Elden Ring DLC: Shadow of 'what could have been'
“AM I PLAYING THE GAME WRONG?”
Spoiler Alert: [spoilers for dlc and final boss]
Three main problems i had with DLC are
1.) Boss Designs and Presentation
2.) Poor Level Balancing
3.) Empty Areas and Poor Exploration Rewards
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1.) Boss Design
The way i played the base game and dlc is
I use a melee build: 2h swords or greatswords ,
I don’t use summons or any non renewable items.
I try not to spam ash of war or hit trade,
So I can learn from the boss and have a good time figuring out their attacks and dealing damage to them.
If you like playing shield,magic,summons,consumables etc that’s good i simply don’t enjoy them.
Remember The correct way to play the game is……whatever you have fun with!
The health bar bar represent the allowed mistakes in a boss fight and flask allow you to increase the total number of your mistakes for the combat system in elden ring or rather all souls game to work The Damage in each fight should be predictable and avoidable
And that is the biggest problem with both base game and dlc's bosses.
The challenge of the game IS to predict to damage AND avoid damage AND deal damage
*And to be clear i don’t literally mean unavoidable as While most attacks can technically be avoided, doing so often requires such specific tactics or build changes that it feels unreasonable. This isn't just a matter of reacting quickly, like a simple latency test where you click a button at the right moment.
You also have to consider the complex environment in which these tight-frame attacks occur. This includes factors like the boss's movement, your stamina, and the spacing and distance between you and the boss, all of which make these precise reactions much more difficult to achieve in practice.
Moreover, even if you manage to dodge attacks more often than not, the tight timing often turns dodging into a 50/50 RNG game.
This adds an unpredictable element that can feel frustrating and arbitrary, detracting from the skill-based satisfaction intended in the game's combat system.
Even with all this the player can still take damage and it costs your limited healing power.
There are too many delayed or snap attacks where you have to feel out the attack to dodge it.
instead of being rewarded for dodging,
dodging simply is you just don't take damage but consume stamina.
For long chains of bosses attacking before we can counter, it makes more sense to just stay away from the boss and just hit them at the end.
game needs some way to deal damage to boss while we are engaging with boss head on
especially when the act of engaging consumes stamina which hurts your damage potential if you are out of stamina by the end.
My problem with the DLC is not the difficulty itself, but rather how it is achieved.
Fast long combos with delays and small damage windows eliminates many ways to play,It also causes the current dominance of going for the stun/"poise break" or blood loss.
I like winning battles through positioning,timing,and learning. but I also don't want to summon it because split aggro to me just creates an entirely different game that I'm not interested in playing.
So a lot of the bosses to me in the DLC are a disappointment for how I play. Not bad or unfair. Not too hard - they're just designed in a way that does not fit well with how I have played and had fun in basically all souls games.
I'm sure there are many who’ll memorise hitboxes and frame data and AI patterns will learn and eventually exploit every opening available.
But that doesn’t mean that all these attacks can feel unfair to many.
Also About the Bosses Presentation itself
First there is no intro scene to enter the dlc.
You Touch the arm and a black screen later you are in dlc and that’s it.
The Bosses set-up and the presentation was completely missing .
There is a lack of build up, lack of spectacle,a real lack of conclusion.
There’s no cutscenes,no dialogue with most of the bosses.
The base game felt more thought out and felt like it was more aware of whose boss they are near to.
Like Rennala had Huge magic school and Her twin sister (which btw Rennala and Rellana really went all out when thinking their names huh) was just...in a tower.
Without a cutscene...or voice lines…It's so weird that so many remembrance bosses don't even have voice lines.
My other gripe is that things feel like they just end, and it feels very anticlimactic as a result.
Fight the flowy and then... Nothing but Miquella's rune?
Fight Messmer? and then... Nothing with no explanation or dialogue/lore after the fight.
Beat Radahn and Miquella, the FINAL boss Short cutscene and then nothing. No one to talk to, nothing to follow up on.
It just feels anticlimactic and unfinished.
Below are some bosses that i really did not like
1.)Dancing lion (+ death rematch 2.0)
The Dancing Lion boss is just a shitshow to the point where it isn’t even fun(which seems to be the running theme of dlc)
The Game’s camera simply can’t handle the boss movement alone makes it a badly designed boss.
I don’t see how anyone can be fine with this unless you like fighting the camera more than the boss and/or simply think the camera is part of the difficulty.
