The legacy of mediocrity reaches its grand finale.

Before I begin I need to address some things in case they are brought up in the comments, as I have had genuine idiots start fights with me on my previous souls-borne reviews over the dumbest capital G gamer shit. I will number these points and I have taken care to truncate them to be as concise and brief as possible, if you wish to skip on down to the review proper, control+F to “Dark Souls 3 was one of the most bland”. I understand that my reviews on this site are incredibly long as is, but I have to bring these up.

1. I have been accused by Souls fans on here of “Not explaining things” because the explanations I give are not to their personal satisfaction, just because someone’s point isn’t something you would like to digest, does not mean they did not explain something. When I say things like “Ranged Magic and Co-op break bosses cause they only focus one player cause their AI is only built for one player”, that is an explanation. I do not need to do animation by animation break downs of every single boss or regular enemy. That would make this hundreds of paragraphs long and that is ridiculous to expect.

2. I do not care about your personal play style or about how you played the game. This is a review. I have to take a different approach when playing the game for that reason. I have to test what mechanics are well made and which ones are poorly balanced and broken. I can not “just ignore it”, a flaw in a product does not vanish by just not paying attention to it, it is fair game to criticize it for existing as that is what a review does. I am giving the game an EXAM, this is not an ADVERTISEMENT.

3.Reviews and advertisements ARE NOT the same thing, a review tells you the pros and cons of a product, from a THIRD PARTY. An advertisement only tells you what the company trying to get you to buy the product wants you to think the selling points are. I am not here to validate your preconceived opinions of a game you already like (or dislike). If you like these games, that’s fine, but if you come at me, I will defend my position. If I have already debunked something, I am not going to waste my time (or yours) arguing against it again. Think before you respond.

4. If you want to play these games a certain way, have at it! But I am not here to validate said challenge runs or play styles, when I say a mechanic is pointless cause there is an objectively better option, I, and let me be CLEAR, AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU HAVE TO STOP PLAYING THAT WAY. I can not believe I have to clarify this to grown men and women on a video game website but Souls fans for what ever reason really struggle to comprehend this.

5. While in the last year and a half I have reviewed DLC packs and expansions as their own games, to remain consistent with my previous Souls reviews, I will integrate the DLC into the entire review proper. I will do this by using examples from both DLC packs when talking about the game play, graphics, music etc.

Dark Souls 3 was one of the most bland, designed by committee, boring jrpgs I have played in years. From soft has learned almost absolutely nothing from their previous four mediocre jrpgs in this mediocre franchise.

Now lets address the “almost” first. It took them five whole games, but they finally fixed the estus mechanic that was always some form of fucked in the previous games and ruined any kind of intended tension (Grasses, Humanities and Crystals in DeS, DS1 and 2, needing to grind for vials in BB). You can not use other recovery items this time, and you must choose between health and magic estus depending on your equipment load out. You are given a little more than enough estus to get through an area and your estus restores a good third of your health, making it actually feel important this time, rather than just another healing option that previous entries were plagued with.

This however comes at the expense of the level design. BloodBorne’s big rooms of nothing and long hallways with item nooks return with a vengeance here, you will never get lost as you just have to explore a big room’s nooks then go straight, or a narrow hallway’s nooks and go straight. It’s honestly pathetic at how under designed every area feels. There is very little if any genuine traps, with the only area in the game feeling genuinely designed being the catacombs with its arrow flinging button traps and massive bone spheres. But those aren’t even common enough in that area to feel threatening, only appearing once and twice respectively. Shortcuts also feel less like shortcuts more like regular elevators at this point, there isn’t a rewarding feeling in finding them, because the areas don’t take that long to navigate in the first place, given how much ground you cover while running back and forth.

There are some occasional stage hazards like giants and archers, but aside from a conjuring giant in the ringed city, killing these hazards eliminates them permanently and removes any further tension, the aformentioned giant isn’t even that much of a threat, as a few charged R2s from a high level weapon kill him in a few hits.

The game has completely given up any psychological aspect to the world and navigation. While DS2 and BB let you warp anywhere you have been from the start, they at the very least gave each of the bonfires in an area plenty of space to at least TRY and add some sort of tension, despite how easy those games were. DS3 has zero tension.

Bonfires are constant, take for example the undead settlement. The placement of the second bonfire in the undead settlement is laugh out loud worthy. Being right behind the first gate you stroll up to from when you arrive in 60 seconds. This is a problem all the way to the late game, after killing the Dragon slayer armour and lighting his bonfire, there is another bonfire right next to it at the entrance to the grand archives, for example.

