Dark Souls III Review Thread
- Thread starter HoJu
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Laughing because I spent some time in DC right before I started playing my copy.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
That is kinda disappointing to see.DS1 and 2 were laid out like this:
DS3's world basically looks like this:
DS1 and 2 were laid out like this:
DS3's world basically looks like this:
Bummer. I guess it's time to accept that I'm not getting a Souls game with DS1 design again.
I think it's at the cost of getting areas that are much more fleshed out. Valley of the Drakes, Darkwood and Ash Lake in particular were kinda nothing areas.
Bloodporne
Member
7 Queens?! REPRESENT! Almost brothers man...R here.
LegendofLex
Member
Demon Ruins + Lost Izalith, Tomb of the Giants, and Crystal Caves aren't fun.
Four Kings, Bed of Chaos, and Seath aren't fun.
That doesn't leave a lot left in the last half of the game that's actually fun.
I was playing through the game again a few days ago and once I finished Sif and placed the Lordvessel I realized the only things I was really looking forward to doing were running the New Londo Ruins and poking around the Duke's Archives. I moved on to DSII instead (furthest I've ever gotten, close to the end of Iron Keep) and am having a ball.
Robot Pants
Member
Please don't do this to me.
The world is really linear?
The world is really linear?
Take a breath. Think about DaS1. How many areas were actually interesting to look around? It was admittedly very cool to find a shortcut into another area; But how often did you actually use Valley of the Drakes, Darkwood, or Ash Lake? The chart up above is also fairly disingenuous since as far as I remember, you can't complete New Londo, Tomb of the Giants or Lost Izalith without doing Undead Burg and Blighttown first.
Dark Souls 2 gets better as it goes, personally. And if you have the dlc or sotfs, you have some of the best content in the series ahead of you. Nothing like the slog that is Dark Souls 1's latter half.
KZXcellent
Member
Yeah, optional and required paths will come up but it's not interconnected. It's not too surprising given only 1 game out of 4 (now 5) had the interconnected world. The game isn't any less breathtaking and fun to explore regardless.
Sumio Mondo
Member
Speak for yourself, I enjoyed all of that, especially the Four Kings fight and the Crystal Caves.
Orthogonal
Member
We are essentially trading fleshed out world design for fleshed out level design. It would be nice to have both, but they are both interesting in their own right.
I think I'm not going to worry about it too much and just have fun with it.
Reviews look great. I think it's silly to focus on the one outlier. In fact, I think that's precisely why some reviewers do this.
For those of you saying that they scored it 7 because it's not for "everyone", that same person scored Dark Souls II a 9.
Metascore looks like a 9, which makes sense for me. Can't wait to play it.
(As far as level design goes, I'm currently playing Demon's Souls and the level design is pretty dam linear once you warp to one of the worlds, although I've only played world 1, all of 2 and all of 3 so far. In fact, the only short cuts I've found are two in 1-1. The game hasn't suffered from this at all.. It's amazing)
For those of you saying that they scored it 7 because it's not for "everyone", that same person scored Dark Souls II a 9.
Metascore looks like a 9, which makes sense for me. Can't wait to play it.
(As far as level design goes, I'm currently playing Demon's Souls and the level design is pretty dam linear once you warp to one of the worlds, although I've only played world 1, all of 2 and all of 3 so far. In fact, the only short cuts I've found are two in 1-1. The game hasn't suffered from this at all.. It's amazing)
People should really spoiler tag more, or not discuss things. Y'all aren't judicious enough. There's no reason to be discussing specific zone or boss names, etc., because they add absolutely nothing for the people that care about this thread.
How much does it matter?
Do you have a lot of choice in terms of boss and zone order? Not really, with a few notable exceptions.
But the zones themselves are large and great and rewarding of exploration. Combat is exciting, taking from SOTFS's approach to have greater enemy variety per zone and more "hard" type enemies and heavies scattered around. There's a ton of shit to find, the use of Dark Souls 2's Estus mechanics makes exploration consistently rewarding, because you'll never be upset getting to the end of a path and grabbing an irreplaceable upgrades. There's the most NPCs ever, and tons of elaborate quests.
The world and level design is fucking great, but the Souls community is completely insane when it comes to inter-connectivity. There is a serious issue with how it all plays into replay value, but there's a bunch of issues there and not just the world design.
How much does it matter?
Do you have a lot of choice in terms of boss and zone order? Not really, with a few notable exceptions.
But the zones themselves are large and great and rewarding of exploration. Combat is exciting, taking from SOTFS's approach to have greater enemy variety per zone and more "hard" type enemies and heavies scattered around. There's a ton of shit to find, the use of Dark Souls 2's Estus mechanics makes exploration consistently rewarding, because you'll never be upset getting to the end of a path and grabbing an irreplaceable upgrades. There's the most NPCs ever, and tons of elaborate quests.
The world and level design is fucking great, but the Souls community is completely insane when it comes to inter-connectivity. There is a serious issue with how it all plays into replay value, but there's a bunch of issues there and not just the world design.
