A game that I will be doing a close analysis of is the Dark Soul series, this is because I find these games to not follow the norms of many games. The game has a rich story-line which the player must follow by reading dialog that are given by the items that you find or NPC that you speak with. The games take place within a medieval fantasy setting, where the player coexists with the likes of knights, dragons, and various monsters. The recurring theme of the games’ settings is that of a once powerful and prosperous kingdom which eventually fell into decadence and damnation after a series of unfortunate events. The protagonist of each “Souls” game can have a varying gender, appearance, and starting class. Players can choose between classes, such as knights, bandits, clerics, and mages. Each class has its own profile that can be tailored by the player’s experience and choices. The player gains Souls from battles which act as both experience points to level up and as currency to buy certain items. The game follows a stamina mechanic which control the player’s action on how many times you can attack, roll-away from danger, and cast spells. This is one of mechanic which makes the game feel difficult and restricted, where you have to really plan out your actions or you could easily die. The main focus of the game-play mechanic comes from the environment and the enemies you encounter, which are both strategic design and placed to surprise you with split second reactions. The game is covered with hidden paths and treasure that can lead to traps or less dangerous routes within the map, while also having an invading mechanic which players from other world can invade your world. All these aspects of the game bring you to the edge of your seat with fear and excitement in the same time, which makes the game interesting with its dark theme.

Now onto the things that are wrong or questionable about the game which made me think, was this the developer intention. When you first begin playing the game for the first time you can feel that something is off about the controls in the game, which seem slow or not response enough while fighting the enemies. This may be due to the stamina effect controlling what you can do, which can be a bad or good mechanic depends on the player. I believe that in some aspect of the game it does work well but in other area it doesn’t. This is because there are areas where enemies doesn’t follow the same principles as the player with the stamina effect, which these enemies do many onslaught of attacks without rest. The game also suffer from the player receiving huge amount of damage when hit from traps, enemies and falling damage, this may be the developer intention of a way to make the game feel difficult, but to me I see it as a poor designing way of introducing challenge. Many games in the role-playing genre suffer from this by increasing the damage of the enemies to make the game feel challenging instead of figuring out creative means of making the enemy action interesting. Another thing that I found which annoy me was the restriction on how far you could cast spells with their lock on system in comparison to using a bow and arrow which has a first person view snipe system that can be shot from far away. Which give the impression that the developer want you to be in melee combat at all times or using a bow from far but not spells, which you can clearly see being the intention in the game.