"The Convergence" is an incredible mod for Dark Souls 3 that reimagines almost everything without changing what made this game so good. A love letter to a great game and one of the best mods ever made, for any game ever.
9/10
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[THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE CONVERGENCE! I'll give individual spoiler warnings for some sections but take this as a general warning.]
After almost a year of first hearing about the mod, I finally got around to playing The Convergence for DS3 a few weeks back. I kept hearing about how this mod was the best thing that ever happened to Dark Souls 3, and I also heard that one of the creators of Archthrones (another huge, upcoming mod for DS3) was the creative mind behind this one, so I knew I had to check it out at some point.
If all you want to know is whether this mod is worth your time:
YES, it is.
It is quite easily the best Soulsborne mod I've played so far. I've played Cinders, and some other, minor mods, but The Convergene stands head and shoulders above them all.
[well, at least until Archthrones, or DS1's Nightfall eventually come out]
With all of that being said, let's get into what The Convergence actually does.
WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO:
If you've played Cinders before, or something like Daughters of Ash (for DS1) or to some extent even SOTFS for DS2, you can picture something rather similar.
These types of overhauls aim to give you a fresh, new experience by adding, remixing and/or removing content and mechanics across the board. But where something like Cinders mainly aimed at greatly expanding things like build choices, weapon variety, spell efficiency, etc., with some ideas that heavily veered away from the core design philosophy of the Dark Souls series, Convergence feels like a true reimagining of Dark Souls 3. At its best points, Convergence feels like a type of "Scholar of the First Sin" official re-release, and even at its worst it does a pretty good job.
All of the new content, especially the new enemies and bosses feel like their lore, placement, design etc. have been very carefully considered, as to not clash with the vanilla DS3's lore and vibes.
Of course, you have all new added weapons, spells, casting tools, etc. You have greatly expanded build choices, and around 20 starting classes. You have lots and lots of neat little Quality of Life upgrades, like having FP restore automatically over time. This is a FANTASTIC addition, and really how it should've been in the main game. However, this has been balanced with spells and weapon arts now costing very large amounts of FP, meaning you can't just spam the most powerful spells in the game without some serious investments in attunement first.
Next, the ability to buy all regular upgrade items right from the start. All vendor NPCs are available the second you first enter Firelink Shrine. They all have greatly expanded inventories too.
Lock on ranges, and most actual spell ranges have been significantly increased as well, to work well with the focus on casting. All armour pieces have increased poise and defence ratings, even a piece of cloth will give you at least a little poise. What's more is that each and every single piece of fashion now has special effects, like increasing casting speed, or reducing incoming Dark damage., etc.
Also, like Cinders, Convergence places little teleport spots all across the world, which let you slightly alter game progression, by letting you access certain areas you're not supposed to be yet. Say, you need a certain spell tome that's locked in the Catacombs? You can access it as early as the Undead Settlement now. This is not as game breaking as it sounds, as you still need to actually defeat certain bosses in the correct way to unlock certain key items that let you progress further. It does significantly reduce the almost unbearable early game slog of DS3's main campaign though, where you have to fight all the way to Irythill before you get anywhere interesting.
You have newly added enemies drawing inspiration from and lifting their movesets from other Soulsborne games, including new invaders, bosses and even mini bosses. These bosses and mini bosses all drop certain collectibles which you can trade in for new versions of coloured Titanite.
These new titanite pieces allow upgrading boss and special weapons to +10, just like regular weapons, or casting tools which all feature their own version of this like Ebony Titanite, Molten Titanite, Crystal, etc. Of course, enemies have generally much more health and damage as a response to having a powered up player character, but it (almost) never feels unfair or out of place.
Lastly, concerning one of the biggest gameplay changes on the side of the player; split damage has been almost completely removed. There are close to NO weapons that deal more than one single damage type. All weapons, spells and skills now deal exclusively either Physical, Lightning, Magic, Fire or Dark damage. There are very, very few exceptions, and in those cases it's almost always because it's a dual-weapon. (e.g. Dancer's Curved Swords) I personally really like this as it forces you to diversify your play-style and include more different damage types in your rollouts. It can of course mean that certain weapons are utterly useless against certain bosses, but the mod gives you plenty of opportunities to respec or simply level up more weapons and stats.
THE NEW MAGIC SYSTEM:
There is no way I can properly sum up just how fundamentally magic has changed here, so I'll just go over the most important points. The biggest point by far - unlike Cinders, which aims to primarly greatly expand the build variety by adding absurd amounts of new weapons, armor and spells - Convergence primarily focuses on completely reworking the magic system from the ground up.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a pure "magic mod", but it's clearly the main focus. Of course you also have a whole bunch of new weapons, lots of which have nothing to do with magic, and are just cool new bonks for you to play around with, but if you go into this expecting a mod with 10 million different weapons and armour pieces you're gonna be disappointed.
The weapon and armour variety here is nowhere near that of Cinders. But that's not to say it isn't good, and that there aren't a whole lot of new toys to play around with. There are some of the most fun and out-there weapons out of any mod in here, and I wish that some of these were in the base game, so rest assured.
So HOW does it change magic?
Most notably - next to the already existing (Soul) Sorceries, Miracles, Pyromancies and Hexes having received a veritable shitton of new spells - the creators added 7 new magic types and a lot of spell tools. You generally still have the three main classes - Sorceries, Miracles and Pyromancies - with Pyromancies now being called "Conjurations", to include the newly added magic types a bit better.
For sorceries, next to the standard Soul/Crystal and Dark Sorceries, Convergence introduces Light sorceries (Lightning damage), which also incorporate some Oolacile spells, and Aeromancies (Physical damage) which do somte serious knock-back. As you'd expect, these scale with INT, except for Hexes, which scale also with FTH.
Miracles of course still have the classic Lightning spells, which are self explanatory, and "Holy" miracles, which deal physical damage (Wrath of the Gods, Divine Pillars of Light etc.) but have received some evil counterparts in the form of Rosaria's Bleed miracles (Dark damage), which previously only featured the "Gnaw" spells, and Necromancies (Magic damage - don't ask me why) which focus on summoning minions, applying debuffs and DoTs. All of these obviously scale exclusively with FTH.
Conjurations are effectively all "Nature spells", as it were. They obviously include good, old Pyromancies, but introduce the most out of any spell type. You have 3 new categories here: Geomancy (Physical) which lets you throw rocks, mud, and boulders at enemies, as well as poison them, Cryomancies (Dark), which the name suggests are like Pyromancies, but with ice instead of fire, and last but definitely not least, Druidism. Drudism deals Magic damage, has a fancy green hue and is kinda similar to Necromancy in that it deals a lot with summoning minions, DoT and heals, but it also includes actual Water Magic! Which means, yes, you can absolutely pull off an Avatar: The Last Airbender build. All conjurations scale with both FTH and INT.
My favourite aspect of this is how naturally these new Spell schools fit in with the established lore of the game. The only one I feel is maybe a bit off is Druidism, which feels like something more fit for an Elder Scrolls game, or Elden Ring, than it does Dark Souls. But that is a very minor complaint, and it's nowhere near some of the most flagrant violations of Dark Souls' design philosophy I've seen in some other mods.
I briefly want to shout out that this mod featured basically a Spirit Ash system two years before Elden Ring released. This mod actually has quite a few things that would later turn up in that game.
BTW: All spell schools now have a corresponding covenant and NPC's to buy spells from and either use them to upgrade low-level spell tools, or turn them into certain covenant items for weapons, fashion, magic and other goodies. What's more is that some of these NPCs even feature all new voice acting!
That is crazy to me, and shows how much effort went into all tis. The performances are pretty good and they felt like pretty natural additions. With maybe the exception of Halflight (yes, he's a Firelink Shrine NPC now), all of them felt very lore-friendly and made sense as vendors. I only wish that they maybe had some side quests associated with them, but I realise that might have been too much to ask.
IMPROVED GRAPHICS AND NEW LEVEL GEOMETRY:
Of course this mod does much more than just overhaul the magic system and adding some weapons. Almost every level here has had something done to it. Be it simply some slight re-shades and some remixed enemy and bonfire placements, or something extreme like some completely new, walkable level geometry that literally expands the level design of the original. That last one goes from a few simple ladders and bridges that created new shortcuts where there previously weren't any, to some things that are so out there that I genuinely wonder how they even pulled this off.
I personally really like most of the changes to the lighting and atmosphere in these levels, with only a tiny handful of examples where I actually preferred the original's art direction. Every area had its lighting improved at the very least, and some like the Cathedral of the Deep have loads of newly added objects and furniture in there that give it a less empty, austere vibe.
The two stand out experiences here would be the Profaned Capital and Smouldering Lake, with so much stuff added/changed that it truly feels like a different version altogether. Without going too much into spoiler territory, the Smouldering Lake does away with the annoying ballista and instead opts for a much more interestingly designed and fitting stage hazard. Smoldering Lake is usually my least favourite location in vanilla DS3 by far, which is why I find it so impressive they managed to actually make it one of the more interesting levels this time around. Irythill is another one that blew me away with how complex the new additions really were.
As for some negatives; I should mention that I experienced some very serious performance drops with this mod installed. Usually my DS3 runs perfectly fine on a (mostly) stable 60fps. With this mod on, I was lucky to push 30 in a normal area. Some areas (especially boss arenas) felt damn near unplayable. Maybe it's just my PC but I noticed that it strongly depends on the location, and how much the mod added. Ashes of Ariandel, for example, basically didn't slow my game down at all, presumably because the mod creators didn't do too much there. If you're struggling to run DS3 normally, this mod will almost certainly be too much for your PC.
BOSSES AND MINI-BOSSES:
From this point on out I'll give another SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING!
Some of the biggest changes to the game can be found in this section, and some of the biggest surprises too.
As you would expect, this mod adds a whole bunch of either revamped, remixed or entirely new boss fights. It also adds a load of new mini-bosses, or "Greater Foes" as they're called in-game. These foes tend to be powered up versions of regular enemies with new attacks and greatly increased health. They are honestly pretty cool for the most part and it's sad that there's no way to respawn them other than entering NG+.
