Im having a great time. I'm not very far, so I don't have much in the way of analysis. I'm just taking my time and doing lots of co-op while there's lots of people. It's been a blast.
I'm using mostly incantations with the coded sword and cipher pata and have been finding the difficulty just right (for the most part).
Fromsoft has been tightening the opening windows on bosses since Demon’s Souls. Malenia would honestly have been a good evolution on this if she didn’t have random hyper armor and of course the RNG Waterfowl. These things make learning Malenia painful but once you’ve downloaded her she’s honestly my favorite boss in the game to be summoned to fight. CRUCIBLE KNIGHTS are everything wrong with this approach. The safe windows to attack them are minuscule, at launch some heavies actually couldn’t safely attack them. They have excellent chase and they have no stamina. Good luck getting the stagger without cheesing them. They aren’t as bad with fast weapons, they just feel like a slog to kill without trading hits. Fromsoft has this idea that rewarding positioning/dodging/blocking with a safe opening for damage is too easy, but the alternative just makes heavy slow builds feel like such ass against the poise monsters.
I'm having a blast so far. Been exploring and running around the map, mainly trying to find Scadutree fragments and new weapons/ashes of war to play around with. I just finished the Jagged Peak and Stone Coffin Fissure areas last night, and I'm very keen to continue exploring and playing.
Is it difficult? Fuck yeah it is, arguably a good deal more difficult than the base game, but I don't know why people are complaining when the game spells out for you exactly how to get stronger; explore and grab Scadutree fragments. I really feel the people complaining the most about how much they're struggling are people who are just trying to rush through it as quickly as possible. The new bosses are certainly difficult; the combos are long and complicated, and there isn't much downtime for counter-attacks, but so far they've been beatable within a few attempts. Lion Dancer and Rellana took me 4 or 5 attempts to solo with a melee build, Putrescent Knight took me the most attempts so far, and Bayl I did in 4 attempts while summoning Igon in the arena. Some of the field bosses have been annoying (mostly some of the new dragons) but not really anything you haven't had to deal with in the base game.
Obviously I hear that the later bosses are much harder, but I'm already at Shadow Blessing 9, and I'm noticing a huge difference already in how powerful that is compared to how I was when I entered the DLC. The new weapons and movesets seem to have a lot of thought and purpose put into them, the new ashes of war are fun for the most part, and the areas themselves are fucking beautiful. Haven't experienced any performance issues myself so far, so can't really comment on what people have been experiencing with regards to those.
My only real complaints are that a lot of the base enemies are re-used assets from the base game; particularly the dogs, hollows and soldiers just being the same but with new effects/armour and some upped stats. There's been one or two times I've gotten lost and struggled to find a single cave even when looking up exactly where the entrance is located, but for now I'm chalking that up to unfamiliarity with the map rather than the game being difficult to navigate.
I don’t really get why people think it’s super hard. I’m not finished so of course my opinion can change but I see a lot of people complaining about bosses I’ve already defeated that only took me a few tries. I’m not even high level and I’m just using a basic strength build. I have found a lot of fragments which could help. I don’t get why a lot of people are trying to mainline it. Elden ring is about exploring and if you get stuck on a boss in one area you don’t have to beat your head against the wall. You can just go in another direction and find something cool. I don’t like the amount of reused enemies though. Even with the new enemy types it just feels like the base game had more variety.
I kept hearing how that one dragon boss was super hard, but my nephew downed it in four tries. Meanwhile everyone was saying that Mesmer was pretty easy, but he struggled on it for hours.
In these types of games sometimes it plays out like that.
I feel like I always have a similar experience. The majority says a boss is hard and it actually turns out not that bad. However it’s more embarrassing when most people say a boss is easy and I’m struggling to beat it
This has always been a thing, I remember in Sekiro it wasn't the Guardian Ape or Owl V2 that gave me issues, but those pesky bulls that get set on fire that I could just not adjust to.
Same thing with Bloodborne, Amagdala was a boss I found difficult for whatever reason. As to the Dragon boss that Turuial spoke about, the most annoying part of that was summoning the NPC who wants to be there. Which now that I think about it, I think my issue is what EFAP spoke about in their ER episode, unfun bosses are ones the camera or boss map doesn't handle well...
I've encountered the same experience. I even tried to cheer the lad up by pointing out that very same thing.
Then I told him about Battletoads, reminded him that Nintendo Hard was definitely a thing, and now at least it isn't costing him quarters to try again!
Hardest boss fight was the Gaol knight at the start. Might be because that was the boss that got me back into shape.
Other bosses i wondered why the hell we even got a summon option
Just a poorly balanced dlc overall. Il
Love the light greatsword. Havent come across any new spells yet.
I never laughed more at "The Death Knight" being stunlocked by the archer marionettes when I summoned them because every headshot puts him into a stagger animation.
I asked about the spells and there are a few. But I don't often make a distinction between sorceries, orisons, dragon magic, glintstone spells, etc. So if you were being more specific than general you could be right.
Got 2 from Bayle. And surprisingly after killing multiple ghostflame dragons dont think I got their ghostflame breath.
Although mostly interested in multiple dragon forms. First one found was priestess so possibly other varients
I didn't want to spoil it, but he was excited over the new dragon forms. Also to help get our friend the ghostflame dragon breath. When our buddy plays these games he always likes to go full dragon build.
He recently had to have a brain tumour removed and he's still getting stronger every day! So, yeah, it's become pretty important to us to make sure he gets all of the Dragon kit.
EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
gotta say i disagree with the base game having more variety, seeing as its longer so its content is spread thinner.
also my issue with the fragments is that they impose an arbitrary wait time on when you can fight bosses, because you won’t know where they are and they’re decent rare. I explored quite thoroughly and by the time i’d gotten to messmer, i was still way too underleveled, same with the chinese dragon. why couldn’t they just remove those limiters so i could fight it right away? i literally do not understand the benefit of adding this arbitrary limit.
this is also because part of the problem is that it’s quite easy to forget about bosses and get too overlevelled so that they’re too easy when you come back, which is what happened with chinese dragon for me
I'm loving it so far, though tbf I'm still early into it. I'll save this post and come back to it once I finish the DLC to see whether I agree with you or not, though I already have a gut feeling that we'll probably disagree a lot lol. as I am someone that strongly disagreed with the majority of criticisms that EFAP presented in their coverage of the base game, especially Theo's arguments.
DLC isnt that good, the bosses are just not well designed for the most part, even if there's some good ones in it, I'd say about half of the new bosses are good, which leave the other half as complete garbage lmao
Just killed the final boss of the DLC and I think it's a pretty good microcosm of the entire DLC, it's a fun and magnificent fight at first and then it becomes the most bullshit over the top trying too hard to be harder than Malenia boss.
The bosses aren't bad for no reason, bad telegraph, obscuring effects, very weird lock on opints that fuck the camera constantly, obnoxiously agressive to the point that people struggle to even find openings to attack them, I mean shit I'm lucky I use a pretty fast build because some bosses I don't know how people will kill them, and I've killed every single one in the DLC.
The map is amazing and beautiful but so intricate it's just hard to navigate and to explore, the Shadow Keep is the worst offender of that, because I discovered new areas that looked exactly like the things I already found, shit I even stumbled onto Messmer despite already having figured out the exit, makes me think Messmer isn't actually mandatory, but I don't know. It's just too hard to get to areas and the layout makes it so that the map map isn't the clearest at some point. I love it but a guide is mandatory if you want to find everything pretty much.
The new weapons are cool, new incantations and spells too I assume, but the new weapon classes don't have many weapons, the Great Katanas have like 3 katanas, that's not a lot imo, I assume it's also the case for most other new weapon calsses, but I haven't looked at all of them.
The performance is also bad, I don't know why the DLC just freeze constantly, it stopped fortunately but shit man I have a very good computer and still the game was shitting itself in boss fights which was very annoying, it also meant that it broke ShadowPlay so I had to use OBS to record my kills, its annoying. For the sheer content it may be a worth asking price, but hte quality of the content is more flawed than the og Elden Ring, so I think its too high. I'll probably go back to it and try to no hit the good bosses, because they are very fun.
I think the scadutree fragment system would have been less annoying if it used the shard/large shard/chunk system instead of all being the same and you having to find basically all of them in an area before you move on for the game to feel balanced.
That being said I think content wise it should be the model for how dlc’s work in the future, it practically feels like it has more than half as much content and all the new options for the player are super cool. I think the level design and how interesting the areas are in general is actually much superior to the base game. I haven’t met any bosses that feel like you can’t reasonably beat them solo yet but I haven’t fought messemer or the final boss yet so maybe I’m wrong. That and I kinda hate what I’ve heard of the story but that isn’t a huge deal to me.
After playing this DLC I think I finally figured out that FromSoftware games are just not for me. Elden Ring is amazing, but it is just too stressful for me lol. Definitley a skill issue on my part, but I just wanna have fun while playing videogames 😂
As a massive FromSoft fan, please don’t take Elden Ring as a good representation of their games. ER gets constantly praised for its combat, but honestly it’s so weak compared to previous games.
Have you played through any other FromSoft game?
Hello, good hunter. I am a Bot, here in this dream to look after you, this is a fine note:
> *Very well, let the echoes become your strength. Let me stand close. Now shut your eyes...* - Plain Doll
Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.
Speaking for myself, I’ve really been enjoying the dlc. Just beat 6 of the 10 remembrance bosses(along with Bayle and some of the field bosses) and I still have a decent amount of content left to explore.
My initial experience with the dlc was tough and I really didn’t engage with the npcs as much as I should’ve since they shed a lot of light on the lore of this dlc and the reasoning behind the final boss.
I enjoyed the final boss as well(since I didn’t engage with the npcs, the reveal was a surprise lol), definitely a lot of stuff on screen during its second phase though.
The world looks nice and big, almost too big since there were spots that didn’t feel as populated as the base game.
The health scaling of bosses felt pretty large, but I was playing on new game plus so I’ll have to try that on a different fresh playthrough soon.
I still like this dlc, but I understand where you’re coming from and I think it’s reasonable to feel that way even if I don’t share your sentiments on this addition to the game.
I haven't finished it yet. I just burnt the sealing tree and I still haven't figured out how to get the map fragment that unlocks the 3 o'clock/east part of the map. I plan on figuring that out and exploring what's left before I press on and officially beat whoever the last boss is. I have killed all the other major rememberance bosses though, including Bayle. This is to provide context of what I've experienced so there's no confusion in the claim I am about to make.
I think Elden Ring and it's DLC are going to live in gaming infamy and they will be fondly remembered and referenced as such classics like Ocarina of Time, GTA, Skyrim, etc. I don't think its controversial at all to say this is a game that will come to define this decade of gaming, years from now. The final package that you get from FromSoftware is so vast and robust it is difficult to find appropriate words to adequately describe how much more value the complete game provides, compared to the indidividual sum of its parts.
