Quick Look: Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel

Member Dark Souls III. I MEMBER!

EPIC Brad is back for MORE!

Really, a George of the Jungle reference? Who's going to get that?

@veektarius: I did.

@veektarius: I thought it is great. <_<

8:56 to Brad.

Did we ever get a reason why he hasn't sold the dozens and dozens of weapons and armor sets he's hoarded and will never use again?

WOLF SQUAD!

@deks: Wolf land

@veektarius: Brendan Fraser?

I'm not the biggest fan of this game, but I did enjoy exploring the Painted World of Ariandel quite a bit. I think the DLC manages to reference the lore of the first game and link it to Dark Souls 3 in a neat way, while simultaneously flesh out some of the best parts of both games. It also concludes well with a grandiose boss fight.

@dougfunk15: In fairness to Brad, that encounter played out pretty much as I think the designers wanted it to, just enough movement to pull in the full team.

I'd put the 12:10 death closer to the "It didn't need to go down like that" aspect of a Time-To-Brad. But a ton of my deaths in DkS3 were because the kick DIDN'T happen for me.

As for the armor, why sell it? It's not like they turn into a huge amount of souls, and personally collecting sets was one of the more rewarding completionist aspects of the series for me.

Too bad Brad didnt remember to try the stay between the legs tactic for the big wolf. He mowed down the little ones real well though :D I'm still at that last boss, it sure is something. The atmosphere in the whole dlc is just so deliciously thick. Expected to be dissapointed by it but I totally loved it. And those 2 new dex weapons are really neat as well, you'll know which ones when you find em.

I didn't love this DLC but the last boss was cool and a nice challenge. I liked the look of the levels too.

The audio issues at the beginning make this basically an anti-ASMR video. Get Navarro on the phone.

Yep, pains me to say it but I was pretty disappointed by this DLC. Felt like more rehash in a game that already felt the least original in the series.

Might just be franchise fatigue for me.

Did someone drop the Slave Knight set for Brad? Or am I confusing that red hood with this other hood he's using?

The dogs in this game all seem to cheat. Not just the wolves, I've had zombie dogs teleporting after me all the time.

HAH, that ending! You were so close!

@veektarius: brendan fraser is a national treasure

He was so close to that bonfire at the end it hurts

I'd say this kind of sums up my disappointment with DS3. A level of difficulty that often felt unnecessarily frustrating as opposed to challenging and rewarding

I was actually feeling a little down from the last couple of days, but the George of the Jungle reference brought a smile to my face. Thanks Drew! Now if we can only get a Super Chicken reference...

If I were in the same place in the game as Jason and lost my save, I too would never have turned it back on.

Those wolves should know it's a $350 fine to awoo

twitter noobs to dying in a minute.

Some really angry foliage around these parts.

I assume @danryckert can take a regular wolf or a sniper wolf, but can he defeat a teleporting wolf?

This DLC pretty well solidified Dark Souls 3's place at the top of my Most Disappointing category. It showed that the game basically just being Dark Souls 1 again but worse wasn't an accidental occurrence, but the actual intended result. It made me glad that Dark Souls 3 is the last Dark Souls game, and that really sucks since before it came out the Dark Souls series was my favorite of all time.

It's a shame there was apparently such an internal blowback to Dark Souls 2. It did a ton of interesting things but all of that was pushed to the side because it wasn't the real sequel to Dark Souls. Well maybe it wasn't, but at least it didn't fall into the Die Hard 2 trap like Dark Souls 3 did.

@Quicklyer: it's probably fatigue as Dark Souls 3 is probably the most refined of all their games and definitely leagues beyond Dark Souls 1 that completely falls apart midway through if not sooner.

I've always passed on Souls DLC content and it seems like this is no different. I really enjoyed Bloodborne for its refreshing change of pace but the DLC seemed frustrating more than anything else. For me personally once I was done with the core game I didn't feel the need to revisit them in the form of these weirdly paced additional areas.

