Now that Dark Souls is done and complete, Bandai Namco has decided to make one last and final effort to get gamers to buy into the series by releasing a complete edition for the home consoles and PC. The complete edition contains all the previously released DLC in one affordable package.
Gamespot is reporting that the complete edition is available for only $49.99 and it comes with the full version of the base game of Dark Souls 3, along with the Ashes of Ariandel DLC and the recently released Ringed City expansion. The triple pack is available as both a digital download and as a physical release throughout Europe, Australia and America and it's appropriately called Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition.
For a lot of gamers, the complete edition is just another sign that Bandai Namco and From Software are finished with Dark Souls... for now.
The director had mentioned in the past that Dark Souls 3 would be the final game in the series... a series that originally started as a PS3 exclusive with Demon's Souls. The game was earmarked for its high-quality challenges and remarkable difficulty.
In reality, Demon's Souls -- and later on, Dark Souls -- weren't that much more difficult than games of the past. The thing that made them stand out was that they were designed to kindle the kind of challenge, reflexes and skill requirements that gamers were required to utilize back in the day during the 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit eras, where timing, attention, and memorization were key.
Many of the bosses in the Dark Souls series have patterns and behaviors that must be learned in order to defeat them, otherwise, you'll never be able to get past them. There are also certain weapons, items, and armors that must be utilized to attain specific buffs and benefits to withstand various attacks from enemies or deal additional damage to them. It's in a way similar to The Witcher, but there's a lot more emergent, player-driven gameplay in the Dark Souls series that encourages exploration and experimentation.
This feature is one of the staples that gamers grew to love about the Dark Souls games; given that a lot of other games will hold the player's hand from start to finish, or fill up a good portion of the game just teaching the player how to play, something the Assassin's Creed games are notorious for.
Bandai, however, isn't sitting around waiting for the next big series to fall into their lap. They're already hard at work on the new Code Vein game, which could be a worthy successor to the Dark Souls games, assuming you like post-apocalyptic vampire fiction.
Anyway, a lot of gamers from the yesteryears of gaming truly appreciate the challenge and difficulty that Hidetaka Miyazaki and the rest of From Software brought to the table with the series. The complete edition is a nice send off for one of the more critically and commercially successful game series that reared its head during seventh gen and continued to be successful into the eighth gen.
The complete Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition is available right now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
