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23 Mar 2015 - 20 May 2015
The demons have begun to invade, and it seems that no one can stop them. That is, until a priest and his fighter companion, a prisoner, happen nearby. The prisoner heads into the demon realm to stop the invasion at its source, and save the human lands.
In a world with games like Dark Souls, it's tough to give this game a fair shake.
It's trying so, so hard to be Dark Souls, but to also be its own thing. It has its own lore that it's trying so hard not to explicitly share, the save points function the same way, the enemies are tough and unforgiving; the comparisons go on and on.
But Dark Souls is, unquestionably, the better game.
That doesn't mean that this game is bad at all. It's fun, it's challenging, and it encourages multiple playthroughs. Arguably, the lack of multiplayer and PvP actually is a large point in its favor. The enemy designs are solid, and the boss fights can be engaging, if maybe a little more difficult than I was expecting.
But all of that struggling to find out the boss patterns, I have done in Dark Souls before. The length of those videos is what you get when you tackle a game like this blind. I expect that in a game like this, I will be frustrated and killed often. I will eventually find my way through to the end, by luck or by skill, and beat that boss down. It will happen, though it take two hours.
And it worked as a testbed to see if I wanted to record any Dark Souls gameplay ever. I think I've decided against it, for now; I've played enough of the original Dark Souls to know that my choices will be mocked, and the actual boss battles are almost rote at this point. And the sequels promise to be even more difficult than Lords of the Fallen, which means even longer episodes of me trying to figure things out before I die again. That frustration can be fun, but I'm not sure it quite fits. Maybe, one day. Until then, we have this game recorded.
I hope that the devs aren't discouraged. They made something that is a lot of fun, but maybe was a little too close to its source material. If they loosen up a little bit, experiment a little more, they may find that they can create something better than they expect. I like this game, but I like it more for its potential.
The game works as an alternate to Dark Souls. If you've already played through all of the Dark Souls games, this may just scratch that itch. No, it's not quite the same. But it can be fun in its own way.