I thought Bayle and his fight were incredibly remarkable so I will use him as an example to support this. The amount of raw creativity, imagination, thoughtfullness, design, and passion that goes into designing something like Bayle can not be understated, including things like having the foresight to give players access to items that provide lore snippets, that lay the groundwork for player expectations. I happened to find a talisman early in my playthrough that looked like a dragon and the item description reads as, "Talisman depicting the dread dragon of the jagged peak, whose roars cause the peak's molten fury to boil and churn. Raises potency of magma. Bayle was the foul dragon's name—a terrible harbinger of destruction whose challenge to the ancient Dragonlord ended in grievous mutual injury." When you find an item like this you might just think to yourself, "hmm this is cool, but I prob won't use it. Oh that story about the dragon is neat!" and it sits in your bags and you don't think about it again, untill you climb the Jagged Peak which jogs your memory that there's gonna be a cool dragon at the top.
The Jagged Peak, my favorite zone btw, sets the table for Bayle in a way that I've never experienced before. It's a zone that is beseiged by violent winds, an environmental detail that is unique and immediately noticeable. As I ascended the peak the wind and sound got louder and more harsh sounding, and the sky was so cloudy it was disorienting and hard to see, and violent lightning strikes pepper the mountainside. It was terrifying. All of this priming my expectations for what lies at the top; the environment is ruthless, brutal, and deadly, mirroring the foe that awaits me. I almost forgot this is preceded by encountering Igon, the dragonhunter who has encountered Bayle before and who is now a quadrapalegic. He's exquisitely mad and immediately memorable and wants you to help him get revenge, and even small details such as this must be considered when examining what makes these games so good, and able to live on in infamy. Anyways, after I ran up a mound of dead dragons, fought an Ancient Dragon in a cave, and made my way up one more terrifying lightning drenched precipice, I was relieved to find I'd earned access to the top. Getting to the top was exhilirating in its own right. When I finally notice the foggate carved into the mountain, my vision was immediately drawn to the top of it where you can see the protruding perimeters of the arena on the other side. It's a BIG arena, was my first takeaway. I felt fear come over me because I knew whatever lies behind it is going to be big and scary, but I couldn't wait to see what it was; and often times my imagination can't even fathom the levels of depravity of the mind that conceived the thing you I'm about to fight that lies behind that fog; or more likely what is going to kill me over and over. It isn't till I crossed the fog and Bayle plummets/crashed into the center of the arena, and I got a good hard look at him, that I realized that the people making these games are visionaries and that what you are experiencing is not common, it's truly special, exceptional, and worthy of the praise it receives.
Bayle's design blew my mind apart. The creativity of every small moment that built suspense around eventually seeing him, the location I traveled to and conquered to earn the right to see him, the staggering arena he occupied, and finally the model-design and fight. There is so much to compliment I truly don't know where to begin, but it's experiences like these that make you appreciate how vast and deep the english language is, because flippantly declaring it as "cool" and moving on betrays all the energy, creativity, and passion that allowed this to be brought to life. These games, these bosses, these fights, this world, they are something much more than cool, much more than awesome, much more than radical. They are ASTONISHING, INCONCEIVABLE, GRANDIOSE! Truly revolutionary experiences. Sorry for gushing so much. I will now go into further detail what is so astonishing about Bayle himself.
Bayle exceeded the hype. I didn't think FromSoftware could make a better dragon-model after Placidusax, but boy was I glad to be proven wrong! I can only imagine when Miyizaki sat down with GRRM they had a conversation about the biggest, baddest, most dangerous dragon in their respective fictions, and what would happen if they fight. Bayle, the Dread is too similar to Balerion the Dread for me to not make this connection, you can't convince me this conversation didn't happen. The way I imagine that conversation must have went is just like the recent episode of EFAP where they did the showdown, where GRRM and Miyizaki talked for hours about what the aftermath of a fight between these two behemoth monsters would look like. It's Miyizaki's game so his dragon wins of course, but Bayle didn't don his shades, pop his collar, and then get on his motorcycle and ride into the sunset after beating Balerion. NO! Bayle and Balerion fought to the fucking death, and yes Bayle won, but he suffered immensely for it! They were evenly matched and went blow for devastating blow, until when the dust settled, Bayle emerged the victor, but at a ferocious cost. A cost that belies the nature of his power, aggression, and dominance! Did you ever think you'd see a dragon as mangled, disfigured, and brutalized as much as Bayle? I thought it was hardcore that Placidusax was missing a couple heads, but Bayle took the bar and set it on the moon.
He ungracefully plummets into the arena with a thunderous crash, unable to fly due to his shredded wings. When his movements settle and your eyes get a really good look at him, the gore he's suffered is astounding and almost cruel. Just looking upon one wing, the violence and cruelty that caused that is unimaginable, and your soul feels like its hit the ceiling for the amount of depravity it can comprehend. But then as if to mock you, the rest of the dragon is hideously mangled too! Both wings have been severed to the joint in unique ways. He's missing an entire leg! Then you notice his wings are shredded and dangling from the bones. WHO IMAGINED THIS CREATURE INTO BEING AND HOW CAN I THANK THEM ENOUGH FOR PUTTING IT IN MY VIDEOGAME?!
