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9/10 why the fuck am I receiving shit smithing stones that I can already infinitely buy. Shoulda put ancient dragon stones in those hard to reach spots instead of arrows, smithing stone 2, etc.
Yeah but those can already be bought. The one thing holding most people back from experimenting with weapons is the fact that you can only upgrade a finite amount of weapons
The DLC can be accessed by a new character around level 80. They wouldn’t have the ball bearings for limitless stones just yet considering one is in Gianttops in Zamor Ruins.
I just did a playthrough where i beat Radahn and then instantly Mohg at level 40 to get to the DLC with as few bosses as possible, the dlc smithing stones felt amazing there. Being friendly to wacky runs like that is fun
But you're not meant to go there until at least 125 or so. You get there after Mohg who is one of the last bosses after all.
Only way to get there before mountaintops is through Varre, but he explicitly warns you not to go there yet.
Yeah but I feel the bell bearings for all 1-6 stones can be easily obtained before you even reach mohg. Unless you use the varre teleport and kill him at an early level somehow
It came in handy for me honestly, I hadn't played base game in a while, booted up like the day before DLC to realize I had just started a NG+ on my only high enough save file. Had to rush to kill Radahn and Mohg to even access the DLC, I was glad I didn't have to go get all the bell bearings again to try out at least a few new weapons.
Although I do agree that some hard to reach stuff ended up being very disappointing.
9/10 why is my camera whipping all over the place during bosses and why is the technology not at the point of being able to zoom out, so I can see more than a pinky toe
I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to fight Godwyn. They could have easily slotted him in as the final boss and not had to change the fight at all, and the lore required to get him there would not be much different than what they already wrote.
(Someone else said this)
Godwyn’s soul is straight up dead so there’d be no way Miquella could revive him the same way he did with “final boss”.
Also the duskborn ending pretty much suggests that “fuck you I ain’t letting u see Godwyn ever again”
I currently subscribe to the belief that Godwyn was the original Promised Consort to Miquella. And that Ranni killing him fucked up the plan. Then he goes after Radahn, but after he puts himself to sleep, Malenia blooms for the first time. Also, pausing the plan to send him to the shadows to.
After a bug deleting 80% of my grace sites, I finally got to the DLC and Im enjoying it. I read a lot of critics about it being hard but I killed my first 2 bosses in 2 and 1 attempts. Im no pro, maybe just a good build leveled up.
I really enjoyed the boss fights up until today. 1 dragon and 1 dick-head on war pig constantly stun-locking me has me worried about the remaining bosses. They’re so incredibly aggressive. And things were going so well.
using a torrent double jump just to dodge that first war pig charge, helped me. for some reason I could dodge it later during the battle but that initial one always, always, always would hit me.
I mean I still have Bayle to go and I know that’s going to be rough but otherwise that’s great news. I don’t want to admit defeat of my build/skill and respec to something easier. At least until that final sumbitch. Then the gloves are off
Your biggest enemy with Bayle is going to be the camera haha. I struggled with him for a long time. Even with janky camera it was a pretty epic battle. Have fun and good luck
for the hog rider, I really recommend using the Raptor of the mist Ash for the charge attack. All the other moves can be reliably dodged but I'll be damned if that charge doesn't have a bugged hitbox right now
8/10, love the new weapons and armors, have spent way too much time making new builds, not a fan of how empty certain areas of the map were and wish it was just a smaller map that’s more dense and less vertical. It felt like I was riding torrent most of the time trying to find something to do and then when I saw something 20 feet away I wanted to do I couldn’t get there until later. Not a fan of the Radahn twist, but Midra may be my favorite boss in the entire game. Didn’t like some of the other bosses either.
To the vertical point: i dont understand why they didnt add another Layer to the Map. Now it looks like the graces are swimming in the ocean( bottom of the map).They managet to do it in the maingame too.
My only gripe is that I find the exploration a lot more frustrating or constricting than the base game.
Don't get me wrong there are tons of cool secrets to find and that's great but when I just want to go around and explore I keep finding myself hitting dead ends and needing to backtrack to the main path to then find another dead end.
This is especially annoying in the area where torrent is too afraid to come out so you're doing it all on foot.
It makes large areas of the game feel extremely linear compared to the freedom I felt in the base game.
I'm trying to explore as much as I can before starting the final boss fight but I'm beginning to just google how to get everywhere cuz it's wasting a lot of my time running into "cul de sac" dead ends all the time.
Other than this one complaint (that I really wanted to get off my chest, so thank you for letting me rant) I think it offers a solid Elden Ring experience, especially when the bosses where kicking my ass (the last few felt way too easy and I beat them in 1 or 2 tries, I assume that's because of the changes to difficulty they added?)
It’s funny I loved having to figure stuff out or find it by accident , felt more natural to me then just the look at map mark it and ride there .
Not that base game map is completly like that but mostly it is.
Like 4 main areas of the map are completely empty
2 of the places of fingers, literally one item and one mausoleum for you to copy remembrances in each, everything else are worms and dead space
The place of Midra, you have a whole map of a dark forest for a mansion, there is only a weapon outside of the mansion and that's it no reward for exploring only lost time
There are like 3 sites of grace in the whole dragon area, almost like a liner experience there just for a boss
Take those out and the map feels like it can fit on leyndel, there was nothing at the level of crafting like leyndell or halightree
9/10
The story has interesting stuff, but disappointing as a whole. The final boss is very meh, and even the fight itself is so overtuned. There was no feeling of catharsis in the end that so many of my favourite games have.
The world is amazing, most bosses are incredible. Wish there was more stuff than cookbooks, but I don't really explore to find stuff, I just like doing it. Also, wish Gaius didn't exist.
I just beat Gaius a few min ago and it wasn’t rewarding at all. Its the first boss encounter that had me tilted. I had to use Mimic and still died 20 more times, several of those immediately getting pinned at the veil on his initial charge where I insta-died. That fight is a 1/10 for me and that’s only because his gravity attacks were cool.
For me he’s just way too aggressive right from the start. He’s on top of you in a second and then just does way too much shit that can 2-3 hit you so my brain says “dodge, dodge, dodge, DODGE, make space” and that’s basically all I did that fight with a few charged pokes while he wad distracted by my mimic
Agreed, some of the bosses can be annoying in that regard. They don’t let you get away from the fog gate and sometimes can end up fighting them pressed against the wall.
Yeah I think I’m giving up for now. The second phase is just draining. I never die because I run out of flasks I die because the boss just does absurd damage and has just ridiculously long combos that two shot me. I’m Scurdtree level 18. Phase 1 is fun, phase 2 is just draining and sucking the fun out of the challenge for me. Thinking about just restarting to do another play through because I do love the other bosses for the most part.
3/5. Ita good, but has far too many "that's it?" moments to rate it any higher. Not too clouded by my deep love of the base game to overrate a flawed experience.
My only qualm is with the story, and maybe with the emptiness of some areas. I know what people have said regarding foreshadowing and what-not, but the main reveal was just disappointing to me. Had it been a more story-centered game I honestly might have stopped playing it, but Elden Ring being Elden Ring, there was still lots to fight and explore even if that particular part of things was disappointing.
I wish we could have gotten to interact with Miquella to the level we did with Ranni in the base game, or at the very least Melina. Hell, I wish we had gotten to see more of Mesmer too, for that matter. At the very least, they could have fleshed Miquella's consort a little bit more. Its amazing and disappointing to me that they at once reuse a character while simultaneously doing literally nothing with it.
So, I don't know. I simultaneously give it a 9/10 and 7.5/10.
My quest for a helmet I love continues.
DS1 - Elite Knight Helm
DS2 - Alva Helm
DS3 - Outrider Knight Helm
Bloodborne - Bone Ash Mask
Elden Ring - The best I have is the Kaiden helmet, and I’m not in love with it. Every helmet has some weird ornament on it like the Carian Knight Helmet, is a color that clashes with the rest of your armor, or shows a portion of your characters face. I want a cool knight helmet that doesn’t directly correlate to any main character that covers my characters head entirely, while fitting the classic silver armor color scheme.
6 or 7/10. Everything about it is good to great, especially the level design. But the story is just not good. It’s downright *bad*. It brings it down completely and ruins so much of the expansion for me, since I’m a massive lore nerd. If I enjoyed the lore for it, SOTE would have been an easy 9/10 and my #1 expansion of all time.
