I have a weird feeling abt this game, sometimes Idk if the intention is to make it hard or just deliberate time waste/design issue. Compared to Thymesia/Lies of P, boss also attack nonstop, needs to parry constantly, and it does damage back/break their weapon, it’s clearly a way to engage with boss/makes combat aggressive. Elden Ring needs to constantly dodge/block/run away & it does nothing to the boss, what’s the point besides time waste? I can see there are designs just for the sake of difficulty, like Ghostrunner’s first boss & last level/Control’s expedition Tier 2&3, needs to precisely control movement/finish before time runs out, it's meant to be hard. Elden Ring is like, sometimes need to watch a guide on how to dodge an atk, then it works out, not even sure if it’s meant to be hard or just design that lacks visual clarity 👀Also, I've heard bad camera in Elden Ring is a "skill issue" cuz you are not supposed to lock on large enemies, is that true? LOL, that's so weird. I lock on to everything. 😄

The amount of crying in this comment section has flooded Liurnia to the depths of the existence lol

It makes me sad that we went from sekiro, a combat system so innovative, complex, and engaging that it was revolutionary, to ER, which is just Darksouls with less thought and detail added to the fine tuned details and mechanics.

There’s always a negative nancy that can’t be pleased 🙄

Understandable take. If you didn't like Elden Ring, this dlc certainly wouldn't change your mind. I liked Elden Ring, and I thought the dlc was just more of the same.

You said Shadow of the Erdtree felt like a bad parody of FROM tropes but that already happened in Dark Souls 2/3 and Elden Ring base game. Dark Souls 2 ran with the trope of the series being only about difficulty. Dark Souls 3 literally ran out of ideas and even made the game's themes a meta narrative around it and cashing in on nostalgia wiping it's hands of most of DS2 and being a direct sequel to 1. Elden Ring...I don't know how many Ulcerated Tree Spirits and generic catacombs needed to spammed to see that FROM fell into the same tropes as other open worlds games. Great video. It really makes me laugh to see how many people got mad at me when I called this Dark Souls 4, 5 and 6 when it turned out to be exactly that including series tradition of having a trash ass end game. I like Elden Ring enough to have played 2 playthroughs but it's no DS1 or Bloodborne (lack of jumping be damned). Lies of P has so far been the only thing taking their formula and pushed it in new directions while having pretty high difficulty without it resorting to cheese.

Every one is reviewer now🤣

I totally disagree with the torrent take, and Im a person that hates horses in games (elden ring, TW3, RDR, etc)....but traveling by foot in this game is incredible tedious because there is so many dead ends and is so empty that it would make it unbearable. If the map was smaller, sure, but not in this one. I 100% agree with the fragments take, its super annoying and makes the exploration a task instead of an adventure. I dont know why it cant be solved with something like "shadow runs": you gain levels by killing enemies in the expansion. Im not as negative as you with the expansion, buy i see your point: boring exploration, bosses with a meta to beat them, builds that are way more effective than others, etc

Sorry, nothing personal, but for me, disabling Torrent in the dlc is the worst take I must've heard about Elden Ring in a long while. I dont understand how the open world would be better without a mount. If you want to fight everything nobody's stopping you. Almost everybody seems to hate that you can't ever summon him in the Abyssal Woods. I didn't mind the first time through but I question the decision to deny using torrent even after getting rid of the aged ones.

Idk I was pretty excited to fight the ghost flame dragons. Also, Deathbirds are great bosses! <---- was playing a holy build and was just excited to see big damage numbers for once

The problem is it’s difficult in a way that isn’t fun or engaging. This combat system is outdated compared to the bosses at this point.

it's time to cash in on the views

And the revered spirit ashes aren't for torrent. They're for powering up your summons in the dlc.

There's well hidden that leads to the joy of discovery, then there's so well hidden that you need to go on a wiki constantly just to access a lot of areas. I found the exploration in the dlc to be a frustrating chore. As far at the abyssal woods, very cool looking area and a good idea to feature a stealth playstyle, but, like the finger areas, devoid of much of anything.

As much as I like the scadutree fragments and have defended them from people who just say it's bad, you had the best and most agreeable take on them. It no longer is an RPG upgrade with these fragments without any choice of how it affects us, which was totally missing and felt flat.

