Now, don't get me wrong. I love the game, I mean really loving it. It's a been a very long time since I was addicted and obsessed about a game(excluding Demon's Souls). But that there are a couple of annoying features that are somewhat disappointing to me...

- No inventory/item stash at the start of the game. It's such a weird design choice to not include in the beginning of the game. I mean sure you can buy the "bottomless pit" in the depths area which let's you do that but that was 11 hours into the game before I properly managed my inventory. Navigating the cluttered menu with all the useless weapons/items felt counter-intuitive. Demon's Souls avoided that by making it accessible in the start.

- There's no clear way to know how much souls you need to level up. I think From Soft. tried to eliminate grinding which is understandable but it's maddening when you have so much souls and can't properly decide whether if you want to upgrade your weapons/armor or your level.

- No Maiden in Black..... :P jk jk.

These are just minor annoyances in an otherwise near-perfect game(at least for me). What are yours?

• No display of how many souls you need to upgrade a stat.
• Poor targeting system.
• Occasionally poor frame rate.

@FluxWaveZ said:

• No display of how many souls you need to upgrade a stat.
• Poor targeting system.

This but also the shoddy frame rate.

Quite a few bugs and glitches still, but besides that I'm loving it.

No direction. Although the game is base on exploration, I would love to have some direction

How bad I suck.

@Management said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

• No display of how many souls you need to upgrade a stat.
• Poor targeting system.

This but also the shoddy frame rate.

That's a feature, adds to the atmosphere.

• Poor targeting system.
• Yeah, no Maiden in Black. I miss her!
• Character creator doesn't really give you what you want.
• The guy at the Firelink shrine

There are little niggles that I've noticed.

Being forced to ''bag'' items that I might not want. It's easy to accrue several set of crappy swords, armour and shields through not being able to put stuff down after rifling through a corpse. This forces me to have quiet moments where I toss out a mountain of crap and lament the fact that the Black Knights I kill don't drop shiny stuff.

Inconsistent damage. Take the dragon on the bridge; some times I can take a gout of flame, and at other times it's instadeath. I don't understand it, and it makes the area around the bridge hard to predict.

I'm starting to get a little dizzy flanking enemies too. I call it the ''death spin'', where you're circling an enemy constantly waiting for him to strike. At times it feels like I've been staring at a washing machine for half an hour.

All minor stuff really. Speaks volumes about the quality of the game, and the community it's spawned.

It has brought my productivity and social life to a grinding halt by being the best game I ever played.

Oh yeah, and the framerate.

Inconsistent damage. Take the dragon on the bridge; some times I can take a gout of flame, and at other times it's instadeath. I don't understand it, and it makes the area around the bridge hard to predict.

@psylah said:

@Management said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

• No display of how many souls you need to upgrade a stat.
• Poor targeting system.

This but also the shoddy frame rate.

That's a feature, adds to the atmosphere.

How does poor frame rate add to the atmosphere?

Although they're not game breaking, there are couple of sequences that makes the frame rate look like it's running on a power point presentaion. e.g the bridge in the ghost lake, couple of sequences in blightown.

Tomb of the Giants...

• The camera. It has to be one of the worst designed camera's in the history of videogames. More than half of my deaths are caused by it going wrong.
• The dragon on the bridge attacks at random. It's complete luck if you get across that bridge to the stairs on the right on the first go.
• Jumping is clunky and scary to use.
• Invisible walls stopping me from shooting something with an arrow.
• Complete lack of direction. I understand that From Software want us to explore, but this is kinda ridiculous.
• They offer a pretty substantial character creation tool, only to find out that I'm going to be spending most of the game as a burnt husk.
• Serious framerate issues during certain parts of the game, which is unforgivable for a game such as this.
• Completely uninteresting plot. If the plot was better, it may give players more motivation to push on.
• Not being able to pause the game. I know, it's all part of the experience & completely intentional. But sometimes I need to go to the bathroom, or have to go answer the door and am in a situation where it is too dangerous to rush to the "quit game" button.

Don't get me wrong, I think this game is fantastic. But it has an awful lot of shitty things in it that I realise some people find endearing. I personally, do not.

Bad frame rate

Targetting system is still shitty

The Fog ring

Nerfed weapon scaling

The bosses are too easy

Strong magic shield is too powerful and lasts too long

Lost Izalith & Tomb of Giants seem intentionally cheap, rather than just hard.

