Probably one of the worst remastered games out there. I'm pretty sure I've ruffled some feathers but hear me out or don't. There are a few issues that stem from the marketing of this game I have problems with. For starters let's talk about prepare to die edition. How is anyone gonna be able to buy it and enjoy it without paying an absurd price (retail key for $400) this issue could be resolved by packaging PTDE with the remastered but they want to make money so because they want to make money they give a discount for this game for PTDE owners. And then take the discount away a Year after it's release. I never cared about the discount and would've been fine paying $40 had they kept the original up but still If they truly wanted to make money while keeping their integrity they would've kept PTDE up for sale and threw the discount out the door. The problem here is that the modding community made PTDE look far better than this heap of garbage. Think about this. PTDE, when modded can be played at 60 frames with little issues. FromSoft takes it away and gives us a new crappy remaster for double the price. I just wished they would give consumers an option between the different versions regardless if you have to pay twice for the same game (Which i happily would) but they didn't give us that. It's bad enough there are technically 3 versions of this game now.

The issues i list will be stated bellow.
- The graphics are downgraded. Likely due to increase performance yet somehow ptde with dsfix is able to look & preform far better with minor collision issues.
- The newly added bonfire in the catacombs. They only added it in for warping to get to the blacksmith and if so they should have just used the bonfire that was already there in the catacombs instead of placing a spawn trap. Not a problem for veteran players but absurd for newcomers. Demon's Souls was more fair than that. The main frustration by this is that the later souls games place bonfires haphazardly, sometimes right next to each other. It's lazy & bad design and i want no part of it. The catacombs doesn't need a 3rd bonfire. Convenience doesn't always = better. Same goes for warping at start and all that other jazz.
- The downside to pvp now is that red phantoms can't invade to the level cap. This concentrates the online pool to 1-120 which ironically just makes twink builds far much worse than they actually were since now twinks can invade low levels all the time not to mention the fact that characters that are higher than 130 will be gated out from online play entirely. This was nothing more than a failed attempt on making invasions more "fair" when the whole point of it was the opposite while at the same time spreading out certain variables to make the game's online features stand out and be more engaging. Yet another new mechanic poorly thought out from the later games in the franchise.
- Weapon levels now effect your summon calculation, although understandable at face value. Yes invaders can make twink builds but once you stop being a pessimist for once you might realize phantoms can too. The harmful effect of adding this on the pvp side of things though erases the drive to get stronger in the game because newer players are oblivious to how strong you can become. (What if a new player comes on and liked a certain weapon that they only discovered because a twink killed them with it). It's that growing theme that metroidvanias excel at because you saw a potential reward that pushed you forward extrinsically but also gained intrinsic value on your journey obtaining your opponent's gear.
- I'm not a fan of the newly added password system. Arguably makes gifting items to friends 10x worse even with unique weapons filtered. This is dark souls 1 not 3 or ER. If you can't be bothered to calculate 10% + 10 then you should probably tell your friend to try again tomorrow.
- You can't trade unique weapons anymore because this game has a blocker for them so veteran players can't give their friends the weapons for the achievement. The problem with this is. This isn't console. This is steam. With steam you can unlock them with the steam console. Maybe not as bad as the bs "no party" rule when playing online on the 360. But honestly was it really that big of a problem? Most boss & unique weapons for the trophy aren't really all that good and can't even be buffed.
- The new Covenant menu wasn't really necessary since all bonfires right next to them are warpable.
- An unneeded graphical error is in the room where big hat Logan sits in the dukes archives. It's pitch black. If you had me mistaken I'd assume that was the abyss.

There are a few well deserved changes like, offering a set amount to covenants and popping a certain amount of souls/humanity. And of course, dedicated servers (Although p2p increases the longevity of the game). The rest was just unneeded attachments from their newer installments.
All i want is PTDE back on the steam store. Do that and i will change this review. #BringbackPTDE If i find any more to add I will later I'm really tired right now.

