it's a great DLC from a gameplay perspective — weapons are great, dungeons are hand-crafted with interesting setpieces, music is amazing, and there are some real jaw-droppingly gorgeous bosses. i hope that all future FromSoft titles have this level of intentionality to them.

from a story perspective, which is personally what i care about most here, it's awful. awful enough to cause me to hate certain aspects of the base game. when miyazaki says this DLC was developed alongside the main game, i do not believe him.

it feels like fanfiction. anything interesting about miquella (and malenia, who, fun fact, never once gets mentioned in the entirety of this DLC) is done away with, in favour of... In favour of what, actually? he's just like marika, but not in any sort of particularly interesting way. i have not beaten the final boss of this DLC, but frankly, the story is so uninteresting (and the boss so infuriating) that i have no real investment or intention in doing so.