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I've been planning to scribble a review for half a year now, but I decided to finish the game first. A brief summary of this post is here.
I played as a pyromancer; I spent the first third of the game with a katana—thankfully, there's no need to kill any more NPCs—and for the rest of the time, I mostly ran around with a Greatsword.
I think I'll start by bashing the new mechanics. Of course, I was prepared for some of this game's "features" at the moment of purchase, but that doesn't change the fact that they are shit. What's new here? First, a new spell mechanic: now we have mana. In PvE, I didn't notice much of a difference, but in PvP, magic builds have become much weaker. Overall—not the most successful innovation. Moving on, we have special skills. Well... okay, sure, but actually they aren't great either. Half are useless: I don't remember this element helping me once in PvP or PvE. Nor do I remember it helping my opponents. To top it off, most of it looks extremely pathetic: some shouting, screaming, one-second stuns, one-second balance, dancing with the wind, same-long wind-ups, constant shield lowering, and various fucked-up visual effects. Oh well, if you don't like it—don't use it. Now let's talk about something every single player will encounter: defense and balance. In the first part, armor provided very important balance and equally important protection. Wearing Havel's, damage taken was about twice as low as for "cloth-wearers," and balance allowed you to trade blows with bosses head-on. In the second part, balance was needed almost only in PvE, but defense remained proportional to weight. Everything was logical and natural. What do we have in the third part? Let's analyze an example to understand the scale of the clusterfuck: cloth gives about twenty percent resist. Havel's gives slightly more than 30, while weighing 3 times more. There is no balance in the game: playing a pyromancer in cloth but with a Greatsword, your balance isn't broken at the moment of impact. If you play in heavy armor, of course, it won't be broken either. But if you get stabbed with a dagger in Havel's set not during an attack, you'll be stun-locked. So balance doesn't depend on armor. Question: have the devs completely lost it? It seems the game mechanics department thought they were working on Bloodborne 2, not Souls 3. And finally, let's analyze another kind of balance—PvP balance. In the arena we have: a third spammers, a third with Greatswords, some percentage trying to hit-and-run with katanas, and the rest just get wrecked. Oh, where is my second part, where all opponents were completely different over 10 fights? By the way, the usable poison and bleed from the second part were also nerfed to 0.
Bottom line—all new gameplay features are either unsuccessful or disgusting. Sigh.
Since we started talking about PvP, let's talk about Multiplayer in general and covenants. The latter, having begun to degrade in the second part, plummeted into a total cesspool by the third. Minimum lore, no PvE covenants, they can be changed at any moment, and even searching for them is boring. The pathetic covenant of those who love helping blue—sorry, blue—pussies was not only kept but multiplied by two. Invasions have turned into an absolute hell. At first, it's utter darkness—because in most cases, over-leveled opponents from god knows where and how damage you (at level 15) three to four times harder, and phantoms almost always accompany them. All because the genius devs forbid an invader from having gear with a higher upgrade than the host, but for the host—there are no restrictions. Here is the best example of a low-level invasion: I invade what seems to be a novice based on equipment; he has one phantom. The host shows a very rare knowledge of etiquette for the third part, greets me and steps aside, leaving me to fight the phantom. We fight the phantom, and at the end, some blue faggot spawns and they kill me together. Reminder—this is the best of about twenty invasions at the start. Usually, two phantoms attack you immediately along with the host. It gets a bit better around Irithyll. You still fight one against two or three, but at least they are your level and have heard something about greeting gestures. At high levels, there are even good invasions with fair fights. Maybe once every ten. The majority are still gankers and blue pussies. A very sharp decline in etiquette since the second part. Of course, you'll rightly say that I'm just a scrub and a noob, and people on YouTube crush gankers by the dozens, and I might even agree to some extent, but why didn't I notice such problems in DS 1 and 2?
