Does a game need to be a masterpiece, can't it just be pretty good? Darksiders 3 is a great 3 star experience. Nothing it does will make you sit up from your couch and take note, but nothing is so appalling you will start mailing death threats to the devs.

There is quite a bit of good here: art design is great, the game has vibrant colors and sceney, combat is punchy and fun, and the story, while the same borderline white noise that defines Darksiders, is actually pretty solidly structured and written, with themes and character arcs carrying through the story and paying off.

Level design is also very nicely done, with paths weaving through the different zones really reminding me a lot of Metroid Prime. Especially when you get new powerups that lead you to new shortcuts through the levels. It REALLY is like Metroid Prime, and Prime is like the coolest game ever, so rip it off more please!!

Thankfully, the game doesn't take many ideas from Souls games other than the basic verbiage. I can't stand these games like Lies of P that are totally idea free aside from their slavish devotion to From's game design and art style. Darksiders 3 borrows the souls mechanic and estus flask mechanic but truthfully not much else. I suppose with more money they could have also added terrible hitboxes and bosses with 4 phases but time is money.

I will address the stink though: the whip chain grappling hook is a disaster. It hardly works and sucks total ass. The final area is a mining complex with some bizarre puzzles relating to a tornado that don't make any sense really. Bosses are not anything special, and as long as you dodge appropriately you won't have any issue. The Unreal engne 4 STINKS!! it has glitches, bugs, and crashes all the goddamn time. It freezes anytime it needs to hit a loading zone which always feels like the game is about to explode. There are also a lot of walking and talking segments which are the video game equivalent of a meeting that could have been an email. You are stopping the flow for all this? Give me a break.

There isn't much to wax poetic about here. i enjoyed it, and I bounce off games almost instantly if I think they are really boring or take too long to get rolling. Remnant for example lost me after an hour of fuckin' nothing happening. Darksiders 3 is imaginative and interesting beginning to end, and actually ends with a bit of gravitas instead of just unceremoniously stopping like a lot of Soulslikes have to. Fury is an entertainingly bitchy character who looks straight out of Witchblade or the Darkness, so I really can't ask for more out of games I paid 20 bucks for.

The Woke Media will cancel me for saying this: but this isn't a Souls-like! It's a Metroid Prime-like!!!

Really enjoying it so far. One of the last bastions of the PS2 era we have in gaming. Unfortunately it willingly attached the "souls-like" label to itself, not unlike tying an anchor around your neck before jumping into a lake, damning it to a fate of being hated by moronic fucking idiot Fromsoft fans and used as youtube fodder for "I Played 30 Souls Clones!!!" videos by guys who are inexplicably making $10,000 a month on patreon. Such is life.