If you're having PC performance issues: CHECK IF RAY TRACING WAS ENABLED. It was for me and tanked my performance massively. Disabling it fixed all of my issues immediately.

"Is it more annoying than a Runebear?" Is my personal test for whether I am having fun with a fight or not.

The biggest update was them changing the bandai namco logo to a black background. No more flashbang when opening the game!

I'm 34 and have been gaming since I was 2, I've never once in my life heard the term "bishotting". This has me completely stunlocked.

My biggest issue with the boss design is the visual assault that a lot of them have, many bosses have such bright particle effects with the attacks and the stage usually has additional color contrast to make things even brighter than normal. That and a lot of bosses just jump around too much and force you to chase them. A boss like Melania is a good example of a boss that has long combos, tons of attacks, and aggro, but virtually zero particle effects, you know exactly what every attack is doing or where it's going. Many of these DLC bosses can't say the same thing.

Also they really ought to give you a scadu fragment sensor after the 2nd to last encounter. In the base game it's easy to tell where tears are, and seeds aren't too hard to find either because they stand out in the environment and drop from specific enemies. But scadu fragments can be literally anywhere, it's absurd.

Bruh Old Hunters DLC fucked me up Loved every second

Its funny how my friend who is max level, 99 on everything is calling me on discord constantly to complain about the bosses.

I see that Margit has passed on his refund button to Dancing Lion

Regarding the enemies hiding around corners and whatnot, I've played Souls games so much since 2009 that I have internalized a lot of the design principles. In this DLC, more than once I've seen an item ahead to pick up, and correctly anticipated the hidden enemy ready to jump you when you pick it up. People should know how this works by now

26:30 The low level crafting materials are put into the DLC so that you can upgrade the new weapons in the DLC even if you didn't grab the optional Bell Bearings from the bas game.

I'm more disappointed that you didn't add the Majula theme from DS2 as background music

I wonder if there's actually an issue with how clear/accessible the Scadutree upgrade system is. When it comes to leveling up via runes, the process is extremely simple - if you can fight it, it gives you runes, runes are progress - and by comparison, Scadutree Fragments essentially require getting lucky in stumbling on the right ruin/nook/area, which you cannot directly control (you just have to go to the next location and hope you spot the right items), so people feel less agency to leave & find power elsewhere, leading to more throwing themselves at walls.

Some of the complaints I've seen are really bizarre like... yeah the playerbody enemies use Estus. They have since Dark Souls 1. Yeah, the heavy weapon wielders get super-armor *they have since Dark Souls 1.* I've even watched someone descend into a full scrubquote because their guard got broken by a boss and it true combod into an attack that killed them, *yeah I'd hope a guard break leads to a true combo!*

Finding upgrades was a huge help. Even though we all have the bell-bearings, it still costs like 90K to fully upgrade a weapon. I don't wanna do that every time just to find out if I even wanna use the damn thing

About enemy speed: when Artorias came out, everybody complained that he was too fast for DS1. Fast forward to DS3, hell, even Bloodborne, and Artorias fights like a regular enemy in this game About scaling: People were literally complaining about the difficulty in Elden Ring ever since it came out, especially when it came to end game. Only later (though there’s still a lot of people who don’t get it) did people realize they needed to level vigor and be more patient Point being, explore more; enjoy the dlc for what it is, a story expansion, not what it isn’t (a boss fight simulator), and the experience will be MUCH more rewarding

The person that said this is "Worse than Ashes of Ariendal" is up there with one of the worst takes I've ever heard

Raytracing wasn't enabled, and my game drops to 30fps fighting the lion 💀.

