Recent reviews by GRAY

Eyes up guardian.

For fans of the Souls series, this is a must play game. For people who are NOT fans of the Souls series, this is STILL a must play. It feels like the culmination of every FROMSoft game to date.

The performance (played using an i9-1100k and RTX 3080ti, was mostly good. It did stutter on occasion, but that was almost exclusively when loading into new areas and rarely did it last for more than a second. I did not find this to be an issue, but i know on lesser hardware, the frame stuttering has been an issue, and could be a deal breaker for some until the issue is fixed.

PROS:

-Story- The game maintains the usual mystique and complexity of the other souls games, but it feels like much less of a chore, and much less difficult, to find the lore and quests that make it worth while. Unlike other souls games, the quests and lore are more direct in delivery. Characters will generally be pretty clear about what is needed to progress their story, making it easier to complete all of the side quests without a guide. The game itself is also much more story heavy. You don't need to read every item description to understand what the plot is. The depth is still there for those looking for it (especially in the secret areas/bosses), but will be easier to digest for the casual fan. All of the side characters, lore, and quests are honestly the best in the entire series to me, even better than Dark Souls 1.

-Combat- This game is essentially an upgraded Dark Souls 3 in combat. It feels familiar, but adds multiple layers of complexity and customization by adding such things as weapon arts (which are all super fun to use, and there are MANY), new stagger mechanics, guard counters, power-stancing (dual-wielding, it was in DS2), a much wider variety of weapons, spells, incantations, and play-styles. It feels as fluid as ever, and the build variety is definitely the best of any game in the series so far.

-Music- Not much to say here. This game has a masterful soundtrack, as the series always has.

-Length- I was worried that the game was going to be overly long, tedious, or grindy because of the open world, but the length felt perfect. I completed the game at 100% (every unique boss, every character quest, a vast majority of overworld content and locations) in about 65 hours, then did two speed runs in NG+ and NG+2 to get the other two ending achievements (which took me about 10 hours to do both). While there are certainly still secrets to discover (I will be exploring much more on a new character), I felt like I completed most of the game by 80 hours. I never felt bored and spent very little time grinding.

-Difficulty- This game can be the easiest or the hardest in the series, depending on how you approach it. If you use summons and one of the cheese builds, the game can be comparable in difficulty to Dark Souls 3, other than a few of the hardest bosses. If you play the game solo and use a regular build without grinding, the game is incredibly challenging, probably the most challenging in the series. This makes it accessible for newcomers, but also a fun challenge for veterans.

-Environments- Without going into spoilers, this game has the most varied, interesting, and cool settings in the series. Even the more "generic" area of Limgrave is a great spectacle with a lot of variety.

-Open World- The game is on par (if not better) than Breath of the Wild in providing an open world where every single square inch is filled with secrets to find and areas to explore. You can explore everything you can see, and wherever that may be, you will find something interesting.

MIXED:

-Bosses- SPOILERS AHEAD!
This game EASILY has some of the best bosses in the entire series, but also some of the worst. The final boss is the best example of this. It is a two part fight. The first half is a great final boss that the story has built up to the entire time, making it feel emotionally impactful. This fight is also pretty difficult. It is immediately followed up by an extremely tedious fight with a large enemy that teleports across the map constantly (the fight is 90% running back and forth) against an enemy that the story in no way builds up to. There is no checkpoint between these. If you die to the second boss you have to do both over again. It is extremely tedious and makes the final boss feel like a bit of a let down. If they handled that fight like Moon Presence from Bloodborne, it could have been much better.
The fight against the Fire Giant is also extremely bad. It is an extremely tedious and long battle of attrition that can take 20-30 minutes straight. I beat it normally on my first playthrough, but ended up using an exploit on the subsequent runs just to get it over with. There are also a lot of repeated bosses/gank battles in the small dungeons that are kinda lame/annoying.
There are some top tier bosses in this game though. Melania is by far the hardest boss in the entire franchise, but rarely felt cheap (the crazy combo slash was hard to learn, but once I did I could dodge it every time), on top of being incredibly cool with great lore. Rykard is by far the best gimmick boss in the franchise (similar to Yhorm or The Storm King). A great spectacle, and an extremely fun fight. Radahn is the most unique fight in the franchise. It is very challenging solo, but you can summon an army to fight with you. He has a super cool move set that had my jaw dropping the first time I fought him. The secret two-headed dragon Placidusax was my personal favorite boss in the game, and one of my favorites in the entire franchise. Overall, I think this game has the best bosses in the franchise, other than maybe Sekiro, but a few stinkers do drag it down a bit.

-Balance- There are a few really cheesy builds that can one shot late game bosses at level 50. I don't really see this as an issue, because you don't need to do those builds to play the game, but I know this may turn off some veteran players. HOWEVER, there are no unplayable builds in the game. Because of shield counters, even dual shield builds are viable the entire game. It seems like, because of the variety of weapons/skills/spells, each builds is catered to with tons of options that are all playable and fun. The biggest issue will probably come in PVP. I am not a huge PVP player, but I know some katana bleed/frost builds are taking over PVP and players have some complaints. In all of the PVP encounters I've had against said players, I've uses spell parrying and guard counters to great effect. Just something to be aware of!

CONS:

-NONE- Other than middling performance for some people (which is apparently being patched), I can't think of a single concrete con for the game. Some things are mixed, but at no point in the game did I feel like there were serious negatives to the game. Even those who haven't loved Souls games in the past will likely find that this game fixed many of the issues from previous games. Everyone will experience this game differently, but I truly think this game is a masterpiece.