On the whole, the Dark Souls series is one that I have
enormous respect for. I respect its
uncompromising difficulty, its minimalistic story, its gameplay that makes you
think and plan out ever attack, and I love the overall apocalyptic tone that is
infused with every game. Unfortunately,
I really, REALLY suck at them. How bad
am I at these games? I couldn’t even get
past the Taurus Demon in Dark Souls I. That
is how bad I am at these games. But in
spite of this, I picked up Bloodborne
last year and really enjoyed it. In fact
it might be safe to say that I put more hours into that game then I did any
other last year and I eventually conquered it, (though admittedly with A LOT of
help), and because of this I was more than willing to give Dark Souls III a shot. Unfortunately,
it’s probably going to take me all year to beat this game so a full review is
out of the question. But I had a
Saturday slot to fill and this seemed like the best thing to write about at the
moment.
So the bottom line is this; is the
game any good? Absolutely and from what
I’ve played so far there isn’t a “but” in this statement. The plot, once again, is very vague and
difficult to follow unless you’re really paying
attention but this time it seems a bit more straight forward then Dark Souls II or Bloodborne and feels easier to follow, (or maybe I’ve just gotten
better at following the plots of these games).
Like the previous games, it requires A LOT of exploration and item description
reading in order to find out what is going on but whereas many of the secrets
in previous games felt needlessly cryptic, most of the hidden, plot important
detail stuff that I’ve encountered was found by simply taking an alternative
path. Sometimes it resulted in a
horrible death and sometimes it resulted in finding something that gave a bit
more context to what I was fighting, (or both), but in either case I’ve yet to
feel as if my time was wasted. Because
of this I’ve found myself really wanting to explore the huge environments and
discover every little obscure thing the game has to offer because whether or
not it results in a horrible, unexpected death or meeting an NPC who give you
information on the axe wielding giant you’re about to square off against the
result is always fun and rewarding.
One of the big problems that I had
with the previous Dark Souls games
was that they always seemed to tanky; as if blocking is your only real option
against your enemies and pray that you had enough stamina to attack, (gross
oversimplification I know), and Bloodborn
kind of had the opposite problem. In that game all you could do was dodge
everything and then hit the enemy as much as you could before running away,
(again, I know it’s a gross oversimplification). Dark
Souls III, however, seems to have found a good middle ground between the
two. The blocking is there and necessary
at times to be sure, but this time around it feels more like an option as
opposed to a requirement, with character customization allowing you to make a
character who can be agile enough to dodge attacks but tough enough to block
them as well. Enemies, likewise, have
attacks and move sets that reflect this.
They’re tough to be sure but never unfairly so and generally follow some
kind of pattern that is exploitable regardless of how difficult it might be to
exploit said pattern. All of these
things make for a game that is still very challenging and unforgiving but, at
the same time, feels far more accessible than previous installments.
Unfortunately, this is all I really
have to say on the game at the moment.
It’s ultimately far more accessible than previous installments with
gameplay that feels balanced for the first time. It both punishes and rewards the player for
exploration but always ends up feeling fun regardless of what path you take and
that’s what I’ve taken away from it so far.
It’s a challenging game but also a very fun one and I cannot wait to
play more of it and highly recommend that you take a look for yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment