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.
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.