look, okay, I think on some level everyone knew that this wasn't going to beat out The Old Hunters as Fromsoft's best DLC, but I don't think anyone really expected it to whiff in the way it did. I'm going to do something patently unwise and offer some criticism to a Fromsoft product in the face of its release, but like, here it is: I know we've been putting Fromsoft on a pedestal for putting out polished content for a while now, and I think SOTE is a signpost that we need to begin holding the company to a standard that matches that pedestal.

the weight content distribution within SOTE feels strangely uneven, with large areas of the map devoted to nearly barren space (finger ruins 1&2, the abyssal woods, cerulean coast, charro's grave)

much fuss has been made about the difficulty of the expansion, and I don't necessarily agree that it is so punishing as to have necessitated a day 1 patch for people who didn't progress enough within the expansion's unique scaling system enough to compensate for the deficit, but bosses have become very aggressive, to the point where certain playstyles have become much more difficult to succeed with (i.e. if you want to play a character that lets you live out your own personal fantasy of being a knight/sorcerer/priest/rogue/eldritch nudist with a black dumpling on its head wielding a giant sunflower then you should be able to do that and not have to abandon that concept to bypass any single piece of content.) anything that promotes build homogeny in a game that has always primarily about character expression is ultimately a poor design choice.

the environmental and "side" storytelling remains very strong (for instance, the frenzied flame, shaman village, ancient dragon, and greater will storyline content is really interesting and presented well), but the "main" storyline which we follow in Miquella's footsteps is so bad as to be reductive. deep between the lines, there is a truly interesting storyline in there in which we watch someone so fully invested in not following in the footsteps of their mother that they abandon all about themselves that is good and worthwhile in the pursuit of an ideal, but you're going to have to do the heavy lifting there to reach that storyline because what remains is a baffling decision to center the setpiece of the expansion around a toxic romance between two characters that had never even been mentioned in the same paragraph before in order to bring back a midgame legacy boss that was popular in japan.

(like, please, George; not everything has to be about incest. also, it's pride month, I guess it's nice of you to include 3 distinctly queer characters in the expansion, but you also don't have to go out of your way to make sure we've killed every single one of them by the game's end.)

ultimately, though, my big issue here is that the SOTE storyline feels detached from the main game enough as to be unimportant; it's difficult to imagine the story of bloodborne being complete without maria or the hunter's nightmare, and it's difficult to imagine the dark souls games's narrative without artorias or slave knight gael, but you can make your way through Elden Ring's main storyline without touching the DLC just fine because nothing of importance happens that affects the greater narrative outside of the context of Shadow of the Erdtree.

there's some good stuff here: the new weapons are cool, the visuals are nice, the legacy dungeons are fun to navigate through. we get some NPCs that people will remember fondly (hi Ser Ansbach!), but I would like the next Fromsoft piece that we get to play through to feel like it was made as a labor of love and not made as a result of simple labor necessitated by Elden Ring's popularity.

the entire vibe of this game feels super predatory. it's Pinocchio, but with the graceless, on-the-nose mall goth writing of American McGee's Alice. wrap it up in Yharnam's discarded skin, and you have Lies of P.

surely round8 studios is aware that Bloodborne fanatics are thirsty for even the tiniest scrap of content, how they're willing to work themselves into a frenzy over the most baseless rumor of a remaster or a sequel, yes? if this sounds like you, be very aware: if you're looking for more soulslike combat, sure, there's some worth here, but you won't find an ounce of subtlety, artistry, or narrative sophistication inside. or, to be more brief: it's fucking lame

the game's final scene features a character droning listlessly into a telephone that "they've found their next key.... DOROTHY!" followed by a jump cut to a girl in red shoes walking off of a train and clicking her heels together. cut to black, credits.

a lot has been said about the phrase "i can't" as a memetic device meant to describe the only communication style left to frappucino-sucking white ladies but, like, when my eyes rolled out of my head after viewing the game's ending and that was the only language left to me, i think i sympathize. i can't. i couldn't. fuck this.