Видео

..for man with no forgiveness in heart, life worse punishment than death - Mr. Miyagi

I know you said your issue was a separate one from the negatives from not using the Scadu blessing system, but the bosses weren’t designed with that separation in mind. 1) about the attack openings, it’s hard to be aggressive when every attack is doing too much damage to you and it whittles your resources to quickly. Not all attacks are made the same for a reason, some do loads of damage and some don’t do much at all, but when not using Scadu you’re punished more for attacks that you could be able to trade through for that last hit of a stance break, or spend too much time being cautious of an attack that when engaging with the intended game mechanics might end up being not that important to someone with more blessings. While I think every single attack is designed to be dodgable, it’s not intended for the average player to have to dodge every single attack. 2) When doing less damage you lose apart of the bosses design when it comes to health and defences. Maliketh does scary damage but has little health, it’s designed for the player to engage in a race to the bottom, a quick short-ish bout that allows maliketh to do all these crazy combos and have your hit still be meaningful after. If you’re doing little damage, yet having to survive a fight longer, these short damage windows will only extend the fight to where these combos become obnoxious and it feels like it takes agency away from the fight. 3) since you’re doing less damage than intend, the fights last longer. But the fights are not designed to be fought for that long. The longer the fight is the more likely you’re going to run into bad Rng or attack patterns that the player isn’t designed around and is less likely to see. I did 90% of a RL1 run before I ran out of time as the DLC dropped and doing that you quickly realise how jank some of the hit boxes, attack patterns, wall clipping, camera, and lots other unfair things that would be easy to brush off of wasn’t 1hkod by every attack at the end or wouldn’t be seen fighting the boss an average amount of times I feel that doing a challenge run it should be expected that a lot of play styles will become unviable. When I did my level 1 run I had to be very patient when I attacked, and just dodging for the 1 opportunity was common. Maybe you would’ve found the DLC more fun if you did a low Scadu blessing run instead of a no Scadu blessing run. On the other hand there’s a lot I do agree with. Rellana is my second least favourite fight in the series (fire giant being the worst), because the combos and aggression is just too much. I found myself not having enough stamina to roll all the combo, attack, and roll more because no time for it to recover on patterns, then again I did do this fight way below the probably intended Scadu tree level. This fight and area felt like another Margit, where it was meant to kick your ass and send you back exploring, especially being positioned right before a cross roads. Also the aggression of some of the bosses is a bit ridiculous, I do think all bosses should have some neutral if for at least phase 1. I think dancing entirely to the tune of the bosses is just not fun. Camera issues and lock on points have been a constant issue since the base game, looking at you ancient dragons and all the others mentioned in the video. I loved the DLC, it was my favourite time gaming ever, but it does have its issues. I think it needed another 6months imo~. It feels like there was more they wanted to do but scrapped it, and the choice in final boss was very disappointing considering there was no build up to it in base game vs a certain other. Can’t wait to see your takes on the lore:)

Kudos for doing a no scadertree blessing run, I was going to but immediately tossed that idea after getting two tapped by rellana, and honestly for me the best way to describe how the dlc felt is I felt like playing sekiro again, in sekiro I found myself learning to respond to the bosses instead of attempting to predict what they'll do, and you will still die a lot for it - the skill ceiling just to be able to play this game got Raised so far with this dlc

These games are fastley becoming anime games, but for the bosses only 😂

While I won't say your opinion is invalid, I will say it comes from a source that would reload a save 200 times for the grafted Scion kill. I would do that, cause I'm neurotic, but I understand my point of view is far different from others. As such, I'd challenge you to play the dlc from the perspectives of other players and see how well the game caters to that playstyle and not a very extremely particular one. Just my two cents bro, I was frustrated at first but I had to play it like others did before I got and then got to play my way ✔️💯

Honestly I haven’t had much issue with telling bosses attacks throughout the dlc with exception of the final one. Though even then I was tired and in a rush to beat the DLC before a trip so I couldn’t enjoy it as much. From my personal experience, many of the bosses seemed to have a way you can manipulate which moves come out, or they have tells that show which move they’re gonna throw out next. This especially goes for the annoying ones. I was forced to use a bleed backhand blade for many of the bosses my first run, but in the 2nd run I’ve been way more capable of setting the pace for bosses and knowing exactly which moves to exploit and how to make them end certain combos at a certain spot. Like for example with Rennalla. A lot of her combos can be forced to end prematurely if you move out within a certain range, opening her for counter attacks. And this can be done with many of her longer ones especially. Maybe it’s because I’m just a bit more analytical with bosses, but honestly I had a lot of fun learning how to fight many of the bosses, except the last one again. Though I will definitely try to learn them as well, because it definitely seems doable.