Bottom line—covenants are shit, invades are shit; at least there are arena fights.
But PvP is just fooling around. Maybe everything is fine with the single-player? Uh, no. Level design is normal, of course, not worse than before. Mobs are okay too. But the bosses are all too simple and too boring, and there aren't enough of them. There are 4 somewhat difficult bosses in the game, three of whom are optional. Only two of those are actually interesting; two are optional. If you plan to play, I highly recommend fighting the last boss of the Dragon Peak location; he really pleased me. But overall, the combat has changed, in my opinion, for the worse. Everything became kind of absurd, too bright, abrupt, and a new feature of some mobs—spamming 270-degree attacks... Apparently, this is how the devs tried to introduce difficulty, but it didn't really work; the game is quite simple.
So, combat is just so-so, it'll do, but worse than before. Well, compared to the previous points, that's already not bad.
But surely something justifies the price of 2000 rubles, right? Probably the lore, atmosphere, and characters, yeah?.. No. The atmosphere and visual part of the game are quite good, okay (except for various unnecessary effects and retarded shield-stowing behind the back by some bots). Characters are slightly less than completely dull, but that's only part of the problem. The problem is also that the characters aren't even new; a large part was blatantly ripped off from the first part by the devs. Considering we are now in an absolutely different time and place, this doesn't even look logical! And it certainly isn't interesting. Even Siegward's quest causes strong déjà vu, not just the NPC concept. The lore-plot was reshaped—some thrones and lords, unnecessary pathos; oh well, let's forget about that and accept it as a given. I didn't find the secret ending myself, so I didn't appreciate it, thus unfortunately I won't comment on it. But I lost at the finale: ГГ summons the keeper, she autistically sits before a fading bonfire, he looks and seems to say: "Heh, look what a great idea I had: you beat two dozen bosses to reach the flame, but of course, I'm not going to light it; trolled you, didn't I?"
Bottom line—not a single even slightly interesting NPC, everything is kind of forced and unnatural. Sigh.
But there is one more point that I personally cannot remain silent about, because I was seriously triggered by this. This is the fucking optimization. Initially, on medium-low settings, my FPS was around 20-25, which would have been fine, but often, especially in boss fights, it dropped to 12-15, and already jerky and abrupt fights turned into something unrecognizable. It also froze—properly, Japanese style—not just second-long stutters, but for five to ten seconds. I dialed settings down to the absolute minimum, messed around with the GPU—it helped. It started dropping to 15-20, average FPS was a stable 25. Now it's okay, let's play. Only the game decided otherwise and at one point crashed hard, took out my driver; I spent several hours trying to get the PC to work, then rolled back the system and dug through drivers. The PC was revived, but I quit playing DS for a long time. By the way, after this crash, absolutely everything lagged for a very long time (except the holy DS1, and various old games like Heroes 3), until I waited for a new driver release. After some time, I launched it again and even optimized the game to an average of 30-35 FPS, although in the Princes' area, for example, it dropped back to 20. For this, I had to cut the "native" resolution by one and a half times, which, as far as I'm concerned, is almost an unacceptable measure. But I'll note one nuance: on "medium," the game looks the same as on minimum. Almost; only the water differs significantly. So a microscopic improvement in FPS when messing with settings (except resolution) is quite logical. Just in case, I'll clarify that I wasn't running the game on a calculator—before DS 3, the laptop handled almost everything on max at 50-60 FPS. Also, the game has a "wonderful" camera and auto-lock—like in the first part, only worse.

