Dark Souls III

208 hours playtime

43 of 43 achievements

First of all I want to say thanks to my dear and lovely friend who gifted me this amazing game. I'll be eternally grateful for this. Thanks. Truly

And what a game it is!!! It is even complicated for me to find the right words to describe it. I loved previous Dark Souls (and hated them too - in a good way) and this couldn't be different with Dark Souls III. I confess I was skeptical when they announced Dark Souls III mostly because of previous experiences and knowing how easily it is for developers to ruin a good franchise. That being said, I figured out how wrong I was as soon I started to play this game.

Its story is fantastic!!! At least in my opinion. I loved how well they managed to end this franchise. If you still didn't play any Souls game, let me tell you: their story are incredible but also completely subjective and they'll happen only if you allow them to happen, otherwise you'll get lost when you finish the game and think that all you did was kill bosses. But how, you may ask me. Well, there are NPCs to talk, side quests that will provide us even more context and believe me, there is a whole story to be told by items descriptions too.

In Dark Souls III they added even more stuff and compared with previous games, it has way more NPCs to interact with. Some side quests can't be completed if you're going to complete a quest given by another NPC (Anri of Astora and Yuria of Londor are the best example of this). If you are currently playing this game I highly recommend you to complete all quests (this will require more than one playthrough btw) because: 1. they will give you even more context and let you know more about Dark Souls' universe and their story, and 2. they are awesome in every single aspect. I already finished DS III three times (for now) and I think I still have so much to figure out (even though I explored everything in all three playthrough).

Now it is time to go back in time first before I start talking about its visuals and design.
Dark Souls - Prepare to Die had a such great visual, not in terms of graphic, but in terms of design. It was great!!! I remember like if it was yesterday when I just started to play that game and how I felt every time I reached a new location. They are all so well designed, so connected with each other, and while playing, without notice, those locations got stuck in my head. For real, I still remember every single detail of that game, every door, shortcut, ladder... whatever :o

Then, they finally released Dark Souls II - poor DS II cries alone in a corner - and I really don't know what they did with that game, it is... nice, I guess, some places are well made and even beatiful (Dragon Shrine is one of my favorite locations - it is so pretty), but for some unknown reason, I didn't feel what I felt when playing Dark Souls 1. It seemed so out of context to me, like if they made a lot of maps and just put all of them together to see what would happen. Well, something happened, indeed. Just not what they had in mind probably.

Now, Dark Souls III. They managed to brought us back all glory we had in DS 1 with perfection. It is so beautiful!! :3
Each one of its 18 maps are unique, each one has it own life and even so, each one is connected with a previous map or the next one, somehow. I played it really slowly only because I wanted to enjoy every pixel of this game. They added so many references from their first two games (I mean, Demons Souls and Dark Souls 1) - DS II keeps crying alone in a corner. It is definitely so epic as Prepare to Die and with modern graphics and all that stuff, it became a master piece.
Bosses design are incredibly good. They are unique in their own style. I won't forget the feeling when I watched Dancer of the Boreal Valley cutscene. Damn, this is one of my favorite bosses. Or the change of style when I was fighting Lothric, Younger Prince. They brought a lot of ideas from Bloodborne for bosses and this was a plus to Dark Souls III. Gave it something more to enjoy.

If not enough, we have also its gameplay.
It is still in the same base from previous Dark Souls. Manage our stamina, rolls and dodges. Attack when you get a chance between enemies' attacks and etc. But the gameplay changed a bit because of small things they added or changed.
They added weapon skills. Besides all normal attacks we can execute with a given weapon, they now have some, let's say, special attacks that consume FP (focus points - the blue bar you can see in my screenshots - also used to cast spells). This small thing changed a lot how to play Dark Souls and gave us many opportunities to create our own playstyle. These weapon skills, if timed right can be devastating and they can open sequence for a bigger combo. That's awesome!
They also added what I said previously: Focus Points. It was present in Demon's Souls. Basically it is our mana bar and instead of have limited uses for spells, we can use it as much we can as long we still have mana. Also, we can refill our mana by drinking Ashen Flask, the correspondent of Estus Flask, but for mana :D. This doesn't look a big difference, but knowing that we can use more spells and special attacks open opportunity to change our playstyle in middle of a fight to adapt to the situation. I felt the gameplay smooth, and faster, and even so, you need to play smart and plan your attacks and how to approach your enemy(ies). You really don't want to see yourself surrounded by five or more enemies without a good strategy in mind. Believe me, you'll die if they are strong enough.

A small talk about achievements. Just like previous Dark Souls, you'll need more than one playthrough to complete Dark Souls III. To be more exact, you'll need three playthroughs to get all achievements. Of course there is always an easy way to get them earlier (if someone drops all rings, yes, rings, to you, you'll get the last achievement you would get if you were going after them in the right way. Most of the achievements are story related, like defeat bosses, find covenants, etc. Actually, their achievements are easier to get than you can imagine.

Dark Souls, each one of them are special to me. I truly love this franchise and no matter how much I play these games, I don't get tired of them. Dark Souls III will always be a game I'll come back to play sometimes (just like DS 1 and DS II).
I don't think twice when asked if I recommend Dark Souls. YES, I do recommend this game. It has a huuuge replay value, awesome story and design plus an amazing soundtrack and the feeling of defeat that boss you thought was impossible is just unique.

Is it hard? Yes, and no. Play smart and be careful and eventually you'll reach the ending.

Will it make you wish to throw your controller on the wall? Hell yeah... but when this happen, you'll make a break, take a deep breath and return to it 10 minutes later just to show it who is the boss!! LOL

There's still so much more I could say about this game specifically or any other Dark Souls! :O But I think I gave you all an idea of what Dark Souls is about and how special they are to me. Sorry for this huge wall text hehe. Thank you so much for you time reading all of this. You are awesome! :3
One last thing... if are not convinced yet, check the gameplay tab and look how fun Dark Souls can be. :p

Quick question: what is the hardest game you ever played? That one you thought about give up many times while playing it, but it was too good and you managed to finish it.