So now that I am currently stuck on the last boss I am feel I can at least give my overall view of the game, it is really a fantastic game marred by some pretty bad ideas in places and these flaws are pretty glaring when set into an otherwise well made game.
The game world is expansive and well made, exploring was fun for most of the areas and I was always excited to see what came next. The castles and "dungeons" felt really good and were interesting to run around in. There was a nice breadth of weapons, armors, and talismans to really cater to your play style. The addition of Torrent and mounted combat was an interesting mechanic and certainly was not bad for their first go at such a thing in a soulsborne game. The story was actually there, sure it was still a confusing mess byt you actually could piece together tidbits so you had an idea of what you were doing, why, and why the world was the way it was. There was a good variety of enemies which kept things interesting and did a pretty good job of introducing harder enemies earlier on in the game to give you a bit of a sense of danger. There were some really awesome and intense boss fights in the game with perhaps my favorite fight being Radahn.
The problem is that with such an expansive world where you try and fill it with content you are bound to hit repetition. An example of this is the reuse of many bosses in various areas just with larger health pools and hitting harder or putting 2 - 3 of them in a confined space. Many of the tombs and caves eventually felt all the same and some were longer than they needed to be. The number of grab attacks and effects that would go through shields and deal massive damage was ramped up to 11 and seemed unecessary on many boss fights. Far too many enemies with near infinite hit combos and or delayed attacks to bait you into opening up before wrecking your shit. Being a defensive shield user it felt like a cheap move to give us guard counters and then make it nearly impossible in most cases to use it on a large number of harder encounters due to their attack speed. There were times when the controls felt unresponsive or would do silly things which caused me to die more than I would like. Fuck dogs, large plants, the large birds and dogs, crucible knights, and those undead dudes that would grapple you.
So overall it is a great game but the combat and some boss designs left a lot to be desired. My thoughts would be fewer big bosses with more unique move sets instead of more bosses who are mostly just "jump, slam, AOE, grab, move far away"
