Hi everyone! Thank you so much for watching and sharing your opinions on the video and the DLC itself. I am humbled by the very positive feedback, but the video is not without problems, and I want to address some of them here and clarify a few things. Firstly, as many of you have pointed out, I was incorrect in the "Bob" segment - it's not inconsistent. What seems to be happening is that if Bob two-hands the sword AND does an attack AND you don't hit him with a heavy enough weapon during the first few frames of that attack - he gets hyper armor that stops you from interrupting him. It appears to be consistent, and I didn't catch it because I was confused after interrupting him several times when he WAS two-handing (thought the other conditions weren't met). As you can tell, I'm not as familiar with the PvP mechanics that are in play against NPC fights, and it's my bad. I still don't think it's good design for those fights, but that wasn't my argument there, so I am sorry for that mistake. My point against Commander Gaius' attacks still stands. During the editing, one of the clips showcasing the evidence of inconsistency for his boar back-kick-attack got cut at the start, and I didn't notice. That was quite unfortunate, and sadly I can't insert it back at this point. If you don't believe that he kicked me through the shield - I urge you to test it yourselves by trying to ONLY block his attacks for a few minutes - you will be surprised by the amount of times you'll get hit. Also, when I block his magic spear attack the first time - I know I still take damage because the shield doesn't have 100% magic negation - that's not the problem. The problem is shown in the next clip, where the shield is ignored entirely. I thought that was obvious, but maybe not to all. I should've outlined more differences between Rellana and Radahn when I was talking about similar initial reactions to them. Rellana is without a doubt a much better boss with clearer attacks, and I should've made it clearer as well. In terms of difficulty - I am not saying that I want bosses to be easier - I am saying that I want them to be less frustrating to learn. Which is why when I suggest at least lowering enemy damage output, I also say that it should be compensated with them having higher health. That will probably not be enough, but it's the simplest step in the right direction, in my opinion. And finally, to those who that tell me that the reason we search for Miquella is because there can only be one Elden Lord and so he needs to be dealt with - no it's not. Eventually that might become our concern, but before entering the DLC - we had no clue. Not only that, but the shadow lands have 0 (ZERO) impact on the base game. You can still become Elden Lord while ignoring the Shadow Lands in their entirety, and still get the same amazing endings we got before. None of them feature the return of Miquella, so I guess if you were happy with the motivation provided in the base game - that's even less of a reason to go anywhere. And even if, in the hindsight, you could imagine that the grace, or something equally abstract, guided us there to figure out what needs to be done (despite it still not changing anything) - it was communicated very poorly. At the end of the day, I, like many others, was playing through the whole DLC without any clue as to why we kill those bosses. I understand why I do that as a player - because I enjoy the gameplay - but not the character. And call it a controversial take, but I would've liked to know.

"Is it Peak?" "Yeah, but it's a jagged one 🔥✍🔥." I owe you an apology I wasn't familiar with your game.

I am so tired of certain reviewers forever sucking up to fromsoftware and refusing to acknowledge some of these glaring issues

Jagged Peak bit got a needed chuckle out of me.

I get that these are supposed to be sad games but honestly it’s hard to invest in any NOC quests in these games knowing basically every one of them will die horribly.

Those tree sentinels felt like teddy bears that far into the DLC.

I killed igon because I thought the game wanted me to put him out of his misery

Heavily agree with you on the feeling after the final boss. I didn't feel like I learned anything. In fact, for most bosses, I would get a lucky win far before ever reaching mastery which just felt so underwhelming. Midra was the one of the few bosses this didn't happen with for me. I actually had 0 flasks when I beat him and it felt like I overcame a true challenge of my skills. Best boss in all of ER imo.

I played Sekiro after Shadow of the Erdtree, and wow, the bosses are about equally fast and aggressive. BUT, each and every Sekiro boss fight feels incredibly engaging. Sekiro has the agility and the tools to outmanoeuvre any boss once learned. Fighting Maliketh, Malenia, Rellana, Radahn, feels outrageous in comparison. I wish I could fight them as Sekiro - they’d still be tough, but fair and likely even fun.

I had seizures when fighting radahn

On motivations: Ansbach and Thiollier’s quests individually lead you to understand that Miquella is very dangerous and has to be dealt with. I found my own motivations reversed by those discoveries and felt engaged when facing Leda and the final boss.

