There's a conception among those who haven't thought about it for very long that Dark Souls is a game about fighting bosses. Eldest Souls offers many reasons why isn't. Dark Souls, really, is about everything Eldest Souls is not. So what is Eldest Souls about?

Eldest Souls is about fighting bosses. It's a boss rush, and an imperfect one. The game's systems of skill trees and boss gems that can be slotted and matched around how you like are strong adapations of souls' rpg stats and gear into the boss rush format, and do work quite well at giving variety to how any particular boss is fought, but only in the specifics. In general, every fight is fought in the same style of manner of slamming your weapon into the boss as rapidly and as skittishly as possible and then evading in a panic at the slightest movement, using the game's hit-to-heal mechanics to survive on the knife's edge as best as you can. This is not exactly how I anticipated the combat feeling like going in, and you feel a bit more sluggish than I had hoped, given the pace of the fights, but it is an enjoyable rush anyway. Certain design decisions, like the rapid pace of combat, tiny arenas, the inability for you to dash through bosses, and large-area boss moves, in tandem with the fragility of the player character, can often lead to fights cut quickly short or otherwise frustrating moments. This would be fine if it were not a boss rush and thus had other elements to support it, or if these frustrating moments were rare, but that is not the case. It falters and flutters on a regular basis, and the overall experience suffers as a result. Not horribly, not terribly, but coniststently enough to be noticeable. This is especially tragic given that this is a boss rush and relies on the quality of the bosses to encourage replayability.

What else does Eldest Souls have? Really, not much- and this is terribly damning for the game. As a whole, it is quite a short experience, boxed in to a terribly small width. As a boss rush, it already relies on replayability to make up its worth in time, but we've already discovered that its bosses have a tendency to lead to frustration. We see the impacts of this problem as soon as we finish the game and go into NG+, and the new games beyond it. The first ascendancy through doesn't do much beside add new moves to the bosses, which does refresh the fights nicely, but it does compound the issue that we find as finish the game again- these fights have a tendency to become bullet hells with frustratingly short readability. As you move upward throough the replays, you become so much squishier, the bosses become so much beefier, and your frustration with the mechanics that were passably annoying before becomes impassable. In short, despite needing to do so to fill its length, the game does not succeed in being a well-replayable experience.

Are there any other elements to Eldest Souls? I've noted it's a game about fighting bosses, and not much more, but there are obviously other elements to note. The music is not quite bad, but a tad boring. Not because of its own quality, but because most of the boss tracks sound pretty much the same. This is a bit of a painfully missed opportunity to distinguish the bosses through their music. The art of the areas, in general, is really good. I did enjoy the brief experience of exploring the world, but it can feel inconsistent at times. Given that the art of the areas is its best execution, certain bosses, move animations, and cinematics feel out of place. I remember first launching the game and being greeted by the non-pixel art opening, and then later finishing the game and seeing the brief ending cinematic, and feeling simply apathetic about either of them. The first doesn't quite fit given the style of the game, and the latter is just lackluster in quality. The story did surprise me, and I really did enjoy reading about it through the games item descriptions.

Item descriptions... that reminds me. I do have one other element of Eldest Souls that I think deserves direct attention- its influence. We've covered that though this game is a soulslike, its not very like Dark Souls at all. In fact, it feels nearly nothing like Dark Souls. And yet, the game wants to appear as Dark Souls as much as it possibly can. So many elements are taken either 1-1 from Dark Souls or masked in a new form. Off the top of my head: the underground water cavern flooded town area, the blacksmith (along with all the other wayward npcs and their quests), the second boss' transformation from a great knight into an eldritch abomination (who is so proudly displayed on the cover image), spider woman boss, the world as a playground-for-the-gods... too many to count. Obviously, many other soulslikes do the same, but it feels so very unoriginal here given that the game does not want to be Dark Souls at all. I have to assume the intention as well was unoriginality, since drawing Dark Souls fans to this very not-Dark Souls game is a good way to attract the wrong audience (something the steam reviews will tell you directly). A number of these soulslike elements stick sorely out as so painfully trying to squeeze them in when they don't fit. Take npcs and their quests, for instance, which the game doesn't have enough time to develop, and their rewards last too short to feel worthwhile achieving. A good bit of effort is put onto the player to engage in a number of moments of backtracking and dialogue, all for the reward of two lines and a buff that will last for maybe a handful of fights.

I think that about covers most all of the elements of Eldest Souls, though I do want to briefly note one more. Achievements. I don't want to dedicate too much time to them, because they're not real, but this game's in particular annoyed me, and highlighted further the issue I noted before of what the game appears like it should feel like and how it plays out in its fights. A number of the achievements require some absolutely dreadful effort, like not taking damage against any of the bosses, or playing the game in the most difficult manner possible, or not dying a single time... and so on. That first one would fit better if this was a game more friendly to the never-get-hit dodge-and-strike ideal it appears to want to be, but this game is not built for that. Trying to get that one just makes every frustration as apparant as possible. The latter two require a game a few hours shorter to feel reasonable. It very clearly feels like an effort to pad out as many hours as possible, and in as painful a way as possible.

And there we have it. Eldest Souls is a game that is not Dark Souls, and feels nothing like Dark Souls, but is as unoriginal as it can be in trying to. It is an entirely different game, but is more-or-less imperfect in its new system. A general lack of impolish and frustration pervade in equal parts, and it struggles to stretch out its short length to its money's worth. I cannot recommend it to the typical souls fan, and I struggle even to recommend it to those who enjoy boss rushes specifically. At best, wait for a sale- it goes down to $5 every couple months, and feels sadly a lot more fitting at that price. Missed potential!

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