Home / Games / DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die™ Edition
DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die™ Edition
Dark Souls will be the most deeply challenging game you play this year. Can you live through a million deaths and earn your legacy?
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Data as of 2026-05-20.
What reviewers agree on
23 of the 101 reviews raise this.
“[h1]Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition[/h1] is the kind of game that doesn’t try to please you — it challenges you to earn every victory. And that’s exactly what makes it so exciting and engaging. The foundation is…”
“It's pretty rough around the edges, it's still really fun. Terrible PC port tho, I have a 9800x3d 32gb ram rtx 4090 and had frame drops in Blighttown, Centipede Fight, and Seath fight. If you are going to play this…”
“This is the best Dark Souls game. It's got this overall gritty and sort of weird design approach on basically every level, not just art direction but gameplay as well. One of the biggest factors that makes this game…”
14 of the 101 reviews raise this.
“More charming than the remaster.”
“I like how it looks somewhat better than the remastered, not sure why, I think it has something to do with the lighting or shading. A shame the online is practically dead (as in, you can restore it with a mod if you…”
“It's pretty rough around the edges, it's still really fun. Terrible PC port tho, I have a 9800x3d 32gb ram rtx 4090 and had frame drops in Blighttown, Centipede Fight, and Seath fight. If you are going to play this…”
13 of the 101 reviews raise this.
“[h1]Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition[/h1] is the kind of game that doesn’t try to please you — it challenges you to earn every victory. And that’s exactly what makes it so exciting and engaging. The foundation is…”
“The good: - Best level design and enemy placements you'll see in a videogame. - Everything on the map connects. - It's the easiest and most readable (pattern-wise) dark souls game. The combat is slow and allows for…”
“A superb game and well worth everyone's time - though not all will have the fortitude to continue through learning to enjoyment. I have over 1,000 hours in DS1 PtdE and another 90 hours in the DS1 remaster. If you put…”
8 of the 101 reviews raise this.
“The good: - Best level design and enemy placements you'll see in a videogame. - Everything on the map connects. - It's the easiest and most readable (pattern-wise) dark souls game. The combat is slow and allows for…”
“i beat this game on my xbox and i gotta say this game is the second best game ever made. the world its just beautiful and so well made everything feels connected and has a feel of wonder mystery and sadness all combined…”
“Obviously one is more or less forced to play the Remastered version of this game on Steam, now, but I was thoroughly blown away by this game in ways that games have not done in a hot minute. The personal feeling of…”
5 of the 101 reviews raise this.
“One of my favorite games, first played when the game came out and still play it regularly to this day. The remaster actually felt like it lost a little bit of the atmosphere. Not sure if it was just. but i alway come…”
“I started playing this game over 10 years ago and still come back to it and the sequels. It may be slower than the others in the series and the pvp is almost non-existent now, but there is still some janky charm to it.”
“For how dated the combat feels now by comparison to later From Soft entries, the atmosphere and open structured level design that always finds a way to loop back around has yet to be beat. I don't think I can ever grow…”
7 of the 101 reviews raise this · 6 of them still recommend the game.
“A terrible port of one of the greatest games ever created. Fortunately, most of the issues can be solved by installing "DSFix." It shouldn't be necessary for a game from 2012 in 2026, but it is! The remaster isn't any…”
“It's pretty rough around the edges, it's still really fun. Terrible PC port tho, I have a 9800x3d 32gb ram rtx 4090 and had frame drops in Blighttown, Centipede Fight, and Seath fight. If you are going to play this…”
“The non-remastered version of Dark Souls is still amazing, albeit it being stuck in 30 fps, but it's a shame that the online features have been disabled. I wish there was online crossplay between this version and the…”
7 of the 101 reviews raise this · 4 of them still recommend the game.
“Fromsoftware are content elitists who refuse to give their player base remakes they want, or stories they ask for. Suck down their content, and hope you get elite enough skills, or they hand you a game breaking cheat in…”
“I am very new to this style of game... For someone who has really only played shooters, sports games, fighters, and really anything popular, I have so many opinions about this game. For one, Amazing! I am a very…”
“Reviewing a game that isn't available is quite something, anyway, 9/11 strongly recommend (♥♥♥♥ BoC, sk*nk).”
