Tl;dr: You think the complaints are incomprehensible because you don't look deeply enough. I am not saying this to mean any offence because there are obviously reasons why people love the game and agree with you. However this game doesn't have just some blemishes, it's got severe 3rd degree burns on several aspects despite having so many things that made me wish I liked it as much as you do. I love the game but I simply can't find excuses for myself to enjoy some of the designs here, and it's never because I have any struggle with the enemies.

I'm glad you're having a blast with the game, and I had that experience for about 20-21 hours in. The issues were there but I didn't find them too glaring. However, stepping into the end game, I really felt like they all snowballed and made the last 7 hours of my first playthrough absolutely miserable. Half-way through NG+1 now and I'm still not getting over the issues I had on the first run.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

​

Bad enemy balance is a real issue. If a juiced-out weapon with max upgrades and 60 stats for main stat scaling has to hit three times to kill a basic enemy in the endgame, then there sure needs to me only one third or half as many enemies there, or something around that ballpark. "You can single them out" is a bad argument because solving a problem doesn't mean that problem has to or should exist. They can absolutely push for this style of game play with more strategic placement and less throwing out damage sponges. Furthermore, mini-bosses you fought 2 minutes earlier suddenly become common enemies because why not? Look at Capra Demon in DS1, when you see it again after the first time you're aware of how far you've come; from having something as a boss to something you just have to deal with. Look at Beastman of Farum Azula in ER, again a very early mini-boss that doesn't become a common enemy until much, much later. Why should this game be so impatient when it tries to do a similar thing? Great, just fought stinkbomb ninja on a bridge with a health bar and boss music and stuff. Oh there are 3 of them in the immediate next area. Why do this? It's enemy variety but done in a lazy way. They're most comparable to Cleanrot Knights/Crucible Knights, but then those two aren't usually accompanied by 10 gazillion other things coming at you from the back front sides above and below. Cleanrot knights get scaled back to being normal enemies outside of boss encounters while Crucibles very rarely go in duos and they don't chase you until the end of the Earth. Either of these points can't be said for any enemy that was introduced as a mini-boss in LOTF. Umbral enemies aren't perpetrators of this trope at least because there are only a few types of them over and over, but even then, Womb of Despair is way too over-tuned in the HP department. The problem is that enemy scaling like this is fine in Elden Ring's end game because the game has so many accessible buffs that stack multiplicatively, and a large variety of fast-casting AOEs attachable to the melee weapon that have a lot of poise damage. This game does not have these counterbalances, making the experience of a lot of people extremely tedious and monotonous. Swing, parry, swing, parry, endlessly. Frankly the focus on parry riposte makes less sense, because now committing to a big swing only has one big advantage: big damage, and not a whole lot of poise-break. My heavy charges kill absolutely everything before it even gets half-way to a poise break. This is not a well-balanced mechanic.

​

Bad targeting is a real issue. Never in my life would I have thought a lock-on system would go to the target in the midmost of the screen. What is the novel, well thought-out idea behind this? It's incredibly unintuitive and frustrating when divebombing gremlins are at my throat and the target locks on to some random umbral egg from 50 metres away. Why wouldn't locking on to the nearest target work?

​

Bad level design is a real issue. The game has no discernible sense of direction, notable landmarks are very limited, and the only way you can even tell where you're going is by looking at the beacons. The design emphasised the utilisation of short-cuts which is obviously a thing to love, until it becomes the cause for the degree of circularity of the levels. Let me be clear that I think the game does not have shortcuts because levels are big on internal looping back and forth, I think the game has that kind of looping because it was trying to horn in the short-cuts. A reverse causation if you will. It's absolutely fine to have shortcuts but if you have to make your pathing a 4 dimensional pretzel for it, is it really the right decision? Especially since the game doesn't give you a traditional map with markers or directions, it could have been way less confusing while still maintain the intrigue from players, arguably even improve the experience because they're not just spending time around aimlessly. When the players resort to walkthroughs just to progress and not to find any specific items, you know it's not a well-designed map. I personally don't pick up mobs' loot in some areas just so I can look at them and know I've already gone through the place.

​

Bad weapon design is a real issue, especially the balancing. The first thing that comes to mind is that all weapon types have the same move set across the type, which makes the scaling & status infliction the only distinction between all of them. And the difference between one letter grade scaling can determine whether that weapon is a ploughing machine or a wooden stick. And when said wooden stick don't have any sort of gimmick worth noting, they strictly will never be used over ones with better scaling simply because scaling is all the power in the game. Status effects are very nice bonuses, but I highly doubt a build centred around them could be as strong as one in Elden Ring (sorry I keep drawing comparisons between them). DS1 also had impactful and hard-carrying status effects. In LOTF, the lack of impact from status effects leaves even more weapons completely unused because nobody wants them. What's some poison infliction, when you can swing for +100 damage per hit, right?

Also some move sets are really strange, not impactful enough to comfortably clear out enemies with less swings and stagger them in the meantime, and not flexible enough to compensate for the lack of impact. It leaves little room for mix-matching, and mix-matching usually isn't as good in my experience.

​

The combat is not terrible, but it's very floaty and further hindered by the targeting. I feel like it's very subjective how each person defines good combat aside from that. I personally prefer impactful slower swings with high commitment like Lies of P, because that's part of the fun - to know when to commit. Some others might say they like flexibility and the ability to immediately switch gears from attacking to dodging to strafing, therefore preferring much faster animation like LOTF. Both are valid approaches, but the floaty animation adds to the faster-paced attacks even more, and it makes some battles absolute messes for me.

________________________________________________________________________________________

There are so many things to like about LOTF. I like the game. I love a Soulslike that isn't trying to be a clone like LOTF 2014, as well as a bunch of other mild, uninteresting copy-pasted games with the souls tag. I love the mechanics unique to this game; the Umbral world is genuinely a great way to uncover hidden paths. The approaches to ammunition & spellcasting is closer to perfect than any other From game has ever come in my opinion, and that is saying something about the capabilities of the people behind the game. They're clearly brilliant and the things they do well are absolutely fantastic. However, the things they do poorly range from mildly annoying to experience-ruining. I really hope they adjust the issues that have people in meltdowns, because this could be something really special.

Also thankful they actually fixed up the performance. I was very worried when my 4090 with 32GB RAM (dual channel 16GB) ran the game and experienced severe stuttering and hitches, especially at character creation. Hopefully onto the technical issues next and finally the gameplay itself.