neko_and_co
This review contains spoilers
Didn't stick the landing.
On one hand, I think the Shadow Realm's world design was an improvement over the base game. The base game, as great as its world was, had a lot of negative space. There were lots of open, empty fields and lakes, which meant long-ish stretches of riding your horse in a mostly straight line. It was fine, but it wasn't exactly engaging. Here, the world design has been made much more compact. The landmass is smaller compared to the base game's map, but it is layered on top of itself, making much more efficient use of space. This leads to less travel, more doing interesting stuff. Nice.
And the locations you visit are generally quite good, too! The Shadow Keep is perhaps the best legacy dungeon FromSoft has created in Elden Ring, the zone hidden underneath the Cerulean Coast was awe-inspiring, and the trek up the scary mountain to Bayle was very memorable. The first time I stepped into one of the Shadow Realm's gaols, I was blown away by the art direction. (Unfortunately, this got a little tired after visiting several more gaols afterward, but this is a minor nitpick.) The Finger Ruins (in particular, the secret third ruin) showcases some of the most striking visuals on offer in Elden Ring—up there with Siofra River.
By far my biggest complaint with the base game was its boss design. FromSoft has created some of the greatest boss encounters in any video game in its previous titles (my personal favorite being Slave Knight Geal), but I felt it really dropped the ball in Elden Ring. I loved exploring The Lands Between, but I did not especially enjoy fighting most of its bosses. However, Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses are an improvement over the base game's! My favorite: Divine Beast Dancing Lion. It's a tough fight, but one that is telegraphed well and features a really diverse, dynamic move set. It is, in my opinion, easily the best boss in the entire game. Also, I want to commend FromSoft on the Bayle fight; I normally do not enjoy dragon fights because of horrendous camera issues and especially prolonged fights from a massive health pool. Bayle was great, though. The camera does, indeed, still struggle at times in both of these fights, but it didn't prevent me from enjoying them.
(FromSoft really needs to sort its camera out, though. It is getting ridiculous. We're seven soulsborne games in, and the camera is largely unchanged since Demon's Souls.)
As for the discussion on difficulty: I do not consider myself an especially great soulsborne player. I'm maybe above average at best. Shadow of the Erdtree was difficult, but not impossible. It's important to make proper use of the Skibidi Tree level mechanic. Once properly leveled in this way, I found the difficulty pretty in-line with FromSoft DLC. For reference, I was on Journey 1 and remained level 200 the entire time. I did use Mimic Tear on a lot of the bosses (not at all, such as Divine Beast), although these bosses seem much less interested in attacking summons compared to the base game.
I am sympathetic to those who entered the DLC on higher Journey tiers. Frankly, I think FromSoft should've handled this better. The DLC is pretty hard, and it's rather unfair to ask someone to enter the DLC for the first time in an already harder version. This released over two years after the base game; of course people are going to have progressed through several levels of NG+. And with as massive as the base game is, it's completely unreasonable to ask people to start over a new save. Perhaps something like how The Witcher 3 offers a pre-made save so you can jump straight into the DLC could've been offered to alleviate this issue. It doesn't surprise me that FromSoft just threw everyone in the deep end, though...
So, for most of my 40 hours with SotE, I was pretty positive on it. I had a four-star in mind; it was generally on-par with the base game for me. There were a lot of improvements, but it also just didn't quite match that overwhelming scale of the base game, which prevented me from going higher than a four.
Then, I entered the Abyssal Woods. Horror and soulsborne mix extremely well together—see Bloodborne! I LOVE what the Abyssal Woods is going for, but it never managed to be interesting. It felt so, so empty; as if I were playing a beta version of the map. The stealth sections were...fine, I guess. I felt neither positively, nor negatively toward them. The stealth sections were so short, they're barely even worth mentioning. They're also not a challenge in the slightest—they are the most basic cover-to-cover (bush-to-bush) stealth you've ever seen, and the game basically tells you exactly what to do before you even reach the sections. It would've been cool to have to figure out yourself that the only way to progress is via stealth, but in an uncharacteristic move FromSoft outright tells the player, "HEY, DON'T BE SEEN!" Outside of the stealth sections are...some rats. And some caster dudes. Emphasis on "some"—this area is big, but largely void of enemies or anything interesting. It completely betrays the supposed "danger" of the Abyssal Woods. It isn't dangerous or scary because there's barely anything of note. The final area, Manse Hall, is neat but quite short. I would've liked to have seen more of it, just as I would have liked to see more of the Abyssal Woods. It could've been the most interesting area in SotE, instead it is simply wasted potential.