Each individual area is sort of a honeycomb of shortcuts and alternate paths, although the placement of shortcuts is too liberal and often confounding. It's just that these individual areas never interconnect. They all essentially have one exit and one entrance.
I can think of maybe one interconnection that I neglected to draw into the above image, and it's not terribly significant. It's just an elevator that takes you straight from a bonfire to a boss. And this is actually a whole other issue: boss runs have been greatly diminished. There's usually a shortcut that takes you practically right to the boss.
LegendofLex
Member
Four Kings was "fine," but honestly I've never had to do anything but run up to them and spam attacks until they die. And that's including a run where I faced them first before getting the other Lord Souls.
And no intertwined areas like Yahrnam and it's surroundings and DS1 before Anor Londo
that's to be expected due to short dev time so, I can't complain.
Bloodporne
Member
Also one of the few that really dug most of these areas. Bed Of Chaos is the only thing that I thought was truly obnoxious in the entire game. Tomb of the Giants, Four Kings and Duke's Archives into Seath especially are killer in my opinion.
Regarding the map layout posted above, that's just depressing and makes Dark Souls 2 look cool in comparison, what the fuck happened?
There's one huge shortcut you left out, but it's kinda nitpicky. Dunno if we're talking about the same one. I agree that having both level design and world design would be great--but I'll take level design over world design any day of the week. DaS1 has a very strong illusion of choice, but you couldn't actually finish most of your choices until you went along the path they set out for you.
Sumio Mondo
Member
At this point every single Souls/Bloodborne game has different game design when it comes to the world design. Which I like personally. Variety is a great thing after all.
Sanctuary
Member
This guy is ridiculous. Ridiculously amazing.
Dark Souls 3, with a "regular" build has the best progression and difficulty curve of the series, IMO. That's what happened.
Each game has its own world design philosophy. Dark Souls 3 lost a bunch of replayability, but made the best overall adventure for the first playthrough.
so fleshed out world design has to mean the world is interconnected?
Almost at any time you are outside in DS3 you see somewhere you have been or somewhere you are going towards. To me that's great world design, even if it isn't as interconnected as DS1
The world is a linear branch thing. Most of the areas that compose the nodes on the branch are like Forest of the Fallen Giants or Brume Tower in terms of directions to go, things to see, etc. I find the linear overall design to be a minor disappointment compared to the density of each area. You can also see areas from other areas and all that.
I'd recommend that you don't. After the start of the game I always felt like I had options
Complicated
Banned
Neither of them are super demanding on a technical level, but Bloodborne is much more forgiving.
This is a pretty much BS post.
Most of your breaks are totally asinine and backasswards way to play the game at best if you want those results.
I mean yeah, if you want to arbitrarily stop after doing one area 50% then fly across the map for literally no fucking reason at all, do the alt path 75%, then fly back to the area you are at 50% and finish that, then come back and finish the other path, you might get some of the run order that this dude is talking about, but in reality you really only ever do it either one way or the other any given time.
I mean seriously, who in the hell is going to get to and kill
pontiff and then fly backwards and kill Yhorm, then fly back to pontiff and walk the 45 mins forward past pontiff to kill Aldrich?
I'm getting the same impression, and I love that. DS1 and DS2 were both wonderful games, with some things being more refined in one than the other, as well as some interesting differences between them. Bloodborne adds to the list of refinements and differences. All that I've heard has painted a picture of a game that takes most of the refinements, mixes the differences in an interesting way (like, the world design being DS2-esque with more small scale interconnectivity sounds great to me), and throws in some twists of its own. This could just be me looking at the limited information I've seen through a romantic lens, but it sounds like perfection.
Also, based on Metacritic, the Souls games have all garnered similar amounts of critical acclaim. With all their differences, it's obvious the numbers don't tell the whole story. Bloodborne is the highest rated in the franchise, but I understand entirely why it's not for every Souls fan, for example. In other words, I'm not sure we should be placing so much emphasis on ratings here. It's especially unproductive to latch onto, say, the publication that gave the game a 7 instead of an 8 or above. There's nothing surprising about where DS3 is at right now, and it doesn't tell you how much you'll enjoy it relative to the other games.
If you don't know where you're going, it's pretty possible to wind up backtracking pretty severely. I wound up getting halfway through an area before sayin' fuckit and going to check something else out.
Robot Pants
Member
Ok this doesn't sound so bad actually. I'm at ease now, just gonna wait and see for myself. Thanks guys.
This is kinda the crux of why I just don't care for dark souls 1's macro level design. While the interconnected levels were neat in concept and partly execution, the only area that impressed me in any way was Sen's fortress. And that is probably the most isolated of any of the zones. While it most likely isn't the case, the game at least feels like it was somewhat hamstrung by the need to have everything "fit". I want big complex and maze like levels. We just don't get those a lot though. The more "isolated" a zone is, the more freedom to go crazy I feel they exploit. I adore demons souls and thought every level was wonderful in its own way. The dark souls 2 dlc is similar. Same with The Old Hunters. Oddly I think the Dark Souls 1 dlc was exceptionally weak level design wise.
