Bloodborne was my first taste of the From Software formula, and a little over a month later, I had purchased Dark Souls III. This allowed my playing of both games to overlap, and compare the two in terms of quality. After all, Bloodborne was released in 2015, while Dark Souls III came out one year later, so there is a certain expectation of improvements in the world, graphics, combat and RPG elements. So, with that in mind, how does this game measure up?
As a brief disclaimer, I hadn’t played the first or second Dark Souls prior to playing this, and while I’ve nearly finished my first play-through of Dark Souls remastered at the time of writing this, I can’t fully judge this game as a sequel to the prior two, but was absolved from any preconceptions as I started. With that out of the way, I can begin…
The world of Dark Souls is coming to an end. Linking the fire has become a ritual lasting through the ages, only the latest Lord of Cinder has refused. As a resurrected Unkindled One, your task is to defeat this Lord, along with three others resurrected Lords, to achieve what you couldn’t in life, or take the world on an entirely different path.
Or, at least that’s what I can make out. The storytelling, like Bloodborne, is told through interactions with NPC characters, item descriptions, and level design, making it quite hard to understand the relevance of your mission, although piecing it and the world together is immensely rewarding. However, this game is infinitely more complex than Bloodborne, not only building upon the mythology of the two previous game, but with a timeline spanning uncountable centuries as opposed to a hundred or so years.
This is reflected in the armour and weapon selection available as well, with a huge set of each, calling back to the last games, while adding dozens of new factions, characters and bosses, each with at least one weapon and outfit. Having played through the game once, and being midway through new game +, I still consider acquiring all of them to be nigh impossible, as various enemies only appear under very strict conditions, such as which covenant you are in, if you are embered and if you haven’t beaten that area’s boss.
Bloodborne, in comparison, has a much smaller selection of weapons (only about 50 including DLC), but I would argue that each of those weapons was much more refined in terms of movement, weight and power, amplified by the two different forms you can put the weapon in. Dark Souls III provides much more quantity for slightly less quality, using what’s referred to a weapon arts, allowing you to perform a unique move with your weapon, but at
the cost of mana, the game’s magic bar.
Unfortunately, I hardly ever find the opportunity to effectively use these in combat, as satisfying as they may be, although that may simply be my playstyle in a game that allows for unlimited character builds. I for one prefer a strength-based build, allowing me to use heavier armours and great-swords, while others prefer using magic in its wide variety of forms, or lighter builds for manoeuvrability and application. It is this choice that makes this game so compelling as an RPG, as while the path of the game is fairly linear aside from secret areas and multiple endings, your character can be hugely personalised to suit your tastes, much more so than Bloodborne, which greatly works in its favour.
The world you inhabit in Dark Souls III is a bleak one. Where the first Dark Souls had vibrant colours to emphasise the fantasy elements, this game has taken the themes of unnaturally prolonging the reign of the Lords to its extreme – the world is covered in ash, and the cursed undead are in far greater numbers. The landscapes are far more barren as lands have converged and aged into dystopia, all under the setting sun in some absolutely stunning
environments.
From purely what you see in the game, you could even make the claim that this is the very end of the world, and that the reason you are to be resurrected is that there is no one left to fulfil the same purpose, they are all hiding away or hollowed into mindlessness. These themes can sometimes be overpowering, and seem to paint most of the world in a similar monotone and grey colour pallet, but there is also a haunting beauty to it, something that is hard to put into words, but quite empowering, as the sense that the whole world is against you and withering away allows you to assert yourself over it, whatever it may throw at you. Be they knights, skeletons, demons or dragons, they are all within your power to overcome, even if they best you a few times first.
Each environment, unlike Bloodborne, is entirely unique, offering some new lore and architecture to vary the game, letting you explore not only fallen kingdoms, but rural villages, ancient hideouts, and forgotten crypts, just to name a few. Hell, the sensation of wandering through an unfamiliar environment, hoping to find the next shortcut or bonfire is what inspired the name of this blog. The simultaneous fear and excitement for the unknown lurking around the next corner is one of the most impressive sensations that games have been able to stir in me, but none have done better than Dark Souls III, and for that alone, I would have to recommend this to anyone who plays games.