After collecting the final Skibidi Tree fragments, I steeled myself for Radahn. I'm sure there's lore significance as to why Radahn is the last boss when I already killed him many hours earlier, but I've never really found much interest in the lore of these games. Regardless, I think it is rather lame to reuse a boss as the final boss of the DLC. No, it isn't literally the same exact encounter; I just would've much preferred something wholly new.
I digress. The first phase is alright. It really harkens back to that signature Elden Ring boss design that I never liked much: endless combos leading to pressing the dodge button over and over and over and over again. However, the attacks are telegraphed well enough—it's doable. Certainly not in the running for my favorite boss of the DLC, but it's fine.
Then, there's phase two. This is where the fight really kicks into high-gear, and the now somewhat infamous difficulty reveals itself. Every attack becomes an AOE and Radahn becomes even more aggressive. A lot of these attacks happen so fast and are so flashy with particle effects galore to the point it's extraordinary difficult (if not impossible) to understand what is even happening. I never learned what I was supposed to actually be doing for a lot of these attacks in the final phase. I just mashed the dodge button and hoped for the best. Phase two looks cool, but it isn't particularly fun. My eventual victory over Radahn felt less like the result of steady improvement, and more like pure luck. In short: this fight is really bad.
The icing on the cake is one particular mass-AOE ability that literally halved my framerate. This is bullshit, pure and simple. I wholly reject any ability that isn't up to performance standards. It's simply unacceptable in an encounter at this level of difficulty. I was never able to consistently dodge that ability because the timing was quite literally different every time it happened. Luckily, I could just tank it. However, that is no excuse. If FromSoft could not get its performance up to standard, the fight never should've been shipped. Full stop. Fix the performance, tone down the visuals, cut the ability entirely—I don't care, but it is simply unacceptable as it currently stands.
Ironically, I think I might've died more to the Divine Beast than I did to Radahn, but I just didn't especially enjoy fighting Radahn. It is a mid fight at best, and one that is made completely unacceptable with its outstanding performance issues. Unfortunately, the rewards for defeating Radahn, a boss you already killed at least once before, are not at all interesting: two versions of the same sword you already got from killing Radahn the first time, a slightly redder version of the armor you already got from killing Radahn the first time, a gold crown, an incantation, and a cutscene of Miquella sitting on the floor. Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
This sucks. I was really enjoying my time with SotE at first. It felt so good to be out exploring a big open world! There were all sorts of cool new armors and weapons to play with. It was a great time. Then, I got to the DLC's finale, and it went out like a wet fart. Just completely soured the experience it had built up.
Three stars.
On one hand, I think the Shadow Realm's world design was an improvement over the base game. The base game, as great as its world was, had a lot of negative space. There were lots of open, empty fields and lakes, which meant long-ish stretches of riding your horse in a mostly straight line. It was fine, but it wasn't exactly engaging. Here, the world design has been made much more compact. The landmass is smaller compared to the base game's map, but it is layered on top of itself, making much more efficient use of space. This leads to less travel, more doing interesting stuff. Nice.
And the locations you visit are generally quite good, too! The Shadow Keep is perhaps the best legacy dungeon FromSoft has created in Elden Ring, the zone hidden underneath the Cerulean Coast was awe-inspiring, and the trek up the scary mountain to Bayle was very memorable. The first time I stepped into one of the Shadow Realm's gaols, I was blown away by the art direction. (Unfortunately, this got a little tired after visiting several more gaols afterward, but this is a minor nitpick.) The Finger Ruins (in particular, the secret third ruin) showcases some of the most striking visuals on offer in Elden Ring—up there with Siofra River.
By far my biggest complaint with the base game was its boss design. FromSoft has created some of the greatest boss encounters in any video game in its previous titles (my personal favorite being Slave Knight Geal), but I felt it really dropped the ball in Elden Ring. I loved exploring The Lands Between, but I did not especially enjoy fighting most of its bosses. However, Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses are an improvement over the base game's! My favorite: Divine Beast Dancing Lion. It's a tough fight, but one that is telegraphed well and features a really diverse, dynamic move set. It is, in my opinion, easily the best boss in the entire game. Also, I want to commend FromSoft on the Bayle fight; I normally do not enjoy dragon fights because of horrendous camera issues and especially prolonged fights from a massive health pool. Bayle was great, though. The camera does, indeed, still struggle at times in both of these fights, but it didn't prevent me from enjoying them.
(FromSoft really needs to sort its camera out, though. It is getting ridiculous. We're seven soulsborne games in, and the camera is largely unchanged since Demon's Souls.)
