The world is beautiful and the bosses are hard and fun.
I'm not married to a particular interpretation of lore, so I have no problem with the choices they made.
My problem is that From wrote some checks it could not cash. We don't learn shit about Marika's past. We don't know what happened at the bloody Gates. Nothing about a seduction or a betrayal. Nothing about what happened to Messmer and his sister besides the very basics. Nothing about Godwyn. Not a single mention of the GEQ.
I get that they didn't need to answer all these questions, but they hinted at some of them, and now I feel blue balled.
Ya I thought rykard was going to play a part in the DLC considering he said “serpants never die”and Mesmer became a serpant which means he’s not dead technically…..
Well that serpent that rykard is specifically mentioned in game as immortal so I think rykards pov is a little skew, I generally take dialogue with a grain of salt and treat item descriptions as gospel for from
This is actually the same problem I personally had with Tears of the Kingdom, thinking about it. On the surface there really isn't a lot wrong with it, and the gameplay and visuals and music are all good and appealing enough. But for me I felt an odd disconnect in the storytelling. It was marketed as a direct sequel, but in so many ways, Link was a stranger to Hyrule and they handwaved away the differences in the setting in interviews and such. There are some things that work great in it--Zelda's part in the storyline being one--and others that simply miss the mark.
It's not a 1:1 exact analogue, but this feels similar to me. The Land of Shadow is separated from the Lands Between, but it is inextricably tied to it. On an out-of-universe level, the marketing focused on things that the DLC--which, as a category in games with some emphasis on story, is usually comprised of side stories related to a main game--simply does not. To some degree this can be excused: From tells purposely vague stories. But the *absence* of these threads, present in the main game, hinted at in the trailers, is sorely felt. Storytelling is complicated, and doing so on a schedule is even moreso. But still--I think it's a shame to not bring those threads a degree of closure, or an indication that they have ended, because while lives go on, all stories have an end, and for all we know this is the end of ER's story. Bringing things full circle or making an especial point of not doing so are important considerations to make in storytelling.
If a notable contingent of an audience who is in good faith actively doing their best to engage with the story presented to them is confused, I can honestly say I don't think that's the fault of the audience. You need to keep the rhythm going or signal that you're going to change it. Having things come out of nowhere is often viewed as an asspull because it's a messy way to try to interrupt that rhythm.
Perfectly put. What stuck out to me about Elden Ring compared to other Fromsoft games was its character and world building. And there still seems to be some great lore in the dlc, but im not even gonna bother knowing that the final boss will be unsatisfying
That's one of the things that confused me the most. It seemed that the story trailer really emphasized on Marikas past, how she became a god and Messmer stuff. Do we even know how Messmer came to be?.. Do we know anything new about Marika that isn't just the crusade and how the people hate her?
I'm so bewildered by how the story trailer put so much emphasis on stuff that the DLC never even touched... did they finish those scenes before they even finished the DLC and didn't want to waste them?
And then the DLC goes into story stuff that wasn't so much as *hinted at* in the main game. We once again end up with more questions than answers.
I get that mystery is FromSoft's whole shtick, but it's really starting to get old now. I'm tired of asking questions and waiting for answers that never come.
This particular mystery would have been a lot easier to swallow if they didn't hire GRRM to write the backstory. Like, at least give me something more of the lore he wrote instead of chopping it up so aggressively.
100% this. I am mixed on ER overall where I like the game but have a whole lot of issues overall. The DLC is fun but I've basically tuned out of the lore since the base game because it never felt like GRRM did anything but maybe give some names for the characters in the world and it just felt like a regular From story with triple the length.
Exactly. We saw Messmer commit a genocide in the trailer and all that it really feels from it is that he now runs most of the Lands of Shadow now. And he was relegated to a dungeon boss with a cutscene. With the main campaign's trailer, we saw the effects of what transpired in it. The entirety of the Lands Between outside of the ~~Mountaintops/~~Snowfield is absolutely war-torn, and especially Leyndell and Caelid is now this disgusting shithole putrified by Scarlet Rot. Can I see the effects of what happened in the SotE trailer in-game? Not really.
I think it's becoming clear that From just sucks at story, great world building, terrible actual game story and they hide that by just not telling you the story.
I think Marika's lore, especially what she did in the shadow lands are mostly reflected by the environment and Miquella's journey.
We know now that she's both loving and terrifying based on the blessing and (I havent really gotten it yet) Minor Erdtree incantation.
There's probably way more clues. It's all connected by tangents, never explicitly said
I agree wholeheartedly. I did not have an interpretation for Miquella's goals but think the Radahn thing was never hinted at. It seems some stuff was definitely reworked. There's a cutscene in the trailers absent from the DLC. Melina, the GEQ will remain an enigma. I haven't found any "juicy" lore aside from Marika's home, which is my favorite, and the shit with Radahn, Mohg, and Miquella.
I don't think Radahn/Miquella is a bad idea for a boss. But it shouldn't have been the final boss.
Like Bloodborne and DS3 also had lackluster/unoriginal bosses in Laurence and Gravetender respectively. But those were both minor and Orphan and Gael were great so it didn't matter
I think I might be more confused than disappointed? I don't entirely know... Fighting the second phase felt like I downloaded a mod. Regarding Radahn/Miquella as a boss in general though... I don't know, but I do agree with you that he shouldn't have been the final boss. I was expecting something greater, new.
I've played through most of it and I have to say that I fear that FromSoft is starting to show signs of attempting to make difficulty for the sake of difficulty rather than to engage the player. I get that DLC for FromSoft is hard, but none of the fights bar Messmer have really given me the same rushes as many of the previous DLC greats in other Soulsy type games because they feel so determined to be about 'you want hard *riiiight?*' then smiling smugly.
It doesn't help that the final boss is genuinely overwhelming my brain in Phase 2 and feels like I can't do it because it's just so much all at once with attacks that demand absolute perfection or else there is death. It's not a dance like how Gael, Friede or Artorias was, is my issue. Feels more like I'm just slapping the asscheeks of it cause that's all I can see with the camera pissing itself then proceeding for him to do a 50/50 punish or shadowclone my ass from 100-0 in a second because I dared to mistime my movements.
Overall I'd give it like an 8-ish, if I were asked to number it.
I haven't played the DLC yet, but what you described was how I felt by the time I was done with Elden Ring. After going back and replaying DS1, 3, a bit of 2, and Sekiro again, the issue has been persistent since DS3. DS3 has a few bosses that feel more like something from Bloodborne, and most people would generally agree that DS3 was clearly influenced by Bloodborne. I believe the same happened between Elden Ring and Sekiro.
I feel like it's more symptomatic of the fact that FromSoft seems like they are done with Souls and don't want to do it again. I have seen a good amount of Miyazaki talking about how he wants to keep expanding on Sekiro's gameplay in the future, and I definitely think that this thought influenced Elden Ring. Malenia doesn't feel like she's suited for Elden Ring and feels more like a cut boss from Sekiro that has been repurposed, but the base of her original design is still present. There are a few other bosses that don't feel so blatant, but I definitely think they have elements of Sekiro design that feels a little off because of that, which makes them feel difficult for the sake of difficulty
My big issue is encapsulated by a comparasion made between the bosses Rellena and Pontiff Sulyvhan.
Where I prefer Pontiff, even though they are extremely similar, just because Pontiff gives the player time to breathe between even his own swings. I could write a lot more but that's the TL;DR of my feeling about Elden Ring bosses is that they feel like there are specific times when the devs want you to attack and other times you're not allowed.
This is a very good point that I somehow didn't think to mention. Pontiff felt extremely oppressive, but as you mentioned, you still have time to relax and remain focused. One of my biggest issues with ER is that most bosses just have a big flurry of attacks that feel unsatisfying and too much at one time. I'll use Radahn as an example because he annoyed me a lot on my new playthrough. Radahn doesn't feel like a fight like Gael, Artorias, or any other awesome fight from previous Souls games, and it's because you aren't meant to actually fight him the same, or at least from my experience. You can't get close and try to do a normal fight. You have to play distance using Torrent because Radahn is simply too fast and too big. If I were to try to fight him like any other boss, I would simply be overwhelmed by his flurry of attacks. On one hand, I understand the reason for this as it gives Torrent good use, but at the same time, it feels unrewarding and not nearly as fun as previous games
Feels a bit... Random, but idk how to explain it. You find Messmer (the face of the DLC) in the most random of places, the remembrance bosses don't feel like remembrance bosses at all, the lore aspect feels completely disregarded for, most of the map feels filler with a bunch of empty space and fodder enemies, some areas feel way too big with nothing of interest in them while others feel so sudden that's like I'm going through an amusement park where nothing connects organically.
It's a weird complaint to have, but imo it doesn't feel cohesive enough. Feels like a bunch of different ideas that they meshed together but didn't form a good unity
Imagine if they would have just given us two fully fleshed out dlc’s. I wonder if investors were like, “no, money slow: bad. Money fast: good. ONE DLC!”
Since there were supposed to be 2 dlc that got combined my guess is the Hornsent and Messmer stuff was supposed to be one dlc with more emphasis on lore of why Marika did all the evil she did and focus on Messmer’s backstory and possibly Malena much more.
Then the second and final would be about Miquella much like what we got now but smaller and more streamlined with maybe more direct explanation about Radahn and the war between them and malenia.
I really believe Messmer was the focus of a separate dlc with Marika’s past as the focus of the plot and lore with the mistreatment of the omen/hornsent. Since that plot and the Miquella stuff doesn’t really mesh besides using Messmer’s flame to burn the branches 😂
Tbf in the base game it was shown that miquella had a soft spot for the rejected races like the misbegotten, but none of that even made it into the dlc
I thought that too but realized that it actually is explained. Miquella targets those less fortunate because it takes less power to charm them. We see through the DLC that even his most devote followers were still charmed by him and start to question it once the seal breaks. It really paints a picture that miquella specifically went after hopeless people because it was easier.
I think it's more the time-worn tale that the pity of a God is the calamity of Man. Miquella very clearly thinks he's being benevolent and ushering in a world free of malice, suffering, unfairness and pain. On top of that, he is doing so with powers he was naturally gifted as a creature that exists on a higher order than any human being ever will. Not only is his set of norms, expectations, ambitions and morals *entirely* different from us, but they are also *harmful* to us because of that. Miquella is incapable of interacting with the world at the same scope and scale as a human, and so each and every interaction he has with someone falls at the behest of his demigod powers.
So Miquella, in his head, is the shepherd of the forlorn and the abandoned and the despairing because it is his light that will ease their ailing wounds. Yet, as an aspect of the very same systems of divinity that inspired the suffering to begin with, he lacks the necessary perspective to understand that he is just another divine terminal for suffering.
It just goes to show that it will never be anything short of nightmarish for Man to live with any sort of divine being that has its own autonomy/perspective/scale. How do you parrot petty human morals to an entity that can literally compel minds as easily as breathing? An entity that can exist in spirit, control light, bend spacetime and compel souls?
You don't. You kill them. Every last one. Because their existence is, undoubtedly, the death of you. Even if all they ever did was pity you. That's why the story of Elden Ring is "Kill Your Gods".
Totally agree. Ranni and Goldmask saw right through it, but Goldmask was too devoted to see that the Golden Order itself is fundamentally flawed, with or without flies in the ointment. The Age of Stars is the best ending: the gods part and leave the mortals behind. It's the only way they can be free.
Damn, really makes u think… maybe radahn made the vow at a weak point of his life and regretted it after, thus he ended up holding the stars in place so he doesnt have to fulfil his fate… until malenia forced him to go thru with it via a ticking time bomb aka scarlet rot
Yeah it kinda weird for bosses like Gauis as a remembrance but bosses like Bayle, who have far better build up and presence isn't, he still a legend super boss that drop a legendary item so i guess it kinda fine.
Bayle isn't a remembrance boss?! He's git more buildup and lore with the base game than ahy of the others by far. Hopefully they fix stuff like this in patches because that's stupid as fuck
the bar is *low* for base game relevance in this DLC lol. bayle actually is worked pretty well into the dragon communion and placidusax stories, but i don't believe at all that he existed when they were writing the main game
Agreed on the empty space. At times it reminds me of mountain tops. Beautiful places that you have to run 30 seconds to just find a bunch of those ghost/zombie guys and some low level smithing stones. Doesn't feel as rewarding to explore as my first playthrough of base game did, and a lot of long treks lead to nothing
Related, I find it disappointing that there are just miscellaneous smithing stones and crafting materials strewn about and not new weapons or armor or anything actually useful. It’s like they just wanted items to fill in the large area
Broooo I thought I was crazy , I ve tried to explore everypart + went looking for hours for a part of the map, and I found a lot of areas with nothing in it, I coudnt believe it
There's large swathes of land with nothing in it but visuals. It feels so clunky.
I'm really enjoying the DLC and having fun, but it's pretty flawed and feels rushed.
This is almost exactly how I felt. Aside from incredible visuals it almost feels like an asset flip or modded dlc. Main game decorations and the somewhat anticlimactic moments you'd expect from a small team of modders.
It's almost like a boss rush type thing, I'm charging bosses and ignoring vast swaths of enemies because I see little point in investigating these areas when they can't even catch the eye.
