Hard to feel like it'd be anything under the high 80s on metacritic if it wasn't for the difficulty. If you remove difficulty and the learning curve from the equation I feel like the quality of the game is up there with some of the best from the past few years.

This is also coming from someone who wasn't really hyped for it, the game totally blew my expectations out of the water. I think it stands up to some of froms best work.

Seriously? What's with critics and their habit of giving cold shoulder to non-Fromsoft soulslike games?

Souls game are my favorite genre so when was this game was announced and released I knew it was day 1 so I didn't care or even checked the Metacritic rating. Played the game when it came out and finished it. Played the game a second time when the DLC came out and finished it. Loved every second of it. Plot 10/10, characters 10/10, graphics 8.5/10, atmosphere+lore 10/10.

So out of curiosity I checked the score and the game is sitting at 80. Wait what? This game IMO is top 10 game of this generation. The ratings is lower than horizon games which I believe is the most overrated game of this generation. I couldn't even play 30 minute of it. IMO it's even better than Elden Ring because it's linear and focused. It's on par with Sekiro and Bloodborne and those are my favorite souls games and those games are 90 or above rating.

Anyway, I think it's a travesty this game got 80 score. It probably scared most buyers from playing it because most gamers only care about ratings and nothing else. I know it's from an unknown developer and critics are skeptical to praise these type of games but this game deserves a 90 at least.

Edit: too many comments so I won't respond to every single one.

First of all, I didn't say top 10 game of all time - I said top 10 game of this generation (ps5 era). Most games this gen were remakes or sequel. At least this game was an original IP Sure the game is a copy of Bloodborne and Sekiro together but the lore and story make up for it. Plot is definitely better than most games as well. I was really interested in learning more about the world and the characters and that is what made it memorable for me compared to other games.

As far as difficulty - souls games are tough. This one is no exception. No one complained about sekiros difficulty and the difficulty curve of learning the parry system. It's also a linear game with backtracking and small levels and you're going from one section to the next. Again critics didn't care, scored it well and it won game of the year. If Sekiro was released by any other developer, it would have gotten lower score. Heck, if lies of p was released by from software, the score would have been higher.

And yes I do believe it's better than Elden Ring simply because in Elden Ring there's not much else to do but go from section to section and rune farm from early on to become OP and cheese your way through the game. Sure there are different style of play you can do such as spell-castor, strength etc but it's an open world game with nothing else to do. The game itself is empty and boring if you're just riding on torrent and exploring. And this is coming from someone who still plays the game.

Anyways, I wasn't expecting this post to blow up. Didn't think it was that serious to most people and I expected most people to agree considering this is the lies of p sub and not general gaming sub.