Early Impressions

At 13 hours in I'm getting a fair idea of what the new Souls is all about. The first thing that struck me is that they aren't dishing out the plot/lore as much as I'd been led to believe prior to release. The tutorial is more comprehensive and they explain Covenants a bit more (with 2 available from the get-go) but otherwise it's as obtuse as ever. I wasn't against the idea of it being a bit more forthcoming with the scene-setting/narrative but I still like the sense of mystery. From multiple playthoughs of DS1 and tons of lore videos I've learned that paying attention to the NPCs and item descriptions is where it's at but at this stage it's all a bit of a haze as to what's going on.

The new mechanics are also less-than-clear to me but again that's not necessarily a bad thing. Agility and Adaptability seem quite nuanced and obviously to understand the depth of their influence probably requires more than one playthrough. I definitely feel ADP has improved blocking speed and maybe roll speed but to hard to tell as my character is constantly evolving. The armour scaling with VIT is a great idea. Whilst Endurance no longer holds a double benefit of boosting Stamina and Equip load it allows Vitality to play a more important role than just a measure of how much I can carry. Stamina is important enough to be the only benefit of END the way HP is to Vigour. The seeming separation of the the new guard break mechanic from Stamina is something I'm undecided on. It only really happened to me early on before I had good armour/poise so I can't really make a call on that yet.

The uniquely claustrophobic atmosphere of the Souls games which to me is one of it's biggest achievements is certainly present in Dark Souls 2. The areas have been varied so far with the labyrinthine battlements of the Forest of Fallen Giants displaying the best level design but the mood has been spot-on throughout.