Home » Reviews » Game Reviews » Dark Souls Remastered Review: Nostalgia in 4K

Dark Souls Remastered Review: Nostalgia in 4K

Our Dark Souls Remastered Review, exploring the question: Should you buy DKS Remastered? We played it all, made a bunch of videos, updated the wiki and are now ready to tell you what we think about this recent release. You may be surprised to find that our initial impressions were a bit off the mark… (video coming soon!)

Genre: Action RPG
Developed by: QOLC / From Software
Published by: Bandai Namco / From Software (Japan)
Release date: May 25th 2018
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC (Reviewed on PS4 Pro)
Launch Price: 39.99 USD

Dark Souls Remastered Features

  • Experience the original Dark Souls title with increased resolution (up to 4k) and 60FPS
  • Engage in a revamped multiplayer experience of up to 6 online players.
  • Obtain the Artorias expansion bundled with the game

Story & Setting

The game has made no changes regarding story and setting from the original release. This is, at its core, a graphic and “cleanup” update to the game that enables newcomers to the series to experience the original offering, while modernizing it in the most minimalistic way possible.

For those who have never played Dark Souls before, the story sets the stage for the trilogy: a cyclic world that is slowly progressing towards ultimate darkness from whence it came. You and others struggle, perhaps pointlessly, to bring about another dawn. But you may find that not all that is told to your character is as it seems, and will have opportunities to make choices accordingly.

Summarizing Dark Souls Lore in one paragraph

The world of Dark Souls is a world of cycles. Kingdoms rise and fall, ages come and go, and even time can end and restart as the flame fades and is renewed. These cycles are linked to the First Flame, a mysterious manifestation of life that divides and defines separate states such as heat and cold, or life and death. As the First Flame fades, these differences also begin to fade, such as life and death having little distinction, and humans becoming Undead. The onset of an Age of Dark, the time when the First Flame has fully died, is marked by endless nights, rampant undeath, time, space, and reality breaking down, lands collapsing and converging on one another, people mutating into monsters, darkness covering the world, and the Gods losing their power. To avoid this and prolong the Age of Fire, the bearer of a powerful soul must “link” themselves to the First Flame, becoming the fuel for another age. If this is not done, the First Flame will eventually die, and an Age of Dark will begin.

The truly unique experience of souls is that the story is not told by exposition but rather available only to those searching for it and willing to spend the time and effort mapping item descriptions and discerning truths from lies in every NPC dialogue available. If you let the promise of a glorious knighthood for a Sun Princess distract you, the unsavory truth of Gwyndolin’s reality may pass you by. If you fail to explore areas thoroughly, you may never meet Priscilla or learn of her world.

Dark Souls Remastered successfully delivers the original story, and stays true to its setting – except that souls are now a shiny hue of blue. Lore enthusiasts will surely have a field day with this one!

 

dark-souls-remastered-review-quelaan
Let the war of the waifus begin anew!

Design, Visual & Audio

The project had some back-and-forths in development and some features were ultimately dismissed including HDR but this remaster is, in the end, mostly about the graphics. And here is where the opinions of players will radically differ and the most controversy will lie. An important thing to note before going into this is that there are two really distinct camps for this game: Console players vs PC players. As I played on console, my opinion will be from a console player’s point of view.

The world of Dark Souls is fantastically designed, and that has not changed, but now we can see it in much sharper resolution in our larger screens. I have actually enjoyed looking at the higher resolution icons for items and discerning things that were not quite visible before, but the place where the remastered shined the most for me was on the enemies. Better textures and better animations meant that the bosses and enemies, with their details and qualities, acquired an enlarged “Presence“. I was honestly surprised to find a renewed interest in even the Frog-Ray. and I increasingly noticed details on each Boss encounter that I had not quite seen in the thousands of hours I spent with the original.

dark-souls-remastered-review-anor-londo
Still a pretty view!

You will not be blown away by the graphics, and areas with small corridors or the distant objects in the Forest may feel rather underwhelming. This is because seeing a higher resolution render of a low pixel design simply sharpens the fact that the base design is simplistic. You will, however, notice an overall improvement to the general atmosphere as lighting has been reworked to deliver more impactful scenes and make your own character better-defined.

