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After replaying all the Soulsborne games I realized that I absolutely loath Dark Souls 3
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Just the ability to refight bosses makes it worth the install. Although I do miss the version where you could fight more challenging versions of the bosses.
This is exactly how I feel about DSIII. It's technically a good game but uninteresting as a whole.
I just finished Dark Souls 3 with the DLCs. Demon's Souls remake was my first Souls game and got me hooked. Then I played DS1, loved it, and now 3.
I think this one is my favorite so far. I haven't given it any deeper thought and I understand the frustrations with the on-your-face fan service.
But the gameplay is so smooth (and a flawless 60fps on PS5), the level design blew me away (although not as much as DS1), the art direction is top notch, the sky boxes are the best I've seen in a game, the enemy design rules... I consistently had fun in my 95h run, with less frustrations than the previous ones.
I think this one is my favorite so far. I haven't given it any deeper thought and I understand the frustrations with the on-your-face fan service.
But the gameplay is so smooth (and a flawless 60fps on PS5), the level design blew me away (although not as much as DS1), the art direction is top notch, the sky boxes are the best I've seen in a game, the enemy design rules... I consistently had fun in my 95h run, with less frustrations than the previous ones.
It's the best dark souls. Combat and bosses are so much better than previous entries, it has the best art direction, music is amazing. Will never understand why people prefer the first one. "But the level design1!1!1!!" Who cares about a bunch of interconnected levels jesus, just give amazing boss fights like Gael, Friede, Midir, Sulyvan etc...Boss fights on the first dark souls (or even demon souls) are so goddamn basic, like they have a bunch of predictable patterns and that's it. So boring.
DS3 's art direction for its majority of areas is a severe step down from even DS2.
Souls has merit beyond its bosses. If it didn't they probably wouldn't have bothered putting so much content in between all those bosses.
DSIII is amazing though I love "fantasy location but it's burnt and/or gross."
Sure but boss fights is where these games truly shine IMO, and DS3 is way better than previous entries in that aspect.
Going from BB to DS3, I think the environments have like, nearly half maybe even a third of the assets, geometry, and design of BB's locales. Couldn't believe it.
Everything was brown black and grey, without anything cool to give it personality.
even the skyboxes look worse.
The first 2 games look dated as all hell these days and have very simple looking environments in comparison. Exiting the dungeons and emerging at the entrance to the boreal valley is one of the coolest environment shifts. Parts of The Ringed City and even Ariandel look really interesting too like the Dregg Heap were just impossible to achieve in the older games, and the Boss arena ending the DLC was maybe my favourite of all these games.
Its a stunning looking game at times and all the comments on art direction and being a "step down" just come off as nostalgia bias to me.
I don't care how much you love Ornstein and Smough, they look like ass now lmao
I've actually come to prefer Dark Souls 3 as 2 was not great and 1 starts to fall apart near the end. 3 might not be as memorable or unique but I enjoyed the general consistency of things. The last boss was stupid easy though. Beat it on my first try without much trouble.
Contrarily, the series shines for me when I'm walking down a dark path of beautiful architecture that conveys a sensation of lost grandeur, or meeting a companion I haven't seen in a while only to find they've turned Hollow and are now mindlessly attacking everyone around them, and maybe I could have done something about it.
I don't even particularly like DSIII's bosses since they feel like a homogenous sludge of lightning fast tanks with annoying bombastic music. Sure they test my reflexes and my patience, but that's about it.
Beautiful low poly architecture with low res textures and really dated lighting yeah. I guess you had to be there because it was very tough starting at Bloodborne and going backwards. DS2 in particular looks particularly strange.
I still find beauty in PS1 games. You have no power here.
To add to this, I could swear DS3 uses tons of BB assets. I still think both games look wonderful, but there were definitely some efficiencies happening there.
lmao
as someone who recognizes you as a fellow DS2 defender from back when i got into more of those arguments, i can understand this reaction to having your DS3 fandom characterized that way
i mean, i got into the Doom franchise last year, and those simple, old ass environments are still incredibly striking and effective to this day
DS3 definitely reaches technical heights far above its predecessors, but the "what the fuck, that's beautiful!" feeling of seeing the Boreal Valley for the first time just doesn't match up, say, with suddenly being in some goddess' room after struggling with O&S or the raw, all-encompassing moodiness of Majula
making an environment hit requires more than just being pretty or technically impressive
It's my favorite Dark Souls game. I understand preferring the first one for its feel, mood, level design, and overall nostalgia. But Dark Souls 3 is by far the most satisfying to play.
Yeah, eh? I played all the games in release order and I can't believe the nonsense I'm reading. It's beyond gatekeeping, it's like, a parody of a Souls gatekeeper or something.