Takes too much time to gain the ability to craft monster & various other weapon types

Uses P2P and as a result, Demon's Souls online is wayyyyyy better.

@metalsnakezero said:

Yeah, no Maiden in Black. I miss her!

@Packie said:

- No Maiden in Black..... :P jk jk.

I remember when I was looking for youtube videos of Demons Souls, I came across a guy who had some videos of the Maiden in Black... specifically her feet. The guy's name on youtube was TheSoleKeeper, and had a channel FILLED with clips of video game girls' feet.

I'm sure he's devastated.

edit: now with link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y19hGYbVyN8

On the xbox 360, the block and quick attacks are on the bumper buttons when it would be much more useful to have them on the triggers.

@psylah said:

@metalsnakezero said:

Yeah, no Maiden in Black. I miss her!

@Packie said:

- No Maiden in Black..... :P jk jk.

I remember when I was looking for youtube videos of Demons Souls, I came across a guy who had some videos of the Maiden in Black... specifically her feet. The guy's name on youtube was TheSoleMaster, and had a channel FILLED with clips of video game girls' feet.

I'm sure he's devastated.

I am devastated... actually!

That I don't own it. :/

Shitty framerate, weird/stiff animations on the red dragon "annoys the hell out of me", no way to dump stuff early and I hate not knowing how many souls I'm missing for a level.
 
That said, I fucking love this game, the only one in a long time I've been this much into.

It's been said before, but you can't see how many souls you need to level up. Also, the multiplayer is kind of broken at a basic level (P2P connections, too many matchmaking servers makes it seem unpopulated sometimes) and at a conceptual level, namely how there's really no negatives to being dead other than a vaguely reduced drop rate and the inability to summon. That makes less people bother being human, which makes being summoned at all a real bitch unless you're at one of a few very specific locations. The only times I've been summoned were outside the gaping dragon boss, other than that not at all.

Mainly the framerate in some parts of the game. Everything else is pretty much fine.

At first my main substantial complaint was for how long it would take for me to get around. I mean for example when I've just beaten a boss battle all the way in the bleedin' Demon Ruins, and I just want to head back to the Blacksmith in Undead Parish, I'm going to have to lug all the way back up?! At first I didn't believe it and I thought I was missing a newly introduced shortcut, but no, Dark Souls demands that you trudge through at least another 20 minutes to get where you want. I understand that it's to help make the journey feel purposely long and enduring, but it's still annoying with how I've added numerous hours within the game set around me just simply travelling to and fro certain areas. 
 
I remember when I first found the Dragon Covenant, I was in awe as soon as I first hit Ashe Lake and then found the Stone Dragon. Having the realisation of just how fucking deep I am in the world, though, completely exhausted me through the thought alone.   

Framerate.

The battle against Quelaag made me realize how clunky the fights can get, there was nothing natural in running away butt naked 90% of the time and stepping in for a quick jab or two when she saw fit to do a move with enough idling. I felt really disillusioned, I think Monster Hunter handles big monsters better.

I guess the camera (or button layout) has issues since I find myself holding B with my index finger so I can fiddle with the camera when I really need to haul ass and know what's going on around me. When wouldn't you want to know what's breathing down your neck? I do it without thinking now but it's not.. fun.

Other than that.. only pet peeves that are often my own fault.

I liked the art direction better in Demon's Souls. That game had a really cohesive art style that made all the levels feel like they belonged in the same low fantasy world. In all its variety Dark Souls loses some of that I think.

The way my head aches when I'm done a Dark Souls Session. Thank god for Advil!

The completely busted multiplayer. I have never been able to invade another world and wasted 3 cracked red orbs trying to do so. Why does the item get used even when it doesn't work?

@Chop said:

The Fog ring

Nerfed weapon scaling

Uses P2P and as a result, Demon's Souls online is wayyyyyy better.

These for me as well. When I first heard about the Fog ring people were saying it was a forest only use item and I thought it was kind of lame but thankfully limited. Now that I've discovered it can be anywhere I feel like it's a ridiculously lame item. Imo it needs to have a tradeoff like reduced health or something. Also, the reduction in weapon scaling is indeed a big disappointment for me. It kind of makes every weapon upgrade less exciting when the best I can hope for seems to be B rank scaling or an upgrade to lightning weapons. I feel like even if they didn't want to go the sharp/crushing route again, they could at least offer better scaling when you take a weapon to +15.

