Seeing Darksiders 3 in stores is a miracle. Not because the game is extremely good, but because it wasn’t sure if we would ever see a next installment in the franchise. As you might know, THQ, the company behind the franchise, went bankrupt back in 2012. Six years after this sad news, a new team including some veteran franchise developers, managed to bring the third entry on the market. Was it worth all this trouble or should this franchise be forgotten as fast as possible? Time to find out.
Stop the Seven
The story of Darksiders 3 takes place during the same era of the two previously released games. For those unfamiliar with the story, let me briefly explain it. The Apocalypse came too early, disturbing the balance between Earth, Heaven, and Hell. War, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, got blamed for this in the first Darksiders. As War, you needed to clear your name during a quest involving tons of powerful enemies.
In the second Darksiders game, you took control over Death, War’s brother, and another Horseman. As Death, you felt sorry for War and felt the urge to help clear his name. Death had to save his brother and the entire human race while he was at it. Darksiders 2 offered an interesting look at the second and perhaps most deadly Horseman.
In Darksiders 3, it’s time for Fury to take the lead, as the third Horseman. What’s interesting is the fact that Fury isn’t a man at all, but she’s a force to be reckoned with. Right from the start, she’ll introduce herself as a badass warrior who isn’t afraid to make her hands dirty. The story itself is told in a typical Darksiders fashion, meaning you’ll see a lot of epic scenes narrated by someone who’s way too serious. The story has its strong moments but it all revolves around the Seven Deadly Sins who came to Earth as devastating monsters. It’s Fury’s task to track down those monsters and bring them down one by one. It’s a typical Darksiders story and I’m sure fans of the franchise will enjoy every second of it, although it’s not the most groundbreaking story out there.
Meet Fury
Fury is a lot different from the other two protagonists. She’s a lot faster and uses an extendable weapon that looks extremely similar to the weapon of Ivy in the SoulCalibur franchise. Although it’s an amazing weapon that allows Fury to unleash both close and long-range attacks in mere seconds. Besides that, she can also use it as an improvised grappling hook during one of the many platform segments. The weapon itself isn’t the biggest innovation for this new warrior, her speed is.
Compared to War and Death, Fury moves a lot faster. That also means she’s the most flexible character in the franchise yet. Her speed is crucial in combat since Fury can’t really defend herself against heavy attacks. In order to survive, you’ll need to dodge the attacks at the right time. Not that easy at first but once you get the hang out of it, it comes close to rhythm games. There’s something about the combat that I really appreciated. It’s not as modern as games like God of War, instead, the combat feels like something from another generation and that’s exactly what I like it this much. Darksiders 3 doesn’t want to impress with overcomplicated combat, it wants you to enjoy killing as many enemies as possible without ever having to worry about the buttons. For me personally, this works. I like the straightforward combat and if you manage to keep your momentum, combat can easily take you to some kind of trance while playing.
Having old-school combat in your game isn’t a bad thing but combining it with old-school platform segments isn’t that good. As much as I liked the combat, I disliked the platform segments. Fury is really flexible and fast but she didn’t always respond correctly to my input, resulting in her falling down a couple of times without I ever intending to do that. It’s a shame that the semi-open world and its platform segments aren’t better than they are now. The world feels too uninspired and the generic platform segments can’t save it from mediocrity, a shame really since there’s a lot of potential in the world of Darksiders.
Technical issues
Darksiders 3 biggest issue isn’t its old-school gameplay, it’s the technical issues it suffers from. I tested the game on a PlayStation 4 Pro and yet I saw the game freezing a couple of times and that’s just the start of all problems. It feels like Darksiders 3 needed some extra polishing before it went on sale but the team ignored it in favor of a quick release during the Holiday Season. This got me worried. Since Darksiders 3 has to compete against other amazing games this Season, I’m a bit afraid of how well it would sell. It would have been better to push back the game to 2019, fix the issues and convince the gamers that the franchise is here to stay. Instead of this, we got a game that’s really hard to judge.
Everything about the game screams past generation and the technical issues don’t help at all, and yet, I had a lot of fun playing it. It strangely felt ‘fresh’ to play this type of game in a landscape filled with ‘close to real’ experience. Darksiders 3 clearly doesn’t want to be the best game on the market, it just wants you to have fun killing those enemies one by one. I adored the design of all characters and even though I’m not sure if it would ever happen, I would love to see the sequel of this story too. As said before, it’s a hard game to judge since the gameplay and technical aspect are far from perfect but there’s certainly a lot of fun hidden underneath all those issues.
Conclusion:
Darksiders 3 is far from perfect and it’s perhaps not the game everybody was hoping for. It feels like something that would belong to a past generation and it suffers from severe technical issues; and yet, it’s still fun to play. The old-school gameplay is rather charming in a world filled with serious games. I doubt if it’s worth its full price at this point but if you’re looking for a straightforward action/adventure game, this one offers everything you’re looking for.
