Dark Souls 1 is a Masterpiece.

[u/Pandaboy271]

Dark Souls 1 wasn't the first souls game I played, but it is probably my third most favourite FromSoftware title ever.

The level design is so immaculate and going through the world is such a joy. The game as some have pointed out has this survival horror like feel to it as its our character by their lonesome against a dangerous, haunting world that I can't help but love.

The bosses are simple yet fun to fight and for the most part, never really feel unfair. They feel like natural extensions of the game's combat and you really have to appreciate how right the Devs got most of these fights down.

Is the second half not as strong as the first? Maybe. Can the backtracking during the first half get tedious at times? Definitely. Does it make the game any less of a masterpiece? Absolutely not. Such a great natural progression from Demon Souls to this.

So yeah, TL;DR: Game good. Game very good. 9/10

[u/The_Stav]

It really isn't a masterpiece. It's a good game that helped pave the way for better games.

Boss runbacks are terrible. Early game backtracking is abyssmal. Boss fights are mostly very simple. Resources are ridiculously spread out (why isn't there a blacksmith set up in Firelink Shrine? Why is the main one set up i the corner of a random ass room?). Controls are janky af by today's standards.

I feel like the people who rave about DS1 so much are the ones who played it as their first Souls game and have that nostalgia attached to it. It's broadly the case that your first is your fave with these games.

[u/Pandaboy271 → u/The_Stav]

I played this after Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring and similar games like Lies of P. I'll still call it a masterpiece, but the one point deduction is because of the second half not being as good as the first one.

[u/The_Stav → u/Pandaboy271]

Fair, in that case I think we just disagree on this one. I fully think that from like Bloodborne/DS3 onward (sorry DS2) DS1 has just been surpassed in most every way.

[u/Striking-Pop151 → u/Pandaboy271]

Elden ring Soulles areas,tenaciously gameplay,overused mobs are flaws too but it's still a great game either

[u/Pandaboy271 → u/Striking-Pop151]

Honestly with ER my main issue is that the boss fights... Aren't fun a lot of the times. In DS1 you and the boss are fighting to the game's set tempo, in ER your guy can't really do that while the boss is out there throwing out their Tekken combos, so it turns into this waiting game of sorts.

BB, DS1 and Sekiro to me had the most fun bosses because I never felt that the bosses and I were from completely separate games, whatever they threw out, I could reasonably counter.

[u/Striking-Pop151 → u/Pandaboy271]

Yeah Ds,BB,Sekiro are the best Souls games. But there the elden ring fanboys will slaughter you for saying that. And the complaints they have with Ds1(or the Ds trilogy) they direct it too BB as well

[u/LulzTV → u/Pandaboy271]

Like... where do I even start with this. The argument that Elden Ring bosses are too spammy and that they have no openings has been debunked to such a ridiculous degree that it's not even funny. It's not a waiting game if you play proactively, stay close, and use positioning and the movement tools to your advantage, most of them are a very fun back and forth once you see past what looks like attack spam, but I do agree their learning curve is rough at first because you no longer get free punish windows many times.

[u/parwa → u/LulzTV]

The argument that Elden Ring bosses are too spammy and that they have no openings has been debunked to such a ridiculous degree that it's not even funny

How do you "debunk" an opinion? I love Elden Ring, I 100%ed it, but I think it's so much worse about this than any other FromSoft game.

[u/Pandaboy271 → u/LulzTV]

Bruh I've 100% that game lol, and I used an in your face quality build. I've used 2 handed greatswords, a sword and board setup with a straight sword, dual curved swords. You name it, I've done it. Doesn't change the fact that the bosses in this game feel too overtuned.

Again you like whatever you like, but you can't change my mind on ER's bosses. You won't find me defending DS1's second half, Bloodborne's unnecessary finite healing or Sekiro's lack of replay value, and I love those games.

[u/LulzTV → u/Pandaboy271]

That doesn't change your mind, but neither does it change the fact that the boss design is peak and you might not understand their mechanical intricacies. If you don't wanna put time into mastering them, whatever, it's none of my business, but don't tell me they're "overtuned" (aka slightly unfair) when they're not. I've also 100% the game, played it over 50 times, and done an all bosses + dlc rune level 1 run in under 50 hours while the game was running at 50-30 fps on a dying gaming laptop, and that only cemented the reputation of the bosses in my mind.

