While revisiting the first two Darksiders games late last year in their remastered editions I was planning to get into the third title the day of release. I actually had it pre-ordered, something I rarely do, back then and had high hopes for the game. Then the reviews hit and I, for the first time ever, withdrew my pre-order and decided to revisit the title after patches and DLCs hit. Well, that happened and the current version of Darksiders III is supposedly the most complete it will ever get. A game I wouldn’t recommend to anyone.
What I always admired about Darksiders, even if I was never a huge fan of both the original and the sequel, was how they freely borrowed things from other games and made them work in new interesting ways. The visual design of lots of locations, concepts and characters was painfully reminiscent of my beloved Legacy of Kain games, yet was different and unique at the same time. First game borrowed concepts from God of War, from Zelda, from Portal of all things and other titles and made them work in an action adventure in an interesting, if not always great, way. Second felt like an inventive evolution of your typical Diablo-like loot-focused action RPGs, mixing in the cool traversal and puzzles and usual action adventure features to the huge open world full of items and treasures to find and ways to increase the damage numbers. Darksiders III decided to base its ideas on the so called “Souls-likes“, with somewhat slower pace, more methodical approach to hack and slash and higher risk gameplay. And this time the franchise failed to make it good.
Conceptually it almost fits. I mean, the combat in the series was always more challenging and involved than in the similar Zelda-inspired titles and the first game had a huge emphasis on parrying, while the second on dodging. So theoretically it should be possible to make all attacks feel more deliberate and “punish” people who mash buttons, while keeping the pace and controls of the original titles intact. And while you go through the tutorial area of the game it does feel like it works. The damage for you and enemies feels balanced, the attacks and animations, the way you can or cannot interrupt them or enemies, the movement speed, the responsiveness, the camera – it all feels if not perfect, but pretty good. But the illusion collapses pretty soon afterwards. Very soon after you kill your intro boss, you realize that every time you get into an area with any number of enemies more than 2 or 3, especially when there’s anything preventing you from having a comfortable camera angle (which is most of the time), you can very easily get overwhelmed and killed off.
And it seems that the developers realized that it’s not working. From the start there were “danger incoming” arrows available to show enemies off-screen, which feels like the most stupid crutch I’ve ever seen in any hack and slash game in my life (especially since it doesn’t seem like the off-screen enemy AI is affected in any way, unlike what most titles of the sort tend to do subtly). And soon after release a “classic” mode of combat controls became available and if you ever make a bad decision of playing the game for yourself, you should just enable it from the start. What the mode does is makes more of your attacks instantly interruptable via dodge, makes item usage far less annoying and also seems to affect your stun times. Does it fix the frustrating combat system? No. Does it make it less annoying to go through? Yes.
But the baffling decisions don’t stop on this. Borrowing further from “Souls-likes”, there’s no map in the game while the world, honestly, doesn’t feel “readable” enough to warrant that. I’m usually very good at connecting the dots in game worlds built on Metroidvania or Zelda-inspired template, but the world in Darksiders III remained disjointed in my head until almost very end, and even then I still can’t figure out what’s where when it comes to some of the locations. But you do get a completely useless “compass” the shows the directions to the next boss.
You also get the “Souls” concept and the leveling up twisted more to resemble the “Souls” games. The concepts in the previous titles were more based on Onimusha or God of War, and in the second title changed to resemble Diablo-like concepts more. Here, though, you get souls as a currency for items and leveling the 3 stats up. And you lose all your souls upon dying, of course, and need to get them again after respawning at a Vulgrim’s checkpoint, of course, and most of the items that you find everywhere are, of course, the souls in an item form which you can break and get souls from within. Of course. It doesn’t really work, mostly due to how hilariously insignificant any stat upgrade feels. After the first initial 10 levels, which are pitiful, but at least somewhat meaningful, each stat levels up at such small percentages that they never feel like they matter at all. Here’s +15 hp at the endgame, when every missed hit will cost you hundreds of hp lost. Oh and here’s +3% to your attack power, enjoy those 6 extra points of damage! Oh and (of course) the healing is based on Dark Souls too, and DkS II of all of them, except refilling your “flask” happens at random and you can’t affect it in any way apart from an enhancement you can put in your weapon that is available pretty late game. Of course.
The only thing that absolutely shines in the game is the visual side. It’s usually pointless to talk about visuals in modern titles, but the style of the Darksiders games is still great and the developers used Unreal Engine 4 to make it look absolutely stunning at times. The world, as annoying as it is to explore since there are barely any traversal puzzles or any puzzles at all, is a joy to behold. Though even this is marred by the fact that the streaming of said world is often visible as white pop-in on the screen borders as you move the camera. This happens on all platforms the game is on and while it has been lessened in patches it still looks distracting.
And it’s also a huge shame that the story in the game are just terrible. Writing in Darksiders has always been a weak point, given how awesome the world the developers created is, but this is so far the lowest point of the franchise. The story itself has no meaningful impact on the overall storyline with only two “big” hints at the bigger picture hinted on in the first game. And unlike the second title, this side-story doesn’t really expand the universe or tell anything that feels important at all, while Fury herself is a terribly one-note character who occasionally says things that seem coming completely out of nowhere. Every time anyone opens their mouths in this game, in general, you often wish them to shut up while every time game attempts to do a one-liner or a joke it’s confusing at best, pitiful and awkward most of the time.
DLCs, by the way, don’t help the situation. The first one, The Crucible, is a reuse of the boring combat arena from the second game and feels even worse here due to the combat in the game in general. It doesn’t bring anything in terms of story or interesting rewards as well. The second and final one, Keepers of the Void, is just boring. It adds some more interesting traversal puzzles, something that has been mostly missing from the main game, but it all happens in a boring world, with boring combat in-between and boring non-story to wrap it all up. The Abyssal Armor, the staple unlockable of the series this time relegated to paid DLC content, is cool, but to get it you need to go through way too much of boredom and frustration making its worth questionable. If you really liked playing the main game, this DLC is at least less pointless than the first one, but I’d still not recommend it.
Playing through Darksiders III was not a fun experience. It had a couple of genuinely interesting moments and fights. But was mostly comprised of excruciating gameplay sections, things that instantly kill you with no warning, bad combat encounter design and general aimless feel to it all. Darksiders 1 and 2, while far from being games I would wholeheartedly recommend, were enjoyable and had enough interesting ideas, either borrowed or of their own, to make them worthwhile. Darksiders III is just not fun to play and the ideas it has, both borrowed and introduced, never work properly. If you’ve been following the series up until this point, you can safely skip this one and save on countless frustrating hours.