Funnily enough, the Shaman village is one of my most memorable areas in the DLC. It has almost nothing in it, but lore. I am not sure how much you got into Elden Ring lore, but if I were to put it in terms of Dark Souls lore, imagine if there was a gesture hidden area in the Ringed City Swamp that led to Gwyn's old village, guarded by a couple of silver knights and an illusion of ornstein. Gameplaywise its just a buch of reuse. But in terms of lore, the place hits like a truck. It changed how I giewed Marika completely. I had to just sit down and think of how this single area recontextualizes everything I thought about the base game lore. For a lore enthusiast likr myself, it was a delight to discover the area, to the point that I forgot all the reuse and just immersed myself there.

My problem with the Scadutree fragments was really their placement. I like some being scattered around, but I think they should've been side rewards, like you kill a side boss, and it drops a weapon AND 1 or 2 Scadutree fragments.

I personally found the reuse of Tree Sentinels really satisfying. After many hours of trekking through unfamiliar and dreary territory, getting humbled by new bosses and enemies, you stumble upon what are basically the equivalent of walking punching bags in comparison to all the scary shit in the DLC. By the time you get to the Hinterlands you're probably quite juiced up on Scad frags and got some cool new DLC build rolling, or at least augmented your build with some shiny new DLC tools. They feel placed as the perfect test dummies to remind you how far you've come and to unleash your wrath and absolutely blast them to bits with your epic new stuff. You even mention how the Tree Sentinel has that "come back later" purpose in the original game - I have many fond memories of coming back to the Tree Sentinel and clapping him with a highly upgraded weapon (second playthrough onward, first playthrough I was stubborn and killed him at base level ofc). That's just me though and I think it's totally valid to not like Tree Sentinel reuse, lore justifications aside.

Your take on Rauh Ruin's aesthetics is similar to how I felt when someone said they disliked Fountainhead Palace's aesthetics, I just don't get it. Besides that, Rauh Ruin's is the closest we've gotten to a legacy dungeon for Torrent (even the elevators finally work with him). It has the design, traps, and secrets of a dungeon, just expanded for the horse.

shadow keep has the type of level design i want to see in a resident evil game

I view the Cerulean Coast as the Weeping Peninsula of the DLC. If you can't beat Dancing Lion or Rellana then you go to the Cerulean Coast to get some more upgrades then comeback.

Honestly, Shaman VIllage is perfect and your approach to it was a little misleading, that was the place that MARIKA of all people was born, the tragedy with the hornsent and the shaman people, the smaller erdtree incantation and her braid at the Grandmother tree, the Erdtree Sentinels are there for a reason, they're enforcers of her Golden Order and they're safeguarding that place that's sacred.

I don't find the Scadutree Avatar to resemble Midir at all, it's actually way closer to Ebrietas from Bloodborne. Wide swings with long, spindly appendages, headbutts and -grabs if you come too close, a devastating bull charge with very little rev-up and homing missile attacks. I really wonder why no one can see the clear reference.

I think Castle Ensis is supposed to be on the tier of the medium dungeons in the base game, like Castle Morne or Castle Sol

Furnace Golems don't drop anything interesting? Someone hasn't beat any bosses with the Deflect Tear yet.

Quality over quality? Did we play the same dlc? It has both.

One think that imo took the approach of "Quality over quantity" undeniably are the minor Dungeons. Almost all bosses I've seen there has a somewhat diferent approach between each others, the lenght feels more like an actual Soul level, and overall feels better to explore due to the amount of secrets and interesting sections as very often they go around a gimmick. Seriously, if they did this take on the base game, ER level design would had been extremely impressive

more like quality and quantity though, this thing took me like 50 hours to fully complete

I think Scadutree fragments still works, because unless you're a die hard completionist, you realistically dont need all of them.

