[Game Review] Dark Souls III

Note: This review contains spoilers.  However, if you are generally turned off by difficult games, maybe read this anyway as I think spoilers may help you better appreciate it, and maybe even motivate you to get into the series. 


 It is no secret that the original Dark Souls is debatably my favorite game of all time.  As nauseating as it has become listening to the zealots of Dark Souls' rabid congregation (of which I consider myself a part of), there is a reason people have gone so bonkers over the series: it is just that damn good.  I don't want to dwell on this misconception that "difficulty makes it good", since a lot of people have already written up great reasons why this isn't the case, but I'll reiterate the basics: this game is difficult, but rarely as difficult as it seems.  It isn't that Dark Souls is punishingly hard to keep completion rates low and thus give it some kind of exclusivity club for those who "get it", but rather it forces you into a corner to either get with its mechanics and gameplay or get stomped on.  It realizes that truly challenging yourself to understand the mechanics of games can often be the most fulfilling part.  But difficulty is simply the method toward a much better philosophy: what makes a game fun?

Dark Souls could have done one or two of its various aspects right and it would still have been a good game, but it did nearly all of them well.  The game is far, far from perfect (I've heard the term "messterpiece" thrown around a lot), but what works gives you more than enough to overlook its glaring flaws.  Controls feel good, the environments (usually) ooze personality and lore bits, and the gameplay -- a tug of war between the stat management and gear swapping/improving of RPGs and the minute-to-minute moveset strategizing of fighting games -- absolutely nails an engaging, fun, and rewarding style of challenge.  Draped over this core of a great game, however, is an abstract and often philosophical story that takes elements from Greek mythology and existentialism.  There are arguments to be made that perhaps there is too much ambiguity when it comes to the plot, but simultaneously that is one of its most compelling features:  it gives you the people, places, and pieces of events that historically happened and are happening in the world of Lordran, but give you the opportunity to speculate as to how all of it ties together.  Story bits are trickled out to the player through item descriptions (have you ever played a game where you were looking forward to reading an item description? --well, welcome to Dark Souls), snippets muttered by NPCs, and environmental tells such as dilapidated buildings or sunken ruins of a once great city.  The game requires total engagement to get everything, but even if you make a brisk pass through the game you will find enough to be intrigued, and it will get you wondering who these gods where and why they did the few things you've picked up on along the way.  The inherent existentialism of the series has always fascinated me: the gods consider the undead plague unbecoming, the human populace stricken by this plague consider it a curse, yet is immortality not the counter to fear of death?  Dark Souls argues that death and finality are something special, something to be coveted, and something worth fighting for.  Never have I played a game where what I was struggling so hard to accomplish was the right for my character to die.

While the Soulsborne series is at five entries now (does Sekiro count as a sixth Soulsborne?), I've only ever played to completion the three titles under Dark Souls.  Dark Souls III does something weird within the universe: it is a sequel to a previous entry.  Whereas Dark Souls II debatably took place in another land far away, Dark Souls III repeatedly pushes toward one conclusion: we are back in Lordran, now under the name of Lothric.  The allusions are countless, and without spending the rest of the year playing the game I could never account for them all.  But in being a sequel, the game allows us to reflect on the story that came before us, and reflect on why we play these games in the first place.

Dark Souls III starts with the ringing of a bell, an interesting play on the bells you are required to ring in the first third of the original game.  The bell wakes you, the Ashen One, a chosen undead to gather the Lords of Cinder, also awoken by the bell, and bring them to Firelink Shrine to relight the first flame and thus end the undead curse and bring back the life throughout the land.  The basics of Dark Souls lore is this: there is something called the First Flame, a mystical flame that allows for human prosperity (or debatably hinders it, giving prosperity to the gods).  It goes out after a long time of burning (although never explicitly said, there is evidence it burns for centuries), and must be relit.  A long time ago, before the first game, the Zeus-like figure Gwen sacrificed himself and his Lord Soul to relight the flame, but it was only a temporary solution, and it brought with it the undead curse.  As the First Flame's light faded, so too did the undead curse rise.  In Dark Souls III, the Prince Lothric was supposed to relight the flame, like many Lords of Cinder did before him, but he refused (there are multiple opinions in game whether or not relighting the flame is a good idea or not, with different endings depending on your choice).  The light is so dim now that it requires three of the previous Lords of Cinder as well as Prince Lothric in order to relight it, and so your quest is to find them all, undead, kill them, and take their cinders to Firelink Shrine in order to relight the fire.

