As from dlcs go I actually had a much harder time enjoying this one over the others. Areas felt incomplete and empty, lots of main game copy paste content or even dlc copy paste content like the stupid hippos. The tedious easter egg hunt for skibbidy fragments and weird power scaling. And the atrocious final boss.
Overall I still enjoyed it and the map was beautiful to look at and fun to explore but it feels like a concentration of all the main games flaws. There's very few fun things to find in the world lots of crafting trash and upgrade materials, surprisingly few useful spells weapons or armor some just flat out worse than whats available in the main game. The skibbidy level scaling felt strange, i struggled with the dlcs bosses until i hit skibbidy level 17 and suddenly they melt within a few hits, i don't really know how many i need for each fight.
The boss fights that are there are solidly enjoyable, messmer is probably the most fun one to fight. The furnace golems are the STUPIDEST thing from has ever made, painfully tedious and very frustrating copy paste trash thats just a waste of time.
Final boss i had to respec cos no matter what i tried i got minced in the second phase. What worked? Fucking fingerprint shield and pokey stick. The most unenjoyable gameplay method of sitting behind a shield and its really effective. If i don't use that i need frame perfect dodges and perfect focus for 10 minutes or longer with bo opportunity to make mistakes. First phase was fine but wtf am i supposed to do in the second phase? Be perfect?
I loved pretty much all of it. Exploring and finding fragments was very fun, the bosses were a nice challenge mostly. Heading south and finding the cerulean coast was amazing. Almost missed the southeast frenzy forest because I missed a single ladder in shadow fortress. Overall it was just superb.
The only boss I struggled with was of course radahn who I spent about 2 hours figuring out how to beat. Thankfully I love summoning for fights so I don't struggle like people who try to solo bosses like insane people. But finding a summon who wouldn't die instantly basically left me with the mimic tear, so mimic it was. Still took an hour of learning the dodge timings and hoping to get a good block on the instant death move. And learning to force him to fight me in phase 1 while letting mimic hold aggro in phase 2 while I blast him with a ranged weapon special. Endurance management ultimately is what wins the fight though. Especially since I use just a medium shield and was only at about 35 endurance. Probably won't fight him ever again.
But what a journey it was.
What were your thoughts on putriescent knight? When I dropped into a replica of Midirs arena I thought I was in for an epic fight and around the corner runs out bonewheel orphan of koss on a horse. The fight itself was ok but i felt a little disappointed. You don't just throw in an exact replica of Midirs arena and give me that.
Yeah, midir is such an excellent fight, and the putrescent knight isn't that good. It suffers from too much retreating which can make fighting it a pain. Once I'm figured out to just jump over his fire attacks it became much simpler and just a matter of learning to keep myself close so I could actually hit him.