I don't think I've ever been more conflicted after having finished a video game than I have been with Dark Souls III.

I'm going to get my praise out of the way, since you've likely heard similar things said by many others by now: The story and new lore, while nowhere near as thematically interesting to me, is still a good addition to existing canon. This game has many of the best fights in the entire series (although it also has a fair number that I don't particularly care for), and the series' combat is at its' peak here. General gameplay has been polished as well; the game looks and feels great to play as a result. When the game is firing on all cylinders, it is a sight to behold.

It's good enough to briefly make me forget all the issues I have with the game up to those points. Because, for as good as Dark Souls III plays, it also comes across as a very scared game. Dark Souls III is scared to take risks, scared to step on anyone's toes, maybe even scared of being a Dark Souls game.

Both of the prior Dark Souls games have had parts that people have since looked unfavorably towards. Blighttown, The Gutter, and so on. You could honestly google any area in Dark Souls II and find someone that swears up and down that it's the worst area (or game, if you're stupid) Fromsoft has ever created. It's something I've always found funny, because some of the previously mentioned areas have been some of my favorites in the series for how well they're able to force the player to respect their environment and really tread cautiously. They're a brutal reminder to the player that you are outside of your depth but have no choice but press on. Finding Blighttown feels like you're walking into a place that you are not supposed to find, it's immediately so openly hostile and dangerous to you that at times it can be genuinely scary. Dark Souls III doesn't really have a clean analog besides a veeery brief segment of Ringed City where you run through an active war zone, and that's because Dark Souls III feels like it doesn't want people to possibly dislike anything about it. It's supposed to be the climax of the series and everything it represents, it can't risk anything the way Dark Souls I could risk everything to cement an entirely new genre of game into the cultural landscape.

(Yes, I know Farron Keep is the new poison swamp area analogy, but it feels so sanitized and unthreatening compared to the nightmare that was trying to go through The Gutter fearing for my torch timer and scrambling for a bonfire.)

It frustrates me seeing this game fully commit to being a 'hard game where you fight hard boss fights' instead of what I really appreciated about the first two games: Dangerous forays into fallen civilizations, complete with now-mad inhabitants and crumbling architecture. Dark Souls III feels so less inclined to be another example of virtual archeology and more than happy to lean into the popular cultural idea of what Dark Souls was at a surface level. It takes the convenience of Dark Souls II's bonfire system with none of the interesting metroidvania trappings of its predecessor and willingly abandons any attempts to play with cohesion, whether to the degree of incredible density found in Dark Souls I or the nonsensical map of Dark Souls II. Dark Souls III just wants to be an action game, it wants you to take a single road throughout the journey, only pulling over briefly to go beat something's head in before getting back on that road, pushing ever closer to your goal. I want to be clear that I am not trying to paint embracing linearity as a de facto negative when it comes to game design; you can see a very similar trajectory taken within the design of the Devil May Cry games that ultimately helped fine-tune those games to perfection. What I take issue with is the cultural cost that embracing linearity has done for Dark Souls, and how that has affected the way people have interacted and viewed the series ever since. It's sad, thinking I'll never play a game as tightly designed as Dark Souls I ever again, or play a sequel as divisive and willing to break everything that came before it the way Dark Souls II did. Dark Souls III feels content to find some decisively less interesting middle-ground between both games in favor of ensuring the series can finally stick the landing.

Maybe it's fitting then, that in a game about the fading of an era that Dark Souls III itself has faded from much of what I loved about the first two games. Just as Lordran, Drangleic, and now Lothric have reinterpreted their predecessors and sought to alter the status quo, Dark Souls III marks a departure from previous Dark Souls ideology, doing away with the genius world structure of it's forefathers in favor of a land that feels dispassionately conventional. When the game wants to come out of its' shell, it's out. It shows you it can be dramatic, somber, explosive, because at the end of the day, it IS Dark Souls.

It's just buried under a mountain of ash.