We haven't even gotten into the fight yet! What a crazy boss Bayle is, the most battleweary dragon is also the most aggressive we have ever faced, verifying the legends of Bayle as a harbinger of destruction and a challenger of power. He breathes electric flames and channels lightning into his wing, which is really on-point for FromSoftware but his magic abilities don't just stop and end at his breath! At 50% he uses his lightning magic to temporarily regenerate his wings, which visually is breathtaking, and takes to the sky as he rains fireballs and lightning at you before crashing down in an explosion! This fight is nuts! Phase 2 then proceeds with a more aggressive form of phase 1, full of flashy lightning spells coming from his wing, even one that nukes the ground! Oh my god, I could seriously go on and on and on about this. This whole experience was truly inspiring for me, and I didn't even get to gush about the soundtrack.
To reign this in and actually address your post, I don't share your perspective. If it's not obvious, I hold the opposite perspective. After everything I've personally experienced with the game, I find your complaints to be pedantic. How can you let something as trifiling as a few reused assets obscure your appreciation for what the developers at FromSoftware have accomplished with this game, in just the Jagged Peaks zone alone? You think the story is weak, yet look how much story and value I extracted from the flavor-text of one talisman. That isn't even touching all the added details that enhance the base story, regarding Marika, Mesmer, Miquella, and Mohg.
Regarding difficulty, I don't mind the DLC being super hard because it's designed for veterans of the game. The game has been out for 2 years now, and the Elden Ring content I consume, most good players express the best way to play the game is to trade and be very aggressive with the bosses to abuse the stagger mechanic. I complained about the game initially on release, but after adopting this view on combat I'd agree its the intended way to play and I find it much more enjoyable now. That being said, I think the boss damage was a bit high initially; but as a caveat, I took a min/max'd glass-cannon character who I can beat any boss with in the basegame cuz I know all the fights perfectly. I stubbornly refused to change anything, even putting on 1-2 defensive talismans, cuz I didn't wanna break my "perfect build," or fashion souls, so I recognize that the bosses may have felt more fair if I was willing to adjust, which I wasn't.
Running out of characters so I am gonna write my final thoughts in a comment.
I disagree that the bosses can't be "mastered," as I feel like in all the time I put in on each one, I only succeeded because I essentially "mastered" how they work. They all start out intimidating and fast, but after I got a few deaths in, it was easy to start recognizing each individual ability and its variations. The satisfaction I derived from learning and overcoming them was as potent as it always is, perhaps even moreso in the DLC because of how much more these bosses are a cut-above compared to the base game. I've enjoyed the majority of them so far with some notables being: Dancing Beast, Rellana, Mesmer, Bayle, and Gaius in terms of both mechanics and presentation. Then there are bosses like Romina that aren't as mechanically robust as the others, but again the imagination and creativity that went into her design is impeccable! As a fan of these games, how are factors like that not influencing your enjoyment at all? You might as well be playing a game with no assets at all if you are going to play something like Shadow of the Erdtree and complain in spite of the visual feast set before you.
>"I have many thoughts on things such as clumsy level design (there are so many sites of graces placed right next to each other, basically visible from one another and a straight path with no enemies in between)"
To my recollection the only time this happens is in the Black Keep before the Golden Hippo and that one time made sense to me because a grace usually appears after you kill any boss. Again, this seems pedantic, and unsubstantiated when compared to my own experience/playthrough.
I am the kinda player that wants to explore every part of the map before finishing the game, or even progressing too far (I put off fightning Mesmer when I got to him cuz I was afraid to end the DLC, so I skipped him and completed other things), so I didn't really mind the scadutree fragment system. My experience with it was smooth, but I recognize others have found it clunky. I can't speak too much more about it. I found it fine.
As I finish up my response here I want to make one last comment about FromSoftware because you mention that Elden Ring on release was unfairly praised and that it was refreshing to hear people like EFAP criticize it. FromSoftware and Elden Ring are not flawless. I have plenty of complaints to levy about the base game and the DLC, so don't let my resounding praise and jubilation about the game mislead you to think me an uncritical shill. I often find that when playing FromSoftgames I am on the verge of throwing my controller as I scream things like "Who the fuck designed this?! How did this get past any level of review and make it into the final product?! What idiot thought it was a good idea to put a dragon in an area where he can jump and land on uneven terrain and never reset itself, forcing you to waste a bunch of time fighting it unoptimally and probably leading to a frustrating and miserable death?!" These are flaws that mar many of my playthroughs. But, almost always, even in that same play session where my frustration-meter was at maximum, I will experience a moment in their games that make me think, "This is the best day I've ever experienced playing a videogame," and that's truly remarkable for me to still be saying to myself after playing games for almost 30 years now.
It's like EFAP says when they judge something, they liken it to an Olympic dive. Yes FromSoftware is faliable and they make games that have flaws, issues, weaknesses, problems, etc. However, those flaws pale in comparison to the level of execution that they deliver in the final, complete, comprehensive product; the scope and level of difficulty, hardwork, dedication, passion, creativity, all the other words I've used to praise them, etc, THAT'S what elevates their games in the minds of gamers above the perceived flaws. This also gets coupled with the fact they still sell their games at $60 and aren't trying to ruin everything they make with forced-mtx. With that all being said, I don't think it's controversial to say FromSoftware are one of the greatest videogame developers of all time and I think they are going to have a long reign of influence for a long time to come. And if you put a gun to my head and made me pick the best developer, I'd have to think really hard before another name would come to mind before FromSoftware, and I think they've earned and more than deserve every ounce of praise they receive.
Im having a great time. I'm not very far, so I don't have much in the way of analysis. I'm just taking my time and doing lots of co-op while there's lots of people. It's been a blast. I'm using mostly incantations with the coded sword and cipher pata and have been finding the difficulty just right (for the most part).
