Dark Souls was never supposed supposed to be a trilogy, but I’m glad it is, because it’s masterpiece of a finisher, Dark Souls 3 is, in my honest opinion, the greatest current souls and soulslike game.

Starting with the best points, Dark Souls 3 has a great variety of bosses, all with unique OST ascribed to them. Their greatest strength comes with improving the feature that started in Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne. Instead of having a constant, same moveset of attacks, the Bosses have phases that can change their forms and attacks upon their healthbar being depleted to a certain threshold, making the fight more dynamic and modifying the player’s current strategy to fit the circumstances. The OST itself takes from Bloodborne and is filled with orchestra music that fits every fight perfectly, describing the boss’s current status and fitting their characters. It’s hard for me to not come back and have a listen to the abyss watchers theme, and hear a slow reverb of a bell going through it.

The world is practically the same as in dark souls 1 however with a lot of passage of time and renaming. Still filled with beautiful gothic architecture building and swamps, holy hell there is a lot of swamps. It still retains a lot of magic from previous games, allowing you to see far away locations and knowingly and unknowingly reaching those places has a great feeling of adventure tied to it. The progress is semi-linear, which isn’t bad in itself as the locations themselves have a lot of passages and secrets, with the dark souls 1 interconnectedness sadly never returning, but it may be confusing finding a dead end and not knowing where to go to progress.

The npc’s just like typical dark souls fashion will give you very vague tips and then cheekily laugh as if your toaster broke when you tried to make toast, as par on the course for them. And have interesting moments as you progress their quest, which will usually just mean going through location carefully finding them, and then later finding them again. They will give you unique rewards and even endings if you manage, however lot of effort and guides may be required.

Multiplayer is here, and is thriving, for the good and bad reasons. The game has a great system for enabling multiplayer as when you beat a boss or use a special item you get embered, replacing the hollow/human process from previous games. The ember status increases your max hp and allow for invasions to happen, the bad news is that the game’s pvp community likes to feed on the new scraps that come through the first real area, so be prepared for swift death. After that however the situation will improve immensely. And that’s because of the covenants, which are a driving force behind 99% of pvp and coop situations. While exploring and talking with npc’s you will acquire covenants which have specific purpose for online play, for example, the first covenant that is unmissable will automatically summon helpful protectors while invaded. Covenants greatest strength is incentivizing multiplayer by allowing unique rewards for completing specific objectives, like helping a player defeating a boss, succesfully repelling and invade, or defeating the host who intrudes on certain area. Dark Souls 3 upgraded the covenants by changing their passive summon ability from rings to an unique slot in inventory, which can be changed freely during any point in the game and instead of working in only one area it will search through all areas and summon the player there if the requirements are met. The only downside to this is that the multiplayer only works as long as there are other players around, and are withing a certain level thresholds compared to the player’s current level.

To finish it off, the battle mechanics haven’t really changed that much from previous games, the dark souls 2 powerstance system however was lost, replaced with weapon arts, giving weapons unique attacks and effects while two-handed. Their usability however varies from amazing to meh as some weapons may be just too slow, as with each iterations of souls, the pace and flexibility of both player and bosses have increased making many fights very tight.

I could have gone on and on about a few other aspects, but this is a steam review not an essay on of my videos on youtube so to say it short. The graphics hold up nicely, with some textures being lower resolution than should be a standard even for that time, the dlc’s are amazing and should be bought with the base game as a package, and the biggest downside is that the game isn’t longer.
T.D.