I really enjoyed the DLC, but from the start tried everything I could think of to kill bosses. This resulted in most bosses dying on the 1st or 2nd attempt, though some (one much more so than others) were still quite a struggle. Almost every boss seems to be hyper aggresive and combo happy. Makes me feel like I won, but I'm not quite sure what happened during the fight. I can't help but feel like I would love the game to just... slow down.

I think the Abyss and Cerulean Coast zones were pretty barren and could have easily been half the size without losing virtually anything.

I'm going to be honest and say this is maybe one of the worst takes on the DLC I've ever seen. Like I'm sorry, but you cannot judge a game like this solely off of a challenge run with a major restriction. "Playing passively" yeah, that happens when you take double and deal half the damage you're supposed to be doing. A lot of the bosses are actually much closer in pace to bosses from previous games, especially Midra, Bayle, and Romina. Many bosses are super fast and hyper aggressive, but this is a lategame DLC where you're expected to have the best gear and maxed weapons from the getgo and to understand how to play the game. I agree on some of the points about the camera, but a lot of your other points seem painted by your challenge run or not understanding core aspects of the design. Enemies and bosses pulling out specific moves after another is often because of positioning and placement where you are relative to the boss so by learning proper spacing and positioning you can avoid them doing that followup, prime example is the final boss. If he pulls you in with gravity but you get out, he won't do his slam if you're far enough away and will instead do the upswing>slam move. If you dodge the AoE but are too close, he'll do the slam. If you get pulled in and he gets you right under him, he slams and you can roll 3x to avoid it. Every one of these movesets can be dealt with and learned, but it really feels like you're refusing to meet the game halfway. You genuinely have brought your criticisms of the DLC on yourself. There are legitimate complaints about this DLC, with some of the empty map design, poor balance on the new weapons and incantations so they're worse than the basegame items, performance, and some confusing questline stuff, but I genuinely think everything you have said boils down to skill issue or self-inflicted problems. Just to make a point clear, I also play summonless and I even refuse to use rot, bleed, stuff that's OP in general most of the time, I also want what I consider a 'pure' experience of the boss fights. I had no issues with any of the bosses in the DLC except Putrescent Knight, and on a whole I consider half this DLC"s bosses to be the best ever made in a FromSoft game, especially Midra, Bayle, and Promised Consort Radahn. I have this same general philosophy, but I also realize that skill issues are skill issues that I just need to overcome and power through. My problem with blessings in general is that their solution was a bit inelegant and now if I want a proper scaling curve I have to not use blessings up to a point because you can just steamroll almost every boss with high blessing levels, and I feel they could have just made blessings drop from bosses instead ala Sekiro and added some redundant ones like how golden seeds work. Ftr, You can't lock onto anything but Bayle's head to encourage you to stay in front of him and punish openings after he finishes an attack much like Darkeater Midir.

You can definitely and 100% stand by your decisions but you severely limited how you could review the dlc by your decision. That warrants most of the flack you'll get. Because its deserved honestly. You put out a review of a severly limited playthrough. You're gunna get flavk for that type of stuff. Standing by it and not regretting it is fine but its a flawed mindset when making a review in my opinion. Its like reviewing a meal at a restaurant but saying you decided to not use the utensils... Then complaining you got dirty and had no way of getting the food to your mouth without getting dirty. You can stand by that review but it was your own fault for a decent number of issues you had.

Honestly after seeing what the DLC had to offer, this seems like the proper ending for this godsforsaken s*** hole!

The footage speaks for itself: the camera is terrible, many attacks take up your whole screen, and some attacks are very awkward to see coming. Sadly, this has been going on for a few games now. The camera is the most inexusable part of these games. This DLC doubled down on an annoying trend that Elden Ring base game had already continued from previous games: enemy attacks with weirdly long or short windups and follow-up attacks to catch the most natural of player's reactions.