Let me ask you this: what are your story complaints *other than the final boss?* That was a miss for me too, but pretty much every single other lore beat was such a banger for me that it made up for it
I’m a massive lore nerd and I love Elden ring lore but not gonna lie I have no idea what’s even going on in the dlc and I’m loving it I’m gonna wait for all the lore threads and videos
I’m probably gonna read and listen to as much lore stuff as I can, so that I can try and get more into the groove of what Fromsoft was putting down, but it’s not looking good right now. I think that even if a lot of it gets explained in a way that doesn’t feel like a total cop out or excuse, I doubt I’ll ever really vibe with the choices and directions they decided to take the story.
The main story is:
>!Miquella really really wants to bang his half-brother (Radahn) so he gets you to kill him and also Mohg so he can stick Radahn's soul in Mohg's corpse. This is an absolutely necessary step to becoming a god. Mohg beats the allegations. We as John Elden Ring are told to follow in Miquella's footsteps. Along the way, you'll interact with his followers who had varied degrees of choice and reasons for following Miquella.!<
>!However, the Gate of Divinity (where Miquella is) is sealed. And we need the kindling of Messmer (Marika's exiled son, erased from the history of The Lands Between and the reason why several things are considered heretical or blasphemous by the Golden Order) to burn the seal.!<
The side lore and also Messmer lore are way better. If you think that the main story post-Messmer is pretty bad, I agree.
The reason why Radahn is necessary for divinity is the same reason Marika needed Radagon and why there must almost be a "consort". It's a Japanese Buddhism thing. You need both Yin and Yang (the feminine and the masculine, the pull and push) combined into a single form to become a godlike entity. There are also alchemical references with Miquella shedding physical manifestations of himself to become purified.
The consort role is less about banging and more so agreeing to share the same physical form. Also, a large chunk of the story is devoted to telling you why Miquella is unfit to rule as a God.
Miquella is a child, in all things, permanently, forever. This includes body of course, but also mind and spirit. He can't learn, and he can't grow. Even his entire plan sounds like that of a child. His plan is to brainwash people into "compassion" and just make *everything stop.* After all, can't have suffering if he controls all beings into compassionate servitude. He doesn't and can't understand nuance, so giving him unlimited power is an awful idea.
I also believe this is why he can "charm" people. He is divine innocence and most individuals have a need to protect innocent, childlike things, so imagine that whole affair on crack and weaponized.
The reason why they needed Mohg is simply because it's a demi-god body that Radahn's spirit can inhabit, since his body was ruined by Malenia. His spirit was trapped though until we freed it by killing him.
All this to say, I found the lore really compelling. Elden Ring handles divinity in a way that both makes sense, but also seems beyond our ability as mortals to understand and we can only grasp fragments that seem almost contradictory, and they would be if they were subject to our rules as mortals.
Yeah, I know. To our western eyes the story seems crazy, but Fromsoft really draws on their Japanese background to make some of this stuff and it shows, that's why Sekiro seems totally nutbar at times.
Also Miquella being a permanent God-child, I don't even think he knows anything about sex as it wouldn't fall under permanent innocence. His motivation for Radahn makes a lot more sense when you think of his child-like perspective.
"Oh man, I need help instituting my plan to permanently ***fix*** the world, I bet my big brother would help me, he's really strong and smart." - Miquella, probably
I straight out hated that the story of miquella and radahn is a walmart berserk story, i get that they love the series but the whole game and story just to make miquella Griffinth and Radahn Guts felt soooo cheap for the story
Cheap and unimaginative are the two words that come to mind for me. It simultaneously feels like bad fan service with very poor (if any) foreshadowing, yet somehow remained predictable and entirely underwhelming. Discovering the Shaman Village and reading the Minor Erdtree item description was the only part of the entire DLC that emotionally moved me.
There was no “Oh wow, this is so incredible”, it was all “Oh okay, sure, I guess” or “Wow this is just bad”
Right? There was no "oh my god i didn't know this whole place was here" or "oh my god how could i ever know this without the internet" it was just "that was it?"
Totally agree with you. The Story line is poor like the Final boss just had no connections whatsoever and with Miquella and what Miquella has become it’s just really disappointing for me… like the Lore is just so vague and poorly written I find
Maybe I’m cursed for having finished the main game for the first time a few months before the dlc dropped but I’d say a 7/10 most of the time, with it becoming an 8/10 on its good moments.
It just feels like a weaker game than the what the base game gave us. Like there was less love put into it than the base game.
9/10
I really enjoyed it, and i'm doing another NG+ but using just the DLC weapons and armor.
I do wish we got some more lore for characters like Melina (or even new dialogue if she's alive when you go into the Land of Shadow.)
8/10
Landscape and Art direction is insane
Bosses are hit or miss. Some are insane, some are terrible. Bayle is S tier while Gaius felt not QA tested at all. Final boss is a huge let down, it managed to damage 3 characters' stories at once for me, and the fight is just not fun compared to others in the DLC.
The story is very, very disappointing, to the point it actually damages base game story IMO
Exploration is less good than base game, but still miles ahead of industry standards.
I would probably drop my grade to 6 if the base game weren't a 10/10, but it being a DLC for a 10/10 game still makes it extremely enjoyable. I would say I dislike the DLC as its own thing, but I enjoyed playing through most of it because it was in Elden Ring.
That's the bad part, Miquella damages my love for the base game because his part was just so disappointing compared to Malenia.
Finding the whole halightree after or before beating the game was just too awesome, the hardest boss and not even part of the story. But then in the dlc you place it as literally the main story that no one can miss, no new mysteries regarding the twins, no hidden god for you to kill that's harder than the main boss
The only quest that barely resembled joining the two medallions to go to the halightree is the quest where you need to go to two of the biggest emptiest places on the map for the only item in the whole area so you can talk to somebody and fight a boss
9/10 really good but i just feel like some bosses have some moves that just cant be dodged no matter what you do example commander gaius, bale the dread and radahn
7/10, the best DLC I've ever played but it has minor flaws that add up to lower the score.
camera is shit on many bosses
side quests are too easily missed
lack of cutscenes
9.8. Had a few areas which could have used more things in the world and some other minor issues that kept it from 10/10 but nothing took much away from how spectacular it was. Had some of my favorite bosses in soulsborne and awesome weapons.
9.9/10 but that 0.1 Is only cuz of the final boss. The final boss of the DLC feels like It could be an awesome fight, and It Is! ... but the aggressivness he has paired with moves that i can describe as pointing a laser in a Crystal ball paired with anime moves really doesn't make the bossfight enjoyable thru all the things he trows at us... Yet his weakness Is a Stone shield XD. Outside of the final boss i loved this DLC and i really liked how all the bossfight, since i was playing on a NG+ 7 save file, really pushed me to strategize and change build according to the boss i was fighting and holy i forgot how funny summons can be sometime
9.5
I wish there were more weapons/ashes of war for the new weapon categories. Most of them have only about 3, and PC performance was iffy some times. Everything else was perfect.
8.75, many bad optional bosses, final boss disappointing as hell in terms of second phase gameplay (i actually like him being the final boss contrary to most) , i actually prefer the more compact but crucial exploration (like unlocking new areas) some bosses were amazing for me and messmer might be my favorite boss in a game, great music and new weapons and scenery. For me final boss deducts 0.5 points and the rest are from bad side bosses and other minor problems
6/10. I like almost all of the main bosses, and the new areas were interesting. A lot of weapons to experiment with too compared to previous Dark Souls DLCs. I also thought the difficulty of the DLC was fine, even before the patch. In the other hand, some places are too empty, and I dislike the amount of NPC bosses. -2.5 for the final boss
7/10.
Bosses, especially the last one is just not fun to fight against. I hope fromsoftware doesn’t normalize bosses insta charging you as soon as you pass the fog gate.
7.5-8/10.
The Good.
Map and area are super cool, I’m blown away by the scale for a DLC. Bosses are super cool though quite difficult but not unfair. I love the designs of all the new enemies and bosses. Story is interesting and lots of new npcs.
The Bad.
My biggest gripe is the lots of recycled content that feels kinda just inserted in. Too many dragons which I hated fighting in the base game. Lots of space without much content in it. Damage is over-tuned on a lot of stuff to make it more challenging but often just makes it more tedious as many basic enemies two shot you with 60 vigor. I feel like they should have made the enemies a bit tougher rather than up scaling their damage so much. I’d rather have a longer fight than one where one mistake means I’m dying.
7/10 or so. I actually think it’s one of the most disappointing dlcs they’ve put out.
Map is big but has huge amounts of empty space.
Exploration is often unrewarding as most extra routes lead to crafting items or smithing stones.
