!! this review is for the Cinders mod but i also don't like Dark Souls III very much !!
this overhaul mod has been highly appraised and it is the pinnacle of mid. not even. it's a little bit actively offensive if you actually care about the series more than an influencer or the same level of engagement a Built by Gamers podcast has.
re-using assets again will surely make a game better, right, i mean they're good assets. unfortunately using things that get one-and-done'd with importance and weight to their appearance 4-5 times on a NG playthrough and you being extremely encouraged to re-fight bosses several times to get things from them actually hard detracts from the game in general despite a majority of it being technically ignoreable
some of the balance changes and changes to progression were good, but many made you overpowered or with an easy way to farm your way into a position that would otherwise take until endgame (which is both good and bad, because dark souls 3's intense linearity and overall snooze-inducing progression path make it so that doing anything with variety early is nigh-impossible and if it is possible it's heavily ineffective).
if you did like elden ring a lot, this is right up your alley, though. i don't think this game would've been worth me getting softbanned were i to use them on live servers, i don't think it was worth hosting a custom server for in order to play with a friend, and i definitely don't think it deserved the excitement i had for it early on. every "added boss" is an offensive-to-look-at asset re-use, all the additional added lore and even item descriptions are mid as fuck and sound like something i'd write when i was fourteen and wanted to wannabe write mod dialogue or other creative projects for the "souls" series when i was still an obnoxious teenager who said "git gud" and was generally unpleasant; very little of this content is worth installing at all for, and it genuinely detracts from a game i already am indifferent about at best overall.
play with a randomizer or something if you want a fresh experience.
this overhaul mod has been highly appraised and it is the pinnacle of mid. not even. it's a little bit actively offensive if you actually care about the series more than an influencer or the same level of engagement a Built by Gamers podcast has.
re-using assets again will surely make a game better, right, i mean they're good assets. unfortunately using things that get one-and-done'd with importance and weight to their appearance 4-5 times on a NG playthrough and you being extremely encouraged to re-fight bosses several times to get things from them actually hard detracts from the game in general despite a majority of it being technically ignoreable
some of the balance changes and changes to progression were good, but many made you overpowered or with an easy way to farm your way into a position that would otherwise take until endgame (which is both good and bad, because dark souls 3's intense linearity and overall snooze-inducing progression path make it so that doing anything with variety early is nigh-impossible and if it is possible it's heavily ineffective).
if you did like elden ring a lot, this is right up your alley, though. i don't think this game would've been worth me getting softbanned were i to use them on live servers, i don't think it was worth hosting a custom server for in order to play with a friend, and i definitely don't think it deserved the excitement i had for it early on. every "added boss" is an offensive-to-look-at asset re-use, all the additional added lore and even item descriptions are mid as fuck and sound like something i'd write when i was fourteen and wanted to wannabe write mod dialogue or other creative projects for the "souls" series when i was still an obnoxious teenager who said "git gud" and was generally unpleasant; very little of this content is worth installing at all for, and it genuinely detracts from a game i already am indifferent about at best overall.
play with a randomizer or something if you want a fresh experience.