Dark Souls III (2016): Ember A Lee Frost (Patreon)

Famous socialist Anthony Soprano once said “remember when is the lowest form of conversation.” Though this may be true to a large extent, Dr Soprano passed 9 years before the release of Dark Souls III, a triumph in the art of “remember when.”

While its previous entry is still the trilogy’s most controversial work, DS3 remains divisive between people who played Demon’s Souls on release and the millions of others who started with this game. On one side, you have the undeniable fact that this is the smoothest gameplay the series had yet seen, with the most quality of life considerations and the highest baseline for boss quality. On the other, you have a game that waits until its second and final DLC to truly do anything novel either visually or thematically in what will likely be the final Souls game ever.

It’s hard to fault the team behind it too much: this game, DS2, and Bloodborne were all produced and released in three year span. Hidetaka Miyazaki famously does not love the idea of repeatedly plugging away at the same franchise with the same core story over and over, and adding a release schedule that is near-impossible to imagine with today’s decade-long dev cycles could only make things worse. Our guests this week, returning champs Spencer and Andrew, largely arrive at similar conclusions: this is not the most inventive game From has ever made, but its highs are so high and the worst thing you can say about its low points are that they’re derivative. 

If you wish to extrapolate this to include podcasts that have gone on for more than ten years, please refrain.