You will absolutely notice the FPS difference and the performance. Blighttown is no longer a lagfest, and the many rolls in the toxic swamp can be precise and calculated. All animations being smoother also means you may notice some more enemy detail, such as the Taurus Demon’s hairs move – eerie!

Recent remasters like Dragon’s Dogma, Skyrim and Shadows of the Colossus have set the bar extremely high, and even if the Dark Souls Remaster doesn’t quite reach that level of quality, it is good enough to captivate the player. You often don’t notice anything is amiss when playing, which I think speaks volumes by itself, because you are playing a PS3 game on PS4 after all. While the environments themselves will most likely not stand out to the would be hollow re-experiencing Lordran again, they will surely notice the difference in enemies and Bosses, which have been given a lot of tender love and care.

It’s easy to see the negatives in Dark Souls Remastered, mostly because we have been spoiled with games like Assassin’s Creed: Origins, God of War, and we no longer see things objectively. We’ve become so accustomed to insane graphics that we cannot tolerate anything less than perfection, and Dark Souls Remastered is not perfect. However, you may have forgotten how it looked before compared to now, so we’ve left a little reminder for you below:

  • Some advise for those on PC who may feel this is not a “real” improvement over the freely available unofficial mod “DS Fix”: The issues that DS Fix introduced are, reportedly, nowhere to be seen in the official upgrade. Alongside this, other improvements to the remaster related to gameplay are likely to have more weight in your experience than the graphics could, so give everything due consideration.

 

Gameplay

Dark Souls is indeed all about the gameplay, and in this regard there’s little that Namco could have done to improve the original game that they haven’t done by releasing Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3.

It is entirely possible that many veterans will find it shocking just how “slow” everything is for this title, and perhaps gain a wholly new appreciation of the quality of life upgrades that time has brought us. Specifically, rolling in more than 4 directions in later Souls games would have been a nice addition here.

That said, and even though the majority of the pillars of gameplay remain unchanged, there ARE differences to how combat plays out. First of all, the framerate makes a HUGE difference when playing – as you are no longer guessing your swings but can see them precisely. This is a very important element of combat for me, and one that feels like a new experience.

Besides the several quality of life improvements (including some such as Covenant swapping at bonfires that I’m not entirely thrilled about), there are several fixes for known exploits that have been deployed, although we will not list them here as those exploits are still present on the original game.

dark-souls-remastered-review-dead-dragons
I caught myself enjoying the scenery a few times

[This might be addressed with a patch, but as it was not fixed as of publishing]. One glaring issue we would like to note in this section is that there seems to be some problem with input and delay. Occasionally you will press a button like attack or roll and nothing happens, but then 2-5 seconds later you pull off the animation, without having pressed anything else. I’m specifically referencing offline gameplay here, not online where lag might be a factor. It happens often enough that it can be frustrating, and I have also verified that it is happening to other players. Hopefully this gets fixed soon, or I foresee many unhappy players.

Last but not least, the most noticeable gameplay changes relate to Multiplayer. Being able to rejoin the frey of “launch day souls” for one of my favorite titles with even more participants is a blast. I had no troubles summoning other players and could get constant and fast action offering my services for hire. I also took full advantage of the new password system to aid fellow reviewers that needed my help or wanted to test some trade mechanics.

The enhanced experience made Dark Souls feel fresh and engaging, and the more I played the more I wanted to keep playing, just like the old times!

dark-souls-review-solaire-ps4pro
PRAISE THE SUN!

Should you buy Dark Soul Remastered?

Remasters, Remakes and Reboots are a divisive proposition at the best of times. I am personally not opposed to them, and only interested if I get something out of it such as a modernized experience. For me, Dark Souls Remastered is worth the price based chiefly on the opportunity to re-experience Dark Souls but in 4k from a new platform, with a revitalized multiplayer. PC players who believe the graphics upgrade is lackluster can consider the accommodation that their price is only 20USD and arrive at a conclusion on the worthiness of the purchase based on their online play.

