TLDR: I believe that Dark Souls III is a game with a lot of missed potential that pissed me off so much I felt compelled to write a review about it weeks after finally beating it.

I saw a tweet the other day that said Dark Souls III is a game about letting go of the past and knowing when to end things before they drag on too long. Did I play the same Dark Souls III?

I finally got 100% completion across three playthroughs, but I may come back for an SL1 run someday, since that might give me a better understanding as to why people love this game's bosses so much. Right now, it just feels like I played Bloodborne with a Dark Souls (1) skin put on top of it, with extremely linear level design and a lot of the bosses consisting of nothing but R1 + dodge spam (although I guess that's true for every game in this series excluding Sekiro, I guess). I wouldn't mind this game mimicking Bloodborne so much if it had an interesting narrative or set pieces like that game does, but Dark Souls III constantly asks the player if they remember Dark Souls 1 with its overt fan service. Admittedly, it got to me sometimes and I loved certain aspects of it, but most of the writing and atmosphere felt desperate to woo me over, especially during segments like that one area after Pontiff Sulyvahn and the final boss as a whole.

Having played this game after about 60 hours of Elden Ring, it's so weird seeing so many of my problems with that game stem from here. I won't get into that aspect too much since it'd be a little unfair to compare this game to one that came out six years later, but it does get on my nerves in both of those games as opposed to other Soulsborne entries. I haven't played much of Dark Souls II and didn't like what I have played so far, but at least that game presents unique (albeit jank) ideas instead of sucking off Dark Souls 1 for a large majority of the runtime.

However, I still think there's a lot of fun to be had with this game!! I don't want anyone to feel bad about liking Dark Souls III just because I don't, especially since apparently this was an introduction into the series for a lot of people. In fact, I did enjoy using Gundyr's Halberd and a high poise build to steamroll a lot of late-game fights, and two DLC bosses in particular are some of my favorites in the series. This game even has some of the most creative bonfire shortcuts despite being so linear. I'm just upset that this is a game that could've done so much more with its world despite the linearity and combat-focused mentality if it wasn't afraid to be a little less derivative.

In a world where people hadn't been so harsh to Dark Souls II, this game might have ended up being an amazing conclusion to a trilogy that combined elements of the previous two as well as bringing clever new ones to the table. Instead, I just see this as a game made as a product— an attempt to capitalize on both the infamy of Dark Souls 1 and the phenomenal success of Bloodborne. I can understand why fans of Dark Souls III love the game to death, but whenever I look back on my time with it, I'll always just think about what could've been.