Dark Souls III (2016)

The third and final Dark Souls mainline entry is a masterful conclusion to FromSoftware’s legendary action RPG series. Blending the deliberate, methodical combat of its predecessors with the swifter, more aggressive pacing inspired by Bloodborne. The game’s world is a decaying, interconnected labyrinth of gothic spires, crumbling castles, and eerie swamps, each area brimming with secrets, shortcuts, and deadly foes. Every encounter demands focus, whether it’s a lone hollow knight or a towering boss with multiple, unpredictable phases, rewarding patience, precise timing, and adaptability.

It really feels like they learned a lot when it comes to the pacing and mechanics from the Bloodborne title, and decided to gracefully translate it into a Dark Souls title, and it was done masterfully. This one has the best level design in my opinion, really makes you want to replay it a couple of times just for testing out new builds, since they introduced weapon arts and much much more spells for you to play around. Not to mention the large amount of bosses and unique weapons you can obtain from them, this is truly the best last Dark Souls title we could ever get. I played and replayed this one quite a bit, but I admit that I was never able to beat Midir haha.

The narrative remains deliberately cryptic, told through fragmented dialogue, item descriptions, and environmental storytelling, inviting you to piece together its somber tale of fading fire and cyclical despair. Visually, it’s stunning, with haunting vistas and oppressive atmosphere, complemented by an orchestral score that swells at key moments to heighten both triumph and tragedy. Dark Souls III is challenging and at times punishing, but its sense of accomplishment and mastery is unmatched, making it a fitting and satisfying farewell to the series. A must play for Soulslike fans or if you even slightly liked Dark Souls to any extent.

This game, like many others, is my first soulsborne. This game is probably the least harsh you'll ever play in the souls series outside of Elden Ring and probably the least balanced too..... 2nd only to Elden Ring.

This game is fantastic in introducing you to all the mechanics in a fast manner, rewarding you for taking your time in the tutorial area with a good first boss to start, to give you a hint of what's coming later on. I think the biggest issue with this game is that there is too much save points, you'll save at a campfire, open a door, and boom. Another campfire. Asides from that, the game feels very smooth.

There is obvious areas that you can progress to while still having your own choice in each path. Each rewarding and each offering different challenges, and that's what makes it interesting for me. Each path still provides a different experience and a different endpoint for it with fun questlines available in each path. I'm saying it in a round about way, but easiest way to describe it is one will slow you down via mud, while the other will make you run a marathon while a hail of arrows rains upon you. It's fun.

This would be the most natural way to get into soulsborne series without it being too easy, or too difficult. Elden Ring is too RPG heavy in grinding, Dark Souls 1 is too unforgiving, and Bloodborne isn't available on pc. Each providing with their own strength, but right here is a great start point.

Gameplay: 4 /5 Story: 3.5 /5 Presentation: 3.5/5 Difficulty: 4/ 5

Basis:

Story= plot progression, intrigue, characters, world

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Much better controls which let me feel like when I failed it was actually all my fault and not the game which is a good place to be. Once again a long journey with many tough foes to face who continue to have amazing character design that gets implemented into the way they fight.

I did it! I finally managed to beat Dark Souls 3 with my Level 1 character!! In other words, completed a "no-levelling run" (Soul Level 1, all bosses). Very proud my magnificent achievement. The whole experience wasn't too difficult. Hardest bosses were Soul of Cinder, Lothric the Younger Prince and Nameless King. Soul of Cinder in particular took a couple hours (maybe 70 or 80 attempts), I made the killing blow with my trusty crossbow, no estus left, HP bar very low (see pic). It was intense.

I have a much greater appreciation for this game now; you really see the nuances of game mechanics when anything can kill you with one hit. I feel like this is the way it was designed to be played. Playing like this, you really have to think carefully about every bit of gear that you use, every consumable and every button you press on the controller. Instead of haphazardly bumbling through the game, you've got to be careful, precise, it's like brain surgery.

Now, time to beat Bloodborne without levelling. The lowest you can do is a Blood Level 4 character. I'm concerned about attempting this, the DLC areas will be horrific.

Leaked Dark Souls 3 DLC Concept Art Shows Enemies, Environments

Wow, this is very cool. It looks like From Software are going down the Lovecraft path again, as they did for the The Old Hunters DLC. From this concept art, I'm going to guess that the Dark Souls 3 DLC content will be superior to the base game, just like it was with Bloodborne. Exciting stuff. I expect that this DLC will be related to "The Deep" which is mentioned frequently in the lore and speculated by some of the community.

