Dark Souls Previews and Video Interview
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GameSpot:
Like in Demon's Souls, the world is vast and created with great detail for you to explore. Everything that you see on the horizon can be reached in some way, so it's on you to tread carefully through the world. The atmosphere and lighting that made Demon's Souls stand out were also present here and equally impressive, from what we've seen of the various areas. After the boss, we moved to a misty dark forest area with moss-covered trees. Here we saw another example of the type of character you can play as. Kajii called him an onion knight, because he was a short, rotund fellow who even rolls clumsily when he does his dodge roll. In the next area we got a brief glimpse of what was described as an "underground hell," sparsely decorated with decaying trees, temples, and lava flowing all around.
GamePro:
Bosses are a huge component of Dark Souls. In the castle area, the dev showed off a giant sleeping dragon, which they didn't bother to wake up because they claimed it would kill the player instantly. It was essentially resting on the castle, and was easily 100 times the size of the player's knight character. Another boss we came across was a giant ogre, which chased the player character across a bridge along the side of the castle. The demonstrator chose to engage with this boss, but the ogre easily overpowered the player character. The From Software rep assured us that if they weren't playing an in-development build, the player would be dead a long time ago. He eventually defeated the ogre by jumping down off of a rampart and stabbing the beast in the head.
Games Radar:
For the sake of the demo, this knight was given a rather unfair advantage: his weapons and armor were the stuff of hours of progress down the line for a normal player - something that was echoed across a variety of different locales and weapon/armor configurations pre-chosen for the demo. Given the game's promise of insane levels of difficulty, however, this was fairly understandable; a demo simply couldn't take place if one were to end up dying as often as most players likely will, especially given that Dark Souls seems to place far more emphasis on multiple types of incoming attacks. The dark fantasy equivalent of Molotov cocktails would arc earthward even as multiple melee attackers would charge in, and instantly we got the sense that the same measured pace of Demon's Souls would be absolutely paramount here.
G4:
Gamers will have to use their brains before they start swinging their swords. This is definitely not a hack-n-slash. If anything it's a trial-and-error slash. 100 different types of weapons will be at the players disposal and each has its own unique action, purpose, strengths and weaknesses. There is no ultimate weapon that can take out any enemy. Instead there's the playstyle that suits you and your style of gameplay. Gamers will have the option to duel-wield and use the environment to their advantage. A small blade will mean the wielder is quicker and can sneak in close and jumping from up high up will make the attack more powerful; both tactics I plan on using.
And AtomicGamer:
After finishing off the ram's head monster, they jumped to another part of the game, a dark forest area where a knight stood wearing weird, puffy armor that made him look like the Michelin man and a bizarrely bulbous helmet. We were told this would not be a player character, and would instead be an NPC (supposedly a beautiful woman with crappy taste in armor). We jumped then to yet another area of the game, an Asian art-inspired (underground Hell) kind of area where the ground was predominantly lava. The player's armor and weapons here were also Asian in design, with an ornate round shield and curved sword. Unfortunately, they also cut this portion short, claiming it was (too dangerous) for us to see. Booooo! Finally, they jumped to a fourth area of the game, inside an ancient castle in an area dubbed (Trap Road) by the dev team. I'm sure you can imagine what that means.