The graphics are quite tricky to pinpoint for me. Coming from Bloodborne, it was clear that the environments and character creation were a big step up, but various enemies and shadows seemed to have a much slower frame rate, giving them an almost stop-motion aesthetic, which while pretty cool, did seem to suggest a poorer quality. I think this was due to it being made with PC and other consoles in mind, not just PS4 (which meant that it also didn’t suffer from the same frame-rate drops after defeating a boss). That being said, this was usually the exception, and doesn’t bear any weight on the bosses or late-game and DLC areas, which are polished to perfection.
The online system is enjoyable as well, and I like that being embered, a state boosts player health, also leaves you vulnerable to invasions from hostile players, but without any way of playing offline aside from disconnecting the console from the internet, expect lots of summons and invasions diverting you from your main goals.
Like Bloodborne, the DLC content is vital if you want the best the game has to offer in terms of areas and bosses. I’ll elaborate more in my spoiler section, but with Ashes of Ariandel and the Ringed City being the last content ever to be released in the Dark Souls series, it more than ends the franchise on a high note.
How does it measure up to the original? Well, just about everything is better from a technical perspective, everything is faster paced, less clunky and more manageable, as well as bigger and better-looking, although nowhere near as interconnected, with more of a level-to-level system as opposed to the more open world of the original. As to how the story measures, up, well that is just up to personal preference. I kind of prefer it, as the macabre themes of the end of the world just resonate with me more than the slightly more archetypal (but still ground-breaking) narrative that the first game offered.
To summarise, this is a must play game that flawlessly incorporates fantasy, horror, beauty, nostalgia, role-playing and a whole host of other genres in what may well be the best made game I have ever played. This game gets a 9.5 out of 10.
9.5 OUT OF 10
SPOILER SECTION
Who is my favourite boss in the main game? Well that’s trickier to pin down than Bloodborne I think. I feel like the boss quality in Dark Souls III is a lot more consistent, with each having a memorable place in the lore, unique move set and a visual marvel of an arena. However, if I line up those criteria to find the best boss, I would come to the Nameless King, likely the hardest boss of the base game.
His lore being the firstborn son of Lord Gwyn, who sided with the dragons, and as such was cast out, is awesome. The mystery as to who the firstborn was has ran through all three games, with his statues removed from Anor Londo and his name forgotten through the ages, so to finally fight him in a battle for the ages is incredibly rewarding to fans of the series.
Like his father, he utilises lightning attacks, but he is introduced in the first phase riding a loyal dragon, the King of the Storm. The first phase is a challenge the first few times, but after a little experimentation, you can easily come up with a winning strategy. The second, however, is absolutely brutal. The King hits incredibly hard, stringing up several hits in succession to immediately kill you. The upside is that he does leave long pauses between his combos, so you can get a few hits in providing you have survived that long. Essentially, this fight is a measure of stamina, endurance and perseverance, with the player likely to die multiple times before downing him.
The arena, while simplistic, is also breath-taking. You fight on the clouds of a stormy sky. I think that’s all I really need to say. It is a perfect example of a spectacle boss room.
However, if we are talking about the best boss overall, it’s a no brainer. Slave Knight Gael.
The setup is perfect; Gael requires the Dark Soul for his Lady to paint a new world in Ariandel. You find him at the very end of the world, having to drink the blood of the pygmies who spawned humanity, an act that will surely lead to his death. Your job is to put him down, and finish the task that he started, putting a tragic spin on the battle. The story wraps up the fate of humanity and its Dark Souls, reborn into a new world and sort of bringing about the long awaited age of man that was stolen from them so long ago. The fight is epic, with just the right difficulty for this stage in the game, with a track that perfectly encapsulates what’s at stake, two undying warriors fighting over the soul of humanity, set in a desert of what may even be the ash of the undead built up over the ages. Nothing has beaten this fight for me in any other game, as much as Bloodborne has great combat and lore, it never quite reached these stakes, wrapping up a whole trilogy.
The worst of the bosses is the ancient Wyvern. He is really only a boss in the sense that he has a huge healthbar and his own music, otherwise he would only be an environmental challenge. You can’t do very much damage to him conventionally, so you have to run across the stretch of the arena, facing basic enemies, to get a plunging attack on him, which instantly wins the fight. Other weaker bosses, like the Deacons of the Deep or High Lord Wolnir actually offer some fun in their fights, capitalising on primary weaknesses and large numbers of basic enemies, but at least they have the decency to have the boss present the entire time, not somewhere behind you, and definitely not instant kill actions to take them
out.
BOSS RANKING
1. Slave Knight Gael
2. Nameless King
3. Champion Gundyr
4. Soul of Cinder
5. The Twin Princes
6. Abyss Watchers
7. Darkeater Midir
8. Sister Friede and Father Ariandel
9. The Demon Princes
10. Dancer of the Boreal Valley
11. Dragonslayer Armour
12. Aldritch, Devourer of Gods
13. Old Demon King
14. Pontiff Sulyvaln
15. Ocerios, the Consumed King
16. Vordt of the Boreal Valley
17. High Lord Wolnir
18. Yhorm the Giant
19. Deacons of the Deep
20. Iudex Gundyr
21. Crystal Sage
22. Half-light, Spear of the Church
23. Champion’s Gravetender and Champion’s Greatwolf
24. Curse-Rotted Greatwood
25. Ancient Wyvern
The areas in Dark Souls III are quite controversial. They are technically and graphically excellent, but the ashy and desaturated colour pallet put a lot of players off, who found the vibrancy of Dark Souls a lot more appealing. I don’t mind the look of the game though – in fact, my favourite area is the Dreg Heap from the Ringed City DLC, as it takes these themes of decay and ruin to their very extreme. In the main game, it is stated that all of the lands converge on Lothric, as Prince Lothric is meant to link the fire, but has refused. The dreg heap is the far future, if Lothric has never been defeated. All lands have piled into one another, from all across the world and its many ages. Buildings are overturned and falling apart, a few of the old hollows still linger, and new enemies like the sprites and the angels give the place the sense of an unending purgatory, waiting to finally start anew but forever stuck in limbo.
This allows some creative enemy and level design, along with cameos from places across all three games, and the start of a side-quest with a familiar face. This is a strange choice for my favourite area, as it has the same problems as the rest of the game in terms of colours, but this is where it feels most natural, and exploring this large, apocalyptic area is incredibly
rewarding.
Farron Keep is my personal least favourite area in the game for a number of reasons, although the main one is the abundance of thick poison sludge covering what feels like 95% of the whole place. You move slowly through it in an effort to find and extinguish the three beacons and open the gate. Add to this irritating enemies that contribute to the poison, and move aggressively fast, and an area layout that makes it easy to get lost, and you have the worst that this game has to offer. The only upside is that it is littered with assortments of items, but again, if you’re looking for anything specific, even if you’ve looked it up on Youtube, all I can say is good luck.
AREA RANKINGS
1. The Dreg Heap
2. The Ringed City
3. Profaned Capital
4. Archdragon Peak
5. Kiln of the First Flame
6. Cathedral of the Deep
7. Painted World of Ariandel
8. Irithyll of the Boreal Valley
9. Untended Graves
10. Lothric Castle
11. Smouldering Lake
12. Firelink Shrine
13. Grand Archives
14. Undead Settlement
15. Lothric High Wall
16. Irithyll Dungeon
17. Anor Londo
18. Cemetery of Ash
19. Catacombs of Carthus
20. Road of Sacrifices
21. Consumed King’s Garden
22. Farron Keep
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