Recent reviews by GabbyHyena

If you like souls-like games then this will be an obvious choice. I'm a souls-like fanatic & I found much to love in this game, it was well worth the premium paid. The open world is enormous (& that's before DLCs have dropped, mind), & the goat-steed Torrent is fun to race around the map on. The summons thing is great if maybe a little obscure to access.

It can, of course, be brutally difficult. It definitely feels like it's tuned to a co-op level of difficulty & that soloing it is more work, fwtw. & I may be over the trollishness of FromSoft & their you-battled-&-died-repeatedly-for-the-shiny-&-it's-useless-junk thing (crescent grass was where I first learned this one trick, lol, but in this one it's #$!% arteria leaf). Nioh 2 spoiled me with its summoning candles & re-usable buffs that last more than 15 seconds. (Somebody make a sci-fi themed Nioh 2-ish game, pretty please.)

Anyways, I'd recommend getting the little belt-lantern sold by a coupla merchants (you only need one) before venturing into the tunnels, caves, & so on. The hands-free illumination is worth it. & mage builds can be easier in the sense of mass-slaughtering-low-level-mobs but can be less effective & trickier to use against stronger enemies & bosses; melee builds may need to run/sneak past mobs but have a somewhat easier time against bosses. (Rune bears are easier to melee against than to range against, in some ways, to pick an example.) Running past stuff is not only viable but plenty of times it's the best way to get to the next grace or whatever.

I've put in hundreds of hours, lol (ETA I've got it on the PS4, also), & not got more than a little bit thru the main story stuff, & thus have easily gotten my money's worth. I'm an old so I'll prolly be playing these games 'till the day I die. Hopefully. :D

The sequel offers a lot more but the original is still a great game. Tough & punishing but if you love the gameplay it's all good.

I want to love this game but in its current state it's nigh unplayable.

In particular the lack of inventory space makes for Kafkaesque tedium, constantly rushing to sell off inventory to open up space or having to trash stuff one spent ones valuable in-game time collecting. Given the number of different items that can occupy an inventory slot & the wildly variant size of stacks (from 10 pieces to a 1,000), the inventory is at least an order of magnitude too small for the job.

The combat controls are cludgey & fun-draining, both in space & on foot.

The flight controls make me actively hate this game; just, no.

& there needs to be a *lot* more, clearly explanatory writing built into the steep learning-curve of this game.

I've played prolly thousands of hours in total of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, & Bloodborne. (I've played relatively little of Dark Souls III, something I work at rectifying. No disparagement, mostly I only have so much time & cannot clone myself to play more than one game at a time. I would if I could, lol.) That's all over on those consoles, now I'm here, checking this place out. & learning the other controller, which I'm doing by making yet another set of characters for some of my most favoritest games ever -- FromSoft product. Context for me to say that so far, my absolute most favorite game of all time, nobody else comes close, is Bloodborne (even if that's not so useful here, heh). But of the ones available here & of which I've played tons, it's Dark Souls II that I love best, hands down. So much that they did right with this one. & this PC port is better than the console version, the enemies are all much more reactive at a farther range, making it harder. Once I've gotten into late game on DSIII I'll review that one -- it may very well end up being neck-&-neck with DSII for my favor. Tho' power stancing is such an excellent mechanic, I enjoy it far more than the weapon-skill thing in DSIII.

I love the intricate combat system of the Souls games, it feels like I'm making my little 'toons dance. The worlds they build are fascinating & I like the cryptic narrative.

My only complaint would be that I'd like a soulsborne-type game but with a science fiction / futuristic fantasy setting instead of pseudo-historical fantasy.