YMMV / Darksiders III

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Envy's true form, whose attacks are far more telegraphed and staggers much easier than Pride before, nor does this character block a lot, leaving players wondering how Envy stood any chance against the Charred Council.
  • Abraxis: for being such a dangerous force threatening the Balance, he sure goes down quick. His attacks are also very telegraphed and easy to dodge, nor does he have the Hit Points needed to stand up to players' onslaught. It also doesn't help that he can be fought right after gaining the Stasis Hollow, which gives Fury access to both a scarily effective protective shield and a weapon whose charged attacks slow enemies down.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Ask anyone in forums about their preferred stat/equipment build, and nearly everyone will say to put a few points into Health, some more into Physical Damage, and then go nuts with Arcane Damage. Due to how the game already multiplies Arcane Damage greatly, with the stat increases being much more substantial per point than Physical Damage, and how higher difficulties make dodging far more crucial for survival than tanking blows, Arcane Damage from counter attacks and Havoc Mode can easily snowball into turning Fury into the biggest Glass Cannon of them all.
• Contested Sequel: The reception to Darksiders III has been mixed for critics and players alike - on one hand, the game taking on elements popularized by the Soulslike RPG genre is a change of pace, but technical issues and removing some of the gameplay/visual and dialogue elements that made the prior installments stand out diminishes the overall quality of this one.
• Demonic Spiders: The Shadow Demons scattered throughout the game are tough enough already, being much stronger versions of existing enemies, but the new ones added in New Game Plus are something terrible. They weren't there in the initial playthrough, and they are MUCH more powerful that their normal counterparts, and will spawn out fo thin air when you reach them, giving no warning to the unprepared. Even on Balanced difficulty, a single hit from them is enough to cut your (upgraded) health in half, and some of their attacks can kill you in one hit if you're already damaged. Not helped is how they appear as almost completely pitch black palette swaps of otherwise ordinary enemies, making it tricky to discern their attack animations, especially in darker areas where they almost disappear into the background.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Abraxis has gained a lot of popularity for his Affably Evil and professional personality.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Downplayed with the Stasis Hollow's Stasis Shield that turns Fury invulnerable and her Combos cannot be interrupted, thus allowing players to whale on hapless foes while they can't do a thing, arguably granting the highest level of survival. However, Stasis Hollow is acquired late in the game (the last Hollow Form, in fact), and with every hit dealt against enemies, the duration of the shield decreases, yet when armed with the right enhancements (and a hefty amount of Wrath shards), players can easily refill the Wrath gauge and use Stasis Shield repeatedly. Not even the remaining bosses can hurt Fury when Stasis Shield is activated. Additionally, when fighting in The Crucible, the shield soaking damage from your Wrath meter in place of your health bar means you technically took no damage, allowing you to take a few hits and still get the "Flawless" bonus points for the round.
  • Downplayed also with the Force Hollow: while the Hammer of Scorn is on its own a relatively decent weapon, it's the only base-game weapon that can break enemy guard with its basic attacks, causing blocking enemies to stagger. While useful on its own, this isn't much of a game breaker, but when paired with a Frenzy Shard, it basically stunlocks them, with every hit either staggering them or breaking their guard within one or two hits. It's so ridiculous that it can reduce Wicked K, an otherwise fairly tough challenge, to a complete non-threat.
  • Played straight with Havoc Form: it fills up fairly quickly (even without the weapon upgrade that increases its gain by up to 50%), Fury is Nigh-Invulnerable when using it or inflicts so much hit-stun that nothing can hurt players while it's active, with basic attacks receiving a huge damage boost and, most importantly, Fury's Hit Points regenerate while using it. Havoc Form isn't just a defensive mechanism or a damage boost, but it's essentially another healing item. Very early in the game (halfway through the Hollow), players can find a weapon upgrade that increases Havoc Form duration.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The "Horse with No Name" trailer shows Fury's close relationship with her horse Rampage. After all the snark and anger she has shown through promotions, it's rather touching to see her playfully nudge the steed only to get a playful shove back in return. It makes Rampage's death all the more heart-breaking.
  • When Fury first speaks to the Charred Council, War is there too, chained up and accused of a crime that he didn't commit. Even though she doesn't listen, War still tries to warn his sister that someone is conspiring against them and to be careful. Fury eventually realizes that he is right and while she can't help him, she asks Ulthane to help War if they ever meet.
  • Fury starts the game with Nephilim's Respite, a reusable healing item. The flavor text states that it was created and given to Fury as a gift by her brother Death. It also states that while other Nephilim had created many great weapons before, Death has always been more interested in things that bring life.
