I'm utterly blown away by the quality of this game. FROM has been for a long time, my favorite developer, but this puts there other games to shame. And it puts the likes of the The Elder Scrolls and Breath of the Wild to shame with the scope of it's open world and high quality.
In terms of exploration nothing has been ever this rewarding, you get a giant sandbox of verticality to explore with all the bells and whistles FROM has added to make the journey a bit easier. The new horse, the jumping, the crafting it all builds to a familiar, but vastly transformed Souls experience.
The combat is pretty much Dark Souls III on steroids with some elements of Sekiro added onto it and it's fine, if it's not broken don't fix it. The only aspect i'm lukewarm towards is the bosses; quality has dropped a little even if there's still plenty of fantastic fights.
The lore is also much more detailed then past Souls games; npc's and bosses generally act more like characters. But it's still cryptic, which is good, because people asking for stuff otherwise want to get of FROM's idenity.
In conclusion; it's my favorite Open World game since Dragon's Dogma, and it blows everything out of the water. Elder Scrolls, the Breath of the Wild games, and Grand Theft Auto might as well be dead franchises, this is the new standard
The height of the Open World genre; a masterpiece
I'm utterly blown away by the quality of this game. FROM has been for a long time, my favorite developer, but this puts there other games to shame. And it puts the likes of the The Elder Scrolls and Breath of the Wild to shame with the scope of it's open world and high quality.
In terms of exploration nothing has been ever this rewarding, you get a giant sandbox of verticality to explore with all the bells and whistles FROM has added to make the journey a bit easier. The new horse, the jumping, the crafting it all builds to a familiar, but vastly transformed Souls experience.
The combat is pretty much Dark Souls III on steroids with some elements of Sekiro added onto it and it's fine, if it's not broken don't fix it. The only aspect i'm lukewarm towards is the bosses; quality has dropped a little even if there's still plenty of fantastic fights.
The lore is also much more detailed then past Souls games; npc's and bosses generally act more like characters. But it's still cryptic, which is good, because people asking for stuff otherwise want to get of FROM's idenity.
In conclusion; it's my favorite Open World game since Dragon's Dogma, and it blows everything out of the water. Elder Scrolls, the Breath of the Wild games, and Grand Theft Auto might as well be dead franchises, this is the new standard
10/10