Combines almost all of the disparate pieces from previous Souls games into a nearly flawless experience.

The open world elements of this game are all really great. The ability to take a break from a frustrating boss or area to go explore is really welcome here. The game does a great job of always rewarding you for exploring - you always end up with some item or piece of equipment and it never feels like a waste of time. The game also does an amazing job of rewarding you with some cool looking place - just over the horizon is always a cool tower, a hidden underground kingdom, or teleporter capable of zapping you to end of the world.

The legacy dungeons here are all fantastic and memorable and well designed. The boss fights are some of the best in the entire series. Even though the mini-dungeons (caves, ruins, etc) all look the same, the game does a great job of trying to give many of them a unique gimmick. Sometimes you just get a mob gauntlet but other times there are small puzzles to solve.

While the bosses may still be hard and the dungeons treacherous, the game has a few ingenious additions that also makes this game one of the friendliest Souls games. You can finally respec your character which I never realized how much I really wanted in a Souls game. The game finally accommodates the player for experimenting with different weapons and builds (which is definitely needed in this game). Almost all weapon upgrade materials can be purchased via merchant at some point in the game so now experimenting with weapons or upgrading doesn't mean that you spend hours farming materials or souls. Stealth can be cleverly utilized to sneak past difficult encounters (sneak past the Tree Sentinel people! Use your head). The game even put in some checkpoints - not many - but in just the right places.

The character build possibilities in this game are also quite amazing. There's literally dozens of viable character builds and dozens of distinct magic and incantations.

There are a few minor gripes with the game. The enemy variety gets very repetitive as many enemy types get reused over and over again. There's always a tinge of disappointment when you delve into a new area only to discover that you're going to be fighting the same zombies or foot soldiers from the last area. There's quite a few repeat bosses which is okay, but some of these just aren't that fun to fight as many times as they ask you to (Erdtree Avatars, dragons, Tree Spirits). Towards the end of the game I spent a lot of time running past enemies that I had grown tired of fighting over the previous 70-ish hours.

The item crafting I also felt neutral towards. It's good to be able to craft certain items now that previously you had to buy or farm, but there are some items where the crafting materials are so numerous you wonder why they require you to craft them at all. Thankfully the crafting here doesn't really impede the game at all.

Despite that this game is still amazing. A shining example of what the open world RPG can be.