As for the discussion on difficulty: I do not consider myself an especially great soulsborne player. I'm maybe above average at best. Shadow of the Erdtree was difficult, but not impossible. It's important to make proper use of the Skibidi Tree level mechanic. Once properly leveled in this way, I found the difficulty pretty in-line with FromSoft DLC. For reference, I was on Journey 1 and remained level 200 the entire time. I did use Mimic Tear on a lot of the bosses (not at all, such as Divine Beast), although these bosses seem much less interested in attacking summons compared to the base game.
I am sympathetic to those who entered the DLC on higher Journey tiers. Frankly, I think FromSoft should've handled this better. The DLC is pretty hard, and it's rather unfair to ask someone to enter the DLC for the first time in an already harder version. This released over two years after the base game; of course people are going to have progressed through several levels of NG+. And with as massive as the base game is, it's completely unreasonable to ask people to start over a new save. Perhaps something like how The Witcher 3 offers a pre-made save so you can jump straight into the DLC could've been offered to alleviate this issue. It doesn't surprise me that FromSoft just threw everyone in the deep end, though...
So, for most of my 40 hours with SotE, I was pretty positive on it. I had a four-star in mind; it was generally on-par with the base game for me. There were a lot of improvements, but it also just didn't quite match that overwhelming scale of the base game, which prevented me from going higher than a four.
Then, I entered the Abyssal Woods. Horror and soulsborne mix extremely well together—see Bloodborne! I LOVE what the Abyssal Woods is going for, but it never managed to be interesting. It felt so, so empty; as if I were playing a beta version of the map. The stealth sections were...fine, I guess. I felt neither positively, nor negatively toward them. The stealth sections were so short, they're barely even worth mentioning. They're also not a challenge in the slightest—they are the most basic cover-to-cover (bush-to-bush) stealth you've ever seen, and the game basically tells you exactly what to do before you even reach the sections. It would've been cool to have to figure out yourself that the only way to progress is via stealth, but in an uncharacteristic move FromSoft outright tells the player, "HEY, DON'T BE SEEN!" Outside of the stealth sections are...some rats. And some caster dudes. Emphasis on "some"—this area is big, but largely void of enemies or anything interesting. It completely betrays the supposed "danger" of the Abyssal Woods. It isn't dangerous or scary because there's barely anything of note. The final area, Manse Hall, is neat but quite short. I would've liked to have seen more of it, just as I would have liked to see more of the Abyssal Woods. It could've been the most interesting area in SotE, instead it is simply wasted potential.
After collecting the final Skibidi Tree fragments, I steeled myself for Radahn. I'm sure there's lore significance as to why Radahn is the last boss when I already killed him many hours earlier, but I've never really found much interest in the lore of these games. Regardless, I think it is rather lame to reuse a boss as the final boss of the DLC. No, it isn't literally the same exact encounter; I just would've much preferred something wholly new.
I digress. The first phase is alright. It really harkens back to that signature Elden Ring boss design that I never liked much: endless combos leading to pressing the dodge button over and over and over and over again. However, the attacks are telegraphed well enough—it's doable. Certainly not in the running for my favorite boss of the DLC, but it's fine.
Then, there's phase two. This is where the fight really kicks into high-gear, and the now somewhat infamous difficulty reveals itself. Every attack becomes an AOE and Radahn becomes even more aggressive. A lot of these attacks happen so fast and are so flashy with particle effects galore to the point it's extraordinary difficult (if not impossible) to understand what is even happening. I never learned what I was supposed to actually be doing for a lot of these attacks in the final phase. I just mashed the dodge button and hoped for the best. Phase two looks cool, but it isn't particularly fun. My eventual victory over Radahn felt less like the result of steady improvement, and more like pure luck. In short: this fight is really bad.
The icing on the cake is one particular mass-AOE ability that literally halved my framerate. This is bullshit, pure and simple. I wholly reject any ability that isn't up to performance standards. It's simply unacceptable in an encounter at this level of difficulty. I was never able to consistently dodge that ability because the timing was quite literally different every time it happened. Luckily, I could just tank it. However, that is no excuse. If FromSoft could not get its performance up to standard, the fight never should've been shipped. Full stop. Fix the performance, tone down the visuals, cut the ability entirely—I don't care, but it is simply unacceptable as it currently stands.
