The moment I reached the ending, I felt as if I had been released from prison. What a relieve.

I am not sure what the game was like on release, but i it deserves a much better score than mixed.

I went in with a very sceptical mindset but was more than pleasantly surprised, There is jank, sure. There are some excellent ideas as well:
-Ranged combat and spell slinging never felt so smooth and fun in a souls like before. Extremely well done.
-The world is beautiful and very compelling to explore, secrets and shiny objects aplenty
-NG+ modifiers are very cool. Random loot + random enemies for maximum amounts of surprise.

On the negative side of things:
-NG+ inflates boss HP to epic proportions. Truly obscene numbers. You can measure the HP by magnitudes of Midir. Sundered Monarch is like 8 and a half Midirs, if not more. You hit for 6k and the bar barely moves. They hit you twice. you die.
-Melee combat can feel a bit floaty and imprecise. Hit don't register from time to time and when combined with the utterly bizarre little skip forward the character does on weapon swing, you end up feeling barely in control.
-When you are in umbral, you are always on a timer. I don't like that. I never like time restrictions in games.
-Very limited roster of enemies.

I ended up doing 4 playthroughs. One for each ending and one last playthrough just for the kicks.

I give this 8.5
Well worth the time for genre fans and newcomers alike.

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