Another week, another ‘Streamer beats Dark Souls with their eyes closed, using nothing but a wired-up baguette, while hanging upside down and reciting the entirety of Shrek’. The ways in which people beat Soulsborne games never cease to amaze me. Yet, there’s a very simple challenge baked into each Dark Souls game already—playing with mouse and keyboard, inarguably the worst way to play one of these games.

I didn’t have a controller when I got Dark Souls 2, my first game in the Souls lineage. I’d never needed one. When I ventured to Drangleic, trying to figure out how the hell to dodge and attack while managing the camera, I was left flailing about aimlessly. Most fights ended with me in a corner surrounded by hollows who didn’t care that I had a shield. Or that I didn’t have a controller. I swear the Ogre was mocking me when he sat on me for the tenth time after my camera darted off in the wrong direction.

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The problem with Dark Souls is that so many actions require you to press two buttons at once. To jump, you need to sprint and then tap ‘B’ (or click the left analogue stick), and to kick, you need to move forward and attack simultaneously. For controllers, that’s fine since they’re so small, but on mouse and keyboard, it’s more finicky given how spread out the buttons are. It usually ends in you stumbling off a cliff or kicking instead of attacking, giving the enemy a perfect opening to deck your ass.

Leyndell From Elden Ring

On top of that, the default key bindings are wildly inconsistent. Attack is understandably left mouse click, but strong attack is left control. Why? Don’t ask me. Cancel is Q, and menus are tailored almost exclusively to controllers, meaning that something as simple as planning your hot bar becomes as much a challenge as fighting your first boss. Controllers also use analogue sticks for the camera so you don’t have to look around while attacking. Since attacking is bound to the mouse on PC, which is also used for the camera, you’ll spin around while swinging.

Elden Ring mostly ditched the two-button combos, giving jump a dedicated input while relegating kicks to optional weapon arts. You’d think things would be better on PC, but they’re not. While you can bind keys, certain things are unchangeable, like ‘enter’ and ‘esc’. The pouch also requires you to flip through it. That’s tedious as is on PC, but the solution is so simple—bind items to numbers instead. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t let you. For the most part, you can make most Soulsborne games manageable on PC thanks to mods and a lot of rebinding, but it’s not intuitive. In the end, it’s easier to spend £10 on an Xbox 360 controller, which is the true first boss most stubborn players (read: me) lose to.

Dark Souls 2 glowing Blue Sentinel phantom helping a summon fight a glowing red invader in the woods

Dark Souls has always been huge on Steam. In 2015, it was reported that 3.25 million of the 8.5 million sales across the series had been on PC—that’s almost half of the player base. It’s doubly impressive when you consider that Dark Souls’ PC port was notoriously bad, so much so that the infamous remaster was heralded simply because online play wouldn’t require mods to work anymore. 12 years later and the ports might be better, but playing with anything other than a controller is still asking to sign up for an unwilling challenge run.

Streamers and fans might love to run through at SL1 with nothing but a broken straight sword, but I like my straight sword in mint condition. And sitting at my desk with a controller feels clunky and awkward. Just let me use my mouse and keyboard, eh FromSoft? There’s a huge player base on PC, it’s probably time to figure out an integral part of that world.

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