So after about four hours of Dark Souls 3 under my belt I am ready to give you guys who care a first impressions. I played on PC, well on a gaming laptop that's about 3 years old. Game runs okay, the frame rate is mostly stable however there are periods where the game will briefly pause completely before resuming. Luckily this pausing doesn't skip frames and the game seems to resume exactly where it leaves off. It does throw off the rhythm a bit at times, but it will probably be patched out soon enough.
Next, the game looks....very Bloodborne-y. Like the mobs look, act, and behave like Bloodborne mobs. However their A.I. is a bit better as dogs with juke you and try to hit you from the side like fucking veloceraptors, making blocking them a *****. Frankly I was hoping for a more Dark Souls look, not that I mind, it just feels like I'm playing Bloodborne 2 instead of Dark Souls.
The last thing I want to talk about is probably the worst aspect so far. That's the combat. I play a melee class, always have, always will. For my start, I picked the Merc and I was really impressed with the moveset on the duel swords you start with. The problem is that the swings are a lot slower than it seems, which resulted in me trading blows a lot, frustrating blows that I don't feel should have hit me. Additionally, dodge rolling feels sluggish and not because of my weight limit. When I push the dodge button, the character takes a few frames to do the action which in turn causes me to get hit by stuff because the character does not dodge when I tell him too. This caused me epic amounts of yelling on Vorpal as timing the dodge to avoid the charge attack was fucking impossible. This has made the combat feel sloppy to me, not nearly as tight as Bloodborne or Dark Souls 2, where my fucker rolls when I fucking tell him to.
Also this game has an extremely wonky enemy curve. The game forces you to fight knights, and shape shifters that fucking wreck your shit. But at the same time gives you basic and fairly simply enemies to fight. I find myself trying to avoid things with shields because event he most basic guy with a shield is several levels tougher to deal with than other enemies. This makes the difficulty feel all over the place, however a few upgrades into my starting weapon helped. Which in turn also worries me, because it feels like it is forcing me to pick and stick with a weapon right out of the gate, when I know there is a ton of stuff to try in the game. But because I have committed to leveling my starting weapon, it makes me unwilling to try the other weapons I have found. Not that the other weapons wouldn't be viable or just as good, it just creates a mentality of "I upgraded this, so I should stick with it." At least until Titanite shards are literally raining from the sky that they can be poured willy-nilly into whatever.
Overall I'd say that I am so far very disappointed in DS3, mainly due to the combat feeling like I am constantly fighting in sludge. Perhaps it is a case of just needed to adapt to the way this game feels but you'd think it wouldn't take more than 4 hours to get used to things, on a basic level.
Next, the game looks....very Bloodborne-y. Like the mobs look, act, and behave like Bloodborne mobs. However their A.I. is a bit better as dogs with juke you and try to hit you from the side like fucking veloceraptors, making blocking them a *****. Frankly I was hoping for a more Dark Souls look, not that I mind, it just feels like I'm playing Bloodborne 2 instead of Dark Souls.
The last thing I want to talk about is probably the worst aspect so far. That's the combat. I play a melee class, always have, always will. For my start, I picked the Merc and I was really impressed with the moveset on the duel swords you start with. The problem is that the swings are a lot slower than it seems, which resulted in me trading blows a lot, frustrating blows that I don't feel should have hit me. Additionally, dodge rolling feels sluggish and not because of my weight limit. When I push the dodge button, the character takes a few frames to do the action which in turn causes me to get hit by stuff because the character does not dodge when I tell him too. This caused me epic amounts of yelling on Vorpal as timing the dodge to avoid the charge attack was fucking impossible. This has made the combat feel sloppy to me, not nearly as tight as Bloodborne or Dark Souls 2, where my fucker rolls when I fucking tell him to.
Also this game has an extremely wonky enemy curve. The game forces you to fight knights, and shape shifters that fucking wreck your shit. But at the same time gives you basic and fairly simply enemies to fight. I find myself trying to avoid things with shields because event he most basic guy with a shield is several levels tougher to deal with than other enemies. This makes the difficulty feel all over the place, however a few upgrades into my starting weapon helped. Which in turn also worries me, because it feels like it is forcing me to pick and stick with a weapon right out of the gate, when I know there is a ton of stuff to try in the game. But because I have committed to leveling my starting weapon, it makes me unwilling to try the other weapons I have found. Not that the other weapons wouldn't be viable or just as good, it just creates a mentality of "I upgraded this, so I should stick with it." At least until Titanite shards are literally raining from the sky that they can be poured willy-nilly into whatever.
Overall I'd say that I am so far very disappointed in DS3, mainly due to the combat feeling like I am constantly fighting in sludge. Perhaps it is a case of just needed to adapt to the way this game feels but you'd think it wouldn't take more than 4 hours to get used to things, on a basic level.
