This review contains spoilers
There was a point maybe 40 hours in when I was tiring of advancing through the game, where exploration was starting to feel like a rote exercise of content that seemed sort of copy/pasted around the map. You see a type of thing, you know what's going to be there and roughly what to expect. Even beelining the main quest seemed really daunting because I doubted I would be able to advance quickly enough without having to grind levels on the side, which would require doing what I was already growing weary of. I was standing in eastern part of Limgrave, looking at my recently almost completely explored map of nearby areas, daunted by the task of wandering east, and staring down the barrel of god-knows-how-much lie beyond the recently conquered Stormveil Castle.
The turning point came when I got the ability to respec, and started looking into builds that could carry me through the end of the game. Ironically, trying to find a way to expedite my progress in the game I was starting to get sick of playing resulted in me actually loving the game and spending much more time with it than I otherwise would have.
An aspect of modern gaming that I don't often see brought up is the way that an active internet connection affects design. These "Souls" games or whatever you want to call them are, by design, made with the assumption of being actively connected to the internet. They know that they can purposefully leave things left unsaid or make quest progression absurdly obtuse and hide extremely useful items and equipment in the most unseeming or backwards places because they know that people playing these games look this stuff up. Sure it's easy to imagine some superman who comes across everything naturally, exploring every nook of the Lands Between with a beautiful moleskin for note-taking on their lap, but most people are going to for whatever reason look one thing up, see the detail for another thing that would be almost impossible to come across in a desired manner organically, and understand that they're not losing out on anything at all by reading a wiki for something so minor.
In that way I felt like I was actually playing the game as intended. Seeing what I was missing in order to make a build that could allow me to play in a way I felt rewarding turned the game into goal-oriented exploring which was in no way less challenging or less rewarding than coming upon it naturally. Once I had made my desired build I just kept looking up equipment that could improve it further down the line, and acquiring that so I would have it when my level was high enough. In the process of doing that I would uncover new and interesting areas that I would explore organically just as I had at the start of the game.
The ability to respec in the game combined with starting out as the Wretch like I had, was that unlike the previous Fromsoft game I had played (DS:R) it means that not only can I change up how I play the game whenever I want, it also means that acquiring items is always potentially relevant to future builds and expanding ways you can enjoy the game. NG+ also gets a new lease in that sense. That detail makes exploration much more worth the while.
Looking forward to the DLC, putting the game down until then.
The turning point came when I got the ability to respec, and started looking into builds that could carry me through the end of the game. Ironically, trying to find a way to expedite my progress in the game I was starting to get sick of playing resulted in me actually loving the game and spending much more time with it than I otherwise would have.
An aspect of modern gaming that I don't often see brought up is the way that an active internet connection affects design. These "Souls" games or whatever you want to call them are, by design, made with the assumption of being actively connected to the internet. They know that they can purposefully leave things left unsaid or make quest progression absurdly obtuse and hide extremely useful items and equipment in the most unseeming or backwards places because they know that people playing these games look this stuff up. Sure it's easy to imagine some superman who comes across everything naturally, exploring every nook of the Lands Between with a beautiful moleskin for note-taking on their lap, but most people are going to for whatever reason look one thing up, see the detail for another thing that would be almost impossible to come across in a desired manner organically, and understand that they're not losing out on anything at all by reading a wiki for something so minor.
In that way I felt like I was actually playing the game as intended. Seeing what I was missing in order to make a build that could allow me to play in a way I felt rewarding turned the game into goal-oriented exploring which was in no way less challenging or less rewarding than coming upon it naturally. Once I had made my desired build I just kept looking up equipment that could improve it further down the line, and acquiring that so I would have it when my level was high enough. In the process of doing that I would uncover new and interesting areas that I would explore organically just as I had at the start of the game.
The ability to respec in the game combined with starting out as the Wretch like I had, was that unlike the previous Fromsoft game I had played (DS:R) it means that not only can I change up how I play the game whenever I want, it also means that acquiring items is always potentially relevant to future builds and expanding ways you can enjoy the game. NG+ also gets a new lease in that sense. That detail makes exploration much more worth the while.
Looking forward to the DLC, putting the game down until then.