Not every franchise can live on forever. They all die out at some point in time. No matter how successful or influential the series can be, the developers can’t work on the series forever. So to put the franchise to rest they have to conclude with a final entry. Ending a story can be taken in two ways, a good way and a bad way. The bad way is when you still leave a lot of unanswered questions or give the opposite of what the players want. For example, let's take Mass Effect 3. While the game’s overall story was good, the ending left a bad taste in the player's mouths. A good example of a franchise perfectly bringing an end to a franchise would be Uncharted 4, which extended the storyline in a way that every character and the player got what they wanted. And then there’s today’s game which is the third and final entry to what I believe is one of the greatest video game franchises of all time and of this decade, Dark Souls.
After the release and huge step forward with the gothic masterpiece that is Bloodborne, FromSoftware decided to take what they learned and put it all into the final Dark Souls entry. Miyazaki knew how notorious the Soulsborne games were for their difficulty, so he told his team to tone the difficulty down and make the third entry as accessible as possible. Dark Souls 3 was made easier on purpose! It was still a challenging game, but Miyazaki wanted it to be a perfect starting point for newcomers and a grand finale for hardcore fans of the series. In 2016, FromSoftware released the third and final entry in the Dark Souls series and it blew the sales records for the company. Dark Souls 3 became one of the best selling games the company has made, selling about three million copies within three months. Damn, that is a lot of threes in one sentence. Dark Souls 3 was praised for many aspects. It’s environments, lore, faster combat which took notes from Bloodborne, more forgiving level design, memorable boss battles, and being a fitting end to this amazing franchise.
It’s no surprise that Dark Souls is considered one of the most recognizable franchises in modern gaming, because FromSoftware have proven that challenging games still have a place in the market today. You don’t have to hold the player by the hand or tell them to do a list of tasks in a specific order to get a message across to them. You just let them go at their own pace and form their own wondrous adventure to tell to dozens of others. That is the spirit of Soulsborne. Recently I just played through Dark Souls 3 to fulfill the thirst I felt after completing both Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1 for the second time each, and delightfully I enjoyed the game the entire way through. Sure much like any ordinary Soulsborne game I raged quit a few times, but in the end it was all worth it. I felt happy with the challenges I conquered, the many mysteries I discovered throughout the game, and how it wrapped up the trilogy with one pretty little bowtie. Dark Souls 3 is personally my most favorite game in the Dark Souls series. It’s not as brilliant as Bloodborne, but in a couple of ways I love it more than Dark Souls 1. Today we’ll be talking about why Dark Souls 3 is so amazing and why it deserves your attention. Fill up your flasks, sharpen thine blade, and prepare to journey to Lothric.
Story
Eons have passed and the First Flame has been rekindled over and over again for countless generations. Mankind is still struggling to survive from the undead curse, but at least there is light which stands as a beacon of hope. Countless heroes have sacrificed themselves to become Lords of Cinders and continue the Age of Man for a few more decades. The First Flame is fading once again and it must be rekindled again to continue the Age of Fire. This time the game takes place in the Kingdom of Lothric, which is ruled by a white haired prince named Lothric. Lothric was chosen to be a Lord of Cinder, but he refused his position and decided to watch the flame burn out from his throne. With the natural order of rekindling now disrupted, a church bell is rung resurrecting past Lords of Cinder who have already given themselves up to the First Flame. Now there are five Lords of Cinder and their fragments would help rekindle the First Flame and continue the age of man. However, only one of these lords showed up.
Yhorm the Giant resides in his fallen capital blaming himself for failing to save his own people from destruction. The Abyss Watchers who possess ancient wolf blood and kill anything that is infected by the Abyss are now stuck in a never ending conflict to kill one another. And finally Aldrich the Devourer of Gods decided to consume other gods lying around the world hoping to gain more power. Aldrich has chosen a madman named Sulyvahn and promoted him to the duty of Pontiff, allowing him to control the Boreal Valleys and send monstrous creatures to cause chaos throughout the land. All seemed lost as an age of darkness began to slowly creep towards mankind, but luckily you showed up at the last possible minute. The right man at the wrong time.
