As far as I´m concerned the best FROM game just got even better.
There are few changes which I don´t see as improvements (enemy placement in Iron Keep, few of the newly added petrified statues, Majula being too bright, one enemy type with visibly unfinished running animations previously not obvious due to placement, new placement of dull ember is good for upping early build diversity but I think it´s a bit
too easy to acquire now), but majority of changes are cool.
There are way too many enemy placements to list, but in general my favourite changes include more of the tougher enemies placed early (who however don´t hinder main progress and as such encourage returning to them later), more lore related inclusions (syan knights guarding bone dusts, dragon disciples not being necessarily hostile etc.) and more invading phantoms who serve as minibosses and have AIs quite á la those in DLC areas.
Besides the enemy reshuffle, the two most notable additions are increased utility of torches and newly placed helpful NPC summons.
When it comes to torches, dark areas are now more plentiful (but not to the point of overkill), lighting all or some sconces in certain areas may lead to surprises and there are now non-hostile hollows who drop loot and can only be seen via their shadows revealed by light. There´s also one area where enemy count may seem like overkill until player finds out that torchlight scares most of the opposition away (and thus also make one of the boss fights easier).
As for the new helpful summons, along with new invasions these first and foremost make the experience more lively and provide some aspects otherwise only available via online play. Whereas previously most of the summons were only there to help with the bosses (bar few exceptions, including DLC "challenge" areas), the additional ones mostly open opportunities to use them as help when going through the levels.
Each also come with personal quirks - one tends to observe environments via binoculars when out of fight, another heals player and gestures when one is out of range and one even urges player to a certain environmental interaction which makes one boss fight easier.
The effect is livelier game and difficulty even more malleable than it was before, at least as far as offline experience is concerned.
The other improvements include an invader who can invade pretty much everywhere, estus upgrades requiring more exploration, keys to DLC areas being scattered through the gameworld (which effectively makes 2, or at least 1, of them quite well hidden secrets), the amount of life protection rings being limited to 2 per playthrough and having increased repair costs and some small touches like "looking up" being occasionally rewarded or a certain item obtained in a DLC area having an effect in the main game.
When it comes to online changes, the upped summon limit increases the possibilities how to tailor difficulty to one´s preferences, can lead to a variety of fun situations and can occasionally increase the challenge too. The general effect is potentially even livelier experience than before.
Pools of blood showing multiple player deaths (up to 5 I think) at once is a fantastic little feature often leading to hilarious displays.
And yeah, visuals are mostly better as well, though I would call these mostly minor and not really the main selling point of the package. Lighting is better, there´s some more atmospheric color toning and improvements to particles, including glow when using healing items or absorbing souls.
It also perhaps bear pointing out that with the exceptions of the newly added random invader the DLC areas remained the same, likely because the devs were already fully satisfied with these (as was I).
All in all, this is a fantastic package for newcomers featuring the biggest and meatiest Souls game to date and a very good value proposal for those who only bought the base game and not the DLCs.
Personally I think that while most of the improvements are nice the upgrade price for owners of vanilla + DLCs is a bit too steep for its own good, around 10$ would feel more appropriate to me.
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As a side note, I hope that manufactured memes like durability "issue" or "willy-nilly" enemy placement won´t discourage potential newcomers from checking out the game
.
Out of all Souls(like) titles this one comes with most breadth, RPG depth and replayability and should not be missed by any action RPG afficionados.
