8/10

Some of the highest highs of the series, but also some of the lowest lows. Please note that in my review it is from the perspective of a souls veteran who has played every single game in the series previously. I play under the following conditions: Solo only -- no player or NPC summons including spirits, melee only (no magic), no overpowered builds (e.g. bleed, bloodhound step, etc), fight every enemy I see without giving up as soon as it's available for me to access naturally.

Limgrave is one of the best areas in all of Fromsoft. Tree Sentinel and Crucible Knight are extremely tough but fair opponents. It's all downhill from here though, as the rest of the game offers little to no challenge. I was using dex dual katanas without any sort of bleed build, which is not an overpowered build at all, and capped my level to 139 to ensure maximum pvp/pve coop opportunities. Despite that, the rest of the game fell over with a couple of exceptions -- dragonbarrow (bell bearing hunter, black kindred) and Malenia.

On one hand, Malenia was one of the toughest, most insane bosses in all of souls history and was truly gratifying to beat, taking me 3x as many tries as the next hardest boss for me (75 attempts on Malenia for a kill, vs 26 for Owl on Sekiro no kurocharm/demon bell NG+, or 25 attempts on Tree Sentinel).

However, there was simply too much filler/pointless content to fill out the gigantic world. The world is huge but mostly empty and the repeating enemies, copy pasted dungeons, and uninspired side bosses that fall over is tiring to slog through. I 100%'d the game on my first run, doing every single boss, dungeon, item, and ending, and it took me around 180 hours which is ludicrous (albeit some of that was pve cooping for fun) because most of it wasn't exciting content.

The other major thing causing this to not be a higher rating is the end game, which is disappointing. I did the bosses in the order I found them, meaning I did Morgott > Mohg > Malenia > Fire Giant > Godskin Duo > Maliketh > Gideon > Hoarah Loux > Radagon/Elden Beast. Of these, Malenia killed me 75 times. Mohg killed me 6 times. Radagon killed me twice. The rest, I first tried. Because Malenia was such a difficulty spike, the rest of the end game felt incredibly underwhelming in comparison. The tuning of the game is simply weird, with Morgott being insanely easy if you do all the other available content before going to him, and the rest of the end game suffers the same fate. Fromsoft "overtuned" the optional areas (Dragonbarrow, Haligtree) to make them ridiculously hard, which makes the rest of the end game feel humorously easy in comparison. Summed up, the balance of the game is all over the place, with a couple of insane difficult spikes in "optional" areas (early Limgrave, Dragonbarrow, and Haligtree) and low difficulty in all the required stuff, which is disappointing.

Overall Elden Ring is a great game with great ideas and direction, but suffers a few flaws from pushing the open world concept too hard with too much filler content and uneven difficulty. Still, it was hard to put down and I enjoyed playing it, and a few fights (Tree Sentinel, Crucible Knight Gaol, Malenia, Bell Bearing Hunter, and Black Blade Kindred) truly were difficult even for a vet.

It's hard not to compare Elden Ring to other entries in Fromsoft's catalogue. It has heart, but not as much charm as Demon's Souls. It has good combat, but not as good as Bloodborne. It has iconic bosses, but not as iconic as Sekiro. Elden Ring is trying to do a lot of things at once and while it does succeed at putting those elements together, it seems spread too thin to truly be a masterpiece.

With that said, Elden Ring has the single best PVE/PVP system of Souls games (a low bar) with the near/far coop/invading solving one major problem of finding people to play with. Now just add in turning off summoning pools, please...

9/10 - goated movement.

This game blew me away. I went in confused and lost, yet couldn't seem to put it down. Despite its nonlinear nature, I seemed to always find the right places to go and things to do. Over time, I learned the techniques and skills the game was trying to teach me because it was so rewarding every time to achieve something. At almost no point was there a hard barrier, ingenuity and perseverance can get you where you need to go. One of my favorite games of all time, despite being a random game I stumbled upon in a tweet. My only gripes are 1) the length and story, this game deserves to be fleshed out even more. It gives hints of story via dialogue and world items, but they're rare, and the ending is a letdown, 2) the unrealized potential of the combat. I didn't really focus on combat because it didn't seem important in this game, then the last enemy comes in with an absolute banger of a fight in terms of design, aesthetic, and fun. There needs to be more.