Verdict: the game is total crap compared to previous parts. Everything in it is bad—except for the fact that it's still a Souls game. It's not worth two thousand at all. I bought it for about 600 and doubt it's even worth that. Maybe there will be a big discount on RC, I'll buy it and decide if the game was only bad in its original form, and with the expansion it's actually okay. Until then DS 1 > DS 2 >>> DS 3. The latter gets 3/10

Bonus: proof of the genius of the DS3 designers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvYApd_X3aU

It's funny, I put off playing the second game indefinitely because of a somewhat frustrating experience (most likely until I finish the third). Let's just say that after the remaster, I didn't really like the port, and some of the developers' design decisions seemed very questionable. Then, I got tilted by a random invader who just one-shotted me. I read about how Soul Memory works and came to the conclusion that such a system primarily benefits griefers. As a player who was experiencing the game for the first time and who was losing/spending these souls on unnecessary things, I had no chance at all; my "skill" didn't matter. I felt a strong sense of déjà vu from my experiences in various MMORPGs where high-level players ganked low-level players, and I decided, "Okay, I'll play it another time." I started playing the third game, and I haven't finished it yet, but I'll share my impressions so far. First, I was disgusted by the mechanics. I didn't like anything they did with the combat; it felt like the developers were trying to make the game "difficult" for the sake of difficulty, completely ignoring the authenticity that was present in the first game, for example. A third of the mobs can't be stunned by attacks, and almost all of their attacks are circular and have a huge hit box. But that's okay; what bothered me the most was the auto-targeting of their attacks. It's impossible to move out of the trajectory of their attacks, and the only options are to either rely on the i-frames of rolls or run as far away as possible. The peak of this absurdity, I realized when I understood that even crossbow bolts and arrows auto-target the player after being fired – that is, they change their trajectory in flight, like heat-seeking missiles, lol. Second, as Alex mentioned above, there's the issue with the NPCs. For me, they all feel like tasteless and pointless fan service. And third, the world looks too generic.

I read about how Soul Memory works and came to the conclusion that this system primarily benefits griefers. As a player going through the game for the first time, who lost/spent these souls on unnecessary things, I had no chance at all; my "skill" didn't matter.

Actually, this is only true in the first few locations. Later on, everything is fine, and you can even start invading yourself. Remembering Soul Sacrifice 3, the Soul Memory mechanic was perhaps quite successful. In the later levels and in the DLC, the balance is close to perfect.

Almost all of their attacks are circular and have a huge hit box. But that's not even the worst part; what bothers me the most is the auto-targeting of their attacks. It's impossible to move out of the trajectory of their attacks, and the only options are either to rely on the i-frames of rolls or to move as far away as possible. The peak of this absurdity, I realized when I understood that even crossbow bolts and arrows auto-target the player after being fired – that is, they change their trajectory in flight, like heat-seeking missiles, lol.

I also noticed this, but I attributed it more to lag. I solved all the problems with mindless rolls backward, and it worked great, so the developers didn't even achieve the intended difficulty. We are fighting not with mobs, but with lag, roll delay, and a terrible camera. And the most difficult enemies and bosses are those that put the most strain on the system and those that disrupt the auto-aim with flight/teleportation.

The invasion turned into a complete nightmare.

Haha, serves you right!

But overall, it's an interesting review, Alex, thanks.

and then I got tilted by a random invader who just one-shotted me

When playing DS2, I would turn off the internet because I already knew what to expect, based on reviews. It's an obvious measure.

A couple of guys just invaded me in the giants’ forest in DS2. The first one left after 15 seconds, and the second one, a bald man with no clothes or weapons, saw my fight with three mobs and jumped into the sea.

Added 1 minute ago
And a few months ago, again at the very beginning, some friendly guy invaded, ran after me, and applauded when I beat up the mobs by parrying.

apparently, Aldric is some kind of...

I didn't like absolutely everything they did with the combat – it felt like the developers were trying to make the game "difficult" for the sake of difficulty, completely ignoring the authenticity that was present in, for example, the first game.

On the contrary, it seemed casual to me. After playing through it several times and trying out different builds, the third game didn't surprise me at all. You walk around the mob on the side and hit it, and it just stands there and turns around like a dummy. You repeat this in every part. This is the essence of a very interesting, hardcore, and authentic combat system.

If you decide to play, I highly recommend fighting the last boss in the Peak of Dragons location; he really impressed me.

