Dark Souls III

1. Summary

A decade after launch, players still adore Dark Souls III. About 16% of reviews call it a masterpiece, "peak", a 10/10 or a favourite game, and the reason they give most often is the boss fights: Slave Knight Gael, the Nameless King, Sister Friede, Darkeater Midir and the Abyss Watchers come up by name again and again. Players also praise the dying-world atmosphere and soundtrack, the way it closes the trilogy's story, and fast, responsive combat with room for many builds. The two expansions, The Ringed City in particular, are treated as part of the full experience. Some reviewers arrived from Elden Ring and found it a natural next step, and a steady group called it their first FromSoftware game.

Only 7.5% of the reviews are negative, and they come from two different camps. Series veterans measure it against Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne and Elden Ring (24% of negative reviews name at least one of them) and find it linear, too nostalgic and built around rolling and light attacks. The second camp likes the game and objects to the Steam version: stutters and freezes on new hardware, controller-only button prompts for keyboard players, no Steam Cloud saves, and a full price for a 2016 game with discounts that stop at about half off. The veterans' design objections stay a minority view, and a lot of the people raising PC or price problems say in the same review that they love the game itself.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Boss fightsHigh

Bosses come up more than any other part of the game, in 14% of all reviews. Reviewers rank them, list favourites and single out the late game and DLC, naming Gael, the Nameless King, Friede, Midir, the Abyss Watchers, Pontiff Sulyvahn and Soul of Cinder most. "Best bosses out of the entire soulsborne genre," one longtime player wrote. Players praise the music and cutscenes that frame each fight, and many tie their best memories of the game to finally beating one boss after days of attempts.

The criticism is narrower. A few early or gimmick fights (Yhorm, the Deacons of the Deep, Curse-Rotted Greatwood, the Ancient Wyvern, High Lord Wolnir) are called forgettable or annoying, the Nameless King's first phase draws complaints about the camera, and some veterans say the final boss and most early bosses fell on the first try. A few negative reviews argue the lineup leans too heavily on ganks and "guy in armor" fights.

Lore, story and the end of the trilogyMedium

Players who mention the story mostly treat Dark Souls III as a fitting finale. They describe a world collapsing in on itself, with lands, kings and gods from earlier games pulled together at the end of an age, and several call the ending one of the best in the series. Returning to places like Anor Londo and the first flame lands hard for people who played the games in order.

The same design draws the complaints. A few players find the item-description storytelling too vague and say they needed a wiki to follow anything, and a few veterans read the callbacks as fan service (see the series comparison item below).

Atmosphere, art and musicMedium

The gothic, end-of-the-world look and the soundtrack are praised warmly and often. Irithyll, the Cathedral of the Deep, Lothric Castle, Archdragon Peak and the Ringed City are the areas people name, and one reviewer says they could spend an hour in the main menu just for the music. Several reviewers say the visuals have held up well for a game from 2016.

A smaller group finds the palette too grey and washed out. "Too gray, almost every area is dominated by an overwhelming and annoying amount of gray," one wrote, and another used ReShade to brighten the lighting.

Fast, responsive combat and build varietyMedium

Reviewers who praise the combat call it faster and more fluid than the first two games and closer to Bloodborne, with weapon arts adding depth and many viable builds (sorcery, pyromancy, miracles, dexterity and heavy weapons all get named). Some Elden Ring players point out that weapon arts and other systems started here.

Combat also draws pointed criticism from veterans. A group of negative reviews says the speed turned it into roll spam ("rollslop" and "R1 spam" are insults that recur), that poise was replaced by hyper armor so heavy armor and shields stopped mattering, and that input buffering makes the character roll or attack seconds after the button press. Those complaints come mainly from players who prefer the slower pace of Dark Souls 1 and 2.

The expansionsMedium

Reviewers who bring up Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City often say the DLC is where the game peaks. "Definitely worth getting the DLC, that's where DS3 really shines," one player wrote. Gael, Friede and Midir carry most of that praise.

Opinion on the two packs differs. The Ringed City gets most of the love, while several reviewers call Ariandel short and thin outside its boss ("Ashes of Ariandel: Garbage, except for Friede."). A few add that the DLC costs extra on top of an already high base price.

