I figure this is the right place to ask this, and I do not mean this question in any kind of inflammatory or troll way. This is something I'm curious about.
Why is Dark Souls popular? Why do you guys like it?
I originally got into it out of desire to see what the hype was with it being such a challenging game. And it was indeed challenging, but unlike most challenging games it actually knows the difference between
challenging and punishing. It heavily rewards skill so your encouraged to practice the game and not just zerg rush it, it encourages you to play cautiously and think things through.
Secondly, as an RPG it's brilliant as a character builder, since it's starting 'classes' are more just starting stat and item sets. Anyone can build any class into anything, if you make a mistake it's not a game over or restart. What combination of skills, weapons etc. you want is completely up to your imagination, without there being any artificial barriers preventing you from certain concepts.
The player community is, interesting. Summoned Phantoms are usually very helpful and friendly, seriously. I'd never seen another game where people are more eager to help someone find hidden secrets on such a common basis. But then there's Invading Phantoms, those being players who come in to kill you. This is honestly something I dislike a bit, but only because of how it combines with the soul system (which I'll get into later). However, the invading phantom has the balancing factor of being forced to fight you and up to 2 (or 3 in DS2) others at once, so they better be a skilled player to be a threat. Which considering they're interrupting an already hard game, of their own will I feel is rather fair, otherwise no one would get anywhere because of constant invaders. That you got two types of Invaders, the honourable ones and the cheap ones. The honourable ones follow an unwritten
code of honour the game community has developed over the years, there's smaller details like using Estus (Health Potions) that people clash on, but the main idea is that you approach the host, exchange greetings and then engage in combat like a duel. This mind you isn't forced on people in any way, but it is a rather popular culture because of how much more enjoyable it tends to make the game for both sides and for how it helps the community bond. But then you got the unhonourable ones, which atm flood Dark Souls 3 on account of it being a new game with a lot of fans, and being console-PC compatible to my knowledge. Basically, these are the players who use any trick in the book to win, which is usually baiting the host into every enemy on the map and then ganking them. It can be annoying, but it's also provides extra challenge in itself. But since invaders have a timer, it's also fun to just sit there and watch the invader freak out because their plan isn't working.
Before I forget, the soul system mentioned before. Soul's are both your Gold and Experience, you choose how much does to your character itself and how much goes to getting new gear or upgrading current gear. Rather simple idea, except for one catch. When you die you drop all the souls on you, and the only way to get them back is to return to where you die and retrieve them. If you die before getting them though? They're gone forever. This has caused many rage quits from people (including myself), but at the same time it adds an incentive to stay alive and use your ahead.
Then there's the world. It's dark, gritty and pretty unforgiving. With only
brief glimpses of true happiness, it's not a world you get to experience too often (that's well executed) and it really set's the mood for the challenges you have ahead of you.
It's method of telling a story isn't straight forward at all either. It does it in a way where if you just want to game you can do that, kill bosses and more bosses just because you like the gameplay and don't worry about a story. But if you do care about the story? You've got a rich amount of lore to dig into that runs so deep that there are
channels dedicated to it. And note the same applies to the characters, they're a lot deeper than the game would suggest by itself, but even with the game alone there are a variety of interesting and entertaining personalities.
And lastly, the sun.
Always
praise the sun.
Edit: The soundtrack is also
awesome.