Probably one of the worst remastered games out there. I'm pretty sure I've ruffled some feathers but hear me out or don't. There are a few issues that stem from the marketing of this game I have problems with. For starters let's talk about prepare to die edition. How is anyone gonna be able to buy it and enjoy it without paying an absurd price (retail key for $400) this issue could be resolved by packaging PTDE with the remastered but they want to make money so because they want to make money they give a discount for this game for PTDE owners. And then take the discount away a Year after it's release. I never cared about the discount and would've been fine paying $40 had they kept the original up but still If they truly wanted to make money while keeping their integrity they would've kept PTDE up for sale and threw the discount out the door. The problem here is that the modding community made PTDE look far better than this heap of garbage. Think about this. PTDE, when modded can be played at 60 frames with little issues. FromSoft takes it away and gives us a new crappy remaster for double the price. I just wished they would give consumers an option between the different versions regardless if you have to pay twice for the same game (Which i happily would) but they didn't give us that. It's bad enough there are technically 3 versions of this game now. The issues i list will be stated bellow. - The graphics are downgraded. Likely due to increase performance yet somehow ptde with dsfix is able to look & preform far better with minor collision issues. - The newly added bonfire in the catacombs. They only added it in for warping to get to the blacksmith and if so they should have just used the bonfire that was already there in the catacombs instead of placing a spawn trap. Not a problem for veteran players but absurd for newcomers. Demon's Souls was more fair than that. The main frustration by this is that the later souls games place bonfires haphazardly, sometimes right next to each other. It's lazy & bad design and i want no part of it. The catacombs doesn't need a 3rd bonfire. Convenience doesn't always = better. Same goes for warping at start and all that other jazz. - The downside to pvp now is that red phantoms can't invade to the level cap. This concentrates the online pool to 1-120 which ironically just makes twink builds far much worse than they actually were since now twinks can invade low levels all the time not to mention the fact that characters that are higher than 130 will be gated out from online play entirely. This was nothing more than a failed attempt on making invasions more "fair" when the whole point of it was the opposite while at the same time spreading out certain variables to make the game's online features stand out and be more engaging. Yet another new mechanic poorly thought out from the later games in the franchise. - Weapon levels now effect your summon calculation, although understandable at face value. Yes invaders can make twink builds but once you stop being a pessimist for once you might realize phantoms can too. The harmful effect of adding this on the pvp side of things though erases the drive to get stronger in the game because newer players are oblivious to how strong you [i]can[/i] become. (What if a new player comes on and liked a certain weapon that they only discovered because a twink killed them with it). It's that growing theme that metroidvanias excel at because you saw a potential reward that pushed you forward extrinsically but also gained intrinsic value on your journey obtaining your opponent's gear. - I'm not a fan of the newly added password system. Arguably makes gifting items to friends 10x worse even with unique weapons filtered. This is dark souls 1 not 3 or ER. If you can't be bothered to calculate 10% + 10 then you should probably tell your friend to try again tomorrow. - You can't trade unique weapons anymore because this game has a blocker for them so veteran players can't give their friends the weapons for the achievement. The problem with this is. This isn't console. This is steam. With steam you can unlock them with the steam console. Maybe not as bad as the bs "no party" rule when playing online on the 360. But honestly was it really that big of a problem? Most boss & unique weapons for the trophy aren't really all that good and can't even be buffed. - The new Covenant menu wasn't really necessary since all bonfires right next to them are warpable. - An unneeded graphical error is in the room where big hat Logan sits in the dukes archives. It's pitch black. If you had me mistaken I'd assume that was the abyss. There are a few well deserved changes like, offering a set amount to covenants and popping a certain amount of souls/humanity. And of course, dedicated servers (Although p2p increases the longevity of the game). The rest was just unneeded attachments from their newer installments. All i want is PTDE back on the steam store. Do that and i will change this review. #BringbackPTDE If i find any more to add I will later I'm really tired right now.