Downloading 'Dark Souls 3' early makes the game even harder
Here's to hoping you speak Japanese and won't need help with boss battles.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn't the only thing hitting the internet ahead of its official release this week: The latest entry in FromSoftware's absolutely punishing Dark Souls series has as well. But rather than going to your torrent site of choice, all you need to do to access it is make a dummy account for your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One with Japan as its home region -- Dark Souls 3 launched there on the 24th. You'll still have to drop cash on the game, so if you were hoping for some nefariousness you're out of luck here.
However, accessing this game via a loophole -- DualShockers has a walkthrough -- that's oddly been open since early last console generation will work against you in a few ways. For starters, because you're downloading the game from the Japanese digital store of your choice, it looks like menu text will be in Japanese. Thankfully, NeoGAF is already bustling with activity to help with any translation questions you might have.
The other problem will resolve itself once the game officially releases. Publisher Bandai Namco says that as of now the multiplayer bits of the game's international version aren't up and running yet. So, leaving trollish notes or trying to help someone out with a particularly brutal boss fight isn't possible for now.
More than that, the game is getting a (sadly commonplace) day one patch that will "deliver further optimization" to the game. That'll happen April 12th when the wider world has access. Need something to kill the time until then? That's what the new trailer embedded above is for.
