I usually set games to their maximum difficulty settings before playing them, lowering it only if I absolutely cannot enjoy the game otherwise. As Dark Souls is probably best known for being an incredibly difficult RPG, it is exactly the sort of game I would expect to enjoy. I have, but the game is not without its struggles. As such, I intend to be as thorough as I can manage.

An immediate downside is the game being a console port. As any gamer likely knows, whether a console (or mobile) port has been done well is by no means guaranteed. Dark Souls suffers from porting issues as many before it have, and many have since.

My playthrough involved the use of “dsfix”. If you have more than 1 monitor as I do, you will need it because the mouse cursor is not confined to the game without it. This is both advice, and an example of the issues it inherits due to being a console port.

It is also worth noting about my perspective/bias as a reviewer - I first tried to play this years ago, and the controls were horrendous even with a controller. I felt it was genuinely unplayable. It is fair to assume from the following: that I had a faulty controller, dsfix corrects controls as well, or the controls have been patched in the intervening years. Whatever the cause, I tend to remain more critical of the controls than I might otherwise be.

NOTE: I listed this review as recommended because it is an enjoyable game despite its flaws, but keep in mind a remastered version is on the way.

• Considering the age of the game (original release on consoles in 2011), the game holds up well graphically. It does not look amazing by today’s standards, but it does not look painfully dated either.
  
• The game aims to come across as unforgiving, and does it in a very good, very strong way. Combat mistakes are punishing, and death comes easy. When you die you risk losing your currency, “Souls” that are have the dual purpose of being used to level up and buy/upgrade things. You can recover your dropped souls on death, but you lose it forever if you die again before recovering it. Losing this is not crippling however. It is a perfect blend of risk and punishment, without being overly frustrating.
  
• The weapons and combat styles are generously diverse. It is hard to find a definitive “this is the best way to do combat” because this aspect was done so well that no one seems to have agreed on what constitutes “best”.
  
• Co-operative play is done in a particularly clever way. You lose the ability to use your “estus” flasks to heal yourself, but the person you are assisting will heal you when they use theirs. You can still use magic, and heal with magic. If you successfully help a player with an area they are trying to get through, you get a reward for it. If you fail in your assistance, you do not.
  
• The motives of NPCs are not clear, and many story aspects are never outright stated. This means that you do not have to bother with a story if you do not wish to do so, a useful thing for replay value. If you care about story though, it is there if you care to try to look for it.
  
• Although I have only played once, and have not as of this writing completed a full game, I am quite certain the replay value is high. The game is probably more fun the second time around, when you know the game better.

• The combat feature of “locking on” to a target sometimes fails, which can cause you to get hit. Only the fastest, most dangerous enemies seem to be able to move in such a way that can cause your combat lock on to fail. This will almost certainly kill you if you are relying on the lock on to keep your shield pointed the right direction. It is more reliable than it is not, but it is a mechanic that slightly missed the mark.
  
• A strength of the game is in how combat mistakes a punished, but a side effect of this is that armor feels almost irrelevant. Many players regard armor choices as “fashion souls” with a frequency that suggests that it is commonly accepted that armor is less for modifying gameplay, and more for stylistic flavor.
  
• In direct contrast to the armor quirk, shields are deceptively powerful. Shields being good at blocking incoming damage is fine, but it is an unintuitive contrast to the seeming uselessness of armor that is difficult to get used to.
  
• In a game where choices matter, the attributes you can level up are very easy to screw up. This may simply result in an inefficient character, but for a new player it could end up resulting in a cripplingly weak one. It is true mistakes can be (mostly) corrected with enough farming, but that is why I call this a struggle instead of a failure. Discovering 20 hours into a game that you built your character terribly would probably be game ruiningly frustrating.

• Dark Souls suffers from a common problem in cross platform ports - bad PC controls. The PC controls are borderline unusable. They are actually so bad, this very game was what inspired me to learn how to get an Xbox controller to work on my computer years ago. I have heard a fix exists for keyboard controls, but have neither verified nor tested this.
  
• The controls using a proper controller are not awesome either. This is, without a doubt, the biggest weakness of the game. It is arguable that the majority of the game’s fabled difficulty lie in the clumsy controls. This can be gotten used to, and adapted to in order to not be a major problem anymore.
  
• Somewhat related to controls is the collision detection. It is not in any way intuitive. I frequently found myself rhetorically asking the air how something managed to hit me when it looked so far away. This can also be adapted to, but also increases the difficulty in a manner for feels artificial.
  
• The game cannot be paused. There are times when this makes sense, such as during a boss battle, or PvP event. However, what about when you are merely clearing a level, and wish to take a restroom break? It is asinine that pausing is not possible in this situation. I have heard this argued as part of the difficulty of the game. I disagree - it is a bad design decision. Having to stand in an area you ‘think’ is safe in order to be able to step away is ridiculous. A workaround exists in that you can exit the game, and upon resuming will be in the same place you were when you exited. So if you can “pause” it this way, why not be allowed to pause it in the conventional way?
  
• You cannot trust the game text itself, which would be a clever feature if it had been intentional. The manifestations of it make clear it is not intentional. An example is a “starting gift” you can select supposedly heals you over time, according to its description. Except it doesn’t do that. At all. It seems likely that it used to do that, but was changed and the tooltip was never updated. I have heard this offered as an aspect of difficulty, but that argument falls flat for a number of reasons. Primarily, none of the inaccuracies will cause problems for any but the newest of players. If the idea was that you cannot trust even the game itself, that would make sense. The problem with that argument is that none of the keys have misleading text. Why not? Why does the starting gift lie, but not one key says it works somewhere it doesn’t? Because the errors were not intentional. But errors do exist, and can impact gameplay in a manner that is quite significant for a newbie.