Dark Souls III

I finally, finally, got around to playing Dark Souls III. I think this took extra long because I had had enough of the previous two games, so I wasn't even considering playing it for a while. Yet here I am.
I'd hope Dark Souls requires no introduction. It's really a genre-defining game, even if that genre is mostly just "a difficult action RPG". Sure there's also the "convoluted, interconnected level design", and "world state persistence through death" aspects, but at the end of the day it is just an action RPG.

I'm going to be brief today, and mostly refer you to find my review for Dark Souls II. I couldn't get into the third game. I couldn't get into the previous two either, but I think this one was even worse somehow. Perhaps it was the experiences of the previous game still being fresh enough in my mind (it's only been several years after all) combined with this being just... more Dark Souls. Aside from being two years newer, I didn't see much innovation, just new content with a fresh lick of paint.
I'd like to add to what I previously said. I think difficult games have the obligation to be fair. It is important that if you're going to make the player lose, that they feel mostly responsible for that loss. Dark Souls III still hasn't managed to properly port their game to PC, because the keyboard and mouse support isn't of acceptable quality. I do not have sufficient control of my character - I execute certain actions without meaning to. Be those attacks which are triggered by a button combination that has an ambiguous meaning, or the game sometimes not intercepting mouse clicks in menus (so they still perform an attack, plunging me off a cliff or attacking a friendly NPC). There's also issues of enemies hitting you through solid walls, or level geometry making you think you get somewhere, only to be interrupted by invisible walls or bumps, again, causing you to lose. These are not super common occurances, but they happen far more often than I find acceptable, given how punishing such issues are. And I won't repeat what I believe to be persistant issues in level design.

Honestly, my opinion on this isn't really important. I'm happy for what the game has done for the genre, and I know there's plenty of people who enjoy it. Good on them. I find this brand of difficulty to be more frustrating than fun, and I get bored of playing the same content over and over again until I'm perfect at it. Recommending this, or not, is simple. Did you like the previous Dark Souls games? If so, you'll probably like this one. If not, you probably won't like this one. If you haven't played any souls-likes, then maybe the best comparison would be to the more recently popular brand of "difficult" games that you see streamers playing. Getting Over It, Jump King, etc., except instead of being just difficult, with no substance, Dark Souls is the same brand of difficult, but with a lot of substance. Regardless of this, I don't enjoy this kind of difficulty, so I can't recommend it. Perhaps my opinion would be different if the game was of a higher quality, but it isn't.