Okay, so.
I've gone through all the following areas, with bosses killed:
Forest of Fallen Giants
Heide's Tower of Flame
Cathedral of Blue
No Man's Wharf
Lost Bastille (first area that engaged me on the same level that Dark Souls did)
Belfry Luna
Huntsman's Copse
Completed up to boss:
Sinner's Rise
I feel I need to further contextualize my earlier comments about the game.
It's clear that I'm enjoying the game on a certain level. I am losing track of time and playing, playing, playing. And it's not solely because I have this inner competitive need to beat the game.
I am digging the lore, the atmosphere and some of the more puzzly aspects like tricking the Undead Jailer to kick the barrel down the stairs and blow up the wall for easy access to some items and the blacksmith)can walk up on debris to access areas and so forth.
I love the NPCs, their conversations, the knowledge they drop and their general designs. Spoon was right about the smith's daughter-really nice, attractive character design. I also think the leveling NPC is pretty nicely designed too. From Software has such great art direction for this series. I also love the whole aspect of not knowing who to trust. It's well preserved from previous entries. I also like that eventually most of the key item NPCs end up back in the hub town. I like that my conversations with them, if I exhaust dialogue options, changes the landscape of the game's environments in this fashion.
I also am a really big fan of the intuitive storytelling elements of this game, and this series. I like that you will learn the more about this world as you dive deeper into it. Rushing through and missing out on the lore and atmosphere really takes away from the overall experience.
I am not keen on the enemies not respawning after you've died too many times in a particular zone. Although as I understand it, there's a way to reset the zone. I just haven't found it yet and am in no big hurry to do so anyway.
Weapons and armor-I can't stand the fact that Im nearly 30 hours into the game and I am still using the Heide Knight's Sword. I just converted to a Greatsword+3 and built up enough Stamina to move somewhat effectively with it. I am tempted to use some of my boss souls, but those pimp items you can trade for seem really nice. I already bought the Pursuer's sword and the Dragonrider's SHield. Sitting on the rest for now.
I hate that things like the Dull Ember and the depetrifying item are so far away from the places that you need them. The game is already so huge, and if feels like From Software was too cautious about letting you get on with your gamebreaking builds early on. Probably to hamstring the PvP aspects and make sure there was a more level playing field early on. Since I only play offline (fuck forced PvP), it's not an issue fo rme. I just want the pimpass items.
The Dull Ember in Iron Keep-I am nowhere near this place and dammit, I want to enchant my weapons. So annoying.
Some of the enemies in this game are BS. The guys guarding the Undead Purgatory are ridiculous. They're super fast with almost no recovery time to take advantage of. I hate that kind of stuff. I COULD try to parry but it seems to me that it's not really working as well as it did in previous games and that's just too risky.
This game is more like Demon's Souls in terms of its balance: Zones are sometimes frustratingly laid out and enemies tend to come in spammy hordes and never hit each other when they're flailing away, and the boss fights are more creative and engaging.
Overall, I have to recant a little bit on my comments. The game is engaging me. It's just that this has some good and bad. It's like this game should have been Dark Souls and Drk Souls shold have been Dark Souls II.
