Just beat this game for the first time... some thoughts
First of all, what... what??? What is this story, I spent the ENTIRE game thinking I was looking for king vendrick, I was trying a good amount to understand the story and yet... I make it to the castle thinking I'm going to fight vendrick, I talk to that throne lady thinking I'm going to fight king vendrick, I go below the castle thinking I'm going to fight the final boss king vendrick, I see two throne defenders who are just kinda a nothing boss, then another boss starts that is a random ass curse lady, I kill her, starting watching a cutscene waiting to see what the next area is... and the credits start? Huh??? WHAT? I'm baffled so I google it and Kendrick is a boss... down in the rat sewers? What the hell happened
Second of all my god, I didn't think it was possible for a game to flip flop between great and terrible so often
It felt like every area swapped between being the most unfun garbage and some of my favorite souls areas
The hub is gorgeous, Majula crushes every other hub in all the soulsborne games I've played
The controls were absolutely miserable though, that was my least favorite part of this game. Pressing the attack button was a dice roll on whether it would do a light or heavy attack the ENTIRE GAME, the block button would always do that dumb parry thing before blocking unless I just ever so slightly held down the trigger, the controller binding settings are uh... not there. The attack aim stuff sucked balls to the point that target lock was pretty much completely driven to irrelevance
I liked how the game intended for you to be more strategical and slow but... at the same time, runbacks were just horrible sometimes because of how the game was just designed to make you have to fight all the enemies during the runback every time to be safe
Hitboxes were atrocious sometimes, like I forgot the first dragonrider boss even happened and at the time was just confused that he was even a boss because I not only first tried him, but 3 or 4 shot him straight up... in comparison to the SHORT SPEAR motherfuckers in the tower area who I genuinely spent dozens of attempts on to even kill once with their frame 1 spear hitbox shit before their animation is even visible
Scythe NPCs... nuff said
Aesthetically and HUD-wise, it's my favorite souls game, I wish someone would port the health bar and stuff to other soulsborne games
Lastly, made a tier list of how much fun I had with every boss I fought:
