FS intentionally broke the meta with the expansion. They want you to use everything at your disposal. All the stubborn people getting their butts kicked deserve the pain for being stoopid.
The design principle of the DLC is very close to the base game, some great areas but also a lot of filler space so far. One big plus though is the verticality and paths interlinking it all together. It’s sort of like they took 2 or 3 zones and layered them into each other. Though, I will say I think they took the criticism of too many inconsequential minibosses/dungeons to heart; too often you’ll be expecting to find a cave or something in the open world and there’s just nothing in a lot of spaces. After getting to Scadu Altus it has gotten a little more interesting..
I have just completed all the main remembrance bosses for SOTE without summoning, So now I can give an informed opinion on them.
Before I get into the issues, Let me just say that the content added aside from the bosses is a great edition to the game. The world is beautiful, The various soundtracks are some of the best they've ever done, The new weapons and abilities are awesome additions and so on. It is an amazing expansion that clearly had much love and passion put into it, but there are glaring issued in regards to the bosses that ultimately ruined my experience.
I am NOT saying don't buy the DLC just because this review is negative. I am voicing my frustrations with some of the design decisions that I will get into down below.
The reason I give SOTE a negative review is because many of the main bosses are now just simply a series of cheap tricks being spammed repeatedly at insane speed that chunk your health.They are NOT fun to fight with the Dark Souls style player combat system used in Elden Ring. I personally gained no satisfaction whatsoever from defeating any of them, instead only a feeling of the kind of relief that comes after you remove a splinter.
Before you move your greasy fingers to your keyboard to frantically type out "Git gud" or "Skill issue" to imply that my skill level is the reason I am complaining; let me show you some of my videos where I defeat many of the hardest bosses ER has to offer flawlessly without taking ANY damage or using any summons:
- Malenia, Blade Of Miquella - NG+17
YouTube™ Video: Malenia, Blade Of Miquella - NG+17 No Damage - No Freezing Pot
Views: 300
Silly red head likes to play with Samurai Swords...
- Mohg, Lord Of Blood NG+15
YouTube™ Video: Mohg, Lord Of Blood - NG+15 No Hit
Views: 240
BLO0D FOR THE BLOOD GOD 0:00 Intro 0:54 Fight 2:40 Lord Of The Dance Floor
- Mohg, The Omen - NG+15
YouTube™ Video: Mohg, The Omen - NG+15 No Damage
Views: 536
We've got the moves 0:00 Fight 2:31 Lord Of Dance
- Crucible Duo https://youtu.be/c8KJOLg0aR4
- Maliketh NG+15 https://youtu.be/bwvdEuHneuU
- Godfrey NG+15 https://youtu.be/M1CGM1hKZsw
- Commander Niall - NG+15 https://youtu.be/KAMJIyvZFlc
With that out of the way, and the seething of Fromsoft fanboys assured, lets continue.
The bosses are straight out of Sekiro with their levels of speed and agression. Put Messmer, Divine Beast, Rellana or many of the other remembrance bosses next to bloodborne bosses; Even many Sekiro bosses and you'll see that they are as fast if not even faster and more aggressive than most of them are. Insane!
I wan't you to do a test; Watch videos of Lady Maria and Rellana side by side. Now do the same thing for the Demon Of Hatred next to Divine Beast; You will see in both cases that the SOTE bosses are faster and more aggressive... IN A GAME WITH SOULS PLAYER COMBAT!
These new bosses only serve to highlight the terminal main issue I have mentioned that Elden Ring has had since day 1:
The player combat itself is not adequate for the enemies you face. It does not offer an compelling; skill based experience like Sekiro and Bloodborne did. Those games had mechanics that made facing highly aggressive enemies more engaging AND enjoyable. Elden Ring forces you to be incredibly passive; You are relegated to rolling around and keeping distance waiting to get 1 hit in on the boss (hopefully) before this tortuous loop begins again.
The difficulty at this point simply boils down to the bosses tricking you into rolling too early or late and then frame catching (roll punishing) you for not getting a frame perfect roll, a roll that has input delay on it as it only occurs after the button has been released, meaning that the roll is based on prediction instead of reaction in many cases as the bosses delay an attack only to release it instantly. I also have noticed that many times that the hit-boxes seem appear before the weapon is actually swung... This means you HAVE to learn each individual boss's timings on so many of their attacks to avoid them because they don't make intuitive sense. Rubbish!
