Japanese Steam reviews of DARK SOULS™ III: 86.6% positive, with gameplay dominating praise
The sample contains 1,916 Japanese-language reviews for DARK SOULS™ III on Steam. The collection covers releases from April 2016 through September 2026.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 1,916 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2016-04-12 and 2026-09-26.
Overall positive rate
Players writing reviews in Japanese recommended the game 86.6% of the time. This figure comes from 1,916 reviews collected between April 2016 and September 2026. Steam reports an all-time positive rate of 86.5% for the title. The two percentages differ by a single point. The collected sample aligns closely with the platform lifetime figure.
The numbers
What recommending writers praise
Reviewers who recommend the game most frequently discuss gameplay and combat mechanics. This topic appears in 55.3% of all recommending reviews. Players note that the level design rewards careful planning and maintains challenge even after mastering the controls. One writer observed that overcoming a powerful boss delivers a strong sense of achievement.
Dark Souls I, IIとプレイしてきたが、Ⅲのレベルデザインは際立っている。
Having played Dark Souls I and II, the level design of III stands out.
Amount of content, length, and replayability follows at 25.3% of positive reviews. Users appreciate the high density of encounters and the freedom to build multiple character types. Difficulty and balance are mentioned in 17.2% of recommending reviews. Players describe a punishing but fair progression curve where repeated failure teaches enemy patterns.
死の恐怖と常に隣り合わせでびくびくしながらなんとかエンディングを迎えられました。
With the fear of death always nearby, I nervously managed to reach the ending.
Characters and character design round out the top four topics at 8.8% of positive reviews. Reviewers highlight the dark fantasy aesthetic and the distinct personalities of the non-playable cast. Story, scenario, and writing appear in 7.4% of recommending reviews. Players enjoy the fragmented narrative that encourages exploration. Graphics and art direction are mentioned in 7.3% of positive reviews. Reviewers praise the atmospheric lighting and the distinct visual identity of each region.
What non-recommending writers criticise
Among reviews that do not recommend the game, gameplay and combat mechanics appear in 65.8% of them. Critics argue that the difficulty often stems from cumbersome systems rather than skill-based challenges. Some players find the enemy hitboxes inconsistent and complain about restrictive camera angles.
隻狼の後、同じフロムの有名どころと言う事で購入
After Sekiro, I bought it as another famous title from FromSoftware.
Amount of content, length, and replayability is mentioned in 26.5% of negative reviews. Several writers feel the game leans too heavily on repetitive encounters without meaningful variety. Difficulty and balance follow at 26.8% of non-recommending reviews. Players cite the initial boss rush as a steep wall for newcomers and note that stamina management frequently interrupts combat flow. Performance, optimization, and bugs appear in 24.1% of negative reviews. Reviewers report frame drops on lower-end hardware and occasional synchronization issues during online matches. UI, controls, and key bindings are discussed in 12.1% of non-recommending reviews. Some players find the default button layout unintuitive on a controller. Online play and multiplayer appear in 13.6% of negative reviews. Writers point out that matchmaking can pair them with players of vastly different levels.
Who wrote these reviews
The median playtime behind these Japanese-language reviews is 72.9 hours. The classification model processed 1,397 of the 1,916 collected reviews. The remaining entries lacked sufficient text for topic tagging. Players who recommend the game focus heavily on core mechanics and content volume. Gameplay and combat appear in 56.7% of all classified reviews, while amount of content covers 25.5%. Those who do not recommend the game also prioritize combat, but they mention difficulty and balance more often. Difficulty appears in 18.5% of all classified reviews, and performance issues are noted in 7.9%. Online play and multiplayer topics show a wider split between recommending and non-recommending writers. The topic appears in 7.3% of all classified reviews, but it ranks higher among negative feedback. Story, scenario, and writing are discussed in 7.2% of the classified sample. Graphics and art direction match that frequency at 7.2%. The remaining topics cover user interface, audio, pricing, and the PC port quality. The median playtime of 72.9 hours reflects a substantial time investment behind each review.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2016-04-12 and 2026-09-26: 1,916 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for DARK SOULS™ III were read on 2026-10-02.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.