If you’ve already battled your way through Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and all of FromSoftware’s other Soulslike offerings and are itching for more, you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on Dark Souls: Archthrones.
It’s an overhaul mod for Dark Souls 3, but given the level of quality on display, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s an official update. Archthrones is, in fact, from a team of mega-talented Souls devotees who’ve been working on the project for over two years. It offers an alternative story set across five worlds which are connected by the Nexus of Embers, a reworked version of Dark Souls 3’s hub area Firelink Shrine.
This ambitious mod not only draws inspiration from the latest Dark Souls, but also mixes in aspects of other FromSoftware titles. In a new 15-minute video, which you can check out below, we see an epic battle against the Demon Vanguard, which bears a striking similarity to Demon’s Souls Vanguard, while the Angelic Wall Guardian gives us serious Tower Knight vibes. Location-wise, the gloomy gothic church surroundings of Ruins of Blue hark back to 2015’s Bloodborne, and the War-Torn Village looks like it’s pulled right out of Sekiro.
No release date has been set for Dark Souls: Archthrones, but its creators have said that it will be “100% free” (opens in new tab) when it arrives. Players will need a copy of Dark Souls 3 and all of its DLCs to play it, though. If you fancy giving some financial support to this talented team, you can do so over on Patreon (opens in new tab).
In other news, one FromSoftware employee recently compared working at the studio to playing Dark Souls. “There’s a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying,” they said. “It’s just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls.”
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