Dark Souls, sequel to Demon Souls, is hard. I'll put it this way: in 12 hours of total gameplay I died 38 times and progressed through only about 3 hours of actual gameplay. No, I didn't beat it. I didn't come close. This game is friggin' hard, and there's absolutely no way that I was going to continue to burn precious hours of my day slogging away at the same God-forsaken, infuriating poison rat, or trudging through an expansive level that I've actually hacked and slashed my way through dozens of times, only to get to the same three-story high boss that stomped me to meat pudding like he did in the last 24 fights. Do I sound a touch bitter? One might ask at this point, then why keep grinding away at this game if you were so enraged by it? That, in a nutshell, is exactly the appeal of the game.

Dark Souls is pretty. The landscapes are incredible, and the physics in the game are consistently both nerve-wrenching and satisfying. Combos, when you can get them off, are fluid and seamless with the enemies own movements and combat approach. Far from a button-masher, there's absolutely no room for error in Dark Souls. You may go up against the black knight with the sword twice the height of your little avatar five or six times (not to mention having to fight your way through the level from your spawn point each time to get to him), and the slightest mistake in a combo, or a reposte from a parry, or an ill-timed roll, will result in your death (again). However, on that seventh try when you seamlessly execute every combo, block or evade ever thrust of enormous mankiller, and deal the killing blow right in his evil little codpiece, the feeling of victory is well worth it. This is exactly the kind of reward system the game designers had in mind. A completely fair and engrossing game that was so infuriatingly difficult that when you do succeed, it's enough to send you on to the next challenge.

As for the infuriating aspects of the game. First of all, "souls" are those things that you collect with each kill and serve both as a kind of XP, as well as the currency for buying and upgrading weapons and equipment as you go through the game. Every time that you die, however, you are sent back to a "bonfire" (which acts like a spawn point), and you lose all of those souls. In addition, everything you've already killed has respawned. You have on chance to fight your way back to the scene of your death to retrieve those souls, but if you die en route (which you probably will), they're gone forever. Additionally, in order to heal, level up, or refill your estus bottles (like health potions), you have to rest at a bonfire, which will (again) revive all of the enemies you killed. You get really surgical about your approach to certain sections of the level after having to re-kill everything a dozen or so times. I actually took to timing one stretch (before the Taurus Demon), I had to to make that trip so many times.

Overall, Dark Souls is definitely a niche game for a certain type of tenacious player that doesn't mind an incredibly difficult RPG. The rewards are few and far between, but what this game does better than perhaps most other RPGs, is make the personal accomplishment of progress a greater reward than whatever equipment one has managed to acquire. The game is fair, if hard, and a great time suck for any potential adventurer with the "minerals" to tackle it.