It's more Elden Ring but, IMO even better! I think there's a lot of genuine valid criticism with the damage scaling. It balances out a bit near mid to end game but especially early on in what I assume to push for the new mechanic "Shadow Realm Blessing" where you collect a new item "Scadutree Fragments" to increase the damage you deal and lessens the damage you take. This is an alright mechanic overall, it's very similar in concept to the "Prayer Beads" in Sekiro. I think it works a bit less here, though, because it feels like they're artificially making you weaker just to throw in the new mechanic. It's not the end of the world, and admittedly as someone who isn't invested in 99% of the items you pick up in this game it was nice having a new useful item that made me feel good grabbing it. That being said, it's entirely the reason early game in this DLC feels so absurdly overwhelming and unfair. Once you get to around 10ish and above it starts to feel a bit more reasonable and bosses stopped killing me in 2 hits but it can make the very early bosses feel really stupid.

Aside from that mechanic, this DLC was great! I found the map really engaging and enjoyed the visuals of it a lot more than base game. The Rauh Ancient Ruins and Hinterland especially are absolutely gorgeous. I didn't love the stealth gimmick of the Abyssal Woods mostly because the guys you can't kill walk insanely slow, but the vibe was genuinely eerie and done insanely well. The Jagged Peak was really badass and the Cerulean Coast was very pretty. Those were the big standouts but in general, I liked the vibe aesthetically a lot and it was IMO a step up even from the base game. OST was as grand and beautiful as the original as well, but similar to the base game this was a bit of a listen to spotify/watch videos type of game for me so it didn't stick with me crazy hard.

Bosses were great here! There's a few I didn't super care for like the Scadutree Avatar, The Furnace Golems, and The Ghostflame Dragons were probably the main weak ones. There's not any huge reasons I feel that way, difficulty wise they were all on the easier end for me but they just felt pretty boring and you have to fight way too many of them. The Furnace Golems are really easy if you stay on torrent but god do they take forever to stagger and are boring as hell. It really sucks there's 8 of them, there's also way too many Ghostflame Dragons and they're just the same dragons as the base game which already had a lot of them. That made them pretty easy to take down but did there really need to be like 4 of them here? I also was a huge fan of the invader-type bosses in the 4 Mausoleums, I'm a sucker for those same playing field 1 on 1 type of situations but PvP doesn't do it for me and I liked turning them into more genuine feeling bosses over random invasions! Otherwise, I felt pretty positive about most major bosses with some stand-out amazing ones. Putrescent Knight, Metyr, Midra, and Romina were all pretty fun and more in my middle tiers but oh man did I love the Divine Beast Dancing Lion, Rellana, Gaius, and Bayle fights! Gaius just felt like a cooler Tree Sentinel fight, and Bayle is probably my favorite dragon fight. Divine Beast Dancing Lion is just really fucking cool visually, I'm very much a sucker for multiple elemental attacks and his are insanely cool. The arena and spectacle of it all are some of the coolest in the game as well. Rellana was super satisfying to learn and felt like a really intense duel. My favorite bosses are ones where I can just so intensely feel my own error and putting together a great run to finally win after a ton of attempts and Rellana capture that feeling almost the best of the DLC! I say almost best because WOW was Messmer fucking AMAZING! I don't know what about him and his patterns clicked so hard with me but he's instantly shot up to not only my favorite boss in Elden Ring DLC or base game, but one of my favorite Fromsoft bosses period. I helped a few friends fight him and he seems a lot less fun with summons/multiple people but I fought him 1 on 1 and had an absolute blast doing so. I'm a little torn on the final boss of the DLC though. The first phase was pretty fuckin cool and satisfying to learn, but the second phase was a bit more on the frustrating side than the fun side. It's not really a pattern thing, I liked how the secondary parts of his attacks made you think a bit more about which way you were rolling but the major problem is they absolutely fucking BLIND you! It covers like you're entire screen and hinders your ability to see the boss and read attack patterns. It did feel even better to dodge full combos in this phase and I still had a good time (there's also some really sick new attacks) but the visual clutter and absurdity of the damage of some combos kept it from feeling quite as great as it could have IMO. Sorry I know this section was kind of just rambling about the bosses but that's my favorite part of these games and what I have the most to say on!

My last major thing is there's just a fuck ton of content here! Most areas feel worthwhile and fun to explore, there's a few of those copy and paste dungeons I didn't love from the original game but I found less and the newer caves/gaols were a lot more interesting to me so they made up for it to me. It's also filled with tons of new weapons, armors, ashes of war, spells, everything. That being said I got the Backhand Blades and the Solitude armor set and never looked back. The blades in particular instantly improved my enjoyment 10 fold they're so fucking cool. I used them the entire DLC and I genuinely think running through the base game again with them instead of my all-strength colossal sword build would probably vastly increase my enjoyment of that as well. I didn't even attempt to scratch the surface of the insane amount of builds just like I didn't in the base game but this build felt a lot more universal than my base game build and was consistently a ton of fun.

I had a lot of fun returning to Elden Ring for this DLC, Fromsoft continues to outdo their base games with insanely sick DLCs! Everything just worked a bit better for me here overall. I had the opposite curve here than I did with the base game. With the base game, I loved the game initially and I felt a bit of a continuous downward trend of my enjoyment after like 3/4ths of the way through but with the DLC it started a bit weary/worried, especially with the damage scaling but once I got past that hump my enjoyment just continued to climb! It also helps that this was my first Fromsoft game/DLC I played on release with friends who also like the games and just talking with all my friends/hanging out in call while we played and going to their worlds to help with bosses was a very positive experience! I've played every Fromsoft game aside from Armored Core VI so far for free from Steam library share and pretty far after their release so getting that often talked about new Fromsoft game experience was very cool.

Dude I cannot believe this is a free demo that's just a prologue the full game. I have nothing but immense praise for everything about this I could gush for hours.

Movement is PERFECT so many abilities and nuances that feel amazing to master. I can't think of the last time a 3D platformer has had such an absurdly good move set that clicked with me so much and felt this good to master. It's accompanied by some of the greatest level design ever to grace a 3D Platformer in my opinion. I know a lot of people found it a little too difficult but it was perfect to me, an amazing mix of genuine challenge and quick satisfying jumps/grapple hooks/speed bursts combined to be phenomenal. I never felt like something was so hard I would never do it, it was the perfect level of challenge that I always felt great about myself for overcoming a section and the reward of a fishing hook checkpoint felt AMAZING on account of that challenge. There were so many beautiful aha moments where I figured out what to do to overcome a platforming challenge and connect my moves together in the perfect way to do so. The game is also a wonderful aesthetic throwback to the GameCube era of 3D platformers aesthetically and mixing that with one of the best sandbox/movement sets I've ever felt it feels like this game was designed with me specifically in mind. I have this nerdy little upper-echelon of games that control perfect to me and the idea that anyone could feel otherwise completely baffles me and this game 100% is joining that list. I was wowed at how much I was popping off just for doing a part of a platforming challenge and how excited I was for there to be more to go. It's a magical feeling that I am constantly chasing especially in platformers and it's just captured so well here. My only minor complaint before would have been that it's a little annoying to find the last few coins in the world if you want to 100% this game but they patched in a way to track them down (after I did it without that patch... but whatever...) so it's not even really an issue anymore! The joys of wide range of feedback!

The fact that this is a FREE prologue that they said won't even scratch the surface of depth that the full game will offer is MIND BLOWING to me!! I really hope this level of challenge sticks around, I know that's probably unpopular but even just putting this amount of challenge into side areas I dream of this team making amazing and thrilling platforming challenges until the end of time. Something I've always loved about the Donkey Kong Country games or Celeste is that insane set of challenges that make your hands sweat and make you feel absurd catharsis when you finally clear a Temple level in DKC:TF or a screen in Chapter 9 of Celeste. I find it increasingly rare to get that feeling in general, but especially in 3D platformers. They're one of my favorite genres ever but generally tend to be a bit on the easier side but this game was the perfect level for me. This prologue completely rocked my world and has me even more unfathomably excited for the full game and I thought I was at peak excitement before! There's a small part of me that worries the full game can't live up to this experience but I like to live on the side of hope and excitement, and if this is anything to go by the full release has Top 10 games of all time potential and is by far my most anticipated game right now.

Sorry if this was a bit rambly but I haven't felt a game completely rock my world this hard in a long time, I was actively checking for this game to show up on backloggd so I could gush about it LOL

I could see you feeling a bit annoyed if you paid $25 for this game, it's very cute and charming but is insanely janky and decently buggy. It's also incredibly short! I liked grabbing the fish and they had some neat little ideas behind them, but I got all 4 in like 15 minutes. The demo I played last year was like most of the main story! There are a good bit of little side quests and missions to do, like returning 4 little ducklings back to their father or finding bones to distract a dog that otherwise blocks your path but even these don't extend the playtime too much. Your mileage will very much vary on how much you want to be a kitten running around a (against the name of the game) pretty little city even after doing all of the tasks. I had a fine enough time doing that, and for a day 1 game pass launch it was cute enough to be worth the playthrough but I wish there was a bit more meat on the main story and the gameplay in general was a bit less janky.