I just think the Miquella aspects of the DLC were the least compelling. Everything relating to Marika and Messmer and the Hornsent was much more compelling.
Nailed it. Everything having to do with Messmer and Marika was, unironically, masterful. I legit started crying when I got to Shaman Village, read the descriptions of the items, and put two and two together. That OST never fails to make me tear up and makes me feel a deeper appreciation for the Elden Beast half of the Final Battle OST While there are some interesting things regarding Miquella’s story, especially with the band and Mohg it just…didn’t feel all that compelling? Most already figured out months ago that Miquella wasn’t going to be the angel on earth he was portrayed as in the base game and it feels like the DLC narrative with him is guiding you to a conclusion you already anticipated, only surprise! Radahn’s here! For some fucking reason
I agree 100%. Miquellas story is just the old cliche "maybe the nice guy with good intentions ISNT all that nice." And then they made him an incestuous femboi in a desperate ploy to make such a dull character more enigmatic.
I wish that the whole part of Miquella abandoning his flesh to ascend to godhood had ended with him placing his soul into Godwyn tobecome something beyond both life and death and really show the horror of his charm magic making people love a literal corpse
Yeah, I REALLY wanted to see a charm magic based boss. Imagine Miquella's soul in Godwyn's body, using both pure charm magic and corrupted death magic, would've been so cool. When I got the Rune of Miquella, which says "Has the power to resist charms", I got so hyped for the final boss. Got disappointed so bad. The only thing we had is that "Heart Stolen" grab attack from Miquella ( which is no joke the coolest part about the fight imo 😭 )
And then we fight them as a monstrosity - Miquella the Loveless / Godwyn, Prince of Undeath - after Miquella's tampering attracted the attention of outer gods... honestly, Metyr, Mother of Fingers was the most visually striking boss (and environment), and should've been the mandatory "Elden Beast" fight at the end of the DLC, not a hidden bonus boss fight.
That’s an amazing idea! Since Marika lost her original body to become a god, then Radahn must’ve been another person that she now inhabits the body of. Miquella could do the same thing with Godwyn’s body, but because Godwyn’s body is still alive then it could go terribly wrong for Miquella.
I don't think this makes sense since Marika is aware of the powers Miquella is trifling with seeing as she was the first to ascend, why would she be on the brink at the start of the base game if she knew she could bring her son back
I think that Radahn is a symptom, not a cause. By which I mean the reason behind why people are dissatisfied with him is absolutely all over the DLC. That reason being that the DLC has almost zero integration with the main game. There is zero mention of Messmer anywhere in the base game. When people first heard about Rellana, they thought that it was a joke. The Scadutree and the Divine Gate and the veil over the lands are neither explained nor brought up anywhere in the Lands Between. In the vast majority of the new lore, we are adding complications rather than elaborations, with just a few exceptions. The base game did not hint at any sort of connection between Miquella and Radahn outside of the fact that Malenia fought him, which was the subject of rampant speculation. On the flipside of the coin, the DLC barely, if at all, touches on anything Miquella was doing in the base game. The Haligtree is not mentioned once. Malenia is only referred to by proxy as the mother of the forager brood and is only mentioned by name in the description of Radahn's armor. The Eclipse or what it was for is never mentioned despite Godwyn's Death Knights being present and on a completely inscrutable quest. You can have Miquella's Needle in your head and it goes unnoted. You can wear Miquella's tiara to Malenia's boss fight or her own armor to Radahn's boss fight and nobody says a word. You can have the Flame of Frenzy in you and Midra doesn't change at all, and you are still referred to as a Lord of the Old Order or of the Erdtree or of Marika by everybody. There's no explanation of whether or not the body in the cocoon is even Miquella. There isn't even a cutscene for entering the DLC, you just go through a loading screen and zone in. I've heard people, including you, say that the Godwyn stuff was always wishful thinking in the vein of Velka from DS1. Well to me the much more apt comparison to DS1 is Sif. If you went and did Artorias of the Abyss first and save Sif, then Sif's cutscene actually reflected that in the base game. To me that reflects a level of care which is so often absent from Elden Ring. In a lot of ways this DLC is the most polished and finely crafted piece of content FromSoft has ever put out, but it's also missing the polish and craft that I would most care about.
@@jaketinsley1987 As factual as gods existing. I think you guys need Vaati to actually get anything from the new lore that is plentiful in the Dlc lmao.
Yeah right. Next time he’s probably gonna use Kainé Salvation or Weight of the World at which point I definitely won’t be listening to what he’s saying.😅
I want to get into that series, but I cannot. I watched a playthrough of Replicant, and bought Automata, but stopped playing it after about 10 hours. Gameplay felt too repetitive, and the story was ok.
In the base game, Radahn presentation was amazing. The cutscene with the voice acting, the build up to the once strongest of the demigods, the overwhelming (at first) battle with the possibility to summon multiple allies on a full battlefield. I feel like it was a bad idea to bring him back. I can't help but compare the new version to the previous amazing fight. Worst, he was mad with rot, then we freed him, only for him to become a puppet zombie...
exactly. He feels like he’s the most violated character. It would have been great that when we kill him, we got a murmur: « Finally free » from Radhan to expose how much he was tired of having his will stripped away. It would have been more tragic and impactful imo with just one line.
Here’s my idea for the final boss: If Miquella can control people to do things against their will, then I believe he could have manipulated a Demi God to be like Godwyn. Miquella could still use Mohg’s body and Radahn’s soul to make a consort like Godwyn, but not an exact replica. The lore could have been that Miquella wanted Godwyn to be his consort so badly that he’d rather have a fake Godwyn than no Godwyn at all.
@@BulldogFromHell I mean he influences them to the point where when his influence vanishes they remember their purpose, as if they woke from a slumber. Take Thiollier for example, he was forced to follow Miquella instead of St-Trina. It does not seem to me as mere influence. When he grabs you during the fight, you get a sigil over your head. This is a magical power. Finally, maybe Radahn wants this, but since he doesn't talk more than when he was inflicted by rot, one could believe he his not himself, altough he could always have been a man of few words.
Not sure why they didn’t just actually do it like Sekiro and attach the fragments to boss fights including side and mini bosses. At least the reasons for clearing dungeons would’ve been universal.
@@abdieljove2011In a realm of magic and Gods, and an entire background story in the main game where Miquella was attempting to restore it through a Celestial event.... there's literally no reason they couldn't have followed through with that instead of, "I know we had plenty of breadcrumbs pointing to Miquella's affection and designs for Godwyn, but what if we just ignore all that and instead we decide he was actually obsessed with Radahn instead, even though that's not something even hinted at or that they even had any association with each other"
1. Scadutree fragments should’ve been dropped by every boss IN ADDITION to having locations in the game world. Would give that feeling of reward after beating bosses, which is somewhat lessened because runes are less meaningful. Also would’ve added fragments at nearly every grace. The game feels artificially difficult for some people because the HP pools of the bosses are insanely high. 2. Godwyn would’ve made much more sense and would’ve been super surprising in a good way. 3. No new dialogue in the base game is super strange and gives off a feeling of lack of polish. Still a 9.5 out of 10 IMO
BOSS SPOILERS: what really disappointed me was a lack of cutscenes for important bosses. bug lady and ESPECIALLY rellana deserved cutscenes. avatar, finger momma and bayle didn't need them tho, they were cinematic enough
It was weirdly anti-climatic stepping into Rellana’s fog gate for the first time and she’s just there. I guess Castle Ensis isn’t really the most spectacular dungeon compared to Belarut anyways..
Rellana not having her own cutscene I can understand. But Romina just having a simple cutscene a la Quelaag would’ve been warmly welcomed since they went the fan service route with her and all.
Not only cutscenes dude. As well as voice over. They just dont talk and sit there like random bosses. Especially Romina that showed up in the story trailer.
Radahn’s story; from all of his lore we were given before and after the festival, to the festival itself was incredible and so well portrayed in the base game. The way that warriors from around the lands between gathered together to celebrate his life by giving him the honorable death on the battlefield the he deserved was near perfection. He is legendary. He didn’t need to have a place in the dlc, because his tale was already told.
I have an "idea". It could be related to how George R.R. Martin wrote thr whole lore. Maybe everything was tied in a way that requires characters to reappear.
Yeah and the fact we got a prime Radahn yet didn't see what he was really capable of was baffling to me. I was so hyped to fight him, just to find out phase 2 is literally just him but with AoE spam and a couple more moves, and the twink on his back. It feels like a BS version of Twin Princes too
That would go under a personal opinion. I think too many people speculate and make their ideas canon instead of realizing the lore is always confusing in these games and DLC MIGHT clear things up. With so many more players now than in the past, there will be less takes focused on what's given and more fanfics and shipping from a more casual crowd. I figured many would grumble when things didn't pan out how they thought.
God damn the fight with Miquella's faithful was amazing though. A blood bath of everyone turning on each other fighting for what they believe is right. One of my favorite fights in the game for its lore alone
After the fight, after looting the dead for all their cool armor, ascending the stairs to stop Miquella there was a message that read "good work, monster" That's going to stick with me
I think the biggest missed opportunity here is Miquela's crosses. Imagine if, instead of just saying "here i left my right big toe", it was Miquela leaving notes about what he is finding in the shadow lands and how it's changing his philosophy. The cross that (in my opinion) adds the most to Miquela as a character is the one in stone coffin fissure. Where he abandons his love. Imagine if throughout the dlc Miquela talks about how bad he feels for the hornsent initially or his brother Mesmer, and then he slowly realizes what Marika went through and why she was so vengeful. But then maybe he gets more angry because it was Marika's order, her neglect, etc. That caused so much pain to Godwyn, Malaenia, the people of the lands between, and THAT is when he decides that he will create an order of compassion, even through compulsion. I just feel like the lore presented is done in the weirdest places (almost no boss cut scenes or dialog, that weird ending cut scene which almost feels like it should have been the intro to the dlc, not at the very end). I've got other problems with the emptiness of areas and the Scadu system but I got into Elden ring because of the lore (which is a nerd ass thing to say) so that's what I'm most disappointed in. Again, all the Hornsent, Marika and Mesmer stuff is awesome, so I'm glad for that. I don't know. We should let it simmer for a couple months, let Vaati, Smough, Zullie, Queelag and everyone else do their research and see where it stands then.
Dude the “I abandon here my love” cross was such a good moment because it really was like oh shit… he’s gonna be the bad guy. Torn on whether I would have wanted more on the crosses. On one hand, I think the love cross works so well because you’ve been reading a bunch of bullshit like “I abandon here my appendix” so when that one matters it hits, but yeah more characterization for them woulda been nice.
I think that as a final boss, Radahn didn't fit the existing lore. Sure, Miyazaki pulled a bait and switch with Radahn and Godwyn, but it doesn't really work because of how Godwyn was built up. For example, it is established in Fia's questline that Godwyn isn't dead, but rather that his soul can't reincarnate into the erdtree- which is why deathblight is so problematic, because it's the reintroduction of actual death in a world where death has still been removed. Because of this, Fia- as a deathbed companion- sleeps with Godwyn so that he can be reborn via the mending rune. Furthermore, in Castle Sol and the Golden Epitath suggest that Miquella and Godwyn were close, which makes sense because Godwyn was akin to a sun, lightning, and gold deity via the Eclipse. Now in the DLC, we find out that Radahn promised to be Miquella's consort under a certain condition, most likely death, but this doesn't make sense. Not because it simply doesn't, but because there was no indication that Miqulla and Radahn spent time with each other. Whereas its made clear that Godwyn and Miquella were close, which made some believe that Godwyn was Miquella's first choice, Radahn second. But that isn't right either. The game is trying to demand that we believe Radahn was Miquella's first choice, which wouldn’t make sense because Miquella's whole thing was making the impossible possible. Miquella created the Haligtree from his own blood, rivaling the erdtree- he blocked the outer god of rot from hurting Malenia, he accepted the rejected of Marika's order within his group. It also tarnishes this very character: the only demigod that was actually good for mankind is instead another person hungry for power, using any means necessary to obtain it-- which includes cursing mohg, ordering Malenia to kill Radahn- which lead to the nuking of all of Caelid, and that everyone that had ever loved Miquella was under his spell. Sure, his charms were brought into question and was definitely a villainous trait to be introduced, but with the DLC, Miquella was essentially the worst of them all. And unlike Ranni, whose character was shafted due to the mistranslation of her ending, Miquella is just another horrible person we must face. Worst of all, people have begun to speculate that the night of the black knives was because of Miquella now. Specifically, Godwyn's death, which was bound to happen because of the lore this messes with during the DLC. Godwyn would’ve made more sense because of all these issues. Miquella, desperate to save his brother, charmed as many as he could to bring him back as his consort. Rather than suggesting that some of the worst atrocities being because of Miquella's desire for a consort- his helpful nature wants to save everyone, including Godwyn. It would’ve made more sense for the deathblight that ate away at Godwyn to do the same as Miquella, much how we all speculated that Mohg would corrupt Miquella. "Godwyn, Prince of Death" or "Godwyn, the Duskborne" would have been perfect for Miquella. In Miquella's journey, he finally managed to create bring Godwyn back, but the deathblight ate away at them both, maybe not leaving shells of their former selves- but rather both of them embrace natural death, or deathblight. Miquella's order is not only one of compassion, but one where death is properly restored. Is Radahn okay when you piece together the lore? Yes and no, it's not just about perspective but also about that it can only really make sense when you ignore the connections that are clearly Godwyn and Miquella (such as Castle Sol, that speaks of Godwyn and his Eclipse, holding a medallion to the haligtree). But perhaps more connections that weren't just retconned (like the Golden Epitath) or just added (like the battle of caelid) in the future.
@@SM-nz9ff I'm going to assume you weren't being rude on purpose, so here: 1. "With this, Godwyn can take his rightful place as First of the Dead. And claim a second, illustrious life." -Fia 2. "I will soon lay with Godwyn. And it will surely stir within me. the new life of the golden prince, and first Dead of the demigods, as the rune of Those Who Live in Death." -Fia 3. "After Godwyn the Golden became the Prince of Death, the ancient dragon fought long and hard against the Death within its companion. Alas, victory was never achieved and its only reward was corruption." -Remembrance of the Lichdragon So, Godwyn is not dead in the way that we think. Marika's order is one where you literally cannot die. Also, Fortissax was not protecting a soulless corpse, but fighting off deathblight within Godwyn. His corpse is at the roots of the erdtree because they thought it would bring him back like everyone else, but destined death severs that connection. Because of this, he has to be reborn via the mending rune. Miqulla, who is quite literally creating a new order, could have totally found a way to bring Godwyn back. He literally put Radahn in Mohg's body, I'm sure he's smart enough to come up with something.
@@SkorBn Na its figurative like Marika living when you mend the rune normally. Its the world order. Marika isn't going to literally come back to life as your wife she is the embodiment of world order. That's what Godwyn "coming back" in his second life means. It means death is returning to the world. Also she is a Tarnished like us and just doing whatever she things is correct. doesn't mean the words she speaks is even true just like all sorts of NPCs who say things that we know are literally incorrect. The Dung Eater exists afterall maybe he's right In this case Godwyn is alive and is death root/death blight. His body is a part of the world order. He isn't and wasn't ever coming back like a boss his soul is totally gone.
I think your way of presenting the problem is one of the most thorough and rings true with many of my own beliefs. You pointed out the whole caelid dilemma and this is the most jarring issue with the DLC lore, it just doesn't click. Also, many people say the DLC was good because it explained why Malenia fought Radahn. But that's specifically something that - in truth - we didn't need. Malenia fought Radahn in a time during which every demigods fought each other for power : Radahn vs morgott, Godrick vs Morgott, Malenia vs Godrick. And Malenia fighting Radahn was only logical. We didn't need a sorry excuse to explain why they fought. What is it going to be next ? Morgott fought Godrick so he could make him his consort ? The lore truly was a disappointment on many angles within this DLC...
@@SkorBn I think this more or less hits the nail on the head. The DLC attempted to force Miquella into a mold that actively betrayed everything compelling about his character in the base game, and I’m not sure what benefit we really even got out of it. I think that the concept of a god so purely devoted to bettering things for the downtrodden that he actively overpowers the will of others, wounds himself, dismembers himself, and ultimately takes corruption unto what is left of himself is a fascinating concept with a lot of room for moral questions. Turning him into the catalyst for everything bad ever just feels like it’s worse than a waste. His current story detracts from the base game.
My biggest issue with final boss is that we already fought Radahn in a super special and cinematic way in the main game. I want a final boss to be shocking and unique, ala Orphan of Kos or Manus. It cheapens the Radahn Festival for me and was an awkward note to end the DLC with.
i disagree. i think if you didnt get it spoiled you would've never seen it coming. miquella was in control the whole time and it was in the works from the first story trailer from the base game. u just dont appreciate the writing
@@Blaynkk Except, if you do the NPC quests, it's spelled out to you that Miquilla is reviving Radahn to be his chosen consort. Invalidating you're entire point.
@@Blaynkk How can it be spoiled when the characters literally tell you it's going to happen? "Miquella was in control the whole time" is something I'd expect in a Star Wars prequel; it's just hackneyed. We also don't know whether the writers intended those words from Malenia when the base trailer released. There's no indication of it in the base game.
@@Blaynkk The game kinda threw it to your face half way into the Shadow Keep, if you follow Ansbach & Freyjas questline. The only thing that surprised me was that the final boss looked exactly like Radahn. I was actually expecting Mohg body with Radahn moveset. And quite frankly I might have prefered that.
You know the souls fanbase has turned into a cult when you need to preface any criticism with a preemptive "I think it's amazing, 10/10 and the best thing ever" before you say anything negative.
@@opethmike Exactly! I love this series but not everything is 100% perfect and every game has something I would change if I could. FromSoft has built up a lot of goodwill with the fanbase, but stuff can still slip through the cracks because nobody is perfect.
Radahn is such an odd choice for the boss because it feels like random areas of justification for him being the final boss are very sloppy for no reason. The memory after the fight is such a letdown because you'd think it'd be a lore reward for those who managed to pass the fight but like... nah??? Everything in it we already knew. And the godwyn/radahn debate is likely just bad signposting by fromsoftware. It's highly unlikely they changed the final boss from godwyn to radahn, especially since godwyn is explicitly permadead in the lore, but the associations with Miquella up against his at-present lacking connections to Radahn outside of the DLC set people up for a different payoff than was delivered.
The biggest issue with the story of the DLC is even after defeating Miquella, we aren't presented with any new ending, or meaningful story bits that sows everything together. You beat the boss, and are given a cutscene that doesn't tell you anything you havent figured out urself by doing the side quests in Shadow. It's disappointing and there are still loose ends that probably won't be tied up unless they are cooking another DLC
which they arent and miazaki said himself they wont. so disappointed in that statement by him. i get it that its not all about the money with him and he wants to move onto other things...but elden ring IS his biggest cash cow yet AND people would go crazy for another dlc or elden ring 2 since there's so much of the story left untold and its just such a fun masterpiece of a game. i dont understand the logic in setting that aside.
1. Fragments definitely should've been either more plentiful, or standardized like in Sekiro where you get power-ups from killing bosses. I personally had to use a guide from level 14 to get enough to get to level 20. 2. Absolutely, 100% agree. It was more confusing than mysterious. Also doesn't help that it's rehashing an old boss, which is annoying at first glance. It'd be like if, instead of fighting Slave Knight Gale at the end of the Ringed City, you instead fought a variation of Yhorm. In hindsight, the lore makes sense. However, in the middle of the fight, it's a bit jarring and unsatisfying.
1. I agree. You really need to explore every corner of the map in order to find all the Scadutree fragments. This is not a big problem for me, as I tend to do that anyway. But in the base game you don't have to do that to make a viable character. Almost any weapon will work, and you can gain runes for leveling wherever you go. In the DLC, you really need to go everywhere.
Exactly my thoughts. Sekiro is in my opinion the best game FROMSOFT have ever made partly because of how well balanced the game is. Killing bosses to get stronger gives you that feeling of satisfaction aswell as a universely useful reward for all builds that allows players to always be scaled properly. Another thing that frankly frustrates me to no end is the abscence of a feature in sekiro that allowed you to replay major bosses from checkpoints. Now i can understand it would be difficult for us to replay EVERY SINGLE OPEN WORLD BOSS but there is simply no excuse for not giving us the ability to infinitely fight rememberences/ major bosses. It just baffles me, since people including myself have wanted this feature since day 1 and considering they were releasing the DLC and a quality of life update a day before it would have been the perfect time to do it. As harsh as it is they either 1. Couldn't be bothered despite being able to incorporate it into Sekiro no problem or 2. They believe for whatever reason its not appropriate for Elden Ring specific style of play. No matter the reason, boss replay mode and the ability to perfect block should have been in the game from day one, nevermind 2 years after the fact.
@@cameronmcginley agreed, especially because Elden Ring is so massive. Running from boss to boss takes an extremely long time compared to Sekiro or the other souls games
@@cameronmcginley Agreed. Sekiro is simply the superior game. Now i dont care about getting stronger stat wise. I find that boring. But sekiro didnt do the whole stat thing you either got good at the boss and mastered the parry system of that game or you did not. The combat was faster, more fluid, both you and the bosses had the same freedoms and restrictions, not having a stamina bar was a godsend, i could go on. What's funny is even if they add a sekiro like deflect mechanic in the form of that deflect tear it is still inferior to sekiro's version. In sekiro it didnt take stamina and your posture bar would never break if u kept perfect parrying. Also in sekiro you could see the enemy's posture bar unlike elden ring and perfect blocking also got their posture up so you could break their posture purely by perfect blocking them. It's a crying shame we went from sekiro to ER imo. ER is a step back in so many ways while Sekiro is their magnum opus. I hope myazaki is all tired out of souls like games and goes on to give us sekiro 2 or at least some sekiro adjacent game.
Man the fact that they didn’t have it be Godwyn, just imagine the divine gate, with an eclipse looming over it. Not very original I must admit, but would have been infinitely better.
Godwyns soul is completely destroyed by the rune of death/ Imagine paying attention to the base game and understanding what completely destroyed means.
@@SM-nz9ff Godwyn's soul isn't "completely destroyed", it's _dead._ This is the whole point of Fia's questline and ending: his soul lives ('lives') in death.
@@TehCakeIzALie1 Uh no you don't understand what's happening in that. Godwyn does not come back in Fias questline like huh. You just put the rune of death back together and death is now apart of the world again. It says so right in this Mending Rune of the Death Prince. Godwyn has no soul his body is apart of the world now spreading death root. You aren't bringing his soul together you are bringing the rune of death back together. He's gone gone, hence he can't be resurrected by Miquella or anyone else. If he could then grace could have just brought him back like the Tarnished are resurrected.
Also to live in death is just what happens when the rune of death is removed from the world order. Its not supposed to be this way so that is what manifests like the undead in Dark Souls. Gwyn tried to have eternal fire but the world state is fighting against him. Same thing here.