We've got a similar experience, I beat all FS games multiple times, in total over 1000h+. And I fully agree with your review about the difficulty. DLC is hard not becuase you are underleveled, it's hard becuase bosses introduce cheap difficulty, spam aggro for 15s to give you 1 quick attack window or if you need to heal then 0 attacks and the cycle repeats. Additionally you get full arena AOE and fights are designed to hide information about incoming attacks to kill you everytime the new strong attack/combo is introduced which makes learning fights very unfun. Also, new weapons face some problems. If you have only a short window to attack, you need to maximize the damage which favors 2x big bonks & jump attack which feels like all new weapons are useless for boss fights. On top of that you get input reading and programmed punishment for natural reactions. You pass the phase of well telegraphed attacks and then a new attack is coming that you can't guess how to avoid and it insta-kills you, then you struggle to get to this point again and you get killed again. This is not a good design, it's a design to hold you on this boss for longer. Also, these bosses are 20x aggro Bloodborne, but you still play with DS3 character with no additional things to balance it, besides extra jump attack. There is no duel anymore in DLC, it's roll roll roll roll roll roll roll, hit once with a toothstick. I remember epic duels from Bloodborne (like Lady Maria, father Gascgoigne, Ludwig, etc.) which were so intense, a lot of parrying and good stuff, that's what the well designed fight is, interactive fight, hit for hit, a few attacks by the boss, and then it's my turn, not watching infinite combos over and over again. This DLC introduces the worst boss balance in their franchise, which in many places feels like cheap difficulty or being hard for the sake of being hard. They broke the game because of ashes, I knew since the beginning that adding ashes will kill the boss balance and it did. Now you can either play solo and the difficulty is broken or you can play with ashes and it trivalises the fight completely.

People are too invested in the hype train and gaslight themselves to believe this is another nigh flawless "masterpiece". Just like in the base game, the ideas are there, but From‘s bitten off more than it can chew and the cracks are blatantly visible. Sometimes, less is more.

The Joseph Anderson we didn't deserve but the one we needed. Just don't do a witcher 3 critique!

Elden ring and it's dlc is something I both love and hate at the same time. The world and art design is amazing and a joy to explore, but there's little to find in it, and the pve honestly just isn't that fun. In previous from games, the pve was amazing, with the bosses just being the cherry on top, while in elden ring the game feels like a beautiful, but empty, ice cream cone, with a scorpion pepper on top.

As I'm currently doing a second playthrough of the DLC, I agree with the Scadutree Fragment criticisms because if they are basically a requirement to be able to have any chance of tackling a boss, I feel that they should have had at least a fair chunk be rewards after bearing the major bosses or a miniboss in the legacy dungeon. Hell, there are 5 fragments located behind one of the optional remembrance bosses, and they give you one for beating the hippo boss at the start of the Shadow Keep so it should have been a no Brainer to have them more as rewards, while keeping ones located at crosses. Cause it would give you a minimum fragment level for each of the legacy bossed that is essentially, "this is where you should be at the minimum" and all the remaining ones are the optional ones to make things easier for you if you want

I 100% agree that if Fromsoft go down the path of thinking “the community will accept any level of absurd difficulty as long as we give them multiple ways to invalidate it” then the magic of the souls games will be lost. Fromsoftwares souls games are long overdue an update in core gameplay mechanics especially when you consider that dodge roll/attack during enemy’s recovery frames is a gameplay loop that started in 2009 with Demon souls. Sekiro to me marks Froms successful attempt at increasing difficulty in a fair and interesting way and I hope they returns to new combat innovations. Ever since I played Lies of P I can’t escape the feeling that if Elden ring had Lies of Ps core combat mechanics it’d be by far my favourite game of all time and when you look at lots of its bosses through the lens of Lies of Ps combat they feel like absolute masterpieces of boss design held back by archaic combat design.

I didnt really enjoy the DLC. Some bosses were very good but i found exploration disappointing. You either get the scooby doo fragment (whole idea of these things even existing is bad imho) or just a cookbook. So many areas like coast or abyssal woods were just empty and all you got for exploration was just the views. Are pretty graphics inportant in making good game? For sure. Can they carry whole exploration if they are the only upside to it? No, not for me at least. Overall boss design was ok. Some I really enjoyed, some i absolutely hated. Im afraid that FS is starting to prioritize flashy combos and overall cinematics over making an actual fun boss. I liked dark souls and Sekiro bosses more. I hope that FS fans wont kill me for saying all of that. DLC is 6/10 for me.

seems like i need to find all scooby snacks so when I will get left-right good night from another boss I won't have an excuse and have to git gud

This is hands down the best critique of the DLC I have seen. There are some good ones out there, but I feel people go too soft on Elden Ring/the DLC just because FromSoft at their worst is still a GOTY.

