Absolutely adored by some and vehemently despised by others, the 'Souls series is one that inspires incredibly polarising opinions across the board; you're either totally okay with unlearning the vast majority of your preternatural gaming skills in favour of starting from the ground-up once again, or you hate the entire experience with a controller-smashing fury every time the game punishes you for thinking you could take an extra sword-swing. Instant-death abounds in the Souls titles, and with a game that racks up the amount of damage you'll take based on certain frames of attack animations, you're forced to really think about your presence on the battlefield, along with analysing every creature around you, so you can dodge, weave and block accordingly. It may not be everybody, but that;'s by far and away the beauty of it. There hasn't been a game in years that's elicited the violent Camp A/Camp B-divides that Dark Souls has, and for all of it's potential faults altering minuscule aspects that go against that very nature of every mechanic being so tight - there's no experience that even comes close to that of mastering it's many systems and statistics.