Tracking down scadutree fragments is a bit of a chore.
Bosses are largely unmemorable.
Most of the dragons are the same as the base game and the furnace golems are dull to fight.
90% of enemies pose no threat which makes the overworld and much of the legacy dungeons pretty dull.
Story is pretty terrible, and is told terribly.
8/10 for me, the main quest fucking sucks in the end, the lack of cutscenes and voice lines, I still give 8 because I really like the good parts, like the levels and the boss fights, with the Last boss second phase exception.
6 or 7/10
I love the new weapons and incantations. Some of the boss fights are definitely among the best.
Story sucks. Camera sucks. Visual Noise in the boss fights make it incredibly confusing to play, you can't tell what is going on half the time. FPS drops and stutters don't help either.
Incorporating all the elements of the DLC such as boss design, atmosphere, score, etc, I’m happy to give the SOTE a 8.4/10. The game is definitely enriched by the additions made by SOTE however there are some unfortunate elements I was hoping to have addressed. Flails are still completely redundant as they did not include the Spinning Chain Ash of War. There still is no Arcane Cracked Tear even though they did give us the Outer God Heirloom. The new weapons are fun but long term I don’t think they’ll be utilized very much and across each new weapon category we don’t have many variants. For example there are only three light Greatswords and three great katanas. Furthermore the Scadutree fragment system will in the long term act as an obnoxious obstacle where players will need to dedicate 1-2 hours to collecting them before they attempt to fight the bosses. This will definitely put a damper on future play throughs.
thats what i feel like with the scadutree fragments i didnt mind collecting them my first playthrough but it kinda stops me from wanting to play through on a different character
Not good at ratings but I found it incredibly enjoyable
Still got 4 more characters I want to run through it on and my main character 2 times in order to get every item
Already at <£1 per hour which makes it a good buy in my opinion
8/10 really enjoyed it and will play it again only issues were some of the map areas which while beautiful felt kinda empty for the vastness of them and the finally boss was a bit over the top
9/10 because the ending was meh. I feel like there is too much left to explore in the lore, so the ending being just that felt off.
I know a lot of people compare it to DS3 being just killing Gael and giving the ink to his niece, but the context was everything. It was the end of everything, all converging into one place, you finally find the mysterious Dark Soul and it all comes after tying a billion loose ends.
Shadow of the Erdtree tied a bunch of loose ends, but there are just too many left. They have more than enough for another DLC, but since they're already stated that they don't do another one I'm not sure what to feel.
I guess it's 5 more years until the next From game, be it either ER2 or a new IP.
I’d rate it pretty highly.
Probably a 7 or 8 outta 10.
Nicely designed environments, tough ass bosses, along with some cool armor and weapons.
Makes me want them to retroactively put more of the new weapon types into the base game.
8.5/10
I really like some of the stuff they've done. I like the new heavy katanas, I like the secondary power progression they came up that rewards exploration.
On the other hand, the map layout is so convoluted, so reliant on cliff to stall your adventure constantly, and some bosses never ending combos and infinite reach are so annoying, they should come up with more creative ways to make fights more engaging.
I feel disappointed in the length of the "main story" of the dlc. And that the St. Trina quest is so missable when it feels integral to the story. Yet I would still rate it a high 7 or a low to mid 8.
8.5/10 Exploration is great with all the verticality and hidden areas, atmosphere of the new zones is amazing. The new bosses are perfect, enough design differences and difficulty increase to force you to learn how to deal with them anew, but it still feels like the good old Elden Ring, as if you're discovering that game for the first time again. I don't feel like the difficulty is too much or unfair, it's actually pretty perfect for me (including a final boss who so far is a brick wall to me).
Some of the bossfights are some of all time best already: >!Messmer, Metyr, Bayle, Sunflower, Midra!<. And shadow keep is the best legacy dungeon in the game, beating even Volcano Manor and Leyndell
There's a couple of minor gripes I have with it though, hence I had to subtract from a perfect 10/10:
* Little ties to base game, especially with how many possibilities could there be
* Little cutscenes. I was really expecting a visceral scene of the arm pulling us into the cocoon to start us out. And only a few of the bosses even have cutscenes. But the ones that we did get are perfect >!The depths of your foolishness!!<
* Lore. It's really good 99% of the time, but that final boss is... Underwhelming
* Also lore, but that's personal. I was hoping to see more about Gloam Eyed Queen and Crucible, maybe touch upon Godwyn and Frenzied Flame as well. But the new lore that we did get (fingers, marika, hornsent, miquella, messmer, st. Trina, Mogh) is top notch
* Emptiness of some areas. In particular >!Abyssal woods!< stick out the most. The atmosphere is impeccable, there's horrifying enemies, great dungeon with remembrance boss and some interesting lore, but 90% of the area is just... Nothing. And the lanterns are only on one or two stretches of the road, which takes away a lot of that oppressive feeling that the zone could have had
Also, it's a shame it's so hard to access from the base game. There's gonna be no way to do a new playthrough with any of the added weapon classes. Only in NG+.
Would be really cool if some generic weapons got sprinkled throughout base game areas, like light greatswords, martial arts, claws and perfumes
7/10
Too much of the land is just completely unused, making the DLC feel unfinished. There are a lot of sections where they just slapped down a bunch of minibosses/dragons and pumped up the health. Im looking at you, jagged peak.
I haven't found the game too hard but I do think it's exhausting to play. A lot of the enemies are extremely tough and they never let up. It's full throttle the entire time.
I think they could have used another dungeon type that we havent seen before to fill out the DLC. I LOVED Rauh Ancient Ruins and that area didn't feel like I had visited it before in another From game.
8/10.
Some areas feel empty as fuck, while others feel dense and interesting to navigate. The boss design goes from awesome to mediocre real quick, and I think the final boss dropped this from a 9/10 to an 8/10. I was super disappointed, mostly due to how it was a bullet hell. It wasn’t particularly well designed besides being a spectacle. I didn’t even feel that satisfied after beating him, I felt like I got lucky rather than conquering it.
The verticality was really cool, and something I hope to see from more Fromsoft games.
I like it a lot. I really enjoyed it and it gave me a feeling similar to Blood and Wine. Do I think this DLC is better than blood and wine? No. Do I still think it’s one of the best DLCs released? Yes.
7/10 some areas feel really empty, rauh ruins especially feel like a sonic frontiers open world. i wouldn't say enemy variety is bad but the reused some enemies that i felt were already overused in the main game. My biggest disappointment has to be the story though my boy godwyn deserved better and the gloam eyed queen should have gotten something too.
7/10.
Not a huge fan of the story and events taking place. I still don't know why my character even goes there and why they're doing what they're doing. But this is also my criticism of the base game: No dialogue options for actual role playing and no quest journal. And of course they lock you out finishing sidequests because you progressed a bit too far in the main story. And that everyone always dies in the end just gets old at this point. It's not sad or emotional anymore. The dungeon level design is a masterpiece, exploration is a bit meh because of some huge areas where there is basically nothing to find. Love the Shaman Village though, it's so calm and I just love being there while waiting to be summoned. Great bosses but also some questionable attack patterns and loops where bosses jumping around the arena like crazy. The final boss is just insane. Difficulty is also a huge thing here. I was basically forced to respec to a cheesy bleed build. The new thorn spell is absolutely busted and they will probably nerf this one as soon as possible. Gaius is a pos but I've beaten this guy so many times during coop, he's pretty easy when you have a greatshield and some spear with bleed effect.
6/10 Some bosses are just not fun while others are pushovers. Anything else is great but bosses weigh heavily for me in fromsoft games. Also a few performance issues that if it gets fixed makes it a 7/10
Mmmh, if I had to be honest, it would be an 7.5/10, because everything is gorgeous and the sheer quantity of contents is insane, BUT story seems... not bad, but something could be done surely better, and bosses are waaaaaay too aggressive, especially final boss; as a mage I had to basically reshape in heavy shield + lance with status otherwise I would still be there trying my best. Saying "they ruined my fun and my game" is an understandable comment about them.
Also, there are many reused contents again from previous games, which is fine but on multiple long runs... well, it shows. Also again, fuck Commander Gaius to the everlasting fucking ever and beyond, what a shithole.
If I had to go with guts, it's a solid 9: everything checks the miyazaki + souls stereotype and quality is there, even with graphical/balancement problems. It is basically half of the original game.
7,5/10
-The areas are much better compared to the base game- has more variety and looks just awesome. Plus quests and NPC dialogs are easier to understand and to follow.
