I was about to post something similar. There are others who share the sentiment, but it's pretty surprising how little many of the Souls fan appreciate the series' qualities. I get the impression many Souls fans would be happy if the game was a bland, grey, empty room to conduct laggy PvP in. In fact that's what Dark Souls 2 is sometimes.
I don't agree that Dark Souls 2 nor 3 outright suck, but to even suggest they're on-par with the previous two games is inane. Demon's & Dark Souls are strewn with rich environmental detail, considered enemy encounters, crunchy, satisfying (though albeit not that deep) combat. The defining feature to me is the way these games seamlessly merge gameplay & lore. Like checkpoints aren't just an unrelated mechanic that has nothing to do with the world. They're directly acknowledged by the game and related to the lore. The manner to which the worlds in DeS & DS1 are written and told is something that takes full advantage of the medium. I can't imagine how you could possibly replicate that style in a film. Dark Soul 1 in particular has a poignant theme of death & decline. Every fire burns itself away. Funny that a game about how every fire fades would get two DIRECT sequels.
Enter Dark Souls 2. To be fair to Dark Souls 2, it had a precipitous development. The director was changed over halfway through, leaving the new guy with just over a year to finish the game. With that in mind, it's a miracle DS2 even works barring some hitbox jank. But the content on offer is just horridly uninteresting. Levels are half-finished messes lacking any sort of thoughtful enemy placement, or the level is brimming with ambush after ambush. No in-between. Bosses take several steps back. Almost all of them are big dudes in armour with giant weapons with even larger hitboxes. People complain about "gimmick" bosses in DeS & DS1, but there are several more conventional bosses laden with creativity. Gaping Dragon, Sif, Quelaag, King Allant. And to top it off, many of the gimmick bosses are high-points of the whole franchise, like Old Monk and Maiden Astraea. 90% of bosses in DS2 are "hurr durr, hit roll button at right time." Then there's indications that perhaps the team behind Dark Souls 2 just wasn't particularly competent at what they where doing. Abandoning estus for life gems and adding the adaptability stat are stupid decisions regardless of how little time the devs had. Both times I've played DS2 I missed when the environments felt like real places. Where it felt like I was exploring places with real history and character like the previous two games.
I know not why people feel the need to defend Dark Souls 2, other than they find identity in being contrarian. I don't want to dismiss the 2 to 3-years of work FromSoft put into the game, but it's an entirely different team than its predecessors. The most it shares with its prequel is the name.
Dark Souls 3 fairs a little better, but is so devoid of creativity. It strips out much of the aspirations and ambitions of Dark Souls to deliver something formulaic. In terms of in the moment gameplay it's better than DS2, but... fuck. It's fine. It's even good at times. Perfectly acceptable, but it feels so safe. This is where I noticed the divide between people who want to experience the magic of these dangerous but fascinating worlds, and the people who play these games to dunk hundreds of hours into shallow, laggy, restrictive PVP when they should really just go play a fighting game. I wonder where the fun is in watching someone teleport to backstab you from a contiguous room. To each their own I guess.
You hit the nail on the head by mentioning it eschews from emotional punches in favour of making everything GRAND & EPIC. Other than the ending, I can't remember a moment in DS3 where I contemplated the implications for more than 2-seconds.
TL;DR I want to fellate Hidetaki Miyazaki. Praise the Sun. Check out the difference between the Japanese & Western box art
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