Darksiders 3 Review - The Third Horsemen Arrives To Try and Restore Balance

Written by Chris Woodside  on November 27, 2018

Reviews: While going through Darksiders 3 I kept thinking about Fury’s question regarding whether it is possible to die of boredom.

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When THQ announced that they were closing their doors in 2013, many assumed that the announcement would also spell an early end to the Darksiders franchise, just a year after the second game debuted. Even following the merge of THQ Nordic that saw the continuation of several high grossing franchises, few would have given much of a chance to see the four horsemen of the apocalypse be resurrected. Because of this, it was a welcome surprise to see that THQ Nordic and Gunfire Games revealed last year that a third game in the series that developed a large cult following was indeed in development and would feature a third horseman, Fury, serve as the protagonist.

For long time fans of the series, there will be little to surprise them in this latest entry of the series. Darksiders has long been known for defying genre boundaries and blending them together in a way that has mostly been successful. The hack and slash combat, combined with the metroidvania inspired backtracking for items and upgrades, and the puzzles that have defined the Legend of Zelda series have always been a defining characteristic of the series. While Darksiders 3 continues to do all of this, it has begun to feel stale after three entries. While the series has long struggled with being a jack of all trades but a master of none, it now is beginning to feel as though the series is making too little strides into the future and more of a relic of previous generations of games. While Darksiders 3 certainly is not a bad game, the repetitive nature of the games should make us question who this series is really for at this point and the purpose of reviving the IP at all.



Somewhat poetically, at the beginning of the game in the opening cutscene, Fury, the main character, asks herself if it is possible to die of boredom. Oftentimes, playing Darksiders 3 seemed to indicate the answer to this question was yes. While some of the boss fights genuinely were entertaining, and there were a handful of puzzles I actually enjoyed figuring out and trying to solve, there just wasn’t enough variety to justify a nearly 20 hour long campaign. Despite having these isolated moments of entertaining gameplay and mechanics, the bland and superficial story, questionable dialogue, and lack of innovation hold the entire game back from really excelling in any one area.

In terms of the story, you now play as Fury, the third different horseman of the apocalypse that has starred in these games. She has been enlisted by the Charred Council, who serve as Gods of this universe, to put an end to the Seven Deadly Sins, who had escaped from their prisons. While I did enjoy seeing the game designers interpretation of each of the deadly sins, such as a fat and grotesque Gluttony or a vapid and obsessed Pride, it also led to a rather predictable and lazy narrative and gameplay.



Immediately after defeating one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the next one is added to your map and you are put on a path directly there. While there are opportunities for some exploration to find hidden upgrades or other items, these paths are usually fairly obviously of where they are hidden, and don’t require any true exploration from the player. Some hidden areas I found I actually would have needed to specifically and actively ignore if I did not want to stumble across some sort of rare upgrade piece. While not every game need be a massive open world adventure that would take hundreds of hours to entirely explore, I found that Darksiders not only didn’t allow much exploration, but in some cases actively discouraged the player from doing so.

One of the larger issues I had with the story was the poorly executed dialogue from some of the characters. While there were a few scenes that were cringeworthy from Fury and other characters, I noticed this most when it came to the various Sins you had to fight. I understand that to a certain extent, as the literal embodiment of the worst qualities of humanity, they would need to be a bit over the top, but it came across as a villain from a Saturday morning cartoon more so than from a story that is happening in the midst of the Apocalypse and a battle between heaven and hell.



Despite the many issues the game has with narrative and exploration, the one area where it was its best was with combat. The combat has not fundamentally changed from previous Darksiders games, as the hack and slash formula still returns, along with a Dark Souls like progression system requiring you to return your collected souls at various checkpoints to increase levels, as well as with the inherent risk of dying and losing the souls you collected. It took some practice to dodge at the precise moments necessary in order to perform counter attacks, which always felt satisfying to pull off and in some cases necessary. As well executed as the combat was, the area where I found it struggled the most here was with the progression system.

As much of a fan as I am of the Souls based progression system, the main reason it works in the Souls franchise is because of the infamous difficulty of the series. It never feels like a chore to exchange your blood echoes for improved stats, because you are always sweating, and trying to determine if you are better off continuing to push on so you can bring back a larger haul with you, or if you should return now rather than lose the echoes you lost. In Darksiders 3 that choice never felt truly difficult to make, very simply because the game is too easy. Over the course of my 20 hour playthrough I only died a handful of times and the majority of those times was in a single boss fight, and not even the final boss, that it felt that isolated battle was largely broken and unfair rather than honest to God difficult. Outside of that singular fight, I never was afraid to risk my souls because, unless I made a silly mistake like mistiming a jump, I never was worried that I would lose all of that progress I made. I appreciate the developers taking cues from a largely successful series and their progression system, but in order to truly take advantage of this, you should play on the highest difficulty available. I completed my playthrough on the second highest difficulty, and I can’t imagine how incredibly bored I would have been if I completed it on a lower difficulty.



Another aspect of this game that I did somewhat enjoy were the many puzzles scattered throughout your journey. Most of the puzzles are fairly straight forward, and usually required you to use a new power you just obtained a few minutes ago in a fairly obvious way. Few of them ever really were difficult enough to stop me from progressing for more than a few minutes, and the majority of those came in the closing hour or two of the campaign, but nonetheless even the easier puzzles were still enjoyable to solve, and it was refreshing to have a game introduce difficulty through puzzles rather than simply adjusting how much damage enemies deal and how much health they have. Even the easy puzzles still required me to think, something I find is less and less common in modern video games.

Darksiders 3 is one of the more interesting games I have played recently. It does a lot of things adequately, but none of them great, like combat. Conversely, especially in the areas of narrative and dialogue, it struggles mightily in certain areas. Despite the games many struggles, I did appreciate a more streamlined experience after coming off of some massive open world RPG’s this fall. It might be a welcome palette cleanser to have a game you can complete in its entirety just over a weekend, but as a result Darksiders 3 gives me very little reason to ever return to the apocalypse after a single playthrough.