[the_doctah]

I completely agree about the open world. The complete lack of breadcrumbs or anything to help you understand where to go made it a much worse experience for me, especially as my first souls game. The game even tells you to follow the Guidance of Grace, which leads you directly to Stormveil Castle, which you will be underleveled for.

I tried playing blind and ended up in Caelid (~lvl 60 area) instead of Weeping Peninsula. That's when I noped out and spent the rest of the game with my head buried in the wiki. I couldn't imagine trying to play these games without a wiki.

Everything else I enjoyed for the most part. The controls and hitboxes are a little janky, the platforming sections are total garbage (shoehorned into an old engine that never had it), but the open world execution was by far the worst aspect for me. At some point FromSoftware has to start catering to players new to the genre instead of forcing people to struggle and calling it part of the experience. With 12 mil in early sales I guarantee a bunch of players struggled with these aspects of the early game and dropped it altogether.

[meowzero]

I think the cryptic nature of Soulsborne games don't work in Open World. Like some of the side quests are near-impossible to complete without a wiki (unless you get very lucky). For instance, some NPCs are like, "I'll see you around." And you have to find them at some random place in the world if you want to continue their quest.

In a more closed world like Dark Souls, I think the no-handholding of side quest can work. But in an open world, I would've liked a bit more hand holding.

[godelski]

The first guy you meet outside the cave tells you to follow the guidance of grace. The graces around the main storyline literally point to the next grace or way to go. If you follow the road you'll get there.

I did get lost in the beginning because this is my first souls game and the only other game I've really played in the last 10 years is botw. But I've always have a good sense of where to go. The times I don't I explore and find something that leads me down a side quest. There's definitely lots of breadcrumbs imo. I mean if you're lost just look at the map and go towards a castle.

I think what could be better is to be able to revisit people and talk to them about quest lines. Or have a log. Other than that I'm having the complete opposite experience of you and I'm sure I've died 500+ times in my 50 hrs.

[the_doctah]

> The first guy you meet outside the cave tells you to follow the guidance of grace. The graces around the main storyline literally point to the next grace or way to go. If you follow the road you'll get there.

That's kind of my point though, because, at the beginning of the game, going straight to Stormveil Castle is not the optimal path. The optimal path is to go through East Limgrave and then Weeping Peninsula to get some levels and some gear. Guidance of Grace leads you away from that. Pretty unintuitive for the very first waypoints of the game.

[agentwiggles]

I agree with some of the critique here, but the lesson I took from the experience of following those first graces was "oh, I guess I'm going to need to be stronger to fight this guy, guess I'll go wander around and level up" - which I think is _exactly_ the lesson that the designers intended.

[godelski]

That's exactly what I did and I've been having a ton of fun. "Okay, I'm not ready for this person yet, but there's all these other things around me, let's go explore that and I should be leveled up and just better at the game/controls by the time I come back." This means absolutely no grinding. The game also taught me to not fight everyone and to focus on skills rather than runes. The game is unfair, so you have to be unfair back.

[oneoff786]

This is what I did too. And my point is that it took me throughout the entirety of Caelid and liurnia which was stupid as shit. Because the rate of progression was extremely slow, especially when you’re just running past things, and the only area that’s particularly appropriate up front is castle Morne which is not advertised.

I don’t think the game is unfair. It’s boss design is great. It’s the pacing that’s shit. Margit was an awesome fight.

[godelski]

> I don’t think the game is unfair

I disagree. It is very intentionally unfair. Two against one bosses where one has long range attacks and one is melee? One shot kills? Losing all your level progress when you die and being unable to retrieve them? This breaks a lot of the common game formulas. It forces you to just "get good" and think about your gameplay differently. But that's exactly what I like about the game. When you're getting you ass handed to you you often can't just come back at a higher level, but need to actually take new strategies. You can for the main questline but outside that you need to "get good"

[brnaftr361]

I unironically paid zero attention to Varre and accidentally tromped through and completed Weeping Peninsula without any instruction whatsoever. It just felt right. Very intuitive.

[oneoff786]

I found a lot of sidequest breadcrumbs. Then that was it and I never found the next breadcrumb again because they teleported to an unmarked location I had been to before and had no reason to go to; standing still and saying nothing.