Today we are going to take a look at Darksiders III. This hack’n’slash action spectacle fighter promises fun combat and stunning locations in a mystical post-apocalyptic world. Whether it can deliver on this promise is the question we will try to answer today. Darksiders III is available on Steam for 59 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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Video Review
Text Review
So… a hack’n’slash spectacle fighter in a pretty acclaimed series. There’s not much that should go wrong here right? Sadly, there is a lot that could and went wrong with Darksiders III. And even though I haven’t played the previous installments that are praised by many to this day – even I can see some of the things that are wrong with this game.
Gameplay
And, sadly, we will have to begin with the part that suffers the most. The gameplay. Darksiders III was supposed to be a nostalgic trip into the past – with simple mechanics that allow you to do cool things without a need to over-complicate everything. And well, honestly they did manage to take a very simplistic approach to the gameplay. But… not a one that is fun.
Thus let's take a look at my biggest gripe with the game. The combat. You play as Fury, one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. That should mean that you are one hell of a fighter with many different moves to get used to obliterate your enemies with right? Gunfire Games and THQ Nordic seems to disagree. You get a whip and you just button smash hoping everything around you dies.
Technically, there are different combos in the game, but you know how you perform them? But smashing the attack button. Yes, that’s all. Different attacks are based on how many times you clicked that one button. The only way to perform one of the extra types of attacks is to either be in the air while attacking (and trust me, that’s super not useful) or to use your special ability. You do have a few different types of special abilities but you can’t chain them or anything like that because those are tied to your different forms and each of them uses the same exact resource. So if you used your special flame form, you can’t use your OP attack. No sir.
And apart from smashing that one attack button you will be smashing the dodge button. It’s obvious that Darksiders III took inspiration from the Dark Souls series where you evading attacks is the key to winning. And the key to winning battles in Darksiders III is exactly the same. But the problem is, the dodge feels incredibly unresponsive and half of the time you’ll dodge only to be hit by the same attack that you dodged. And even more, fun, when you engage battle with multiple foes at once, there a good chance you’ll dodge right into an attack of another foe. Not fun.
And that’s pretty much the combat. You don’t have any cool spells – even though the game calls you a mage – your combos are boring and your defensive tool is unresponsive.
Now that alone would make the combat mediocre at best. But add to that the fact that enemies level-scale with you and thus even the weak mobs are a serious threat to you makes the combat feel incredibly slow and just atrocious, to be honest. Often you will find yourself in situations where if you are fighting more enemies at once that you’ll get hit – that will stop your attack, get hit again and again and again only to die in a matter of second without really having a chance to get out of that.
The only true fun encounters are the bosses. Those are actually fun and decently creative fights, but there is only a few of them and they have their own problem. As bosses, there is a good chance you’ll have to repeat them a few times as you’ll likely just die to the abilities you’re not familiar with. So what happens when you die? You have to run back to the boss. Often for minutes at times through areas with re-spawning enemies that you will have to fight over and over and over again for no real gain. Why would you force your players to do that?!
Okay, that’s the combat and I honestly don’t want to talk about it anymore. It just not good. So let’s instead talk about the tiny little bit of a progression system that can be found in Darksiders III.
As this is an RPG – you get to level up. And again – similarly to Dark Souls – you do this by collecting souls. These can be given to this demon who will then give you level up points in exchange. So… what exactly can you upgrade? Maybe you get to finally get a few cool abilities here? Nope. You get to upgrade your health, melee damage or magic damage. That’s all. And that’s probably the lamest excuse for a progression system I ever saw.
But wait, there is one more system to get your character more powerful. You can also upgrade your weapons. Either directly enhancing their damage or adding a “gem” into them that … upgrades the stats. Seriously, was the part of the team that adds cool stuff to the progression system all at lunch when design was happening and when they came back nobody asked them for input? What happened here?
And lastly, puzzles. For reasons I personally never understood, hack’n’slash spectacle fighters tend to put in puzzles for you to solve and the same can be said about Darksiders III. And similarly to everything we talked about until this point, they’re just not fun. They consist of dumb little small mechanics that are insanely badly explained. Like this one where the game wants you to feed a bug some lava and then throw him at a wall. But nothing tells you the bug eats lava. Thus you result to you randomly throwing the bug around until you throw him close to the lava and he finally eats it.
So… Darksiders III gameplay is… mediocre. Painfully mediocre. My complaints may sound like the game is just abysmal, but that’s not the case really. It’s just not fun. Stuff works and you will get it done. But you’ll not gonna be excited while doing it. Everything is gonna feel like a grind and please give better explanations to how mechanics work for puzzles in the future.
Story
Okay, moving on to the story. Which is honestly probably the best thing about Darksiders III. You are Fury – one of the Four Horseman and you have been tasked to go to Earth to bring balance to the apocalypse. And the story is presented in good visual ways, with short cutscenes that don’t last too long and do provide a sense of actually doing something important. Good job here, as the story will likely end up being the reason why you finish this, especially if you played the previous games in the series.
Graphics
Next up, the graphics. And here I’m really split. On one hand – the graphics could really you higher resolution textures and sometimes they act a bit funky. But on the other hand, I really like the style. The combination of angelic, demonic, fantasy and post-apocalyptic graphics is something I think looks really cool. And the Seven Deadly Sins (the bosses) are amazing in design. But then, Fury herself looks like she was made from wax and you’ll spend a looooooot of time looking at her.
Music
Then there’s the music. Or… for the most part a lack of it. I just felt like I haven’t really heard anything in terms of music when I played. There is some good music in the menus but once you go into the game mostly you just hear the sound effects. Those are good, even great I’d say but the lack of a music score just … I don’t know, it almost feels like the game has no soul because of it.
Performance
And lastly, the performance. And even here I can’t not be critical. I’ve experienced crashes and severe frame drops. Not good, not good at all.
Conclusion
So… in conclusion: Darksiders III fail to meet expectations. It’s a mediocre game at best that is asking full price. There are better spectacle fighters and there are better hack’n’slash games available on lower prices. The only reason you should pick this up is if you truly want to experience the story yourself. But you just want to know the story, just watch someone play the game instead of you being forced to do so. If this was a 20 dollar game I think I’d give it a recommendation – but coming at 60 bucks, no way.
So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.
Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page