as of recently I have beaten this game on NG+7 (though really my full number of full playthroughs probably looks more like 11 or 13), and can say for certain that it is in my top 3 games of all time. It is, in my view, the culmination of everything the two previous games have been building to. What do I mean by that?

Well, you have Dark Souls 1. Not exactly a trailblazer by any means due to its existence as a spiritual successor to the game Demon's Souls, but it served to refine what Demon's Souls was trying to be. Dark Souls 2 was the weird black sheep of this whole franchise. Seemingly made to see how far the gameplay formula of Dark Souls could be stretched before simply breaking, it was one big giant experiment. One that, in many's eyes, largely failed. Dark Souls 3, then, is the results from the experiment that was Dark Souls 2 being used to create what is essentially a holistically perfect sequel, one that in many regards negates the need to ever revisit the previous entries in the series.

What it learned from Dark Souls 2 is that the gameplay formula found in Dark Souls 1 is already a work of near-unparalleled game design. You don't need to add anything onto the already existing gameplay loop of dodge rolls and resource management. So instead it just gives you more of what made Dark Souls 1 such a masterpiece, while keeping what good ideas were in Dark Souls 2. I can't not wholeheartedly recommend this game, even though I thought for a while the number of references and plot beats from Dark Souls 1 might make the game seem a bit impenetrable, I think it'd be rather unintrusive for a newer fan while still enhancing the experience for veteran players. It goes on sale pretty frequently, and even though Elden Ring comes out very soon I think it's still worth at least one playthrough.

as of recently I have beaten this game on NG+7 (though really my full number of full playthroughs probably looks more like 11 or 13), and can say for certain that it is in my top 3 games of all time. It is, in my view, the culmination of everything the two previous games have been building to. What do I mean by that? Well, you have Dark Souls 1. Not exactly a trailblazer by any means due to its existence as a spiritual successor to the game Demon's Souls, but it served to refine what Demon's Souls was trying to be. Dark Souls 2 was the weird black sheep of this whole franchise. Seemingly made to see how far the gameplay formula of Dark Souls could be stretched before simply breaking, it was one big giant experiment. One that, in many's eyes, largely failed. Dark Souls 3, then, is the results from the experiment that was Dark Souls 2 being used to create what is essentially a holistically perfect sequel, one that in many regards negates the need to ever revisit the previous entries in the series. What it learned from Dark Souls 2 is that the gameplay formula found in Dark Souls 1 is already a work of near-unparalleled game design. You don't need to add anything onto the already existing gameplay loop of dodge rolls and resource management. So instead it just gives you more of what made Dark Souls 1 such a masterpiece, while keeping what good ideas were in Dark Souls 2. I can't not wholeheartedly recommend this game, even though I thought for a while the number of references and plot beats from Dark Souls 1 might make the game seem a bit impenetrable, I think it'd be rather unintrusive for a newer fan while still enhancing the experience for veteran players. It goes on sale pretty frequently, and even though Elden Ring comes out very soon I think it's still worth at least one playthrough.