After playing "Dark Souls: Age of Fire" all afternoon, Ben quit the game and looked out the window at the darkening sky. He let out a deep breath.
They were just too welcoming!
That was the only way to sum up his experience after a whole afternoon.
Getting dropped straight into the Catacombs at the start was awkward enough, but he'd let that slide for now.
But after all the effort to reach Undead Burg outside the city, he only had one clear thought.
The townsfolk there were way too welcoming.
The locals, with straight swords and axes in hand, were very eager to "greet" every visiting Undead.
Along the way, Black Knights also came out for a very "warm" welcome.
And when players reached the prison tower, Havel didn't get mad about uninvited guests. Instead, he kindly picked up his Dragon Tooth club—like a massage stick—and gave the Undead a full-body massage.
What players didn't know, though, was that Lucas had made a few small tweaks to Havel.
In the original game, there were multiple ways to deal with him: door tricking, dung pies, or the sneaky staircase method.
The easiest trick was the staircase method. Players could run up the watchtower stairs and then jump down just as Havel came up.
The player would lose some health from the fall, but since Havel wore heavy armor, he would also take a big chunk of fall damage.
And since the player had Estus flasks while Havel didn't, in the end Havel would die miserably to the "cheap" trap set by the Undead.
Lucas made a few changes to this.
After all, drinking Estus wasn't like the original game where the character just stood still.
So Havel still took fall damage, but a bit less. He also got up faster than before. On top of that, the game made the check for whether he would jump down or run down more strict, adding more challenge for players.
And when the Undead finally reached the top of the walls, things got even crazier.
On the walls, with two hollow soldiers shooting arrows at them, the Undead would be treated to a "Taurus Demon feast" — except this meal was a little too hot to swallow.
And later, on a wide bridge, the red drake flying across the sky spared no effort to give the Undead a fiery fireworks show.
"I thought that after linking the fire I was already unbeatable… but it turns out I was so wrong!"
Leaning back in his chair, Ben opened the game chat group and sent this message.
Right after he posted it, the others all seemed to feel the same and started sending their own messages.
"Same here, this Dark Souls: Age of Fire is just pure malice!"
"Yeah, so many traps everywhere, you can't even prepare for them!"
"My first death in Firelink Shrine happened right in the New Londo ruins!"
"You're weak then! I died to that fat demon in the Undead Asylum!"
"And the fast travel system in this one… who knows when it'll unlock. Feels so weird without it!"
"Exactly, exactly!"
The whole chat group was full of complaints, with everyone sharing their painful experiences.
And it wasn't just the chat group — forums and communities everywhere were the same. The first batch of players who entered the game were basically crying out in misery.
They were the ones who bought Dark Souls: Age of Fire on release and jumped right in.
Most of them, like Ben, were veterans who had already played earlier Dark Souls games.
Before entering, they were full of confidence.
After all, they knew Dark Souls inside and out.
They had cleared the game, done NG+, NG++, even NG+8.
These Dark Souls veterans had plenty of faith in their skills.
As seasoned Ashen Ones, they had overcome countless challenges.
The Nameless King, the Soul of Cinder, the Abyss Watchers — all of them had already fallen to their hands.
Which one hadn't they beaten?
For many, later on Dark Souls had even turned into more of a fashion dress-up game.
So taking on a prequel should've been easy, right?
But once they stepped into the game with that mindset, they quickly realized they were wrong.
And not just wrong — completely wrong!
Lucas had kept the combat system closer to the sequels instead of the original.
The original had some clunky moves that hurt the flow. The most obvious one was that the Undead had to stand still to drink Estus.
But even with a familiar combat system, so what?
In a Dark Souls game, the real charm was never about complex moves, but about making the game challenging and fair with simple actions.
Basic light attacks, heavy attacks that were rarely useful, and weapon arts that only worked in certain cases.
Combined with shield blocking, parries, counters, and rolling, the whole system was simple and easy to understand.
The real difficulty came from bosses and enemies with all their unique attack patterns.
New monsters, new bosses — even if the combat system was the same, without knowing how to counter them, without being able to read their opening moves, players still suffered just the same.
And on top of that, there was another huge factor: the Dark Souls 1 map.
You could say the most praised part of Dark Souls 1 wasn't the combat, the bosses, or even the story.
Not that those were bad, but because something else shone so brightly it overshadowed everything else.
That was the brilliant level design. Each area was filled with puzzles and, of course, traps at every turn.
The whole map was built as one massive, interconnected structure, layered in three dimensions, with areas looping back into each other like a Möbius strip.
Firelink Shrine sat right at the center, connected in all directions.
Because of this, the bonfire teleport system had to be locked until players reached Anor Londo and got the Lordvessel.
Since every part of the map was tied together, letting players freely teleport early on would've ruined the experience of discovering the map's genius and the careful layout of each area.
After all, Dark Souls 3 uses more of a straight-line style map.
If fast travel wasn't in the game, players would have to spend tons of time just running from one place to another.
But in Dark Souls 1, it was completely different. The whole map was filled with shortcuts linking everywhere, making travel very convenient.
Also, fast travel only unlocked after getting the Lordvessel, which felt like a reward for the player.
Of course, players now clearly haven't fully understood how brilliant the map design really is.
For most of them right now, the only thing on their minds is:
Who am I? Where am I?
On the first day the game launched.
The furthest progress so far was made by a small group of skilled players who, with the help of Solaire of Astora, managed to beat the first Gargoyle and ring the first bell.
But that was for the top players. Most regular players were still outside Undead Burg, being warmly "welcomed" by the local villagers.
(End of The Chapter)
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