Justin Wood

I'm trying very hard to enjoy this game but I find it incredibly difficult. I keep coming back and giving it another chance but it just falls so ridiculously short. Coming from a background that enjoys and respects more punishing gameplay I see where they were going, but the difficulty seems to rely on way too heavily on the user after cranking enemy tracking and damage. The dodge being my biggest gripe. What used to be a great way of getting around three enemies at once now let's you dodge one just to be hit by the other two and stacked unless you get lucky enough for them all to strike at once, but waiting for that opportunity gets you killed, making 1v1 combat a joke, and anything more a sweat production. Let's compare the first level of 2 and 3. DS2 features a great segway into the combat with a few enemies in a controlled environment that still allows an open field to fight, the fodder enemies are just that, beyond that a typical "first boss" to get you used to timing. With a bit of finesse it can easily be done without getting hit if you have experience gaming. DS3 features slightly open environs with immovable obstacles splayed out unharmoniously. The fodder enemies have ridiculous tracking, if one is in range no matter how you maneuver, you will get hit if you don't dodge which sounds good in text but in practice it means even the weakest enemies make you strategize to single them out. Not very typical for how these types of games play, and I feel how immensely out of place it is. The first boss fight is simple enough, it pontificates how important surgical precision and split second timing will be, but the stages of the fight do nothing more than increase the attackers pace. Altogether it's a very clunky feeling game that if you try to enjoy as the hack and slash game it should be, you are going to have a bad time. They went for a souls like game with wandering enemies that can allow you to be ambushed by being unlucky enough to cross paths near other camps of enemies, which shouldn't be a problem but the games reliance on a very clunky dodge mechanic mixed with perfect precision on enemies means that you are almost guaranteed to be hit, stunned on hit, and locked into massive damage by enemies that die in two hits anyways. I opted for three stars because the story seems great and I haven't made it very far in, yet I'm still massively disappointed with how the game plays in your hands. Dark souls plays well because of simple mechanics you have to learn, this feels choppy, slow, and outright NOT what you'd expect from a darksiders title.