It's more Elden Ring, along with everything good and bad about it. They didn't really do anything to improve the formula and I could argue by virtue of it being a DLC it's not as exciting. For instance you already have a full build going into it vs progressing towards it.

Great looking big world, amazing vistas but also emptier feeling with less points of interest. There's a section where you can't use Torrent and you're on foot for 20 minutes in a mostly empty forest devoid of many enemies or items to loot as an example.

Enemies are more aggressive and hit harder. This is going to appeal to people who wanted more/harder bosses like Malenia, ones that don't give you time to do much of anything because they're constantly attacking with wide AoEs. It's certainly going to turn off people that didn't love the endgame areas of the base game.

Good DLC, it's more of the game but lacks the same magic for me in a lot of ways that the base game gives.

Interesting, I watched a little bit of it and it was the weirdness that got me but in the long run it wasn't really as weird as I thought. It does have a lot to say in beliefs, faith and in a way finding your place.

It has a lot of mechanics that you wouldn't think would fit because they don't, but that's also a bit of the point of the whole thing.

Gameplay is mostly walking and puzzle oriented, fairly simple but I also found that if you miss the obvious there's really no hints to guide you to the right path.

It took about 4 hours for me to finish so it wasn't particularly long but it has it's story and it feels finished.

Ending is a little dark but overall it was an interesting story.

It's exactly what was promised and kickstarted, a Suikoden successor. It is very much Suikoden with a lot of same great things and the same not so great things. I enjoyed it at the end of the day but hope a sequel can just improve on it.

+ Nice cast of characters
+ Sprite work is great
+ Camera work with the 2D/3D works really well in some areas.
+ Duels were great moments but wish there were more.
+ A lot more voice acting that I expected, almost everything is voiced.
+ Fun bosses
+ You can't really miss recruits due to timing like Suikoden just a point of no return near the end of the game to have collected everyone.

- Story is fine but I find myself saying Suikoden 2 did it better.
- Other than bosses combat is kind of w/e. There is combo attacks that are basically useless for their cost. Magic outside of party healing is not super useful, and single target healing is a static value which is weird.
- A couple of recruits are hard locked behind the Beyblade and cooking minigames. Both which are very long winded and not enjoyable due to poor balancing. Making getting these recruits pure chore.
- Technical problems, particular with shadow rendering leaving artifacts.
- The 3D colors/textures don't really mesh with the 2D sprites a lot of the time.