Hi everyone! Thank you so much for watching and sharing your opinions on the video and the DLC itself. I am humbled by the very positive feedback, but the video is not without problems, and I want to address some of them here and clarify a few things. Firstly, as many of you have pointed out, I was incorrect in the "Bob" segment - it's not inconsistent. What seems to be happening is that if Bob two-hands the sword AND does an attack AND you don't hit him with a heavy enough weapon during the first few frames of that attack - he gets hyper armor that stops you from interrupting him. It appears to be consistent, and I didn't catch it because I was confused after interrupting him several times when he WAS two-handing (thought the other conditions weren't met). As you can tell, I'm not as familiar with the PvP mechanics that are in play against NPC fights, and it's my bad. I still don't think it's good design for those fights, but that wasn't my argument there, so I am sorry for that mistake. My point against Commander Gaius' attacks still stands. During the editing, one of the clips showcasing the evidence of inconsistency for his boar back-kick-attack got cut at the start, and I didn't notice. That was quite unfortunate, and sadly I can't insert it back at this point. If you don't believe that he kicked me through the shield - I urge you to test it yourselves by trying to ONLY block his attacks for a few minutes - you will be surprised by the amount of times you'll get hit. Also, when I block his magic spear attack the first time - I know I still take damage because the shield doesn't have 100% magic negation - that's not the problem. The problem is shown in the next clip, where the shield is ignored entirely. I thought that was obvious, but maybe not to all. I should've outlined more differences between Rellana and Radahn when I was talking about similar initial reactions to them. Rellana is without a doubt a much better boss with clearer attacks, and I should've made it clearer as well. In terms of difficulty - I am not saying that I want bosses to be easier - I am saying that I want them to be less frustrating to learn. Which is why when I suggest at least lowering enemy damage output, I also say that it should be compensated with them having higher health. That will probably not be enough, but it's the simplest step in the right direction, in my opinion. And finally, to those who that tell me that the reason we search for Miquella is because there can only be one Elden Lord and so he needs to be dealt with - no it's not. Eventually that might become our concern, but before entering the DLC - we had no clue. Not only that, but the shadow lands have 0 (ZERO) impact on the base game. You can still become Elden Lord while ignoring the Shadow Lands in their entirety, and still get the same amazing endings we got before. None of them feature the return of Miquella, so I guess if you were happy with the motivation provided in the base game - that's even less of a reason to go anywhere. And even if, in the hindsight, you could imagine that the grace, or something equally abstract, guided us there to figure out what needs to be done (despite it still not changing anything) - it was communicated very poorly. At the end of the day, I, like many others, was playing through the whole DLC without any clue as to why we kill those bosses. I understand why I do that as a player - because I enjoy the gameplay - but not the character. And call it a controversial take, but I would've liked to know.
with your last point the reason the tarnished enters the shadow lands is because were guided by grace to do so. sure the tarnished doesn't know exactly why grace is guiding us, but we have followed it the whole way through the base game so why would we stop once were Elden lord, thus giving the tarnished a reason to be there. And you come to learn why grace guided us to the lands through Ansbach.
and bro realized that you dont need to do bosses solo to have fun with the game. the bosses are not designed around summons there designed to be beatable with any build, some just happen to be easier with different builds
Going by that logic, there is no reason to go to the Ringed City if you didn't play Ashes of Ariandel, and there is no reason to go to the Old Hunters cause it's just a nightmare spiritual plane and not an actual place. There are in-universe reasons of course, but if we're talking player character relevance, the whole "Miquella being potential competition" thing probably has more relevance than any prior From dlcs(we do know he was trying to create his own order similar to Ranni from item descriptions in the base game). On the topic of not knowing why you fight bosses, you won't know why you fight any boss in Bloodborne/Ds1/Ds3 outside of just self-defense and the same goes for Elden Ring. There are exceptions of course, but do you know why you had to fight the Crystal Sage? Or Curse Rotted Greatwood? Or the Old Demon King that doesn't even bother you unless you seek him out? Or the Witches of Hemwick? Or the Taurus/Capra Demon? Or the Demon Prince? Or Champion Gravetender? Or the Living Failures? Or Laurence? Or hell even Artorias and Sanctuary Guardian. Of course, a lot of these would be answered with "cause of self-defense" and that's fine.
From is a company that is very gameplay first with their games. its sad and frankly elden ring and sekiro were a drastic improvement on something that just wasn't there before. And to see the DLC go back to the barren narrative wasteland that these games found themselves trapped in, I feel like they're just at odds sometimes with giving satisfying contexts to their gargantuan projects. I get your frustration and its something i've accepted long ago when I played a very bad game called dark souls 2. it was nothing that i wanted and it failed to deliver on so many places, yet its best aspects still were good enough that i persevered through. I enjoyed powerstancing, I found ways to like the game that i disliked. Bloodborne was way cooler and until ds3 came out i had to make do with 2. And even still 2 has more cutscenes than the dlc of elden ring. Its a strange balance between fun, gameplay and story. Games are much more than art, interacting with said art is insanely gratifying but can lead to you feeling empty that there wasn't a resolution to it. But really though you really should just accept that radahn is a summon a friend boss and frankly more people should accept how fun it is to help someone clear these fights.
It feels like it could be a memory you find earlier in the game. It would give more context to the fight. That scene felt disappointing and out of place.
Honestly if that cutscene was from the perspective of radahn with his response to what miquella said it would at least have more of a point in existing
@@blackmailerhack3056that's the point right? Radahn didnt have a say. In fact, he clearly resisted Miquella at first which is why he sent Malenia to kill him
@@lobsterdog1755 we don’t see him resist Miquella. Just that he wanted to halt the stars to protect Sellia. But fighting Malenia might have been part of his vow. He may have wanted a warrior’s death and that’s why Malenia had to kill him, but it’s all so ambiguous and we can’t really say. The cutscene should have made the vow more explicit on each side
They hit me harder then mesmer did. They are harder for me to best. But I have trouble with every enemy on horse I just struggle with even basic enemies
@@bombyo3634 everyone has certain enemies that just give you hell. Compared to everything else in the dlc I felt like I had all day to dodge their attacks.
@YOGO_MUSHI I tried to fight romance at the end my controller dropped I just picked it up to see it start over right after I picked it back up. 😶🌫️😭😭😭
Yo tell me why that joke literally has the actually in tears and I actually feel like finally I understand all those comments when people are like oh my God I'm dying but it's just barely funny🙄😬
It sounds like a rework of Joseph Anderson's joke for his review of the base game where he said it's a masterpiece, but a shattered one. This one hits for both parts in terms of tying it to the game though.
@@solomongrundy1905well Joseph’s tied to the game as well because Elden ring being a shattered master piece also refers to the shattering that happened in game
@@slothorne8222 That's why I said both parts hit for this one, since "Jagged" and "Peak" both come from the game, while "Shattered" matches but "Masterpiece" doesn't
I’m shocked Rellana had no intro cinematic or build up. You don’t need an intro cinematic to make the build up to the boss awesome. Bayle was perfect in that way. The build up was incredible and the payoff truly hit. But given the gravitas of Rellana… where was hers?
Yeah. Half the bosses get no cutscene and barely any lore but it was very important that when you empty the water in shadow keep church district or burn the sealing tree you watch a minute long cutscene.
100% agree. Especially considering what an important role she has from a lore perspective, linking the Erdtree world to the Shadowlands. You just enter the door and she starts fighting you like you entered a demi-human queens hideout.
Yeah, record breaking game, but we still cant solve cameras. Or mobility issues. It feels so weird to have a stamina bar against enemies who seemed to have none. Endless chains into input read spams. Or only having a fucking roll when these bosses are near jumping wall to wall in 1 second. In bb and sekiro. It feels like my character can actually keep up and is suited for the bosses. In elden ring it feels like i need to use gimmicks.
What Im personally tired with is that all of Elden Ring has to go around "difficulty", if people liked how the bosses works compared to player or not... You know what objectively is an issue and changing it would benefit everyone of us, Elden Ring fans, haters o anyone? Improve the optimization, that since OG Dark Souls had been very bad on some areas, improve the camera, which doesn´t do any justice to giant boss fights, improve the hitboxes, who technology had advanced enough already to not have giant cilinders on weapons.
Shaman village is probably my favorite location in the entire game, upon first stepping in there I knew it was special. Then you learn all the lore, amazing.
Really? A tiny area with no loot and just a bit of lore is your favourite area? Not the Jagged Peak of Bayle? Not the Shadowkeep? Not Belurat or Ensis? I know opinions are subjective, but yours is so odd that I’ll call it objectively wrong, lmao
@@sudowtf Its almost like, you don't get it, because its a different emotion its resonating with for them other than just "big cool castle/mountain" The game goes out of its way to make little places and moments like the village have a deep insight into either a character or culture of the area.
@@irishaarbearno, he’s right. Shaman village has exactly 2 items, and it’s lore isn’t impactful unless you combine it with Bonny village and the potentates
@@Scowleasy there's a reason it's empty, cause her village was slaughtered by the hornsent. The "lack of items and enemies" is not a negative, it's about additional storytelling through the environment that have implication on the entire lore of the most important character in the entire game. These type of comments are just so utterly ignorant.
@@irishaarbear give me the exact item from the shaman village that states it was slaughtered by the Hornsent. Go ahead asshole, there’s only 2 to pick from.
@@electro_spectre it comes to personality archetype I think. I also am not that completion motivated, so winning a mega gruelling FS fight doesn't really give me a jump-around-the-room feeling. but neither do I default to "this is bullshit" in the process. because I know that the transition from feeling absolutely trumped and fighting through the natural pangs of frustration, to piecing together the way to deal, is exactly what is intended and can be ultimately enjoyed with an appropriate enough mindset that expects it. plus there is the RPG problem-solving to go with that as much as you want to allow yourself before feeling cheap. tho i gotta say purely mechanically, Malenia design is way more irritating than Primeagon, with all the idling into action-read foulfoot nuke, while Rada2 is overwhelming and all, but is more involved with more straightforward solutions imo
@@electro_spectre Gael is peak of the artorias style boss design. Gael is also the nadir of from soft boss design since it perfectly encapsulates the rut they got stuck in making most boss fights exactly like Artorias.
I get that these are supposed to be sad games but honestly it’s hard to invest in any NOC quests in these games knowing basically every one of them will die horribly.
Yeah it really begins to hamper the effect of it when it's done over and over again, the same goes for alot of the other things fromsoft loves to reuse
@@gabriellecollier8127 yeah the issue is that it all feels for naught knowing they'll just go batshit insane tweaking and try to kill you fail, but yeah :(
One thing that annoys me about the skibidi tree fragments is that they didn’t just give you one after a boss fight and scale it accordingly like how sekiro did it with boss remembrances being used to raise attack power. Fromsoft stated outright that the skeet fragments were going to be similar to the remembrances so WHY MAKE THE SYSTEM WORSE?
