If you already played enough of the popular souls games (that we all know) and looking for a new one, this is a good choice.
7.6/10 .

I tried to understand why this game gets a high amount of hate and figured that the haters can be divided into 3 groups:
- performance issues group (much justified). It ran fine for me so i hope it's now patched and fixed for everyone else.
- the group of people who complains about the game cramming too much enemies, justified but i never felt that, so i think the devs listened and patched this earlier or these people are wrong.
- the group of people who compares every little detail of this game to FromSoftware games. These are stupid people and their long BS filled reviews aren't even worth considering.

TL,DR: Don't buy it, just buy any FromSoft game.

Here's what's up:

-First thing that just blows my mind. The enemies scale to you. Meaning every time you level up, upgrade your weapons, progress into a new area or kill a boss, I don't know what triggers it, standard mob enemies just get strong with you. Mid to late game mobs will take 5-6 hits from my upgraded weapon and buff before going down. Imagine your typical hollow soldier from the Dark Souls games getting stronger and stronger, larger health pool and starts hitting like a truck. Absolute bonkers idea from the devs.

-Enemy types. You'll encounter a unique field/area/mini boss, whatever you want to call it; like an Infernal Enchantress or a Ruiner, only to find them placed around the next area multiple times with roughly the same health and damage while you only get a level or 2 from the original one.

-Mob density. These ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ got me, they stated in a post on steam that they were going to tweak the mob density and all that stuff during their updates, which is what got me to put the game down originally. My friend and I came back after seeing 1.5, dove in and it's pretty much the same. You walk into an open space and there is just 6 to 7+ enemies from melee, to ranged, to spellcasters, that have take a quarter of your health with one hit. Remember the mini boss you just fought? You get to fight another one with 3 melee mobs, and 2 ranged ones that shoot arrows at you with the velocity of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 9mm round from an elevated platform! Because this is what surely makes games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring fun! Oh and don't forget the umbral floating ball that you have to burst because if you don't, the enemies will be either LITERALLY invincible or have crazy health regen, which means you have to burst that thing by pointing your lamp at for 3-4 seconds and you're completely vulnerable while doing so.

-Umbral? Just a gimmick, nothing else, gives you a second chance I guess.

-Bosses are whatever, nothing memorable to be honest. A lot of them are gimmicky and you're stuck fighting and engaging them the way the game wants you to, you get no say in the matter.

-When I play soulslikes I enjoy exploring the environment I'm place in, but this game just forces you to sprint like Usain Bolt through the levels just to not put up with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemies and their placements.

-The mimics, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mimics. You can't tell which one is a mimic, you can peer with your lamp but it won't show you and guess what, the mimic ONE SHOTS you. And. They. Are. Everywhere.

Honestly, there's a 100 other things I could complain about this game. But I won't, you get the gist of it, don't buy this, just pick any random game from FromSoftware and play that instead.

I really think the devs just wanted to make soulslike, didn't understand what makes them engaging and difficult and ♥♥♥♥ this piece of umbral ♥♥♥♥. Wish I could refund.

Everything you want from a Souls-like. It's not From Software but it's hard to tell that it isn't.

This is a post patch 1.5 review, running the game with a 4090 RTX and an i9 processor. I did not experience many technical problems aside from the occasional stutter during a zone transition. Areas that were previously notorious such as Bramis Castle have been greatly improved, whereas places where I noticed a hitch tended to be areas that were not much of a problem to begin with--so I think a lot of focus was placed on smoothing out biggest problems. Overall the game runs quite well for me now, but that may be due to my hardware more than anything else.

There's a lot to like about the game in my opinion. The weapons and armor are great, and personally I rather enjoy the visual style with the grim dark medieval aesthetics. The starting class selections are interesting and seem to cover all styles of play. The stats are logical and easy to understand and plan a build around. By far the most innovative element in the game play is the Umbral Lamp that allows you to both peer into and travel from the mortal realm to the land of the dead. This mechanic never got old to me and was a joy to experience throughout. The controls are mostly intuitive, and I like that I could cast spells on the fly without having to swap out what was in my hands. The only downside is you can't equip spells and throwable weapons at the same time, but generally if you excel at one you won't need the other.

Stuff that isn't so great aside from the aforementioned performance hitches would have to come down to some issues with the enemies and the quests. Enemy variety is not amazing, and around the 3/4 mark this becomes very noticeable and disappointing. I do like what is there, but I just wish there were more surprises towards the end of the game. Once in a great while the AI would just completely bug out too and an enemy would stare at me stupidly not knowing what to do. Meanwhile projectile throwing enemies are far too accurate and aggressive, and this becomes particularly annoying during a few encounters. The worst part of the game for me had to do with how easy it was to fail certain quests, including a notorious quest that will immediately fail if you follow your natural inclination to ascend an elevator after defeating a boss that was guarding it. Just not a good design.

