Finished my first run through, probably missed a lot, enjoyed it and its certainly a great game. But at the same time I'm happy that its the end of this incarnation of the series. While the game was good I could feel franchise fatigue setting in, this wasnt helped by the game being a homage to its predecessors. I think it could have done with more new areas, a lot of the areas felt like rehashes of stuff that had come before (some quite explicitly of course). As did a lot of the enemies and bosses. The game is polished but I felt it lacked the same element of exciting discovery as the other games (nor did it have the messed up levels from Demon Souls). Looking forward to another run through. The game has a crazy amount of loot compared to the other ones, always felt like I was picking stuff up and I'm going to experiment a bit more this time.
Despite the negative tones it might be my favourite of the Dark Souls games, it includes more or less everything I liked from the previous games and while lacking some of the high points from 1&2 it also lacks the lows. Demon Souls remains my favourite of the Souls series, and Bloodborne my favourite of the extended series (just for the lore and setting never mind the combat). It'll be interesting to see where they go next with Souls but I really hope its not more western fantasy. They should take the Otogi world and give it the souls treatment.
