Trying Dark Souls 1 after playing modern soulslikes.
I have never played DS1. I played Dark Souls 2 one year after its premiere. It was rather clunky but I enjoyed the atmosphere. Then every 1-2 years I played another soulslike. I bought Remastered on PC only last year and finished the first playthrough and NG+. Here are my thoughts.
What I liked:
COMBAT - it is a bit clunky. But it has its charm. You can finish most levels by dodging, using shield or parrying. Parry works really well and is a bit easier than in other games.
EXPLORATION - in the first half levels are fantastic and interconnected, there are hidden items in interesting spots. There are traps and typical soulslike 'surprises'.
NPCs - I liked them a bit more than in other souslkes. Most of them lacked depth and meaningful quests but they had peculiar characters. Gough, Siegward and Solaire are very memorable. Oh, and our Trusty Patches is there!
EQUIPMENT VARIETY - armors matter, as opposed to some other souslikes when it's mostly fashion. There are many viable weapons, as opposed to other souslikes. Shields are very usable.
CONSUMABLES - I finished the games practically without consumables. I love that you don't have to collect the flasks.
DIFFICULTY LEVEL - I liked the fact that the game wasn't overtuned in terms of difficulty. I felt I could progress through the levels without much grind.
COVENANTS - interesting mechanic. It made invading limited to given area (expect for Darkwraiths) but it added depth to the lore.
NO MULTI STAGE BOSS FIGHTS - I generally dislike multi-stage boss fights.
What I disliked:
CHECKPOINTS - too few checkpoints. No checkpoints before the bosses. I can sprint to the boss without a problem so it turns the experience for me into a loooong loading screen. So I wasted time not practicing boss moves. I honestly hated that, given the quality of life improvements in modern games. Level interconnectedness and shortcuts is nice, but after the first impression how clever it was all the shortcuts seemed 'long' and tedious for me.
FAST TRAVEL - fast travel is given later in the game and connects only some of the bonfires.
HUMANITY - kindling fire and using humanity for covenants adds some artificial mechanics to the game. I adds to the lore, but for me it was mostly annoying chore.
SECOND HALF OF THE GAME - there were some good ideas (e.g. new lando ghosts, Blight's wooden structures) but most of the areas seemed tedious for me. I honestly hate lava and poison lakes. Most of the time they seemed like the development process looked like this: "Put there laval/poison lake and add whatever around'.
PVP - I played on a fast cable connectin to avoid lags but got 'teleported backstabs' all the time. No idea how they switch from facing me to backstabbing me. Backstabs seem exploited a lot.
LATE GAME BOSSES - Bed of Chaos is a really bad design. I couldn't dodge aerial Kalameet's attack so I had to tank with shields. Manus was too chaotic and fast for the slow clunky movement of the hero. Also the bosses when they slam their hand on the ground and you hit the hand. And repeat. And repeat. Ceaseless Discharge was cool boss visual design but boring.
EQUIPMENT UPGRADE SYSTEM - I didn't like different types of titanite and the distributed upgrades among blacksmiths (e.g. boss weapon upgrades only in Anor - long run from bonfire to the blacksmith). Limited highest tier resources, e.g. demon titanite only sufficient for one weapon upgrade. Generally I think the game incentvizes using only one or two weapons in one playthrough.
BOSS PARRY - you can't parry bosses, except one or two.
FOG GATES - at least two times my vision was obstructed and I have fallen down the staircase or got attacked with the boss with dogs and I could not see anything because of fog.
Overall, I would prefer a shorter, tighter game like Sekiro. But it was still great as an open adventure RPG game. My subjective rating in 2023 is 7.5/10. If there were more bonfires and no lava/poison/tombs levels, it would be 9.5/10.