This game is about movement and exploration. That's where it shines. So focus on those things and don't get bogged down by anything else.

DS3 is a decent conclusion to the series. I enjoyed playing it, but it wasn't perfect, mostly due to the fact that it clung too tight to the flaws of previous entries.

The GREAT:
- The graphical fidelity and performance is unmatched in previous souls games. It's clearly a far more modern game and performs and looks very good.
- It has the toughest average boss difficulty of all the games, even despite me having the full series of experience under my belt. There are still easy throwaway bosses, but less.
- The invasion/pvp mechanics are probably the most easy and enjoyable of the whole series. While I prefer DS2 pvp mechanics, the easy of SL matchmaking, the PVP covenants, and the high activity for invasion and coop play are unmatched in prior entries.

The okay:
- The mechanics feel a bit off. Whereas Bloodborne truly perfected the high speed, high risk high reward gameplay via the bloodvial and rally system, DS3 feels slower and clunkier yet the enemies are faster and have longer complex combos, forcing a playstyle where you are constantly rolling out of hectic situations and getting in 2-3 swings during the enemy animation downtime. It gets very formulaic yet doesn't feel quite right -- you're meant to go fast, yet still get punished hard for being too aggro. It frankly isn't compelling after playing DS1/2 (slower, methodical) and BB (faster, aggressive).
- Especially in the first half, there are a lot of incredibly easy throwaway bosses. I died 0 times on 8 bosses, 1 time on 6 bosses, and 2 times on 3 bosses. Out of a total of 25 bosses (including DLC), this means I died 2 or less times on 16 of them.
- Of the bosses that are difficult, the difficulty feels mostly related to spastic roll/reaction timing rather than more complex difficulty. The boss I died the most on, Nameless King, is mainly challenging due to the fact that he delays his swings and has multiple combos designed to catch you out once you get hit once. He rushes you down while you try to heal similar to Artorias in DS1, but with even less forgiving gap closers.
- Some of the world designs are very good, such as Highwall, Undead Settlement, Cathedral of the Deep, Irithyll. Others are bland and boring, especially as retreaded old locations.

The not good:
- The story retread of old themes and ideas feels hollow a lot of the time. The parts where DS3 succeeds most is when it does its own thing, ironically enough. For example, the most interesting characters by far are the Firekeeper, the NPC questlines that are non-related to DS1 characters, etc. The parts that aren't as good are the retreaded areas and plot themes. Ironically, more DS2 related story would have made this feel a lot stronger, but it's mostly ignored.
- Vibe of the game in general doesn't feel inspired and it feels very disjointed. I don't mind fast travel and what not, but the world doesn't feel connected in any sort of way which was a good thing about DS1 and DS2.
- Those characters who are original to the story have pretty interesting and compelling stories, but some of them are tied to obscure lore and ideas that are hard to figure out.

The bad:
- Auto summon covenants as part of unlocking spells is a really miserable system as the player has no agency to get put in to a session and has to wait around for hours to get summoned.
- PVP while better than others is still rife with twinks and tryhards even during the story progression. From never solved this and it frankly ruins the feeling of natural PVP/human interactions as you go through the story.
- Over-use of multi-phase fights with refreshed HP bars. This is frankly annoying and stupid -- just make the boss HP bar one bar and have multiple phases of a fight. It's frustrating for a boss to recover all of its HP without having any way to anticipate it.
- For whatever reason, I simply did not feel a "thrill" of playing this game. I don't know how else to put it than that, but it lacked a special feeling of engrossment.

Bloodborne brings much needed improvements to Fromsoft's Souls formula. The game is satisfying to play, the setting is beautiful, the music is some of the best in the series, the visuals are great for their time and a big step up from prior especially in UI, the characters are interesting and thoughtful, and the enemies and bosses are unique and interesting. It is a breath of fresh air and among one of the most fun games I've ever played.