Next to the aforementioned upgrade materials they drop (Hollow's Remains, Soldier's Remains, etc.) they also all drop a "Soul of a Greater Foe", which you can turn into either a Titanite Slab or one of a couple of special rings, which all have various effects and buffs.
Next to these Greater Foes, there are also a bunch of newly added NPC invaders. They are pretty varied and feature some really unique build ideas. They're also pretty well balanced in that they don't have as much health as regular invaders, but are allowed to heal more often as a trade off. These also sadly can't be respawned.
On to the main bosses. There are now 31 instead of 25 bosses, but that doesn't mean that only 6 are new. Some new ones completely replace certain bosses, mostly the ones that people generally tend to dislike. And that's just the completely new ones. Almost all vanilla bosses had at least something done to them, some only receiving some minor tweaks on attack speeds, timings and maybe some new, or powered up attacks, while some others completely changed their second phase or even added an entirely new third one. While the number of new bosses here once again pales in comparison to something like Cinders, I vastly prefer the approach that Convergence took with its redesign for them.
Cinders honestly didn't do that great a job in that department. Not only did it feel like half of the "new" bosses were just Dragonslayer Armour but with different outfits, but the placement of these was usually haphazard at best, and often outright horrible. Not every semi-open space is a fitting boss arena, especially when the boss clips through the walls and floor.
What's more is that they all felt horribly balanced, with ridiculously inflated HP and really lazy design. The optional end game bosses felt like a boring chore more than a challenge. It felt like Cinders was so busy cramming as many bosses in there as it could that it kinda forgot to make them actually good.
In contrast, Convergence does the complete opposite and knocks it out of the park. I hope that all mod creators take note in the future. Not only do all the bosses feel (mostly) pretty well balanced, their placement makes sense and you never have to fight a boss in an area it was clearly not designed to be in.
Their lore and design also feels very natural and as though they could've been found in some scrapped design document. Also unlike Cinders, the bosses here aren't just 1:1 reskins from existing enemies in DS3, like, for example, a Cathedral Knight dressing up as a boss. These are completely new bosses, made from the ground up, taking moves from bosses/enemies from all over the series, but primarily Bloodborne and Sekiro. Their moves feel very organic, and they all clearly had their timings and cadence adjusted to work well with DS3's combat.
Yet again, another SPOILER WARNING, as I will be going into the new bosses in detail now. I'm not going to talk about all the minor changes to all other boss fights, as that would go completely beyond the scope of this review, which is already way too long.
-NEW BOSSES-
Archdruid Caimar:
The first completely new boss, and he replaces the Curse-rotted Greatwood in the Undead Settlement. Caimar is honestly fucking crazy and it's quite possibly the best boss they added. He uses Druid spells and summons wolves at his side. It feels unbelievably polished, I genuinely prefer it to a lot of DS3's normal bosses. He uses Owl's (Sekiro) moveset mixed with a bit of Gundyr and, i think, some Milwood Knight moves. Oh, and that phase 2 transition is fucking NUTS!
Royal Darkwraith:
Honestly, probably the worst of the newly added bosses. He can be found somewhere deep within Farron Keep. I really like his Darkwraith/Cathedral Knight inspired move-set but it's very clearly quite unpolished, as multiple of his attacks have their hit-boxes active long before his weapon is anywhere close to you. Coupled with the fact that you have to fight him in a poison pool with no opportunity to not be poisoned, this makes for the fight that could be improved upon the most.
High Lord Wolnir:
Unlike the other base game bosses, Wolnir didn't just receive a few minor changes, his whole fight got completely scrapped. Instead, we have a more humanoid opponent of the same name, with a moveset which appears to be lifted from Milwood Knights and perhaps the Strawhat Shinobi guys from Sekiro. Very fun fight, if a bit standard. He uses both Blackflame attacks as well as Holy miracles. Much more fun to fight than the original.
Frigid Wyvern:
OK, I guess this one is more of a stage hazard, but the Wiki considers it a boss, so I will too. It's basically just a normal Wyvern but with ice instead of fire. Thankfully, you can kill it without a plunging attack to the head. Not actually respawnable, so technically closer to a mini-boss. We encounter him a few times, making this encounter very Demon's Souls-y.
Headless Knight:
Replacing Dragonslayer Armour on Lothric Castle's long bridge, we encounter the Headless Knight, which is basically Champion Gundyr with some different attack timings, added AOE attacks and lightning damage. Seems more aggressive than standard Gundyr too. Very tense fight, super speedy and very in-your-face, especially in such a small arena.
Vessel of Kaathe:
If I remember correctly, this was the first new bosses they ever added to this mod, and I guess you can kinda tell. Not that it's bad, it's just a fairly normal reskin of a regular DS3 Demon. It's basically immune to Dark damage and highly resistant to Fire and has some pretty intense AEO blasts. The thing that definitely saves it is the surprise second phase, which I will not spoil here.
Euclus, King of Fallen Oolacile:
The last of Convergence's completely new bosses, Euclus also has a very strong argument for being the best out of them. He replaces Halflight in Filianore's Church. While some attacks definitely need some more work (that AOE-grab comes out WAY too fucking fast for how much damage it does and how hard it is to avoid) he has the most intense and varied moveset out of all the bosses here. His moveset is equal parts Corruped Monk (Sekiro) and Martyr Logarius (Bloodborne), and he makes use of Light sorceries. Great boss and seriously tough, with very few hiccups.