Dark Souls Remastered may not be perfect, and I must admit I went into it with some degree of worry, but the magic of the game is too strong and you will feel the nostalgia wash over you. Bandai Namco has successfully pulled off this remaster, somehow, someway, and I don’t think you will truly understand until you play yourself. I cannot wait for May 25th to see what you all think!

For those who started with Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 or have never played souls: the Remaster is an unmissable experience that they should not pass up on. The original Dark Souls will open your eyes to how this all started, and hopefully fill the gap until we get some other title to scratch that souls itch.

 


If you are looking for more Souls content, you might want to check out our Dark Souls 3 Review, or focus on what is new with Dark Souls Remastered and some details on DKS Remaster Development. Keep up to date on everything Dark Souls Remastered with upcoming Video Walkthroughs, Boss and Build Guides, and more!

 

About our Reviews

8.8

Great

Story & Setting 9
Design, Visual & Audio 8.5
Gameplay 9.5
Replayability 8.5
Pricepoint 8.5

Summary

A wonderful trip down memory lane, in 4k and 60FPS. Engaging combat, thrilling multiplayer and intriguing lore make Dark Souls Remastered a worthy purchase for veterans looking to polish their backstabbing skills; and a mandatory buy for those who never got around to playing the original 2011 release.

About the Author

Games

Comments

58 responses to “Dark Souls Remastered Review: Nostalgia in 4K”


  1. >

    Many people will play these games once, but they will repeat segments tens of times until they get them right. As much as I hated it the first time I played it, I can remember every twist and turn of Tower of Latria 3-1 (different game, but you get the idea).

  2. Strange. Even though I only played Dark Souls for once, I remember a lot of things.

  3. >

    This totally came to me because I like to see how much damage Tarkus can do (good candidate for most OP NPC summon ever). Now, I’ve done all this before, but since it’s not new I’m daydreaming a bit.

    Anyway, I take Tarkus down past the Berenike Knight who he kills effortlessly and on the way to Ricard. I’ve known for quite some time the room Tarkus is summoned from is right above where Ricard is camping (dudes are literally in the same apartment complex). What I like to do is crowd Ricard with my shield up because Tarkus can hit through me.

    I swear to God Ricard knew what I was up to because he starts shooting at Tarkus. A couple seconds later the Iron Knight slams Ricard into oblivion and I’m thinking to myself “These guys really seem to hate each other” and the daydream spirals into sitcom territory. Like Ricard is pissed off that Tarkus’ crazy heavy armor is too loud in the upstairs apartment and opens fire the second he sees him. Tarkus accuses him of looking through his mail and slams a greatsword into his face. Typical Seinfeld/Kramer like relationship.

  4. Well the Great Hollow is one of the worst place to visit…i know that, back at the time when DS was released in 2011, many people tried to reach the bottom of the Great Hollow and got to the Lake of Ash…well….once reached the Lake of Ash many people haven’t been able to go back to the surface due to some glitch in the Great Hollow which didn’t allow to make a step from a branch to a platform….and those people have been obliged to start the game over….

  5. >

    And that stupid AF spot in great hollow by 2 lizards? Where you cant get up to landing because of a hump in the root. Can’t roll it, can’t jump it, can’t backstep it, can’t run it. Only way I’ve ever done it was by chance after taking off all gear and equip, then just running while moving stick in every direction back and forth, which is dangerous cause you might accidently run right off the branch to hang with gravity. So dumb!

  6. >

    >

    Lol :00011:
    Just for THIS time….i didn’t slip on that damn branch…and i got there really soon, such as at SL 7 just to get a decent armor (Crimson Set) and the Falchion for my Dex/Faith
    All the other times i tried to walk on that branch my feet seemed awry and in one second i was falling in the swamp below…..

  7. >

    Don’t forget about the Golem’s windy flatulence and the fact that they live near an airport…and every time you walk out your door you might get hit by a rock. But hey, at least you have a convenient corner store for herbal remedies and snakes to keep the rodents away.

