Dark Souls 3

Fucking good innit.

Dark Souls 3 definitely fits the moniker of a "Best Of" collection, with a lot of returning mechanics, armours and weapons, and lots of callbacks in the environments and NPC interactions. But I'm an unabashed lover of fanservice, and 3 does it so god-damn well.

And I've borrowed some screenshots from Videogamer. Cheers.

 

I created my character, a lady called Leona because she looks like a female Leon S. Kennedy. The character creator is basically Bloodborne's, though later experimentation with copying a character over (by screenshotting the sliders and copying them) shows that it isn't identical, which I found interesting. Even accounting for the fact that some sliders have been flipped right to left (a slider which went Wide/Thin might be Thin/Wide etc.), proportions aren't identical and the lighting engine is less flattering than it was in Bloodborne. The biggest, and obviously most important, issue with Dark Souls 3 is it's hair game. What shite. Found 2 hairstyles that look good, and that's your lot. And they all look like they're made of plastic or melted plastic. And after Bloodborne's excellent stylised and dynamic hairstyles, that flowed about and struck a good balance between realism and stylistic, this is a disgrace.

 

So you'll likely want a hood, is what I'm saying.

 

Past that though, the core gameplay is phenomenal. Taking cues from Bloodborne, each weapon has a much more distinct moveset thanks to some new and better animations for the more boring ones and the addition of weapon arts, which set apart weapons that would previously just have the same moveset. For example, you may get yourself a standard halberd, with a standard halberd moveset, with a weapon art that lets you charge forward using it like a spear. Neat. You may also find later on another halberd, with the same standard moveset, but the weapon art is instead a buff, or a variation on your spin. Weapon arts use mana, a returning feature from Demon' Souls, which also serves as a replacement for spell uses. Strong attacks are also now charge attacks, like Bloodborne, with slightly different effects if you tap the button rather than hold, putting even more moves at your disposal. Power Stancing from Dark Souls 2 may be gone, but in it's stead are duel weapons, which function as a single weapon until two-handed, where they are equipped to both hands and gain new L1 and L2 attacks.

 

 

This weapon variety makes combat a joy, as every victory really either lets your weapon, you, or both of you shine. You'll watch a specific attack or spell cleave through a horde and take a moment to appreciate your choice, or you'll go up against something it's not as good against and triumph, and feel your skill take centre stage, because no weapon is ever so bad at something that it will be impossible. But the moment any Souls game lives or dies on is when both you and your weapon are at their finest, a boss fight or particular area where as well suited your weapon is, you still need to give it your all to succeed. And god damn does Souls 3 pull off those moments.

 

And you get one right at the start, as the game opens with a boss. And not in the sense that Demon's or Dark did, where you either had to die to it or you had to go around and get your weapons and a cheap shot first. 3 opens with a full on boss, with 2 stages that find unique ways to fuck you up. Gundyr embodies Dark Souls 3 to a tee. His first stage should in theory be pretty standard, but in reality it's far from it. As someone who came straight off the back of the first game into 3, the way Gundyr moves spectacularly undermined so much of what I'd learned. Blocking and moving around the side would get me shoulder charged, his combos would always have one or two more attacks than I had the stamina to block. He's brutal, though not in terms of difficulty. He still has openings, they're just in places you wouldn't expect, with timings you wouldn't expect. For new players, I can imagine Gundyr Part 1 might even be easier, as you won't have to unlearn all your tactics. And then his second phase comes along and frankly you've got no idea what to do or how you did it. But you did, somehow.

 

Still beat him second try. I am, after all, great.

 

 

 

Early on, series fans will see a lot of the old games in 3. The dragon on the bridge trope, some very Undead Burg-y vibes and some old faces back again. And you'll be seeing that a lot, the old is back again but simultaneously prettier and more dilapidated. Things are so fucked this time around that even the demons are having a hard time, which I find grimly amusing. But it's OK, because the old stuff was good, and seeing it back again with a fresh lick of paint and with new lore details is fantastic, and From have done an excellent job of fanservice of the best kind.

