Not sure if this games labeled a "souls-like" but I will 100% call it just that; a souls-like with less emphasis of melee and a full throttle emphasis on guns, abilities, and carnage.
At first, I started playing this game with my brother, and while it didn't last long, I had a blast. Luckily, my friend wanted to play it with me, so I was able to play this game all the way through and give its justice... which may have hurt my opinion of the game sadly. Anyways, this games story deals with a sentient disease/sickness called The Root, which is taking over multiple realities. You are tasked to find and eradicate the root, going through many realities in doing so. Now, the comparison with dark souls is apparent. Not only is the boss fights really difficult, but they have rings/amulets that akin to Dark Souls. Same as leveling up weapons and boss weapons. Now, I've only played Dark Souls 1+2, so idk if 3 has this, but the cool thing about this game is that not only do you get boss weapons from killing bosses, but you also get mods, which are basically abilities for your guns. And you can mix and match with the weapons that aren't boss weapons which makes builds so much more fluid and customizable. Now, playing through the campaign normally with my friend, we ended up killing a good portion of the side bosses, with some being way easier than others. The problem with this game is that it used RNG for it map layouts and boss spawning, which hey, it makes the game replayable ... but to an extent. If there's a certain boss you want to fight, there's a good chance you will have to replay the same "biome" multiple times since the RNG doesn't seem to exclude bosses you already fought. So, the dlc to this game (swamp Corsus) was pretty pointless imo because we replayed that biome over 6 times and never was able to kill the Iskall Queen. Despite that dlc, the other main dlc, Subject 2923, proved to be a complete blast of a dlc. Giving some more cool lore, creatures, and of course, the final boss. It was definitely a great way to end the game. Swamp of Corsus survival was pretty mid imo, although me and my friend gave it a swing a few times with little success.
In all, this game was pretty solid, albeit frustrating. Some of these optional bosses are infuriatingly hard, but so rewarding once they were finally defeated. The main boss fights were awesome, the map layouts were procedurally generated so not the best, but there was always loot and scrap to find, and the teamwork this game enforces to kill some of these optional bosses can be quite rewarding. Definitely recommended for coop fans.