I think people need to realise how important the DLC upgrade systems are and why it's so important to explore, if you just B-line it to every main boss your going to get destroyed you can find plenty of Scadutree fragments and Revered spirit ash in the open world to aid you in combating the admittedly tough bosses, there are some valid criticism's of this DLC like bosses fucking you as soon as you enter the arena so it's next to impossible to summon your spirit ash if you are going for that and I do tire of seeing the dull dragon and ulcerated tree spirit fights but there optional so it doesn't really matter, I think the main point about the mixed reviews is that a lot of people are new to Fromsoft's soulsborne games and they didn't realise that this DLC would be Elden Ring's end game but harder and if that isn't for them that's fine tbh.

My only gripe so far is the camera notably in the golden hippo and dancing lion fight sometimes you just end up in the wall and you cant see a thing and then face eat 2 attacks and fall over. Fighting the camera isnt new to from tbf but its noticeably bad here.

There is a definite issue with performance. Started with the patch that came out the day before the DLC. There are other posts online complaining about the same thing, but personally I had already been playing for a few days before the DLC and dropped from 50s to low 40s as soon as that patch hit EDIT: never had ray tracing enabled to begin with. Disabling hyperthreading in bios helped, but that helps for most games so long as you’re not multitasking

I think people don’t understand the Scadurtree fragment system and why it exists. TLDR; people are used to being overpowered, and when they aren’t overpowered in the dlc, they get confused and assume something is wrong. If enemies were similar difficulty to late base game enemies, people would absolutely destroy them because full builds in Elden Ring are so powerful. Part of the fun is exploring the world and finding new, powerful stuff, but a consequence of that is that stacking all the powerful effects together makes you insanely op. Instead of making enemies harder and having even more powerful stuff to find in the dlc, they decided to make enemies deliberately overtuned and use Scadutree fragments to encourage exploration. People think their Comet Azure one shot build should work in the dlc, and when it doesn’t, and there isn’t a Super Comet Azure spell to find to get stronger, they get mad. They don’t understand Scadutree fragments and why those are the primary upgrade item instead of being able to upgrade weapons higher or getting even stronger gear.

I've been on Messmer for 4 hours with no bleed or summons/ashes. I would appreciate any prayers sent my way.

I checked the fextralife comments for Messmer and omg it was literally all negative 😭😭😭

Honestly, the thing I like the least about Elden Ring in the first place (aside from everything about the chalice dungeons) is the constant thought of "Is this supposed to be super hard, or am I supposed to upgrade my weapon five more times, level twenty, then come here?" Obviously thats smoothed out with familliarity, but I can see people being confused and frustrated baecause they dont understand that they arent keeping up with the core progression of the game or knowing whats a reasonable place to be.

This is not what review bombing is. Most of these were reasonable. It seems like you were in agreement or at least partial agreement with most of these reviews too, so I don’t necessarily understand how this could be viewed as review bombing indicated by the title. I also don’t agree with the optional content take. For example, Commander Gaius is guarding 5 fragments. If we’re going to stick with the idea that fragments are more or less parallel to weapon upgrades (literally increases your AR) then that would be like ignoring 2 tiers of weapon upgrades by pacifying that boss as meaningless optional content that you can just simply ignore if you’re struggling. Would you want to go to Malenia or Godfrey with a +9/+23 weapon? I mean you could, I guess. But that just seems silly. The point I’m trying to make is this optional content may as well be considered mandatory for most players. I think the Scadu upgrades are mostly a failure. On one hand I understand the reasoning for their implementation, on the other I have literally never encountered anybody complain about the thing they are trying to “fix” as per its implementation. As least from my experiences, going into the previous games DLC I don’t care about leveling more, at least that’s not the primary goal. The feeling of progression almost entirely comes from getting new rings, cool weapons, spells, armor, etc. in fact if it’s a DLC you’ve been waiting for, the build is likely already completely leveled (120). Leveling more would just be taking yourself out of specific invasion/coop brackets. So I feel like this issue they are trying to combat is in fact a non-issue and illogical from my perspective. I also don’t view purely numerical changes to my AR and negation as meaningful character progression. But that’s a whole other topic. Sorry for typing a book. I beat the final boss last night and it sucked. Im just so glad they are done with this game and can move onto something else. Maybe another armored core game or back to linear souls.