When I've struggled on a boss for a long time, I've been told to just use Mimic Tear or to summon another player, and I always refuse. While part of me does this out of a stubborn "I want to do this by myself" mentality, another part is because I have to partly relearn the boss. When there's more than one target, the boss becomes unpredictable and will sometimes do one half of a combo to one target and the rest to another. They can also change targets for single attacks on a whim; for example, a boss might raise a sword to slam down on my summon, but at the last second they might spin on a dime to attack me instead. I now have no way to know when the boss is gonna attack me, or I'll get swiped by a hitbox I didn't know existed because I'd always dealt with a combo in one way. It just really throws any sense of flow off and bosses just don't seem to function well when facing more than one attacker. Their animations can look like they're on the verge of bugging out and it takes away from the experience for me.

I’m shocked Rellana had no intro cinematic or build up. You don’t need an intro cinematic to make the build up to the boss awesome. Bayle was perfect in that way. The build up was incredible and the payoff truly hit. But given the gravitas of Rellana… where was hers?

Jagged peak is peak

Shaman village is probably my favorite location in the entire game, upon first stepping in there I knew it was special. Then you learn all the lore, amazing.

When the final boss died, after 10 hours of fighting it, I didn’t jump for joy. I did a bit of a mental shrug.

I've beaten the final bosses solo on 2 of my characters and I gotta say, its a bad boss not (just) bc its too hard and bc the second phase puts a lot of shit on the screen that fucks your visibility, but because this boss punishes build variety a lot, I beat him first with my dex arcane bleed build, normal character nothing out of the ordinary, was using a blood infused milady. But for my pure faith caster/cleric build I didnt cast a single spell to beat him bc he doesnt give you enough room to safeky cast any spell that isnt fast like glintstone pebble bc he never stops attacking and I didint wanna just spam catchflame for the fight. I basically had to beat him through parrying and critical hits on my pure caster build bc using spells on him solo was really risky and not worth the danger you had to put yourself through, not to mention that almost half of the dlc incantations are slow as shit and really hard to use in most of the bosses bc of it. (The new butterfly rot spell is a fucking joke, takes longer than scarlet aonia and deals less damage and less scarlet rot build up all that without hyper armor in the cast anymation, thank you for a fucking useless spell fromsoft)

14:06 so pretty much the reason why are are confronting miquella is because both of our goals are in opposition to one another, you becoming Elden Lord and Miquella becoming a God. We unfortunately can't have both. It's really not that more complex. Granted like you mentioned, Miquella kinda manipulated everyone from the start so maybe a bit of revenge is in order as well. Miquella's age of compassion is flawed because he shedded away the most important thing, his love (st. trina). You can't have compassion without love. So In a way he's committing the same mistakes Marika did.

Some bosses are like getting into a fight with someone who doesn't know how to and just run up doing rapid-slaps while craning their head back as far as possible... except each one of those slaps carry the force of a heavy-weight boxer's haymaker

yeah those early reviews that the big fromsoft content creators put out where definitely overhyping this dlc. its a fun expansion and its definitely worth the 40 bucks but it has just enough things going against it to make it end up being like a 7.5/10 to me

I never felt like i ever "beat" a boss, I just got lucky they didnt spam their one shot move

FYI the reason he sometimes poises through attacks is greatsword get a poise boost while two handing and attacking. It’s so heavier weapons can trade with smaller ones in pvp

"Curse you, Bayle!" Best... NPC... EVER!

Something the DLC did and I wished was more prevalent in the main game was the abyssal wood's entrance, it's through a catacomb, imagine if it had megaman legend style of dungeons where they are all linked somehow to a greater underground instead of how sporadic caves, and catacombs felt in the lands between

I looked for the missing closure at the end by returning to saint trina, because she is an aspect of miquella, who asked me to kill him, but she was simply dead too, which makes sense, I suppose, but was disappointing nonetheless

Great video that provides a fair critique of something you enjoy. Extremism can be all too common to come across when hearing this about the DLC. One issue that I had with the DLC that I don't hear much discussion about was the actual in-game map. With how dense and layered the open world is in the DLC I don't think that the map is as useful of a tool as it was in the base game. Personally, I have a hard time remembering which sites of grace are on which level of the world. I wish they had a map of the subterranean layer you could view independent of the surface map just like they did for underground segments in the base game. I somehow missed the connection that there was an impromptu infirmary set up for the jar victims in Shadow Keep. Thanks for pointing out that cool world building detail.

The Map is far too big for what's in it.

35:00 I hope the next game gives you a boss rematch feature. There's certain bosses I would love to fight again but I don't want to replay the whole game again.