  8. In Sen’s right now and it occurs to me there’s a sitcom waiting to happen. Tarkus lives right above Ricard with their cynical neighbor in the steel armor ready to rain on their parade. Meanwhile, the iron golem is always throwing noisy parties

  9. Depending on how many souls I’m carrying, sometimes I just suicide out after getting the gear. Why? Because screw From is why! Side note: playing as a cleric and using force up there is a great way of keeping the skeeters at bay (temporarily).

    I also realized that all my previous trepidation about the blowdart gauntlet was misplaced. It occurred to me that none of them can make you MORE toxic once you’re already there, so it only takes 30 seconds to walk around killing them while you just heal up a couple of times and take the bloom after you’re done. Sometimes, naked aggression is your friend!

  10. Lol!

    My daughter was watching me do that part last night and I said when crossing that branch the first time, “I wonder if they fixed the spot where you get hung up.” My daughter asked what I meant and I told her “There’s this part on the branch where your feet get hung up on something and it’s hard to cross safely over it because you need to put more pressure on the stick and basically run and you tend to get thrown off.”

    Guess what happened to me?

  11. >

    Speaking of Blighttown deaths, has anyone else ever noticed that the tree branch/root leading to the Sealer Set has some sort of odd glitch (for lack of a better word) where when you try to walk back the way you came, your feet always hitch up on something invisible and often cause you to slide off? I’ve died there more in BT than any other spot, mostly because I always do this. It drives me nuts.

  12. ah yeah pvp. didn’t talk about that yet :D
    I would say i’m a dark souls vet, but pve mainly… never really got into PVP in any of the DS games.
    Maybe with this remaster i should consider reading up on that and learning the ropes in that department… the game is so bloody active that one cannot reverse hollowing and make it to the boss without expecting an invader XD. Tha was very different for me when playing on PS3.

    The ones i attempted to fight off all killed me, so im a runner now XD
    time to get better at fighting enemies with braincells i guess.

    on performance improvement: Especially Sen’s fortress was a lot easier for me this time around, the extremely annoying swinging blades there were so easy to dodge compared to PS3.

  13. I went Darkwraith and started invading the Painted World last night. I had much better luck fighting hosts than I did fighting invaders while lvling through the game.

    3 losses. Only 1 of which did the host have a summoned helper.
    12 successful invasions.
    1 disconnect.
    And 1 black crystal when the host was hiding too well.
    Not a bad session.

    I actually had more fun with the PVP than on DS3.
    Yes, I’m one of those people that played on and off since DeS but didn’t play online until 3. So for me, it’s feeling great.

    I’m just a Chaos Blade ninja flipper. Basically the same build I pvp’d with in DS3. Only now, my opponents lack all those fancy WA and a slew of weapons I hated fighting against. And the phantom range is almost non existent now. I’m really happy with it.

    Not sure what the meta will now be, but I’m assuming it will be somewhere between 80-120.
    I’m at SL 85 and I feel like I could stop anywhere at 90. 100 if I decide I need the extra HP.
    I’m not usually one to stop lvling but if the online play demands it, I might actually stick with a meta this time.

  14. + The glorious great scythe/lifehunt has returned.
    + Gravelording now works consistently.
    + Giantdad is back.
    + Nice QoL changes.

    – The network still blows.
    – Save editors and exploits have already infested multiplayer.
    – Giantdad is back.
    – Sif must die again.

  15. Something else that I’d forgotten about was the penalty for leaving covenants. Luckily it occurred to me before I joined Darkwraiths and lost all my DMB ranks. At first I was kinda butt hurt and thought that Bamco wasted another opportunity to improve the game, but then i thought about it in a different way. This makes new character creation a lot more fun and should encourage new play styles from each file. I’m going to create a character for each PvP/Co-OP covenant and make sure the starting class has the best min/max potential for what that covenant offers. Some covenants apply to all but others benefit from certain classes more IMO. I intend to use dragon weapons with my dragon bro so class that starts with highest str, Bandit. Sun Bro seems obvious to select Cleric or Knight. Cleric seems fitting for Gravelord too, more fore lore irony, but the GLCS requires healthy str/dex so maybe Knight as well. Darkwraiths can be anything I suppose but you get my drift. Using covenant devotion to drive character class gives the decision a little more value to me.

