I have a general aversion to open-world games. I don't think this game needed to exist. In my opinion, the dark souls combat system is overplayed, and pretty stale at this point. This game had/has some severe balancing issues, and many of the bosses were simply not designed very well.

All that being said, this game gave me a great sense of exploration. It sometimes felt a little disjointed and clumsily assembled, but by the end of the game, I felt satisfied.

Interestingly, I feel like this is the least replayable of the soulslike games. After seeing all of the side dungeons (none of which are particularly interesting), there's no real reason to return to any of them, other than to collect items for your build. A subsequent run of the game might involve collecting a few key build items, then linearly running through the open world to all of the main bosses. At that point, I'd rather just replay a Dark Souls game, where the game world is thoughtfully and intentionally designed for the player to run through in a semi-linear manner.

All in all, I think this is a pretty great game, but not one that I'll find myself returning to as often as the others.