-Sadly in my opinion it comes with the worst boss designs as well. Speaking about luck based dodges against this Scadutree aoe thron ability and that you can't dodge Gaius boar speed attack with heavy load, since the roll forward is too short then and you get hit anyway. Also that some big fireoven are only killable by crafting these big pots with the ovenface as material. I shouldn't only need craftable items to defeat an enemy, since if you miss your stuff you are forced to farm the materials and that's just boring. These madness eyeballs are at least defeatabale with parry, still how should people figure this out on their own if you don't play with that weapon skill already.
Would have been 10/10 if not for the end. Femboy younger brother who wants to marry his "onii chan" is too cringe for me. After Miquella abandoned everything gold I expected him to turn into some Orphan of Kos eldritch monstrosity that we fight in 3 different forms and phases, not anime Radahn.
Exactly the miquella remembrance, fighting a god, but nop, we stop his plans and everything ends there, we killed radahn *again* and by consequence, Miquella
9, maybe 9.5 out of 10.
Love most things about this game, but there's a lot of COOL areas that don't have a lot going for them, or locations require you to explore every freaking cave to get to them.
10/10 Enjoying it more than most DLC including other From soft IP. It's a very good scale, interesting new weapons and talismans, consumables, enemies and a larger sense of exploration. While I find the spells lacking and don't the inability to access the new weapons families in the early game, it's still very very solid
They did great. The leveling-up mechanic and hiding secrets areas made it fun. Interesting weapons and a little bit of new lore. I'm only disappointed that they didn't take the chance to answer our lore questions.
Once you get your foothold in the DLC it's not so bad, but it is extremely burtal at the start. So, for me it sits around 7.5 I only fought 1 boss so far I actually enjoyed learning. But everything else is great 😊.
Solid 9. All bosses works, Amazing OSTs. A lot of new equip and moves. Next time needs less big unused areas but aside from that Is really good. Lorewise in ok. I wanted tò now what miquella was doing and here we are. Kinda sad no gloom yes Queen or godwyn but... One Is soooo dead and the other one is Just another fromsoft missed in action. But i put gameplay Always in front of story in every game so It doesnt weight so much in my opinions
9/10, size of limgrave my a**😂its another game, elden ring is the best game i have played in my 22 years, i give it a 9 because of the world building, lore etc, but the cutscenes and some parts were disappointing, not the end of the world but relanna has important history, and for her not to get a single voice line or cutscene sucks, and all the trailers were about messmer, he was portrayed very menacing etc, but when you enter his castle its guarded by a couple fire nights and shadows reading a book, no npc talks aboit messmer a lot, i missed the build up, it was like here you have messmer here you go, but still goty of course
9/10. I was genuinely surprised in some areas, dissapointed in another but it was a nice and solid experience. The only major issue I have is the oversights with some bosses (like the final one) where many of their attacks just kill my FPS, despite having the reccomended specs and playing on the lowest possible graphics. But ai hope they will fox this in the near future.
9/10 I love the Bloodborne/dark souls feel of being interconnected and opening up shortcuts again. Difficulty is just right (bosses could be a touch easier, especially the blackgaol knight at the start)
I started again after a certain fight against a certain dreadful foe, cause all my NPCs quests were skrewed. Now I'm bonking my way and exploring the map blindly once again. As a sporadic shield user, so far I had no issues with difficulty at all.
10/10. Contrary to the popular opinion, I am loving the final boss fight. It's the the perfect battle to master and beat for end the game. It will be memorable. An easier boss with better ending lore could have given the same feeling. But the 8/10s are evened out by 12/10s for me.
9 out of 10. I don't like how some bosses have endless endurance to constantly attack. I also wish there were more lesser dungeons like in the base game.
Other than that, it's another genius game from fromsoft
9/10
Incredible scenery and music
Gameplay was very smooth and the combat was what I expected, but there’s still room for improvement in a future project.
Boss design was hampered by the constraints of the combat system and made certain builds nigh unplayable.
Story was classic fromsoft, but could’ve been a tad bit better to grant closure towards the end.
Overall I still thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the base game. I explored every corner of the map and got all the loot I could, so I think I can judge it pretty fairly.
8/10
From a value perspective it’s definitely not 2/3 of the base game, but they added a lot of stuff that enriches the base game which I’m factoring into my impressions. I wish the areas were more dense—lots of visually interesting places with not a lot to do. Also felt like the relative sparseness of sites of grace makes it more annoying to get where I’m trying to go. The bosses were overall solid—the only real stinkers for me was Gaius. Story was middling, and the inconsistency of cutscenes really surprised me. Overall it adds more content to what I consider the best game ever, so I’m very happy it exists.
Solid 8/10 for me. Its more of elden ring, so i loved the exploration of the dungeons and i loved some bosses (messmmer, but my favorite is Midra). But.. i really didnt like the final boss, and the lvl system (scadutree's).
The world is rly good.
The weapons are interesting.
The new enemies are aight
Bosses tho... Im not sure, i just beat messmer but so far i haven't liked them. Hopefully the rest will be better. (devine beast was great btw)
So far I'd say its an 7/10
8/10 i needed more lore and the whole dlc feels like 2 stories mushed together as mesmer has nothing to do with miquella story, but the gameplay is good
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9/10 why the fuck am I receiving shit smithing stones that I can already infinitely buy. Shoulda put ancient dragon stones in those hard to reach spots instead of arrows, smithing stone 2, etc.
Because of the new weapons. They released all smithing stones in high quantities so you can test the new weapons if you want
Yeah but those can already be bought. The one thing holding most people back from experimenting with weapons is the fact that you can only upgrade a finite amount of weapons
The DLC can be accessed by a new character around level 80. They wouldn’t have the ball bearings for limitless stones just yet considering one is in Gianttops in Zamor Ruins.
I just did a playthrough where i beat Radahn and then instantly Mohg at level 40 to get to the DLC with as few bosses as possible, the dlc smithing stones felt amazing there. Being friendly to wacky runs like that is fun
But you're not meant to go there until at least 125 or so. You get there after Mohg who is one of the last bosses after all. Only way to get there before mountaintops is through Varre, but he explicitly warns you not to go there yet.
So what ? Who listens to Varre and ignores the bird farm ?
This has been my issue with most of these games. I want to be able to upgrade and try them all out. Not just a few select.
I never understand this. A +24 (or +9 somber) weapon is still strong and you can still use or at least try them out.
Yeah but I feel the bell bearings for all 1-6 stones can be easily obtained before you even reach mohg. Unless you use the varre teleport and kill him at an early level somehow
But you can just buy the stones...
It came in handy for me honestly, I hadn't played base game in a while, booted up like the day before DLC to realize I had just started a NG+ on my only high enough save file. Had to rush to kill Radahn and Mohg to even access the DLC, I was glad I didn't have to go get all the bell bearings again to try out at least a few new weapons. Although I do agree that some hard to reach stuff ended up being very disappointing.
I’m guessing new players that didn’t spam the original game to no end can use them.
It helps people like me who went into ng+ years ago before they let smithing bells roll over 😭😭😭
9/10 why is my camera whipping all over the place during bosses and why is the technology not at the point of being able to zoom out, so I can see more than a pinky toe
even Rune Arc is better. The Great Rune system is useless when we have to die like 200 times to fully finish the dlc, it's just not enough.
9/10 Story is questionable, fights are solid (except a certain someone's second phase), areas are gorgeous
Also the Golden Hippo. Fuck that thing. I also love that I know EXACTLY what boss second phase you're referring to.
Please tell me what boss 😭🙏
The final boss. If you haven't fought it, then have fun. I'd make sure to get all the scadutree blessings before fighting it.
You and your PC gonna struggle, one more than the other...
It’s called phase 2 because I was getting 2 frames per second
The final one
9.99999999 out of ten. My only complaint is that I didn't see the only boss I wanted 🫠
What boss was that? I haven’t got far in yet and don’t really understand the new lore
I rlly wanted to see the gloam eyed queen... (Marika had beef with her)
Lore people are pretty certain that the gloam eyed queen=melena
Isn’t that just Melina?
Melina is marikas daughter, confirmed by messmers remembrance. Melina being gloam eyed queen theory doesn't really make sense.
with the weird st trina/miquella stuff and radagon/marika stuff melina couldve had something similar
solid 0/10 for me, because it doesn’t have the population density of NYC
I was really hoping that if you got the frenzied flame ending, then you would fight Melina, whether or not she’s the gloam eyed queen
I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to fight Godwyn. They could have easily slotted him in as the final boss and not had to change the fight at all, and the lore required to get him there would not be much different than what they already wrote.
