More thoughts and PvP/mechanical analysis.
The lore, story and NPC storylines are DS1 tier. It feels like a genuine representation of DS1's far future, although how much time has actually passed since the Chosen Undead's adventure is not addressed. The item descriptions and character dialogue, as expected give further insight into the world without being too direct. I'm very happy with how these aspects were handled.
The world/map itself, is coherent and partially nonlinear. Spoilers, but here's a map I drew from memory after two playthroughs.
PvP wise, there have been some changes. Poise works differently now, it seems you only have poise while blocking and during some frames of attacking animations, otherwise your character has 0 poise regardless of what equipment they have. Larger weapons seem to have partial hyper armour/poise bonuses while attacking, making it possible to avoid being stunlocked by quicker weapons if you time your greataxe swings right. Fast weapons still have a general advantage however. I think this could be helped by simply having heavy weapons deal more damage since right now, fast weapons seem to outdamage them significantly. The Longsword does about 2.5 times the damage of a Zweihander over an equal amount of time on a 40/40 character, for example. Against other players, weapon skills seem to be slightly helpful or incredibly effective with little middle ground.
As for magic, I don't know anything yet as I've only fought other melee builds. I did try a crossbow in one PvP fight, but it was only good for one surprise shot before landing hits with it became impossible. Black firebombs are more useful than crossbows if you plan on attacking players from a distance. Throwing knives and poison knives are much better than the DS1 versions, and can be thrown rapidly however you can only hold 40 of each now.
Edit---------
Phantom range is still present in PvP though it is not as bad as in Dark Souls 2. Some fights I had seemed to not suffer from phantom range hits at all however, so it is probably only a real problem with subpar internet connections or long distances.
Some lighter weapons (Partizan, longsword...) seem to have good poise partway through their weapon skill moves. The partizan has a pretty good spin move that can catch people mid-roll and potentially lead into a combo although the tracking on it is a little weird. The longsword has a move to disrupt blocking and an upward slash that grants poise but is easily sidestepped.
Fishing for backstabs, and landing backstabs at all, seems harder to do. I've never tried doing it but so far I have not been backstabbed once in PvP after having around 80 fights. It looks like most people in the game are not actively trying to go for backstabs anyway. Maybe the fishing days are over?
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A few dozen PvP fights later, I can confirm that the claymore is no longer one of the top-level PvP weapons like it was in Souls 1. The estoc is still very, very good as is the longsword. Greatswords are actually fairly hard to use against good players since they lack the speed of a straight sword and don't have that much of a damage advantage in exchange for the lower speed, although at 40/40 a refined claymore has the potential to ruin someone's day.
There are a good amount of weapons, usually boss weapons, with good gimmick weapon arts but some seem to rely on the special moves too much. Some weapon arts like the estoc's shield splitter, have bad tracking or are otherwise not viable and need to be buffed. I'm hoping the DLC will introduce more kinds of weapon arts for unique weapons and tweak some of the less useful ones, or change the distribution a bit so some less common weapons see more use.
The lore, story and NPC storylines are DS1 tier. It feels like a genuine representation of DS1's far future, although how much time has actually passed since the Chosen Undead's adventure is not addressed. The item descriptions and character dialogue, as expected give further insight into the world without being too direct. I'm very happy with how these aspects were handled.
The world/map itself, is coherent and partially nonlinear. Spoilers, but here's a map I drew from memory after two playthroughs.
![[+]](images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Spoiler![[Image: 6w620DO.png]](http://i.imgur.com/6w620DO.png)
PvP wise, there have been some changes. Poise works differently now, it seems you only have poise while blocking and during some frames of attacking animations, otherwise your character has 0 poise regardless of what equipment they have. Larger weapons seem to have partial hyper armour/poise bonuses while attacking, making it possible to avoid being stunlocked by quicker weapons if you time your greataxe swings right. Fast weapons still have a general advantage however. I think this could be helped by simply having heavy weapons deal more damage since right now, fast weapons seem to outdamage them significantly. The Longsword does about 2.5 times the damage of a Zweihander over an equal amount of time on a 40/40 character, for example. Against other players, weapon skills seem to be slightly helpful or incredibly effective with little middle ground.
As for magic, I don't know anything yet as I've only fought other melee builds. I did try a crossbow in one PvP fight, but it was only good for one surprise shot before landing hits with it became impossible. Black firebombs are more useful than crossbows if you plan on attacking players from a distance. Throwing knives and poison knives are much better than the DS1 versions, and can be thrown rapidly however you can only hold 40 of each now.
Edit---------
Phantom range is still present in PvP though it is not as bad as in Dark Souls 2. Some fights I had seemed to not suffer from phantom range hits at all however, so it is probably only a real problem with subpar internet connections or long distances.
Some lighter weapons (Partizan, longsword...) seem to have good poise partway through their weapon skill moves. The partizan has a pretty good spin move that can catch people mid-roll and potentially lead into a combo although the tracking on it is a little weird. The longsword has a move to disrupt blocking and an upward slash that grants poise but is easily sidestepped.
Fishing for backstabs, and landing backstabs at all, seems harder to do. I've never tried doing it but so far I have not been backstabbed once in PvP after having around 80 fights. It looks like most people in the game are not actively trying to go for backstabs anyway. Maybe the fishing days are over?
-----
A few dozen PvP fights later, I can confirm that the claymore is no longer one of the top-level PvP weapons like it was in Souls 1. The estoc is still very, very good as is the longsword. Greatswords are actually fairly hard to use against good players since they lack the speed of a straight sword and don't have that much of a damage advantage in exchange for the lower speed, although at 40/40 a refined claymore has the potential to ruin someone's day.
There are a good amount of weapons, usually boss weapons, with good gimmick weapon arts but some seem to rely on the special moves too much. Some weapon arts like the estoc's shield splitter, have bad tracking or are otherwise not viable and need to be buffed. I'm hoping the DLC will introduce more kinds of weapon arts for unique weapons and tweak some of the less useful ones, or change the distribution a bit so some less common weapons see more use.
![[Image: Jq9oaQ6l.png]](http://i.imgur.com/Jq9oaQ6l.png)