I\'m not a major Dark Souls fan, though I finished the first and played the second and third with my brother, but I\'ll play devil\'s advocate. What Dark Souls offers is an atmosphere not found in any other RPG. A sense of desolation and decay, watching the fall of a grand kingdom, a world\'s destruction before its rebirth. The characters are in the game are more along the lines of set pieces rather than multidimensional characters, they contribute to themes rather than complex characterization. Like how Solaire represents the positive aspects of the Age of Fire just how Gwyndolin embodies the negative aspects.
If you could change the world for the better, you would be hurting the atmosphere. Its like having the final girl rally the group around killing the monster in the first fifteen minutes of the horror film. Dark Souls presents a world that cannot be saved, either it can be staved off from death for a few more decades or it can be plunged into darkness with the hope it will be better than what they have now.
Where I agree with you is that the conclusion is unsatisfying. Critics like Vaati Vidya will say the game is perfect and the Ringed City is the perfect way to end the series. Of course, he says this because Dark Souls is practically signed on his paycheck. Only a fool poisons the well he drinks from. Dark Souls 3 is too afraid to add finality to its franchise, to explain the major secrets it keeps close to its chest. What is the Age of Dark? Is it better than the Age of Fire? What causes the Age of Fire to keep resurrecting if the Age of Dark tends to be more powerful? If the creators are going to make a new franchise, why leave the mysteries open ended? What motivated the creators to write such an open ending was greed more than anything, as leaving it open means they can make another sequel if they need that to fall back on.
The fact that you think that the chracters from the Souls series are shallow or that the conclusion is unsatisfying shows that you probably missed the entire point of the game.
Amazing how two people can play the same game and come to different conclusions eh Lala? It\'s almost as if....we are entirely different people.
The entire point of the game is \"Go kill bosses, also? World fucked.\"
...I mean, I disagree, but I\'ve also written my own damn review, so...?
This review screams \"I\'m smarter then you!\" Chill out.
And stop being hostile to people who disagree with you.
I have no idea what you are on about.
Mind you, I DO like the game. I just find it so unfulfilling. Like I went on a long, strenuous journey...for nothing. To defeat all those tough areas, all those bosses, and get THAT kind of ending?
As I watched the credits, I actually had to ask myself why I even bothered. It was an NES game all over again. "Thanks for playing! Start again?"
Why people get this salty over other people\'s reviews on this site, I\'ll never fully understand.
But in any case, I mostly agree with the review, though Dark Souls always has that avant garde \'out\' of \"well, it\'s supposed to be like that, don\'t disrespect the art man\". And whatever, fair enough. The Dark Souls world is quite enjoyably bleak.
(I will add a clause, if the review is poorly written or unnecessarily hostile towards the creators/fans, then yeah go nuts with criticising it, but if it\'s decently written like this one, I don\'t understand the hate)
Leave a Comment:
Either an unfulfilling time sink, or an arcade classic.
Ah Dark souls III, the purported final installment of an rpg series completely devoid of any role playing, with a "Story" so hidden and thin while at the same time being utterly pointless.
If you're someone who loves rich role play, with interesting NPC's and quests, along with the ability to play out the story in your head with choices in the game. Well, look elsewhere.
If you're someone who loves reasonably challenging dungeon crawls with epic bosses to kill. This is for you.
To sum up the whole series. "Everything is fucked, and you can't do anything about it."
The "Story" (if you even want to call it that) of the Souls series is told mainly through text on items. Where you can basically learn about stuff that already happened before you ever got there. Even better, your character isn't even a bit character in this play. Nope, EVERY. SINGLE. ACTION you take in this series is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY, POINTLESS. You're not a hero, you can't save anyone. You're not a villain, everything is already doomed. You're not an actor in the play, your a random bum rooting around in the building the play was shown 60 years ago. The misery and hopelessness that the game positively oozes is so utterly overbearing that it simply becomes laughable.
The endings are generally around a minute long, and filled with all the substance of an old NES ending. "Thanks for playing! Please play another round!"
The NPC's are pretty much flat, dull characters, with only a handful of lines. Some of them have "quests" where you can meet them out in the field a time or two, maybe kill a boss together, and then they'll either die, or you'll end up killing them yourself. That is, of course, if you even noticed them at all. Or are the type to summon an NPC character to fight a boss that you don't need help for.
About 99% of play is spent wandering around dead areas, killing mindless dead men/monsters (again) all so you can kill a boss, get the thing, and move on. It works so perfectly as an arcade game its almost hard to believe that, that WASN'T the designers intention.
It really does become comical. With such moments as a sickly god being devoured by a blob monster, alive and conscious throughout your entire fight before finally dying with his murderer. Sounds horrible right? Except that he is a character from Dark Souls 1, where your only (non multiplayer gimmick) interaction with him is to....murder him. That's it. He was just a flat boss with like...two lines of dialogue. Sure you could find out some of his backstory, and how much his life had sucked. But even pre-murder you couldn't do anything with said knowledge. You couldn't talk to/befriend him or anything of the sort. It was either kill him or ignore him. So his reappearance here isn't "Oh my god!! That guy! I'll save/avenge you old friend!" It's more like "Oh hey, its that guy....and boss defeated. How many souls was that worth? Sweet, I can level up."