I played through ER for the first time back in March and didn’t like the game at all, but just recently I decided to replay it - and my opinion about the game hasn’t changed since then. Even a little bit.
It’s difficult to convey the impression when you enter the game for the first time, you appear in a beautiful open world (especially if you’ve previously played Souls games, where there are only dungeons, swamps, castle corridors), and now you’re running around the world, swinging, and then at one point you come to the first boss. It was at that moment that I realized that something was wrong with the bosses. The whole problem with most bosses in the game is that they are dishonest to the player. Absolutely. You can practice attacks for a long time, but at one moment the boss will hold his hand a little before striking, and you won’t have time to react - and now you’re back at the fire.
A little higher I wrote about an interesting open world, and so - by the middle of the game you already forget about this open world, because almost all the actions take place in dungeons, swamps, and corridors of castles, but if in souls such locations were really well done, then here they are slightly above average (and the developers didn’t seem to care about some locks)
There are a lot of weapons in the game, and this could be called a plus, if not for one BUT - half of these weapons (as well as spells) are absolutely useless at any stage of the game, and any boss is cleared in a few minutes with two rivers of blood, which is why some two-handed weapons (with damage like a toothpick) become simply unnecessary. Okay, we're done with the weapons.
The plot is all in the spirit of souls, some era, some that have gone out, something to save and take the throne... In general, if you don’t watch three-hour analyzes on YouTube, you’ll hardly understand anything .
Speaking of advantages, one cannot fail to note the combat, which migrated from DS (with some innovations, in the form of a jump) - it is still just as good (but the camera, like in DS, does not know how to behave in narrow rooms and in battles with big bosses...)