15 Most Brutally Hard Video Games Of The Generation (So Far)
9. Dark Souls 3
Considering Souls' reputation as being the singlemost b*stard hard game across the entirety of the medium, part three isn't actually too bad. Coming after FromSoftware have perfected their own brand of animation-specific action from the past two games, DS3 has nothing that reaches anywhere near the same levels of wall-destroying fury as say, Ornstein & Smough.
Instead, DS3 is easily the best-playing Souls of the bunch, introducing a new mechanic where any felled boss's soul can be transmuted into a new weapon, providing an extra layer of pull to see the entire campaign through. Difficulty-wise there are things like your first face-flattening at the hards of Iudex Grundyr, who just to make sure he wins, transforms into a ginormous mass of alien goop for the final third of the bout, and a final boss that rolls together scores of your own abilities for the ultimate showdown.
Still, DS3 was Souls refined - all of the challenge from the other two filtered through play-testing to create battles and scenarios that were adaptable, learnable and far more surmountable than, say, Bloodborne (but I'll get to that).