Also, I vastly prefer Euclus over who previously stood guard here, Storm King Allant. Yes, the final boss from Demon's Souls. Not that it was a bad fight, but I really dislike shoving gratuitous fan-service like that into a mod that takes itself this seriously.
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END- & POST-GAME SPOILER WARNING
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REVAMPED & REKINDLED BOSSES
So those were the new bosses, the ones which didn't exist in this game at all (except for Wolnir), and those are already pretty damn good. What about the rest? As I've said before, almost every boss in the game had, at the very least, their health and damage adjusted, most of them even had some extra attacks added or attack timings changed. Obviously I'm not gonna point out every change here, instead I'll focus on the most important ones.
REVAMPED Pontiff Sulyvahn
If you know anything about Convergence, you've probably already heard about this one, and for good reason. This version of Pontiff is now my favourite fight in the whole game, yes, more so than Gael even.
But first, the build up. His cathedral in Irythil stands empty when you first get there, surely confusing many a player on where he's gone. I was wondering whether they took him out entirely, and was almost sure that was the case after I'd beaten the Twin Princes and hadn't found him. But luckily, after you get all 4 Lords of Cinder, a portal to the Realm of Moonlight opens inside Firelink Shrine, letting you access a beautiful, moonlit version of his boss arena, with the original "Old King of the Eclipse" OST reinstated as his boss theme.
The first two phases are more of the same, although Sully obviously had his HP and damage adjusted to end-game levels.
The third phase is where shit gets real. This guy just channels his inner Sword Saint Isshin, transforms his Greatsword of Judgement into a Swordspear and goes fucking HAM with endless combos, AOE's, high speed and insane aggression. Honestly it's kinda hard to explain what makes it so good, it's just the package of everything together that made me actually clap in my chair when it was finally over.
REVAMPED Soul of Cinder:
Of course they massively overhauled this guy too, why wouldn't they? Honestly this one is almost as good as the previous one, and I vastly prefer this SoC over the original. While the first phase was always a bit too chaotic and the second a bit too easy for my liking, the difficulty in this version is ON POINT.
First phase obviously incorporates a lot of new mechanics and builds, for example, he now has an Aeromancer mode, a Geomancer mode, even a Hexer mode too. His resistances have been buffed across the board, as well as his HP, but somehow the fight feels a little less chaotic than the original. Until this point, it's fairly normal, albeit with new attacks.
The second phase goes insane though. SoC now suddenly channels both Gwyn AND Shura Isshin, with a side of Genichiro Ashina and even a little bit of Ludwig the Holy Blade in there. Truly a "best of" of the entire series. And it's quite intense too. OG SoC's second phase always felt a bit too easy, this one truly feels how the amalgamation of all of history's most powerful entities SHOULD fight. Once again, a bit hard to explain why it's so good, you just have to experience it yourself.
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Finally, we've arrived at the last 2 "new" bosses. Only, they're explicitly not new, but remixed, MUCH harder versions of the Lord of Cinder fights. These are only available after beating SoC, marking them post-game content. Only attempt these if you have a high tolerance for frustration. I'm not a big fan of these tbh. Currently only the two below are available, perhaps some time in the future we'll see the other two get one as well.
REKINDLED Abyss Watcher:
So this is, by far, no question, 100% the hardest boss in this game by a mile and then some. This fight might be harder than Malenia. It's certainly many, MANY times harder than anything else in this game. It's kinda sad that it's not very good then. I'm honestly kinda shocked this was made by the same people who gave us gems like Caimar and Euclus. This one feels like what a 13 year old who just got into Souls games thinks a hard boss should be.
Every fucking hit fully staggers you. Yes, literally every single tiny fucking hit. Every combo will stunlock and kill you. He can chain combos literally while you're still on the floor, unable to move. His hitboxes deviate WILDLY from his actual attack animations.
The tracking here makes DS2 look like a turn based game. This could've been a great fight if it received much more polished, but the way it's now it feels grossly out of place.
REKINDLED Yhorm the Giant:
I honestly don't have much to say on Rekindled Yhorm. He is nowhere near as hard as the guy above, not even in the same ballpark. There are base game bosses that are harder than this, even if it's arguably still harder than the original.
Increased attack speed, some new moves and added Fire AOEs/trails to most of his attacks, but that's it. If you can kill Yhorm, you can kill him in this state as well.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
On the whole, this is a fantastic mod. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement here, but seeing how the mod hasn't been updated in over a year, I don't think we'll be seeing any continued support for this project. At least, not in the near future.
AFAIK the mod creator is currently busy with DS3 Archthrones, as well as The Convergence for Elden Ring, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Overall, I just want to say that I find it amazing how talented the people who worked on this are, how much it reinvigorated my love for DS3 and how interesting the experience it gave me was. With Cinders, I was more then ready to deinstall it after I finished my first playthrough. Here though, I'm already planning my next few.
There is still SO MUCH STUFF I haven't even touched on. I probably barely even covered 50% of what this mod does. And that's even though this post is already so fucking long lol
I can't recommend this mod enough.
