Darksiders III (2018)

No he conseguido jugar más de 5h con la principal queja de una dificultad desmedida. Quizá la culpa sea mía por tener ciertas expectativas, aunque creo que es razonable teniendo en cuenta que es la tercera entrega de la saga y es que ese es mi problema.

Lo he jugado en dificultad normal y la sensación es que he tenido que luchar constantemente con el juego para que me deje jugar resultándome incluso en ocasiones un combate injusto; con enemigos "minion" con una vida más alta que algunos bosses de otros juegos. Y si aún el combate estuviese realmente pulido, quizá sería hasta gratificante estar una y otra vez enfrentándose a los mismo enemigos tras spawnear. Que no se me malinterprete, el combate es divertido, dinámico y con muchas posibilidades, pero el trabajo de cámara y el movimiento es ciertamente obstuso y a veces resulta frustrante al no tener la sensación del control completo sobre el personaje.

En cuanto a la historia no tengo muchas quejas, con gran continuidad sobre las anteriores entregas y con un personaje principal bastante interesante. Me da realmente pena no poder continuar con la historia porque me parece que es uno de los puntos fuertes de la saga.

Es posible que Darksiders III se haya lanzado en una época donde lo guay es parecerse a Dark Souls y desde luego creo que hacen un buen trabajo en ese sentido. Pero es que Darksiders no es Dark Souls por mucho que el nombre se parezca ni creo que tenga la necesidad de hacer este brusco volantazo a estas alturas de la saga. Y este es precisamente mi mayor problema con Darksiders III: parece tener un síndrome de inferioridad con respecto a la saga de FromSoftware.

Darksiders es una saga que me gusta, que tiene su propia identidad y es suficientemente interesante como para no tener que compararse con ninguna otra entrega. Considero que el equipo de THQ NORDIC debería confiar más en su criterio y en su propio trabajo en vez de fijarse en el de lado.

Quizá vuelva a intentar retomar la saga en algún otro momento en dificultad fácil desde el principio solo para poder continuar con la saga y con la esperanza de que el estudio se reencuentre en las próximas entregas.

This third installment brings Fury, as the third horseman. The fight to restore balance continues and the conspirators are revealed. The game keeps the old formula with intricate levels, which you uncover them as you progress, the keys that connect the levels are now your weapons and that is an interesting choice.

The souls influence is heavily present in the game's currency system, level and item progression etc. The story is interesting, showing a different side of some concepts and aspects involving humanity and some of the roles we take to survive. There is one puzzle level at the end who felt rushed and boring only for the sake of forcing some more hours.

The balance difficulty feels more like the enemies are sponges and give a lot more damage. I can apeal to a degree of difficulty but after several hours of farming, exploring and upgrading with more than half of the game explored, it felt like a bad choice of design and it it wasn't worth the effort. Boss battles could have been more intelligent, there is one ridiculously easy and one that has a really cheap arena design.

Darksiders was a successful GOW clone but they tried too hard to transform this one in a hybrid souls game. It feels unfinished. It is filled with non interesting levels, compared to its previous titles. Where i would stop and analyze the variety of the choices they made to DS1 and DS2, here i felt the need to cut through them after a certain point.

Ready your wip and battle with fury and find your inner balance.

I've had this one on my list for a while since I played the previous 2 installments. I did enjoy the first one a lot the initial time I played it, many years ago. After recently replaying it, I must admit that I had to put it down after a while. Perhaps I'm just too old for the fast-paced hack and slash games of the modern era... I had a lot of fun with Darksiders 2 and fondly remember how it crammed the maximum graphics juice of the Wii U.

This 3rd game felt a bit different, yet at the same time, not. At the core, it's quite similar. Zelda-type dungeons with puzzles varied with fighting. It retains some RPG and hack-and-slash elements from the previous games, but here a dodge mechanic shines as the main combat advantage along with a dark souls-esque souls-system to level up your 3 ability stats.

What I enjoyed the most with the game was certainly the puzzles. They felt balanced and engaging. The level-up system is quite crude and simple but has room for some interesting builds. Switching between the different abilities gained through every dungeon felt a bit arduous and ruined the flow of the game for me. I mostly stuck to one ability to use in combat anyway.

This game was also really difficult for me. Even after lowering the difficulty to its lowest setting I was honestly still struggling. It seemed like the best and only way to go about fighting was to time your dodges and counter, just over and over again. Making it more like a dodge-and-slash game. The way that enemies attack you from all sides in hordes made me often swear off a backshot that I didn't see in time.

Fury is an interesting character, who cares a lot about her horse? Maybe? I do feel like she falls kind of flat in her existential crisis of meaning, even albeit it's an interesting topic to explore. Also, I feel like they overplayed that emotional connection to that horse a bit repetitively.

It's a myeah game for me, pretty much in the same way as the other Darksiders felt. If you really like those games you probably like this one, it's the same core formula.

I didn't really enjoy this game all that much. I felt like the graphics and story were okay, but the gameplay loop was severely repetitive. It was a shame after such a fun time with DS 1 and 2 that this one just didn't hit the mark.

