>>11424
Now on to the level design, the level design has been dumbed down severely, what do I mean? The game has A VERY CLEAR progression to it with some areas blatantly being locked out for the player. So, due to this DaS2's bullshit "star" pattern of level design is back, but this time the star is a bit crooked and has a few nook and crannies to it here and there, but there's no real inter-connectivity between the levels anymore. I've seen all sorts of analysis on why this happened, and the ones I agree with the most is that fucking casuals who hate exploring and backtracking is what killed the interconnected level design of DaS 1.

So instead of an interconnected world laden with shortcuts along with hubs that have well thought out functionalities to their detours are long gone now. Long gone is that eerie feel you get when you notice that the environment around you is getting progressively darker, foggy or hellish. These have now been replaced by isolated cities and settlements that barely look like they belong in the same continent and sometimes even world and a shitty warp menu. Now don't misunderstand me, the levels look really gorgeous at times but the exploration is just so linear now due to how isolated the world segments are. More over the world no longer feels like it could exist or have some functionality, it instead feels very gamelike.

One could argue that DaS2 and 3 have an emphasis on designing levels for a video game instead of one giant level and then have that be the world if that makes any sense to you. Which causes a lot of misery in my heart to be honest.

As an example, it's not like in DaS where if you're bold and stupid enough as a newbie you could explore the catacombs and die horribly while getting some powerful jacked up loot. It's not like in DaS where you can skip the Taurus Demon by going through New Londo to the Valley of the Drakes, straight to Dark Root Basin and then straight to the rest of the game without even fighting him, or cheesing him with upgraded gear from Andre at the Undead Parish or Sorceries or Pyromancy from Laurentius and Griggs. Moreover, long gone is the ability to tackle the bosses in any order you want because of this. In some DaS runs I decide to kill Quelaag first by cheesing her with toxic and then using her souls to upgrade pyromancy or weaponry. The exploration and exploitation of the map's design has been killed and reduced to nothing more but nooks and crannies and trick jumps.

This makes for a very limiting experience, however a much more casual and hand holding one. Similarly a lot more attention was put in place to not let players cheese bosses with ranged weaponry. Granted the Hellkite SORT OF had this by making it expensive to do it without a very upgraded bow, but the point still stands. This can be argued as a good thing however, since I'm not gonna lie in some runs of DaS I have been a faggot and cheesed Capra with Dung Pies I collected from skipping Taurus to get early access to better Pyromancies.