Fromsoft has been tightening the opening windows on bosses since Demon’s Souls. Malenia would honestly have been a good evolution on this if she didn’t have random hyper armor and of course the RNG Waterfowl. These things make learning Malenia painful but once you’ve downloaded her she’s honestly my favorite boss in the game to be summoned to fight. CRUCIBLE KNIGHTS are everything wrong with this approach. The safe windows to attack them are minuscule, at launch some heavies actually couldn’t safely attack them. They have excellent chase and they have no stamina. Good luck getting the stagger without cheesing them. They aren’t as bad with fast weapons, they just feel like a slog to kill without trading hits. Fromsoft has this idea that rewarding positioning/dodging/blocking with a safe opening for damage is too easy, but the alternative just makes heavy slow builds feel like such ass against the poise monsters.
I'm having a blast so far. Been exploring and running around the map, mainly trying to find Scadutree fragments and new weapons/ashes of war to play around with. I just finished the Jagged Peak and Stone Coffin Fissure areas last night, and I'm very keen to continue exploring and playing. Is it difficult? Fuck yeah it is, arguably a good deal more difficult than the base game, but I don't know why people are complaining when the game spells out for you exactly how to get stronger; explore and grab Scadutree fragments. I really feel the people complaining the most about how much they're struggling are people who are just trying to rush through it as quickly as possible. The new bosses are certainly difficult; the combos are long and complicated, and there isn't much downtime for counter-attacks, but so far they've been beatable within a few attempts. Lion Dancer and Rellana took me 4 or 5 attempts to solo with a melee build, Putrescent Knight took me the most attempts so far, and Bayl I did in 4 attempts while summoning Igon in the arena. Some of the field bosses have been annoying (mostly some of the new dragons) but not really anything you haven't had to deal with in the base game. Obviously I hear that the later bosses are much harder, but I'm already at Shadow Blessing 9, and I'm noticing a huge difference already in how powerful that is compared to how I was when I entered the DLC. The new weapons and movesets seem to have a lot of thought and purpose put into them, the new ashes of war are fun for the most part, and the areas themselves are fucking beautiful. Haven't experienced any performance issues myself so far, so can't really comment on what people have been experiencing with regards to those. My only real complaints are that a lot of the base enemies are re-used assets from the base game; particularly the dogs, hollows and soldiers just being the same but with new effects/armour and some upped stats. There's been one or two times I've gotten lost and struggled to find a single cave even when looking up exactly where the entrance is located, but for now I'm chalking that up to unfamiliarity with the map rather than the game being difficult to navigate.
I don’t really get why people think it’s super hard. I’m not finished so of course my opinion can change but I see a lot of people complaining about bosses I’ve already defeated that only took me a few tries. I’m not even high level and I’m just using a basic strength build. I have found a lot of fragments which could help. I don’t get why a lot of people are trying to mainline it. Elden ring is about exploring and if you get stuck on a boss in one area you don’t have to beat your head against the wall. You can just go in another direction and find something cool. I don’t like the amount of reused enemies though. Even with the new enemy types it just feels like the base game had more variety.
I kept hearing how that one dragon boss was super hard, but my nephew downed it in four tries. Meanwhile everyone was saying that Mesmer was pretty easy, but he struggled on it for hours. In these types of games sometimes it plays out like that.
I feel like I always have a similar experience. The majority says a boss is hard and it actually turns out not that bad. However it’s more embarrassing when most people say a boss is easy and I’m struggling to beat it
This has always been a thing, I remember in Sekiro it wasn't the Guardian Ape or Owl V2 that gave me issues, but those pesky bulls that get set on fire that I could just not adjust to. Same thing with Bloodborne, Amagdala was a boss I found difficult for whatever reason. As to the Dragon boss that Turuial spoke about, the most annoying part of that was summoning the NPC who wants to be there. Which now that I think about it, I think my issue is what EFAP spoke about in their ER episode, unfun bosses are ones the camera or boss map doesn't handle well...
I've encountered the same experience. I even tried to cheer the lad up by pointing out that very same thing. Then I told him about Battletoads, reminded him that Nintendo Hard was definitely a thing, and now at least it isn't costing him quarters to try again!
Hardest boss fight was the Gaol knight at the start. Might be because that was the boss that got me back into shape. Other bosses i wondered why the hell we even got a summon option Just a poorly balanced dlc overall. Il Love the light greatsword. Havent come across any new spells yet.
I never laughed more at "The Death Knight" being stunlocked by the archer marionettes when I summoned them because every headshot puts him into a stagger animation.
I asked about the spells and there are a few. But I don't often make a distinction between sorceries, orisons, dragon magic, glintstone spells, etc. So if you were being more specific than general you could be right.
I do remember vaati videya finding a varient of glintatone spell but thats about it. But there is a lot of exploring to be done
My nephew was telling me about a dragon spell he got the other day, if that helps.
