Soon after the release of the two games "Dark Souls" and "Honor of Knights", major mainstream game media at home and abroad released game reviews one after another.

To everyone's surprise, even in Europe and the United States, "Dark Souls" was a one-sided success!

When those game evaluation media in Europe and the United States blew "Dark Souls", they even blew it more ruthlessly than the domestic media, which made many players wonder, how much money did Chen Mo stuff for them?

Some European and American game media even gave "Dark Souls" a close to full score, especially in the combat system, level design, world view design, etc., and even some media called "Dark Souls" a "unique masterpiece of cold weapon combat design", and even regarded Thunder Mutual Entertainment as a "dark god factory"!

As a large number of game reviews continue to come out, players are surprised to find that even in Europe and the United States, "Knights of Glory" has been completely crushed by "Dark Souls", whether it is professional evaluation, player ratings or sales, "Dark Souls" has surpassed "Knights of Glory" in an all-round way, and it is still showing an upward trend!

And with more and more professional reviews coming out, many players also understand where the unique charm of "Dark Souls" comes from.

It has to be said that ordinary players pay more attention to the experience and feelings obtained in the game, while some professional media will analyze the design of a game more accurately, and this kind of evaluation often pays more attention to the artistry and design of the game.

And the game media, after analyzing "Dark Souls", summarized the advantages of this game into three aspects.

The first point is the extremely rich combat system. There are a wide variety of cold weapons in Dark Souls, and there are even many weapons that cannot exist in reality, and these cold weapons have their own uses.

Players can use weapons such as daggers and straight swords for speed and flexibility, as well as broadswords and sledgehammers for lethality. However, different weapons have different characteristics, and no matter what weapon is used, there will be corresponding weaknesses that must be compensated for by the player's good handling.

This is in stark contrast to "Knight's Glory", although "Knight's Glory" was born out of real-life combat, but the combat means are very simple, and many times the player's reflexes and character attributes are tested.

But in "Dark Souls", there are a lot of combat skills, and players can even interrupt the opponent's attack by anticipating the knife in advance, and at the same time, with special mechanics such as shield reversal, rolling, backstabbing, and execution, the entire combat system is very rich.

The second point is the pinnacle of level design. The mainstream level design in this world is still mainly numerically driven, which means that monsters are getting stronger and stronger, mainly because their stats are getting higher and higher.

Many game companies are even considering opportunistic tricks through various algorithms, allowing many monsters to refresh randomly, and at the same time giving these monsters corresponding attributes through the player's level progression, creating a sense of randomness for the player.

But in this mode, the player's experience will become very boring, as long as the player's attributes can crush the monster attributes of this level, that is, chopping melons and vegetables all the way.

If the player's attributes are not up to standard, it will be very painful during the battle, and it will be difficult to pass the level even if the skill is good.

But Dark Souls chose a different approach, which was to carefully plan each monster in the level. Although monsters will randomly spawn locations within a small range, the overall configuration is unchanged.

Coupled with the different characteristics of the monsters and the designed conspiracy, when the player challenges a certain level, it is equivalent to solving a puzzle.

Is it pulled out and hit one by one? Or do you inflict terrain kills on monsters in a specific way? Or maybe you put on a specific gear and go straight to it?

Different players have different methods, but not every method will work, and players will have to try again and again to figure out the optimal solution for this level.

At the same time, the design that all monsters will be resurrected after using a campfire makes the game much more difficult, but it also ensures the integrity of this level design to the greatest extent.

If the monsters don't come back to life, then the player only needs to slowly move one by one, and one day they will clear the level, but this is obviously not the original design of the game Dark Souls.

Dark Souls wants players to be able to solve puzzles perfectly, going from one campfire to another with a limited amount of health and vials.

This level design is very difficult and even desperate for many people, but it ensures that the level experience of Dark Souls is always at a super high level, without any discounts.

Moreover, the reason why "Dark Souls" is popular is not because it is difficult, but because it is difficult and reasonable.

The point of this game is not in the suffering itself, but in the sense of accomplishment that comes after suffering.

While other games are about the player's character growing, Dark Souls is about the player growing himself.

In the beginning, the player has to drink an elemental bottle against a skeleton, but later they can parkour all the way to the boss room and kill them as quickly as possible.

From the newcomer to the big guy, the player's character may not have become much stronger, but the player himself has really become stronger.

The charm of Dark Souls' level design is that it doesn't deliberately make things difficult for the player, but guides the player through failure after failure, allowing the player to try different methods and finally find the most suitable way to complete the level.

At the same time, "Dark Souls" takes the charm of exploration to the extreme.

While this isn't an open-world game, Dark Souls allows players to explore a variety of routes.

Different areas have different levels of difficulty, and Dark Souls doesn't enforce that players must follow a certain line, if some bosses completely kill the old woman and defeat the dancer after winning the second boss, they will enter the advanced area of Lothric City.

At the same time, there are a large number of hidden items in the corners of the map, which hide the unknown history of Dark Souls.

Through these one-word item descriptions, players can brainstorm the story behind the item, as well as the entire world background of Dark Souls.

The third point is the unique nature of the game. Although many people already have a certain understanding of dark games as early as the time of "Diablo", it is clear that the launch of "Dark Souls" has pushed the concept of dark games a big step forward!