The biggest flaw in this dlc were the bosses, for me. The lack of cutscenes or dialogues was a shame. In the base game I got attached to the main bosses because they felt alive, they had character, they weren’t hollow shells you had to fight. They had a weight, a resonance in the fight. In the dlc I entered a boss room and I had to fight a random ripoff of sulyvahn don’t knowing why, a scarlet rot quelaag because… yeah, I guess, and that’s it. They die anonymously as they lived. It’s a pity. Then, with some exceptions, they didn’t feel dlc bosses at all. There was an excess of artificial difficulty: when even a single grab (like the Messmer one - which btw is the best boss in the dlc) can one shot you, or plenty unreadable combos leave you with one second to attack or heal, is not fun. Gael was a very difficult boss, but were necessary like 4 or 5 hits to kill you, and had a lot of windows. Finally, in other fromsoft games dlc bosses had something more as compared the main game ones, but here is the opposite. They had nearly nothing that made me gasp, like a mechanic or a moveset: midra is just an old man with frenzied flame incatations and 5 attacks, rellana is sulyvahn with base game sorceries and a unique one, consort radhan phase 1 is simply starscourge radhan with a blood flame attack (I refuse to consider the second phase a boss fight). The main game bosses felt more unique, experimental and in a nutshell… fun. As it should be for a dlc boss. I still love the dlc, but I can’t understand all the praise it received “bosswise”. They could have done so much more… PS: Sorry for my English is not my first language

Excellent and well-thought critique. I think the Scadufragment system did more harm than good. It’s a chore to collect but nothing arduous. What’s worse is the balancing system around co-op, because they had to take PVP into account. To summarize, regardless of your own Scadlevel, if a host’s Scadlevel is lower, you’re downgraded to their level; worse yet if they’re on NG+2 or 3, find themselves struggling because they can’t find enough fragments or refuse to level them, and therefore resort to summoning. In the base game the co-op sorting system relies on Rune level and weapon upgrade to match you with players within your range (unless you use passwords). In the DLC however, I could be adequate or even overpowered in my own file, and find myself getting killed in one or two hits even with adequate defense (armor/talismans) and buffs. But it hasn’t been a month since DLC release and I suspect once the honeymoon is over, players might be honest enough to admit that while FromSoft are capable of producing brilliant, S-tier level games, they’re not infallible or above making poor decisions.

My victory over Radahn was the most Hollow victory I had ever experienced. I could consistently No-hit his first phase but the second phase? Nah, it shows Fromsoft has lost the plot. It's not fun, it's not fair, it's not even challenging in the right way. The mere fact you can perform damn near perfectly only for him to say 'Lol no you actually die' with his 'Meteor strike electric Boogaloo' attack near the end is the biggest 'fuck you' I've ever seen thrown in. it's a roll of the dice if you live or die it's actually absurd. I had to resort to a shield and bleed (Not a spear) along with a Tank summon to actually pull a win. Radahn alone has made me unenthused for future Fromsoft titles. I've done SL1 playthroughs on all games and those were torture but it was torture of my own making. Radahn? No, it's active hostility towards players by design.

very well written and edited video, I was shocked to see you only have 900 subs

I think the reason Leda and her allies attack you is because of the broken enchantment letting her paranoid side out. Once Miquella's great rune is shattered and his spell is lifted, all of the npcs begin to show free will from him, and Leda's free will is very paranoid. She talks about others possibly being disloyal and asks about your suspicions, and can even kill Ansbach if you let her. It's this paranoia that eventually leads her down the line to you, and like Ansbach she finds a reason to believe you're against her cause, rallying up her allies to attack you. It's interesting to note as well that npcs whose questlines you've progressed through don't seem to show up as part of her group in the arena. I helped beat Messmer with the Hornsent and healed the brood for Moore, and then neither appeared in the fight, making me believe it's Leda that convinces anyone who hasn't been helped by you to turn against you. If it's truly the case, I think it's an amazing detail.