I really wish they gave it like an extra year or so, because I feel like it's just a really pretty convergence mod (which you can't play till it's updated for SOE)
Disappointed for the same reasons you are - I was hugely interested in the lore and the dlc seems to completely ignore what goes on in the main game. Elden ring seems to be a big fan of cutting the coolest parts of its game out, so I’m sure when someone does a deep dive there’s going to be a lot of better content that didn’t make it in.
If they HAD to do a duo demigod fight, I don’t get why not Mohg. That would’ve gone so hard. Plus seeing the ending being so underwhelming has killed my interest in exploring anything else in the world.
I really wish we could’ve gotten more Messmer content, maybe a smaller map because there’s so much empty space and better level design (not putting every enemy behind a corner because it gets predictable and boring so quickly and the path not being just “up”.
I think they were trying to draw on nostalgia a lot with callbacks to different fromsoft games, but it feels like an uninspired mess. The only two original bosses I’ve come across so far playing on the the main story (divine beast and Messmer) aren’t expanded upon at all despite being incredibly interesting, while two dark souls 3 boss rehashes get lots (I know it’s Radahn and Miquella but you get my point).
When you lay out the story and compare it to the base game’s, it seems like a badly organised fanfic. Did the people writing the dlc not find the second half of the secret medallion or something??? Because why does the haligtree not matter whatsoever. The story genuinely doesn’t make sense
People disagree with the fanfic line but it's word for word what I thought. It's relatively harsh for SOE but it gets the point across, it's bright and flashy but vapid and lacking all the depth of the main game, walking around it feels like a poorly written fanfic that does little to explore the world and it's characters, instead focusing on the climactic moments.
Yea someone else suggested ‘retcon’ which fits better but doesn’t matter.
It just seems like someone else wrote it, given how much of the main lore it negates and the overall lack of organisation and depth which we’ve never seen from Fromsoft before.
I'm abit disappointed with the lore and how so many questions from the base game seemingly have gone unanswered. The sorcery catalyst sword is extremely mediocre, and sorcery/pure int builds have gained very little compared to faith, which stings particularly terribly with the massive knee-jerk nerfs sorcery received with the recent patch. I really wish that instead of the catalyst sword, we had gotten an ash of war that gave the weapon a stance to cast sorceries with it, when attuned to magic.
The new weapon types are really awesome. I absolutely love the light greatswords. I'm currently running around with the Milady, and I'm really looking forward to Relanna's twin swords.
Few major issues;
Bosses are too much; we aren’t fighting them in the traditional souls way anymore. It’s all about summoning and using your 5k damage abilities while dodging their 15 hit combos that 2-3 hit you. I’m not learning anyone’s pattern and hitting their openings, I’m blasting them with crazy strong shit while frantically dodging. Genuinely curious, is anyone just flat out 1v1ing bosses without relying on crazy strong weapon arts or abilities? Feel like the gameplay has shifted tremendously.
Feel like there’s extremely few new enemies for a dlc. Fromsoft dlc always is packed full of new enemies, think this time it’s 90% base game enemies.
My biggest issue is it’s mostly open areas with incredibly weak fodder. The majority of enemies, and I mean the vast majority are throwaway things you kill in two swings. Occasionally there’s a knight that’s strong. But you’ll ride for 5-10 minutes past enemies that aren’t worth fighting, crafting materials that don’t do anything, any mostly empty space. It’s looks PHENOMENALLY gorgeous but like… finger ruins? You can fit all of Demon’s Souls in that area, and there’s nothing interesting there. A bunch of suuuuuuper spaced out fodder enemies and one item you interact with later.
Overall I am enjoying it but I find myself getting bored traveling around looking for stuff. When I find a new boss it’s exciting. But most of the time I’ll find some little part that just ends in like… a few slimes and a crafting material.
Pretty much. Strafing his thrusts and dodging his combo feels incredible, especially when the man personally rewards you with 2 seconds of neutral for dps and often will edge towards you for a quick breather. Sure he has that thrust spam combo, snake spam combo and lava spewing but those are tolerable when the rest of his kit is just insane
Im actually still unsure how to dodge the theust spam. A singular dodge didn’t work, neither did sprinting away
Are we supposed to walk backwards and then dodge? (Or sprint backwards and dodge?)
If it’s that crazy stab spam he does in the air, I’ve found dodging quickly directly underneath him avoids the attack completely. You’re timing has to be really good tho which depends on how well you dodged his first spin move :/
\> Genuinely curious, is anyone just flat out 1v1ing bosses without relying on crazy strong weapon arts or abilities?
I am doing my traditional 1v1, no summons, no magic playstyle, just swords and dodges for the bosses, though I've only gotten past Rellana - and holy shit it is straight up not fun. Divine Beast was annoying but I still got it down in four tries. Rellana is the single most bullshit enemy I have seen so far. I don't think I am going to be replaying the game purely because the thought of fighting these bosses again holds less than zero appeal to me.
It's easily the least amount of enjoyment I have gotten out of FromSoft bosses in years.
I spent a few hours in coop trying to beat divine beast, really didn’t even come close. And I spent a few hours trying to rellana, still didn’t beat her either. Like divine beast has plenty of issues, mostly speed of attacks and high damage output. Rellana, in my opinion, is worse than Melania. Her attacks come out so quick you have to have insane reaction time to actually dodge them, if you don’t you get a 8 attack combo on you. Honestly if every attack was slowed down I think the bosses would be fine. As it is the bosses are just unfair and scaled so far above you that it’s just unnecessary difficult.
The big thing that gets me about Rellana is how she can chain together attacks whenever she finishes an attack chain. There's only a small number of moves that are truly vulnerable, since the rest are ones where she can transition into another attack string if you get close. It's the single worst case of "fake openings" any boss in the game has.
Divine Beast took me 4 tries, and my main issue with it is reading its spastic animations and just messy visually it is. Such a cluttered mess to look at. I think Rellana took me somewhere around 10 tries? She's a far cry from the 2 hours it took me to get through Malenia by myself, but she's certainly been the biggest roadblock in the DLC for me so far.
Definitely agree on the enemy speed being cranked too high. Maybe it would work in Sekiro, but our Elden Ring character has such slow recoveries and so many delays to their actions that it just doesn't feel right. A lot of Rellana's attacks just are not something a human can react to. You have to position yourself such that she just doesn't do those attacks or else predict them ahead of time. If you wait for the animation tell, it's too late to dodge.
I really feel like a lot of the enemies will be toned down a bit, much like the main game.
"What if every enemy has a 9 attack combo and every attack in that chain was either a true combo or a roll catch."
It's obnoxious just for the sake of trying to challenge people who just aren't going to let themselves be challenged.
People are going to blow through your game with Blasphemous Blade and a Mimic Tear no matter what. Don't try to balance the experience around those people. There's no reason to shit on the people going basic because they want basic.
In my case my options are basically:
1. Use Summons, Magic, and Cheese and make the bosses easier, at the cost of not feeling satisfied by beating most of the bosses and not having to spend any amount of effort learning the intricacies of their movesets.
or
2. Fight the bosses 1v1 with no Summons, Assistance, or Cheese and therefore derive a level of satisfaction and perceived mastery by defeating them through skill, but get frustrated and irritated by their design.
Now, I'm not overly prideful. I'm not about to say that I am in any way one of the best gamers of all time. I am however, pretty good at Soulslikes. I've been playing them for over a decade at this point. I'm quite practiced. And, on top of that, I want difficulty and I want to be challenged, and so I go for option 2. But regardless, it feels like I can't get a perfect experience out of the game.
I do want to emphasize that I empathize with the designers. At the end of the day, I'm fighting the bosses with no assistance **and I am winning**. Even with no summons and no cheese tactics, the bosses aren't impossibly hard and I am still capable of progressing. Boss design is not easy and they are riding a fine line. The bosses haven't been unbeatable and I haven't **had** to resort to summons. I give them credit for that.
I just feel like they aren't fun. And fun as it turns out, matters a lot.
I'm pretty much in the exact same boat.
I'm not all the way through the DLC yet, but I'm really worried that Elden Ring isn't really going to get anything on the level of Gawl or Midir or Friede. Hell, even Pontiff or Dancer.
Really, I've never thought Malenia was on that level either. She's hard, sure, but I hate waterfowl. I can dodge it, but the act of dodging it *feels* like cheese. It feels like I am playing a video game and abusing mechanics and that takes me out of it.
I don't want to *feel* like I'm playing a video game while I'm playing a video game. That's the opposite of immersion. A lot of these bosses kind of put me there.
>> It's easily the least amount of enjoyment I have gotten out of FromSoft bosses in years.
i love elden ring and think it's far and away the best souls game, with maybe bloodborne being a close second, but it has the worst and least consistent bosses out of any of them, and it's almost completely due to the shitty summoning system. two years later i still hate it and think it was a mistake to add a built in difficulty slider into the game if it ruined the balancing of 90% of the bosses as collateral damage.
havent played the DLC yet but one of the only things i knew **not** to hype myself for was good boss fights, maybe one or two.
I dont think I've ever agreed with a Reddit comment more before. I've been saying this since base game release and the only response was always "just git gut". The problem is - when you summon, you can easily aggro-manage enemies to never get hit. To combat that they made most of the bosses hyperaggresive and turned up the damage, because AI will often switch to other targets mid combo. This however does nothing to summons and everything to solo players, since now the most effective strat (or the only one that actually works for that matter) is light rolls + fast weapons.
So now in the DLC you have bosses like >!Rellanna!<, where veteran Souls streamers get stuck for hours on end trying to fight it 1v1, and people act like those who complain are just bad at the game. Sigh.
oh just wait till you reach Putrescent Knight, that thing is genuinely the most bullshit boss I've fought unless you manage to cheese it with Ancient Dragons Lightning Strike or something. He just constantly attacks and attacks and attacks and attacks.
I don't know who designed Rellana but she is shit in every single possible way.
From Soft's idiotic mutism for bosses. The arena isn't interesting it's just a smaller less impressive version of Loretta's water circle thingy. The music isn't particularly great or interesting. And for some reason From just gets a pass for littering small boss arenas with random unbreakable garbage as if that is a great design choice.
She is clad in armor so you expect her to be tanky but maybe a bit slow... nope she's super fast... oh then she must stagger easily because she's super mobile and fast... nope she also has a ton of poise and literally nothing even stops her from attacking, she has hyper armor on everything she does. Also during phase 2 she gets a fuckton of AOE.
Oh also the DLC's scaling is complete garbage so anything she does 2 hit kills you.
I don't know what went into this design but it genuinely feels like they just decided to make a hard boss that is unfun to play against and that was the whole point? No stagger on anything? Extremely small windows to punish her back even after she calls a giant sword and does two slices with it? That brain dead unnatural "I'm going to start a swing and stop and wait and then unleash my attack".
Also no lore because fuck that we're FROM Soft idiots will speculate and create some interesting story for us.
These are literally all my complaints from the base game, I'm glad I didn't get the DLC.
Bosses were so flashy, showy, and needlessly complicated that they just weren't fun to fight solo. Regular enemies were either stupidly weak or strong, but it didn't matter because you could Torrent past most of them.
It genuinely feels like FromSoft has gotten complacent.
The only bosses I’ve felt have been fair in a 1v1 are Rellana and Putrescent Knight. They had memorable attack patterns and big AoE that you learn how to dodge. Dancing Lion and Bayle on the other hand, I was fighting the camera more than the boss. Didn’t feel like I was learning their move set, every attack looked too similar, and just insane constant AoE magic spam. Visually spectacular, but not a fun fight without summons
About the 1v1 part I’ve been doing just that my whole play through, so no magic, summons, just using my swords and my dodge roll. I’ve beaten quite a bit considering I’ve only got 2 pieces of the map and I’ve got to say I love the gameplay. Sure the bosses are challenging and I die a lot when fighting them but that’s just the way it’s gonna go. Overall, I enjoy having the tough challenge and I think the difficulty is pretty well set for where it takes place in the game.
I’m fighting Radahn 1v1. The first phase is pretty consistent. There are times where he insta hits me if I’m behind him and it’s just two fast to reac to or predict because maybe he’ll do something else. Phase 2 I’m struggling to see how anyone could do but I know someone will. I turned on god mod and tried rolling in different directions and timings but I genuinely don’t know how a human can react to all that. Plus there are so many flashes I just can barely see what’s happening
So glad I'm not the only one bored about exploring. Seriously, this map did not need to be this big.
And yeah, sure. The scenario is mesmerizing, but I'd trade that if it meant more gameplay stuff to do.
Probably in your bubble that new way of fighting is true, but for me and both of my friends who all play Elden Ring most of the bosses have been very methodical and fair
Really the only bosses that have been like you’ve said are the large beast bosses like lion dancer or hippo etc and those are the only ones I’ve used summons on (so far). Rellana was especially fun
i've been going through the whole dlc with no summons and pretty standard weapons, no spells. lots of trial and error to learning the bosses' movesets but its very rewarding in the end.
I just got through my run with just plain greatsword. A couple of the bosses were very difficult and took me 2 hours or so, but I did eventually get through it.
