The games take place within a dark, medieval fantasy setting, where the player's character fights against knights, dragons, phantoms, demons, and other monstrous or supernatural entities. The accretion, loss, and recovery of souls are central to the narrative and gameplay of Dark Souls games. These games are linked through their setting and an overarching cyclic narrative centering around fire, and are linked through common themes and elements, including interactions with phantoms and battles with demons. At the end of each game, characters may reignite the "first flame" or allow it to fade, recurring a choice others have made before.
The Dark Souls games are played in a third-person perspective, and focus on exploring interconnected environments while fighting enemies with weapons and magic. Players battle bosses to progress through the story, while interacting with non-playable characters. The protagonist of each Dark Souls game can have a varying gender, appearance, name, and starting class via character creation. Players can choose between classes, including knights, barbarians, thieves, and mages. Each class has its own starting equipment and abilities that can be tailored to the player's experience and choices as they progress. The player gains souls from gameplay battles which act as both experience points to level up and as currency to buy items. Souls gained are usually proportional to the difficulty of fighting certain enemies; the more difficult an enemy, the more souls the player will gain from defeating it.
One of the core mechanics of the series is the use of how it handles progress, death, and player improvement. Bonfires serve as a checkpoint within the series, restoring all health and other critical resources when used, but also respawning most enemies and obstacles, making repeated trips back to safety untenable for forward progress. Upon losing all of their health points and dying, players lose their souls and appear back at the bonfire where they last rested. If the player can return to their point of death, their bloodstain, without dying again, they can regain all lost souls.[1] If the player dies again before reaching their bloodstain, the souls are permanently gone.[1] Notably, using a bonfire manually and respawning at one after death have identical effects, save for the player losing their currency at their place of death, which can be retrieved with no penalty. In this way the player is encouraged to not fear death, as no progress is lost so long as they can learn from their mistakes. As the player retraces their steps after death, they will naturally defeat more enemies, gaining more souls and allowing their character to gain experience alongside the player themselves.
Online interaction in the Dark Souls games is integrated into the single-player experience. Throughout areas of the game, players can briefly see the actions of other players as ghosts in the same area that may show hidden passages or switches. When a player dies, a bloodstain can be left in other players game world and when activated can show a ghost playing out their final moments, indicating how that person died and potentially helping other players online to avoid the same fate in advance. Players can leave messages on the ground that can help other players with tips and warnings. Multiplayer can be engaged in both player versus player combat and cooperative gameplay using invasion or summoning mechanics.[2][3] Players can also rely on covenants, which serve as "factions" that can allow players to delve further into the multiplayer experience.
Dark Souls is the first game in the series; it is considered a spiritual successor to Demon's Souls (2009).[4][5] FromSoftware wanted to develop a sequel to Demon's Souls, but Sony's ownership of the intellectual property prevented them from doing so on other platforms.[6] It was released in 2011 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.[7] In 2012, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition was released for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, featuring the base game and the Artorias of the Abyssdownloadable content.[8] The game takes place in the fictional kingdom of Lordran. Players assume the role of a cursed human character who sets out to discover the fate of undead humans like themselves. The plot of Dark Souls is primarily told through environmental details, in-game item flavor text, and dialogue with non-playable characters (NPCs). Players must piece together clues in order to understand the story, rather than being told the story through more traditional means, such as through cutscenes. Dark Souls and its predecessor Demon's Souls garnered recognition due to the series' high level of difficulty.[2][9][10][11] A version featuring some graphical and gameplay enhancements, Dark Souls: Remastered, was released in May 2018.[12]
Dark Souls II was first announced in late 2012 during the Spike Video Game Awards. This is the only game in the series where director Hidetaka Miyazaki did not reprise his role, although he was still involved in supervision.[13][14] It was released in 2014 for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.[15] In 2015, an updated version featuring The Lost Crowns downloadable content was released for Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, under the title Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin[16] - with the latter two platforms receiving retail releases.[17] The game takes place in the kingdom of Drangleic, where the player must find a cure for the undead curse.[3] Although set in the same universe as the previous game, there is no direct story connection to Dark Souls.[18]