The system was used to encourage exploration. If players knew the only way to boost their defense and attack was through boss remembrances then they would just bum rush the bosses and not explore the open world. Which half the game is exploration.
@@buffoonustroglodytus4688 then have mini bosses hidden around the world that also give you the fragments just like Sekiro did, carefully placed bosses at locations that encourage exploration while also adding to the replayability. Main bosses don’t have to be the only ones that drop the fragments, not a tough development question at all and it’s a shame that they answered it so poorly considering their success in a previous game that had the exact same thing.
@@DandifiedToe yeah I can see where you are coming from, and I agree sekiro did the system better. I don’t know if I can think of a reason why they chose to do it this way instead of the sekiro way. Maybe they couldn’t make enough interesting bosses for all the schadenfreude levels?
Just to throw out another perspective: For a first-time playthrough, I actually preferred the exploration-based scadutree fragments to the Sekiro remembrance system. In Shadow of the Erdtree, if you’re stuck on a boss or sick of fighting a boss, the best antidote is to fully take a break from combat. Go explore, relax, shift your mindset from “fight” to “discover.” I enjoyed this. In Sekiro, if you were struggling on a boss, the answer was, “see if you can find and defeat another boss.” Boss fights all the way down. All that said, I agree that on repeat playthroughs, the Sekiro system works better, because exploration is by far the most fun the first time, while boss fights tend to remain fun for multiple playthroughs.
i thought i unlocked the st trina dialogue after consuming the heart of bayle, which makes sense when you read the item descriptions. I might have just gotten lucky with leaving and coming back at the correct amount of potion deaths to get that understanding though.
I played Sekiro after Shadow of the Erdtree, and wow, the bosses are about equally fast and aggressive. BUT, each and every Sekiro boss fight feels incredibly engaging. Sekiro has the agility and the tools to outmanoeuvre any boss once learned. Fighting Maliketh, Malenia, Rellana, Radahn, feels outrageous in comparison. I wish I could fight them as Sekiro - they’d still be tough, but fair and likely even fun.
Thats the thing about sekiro they gave us one weapon and designed bosses around that id rather from give us a main character ,one or two weapons and 6 or 7 good unique bosses then elden trash bosses
Heavily agree with you on the feeling after the final boss. I didn't feel like I learned anything. In fact, for most bosses, I would get a lucky win far before ever reaching mastery which just felt so underwhelming. Midra was the one of the few bosses this didn't happen with for me. I actually had 0 flasks when I beat him and it felt like I overcame a true challenge of my skills. Best boss in all of ER imo.
We've got a similar experience, I beat all FS games multiple times, in total over 1000h+. And I fully agree with your review about the difficulty. DLC is hard not becuase you are underleveled, it's hard becuase bosses introduce cheap difficulty, spam aggro for 15s to give you 1 quick attack window or if you need to heal then 0 attacks and the cycle repeats. Additionally you get full arena AOE and fights are designed to hide information about incoming attacks to kill you everytime the new strong attack/combo is introduced which makes learning fights very unfun. Also, new weapons face some problems. If you have only a short window to attack, you need to maximize the damage which favors 2x big bonks & jump attack which feels like all new weapons are useless for boss fights. On top of that you get input reading and programmed punishment for natural reactions. You pass the phase of well telegraphed attacks and then a new attack is coming that you can't guess how to avoid and it insta-kills you, then you struggle to get to this point again and you get killed again. This is not a good design, it's a design to hold you on this boss for longer. Also, these bosses are 20x aggro Bloodborne, but you still play with DS3 character with no additional things to balance it, besides extra jump attack. There is no duel anymore in DLC, it's roll roll roll roll roll roll roll, hit once with a toothstick. I remember epic duels from Bloodborne (like Lady Maria, father Gascgoigne, Ludwig, etc.) which were so intense, a lot of parrying and good stuff, that's what the well designed fight is, interactive fight, hit for hit, a few attacks by the boss, and then it's my turn, not watching infinite combos over and over again. This DLC introduces the worst boss balance in their franchise, which in many places feels like cheap difficulty or being hard for the sake of being hard. They broke the game because of ashes, I knew since the beginning that adding ashes will kill the boss balance and it did. Now you can either play solo and the difficulty is broken or you can play with ashes and it trivalises the fight completely.
FS created Sekiro and that was the best fighting mechanics they put out, ever. Only to completely abandon it in ER. They don't need to get inspired by Lies of P, they need to remember how great Sekiro was!
Theres several mods that add deflection, and one that replaces backstep with a duck which is basically a neutral dodge you can cancel into a backstep attack at any time, and they function pretty much perfectly in the game. Almost as if they were meant to be there from the start
35:00 I hope the next game gives you a boss rematch feature. There's certain bosses I would love to fight again but I don't want to replay the whole game again.
@@skinnytimmy1like, this is my main criticism of Radahn reuse and its defenders. If you really wanted a rematch against prime version of that boss, then put like dream bosses in Hollow Knight or boss rush mod etc. do not force it as final fight of dlc. I know its not the same model or moveset, but still i didnt get through all dlc just to fight Radahn again.
People are too invested in the hype train and gaslight themselves to believe this is another nigh flawless "masterpiece". Just like in the base game, the ideas are there, but From‘s bitten off more than it can chew and the cracks are blatantly visible. Sometimes, less is more.
@@Marshall97531 bad comparison, when was Elden ring or fromsoftware ever mainstream? Last time I checked their previous titles never sold as much as Minecraft or GTA. Try harder the next time you reply.
This is hands down the best critique of the DLC I have seen. There are some good ones out there, but I feel people go too soft on Elden Ring/the DLC just because FromSoft at their worst is still a GOTY.
@@jameslough6329and worst, directionless of dlc, Inconsistency in quality and storytelling, showing signs of limitations of dodge roll/ attack combat, balancing etc. This dlc is basically fromsofts attempt of supplementing quality with quantity so dlc does not fell wasted. Its right in same range as Ashes of Ariandel in quality (and thats was considerd the worst Fromsofts dlc till now).
@@Vengeance_I_m did you heard of Ringed city, Old hunter dlcs? Content vise it is the biggest one yet (so if we are judging by content amount standards then maybe yes, but thats the rabbit whole that should not be encouraged in future since Fromsoft could could end up in Ubisoft situation and print low grade content for sake of it), but quality is significantly worse then any previous dlcs.
@@madkoala2130 I strongly disagree with you. I think the quality of SOTE's content is MUCH more consistent than the base game of Elden Ring and FromSoft definitely went with a quality over quantity approach to the DLC. From my experience, the quality of the new remembrance bosses, legacy dungeons, new weapons classes, art direction, environmental storytelling, and even minor side dungeons has all been consistently great from start to finish. Sure there are a couple stinker bosses, and the lore of the Final Boss could have definitely been handled better. But overall the DLC is without a doubt FromSoft's best work to date.
I 100% agree that if Fromsoft go down the path of thinking “the community will accept any level of absurd difficulty as long as we give them multiple ways to invalidate it” then the magic of the souls games will be lost. Fromsoftwares souls games are long overdue an update in core gameplay mechanics especially when you consider that dodge roll/attack during enemy’s recovery frames is a gameplay loop that started in 2009 with Demon souls. Sekiro to me marks Froms successful attempt at increasing difficulty in a fair and interesting way and I hope they returns to new combat innovations. Ever since I played Lies of P I can’t escape the feeling that if Elden ring had Lies of Ps core combat mechanics it’d be by far my favourite game of all time and when you look at lots of its bosses through the lens of Lies of Ps combat they feel like absolute masterpieces of boss design held back by archaic combat design.
What "absurd difficulty"? Of all the souls games Elden Ring is by far the most accessible which throws the least roadblocks at you. Unless you decide to make a challenge run on your own volition, but that's on you, not on the game then.
@@shiroamakusa8075i think you didn’t read the comment, so I’ll repeat it, any absurd difficulty if they give them ways to invalidate it. If a boss like radhan fills the screen with incomprehensible lights and does one shot you, you should just, you know, search for a way to trivialize the fight with a bugged ash of war, summons and 5 mins of pre-buffing. If radhan did the less damage, and his attacks were more visible (using the sekiro camera angles maybe?), do you think that would be too easy? That it wouldn’t make the community to look out for other build than the meta and abusing the “let my clone fight” ? Wouldn’t make it easier to actually appreciate the fight and encourage a duel of learning the timings and overcoming it, instead of just put the most damage and the most poise and wish for good rng? Or maybe yeah the game would be better if every attack was a one shot. Maybe why have health even!
@@trg2516 what did i say then, cause i mostly asked questions. So you don’t think than when big damage numbers aren’t tied to a fight, people don’t start learning how to fight? Cause then you would be surprised to know the existence of a game called Sekiro.
I looked for the missing closure at the end by returning to saint trina, because she is an aspect of miquella, who asked me to kill him, but she was simply dead too, which makes sense, I suppose, but was disappointing nonetheless
I did the same and was so sad. I loved that aspect, it gave us a purpose to go for M&R. And then I found out online that they cut her content. She actually had dialog after the Final Boss. ;_;
@@skylerstone7885i guess you didn't learn anything because Yurt, Lautrec and Suspicious Beggar disagree with you. And if you choose to consider it, Navlaan too.
My victory over Radahn was the most Hollow victory I had ever experienced. I could consistently No-hit his first phase but the second phase? Nah, it shows Fromsoft has lost the plot. It's not fun, it's not fair, it's not even challenging in the right way. The mere fact you can perform damn near perfectly only for him to say 'Lol no you actually die' with his 'Meteor strike electric Boogaloo' attack near the end is the biggest 'fuck you' I've ever seen thrown in. it's a roll of the dice if you live or die it's actually absurd. I had to resort to a shield and bleed (Not a spear) along with a Tank summon to actually pull a win. Radahn alone has made me unenthused for future Fromsoft titles. I've done SL1 playthroughs on all games and those were torture but it was torture of my own making. Radahn? No, it's active hostility towards players by design.
All you have to do is run one in direction to dodge the meteor strike lmao what're you talking it, it's almost a guraunteed no hit if you just run away.
The actual attack you should be talking about is his Meteor throw in Phase 2, i think in all of my 5 hours of fighting him i think i dodged the second part of that move twice. Absolute run killer for me, not to even mention one of his Slash comboes is literally a frame perfect dodge or else you eat the attack is just horrible boss design. A boss fully designed to widdle you down and force you to into panicking, just so frustrating. Atleast with Malenia there was pretty clear ways to combat her big moves. For Radahn it just felt like either im gonna get lucky and dodge it or suffer 2 flasks or just die.
