Once in a while you play a game and while it has some problems, you can tell that it can be the start of something great. We say they have "Potential". Whether it is the world, a new gameplay system of unique combination of genres, they usually have great ideas but mediocre excecution.

One of those games for me is Darksiders 1. I think the world is interesting and unique. The prospect of playing as the 4 horsemen of the apocalyps, slaying demons and fighting alongside angels is really cool. The unique combination of hack an slash combat with Zelda inspired dungeons was also really interesting. The big problem was that outside of the world, the game didn't do much new and its Zelda and God of War influences felt glued together, rather then being well intertwined systems that played into eachother and made a product that was better than the sum of its parts.

I was therefor really excited to play Darksiders 2 to see if it would be what Assassin's creed 2 was to AC 1 but allas, I feel like it fell short. DS 2 is undoubtedly a better game than DS 1. Combat and movement is more fluent, the world is feels more connected and less claustrofobic, there are more gameplay systems to interact with, ect. But all the improvments that DS 2 brings to the table are just that, improvements. It doesn't fix any of its core issues. With the exception of the grapling hook that can be used to pull enemies towards you, the combat side of the game is still very much disconnected from the puzzle dungeons, horses are still hardly used outside of getting from A to B outside of 1 or 2 bosses which is dissapointing in a game where you are called "Horseman" every other line of dialog. Enemy variety is still a weak point and the skill tree only has a handfull of actual skill with the rest being stat upgrades to the other skills. While the world is more spatious, it feels emtpy everywhere you go. For all of these reasons, even if DS2 is a better game than DS1, I found it to be a bigger dissapointment because it could have been so much better.

I have not played Darksiders 3 because I have not heard the best things about it and I am afraid that even if a potential Darksider 4 fixes all of these issues, it is already to late. You can only make so many games that don't quite get it right, before people lose interest and give up on it.