9/10
9/10
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[THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE CONVERGENCE! I'll give individual spoiler warnings for some sections but take this as a general warning.]
After almost a year of first hearing about the mod, I finally got around to playing The Convergence for DS3 a few weeks back. I kept hearing about how this mod was the best thing that ever happened to Dark Souls 3, and I also heard that one of the creators of Archthrones (another huge, upcoming mod for DS3) was the creative mind behind this one, so I knew I had to check it out at some point.
If all you want to know is whether this mod is worth your time:
YES, it is.
It is quite easily the best Soulsborne mod I've played so far. I've played Cinders, and some other, minor mods, but The Convergene stands head and shoulders above them all.
[well, at least until Archthrones, or DS1's Nightfall eventually come out]
With all of that being said, let's get into what The Convergence actually does.
WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO:
If you've played Cinders before, or something like Daughters of Ash (for DS1) or to some extent even SOTFS for DS2, you can picture something rather similar.
These types of overhauls aim to give you a fresh, new experience by adding, remixing and/or removing content and mechanics across the board. But where something like Cinders mainly aimed at greatly expanding things like build choices, weapon variety, spell efficiency, etc., with some ideas that heavily veered away from the core design philosophy of the Dark Souls series, Convergence feels like a true reimagining of Dark Souls 3. At its best points, Convergence feels like a type of "Scholar of the First Sin" official re-release, and even at its worst it does a pretty good job.
All of the new content, especially the new enemies and bosses feel like their lore, placement, design etc. have been very carefully considered, as to not clash with the vanilla DS3's lore and vibes.
Of course, you have all new added weapons, spells, casting tools, etc. You have greatly expanded build choices, and around 20 starting classes. You have lots and lots of neat little Quality of Life upgrades, like having FP restore automatically over time. This is a FANTASTIC addition, and really how it should've been in the main game. However, this has been balanced with spells and weapon arts now costing very large amounts of FP, meaning you can't just spam the most powerful spells in the game without some serious investments in attunement first.
Next, the ability to buy all regular upgrade items right from the start. All vendor NPCs are available the second you first enter Firelink Shrine. They all have greatly expanded inventories too.
Lock on ranges, and most actual spell ranges have been significantly increased as well, to work well with the focus on casting. All armour pieces have increased poise and defence ratings, even a piece of cloth will give you at least a little poise. What's more is that each and every single piece of fashion now has special effects, like increasing casting speed, or reducing incoming Dark damage., etc.
Also, like Cinders, Convergence places little teleport spots all across the world, which let you slightly alter game progression, by letting you access certain areas you're not supposed to be yet. Say, you need a certain spell tome that's locked in the Catacombs? You can access it as early as the Undead Settlement now. This is not as game breaking as it sounds, as you still need to actually defeat certain bosses in the correct way to unlock certain key items that let you progress further. It does significantly reduce the almost unbearable early game slog of DS3's main campaign though, where you have to fight all the way to Irythill before you get anywhere interesting.
You have newly added enemies drawing inspiration from and lifting their movesets from other Soulsborne games, including new invaders, bosses and even mini bosses. These bosses and mini bosses all drop certain collectibles which you can trade in for new versions of coloured Titanite.
These new titanite pieces allow upgrading boss and special weapons to +10, just like regular weapons, or casting tools which all feature their own version of this like Ebony Titanite, Molten Titanite, Crystal, etc. Of course, enemies have generally much more health and damage as a response to having a powered up player character, but it (almost) never feels unfair or out of place.
Lastly, concerning one of the biggest gameplay changes on the side of the player; split damage has been almost completely removed. There are close to NO weapons that deal more than one single damage type. All weapons, spells and skills now deal exclusively either Physical, Lightning, Magic, Fire or Dark damage. There are very, very few exceptions, and in those cases it's almost always because it's a dual-weapon. (e.g. Dancer's Curved Swords) I personally really like this as it forces you to diversify your play-style and include more different damage types in your rollouts. It can of course mean that certain weapons are utterly useless against certain bosses, but the mod gives you plenty of opportunities to respec or simply level up more weapons and stats.
THE NEW MAGIC SYSTEM:
There is no way I can properly sum up just how fundamentally magic has changed here, so I'll just go over the most important points. The biggest point by far - unlike Cinders, which aims to primarly greatly expand the build variety by adding absurd amounts of new weapons, armor and spells - Convergence primarily focuses on completely reworking the magic system from the ground up.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a pure "magic mod", but it's clearly the main focus. Of course you also have a whole bunch of new weapons, lots of which have nothing to do with magic, and are just cool new bonks for you to play around with, but if you go into this expecting a mod with 10 million different weapons and armour pieces you're gonna be disappointed.
The weapon and armour variety here is nowhere near that of Cinders. But that's not to say it isn't good, and that there aren't a whole lot of new toys to play around with. There are some of the most fun and out-there weapons out of any mod in here, and I wish that some of these were in the base game, so rest assured.
So HOW does it change magic?