Only bosses that made pull out the Mimic Tear were Gaius and last boss. Gaius hitboxes felt broken and phase 2 off the last boss is visually cluttered and way too relentless. The bosses in the DLC generally felt like they were hyper aggressive and had 3+ hit combos you had to dodge for an opening. Basically felt like the bosses played Sekiro and we Dark Souls. But my biggest gripe with the DLC is that the last boss, as the end for Elden Ring, felt really disappointing.

Sure you aren't just getting burnt out on Souls?

You literally made a Level 1 run and killed the main incentive for exploration in a game centered around it Not a great plan, i can respect that, but it's note the ideal way to judge a game

So for me, the only self imposed challenge I had was no summons. I went in with an arcane build because I wanted to get as many drops from enemies as I could on my first playthrough. Unfortunately, one of the first things I did was explore the first area very thoroughly and I managed to find the bloodfiend's arm colossal weapon in prospect town, I occult infused it immidiately because I thought beating things with an enemies arm was pretty badass. I say unfortunately because that weapon alone pretty much trivialized the rest of the DLC, even the last boss only took me around 30 or so attempts, so initially when I saw all the complaints about difficulty I thought it was just normal Fromsoft new player influx business. My next playthrough, I wanted to play as a dex build with backhand blades because they seemed cool, and this is where things started to make more sense for me. You really start to notice the attack windows when the couple of attacks you do get to make do very little damage (relative to an instant bleed colossal weapon smash) and on-top of that, even against regular enemies, if you get NO staggers, you start to realize even they are crazy relentless (the Fire Knights, for example).

As someone really bad at these games. I found that just having the Bloodborne/Sekiro mindset for this DLC made this easier. I kinda disagree that there isn't enough punish windows. Positioning and looking closely at the seemingly random moveset helped wonders. The blessings were a big help to learn the movesets of the bosses since I don't get one shot. I rarely used defensive talismans, although I made sure I had at least boiled crab. The blessings were the key to actually learning the aggressive moveset of the bosses and even then just be more aggressive and it yielded better results. It seems they opted to punish passive play here. The Deflect tear also lets you incorporate this aggressiveness into your playstyle through guard counters.These are huge for actually giving yourself space to hitback and usually after 2 to 3 of these you just are able to put a stop to the boss(Except the last boss). Mindset shifting seems to be the best play here.

Hell yeah great review. I didnt really understand what fromsofts design goals were for elden ring but the dlc kind of convinced me they care more about spectacle and making bosses crazier to match their public image as the company that makes hard games. All the issues from the base game are there like having horse combat but no realistic way to or dodge, roll/health punishing, undodgeable attacks (radhan), lame rewards and the story is inconsequential and boring!

IMO dlc is Tekken paced. After assumung I only have max 14 frames to punish, things went smooth with using carian slicer. If it turns out boss is still recovering, added 1 more slicer, total half a second (30f) punish window max

The blessings dont do anything to enemies. They give you a percentage buff to damge and defense.

While I agree that the lack of tells and camera issues with the bosses, I think I'm in agreement with others that your feeling of needing to be more passive is entirely colored by the lack of blessings. For example, i was stuck on Radahn for 3 days, the way I ended up beating him without summons or a shield was just being super aggressive, knowing when to dodge or tank weaker hits, always healing instead of punishing when need be, and sneaking in hits between attack combos. Even if I'm fine with the direction bosses are going, I do understand the disappointment with From's boss design here. It's the arms race with the skilled players. Roll catches, combo branches and extensions, attacks that can't be d and need either jumping, sprinting, or blocked. And in general, bosses can't reasonably be sight read, attacks aren't intuitive, and require more memorization. I'm perfectly fine with this personally, but i can definitely see how divisive that is.

The issue with not using the blessings, is that since you limit the way you experience the game, you also make your own experience much more detached from the most common experiences of the players. A good approach would be to perhaps try it both ways, first play with and then without the blessings. In regards to bosses.... I unironically find them a lot more fair than bosses from the base game, I think they are excellent.

I found many bosses to feel unfair. Long combos which could be mixed up and chained into other combos, and no windows to heal except for at the end of a combo. So you would have to survive a long string of attacks to heal, and give up any opportunity to get your own attack in. That being said, by the time I had learnt bosses’ attack patterns, I was really enjoying the fights. What I was most frustrated by was the arduous learning process; it took so long because getting hit more than once was a death sentence, and healing was punished. Had I been able to heal more often and more reliably it would have been a less painful learning process.