  • The first two games stated that humanity has been completely destroyed in the Apocalypse, but here, we are shown that this is not the case. In a midst of a destroyed city full of demons, there is a giant magical tree where Ulthane and his fellow Makers provide shelter to human survivors. Ulthane gives Fury an item that can teleport any human she encounters to safety, and despite her initial disdain for the "useless, hairless simians", Fury agrees to help. By the end of the game, when an entire army of demons attacks the Maker Tree, Fury leads the human survivors to safety and becomes their protector.
  • During their battle, Lust tries to trick Fury with illusions of her desires. Fury sees the other Horsemen coming to her aid, then kneeling and proclaiming her their new leader. Completely enraged, Fury breaks the illusion: she might be arrogant in her belief that she should lead the Horsemen, but she never wanted her brothers to kneel before her.
  • After Envy nearly kills her, Fury wakes up in the Maker Tree with Jones at her bedside. Fury is utterly broken by her defeat, sounding close to tears, and Jones gives her a much-needed pep talk. Despite chewing her out for her arrogance before, when Fury is at her lowest point, he is there for her. It's made all the sweeter when the ending reveals that Jones is actually her brother Strife, which also implies that all this time he has been on Earth, helping humanity along with the Makers.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: A minor example for the new Hollow weapons granted by the Keepers of the Void DLC. Having 4 extra enhancement slots is a welcome addition, but the Hollow weapons themselves, with the exception of the Flame Claws, are functionally identical to their base, utilizing almost all of the exact same attack animations with little to no variation, leaving players wondering why they'd bother using the weapons at all.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Used by and against Fury - to most characters in the game, Fury is the runt of the litter in the Horsemen, getting almost no respect from all who she interacts with. Fury rightly chafes at this and calls out all characters who do so, pointing out that regardless of the situation, she is still a Nephilim and one of the Four Horsemen. Her status as the least favoured of the Horsemen, however, is probably due to her very abrasive personality, which in turn is probably due to her treatment within the group, but she does get called out herself a few times about her general attitude.
• Jerkass Woobie: Fury becomes more and more of one as the game goes on and she gets increasingly brutal lessons in humility.
• Magnificent Bitch: The true villain of the game, Envy, poses as Fury's Watcher and spends the entire game steadily manipulating her to Envy's own ends. Having Fury eliminate all the Seven Deadly Sins, Envy emerges when Pride has been defeated to usurp all their power and defeats Fury effortlessly. Declaring that the world will be hers, Envy proceeds to storm over to the Charred Council and nearly erases them herself to achieve her own ends, showcasing a brilliant and cunning mind underneath her selfishness and deadliness.
• Moral Event Horizon: In case it wasn’t clear just what kind of scumbags they are, after Fury indirectly saves their lives from Envy, the Charred Council immediately tries to murder her for disrespecting them.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Despite getting an dedicated trailer days before release, players never actually get to mount Rampage as it only appears briefly in the game proper before getting killed early on in the story.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Cameo of the Destroyer in the epilogue, leading a demon army in a final attempt to wipe out humanity.
• Rewatch Bonus
  • Everything about Jones and his Shut Up, Kirk! attitude towards Fury takes on a whole new meaning when he's really Strife in disguise from the start of the game.
  • During the fake-out gathering of the Horsemen after meeting Lust, observant players may notice that War and Death’s descriptions of their adventures don’t match up with the events of the previous two games; Death, for instance, claims to have freed War and proven his innocence, except his mission in Darksiders II was to erase his crime by resurrecting humanity, not prove him innocent.
  • After The Reveal that the real Envy replaced Fury's Watcher, a lot of the latter’s dialogue heard throughout the game comes off as less admiration and more rueful jealously and/or implicit taunting.
    • When Lust is defeated, they offer information on the location of Envy. Fury takes this as them not knowing Envy was already killed, but it's clear they and most of the other Sins saw right through Envy's disguise the moment Fury entered their presence. The confrontations with them often include at least one Aside Glance or veiled acknowledgement towards Fury's Watcher just before a change in camera
    • When looking for Envy right at the start of the game, the Watcher gives this gem, in the most sarcastic voice possible:
      "I hope it's not Envy. That one's a terror."
• Rooting for the Empire: It's very easy to sympathize with Envy after the massive Hannibal Lecture this character gives to the Charred Council.
• Scrappy Mechanic
  • The aforementioned change to game-play utilizing Soulslike RPG elements, such as losing accumulated souls upon death and enemy mobs capable of defeating players since this installment heavily downplays Mook Chivalry.