To be fair, I wouldn't blame you if all of that was just a bit too much for you.  The story isn't particularly complex outright (darkness is here, and defeat darkness by beating baddies), but its execution is.  Each of the Lords of Cinder have their own lore to them, each a story that can be incredibly difficult to fully pick up on through your playthrough.  Dark Souls III deals with its plot as good, if not better, than any of the previous Dark Souls games.  There is a depth to what you can learn about each boss, why they are there, what their affect on their area of the map is, and why they have the significance enough to be a boss.  It's grimdark stuff, which may not be to your taste, but it plays out very much like a tragedy of man.  It is hard to follow the plot and not feel as though perhaps the gods are something closer to ideological, that the flame is a type of optimism, the undead curse a type of existentialist cynicism.  Philosophically, all of these games can be taken apart and studied (and they have), and Dark Souls III does extremely well in its engagement with this type of storytelling.  The story may not feel as succinct as the original, but it feels told to you a little more straight.  It adds not only to the original game's plot, but also allows for its own lore and its own smaller-scale complexity as you meet NPCs and follow their questlines (questlines are done differently in these games, where rather than having markers on a minimap, you have to find them in the world and talk to them in order to progress their story, and it is very easy to screw up, giving you different outcomes as you play).  Despite it being built almost entirely on top of the original's foundations plotwise, I'd have to recommend Dark Souls III as probably the best starting point in the series, with the caveat that it should really be played again after beating the first.

Dark Souls has a major problem with pacing.  In that first game, it had a tightly knotted map with interconnecting pathways and multiple directions to go.  It is a common complaint that the original game was poor at telling you which direction to go first was.  In the opening area, the catacombs where right there with skeleton enemies and gravestones -- a go-to for early levels in most RPGs.  However, in Dark Souls this is one of the end game areas, and so any new player trying to make their way down there will be met with a stiff brick wall of difficulty.  Even learning where you need to go, the game's difficulty can sometimes spike and drop at will, with a vague semblance of a difficulty curve.  There is an underlying curve, but it isn't so smooth.  Dark Souls III fixes this with not only the best difficutly curve in the series, but one of the best I've ever played in a game.  For veteran players, the first half of the game can be a steady but somewhat easy playthrough until roughly halfway through the game, where the game starts to resemble what a majority of the other games feel like, before finally ramping up in its later quarter.  Although never as hard as the hardest parts of the original Dark Souls, Dark Souls III manages to be incredibly difficult to even veteran players but placing that difficulty at the end of a smooth difficulty ramp up.  Early players won't be so punished for experimenting with paths and mechanics, with even bosses for the first half of the game requiring only minimal attention to reaction time.  It allows you to truly experiment with gameplay, and since there is the new weapon arts mechanic, you can truly find your play style without feeling like you are being punished for it.

Weapon arts are special moves attatched to types of weapons that can be used in exchange for a little mana or a lot of stamina (depending on if you have any mana).  They add another element to Dark Souls' gameplay that gives you more ways to build your play style.  In Dark Souls more than most other RPGs, it is more about how you want to play than how you should play.  If you are bad at dodging, investing in vitality will allow you to equip heavy armor while still allowing you a quick enough dodge so you can have some leeway by soaking up more hits.  If you like to do quick attacks, then lighter or even dual weilding weapons are for you.  If you would rather play by striking hard during a brief opening, than heavier weapons will be more your style.  You find the category of weapons or armor you enjoy playing with, and you upgrade those to whatever you are content with.  There is no getting stuck with something, and thus there are few mistakes you can make that will truly fuck you over (you'd pretty well have to try).  As far as the Souls series is concerned, Dark Souls III feels very much a successor of Dark Souls I and II.  Weapons feel good for the most part, although I never quite found that one weapon that truly fit what I wanted to do as I did in the other two, as mid-weight swords felt too weak and heavy swords felt too slow.  I opted for heavy swords except for special occasions.

