Well it was yesterday; I still have fond memories of that October spent exploring, dying, and one shotting bosses. Summoning stupid white phantoms was probably the best part. I'm a bit depressed its still 5 months to Dark Souls 2, but in celebration of the anniversary I suggest everyone go buy another copy of Dark Souls and go fight Gwyn without parrying. Any wondrous memories to share on this most glorious of occasions?

I'm not sure if "fond" is the right word. I don't think I have any "fond" memories of Dark Souls, and that's why I love it. The unrelenting atmosphere is a big part of what makes that game great. Though in terms of memorable moments, I have a few.

After spending hour after hour in the claustrophobic Depths, to only then move onto Blighttown, was a real great way of creating a feeling of endless despair. And what's better was that after climbing your way out of Blighttown, that bonfire that made you feel so safe at Firelink was gone.

@fredchuckdave: I really, really enjoyed the community aspect with everyone figuring stuff out as they went along, I'd imagine it's how folks felt when they were first playing through Fez when it first came out. I remember having 3 of my friends round the weekend it was released and I played it for about 8 hours straight while they strategized and cheered me on through the undead burg and all that. Super, super fun time.

I joined the dark souls party late. I got demon souls around september 2011 and didn't like it (Love it now) I bought the Prepare to die edition last year and my first memory is jumping into the well at fire link shrine.

I thought it had treasure down there!

@benny: Yep, playing at launch was definitely the best; though the community showed its lack of creativity remarkably fast. Best Dark Souls early game experience is wandering into new areas; no idea if its where you're supposed to go and realizing you're one of the first ones there since there's no messages. That secret passage to the Spider Covenant and the best music in the game? Totally didn't have a message in front of it when I went there first! I did the catacombs prior to Anor Londo and made it to Tomb of the Giants and just said "fuck this" as opposed to running into the golden door, obviously realizing there must have been some item to light it up.

@jimmyfenix: Need Jumping off.

Dark Souls is fantastic and one of the greatest games of this console generation. It's unflinchingly brutal in an environment where most games aren't and I find it sort of baffling/heartening that it has obtained the success it has.

That being said... I'd really like to play Demon's Souls and compare them directly. One day.

@arbitrarywater: Demon's Souls is a good game, it is by no measure "one of the greatest games of this generation;" there are simply far too many flaws with it. Dark Souls is flawed too but the flaws are marginal stuff. I played Demon's Souls first and Dark Souls was much more challenging in general (played both completely blind); though falling off cliffs was by far the most dangerous opponent in both games. Demon's Souls has 1 hard boss which is a great boss and one of the best in any action game period, but Dark Souls has like 6 or 7 on that level with the DLC; most bosses in Demon's Souls are much easier than the Taurus Demon for comparison. Demon's Souls has a bunch of "free" puzzle bosses which are ridiculous easy compared to Bed of Chaos.

Oh, Dark Souls, you bring such drama
Many deaths, an endless list
Filled with commas
A roll off a cliff
A controller into the wall
The bonfire calls
THANKS OBAMA

@fredchuckdave: Wait.... you can parry Gwyn? I just shielded him and dodged then poked him with a couple two handed sword hits.

Personally my favorite memory was dying about 10 times before I got to the heart of the Bed of Chaos, and killed him in one hit. I was kinda stunned and thought "NO WONDER IT'S SO HARD TO ACTUALLY GET TO THIS PART."

@fredchuckdave: Then I shouldn't have much problem getting through it, especially with stuff like "A mana bar that regenerates with the right ring". Of course, I first need to own a PS3, but those things will hopefully be absurdly cheap in a couple of months.

Got it on launch day, played 16 hours over the course of two weeks and decided I never wanted to play it again.

It actually makes him probably one of the easiest bosses to fight. If you use the hornet ring as well, it kind of trivializes the boss.

Also there's a pretty fun mod that has just recently been released for Dark Souls. It makes all the monsters a lot more aggressive and having to deal with multiple enemies all the time. Really fun after you know all the enemies positions.

http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/topic/4202-dark-souls-agressive-mod/

@haffy: Even without parrying he was still pretty easy to beat! I don't think I parried once the entire game... because I'm crazy or something?