I fought Scadutree Avatar much earlier in the playthrough than most, I was playing with a Milady and trying to engage with the boss on somewhat fair terms and I think here Scadutree Avatar shines incredibly. Many bosses in the DLC will ask of you to find something that is truly powerful that will help you defeat the uptick of difficulty. I am actually very pleased that Scadutree Avatar is not only a very unique design in the catalogue of Fromsoft, but it also keeps its fairness, has great cadence, and a few moves that though hard to interpret at first are incredibly dodgable while also punishing repeated mistakes with bleed build-up. After defeating Rellana, a lightning-fast boss with endless combo's (that I still agree is a better boss than Scadutree Avatar), Scadutree Avatar was a breath of fresh air and great fun. Sometimes I do think that the community puts too much emphasis on a boss having to challenge them or be hard in a way which is unfair. I think Scadutar is an incredible well designed boss. It may not be as difficult as some of the other bosses, but for me it was one of the most FUN bosses to fight in this DLC.

commander gaius clips at 43:40 explained: the difference in damage is because of the counter hit system. In the first example you were drinking the flask and got hit, because you were in the middle of an action, you got more damage than the second clip

I’ve watched 30 min at this video now and it becomes apparent this guy doesn’t realize that it is a DLC and not a full scale game

The Gaius charge is pretty bad with how inconsistent it is but if you dodged it, that would probably help. When I played this before the patch the first dash was practically undodgeable but maybe the patch with his changed starting position fix this. For the later charges dodge into him with good timing. He's honestly one of the most fun bosses in the dlc for me while the rest of the world seems to hate him.

amazing job on this one!

I wanna add about the Ghostflame dragons is that they feel very different from the normal dragons since they have a lot of new moves

Armored Core 6 is their newest quality focus game my guy. And it's peak.

There is a duo boss another KZfaqr said „ the hippo and the camera“.

watching until the end, i can see why you feel a certain way about some of the area and the thing with the forge golem being spread around all over the map. it's just that the one thing i didn't hear you mention once ( i think ) is that lore and story telling through enemies / NPC placement has a big role in designing this and the base game. the only area i didn't think did enough is Rauh. but this is just my opinion

the gaius attacks doing more damage arent glitches. If yoh get attacked while you are in the middle of some stamina consuming animations like jumping or attacking, yoh take more damage. that's always been in the game.

Twig guy?! That’s zanzabart, lord of the quimbled flame.

Love this vid, great work!

The pot enemies with fragments don’t throw them. They will run away from you if you approach them.

I like videos like this that break down this DLC and other content from other games, but I can’t help but feel like fans(mostly Americans) love to complain a lot no matter how good something is. I thought the biggest disappointment you would have would maybe be reused bosses, only to hear you say your biggest disappointment was that it didn’t have a duo boss fight, instead of just accepting the improved quality of the bosses in this DLC which was obviously their focus. I personally go into these games and DLCs expecting nothing. I look at what the developers did, and judge it based on how well they did it. I do not look at what they DIDNT do. Maybe it’s just me, idk. I like this video, but I do feel like we the fans love to complain about nothing when it comes to these games

Don’t agree with every single point you made but man this was a stellar video. I was shocked when I saw how many subs you have, you deserve way more.

shadow keep is its own fucking game

I think they did adapt to the base game open world well. N I’d be willing to bet the next game they make will have a large world with a layout kin to the way the DLC is. I really like what they did with catacombs and dungeons. They felt a lot more important.

At this point, the camera issue has to fall into one of these cases: 1-It's completely intentional 2-It's inherit to the game's engine and/or design (Pardon my lack of proper vocabulary)

Awesome video man. Subscribed

Well made video!

46:16 / 1:36:11 It may be nice to talk about non gameplay and design aspects when you do these because boy you must be missing a LOAD of characterization, thematic, and narrative details, here. I mean, Shaman Village and its fate is literally the cause of the DLC and the founding of the Golden Order? xD

To be fair, the ghostflame dragons do have some new attacks which threw me for a loop

I been listening to this video for like 35 min and thought it was almost over haha got another hour and a half to go enjoy your takes so far tho :)

I agree with almost everything said in this review, my first 5 hours in the dlc were a bit lacluster but once i got past castle ensis it was all uphill for me