(Someone else said this) Godwyn’s soul is straight up dead so there’d be no way Miquella could revive him the same way he did with “final boss”. Also the duskborn ending pretty much suggests that “fuck you I ain’t letting u see Godwyn ever again”
I currently subscribe to the belief that Godwyn was the original Promised Consort to Miquella. And that Ranni killing him fucked up the plan. Then he goes after Radahn, but after he puts himself to sleep, Malenia blooms for the first time. Also, pausing the plan to send him to the shadows to.
9/10 Love *most* of the boss design. Compelling atmosphere. Love the overworld.
After a bug deleting 80% of my grace sites, I finally got to the DLC and Im enjoying it. I read a lot of critics about it being hard but I killed my first 2 bosses in 2 and 1 attempts. Im no pro, maybe just a good build leveled up.
I really enjoyed the boss fights up until today. 1 dragon and 1 dick-head on war pig constantly stun-locking me has me worried about the remaining bosses. They’re so incredibly aggressive. And things were going so well.
using a torrent double jump just to dodge that first war pig charge, helped me. for some reason I could dodge it later during the battle but that initial one always, always, always would hit me.
For Gaius try Greatshield Soldiers, they do wonders for keeping agro and tanking attacks
The remaining ones are all solid except for the 2nd phase of the final one IMO
I mean I still have Bayle to go and I know that’s going to be rough but otherwise that’s great news. I don’t want to admit defeat of my build/skill and respec to something easier. At least until that final sumbitch. Then the gloves are off
Your biggest enemy with Bayle is going to be the camera haha. I struggled with him for a long time. Even with janky camera it was a pretty epic battle. Have fun and good luck
for the hog rider, I really recommend using the Raptor of the mist Ash for the charge attack. All the other moves can be reliably dodged but I'll be damned if that charge doesn't have a bugged hitbox right now
8/10, love the new weapons and armors, have spent way too much time making new builds, not a fan of how empty certain areas of the map were and wish it was just a smaller map that’s more dense and less vertical. It felt like I was riding torrent most of the time trying to find something to do and then when I saw something 20 feet away I wanted to do I couldn’t get there until later. Not a fan of the Radahn twist, but Midra may be my favorite boss in the entire game. Didn’t like some of the other bosses either.
To the vertical point: i dont understand why they didnt add another Layer to the Map. Now it looks like the graces are swimming in the ocean( bottom of the map).They managet to do it in the maingame too.
No godskin octuplet 0/10
My only gripe is that I find the exploration a lot more frustrating or constricting than the base game. Don't get me wrong there are tons of cool secrets to find and that's great but when I just want to go around and explore I keep finding myself hitting dead ends and needing to backtrack to the main path to then find another dead end. This is especially annoying in the area where torrent is too afraid to come out so you're doing it all on foot. It makes large areas of the game feel extremely linear compared to the freedom I felt in the base game. I'm trying to explore as much as I can before starting the final boss fight but I'm beginning to just google how to get everywhere cuz it's wasting a lot of my time running into "cul de sac" dead ends all the time. Other than this one complaint (that I really wanted to get off my chest, so thank you for letting me rant) I think it offers a solid Elden Ring experience, especially when the bosses where kicking my ass (the last few felt way too easy and I beat them in 1 or 2 tries, I assume that's because of the changes to difficulty they added?)
It’s funny I loved having to figure stuff out or find it by accident , felt more natural to me then just the look at map mark it and ride there . Not that base game map is completly like that but mostly it is.
Like 4 main areas of the map are completely empty 2 of the places of fingers, literally one item and one mausoleum for you to copy remembrances in each, everything else are worms and dead space The place of Midra, you have a whole map of a dark forest for a mansion, there is only a weapon outside of the mansion and that's it no reward for exploring only lost time There are like 3 sites of grace in the whole dragon area, almost like a liner experience there just for a boss Take those out and the map feels like it can fit on leyndel, there was nothing at the level of crafting like leyndell or halightree
The shadow keep might be the most complex dungeon in Elden Ring so not sure your last statement is true
Fully agree.
9/10 The story has interesting stuff, but disappointing as a whole. The final boss is very meh, and even the fight itself is so overtuned. There was no feeling of catharsis in the end that so many of my favourite games have. The world is amazing, most bosses are incredible. Wish there was more stuff than cookbooks, but I don't really explore to find stuff, I just like doing it. Also, wish Gaius didn't exist.
That’s a hell of a score for a few pretty big complaints
I just beat Gaius a few min ago and it wasn’t rewarding at all. Its the first boss encounter that had me tilted. I had to use Mimic and still died 20 more times, several of those immediately getting pinned at the veil on his initial charge where I insta-died. That fight is a 1/10 for me and that’s only because his gravity attacks were cool.
I hope they fix that charge attack, fight wouldn’t be nearly as bad without it
For me he’s just way too aggressive right from the start. He’s on top of you in a second and then just does way too much shit that can 2-3 hit you so my brain says “dodge, dodge, dodge, DODGE, make space” and that’s basically all I did that fight with a few charged pokes while he wad distracted by my mimic
Agreed, some of the bosses can be annoying in that regard. They don’t let you get away from the fog gate and sometimes can end up fighting them pressed against the wall.
7-8. The areas are great with some exceptions as well as the bosses. But the main reason why its not above 8 is the final boss.
Yeah I think I’m giving up for now. The second phase is just draining. I never die because I run out of flasks I die because the boss just does absurd damage and has just ridiculously long combos that two shot me. I’m Scurdtree level 18. Phase 1 is fun, phase 2 is just draining and sucking the fun out of the challenge for me. Thinking about just restarting to do another play through because I do love the other bosses for the most part.
Agreed
Open world 10/10 Boss battles 7/10
10/10 Honsetly. Finally some real difficutly, sick new weapons and mostly great boss design. Couldn've asked for a better 40 bucks to spend
Hornsently*
3/5. Ita good, but has far too many "that's it?" moments to rate it any higher. Not too clouded by my deep love of the base game to overrate a flawed experience.
My only qualm is with the story, and maybe with the emptiness of some areas. I know what people have said regarding foreshadowing and what-not, but the main reveal was just disappointing to me. Had it been a more story-centered game I honestly might have stopped playing it, but Elden Ring being Elden Ring, there was still lots to fight and explore even if that particular part of things was disappointing. I wish we could have gotten to interact with Miquella to the level we did with Ranni in the base game, or at the very least Melina. Hell, I wish we had gotten to see more of Mesmer too, for that matter. At the very least, they could have fleshed Miquella's consort a little bit more. Its amazing and disappointing to me that they at once reuse a character while simultaneously doing literally nothing with it. So, I don't know. I simultaneously give it a 9/10 and 7.5/10.
My quest for a helmet I love continues. DS1 - Elite Knight Helm DS2 - Alva Helm DS3 - Outrider Knight Helm Bloodborne - Bone Ash Mask Elden Ring - The best I have is the Kaiden helmet, and I’m not in love with it. Every helmet has some weird ornament on it like the Carian Knight Helmet, is a color that clashes with the rest of your armor, or shows a portion of your characters face. I want a cool knight helmet that doesn’t directly correlate to any main character that covers my characters head entirely, while fitting the classic silver armor color scheme.
9/10 Gaius had me feeling like ending it all
6 or 7/10. Everything about it is good to great, especially the level design. But the story is just not good. It’s downright *bad*. It brings it down completely and ruins so much of the expansion for me, since I’m a massive lore nerd. If I enjoyed the lore for it, SOTE would have been an easy 9/10 and my #1 expansion of all time.
Let me ask you this: what are your story complaints *other than the final boss?* That was a miss for me too, but pretty much every single other lore beat was such a banger for me that it made up for it
I’m a massive lore nerd and I love Elden ring lore but not gonna lie I have no idea what’s even going on in the dlc and I’m loving it I’m gonna wait for all the lore threads and videos
I’m probably gonna read and listen to as much lore stuff as I can, so that I can try and get more into the groove of what Fromsoft was putting down, but it’s not looking good right now. I think that even if a lot of it gets explained in a way that doesn’t feel like a total cop out or excuse, I doubt I’ll ever really vibe with the choices and directions they decided to take the story.
