D A R K S O U L S I I I

[Lemonray]

Four hours.

I'm going to go to sleep now and set an alarm to wake me shortly before the game unlocks. I'll report back after an hour or two of playing.

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I'm three hours into the game and feeling tired, so here are some brief first impressions.

The controls are great. A halfway point between the Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne controls, just about.

The difficulty so far seems that way also, hovering between early DS1 and early BB. Using a (medium) shield is no longer borderline overpowered like in DS1, since enemy attacks, even from weaker enemies, seem to drain more stamina if blocked now meaning you can't just soak up attacks repeatedly, though greatshields might allow this. I'll have to look for one tomorrow. The first two bosses could have done with some more health though.

The world design so far is easily at least as good as Bloodborne and the first half of Dark Souls in terms of layout and the game is about on par with Bloodborne visually. Enemies are great, things in general look very nice. Only, the HUD looks... Off, to me. I'll have to look into modding it and using a nicer texture. It's actually bothering me to look at it.

The flame embers effect on the player character (replaces unhollowed/human from DS1) looks awesome.