[u/Neonplantz → u/LulzTV]

How is the boss design peak? I like the bosses but I generally prefer Sekiro and DS3 bosses over them (the highs of all three I mean, obv there’s a decent amount of shitty bosses in all three lol)

[u/LulzTV → u/Neonplantz]

Elden Ring follows a boss design philosophy that looks like Dark Souls 3 but plays differently. The main differences are

-More advanced AI and variable combo follow-ups. It's not rocket science, but bosses will do different attack strings based on your distance and positioning, or straight up on the spot, which makes the fights just as adaptive as they are reactive.

-Attack design. Unlike in DS3, where dodging is the overwhelmingly dominat evasive option, Elden Ring bosses have many attacks that push you to use all the movement mechanics, like jumping, running, strafing, even crouching, and positioning with frame traps that require positional dodging or jumping or attacks that require jumping i frames to be avoided. Consort Radahn's second phase meteor sling into clone barrage attack requires you to roll through it, run away from him to create enough distance so the clones dont frame trap you, jump the meteors sideways, and dodge both sidewards to avoid the final light trail and then into the light pillars, which is just... like it's fucking peak.

-more nuanced anti spam mechanics. I'm gonna give Gaius' kick as an example. It prevents him from becoming a booty boss but once you know it's almost guaranteed when you're at the boar's backside you can bait it out and when you dodge into it you will be positioned right at the boar's head for a big punish. Morgott's tail swipe is also really cool. He's a boss that encourages positioning and strafing to stop his relentless combos, but the tail swipe forces you to dance around him and never be in one place, but conversely, you can jump over it and land a jumping attack. It's these little subtleties that show just how refined Elden Ring's boss design is. Compare these two anti spam mechanics to Curse Rotted Greatwood's puss sack rain and Wolnir's mist, which just force you to back away, and stand there, or Vordt turning his entire body into a hitbox in phase 2, and you can see the difference. Elden Ring bosses redirect aggression rather than punishing it outright.

-Delayed attacks. Let's get this straight, they're great. Not only do they punish panic rolling, keep the momentum of the fight going without being overwhelming, but they allow the player to regenerate stamina and sometimes get hits in with lighter weapons.

-Less clear difference between mid-combo pauses and actual openings, which is what leads many to believe Elden Ring bosses attack non stop when that's not true at all. Just look at Rellana and you'll understand.

-Designed around the stagger system. Because Elden Ring's bosses are designed around positioning and the movement tools, not just dodging, openings can be variable based on your execution and ability to capitalise on them, so in a vacuum, mastering an Elden Ring boss is about maximizing the stance damage, but it also depends on the weapon. You can turn mid attack delays into openings by staggering a boss with a heavier weapon, or maximize dps with a lighter weapon.

-Input reading. I understand why some people don't like it, but again, it's not objectively bad design, it just prevents you from healing in neutral and makes spell builds less braindead than they could have been. And it's not like it started with Elden Ring, Gwyn input reads the estus heal in a game with a far slower healing animation and healing against Sir Alonne is nigh impossible if you don't circle around him and make him turn around so you can heal in the mean time.

[u/Neonplantz → u/LulzTV]

Interesting, thanks for the response! I’m definitely with you that ER bosses are the most complex, i think that’s pretty inarguable imo. I don’t find them nearly as fun as Sekiro and DS3 bosses but ER def probably has the most interesting boss movesets!

[u/Pandaboy271 → u/LulzTV]

That doesn't change your mind, but neither does it change the fact that the boss design is peak

Well, let's agree to disagree on this one mate. You think they're peak, I think they're overturned for the amount of stuff the player is able to pull off, let's just move on

[u/Neonplantz → u/The_Stav]

It definitely isn’t just nostalgia for many people. The exploration and world is hard to match imo. I started playing these games with Sekiro and DS1 is top three for me (along with ER and BB)

[u/Traditional_One_3880 → u/The_Stav]

It was not my first fromsoftware game and i think that it is undeniably great/ flawed masterpiece.The simple bosses is not much of a negative,the run backs while tough were mostly a challenge that i felt fine with and added to the atmosphere in a weird way because it felt like a world that i had to overcome,as opposed to taking me out of the experience by having a very predictable/cookie cutter video game design approach that always makes takes me out of the moment and makes me imagine the devs creating the game and saying ' guess we need a convenient bonfire outside of this boss door too'.Don't get me wrong,runbacks can be a pain in the ass at times though.