One such occasion was the Twin Princes, one of the final and most rewarding bosses in the game.  While a majority of the time through Dark Souls games harder bosses are generally the best, there has never been one where it felt like all of the hard bosses where the best.  Twin Princes is roughly the part of the game where I felt truly challenged.  Learning their moves and how to read their various swings became an art in and of itself for me.  What was remarkable was how quickly my brain was able to register what I was supposed to do because of how clear most of the telegraphs where (with one or two exceptions).  It was translating that recognition to my reaction time that became the true test.  Pontiff SulyVahn was another like this, who was around the halfway point.  There is a graceful dance to playing these bosses, of finding the shifting rhythms of their attacks and playing counterpoint to them.  It is engaging and involving.  While the earlier bosses get you around AOEs or dodging telegraphs, it is Pontiff Sulyvahn that begins the half of the game where it becomes a complex dance of moves, learning your strengths and taking effort in blacksmithing your gear up to snuff.  Dark Souls III has several of my favorite bosses of the entire series, and no, none of them are as difficult as O and S from Dark Souls I.

There are only a couple of criticisms I can lay at Dark Souls III with any confidence.  The environments, while cool, are often the gothic churches found in Dark Souls or something very akin to Bloodborne, whose Lovecraftian style can feel at odds with Dark Souls D&D-cum-horror style.  That said, Dark Souls III's environments feel sprawling, with multiple paths and shortcuts to be found in any given area.  And while these shortcuts are an awesome echoing of Dark Souls' knotted singular world, it can't ever match up to how unbelievably interconnected the original game felt.  It is a popular sore spot with Souls fans that the original Dark Souls felt so incredible that first time you found out that the far off location you thought you where at was actually just above the first place you visited.  Dark Souls' map felt complex yet accessible, something you learn as you go but also giving you reason to map out in your head different routes to different locations, or to scan the skyline looking for a previous location once you get your bearings (and being able to actually see those other locations, and others you've yet to visit but would).  Dark Souls III takes more after Dark Souls II, although replacing that games' octopus styled map branching out from the hub into a straight path with multiple diversions that eventually folds back on itself.  It's extremely fun to explore, but still feels like it is missing that magical aspect to the original that is beginning to feel more and more like it may have been somewhat an accident.  Likewise, Dark Souls III may be the most liberal with bonfires, the games' take on checkpoints.  They appear at an extremely frequent rate until later in the game where they opt for more shortcuts and less bonfires.  Understandably, this is partially what gives the early game such a leniency on newer players, and it is at least partially done away with by the latter half of the game.  The Estus Flask, your means to healing, has many more charges than in any previous Souls game (early on, at least), making several sections easier to just power through instead of learning mechanics.  This can be useful for later boss fights, and you can still tailor the game away from giving you so much leniency, but it is an easy trapping no one would willingly give up (the idea, I suspect, was to rope you in to spells, which the Estus Flask charges can be dumped into refilling through the Ashen Flask, but I don't think that this was the optimal solution).

 Dark Souls is still my favorite game in the series, but that is partially due to an inherent magic in its design, layout, and gameplay that would be next to impossible to replicate anywhere else.  Dark Souls III is definitely the most fun of the series to play, a game that rewards returning players with complex lore and tightened gameplay, but allows for new players to have a much more forgiving entry into the dark world of fallen gods and ever rising undead.  Perhaps this game deserves the only higher rating than what I'm giving it, and my bias towards the original holds it down.  Whatever the case, Dark Souls III is unforgettable, and a completely absorbing and fun time.



