Weekend Confirmed 143 - Far Cry 3, The Walking Dead, Tera

It's weird to hear someone (Cannata) go on about losing everything when talking about death in Dark Souls.

You don't really lose anything, just some souls. And even then they aren't lost if you can make it back to the point where you died, which you should generally be able to do if you made it that far to begin with.

The game is not sadistic - you aren't losing any stats or weapons or armor or other items and loot. You are learning from your mistakes and getting better. And even if you do die before reaching your dropped souls, it's almost never a big loss. The amount of souls you obtain on your way to a boss is generally pitiful and insignificant compared to the souls you get from defeating the area boss at the end of your trek. And after taking a boss down and having that abundance of souls from taking them down + the souls from the journey is generally when you use them to level up, so the threat of losing actual significant amounts of anything are pretty rare, unless you are hoarding them boss after boss. Which you shouldn't be doing, really.

You can't get bummed about about a losing a few hundred or thousand souls up front, especially early on when it ramps up and the bosses will soon be giving up souls in the 10k, 20k, 40k, etc range when you down them. And you'll also be finding items / loot of souls that will give you x amount of souls when you use them, useful if you are missing a certain amount to hit that next soul level or buy a certain item. And those solid soul items are never lost on death, same with everything else. Meaning you'll always have a spare cache of souls in your inventory ready to add to your total on demand as long as you are looting along the way. Which you will be. Loot is loot.

Once you get used to the systems and basics, combat especially, you'll die less and less and progress more and more. It's still a very dangerous world and some minions and bosses will kick your ass, but then there's also coop. If you want some boss practice, put down your summon sign and help someone else out before taking them down in your game for good. You'll earn a whole mess of souls for helping others defeat those bosses, too. You can even repeat them as long as your are in level range and there is someone out there in human form with the boss still alive in their game. Likewise in a particularly tough encounter you can summon two people to help you take out the boss in your world for good.

Eventually you'll get to the point where you know how the game works, your gear is being upgraded, your soul level is increasing , and you are familiar enough with the mechanics and systems to destroy some bosses 1v1 on the first blind attempt. There is a hump to get over, but once it clicks you won't be able to put it down.

It really not that much longer than any other RPG out there for the amount of content it contains. The world is unique and interesting, so is the approach to storytelling and character interactions with the NPCs you'll meet scattered about Lordran.