I see your point about torrent, but i dont think i wouldve even finished the DLC if you had to run everywhere. Especially in areas like the finger ruins or cerulean coast where there is essentially nothing for long stretches.

Disagree. The DLC improved on many things from the base game and brought it to a new level. It is arguably the best followup fromsoft has ever made. Obviously it didn't fundamentally change the game, but it's a DLC not a sequel. This applies to *all* of their DLCs. I feel like that's the issue with your critique. You seem to evaluate it based on what a sequel should be, and not an expansion. And, of course, it seems like you disliked the base game so naturally you didn't like the DLC. I feel many of these "mistakes" of ER that you mention are just subjective things you personally didn't like about ER.

really funny to see people rant about the fromcultists and fromdrones, all while excitedly participating in the worlds lamest hate circlejerk

Fix your damn audio. Opinion discarded

Completely off base with the respec mechanic, considering that's on From for not making the fights as manageable with specific builds. Respecs add a whole lot and stop you from having to restart your character and play the game from the start, a thing you yourself admitted was an annoyance in elden ring specifically. I agree with just about everything else however :)

What a trash DLC

Even cheaper AI for player. Just for the sake of Harder gameplay

Regarding Torrent, all they had to do was make all the areas, villages, castles, caves, settlements disable torrent most castles and caves do this, but villages and settlements dont, there are a lot of sections where enemy placement was well thought out, to the point where it was designed to be a challenge to get through, on purpose Getting to the gate before Raya Lucaria, the random leyndell and liurnia knight settlements, hell even the random lookout towers that had a chest at the top, even they had themed enemies guarding them, and all threat made completely null because of torrent The Convergence Mod actually tackles this issue quite a bit, a lot of areas progression is made into an old school Dark Souls experience, with you having to go through _every corner of the area in order to get to the end_ And Castle Morne was given a completely new and unique maze-like "Gate Town" area that you had to complete and survive through, in order for you to get inside the actual castle In vanilla you just ride torrent straight through the front door

Nah it’s good

You have to be absolutey retarded to think that the ER map is giving you too much information. It gives you borderline nothing. I spend, what feels like thousands of hours, just trying to figure out where i am supposed to go next. Its the BotW Map that gives you exactly how much you need. Not ER. ER is overrated AF. :*

Sure the abyss is super cool, BUT THERES NOTHING FUCKING THERE ITS JUST A FORCED TEN MINUTE RUN TO MIDRA

THANK YOU for saying these games have only gotten more and more conventional as time has gone on! That's one of the main reasons why DS1 is one of my favorite games of all time and I can't ever enjoy games like Bloodborne and DS3 anywhere near as much as other people do. As time has gone on I feel that a lot of what I love about DS1 has been sanded away to create games with more and more mass appeal. I'm not trying to say that games having mass appeal inherently makes them worse, but rather that in chasing mass appeal you often end up leaving behind a lot of the flavor and vibe that i love so much about games like DS1.