9.5

[Game Review] Ark: Survival Evolved

MMOs may still be around, but they are no longer these behemoths they once were.  World of Warcraft has been on the decline for years, and most semi-massively multiplayer online games usually work in chunks of multiplayer zones rather than one ever present multiplayer server.  Destiny gave us a loot shooter that utilized a multiplayer system that created instances of each zone and limited the number of people there at any given time so you weren't overwhelmed while still giving you the feeling you were populating a world of other players, completing quests and killing monsters just like you.  Likewise, the larger-than-average take on multiplayer in the wake of the MMO lead to battle royale games, or at the very least something like proto-battle royale games.  It is probably incorrect to say that DayZ was the first of these types of games, but it was certainly one of the earlier and more popular incarnations (there is more than a few arguments to made for Minecraft as another).  Rather than controlled zones, these games went with the singular server you'd join, just with a much smaller map and smaller population limits.  The other major difference was how the gameplay loop was handled this time around: rather than giving you leveling mechanics that locked loot, dungeons, and abilities behind xp gates, you now had to scavenge and craft everything you had.  It gave a sincere weight to every risk you took, knowing you could lose that rifle that took you forever to find or craft.  Everything you had you built and scavenged with your own hands.  Your base of operations was something you created from a floor plan you designed, and everything in it represented countless hours of work.  Survival/crafting games became the new vogue for people wanting a truly open-ended experience, where each new game/character felt like a new approach to the mechanics and the world you knew.  Add in the multiplayer aspect, and suddenly people became intensely protective.  Losing in a World of Warcraft duel or PvP game meant a hurt in pride.  Losing all you had in your base to a raid was a personal attack and a massive set back.  The stakes were higher, and thus the adrenaline rush from successful play was through the roof.  Following DayZ and Minecraft, several other games gave their own approach to the genre.  Rust is by far the closest to the platonic version of this genre:  you craft and gather resources, you play online with many other players (usually under a hundred), and you can loot, raid, or create and join clans.  From this formula came Ark: Survival Evolved.

Ark's most obvious difference from other games in the genre is that you can tame, ride, or kill dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs have had a difficult history in the video game sphere since the end of the 90s, with popular franchises such as Turok and Dino Crisis flailing with the new millennium.  Dinosaurs may have been childish in the eyes of the games industry, which was striving more and more towards gritty realism or otherwise grimdark territory.  Jurassic Park would have licensed games from time to time, but none of them would ever have a lasting impact outside of mild cult status, such as with Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis.  As zombies became less popular in the early 2010s but survival games continued to thrive, there was a need to fill in this void of an omnipresent threat to give these games the tension needed.  The Long Dark used the elements, Don't Stave used Lovecraftian horrors, Rust used other players, and Ark used dinosaurs.  It stood out from the crowd pretty early on, even with a cripplingly buggy early access reputation, but what kept players playing was the ability to tame these prehistoric giants.

Taming dinosaurs in Ark has a similar appeal to catching Pokemon in Pokemon: it drives the collector in you (at least at first), and it gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you could turn that intimidating monster threatening the beach in which your base is perched into a powerful ally.  Taming your first T-Rex in Ark is exhilarating.  Finding the Rex itself can be a task itself as it usually only spawns in much more difficult areas of the map.  Once you find it, it takes a difficult amount of tranqulizers to put out, and even then takes quite a bit of meat in order to tame.  The process ends up being multi-tiered and difficult, but the reward is a behemoth with massive attack damage that can outright change the game.  While the Rex has an obvious PvP or protectorate appeal, other dinosaurs can have surprising uses as well.  Parasaurs are great pack mules early in the game, allowing you to ride them as a mount and have them carry all of the resources you've collected on an excursion.  Triceratops (called Trikes in Ark, one of the many short-hands used throughout the game) are relatively good early game berry harvesters, which can help in garnering enough narco berries to start a stockpile of narcotics, the main ingredient in tranquilizer arrows or darts.  In later sections of the game, Ankylosaurus can be tamed to gather stone and metal (of which they have a buff that cuts these resources' carry weight in half), or a Therizosaur, which can harvest wood at an alarming speed and quantity.