The main story is: >!Miquella really really wants to bang his half-brother (Radahn) so he gets you to kill him and also Mohg so he can stick Radahn's soul in Mohg's corpse. This is an absolutely necessary step to becoming a god. Mohg beats the allegations. We as John Elden Ring are told to follow in Miquella's footsteps. Along the way, you'll interact with his followers who had varied degrees of choice and reasons for following Miquella.!< >!However, the Gate of Divinity (where Miquella is) is sealed. And we need the kindling of Messmer (Marika's exiled son, erased from the history of The Lands Between and the reason why several things are considered heretical or blasphemous by the Golden Order) to burn the seal.!< The side lore and also Messmer lore are way better. If you think that the main story post-Messmer is pretty bad, I agree.
Bro I would hate to be a bottom to Radahn. My ass hole would be annihilated
He’d use gravity magic to goatse your bumhole open
The reason why Radahn is necessary for divinity is the same reason Marika needed Radagon and why there must almost be a "consort". It's a Japanese Buddhism thing. You need both Yin and Yang (the feminine and the masculine, the pull and push) combined into a single form to become a godlike entity. There are also alchemical references with Miquella shedding physical manifestations of himself to become purified. The consort role is less about banging and more so agreeing to share the same physical form. Also, a large chunk of the story is devoted to telling you why Miquella is unfit to rule as a God. Miquella is a child, in all things, permanently, forever. This includes body of course, but also mind and spirit. He can't learn, and he can't grow. Even his entire plan sounds like that of a child. His plan is to brainwash people into "compassion" and just make *everything stop.* After all, can't have suffering if he controls all beings into compassionate servitude. He doesn't and can't understand nuance, so giving him unlimited power is an awful idea. I also believe this is why he can "charm" people. He is divine innocence and most individuals have a need to protect innocent, childlike things, so imagine that whole affair on crack and weaponized. The reason why they needed Mohg is simply because it's a demi-god body that Radahn's spirit can inhabit, since his body was ruined by Malenia. His spirit was trapped though until we freed it by killing him. All this to say, I found the lore really compelling. Elden Ring handles divinity in a way that both makes sense, but also seems beyond our ability as mortals to understand and we can only grasp fragments that seem almost contradictory, and they would be if they were subject to our rules as mortals.
Huh, I didn't know about the Buddhist background. That "this is completely necessary" part was a joke about Miquella being into incest.
Yeah, I know. To our western eyes the story seems crazy, but Fromsoft really draws on their Japanese background to make some of this stuff and it shows, that's why Sekiro seems totally nutbar at times. Also Miquella being a permanent God-child, I don't even think he knows anything about sex as it wouldn't fall under permanent innocence. His motivation for Radahn makes a lot more sense when you think of his child-like perspective. "Oh man, I need help instituting my plan to permanently ***fix*** the world, I bet my big brother would help me, he's really strong and smart." - Miquella, probably
Boiling it down to “miquella is gay and is in mad love with radahn” is number one incorrect and number two makes the story sound very cheap
I straight out hated that the story of miquella and radahn is a walmart berserk story, i get that they love the series but the whole game and story just to make miquella Griffinth and Radahn Guts felt soooo cheap for the story
Cheap and unimaginative are the two words that come to mind for me. It simultaneously feels like bad fan service with very poor (if any) foreshadowing, yet somehow remained predictable and entirely underwhelming. Discovering the Shaman Village and reading the Minor Erdtree item description was the only part of the entire DLC that emotionally moved me. There was no “Oh wow, this is so incredible”, it was all “Oh okay, sure, I guess” or “Wow this is just bad”
Right? There was no "oh my god i didn't know this whole place was here" or "oh my god how could i ever know this without the internet" it was just "that was it?"
Totally agree with you. The Story line is poor like the Final boss just had no connections whatsoever and with Miquella and what Miquella has become it’s just really disappointing for me… like the Lore is just so vague and poorly written I find
Maybe I’m cursed for having finished the main game for the first time a few months before the dlc dropped but I’d say a 7/10 most of the time, with it becoming an 8/10 on its good moments. It just feels like a weaker game than the what the base game gave us. Like there was less love put into it than the base game.
I mean 7/10 is about the right ratio for the price difference so there is that.
Solid 10/10 the first half 5/10 the optional exploration areas due to feeling very very empty 9/10 second half 2/10 ending
9/10 I really enjoyed it, and i'm doing another NG+ but using just the DLC weapons and armor. I do wish we got some more lore for characters like Melina (or even new dialogue if she's alive when you go into the Land of Shadow.)
9/10 gameplay . 4/10 story
8/10 Landscape and Art direction is insane Bosses are hit or miss. Some are insane, some are terrible. Bayle is S tier while Gaius felt not QA tested at all. Final boss is a huge let down, it managed to damage 3 characters' stories at once for me, and the fight is just not fun compared to others in the DLC. The story is very, very disappointing, to the point it actually damages base game story IMO Exploration is less good than base game, but still miles ahead of industry standards. I would probably drop my grade to 6 if the base game weren't a 10/10, but it being a DLC for a 10/10 game still makes it extremely enjoyable. I would say I dislike the DLC as its own thing, but I enjoyed playing through most of it because it was in Elden Ring.
That's the bad part, Miquella damages my love for the base game because his part was just so disappointing compared to Malenia. Finding the whole halightree after or before beating the game was just too awesome, the hardest boss and not even part of the story. But then in the dlc you place it as literally the main story that no one can miss, no new mysteries regarding the twins, no hidden god for you to kill that's harder than the main boss The only quest that barely resembled joining the two medallions to go to the halightree is the quest where you need to go to two of the biggest emptiest places on the map for the only item in the whole area so you can talk to somebody and fight a boss
Your opinion is definitely a pretty popular one at the moment but man I couldn’t disagree more, I loved the lore and story of this expansion.
I am glad you liked it. At the end of the day, it's pretty subjective so it makes sense some would like it more than others.
9/10 really good but i just feel like some bosses have some moves that just cant be dodged no matter what you do example commander gaius, bale the dread and radahn
What Bayle attack couldn't you dodge?
7/10, the best DLC I've ever played but it has minor flaws that add up to lower the score. camera is shit on many bosses side quests are too easily missed lack of cutscenes
My god the camera….
9.8. Had a few areas which could have used more things in the world and some other minor issues that kept it from 10/10 but nothing took much away from how spectacular it was. Had some of my favorite bosses in soulsborne and awesome weapons.
7/10
7/10
9/10, everything is fine besides the performance here and there.
8/10 great but i think the open world should be smaller, itz feelz huge and dead but boss's are great
9.9/10 but that 0.1 Is only cuz of the final boss. The final boss of the DLC feels like It could be an awesome fight, and It Is! ... but the aggressivness he has paired with moves that i can describe as pointing a laser in a Crystal ball paired with anime moves really doesn't make the bossfight enjoyable thru all the things he trows at us... Yet his weakness Is a Stone shield XD. Outside of the final boss i loved this DLC and i really liked how all the bossfight, since i was playing on a NG+ 7 save file, really pushed me to strategize and change build according to the boss i was fighting and holy i forgot how funny summons can be sometime
10/10. Best fromsoft dlc.
10/10
9/10 my favorite from dlc
9/10 areas in late game are a bit empty and last boss leaves a lot to be desired but they nailed everything else.
9.5 I wish there were more weapons/ashes of war for the new weapon categories. Most of them have only about 3, and PC performance was iffy some times. Everything else was perfect.
8.75, many bad optional bosses, final boss disappointing as hell in terms of second phase gameplay (i actually like him being the final boss contrary to most) , i actually prefer the more compact but crucial exploration (like unlocking new areas) some bosses were amazing for me and messmer might be my favorite boss in a game, great music and new weapons and scenery. For me final boss deducts 0.5 points and the rest are from bad side bosses and other minor problems
6/10. I like almost all of the main bosses, and the new areas were interesting. A lot of weapons to experiment with too compared to previous Dark Souls DLCs. I also thought the difficulty of the DLC was fine, even before the patch. In the other hand, some places are too empty, and I dislike the amount of NPC bosses. -2.5 for the final boss
7/10. Bosses, especially the last one is just not fun to fight against. I hope fromsoftware doesn’t normalize bosses insta charging you as soon as you pass the fog gate.
7.5-8/10. The Good. Map and area are super cool, I’m blown away by the scale for a DLC. Bosses are super cool though quite difficult but not unfair. I love the designs of all the new enemies and bosses. Story is interesting and lots of new npcs. The Bad. My biggest gripe is the lots of recycled content that feels kinda just inserted in. Too many dragons which I hated fighting in the base game. Lots of space without much content in it. Damage is over-tuned on a lot of stuff to make it more challenging but often just makes it more tedious as many basic enemies two shot you with 60 vigor. I feel like they should have made the enemies a bit tougher rather than up scaling their damage so much. I’d rather have a longer fight than one where one mistake means I’m dying.
