Nevertheless, none of those complaints really matter with regards to the gameplay, which remains brilliant.

Fundamentally, although this is an improvement over the original release, it doesn’t quite live up to the ‘remastered’ flag. The retexturing, although clearly better, doesn’t offer that much of a leap forward – certainly nowhere close to that seen in remastered versions of God of War 3 and Shadow of the Colossus. The polygon models haven’t been touched, so the new lick of paint really emphasises the ‘boxiness’ of some of the buildings there are some really harsh lines and angles on the architecture that stand out a mile.

There’s also a new bonfire by Vamos, the blacksmith in the Catacombs, which doesn’t really make the game any easier, but allows more easy access to him when in the latter part of the game and want to level up some gear. You can even switch a covenant you’ve entered at any time at a bonfire, so there’s a bit more focus on getting players to take part – and if you’re not interested, you now start equipped with an item that will banish any invaders from your world. These are two areas that the sequels actually excels over the original game, making it far easier to play against friends and enemies, as well as the overall matchmaking in inter-covenant battles. There have been a few tweaks to the multiplayer matchmaking, adopting some of the systems found in the two sequels: the ability to use passwords to find specific players and to heal using Estus whilst in an online battle. It also has some lovely 4K textures that show off From Software’s grim fantasy art direction. So what’s new? The game now runs at a silky-smooth 60fps – and yes, that includes Blighttown. However, not one of those issues stopped it being regarded as an all-timer. The thing about Dark Souls is that it was a bit of an awkward game, with Blighttown’s infamous frame-rate nosedive and the odd muddy texture throughout Lordran – as well as some unreliable netcode.

Dark souls remastered release date