So finished this, been playing for a while but tried to stay away from too many spoilers, checked some wiki stuff cause I hate some things in Souls(like NPC quests, always some stupid shit with these). Insanely good game, although I'll say it's by far the easiest Souls, assuming you don't restrict yourself. You get way more flasks than usual I feel like(I very very rarely ran out, only the first few hours if you don't know where the seeds/tears are and then in some of the longer dungeons later in the game), you can explore pretty far right away so you can farm high souls or get good gear early on and most importantly spirit ashes are broken shit. I guess it isn't too different than people using summons constantly on bosses but ashes are quite often even stronger than players and they don't require waiting and stuff.
I'll be rolling a new char for NG+ and this time playing without ashes.
My clear char was actually the 3rd char I played, I made my usual dagger char to start with but after like 5-6hours I just rerolled out of it cause I hated daggers in this, they still have their usual weaknesses(shit range, shit dmg on status immune mobs, shit stagger) but the strengths are barely even an advantage with how easy it is to make greases now or switch status on weapons with ashes of war, plus powerstance on other stronger weapons actually apply status just as fast. The mounted combat also doesn't help the reach issues.
Then I rolled my 2nd usual build, collossal sword build. Was actually pretty good, played with War Cry/Barbarian Cry at first, then switched to Ruins Greatsword, then switched to Redmane Flame ash and that one's broken shit. That said, got kinda bored of it and I rerolled about halfway through(after clearing everything outside Leyndell).
Eventually rolled a faith caster with focus on fire spells(Catch Flame, Sling Flame/Black Flame, Dragonfire, then switched to giant spells once I got them). Was pretty fun, although obviously the places with heavy fire resistant enemies weren't so great but I just switched to lightning spear for these as needed, wasn't that much though, most enemies are just resistant to fire but still get fucked pretty good with buffs, and there's only a handful of actually immune to fire stuff.