I feel like after defeating Miquella and Radahn, he would at least say something? I thought it was weird there wasn’t any dialogue upon defeat, and then the cutscene is just a flashback and then… that’s it. That’s the end to this epic dlc? I still appreciate that cutscene lore-wise but it just felt off and didn’t stick the landing for me. Would have been interesting if the Tarnished did certain things or collected specific items like the Three Thirds Cords in Bloodborne, then we could walk through the Divine Gateway ourselves and leave it open to that. Still a great expansion.
I think the worst part about Radahn being the final boss is that it's just not really that interesting purely as a concept. He's a character we already know a lot about and literally have to fight to access the dlc in the first place. The dlc doesn't really add anything to his character and mostly just uses him as a vessel to (very shallowly) explore Miquella. I genuinely think had he been a completely new and mysterious character or being we've never heard of before but is maybe hinted at in like one or two item descriptions people would be far more positive about it.
thats kind of the point though hes just a poor clone and a meager representation of the real radahn, adding in a new character would take a lot of explaining to justify, in the case of messmer the explanation had to be that he was the very first kid marika had before leaving them and having their name basically be forgotten because messmer was never mentioned in the lore, imagine adding in a whole new character with no explanation outside the erdtree, that could create a lot more plotholes then messmer would, and if you say miquella could use messmer, thats stupid, that would be a lot worse because at least when you fight radahn you havent fought him in some time but if theres only one boss that seperates you from normal messmer and then all of a sudden you fight messmer the consort it would just be seen as lazy.
@@SpookeyGael Better than an endgame death blight Godwyn like a bunch of people somehow want. And don't tell me that you can do Godwyn without death blight because that would be such a massive plot hole to cure it and leave him in The Lands Between uncured. That shit would have had less than a 1% completion rate and made people despise FromSoftware. They made the right call. Godwyn is more dead than anyone else in the game and he needed to stay dead to preserve the base game, which they said the DLC wouldn't affect. He's the ONLY character who is soulless, and Miquella requires both soul and vessel to have his consort. If the DLC could affect the main game, yes you can do Godwyn, but it doesn't so you can't.
I think that he would be PERFECT, if he wasn't the final boss, it aactually gives a lot of info on Miquella, his morals, its tragic, it makes sense, but again, it should never be the final boss.
Fromsoft needs to add some things to the plethora of empty spaces in these areas. It's a serious issue to scour every nook and cranny of an area and find absolutely nothing except maybe a smithing stone, or a glovewort.
What’s interesting is the item description on the double axes you get from the death knight. It explicitly states that Godwyns body is a surrogate, not his real dead body. So there is more to uncover for sure
Woah, that's a massive piece of lore to drop Really makes me think maybe Godwyn was planned to be the final boss after all, and they just left this reference in, I honestly can't think of anything else that "surrogate cadaver" could mean
One of the biggest issues I have with the reveal is simply a lack of interest in Radahn... He feels like the character I would have loved when i was 12-14 years old "he's the biggest and the strongest and the baddest- look at his character, he is HUGE and wears BADASS armour and is this great general" etc etc. This legendary warrior you have to put down in an honourable tournament. But as an adult, I'm just less enthraled with memetic badassery than I once was. I'm not saying they re-wrote it but it does feel like they at least went "Everyone loves Radahn, so let's give them what they want". It was fine as it was, we didn't need more of him- his story was well-told and nicely contained. You have enough hints to a deeper character and story to keep lore squirrels rooting around and with some grandiose visuals for enjoying smashing your face against. It felt unsatisfying to revisit a boss in that way and it is impossible to remove it from the knowledge of countless posts over the years about "what it would be like to fight prime Radahn". I hate the term fanservice, as it is overused, but it certainly smacks of that. It was narratively disappointing, which I found especially frustrating as I actually found myself becoming quite invested in this new world and story. I've played all the games and I have always enjoyed discovering/being told about the lore but it was never really a big part of my first playthrough experience- gameplay tended to be my main focus and then I would spend far more hours reading/watching lore info afterwards. But in this DLC i was excited and speculating as I went- I actually cared more about the world design and worldbuilding than the gameplay but as soon as I had the ending spoiled for me, I lost so much interest in getting to the end because I no longer cared for where it was going. It feels like the bad joke ending to the story.
For me the worst thing about Radahn fight is you expect the final boss to be a strong representation of the themes and concepts of the game. I think this is a massive part of why Slave Knight Gael is so loved, his character perfectly embodies the struggle and perseverance you yourself have gone through all to get to this point at the end of time. Godwyn as a character would’ve been such a poetic final boss to Elden ring. A powerful, sacred and revered lord and is now an empty husk who is the physical manifestation of death infecting everything he touches. His presence in the dlc even would’ve added another element to Messmers character with him presumably being Marikas 1st child but in the land between Godwyn being considered the 1st, literally the golden child. In the grand scheme of Elden Ring lore Radahn is a cool side character and even if the lore can explain him being Miquellas consort that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like extremely misplaced fan service.
Godwyn can not be his Consort his Soul was destroyed with the Rune of Death there is no way to bring him back atleast not his true self unlike Radahn whos soul just got back to the Erdtree.
@@KingDarkness100 Elden ring has so many plot points that come out of nowhere and the community accepts them. Miquella was able to put Radahns soul into Mohgs body and everyone just accepted it as a possibility. If fromsoft wrote extra lore for the sake of plot convenience no one would care, something like the stars actually carried a material with them that if crafted into a needle could return a slain soul to its body. It’s already real lore that souls that suffered all manners of death go to the scadu tree
Goodwyn would have been so much better as a final boss, the whole point of miquella was to get him a proper burial, a Frankenstein husk of him that failed could also work. but its just a repeat boss yaaaaay but this time has no adorable horse. really anyone new would have been better but they wanted a demon king/akuma looking final boss and radahn assets were sitting there for them to asset flip
@@bs7257 Fun fact Marika was able to put back Godfrey's body after he died. This is not the case where Miquella putting Radahn's soul in a body makes no sense
The biggest problem I have with the final boss is that there is too little surprise, not too much. Halfway through the game Ansbach & Freya basically say "Hey they're resurrecting this guy for Miquella" and from that point onwards you know exactly what the final boss is going to be. I expected a phase 3 to the boss, but there just wasn't, there was only anticlimax. Remember how in the base game , you know you're going to have to fight Radagon, that's a given. But then you're surprised by the Elden Beast (unless you paid AMAZING attention to some very fine details). Yeah, the fight against EB is god-awful, but the inclusion there is amazing. It hits that perfect balance between "I could've seen this coming" and "I didn't see this coming", and it raises some intriguing questions that get you thinking. Final boss dude over here, achieves the opposite. You can perfectly see them coming, but they don't make much specific sense. Anyone could've been Miquella's consort, and they don't really provide a reason for them to be, aside from "Miquella liked them I guess". And then afterwards, you don't get anything; it's just over. No second health bar, no nothing. And this just raises questions of the frustrating kind; what was this ritual even about then? Did Miquella just need one consort and one divine gate and that's it? Then what was all that business with the corpse with the stitched skin in the trailer about? Guess that doesn't matter anymore. Imagine if we had to, idk, fight that corpse that Marika pulled the Rune/Hairs from in the trailer. That would've been a fun twist. Anything at all would've been better.
I think it's weird they didn't choose Godwyn given that there was so much lore pointing to Miquella trying to restore his soul/grant him a true death. As an aside, I actually think Radagon's reveal could be pretty surprising for most players... after all, the "Radagon is Marika" is hidden behind a pretty obscure and high intelligence puzzle.
Yeah and after you defeat them, nothing happens? Like you get a memory that they were in accord and I am like yes we know that, that's why we fought you to stop you xD, his circlet boosts intelligence, faith, and arcane by 1 (is that a joke?), and increases the power of Miquella's incantations by 10%, compare that with DS2 or DS3 DLC rewards and it's really weak
No, it could not be anyone else. Radahn is literally the strongest demigod, and he is a kind person, not like most of his delusional siblings. Godwyn was the only other perfect Consort, but his soul was completely destroyed, so Miquella had to use Radahn instead. Also, Marika needed the same things as him to ascend to Godhood. The divine gate and her consort Godfrey, who did the same things for Marika as Radahn would have done for Miquella (deleting everything that stands against his new Order), I would go as far as to say that Radagon is Marikas version of St. Trina(Radagon and Trina are the opposite genders of Marika and Miquella which would explain how Radagon can be Messmers and Melinas father, besides Godfrey being Marikas first Consort). I mean, I get it. We don't know who or what that thing was that Marika pulled the hair strings from, but she betrayed the Hornsent people and sacrificed them to activate the Gate because the Hornsent tortured her people, the Shaman and Metyr and her Two fingers guided her, besides not getting any new messages from the Greater Will at all. They misguided her I would say.
tbf it's the same for elden beast. radagon is a surprise, but if you did explore and found the stars spell you know about the beast. same for the other souls too: gwyn is a dead giveaway, gherman too, nashandra is obvious (not her being a skelly). soul of cinder is incredible tho.
@@KingDarkness100 we do know. check the innards item (the one dropped by the vase blobs, idk how it is in english), it has strands of hair in the sprite. they ammassed people, tons of them, to ammass divinity. somehow, all that concentration is enough power to become a god.
I'm honestly surprised you didn't complain that there weren't enough weapons in the new weapon categories. That's another big one I've seen thrown around, and one I agree with. There are only around 1-3 weapons for each new category, with perfumers getting like 5 for each status effect.
Radhan mostly just felt like fan-service to me. This is probably the last piece of Elden ring content/story we'll ever get, so I really would've liked a more satisfying sendoff. I think it's especially disappointing when you compare it to Dark souls, because they absolutely nailed it with Gael in DS3. Gael was a completely new character that we had just met a few hours earlier, and he wasn't even the final boss of the Dark Souls Story (edit: that would be Soul of Cinder imo), yet they still managed to make it feel so impactful and like a true sendoff.
Gael could actually be considered the final boss in a sense; while none of the endings change, the implication of a potentially infinite, everlasting painted world existing in such an otherwise hopeless world is maybe the only meaningful end the series could have found.
For me personally a big issue was how a lot of the items were just smithing stones or something else i dont really care about. There were parts I thought I'd find a cool new item or consumable and it just ended up being a couple +6 smithing stones
That's ultimately a you problem though. They can not guarantee that the player has the smithing bell bearings, and with the quantity of the new weapons and ashes they HAVE to give you those materials, they've done it for every one of their DLC's thus far.
@@epsilon1275 No its not a "you problem" , the problem is that exploration is unrewarding and fromsoft knows most people dont need those resources. It's easy to just add the stones to merchants instead of undermining exploration. Although honestly they just probably have nothing better to put there, and that's an issue too.
Am I the only person who appreciates the smithing stones? I upgrade everything, even what I can't use because I'll respec in NG+ so I felt like they did that for fans like me who wanna upgrade a lot. It was nice to not have to always buy 12 of every smithing stone and have some spare somber stones.
It felt weird going along a branching side path and picking up Somber 3s, but keep in mind there are a ton of new weapons and they all need to be upgraded too. I actually really didn't mind this thing at all. Elden Ring exploration was already very subpar, this was just more of the same. Very glad they didn't put items at the finger ruins or in the woods honestly, but it feels shit having a giant completely empty area.
I agree with you on Radahn. He's a great character in the base game but fighting him again is just not very interesting. Godwyn was such a no-brainer slam dunk of a last boss, idk why they dint take it.
Whether or not the part was ever intended by any of the developers to go to Godwyn, seeing him restored to his prime would've been much more interesting than seeing Radahn restored. Radahn doesn't even get any dialogue, he just grunts like a beast the same way his rotted husk did in the first fight.
I'll reserve judgement on whether it was a retcon or not until Miyazaki inevitably gets asked about it. I'm not saying I expected Godwin as the final boss, but given his weird faces show up in dungeons, along with Death Knights, I feel like there may have been something more planned. My biggest complaint is it's basically confirmed Melina and Messmer are siblings, and she has no new dialogue or input on the story.
If anything Godwyn would’ve been even more of a retcon since it’d completely ruin Fia’s quest and the Age of Duskborn ending, since Godwyn was already brought back as the Rune of the Death Prince. They can’t just bring him back again and have two of him existing
This also messes up Melina being the GEQ. Now that whole story makes no sense to me. Cause she was meant to be before Merika and we get nothing about her rule. Feels like a cope out and they backtracked.
@@mytsw that doesn’t inherently decanonize the Frenzy ending, there’s nothing saying there can’t be multiple lords of frenzied flame. If anything it’d be beneficial for the frenzy to have multiple, since it means there’s a greater chance one of them takes over the world
@@aldrichunfaithful3589 it was speculated since we saw promo art of miquella riding torrent a year ago. But no mention ingame and in the DLC no reference either. Also no cosmetics for torrent :(
The DLC also didn’t really touch on Marika’s rise to godhood even though it was a major part of the story trailer. I also wish they had told us more about Messmer since now I feel like he’s the least developed demigod even though he was a major part of the dlc’s marketing.
One thing that I don't see many people mention is that we know that Radahn's people, and consequently Radahn too, love and celebrate war, which is something that only brings death and misery to the people, and they put him as the chosen one of Miquella to be the lord of an era of compassion because now they decided that Radahn is a kind guy with a good heart? one thing doesn't match the other...
I haven't hit play yet, but here's the one problem I have. There are enough Golden Seeds in the game to max upgrade your flask without getting every single one. There are exactly 50 Scadu fragments while 50 are needed to max upgrade the blessing. I don't think I need to say why this is incredibly stupid. I think you all know.
I will say the 1st 10 upgrades do way more for you than the next 10 so don't worry about getting them all. 15 should be more than enough and if you explore everywhere you'll probably find more than that. I agree though there should have been more.
@@TheFondalizer That's after the first patch. The stat spread was way worse before they scaled it better until 14 and dropped off after that. Even the original spread wouldn't be so bad if they game had more than you needed or they didn't do that dumb thing they did with golden seeds where you need an x amount more than last time to upgrade. Just put only 20 of them on the map in obvious places like shrines/churches and make like 5-10 of them only acquirable as catacomb or gaol rewards. Please don't put them on hard to see mob enemies in the middle of a forest that run away before you even notice they were there.
@@budafuka The first patch happened very fast though and changed exactly what you described just in another way o.O you now have the leeway of about 20 fragments that dont really give you much anymore. In practice its basically the same thing as having too many golden seeds exept that for people that DO like to explore the additional fragments actually do give a small benefit and are not useless. Why are you still complaining about stuff they fixed almost instantly. OK if you played the entire game during the first 2 days then maybe you were affected but did you really not want to explore during your first playthrough?
Sunbro here. The scadutree system is pretty bad for co-op. The boost from blessings are massive, but the team gets scaled down to the host’s blessing level. At low blessing, the host is getting wiped by putrescent knight before I can land in the arena. But at a higher blessing level, the host might not even need help. I don’t like 7 versions of the same fight, where it’s a dice toss if the boss is getting nuked or our weapons are made of foam and everyone gets 2-shot.
@@slaphappy-qb3jb That's not how co-op with randoms works. you get level matched. This is a whole subset of players we are talking about that just like to lend a friendly hand to strangers because "sunbros" were inspired by how Solaire helps you. not that people need help anyways these days with mimic tear.
@@crestfallenhussar895 nobody plays with randoms anymore, or at least very few people. Most people password match their max level friends. I invade a lot, and 90% of the fights are against gank squads with their near max level friends, which you can determine from how many souls you get from them. Stats such as damage reduction and fp are completely unaffected by being summoned by a lower level player, which trivializes the base game. The fragment being based on the host is how matchmaking should have always been.
@@crestfallenhussar895 I did read. They're mad because they can't carry as a high level phantom and the host actually has to git gud. If you're expecting me to feel bad because all the casual shitters can't hack it, you're going to be waiting a long time. $100 says you're one of the shitters that was crying about how hard the game was because your blasphemous blade or moonveil spam didn't work anymore. Sit down kiddo.
I truly appreciate your criticism of the final boss as true criticism. As much as I love the final boss, I definitely understand people’s general gripes with it. However, all I’ve seen online for the past 2 weeks is hundreds of people raging over the difficulty or lord behind it. Your criticism so far has been the only one that I truly respect and understand, so genuinely, thank you for putting it so perfectly. Personally, I think it would have eased the shock a bit to have Radahn’s design be less similar to his original design. A thought I’ve seen thrown around is that Radahn should have been a lot more malformed and closer in design to Mohg to visually explain his soul being put into his body. I think that would have not only been a great design concept, but also would have better explained how Radahn is actually there.
The final boss has killed a lot of my hype for an otherwise surprisingly good DLC. It's not a git gud situation, it's a...this boss just isn't fun to fight situation.
I wanted the Scadutree Fragments work more like Beads in Sekiro, and less like Golden Seeds, and that more bosses and super enemies drop them. I also wanted them to be more. I also wanted St. Trina to be more active, even though I like that Miquella's denial of her makes it about how childish and unwilling to grow up he is. And I do think that there was something missing from Miquella during the final battle.
@@cosseybombexcept that he did that only because he felt like nobody was listening to his special little vision for the world, lmao. He's a childish, spoiled little cuck who did what he did just so he could force everyone to think like him He's literally the embodiment of Twitter kids LOL
Yeah finding an item on the ground shouldn't be the level up system. I think have guaranteed drops from big enemies and bosses, like you say, but I'd also add in random drops from strong enemies, too. That way people don't get stuck. You can still powerlevel up to a point. Maybe beating bosses as a summon has a random chance, too.
Cerulean coast and its accompanying red flower area were both needlessly empty and absolute slogs that showed the worst of the flaws of open world in the souls formula
I think the DLC has unusually large amount of those areas, i mean almost every area is like that besides legacy dungeons. I feel like they have an obsession with trying to make everything gigantic and big, its purely for visual and aesthetic reason. They want you to feel like an ant in the world and putting content there is afterthought.
@@FrozenkexI disagree, the only locations that felt “empty” were Charo/Cerulean, the Abyss and Jagged Peak. The latter two are excusable though because they’re designed as more linear segments, not fully open like the rest of the game, and they both do it well
@@Mo167ose Yeah I agree with this. Charo's Hidden Grave and Cerulean Coast were the only two that seemed unnecessary. The other areas felt like they had substance and at least some visual variety.
'reused'? nigga its completely in context within the story and his model and moveset are completely different to his character in the base game. next time just say you're too dumb to understand it instead of exposing yourself for being an idiot
My problem with the new leveling up system is that I personally took the words "Sekiro Like" by heart. I thought that by defeating bosses it would make me stronger, and not that I would NEED to search for them in (many times) obscure locations. I like to aimlessly explore the games that I play, when I NEED to explore to get stronger is no longer a pleasure, is a chore. Your suggestion of increasing the number of scadutree fragments can be easily applied by making bosses drop them (both main and side bosses).
@@boshwa20 It is, I just started a new playthrough and the need to find all the upgrades again is ass. But to be fair, the new patch really made a difference on the return u get from each scadutree level
Agreed. I already said this under a lore hunter video. But the satisfaction of beating bosses is inherently tied to progression. The progression and satisfaction of beating bosses being so divided, aside from Golden Hippo and Gaius, i found jarring. Getting a measly level up from Dancing Lion after almost 2 hours of attemps was frankly painful.
@FA-M-S Gaius also stores 5 of these things behind his arena. If they didn't want scadus to drop from bosses. The least they could have done is have more bosses that guard areas where scadus are available.
I share your sentiment about the presentation of radahn. He is badass and I love the fight mechanically but I couldn’t help but feeling a little confused when meeting him there. Having already fought him in the base game also takes away some of the excitement as opposed to fighting someone new.
He's also just basically a puppet/lackey of Miquella here, so it's hard to really feel something here... Radahn's real fight tells such an epic story of heroism and closure, and honouring Radahn with one last great fight. For the final battle, it's just Miquella we're trying to stop and we don't even know whether Radahn is a willing participant or not. Just falls flat
@@socialjihad5724we don't know if he's a willing participant or if he's been brainwashed. It's all up to player interpretation currently and I'm of the belief that the final cutscene is trying to imply the former.
@@duvetboa I mean, the end of my comment literally specifies that we don't know if he's a willing participant or not. But I find both answers unsatisfying: either he has no autonomy(which is boring for obvious reasons), or he does, in which case I just don't believe this is in line with the character they established and whose story they ended.
whats confusing to you? its explained in the lore, it works thematically and in context to what we've learned, it also helps explain our interaction with him in the base game.....what are you and the other normies who've never played a SoulsBorne game before having so much trouble understanding?
Scooby Doo blessings don't belong in a souls rpg design. They should've made the dlc stuff drop shadow runes and have those turn into dlc levels that go on top of your levels Soulsborne are based on rpg stats and have that traditional leveling system; Sekiro is fully mechanical in nature so it has those simplified upgrades. KEEP THEM SEPARATED
Let’s say Miquella x Consort needed to happen rather than a standalone Miquella boss. I can list a few candidates who have more precedence than Radahn as a consort. Imagine the imagery of an angelic Miquella on the back of Mohg’s satanic appearance. Or maybe introduce Miquella’s shadow. Or maybe Leda, who refused to die out of loyalty to Miquella, and reflecting the player and Ranni, Miquella picks a tarnished as his consort. Or as everyone is saying, Godwyn. Those would be better than Radahn just appearing out of thin air, with no established connection between the two. Radahn being alive does nothing for me, because they do nothing with him being alive again. Him being made from Mohg means little to nothing except some horns and one blood attack. The value of a ‘prime Radahn’ fight comes from a Radahn not ravaged by the scarlet rot, and yet this Radahn felt no different. He is supposedly revived, and yet he has even less personality than base game Radahn. He seems somehow more brain dead than the actual brain dead one. He has no personality, he has no dialogue, so what was the point?
It may be because I have gone through the game a half dozen times, or due to the dlc just being big, but as much as I adore the expansion I cannot see myself putting in another playthrough to traverse the DLC. As cool as the intertwining map is, I feel as if it will be a chore to traverse in subsequent playthroughs.
I thought so too, as I was going through it the first time. Knowing how these sections connect through multiple pathways, actually makes navigating it easier than the base game. Also, sadly, there's a lot less you have to go out of your way for, since anything you forgot, can easily be looked up.
This is exactly the same feeling i had with the base game, but with the sacred tears and seeds. I really don't like the trade-off of extreme tedium in repeat playthroughs in exchange for better exploration ion your first playthrough. Having to go on a collectathon for each new character makes me feel like i'm playing an MMO, where i just turn my brain off with a video on my second screen. Maybe I'm just approaching it from the wrong perspective, but knowingly gimping my healing to do the stuff I wanna do like bosses and legacy dungeons also feels bad. There being a total of 20 scadutree levels is also insane to me.
Agree with all this. I wish, lore and story wise, it answered more questions but we all know Miyazaki is a "leave them wanting more" guy. I wanted more information about Miquella as well. And yes the final boss just didn't work at all. A head scratching moment for sure. I also think that putting Messmer on the cover and then he's just another story boss, I wanted more with him as well. But you know it's an excellent dlc when you start to get a little sad when you realize you're at the last legacy dungeon and that it's almost over.
I think the issue with the story is less "didn't answer enough questions" and more "presents the final boss as the good guy and all the base endings as crapshoots, but doesn't let us join him".
