Game Review: Dark Souls Remastered on Switch has finally arrived

After many delays, the classic Form Software finally arrives on Nintendo Switch, but does it work as well as the fans wanted?

Battlefield V in single player mode with interview and interview: World War II as you have never seen before

Dark Souls contains everything that is great in video games, past and present. That's how we started our review of the original game, in 2011, and it still seems true today. There are many good reasons to want an updated version of the first Dark Souls, especially its infamous technical problems, but unfortunately, this version proved to be a pretty mediocre remaster when it was released on other consoles more early this year. And now, despite several delays, it is finally available on Switch and although it is not the final version, it is not so far …

When Dark Souls and his spiritual successor Demon's Souls appeared, they were treated as an antidote for those who are disillusioned with the state of the modern game. But instead of some retrograde relics, they offered a clear and positive indicator for the future – a symbol that many developers have subsequently taken into account. You must work to earn rewards in Dark Souls, but the game does not punish you for its own amusement; we try to prove that the greatest pleasure results from the greatest effort.

Although Dark Souls is an excellent narrator, his plot is extremely abstruse and requires as much effort as the gameplay to fully understand it. But basically, you exist in a country where the bad guys have already won – the society is in definitive decline and everyone is turning into "hollow" non-living. The melancholy atmosphere generated by the game is fantastically well-maintained, not so much by the amateur voice-over as by the dark and hopeless atmosphere of the game world itself.

You start the game as a seemingly ordinary hollow, except that a trick of fate has allowed you to keep your human spirit. You can even convert back into a person by getting "humanity" from dead enemies – though it's a rare commodity and, as you may have heard, death is very common in Dark Souls.

There is nothing (or almost nothing) perverse or unfair about Dark Souls. One could even say that it is not the difficulty in itself that is extraordinary, but the level of concentration and diligence required of the player. There are very few enemies in the game who can not kill you with only a few attacks and many who need less than that. But conversely, you can also defeat them with relative ease if you keep your mind sharp and you are perfectly aware of your environment and the abilities of your opponents.

Although your abilities and stats can be improved, this is primarily a third-person action game. Using a variety of medieval melee and ranged weapons, Dark Souls still has one of the most rewarding and tactical swordplay ever seen. And all this despite it only relies on a handful of moves, without combos in the traditional sense of the fighting game.

Instead, Dark Souls seems much more realistic as you dodge and roll around your opponent – your shield is always in front of you, while you wait for an opening before you engage in an attack. As long as you do not panic, you can easily knock down much stronger and more powerful enemies, weaving and dodging, parrying and blocking.

On a technical level, Dark Souls has always been unusual, sometimes even outdated, but the exceptional artistic design more than makes up for it. The monster designs are wonderfully, unsettling, imaginative. And yet, there are also moments of beauty; Climbing to the top of a tower after hours spent in the sewers and dungeons, and watching the sun set down sadly, said more than a hundred cinematic scenes could have done it. The world is almost dead, your chances of success are minimal, and yet the hope is not yet completely extinguished …

All these moments are recreated in this remastered version which, despite the fears, works surprisingly well on Switch. It is obvious that there is no 4K resolution and that the frame rate is 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames per second, but most of the time, it's almost impossible to distinguish the game from the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Although it's more a sign of the little change that has been made to the original version of the latest generation than anything else.

It is important to note that Blighttown remains fixed and, even if frame rate instability is still present, it is neither more nor less than before. Unfortunately, little work has been done on the textures, which in some places, including Sen's fortress, seem rather vague and indistinct.