I gotta brag.
First (and maybe last game) that I've Platinum'ed. It took around 65 hours to do everything. The Defiled Chalice Dungeon was a real bitch, but the boss that I struggled with the most was Pthumerian Descendant. It seemed that the last few boss fights in the Chalice Dungeons were made extra hard by virtue of being in a small room with a giant creature so the camera was a big hindrance, not a fan of that.
Anyways, here my final thoughts.
Likes:
Art style, creature and world design. Other than frame rate issues (that I didn't really find bad), I think this is a fantastic looking game. From comes up with very, very detailed ark work and I think it works here really well. Really felt "next-gen" to me. I love the cloth physics of all your outfits.
The creatures are really horrific and grotesque. This is a Lovecraft-ian game I always wanted.
Love most of the combat mechanics. I thought I would stuggle without a shield, but it turned out that it wasn't a big issue.
No shitty story/terrible dialog (Bioware looking at you) to bog me down.
Dislikes/Improvements:
Online - I think this was a big step backwards. I don't like the Insight system (losing it even if a summon fails). I wish Insight was more like Humanity in the Dark Souls games where using it gave you some boosts in game, but also exposed you to invaders. The concept of ringing a bell and getting invaded is cool, it's just makes it too easy to avoid invasions. Maybe they should have added more Bell Maidens through out the game. From needs a better system for matching versus the +/- 10 levels around you. Perhaps they should just scale the Summoned/Invading players stats to match the host so more players are eligible for matchmaking.
Vials - I really hate farming vials or purchasing them. The Estus flask system was much better imo. When you get stuck on a boss and run out of vials, it sucks to have to go farm for that. Especially when in an area where monsters don't drop them.
I'm not sure there's as much variety in different classes as there was in the other games (magic user, cleric, pyromancer, etc). Everything seems geared toward close combat.
Load times - obviously. But the game could have been designed around that more effectively like allowing you to heal, levelup, respawn enemies, and warp directly from a lamp without having to go back to the Hunters Dream.
Overall really happy with it and really enjoyed it. I may attempt a level 4 "Waste of Skin" play-through (in DS1 I managed to get to the very end with a level 1 pyromancer and then stopped), but I don't think this game will have the same lasting appeal as DS1 has. I think part of it may just be fatigue with the series/style. I'd like From to reinvent the genre again.