A good first FromSoftware game, or next step after Elden RingLow

A steady group of reviewers says this was their first Souls game and recommends it as a starting point. "Dark Souls 3 was my first souls-like, and I couldn't ask for anything better," one wrote, and another told newcomers: "If you are coming off of Elden Ring this will be the easiest transition". Some advise playing Dark Souls Remastered first for the story callbacks, but say it is not required.

Where players are split

Difficulty: fair challenge, too easy, or cheapHigh

Difficulty comes up in 9% of reviews, and the usual view in them is that the game is tough and rewarding and that the challenge is the point. "Dark Souls III is hard but completely fair," wrote one player who had never played a Dark Souls game before. Some describe being stuck on Iudex Gundyr, Vordt or Pontiff and then breaking through.

Two smaller camps disagree in opposite directions. Some veterans coming from Sekiro, Elden Ring or the earlier games call it the easiest in the trilogy and say they beat most bosses on the first try. Players who struggled describe a different kind of difficulty: groups of regular enemies that stun-lock, arrows through walls, and enemies hitting harder than bosses. "You will be parrying literal gods yet hopelessly destroyed by some mangy dogs," one fan joked, and an unhappy reviewer put it as "Constantly getting stunlocked and gank in the first area made for a boring early game experience." These complaints name the poison swamps, the Catacombs of Carthus and Farron Keep. A few players asked for an easy mode or a difficulty slider.

How it compares with Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 and Elden RingMedium

Comparisons with other FromSoftware games run through the whole conversation, and they are the main reason long-time fans give for disliking it. Its fans rank it the best of the trilogy or tie it with the first game, with better bosses and combat than either. For its critics it is "the most linear game in the Souls series", a chain of corridors from fog gate to fog gate with none of Dark Souls 1's interconnected world, full of recycled characters and locations. Positive reviews concede the point too: "Yes it's linear. Yes it can be frustrating, it is Dark Souls." Another fan wrote that the game "leans heavily into fan service" and that "Sometimes it feels a little too nostalgic."

Elden Ring sits on both sides. Some Elden Ring players found this a tighter, more focused game and preferred it. Others found it clunky, linear and confusing next to the open world they came from, and a few negative reviews simply say to play Elden Ring instead.

Online play: PvP and co-op versus cheatersLow

Reviews about online play lean toward players with hundreds of hours in the game. Fans call the PvP the best in the series ("DS3 has the best PvP out of the souls series, Elden Ring included.") and some say co-op and summoning were still active, while others found summon signs scarce. A group of reviews reports cheaters in invasions, god mode and item-spawning, and players being soft-banned after a cheater dropped illegal items into their inventory. "Cheaters are too rampant to enjoy the game, and they can put cheated items into your inventory, causing you to be softbanned, along with the cheaters," one wrote. Their workarounds are a third-party anti-cheat tool (Blue Sentinel), playing offline, or the Seamless Co-op mod. A few reviews also call invasions a forced, unfair mechanic for players who only want the story.

What frustrates players

Full price for a decade-old gameMedium

Price comes up in 2% of all reviews and in 10% of the negative ones, and players who love the game raise it too. Reviewers say the game used to drop to 75% or 80% off and later rarely went below 50%, and that the base game sat at $60 (or more with the DLC) years after launch. One Brazilian player noted the local price had more than tripled since they bought the complete edition on PC. "How is this 10 year old game $60? Sure, it is a good game but $60 a decade later is a bit of price gouging," one player wrote. Positive reviews that mention price often add the same advice: wait for a sale, or buy the bundle with the DLC included.

The PC version: stutter, freezes and console-only controlsMedium

Technical problems on PC appear in 11.5% of negative reviews, and players who like the game report them as well. The first problem is stutters and multi-second freezes on modern hardware (RTX 40 and 50 series cards and newer CPUs are named), often after an hour or so of play, and a few players say it never happened when they first played years earlier. "Game doesn't run well on newer hardware, constant lag spikes which freeze the game for 2 seconds," one wrote. Several found that setting the game's CPU affinity to "disable core 0" helped, and others say nothing did.

