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So was your mom

I've died far more times against Midir than against thils DLC remake of Lorian and Lothric :\

"When it comes to souls games, what makes then stand above the rest is that they are supposed to be precise. When you take damage, its supposed to be your fault..." This has never been the case with any of the souls games 😂. The whole "hard but fair" meme is a total myth that souls fans use to prop up their favorite game series and pretend it's better than it is. DS1 is chock full of unfair encounters, unexplained mechanics, trial and error, deliberate player inconveniences. It's so uniquely antagonistic and non-acommodating to the player that there's a strong argument that it can be seen as a type of survival horror. And thats always been a part of the appeal. DS2 has a lot less of that but it still has a variety of encounters that will seriously challenge and punish certain playstyles, so much so that unlimited healing with different strategic uses is baked into the balancing and design. Not to mention that poise-tanking and hit trading are meant to be deliberate playstyles you can invest and gain value out of. So "taking damage means the player made a mistake" is clearly not an overarching design philosophy here. Maybe this can be said moreso of Bloodborne and Dark Souls: Bloodborne edition (DS3) which trend toward forgoing RPG player expression and funnel the player into a dodge heavy, reactive-aggressive playstyle. But even still I'm suprised to hear this from someone who has had such a perfectly warranted critical perspective on the series.

In the first few mins footage is shown of Martyr Logarius behaving strangely. He's just making the same forward slash over and over, and sparingly his flying attack. Whenever I fight him he is a maniac, hard to keep up with, and uses a shit tonne of blood skull spells. What gives?

Season of the Deep broke my brain. One day during Deep Dive, the ransoms I matchmade with didn't proc the challenge mode, and i simply logged out. I haven't come back. I did not, and will not, buy Final Shape. I've seen it via Byf and Myelin. It's over and I'm glad.

its just a fucking video game...how deep do folks go with this shit?

Lack of warp system isn't just something that makes use of interconnectedness, it's inherently important to the immersion and the feeling of adventure. In later FS games you never feel like you're stuck on some god-forsaken swamp, or reached some unfathomable depths away from comfort and famliarity. Just teleport to your home, talk to NPSs (you're even supposed to), buy any item you need, upgrade weapons, or even teleport to some other part of the world and return any time later. In DS when you meet a vendor you actually have to carefully think whether you want to buy anything. In ER - there's no need to - everything and everyone is "close" to you, basically. Ironically, despite technically being way smaller, DS1 world feels bigger, because distance actually has much more gameplay relevancy. It makes sense you didn't like DS1 the first time and conciser bosses to be the most important aspect of the series (lol) - newer games made to cater to players like you much more.

Lmao this dude ACTUALLY thought that Fromsoft perfects games with the DLC than quotes Bloodborne. The DLCs have ALWAYS been worse than the main game

respectfully disagree with mostly everything you said

Trying this on game pass recently and it’s honestly insulting people put it on the same level as lies of p, it’s not even close.

Your description of Gherman is basically Joe Biden 😂.

and the cycle spins on

#44:59 u need hefty furnace pot and that walking furnace has an insanely op physic tear for any build. And other than fighting bosses for fun,the spells and weapons exploring areas,even if areas suck they have pretty dam good weapons and spells,some even being some of the best in the game. I wish there was a boss right after activating forge to get rid of the lava at each forge

I hate this video

35:50 these following lines are golden lol

Beat every souls game up to this point. This is a reflection of their first game back in the 2010’s. I couldn’t even finish it. Got to the second to the last boss. The design of the levels being samey to a degree I thought I was getting fucked by 4 identical people and couldn’t recognize which one started. The fucked up frame rate. I’m talking 2 frames per second. They took the soul formula of mimics and gimmick fights and produced a should be aborted fetus. This is a pale pale pale abysmal attempt to make a souls game. It’s so bad that they don’t even have a decent xp farm. Lol Whoever made this game should unalive their children.

Dodge is clunky with not enough frames, parrying system in not even worth it (high risk low reward and only used for bosses actually). Defence is the worst part of the game.

Remember? TF dude... still playing it every day.

LOTF 2023 can't hold a candle to OG game. In fact tit seems like they release new game just to spoil the impression of original one.

The "restrictive difficulty" was the best part about Lies of P. Too bad the devs succumbed to the cries of the streamers and so called "souls veterans" and nerfed it to the ground.

