The Souls franchise is one of the greatest game genres to evolve in the past decade. From Demon's Souls to Dark Souls III, the franchise has seen a steep evolution. However, the franchise is popular is not its evolution, but rather its ability to serve the same experience every time with greater difficulty. This challenge has become such a vital part of Dark Souls that every time a game is released in the series, people invent crazy methods to make it even more challenging.
However, Dark Souls III has to be the entry that drove these challenges to a new height. In the past few years, viewers saw some of the most insane challenge-runs since its inception.
10 No Flips, Just Fists - G-Soul
When the first Dark Souls game was released, it was known for its variety of weaponry. Dark Souls III took that to another level and gave players broader freedom to play around with their builds. But for challenge runners, all of that doesn't matter at all. This is why G-Soul did a challenge run, literally using no weapons. Just bare-fisting every boss to extinction. Obviously, the whole run took an awful lot of time to complete, but it sure as hell was worth it.
9 One-Shot Boss Challenge - Ray Dhimitri
Dark Souls games are known for their hardcore difficulty, traps, and boss battles. Therefore the game tends to kill the players in unfair situations, sometimes destroying them in just one shot. Ray Dhimitri's challenge run was the opposite of this. It was all about killing Dark Souls III bosses in just one hit. As scary as it may sound, this was actually done by Ray and that too with quite a bit of perfection. However, this challenge is certainly not for everyone.
8 Shield Only Challenge - LobosJr
The successful Dark Souls run heavily on one main thing, a good knowledge of parrying. At the same time, players can finish the game without perfectly conquering the shield's use case. What if someone decides that they want to finish the entire game with just a shield? LobosJr did the same thing when he did a challenge run of Dark Souls III with only shields.
This means no weapons, no spells. Just the shield to block and the same shield to attack. Now that's a great example of passive-aggressive.
7 2x Speed Challenge - SquillaKilla
Modifying game files to alter the game's experience is called modding. This is something that has gotten extremely popular in the last ten years and continues to grow. While mostly modding is done to either make the game look or play better, this one was done for the sake of challenge run. As evident by the name, the 2x Speed Challenge is all about playing Dark Souls III at double the speed. This means a player needs to have twice as much faster response time.
6 CUPHEAD Challenge - Ymfah
Anyone who has played the Cuphead knows that it is very challenging. And since Dark Souls is known to be hard as well, what if both the games are mixed? What kind of difficulty will it create for the players? This was answered in the concept of Cuphead Challenge Run. While it doesn't conventionally mix the two games up, it gives a way of playing Dark Souls III that spiritually resembles the 2D platformer. Using the Farron dart only to complete the whole game.
5 No Level Up - Ginomachino
Done by Ginomachino, the no level up challenge does exactly what its name says. Leveling up is extremely important in Souls games since it is part of the progression. Without leveling, players will not feel like they're getting better. But to challenge runners, this entire concept is a truffle cake with icing.
This entire run involves no level ups, no upgrades, but just a hardcore tireless attempt at progressing through the whole game. In short, it is insane.
4 No Hit Run - The Happy Hob
Taking the insanity one step further, what if the whole run is about not getting hit at all. While getting hit by a weapon in the no level up will mean the challenge continues, in this, it immediately ends. This is what makes this run much more challenging than the one above. Attempted by Happy Hob, the run needs the player to avoid any enemy hit. This is extremely brutal considering how uncertain the AI can be in Dark Souls III.
3 No Health & Stamina Challenge - DECC
Taking it one step further, what if the No-Hit Challenge becomes a one-hit die challenge genuinely? A streamer known as DECC has attempted this run, which involves modifying the game files to play with just one mana, one health, and one stamina point. This means that the player can not only get hit but also not fall or take any damage at all. To make it even more brutal, the player can not even run, so timing and attacking need to be impeccable.
2 Dance Challenge - Luality
Completed by Luality on her stream, the dance challenge is exactly what it sounds like. The woman took it in her hands, or shall we say her legs, to finish Dark Souls III with a dance pad. The challenge is harder than it sounds, as the stream footage easily showcases how difficult and fast one needs to be to fight even one boss, let alone the whole game. The dance challenge is clearly one of the wackiest ways anyone has ever played Dark Souls III.
1 Banana Challenge - AtwerkinYoshi
But as wacky as the dancing was in the dance challenge run, this one easily tops it. This is playing Dark Souls III with nothing but bananas. AtwerkinYoshi figured out a way to fix up his controller setup with many bananas and used it to play Dark Souls III successfully. Even if it sounds odd, there are clear footages of this online, and it is easily one of the craziest ways to play the game. Going out of the usual control setup and using fruit to fight, Dark Souls III challenge runs are really one of a kind.