@@BigVorst run towards the right side or left side of the stair straight into the arena's corner. I'm not sure if you still need to dodge the blast smoke, but its a guaranteed safe spot every time.
On motivations: Ansbach and Thiollier’s quests individually lead you to understand that Miquella is very dangerous and has to be dealt with. I found my own motivations reversed by those discoveries and felt engaged when facing Leda and the final boss.
This was my experience too. At the start I was just there to meet miquella cuz he seemed like a cool guy but the longer I played the more I felt he was a problem and needed to go down. So the final confrontation gave me the closure I needed. It‘s like the first dark souls DLC, noone was there to applaud you for taking down artorius, in fact your deeds will be misappropriated to him, but you did them because they needed to be done. It‘s a thankless job but you‘re the only one who can do it.
@@_CrimsonBladeThe issue here is that Miquella wants to make the world better by subduing everyone’s minds with his enchantment. Basically he would eradicate free will in order to make the world a “better” place. This is unambiguously dangerous.
I didnt really enjoy the DLC. Some bosses were very good but i found exploration disappointing. You either get the scooby doo fragment (whole idea of these things even existing is bad imho) or just a cookbook. So many areas like coast or abyssal woods were just empty and all you got for exploration was just the views. Are pretty graphics inportant in making good game? For sure. Can they carry whole exploration if they are the only upside to it? No, not for me at least. Overall boss design was ok. Some I really enjoyed, some i absolutely hated. Im afraid that FS is starting to prioritize flashy combos and overall cinematics over making an actual fun boss. I liked dark souls and Sekiro bosses more. I hope that FS fans wont kill me for saying all of that. DLC is 6/10 for me.
Unfortunately seems like they are on the witch hunt for those who have negative opinion of dlc, just look what happend to Feeble king. All tho some of the things he said are bs, but he nailed in the head with exploration criticism. Those people are not Fromsoft fans (if they were, they would know drop in quality is this dlc to previous dlcs) those are fresh elden ring fans who maybe tried playing previous games once and never tried it again.
The fragments were a great idea though. They stop you from just steamrolling the dlc with your endgame build while also not necessitating the need to grind levels if you were lower level in order to catch up to what amounts to post game content essentially They also make the co-op experience better since the matchmaker goes off of your character level rather than the scadutree level. I've been able to be summoned to help people with every boss in the dlc even after beating it since leveling my character wasn't the primary goal. In the base game, you pretty much get locked out of fighting earlier bosses with people since your level determines everything. Not a concern in the dlc unless you do grind and overlevel yourself.
@@bondrewd5935 real fromsoft wouldnt blindly say "This is best dlc ever!" while also ignoring glaring issues that makes it no way near the quality of previous dlcs and would not go full on witch hunt for those who criticised it and had good reasons why this isnt the best one for them (same thing is why non of us can agree on which Soulsborn game is the best one). Dont prosecute people for saying something contrary to publics opinion, this dlc here is.pure case in that.
@@madkoala2130yes but everyone has an opinion. As a fromsoft fan my complaints are exploration rewards being mostly lackluster, lack of the new weapon types, some bosses having wonky moves and hit boxes, and a slight slight disappointment with the story and lore of the dlc, mainly the radahn thing. But even that isn’t bad for me, just could have been better lore wise. But a 6 form the comment above? That’s barely above average. I mean I get everyone has an opinion but I think most people disliking the dlc are exaggerating the complaints and forgetting the positives. And I feel like most of them also probably did not like Elden ring either. For me it’s a nice 8.5/10 for me. But the “oh I needa be different so ima say this dlc is shit and anyone who disagrees is now a fromsoft super fan who is brain dead”, is stupid and really cringe honestly. U can have opinions on this dlc but to force people to also think it’s bad is another type of cringe. Also this video doesn’t necessarily mean the game is bad. If someone were to only focus on the good things of the dlc then u would think the dlc is the best thing ever made. It seems the people in the comments think the dlc is just negative cause of a honest critique video
Something the DLC did and I wished was more prevalent in the main game was the abyssal wood's entrance, it's through a catacomb, imagine if it had megaman legend style of dungeons where they are all linked somehow to a greater underground instead of how sporadic caves, and catacombs felt in the lands between
@@buffoonustroglodytus4688 I know, it's the part of me that wished the game map was smaller, like a more condensed experience, it hurts the environmental storytelling and some progression aspects but it's such a cool feature
I saw another reviewer say that it would've been great if Shadow Keep was a massive, central dungeon that connected to all areas of the map and honestly, I think that would've been really cool.
The reason why it doesn't feel fun being stuck on a boss anymore is because it happens with every boss now. Every remembrance boss has countless delayed or unnatural-looking attacks that you can't intuit how to dodge on your first attempt. This means that you're guaranteed to die 10+ times figuring out how to dodge these attacks. It used to be interesting when you ran up against a wall like that because not every boss was extremely hard and it was fun to finally meet a real challenge. But when every boss is a roadblock, it gets exhausting. You lose the motivation to learn him and fight fair because you know the next boss after him will just be another roadblock.
It’s important to remember that despite us all playing this like a separate video game this is an end game dlc with end game content and I only really want bosses I have to take my time on. Put in the context of a full playthrough it makes sense. One of the major criticisms of the main game was how easy it was to get overpowered without even realizing it and never having to learn any of the bosses. The DLC fixed this problem and people are still complaining
@@bobdylanlovr69 I would wager that the vast majority of players did not complain that they could become "overpowered" in the base game. That was [likely] an extremely small subset of diehard fans. I would wager that the same people complaining then are complaining now (since most ppl who bought the game did not make it to mogh). Ironic, that it's impossible to please the hardcore From fans lol
@@masque9446speaking as someone who over-leveled and upgraded through meticulous exploration with the main game and then felt the bosses were too easy and felt like I accidentally made my first playthrough worse, I liked the challenge of this DLC and the scadutree blessing system is a neat way to ensure you can keep it challenging if you want
I don’t agree with this at all. For me, being stuck on a boss and having to learn to dodge a multitude of difficult combos just makes it more satisfying and rewarding to beat that boss. And also there are so many ways you can make even the hardest bosses a breeze (perfume bottles for fuck sake).
I kind of somewhat agree a little bit. On repeat playthroughs, the open world is really boring and tedious to traverse. And most of fromsoft’s environmantal storytelling is done in the legacy dungeons, while the open world is quite barren and plagued with reused assets. While I enjoyed elden ring’s open world the first time and think it was a good for this game, I also hope fromsoft’s future games are more linear like sekiro. Less open world but also with the ability to explore different areas and get stronger if you get stuck.
I don't think open world design is inherently bad for soulslikes. The problem is that things were too spread out to have meaningful encounters and you were incentivized to just ride past everything on Torrent. As much as I enjoyed horse combat, the game would have been better if the open world was condensed to half its size but you had to traverse all the areas on foot.
And I'm having a lot more fun exploring the levels and smaller open areas in Stellar Blade. In 13 years of gaming I've only completed 3 big open world games (Elden Ring base game / Fenyx Rising / Skyrim). And Skyrim to this day is the only open world game I've finished twice (once on PS3 and once on PS4). That's why I see it as a big plus, when a game doesn't have a huge open world. But what's worse is that I no longer enjoy the combat encounters either. I don't know how you play the game... but I feel like I'm way too limited in my actions. Even when watching way better players, most people simply use one type of attack. Enemies aren't defeated with different combos, with a variety of spells, or with multiple weapons - but with a single ability. Sure, different weapons / skills are used (like Asmongold switching from jump attacks to guard counters) but that's not a combat system I find engaging. I play the game with light gear for example. So I can use and switch between multiple weapons and also because light armor looks nicer. And I also use different spells to further mix up the combat encounters. That's what I want from a fantasy RPG / big sandbox and what's fun to me. (Unless the basic combat system is so fun that it doesn't require multiple weapons.) But in "Shadow of the Erdtree", efficiency is pretty much everything due to the difficulty and very small recovery windows in which you can perform an action. To me, it's like getting the full job kit in FF14 but being limited to playing a low-level dungeon where you only have access to one or two skills. But not because you don't have access to the kit, but because if you press more than one button or perform an action that lasts longer than 2 seconds, you die. Sure, there are summons that give you a little more leeway... But summons don't really add anything to the encounter or gameplay unless being a summoner is your class fantasy. But even from that perspective, the system isn't that fun.
@@SuperLotus I think it is. FS is great at enemy positioning, level creation and presentation and the combat is at its best when it is methodical. I mean, take the opening shot of Anor Londo or Majula, they are perfect because the devs can control where you are coming from. I think one of the best places in ER is Stormveil Castle for the simple fact that it's not open world, it feels like a souls game. Explore different rooms, unlock elevators and shortcuts, fight enemies cleverly positioned in different points etc. When you are running around and get to a bunch of enemies on the map and fight them it's not as great as traversing a complex dungeon or castle. That is where FS shines and imo the open world doesn't allow for that kind of gameplay.
@@Braylenc123 I fought radahn for like, 6 hours, and then proceeded to get bored and stopped having fun with the fight. At that point I felt like I had to force myself to keep fighting him. So I just used a mimic tear and beat him 3rd try. Crazy how easy the dlc is if you summon.