Oh, and the lore is trash

One thing that's been plaguing the souls community since Dark Souls 2 has been bad criticism rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the game's intent. It's fine to not like the game's own intent and think it's bad, because you didn't like what it attempts to do, but it's completely another to disregard the clear intent and criticize a misunderstanding of it. Scadutree fragments. FromSoft's stated intent was to mimic a power progression similar to early game Elden Ring, without forcing players to level up. As you correctly say, past level 100, power increase from leveling are severely diminished, so they couldn't rely on it. Not to mention once you get to levels like 400 (which would be needed if they wanted to contain the power progression to leveling), you get to a point where a character can use every weapon and every spell, and it no longer has a build and it also breaks the main game - something they didn't want to do. They could've handled Scadutree fragments better, but as an alternative to grinding levels in Mohgwyn palace, they are pretty good. You talk about how Torrent ruins the game's world - an open world medieval action game without Torrent exists and it's called Dragon Age and it's a total slog to play. Yes, Torrent allows you to run past so many enemies, and whether you run past or fight is up to you - I fight pretty much everything I see. You know why? Because I actually enjoy the game, I simply enjoy fighting things. The simple act of fighting is fun, and I get to practice various tricks, parrying, dodging more complex attack patterns, etc. Maybe if people didn't run past the runebears, they wouldn't have so much problem in the DLC :^) Maybe the enemies on your path are there to teach you how to play, and you chose to run past them. I actually like the minibosses like runebears, deathrite birds, etc. I see them more as elites in a game like Diablo 2, not real bosses, and I enjoy them, as a little thing to break up the open world. You complain about the ability to respec, but you also rant about the need to gather up scadutree fragments, and here's why that's stupid - let's say you're level 80 in Altus Plateau and you realize you don't enjoy your character. You want to now try a katana for example. In Dark Souls, it would take you something like 10 hours to get a new character and get it to a similar position in the game - which would be level ~35 and in Anor Londo. Dark Souls is really short, it can be beaten in a day without speedrunning it. In that sense, "changing your build" by starting anew is a lot smaller committment in Dark Souls than it is here. You also complained about how awful it is to have to get the scadutree fragments on a new character (not really true, they're almost all a part of organic progression), but you want to have to grind 100+ levels if you just wanted to try a weapon with a different stat scaling. The other FromSoft games are really small - one time, to get the Sekiro platinum, I sat and beat it 3 times in a single day. I didn't even speedrun it, it's just a really short game. Elden Ring, due to its size, requires some concessions. Elden Ring encourages build variety through the combination of all its systems - the respecs, the way rewards are given out, and the overall higher level cap, that follows the same progression curve. Then, to acknowledge everything that this leads to, it also gives you a lot more hybrid items, so in the end, you will have a hybrid build. You will organically try out spells, incantations, consumables (which are finally useful), perfumes, not to mention spirit ashes, and how you can get infinite perfumes with them. This is what I mean when I talk about Souls criticism being bad. A lot of people speak from vibes, and fail to understand the design intent underpinning FromSoft's decisions. It's fine to not enjoy it, but to demand the game become a slog, just so it can resemble, on paper, a predecessor that is 1/5 of its length is... in my opinion ignorant. You complain about having to run around and explore, then you also want Torrent taken away. It's clear there's no thought put into your criticism, it's just vibes with some rationalization. Do good critique next time, and think about how the things you criticize fit together. Right now it is not a critique, it's a thoughtless rant.

To add to the boss design thing: I hink any move that requires a boss become invunrable for several seconds is bad design. I also found using anything other than a blood infused twinblade made the boss fights tedious, so more bad design. My biggest impression from the DLC? Tedium. I have no incentive to replay it.

The camera is bad on purpose, for artificial difficulty. Dark Souls 2 didn't have that issue, because it's not a Miyazaki game, that guy is a hack who makes the games bad on purpose. ER isn't about creativity, you are encouraged to follow guides and copy meta builds.

I watched your whole video. Although I play and platinum almost every souls like game and can agree that some Fromsoftware and non Fromsoftware games are better than Elden ring (Bloodborne and DS3 or Lies of P), I disagree with your general complaint of Elden ring dlc regarding exploration. Elden ring is an open world game and even the main game incentivises exploration. I don’t know why you would think that dlc would be different.

The audio cutting out all the time makes this video painful to listen to. Which is a shame because the points are legit.

Fromsoft fagboys will always defend this game, its how these devs are allowed to get away with copy paste bosses. Ragnarok was a walking simulator but the bosses were so much better than elden ring

Bethesda is the same there Fans alwas say it is just Bethesda Jank and this is OK but players from outside are going to criticise Bethesda for it

Respec has consequences, but Elden Ring needs it. Imagine gathering all the crap (seeds, bell bearings, whetstones, etc.) for every new build, lmao. Edit: Changing build is fun too, it's not only a tool to counter certain bosses.

ringed city at least has new enemies smh, ds2 dlcs has new enemies too

Complaining... complaining... complaining... absurd.

Jokes on you. Monster Hunter has taught me to treat all mini bosses as the same guy and he wants a rematch

Ngl im only 4 minutes and i can tell this is bait

Paused the vid. Sorry, I am going to jump on your Torrent rant here, without Torrent the DLC would be way too big and grace distance too far. Not to mention the replaybility of the DLC would be shafted, once you collect the Fragments, Spirit Ashes and special items, on a second run of the DLC you would have to slowly traverse every area, with no tangible reward. It would not feel more rewarding. The reward of special items is once, the reward of exploration is once. Without Torrent 90% of the DLC playtime would traversing the large barren map, fighting the same 7 enemies. There's a reason why most people on NG+ and New Characters just blast past most of the open world in the base game, because it not that good.