Dark Souls III was released in 2016 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.[19] The gameplay is paced faster than previous Souls installments,[20] which was attributed in part to the gameplay of Bloodborne.[21] The game takes place in the kingdom of Lothric, where the player must end the cycle of linking the Flame. In 2017, the complete version containing the base game and both expansions (Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City) was released, under the title Dark Souls III: The Fire Fades Edition. Dark Souls III was both critically and commercially successful, with critics calling it a worthy and fitting conclusion to the series. It sold over 10 million copies by 2020, making it the fastest-selling game in Bandai Namco's history at the time[22][23] (until it was overtaken by Elden Ring).[24] In 2015, Miyazaki said that Dark Souls III would likely be the last of the series, with FromSoftware choosing to move onto new games of unrelated IPs in the future.[25]
Other media
Cover art for the first issue of the Dark Souls comic book
A comic book by Titan Comics based on the series debuted alongside the release of Dark Souls III in 2016.[26] A Kickstarter campaign for a licensed board game by Steamforged Games, Dark Souls – The Board Game, was also announced around the same time.[27] The campaign was funded within the first three minutes of its launch and was released in April 2017.[28][29]
In February 2017, music from the series by Motoi Sakuraba was performed by a live orchestra at the Salle Pleyel concert hall in Paris.[30] In September of that year, a limited edition vinyl box set containing the soundtracks of all three games was released in Europe.[31] In Japan, a box set containing the enhanced versions of all three games for the PlayStation 4, the soundtracks for each, bookends, artwork prints, and dictionaries detailing every in-game item was released on May 24, 2018.[32]
Unlike its successors, Demon's Souls uses a central hub system known as the "Nexus" where players can level up, repair equipment, or buy certain items, before venturing into one of the five connected worlds. The "World Tendency" feature is also exclusive to Demon's Souls, where the difficulty of exploring a world is dependent on how many bosses have been killed, and how the player dies. The gameplay involves a character-creation system and emphasizes gathering loot through combat with enemies in a non-linear series of varied locations. It had an online multiplayer system integrated into single-player, in which players could leave messages and warnings for other players' worlds, as well as join other players to assist and/or kill them. After FromSoft extended the server's lifecycle past the original 2011 shutdown date, the multiplayer component was finally taken offline in early 2018. [41]
King's Field
The King's Field series, also developed by FromSoftware, is considered a spiritual predecessor to the series. It debuted in 1994 with King's Field for the PlayStation and had three sequels.[4][35]
The "bloodstain" gameplay mechanic has been given praise by critics. David Craddock of Shacknews called them one of the core tenets of the series.[63] He stated that the harshest punishment one can receive in a Souls game is "not dying once, but twice."[63]GamesRadar+ called bloodstains, in combination with Demon Souls's message system, "a graceful, elegant way of letting players guide each other without the need for words", and said that "rarely has the price of failure been balanced on such a precarious knife edge" as being forced to retrieve one's bloodstain.[64]
The bonfire concept was similarly praised. Matthew Elliott of GamesRadar+ called bonfires a powerful symbol of relief, and "a meaty cocktail of progress, exhaustion and joy",[65] and that, while other games evoke emotions with their save points, no other game does so as effectively.[65]Vice called the Bonfire a "mark of genius" that "reinvented the save point" and allowed the player to reflect on their progress.[66]
Sales and legacy
The Dark Souls series had shipped 35.18 million copies outside of Japan as of March 2023[update].[67]Dark Souls III broke sales records upon release, selling over three million copies worldwide by May 2016 and was Bandai Namco's fastest-selling game until being surpassed by Elden Ring in 2022.[68][69]
The Soulslike genre was inspired by common features of the series, resulting in many games using similar mechanics. Other FromSoftware games directed by Miyazaki, such as Demon's Souls, Bloodborne,[70][71]Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,[72] and Elden Ring,[73] share many of the same concepts of Souls and are often associated with the series and grouped under the "Soulsborne" label.[74][75][76][77]
The series has also been cited as an influence on several PlayStation Network features, including asynchronous messaging, social networking, and video sharing,[78] as well as for the television show Stranger Things.[79]
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