This review contains spoilers
SOTE was a release I was excited for because of how much I enjoy Elden Ring and other FromSoft games. This expansion is a major letdown for me. Had very high expectations coming into the dlc only for me be to left with very mixed feelings on the DLC. There are things I did enjoy and a lot of things I couldn't.
The exploration in DLC was fantastic which is nothing surprising. The map was a lot smaller but more dense and vertical in terms of content and areas. Exploring the world was one of my favorite parts about the DLC.
The bosses are where my feelings start to get mixed, on one hand you have some of FromSoft's best bosses with some of the sickest cutscenes and second phases ever. On the other hand you have some of the worst second phases in the history of gaming and random side bosses which are just cancerous to fight. Messmer, Midra and Rellana are my favorite fights from this DLC with Messmer and Midra being some of my favorite bosses from FromSoft's catalog. The fights are so thrilling and engaging to play. Both transition cutscenes into the second phase was some of the rawest shit I've seen in a long time. Never felt like there were moves in their kit that were unfair to the player. Rellana was a great fight but there were cases where you couldn't dodge the move no matter what you did. When she would spawn three swords followed by the double moon attack, you couldn't do anything in that scenario. I got hit by that so many times I was losing my min. Overall those three fights are the best the dlc has to offer.
That's about all the fights I genuinely enjoyed in the dlc. Everything after is just so poorly designed which made the dlc so miserable to enjoy. The side bosses like Commander Gaius and Metyr were terrible fights. Bad movesets, terrible camera angles and moves that had the stupidest hitboxes known to man. Divine Beast was another fight that was cancer because of the fucking camera which is something that hasn't been fixed yet for whatever reason. Romina was whatever, didn't enjoy it but it's just there.
The final boss is the culmination of the bad things in the game put into one fight. Radahn's first phase is alright, some people enjoy it a lot but I just find it boring. The second phase is where all the problems lie. 90% of the time the phase starts with Miquella casting a fucking nuke that you can only evade if you are running away, if he ever casts it again in the fight while you are close to him you are most likely going to get hit for 80% of your HP. The pillars of light followed by every attack is annoying, it's easy to avoid by just walking to the side after dodging normally but if you get clipped by it you're going to get fucked by a true combo. They can all be avoided relatively easily but there are a few moves where it's almost impossible to dodge those pillars, like if you are clipped by Radahn's illusions you are going to get smited. The illusions are some of the most braindead moves I've ever seen, it's so hard to dodge all of them and if you do you still might get by the real Radahn at the end followed by the heavenly smite. The worst thing about this phase past of all this is the visibility. You can't tell what move he is doing half the time because Miquella's hair and the light pillars obscure Radahn's next attack for half of the attacks. Everything I dodged was off luck and instinct. If the hair would blind the move wind up, I would get hit by the move followed by the light pillar into another attack. Just a terrible boss fight all around.
The scadutree fragments were good in theory but it was just not good at all. It was supposed to ensure that you wouldn't be overpowered coming into the dlc but it was so ass. When I had very few levels in the scadutree blessing level I was getting two shotted by everything. When I had 19 levels I was still getting two shot, it just made no sense at all. The damage scaling was noticeable after a while but at the core of it it was just not fun to be slain by everything after having so many levels in there no levelling system.
My biggest gripe with the DLC is the boss design overall. The aggression every boss has is so high it's disgusting. For some fights like Messmer and Rellana it works, for other it just doesn't at all. It feels as if they jut copy and pasted the same design theory they had throughout the dlc under the guise of difficulty which resulted in a group of bosses that were never fun to fight with the exception of a select few.
Overall the DLC was good, I guess? Playing with other people enriched the experience and may have slightly raised my general opinion on it. But nonetheless it had too many issues for me to place this expansion up with there best works.
The exploration in DLC was fantastic which is nothing surprising. The map was a lot smaller but more dense and vertical in terms of content and areas. Exploring the world was one of my favorite parts about the DLC.
The bosses are where my feelings start to get mixed, on one hand you have some of FromSoft's best bosses with some of the sickest cutscenes and second phases ever. On the other hand you have some of the worst second phases in the history of gaming and random side bosses which are just cancerous to fight. Messmer, Midra and Rellana are my favorite fights from this DLC with Messmer and Midra being some of my favorite bosses from FromSoft's catalog. The fights are so thrilling and engaging to play. Both transition cutscenes into the second phase was some of the rawest shit I've seen in a long time. Never felt like there were moves in their kit that were unfair to the player. Rellana was a great fight but there were cases where you couldn't dodge the move no matter what you did. When she would spawn three swords followed by the double moon attack, you couldn't do anything in that scenario. I got hit by that so many times I was losing my min. Overall those three fights are the best the dlc has to offer.
That's about all the fights I genuinely enjoyed in the dlc. Everything after is just so poorly designed which made the dlc so miserable to enjoy. The side bosses like Commander Gaius and Metyr were terrible fights. Bad movesets, terrible camera angles and moves that had the stupidest hitboxes known to man. Divine Beast was another fight that was cancer because of the fucking camera which is something that hasn't been fixed yet for whatever reason. Romina was whatever, didn't enjoy it but it's just there.
The final boss is the culmination of the bad things in the game put into one fight. Radahn's first phase is alright, some people enjoy it a lot but I just find it boring. The second phase is where all the problems lie. 90% of the time the phase starts with Miquella casting a fucking nuke that you can only evade if you are running away, if he ever casts it again in the fight while you are close to him you are most likely going to get hit for 80% of your HP. The pillars of light followed by every attack is annoying, it's easy to avoid by just walking to the side after dodging normally but if you get clipped by it you're going to get fucked by a true combo. They can all be avoided relatively easily but there are a few moves where it's almost impossible to dodge those pillars, like if you are clipped by Radahn's illusions you are going to get smited. The illusions are some of the most braindead moves I've ever seen, it's so hard to dodge all of them and if you do you still might get by the real Radahn at the end followed by the heavenly smite. The worst thing about this phase past of all this is the visibility. You can't tell what move he is doing half the time because Miquella's hair and the light pillars obscure Radahn's next attack for half of the attacks. Everything I dodged was off luck and instinct. If the hair would blind the move wind up, I would get hit by the move followed by the light pillar into another attack. Just a terrible boss fight all around.
The scadutree fragments were good in theory but it was just not good at all. It was supposed to ensure that you wouldn't be overpowered coming into the dlc but it was so ass. When I had very few levels in the scadutree blessing level I was getting two shotted by everything. When I had 19 levels I was still getting two shot, it just made no sense at all. The damage scaling was noticeable after a while but at the core of it it was just not fun to be slain by everything after having so many levels in there no levelling system.
My biggest gripe with the DLC is the boss design overall. The aggression every boss has is so high it's disgusting. For some fights like Messmer and Rellana it works, for other it just doesn't at all. It feels as if they jut copy and pasted the same design theory they had throughout the dlc under the guise of difficulty which resulted in a group of bosses that were never fun to fight with the exception of a select few.
Overall the DLC was good, I guess? Playing with other people enriched the experience and may have slightly raised my general opinion on it. But nonetheless it had too many issues for me to place this expansion up with there best works.
4 Comments
Actually pretty well typed out review
Actually a good review i thought slurs were gonna come out bruh
I am not surprised, a good amount of the bosses in ER's base game have the same flaws of artificial difficulty, and not fitting the playstyle of the game at all. Shame to hear they doubled down on some of these but I'm not surprised.
AryJawns
7 days ago