The conclusion to the Dark Souls series is finally upon us and while it’s still a good game, it’s probably not the grand finale we were all hoping for.
Dark Souls 3
Developer: FromSoftware
Price: $60
Platform: PC, PS4, and Xbox One
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 copy for review
The journey that started five years ago with Dark Souls has finally come to a close with the release of Dark Souls 3. This is a series that started with Demon’s Souls and has grown into this monster of a franchise that has had a few pretenders attempt to copy the formula to no avail. To cut straight to the point, if you’re a fan of Dark Souls you’ll enjoy this game. It’s a solid entry in the series and basically gives you more of that Souls goodness you’ve come to expect. Fans of Dark Souls’ near perfect world design will be happy to know that Dark Souls 3 (mostly) returns to an interconnected world. For the most part, you’ll be able to explore the world to discover areas by heading in whichever direction you decide on, but there are still many areas that are isolated locations. Dark Souls 2 really disappointed in this regard and while the latest title doesn’t quite reach the same heights Dark Souls did with its level design, it’s still a step up.
Dark Souls 3 introduces a new system called Weapon Arts which are special abilities certain weapons have that are fueled by the return of the mana gauge. So besides your regular estus flasks, you now have these ashen flasks that refill this new meter (called Focus Points) and what’s neat is that you can actually adjust how many of each flask you can carry to suit your playstyle. If you don’t plan on using weapon skills or magic then you can just allocate all your estus flasks to the healing variety, or vice versa. This change is a massive improvement for fans of magic based builds since you now have a proper meter that fuels your spells instead of using stamina. Personally, I didn’t find weapon arts to be very interesting. A majority of the weapons share incredibly similar skills and it’s only the special late-game weapons that offer something unique like a hammer that you plant into the ground and proceeds to let loose a stream of fire from its tip.
It’s frustrating that while the game is still good, the only good I can find to say is that it’s more Dark Souls. There are moments where I do wish this game had a longer development period to incorporate some of the applicable changes Bloodborne introduced to the series because while Dark Souls 3 is great, it could have been so much better. Demon’s Souls introduced this idea of being in soul form and using an item to become human to gain an advantage of some sort. Dark Souls 3 goes back to this with you constantly as a human, but this time you enter an “embered” state where your character is brimming with this fiery effect and gains a health boost in a somewhat similar way to how Demon’s Souls worked. I’m still not a fan of how the Souls series requires you to be in human form to interact with the PVP aspect though. I really enjoyed how Bloodborne completely eliminated this part of the game which adds to the tension of never knowing when someone might invade you. It’s frustrating seeing how this game incorporates some of the changes from Bloodborne but ignores so many better ones.
The frame-rate is also still a serious issue with this series and I wonder if it’ll ever stop being one. For the most part the game runs smoothly, but there are some areas where it just takes a devastating plunge. This is made worse during some of the more hectic boss fights that leave you fighting the game more than the actual boss.
As great as Dark Souls 3 is, it’s got some faults that stop it from being the memorable send off I was hoping it’d be. The game wears its Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls pride on its sleeve, almost too proudly in a way. The Firelink Shrine is an almost exact copy of the Nexus from Demon’s Souls, even down to the firekeeper practically being a clone of the Maiden in Black with some stupidly similar dialog. Homage is one thing, but this just comes off as a lazy attempt to recapture some nostalgia. There’s also a bit of environment fatigue with almost every location being a thematic repeat of places you’ve already been through in the last four games. There’s your swampy forest, your lower castle area, your higher castle area, another cathedral, another underground cathedral and a few more areas that will immediately give you a sense of déjà vu. It’s understandable that Dark Souls is working with a specific theme and setting, but FROM doesn’t really do anything interesting or new with the majority of locations in the game. The repetitive nature of the environment also extends to the bosses with many of them having extremely similar move-sets and strategies for defeating them. It’s a real bummer heading into what should be a major fight only to realize you know exactly how to beat it and proceed to do so with little effort.
From the moment the game starts it’s clear that this game was made side-by-side with Bloodborne. There are elements at play here that are so clearly pulled from that game but it comes off as someone watching a chef cook a dish, and attempting to replicate it without understanding why the chef mixed those ingredients together in the first place. Dark Souls is a slow game. You could always play it somewhat aggressively but it was mainly meant to be played in a more cautious and defensive manner which is why Bloodborne was such a breath of fresh air with its shift to a more intense, fast-paced style of combat. Dark Souls 3 falters in this regard because it’s attempting to mix the two types of gameplay together without realizing what made each work in its own separate way. Enemies are fast in this game, Bloodborne fast, but your character still rolls and moves in the same sluggish way you did in previous Souls games. Bloodborne balanced the more aggressive, speedier enemies by making your character faster and encouraging a riskier, more aggressive style of play with elements like being able to recover health by attacking an enemy after being hit yourself. Bloodborne also replaced the roll with a dash that always kept you in a stance for attacking and the weapons themselves were all much faster than they are in Dark Souls. Your weight, a key stat in Dark Souls, is practically nonexistent in Bloodborne with weight being a hidden stat that only minimally affected your stamina regen rate; other than that you could pretty much equip whatever you wanted and dash all over the place. Everything in Bloodborne was altered to fit this new style of play but Dark Souls 3 takes a piece of this puzzle and tries to force it into a different set.
The Final Word
It’s slightly frustrating trying to describe my feelings about this game because on one hand, it’s one of the best games in the Dark Souls series purely on the way it plays, but this being the third (fourth if you want to count Demon’s Souls due to a similar style) in the series means fatigue starts to take its toll. Dark Souls 3 is a fantastic entry in the series but instead of standing on its own, it feels more like a nostalgic romp and because of this ends on a less climactic note than I would’ve preferred.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