Okay, so for the I'm getting old argument : If your past 45 yes, otherwise no. Your reflex stay nearly the same without training from your 25 to your 40, then you can keep them high with conservative training and can improve them till you are 60. After 60 well it's time to die so nope.

"...Enemies can instantaneously recover all their stamina after an attack ended." Enemies in Fromsoft games don't have stamina to limit their actions, only how much they can block, for those that do so. They can unload a massive 12 hit combo, then turn around and go right into another combo with barely any pause or rest. It's just one of the many, MANY, unfair advantages Fromsoft gives enemies and bosses over players.

Watch FightingCowboy beat Rahdan, Dancing Lion and Bale in the face for half the duration of the fight once he figured out aggression is the way to go, and tell me you need to play passively. The DLC rewards hyper aggression and dodging then attacking.

bayle with no blessings really do be a challenge charged r2?only jumping r2 with dual colossal swords and we need more scorpion liver drops or a merchant to sell them. i ended the dlc with 6 scorpion livers, why give us the picled liver recipes right from the beginning without giving us the chance to get the ingredients?

I feel like people blow the difficulity out of proportions i had almost no issues finding windows to attack or rebuff or figuring out how and when to punish, i never use Spirit ashes i played lvl 155 Dex build with blessings and i had like blessing level 15 when i fought and beat radahn i was scared at first by his second phase but after a few tries, it was fine i played milady and used messmer soldier shield with parry ashes The only fight i felt helpless a few times was Gaius, i dont even really know why, it's just that you can't block him that good because he does a lot of stamina damage, maybe?

I’m very surprised to hear some of the souls vets speak this way. I’m old, slow and fairly mid at these games and I can do it without summons. Reminds me of back in the day when people said dark souls was too hard.

Imo, the main problem with these bosses is two folds of infinite stamina, and absurd damage, one simple step can be done to make bosses fairer is give them their own version of a stamina system

Art direction was great. Looking at everything and discovering all the new stuff was great. Gameplay wasn't as fun, ended up reverting the guard counter cheese build .

Agree with most of the point made. But the lock on point, I think death bird is designed to be fought head on and hitting its head should be the main goal of the player, hitting its legs does significantly less damage and make the fight really awkard

Honestly while I do agree Bayle is a bit of a bastard, and some of the bosses aggressiveness can be aggravating to deal with solo, I think some of your struggles come from your 'imposed personal challenge'. Now let me be frank I am not disparaging your playstyle nor saying it isn't a viable way to play; I just think it flies in the face of the design of the DLC's intended challenges and level sets. From what I gather, this DLC ENCOURAGES the use of the spirit ashes, and changing up play styles and equipment (to give you a reason to seek the new loot aside from acquiring it), and it maybe those design philosphies fly in the face of your play style. Also due to the scaling of the DLC being layered ONTOP of the vanilla game's leveing system and ONLY applies to the DLC regions, you really are nerfing yourself by not using the Scardu Tree fragments and Spirit Ash buffs since the DLC is intended for NG+ level players given most players will have NG+'d a few times, or have multiple characters and builds. After all, while the devs do want all players to have it their way; the game still has a layer of INTENDED sets of programming and challenge, which the devs want the players to seek out and try on top of player choice in approach of quests and play styles. Just because a style can be done, doesn't mean it is viable entirely without some measure of fraught danger for a playthrough. After all while a player can play the game without leveling and using starter gear... just like the prior FromSoftware SoulsBorne-esque games, while you CAN do it, it isn't the intended way the devs envisioned for players to play the game, otherwise why would they bother creating all the upgrade and leveling systems? A players self-imposed challenge is still a SELF-IMPOSED challenge, which may fly in the face of intended game design, which may suck for your challenge, but is the way it is for a reason. Now I'm not saying the game and its systems are free of criticism, and I do wish for the devs to act on feedback and fix balancing issues; I just personally feel this DLC while challenging and at times brutally harsh... has been fair. I've been having a grand time and feeling most combat encounters are fair, and suck mainly from my own lack of skill (and I am FAR from the best Soulsborne player let me tell you), or I need to think outside the play box I subscribe too. I've found style switching a boone and helped me conquer much of the game by utilizing every bag of trick from the vanilla game and the new tricks gained from the DLC. IMHO I always felt self imposed challenge runs to be, well counter-intutive to the intended gameplay experience of these games. Yes you're free to do them, but as I stated above, aside from the personal glory of powering through said challenges, but you also open yourself to hitting hurdle after hurdle approaching the gameplay in such a manner.