In the past the way you'd avoid these delayed attacks is by outflanking them; but they now give most of these bosses near infinite tracking on their attacks FORCING you to time a dodge the way the devs want, and some of these attacks have way to many active frames so they will automatically hit you even if you roll into them. You will be waiting to get 1 hit in after a boss does 10+ attacks in a row, when you go to get damage to move the fight forward, the boss jumps away or has specific trading attacks that startup in reaction to the first frame of your attack animation; Not many people know this, but the bosses in Elden Ring basically input read! Because of this the wise tactic is to actually wait and roll around and only punish specific attacks instead of attacking when a boss is seemingly in neutral. This makes for passive boring game play. If you're going to do this, ADD ATTACK/ANIMATION CANCELLING so we're not trapped doing an attack that is going to be punished by the boss.
As many others have mentioned the camera is totally abysmal for many of the bosses, it's at its worst for the divine beast and the final boss where much of the time you cannot see what the hell is going on because the camera is too close to the point when the boss is clipping through the screen. This is made even worse when they're filling the area with various elemental attacks whilst being right on top of you. ♥♥♥♥ the Divine Beast and ♥♥♥♥ the redhead and his twink at the end. Those two bosses are the greatest offenders in this regard and the muscular redhead and his twink companion in particular almost seem like they are rubbing it in your face in the second phase as you are clearly being forced to stay right next to the boss because of elemental light attack extensions appearing on each attack to catch you if you roll backwards. Couple of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
I dearly hope for their next game the bring back mechanics from Bloodborne and Sekiro to make dealing with these sorts of bosses actully fun as well as challenging.
I love Fromsoft, They are one of the last truly high integrity, well meaning and talented dev teams that remain in the gaming industry. So when they make a mistake we must point it out instead of heaping relentless praise upon them so that can make better games in the future.
You aren’t allowed summons in that fight so it’s not much of a bragging point. He took me like 10 tries though; once you realize how easy he is to parry/backstab/stagger he goes down quickly. You just have to get acclimated to him constantly closing the distance and different incremental combos.
Moonveil?
Kinda-sorta; I found this dlc one couple days ago
Pretty sure this one was just dropped in to have a big dragon battle royale between you, Messmer's soldiers, and the dragon (though we all know who's doing the actual damage here).
Elaborate please. BB's level design is superb: Central Yharnam + Cathedral Ward is a class on intricate, vertical, multi branching level design. It's on par with early DS1 (Undead Burg + Parish). And if the criticism is about it's combat, lemme say it works wonderfully in its own context, even if terrible in DS's.
"I suck, therefore game is bad" lol
Nah, I made it through NG+3, but that was 2 years ago. I can't remember anything about this game and I no longer care. This is just shitty way to release a dlc.
best review on steam
I have just completed all the main remembrance bosses for SOTE without summoning, So now I can give an informed opinion on them.
Before I get into the issues, Let me just say that the content added aside from the bosses is a great edition to the game. The world is beautiful, The various soundtracks are some of the best they've ever done, The new weapons and abilities are awesome additions and so on. It is an amazing expansion that clearly had much love and passion put into it, but there are glaring issued in regards to the bosses that ultimately ruined my experience.
I am NOT saying don't buy the DLC just because this review is negative. I am voicing my frustrations with some of the design decisions that I will get into down below.
The reason I give SOTE a negative review is because many of the main bosses are now just simply a series of cheap tricks being spammed repeatedly at insane speed that chunk your health.They are NOT fun to fight with the Dark Souls style player combat system used in Elden Ring. I personally gained no satisfaction whatsoever from defeating any of them, instead only a feeling of the kind of relief that comes after you remove a splinter.
Before you move your greasy fingers to your keyboard to frantically type out "Git gud" or "Skill issue" to imply that my skill level is the reason I am complaining; let me show you some of my videos where I defeat many of the hardest bosses ER has to offer flawlessly without taking ANY damage or using any summons:
- Malenia, Blade Of Miquella - NG+17
YouTube™ Video: Malenia, Blade Of Miquella - NG+17 No Damage - No Freezing Pot
Views: 300
Silly red head likes to play with Samurai Swords...