The lighting phase is another problem with the fight the best and consistent strategy is to just wait for it to end (which seems to be the running theme of DLC)
just don’t engage with the boss it’s totally fine
Now for Dancing lion but worse as this time he got death and add ons(Basilisks) on top of being a shit boss
Same problem as above and I absolutely hate boss using add ons unless the fight is designed around it:
boss staying stationary ,maybe healing(?) until you deal with add ons anything else which just doesn’t scream they couldn’t come up with a better idea
Also having your first boss being reused as a random boss in a location just retroactively makes me hate him more.
2.) Scadutree Avatar( aka Flowey)
The problem is less with challenge but the time waste it does
p1 this was actually fun to learn.
learn each attack pattern and then getting a chance to attack too this phase was so e wonderfully.
p2 throws everything you learned out o window.
the phase start with flowey zoom across map 3 times then does aoe vine 2 times then when you finally reach him to attack he runs away.
all of those safe windows we learned are no longer applicable as boss now gets do this every single time: attack->aoe->follow up.
and it's after all of this you get to attack 1-2 hits if you are lucky to be in range otherwise gg repeat time.also another problem is just after forming homing missiles it can immediately starts attacking.
p3 this was thematically satisfying with the sole problem being the charge aoe attack.
i was able to dodge it one time out of 3 times it happened in my winning run.
yes you can dodge it via seeing the lights
but this much precision to dodge at this specific frame while you are in third phase of a already challenging fight isn't good.
3.)Commander Gaius
Whole fight felt like shit and was annoying.
The boar charge dodge timings are too tight it felt like it 50/50 chance to dodge it. And It should not be able to combo charge attack and slam attack when you are that close to him.
Entire time it felt like Boss does combo you attack but before you can recover and roll away you are either caught mid roll or just take damage
Especially in p2 where along with just attack now even if you manage to dodge it now boss has aoe too.
The boss was too aggressive and the fight needed more time to properly flow and needed some weight.
Big boar dashing,punching and 180° spinning and continuing to either attack,dash or slam
Just didn't feel right nor it was fun to fight.
Maybe with torrent it could've been better but I rather use summons than use torrent.
They give us torrent to fight but
They still ask for confirmation for revival when we specifically used the button inputs to revive it ,why?
Boss is riding a boar that is faster, resilient and even capable to attack and doesn't die mid fight
from as much as a breeze.
It’s not that that I don't wanna learn torrent but from start of base game till now
Fighting on torrent was always miserable and is something I always begrudgingly did
FINAL BOSS and ENDING
First phase was so fun to learn. Fight felt fair and all attacks felt intuitive and fun to get used to some were hard to and basically required to at least stay back but not at all terrible.
And phase 2 starts and the fight completely shits the bed to the point i am amazed people who made 1st phase can even make something this bad.
He gets new attacks which aren't punishable, taking away the already few opportunities you have to deal damage.you could do nothing except watch boss actually play the game while you are standing there that is if you are lucky enough to even watch
Because it so much visual clutter.
there's constantly beams of light raining down everywhere and blinding you, obscuring your vision.
These just simply don't stop coming
Every time Radahn moves a bit there are more and more pillars,aoe.
I never really managed to fully dodge his p2 moves, every time it felt like rng where either rolled correctly or i took a hit except that scissor attack which isn’t dodgeable
(Umm aksually if do this specific tactic and get lucky with positioning and distance you can dodge it see it’s completely fair and reasonable,
You're not using shield? You're playing the game wrong)
Again, all this happens while there are continuous flashes of light that burns
MY RETINAS
Fighting the boss with all this visual mess at 2fps just honestly made me sad
Even after beating the boss we get like a 10 second cutscene just telling us what we can already see and know.
Running up to the gate after defeating the boss and watching the cutscene for the first time, expecting to be able to interact with it for one last cutscene that actually resolved the story of the DLC then realizing the divine gate is inaccessible was honestly horrible
It basically left me with the feeling of “That’s IT?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.) Poor Level Balancing
The blessing level often ends up feeling like one of those mechanics where you can only fight the boss if you are at an arbitrary level because at lower level the boss just does too much damage and if you are higher than that arbitrary number of levels you’ll feel like you’ve cheesed the boss.
The Difficulty in souls game always feels good because instead of relying on easy/normal/hard they had built in mechanics to ease up difficulties like Kindle a Bonfire,magic,shields etc.
With the shadow blessing mechanic we are back to this problem.
They would have worked better if they were rewards for engaging with bosses or if there were more around to make it easier to hit max shadow blessing level.
