Locations (Dark Souls)

My own list for underrated would be something like:

5. Sunken Valley - Very beautiful, with strong stealth and grappling hook gameplay, and surprising visual variety and connectivity with other areas.

4. No-Man's Wharf - Atmospheric. Ganks are punishing when rushing through but fair and rewarding when patient and clever. Strong storytelling through art, gameplay, and inference.

3. New Londo Ruins - Great lore, super atmospheric, and strong level design. Love the Darkwraiths, while the ghosts are interesting if annoying at times. Best lord soul boss despite being the only one absent from intro.

2. The Gutter - Best usage of the darkness/low visibility mechanic in series. Very layered level design that isn't too precarious but just enough to build tension, and its extremely gratifying to witness your progression by lighting more and more torches.

1. Undead Settlement - Still has some of the better layout in the series, lots of enemy types with encounters that reward the observant player, two strong minibosses, a lot of new NPCs, and great visual variety despite initial impressions.

While for overrated it would be:

5. Inner Ward - Just a bit. Great level but could never understand why so many see it as the best area in DeS.

4. Forsaken Castle Cainhurst - Visuals are amazing, sure, but story and gameplay are good. Just good. I mean, pretty linear design with as much as three different rooms just being overloaded with ghost ladies.

3. Anor Londo - Exceptional visuals and story, but gameplay ranges between some of the best in DS1, and some of the most annoying and unimaginative enemy placement and level design in the game.

2. Drangleic Castle - Walking up to it is great, but the visuals never reach that level again. Gameplay is quite decent but that's all. Did not live up to the hype.

1. Cathedral Ward - Looks way too similar to Central Yharnam. The art direction doesn't do the best job of selling what its story is supposed to be and thus doesn't do a good enough job to distinguish it; it just feels like more Yharnam. Enemies are pretty strong and varied, but level design is less so. While it has multiple paths of progression, each of those paths is narrow with little to no interconnectivity with or layering over or under the other paths, limiting the sense of exploration. One of those is outright BS with the need to do the usual Souls-style, ultra-janky platforming in the HC Workshop, and is probably the worst example of it in the series next to the Flamelurker shortcut.

What is/are, in your opinion, the most underappreciated location(s) in the Dark Souls franchise? Please share.

The Undead Settlement:

One of the things I like most about DS3 is the way that it handled indirect storytelling, environmental storytelling in particular. That is, I genuinely think it did better than any other Soulsborne game, and in many ways, the Undead Settlement is emblematic of that. Releasing the dogs on the hollows; the ritualized burning of them with the cathedral evangelist; the caged hollows; hollow manservants carrying their butchered remains; and that isn't even all of it. There are also quite a few NPCs you meet here, especially Siegward. It all adds a beautiful sense of atmosphere to quite a large area with a surprising amount of variety in its aesthetic design, from ramshackle houses to sewers to a white tower to a flowery path that leads to a colosseum-like boss arena with a lower layer that is a hollow graveyard.

Another thing is the level design, which is among the best in the whole series. Seriously, I'm still impressed how all the various routes fit together, the sheer amount of layers in several sections, multiple shortcuts, the environmental hazard that is the arrow-shooting giant which was very well handled in my opinion, considering you can go to him first and befriend him, not to mention that you can choose one of two routes to go through the area near the beginning, within which there are also multiple paths to choose. It does have a slight bonfire issue, but the two that are too close to each other cover about 5% of the area in the beginning so it doesn't bother me much. The beneath the bridge bonfire might also be a bit redundant but I can also understand why they placed it there.

The enemy variety and placement is also pleasantly varied and well-designed, as it has the fodder peasants, tougher but fair evangelists and manservants, the bushwhacking slaves, and two good mini-bosses with the demon and boreal outrider night. The boss is slightly disappointing though I don't think it's outright bad, and you can't argue against the fact that it fits the area both lore-wise and visually.

Wow. This turned out be way beefier an explanation than planned. I know this area usually has a mixed, if marginally positive, reception. While each to their own, of course, I personally couldn't disagree more. It isn't my favorite, not even in DS3, but I love it and it's certainly up there.

Honorable mentions are a few of the other early DS3 areas, the High Wall of Lothric and Cathedral of the Deep, and also the Gutter and No-Man's Wharf from DS2 (great atmosphere and level design, as they used the darkness mechanic really well with the addition of torches; certainly better than the Tomb of the Dipshits in DS1).