Bramis Castle, the way is clear to the king’s castle, which seems to be sinking into lava. It really does seem to be the last area, or at least the penultimate one. Once again, everything is on offer here to make life difficult for the player. Lots of ambushes and nested enemies who watch out for each other. If you swerve too far, you’ll either end up in a trap, in the abyss or in the next enemy.
A really difficult and challenging area, especially because the camera work is absolutely not made for the area. In the narrow corridors, it hangs too often behind banners, walls or shows your feet during a duel. Speaking of duels, there are fewer and fewer of them here. Most of the duels are accompanied by adds. That’s a shame, I like big, tough opponents that you have to deal with. It doesn’t always have to be a boss, but this way I can do some melee combat again.
But if that wasn’t difficult enough, I find it very confusing here. Sometimes I run round in circles because I’ve overlooked some ladder or umbral door. In Dark Souls, the focus was on combat, I liked that. This one has become more of a Tom Raider.
The architecture is great, they’ve put a lot of effort into the castle again, even if the lava part gets a bit out of hand.
This is the first area where I hear myself constantly asking… Are we nearly there?