I think it comes down to the developers needing to take a stance.....either they 're a soul-like, or they're not....or they're a metroidvania or they're not....or they're an action RPG or they're not. They just didn't successfully manage to do all three of those in one game.

I'm going to give Genesis a run as I have it already, but I'm hoping it's not more of the same as this one and moves back towards the DS 1/2 variety instead.

~David

Coming off of Arkham Knight, what I really needed was a game with a straightforward story that wasn't really trying to hard and fun, adventure-style gameplay. Or at least I know that in hindsight, because that's what I got from Darksiders III and it was great.

Let's start with the negatives, just so that I don't end on it: My one major complaint with the game is about the consumables mechanic. Trying to use any consumables other than the basic health items during a battle was practically impossible, and the imprecision of the d-pad led to many frustrating moments where I tried to heal but then accidentally selected some other item and died before I could correct the mistake. It's a weird problem to have in a 2018 game, given that every other action-RPG solved it a long time ago by either having a limited number of hotkeyed consumables (e.g. you could have one item for each d-pad direction, and change the loadout as desired) or by just letting you pause the action to use whatever items you want. The fact that they have the main healing ability semi-hotkeyed means they were clearly aware of the problem, but that was not by any means an adequate solution.

Okay, now the good stuff. More than any other game I've played in the last few years, DIII (that's what the cool kids call it, right?) made me feel the way I felt playing games as a kid. As much as I like games that try to do big artistic things, it's nice to sometimes play a game that's just fun. The story was a neat little twist on familiar archetypes, the mechanics were just varied enough to be engaging, and the combination of semi-open-world exploration with dungeon-crawler design kept me engaged, even when going back to explore previous areas armed with new abilities, and the puzzles were clever without being too clever (or relying on obnoxiously precise execution even when you've figured out how to solve it (I'm looking at you Talos Principle)). It didn't blow my mind or move my soul—it was a little weird, a little familiar, and a lot of fun.

Darksiders has always had a soft spot for me despite its many flaws. Painfully dated screenshakes during a booming voice to show command and several frame drops during the massive fights - Darksiders 3 is the epitome of these and has me reassured i'd never buy these games at full price.

Despite that, it's incredible what they've tried to achieve in terms of gratifying combat and just general plot.

Gameplay: 3/5 Story: 3.5/5 Presentation: 2/5

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

I was very disappointed with how this game turned out. Like most story-driven games I try to avoid spoilers and sometimes I don't look up reviews for games just so that I don't have a bias, to begin with. Having played 1 and 2 I really love this series and I only hoped that the third would continue to excel as the first two did. In all honesty, the game was less polished and less developed than the first. This isn't to say that the first was bad in anyway its just that most first ips don't get the funding and development that they deserve. Now to breakdown what made this game such a let down.

First off gameplay, if you are looking for rpg elements this game offers a minimal amount. Though you do get "different" weapons through the game, which also come with new abilities they are only an addition to your main weapon (the whip). I found myself really only using one of the weapon/powers throughout practically ever combat sequence. The game does require you to solve many puzzles throughout the game using a combination of the powers. The puzzle aspects ended up being some of the most fun in the game. Upgrade wise well its just that you basically just make weapons more powerful with the same old crafting materials the whole game. As for your character you can upgrade three stats. Health, Strength, and Arcane, which is for your powers and dodge counter damage. You do have enhancements which when fully upgradeed they make combat a lot easier, but not anymore satisfying. Unlike almost all "hack nslash" action rpgs you get to learn some new combos, but not in this game its the same recipe all the way through.

The stroy did fine as it continued to fill in gaps that were not yet told in the first two games. Fury did bring in a different more hotheaded and reckless personality, but I didn't really feel like the story was executed in a way that made me feel for her in the struggle. There is much story still to be told and I hope that this series doesn't end even if this game was their worst.

Finally presentation, I can basically summarize this into two words " loading screens". The game did a horrible job rendering. I played on PS4 so they really should have tested render times on this game. Every once and a while I would get a hang up while traveling through the world when for about 15 seconds the game would just freeze to load the new area. Then suddenly enemies would pop into the scene and you would be back to normal. Another irritating , but not game ending problem was that as I would go around corners or go through areas too fast I would see a lot of white sections around the screen as it would render areas slow enough that I would see holes getting filled with environment as I am traveling. The textures also felt like they lacked. Close ups of certain objects looked so low res.

So I harped on this game a lot. I feel that a lot of it stems from the fact that I was really excited to play this game and it turned out way different than I had hoped. I would say you can definitely look up the story info or watch the game online, but I wouldn't say that it is worth the buy.

Additional note(with some spoilers): I did watch one trailer for the game and it built up my anticipation as I got to see what almost looked like open world gameplay with Fury riding around on her horse. Such a let down that one of the horseman doesnt even get to ride their horse the whole game. And though the game was semi linearly open world it didn't feel like you had too much to discover.