DestroyTheCore wrote:I just finished the game.
I was generally underwhelmed by the boss fights. They were either too easy or broken due to the camera (I'm looking at you, Nameless King and Twin Princes!) The final boss was a copied-pasted version of the Twin Princes, so it was unfortunate to use the same strategy as in the previous boss fight.
Maybe it depends on your build or play style, but I think DS3 has the best bosses of the entire roster of games (from Demon's Souls to Bloodborne).
A lot of the previous games had bosses that felt lazy or pointlessly frustrating.
While the DS3 ones were never frustratingly hard, I think a lot of them were very challenging, and on some of them I really felt an incredible rush when I finally managed to beat them.
I don't think the final boss is reused from Twin Princes at all. He has five different forms which all require some knowledge of his moveset and none of them even closely reminded me of Twin Princes. The first sword form is probably the closest, but he didn't share the same constant aggression that made Lorian extra difficult, and made shields completely useless in his fight. In comparison I had my shield up most of the final boss fight.
Both fights ARE the swordy rolly dodgy counterattack kind though. But so were Pontiff and Dancer, and those two also each had their unique spin on the formula. If there's any fight that felt redundant, it must be Dragonslayer Armour
Looking at the bosses of the other games:
Demon's: Some great boss fights with a lot of creativity, and a few misses. Dragon God was a boring puzzle (but not bad, per se), and all the swamp bosses were pointless, but the rest were great.
DS1: Again, some really good and memorable bosses, but others were just stupidly difficult without being interesting. Almost like the game begged you to summon phantoms, which I ended up doing for a couple of fights, and still regret it to this day. The most awesome boss in the game is Gaping Dragon, but it's also probably the easiest, so hard does not necessarily equal good.
DS2 famously suffers from both its lack of variation, and bosses that just manage to piss you off more than give you a fun challenge, or just swarm the arena with enemies, in a game that's not really well suited for multi enemy combat. There are some good fights, but very few memorable. Ruin Sentinels alone pulls the avarage quality way way down.
Bloodborne: All the bosses are well designed and fair, but most of them are cut from the same cloth and requires the exact same strategy, which unfortunately makes them a bit less memorable.
I think DS3 overcomes all the shortcomings of the previous games, and manages to present highly unique encounters for almost every boss fight, while the typical dodg'em'up sword fights all have a unique twist to them.
I now understand the linearity complaints. Once you are done with Farron Keep and Cathedral of the Deep, exploring the other areas felt mostly linear. I also wished the areas were more varied. They did not have to reuse the same settings as in the previous games i.e a gigantic library, a poisonous swamp, a dungeon with several floors, castles with dragons, etc. It felt too much like reused ideas from previous Souls games and it was boring to see this for the fifth time in the series.
I agree on this. The world design is a huge improvement compared to Dark Souls 2, and though every setting was beautiful, it felt less unique and creative compared to Dark Souls 1, which really pulls you in deep and genuinely scares you with the feeling of where you have gone.
I think the two biggest issues with the general design of the game is, like you said, the complete rethread of everything we've now seen several times before, which takes away a lot of the "magic".
And allowing fast travel from the beginning of the game meant there would be many passages you'd never naturally have to return to, meaning you'd often lose the sense of connection between each area, and the general connectivity of it all. A lot of shortcuts are even completely redundant due to this, and it feels like it was a design choice added late in development, as a lot of the level design feels like it's ready for not needing fast travel at all. It doesn't ruin the game, but it's a little sad.