Well done and very fair breakdown of the DLC. I sort of hope the next FromSoft Soulsborne game will be a more linear and contained experience like Sekiro or Bloodborne and bring some fresh gameplay elements to the table. It's much easier to balance around an intended playstyle than having so many options and paths to go down. I might be biased towards Sekiro, but it offers a combat system that you can master to a degree where you can easily beat the bosses just using the base mechanics. Additional mechanics like the prosthetic tools, consumables, throwables, weapon arts can help you vary your playstyle or arguably make fights easier, but you don't need any of them. Meanwhile, in Elden Ring but especially the DLC it seems like you want to use any in-arena NPC collaborators, spirit ashes, cheesy spells, overpowered weapon arts etc. if you don't want to feel frustrated. The DLC's most enjoyable bosses to me were Romina, Messmer, Putrescent Knight, BAYLE and hippo (although the latter two having heavy camera issues). Dancing Lion and Rellana seemed like they should have been the last 2 bosses before Messmer in terms of difficulty and relentless move sets. And yes, Radahn phase 2 is just straight up BS. On the topic of Lies of P: yes, introducing parry and rally in that game was a good idea to make the gameplay more interactive, but the game IMO had other issues, mostly with animations, camera and perceived parry timing. Plus making parry an arguably worse and more risky option than blocking in many cases, since you can rally back so much health. Meanwhile if you mistime the kind of unforgiving parry windows, you get flat out hit and can't rally back anything. And zero poise for heavy builds was definitely also a choice... But that's just some of my thoughts. Nevertheless, hyper aggressive enemies require other was to interact with them than dodge rolling and jumping. Yes you can parry SOME bosses in DS/ER, but that requires a certain build and play style, which brings us back to limited build variety if you don't want to be frustrated by boss encounters.

The reason why it doesn't feel fun being stuck on a boss anymore is because it happens with every boss now. Every remembrance boss has countless delayed or unnatural-looking attacks that you can't intuit how to dodge on your first attempt. This means that you're guaranteed to die 10+ times figuring out how to dodge these attacks. It used to be interesting when you ran up against a wall like that because not every boss was extremely hard and it was fun to finally meet a real challenge. But when every boss is a roadblock, it gets exhausting. You lose the motivation to learn him and fight fair because you know the next boss after him will just be another roadblock.

Desperately hoping that we get a patch with a Godwyn bossfight.

I did feel like the difficulty of this DLC is pretty uneven. Early doors it can be very hard, then once you've got some scooby snacks and a good build the mid to late game is straight cruising and then the final boss is crushing again regardless. I've enjoyed the DLC as a whole though but I do agree some other recent soulslikes have added quality of life and story telling features that feel noticeably absent here now. A solid critique 👍

Elden Ring (and the DLC, admittedly) was entertaining and engaging as a pastime but I'm never touching this game again. This was my first FromSoft game, and my second Soulslike in general (I had just finished playing Lies of P when I picked up ER), and I was frankly disappointed. My main issues: The open world is cool and all but it feels just full of nothing. The biomes feel a bit unbelievable, there are no (ruins) of farms, warehouses, etc. It's just fort after fort or tiny village after tiny village. The Lands Between/Land of Shadows both feel like places that barely had people living in, even prior to the whole Shattering. Marika's childhood village is an enormous open clearing with 4 minuscule houses. Leyndell itself was pretty small even for medieval european standards (which is the whole aesthetic the game is obviously aiming for). Hell, there are so many churches in the game that are completely divorced from the rest of the urban grid, which is almost unthinkable if we once again consider the whole medieval european inspiration for the worldbuilding. Many buildings didn't even have windows either. A friend of mine said he chose the Frienzed Flame ending because the game feels like an empty, dead, fake/artificial/diorama-like world that should be razed to the ground and frankly I've come to agree with him. Both Finger Ruins, the Abyssal Woods, the Cerulean Coast (and the redundant Charo's Hidden Grave) and hell even the Jagged Peak all feel empty and unnecessarily large, they occupy an enormous area in the map yet the % of actually exploration-worthy areas is small and makes me feel like the whole thing about the DLC being as large as Limgrave is frankly not that far off from the truth. I was intrigued by the Abyssal Woods, for a long time it was this mysterious area in the map, getting there in the first place requires exploring a bunch of secret places - but when I got there I was disappointed. It was supposed to be this super creepy area that even Torrent was afraid of crossing yet the biggest threat there were these lame invincible enemies that frankly didn't even pose that much of a threat. The difficulty is extremely punishing and unfair at times, specially Radahn. It was such a pain in the ass that after a couple dozen times - with summons, without summons, changing my build, etc - I just gave up. I have errands to run, things to do, I cannot spend this much time trying to figure out a way to defeat a videogame boss that was deliberately designed to be inaccessibly frustrating. It's simply NOT FUN. Yeah yeah this is subjective and all but frankly I'm worried for people whose main source of fun and entertainment is subjecting themselves to frustration and repetition over and over. The reward for that hapless gauntlet is but a weapon I hear isn't even that good + some vague cutscene from the launch trailer + an amount of runes you can amass by the Palace-Approach Ledge Road in like 10 minutes. Add insult to injury, I found it extremely stupid of them to pull this whole "Radahn as a promised consort, made of the remains of Mohg" storyline. It feels like some idea shoddily conceived by the writers that probably didn't fit into the main game and then was shoved here, it feels extremely out of nowhere. It revives two foes that have gone down in rather glorious ways (I found both fights difficult but well designed), and at the end of the day the DLC does not answer key questions. Who were the Numen that Marika (and possibly also Maliketh) descends from? How did Marika hide Messmer? Where does Melina, arguably the games deuteragonist, fit in all of this family tree? Rellana's lackluster introduction failed to convey the fact that she is a sister to Rennala and an aunt to two of the most important characters from the base game, namely Ranni and Radahn. I'm sorry but the whole 'explaining key lore details through vague item descriptions' doesn't cut anymore, not for something of this scale. So many items and talismans feel useless. Death Blight, Madness and Sleep status effects are basically devoid of function in PvE, as just attacking enemies will be a much faster way to deal with them. Poison and Scarlet Rot frankly feel redundant. I find the score/soundtrack nothing to write home about either, it's just generic epic orchestral music with faux gregorian chant in the background, everything sounds the same. Anyway, I'm gonna be frank, I came to Elden Ring expecting something that would fix some of issues that had me pulling out my hair in anger/frustration over at Lies of P, like the horrible lack of a poise mechanic, attosecond-long i-frames that leave you no space to avoid attacks, heal or retaliate, awful dodging, etc. But frankly ER made me appreciate some other aspects of LoP more. Unfortunately, however, being critical towards Elden Ring in any capacity does not often invite polite, cordial discussion, but an army of lobotomized drones with an obsessed droolling fanboy mentality calling it the best game of all history and condescendingly telling others to "Git Gud".

