I really like these games but I always feel like a tourist in them rather than someone who truly loves them. Still, this is another banger! Level design splits the difference between the big contiguous space of DS1 and the pocket zones of DS2, the changes to combat and magic make it a lot easier to experiment with your build (even though I ended up getting choice paralysis and going with a relatively conservative sword-and-shield deal once again) and it's got some of the coolest bosses in the series. Loses some novelty by being made up largely of explicit callbacks to old games rather than new stuff, but they're fun callbacks that still maintain some semblance of mystery and ambiguity, and it's cool to see FromSoft making a clear attempt to wrap this whole thing up.

Honestly felt like I could go for more Souls by the time I finished, I'm not gonna roll right into another playthrough or anything but I definitely want to play the original version of DS2 at some point soonish.