Playing through Dark Souls Remastered right now, nearing the end. I originally played through Dark Souls 3 and then Bloodborne, and with the remaster out, I thought I'd give this a spin since I enjoyed the other two.
This isn't necessarily a thread to shit on Dark Souls 1, but by god, this has aged poorly. The level design is VERY poor after Anor Londo and is by no means complimented by the stiff controls of the character. The level design is further hampered when you take damage from a two feet fall. Moreover, the level design is misleading and in no way as clear as the following games. I spent nearly 45 minutes in the Duke Archives trying to find my way, and the fact that you have videos online with tens of thousands of views on how to reach a bonfire or next location is truly telling of how poor the level design is.
As for combat, it's not all bad. It can be somewhat fun if it plays in your favour and you near the end with stronger weapons, but half the time I feel as though I've been crippled tremendously. Let's use Seath the Scaleless for instance. The boss room is rather large, but so is the boss as he fills the majority of the room. Now, try to move around this boss who fills the majority of the room and also dodge his attacks which fill the majority of the room. It's hard to do so when player movement is so damn stiff. I really don't want to mention the part of Dark Souls where, upon dying to a curse, you are permanently at half health until you cure yourself with a purging stone, that which costs souls (you just lost these in a boss room).
This may seem like a rant thread, and maybe it is. But I feel like this game is put on a pedestal, when in fact it really is flawed and has aged poorly compared to its successive games. I still enjoyed this game, but man, this was the worst experience in the Souls series so far, and I'm put off from playing Dark Souls 2 now. :(
EDIT: Oh yeah, worst of all: the stopping to sip some orange juice and getting pinwheeled the fuck out of enemies.. -_-
TL;DR:
This is how I feel:
"I wouldn't say the level design is poor, but I wasn't blown away either even as a huge fan of the series, it was certainly above average though. Compared to other modern games, it looks masterclass because of just how brainless most games were back then, and generally still are from the mainstream. Biggest problem is the game straight up sucks after Anor Londo and it feels worse to play in general, especially with that archaic 4 way movement.
