2.5/5 ★ – Chunderclap's review of Dark Souls: Remastered.

Good: The interconnectivity of the world at large was really satisfying to piece together and recognize, and made for satisfying conclusions to zones when linking back to firelink. Compared to the rest of the games, the direction and plot felt better established and more compelling than any other. The weapon variety was really cool, and the upgrade progression, especially capped off with a boss weapon ascension, was really satisfying and rewarding. The zone reveals were incredible, as always, and were incredibly exciting ways to begin levels and zones. The average boss design was pretty good, inoffensive and satisfying to overcome, and although few stand out, Quelaag was my favorite boss. Bad: The level design was incredibly mediocre, with most areas being too linear and short, and lacking the exploratory feel that later fromsoft games give me. When the level design strayed from mediocre, it fell into absolute despair. Namely, the dukes archives and the crystal cave being disappointments, with the latter being a nonsensical, rage inducing, awfully paced and woefully unrewarding, platforming walk in a game with horrible camera and player controls. It felt like the lack of fast travel was a miserable way to begin the game, and served only to artificially inflate the game time numbers. Once fast travel is unlocked, gameplay improves drastically. The enemy design and placement was abysmal, and the purest example of artificial difficulty, with an overwhelming abuse of ranged enemies being enough to break ones spirit. To top that off, enemies such as the skeleton dogs, crystal archers, dukes archive mages, and blighttown poison dart enemies, seemed to ruin already awful levels by capitalizing on the players disadvantaged position of being the only combatant to deal with wall collisions. Moments such as dukes archives, where the enemy placement puts you in the crosshairs of 3+ ranged enemies. The only possible safe area is by hugging pillars, but suddenly your attacks strike the pillar and fail to connect on the enemy. All in all, terrible enemy placement marred already horrible level design. While the average boss was inoffensive, ds1 does have some of the worst boss fights in the series, such as Gwyn, Bed of Chaos, and the Four Kings. These bosses are awful for many reasons, but Gwyn may be the most egregious shortcoming. To begin, he is completely antithetical to the combat system laid out throughout the game. The game is paced slowly, with big lumbering attacks, large punish windows, and fair feeling movesets. Instead, Gwyn is uncharacteristically aggressive, with literally no heal windows, unless you space perfectly and begin healing mid attack. His hitboxes are by far the worst I have encountered, with his stab tracking, reach and duration being the definition of artificial difficulty. His instant, no windup attack is also unlike anything I have seen in any of the three souls games, and all of this is going on in a boring, anticlimatic arena littered with tripping hazards, with some minecraft piano soundtrack in the background, lacking any sort of excitement, sense of an imminent end, grandiose setting, etc. Overall (5/10): Dark Souls Remastered was a painful slog of a game, through poorly designed levels, littered with horrible enemy design and placement. With some of the worst bosses in fromsoft history, scattered amidst an inoffensive, if unremarkable cast of bosses. While the upgrade and progression system shined, and the fromsoft tradition of grandiose zone reveals delivered wonderfully, so much of the game ruined what was a perfectly satisfying gameplay loop, which fortunately will go on to be improved upon by later entries.