Azuren said:
I believe Metroidvania to be a form of open world; it's just an open world side stroller.
And considering this is a 3D Metroidvania... |
...that's...not really what Metroidvania is. Metroidvania is a type of game wherein the player is initially locked in a small part of the world, and then by acquiring new items/defeating bosses/fulfilling some other kind of objective, they unlock new portions of the world to explore. Usually, there's an element of backtracking involved, where the player is teased with part of the world they cannot access yet, later given the ability to return there, and then they must move back through previously crossed terrain to reach there.
Perhaps the most important part of that whole definition is the "wherein the player is initially locked in a small part of the world." Open world games, are, well, open world. Almost the entire world is open to the player from the get go. This isn't the case in Dark Souls; especially Dark Souls 1, where the player is initially restricted to a relatively linear path through the Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and Darkroot Garden before the game begins to open up some.