The GREAT:
- Thoughtfully designed combat mechanics that encourage aggression and risk taking in a way that no prior entries did before. Things like rallying, visceral attacks from charged attacks, and limited use ranged parries make the combat far more engaging than anything seen previously
- The best movement of the series. Stamina is less punishing which allows for rapid maneuvers.
- The best weapons of the series thus far. With useful movesets and complex combo decision making, the user has to think about damage potential vs swing speed vs stagger ability against each enemy. Combined with fast movement and rally, the calculus of how to defeat each enemy most efficiently never gets old.
- The art style and design of the world is simply gorgeous. Bloodborne brings back the tradition from DeS of having a well thought out, cohesive world design from its setting to the clothing and weapons to the personalities and going ons that you encounter. The gothic Lovecraft horror style works fantastically.
- The world design is simply fantastic and brings back the tight feel that DeS had. There is a genuine sense of progression as you unlock shortcuts that feel naturally designed while keeping some of the quirky "connectivity" of DS1 world map. The world actually feels "alive" in a way that no prior games have, with more NPCs that act naturally and react to the ongoing changes to the world.
- The story is strong for a Souls game. By story, I mean the character interactions, setting, motivation of the various characters including player, dialogue, and general script of the world unraveling as the story reveals itself. Motivations are much more obvious and well written than the Dark Souls series, and it feels more reminiscent of Demon's Souls in terms of the tightness of the narrative.
- Difficulty aside, when the bosses in this game hit, they truly HIT. Some of the most iconic bosses in the series are in the game for sure -- Cleric Beast, Gasciogne, Blood Starved Beast, Ludwig, Maria, Orphan, and Gehrmen are all top notch designs in terms of placement, visuals, excitement, and fun.
- The game brings back the truly difficult LEVEL design that was severely lacking in DS1 and DS2. I very frequently died in levels when I got too reckless or thoughtless and had to re-learn a respect for the standard enemies. This gives a DeS-like experience which was very appreciated.

The GOOD:
- The first truly difficult encounters of the series. I mostly waltzed through Des, DS1, and DS2 with minimal deaths. While Bloodborne bosses are not all that hard either, a handful stand out -- particularly Orphan of Kos (8 deaths), Bloody Crow of Cainhurst (10 deaths) and Defiled Watchdog (a personal record setting 20 deaths).
>> To contrast, in DeS I had 7 deaths on Allant and 8 on Armor Spider. In DS1 I had 5 deaths on Artorias and 3 on Sanc Guardian. In DS2, I had 12 deaths on Dual Pursuer, as well as 5 on Sir Alonne and Old Iron King. Aside from those named, it took me 2 or less deaths, the vast majority 0.
- The music and soundtrack take a big step up from prior entries here. Notable mention - Cleric Beast theme - as one of the best in all the series.
- Chalice dungeons as a concept are a very interesting mechanic and added a lot of fun side contact that allowed me to enjoy the combat and exploration more. Without this, the game certainly would have felt too short.

The mediocre:
- Contrary to what I mentioned before, although there are a few of the hardest encounters in the game so far, most of the bosses were very easy. Out of 23 encounters (no chalices included), I only died at least once on 8 of those. Out of those 8, only two of them were more than 2 deaths (Bloody Crow of Cainhurst at 10 and Orphan of Kos at 8). The tuning felt a bit off especially on the giant beast monsters where I blindly ran to their back and hit R1 like I do in all large beast encounters in souls.
- In chalices it was similar. Of 31 encounters, I only died on 11 bosses. Of those 11, I only died more than twice on 4 (Defiled Watchdog at 20, Defiled Keeper at 5, Abhorrent Beast at 5, and Undead Giant at 3). Admittedly a lot of these were more similar to minibosses than real bosses.
- Of the bosses that were hard, they felt hard mainly due to ridiculous scaling rather than strategic challenge. Bloody Crow of Cainhurst can essentially 1 shot you to death if he parries you, so the strategy I learned was to game his AI to avoid allowing him a window to parry me which made the fight easy. Defiled Watchdog may seem like the hardest encounter in the game based on my stats, but that is only because the game halves your HP in the Defiled chalices which allows the dog to one shot you with multiple attacks. I learned later that there is an accepted strategy to beat the dog by keeping a specific certain distance and hitting it in specific areas to game the AI into not doing certain attacks. Kind of a shame, but it was still fun to figure them out myself.
- Of the boss list, there were a few stinkers that were just boringly designed. Notably, bosses like Darkbeast Paarl, Ebrietas, Celestial Emissary, Living Failures, Witches of Hemwick were simply boring or undertuned to the point of being laughable. One Reborn is probably one of the worst bosses in any souls game if only for the fact that is a shameless worse version of another encounter, Tower Knight. It's a bit disappointing to have to deal with these throwaway bosses in a game that hosts such interesting encounters. The main problem is that these bosses are not only just easy, but they are uninteresting in gameplay design. In something like Demon's Souls, they embraced the "puzzle" aspect of many bosses which let the player get creative in how to deal with a boss. Although it could trivialize encounters, it still felt fun trying to figure out how to solve the problem. In Bloodborne, the bosses I listed are not hard and have no puzzle elements. You just hit them until they die and they provide almost no resistance.

