This game is great in two areas, good in a couple others and ranges from bad to serviceable for everything else. The two areas I find to be great are the characters and the story. From their designs, to their history, to their banter, to their dynamics between one another, the characters in this game are truly a joy to watch interact and slowly change each other over the course of the game. The overarching story is also rather good with an antagonist that I feel is rather sympathetic.

For the rest of the game, its hard to say. The two areas I think are good are the music and the skits, they add a lot to the experience and help make certain scenes and characters quite memorable. The areas I find serviceable are the world (rather average, maybe slightly above), the art/visuals, and the combat (although this last one hinges on bad for me). Lastly, I find the enemies, exploration, and reuse of assets/enemies to be a serious blunder and are quite bad. Tales of Arise does this better although that game still has some similar issues. The only area of this game that I consider a mixed bag are the side quests. They are typically boring to do but often lead to interesting character development that helps understand more about the side characters and main party.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game. If you can stomach the boring/repetitive combat, enemy variety, and exploration, and are looking for engaging characters and a well executed revenge story, check this game out. Otherwise, you can probably skip this one. (Honestly this game would have been better suited as a book or series of books/manga. It is basically just wasting your time with everything other than the narrative).

This game is great in two areas, good in a couple others and ranges from bad to serviceable for everything else. The two areas I find to be great are the characters and the story. From their designs, to their history, to their banter, to their dynamics between one another, the characters in this game are truly a joy to watch interact and slowly change each other over the course of the game. The overarching story is also rather good with an antagonist that I feel is rather sympathetic.

For the rest of the game, its hard to say. The two areas I think are good are the music and the skits, they add a lot to the experience and help make certain scenes and characters quite memorable. The areas I find serviceable are the world (rather average, maybe slightly above), the art/visuals, and the combat (although this last one hinges on bad for me). Lastly, I find the enemies, exploration, and reuse of assets/enemies to be a serious blunder and are quite bad. Tales of Arise does this better although that game still has some similar issues. The only area of this game that I consider a mixed bag are the side quests. They are typically boring to do but often lead to interesting character development that helps understand more about the side characters and main party.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game. If you can stomach the boring/repetitive combat, enemy variety, and exploration, and are looking for engaging characters and a well executed revenge story, check this game out. Otherwise, you can probably skip this one.

I believe this game is the best all around souls game From has made. It takes parts from all of the previous entries and combines them to create a very enjoyable experience. It takes things such as power stancing from DS2, some world design elements from DS1 (I can't believe I can say that), grand level design from DS3/BB, and faster/smoother combat from DS3/BB. It improves upon most of these, making it for me a more definitive "Dark Souls" experience, despite not technically being the same series. Unfortunately, it also takes some of the bad with it, such as poor enemy/boss reuse and inconsistent difficulty.

I would say this game also does the open world formula better than most and in fact probably better than any other game out there right now. It still falls to some common shortcomings found in the open world genre but alleviates them mostly with its strengths (i.e. combat, item discovery, bosses, legacy dungeons). Once the DLC releases, I am sure this game's rating will actually go up, as the DLC content released by From has consistently been the best content across all of their souls related games.

Consider giving this game a shot even at full price, it has enough content to justify it which is rare to see in games released today. I will reiterate, I consider this game to be overall the most definitive souls experience, taking aspects from all of the previous games and improving upon them, and I am certain this sentiment will garner more popularity after the DLC is released.