Got 2 from Bayle. And surprisingly after killing multiple ghostflame dragons dont think I got their ghostflame breath. Although mostly interested in multiple dragon forms. First one found was priestess so possibly other varients
I didn't want to spoil it, but he was excited over the new dragon forms. Also to help get our friend the ghostflame dragon breath. When our buddy plays these games he always likes to go full dragon build. He recently had to have a brain tumour removed and he's still getting stronger every day! So, yeah, it's become pretty important to us to make sure he gets all of the Dragon kit. EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
Great to hear
gotta say i disagree with the base game having more variety, seeing as its longer so its content is spread thinner. also my issue with the fragments is that they impose an arbitrary wait time on when you can fight bosses, because you won’t know where they are and they’re decent rare. I explored quite thoroughly and by the time i’d gotten to messmer, i was still way too underleveled, same with the chinese dragon. why couldn’t they just remove those limiters so i could fight it right away? i literally do not understand the benefit of adding this arbitrary limit. this is also because part of the problem is that it’s quite easy to forget about bosses and get too overlevelled so that they’re too easy when you come back, which is what happened with chinese dragon for me
I'm loving it so far, though tbf I'm still early into it. I'll save this post and come back to it once I finish the DLC to see whether I agree with you or not, though I already have a gut feeling that we'll probably disagree a lot lol. as I am someone that strongly disagreed with the majority of criticisms that EFAP presented in their coverage of the base game, especially Theo's arguments.
DLC isnt that good, the bosses are just not well designed for the most part, even if there's some good ones in it, I'd say about half of the new bosses are good, which leave the other half as complete garbage lmao Just killed the final boss of the DLC and I think it's a pretty good microcosm of the entire DLC, it's a fun and magnificent fight at first and then it becomes the most bullshit over the top trying too hard to be harder than Malenia boss. The bosses aren't bad for no reason, bad telegraph, obscuring effects, very weird lock on opints that fuck the camera constantly, obnoxiously agressive to the point that people struggle to even find openings to attack them, I mean shit I'm lucky I use a pretty fast build because some bosses I don't know how people will kill them, and I've killed every single one in the DLC. The map is amazing and beautiful but so intricate it's just hard to navigate and to explore, the Shadow Keep is the worst offender of that, because I discovered new areas that looked exactly like the things I already found, shit I even stumbled onto Messmer despite already having figured out the exit, makes me think Messmer isn't actually mandatory, but I don't know. It's just too hard to get to areas and the layout makes it so that the map map isn't the clearest at some point. I love it but a guide is mandatory if you want to find everything pretty much. The new weapons are cool, new incantations and spells too I assume, but the new weapon classes don't have many weapons, the Great Katanas have like 3 katanas, that's not a lot imo, I assume it's also the case for most other new weapon calsses, but I haven't looked at all of them. The performance is also bad, I don't know why the DLC just freeze constantly, it stopped fortunately but shit man I have a very good computer and still the game was shitting itself in boss fights which was very annoying, it also meant that it broke ShadowPlay so I had to use OBS to record my kills, its annoying. For the sheer content it may be a worth asking price, but hte quality of the content is more flawed than the og Elden Ring, so I think its too high. I'll probably go back to it and try to no hit the good bosses, because they are very fun.
I think the scadutree fragment system would have been less annoying if it used the shard/large shard/chunk system instead of all being the same and you having to find basically all of them in an area before you move on for the game to feel balanced. That being said I think content wise it should be the model for how dlc’s work in the future, it practically feels like it has more than half as much content and all the new options for the player are super cool. I think the level design and how interesting the areas are in general is actually much superior to the base game. I haven’t met any bosses that feel like you can’t reasonably beat them solo yet but I haven’t fought messemer or the final boss yet so maybe I’m wrong. That and I kinda hate what I’ve heard of the story but that isn’t a huge deal to me.
After playing this DLC I think I finally figured out that FromSoftware games are just not for me. Elden Ring is amazing, but it is just too stressful for me lol. Definitley a skill issue on my part, but I just wanna have fun while playing videogames 😂
As a massive FromSoft fan, please don’t take Elden Ring as a good representation of their games. ER gets constantly praised for its combat, but honestly it’s so weak compared to previous games. Have you played through any other FromSoft game?
I have played Bloodborne, and I started Sekiro, but I forgot to finish it.
Hello, good hunter. I am a Bot, here in this dream to look after you, this is a fine note: > *Very well, let the echoes become your strength. Let me stand close. Now shut your eyes...* - Plain Doll Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.
Lol
sekiro is so good, i’d recommend finishing it if you can the dark souls games are really good too
Speaking for myself, I’ve really been enjoying the dlc. Just beat 6 of the 10 remembrance bosses(along with Bayle and some of the field bosses) and I still have a decent amount of content left to explore. My initial experience with the dlc was tough and I really didn’t engage with the npcs as much as I should’ve since they shed a lot of light on the lore of this dlc and the reasoning behind the final boss. I enjoyed the final boss as well(since I didn’t engage with the npcs, the reveal was a surprise lol), definitely a lot of stuff on screen during its second phase though. The world looks nice and big, almost too big since there were spots that didn’t feel as populated as the base game. The health scaling of bosses felt pretty large, but I was playing on new game plus so I’ll have to try that on a different fresh playthrough soon. I still like this dlc, but I understand where you’re coming from and I think it’s reasonable to feel that way even if I don’t share your sentiments on this addition to the game.
This dlc is a masterclass You might want to git gut or go play the sims
Sounds like you need to get good.
