Recent reviews by The Messiah Of Vermin

*spoiler free review

Dark Souls 3 is, in my opinion, a great game. However, I'll try to be unbiased yada yada ya.

As for negatives, I feel that some enemies are too big and attack to fast for the type of game Dark Souls 3 is. Some enemies are so large and attack so fast that its very difficult to know what is happen save for audio cues. This can obviously make certain fights extremely frustrating but thankfully they are few and far between. Another thing that annoyed me quite a bit, though subjective, is the abundance of throwback equipment from Dark Souls 1 and 2. I won't go too much into detail but it really sticks out this time around because the new armour and weapons are so interesting and varied that it makes the returning items feel out of place. Going off of this, Dark Souls 3 is much more fast paced than previous titles and has a heavy emphasis on dodging, though shields are still as effective as ever. The game has lot more situation where enemies will be in packs and swarm you, but it feels somewhere in between the packs in the first and second game, they won't one shot you but they still hurt and aren't as flimsy as the hollow packs from the first game. Without saying anything more, I also feel there are too many invasion covenants, they mostly are different from one another but it still seems like they could have cut at least one, but hey extra content. I could, once again, say the same for some levels in the game that feel a bit like callbacks, but this is less of an issue as it really only a shared theme than anything. My final complaint has to do with the overabundance of similar character from previous games. It can get so bad that some are literally the exact same character. This is personal but again the new chracters put them to shame.

As for positives, I obviously think the new weapons and chracters and armour and rings and everything is much improved. The new weapons are all noteworthy and feel less homogenous than in previous games; each weapon seemingly has a niche. The new armours are all pretty unique and have decent bit of backstory to them as well. The new and returnng magics of all types feel cool and the new editions are all really cool. The way that stats are handled also feels very unique with each one opening up new spells and weapons to the character. Essentially, if you love to play different builds there is a lot for you here. The new rings all feel worthwhile in one wy or another, my only complaint would be that some act as a straight upgrade to others. The focus point system and the new special moves add a new layer of depth to combat that makes PVP a lot more fun, though only with an experienced opponent. On the note of PVP soul level is once again used and the anti-twink measure this time around has to do with weapon upgrades (ie I cant invade a new player with a +1 weapon with my +10 anus destroyer and hornet ring even if we are the same level). The level design is much more similar to DS1 with several shortcuts being used and levels making sense in terms of placement. Other UI elements and annoyences have been fixed as well, for example the menu no longer opens back up when you use an item without equiping it. Covenants are much easier to switch to and from due to a change that has been made to the covenant system. Homeward bones also have a change that makes leveling much less of a hassle than in Dark Souls 2. NPC's (aside from returning ones) are actually fairly cool and feel very different to older ones. The Dark Souls 2 style of having npcs take up permanent residence in an area has been removed thankfully and NPCs have arcs to them once again. Boss fights feel a lot more unique again with several of them being particularly memorable to me; the 'big guy with sword' trend has not been continued and has instead been replaced by interesting bosses. Overall, I would say that Dark Souls 3 improves on almost everything from previous titles all while adding a lot more interesting mechanics and ideas to it. While not all of them work out perfectly, I think they add a lot to the game. My most major complaint would be the feeling of similarity that the game has to previous souls games in its levels, NPCs and weapons. Expect to see a lot of messages asking "this again?" as you play through the game. That being said I have yet to find a boss that has been copied into the game.

Overall, if you enjoyed dark souls 1 and had a lot of issues with dark souls 2 you will probably end up liking this game.

It has guns in it.