(currently in the middle of it all, more like some comments about the ongoing experience rather than a review of the total experience, that will come later, trust)

yeahyeahyeah i do guess it's a bit trite to state the impact this has had on interactive media as a whole in the decade or so since its release, but DAMN, a very, very special sort of slow-burn dungeon drudge. bringing the contiguous level structure of king's field (2 and 4 specifically), the build and playstyle variety of armored core together with a combat system that is not unlike nintendo's 3D zelda games (spoiler: it's way better than any 3d zelda game) absolutely was the key to bringing from software's long-standing uncompromising design sensibilities to the minds of (relative) normies. it didn't do anything new, but what it did do was executed with a staggering degree of cohesion. the world itself: exploring it, seeing it unravel and fold back into itself as you work your way across lodran, comes first, as it should in any sort of adventure. the dodgeroll simulation is a very, very distant 2nd to the world. no matter how mechanically sound the combat is, no matter how satisfying it may be to finally understand an encounter and execute it victoriously (or more often than not, just barely survive through it), the dungeons themself will take precedence over all, and, like king's field 2 and 4, this game is basically one contiguous, focused, dungeon. sure, it's fun to dodgeroll through the swings from enemies of all sizes, but i'm gonna want to have fun on my way to all of that, time and time again, too. (i have a hunch that, after bloodborne, all of the wizardry-loving folks were long gone, and the focus shifted from mostly dungeons to mostly dodgerolls, and i am hoping that they haven't become too lost in that dodgeroll sauce.... we'll find out for sure late this august)

it really feels like a culmination of every single thing they've learned from the 50ish games they made prior to this. say less to the player, let them figure their way through and leave the rest for them to infer, perhaps ad infinitum.

[if it turns out folks (who have probably either: not played, or not liked any of from software's games that are essentially fiendish mazes composed of like 2 repeating textures that sometimes don't even tile properly) are trying to gaslight I and others about the 2nd half: well.... that wouldn't be surprising, honestly. stranger things have happened.]

nightmare labyrinths. sprawling, focused and concise. four disparate realms of enclosed torture, each with their own take on a set of explosion tools and nasty, nasty fiends. the paragon of abstract, less-linear first person carnage. beautifully brown.

after decades of first person shooting games, many of which just blur into an indiscernible soup of drab real life murder machines, the drab fantasy realms of quake still casts the shadows in which they reside.

forever the most first person shooter. the best game id will ever make.