There was some doubt that this game would never come out, seeing as how THQ went under and the game was stuck in limbo for a long time. I should be glad that it did, and that it expanded upon the amazing lore set by the first two games, and in a way, I am glad. But the game-play of this game GOD the game-play of this game......
Around the time the first game came out difficulty in games was inspired by two games specifically "Devil May Cry" as well as "Ninja Gaiden" which were, at the time considered to be tough as nails. Darksiders one mimicked the more DMC difficulty, all be it a bit less so. Darksiders two did the same with NG. Neither of the games were quite as hard as the ones they were inspired by. Frankly, I actually like that they aren't as difficult.
But times change, and inspiration comes from different sources. Enter Darksidersouls. Since the time THQ went under and the game was stuck in limbo a new kind of difficulty emerged in the form of Darksouls. It was a game where every encounter could potentially be your last. I never played the game because I didn't like that idea, like having enemies jump out at you out of no where for an insta-death. No thank you. Had enough of those playing NG2 on Master Ninja mode and those enemies weren't in hiding. And yet, that became the inspiration for Darksiders 3. I can't say I'm in any way surprised, but I do wish they'd gone a different route.
We'll get to game play in a bit though, for now, lets talk about Fury, the third horseman. Her goal is to find and kill the seven deadly sins. That's basically her journey. You can do it in any way that you want (almost) but there really isn't much to it. Unlike the other horsemen, though, the journey she takes is much about herself as well. In the beginning she is hot headed and brash, but by the end she is visibly changed, worrying for the humans, who she hadn't really cared for at first. In the waiting period for this game to officially launch IGN did an interview with the voice actress Crissy Jones, who played Fury and they sounded genuinely excited. When the game came out, however, they said that Fury's voice acting was mostly just yelling and wasn't very good. They might as well just have made a trophy out of a middle finger and sent it to her. That's why I don't listen to reviews of games any more. I look at the story and the game-play to see that they are engaging and fun, if so, then I'm interested. It's that simple.
Fury starts by killing off Envy and from there, finds Ulthane. He tells her Where Wrath is, and Fury fights him, winning, but at the cost of her horse's life, and nearly of hers. At the last second she is transported into the Hollow Lands where she is patched up or healed or whatever and meets The Hollow Lord (who was a password in the first game you could type in to get the Harvester for free) and he gives her the flame hollow. Unlike in the previous games where War and Death pick up new weapons, Fury is a bit different. Her weapon, the Scorn is, basically a hilt. Her signature weapon are the barbs but Scorn can turn into anything from chains to hammers to swords to spears. Each hollow gives her a different weapon. I like the idea very much.
But I digress, we're still on story. After escaping the Hollows you end up in Avarice's domain. Personally, I like the name Greed better but whatever. You can choose to kill him now or wait and delve deeper into The Nether, (where you went to fight Wrath) and eventually come across my favorite sin (personality wise) Sloth. Either way you end up back in the hollows where you are given the storm hollow. It isn't, however, until you get to a place called the Bone-land when you get the next sin.
Before you can do that Fury has a confrontation with Pride who naturally thinks she's the best of the sins and refuses to fight you until you've defeated all the others. She goes off to a land called Aries. This brings me to a small gripe about this game. I wish there was more lore in it. While I like Fury's story very much, and the characters as well, the history of the world just isn't really in the game. You can see it, reading some of the descriptions of things in the menu, but there aren't really any side quests or journeys you can undertake in which you learn about any of the history. If this game had come after the first, which had just enough lore to keep you interested, then I would have enjoyed it more. The problem is that this game came after the second game which was full to the brim with all kinds of lore. It's kind of a shame they took it away in this game. Fortunately the DLC adds a bit of lore to keep you interested.
In the Bone-lands Fury finds the angels, who she blames for killing her noble steed and decides to massacre the lot of them. Then you come face to face with Useal, an arc angel stuck on earth and he tells you that they angels had nothing to do with killing your horse and that it was Lust. With that knowledge, Fury continues her quest.
She's attacked by a kraken all the while during her search for the sin, as well as some enemies that will make you rip all of your hair out in frustration if you hadn't already done that in in the first few sections of the game. Finally she comes to Lust.
This is another of my favorites. Slightly off topic for a bit, but I watch a lot of animation (anime) and often in it there are young boys who are for, whatever reason, played by women. Timmy Turner from Fairly Odd Parents is played by Terra Strong, for example. Anime tends to do it on an even more regular basis. I bring this up because the opposite is done here. It is obviously a man voicing the character, Jason Spisak, but he is speaking in a feminine voice. I guess my point with all of the above is that I kind of like seeing the rolls reversed and I think more men should do it.
