Dark Souls 2: 10 Lessons All Games Must Learn From It

4. Let Us Learn From Our Mistakes

Dark Souls 2 features a short set of tutorials to help introduce players to more complex manoeuvres like jumping (back in my day, we didn't need tutorials to learn that skill). Of course, these tutorials are ruthless and will still see you die again and again, but at least you're learning. In fact, learning is a big part of Dark Souls 2. Due to nearly everything being permanent, you'll quickly learn when you've made a mistake. Have you been spending vital souls and shards on upgrading a weapon when you have one that's far better for your stats sitting in your inventory? You'll feel silly at first but you'll never make that mistake again and you've just learnt more about stats and equipment on your own. Even combat is based around learning from mistakes. Rushing into battles and not playing with caution will always lead to death; learning to be patient is a vital lesson that you'll only learn after many deaths. Memorising the patterns and movements of a boss is essential to defeating them too and it's rare that you'll be able to improvise a strategy on the fly. There's a reason that so many people wanted to start Dark Souls 2 knowing as little as possible; learning is a major part of the experience. Almost every death and mistake in Dark Souls 2 becomes a vital lesson to learn from (I'm still trying to figure out what I learnt by falling through that crack in the floor though) and that's a great way to make us feel like smarter and better players as we progress. Soon enough, you might even be brave enough to parry an enemy but let's not get ahead of ourselves.