Well, finished the DLC, or basically killed all the big bosses and consider it "good enough".
Global impression? It's one of the weaker DLC. The end is kind of a wet fart. Though you faggots spoiled me on the Radhan thing, it's still incredibly lame even when mentally prepared for it. The fight itself was the first time going double colossal into face didn't seem like an option and while searching read that tower shield and rapiers trivialize him. And they do... to an extent, still took me like 15 tries where I had a cold rapier, a bleed rapier and Mesmer's spear where I would freeze Radhan, thaw him with a spear poak, shift to bleed, once he bleed went back to cold and so on. I still have no idea how you are supposed to avoid damage from his "get over here" + "overhead smash with crater" move, big boy shield did block the worst of it. Phase 2 being a light show was also confusing as hell and I cannot imagine how it would have been to deal with that with only dodges and jumps. Move that got me specially salty (aside from the hug till I learned Miquella's rune cleanses that) was the one where Radhan just rushes to the other side of the screen, most of the times it would just miss since I was pretty much on top of him poking, but when it hit, it would oneshot me and the shield would do nothing. Still don't understand that move for the most part.
Leaving that aside and going back to my last post...
So I had found Midra, and beat the Putrescent knight. Slammed my head into Midra a few more times and got the win eventually, double colossals stagger him very fast and I had gotten a feel for most of his moveset, this is probably the boss that made me feel the most like I beat him proper. Midra I'd also say is my favorite boss in the DLC, love the design and anything related to the frenzied flame.
After that I think I ended up going "fuck it" and tackling shadow keep again in case I found the way to the finger thing since I really wanted to see what abomination would come from that and ended up coming out the other side in the pretty gardens area... which I instantly hated due to the beyblade fuckers. Managed to get through and though the area was pretty, having another variant of the hornsent knight as the only really new thing was meh. Reached the boss, scarlet rot waifu 2, which was a nice boss and something that thankfully wasn't spaz city, did take her out in like 3-4 attempts, probably some extra health would have been nice to have. As per usual, no idea who she was or why she was there, I only know I fucked her up. Then I see some shit about "needing the flame of Mesmer".
Soooo we go back to shadow keep to find Mesmer which I end up doing (the museum zone is honestly a pretty neat dungeon). Mesmer gave me fits and I let him rest for a bit and went exploring areas I had ignored, like the whole fucking area that takes you to dragons peak. Did the rounds and reached BAAAAYYLEEEEE!, who proceeded to destroy my shit in a light show. After a few tries went "yep, this one is also for later" and went back into Mesmer.
So off we fight Mesmer again, but I was getting tired with the anime zaniness, so I ended up using the Cathedral phantom thinking that might move some story, big mistake since the hornsent was weeping. Did kill Mesmer, but I honestly was starting to go into "I can't be assed" mode so was content with using the NPC phantom and just smack him hard with double colossals as per usual. Then I explored some more and found commander Pigman, if I wasn't in the mood of dealing with Mesmer, you can imagine how much of a desire I had to deal with this fucking cripple, learned quick that fighting on torrent is a horrible idea (which is the biggest fuck up, let the horse be useful when available for fucks sake) and I ended up using the ash for the Knight with big hammer and then jumping double colossals while the fucking thing was distracted.
Noticed that the reward for beating that fucker was just scadu shards or whatever the fuck they are called and got flustered at not finding the other side, peeked into a guide and made my way to Marika's home town. Fun contrast fighting Tree Sentinels, they are so fucking easy compared to everything else, they felt like they were moving in slow motion, absolutely fascinating experience beating their shit. Anyway, pretty vistas but not much else. Finally go, blow the horn and go visit creepy cathedral man (I did visit earlier without having blown the second and was able to go to the lower are, but got killed in the invasion and don't know if that would have let me fight the Mother of fingers earlier or not, did get to see a grown man cradling a mass of fingers, wholesome.) and finally got something cool for my efforts with the boss.
Mother of fingers is the shit that I'm always looking forward the most in from soft games, the critters that "don't belong". Astel was a huge highlight for me in my first playthrough, at last till I fought another one. The fight itself was nothing too crazy, but it reminded me of Ebriates and Rom. Didn't take too many attempts though and I doubled up the remembrance since I find giant finger weapons funny and more importantly, that staff that let me use miracles and spells was very convenient to my build.