I’m surprised you gave it such a scathing review, I really liked it. I think their goal was to make it feel like it fits perfectly into Elden Ring, as if it could have always existed, and it does, that’s why there’s mausoleums, catacombs, recipe books, etc. It’s literally more Elden Ring. I think you and others were expecting sequel-levels of difference and that’s a bit ridiculous, it’s an expansion, of course it’s gonna be like the base game. Also I don’t get the criticism that there’s “nothing of value to find” and that you’ll “have a complete build by the time you get to the DLC?? There’s tons of weapons for every build you can think of. Every type of character, STR, DEX, INT, FTH or any combo have many new weapons, ashes of war, spells, talismans, etc. there’s new stuff everywhere! Why would any player choose 1 weapon from the base game to use through the whole DLC? That’s boring and I don’t believe many players did that, and From adding new weapons is exactly part of the fun. Majority of players pick a stat to main and bounce around different weapons of that stat. This is further supported by From because the forges give you Ancient dragon smithing stones so you can try out more weapons. On your 1st playthrough of the DLC it rewards exploration with these new tools and gives you tons of content to use these new tools on for fun. Yeah on repeat playthroughs you’ll run straight to the content you care about but that’s true of base Elden Ring too so that’s not very fair criticism.

Sitting under the golden tree was also my favourite moment of the dlc!

Souls “veterans” really are the biggest parasites in the Souls community, thank you for proving my point.

She can do instant AOE after rolling, stinger, spinning slashes or any attack that puts her far enough to do her intro moves from my experience.

It's a good 8.5/10 for me. The variety of areas was quite big. I enjoyed traversal with jumping sections, hidden areas and even a major boss in said hidden area. And I liked the Dungeons being different from each other. What I didn't like were the empty areas of the finger ruins, abyssal woods or the shaman village. Especially the abyssal woods rubbed me the wrong way. The frenzied flame is my favorite aspect of elden ring and the area was soooo empty. I get they were going for a feeling of emptiness, nice lore wise - and extremely boring gameplay wise. I didn't get to ride torrent either, didn't help the entire area that had 2 enemy types over the size of Leyndell. A frenzied dragon that stalks you throughout the woods would have been so easy yet so great to add...

You got some weird takes, brother.

I wish boss fights were more focused on being interesting experiences, rather than the prioritization being placed on making it difficult. All the major bosses in Dark Souls 1 were unique. They were hard because they were all different. Once you figured out the moveset, they became very easy.

I agree with most of your points, however, I don't quite agree that From should keep making Elden Ring sized games, if that's what you're implying in the conclusion section. The sheer scale of the open world played a big role in the weaker aspects of both the base game and the DLC, and I don't think doubling down on that will help. They should focus on large scale projects going forward if by large scale we're talking more comparable to Bloodborne or DS3 levels. Elden Ring overstepped its bounds at least a bit, and reigning it in some could do wonders for quality control.

29:43 Vyke had his armor on when embraced by the 3 fingers thus he wasn’t completely embraced. Midra however was probably touched by the 3 fingers considering the swollen eyeballs that have finger prints on them in his mansion.

This is what happens when you get ppl who play Elden Ring 1st and then go visit the older games. Elden RIng would not exsist if it were not for DS, DS1, DS2, BB, DS3, and Sekiro. Comparing ER to a game that is 10 years older is ridiculous to the point of being offensive, lol.

Thanks for help .

I really want to love this fight but the camera is horrible

I agree with the majority of your points and just wanted to say this was an overall well thought out video. That being said your take on AC6 was definitely questionable. FS Delivered one of the most tight and focused, not to mention fun gaming experiences I've had over the last decade with AC6 to the point that i prefer it to ER altogether. Elden ring is a phenomenal game. Until it's not and it completely decapitates itself by the end. And this DLC did nothing to help its case, at least to me. I know more souls would get stale but I think the open world experiment proved where FS's talents lie.

the crafting system is actually very intrusive to the main experience of the game. going out of your way to explore an area just to find a cookbook for a crafting recipe you will never use, or an ingredient you will never craft with, absolutely kills the exploration in this game imo. the DLC is especially egregious with all the useless cookbooks you find in place of cool shit like weapons or armor

25:03 Thank god you aren't the one designing the bosses lmao "blood red"

i will say, i thoroughly enjoy midras boss fight. i had just beaten the game for the first time as the lord of frenzied flame, so seeing the “LOFF” title on his health bar made the fight extra personal lol. even now when i rerun the dlc, i make sure to go back and remind him who’s the real LORD OF FRENZIED FLAME, silly as that might be

45:00 you need to throw a furnace pot, i.e. the black one with a furnace giant visage on it. You find the recipe for it nearby the fly village in the starting area.