I think chasing the flowing dance boss style is fine but I think it's long overdue they separate the roll button from sprint. Bosses and reaction times are at all time highs and nothing feels worse than getting hit from the fixed delay from the input system trying to determine "is it a roll or sprint" Some boss attacks were clearly designed to hit behind guard (hitbox lands above or to your flank or even whips around behind you) and is an interesting design choice that really only the most observant are going to know how to counter play. Locked on camera is a big "no" for some bosses - actually makes fight harder Final boss is very good though.

for you nioh fans out there, in the second game there was the boss katsuie shibata. Absolute powerhouse, really flustering and annoying every time he pops up to the point where i thought he was bullshit. But once you found out his timings and your windows to attack it becomes a matador dance like scott mentions

I watched this entire video while a boss did one combo

i genuinely just thought i was rusty and needed to get back into the swing of things, my first instinct wasnt to give a fucking bad review, thats like half the fun of souls likes THE DIFFICULTY

People when the dlc for a hard game is hard Honestly my only issue with it is just by and large elden ring bosses. Extremely long combos and camera issues with some of the larger bosses.

Hot take: I like the scadutree blessings. Personally I'm tired of weapon upgrades and I'm glad there is something that upgrades everything regardless of your build or weapon upgrade status.

I started the dlc with a rl180 str char on ng+, and I've been cruising through the dlc. Every once in awhile I'll hit a wall with my main weapons and have to play around with gear and talismans, but that's the point. You're supposed to adapt. Also Ive not had any issues with getting 2 shot, I can usually tank and trade with most of the enemies I've come across so far

Genuine questio: Was the Ray tracing set after the 1.10 in Playstation?

The "reused boss" isn't even the same model, just the same overall design. It's an entirely different model, with new animations, and a battle that flows completely different from the version of the character in the base game.

I cannot stress this enough, your character levels means absolutely nothing. You have to, have to, have to, get the scad blessings. You will continue getting smashed until you do. If you stay within the necessary blessing range for the content you are on the difficulty should feel like Haligtree or Farum. If you can only take 1 hit from a boss, go look for more fragments. It scales pretty high so if youre in the late game at +10 or +11 youre too low.

the only thing i agree is that the enemies have a lot of poise

Fucking lmao that one review on the side around 11 min "NG+8 and everything one shots you and has 20k HP" Yes, that's how NG+ scaling works in FromSoft games can I have some of whatever you're smoking please? peak gamer

Im going through the dlc on a 125 character and I’m having a great time. Bosses are difficult and I can’t just weapon art them to death in 2 seconds

My only complaint how many dragon fights there are. Ive always felt that the dragon world bosses have been some of the lamest fights in the base game. The first time you fight one it's really cool, but there are so many it just becomes more of an annoyance to come across another one after a while, and the dlc has a bunch of them. I was exploring the map a little last night and ran into 6 dragons in like 45 minutes. Other than that I've been loving the dlc.

A great game. The only critique I have is the hard counters to builds like Arcane and Intelligence. For example basically being forced to parry the Gaol Knight or the Ghostflame Dragon having like 90% resistance to magic damage. It forces builds to respec or use cheese methods to deal with them. For example on my INT build I had to swap to a Nakakiba with Spectral Lance to take him down because I couldn't spec enough into Faith to use much else. The bosses should be hard, but I dislike the hard-counter Fromsoft employs with its boss design.

Something I have not seen anyone mention is the lack of input reading that bosses have. Bosses in base game will react to you healing and punish you and sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. DLC bosses may hit really hard but you can just heal in there face most of the time and they just let you. I never noticed bosses having a reaction to using the flask which I think also helps balance out the difficulty.