@@Braylenc123 glad I sticked through! such a fun fight without cheese. i missed bosses that are really hard and you have to learn the whole pattern. not just trading blows and eventually winning. base game was honestly too easy
The biggest flaw in this dlc were the bosses, for me. The lack of cutscenes or dialogues was a shame. In the base game I got attached to the main bosses because they felt alive, they had character, they weren’t hollow shells you had to fight. They had a weight, a resonance in the fight. In the dlc I entered a boss room and I had to fight a random ripoff of sulyvahn don’t knowing why, a scarlet rot quelaag because… yeah, I guess, and that’s it. They die anonymously as they lived. It’s a pity. Then, with some exceptions, they didn’t feel dlc bosses at all. There was an excess of artificial difficulty: when even a single grab (like the Messmer one - which btw is the best boss in the dlc) can one shot you, or plenty unreadable combos leave you with one second to attack or heal, is not fun. Gael was a very difficult boss, but were necessary like 4 or 5 hits to kill you, and had a lot of windows. Finally, in other fromsoft games dlc bosses had something more as compared the main game ones, but here is the opposite. They had nearly nothing that made me gasp, like a mechanic or a moveset: midra is just an old man with frenzied flame incatations and 5 attacks, rellana is sulyvahn with base game sorceries and a unique one, consort radhan phase 1 is simply starscourge radhan with a blood flame attack (I refuse to consider the second phase a boss fight). The main game bosses felt more unique, experimental and in a nutshell… fun. As it should be for a dlc boss. I still love the dlc, but I can’t understand all the praise it received “bosswise”. They could have done so much more… PS: Sorry for my English is not my first language
An observation I made that contributes to the lack of boss cutscenes is that in SotE, there are only 1 demigod and 1 god, whereas in the base game, there were plenty of demigods. FromSoftware made sure each demigod was given a cutscene or two to characterize them and to show off their second phase twist. Outside of that, main story bosses such as Renalla, the Fire Giant, Maliketh, and Godfrey received similar treatment using cutscenes too. Suffice to say, it was the exception rather than the norm for a rememberance boss to lack a cutscene during their boss fight. To be honest, it makes it all the more upsetting that bosses like Rellana, Romina, Metyr, and Bayle didn't get their own boss cutscenes despite being lore significant/main story bosses
@@iamdoom9810metyr reveal plays much better without a cutscene. U get teleported to a freakish area with a eldrich being off in the distance. It makes everything way more eerie and off putting which is the intended reaction. A cutscene would’ve been cheesy in that scenario Also Bayle is supposed to be a immersive gameplay focused boss with the lead up. Bayle in all respect is a no bullshit no time to waste kinda boss so it makes sense he storms down on u. Rellana shoulda got a cutscene though
Messmer's grab attack does not one shot you I can attest to that, got hit by it multiple times but survive and he has no unreadable combos. I think the one combo people struggle with is the one where he lunges into the air and rapidly thrusts his spear with fire 5 times. That attack is extremely telegraphed, he always uses the same slash attack that dodges towards you and gives you time to react and roll towards or run away from his rapid thrusts in the air. What is a problem is Commader Gaius' thrust that instantly knocks out all fun from the fight. Screw that boss. Screw Jori Elder Inquisitor too. Though I agree with your take on how the bosses have like no cutscenes. There are only 3 bosses with cutscenes when every major boss is a remembrance boss. It's a huge disappointment that Rellana was given the Sulyvahn Treatment with no cutscenes and the same goes for Romina
"artificial difficulty" Funny, I didn't notice any. "unreadable combos" Nor of these. "leave you with one second to attack or heal, " Hardly ever this. "Gael was a very difficult boss, but were necessary like 4 or 5 hits to kill you," Yes he didn't do enough damage. "midra is just an old man with frenzied flame incatations and 5 attacks" Midra has like 20 attacks? "rellana is sulyvahn with base game sorceries" She has similarities to Pontiff but it's a very different boss. Rellana's move-set is much more complex and she has a lot more moves/longer combos. "The main game bosses felt more unique, experimental and in a nutshell… fun." To each their own I guess. While the base-game bosses slap, I think the DLC ones are, on average, better.
I think midra was fine. He didn’t feel bloated like rellana or radahn and had actual cutscenes and a cool atmosphere to go with the relatively simple moveset. Bayle is an amazing fight and messmer is self explanatory. I think romina is decent too but I hate the lack of cutscene
Sorry but that’s a you problem. On subsequent playthroughs these bosses are really fair, even radahn. The only problematic one is gaius. They’re in general just more complex and harder to learn. But infinitely more satisfying than any piss easy excuse for a boss in dark souls 3
@@Stanzbey69i agree idk if elden ring was your first souls game but having played all their other titles afterwards the bosses felt like they could be basic enemies in elden ring in terms of difficulty
@@Stanzbey69calling Radahn fair is like if you enjoy having to hit him once every 1 mins and somehow managed to beat him and always got lucky he didn't spammed his few difficult to dodge, hard hitting combos one after immediately finished another. I believe it's more of a u problem if you're fine with defending a boss that goes the extreme end of the Elden Ring boss stereotypes and not seeing the obvious issues in boss design.
@@Stanzbey69 After playing other games, memorizing attack patterns doesn't feel like learning anything to me. It just feels like they couldn't figure out how to make something hard in an interesting way, so they just made the attacks as crazy as possible so you die a bunch before memorizing the timings. This is probably why tons of people keep complaining about not feeling anything after bosses.
@@andreybelyshev5093 Cerulean Coast needs to be big but it also could've used more actual filling in it The Finger Ruins also could've used a roaming boss or something at least.
@@andreybelyshev5093 it's most areas for me too much riding torrent into open spaces. Legacy dungeons are also very disappointing shadow keep is big but not very enjoyable.
Yep. Why do some of these areas even exists? Why does the red area exists when it has nothing but reused base game minibosses? Why is there THREE finger ruin areas? Why not just make one and actually put stuff in it? Put a little legacy dungeon there. What’s the point of abyssal woods? Stealth in a fromsoft game is a terrible idea. Why not just put a stealth section in Midras Manor and put the Manor somewhere else? There is so much places where content in useless areas could be put. Miyazaki said the world needed to be big in order to capture that scale of original Elden Ring. Unfortunately he didn’t extent that into the legacy dungeons, they are pitifully small besides Shadowkeep.
Levelling up my scadu blessing did not make the bosses any more fun nor decrease their combo length from 15 hits to 10 hits or something. Gitting gud just means I'm smart enough to walk backwards for 10 seconds and poke them once. Where is the fun?
yeah those early reviews that the big fromsoft content creators put out where definitely overhyping this dlc. its a fun expansion and its definitely worth the 40 bucks but it has just enough things going against it to make it end up being like a 7.5/10 to me
Yeah once the final boss is patched or reworked it might be closer to an 8 for me, but this is the least I’ve enjoyed a roster of FromSoft bosses to date. Not necessarily in terms of quality for each boss but for the exhausting experience their movesets + design create for most builds
@@ryanmattioli9790 stop doing hard drugs. They can impair your ability to think and you can lose brain function that you will never recover. Based on your previous statement, you're already significantly impaired, maybe if you stop smoking meth now it's not too late for you...
When I've struggled on a boss for a long time, I've been told to just use Mimic Tear or to summon another player, and I always refuse. While part of me does this out of a stubborn "I want to do this by myself" mentality, another part is because I have to partly relearn the boss. When there's more than one target, the boss becomes unpredictable and will sometimes do one half of a combo to one target and the rest to another. They can also change targets for single attacks on a whim; for example, a boss might raise a sword to slam down on my summon, but at the last second they might spin on a dime to attack me instead. I now have no way to know when the boss is gonna attack me, or I'll get swiped by a hitbox I didn't know existed because I'd always dealt with a combo in one way. It just really throws any sense of flow off and bosses just don't seem to function well when facing more than one attacker. Their animations can look like they're on the verge of bugging out and it takes away from the experience for me.
I am also tired of hearing people talk about Scadutree fragments and act like they excuse From from all criticism. They basically refuse to balance anything themselves and place all the burden on the player, then when the player doesn't get it right they and all their cultists tell them to git gud and collect fragments.
I guess your idea of "balance" is then "I get to one-shot all the bosses no matter what I do", then? Because that's the only way your comment makes sense.
I personally like the concept behind the fragments (localized difficulty scaling), it's the random distribution that makes it annoying I'd rather the fragments come from each demigod equivalent boss, so you power up by beating the major bosses pre radahn rather than searching random places
I'm tired of people talking about leveling up. Fromsoft should balance the game around level 1 because I don't want to engage with any rpg elements. (This is how you sound)
It's the opposite they did balance the game by adding fragments so everyone can do it ..If some is higher skill then you he will need like 2 of them and you will need 10 ,they are all over the place and not hard to find ..But your logic if you suck at boss balance is not good meanwhile there is a girl on yt beating same boss as you with legs,isnt that embarrassing,so you crying that they need to balance the game to your skill then it will be good but all guys who are higher skill will walk through dlc in two hours so who cares about them if you had fun.. Fragments are best thing ever they added..On lvl 150+ one level take 100k souls so if you go farm a milion to 10 lvls ,if you go to Malenia with 150 or 160 lvl its same shit ,10 levels wont make any difference and will take forever to farm them,but 4 fragments with 5% bonus dmg and defence will make massive difference,use you head before you type
Radahn sucks but I honestly dont see how people are hating on all the bosses for having to roll and poke. Bayle and messmer had intresting movesets and felt pretty fair.
I suspect the honey moon phase is slowly coming to an end and in a couple months time, a lot more people will be calling out the DLC for what it is. a 6 or 7/10 and no more.
I've beaten the final bosses solo on 2 of my characters and I gotta say, its a bad boss not (just) bc its too hard and bc the second phase puts a lot of shit on the screen that fucks your visibility, but because this boss punishes build variety a lot, I beat him first with my dex arcane bleed build, normal character nothing out of the ordinary, was using a blood infused milady. But for my pure faith caster/cleric build I didnt cast a single spell to beat him bc he doesnt give you enough room to safeky cast any spell that isnt fast like glintstone pebble bc he never stops attacking and I didint wanna just spam catchflame for the fight. I basically had to beat him through parrying and critical hits on my pure caster build bc using spells on him solo was really risky and not worth the danger you had to put yourself through, not to mention that almost half of the dlc incantations are slow as shit and really hard to use in most of the bosses bc of it. (The new butterfly rot spell is a fucking joke, takes longer than scarlet aonia and deals less damage and less scarlet rot build up all that without hyper armor in the cast anymation, thank you for a fucking useless spell fromsoft)
On my int build playthough, have been trying the new DLC spells and other underutilized spells to fight Radahn The only reliable spells to punish his attack are just Carian slicer and Glintstone pebble speed spell like Night comet or Comet Tried Gavel of Haima and Adula's Moonblade but you really need a large opening for that There is no difficulties in between for mages, it is either piss easy or CBT
As I'm currently doing a second playthrough of the DLC, I agree with the Scadutree Fragment criticisms because if they are basically a requirement to be able to have any chance of tackling a boss, I feel that they should have had at least a fair chunk be rewards after bearing the major bosses or a miniboss in the legacy dungeon. Hell, there are 5 fragments located behind one of the optional remembrance bosses, and they give you one for beating the hippo boss at the start of the Shadow Keep so it should have been a no Brainer to have them more as rewards, while keeping ones located at crosses. Cause it would give you a minimum fragment level for each of the legacy bossed that is essentially, "this is where you should be at the minimum" and all the remaining ones are the optional ones to make things easier for you if you want
14:06 so pretty much the reason why are are confronting miquella is because both of our goals are in opposition to one another, you becoming Elden Lord and Miquella becoming a God. We unfortunately can't have both. It's really not that more complex. Granted like you mentioned, Miquella kinda manipulated everyone from the start so maybe a bit of revenge is in order as well. Miquella's age of compassion is flawed because he shedded away the most important thing, his love (st. trina). You can't have compassion without love. So In a way he's committing the same mistakes Marika did.