- Mohg, Lord Of Blood NG+15
YouTube™ Video: Mohg, Lord Of Blood - NG+15 No Hit
Views: 240
BLO0D FOR THE BLOOD GOD 0:00 Intro 0:54 Fight 2:40 Lord Of The Dance Floor
- Mohg, The Omen - NG+15
YouTube™ Video: Mohg, The Omen - NG+15 No Damage
Views: 536
We've got the moves 0:00 Fight 2:31 Lord Of Dance
- Crucible Duo https://youtu.be/c8KJOLg0aR4
- Maliketh NG+15 https://youtu.be/bwvdEuHneuU
- Godfrey NG+15 https://youtu.be/M1CGM1hKZsw
- Commander Niall - NG+15 https://youtu.be/KAMJIyvZFlc
With that out of the way, and the seething of Fromsoft fanboys assured, lets continue.
The bosses are straight out of Sekiro with their levels of speed and agression. Put Messmer, Divine Beast, Rellana or many of the other remembrance bosses next to bloodborne bosses; Even many Sekiro bosses and you'll see that they are as fast if not even faster and more aggressive than most of them are. Insane!
I wan't you to do a test; Watch videos of Lady Maria and Rellana side by side. Now do the same thing for the Demon Of Hatred next to Divine Beast; You will see in both cases that the SOTE bosses are faster and more aggressive... IN A GAME WITH SOULS PLAYER COMBAT!
These new bosses only serve to highlight the terminal main issue I have mentioned that Elden Ring has had since day 1:
The player combat itself is not adequate for the enemies you face. It does not offer an compelling; skill based experience like Sekiro and Bloodborne did. Those games had mechanics that made facing highly aggressive enemies more engaging AND enjoyable. Elden Ring forces you to be incredibly passive; You are relegated to rolling around and keeping distance waiting to get 1 hit in on the boss (hopefully) before this tortuous loop begins again.
The difficulty at this point simply boils down to the bosses tricking you into rolling too early or late and then frame catching (roll punishing) you for not getting a frame perfect roll, a roll that has input delay on it as it only occurs after the button has been released, meaning that the roll is based on prediction instead of reaction in many cases as the bosses delay an attack only to release it instantly. I also have noticed that many times that the hit-boxes seem appear before the weapon is actually swung... This means you HAVE to learn each individual boss's timings on so many of their attacks to avoid them because they don't make intuitive sense. Rubbish!
In the past the way you'd avoid these delayed attacks is by outflanking them; but they now give most of these bosses near infinite tracking on their attacks FORCING you to time a dodge the way the devs want, and some of these attacks have way to many active frames so they will automatically hit you even if you roll into them. You will be waiting to get 1 hit in after a boss does 10+ attacks in a row, when you go to get damage to move the fight forward, the boss jumps away or has specific trading attacks that startup in reaction to the first frame of your attack animation; Not many people know this, but the bosses in Elden Ring basically input read! Because of this the wise tactic is to actually wait and roll around and only punish specific attacks instead of attacking when a boss is seemingly in neutral. This makes for passive boring game play. If you're going to do this, ADD ATTACK/ANIMATION CANCELLING so we're not trapped doing an attack that is going to be punished by the boss.
As many others have mentioned the camera is totally abysmal for many of the bosses, it's at its worst for the divine beast and the final boss where much of the time you cannot see what the hell is going on because the camera is too close to the point when the boss is clipping through the screen. This is made even worse when they're filling the area with various elemental attacks whilst being right on top of you. ♥♥♥♥ the Divine Beast and ♥♥♥♥ the redhead and his twink at the end. Those two bosses are the greatest offenders in this regard and the muscular redhead and his twink companion in particular almost seem like they are rubbing it in your face in the second phase as you are clearly being forced to stay right next to the boss because of elemental light attack extensions appearing on each attack to catch you if you roll backwards. Couple of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
I dearly hope for their next game the bring back mechanics from Bloodborne and Sekiro to make dealing with these sorts of bosses actully fun as well as challenging.
I love Fromsoft, They are one of the last truly high integrity, well meaning and talented dev teams that remain in the gaming industry. So when they make a mistake we must point it out instead of heaping relentless praise upon them so that can make better games in the future.
H. P. Lovecraft's Cat dont blow a gasket.
