Darksiders III - PlayStation 4

I play games a ton. Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War 4 and Zelda Breath of the Wild being the recent ones. This isn't an open world like HZD and Zelda BotW, and doesn't have the incredible, realistic graphics of GoW4. What it does have is the gameplay value we enjoyed with Super Metroid and the classic Zelda games where you find places that you know you can traverse or probably need some power or item to solve but don't have it but you take a mental note of that spot and come back. That was great adventuring when I played those games and Darksiders 3 does that very well with the gameplay.The combat is great as well. It relies heavily on combos and dodging but it does it well like what you might have experienced in Darksiders 2. It is very rewarding about mid-game when you are timing the evades perfectly most of the time and are able to take on multiple, hard enemies at the same time. The boss fights are kind of straightforward but take practice especially at higher difficulties. You get a different weapon that can be used as part of the different Hollow powers you get and they have different ranges and stuff that change how you fight. I will admit it would have been nice to have them be more unique and cause you to play differently and add more variety like in DS2 but sadly they didn't and this is pretty much my only real pause with this game.The story is great. They come straight in to the story, for those that are Darksiders fans, where the horseman War is accused of causing the Apocalypse. Fury, his fellow horsemen is tasked to find and capture the 7 deadly sins and she is given a Watcher to attend to make sure she completes her task. Fury finds out more about what happened with War and Fury starts to see the role that they play in the whole scheme of the story. There are many elusions and there are unanswered questions in the end and I think that is great because it causes you to want more from the series.The voice acting is amazing. The voice actress they got for Fury really gives her all and all the deadly sins gave great performances. They cast this great and scripted this really well.The graphics are fine. They aren't God of War 4's graphics and maybe a little less than Herizon Zero Dawn. That is fine. The Darksiders games have always been a little more cartoony anyway and not meant to be mega realistic. Also they seems to be focussing on exploration, just not mass exploration like you would get from Breath of the Wild. They also obviously didn't have the budget for something so massive.Exploration: Great! There are great puzzles there are hidden paths, there are hidden enemies, etc. You really have to use all the tools they give you to find everything. This isn't as straightforward as a game as other reviews say. Sure they give great segways to the next area they want you to go but there isn't a marker on your map or anything forcing you there. You can port to any area and explore. Actually, I killed the deadly sins in the wrong order from what some would say. I thought that was awesome since I wasn't fully led and handheld in that respect.Puzzles. None of the puzzles were terribly hard but neither are any of the other games that we play now. There were some where I had to take time with trial and error but it was still fulfilling when I figured stuff out although it is pretty apparent when you scanned the area what you should do. It was fulfilling because they allow you to manipulate the world in unique ways that make sense without needing to throw a fairy at the thing you need to manipulate to lead you to do the thing you need to proceed. I loved seeing a color on a certain thing and thinking, "if I use this tool, I can probably shift that thing around so I can jump and swing here", and then it worked. It was just enough for a player to actually use their brain. Again focus on that they didn't have to put map markers or indicators on the world to help you along the way.Menu and UI. Needs to be a lot better. It was hard to toggle items in the middle of a fight and the menu wasn't terrible but didn't have a smooth flow. But I wasn't using items for the majority of the game or needing to use my menu for much more than giving points to certain attributes and such.Overall it was a great experience. I did almost all the trophies except beating the game on Apocalyptic. There are few collectables so it doesn't feel like a collectathon. I completed on hard difficulty and used a fair amount of consumables on boss fights. But I was heavy on some consumables in the end. I am sure on Apocalyptic that I would have to buy those same consumables rather than have 10-12 in my inventory.Please get this game. It is worth it and was a lot of fun and I would really like it to do well enough to do a Darksiders 4 and improve on the current one and maybe pull in some cool stuff from the other Darksider games.

I gave this game five stars because I can overlook its shortcomings. I am a HUGE fan of this series and was very excited for this third installment. Each Darksiders game has been different from each other, there is no doubt about that. However, there is a common feel to them that make the lore, environments and gameplay, very exciting.Cons:-The first thing you should know, is that this game is NOT easy. The difficulty from this game arises from its issues, rather than its overall creation. I can't do a great technical job of explaining what is going on, but mainly, the enemies hit really hard and it's very difficult to avoid damage. Dogging is a bit of a joke in this game and it's pretty much the only means you have for getting out of the way. Enemies can hit much farther than you can dodge and there's no running away. Mobs will overtake you and you will often feel like you've been cheated out of a successful fight. Regular enemies will prove to be a challenge to most people, as they can easily gang up on you and take you out. Some simple enemies will seem to be able to take two thirds of your health in one hit, it just doesn't make sense. The difficulty spikes are all over the place. So, you will often end up trying to run through a section and avoid combat, so that you don't lose all of your health resources before you get to a boss.-Check points are often terrible. You can spend a long time clearing out enemies to get to a boss and then the last simpleton takes you out, causing you to have to do the entire map over again. I'm not sure why they though this was a good idea, as it really only leads to frustration.- A little bit of loading issues in some sections. The screen can often freeze for a few seconds when running between some map areas. This is likely just the extended areas loading, but it's not game-breaking.Pros:- This game is really fun, overall. The lore, and environments are amazing, to me. Granted, the lore is not quite as epic as the first two games, but you can still tell it's a Darksiders game. Don't believe people who tell you different.- The maps are fantastic. There is a ton of opportunity for secrets, and exploring. It's important to know that these maps are not the huge landscapes that we saw in D2, but they are certainly attractive and very interesting. The developers did a great job of making you spend time in a smaller map in such as way that you feel like it's a huge place. I never got bored with exploring or finding secret paths. As you start the game, you will see lots of places that you want to get to, but won't be able to until later in the game. In other words, you will need to revisit the same map areas, but with different abilities. This is actually fun, since the new sections of those maps are quite interesting. Fast travel will be available.- Graphics are good, but certainly not Red Dead Redemption good. They are a bit stylized for the genre, but that's what you would expect. The colors are brilliant, the lighting and environments are often fascinating.- You HAVE to explore. There are so many places that you will NOT discover if you do not snoop at every corner. There are a lot of tiny tunnels that you will not see if you don't look. Those tunnels often lead to additional boss fights and rewards, as well as huge sections of maps. Jump, climb, float...all of it. As you gain those extra abilities, you will be able to reach many of them. If you see an enemies standing in an impossible location...you CAN eventually get there.- Plenty of gameplay hoursNotes: Yes, there are Cons, but this game is really fun, overall. You can tell the developers put some heart and soul into it. It doesn't feel lazy, just occasionally underdeveloped from a lack of resources. I think they are learning and tried to take this in a different direction. Most of it worked, but some things need tweaking or reversing. Don't expect this to fulfill your Darksiders Lore encyclopedia, it won't, but there is enough story there to make it interesting. Don't skip out on this game because of a few bad reviews. If you are new to the series, then I'd say that you must buy the remastered versions of the first and second game and play through those. Each experience will be different, but you won't regret it. By the way, the first game has some difficulty spikes as well, but it's well worth powering through.