I HATE SELF COMMODIFICATION I HATE SELF COMMODIFICATION

What

They be calling me Raging Bolt the way I clap those thunders

^incomprehensible

Me when I see your father btw

im not reading all that

I miss more freeform fights like Bed of Chaos and that one Chariot in the long corridor in DS2. They're not ALWAYS good, but they're interesting and shake up the formula of beating up a guy with a stick

I like Elden Ring and LOVE DS3 but they're unambiguously the product of a fandom who is actively hostile to any experimentation. The most boring people in the world would have told you that walkbacks are ESSENTIAL to the formula until ER shot them in the back in the head and no one complained

Also serious opinion time: while DS2 kinda blows to play it is unmistakably the closest game to the original in the spirit of shaking up the formula and trying interesting new things with both the franchise and the medium of gaming in earnest(even if they mostly don't pan out).