The reason there are so many bonfires so close to each other can only mean one thing. It’s no secret that Sony and Namco use these games false perception of being “difficult” for marketing purposes, and with so many plentiful bonfires for checkpoints, you can just feel the cynicism in the design here as this is clearly made to help streamers and youtubers make quick and cheap “rage compilations” for free advertisement. If you actually play these games like the JRPGs they are however, that intended cynical design falls flat on its ass.

I will say this however, Dark Souls 3 is very good at conveying a sense of scale, due to how close the camera is to you this time and how tall the geometry is, the world feels massive. And the draw distance and landmarks of where you have been and will get too are a nice touch when at a high elevation.

On the surface it seems that from soft has tried to make ranged magic less useful and more balanced than previous games. The MP bar from Demons souls makes a return and the only way to restore it is with blue estus, and unless you start as a pyromancer or sorcerer, the bar is much smaller to compensate and try to make you use your melee weapon more. The stamina bar is also made small at the start to try and convince you to invest in endurance early to roll more often. Of course the gains to FP are quite high if you invest early on, I boosted all the way to 30 FP and had more than enough FP for boss fights so long as I took along two magic estus. And with as little as 30 endurance you’ll have more than enough stamina to block and roll your way to easy kills. With around 40 strength and 20 dex, 35 intelligence and 35 faith 100% of enemies and all but one boss in the game is a matter of when you will kill them than if.

A heavy investment in Vitality is also obviously needed to wear some pieces of heavy armour and for holding great shields that can fully absorb or mitigate attacks. And as long as you keep your preferred weapon upgraded (any weapon in the game will serve you well till the end game pretty much with few exceptions, I used an early game dark sword infused with a heavy gem for my entire run) you’ll find that the RPG mechanics of the game once again break the action parts of the advertised “tough” game play wide open once again.

You may be wondering why I listed my stats two paragraphs ago that high, and that’s due to the fact that exp gain in DS3 is very high, most likely to help along streamers so they can quickly power up and power through more of the game to make more cheap rage compilation content. A good 20 or so hours grinding in the high wall will make you more than strong enough for the endgame (most regular play throughs of this I studied had normal, everyday people, beating this in the mid 60s), hammering home just how easy these games have always been.

I said earlier that the attempt to balance out magic was only on the surface, and here’s why, enemy AI from the dregs outside the fire link shrine to the soul of cinder have no way of countering magic and pyromancies as their AI is entirely focused on on melee fighting, again, even if they don’t get stun locked when hit with ranged magic, they still zerg rush you like morons and by the time they reach you, if a regular enemy, you’ll be able to finish them off easily with your melee weapon. Even enemies that do cast magic make the effort to get close enough to you so can dash towards them, which makes them revert to melee mode, and ruins any potential solution to this classic flaw of the franchise.

Pyromanices are incredibly overpowered in the game, this seems intentional, given the massive circle jerk of fire related imagery and themes being drilled into you to drive the plot forward and establish the lore of the game. It’s not going to be an uncommon strategy to summon a helper for a boss and snipe them from afar with great fire ball and watch their HP melt. Some bosses are even more flammable solo, like aldritch, as simply having the grass crest shield, the chloranthony ring and a quick r1 finger is more than enough to kill him in less than 90 seconds with great fire ball.

The bosses haven’t improved from Bloodborne (or any of the previous four games really). They are still completely lost when you summon and snipe them with magic. And the DPS of either AI or especially a human partner is so high that the extra health they get from summons matters little. The bigger bosses are still camera devouring monstrosities that are genuinely laughable given how bad your visibility is when they get close, as the camera is not, and has never been, designed around enemies that large and it makes fighting them more a battle with the camera than the intended eldritch gods they want you to think you are fighting.


The game is also strangely obsessed with giving many of the bosses multiple phases. While this is common in JRPGs, these are more meant for skill checks to make sure the player isn’t mindlessly brute forcing their way through the game and in general are used sparingly. DS3 of course has dozens of multi phase bosses starting with the Abyss watchers all the way to the Soul of Cinder. To balance these fights out these bosses have less health than usual ones, but this makes the laughable action part of the combat even more so, because when you actually play these games as the RPGs they are instead of the circle button youtube rage compilations they aren’t. You see how poorly thought out so many aspects of them really are. As the lower health pools mean fuck all when you actually level up and equip properly.