Malenia is the face of the base game, despite being a secondary boss as well. No one expected messmer to be the main focus of the dlc, it was made clear that the story was about miquella
Even if you don't think there were rtcons, I think it's safe to say there was some cut content that would've expanded the lore. Particularly with the Gloam-eyed queen, Melina, and potentially Malenia
The most annoying thing is how many people ride FS for stuff they just threw down assets and the community has come to the conclusion they are god storytellers/worldbuilders assuming that enemies in a certain place mean something, or a texture on a wall has a story implication. No. It doesn't. Grasping at straws because you want their to be straws is cringe.
exposing yourself for having no idea of why everything you said is wrong. why dont you show us all your amazing world building and epic stories so we can see how its really done? not looking good so far seeing as you dont seem to understand the difference between 'there' and 'their'. we get it, you're too dumb to get the context of FS placement of things you seem to think are just 'thrown down'....again exposing yourself as one of these idiots who have come into EldenRing having never played any Souls games or their DLCs before. These games are not for you
I mean, was anyone who went into the DS3 DLC not confused when they encountered Gael as the last boss? I don't really see anything inherently wrong with Radahn being the final boss, especially in the context of the criticism provided in this video. I get that it would have been interesting to have gotten something related to Godwyn, but it does seem like Fromsoft had the Radahn fight planned from the very beginning. Also, it's not exactly true that you don't get any indication of Radahn being brought back before entering the final boss area; it is blatantly foreshadowed by various instances of dialogue that Miquella had planned to put Radahn's soul into Mogh's body.
My biggest complaints are: 1: The location of some skadushs are not intuitive, especially the ones dropped by shadow guys 2: No new dialogue with characters from the base game. How does Melina have nothing to say about what happens there??? Edit 3: I just remembered the red place. WHY does it exist??? There are only repeated bosses and nothing interesting or new. Loved the last boss
Mine are boring open world, should've been all DS/BB style, no torrent. Some shit bosses like Putrescent Knight and Scadutree Avatar Not a fan of the scadutree system Enemy reuse and spam
My only MAJOR complaint about the DLC is how you can permanently fail a bunch of quests just by going near the Shadow Keep. You don't even have to kill any bosses to get there. There's nothing in the game to suggest there's any reason you shouldn't go exploring. Quite the opposite, the whole Scadutree Fragment thing ENCOURAGES exploration, which is what I was doing when this happened. Had to look it up to see what it meant. Turns out I just missed out on a bunch of stuff. That is some BS.
You can reach the Shadow Keep without setting a foot into Belurat or fighting Relanna. And it even feels natural because of all the Scadutree fragments you´ll find along the way.
Just wait and start another profile...it'll get patched just like base game... On one I'm right in front of radahns fog gate waiting for a patch update...I did the ansbach and tholly quest but didn't summon them for leda and now they're not by radahns door so I just jumped on my other character like I'll just wait til enough complaints come and they patch it lol everyone is complaining about missed quest so from will surely fix it...they'll fix anything that doesn't ruin their plan for the game
I am unhappy with the lack of answers for many of the questions we had. The scooby doo system was a questionable idea at first and the implementation surprised me for how bad it was. The final boss is not satisfying as they prioritized spectacle over mechanical enjoyment. I hate that Radahn can unleash super poweful combos at the player and, even if you deal with it perfectly, your reward is a light attack with a rapier. Some of his attacks can't even be punished at all unless you are using things like raptors of the mist. What is the point of those explosions at the start of phase 2 and 3? There is no gameplay to them at all.
And he hit like a truck for someone who is as aggressive as a kangaroo. Usually if bosses hit like a truck they are sluggish as fuck but also tanky as well (see Nameless King or Fume) to draw out an endurance fight and if bosses are aggressive like a kangaroo they either hit like wet noodle in a single hit or they are squishy or they have no poise to force a race to the bottom Radahn just said fuck it, bake the cake and eat it as well. That’s why he’s unfun to me
@@KhangNguyen-ij4xheat the cake and have it as well* But you’re right. Things also why I like Maliketh: he does an obscene amount of damage but he’s squishy.
Waiting for long combo strings only to get a single attack off in retaliation is something I really hope they move away from. I like doing damage sometimes!
@@ZachStachelski13only if you have a parry mechanic like in Sekiro , super aggressive enemies make sense and are a joy to fight. My stance on elden ring is, that they don‘t get that people want to play builds and not want to counter mechanics. All should be reasonable doable with walk/run/dodge. Opting for guard and parry (or the spontaneous block bottle) should be optional but advatagious, if you invested in them. And Radhan also has other problems. His miquella cloak obscures his body and movement together with the aweful camera. Slave Knight Gael is the go to boss in terms is peak difficulty. But fromsoft have to invest in talent to make their camera smarter. This is just not acceptable anymore. Monster Hunter for example is peak camera.
The blessing system feels like you regress to then regain your power from the base game and I hated it, I'd rather not feel like I'm weak with an endgame build. As well as the fragments themselves made me stop caring about anything that wasn't them and I ended up beating the dlc and not wanting to go back since it all just felt like a waste of time and in every other souls game I always kill all bosses (main bosses in elden rings case). The biggest issue is there is zero replayability with this system as I'm not going to run around for multiple hours to collect shit in order to fight bosses in a fair state, anyone who compares it to Sekiro has never played it more than once if at all since you don't ride around for hours at a time to collect prayer beads, since the game is much smaller, the detours don't feel bad at all and you don't need to get all of them to feel like the game is sufficiently balanced. The final boss being... spoilers ...Radahn is so disappointing it's not funny, personally I think his second phase is stupid difficult not remotely fun but if it had been a new character I'd be way happier even if it was the same mechanically. It felt like they reused a boss from the base game and made the dlc not feel worth it at all. Game mechanics-wise his second phase just feels like spam in general which isn't fun, we've had bosses that had similar mechanics but the way it was done with Radahn felt like just pure spamming of light to blind me and piss me off. It took me 272 deaths to beat him solo with no cheese and I might never fight him again because it's not fun to go through his first phase to then die 10 seconds after his nuke from everything he (once again) spams. Also probably the most disappointing ending to a boss fight ever, every single boss in DS1, 3 and maon bosses in base game ER feel satisfying after besting them but Radahn started and ended with disappointment. Overall the DLC at its best which is just Messmer is a 10/10 but at its worst is 4 or 5, the dlc is a 6 or 7 depending on my mood. Every DLC fromsoft has released before this is better and I hope they never make something like this again. I will be using cheat engine to give myself fragments if I ever play it again and will be killing Messmer then leaving, the best thing about the DLC is the new weapons that I will also cheat engine into my inventory so I can actually use them before the end of the base game. My expectation that a fromsoft DLC will be better than the base game is now completely false and I will have lower expectations from here on out.
@@infintypotato495 Exactly my thoughts. I have played every Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro, I am a FS and Miyazaki fan. I think some fans just cannot accept when a genius makes a mistake, the ending of this dlc was the mistake. I literally had no problem whatsoever with anything in the dlc other than the extremely empty open areas and the ending. Like, seriously? Not even a single line of dialogue for Miquella addressed to the Tarnished after we beat him? Nothing about us killing his sister? After he tried pretty much evrything to cure her???
why do people write shit like this? you just expose yourself as not understanding lore and context, needing to have your hand held and spoon fed everything and that you demand an easy time through the DLC just because you finished the base game....we get it, youve never played a soulsborne game before.
When it was revealed that miquella took mohg's body for the ritual I was expecting a more grotesque final boss, i think radahn looks too perfect and should have more mohg features
I’m also upset that there’s no extra equipable Great Runes that you obtain from the DLC. Surely they could’ve made Messmer and Miquella have them. Final fight should have been Godwyn too.
While I actually understood why Radahn would be the final boss, and I actually enjoyed and understood Miquella's story before facing Radahn, there is no denying that the final boss should never be someone we have fought before, period. I think what they should have done is concluding the Miquella's story midgame,i.e. Having Radahn as a midgame boss, and focusing the second half of the DLC on Messmer. Other than that, my biggest criticism with Shadow of the Erdtree is the lack of weight I feel with many of the main bosses. Whenever I fought a base game boss I always get the feeling that I was fighting someone important. DLC bosses like the Dancing Lion, Rellana, Romina, or the Putrescent Knight are all solid fights themselves, but none of them has the presence & the impact that Maliketh, Godfrey, Rykard, (base game) Radahn ,etc. had. What hurts the most, in my opinion, is the lack of a cutscene, or even a name, for many of these bosses. This severely devoids them of a personality. Before fighting Godfrey for example, we got to hear the man talked, and we learnt what kind of a person he was, that he loved his son Morgott, and that he was an honorable warrior. Phase 2 cutscene adds even more, showing us deep down hes a babarian who lusted for combat, and that he believed only those with strength deserved to rule. The same can be said about other base game bosses. This makes me feel like I was fighting a real person, with a distinct personality. I cant say the same for, say, Rellana, or Romina, or the Putrescent Knight. As far as Im concern they are roadblocks with cool design & neat moveset.
Romina was extremely forgettable and nothing special. I do agree we should have had more voice lines and cutscenes.. but I guess that’s what we get for a $40 game with two years of development vs $60 game with 5 years of development
@@LayDownAndRotLook, it’s a pipe dream that won’t happen ofc, but come on, it’s a nice as hell thought. Is it probable? Hell no, they would never do it. But fuck, it would be a significant improvement.
I am PRAYING that this isn’t what Elden Ring ends on, especially after Miyazaki said there are no plans for a sequel. If this truly is the one and only Elden Ring, ending the game with this would be kinda disappointing. There are way too many things that don’t have an answer to, and too many loose ends. This DLC, while answering plenty of questions, was mostly just a “here’s an end to on specific plot point”, that point being Miquella and his quest for godhood. What about the giant death plague under Lyndell? Who is Melina, and what’s with her eye during the frenzied flame ending? Who was the gloam eyed queen? So many unanswered questions, itd be so sad for them to end without anymore dlc, lore, or content.
first things first melina is now believed to be messmers sister, secondly there are lots of mysteries that go unawnsered in from software games thats just how it is, three the gloam eyed queen was clearly someone whos rebelling against the erdtree and bringing them back would make maliketh and their destined death power look like a joke. some parts of the lore are better off not being awnsered and better left to be speculated over, for instance in dark souls 3 aldritch had this dream about the "deep sea" thing and we never really got to see more of it in the dlcs, from usually does not awnser everything in their dlcs
@@rangopistacho6928 I think even when fromsoft leaves mysteries unanswered in their other games, at least the story is complete. I still think after the dlc elden ring's story isn't. I think for example knowing more about the gloam-eyed queen or about the plague under leyndell would fundamentally change your interpretation of the events of the main story in a way unanswered mysteries in other games wouldn't.
@@rangopistacho6928 the thing abt Melina is I saw a post saying that they removed the mention of a sister from Messmer’s kindling (haven’t been able to fact check this), so is that even canon anymore?
As for your Melina critique, they probably wouldn’t have given an answer that only pertained for one ending, and the DLC all but confirms Melina is Messmer’s sister through an item description (I forget which one)
@@Mo167ose It’s Messmer’s kindling, but according to a post I’ve seen, as I said, I haven’t been able to fact check this, they got rid of the mention of Messmer having a sibling. Can we even count that as canon anymore?
I guess FromSoft didn't have enough funds to rehire George R.R. to help write the DLC. That was their mistake. Miyazaki continued on the Elden Ring lore through his own thoughts instead of the creator or at least co-creator, which would've helped massively. My other gripe is why don't they give us a continuation for the ending we picked? Pick up where we left off. No intergration at all or at least use some of the same major base game characters for DLC like Melina, Ranni, etc, even if its not a continuation for the ending you chose.
I've said it elsewhere, but I think my main problem with the final boss is that they gave Miquella the power to make anyone do anything, which essentially removes all tension from every character moment in the game. Because we've had no demonstration of the limits of Miquella's control, everything can potentially be retroactively explained with 'Miquella made them do it'. I think that's why, for me, Radahn feels so out of place, even after hearing Ansbach's dialogue beforehand. It's not a twist to see Radahn paired with Miquella when we remember that Miquella can make anyone do anything. It could've just as easily been any capable warrior in Radahn's place. What I think might have been better is if we had some limits to Miquella's power so that it leaves us questioning whether Radahn actually wanted to go along with it and whether defeating Miquella is the 'right' thing to do. In this way, Miquella more accurately reflects the player as we more than likely share the same goal of ending the current order for something better. I think that then puts us in a similar position as the previous end bosses like Soul of Cinder and Gael, where it's a reflection of the player and their journey. I think thematically the game and the DLC seems to be making the point that becoming a god/leader always costs something of ourselves, no matter our intentions. As the player character, we kill a lot of beings to become stronger, even though our broader intentions may be positive. This is parallel to Miquella who wants a gentle rule, but in the process commits several atrocities like mind controlling people, and resurrecting Radahn in a humiliating way to Mohg for (possibly) conquest and war.
I'm going to play through again and not mess up NPC questlines like in every Fromsoft Game with semi-arbitrary lock points and triggers, however I do think that limits are reasonably laid out. We have to be actively touched by Miquella twice, after ascension, to be charmed in the boss fight. IIRC from NPC dialogues, he cannot fully subvert people's will or personality, only guide their existing tendencies into aiding him. Notice he has no converted Erdtree faithful in his entourage, other than maybe Freyja though she is a Redmane first and all else second. All others are heretics in one way or another, which is perhaps why he is associated with outcasts. That is who he can charm, since they are already abandoned by the existing order.
@@cyclic_infinity I think the physical contact is the only requirement, which is a weak limitation. Radahn was also the most devout Golden Order fanboy though, so although I like the heretic part, I don't think it's necessarily correct.
they could have done anything and it would have been better than the radahn story. miquella could have just tried to get us as his consort and we could have an lsd-fueled mind battle or some crazy stuff to beat his charm. miquella could have tried to resurrect godwyns soul in mogh's body but things could have gone sideways since godwyn can't be revived and maybe we get some cosmic horror type of battle with the undead god of naivety.
@@metalface_villain Personally, I think I wanted to see Godwyn's body used instead of Mohgs since Godwyn's soul is gone and that would be technically 'ethical' for Miquella to do. Then the soul he uses for the body doesn't really matter, but the final form should look way more like its body (there's no reason for Radahn to look mostly like Radahn imo). Then everyone wins, we get grotesque Godwyn, we get someone's soul manipulated by Miquella, and we don't necessarily get Radahn Pre-Alpha
@@jmell458 Absolutely fair, I think it's something that will get the Lore Video treatment once we're far enough out. I definitely think it's a nebulous point with multiple interpretations that work.
I thought the discovery of lore surrounding Radahn before the boss fight wasn't too bad actually. Ansbach told you someone snagged Mohg's corpse for nefarious things he needed a soul to inhabit the body. We know that the soul can't be Godwyn because it doesn't exist anymore. In the same building we can talk to Freyja and she tells us that Miquella is trying to revive Radahn's soul. Put the pieces together and we realize Miquella's plan is told directly to us. Sure we don't really know why Miquella is doing this until it's all over but it really gets your brain churning when you realize what he is doing.
Like you I found all the reveals naturally through the npcs. But it still just felt almost like a retcon. The only thing in the base game that even hints at miquellas intentions is when malenia whispered in radahns ear. I was still satisfied with it and seeing radahn in his prime was dope. But when I found out from the npcs it did feel out of left field
My take is that Godwyn was the original soul Miquella wanted as elden lord but because the eclipse was interrupted Radahn was taken as a back up. I don't really have evidence for this just a gut feeling Edit: ah I guess other people think that as well lol
@@jerryb216 which would have been a reasonable explanation, but they didn't even try to do that. Literally just add a description to an item that says - 'after several promising leads, miquella realized Godwyn could NEVER come back'.
Old school souls fan here - How is it Mohgs body, but has a human face? But seriously, this ending was the main reason my experience was soured. I felt like I saw a beautiful presentation of a plate of food and the entire dinner was bland. This ending meant everything, and I was completely open for a twist away from my expectation (Godwyn), but when that twist seemed much worse and then the boss is only two phases and after there's a small clip of a memory? Add the fact that they absolutely did everything in their power to shun intelligence builds. Gross.
I find it so out of left field to see Radahn again. Not only are Ansbach’s and Freyja’s quest missable, but if you do not pay much attention to the game, you may not put the pieces together as to why a boss the player HAD to kill to enter the DLC is back.
Idk man when I play these games basically every boss I meet is out of left field. Just killed the sunflower dude because I stumbled randomly into his mansion and I'm not even sure why I had to do that.
Many of my top games of all time are open world, and Elden Ring is one of them. But I think From's strengths just shine brighter in a more linear style. I am not against them re-visiting this style by any means. I really liked Shadow Keep and how it led to many different areas. I hope they build on that DS1 style design that they had at points in the expansion.
The thing with how From did the open world is that, it's peak gaming at first, but after a couple of hours it becomes a chore, and even more so on consecutive playthroughs/characters Meanwhile, I never get bored of making a new build on DS3, BB or DS2, never - but ER however, its open world is just so damn boring and empty after your first playthrough
I agree with you on this one completely my dear friend. I would love to see an elden ring 2 but with a better and most sustainable open world that can hold itself up after the first play through, just one play thorough and on your second run, there's almost no replay value unlike the other games. Overall the dlc is still fun and enjoyable, along with the base game. 8.5 is the best score the dlc deserves.
@@SohelanthropusInteresting, I had the opposite experience. I've beat ER at least 15 times, way more than I ever replayed the other souls games. Only beat DS1 twice, BB once. Maybe I'll go back and play them, but I never understood why people said ER wasn't replayable. It was literally the most replayable game I've ever played.
@@Sohelanthropus this would be solved if there were more and faster ways to get around the map like the teleporters in Caelid and the Physick church Make them be behind very difficult challenges like enemy gauntlets or platforming sections so most ppl can't cheat progression until they're high level or really good (i.e. after your first playthru at least)
With Scadutree Fragments, they could have taken inspiration from how Sekiro handled its progression system, you increased your attack power naturally as you defeated each major boss, and you upgraded your health by defeating minibosses and exploring. They could have made Scadutree Fragments rewards for completing dungeons, and each remembrance boss gives you a larger reward, maybe 5 fragments for example. That way they'd ensure you wouldn't be overleveled for bosses and it encourages you to explore dungeons and fight more minibosses.
If Radahn was a secret optional boss like Malenia people would be extremely hyped but as a final boss it just feel so disappoiting that the final boss is a guy we already fought, yes this is him in his prime but it is still Radahn. I also really hate his second phase i think its really bad because you can't see anything most of the time since you're constantly getting flashbanged by the rays of light.
Also, nobody else has mentioned this. But Promised Consort Radahn isn't well animated. He slides around on his feet and looks stiff as a board. A real farcry from the original.
Couldn’t agree more about confusion and displeasure being the feeling on the final boss encounter. I wanted wonder, awe, and to be left thinking about it for years. Instead I was disappointed and got a lackluster explanation why that barely leaves room for speculation after the fact. Even though I enjoyed the fight itself, I just wanted something(or someone) else.
I will say is that a fault of the game or your expectations on what you wanted? If you went in with no expectations or assumptions of the lore it answered a ton and was very fulfilling answering a lot from the opening of the game and explains a lot of what is happening in the game, could there have been more? Of course, but what was given was amazing lorewise.
Why does Midra's Manse have three graces but also shortcuts looping back to each other? Why are there two nearly identical Finger Ruins on the map? There should have just been one. Why does the giant arch structure behind the Shadow Keep have nothing there to interact with but scadutree fragments? Why is half of the Specimen Storeroom inaccessible without going through the church district? This is the only legacy dungeon that does this. Why do they encourage exploration but approaching the Shadow Keep too soon automatically skips ahead nearly every NPC questline? Why do Furnace Golems take so fucking long to kill? Why are Cerulean Coast, Charo's Hidden Grave, The Hinterlands, Jagged Peak, and both Finger Ruins so empty? Why do so many of the DLC boss arenas have giant boxed in walls for the camera to get stuck on? On that note why do so many of these bosses push you around like your feet are on an air hockey table? This was never as much of an issue in the base game as it is in this DLC. Why would you even fight 90% of the enemies in the DLC if runes are drastically ineffective at making you stronger? You can run past almost anything. Why do some enemies and bosses have long combo attacks and can immediately cancel into another one without recovering their stamina? Why is the deflect tear a 5 minute flask buff and not a talisman or a great rune? Why is there a dev message in every smithing dungeon pointing out the blatantly obvious weak point of the golem enemies? Why is The Lamenter the only unique interesting boss to figure out in the DLC and every other boss is a standard combat encounter? Why are the Iris of Grace and Iris of Occultation quest items consumable at all? Why do so many bosses rush you at the fog gate immediately? Why do so many bosses have attacks that lunge forward and magnet their bodies to your location? Player positioning becomes meaningless. Why do I get the feeling this DLC was a lot more Tanimura than it was Miyazaki?
Agree with most of it especially first point. I really dislike how Fromsoftware became wasteful with their bonefires and it is getting worse in each game. In old games you had 1 or 2 bone fires in level and entire level revolved around those. You kept opening shortcuts and it was extremely satisfying. Now most of the levels are linear lines with lots of pockets around for secret stuff. It feels like they don't give much thought while placing those.
Why does Midra's Manse have three graces but also shortcuts looping back to each other? The world may never know. Why are there two nearly identical Finger Ruins on the map? There should have just been one. Did you do Ymir's quest? Why does the giant arch structure behind the Shadow Keep have nothing there to interact with but scadutree fragments? That structure exists to catch fragments of the Scadutree. What did you expect to find other than Scadutree fragments? Why is half of the Specimen Storeroom inaccessible without going through the church district? This is the only legacy dungeon that does this. Is this even a problem? They just tried to do something different by splitting the dungeon. Why do they encourage exploration but approaching the Shadow Keep too soon automatically skips ahead nearly every NPC questline? Fair point. Why do Furnace Golems take so fucking long to kill? They don't. Why are Cerulean Coast, Charo's Hidden Grave, The Hinterlands, Jagged Peak, and both Finger Ruins so empty? Cerulean Cost, Charo's Hidden Grave, and Jagged Peak link to different areas and have multiple bosses, the Hinterlands is a lore area, and the Finger Ruins have Remembrance dupe points and tie into a quest. Why do so many of the DLC boss arenas have giant boxed in walls for the camera to get stuck on? Fromsoft has always struggled with the camera, this isn't a DLC issue. On that note why do so many of these bosses push you around like your feet are on an air hockey table? This was never as much of an issue in the base game as it is in this DLC. This only happens with Romina. Why would you even fight 90% of the enemies in the DLC if runes are drastically ineffective at making you stronger? You can run past almost anything. Because playing the game is fun. Why do some enemies and bosses have long combo attacks and can immediately cancel into another one without recovering their stamina? They have plenty of openings. Why is the deflect tear a 5 minute flask buff and not a talisman or a great rune? Nobody in the Shadow Lands has a Great Rune (other than Miq but it breaks), and the effect would be too busted on a talisman. Being on a timer is a good tradeoff for such a powerful ability. Why is there a dev message in every smithing dungeon pointing out the blatantly obvious weak point of the golem enemies? Who cares? Why is The Lamenter the only unique interesting boss to figure out in the DLC and every other boss is a standard combat encounter? He's a shit boss. Nothing is interesting about a DPS check. I'd rather fight every other boss twice each than ever look at them Lamenter again. Why are the Iris of Grace and Iris of Occultation quest items consumable at all? There are 2 of each, and there are 2 points where you have a choice of using one or the other. You will have 2 left over. Them being consumable makes the leftovers not useless. Why do so many bosses rush you at the fog gate immediately? Only Messmer and Radahn do this. Why do so many bosses have attacks that lunge forward and magnet their bodies to your location? Player positioning becomes meaningless. Fair point. Why do I get the feeling this DLC was a lot more Tanimura than it was Miyazaki? Because you're mostly nitpicking.