Scott it's bright and sunny in Detroit today

Bayle just either shoots a fire missile at me or bum rushes me the second I get through the fog and not only do I not have a moment to summon a spirit ash but the guy you are supposed to summon to help you, Egnog or whatever his name is... when I activate the sign a pop up appears asking me if I want to summon him. Like, no shit asshole, that's why I clicked the Y button on the sign. Meanwhile, the Balrog Dragon is already lubed up and ready to take away my innocence and I'm just supposed to take it because fuck my life I guess. At least Malenia was polite enough to walk slowly towards me so I had time to do my thing but not Bayle, OH NO, he wants that ass and he gonna get that ass and my consent is not a factor.

11:00 I had a great time with the dlc so far, but I feel that complaint. I almost never want to fight overworld encounters, because it is just a waste of time compared to horse dashing past everything.

Around 16:36 the poster had an issue with sword swing delays in combos and you're answer to that was pointing to a boss that had a dance like motion to their combos. If the dance combo is varied enough than yeah, I would say that would be fun to lean, and what I mean by this is if dance A had fast, fast, delay, fast and then Dance B was Fast, delay, fast, fast each dance having a visual telling of what's about to come that to me is a great learning experience. The issue comes when there isn't any difference, let's say throughout a fight a boss brings their weapon to their left side and swings it to their right than into a combo, now part way through this fight the boss does the same start up animation but delays the swing before going through and doing the combo. That to me isn't fun because there isn't any telling animations that the delay is going to happen and therefore turns into a guessing game on which ones is going to happen. Couple this with over tuning of damage from bosses where one mistake results in death, the experience can be rather frustrating. Let's take Kos from BloodBorne as a good example for varied combos. Each move set has its own start up animation so a player could learn what was going to happen and react accordingly, while failing to learn the move set will result in lack of heals and eventual death. It shouldn't be about dying 50 times to a single mistake; it should be about minimizing the mistakes over the fight.

I was wondering if you think Messmer should be nerfed. Is it not fun?

In response to the "not being able to use the sandbox" argument: You can 100% use all the fancy spells/incantations during boss battles...if you summon. If what you wanna do is have fun with all the tools the game gives you, then just summon. If what you want is to beat the boss solo, then you should be ready to expect to have your number of potential winning strategies be reduced significantly.

my rule of thumb is if gino machino says a boss is tripe then you should probably just stopdefending it

The Dancing Lion isn't the only one with a terrible camera thing. There is at least one Ulcerated Tree Spirit I found and that rhino got a camera movement waaaay worse than anything happening with the lion. Especially when you get pummeled to a wall. In regards to grabs... the rhino grabs and the dude with the Rakshabladethingy too ^^

Hey scott im having a rough time with the dryleaf. Im running blood dryleaf arts and i just feel like im not doing enough damage to mesmer. Really struggling tbh. Im at +9 upgrade and refus3 to use summons to win. Any tips or weapons you would recommend i have 6 more larval tears to respec(anyone who has beaten him can reply as well)

Every big boss in the DLC has camera issues Scott... I beat the "hippo" boss when I stopped locking on AGAIN. Its fucking annoying how shit the camera is on so many bosses. Makes you fight the camera not the boss. Basically any boss that isn't human sized had camera issues. Its bad. I will outright say also, the game has many "easy" modes if you choose to play a certain way (summons or greatshield) style. There is a fine line between difficulty and fun. And I will say the DLC went the road of difficulty rather than fun. Every boss doesn't need to be a dance you need to learn, every boss doesn't have to be Melenia. I love Melenia, optional, out of the way, but difficult as hell.(if you don't cheese her) I felt the DLC just said, "lets make everything difficult and every attack do 60% of your HP + tip." I can honestly say playing the previous dark souls DLC's on release, they were difficult, but never so difficult that it stopped being fun. Like fuck, these bosses don't let you breathe and god forbid you didn't roll at the right time of the first multi combo attack with every attack taking away 60% health + tip (you're dead)

I feel like they should have added the ability to upgrade armor in elden ring imo that would have been nice

9:00 i think that guy was referring to reused moves, not entire characters. for example (spoilers incoming) the putrescent knight resuses some moves from orphan of kos, and bayle reuses some moves from midir. still, i dont think a couple reused moves is that big of a deal, i just think thats what that guy was pointing out.

