Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition review

If you decide to pick up Dark Souls on PC before October 26th, you'll be treated the new DLC early and at no extra cost. Artorias of the Abyss centers around traveling to the world of Oolacile to combat the legendary Artorias and save the land from being consumed by the spreading abyss. Initiating the DLC is a bit complicated, but thankfully it provides some of the best Dark Souls content to date.

For those nervous whether the DLC will remain true to the Dark Souls spirit, relax. Oolacile maintains the same sense of exploration, wonder, and danger that made the original game so appealing. It sets the right tone and atmosphere that forces the player to traverse the landscape shield in hand, anticipating the next enemy encounter. Most if not all of the enemies in the DLC are unique to the world of Oolacile, which contributes to the tension of the journey. The three major boss fights — Artorias, Black Dragon Kalameet, and Manus, Father of the Abyss — are arguably the toughest challenges all of Dark Souls has to offer. Even the toughest fights in regular Dark Souls don't quite live up to the new ones.

In addition to the new single player content, Oolacile contains a new form of multiplayer combat. After the Artorias fight, the player may stumble into the Battle of Stoicism, which offers 1v1, 2v2, and 4-player free-for-all matches. Unlike world PvP, your humanity and souls are not on the line in the Battle of Stoicism. This new form of multiplayer winds up feeling like a safer, less stressful alternative for people who aren't looking to gamble their hard-earned souls.

The fights in the Battle of Stoicism are simple, but the rules leave a bit to be desired. Each fight is given a time limit — I only managed to get into 1v1 matches where the limit was 5 minutes — and the victor is determined by the amount of kills at the end of the round. The fight is not separated into rounds, so any damage you take in the process of killing your adversary will still be present when he or she returns. That is, unless you prepared ahead of time. While the rules state that no healing items can be used on the battlefield, and the game appropriately locks them out, healing miracles still seem to be functional. I dueled one player multiple times who would fully heal up while waiting for me to respawn, which made my potential success that much more difficult. Every player has access to these miracles in theory, so perhaps it's not an issue in the long run. Be aware, though, that when you dive into the Battle of Stoicism, some people may be more prepared than you at the start.

It's difficult to pass final judgement on the PC port of Dark Souls. The PC controls and lack of an update to outdated problems feel inexcusable. It contains great new content like the Battle of Stoicism and Oolacile, but the content is unnecessarily hard to find. Matches in Stoicism have long wait-times, I believe, because many people still haven't found or reached that part of the DLC yet. Despite these issues, if you have a 360 controller and the patience for it's long boot-time, this is by far the best version of Dark Souls currently available. It's a shame that anyone without a controller has to struggle through broken controls to see it.

Lordran changes people. Indeed, the world of Dark Souls does nothing if not leave an impression on anyone who steps foot into its kingdom. Lordan is cold, unfeeling, and uncompromising. It's skeletons will slice you to pieces, bores will impale your organs, and rats will infest you with disease. With the PC release of Dark Souls fresh in our minds, it was time to revisit this unforgiving land. I couldn't have been more excited.

My quest to re-enter Lordran was arduous. It seemed Dark Souls's reputation for being difficult had extended to simply launching the game. Every time I booted it up, the game window just hanged. Clicking anywhere on the screen would cause it to lock up and I would be forced to restart it. After about an hour of research, the shockingly appropriate solution presented itself. All I needed was patience. After letting the game's boot process take its course — a course that lasts 2-3 minutes every time I start it — I was finally prepared to die.

The problems with PC port are immediately apparent when you hit the title screen. The Windows default mouse icon hasn't even changed. No special Dark Souls icon for this port, but more importantly, the cursor never goes away. The entire time you play Dark Souls you'll be forced to notice the iconic Windows mouse arrow bouncing around the environment. Even during combat and exploration. It's a horrendous distraction that is indicative of the kind of port we have here.

As if the cursor wasn't bad enough, the controls themselves are a disaster. Dark Souls was designed for a controller, and the port must assume the player has a PC controller handy. Without one, the game is nearly unplayable. Dark Souls is all about precise movement, quick reaction times, and thinking on your feet. These techniques become nearly impossible when mouse movement seems to jerk around unevenly, menu navigation feels half-unfinished, and the default keymapping is nonsensical. The game plays fine with a 360 controller plugged in, but the keyboard and mouse controls appear to overcomplicate an already difficult game.

Dark Souls's trip to PC keeps the game nearly untouched, for better and for worse. The port leaves many of the problems of the original version in tact. The tiny bearer's ring, a gift you can choose at the start of the game, still erroneously states in the creation menu that it will regenerate health over time. In reality, The ring only boosts your maximum health. Covenants, arguably the most interesting piece of the Dark Souls puzzle, are still a mystery to anyone not combing the Dark Souls wiki for information. Important mechanics such as kindling, reversing hollow, and summoning players remain unexplained. Dark Souls is great because of the mystery and wonder it presents, but it's a shame that the developers didn't use this PC port as an opportunity to clean up the rough edges.

It's not all bad news, however. Perhaps the biggest difference between the PC and console versions of Dark Souls is the frame rate. In the console versions, there are several areas throughout the adventure that drop to unacceptable levels of fps; there are whole sections of the game that feel like slideshows. The PC version, while still not an entirely smooth frame experience, is greatly improved. Even in Blighttown, an area infamous on consoles for being sluggish, the PC journey is primarily a smooth one. The frame rate will drop occasionally, but only for a second or two.

Despite the port's issues, it didn't take long for me to get right back into the Dark Souls vibe. Rolling around the environment to marvel at the over-the-top ragdoll physics, planning escape routes as a black phantom invades, placing "Praise the Sun" exclamations after difficult boss rooms — this is the heart of Dark Souls. For all of the problems the port has, it retains everything that made the original version great. Additionally, thanks to the improved frame rate, the complex landscapes no longer suffer from unbearable presentation.