@@JF-vz1ju Did you do Ymir's quest? Yes. It still ruins any uniqueness the Finger Ruins would have had by having two identical ones in the overworld. There should have only been one. What did you expect to find other than Scadutree fragments? Some sort of interaction with the Scadutree, the giant chalice, some lore, anything? These games are immersive because everything you find is put there in the world for a reason. With such a massive important looking structure it seems like a missed opportunity to give it no story purpose or player interaction. Is this even a problem? They just tried to do something different by splitting the dungeon. It is a problem given how the Storeroom is designed with multiple levels and secret pathways. Players can easily loop around continuously thinking they missed something inside the dungeon when the solution isn't even available to them until they find the other entrance outside. They don't. They do. I'm not the only person that feels this. It's not a particularly challenging enemy it's just a big bloated HP bar. After fighting so many of them across the DLC (they're the most overused large enemy) it becomes boring. Cerulean Cost, Charo's Hidden Grave, and Jagged Peak link to different areas and have multiple bosses, the Hinterlands is a lore area, and the Finger Ruins have Remembrance dupe points and tie into a quest. None of that is any excuse for the multitude of dead ends, open space, and lack of meaningful/useful things to discover within them. These areas show the same amount of emptiness as Consecrated Snowfield, ones of the most heavily criticized areas in the base game, actually even more so. Fromsoft has always struggled with the camera, this isn't a DLC issue. It is still an issue in the DLC. This only happens with Romina. And Golden Hippopotamus, Divine Beast Dancing Lion, Commander Gaius, and Midra, Messmer, and Radahn to lesser extent. Because playing the game is fun. Yes, and it would be more fun if the player feels growth from engaging with the combat, that's why the Souls/Runes mechanic works so well. They have plenty of openings. They do have openings, but occasionally some bosses like Rellana will decide to continue attacking with another combo attack without giving an opening. In a game with a stamina system for the player this is a huge issue. SotE's enemies recover their stamina way more quickly, and it some cases, bosses just ignore the need to. Nobody in the Shadow Lands has a Great Rune (other than Miq but it breaks), and the effect would be too busted on a talisman. Being on a timer is a good tradeoff for such a powerful ability. I agree the ability would need to be nerfed for use with a talisman, especially for PVP. But they could have made an excuse for another Great Rune, with either Messmer or Radahn. Who cares? I care? Part of the appeal of FromSoft games is that they don't hold the player's hand. I don't see why they were so worried about players not figuring out this extremely simple enemy design that they had to leave a dev message to tell them exactly what to do. He's a shit boss. Nothing is interesting about a DPS check. I'd rather fight every other boss twice each than ever look at them Lamenter again. What's interesting about Lamenter is you don't know it's a DPS check. The enjoyment comes from figuring out how his mechanics work. A lot of past Souls games had weird boss fights like this and it made them very memorable experiences. It's a lot more unique than just memorizing dodging and attacking patterns for the 100th time. There are 2 of each, and there are 2 points where you have a choice of using one or the other. You will have 2 left over. Them being consumable makes the leftovers not useless. That's a fair point, the problem is players can use the items before finding their purpose in the sidequest, locking themselves out of rewards. The small buff you get does not seem worth that risk, I feel like it should have just been a key item. Only Messmer and Radahn do this. Golden Hippopotamus and Commander Gaius did as well, but FromSoft has since patched them so they don't rush you anymore. Because you're mostly nitpicking. I really am, but this DLC feels like a death from 1000 cuts sort of scenario. It's not the tight finely crafted experience I've come to expect from FromSoft games. It feels similar to Dark Souls 2, where it's a fine game on its own but compared to FromSoft's other games I know they can do much better.
@@hododod246 I think they know that the bosses and lots of enemies are extremely overtuned for the player's mechanics. This limits them from making gauntlet style levels and forces them to either make the combat better or spam checkpoints everywhere. They do the latter and we get sad.
I enjoyed the first half of the video, I won't be watching the second half yet as I haven't finished the DLC and have been enjoying being fully blind so far, I look forward to coming back
@@bofa722 my apologies it is technically patches and torrent fused together after patches tried to consume him to reach godhood very deep lore. “Aaaaa torrent you were at my side all along” patches does say in the beginning of the fight.
One issue that is creeping up after replays is that there just aren't that many cool items to find in the open world. There are a lot of cookbooks for stuff that is just never going to be used. Finger consumables? Spirit consumables? 19 different greases. Hefty Pots are cool at least but we have like 8 variants or something. Some of these should have been fragments, arterea leaves, and rune arcs. There are hardly any rune arcs. I get that the elden ring was shattered after and we have like, some iris' that do the same thing but they're tied to quests and we get like 4 of them. Also, elden ring, can we please add an item filter when we're equipping items please.
i thought this as well when playing. i hardly ever went to a hidden away ruin and got surprised to find a neat spell. I think the only memory i have of this was the shaman village and he rings of light spell near some deathbirds. and i also dont remember finding super unique weapons in the open world that werent very obviously in the open like the backhand blades and the great katana
Exactly, this DLC needed way better rewards for exploration, more rune arcs, more larval tears and for the love of GOD more ancient dragon/somber smithing stones, You know, the only ones I CANT buy from the shop in the roundtable hold?
You can sort items in the menu with 4 options, and you have the item box at graces. I normally carry 7-10 weapons max. Greases are great for pure strength and dex builds. The pots and all usable items carry over to your mimic so you can spam rot, poison, healing stones, and etc. Plus items are great for covering weaknesses in pvp. I agree we needed more items of higher rarity in the wild, but co-op helped me farm 100 rune arcs. I believe that was the design intent for the lack of rune arcs; getting others to work together.
them splitting a cookbooks recipes from 4 to 1 in the dlc was a huge redflag they ran out of stuff to reward us with, and the worst part was that everytime i saw what the recipe was for i said to myself, great so people who hack unlimited items in are gunna abuse this against me when i only have a scares amount if i don't grind forever. they needed to shrink the map instead of make it monotonous at the very least and make the cook book item have more things in it, the key items list is way too long now 😅 and they could have copy and pasted so many enemy items or spells as ashes of war instead and no one would complain, id love albuneric cartwheel or skeleton spinning lunge as an ash of war
I have 49/50 fragments, I looked through all the lists and I swear I have every single one of them, I fought Radahn 107 times but I’m not willing to manually check each scadutree fragment, I wish there were just a few more and I could’ve been the max blessing…. It’s a shame in my opinion the golden seed system was very well done I wish they did the same here
There's nothing in this world that won't convince me that the original plan for the DLC/cut content was that we would help Miquella chose between Radahn and Godwyn. The story is based on releasing Radahns soul into Mohgs body and who is the opposite? Godwyn. I do agree that after the initial shock of Radahns reveal it falls flat at the end and drops it from a 10 to a 9 IMO. I would also like the Scadutree to have been implemented differently. Maybe instead of a general buff you could apply the seeds to talismans and increasing their buff. Then it would have been more choices for the player what to buff instead of a flat dmg neg and boost. That's the reason it drops from a 9 to a 8.5 The final problem is that there's so much extra story content that is both detached and important. Like the fingers, the madness, the hornsent/Shaman. All those things being kinda dismissed because the story is "follow miquella" oh and the St. Trina? Yeah you have to luck out to find that aspect. It's what drops it to an 8 for me. Overall I believe this was their most ambitious DLC but I don't think it belongs in the echelon of Night City, Hunters Nightmare, Fire & Wine. It's a good even at times amazing dlc and brings more Elden Ring than before but didn't make the game better.
Lore wise for final boss, my thinking is that Miquella did want to revive Godwyn like we see in Golden Epitaph and Castle Sol, but ultimately could not. Makes sense he would choose Radahn but it comes out of nowhere in this DLC with no hint of Miquella and Radahn interaction in main game
The writers just arbitrarily decided that Miquella couldn't revive Godwyn. Nobody would have betted an eye if in the DLC we find out that he found some new, different way that actually works.
Miquella never wanted to revive Godwyn. Castle Sol has NOTHING to do with Godwyn. Let's not confuse things. Godwyn had its ending and the Eclipse was about Marika's unwanted children set to be sacrificed
@@Molimo95You can't revive something destroyed. Godwyn's soul did not go to the Greatroots, it was destroyed. We already had these cringe retcons with Dark Souls 2 Lord Souls reincarnation and people complained because of it
I have many other complaints: - No underground/sky map 😢 - New weapon types, but only 3-4 of each - Throwing fire pots at furnaces with armored legs is not fun - Ensis castle was very bland. - Performance issues - The way to kill winter lanterns is dumb - I don't want to play the whole base game again to get everything in the DLC, because you have to play it twice to get everything. Let me NG+ the DLC separetely. Why is that so hard FromSoft? - Finger ruins were lame - Still many many many lore questions left unanswered. - Things in the trailers that are not in the game (the dancer fight is now in the mausoleum, for example) - Extremely unerwhelming ending. I cant even climb the freaking stairs to the divine gate to enjoy the view 😩 - No interesting torrent upgrades - No new great runes - Reused lion dance fight in the ruins - Probably more that im not remembering 🤔 9/10, I still enjoyed the DLC a great deal, but Old Hunters is still king.
Old hunters was not that good. Ringed city and SOTE are much superior. Bloodborne didn't even have an invasion boss and reskinned one of the DLC bosses (Laurence) making one of the worst fromsoft bosses. Stop the glaze.
@@Moody.Smiruai Lawrence has the best OST from any FromSoftware game EVER. Now, I _could_ count how many reskinned bosses Elden Ring has, to make a fair comparison, but there are so many... it would take hours 🥱
@@Moody.Smiruai It has the best music FromSoft has ever made. Orphan, Maria, Ludwig, Laurence, even the LIVING FAILURES are impeccable. Hell even Living Failures, a pretty mediocre fight, has a moment of pure beautiful cosmic spectacle during the Phase 2 transition. Ludwig, Maria, and Orphan are some of the best bosses From has ever made. There's basically no empty space or reused fights. And, most importantly, it's satisfying narratively. It sets up and pays off important parts of the lore, Gehrman's apprentice, the first Church Hunter (who was massively foreshadowed in the base game), the founder of the Healing Church, Kos and her importance, and putting the tormented souls of the Hunters to rest. Calling Laurence (an optional lore focused boss) bad when Radahn, Consort of Particle Effects, exists as the required final boss and actively retcons and messes with the established story for fanservice is particularly hilarious. (The music is good though, at least!)
Throwing fire pots at the furnaces takes like 4 seconds bruh, the finger ruins are lame and should be smaller, and FromSoftware always changes enemy locations like the Dancer. If you look at the original Elden Ring gameplay reveal, you can see that you fight Elemer at Stormveil and fight the chariot on top of a castle wall, which you don’t do in the final game.
Finally someone makes the proper critique of the last boss. And that no one cares if the lore actually ends up lining up, the problem is, no one finds this apparent, or pleasantly surprising, thus a first run playthrough is a failure at that point.
True, but upon further analysis, it does recontextualize a lot. For some, it wilm be for the worse, but to me, I do see how it thematically lines up with even the Base Game’s themes.
Another minor thing to note about Scadutree fragments is that your Scadutree blessing doesn't reset upon entering a new game cycle, meaning that if you got to +20 or close to it in New Game, there's essentially no progression on future visits to the Shadow Realm. Regarding the final boss: Not only is it a character we've already fought, it's also conceptually and mechanically similar to the Twin Princes, so there are multiple layers contributing to the feeling of it being reused content, at least to my perception.
Thats... a bummer, since i was planning on going with a different build on ng+ but knowing how garbage ng+1 must be, i will roll over half the DLC bosses. Not that i would have wanted to reexplore everything for the fragments mind you.
That’s a good thing. I do not want to have to reacquire scadutree fragments on NG. What you just said also applies to base Elden Ring. If you’re in New Game+ you’re already pretty set in your build and stats, so all you’re really doing is dumping points into stuff you don’t do. So really, your critique doesn’t make sense as New Game+ literally starts you as a fully decked out character in the base game.
No covenants was a huge killer, they could've made ERs multiplayer ecosystem be long lasting like DS3s and DS2s were, but nah they made a stupid mistake
@@SohelanthropusEspecially because there are SO MANY factions that exist and areas they reside in that entering them would trigger the invasions. Now granted if every faction had a covenant then the invasions would be annoying in an unfun way but some of the major areas? Leyndell? Lucaria? Gelmir? Halitree? Stormveil? Theres just a huge missed opportunity with that side of things. ER's multiplayer is sadly not very fun cause it's just AOW spam and constant triple ganks. I feel covenants would've fixed that.
If there was a route where WE became miquellas consort it wouldve made his story far more compelling imo. That along with godwyn replacing radahn as his default consort given all the buildup. A prime Radahn being the boss just feels like fanservice.
@@Uriseph Finished Bitterblack Isle a week ago. I love how the island has a ng+ feature in base game. You get to fight the same final boss but with a second phase. It's really rewarding in both exploration and lore. It's a shame that people question me "playing a old game" when more people should play Dark Arisen. I also recommend finishing both modes of Bitterblack Isle before finishing base game, the added context to the lore helps makes the ending of the base game way more meaningful.
Before I even watch this. From a lore perspective this dlc answered NOTHING. None of the questions I had going in where answered. All the bosses where just random people that came out of nowhere with zero reference in the base game. I don't even has an issue with the final boss being what it was, but it still came out of nowhere. Gameplay wise it's mostly good, but they weren't lying when they said they pushed the limits of what people and tolerate. Biggest complaint is that 90% of the open world despite being very pretty has no new enemies or even a good variety of old enemies. It's just shadow villagers and death birds in almost every new region/biome and nothing else outside legacy dungeons.
Nah fuck that half the new ingredients are literally just name changes from their vanilla counterparts; we don't need any more lazy, artificial barriers to progression
Japanese people don't understand English that well, and I don't trust them to use such a word period. It's just a thing you often see in Japanese media where they'll use super old and obscure words/kanji characters to seem cool, but in fact absolutely no one except a few historians knows what scadu is or how to pronounce it.
Then use a shield. Its actually funny how games journalists are the ones doing work and the fakes, frauds, a phonies are getting exposed. its like Charlie said you either die a gamer or live long enough to see yourself become a games journalist lol. I'm enjoying all this almost as much as the DLC itself. People's sheer stupidity has me gloating around like I have never done before and I hope it bothers these people fr because the response has been garbage from some of these people.
@@SM-nz9ff I can't actually decipher your comment. Are you having a go at me? I'm just saying the last boss isn't that fun to do without a shield. I don't like using shields and since when has fromsoft games made you fight in a certain way except from gimmick bosses like yhorm etc
@@Sari36YT Na I was more talking generally. You can use shields or not if you need to but FromSoft aren't here to bow to any particular persons challenge run and if the intent or best way to fight a boss is using a shield then that's what it is just like anything else in these games.
Part of the problem is Radahn can randomly hit you mid i-frame. He's literally one of the worst boss fights of all time right now, he's so bad that I've played the DLC multiple times out of sheer spite for the guy.
That either has lore implications about the validity of his godhood, or that they just can't get in to the land of shadow. Alternatively, we were always reading too much into it and they were not very good enemies anyway so Fromsoft left them out.
@cyclic_infinity I could care less if they're good, bad, easy or hard to deal with. Even just the sound of their trumpets. But the lore implications are interesting. False god perhaps.
@@davidanderson9967 For how often the lore community likely overreads the text, I always like to put forth a purely practical option. Sometimes assets are just reused, sometimes enemies are just left out for other reasons. Unless Miyazaki gives us lore and story for it, it's always an important Occam's Razor option to keep in mind. Doesn't make it right, but it's important to remember.
@@cyclic_infinity They brought back lobsters and revenants and had like six more lesser dragons, I don't see why they would think people would be mad at the envoys of all things coming back.
@@Dinoman972 No one would be mad, maybe From themselves like them less than the other enemies they decided to reuse. Just a potential alternative explanation from a game design/Doylist perspective. I don't think that's the case yet, I do think it has implications for either Miquella or the Land of Shadow. But I have an English degree so I am versed in the problems of overreading the text and try to avoid that when I can.
Игры
Final boss should have been Consort Patches.
Jokes aside, Patches should definitely have been somewhere in the DLC.
A kick to shatter the heavens.
Was hoping Patches quest would continue in dlc. And new Miquela ending.
@@ixiahj the Bill Cosby of Elden Ring
honestly i wouldnt even be mad lol
I just think the Miquella aspects of the DLC were the least compelling. Everything relating to Marika and Messmer and the Hornsent was much more compelling.
Miquella being there at all felt shoehorned af, story wise.
Nailed it. Everything having to do with Messmer and Marika was, unironically, masterful. I legit started crying when I got to Shaman Village, read the descriptions of the items, and put two and two together. That OST never fails to make me tear up and makes me feel a deeper appreciation for the Elden Beast half of the Final Battle OST
While there are some interesting things regarding Miquella’s story, especially with the band and Mohg it just…didn’t feel all that compelling? Most already figured out months ago that Miquella wasn’t going to be the angel on earth he was portrayed as in the base game and it feels like the DLC narrative with him is guiding you to a conclusion you already anticipated, only surprise! Radahn’s here! For some fucking reason
The reveal about Marika's origin was by far more interesting than everything Miquella. As was Messmer in spite of his all too short of a role.
I agree 100%. Miquellas story is just the old cliche "maybe the nice guy with good intentions ISNT all that nice." And then they made him an incestuous femboi in a desperate ploy to make such a dull character more enigmatic.
@@Q35MMlol I started crying from boredom when I got to Shaman village. "Aye yo are there any DUNGEONS in this DLC? No?
"Somehow Radahn returned."
Stop it😂😂
Too good 😂
I thought the same exact thing
literally though
Literally my thoughts lmao
I wish that the whole part of Miquella abandoning his flesh to ascend to godhood had ended with him placing his soul into Godwyn tobecome something beyond both life and death and really show the horror of his charm magic making people love a literal corpse
Yeah, I REALLY wanted to see a charm magic based boss. Imagine Miquella's soul in Godwyn's body, using both pure charm magic and corrupted death magic, would've been so cool.
When I got the Rune of Miquella, which says "Has the power to resist charms", I got so hyped for the final boss. Got disappointed so bad. The only thing we had is that "Heart Stolen" grab attack from Miquella ( which is no joke the coolest part about the fight imo 😭 )
And then we fight them as a monstrosity - Miquella the Loveless / Godwyn, Prince of Undeath - after Miquella's tampering attracted the attention of outer gods... honestly, Metyr, Mother of Fingers was the most visually striking boss (and environment), and should've been the mandatory "Elden Beast" fight at the end of the DLC, not a hidden bonus boss fight.
@@Witness631 That's so much cooler, and fits into the themes being set up by the new catacombs and gaols throughout the lands of shadow.
That’s an amazing idea! Since Marika lost her original body to become a god, then Radahn must’ve been another person that she now inhabits the body of. Miquella could do the same thing with Godwyn’s body, but because Godwyn’s body is still alive then it could go terribly wrong for Miquella.
I don't think this makes sense since Marika is aware of the powers Miquella is trifling with seeing as she was the first to ascend, why would she be on the brink at the start of the base game if she knew she could bring her son back
I think that Radahn is a symptom, not a cause. By which I mean the reason behind why people are dissatisfied with him is absolutely all over the DLC. That reason being that the DLC has almost zero integration with the main game.
There is zero mention of Messmer anywhere in the base game. When people first heard about Rellana, they thought that it was a joke. The Scadutree and the Divine Gate and the veil over the lands are neither explained nor brought up anywhere in the Lands Between. In the vast majority of the new lore, we are adding complications rather than elaborations, with just a few exceptions.
The base game did not hint at any sort of connection between Miquella and Radahn outside of the fact that Malenia fought him, which was the subject of rampant speculation. On the flipside of the coin, the DLC barely, if at all, touches on anything Miquella was doing in the base game. The Haligtree is not mentioned once. Malenia is only referred to by proxy as the mother of the forager brood and is only mentioned by name in the description of Radahn's armor. The Eclipse or what it was for is never mentioned despite Godwyn's Death Knights being present and on a completely inscrutable quest. You can have Miquella's Needle in your head and it goes unnoted. You can wear Miquella's tiara to Malenia's boss fight or her own armor to Radahn's boss fight and nobody says a word. You can have the Flame of Frenzy in you and Midra doesn't change at all, and you are still referred to as a Lord of the Old Order or of the Erdtree or of Marika by everybody. There's no explanation of whether or not the body in the cocoon is even Miquella. There isn't even a cutscene for entering the DLC, you just go through a loading screen and zone in.
I've heard people, including you, say that the Godwyn stuff was always wishful thinking in the vein of Velka from DS1. Well to me the much more apt comparison to DS1 is Sif. If you went and did Artorias of the Abyss first and save Sif, then Sif's cutscene actually reflected that in the base game. To me that reflects a level of care which is so often absent from Elden Ring. In a lot of ways this DLC is the most polished and finely crafted piece of content FromSoft has ever put out, but it's also missing the polish and craft that I would most care about.
Well said. All factual observations
No shit Messmer and Shadow land was hidden from the Lands Between you genius people
@@jaketinsley1987 As factual as gods existing. I think you guys need Vaati to actually get anything from the new lore that is plentiful in the Dlc lmao.
Miss Chalice and SmoughTown are also pillars of lore knowledge. Stop simping for Vaati. Lmao
@@KingDarkness100 The author of the post explained his point in a clear well written well thought out manner. Its his opinion deal with it.
you can't throw in Song of the Ancients and expect to to listen to anything else thats going on. 10/10 review i'm sure
Pling pling plong
Yeah right. Next time he’s probably gonna use Kainé Salvation or Weight of the World at which point I definitely won’t be listening to what he’s saying.😅
can anyone help me with the name of the ost playing in the last 30 s ?
@@ufjbvhbk3313 Kings field ost, Dark reality I think
I want to get into that series, but I cannot. I watched a playthrough of Replicant, and bought Automata, but stopped playing it after about 10 hours. Gameplay felt too repetitive, and the story was ok.
