in my first five hours with Dark Souls 3
I spied 44 weapons 7 sorceries and 7
miracles and hexes I encountered 10 NPCs
and over half of them had extendable
quest lines and all of this is without
finding the Pyromancer hidden in the
undead settlement or the quest line you
can do for the red eye orb and probably
even more and someone can correct me if
I'm wrong and I often am but this feels
like one of the densest early games I've
seen in the souls series and if they can
maintain this into the mid and the late
game then I am going to be impressed
all of this lines up with a recent quote
by Miyazaki where he states that Dark
Souls 3 could possibly be smaller than
Dark Souls 2 but with more depth and
complexity I believe it's also the first
Souls game to come with the promise of
more DLC later down the line so take
that how you will for now though let's
review the early game because all of the
footage we have now gives us a really
solid idea of what the game will be like
I'm both very happy with and a little
bit worried about the level design I'm
happy because like I said earlier it's
really really dense the best way I can
describe it is imagine a map is drawn on
a flat piece of paper but then you
folded that piece of paper in on itself
for example filing shrine has four
vertical layers and the undead
settlement has two sets of two branching
paths both of which lead to the same
destination when I was playing I was
really really lost and it's only after
painstakingly going through hours of
footage and watching it forever that I
actually have my bearings now and this
bodes well for all the secrets that
they'll be able to hide in these very
replayable levels when we leave the high
wall of lothric after beating vort
we get this big view of what a probably
future areas and all of them look really
far apart from one another I speculate
that there will be a few branching paths
down this road though a lot of the areas
are so spread out that I can't imagine
that we're going back to the amazing
intertwined world of Dark Souls 1
my biggest concern is the ability to
warp to every single bonfire I really do
agree with the argument that warping to
every bonfire reduces the tedium of the
game I get that but I also think that
this can reduce bonfires to feeling a
lot like checkpoints rather than kicking
off points into multiple areas that's
how I felt in Dark Souls 2 I feel like
every time I hit a bonfire the bonfires
before it became redundant and I have a
feeling that's going to be the same way
in Dark Souls 3 I might be alone in this
but I loved the treks between bonfires
and Dark Souls 1 and often it led me to
discovering a part of the world that I
had missed my first time through
considering the early levels of Dark
Souls 3 is so dense and intertwined I'm
worried that they're missing an
opportunity here by making bonfires feel
like checkpoints one thing I did like
surprisingly was regularly warping back
to Firelink shrine because in my opinion
it's the first game since Demon Souls to
get the hub right if you're going to
force a player back to the hub world to
level up which is in every game except
Dark Souls 1 then you have to make every
visit to the hub feel worthwhile it has
to be comforting it has to be engaging
and different now majula in Dark Souls 2
it had the right idea but presumably
because of time constraints there are
like two times I remember where new NPCs
even showed up so a lot of the time it
was just two loading screens in the way
of leveling up the hunters dream is much
the same with incredible atmosphere in
design but I did miss talking to new
characters this new filing shrine even
just at the start of the game had me
engaged I was leveling up at the fire
keeper I was buying items from the
handmaiden and giving her umbrella to
expand her wares I was doing a bunch to
my equipment at the blacksmith and most
importantly new characters constantly
appeared a dodgy guy called yeol sold me
sorceries and had his own quest line
gray rat sold items and then he sold
even rarer items when I sent him to go
steal some stuff
a man named Leonhardt encouraged me to
invade and kill people and even killing
a woman named
elana had a character named Aegon hunt
me down within the shrine a lot happened
in my short play time and I just put it
down to talking to NPCs every time I
went back to the shrine so I recommend
you do that too one of the new stats you
can level up at the shrine is called
luck and a lot of you will remember it
from demon souls it's a curious addition
because what luck does is increase enemy
drop rates and to me this is just a
blaring sign that enemy drops are going
to be way more important in this game
and the only reason I can think that
they'd put luck in is if enemies are
going to drop really interesting gear
this time around what I experienced
lines up with this because I chose the
rusted gold coins as my starting gift
and I used them when I was fighting the
Knights and my character got tons of
sweet gear and armor and you know I
can't actually think of a single enemy
that didn't drop a part of its set or
its weapon the lothric Knights dropped
their gear the fat Knight gave me his
huge halberd the workers gave me their
set and even the fat lady dropped her
hat sunlight blade who is another
uploader he got a great machete and a
flam birch from his enemies and other
uploaders found titanite know kinds of
stuff so luck is going to be important
but my only problem with luck is that
when you invest in drop rates
you're never gonna like that stat when
you're in the late game however Miyazaki
has confirmed that there is a way to
reallocate stat points in Dark Souls 3
so you don't feel that bad investing in
luck for the early game what luck is
going to do for you is give you really
good weapon variety and most of us are
coming from blood-borne which had like
15 melee weapons in the entire main game
and in the first hour of Dark Souls 3
we've already come across more than that
I do have to admit though the weapons
don't meet the depth that blood-borne
strike weapons had however weapon arts
really do help the weapons come close to
having a bit more depth webinars are
activated with l2 if you didn't know and
the type of weapon art your weapon has
is readable in the description for
example this pickaxe has one called
galvanized where you get higher stamina
recovery for a while and this curved
sword I found
has an awesome frost blade if you press
l2 as you can see here some weapon arts
are really boring admittedly and some
weapon arts are shared across multiple
weapons but they are such a welcomed
addition and I think that boss weapons
in particular are going to be really
special weapon arts use focus which is
the blue bar below your health
spells use it as well and I rarely found
myself running out of focus but that's
probably because I wasn't playing a
spellcaster
while I do think the mana bar is
fantastic I think it's way more
