Connor Graham

I've played LoTF for about 40 hours so far (across 3 characters; I like to test different builds at the same time) and I love it. I've played over 100 hours in Elden Ring, so LoTF really scratches that souls like itch. Between the world, art direction, darker gothic style, builds/classes, and lore, I'm having a great time. I know a lot of people playing on PC are having tons of technical/performance problems, but so far on the PS5 I encountered just a few minor things - the game crashed only once, some texture pops here and there - other than that, the game has run smoothly for me (mind you, I did set the graphic to performance, yet the game still looks great - side note: I don't think graphics make or break a game; art direction and style are much more important in the long haul). It did take me a while to get a hang of the combat and controls - at first I was having a lot of trouble (died ~ 20 times to the first few bosses like Pieta and Hushed Saint), maybe because I was trying to brute-force-Elden Ring it - but once it clicked the combat proved satisfying. The magic system is great as well, being locked to the D-pad rather than a weapon item. Weapons have increased move-sets as you upgrade them, which is pretty cool to see, and there's a lot of different builds to experiment with (probably my favorite part of souls likes). A couple of gripes I do have: the lock-on system is schizo and can mess you up when fighting multiple enemies, there's no move canceling so if you hit a button the move is going to follow through no matter what (a huge reason I kept dying at first), and enemy placement needs to be absolutely overhauled (nobody likes fighting melee enemies alongside ranged ones, that's just **** awful). Hexworks and CI are doing a great job communicating with players and pumping out patches to fix problems and fine tune the game - it'll only get better as time goes on. There's little excuse for the performance issues that people had at launch, but I see they're listening and trying to fix it - plus, is it any different than the buggy games that bigger studios with 10x the budget put out (Diablo 4 for one, plus Cyberpunk came out 3 years ago and that has gotten a full redemption arc). If you don't want to buy right now, I'd understand, but definitely come back and try it out after some time - if you enjoy dark fantasy souls likes, LoTF is a solid entry. Its a shame the performance issues on PC have crashed the user scores.