Dark Souls 3 DLC

The Dark Souls 3 DLC is supposedly arriving in September, though no date is confirmed. One article says that it might be released as early as August, but I think it's just clickbait. One thing is for certain: I'm really excited about it, for two reasons. Firstly, one could argue that the DLC content from Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne is superior to the base game. At least in terms of boss fights, that is certainly the case. From Software are also known to make their DLC content especially challenging and harrowing. This is true for all of their recent four games, so I'm looking forward to a new challenge. Another thing to look forward to is the possibility of Lovecraft-themed DLC, as hinted throughout much of the DS3 lore.

Miyazaki has stated that the Bloodborne idea was based upon Oolacile and the DS1 DLC. That makes me think that Miyasaki still has a lot of material surrounding those themes and wishes to explore further. I'm hoping that the DLC explores darker, more surreal territory, much like the DLC content from Bloodborne and DS1.

I found this Youtuber has similar theories to my own, and he also directly references some of the related lore:

I've tried Dark Souls 1 and 2, and hated both of them, mostly for their early difficulty. I quit early on in both of them. Dark Souls 3 fixes this issue, making the game approachable even to a Souls newbie like me. The game doesn't get too difficult (I breezed through most of the game), but honestly nothing is as difficult as the beginning of the other Souls titles. And I'm okay with this drop in difficulty, because it's the same gameplay experience, just condensed. It more quickly gets you to that point of intense satisfaction where, even though you just died horribly to a boss, you know you've got its number, and will get it next try (or the try after [or the try after {etc}]). It also removes some unnecessary mechanics of the previous games (e.g. hollowing, equip weight affecting stamina recovery) which negates the need to fret over equipment too much.

The high points are the first third and the final boss, during the latter two-thirds your character has become strong enough to handle the enemies since now your attacks stun most enemies. Plus you have enough healing that you can outright tank most bosses during that portion of the game. The final boss is great, though, and at least the areas you move through are neat artistically.

I'd recommend Dark Souls 3 to any newcomer to the series, and for veterans who want a more casual experience. Maybe I'll go back and try the other Souls games again.

Note: I played Knight, wielding a fast 1h sword weapon.

[Minor spoilers / not really spoilers, just talking vaguely about things that happen somewhere in the game]

Some other issues I have with Dark Souls III are three points where the game is just completely unintuitive. The first is the solution to a required boss, Yhorm (I'll drop the epithet to not spoil the boss type, but will discuss the specifics below under [Heavy Spoilers]). It requires you do something mechanically you've never done before, and the hint it gives you is just plain wrong/misleading. The second is what happens just after, the game teleports you to a new location, immediately makes you fight a boss, and doesn't tell you where you ended up. You can kind of guess from the name of the boss (it contains a location), but the game has never done this before and the place you end up is from early on in the game, an area you might have forgotten. The final issue I have is that a bunch of the late-game content (most of the optional bosses) are hidden behind an invisible wall. From what I can tell, nothing tells you about this, so you actually have to slash a wall behind a treasure chest to enter this area.

[Heavy spoilers: boss discussion]

Yhorm the Giant is a trash boss. In his boss room is a white glowie containing a sword, and a message saying "It takes this sword to fell a great tree." Yhorm is a giant, not a tree, so you'd assume it's not for this boss. You attack him, and he has loads of defense, with your attacks doing ~80 damage out of ~20,000 HP. So immediately you think there's a gimmick, and so you try to use that sword, but whacking him with it does even worse damage, and the special changes your stance and causes wind to swirl around the sword, but nothing else seems to get it to do anything. So you go back to the boss fighting normally, and notice he's a pushover, his attacks are all slow and super-telegraphed, and fully blockable with a shield, so you could feasibly hit him the 250 times you need to kill him normally. It's half of an interesting idea, have a boss that's pathetic but require intense tedium to kill it. Of course, I don't want to kill the boss this way, and it turns out the sword in the boss room is the answer, and to use it you have to charge the special for ~15 seconds (a long time in an action game), and after you unleash it, the boss dies in four hits, making it completely trivial to beat since the boss is slow enough to give you time to charge the special.