So anyway, after defeating Lust and getting the force hollow its on to Gluttony. Here, I should also point out that you can go for Avarice or Gluttony if you haven't already. I like that the game doesn't really direct you where to go it just lets you be you. I like it. Back to story. You start out in the Depths a largely underwater landscape with drowned ruins. It leads way into a subway briefly and from there into a sewer I think. It's questionable because you kind of travel through both. The Nether is the same, though it seems to be more subway than sewer while this one seems to be more sewer than subway.
Eventually, you come across Gluttony. Fury and he exchange some friendly banter, that is until he spits up the head of Fury's horse. Enraged, she dies. Oh wait maybe that was just me trying to avoid all the damn acid all along the floor during the fight. After dying a few more times and finally out of luck or shear will, but mostly luck, you'll get Gluttony's health about half way at which point he'll turn into the kraken. This part of the fight can easily fuck you up and bring you to tears when you die and have to fight Gluttony and his acid fountain again. Once you figure out what the hell your actually doing though it's really not that hard.
After defeating Gluttony you get the Stasis Hollow. At this point you have to try and find your way back somewhere, anywhere. There are multiple areas that lead out of the Depths, but to continue the game, you have to get back to Haven (where you met the makers). Once you have the Force and Stasis Hollows you can head over to the Scar if you want.
I hate it. The Scar has demonic enemies. That's not the reason I hate it though. In fact I actually love fighting the enemies here. One of them is a Trauma from the first game. Some are lesser demons from the first game. Some, new to this game, summon in enemies in battle while another makes copies of itself. They are all incredibly different enemies and I like fighting them. What I hate, though is dying. The puzzle to get into the scar is very unforgiving. Basically, you have to use Stasis to freeze something and then the Flame Hollow to jump across it. The problem is that you are not only on a timer, but if you should do anything wrong, like not freeze EVERYTHING or time your jump wrong or die to any one of the aforementioned enemies before you make it to the next save point, then you have to do it all over again. And that, really effing sucks. This same thing happens with the Tornado that plagues the Scar. Both gave me lots of frustration when I first did them.
Inside the Scar you meet two people. The first you're most likely to meet, by sheer accident, is Abraxis. He is a demon lord who The Hollow Lord asked you to kill, though you'll be forgiven for forgetting as it's all the way back in the beginning of the game when you get the first hollow. The second creature you meet is one of the Chosen. The game likes to throw this term around. Each of the Darksiders game had creatures called "the chosen" and they were all different. This mini boss is one of the only ones in the game. There are actually more than one to fight but more on that later.
After you meet them, Abraxis not required, you can actually skip right over him, then it's on to a rematch with Wrath, where this time, Fury kills him for good. Assuming you've defeated all the other sins then it's on to Aries to fight Pride.
Defeating her, it is revealed that, the Watcher, who was with you the entire time, was actually the real Envy, who had disguised herself as an ally. There are several hints throughout the game, easily miss-able in the first play through.
Envy kills Fury, or so she thinks. In truth, she is saved by a human, Jones, who she met at the beginning of the game. It's not actually clear on who saves her, but I'm making an assumption here. Either way, she ends up back in Haven with Ulthane. Now, assuming you killed Abraxis, and returned to the Hollow Lord, the ending can change here. Under the assumption that you did, though, you get a . . . . . . . . . thing. It's never really clear what it is or what it does.
Ulthane reveals a portal, one he'd been working on for the entirety of the game, which leads the horseman to her final battle with Envy. She holds up said thing after the battle realizing that said thing can destroy the council and then leaves. Outside, the tree is under attack from the Destroyer (this game takes place while War is still imprisoned by the council and there by not dead yet) and everyone is in a tizzy. Ulthane tells the horseman to use the portal and get the humans to safety. She vows to look after them and on her way out, sees that Jones is the only human who stayed behind. This is because, as it turns out, he was Strife all along. BUM BUM BUUUUUM. That's why I think it was him who saved her.
Anyway, cut to credits. There are some extra cut scenes, much like in the second game, with the Prince of Darkness talking to Lilith, both of which very depending on if you got the thing from the Hollow Lord. And that's the end.
There are some glaring issues that I need to talk about though. As mentioned above, sometimes, getting to save points can be a real chore. I actually timed the load screen after death. It's right around 40 seconds. That doesn't seem like a long time but add that to getting from one save point to another, possibly having to fight all the enemies along the way to get there only then to die in the exact same spot and have to do it all over again. In some cases, during the boss fight with Lust, for example:
Wait 40 seconds for load screen.
