Dark Souls is a third-person action RPG and a spiritual successor to 2009's Demon's Souls. Mechanically, it is very similar to its predecessor. The player can choose between several character classes for the protagonist, choose the gender, and customize his or her physical appearance. Character attributes can be manually increased when leveling up. The game takes place in a series of interconnected, mostly dungeon-like areas populated by enemies. Some areas can be accessed freely, though the enemies there may be too hard for the player to tackle at earlier stages. Combat allows detailed options such as active parrying, blocking, rolling, and different attacks with equipped weapon. The player must pay close attention to both their vitality and stamina meters. All actions will reduce stamina, and when the stamina bar is empty the player is left vulnerable.

Dark Souls: Remastest is a multiplayer focused mod for Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition that adds a variety of new PvP related content to the game, and removes most of the coop restrictions from the game.