Dark Souls 3 is the conclusion to the critically-acclaimed Dark Souls series. Marketed as a grand finale to the series, Dark Souls 3 has huge expectations to fill. Does Dark Souls 3 live up to the hype generated by the previous games, or is it a disappointing end to a great series?

At first glance, the story of the game is almost non-existent, which is a staple of the Dark Souls series. The player is told a vague history of the world and told what goal they’re working towards in the opening, and then they’re sent on their way. However, the history and lore of the world is told through the player’s interaction with the world. It’s incredible how the Dark Souls series gives the player so much information about the world just through visuals alone: A large staircase with unnaturally wide and tall steps on one side and normal steps on the other lets the player know that giants coexisted with humans, and destroyed suits of armor and the bodies of dragons strewn around an abandoned city reveal that the city was destroyed by a war with dragons. Many parts of the story are intentionally still mysteries, however: If giants coexisted with humans, why are they only found in chains in the most secluded areas of the world? If the city was fighting dragons, why aren’t there dragons in the town right outside the city? In theory, this seems like to be a frustratingly obtuse experience, in action it works perfectly. The story told throughout the Dark Souls series is a borderless puzzle, and if the player assembles that puzzle, they’ll find a stunningly deep, rich story.

The gameplay of the Dark Souls series is notorious for being difficult; “Prepare to Die” is even the official tagline of the series. The difficulty is hugely exaggerated, however. Any enemy can and will kill an unprepared player, but the game gives the player many ways to overcome the challenges they encounter: the player can grind for experience to improve themselves, other players can be summoned to fight with the player, and a robust in-game messaging system lets players lay down messages that give advice or warnings about what is encountered in each area. The Dark Souls series isn’t a journey of unfairly difficult challenges, but of overcoming obstacles by using everything at your disposal. The weapons and armors available in the Dark Souls series traditionally have their own benefits and drawbacks, with no regular weapon or armor being completely superior than the rest: a suit of plate armor can absorb a large amount of physical damage and keep the player from being knocked to the ground after large hits, but magical robes can absorb elemental damage and weighs almost nothing, letting the player dodge attacks with ease. This balance is great, it allows every possible combination of weapons and armors to be a viable solution to get through the game with.

The original Dark Souls has one of the greatest designed game worlds ever, with every area having unlockable paths and shortcuts leading to other areas, which made every area feel like it was another slice of the world rather than just another game level. Almost every area of Dark Souls was interconnected through shortcuts; the player could go from a castle to a magical forest deep underground with just a set of stairs, or from an isolated fortress to a crowded graveyard with just an elevator ride. Unfortunately, the areas in Dark Souls 3 are linear, with almost all of them being basically in a straight line with one after another, and almost none of them have shortcuts that connect them with other areas. However, each area has much more space, optional paths, and beautiful scenery than most areas in the original Dark Souls. Although the interconnected areas were amazing, the prospect of each area being much bigger is a good trade-off. Unfortunately, even with these larger areas, Dark Souls 3 is around half the length of Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2. So the end-result is that Dark Souls 3 has a linear world that is only half the adventure as previous games in the series.
Dark Souls 3 is touted as the grand finale of the Dark Souls series, but it never really feel like anything but another entry in the series. The story constantly teases the player with promises of an epic conclusion, but it never delivers on these promises. The final areas of the game don’t feel any different from the areas you’ve already been to, the enemies are almost all ones you’ve faced before, and the ending ends as quickly as it arrives. In addition, Dark Souls 3 is much more shorter than both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, so the whole game feels much more limited in what it has to offer than the previous entries. The spiritual successor to the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, proves that the team behind Dark Souls can drastically change the traditional Dark Souls formula and make all of the changes improvements, yet Dark Souls 3 is an unambitious and disappointing game. On its own, Dark Souls 3, is a good game, but as the final entry in the Dark Souls series, it has to be compared to the previous games in the series, and compared to them it’s a disappointment.