Like imagine if you missed a shadow fragment what options does the players have to find them other than looking a guide up?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.) Empty Areas and Poor Exploration Rewards
The areas lacked conclusion like to the point of me going “am i missing something her”
And the answer was “no this area is just empty, maybe next will be better” and sadly the next better area never came.
Some parts that really stuck out to me were
Area after Bonnie village with just wolves and a fire golem that just sucks to kill as every time it’s the same strategy it didn’t feel great the first time fighting him nor did it feel so on my 10th time, the map for this area was large but nothing to do just regular wolves .
There is a pretty beach area with blue flowers(Cerulean Coast) . You can see it from some time after you start and after sometime when you finally do get to enter that area there is …..nothing….. It was like a horse simulator from the site of grace to the St. Trina
The Finger areas looks ominous and occupy so much map space and then it’s just go there and blow horn
Abyss woods was so disappointing. It starts with DON'T LET IT SEE YOU.
And then it’s some 3-4 dudes wandering around who you can parry and they never respawn. I was expecting some horror themed gimmick boss and it never came.The mini dungeon was okay though the boss was fantastic
About the Exploration itself
Initially I did find the exploration fun but after some time of wandering around it does become boring. The verticality makes for beautiful scenery but navigation via your map basically become impossible and counterintuitive .
Going under the map to get to new places cuz the path is blocked by what’s above become a recurring thing
The exploration in the dlc feels like evolution of how it was like in the base game; here it asks you to trust your instincts and just explore and just go to the area it is taking you.
It often works But it is frustrating at times when you feel like you've looked everywhere and you can't figure out how to reach the next area which going by map you should just be able to ride into but the paths are all blocked
Now about rewards
Good exploration Needs good rewards that feel like they are worth your time.
Exploring for the sake of exploring can only take you so far.
The good rewards are complementary to a good exploration experience.
Exploring every nook and cranny only to find cookbooks, Smithing Stones ,Ghost Gloveworts are just not it.
--------------------------------------------------xxxxxxxxxx--------------------------------------------------
Conclusion:
I Still think fromsoft is best at what they do though they desperately need to figure out how they can evolve the souls formula without it becoming more and more of what's it already became.
At the end i just wanna reiterate
Remember The correct way to play the game is……whatever you have fun with and Your choices are valid
“AM I PLAYING THE GAME WRONG?”
Spoiler Alert: [spoilers for dlc and final boss]
Three main problems i had with DLC are
1.) Boss Designs and Presentation
2.) Poor Level Balancing
3.) Empty Areas and Poor Exploration Rewards
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1.) Boss Design
The way i played the base game and dlc is
I use a melee build: 2h swords or greatswords ,
I don’t use summons or any non renewable items.
I try not to spam ash of war or hit trade,
So I can learn from the boss and have a good time figuring out their attacks and dealing damage to them.
If you like playing shield,magic,summons,consumables etc that’s good i simply don’t enjoy them.
Remember The correct way to play the game is……whatever you have fun with!
The health bar bar represent the allowed mistakes in a boss fight and flask allow you to increase the total number of your mistakes for the combat system in elden ring or rather all souls game to work The Damage in each fight should be predictable and avoidable
And that is the biggest problem with both base game and dlc's bosses.
The challenge of the game IS to predict to damage AND avoid damage AND deal damage
*And to be clear i don’t literally mean unavoidable as While most attacks can technically be avoided, doing so often requires such specific tactics or build changes that it feels unreasonable. This isn't just a matter of reacting quickly, like a simple latency test where you click a button at the right moment.
You also have to consider the complex environment in which these tight-frame attacks occur. This includes factors like the boss's movement, your stamina, and the spacing and distance between you and the boss, all of which make these precise reactions much more difficult to achieve in practice.
Moreover, even if you manage to dodge attacks more often than not, the tight timing often turns dodging into a 50/50 RNG game.
This adds an unpredictable element that can feel frustrating and arbitrary, detracting from the skill-based satisfaction intended in the game's combat system.
Even with all this the player can still take damage and it costs your limited healing power.
There are too many delayed or snap attacks where you have to feel out the attack to dodge it.
instead of being rewarded for dodging,
dodging simply is you just don't take damage but consume stamina.
For long chains of bosses attacking before we can counter, it makes more sense to just stay away from the boss and just hit them at the end.
game needs some way to deal damage to boss while we are engaging with boss head on
especially when the act of engaging consumes stamina which hurts your damage potential if you are out of stamina by the end.