The bad:
- The main reason I cannot give this game 5 stars is due to the abhorrent frame rate. Despite playing on PS5, the game is capped at 30fps and VERY frequently dips below this. Any time you pan or move the camera it is extremely noticeable. Frankly, this is unacceptable and ruins the visual experience especially in a fast moving game with rapidly moving bosses.
- The game relies on an inventory system based mostly on farming as if you run out of healing vials or bullets, you basically have to go farm more. I believe that the idea was that you would naturally receive vials as you kill enemies at a reasonable rate, but especially in later areas enemies stop dropping items as often and it doesn't really work out that way. The most viable way to handle this is to just farm a large amount of vials and bullets early in the game to keep good stock. Annoying and pointless -- they should have just kept the healing charge system from prior entries and allow killing enemies to restore charges if they wanted that type of feature.
- In chalices, the "materials" concept was completely pointless. They add needless extra side rooms to each level that are a slog and that I personally dread doing. Whereas I enjoy the main loop of pulling lever -> boss in chalices, I always hated seeing the pre- and post- side doors because I knew I'd have to go in and screw around in some time waster materials collection. They should have scrapped this and the materials system completely.

I gave DS1 a 3/5. DS2 is a 4/5.

Demon's Souls is still the superior game, but DS2 did a lot of things better than DS1.

In terms of narrative, level design, atmosphere, mood, and characters, DS2 is a massive step forward from DS1 and more resembles its masterpiece predecessor DS1. The bosses are more interesting than DS1, but there are too many filler/easy ones still and the hard ones are still the same "roll simulator" formula.

The beginning of DS2 is truly hard. With low iframes, worse animations for all swings, and the ever imposing (terrible) system of SM lingering over you every time you lose your souls, it is really a gauntlet until you get past the second boss and finally get a 100% block shield. After this, the bosses mostly become as trivially easy as DS1. The maps and levels however are tougher and more resemble the challenge Demon's Souls posed.

The great:
- The world map is simply fantastic in terms of how open it feels, how everything branches out from Majula (a wonderful hub zone far surpassing the dreary Firelink)
- Being able to port from the start is a welcome addition and lets the player avoid retreading old zones over and over and lets the designers be more creative and vast with world design. No, I do not care about how epic it is that you can open an elevator to go back to firelink from the chapel in DS1, it's horribly boring and annoying to slog back through the same areas over and over and makes the world feel small, not big
- A stronger narrative and world feeling that generally is tighter and more sensical, however still strapped down by some of the weird choices from DS1 that came over (Dark Souls lore fans try to explain what souls versus humanity are: IMPOSSIBLE challenge)
- More compelling characters, motivations, and general characterization than DS1, but doesn't quite reach the highs of DeS
- Level design is fantastically improved from DS1 with much less lazy/incomplete feeling areas
- Graphics in general just feel a large step ahead of DS1, giving a more immersive feel
- Difficulty wise, the bosses aren't much to talk about, but some of the levels truly bring back the challenge that Demon's Souls that had me feeling the adrenaline rush while progressing through the game
- The covenants are massively improved from DS1. Belfry covenant in particular is very very fun.

