>>29399660>DS1 was generally an improvement in a gameplay and worldbuilding sense.I did not say otherwise. In fact, I think every game has made major improvements in one way or another.
DS1 improved the kombat and had a bigass well made interconnected world that's a rarity in 3d games. It also greatly improved the summon system.
DS2 wasn't interconnected but was about as nonlinear as a Souls game could get, you didn't even have to beat the 4 lords to beat the game. There was also the new estus system, teleporting from the get-go, omnirolling, a better smithing system, and a ton of other small changes that improved gameplay immensely. Admittedly those steps forward came with a few steps back, but I can deal with janky animations for the sake of not waiting half an hour for a friend to get on the same node when I'm trying to co-op.
DS3 has a character creator almost on par with BB's and a healthy mix of good gameplay mechanics from the previous games (like DS2's omnirolling but with DS1's roll attack weapon aiming) in a world that I absolutely cannot care about. I think part of the reason behind that is DS3's linearity, in DeS, DS1, and DS2 you generally have to do a few things at the start of the game but once you get those things out of the way you can do just about whatever you want. DS3 doesn't give you a real choice of where to go until the swamp and even then you have to do the CotD before you can go to Irithyll so the choice is already kind of made for you. Even if you kill the dancer early the untended graves are your only subsequent option because you can't enter the Archives until you've killed 3 LoCs.
