Dark Souls 3 doesn’t come out for another two weeks in most of the world, but it’s been out since March 24 in Japan. That means speedrunners have already descended upon it, and they’ve gotten really good. While our reviewer James has already put 50+ hours into it over the last couple of weeks (you can read his initial thoughts here, and his full review soon) speedrunner Jung Ho Min has managed to beat the game in a fraction of that time, clocking in at an in-game time of 1:42:10. You can watch the full run above, though you can easily guess that it’s riddled with spoilers.
That’s an absurdly fast time for a game that is reportedly a very long experience. What’s crazier is that this is still on the cutting edge of speedrunning Dark Souls 3: the time is only going to get faster from here, as evidenced by Jung Ho Min having posted a previous world record time of 1:56:10 only two days earlier. Like the insane speedrun path that let people beat Dark Souls 2 in less than 20 minutes, this is an Any% run—meaning the runner only has to make it to the end of the game as fast as possible, allowing them to skip bosses and other large portions of the game entirely.
It’s an exciting time to watch Dark Souls 3 speedruns because the fastest routes and best time saves are actively being discovered. If you are interested in seeing more, popular Dark Souls speedrunner Distortion2—who holds the record for both Dark Souls 2’s older Any% route and the current All Bosses route—has been livestreaming speedruns frequently and, literally while I was typing out this article, he clocked a time of 1:43:11 in an All Bosses run. There’s no doubt runners everywhere will be trying to best the high bar that’s already been set, but there’s also no doubt they’ll break the record in a hurry.