My problem with the DLC is not the difficulty itself, but rather how it is achieved.
Fast long combos with delays and small damage windows eliminates many ways to play,It also causes the current dominance of going for the stun/"poise break" or blood loss.
I like winning battles through positioning,timing,and learning. but I also don't want to summon it because split aggro to me just creates an entirely different game that I'm not interested in playing.
So a lot of the bosses to me in the DLC are a disappointment for how I play. Not bad or unfair. Not too hard - they're just designed in a way that does not fit well with how I have played and had fun in basically all souls games.
I'm sure there are many who’ll memorise hitboxes and frame data and AI patterns will learn and eventually exploit every opening available.
But that doesn’t mean that all these attacks can feel unfair to many.
Also About the Bosses Presentation itself
First there is no intro scene to enter the dlc.
You Touch the arm and a black screen later you are in dlc and that’s it.
The Bosses set-up and the presentation was completely missing .
There is a lack of build up, lack of spectacle,a real lack of conclusion.
There’s no cutscenes,no dialogue with most of the bosses.
The base game felt more thought out and felt like it was more aware of whose boss they are near to.
Like Rennala had Huge magic school and Her twin sister (which btw Rennala and Rellana really went all out when thinking their names huh) was just...in a tower.
Without a cutscene...or voice lines…It's so weird that so many remembrance bosses don't even have voice lines.
My other gripe is that things feel like they just end, and it feels very anticlimactic as a result.
Fight the flowy and then... Nothing but Miquella's rune?
Fight Messmer? and then... Nothing with no explanation or dialogue/lore after the fight.
Beat Radahn and Miquella, the FINAL boss Short cutscene and then nothing. No one to talk to, nothing to follow up on.
It just feels anticlimactic and unfinished.
Below are some bosses that i really did not like
1.)Dancing lion (+ death rematch 2.0)
The Dancing Lion boss is just a shitshow to the point where it isn’t even fun(which seems to be the running theme of dlc)
The Game’s camera simply can’t handle the boss movement alone makes it a badly designed boss.
I don’t see how anyone can be fine with this unless you like fighting the camera more than the boss and/or simply think the camera is part of the difficulty.
The lighting phase is another problem with the fight the best and consistent strategy is to just wait for it to end (which seems to be the running theme of DLC)
just don’t engage with the boss it’s totally fine
Now for Dancing lion but worse as this time he got death and add ons(Basilisks) on top of being a shit boss
Same problem as above and I absolutely hate boss using add ons unless the fight is designed around it:
boss staying stationary ,maybe healing(?) until you deal with add ons anything else which just doesn’t scream they couldn’t come up with a better idea
Also having your first boss being reused as a random boss in a location just retroactively makes me hate him more.
2.) Scadutree Avatar( aka Flowey)
The problem is less with challenge but the time waste it does
p1 this was actually fun to learn.
learn each attack pattern and then getting a chance to attack too this phase was so e wonderfully.
p2 throws everything you learned out o window.
the phase start with flowey zoom across map 3 times then does aoe vine 2 times then when you finally reach him to attack he runs away.
all of those safe windows we learned are no longer applicable as boss now gets do this every single time: attack->aoe->follow up.
and it's after all of this you get to attack 1-2 hits if you are lucky to be in range otherwise gg repeat time.also another problem is just after forming homing missiles it can immediately starts attacking.
p3 this was thematically satisfying with the sole problem being the charge aoe attack.
i was able to dodge it one time out of 3 times it happened in my winning run.
yes you can dodge it via seeing the lights
but this much precision to dodge at this specific frame while you are in third phase of a already challenging fight isn't good.
3.)Commander Gaius
Whole fight felt like shit and was annoying.
The boar charge dodge timings are too tight it felt like it 50/50 chance to dodge it. And It should not be able to combo charge attack and slam attack when you are that close to him.
Entire time it felt like Boss does combo you attack but before you can recover and roll away you are either caught mid roll or just take damage
Especially in p2 where along with just attack now even if you manage to dodge it now boss has aoe too.
The boss was too aggressive and the fight needed more time to properly flow and needed some weight.
Big boar dashing,punching and 180° spinning and continuing to either attack,dash or slam
Just didn't feel right nor it was fun to fight.
Maybe with torrent it could've been better but I rather use summons than use torrent.
They give us torrent to fight but
They still ask for confirmation for revival when we specifically used the button inputs to revive it ,why?
Boss is riding a boar that is faster, resilient and even capable to attack and doesn't die mid fight
from as much as a breeze.
