Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 2 is said to be one of the greatest games of all time, and that might be true if you like things known as "Rage Games". Rage games are games where you're fighting endless enemies that are much stronger than you, and you do this constantly, always dying and finding all your hard work was for nothing, as everything you just killed respawns if you die or rest at the checkpoint.

This is how basic it could look. But in game, it's MUCH worse.

Dark Souls 2 has your character fighting through a hidden land in order to break a curse, known as the Dark Sign. The Dark Sign appears on men, women, and children alike. Those branded with the Dark Sign are to become Hollow, those without a soul. Due to this, the Hollow must feed on souls to survive, but they do so without any free will, like zombies, as which their bodies also begin to resemble. Those branded with the Dark Sign and not yet Hollow are known as Undead. As an Undead collects souls of its fallen foes, they keep their sanity longer and drive off becoming Hollow for a small time. Thus, also, with being Undead, they are able to die, but come back to life. This happening, however, changes their outer appearance to that of a Hollow, and they are even closer to becoming one.

A Hollow "Zombie"

Within the original Dark Souls, it was possible to become human-like again by using a physical embodiment of Humanity. These small humanity sprites could be found on fallen enemies, or found in chests. Within Dark Souls 2 however, Humanity no longer exists. The small sprites are replaced with items called Human Effigies. These were small wire cages that were slightly shaped like a person. If one gazed into one while near Hollow, they would return to their human form once again. The Effigies are said to hold the resemblance of a person inside, but it changes on who looks within to their former self. These are the only way of regaining humanity, and are more scarce than the humanity sprites of the first game.

A Humanity Sprite (left) compared to a Human Effigy (right)

One thing about Dark Souls is the unique battle system it uses. If you were playing on any kind of controller, whether PlayStation or Xbox, both shoulder buttons and triggers would control your left hand and your right hand in attacks and defending. Clicking down the right stick would place a lock-on on one of your enemies. Normally in the game, however, three or more enemies attack you at a time, which requires the use of rolling to avoid attacks. Even in boss battles, there's usually a unique way they attack, and for you to attack it. For example, a boss during an area of the game known as The Forest of Fallen Giants requires you to use a ballista, which is essentially a very big crossbow on wheels, to attack and kill the boss, as just using your sword would cause the fight to last forever. Even for the area boss, it uses unique attacks. The area boss, once you whittle its health down past 50%, will actually rip its left arm off to swing at you like a club. I know people said "Give me a hand", but this guy took it way too seriously.

The Pursuer in which the Ballista must be used to defeat

My thoughts on Dark Souls 2 is that it's hard, and it's not just simple "Oh. It's hard, but I can get past it soon." The game is "Oh my gosh. I'm going to be stuck here forever" hard. And that's how a lot of the game actually is. I personally have been stuck in an area for over six hours of game play, despite my leveling up and stronger items. No other game could compare to how hard Dark Souls is. Many people put hours into this game, with little to no progress at all. In one of the towns in game, if the player is linked to the online servers, there's a monument that counts up the total number of deaths since the game released in March of 2014, only three short months ago. The total number of player deaths is, at the time of writing this blog, 289,317,551. Of all those deaths, less that half a million players have even finished the game once!