Dark Souls III + Ashes of Ariandel DLC Review
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The occasional callback can also be bizarre, in that it can highlight how the series never seemed to hit the same atmosphere again. I'm talking about Irithyll Dungeon, which comes immediately after the game's most inspired area (Irithyll of the Boreal Valley) and apes the starting area of the Tower of Latria of Demon's Souls. It lacks the same thoughtful enemy placement, and while it intersects with the Profaned Capital in interesting ways, it has a weaker layout than its inspiration and replaces its dreadful atmosphere with cheap jump scares. If I were more critical I'd call it a dud, but there are still enough strange enemy designs and secrets to discover that it's hard for me to write off the area entirely.
Given I mentioned enemy placement, it's worth noting that the enemies in the game are generally thoughtfully placed and fun to fight. Dark Souls III features a varied roster that encompasses all manners of humanoids and monstrosities, with complex behaviours and characteristics. Some have stances that mirror the player's own weapon Skills, some rile up other enemies in the area, some are suicidal and will do anything to destroy the player character, and those are all enemy types that can be met in the first third of the game. Players who found Dark Souls II to be excessive in terms of aggression and numbers will likely be similarly dissatisfied by certain areas of Dark Souls III, such as the beautifully constructed Cathedral of the Deep, but I found the encounter design to be fair and far from repetitive. With the exception of a few grab attacks and a few attacks that will probably be avoided anyway thanks to the generous invincibility frames, hitboxes seem generally as fair as the encounter design, which is important given bonfires are less plentiful and the enemies never despawn, unlike Dark Souls II.
Finally, the bosses of the game are some of the best in the series, but the entire roster lacks a certain amount of variety that made the other games feel more surprising and inventive. This is a complicated subject to broach, and to avoid seeming too negative, I'm going to be clear in that I think the vast majority of the bosses in Dark Souls III is fantastic. Bosses such as Pontiff Sulyvahn and the Dancer of the Boreal Valley are incredibly fun to fight, with complex movesets, high but varied modes of aggression, and surprising gimmicks and tricks. However the problem is that, as varied as they are, almost every single boss is a high-aggression killing machine with an enraged second phase, with perhaps the exceptions of Crystal Sage, which few people would consider a highlight, and a couple of bosses that are trivialized by their gimmicks and far too boring to fight legitimately. With a relatively small roster of bosses, it's easy to see why From Software went in this direction, but I really wish there was more space for slightly slower and perhaps less melee-oriented fights. All that said, Dark Souls III still features several fights that would end up on an hypothetical "Top 10 Bosses of the Souls Franchise" article from me, so I'd say it does pretty well in that department.
Online Gameplay
There really isn't much to say about Dark Souls III's online interactions that hasn't already been said for the other games. Essentially, there are a few ways that allow for players to interact online. First of all, players can drop messages, made of preset sentences, nouns and ghostly gestures, to inform or trick other players. This has been a staple since Demon's Souls, and the feature serves exactly the same purpose in Dark Souls III.
Secondly, players can drop summon signs to be summoned by other players for co-operative play. As spirits, players can then help other players fend off enemies, discover secrets, and defeat bosses, and obtain rewards for the effort. Defeating bosses is indeed the final goal for every summon, as Dark Souls III dropped the short, time-limited Small White Soapstone signs that Dark Souls II introduced. I miss them, but it's a small detail in a complicated web of systems. It's possible to summon up to two players normally, and an additional third by using a consumable that also raises the number of possible invaders.
Invaders have always been a subject of contention for some Dark Souls players. They are, as the name implies, other players that can drop into another world to kill its host, in the guise of dark spirits. They are limited to players that have opened themselves to direct online play by using an Ember (an item that also significantly boost HP until death), but can face significant obstacles, in the form of either additional help on the host's side, or simply the race against time of getting the drop on a host before they cross a fog gate to a boss.
These interactions are slightly complicated by the return of covenants, guilds of sorts that can be joined to play a role online. The Warriors of Sunlight covenant, for example, indulges in co-operation and gets rewarded for helping a player defeat a boss. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the covenant roster is lackluster. Way of Blue provides protection from invasions that players will probably never need, simply opting instead to never use Embers (or only use them immediately before boss fights). The Blue Sentinels and the Blades of the Darkmoon hunt invaders, though the netcode for these two covenants seems to be either incredibly tempermental or just downright broken. Mound-makers are an interesting addition, as they can help or antagonize a player depending on their whim, but they are rewarded only for kills, making their intentions easy to predict for anyone with the slightest experience in the game. Finally, the Watchdogs of Farron and Aldrich Faithful are summoned to protect certain areas from players, covering essentially the same design space.
It's a disappointing regression from Dark Souls II, which offered covenant-specific arenas and interesting (if certainly flawed) gimmicks such as the Rat King covenant, members of which could summon unsuspecting players to their personal trap-filled playground, while also shouldering all the risk of the possible battle. The lack of gimmicks and interesting gameplay opportunities could be excused if the covenant of the game at least were deeply intertwined with the game's lore, but dialogue is essentially non-existent (most covenants don't even have a covenant leader to converse with) and the suggestions in terms of story and writing are weak at best, when not totally inconsequential.
