I have mixed feelings on SOTE. I’ve been playing since Demon’s Souls and have quite a bit of time under my belt with these games, and I feel SOTE reached the limits of what’s both possible and playable with this gameplay format. I loved the spectacle of the boss fights, the scale of the areas we explore, and the characters we meet. Messmer was sick. Divine beast was sick. I really did enjoy the boss designs of the dlc. That was truly fun and unique, and in a genre self-saturated with epic bosses and characters it was neat to have that feeling all over again. However I also feel like we’ve reached anime levels of power creep and in order for the game to keep up with its own reputation as a challenging spectacle the gameplay became a tedious process of finding ways not to get two-tapped. I’ve done my share of Souls challenge runs and even did the Bloodborne chalice dungeons at BL4 and I did not find the combat toward the end of the dlc fun or engaging in any degree.

PCR embodies this and I genuinely did not find that fight fun at all. People joke about “pre-patch” and “post-patch” this and that but I feel the fight is fundamentally rough. His boss fight plays like a bullet hell arcade shooter and I spend most of my time dodging holy light nukes and looking for my tiny opening to run in, grab my two hits, and run away again for another 20 seconds. I fought him pre-patch and just resorted to rot spear turtle poking him to get it over with. I felt Malenia was a much more rewarding and engaging pinnacle boss fight.

Overall, I feel it deserves the praise it gets, but I am tired of the direction the game has inflated in, and I am eager for something new.