4/5 ★ – forlornronin's review of Dark Souls III.

-Chief complaint: a lot of the mid-game dungeons like Irithyll Dungeon and EPIC POISON SWAMP are just kind of irritating and unfun to trudge through. A lot of the enemies are just really good at everything - they're very mobile, they're very strong and they have lots of health. This is mostly fine in settings where you have a lot of breathing room between dudes, but this is easily the most enemy-crammed souls game I've played and its definitely for worse +Final boss was just fantastic. The concept execution and gameplay all excellently intersect, and for a series finale it actually punctuates the universe perfectly which is such an incredible feat for a series like Dark Souls. I could not have made a better final boss with infinite time and budget. Just perfection +Gwyn in the Soul of Cinder was so exciting -Ashes of Ariandel was pretty empty and I definitely subscribe to the theory that they overcompensated for this with Friede +Ringed City was a fantastic addition to the game -Yet another souls game where you have zero reason to ever experiment with other weapons, especially as a dex user. And once you're in the phase of the game where you're upgrading weapons, just forget about it completely, because you are very very punished for switching away from your existing upgraded tools. Nothing else will compare, even if other weapons would theoretically be better at the same upgrade level +Soundtrack was a cut above previous entries. This was after Bloodborne, so I can definitely see they learned a lot in the sound department +Gameplay feels like the snappiest Souls has ever been. I can definitely see they've been honing their craft as each title is sequentially just a little smoother and tighter to play and Bloodborne helped them bridge the gap a bit +Pretty good environment designs +Lots of great bosses, only two or three had me really throwing my hands up. Most of them felt really great to play which is a relief coming out of games like Demon's Souls -Narrative is delivered pretty typically for From Soft, never really been a fan but it is what it is. I "got" most of it after being conditioned by previous entries to dig up the story myself, i just don't prefer it this way. Run time: 23h49m Don't have a lot to say other than its great at what it set out to do. It's the fastest and smoothest Souls game, and its a finale I sincerely couldn't even envision being any better than it is. Really good 8/10