- I played through 2 big areas, the High Wall of Lothric and the Undead Settlement. However there was also a short tutorial area with the first boss, and Firelink Shrine. The Shrine also has Andre (or someone who closely resembled him) and the maiden to level up.
- In this demo at least, leveling could only be done in the hub.
- There are starting gifts of course. I picked a red gem to make a fire weapon, one of the more useful ones.
- A lot of DkS II changes are back. Estus flask shards return, and you can reinforce bonfires again. The more simple style of weapon upgrading also returns.
- Humanity or human effigies are gone, instead there's Embers. If you consume one, you get more health and you're visibly hot & glowing (as seen in the latest trailer). Otherwise Ember behaves like Humanity: in the demo you only get npc invaders if you're 'embered'. Otherwise not. If you beat a boss, you get ember status.
- Ash flasks are for your magic meter, but if you're not a magic user, you can choose to change them into regular flasks. I had one ash flask and 3 estus flasks, but changed that into 4 estus flasks. Works the other way around too of course.
- Covenants obviously return, and in the demo you could even discover the sunbro medal. Changing covenants is done by swapping out medals in the equipment menu. There was a covenant trophy for just picking up the medal.
- Bosses (don't remember names): tutorial area boss is an easy one-on-one affair, Artorias-lite. Second boss is the watchdog with the Smough-like armor, seen in the trailers. He has this annoying frostbite side effect which slows you down if you get close. This fight resembles Blood Starved Beast, as this guy also gets a status effect in his second phase. The third boss is the hardest: a huge living tree that has eggs all around his body you have to destroy. There are multiple phases, of which the first was the hardest. There are still regular enemies helping him and respawning in that phase, so you have to do damage asap. They're gone in the later phases, making the fight easier. This is where I chose to upgrade my weapon to fire, which helped to bring him down. Most other journalists didn't even reach this guy, so I was glad I could take him down.
- Difficulty was what you'd expect, and the classic Souls traps are there. If you see a gang of zombies, you can be pretty sure one will have that RE4-style morph
THE GOOD
- Miyazaki said in his presentation that they were going for fewer maps compared to DkS II, but that they would be more complex. This definitely checks out in The High Wall of Lothric, which feels like a more complex Undead Burg. Design-wise this was a more intricate area than the following undead settlement. High Wall has a classic DkS feel to it, especially when you've made progress in the level, and are aching for a shortcut or bonfire.
- The Undead Settlement felt ripped straight out of Bloodborne, enemy designs included. There were fat mages here that felt very similar to the ones in Demon's Souls, complete with insane laugh. They're annoying, because their dark magic (hex) orbs track you.
- Combat feels great, but I didn't mess around with the new skill system that much. I went with the classic shield + sword combo, which only had parrying. If you two hand a weapon or hold one in your left hand, you can use the weapon specific skill. For instance if you 2H a dagger, you can use the BB-esque quickstep. Combined with all the different classes, I'm sure there will be plenty of options for interesting builds this time.
THE BAD
Even though this demo only had early areas, it's all starting to feel very familiar. The High Wall of Lothric is an intricate area, but it again has a fire-breathing dragon and this is all getting a bit old. I never thought I'd say this, but here we are. I hope the later areas offer more original designs, and shy away from the classic templates seen in the other games.
THE UGLY
Framedrops. They are real and they are really ugly. Once I'd found the second boss there was an easy route to beeline to him, but doing that made the framerate drop like you wouldn't believe. Definitely reminded me of Blighttown. This was a pretty open area, but nothing too big. This is just one example, the framerate dropped all over the place during the demo. Frames also dropped whenever a zombie enemy morphed into his Ctulhu-form (these were in BB as well). These drops were a constant and general nuisance in the demo. Discussed this with a few other journalists, they experienced them as well. I'm hoping this will be fixed in the final version, but the build version was 1.01 something, so I'm guessing this is pretty much the build it will ship with (game comes out earlier in Japan). I have no idea if the framedrops happen on Xbox One as well. I was very disappointed to see this though, and I'm definitely planning on playing the pc version now.
