FUCK MIYAZAKI FOR MAKING ME KILL A DOG WHO WAS JUST TRYING TO PROTECT ME

I have a lot I wanna say about this game (contains spoilers) and it's gonna be all over the place so yeah. This was my first playthrough and my first ever souls game, I had only ever heard how immensely challenging it is and is very unwelcoming to new players which really had me going in with very low expectations but I did give it a try and contrary to popular belief this game IS welcoming to new players, people who say otherwise simply haven't put any time into the game.

Now talking about the game itself, I can assure you the game most definitely backs up the "Challenging but Fair" phrase a lot of people use to define its difficulty. You have no difficulty settings that you can use to make the game easier, Fromsoftware encourages you to actually explore the game and find different weapons, armors, spells, items that will make the game easier as you progress. I really love how they don't spoonfeed every little thing to the players and instead it's simply pure exploration, you really need a lot of patience to play it but trust me it's 100% worth your time.
The absolute best thing about this game is how impressively intertwined every single place is, the map is well made and connected it's actually just beautiful, every location in this game is very unique with almost all of them having different sets of enemies and NPCs. It goes without saying the soundtrack in this game just doesn't miss.

Another thing I really love about Fromsoftware games are how they work, yes it is very challenging but it's so fun, you do a lot of mistakes or get ambushed and killed a lot of times and loose all your souls and yet you keep playing because you don't wanna give up and at the end of every fight it gives you that feeling of pure satisfaction as you see the enemy die and fade away which took you hours and days to kill. This game is so rewarding and actually pays off for all the work you put into it.

Now this game isn't all positives, there are some things that genuinely pissed me off, namely the tomb of the giants. That dogshit abhorrent place can go fuck itself with all it's ugly skeletons with it. It's not even challenging, it's just ridiculous how stupidly annoying that place is, I never hated a place in a game sm before but like I said after all the work you put in, it does pay off at the end and it did. Once I beat nito and got out I was the most whimsical, joyous, jovial and cheerful man.

Now directly skipping to the end of the game and the final boss Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. The fight was a shock to me given how incredibly easy it was, I thought it was a bait and hes gonna come back alive and just fucking molest me, but no he didn't. The fight barely took me a minute to finish, I summoned solaire and before he could even charge his attack I had already killed gwyn. I wasn't disappointed by the fight at all even though how anticlimactic it was. The game makes you think Gwyn is the most powerful character as he is often referred to as Lord of cinder, but when you go through the smoke expecting a bad ass cutscene, what do you get? Nothing. You just walk in and Gwyn starts attacking with the most hauntingly sad yet beautiful soundtrack in the background and by the time you notice you had already took 90% of his HP and is one hit away from dying, what makes this fight amazing isn't the difficulty but rather the story behind it, throughout the game you're led to believe that gwyn is extremely powerful but turns out he's really weakened, barely having any strength to fight, just a victim, a hollow, just like you and everyone else.

Coming to the DLC, I have not much to say except it's fucking amazing. Artorias was my fav boss fight, as he is really balanced and his backstory just signifies the fight even more. I have yet to beat that fucking manus. He gives me PTSD, it's clear the demon of hatred in sekiro was inspired by him, it took me a lot of time to beat the demon but I did, just like how I'll beat manus but I will beat him for sure.

Lastly to the people who complain about how hard darksouls is and that they die a lot, it literally says Prepare to "die" in the title, stop crying and git gud.