The first twenty hours or so feel like strapping on a comfy pair of old greaves. Whether armour-clad, wielding a greatsword and tower-shield, or draped in cloth while holding a katana and buckler, Dark Souls 3 feels like home. ![]() It’s a game that doesn’t want you to feel at ease, but if you’re a series veteran, you will. Despite the glorious sunshine, you can never escape the overwhelming darkness of the setting, and it’s uncomfortable. Then there are your immediate surroundings: dominated by grotesque, twisted corpses impaled through wooden spikes, their hands contorted and their fingers pointing towards that same skyline. You enter this area – in series tradition – by slowly pushing open a set of large double doors, light seeping in as the door cracks, gradually revealing the distant, gothic spires against an orange sky. Take one of the first zones: the High Wall of Lothric. It’s a trade-off I don’t mind when the areas themselves, however disparate, are so exquisitely detailed and interesting to explore. Purists might be disappointed that the layout of the world means warping between bonfires is an absolute necessity – particularly as you need to return to a hub disconnected from the rest of the world to upgrade your character and equipment, like in Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne – but it’s a concession made to accommodate the scale of this sprawling landscape. There’s a great sense of discovery, with seemingly innocuous routes often revealing themselves to be pathways to massive undiscovered locations. Gorgeous vistas welcome new zones, your destination a stark landmark in the distance. There’s a certain rhythm to this world, with generally two different routes – and two bosses – available at any time. Instead of imitating the original Dark Souls’ labyrinthine connection of distinct areas leading back to a central hub, Lothric is a spider’s web, each new section its own standalone environmental puzzle. It’s essentially a greatest hits collection, taking the best of the studio’s back catalogue and wrapping it in a new, slightly chaotic package. The setting, Lothric, is a gorgeous world packed with detail, but clearly wears its influences on its engraved gauntlets, even revisiting old Souls haunts. You’ll fight undead soldiers atop a castle while avoiding dragon’s breath in one section, and some hours later be rolling under the claws of a giant beast, its crimson blood spattering on moonlit cobbles with each swipe of your sword. Dark Souls 3 takes some of Bloodborne’s speed (albeit without the PS4 exclusive’s brilliantly nippy dash-dodge), the playstyle variety of Dark Souls, and lets you loose across a world that’s a combination of the former’s gothic streets and the latter’s medieval embankments.
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