    • Adding to this is the fact that players do not get Hit Point restoration at checkpoints. Thankfully, enemies drop Health Lurchers much more often than enemies in Dark Souls III drop Estus Flask refills, but when players find a checkpoint right before a boss fight, the usual plan of attack is to run in, watch the cutscene, get themselves killed, respawn with full health and healing items and THEN try for real, which destroys any kind of build-up of tension.
  • The poisonous sludge scattered particularly around Lust's abode and the grinders around Wrath's level: normally, when Fury falls from great heights, a small portion of Hit Points are lost and players get teleported back up, but falling into either of these, Hit Points drops to zero and players have to start over from a checkpoint.
  • While camera controls in the Darksiders series were never the best for an Action Game, Darksiders III is placed squarely into this, coupled alongside the Downplayed Mook Chivalry. Because this game makes the latter trope more pronounced compared to the previous games, players will be fighting against the camera upon target-locking one enemy, as they also have to contend with paying attention to other Mooks in the vicinity attacking them off-screen. This gets worse if fighting takes place, for instance, in a corridor, as the camera decides to ensure it follows Fury's rear - if her back is to the wall, the camera will position behind her rather than displace and give players a better view from another angle. Furthermore, although the user interface denotes when another enemy off-screen will attack, the warning is so minuscule on the heads-up display that players will hardly notice it and get struck no matter what.
• Shocking Moments: Compared to its predecessors, there are tons in Darksiders III.
  • Fury's horse, Rampage, is killed early on in the story; this has not happened to either War or Death in their respective games.
  • The revelation that not only is Fury's Watcher actually Envy in disguise, but she humbles Fury to the brink of Heroic BSoD.
  • After the Final Boss fight with Envy, Fury briefly throws down with the Charred Council of all entities, something no other character in the series has yet to do, and barely escapes with her life.
  • Just as the game ends, Strife appears in the flesh after spending a majority of the game disguised as a human.
• Take That!: Fury's mini rant about the Rule of Three is likely a jab at the previous entry in the franchise, in which one of its largest points of criticism was that the game felt like an endless fetch quest for MacGuffins, and usually done in bundles of 3, even needing to hunt down 3 MacGuffins to get 1 of 3 other MacGuffins.
  Yahtzee: It's not just padded, it's fractally padded!
• Tearjerker: Rampage getting killed and Fury’s subsequent near-breakdown. One of the few things she genuinely loved in existence, Rampage gets senselessly butchered as part of The Conspiracy by the Charred Council to get rid of the Horsemen entirely, and lives just long enough to die at its beloved mistress’ feet.
• That One Attack: Avarice is not a hard boss, but once his Hit Points are at 50%, he will grab a freezer to use as a weapon, which has an enormous hit-box, practically no wind-up and deals high damage. Players can simply wait until Avarice drops the freezer and goes back to his normal attack patterns, but that takes so long, players would be forgiven for not figuring that out.
• That One Boss: Wrath's second fight, not so much because this boss is hard, but rather because of the long, boring trek to reach this character every time, including a tedious first phase. Once Wrath runs low on Hit Points, the character starts attacking angels and demons scattered around the arena. If the boss manages to kill any of them, it restores a significant portion of health, meaning players have to absolutely go all-out or have to delete several bars worth of Hit Points from this boss again before finally shifting to the second phase of the fight (which is just a slightly scarier version of the early-game encounter).
• That One Level: The Scar has some infuriating non-combat sequences where players must outrun a tornado that instantly kills Fury if it gets too close. Players barely get enough time to make it to safer ground, meaning timing has to be absolutely perfect while running from one shelter to another - the slightest misstep and it's game over. Ditto for the sequences where players must freeze rotating spiked blades with the Stasis Hollow in order to safely walk across them - the effect barely lasts long enough for anything other than a perfect sprint.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A common criticism with Darksiders III - the change in game-play to emulate Soulslike RPGs made players frustrated, especially when they were hoping for III to be similar to the first two games.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Tempest initially appears as simply a terrifying tornado that lingers around certain areas of The Scar, necessitating a rapid sprint from points of covers to avoid being sucked up for an instant kill. The Watcher describes it as a kind of living being at the center of the storm, and when you finally destroy it a loud echoing "Thank you!" is heard as the twister dissipates permanently. And that's it; no call backs, no further comment from Fury or the Watcher, no mention of any kind about who the being was, whether it was Angel or Demon or something else entirely, or how it apparently was cursed into to becoming the Tempest.
• Underused Game Mechanic: There are several puzzles that require a sword as a key in order to progress. Fury can attack enemies using this sword, even using the dodge mechanic like the Hollow weapons to deliver a boomerang counterattack like some of the enemies in the game. However, due to the nature of having to find this key after players have likely killed all enemies in the area, there are not many chances throughout the game to use this weapon as...well, a weapon.