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Three years is plenty of time to heal most wounds, but Dark Souls cuts deep. With Dark Souls 2 finally in our hands, our memories loom large. Was the first Souls joint from Bandai Namco and From Software really that demanding? Did it really punish us so much that difficulty defined it in our minds? Have our skills dulled in the months since? Joystiq's Sinan Kubba, in preparation for his review of Dark Souls 2, waded back into those murky waters and found that his experiences had stuck with him. As evidenced by this Tiny Stream, Sinan's senses are still keenly attuned to Souls' mean tricks. Even when he's prepared, though, the game still manages to get in some licks. [Images: Bandai Namco]

YouTuber Soul Slasher has come up with a way to make Dark Souls a more classic RPG experience in the vein of King's Field, by switching the player perspective from third-person to first-person.

Soul Slasher explains in the video above that this effect was accomplished through the use of several third-party programs, including his own custom HUD mod. Unfortunately, this first-person mod isn't available to the general adventuring public.

Dark Souls is an open-world action game developed at From Software categorized by its extreme difficulty and minimalist plot. Its sequel, Dark Souls 2, is slated to launch in March 2014.

If you survived long enough to appreciate the twisted, melancholy beauty of Dark Souls, maybe prepare to buy Udon's art book. After releasing Dark Souls: Design Works in Japan last year, the comic book studio is bringing an English version to North America in October.

The 128 pages of the 8.25"x11.75" hardcover book span the game's worlds, characters, weapons, and monsters, including concept art and sketches. Design Works also features interviews with director Hidetaka Miyazaki and various From Software artists.

If you're looking for something to tide you over until March 2014, Dark Souls: Design Works has a list price of $40, although at the time of publishing Amazon is selling it for $29.

The word of the week on Xbox Live is "dark," evidently, as both DarkStalkers Resurrection and the Games on Demand version of Dark Souls are heavily discounted until June 4. You can pick up either game for $10.

The marketplace also has Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for $15, along with some discounted DLC for the tactical shooter. We realize that one doesn't have "dark" in the title, but it does have "ghost." Both DarkStalkers and Dark Souls have ghosts in them, so it makes sense, see?

PSN is running a DarkStalkers Resurrection deal of its own as well. Pick up Resurrection for $15 and you'll get a free download of the excellent Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. PlayStation Plus members can get the same deal for only $10.49. This promotion also runs until June 4.

Welcome to The Level Grind, a column that asks questions about game design and industry culture from the perspective of a game player. A few weeks ago I wrote about Dark Souls and how my initial impression of the game was, for the lack of a better term, "wrong." I'd given the game another shot after some convincing from a friend, and since the fanatical position on the game's brilliance had transitioned from boil to simmer.

It's easy to say I fell in love with Dark Souls, yet weeks have passed and I haven't played the game at all. Though my time was focused on other games for review, I wondered why the urge to delve deeper into From Software's complex world had subsided after my gushing editorial. What I've come to realize is that kindness is to blame.

2,367,000 people made good on their preparations to die in Dark Souls. As livedoor reports, From Software announced the latest global sales figures for the 2011 deathtrap at a recent press conference. Around half a million purchases came from Japan, the studio revealed, with the other 1.85 million or so made up from North America and Europe.

Copies which included the 'Artorios of the Abyss' DLC released last year comprised just under 700,000 sales. As ShackNews reports, according to Namco Bandai VP Carlson Choi the PC version represents "over 300,000" of that figure.

While Demon's Souls proved a surprise hit when Atlus brought it to North America, Dark Souls' sales performance may explain why its follow-up warrants a '2' tacked onto it rather than a new moniker. Even if it should be called Dragon's Souls...

This is Making Time, a column about the games we've always wanted to play, and the games we've always wanted to play again. When Dark Souls first launched in October 2011, I picked it up immediately. Though that statement may seem to be tied to my love of the game's spiritual predecessor, the truth is I've never touched Demon's Souls. It was the rampant fan excitement for a new entry in From Software's action-RPG that drew me in. But Dark Souls didn't resonate with me.

It was a combination of elements that made it easy for me to shelf my copy: the continuous discussion of its incredible difficulty and the "if you don't like it, you don't get it" attitude from fanatics. I never planned to play Dark Souls again.

Early this morning, I wrapped up my fifth hour of the game on Xbox 360, after putting three-plus hours in on the (only worth playing with fan-made fixes) PC version. Dark Souls' hooks are firmly embedded under my skin.