I do know if i should get into the dlc with my lvl 150 character or just start a new one

I just beat the dlc today, all the remembrance bosses killed, and I do think the worst offender of the boss issue ive had with Elden Ring is the final boss. The final boss was the first time in Elden Ring that I legit went "I dont want to play this" but I was right at the end so I finished it anyways. My main issue is just an Elden Ring issue honestly, some bosses feel like im playing a turn based game were the enemy gets to hit 10 times and each time is a qte that if I pass, I get to have 1 hit, if I fail I either die or need to use my 1 hit timer to heal instead. I personally just think bosses and such are moving to fast and doing to much for the usual formula. My favorite Fromsoft title is Bloodborne, and I felt like the speed you got to move at plus all the actions you could take could let you get behind bosses and punish them a lot more than Elden Ring, but that is the boss issue for me. The only other issue is with the fragments thing, I get why they are there and what they are for, but it does feel bad that my levels dont feel important anymore. Like I lost 500k souls at one point and just didnt care, which doesnt feel great imo.

Funny part about "the reused character" is that the model is completely new...like from scratch. Just compare the models or even the armor and you see that not a single tri is copied.

I loved the DLC, however i do agree on a lot of the complaints. Do you Need to get all the scadutree fragments and revered spirit ashes again on the 2nd in NG+? I Hope Not

It would be awesome and totally feasible for the dlc weapons to drop partially upgraded

As far as copy-pasted stuff I definitely argree, it comes across as lazy and quantity over quality 💯 many that praise Elden Ring so much have never even played the other Souls games.

I enjoy the DLC, but I do feel like the DLC is TOO hard. Speaking as someone who's played every souls game and DLC since Dark Souls 1. The difficulty is not in the boss moves or anything, but it feels like they jacked up the health and damage of enemies entirely too much. There's also entirely too much empty space in the map. I would've preferred if they shrank down the giant plain fields and just made the content more dense.

To be honest I actually loved the Divine Beast Dancing Lion fight. The music is top notch and all of the attacks are usually just variations on the base moveset from phase 1. My main issue was with the camera, but that’s a problem with almost every large boss in the game.

Rellana is optional? What path goes around her?

I found multiple bosses creating camera issues like the "big" Dragon, Hippo, the other reviving Treespirit apart from the first boss... I love this DLC, but I think that the comment about the non-stop chaining of combos holds some truth. You loose soo many fights due to being just a tiny bit inpatient, because you want to end a fight in less than 15 Minutes. 30+ Deaths for multiple bosses each... I think many people can loose interest after a while.

The exact same way people complained about Orphan of Kos, Demon of Hatred, Midir, Sister Friede and Fume Knight, it's how people are crying right now. The usual BS moments in a Fromsoft game, outside some segments, are pretty reasonable to deal with. The camera was an issue with the Dancing Lion but unlocking it made it far easier.

Also with the smithing stone as you can see in one of the reviews people don't talk to npcs. So who knows if they even go to shops or if they just head charge and see items.

I love the DLC but my biggest complaint is the bosses. Some of them have been decently fun but a lot of them just attack too much and too fast. I tried not using spirit summons because i dont want to cheese bosses but it was the only way i felt i could actually land an attack. That twin moon Knight just doesnt stop moving and she doesnt get staggered even by colossal weapons, you have to dodge for 5 minutes to get 1 attack off that barely does damage because her health pool and resistance to damage is extremely high. If she at least got stunned like Melania did it would have felt fine but currently on a lot of the bosses its just a dodge fest with very little interactive gameplay in my opinion.