The okay:
- Boss difficulty is still just OK. Higher highs, but lower lows than DS1. Quantitatively better than DS1 as I did not first try every single boss, but the formula of learning when to roll to win stays. Less estus and slower healing from estus/life gems made the early game difficult. There are a couple of bosses that really bring back the spirit of Demon's Souls bosses in their ingenuity, but they are few and far between
- The game is simply clunkier by design. Longer animations after swings leave you vulnerable, have to level up ADP to get iframes for your rolls, healing is not instant, etc. It makes it harder, but at the expense of fluidity
- Late game, it's more of the same dark souls gameplay (roll at the right time, swing once or twice, retreat and rebuild stamina)

The bad:
- The UI is still pretty ugly and outdated, though not as bad as DS1
- A continued insistence on unpleasant platforming as part of the gameplay in certain areas of the game in a game with clunky platforming

The ugly:
- Soul memory, quite possibly the worst online system designed since Nintendo Friend Codes
- Frigid Outskirts, as idiotic as its reputation says it is
- Some NPC invasions were incredibly annoying to deal with

Other notes:
- The hitboxes aren't bad. You are.
- Gank bosses are annoying, but there are ways to deal with them that can be very satisfying. Ruin Sentinels and Throne Watchers are fun bosses to learn how to deal with

Good but overrated. Demon's Souls is the superior game in narrative, gameplay, level design, atmosphere, mood, characters. The only thing Dark Souls has for it is there are a couple bosses that are harder than what you'll find in Demon's Souls (mainly Artorias).

After playing Demon's Souls, I was influenced by the hype of people saying this game is superior and that Demon's Souls is a prototype outing. Couldn't be further from the truth. I first tried every boss in Dark Souls except Artorias (4 tries), Sanc Guardian (3 tries), and O&S (2 tries). The rest were pushovers, similar if not inferior to what you see in Demon's Souls NG+, which is actually hard. On DS1 NG+, I one shot every single boss.

Overall, the narrative of this game is not as good as Demon's Souls. The world doesn't feel as complete or intertwined story-wise as Demon's Souls. The game is showing its age in the UI and textures and frankly looks ugly. The gameplay however is good, similar to Demon's Souls.

The one big thing this game has going for it is the interconnected world. If you are the type of person to cream your pants from being able to see an "open" world interconnect on itself, this is definitely a great perk. Personally, not so important for me.

I would have given this game a 4.5/5 for the sheer enjoyment and fun of playing through the bosses, but some things that were unforgivable:

- absolutely terrible UI, especially the inventory system
- humanity system is annoying and feels tacked on / gamey, lore explanation for humanity and soles is questionable at best
- lore in general doesn't hold a candle to DeS and world overall has a rushed, gamey vibe rather than a cohesive
story or narrative that feels rewarding to discover
- weak narrative, with hints that they stripped out content that could have made it more interesting
- very lazy level design in the second half (demon ruins/izalith in particular), which makes replays a slog
- too many instances of reused textures and bosses
- enemies and zones that are annoying rather than hard, artificial difficulty and time wasting caused by bonfire placement, warping logic, etc
- very overrated boss difficulty likely driven by nostalgia goggles
- Bed of Chaos is the single worst game design in all my experiences of souls so far and is unforgivable -- genuinely worth docking off an entire star just for this boss

If you have not beaten NG+, you have no real right to judge this games difficulty.

A true challenge that requires the player to play smartly and methodically. It punishes both those who rush in and those who hesitate. The gameplay is satisfying and the level design is intimidating. The story is deeper than first glance and is not force fed to the player, leaving crumbs and secrets to be unpeeled. The real Demon's Souls starts in NG+.

Did not play the original prior so no nostalgia glasses. Beat this game twice over on NG and then on NG+. Went back and played the original on PS3 as well. The remake is superior in most facets -- playability, quality of life, graphics, audio (both epigenic and music orchestration). The original had the mood nailed down and the remake is faithful to it. Frankly, the remake is vastly superior but only because it is built on the shoulders of a giant.

Demon's Souls is likely the best all around package as far as a game goes in the Souls series. Many casual Soulsborne fans rate it lowly but it's mostly because they either never played it or can't appreciate something this well designed. It's not about the number of times you have to smash your face into a boss to learn the right time to do your acrobatic dodge roll, it's about the slow paced challenge and build up of momentum in each carefully designed level. It's the atmosphere that surpasses all others in the series.