Poor Brad took that last left when the bonfire was just a few feet had he taken the right.

Other than the boss fight (the optional one is okayyyy), I was pretty lukewarm on this one. The aesthetic was a nice change-up too I guess.

Bummed that Brad seemed to form an opinion before he even started this, just based on stuff he read.

@Quicklyer: I think Dark Souls III was way better and more original than two, It can't measure up to Dark Souls I or Demon's Souls though.

Hmm it is fun to watch brad play dark souls but it seems that most people are more or less over this formula of game. I hope they can find another successful IP but I'm not sure if the world needs more dark souls.

@art_vandelay said:

Dark Souls 3 is obviously the most refined, and imo most fun to play gameplay-wise. Obviously also the best looking game graphically. Both of these things are important to a greater or lesser extent.

But the majority of Souls fans have judged DS3 to be way to referential to Dark Souls 1. In terms of narrative (lore, characters, enemies, setting, and overall worldbuilding) many people would say that Dark Souls 2 was, at the very least, original.

2016, the year of DLC with snowy environments inhabited by wolves.

@aistan: I actually didn't think DS3 was disappointing at all. I think DS3 is the strongest in the series, at least as far as gameplay is concerned. My main complaint is the lack of enemy variety; it feels like you're fighting those little thieves with the bags on their heads in 60% of the areas. It also leans a bit too hard on the DS3 references, and some of the NPC questlines are super hard to discover on your own.

If I had to rate them, I'd go Bloodborne (if it counts) > DS3 > DS2 > DS1.

Though I am also glad that DS3 is the end of the series. As much as I enjoyed the game, I want something new.

The only thing I didn't like about this DLC is that it's short. The fact that it's highly referential, just like the main game, is something I already made peace with. The series itself has "gone hollow" and you must bring it to its finality. That its overt story pokes fun at sequelization itself seems to pass over everyone's head.

Nothing will recapture the novelty of DeS & DS1 without making a radically different game. (Bloodborne: almost...)

Thanks for the quick look. I'm #TeamBrad all the way. Would not have checked out this game without the Quick Look.

Love the team of Jason and Brad. So much less frenetic and more purposeful. You guys are great together.

why does he keep saying you have to get so far into the game to access the dlc, it's like after the third boss

lest we forget dark souls 3 also gave birth to that rowdy dirty boy The Junker.

I liked Dark Souls 1 and 2. Both are good games but for different reasons. Honestly I can't pick between the two. Though Dark Souls 2 has some uninspired bosses while I can't remember a part in Dark Souls 1 that felt uninspired and lazy, maybe the Capra Demon bossfight but thats debatable.

Dark Souls 3 has some amazing atmosphere, but the enemy placement and level layout feels off at parts. Theres also so much more ways to cheese the game, it feels like it is designed to be played that way. At least in Dark Souls 1 and 2 you still felt smart if you found a way to defeat a strong enemy/a boss the easy way. Here it feels artificial, like that the game is directing you to do stuff you can do normally otherwise. The entire first part of the game really feels like cheese-heaven for me. No idea but something just seems off level design wise. Some other parts, like the Undead Village were nice though regardless of the million spots where you could play the easy game because the leveldesign was allright.

Well at least the first boss (Gungnir Ludex?) in Dark Souls 3 is fantastic. Problem is that I do not even remember their names, while I remember almost all of the Dark Souls 1 bosses names on the fly. Dark Souls 3 also comes of as sort of uninspired to me, trying to cash in on "Dark Souls 1 nostalgia" if thats a thing.

Brad, you gotta use those DOTA situational-awareness skills for Dark Souls, my man!

Considering all the fast paced RTS games he's played it surprises me how much the encounters in this game seem to throw him. But then again I have like 700 hours in this series, so I'm super biased.

I think it can still be fresh, just needs a different setting/era. Futuristic space robots or something.

