Elden Ring

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One thing that bothered me about the DLC, that I haven't seen a lot of people mention so far, is the complete lack of cohesion in the Land of Shadows and the enemies that inherit in it.
Like the Dragon, the Chaos Lord, and the Finger Mother feel completely disconnected from the whole Mesmer burning shit up, and Miquella spreading aids around. And yet, you'll fight the same fucking enemies everywhere, the Mesmer soldiers are the only one that have their own areas.
That's not a problem that any of From's other DLCs ever had before.

Land of Shadows just doesn't feel like a real place, at all. The Lands Between wasn't perfect in the regard, far from it, but the Land of Shadows feels so much worse.
 
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Gondolindrim said:
Like what's the problem with being upfront about who the villain if your DLC is?
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It's probably got less to do with being pointlessly cryptic and more to do with Fromsoft slapping everything together last minute ala Dark Souls 3, which was playing hopscotch with boss placement until the very tail end of development.

A lot of this DLC has that same kind of feel, which speaks of troubled development. You can see the seams of cut content and switched around bosses or bosses that were just narrowly stitched together last minute. Rellana has no intro cutscene for instance, neither does the DLC begin with one, very strange stuff. Radahn feels like a last minute pull of previous concepts either done to give people fan service or due to the original idea not working out.

Personally I still love the DLC. It's been great and the areas are very fun to look at and explore, and the base game needed a couple more really solid boss fights. Sadly, the air of incompleteness really hangs throughout.
Terror Sandwich said:
Like the Dragon, the Chaos Lord, and the Finger Mother feel completely disconnected from the whole Mesmer burning shit up
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They combined two DLCs into one and it definitely feels like it in regards to these guys. I didn't believe Barbarians of the Badlands was a real thing until I got to the dragon mountain and noticed that the assets would probably feel a lot more at home in a wasteland sort of setting rather than the lands of shadow.

I understand why they decided to just do one large expansion rather than two 20 dollar DLCs but I think it might have helped with cohesion a bit if they had two separate but smaller maps. Barbarians could have been a mid-game DLC and then Shadow could have been the Uber hard endgame one.
 
Terror Sandwich said:
One thing that bothered me about the DLC, that I haven't seen a lot of people mention so far, is the complete lack of cohesion in the Land of Shadows and the enemies that inherit in it.
Like the Dragon, the Chaos Lord, and the Finger Mother feel completely disconnected from the whole Mesmer burning shit up, and Miquella spreading aids around. And yet, you'll fight the same fucking enemies everywhere, the Mesmer soldiers are the only one that have their own areas.
That's not a problem that any of From's other DLCs ever had before.

Land of Shadows just doesn't feel like a real place, at all. The Lands Between wasn't perfect in the regard, far from it, but the Land of Shadows feels so much worse.
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I was going to say Ashes of Ariandel, but as much of a flaming pile of shit that was it was still consistent. Plenty of new enemies to reflect the location. Maybe Ringed City? That DLC felt like a mashup of cut content too.
 
Gondolindrim said:
Plenty of new enemies to reflect the location
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That's still only a small number of enemies really, and most of them suck ass.
Gondolindrim said:
That DLC felt like a mashup of cut content too.
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I don't really feel like Shadow is a mashup of cut content, since what little we do know about the concepts the DLC uses don't line up with cut content from the base game at all, but it definitely feels like two entirely different concepts stapled together.

I honestly kind of think a big reason this DLC took so fucking long to come out was because they didn't have a ton of cut content to repurpose. Ashes of Ariandel was clearly a cut level and we know Ringed City was God's Grave retooled. They had to take two full years on it making new shit and reusing everything else because they didn't have a whole level's worth of content already cooking.
 
Torch run is out, reminder that every single instance we complain about a boss that rolls the floor with any of us, at the end of the day it all boils down to a skill issue.
 
Spinning gravity thrust is fucking nasty. I've been away from the game for most of the week and maybe this is known but I think it's the only AoW you can rip off a boss weapon. Slap that bad boy on a bleeding colossal weapon with the normal bleed/skill trinkets and watch it shred.
 
Bro the new crucible knight is fucking AIDS.

His transformations are elaborate and hard to respond to and he does them like every 4 seconds, the weird ass lion centaur one just blatantly reads your inputs. Whenever I died to a crucible knight it felt like my fault in the main game but this new one is such a pain in the ass.
 
Evil Peter Griffin said:
This is all you need
View attachment 6119856View attachment 6119858
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This sentiment is pretty :feels: but for some fights Divine Bird Warrior Ornis or Taylew the Golem Smith/Black Knight Commander Andres are better.
Ornis is a fast but relatively squishy budget Crucible Knight and I don't think I need to say more, while Taylew and Andres are both fat pieces of shit that can hold down fast agresssive bosses like Commander Gaius, although Taylew is better due to his ranged attack and being more tanky.
The damage bosses shit out make sacrificing ever 660 health seem kind of daunting since that's going to put you into their one or two shot range.
I feel like the bosses being more aggressive is in part of a response to the Mimic Tear.
Also if you're going to be using the BB, or any form of fire damage, or even a weapon at all I'd recommend farming the Fire Knights for their helmet.
It's a light helm but slightly boosts HP, Equip load, stamina, and secretly fire damage, it's literally just an Erdtree's favor in the helmet slot.
 
