This game is really solid overall, it has some annoying aspects, but the good vastly outweighs it overall.
My favourite part of this game is the atmosphere, the world feels oppressive and each area reflects how the world has decayed due to the demons. Aesthetically, my favourite area was the Tower of Latria, I loved how you start in this bleak prison and make your way up to the top of these towers and can drop down into a swamp below these towers, all seamlessly without a loading screen between them which was great. Progressing through the poison swamp was also really cool, it felt like the area was getting more and more filthy and decayed as you progressed through it which was fascinating.
The gameplay is pretty good overall, it plays well for the most part and, while I haven't played Dark Souls 1 yet, I've heard it plays nearly identically to that game, however I can say that does play notably similarly to Dark Souls 3. My main gripe with the gameplay is the lock-on system, which restricts your movement options when you use it, where you can only roll in four directions and can only sprint forwards. This made me mostly play without locking on so I can sprint and roll in any direction.
One thing I really don't like about this game is the healing items being permanently consumed instead of the estus flask system of the Dark Souls games. I had to grind quite a bit for healing items in the early and mid game which was annoying and allows you to store hundreds of total healing items if you can accrue them. This stopped being an issue in the late game for me, in fact I had hundreds of healing items which was pretty silly. I also had an issue with the limit you had on items you can hold at any time, this can make the player stop what they're doing and double back to the nexus to drop off items which only serves to slow gameplay down unnecessarily.
I'm not sure how I feel about the music, the boss themes felt a little off to me, like I got what they were going for with things like the Dragon God's theme making you feel like a rat hiding from the giant demon trying to kill you. The themes just felt like they should've had a more grander feeling to it, they felt underwhelming in that regard.
Another issue I have with this game is the grinding you have to do to upgrade your weapons, you won't naturally get upgrade materials over the course of the game like in Dark Souls 3, but instead grind one enemy type until you max out your weapon. This is extremely tedious and messes up the pacing of the game a bit. I think it would've been much better if you had to progress further into the game to get the better upgrade materials instead of tying them behind the same enemies, just with lower drop rates. I grinded to max out my Crushing Claymore and it ended up making the rest of the game too easy, so the game balance doesn't feel like it scales with the intent of you fully upgrading your weapons.
The bosses were also a little iffy for me. A lot of them felt centered around a gimmick and a lot I could just win because my stats were too high. I did enjoy a few of the bosses, like the Flamelurker and the Old Hero, but there were others like Storm King which you can cheese by hitting him from behind a wall where he can't hit you back. I definitely would've liked more bosses where you just have to learn their patterns and win with skill instead of learning their one gimmick, but their not annoying to fight at least, just not what I'd prefer.
The performance on PS3 was mostly good, but there are some parts where dragons come down and breathe fire that cause slowdown and framedrops that are pretty annoying.
One thing that does suck about this game is that the servers have been shut down, so the online no longer exists, which locks some content away for people playing it now.
Overall, this game is good, I'm not sure how it stacks up compared to the other Souls games yet, but this game is solid on its own. I highly recommend it if you have a PS3.
My favourite part of this game is the atmosphere, the world feels oppressive and each area reflects how the world has decayed due to the demons. Aesthetically, my favourite area was the Tower of Latria, I loved how you start in this bleak prison and make your way up to the top of these towers and can drop down into a swamp below these towers, all seamlessly without a loading screen between them which was great. Progressing through the poison swamp was also really cool, it felt like the area was getting more and more filthy and decayed as you progressed through it which was fascinating.
The gameplay is pretty good overall, it plays well for the most part and, while I haven't played Dark Souls 1 yet, I've heard it plays nearly identically to that game, however I can say that does play notably similarly to Dark Souls 3. My main gripe with the gameplay is the lock-on system, which restricts your movement options when you use it, where you can only roll in four directions and can only sprint forwards. This made me mostly play without locking on so I can sprint and roll in any direction.
One thing I really don't like about this game is the healing items being permanently consumed instead of the estus flask system of the Dark Souls games. I had to grind quite a bit for healing items in the early and mid game which was annoying and allows you to store hundreds of total healing items if you can accrue them. This stopped being an issue in the late game for me, in fact I had hundreds of healing items which was pretty silly. I also had an issue with the limit you had on items you can hold at any time, this can make the player stop what they're doing and double back to the nexus to drop off items which only serves to slow gameplay down unnecessarily.
I'm not sure how I feel about the music, the boss themes felt a little off to me, like I got what they were going for with things like the Dragon God's theme making you feel like a rat hiding from the giant demon trying to kill you. The themes just felt like they should've had a more grander feeling to it, they felt underwhelming in that regard.
Another issue I have with this game is the grinding you have to do to upgrade your weapons, you won't naturally get upgrade materials over the course of the game like in Dark Souls 3, but instead grind one enemy type until you max out your weapon. This is extremely tedious and messes up the pacing of the game a bit. I think it would've been much better if you had to progress further into the game to get the better upgrade materials instead of tying them behind the same enemies, just with lower drop rates. I grinded to max out my Crushing Claymore and it ended up making the rest of the game too easy, so the game balance doesn't feel like it scales with the intent of you fully upgrading your weapons.
The bosses were also a little iffy for me. A lot of them felt centered around a gimmick and a lot I could just win because my stats were too high. I did enjoy a few of the bosses, like the Flamelurker and the Old Hero, but there were others like Storm King which you can cheese by hitting him from behind a wall where he can't hit you back. I definitely would've liked more bosses where you just have to learn their patterns and win with skill instead of learning their one gimmick, but their not annoying to fight at least, just not what I'd prefer.
The performance on PS3 was mostly good, but there are some parts where dragons come down and breathe fire that cause slowdown and framedrops that are pretty annoying.
One thing that does suck about this game is that the servers have been shut down, so the online no longer exists, which locks some content away for people playing it now.
Overall, this game is good, I'm not sure how it stacks up compared to the other Souls games yet, but this game is solid on its own. I highly recommend it if you have a PS3.