Did you find the velvet st trina sword in the fissure? 👀

great video and i agree with a lot of what u said and also obviously disagree with a lot of what u said. however im a bit baffled at how u thought enir illim is one of the peaks in level design of the game. i was so disappointed cus its just a straight line to the boss, with one branch off to get the euphoria weapon. besides that what else is there to explore? did i miss a lot

What a high quality video man, you should and will be recognized for your work in the future

>still remains completely unaware of being able to swing weapons to his left by pressing L1/L2 while on horseback >ditches off the meaningful moveset and thematically visual updates for dragons as just recycled enemies >dumb comparison with troll fights from GoW (2018) as in that game you just have that enemy as major threat where in Elden Ring there's much more variety alongside the recycled ones. >completely misses the incantation reward from the NPC in Belurat as it being just a lore dump. lol >15:27 sudden change in tone making him sound like Moistcritikal lol >talks about "dancing" around Rellana's attacks while showing clips of him trading like an ape and accidentally low profiling blows due to jumping attack spam playstyle. >shows completely ignorance to damage types when talks about being nearly one-shoet by Rellana's twin moons attack while wearing the highest physical defense armor not realizing that's a magic attack >considers Stone Coffin Fissure a dungeon.

One thing about commander Gias if you have to much poise his mount hitbox is so long he can double hit you with the charge. I was getting oneshot by it cause i was doing a full poise build xD

I missed the main path to Cerulean coast and actually ended up going to Charo' Hidden Grave first, then climbing down the collosal dragon's wings and making my way to the coast, and ultimately to the Fissure. I also platformed UP from Cerulean coast into that ravine with the Erdtree Spirit. Both of those were some of the coolest experiences I've ever had in a game. I knew there was going to be something cool down the bottom of the world, and making my way down the beach and along the coast, even though it didnt take too long, was such an adventure. I felt less like I was playing a game and more like I was just an adventurer camping under the stars, talking to my horse, and seeing what lay beyond the horizon. I'm glad that experience wasn't interrupted, in fact I think the ghost flame dragon was even too much. I got to the fissure before breaking miquellas rune, so seeing the path to Trina sealed off filled me with excitement about coming back later. The drop down to the Putresence Knight had my heart in my throat, and I don't think I would have enjoyed that nearly as much as I did without feeling like I took a peaceful journey to the edge of the worls.

If you use a non heavy weapon, the fire knights from shadowkeep will indeed be one of the hardest common enemy in a legacy dungeon of this game because you will not interrupt their attacks with every swing. When it comes to ER, YMMV based on build. Torrent in Elden Beast makes it feel too easy. It's hard for me to say "they didn't play-test this", "how can torrent not be usable here", when Elden Beast has attacks such as concept order that only make sense if you do not have Torrent's speed. Torrent breaks too many of Elden Beast moves.

I also entered the dlc with the starscourge greatswords

I thought i was imagining Gaius inconsistent damage. Glad (i think?) to see it is actually true.

Makes us wonder the next game from Miyazaki as he stated he has one more left in him..either a sequel to Dark Souls his trophy series or a whole new game or even a elden ring 2 but most of the demi gods are dead but the aftermath of killing most of them and leaving the outer gods to rule could come back as 4 big bosses but I feel as he'll incorporate all games success's into his last game. But this is truely a masterpiece series that we are able to play and witness and it will really sad once we know its over

As someone who likes to use spirit summons, I only found out that the godskin duo were infamous after my first playthrough was complete and it puzzled me because I beat them after only a couple of attempts, and had a lot more trouble with the likes of Godfrey and Placidusax. ER's multi-boss fights just expect the player to be using summons. I don't feel like it's really reasonable to complain that something is unbalanced if that imbalance comes from refusing to engage with a fairly centralized mechanic like spirit ashes

Romina is such a cool fight aesthetically. I died to her intentionally a couple of times so that I could marvel at her beauty one more time😂

I didn't mind the scadutree fragments. I personally did find a good amount the first playthrough, i think i was at level 4 or 5 before fighting rellana which was the 1st boss i ran into. Although i was trying to be thorough. However, i know not everyone plays like me and i think it can hurt some people that dont want to look for them. I've been summoned so many times and the hosts fragment level is like 2 or 3 while we are fighting messmer or bayle and i just know we are going to get 1 or 2 shot. Or itll be the putressent knight and they die before i can even reach them. I don't think the fragments are extremely hard to find, but they can be a bit out of the way if you arent combing over everything sometimes.

