Not long after the release of Dark Souls and Knight of Glory, all the major video game media in China and overseas released their reviews.
To everyone's surprise, even in Europe and the United States, Dark Souls achieved overwhelming success!
The video game media in Europe and the US were praising Dark Souls even more than the media in China. Many players were confused as to how much money Chen Mo had given them.
Some video game media in Europe and the US even gave Dark Souls full marks, especially for its combat system, level design, and world design. Some even called Dark Souls a 'unique masterpiece of cold weapon combat design', and even called Thunderbolt Entertainment the 'Diablo Factory'!
As a large number of game reviews were released, the players were shocked to discover that even in the European and American regions, Knight's Glory was completely crushed by Dark Souls. Be it professional reviews, player ratings, or sales figures, Dark Souls had surpassed Knight's Glory in all aspects. Moreover, it was showing a continuous upward trend!
As more and more professional reviews were released, many players began to understand where Dark Souls' unique appeal came from.
It had to be said that the average player focused more on the experience and feelings gained from the game, while professional media would more accurately analyze a game's design. These reviews often focused more on the game's artistry and design techniques.
After analyzing Dark Souls, the video game media summarized the game's strengths into three areas.
The first was the extremely rich combat system. There were many types of cold weapons in Dark Souls, some of which didn't even exist in real life, and they all had their own uses.
Players could use daggers and swords for speed and agility, as well as greatswords and hammers for damage. However, different weapons had different characteristics. No matter what weapon was used, there would always be a corresponding weakness, and these weaknesses had to be made up for by the player's good mechanics.
This was a stark contrast to Knight of Glory. Although Knight of Glory was based on combat in real life, the combat was very simple, and most of the time it tested the player's reaction speed and character stats.
However, there were many combat techniques in Dark Souls. Players could even interrupt the opponent's attack by predicting their movements. At the same time, with special mechanisms such as Shield Counter, Roll, Backstab, and Execute, the entire combat system was very rich.
The second point was that the level design was at the peak of perfection. The main level design in this world was still based on numerical analysis. In other words, the stronger the monsters were, the higher their attributes were.
Many game companies were even considering using all kinds of tricks to make many monsters spawn randomly. At the same time, they would give these monsters corresponding attributes based on the player's level progress to create a sense of randomness.
However, in this mode, players' dungeon clearing experience would become extremely boring. As long as players' Basic Attributes could overwhelm the monsters' Basic Attributes, they'd have no problem clearing the dungeon.
If a player's Attributes weren't up to snuff, they'd suffer during battle. Even if they had good techniques, they'd have a hard time clearing the stage.
However, Dark Souls chose another method, which was to carefully plan out every monster in the level. Although the monsters would spawn randomly in a small area, the overall configuration would not change.
In addition to the different characteristics of the monsters and the designed conspiracies, when the players challenged a certain stage, it was equivalent to solving a riddle.
Should he pull them out and fight them one by one? Or was he going to use a special method to kill the monsters in the area? Or was he going to put on special equipment and rush through the monsters?
Different players had different methods, but not every method was suitable. The players had to try repeatedly to figure out the best solution for the level.
At the same time, although the design that all the monsters would be revived after using the bonfire greatly increased the difficulty of the game, it also ensured the completeness of the level design to the greatest extent.
If the monsters didn't revive, the players would only have to slowly kill them one by one, and one day they would clear the stage. However, this was obviously not the original intention of Dark Souls when it was designed.
Dark Souls hoped that the players could solve the riddle perfectly and move from one bonfire to another with a limited amount of HP and potions.
Although this level design was very difficult and even hopeless for many people, it ensured that the level experience of Dark Souls was always maintained at a high level without any discount.
Moreover, Dark Souls was popular not because it was difficult, but because it was difficult for a reason.
The meaning of this game wasn't the suffering itself, but the sense of accomplishment after suffering.
Other games allowed the players' characters to grow, but Dark Souls allowed the players themselves to grow.
In the beginning, the players had to drink Elemental Bottles to deal with a skeleton, but later on, they could parkour all the way to the boss room and kill it with extreme speed.
From a newbie to a boss, the players' characters might not have become much stronger, but the players themselves had truly become stronger.
The charm of the level design of Dark Souls was that it didn't deliberately make things difficult for the players. Instead, it guided the players through repeated failures, allowing them to try different methods and finally find the most suitable way to clear the stage.
At the same time, Dark Souls maximized the charm of exploration.
Although it wasn't an open-world game, Dark Souls allowed the players to explore many routes.
Different areas had different levels of difficulty. Dark Souls didn't force the players to follow a certain path. If some bosses defeated the second boss, killed the old woman, defeated Dancer, and entered the high-level area of Lothric City, they would be able to enter the high-level area.
At the same time, there were many hidden items at the corners of the map, which hid the unknown history of Dark Souls.
Through the descriptions of the items, the players could imagine the story behind the items and the world background of Dark Souls.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
