Man oh man. Man oh man oh man. I don't think I would have rated this a perfect score without playing DS1 first and I'm very glad I did. An absolutely beautiful second souls like experience.

I still have a lot more of this game to see and a lot more of its mindset to internalize, but it is legendary for a reason, and finally assessable to those who were intimidated by the ASCII before. It's deceptively simple to start playing, but to actually get what's special out of it, you need to learn to find the story in it's unrelentingly comprehensive simulation.

I don't know, something about this just didn't click for me the way DOOM 2016 did. I owe it another shot probably.