Dark Souls III

So after eight years, five games (three actually titled “Dark Souls”), over a hundred bosses, and thousands of broken controllers, we‘ve come to the end of the Soulsorne series for the time being. And even as the series ends, these games remain so unique, so unrivaled in what they do, and so treasured by fans that half of me wishes this series kept going. Yet as the credits rolled, I found myself both immensely pleased with the game and entirely glad FromSoft is taking a break.

While the previous four Soulsborne games each had an identity distinctly their own, Dark Souls 3 comes off as more of a “best of” attempt to combine aspects of the four previous games. The first thing most players will notice is how much Bloodborne influenced the speed and flow of combat. Yet at the same time, you don‘t move quite as fast, making it almost feel more like Demon‘s Souls. You're back to using only an Estus Flask for healing like in Dark 1, but you collect shards to upgrade your flask like Dark 2 rather than kindling bonfires. Instead of spell uses, we‘re back to an SP gauge, or in this case focus point (FP) gauge, ala Demon‘s Souls. Hell, the luck stat from Demon‘s Souls even makes a triumphant return to the series after being absent over the past three games.

Dark Souls 3 is the most direct sequel in the series. While Dark Souls 2 had light, often times obscure references to the first game, Dark Souls 3 wades chin deep in prior lore. For a series that has been fairly restrained, FromSoft went a little fan service crazy with this one. Not only are there callbacks to the first two Dark Souls games, but there are plentiful references to Demon‘s Souls and even Bloodborne. There is one particular moment where there is a callback within a callback combined with another callback where it threatens to create some kind of fan service singularity. I‘m still not sure whether I found this particular moment awesome, sad, or kind of hilarious.

For the most part, Dark Souls 3 does a pretty good job with this. While there is certainly some amount of purposeless fan service, much of it does help fill in gaps in lore or simply enhance it. More importantly, if you step back for a moment and think about what is going on and why, there is a logic behind this design. One common complaint about Dark Souls 2 was its attempts to link its events to the first game‘s felt a little aimless and perhaps mostly out of obligation. Here, it does serve a purpose.

Dark Souls 3 is the most linear game in the series. There are a few points where you can tackle one of two sections in different orders, but that‘s about it for branching paths outside of optional areas. And even then, there aren‘t many optional areas. The game does compensate a bit for this though in how dense levels tend to be. There is a healthy twenty to thirty hours difference in total play time if you want to thoroughly explore everything there is to do.

I expect most first time players to miss much of this content as well, as we‘re back to Dark Souls 1 levels of obscurity when it comes to how some side quests develop. Since there is less reason to retrace your footsteps, you‘re likely to miss quite a bit unless you do certain things in very specific orders. While I know Souls players often enjoy this level of obtuseness, it does hit the point of feeling a little too random at times.

Whereas Dark Souls 1 notoriously had a strong first half and a back half that was a bit of a slog, there is a point just under midway through Dark Souls 3 where the game kicks it into high gear. Up until that point, bosses were a bit of a mixed bag and levels tended to range from okay to kind of bad in one specific case. But once you hit a certain point, and you‘ll know what point it is when you get there, almost the entire remainder of the game is incredible.

Dark Souls 3 is the most accessible game in the series. There is a very deliberate attempt by the game to remove some of the famous obscurity regarding the basic functionality of the game‘s systems. Meanwhile, the game features a fairly linear progression in difficulty. Like in previous Souls games, certain bosses signal spikes in difficulty, but they‘re more where you expect them to be as opposed to say the brutal Father Gascoigne fight being the first or second boss encounter in Bloodborne.

Individual level designs tend to be less amalgamations of various games and more thematically influenced by specific entries. My favorite level was a deliberate callback to one of the most famous levels of Demon‘s Souls that refreshed it in some very creative ways that will likely drive players mad. Perhaps each player is destined to like and dislike certain areas based on how they felt about prior entries. There are levels which suffer from an issue Dark Souls 2 had where bonfire placement feels almost spammy and too frequent. My favorite levels tended to involve single bonfires with shortcuts looping back to them. I find these levels to have more deliberate and thoughtful design behind them.

The Soulsborne series is famous for some of the toughest, most intense, yet best designed bosses in gaming. Dark Souls 2 suffered from having far too many boss battles. A good chunk of these were bad, forgettable, or barely qualified as boss fights. FromSoft clearly listened to feedback. While I won‘t provide an exact count, this game focused on fewer, yet more memorable boss fights. Of the core boss fights, even the duds were fairly inoffensive compared to previous faux paus such as the Bed of Chaos, the Dragon God, and the Royal Rat Authority. On top of this, I would say six of the game‘s bosses stand out as among the top boss fights in the Soulsborne series. The game compensates for fewer bosses with more mini-bosses than in previous games. There are also plentiful Black Phantoms and unique enemy encounters to tackle.

Speaking of phantoms, after spending three games trying to get away from the Demon‘s Souls Soul Form/Human Form system, Dark Souls 3 has generally brought that system back with its Unkindled/Lord of Cinder system. When in Lord of Cinder form, you‘ll have 30% more health, be able to summon phantoms to help, but will also be vulnerable to invasion. Not a fan of PvP? Just throw yourself off the nearest cliff following boss fights. Basically, it‘s a simplified version of the Demon‘s Souls system that doesn't require you to use a Cling Ring. As someone who thought they basically got it right the first time around, I was pleased to see this.

Every Souls game has suffered from a certain amount of jank, but Dark Souls 3 might be the jankiest of them all since the original Demon‘s Souls. The game suffers from similar, if not worse hitbox/collision detection issues previous games had. In one absurd moment, I got one arrow stuck in the air next to a nearby wall, and then shot another arrow that got stuck in mid-air next to another distant wall. There was a castle staircase at one point that enemy projectiles were repeatedly clipping through. Texture issues of all kinds were a constant problem throughout my playthrough as well.

The cost of annualizing the series shows up in other ways as well. The PC version of the game suffered from crashing issues at launch. Meanwhile, FromSoft‘s repeated attempts to get cheating under control on the PC version has made things possibly worse as legitimate players find themselves victims of softbans thanks to invaders abusing hacked equipment. Then there‘s the entire controversy regarding the game‘s mysterious use of the Poise stat versus previous entries in the game (see: Patrick Klepek s writeup on the subject from April). Then there are issues of if the game is balanced properly, though I personally only played through once with a quality build, so I hesitate to go too deep into this subject. The game does seem to favor quality builds more than in the past, and it does seem to overly favor faster weapons and builds.

And so we have come to the end of the Dark Souls series for the time being. While I‘m certainly going to miss it, Dark Souls 3 was a clear message that it was time to take a break before FromSoft really did run out of steam. As I look back on the past decade, I can‘t think of a single other game series that produced such consistent quality. The Souls series brought challenge back to AAA gaming in a time when everything else seemed to cater to mainstream audiences. But more importantly, it made challenge fun, not artificial or overly opressive. Dark Souls 3 is a fantastic celebration of this amazing series and a wonderful way to send it out in style.