Dark Souls III (2016)
Dark Souls III is a 2016 role-playing (rpg) video game made by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
The Age of Fire is ending, and Lothric has become a kingdom of ash. The Ashen One rises from a cemetery of failed undead warriors, tasked with hunting down the Lords of Cinder who abandoned their thrones and refused to link the First Flame. Dark Souls III is the closing chapter of the trilogy: faster and more aggressive than its predecessors, it piles gorgeous, decaying architecture on top of punishing combat, and threads its world with a melancholy that makes every bonfire feel like borrowed time.
Quick answers
What is Dark Souls III about?
The Age of Fire is ending, and Lothric has become a kingdom of ash. The Ashen One rises from a cemetery of failed undead warriors, tasked with hunting down the Lords of Cinder who abandoned their thrones and refused to link the First Flame. Dark Souls III is the closing chapter of the trilogy: faster and more aggressive than its predecessors, it piles gorgeous, decaying architecture on top of punishing combat, and threads its world with a melancholy that makes every bonfire feel like borrowed time.
When was Dark Souls III released?
Dark Souls III was released on 24 March 2016.
Who made Dark Souls III?
Dark Souls III was made by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
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Dark Souls III in our writing
- Companion guide: Dark Fantasy
- Companion guide: FromSoftware: Elden Ring, Dark Souls and the Studio That Named a Genre
- Companion guide: Sword & Sorcery
A few thoughts on Dark Souls III
Dark Souls III stands on its own as a landmark of action RPG design, dense with lore and demanding in equal measure. The two preceding entries and the spin-off Demon's Souls fill in the mythology for anyone who wants the full picture.
Kingdoms living out their last, saddest chapter
Lothric is a kingdom that already gave up, its Lords of Cinder abandoning their thrones rather than face what linking the flame costs them. Wizard and Glass wanders a Mid-World worn down the same way, Oathbringer's Roshar buckles under ancient orders and older wars, and House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones both watch a dynasty consume itself from within.
Prog and metal heavy enough to soundtrack the end of an age
Dark Souls III plays like a funeral procession with a blade in its hand, gorgeous and exhausted at once. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King carries that same grand, doom-laced weight, the Blade Runner score matches its melancholic, dying-world atmosphere, and Fates Warning and Cradle of Filth bring the same ceremonial heaviness to the speakers.
Undying warriors who can't put down a duty they never chose
The Ashen One is one more failed undead pulled from the grave to finish someone else's war. Saint Seiya's bronze warriors fight and die in service to a goddess who never really asks, Inuyasha wanders a feudal world bound by old demon hierarchies, Rurouni Kenshin carries a violent past he can't sheath, and Fullmetal Alchemist's brothers pay for a war they didn't start.