Good Level Design

What are some games with good level design

Hardmode: justify your answer without using buzzwords like "flow", "feel", etc

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>inb4 you first

Undead Burg is a nicely interconnected layout and lots of cool shit to find, without being hard to navigate.

Oh yeah also Thief.
I probably don't have to explain why.

this.
thief has the best level design i can think of right now.
except for thieves' guild of course.
fuck thieves' guild.

Are you fucking shitting me?
Undeadburg was fucking terrible
>lol here a city
>but it's just a straight road that doesn't make any sense with people having bed room on the literally roofs and shit.
>Also let's make small chapel the highest point of city with elevator to the some shithole
After boletaria which actually felt like a castle city, this shit was just pathetic.

Unironically Dark Souls 2
Shulva+Dragon's Sanctum are the best area in the entire series

I don't include setting as part of level design honestly. A realistic setting is usually garbage to play in.

provide map

Thief was designed to be realistic
Hence all the kitchens and shitters you find in that game.

That "shithole" is the ruined cathedral around the firelink shrine, the most holy place for humans and access point to the kiln.
It would only make sense to connect that to another church.
In fact it's been probably one big construct at some point.

shamelessly bumping this thread like a little fag

>cathedral
It literally one big room without roof with two small rooms on side. And nothing implied that big room ever had roof by the way. So calling it cathedral is retarded.
And no, it's not holy place for humans, most of humans don't even know this shit exist.
>In fact it's been probably one big construct at some point.
Undeadburg was implied to be recent settlment

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i think the first dark souls generally have very good level design, at least until you reach the last ones like lost izalith.

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>And no, it's not holy place for humans, most of humans don't even know this shit exist.

Yeah except firekeepers who make it their entire lifes purpose to look over the flames. And everybody who knows about firekeepers knows as well. Which is virtually everybody. Besides the cramped graveyard right behind the church ruins imply that people probably wanted to be buried there.

The ruins themself are pretty massive. There is a giant roof with the birds nest on it, a tower, a ceremony hall (the room with frampt).
The thing is just broken. The original building was reached from the elevator to the gallery that leads down to new londo. The ruin walls are all pretty much connected.

>Undeadburg was implied to be recent settlment
Doesn't really matter when we are talking about firelink shrine.

Not Dark Souls that's for sure
>DUDE SHORTCUTS LMAO XD

>abstract winding corridors
>good

>The original building was reached from the elevator to the gallery that leads down to new londo. The ruin walls are all pretty much connected.

boy im fuckin tired.

What I'm trying to say is, if you go by the ruined walls, trying to reconstruct the building that probably was there before everything went to shit, you'd likely end up with a pretty big church.

>i think the first dark souls generally have very good level design
It didn't
Unironically keep in the forest of fallen giants was better designed than anything in first das.
And nothing came even close to the des and bloodborne

The best level design in games are in puzzle game like the talos principle because of using elements of multiple individual puzzles to complete completely separate puzzles
Alternatively it's in titles with metroidvania exploration where an initially restricting world becomes joined up by then end because of the players capabilities as opposed to the world changing.

>thief
>abstract
>i only ever saw The Sword and that just from screenshots on Sup Forums

Other than maybe central yharnam bloodborne's levels were mediocre.

Old Yharnam and Forest were good

nah
>cathedral ward
>old yharnam
>forbidden woods
>hunters nightmare
>research hall
>fishing hamlet

I personally think that this is main difference between bloodborne and "amazing" how Sup Forums loves calls it das 3 level design.
I fucking hate forbidden woods, but level never stopped me from replaying game, just run past everything. Das3 level design is so bad and tedious, that I usually drop game on the wall when want to replay.

Old Yharnam was fine but I find it a tedious bore on subsequent playthroughs. Forest was good I agree if not linear.
Shit I forgot about the DLC levels. Hunter's Nightmare was par for the course but research hall and fishing hamlet were good. Other than AoTA From's DLCs usually have the best levels for their titles.

farron keep and cathedral of the deep always keeps me from replaying das 3, so fucking tedious