Books like Dark Souls: Design Works
Dark Souls: Design Works
Since it's more illustrations than text, keeping it as a semi short review. I got this for the bf last year [and I got him #2 for v-day so expect that soon as well] and read this because I knew I was also going to be getting the second. I played through Demons Souls in its heyday, and as much as I love the look/lore/dismal-ness of the Soulsborne series, the control scheme is really difficult for me to ever really get used to, so I've played about halfway through DS1 [that this book is for] but had to stop also because I no longer had a system to play it on. That being said, I've watched countless let's plays and have spent hours and hours reading into the [fascinating] lore of the series, have read the related comics, etc.The design and general aesthetic of the Soulsborne games have always been a favorite of mine. So when I found out this book existed I was stoked. It's very high quality, both physically and the content within. It's so nice to be able to see art/diagrams of the many enemies in the games, since most of the time the game is so dark, and moves so fast, you don't get to see the detail that goes into the things you fight most of the time.There's also random commentary on some of the design choices, and interviews within the book that were very interesting to read over.That being said, I didn't give it a full 5 star because it seemed rather... incomplete? There's actually a ton of official art and detailed concepts that you can easily find online from the designers/official websites/etc that were left out of the book for some reason. That, and there are enemies [bosses in particular in this case] that are actually huge and detailed, and lots of important lore around them, and they only got a picture that's maybe a fourth of a page and tiny, whereas other common enemies get full pages. This includes some of the Lord Souls bosses too, which I thought was really backwards. I'd definitely only really recommend it to Soulsborne fans who have played DS1 since it is pretty spoiler-y if you haven't/plan to; or if you at least highly appreciate DS1.