Dingy Pals Tres.

Dingy Pals Tres.

Dark Souls III didn't like me, and initially I didn't like it. It felt a lot like the oppressive overworked middle school teacher who would yell at you to have fun on field trips. Somewhat similar to a fascist regime I thought to myself, as I romanticized my failure to grasp the games concepts. It wasn't til later on; when I was about half way through the game when I started making that a positive link. Stating that the game would kick your teeth in and fitting them back into your gums was genuinely fun. Not quite, as that's not the greatest analogy. Hours of playtime before that I refunded it. Two minutes before I overshot the Steam refund limit.

That's right, for the first two hours I couldn't muster the capabilities to defeat my mortal enemy (at the time) Iudex Gundyr. No, his halberd far too strong for my tastes, moveset too unpredictable to the new player that I was. I admit, I went in with high expectations thinking I could pick it up and power through. Now with a 64 hour gametime and only one Journey completed my original estimate is one of ego and rumors.

At the time of refund I was using a mouse and keyboard, and would later realize that this was taking a game that should be sitting up there with Half-Life 2 and it's compatriots (Sorry Half-Life, didn't like you as much) and taking it down to a level where I was essentially trying to play Starcraft 2 on the Commodor64 without a floppy disc to actually play the game. In short, it really, really, really, didn't work out well.

After much nudging and pushing and stares aimed at the 80% positive review bar I eventually took the same refunded 60$ and got the game. Again. At full price. I also decided to be really adventurous and got the Steam Controller on whim/suggestion, as all my previous experiences with X-Box and PlayStation controllers had left me with PTSD comparable to Bastion of Overwatch.

The doors to the game (and the ones right after the Iudex bonfire) opened up and all of a sudden the game wasn't so much a grind to beat a 'level', but a functional world that didn't care if you were picking up eagle shields or invading. I was just another undead wandering around killing other undead (Pretty damn rude now that I think about it). The controller did a lot, bridging the gap between my keyboard fetish and my controller PTSD to create a working, dare I say, fun, Dark Souls III experience.

But for those who (like me at the start of this endeavor) are unfamiliar with the Souls series it's not so much instant fun as the modern day shooters that fail to impress, (That, in my opinion, barely stand up to the original Halo 1 Demo and the holy land of BloodGulch). It's a rhythmic process, akin to learning how to play an instrument. You're going to fuck up, and once you accept that the world doesn't actually give a damn about you fucking up, you'll get along nicely with the plethora of surprisingly agile corpses and fauna of Lothric that inhabit it's various nooks and crannies.

Only later on did I discover the far more dynamic magical but not so magic-user friendly land of PVP. It's an interesting system to say the least. Rather than joining your buddy pals through steam or your buddy not so good pals I'd rather stab you then shake hands through a server browser you're lore bound to the world. Forced to use it's really poorly explained soapstone system that's got it's quirks but gets the job done and doesn't remove the immersion that the game so desperately strives for. The only thing that might do that would be the Estoc, but new players will figure that out pretty quickly.

But to get back on course, PVP took everything I knew about Dark Souls III and once more kicked my teeth and, but instead of telling me to have fun repeatedly learning a new area it told me to quite simply: “Git gud”. The words all those who praise the sun or otherwise take to heart when scrounging for the embers of a host.

Instead of the undead teaching me these new ways it was close friends and companions, or the ever knowledgeable land of Youtube, who through countless parry montages taught me the way of parrying (Of which I still cannot perform).

It's a mean world that you'll need to lick the boots of before understanding that those boots don't increase your hidden poise stat. The PvE is hard, and a hell of a lot easier with friends or even random summons; they can at least get you back to your souls. And the PvP is another beast entirely, something to be feared and respected. Oh, and by chance you've read this far, don't use the curved sword or the estoc. It's just rude. -Triiodine.