A excellent time of year to discuss Dark Souls! (No sarcasm.)
What I like about it?
- The lore, how it's told through a minimalist approach that leaves plenty of room for educated speculation.
- The characters. They're all great and amazingly voiced. I was genuinely invested in what was happening with most of them and the fates of many really pulled my heart strings, maybe more than in any other game.
- The game's slow, methodical pace. Quite a breath of fresh air in comparison to everything else.
- Subtlety. This isn't a game of explosions, building sized monsters and bombastic Hollywood music score and praise the Sun for that!
I'll take the liberty of adding what I DON'T like: getting jumped by JP douchebags that King Crimson my ass every time. Dude standing in front me, not even strafing and half a second later I'm eating a backstab. WTF netcode?! >:[
IMHO PvP is great in theory but in practice it allows for some really stupid things. Hopefully the reports about DSII nerfing backstabs will make PvP more about trading blows than "2 dudes continuously circling each other waiting for the other to take a swing".
Personally, the best thing they could make for DSII multiplayer is include the ability to lock specific regions from netplay.
Also yeah, attacking a defenseless, blind, moribund chick takes some topnotch scumbaggery.
Won't say the same about the Mayor of Peaceful Land with Kind Inhabitants. :P