The new installment in the Souls series brings the player yet again to a land filled with things trying their absolute hardest to kill you. This time around, the game cranks up the difficulty by adding elements from the much faster-paced Miyazaki-directed game Bloodborne. Although I have enjoyed almost every facet of the game, as a returning fan from the previous games, I think that some bosses are recycled and that it is much too linear.

The story of the game centers around the player character known as an Unkindled. The player is part of a long line of undead that have been resurrected from death in order to defeat the Lords of Cinder and link the fire in order to prolong the age of fire and to prevent the abyssal plague from consuming the world. The Lords of Cinder are the Abyss Watchers of the Farron Legion, Saint Aldritch of the deep, Yhorm the Giant, king of the Profaned Capital and the twin princes of Lothric. Between these Lords of Cinder are bosses that have been more difficult for me than the Lords of Cinder themselves.

On this note, the bosses of Dark Souls 3 have had the best design of the entire Souls series. The upgraded graphics engine has added gorgeous textures to the various monstrosities that the player will face. That being said, the way the fights play out are quite repetitive. All of the bosses have a second phase of their fight, and it most often has them just adding fire to their weapon and doing a ridiculous amount of damage against the player character, or creating a clone of themselves so you have to worry about two enemies doing the exact same moveset. I am used to bosses doing this after playing Dark Souls one and two, but it seems way too excessive in the third game.

My main gripe with the game is how linear everything is compared to the previous games. In previous games, the player could choose whichever path they want and take out whichever boss they wanted to first. In Dark Souls 3, it seems like if you branch off the main path, you will be destroyed by enemies that seem way more overleveled than the player character, a facet that has never been in a Souls game. This honestly disappoints me as one of my favorite parts of the Souls games was creating my own path and getting a system down for taking out the bosses on my own accord. The upgrade materials to level up your weapons all seem to be distributed around the areas based on the different levels of the player character rather than evenly distributing them around the entire game.

With the negatives nailed down, I would say that the atmosphere of the game is the best atmosphere that I have ever experienced in a game, and the combat is the most engaging. The amazing feeling after being stuck on a boss for days and then finally beating them after hours of attempts was incredible. I was stuck on a certain boss (Pontiff Sulyvahn) for at least four days. I went in on a certain attempt in order to just learn the bosses moveset so I could adjust to it, but in the end I finally beat him and I am pretty sure my neighbors heard me yelling “YES!” from a few miles away. Not only this, but the game incorporates characters and areas from the first game, so the nostalgia while playing the game was at times almost overwhelming.

Dark Souls 3 is linear and some of the bosses are boring, but even with that, it is probably my favorite Souls game to date, and I think it is the perfect finale of the series.