The difficulty level and style of gameplay of the Dark Souls series I feel has now become legendary, often leading to other games being referred to as souls-like; moreover, creating something of a sub-genre of its own.

To start off, I would highly recommend this game to anyone who wants deep character customization, and replayability. Think back to your days in the early final fantasy games, you spend 100+ hours developing your character only to get to the end of the game with nothing left to do, and only one area that maybe presents a moderate challange. With features like new game +, and an entire world of people to co-op or battle with, you have a game that will always offer you something to do with that character you spent all that time creating. To add to its challenging and enjoyable combat style, you have the ability to mix and match an entire armoury of weapons, shields, and magic that allows for the creation of nearly any kind of character theme that a person could conjure up.

While all three games offer you a lot of options for character creation, each I feel provides greater focus on certain gameplay styles. The first being an unrefined game that for me offered the most interesting world, and the second which offered the smoothest gameplay and various combat enhancements, while the third enhances combat in a number of ways that if I'm not mistaken are unique to only this installment of the series.

-Weapon Arts were options for most weapons that enhanced the ability of ranged weaponry, two-handed, and weapon & shield style combat. They provided additional abilities that are unique to certain weapon types: such as a quick-shot or triple-shot with a bow, to the famous samurai iaido slash, or special parry animations, to charging attacks and fencing combos.

-Paired Weapons are the replacement for the power-stancing option of Dark Souls II; however, it limits you to only those individual weapons, unlike the power-stance option which could combine your own selection of weaponry. Although one advantage of this is that the paired weapons recieve buffs on both of their pieces as they are considered a single weapon.

-A belt bar was added to your (pause-type menu) which gave you five more items that were easy to get to quick.

-The ability to quickly revert back to the first item on your ten slots of items made it nice for finding your extus flask instead of going through the entire list of items you had equipped.

-Password Connection Option allowed you to connect with anyone, regardless of level.

So all in all they did add some neat features to this game; however, the smoothness of Dark Souls II was lost on this installment, combat feels more clunky and less flowing. The loss of power-stancing makes duel-wielding only a good option if a paired weapon is used. So as I mentioned above about each game providing more benifits to different styles, I feel that this game provided a much better gameplay experience for the following styles:

-Ranged Weaponry
-Two-Handed
-Weapon & Shield
-Specialist Spellcaster

To start this review off, do not let the masses negative reflection of this fine gem stop you from giving it a try. This is by far the most polished and well running of the Dark Souls series, and the definitive version of Dark Souls 2.

The difficulty level and style of gameplay of the Dark Souls series I feel has now become legendary, often leading to other games being referred to as souls-like; moreover, creating something of a sub-genre of its own.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone who wants deep character customization, and replayability. Think back to your days in the early final fantasy games, you spend 100+ hours developing your character only to get to the end of the game with nothing left to do, and only one area that maybe presents a moderate challange. With features like new game +, and an entire world of people to co-op or battle with, you have a game that will always offer you something to do with that character you spent all that time creating. To add to its challenging and enjoyable combat style, you have the ability to mix and match an entire armoury of weapons, shields, and magic that allows for the creation of nearly any kind of character theme that a person could conjure up.

While all three games offer you a lot of options for character creation, each I feel provides greater focus on certain gameplay styles. The first being an unrefined game that for me offered the most interesting world, while the second enhances combat in a number of ways that if I'm not mistaken are unique to only this installment of the series.

-It uses soul memory instead of soul level which sucks in a way, but allows for a higher level character before the game becomes a ghost town. For me it is Tier 36 (3-5 million souls) which allows you to reach level 200 and still meet a lot of people in the later areas of the game. This is a boon to a focused spellcaster, who has the potential to have 10+ spells attuned giving them a greater arsenal of spells to enjoy and toy with.

-It provides consumable items to reduce the required stats for spells, which allows even the less focused fighter/ mage characters more options as far as spell choices go.

-The parry/riposte now has two options for most enemies: a falling down, and on their back riposte attack which keeps it from getting too stale if your good at parrying.

-The game also offers several options for parrying with a right-hand weapon.

-Power-Stance provides the ability to extend your moveset options for duel-wielders, giving them more attack variations to keep things from becoming too repetitious.

-And likely the most praised aspect of the game is the flowing of movesets and smoothness of combat. The first as I mentioned above was still unrefined, and the combat didn't allow you to mix and match weapons with any great proficiency; moreover, many of the weapons will flow more easily from one to another without a long pause between attacks, as the other two installments feel to do. Each weapon will be different, but the smoothness of combat means you will have more options for your battlerager without the undesired break between each weapons moveset.

So as I mentioned above about each game providing more benifits to different styles, I feel that this game provided a much better gameplay experience for the following styles:

-Duel-Wielding
-Parry Master
-Multi-Focus Spellcaster
-Fighter/ Mage
-Fighter/ Cleric