Pros:
– Slightly improved visuals or lightning in the day over Dark Souls. On par in many ways with Bloodborne. Character models are good.
– Very nice art direction for the landscape, especially the plagued lands to the east with their red skies and fungus, there’s some variety of biomes.
– The creatures and enemies as above are numerous and diverse in their design, some in particular are quite unique.
– The music is solid, and unlike it’s predecessors quiet empty landscapes, there is ambience in this game now.
– You can ride around on horseback and fast travel too which are nice features, horseback combat and double jumps are included.
– A range of weapons and armor/outfits to suit the range of starting play styles (melee, dexterity, ranged, mage, faith etc).
– A day/night cycle with dynamic weather.
– A fairly big map to explore with various dungeons and even free roaming bosses, also many collectibles for crafting or special armour/weapons and spells.
– The game has new attack abilities learned from enemies or vendors that apply to different weapon types.
– The game now has jumping and crouching which will make the old games hard to go back to.
– A nice tough challenge that can always be overcome provided players LEVEL UP in easier area’s first, or farm runes (xp).
– There’s all the usual co-op/summoning.
– Good collision detection.
– Character creation is solid, still tricky to make someone that doesn’t look like a mutant, and a huge plus is you can edit your characters completely any time, from the mirror in the round table hub world.
– You no longer die from falling small distances.
– There’s many good aspects the the game.

Cons:
– First off, this game really is just Dark Souls 4 with some nice Bloodborne/cosmos aesthetics, there’s no denying this. It even has the same awkward crosshair for bows from Dark Souls 1. And many of the same animations, sound effects, some enemies, this is a big negative for a title trying to ship as a new IP like Bloodborne did. It does reskin/rename everything (bonfires, lanterns, now they’re gold lights called grace) but still could’ve done more to differentiate instead of recycling assets.
– Some visuals are poor for 2022, very basic grass assets like from the PS2 era or poor decals like some rocks.
– The AI can be a little goofy at times, but considering the difficulty this is normally welcomed.
– co-op/summoning isn’t perfect, it’s a bit odd due to the inclusion of summoning pools activated near a boss, which no one uses or knows how they really work. A put down sign is still simpler, though you must use an limited item now to reveal summon signs.
– Controls will take a day to get used to for Dark Souls/BB players, as X is now jump and Triangle now to read messages and collect items. L1/R1 + Triangle is to two hand weapons, but once it feels natural it’s ok.
– The runes (xp) from enemies is quiet small compared to previous games, tough enemies will drop just a few hundred, most bosses 1000-4000 until very late game where they’ll drop 50k+. Thankfully there are some farming spots. But getting to this point can be a little slow going, so one must persevere, and seek good weapons early on.
– Guidance of grace is a useless feature that just makes the map look more cluttered.
– Missions/quests have almost no logic and nothing to go on, to progress them takes trial and error, and in deeper quests pure luck in finding a random character in a random place (such as Blaidd in the giant underground map, obscured on the edge of a rock structure). The same for the main quests and the path one must take, little logic for the most part.
– Many will find this game too hard. Note to newcomers: pay attention to stamina, for harder attacks roll out the way. Do not wade into an enemy button bashing, pick your moments. And LEVEL UP! If anything or any boss seems too hard, go to an easier spot and farm runes (the games currency for leveling and experience) this is how you’ll get stronger and defeat that boss you couldn’t previously. This has been a staple of RPGS since FF7 and way before! Don’t give up.

Is this worth buying? So far, yes definitely, despite the few negatives I’m enjoying it and feel there’s a great deal of longevity, not just in the big map but I’m already thinking up play styles for the next character or play through. Throw in the vast amount of weapons, armour, collectibles and things to conquer, it can be addictive.