I can respect that outside of some wackadoodle boss tuning (so, Elden Ring then), this might be the best piece of DLC From have produced, it's certainly a great value proposition being like 1.5 DLC sequel.
But as all consuming as it was in the moment as their titles always are, now I'm done i'm really noting the diminishing returns for me on this formula, for a game where combat is a massive piece of the pie, the overworld doesn't do much to incite the player to engage when Torrent can blaze past everything and runes are whatever, the big engagement fights in said open world are reheats of already tired and tedious encounters from the base game and the wicker men/brasier bros are among the most boring boss enemies From have ever put to code, I haven't seen such endless stomp and leg twatting action since DS2 ancient dragon.
Doing the post game whip around to pick up their tears in case there was anything cool was probably not the way one wants to close out the DLC.
It's such a strange feeling to have, one that's not too dissimilar to how I felt about the base game, where the game is clearly operating on a level other devs would dream of, some of the vistas/area reveals in this DLC are PEAK, not just for FS but for games in general, the vibes are often unmatched, a brief pre boss intro scene can strike me more with engaging tone and cinematography than entire actual AAA cinematic blockbusters.
And while having issues with the in game map's visibility and the world's dead spaces, the general structure of the shadow lands is like Lordran's philosophy adapted to an open world, it's crazy impressive in that regard.
I was pretty whelmed by the legacy dungeons, shadow keep's flooded backdoor was my fave from a level design standpoint for offering something different to the norm (hey it's also been ages since DS1, they can redo the draining the water angle), and the spoopy trashed manor was a runner up, which while standard in structure, had impeccable tone.
Otherwise it's more forts, castles, be wary of right, etc, very little to surprise outside a forested ruins biome stealthing in as an overworld/dungeon hybrid (does that kind make it like this maps version of the main games underworld then?), which was mostly just a tunnel maze unfortunately.
I don't know how they shake things up from here, the abyssal woods represented a much needed gimmick in a world surprisingly devoid of them, it's a shame that said woods were an open space with little going on instead of the idea being compacted into a more wide linear segment with clearer purpose.
I don't think any of the legacy dungeon like segments from the DLC match those from the main game or the best from other DS games. Elden Ring's open world and breaking out another thesaurus of terminology remixing hasn't done enough to shake that feeling of overfamiliarity I was getting from DS3.
Or maybe I'm just more down for the Sekiro and Bloodborne types at this point, the ones that get to push the general formula further, especially as we head deeper into the bloated RPG/character building elements in the spiritual souls successor line of games.
And it's knowing all these rules or soul-isms built up across multiple games crammed into just over a decade that have no doubt led to the escalation in bosses and sturdier standard foes, as we reach critical mass on just how much kit you can hand to a boss within this increasingly dated framework of combat that lives behind a cumbersome camera that was already flawed in the late 2000s. I'm straight up not interested in bosses getting juiced up more than this, not without some sort of combat rework.
To me ashes are a lameduck solution that turns the boss fight into a completely different aggro drawing roulette and/or a race to burst them down before they can work through your flasks, this ain't monster hunter when it comes to joining forces to tackle overwhelming foes that's for sure , this game has made me think back to lies of P and think "damn I should've put more respect on that game's bosses".
There's no going back really though, difficulty is an expectation and overcoming odds is a part of the formula, these games have raised the collective playerbase skill floor so the days of DS1/2 are done, still I can hope they step back a bit next time, instead of increasingly catering to the niche of players perfectly rolling in their tarnished tighty whities who can only be stopped from perfect runs at this point by basically inserting full on unavoidable attacks anyway.
I don't envy the idea of trying to balance a game as vast as this with so many options, in part I think the overtuning of bosses might just be the safest way to assure challenge remains before players figure out just how many gimmicks they can layer onto their own character pre fog door and any cheese that lurks within the ten billion options From offer the player.
All that griping and it's still a strong 8 outta 10 time that consumed my long weekend
I hope I actually care about the lore in the inevitable next dreary medieval tinged Soulslike, all this deepest lore here and I still can't remember which M is which, my main takeaway was basically learning the gruelling backstory of the POTS
PS: Scadutree avatar was the best boss, I will be taking no more questions.