Overall I want to give this game a positive review and support the devs. It has some fantastic innovations but unfortunately also drops the ball on some of the basics. I would love to see a future installment that leans into what was done well while polishing up some of the little things with mechanics and game play that make souls-like games so enjoyable. The QoL improvements after 1.5 are fantastic as well, so I would recommend this game to any fans of the genre.

No matter how many negative reviews I've read, this game exceeded all my expectations. The graphics are stunning, the gameplay is engaging. Yet it still needs some bug fix and stuff, it doesn't deny the fact that it's absolutely worth to give it a try.

This game gets too much hate

at first I was excited. then i realised that I should've just bought helldivers. I won't be recommending this game to anyone. definitely very lackluster. bosses are really stupid. 75% of them you need to use range, making melee combat absolutely pointless. wanna NG+? don't bother. its not worth it. bosses get even dumber with huge damage buffs and ridiculously large health pools. After I finish the umbral ending I'm more than likely not gonna touch this game again. very disappointed. I had high hopes watching gameplay and reading about the story. it was fun for maybe the first 10-20 hours and then it slowly starts to become a chore. If i didn't buy a game key from a site I would've requested a long time ago.

Honestly, more frustrating and annoying than difficult. Boss fights are awesome but everything in between is just a drag

After Playing trough the game I have bunch of good things to say but also bunch of bad things to say.
Overall I'd say quite good experience I found myself looking forward to playing again and all in all a solid 7/10 is I think very fair for the game that has a lot of issues but does a lot of things right.

Good things:
Umbrall world is to me crazy good idea and I think its executed well.
Move set is refreshing and very aggressively centred which You have to understand first and adapt for it to be fun and effective.
Weapons in this game have great design and variety.
Armours are very good looking both armour or cloth based.
Exploration in this game is super fun and innovative.
Build variety is quite good in this game since you have like completely 6 or more different ways to play the game.
Vestige seed mechanic is very good makes you think about the optimal place to place it.
Modifier options in NG+ are very fun idea.
Parrying is very satisfying and breaking the guard is worth the effort.
The kick mechanic is my favourite thing in this game.
The world and area building is stunning.
The bringer of stillness and nullity is very good gank fight.

Bad things:
Horrendous enemy placements in some areas like it makes no sense for them to be so many there, like someone wants to kill everything in the manse of the Hallowed brothers and keep playing the game.
Infernal enchantress hitting you with exploding ball without even seeing you makes no sense to me, they are dodgeable but everytime one of them explodes imidietly and hits you.
Bosses are so poorly executed in this game, I might be a seasoned souls player but not a single boss in this game except for congregator of Flesh took me more than 3/4 tries.
Excessive amount of flower beds and pointless shortcuts after exploring area.
Status effects are too strong and strength based weapons.
Socketing eyeballs is very cool idea to me but not if using one eye that makes it so you cant die in charged attack but turn your health to wither into regaining it right back breaks the game and turns it into Heavy charged attack spamming ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
The Judge Cleric fight is pure BS. Second phase is great first is just ♥♥♥♥.
Remembrances being utter dogwatter in this game is disappointing to say the least. I played balanced build between strenght and agility and never once I saw a weapon or anything else in remembrances that was utterly worth using.
there are so many things in this game that if someone that played souls games will recognise from others:
Adyr fight being literally deacons of the deep just a little more anoying.
Monarch fight is basically father Ariandell.
Harroved Dervla and Unbroken promise is literally the Lothric princes fight.
The Hushed saint fight running around all the time fells annoying.
The game does a poor job of informing you that you are taking damage especially large portions of it.
Hollow Crow just throwing in the loop a bunch of enemies while really doing nothing is just pointless.
I'm not going to point at bugs there are plenty but hopefully They will get better.

All in all this game has some great things but does the big things pretty poorly but since the boss fights in this game don't tend to last long its bearable.
Its solid 7/10 for me but I can understand that someone with less patience and understanding could call this a bad game.
I would recommend this game but also warn people that it takes a lot to keep playing this game at times.

Absolutely unjustified hate, I usually never buy single player games with mostly positive or lower ratings, but I saw a bunch of youtubers say the 1.5 patch made the game really solid.

+Fantastic Interconnected world that surprised me at times.
+Weapons feel weighty and good,
+ and - Bosses (up to my current place in story) felt fair, however they could for sure use additional move sets to add variety
-Enemy variety is a little lacking like others have said but there is still enough variety to keep it somewhat interesting, especially with the placements they made for certain harder enemies.
- Also this is just me but I really don't like the "perfect guard" system and how it still withers health, that's just me.

Have plenty of play time in the souls games on console and a little on steam, and this is a perfectly good game in it's own right. I obviously didn't touch on all the good points, but I did want to point out my negatives with the game which aren't all that bad anyways.

Overall would give the game like a 8/10