You are an Unkindled One, an individual who was resurrected by the bell and failed to become a Lord of Cinder in the past. You make it to Firelink Shrine to discover that all the lords are gone and you have to seek them out. You must slay them to claim their ashes and you must bring them back to their thrones at Firelink. So that’s what you must do, journey throughout Lothric, encounter many foes and allies along the way, and pray to god that the embers will guide your way to victory. Only then you can gain the Souls to become a powerful Lord of Cinder and sacrifice yourself to the flame. Is it really worth continuing the Age of Fire? Is it worth letting mankind live on with the undead curse? Is it worth repeating the same cycle and mistakes over and over again just for future fools to sacrifice themselves to what is basically a bonfire in the middle of an ash covered field? A field full of warriors long gone. The choice is yours.
Gameplay
Dark Souls 3 borrows a lot of the same aspects as seen in the first game, but I also feel like it kept some of the aspects From Software learned from their previous game Bloodborne. Which is great, because that was the game FromSoftware learned the most from. You explore each area in the game fighting various enemies with different skills, collecting items, opening up new routes, picking up new weapons, and fighting bosses along the way. If you die, which you will, you’ll spawn back at the previous checkpoint you rested at which are known as Bonfires. All the enemies you killed besides bosses will respawn once you respawn at a bonfire and you’ll have to navigate these sections all over again to continue where you left off. Whenever you kill enemies you gain Souls, and Souls can be spent at the Firekeeper back at Firelink Shrine to upgrade your stats. These stats can raise your attack power, the amount of health and stamina you have, resistance to elemental damage, and sometimes increase the efficiency of certain weapons. When you die you lose all your Souls, but you are given the ability to get them all back by backtracking to the area you dropped them in and picking them up. If you die again however they are gone forever. This design choice may get frustrating to some people, but I believe it’s genius. FromSoftware is telling the player the only way they are going to get stronger is by learning from their mistakes and if they refuse to learn they are only making the game harder.
To fight foes you have a multitude of weapons to use. Much like the original, Dark Souls 3 has a wide arsenal of weapons each providing the player with multiple playstyles and strategies to each combat scenario. There are straight swords, greatswords, spears, halberds, daggers, claymores, axes, and certain items like catalysts and pyromancy flames which allow you to perform spells. To provide a little more defense you have sets of armor you can equip, rings that give you certain buffs, and shields to block attacks. Be careful how much you have equipped though, because you have an equipment load. The weight of a piece of equipment will increase the equipment load, and if it’s too high then you’ll dodge slower and actions will consume more stamina. Speaking of stamina, unlike most action games where you can spam actions as much as you’d like here in Dark Souls you have a stamina bar. Every action like attacking or dodging uses up a bit of your stamina meter and when the meter is low you'll have to wait for it to recharge before you can continue attacking or dodging. It’s a system of learning when to strike, when to evade, and when to save up enough stamina for very powerful attacks. Windows of opportunity is what I like to call these types of systems. Making smart quick second decisions during busy fights.
You will take damage during fights or encounter those situations where you wish your weapons could be buffed. There are also numerous items you can use throughout the game. Your Estus Flask is one of the most important items on you. It is your main source of healing during fights, but don’t abuse it so easily. You have a limited amount of time to use it and unlike Dark Souls 1 which starts you with about five Estus Flasks and lets you carry more by spending Humanity at Bonfires, Dark Souls 3’s Estus Flask needs to be upgraded using special materials. Scattered throughout the world are shards and bone marrow. Shards increase the amount of times you can heal, while bone marrow increases how much health you get for using the Estus Flask. Some of you may complain that having to find the upgrades for the Estus Flask may make some challenges easier due to having a permanent increase, but here’s my defense.
In Dark Souls 1 early sections of the game can still be cheesed if you had enough Estus Flasks. Well your maximum capacity is ten but you can upgrade it to twenty by beating a boss known as Pinwheel. He’s located in a challenging area in the game known as the Catacombs, but he’s one of the easiest fights in the game if not the entire series. You can make a straight run for him at the beginning of the game and then respawn at a previous bonfire now with the item needed to carry twenty flasks. In Dark Souls 3 you have to work towards having an effective flask. Upgrading the estus flask by finding the items needed to make it stronger rewards the player for taking the time to explore the world. Plus they are hidden in areas the player is most likely to find them in. Other consumable items include ranged projectiles like Knives or Firebomb, elemental buffs like resin, or multiplayer focused items like Soapstones. However, I don’t have PS Plus so we can’t really talk about the multiplayer component of Dark Souls 3.
