Dark Souls: Archthrones feels like a Souls series romhack, combining disparate parts of FromSoftware's work into a tailor-made campaign for Dark Souls 3. This is one for the fans, full of clever winks and nods to other games in the series, but as one of those fans myself, I certainly don't mind taking care of them.
From the start, Archthrones' opening level is a condensed homage to Demon's Souls, featuring the same smelly potato boy Vanguard boss – new-school fans will recognize his moveset and animations from the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls and Earthtree Sentinels from Elden Ring. I thought I was a lock for a first-time win against this boss who was clearly supposed to “lose,” but at half health he pulled out a new wicked moveset straight out of Bloodborne's Old Hunters DLC and I became put in my place.
This kind of cheeky subversion of expectations gives me great hope for Archthrones—at its core, this is an exercise in reference and imitation, but having this inside baseball humor by Souls fans for Souls fans feels perfect Niche.
If you're good enough at this type of game to reach the second phase of the boss, your brain probably has enough holes in it to recognize and get excited about the Bloodborne gag disguised as a Demon's Souls gag, and I for one was thrilled with it. Such a freak nerd turducken. You have to be the same to understand it.
And the quality of craftsmanship here is also commendable: in addition to the chopped and screwed assets straight from the FromSoft catalog, the custom model work on display is outstanding. One of the starting classes, the Duelist, features this elegant plate armor and half-cloak that would make a great endgame set, and they have been completely tailored for this mod.
Installation is a breeze: simply insert the demo files into your Dark Souls 3 installation and run the game. After the initial setup, running Dark Souls 3 takes you straight to Archthrones, which has its own save slots and an online server to protect you from DS3's anticheat. At the time of writing, I've had better luck playing Archthrones offline, but the fact that it even pursues the asymmetric multiplayer ambitions of Souls in mainline mode is commendable.
To uninstall and play the original game, you'll probably want to completely reinstall Dark Souls 3 to make sure everything is clear regarding saves/anti-cheat operations. There is currently no set release date for Archthrones, but you can check out the demo for yourself the next day NexusMods.
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