Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

Everything good about this game stays in shadow of it's difficulty. Not only it's hard to get to next Bonfire... There's like 1000 super hard boss fights which are not actually boss fights just some dudes that will kill you with one swing of whatever they holding in their hands.

It's ok when game is hard but not to the level when your lack of - i do not know what it is that I'm missing -is causing you to die at the same point for like 100 times (seriously, 100 times!). And what's worst game is not perfect so you will also die because of game's flaws.But the worst thing is that you cannot save wherever you want. With game that hard that's at least they could do. Every time you got killed by "not THE boss" you are spawned at Bonfire that very often is far, far away from "not THE boss"so getting to him after like 10th attempt is simply boring. Again: I'm cool with hard games but not when it's punishing you for dying.

Another thing is no sens of direction. It's good that you have absolute freedom, but it make no sens when you do not know who you are, where you are going or why should you care to kill so many strange creatures. After about 25-30h there is absolutely no story here. I didn't even know you could do game so big and forget about such a little thing as story or at least some background. After about 45h of gameplay there was only 2 more lands to explore and after checking on WiKi I found out that I almost finished the game... Well, that got me angry.

Sure, I'm not hardcore RPG player, neither professional gamer but why would you like to play a game that is so hard that after 12 hours of playing you still can be killed by some random creature in area you are exploring. It wouldn't be so frustrating if loosing humanity and souls wouldn't be so painful (also boring as hell). And seriously almost complete lack of story is just not what I'm expecting from the 9.5 game. Sure, there are items description and some wrings on walls and few enigmatic conversations, but who is this brilliant guy this mastermind who expects me to put it all together? Oh! That supposed to be fun? Hmm...

Game is technically ok, visuals are great, music is fine and there is fantastic atmosphere. There's not much of music here however when it appears is great. What is really impressive is sound effects. Also lighting is very nice.

Without thick guide, this game can only be beaten by no-live-RPG-fan what's in my opinion is just stupid. Developers just putted you in huge world not explaining what is what and why you there... For my this is not on the list of what GREAT game should be like.