A Walk in the Undead Park
The demo took place in a region called the Wall of Lodeleth, a sprawling castle town filled with insane undead congregants, hulking stone dragons, and murderous knights. The wall of Lodeleth is similar in scale and structure to the Undead Burg from the original Dark Souls. The level layout, enemy design, and overall architecture are unique to Dark Souls III, but the area had a familiarity to it that fans of the original game will no doubt recognize.
The level is strewn with items and weapons to pick up. Most items found were consumable weapons, such as firebombs and throwing knives. There was no inventory menu in the demo, so these items were immediately placed into your item bar when collected. The few weapons you could find were also immediately placed in your weapon slots. This allowed you to have three weapons equipped at once like in Dark Souls II, but it is unclear if this will carry over to the final game.
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| The great sword is slow but devastatingly powerful, capable of stunning large or armored enemies. Its battle art stance is a lunge, which moves you into position for a powerful sweep or uppercut. |
You could choose between two classes in the demo: a knight and a northern warrior. The knight is an armored character equipped with a kite shield and a long sword. The northern warrior wore chain/cloth armor, and wielded a bandit axe and leather shield. Both characters had the same movement speed and rolling animations, so the only major differences between the two were their starting weapons.
Magic was not available for use in the demo. One enemy, a glaive-wielding fat knight, could summon light pillars in a style similar to the heavenly thunder spell from Dark Souls II. Another enemy, a giant crawling knight, fought with an enchanted blade that inflicted a status effect called frostbite. The effects of this status effect were unclear. Unfortunately, the demo was very melee-oriented, so how these sorceries tie to the player's repertoire is unknown as of yet.
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| The armored beast is a hulking, knight-like monster that walks on four legs. A sword-wielding version was present in the demo, which inflicted a bizarre new status effect called frostbite. |
Evolution and Compromise
The basic controls in Dark Souls III are exactly as they have in previous games. If you have any familiarity with the Souls games, you will have no trouble acclimating yourself to Dark Souls III. The square button uses consumable items. Circle performs an evasive dodge. X is the confirm and interact button. Triangle shifts between one-handed and two-handed fighting styles. The shoulder buttons correspond to your left and right-handed weaponry. L1 and L2 are your light and heavy left-hand attacks, while R1 and R2 are your right hand attacks. You can now charge your R2 attacks by holding the button briefly, which is the only real change to the basic controls.
The technical mechanics are what make Dark Souls III stand out. The revised backstab element, redesigned defense, and the new battle art system all streamline the gameplay from both Dark Souls games, while also introducing elements from Bloodborne.
Backstab attacks work almost exactly as they did in the first Dark Souls. Attacking a humanoid enemy in the back initiates a flashy stab animation, which deals critical damage and knocks your victim onto the ground. This attack is instantaneous; if you are positioned correctly, you will immediately backstab when you attack. This differs from Dark Souls II, which made backstabs a two-stage attack. The first part of the attack was an actual, physical blow, which could potentially miss a fast-moving opponent. Only when this strike connected would the backstab animation follow.
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| The legion scimitars are a pair of blades wielded as one. When two handing, your left-hand attacks perform sweeping combo attacks with both weapons. Against an unarmored enemy, these slashes are vicious. |
The change in backstabs from Dark Souls to Dark Souls II was made to better accommodate the multiplayer PvP. The instantaneous backstab system of the original game could result in some sill-looking combat whenever online latency became an issue. Much of the PvP metagame revolved around abusing or avoiding the system. Making backstabs a physical strike in Dark Souls II alleviated much of the abuse because of its potential to miss. How PvP in Dark Souls III plays out as a result of this change is still unknown, as there was no multiplayer in the demo at all to experiment with.
Defense works as it did in the original Dark Souls. When armed with a shield, holding L1 lets you block frontal attacks. L2 will perform a shield slap. When timed correctly, this will parry incoming melee attacks, opening your opponent to a powerful riposte. Like backstabs, the parry window is active the instant you tap L2, though the timing is still fairly strict. Enemies no longer fall over when parried like in Dark Souls II, so you can immediately follow with a riposte instead of having to wait for them to hit the ground.