@@High_Rate136 The Elden Lord is the consort to the resident god and Miquella already chose someone who isn't you. Also, he plans to supplant Marika's Golden Order with his own while you are poised to inherit it, so there's no way for the both of you to coexist.
I think we're confronting Miquella because if he becomes a god he will rule as a tyrant. Even if Miquella's intentions are good and he's blind to his own evil, he's still evil.
Some bosses are like getting into a fight with someone who doesn't know how to and just run up doing rapid-slaps while craning their head back as far as possible... except each one of those slaps carry the force of a heavy-weight boxer's haymaker
Great video that provides a fair critique of something you enjoy. Extremism can be all too common to come across when hearing this about the DLC. One issue that I had with the DLC that I don't hear much discussion about was the actual in-game map. With how dense and layered the open world is in the DLC I don't think that the map is as useful of a tool as it was in the base game. Personally, I have a hard time remembering which sites of grace are on which level of the world. I wish they had a map of the subterranean layer you could view independent of the surface map just like they did for underground segments in the base game. I somehow missed the connection that there was an impromptu infirmary set up for the jar victims in Shadow Keep. Thanks for pointing out that cool world building detail.
ER and SotE has taught me that a game without clear balance and limits is just a mess of mechanics. The problem with the difficulty in ER and SotE is that it just feels like Fromsoft is reacting to and overcompensating for challenge runners. Fromsoft must NOT use challenge runners as the baseline metric to set the average difficulty. Challenge runners and hardcore gamers don't represent the majority of players, and will get absurdly good at a game whether they like it or not. They must stop trying to one up themselves and they must stop trying to escalate the difficulty to absurd degrees in the base game. They just need to focus on making well tuned, interesting and complex combat and movesets. They can keep to their philosophy but must also keep the average player in mind. Difficulty must not come before or at the expense of balance and game mechanics. They must also focus a lot more on balancing their games and not give the player spells and skills that can break the game. They must commit to making their games balanced around a challenging difficulty and not give the player things that completely break that balance. Likewise they must not make overtuned bosses just for the sake of difficulty. All enemies and bosses should be properly tuned for the player to comfortably handle and push that comfortability in more difficult modes. A possible solution is to offer a baseline challenging experience in the main game for casuals and offer further challenge with additional game modes like New Game Plus, Boss selection and Boss gauntlets. I find it crazy that ER and SotE don't have boss select and boss gauntlets. Even Bloodborne sort of did this with the FRC chalice dungeons and Sekiro with its boss gauntlet. Hollow Knight did a great job of this with the Pantheons DLC, which is basically made for hardcore gamers and doesn't take away the experience of the main game for casual players. Also the difficulty in the pantheons can be customized with bindings, that make you weaker and make the fights more challenging. At this point Fromsoft is trying to make every boss Ascended Any Radiance and expecting casual players to enjoy it.
Exactly, they just straight stopped balancing their games with ER after 13 years of doing good job at it. Honestly at this point I would welcome difficulty modes, something like the bell in sekiro, and for From to tightly balance the game for each difficulty mode separately, instead of throwing bunch of game-breaking shit and telling you to balance the game yourself. For players who want to have easier time, it would be far better to play with altered damage and health numbers, instead of relying on unlimited accessibility mechanics like coop/spirits and game-breaking builds from google to skip all of the bossfight content and experience the game is supposed to provide. Being able to make, idk, 5 more mistakes in a bossfight (easy mode) won't fundamentally change and ruin the experience like all the cheese can. I was getting summoned as coop to fight endgame bosses by people who literally didn't know even the absolute basics of combat and gameplay, and who wouldn't be allowed to progress past first level in bloodborne. But they just got carried by summons the entire game and never even had the chance to learn the basics and experience bosses. I just felt like shit helping them, they'll finish ER after 100 hours without even knowing what a souls game is. If they played on easy mode, the difference would be minimal.
Elden ring and it's dlc is something I both love and hate at the same time. The world and art design is amazing and a joy to explore, but there's little to find in it, and the pve honestly just isn't that fun. In previous from games, the pve was amazing, with the bosses just being the cherry on top, while in elden ring the game feels like a beautiful, but empty, ice cream cone, with a scorpion pepper on top.
This video pefectly echoed my thoughts on boss difficulty for this DLC’s bosses, with emphasis on the final one. At least in the base game, Malenia felt like this hidden optional ultimate challenge of strength, so I forgave the incredibly harsh learning curve. But yes, the final boss especially, gave me the feeling that the process the developers want you to go through is to die a million times until you somehow manage to learn the boss’s moves, because you barely get to learn anything in these fights when the dodging windows are so precise and the attacks hit so hard. Side note: Whatever happen to level difficulty? Like, I’m not saying every level should be Yahargul, or Sens fortress but come on. Bosses take more time than levels at this point, which doesn’t feel right.
"Some item description suggests Kind Miquella is not so kind, but why is this our problem? " Yeah, yeah. I baffled how game just imply you will see him as a villain after you discovered SPOOKY MIND CONTROL!!! 1 But if we look closer we will see only three options for this world to function. 1. Golden ordered. Yes, that one, constantly drenched in blood, wars, subjugation, punishment, guilt, injustice etc (we are it's ruler now btw, just a reminder) 2. Something-something stars, cosmic order, maybe who knows, probably subjugation, blood and stuff, but maybe not? 3. Miquella will command everyone to stop killing and torturing each other. But it will be with SPOOKY MIND CONTROL so it's worse than constant bloodshed and we should kill him asap, to prevent people who want to murder and torture others from being robbed of their free will. Yeah, i don't know, game. It would be better if we can live without bloodshed AND mind control, but of all options you gave us, mind control doesn't look that scary.
I'm not sure if it's really mind control as in "Miquella will command everyone to stop killing and torturing each other", rather it causes some kind of imprinting, unconditional worship of Miquella. Is this actually made clear anywhere in the lore texts? Because with imprinting, he could of course then command everyone anything he wants, but it'd also mean that the entire world is going to spin around him. Likely with overall cognitive decline in pretty much everyone - as no one can be trusted and not just the evil people are going to be affected.
IMHO the real problem is the godhood ambition. Having good intentions itself doesn't justify all subsequent behavior. The expression "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind. Radahn was a good guy by all accounts and improved things around him, he was loved by his troops, loved his animal companion the horse, and protected his non-human friends in selia from disaster (being nuked by outer gods). Malenia attacked/ruined Radahn and essentially nuked the entire continent of Caelid into a dystopian zombified hellscape because because Miquella wanted to force Radahn to be consort. The fact Miquella didn't kill or nuke anyone by his own hand doesn't excuse it, it's no different than the brutal massacres and cultural destruction of hornsent. If Miquella was purely a saint he easily could have used his influence to try and pacify the warring demigods so that the wars would end; he didn't, he took advantage of it.
@@quinnmichaelson6793 I don't say he is a good guy, but he didn't do anything worse than any other demigod. Rani, so many people chose in original game kill EVERYONE who stand in her way. Betrayed everyone, who trusted her. Release destined death, and risk everything for a phantom hope of better future... But we see her as just another side in a conflict, maybe even a better one. I can't see how Miquella is so much different or worse. The one objective side of his potential rule I can admit is terrifying is inability to reverse it. You always can use force to overthrow golden order, this potential moon order, any warlord, but Miquella probably would be impossible to overthrow... But, we don't have a choice to overthrow anything in the game. We can't kill Radagon, slay Ellen Beast and give Lands Between to its people. We take a throne at the end. We can't take a throne and make a new order, we can't even betray and stop Rani after we discovered her plans to bring some new alien order... We only can join her, or restore Golden Order. Sure, we can sprinkle a but of mending rune here and there, to help specific and very minor group of people, but in general, we unable to influence this world in any meaningful way. And from this I will conclude, Miquella is BETTER than Marika, than Crucible, than Greater Will, potentially better than "Pale, cold Moon", and definitely better than reign of our protagonist driven exclusively by constant lust for power and murderous frenzy. No srsl, tarnished one of the most vicious and scary characters of Ellen Ring :) P. S. Unfortunately, yes, destruction of Caelid is better than Shadow Realm genocide. It's not intentional, and scale of destruction is incomparable. Both bad, but one is terrible mistake, and another is malevolent act of villainy of insane proportions.
@@oldensad5541 I'm sorry, but the destruction of Caelid was 100% intentional on Malenia's part, and she is not off the hook for that. She was ordered by Miquella to remind Radahn of his promise, and the game gives PLENTY indication that he did not want to partake in her plan anymore after a while, going so far as to hold the stars back. Miquella is just Sketch, and whether you align with it or not, you are sort of following the Greater Will's grace, which manifests in the form of those rays you see from certain bonfires.
Although his charming power is without a doubt a curse for Miquella, I think you're missing the point of the DLC. Which is that Miquella *is* Marika, as she once was... hopefully you don't think I mean that in a literal sense. His intentions aren't inherently worse than anyone else's. But, in the process of becoming God and establishing a new Order, those intentions would have become corrupted; his era too would accumulate blood, wars, subjugation, punishment, guilt, injustice, and the rest. The charm is just the new guidance of grace. The fact that he--in the immediate wake of his apotheosis--finds himself with no recourse but to use Radahn's strength to annihilate the player, foreshadows that. The roots are rotten, and there is no salvation. Not in any of the games. On-paper Ranni's solution is pretty hard to find fault with; however--and by implication you seem to realize this too--it would be strange to say the least, in the context of FROM's storytelling conventions, for her answer to be any different. Besides, we don't kill Miquella because he's evil. We kill Miquella for the sake of our own ambitions for Lordship. If Miquella coveted us, sought to court us instead of Radahn, siding with him would have surely been a possibility. But there is no ending where the player forfeits Lordship, which is what Miquella wanted from us, and so he had to go.
Excellent and well-thought critique. I think the Scadufragment system did more harm than good. It’s a chore to collect but nothing arduous. What’s worse is the balancing system around co-op, because they had to take PVP into account. To summarize, regardless of your own Scadlevel, if a host’s Scadlevel is lower, you’re downgraded to their level; worse yet if they’re on NG+2 or 3, find themselves struggling because they can’t find enough fragments or refuse to level them, and therefore resort to summoning. In the base game the co-op sorting system relies on Rune level and weapon upgrade to match you with players within your range (unless you use passwords). In the DLC however, I could be adequate or even overpowered in my own file, and find myself getting killed in one or two hits even with adequate defense (armor/talismans) and buffs. But it hasn’t been a month since DLC release and I suspect once the honeymoon is over, players might be honest enough to admit that while FromSoft are capable of producing brilliant, S-tier level games, they’re not infallible or above making poor decisions.
