Dark Souls III is a vending machine where you pay by punching yourself instead of coins. You keep going because each time you step up the machine you know you that you’re going to hurt yourself, but you’ll get something cool out of it. At the same time, I think I’m getting a little tired of forced masochism. I’ve now played DSIII for around 40 hours and have a much better idea of how the game is put together. Let’s finish looking at Dark Souls III, (hopefully) the last Souls game.

For a quick recap of my first impressions, click here.

Take a break from playing every ten deaths or so; your controllers and screens with thank you. I'm not one for throwing controllers, but I came close a few times with DSIII. — Take a break from playing every ten deaths or so; your controllers and screens with thank you. I'm not one for throwing controllers, but I came close a few times with *DSIII*.

The combat in DSIII is my favorite in the whole series, by far. The variety of weapons is impressive in scale and the designers clearly had some fun giving some weapons pretty wacky movesets; things definitely get a little anime-looking with the Farron Greatsword or Onikiri and Ubadachi. Soul Transposition, the ability to use Boss Souls to create weapons/rings/spells, adds a new dimension to the game and more value to boss souls. You find a lot more upgrade materials in DSIII than the other games which is nice if you want to try out a variety of weapons throughout any one playthrough. The large variety of enemy movesets encourages you to try out different kinds of weapons/tactics as well.

Keep acting cocky, buddy. I'm taking that dagger and fancy greatsword when you're ash.

The Bosses in DSIII are fun to fight, though ideas were clearly running a little short. DSII was criticized for most bosses falling into the “people in armor” category, but it seems like the designers of DSIII didn’t find that to be a problem. There are some really interesting bosses, both in their visual design and how to fight them, but you’ll be facing off against a lot of people in armor in this one. That being said, the non-human looking bosses are really cool. Most bosses have two stages, the second one usually being faster and more difficult, which is cool because it forces you to change around your strategy. Oceiros, The Consumed King, is a great example. He starts out as a mage, casting spells at you from afar and retreating whenever you get too close. In his second stage, he attacks in a way that matches his dragon-like appearance; up close and on all fours.

He's quite the chatterbox too. A charmer, really.

In the online sphere, things have definitely become smoother compared to DSI/II. There’s a total of eight covenants (one down from DSI/II) each of which falls into the summoner or invader type. There’s a tied-together nature to a bunch of the covenants, which is interesting. For example, followers of the Blue Sentinel Covenant will be automatically summoned whenever a follower of the Way of Blue is invaded. This definitely creates a new kind of dynamic to invasions, where you have to think if you’re ready to fight two or three people at once. The netcode has been improved massively, so PvP is much smoother in general and parrying is actually viable, unlike the horror that was DSI PvP.

From left to right and top to bottom: Rosaria's Fingers, Way of Blue, Blades of the Darkmoon, Blue Sentinals, Watchdogs of Farron, Mound-Makers, Aldrich Faithful, Warriors of Sunlight.

Despite what some people think, you can have too much of a good thing. Dark Souls is feeling a little tired by the end of Dark Souls III. Some of the issues I noticed in my first twelve hours became more glaring as time went on. The lack of a “working” poise stat seems like a huge oversight for the developers. In DSI and DSII poise affected how likely you were to be staggered by an enemy attack. DSIII has the stat, but it basically means nothing now. The only way to get poise to have the same effect as previous games is with certain Weapon Arts. I don’t think this is as much a problem for PvP, but in PvE it means that fast hitting enemies can rip through you. The Dogs or Thralls, for instance, pose an incredibly high threat if you can’t take them on one on one. Given how fond DSIII is of throwing multiple of these kinds of enemies at you (along with some kind of ranged enemy), things can get very frustrating very fast. DS combat is about one-on-one fights and DSIII habit of sic’ing multiple enemies on you at once makes the elegant, well-thought out, and generally enjoyable combat feel more frustrating than it should.

Here's somebody wearing the highest poise armor in the game, with a shield that also increases poise. They're still getting staggered by the first kind of enemy in the game.

The Souls games are supposed to be hard, for sure, but it seems like the developers of DSIII cranked things up to eleven when we were barely making it through at eight. Some of the mini-bosses are incredibly fast, strong, and presented in areas where you have almost no room to maneuver. Some levels towards the end of the game, like the Grand Archives, are very enemy and obstacle dense which makes progressing through them feel like more a slog than it should. There are some enemies which seem a little broken, frankly. The Jailers in Ihyll Dungeon, for instance, have the ability to lower your total possible health as long as you’re in their line of sight. They have a grab attack which will almost certainly kill you if they’ve lowered your health and their normal attack slows your movement speed to a crawl. I know this games are supposed to be punishing, but they were fun because you could overcome a great challenge, not because you beat your face into a wall.

You will hate these things by the end of your first trip to the Dungeon. They are the most annoying enemy I've ever fought in any game, period.

Worth Playing?

Yes.

Dark Souls III is a great game, but the cracks we started to see in Dark Souls II are definitely in the fore here. The formula is turning stale and the designers seem like they’re making things harder without giving the player more abilities to compensate. However, the combat is still better than 99% of games, the world is beautiful in that dead-tree-kind-of-way, and the amount of replayability is insane. I’ve put 40 hours into this game, but I feel like I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. I hope this is the last Souls game, because it’s a good way to go out. Dark Souls III isn’t perfect, but it’s fun, special, and worth your time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Let’s Look At. If you did, please share this article with anybody you think would enjoy it.

Don’t forget to follow TheMagnusKit on Facebook and Twitter, links below.