Most notably - next to the already existing (Soul) Sorceries, Miracles, Pyromancies and Hexes having received a veritable shitton of new spells - the creators added 7 new magic types and a lot of spell tools. You generally still have the three main classes - Sorceries, Miracles and Pyromancies - with Pyromancies now being called "Conjurations", to include the newly added magic types a bit better.
For sorceries, next to the standard Soul/Crystal and Dark Sorceries, Convergence introduces Light sorceries (Lightning damage), which also incorporate some Oolacile spells, and Aeromancies (Physical damage) which do somte serious knock-back. As you'd expect, these scale with INT, except for Hexes, which scale also with FTH.
Miracles of course still have the classic Lightning spells, which are self explanatory, and "Holy" miracles, which deal physical damage (Wrath of the Gods, Divine Pillars of Light etc.) but have received some evil counterparts in the form of Rosaria's Bleed miracles (Dark damage), which previously only featured the "Gnaw" spells, and Necromancies (Magic damage - don't ask me why) which focus on summoning minions, applying debuffs and DoTs. All of these obviously scale exclusively with FTH.
Conjurations are effectively all "Nature spells", as it were. They obviously include good, old Pyromancies, but introduce the most out of any spell type. You have 3 new categories here: Geomancy (Physical) which lets you throw rocks, mud, and boulders at enemies, as well as poison them, Cryomancies (Dark), which the name suggests are like Pyromancies, but with ice instead of fire, and last but definitely not least, Druidism. Drudism deals Magic damage, has a fancy green hue and is kinda similar to Necromancy in that it deals a lot with summoning minions, DoT and heals, but it also includes actual Water Magic! Which means, yes, you can absolutely pull off an Avatar: The Last Airbender build. All conjurations scale with both FTH and INT.
My favourite aspect of this is how naturally these new Spell schools fit in with the established lore of the game. The only one I feel is maybe a bit off is Druidism, which feels like something more fit for an Elder Scrolls game, or Elden Ring, than it does Dark Souls. But that is a very minor complaint, and it's nowhere near some of the most flagrant violations of Dark Souls' design philosophy I've seen in some other mods.
I briefly want to shout out that this mod featured basically a Spirit Ash system two years before Elden Ring released. This mod actually has quite a few things that would later turn up in that game.
BTW: All spell schools now have a corresponding covenant and NPC's to buy spells from and either use them to upgrade low-level spell tools, or turn them into certain covenant items for weapons, fashion, magic and other goodies. What's more is that some of these NPCs even feature all new voice acting!
That is crazy to me, and shows how much effort went into all tis. The performances are pretty good and they felt like pretty natural additions. With maybe the exception of Halflight (yes, he's a Firelink Shrine NPC now), all of them felt very lore-friendly and made sense as vendors. I only wish that they maybe had some side quests associated with them, but I realise that might have been too much to ask.
IMPROVED GRAPHICS AND NEW LEVEL GEOMETRY:
Of course this mod does much more than just overhaul the magic system and adding some weapons. Almost every level here has had something done to it. Be it simply some slight re-shades and some remixed enemy and bonfire placements, or something extreme like some completely new, walkable level geometry that literally expands the level design of the original. That last one goes from a few simple ladders and bridges that created new shortcuts where there previously weren't any, to some things that are so out there that I genuinely wonder how they even pulled this off.
I personally really like most of the changes to the lighting and atmosphere in these levels, with only a tiny handful of examples where I actually preferred the original's art direction. Every area had its lighting improved at the very least, and some like the Cathedral of the Deep have loads of newly added objects and furniture in there that give it a less empty, austere vibe.
The two stand out experiences here would be the Profaned Capital and Smouldering Lake, with so much stuff added/changed that it truly feels like a different version altogether. Without going too much into spoiler territory, the Smouldering Lake does away with the annoying ballista and instead opts for a much more interestingly designed and fitting stage hazard. Smoldering Lake is usually my least favourite location in vanilla DS3 by far, which is why I find it so impressive they managed to actually make it one of the more interesting levels this time around. Irythill is another one that blew me away with how complex the new additions really were.
As for some negatives; I should mention that I experienced some very serious performance drops with this mod installed. Usually my DS3 runs perfectly fine on a (mostly) stable 60fps. With this mod on, I was lucky to push 30 in a normal area. Some areas (especially boss arenas) felt damn near unplayable. Maybe it's just my PC but I noticed that it strongly depends on the location, and how much the mod added. Ashes of Ariandel, for example, basically didn't slow my game down at all, presumably because the mod creators didn't do too much there. If you're struggling to run DS3 normally, this mod will almost certainly be too much for your PC.
BOSSES AND MINI-BOSSES:
From this point on out I'll give another SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING!
Some of the biggest changes to the game can be found in this section, and some of the biggest surprises too.
As you would expect, this mod adds a whole bunch of either revamped, remixed or entirely new boss fights. It also adds a load of new mini-bosses, or "Greater Foes" as they're called in-game. These foes tend to be powered up versions of regular enemies with new attacks and greatly increased health. They are honestly pretty cool for the most part and it's sad that there's no way to respawn them other than entering NG+.
Next to the aforementioned upgrade materials they drop (Hollow's Remains, Soldier's Remains, etc.) they also all drop a "Soul of a Greater Foe", which you can turn into either a Titanite Slab or one of a couple of special rings, which all have various effects and buffs.