I'll level with you, I don't understand what you wanted with this game. You seem so negative about every single thing they did, I can't imagine what you even found fun about the base game. I really can't. You hated so many fun bosses, claimed certain things were just bad design (the zombie boss has the easiest diodgable moves, no idea how you struggled with this but mesmer was no problem). You clearly didn't pay attention to lore, so your confusion with details like torrent running away is silly. You have a good point about some things, like the final boss feeling crazy hard and having that wide triple attack being nearly undodgable. Honest question, artifical difficulty... what does that even mean? People say that, but it generally doesn't make sense to me. It usually boils down to people feeling something is hard without being fun. Okay, sure, that's fair. But that's not "artificial". It's hard, you don't like it, and it just comes off like people want to try to blame from soft for losing to the game when in fact you didn't learn the game. It's like saying "this loss didn't count, it's artifical difficulty. It's not that I haven't learned, it's that the game's challenge is not fair." I've never felt this in the entirety of fromsoft, so I'm at a loss for understanding this argument. Ironically, it's lazy, the very thing people accuse fromsoft of being every time they say "artificial difficulty." Sorry if I'm coming off combative, I do have my issues with the game (camera on bayle and a few other fights is awful, some places are indeed empty, repeat bosses), but I really enjoyed the dlc regardless and hope they continue with this game design and simply fix these quality of life issues. It sucks you didn't enjoy it, I hope they don't let you down next time.

Agree with a lot of what you’re saying but malenia’s waterfowl can be dodged by running away and then dodging into her on the third, no spin at all required even on heavy load. It would also really surprise me if the devs did it any other way

i like how they made phase 2 radahn tank ur fps as a bit of meta difficulty l, miyazaki is truly a genius

Comment section is just people coping they can't beat radahn

I did not hate LOTF. I just thought it was boring. Before I finished it, I decided to go back to new game+ of Lies of P rather than spend any more time in LOTF.

If you think the best expansion ever made is "so bad it made you want to touch grass", and you're booking time off work to play a videogame instead of using your ever-diminishing vacation allowance to explore the real world and interact with real people, then you have bigger problems than just bad taste fella. Ignore this cry for mental health help as 'SotE' isn't "half-baked" or a sequel that was cut for time, it is quite literally the finest DLC/Expansion that I've played, and it's still baffling how FromSoftware can craft something this good in the time it takes Treyfart to squit out a runny stream of turd slime, or for Ubirot to give us banal maps full of 70 hours of copy-pasted guff with nonsensical, turgid story lines. Do yourself a favour, buy this now and play it when you get the chance, making sure you don't ignore your partner(s), children, friends, and family, and don't forego reality for spending some time in a virtual world, no matter the staggering quality on offer.

Game would have been better if they just designed two or three more variants of thr asylum demon tbh

Is it well made? No Do i love it? Yes lol

Nah bloodborne is definitely better this is delusional An open world game can't compete with the focus of a linear game Just not possible

My biggest issue with the Shadow of the Erdtree is what I believe to be the root of every problem with content, loot, weapons, boss design and perhaps the one of the few things Dark Souls 2 got right: Separate DLCs. Dark Souls 2 has three DLCs: Crown of the Ivory King, Crown of the Sunken King, and Crown of the Old Iron King. Each DLC has its own content with bosses and lore unique to the DLC while expanding upon the lore of Dark Souls, which is infinitely easier because Dark Souls is "ruined" unlike Elden Ring where the land is actively falling apart. Why I say this is because this DLC feels horrible because it is a jumbled mess in an attempt to get out as much content as possible so that they can move on to the next project. Shadow of the Erdtree was not about Miquella, nor Radahn, and not even Mohg. It was about Marika and just happened to involve Miquella, Radahn, and Mohg. The Land of Shadow is where Marika was born, where she grew up and her village was tortured and killed; it's where she was chosen as an empyrean- something that multiple god candidates can have, such as the old lady with the crucible and the gloam-eyed queen (or Ranni, Miquella, and Malenia)- and Marika won that battle for the throne. Using this, she countered by destroying everything about the crucible. She had Godfrey rebrand the crucible with his knights by making it seem like they were using their faith to create artificial animal limbs and could make the earth tremble- making omens, symbols of perfect societies and the crucible thriving- a terrible curse that must be destroyed. We see that Marika protects her village to this day, having her son and her technically-not-son's friend (Gaius) guard an entrance to what seems like a small furnace that was probably used to burn away whatever Marika had to get passed like we do. Marika's son, Messmer, is leading the crusade against the crucible and as such, everyone you see in the DLC is somebody effected by this... until you get to the point where the game reminds you that Miquella and Radahn are also here. At some point, the game will be like- "Remember that Miquella is here, dismembering himself for the greater good!" or "This guy grew up with Radahn!" despite the fact that regardless of whether or not Radagon and Marika are the same person, anyone of Carian lineage should hate them because Radagon not only broke up a family, but abandoned his wife for his other self and had the audacity to bring his children. The only person who properly responds to this is Ranni, who goes on a mission to never let gods bother mankind again because of it. Sure, that's not the full gist of it and I may have missed some parts. But Shadow of the Erdtree is about Marika, not about Godwyn, not about Miquella, or even Radahn. Another example: St. Trina is Miquella's other half. And the reason she's left in some chasm to die and why there is no addition of sleep spells, weapons, incantations, or the like, is because he abandoned her there to die and so whatever you find in there is it. Most bosses have such high sleep resistances that sleep doesn't matter, and eternal slumber is infinitely better, but it doesn't matter because nothing you fight that actually matters is truly affected by eternal slumber. We also find out that St. Trina is quite literally guiding people in death by soothing the body while the soul can rest. Putrescent Knight is what happens when a body without a soul is comforted by St. Trina, because a mass of flesh whose soul has most likely already been burned by ghost flame has no meaning, it hates it. But no, we get nothing expanding upon that at all. What would have been better to have multiple DLCs like: 1. "Shadow of the Erdtree" Where we learn of Marika's past as we do already in the current DLC. Expanding on her crusade with the crucible, leaving bosses such as Midra, Messmer, and Rellana. This also gives them an opportunity for larger and greater detailed areas, while also possibly adding another set of important bosses. 2. "Era of Compassion" Where we enter through Miquella's cocoon to an alternate world like the realm of shadow, but instead it's all about blood and faith- Miquella actively fighting off Mohg's advance while trying to ascend to godhood so that he can finally wake up. We could have an entire sleep area where St. Trina isn't an enemy, but rather we get to see why she was Miquella's other half, putting many incredibly aggressive enemies into eternal slumber so they can't fight us but also causing other enemies like the putrescent knight to exist. Meanwhile we get a bit more about Mohg and his motivations, not "he was charmed and a pawn," but rather "he was charmed and stronger than Miquella anticipated." 3. "Realm Beyond Time" Where we learn about dragons and the five fingers. Here we could get Bale and more dragon centric bosses and areas, perhaps even more aspects of the bestial lore with Maliketh and ancient deities or legacies of them like ghost flame. And just plenty of other ideas that don't necessarily need to land perse, but rather just go to show that so many of these stories are too big to be cramped into one DLC. The reason why it worked in the base game was because everybody was supposed to be converging in the lands between, everybody had their own factions in their own areas and these areas were exactly as we found them- Godrick and his lot were pathetic, Radahn's faction is fighting off scarlet rot, the Haligtree is dying but awaiting Miquella's return, Mohg and his people are seeking refuge in blood and killing tarnished, while Ranni and the carians are silently building strength. This all worked because the main premise was ascending to elden lord while helping or destroying these factions, while Shadow of the Erdtree just has all of these groups that don't get enough time to shine because they've only gotten increasingly more complex, not less. Elden Ring 2 or another DLC won't matter because they put the most important aspect of the game in the DLC, the divine gate. Apparently, people can just ascend to godhood, which while fine, defeats any purpose of a sequel. By the point in the game, you canonically enter the DLC, the fingers are dead, the greater will no longer responds, the lands between is falling apart, you have to kill the guy guarding death to make sure that everything stays dead, and you burn the tree that helped make everyone immortal. By this point, if you beat the game already, everything is dead and practically every faction is without a leader. What would a sequel do? Just solidify who we got rid of? All the empyreans that had access to the divine gate are gone. We stopped Miquella, Ranni didn't need it because of us, and Malenia would never try to surpass her brother. So, who'd be left that would make a compelling story? The world outside of the lands between is falling apart too, so no land of reeds, the badlands may just be the land of shadow, but nobody knows, all the outer gods that matter have been sealed or already are wielded by characters we defeat. So, they hastily wanted to conclude the story just to ensure that nothing else could happen. Not only that, Marika and Radagon having an endless number of children stops making sense after the fifteenth important demigod and now we're trying to figure out how she had to do this while married to Godfrey or Radagon, who all these important demigods look like. Shadow of the Erdtree is great, I love it, I loved it on my first playthrough and there are plenty of other things I'll love as I play more when I feel like beating the game again. But there are some things that seemed like nobody discussed beforehand or just ignored because they wanted to get this one project over with so that they could get the next one. Which is insane because a possibly rushed project performing this well to me isn't an omen of things to come, but an omen of things that'll be missed in future projects.

I like the video so far, but that part about From caring about framerate is insane. Pretty much every one of their games has had mild to severe framerate issues on the platforms they initially launch on (ESPECIALLY DS1).

Gonna come back to this after i play it. I have a fallout fix at the moment lol

About on par with your other essays on From games. Really great analysis in some parts, and some hilariously wtf "solutions" and flat out dumb takes elsewhere. It's a shame you don't seem to appreciate the art design and atmosphere, which is a huge part of what makes these games so great imo, rather than the rolling simulators that are so many of the bosses in both the base game and DLC. That said, you have a great way of expressing your thoughts and your voice has a nice tone and flow for the video essay medium.