Its funny you mention the final boss of sekiro because I was disappointed it was Isshin over Genichiro since he is the real antagonist. It being Isshin kinda deflates the tension since you know he doesn’t hate you he just wants to have a fun duel.

My biggest gripe with this game is with the NPCs. You got do everything in the correct order or else you will lose on certain quest lines ...

Genuinely great video.The flow reminds me of Joseph Anderson, very good. A lot of people leaving a hate comment about one opinion they disagree with on an 1:30 hour video is crazy to me.

HOL' UP, You can use Torrent for Gaius? I had no clue. I am on the same side of the Argument when it comes to Torrent for bosses. I feel like he's usually more of a Hindrance once you get in range of the boss. And Gaius will usually stay in range if he's not using the Best hitboxed charge attack in the game. even for the elden beast. I use torrent just to get close then dismount Also Gaius doing the extra damage may be cause of Piercing damage properties rather than a bug, if he hits you while youre pressing an action it does extra damage. (Or he might just hit multiple times when he's not intended to, if this is the case then its clearly a bug)

Okay to counter the drakes 1 they use completely different elements to the base game and 2 we are literally fighting the king of drakes do you expect all of the drakes to be dead

49:47 another thing I found odd was the lack off boss cutscenes and voice lines

I was helping people beat the scadutree avatar & i couldn't believe how many people i saw die to a charging sunflower. Its honestly hilarious cause the flower looks like its driving a go-cart when it does its charge. 🚗

28:40 have to agree I was actually surprised there wasn’t one

Amazing Review, I enjoy listen to your voice

Miyazaki showed when he said that Elden Ring isnt his ideal RPG but its close, that he isnt trying to make a genre or series, hes trying to perfect a single game I dont think what we need is for them to spend the next 2 years on something thats way too ambitious, what we need is for them to get the time they really need to perfect everything Elden Ring failed at They dont need a smaller project, they need more freedom and time, they need to be able to focus more on content, quality, art, and design than deadlines, rewriting lore around last minute changes 50 catacombs is fine as long as they do it right, personally the thing i love the most about elden ring is that theres no way anyone is going to 100% it their first time, there is so much content and so many hidden little things that its just not possible without ruining your first playthrough by draging yourself through guides and searching so intensly that it becomes tedious Elden ring is dauntingly large but it doesn't expect you to see everything the first time, it doesnt even want you to know how much there is left to see, i was honestly surprised when i saw people saying that elden ring is so big that its intimidating and made them not want to get into it They dont need to scale their projects down, they just need to put more individual thought into the content theyre making, Elden ring's bosses, while not terrible, are almost all some of the worst in the series, and this game was my first soulsborne, i had no preconceptions They didnt give the boss movesets the time they needed to really get good and what that means is that i never want to fight any of the main bosses, but i will die on purpose to a crucible knight just so i can fight it again cause their moveset is nearly perfect, the DLC bosses suffer the most from this lack of play testing and time They gave some youtubers a chance to play the game early and that should have been a playtesting cycle but they couldnt explore the entire DLC, it wasnt an event to learn what should change and what was bad, it happened solely to generate hype which is a bit of a disappointing discovery because theyve always prioritized quality and making the game with the image Miyazaki had of it over how much hype they can generate before release If outside playtesters were given full access to the game, i doubt there would be so many issues with later bosses like Radahn, Gaius, Romina, the divine beast reuse, and the golden hippo They didnt need to scale the project down, they needed to take the time to perfect it