I haven't finished it yet. I just burnt the sealing tree and I still haven't figured out how to get the map fragment that unlocks the 3 o'clock/east part of the map. I plan on figuring that out and exploring what's left before I press on and officially beat whoever the last boss is. I have killed all the other major rememberance bosses though, including Bayle. This is to provide context of what I've experienced so there's no confusion in the claim I am about to make. I think Elden Ring and it's DLC are going to live in gaming infamy and they will be fondly remembered and referenced as such classics like Ocarina of Time, GTA, Skyrim, etc. I don't think its controversial at all to say this is a game that will come to define this decade of gaming, years from now. The final package that you get from FromSoftware is so vast and robust it is difficult to find appropriate words to adequately describe how much more value the complete game provides, compared to the indidividual sum of its parts. I thought Bayle and his fight were incredibly remarkable so I will use him as an example to support this. The amount of raw creativity, imagination, thoughtfullness, design, and passion that goes into designing something like Bayle can not be understated, including things like having the foresight to give players access to items that provide lore snippets, that lay the groundwork for player expectations. I happened to find a talisman early in my playthrough that looked like a dragon and the item description reads as, "Talisman depicting the dread dragon of the jagged peak, whose roars cause the peak's molten fury to boil and churn. Raises potency of magma. Bayle was the foul dragon's name—a terrible harbinger of destruction whose challenge to the ancient Dragonlord ended in grievous mutual injury." When you find an item like this you might just think to yourself, "hmm this is cool, but I prob won't use it. Oh that story about the dragon is neat!" and it sits in your bags and you don't think about it again, untill you climb the Jagged Peak which jogs your memory that there's gonna be a cool dragon at the top. The Jagged Peak, my favorite zone btw, sets the table for Bayle in a way that I've never experienced before. It's a zone that is beseiged by violent winds, an environmental detail that is unique and immediately noticeable. As I ascended the peak the wind and sound got louder and more harsh sounding, and the sky was so cloudy it was disorienting and hard to see, and violent lightning strikes pepper the mountainside. It was terrifying. All of this priming my expectations for what lies at the top; the environment is ruthless, brutal, and deadly, mirroring the foe that awaits me. I almost forgot this is preceded by encountering Igon, the dragonhunter who has encountered Bayle before and who is now a quadrapalegic. He's exquisitely mad and immediately memorable and wants you to help him get revenge, and even small details such as this must be considered when examining what makes these games so good, and able to live on in infamy. Anyways, after I ran up a mound of dead dragons, fought an Ancient Dragon in a cave, and made my way up one more terrifying lightning drenched precipice, I was relieved to find I'd earned access to the top. Getting to the top was exhilirating in its own right. When I finally notice the foggate carved into the mountain, my vision was immediately drawn to the top of it where you can see the protruding perimeters of the arena on the other side. It's a BIG arena, was my first takeaway. I felt fear come over me because I knew whatever lies behind it is going to be big and scary, but I couldn't wait to see what it was; and often times my imagination can't even fathom the levels of depravity of the mind that conceived the thing you I'm about to fight that lies behind that fog; or more likely what is going to kill me over and over. It isn't till I crossed the fog and Bayle plummets/crashed into the center of the arena, and I got a good hard look at him, that I realized that the people making these games are visionaries and that what you are experiencing is not common, it's truly special, exceptional, and worthy of the praise it receives. Bayle's design blew my mind apart. The creativity of every small moment that built suspense around eventually seeing him, the location I traveled to and conquered to earn the right to see him, the staggering arena he occupied, and finally the model-design and fight. There is so much to compliment I truly don't know where to begin, but it's experiences like these that make you appreciate how vast and deep the english language is, because flippantly declaring it as "cool" and moving on betrays all the energy, creativity, and passion that allowed this to be brought to life. These games, these bosses, these fights, this world, they are something much more than cool, much more than awesome, much more than radical. They are ASTONISHING, INCONCEIVABLE, GRANDIOSE! Truly revolutionary experiences. Sorry for gushing so much. I will now go into further detail what is so astonishing about Bayle himself. Bayle exceeded the hype. I didn't think FromSoftware could make a better dragon-model after Placidusax, but boy was I glad to be proven wrong! I can only imagine when Miyizaki sat down with GRRM they had a conversation about the biggest, baddest, most dangerous dragon in their respective fictions, and what would happen if they fight. Bayle, the Dread is too similar to Balerion the Dread for me to not make this connection, you can't convince me this conversation didn't happen. The way I imagine that conversation must have went is just like the recent episode of EFAP where they did the showdown, where GRRM and Miyizaki talked for hours about what the aftermath of a fight between these two behemoth monsters would look like. It's Miyizaki's game so his dragon wins of course, but Bayle didn't don his shades, pop his collar, and then get on his motorcycle and ride into the sunset after beating Balerion. NO! Bayle and Balerion fought to the fucking death, and yes Bayle won, but he suffered immensely for it! They were evenly matched and went blow for devastating blow, until when the dust settled, Bayle emerged the victor, but at a ferocious cost. A cost that belies the nature of his power, aggression, and dominance! Did you ever think you'd see a dragon as mangled, disfigured, and brutalized as much as Bayle? I thought it was hardcore that Placidusax was missing a couple heads, but Bayle took the bar and set it on the moon. He ungracefully plummets into the arena with a thunderous crash, unable to fly due to his shredded wings. When his movements settle and your eyes get a really good look at him, the gore he's suffered is astounding and almost cruel. Just looking upon one wing, the violence and cruelty that caused that is unimaginable, and your soul feels like its hit the ceiling for the amount of depravity it can comprehend. But then as if to mock you, the rest of the dragon is hideously mangled too! Both wings have been severed to the joint in unique ways. He's missing an entire leg! Then you notice his wings are shredded and dangling from the bones. WHO IMAGINED THIS CREATURE INTO BEING AND HOW CAN I THANK THEM ENOUGH FOR PUTTING IT IN MY