I went back to Dark Souls 1 and im having way more fun exploring Lodran than i did in this bland open world

Fantastic Review/Critique. Finaly more nuance then "Its just bad Bosses and to much reused Stuff" and "EZ Boss its not bad just git gud and a perfect World". Great Video, keep it up!

Scooby Doo Fragments lmao i'm dying

in my opinion, a lot of problems that come with sotes bosses aren't really problems with the bosses themselves but problems with learning them.

Dude I felt like a crazy person with the Gaol Knight. Feels good to be validated. Another fight that was weird was the Dragonkin NPC you fight in a catacomb. He would stagger on hit but after the first stagger he would recover and hit you back even before the time it took to finish my follow up swing. It was literally forced damage. And it's not like I was using a slow weapon. I had the uchigatana Anyway, good video!

You've put into words why summons bother me. Elden Ring was my first From game. I used them on my first playthrough, and when I beat the game, I didn't feel like I knew anything about any of the bosses. I felt I just got lucky. I went back and did a full replay, melee and no summons, and that's the moment the genre "clicked" for me. It built my confidence so much that I even went on to beat the game at level 1 and I went on to beat DS3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro since. The design of the summons are really cool and I would love to use them while still keeping the constant threat of being hit. Maybe make them weaker and don't have bosses aggro them? Great video.

40$ you could buy 2 skins in COD.

Super cool video, keep up the amazing content !!

12:34 somehow this line perfectly describes how I believe marika feels when she is finally free from the curses she and her family has, it’s just a throwaway line from godricks last bit of his dialogue and yet the way it flows with the hum of marika’s theme just makes me sit back and listen… Beautiful…

21:53 As both a gamer who´s been playing fromsoft stuff for years and someone who´s profession has to do with reading comprehension and writing, you´d be surprised of how much this is so not the case. People don´t read. And because they don´t read, they miss out on key chunks of information. This is happening everywhere in life: college, work, everyday life and, of course, videogames. I agree with you on the fact that we cannot dismiss valid criticism with a simple "git gud" cause that shit is cringe, but the total obliviousness and lack of willingness to engage with any fundamentally complex written text in any form of media is a real phenomenom. I´ve seen it expressed in Elden Ring players who´ve had the game for two years now and still haven´t got a clue of how to make life easier for themselves, cause they just boot it up and hack away till they lose so much they get bored. The amount of times people I´ve discussed the DLC with aren´t even aware of the existence of the scadu tree fragments is mind blowing. Nice video, it had some thoughtful insights :)

Amidst the seas of rapturous praise, I think videos like these are especially important. It's extremely useful for fostering your critical eye to deeply and thoroughly dissect what it is you like, dislike, and think could be better, while also offering up new ideas going forward. It's very rare, in both videos of extreme praise and overwhelming negativity, for you to completely agree with either one, so I think every single one of these videos discussing the ups and downs of this particular DLC and how it recontextualizes stuff from the base game is a worthy critique. Love the vid, love the points, keep it up 👍👍

FS created Sekiro and that was the best fighting mechanics they put out, ever. Only to completely abandon it in ER. They don't need to get inspired by Lies of P, they need to remember how great Sekiro was!

