This honestly my favorite game of all time. I love the Souls series, and with over 1300 hours put into the other four games, this has instantly become my favorite of them. If you take 35% Demon's Souls, 35% Dark Souls, 15% Bloodborne, and 15% Dark Souls 2, then combine them into one, you will get Dark Souls 3.
Starting off, what the game takes from Demon’s Souls is the strong, sprawling, atmospheric level design, as well as many other references, callbacks, and influences. From the original Dark Souls, you have incredible bosses, music, NPCs, visually stunning vistas, and interesting lore. This game feels more like a sequel to Dark Souls 1 than two did, with direct references to the game, as opposed to 2's way of saying that "something happened long ago." From Bloodborne, take the detailed environments, visually impressive graphics (thanks to a new engine), and a dash of enemy and boss designs. Finally, from Dark Souls 2, take the massive quality of life changes, that make the game more accessible in a positive way.
Pros:
+Excellent gameplay, with a combat feel and speed similar to Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls.
+Tons of content, with over 150 different weapons, a vast array of armor sets, and a solid amount of spells.
+Extremely detailed and varied the world, with attention to level design and smart world building. Like Dark Souls 2, the game covers a lot of horizontal distance. However, the world fits together in a way that makes sense.
+The levels are also massive, with some single areas taking up as much space as multiple areas from other games. There are many paths, shortcuts, and secrets in those big levels.
+Approachable systems, such as a very simple yet deep upgrade system, where weapons can be upgraded to +5 or +10, and infused with an element or scaling path, similar to Dark Souls 2. However, the paths are much more attractive, such as a strength scaling, quality scaling, luck scaling, and many other paths, in a very Demon's Souls-y way.
+The return of exclusively using estus to heal. No more lifegems or blood vials. There is a Dark Souls 2 system of upgrading the estus. However, you start with four charges instead of 1. Divine blessings still exist but are very rare, and you can only carry one at a time.
+I was personally not disappointed by a single boss, area, or enemy in the game. There was no drop in quality like Dark Souls 1, dark areas like Dark Souls 2, or annoying, tedious grinds, like Bloodborne. There was a smooth difficulty curve that increased the quality of the zones and bosses did, all the way to the end of the game.
+Mound makers are one of the coolest covenants in a Souls game. The way they work is to leave your white sign. However when you are summoned, you are hostile to the host, summoned phantoms, invading phantoms, and enemies. Your task is to kill a phantom of any kind, so they act as a sort of wild card. Every encounter I have had with mound-makers has been a fun time.
+The matchmaking, at least on ps4, has been incredible. Very similar to the speed of dark souls 2, but with the password system of bloodborne. Multiplayer with friends is very fast, and can be done immediately after the tutorial boss. The PVP also takes a two-hit combo system from dark souls 2, where it's relatively impossible to get stunlocked to death unless you get ganked. Backstabs are also a non-issue, unless possibly the other player has a horrible connection.
+Amazing soundtrack, one of the best in the series. So many good songs.
However, there are a few problems that some may have with the game:
-Magic is pretty hard early game, other than maybe pyromancy. When trying to play a mage, you have a lot more stats to focus on, and it takes a very deep investment in faith or intelligence for spells to get really strong. I played a magic character as one of my characters, and I constantly struggled with whether I wanted to upgrade int for better spells/damage, attunement for more mana and spell slots, str/dex to get a better backup weapon, and health since you start with extremely low health. The cast speed also feels slow, and you can't cancel casts. With an increase in aggression and low health, starting as a spellcaster is very challenging for the first third of the game. It is doable, however, and by the end of the game is very viable and will hit very hard.
-Encounters take a very ambush-y and gank-y approach to them. This, not a bad thing for me personally, but I know a lot of people dislike this method of approach, and there is a lot of it in Dark Souls 3. With magic being as slow as it is, it makes playing a mage even harder than it already was.
-The world not interconnected like Dark Souls 1 is. There are no inter-level shortcuts and areas with multiple entrances and exits. This a non-issue for me because the level design was so good that it didn't matter to me. However, I know that one of the biggest draws for people regarding Dark Souls 1 was how the world was connected. So this will be a negative for a lot of people.
-There is a lack of attractive covenants to take the place of the art bros or grave lords. Most of the covenants have a typical function. Coop, invasions, or protection of a host/area. This a letdown, as the weirder covenants were some of, the more fun covenants that existed.
-This one of my biggest negatives, but also not a big issue in the grand scheme of things. There are two returning covenants in the game that perform the same duties. The blue sentinels from dark souls 2 and the Blades of the Darkmoon from dark souls 1. I do not see the point in having both of these covenants. The way Darkmoon should work to use the eye orb to invade the world of sinners who invade other players, and let blue sentinels do the guarding of the way of the blue members. This just feels incredibly lazy, redundant, and a massive oversight into the possibilities of the coolness of the Darkmoon.
-Probably the most objective negative is with some weapon variety. A lot of weapons have copy pasted move sets, with only the weapon art to differentiate them, and sometimes not even that. A lot of weapons are objectively worse than others for this reason. Boss soul weapons are also disappointingly underwhelming. However each weapon class is very fun and different, so even if many play the same between weapon classes, there are lots of types to play with.
Those cons aside, this game is incredible. I highly recommend it, whether you are a fan of the series or not. It takes all the best parts of the other games, mixes it into an excellent dish, and adds its twist to make it stand above the sum of its components. I have blown away, and it surpassed my expectations, which were already extremely high. I hope that the multiplayer lasts a long time, as I will be playing for years to come.
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