  16. I think I mentioned my excitement of re-experiencing DS with the PS4 head phones in an earlier thread. First time thru I lived with college roommates and played in the living room, so never had the volume up too high to be courteous. Its been great hearing all the ambient background noise that was never audible to me before. One hugely surprising bit was the foreboding music that kicks in as you’re walking down the stairs towards the cliff in Ariamis. The area that triggers the King Jeremiah, aka the King in Yellow, invasion. Swear it’s the precursor to Yahar’gul music from Bloodborne. The other ambient noise that i never heard and is very audible as an invader is this low resonant sound, almost like a hum that fades in and out. Makes me feel like im listening to the pulse of time or the fading flame, super eerie.

  17. It’s funny. I got through Blighttown with a record three or so deaths, because the framerate was nice. I started with the Valley of Drakes entrance and cleared stuff out there, and then worked my way back from The Depths. Now I’m in Sen’s Fortress. :)

  18. >

    I made it to the bottom via the valley of drake shortcut using the master key. once there i killed the Chaos witch with a combination of sorceries and the drake sword… it took a while because i did it really early (but her pattern is easy enough to master), but it gave acces to upgrading a pyromancy flame to give an alternative for sorceries. and the pyromancy flame let me farm the giant leeches very fast (great chaos bolt) in blight town for green titanite. This gave me acces to magic weapons.

  19. >

    My intention was to do a dex/int build this time, but I made the mistake of not sticking to one or the other in the early part of the game. So I have a sorc with only 21 int, and my weapons don’t really do enough to damage much with a buff yet, so I had to quickly convert a halberd to Magic because I was getting tuned. You made a good choice pumping points into Int (although I find some spots really tough for casting, like blighttown or the forest…spells keep flying over the heads of enemies.

  20. i played it a lot the last 4 days, and im in the camp of people who ‘ enjoy it more than they thought’. it plays better than i expected after having played DS2 and DS3 mostly. on the other topics:

    I have yet to press a gravelord sign that works… (on both PC and PS4 pro) connecting to their world always fails. co-op seems fine (ive only tried passworded co-op a couple of times).

    ive seen 1 Vagrant on the taurus demon tower.

    And one thing i really want to share that made me really happy:
    After trying Ornstein and Smough over 20 times on PS3 before being able to solo kill them, i managed this yesterday (smough killed first) in remastered on PS4 in a single try!! (with a sorcerer build with 30 int at the time :D). guess DS2 and 3 are really good at training you for DS1, or sorcery is very overpowered in DS1 (i never tried sorcery in the old DS!, so i dont really know).

  21. I’ve only been invaded a handful of times. Died on them all. I was really impressed with the better hit detection. I might actually stick around for awhile since I didn’t play online back in the day, and most of the issues I had with it seem better so far.

  22. As for game quality, everything is great except for lighting in dark areas. Whatever they did to improve lighting in lit areas has had the opposite impact on dark areas. Hit detection is a little too good honestly, haha. I’ve had a few pvp matches where i could have used some of that DS3 phantom range :lol!: :pve:

    Pretty annoyed by all the folks who have returned to immediate BS strats, but not surprised I guess. I understand if you see me doing it then return the favor, but I approach every encounter with face2face intentions just to see immediate strafing for backstabs, some people have no sense of decency :00006:

    And I’m extremely happy for the return of estus punish. Who needs a Lloyd when you have animation frames like that :00008: Praise it!

  23. Just be aware that you’ll encounter some invaders spamming you with very quick wrath of the gods spells. It is the old DS days again. :X(:

  24. >

    I think I saw 3 vagrants in my whole time on PS3. Glad to see they seem to be working better.

    My understanding is that the “disasters” only happen when you’re in NG+. I saw it happen a grand total of once on PS3. I can safely say that I’ve seen zero “disasters” on PS4 but am constantly seeing Gravelord signs and getting the messages that the Gravelord Servant death messages quite routinely. If it’s anything indication, NG+ should be pretty much all in on the phantom enemies.

  25. >

    Could be a mix of the fps increase plus motion blur being added into the game.

Log in to leave a Comment

Latest from Fextralife