Darksiders III

In order to get strong enough to feel like you can even stand on your own to feet, you have to grind and grind AND GRIND souls to level up enough that enemies (bosses in particular) don't chew you up and spit you out before you can even do any significant damage to them. Personally I'm not interested in any game that requires that much grinding. When you do finally get leveled up to the point where you can go at things with much more confidence, the novelty of the gameplay is lost. The rpg elements introduced in the previous title are not present here. Which is dissapointing for me at least. The ability to target enemies and use powerups is not setup for smooth, fluid combat, and can be downright infuriating at times. The only thing this title has going for it is the visuals and story. Other than that it is BARELY enjoyable. Especially when compared to the previous installments. I hope the devs do a much better job with the actual gameplay fun factor in future installments.

I Like this game, not the best ever made, but it's fun.

After 35 hours I finished my first playthrough, I started in Challenging difficulty because I'm a veteran of the series and let me tell you, at times I wanted to just quit, but I kept going and at the end it gets quite satisfying. But since it borrows too much from other genre it will probably disappoint a lot of fans of the series There are some significant changes this time around, some good, some not so good, and most of them are just "soulslike inspired": - The dungeons are gone, now is just a variety of zones interconected with lots of secrets and shortcuts that will be available after gaining new abilities (nice), but there are some zones that will fill you with rage (at least there is nothing like blight town) - The combat is still fast paced and the game is not shy to throw groups of enemies at you, but since this is now a souls-like enemies hit like trucks and they can stun lock you so if you get surounded you are as good as dead - healing is a bit different, now you have one use items with a cooldown or an amulet (flask) with a set amount of charges that recharge after death or by killing enemies (no, this doesn't make the game easier beacuse you have to stop attacking or moving to heal, and even in classic mode that's half a second where you will be open to get oneshoted - And the most important and frustrating changes of all, the manual saves are gone, only checkpoints this time, i,e: I forgot to fight an optional boss before facing the last sin and now I'll have to play the whole game all over again if I want another chance at it, and I forgot to fight it because it was mentioned at the beggining of the game, but since there's no map or journal to keep track of quests I totally forgot about it My advice: Soldier on past the frustration and you'll find the joy of being a dodge master even by sound alone. And get used to the axe of scorn because is faster than the mallet and you can break through the defense of enemies without charging the attack

TL;DR: The game is not a good example of a Darksiders game. Lacking in puzzles, tight controls and better writing. The shortness actually helps so you don't need to play it too long. The port is poorly translated to PC, even with good spec (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD and a GTX 1060 with 16GB of RAM it still has stutter and low FPS issues. Got on sale if you want to complete a collection, or better yet, replay one of the first 2. Puzzles: This game has almost completely removed puzzles. It is replaced with tedious terrain traversal, where it seems that the game mechanics work against you in hopes of making the journey seem longer. The way it does that is by not having nearly the tightness of traversal control the previous 2 games had, and therefore forcing you to attempt, fail and try again on a piece of the journey... The few puzzles that remain are simplistic and solved easily, things that you would find in the first few hours of the first two games. Combat: Ok but the camera is sometimes your worst enemy. If you get into a brawl with too many enemies it can quickly put you into a situation where you cannot even find time to dodge, can get frustrating at times. Character progression: Itemization is basic but tight. They integrated the powers that you gain for more terrain traversal (... yay I guess) with the secondary weapons you get to use. It is fun and makes sense. Upgrades are simplistic but functional. Armors seem to be really boring but I don't miss the diablo like itemization of Darksiders 2 anyway. Level ups/skill points are done in a flat stat boost type of way, honestly it could have been done as an automatic change on a level up, no need to force us with choices like +hp, +dmg% and anothet +dmg% (for different parts of combat). Should have been just delegated to automatic growth. Story: Meh... Port: Just plain bad: crashes, frame drops, load times I can complain about more things, but there is a limit to the gog review length so let us stop here.

This installment takes the franchise in a different direction; it's now mostly a mix of Bayonetta, Dark Souls, and Super Metroid. No map, but you can explore the world as you see fit, and obtain new movement abilities to reach new areas. What really killed it for me was the combat; it's fast and fluid, but the controls are surprisingly unresponsive, especially the dash, healing, and transformation. This wouldn't even be a problem, except even little trash mobs can kill you in 4 hits or less; one of those other elements (or even just the camera) NEEDS to work well in a game like this, but it's just broken. Some fiths are easy, some are hard, and most feel like a toss of the dice. I'm being generous with the rating, because some of that might be my fault, because of how I leveled or whatever. I do also enjoy getting all the different weapons and using their special powers. The art is beautiful, though, especially Fury's design. The world is surprisngly colorful; not as pretty as that of its predecessor, but the underwater sections are just stunning. Unfortunately, this is tempered by some shockingly incoherent writing. I could see bits and pieces not connecting with the other games, or even the same game, if you have multiple writers, but there are some pretty major details that got screwed up, and one of the most baffling cutscenes I've ever witnessed; I'm STILL not entirely sure what happened there, and the game never really addresses it, either. Not that the writing in this series is mind-blowing, or why you should be playing it in the first place, but this was noteworthy. Fury's pretty awful, too, but to her credit, she does change and grow over the course of the adventure, even if the writers come right out and say they're throwing up their hands as to how. I wanted to like this a lot more, and it does have some great elements, but it breeds a little resentment what it dragged me through by dangling those carrots.