I have only played this game for a few hours and find myself just really not enjoying it.
There's a few things I really dislike about the game, but one of the biggest things is that, after playing through and beating, all 3 dark souls, Lies of P, Elden ring, this game just feels like ♥♥♥♥ in comparison.
Don't get me wrong, the environments, the character designs, the graphics, 10/10 beautiful.
The mechanics, how you move your character, the boss mechanics, your moveset, somehow feel sort of smooth but clunky at all the wrong times.
I also just find myself avoiding the alternate reality purely because of all the controls and weird ♥♥♥♥ you have access to, its complicated and feels like more work than it worth. So far the bosses have all had some sort of weird gimmick that forces you to just not be allowed to do certain things. Like one boss just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥ poison and you just kinda have to sit there and WAIT for a long time before you can play, so you just sit there and watch him do whatever, its not fun its just boring, not hard, just time consuming. It wouldn't be that bad if the game gave you any poison resist at that point but they don't, you have some limited number of consumables and that's it. Another boss is a guy on a horse and he does the thing where he makes passes at you and the hitbox on some of those attacks lasts way too long you still get punished for good timing because it happened to be in the wrong direction.
At the end of the day that's a skill issue on my part, but its just lame. The game is really not clear about what defensive abilities you have that will work, some attacks that look like a regular attack are grabs that you cant block. Some attacks that you CAN block, do a random aoe on the ground after, so you still get hit. If I wanted to sit there and just ram my face into a wall and just keep trying, I would, that's what you do in these games. But THEN the run back to these bosses is awful, like they really don't put a lot of rest spots around. Some other issues, some of the bosses stand still for way too long after they do a combo that lasts way too long. Like too long like you think the boss might be bugged, no they just let him stand there and be a target dummy for a while. Idk, its got potential but it all just feels OFF. It feels like a vegetarian souls like, like its almost good but its just missing that SATISFACTION.
They also don't give you new sets of gear or weapons often enough. I'm 5 hours in and finally found my first set of maybe? usable armor, and still using the starter weapons because there hasn't been anything better. I pick up a lot of loot and its just consumables or useless stuff, occasionally some souls. Maybe I have missed some stuff in the alternate world, but the game makes me not want to even go there, and I haven't gotten any inclination from the game that I would find better stuff there, so why bother if its not fun.
More issues, the lock on system is butt. If the enemy you want to swap to is not within a very narrow cone in front of you, you cant swap to it, and when you are locked on to an enemy and try to roll, you don't do a roll, you do a weird sidestep where you swing to one side, circling around them, and if you do this on a precarious ledge, you just fall right off. Like I said, smooth but clunky in all the wrong ways. Cool idea but in practice, just makes your life harder. I think there's a way to force a long roll if you double press, but then the unusually long buffer system comes into play, it lets you do a lot of inputs in succession.
Maybe ill try again with full ungabunga strength build and see how it feels but I can't recommend this game when I know a better experience of souls like, lies somewhere else.