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| The bulk of your opposition comes from the undead hollows that haunt the wall of Lodeleth. These human husks are armed with a wide variety of weapons and armor, making each encounter with them unique and highly dangerous. |
Kicking makes its return in Dark Souls III. Kicking does not do damage, but knocks an enemy off balance and depletes stamina when used against a shielded opponent. An enemy's guard will break if all of their stamina is depleted. Like in Dark Souls II, a guard-broken enemy is vulnerable to a free riposte attack.
Dark Souls III limits what you can parry with, which feels like a step back. In Dark Souls II, you could block and parry with most weapons and shields. The timing varied wildly based on the weapon you had equipped, but you could effectively parry at any given time. Dark Souls III restricts parrying to small shields exclusively. Targes and bucklers have a shield icon next to their weapon artwork. This symbol indicates that the shield can parry with L2. Larger shields, like the kite shield the knight character is armed with, feature a sword icon instead. They can only be used to block, and pressing L2 will initiate a mechanic unique to Dark Souls III called battle arts.
The Art of War
Battle arts can be performed by holding L2 while two-handing a weapon, or when armed with a shield with a sword icon. Battle arts are a hybridization of the weapon transformations from Bloodborne and the dual wielding combat from Dark Souls II. When holding L2, you will enter a special stance that modifies your basic attacks. With the long sword, for example, your basic R1 slash is replaced with a powerful lunging thrust. Your R2 attack is replaced with a heavy uppercut.
Unlike weapon transformation or dual wielding, battle arts have a limited number of uses, similar to spell charges from previous games. A counter underneath the stamina gauge shows how many battle arts you have remaining. The demo gives you twenty charges, and each battle art attack consumes one point from this counter. You can continue to use these skills when the counter is depleted, but the attacks are considerably weaker than they would be normally. Like spells and healing flasks, the battle art counter is replenished by resting at a bonfire checkpoint.
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| Holding the battle art button with a long sword puts you in a unique battle stance. From this stance you can initiate a powerful thrust, or a fierce vertical blow. Unlike the great sword, you can move and circle enemies while in battle art stance. |
The demo featured two alternate weapons hidden within the level. The great sword used a move set identical to the zweihänder from the first Dark Souls. Its R1 attacks were wide-sweeping blows, and the R2 attack was a heavy slam. Its battle arts include a wrenching swing and a launching uppercut. Unlike the long sword, which had a proper battle art stance, pressing L2 with the great sword resulted in a lunge. Pressing R1 or R2 during this lunge initiated the battle art.
The legion scimitars were the second weapon in the demo. They are a pair of blades, but work as a single weapon. When one-handing the weapon, you would only use one scimitar, which had a move set similar to that of curved swords in past games. Two handing would draw the second blade. R1 and R2 still corresponded to the right-hand blade, but L1 and L2 were battle art attacks, which result in a flurry of spinning slashes.
Aside from the legion scimitars, there was no dual-wield function in the demo. In Dark Souls II, pressing and holding the triangle button let you to dual wield the weapon in your left hand, which created some new and interesting attack combinations. If you had a shield equipped in your left hand, holding triangle would allow you to two-hand it, which strengthened your defense. The Dark Souls III demo had no such mechanic. The shield categorization and scimitar design suggests that the dual wielding will be restricted to specific weapons this time around.
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| The dancer is the final boss in the demo. Her peculiar swirling attacks and hunched posture make her very difficult to read. Blocking her attacks is the safest strategy, but her fiery weapon enchantments will chip away at your health. |
Ushering a New Dark Adventure
Dark Souls III feels like a more expansive version of the original Dark Souls. Combat is fast, rewarding, and brutally demanding. The lack of a proper dual-wielding system is disappointing, but battle arts do a good job of enhancing your offensive capabilities. Multiplayer combat is still a very big mystery, so it is unclear how the changes to backstabbing and parrying will play out in the long run. Nonetheless, Dark Souls III is rife with improvements, offering a tightly interconnected world filled to bursting with fantastic landmarks to explore, and grotesque challenges to overcome. It is scheduled for release on PS4, Xbox One and PC early 2016.
Game Pros/Cons:
- Pros: Gorgeous visuals and fluid animations. Vast, interconnected level design. Subtly improves combat mechanics from previous games.
- Cons: Weapon parrying is no longer possible. Dual wielding is largely absent. Backstab attacks are instant, exposing PvP to balance issues in the future.
Our Final Verdict: Dark Souls III emulates the world and game style from the original game, but draws elements from Dark Souls II and Bloodborne, to create a gripping and highly polished dark fantasy adventure.