To preface, I really did enjoy my time with game and really want to love it. There’s just so many gripes I have that progressively ruined the game more and more for me.

This games feels like a huge ball of kinda wasted potential. A story full of pretty interesting plot points that all feels loosely connected to the point of not even really recognizing characters that were apparently important. A really cool immersive world that feels like it goes mostly unused, with every location being visited just once and never going deeper than the surface. A detailed quest system where it never feels like you’re doing anything more than running errands. A really fun combat and skill system that kinda feels like you’ve played everything after trying a couple vocations. Shops filled with beautiful armor and strong weapons that you’ll probably never get to use most of because of how the gold you earn is next to nothing outside of quests.

As for other issues with the game, a lot of times it makes things more complicated than they need to be. I don’t want my hand to be held the whole way through, but being able to just miss parts of the game just because you aren’t being a detective can be annoying. Some systems just feel unnecessary, like having to learn teach a pawn Elvish is just a strange roadblock that didn’t need to be there. But to me, the biggest issue with the game is the length. Getting into what’s supposed to be a huge RPG should be able to take a lot of time, exploring, growing, and questing. I finished in just under 30 hours. And I wasn’t just breezing through everything, I did a majority of the side quests available to me and it still was a pretty short game. When I learned how suddenly the game ends and how unfun the endgame is, it killed my motivation to keep finishing the side quests I did still have.

I still truly did enjoy playing this game. I got very immersed in the world and my characters and my pawns and I was planning to do another playthrough but I don’t want to anymore, it would just be pointless busywork, and it breaks my heart. I still would definitely suggest this game but you should know to expect a game that probably isn’t as good as you would hope it is.

Replaying it, I wanna like it so bad but I really just hate so much about it. Unlike other Souls games, replayability is like zero because the huge open world makes it feel like a checklist of chores instead of going through a fun game again, not to mention the dread of knowing you’ll have to play the latter half of the game again. The difficulty is ridiculous and stupid, not fun. Everything is super tanky and one or two shots you and they just end up making bosses regular enemies. Also, they throw an overly inflated amount of enemies for artificial difficulty just like Dark Souls 2, all because the open world design means they have to make over the top difficulty to keep you from entering areas early. Bosses are just straight up artificial difficulty and asshole design, not fun, and the vast majority of them are just reused a shit ton of times with the only variation being that sometimes you’ll have to fight like two or three at once. There are the few good ones, Radahn, Godrick, Morgott, Rennala are great bosses, but so many others are so unnecessarily aggressive and damaging that it’s not even fun. Other Fromsoft games’ bosses like Ludwig, Gael, and Nameless King were huge challenges that still felt fun and like you were learning patterns, not like something like Malenia or Placidusax or Radagon that feels like it’s entirely luck or using the right build. No linear, handcrafted areas makes the game feel empty and unengaging, save for the few ones like Volcano Manor or Farum Azula. Build flexibility and the sheer amount of weapons make me wish I could play the game over and over again to try all the weapons and spells out but playing the game again would be a punishment and 99% of them are completely unviable during normal gameplay. As for multiplayer, it makes me wanna bash my fucking head in with a rock. Coop is as convoluted as any Fromsoft game, but invasions are the worst thing in basically like any game ever. The "community" this game has created is the most toxic, sweaty, evil ass group of people ever created because the whole concept of the game is basically like a huge dick measuring contest for these people. I could count every positive player interaction I've had on one finger. There are no duels or any form of unspoken set of rules like the other games, everyone uses one shot builds or just tries to goad you into a huge group of enemies that will inevitably rush and kill you in seconds while the dumbfuck that got you killed emotes like they actually achieved something. I just fucking hate so much about this game and I hate that I have to hate it.

As for positives, it's undoubtedly the most aesthetically pleasing Fromsoft game and one of the coolest looking games I've played period. The characters are enjoyable, and it seems like someone convinced Miyazaki to be a little bit less of an edgelord and actually give some characters decent endings to their stories instead of just having everyone die at the end. The story of the game as a whole is easier to follow and the lore is better than Dark Souls in a lot of ways thanks to having George R. R. Martin working on it.

In the end, the game is what it is and it did so well that Fromsoft are definitely gonna stay on this path. I already know Shadow of the Erdtree is just gonna be more over the top difficulty and I'm gonna hate that too. Will I still buy it? Yeah, kinda feels like I have to at this point. But will I like it? No, probably not.
:(