Darksiders III Review (NSW)

Written by Patrick Orquia

Title : Darksiders III
Developer: Gunfire Games
Publisher: THQ Nordic
Genre: Action RPG, Hack n’ Slash, Soulslike
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 30 September 2021
Price: $39.99

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The Darksiders series has been an ongoing franchise of action RPGs released on different platforms over the years. All of the games have been released on Nintendo platforms, starting with Darksiders II, which has special edition released on the Wii U, with extended features utilizing the console’s gamepad. Darksiders I, which has been released years prior, was also ported on the Wii U, but unlike its sequel, it is a straight port but it ran decently, at least. The two would also be ported on Wii U’s more successful follow up, the Nintendo Switch, with not much fanfare. Darksiders Genesis, a top-down Diablo-like game, was also released on Switch. The third entry on the mainline series, Darksiders III, also followed the footsteps of its predecessors and got ported on Nintendo’s hybrid console. Is it as good as the others? Read on and find out.

In this game, you play as Fury, one of the Nephilim aka the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, although Fury is a woman in the game. The game pretty much plays like the first two games, more like the first one in terms of style and score, with additional soulslike elements. You are tasked with defeating the Seven Deadly Sins, which are represented by seven bosses that you will have to battle against throughout the game. Also, like in the first two games, you get to acquire new weapons and abilities as you progress in to the game. You will traversing different areas with different biomes and different sets of gnarly enemies, utilizing your skills in platforming and attacking and evading enemies.

You’ll go through the usual affair of fighting different types of monsters and other baddies, and defeating them earns you orbs that you can use to level up or to buy new upgrades for your weapons, etc. You have a health and fortitude bar that you can refill with shards also dropped by fallen enemies. You also have a Fury Gauge that gives you a temporary rage state when activated, allowing you to fight off your enemies with increased attack power. Fighting enemies fills this gauge, so you have to fight and fight some more for you to use it.

As you progress into the game, you will be able to acquire better weapons and gears to unleash more devastating attacks, which is quite fun as hordes of enemies come at you. You can also perform some acrobatic moves as you traverse wide open fields and do some platforming to reach new areas. You can perform an attack dodge as you go head-to-head against your many enemies, which, when performed at the right moment, gives you a bullet time effect that slows them down, allowing you to perform additional attacks and giving you more loot. It can take you about 10-15 hours to go through the game and get rid of all the Seven Deadly Sins, depending on your play style and ability as a player. Better work on your hand and eye coordination, as things can go pretty crazy in this game.

Unfortunately, not everything is good in this game, or at least, not on the Switch version of the game. The Switch port, which came out to the console about three years since its original release, suffers from performance issues right on the get go. Frequent frame rate drops, lagging, glitching, bugs, just to name a few. Several game ports have had the same fate on Switch, but a few ones are almost unplayable due to their unoptimized state, and one of them is Darksiders III. The game has fast-paced action, and since it does not perform well on the console, some actions, like the attack dodge that rely heavily on timing, are hard to pull off. The performance issues even escalated by the halfway mark in the game, especially when lots of action is taking place on the screen. Hopefully, the developers update and patch up the game on Switch so that it becomes more satisfactory to play.

Overall, Darksiders III is a good game, which capitalize on the success of its predecessors. It is hard to recommend the Switch version, though, so if you really want to play the game and you have the option to buy it on another platform, please do so. This game can still be saved with patches and improvements but until those come to fruition (as of now, there are no new updates for such and I doubt if there ever will be), maybe avoid the Switch version for now. Or maybe wait for a sale. Save your money for the time being.

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REPLAY VALUE: Medium

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PROS

• Cool art style and character design
• Excellent music and audio design
• Fun combat and overall gameplay
• Difficulty can be a bit steep but the game allows you to steadily work on your play style to be better
• Good variety of enemies

CONS

• Severe performance issues, frame rate drops, bugs, and glitches that can hinder you from fully enjoying the game
• Very long load times
• Floaty controls, mostly due to the aforementioned issues; even simple platforming can be a struggle because your timing may become off due to delays and pauses that you will encounter
• Game crashes

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RATING: 3/5 furious slashes

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