In the base game, Radahn presentation was amazing. The cutscene with the voice acting, the build up to the once strongest of the demigods, the overwhelming (at first) battle with the possibility to summon multiple allies on a full battlefield. I feel like it was a bad idea to bring him back. I can't help but compare the new version to the previous amazing fight. Worst, he was mad with rot, then we freed him, only for him to become a puppet zombie...
exactly. He feels like he’s the most violated character. It would have been great that when we kill him, we got a murmur: « Finally free » from Radhan to expose how much he was tired of having his will stripped away. It would have been more tragic and impactful imo with just one line.
Can't bring godwyn back because you're godwyn. *mind blown*
Here’s my idea for the final boss:
If Miquella can control people to do things against their will, then I believe he could have manipulated a Demi God to be like Godwyn. Miquella could still use Mohg’s body and Radahn’s soul to make a consort like Godwyn, but not an exact replica. The lore could have been that Miquella wanted Godwyn to be his consort so badly that he’d rather have a fake Godwyn than no Godwyn at all.
@@BulldogFromHell I mean he influences them to the point where when his influence vanishes they remember their purpose, as if they woke from a slumber. Take Thiollier for example, he was forced to follow Miquella instead of St-Trina. It does not seem to me as mere influence. When he grabs you during the fight, you get a sigil over your head. This is a magical power. Finally, maybe Radahn wants this, but since he doesn't talk more than when he was inflicted by rot, one could believe he his not himself, altough he could always have been a man of few words.
@@BulldogFromHell Brother he quite literally has a move that mind controls the player.
Not sure why they didn’t just actually do it like Sekiro and attach the fragments to boss fights including side and mini bosses. At least the reasons for clearing dungeons would’ve been universal.
I think if Radahn was the penultimate final boss that leads into a more original conclusion that people would have found that moment easier to swallow
Where Godwyn at
@@movieman6456dead
@@movieman6456Dead. Literally had his soul erased. That boy is deader than dead.
@@abdieljove2011In a realm of magic and Gods, and an entire background story in the main game where Miquella was attempting to restore it through a Celestial event.... there's literally no reason they couldn't have followed through with that instead of, "I know we had plenty of breadcrumbs pointing to Miquella's affection and designs for Godwyn, but what if we just ignore all that and instead we decide he was actually obsessed with Radahn instead, even though that's not something even hinted at or that they even had any association with each other"
100%
Finding the Death Knight Armor set gave me so much hope man
Hope for a mermaid whose soul is gone and who died to a few human women?
@38Jim real bro...
@@BulldogFromHell the one who fought against the biggest ancient dragon and won
@@derekfrost7751He fought Fortissax not Gransax
@@maniac7302he defeated gransax as well. He's credited for defeating the dragons during their invasion. Fortisax just respected him for his strength
1. Scadutree fragments should’ve been dropped by every boss IN ADDITION to having locations in the game world. Would give that feeling of reward after beating bosses, which is somewhat lessened because runes are less meaningful. Also would’ve added fragments at nearly every grace. The game feels artificially difficult for some people because the HP pools of the bosses are insanely high.
2. Godwyn would’ve made much more sense and would’ve been super surprising in a good way.
3. No new dialogue in the base game is super strange and gives off a feeling of lack of polish.
Still a 9.5 out of 10 IMO
BOSS SPOILERS:
what really disappointed me was a lack of cutscenes for important bosses. bug lady and ESPECIALLY rellana deserved cutscenes. avatar, finger momma and bayle didn't need them tho, they were cinematic enough
It was weirdly anti-climatic stepping into Rellana’s fog gate for the first time and she’s just there. I guess Castle Ensis isn’t really the most spectacular dungeon compared to Belarut anyways..
@@bugsisland3061 yea and don't get me wrong, the fight is AWESOME. but it just... feels weird without some sort of introduction
Rellana not having her own cutscene I can understand. But Romina just having a simple cutscene a la Quelaag would’ve been warmly welcomed since they went the fan service route with her and all.
Not only cutscenes dude. As well as voice over. They just dont talk and sit there like random bosses. Especially Romina that showed up in the story trailer.
@@AgusSetiawan-mx1vq I don’t think romina would be able to speak if she wanted to tbf lol
Radahn’s story; from all of his lore we were given before and after the festival, to the festival itself was incredible and so well portrayed in the base game. The way that warriors from around the lands between gathered together to celebrate his life by giving him the honorable death on the battlefield the he deserved was near perfection. He is legendary. He didn’t need to have a place in the dlc, because his tale was already told.
Yeah, I really don't know what this is supposed to tell us about Radahn or even (to a certain degree) Miquella
I have an "idea".
It could be related to how George R.R. Martin wrote thr whole lore. Maybe everything was tied in a way that requires characters to reappear.
Yeah but we didn't get fight him in his prime and thats more important than the story IMO.
Yeah and the fact we got a prime Radahn yet didn't see what he was really capable of was baffling to me. I was so hyped to fight him, just to find out phase 2 is literally just him but with AoE spam and a couple more moves, and the twink on his back.
It feels like a BS version of Twin Princes too
That would go under a personal opinion. I think too many people speculate and make their ideas canon instead of realizing the lore is always confusing in these games and DLC MIGHT clear things up. With so many more players now than in the past, there will be less takes focused on what's given and more fanfics and shipping from a more casual crowd. I figured many would grumble when things didn't pan out how they thought.
God damn the fight with Miquella's faithful was amazing though. A blood bath of everyone turning on each other fighting for what they believe is right. One of my favorite fights in the game for its lore alone
yup
The fight for me ended with me, my mimic, ansbach, and thollier all jumping Dane JJK style😂
Yeah, easily the best fight for me in the game.
''Sad, forever?''
After the fight, after looting the dead for all their cool armor, ascending the stairs to stop Miquella there was a message that read
"good work, monster"
That's going to stick with me
I think the biggest missed opportunity here is Miquela's crosses. Imagine if, instead of just saying "here i left my right big toe", it was Miquela leaving notes about what he is finding in the shadow lands and how it's changing his philosophy.
The cross that (in my opinion) adds the most to Miquela as a character is the one in stone coffin fissure. Where he abandons his love. Imagine if throughout the dlc Miquela talks about how bad he feels for the hornsent initially or his brother Mesmer, and then he slowly realizes what Marika went through and why she was so vengeful. But then maybe he gets more angry because it was Marika's order, her neglect, etc. That caused so much pain to Godwyn, Malaenia, the people of the lands between, and THAT is when he decides that he will create an order of compassion, even through compulsion.
I just feel like the lore presented is done in the weirdest places (almost no boss cut scenes or dialog, that weird ending cut scene which almost feels like it should have been the intro to the dlc, not at the very end).
I've got other problems with the emptiness of areas and the Scadu system but I got into Elden ring because of the lore (which is a nerd ass thing to say) so that's what I'm most disappointed in. Again, all the Hornsent, Marika and Mesmer stuff is awesome, so I'm glad for that.
I don't know. We should let it simmer for a couple months, let Vaati, Smough, Zullie, Queelag and everyone else do their research and see where it stands then.
Dude the “I abandon here my love” cross was such a good moment because it really was like oh shit… he’s gonna be the bad guy. Torn on whether I would have wanted more on the crosses. On one hand, I think the love cross works so well because you’ve been reading a bunch of bullshit like “I abandon here my appendix” so when that one matters it hits, but yeah more characterization for them woulda been nice.
I think that as a final boss, Radahn didn't fit the existing lore. Sure, Miyazaki pulled a bait and switch with Radahn and Godwyn, but it doesn't really work because of how Godwyn was built up.
For example, it is established in Fia's questline that Godwyn isn't dead, but rather that his soul can't reincarnate into the erdtree- which is why deathblight is so problematic, because it's the reintroduction of actual death in a world where death has still been removed.
Because of this, Fia- as a deathbed companion- sleeps with Godwyn so that he can be reborn via the mending rune.
Furthermore, in Castle Sol and the Golden Epitath suggest that Miquella and Godwyn were close, which makes sense because Godwyn was akin to a sun, lightning, and gold deity via the Eclipse.
Now in the DLC, we find out that Radahn promised to be Miquella's consort under a certain condition, most likely death, but this doesn't make sense. Not because it simply doesn't, but because there was no indication that Miqulla and Radahn spent time with each other. Whereas its made clear that Godwyn and Miquella were close, which made some believe that Godwyn was Miquella's first choice, Radahn second.
But that isn't right either. The game is trying to demand that we believe Radahn was Miquella's first choice, which wouldn’t make sense because Miquella's whole thing was making the impossible possible. Miquella created the Haligtree from his own blood, rivaling the erdtree- he blocked the outer god of rot from hurting Malenia, he accepted the rejected of Marika's order within his group. It also tarnishes this very character: the only demigod that was actually good for mankind is instead another person hungry for power, using any means necessary to obtain it-- which includes cursing mohg, ordering Malenia to kill Radahn- which lead to the nuking of all of Caelid, and that everyone that had ever loved Miquella was under his spell. Sure, his charms were brought into question and was definitely a villainous trait to be introduced, but with the DLC, Miquella was essentially the worst of them all. And unlike Ranni, whose character was shafted due to the mistranslation of her ending, Miquella is just another horrible person we must face.
Worst of all, people have begun to speculate that the night of the black knives was because of Miquella now. Specifically, Godwyn's death, which was bound to happen because of the lore this messes with during the DLC.
Godwyn would’ve made more sense because of all these issues. Miquella, desperate to save his brother, charmed as many as he could to bring him back as his consort. Rather than suggesting that some of the worst atrocities being because of Miquella's desire for a consort- his helpful nature wants to save everyone, including Godwyn. It would’ve made more sense for the deathblight that ate away at Godwyn to do the same as Miquella, much how we all speculated that Mohg would corrupt Miquella.
"Godwyn, Prince of Death" or "Godwyn, the Duskborne" would have been perfect for Miquella. In Miquella's journey, he finally managed to create bring Godwyn back, but the deathblight ate away at them both, maybe not leaving shells of their former selves- but rather both of them embrace natural death, or deathblight. Miquella's order is not only one of compassion, but one where death is properly restored.
Is Radahn okay when you piece together the lore? Yes and no, it's not just about perspective but also about that it can only really make sense when you ignore the connections that are clearly Godwyn and Miquella (such as Castle Sol, that speaks of Godwyn and his Eclipse, holding a medallion to the haligtree). But perhaps more connections that weren't just retconned (like the Golden Epitath) or just added (like the battle of caelid) in the future.
No Godwyn can't come back b/c his soul is completely destroyed by the rune of death hence he needed Radahn now wtf how are you people so aloof.
@@SM-nz9ff I'm going to assume you weren't being rude on purpose, so here:
1. "With this, Godwyn can take his rightful place as First of the Dead.
And claim a second, illustrious life." -Fia
2. "I will soon lay with Godwyn.
And it will surely stir within me.
the new life of the golden prince, and first Dead of the demigods,
as the rune of Those Who Live in Death." -Fia
3. "After Godwyn the Golden became the Prince of Death, the ancient dragon fought long and hard against the Death within its companion. Alas, victory was never achieved and its only reward was corruption." -Remembrance of the Lichdragon
So, Godwyn is not dead in the way that we think. Marika's order is one where you literally cannot die. Also, Fortissax was not protecting a soulless corpse, but fighting off deathblight within Godwyn. His corpse is at the roots of the erdtree because they thought it would bring him back like everyone else, but destined death severs that connection. Because of this, he has to be reborn via the mending rune. Miqulla, who is quite literally creating a new order, could have totally found a way to bring Godwyn back. He literally put Radahn in Mohg's body, I'm sure he's smart enough to come up with something.
@@SkorBn Na its figurative like Marika living when you mend the rune normally. Its the world order. Marika isn't going to literally come back to life as your wife she is the embodiment of world order.
That's what Godwyn "coming back" in his second life means. It means death is returning to the world. Also she is a Tarnished like us and just doing whatever she things is correct. doesn't mean the words she speaks is even true just like all sorts of NPCs who say things that we know are literally incorrect. The Dung Eater exists afterall maybe he's right
In this case Godwyn is alive and is death root/death blight. His body is a part of the world order. He isn't and wasn't ever coming back like a boss his soul is totally gone.
I think your way of presenting the problem is one of the most thorough and rings true with many of my own beliefs. You pointed out the whole caelid dilemma and this is the most jarring issue with the DLC lore, it just doesn't click.
Also, many people say the DLC was good because it explained why Malenia fought Radahn. But that's specifically something that - in truth - we didn't need. Malenia fought Radahn in a time during which every demigods fought each other for power : Radahn vs morgott, Godrick vs Morgott, Malenia vs Godrick. And Malenia fighting Radahn was only logical. We didn't need a sorry excuse to explain why they fought. What is it going to be next ? Morgott fought Godrick so he could make him his consort ?
The lore truly was a disappointment on many angles within this DLC...
@@SkorBn I think this more or less hits the nail on the head. The DLC attempted to force Miquella into a mold that actively betrayed everything compelling about his character in the base game, and I’m not sure what benefit we really even got out of it. I think that the concept of a god so purely devoted to bettering things for the downtrodden that he actively overpowers the will of others, wounds himself, dismembers himself, and ultimately takes corruption unto what is left of himself is a fascinating concept with a lot of room for moral questions. Turning him into the catalyst for everything bad ever just feels like it’s worse than a waste. His current story detracts from the base game.
My biggest issue with final boss is that we already fought Radahn in a super special and cinematic way in the main game. I want a final boss to be shocking and unique, ala Orphan of Kos or Manus. It cheapens the Radahn Festival for me and was an awkward note to end the DLC with.
i disagree. i think if you didnt get it spoiled you would've never seen it coming. miquella was in control the whole time and it was in the works from the first story trailer from the base game. u just dont appreciate the writing
@@Blaynkk Except, if you do the NPC quests, it's spelled out to you that Miquilla is reviving Radahn to be his chosen consort. Invalidating you're entire point.
@@Blaynkk How can it be spoiled when the characters literally tell you it's going to happen? "Miquella was in control the whole time" is something I'd expect in a Star Wars prequel; it's just hackneyed. We also don't know whether the writers intended those words from Malenia when the base trailer released. There's no indication of it in the base game.
@@Blaynkkyeah I think a huge problem is people are afraid to admit they spoiled it for themselves, and ruined it for themselves
@@Blaynkk The game kinda threw it to your face half way into the Shadow Keep, if you follow Ansbach & Freyjas questline. The only thing that surprised me was that the final boss looked exactly like Radahn. I was actually expecting Mohg body with Radahn moveset. And quite frankly I might have prefered that.
"Easy to understand and easy to find"
*Ymir looks at the camera*
You know the souls fanbase has turned into a cult when you need to preface any criticism with a preemptive "I think it's amazing, 10/10 and the best thing ever" before you say anything negative.
We can tell you're wrong because you can find mainly negative reviews of the DLC out there.
For real
fanboys man, they’re a legit plague
@@facundovera3227 Now look at the reactions to them.
@@opethmike Exactly! I love this series but not everything is 100% perfect and every game has something I would change if I could. FromSoft has built up a lot of goodwill with the fanbase, but stuff can still slip through the cracks because nobody is perfect.
Radahn is such an odd choice for the boss because it feels like random areas of justification for him being the final boss are very sloppy for no reason. The memory after the fight is such a letdown because you'd think it'd be a lore reward for those who managed to pass the fight but like... nah??? Everything in it we already knew. And the godwyn/radahn debate is likely just bad signposting by fromsoftware. It's highly unlikely they changed the final boss from godwyn to radahn, especially since godwyn is explicitly permadead in the lore, but the associations with Miquella up against his at-present lacking connections to Radahn outside of the DLC set people up for a different payoff than was delivered.
The biggest issue with the story of the DLC is even after defeating Miquella, we aren't presented with any new ending, or meaningful story bits that sows everything together. You beat the boss, and are given a cutscene that doesn't tell you anything you havent figured out urself by doing the side quests in Shadow. It's disappointing and there are still loose ends that probably won't be tied up unless they are cooking another DLC
No other From Software DLC adds a new ending. Not one.
Exactly. Newcomer to From titles@@jjstraka1982
@@jjstraka1982
Would Ringed City count or no?
which they arent and miazaki said himself they wont. so disappointed in that statement by him. i get it that its not all about the money with him and he wants to move onto other things...but elden ring IS his biggest cash cow yet AND people would go crazy for another dlc or elden ring 2 since there's so much of the story left untold and its just such a fun masterpiece of a game. i dont understand the logic in setting that aside.
@@Jsch23 we live in a world where companies milk franchises to death against fans' wish, and then there's Miyazaki
1. Fragments definitely should've been either more plentiful, or standardized like in Sekiro where you get power-ups from killing bosses. I personally had to use a guide from level 14 to get enough to get to level 20.
2. Absolutely, 100% agree. It was more confusing than mysterious. Also doesn't help that it's rehashing an old boss, which is annoying at first glance. It'd be like if, instead of fighting Slave Knight Gale at the end of the Ringed City, you instead fought a variation of Yhorm. In hindsight, the lore makes sense. However, in the middle of the fight, it's a bit jarring and unsatisfying.
1. I agree. You really need to explore every corner of the map in order to find all the Scadutree fragments. This is not a big problem for me, as I tend to do that anyway. But in the base game you don't have to do that to make a viable character. Almost any weapon will work, and you can gain runes for leveling wherever you go.
In the DLC, you really need to go everywhere.
Exactly my thoughts. Sekiro is in my opinion the best game FROMSOFT have ever made partly because of how well balanced the game is. Killing bosses to get stronger gives you that feeling of satisfaction aswell as a universely useful reward for all builds that allows players to always be scaled properly.
Another thing that frankly frustrates me to no end is the abscence of a feature in sekiro that allowed you to replay major bosses from checkpoints. Now i can understand it would be difficult for us to replay EVERY SINGLE OPEN WORLD BOSS but there is simply no excuse for not giving us the ability to infinitely fight rememberences/ major bosses. It just baffles me, since people including myself have wanted this feature since day 1 and considering they were releasing the DLC and a quality of life update a day before it would have been the perfect time to do it. As harsh as it is they either 1. Couldn't be bothered despite being able to incorporate it into Sekiro no problem or 2. They believe for whatever reason its not appropriate for Elden Ring specific style of play.
No matter the reason, boss replay mode and the ability to perfect block should have been in the game from day one, nevermind 2 years after the fact.
@@cameronmcginley agreed, especially because Elden Ring is so massive. Running from boss to boss takes an extremely long time compared to Sekiro or the other souls games
@@cameronmcginley Agreed. Sekiro is simply the superior game. Now i dont care about getting stronger stat wise. I find that boring. But sekiro didnt do the whole stat thing you either got good at the boss and mastered the parry system of that game or you did not. The combat was faster, more fluid, both you and the bosses had the same freedoms and restrictions, not having a stamina bar was a godsend, i could go on. What's funny is even if they add a sekiro like deflect mechanic in the form of that deflect tear it is still inferior to sekiro's version. In sekiro it didnt take stamina and your posture bar would never break if u kept perfect parrying. Also in sekiro you could see the enemy's posture bar unlike elden ring and perfect blocking also got their posture up so you could break their posture purely by perfect blocking them.
It's a crying shame we went from sekiro to ER imo. ER is a step back in so many ways while Sekiro is their magnum opus. I hope myazaki is all tired out of souls like games and goes on to give us sekiro 2 or at least some sekiro adjacent game.
Outside of remembrance bosses, I lost a lot of excitement for bosses because there wasn’t much reward for bosses other than accomplishment.
Man the fact that they didn’t have it be Godwyn, just imagine the divine gate, with an eclipse looming over it. Not very original I must admit, but would have been infinitely better.
Godwyns soul is completely destroyed by the rune of death/ Imagine paying attention to the base game and understanding what completely destroyed means.
@@SM-nz9ff Godwyn's soul isn't "completely destroyed", it's _dead._ This is the whole point of Fia's questline and ending: his soul lives ('lives') in death.
@@TehCakeIzALie1 Uh no you don't understand what's happening in that. Godwyn does not come back in Fias questline like huh. You just put the rune of death back together and death is now apart of the world again. It says so right in this Mending Rune of the Death Prince.
Godwyn has no soul his body is apart of the world now spreading death root. You aren't bringing his soul together you are bringing the rune of death back together. He's gone gone, hence he can't be resurrected by Miquella or anyone else. If he could then grace could have just brought him back like the Tarnished are resurrected.
Also to live in death is just what happens when the rune of death is removed from the world order. Its not supposed to be this way so that is what manifests like the undead in Dark Souls. Gwyn tried to have eternal fire but the world state is fighting against him. Same thing here.
@@SM-nz9ff everyone keeps saying that, since when does he need a soul for us to fight him?
I feel like after defeating Miquella and Radahn, he would at least say something? I thought it was weird there wasn’t any dialogue upon defeat, and then the cutscene is just a flashback and then… that’s it. That’s the end to this epic dlc? I still appreciate that cutscene lore-wise but it just felt off and didn’t stick the landing for me. Would have been interesting if the Tarnished did certain things or collected specific items like the Three Thirds Cords in Bloodborne, then we could walk through the Divine Gateway ourselves and leave it open to that. Still a great expansion.
I think the worst part about Radahn being the final boss is that it's just not really that interesting purely as a concept. He's a character we already know a lot about and literally have to fight to access the dlc in the first place. The dlc doesn't really add anything to his character and mostly just uses him as a vessel to (very shallowly) explore Miquella. I genuinely think had he been a completely new and mysterious character or being we've never heard of before but is maybe hinted at in like one or two item descriptions people would be far more positive about it.
thats kind of the point though hes just a poor clone and a meager representation of the real radahn, adding in a new character would take a lot of explaining to justify, in the case of messmer the explanation had to be that he was the very first kid marika had before leaving them and having their name basically be forgotten because messmer was never mentioned in the lore, imagine adding in a whole new character with no explanation outside the erdtree, that could create a lot more plotholes then messmer would, and if you say miquella could use messmer, thats stupid, that would be a lot worse because at least when you fight radahn you havent fought him in some time but if theres only one boss that seperates you from normal messmer and then all of a sudden you fight messmer the consort it would just be seen as lazy.
I personally was rooting for Elden John
@@SpookeyGael Better than an endgame death blight Godwyn like a bunch of people somehow want. And don't tell me that you can do Godwyn without death blight because that would be such a massive plot hole to cure it and leave him in The Lands Between uncured. That shit would have had less than a 1% completion rate and made people despise FromSoftware. They made the right call. Godwyn is more dead than anyone else in the game and he needed to stay dead to preserve the base game, which they said the DLC wouldn't affect. He's the ONLY character who is soulless, and Miquella requires both soul and vessel to have his consort. If the DLC could affect the main game, yes you can do Godwyn, but it doesn't so you can't.
I think that he would be PERFECT, if he wasn't the final boss, it aactually gives a lot of info on Miquella, his morals, its tragic, it makes sense, but again, it should never be the final boss.
@@rangopistacho6928 It could just be Godwyn, it would be perfect
Fromsoft needs to add some things to the plethora of empty spaces in these areas. It's a serious issue to scour every nook and cranny of an area and find absolutely nothing except maybe a smithing stone, or a glovewort.
You dont want thin beast bones and glass shards?!