Man, you basically put everything I've been trying to figure out about this DLC and how it sat with me, in better words than I could ever muster. Especially with Radahn, I felt... No joy in beating him.
criminally underrated video, i could not think of presenting the issues with this game better than you did, i hope Fromsoft actually watches this video instead of watching Vati's speculation on vague lore info and laugh at it while sipping a coffee
12:34 somehow this line perfectly describes how I believe marika feels when she is finally free from the curses she and her family has, it’s just a throwaway line from godricks last bit of his dialogue and yet the way it flows with the hum of marika’s theme just makes me sit back and listen… Beautiful…
FYI the reason he sometimes poises through attacks is greatsword get a poise boost while two handing and attacking. It’s so heavier weapons can trade with smaller ones in pvp
After looking through all of my footage with him again, I think you are right. I was confused because I actually interrupted his two handed attacks at least twice. Maybe it's because I hit him very early into his attack, or he did a weaker version, not sure. But it doesn't seem to happen when he's not two-handing the weapon, so at least there's that consistency
@@Umbriferous Yeah that’s right - just early into the attack. A bit of a weird one given it depends on the armor of the npc but the armor of solitude has a lot of poise. E.g. you won’t see that as an issue for the ancient dragon man fight given hyper armor values of the great katana and the poise of his armor
Elden Ring (and the DLC, admittedly) was entertaining and engaging as a pastime but I'm never touching this game again. This was my first FromSoft game, and my second Soulslike in general (I had just finished playing Lies of P when I picked up ER), and I was frankly disappointed. My main issues: The open world is cool and all but it feels just full of nothing. The biomes feel a bit unbelievable, there are no (ruins) of farms, warehouses, etc. It's just fort after fort or tiny village after tiny village. The Lands Between/Land of Shadows both feel like places that barely had people living in, even prior to the whole Shattering. Marika's childhood village is an enormous open clearing with 4 minuscule houses. Leyndell itself was pretty small even for medieval european standards (which is the whole aesthetic the game is obviously aiming for). Hell, there are so many churches in the game that are completely divorced from the rest of the urban grid, which is almost unthinkable if we once again consider the whole medieval european inspiration for the worldbuilding. Many buildings didn't even have windows either. A friend of mine said he chose the Frienzed Flame ending because the game feels like an empty, dead, fake/artificial/diorama-like world that should be razed to the ground and frankly I've come to agree with him. Both Finger Ruins, the Abyssal Woods, the Cerulean Coast (and the redundant Charo's Hidden Grave) and hell even the Jagged Peak all feel empty and unnecessarily large, they occupy an enormous area in the map yet the % of actually exploration-worthy areas is small and makes me feel like the whole thing about the DLC being as large as Limgrave is frankly not that far off from the truth. I was intrigued by the Abyssal Woods, for a long time it was this mysterious area in the map, getting there in the first place requires exploring a bunch of secret places - but when I got there I was disappointed. It was supposed to be this super creepy area that even Torrent was afraid of crossing yet the biggest threat there were these lame invincible enemies that frankly didn't even pose that much of a threat. The difficulty is extremely punishing and unfair at times, specially Radahn. It was such a pain in the ass that after a couple dozen times - with summons, without summons, changing my build, etc - I just gave up. I have errands to run, things to do, I cannot spend this much time trying to figure out a way to defeat a videogame boss that was deliberately designed to be inaccessibly frustrating. It's simply NOT FUN. Yeah yeah this is subjective and all but frankly I'm worried for people whose main source of fun and entertainment is subjecting themselves to frustration and repetition over and over. The reward for that hapless gauntlet is but a weapon I hear isn't even that good + some vague cutscene from the launch trailer + an amount of runes you can amass by the Palace-Approach Ledge Road in like 10 minutes. Add insult to injury, I found it extremely stupid of them to pull this whole "Radahn as a promised consort, made of the remains of Mohg" storyline. It feels like some idea shoddily conceived by the writers that probably didn't fit into the main game and then was shoved here, it feels extremely out of nowhere. It revives two foes that have gone down in rather glorious ways (I found both fights difficult but well designed), and at the end of the day the DLC does not answer key questions. Who were the Numen that Marika (and possibly also Maliketh) descends from? How did Marika hide Messmer? Where does Melina, arguably the games deuteragonist, fit in all of this family tree? Rellana's lackluster introduction failed to convey the fact that she is a sister to Rennala and an aunt to two of the most important characters from the base game, namely Ranni and Radahn. I'm sorry but the whole 'explaining key lore details through vague item descriptions' doesn't cut anymore, not for something of this scale. So many items and talismans feel useless. Death Blight, Madness and Sleep status effects are basically devoid of function in PvE, as just attacking enemies will be a much faster way to deal with them. Poison and Scarlet Rot frankly feel redundant. I find the score/soundtrack nothing to write home about either, it's just generic epic orchestral music with faux gregorian chant in the background, everything sounds the same. Anyway, I'm gonna be frank, I came to Elden Ring expecting something that would fix some of issues that had me pulling out my hair in anger/frustration over at Lies of P, like the horrible lack of a poise mechanic, attosecond-long i-frames that leave you no space to avoid attacks, heal or retaliate, awful dodging, etc. But frankly ER made me appreciate some other aspects of LoP more. Unfortunately, however, being critical towards Elden Ring in any capacity does not often invite polite, cordial discussion, but an army of lobotomized drones with an obsessed droolling fanboy mentality calling it the best game of all history and condescendingly telling others to "Git Gud".
okay the game isnt for you. that is what happens, not everything is made for everyone. shocking, I know. what I don't get is why new players like you like to come in and complain nonstop about the game instead of realizing it just isn't your type of game. Like really I don't sit around b****ing about farming simulator because it wasn't tailored to exactly what I wanted in a videogame lmao
Well done and very fair breakdown of the DLC. I sort of hope the next FromSoft Soulsborne game will be a more linear and contained experience like Sekiro or Bloodborne and bring some fresh gameplay elements to the table. It's much easier to balance around an intended playstyle than having so many options and paths to go down. I might be biased towards Sekiro, but it offers a combat system that you can master to a degree where you can easily beat the bosses just using the base mechanics. Additional mechanics like the prosthetic tools, consumables, throwables, weapon arts can help you vary your playstyle or arguably make fights easier, but you don't need any of them. Meanwhile, in Elden Ring but especially the DLC it seems like you want to use any in-arena NPC collaborators, spirit ashes, cheesy spells, overpowered weapon arts etc. if you don't want to feel frustrated. The DLC's most enjoyable bosses to me were Romina, Messmer, Putrescent Knight, BAYLE and hippo (although the latter two having heavy camera issues). Dancing Lion and Rellana seemed like they should have been the last 2 bosses before Messmer in terms of difficulty and relentless move sets. And yes, Radahn phase 2 is just straight up BS. On the topic of Lies of P: yes, introducing parry and rally in that game was a good idea to make the gameplay more interactive, but the game IMO had other issues, mostly with animations, camera and perceived parry timing. Plus making parry an arguably worse and more risky option than blocking in many cases, since you can rally back so much health. Meanwhile if you mistime the kind of unforgiving parry windows, you get flat out hit and can't rally back anything. And zero poise for heavy builds was definitely also a choice... But that's just some of my thoughts. Nevertheless, hyper aggressive enemies require other was to interact with them than dodge rolling and jumping. Yes you can parry SOME bosses in DS/ER, but that requires a certain build and play style, which brings us back to limited build variety if you don't want to be frustrated by boss encounters.
the biggest problem i have is that you are given the illusion of choice throughout the dlc. There's only one ending, yet the dlc presents itself as such much like the base game, but the base game's side quests actually lead to alternate endings. St Trinas quest is the biggest offender, you do all this obtuse stuff just to only be tunneled into one specific ending thats vague and disappointing. Ive been repeatedly attacked for having this stance cause souls elitists are insane, but its not a good thing to beat the final boss, to then wonder if there is anything else you can do or if you missed something that you can do differently next playthrough. I keep getting told "Fromsofts dlcs always do that" but thats a terrible argument cause none of the other dlcs are 40$ for one. being shown a still image with a character stating the same thing we already know is a terrible reward for completing a dlc.
might also add that because of this, there is 0 incentive to beat the dlc ever again. The one time you play the dlc is the same experience as any other time you play it, none of your choices matter, you are always going to fight the followers and then Miquella and Radahn. There's nothing stopping you from just beating Mesmer, then just going back to the main game and never beating the last bit of the dlc at all.
@@buffoonustroglodytus4688 it's really really bad. Best case scenario is they add new endings in updates later on but I doubt it. We really need a St Trina ending specifically. Just something to justify ever playing the dlc again all the way through.
@@Zepimo123 this probably the main disappoinment for me overall. The lack of interaction between the base game and the dlc. Like the end of jerren’s quest, it absolutely hints at a later encounter which never happens. Fuckin gideon the know nothing has shit to say about the shadowrealm or miquella despite doing nothing but reading lore and being a prick. Also melina has nothing to say about her mother’s birthplace or any spoken echoes in the dlc. Messmers fire can’t be used to burn the erdtree as well, sparing melina and getting a new more interesting outcome to her quest other than «she dies» like all the other characters in every single fromsoft game ever made. Really lame.
@@buffoonustroglodytus4688 Melina can literally still be with you during the dlc. You kill a frenzy lord, no peep from Melina. You kill her brother? Not a fuckin word. No word from Malenia, can't tell her where her brother is or what he's up to. Gideon? the dude that wants to know this kinda stuff? doesn't say a word, and can't tell him shit.
One thing I will say is that this DLC has probably some of the coolest looking bosses in the series in my opinion. I also really liked the narrative. The fight against Radahn doesn't make me feel like I am fighting the last boss or some big evil baddie, I actually feel like I'm fighting a hero. A guy who's revived at his peak, not just a memory of what a hero he was but the actual real life example of the power the demigods had. The entire game and pretty much the whole souls series we fight enemies that are dying, diseased, horrifically injured or unwilling to fight to begin with. People who have given up or people who are a shadow of their former selves. The entire time we play the game the people and descriptions tell of a world filled with legends so big you'd be in awe just looking at them. Fighters so powerful they could stop the stars themselves in their tracks, but we never really get the feeling of seeing any of them even when we do manage to face them in a fight head-on. The DLC really changed that. For once I felt like I wasn't fighting against a powerful grandpa but a young hero in his prime, a real living legend.
