>>23622384Open world inherently fucks with the formula they tried to go for, so yes its a valid critique.
They wanted to make dark souls but slapped open world on top of it, forgetting that open world games work because there's actually points of interest throughout the world that isn't just
>go here and kill a bunch of shit mindlesslythey work because those open fields actually have items of value that you use, as opposed to ER where its entirely optional and 99% of players never even craft as single item.
They wanted to make an open world game, but every single enemy type is just the same generic mindless undead we've been killing in every DS game, despite the lore in ER being that these are factions filled with intelligent and somewhat coherent people. Which makes them being stupid mindless and silent undead directly counter to what the story is. And this further exacerbates the issue of the OW because it just makes it feel like a giant empty slog.
OW games work because there's variety and different locations.
Ironically DS2 and all the other DS games had more world variety than ER.
In DS2 alone, the shrine of amana and gutter is a far different area than the rivers underneath. Every main section of ER is just a castle, a castle in the sky, a castle underground, a castle in the snow, a castle in the lava. It being an OW game makes this even worse, because you spend all this time exploring and its all the same shit.
Meanwhile in DS2 you have a floating lava castle, which made no sense but its something. You had haunted woods, you had an underground water shrine, you had flying dragon islands. So much more variety despite the game not even being half as large.
