Review

Dark Souls 3 is stupid and everything I hate about Elden Ring started here. The story is nonsense. That's a pretty well agreed upon fact at this point. We know of the development difficulties and that the game didn't really come together on the whole. Why are people becoming trees? And why does people becoming trees get dropped like 1/3 of the way into the game? Why are there angels? What does the profaned flame have to do with anything? I'd like for literally anyone to describe a single character or concept in this game without using the phrase "associated with". It's no good. There are no truly new ideas happening here. The fan service is beyond out of control and it's stupefying. We already went through this in Dark Souls 2 and it handled it with aplomb.

That game took place in the same universe but you really got the sense that we were generations and generations after the events of Dark Souls. There are only a couple of direct references made to the first game and DS2 does something I love where they are often just wrong. You can see that the stories have changed over time. The item descriptions reference gods we know but their names have changed. Things like that. Now in DS3 we're supposedly even more generations and generations farther in the future. Yet magically, not a second has passed since DS1. Everyone's getting directly referenced and I just find it embarrassing. Please get off my dick, I am begging. I do not want to hear you make the same exact jokes you've been making for years now. Do you have any new material? If no, then why are we here? If I wanted to play DS1, I would play DS1.

And in fact, I would rather be playing DS1. Because you see, we've decided to take all the wrong lessons from Bloodborne. Dark Souls 3 is significantly faster than any of the previous souls games. But now, unlike in Bloodborne, we do not have the rally system. So you are just sort of expected to be faster and more perfect than ever before. We've just notched that lil difficulty setting up because it's what the shitheads want. If they're not bashing their heads against a brick wall, they might start having thoughts and we can't have that. Shit pisses me off. This series in its youth was not exceptionally difficult. That was its outside reputation. But the moment you started playing any of these games (I'm specifically talking about the run from Demon's Souls to DS2), you can see that they are not super difficult. They are hard, but fair. Now, we've got garbage like Midir, Friede, Nameless King. I'm not having fun. I'm perfectly capable of defeating all of them. I do not want to. It takes too long to learn their shit and be able to pass their shitty tests.

The one thing the game's got going for it is the spells. I like the FP system where even the sword wielders have reason to dabble in it. Given the sword arts and all that. The spells themselves are also just fun. So ya got that Dark Souls 3. Your spells are fun. Just about everything else is a total disappointment.