There is one boss that is an exception to most of these criticisms. Dark eater Midir is an optional boss you fight in the ringed city, and the way you need to fight him is via casting poison magic. Since he has the most HP of any boss in the game, this means the poison will do 1K damage to him each time due to its scaling effect, which is critical to wear him down quickly, otherwise, you will most likely run out of estus due to how strong his attacks are. Co-op is a non factor for this fight as it will just bloat his health and fuck you over, and he resists magic and pyromancies. If he wasn’t huge and devoured the camera, the series could have had its first genuinely good boss fight, but alas, you should never underestimate souls games for underachieving.

The combat in general feels like it was retroactively changed to be more like bloodborne at the last minute. Enemies and bosses are much more aggressive and are more prone to use combo attacks, it’s clear that From soft has gone all in on the R1+circle button simulator jokes, as the hit boxes on boss and regular mook attacks are less about blocking and whacking R1 at the right time, and more rolling and then hitting R1. This becomes less and less of an issue the more you invest in stamina and upgrade your shields, but it’s still hilarious that from soft turned the combat into what even their own fans jokingly refer to it as.

Invasions are still annoying and immersion breaking. They’ve never added anything to enhance these games and have always been a tacked on multiplayer feature that should have died along with the 7th generation when that plagued damn near every game. Thankfully I always leveled high enough to mitigate this annoyance, but still had my fair share of them, which forced me to use the broken Alt F4 build before carrying on with the session. What’s especially funny is that the game has a separate PVP mode which isn’t available until very late in the game. Why invasions are even here anymore is baffling considering it was given its own dedicated mode that could prevent any of these annoyances from occurring in the first place.

Visually Dark souls 3 is as strong as you would expect from the series now. Stunning lighting and impressively huge level geometry are paired with detailed textures like scratches and gashes in your shields and armour, chips in your melee weapons sharp ends, and lovely cloth physics that flow elegantly and realistically. This is topped of with some amazing particle effects. Attacks feel like they have a strong effect when you see an explosion of sparks or magic dust.

Unfortunately due to the fire themed circle jerking in the story, your character pulsates an ugly and gaudy ember effect. This just bizarre to see as almost none of the enemies have this effect and look stunning regardless. We already know the player character is fire themed due to being called the ashen one, an ugly ember effect is not needed.

The animations are the best in the series so far, for as bland and mediocre as the boss fights are, the gorgeous and over exaggerated animations of the Abyss watchers unorthodox great sword swings, the animalistic claw swipes of the wyverns and midir, and many others are a sight to behold. Regular mook attacks are on the same level. With some like the tar demons pulsating pustules changing depending on the attack being an outstanding detail.

Menu UI has been fixed again, with BloodBorne's awful and unintuitive vertical menus gone. DS2’s horizontal menus return and the layouts do an excellent job of showing you where everything is, you even have dented tabs at the top this time to eliminate any possible confusion.

Musically, Dark Souls 3 is mostly quite bland.

While legendary video game composer Motoi Saukraba does return, he only does a handful of tracks this time. Said tracks are the best in the game, as Sakuraba is a master of his craft. Vordt of the Boreal Valley’s powerful horn section and thundering percussion set a strong first impression when you encounter the game’s first real boss. Then there’s Curse Rotted Greatwoods ominous strings and haunted chants, the foreboding violins of Crystal Sages, the scatter shot booming horns of Wolnir and the Bombastic fast paced tempo of Nameless King that sounds like it was ripped straight out of the Tales games. These will be the highlight of the game musically for you and don’t disappoint.

Most of the tracks are composed by Yuka Kitamura, and while she does a generally competent job, it’s very easy to notice she’s more or less just trying to copy Sakuraba’s style but rely more heavily on violins. The majority of her tracks start off the same way, with a big booming hook, followed by heavy use of violins. There is talent here and from what I have sampled of her Sekiro score (I have not played that one yet), she really comes into her own in that game. In the case of DS3, it seems more that she’s composing in a style that doesn’t suit her and it falls flat due to that.

I’ve saved talking about the story till last cause it’s nothing special.

In my Dark Souls 2 review I touched upon that the conclusive, makes you wonder what may happen but good enough endings to Dark Souls 1 was made completely pointless by the existence of Dark souls 2, the choices you can make in that game are also nullified by the existence of Dark souls 3, as both protagonists chose to link the flame and continue the world as is. Dark Souls 3, to its credit, does try and work with this buy having the linking of the flame become a tradition of sorts, which each successive linker becoming a lord of cinder. And toys with this tradition by having the linking of the flame not happen for what seems like hundreds or even thousands of years. The previous Lords of Cinder have gone mad during this time and it is up to the Ashen one to link the flame yet again before it is to late.

