D A R K S O U L S I I I

[Marth]

The series needs little to no introduction. I know the Bloodborne hype here wasn't strong and maybe that's a sign that times have changed or the members I used to chat heavily with about the Souls series are no longer posting. But aside from myself who else is excited for this?

Given that DSII was pretty weak (but by no means a bad game) when compared to the first of the series, are expectations high or low this time around? Given what I've seen of the game (trailers really and some minor gameplay because I don't want to ruin this for myself), my expectations went from very low to extremely high. It seems that this time around the game is aware of what made the Souls games so great and Bloodborne (Dark Souls 'light') really echoed this while making progressive strides. If that game was any indication of what is to come with a more robust title like Dark Souls, I think we're in for the best game in the series and will be given the final game in the trilogy that fans want and deserve.

But yeah, hey discuss.

IF THERE ARE ANY LORE/BOSS/LOCATION SPOILERS IN YOUR POST PLEASE TAG IT WITH A SPOILER TAG: a huge part of these games is the world building through exploration and self-defined understanding. If I read your post and then my perspective is completely influenced by you and not from my own immediate understanding I'm going to be mad. I'm all for debate and comparing notes because that's what you do with these games, but give us all some time to play it first (yes I know it releases internationally  on April 12th, but there is a lot of footage out there from the Japanese release and some may have japanese copies. I know a few guys on my campus do and its really hard not to go over to their places and check it out).

[Lemonray]

But aside from myself who else is excited for this?

Lemonray is excited for this.
And despite ignoring most of the info about the game I have a feeling it will be the best Souls game to date. They've done four games in this style before DS3 so the fellows at From software should have a very developed understanding of what mechanics and aspects and such work best by now, and which ones need further refining (The archery in DS3 seems to have been upgraded in this way), so by all means this should be even better than the other games. I'll be playing Bloodborne at some point before DS3 releases so I'm expecting fun times from that game also.

[TomGuycott]

My post didn't go through the other day, but long-story-short my excitement for this game is MONUMENTALLY high.

[Davy Jones]

Saw it on Game Grumps, I like the setting way more than Bloodborne (which is based on the same engine as DSIII).

[water dog]

I'm Hype AF Fam about this game, preordered it on Steam, saving for the season pass, avoiding all spoilers.

I think I'm going to either shoot for a pure Ranger build or go my classic big-shield-lightning-bolt-thrower that I always end up rolling somehow even when I don't want to. Either way, there is nothing that can stop me from thoroughly enjoying this game, be it a better or worse game than 2 was.

[Lemonray]

The steam preload is up. Get downloading guys.

[TomGuycott]

I'm not gonna be home a lot the week it releases, so I'm about to be antsy as fuck to play it when it comes out.

I have a day off the 14th, though. I'll play the hell out of it then.

[Lemonray]

Four hours.

I'm going to go to sleep now and set an alarm to wake me shortly before the game unlocks. I'll report back after an hour or two of playing.

----

I'm three hours into the game and feeling tired, so here are some brief first impressions.

The controls are great. A halfway point between the Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne controls, just about.

The difficulty so far seems that way also, hovering between early DS1 and early BB. Using a (medium) shield is no longer borderline overpowered like in DS1, since enemy attacks, even from weaker enemies, seem to drain more stamina if blocked now meaning you can't just soak up attacks repeatedly, though greatshields might allow this. I'll have to look for one tomorrow. The first two bosses could have done with some more health though.

The world design so far is easily at least as good as Bloodborne and the first half of Dark Souls in terms of layout and the game is about on par with Bloodborne visually. Enemies are great, things in general look very nice. Only, the HUD looks... Off, to me. I'll have to look into modding it and using a nicer texture. It's actually bothering me to look at it.

The flame embers effect on the player character (replaces unhollowed/human from DS1) looks awesome.

[Lemonray]

I just beat the final boss.
Massive spoilers below.

Spoiler

The final boss is the Chosen Undead, the protagonist from Dark Souls 1. Named the Soul of Cinder here, he fights with a bonfire sword which he can transform into a curved sword, spear, and catalyst and he is capable of using superpowered versions of sorceries, miracles and pyromancies- He can even fire a Kamehameha and uses some of Gwyn's moves in his second phase, complete with the piano music.

10/10. An absolutely incredible final boss. Comparable in impact to OoT Ganon.

More thoughts tomorrow when I've had some time to consider things.

[Lexou Duck]

the best thing in dark souls 3 : blood splattering on the walls depending on how you hit the enemies (i take it they repurposed the algorithm from bloodborne ?)

also the boss of the cathedral was very intertesting, and uncommon for souls games ive seen (i mean the pope and co)

[Lemonray]

The Deacons of the Deep were great. The bosses throughout the game were great in general, although I hope the upcoming DLC has more beast/monster/unusual type things to fight since there was around a 2:1 ratio of big guys with weapons to non-humanoid bosses. This game had good big guys though.

[Marth]

I'm finally getting the chance to play since school has kept me busy as can be.

This is the best Dark Souls ever. I just beat the Abyss Watchers. Gotta say that was a fun fight that felt like a mix of the Four Kings and Artorias.

[Lemonray]

More thoughts and PvP/mechanical analysis.


