"Dark Souls III" is the newest and possibly the last entry in the "Dark Souls" series. The series that is known for it's hard, but fair difficulty did not go down in quality from its previous entries. I enjoyed the entire time that I spent on this game. Everything from the gameplay to the sound quality has improved. Here are some core points of the game.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere in "Dark Souls III" is that of despair and the end of the world. You will find swamps, ruins, castles, and much more here. While there are very few colorful areas, the particle effects make your environment feel alive, yet dying. It is fitting in every way. The music is very well made, the graphics are great, and the feeling of every area is unique. There is no misplacement or awkwardness in the environments that you explore. For example, you will find slugs and other disgusting creatures in swampy areas while a town that is infested with undead will have grotesque enemies crawling around every corner. Areas make you want to explore and find secrets, which there are plenty of (as well as traps). The bosses of the game have the most unique design in the entire series, which surprised me. Many of the bosses felt fresh and new, which made me quite happy and scared a little since I had no idea what I was facing in battle. The artistry of the game's environment adds so much personality and uniqueness to this title that very few other games ever gave me.
Story:
"Dark Souls III" does not force its story into your face. While it is there, it is more optional and you can fully enjoy the game without much interruption from the story. However if you are one who likes good stories in video games like me, you will find a rich lore to discover and storyline to follow. It is easy to know what your character's goal is in the game, but if you want to know how everything happened, for what reasons, and more, you will have to dig deep. It is a satisfying feeling, finding out all of the lore of the game. Some of it is disturbing, while some of it will almost make you cry. There are very few happy bits of lore in the game, but it is the apocalypse. You find out the story through exploration of areas, analyzing enemies, talking to all NPCs, and reading items descriptions. It sounds like a lot of work and that it might take away from the enjoyment of the game, but, trust me, when you find out a secret of the game and find out more lore, you will have "wow" moments. I even told people who do not play video games about some of these moments.
Gameplay
The game's gameplay is similar to previous entries. You go through areas by fighting enemies. You beat them by dodging, blocking their attacks, and counterattacking. You could just go in like a madman and start slashing, but you will most likely see the "you died" message. There are bonefires that serve as travel points and restore your resources, and, of course, there is magic. However, so many things are different, but it's mostly for the good. There is a new resource called Focus Points, which is sort of like your mana bar. Spells no longer have a specific number of uses before you have to go to a bonfire and replenish them, now they use focus points. This adds more strategy to the game and now you can strategize much more on how to use your spells and weapon arts. Weapon arts is another new feature, giving all weapons unique skills that use focus points. A dagger's special skill is a series of quick dashes, while dual wielding swords will perform a spinning attack in order to hit all of the enemies around you. This new feature gives a lot of love for people who do not want to delve into the world of magic and just prefer to use their weapons against all of these monstrosities. Another important feature of the game are the embers. When you die in the game, you are at a reduced health. The only way to fully restore it is by killing a boss or consuming an ember. This lets you partake in all of the features of multiplayer and it gives your character a nicer look. The previous entries of the series used humanity, which could have been stacked, but in "Dark Souls III" you can only consume one ember and no more until you die again. I looked at my reduced health as my standard health and when I consume an ember, I treat it as a bonus to my health, as I kept dying every 20 minutes most of the time that I spent going through the game.
Multiplayer
My favorite feature of the game was multiplayer. You can partake in a jolly co-op or player versus player. There are covenants in the game that give you rewards based on if you killed players or helped players clear an area. While most of these activities require you to have consumed an ember, some of them do not. The game allows you to turn off the multiplayer feature and it also gives a lot of thought to player safety when they do not want to be disturbed by invaders. Since you usually cannot predict when an enemy player will invade your world, you can join covenants where ally players will be summoned to your world to protect you from these invaders. It causes a lot of fun multiplayer features that I have enjoyed. My favorite thing about this, though, are the duels. I love invading other players' worlds and when you track them down through random running around or following a trail of corpses that they might have left behind, most of the time you will face each other in a duel. It gets really intense. Suddenly, you shift to a more uncomfortable position in your seat, just so that you don't relax even for a moment. You don't realize it, but you stopped blinking and your eyes are fully focused on your opponent. You are contemplating on how to strike him or her, without exposing yourself to their attacks. Once you finally strike your opponent down, you feel powerful. There are very few encounters against other players that are easy and if somebody in the room distracts you while you are battling it out with another player, get rid of them from your life. They do not understand the struggle.
Conclusion
"Dark Souls III" is the best entry in the series and it does not require you to have played the previous entries in order to be invested in the game. While it's not my favorite game ever, it is definitely one that I love and I will hold it in my top list of games. Not for a single moment after purchasing this game's collector edition have I regretted spending the money. After finishing the story, I am impatiently waiting for the downloadable content to come out. Until then, I will take my frustrations out on other players by invading their worlds and stomping on their progress. There is only one way to prepare for this game and that is to prepare to die.
