After more than half a year, it's sad to say that with version 1.5, the game still stutters.

They say they made performance optimizations and fixes with the numerous patches but if this is the best they can do, I can't imagine the launch state that the game was in.
The game is graphically heavy also, but if only at least it didn't stutter, I would have posted a positive review.
It's a shame because the game is great, way better than its predecessor, and it has many pc-specific graphical options and features.

It s a (mediocre) soulslike game, with some very good ideas, but sometimes badly executed.

The good things:

--Areas for the most part look good
--bosses are not copy pasted, some even with unique mechanics
--Storytelling in form of memories is kinda cool
--"The umbral" is a cool game mechanic, although some levels didnt really need them
--Ammunition being used like Mana instead of consumables feels good
--Mana levels by leveling magic attributes, so no artifical extra stat to level
--Weapons look good, and feel for the most part good to use, especially heavy weapons
--Cool lookin animations, for example pieta bossfight, or magic usage

The many, many Bad:

--Lantern usage, especially during combat to get rid of parasites, is super clunky
--The cutscene after the first boss after the tutorial feels broken (it s not btw)
What i mean with this is: there is a cutscene playing where the boss wants to steal your lamp, but it ends randomly without context and explaining anything, and after you revive with your lamp still in your posession somehow
--Movement is clunky, especially around corners (but i have heard they improved that)
--The NPC sidequests are OMEGA HORRIBLY designed, in a way you cant take the very obvious big elevator after you have to defeat a boss (where also the bonfire is located) or the mission instafails, or you are forced to summon npcs during a fight to progress their questline (also you have to die first in order to summon them so you re not allowed to first try bosses or you fail missions)
--Item flavor texts are only available if you level Faith / Firemagic, so if you go full meele you wont see them
--For Achievements you have to play the game over 10 times, some of them must be done multiple times to trigger
--The least balanced Multiplayer experience i have ever seen and i play league (when you get invaded you can have invaders who will always onetap you, or they will never deal a single point of dmg to you regardless of what they do, although to be fair both scenarios are quite funny, unless they happen every 2 minutes because invasion cooldown is far too low for how far spread bonfires can be in some areas)
--Magic is completly imbalanced. Some spells (Seismic Slam) kill bosses in seconds, while also costing less mana, are easier to obtain, have addedd aoe, higher status buildup, have higher impact on poise, have no tradeoffs and have more range, while magic designed with drawbacks are just straight up garbage
--Poise is very bad, although not new world levels of bad
--Poison can cheese almost every boss, and becomes even more broken in NG+
--Many areas just have tedious amounts of enemies
--Many shortcuts are irrelevant when you play the game for the first time or NG+0 and only become relevant when you play without bonfires, but why would you lmao
--Because the game was far too easy back then, they multiplied boss HP but (seemingly) forgot to balance them for NG+, resulting in them STILL being too easy, but being so spongy it feels like they are target dummies designed to check for dps (unless you use poison)
--Summon npcs are useless and besides for missions dont do anything
--Summon Mulitplayer is beyond broken (when it is functional) you can (besides at bosses) resummon your friend anytime and he will spawn with full hp mana and potion charges
--reviving your partner costs YOUR potion and not his, which lets the host heal less when the client already has infinite healing, but that doesnt matter much, because
--you have infinite healing anyways since you can just use consumables like in DS2 aka lifegems
--no manaflasks, resulting in either having manaconsumables, which are broken by themselves, or you build around manaregen which makes every single trashmobenemy in the game obsolete (but there are still lots of them)
--Some bosses that have cleave attacks in front of them will hit you when you re clearly behind them
--Some areas need to be backtracked if you want specific items/endings/equpment/quests
--After doing some NPC missions, resulting in them dying, some drop their unique loot at a completly different (random?) location where you never had to interact with them
--Jumping keybind as horrible as it was 10 years ago (least on controller)
--umbral zone occasionally has stutters, even after many fixes (at least most normal realm areas are fine now)
--Manually placing bonefires in praxis is not fun, please stop doing this
--Vigor (=Souls/Runes) gains feel weird sometimes
--Weapon upgrade materials are too little in the first few areas, and it feels like you have limitless amounts later on
--Enemies that can drop items sometimes need 10 seconds after their death to drop the item (this includes vigor as well)
--you have to MANUALLY absorb vigor using your lantern or by walking through them (this does not include bosses tho)
--Bossmusic is fine ig, but no real bangers sadly
--you can get stuck at corners
--iframes when you actually get hit are too short, resulting in you being able to be oneshot from specific enemy attacks or having multiple enemies on you
--dodge rolls are a bit unresponsive and sometimes going into weird directions, and also buffer sometimes resulting in multiple rolls in a row


Know the feeling, when repeating a video game, where you are like "UGGH this part again" ?
Almost every single area here feels like this when you play NewGame+.

Game is fine, for a playthrough or 2 but anything beyond that is overstaying its welcome. Best wait for 50% off or something.

I've never in my life played a game with so many stutters and frame drops.