Next to these Greater Foes, there are also a bunch of newly added NPC invaders. They are pretty varied and feature some really unique build ideas. They're also pretty well balanced in that they don't have as much health as regular invaders, but are allowed to heal more often as a trade off. These also sadly can't be respawned.
On to the main bosses. There are now 31 instead of 25 bosses, but that doesn't mean that only 6 are new. Some new ones completely replace certain bosses, mostly the ones that people generally tend to dislike. And that's just the completely new ones. Almost all vanilla bosses had at least something done to them, some only receiving some minor tweaks on attack speeds, timings and maybe some new, or powered up attacks, while some others completely changed their second phase or even added an entirely new third one. While the number of new bosses here once again pales in comparison to something like Cinders, I vastly prefer the approach that Convergence took with its redesign for them.
Cinders honestly didn't do that great a job in that department. Not only did it feel like half of the "new" bosses were just Dragonslayer Armour but with different outfits, but the placement of these was usually haphazard at best, and often outright horrible. Not every semi-open space is a fitting boss arena, especially when the boss clips through the walls and floor.
What's more is that they all felt horribly balanced, with ridiculously inflated HP and really lazy design. The optional end game bosses felt like a boring chore more than a challenge. It felt like Cinders was so busy cramming as many bosses in there as it could that it kinda forgot to make them actually good.
In contrast, Convergence does the complete opposite and knocks it out of the park. I hope that all mod creators take note in the future. Not only do all the bosses feel (mostly) pretty well balanced, their placement makes sense and you never have to fight a boss in an area it was clearly not designed to be in.
Their lore and design also feels very natural and as though they could've been found in some scrapped design document. Also unlike Cinders, the bosses here aren't just 1:1 reskins from existing enemies in DS3, like, for example, a Cathedral Knight dressing up as a boss. These are completely new bosses, made from the ground up, taking moves from bosses/enemies from all over the series, but primarily Bloodborne and Sekiro. Their moves feel very organic, and they all clearly had their timings and cadence adjusted to work well with DS3's combat.
Yet again, another SPOILER WARNING, as I will be going into the new bosses in detail now. I'm not going to talk about all the minor changes to all other boss fights, as that would go completely beyond the scope of this review, which is already way too long.
-NEW BOSSES-
Archdruid Caimar:
The first completely new boss, and he replaces the Curse-rotted Greatwood in the Undead Settlement. Caimar is honestly fucking crazy and it's quite possibly the best boss they added. He uses Druid spells and summons wolves at his side. It feels unbelievably polished, I genuinely prefer it to a lot of DS3's normal bosses. He uses Owl's (Sekiro) moveset mixed with a bit of Gundyr and, i think, some Milwood Knight moves. Oh, and that phase 2 transition is fucking NUTS!
Royal Darkwraith:
Honestly, probably the worst of the newly added bosses. He can be found somewhere deep within Farron Keep. I really like his Darkwraith/Cathedral Knight inspired move-set but it's very clearly quite unpolished, as multiple of his attacks have their hit-boxes active long before his weapon is anywhere close to you. Coupled with the fact that you have to fight him in a poison pool with no opportunity to not be poisoned, this makes for the fight that could be improved upon the most.
High Lord Wolnir:
Unlike the other base game bosses, Wolnir didn't just receive a few minor changes, his whole fight got completely scrapped. Instead, we have a more humanoid opponent of the same name, with a moveset which appears to be lifted from Milwood Knights and perhaps the Strawhat Shinobi guys from Sekiro. Very fun fight, if a bit standard. He uses both Blackflame attacks as well as Holy miracles. Much more fun to fight than the original.
Frigid Wyvern:
OK, I guess this one is more of a stage hazard, but the Wiki considers it a boss, so I will too. It's basically just a normal Wyvern but with ice instead of fire. Thankfully, you can kill it without a plunging attack to the head. Not actually respawnable, so technically closer to a mini-boss. We encounter him a few times, making this encounter very Demon's Souls-y.
Headless Knight:
Replacing Dragonslayer Armour on Lothric Castle's long bridge, we encounter the Headless Knight, which is basically Champion Gundyr with some different attack timings, added AOE attacks and lightning damage. Seems more aggressive than standard Gundyr too. Very tense fight, super speedy and very in-your-face, especially in such a small arena.
Vessel of Kaathe:
If I remember correctly, this was the first new bosses they ever added to this mod, and I guess you can kinda tell. Not that it's bad, it's just a fairly normal reskin of a regular DS3 Demon. It's basically immune to Dark damage and highly resistant to Fire and has some pretty intense AEO blasts. The thing that definitely saves it is the surprise second phase, which I will not spoil here.
Euclus, King of Fallen Oolacile:
The last of Convergence's completely new bosses, Euclus also has a very strong argument for being the best out of them. He replaces Halflight in Filianore's Church. While some attacks definitely need some more work (that AOE-grab comes out WAY too fucking fast for how much damage it does and how hard it is to avoid) he has the most intense and varied moveset out of all the bosses here. His moveset is equal parts Corruped Monk (Sekiro) and Martyr Logarius (Bloodborne), and he makes use of Light sorceries. Great boss and seriously tough, with very few hiccups.
