"Greatest hits" album of Souls series and Bloodborne. Instead of creating something new, this game uses a lot of locations / ideas / NPCs / enemies from other games in one bundle.

PVE might have been the best in the series, if not for the lack of poise. The fact is that a meagle rat can interrupt you. You get staggered after a single hit by anything.
The combat is still great, if you play as a light weight dodger with fast weapon. If only players had some poise. Enemies DO have it, after all. The system is in the game.

Enemies themselves are cloned in several locations. It's a little bit annoying to see enemies from the first two locations well past the big chunk of the game, but with new "look" and lore, pretending to be new enemies without any connection to their counterparts from earlier. There's still a good variety and they differ in their behavior and form.

Location design is fantastic! They look great and designed well, with good looping for shortcuts (the game does suffer from "does not open from this side" disease though) and enemy placements. And they're bigger than locations from previous games. You would often look from the high place and see a lot of places you have visited or would visit. Simply gorgeous.
It would seem at first that the world is interconnected like it was in Dark Souls, but, sadly, this is not the case. The game is very linear with very few branching paths to different locations.

And one of the hidden locations is a relighted version of one from the main course of the game. There's not a single unique enemy in it, the boss is one of the previous ones with added aggression. And they put there unexplained fanservice items which do not fit in with the lore. The location looks and feels great, but it's still a damned reskin.

Bosses. It's hard for me to judge their difficulty, each boss feels good, that's for sure. Two of the bossfights might go in the top ten boss fights out of all FromSoft games for their sheer feel. And this game contains the best last boss.

PVP might have been the best in the series. It did so many things right this time around. So many things... But it suffers from the same problem as PVE - lack of poise. Every weapon stunlock. Meta is to spam R1 into oblivion.

Parries are harder and much more punishing for mistiming. Which is good, but that also means you can't parry spammers and the first hit stunlocks you so you get hit two-three times always. Aside from overpowered Caestus (it allows to parry like in Dark Souls (on reaction) and has incredibly fast recovery animation, which let's you roll away from attack even if you missed a parry) and they brought a system from Dark Souls II where you can't parry heavy weapons (running and rolling attacks excluded). So they really hit a nice spot with parrying in this game. Time to nerf caestus recovery animation (i.e. - prolong it).

They also "fixed" backstabs. It has a starting animation now, like in DSII, but in DSII even with this animation backstabs were often glitchy and unfair. In this game out of hundreds PVP matches I was backstabbed once and it was my fault (got greedy on attacking one player and his buddy caught me mid animation), while I backstabbed countless parry spammers (besides caestus - recovery from parry is not immediate and with a bit of prediction of a parry you can easily punish players for spamming).

Back to weapons. Light weapons are a meta, since stun-locking and fast attack speed. Are heavy weapons dead? Not entirely.
They brought back an amazing system from Demon's Souls called "hyper armor". When you swing a heavy weapon, at some point in the swing (differs for different weapons) hyper armor activates and you can no longer be staggered out of animation. So you still get hit, but your attack is not interrupted and you can hit your opponent as well. It's incredible. The problem is - hyper armor does not start immediately, so you can still be thrown out of heavy attack by a poke from a dagger while wearing full Havel's. It's still much easier to win with light weapons. The only way you can die from heavy weapons is if you make a mistake. They reduced stamina consumption for rolls, so it's really not that hard to dodge forever. In the end heavy weapons are a gimmick and with them you're hindered against good players by quite a lot. Still winnable though.

Just a small note - range. There's almost no phantom range! Unless you have a bad connection to your opponent - you can have a hitbox porn where weapon only hits you by the length of it's actual model. No bs with double range for pokes like in DSII, which ruined PVP for me there. Now it's always depends on connection. And most of the time connection is good.

Invasions. FromSoft really wants weak players not to suffer? But why? There's already such thing as "offline" for those who dread being invaded.
If you're running by yourself - embered, don't summon anyone and don't use a dried finger - high chances you won't get invaded at all (two covenant areas are exceptions). Until you "touch" online by summoning - you're mostly safe. So invaders mostly invade co-opers and gankers. Which puts them in quite a pickle. It's still doable 1 vs. 2 or even 1 vs. 3 (this games allows up to six players in one session. With max three white summons), but if you get to a tryhard gank - your chances are slim.
Phantoms (whites, reds, blues, purples, whatever) get half amount of estus flasks they have while being in their world. There are no other replenishing healing items. You can have a single divine blessing of siegbrau on yourself and that's it (all spares go to the botomless box). So From finally did it right with healing items both for PVE and PVP. You also get back one Estus flask for every enemy phantom killed (so for red this means if anyone at all dies, since reds are not allied with each other). Semi-same system in PVE, where you get a flask after some number of mobs killed.


In the end it's a great title. But it's a rehash of the previous games, so I don't feel it's possible to rank it very high. It's above Dark Souls II, that's for sure, but is it above Dark Souls and Demon's Souls? No. At least not for the returning player. Because we have already seen everything in it before playing. It was done good before and this game failed to improve ideas, only to copy them.

