Dark Souls 3 speedrunner has already finished the game in 102 minutes

Dark Souls 3 hasn't even launched in the west, but after only a week of being available in Japan a speedrunner has completed From Software's latest opus in one hour, 42 minutes and 10 seconds.

Now before anyone says "it's only two hours long" I want to be clear that Dark Souls 3 is much, much longer than that. I just rolled credits on my imported copy last night after roughly 37 hours (a bit less as you can't pause and the timer ticks during bathroom breaks), though I'm a veteran of the series who has played through each previous outing several times. A reviewer friend of mine who's also a fan of the franchise said his first playthrough came in at around 76 hours. So there's quite a bit of range there and it's fair to say it's a pretty big game.

Comparatively, Dark Souls 1 and 2 were both completed in under an hour. According to Speedruns.com, the first game's been bested in 46 minutes, 25 seconds; Dark Souls 2 rings in at 54 minutes and five seconds; and Bloodborne can be completed in 35 minutes and 41 seconds. And that's playing current builds without glitches that allow you to skip large chunks of the game. Otherwise most of these records are roughly halved.

As for Dark Souls 3 speedrunner Jung Ho Min, it's clear the pioneering player has already had a lot of practice. I noted in my Dark Souls 3 impressions piece that this latest entry felt a little easier to me, though that may be a byproduct of too much practice with its predecessors. Either way, there's a lot of game here and pro players will no doubt find new and inventive ways to make the game harder on themselves. For example, they could take Twitch user The_Happy_Hobbit's approach of playing through the game without getting hit and restarting from scratch every time they do.

You can watch the speedrun above, but there will obviously be major spoilers, so I wouldn't recommend it for those who aren't already playing the imported version. But hey, maybe you like spoilers. To each their own.

Dark Souls 3 will launch internationally on 12th April for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

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