@@43eyes We want all the glass shards.
Don’t forget the cookbooks
Definitely agree... The worst part of the DLC by far. Areas didn't feel rewarding enough to explore.
That’s entirely the issue with going open world. Huge scale but lots of useless empty space
What’s interesting is the item description on the double axes you get from the death knight.
It explicitly states that Godwyns body is a surrogate, not his real dead body.
So there is more to uncover for sure
Woah, that's a massive piece of lore to drop
Really makes me think maybe Godwyn was planned to be the final boss after all, and they just left this reference in, I honestly can't think of anything else that "surrogate cadaver" could mean
Yooo 😲
One of the biggest issues I have with the reveal is simply a lack of interest in Radahn... He feels like the character I would have loved when i was 12-14 years old "he's the biggest and the strongest and the baddest- look at his character, he is HUGE and wears BADASS armour and is this great general" etc etc. This legendary warrior you have to put down in an honourable tournament. But as an adult, I'm just less enthraled with memetic badassery than I once was.
I'm not saying they re-wrote it but it does feel like they at least went "Everyone loves Radahn, so let's give them what they want". It was fine as it was, we didn't need more of him- his story was well-told and nicely contained. You have enough hints to a deeper character and story to keep lore squirrels rooting around and with some grandiose visuals for enjoying smashing your face against. It felt unsatisfying to revisit a boss in that way and it is impossible to remove it from the knowledge of countless posts over the years about "what it would be like to fight prime Radahn". I hate the term fanservice, as it is overused, but it certainly smacks of that.
It was narratively disappointing, which I found especially frustrating as I actually found myself becoming quite invested in this new world and story. I've played all the games and I have always enjoyed discovering/being told about the lore but it was never really a big part of my first playthrough experience- gameplay tended to be my main focus and then I would spend far more hours reading/watching lore info afterwards. But in this DLC i was excited and speculating as I went- I actually cared more about the world design and worldbuilding than the gameplay but as soon as I had the ending spoiled for me, I lost so much interest in getting to the end because I no longer cared for where it was going. It feels like the bad joke ending to the story.
For me the worst thing about Radahn fight is you expect the final boss to be a strong representation of the themes and concepts of the game. I think this is a massive part of why Slave Knight Gael is so loved, his character perfectly embodies the struggle and perseverance you yourself have gone through all to get to this point at the end of time. Godwyn as a character would’ve been such a poetic final boss to Elden ring. A powerful, sacred and revered lord and is now an empty husk who is the physical manifestation of death infecting everything he touches. His presence in the dlc even would’ve added another element to Messmers character with him presumably being Marikas 1st child but in the land between Godwyn being considered the 1st, literally the golden child. In the grand scheme of Elden Ring lore Radahn is a cool side character and even if the lore can explain him being Miquellas consort that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like extremely misplaced fan service.
Godwyn can not be his Consort his Soul was destroyed with the Rune of Death there is no way to bring him back atleast not his true self unlike Radahn whos soul just got back to the Erdtree.
@@KingDarkness100 Elden ring has so many plot points that come out of nowhere and the community accepts them. Miquella was able to put Radahns soul into Mohgs body and everyone just accepted it as a possibility. If fromsoft wrote extra lore for the sake of plot convenience no one would care, something like the stars actually carried a material with them that if crafted into a needle could return a slain soul to its body. It’s already real lore that souls that suffered all manners of death go to the scadu tree
Goodwyn would have been so much better as a final boss, the whole point of miquella was to get him a proper burial, a Frankenstein husk of him that failed could also work. but its just a repeat boss yaaaaay but this time has no adorable horse. really anyone new would have been better but they wanted a demon king/akuma looking final boss and radahn assets were sitting there for them to asset flip
@@bs7257 Fun fact Marika was able to put back Godfrey's body after he died. This is not the case where Miquella putting Radahn's soul in a body makes no sense
@@petercottantail7850 Fun fact Godwyn can never returned, and the only thing that keeps Godwyn from dying is the death rune inside him
The biggest problem I have with the final boss is that there is too little surprise, not too much. Halfway through the game Ansbach & Freya basically say "Hey they're resurrecting this guy for Miquella" and from that point onwards you know exactly what the final boss is going to be. I expected a phase 3 to the boss, but there just wasn't, there was only anticlimax.
Remember how in the base game , you know you're going to have to fight Radagon, that's a given. But then you're surprised by the Elden Beast (unless you paid AMAZING attention to some very fine details). Yeah, the fight against EB is god-awful, but the inclusion there is amazing. It hits that perfect balance between "I could've seen this coming" and "I didn't see this coming", and it raises some intriguing questions that get you thinking.
Final boss dude over here, achieves the opposite. You can perfectly see them coming, but they don't make much specific sense. Anyone could've been Miquella's consort, and they don't really provide a reason for them to be, aside from "Miquella liked them I guess". And then afterwards, you don't get anything; it's just over. No second health bar, no nothing.
And this just raises questions of the frustrating kind; what was this ritual even about then? Did Miquella just need one consort and one divine gate and that's it? Then what was all that business with the corpse with the stitched skin in the trailer about? Guess that doesn't matter anymore. Imagine if we had to, idk, fight that corpse that Marika pulled the Rune/Hairs from in the trailer. That would've been a fun twist. Anything at all would've been better.
I think it's weird they didn't choose Godwyn given that there was so much lore pointing to Miquella trying to restore his soul/grant him a true death.
As an aside, I actually think Radagon's reveal could be pretty surprising for most players... after all, the "Radagon is Marika" is hidden behind a pretty obscure and high intelligence puzzle.
Yeah and after you defeat them, nothing happens? Like you get a memory that they were in accord and I am like yes we know that, that's why we fought you to stop you xD, his circlet boosts intelligence, faith, and arcane by 1 (is that a joke?), and increases the power of Miquella's incantations by 10%, compare that with DS2 or DS3 DLC rewards and it's really weak
No, it could not be anyone else. Radahn is literally the strongest demigod, and he is a kind person, not like most of his delusional siblings. Godwyn was the only other perfect Consort, but his soul was completely destroyed, so Miquella had to use Radahn instead. Also, Marika needed the same things as him to ascend to Godhood. The divine gate and her consort Godfrey, who did the same things for Marika as Radahn would have done for Miquella (deleting everything that stands against his new Order), I would go as far as to say that Radagon is Marikas version of St. Trina(Radagon and Trina are the opposite genders of Marika and Miquella which would explain how Radagon can be Messmers and Melinas father, besides Godfrey being Marikas first Consort). I mean, I get it. We don't know who or what that thing was that Marika pulled the hair strings from, but she betrayed the Hornsent people and sacrificed them to activate the Gate because the Hornsent tortured her people, the Shaman and Metyr and her Two fingers guided her, besides not getting any new messages from the Greater Will at all. They misguided her I would say.
tbf it's the same for elden beast. radagon is a surprise, but if you did explore and found the stars spell you know about the beast.
same for the other souls too: gwyn is a dead giveaway, gherman too, nashandra is obvious (not her being a skelly).
soul of cinder is incredible tho.
@@KingDarkness100 we do know. check the innards item (the one dropped by the vase blobs, idk how it is in english), it has strands of hair in the sprite.
they ammassed people, tons of them, to ammass divinity. somehow, all that concentration is enough power to become a god.
I'm honestly surprised you didn't complain that there weren't enough weapons in the new weapon categories. That's another big one I've seen thrown around, and one I agree with. There are only around 1-3 weapons for each new category, with perfumers getting like 5 for each status effect.
I feel like if the final boss actually said something it would've been a bit easier to accept
Radhan mostly just felt like fan-service to me. This is probably the last piece of Elden ring content/story we'll ever get, so I really would've liked a more satisfying sendoff.
I think it's especially disappointing when you compare it to Dark souls, because they absolutely nailed it with Gael in DS3. Gael was a completely new character that we had just met a few hours earlier, and he wasn't even the final boss of the Dark Souls Story (edit: that would be Soul of Cinder imo), yet they still managed to make it feel so impactful and like a true sendoff.
To me Midir is the true final boss, because I always did him last on my 3 playthroughs because he is a bitch, but awesome.
I mean, we had Gael through two whole DLCs.
i also feel it was fun service
Gael could actually be considered the final boss in a sense; while none of the endings change, the implication of a potentially infinite, everlasting painted world existing in such an otherwise hopeless world is maybe the only meaningful end the series could have found.
Gael was a lot like us. He starts from nothing and ends up powerful and relentless in his mission.
For me personally a big issue was how a lot of the items were just smithing stones or something else i dont really care about. There were parts I thought I'd find a cool new item or consumable and it just ended up being a couple +6 smithing stones
Great expansion but by far my largest criticism
That's ultimately a you problem though. They can not guarantee that the player has the smithing bell bearings, and with the quantity of the new weapons and ashes they HAVE to give you those materials, they've done it for every one of their DLC's thus far.
@@epsilon1275 No its not a "you problem" , the problem is that exploration is unrewarding and fromsoft knows most people dont need those resources. It's easy to just add the stones to merchants instead of undermining exploration. Although honestly they just probably have nothing better to put there, and that's an issue too.
Am I the only person who appreciates the smithing stones? I upgrade everything, even what I can't use because I'll respec in NG+ so I felt like they did that for fans like me who wanna upgrade a lot. It was nice to not have to always buy 12 of every smithing stone and have some spare somber stones.
It felt weird going along a branching side path and picking up Somber 3s, but keep in mind there are a ton of new weapons and they all need to be upgraded too. I actually really didn't mind this thing at all. Elden Ring exploration was already very subpar, this was just more of the same. Very glad they didn't put items at the finger ruins or in the woods honestly, but it feels shit having a giant completely empty area.
I agree with you on Radahn. He's a great character in the base game but fighting him again is just not very interesting. Godwyn was such a no-brainer slam dunk of a last boss, idk why they dint take it.
Whether or not the part was ever intended by any of the developers to go to Godwyn, seeing him restored to his prime would've been much more interesting than seeing Radahn restored. Radahn doesn't even get any dialogue, he just grunts like a beast the same way his rotted husk did in the first fight.
I'll reserve judgement on whether it was a retcon or not until Miyazaki inevitably gets asked about it. I'm not saying I expected Godwin as the final boss, but given his weird faces show up in dungeons, along with Death Knights, I feel like there may have been something more planned. My biggest complaint is it's basically confirmed Melina and Messmer are siblings, and she has no new dialogue or input on the story.
If anything Godwyn would’ve been even more of a retcon since it’d completely ruin Fia’s quest and the Age of Duskborn ending, since Godwyn was already brought back as the Rune of the Death Prince. They can’t just bring him back again and have two of him existing
@@Mo167ose Ending sequence did not actually happen during the events of DLC, see Midra
This also messes up Melina being the GEQ. Now that whole story makes no sense to me. Cause she was meant to be before Merika and we get nothing about her rule. Feels like a cope out and they backtracked.
@@mytsw that doesn’t inherently decanonize the Frenzy ending, there’s nothing saying there can’t be multiple lords of frenzied flame. If anything it’d be beneficial for the frenzy to have multiple, since it means there’s a greater chance one of them takes over the world
@@leighsimmons2663 Melina was never the GEQ.
Why did Miquella ride Torrent? Or was it a different spirit horse?
i haven't played the dlc yet but wasn't torrent miquella's horse? i remember that being a thing
I think it was a different one. It doesn't have the bags on its back like ours.
@@aldrichunfaithful3589 it was speculated since we saw promo art of miquella riding torrent a year ago. But no mention ingame and in the DLC no reference either.
Also no cosmetics for torrent :(
The DLC also didn’t really touch on Marika’s rise to godhood even though it was a major part of the story trailer. I also wish they had told us more about Messmer since now I feel like he’s the least developed demigod even though he was a major part of the dlc’s marketing.
@@unipachuThe DLC revealed a lot about Marika’s motivations though. Even if it left massive, massive questions.
One thing that I don't see many people mention is that we know that Radahn's people, and consequently Radahn too, love and celebrate war, which is something that only brings death and misery to the people, and they put him as the chosen one of Miquella to be the lord of an era of compassion because now they decided that Radahn is a kind guy with a good heart? one thing doesn't match the other...
It’s crazy to me they somehow managed to make fighting Radahn at his peak the most disappointing aspect of the dlc.
I haven't hit play yet, but here's the one problem I have.
There are enough Golden Seeds in the game to max upgrade your flask without getting every single one.
There are exactly 50 Scadu fragments while 50 are needed to max upgrade the blessing.
I don't think I need to say why this is incredibly stupid.
I think you all know.
I will say the 1st 10 upgrades do way more for you than the next 10 so don't worry about getting them all. 15 should be more than enough and if you explore everywhere you'll probably find more than that. I agree though there should have been more.
@@TheFondalizer ... 11-20 do almost the exact same though?
@@TheFondalizer That's after the first patch. The stat spread was way worse before they scaled it better until 14 and dropped off after that. Even the original spread wouldn't be so bad if they game had more than you needed or they didn't do that dumb thing they did with golden seeds where you need an x amount more than last time to upgrade.
Just put only 20 of them on the map in obvious places like shrines/churches and make like 5-10 of them only acquirable as catacomb or gaol rewards. Please don't put them on hard to see mob enemies in the middle of a forest that run away before you even notice they were there.
@@budafuka The first patch happened very fast though and changed exactly what you described just in another way o.O you now have the leeway of about 20 fragments that dont really give you much anymore. In practice its basically the same thing as having too many golden seeds exept that for people that DO like to explore the additional fragments actually do give a small benefit and are not useless.
Why are you still complaining about stuff they fixed almost instantly. OK if you played the entire game during the first 2 days then maybe you were affected but did you really not want to explore during your first playthrough?
If Ubisoft did this with their collectibles in open worlds, they would get clowned on for months (and rightfully so)
Sunbro here. The scadutree system is pretty bad for co-op. The boost from blessings are massive, but the team gets scaled down to the host’s blessing level. At low blessing, the host is getting wiped by putrescent knight before I can land in the arena. But at a higher blessing level, the host might not even need help. I don’t like 7 versions of the same fight, where it’s a dice toss if the boss is getting nuked or our weapons are made of foam and everyone gets 2-shot.
I see this as an absolute win. Far too many hosts being carried through the game by level 709 phantoms
@@slaphappy-qb3jb That's not how co-op with randoms works. you get level matched.
This is a whole subset of players we are talking about that just like to lend a friendly hand to strangers because "sunbros" were inspired by how Solaire helps you.
not that people need help anyways these days with mimic tear.
@@crestfallenhussar895 nobody plays with randoms anymore, or at least very few people. Most people password match their max level friends. I invade a lot, and 90% of the fights are against gank squads with their near max level friends, which you can determine from how many souls you get from them. Stats such as damage reduction and fp are completely unaffected by being summoned by a lower level player, which trivializes the base game. The fragment being based on the host is how matchmaking should have always been.
@@slaphappy-qb3jb I ain't reading all that because you can't even read.
Op told you how they were playing and why they were dissatisfied.
@@crestfallenhussar895 I did read. They're mad because they can't carry as a high level phantom and the host actually has to git gud. If you're expecting me to feel bad because all the casual shitters can't hack it, you're going to be waiting a long time.
$100 says you're one of the shitters that was crying about how hard the game was because your blasphemous blade or moonveil spam didn't work anymore. Sit down kiddo.
I truly appreciate your criticism of the final boss as true criticism. As much as I love the final boss, I definitely understand people’s general gripes with it. However, all I’ve seen online for the past 2 weeks is hundreds of people raging over the difficulty or lord behind it. Your criticism so far has been the only one that I truly respect and understand, so genuinely, thank you for putting it so perfectly.
Personally, I think it would have eased the shock a bit to have Radahn’s design be less similar to his original design. A thought I’ve seen thrown around is that Radahn should have been a lot more malformed and closer in design to Mohg to visually explain his soul being put into his body. I think that would have not only been a great design concept, but also would have better explained how Radahn is actually there.
The final boss has killed a lot of my hype for an otherwise surprisingly good DLC. It's not a git gud situation, it's a...this boss just isn't fun to fight situation.
I found him so fun to learn to dodge his moves, he has some of the most satisfying moves in the whole game
I had a blast figuring him out, way easier than malenia but more satisfying imo.
git gud, not even close to being the hardest Soulsborne boss
@@BLVCKCVT-jc3vz Who said he was hard?
I wanted the Scadutree Fragments work more like Beads in Sekiro, and less like Golden Seeds, and that more bosses and super enemies drop them. I also wanted them to be more.
I also wanted St. Trina to be more active, even though I like that Miquella's denial of her makes it about how childish and unwilling to grow up he is.
And I do think that there was something missing from Miquella during the final battle.
Unwilling to grow up? Dude sacrificed everything to become a god..
@@cosseybombexcept that he did that only because he felt like nobody was listening to his special little vision for the world, lmao. He's a childish, spoiled little cuck who did what he did just so he could force everyone to think like him
He's literally the embodiment of Twitter kids LOL
Yeah finding an item on the ground shouldn't be the level up system. I think have guaranteed drops from big enemies and bosses, like you say, but I'd also add in random drops from strong enemies, too. That way people don't get stuck. You can still powerlevel up to a point. Maybe beating bosses as a summon has a random chance, too.
@@notsorrystory but then jackasses will just farm the first big enemy until they max the system then proceed to have an unintendedly easy experience
@@frankcaggiano8282 they would only drop the first time so it can't be farmed
Cerulean coast and its accompanying red flower area were both needlessly empty and absolute slogs that showed the worst of the flaws of open world in the souls formula
Right on, right fucking on
I think the DLC has unusually large amount of those areas, i mean almost every area is like that besides legacy dungeons.
I feel like they have an obsession with trying to make everything gigantic and big, its purely for visual and aesthetic reason. They want you to feel like an ant in the world and putting content there is afterthought.
@@FrozenkexI disagree, the only locations that felt “empty” were Charo/Cerulean, the Abyss and Jagged Peak. The latter two are excusable though because they’re designed as more linear segments, not fully open like the rest of the game, and they both do it well
@@Mo167ose Yeah I agree with this. Charo's Hidden Grave and Cerulean Coast were the only two that seemed unnecessary. The other areas felt like they had substance and at least some visual variety.
@@ZyckroThere are more dungeons in Limgrave alone than the entire DLC.
They made radahn the final boss for meme purposes
Now Radahn is also reused. Bravo FromSoft...
'reused'? nigga its completely in context within the story and his model and moveset are completely different to his character in the base game.
next time just say you're too dumb to understand it instead of exposing yourself for being an idiot
My problem with the new leveling up system is that I personally took the words "Sekiro Like" by heart. I thought that by defeating bosses it would make me stronger, and not that I would NEED to search for them in (many times) obscure locations.
I like to aimlessly explore the games that I play, when I NEED to explore to get stronger is no longer a pleasure, is a chore.
Your suggestion of increasing the number of scadutree fragments can be easily applied by making bosses drop them (both main and side bosses).
Doing this repeatedly with new characters is going to be a pain in the ass.
Just entering the dlc and pulling out the grocery list
@@boshwa20 It is, I just started a new playthrough and the need to find all the upgrades again is ass.
But to be fair, the new patch really made a difference on the return u get from each scadutree level
Agreed. I already said this under a lore hunter video. But the satisfaction of beating bosses is inherently tied to progression. The progression and satisfaction of beating bosses being so divided, aside from Golden Hippo and Gaius, i found jarring. Getting a measly level up from Dancing Lion after almost 2 hours of attemps was frankly painful.
@@Red-nl4lk It is quite baffling that from all of the DLC bosses, that freaking Hippo is the only one who drops a scudtree fragment
@FA-M-S Gaius also stores 5 of these things behind his arena. If they didn't want scadus to drop from bosses. The least they could have done is have more bosses that guard areas where scadus are available.
I share your sentiment about the presentation of radahn. He is badass and I love the fight mechanically but I couldn’t help but feeling a little confused when meeting him there. Having already fought him in the base game also takes away some of the excitement as opposed to fighting someone new.
He's also just basically a puppet/lackey of Miquella here, so it's hard to really feel something here... Radahn's real fight tells such an epic story of heroism and closure, and honouring Radahn with one last great fight. For the final battle, it's just Miquella we're trying to stop and we don't even know whether Radahn is a willing participant or not. Just falls flat
@@socialjihad5724we don't know if he's a willing participant or if he's been brainwashed. It's all up to player interpretation currently and I'm of the belief that the final cutscene is trying to imply the former.
@@duvetboa I mean, the end of my comment literally specifies that we don't know if he's a willing participant or not. But I find both answers unsatisfying: either he has no autonomy(which is boring for obvious reasons), or he does, in which case I just don't believe this is in line with the character they established and whose story they ended.
@@socialjihad5724 Fair enough, sorry I just woke up and have poor reading comprehension
whats confusing to you? its explained in the lore, it works thematically and in context to what we've learned, it also helps explain our interaction with him in the base game.....what are you and the other normies who've never played a SoulsBorne game before having so much trouble understanding?
Scooby Doo blessings don't belong in a souls rpg design. They should've made the dlc stuff drop shadow runes and have those turn into dlc levels that go on top of your levels
Soulsborne are based on rpg stats and have that traditional leveling system; Sekiro is fully mechanical in nature so it has those simplified upgrades. KEEP THEM SEPARATED
Let’s say Miquella x Consort needed to happen rather than a standalone Miquella boss. I can list a few candidates who have more precedence than Radahn as a consort.
Imagine the imagery of an angelic Miquella on the back of Mohg’s satanic appearance. Or maybe introduce Miquella’s shadow. Or maybe Leda, who refused to die out of loyalty to Miquella, and reflecting the player and Ranni, Miquella picks a tarnished as his consort. Or as everyone is saying, Godwyn.
Those would be better than Radahn just appearing out of thin air, with no established connection between the two. Radahn being alive does nothing for me, because they do nothing with him being alive again. Him being made from Mohg means little to nothing except some horns and one blood attack. The value of a ‘prime Radahn’ fight comes from a Radahn not ravaged by the scarlet rot, and yet this Radahn felt no different. He is supposedly revived, and yet he has even less personality than base game Radahn. He seems somehow more brain dead than the actual brain dead one. He has no personality, he has no dialogue, so what was the point?
Hack, they could have made his sister as his consort.
I am talking about Malenia the blade of Miquella.
sorry, for any grammer or spelling mistakes.
just....no. stop with these awful fanfics. theres a reason FromSoft make billions of dollars and you are not a professional writer
@@BLVCKCVT-jc3vz Yeah, they sound like fanfics, but Radahn also felt like fanfiction, I’m just listing candidates who had more precedent
It may be because I have gone through the game a half dozen times, or due to the dlc just being big, but as much as I adore the expansion I cannot see myself putting in another playthrough to traverse the DLC. As cool as the intertwining map is, I feel as if it will be a chore to traverse in subsequent playthroughs.
I thought so too, as I was going through it the first time.
Knowing how these sections connect through multiple pathways, actually makes navigating it easier than the base game. Also, sadly, there's a lot less you have to go out of your way for, since anything you forgot, can easily be looked up.