intuitive than spell charges are I just
can't help but feel like they're wasting
it on all the boring sorcery and miracle
choices that I've seen so far just once
in a Souls game I wish I could play
solidly as a sorcerer or a cleric
instead sorcery and miracles always seem
relegated to this position where they
compliment a melee play style they never
stand on their own and spells I've seen
so far just seem so standard you throw a
soul arrow at an enemy use soul great
sword when they get close you buff your
weapon you fumble switching between your
catalysts and your melee wouldn't it be
cool if you could run while you cast or
if you could lay down traps on the
ground to bait enemies into or maybe you
could freeze enemies to slow them down
or cast debuffs on your enemies why have
spells remained so boring and projectile
based for three games in a row and why
haven't any spell casting mechanics been
improved hopefully the rest of the spell
list changes my opinion at the very
least I hope that they have a melee
weapon that doubles as a good catalyst
and actually has decent melee moves as
well what I will say is that bows are
awesome this time around I can
absolutely see bow only builds being a
thing when you use a bow in any Souls
game you spend a lot of time rolling
right well now bows have this crazy fast
rolling attack it's great it helps you
keep up your DPS while you're fighting
not to mention the webinar of the short
bow which turns your enemies into a pin
cushion or the weapon art of the longbow
which makes you feel like a sniper
those were the reason my boss fights
felt really epic for sure
it was fun switching up my play style
mid-fight based on where I was and right
now on screen you're seeing the you Dex
gun deer fight and when I watched other
streamers do this fight I realized they
had a really easy time with it and the
reason I was having a tough time was
because I was using the bandit knife
which did barely any damage so this boss
is really easy if you have a good weapon
and the second boss too was really easy
for me his health just melted away and I
voiced these concerns in my playthrough
saying bosses needed more health and
shortly after that an article came out
and Miyazaki said that the difficulty
had been toned down for the bosses
because they wanted journalists to get
through the demo and that's really
heartening to hear because bosses were
incredible they had amazing movesets
they had great soundtracks and some of
the soundtracks even changed halfway
through the fight
it's just they needed more health so I'm
glad that's fixed you should check out
my playthrough if you want to see the
bosses in their entirety one thing I
noticed during this fight was the
attention to detail the cobblestone
floor is completely depressed and
wrecked if you look at it here which is
probably from Voort stamping and
smashing and charging all over the place
this implies that he's been regularly
stopping people who attempt to leave the
castle additionally there's this giant
root that has snaked its way up the door
towards the sunlight which implies that
no one has successfully defeated Vaught
and left this place for a really long
time it's just my theories of course and
they might be wrong but telling a story
through environments is what from is
really good at and this attention to
detail is great to see all areas will
like this roots snake all over the
ground in the undead settlement the sky
is filled with crows there are lamps
hanging bodies torture devices wells
cages I could go on and on but really
it's all visible in this footage and
it's a far cry from the repeating
textures and empty rooms of Dark Souls 2
for sure and I reckon that environmental
clutter is surely one of the last things
you do in the development of a game and
the fact that it's all here is
probably a good sign that the game is
fairly complete I was playing on ps4 and
I was really impressed with the skyboxes
the draw distance the cloth physics the
texture quality and all of that so
imagine how it'll look on PC in that
glorious 60 frames a lot of this great
quality stuff is due to the fact that
it's a next-gen game like blood-borne
was and it's clear that they've taken a
lot of cues from blood-borne as well not
only is the gameplay faster and smoother
but we can already see weapons and items
that really encourage a blood-borne
paced style the pontiff's left eye ring
for example restores health on
successive hits which is like the regain
system from blood-borne and the weapon
art for the dagger has you dashing all
over the place like you would in
blood-borne so there are a few gameplay
references to blood-borne but there are
a ton of Story references to previous
Souls games characters from Dark Souls 1
are coming back to life presumably
because they're on candles like Sigrid
is or undead with a purpose like Andre
the way these characters appear is
fantastic it's clearly meant to trigger
that nostalgic feeling that you get from
previous games and it works just look at
how excited twitch chat gets when they
see Sigrid coming up an elevator or when
the gargoyles first appeared
this is the end of an era for Dark Souls
and they're proudly playing that
nostalgia card and I'm sure you know
this but I'm all for powerful encounters
and characters but here's hoping they
don't overdo it though because there
doesn't need to be room for new concepts
and new characters in this series one
character I'm very happy I met is
leonhart the ring finder he gives you
the cracked red eye orbs and I think he
reappears when you get the reward for
invading somebody successfully the guy's
a game informer then discovered that he
gives you a quest to kill a dark wraith
which ends in you receiving the red eye
orb now a lot of you hate getting
invaded and I get that but I love
invading and I love getting invaded and
having this invasion option early is so
core to PvP fanatics and if you like
summoning instead then you can do that
as soon as you reach Firelink shrine
because the handmaiden sells you the
white summon soapstone and there's a
warrior of sunlight medal hidden in the
undead settlement covenants are now item
based there's a slot in your inventory
where you can equip a covenant item and
switch to that covenant this is way more
convenient I love it so if covenants are
really convenient now I just want them
to have depth I want them to have tons
of rewards that you can get and I want
them to be difficult to achieve so the
game gets more longevity and I think
convenience is a good step but hope we
see some depth as well so overall what
we've seen so far should look good to
you if you're on the fence about buying
this game and I really look forward to
diving into it with you guys and seeing
if it can live up to the high
expectations that the early game has set
so subscribe if you're interested in
seeing a year of Dark Souls 3 content
and I'll see you guys on March 22nd as
we dive into the Japanese version of
Dark Souls 3
you