Okay. So. Wow. Fucking wow, FromSoft. Wow.
The combat in this game is fucking SUBLIME. Running, dodging, shooting, parries and viscerals and rallying- they all feel perfect. Not even the botchy 30fps can lessen my enjoyment of the combat.
When I began this run last September, I picked the Threaded Cane and man am I happy about that decision. I'm still using it 20+ hours into the game as my main weapon, and it's perfect. I'm also agonizing myself over whether my secondary should be Ludwig or the saw spear (low damange but swinging it feels really good). Probably Ludwig.
As for the world/level design.... Level design is A+, especially in the Cathedral Ward and of course Central Yharnam. Levels keep looping back upon themselves. I noticed that they're extremely big compared to Dark Souls 1 and 2's areas. I'd be happy to see more interesting shortcuts, but the levels sre great.
Sadly, the world's interconnectivity isn't as up to par. It just doesn't feel like there's a very cohesive world here, with how big the world is and how you need to use lanterns to get around. More interesting shortcuts, especially vertical ones, would be cool. I dunno, perhaps I just feel this way because I binged hard. That's not to say the game is linear though, I have four different places to try right now (Forbidden Woods, The Lecture Hall, Hypogian Gaol, the first Chalice), beyond where I am. I'll go by order of the headstones I think. I wish I hadn't looked up what the tonsil stone did and only used it later, I feel I'd have appreciated it more, then. (I already know about the game's tonal shift though.) I went to the Nightmare Frontier and didn't really feel anything about it even though it seemed significant.
The performance usually isn't jarring so long as I don't change the direction of the camera very fast. And beyond that, the game is absolutely wonderful graphically- besides the lack of anti-aliasing perhaps.
However, perhaps due to the nighttime setting, I feel that the color palette is somewhat samey between levels and that makes them kind of blend together. Would have to revisit Central Yharnam to make up my mind about it. But especially given how big the levels are, it's a bit overwhelming.
There seems to be far less actual NPCs around. Eileen is the only one I've found (and I looked her up) alongside Alfred.
And lastly, on items and lore- what lore I have been able to dig up is amazing stuff, there just isn't much of it. I appreciate the brevity of having very few weapons, but there's practically no interesting item I picked up from the environment in general- looted one set of armor, found only one or two weapons, almost nothing that isn't yet another consumable. I've bought the majority of the interesting items I have so far, and given how (relatively) little loot is available even to buy, I wish there's been some more to expand upon the lore. I've seen almost any item I have on the loading screens already. There's especially little information out on side characters/important people/small stories concerning one or two minor characters.
I crawled the wikis a little to find out some little things (is Amelia optional given how important the skull seems to be? etc.) and got some lore spoilers (who the skull belongs to, seeing Amygdala ahead of time, details on the Great Ones/Old Ones, the stuff about the cosmic horror, etc.) sadly.
So yeah. GOAT tier combat, wonderful atmosphere, a bit samey levels/level design, somewhat weak interconnectivity(between levels), too little lore. That's where I'm at right now, and this is a beautiful game in every way.