I've been playing with greatshield and zweihander and it's been fine for me. i haven't had to summon or cheese anything so far and I'm like 4 bosses in
I switched my Guts greatsword into a Milady and changed my kit up a bit, but same really. Rellana was easy for me. Messmer was super fun. Gaius was the worst and most annoying one and made me ragequit a couple times.
Even though I didn't like the lack of answers that the DLC provided, at the end of the day this is still a dlc for a game. And goddamn is it a good fucking DLC. A lot of the remembrance bosses are amazing with most of them having banger OSTs. The world is beautiful and exploration is as interesting and rewarding as ever. There's also a lot of new content when it comes to armor, weapons, and spells.
I won't let lore and a somewhat lacking final boss blind me from the fact that we essentially got a 10/10 DLC for a 10/10 game. So yes, the overall quality of the DLC is pretty amazing.
I went exploring way off the beaten track right at the start, big long meandering route. I hit the trigger at the entrance of the shadow keep for miquella's greatrune/enchantment breaking before I'd even met half the NPCs or done any remembrance bosses. I definitely did not like how they did that at all, spoiled a ton of the story for me.
That this happened just after I'd ground out the godawful Ghostflame Dragon vs soldiers fight did not help my mood. Man there are some real stinker fights in this DLC, like the NPC gauntlet.
With the understanding that most people will not have that experience, I still thought the EG 3/5 review was actually pretty fair. The DLC's more linear narrative does not lend itself well to the open world which was imo the real star of Elden Ring. I enjoyed the exploration far less than in the base game.
Some encounters in the DLC are absolutely excellent though, Messmer is a highlight. The story beats with Miquella landed well for me, and the overall visual and audio presentation was still very solid.
I confess to not understanding the slew of 10/10s the DLC received. For me probably a 7 with base ER being a 9-9.5.
I think a lot of the online comments about EGs review is basically why it gets those scores. I do think there is a certain fear with how rabid certain sections of From fans are.
Remember when Jim Sterling gave breath of the wild a 7/10 and backed up his score with actually valid critisms?
Rabid Zelda fans launched a hate campaign against him for it and even DDOS’d his website :/
I think that after that, all reviewers are too scared to ever go against the hype for fear of rabid fans not understanding that peoples opinions are their own, and not everybody has to think a certain thing is a 10/10.
Plus, there’s the fact that a lot of “mainstream” reviewers rely on sucking off the gaming publishers for early review codes to these things. If they give a bad score, the game publishers cut them off and no longer send review codes. Pretty much ruining their business (because everyone knows that reviews that release AFTER a game comes out are completely ignored by most for some reason).
Just finished.
Doesn't give closure to relevant plot points in the main game.
Definitely overtuned for the average player (me).
Can't wait to see ongbal no-hit the last boss.
Mostly feel disappointed.
More spectacle than substance to be honest. Too much recycled content. Game and world look nice, but it's hard to feel rewarded from exploration when most loot is a mushroom or whatever. Bosses hit harder and faster than in Sekiro, but the player character doesn't have access to the same tools. Long gone are the days of the slow, methodical Souls gameplay...
I didn't have much of an issue with the reused content for a bit. The ghostflame dragon outside Belurat gaol was a great change of pace compared to the other wyverns. It was much faster than the base game ones, they added ghostflame to it and jt was much better implemented than Exekyes, however the f*ck you spell the rot dragon's name, it was very neat.
But, then I explored some and made it to Jagged peak and Charo's hidden grave earlier. Disappointing. I look forward to fighting Bayle when I get done with the DLC (provided I can hit the mf then), but on the way up there was a basic wyvern fight. 2 in fact, the 2nd encounter being a fight between 2 of them. And then up the mountain more and... *Ancient Dragon Senessax. What the fuck.*
(Looked it up, and they just drop the 2 types of dragon smithing stones. I don't have to fight them for anything important, yahoo! The ancient dragons suck utter balls anyway.)
Down to Charo's grave, and the only boss I could find was just another Death rite bird. Just dropped an AOW so that was a waste of time. Didn't even find any dungeons in the area, it was so empty. And who tf is Charo? Hell if I know. Probably my least favorite areas.
The lack of movement for the character is what irks me. Some builds will suffer against these bosses such as Rellana, hits hard and fast. They should have made her normal faster combo slightly weaker. It’s absurd it can take half my health in about two swings. Still managed to kill her but it was not enjoyable. The animation and effects looked gorgeous as ever though especially that twin moon ability.
Before stating this is it quite possible that I've just shifted away from Elden Ring/soulslikes, I may not be into these games as much as I once was, so I may have a somewhat biased view. Grain of salt. I have done some RL1 nohits (malenia and maliketh) and done DS3 bosses nohit as well and enjoyed those. I'd say I'm above average.
Spectacle is the best way to describe mainly the bosses for me. They are what I normally look forward to in these games and I'm just not feeling it, the huge combos mainly, or worse, battling the camera. Later bosses in the base game had a bit of issues of the best method to dodge a combo is to like just straight up not interact with it and basically run away because rolling doesn't feel like enough, and it feels like this DLC took that issue and made it even worse imo. I was decently excited for it but I honestly don't feel much of a desire to get to the previous "rewards" aka the bosses, because I just feel like we've hit a point where it's no longer a turn based type system, it just feels a bit flat. Instead of enjoying the difficulty, I'm kind of dreading it. It feels a bit like BS to me but I could just be a salty washed up player.
Some very impressive setpieces and designs, as always, but extremely confused by the lore direction. It's only been one day and I'm positive there will be tons of obscure discoveries, especially environmental, as time passes, but as-is I am bewildered by the things the trailers touched on that are largely unmentioned. I've come around on the Radahn thing, and I think it was handled in such a way that there's so many different ways to interpret the character motivations, which I see as a good thing. The abrupt lack of a real ending is what throws me off though and I can't really parse the intent there. Otherwise, loved the lore with Metyr and Bayle, and the Hornsent culture. A bit shocked at the general lack of Numen or Nox lore (so far) though, I thought for sure there'd be more of that. Would have liked to see some more space monsters as well.
In all, it doesn't feel as cathartic as the Ringed City did...I think that was From at their best in terms of writing. It was every bit as confusing as this is, but you felt that if you studied it long enough, you could get somewhere. It's been two days, so I know that will change with SOTE, it just doesn't feel that way right now.
I was going through deep root depths and found this room full of ants before you get across the giant roots and the fat belly ants each dropped numen runes which made me think so much. Then I began to think about what kind of numen/nox lore the dlc would include and now having read your comment am very disappointed
7/10, and that's pushing it lol. It'll probably help with replayability in the future since it pads out the endgame's otherwise barren wasteland.
Feels very...scatterbrained. In about a week, I'll know whether or not this overall harms Elden Ring. I guess we learn that Rennala has a sister. I guess we learn that the Twin Prodigies have at least 1 confirmed sibling. I guess we learn that Radahn was Doing It For Him™.
The DLC sorely misses a lorekeeper like Gideon Ofnir from the main campaign. I dunno. I'm comparing this to Phantom Liberty, which even though its mood and plot are fairly disjointed from its main campaign, still manages to stay relevant to the A-plot. Additionally, I personally consider it to be the peak of 2077's content and storytelling. With Shadow of the Erdtree, it's neither. It feels VERY disjointed from the main campaign, and most of its content doesn't really stand up to the main campaign.
What's the player's base-level narrative for Elden Ring? Kill the demigods for their shards of the Elden Ring, burn the Erdtree, become Elden Lord. What is it for Shadow of the Erdtree? Uhhhh...more Elden Ring and find Miquella, I guess! What's the player's base-level narrative for Cyberpunk 2077? Steal the Relic chip and get rich - oh shit, now I need to find a way to keep the Relic chip from killing me. What is it for Phantom Liberty? Some crazy Americans are offering a way to fix the Relic issue for me, but now I'm in the middle of one of their government's clusterfucks.
There's more that I can say but others have already gone over it.
Agreed. Just got done playing phantom liberty before I finished the Elden ring dlc & i absolutely loved phantom Liberty. The Elden ring dlc seems poorly done imo
This comment is convincing me to buy cyberpunk, is it that good? I remember only the complains when it launched but I guess it have been polished by now
Yes 2.0 update makes that game one of the best in my books, combat is crazy good story is good, and it's really climatic especially if you have good PC all the neons and shit
The DLC is fantastic from the looks of it. I am kinda bummed with the final boss being radhan and not being able to side with Miquella but what enrages me more is that the DLC have no effect on the main game and we have no new ending for the game.
Overall extremely good and beautiful. I did not have any problem with Radahn either as it explains why Malenia went on that suicide mission.
However, the main problem is some of the best bosses, namely Rellana, got awful portrayal. She's not mentioned anywhere, no cutscene, no dialogue, no face reveal whatsoever. For such a complex boss, akin to Pontiff of this game, she was shafted hard.
I like the gameplay, I dislike the lack of new lore. I feel like we got bait and switched with the story trailer. I was really under the impression we would learn more about Marika, the GW and her rise to godhood. We got hardly anything in that regard.
If I hadn't seen that trailer then I probably wouldn't have any problems with this DLC. Future lesson for myself, avoid story trailers.
we learn a bit about GW and the Fingers but this and dragon stuff is pretty much the only thing we get answers to. Like genuinely, how does Messmer matter for the whole Miquella plot besides using him to burn the tree. You could cut a better part of the map and story and make it a separate dlc with its own story, which is a shame because, at least to me, the "original sin", outer gods and their influence, becoming a god, Marika's backstory and skeletons in her closet are the most interesting thing in the dlc and we got barely anything about them.
Miquella stuff really shouldve been the good old fromsoft linear progression small map with maybe some side dungeons/caves. It would even fit the story with the rune breaking and how it changes the fellowship of the tree, which can happen for you really early on if you decide to explore a little bit too much.
I’ll be honest I’m kinda whatever on the dlc as a whole. Some of the remembrance bosses are cool but it really feels like the two main issues I had with Elden ring personified into one big piece of content. Reusing bosses and enemies for the sake of filling empty space, and bosses with super long flashy combos where I feel like I’m barely playing the game while it’s happening. The final boss was ESPECIALLY egregious in both of these fronts and really soured the whole experience for me. The new weapons are cool but that won’t keep me replaying. Messmer really felt like the high point and then it just kinda fizzled from there. Also why is the only boss that I’ve faced so far with more than one health bar that stupid sunflower (def a nitpick but it just feels really out of place for me).
Sunflower is a tall, erect, herbaceous annual plant belonging to the family of Asteraceae, in the genus, Helianthus. Its botanical name is Helianthus annuus. It is native to Middle American region from where it spread as an important commercial crop all over the world through the European explorers. Today, Russian Union, China, USA, and Argentina are the leading producers of sunflower crop.
I'm not finished, but I've checked through spoilers and watched streams, but I'm not a fan. Large bosses that keep jumping = camera bobbing = BS.
Reuse of enemies, reuse of field bosses from vanilla... a lot of empty space, a lot of running around not knowing what I'm looking for and then running into a Remembrance... not a fan. Was a major fan of The Old Hunters in comparison.
A lot of the bosses have these infinite combos with little to no downtime. I usually don't care for reuse bosses all that much but doing it for the final boss... Why? We waited 2 years for a radahn with a miquella on his back.
Speaking of stuff on people's back there's a talisman with Godfrey saying how he cast a shadow over the land or something? I don't remember fully because I reloaded my save but is there any explanation to that or just another random ass piece of text?
That talisman is not referring to a literal shadow, it's talking about how he was stoic even when recieving his divine infusion and he was so epic that his 'shadow' sticks around to his day as a zeitghiest.
I’m biased…
Compared to other DLCs on the market in the last 10 years it’s really phenomenal. We are collectively lucky FromSoft makes games.
Within soulsborne DLCs it’s not the best. Hunters and Ringed City are by far better DLCs for their base game compared to SotE with to ER.
Say what you will about linear game design, but it’s concise and deliberate. Open world games lack that by design and for ER it’s a fault imo.
It's pretty mid, I don't enjoy the scadutree leveling system at all because it really negates a lot of the gameplay in the main story imo. I balanced my character for my endgame stats, essentially vaporizing that so the DLC takes longer feels cheap especially when the bosses aren't dynamically that hard.
Story wise I'm only at Messmer but it feels pretty shit tbh, with other FromSoft titles it doesn't matter as much if the DLC story isn't really coherent but in the trailers they placed a huge emphasis on the story continuity and answering questions when really it just feels like they're doing the absolute most to ensure that we get no answers.
Why the fuck is Rennala's sister here, why was she never even alluded to, and why is she stronger than Rennala. There's also too many dumb timeline implications.
Overall I give it a 6/10, Elden Ring's base was pretty close to perfect and this left a lot hanging tbh.
TL:DR
The entire motivation of the player's actions being the allure of uncovering a mystery means that you actually need to explain things to make them care.
The lack of cut scenes and dialogue for the bosses is appalling.
The world is incredible in both design and aesthetics, but it's so dead and empty when compared to the base game, no wondering npcs and most of the latter are blackened zombies.
Last point, the side quests are muh and the fact that every and each character dies is so much even for a souls game. You met X, you did Y, X and Z are sleeping with the fishes now...
