Andrew Rakow

I've combed through a lot of one star reviews that I want to address here, because a majority of them are missing TWO core concepts of FromSoft games. The first concept is simple enough: perseverance. The souls series, at its core, are about overcoming difficulty through skill, smarts, and no small amount of perseverance. I see a lot of "Souls veterans" complaining about how this game is harder than the rest when in all honesty the opposite is true, and they seem to have lost sight of why: you have to be determined to make progress. This doesn't mean mindlessly fighting the same boss over and over, it means taking a step back and finding ways to overcome them. The map is almost completely accessible from the beginning, so take a breather by going to farm easier targets to get stronger. The second concept is equally as simple: the game only cares as much as you do about your progress. These games hand you an introduction and basically nothing else; it's up to you to discover how the story goes. It's their job to give it to you as you ask, NOT spoon feed it to you. You're a smart player, right? Read item descriptions, exhaust the NPC's dialogue, explore! The only reason you don't have direction is because you aren't really looking for it, you're waiting for it to be handed to you. The Souls series has always been like that, and if you say otherwise, you didn't actually play them. These games aren't foreveryone, but don't for a second buy into reviews stating these complaints. YOU and you alone drive how much (or little) of the story, and YOU control the difficulty.