Is anyone going to talk about how scadutree fragments, revered spirit ash, golden seeds, and sacred tears ALL carry over into NG+? The only way you're hunting them again is if you start a new file

honestly this has nothing to do with the video but why would they hide midra so well only to give him what feels like such low scaling? that boss’s design is so good but held back by the level most people will be when finding him.

The intro felt very reminiscent of Joseph Anderson's video, which I recently rewatched. The "yeah probably, but" thing. Not sure if intentional, but I enjoyed it.

Loved the intro pun. Bravo! B) Really great video! I thought you laid out and navigated your points very thoroughly. The effort you put into this really shows, great job! :)

Glad I’m not the only one that noticed FromSoft’s inability to balance their game smh

The 2nd phase of the final boss had me thinking it wasn't worth it and I should delete my save to stop me from wasting more time on it. I didn't, I've beat it twice, and I'm sure it wasn't worth it. I didn't "gitgud", I got lucky. The second victory took a tiny number of attempts compared to the first, but it still feels more like luck than skill.

This is one of the best videos on the subject ive seen holy hell

I miss when stamina actually meant something in souls games. 99.99% of my time in combat was just reacting to attacks instead of planning of what I'm going to do. Bosses punish playing aggressive too much and with stamina being so generous, it was just too much reaction. I played Ds1 and remembered that you can't just roll then attack immediately after all the time. You had to plan every move, everything you did mattered. Every dodge, every spell, every block, every attack had weight in the fight. Healing was riskier as you had to stand still. Spells were actually fun to use as you didn't need to have a ton of FP to use. Just as long as you met the requirements to cast the spell, you could cast it. No need to level up 2 stats for it, just level up the one and you're good. It allowed more flexibility in it. Dark Souls 2 perfected it as spells actually used stamina, but still didn't use the FP system

I really feel like the fragments ruined the dlc. Screwed up the whole difficulty curve. I really cant understand why they made this change.

Our tarnished is a demi God Refborn from the walking monolith. The half blood offspring. That's why we van slay gods. As to why we are "unknown" we were bastards tarnished/ demigod and died off of the lands between. Brought back to be buird as a guarded demigod You can hear the bell, the roar and stomp when we wake up

Genuinely just thank you for this video. I’m so glad to hear some actual fair criticism on the DLC. So many moments I was thinking “exactly” during this lol

when you said we're friends with all the npcs to then just turn and kill them without reason you're missing the point entirely, Miquella wanted to ascend to a god and make Radahn his Elden Lord, we are supposed to become Elden Lord, we can't just let that happen, we infiltrate into Miquella's charmed followers, locate some possible allies (Ansbach with his allignance to Mohg and Thiollier with St. Trina) and disrupt the entire plan because to us Miquella is no more than a competitor we must crush in our journey, we actually betray Miquella's followers with clear reason, nothing "just happens" randomly

It's funny that you said "I have learned nothing from fighting this boss." I had the exact same thoughts after entering the DLC. None of the experience I gained fighting Malenia carried over to the DLC. It literally does not matter. Also, the clunkiness of this games input / que system works against any enjoyment I'm deriving from the game. It's my last FS game. I've played since DS1 and issues present in that game can be still seen in ER. Funnily enough, their best game was DS2 IMO.

I 90% agree with your quest design criticism. Yes, Lies of P has better quest design- but in my opinion- the better design of lies of P brings the quest design closer to more modern gaming quest design rather than improving on the souls-like quest design. From soft really needs to learn how to advance quests without requiring a bonfire/reload. I mean- you can miss an entire ending of the game if you sit at the lakeside grace only once which many experianced players will do since its the first grace in a new area with 3 graces slightly further into exploring the area- with ZERO indication you should return to that grace if you dont need to top off ypur flasks.

that Radahn presentation pretty much says it all. there's no fitting description for that other than bullshit. you forgot to mention how every boss and their mother has a tendency to outright fly into the air repeatedly so you can't hit them. the centipede lady does that shit all the time and its fucking frustrating to deal with.

