I didn't have any personal issues with DS2 that were as major as some people have, but Christ just by comparison to the first and third games it looks bad. DS2 had a quantity over quality problem, which I didn't really think much during the playthrough until I played DS3 where pretty much every boss is cool or super inspired and unique in some way.
As someone who started with Elden Ring and worked my way through, I can see this is the transition point between the two in gameplay. DS3 is noticeably a LOT faster and to compensate for this, the stamina economy on all your actions has been increased greatly. In 1 and 2 you basically had to think about every roll and attack carefully and not get greedy, but in this game not only is spam rolling and attacking an option, but it works in a lot of scenarios. I was able to roll and attack the same amount with sub-2 digit Endurance in this game vs. my DS2 playthrough where I had 30+ END. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as the game takes this advantage this new advantage the player has and challenges it with faster, harder hitting bosses. Pontiff in particular stands out to me because he has a literal 6 hit combo that took me a while to figure out that is essentially just roll through the attack in certain directions 6 times in a row (with some timing involved).
That being said if you're going to have a game where rolling is this frequent, don't make the input queue for rolling last for a century, especially if you're going to give bosses options to punish rolling immediately out of hitstun. Like yeah, sure, I'll eat the hit because I timed the roll a split second too late. I'll learn next time. Don't really appreciate not pressing any more buttons during that hitstun and the game still making me roll into the follow-up after.
Areas are cool, weapons are cool, combat is faster, game is more DS1 than DS2, lacks a lot of the small imbalances that DS2 had like Lifegems and infinite Ring of Protection that invalidated the soul loss mechanic, it also went back to DS1-esque controls, meaning turning while sprinting isn't at such a wide angle, and you can change the direction mid-attack again! This game also had a really had a lot of "this is one of my new favorite bosses in Soulsborne" and not a lot of if any "this boss sucks and I can't wait for it to be over." It's insane how easy you can tell that not only was the original/a different team working on it but they actually had the time to polish it and properly bring their vision to fruition.
I think one of my primary thoughts in retrospect now is that Elden Ring really needed the sort of polish that this game had. I know that it's a massive game and all, but the boss variety in Elden Ring is infamously slanted towards re-using bosses, and the duo bosses were something they just forgot to program AI for, then broke the AI during a patch - AI went from oppressive and overwhelming to literally doing nothing. If the duo bosses in ER had the AI this and DS1 had it would be good. If all the bosses were as inspired as it that would be incredible. I guess what I'm saying is DS3 is basically Elden Ring but way more polished. A better game, even.
Okay time to go sit through some lore videos. Vaati save me AIEEEEEEEEEEEE
As someone who started with Elden Ring and worked my way through, I can see this is the transition point between the two in gameplay. DS3 is noticeably a LOT faster and to compensate for this, the stamina economy on all your actions has been increased greatly. In 1 and 2 you basically had to think about every roll and attack carefully and not get greedy, but in this game not only is spam rolling and attacking an option, but it works in a lot of scenarios. I was able to roll and attack the same amount with sub-2 digit Endurance in this game vs. my DS2 playthrough where I had 30+ END. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as the game takes this advantage this new advantage the player has and challenges it with faster, harder hitting bosses. Pontiff in particular stands out to me because he has a literal 6 hit combo that took me a while to figure out that is essentially just roll through the attack in certain directions 6 times in a row (with some timing involved).
That being said if you're going to have a game where rolling is this frequent, don't make the input queue for rolling last for a century, especially if you're going to give bosses options to punish rolling immediately out of hitstun. Like yeah, sure, I'll eat the hit because I timed the roll a split second too late. I'll learn next time. Don't really appreciate not pressing any more buttons during that hitstun and the game still making me roll into the follow-up after.
Areas are cool, weapons are cool, combat is faster, game is more DS1 than DS2, lacks a lot of the small imbalances that DS2 had like Lifegems and infinite Ring of Protection that invalidated the soul loss mechanic, it also went back to DS1-esque controls, meaning turning while sprinting isn't at such a wide angle, and you can change the direction mid-attack again! This game also had a really had a lot of "this is one of my new favorite bosses in Soulsborne" and not a lot of if any "this boss sucks and I can't wait for it to be over." It's insane how easy you can tell that not only was the original/a different team working on it but they actually had the time to polish it and properly bring their vision to fruition.
I think one of my primary thoughts in retrospect now is that Elden Ring really needed the sort of polish that this game had. I know that it's a massive game and all, but the boss variety in Elden Ring is infamously slanted towards re-using bosses, and the duo bosses were something they just forgot to program AI for, then broke the AI during a patch - AI went from oppressive and overwhelming to literally doing nothing. If the duo bosses in ER had the AI this and DS1 had it would be good. If all the bosses were as inspired as it that would be incredible. I guess what I'm saying is DS3 is basically Elden Ring but way more polished. A better game, even.
Okay time to go sit through some lore videos. Vaati save me AIEEEEEEEEEEEE