You should try it out. Takes a bit of confidence to consistently do it, but once you find yourself parrying those giant once-spawning tower guards' giant maces you'll be feeling like a hell of a badass. Not every attack is parryable, and even less can be followed up with a critical animation, but when you're running through Undead Burg with nothing but a shitty shield and a rapier, not a scrape on you, parrying anything that comes close, you'll be feeling pretty good.

Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of this generation. I played Demon's souls afterwards and enjoyed it but not quite as much. Can't wait for Dark souls 2!

Oh yeah? Well nothing in Dark Souls comes close to the creepy deviousness that is the prison in 3-1, the corrosive monsters in 3-2 or the swamp in 5-2. Nothing in Dark Souls gives me the shits like those places and the sigh of relief when you finally make it to the plank in 5-2.

Cheers to my favorite game

@arbitrarywater: Rings in Demon's Souls are horribly imbalanced so there's 2 or 3 that you'll use and never think of touching the others; they're pretty imbalanced in Dark Souls as well but not quite as much of a no brainer and it takes a while to get the best ones (best 2 in Demon's Souls are in the opening area).

@grissefar: 5-2 is just straight up bad design, anyone could tell you that; but you can skip literally every monster in it so that's something (also bad design). Prison is a pretty creepy area and most of Demon's Souls is very atmospheric however the disjointed nature of the worlds makes it much less immersive than Dark Souls; Demon's Souls is like a platformer that randomly changes environments while Dark Souls actually makes sense from place to place. 3-2 isn't really anything special except for the verticality.

Oh yeah? Well 5-2 is pretty cool and terrifying. And nothing in Dark Souls is anywhere as creepy as Demon's Souls. And Demon's Souls doesn't feel rushed.

@grissefar: Oh yeah? Well Tomb of the Giants is pretty cool and terrifying. And nothing in Demon's Souls is anywhere as creepy as Dark Souls. And Dark Souls doesn't feel rushed.

Oh yeah? Well you're a liar.

Also you mention Tomb of Giants - I wouldn't have thought so but I guess it really is the coolest place in Dark Souls huh? Well if you like Dark Souls so much, why don't you go kill that stupid butterfly? Or run through the wierd crystal world all the way to Seath? Well try not to get dizzy from the crazy camera when you bash away at the centipede. Ha ! Ha !

@grissefar: Bastard! Funny thing about Crystal Caves is as I was going through the game I thought "wouldn't it be cool if there was a Final Fantasy IV crystal area with an invisible bridge?" and there it was.

Yeah, that game at launch was freakin' cool because everybody was trying to figure out and share everything they could. Plus, following guys like EpicNameBro, who kind of unknowingly helped coalesce and unify the Souls community was just something to behold.

Dark Souls II can't get here soon enough.

Dark Souls 2 is two years old?!

decided to go back to Dark Souls today, and I got to Anor Londo for the first time (though i'd seen dozens of playthroughs, 1st time there personally)

FUCK those Big ass archers!!

I've noticed that, at least in dark souls (never played demons souls) the worst bosses were also the very large, less-human ones- Seath, the Bed of Chaos, the Gaping Dragon, Ceaseless Discharge, the Hydra(incidentally, at least in my experience, these are also some of the easiest bosses). I loved dark souls when it seemed like it wasn't trying to evoke monster hunter, as they weren't (generally) that great at. Maybe they'll figure it out in 2? Like, sit that entire department down to play Shadow of the Colossus and ask themselves "What made this fun, and how can we apply it to our game?"

@towersixteen: I think Seath and Gaping Dragon are fine, Seath is a little too easy if you're not going after the tail and too hard/random if you are, I never had too much of an issue with Bed of Chaos but I guess a lot of people weren't able to figure out basic components of the fight and thus die repeatedly every time through. Kalameet in the DLC is incredible and a large boss, one of the hardest bosses in the series. The "large" bosses in Demon's Souls were all basically puzzles instead of actual fights; so while the Dragon God is a really great visual design they didn't really do a whole lot with it.