Lizard Machine Bugs said:
Also if you're going to be using the BB, or any form of fire damage, or even a weapon at all I'd recommend farming the Fire Knights for their helmet.
It's a light helm but slightly boosts HP, Equip load, stamina, and secretly fire damage, it's literally just an Erdtree's favor in the helmet slot.
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Here's more BB fun facts. For some reason this talisman
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works with Blasphemous Blade. So now it does more damage.
 
So I just did the abyssal forest, and I have a spoilery question - are there really only 3 fucking winter lanterns in the whole fucking place? Because I now want to find miyazaki and beat him to death - I did the first two winter lanterns, and figured ok if there are flowers in tall grass there's a lantern nearby. I took off running, killed some rats and reached an open area covered in mist - and then I started building madness. Did a sheep bleat at me again (why does that only sometimes get me half a bar of madness?) I wonder as I look around, then I yelp out loud as another winter lantern quickly shuffles up to me and through blind luck I pull off the parry and beat him down. But now my winter lantern rule is broken - they aren't just near flowers or tall grass, they could be anywhere! So then I start crawling anywhere I haven't been before, which is pretty much all of the map. I must have done it for about 15 minutes before I just decided to die if I met another one and started running again. And never saw another winter lantern. As if it wasn't bad enough I couldn't use a horse in the whole area, then you troll me into crawling as well?

That said, Midra was a fucking amazing fight. I didn't even mind that it was a resurrection two phase, since it actually felt appropriate. The cutscene when he transforms was brilliant too.

Gondolindrim said:
I wonder how much of Radahn's reddit popularity is to blame for him suddenly taking over the Miquella DLC. Because I can't shake the feeling that him being the final boss over Messmer wasn't planned.
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No it was on purpose, they did the same thing with Godrick for the base game - they gave him way more screen time than anyone else too. The idea is that that way reviewers and streamers who get the game before anyone else can play clips and talk about everything up to Messmer/Godrick, but don't spoil the rest of the game for everyone. So they frontload the trailers with them and make you sign an nda regarding the rest of the story and story bosses.
WE'RE ALL GONNA said:
THIOLLIER KEEPS HIDING BEHIND A WALL DOING JACK SHIT WITH HIS BOYPUSSY FAGGOT TIRADE WHILE I GET DEMOLISHED BY RADAHN FUCK FUCK FUCK
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Easily my biggest gripe with the dlc is fucking npc summons, they need major work. At the moment a third of the time they're just increasing the health and damage output of the bosses for no reason, since they don't even take aggro, just run in circles or stand still at the edge of the arena.
 
I can't be the only one that got RE vibes when they found Midra's Manse. First thought in my head was "What a mansion!" That and the Abyssal Woods are the only places that actually felt spooky to me.

HodgePodgeRogerDodger said:
The fact that Mesmer did not have his own Great Rune, Ranni’s discarded one isn’t in the Shadow Realms, and Miquella’s just allows you to say “No way fag” are a major disappointment.
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When I found Miquella's I hoped that St. Trina could repair it or perhaps transform it into a Trina's own Great Rune. It allowing you to undo the charm effect is useful, but given how cancer that fight is, pausing to select let alone use it is just asking to get slaughtered.
 
Str8Bustah said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=l1KmSg5S6mETorch run is out, reminder that every single instance we complain about a boss that rolls the floor with any of us, at the end of the day it all boils down to a skill issue.
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More like autism issue. Grinding a boss enough to know his pattern by heart is skill related as in how much free time you have. Also having a shield to parry kinda invalidate the idea.
 
Shadow of the Erdtree's retcons fucking suck and destroy their base game, just like every other goddamn Formsoft DLC:


-The Three Fingers are right. The Frenzied Flame and the Greater Will are both mindless dipshits, the Dark Side of the Force (Three Fingers) and the rest of the Force (Two Fingers), with the Greater Will being the equivalent of a poorly-optimized Game of Life program spinning off and clumping up in some corner of the map. You could say "we should have known this was the case due to a hand normally having five fingers", but shut the fuck up about that. This feels like the reveal in Runescape that life only exists because one of the original Gods was retarded and refused to put away her toys. The Greater Will makes things, sticks two fingers and a bug into the world's pussy, and immediately fucks off afterwards.

-Marika is a Crystal Gem from Steven Universe. All the esoterism, and the interesting mysteries about whether or not Marika and Radagon are the same person? Nope, it's a direct allegory for syncretic religious beliefs. I mean sure, we don't know if Radagon is also a Numen (thus making Marika just a Namekian), but Marika really did just steal Rennala's husband and the Dark Moon cult's sanity by fusing with Rennala's husband. Also, Empyreans are a made-up race, literally just the bloodline of whomever knocks on Heaven's Door in the Land of Shadow. The Greater Will doesn't CHOOSE anyone apparently; his Two Fingers scout out an angry-looking bitch with a superpower, nudge them up to the Dev Room, and let the Elder Beast taste the cut of their gib.

-Of course Miquella is evil. Wow, what a creative twist. "Your honor, that thirteen-year-old boy was raping ME, not the other way around! Just look at his hypnotic eyes!" Maybe I'm just too sensitive about retarded/psychopathic little boys in media, after watching too much SVU; I don't fucking know. But of course the plan was still for this possessive twink to succeed Marika's position, just in whatever the fuck the Shadow Realm is. Did they even know he would've just kept the Elden Ring broken? I honestly wonder if this was a writing decision simply to spite those who wanted to cure Malenia with Miquella's Needle.

...I'll stop here, now that I'm having a stroke.
 
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