Dark Souls III

Players familiar with previous games in this franchise or last year's Bloodborne know what they're getting into with this extremely difficult game. It's a brutally challenging and thoroughly unforgiving experience but also one with a capacity to imbue a sense of achievement uncommon in modern games. Players who stick with it will die countless times, but with each hard-earned victory, every new bonfire, and each seemingly tiny step of character progression, they'll feel like they've accomplished something worthwhile, something that not every gamer has the fortitude to do. It helps that the combat -- now bolstered by a new weapon-arts system that sees each weapon given its own set of special moves, adding to an already hefty number of options available to players in battle -- is tight, tense, and rarely anything less than thrilling, especially when you're going up against super-powerful and highly dynamic boss characters.

But there are a few chinks in the armor. The maze-like world through which we travel -- while often just as elaborately laid out and as fun to explore as in past games -- has a handful of areas that just aren't much fun thanks to their dull, open structure. Plus, the difficulty is a little bumpy. Some areas (and bosses) are easier than you'd expect for a Souls game and may lull the player into a sense of false confidence. Then they'll stumble into another location with incredibly powerful enemies that rank among the hardest the series has yet generated. Basically, the game could have done with a tad more fine-tuning. That said, most of the time, Dark Souls III is just as compelling and rewarding as its predecessors and should prove well worth the time for older players with a thirst for a serious challenge.