It’s not that that I don't wanna learn torrent but from start of base game till now
Fighting on torrent was always miserable and is something I always begrudgingly did
FINAL BOSS and ENDING
First phase was so fun to learn. Fight felt fair and all attacks felt intuitive and fun to get used to some were hard to and basically required to at least stay back but not at all terrible.
And phase 2 starts and the fight completely shits the bed to the point i am amazed people who made 1st phase can even make something this bad.
He gets new attacks which aren't punishable, taking away the already few opportunities you have to deal damage.you could do nothing except watch boss actually play the game while you are standing there that is if you are lucky enough to even watch
Because it so much visual clutter.
there's constantly beams of light raining down everywhere and blinding you, obscuring your vision.
These just simply don't stop coming
Every time Radahn moves a bit there are more and more pillars,aoe.
I never really managed to fully dodge his p2 moves, every time it felt like rng where either rolled correctly or i took a hit except that scissor attack which isn’t dodgeable
(Umm aksually if do this specific tactic and get lucky with positioning and distance you can dodge it see it’s completely fair and reasonable,
You're not using shield? You're playing the game wrong)
Again, all this happens while there are continuous flashes of light that burns
MY RETINAS
Fighting the boss with all this visual mess at 2fps just honestly made me sad
Even after beating the boss we get like a 10 second cutscene just telling us what we can already see and know.
Running up to the gate after defeating the boss and watching the cutscene for the first time, expecting to be able to interact with it for one last cutscene that actually resolved the story of the DLC then realizing the divine gate is inaccessible was honestly horrible
It basically left me with the feeling of “That’s IT?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.) Poor Level Balancing
The blessing level often ends up feeling like one of those mechanics where you can only fight the boss if you are at an arbitrary level because at lower level the boss just does too much damage and if you are higher than that arbitrary number of levels you’ll feel like you’ve cheesed the boss.
The Difficulty in souls game always feels good because instead of relying on easy/normal/hard they had built in mechanics to ease up difficulties like Kindle a Bonfire,magic,shields etc.
With the shadow blessing mechanic we are back to this problem.
They would have worked better if they were rewards for engaging with bosses or if there were more around to make it easier to hit max shadow blessing level.
Like imagine if you missed a shadow fragment what options does the players have to find them other than looking a guide up?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.) Empty Areas and Poor Exploration Rewards
The areas lacked conclusion like to the point of me going “am i missing something her”
And the answer was “no this area is just empty, maybe next will be better” and sadly the next better area never came.
Some parts that really stuck out to me were
Area after Bonnie village with just wolves and a fire golem that just sucks to kill as every time it’s the same strategy it didn’t feel great the first time fighting him nor did it feel so on my 10th time, the map for this area was large but nothing to do just regular wolves .
There is a pretty beach area with blue flowers(Cerulean Coast) . You can see it from some time after you start and after sometime when you finally do get to enter that area there is …..nothing….. It was like a horse simulator from the site of grace to the St. Trina
The Finger areas looks ominous and occupy so much map space and then it’s just go there and blow horn
Abyss woods was so disappointing. It starts with DON'T LET IT SEE YOU.
And then it’s some 3-4 dudes wandering around who you can parry and they never respawn. I was expecting some horror themed gimmick boss and it never came.The mini dungeon was okay though the boss was fantastic
About the Exploration itself
Initially I did find the exploration fun but after some time of wandering around it does become boring. The verticality makes for beautiful scenery but navigation via your map basically become impossible and counterintuitive .
Going under the map to get to new places cuz the path is blocked by what’s above become a recurring thing
The exploration in the dlc feels like evolution of how it was like in the base game; here it asks you to trust your instincts and just explore and just go to the area it is taking you.
It often works But it is frustrating at times when you feel like you've looked everywhere and you can't figure out how to reach the next area which going by map you should just be able to ride into but the paths are all blocked
Now about rewards
Good exploration Needs good rewards that feel like they are worth your time.
Exploring for the sake of exploring can only take you so far.
The good rewards are complementary to a good exploration experience.
Exploring every nook and cranny only to find cookbooks, Smithing Stones ,Ghost Gloveworts are just not it.
--------------------------------------------------xxxxxxxxxx--------------------------------------------------
Conclusion:
I Still think fromsoft is best at what they do though they desperately need to figure out how they can evolve the souls formula without it becoming more and more of what's it already became.
At the end i just wanna reiterate
Remember The correct way to play the game is……whatever you have fun with and Your choices are valid