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Solo kill too, my dignity is restored.
Will write some more later, but in the meantime, so long and thanks for the ride, would rage again
In the end, my dreams of killing a god with the Godslayer's Sword were shattered by the extreme randomness of the endless SPAM of Radagon. There are some openings to be sure, but they are so few and far between and unreliable to boot that it just wasn't worth dodging 15+ attacks before an opening long enough to use the weapon art presented itself. Even then, he would sometimes teleport away, jump into the air or do his super fast stomp that goes through the hyper armor and interrupts me. So back to the Super Mario Jumping Jack loadout, which felt like taking the training weights off due to how fast it is and meant I could take him down with childish ease and took down the subsequent god down on the second try (the first one was cut short by the arena limit stopping me from dodging his Ring attack. Didn't even know until that moment there
was an arena limit). Seriously, that build is so strong already I can't imagine the obscenity that must be the same but with a bleed build.
Overall thoughts about the game:
Unlike a lot of other people, I didn't really feel much fatigue from the size of the world, propably a result of me taking over a month to finish the game. Limgrave/Weeping peninsula were the best open areas, Caelid definitely the worst one, but I don't really get the complaining about Mountaintops of Giants, its physical size is fairly big sure, but the content is small enough that I was done with it in a couple of hours. Sure, the content of each area is mostly copy/pasted, but that didn't seem to bother me all that much and there is enough unique content in each to keep things interesting for me. All the side caves/catacombs were repetitive to be sure, but I treated them like the occasional snack inbetween tackling major content and I somehow enjoyed the dumb lottery of what the boss of each of them would turn out to be.
Would the game have been stronger without all that stuff? Certainly, if only because it forced From to spread the interesting loot over a bajilion different areas, dilluting the enjoyment you get from exploring every nook and crany of the real dungeons and taking precious dev time away from working on the unique content. It's probably a contributing factor to the endless enemy recycling which I didn't mind at first but really hit absurds levels in Haligtree. While theoretically a well designed area in terms of layout, architecture and exploration, it's hopelessly marred by the fact that it seemingly features almost every single enemy type present in the game. Take the Misbegotten Warrior: you first encounter him at the end of a fun little dungeon early on and has a great build up to him. But then you meet him again in Caelid, in Leyendell, in a random cave I've forgotten about, in Consecrated snowfield and finally not once but twice in Haligtree (and probably more that I've forgotten about), each appearance diluting his initial impact until it's a joke to see him again and again and again. Yes of course we had the Taurus and Capra demons reappearing in Dark Souls 1, but at least it was a single area and it made sense to have demons in totally-not-Hell.
That being said, the amount of unique content is absolutely staggering. Of note in particular is the undeground half of the game, large enough and unique enough that it could have reasonably been carved out into a separate DLC and nobody would have noticed had they added a couple of more interesting bosses along the way. The final one is really fun and unique (until it gets idiotically recycled later on) as well as the Dragon you meet in the dream/remembrance, but I struggled to remember what the other bosses were.
Honestly, I can't make up my mind if the negatives outweight the positives. The sheer lenght of the game made for the feeling of an incredible journey, from the lowly maidenless tarnished to the god killing jumping jack monster build I've mentioned before, it nails the feeling of a great odyssey unmatched in other From games. But this came at the cost of serious risks of burn-out that's been evident in many other posters in this thread.
Now, if I didn't get fatigue from the world size, I certainly got fatigue from the end-game bosses. This is certainly due to the way I approached the endgame. I had cleared Farum Azula minus Maliketh but took a break from getting mashed to a pulp by him to do Mogh's area, killed him, came back to kill Maliketh, then cleared Haligtree (worst area in terms of enemy recycling), bashed my head against Malenia for a few days, then straight into Placidusax, Hoarah Loux and the final duo of bosses. At least for me, each of these bosses required a fair amount of time to even just get out of the "What the fuck is happening, why am I already skewered in five different pieces" phase, let alone make any real progress against them. This absolutely put a dent in my motivation to continue, as loading the game meant bashing my head against one boss after another after another.
Lots of people have written already about what makes these bosses so hard or frustrating to fight, so I won't repeat it here, only thing that I would add though is that the sheer spectacle of these fights oftentimes works against the gameplay; in a lot of fights the second phases of the major bosses throws so much shit at your screen (I'm looking at you Mogh and Malenia) that it can make it hard to know what the fuck is happening on your screen and at least for me really overloaded my capacity to react to them.
Overall, I'm really mixed about these late game bosses. On the one hand too many made me give up on soloing them (Mogh, Hoarah Loux and Placidusax made me use the Ashes Spirits, Malenia was the only case of me sumoning some Sunbros) on the other, I've done a lot of sunbroing after beating them and this has helped me really understand them better (to the point that I've essentially soloed most of them for a few crappy hosts; except Malenia, fuck Malenia), to the point that I'm really looking forward to fighting them again and soloing them this time (except Malenia, fuck Malenia).
I think that had they been better spread out along the game and not all crammed into the late game, I wouldn't have found them quite as frustrating as I did. The design, presentation and fighting style of many of them is simply incredible, some of the best From has ever made (even Malenia, but still, fuck Malenia), Hoarah Loux probably being my favourite (great music in the second phase), which is why I have such a hard time making up my mind about them.
But if you have the time, definitely do some sunbroing. I find it incredibly fun (especially when the second summon dies like a chump and you get to flex in front of the host) and there's a lot humble hosts that have no idea how to play the game and need the help of us Munchkins (I've seen way too many guys spamming Rivers of Blood against Radagon, while he's immune to Bleed!!). Boss fights with two people still feel fair most of the time, and summoning several people for the late game bosses is still no sure way to farm Rune Arcs.
Gank bosses, and the the sheer propensity From has for dropping them everywhere with no thought on how they combine together, can go and die in fire though. Seriously From, fuck off with that bullshit, it's like they never actually fought against Smough and Ornstein and understood why that fight is still amongst the best they've ever made.
On the game balance, the variety of viable builds along with their minor variation is fanstastic. There are so many different builds I'd like to try it's not even funny. But there are also so many ways that you can essentially break the game (Moonveil, Rivers of Blood and let's not even get into Mimic shenanigans that I refuse to partake in) that, again, I find myself having trouble making up my mind about it. I can see why Porky wants to stick to his sword and board style, it's simple, straightforward and doesn't feel the slightest bit cheesy; I'm never sure I'm meant to be able to stack damage as high as I can, and I didn't even get into the bleed madness side of the game.
So yeah, not sure if to rate it shit, good for what it is or great. Would rage again though