The real game changer, however, comes in finally taming and building a saddle for a flying mount.  Early in the game, the only flying mount you can get is a Ptaranadon, which is fast but can run out of stamina quickly and has poor carry weight.  Running out of stamina causes the dinosaur to immediately start descending until it finds a place to land, regardless of what threat may be nearby.  The Ptaranadon is not very useful for resource gathering, but it is excellent at location scouting, looking for tamable dinosaurs (especially when looking for a higher level tame, as you may have to fly a long distance to find one), or moving you somewhere far away to essentially give a fresh go at a new base, if you were confident enough to leave most of your belongings behind.  The next up flying mount is the Argentavis (or Argy), which is essentially a giant hawk.  It has an incredibly large pool of stamina allowing it to go long distances, and a large carry weight with a buff that halves the weight of stone and metal, making it excellent for harvesting.  The Argy's downside is that it is much slower than the Ptaranadon, which can create risky situations if you are using one to get out of dodge quickly.  If you play on other maps than The Island (Ark's default and first map), you can also find mounts such as Griffons and Wyverns, both extremely powerful and essentially near end game tames.

Getting these mounts, however, have their own difficulties.  Taming them is one thing, but if you want to properly utilize them then you have to create a saddle, which can take a large amount of resources but also must be unlocked in the crafting tree.  Unlike almost all other crafting based survival games, there is an explicit xp gate behind unlocking crafting recipes.  The general game design behind crafting games usually comes from your efficiency in gaining resources (either from learning game mechanics or moving your base of operations to somewhere far more dangerous but more lucrative) and then crafting particular crafting benches or smithies that house the next branch in the crafting progression.  It's excellent design since it rewards engaging in the game's internal mechanics in order to proceed.  Ark, however, goes a completely contradictory approach that I would call ambitious.  Rather than rewarding this kind of engagement with the underlying systems of the game, the game gives out Engram Points each level to the player, which can be spent on Engrams, which are essentially crafting blueprints.  Blueprints are locked behind a level gate, so making certain saddles can mean grinding your way to that specific level before being able to make it.  It sounds awful, but it works for the game's primary way of playing: with multiplayer.  The idea behind it is that no one person ever has enough engram points to unlock every crafting recipe, meaning individuals are forced to specialize what they can make and balance this with what other friendly players have learned.  Playing solo this can be a serious chore, however the game does allow game rule controls such as xp gain modifiers, taming speed, etc. that allow for you to tailor the game for solo play much better (assuming you aren't playing on an online server, in which host has these controls).  When played properly, this can create an exciting incentive towards clan synergy, giving everyone specializations and forcing everyone to work together.  None of this really becomes important until the latter half of the leveling path, though, so for the first half of the game it really is just pick what you want.  A mild criticism of this system is that the engram path can sometimes feel a bit ambitious.  For example, the Ptaranadon saddle isn't unlocked until around level 38, but if you are replaying the game as a new character it is very easy to optimize your play to the point where getting a Ptaranadon is viable at half that level.  Likewise the Argy saddle isn't unlocked until an insanely steep level of 62, making grinding all the more likely if you know what you are doing.  Of course, grinding is something that sort of comes with crafting games, and so before you can really utilize some of these dinosaurs you will be needing a base, some narcotics  (as well as the stations that allow you to craft them), and some metal tools.  Doing all of this, however, won't get you to level 62 before getting an Argy would be extremely handy.

These and several other mechanics too tedious to list out create a game that excels at encouraging co-op play, and has a tall ceiling before you feel you've gotten sick of it or otherwise beaten it.  End game content is difficult and takes a lot of work to even prepare for, let alone get to.  It is incredibly easy to dump a hundred hours into this game without really registering as having done anything to further your way to the actual end of the game, and the truth of the matter is getting to the end game doesn't really matter.  There is more than enough exploration (on several massive maps, four of which are free, no less), unique dinosaur taming, and base building to be worth the money and time.  The game can be a glitchy mess, especially for some of its ports (the Switch port is absolute garbage and you should never buy it), but rarely does it ever get in the way of the fun pouring out of your computer screen.  The MMO's biggest fault was thinking we needed a tailored experience with peers to have fun.  As it turns out, which just needed a highly involving, complex toy box to play around in.



8.5