Dark Souls 3 - The good, the bad, and the lazy

[My name is Fiction]

Wait, they removed poise? wtf it was the most unique feature its gameplay has
I have only played a bit but I consider really bad design choice to give you a boss in the first minutes of the game. It is just a lazy tutorial and dissuades new players. I suppose their purpose was (besides being lazy with the tutorial) to fill that marketing punchline of prepare to die.

You say it was lazy without like.. um.. explaining how it was any different from 1 and 2.
In terms of marketing it was 2 that focused on the "prepare to die" thing.
Instead off the linear method to clearing the zone you can rush right past everything to the boss.
Even without the bonfire its not much of a trek back.
In 1 you had to fight enemies or they could body block you lol.
1 had a boss even sooner altho the best strategy was to skip him. A gimmick boss in a way.
2 was a departure with no end of tutorial boss just select a zone. Unless you count the hunger hippo.
3's boss has the usual weaknesses of a humanoid boss with some methods of catching those who would exclusively abuse them.
His 2nd stage is only dangerous if you stop attacking, some starter classes smash stage 2 but not 1. It was pretty neat.

In short having a boss early is a normal "souls" convention not "lazy".

They didn't remove it, there's a fully functioning Poise system built in there with armor and rings that effect it and everything.

It's just turned off.

Its interesting that the poise is calculated with some decimal. Meaning it might be operating like a % off of something else when turned on. Hopefully not your dad's old poise system.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I started with DkS1 when it came out for PC, then played DkS2 and bought a PS3 for Demon's Souls around two years ago. No question that certain things in Dark Souls were changed for the better, that's a given. Estus is a way better system than having two full stacks of 100% healing grass. Combat and control felt tighter in many ways. Level design was extremely impressive for the most part. Balance was a little better in some ways. But Demon's Souls has this atmosphere, direction and structure that wins out for me. It's much more focused and feels more polished and complete. I do agree that Dark Souls feels more like a cohesive world, and it's brilliantly put together but it's no secret that DkS1 drops off in quality after Anor Londo. Demon's Souls feels finished and deliberate right up to the ending, and I really prefer polished, focused experiences regardless of length. While it's more limited and simple it's also more potent, if that makes any sense. For example, comparing Blight Town to the Valley of Defilement is just no contest in terms of level design, theming and visual style. Fool's Idol is a far more interesting, freaky and intimidating bossfight than Pinwheel. There has never been any home base since that could even put a patch on the Nexus. Even out of the gimmicky puzzle bosses I feel that Dragon God is a lot better designed and executed than Bed of Chaos.

On that note I much prefer the art direction in DeS as well. Dark Souls has an orange/brown/green low fantasy twisted corruption kind of feeling. Demon's Souls has a blue/grey/red ethereal, misty quality. It's still low fantasy, but it's more elegant and surreal. I prefer the lore in DeS as well as an overall concept with the demonic colorless fog and the fall of King Allant. And nothing has topped the ending of Demon's Souls, with the Old One surfacing from the strange, misty ocean to lie in the shallows, with white birds encircling the impossibly huge swords impaled through its hide hundreds of feet in the sky.

At the end of the day Demon's Souls just resonates with me a lot more than Dark Souls. Don't get me wrong, I still have well over 1000 hours in DkS1 but Demon's is the more compelling and rich experience for me.

I agree with a lot of these points, and it's interesting to hear them being said by someone who actually didn't start with Demon's. It is simply one of those rare gems of a game, where even with some excessive design choices, it still did so much else so well.