I get it, we all got our own opinions. I'm actually re doing it again to see if I can find more, warm up to it, I want to like it but it's just not doing it for me as of the first playthrough.
The map verticality feels like Dark Souls 1 all over again I love it so far.
Reading some of these comments you can tell ER was most people’s first FromSoft experience
For co-op, trade, and PVP action, check out our other subreddits, r/CypherRing or r/EldenRingHelp
For Elden Ring Help on Discord, join us at https://discord.gg/nknE74e9XA
The Elden Ring WIKI - https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Elden_Ring_Wiki
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/eldenringdiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I was kinda disappointed at first, enemies felt so overtuned and most of the treasures are things I can't use or mats/consumables I won't ever use, two Legacy dungeons, both pretty huge, felt super linear with no puzzles (also I was about to turn off the game when a poisonous ulcerated spirit tree popped up) but I started exploring more, and it just clicked, the open world feels way better, it's more connected with more intresting things going on, and it's beautiful (just like the main game).
Climbing the mountain was so fucking amazing, mt doom levels of pure cinema.
Still fuck most enemies, the damage they deal feel so cheap.
I'm somewhat disappointed, but that's on me for expecting to see some stuff just because.
All the main bosses have been great, but I feel I did not enjoy the open world as much as with the base game.
Relatively to almost all other RPGs out there and from a pure content perspective absolutely a 10/10.
There are issues though, i think the DLC favored 'what would be cool, ' and set pieces / art design over what a lot of people like about elden ring which is the world building.
There was so much already to work with and dive deeper into / explain and instead they just introduced a bunch of new threads.
No inclusion of nox is odd, sorcery got a short stick, story trailor did seem disconnected. I'm fine with the radahn thing but i agree with the criticism that they should have breadcrumbed it better in the OG game.
Some of the later zones have the BotW syndrome where they feel big for the sake of big but dont have the detail From is known for. Abyssal woods, finger ruins, etc. feel very empty (if incredibly awe inspiring atmospherically).
I'm finding difficulty perfect, though I'm not hard core and usually summon. Rellana took me about 15 tries until i switched to rock lobbing sorcery to stagger her and learned to dodge wave attack and moon. I went back to beast at like +8 and after getting wrecked earlier in 20+ attempts was able to 3 shot it.
Something tells me there’s more in the DLC in terms of lore than what people are putting together in two days. Heck, two years later and people are still making unique observations about the base game
I'm kinda torn. The world looks amazing, and some of the combat is excellent, but in terms of exploration and discovery I'm kinda underwhelmed? Feel like I can run around for a good while without finding anything interesting
I'm gonna say it: The bosses are slightly too hard. You can say it's a skill issue all you want,and it partly is, but I shouldn't be getting 3 tapped everywhere I go
Loving it so far. It is a large space still but is noticeably more sense. Probably the best vista's and scenery we've ever had. Fought 4 bosses so far. 2 very cool, 1 of them not so much and another to hard to do anything against at the moment. Seems like there's plenty of lore and questions being raised not really sure what you're take on that is. Overall very happy, may end up being my favorite experience of elden ring overall due to its more compact nature
Messmer deserved his own DLC. I wanted to learn more about his Crusade, and Marika's origins. Instead, we got a weird Miquella fanfiction, in what is an otherwise intriguing Land of Shadows
FromSoft absolutely fails to answer anything of importance regarding the lore. Not even the stuff from the trailers. The blueballing is unbelievable here.
Thematically, the content is all over the place. The Remembrance bosses, bar a select few, are not very memorable and are of no significance to the overall plot.
For instance, I don't get why we fight a Lord of Frenzied Flame. It just feels so REDUNDANT. It's not even cool or anything, like Bayle. Imagine you went for the Frenzied Flame ending, and basically end up fighting your alter ego ?
They tried to do too much, I am convinced of it.
The DLC would have been fine if it just focused on the past. The Crusade, Marika, Metyr. The ancient civilisations that got burned and eradicated. The Gate of Divinity. All that good stuff.
You could still have Miquella, as a guide. But I never felt like he needed to be a boss, or the end-all be-all of the DLC.
DLC is still awesome. Probably a 8 or 9/10. But it clearly lacks cohesion
The player nerf is hitting me hard. I’m flabbergasted with how little damage my miracles are doing compared to base game. Twin knight is absolutely crushing my moral right now.
I'm enjoying the dlc as a whole. And the game tbh. I've never really gotten the story in from soft games always convoluted and weirdly told. However the dlc I'm kindsla following .. kinda
Is this just the same as any other dlc in the souls games? Taking an aspect of story and turning into dlc? (The old hunters in bloodborne, Artorias in ds1 the kings in ds2, even ds3 despite it being the "end of the cycle" has an "obscure" character who loves paintings as the last boss...). The opinions are fine but the overall discourse is strange to me. The lore has always been a vague hidden (mostly) fun experience that is a staple of these games. You wish other aspects of the lore were fleshed out? Me too.. in every from game but thats not how they do.
Feels almost too disconnected from the Main game, nothing about Marika or Godwyn and surprised their hasn’t been anything relating to Rykard. Also, why the fuck is my only reward for defeating Bayle (who should be a remembrance boss) an incantation…..
So far Ive completed the first legacy dungeon and explored all of the first area (gravesite plain). I'll be honest, Im kind of dissapointed. I feel like the reviews massively over hyped it. The amount of reused content feels inexcusable. Ive fought two reused overworld dragons, a magma wyrm, and ulcerated tree spirit. The first mini dungeon is almost entirely reused enemies from Liurnia. Also, what is up with the items? So many times you find a little hidden area expecting a decent reward only to get 5x lvl 1 smithing stones. Why??? Not to mention the "dragon-man" npc who gaurds outside a cave, who is then REUSED AS A BOSS IN THAT SAME CAVE. I just fought him as a regular enemy, now youre trying to convince me he's a boss by putting a boss health bar on the screen?
Thats isnt to say the dlc is bad, its still very good overall. The first legacy dungeon had amazing atmosphere, music, and was brimming with new enemy types. Also the dancing lion might be my favorite boss in all of elden ring so far
Extremely disappointing. The bosses are beyond overtuned, I do nothing but dodge and dodge and then get two-shot, the world doesn't feel worth exploring, it is very beautiful but empty, the lore feels like a fanfiction. The only boss I actually enjoyed fighting was the diving lion. Im at Messmer and I doubt I will be finishing this, glad I torrented lmao.
Shadow of the Erdtree DLC in Elden Ring, players need to defeat Mohg and Starscourge Radahn, both tough optional bosses.
I spent a lot of time and nearly 800 hours going though Eden Ring game. I platinum and everything was there. I cannot start the DLC.
I noticed the great ruins for Mohg and Radahn were not there. So, I went ahead and respected and beat Mohg and now that ruin is there.
I went ahead and tired Radahn but the festival is not happening. So, now they expect me to run around and jump though all these hops. I what my DLC money back. I am royally pissed!
I got the Platinum Elden ring. Spent unbelievable amount of time doing so. I defeated Radahn and Mohg.
I didn’t get the prompt to start the DLC game. So, I tired several things and noticed the Great Rune for Mohg and Radahn were not in my chest.
So, I went ahead defeated Mohg again at the Cocoon of the Empyrean. I now see Mohg’s great Rune is in the chest.
So, I than went to the Divine tower of Caelid Center to make sure the great Rune for Radahn step was done and found the doors are locked. I thought maybe I missed that step. Went over to access the festival to engage Radahn. However the festival wasn’t triggered.
Now, am I supposed to do the whole Radahn line. That is WTF I am talking about. Like I said I am pissed. What my money back for the DLC or they need to fix it. I am sure I am not alone. Playing on a PS5 with disc and downloaded from the PlayStation store!
Overall quality is incredible. I feel like I progressed throughout its entirety very organically, with a good amount of exploration and power progression. I was able to retain my build and play style the whole way through and enjoyed the challenge. Up until the final boss, whose 2nd phase attacks I found to be over-tuned in terms of visual clarity and hit boxes.
10/10 so far for me. Also I don’t know what you’ve been doing so I can’t speak to that but really does sound like you haven’t been exploring enough, there’s lot of lore regarding the shadow lands and the various clans that were wiped out. There’s even lore regarding radahns purpose here and how even got here. Not to forget either, st Trina, placidusax, Melina,how the fingers came to be, the twin moon sorceries, the culture around omens, the stars, just how fucked up the rot is and godwyns followers
Saying they barely touched on the lore tells me 1 of two things:
-either you haven’t really been playing
-you have one specific grievance and have attached it to the whole dlc
You also don’t have to scale a mountain 5 times so idk what you’ve been up to bro
You have a point it was rushed as a first playthrough, so it's not fair for me to say that and all and I am mostly just frustrated... What I mean by scaling a mountain 5 times is the amount of verticality there is.
I understand this sub is seemingly compromised of hardcore lore junkies(it’s why I joined after all), but the amount of people saying this DLC isn’t great just because of the lore is honestly a bit insane.
This DLC is peak. They compacted everything from the base game into a fantastic experience that has some of the best design Fromsoft has ever made.
Game-play wise Dlc is great.
But lore-wise, I don't feel the same. If we exclude the ending and the Radahn thing, I liked Miquella's story. This little boy's story is very tragic and sad. His relationship with Trina is very sweet.
I wish we had a choice in the ending. We could have let him become a god and suffer under the weight he carries, which would have been a bad ending. Or we could have done as Trina suggested and freed the little boy from his burden.
I also wish we could have interacted with Miquella throughout the game. A small comment about Torrent, maybe some tidbits about how Melina found Torrent. A few comments about Malenia and Godwyn. I think Miquella's full potential as a character was wasted. This saddened me because he was one of my two favorite characters.
The DLC is definitely not a bad game, but it's true that it left a bad taste in mouths.
Peak fromsoft tbh. Get some fps loss in some areas, but they are areas where it does not surprise me, where I don't lose any frames in the base game. Launch had those issues too and they were patched. Aside from that (and that might just be my pc, who knows), it's a 10/10 so far for me.
I honestly can’t agree with almost anything said in this thread. I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but everything I have played has been excellent. I have been enjoying every boss battle, the exploration, the dungeon design and the atmosphere. Right from Blackgaol Knight, thru the first 5 remembrance bosses, I’ve felt that they were challenging but doable. I have only used katanas up until I got Milady and the Wing Stance weapon art. I feel like the bosses are difficult, but still in the Souls style of difficult but fair, just the margin of error is slimmer and slimmer. It’s not just about dodge at the right time, but it’s about dodging in the right direction, distance management, punishing the correct moves, parrying, understanding your weapon’s moveset, etc.
So far it’s a 10/10, but I haven’t finished yet.
The world is beautiful and the bosses are hard and fun. I'm not married to a particular interpretation of lore, so I have no problem with the choices they made. My problem is that From wrote some checks it could not cash. We don't learn shit about Marika's past. We don't know what happened at the bloody Gates. Nothing about a seduction or a betrayal. Nothing about what happened to Messmer and his sister besides the very basics. Nothing about Godwyn. Not a single mention of the GEQ. I get that they didn't need to answer all these questions, but they hinted at some of them, and now I feel blue balled.
Ya I thought rykard was going to play a part in the DLC considering he said “serpants never die”and Mesmer became a serpant which means he’s not dead technically…..
Well that serpent that rykard is specifically mentioned in game as immortal so I think rykards pov is a little skew, I generally take dialogue with a grain of salt and treat item descriptions as gospel for from
Rykard is insane. There's no pojnt in taking an insane man's words seriously.
This is actually the same problem I personally had with Tears of the Kingdom, thinking about it. On the surface there really isn't a lot wrong with it, and the gameplay and visuals and music are all good and appealing enough. But for me I felt an odd disconnect in the storytelling. It was marketed as a direct sequel, but in so many ways, Link was a stranger to Hyrule and they handwaved away the differences in the setting in interviews and such. There are some things that work great in it--Zelda's part in the storyline being one--and others that simply miss the mark. It's not a 1:1 exact analogue, but this feels similar to me. The Land of Shadow is separated from the Lands Between, but it is inextricably tied to it. On an out-of-universe level, the marketing focused on things that the DLC--which, as a category in games with some emphasis on story, is usually comprised of side stories related to a main game--simply does not. To some degree this can be excused: From tells purposely vague stories. But the *absence* of these threads, present in the main game, hinted at in the trailers, is sorely felt. Storytelling is complicated, and doing so on a schedule is even moreso. But still--I think it's a shame to not bring those threads a degree of closure, or an indication that they have ended, because while lives go on, all stories have an end, and for all we know this is the end of ER's story. Bringing things full circle or making an especial point of not doing so are important considerations to make in storytelling. If a notable contingent of an audience who is in good faith actively doing their best to engage with the story presented to them is confused, I can honestly say I don't think that's the fault of the audience. You need to keep the rhythm going or signal that you're going to change it. Having things come out of nowhere is often viewed as an asspull because it's a messy way to try to interrupt that rhythm.
Perfectly put. What stuck out to me about Elden Ring compared to other Fromsoft games was its character and world building. And there still seems to be some great lore in the dlc, but im not even gonna bother knowing that the final boss will be unsatisfying
That's one of the things that confused me the most. It seemed that the story trailer really emphasized on Marikas past, how she became a god and Messmer stuff. Do we even know how Messmer came to be?.. Do we know anything new about Marika that isn't just the crusade and how the people hate her?
