Love the look and as a big souls fan I was looking forward to this. It starts out pretty good. Has a decent story and a great look. But, the combat is just not quite there for a souls game. It wants to be. But, just doesn't cut it. It's fairly easy throught the first 3 areas or so. Then the difficult all of a sudden ramps. The problem is, the combat just isn't up to par with where it should be. And, in order to increase the difficulty they just throw in lots of enemies in tight spaces in lieu of quality encounters with better enemies. I'm about half way through and ultimately my initial impressions have been brought to the reality that this game just isn't that good. With a bunch of tweaking to the combat and a better implementation of the encounters if could be good.
I had little experience playing thse games back when they were new. However, I had always heard good things about the original. Having played it several years ago, it is impressive how it really was the original survival horror game. I love the Lovecraftian atmosphere of the first one and while the controls leave a lot to be desired, I enjoyed it up to the end. Although, I did get stuck at the very end due to a missing item. And so are adventure games of old. Good thing for YouTube as I didn't have a save before where I would be able to aquire the item. About a year later I tried the second one. A much different game overall. I'm not really sure what the devs were thinking on this one as there is a ton of combat and not much ammo. Not to mention the goofy overall atmosphere, I do not recommend the second game as it really misses the atmosphere of the first one. The third has a western ghost story theme which just doesn't have the same feel as the first game. But, at least they realized this is an adventure game first and foremost with some combat sprinkled in for tension. Final verdict, get this collection & play the first. If you feel the need for some more after the first one I highly recommend you save yourself a lot of frustration and skip the second and try the thrid.
