Enkindled

I'm shocked to find myself playing a Dark Souls game. I've thought of them as games for Serious Hard Core Gamers, who love dying a lot and have a masochistic determination to play the hardest games possible. Several years ago I entered into this world through Elden Ring, which is from the same developer and shares many characteristics but isn't technically a Souls game. I ended up really loving it a lot, so much so that I decided to step back in time and try one of the preceding games. From some light online research, it sounded like Dark Souls 3 (stylized as Dark Souls III) is the most accessible of the main series. Amazingly, despite being 10 years old now it still sells at full price and only rarely goes on sale, so I kept it on my Steam Watchlist for nearly a year before a sale finally popped up. And then, after playing Esoteric Ebb, I started it!

 

I'm currently about 20 hours into the game, my sense is that I'm well less than halfway through, perhaps a third or even a quarter. I've defeated a few bosses, including one of the Mega Bosses that seem closely tied to the main storyline of the game. I wanted to write this post to share my impressions so far.

 

 

Coming at it from someone who previously only played Elden Ring, there are a lot more similarities than I expected. The "Souls" mechanic is identical, the attributes are identical, the defenses are identical, the overall loadout (weapons, ammunition, spells, armor, rings, tools) are identical, the combat is basically identical. It even extends to the setting and appearance and monsters. The first time I saw some froggy enemies, I immediately thought "Oh no, those guys are dangerous!" It took a little while for me to remember why - as in Elden Ring, they do Death damage, which can instantly kill your character. Blue-eyed skeletons have the same endless resurrection mechanic. Elevators work the same, and can have the same sorts of secrets. And on and on. I think that if you just saw a brief 1-minute clip of either game, you probably wouldn't be able to tell which was which.

 

 

The biggest difference so far between the two is the open-worldedness of Elden Ring versus the massive but ultimately constrained environment of Dark Souls. I think that I finally understand why the large boss zones of Elden Ring are called "Legacy Dungeons": they are "Legacy" in that they feel like Souls areas. Basically, if you were to take all the Legacy Dungeons in Elden Ring and smush them edge-to-edge, you would end up with something like the Dark Souls 3 map. You lose the big landscape separating those areas, as well as most of the hidden little dungeons and settlements and things. Along with those, you also lose the horse for traversing those large open areas.

 

 

One thing I loved about Elden Ring is its non-linearity. There's very little direction in where to go after the tutorial dungeon. In a lot of games like, say, Divinity: Original Sin, enemy difficulty acts as a soft set of guiderails, urging you to follow a certain progression. In Elden Ring, though, it's very feasible to get on your horse and then just Ride Really Fast past the scary landscape monsters and get to where you want to be. And even most of the game's big bosses are skippable: you need to defeat a certain number of them to beat the game, but if one is giving you trouble, you can just leave and go do something else for a while and come back when you're stronger, or never come back at all.

 

 

Dark Souls 3 is much more linear, although it becomes less so over time. It's particularly striking when you fight your first boss, Iudex. I think I died to him a good 30 or more times. In Elden Ring,  you similarly fight a tutorial boss, but are kind of expected to die to him and just pop out on the other side to continue the story. In Dark Souls 3, though, you must continue to throw yourself at him until you eventually Git Gud. Unlike the rest of the game, there isn't even the option of grinding for Souls and leveling up your skills and equipment: those mechanics aren't unlocked until after you get past that first boss. It's hard! I do respect the developers for doing that; in particular, you'll hit that boss while within the Steam Refund window, and can have a serious talk with yourself about whether you'll actually enjoy playing this type of game before you've sunk too many hours into it.

 

 

Once you're past that first boss, the game progresses mostly linearly for a while, but it doesn't feel like it's on rails. There's a lot to explore in each area, some side quests, some stuff that you need to come back to later after you've found a key or talked to an NPC. This also opens up the possibility of grinding out more Souls to make your character stronger. As in Elden Ring, any time you rest at a Bonfire all non-boss enemies respawn, so if you want you can keep plowing through them again and again. I never specifically did this to grind, but I did periodically revisit earlier areas to look for more hidden items and stuff, which ends up having the same effect.

 

Going forward, it seems like some but not all bosses are skippable. In particular, you can progress past the end of the second major zone without defeating the boss there; as far as I can tell, you do need to kill the major boss at the end of the third zone to progress into the fourth. But once you're in the third zone, multiple progression paths open up. I think that at least one of these is from a DLC I bought with the game, but the others feel like part of the base game. I'm enjoying reaching this part of the game, as it cuts down on the "stuck" feelings. If I'm bouncing off something too many times, I can put more effort into chatting with friendlies back at Firelink Shrine, or poke my head into another area for a while. The early part of a later zone can well be easier than the later part of an earlier zone. And of course all this depends on what build you're running.