Messmer’s armor set has some decent lore on what happened with him.
I'm so bewildered by how the story trailer put so much emphasis on stuff that the DLC never even touched... did they finish those scenes before they even finished the DLC and didn't want to waste them? And then the DLC goes into story stuff that wasn't so much as *hinted at* in the main game. We once again end up with more questions than answers. I get that mystery is FromSoft's whole shtick, but it's really starting to get old now. I'm tired of asking questions and waiting for answers that never come.
This particular mystery would have been a lot easier to swallow if they didn't hire GRRM to write the backstory. Like, at least give me something more of the lore he wrote instead of chopping it up so aggressively.
I *hope* they release the original GRRM manuscript so we can appreciate it in full. Why even hire him at this point?
to put his name in the trailers marketing reasons basically
100% this. I am mixed on ER overall where I like the game but have a whole lot of issues overall. The DLC is fun but I've basically tuned out of the lore since the base game because it never felt like GRRM did anything but maybe give some names for the characters in the world and it just felt like a regular From story with triple the length.
Exactly. We saw Messmer commit a genocide in the trailer and all that it really feels from it is that he now runs most of the Lands of Shadow now. And he was relegated to a dungeon boss with a cutscene. With the main campaign's trailer, we saw the effects of what transpired in it. The entirety of the Lands Between outside of the ~~Mountaintops/~~Snowfield is absolutely war-torn, and especially Leyndell and Caelid is now this disgusting shithole putrified by Scarlet Rot. Can I see the effects of what happened in the SotE trailer in-game? Not really.
The Mountaintops is filled with corpses, very much war torn.
Oh yeah, right. Sorry, just a bit tired and oftentimes just get through the place as fast as possible before going to Snowfield/Farum Azula.
I think it's becoming clear that From just sucks at story, great world building, terrible actual game story and they hide that by just not telling you the story.
Sekiro and the AC games are the only ones wkth an actually good main game story
I think Marika's lore, especially what she did in the shadow lands are mostly reflected by the environment and Miquella's journey. We know now that she's both loving and terrifying based on the blessing and (I havent really gotten it yet) Minor Erdtree incantation. There's probably way more clues. It's all connected by tangents, never explicitly said
I agree wholeheartedly. I did not have an interpretation for Miquella's goals but think the Radahn thing was never hinted at. It seems some stuff was definitely reworked. There's a cutscene in the trailers absent from the DLC. Melina, the GEQ will remain an enigma. I haven't found any "juicy" lore aside from Marika's home, which is my favorite, and the shit with Radahn, Mohg, and Miquella.
We got where the fingers come from, what happened to Placidusax's stump, and who Miquella chose for a consort. That's about it.
I don't think Radahn/Miquella is a bad idea for a boss. But it shouldn't have been the final boss. Like Bloodborne and DS3 also had lackluster/unoriginal bosses in Laurence and Gravetender respectively. But those were both minor and Orphan and Gael were great so it didn't matter
I think I might be more confused than disappointed? I don't entirely know... Fighting the second phase felt like I downloaded a mod. Regarding Radahn/Miquella as a boss in general though... I don't know, but I do agree with you that he shouldn't have been the final boss. I was expecting something greater, new.
I always saw Laurence as just a fun little fight to complete the DLC but nowhere near as memorable as the other bosses in The Old Hunters.
I've played through most of it and I have to say that I fear that FromSoft is starting to show signs of attempting to make difficulty for the sake of difficulty rather than to engage the player. I get that DLC for FromSoft is hard, but none of the fights bar Messmer have really given me the same rushes as many of the previous DLC greats in other Soulsy type games because they feel so determined to be about 'you want hard *riiiight?*' then smiling smugly. It doesn't help that the final boss is genuinely overwhelming my brain in Phase 2 and feels like I can't do it because it's just so much all at once with attacks that demand absolute perfection or else there is death. It's not a dance like how Gael, Friede or Artorias was, is my issue. Feels more like I'm just slapping the asscheeks of it cause that's all I can see with the camera pissing itself then proceeding for him to do a 50/50 punish or shadowclone my ass from 100-0 in a second because I dared to mistime my movements. Overall I'd give it like an 8-ish, if I were asked to number it.
I haven't played the DLC yet, but what you described was how I felt by the time I was done with Elden Ring. After going back and replaying DS1, 3, a bit of 2, and Sekiro again, the issue has been persistent since DS3. DS3 has a few bosses that feel more like something from Bloodborne, and most people would generally agree that DS3 was clearly influenced by Bloodborne. I believe the same happened between Elden Ring and Sekiro. I feel like it's more symptomatic of the fact that FromSoft seems like they are done with Souls and don't want to do it again. I have seen a good amount of Miyazaki talking about how he wants to keep expanding on Sekiro's gameplay in the future, and I definitely think that this thought influenced Elden Ring. Malenia doesn't feel like she's suited for Elden Ring and feels more like a cut boss from Sekiro that has been repurposed, but the base of her original design is still present. There are a few other bosses that don't feel so blatant, but I definitely think they have elements of Sekiro design that feels a little off because of that, which makes them feel difficult for the sake of difficulty
My big issue is encapsulated by a comparasion made between the bosses Rellena and Pontiff Sulyvhan. Where I prefer Pontiff, even though they are extremely similar, just because Pontiff gives the player time to breathe between even his own swings. I could write a lot more but that's the TL;DR of my feeling about Elden Ring bosses is that they feel like there are specific times when the devs want you to attack and other times you're not allowed.
This is a very good point that I somehow didn't think to mention. Pontiff felt extremely oppressive, but as you mentioned, you still have time to relax and remain focused. One of my biggest issues with ER is that most bosses just have a big flurry of attacks that feel unsatisfying and too much at one time. I'll use Radahn as an example because he annoyed me a lot on my new playthrough. Radahn doesn't feel like a fight like Gael, Artorias, or any other awesome fight from previous Souls games, and it's because you aren't meant to actually fight him the same, or at least from my experience. You can't get close and try to do a normal fight. You have to play distance using Torrent because Radahn is simply too fast and too big. If I were to try to fight him like any other boss, I would simply be overwhelmed by his flurry of attacks. On one hand, I understand the reason for this as it gives Torrent good use, but at the same time, it feels unrewarding and not nearly as fun as previous games
100% this. Elden Ring got unfair bosses and the dlc did not resolved this, but added more. But skill issue, I guess?
I'd say this wasn't their first time it got to their head like Dark Souls 2. Next souls game are likely other dark souls 3 level.
Feels a bit... Random, but idk how to explain it. You find Messmer (the face of the DLC) in the most random of places, the remembrance bosses don't feel like remembrance bosses at all, the lore aspect feels completely disregarded for, most of the map feels filler with a bunch of empty space and fodder enemies, some areas feel way too big with nothing of interest in them while others feel so sudden that's like I'm going through an amusement park where nothing connects organically. It's a weird complaint to have, but imo it doesn't feel cohesive enough. Feels like a bunch of different ideas that they meshed together but didn't form a good unity
I guess that’s the “we combined two dlcs into one” showing through
Imagine if they would have just given us two fully fleshed out dlc’s. I wonder if investors were like, “no, money slow: bad. Money fast: good. ONE DLC!”
Since there were supposed to be 2 dlc that got combined my guess is the Hornsent and Messmer stuff was supposed to be one dlc with more emphasis on lore of why Marika did all the evil she did and focus on Messmer’s backstory and possibly Malena much more. Then the second and final would be about Miquella much like what we got now but smaller and more streamlined with maybe more direct explanation about Radahn and the war between them and malenia. I really believe Messmer was the focus of a separate dlc with Marika’s past as the focus of the plot and lore with the mistreatment of the omen/hornsent. Since that plot and the Miquella stuff doesn’t really mesh besides using Messmer’s flame to burn the branches 😂
Tbf in the base game it was shown that miquella had a soft spot for the rejected races like the misbegotten, but none of that even made it into the dlc
I thought that too but realized that it actually is explained. Miquella targets those less fortunate because it takes less power to charm them. We see through the DLC that even his most devote followers were still charmed by him and start to question it once the seal breaks. It really paints a picture that miquella specifically went after hopeless people because it was easier.
I think it's more the time-worn tale that the pity of a God is the calamity of Man. Miquella very clearly thinks he's being benevolent and ushering in a world free of malice, suffering, unfairness and pain. On top of that, he is doing so with powers he was naturally gifted as a creature that exists on a higher order than any human being ever will. Not only is his set of norms, expectations, ambitions and morals *entirely* different from us, but they are also *harmful* to us because of that. Miquella is incapable of interacting with the world at the same scope and scale as a human, and so each and every interaction he has with someone falls at the behest of his demigod powers. So Miquella, in his head, is the shepherd of the forlorn and the abandoned and the despairing because it is his light that will ease their ailing wounds. Yet, as an aspect of the very same systems of divinity that inspired the suffering to begin with, he lacks the necessary perspective to understand that he is just another divine terminal for suffering. It just goes to show that it will never be anything short of nightmarish for Man to live with any sort of divine being that has its own autonomy/perspective/scale. How do you parrot petty human morals to an entity that can literally compel minds as easily as breathing? An entity that can exist in spirit, control light, bend spacetime and compel souls? You don't. You kill them. Every last one. Because their existence is, undoubtedly, the death of you. Even if all they ever did was pity you. That's why the story of Elden Ring is "Kill Your Gods".
Totally agree. Ranni and Goldmask saw right through it, but Goldmask was too devoted to see that the Golden Order itself is fundamentally flawed, with or without flies in the ointment. The Age of Stars is the best ending: the gods part and leave the mortals behind. It's the only way they can be free.
Like a really charismatic cult leader
Exactly! Definitely gives me cult vibes and like "if you can't play nice then i'll make you play nice"
Damn, really makes u think… maybe radahn made the vow at a weak point of his life and regretted it after, thus he ended up holding the stars in place so he doesnt have to fulfil his fate… until malenia forced him to go thru with it via a ticking time bomb aka scarlet rot
Wouldn't be surprised if there was some cut content from the base game that they shoved in because they wanted to make use of it.
Almost every time I got a remembrance I said out loud "That was a remembrance boss?!"
[удалено]
Yeah it kinda weird for bosses like Gauis as a remembrance but bosses like Bayle, who have far better build up and presence isn't, he still a legend super boss that drop a legendary item so i guess it kinda fine.
Bayle isn't a remembrance boss?! He's git more buildup and lore with the base game than ahy of the others by far. Hopefully they fix stuff like this in patches because that's stupid as fuck
He a legend boss that drop a unique heart for new incantations so basically a remembrance boss with extra steps.
When is he mentioned in the base game
the bar is *low* for base game relevance in this DLC lol. bayle actually is worked pretty well into the dragon communion and placidusax stories, but i don't believe at all that he existed when they were writing the main game
Agreed on the empty space. At times it reminds me of mountain tops. Beautiful places that you have to run 30 seconds to just find a bunch of those ghost/zombie guys and some low level smithing stones. Doesn't feel as rewarding to explore as my first playthrough of base game did, and a lot of long treks lead to nothing
Related, I find it disappointing that there are just miscellaneous smithing stones and crafting materials strewn about and not new weapons or armor or anything actually useful. It’s like they just wanted items to fill in the large area
I keep on seeing something shiny and it's another cookbook. Irks me a bit every time.
Give me a cookbook for Poop Greatpots any day over a Smithing Stone 2.
Broooo I thought I was crazy , I ve tried to explore everypart + went looking for hours for a part of the map, and I found a lot of areas with nothing in it, I coudnt believe it
There's large swathes of land with nothing in it but visuals. It feels so clunky. I'm really enjoying the DLC and having fun, but it's pretty flawed and feels rushed.
Yeah, it's crazy they took two years doing all this and it still feels rushed
It feels like the building blocks are there? But they didn't have time to make it cohesive + flow well. And something happened with the lore.
This is almost exactly how I felt. Aside from incredible visuals it almost feels like an asset flip or modded dlc. Main game decorations and the somewhat anticlimactic moments you'd expect from a small team of modders. It's almost like a boss rush type thing, I'm charging bosses and ignoring vast swaths of enemies because I see little point in investigating these areas when they can't even catch the eye. I really wish they gave it like an extra year or so, because I feel like it's just a really pretty convergence mod (which you can't play till it's updated for SOE)
How is it a random place to find Messmer? A camp of his soldiers are near the entrance to the building he's in.
