Dark Souls: Remastered review – dark fantasy RPG makes glorious return

“Prepare to Die” saw Dark Souls become an unlikely hit in 2011. Seven years on, the price is still being paid. There have been two sequels, an endless array of merchandise, an army of writers and video-makers dedicated to dissecting the game’s mysteries and now Remaster.

The game is famous for the wrong things. Dark Souls is an inversion of the kind of stories games usually tell. It constructs a meticulous dark fantasy world in which almost everything is trying to kill you. The challenge lies not in conquering it but in surviving it and trying to understand it. It is opaque, even mystical; true comprehension always feels just out of reach.

For those familiar with the game, playing through again is a stark reminder of just how flabby Dark Souls’ imitators, and even its own sequels, have become. The world of Dark Souls is almost one landmass, with few loading screens, and the way it intricately twists around itself is an architectural feat. The spaces are cramped, the enemies placed like chess pieces. No video game world feels quite so solid, so marvellous to unravel and so plausible as Lordran.

A major part of this is the weird and unsettling aesthetic. Lordran is a ruin, an abandoned remnant of what was once the gods’ playground. The bosses can be inscrutable monsters, but more often they are mighty wrecks of eras long gone: a giant wolf guarding her master’s grave; two knights standing guard in the throne room of a desiccated reign. Eventually, you’ll meet the greatest minds, the shapers of this world’s history, all mad and feral.

Dark Souls: Remastered is out now for £29.99. A Nintendo Switch version is forthcoming.

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