An issue with Microsoft's Game for Windows Live servers is preventing some customers from accessing games that use the software. The ever-growing comment thread on Microsoft's support forums repeatedly mentions difficulties with Dark Souls and Age of Empires Online, but that could simply be due to the popularity of those games.

"Starting from last night - some of our users are experiencing an issue connecting, in game, to games that they have previously had no issues with. We are aware of this issue and are looking into what is causing it and for a resolution," noted a Microsoft moderator prior to the weekend.

Workarounds to the issue appear to be inconsistent, and don't seem to guarantee the problem will be resolved. We'll update if we hear about a resolution.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is the weekend deal on Steam, cutting the masochistic experience by 33 percent to $26.79. You may be used to Steam deals dropping game prices deeper, but consider the price punishment an appetizer for what's to come.

The million seller franchise earned a spot in our Joystiq top ten for 2011 for being the Stockholm syndrome experience of the year.

PC download codes for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition are on sale for $19.90 on Amazon. The code includes the full version of the game along with the Artorias of the Abyss expansion.

The Artorias of the Abyss DLC was recently made available on Xbox Live and PSN for $15. The Prepare to Die Edition PC code requires a Steam account for activation.

The Dark Souls 'Artorias of the Abyss' downloadable content is coming to Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network on October 24 in Europe and Australasia. The DLC contains the additional content of the Prepare to Die edition recently released on PC. It will cost 1200 MSP on XBLM, and $14.99 on PSN.

For those who view downloads on the same level of an invading player robbing them of all their souls, a Prepare to Die retail edition for consoles is headed to Europe and Australasia on October 26. There remains no word on it being brought to North America.

After comments from Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki spread across the web like a Great Chaos Fireball, Namco appears to be doing some damage control. In an interview with Metro, Miyazaki's comments - as they were originally translated - hinted at the possibility of creating an easier difficulty mode for the notoriously tough Dark Souls, or at least doing a better job of helping players understand "the messages behind our difficult games."

Namco contacted Metro saying that Miyazaki's quotes were mistranslated, and in fact he made no mention of decreasing the difficulty at all. According to Namco, what he actually said was, "I am thinking about how to make everyone complete the game while maintaining the current difficulty and carefully send all gamers the messages behind it." This, says Namco, was the "true intention" behind Miyazaki's statement.

For its part, Metro admits (as it did in the original interview article) that the translation "wasn't very good." Still, the outlet states that "the sentence in question always seemed pretty unambiguous."

Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki says he wants his games to be described as "satisfying rather than difficult." Speaking with Metro, Miyazaki considers whether he should make another difficulty mode so everyone can complete the notoriously challenging game.

"However, I suppose gamers do not particularly prefer easy games. What they want is interesting and worthwhile games to play, so I think it is natural that hindrance or stress that does not attribute to such interesting and worthwhile elements will be removed in the end," says Miyazaki. "If the number of easy games is increasing nowadays, I guess it is because difficulty is not related to interesting and worthwhile game elements in many games among players."

Dark Souls - despite or because of its oppressive difficulty - has sold over a million units globally and greatly contributed to Namco Bandai's fiscal fortitude.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition will be released as a boxed product for consoles, Namco Bandai has announced. Launched (and modded!) this week on PC, the Prepare to Die Edition features all of the original Dark Souls content along with a new expansion called "Artorias of the Abyss" and brand new PVP matchmaking. This new console edition will launch in Europe and Australasia on October 26. For those who already own Dark Souls on console, the new content is slated for a downloadable release as well.

We've contacted Namco Bandai to see if the retail edition is headed to North America as well.

Namco Bandai saw a net income of 1.9 billion yen ($24 million) in its fiscal year 2012, with help from strong US sales of Dark Souls and Ace Combat Assault Horizon. Dark Souls sold 1.19 million units across the US and Europe, while Ace Combat Assault Horizon sold 1.07 million units in Japan, the US and Europe.

Across all platforms, Namco sold 23.3 million software units, led by 8.5 million for PS3, 4.2 million for PSP and 3.2 million for Xbox 360. Revenue from Namco's mobile sector increased, although number of paid subscribers dropped from 3.34 million to 2.15 million year-over-year. Sales of Namco's arcade game machines grew from 56 billion yen ($701.3 million) in FY 2011 to 73.4 billion yen ($919.2 million) in FY 2012.

One man's pain is another's pleasure. Never has this been more true than in the case of Dark Souls, as the sadistically difficult RPG continues a slow creep toward two million sales. As part of today's Namco Bandai financials, the company revealed sales in the United States and Europe reached 1.19 million copies.

Publishing in Japan was handled by From Software, which revealed last November that the game had shipped 370,000 units in the region.