I tried to play Bloodborne again today and realized that I actually hate it. Partly because I despise parrying systems, especially when they're deeply essential to the gameplay, and partly because there's just so much crap everywhere. Like, it's actively irritating to my eyes. Geometry overload. There's not a single strip of street that isn't packed with twentyfive coffins, twelve statues, thirteen breakable boxes, five cages with hounds in them and three desolate wagons. And supposedly people live in this place!
It's not design, it's just copy paste overload. It's "hey, we can push this many polygons and still hit 30 fps".
Not sure what's hard to believe, Dark Souls 3 being a bland greatest hits album and cheap fan service as an answer for Dark Souls 2 being "too different" is quite common criticism, it's not even controversial. Ofc you can like it despite of it, but it's hard to deny if you play all the games, not because of some form of gatekeeping "you need to play all the games or you're not a fan", but because you will see the paterns, you will know the Storm Ruler, you will recognize the not-Latria Irithyll Dungeon, another swamp, the not-Duke Grande Archives, familiar NPCs, the Bloodborne wannabe combat and art direction, you get the idea.
Dark Souls 3 is fantastic with an awesome second DLC (first was ok). My only real problem with it is that some bosses like Gundyr and Friede came straight out of Bloodborne, so you could barely keep up with them even with DS3's increased mobility. Gundyr is especially aggressive as fuck.
Gundyr Maximus is insane, I loved it. Bit of a step up from first round. Not the most complex boss fight, but great fun. My ears were ringing for a good while afterwards from all of the smashing around.
I agree with this take but it's more that said poster Morrigan was responding to came at it from the perspective of "obviously DSIII fans never actually played the rest of the series."
DSIII sucks but the people who like it aren't inventing reasons to do so.
Edit: Oh, you were that poster.
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OP
OP
Honestly, this is a problem I had all of last gen. Just because you can push the amount of objects on screen doesn't mean you should
Agree with most of what you say OP. My biggest problem with it is that it's sitting somewhere between DS and BB in terms of its combat which just makes it an incredibly frustrating experience. It also has an insufferable amount of gank (yes, I know that 2 is worse) where it got to the point where when I was jumped on by an enemy from around a corner it just became laughable. The bosses also do absolutely nothing for me. I think the only one I actually enjoyed fighting was Dancer which is a fantastic boss.
Love Dark Souls 3, love the weapon variety, world, bosses and combat.
I'm in a toss up between DS1 and 3 being third best souls game for me after Demons Souls (my fav) then Bloodborne. DS2 right down for me with some incredible highs, but really low lows.
Really don't get the hate that DS3 gets.
Sekiro is fucking amazing.
I'm in a toss up between DS1 and 3 being third best souls game for me after Demons Souls (my fav) then Bloodborne. DS2 right down for me with some incredible highs, but really low lows.
Really don't get the hate that DS3 gets.
Sekiro is fucking amazing.
While true, I'd also argue that if you play all the games, you'll also notice things in DS1 like not-Vanguard, not-Valley of Defilement, not-Tower Knight, yes-Crestfallen Warrior, not-Red Dragon, the super iconic Praise the Sun pose being literally a rehash of a miracle casting animation from Demon's Souls, used by not-Ostrava, and so on.
Dark Souls III definitely has more intentional, direct call backs than any other game, but if you start including level design and area themes into the same criticism, you're in bitch-eating-crackers mode.
Dark Souls 1 had a tremendous amount of fresh aspects in comparison to Demon's Souls, also it was only the second game of this kind. Dark Souls 3 is pure rehash.
I'm always baffled to hear people talk about how essential parrying is to BB. I never learned how to parry in it and ended up beating the game pretty handily (even beating the final boss of the DLC on my first go)
I have yet to play Dark Souls II, but as of now I rank the Soulsborne games as follows:
1. Bloodborne
2. Dark Souls I
3. Demon's Souls
4. Dark Souls III
They are all great-tier games. Ranking them is basically splitting hairs. Dark Souls III lands at the bottom because I believe it has the weakest level design of the series.
1. Bloodborne
2. Dark Souls I
3. Demon's Souls
4. Dark Souls III
They are all great-tier games. Ranking them is basically splitting hairs. Dark Souls III lands at the bottom because I believe it has the weakest level design of the series.
Souls 3 looks a little too much like Bloodborne for me, art wise and I found the game significantly easier than it's predecessors but idk, it's the only one I've bothered to replay. It's just fun to go through for me.