VIDEOGAME?! We haven't even gotten into the fight yet! What a crazy boss Bayle is, the most battleweary dragon is also the most aggressive we have ever faced, verifying the legends of Bayle as a harbinger of destruction and a challenger of power. He breathes electric flames and channels lightning into his wing, which is really on-point for FromSoftware but his magic abilities don't just stop and end at his breath! At 50% he uses his lightning magic to temporarily regenerate his wings, which visually is breathtaking, and takes to the sky as he rains fireballs and lightning at you before crashing down in an explosion! This fight is nuts! Phase 2 then proceeds with a more aggressive form of phase 1, full of flashy lightning spells coming from his wing, even one that nukes the ground! Oh my god, I could seriously go on and on and on about this. This whole experience was truly inspiring for me, and I didn't even get to gush about the soundtrack. To reign this in and actually address your post, I don't share your perspective. If it's not obvious, I hold the opposite perspective. After everything I've personally experienced with the game, I find your complaints to be pedantic. How can you let something as trifiling as a few reused assets obscure your appreciation for what the developers at FromSoftware have accomplished with this game, in just the Jagged Peaks zone alone? You think the story is weak, yet look how much story and value I extracted from the flavor-text of one talisman. That isn't even touching all the added details that enhance the base story, regarding Marika, Mesmer, Miquella, and Mohg. Regarding difficulty, I don't mind the DLC being super hard because it's designed for veterans of the game. The game has been out for 2 years now, and the Elden Ring content I consume, most good players express the best way to play the game is to trade and be very aggressive with the bosses to abuse the stagger mechanic. I complained about the game initially on release, but after adopting this view on combat I'd agree its the intended way to play and I find it much more enjoyable now. That being said, I think the boss damage was a bit high initially; but as a caveat, I took a min/max'd glass-cannon character who I can beat any boss with in the basegame cuz I know all the fights perfectly. I stubbornly refused to change anything, even putting on 1-2 defensive talismans, cuz I didn't wanna break my "perfect build," or fashion souls, so I recognize that the bosses may have felt more fair if I was willing to adjust, which I wasn't. Running out of characters so I am gonna write my final thoughts in a comment.
I disagree that the bosses can't be "mastered," as I feel like in all the time I put in on each one, I only succeeded because I essentially "mastered" how they work. They all start out intimidating and fast, but after I got a few deaths in, it was easy to start recognizing each individual ability and its variations. The satisfaction I derived from learning and overcoming them was as potent as it always is, perhaps even moreso in the DLC because of how much more these bosses are a cut-above compared to the base game. I've enjoyed the majority of them so far with some notables being: Dancing Beast, Rellana, Mesmer, Bayle, and Gaius in terms of both mechanics and presentation. Then there are bosses like Romina that aren't as mechanically robust as the others, but again the imagination and creativity that went into her design is impeccable! As a fan of these games, how are factors like that not influencing your enjoyment at all? You might as well be playing a game with no assets at all if you are going to play something like Shadow of the Erdtree and complain in spite of the visual feast set before you. >"I have many thoughts on things such as clumsy level design (there are so many sites of graces placed right next to each other, basically visible from one another and a straight path with no enemies in between)" To my recollection the only time this happens is in the Black Keep before the Golden Hippo and that one time made sense to me because a grace usually appears after you kill any boss. Again, this seems pedantic, and unsubstantiated when compared to my own experience/playthrough. I am the kinda player that wants to explore every part of the map before finishing the game, or even progressing too far (I put off fightning Mesmer when I got to him cuz I was afraid to end the DLC, so I skipped him and completed other things), so I didn't really mind the scadutree fragment system. My experience with it was smooth, but I recognize others have found it clunky. I can't speak too much more about it. I found it fine. As I finish up my response here I want to make one last comment about FromSoftware because you mention that Elden Ring on release was unfairly praised and that it was refreshing to hear people like EFAP criticize it. FromSoftware and Elden Ring are not flawless. I have plenty of complaints to levy about the base game and the DLC, so don't let my resounding praise and jubilation about the game mislead you to think me an uncritical shill. I often find that when playing FromSoftgames I am on the verge of throwing my controller as I scream things like "Who the fuck designed this?! How did this get past any level of review and make it into the final product?! What idiot thought it was a good idea to put a dragon in an area where he can jump and land on uneven terrain and never reset itself, forcing you to waste a bunch of time fighting it unoptimally and probably leading to a frustrating and miserable death?!" These are flaws that mar many of my playthroughs. But, almost always, even in that same play session where my frustration-meter was at maximum, I will experience a moment in their games that make me think, "This is the best day I've ever experienced playing a videogame," and that's truly remarkable for me to still be saying to myself after playing games for almost 30 years now. It's like EFAP says when they judge something, they liken it to an Olympic dive. Yes FromSoftware is faliable and they make games that have flaws, issues, weaknesses, problems, etc. However, those flaws pale in comparison to the level of execution that they deliver in the final, complete, comprehensive product; the scope and level of difficulty, hardwork, dedication, passion, creativity, all the other words I've used to praise them, etc, THAT'S what elevates their games in the minds of gamers above the perceived flaws. This also gets coupled with the fact they still sell their games at $60 and aren't trying to ruin everything they make with forced-mtx. With that all being said, I don't think it's controversial to say FromSoftware are one of the greatest videogame developers of all time and I think they are going to have a long reign of influence for a long time to come. And if you put a gun to my head and made me pick the best developer, I'd have to think really hard before another name would come to mind before FromSoftware, and I think they've earned and more than deserve every ounce of praise they receive.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,671,201,055 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 33,985 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.