Video Game Review: ‘Dark Souls III’

Many games try to scare, but few are actually tense since there’s no genuine threat in a virtual world. However, “Dark Souls III” is truly nerve-wracking.

The “Souls” series solves this problem and makes the stakes of the game real with punishing combat difficulty and the recoverable loss of all the player’s currency upon their inevitable, frequent death.

“Dark Souls III” is stylistically and thematically similar to its predecessors: the same empty, grim, dark fantasy world, populated by stalking undead horrors and massive bosses. In the first game, it was terrifying and unfamiliar. By this third game, the now-familiar strangeness is comforting, a good note to leave the series on if “Dark Souls III” is the final outing.

Combat is fast-paced compared to that of previous titles, which promoted hiding behind a shield and waiting for enemy error over aggressive action. The pace of attacks encourages heart-racing risks, and the trial-and-error nature of the world leads to careful advances and running away when necessary. As it should be.

Beyond certain quality of life features like having all of the shops in one central hub, “Dark Souls III” shares a lot in common with “Dark Souls” and less with the uninspired “Dark Souls II,” which lacked the work of innovative series director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

The minimalist plot acknowledges the similarities and passes them into the third installment as intentional allusions. This time, the player must stave off an imminent Age of Darkness by re-igniting the central fire of the world. But this has happened many, many times before and now a simple sacrifice isn’t enough – the ashes of the four Lords of Cinder who previously did the job are needed. The “Souls” world is one where ennui has set in.

But the real story is in the fraught journey. Many areas are remixes of now-familiar archetypes – a dark castle swarming with oversized knights, a swamp of poisonous monsters, catacombs with skeletons and traps – but these have enough weirdness to keep them fresh.

The areas are huge and interconnected; secret passages and sewers lead through side areas, and sometimes even large, hidden locations are possible to miss entirely.

The default reactions to one of the many new types of monsters are apprehension, fear, overzealousness or death. The enemy design is top-notch and leans even more toward horror than previous titles have. Early encounters with sword-wielding zombies give way to creepier, scuttling creatures from some bestiary.

The multiplayer component of “Dark Souls III” is as integrated as ever, including reading the messages other players write on the floor and summoning them to your world, briefly, to help defeat bosses. Without the ability to talk to these summoned allies, they are lovely comrades aimed at the same goal, or aimed at killing you, rather than annoying users.

A number of technical glitches and quirks in “Dark Souls III” on the PC were plaguing, though some in-depth troubleshooting fixed the worst issues.

“Dark Souls III” kicks the player to the main menu if the game lags too much for multiplayer gameplay. Both previous games launched with very poor PC optimization, which is unacceptable, though perhaps not all players will have these issues.

“Dark Souls III” is like a teacher who is expected to be merciless but actually teaches students to overcome obstacles that seemed impossible. If only it could overcome the greatest obstacle of all: a buggy release.