Rellana took my several hours, and a few breaks to beat. Love this shit.

first review and exploration issue: the guy literally does exploration. he goes to an optional point of interest to explore it and gets his cheeks clapped. that's clearly a design issue on fromsoft behalf. also game like elden ring should fly on 4080, there's no excuse why it dips to 40 fps even with rtx on. other technical issues are valid as well. if it's bad in the base game, and it doesn't get better in the dlc, it is a problem and valid criticism

to comment on your "roll to react" stuff. It's REALLY hard when the boss does a feint to bait that roll out of. That's me reacting to the boss. I get punished for reacting. Bosses require memorization of attacks now, rather than reaction, and while that was a thing in the base elden ring, I don't think it was nearly as bad as it is here. In the base game, the bosses delayed attacks, the dlc bosses has them straight up act like they are gonna attack then not, then attack while you are recovering from a roll.

Constructive criticism as requested: I am on NG7 with a 380 character. My fundamental complaint with the pervasive "one-shotting" by bosses is that it breaks the core mechanics of the game. Everything from leveling to equipment loadouts. Why would anyone waste points putting them into vigor if being hit at 10 Vigor is the same as being hit at 70 Vigor? Why wouldn't I redistribute those points into damage or endurance? Why would I occupy a memory slot with something like Golden Vow if it's not going to mitigate enough damage to keep me from dying from a tail sweep? Why equip Dragoncrest Shield or any of the resistance/drake talismans when they don't mitigate enough damage to keep you from dying in one hit? It breaks the game imo. All that aside; I'm currently standing outside the final area of the game and have very much enjoyed the DLC with the exception of one particular encounter (that is entirely optional).

Always appreciate those who call out the players who are simply too lazy or stubborn to do any research into games they don't play. It took me about 3 years of watching FromSoftware lore and player content to push me back into Bloodborne after raging away and I've never looked back since. I'm not really into the Souls titles but Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Sekiro (yet to play) very much appeal to me, all for different reasons. Love your content and engagement.

I honestly thought the DLC enemies being more powerful than the ones in the base game was a no brainer. This IS a souls game, the whole point of these games is that they are very hard and require constant commitment and dedication to be beaten. What would be the point in a DLC if anyone with a maxed out character from the base game can just mow down everything right away?

I honestly disagree with the notion of "If it's optional but bad, it doesn't matter" like why shouldn't we expect top quality?

I saw someone complain about how the dlc utilizes the same engine as the base game...........

This reminds me of when people were up in arms because the Helicopter in AC 6 was giving them a proper Armored Core welcome.

AT around 16:30 the point he is making is that is not fun. Bosses holding swings designed to punish you for reacting to him swinging then roll are just not fun to most people. Slowing down or speeding up moves to punish the player for reacting is stupid. Its not "panic rolling" I panic roll when I freak out and spam the roll button, If I predict/ react thats not panic rolling, I am not panicking. Not all bosses do this in the game so its clearly not what Elden ring is. Its just in my opinion fromsofts pathetic attempt at trying to be hard without changing core gameplay. Having me fight the boss until I memorize everything isn't fun. If I wanted to memorize, I'd go play a matching game. Every other souls game you can play reactively. Elden ring bosses just are not fun. I also bought the DLC hoping they would improve which they didn't. With other games I would naturally memorize and make it easier while playing reactively. In this game I can't do that. I have to turn my brain off and just memorize everything. I win but its not fun. I just don't have fun. This was not a problem in Lies of P, Sekiro, or DS3. So its clearly not just me not liking the genre. Its a flaw in Elden Ring.

Calling it a review bomb is disingenuous.

My only complaint is the lack of catacombs, caves, dungons, Forts, etc, side stuff to explode outside the main poi's. The map is huge which i'm happy about but has a LOT of waste space. Sure the main game had this problem too but imo the dlc is much MUCH worst. For an example the 2 finger areas, Jagged Peak, the coast, and the Abyssal Woods take up more than half the dlc map and have nothing in them beside the one reason they are there (aka- A Boss, or the horn finger things). That would be like if the Mt. Gelmir only had the Volcano Manor. My example might not make total sense, but I hope you get my complaint

Performance is bad even with ray tracing turned off and a 3080; will wait for a patch to continue playing. Really annoying to constantly lose frames whenever the boss does a combo.

