greetings. so, I finally watched Joseph Anderson's videos on Dark Souls. I have to admit, a lot of the issues he discussed often get overlooked by fans, and I'm somewhat guilty of that too. I mostly agree with his point of view, with two major exceptions:
1) in my opinion, recycling bosses as regular enemies is NOT fine. it's bullshit when other games do it, and it's bullshit when Dark Souls does it. it doesn't make you feel stronger, it just devalues the weight of the original encounter.
2) I don't think that Dark Souls story is absent, nonsensical, or lacks a solid base. there are gaps, sometimes big gaps in its story and lore, but once you collect enough pieces of the puzzle, putting them together is trivial.
sadly, the things he talked about in the videos don't really explain what happened to Ross when he played this game. in his critique he never touched on anything even remotely related to what Ross had a problem with. or maybe he did, but we don't know for sure because Ross gave up too quickly.