Dark Souls III entices gamers with beautiful aesthetic and intriguing gameplay

Parker Sublette

Staff Writer

Despite hairpulling levels of frustration and difficulty that come from it, Dark Souls III manages to enrapture with an incredibly beautiful aesthetic, intuitive gameplay, and an extremely creative approach to storytelling.  

Dark Souls III developed by FromSoftware is actually the fourth installment in the popular Souls series. Dark Souls III begins with the player’s character being brought back to life and given the task to hunt down and kill a group of creatures known as the Lords of Cinders. Other than that Dark Souls III has next to nothing in regards to a guided plot.

While the apparent lack of a guiding plot to the give the player purpose and direction might be seen as unnecessarily simple or even lazy on the part of the game developers it is in actuality part of what makes the Souls series so great. The Souls series does in fact have a very complex and developed plot but unlike other games one has to put in the work of exploring and investigating the world to uncover it. The sort of hidden plot that Dark Souls III presents gives one a sense of intrigue as well as more reason to explore.

However Dark Souls III does continue the Souls tradition of being exceedingly difficult with its combat. It is important to understand that besides wandering around and exploring the world combat is really the only other aspect to Dark Souls III. Since combat is such an integral part of the game its extreme difficulty makes the game a little frustrating and intimidating for players, especially those new to the Souls series.

Despite its extreme difficulty Dark Souls III manages to maintain exciting and enjoyable combat despite the high level of difficulty due to its very intuitive gameplay. Dark Souls III has a very unique system that is based more heavily around defensive and evasive maneuvers by the player. This defensive combat is where Dark Souls III’s differs from other games in that makes player take a more patient stance whereas most others take a very aggressive take on combat.

Dark Souls III also provides player with a wealth of extremely beautiful and interesting environments combined with extremely good graphics. Dark Souls III may be focused on combat but the highly alluring scenery presents players with an interesting backdrop to the endless fighting.

Continuing with the theme of constant combat Dark Souls III has an interesting multiplayer system based around “invading” other player’s worlds. In the game if you have multiplayer turned on in your settings you will at times be randomly pulled into another player’s world and either given the task to help that player kill something in their world, or to kill that player. While being randomly pulled out of your world might sound a bit inconvenient at times it actually adds a bit of much needed aimlessness to the game.

All in all Dark Souls III gives players an extremely challenging yet enjoyable system of combat that when combined with beautiful scenery and a strangely hidden plot makes for a gaming experience that is both frustrating and rewarding for the player.

Dark Souls III releases for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on April 11.