Suskie's Dark Souls III review

Great read. The amount of references in the game was definitely a little much, but the story had a great payoff all things considered. I was lucky enough to have no performance issues or glitches with my AMD card.

I think it's the best in the series, but I'm currently only a few hours into DS2 which I haven't ever beaten, so we'll see.

I haven't finished DS3 yet (trying to beat the boss of Grand Archives) but I think that's pretty much the end of the game. It sounds like we mostly agree on the game in that Souls is starting to feel a bit routine for me. I mean, I definitely think DS3 has better level design and enemy layout than DS2, but I actually preferred Bloodborne for its different, more aggressive combat. I'm not sure I'd agree the game is really any harder than the others. I actually got all the way to Irithyll without figuring out how to upgrade the Estus Flask. The game's a lot faster and seems more built around meele builds (which pretty much fucked my INT build), but the shortcuts and bonfires are stupidly plentiful. Also a lot of the enemy AI can be confused by circling around them (which is also silly since the window for backstabs is super generous). As far as the weapon skills go, I found them more useful in PVP to try to catching someone off guard or eat through their stamina bar.

Overall the game is way better than anything else I've played this year but I kinda hope that there's a Bloodborne 2 next instead of a DS4.

Thanks very much to both of you for reading!

holdthephone: I can pretty much guarantee that Dark Souls II won't wind up being your favorite in the series.

Genj: I wouldn't say that DS3 is more difficult than Demon's or DS1, both of which are brutal, but I thought DS2 was a cakewalk (at least for mandatory stuff) and Bloodborne only gave me trouble for the first few bosses until I got used to the no-shields thing. Plus Bloodborne feels like it pulls back after a while regardless of that, whereas DS3's late-game content is some of its toughest.