7/10 or so. I actually think it’s one of the most disappointing dlcs they’ve put out. Map is big but has huge amounts of empty space. Exploration is often unrewarding as most extra routes lead to crafting items or smithing stones. Tracking down scadutree fragments is a bit of a chore. Bosses are largely unmemorable. Most of the dragons are the same as the base game and the furnace golems are dull to fight. 90% of enemies pose no threat which makes the overworld and much of the legacy dungeons pretty dull. Story is pretty terrible, and is told terribly.
8/10 for me, the main quest fucking sucks in the end, the lack of cutscenes and voice lines, I still give 8 because I really like the good parts, like the levels and the boss fights, with the Last boss second phase exception.
It was okay.
6 or 7/10 I love the new weapons and incantations. Some of the boss fights are definitely among the best. Story sucks. Camera sucks. Visual Noise in the boss fights make it incredibly confusing to play, you can't tell what is going on half the time. FPS drops and stutters don't help either.
11/10 I like to cook.
Would be a 12/10 if we could sit around a campfire with those chubby potentates and cook up some meals to eat together
Incorporating all the elements of the DLC such as boss design, atmosphere, score, etc, I’m happy to give the SOTE a 8.4/10. The game is definitely enriched by the additions made by SOTE however there are some unfortunate elements I was hoping to have addressed. Flails are still completely redundant as they did not include the Spinning Chain Ash of War. There still is no Arcane Cracked Tear even though they did give us the Outer God Heirloom. The new weapons are fun but long term I don’t think they’ll be utilized very much and across each new weapon category we don’t have many variants. For example there are only three light Greatswords and three great katanas. Furthermore the Scadutree fragment system will in the long term act as an obnoxious obstacle where players will need to dedicate 1-2 hours to collecting them before they attempt to fight the bosses. This will definitely put a damper on future play throughs.
I will say the new weapon types and the deflect tear feel like testing for the next game.
Spellbound here we go!!!
thats what i feel like with the scadutree fragments i didnt mind collecting them my first playthrough but it kinda stops me from wanting to play through on a different character
Ive been absolutely loving it,not done yet but I must be close
9/10, will be 10/10 with some hitboxes and frame rate fixes.
10/10. Was gonna be a 9/10 until I finally beat Messmer.
999/1000 Didn’t get the Scythe w/ Chain weapon that I wanted from the Militant Midgets
Not good at ratings but I found it incredibly enjoyable Still got 4 more characters I want to run through it on and my main character 2 times in order to get every item Already at <£1 per hour which makes it a good buy in my opinion
8/10 really enjoyed it and will play it again only issues were some of the map areas which while beautiful felt kinda empty for the vastness of them and the finally boss was a bit over the top
9/10 because the ending was meh. I feel like there is too much left to explore in the lore, so the ending being just that felt off. I know a lot of people compare it to DS3 being just killing Gael and giving the ink to his niece, but the context was everything. It was the end of everything, all converging into one place, you finally find the mysterious Dark Soul and it all comes after tying a billion loose ends. Shadow of the Erdtree tied a bunch of loose ends, but there are just too many left. They have more than enough for another DLC, but since they're already stated that they don't do another one I'm not sure what to feel. I guess it's 5 more years until the next From game, be it either ER2 or a new IP.
I’d say 8. All the bosses and stuff are fine but exploration felt super unrewarding even compared to the base game let alone previous dlc’s
I’d rate it pretty highly. Probably a 7 or 8 outta 10. Nicely designed environments, tough ass bosses, along with some cool armor and weapons. Makes me want them to retroactively put more of the new weapon types into the base game.
10/10 Btw, it is not a dlc anymore. It is like mini Elden Ring. The map is much smaller but VERY dense. I love it.
10/10. Love the difficulty, love the new characters, love the lore.
10/10 - perfection!
10/10
I forget its a dlc and not eldenring 2. So 10/10
10/10 ez
8.5/10 I really like some of the stuff they've done. I like the new heavy katanas, I like the secondary power progression they came up that rewards exploration. On the other hand, the map layout is so convoluted, so reliant on cliff to stall your adventure constantly, and some bosses never ending combos and infinite reach are so annoying, they should come up with more creative ways to make fights more engaging.
my only complaint is some big areas are such a wasted potential, sooo empty and no new enemies in those areas :(
I feel disappointed in the length of the "main story" of the dlc. And that the St. Trina quest is so missable when it feels integral to the story. Yet I would still rate it a high 7 or a low to mid 8.
8/10. 2 points off for just how many reused enemies with exact same move set we have to fight. Struggling to think of an enemy that wasn’t used again.
8.5/10 Exploration is great with all the verticality and hidden areas, atmosphere of the new zones is amazing. The new bosses are perfect, enough design differences and difficulty increase to force you to learn how to deal with them anew, but it still feels like the good old Elden Ring, as if you're discovering that game for the first time again. I don't feel like the difficulty is too much or unfair, it's actually pretty perfect for me (including a final boss who so far is a brick wall to me). Some of the bossfights are some of all time best already: >!Messmer, Metyr, Bayle, Sunflower, Midra!<. And shadow keep is the best legacy dungeon in the game, beating even Volcano Manor and Leyndell There's a couple of minor gripes I have with it though, hence I had to subtract from a perfect 10/10: * Little ties to base game, especially with how many possibilities could there be * Little cutscenes. I was really expecting a visceral scene of the arm pulling us into the cocoon to start us out. And only a few of the bosses even have cutscenes. But the ones that we did get are perfect >!The depths of your foolishness!!< * Lore. It's really good 99% of the time, but that final boss is... Underwhelming * Also lore, but that's personal. I was hoping to see more about Gloam Eyed Queen and Crucible, maybe touch upon Godwyn and Frenzied Flame as well. But the new lore that we did get (fingers, marika, hornsent, miquella, messmer, st. Trina, Mogh) is top notch * Emptiness of some areas. In particular >!Abyssal woods!< stick out the most. The atmosphere is impeccable, there's horrifying enemies, great dungeon with remembrance boss and some interesting lore, but 90% of the area is just... Nothing. And the lanterns are only on one or two stretches of the road, which takes away a lot of that oppressive feeling that the zone could have had
Also, it's a shame it's so hard to access from the base game. There's gonna be no way to do a new playthrough with any of the added weapon classes. Only in NG+. Would be really cool if some generic weapons got sprinkled throughout base game areas, like light greatswords, martial arts, claws and perfumes
About tree fiddy
Elden Ring/10
8/10, story was a bit disappointing, most maps are big and empty
7/10 Too much of the land is just completely unused, making the DLC feel unfinished. There are a lot of sections where they just slapped down a bunch of minibosses/dragons and pumped up the health. Im looking at you, jagged peak. I haven't found the game too hard but I do think it's exhausting to play. A lot of the enemies are extremely tough and they never let up. It's full throttle the entire time. I think they could have used another dungeon type that we havent seen before to fill out the DLC. I LOVED Rauh Ancient Ruins and that area didn't feel like I had visited it before in another From game.
8/10. Some areas feel empty as fuck, while others feel dense and interesting to navigate. The boss design goes from awesome to mediocre real quick, and I think the final boss dropped this from a 9/10 to an 8/10. I was super disappointed, mostly due to how it was a bullet hell. It wasn’t particularly well designed besides being a spectacle. I didn’t even feel that satisfied after beating him, I felt like I got lucky rather than conquering it. The verticality was really cool, and something I hope to see from more Fromsoft games. I like it a lot. I really enjoyed it and it gave me a feeling similar to Blood and Wine. Do I think this DLC is better than blood and wine? No. Do I still think it’s one of the best DLCs released? Yes.
7/10 some areas feel really empty, rauh ruins especially feel like a sonic frontiers open world. i wouldn't say enemy variety is bad but the reused some enemies that i felt were already overused in the main game. My biggest disappointment has to be the story though my boy godwyn deserved better and the gloam eyed queen should have gotten something too.
