This was my first Darksiders game, so I dived in with no expectations, but ended up really enjoying it. The user rating is really unfair in my opinion, this is a pretty nice and polished game, although not without flaws.

It's not really a souls-like either, there are only some superficial elements, like the "bonfires" you respawn at, the "estus" like healing, animation commitment (can be turned off via the "classic" mode, which I recommend). The game has a 2 weapon combat system, you fight with the whip + one of the 4 elemental weapons (dual chains/fire, spear/lightning, hammer/gravity and dual swords/ice), and there's also a chakram/glaive as your sole ranged option. The combat is much faster paced than Souls and there's a lot of combo potential, e.g. you can do Scorpion's "get over here" thing (from Mortal Kombat) to catch an enemy with your whip and then juggle them. You can also jump, stomp, do charged attacks, and there's even a Devil Trigger like super transformation.

You can't block and the dodge is just a short dodge step, no rolling. The only defensive option is the dodge counter a la Bayonetta/Oneechanbara. You dodge at the last second, the game slows down and you press one of the attack buttons to counter, which deals a lot of damage and has very satisfying animations. This also usually breaks the enemy's combo, thus making a lot of 1v1 fights quite easy. Just bait the first hit, then counter and go ham.

However, the combat system shows its flaws when it comes to group fights. The game loves spamming large groups of fast enemies and even with the whip's wide, sweeping hitboxes it's still easy to get overwhelmed and chain stunlocked, as you can't really dodge counter when surrounded by multiple enemies, so you kind of just pull back and mash. The camera is not the best either, it's too low when locked on, with Fury partially obscuring the opponent.

The enemies hit hard and it's possible to get 2 shot, especially early on when you're low level and don't have any upgrades, however the game offers a plethora of difficulty options to accommodate all skill levels (but none of them will let you just button mash through the game, you still have to counter). I recommend playing on balanced (aka normal) + classic mode (you can dodge cancel your attacks).

There are a lot of boss fights, but none of them are too hard, except for maybe Lust who's a double boss fight very similar to Ornstein & Smough in Dark Souls, as well as the last boss in the Void Keepers DLC who's a little overtuned.

The game is set in a large interconnected world with no loading screens and numerous shortcuts and secrets to find, and you can tackle the areas and bosses in a non-linear fashion. There are also metroidvania elements, you unlock 4 elemental powers and each comes with multiple new movement abilities (e.g. high jump, wall jump, gliding, walking on water etc). There's a fair amount of platforming and even some puzzles (although nothing too crazy). The game has no map and you're thrown in with no guidance or handholding, which I found really refreshing and fun. The exploration is excellent, you pick a direction, drop down a hole, and can end up somewhere really cool.

While the game is not AAA, the graphics are quite pretty, and the animations are very smooth. The cutscenes are very cinematic and the voice acting is solid. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4 and I haven't encountered any bugs or issues (aside from the missing texture for a shipping container, which you can fix using this mod[www.nexusmods.com], apparently the texture got lost in one of the updates).

Overall, if you're a fan of challenging action games and metroidvania like exploration with no guidance, Darksiders III is lots of fun and an easy recommendation.