Dlc is shit end of duscussion

The reason scadutree fragments are a thing was to solve the overlevlled character problem when it came to DLCs. However they should've added more to spread them out and allow players to miss some but still get max like golden seeds. Its a hard problem to find a solution to and tbh I think it was a decent attempt.

You’re pretty spot on here especially about the map. Finding map fragments in the base game was so lame because nothing was stopping you from heading to them the second you entered the area. In the DLC you have to work towards finding the right path towards them and it makes uncovering the map so much more rewarding

All of this game is boring and a waist of time. A big disappointment to me. If you didn’t have to level up for an eternity first maybe the boss fights would be ok but copy and paste bs is all this game offers. This dlc is not better than the game to begin with. This game was an insult to my intelligence and time. Most humans who play games like this would not understand. If you can like this game than you’re easily entertained. This game sucks.

L review

Gotta' love how the haters both go "I hate looking for Scadutree fragments, it forces me to explore the map" and "I hate how the map is so empty and contains no worthwhile pickups". Shows you lot are just looking for excuses to bash the game and hope your braindead simps are not intelligent enough to notice the contradiction.

Fantastic video. Plz make more

Issues with the DLC 1. Enemies are overtuned to the point they are playing sekiro while we are stuck with Demon Souls gameplay with small QoL over the last years but with less significant improvements (Bloodborne, Sekiro and Lies of P do a much better job than this) 2. Cheese and OP Builds are heavily incentivized because the majority of the bosses are now build checks where a person with unoptimized build will struggle so hard they will hard swap for meta builds which is terrible game design for a mostly PvE singleplayer game making the fights very unsatisfying. 3. Exploration is unrewarding enough, the fact they had to add a crucial item such as the scadutree fragments to "encourage" exploration damages the replay value because collecting the same material for almost 50 times is lazy game design by artificially gatekeeping the players from naturally progressing at their own pace to make the world a huge scadutree checklist (base game handled this matter much better with the crimson tears/sacred tears scarsed around the map but placed very specifically on early/mid/late game areas which makes it natural as players progress through the game) 4. Rewards are terrible (useless cookbooks, tons of smithing stones that are useless because everyone has at least 3 weapons maxed out and tons of resources spared cause they explored the base game map) where replay value is just a collection checklist (scadutree fragments and very specific armours/weapons/ashes, and thats bad cause it really means the majority of things you will find on the open world will be either useless or extremely niche making it bloated. 5. A lot of copy pasted mobs makes the encounters less special and boring real fast, genuinely fromsoft wanted to bloat the game as much as possible because the quantity over quality approach on an expensive market of 60/70usd games will make players feel they the most of their money back the bigger and longer the game is but bloated. My biggest theory is fromsoft realized how going through a niche market (Linear Hard Games) to a wider demographic with open world concept (Longer and Easier) massively makes more profit than all their older games. By dumbing down the games as a whole sacrificing certain aspects of the souls genre makes more money than anything else they produced in the past, which leads me to think they will keep making games of this kind with the direction of this DLC. Hopefully im wrong because i truly wish we had a souls game with Sekiro+Bloodborne combat together it would be perfect (oh wait we have one, its called Lies of P). Ironic how Lies of P was made by a small studio which adresses most issues with Elden Ring. My overall conclusion is the DLC shows how incredibly stagnated the series has become specially with this title (previous games such as Dark Souls are completely fine as they are) but making games such as Bloodborne and sekiro that were developed way before ER have much better combat system and replayability. This is what they thought "Lets make the DLC as big as possible (don't matter how bloated it is) because most people nowadays value videogames over their length rather than the quality itself". The DLC genuinely feels like a one and done experience (if you think about it the dlc has a lot of requirements and on consoles (the market they target the most) you cant duplicate savefiles before the dlc so you have to make your own way to the dlc again for almost 30hrs (because Mohg is unlocked at lategame) and most people recommend to be level 120-150 which again are lategame stats, it all makes sense on that way (how can you make something replayable when the main requirements to get in there are almost finishing the game itself). It's interesting how Zelda TOTK and Elden Ring DLC suffer from nearly the same issues and both franchises started as linear games but became widespread and more popular once they took the open world approach.

Onze really thought he was Virgil with those attacks 🫤