Frame rate. Targeting system sometimes being crap, I feel like with a few minor tweaks it would be perfectly sufficient. Online system that forces me to watch tv for 20 mins before someone summons me. Not really sure what the problem is with the netplay, but they need to figure out something better. Absolutely love the game though.

Really, the only complaint I have so far is that I can't pause the game.

One of the best games this year with ease. And it manages to be so, even though:

- Poor frame rate.

- Stupid looking ragdolls (seriously, turn off collision with the player character, god damn it)

- Targeting system mess up, where e.g. my spells shoot in completely wrong direction.

Blight Town :(

That is all

The multiplayer is basically broken for me.  
The Framerate in Blight town is more dangerous than the enemies themselves.

@Packie said:

- No Maiden in Black..... :P jk jk.

Soul of the mind, key to life's ether.

Soul of the lost, withdrawn from it's vessel.

Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended.

So the world might be mended.

Art thou done? May thine strength help the world be mended.

Blight town. Fucking Blight town.

Not sure if it's been said but you CAN check how many souls you have left, once you level up (you'll see a thing on the bottom of the top left part of your screen where your available souls are at, it will say "REQ SOULS" it ONLY pops up when you go to level up and will inform you how much you will need next for the next level.

• The framerate is intermittently awful.
• Occasionally, the controls will take several seconds to respond for no apparent reason.
• The targeting system can be problematic (sometimes it doesn't switch between enemies when you flick the right stick, sometimes it doesn't lock on when it should et cetera), especially when it comes to group combat.
• The lack of teleportation between bonfires (I've heard you get that ability later, but it should've been available from the beginning) means getting around can be really tedious.
• Some enemies have easy attack patterns but copious amounts of health, which makes battling them very tiresome.
• So far, the story has been paper-thin and nothing about the world has been explained. In Demon's Souls there were people telling me the history behind different areas and characters, but in this game all I know is that there are "Lords" and that I need to ring two bells.
• Various bugs and glitches (for example, one time when I walked onto the bride with the red dragon died for no apparent reason, and one time I was, upon death, brought to the second to last bonfire I had visited rather than the last).
• Tomb of Giants is absolute bullshit until you get the lantern. Hell, I had to watch a Youtube video just to know that your were supposed to slide down those rock things. They just looked like deadly falls to me.

Fog ring, PvP with the fog ring, PvP where the lag causes seemingly random backstabs, PvP when...

I think you get it. PvP is retarded with the p2p system. It's like the scraping spear all over again.

Overall camera issues in tight quarters where the environment often blocks your view. The same with big bosses who sometimes fill the entire screen. I might as well have someone just stand in front of my TV. All you can do is block/roll and hope for the best.

Also, Infinitely re-spawning mosquitoes who take several wild swings to even get one hit. They're not hard to fight off and I learned to deal with their constant harassment, but I still hate that nothing I do will make them go away. Would be fine with it if there was an insect repellent consumable in this game. It's also lame how they keep getting caught under the floor.

Everything else, I love.

I hate that there is no PC port. I'm going crazy seeing all these Dark Souls threads here. I want to contribute to those threads!

Shitty framerate in areas really makes some of the deaths feel pretty cheap.

The only thing i hate about this game is the bad framerate, i find it crazy that from software didnt make smooth framerate a top priority considering how vital timing is in this game.

I agree that this game is so amazing that to point out its' flaws is basically simply nit picking, but there are a few things that i would prefer minor adjustments.

I agree that the system to not tell you exactly how many souls you need for your next level is annoying. You should be able to move your attributes to whatever level you wish, but if you do not have the amount of souls for that particular level it should begin to say souls required in red text or something.

I think the equipment HUD in the bottom left could have been made a bit smaller, i would like there to be a scaler for that.

Also, i still really hate the way it says "YOU RECOVERED" really huge right in the middle of the damn screen while it darkens the screen. Sometimes i am in the middle of a fight or trying to avoid a boss smashing me while I'm making an insane dash for my bloodstain...it's just really annoying. Move it to the top of the fucking screen for god's sake.

Like i said though, this is simply nit picking. I gave the game a 9.4 in my review so obviously i have only minor issues with the game considering it almost scored it perfect.

• The occasionally poor framerate.
• The incredibly reduced weapon damage scaling.
• By association with number 2, lightning weapons being completely overpowered compared to everything else melee-wise.

Other than that, I am quite enjoying myself.