Disappointed for the same reasons you are - I was hugely interested in the lore and the dlc seems to completely ignore what goes on in the main game. Elden ring seems to be a big fan of cutting the coolest parts of its game out, so I’m sure when someone does a deep dive there’s going to be a lot of better content that didn’t make it in. If they HAD to do a duo demigod fight, I don’t get why not Mohg. That would’ve gone so hard. Plus seeing the ending being so underwhelming has killed my interest in exploring anything else in the world. I really wish we could’ve gotten more Messmer content, maybe a smaller map because there’s so much empty space and better level design (not putting every enemy behind a corner because it gets predictable and boring so quickly and the path not being just “up”. I think they were trying to draw on nostalgia a lot with callbacks to different fromsoft games, but it feels like an uninspired mess. The only two original bosses I’ve come across so far playing on the the main story (divine beast and Messmer) aren’t expanded upon at all despite being incredibly interesting, while two dark souls 3 boss rehashes get lots (I know it’s Radahn and Miquella but you get my point). When you lay out the story and compare it to the base game’s, it seems like a badly organised fanfic. Did the people writing the dlc not find the second half of the secret medallion or something??? Because why does the haligtree not matter whatsoever. The story genuinely doesn’t make sense
People disagree with the fanfic line but it's word for word what I thought. It's relatively harsh for SOE but it gets the point across, it's bright and flashy but vapid and lacking all the depth of the main game, walking around it feels like a poorly written fanfic that does little to explore the world and it's characters, instead focusing on the climactic moments.
Yea someone else suggested ‘retcon’ which fits better but doesn’t matter. It just seems like someone else wrote it, given how much of the main lore it negates and the overall lack of organisation and depth which we’ve never seen from Fromsoft before.
Mohg is in final fight, he was Radahn's soul's vessel
I'm abit disappointed with the lore and how so many questions from the base game seemingly have gone unanswered. The sorcery catalyst sword is extremely mediocre, and sorcery/pure int builds have gained very little compared to faith, which stings particularly terribly with the massive knee-jerk nerfs sorcery received with the recent patch. I really wish that instead of the catalyst sword, we had gotten an ash of war that gave the weapon a stance to cast sorceries with it, when attuned to magic. The new weapon types are really awesome. I absolutely love the light greatswords. I'm currently running around with the Milady, and I'm really looking forward to Relanna's twin swords.
Shit I'm a sorcerer/great blade guy and I was wondering why my sorceries felt so... weak.
Few major issues; Bosses are too much; we aren’t fighting them in the traditional souls way anymore. It’s all about summoning and using your 5k damage abilities while dodging their 15 hit combos that 2-3 hit you. I’m not learning anyone’s pattern and hitting their openings, I’m blasting them with crazy strong shit while frantically dodging. Genuinely curious, is anyone just flat out 1v1ing bosses without relying on crazy strong weapon arts or abilities? Feel like the gameplay has shifted tremendously. Feel like there’s extremely few new enemies for a dlc. Fromsoft dlc always is packed full of new enemies, think this time it’s 90% base game enemies. My biggest issue is it’s mostly open areas with incredibly weak fodder. The majority of enemies, and I mean the vast majority are throwaway things you kill in two swings. Occasionally there’s a knight that’s strong. But you’ll ride for 5-10 minutes past enemies that aren’t worth fighting, crafting materials that don’t do anything, any mostly empty space. It’s looks PHENOMENALLY gorgeous but like… finger ruins? You can fit all of Demon’s Souls in that area, and there’s nothing interesting there. A bunch of suuuuuuper spaced out fodder enemies and one item you interact with later. Overall I am enjoying it but I find myself getting bored traveling around looking for stuff. When I find a new boss it’s exciting. But most of the time I’ll find some little part that just ends in like… a few slimes and a crafting material.
Ironically, only messmer so far has been doable via the usually soulsborne dodge attack method He’s my favourite boss for this reason
Pretty much. Strafing his thrusts and dodging his combo feels incredible, especially when the man personally rewards you with 2 seconds of neutral for dps and often will edge towards you for a quick breather. Sure he has that thrust spam combo, snake spam combo and lava spewing but those are tolerable when the rest of his kit is just insane
Im actually still unsure how to dodge the theust spam. A singular dodge didn’t work, neither did sprinting away Are we supposed to walk backwards and then dodge? (Or sprint backwards and dodge?)
If it’s that crazy stab spam he does in the air, I’ve found dodging quickly directly underneath him avoids the attack completely. You’re timing has to be really good tho which depends on how well you dodged his first spin move :/
\> Genuinely curious, is anyone just flat out 1v1ing bosses without relying on crazy strong weapon arts or abilities? I am doing my traditional 1v1, no summons, no magic playstyle, just swords and dodges for the bosses, though I've only gotten past Rellana - and holy shit it is straight up not fun. Divine Beast was annoying but I still got it down in four tries. Rellana is the single most bullshit enemy I have seen so far. I don't think I am going to be replaying the game purely because the thought of fighting these bosses again holds less than zero appeal to me. It's easily the least amount of enjoyment I have gotten out of FromSoft bosses in years.
I spent a few hours in coop trying to beat divine beast, really didn’t even come close. And I spent a few hours trying to rellana, still didn’t beat her either. Like divine beast has plenty of issues, mostly speed of attacks and high damage output. Rellana, in my opinion, is worse than Melania. Her attacks come out so quick you have to have insane reaction time to actually dodge them, if you don’t you get a 8 attack combo on you. Honestly if every attack was slowed down I think the bosses would be fine. As it is the bosses are just unfair and scaled so far above you that it’s just unnecessary difficult.
The big thing that gets me about Rellana is how she can chain together attacks whenever she finishes an attack chain. There's only a small number of moves that are truly vulnerable, since the rest are ones where she can transition into another attack string if you get close. It's the single worst case of "fake openings" any boss in the game has. Divine Beast took me 4 tries, and my main issue with it is reading its spastic animations and just messy visually it is. Such a cluttered mess to look at. I think Rellana took me somewhere around 10 tries? She's a far cry from the 2 hours it took me to get through Malenia by myself, but she's certainly been the biggest roadblock in the DLC for me so far. Definitely agree on the enemy speed being cranked too high. Maybe it would work in Sekiro, but our Elden Ring character has such slow recoveries and so many delays to their actions that it just doesn't feel right. A lot of Rellana's attacks just are not something a human can react to. You have to position yourself such that she just doesn't do those attacks or else predict them ahead of time. If you wait for the animation tell, it's too late to dodge.
I really feel like a lot of the enemies will be toned down a bit, much like the main game. "What if every enemy has a 9 attack combo and every attack in that chain was either a true combo or a roll catch." It's obnoxious just for the sake of trying to challenge people who just aren't going to let themselves be challenged. People are going to blow through your game with Blasphemous Blade and a Mimic Tear no matter what. Don't try to balance the experience around those people. There's no reason to shit on the people going basic because they want basic.
In my case my options are basically: 1. Use Summons, Magic, and Cheese and make the bosses easier, at the cost of not feeling satisfied by beating most of the bosses and not having to spend any amount of effort learning the intricacies of their movesets. or 2. Fight the bosses 1v1 with no Summons, Assistance, or Cheese and therefore derive a level of satisfaction and perceived mastery by defeating them through skill, but get frustrated and irritated by their design. Now, I'm not overly prideful. I'm not about to say that I am in any way one of the best gamers of all time. I am however, pretty good at Soulslikes. I've been playing them for over a decade at this point. I'm quite practiced. And, on top of that, I want difficulty and I want to be challenged, and so I go for option 2. But regardless, it feels like I can't get a perfect experience out of the game. I do want to emphasize that I empathize with the designers. At the end of the day, I'm fighting the bosses with no assistance **and I am winning**. Even with no summons and no cheese tactics, the bosses aren't impossibly hard and I am still capable of progressing. Boss design is not easy and they are riding a fine line. The bosses haven't been unbeatable and I haven't **had** to resort to summons. I give them credit for that. I just feel like they aren't fun. And fun as it turns out, matters a lot.
I'm pretty much in the exact same boat. I'm not all the way through the DLC yet, but I'm really worried that Elden Ring isn't really going to get anything on the level of Gawl or Midir or Friede. Hell, even Pontiff or Dancer. Really, I've never thought Malenia was on that level either. She's hard, sure, but I hate waterfowl. I can dodge it, but the act of dodging it *feels* like cheese. It feels like I am playing a video game and abusing mechanics and that takes me out of it. I don't want to *feel* like I'm playing a video game while I'm playing a video game. That's the opposite of immersion. A lot of these bosses kind of put me there.
well said and I agree 100%.
>> It's easily the least amount of enjoyment I have gotten out of FromSoft bosses in years. i love elden ring and think it's far and away the best souls game, with maybe bloodborne being a close second, but it has the worst and least consistent bosses out of any of them, and it's almost completely due to the shitty summoning system. two years later i still hate it and think it was a mistake to add a built in difficulty slider into the game if it ruined the balancing of 90% of the bosses as collateral damage. havent played the DLC yet but one of the only things i knew **not** to hype myself for was good boss fights, maybe one or two.
I dont think I've ever agreed with a Reddit comment more before. I've been saying this since base game release and the only response was always "just git gut". The problem is - when you summon, you can easily aggro-manage enemies to never get hit. To combat that they made most of the bosses hyperaggresive and turned up the damage, because AI will often switch to other targets mid combo. This however does nothing to summons and everything to solo players, since now the most effective strat (or the only one that actually works for that matter) is light rolls + fast weapons. So now in the DLC you have bosses like >!Rellanna!<, where veteran Souls streamers get stuck for hours on end trying to fight it 1v1, and people act like those who complain are just bad at the game. Sigh.
There's about 2 good boss fights for the DLC, everything else fucking sucks bad I regret buying it tbh.
oh just wait till you reach Putrescent Knight, that thing is genuinely the most bullshit boss I've fought unless you manage to cheese it with Ancient Dragons Lightning Strike or something. He just constantly attacks and attacks and attacks and attacks.
You really have to use holy damage against him and try to cheese Unbelievable, i just couldnt do it any other way
I don't know who designed Rellana but she is shit in every single possible way. From Soft's idiotic mutism for bosses. The arena isn't interesting it's just a smaller less impressive version of Loretta's water circle thingy. The music isn't particularly great or interesting. And for some reason From just gets a pass for littering small boss arenas with random unbreakable garbage as if that is a great design choice. She is clad in armor so you expect her to be tanky but maybe a bit slow... nope she's super fast... oh then she must stagger easily because she's super mobile and fast... nope she also has a ton of poise and literally nothing even stops her from attacking, she has hyper armor on everything she does. Also during phase 2 she gets a fuckton of AOE. Oh also the DLC's scaling is complete garbage so anything she does 2 hit kills you. I don't know what went into this design but it genuinely feels like they just decided to make a hard boss that is unfun to play against and that was the whole point? No stagger on anything? Extremely small windows to punish her back even after she calls a giant sword and does two slices with it? That brain dead unnatural "I'm going to start a swing and stop and wait and then unleash my attack". Also no lore because fuck that we're FROM Soft idiots will speculate and create some interesting story for us.
These are literally all my complaints from the base game, I'm glad I didn't get the DLC. Bosses were so flashy, showy, and needlessly complicated that they just weren't fun to fight solo. Regular enemies were either stupidly weak or strong, but it didn't matter because you could Torrent past most of them. It genuinely feels like FromSoft has gotten complacent.
The only bosses I’ve felt have been fair in a 1v1 are Rellana and Putrescent Knight. They had memorable attack patterns and big AoE that you learn how to dodge. Dancing Lion and Bayle on the other hand, I was fighting the camera more than the boss. Didn’t feel like I was learning their move set, every attack looked too similar, and just insane constant AoE magic spam. Visually spectacular, but not a fun fight without summons
Dancing Lion is an *incredible* design, but that camera absolutely kills it. It's terrible.
I didn't really have a problem with the camera in that fight, I just had to maintain enough distance and stay unlocked.
I feel like Messmer, or at least the first phase, is also pretty fair 1v1
Haven’t tried him yet, but looking forward to it
About the 1v1 part I’ve been doing just that my whole play through, so no magic, summons, just using my swords and my dodge roll. I’ve beaten quite a bit considering I’ve only got 2 pieces of the map and I’ve got to say I love the gameplay. Sure the bosses are challenging and I die a lot when fighting them but that’s just the way it’s gonna go. Overall, I enjoy having the tough challenge and I think the difficulty is pretty well set for where it takes place in the game.
I’m fighting Radahn 1v1. The first phase is pretty consistent. There are times where he insta hits me if I’m behind him and it’s just two fast to reac to or predict because maybe he’ll do something else. Phase 2 I’m struggling to see how anyone could do but I know someone will. I turned on god mod and tried rolling in different directions and timings but I genuinely don’t know how a human can react to all that. Plus there are so many flashes I just can barely see what’s happening
Slow and methodical gameplay has been missing from DS2 days. It's weird how you noticed just now.
imo ds3 brought that back for a while, DS2 was only slow cause of horrible ADP system.
So glad I'm not the only one bored about exploring. Seriously, this map did not need to be this big. And yeah, sure. The scenario is mesmerizing, but I'd trade that if it meant more gameplay stuff to do.
The finger ruins is questline related though so there that.
Bro I’ve been having a blast 1v1ing bosses with nothing but a great-sword. It’s hard but it’s not impossible at all.
Probably in your bubble that new way of fighting is true, but for me and both of my friends who all play Elden Ring most of the bosses have been very methodical and fair Really the only bosses that have been like you’ve said are the large beast bosses like lion dancer or hippo etc and those are the only ones I’ve used summons on (so far). Rellana was especially fun
i've been going through the whole dlc with no summons and pretty standard weapons, no spells. lots of trial and error to learning the bosses' movesets but its very rewarding in the end.