A solid premise on paper, but the execution is as expected, quite poor and under cooked. The story in typical souls fashion is presented in a very bare bones way and you are expected to get more from the lore of the world than the actual plot proper. You collect your lords of cinders ashes, and then make one of three choices that do nothing interesting with the souls formula. You become a god and subjugate the masses, link the flame and preserve the world, or let it die. All of these choices transpire in very brief cut scenes before fading to black. Given the series hasn’t continued at the time I post this, it seems that the choices are actual weighty choices now, but ring hollow with how bare bones the story is, being nothing but a quick premise, uninteresting macguffin hunt, and then rushed choices.

The side quests don’t feel fulfilling but this is to be expected, as they’ve always felt more like tacked on framing devices to get rings and spells rather than genuine side stories in a (on paper) rich world seemingly brimming with information. You will know that people like Greirat and Sirrius will die as that’s just how these games go at this point, and you’ll roll your eyes and power through to get the good equipment their quest will bring you in spite of their half assed implementation.

The lore this time isn’t even a modicum of interesting due to Lothric being Lordran several centuries in the future. DS3 is filled to the brim with lazy pandering towards DS1, like Oscars corpse being right in front of you at the start to give you your estus, Anor Londo briefly returning for cheap nostalgia claps, and the final boss fight taking place in the Kiln of the first flame which also plays Gywnn’s theme in the second phase, just to name a few of many eye rolling homages you will encounter.

The original characters for this game don’t feel interesting at all due the fact that they just contribute to the theme of cycles that the trilogy is built around. The lords of cinder for example are just people who did the same thing DS1 and 2 hero did and they’re nothing more than obstacles in your path due to how underwritten everything is.

Both DLC packs like the base game share the premise of a solid idea of a plot on paper but like the base game suffer from extremely skeletal, bare minimum execution to even forgetting the premise near the end in Ringed City’s case.

Arriendel’s premise of a magical world found inside a painting fading away due to the painting in the real world starting to rot due to not being preserved well is a very interesting idea. But aside from a few houses full of pus and fleshy walls, and anthropomorphic birds with huge rotten penises (yeah I don’t know how to parse that either), that premise is barely touched upon, and when you do finish the DLC, your entire journey feels like it was meaningless because you just accelerated what was already happening in the first place.

That leaves us with the Ringed City. Another interesting premise, the Ringed City which takes place in the same sort of dimension the Kiln is in, presents it’s self as a “Landfill of realms” so to speak. But this “Landfill of realms” is really just window dressing. Sure you’ll see buildings from Dark Souls 1 and 2 along the way, but the actual plot, if you can call it that, is about you confronting Gael at the end of the world to get a hold of the Dark soul, which he has been devouring pieces of before he returns to his niece in the painted world to save it. You then kill Gael and the hyped up “Grand finale of the soulsborne franchise” just kind of ends with him falling over, you don’t even get a cut scene for this. It makes the Ringed City feel incredibly unfinished, and given how I just described it in the entire paragraph, it probably was unfinished and rushed out.


Dark Souls 3 is a mediocre cap off to a mediocre franchise. Filled with both cynical design choices like plentiful bonfires to help along the uninformed twitch streamer rage compilation audience, to continued poorly designed boss fights, ok at best combat, under designed levels, bland music and a bare bones, by the numbers soulsborne plot that does nothing interesting with the formula. It was one of the blandest, most low effort JRPGs I have ever played and in this franchise that is saying something.

There has never been anything special about this series, its reputation as “difficult”, that comes from deceptive advertisements deliberately targeted at people who have never played a JRPG in their life, is far more anger inducing than any of the games could ever hope to be. Its mechanics it apes and takes from other series are also done much better in those inspirations. The only remarkable thing about these games has been an incredible talent at underachieving with their potential. From soft can not make action JRPGs with Zelda combat, but they can make interesting on paper worlds. A narrower, non RPG focus is something I feel would lead to a much better output from this developer, and the existence of Sekiro and Armoured core 6 at a glance feel like a breath of fresh air. Hopefully, those are better than the mediocrity this franchise has plagued the entire medium with since 2009.

4/10.