2 years? Man, that has kind of bummed me out. I got the game with high intentions as I really like the <i>idea</i> of Dark Souls, but the endless fail/retry didn't suit the amount of time I can dedicate to gaming and I ground to a halt in The Depths. I suspect I'll never go back to it now and it's dead to me now, which seems a shame.

Time flies. I remember going to the midnight release with a friend of mine for this weird game we hardly knew anything about. Easily became one of my favorite games of this generation.

Confusing thread title is confusing. This is about Dark Souls but it's on the Dark Souls 2 forum and has "Dark Souls 2" in the title.

I don't know why I did this.

It's been a long time, but I finally did it. I killed the Moonlight Butterfly.

@breadfan: At my midnight release there were like 300 people in the line, 250 of them getting the new NBA game of all things.

I don't have specific memories of the game but i started a new character today and got the first black knight to drop his sword which i used to beat the crap out of Havel with relative ease and went straight for the Black Knight in Darkroot Basin which conveniently dropped his Halberd. I'm very pleased with this. I like big fat slow weapons that just crush enemies. I'm not really into finesse.

In any case i never got lucky and obtain these weapons this quickly. I remember having a great time with the Halberd but i think i'll stick to the Black Knight Sword for the time being. This also makes the game basically easy mode now too. Those gargoyles didn't see this coming.

@fredchuckdave: Seath and the Gaping Dragon were definitly the best of those I listed, but they weren't particular memorable either(at least to me) which puts them far, far, behind other dark souls bosses. The Bed of Chaos was utter nonsense, even though I didn't have a ton of difficulty with it, it was a bad puzzle boss, and the floor randomly opening up was a big fuck-you in a game generally really good about fair difficulty. It's interesting that you thought Kalameet was so good, I would've put him with Seath and G.D. in the "Not bad, but not particulary memorable" category- I actually though he was the weakest boss in the DLC, but mostly because I found Manus and Artorias to be a blast- challenging but extremely fun.

@towersixteen: Kalameet is fast, not slow and lumbering and requires dodging which is relatively unique to Dark Souls since you can block or just straight up tank most things (have to dodge a fair amount in Demon's Souls in NG, gets easier in NG+) unless you're playing low stamina low health. It's probably the best fight in the game against multiple not overpowered characters as well; the only way its easy is if you're playing with a sorcery character at which point you should have realized you were making the game easy thus it wasn't the game's fault apart from sorcery being overpowered. Bed of Chaos isn't random at all, you might die the first time there because you don't know the fight but that's not random either, that's learning the fight. Manus and Artorias are great fights, so are the Manticore (especially with low stats) and Kalameet), though I still think Gwyn is the best fight in either game without parrying.

The best thing in Dark Souls is progressing far enough to kill the Four Kings as a level 1 character then trolling all the low level players in Undeadburg, the Parish, and Lower Underburg.

Ya, I love Dark Souls. I think its my favorite game to come out of this generation of games, really.

The nuance and skill mastery of the combat, the evolution of your character skills, the fluid nature of PvP versus PvE, the different environments that feel like stepping into a new area is a entirely different place, the atmosphere, the music, the sounds, the exploration and discovery. It's an intense game unlike any other as well.

Everything about the game is so well done.

While there are annoying things about it sometimes nothing is completely unfair (as really it's all about patience and paying attention to your surroundings).

It's a great game.

@fredchuckdave: where is the anniversary thread for Demons Souls? You know, the superior of the two.

@humanity: Where is the anniversary thread for trudging through a swamp? I sure love doing that (note I've actually had a wonderful experience walking through a swamp in real life, but its not very fun in a game).

@humanity said:

Funnily enough, I just got a strong urge to start a new character of Demon's Souls. The only thing keeping me from agreeing with you that it's superior is those fucking crystal lizards (and world tendencies being pretty much dead now).

