The controls are poorly designed, too many actions are linked to too few buttons, like for example you have to press the circle button for both rolling and jumping, you end up jumping when you want to roll, and rolling when you want to jump.
The targeting system isn't good either, when you lock on to an enemy the camera stays focused on them and you can't move it, sometimes your whole view would get blocked behind trees and you can no longer see anything since you can't move the camera. You also have to be very close to an enemy to lock on, so you can't keep an empty space between you and the enemy to see what they're doing.
The way you walk on ledges, cliffs or other thin paths is cheap, no specific method to traverse them was ever designed, meaning you have to walk so carefully or you will fall off and die, even while you're fighting an enemy.
There is no map either, which makes you run around in circles for hours, and worse is the game gives you no sense of direction, making you even more lost.
As for the actual combat, I've heard about how strategic it's supposed to be, but you use the same strategy for every enemy, hit and run, or circle around them and wait for an opening to attack. This became boring and repetitive after a while. As for the poweful enemies, I don't understand how giving them attacks that were stronger and faster than yours and high hp makes the game any more challenging rather than tedious and frustrating.
As for the tutorials, the devs often seemed too lazy to explain fundemental gameplay techniques, like for example teaching you how to properly parry, and this was praised as in "Dark Souls doesn't hold the player's hand like other games".
Any other game would have been panned for these issues, but Dark Souls is somehow acclaimed for them. The game really is difficult, but it's difficult for all the wrong reasons.
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