The second cluster is keyboard and mouse support: the game shows only Xbox button prompts, mouse sensitivity is too high even at the lowest setting, the move-forward-plus-attack kick fires by accident, there is no borderless window mode, and frame rate is capped at 60. "The game never gives you a proper button layout, providing zero help in the menus or during gameplay," wrote one keyboard player, who warned that anyone without a controller would be disappointed. These complaints often come from people who quit within the first hour.

Covenant farming for achievementsLow

A group of completionists singles out the covenant items needed for the ring and spell achievements, which require hours of farming low drop rates or grinding PvP. It rarely changes a recommendation and shows up mostly as a caveat in otherwise glowing reviews. "Life is too short to become a full-time employee at the Lothric item-distribution department," one player wrote after giving up on 100%.

The camera and lock-onLow

Players fight the camera in tight arenas and big-boss fights, and lock-on breaks when bosses teleport or stops working at range. "Beautiful game, but by god does the PC gameplay revolve around wrestling with the worst camera controls known to gaming," one reviewer wrote. Fans mention it too, usually as a known flaw they put up with (the Nameless King fight is the usual example).

No Steam Cloud savesLow

Only a small number of reviews raise it, and they are angry. Several negative ones give a lost save as the reason they can't recommend the game. Players lost long saves after reinstalling Windows, moving to a new PC or switching between a desktop and a handheld, often without knowing the game did not sync. "The game itself is really good but the developers still haven't enabled cloud saves," wrote one player after losing a 550-hour save. Some point out that Dark Souls Remastered does sync.

Runbacks and enemy placementLow

A smaller group complains about long runs from the bonfire to the boss through respawned enemies. "Who thought it was a good idea to put enemies between a bonfire and a boss?" one newer player asked. Some also dislike having to warp back to Firelink Shrine every time they want to level up.

Easy-to-miss questlinesLow

Some players say NPC questlines fail silently if you kill the wrong NPC or enter an area too early, which pushes them to a guide. "Quests are designed to fail without prior esoteric knowledge," one veteran wrote. Another lost a 100% run to a glitch where Siegward's emote never unlocked.

3. The player conversation

The tone is warm and often personal. Alongside the boss rankings and "Praise the Sun" one-liners, several longer reviews describe the game as something that got the writer through a bad period, or as a game they keep coming back to. Many reviews are short jokes or ritual phrases, and the substantive ones tend to be long and detailed.

Disagreement lives mostly among people who know the series well. Negative reviews from veterans often list platinums and hundreds of hours in Dark Souls 1 and 2 and argue about linearity, poise and rolling, while fans defend it as the best of the trilogy. Newcomers raise different things: Elden Ring players either praise it as the natural next game or bounce off its pace and structure, and several players who quit within the first hour name the keyboard prompts or mouse sensitivity. The online and PvP discussion leans toward players with hundreds of hours.

The tone held steady. In every week from mid-November 2025 onward, between 89% and 97% of that week's reviews recommended the game, with no lasting dip.

4. What the developers could do

1. Fix the stutter and freezing on modern CPUs and GPUs. Players who otherwise love the game call it unplayable on new hardware, and the workaround they pass around, setting CPU affinity by hand, doesn't work for everyone.
2. Turn on Steam Cloud saves. Reviewers lost saves of up to 550 hours when they reinstalled or changed PCs, and several negative reviews give that as their reason.
3. Price it like a 2016 game. Players who like the game complain about the price too, and they point to the deeper sales it used to get and to the extra cost of the DLC.
4. Add keyboard and mouse prompts, a usable mouse sensitivity range and a borderless window mode. Players without a controller say they could not learn the controls, and many of these complaints come from people who quit within the first hour.
5. Protect players from cheaters in online play. PvP fans report god mode, item spawning and soft bans caused by items a cheater dropped, and they lean on third-party tools to stay safe.
6. Cut the covenant drop-rate grind behind the achievements. Completionists who loved the rest of the game describe hours of farming as the low point of a 100% run.
7. Stop lock-on from breaking when bosses teleport or move off screen. The camera is a recurring complaint from both fans and critics of the game, most often in large-boss fights.