In my blind playthrough I did:
Sage, Abyss Watchers, Deacons, Wolnir; and Pontiff, Yhorm, Aldritch
Must just be the way I like playing. I don't want to go too far one way when I know I can go another
Vital Tundra
Member
DS1 and 2 were laid out like this:
DS3's world basically looks like this:
I don't see why people are so upset about this. Yeah its neat to have different paths but frankly both DkS1 and 2 have baron areas with 1 having the last portion of the game rushed, and frankly most of DkS2 areas lack character, and the general level design is far worse than DkS1. Linearity isn't bad.
BrokenIcarus
Member
DS1 and 2 were laid out like this:
DS3's world basically looks like this:
Urgh, no, no, no I did not want to see this, shit shit shit.
Hype deflated. Got damnit from whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
DS2 world is a disjointed mess and no amount of diagrams is gonna make it better than DS3 world. The world might be more linear but it's seriously a lot better crafted. Not missing trash levels like Lion Warrior Bush or Mini Spider Cave at all.
Urgh, no, no, no I did not want to see this, shit shit shit.
Hype deflated. Got damnit from whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Pay attention to the rest of the posts. The DaS1 picture, in particular, is disingeous at best. DaS2 had crazy sprawls, but it also lost a lot of character for it. IMO, at least.
Slick Butter
Member
The Catacombs & Tomb of the Giants are really great areas, I think, as is the Duke's Archives and New Londo Ruins. The only truly bad things about post-lord vessel is the Demon Ruins, 1st part of Lost Izalith, and the Bed of Chaos.
Seath is unfortunately easy, but the Four Kings are certainly not a bad fight, and Nito is pretty good, though his skeletons can be annoying. I think the real problem is is that these should have been the best fights in the game but were largely only decent or worse.
It would be kinda hard to stack vistas of that size on top of each other or traverse them, if we were to zoom in to the individual dots though, each area on it's own would be much more complex in itself.
Same, don't even try to dismiss these critisisms because you thought they weren't fun. Finding shortcuts was a process of dread and wonder, regardless of whether the areas connected are considered weak in comparison to the rest. The shortcuts are the ultimate reward for pushing forward and figuring out the lay of the land.
It likely overlapped with Dark Souls 2 core development. There's a lot of design work and prototyping that can overlap with the later phases of development.
More than that. It was in parallel with BB. It's longer than any of the games other than DS2, not including DLC areas or Chalices.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
I will never ever ever ever ever
Ever
Understand the weird obsession with DS1s transparent tedious connections
Will never understand it....it's like nobody is corcened about the actual level design, with its enemy design, sound design, boss fights, NPC quest lines, unique scenarios, explorable areas, loot, art direction...no if I can't walk bough a really boring area to get back to Undead Burg or Firelink than The game is ass
Ever
Understand the weird obsession with DS1s transparent tedious connections
Will never understand it....it's like nobody is corcened about the actual level design, with its enemy design, sound design, boss fights, NPC quest lines, unique scenarios, explorable areas, loot, art direction...no if I can't walk bough a really boring area to get back to Undead Burg or Firelink than The game is ass
I don't know why you guys need this to be exactly like Dark Souls 1 or 2.. it is a sequel, not a copy of the same game..
let the devs experiment with it and us to find if it was good enough, most of us haven't even played it, geez...
---
but to argue some points, yeah it is true, DkS1 had some pretty useless areas or areas which were meant to be just connecting areas, like Firelink Shrine, Valley of Drakes, Demon Ruins. Those areas can be completely rid of and there would be not much problems.
and I'm not very concerned because as some had already said, Bloodborne was more linear in thay connectivity aspect and I still dearly love that game, I even consider the areas a lot more improved than DkS1 or the portion I've already played on DkS2. The areas mostly have one, or max 2 entrance/exits, but they are complex and have a lot more elements in them which I find better than just connecting the areas.
if DkS3 has more complex areas than DkS1 or DkS2, I'm not concerned much about the connectivity of them
let the devs experiment with it and us to find if it was good enough, most of us haven't even played it, geez...
---
but to argue some points, yeah it is true, DkS1 had some pretty useless areas or areas which were meant to be just connecting areas, like Firelink Shrine, Valley of Drakes, Demon Ruins. Those areas can be completely rid of and there would be not much problems.
and I'm not very concerned because as some had already said, Bloodborne was more linear in thay connectivity aspect and I still dearly love that game, I even consider the areas a lot more improved than DkS1 or the portion I've already played on DkS2. The areas mostly have one, or max 2 entrance/exits, but they are complex and have a lot more elements in them which I find better than just connecting the areas.
if DkS3 has more complex areas than DkS1 or DkS2, I'm not concerned much about the connectivity of them