I felt personally attacked when he showed the jump attack spam footage and was like “yeah some playstyles make the game too easy” LOL

"Some item description suggests Kind Miquella is not so kind, but why is this our problem? " Yeah, yeah. I baffled how game just imply you will see him as a villain after you discovered SPOOKY MIND CONTROL!!! 1 But if we look closer we will see only three options for this world to function. 1. Golden ordered. Yes, that one, constantly drenched in blood, wars, subjugation, punishment, guilt, injustice etc (we are it's ruler now btw, just a reminder) 2. Something-something stars, cosmic order, maybe who knows, probably subjugation, blood and stuff, but maybe not? 3. Miquella will command everyone to stop killing and torturing each other. But it will be with SPOOKY MIND CONTROL so it's worse than constant bloodshed and we should kill him asap, to prevent people who want to murder and torture others from being robbed of their free will. Yeah, i don't know, game. It would be better if we can live without bloodshed AND mind control, but of all options you gave us, mind control doesn't look that scary.

Legacy dungeon is still peak on the base game. All legacy dungeons on dlc felt short and very linear.

Amazing video. The most well-thought review I've seen so far

This is the type of video I’ll be showing my kids. This shit is perfection.

Man, you basically put everything I've been trying to figure out about this DLC and how it sat with me, in better words than I could ever muster. Especially with Radahn, I felt... No joy in beating him.

The craft system of this game is a disgrace, why we dont buy the materials from the site of grace?

Empty areas are too large. Most secrets are on the point but some secrets feel impossible without guides / not suit the size of open-world.

careful, fromdrones gonna call you stupid

I am also tired of hearing people talk about Scadutree fragments and act like they excuse From from all criticism. They basically refuse to balance anything themselves and place all the burden on the player, then when the player doesn't get it right they and all their cultists tell them to git gud and collect fragments.

It's the discussions like this that help me to continue pushing.

In regards to the question around the 14 minute mark “why are we even here” Well after finding out Miquellas intentions it makes perfect sense why we have to kill him. Our goal is to become Elden lord and we find out that Miquellas trying to bring his age with Radahn as Elden lord which would basically render our whole journey and our tarnisheds suffering up to that point meaningless. Our goal has been the same from the start. Become Elden lord and there cannot be two.

Levelling up my scadu blessing did not make the bosses any more fun nor decrease their combo length from 15 hits to 10 hits or something. Gitting gud just means I'm smart enough to walk backwards for 10 seconds and poke them once. Where is the fun?

Good ahh vid fr u deserve a sub

Defence doesn't have diminishing returns. It gets better the more you have in fact. You have to look at it from an ehp stand point to get the true picture. Defence is actually stupidly op

Might be multiple replies as i digest the video. Yes saw some challenge runners also say how some bosses are just badly designed and inconsistent. As you mentioned with bob. This attack should stagger him. But those times he just gets something off is so dumb. This challenge runner brought it up by malenia. How sometimes she gets hyper armor. Or how some bosses take multiple parries. It makes the parry less rewarding or just not as consistent.

Bro ripped off Joseph Anderson intro so clean that I ain't even mad about it

One thing I will say is that this DLC has probably some of the coolest looking bosses in the series in my opinion. I also really liked the narrative. The fight against Radahn doesn't make me feel like I am fighting the last boss or some big evil baddie, I actually feel like I'm fighting a hero. A guy who's revived at his peak, not just a memory of what a hero he was but the actual real life example of the power the demigods had. The entire game and pretty much the whole souls series we fight enemies that are dying, diseased, horrifically injured or unwilling to fight to begin with. People who have given up or people who are a shadow of their former selves. The entire time we play the game the people and descriptions tell of a world filled with legends so big you'd be in awe just looking at them. Fighters so powerful they could stop the stars themselves in their tracks, but we never really get the feeling of seeing any of them even when we do manage to face them in a fight head-on. The DLC really changed that. For once I felt like I wasn't fighting against a powerful grandpa but a young hero in his prime, a real living legend.

One thing that annoys me about the skibidi tree fragments is that they didn’t just give you one after a boss fight and scale it accordingly like how sekiro did it with boss remembrances being used to raise attack power. Fromsoft stated outright that the skeet fragments were going to be similar to the remembrances so WHY MAKE THE SYSTEM WORSE?

Such an excellent video. Subbed.

Really cool video! I am surprised this video has only ~1700 views

I totally agree with your points regarding the NPC quests and the boss fight being inconsistent, some being centred around fromsoft expecting us to use the broken item/builds or summons.

I am also excited to see whats next. There is no doubt in my mind fromsoftware saw what lies of p did and wanted to try and experiment with a dodge and parry synthesis as well. The hardtear retroactively made a lot of fights more engaging in my opinion.

For character motivation it's stated that we too were under influence of Miquella spell that ushered us into Shadow Realm, but for what purpose it's hard to tell, since we're ones that end his life.

Your jagged peak intro is... well, peak

Excellent video. My exact complaint about the boss design but explained in an excellent fashion at the 27 minute mark.