6 of the 101 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“It's pretty rough around the edges, it's still really fun. Terrible PC port tho, I have a 9800x3d 32gb ram rtx 4090 and had frame drops in Blighttown, Centipede Fight, and Seath fight. If you are going to play this…”
“I just found out they did a remastered version and delisted this version of the game from the store. I love from software games, but this version of the game on PC was really bad, I can understand why there's a…”
“Absolutely unplayable on PC with keyboard and mouse. Horrendous controls, no option to adjust mouse sensitivity, useless pointers from the game that explain in deep detail what controller button to press, when you're…”
4 of the 101 reviews raise this · 3 of them still recommend the game.
“I like how it looks somewhat better than the remastered, not sure why, I think it has something to do with the lighting or shading. A shame the online is practically dead (as in, you can restore it with a mod if you…”
“The non-remastered version of Dark Souls is still amazing, albeit it being stuck in 30 fps, but it's a shame that the online features have been disabled. I wish there was online crossplay between this version and the…”
“Fromsoftware are content elitists who refuse to give their player base remakes they want, or stories they ask for. Suck down their content, and hope you get elite enough skills, or they hand you a game breaking cheat in…”
3 of the 101 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“Just tried to play this game for the first time in 12 years, only to find out support for it has, somehow, deprecated? And I'm supposed to spend $40 on the remastered edition? What the ♥♥♥♥? I can't even run this game…”
“The original Dark Souls experience. Better than the REMASTERED version, 'cause in this one you can use MODS that fix the game better than the remaster, talking about glitches, FPS and even textures and HD quality. Too…”
Counted across 101 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 91.5% positive rating · as of 2026-05-20
“Knight Artorias reminds me of Sayaka Miki.”
— a player, Steam review · 90 hrs played“Talk about a flawed masterpiece! This is the epitome of a flawed masterpiece. A truly brilliant game for it's time though not without some serious issues including a developer acknowledged broken boss with a purposefully implemented cheesing mechanism to get by. If you die the…”
— a player, Steam review · 159 hrs played“*Review after 100%* Considering you can't even get this version of the game anymore, this 'thumbs up,thumbs down' review will probably be moot for some of you; though it is worth pointing out that FromSoft essentially released the same game as the remastered edition, bar the…”
— a player, Steam review · 62 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live count fetched 2026-07-11 10:12 UTC · history via SteamCharts.
Achievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-07-25.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition update
We have been working to restore the online service for the Prepare to Die Edition that was released in 2012. However, we are no longer able to provide this service, due to the aging of the system. We
Discount program termination
For the past two years, we have offered a 50% discount on Dark Souls: Remastered for everyone who owned a copy of the original Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on Steam. This message is to inform yo
Games like DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die™ Edition
From our knowledge graph — ranked by shared traits, not a black box. Each card says why it's here.
DARK SOULS™ II
85.7% · 21,834 reviews
shares Unforgiving, Immersive, Souls Like, Replay Value
DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED
92.3% · 66,525 reviews
shares Souls Like, Lore Rich, Replay Value, Dark Fantasy
DARK SOULS™ III
94.0% · 165,459 reviews
shares Souls Like, Lore Rich, Replay Value, Dark Fantasy
Monster Hunter: World
91.9% · 170,722 reviews
shares Souls Like, Replay Value, Action RPG, Great Soundtrack
DARK SOULS™ II: Scholar of the First Sin
82.3% · 52,061 reviews
shares Souls Like, Lore Rich, Dark Fantasy, Action RPG
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
88.5% · 28,061 reviews
shares Dark Fantasy, Action RPG, Great Soundtrack, Open World
Blade of Darkness
86.9% · 787 reviews
shares Souls Like, Lore Rich, Replay Value, Dark Fantasy
ELDEN RING
94.0% · 560,575 reviews
shares Souls Like, Dark Fantasy, Action RPG, Great Soundtrack
Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-20.
| Genres | Action, RPG |
| Player tags | Souls-like · RPG · Dark Fantasy · Difficult · Action · Exploration · Lore-Rich · Fantasy · Unforgiving · Adventure · Atmospheric · Immersive (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Multi-player · Steam Achievements · Partial Controller Support · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English * , French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish - Spain, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Japanese * |
| Achievements | 41 |
| Estimated owners | 1,000,000 – 2,000,000 (SteamSpy) |
| Official site | http://www.preparetodie.com/ |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
OS *: Windows XP , Windows Vista, Windows 7, or newer Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 GHz+ or AMD Phenom II X2 545 3.0 GHz+ Memory: 2 GB Hard Disk Space: 4GB Video Card: GeForce 9800 GTX+ or ATI Radeon HD 4870+ DirectX®: 9.0c Sound: Direct Sound Compatible Additional: Microsoft Xbox 360® Controller for Windows® (or equivalent) is strongly recommended.