Dark Souls III

By the time Dark Souls III arrived in 2016, FromSoftware had already defined an entire genre twice over — once with the original Dark Souls, once again by proving it wasn't a fluke with Dark Souls II. The third entry had the hardest job of the three: close out a trilogy that had already been thoroughly analysed, memed, and imitated, without simply repeating what came before. It manages that by doing the thing that sounds simplest and is actually hardest — taking everything the series does well and making it faster, without losing the weight that made it matter in the first place.

Faster, not lighter

Combat in Dark Souls III moves with noticeably more aggression than its predecessors, both from enemies and from the player character's own moveset. That speed increase could easily have undercut the series' deliberate, punishing rhythm — go too fast and a Souls game stops feeling like a Souls game — but it doesn't. Every exchange still demands the same reading of an enemy's timing and commitment to your own attacks that the series built its reputation on; it's just happening at a pace that finally matches how aggressive the world around you has become.

Bosses built to be remembered

This is where Dark Souls III arguably peaks hardest. Colossal, genuinely varied boss encounters sit among the best the series has ever produced, and the scale is matched by attack patterns that keep demanding you actually learn a fight rather than out-level it. Some of these encounters are rightly held up as high points not just for this game but for the action RPG genre as a whole.

A world that tells its story without telling you

FromSoftware's environmental storytelling is in full form here — item descriptions, level architecture, and where NPCs choose to stand all build a coherent, tragic sense of a dying world without ever resorting to a cutscene explaining it to you. It's a technique the series pioneered and Dark Souls III executes with the confidence of a studio that's spent two prior games refining exactly how much to leave unsaid. The soundtrack backs this up by understanding restraint — silence carries as much weight as the score does, and music arrives specifically for the moments that have earned it.

What hasn't softened

None of this comes with an easier on-ramp. The difficulty here is the same uncompromising demand the series has always made, just delivered faster, and anyone hoping this entry would be the gentler introduction to Souls games will find it isn't. Full price is steep for a game approaching its tenth anniversary — this is very much a "wait for a sale" purchase unless you want it today specifically. And while build variety is genuinely deep, getting real value out of experimentation still rewards already understanding the underlying systems, which is as true here as it's always been in this series.

Final verdict

Dark Souls III is widely and, on replay, still convincingly regarded as the most polished entry in the original trilogy — faster combat that never loses its weight, some of the series' best boss design, and environmental storytelling that remains a genre benchmark a decade later. Very Positive reception from over a hundred thousand reviews, nearly a decade after release, isn't nostalgia talking; it's a game that has simply held up.

Nine and a half reflects a game with vanishingly few real weaknesses for what it's trying to be — the difficulty is the point, not a flaw, and everything built around that difficulty is close to as good as this genre gets.

Price checked 30 July 2026.

If you want that same sense of a world worth reading between the lines, without the boss fights that can end a run in three hits, Wanderer tells its story at a much gentler pace.