The good
Bosses stages
Boss stages existed since demon souls and the subsequent games but in Dark souls 3 you can truly see a boss stages reach its full potential. They are not only visually different in the different second stage but they also have striking change their tactic, acting very aggressively and in some cases more passively. I would have chosen 'The nameless king' as an example but his attacks at the beginning where mostly from the drake consequently I chose Pontiff Sulyvahn. His combos in the first stage can be unpredictable at times, but once you manage to get him to the second stage, he earns wings and duplicates himself. The combos we were dealing with before now changes to a more predictable move set which means your approach to the boss changes with him as you act more aggressively.
Weapon skills and range weapons.
Dark souls 3 introduces us to the weapons skills which can only be used if you double hand it. Now this requires you to ditch the shield for a more aggressive play style. The downside to it the lack of defense due to the shield being sheathed. The L2 attacks which vary on different weapons can completely decimate an enemies' stamina while leaving the open to attacks and other can boost sorceries/faith strength.
Another notable improvement is with the bows. Short and composite bow allow you to rapidly engulf an enemy with arrows, though it doesn't do as much as a normal bow would, it is still an effective tool players could you to cause damage from a distance and a nice substitute for sorceries and miracles.
Magic now uses fp and dual Estus
Magic in Dark souls and Dark souls 2 required you to equip multiple spell to use it more than a couple of times. Now with an mp bar you can, you can fire away along as you have an ashen Estus flask to restore the mp. The best part about this is you can divide the amount of Estus you carry. If you have a magic/pyro/faith build you will have to sacrifice a couple of Estus flask for some ashen Estus making some areas and boss fight a little tricky. This is where Dark souls feels really fleshed out when compared to Bloodborne. There is only one way to play bloodborne and that to be aggressive all the time whereas Dark souls allow you to mix thing a little with the way you play.
The bad
PVP gank squad
Introduced in Dark souls 2 as the way of blue covenant. It allowed you to get other people as back up if you are invaded. I have invaded and have been invaded, there is a certain thrill of chasing down a person and engaging them in a 1v1 duel. Way of the blue completely ruins this aspect of the game as it always ends up with me having to duel with 2-3 players which can be tough. I understand what Fromsoft what were trying to achieve but it has tarnished the invading aspect of the game.
The support should summon players as ghost, they can't hit the invader but can disrupt him by throwing items that stop healing or maybe giving the host a buff and then he can just sit down and see how the fight pans out.
Lore inconsistencies
Demon souls and Dark souls take on storytelling are some of the best thing I come across in gaming. For it to be successful everything in the game world had to be design in a way so it would make sense to the player, such as the item location and descriptions, layout of the environment, NPC dialogues and boss placement. Getting those wrong or doing it bad job could really disoriented the lore and make things a little inconsistent.
Dark souls 2 is where Fromsoft started taking a few liberties with the lore. Dark souls 3 does a good job with the story but there are moments where the lore doesn't quite make sense. One such example is after you fight the stray demon on top of the old wolf Farron bonfire and its soul gives you Havel's ring. Now, why would a stray demon's soul give you Havel's ring when they were originally worn by his followers in the original dark souls. Wouldn't it make more sense if it was gained from a corpse rather that a demon souls. Other examples are Archdragon peak a random NPC enemy gave me Ricard rapier and there is another one right above him that gives me Havel's weapons and shield.
One that really pissed me off was after fighting the nameless king, you realize who he was and that he was the one that train Ornstein. From the game, we know Ornstein in dark souls was an illusion in the Arno Londo fight and after finding his armor after the nameless king fight, am I suppose to assume that he unceremoniously died fighting the mentor. If that's the case it's pretty disappointing we don’t get to see the captain of Gwyn's knight in his full form.
DLC will truly give a definite end to the story
Although Miyazaki said Dark souls 3 will be the last game in the series. The game still has a lifeline with its DLC and still continue some of the missing elements of the story. Similar to the Witcher 3 DLC it will release in the fall of 2016 and early 2017 and a third one with an unknown date. Fromsoft doesn’t play around when it comes with their DLC, in fact, their DLC for Dark souls 2 saved the story entirely while also providing some of the most challenging bosses in the series.
My disappointment lies with some unanswered question in the story. Such as why the stable church from Londor want you to usurp the fire at the end of the game and what are its implications on the world afterward. Another question I had was about the former queen of Lotric who seem likely to be Gwynevere. What happened to the queen, she can't just disappear for the second time and what about the statue of primordial serpent Kaathe with angels wing, what did he say to the queen's daughter that made her into a heretic. Another person that we have next to no lore about is Ocelotte and why the queen left after she was born. Too many questions left unanswered.
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About that PVP gank squad:
I think they have done a wonderful job with it. Red players need to assess whether they want to invade or not. You have to know its a perilous task, not something to be taken lightly. You have to consider that there are lots of people that LOATHE invasions but still need online.
You talk like invasions are duels. THEY'RE NOT. Its pure survival of the fittest, with reds abusing estus and all. You dont want to duel, you want to chase down and murder the host. With that in mind, can you really say anything about the blue sentinels?
Plus, in road of sacrifices you get invaded like crazy, you get regularly 2+ reds simultaneously. Do they take turns battling the host?
Do they show any semblance of battle etiquette? No. They gang up on the host like little b***es, so i say HAIL THE BLUE SENTINELS.
The lore is really where I'm with you. Time has always been a little fuzzy in these games, but the reemergence of characters and locations from BOTH games really muddied the lore, in my opinion, especially because DS2 made it pretty clear that Drangleic was a civilization built upon the ruins of Lordran...meaning the characters of DS1 should be LONG gone by the time we enter 3's timeline.