Finished
Dark Souls
3D dungeon crawler with real combat system and some interesting mechanics from other games (metroidvania comes to mind - enemies resetting, but when you choose them to).
The Good:
- Very good, proper combat system, utilizing hit-boxes, range, stamina, blocking, evasion, etc. Something games like Twitcher horribly lack. No combos / weird shit (Ninja Gaiden etc.), but different weapons have different attacks, stamina costs, additional effects.
- Fantastic oppressing atmosphere of old, dying world.
- Beautiful graphics artistic-wise. Some locations are simply splendid.
- Competent map design. Shit is deliberately done in most irritating way possible (dangerous ledges, enemies throwing you off cliffs, etc).
- Varied equipment and some additional techniques (magic / miracles / pyro). Still, you can use your favorite sword through the entire game, thanks to upgrades.
- Hard but fair. If you failed, it was probably your fault. Some exceptions, though (bullshit areas and bosses).
- Big and long game. Not all areas are equally good, though.
The bad:
- Vanilla version is simply abysmal and one of the shittiest ports ever made. Grab DSFix to make it playable.
- Physics engine (Havok) is shit. Usual "enemy corpses flying around" stuff.
- Some deaths are fucking cheap. After some time you'll develop a "bullshit detector": you'll immediately spot "suspicious" areas, thinking "it looks like another shitty ambush / trap by witty devs". And you'll be right in 99% cases.
- Visible drop in map design after ~ 1/2 of the game. Some early areas are fantastically designed (Undead Burg, Blighttown, Painting World), most of later ones are either boring (Tomb of the Huge Fucking Skeletons, Lower New Londo), exhausting (Duke Archives) or simply terribad (Crystal Cave).
- DLC areas aren't that great: shitty "forest", one decent maze-like city, linear "boss gallery" except of that.
- You can die in places where recovering souls/humanity is impossible / extremely hard.
The ugly:
- When using shops you can't compare items' stats with the ones you have in inventory. Wanna check if armour in shop is better than yours? Get a piece of paper and write stats down.
- Do you want to pick up this item? (yes/yes). WTF?
- Story and lore is toned down - you have to put the pieces together, and even then some things are not explained. I liked this, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
- >9000 weapons, yet all you really need is: strong regular sword (fast, easy to use, low stamina cost, piercing attack for narrow corridors), a spear (you can attack while using shield - great for crowd control, works in narrow spaces), a bow (the most OP weapon in game), a crossbow, one shield with high Stability. And that's fucking it. Elemental / crystal / dark / whatever weapons are inferior, since regular damage >>> everything else.
- Magic feels tackled on. What's the point of using Sorceries / Miracles / Pyromancies, when you have to increase Int/Faith AND Att to use them, they have limited number of uses, stronger ones require long casting time (making you vulnerable) and most of them aren't that great anyway. Plus, you have to pump End, Str and Dex anyway (better equipment, blocking, load, most weapons scale with STR and DEX).
- Crafting / upgrade system feels great initially, until you realize it's quite fucking basic and most upgrades are useless, since normal weapons >>> everything else.
- It's basically something like Diablo, only in 3D and with proper combat system. But it's all about combat: you gather resources in combat to improve your stats and equipment to perform better in combat. Repeat for 100 hours. After 50 hrs it feels more like job than a game. Loved first 50 hrs, though (fantastic exploration).
Verdict:
Good, but not great, and not for everyone (non-stop combat).