Respawn.
Travel 15 seconds back to the Lust Boss.
Die in 1 second.
Repeat.
It may seem like I'm nit picking here but I'm not exaggerating either. Sometimes you can last longer than one second so the time can vary a bit. One of the things this game has going for it is that after you initiate the boss fights, eg watch the cut scene, they are just there waiting for you after you die. That's a nice change from Darksiders 1 and 2 in which you had to skip the scene every time. In Darksiders 2 In the Archon fight you had to skip three different scenes just to get back to the fight and then die and do it over again. I like the change. It still suck waiting for the load screen though.
Another thing I enjoy about this game is that, like the other Darksiders games, it is uniquely different. Sometimes, as mentioned above, that can be a bad thing, but for the most part, I like it. This game is sort of Metroid style game. It happened a bit in the first game, but in this one it's far more obvious how the world seems to fold in on itself revealing new paths to areas you've already visited. The paths usually lead to treasure, so it's worth looking for them.
On the subject of treasure, I find the items I pick up far more useful than the ones in Darksiders 2. Where Death would pick up a weapon with some stat boost or another, this game hearkens back to the first game, having you pick up Enhancements, which you can embed into your weapon for various stats. Personally, I like that much better than just finding a weapon randomly in a dungeon. Also, Souls as currency are back. They were absent in the second game because of the locations Death was visiting, but in this game, they make a triumphant return. And with souls, of course, comes everybody's favorite demon merchant Vulgrim. God I love him.
Now and again he and Fury will talk and, ugh, I love it. The banter between them and the one liners he has are awesome. I love too, how the game kind of makes fun of itself, when, in one encounter, Vulgrim asks Fury for an artifact, which she has just acquired from the angels.
There are a few things missing from this game though, some characters, like Ureal, and others just game play elements. In the first two games there was a shooting segment, in Darksiders 1 there were two actually, where War, and Death take up an angel/demon gun and just fire away. This game doesn't have anything like that. Considering the mechanics of the game though it was probably for the best that they got rid of it.
Instead, you have to run away from a giant ass tornado. That's a super annoying section. It doesn't help that, when I first played it, I didn't know you could just avoid being sucked into it just by having the Force Hollow equipped. I guess that was on me, but still, kinda irksome.
That, sort of, leads me into my next section, and that's the puzzles. It wouldn't be Darksiders without them. Each area has puzzles that can only be solved by using one of the four hollows. Sometimes you have to use more than one switching between them on the fly. The puzzles are made even more complicated in the DLC, in the Void, not so much in the Crucible, where you just fight a bunch a shit. Sometimes though, like at the end, when you've to get to Wicked K, but not much there.
Another cool thing is that, as Fury acquires new hollows, Scorn changes its form. I mentioned it above, but it's worth repeating. Each weapon has various skills that the others don't. Take the Force Hammer "Mallet of Scorn". With that equipped you can smash right through cars, light, lamps, and all other manner of objects in your way. You can break SOME of those things with other weapons, but with the mallet, it's just more fun. Especially with the "get souls from breaking objects" enhancement on it. That makes doing it well worth it. Until the game crashes.
The "Lance of Scorn" is the only weapon that can be throne. It makes fighting long range enemies much easier but only if you can time the dodge counter right. The "Edge of Scorn" has the unique ability to freeze enemies (and objects) for a time. I wish it would freeze enemies for just a bit longer, but alas. The Flame hollow just sets stuff on fire. I mainly use it for when I need to jump higher, which is often.
I do need to talk about something else though, and that's the enemies. This game has no shortage of variety when it comes to fighting. Some enemies, like the Trauma's and the Undead General all make an appearance in this game. While the Trauma was missing from Darksiders 2 it, too, had an Undead General. The one in the third game is more akin to that one than the one from the first. Most of the enemies are fine I guess.
Like I said, the variety is great, but what isn't great, is the damage output. Right off the bat enemies can kill you in about 3 hits where as it takes you, depending on the enemy, seven or eight to kill them. What's more, some of the enemies have a gap closing attack where, even if you dodge, it can still hit you. This becomes especially tiresome with what I call the "shadow" enemies. They are regular enemies but with glowing red eyes and bathed in darkness. They can just one shot you. Even upgrading your health is no use against them as they seem to have no regard for what it may be.
What makes it all even more frustrating is that there are some enemies who have projectiles which they throw at you from off screen. Sure, there's a red arrow on screen telling you where the attack is coming from, but when you're surrounded by red arrows it doesn't really matter where the attack is coming from, you're just dead.
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