Darksiders III

This is an enjoyable game. I am a fan of the darksiders universe, compared to the other 2 releases this followed the souls model. so might be off putting for most who expect to be chainning combos instead of the being more strategic & methodical. For me the performance of the game is terrible, I have suffered crashes and lag. This is 2020 and still the performance is terrible for a 2018 game. I am using an Nvidia Geforce 1060 GTX & an Intel Core i7. This can be annoying especially considering its a soulike, so you did succeed in defeating that boss & reclaiming your souls. Well too bad for you because the game crashed & you have to repeat it or worse your souls go missing. For this reason I cannot recommend this enjoyable game.

The third game in the series continues previous' games pattern of mixing up the gameplay for each new Horseman. This time the game takes inspiration from Dark Souls and Bayonetta for its combat, and older games like Soul Reaver for the world design. The biggest emphasis in the game is on combat. Enemies are much tougher than in prior games, and Fury start out pretty fragile. As the game progresses, and you are able to level up, increasing the 3 stats - Health (HP), Strength (base physical damage) and Arcane (damage from counters, wrath attacks and Havok form), the feeling of being bad-ass form prior games returns, and a number of enemies become "trash mobs", killable in 1 or 2 hits. The lock-on camera is more useful than ever before, but being forced against a wall, or fighting in a pit against multiple enemies CAN still result in some pretty cheap-feeling deaths. And do be assured: the start of the game is tough. Learning to do the last second dodge to slow down time and counter (just like in Bayonetta's Witch Time) is a crucial skill. Exploration changes from prior games, because now you are looking at one deeply layered, interconnected world. There's no map, because it's incredibly difficult to break things down into "levels". You are able to fast-travel between Vulgrim plinths-and these are also the checkpoints where you respawn upon death, and places where you level up by paying the sould you collected to Vulgrim. Unlike Dark Souls, collecting souls here is very simple, and just like in the 1st game, smashing everyhting in the terrain gives you souls (and lots of them if you have the right enhancement). There's lots to explore- it took me almost 40 hours to search through and collect all the extra items useful in crafting. The game's not without its glitches (though a patch imrpoved the situation), and I had soem crashes, and some instances of Fury being stuck in textures. But these didn't detract from my enjoyment. Bring on Game 4!

Really good game. I like the combat more than Dark Souls because the enemies intentions are better noticeable and it's not so punishing if you die.

Awful game. Worth 2 stars only because of the art style - it's Darksiders after all. I wouldn't even think it's possible for me to delete a Darksiders game after 3 hours without any desire to continue playing but here Iam. What makes this game so bad? Well it's a Dark Souls clone. DS is like a cancer in the industry - every half-arsed developer is trying to clone it, thinking that it will make their game sell better, but it's a fact proven time and time again - that almost everything Dark Souls is praised for, is something that is considered a fault in literally every other game. Because it is. Sparse checkpoints - bad. Simplistic combat that relies on one single skill - bad. Enemies with ridiculous health - bad. You take all those mechanics without the "oh, but it's challenge" label and you are left with a bad game. Happened to every DS clone and they still don't learn. But this one takes it a step further. Remember that point about one single skill the whole game relies on? Both in Dark Souls and in Darksiders 3 that skill is timing, except in Dark Souls most of the time it's very clear when you need to time your dodge and any attack can be interrupted by it. It also gives you a long invulnerabilty frame. In this game your attacks can't be interrupted and the dodge is short and it's invulnerability frame is even shorter. You must make your dodge eligible for a counterattack and this is impossible to do consistently because in addition to activation being unreliable, there are no clear indicators (except for a few enemies that have sound ques) when their attack reaches a phase of "counterattack eligibility" for a dodge. So imagine that - you have zero ways to affect the fight in any way other than timing - just like in Dark Souls. But unlike Dark Souls that one skill also has an element of luck. That's Darksiders 3 gameplay. And that is unplayable.

Not better than the first game, but still great.