"Greatest hits" album of Souls series and Bloodborne. Instead of creating something new, this game uses a lot of locations / ideas / NPCs / enemies from other games in one bundle. [b]PVE[/b] might have been the best in the series, if not for the lack of [u]poise[/u]. The fact is that a meagle rat can interrupt you. You get staggered after a single hit by anything. The combat is still great, if you play as a light weight dodger with fast weapon. If only players had some poise. Enemies DO have it, after all. The system is in the game. [b]Enemies[/b] themselves are cloned in several locations. It's a little bit annoying to see enemies from the first two locations well past the big chunk of the game, but with new "look" and lore, pretending to be new enemies without any connection to their counterparts from earlier. There's still a good variety and they differ in their behavior and form. [b]Location[/b] design is fantastic! They look great and designed well, with good looping for shortcuts (the game does suffer from "does not open from this side" disease though) and enemy placements. And they're bigger than locations from previous games. You would often look from the high place and see a lot of places you have visited or would visit. Simply gorgeous. It would seem at first that the world is interconnected like it was in Dark Souls, but, sadly, this is not the case. The game is very linear with very few branching paths to different locations. And one of the hidden locations is a relighted version of one from the main course of the game. There's not a single unique enemy in it, the boss is one of the previous ones with added aggression. And they put there unexplained fanservice items which do not fit in with the lore. The location looks and feels great, but it's still a damned reskin. [b]Bosses[/b]. It's hard for me to judge their difficulty, each boss feels good, that's for sure. Two of the bossfights might go in the top ten boss fights out of all FromSoft games for their sheer feel. And this game contains [u]the best[/u] last boss. [b]PVP[/b] might have been the best in the series. It did so many things right this time around. So many things... But it suffers from the same problem as PVE - lack of poise. Every weapon stunlock. Meta is to spam R1 into oblivion. Parries are harder and much more punishing for mistiming. Which is good, but that also means you can't parry spammers and the first hit stunlocks you so you get hit two-three times always. Aside from overpowered Caestus (it allows to parry like in Dark Souls (on reaction) and has incredibly fast recovery animation, which let's you roll away from attack even if you missed a parry) and they brought a system from Dark Souls II where you can't parry heavy weapons (running and rolling attacks excluded). So they really hit a nice spot with parrying in this game. Time to nerf caestus recovery animation (i.e. - prolong it). They also "fixed" backstabs. It has a starting animation now, like in DSII, but in DSII even with this animation backstabs were often glitchy and unfair. In this game out of hundreds PVP matches I was backstabbed once and it was my fault (got greedy on attacking one player and his buddy caught me mid animation), while I backstabbed countless parry spammers (besides caestus - recovery from parry is not immediate and with a bit of prediction of a parry you can easily punish players for spamming). Back to weapons. Light weapons are a meta, since stun-locking and fast attack speed. Are heavy weapons dead? Not entirely. They brought back an amazing system from Demon's Souls called "hyper armor". When you swing a heavy weapon, at some point in the swing (differs for different weapons) hyper armor activates and you can no longer be staggered out of animation. So you still get hit, but your attack is not interrupted and you can hit your opponent as well. It's incredible. The problem is - hyper armor does not start immediately, so you can still be thrown out of heavy attack by a poke from a dagger while wearing full Havel's. It's still much easier to win with light weapons. The only way you can die from heavy weapons is if you make a mistake. They reduced stamina consumption for rolls, so it's really not that hard to dodge forever. In the end heavy weapons are a gimmick and with them you're hindered against good players by quite a lot. Still winnable though. Just a small note - range. There's almost no phantom range! Unless you have a bad connection to your opponent - you can have a hitbox porn where weapon only hits you by the length of it's actual model. No bs with double range for pokes like in DSII, which ruined PVP for me there. Now it's always depends on connection. And most of the time connection is good. [b]Invasions[/b]. FromSoft really wants weak players not to suffer? But why? There's already such thing as "offline" for those who dread being invaded. If you're running by yourself - embered, don't summon anyone and don't use a dried finger - high chances you won't get invaded at all (two covenant areas are exceptions). Until you "touch" online by summoning - you're mostly safe. So invaders mostly invade co-opers and gankers. Which puts them in quite a pickle. It's still doable 1 vs. 2 or even 1 vs. 3 (this games allows up to six players in one session. With max three white summons), but if you get to a tryhard gank - your chances are slim. Phantoms (whites, reds, blues, purples, whatever) get half amount of estus flasks they have while being in their world. There are no other replenishing healing items. You can have a single divine blessing of siegbrau on yourself and that's it (all spares go to the botomless box). So From finally did it right with healing items both for PVE and PVP. You also get back one Estus flask for every enemy phantom killed (so for red this means if anyone at all dies, since reds are not allied with each other). Semi-same system in PVE, where you get a flask after some number of mobs killed. [b]In the end it's a great title. But it's a rehash of the previous games, so I don't feel it's possible to rank it very high. It's above Dark Souls II, that's for sure, but is it above Dark Souls and Demon's Souls? No. At least not for the returning player. Because we have already seen everything in it before playing. It was done good before and this game failed to improve ideas, only to copy them.[/b]