Elden Ring DLC would be ez if they made Dryleaf Arts Hwoarang's BS combo pressure.

Great video! You really hit the nail on the head in the issue with the boss designs. I played with a friend and even then you can feel the too short windows. Seems like fromsoft is really punishing people who dont use some form of metigation to draw the bosses aggro. This discussion reminds me of the level 1 runners when bloodborne came out. There is so much arbitrary elemental damage on later bosses, and resetances is governed alot by level. It is still the hardest game to level 1 in the series....or was not sure now lol. In the end, I'm curious how people like the dlc in the future. Can be hard to judge in the moment, but I think yours will hold up.

The punish windows in main game *dodge. Dodge, dodge, time for an AOW or several heavy/light attacks* Punish windows in dlc were like *dodge dodge dodge, dodge but get hit anyway, get hit again because you didnt dodge first attack, dodge, dodge, dodge, opening? Nope hit, dodge, dodge, punish window finally shows long enough to choose between a heal or a light attack before restarting the cycle* Whole dlc is a war of attrition How long can you handle 1 second punish windows every 30 to 45 seconds is basically the game

BAYLE!! VILE BAYLE!!!

Sorry you had such a a negative experience mate. This dlc was honestly one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. I had a blast figuring out how to punish the bosses and avoid their crazy combos. Definitely a couple stinkers in the boss pool (final boss mainly). But overall I thought this was one of the funnest pieces of content From gas ever made. Your views are valid anyways tho. Not everything is for everyone after all :)

I really don't understand this idea of players expecting to automatically beat new content just because they have mastered previous games from said developer. Dont change things up, and its gonna be complaints about shit being cakewalk, change it up and now they get complaints from "souls vets" Who feel entitled to beat the game. How the hell does from win in this lol.

40 seconds in, and... is this bait? Or a parody video? This is a Poe's Law situation, surely. I'm just going to assume it is and move along, I can't deal with 18 minutes of frustration if it's sincere.

This started with Sister Fride. From gave her Bloodborne dodge while you had standard DS roll. Anyway, about punish windows, From has now left us only one option, attack when bosses are in long recovery only, whereas previously you could attack when you SAW that the boss finished a combo.

Personally I agree, I thought most of the base game was well balanced giving opportunities to fight in boss fights, I was able to enjoy multiple different types of builds, really liked playing as a caster, I didn't mind using summons, but the DLC is different the bosses have become over tuned, now they can beat up u and your summons, due to unlimited poise and aggression, constantly knocking u over , and roll catch after roll catch, honestly I would think all of that would be kind of doable if it wasn't for the fact that the bosses often can jump in and out of your range in an instant. I think at least one of theses elements needs to be reviewed for most bosses in the DLC .

Nearly all bosses have NPC to summon These help to reapply buff and reduce the pressure on you And it's not like ash spirits, these NPC summon are literally a game mechanic for the dlc

Get a good ash of war, and proc bleed on messmer, kill him the build variety makes the game so easy (and I didn't even respec)

Instead of the using the blessings and summons, it would be fun to see a run where you summon a friend for the boss fights. You could figure out some duo strats! I'm sure it wouldn't be a cake walk if you were both level 150, zero blessings

I personally did use the Scadutree blessings. The boss design is indeed quite annoying. The only boss that had me result to using spirit ashes though was Consort. This was before I had heard shield-poking trivializes him, but though that would have saved me time it would have been equally as unfun as fighting the boss normally. After I beat DS3's DLCs I was constantly putting my summon sign down to fight Friede and Gael. For this DLC I have disabled multiple summoning pools and have zero desire to refight most bosses. Video games are supposed to be fun, this was not.

There are bell bearings hidden in the DLC that sell item crafting equipment. People really need to learn how to switch between lock on and lock off play and go into major bosses on the first couple attempts with the goal of just learning their hitboxes without attacking. Just survive as long as you can and see when you need to dodge, jump, strafe, or straight up run. If more players did that, they wouldn't complain.

Just play the damn game…enough with the making it harder blah blah blah..just fuckin play.

was this the same erdtree that I've NEVER SEEN or NEVER PLAYED? Show me on the doll where the erdtree touched you. 100/10+1 clickbait title.

Good talismans and buffs like golden vow, you can get to 80-90% damage negation... And using no scadutree is like not upgrading your flask, makes no sense