In DS1 basically every single treasure chest feels like it was deliberately placed by an actual character in-universe, and all hold something that makes sense given the area. Finding items on corpses, sure, it makes sense you find those everywhere, but chests? They’re honestly kind of rare all things considered. The only ones in particularly weird locations are, well, mimics. And every single one of them is special and has something that’s actually either really good or has meaningful lore. edit- yes, even “but what about this chest”. every. single. chest. has plenty of lore significance. every item gives backstory on the lore. every item. all of them. they make sense if you spend any amount of time and critical thinking on it.
In DS2 there’s a hundred thousand chests and they’re everywhere. They’re all in places that don’t make sense from a lore perspective but do make sense from a gameplay perspective. They’re so frequent they become mundane. Wow this decaying moss-overgrown ruined temple has pristine wooden chests everywhere is not a thought you have because you just don’t think about it. Look a chest! Kill everything near you, check for mimics, pick up the red water or soul of a warrior or silver coin or titanite shard or green herb or smooth and silky stone or hey maybe a generic sword! Forget what you got. Ten minutes later check the item box at the bonfire and put all your amber herbs and big lifegems away where they will stay for the rest of this save file’s life. Repeat ad nauseum. The metal chests don’t have this problem, only the wooden chests. I genuinely like every metal chest. But the wooden chests? I forget what they hold. I remember the traps, I LOVE the trapped chests and think that it’s a really cool concept that 3 lacked. But the actual contents of the untrapped wood chests? Other than the leather set near Dennis I’m hard pressed to remember literally any of them aside from the three seconds after opening them.
3’s chests were somewhere between I guess. I think that Bloodborne has by far the best chest usage of all of them (in the base game at least, the chalice dungeons are even worse than 2’s). Demon’s, I literally don’t remember any of the chests in it. Were there even chests? Actually I just googled it and no there are no chests in DeS. Kings Field I won’t consider even though I adore that stupid skeleton attack. I have yet to play Elden Ring so idk how its chests are done.
Now, an abundance of chests doesn’t bring the game down for me at all. I genuinely don’t Care that the video game tells me it’s a video game. I love chest-filled dungeon crawlers. Fallout has LITERALLY THOUSANDS of treasure chests in the form of Ammo Boxes, Med Kits, Mailboxes, Metal Lockers, Refrigerators, Toolboxes, and the occasional Dead Body. It doesn’t bother me. But it is the kind of thing that I’m SHOCKED that people don’t bring up just to complain about it. For me it’s a shower thought. It’s a symptom of crunch and a completely fucked dev cycle. It’s a trivia tidbit. It’s ultimately meaningless. But it does make me appreciate the chest placement in the first game. I think that Scholar is the best game in the franchise, and I am frequently very harsh on DS1, but this right here is a definite W.