Having punished console players within an inch of their sanity, Namco Bandai will launch Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC August 24.

The long, perilous journey through months of sinister rumors that Dark Souls was trekking to PC is finally at an end. Namco Bandai announced today that internet petitions do have some validity, and that Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition will launch on PC August 24.

Prepare to Die Edition will feature new bosses, but the rest will be the same as it was on consoles, previous rumors reveal. If that's the case, PC players should be prepared to face a relentlessly difficult experience of satisfaction.

After a long, difficult and treacherous battle, it appears Dark Souls may finally be coming to PC. Congratulations, warriors -- your petitions may have once again vanquished the initial convictions of yet another development studio.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is set to launch in August, a story in German magazine PC Action says (as found by NeoGAF user Anarkin and confirmed by us). Prepare to Die will feature new bosses, but everything else will be a direct translation of the PS3 and Xbox 360 title, according to Anarkin's report from the cover of PC Action.

Publisher Namco Bandai has previously hinted at a PC version of Dark Souls, if it appeared enough fans would play (buy) it.

Head over to the official Dark Souls Facebook page, and you may discover a new "app" that says "an announcement is coming." The app is nothing more than a brick wall, which will seemingly be broken down once it reaches enough likes. While we'd like to think the wall hides a stack of delicious, fluffy pancakes, evidence points to the impending announcement of a PC version.

And, by evidence, we mean the Australian magazine PC PowerPlay, which strongly suggests Dark Souls will be featured in its April issue. An image of the magazine has popped up on NeoGAF, revealing a page styled after Dark Souls' infamous "YOU DIED" screen. The magazine is due on shelves April 18, so we should likely know exactly what's going on by then.

The possibility of a PC version of Dark Souls cropped up earlier this year when a Namco Bandai forum admin suggested users make a petition for the project. A week later, Namco took notice of the petition, with the admin telling users they had the company's attention and that "the future is in your hands."

We never thought we'd say this, but here goes: someone noticed an online petition. Namco Bandai threw down the gauntlet, tasking a masochistic PC audience with drumming up signatures for a potential PC port of Dark Souls. Over 64,000 of them responded.

Namco Bandai community manager Tony Shoupinou dropped into the forums to say that his bosses approached him after the news broke. "If you wanted to have the attention of Namco Bandai Games, now you have it," he wrote in a post. "The future is in your hands, and I hope you will keep supporting this. I make a personal objective to make sure every relevant people in Namco Bandai Games is in touch with this formidable effort."

It's hardly confirmation that a port is incoming, but at least you've gotten Namco-Bandai's attention -- and knowing is half the battle.

Petitions come and petitions go, but when an employee of Namco Bandai suggests Dark Souls could get ported to PC with a few thousand signatures, we take notice. Administrator shoupinou responded to a request for a PC version of Dark Souls with the following advice:

"There is always possibilities to have games adapted on PC and the good news is that Dark Souls is not a 100% typical Console game so the adaptation is possible. Now to make things happen, let's say the demand has to be properly done. someone to make a successful petition?"

There is a petition gathering steam as we speak -- 36,668 signatures as of this writing -- and if you're a PC or Dark Souls fan, we don't see any danger in adding your own to the fight. Unless the CIA is using it to compile a list of suspected terrorists or something.

It's a crying shame that, for the uninitiated masses, Dark Souls will primarily be remembered for its considerable difficulty. It's an absolutely true shame, of course. To my recollection, no other game's punishment caused my brother to literally break a controller in a fit of rage, delete his save and write a chart-topping tribute song before his hatred could subside.

It's not all death and discouragement, however. Though every twist and turn of Dark Souls' menacing and lovely locales plays host to a preset lineup of fiends (many of whom can kill you with a sideways glance), there is a strange progress to the proceedings. It may come after hours of un-progress, but it comes -- and when it does, it comes correct.

Self-improvement in games typically comes in forms that are mechanical (you level up and gain five magic points!) or educational (now you know where the spike traps are). Dark Souls' core tenet of repetitious short-burst failure paired with a wildly open-ended RPG character progression system blends both methods perfectly. What's more, it offers an intensely terrifying risk/reward system for ever-precious Souls; fortunately, your Brains are never jeopardized.

Were you able to skirt around the considerable difficulty of Dark Souls by finding potent tactical combinations, like casting Iron Flesh and Homing Soulmass in tandem to turn yourself into an invincible, automatic killing machine? Well, you can't do that anymore: Dark Souls patch 1.05 was recently released, adding a handful of new features, tweaking a few abilities and outright nerfing some spells, including the two mentioned above.