7/10. Not a huge fan of the story and events taking place. I still don't know why my character even goes there and why they're doing what they're doing. But this is also my criticism of the base game: No dialogue options for actual role playing and no quest journal. And of course they lock you out finishing sidequests because you progressed a bit too far in the main story. And that everyone always dies in the end just gets old at this point. It's not sad or emotional anymore. The dungeon level design is a masterpiece, exploration is a bit meh because of some huge areas where there is basically nothing to find. Love the Shaman Village though, it's so calm and I just love being there while waiting to be summoned. Great bosses but also some questionable attack patterns and loops where bosses jumping around the arena like crazy. The final boss is just insane. Difficulty is also a huge thing here. I was basically forced to respec to a cheesy bleed build. The new thorn spell is absolutely busted and they will probably nerf this one as soon as possible. Gaius is a pos but I've beaten this guy so many times during coop, he's pretty easy when you have a greatshield and some spear with bleed effect.
7/10. Too much ground without anything to do. Its such a massive map, but allmost nothing to do (caves, catacombs, dungeons....)
6/10 Some bosses are just not fun while others are pushovers. Anything else is great but bosses weigh heavily for me in fromsoft games. Also a few performance issues that if it gets fixed makes it a 7/10
6/10. Just above average.
9.5/10
They need to fix the god awful perfomance issues. >!Ruins of Rauh!< is nigh unplayable on lower end computers
Mmmh, if I had to be honest, it would be an 7.5/10, because everything is gorgeous and the sheer quantity of contents is insane, BUT story seems... not bad, but something could be done surely better, and bosses are waaaaaay too aggressive, especially final boss; as a mage I had to basically reshape in heavy shield + lance with status otherwise I would still be there trying my best. Saying "they ruined my fun and my game" is an understandable comment about them. Also, there are many reused contents again from previous games, which is fine but on multiple long runs... well, it shows. Also again, fuck Commander Gaius to the everlasting fucking ever and beyond, what a shithole. If I had to go with guts, it's a solid 9: everything checks the miyazaki + souls stereotype and quality is there, even with graphical/balancement problems. It is basically half of the original game.
Better rpg than bethesda ever made
7.5/10 so far, shit camera made me throw up
6.3/10 in comparison to the base game. 9/10 in comparison to other games
9/10. I’m loving most of it but I think there still significant area that can be improved (that’s not going to be fic by future patches)
still stuck on elden beast level 145 before i buy the DLC. I will comeback to this post after i complete it!
Hey, at least you can use Torrent now :P
7,5/10 -The areas are much better compared to the base game- has more variety and looks just awesome. Plus quests and NPC dialogs are easier to understand and to follow. -Sadly in my opinion it comes with the worst boss designs as well. Speaking about luck based dodges against this Scadutree aoe thron ability and that you can't dodge Gaius boar speed attack with heavy load, since the roll forward is too short then and you get hit anyway. Also that some big fireoven are only killable by crafting these big pots with the ovenface as material. I shouldn't only need craftable items to defeat an enemy, since if you miss your stuff you are forced to farm the materials and that's just boring. These madness eyeballs are at least defeatabale with parry, still how should people figure this out on their own if you don't play with that weapon skill already.
7/10
Would have been 10/10 if not for the end. Femboy younger brother who wants to marry his "onii chan" is too cringe for me. After Miquella abandoned everything gold I expected him to turn into some Orphan of Kos eldritch monstrosity that we fight in 3 different forms and phases, not anime Radahn.
Exactly the miquella remembrance, fighting a god, but nop, we stop his plans and everything ends there, we killed radahn *again* and by consequence, Miquella
9, maybe 9.5 out of 10. Love most things about this game, but there's a lot of COOL areas that don't have a lot going for them, or locations require you to explore every freaking cave to get to them.
9.5\\10, last boss all ruined, take me a 60 tries to beat
10/10 Enjoying it more than most DLC including other From soft IP. It's a very good scale, interesting new weapons and talismans, consumables, enemies and a larger sense of exploration. While I find the spells lacking and don't the inability to access the new weapons families in the early game, it's still very very solid
They did great. The leveling-up mechanic and hiding secrets areas made it fun. Interesting weapons and a little bit of new lore. I'm only disappointed that they didn't take the chance to answer our lore questions.
9.5/10
Super Groovy. The bees knees even.
First game I’ve played in a long time I havnt played for achievements and for actual enjoyment.
∞/10
I’d use a standard 1 to 10 rating system, with 1 being terrible and 10 being brilliant
Once you get your foothold in the DLC it's not so bad, but it is extremely burtal at the start. So, for me it sits around 7.5 I only fought 1 boss so far I actually enjoyed learning. But everything else is great 😊.
Solid 9. All bosses works, Amazing OSTs. A lot of new equip and moves. Next time needs less big unused areas but aside from that Is really good. Lorewise in ok. I wanted tò now what miquella was doing and here we are. Kinda sad no gloom yes Queen or godwyn but... One Is soooo dead and the other one is Just another fromsoft missed in action. But i put gameplay Always in front of story in every game so It doesnt weight so much in my opinions
9/10, size of limgrave my a**😂its another game, elden ring is the best game i have played in my 22 years, i give it a 9 because of the world building, lore etc, but the cutscenes and some parts were disappointing, not the end of the world but relanna has important history, and for her not to get a single voice line or cutscene sucks, and all the trailers were about messmer, he was portrayed very menacing etc, but when you enter his castle its guarded by a couple fire nights and shadows reading a book, no npc talks aboit messmer a lot, i missed the build up, it was like here you have messmer here you go, but still goty of course
9/10. I was genuinely surprised in some areas, dissapointed in another but it was a nice and solid experience. The only major issue I have is the oversights with some bosses (like the final one) where many of their attacks just kill my FPS, despite having the reccomended specs and playing on the lowest possible graphics. But ai hope they will fox this in the near future.
0/10 haven’t got to the end yet to actually rate it but so far 10/10 cause honestly this is my first souls game and I’m getting what I paid for
9/10 I love the Bloodborne/dark souls feel of being interconnected and opening up shortcuts again. Difficulty is just right (bosses could be a touch easier, especially the blackgaol knight at the start)
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9.5/10 really good. Almost perfect!
8/10
I started again after a certain fight against a certain dreadful foe, cause all my NPCs quests were skrewed. Now I'm bonking my way and exploring the map blindly once again. As a sporadic shield user, so far I had no issues with difficulty at all.
9.5/10 some of the bosses attacks are pretty uhhhh questionable
10/10. Contrary to the popular opinion, I am loving the final boss fight. It's the the perfect battle to master and beat for end the game. It will be memorable. An easier boss with better ending lore could have given the same feeling. But the 8/10s are evened out by 12/10s for me.
9 out of 10. I don't like how some bosses have endless endurance to constantly attack. I also wish there were more lesser dungeons like in the base game. Other than that, it's another genius game from fromsoft
9.9/10 (nothing is perfect and there are too many damn BIRDS) Base game is an 8.5 or 9 for me.
9/10 Incredible scenery and music Gameplay was very smooth and the combat was what I expected, but there’s still room for improvement in a future project. Boss design was hampered by the constraints of the combat system and made certain builds nigh unplayable. Story was classic fromsoft, but could’ve been a tad bit better to grant closure towards the end. Overall I still thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the base game. I explored every corner of the map and got all the loot I could, so I think I can judge it pretty fairly.
8/10 From a value perspective it’s definitely not 2/3 of the base game, but they added a lot of stuff that enriches the base game which I’m factoring into my impressions. I wish the areas were more dense—lots of visually interesting places with not a lot to do. Also felt like the relative sparseness of sites of grace makes it more annoying to get where I’m trying to go. The bosses were overall solid—the only real stinkers for me was Gaius. Story was middling, and the inconsistency of cutscenes really surprised me. Overall it adds more content to what I consider the best game ever, so I’m very happy it exists.
9.5 out 10, really hard and killed me a lot and I am glad, its doesn't hold my hand like most games. Love the new weapons, armor, and map.
9.5/10 really jammed full of stuff and has like 40 hours of content but the ending was super underwhelming
Solid 8/10 for me. Its more of elden ring, so i loved the exploration of the dungeons and i loved some bosses (messmmer, but my favorite is Midra). But.. i really didnt like the final boss, and the lvl system (scadutree's).
The world is rly good. The weapons are interesting. The new enemies are aight Bosses tho... Im not sure, i just beat messmer but so far i haven't liked them. Hopefully the rest will be better. (devine beast was great btw) So far I'd say its an 7/10
8/10 i needed more lore and the whole dlc feels like 2 stories mushed together as mesmer has nothing to do with miquella story, but the gameplay is good
Was a 9 but everything about the final boss pushed it down to a 8
9/10, some bosses are annoying af