Dark Souls 3

[Dr Diamond 407]

So i picked this game up on steam on sale and my god, it is one of the best games i have played. Im getting destroyed regularly, its frustratingly hard at times and yet i keep playing it for hours and hours.

the depth is incredible, the enemy variety is amazing and the options are endless. Currently traipsing through farron keep and getting pissed off with the poison mud.

[phil bottle 9,822]

So i picked this game up on steam on sale and my god, it is one of the best games i have played. Im getting destroyed regularly, its frustratingly hard at times and yet i keep playing it for hours and hours.

the depth is incredible, the enemy variety is amazing and the options are endless. Currently traipsing through farron keep and getting pissed off with the poison mud.

It is a great game, the first is still my fave.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

First is the hardest and best overall for me. 

[Venom 105]

Just finished this game with a playtime of 22 hours. Loved it. It’s my favourite of the series. The boss quality in this game in amazing and is consistently of the quality that the others only occasionally reach. The level design is generally good and never frustrating. Highly recommended.

[Venom 105]

First of the base game is of a higher standard then any of the other games I’ve played so far (ds1,ds2,bb,er). There are some amazing fights in here. Gundyr is a interesting opening boss compared to the other games which are usually quite simple. And Vordt is really unique as a fight and a lot of fun. Abyss watchers is very cool and a nice early spike in difficulty. Pontiff at the time was one of my fav fights in the series. He is very well designed with a truly unique concept for phase 2. Took a while to learn the timings but very satisfying when I did. The rematch against gundyr is in my top 5 bosses still. I love the aggression in the fight and it constantly feels active either in punishes or dodges. Princes is again a difficult but awesome fight with a really cool teleport concept.  The nameless king is one of the coolest boss arenas ever. The first phase is easy whilst unique and the second is a fun duel. Another great boss.

The final boss is by far the best finale in the series. Soul is a really cool fight and quite challenging. Most of these games either have a disappointing finale or in the case of ds2 a neutral one. 

Even the worse boss in this game are still better than the average boss in ds1,ds2 and bb. The gimmick fights are less good but still not bad or annoying.
 

I’ve heard this boss quality continues in sekiro and I know from playing it that Elden ring matches it in some fights. I find it hard to believe that from will ever top this level of consistent good boss design. 
 

When I was playing the later fights I was doing so with about 1/3 the amount of total healing you can have. This provided a good level of difficulty for me. With full healing I would say these fights would be on the easier side and so would recommend to anyone who enjoys the challenge to play with less than max healing.

 

[Venom 105]

The levels is where I can start to pick up on some problems with the game. After ds2 these levels were very easy to go through. Which isn’t a good or bad thing just different. Most of the levels in this game are well designed with there paths and interconnectivity. But most of them felt unoriginal. They felt like some of the better levels in the earlier games just without providing anything new. The exceptions being irrethyll dungeons which was a new setting but not to interesting level design wise. And the cathedral. The cathedral is the hardest level in the base game. It’s very long and loops back to the same bonfire like 4/5 times. The enemy’s are challenging and the setting is unique. Unfortunately this area is capped with the worst boss in the game. I would have loved to see more varied levels but what is here is pretty good gameplay and looks amazing. Just more originality would have been better.

Importantly however there is nothing offensively bad here which is more than can be said for any of the other games I’ve played.

[Venom 105]

Ahh the dlc. 
In these games the dlc is usually a big step up in quality than the base game. Artorious of the abyss gave ds1 good bosses and difficulty. The crowns gave ds2 amazing bosses and very good and unique level design. The old hunters added difficulty and variety to bb. Ds3 does not continue this tradition. The ds3 dlc is still amazing but it’s more like the best of ds3 as opposed to a step beyond. It contains two bosses in my top 5 and one of witch is my favourite of all time. The level design is of the quality of cathedral in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. I would highly recommend it if you enjoyed the base game. 
 

Now onto specifics. Dlc 1 is on the shorter end contains 1 very large area and 2 bosses. The first of which is an okay fight with a small guy and a large wolf. It’s relatively easy and not that original but it’s okay. The level is quite challenging and unique. Probably my favourite snowy level. The final boss of the dlc sister friede and farther ariandel is my faviourte fight to date. It’s a long 3 phase fight but each phase you can master individually. The first phase using invisibility well while introducing some tells and timings that will be useful in a later phase. The second phase is one of the best duo fights that has been done by from. Both this a demon princes make me wonder why people look back to the shit show of a fight that is Onstein and Smough as an example of a good duo fight when ds3 has much better (and actually good examples). The final phase is a fight that dose long combos well without being boring. There are lots of possible moves all of which are punishable. Love the fight it’s a masterpiece.

 

Dlc 2 is a longer dlc that dosent quite reach the same highs. Dreg keep is a cool use of verticality and the ringed city revel looks awesome rivalling anor londo. The ring city itself is quite challenging and long. The boss in this dlc the gets into my top 5 is demon princes. It’s an easier fight but it’s an example of a duo fight done really well. The cycling agro is really cool and you can learn to types of play to speed up the fight. (Targeting the aggressive one and targeting the passive one) then you can keep damage on the same prince the whole fight. Then the second phase is a impressive fight and the switching moves based on kill order is a cool mechanic. 
The other main bosses in this dlc are midir and gael. I’ll start with midir. He’s a large dragon which when you learn the fight is awesome to play against. There can be a lot of trial and error to learn the fight though. This is fine for a boss and can be fun. However he is placed weirdly at the end of a long boss run which is not good for a trail and error fight. Also it’s clear both him and gael are fights designed with max healing (or close to) in mind. This my skew my opinion on them as my fights were on a much lower amount of healing. Gael phase 1 is amazing and then each of his next to phase look cooler than the last. Unfortunately they also get more and more boring each phase. Phase 2 can be okay if you play very aggressive but your almost guaranteed to take chip damage doing this and this took away from my limited healing. Phase 3 is just baiting out the same 3 combos over and over and waiting for the small punish window. Overall for me it was like an 8-9 min fight playing aggressively and I could only take 8-9 hits which meant a minute of flawless play for each hit taken. The fight was clearly not designed for this and so aswell as being boring In the later phases it took quite a few attempts before I could do them flawlessly aswell. Despite the sour note they are still both nice challenges and a decent finale to the trilogy. Though I do think doing friede last would be better.

[J4MES OX4D 10,057]

Absolutely love Dark Souls 3! Spent 75+ hours in total and some of the locations and bosses were legendary. Still think this game is miles ahead of anything they did in Elden Ring. 

 

One of my most favourite locations in the whole series