Darksiders III

Darksiders as a Series always managed to give each game of each rider a unique feel to it. And even despite, or specifically because I played Dark Souls 1 before playing Darksiders 3, I can witness the accuracy of the Darksiders' series' own art-style and worldbuilding, with features that became common to the time it was developed. While the Darksouls inspired soul-system was just a nice feature to it additionally, no progess will be lost if you die twice (unlike in real soulslikes) independently of difficulty. The "lost" souls will just gather in either nearby floating soul groups, or they just spawn a new one and float around as their own. They managed to establish a fully thorough and easy-to-understand character development and the scale perfectly fits into the complex maps. I played through Darksiders 3 in the matter of lets say 2 months (started on hardest dif), found secret places and many envorinments each of which radiated so much thoughtfulness, and played right through it again right afterwards, that I can say with confidence that I appreciated every single second of it. The map is open, with much more pathways and hidden pathways than its predecessors and a density of memorable places that truely fit into their places and bosses. Searching additional loot is always rewarded and the Add-ons are quite fun as an addition to the main game. Highly recommended game in a series that teaches you much more than it needs to admit.

Looking at the scores this game is getting I feel it is totally underrated for some reason. As a fan of Darksiders series I was not disappointed with it, quite the opposite - I think it is a great continuation of the series and a great game overall. If you haven't played any of the Darksiders' games - it is a third-person slasher roughly based on the art and story of the comics series by the same name. There is going to be a lot of fighting, some environmental puzzles and some RPG elements. It shines best with its art design and the overall mythology of the game universe. I mean, how many games start with the humanity being utterly and mercilessly destroyed? I really like how each installment of the series while having roughly the same gameplay formula adds a distinct flavour to it. In the first Darksiders you play as War - a big tough guy who packs a lot of brute force. In second part you follow the story of Death - a lethal and nimble assassin. In the third part you meet Fury - a renegade who likes to dance on the edge of a knife and delivers the greatest damage as counter-attacks. The difficulty also seems to increase with each game in the series, so prepare to break sweat often while playing this one. Also, this is the first game in the series where you just have to use a gamepad, keyboard + mouse makes this game borderline unplayable. Believe me, as these words are coming from a hardcore PC-only fan who did successfully complete previous games in the series without a gamepad whatsoever. And do remember that evade button is your friend, as it is responsible for both your survival and your greatest weapon (remember - counter-attacks). I must say I have not played any games from the FromSoftware studio (like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, etc...) so there won't be any meaningless comparisons between those from me. If you are looking for something similar to those, you should probably look elsewhere. Otherwise, it is a great game which packs a lot of fun.

I bought this game after the patch with "classic" combat, which is how I played the game (and how I recommend playing it) and well... I am a HUGE Darksiders fan, the first game is one of my favorite games of all time, the second one was alright but felt unfocused (I hated the loot system), this game brings a lot of it back to its roots, no overly tedious loot system, just enhancing the few (awesome) stuff you get throughout the game. Fury controls like a dream and actually goes through a character arc throughout the story (great story btw). The world is so interconnected and there are so many paths you can take, you'd think the lack of a map would make it overly confusing but not at all, if there's a spot you can't access yet, maybe you go somewhere else, get a new ability and then you get a "aha! now I can go back there and progress!" moment, I haven't felt so involved with a world and its layout since the last Zelda game I played. Then there is the Dark souls elements where if you die, you spawn at a checkpoint, the enemies respawn and you have to (sometimes tediously) go and grab your souls back, I didn't like this, it's why I played on the easiest difficulty because dying constantly and having to traverse areas I am already familiar with wasn't fun, the odd thing is if you die by falling, you return near where you fell and don't have to deal with collecting your souls all over again, they clearly had a normal checkpoint system as a possibility so I don't know why that couldn't be an option for the classic mode. Aside from that, the game is hard! (even story mode is tricky at times) but really fun! I liked the combat and instead of climbing you do a lot more platforming which controls wonderfully (not common in most hack and slash games). So if you are a Darksiders fan, pop the game in classic mode and give it a chance, I was actually shocked how much I liked it and am really looking forward to the next installment!

Summary: An action platformer with higher focus on the combat and less on physical puzzles (which are heavily featured in the DLC, if you need that itch scratched) PROS + The best combat in the franchise, if you use classic mode + Superb level design + Very organic feeling world + Bosses which are interesting both visually and mechanically + Top notch voice acting + New game+ with additional fights and equipment upgrade routes + An absolutely ungodly amount of explorable side areas CONS - Actually mediocre combat if you do not use classic mode - No minimap - No ingame method to track missing collectibles - NO MINIMAP!!! How could you screw this up, devs! Subjective opinion: Strongly recommend. It is simply fun to play. The fights are fun, the platforming is fun, the puzzles are fun, finding the secrets and exploring side areas is fun. The new game+ modes are appealing and meaningful. It has traditional backtracking like many games of similar genres, to get to items which were unreachable before, but that can now be obtained with new powers. It is much closer to the original darksiders than to darksiders 2, and in my humble opinion, this is a very good thing. The gearing system in the previous iteration of the series does not feel like it belongs in this type of game.

Better than most 2024 games.