Also, I vastly prefer Euclus over who previously stood guard here, Storm King Allant. Yes, the final boss from Demon's Souls. Not that it was a bad fight, but I really dislike shoving gratuitous fan-service like that into a mod that takes itself this seriously.
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END- & POST-GAME SPOILER WARNING
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REVAMPED & REKINDLED BOSSES
So those were the new bosses, the ones which didn't exist in this game at all (except for Wolnir), and those are already pretty damn good. What about the rest? As I've said before, almost every boss in the game had, at the very least, their health and damage adjusted, most of them even had some extra attacks added or attack timings changed. Obviously I'm not gonna point out every change here, instead I'll focus on the most important ones.
REVAMPED Pontiff Sulyvahn
If you know anything about Convergence, you've probably already heard about this one, and for good reason. This version of Pontiff is now my favourite fight in the whole game, yes, more so than Gael even.
But first, the build up. His cathedral in Irythil stands empty when you first get there, surely confusing many a player on where he's gone. I was wondering whether they took him out entirely, and was almost sure that was the case after I'd beaten the Twin Princes and hadn't found him. But luckily, after you get all 4 Lords of Cinder, a portal to the Realm of Moonlight opens inside Firelink Shrine, letting you access a beautiful, moonlit version of his boss arena, with the original "Old King of the Eclipse" OST reinstated as his boss theme.
The first two phases are more of the same, although Sully obviously had his HP and damage adjusted to end-game levels.
The third phase is where shit gets real. This guy just channels his inner Sword Saint Isshin, transforms his Greatsword of Judgement into a Swordspear and goes fucking HAM with endless combos, AOE's, high speed and insane aggression. Honestly it's kinda hard to explain what makes it so good, it's just the package of everything together that made me actually clap in my chair when it was finally over.
REVAMPED Soul of Cinder:
Of course they massively overhauled this guy too, why wouldn't they? Honestly this one is almost as good as the previous one, and I vastly prefer this SoC over the original. While the first phase was always a bit too chaotic and the second a bit too easy for my liking, the difficulty in this version is ON POINT.
First phase obviously incorporates a lot of new mechanics and builds, for example, he now has an Aeromancer mode, a Geomancer mode, even a Hexer mode too. His resistances have been buffed across the board, as well as his HP, but somehow the fight feels a little less chaotic than the original. Until this point, it's fairly normal, albeit with new attacks.
The second phase goes insane though. SoC now suddenly channels both Gwyn AND Shura Isshin, with a side of Genichiro Ashina and even a little bit of Ludwig the Holy Blade in there. Truly a "best of" of the entire series. And it's quite intense too. OG SoC's second phase always felt a bit too easy, this one truly feels how the amalgamation of all of history's most powerful entities SHOULD fight. Once again, a bit hard to explain why it's so good, you just have to experience it yourself.
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Finally, we've arrived at the last 2 "new" bosses. Only, they're explicitly not new, but remixed, MUCH harder versions of the Lord of Cinder fights. These are only available after beating SoC, marking them post-game content. Only attempt these if you have a high tolerance for frustration. I'm not a big fan of these tbh. Currently only the two below are available, perhaps some time in the future we'll see the other two get one as well.
REKINDLED Abyss Watcher:
So this is, by far, no question, 100% the hardest boss in this game by a mile and then some. This fight might be harder than Malenia. It's certainly many, MANY times harder than anything else in this game. It's kinda sad that it's not very good then. I'm honestly kinda shocked this was made by the same people who gave us gems like Caimar and Euclus. This one feels like what a 13 year old who just got into Souls games thinks a hard boss should be.
Every fucking hit fully staggers you. Yes, literally every single tiny fucking hit. Every combo will stunlock and kill you. He can chain combos literally while you're still on the floor, unable to move. His hitboxes deviate WILDLY from his actual attack animations.
The tracking here makes DS2 look like a turn based game. This could've been a great fight if it received much more polished, but the way it's now it feels grossly out of place.
REKINDLED Yhorm the Giant:
I honestly don't have much to say on Rekindled Yhorm. He is nowhere near as hard as the guy above, not even in the same ballpark. There are base game bosses that are harder than this, even if it's arguably still harder than the original.
Increased attack speed, some new moves and added Fire AOEs/trails to most of his attacks, but that's it. If you can kill Yhorm, you can kill him in this state as well.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
On the whole, this is a fantastic mod. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement here, but seeing how the mod hasn't been updated in over a year, I don't think we'll be seeing any continued support for this project. At least, not in the near future.
AFAIK the mod creator is currently busy with DS3 Archthrones, as well as The Convergence for Elden Ring, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Overall, I just want to say that I find it amazing how talented the people who worked on this are, how much it reinvigorated my love for DS3 and how interesting the experience it gave me was. With Cinders, I was more then ready to deinstall it after I finished my first playthrough. Here though, I'm already planning my next few.
There is still SO MUCH STUFF I haven't even touched on. I probably barely even covered 50% of what this mod does. And that's even though this post is already so fucking long lol
I can't recommend this mod enough.
9/10