At the end of each area there is a boss and these gigantic bosses is what the Dark Souls series is known for. They will pile drive you into the ground unless you understand their attack pattern and learn how to evade them. Once you beat them they will drop a huge amount of souls and give you a boss soul which allows you to unlock a boss weapon. There are two available items for each boss soul so decide which one you want. With challengers awaiting around each corner and faith on your side you should be able to collect the ashes of previous Lords of Cinder, rekindle the First of Flame and bring an end to this madness once and for all.
Thoughts
Dark Souls 3 really fulfilled the thirst I had after beating Bloodborne. If refined what made the series great while reworking some of the problems the first game had. Level design is much better than the first game. Some Souls fans complain that Dark Souls 3’s world is very linear which they are right. The world of Dark Souls 1 was interconnected and areas would loop back into each other. However, some of these areas feel really poorly designed, are a burden to go through during second runs, and I think the quality drop is due to how they had a deadline and were trying to maintain the interconnectedness. Take it from Miyazaki himself, who stated the second half of Dark Souls 1 was rushed at the end of development and specifically Lost Izalith and The Bed of Chaos being the biggest mistakes the company has ever made. Dark Souls 3 is just a more consistent adventure. I never felt like an area was poorly designed, or that it dragged out too long or became too confusing. My adventure was set at a good pace and I always felt like I was on the right path. Some levels still maintain the interconnectedness of older games like The Undead Settlement and Irithyll while still being fair/well designed, there are multiple secrets to discover, and a plentiful amount of checkpoints so that you don't have to backtrack so often across long distances. It's a more balanced world much like Bloodborne, and I love it.
I like how Dark Souls 3 learned from Bloodbrone’s faster paced combat, showing that fighting with a more aggressive playstyle is more effective than fighting with a defensive one. Shields are still a viable option, but they become unviable during certain boss fights and it’s better to just dodge. They even encourage an aggressive playstyle by having the ferocious fast does that Bloodborne had which hound at the player. The newly added weapon arts make you care about which weapon you use in a particular class, and allow them to charge up powerful attacks against single targets. Almost every single boss fight in this game is great, and they are some of the best the series has seen. Pontiff Sulyvahn, The Abyss Watchers, Aldrich, The Twin Princes, Gundyr, and much more. There are some mechanics focused bosses though, and they are low points for the game. However, these fights aren’t downright terrible and I still had fun with them. Like the fight against Yhorm and how an cool NPC's questline ties into it.
Dark Souls 3 has the best environments, because personally I thought the environments of the first game lacked variety. Most of them being dark lit caverns or fortresses, while Dark Souls 3 took you to a glistening kingdom within a snowy valley, a poisonous swap containing the ruins of a previous civilization, a cavern full of the undead with the demon ruins buried deep within, a twisting castle with a library full of tricks, and much more. The world is linear, but the transition into each area feels natural. More natural than Dark Souls 1. The controls are much better than Dark Souls 1 and some of the most responsive I’ve seen from the series alongside Bloodborne. Dark Souls 3 wanted to be the best that it could be and it absolutely delivered on its goal.
However, this doesn't mean the game suffers from a few minor flaws. I’m not much of a spell user, but I don’t like the magic meter. All your spells utilize it and weapon arts use it too. To refill it you need to exchange your Estus Flask for Ashen Flasks. This means you have to sacrifice how many times you can heal just so you can continue special skills. This may discourage spell builds as it’s more limiting. Yet again, spell users in Dark Souls 1 could use a huge number of spells if they acquired a bunch of spell slots, so I guess it’s more balanced here. While I like the way Embers work better than Humanity, they can break the balance of the game. They increase the maximum amount of health, stamina, and magic you have. Making some challenging fights trivial. These flaws don’t really detract from my love of Dark Souls 3, because I believe this is an absolute masterpiece. It’s no Bloodborne, but it’s second place in my Souls ranking. I strongly recommend it and if you aren’t a Souls fan then this is a good place to start. In the end I am going to give Dark Souls 3 a 10/10 for being absolutely incredible.
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