Fantastic Review/Critique. Finaly more nuance then "Its just bad Bosses and to much reused Stuff" and "EZ Boss its not bad just git gud and a perfect World". Great Video, keep it up!
i really wish that shadow of the erdtree unlocked a new ending for the base game. i felt that radahn being the final boss was fitting, but the ending disappointing
I wish they were like the golden seeds where you didn't need to collect all of them to max out you stats. Especially when random pot enemies can have them
@@makito106 I think FromSoftware did not understand what people liked about the progression in the base game this time around(which is fine, they tried something in dlc, didn't work great IMO, they learned, it will be better in the future). IMO progression should NOT be tied to searching for an item, but more so to defeating an enemy(bosses, mini-bosses, dragons, Those firey things that dropped phisique tears). It will make it easier for people to progress more organically. There were plenty of bosses that were present in caves and all around scattered throughout the whole world. Make them drop these items that make your character stronger. That literally mimics the way the base game worked - a boss is too hard -> you go search for other enemies/minibosses -> defeat them -> get stronger by defeating them -> kill the boss that was giving you a headache -> progress forward. Going around just to gather these shadow tree fragments, while often there was nothing that interesting around them was not fun.
I think with a few of them, the big issue is the camera. Like the Lion. Has one of the worst cameras in any souls boss ever, which is a shame cause I think there could be arguments for strong mechanics.
that Radahn presentation pretty much says it all. there's no fitting description for that other than bullshit. you forgot to mention how every boss and their mother has a tendency to outright fly into the air repeatedly so you can't hit them. the centipede lady does that shit all the time and its fucking frustrating to deal with.
Dude I felt like a crazy person with the Gaol Knight. Feels good to be validated. Another fight that was weird was the Dragonkin NPC you fight in a catacomb. He would stagger on hit but after the first stagger he would recover and hit you back even before the time it took to finish my follow up swing. It was literally forced damage. And it's not like I was using a slow weapon. I had the uchigatana Anyway, good video!
Despite its flaws and issues, SOTE is still a 9.5/10 GOTY for me seriously its size, quality and entertainment value have blown everything out of the water
But one that was present since launch. Like oh boy we can buy string. But what about Arteria leafs or StTrinas Lilly's. The actual most annoying material to farm
Im glad SOMEONE finally pointed out that we have literally no -NO story reason, no motivation to be doing ANYTHING we're doing in the dlc. Sure the PLAYER does -"play more Elden ring" but not the player character. Whys the tarnished here? Why are we doing anything we're doing? Why do we kill Rellana? Why do we kill Messmer? Why do we stop Miquella, kill him, or even care? The dlc really outside of "huh, whys miquella ...? go find out" doesnt give us reason for any of that. We just.. do it. Because you know, its a Fromsoft game. So .. of course we want to play it. Its a Fromsoft game. Of course the "story" is cryptic and mysterious. Its a Fromsoft game. Of course theres random enemies, bosses, and beings you gotta kill... because.. you just gotta do it. They're in your way. They're bad or something. They're actually secretly doing things that they shouldn't so if you stop them, then everythings somewhat better. So on and so forth. Its a Fromsoft game. Just go play it. You know you want to. Who cares the actual in-game, in-universe reasons? Those really dont matter at all anymore, do they? Its a Fromsoft game, dont worry, its good, I promise.
My biggest gripe with the DLC, yeah. It's bizarre that a) we didn't get the option to side with Miquella when endings like the Frenzied Flame exist, and b) this DLC story is COMPLETELY separate from the rest of the game. We fight the Mother of Fingers and NOBODY has anything to say about that in the main game? We have Messmer's flame and somehow that doesn't mean anything to Melina? Why can't we burn the Erdtree with that, saving her in the process? Maybe there's a lore reason for the last one, but I certainly didn't find it. All in all, while I had a ton of fun with the gameplay of it (even enjoyed most of the bosses more than I did the base game's!) the story left me confused at how this was written by the same people who wrote Bloodborne and Sekiro.
There is no option to side with miquella because you are in his way. Your goals and his are diametrically opposed. You cannot exist in his order, and neither can he if you want to be lord. Thus it doesnt make sense for there to be an option to side with him.
21:53 As both a gamer who´s been playing fromsoft stuff for years and someone who´s profession has to do with reading comprehension and writing, you´d be surprised of how much this is so not the case. People don´t read. And because they don´t read, they miss out on key chunks of information. This is happening everywhere in life: college, work, everyday life and, of course, videogames. I agree with you on the fact that we cannot dismiss valid criticism with a simple "git gud" cause that shit is cringe, but the total obliviousness and lack of willingness to engage with any fundamentally complex written text in any form of media is a real phenomenom. I´ve seen it expressed in Elden Ring players who´ve had the game for two years now and still haven´t got a clue of how to make life easier for themselves, cause they just boot it up and hack away till they lose so much they get bored. The amount of times people I´ve discussed the DLC with aren´t even aware of the existence of the scadu tree fragments is mind blowing. Nice video, it had some thoughtful insights :)
@@DionPanday he said that just for the lolz… he’s been quoted in interviews saying the exact opposite: that he underestimated he time it would take to complete the dlc cause he breezed past it, partly cause he designed it and partly cause he uses all the tools the game gives him 😂
This is genuinely so frustrating. And I do certainly also engage in that type of behavior sometimes. But it is insane to see friends of mine, even those that I find to be intellectual and thoughtful people, routinely skip over chunks of dialogue or tutorial popups in game, then not know what to do, get frustrated and blame the game. I can't speak about other walks of life, but I assume to many, games are just something to turn your brain off and have fun. Or they simply aren't willing to give the game the same amount of energy and curiosity as they might have when they were younger and now just expect the dopamine to flow. As for Shadow of the Ertdtree, just letting yourself be summoned to help people with the bosses will give you a good idea of the type of player you're speaking about.
Just wanted to say I'm glad you bring up the issue of the story and especially motivation, as it's not really a critique I've seen brought up elsewhere, and it feels important. We, as the player, have basically no reason to be there other than to experience the content. We don't have any loyalty to Miquella, we're not charmed as far as I can tell, as if we are, that would break the moment we enter shadow altus. We don't really have any reason to mistrust Miquella either, although we do learn in shadow keep that he is planning to do some kind of ritual involving radahn and mohg. The thing is...at a certain point, Leda basically tells us, we need you, the Tarnished, to burn down the sealing tree with Messmer's flame. So why don't we just...not? When I got to that moment in the story I was thinking, why would I even do this? The only person that benefits from the sealing tree being burned is Miquella. The Tarnished could walk away at this point, take Messmer's flame with them, Miquella would be stuck in the Land of Shadow forever and Radahn would never be reborn. The whole conflict feels contrived and the only reason to push on is because you want to finish the DLC, which ironically, has no impact on the base game anyway. It's strange because Fromsoft is normally really good at creating worlds that feel old, but 'lived in', where you're kicking up dust and disturbing things that have been long forgotten. SotE's world instead feels...static. Like, the player is the only thing with agency in this world and everything there is just waiting for the Tarnished to come along and stir shit up. Worse, a lot of the stuff we discover feels like it should be more consequential than the base game. We literally get a sidequest to find the Mother of Fingers, and another one to kill the dragon that crippled Placidusax himself. How is there only one person in this entire land that has investigated the giant finger ruins that take up a huge chunk of its landmass? Why include another Lord of Frenzied Flame when he adds next to nothing to the lore, and interacts with you exactly the same regardless of if you accepted the flame? it feels like a remix of Elden Ring's greatest hits, but without the natural cohesiveness that made the world of the base game so great. I don't mean to sound overly negative, but I really went into this DLC hoping to explore more of ER's great world and story, and I felt like I got empty calories in return. The spectacle was great, but the lack of a strong story in this DLC left me feeling like SotE was just more for the sake of more.
I did feel like the difficulty of this DLC is pretty uneven. Early doors it can be very hard, then once you've got some scooby snacks and a good build the mid to late game is straight cruising and then the final boss is crushing again regardless. I've enjoyed the DLC as a whole though but I do agree some other recent soulslikes have added quality of life and story telling features that feel noticeably absent here now. A solid critique 👍
I’ve disagreed with a lot you’ve said but this is legitimately my favourite video reviewing the dlc. It wasn’t overly negative or positive, criticized without insulting, and offered helpful feedback for the most part. Also you wrote some banger lines here. Plus it’s absolute comedy gold when you’re talking about fun and satisfying boss fight experiences and you show “bed of chaos”. I hope you find lots of success with your channel!
I think, that our goal as the player character is to become Elden Lord and be a deciding factor in the future of the lands between and choose our own new god. This means we are standing in direct opposition to miquella, who himself wants to become a god with his consort/elden lord. So we go out, search for our rival in ambition and to rid them from those worlds and our way. So this is why we kill former "companions", which where never companions in the first place. partially forced into loving and following Miquella.
Some of my thoughts: DIFFICULTY - I genuinely start to think that Miyazaki is going from "tough, but fair" to "difficult=good", where the term "difficult" also covers terms "frustration" and "unfair". Few days ago I started to really think that there is power creep present. But not on the players side, but on the side of bosses. It basically all started with the Elden Ring (examples are Malenia's dance, Elden Beast's elden stars, Fire Giant overall, Margit/Morgotts quick-succession attacks similiar to Promised Consorts "undodgeable" frame trap short combo"), which is really strange, because (at least in my opinion) Sekiro is Fromsofts most perfect game they've ever made. So going from Sekiro, which is so well balanced, to Elden Ring, with several questionable boss attacks/combos is pretty strange. And with that I think this power creep will only grow from now on, basing it mainly on Promised Consort (especially second phase). ENDING - The ending was very much anti-climatic. Even tho I thought the DLC lore would be different (my head cannon was that Messmer got out of the hand, and Miquella was the only demigod/Marika's child to be able to stop him), I still expected something cool to happen after I defeat the final boss. Like going through the Divine Gate, or being able to speak with Miquella, or maybe new available game ending. But what we have got was this memory (which people are not really that fond of, since It looks pretty cheap, it is short and doesn't give any more contest than there already is), and that is all. I gotta agree with Umbri about some parts of DLC feeling rushed, the ending being one of them. DEFLECTING TEAR - If Fromsoft was experimenting with this tear, I really hope they will not implement it as a "base-kit". I wasn't really a fan of approach Lies of P took, where you could do both, deflect and roll/dash. In my opinion the game should have just of those available (I know you can dash through few attacks in Sekiro, but it is not a mechanic you can use to dodge 50% of attacks). Having both makes the game too complex, where it basically takes double the time to master both of the mechanics, where for example in Sekiro you have only deflecting, so you put time only in that and you don't have to stress about the other 50% of attacks that you can dodge by the other one.
Thats honestly and intresting critique that i never considered. I never thought that lies of P was too complex but i can see how a person might think that. Personally i see it as a way to mix up the gameplay. Weaving together parries and dodges can also make the typical souls gameplay more fresh and exciting. At least in my opinion.