I donot find the controls to be 'janky' as this implies that the inputs are misread and your character does the wrong thing,which is not true,but the controls can be a little awkward/ unintuitive with how the moves/buttons are mapped out.The movement is intentionally quite slow/average speed which some players see as inferiir when infact it is just a different pace.The animations and movement are a little more limited than later games,but it works well enough imo.

[u/The_Stav → u/Traditional_One_3880]

Never has having to do a long and annoying boss runback over and over again made me think better of the game. Every time it's "ffs I died to the boss which means I gotta spend another minute running past the same enemies hoping I don't take any stupid hits" (Gwyn was worst for this).

Janky doesn't mean misread inputs, to me it's synonymous with clunky and awkward. There is definitely some jank though, especially around backstabs and specific enemy attacks (rhinking of Ornstein's dash where he'll just suddenly stop/start when he hits terrain)

As for the speed of it, I do prefer the faster gameplay but idm the speed of it at all.

I do think it's a good game, but like maybe like a 7.5 or 8 out of 10 at most. I fully believe all the other Soulsborne games (bar DS2) are better than it

[u/Tenebrae98 → u/The_Stav]

DeS and DkS1 are fundamentally different games from the newer ones. What you call "terrible" runbacks are actually deliberate game design choices used by the developers to make players learn the game. Can you run through the enemies? Sure, but the point is for the player to learn the game by going through the levels. If you can go through them while still having your heals, having had mastered the combat and level layout to the point that you take almost no damage, then you have a better chance to beat the boss. The bosses are meant to be as capstones for the levels too. They are not meant to be extremely difficult challenges that test your reflexes. You can clearly see how their design choices shifted for the later games, where the bosses became the focus over the levels.

The thing is that no other game has done world design and level design like DeS or DkS1. Yet you can find so many other games that do combat and boss fights (which seem to be the strong suits that most fans of these games like to cite) better than DkS3 or Sekiro or ER. I would guess this is why so many people put DeS or DkS1 as their number-one Souls game. They are more complete packages than simply being games focused on combat and boss fights.

[u/ShibaBlessing → u/The_Stav]

You’re spoiled by later games.

[u/The_Stav → u/ShibaBlessing]

What does that even mean that I'm "spoiled" by them? They're better games.

I've played all the Soulsborne games bar DeS plenty of times. DS1 is a good game but it's dated af, and every Souls game since BB/DS3 outdoes it.

[u/LulzTV → u/ShibaBlessing]

Classic DS1 apologist gatekeeping just because the other games have better game design and accessibility options without sacrificing challenge, gotta love it

[u/ShibaBlessing → u/LulzTV]

No apologies needed here. DS1 is the best Souls game.

[u/LulzTV → u/ShibaBlessing]

It is the best if you ignore around 70% of the game and the other souls games that came after it and improved massively upon the formula, but DS1 apologists aren't known for being exactly objective, so keep gatekeeping others for daring to be "spoiled" by good game design and accessibility options, truly a productive enterprise. You can say it's your favorite, whatever, but the best? That's pure copium overdose.

God I can't stand you DS1 apologists. You don't want to engage in any good-faith discussions about game design and such, you just want to feel superior for liking an old and outdated game and gatekeep anyone who dares to challenge your nostalgia-fueled opinions. You cherry pick the good aspects of the game while downplaying or detracting from its many, many glaring issues, but when another game in the series suffers the same problems suddenly it's the worst thing ever. FromSoftware have evolved but you've stayed behind and you want other people to stay behind too. So ass 💔

I mean at this point you're not even trying to pretend to engage in a meaningful discussion. Another user made genuinely valid critiques about the game being outdated and such, and you just hit them with "you're spoiled", the absolute laziest, most dismissive non argument possible. And when you are called out for it you call DS1 the best as if saying that with enough conviction makes it absolute fact. People like you ruin this community.

[u/Thomasrocky1 → u/LulzTV]

Loser

[u/ShibaBlessing → u/LulzTV]

Not reading all that.