I'm in the endgame now, and I'm having some conflicting feelings at present.
Until Leyndell, I was ready to herald this as the best From Software title yet, provided the endgame remained as strong. I personally thought Caelid was slightly weaker than the rest of the areas, barring Radahn's fight, and that Liurnia was gorgeous but also a bit sparser than Limgrave. But still all of these were fantastic areas, ripe with inventive enemies and content. I adored Altus and Gelmir, and Leyndell was simply mesmerizing. The legacy dungeons have been all fantastic, though I really wish they did something more with Redmane Castle. The underground areas overall felt a bit disjointed in their progression, and suffered a bit from unnecessary repetition (two unicorns and flame-lighting sequences, really?) which detracts rather than adds to the experience. but the aesthetic and mystery compensated for it. The Deeproot Depths were a wee uninspired, and Lake of Rot was awesome aesthetically but Izallith levels of laziness. Still, it gave us the Souls vertical descent to Hell we all love.
My major quibble with the game begins in the endgame, with Mountaintop of the Giants. Simply put, there was no need for that to be a whole region in its current state. It is lazy design. There are hardly any new enemies, the difficulty spike is extremely notorious at that point, and it feels artificial. Enemies are ridiculous sponges, and deal obscene amounts of damage, regardless of your build. Coming from Leyndell and Lake as a melee and heavy shield user, I was quite shocked. Aesthetically, it is also the weakest of the lot. Mogh's own 'dungeon' was similarly pointless.
Fortunately, the last few areas after that are remarkable in their beauty, Haligtree and Azula are some of the most beautiful areas From has ever produced. I have yet to complete these areas and beat their bosses. Overall, I am mesmerized by the game, but I do think they really overdid it with the repetition, which begins to take a toll in the endgame paired with some lazy design, empty space, and excessive difficulty. Way too many reused bosses, not only in the optional dungeons, but in the main quest, which leads to diminishing returns and begins to feel like a grind. You can only beat so many Erdtree Avatars, Magma Wyrms, Tree Spirits, Apostles, Ferrymen, Night Cavalries, Tree Sentinels, and tanky dragons, before they begin to feel like a genuine chore. Also, while Lyndell was amazing... they really dropped the ball with making Margot so reminiscent to Margit. After Godfried, Renalla, Radahn, and Rykard, it felt derivative and lame. Hopefully the last few bosses I have left are up to standards.
There are also deep balancing issues, particularly since Mountaintop, which makes builds lacking in vigor tortuous to play. Some regular enemies will one or two shot kill you even at 50 vigor wearing heavy armor. Meanwhile, I have found movement in combat to be clunkier, particularly rolling, making it less feasible than in DS3. This would be okay, since DS3 became a rollfest, but the problem is they have really gone a bit overboard with enemy aggression and endlessly chained long strings-combos,. This makes finding windows to attack safely quite difficult, and while I welcome the challenge, there were many times I thought bosses were just excessive with the spamming and string length, particularly in the late game where damage becomes grueling. This led me to rely on Mimic Tear and heavy shields more than I wanted to. I had to give up on my dual Halberd build, since tanking is just not feasible in this game.
Finally, while they did a really amazing job making the optional content a bit diverse (caves, tunnels, graves, catacombs each having distinct concepts) the repetition adds to the problems with the endgame. So much of mountaintop looks monotonous, having the same enemies you've fought before just buffed to the gills plus large tracts of empty space is just not inviting to exploration. You might say "but the content is optional! Just don't do it" but the fact is the game requires you to get pretty fucking strong to deal with its morbid difficulty later on. So you either find a farming spot, which is not fun anyways, or have to engage with the optional content, and fight twelve versions of the same boss. I can't believe they actually reused Astel or whatever his name was in a stupid cave. Also, I can't imagine what a first playthrough would look like skipping most of that content. I'm at 100 hours and am still having a really hard time, though a lot of it was getting lost and running in circles like a jackass. I really hope future patches can do something about the balancing and maybe even do something with Mountaintops. Though it's unlikely they will change its content at this point.
With all of this said, a part of me thinks it is the greatest game I've ever played. The world is immense, insanely beautiful, the music is incredible, the lore is fantastic, the legacy dungeons are amazing, their boss fights are arguably the best in the series, and the ambience is just spot on. I think it sets a new standard for open world games, which I have never enjoyed for their monotonous nature. Another part of me still thinks DS1 is insuperable for its novelty and world integration, flawed as it is.
Also, fuck bears.