 

Fanservice is at it's best when it's done with understanding of why the thing has fans. Compared to 2, 3 understands the series' biggest fans so much more. Example: In 2, you could get a shield that references everyone's favourite Subro, Knight Solaire, as well as his sword. Compare this to 3, where you can get his entire equipment set, from armour, to sword, to shield and even his talisman. I see what 2 had intended with it's downplayed references, but it was misplaced subtlety, in an aspect that the series, despite it's reputation, generally isn't very subtle. The people that love Solaire are the people who want to BE Solaire, or to be WITH Solaire, they aren't the people who want to distantly remember him. They already do that. I already do that. The shield and sword in 2 were cute, but through the armour in 3, we can vicariously see him again through the many people online in his clothes, holding his sword skyward to Jolly Co-operation.

 

Not that 2 wasn't capable of that sort of thing too, mind. One of my favourite item descriptions in 2 is of Havel's armour, which states that historians couldn't work out if Havel was a person or a location. Of course people who played the first game know, and that's good fanservice because it's playing off their knowledge of the series while giving them something they love and are familiar with. You know what, I'll probably do a whole thing on good fanservice one day.

 

So if the idea of fanservice turns your cynical face into a horrid facsimile of a frown, maybe Dark Souls 3 won't be as good for you. But you won't be lacking in things to love either.

 

Gundyr wasn't a fluke, the bosses in 3 are all spectacular, and one of 2 aspects of 3 that have convinced me that I wasn't wrong for seeing the potential in 2. There are a lot of bosses that are armoured knights, which is something that people touted as a negative in Dark Souls 2. But here, you'll hardly notice, because each fight is so incredibly unique. They all fight completely differently, with different weapon setups, gimmicks and levels of aggression. While 2 had lots of similarly slow enemies with similar movesets, 3 goes out of it's way to push you out of your comfort zone and keep things interesting in brilliant ways.

The other aspect is the linearity. 2 was very straightforward. You may start with 4 routes but they never intersect and when you finish them all it's a straight line to the finish. I was fine with this, as I enjoyed the environments, even if they weren't as solid as the first game. And 3 proves that the linearity wasn't the problem, but rather the lack of depth in the environments. In 3, you'll still be traveling down a mostly linear path, however that path will branch off into optional areas, and diverge between 2 main areas that can be tackles in either order, only for one path to diverge again. There's less of the first game and Bloodborne's huge looparounds, but rather they have made each area a microcosm of a Souls game. You'll usually find one bonfire in an area and loop back to it again and again, giving you more ways to access the area. It gives the same sense of accomplishment and exploration that the best of the series have always done, but in smaller areas that allow for more diverse environments and easier to grasp progression for new players.

There's more I could say, but it could all be easily simplified. The lore is brilliant, mixing new elements into the old stories. The NPC interactions are closer to Dark Souls than Dark Souls 2, in that there are a lot of sad endings no matter what you do, but they're also some of the best stories in the series and they really enhance what is a much clearer main narrative than in Dark Souls, that has clearly taken some good lessons from Bloodborne. But I think I'll finish by briefly touching on an underappreciated element of the series: It's odd sense of humour. From has a way of writing some brilliant item descriptions that poke fun at the player and even it's own story. My favourite is still the description of the Pebble in Bloodborne ("Can be thrown at enemies. Quite thrilling."), though I recommend you read the description of the Rubbish in 3. There's also a lot of environmental jokes. Enemies fall on you from above as you pick up items screaming, and you'll walk from a bonfire into a dangerous looking area only to find another bonfire, just at the top of some empty stairs, form which you can actually see the bonfire you just walked 20 meters from. Brilliant.

So yeah, it's good. Damn good. Probably my favourite in the series, very close to Bloodborne.

Next week, probably not Lightning Returns, because between Dark Souls 3 I've been playing another game I quite like, but probably for the wrong reasons. Next Week: Endless Legend.