The opening area to The Ringed City, the latest downloadable content for Dark Souls 3 and possibly the final expansion of the Dark Souls universe, is a brutal slog, even by Souls standards. Angelic creatures hover, capable of firing laser-like barrages every few seconds. It means instant death. If you spend 10 minutes trying to meticulously take one down with arrows, they wither away—only to reappear seconds later. Your best option is to run like hell, pray that enough arrows manage to sail past your face, and hide. It feels a lot like trying to survive 2017.
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I've been dreading the release of The Ringed City for a little while now. Though I'm almost always down for more Souls, it's bittersweet knowing that The Ringed Citymight signal a curtain call for a series that's transformed my gaming worldview. Even if it's time to say goodbye, a notion I'd settled on after the uninspiring Ashes of Ariandel, I prefer staving off the inevitable. It's why I laughed when the unlocking mechanism Bandai Namco sent me to play The Ringed City early didn't work. It meant I could put off the final ascent for a few days.But the ascent means nothing if the journey isn't worth it, and like Ashes of Ariandel, The Ringed City continues to suggest FromSoftware is right to move on from Dark Souls. I'm usually beaming with pride when I've scaled the latest mountain FromSoftware has put in front of me, but by the end of The Ringed City, I was left empty, bored, and ready for change.
Images courtesy of FromSoftware
Playing a Souls game is asking to be kicked in the gut, but as far as gut punches go, they feel pretty fair. But little felt fair about the way The Ringed City introduced itself, as I ran in circles, hoping to avoid the angels' glare. Spawn, run, die. Repeat. Invincible enemies aren't the Souls way; the game is usually happy to let you cowardly pelt even the toughest enemies with arrows. There's nothing inherently wrong with subverting expectations, but in this case, it mostly induced frustration. Though you eventually discover a way to dispatch the angels, it came after I spent too much time wondering why I wasn't playing Breath of the Wild instead.The Ringed City punctuates this intro with a two-on-one boss fight, complete with a last-minute transformation. After banging my head against the boss for a few hours, I succumbed to summoning a friend for jolly cooperation, and we took them down together. I'm normally against summoning, except in the most extreme of circumstances, but it was deeply satisfying to split our efforts, before coming together for the main event. It made me retroactively wonder if my desire to beat everything on my own in a Souls game had done more harm than good. Given how much time you spend alone, having a buddy during the farewell tour felt appropriate.Read the full article on Waypoint.