Dark Souls III Score Reassessment: Trilogy Ending Reception
When Dark Souls III was released in 2016, it was met with widespread critical acclaim. Reviewers praised its refined combat, atmospheric world design, and punishing yet rewarding gameplay—hallmarks of the series that had, by then, cemented FromSoftware’s reputation as a master of the action-RPG genre. The game garnered aggregate scores in the high 80s and low 90s, a testament to its perceived quality. Yet, in the years since its release, a fascinating discourse has emerged within the community, not just about the game itself, but about its role as the concluding chapter of a trilogy. A reassessment of Dark Souls III’s critical reception necessitates a shift in focus: from evaluating it as a standalone title to understanding it as a narrative and thematic finale. The initial scores, while justified in many ways, often failed to fully capture the weight of this responsibility—a weight that has profoundly shaped the game’s legacy.
Initially, reviews focused heavily on the mechanical and experiential aspects. Dark Souls III was seen as a culmination of FromSoftware’s technical evolution. The combat was faster, more fluid, and incorporated mechanics from Bloodborne, demanding a more aggressive playstyle. The boss fights, from the punishing Sister Friede to the epic Slave Knight Gael, were almost universally hailed as some of the best in the series. The visually stunning, albeit linear, locations like Irithyll of the Boreal Valley and the ringed city itself were lauded for their breathtaking artistry. On a purely functional level, it was a near-perfect refinement of a proven formula. Critics rightly applauded it for this.
However, this focus on mechanical polish often overshadowed a more nuanced conversation about its narrative and thematic purpose. Dark Souls III is not merely another adventure in a decaying world; it is a game explicitly about endings, decay, and the futility of prolonging an inevitable conclusion. The world is not just crumbling—it is collapsing in on itself, with lands of lords from different eras converging in a desperate, final convulsion. This central theme was sometimes noted in reviews but was rarely the central lens through which the game was judged. The initial reception was for a masterpiece of game craft, but the lasting conversation has proven it to be something more complex: a masterpiece of game context.
The release of the two DLC expansions, Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City, was the catalyst for this reassessment. These expansions forced players and critics alike to recontextualize the entire experience. Ashes of Ariandel presents a painted world that is itself rotting, offering a microcosm of the main game’s themes. Its conclusion presents a cryptic yet profound choice: to embrace the cold and dark to create a new, gentle world inside the painting. This was no longer about linking the fire or ushering in an age of dark; it was about accepting an end to make something new possible.
Then came The Ringed City, the unequivocal final word on the Dark Souls saga. It takes the player to the literal end of the world, where time has stagnated and all that remains are the dregs of kingdoms past. The final boss fight against Slave Knight Gael is not a battle against a god or a king for the fate of the world. It is a bleak, tragic clash between two nobodies at the end of time, fighting over the last vestiges of the Dark Soul itself—not to perpetuate the age of fire, but to use its blood as pigment for a new world. This ending is profoundly nihilistic yet strangely hopeful. It acknowledges that the cycle we’ve been perpetuating for three games is utterly broken. True hope lies not in re-linking the fire but in starting over entirely elsewhere.
This concluding statement reframed Dark Souls III’s base game entirely. The base game’s ending options—Linking the Fire, Usurping the Fire, or simply letting it fade—now felt like the final, futile options of a dying era. The DLC presented the only true escape: abandonment and rebirth. This narrative boldness, this willingness to not just end a story but to declare its central conflict fundamentally unresolvable and worthy of termination, is a rare feat in any medium.
Consequently, the legacy of Dark Souls III has evolved. It is now seen less as a simple "greatest hits" compilation of Souls mechanics and more as a necessary, melancholic dirge for a world we had grown to love. The initial perfect scores seem almost conservative in hindsight; they appreciated the game’s present but underestimated its profound commentary on its own past. The game’s true achievement was its meta-narrative: it made the player feel the exhaustion of the cycle. The combat fatigue mirrored the narrative fatigue. The desire for it to be "over," even as we cherished every moment, was precisely the point.
Therefore, a modern reassessment of Dark Souls III’s critical score would likely place even greater emphasis on its narrative audacity and thematic cohesion. While its technical merits remain unquestioned, its stature has grown because it dared to provide a finale that was both definitive and defiant. It refused a simple, triumphant conclusion. Instead, it offered a somber, poetic, and intellectually satisfying end that honored the trilogy’s core themes of struggle, futility, and fleeting beauty. The initial reception saw a superlative game. The lasting legacy confirms it as a profound and essential conclusion—one that has only deepened in resonance with time, cementing its place not just as a great game, but as a pivotal ending in video game history.