I might disagree on your Scadu Tree Avatar and Commander Gaius take but i simply haven't fought these 2 twice or in the way you mentioned. Gaius was rough but he wasn't bad because i had a shield and great sword with 60 vigor and i was just shield countering him into oblivion. I personally really, REALLY like the Scadu Avatar fight. I also had the sword of night and flame. He did his thing, I struck his head with the fire art on opennings. It got much harder during phase 2. It was really fun for me. Then phase 3 rolled around. After that massive aoe, I realized the guy was slow, methodical. He was broken, just like the demon king in ds3. It struck a chord with me in a special way. Not only was the fight fun for me, it was emotional. And when I got Miquella's discarded great rune at the end of it, my jaw dropped. Maybe you're right that the boss is less impressive on a second playthrough, but I haven't done that yet. Cannot confirm

Ensis is NOT trying to be Raya Lucaria, it is more a second version of Caria Manor which is around the same size/verticality. Don't know why people keep comparing apples to oranges but it's annoying at this point. The only Raya level dungeon is the Shadow Keep which is one of the best dungeons in the whole game, base game included. Ensis is what it is supposed to be, a Carian Manoresque home away from home for the sister that fell in love with Mesmer and got locked away in the land of shadow as a result. It's like people just ignored Caria Manor as the actual home of the Magical Royal Family/or that it exists to the North of Liurnia and IS NOT the University City.

2nd comment lol. Thinking about what could be done with Charo's hidden grave, I came up with something interesting. Maybe a reward for those who have done all the npc quests. Shadow of the Erdtree is already the best when you do the npc quests, why not do something special. Have it where Ansbach holds a meeting here behind a minor boss (perhaps the Deathrite Bird that spawns here?) and when you arrive, all of the npcs you have met along the way are here. Ansbach gives this whole speech about what is about to happen and what all they need to do. It would be an excellent lead up for the fight pre-Radahn with Leda. This would also be a point where you can get everyone's final thoughts alongside an air that's sort of "calm before the storm" I can just picture talking to Thollier after Ansbach's speech and he's intimidated, depressed, afraid of what's to come, but ultimately driven. It'll also strengthen what Ansbach says about Thollier later after the fight hit much harder. I haven't done all the quests, I'll admit, but maybe we can have Moore there as well, expressing a want to not fight and stay out of it. I straight up don't know what happens to Freya, L. But I think this would be an interesting opportunity to witness npcs have dialogue with each other too. Maybe prompted by the player so it doesn't feel forced. Lmk what y'all think of something like this (Edit, my not doing the npc quests is showing. Moore is apparently against you in the royale L. I also had an idea. If you give the dragon priestess Thollier's she'll join you as a spirit ash long story short. Maybe if you have her on your belt at this point. She'll make a comment on the situation. Maybe the same for Queelign and Latenna as well. There's a criminal lack of base game dlc overlap in Shadow of the Erdtree)

44:00 i think you get extra damage while you are recovering from an attack or during a jump.

Came with all my characters at level 80, had a blast. I didn't like fighting Furnace Golems mainly. 10/10 DLC though holy crap. I'm just 6 minutes into the vid but I'm probably going to watch the whole thing :D

My biggest complaints with the DLC is the rewards feel very lackluster. So many enemies just drop smithing stones which are completely useless

I can agree with you on pretty much everything, except for Malenia. Easily one of the coolest fights and definitely one of the most memorable. The waterfowl attack may seem insurmountable at first, but once you’ve figured it out, it’s not that hard to dodge. Her story and moveset are peak.

1:31:49 After fighting Radahn I have come to a conclusion regarding him, I can sorta understand why Miyazaki brought him back. Radahn is the strongest, bar none, the game states that clearly beforehand, he's meant to, in effect be this world's version of someone like Gojo, i can remember as far back as the games release people wishing we could have fought prime radahn. I think it's cool it's here as a send off to elden ring, but it should not have been the final boss, it should have been a super boss like Bayle (result from Freyja's questline) and have Godwyn be the consort.

The enemy I never wanted to see was the tree spirit things. I think that’s what they’re called. The base game has like 12 of them and the DLC just added at least 3 more

the fire golem at the start is 100%meant to be fought when first encountered, you must fight those enemies with torrent, i dont get why people don realize that...........

