This is just straight up not true. Dark Souls 1 is not a linear, bos🐠s rush game with no exploration. It’s maybe linear compared to Elden Ring, b♍ut saying it’s linear is at best disingenuous and worst an outright lie.

The author also is not complaining that it isn’t an open world game, they’re (rightfully) complaining that it gives you the illusion of being open world without actually being that way. The invisible walls are annoying and they do lead to you wasting time. The genre has conditioned players to explore every single part of a level to find hidden weapons, armor, collectibles, bosses, anything and BMW punishes the player for this by VERY often leading you somewhere that absolutely nothing exists, only for you to run💎 into an invisible wall. This isn’t hard to comprehend. Just because you don’t mind the problem doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.

From very early on in BMW you’re conditioned to believe you can’t fall off cliffs to your death, unt🔯il suddenly you can, but also only sometimes. This is just straight🅘 up bad game design and something they can improve upon in the future. Why is it so controversial to say that?

I actually think it’s unfair to even compare the game to Dark Souls at all specifically because it DOES give people the impression that they’ll be able to fall over cliffs or that there’s a single world with looping shortcuts. It’s more of a hybrid God of War 4 and Nioh than it is any of the actual Souls gamesღ.