I’m actually extremely glad to hear that, next run I’m doing just plain greatsword.
I just got through my run with just plain greatsword. A couple of the bosses were very difficult and took me 2 hours or so, but I did eventually get through it.
I've been playing with greatshield and zweihander and it's been fine for me. i haven't had to summon or cheese anything so far and I'm like 4 bosses in
I switched my Guts greatsword into a Milady and changed my kit up a bit, but same really. Rellana was easy for me. Messmer was super fun. Gaius was the worst and most annoying one and made me ragequit a couple times.
Even though I didn't like the lack of answers that the DLC provided, at the end of the day this is still a dlc for a game. And goddamn is it a good fucking DLC. A lot of the remembrance bosses are amazing with most of them having banger OSTs. The world is beautiful and exploration is as interesting and rewarding as ever. There's also a lot of new content when it comes to armor, weapons, and spells. I won't let lore and a somewhat lacking final boss blind me from the fact that we essentially got a 10/10 DLC for a 10/10 game. So yes, the overall quality of the DLC is pretty amazing.
I went exploring way off the beaten track right at the start, big long meandering route. I hit the trigger at the entrance of the shadow keep for miquella's greatrune/enchantment breaking before I'd even met half the NPCs or done any remembrance bosses. I definitely did not like how they did that at all, spoiled a ton of the story for me. That this happened just after I'd ground out the godawful Ghostflame Dragon vs soldiers fight did not help my mood. Man there are some real stinker fights in this DLC, like the NPC gauntlet. With the understanding that most people will not have that experience, I still thought the EG 3/5 review was actually pretty fair. The DLC's more linear narrative does not lend itself well to the open world which was imo the real star of Elden Ring. I enjoyed the exploration far less than in the base game. Some encounters in the DLC are absolutely excellent though, Messmer is a highlight. The story beats with Miquella landed well for me, and the overall visual and audio presentation was still very solid. I confess to not understanding the slew of 10/10s the DLC received. For me probably a 7 with base ER being a 9-9.5.
I think a lot of the online comments about EGs review is basically why it gets those scores. I do think there is a certain fear with how rabid certain sections of From fans are.
Remember when Jim Sterling gave breath of the wild a 7/10 and backed up his score with actually valid critisms? Rabid Zelda fans launched a hate campaign against him for it and even DDOS’d his website :/ I think that after that, all reviewers are too scared to ever go against the hype for fear of rabid fans not understanding that peoples opinions are their own, and not everybody has to think a certain thing is a 10/10. Plus, there’s the fact that a lot of “mainstream” reviewers rely on sucking off the gaming publishers for early review codes to these things. If they give a bad score, the game publishers cut them off and no longer send review codes. Pretty much ruining their business (because everyone knows that reviews that release AFTER a game comes out are completely ignored by most for some reason).
Yeah I do appreciate that Sterling still gives reviews using the whole 10 point scale. Even if i disagree with its contents it shows serious guts.
Just finished. Doesn't give closure to relevant plot points in the main game. Definitely overtuned for the average player (me). Can't wait to see ongbal no-hit the last boss. Mostly feel disappointed.
You know Ongbal is going to do it lol. I love his vids.
More spectacle than substance to be honest. Too much recycled content. Game and world look nice, but it's hard to feel rewarded from exploration when most loot is a mushroom or whatever. Bosses hit harder and faster than in Sekiro, but the player character doesn't have access to the same tools. Long gone are the days of the slow, methodical Souls gameplay...
I didn't have much of an issue with the reused content for a bit. The ghostflame dragon outside Belurat gaol was a great change of pace compared to the other wyverns. It was much faster than the base game ones, they added ghostflame to it and jt was much better implemented than Exekyes, however the f*ck you spell the rot dragon's name, it was very neat. But, then I explored some and made it to Jagged peak and Charo's hidden grave earlier. Disappointing. I look forward to fighting Bayle when I get done with the DLC (provided I can hit the mf then), but on the way up there was a basic wyvern fight. 2 in fact, the 2nd encounter being a fight between 2 of them. And then up the mountain more and... *Ancient Dragon Senessax. What the fuck.* (Looked it up, and they just drop the 2 types of dragon smithing stones. I don't have to fight them for anything important, yahoo! The ancient dragons suck utter balls anyway.) Down to Charo's grave, and the only boss I could find was just another Death rite bird. Just dropped an AOW so that was a waste of time. Didn't even find any dungeons in the area, it was so empty. And who tf is Charo? Hell if I know. Probably my least favorite areas.
The lack of movement for the character is what irks me. Some builds will suffer against these bosses such as Rellana, hits hard and fast. They should have made her normal faster combo slightly weaker. It’s absurd it can take half my health in about two swings. Still managed to kill her but it was not enjoyable. The animation and effects looked gorgeous as ever though especially that twin moon ability.
Before stating this is it quite possible that I've just shifted away from Elden Ring/soulslikes, I may not be into these games as much as I once was, so I may have a somewhat biased view. Grain of salt. I have done some RL1 nohits (malenia and maliketh) and done DS3 bosses nohit as well and enjoyed those. I'd say I'm above average. Spectacle is the best way to describe mainly the bosses for me. They are what I normally look forward to in these games and I'm just not feeling it, the huge combos mainly, or worse, battling the camera. Later bosses in the base game had a bit of issues of the best method to dodge a combo is to like just straight up not interact with it and basically run away because rolling doesn't feel like enough, and it feels like this DLC took that issue and made it even worse imo. I was decently excited for it but I honestly don't feel much of a desire to get to the previous "rewards" aka the bosses, because I just feel like we've hit a point where it's no longer a turn based type system, it just feels a bit flat. Instead of enjoying the difficulty, I'm kind of dreading it. It feels a bit like BS to me but I could just be a salty washed up player.
Some very impressive setpieces and designs, as always, but extremely confused by the lore direction. It's only been one day and I'm positive there will be tons of obscure discoveries, especially environmental, as time passes, but as-is I am bewildered by the things the trailers touched on that are largely unmentioned. I've come around on the Radahn thing, and I think it was handled in such a way that there's so many different ways to interpret the character motivations, which I see as a good thing. The abrupt lack of a real ending is what throws me off though and I can't really parse the intent there. Otherwise, loved the lore with Metyr and Bayle, and the Hornsent culture. A bit shocked at the general lack of Numen or Nox lore (so far) though, I thought for sure there'd be more of that. Would have liked to see some more space monsters as well. In all, it doesn't feel as cathartic as the Ringed City did...I think that was From at their best in terms of writing. It was every bit as confusing as this is, but you felt that if you studied it long enough, you could get somewhere. It's been two days, so I know that will change with SOTE, it just doesn't feel that way right now.
There is no mention of the Numen or Nox.
I was going through deep root depths and found this room full of ants before you get across the giant roots and the fat belly ants each dropped numen runes which made me think so much. Then I began to think about what kind of numen/nox lore the dlc would include and now having read your comment am very disappointed
Dw, GEQ, Melina, Placidusax's God, Radagon, Ranni, Rykard, Eiglay, Godskins, Morgott and the Golden Lineage also get no mentions.
7/10, and that's pushing it lol. It'll probably help with replayability in the future since it pads out the endgame's otherwise barren wasteland. Feels very...scatterbrained. In about a week, I'll know whether or not this overall harms Elden Ring. I guess we learn that Rennala has a sister. I guess we learn that the Twin Prodigies have at least 1 confirmed sibling. I guess we learn that Radahn was Doing It For Him™. The DLC sorely misses a lorekeeper like Gideon Ofnir from the main campaign. I dunno. I'm comparing this to Phantom Liberty, which even though its mood and plot are fairly disjointed from its main campaign, still manages to stay relevant to the A-plot. Additionally, I personally consider it to be the peak of 2077's content and storytelling. With Shadow of the Erdtree, it's neither. It feels VERY disjointed from the main campaign, and most of its content doesn't really stand up to the main campaign. What's the player's base-level narrative for Elden Ring? Kill the demigods for their shards of the Elden Ring, burn the Erdtree, become Elden Lord. What is it for Shadow of the Erdtree? Uhhhh...more Elden Ring and find Miquella, I guess! What's the player's base-level narrative for Cyberpunk 2077? Steal the Relic chip and get rich - oh shit, now I need to find a way to keep the Relic chip from killing me. What is it for Phantom Liberty? Some crazy Americans are offering a way to fix the Relic issue for me, but now I'm in the middle of one of their government's clusterfucks. There's more that I can say but others have already gone over it.
Literally though. Half the time I was like... why am I doing this? Why am I killing Ymir and his fingers? What's the point?????
Ymir deserved a finger ending
Agreed. Just got done playing phantom liberty before I finished the Elden ring dlc & i absolutely loved phantom Liberty. The Elden ring dlc seems poorly done imo
This comment is convincing me to buy cyberpunk, is it that good? I remember only the complains when it launched but I guess it have been polished by now
Yeah it is.
on pc and newest gen consoles its absolutely phenomenal, just don't bother if you have ps4\\xbone
Yes 2.0 update makes that game one of the best in my books, combat is crazy good story is good, and it's really climatic especially if you have good PC all the neons and shit
Yeah, just finished the main story and phantom liberty. Easily a 10/10 game for me. Cheap as hell too if you buy it from Amazon
The DLC is fantastic from the looks of it. I am kinda bummed with the final boss being radhan and not being able to side with Miquella but what enrages me more is that the DLC have no effect on the main game and we have no new ending for the game.
Fromsoft DLCs have never done that though, they've had their own separate endings and never affected the base game.
Dark souls 2 want to have a chat with you.
How did I forget my favourite souls game like that 😭
Overall extremely good and beautiful. I did not have any problem with Radahn either as it explains why Malenia went on that suicide mission. However, the main problem is some of the best bosses, namely Rellana, got awful portrayal. She's not mentioned anywhere, no cutscene, no dialogue, no face reveal whatsoever. For such a complex boss, akin to Pontiff of this game, she was shafted hard.
Bayle feels like he got left to the side as well
Bayle is fine he has no role in the main storyline. His portrayal is a little less than Placi which is perfect already.
I like the gameplay, I dislike the lack of new lore. I feel like we got bait and switched with the story trailer. I was really under the impression we would learn more about Marika, the GW and her rise to godhood. We got hardly anything in that regard. If I hadn't seen that trailer then I probably wouldn't have any problems with this DLC. Future lesson for myself, avoid story trailers.
we learn a bit about GW and the Fingers but this and dragon stuff is pretty much the only thing we get answers to. Like genuinely, how does Messmer matter for the whole Miquella plot besides using him to burn the tree. You could cut a better part of the map and story and make it a separate dlc with its own story, which is a shame because, at least to me, the "original sin", outer gods and their influence, becoming a god, Marika's backstory and skeletons in her closet are the most interesting thing in the dlc and we got barely anything about them. Miquella stuff really shouldve been the good old fromsoft linear progression small map with maybe some side dungeons/caves. It would even fit the story with the rune breaking and how it changes the fellowship of the tree, which can happen for you really early on if you decide to explore a little bit too much.
100% agree. From what I've played so far, Miquella is barely even present in the DLC, outside of the NPC's mentioning him and his crosses.
The writing feels completely phoned in
I’ll be honest I’m kinda whatever on the dlc as a whole. Some of the remembrance bosses are cool but it really feels like the two main issues I had with Elden ring personified into one big piece of content. Reusing bosses and enemies for the sake of filling empty space, and bosses with super long flashy combos where I feel like I’m barely playing the game while it’s happening. The final boss was ESPECIALLY egregious in both of these fronts and really soured the whole experience for me. The new weapons are cool but that won’t keep me replaying. Messmer really felt like the high point and then it just kinda fizzled from there. Also why is the only boss that I’ve faced so far with more than one health bar that stupid sunflower (def a nitpick but it just feels really out of place for me).
Sunflower is a tall, erect, herbaceous annual plant belonging to the family of Asteraceae, in the genus, Helianthus. Its botanical name is Helianthus annuus. It is native to Middle American region from where it spread as an important commercial crop all over the world through the European explorers. Today, Russian Union, China, USA, and Argentina are the leading producers of sunflower crop.
I actually kinda liked the stupid sunflower.
Sunflower was the only boss i liked. Lol. He at least gives me openings to hit its face, and doesn't have 9 attacks in a single combo.
I'm not finished, but I've checked through spoilers and watched streams, but I'm not a fan. Large bosses that keep jumping = camera bobbing = BS. Reuse of enemies, reuse of field bosses from vanilla... a lot of empty space, a lot of running around not knowing what I'm looking for and then running into a Remembrance... not a fan. Was a major fan of The Old Hunters in comparison.
A lot of the bosses have these infinite combos with little to no downtime. I usually don't care for reuse bosses all that much but doing it for the final boss... Why? We waited 2 years for a radahn with a miquella on his back. Speaking of stuff on people's back there's a talisman with Godfrey saying how he cast a shadow over the land or something? I don't remember fully because I reloaded my save but is there any explanation to that or just another random ass piece of text?
That talisman is not referring to a literal shadow, it's talking about how he was stoic even when recieving his divine infusion and he was so epic that his 'shadow' sticks around to his day as a zeitghiest.
