If the first Dark Souls depicted a world gracefully drifting towards the apocalypse, Dark Souls 3 shows one on a spiraling, feverish descent directly into it. It’s a fierce and punishing behemoth that dares you to take a step forward before knocking you back, again and again and again. But with a bleak, yet beautiful world that’s enthralling to explore and packed with secrets to find, I always felt compelled to come back, eager for that familiar thrill of overcoming even the most exacting challenges.
Dark Souls 3 does suffer from occasional framerate dips and a few underwhelming boss fights, but beyond that, its epic scale, aggressive obstacles, and rich development of existing lore make it the grandest and fiercest Dark Souls adventure yet.
Kindling Friendships
There are plenty of interesting characters to meet throughout Dark Souls 3, some new and some returning. The voice acting is great as always and characters have a ton of dialogue to exhaust, offering up plenty of new emotes to perform, dropping useful hints about the world and your role in it, and generally cementing themselves as the next in a line of odd, yet lovable Souls personalities. Like in past games, NPC questlines remain mysteries to be solved over the long term of your adventure, so in my first 35-hour playthrough they weren’t all completed. I let a couple characters die because of my failure to encounter them in certain areas or meet certain circumstances, but in keeping with true Dark Souls fashion, even death has its rewards: those conclusions still had something interesting to offer in the way of tragic closure, sometimes tied to other plot details in startling ways, or neat new items.
The Art of the Kill
The brutality of Dark Souls 3’s worlds and the beasts that roam there are matched only by its vicious new moves called weapon arts, which add variety and style to an already strong combat system: one moment I’m crushing enemies with the devastating weight of my greatsword, the next I’m turning the giant hunk of curved steel into a graceful propeller of destruction.
Weird and Wonderful Weapons
Some of the most awesome-looking weapon arts, and one of the most impressive strides in Dark Souls 3’s combat in general, come out of its dual-wielded weapon sets. A clean system for dual-wielding most combinations of weapons and an awesome arsenal designed specifically for it means it’s now actually viable to have a dual-wielding build in Dark Souls. The risk of not having a shield has always been one part of what’s so enticing about dual-wielding, and some of Dark Souls 3’s weapons are just aggressive and multipurpose enough to make you not even miss it.
Lords of Cinder
Dark Souls 3 experiments a lot more with the boss-battle structure, yielding mixed results. For example, most boss fights have two phases, in much the same way Bloodborne does, which means new movesets and sometimes a brand-new health bar can emerge halfway through a battle to keep the tension mounting and prevent you from getting lazy with your tactics.
The Verdict
If Dark Souls 3 truly is the last in the series as we know it, then it’s a worthy send-off. Weapon arts allow stylish and versatile new moves without tarnishing the purity of the combat system. Lothric’s awe-inspiring locations provide visually stunning arenas for rigorous exploration and fierce face-offs with hosts of deadly enemies and even deadlier bosses. While not all the risky changes land as neatly as others, Dark Souls 3 is a powerful journey and the sequel the series truly deserves.