If I play it again Im using a mod that will just give me all the items like shadow frags right away
It is very fun a second time though, it isn't as big as you think it is
Just started my second playthrough of the DLC, the scadutree blessing does actually carry over which was a big sigh of relief for mer
This is exactly the same feeling i had with the base game, but with the sacred tears and seeds. I really don't like the trade-off of extreme tedium in repeat playthroughs in exchange for better exploration ion your first playthrough. Having to go on a collectathon for each new character makes me feel like i'm playing an MMO, where i just turn my brain off with a video on my second screen. Maybe I'm just approaching it from the wrong perspective, but knowingly gimping my healing to do the stuff I wanna do like bosses and legacy dungeons also feels bad. There being a total of 20 scadutree levels is also insane to me.
Agree with all this. I wish, lore and story wise, it answered more questions but we all know Miyazaki is a "leave them wanting more" guy. I wanted more information about Miquella as well. And yes the final boss just didn't work at all. A head scratching moment for sure. I also think that putting Messmer on the cover and then he's just another story boss, I wanted more with him as well. But you know it's an excellent dlc when you start to get a little sad when you realize you're at the last legacy dungeon and that it's almost over.
To be fair From Soft never shows off their final boss in DLC promotional content. At least from what I remember
I think the issue with the story is less "didn't answer enough questions" and more "presents the final boss as the good guy and all the base endings as crapshoots, but doesn't let us join him".
Malenia is the face of the base game, despite being a secondary boss as well. No one expected messmer to be the main focus of the dlc, it was made clear that the story was about miquella
Even if you don't think there were rtcons, I think it's safe to say there was some cut content that would've expanded the lore. Particularly with the Gloam-eyed queen, Melina, and potentially Malenia
There is a massive amount of Miquella information if your brain is more than a bowl of oatmeal.
The most annoying thing is how many people ride FS for stuff they just threw down assets and the community has come to the conclusion they are god storytellers/worldbuilders assuming that enemies in a certain place mean something, or a texture on a wall has a story implication.
No. It doesn't. Grasping at straws because you want their to be straws is cringe.
exposing yourself for having no idea of why everything you said is wrong.
why dont you show us all your amazing world building and epic stories so we can see how its really done? not looking good so far seeing as you dont seem to understand the difference between 'there' and 'their'.
we get it, you're too dumb to get the context of FS placement of things you seem to think are just 'thrown down'....again exposing yourself as one of these idiots who have come into EldenRing having never played any Souls games or their DLCs before. These games are not for you
I mean, was anyone who went into the DS3 DLC not confused when they encountered Gael as the last boss? I don't really see anything inherently wrong with Radahn being the final boss, especially in the context of the criticism provided in this video. I get that it would have been interesting to have gotten something related to Godwyn, but it does seem like Fromsoft had the Radahn fight planned from the very beginning. Also, it's not exactly true that you don't get any indication of Radahn being brought back before entering the final boss area; it is blatantly foreshadowed by various instances of dialogue that Miquella had planned to put Radahn's soul into Mogh's body.
My biggest complaints are:
1: The location of some skadushs are not intuitive, especially the ones dropped by shadow guys
2: No new dialogue with characters from the base game. How does Melina have nothing to say about what happens there???
Edit 3: I just remembered the red place. WHY does it exist??? There are only repeated bosses and nothing interesting or new.
Loved the last boss
also they can bug and you can be left with 19+ and your even increasing OCD haunting you for eternity
Mine are boring open world, should've been all DS/BB style, no torrent.
Some shit bosses like Putrescent Knight and Scadutree Avatar
Not a fan of the scadutree system
Enemy reuse and spam
Also subpar legacy dungeons and a lot of boring DS3 grey aesthetic
Wait, what shadow guys?
@@FSVR54 seems like you just don't like fromsoft games...
My only MAJOR complaint about the DLC is how you can permanently fail a bunch of quests just by going near the Shadow Keep. You don't even have to kill any bosses to get there. There's nothing in the game to suggest there's any reason you shouldn't go exploring. Quite the opposite, the whole Scadutree Fragment thing ENCOURAGES exploration, which is what I was doing when this happened. Had to look it up to see what it meant. Turns out I just missed out on a bunch of stuff. That is some BS.
Oh shit, didnt even know that, that just sucks omega balls, I'll have to see what I missed cause I approached it pretty early in my playtrough
You can reach the Shadow Keep without setting a foot into Belurat or fighting Relanna. And it even feels natural because of all the Scadutree fragments you´ll find along the way.
Not even the shadow keep, if you get on the road to Manus Metyr it breaks almost as soon as you leave the Bonny Village, super ridiculous..
@@frantisekfojt8688Just did that, but the two NPC's in question were already met past Rellana's arena. I'm screwed?
Just wait and start another profile...it'll get patched just like base game... On one I'm right in front of radahns fog gate waiting for a patch update...I did the ansbach and tholly quest but didn't summon them for leda and now they're not by radahns door so I just jumped on my other character like I'll just wait til enough complaints come and they patch it lol everyone is complaining about missed quest so from will surely fix it...they'll fix anything that doesn't ruin their plan for the game
Elden Ring: Criticised for reusing bosses over and over
Also Elden Ring: Let's make the final boss a reused boss.
I am unhappy with the lack of answers for many of the questions we had. The scooby doo system was a questionable idea at first and the implementation surprised me for how bad it was. The final boss is not satisfying as they prioritized spectacle over mechanical enjoyment. I hate that Radahn can unleash super poweful combos at the player and, even if you deal with it perfectly, your reward is a light attack with a rapier. Some of his attacks can't even be punished at all unless you are using things like raptors of the mist. What is the point of those explosions at the start of phase 2 and 3? There is no gameplay to them at all.
And he hit like a truck for someone who is as aggressive as a kangaroo. Usually if bosses hit like a truck they are sluggish as fuck but also tanky as well (see Nameless King or Fume) to draw out an endurance fight and if bosses are aggressive like a kangaroo they either hit like wet noodle in a single hit or they are squishy or they have no poise to force a race to the bottom
Radahn just said fuck it, bake the cake and eat it as well. That’s why he’s unfun to me
Ngl phase 1 was a 9/10 then phase 2 came and I was just like "why" so much shit is happening on the screen felt like a modded version of phase 1
@@KhangNguyen-ij4xheat the cake and have it as well*
But you’re right. Things also why I like Maliketh: he does an obscene amount of damage but he’s squishy.
Waiting for long combo strings only to get a single attack off in retaliation is something I really hope they move away from. I like doing damage sometimes!
@@ZachStachelski13only if you have a parry mechanic like in Sekiro , super aggressive enemies make sense and are a joy to fight. My stance on elden ring is, that they don‘t get that people want to play builds and not want to counter mechanics. All should be reasonable doable with walk/run/dodge. Opting for guard and parry (or the spontaneous block bottle) should be optional but advatagious, if you invested in them. And Radhan also has other problems. His miquella cloak obscures his body and movement together with the aweful camera. Slave Knight Gael is the go to boss in terms is peak difficulty. But fromsoft have to invest in talent to make their camera smarter. This is just not acceptable anymore.
Monster Hunter for example is peak camera.
The blessing system feels like you regress to then regain your power from the base game and I hated it, I'd rather not feel like I'm weak with an endgame build. As well as the fragments themselves made me stop caring about anything that wasn't them and I ended up beating the dlc and not wanting to go back since it all just felt like a waste of time and in every other souls game I always kill all bosses (main bosses in elden rings case). The biggest issue is there is zero replayability with this system as I'm not going to run around for multiple hours to collect shit in order to fight bosses in a fair state, anyone who compares it to Sekiro has never played it more than once if at all since you don't ride around for hours at a time to collect prayer beads, since the game is much smaller, the detours don't feel bad at all and you don't need to get all of them to feel like the game is sufficiently balanced.
The final boss being... spoilers
...Radahn is so disappointing it's not funny, personally I think his second phase is stupid difficult not remotely fun but if it had been a new character I'd be way happier even if it was the same mechanically. It felt like they reused a boss from the base game and made the dlc not feel worth it at all.
Game mechanics-wise his second phase just feels like spam in general which isn't fun, we've had bosses that had similar mechanics but the way it was done with Radahn felt like just pure spamming of light to blind me and piss me off. It took me 272 deaths to beat him solo with no cheese and I might never fight him again because it's not fun to go through his first phase to then die 10 seconds after his nuke from everything he (once again) spams. Also probably the most disappointing ending to a boss fight ever, every single boss in DS1, 3 and maon bosses in base game ER feel satisfying after besting them but Radahn started and ended with disappointment.
Overall the DLC at its best which is just Messmer is a 10/10 but at its worst is 4 or 5, the dlc is a 6 or 7 depending on my mood. Every DLC fromsoft has released before this is better and I hope they never make something like this again. I will be using cheat engine to give myself fragments if I ever play it again and will be killing Messmer then leaving, the best thing about the DLC is the new weapons that I will also cheat engine into my inventory so I can actually use them before the end of the base game. My expectation that a fromsoft DLC will be better than the base game is now completely false and I will have lower expectations from here on out.
@@infintypotato495 Exactly my thoughts. I have played every Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro, I am a FS and Miyazaki fan. I think some fans just cannot accept when a genius makes a mistake, the ending of this dlc was the mistake. I literally had no problem whatsoever with anything in the dlc other than the extremely empty open areas and the ending. Like, seriously? Not even a single line of dialogue for Miquella addressed to the Tarnished after we beat him? Nothing about us killing his sister? After he tried pretty much evrything to cure her???
why do people write shit like this? you just expose yourself as not understanding lore and context, needing to have your hand held and spoon fed everything and that you demand an easy time through the DLC just because you finished the base game....we get it, youve never played a soulsborne game before.
When it was revealed that miquella took mohg's body for the ritual I was expecting a more grotesque final boss, i think radahn looks too perfect and should have more mohg features
I’m also upset that there’s no extra equipable Great Runes that you obtain from the DLC. Surely they could’ve made Messmer and Miquella have them. Final fight should have been Godwyn too.
While I actually understood why Radahn would be the final boss, and I actually enjoyed and understood Miquella's story before facing Radahn, there is no denying that the final boss should never be someone we have fought before, period. I think what they should have done is concluding the Miquella's story midgame,i.e. Having Radahn as a midgame boss, and focusing the second half of the DLC on Messmer.
Other than that, my biggest criticism with Shadow of the Erdtree is the lack of weight I feel with many of the main bosses. Whenever I fought a base game boss I always get the feeling that I was fighting someone important. DLC bosses like the Dancing Lion, Rellana, Romina, or the Putrescent Knight are all solid fights themselves, but none of them has the presence & the impact that Maliketh, Godfrey, Rykard, (base game) Radahn ,etc. had.
What hurts the most, in my opinion, is the lack of a cutscene, or even a name, for many of these bosses. This severely devoids them of a personality. Before fighting Godfrey for example, we got to hear the man talked, and we learnt what kind of a person he was, that he loved his son Morgott, and that he was an honorable warrior. Phase 2 cutscene adds even more, showing us deep down hes a babarian who lusted for combat, and that he believed only those with strength deserved to rule. The same can be said about other base game bosses. This makes me feel like I was fighting a real person, with a distinct personality. I cant say the same for, say, Rellana, or Romina, or the Putrescent Knight. As far as Im concern they are roadblocks with cool design & neat moveset.
Romina was extremely forgettable and nothing special. I do agree we should have had more voice lines and cutscenes.. but I guess that’s what we get for a $40 game with two years of development vs $60 game with 5 years of development
The absence of cutscenes was really a letdown; it seems like this DLC was rushed and left unfinished.
@@Jbswe I do hope they will add cutscenes in soe future updates
@@DUNGSI27 Add cutscenes in updates? There's stupidity, and then there this...
@@LayDownAndRotLook, it’s a pipe dream that won’t happen ofc, but come on, it’s a nice as hell thought.
Is it probable? Hell no, they would never do it. But fuck, it would be a significant improvement.
I am PRAYING that this isn’t what Elden Ring ends on, especially after Miyazaki said there are no plans for a sequel. If this truly is the one and only Elden Ring, ending the game with this would be kinda disappointing. There are way too many things that don’t have an answer to, and too many loose ends. This DLC, while answering plenty of questions, was mostly just a “here’s an end to on specific plot point”, that point being Miquella and his quest for godhood. What about the giant death plague under Lyndell? Who is Melina, and what’s with her eye during the frenzied flame ending? Who was the gloam eyed queen? So many unanswered questions, itd be so sad for them to end without anymore dlc, lore, or content.
first things first melina is now believed to be messmers sister, secondly there are lots of mysteries that go unawnsered in from software games thats just how it is, three the gloam eyed queen was clearly someone whos rebelling against the erdtree and bringing them back would make maliketh and their destined death power look like a joke. some parts of the lore are better off not being awnsered and better left to be speculated over, for instance in dark souls 3 aldritch had this dream about the "deep sea" thing and we never really got to see more of it in the dlcs, from usually does not awnser everything in their dlcs
@@rangopistacho6928 I think even when fromsoft leaves mysteries unanswered in their other games, at least the story is complete. I still think after the dlc elden ring's story isn't. I think for example knowing more about the gloam-eyed queen or about the plague under leyndell would fundamentally change your interpretation of the events of the main story in a way unanswered mysteries in other games wouldn't.
@@rangopistacho6928 the thing abt Melina is I saw a post saying that they removed the mention of a sister from Messmer’s kindling (haven’t been able to fact check this), so is that even canon anymore?
As for your Melina critique, they probably wouldn’t have given an answer that only pertained for one ending, and the DLC all but confirms Melina is Messmer’s sister through an item description (I forget which one)
@@Mo167ose It’s Messmer’s kindling, but according to a post I’ve seen, as I said, I haven’t been able to fact check this, they got rid of the mention of Messmer having a sibling. Can we even count that as canon anymore?
how the fuck did this dlc get a higher rating than blood and wine? are game reviewers really that scared of getting bullied by fromsoft drones lmao
They absolutely are the fromsoft meatriding has been at maximum intensity since the game originally released
because The Witcher is a dogshit game saved by its writing
I guess FromSoft didn't have enough funds to rehire George R.R. to help write the DLC. That was their mistake. Miyazaki continued on the Elden Ring lore through his own thoughts instead of the creator or at least co-creator, which would've helped massively. My other gripe is why don't they give us a continuation for the ending we picked? Pick up where we left off. No intergration at all or at least use some of the same major base game characters for DLC like Melina, Ranni, etc, even if its not a continuation for the ending you chose.
I've said it elsewhere, but I think my main problem with the final boss is that they gave Miquella the power to make anyone do anything, which essentially removes all tension from every character moment in the game. Because we've had no demonstration of the limits of Miquella's control, everything can potentially be retroactively explained with 'Miquella made them do it'.
I think that's why, for me, Radahn feels so out of place, even after hearing Ansbach's dialogue beforehand. It's not a twist to see Radahn paired with Miquella when we remember that Miquella can make anyone do anything. It could've just as easily been any capable warrior in Radahn's place.
What I think might have been better is if we had some limits to Miquella's power so that it leaves us questioning whether Radahn actually wanted to go along with it and whether defeating Miquella is the 'right' thing to do. In this way, Miquella more accurately reflects the player as we more than likely share the same goal of ending the current order for something better. I think that then puts us in a similar position as the previous end bosses like Soul of Cinder and Gael, where it's a reflection of the player and their journey.
I think thematically the game and the DLC seems to be making the point that becoming a god/leader always costs something of ourselves, no matter our intentions. As the player character, we kill a lot of beings to become stronger, even though our broader intentions may be positive. This is parallel to Miquella who wants a gentle rule, but in the process commits several atrocities like mind controlling people, and resurrecting Radahn in a humiliating way to Mohg for (possibly) conquest and war.
I'm going to play through again and not mess up NPC questlines like in every Fromsoft Game with semi-arbitrary lock points and triggers, however I do think that limits are reasonably laid out. We have to be actively touched by Miquella twice, after ascension, to be charmed in the boss fight. IIRC from NPC dialogues, he cannot fully subvert people's will or personality, only guide their existing tendencies into aiding him. Notice he has no converted Erdtree faithful in his entourage, other than maybe Freyja though she is a Redmane first and all else second. All others are heretics in one way or another, which is perhaps why he is associated with outcasts. That is who he can charm, since they are already abandoned by the existing order.
@@cyclic_infinity I think the physical contact is the only requirement, which is a weak limitation. Radahn was also the most devout Golden Order fanboy though, so although I like the heretic part, I don't think it's necessarily correct.
they could have done anything and it would have been better than the radahn story. miquella could have just tried to get us as his consort and we could have an lsd-fueled mind battle or some crazy stuff to beat his charm. miquella could have tried to resurrect godwyns soul in mogh's body but things could have gone sideways since godwyn can't be revived and maybe we get some cosmic horror type of battle with the undead god of naivety.
@@metalface_villain Personally, I think I wanted to see Godwyn's body used instead of Mohgs since Godwyn's soul is gone and that would be technically 'ethical' for Miquella to do. Then the soul he uses for the body doesn't really matter, but the final form should look way more like its body (there's no reason for Radahn to look mostly like Radahn imo). Then everyone wins, we get grotesque Godwyn, we get someone's soul manipulated by Miquella, and we don't necessarily get Radahn Pre-Alpha
@@jmell458 Absolutely fair, I think it's something that will get the Lore Video treatment once we're far enough out. I definitely think it's a nebulous point with multiple interpretations that work.
I thought the discovery of lore surrounding Radahn before the boss fight wasn't too bad actually. Ansbach told you someone snagged Mohg's corpse for nefarious things he needed a soul to inhabit the body. We know that the soul can't be Godwyn because it doesn't exist anymore. In the same building we can talk to Freyja and she tells us that Miquella is trying to revive Radahn's soul. Put the pieces together and we realize Miquella's plan is told directly to us. Sure we don't really know why Miquella is doing this until it's all over but it really gets your brain churning when you realize what he is doing.
Like you I found all the reveals naturally through the npcs. But it still just felt almost like a retcon. The only thing in the base game that even hints at miquellas intentions is when malenia whispered in radahns ear. I was still satisfied with it and seeing radahn in his prime was dope. But when I found out from the npcs it did feel out of left field
My take is that Godwyn was the original soul Miquella wanted as elden lord but because the eclipse was interrupted Radahn was taken as a back up. I don't really have evidence for this just a gut feeling
Edit: ah I guess other people think that as well lol
@@jerryb216 which would have been a reasonable explanation, but they didn't even try to do that. Literally just add a description to an item that says - 'after several promising leads, miquella realized Godwyn could NEVER come back'.
Why not moghs soul in godwyns body for a death root final boss
The problem is Miquella and his contrived plan to get himself Radahn as his consort, which pretty much came out of nowhere.
Old school souls fan here - How is it Mohgs body, but has a human face? But seriously, this ending was the main reason my experience was soured. I felt like I saw a beautiful presentation of a plate of food and the entire dinner was bland. This ending meant everything, and I was completely open for a twist away from my expectation (Godwyn), but when that twist seemed much worse and then the boss is only two phases and after there's a small clip of a memory? Add the fact that they absolutely did everything in their power to shun intelligence builds. Gross.
FromSoft has to move on from the dodge roll. JFC.
I find it so out of left field to see Radahn again. Not only are Ansbach’s and Freyja’s quest missable, but if you do not pay much attention to the game, you may not put the pieces together as to why a boss the player HAD to kill to enter the DLC is back.
Idk man when I play these games basically every boss I meet is out of left field. Just killed the sunflower dude because I stumbled randomly into his mansion and I'm not even sure why I had to do that.
Many of my top games of all time are open world, and Elden Ring is one of them. But I think From's strengths just shine brighter in a more linear style. I am not against them re-visiting this style by any means. I really liked Shadow Keep and how it led to many different areas. I hope they build on that DS1 style design that they had at points in the expansion.
The thing with how From did the open world is that, it's peak gaming at first, but after a couple of hours it becomes a chore, and even more so on consecutive playthroughs/characters
Meanwhile, I never get bored of making a new build on DS3, BB or DS2, never - but ER however, its open world is just so damn boring and empty after your first playthrough
I agree with you on this one completely my dear friend. I would love to see an elden ring 2 but with a better and most sustainable open world that can hold itself up after the first play through, just one play thorough and on your second run, there's almost no replay value unlike the other games.
Overall the dlc is still fun and enjoyable, along with the base game. 8.5 is the best score the dlc deserves.
@@SohelanthropusInteresting, I had the opposite experience. I've beat ER at least 15 times, way more than I ever replayed the other souls games. Only beat DS1 twice, BB once. Maybe I'll go back and play them, but I never understood why people said ER wasn't replayable. It was literally the most replayable game I've ever played.
@@Sohelanthropus this would be solved if there were more and faster ways to get around the map like the teleporters in Caelid and the Physick church
Make them be behind very difficult challenges like enemy gauntlets or platforming sections so most ppl can't cheat progression until they're high level or really good (i.e. after your first playthru at least)
This exactly. Ds3 ect you are always playing the game. Eldenring you are running to the next small bit of content you need to engage with.
With Scadutree Fragments, they could have taken inspiration from how Sekiro handled its progression system, you increased your attack power naturally as you defeated each major boss, and you upgraded your health by defeating minibosses and exploring. They could have made Scadutree Fragments rewards for completing dungeons, and each remembrance boss gives you a larger reward, maybe 5 fragments for example. That way they'd ensure you wouldn't be overleveled for bosses and it encourages you to explore dungeons and fight more minibosses.
If Radahn was a secret optional boss like Malenia people would be extremely hyped but as a final boss it just feel so disappoiting that the final boss is a guy we already fought, yes this is him in his prime but it is still Radahn. I also really hate his second phase i think its really bad because you can't see anything most of the time since you're constantly getting flashbanged by the rays of light.
Also, nobody else has mentioned this. But Promised Consort Radahn isn't well animated. He slides around on his feet and looks stiff as a board. A real farcry from the original.
I agree with everything you said ! There should be ATLEAST ONE item description that is about radahn and miquellas connection in the base game
Couldn’t agree more about confusion and displeasure being the feeling on the final boss encounter. I wanted wonder, awe, and to be left thinking about it for years. Instead I was disappointed and got a lackluster explanation why that barely leaves room for speculation after the fact. Even though I enjoyed the fight itself, I just wanted something(or someone) else.
The two year wait might be the crux of the issue here. People built up so much head cannon that just didn’t jive with what FS was holding back
It’s cause you spoiled it for yourself dude lol
I will say is that a fault of the game or your expectations on what you wanted? If you went in with no expectations or assumptions of the lore it answered a ton and was very fulfilling answering a lot from the opening of the game and explains a lot of what is happening in the game, could there have been more? Of course, but what was given was amazing lorewise.
@@Justin-sl7ri this 100%
@@PuffnStuff117 Didn't get spoiled. Can confirm the lore and story of Miquella sucks
Why does Midra's Manse have three graces but also shortcuts looping back to each other?
Why are there two nearly identical Finger Ruins on the map? There should have just been one.
Why does the giant arch structure behind the Shadow Keep have nothing there to interact with but scadutree fragments?
Why is half of the Specimen Storeroom inaccessible without going through the church district? This is the only legacy dungeon that does this.
