Dark Souls III is a favourite here at RPS, but it hasn’t lit a fire in the hearts of the entire team. Recently, Alec jumped into the game, having observed the series from afar for some time, and shared his thoughts. He, Pip and Adam gathered to discuss the appeal of the series, and talked about its divergence from traditional RPG systems, the intimidation factor and the complicated nature of its much-debated difficulty.>

Adam: Dark Souls III is probably going to be in my top three games of the year, despite the thousands> of good games coming out this year. I m continually surprised to see it selling quite as well as it does though, because so many people that I recommend the series to treat those recommendations as a form of sadism.

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If I have learned anything from reading other people’s opinions about Dark Souls it’s that Dark Souls is probably a metaphor for something. But what? WHAT? There are so many conflicting opinions out there.

Well, that’s where your pal, Pip (that is me), can help. I have come up with a definitive list of ways to interpret Dark Souls correctly:

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To many, Dark Souls III [official site] can be summarised as a boss stamping on a human face forever. We’re here to help. This is a guide to killing all of the bosses in Dark Souls 3 but it’s not simply a how-to-murder manual. It also takes a look at some of the sumptuous design and the patchwork lore surrounding many of the bosses, explaining who they are, what they leave behind when they perish, and why it’s necessary to steal all of their souls. As such it’s absolutely riddled with spoilers, as well as strategies and a sprinkling of silliness.

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Dark Souls III [official site] is a superb entry in From Software’s series, and in both design and lore it feels like a fitting finale. Is it time to move on?>

One day, many years from now, when I have a family that I hang out with by way of a VR headset while in real life we all fester in our isolated cubicles, I envision my future kid coming up to me in our shared virtual space and asking Daddy, what was Dark Souls like? At this point, I d look wistfully out the virtual window at the setting sun (an illusion concealing the fact that in the real world the sun had set for the last time many years ago), and I d say:

Dark Souls, my child, wasn t like all the other games. It didn t play nice. It didn t hold your hand, or make you feel loved or important, but it was, in many ways, the purest game series of all. It ended in 2016.”

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The day that Dark Souls III [official site] arrived on Steam, the multiplayer functionality for Dark Souls I mysteriously died. No messages, no invasions, no human helpers, no ghosts, no bloodstains. Your world was no longer a vibrant place, riddled through with the lives (and deaths) of others. People spoke of deliberate closure, to cause a migration to the new game, while others thought servers had been moved from one to the other for less sinister reasons but with the same end-result.

Last night, the servers came back online, leading to much praising of the sun. But what actually caused the lights to go out in Lordran?

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Dark Souls [official site] isn’t for everyone in the same way that a bowl of piping hot broth isn’t for everyone. Let it cool for a while, add some seasoning, and people might happily tuck in and enjoy, but if you expect them to eat it exactly as you would whether that’s by chugging it down in a few swift gulps or taking tiny sips long after it’s gone cold a fair few folks would rather have a nice sandwich instead. Nothing wrong with that. Nobody should have to drink soup through a straw.

Or should they? Given the cries of ‘git gud’ that greet many complaints about the difficulty or inaccessibility of Dark Souls, it’s tempting to see those who love the series as precisely the sort of people who would chase you away from the bowl if you brought a spoon to the soup kitchen. NO SPOONS they’d shriek YOU WON’T APPRECIATE IT IF YOU DON’T GET IT ALL DOWN YOUR CHIN AND THE FRONT OF YOUR JUMPER BEFORE YOU MANAGE TO SWALLOW A MOUTHFUL

I wholly agree with these kitchen monsters.

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Ever had one of those games that you just long to get into, but can’t? There haven’t been many I’ve wanted to get into more than the Dark Souls series. To sink into the world I see people talking about on my Twitter feed. To have that sense of discovery in ash and ember. For that crumbling world to feel like something more than just a succession of traps and gauntlets. I want to like Dark Souls. I really hope Dark Souls 3 is the clicking point. But… so far, (whispers)> I’ve never managed to like Dark Souls.

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Dark Souls is the famously easy and brightly-coloured walking simulator beloved of casual gamers, and scorned by the hardcore. If you’ve long desired to frolic in its pastel fields but been unwilling to scrape together the requisite pennies, the good news is that, if you live in the EU (including UK), you can currently grab a Steam code for it for free. I know it says ‘Prepare To Die’ in the subtitle, but that’s just a typo – it’s actually ‘Prepare To Dye’, in reference to its acclaimed dressmaking minigame. … [visit site to read more]