Some initial thoughts and comments now I’ve done the first boss proper and clocked up nearly 20 hours over the weekend.
Any doubts that FROM could transition the Souls formula to a more open world design are gone, blown away even. It’s a massive open world but not as we know it. One of the major aspects of a Souls game for me has always been the carefully crafted levels, which successfully give the illusion of an open connected world whilst keeping the player focused on what is important in the world and where you should be going. They have managed to do this in an open world and still included the more focused “dungeon” areas. It feels like a massive world which has been properly hand crafted and packed with stuff to see, do and investigate. Every time I set off in the open areas I feel like I am departing on an adventure, something so rarely captured by other games - Dragon’s Dogma immediately pops into my head as a game that evoked similar feelings. Even within what still feels like the starting area I get so many “What the …?” moments as I travel. It’s an open world that begs to be explored and consistently rewards you with experiences.
A couple of points about enhancements and practical changes to the formula, particularly in terms of difficulty and accessibility. It is still tough and unforgiving, that’s a core tenet of the Souls design, but well designed concessions have been made to enable help to be more easily accessible. The usual volunteer to help by placing a symbol down system still exists but in addition the “pool” system for offering/accepting help makes it easier to get help and adds benefits for both parties. The item needed to access help is also in abundant supply via crafting.
The new use of ashes to summon spectral help in the form of a pack or wolves, a sorcerer or some villagers adds a nice option for getting past trickier obstacles in the field - these are restricted to certain areas and situations. In the open world the “Brave Sir Robin” tactic or running away and chickening out is helped by the addition of “Brave Sir Torrent”.
One nice update is the interaction of multiplayer stuff across friends. You can ensure you play with friends using a network password - which you can easily turn on and off as it maintains a history of previous passwords for you. You can also set multiple “group” password which highlights messages, ghosts and bloodstains from other people who have the same password in that section. So I’ve already seen messages from @Brave and a death puddle from @Gordon.
At this stage it’s all I ever wished for and more.
NB: I’m playing PS5 version on PS5 and perfectly happy with performance, framerate is well within my perceptible boundaries.