@soldierg654342: No sir, crystal lizards are good design, as are spaz attacks. Know why? Because it was made first and to a very slightly smaller audience on the same platform; therefore it is somehow an exclusive club of millions including myself. That's why. Nostalgia for a game that's not even old.

Two years later and I still haven't finished it yet. I'm getting real close though, as I've been on a Dark Souls binge lately. I remember when it first came out, I played around 4 hours and decided it really wasn't for me. Then about a year or so later I came and have loved it ever since. It just clicked with me for some reason and now it's one of my favorite games ever.

@fredchuckdave said:

If I'm actually being honest, I think the lizards are fine as the require to think about your upgrades carefully. It's the monster in me that grinds for Titanite Slabs in New Londo that hates them. Really, Deamon's Souls only beats Dark Souls by a hair because of Latria.

I've played exponentially more Dark Souls though. I got to the Demon's Souls party late.

I just picked it up about a month ago and have been slowly making my way through it. I'm still in the Undead Parish and fighting the winged gargoyle boss on top of a rooftop. I can definitely see the appeal of this type of game. Been thinking of picking up Dark Souls 2 when it comes out even if I don't get around to beating the first one.

@fredchuckdave: I still disagree about Bed of Chaos, I know its not actually random, I just meant there's no warning and no way to know. Usually in dark souls fights are balanced so you have a chance to do anything on the first try, I probably actually managed about a third of the bosses on my first try. With the fights I didn't, I felt like I understood it was because I messed up. BoC isn't like that, its straight up roll of the dice the first times whether or not that bullshit kills you, there's no way to be prepared for it. I think it's telling that it's the only boss in the game where your progress carries between deaths, I think somewhere in testing someone must of realized it was bad/stupidly frustrating but they didn't have time to actually make it good, and that was their solution.

As for the others, I might've had a different experience due to builds. I was a mid stamina/low health dex/int hybrid. Gwyn went down in four casts of Crystal Soul Spear, Kalameet took that plus a few more casts and a couple rapier pokes. Neither was a particularly epic battle, but I completely understand that that could vary wildly depending on build. I still think, on average, the small to midsize humanoid bosses were of significantly higher average quality than the big monsterous ones. It's something that I'd be excited to see them improve in the sequel.

@fredchuckdave: yah Blighttown is a pretty crappy area especially if you have a thrusting weapon which makes hitting the Mosquitos near impossible

I loved both previous Souls game but I pray that Dark Souls 2 has less weirdly slippery terrain

@humanity: Mosquitos do absolutely nothing to almost any character, have to be running a purposefully weak build to have any trouble with them (i.e. you can completely ignore them, also blighttown's swamp is like 2-3 minutes long and you run 3-4 times as fast as you would in 5-2 without the rusted iron ring, with it you run 8 times as fast). I'll shoot down any Demon's Souls arguments other than Flamelurker (False King is a good boss but Warding makes it trivial), if you really really like Flamelurker then there's some very slight argument for Demon's Souls (keeping in mind there's 6 or 7 bosses on par with Flamelurker in Dark Souls, Gwyn is the most similar and just way faster/doesn't stagger etc.); I mean the worst zone in Dark Souls is The Great Hollow, a place the majority of players don't even go to and it's still a shitload better than the entirety of world 5. If world 5 didn't exist then Demon's Souls would be a slightly worse game than Dark Souls but since it does it falls down 2 or 3 levels as a result; you can't make an objectively terrible part of the game that's mandatory to go through and somehow call it a "great" game with no caveat.

@fredchuckdave: yep I got new memories everyday: I did not stop playing this game for the last 2 years ! I finished it at SL1, platinumed the hell out of it fairly recently just to say I did but what really keeps me going is the PvP...still loving it, playing almost everyday.

I think my fondest memory of DaS was the day I managed to pass Ornstein and Smough on my own because back then every time I summoned someone, we would fail. And hen I realized that rather than trying to cheese my way through this game, I had to learn how to get good at it. Fighting O&S about 100 times alone, dying 99 times was the way to go ^_-. I was so happy to manage to go through these two bastards!...good times. I can't wait for more "YOU DIED" screens in DaS2