Dark Souls: Picked this up sometime in January and got about half way. Really enjoyed this more that I thought I would but sadly I know I won't finish it. It isn't the difficulty of the game (which is hard but not soo hard) but more the fact they make the game a chore. Somewhere they mixed up convoluted and difficult and I just wish I could play a challenging game like this without having to have 3 tabs of guides open to know the general direction I'm going in. Not explaining what character stats do( and really poor UI all around) its a really cheap and lazy way to artificially add difficulty and not fun at all!

KoA: Reckoning: This game is enjoyable and had tons of promise but as a loot driven game with no way to show it off is pointless. And with shallow unbalanced combat, tedious uninteresting quests, and a far too open world (80% of playtime in this game consists of holding down the run button just to get to the next thing), I can't keep going. People say this game feels like a single player MMO and they are right (and not in any of the ways a MMO is good).

Syndicate- OK, I probably will finish this, because I'm already like 4 hours into to the supposed 7 hour campaign, but I'm not enjoying it. The controls, ugh. Feels sooooo.... bad, like I can never aim right where I want to. Maybe I'm so use to the CoD/Halo/BF controls, if it doesn't play like one of those I cant play it right? I was using a game pad on the PC and I had to mess with the sensitivity for an hour and turn of V-sync for it to even be playable so maybe I'm getting more problems from that, but I found the mouse and keyboard crappy to control with also. (I just played the Darkness 2 using the same set-up and it was perfectly fine) The story, well there isn't one and the DART (dude hacking) mechanics are fun, they seem far under realized. I can really see the potential in this game but I feel like It falls flat. After playing the Darkness 2 (the sequel to the game from the creators of this one), I'm would almost be excited for a Syndicate 2 made by a different studio using similar mechanics. Starbreeze seems like they have a lot of great ideas, but can never quite execute.

@Cloneslayer: Just a suggestion for Syndicate, might not help you - but I kept feeling that something was off with Syndicate, then I turned off V-sync and everything just felt so much better.

Can't speak for using a gamepad - mouse+keyboard is my weapons of choice, but I kind of recognize where you are coming from with the whole "The controls, ugh. Feels sooooo.... bad, like I can never aim right where I want to." same as what I was feeling before I turned off VSync. Shame that has an impact on things, but... you know. Hope that sorts the problem for you as well!

I don't get why anyone would need a guide to find their way in Dark Souls. Find a route, follow it, kill a boss, repeat. The only thing a guide is good for is if you want to make sure that you see the most of the game in one playthrough. I also don't get why you say that it doesn't say what character stats do when it does. Even if one of the relevant menus doesn't say "Select:Explaination", most of the relevant ones do (the one that doesn't is a dumb oversight).

I've heard people complaining about the UI before, but they didn't give any specific examples either. I can't off the top of my head think of anything I found to be wrong with it besides it looking a bit plain so could you share an example?

As for the other two games, I had a faint interest in both at one point but I'm not sure I'd play either one of them right now.

@Cloneslayer said:

Not explaining what character stats do( and really poor UI all around) its a really cheap and lazy way to artificially add difficulty and not fun at all!

I'm not sure if that was intended by the developer. I'm a huge fan of the Souls series....though you often see new players on forums creating characters with poorly allocated stats and the reason could be that they're not explained in detail in the game.

I find myself having to keep respecing in KoA just to keep the combat interesting. I think I need to just focus on the main quest and factions and force myself to ignore the side quests.

Most people would say the co-op is the bread and butter of syndicate and after dumping tons of hours into it and not even having the game for a week, i would agree.