A solid Souls game, but it's definitely missing a lot of what made the next entry in the series so iconic -- the story is fairly simple (and the game has lore dumps to make sure you understand everything), the bosses are mostly complete jokes, the levels are not interconnected, and are generally simpler than Dark Souls' levels (still way better than DSII SotFS). The poison swamp is the worst that FromSoft have ever made, to my knowledge (haven't played Elden Ring, though).

Overall, it's a good game, but it is nothing special. We should be thankful that the series was able to evolve past this title.