In my opinion this is one of those games that suffers from being open world more than it benefits from it. The absurd amount of crafting ingredients makes even the purple item pickups not be something I'm excited about. The vast open space and the refusal to have any way to track questlines makes content even more missable than they already were in Dark Souls. The amount of very similar catacombs and mines with the same bosses just to fill the empty space sucks.

But in terms of action, this is probably the best it has ever felt. I was also way more invested in the storyline than in any other souls game because this is a world that feels alive and able to be meaningfully changed. This is also a really pretty game, it's nice to finally see a color other than gray in a Souls game and all the designs are really cool. The spirit ashes are another way to grant you the power to adjust your own difficulty and it's much appreciated.