For the dragon debate, there are 3 ghost flame dragons, 3 basic dragons for the questline, 1 Farum Azula recycle Fortissax with a new name, and the final boss of that questline which is just a great fight.

33:30 - Might be relevant that Miyazaki himself said he always plays with spirit summons on bosses, so that might explain some of the balancing decisions for the average player. Bosses are hard, yes, but they give you a lot of options you can use as a crutch if you want to. Great shields, spirit summons, bleed procs, etc

wait is the lion dance boss fight optional????

I'm used to playing convergence, so I already expect to be 2 shot.

"You dont have to fight that boss, just skip it" This is my least favorite argument to hear. Of course if I dont play the DLC I won't have any complaints with it.

I'm a fromsoft die hard and I think certain sections are too hard. Some of the repeating attacking enemies are wayyy too agro and deal too much damage.

From the looks of it, higher NG+ completely put the DLC's difficulty out of whack. If you're still on NG, or lower NG+ it should be just right.

Being optional doesn't make it ok to be bad imo. If you are playing blind you don't know what those dragons gonna give you so most ppl wont gonna skip it.

I just hate looking for the scadu tree fragments. DLC bosses are actually pretty fair honestly once you have enough levels but finding the damn blessings is just a bummer frankly

tbh the only problem is the massive gap between regular enemy difficulty and boss difficulty, i want them to add some unnamed creatures that just fuck me up

final boss has an attack that is completely impossible to dodge consistently. i was expecting difficult not a complete design failure

"something that was bad at launch still being bad in the dlc despite being very well known to be bad cannot be criticized because nothing changed" thanks scott.

One thing I can tell you... Going in there level 135 with only 40 vigor was not a good idea

Eh.. I enjoyed learning timings in most of their games but ER is basically making the souls combat system buckle under its weight tbh.. they need to change the formula up completely at this point to make it more interesting than "Press B at whatever awkward timing we made", it is tired.

I personally loved the Scadu tree fragment system and have been pleasantly surprised so far. Minus the hippo no boss has been actually broken or bullshit at the point I’m at. The fragments create a balanced sense of progression fromsoft has clearly tuned the areas to, which allows them to properly scale the dlc which at the very least mitigates the main game problem of being overleveled or under leveled for an area. Fromsoft couldn’t account for how strong players would be for in the areas of the main game; this no longer seems to be the case since they have a good reference point of general power players will be at when entering a new zone. I say all of this as a certified Elden ring main game hater - I did not like the open world, the constant repeat enemies, as well as the overall feel of the game. The dlc has sold me. It’s what I wanted Elden Ring to be.

The only thing i disliked was the final boss and tickling him with +12 scadutree. A small nerf for him wouldn’t hurt the overall dlc experience

My issue is a lot of the bosses cannot be hitstunned at all. Rellana will tank a fully charged r2 from a greatsword or colossal weapon and still continue a swing. I think that’s a little ridiculous. Otherwise Im fine with the difficulty.

Performance issues are way more than just raytracing being on or not. I've not had RT on since install and my rig far outspecs the game but has really intense stutter every session The "you don't have to engage with it, it's optional" argument is pretty weak considering you don't KNOW what lies behind that repeated boss #11 Unless you've googled everything beforehand but that can't be recommended either. Also who doesn't want runes from bosses

Its about if you are having fun , i can fight a boss and learn everything it does if its a fun one even if it very hard and fun is subjetive so for me i just didnt had fighting most of the dlc bosses. And it seems a good chunk of people also think that dlc bosses are not fun for them , like sekiro is a very hard game and you dont see that one getting review bombed , just saying people dislike it because its hard is bit of a straw man argument

I believe I have upgraded the Shadow Realm Blessing eight or nine times and have yet to kill a boss.