The fire baskets drop the coolest and most unique crystal tears for your flask of physic in the game which makes them well worth killing, they are basically the replacement for the erdtree avatars in the base game. You are doing yourself a serious disservice by ignoring them.

Excellent video, man! Great points. One thing that annoyed me about Erdtree... FromSoft encourages you to explore and challenge the bosses in any order... but you're locked out of several NPC quest lines if you do them in the "wrong" order. So there IS an order to defeat the bosses in... that's very contradictory.

Yeah. Been running around getting tree fragments for 40 hours and haven't beat one boss. It has quantity.

29:05 seems like you haven't played AC6 cuz it has some really good duo bosses and final boss of secret ending has a phase that is a fantastic trio boss

You know I gotta say I adored Radahn but he’s an 8 or 9 out of 10 for me but I think a third phase would have helped him a ton and would have probably made him a 10/10 for me

Mr Martin ain't working overtime on winds

As far as the camera, you need to get comfortable turning the lock-on off and on while managing everything else.

“Fighting rellana feels like a dance” *jump attack* *jump attack* *jump attack*

From what I've heard, there will be no sequel, which may be why some people have complained that elements of the DLC could have been in a new game.

btw since you mentioned the blazing bull boss fight being BS from sekiro, there's actually a really easy way to fight him just run away from the bull, and it will always do the same the easily deflectable and punishable charging attack. Keep baiting the charge and it'll be dead in 30 seconds.

Wow, i watched this whole video, and i know you took a lot of time to make this video, and of course your opinions are valid for yourself as they should be. But personally i feel like lore answers about half of your problems. A lot of places are empty because of lore unfortunately. But the lore is so good it really does just make you appreciate the area.

Rellana isn't like Lady Maria... she's a take on Pontiff Sulyvahn from DS3. Same dual swords, and even VERY similar music (same violin).

Look up definition of Wyvern. It’s a dragon

Glad you didn’t make something garbage and click baity like “Worst Fromsoft DLC yet!!”

No real issue to be honest considering what we got from previous DLCs if you’re expecting a completely different game then you’ll never be satisfied

gravesite plain is my least favorite area of the whole dlc because of 1 thing: the phantom gravestones... they're white... that is a problem because now i can't see loot on the ground and/or i keep thinking i see loot somewhere, and then sike its just a gravestone clipping into terrain or something. if they had at least made them a different color i wouldn't have minded at all, but they chose to use the same color as the one they use on lootables. was so happy to get out of there.

Any fight where you can consistently stun enemies is as hard as you make it.

Scadu is old English for shadow, so it’s pronounced Shadowtree. Shadow Fragment.

Are you on Shrooms? Shadow Keep isn't biggest, Lyandell had Subterranean Shunning Grounds...

Good video and I agree with a majority of it

I suggest you try doing Shadow Keep without fragment upgrades like I did. It makes Haligtree and Farum feel pretty tame. The Fire Knights by themselves are just very tough with their fast and far reaching dagger attacks and their ranged spells. When they're with the Vulgar Militia you literally have to just run away and separate them all. Ancient Death Rancor really fucks with the Fire Knights but otherwise they shrug off anything except very high stagger weapons/ashes. I can do enough damage just fine but they do a really good job of keeping you off balance unless you are relentless with perfect dodge timing.

I would say the dlc is only a "shadow" of the main game. 😉

Did George create the dlc final boss lore?

Why do none of my grace sites have arrows.

WTF dude? That big fire dude would be extremely easy if you know how to jump. It is easier than that first dancing madatrucker you encounter first in the DLC shadow realm.

Im always fown for horse on horse action.

Enemies can do counter damage, you're showing us it doing counter damage to you. You're mid swing when it did double damage and healing and rolling when it did regular damage.

I love fighting the Tree Sentinels. They're cozy fight for me. Not annoying at all. The Falling Star Beast though can F right off. One of the more annoying bosses for me.

With the Jagged Peak dragons I let them kill each other then killed the winner