Dark souls 3 clocks at 150 hours and is probably my most played from software game. While at the beginning you are euphoric exploring a whole new world and lore (eventhough you will only get some tidbits here and there) later this game shows its true colors (brown-yellow-gray) and feels like their weakest game.
Instead of providing a new world, it just reiterates dark souls 1 in way too many places. The pvp/co-op excuse/explanation of dark souls 1 suddenly becomes a major plot point of this game. The world is convulted and so the possibility that even your beloved anor londo from dark souls can suddenly spawn at the top of an existing city. Tightening the lore or even exploring some questions of part 1 are almost exclusive to the last dlc. In the meantime this game offers you many questions that are just fully ignored (Oceiros and ocelotte, the dragon girl in the tower, gwyndolin).
Even if we overlook the story issue, the game suffers heavily from a misdirected art direction. This game feels like it borrowed just all existing assets from bloodborne and then just called it dark souls and thanks to that the combat was also heavily speed up, so that the feeling of realism or at least the heavy feeling you have when wearing a full armor is gone. Game became faster so that blocking is not needed. Also the world design took a heavy toll, the game is basically just linear. There is not the breathing world you had like in dark souls. Here it is just a linear path way.
The art direction also took a heavy toll, by decidignt to display the whole game in greyish with a yellow taint.

OVerall a good game experience, but a bad dark souls experience.

This Game heavily suffered from the gta trend back then. To a point where it even lost its actual identity it had. Still if you were a pre-teen like me when this released it was really cool. In retrospective, this game offers fun characters, interesting story line, nice setpieces and the addition of driving around, while not meaningful, is fun and a faster transport. Adding a tony hawk like skateboard was also a great addition. Either way this game still suffers of beeing to difficult, especially if you want to get all orbs.

the first one as a kid was fun. During the age of "gta-fiying" your games (see jak n daxter), this game was also affected. Regardless instead of loosing some part of your identity, I feel sly improved and strengthen its core. Now you can control all three of the gang and the occasional talk/cutscenes during the mission just makes it more immersive. You basically can feel their friendship. The dialogues, the dynamics between the characters and even the details like "small presentations before the big heist and giving the operation a name" are something that gives the game the soul, even their newest games don't have. In my eyes this interaction in between the characters is something, where today only naughty dog reaches the same level.
The story arcs itself contain some interesting twists and still offer a interesting plot. Overall this game is one of my all favourites.