The update is the same as the Japanese patch that went live some time ago. You can check out a full list of translated patch notes over on Eurogamer. Many condolences for the imminent death(s) of your poor, poor hero.

Namco Bandai is expanding its captive audience for Dark Souls, the grim action-RPG that critics and fans like, loathe and then love. According to developer From Software in Japan, 1.5 million vectors for its brutal challenge have shipped to stores worldwide.

North America has received the largest Stockholm Syndrome shipment of 620,000 units, followed by Europe with 470,000 and then Japan (370,000), where Dark Souls was published by From exclusively on PlayStation 3. The game's gauntlet landed in Asia last on October 18th, shipping 40,000 copies to that region.

We'll be keeping an eye out for Dark Souls' commercial performance in North America once the NPD releases the next round of statistics. How effective is word of mouth, we wonder, when it's whispered seductively through prison bars?

Generally speaking, speed runs fall into one of two categories: "That's completely nuts" and "I should feel bad for ever trying to play this game." Most speed runs can be classified as the former; incredible displays of memorization and timing that reduce hour-long sequences into minutes. They're fun to watch, and sometimes even educational.

Speed runs like SexyShoiko's Dark Souls play-through, however, make us ashamed of the countless hours we've painstakingly bled into this unforgiving beast of a game. Over a series of seven YouTube videos (part 1 above, 2 through 7 after the break) SexyShoiko manages to topple the entire title in less than an hour and a half, which is completely bewildering. We'd call him/her a masochist, but that term seems inapplicable to someone who is quite clearly the master of their own domain.

[Thanks, everyone who sent this in!]

After some were upset that Namco Bandai changed the contents of the Dark Souls collector's edition, now it looks like many fans won't be getting the collector's edition at all. Co-optimus reports that online retailer Newegg didn't receive any copies of the collector's edition at all, while it appears that Best Buy's supply isn't enough to satisfy all pre-orders.

To rectify the situation, Newegg will be offering $20 gift cards to all those who pre-ordered the game, while Best Buy will offer $20 cards for anyone who doesn't receive their collector's edition as expected. Kind of a bummer, to be sure, but as Co-optimus points out, twenty bucks is almost enough to buy the full, printed Dark Souls guide, which features more content than the digital mini-guide included with the collector's edition.

The art book, however, can't be replaced, which is unfortunate because there really are some spectacular designs in the game.

The many creatures of Dark Souls all feature some lovely design elements, though their predilection for constantly killing you might prevent you from appreciating their more artistic qualities. Thankfully, PlayStation Blog has gathered up several of the different monster designs, accompanying them with commentary from Dark Souls' director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

The headless, one-legged horror pictured above is a Titanite Demon, which Miyazaki noted was "the product of a lot of brainstorming when we weren't able to narrow down the theme," adding that, "from the game perspective, we needed 'an ore demon that forges weapons', and he was ultimately selected for that role."

Miyazaki clearly forgot the demon's defining feature, namely that he's a dirty butthole and we hate him.

When we received our review copy of Dark Souls, we noticed the collector's edition contents weren't exactly as they were described back in May. Don't worry, if you pre-ordered Dark Souls in North America, you're still getting all the same bonus content, albeit in a different format. The package still comes in a metal tin and features a copy of the game and a hardbound art book.

What's changed, however, is that the mini strategy guide, behind-the-scenes videos and original soundtrack are no longer included on physical media, but are instead via a download token. Meanwhile, the UK version is a little different as well. It turns out the UK version does include the soundtrack and behind-the-scenes videos on physical discs, both of which reside in pockets in the art book's cover. Not included with the UK version, however, is the metal tin.

Hopefully, that clears things up. Not that it's going to matter much after the Capra Demon kills you for the millionth effing time.

I imagine a large, imposing brick wall. Upon closer inspection I notice that, while the wall is solid, it's not impenetrable. Upon even closer inspection, I detect the faintest whiff of something delicious. Resolute to claim whatever lay on the other side, I set about smashing into the wall. After hours of chipping away, the wall tumbles down. On the other side, a perfect stack of mouth-wateringly fluffy pancakes. Immediately beyond the pancakes, another brick wall and, again, an intoxicating aroma emanating from within.

The cycle of Dark Souls is essentially the same: Hours of diligent, often frustrating work followed by a surprising, often spectacular payoff. I just hope you really love pancakes.

What we're appreciating most about Dark Souls' marketing campaign is how it repeatedly warns about the game's difficulty. It's not gonna be a "how hard could it be?" situation like Demon's Souls. Nope, the cards are on the table.