I actually dropped the game after that. I played through almost everything up to the credits (as I believe), and then I went to fight that guy. I ran around, died a few times, and then I quit and never went back; there was no motivation to even finish the main storyline.
What I disliked the most was the dull world. I've never cared much about the "plot": some campfires, kings, rogues, and various items, knights who are not clearly different from each other, NPCs spouting two incredibly important and interesting lines – it's not that I'm not a fan of this format, but if it doesn't come to me, I won't bother sweating and delving into it. But the world itself – graphically and in terms of level design – is completely gray and uninteresting. Besides the villagers (sort of cool-looking, but ultimately still dull) and the centipede-like creatures, nothing else really stood out. Oh, and there were also creepy giant crabs.

However, I also dropped the first game at one point, after playing quite a bit. Again, I just didn't have the motivation to continue at some point – I had already explored everything many times over. I played one build, passed the initial learning curve, ran around the shortcuts, died on the bosses = I played it all. There's nothing left to learn, and it won't be interesting anymore. In this regard, I think I was lucky that I started with the second game – it seemed to have a special, cozy atmosphere, not least because of the nice hub, which the other two games can't boast.
And then you want to play the other parts and relive those feelings, but it doesn't work anymore because the concept is one-time. You sit there without much satisfaction, with a face like this:

DARK SOULS III

In short, this is a drop. The main reasons were discussed or mentioned above.
For a couple of days, I couldn't beat the God-Eater™, but today I logged in and defeated him on the first try without even trying. Did I get any emotions from passing a stage of the game that I couldn't pass for quite a long time in game terms? No, none at all. Or maybe I became a better player, since I managed to defeat an opponent that I couldn't defeat before? No, I just got lucky with good rolls and the boss's attack RNG. Well, okay, let's keep playing, I thought. But the game decided a little differently. After this boss, no new locations were opened, and I was immediately teleported to yet another boss - the dancer. I died a couple of times on him and decided that's it, enough. I got tired of pressing the spacebar in absolutely identical battles for several dozen hours.
4/10, worse than even the clone of Dark Souls that I talked about earlier. You can play it once if you have nothing else to do and if you have enough patience.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

As I mentioned earlier, after my first experience with this installment, I decided to put it aside for a while and started playing the third game. Some might find this a strange decision, while others might say that I did the right thing, as the first and third games are excellent, while the second is just a mediocre product. However, I believe that I made the right choice and can now laugh at those haters without any guilt. First of all, after playing the third game, I returned to the second with great relief. It turned out to be much better in terms of gameplay, levels, and mechanics than the third, and the contrast is simply incredible. After playing the first game, I didn't like the port and some of the changes, but thanks to the third game, I realized that it was just a matter of getting used to it. As funny as it may sound, I actually chose the same build that the terrible third game forced me to use – I played in light armor and relied primarily on rolls (I abandoned my first mage character). But here, fortunately, they were implemented properly, and besides, it was quite possible to use skillful character movements in the right directions; there were no 360-degree auto-aims for every mob and boss.
I completed 100% of the game with the starting scimitar.

Initially, I wanted to play as a dual-wielding character, but as the game progressed, I upgraded the scimitar, and there were no other worthy weapons to use in the other hand, which made it simply easier for me to use it with both hands. Hey, at least it wasn't a katana again!

I wore this set for almost the entire game simply because it was relatively light and looked good (lol).

I used the regular longbow for the first half of the game, while I started using the hunter's bow actively in the final part. It was with it that I easily peppered Nashandra and the Song Demon with arrows. Besides, it turned out to be incredibly useful to me in the Shrine of Amana. I would have simply gotten tired of going through it with melee combat.

This is the only shield that I "used" – I kept it on my back for increased stamina regeneration lol. I actually never understood how effective it was and whether it even worked that way, but never mind, I still stayed below 30% equipment load.

Of the rings, I will highlight only this one; I wish there were more like it in all the games where you can fall and take damage.
I want to play as a pyromancer or mage sometime, but for now, I'm a little tired of Souls, so I'll do it another time. Plus, I need to somehow transfer a couple of items to a new character, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet.
8.5/10
In some ways, it's worse than Dark Souls 1, in some ways it's better, but overall, I agree with Alex: 1 > 2 > 3.

