This isn't my proper review, but I wanted to get some thoughts down at hour 30. I'm calling it early that this could very easily end up being my favorite Souls game (and by default favorite ever), depending on how it progresses. Where I'm at now with it now, I'm incredibly impressed. Part of me does yearn for the more …
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This isn't my proper review, but I wanted to get some thoughts down at hour 30. I'm calling it early that this could very easily end up being my favorite Souls game (and by default favorite ever), depending on how it progresses. Where I'm at now with it now, I'm incredibly impressed. Part of me does yearn for the more focused Souls experience I'm used to but it's still there, just with an open world element insulating that core experience. My only complaint is that the open world and mini-dungeon stuff in particular can start to feel repetitive. They remind me a lot of the Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne but are thankfully much shorter and less intentionally labyrinthian. There's always unique items found within them though, so I'm compelled to complete each one. Overall I think it's a much stranger integration of the generic procedural-feeling dungeon concept than in Bloodborne. It still feels very cool to discover them. At times like this, the game can feel borderline bloated, but I don't mind because I'm having such a good time. Fromsoft has once again come around to ruin all other games for me because this core gameplay loop is just unparalleled. I'm incredibly thankful that the core Souls experience is still intact. They could have easily simplified and dumbed things down to make things more accessible but they chose to keep many things as mysterious and vague as ever, thus preserving the trademark series magic. In some ways the game is more accessible. Tutorials are more plentiful but they don't over-explain and are not intrusive, simply providing a simple statement of guidance from time to time. My only concern at this point is whether or not the escalation will be enough to keep the experience a 10/10 for 80 hours. This is my dream game in so many ways. My jaw has been on the floor every night I've spent with it. The sense of discovery and epic scope is stronger than than any game I've ever played. I also think the writing and lore design is a subtle step up in quality. It's a bit more understandable and I'm more intrigued by the relationships between characters than in previous games. Maybe that's the George RR Martin touch surfacing? There's a feeling of freshness to it - like the classic Souls deck has been reshuffled, creating a sense of unfamiliarity that makes the mystery of the world more compelling. And things like pyromancy now being faith-based tickle my brain because of how it rewrites the past and plays on expectations. It's delighting to me that this game is currently super popular, even breaking through to the people who bounced off Souls games in the past. It feels like this series is finally getting it's due in a big way. Now I get to be one of those hipsters who have been playing these games since the beginning. I'm just glad that at it's heart it's still the same game I've loved since 2009.
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