Christopher Gray

I just finished my first playthrough on PS5 running it on performance mode (recommended). I love this game, however I also will acknowledge that I believe this is the easiest FromSoft Game in awhile. It's clear they made the game more accessible, and the difficulty mainly comes from bosses just hitting for an unnecessary amount of damage compared to how much health they have. With that out of the way, I did play the game for nearly 135 Hours from launch day to yesterday (April 10th) before I decided to go into NG+. I decided to go through entire areas, doing every Dungeon possible and trying to find every boss including Night World bosses. Needless to say despite a few things that I mentioned above, I still found the game to be very much enjoyable. The game has things in it that most Souls Vets will probably steer clear of in their first playthrough to do a more traditional run. Stuff like Spirit Summons and of course player summons are stuff that make the game significantly easier and more accessible for a lot of players and in my opinion is a welcome addition into the formula. Mounted combat trivializes some fights as well, but is still enjoyable enough to warrant usage. Early on I found areas that just made my jaw drop, as always the art direction in Fromsoftware Games is what makes these games look gorgeous. Fromsoft has never been huge on graphical fidelity but the art direction more than makes up for that. If you're a fan of the series or a newcomer there is something here to enjoy. The fact that this is open world makes the game way more accessible in terms of difficulty, and as that was typically the biggest gate to enjoying souls game it is welcome as it brings new people iI. Souls Vets should know however that this game feels significantly easier than the others entries into Soulsborne though- just having the option to find higher level bosses and killing them early on for a significant amount of runes makes some later areas trivial. It's because of this that I do suggest using some sort of guide map to plan routes, as finding yourself in the earlier areas first does do wonders for making them more difficult and to that extent enjoyable. With that said though I think this game is definitely a 5/5 stars. There is a few things (such as damage as mentioned before) that would be better if tweaked, but it's just a minor annoyance.