Dark Souls III: Everything you need to know about the new mechanics

[MUSIC] All right, so Dark Soul isn't due out until the first half of next year and it's bound to go through a ton of changes. But if you're a Souls fan you'll love to pick at the intricacy. I just spent a few hours with the recent games gone demo. But while NanGale wouldn't let us record the play through, I'm gonna give you a detailed rundown of the state of Dark Soul III's mechanics. So on this demo, you can pick from two premade classes, the wandering knight and the northern warrior, aside from the armor the obvious differences are that the knights equipped with the broadsword and the northern warrior has a one-handed axe. Stats weren't present in this demo, so combat, it definitely feels dark souls as opposed to bloodborne. The first thing I noticed was the dark souls one kick was back Just hold the direction with your left analog stick and hit R1 at the same time. There are two types of shields right now, one that lets you parry and repost with L2, and one that lets you perform the new art attacks by holding L2. There's a little icon next to the shield edge shows you what function it is. [UNKNOWN] attacks use up what I'm gonna call [UNKNOWN] points, of which you get 20. This is refreshed at each bonfire, just like your [UNKNOWN]. The broadsword is the wandering knights default weapon, and it's start move is a ready stance, which gives you access to a secondary, light and heavy attack variation. These do more damage than a regular attack, and each slash uses one [UNKNOWN] point. The one handed axe, is the northern warrior's default weapon. The arts move it has is a barbarian style, [UNKNOWN] which stuns enemies and give you a small damage block. I found myself using this one a lot. I'd combo an enemy, and when it would start its attack string, I'd stun it with the shock to reset its state, letting me continue with another combo. The great sword you find, has another arts move which looks like a quick stomp forward, but it kind of looks like an [UNKNOWN] attack. A parry or a guard break. But I really wasn't able to connect it on basic enemies in these kinds of scenarios. If you hit R2 during the step, though, you perform a a big upward slash. The jeweled scimitars you find have a two handed twirl as the arts move, which attacking the area around you. It's a two-handed twirl regardless of whether you have it equipped in sword and board style, or in two handed form, with one scimitar in each hand. It's a pretty fast weapon, so it's easy to follow up the arts attack with a regular combo. Alright so ripostes. Maybe it's been a while for me, but they felt easier to do, and easier to trigger. And they give you invincibility. Finding the sweet spot for back stabbing also helped me, and it also makes you invincible. Which some people might not be too happy about. Enemies can also back stab you, and enemies can also change stance. So for instance, some of the bigger knight enemies change from sword and board style, to two-handed sword stances, just like you can. Coming straight from Bloodborne, dodging didn't feel as reliable in the Dark Souls demo. I won't spoil the monsters that surprised me but I'll say the demo was swarming with lots of enemies per mob/. And mobs that crawl up from the edge of the stage and a lot of those enemies had sweeping attacks, which meant dodging a lot usually put me in a really bad position you know, it's that classic Souls geometry track. [UNKNOWN] are more effective when I use my shield to block attacks and control the space, which is great, because that's Dark Souls. So the items you can find in the demo are the green blossom which gives you stamina regen, pine resin which buffs your weapon with fire, fire bombs, throwing knives and of course the [UNKNOWN] flask which you can still charge with multiple button presses to get more Fields, so nothing new here. The demo didn't have stats screens, equip screens, or a hauling mechanic. So that's all up in the air at this point but, I can confirm that the praise the sun gesture is back so, don't need to worry. That's the state of the game post Games Con 2015. It's due out in the first half of next year but hopefully we'll see a lot more new stuff. So as always be sure to stay tuned to Gamespot where we'll keep you updated on Darksouls 3.