Life Ring?

Oh boy

this apparent disappointment with DS3 is making me think a remastered Dark Souls for current gen would be a very easy payday for From Software.

Aaand he missed the first pick up. That's a great start!

@puppymehard:

Bloodborne is actually my problem with it. Prior to Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls was the one you took slowly and methodically. Taking your time. Seeing where enemies were and how to approach them, then seeing their tactics and how to fight them. Bloodborne was different, with needing to be super mobile and everything being fast and aggressive, and more requirement to constantly be on the attack because that's how you regenerate health.

Dark Souls 3 took too much influence from the aggressiveness of Bloodborne, and it doesn't feel anywhere near as good to me as the previous games I loved. (I never played Bloodborne since I haven't got a PS4.) Maybe it's not as fast-paced as Bloodborne, but all the enemies are super aggressive compared to the previous Darks Soul and you can't deal with that by standing back and analyzing. You need to rush in and beat everything down before it gets a chance to murder you.

I tried to make a new character in advance of this DLC coming out because the only one I had was level 120 on NG++. I got maybe four areas in before I threw up my hands and gave up. I cannot stand the early parts of this game. I can't put myself through that again. So I did the DLC on my 120 NG++ character. This is compared to Dark Souls 1 and 2 which I have replayed in their entirety at least four or five times each.

In terms of expectations vs. results, which is what Most Disappointing is, Dark Souls 3 easily takes that spot for me. This is even before getting into all the incredibly interesting lore stuff that Dark Souls 2 set up and 3 ignored entirely.

this apparent disappointment with DS3 is making me think i've taken crazy pills. i've put 250h into dark souls 1 and 2 each over the years, and i'd be near there with DS3 as well already if i wasn't waiting for the second DLC. it's my favorite in the series.

the level design is consistently good for the first time, instead of having the last third be unfinished (DS1) or having a third of the areas be completely superfluous and uninteresting (DS2). DS3 has 3 areas that i'd say aren't that great: demon ruins, consumed king's garden, and profaned capital. but CKG and PC are pretty dang short, they're more like epilogues to the areas they connect to.

i don't think DS3 hits the highs that DS1 does, but it never comes close to the lows of DS1 and DS2 either. bosses, areas, lore, characters, and combat are all more consistently great in DS3 than they've ever been in the series.

Brad back in his natural environment: dying like a bitch in Souls games.

People what are learnéd.

i think it's funny that the dsfix hasnt been made official with dark souls pc yet (unless im REALLY out of the loop). but i guess dark souls fans are the kind that don't balk at a little ini fiddlin'.

People that get up in arms about DS3 "referencing" DS1, while praising DS2 for being original sounds like the craziest thing ever to me.

While DS3 had plenty of stuff it fell back on from previous games, it rarely just plonked it in without some reason for it to be there, or without new lore added to the thing in question that built upon what they already had. DS2 put in a bunch of those same armour sets people complain about DS3 having but with even less reason for them to be there, and straight up just had Ornstein as a boss at one point, without even changing the character model.

On top of the overt stuff, half the characters, locations, and lore was a rehash/reskin of something from DS1, but tweaked to make it seem different.

I guess it's personal taste rather than hypocrisy. At least everyone seems to be in agreement that they should make something other than Dark Souls 4 now, though.

People complaining about the DLC probably haven't put in as much time as hardcore fans of the series. My only real complaint would be the length, but coming off of the Bloodborne DLC that's to be expected since From combined two pieces of DLC into one with The Old Hunters.

I'm there for the lore, the environments, the enemies, and the bosses. I always make sure to clear entire areas of enemies before I start running past everything. I'll explore and be as meticulous as I can as I look for secrets and lore bits as I try to figure out the story.

If people are fine simply summoning in help for the bosses while they complain about the length then that's on them. I kill everything solo so it took me a good number of hours to figure out the main boss of this DLC.