As much as I enjoy DS3, I have conflicted feelings about it overall. I find it’s combat system, animations, and general gameplay to be the most refined of the trilogy. This led to plenty of awesome enemy and boss encounters that were exhilarating and fun. The game wasn’t very hard, but I may have to chalk that up to my experience with the series. But what I’m conflicted on was the experience as a whole. Many of the locations the game has you explore felt like rehashes of previous concepts, such as the poison swamp and maze-like catacombs. They don’t build on them or twist them in a surprising way, they just recycled areas that weren’t even that great, to begin with. And that’s my largest problem with DS3, it feels like it’s identity hinges on DS1 with all its fan service and call-backs. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed seeing past locations plunged into complete ruin, it’s really cool to see. But I just wished there were more cool ideas and memorable areas. That doesn’t mean the areas were poorly designed, I enjoyed how a few areas integrated the DS1 approach to connecting areas together with shortcuts. Although I do miss having that larger interconnected world, but this new approach isn’t bad, just not my personal favorite. I’m glad I replayed this game, I had a lot of fun and the combat is my favorite of the three. I’ll still find DS1 to be superior with its impressively interwoven world, but DS3 is my go-to for bosses and combat. Still great.