The lore, story and NPC storylines are DS1 tier. It feels like a genuine representation of DS1's far future, although how much time has actually passed since the Chosen Undead's adventure is not addressed. The item descriptions and character dialogue, as expected give further insight into the world without being too direct. I'm very happy with how these aspects were handled.

The world/map itself, is coherent and partially nonlinear. Spoilers, but here's a map I drew from memory after two playthroughs.

Spoiler

There is a general order to follow through the game as you see, but within the individual levels you'll usually have to spend some time exploring if you're going in blind even if there are visual tells on what general direction you should be going in. I'm hoping the DLCs will have at least some confusing levels for players to get lost in though.

PvP wise, there have been some changes. Poise works differently now, it seems you only have poise while blocking and during some frames of attacking animations, otherwise your character has 0 poise regardless of what equipment they have. Larger weapons seem to have partial hyper armour/poise bonuses while attacking, making it possible to avoid being stunlocked by quicker weapons if you time your greataxe swings right. Fast weapons still have a general advantage however. I think this could be helped by simply having heavy weapons deal more damage since right now, fast weapons seem to outdamage them significantly. The Longsword does about 2.5 times the damage of a Zweihander over an equal amount of time on a 40/40 character, for example. Against other players, weapon skills seem to be slightly helpful or incredibly effective with little middle ground.

As for magic, I don't know anything yet as I've only fought other melee builds. I did try a crossbow in one PvP fight, but it was only good for one surprise shot before landing hits with it became impossible. Black firebombs are more useful than crossbows if you plan on attacking players from a distance. Throwing knives and poison knives are much better than the DS1 versions, and can be thrown rapidly however you can only hold 40 of each now.

Edit---------

Phantom range is still present in PvP though it is not as bad as in Dark Souls 2. Some fights I had seemed to not suffer from phantom range hits at all however, so it is probably only a real problem with subpar internet connections or long distances.

Some lighter weapons (Partizan, longsword...) seem to have good poise partway through their weapon skill moves. The partizan has a pretty good spin move that can catch people mid-roll and potentially lead into a combo although the tracking on it is a little weird. The longsword has a move to disrupt blocking and an upward slash that grants poise but is easily sidestepped.

Fishing for backstabs, and landing backstabs at all, seems harder to do. I've never tried doing it but so far I have not been backstabbed once in PvP after having around 80 fights. It looks like most people in the game are not actively trying to go for backstabs anyway. Maybe the fishing days are over?

-----

A few dozen PvP fights later, I can confirm that the claymore is no longer one of the top-level PvP weapons like it was in Souls 1. The estoc is still very, very good as is the longsword. Greatswords are actually fairly hard to use against good players since they lack the speed of a straight sword and don't have that much of a damage advantage in exchange for the lower speed, although at 40/40 a refined claymore has the potential to ruin someone's day.

There are a good amount of weapons, usually boss weapons, with good gimmick weapon arts but some seem to rely on the special moves too much. Some weapon arts like the estoc's shield splitter, have bad tracking or are otherwise not viable and need to be buffed. I'm hoping the DLC will introduce more kinds of weapon arts for unique weapons and tweak some of the less useful ones, or change the distribution a bit so some less common weapons see more use.

[TomGuycott]

I have many things to say about the game, but I'm at work and I don't have enough time. I'm immensely thrilled with the game, and I'll just go through the highlights:

-With so many new people online, it gives an average player like me chances to feel like a god. I took on a three man gank squad and a blue sentinel and won.

-The pacing feels awesome. I only just got to one of the bosses mentioned in the intro movie the other day, and I keep progressing and thinking I'm approaching the next one, but it ends up being another boss entirely, and there are sooo many great ones. I love the boss soul rewards as well.

-Fantastic references to Dark Souls 1 and 2, and even sprinklings of Demons' Souls and Bloodborne if you know where to look.

-Character side quests that matter. I'll talk about the rewards I have been getting when I have more time, though.

-Weapon Artes are really interesting, and they have been coming into play for me a lot, even as a magic oriented character (I'm currently a "spellsword" style character where I use weapons like katanas and halberds while having a good magic lineup).

-The concept of the FP bar is fantastic. Previously you get multiples of a spell and could go on and on based on that, but now it is based on how your character is built, which is far more appropriate and makes for interesting matchups.


I'll go into more spoilery details within tags later. I want to gush about some of the stuff I've seen and side quests I've botched.


I also just found out that some friends got it and we may coop tonight. I'm super excited.

[Lemonray]

Well. It turns out the Dark Souls 1 poise system has been in the game the whole time. Only, it is disabled, mostly. Because having a high enough amount of poise will supposedly give you a couple of extra hyper armour frames during animations which grant them, even if poise seems to not exist otherwise. The old poise can be toggled on or off through a simple modification. There is no word on this being intentional or accidental, but the answer could be revealed by the next patch, which comes out tomorrow. I don't want to think this is an oversight (poise vs. no poise is incredibly easy to notice while playing) but I do find it strange that some enemies such as the cathedral knights and gargoyles demonstrably have Dark Souls 1 style poise while players don't.

---

After stacking poise and testing things myself, I've learned that the hyper armour frames are the same with 0 poise or 50. Meaning, there is a stat in the game that does nothing at all. Oh dear.