After that I went and burned the thing and what stank of final dungeon appeared. I did another round of going through unnoticed areas but nothing particularly noteworthy at this point outside of FINALLY finding the top left part of the map (had to look at a guide) which sadly had fucking nothing, one of the bigger issues of the DLC, map gives you the impression that it's full of stuff, but no, not really. Proceeded to eventually do the final dungeon (was fine) and ended up in the NPC mosh pit. I had only done the quests for sleepy boy and Mogh's guy, so I was facing everyone on the other side. Summoned my new favorite ash, the night sisters and proceeded to smash my face into it a few times till I noticed my allies seemed basically immortal and that Freja and Hornsent had to be killed FAST.
Collected a shit ton of loot, including my new favorite big boy shield and reached Radhan who absolutely fucking destroyed me. So at that point decided to go into BAAAAAAYLEEEE! again, tried a few times including summoning Igon but wasn't doing particularly well... till an attempt with Igon around made BAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYLLLLLLLEEEEEE!!! spaz out a bit and let me keep jumping and clubbing managing to get a good chain of staggers, I also managed to avoid the flying lightshow by randomly rolling around and boom, dead dragon. Ended up being a bit anticlimactic like with Rellana, but a win is a win.
After that tried Radhan, got more shit kicked in and just looked at guides and noticed I completely missed the fucking tree avatar. I had gone through that cathedral like 4-5 times and never noticed the path to it, crazy shit. Fought it and oneshot it... or so I thought, it did it's respawn thing, killed it again and.... another one comes and then it killed me, suddenly started thinking it may be a gimmick fight where I need to use a specific weapon or do something in it's arena, though ended looking it up and it's just "kill it 3 times"... I did enjoy this boss a lot though. Could be that I was like lvl 16 scadu at this point, but it was a quick fight with the thing having solidly telegraphed attacks and windows. Probably my second favorite after Midra.
And then went after Radhan and I already detailed how that went.
So I cannot deny I didn't get my money's worth, I did spend 40-50 hours in this. But I honestly felt it was full of highs and lows. "WOW! what an awesome looking area!" onlyf or it to be transitional window dressing. They could have done so much more with the cerulean plains and the finger monuments.. That Bayle's area is a 5th of the map but is really just a straight line was also a downer (though the atmosphere was pure kino), could have been an awesome subterranian network cavern. The more legacy dungeons were fine, but outside of shadow keep none was particularly memorable, a finger legacy dungeon would have been cool... and the copy paste dungeons were better this time. The forges kind of being a highlight.
The weapons are all neat though useless pieces of shit vs bosses for the most part, there was a reason I always went back to double colossals and ended up going with a bleed/cold build for Radhan, Leaf guy's kung fu is awesome, but you aren't doing shit with that vs a boss. I still had fun constantly rotating my weapons, Rellana being the coolest and Mesmer spear being the most surprisingly useful with the ability to just throw it.
The bosses... sadly no Artorias, Kalamet, Sir Alonne, Fume Knight, Ludwig, Lady Maria, Siste Friede or Gael. They were fine for the most part (fuck you pig man) and I do think I kind of cheated myself vs mesmer and Bayle but I had higher hopes. Usually the DLC bosses are the best ones, but I prefer base Radhan, Radagon or Astel to most of the DLC guys outside of Bayle, the Shadow tree and possibly Bayle... yeah, definitely Bayle. Thankfully, not Melania level bullshit though, the mere fact that Radhan could be killed without esoteric lore made him a thousand times better than the rot whore.
Basically was fine, but nothing amazing. Would still like SOMETHING with Godwyn. Oh yeah, the plot... makes no fucking sense, we didn't even know that Miquella and Radhan had even bloody interacted till this. And if I get it right, Miquella used his "love me daddy" powers on Mogh and proceeded to use his corpse to revive Radhan... who was still alive anyway? Would have made so much more sense it was Godwyn. We know from the lore that Miquella and Godwyn knew each other, we know that Godwyn's soul is dead/destroyed, but Radhan is still alive and well when we play, just in a horrible state of pain, was Miquella's whole plan banking on Radhan eventually dying and doing this whole shit? And does Radhan have ANY agency in this? Not a single line? I usually don't give a shit about souls lore outside of the ambience and do enjoy the essays, but this one was extra crap.