 

 

Speaking of which: that's another major change for me in this game. In Elden Ring I played as a Sorcerer: I relied heavily on magic from my staff. I'm taking a very different approach in this game. I originally wanted to do a Faith build and started as a Cleric; this was fine for the tutorial area, but after enough deaths against the first boss I decided it wasn't for me. Based on some later online reading, it sounds like Faith-focused builds can be fun in New Game Plus, but the key weapons and spells for Faith builds don't become available until closer to the end of the game. I started again from scratch and this time rolled a Knight, which is a fairly balanced class but leans more towards Strength and Vitality, and also has a really nice set of starting armor (which I'm still rocking all these hours later). The boss was still really hard, but I was eventually able to beat him with my sword.

 

 

When leveling up, I prioritized Vigor early to increase my maximum HP, enough Vitality to carry my load (wearing a few rings) at 70% or less, and pushed a lot into Endurance to increase Stamina. As in Elden Ring, I find Stamina incredibly powerful: if you can just keep mashing Attack enough and are staggering your opponent with each hit, you can stun-lock and kill them provided your Stamina outlasts their Health. I've been adding just enough Strength to wield the equipment I want: in particular, a Claymore that I found relatively early on and have since fallen in love with. I put a Raw Infused Gem on the Claymore since my stats are still fairly low, and instead am upgrading that Claymore as much as I can.

 

 

Once I reached a comfortable level around my stats, I started dipping a bit into Faith. I don't know how much I'd invest in that area, but I'd been jealous of the Miracles in Elden Ring and have long wanted to experience them for myself. So far it's been very useful. In particular, one Miracle will clear any status afflictions, which is incredibly useful in an area where you need to navigate a poison swamp. I'm looking forward to future Miracles to augment my weapon strength and/or defenses. Overall I have a vague idea of becoming a sort of Paladin, primarily a martial warrior but also with divine magic to buff myself.

 

 

I've just recently started to put a few points into Dexterity as well. From what I can read online, this is usually called a "Quality" build in the community: basically, a warrior who equally distributes between Strength and Dexterity rather than fully committing to one. This opens up the widest variety of weapons to use, which in turn increases the likelihood that you'll be able to exploit an enemy's weakness against a particular damage type. Several weapons also scale their damage against both Strength and Dexterity, so for everyday weapons you continue to increase in damage when leveling up either stat.

 

 

Luck and Intelligence will likely be my dump stats, though I might put a handful into Intelligence since there are a few spells that use that along with Faith. I haven't yet put anything into Attunement, I probably will eventually but I'm not sure yet how much I'll need. I'm kind of imagining that I'll just buff myself outside of fog gates, and I think most beneficial spells last around a minute, so I'm unlikely to need to repeatedly cast between bonfires if I'm mostly relying on my sword for damage.

 

 

While the game systems are mostly identical to Elden Ring, my gameplay experience is significantly different. As a Sorcerer, I felt like the game was mostly about resource management. I had a certain amount of FP, which I could replenish a certain number of times with my flasks before beating the next boss or reaching the next bonfire; that FP translates into magical damage against enemies, making it a numbers game of having enough FP and Stamina to nuke them down before they can whack me to death. Playing as a melee martial build now is totally different. I don't really need to worry about resources at all; or, rather, the one resource I have is Health, which again I can refill with Flasks. The game is much more active now, with me focusing on dodging enemy attacks, looking for openings, striking and withdrawing or driving in for the kill. I'm getting to learn most monsters' attack patterns pretty well now, whereas for my Sorcerer build that mostly only applied for bosses. I'm glad that I had some grounding in this game series before playing as a melee character, this would have been much more challenging as my first experience but as it is I'm having a blast.

 

 

This is where I would typically drop in some notes about the story and my progress so far, but... as usual for the series, the plot is extremely opaque. Which is part of what I love about it: it's very subdued, ambiguous, taciturn, with rare fragments of dialogue that take on extra weight because of how rare they are. The game also assumes that your character already knows everything and so never bothers to define, like, what Unkindled means or who the Hollows are or any of the other terms thrown around. As with Elden Ring, I'm mostly avoiding any walkthroughs or guides; I think there has been one or two times when I've looked something up when I haven't been able to progress. I've started keeping a slight eye on the Side Quests part of the wiki; it looks like I've already accidentally failed a couple of them, which is fine.

 

 

That's it for now! I feel like I have a good amount of momentum on this game and will probably continue cruising along for some time. I'll probably have one more post here when I'm all wrapped up, but might do something in the interim if the journey is looking longer than I currently expect.