Why do they encourage exploration but approaching the Shadow Keep too soon automatically skips ahead nearly every NPC questline?
Why do Furnace Golems take so fucking long to kill?
Why are Cerulean Coast, Charo's Hidden Grave, The Hinterlands, Jagged Peak, and both Finger Ruins so empty?
Why do so many of the DLC boss arenas have giant boxed in walls for the camera to get stuck on?
On that note why do so many of these bosses push you around like your feet are on an air hockey table? This was never as much of an issue in the base game as it is in this DLC.
Why would you even fight 90% of the enemies in the DLC if runes are drastically ineffective at making you stronger? You can run past almost anything.
Why do some enemies and bosses have long combo attacks and can immediately cancel into another one without recovering their stamina?
Why is the deflect tear a 5 minute flask buff and not a talisman or a great rune?
Why is there a dev message in every smithing dungeon pointing out the blatantly obvious weak point of the golem enemies?
Why is The Lamenter the only unique interesting boss to figure out in the DLC and every other boss is a standard combat encounter?
Why are the Iris of Grace and Iris of Occultation quest items consumable at all?
Why do so many bosses rush you at the fog gate immediately?
Why do so many bosses have attacks that lunge forward and magnet their bodies to your location? Player positioning becomes meaningless.
Why do I get the feeling this DLC was a lot more Tanimura than it was Miyazaki?
Agree with most of it especially first point. I really dislike how Fromsoftware became wasteful with their bonefires and it is getting worse in each game. In old games you had 1 or 2 bone fires in level and entire level revolved around those. You kept opening shortcuts and it was extremely satisfying. Now most of the levels are linear lines with lots of pockets around for secret stuff. It feels like they don't give much thought while placing those.
Glad to see someone actually being critical. Enjoyed the DLC overall, but it has so many shortcomings.
Why does Midra's Manse have three graces but also shortcuts looping back to each other?
The world may never know.
Why are there two nearly identical Finger Ruins on the map? There should have just been one.
Did you do Ymir's quest?
Why does the giant arch structure behind the Shadow Keep have nothing there to interact with but scadutree fragments?
That structure exists to catch fragments of the Scadutree. What did you expect to find other than Scadutree fragments?
Why is half of the Specimen Storeroom inaccessible without going through the church district? This is the only legacy dungeon that does this.
Is this even a problem? They just tried to do something different by splitting the dungeon.
Why do they encourage exploration but approaching the Shadow Keep too soon automatically skips ahead nearly every NPC questline?
Fair point.
Why do Furnace Golems take so fucking long to kill?
They don't.
Why are Cerulean Coast, Charo's Hidden Grave, The Hinterlands, Jagged Peak, and both Finger Ruins so empty?
Cerulean Cost, Charo's Hidden Grave, and Jagged Peak link to different areas and have multiple bosses, the Hinterlands is a lore area, and the Finger Ruins have Remembrance dupe points and tie into a quest.
Why do so many of the DLC boss arenas have giant boxed in walls for the camera to get stuck on?
Fromsoft has always struggled with the camera, this isn't a DLC issue.
On that note why do so many of these bosses push you around like your feet are on an air hockey table? This was never as much of an issue in the base game as it is in this DLC.
This only happens with Romina.
Why would you even fight 90% of the enemies in the DLC if runes are drastically ineffective at making you stronger? You can run past almost anything.
Because playing the game is fun.
Why do some enemies and bosses have long combo attacks and can immediately cancel into another one without recovering their stamina?
They have plenty of openings.
Why is the deflect tear a 5 minute flask buff and not a talisman or a great rune?
Nobody in the Shadow Lands has a Great Rune (other than Miq but it breaks), and the effect would be too busted on a talisman. Being on a timer is a good tradeoff for such a powerful ability.
Why is there a dev message in every smithing dungeon pointing out the blatantly obvious weak point of the golem enemies?
Who cares?
Why is The Lamenter the only unique interesting boss to figure out in the DLC and every other boss is a standard combat encounter?
He's a shit boss. Nothing is interesting about a DPS check. I'd rather fight every other boss twice each than ever look at them Lamenter again.
Why are the Iris of Grace and Iris of Occultation quest items consumable at all?
There are 2 of each, and there are 2 points where you have a choice of using one or the other. You will have 2 left over. Them being consumable makes the leftovers not useless.
Why do so many bosses rush you at the fog gate immediately?
Only Messmer and Radahn do this.
Why do so many bosses have attacks that lunge forward and magnet their bodies to your location? Player positioning becomes meaningless.
Fair point.
Why do I get the feeling this DLC was a lot more Tanimura than it was Miyazaki?
Because you're mostly nitpicking.
@@JF-vz1ju
Did you do Ymir's quest?
Yes. It still ruins any uniqueness the Finger Ruins would have had by having two identical ones in the overworld. There should have only been one.
What did you expect to find other than Scadutree fragments?
Some sort of interaction with the Scadutree, the giant chalice, some lore, anything? These games are immersive because everything you find is put there in the world for a reason. With such a massive important looking structure it seems like a missed opportunity to give it no story purpose or player interaction.
Is this even a problem? They just tried to do something different by splitting the dungeon.
It is a problem given how the Storeroom is designed with multiple levels and secret pathways. Players can easily loop around continuously thinking they missed something inside the dungeon when the solution isn't even available to them until they find the other entrance outside.
They don't.
They do. I'm not the only person that feels this. It's not a particularly challenging enemy it's just a big bloated HP bar. After fighting so many of them across the DLC (they're the most overused large enemy) it becomes boring.
Cerulean Cost, Charo's Hidden Grave, and Jagged Peak link to different areas and have multiple bosses, the Hinterlands is a lore area, and the Finger Ruins have Remembrance dupe points and tie into a quest.
None of that is any excuse for the multitude of dead ends, open space, and lack of meaningful/useful things to discover within them. These areas show the same amount of emptiness as Consecrated Snowfield, ones of the most heavily criticized areas in the base game, actually even more so.
Fromsoft has always struggled with the camera, this isn't a DLC issue.
It is still an issue in the DLC.
This only happens with Romina.
And Golden Hippopotamus, Divine Beast Dancing Lion, Commander Gaius, and Midra, Messmer, and Radahn to lesser extent.
Because playing the game is fun.
Yes, and it would be more fun if the player feels growth from engaging with the combat, that's why the Souls/Runes mechanic works so well.
They have plenty of openings.
They do have openings, but occasionally some bosses like Rellana will decide to continue attacking with another combo attack without giving an opening. In a game with a stamina system for the player this is a huge issue. SotE's enemies recover their stamina way more quickly, and it some cases, bosses just ignore the need to.
Nobody in the Shadow Lands has a Great Rune (other than Miq but it breaks), and the effect would be too busted on a talisman. Being on a timer is a good tradeoff for such a powerful ability.
I agree the ability would need to be nerfed for use with a talisman, especially for PVP. But they could have made an excuse for another Great Rune, with either Messmer or Radahn.
Who cares?
I care? Part of the appeal of FromSoft games is that they don't hold the player's hand. I don't see why they were so worried about players not figuring out this extremely simple enemy design that they had to leave a dev message to tell them exactly what to do.
He's a shit boss. Nothing is interesting about a DPS check. I'd rather fight every other boss twice each than ever look at them Lamenter again.
What's interesting about Lamenter is you don't know it's a DPS check. The enjoyment comes from figuring out how his mechanics work. A lot of past Souls games had weird boss fights like this and it made them very memorable experiences. It's a lot more unique than just memorizing dodging and attacking patterns for the 100th time.
There are 2 of each, and there are 2 points where you have a choice of using one or the other. You will have 2 left over. Them being consumable makes the leftovers not useless.
That's a fair point, the problem is players can use the items before finding their purpose in the sidequest, locking themselves out of rewards. The small buff you get does not seem worth that risk, I feel like it should have just been a key item.
Only Messmer and Radahn do this.
Golden Hippopotamus and Commander Gaius did as well, but FromSoft has since patched them so they don't rush you anymore.
Because you're mostly nitpicking.
I really am, but this DLC feels like a death from 1000 cuts sort of scenario. It's not the tight finely crafted experience I've come to expect from FromSoft games. It feels similar to Dark Souls 2, where it's a fine game on its own but compared to FromSoft's other games I know they can do much better.
@@hododod246 I think they know that the bosses and lots of enemies are extremely overtuned for the player's mechanics. This limits them from making gauntlet style levels and forces them to either make the combat better or spam checkpoints everywhere. They do the latter and we get sad.
The "plin plin plon"s of Soul of Cinder's second phase is an incredible soundtrack decision, nothing in Elden Ring matches that musically, sadly
I enjoyed the first half of the video, I won't be watching the second half yet as I haven't finished the DLC and have been enjoying being fully blind so far, I look forward to coming back
Dude delete your comment before some POS spoils it for you 🤦♂️
Final boss is Torrent
@@GG-ou7it Patches*
@@bofa722 my apologies it is technically patches and torrent fused together after patches tried to consume him to reach godhood very deep lore.
“Aaaaa torrent you were at my side all along” patches does say in the beginning of the fight.
@@GG-ou7it yeahhh. Now onto the more pressing matter. Would the fusion be named Parrent or Torches?
One issue that is creeping up after replays is that there just aren't that many cool items to find in the open world. There are a lot of cookbooks for stuff that is just never going to be used. Finger consumables? Spirit consumables? 19 different greases. Hefty Pots are cool at least but we have like 8 variants or something. Some of these should have been fragments, arterea leaves, and rune arcs. There are hardly any rune arcs. I get that the elden ring was shattered after and we have like, some iris' that do the same thing but they're tied to quests and we get like 4 of them.
Also, elden ring, can we please add an item filter when we're equipping items please.
i thought this as well when playing. i hardly ever went to a hidden away ruin and got surprised to find a neat spell. I think the only memory i have of this was the shaman village and he rings of light spell near some deathbirds. and i also dont remember finding super unique weapons in the open world that werent very obviously in the open like the backhand blades and the great katana
Exactly, this DLC needed way better rewards for exploration, more rune arcs, more larval tears and for the love of GOD more ancient dragon/somber smithing stones, You know, the only ones I CANT buy from the shop in the roundtable hold?
I found many new Items in every area maybe you guys didnt explore carefully enough?
You can sort items in the menu with 4 options, and you have the item box at graces. I normally carry 7-10 weapons max. Greases are great for pure strength and dex builds. The pots and all usable items carry over to your mimic so you can spam rot, poison, healing stones, and etc. Plus items are great for covering weaknesses in pvp.
I agree we needed more items of higher rarity in the wild, but co-op helped me farm 100 rune arcs. I believe that was the design intent for the lack of rune arcs; getting others to work together.
them splitting a cookbooks recipes from 4 to 1 in the dlc was a huge redflag they ran out of stuff to reward us with, and the worst part was that everytime i saw what the recipe was for i said to myself, great so people who hack unlimited items in are gunna abuse this against me when i only have a scares amount if i don't grind forever.
they needed to shrink the map instead of make it monotonous at the very least and make the cook book item have more things in it, the key items list is way too long now 😅
and they could have copy and pasted so many enemy items or spells as ashes of war instead and no one would complain, id love albuneric cartwheel or skeleton spinning lunge as an ash of war
I have 49/50 fragments, I looked through all the lists and I swear I have every single one of them, I fought Radahn 107 times but I’m not willing to manually check each scadutree fragment, I wish there were just a few more and I could’ve been the max blessing…. It’s a shame in my opinion the golden seed system was very well done I wish they did the same here
There's nothing in this world that won't convince me that the original plan for the DLC/cut content was that we would help Miquella chose between Radahn and Godwyn. The story is based on releasing Radahns soul into Mohgs body and who is the opposite? Godwyn.
I do agree that after the initial shock of Radahns reveal it falls flat at the end and drops it from a 10 to a 9 IMO.
I would also like the Scadutree to have been implemented differently. Maybe instead of a general buff you could apply the seeds to talismans and increasing their buff. Then it would have been more choices for the player what to buff instead of a flat dmg neg and boost. That's the reason it drops from a 9 to a 8.5
The final problem is that there's so much extra story content that is both detached and important. Like the fingers, the madness, the hornsent/Shaman. All those things being kinda dismissed because the story is "follow miquella" oh and the St. Trina? Yeah you have to luck out to find that aspect. It's what drops it to an 8 for me.
Overall I believe this was their most ambitious DLC but I don't think it belongs in the echelon of Night City, Hunters Nightmare, Fire & Wine. It's a good even at times amazing dlc and brings more Elden Ring than before but didn't make the game better.
Lore wise for final boss, my thinking is that Miquella did want to revive Godwyn like we see in Golden Epitaph and Castle Sol, but ultimately could not. Makes sense he would choose Radahn but it comes out of nowhere in this DLC with no hint of Miquella and Radahn interaction in main game
Talk to other npcs they all hint at it throughout your journey
@@Areis1997 he said "in main game". Talking with the NPCs that are new and appear on the DLC is not the main game.
The writers just arbitrarily decided that Miquella couldn't revive Godwyn. Nobody would have betted an eye if in the DLC we find out that he found some new, different way that actually works.
Miquella never wanted to revive Godwyn. Castle Sol has NOTHING to do with Godwyn. Let's not confuse things. Godwyn had its ending and the Eclipse was about Marika's unwanted children set to be sacrificed
@@Molimo95You can't revive something destroyed. Godwyn's soul did not go to the Greatroots, it was destroyed. We already had these cringe retcons with Dark Souls 2 Lord Souls reincarnation and people complained because of it
I have many other complaints:
- No underground/sky map 😢
- New weapon types, but only 3-4 of each
- Throwing fire pots at furnaces with armored legs is not fun
- Ensis castle was very bland.
- Performance issues
- The way to kill winter lanterns is dumb
- I don't want to play the whole base game again to get everything in the DLC, because you have to play it twice to get everything. Let me NG+ the DLC separetely. Why is that so hard FromSoft?
- Finger ruins were lame
- Still many many many lore questions left unanswered.
- Things in the trailers that are not in the game (the dancer fight is now in the mausoleum, for example)
- Extremely unerwhelming ending. I cant even climb the freaking stairs to the divine gate to enjoy the view 😩
- No interesting torrent upgrades
- No new great runes
- Reused lion dance fight in the ruins
- Probably more that im not remembering 🤔
9/10, I still enjoyed the DLC a great deal, but Old Hunters is still king.
Old hunters was not that good. Ringed city and SOTE are much superior. Bloodborne didn't even have an invasion boss and reskinned one of the DLC bosses (Laurence) making one of the worst fromsoft bosses.
Stop the glaze.
@@Moody.Smiruai Lawrence has the best OST from any FromSoftware game EVER. Now, I _could_ count how many reskinned bosses Elden Ring has, to make a fair comparison, but there are so many... it would take hours 🥱
@@Moody.Smiruai It has the best music FromSoft has ever made. Orphan, Maria, Ludwig, Laurence, even the LIVING FAILURES are impeccable. Hell even Living Failures, a pretty mediocre fight, has a moment of pure beautiful cosmic spectacle during the Phase 2 transition. Ludwig, Maria, and Orphan are some of the best bosses From has ever made. There's basically no empty space or reused fights. And, most importantly, it's satisfying narratively. It sets up and pays off important parts of the lore, Gehrman's apprentice, the first Church Hunter (who was massively foreshadowed in the base game), the founder of the Healing Church, Kos and her importance, and putting the tormented souls of the Hunters to rest.
Calling Laurence (an optional lore focused boss) bad when Radahn, Consort of Particle Effects, exists as the required final boss and actively retcons and messes with the established story for fanservice is particularly hilarious. (The music is good though, at least!)
Throwing fire pots at the furnaces takes like 4 seconds bruh, the finger ruins are lame and should be smaller, and FromSoftware always changes enemy locations like the Dancer. If you look at the original Elden Ring gameplay reveal, you can see that you fight Elemer at Stormveil and fight the chariot on top of a castle wall, which you don’t do in the final game.
Finally someone makes the proper critique of the last boss. And that no one cares if the lore actually ends up lining up, the problem is, no one finds this apparent, or pleasantly surprising, thus a first run playthrough is a failure at that point.
True, but upon further analysis, it does recontextualize a lot. For some, it wilm be for the worse, but to me, I do see how it thematically lines up with even the Base Game’s themes.
@@wanshitong5101 I'm interested, which themes do you mean?
What is the name of the background music towards the end of the video?
Another minor thing to note about Scadutree fragments is that your Scadutree blessing doesn't reset upon entering a new game cycle, meaning that if you got to +20 or close to it in New Game, there's essentially no progression on future visits to the Shadow Realm.
Regarding the final boss: Not only is it a character we've already fought, it's also conceptually and mechanically similar to the Twin Princes, so there are multiple layers contributing to the feeling of it being reused content, at least to my perception.
That's the same way with the golden seeds once you hit max level your done regardless of the NG+
WHAT, plz tell me this is not the case. I was planning 0 fragments run on ng+. Now I'll have to make a new character ffs
@@danfoster6757 That's true, but unlike golden seeds, it doesn't strike me that preserving Scadutree blessing was a necessary design choice.
Thats... a bummer, since i was planning on going with a different build on ng+ but knowing how garbage ng+1 must be, i will roll over half the DLC bosses. Not that i would have wanted to reexplore everything for the fragments mind you.
That’s a good thing. I do not want to have to reacquire scadutree fragments on NG.
What you just said also applies to base Elden Ring. If you’re in New Game+ you’re already pretty set in your build and stats, so all you’re really doing is dumping points into stuff you don’t do. So really, your critique doesn’t make sense as New Game+ literally starts you as a fully decked out character in the base game.
- No 6 player limit
- No covenants
- No continuation to Patches questline
- Still maidenless
But patches goes back to murkwater cave.
No covenants was a huge killer, they could've made ERs multiplayer ecosystem be long lasting like DS3s and DS2s were, but nah they made a stupid mistake
@@SohelanthropusEspecially because there are SO MANY factions that exist and areas they reside in that entering them would trigger the invasions. Now granted if every faction had a covenant then the invasions would be annoying in an unfun way but some of the major areas? Leyndell? Lucaria? Gelmir? Halitree? Stormveil? Theres just a huge missed opportunity with that side of things. ER's multiplayer is sadly not very fun cause it's just AOW spam and constant triple ganks. I feel covenants would've fixed that.
Remember coliseums being added as an update? There's still hope
Covenants are pointless half the time
If there was a route where WE became miquellas consort it wouldve made his story far more compelling imo. That along with godwyn replacing radahn as his default consort given all the buildup. A prime Radahn being the boss just feels like fanservice.
When you start a new game plus, do you have to find the fragments again?
He didn't tell us to downvote and unsubscribe :(
1:54 agreed, I love all the fromsoft dlc's but think the original Dragon's Dogma had one of the best dlc progression systems I've played
Dark Arisen is probably the best dlc/expansion I’ve ever played next to Wrath of the Chosen.
@@Uriseph Finished Bitterblack Isle a week ago. I love how the island has a ng+ feature in base game. You get to fight the same final boss but with a second phase. It's really rewarding in both exploration and lore.
It's a shame that people question me "playing a old game" when more people should play Dark Arisen. I also recommend finishing both modes of Bitterblack Isle before finishing base game, the added context to the lore helps makes the ending of the base game way more meaningful.
Before I even watch this.
From a lore perspective this dlc answered NOTHING.
None of the questions I had going in where answered.
All the bosses where just random people that came out of nowhere with zero reference in the base game.
I don't even has an issue with the final boss being what it was, but it still came out of nowhere.
Gameplay wise it's mostly good, but they weren't lying when they said they pushed the limits of what people and tolerate.
Biggest complaint is that 90% of the open world despite being very pretty has no new enemies or even a good variety of old enemies.
It's just shadow villagers and death birds in almost every new region/biome and nothing else outside legacy dungeons.
They should had the final fight with Ranni holding onto you like how Miquella is holding Radahn
They could’ve had scadu smithing stones instead of regular ones.
Isnt that just the same effect with just an extra step of having to go to the roundtable lmao
@@nickb7704 ye
@@nickb7704 to me it’s a better placebo of loot than finding a smithing stone [1] x2 when you have bell bearings lol.
Nah fuck that half the new ingredients are literally just name changes from their vanilla counterparts; we don't need any more lazy, artificial barriers to progression
@@bofa722 it would be more rewarding than finding regular ones all the time especially if you have the miner’s bell bearings.
The biggest plot twist of the DLC is the community learning to pronounce scadutree correctly
Japanese people don't understand English that well, and I don't trust them to use such a word period. It's just a thing you often see in Japanese media where they'll use super old and obscure words/kanji characters to seem cool, but in fact absolutely no one except a few historians knows what scadu is or how to pronounce it.
Skibidi of the Gyattree
@@Gungrave123 bro got consumed by scarlet brainrot
Holy crap watching this video shows how much easier radahn becomes when you use a shield...
Then use a shield. Its actually funny how games journalists are the ones doing work and the fakes, frauds, a phonies are getting exposed.
its like Charlie said you either die a gamer or live long enough to see yourself become a games journalist lol. I'm enjoying all this almost as much as the DLC itself. People's sheer stupidity has me gloating around like I have never done before and I hope it bothers these people fr because the response has been garbage from some of these people.
@@SM-nz9ff I can't actually decipher your comment. Are you having a go at me? I'm just saying the last boss isn't that fun to do without a shield. I don't like using shields and since when has fromsoft games made you fight in a certain way except from gimmick bosses like yhorm etc
@@Sari36YT Na I was more talking generally. You can use shields or not if you need to but FromSoft aren't here to bow to any particular persons challenge run and if the intent or best way to fight a boss is using a shield then that's what it is just like anything else in these games.
Part of the problem is Radahn can randomly hit you mid i-frame. He's literally one of the worst boss fights of all time right now, he's so bad that I've played the DLC multiple times out of sheer spite for the guy.
What is the name of background music used at the very end of the video?
My biggest issue is where is where are the oracle envoy when Miq is making his rise to godhood?
That either has lore implications about the validity of his godhood, or that they just can't get in to the land of shadow. Alternatively, we were always reading too much into it and they were not very good enemies anyway so Fromsoft left them out.
@cyclic_infinity I could care less if they're good, bad, easy or hard to deal with. Even just the sound of their trumpets. But the lore implications are interesting. False god perhaps.
@@davidanderson9967 For how often the lore community likely overreads the text, I always like to put forth a purely practical option. Sometimes assets are just reused, sometimes enemies are just left out for other reasons. Unless Miyazaki gives us lore and story for it, it's always an important Occam's Razor option to keep in mind. Doesn't make it right, but it's important to remember.
@@cyclic_infinity They brought back lobsters and revenants and had like six more lesser dragons, I don't see why they would think people would be mad at the envoys of all things coming back.
@@Dinoman972 No one would be mad, maybe From themselves like them less than the other enemies they decided to reuse. Just a potential alternative explanation from a game design/Doylist perspective. I don't think that's the case yet, I do think it has implications for either Miquella or the Land of Shadow. But I have an English degree so I am versed in the problems of overreading the text and try to avoid that when I can.