I easily took down Nashandra and the Song Demon with arrows.

They die on the first try anyway.
I played as a "tin can" build, ending up with a shield, a Gatsone Dildao (I think only the club of some boss was bigger, but its moveset is really bad), and an Avelyn (I barely shot with it, just for the "cancer" build), as the ultimate character. It was great - you walk around and one-shot everything, and especially in the Temple, when you stubbornly charge under fire as an angry dwarf to punish the annoying jerk. Then I read online about constant complaints from all sorts of laser katana-rapier guys about everything. And towards the end of the game, I suddenly learned that the Covenant I joined for fun at the start of the game buffed the strength of the mobs. I was too lazy to Google it at that moment, and I wasn't sure yet if I would drop the game.

Added 1 hour 23 minutes ago


A strange spin-off of the Reimi Empire, and completely unexpected. After the harsh cliffhanger of the third game, a resolution was expected, but instead, you are thrown into an underdeveloped, semi-medieval setting about barbarians and knights. I'd rather swing 765 clubs.
The generator seemed diverse, but I didn't feel much interest in digging into it. I picked the Immortal race (a nice balance in a roguelike) and created a half-support, half-dialogue character as best as I could, based on aesthetics. I immediately sighed because now they were forcing a fixed party and a billion of all sorts of hardcore themes. Some taxes, base building, reputation, crafting. I just wanted to run through quests for an hour. It seems interesting and diverse, but I'm not a fan of these themes in roguelikes. Fortunately, they don't force it on you, and you can immediately hand over control to allies. Well, someone might enjoy it.
The level design is a bit sparse; the "cities" of the barbarians are just three houses, which looks rather pathetic after the previous part (where you could easily wander around one city for a whole month), but as I understand it, this is compensated by non-linearity and your own base-hub. But again, since I didn't build or craft much there, it was meh.
The quests are tough, with battles of several dozen people - the developers decided to change the format again. My build couldn't handle it at all, but my teammates were killing mobs in packs. Maybe I just generated a bad build, or maybe the balance is like that. However, nothing new - it's like that in all parts, there were always exploits, and this is probably part of the fun. The combat is again for those who like to mess around; on the one hand, it's cool to command a bunch of guys, but I liked the compact tactics from 1 and 3 more. Even solo in the second game, I liked it more; it didn't overload and I didn't have to sit for three hours. Again, it's good that allies can act independently, and even better than I would.
The presentation is somehow strange; sometimes you have battles and quests, and everything seems to be frozen in place, and then suddenly %%boom%%. Honestly, there was one moment that could have given me a serious scare if I had tried to play for perfection or had picked a different race. But I was suddenly lucky, and I ended up with some kind of ending, I don't know, neutral. Maybe I could have replayed something differently.
Something like that. The old setting didn't appeal to me, although there were some cool themes in it; crafting, economy, combat - just for strategy fans. The non-linearity is cool, but it's very complex - for replaying and grinding. In short, somewhere around a six. Plus a couple of points for the development of various themes and non-linearity, and another one for the increased challenge, but minus a point because it's not quite my content, and another minus for the setting.

Oh yes, - I also laughed at the super-boss of one of the barbarian clans, who flew away with one hit.

It’s good enough for a free DLS!

with a single hit

Sorry, SLAPS.

It's good enough for a free DLC!

If it were paid, I would think that the developers decided to make a little extra money off the hype surrounding this spin-off. But as it is, they released experimental content. Some of the elements have appeared before in other series.

I hope the developers are reading these reviews and will take the information in them into account.

Doki Doki Literature Club!
Not the most exciting visual novel I've read, but I can't help but note how great, subtle, and unique it was in terms of storytelling.

8/10. Sky, Ment – don't play it.

God bless Japan!