From Software has showcased a few of the weapon arts found in Dark Souls 3

From Software has been streaming bits of Dark Souls 3 footage the past month or so but given the timezone and language differences many in the West simply don't even know of them happening.

Luckily a youtuber by the name of Rikudou has taken it upon himself to update the most interesting parts of the steam for our enjoyment. This time around its 12 minutes of footage showing off various weapon arts as well as the knight and cleric "classes":

 

As with the previous video showcasing some backstab-riddled Thief gameplay the aesthetics in Dark Souls 3 seem to borrow heavily from Bloodborne. During the first few seconds of the video I genuinely thought this was Old Yharnam and that the DS3 portion of the stream was just about to come up. Don't take that as a complaint from me though, Bloodborne is immensely atmospheric and if Dark Souls 3 can capture the same sort of feeling then it'll be a better game because of it.

The video showcases four different sets of weapon arts: the charge attack for the longsword, the whirlwind of doom for the scimitar, the knock out punch for the greatsword and the shield spell for the clerical mace. This might come as a surprise but out of all the weapon arts shown so far the clerical mace seems to be the most powerful, despite being the most boring looking. The reason I say that is because stamina management in Dark Souls is incredibly important and if you can simply give away 1/3 of your HP in order to expend two full stamina bars on a boss odds are he'll be going down far sooner than you will.

But as far as style goes I don't think anything beats the scimitar. I don't even care if it does no damage, just the fact that you can be a Dark Souls equivalent of the whirling-dervish is enough to compensate for any lack of function. Though I'm pretty sure the reason it did no damage is because the character showcased in the video is built purely for strength while the scimitar is a DEX scaling weapon.

All I can say now is that the more Dark Souls 3 footage I see the more I want to actually play the damn thing, but unfortunately we'll all have to wait until April 12th when Dark Souls 3 officially releases for the PC, Xbox One and PS4.

And finally, if you haven't seen it go check out the intro cinematic, it has a few interesting bits of lore to speculate on.