With the remaster out soon, I felt this game deserved a final nod from me. This is more for me rather than people reading, but you're more than welcome to comment or feedback. I'm doing reviews with all the souls games, but im starting with this one.

Souls 1 is my favorite of the series. I started with it so ultimately I have a teeny bit of bias (As everyone tends to lean towards their starting game as their favorite) but just like the others it has its ups and downs. With easily over a thousand hours of experience and completed practically every type of run you can think of, I came to the conclusion ive experienced everything this game has to offer me.

For consistency I'm going to be looking past the purely technical problems, such as framerate drops and multiplayer issues, as that's not really a product of the game design as it is the hardware behind it. This game has plenty of those issues, but it will not be addressed

Lets start with the visuals. For an older game, this actually has some very impressive visuals. I do wish they removed the visual tint from areas like Blighttown and Lost Izalith (Green and Red respectively), but other than that there isn't much to hate. Environments and enemies look crisp, the lighting is very good, and it uses every aspect of the color pallet for different areas. From the deep sea blue in the Crystal Caves, to the Earthen Brown in the Tomb of the Giants, or Lush Green of Darkroot Forest, design of the areas aside each of them all have distinct and memorable features about them. Lighting is proven to not be an obstacle (Jokes about tomb of the giants aside) as dark environments are still easy to traverse and not overly obscuring.

Each setting very adequately promotes the mood it was desired to. Darkroot forest portrays the abandoned nature setting very nicely, the dark hopelessness of Tomb of the Giants, even the mysteriousness of Ash Lake. It feels as if the environments that are before us (Besides the rushed Lost Izalith) were the experience that was meant to be provided and what they had in their head initially. Never have I been confused on what im supposed to feel about an area.

The soundtrack is equally as impressive, each boss fight and anecdotal melodies of respective sounds and places all feel just as ampent as you think it would be. As the trilogy goes on the soundtracks get better, but that doesn't mean this game is lacking in that department.

Soundtrack is a very important feature of a game, and despite this game being a relatively quiet experience, where it is given is not in short supply. Orchesetral music, elaborate sheets and melodies makes the boss's who dont have shared music very memorable, so I have to give the soundtrack a pass even if you don't hear it all that often.

The designs of the levels themselves while maybe not entirely intentional, do promote and accentuate the style and path youre meant to take. My favorite thing is that its not all separated, you can see the areas from around eachother and different shortcuts from entirely separate areas lead to another. Blighttown looping back up and suddenly youre back at firelink shrine! Those kinds of things are what I consider fantastic map making. Its well designed, lots to explore, yet simple at the same time for a veteran.

Some areas do get annoying, like the Depths being a maze or Blighttown being a swamp, every single area in the game is going to have SOME sort of feature you hate about it. But that's just part of the challenge. Duke's Archives has super strong enemies, Lost Izalith has the lava, Tomb of the Giants has darkness, Blighttown has the swamp, and so on. All areas have a unique problem factor designed intentionally to be an added sense of challenge. While you don't have to LOVE the factors, the added difficulty is what makes this game all the more satisfying and hard.

One thing I will say though, is that the areas at the very start of the game could be placed a little better. Newcomers are expecting a very big challenge, so tougher than normal enemies are just going to be percieved as normal. Going to the skeletons and ghosts is definitely what happens first for newer players most of the time, and I think that maybe adding a locked door to the graveyard could've sufficed enough to help steer them in the right direction.

The gameplay itself is very freedom based. You're tossed in with no explanation and told "Just go." And for the most part, you can. Theres a lot of non-glitch oriented sequence breaking you can do, and with no real guide, quests, hud, or map, theres nothing but you telling you where you should go, and I wish more games would do that.

All right, all right. Time to tackle the elephant in the room: The combat.

The combat in this game is superb. All attacks are fluid, natural, and telegraphed to a reasonable extent. Every enemy feels like the attacks they put out is of adequate strength, in terms of damage, weapons, and animations.

Enemies have clear weaknesses and openings of attacks that you can easily exploit. But if you dont and choose a bullheaded appraoch, you're going to die. A lot.

The massive selection of weapons to choose from is great, in fact it doesnt really matter what weapon you choose as long as you upgrade and allocate stats accordingly, and thats one of the reasons this game is so good. A lot of the other weapons in the other souls games are just plain trash but the freedom of knowing "I like this weapon, I can use it reasonably!" for basically anything other than the Mail Breaker and the Broken Straight Sword is a godsend. The freedom of choosing any weapon that suits your style and doing very well with it for the course of the game should be staple in weapon based games. Good design here.

The funny thing with weapons, the stats of themselves don't actually matter all that much. The most important things that most people seem to forget is the stamina usage and moveset. Most newer players and even seasoned players opt into the most damage, rather than a comfortable weapon for their style. It's why I personally think the Longsword is the best weapon, easy to use, early, good stats, great moveset. But hey, if you like the weapon, go for it. You'll probably do well with it.

All in all, this is fantastic game design. I honestly wish that the remaster tackled some things other than technical points like removing the color tints in areas, hell maybe even fixing lost izalith, and keeping the rest as is.

Appearance 9/10. Not the most fantastic graphics and appearance but for 2011 this is probably some of the best you can get and STILL looks good.

Style 10/10. Sets the mood, no hand holding, you're put in the action and told to go, pulls it off perfectly.

Combat 9/10. Smooth, enemies have cheap moves here and there, but playing smart and careful is the name of the game and by doing so you'll be just fine.

Soundtrack 8/10. Fantastic soundtrack, but not heard very often, basically exclusively bossfights. Wish there was a little more, maybe some light ambience for areas.

Level Design 8/10. Areas link up reasonably well, clever map design, but some over the top mechanics appear sometimes in areas, where it rises a bit more than a challenge and feels a bit unfair sometimes, but a lot of people debate that the ideal experience shows it isnt fair.

Overall: 9/10. Would definitely recommend for newcomers and veterans alike. Provides a challenging and enveloping experience that definitely provides a sense of satisfaction and fun for those who enjoy a difficult game.