@@TheUltimateMachineGod i dont know if the word “complex” is a fitting term. What I more meant is that both of mechanics are not explored/used fully if you implement both. I personally either want to focus on rolling around, knowing perfect ways to use the dodge, or knowing perfectly how to deflect attacks. I cant imagine using any another mechanic (dodging) in Sekiro, focusing on anything else than deflecting.
@@sebastian6650 I respect your opinion but I must humbly disagree. Lies of P was able to to explore both fairly well. Both mechanics contribute to that games version of a stance break. Parrying works similarly to sekiro while you could also dodge and attack much like in Elden ring. To facilitate this style of play there are plenty of instances in fights where switching between the two can be essential. Heavy deliberate swings are much easier to dodge than time a block. While fury red attacks can only be perfect blocked. Longer combo strings are far easier to parry than dodge and dodging is also much easier to dodge charges and sweeps. You can use one or the other but using both can help you if you struggle with certain kinds of attacks. Switching styles mid combat can open up opportunities that my not be obvious.
First sentiment is straight up wrong. These bosses are not harder than base game elden ring or even sekiro. People just… kinda don’t want to learn bosses anymore since elden ring’s launch? They’re just a natural evolution of ds3 bosses. They’re designed around the usage of jumping, positioning etc. Not just rollspamming like ds3. Now, a valid criticism around this, is the fact that the game does a really bad job at explaining the mechanics to you. It’s very easy to believe that just rolling will get you the win, because in most cases it does. But when a boss is more demanding, requiring you to use these mechanics to their fullest, it seems ‘unfair’ as a result.
The intro felt very reminiscent of Joseph Anderson's video, which I recently rewatched. The "yeah probably, but" thing. Not sure if intentional, but I enjoyed it.
Amidst the seas of rapturous praise, I think videos like these are especially important. It's extremely useful for fostering your critical eye to deeply and thoroughly dissect what it is you like, dislike, and think could be better, while also offering up new ideas going forward. It's very rare, in both videos of extreme praise and overwhelming negativity, for you to completely agree with either one, so I think every single one of these videos discussing the ups and downs of this particular DLC and how it recontextualizes stuff from the base game is a worthy critique. Love the vid, love the points, keep it up 👍👍
I miss when stamina actually meant something in souls games. 99.99% of my time in combat was just reacting to attacks instead of planning of what I'm going to do. Bosses punish playing aggressive too much and with stamina being so generous, it was just too much reaction. I played Ds1 and remembered that you can't just roll then attack immediately after all the time. You had to plan every move, everything you did mattered. Every dodge, every spell, every block, every attack had weight in the fight. Healing was riskier as you had to stand still. Spells were actually fun to use as you didn't need to have a ton of FP to use. Just as long as you met the requirements to cast the spell, you could cast it. No need to level up 2 stats for it, just level up the one and you're good. It allowed more flexibility in it. Dark Souls 2 perfected it as spells actually used stamina, but still didn't use the FP system
I feel like part of the issue is that in recent games they really feel like they need to up the spectacle for most major bosses. With very long animation chains and big signatures moves, but never really updated the way they expect the player to move in order to avoid said attacks. Meaning that they’re increasingly reliant on I frames to avoid these moves, rather than having believably avoided it by moving out of the way. Plus a lot of these moves have such a wide visual effect you can’t look at it and intuitively work out where to go to avoid it.
Genuinely just thank you for this video. I’m so glad to hear some actual fair criticism on the DLC. So many moments I was thinking “exactly” during this lol
This is a really lovely video, well thought out and obviously coming from a good place, made in good faith. I can see most of your points and agree with many of them. The one that I do disagree with is the 'problem' of player character motivation. There is no explicit motivation because you are not playing a predetermined character. In that way Elden Ring, like many other FromSoft titles, is still an RPG at its core. It's up to the player to decide who they are playing as. And as such the motivation will vary. My initial playthrough is a character that desperately wants to do right by as many people as she can, getting entangled in things so much beyond her comprehension that in her efforts to help she stumbles into becoming Elden Lord. Miquella seems to be the only demigod with similar concerns to that goal of helping people, so she follows him into the Shadowrealm for guidance or advice, only to find out in the end she doesn't agree with his approach and has to stop him. The second playthrough I wanted to be different. And I wanted to pursue the Chaos Flame. So my second character doesn't care. He'll help people if it benefits him, he'll play along but backstab whenever necessary. He doesn't exactly go out of his way to fuck things up- but if things GET fucked up then that's no skin off his back. He'll skip dialogue and questlines if he doesn't feel like it. And he goes to the Shadowrealm just because he can. Just to see what is there that will help him grow more powerful. He doesn't much care for the idea of someone becoming a god and taking out the source of his own status, so he meanders around, vaguely following Miquella to put a stop to that. I did not sit down and think those characters out in advance, though you definitely can and it'll likely give the game a whole new layer of enjoyment. But for me I just sortof played them and let their personalities form in my head as I went along. So for me, the motivation is not lacking at all. The game isn't supposed to give you one. You have to find one for yourself. The same goes for the significance of NPCs in your journey. Meaning doesn't only arrive from the ending of it. And my emotions are engaged in very different ways in both playthroughs (though I agree that the obtuseness of all the NPC quests is getting real old).
It's funny how despite being way better, The Old Hunter's DLC wasn't nearly as well received as Shadow of the Erdtree. It's almost like reviews are based on the hype a game generates, rather than the actual quality of the game itself.
Well done! This was very thoughtful and measured critique, and I appreciate how carefully you chose your wording and your tone. I find myself on agreement with basically everything you said, just wanted to give a few thoughts of my own. As far as exploration, repetition and open world things, the exploration of the world and legacy dungeons was easily my favorite part of the dlc. As you said the side activities were far less repetitive and more rewarding in most cases (except the furnace golems which I only killed all of out of obsessive completionism, those were a dull chore). But whenever I step back and think about it more critically, several of the map areas have a rushed feeling about them, with little thought given to enemies or items or blind playthrough experiences. On the one hand, the desolate nature of the finger ruins and the abyssal woods definitely added to their pervasive atmosphere of foreboding and creepiness. On the other, there is such a thing as overdoing it, which I feel like both did. The finger ruins especially, which are utterly pointless to explore before starting Ymir’s quest. Even after meeting Ymir, they each only hold one item of any importance, and even that wasn't a very interesting item. I wanted something at the end of those explorations to build on and intensify that disturbing alien atmosphere. Instead it's a big John Travolta shrug. Abyssal Woods at least had Midra’s mansion as a capper, and a lot of Bloodborne influence (although the massive amount of cribbing and reshuffling of things from previous games became a little grating to me.) All areas seems to suffer from lackluster item pickups. Getting something like a single crafting material or a +4 smithing stone is frankly insulting at this point in a playthrough. I can buy endless smithing stones, and half the time the crafting material item pickup was in an environment full of that very crafting material. What the hell was that? I'm 100% with you on the shamen village though. That was one space that felt appropriately empty. It was probably the most emotional and fascinating spot in the dlc for me. Moreover, the Marika & Messmer stuff was enormously more poignant and affecting than anything to do with miquella. Kinda wishing that had been the main plot of the dlc. The main plot was itself under baked and confused at best. As you brought up with our character's motivation, I never understood why we were doing any of this stuff. The only one with any sort of purpose was Anbach wanting to avenge Mohg, but personally I couldn't care less about Mohg’s dignity. The npc quests were absolutely Fromsoft at its worst cliches. As a veteran player I was constantly talking to NPCs, reloading areas, fast travelling back and forth, looking for any changes, and somehow I still managed to fail at least half of the quests, with the NPCs just disappearing into the aether for no apparent reason. Finally, we come to the bosses and combat in general and yeah…that's definitely the biggest issue. To me it felt like Fromsoft really didn't know what they wanted to make. It feels like they want to move more towards an action game, which is fine, but couldn't commit fully and so you have our characters still feeling mostly straight out of DS3. Fights like Radahn, Rellana, Romina all felt straight out of character action games, like Stellar Blade or DMC, or at best, Sekiro. Actually Rowina specifically felt like an unused Sekiro boss that they just stuck scarlet rott on. The obvious difference being that in those games, your character is on a level playing field, able to match the speed and aggressiveness of the bosses. This dlc merely intensified that feeling of player/enemy discrepancy from the base game, additionally making some build types all but inviable. As a personal anecdote to highlight this feeling: Yesterday I helped a friend with every boss from Fire Giant through Godfrey. After that, I went back to my own game where I was stuck at Radahn. I went in for another try and it just felt like I was playing an entirely different game than what I had just come from. It was utterly bizarre and alienating. I think I had a few more things to say but at this point I've been rambling way too long so I'll stop here. Anyway, you've got yourself a new subscriber 👍
If From balanced bosses around using summons, they have a weird way of showing it, cause most bosses will nuke you in the summon animation lmao. It's absolutely terrible. I had to use the cheese strat of fingerprint shield + rapier for radahn and I just... I hate it. I hate the DLC, lol. The entire thing was a fragment collectathon for me following a youtube guide. It wasn't a game full of exploration and wonder, it was "crap I hope the fragments I got up to now are enough for this boss to get more fragments". It sucked, the entire thing required gimmick builds to get through for slow-reflex people like myself.
Very good video. Listening to you talk and explain helped me put a lot of my thoughts into perspective. After finishing the original Elden Ring and more now after the DLC i feel a bit sad, because of the direction the whole thing is going. I can remember stumbling upon paths where I thought "hmm its Fromsoftware, lets try" and jumping on ledges, like one you have to go to for rannies dagger or the rock formations in the dlc that bring you to the cerulean coast and having the time of my life just to stumble upon another dragon boss or astel which I did not enjoy at all. Where in every soulsborne earlier and even Lies of P or the new Nine Sols the bosses felt like a reward for exploring and progressing the world, now they feel like a chore to progress the story. Of course I enjoyed game and dlc, with the former being clear game of the year for me but as strange as it felt I expected more from Fromsoftware. The story for example is made up of hundreds of threats that, instead of being neatly tied together, in the end just fell apart for me. (Most glaring one for me here was the choice of an Eldenbeast instead of just fighting Marika as the final boss, or for the DLC the fact that Messmer just chills about in some random ass room and after beating what was for me the best boss of the dlc you dont even get to progress throught that room but you have to burn a tree in a compeltely different area.) Slowly the confusing worlds and open questlines I found interesting in the first games begin to annoy me. (Melina's cutscene in the Frenzy Ending comes to mind, like there is no closure to this part of the story). After watching your video I am carefully optimistic because of the points you made and also becasue I know fromsoftware can desing a very different kind of game (Sekiro) which was their real Magnum Opus for me.