The DLC sucks though outside a couple bosses. The art direction for those areas was better than the main game but they're lame areas. Ashes of Ariandel with the poison swamp and those ridiculous angel enemies that shoot lasers and can curse you was terrible. That's not fun at all
The DLC sucks though outside a couple bosses. The art direction for those areas was better than the main game but they're lame areas. Ashes of Ariandel with the poison swamp and those ridiculous angel enemies that shoot lasers and can curse you was terrible. That's not fun at all
I do agree that it feels way too similar in tone and gameplay to Bloodborne, almost as if they were going for some sort of universe overlap. It's like they took the concept assets from BB and asked "How can we make this work in Dark Souls?"
my take: there're souls series fans like you (& me) that're 'adventurers', & there're fans that're 'warriors', & the games are able to completely satisfy both...
on topic: while i, like everyone, have my favorites (bloodborne, demon's souls), i can't really imagine saying that there's one that i 'absolutely loath'. they've all got their moments, & are all worth playing, imo...
Spare me. I played the games in order of release. I played Demon's Souls in 2009, then I got every subsequent game at launch and have sunk hundreds of hours across all of them. I'm well aware of the Stormruler connection and all the other stuff, that's not the point. The point was that your post wasn't just an opinion on the game (which you're entitled to), you generalized and insulted its players (and even its creators, disregarding them as some "greedy committee"), too, in an incredibly condescending way.
"People who liked Dark Souls 3 either haven't played the others or are too dumb to see it's a pale cash grab imitation" is pure toxicity. I've actually defended the fandom from unfair attacks and generalizations of us being all smug gatekeepers before, but you're really not helping to contribute to this image.
I loved the DLC and when all is combined DS3 is a great game and one of my favorites of the generation. I always have a great experience with the atmosphere these games have.
No way. I think it's a better game than BB. More and better areas. More and better bosses. More and better weapons and play styles. PvP is best they've ever done. I played this before BB and BB felt like a step backwards (because it was literally the game that came before so it makes sense I guess).
I get that most people like BB more because it was a lot of people's first or they prefer the genre/atmosphere/setting more but i think by the numbers DS3 is objectively better. There's so much variety and almost everything is viable. I don't have an attachment to the older games so I don't care if things were a "callback" or felt like a "cash grab" (lol). I played the game on its own merits and had an absolute blast with it.
And I say this as someone that slightly prefers BB for the setting/horror atmosphere. DS3 is fucking fantastic.
I get that most people like BB more because it was a lot of people's first or they prefer the genre/atmosphere/setting more but i think by the numbers DS3 is objectively better. There's so much variety and almost everything is viable. I don't have an attachment to the older games so I don't care if things were a "callback" or felt like a "cash grab" (lol). I played the game on its own merits and had an absolute blast with it.
And I say this as someone that slightly prefers BB for the setting/horror atmosphere. DS3 is fucking fantastic.
I didn't want to insult any players, it's just that playing the predecessors is a requirement (for reasons already stated) to visualize the whole picture and a lot of people did not. About the creators, yeah i think the game came from a place of greed indeed, mostly from Bandai Namco milking the Dark Souls franchise, i don't believe for a second Miyazaki wanted to make this game, even more with Bloodborne dev in parallel.
Making a blanket statement to the effect of "real fans would have noticed DSIII is a rehash" is just gatekeeping, my dude. I don't like the game either but you don't need to come up with extra reasons for that.
The Nameless King down. Wasnt too tough, considering what Id read. Had three sunbros die on me during a bunch of attempts, and ended up doing it solo.
I spent a couple of hours prior to that farming souls in Grand Archives to raise my Vigor from 20 to 30, that helped a lot with survivability. Its been at 20 since the beginning of the game, but I think thats a key thing with this boss fight and the random stuff with the camera and targeting. Makes it a lot easier.
Only one boss left. Boooh.
I spent a couple of hours prior to that farming souls in Grand Archives to raise my Vigor from 20 to 30, that helped a lot with survivability. Its been at 20 since the beginning of the game, but I think thats a key thing with this boss fight and the random stuff with the camera and targeting. Makes it a lot easier.
Only one boss left. Boooh.
never get the complaints on sister friede being too hard, she highly telegraphs fucking everything, maybe it was the weapon I used which was a 2hander, but she gets stunned like a mofo too.
Yeah I talk about it in my recent LTTP thread.
I don't hate it, in fact I think it's a good game, but i rank it last among the souls games.
I definitely agree that it's in the middle between bloodborne and the other souls games, speedwise.
My experience was the opposite of m y dark souls 2 experience. Started off feeling great but really didn't like the feel by the end.
Sister Friede might be my favorite boss in the series, though
I don't hate it, in fact I think it's a good game, but i rank it last among the souls games.
I definitely agree that it's in the middle between bloodborne and the other souls games, speedwise.
My experience was the opposite of m y dark souls 2 experience. Started off feeling great but really didn't like the feel by the end.
Sister Friede might be my favorite boss in the series, though