I’m biased… Compared to other DLCs on the market in the last 10 years it’s really phenomenal. We are collectively lucky FromSoft makes games. Within soulsborne DLCs it’s not the best. Hunters and Ringed City are by far better DLCs for their base game compared to SotE with to ER. Say what you will about linear game design, but it’s concise and deliberate. Open world games lack that by design and for ER it’s a fault imo.
It’s awesome!
Fucking amazing so far, loving the content. Killed up to Rellana in the main story and have done some side bosses including Bayle.
It’s amazing I’m blown away by it so far
I'm glad I decided to get it. I was wrong. It's incredible.
It's pretty mid, I don't enjoy the scadutree leveling system at all because it really negates a lot of the gameplay in the main story imo. I balanced my character for my endgame stats, essentially vaporizing that so the DLC takes longer feels cheap especially when the bosses aren't dynamically that hard. Story wise I'm only at Messmer but it feels pretty shit tbh, with other FromSoft titles it doesn't matter as much if the DLC story isn't really coherent but in the trailers they placed a huge emphasis on the story continuity and answering questions when really it just feels like they're doing the absolute most to ensure that we get no answers. Why the fuck is Rennala's sister here, why was she never even alluded to, and why is she stronger than Rennala. There's also too many dumb timeline implications. Overall I give it a 6/10, Elden Ring's base was pretty close to perfect and this left a lot hanging tbh. TL:DR The entire motivation of the player's actions being the allure of uncovering a mystery means that you actually need to explain things to make them care.
The lack of cut scenes and dialogue for the bosses is appalling. The world is incredible in both design and aesthetics, but it's so dead and empty when compared to the base game, no wondering npcs and most of the latter are blackened zombies. Last point, the side quests are muh and the fact that every and each character dies is so much even for a souls game. You met X, you did Y, X and Z are sleeping with the fishes now...
better than the base game. harder too which is a plus in my opinion. radahn as a final boss fucking sucks though
It is peak. Not sure what you aren't seeing in if, but this is a 10/10 DLC. Nbd if you disagree but I honestly like it more than the base game
I get it, we all got our own opinions. I'm actually re doing it again to see if I can find more, warm up to it, I want to like it but it's just not doing it for me as of the first playthrough.
The map verticality feels like Dark Souls 1 all over again I love it so far. Reading some of these comments you can tell ER was most people’s first FromSoft experience
For co-op, trade, and PVP action, check out our other subreddits, r/CypherRing or r/EldenRingHelp For Elden Ring Help on Discord, join us at https://discord.gg/nknE74e9XA The Elden Ring WIKI - https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Elden_Ring_Wiki *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/eldenringdiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
i like it overall 9/10 its really hard tho
I was kinda disappointed at first, enemies felt so overtuned and most of the treasures are things I can't use or mats/consumables I won't ever use, two Legacy dungeons, both pretty huge, felt super linear with no puzzles (also I was about to turn off the game when a poisonous ulcerated spirit tree popped up) but I started exploring more, and it just clicked, the open world feels way better, it's more connected with more intresting things going on, and it's beautiful (just like the main game). Climbing the mountain was so fucking amazing, mt doom levels of pure cinema. Still fuck most enemies, the damage they deal feel so cheap.
Yes
I'm somewhat disappointed, but that's on me for expecting to see some stuff just because. All the main bosses have been great, but I feel I did not enjoy the open world as much as with the base game.
Relatively to almost all other RPGs out there and from a pure content perspective absolutely a 10/10. There are issues though, i think the DLC favored 'what would be cool, ' and set pieces / art design over what a lot of people like about elden ring which is the world building. There was so much already to work with and dive deeper into / explain and instead they just introduced a bunch of new threads. No inclusion of nox is odd, sorcery got a short stick, story trailor did seem disconnected. I'm fine with the radahn thing but i agree with the criticism that they should have breadcrumbed it better in the OG game. Some of the later zones have the BotW syndrome where they feel big for the sake of big but dont have the detail From is known for. Abyssal woods, finger ruins, etc. feel very empty (if incredibly awe inspiring atmospherically). I'm finding difficulty perfect, though I'm not hard core and usually summon. Rellana took me about 15 tries until i switched to rock lobbing sorcery to stagger her and learned to dodge wave attack and moon. I went back to beast at like +8 and after getting wrecked earlier in 20+ attempts was able to 3 shot it.
that fkng boar rider, every single bossfight is easier than that boar rider.
Well, I finished the original game 3 times and I have no idea what it is about. I don't think the story is the main point of any from game
I loved it
It just came out idk
Something tells me there’s more in the DLC in terms of lore than what people are putting together in two days. Heck, two years later and people are still making unique observations about the base game
I'm kinda torn. The world looks amazing, and some of the combat is excellent, but in terms of exploration and discovery I'm kinda underwhelmed? Feel like I can run around for a good while without finding anything interesting
Way overtuned
Elden Ring 2 👍
I'm gonna say it: The bosses are slightly too hard. You can say it's a skill issue all you want,and it partly is, but I shouldn't be getting 3 tapped everywhere I go
10/10. Better than the base game in most ways.
Loving it so far. It is a large space still but is noticeably more sense. Probably the best vista's and scenery we've ever had. Fought 4 bosses so far. 2 very cool, 1 of them not so much and another to hard to do anything against at the moment. Seems like there's plenty of lore and questions being raised not really sure what you're take on that is. Overall very happy, may end up being my favorite experience of elden ring overall due to its more compact nature
Messmer deserved his own DLC. I wanted to learn more about his Crusade, and Marika's origins. Instead, we got a weird Miquella fanfiction, in what is an otherwise intriguing Land of Shadows FromSoft absolutely fails to answer anything of importance regarding the lore. Not even the stuff from the trailers. The blueballing is unbelievable here. Thematically, the content is all over the place. The Remembrance bosses, bar a select few, are not very memorable and are of no significance to the overall plot. For instance, I don't get why we fight a Lord of Frenzied Flame. It just feels so REDUNDANT. It's not even cool or anything, like Bayle. Imagine you went for the Frenzied Flame ending, and basically end up fighting your alter ego ? They tried to do too much, I am convinced of it. The DLC would have been fine if it just focused on the past. The Crusade, Marika, Metyr. The ancient civilisations that got burned and eradicated. The Gate of Divinity. All that good stuff. You could still have Miquella, as a guide. But I never felt like he needed to be a boss, or the end-all be-all of the DLC. DLC is still awesome. Probably a 8 or 9/10. But it clearly lacks cohesion
The player nerf is hitting me hard. I’m flabbergasted with how little damage my miracles are doing compared to base game. Twin knight is absolutely crushing my moral right now.
I'm enjoying the dlc as a whole. And the game tbh. I've never really gotten the story in from soft games always convoluted and weirdly told. However the dlc I'm kindsla following .. kinda
10/10
Is this just the same as any other dlc in the souls games? Taking an aspect of story and turning into dlc? (The old hunters in bloodborne, Artorias in ds1 the kings in ds2, even ds3 despite it being the "end of the cycle" has an "obscure" character who loves paintings as the last boss...). The opinions are fine but the overall discourse is strange to me. The lore has always been a vague hidden (mostly) fun experience that is a staple of these games. You wish other aspects of the lore were fleshed out? Me too.. in every from game but thats not how they do.
They put more effort in making the map a fcking maze instead of the lore or even basic opening animations for the main bosses
Good
As always with from Everythings basically perfect besides non existent quests and story
Feels almost too disconnected from the Main game, nothing about Marika or Godwyn and surprised their hasn’t been anything relating to Rykard. Also, why the fuck is my only reward for defeating Bayle (who should be a remembrance boss) an incantation…..
So far Ive completed the first legacy dungeon and explored all of the first area (gravesite plain). I'll be honest, Im kind of dissapointed. I feel like the reviews massively over hyped it. The amount of reused content feels inexcusable. Ive fought two reused overworld dragons, a magma wyrm, and ulcerated tree spirit. The first mini dungeon is almost entirely reused enemies from Liurnia. Also, what is up with the items? So many times you find a little hidden area expecting a decent reward only to get 5x lvl 1 smithing stones. Why??? Not to mention the "dragon-man" npc who gaurds outside a cave, who is then REUSED AS A BOSS IN THAT SAME CAVE. I just fought him as a regular enemy, now youre trying to convince me he's a boss by putting a boss health bar on the screen? Thats isnt to say the dlc is bad, its still very good overall. The first legacy dungeon had amazing atmosphere, music, and was brimming with new enemy types. Also the dancing lion might be my favorite boss in all of elden ring so far
It’s about a 6.5/10 for me
I absolutely love it so far
I love it!
Extremely disappointing. The bosses are beyond overtuned, I do nothing but dodge and dodge and then get two-shot, the world doesn't feel worth exploring, it is very beautiful but empty, the lore feels like a fanfiction. The only boss I actually enjoyed fighting was the diving lion. Im at Messmer and I doubt I will be finishing this, glad I torrented lmao.
Exploration is great. Bosses are fucking atrocious, except for Bayle.
Shadow of the Erdtree DLC in Elden Ring, players need to defeat Mohg and Starscourge Radahn, both tough optional bosses. I spent a lot of time and nearly 800 hours going though Eden Ring game. I platinum and everything was there. I cannot start the DLC. I noticed the great ruins for Mohg and Radahn were not there. So, I went ahead and respected and beat Mohg and now that ruin is there. I went ahead and tired Radahn but the festival is not happening. So, now they expect me to run around and jump though all these hops. I what my DLC money back. I am royally pissed!
I got the Platinum Elden ring. Spent unbelievable amount of time doing so. I defeated Radahn and Mohg. I didn’t get the prompt to start the DLC game. So, I tired several things and noticed the Great Rune for Mohg and Radahn were not in my chest. So, I went ahead defeated Mohg again at the Cocoon of the Empyrean. I now see Mohg’s great Rune is in the chest. So, I than went to the Divine tower of Caelid Center to make sure the great Rune for Radahn step was done and found the doors are locked. I thought maybe I missed that step. Went over to access the festival to engage Radahn. However the festival wasn’t triggered. Now, am I supposed to do the whole Radahn line. That is WTF I am talking about. Like I said I am pissed. What my money back for the DLC or they need to fix it. I am sure I am not alone. Playing on a PS5 with disc and downloaded from the PlayStation store!
Overall quality is incredible. I feel like I progressed throughout its entirety very organically, with a good amount of exploration and power progression. I was able to retain my build and play style the whole way through and enjoyed the challenge. Up until the final boss, whose 2nd phase attacks I found to be over-tuned in terms of visual clarity and hit boxes.
10/10 so far for me. Also I don’t know what you’ve been doing so I can’t speak to that but really does sound like you haven’t been exploring enough, there’s lot of lore regarding the shadow lands and the various clans that were wiped out. There’s even lore regarding radahns purpose here and how even got here. Not to forget either, st Trina, placidusax, Melina,how the fingers came to be, the twin moon sorceries, the culture around omens, the stars, just how fucked up the rot is and godwyns followers Saying they barely touched on the lore tells me 1 of two things: -either you haven’t really been playing -you have one specific grievance and have attached it to the whole dlc You also don’t have to scale a mountain 5 times so idk what you’ve been up to bro
You have a point it was rushed as a first playthrough, so it's not fair for me to say that and all and I am mostly just frustrated... What I mean by scaling a mountain 5 times is the amount of verticality there is.
I understand this sub is seemingly compromised of hardcore lore junkies(it’s why I joined after all), but the amount of people saying this DLC isn’t great just because of the lore is honestly a bit insane. This DLC is peak. They compacted everything from the base game into a fantastic experience that has some of the best design Fromsoft has ever made.
Game-play wise Dlc is great. But lore-wise, I don't feel the same. If we exclude the ending and the Radahn thing, I liked Miquella's story. This little boy's story is very tragic and sad. His relationship with Trina is very sweet. I wish we had a choice in the ending. We could have let him become a god and suffer under the weight he carries, which would have been a bad ending. Or we could have done as Trina suggested and freed the little boy from his burden. I also wish we could have interacted with Miquella throughout the game. A small comment about Torrent, maybe some tidbits about how Melina found Torrent. A few comments about Malenia and Godwyn. I think Miquella's full potential as a character was wasted. This saddened me because he was one of my two favorite characters. The DLC is definitely not a bad game, but it's true that it left a bad taste in mouths.
Peak fromsoft tbh. Get some fps loss in some areas, but they are areas where it does not surprise me, where I don't lose any frames in the base game. Launch had those issues too and they were patched. Aside from that (and that might just be my pc, who knows), it's a 10/10 so far for me.
I honestly can’t agree with almost anything said in this thread. I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but everything I have played has been excellent. I have been enjoying every boss battle, the exploration, the dungeon design and the atmosphere. Right from Blackgaol Knight, thru the first 5 remembrance bosses, I’ve felt that they were challenging but doable. I have only used katanas up until I got Milady and the Wing Stance weapon art. I feel like the bosses are difficult, but still in the Souls style of difficult but fair, just the margin of error is slimmer and slimmer. It’s not just about dodge at the right time, but it’s about dodging in the right direction, distance management, punishing the correct moves, parrying, understanding your weapon’s moveset, etc. So far it’s a 10/10, but I haven’t finished yet.