to get it through the Darkwraith Covenant (which is a pain to get imo) but it now drops off the Dark Wraiths in New Londo thanks to the new patch.

*There are a ton of rings in this game, but there is no trophy for getting them all (as in Demon's Souls) Makes life a bit easier, since I hate collection trophies.

Of the two, I still believe the hardest to platinum is Demon's Souls for the following reasons -

-No boss that steals levels from you
-No ring trophy (the "Friend" Ring and "Foe" Ring in Demon's Souls were a @#$%& to get!)
-No "Pure Bladestone" type drop to try and farm, rare smith stones are ground spawn in certain zones.
-Full HP bar pretty much throughout

One thing I miss from Demon's Souls - The Monk Battle (playing other players as a boss battle was an awesome idea!)

FINAL TIP - There is an item called the SYMBOL OF AVARICE that is extremely rare which I believe was recently added. Its a helmet that makes you look like a cursed chest lol. In addition to the cosmetic effect, it increases item discovery and boosts souls earned by 20%! Downside is it drains HP (kinda sucks BUT you can use it to drain your HP to a certain level to activate the +attack ring to kill from a distance with a bow quickly . . .remember that trick in Demon's Souls with Muramoto ;)?) Anyhow, I digress. Here's how to get the Symbol of Avarice -

-Approach a CURSED treasure chest
-throw a Lloyds talisman at it (bring a bunch, you'll probably need it. Male undead merchant in Undead Burg sells for 500 souls per)
-The talisman will simultaneously wake it up and put it to sleep! (Weird huh? Not its supposed intended use lol) The chest will start snoring with a purple glow around it and there will be a gold glow in his mouth. Loot the first item, thats its intended drop.
-Stand to the side of it, so it won't wake up and eat you. When the purple aura dissipates, throw another Lloyds Talisman. Rinse and repeat until you see another gold glow. Once you see it loot it, thats your Symbol of Avarice!

Note - I tried it on multiple chests in different areas, it seems like each chest can drop the Symbol once (I have 4, 2 of which I gave away). Once you throw the first Lloyd's, you better be ready to fight because they WILL eventually wake up and aggro. Read more ›