Honestly, the coolest aspect of the game is character creation. I like the "switch-on-the-fly" class system in theory, but grinding skill mastery is a chore, as is farming the item to auto master a skill. There's a good degree of difference between the various classes, but some of them seem incomplete, gimmicky or just a repository of a couple good skills, which are then mastered for use on other, better classes.

Really though, my biggest problem with the game comes down to the idea that it seems to be balanced around having a partner character. You can fairly easily get through a sizable portion of the game solo (though the ambush encounters will sometimes border on ludicrous while solo) but there's a point about maybe 80% of the way through the game where it just became incredibly tedious. Even with what I'd consider to be a rather optimized build, damage numbers on bosses at this point were low across the board, and continued to only get lower as the game progressed. Combine that with the absurd damage some bosses deal out in a single quick hit, and the repeated use of a few core enemy designs throughout the entire game, and I can't really recommend this without a large asterisk. It's a pretty game, and it has some good ideas, but it really seems to ignore a great deal of what makes souls games good (thoughtful boss movesets and varied enemy designs) and focuses a lot on what makes some souls games frustrating (damage-sponge, slap happy bosses that love to oneshot you). If you don't mind the eternal shame of playing with a partner character, then the boss difficulty won't really be an issue, but the samey enemy designs might get a little old.

Honestly, the coolest aspect of the game is character creation. I like the "switch-on-the-fly" class system in theory, but grinding skill mastery is a chore, as is farming the item to auto master a skill. There's a good degree of difference between the various classes, but some of them seem incomplete, gimmicky or just a repository of a couple good skills, which are then mastered for use on other, better classes. Really though, my biggest problem with the game comes down to the idea that it seems to be balanced around having a partner character. You can fairly easily get through a sizable portion of the game solo (though the ambush encounters will sometimes border on ludicrous while solo) but there's a point about maybe 80% of the way through the game where it just became incredibly tedious. Even with what I'd consider to be a rather optimized build, damage numbers on bosses at this point were low across the board, and continued to only get lower as the game progressed. Combine that with the absurd damage some bosses deal out in a single quick hit, and the repeated use of a few core enemy designs throughout the entire game, and I can't really recommend this without a large asterisk. It's a pretty game, and it has some good ideas, but it really seems to ignore a great deal of what makes souls games good (thoughtful boss movesets and varied enemy designs) and focuses a lot on what makes some souls games frustrating (damage-sponge, slap happy bosses that love to oneshot you). If you don't mind the eternal shame of playing with a partner character, then the boss difficulty won't really be an issue, but the samey enemy designs might get a little old.