Ironically, I think I might've died more to the Divine Beast than I did to Radahn, but I just didn't especially enjoy fighting Radahn. It is a mid fight at best, and one that is made completely unacceptable with its outstanding performance issues. Unfortunately, the rewards for defeating Radahn, a boss you already killed at least once before, are not at all interesting: two versions of the same sword you already got from killing Radahn the first time, a slightly redder version of the armor you already got from killing Radahn the first time, a gold crown, an incantation, and a cutscene of Miquella sitting on the floor. Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
This sucks. I was really enjoying my time with SotE at first. It felt so good to be out exploring a big open world! There were all sorts of cool new armors and weapons to play with. It was a great time. Then, I got to the DLC's finale, and it went out like a wet fart. Just completely soured the experience it had built up.
Three stars.
Bloodlines is an incredible RPG, one that offers an experience no other game does. Try to find a better vampire fantasy depicted in video games—it doesn't exist.
The many different clans, rules, rich history, and politics of Bloodlines' world is absolutely fascinating to uncover. A vast array of characters bring it all to life with some truly stellar writing, great voice acting, and pretty decent facial animations for the release year. The dialogue is where this game sings, and a very decent array of choices are offered, allowing you to effectively role play whatever type of vampire you've got in mind.
However, the combat is where this game becomes an genuine slog. I chose to focus on ranged combat for my playthrough, but whether you choose a melee or ranged focus, combat just feels like total ass. Guns are comically inaccurate with stiff animations, enemies are bullet-spongy, AI is very janky and unreliable (good luck trying to stealth your way through), and the difficulty often alternates between being trivially easy and unreasonably difficult. Unfortunately, as the game progresses, Bloodlines features some seriously lengthy combat levels, which kill the vibes every single time.
That said, this is a Source engine game (one of the first, actually). Naturally, that trusty 'ol console can be summoned with a quick press of the tilde key. If those combat encounters are really giving you trouble, just type "god" into the console and breeze through it. I didn't use godmode except for a few sequences in the game, but I'm glad I used it when I did. I wouldn't have seen Bloodlines through to the end otherwise.
So, while the combat is really quite terrible, it is worth putting up with for all that good talky-RPG stuff Bloodlines is so damn good at. There's a reason everyone calls this game both "flawed" and a "masterpiece." It's absolutely worth finding out for yourself why this game still holds a place in a lot of people's minds over 20 years later.
If you do decide to give Bloodlines a shot, here are some tips:
1. Install the fan patch. Install the fan patch. Install the fan patch.
2. Decide whether to focus on melee or ranged combat and stick to that. Either is fine, and you'd just be wasting XP splitting it between the two styles.
3. Remember the console! Don't feel shame in using godmode from time to time, if a particular sequence is really bringing the whole experience down. You're not cheating yourself out of anything worthwhile, I promise.
The many different clans, rules, rich history, and politics of Bloodlines' world is absolutely fascinating to uncover. A vast array of characters bring it all to life with some truly stellar writing, great voice acting, and pretty decent facial animations for the release year. The dialogue is where this game sings, and a very decent array of choices are offered, allowing you to effectively role play whatever type of vampire you've got in mind.
However, the combat is where this game becomes an genuine slog. I chose to focus on ranged combat for my playthrough, but whether you choose a melee or ranged focus, combat just feels like total ass. Guns are comically inaccurate with stiff animations, enemies are bullet-spongy, AI is very janky and unreliable (good luck trying to stealth your way through), and the difficulty often alternates between being trivially easy and unreasonably difficult. Unfortunately, as the game progresses, Bloodlines features some seriously lengthy combat levels, which kill the vibes every single time.
That said, this is a Source engine game (one of the first, actually). Naturally, that trusty 'ol console can be summoned with a quick press of the tilde key. If those combat encounters are really giving you trouble, just type "god" into the console and breeze through it. I didn't use godmode except for a few sequences in the game, but I'm glad I used it when I did. I wouldn't have seen Bloodlines through to the end otherwise.
So, while the combat is really quite terrible, it is worth putting up with for all that good talky-RPG stuff Bloodlines is so damn good at. There's a reason everyone calls this game both "flawed" and a "masterpiece." It's absolutely worth finding out for yourself why this game still holds a place in a lot of people's minds over 20 years later.
If you do decide to give Bloodlines a shot, here are some tips:
1. Install the fan patch. Install the fan patch. Install the fan patch.
2. Decide whether to focus on melee or ranged combat and stick to that. Either is fine, and you'd just be wasting XP splitting it between the two styles.
3. Remember the console! Don't feel shame in using godmode from time to time, if a particular sequence is really bringing the whole experience down. You're not cheating yourself out of anything worthwhile, I promise.