Is it worth getting the DLC with mixed reviews?

[BrutalGlory]

I'd prefer if people avoid spoilers when giving their opinions (which is what's making it so hard to determine which reviews are people who suck and which are try-hards who will simply tolerate anything no matter how poorly designed). I have a few question I hope i can get answered.

1: ER ran fine on my system with the base game at launch, is the stuttering as common as it seems to be and does anyone know what's causing it yet? (No sense buying unless it's fixed as DLC is non-refundable after all).

2: How large is the DLC? Again while i'm trying to avoid spoilers there seems to be a good deal of sarcasm and conflicting statements going around about it being larger than or smaller than Limgrave. Half the people say it's empty and the other half say it's packed.

3: Half of the negative reviews are claiming that combos are 10+ seconds long with no room to hit the boss (basically Melania on steroids). Meanwhile other people are simply responding with "git gud" - which doesn't exactly help narrow it down. I like difficult fights, I like memorizing them and replaying them until it becomes boring, but is this simply going to be tedious rather than fun or engaging? (AKA am i looking at a few dozen hours of dealing with Melanias water dance 24/7 on EVERY fight because that would just be torture).

4: What % of bosses and enemies are being recycled from the base game? This seems to be another complaint people have. If 99% of the DLC is just more recycled minibosses/bosses I can't imagine it's worth buying.

5: (spoilers i don't mind too much on this one) How does the leveling work in the Xpac? I mainly ask because some people are saying others don't level while other people are saying that bosses level with you which negates the purpose of leveling to begin with. I don't mind bosses getting harder as you get stronger, but if the leveling is pointless and doesn't change anything I can't see it as a selling point in an exploration based game.

[karl-emil]

The expansion is great, people are just really mad at being bad at the game.

[Somnia]

its really fun, level design and exploration is peak.

[losinsanity]

The only question to ask is do you love Elden Ring? I spent over 300 hours on PC. I also got the platinum on PS5 and PS4. All in seperate playthroughs. Therefore, I've achieved 100% on 3 different platforms. I'm NOT a Souls gamer. I'm just a gamer. Elden Ring is one of the BEST games EVER made. Period. You want unlimited game time, play Elden Ring.

[Knavenformed]

Personally I'm holding off for a while
The difficulty of the main game after Secret Mountaintops started to become truly exhausting, so the DLC being based on those levels with a "find these fluff items to be powerful" just doesn't sound too enticing

After I get my Quality build to Mohg on a new playthrough I'll get the DLC even if I had a lvl125 occult game beat save already

[VanDerSol]

It's a very good time.

It is harder than the base game. Who could of seen that coming?

[milesprower06]

This morning and afternoon have proven that the hardcore Souls community wants these games to return to obscurity where only jerkwads play them to make fun of lesser skilled players.

[VanDerSol]

Originally posted by milesprower06:

This morning and afternoon have proven that the hardcore Souls community wants these games to return to obscurity where only jerkwads play them to make fun of lesser skilled players.

What does that even mean?

Use a summon, or don't. Who cares?

[Drax]

1) Stuttering is annoying at times. Hopefully will be fixed soon like the base game was.

2) Map is huge, and there's a bunch of new bosses and items. It is, however, less densely packed and in the base game where there might be a cave or ash of war, in the DLC there's nothing. Overall though it's impressive for a DLC. I assume about 50hrs to find everything + finish it.

3) Most story bosses imo are better than anything in the base game. I'm really enjoying the boss fights. There's one boss who is quite tedious near the start which most people are complaining about though the idea is to level your character with scadu fragments which is what most people aren't doing. Though, if you're good enough or use cheesier builds it's still more than doable at the start of the DLC.

4) In regards to 1:1 copy pastes, very little. There's quite a few that are basically the same enemies with different moves and move sets. For minibosses quite a few are humanoid/player enemies with unique movesets. There's still a bunch of new enemy types in the game, however.

5) Bosses don't level with you. You need to use scadutree fragments to level up and there's plenty around if you look for them. Those people are idiots. I've multiple recordings of me taking like 3 hits to the face without dying and I'm hardly overlevelled.

Most people complaining are just stuck at the very start of the game and were expecting to be able to breeze through content as a high levelled player despite it being made blatantly clear prior to launch that a new levelling system was being used to make the game retain difficulty. For people who like a challenge and understand they need to explore to get stronger, this is a great expansion. For people who only want to rely on OP builds to make content easy, they're not happy.

[Dr.Acula]

There are a few recycled bosses (mostly outdoors). It's not anywhere near 99% though.

The question you should ask yourself though before buying the DLC:
Did you enjoy the Malenia and Maliketh fights?

If the answer is yes then you might have a good time with the DLC. If you hate those fights though then you are likely to get frustrated because the main boss fights I've seen are similar in style. They are extremely fast with lots of attack combos and very small windows of opportunity to counter the attacks.

A lof of my failed boss attempts actually ended within the first 10-15 seconds of the fight starting. Bosses will attack rapidly and if they hit it hurts (one and two hit deaths are common). Just trying to learn attack patterns (if you can see and recognize them) will be an extremely time consuming process and if you have trouble with some mechanics like parrying attacks you will have a tough time.

Originally posted by VanDerSol:

Originally posted by milesprower06:

This morning and afternoon have proven that the hardcore Souls community wants these games to return to obscurity where only jerkwads play them to make fun of lesser skilled players.

What does that even mean?

Use a summon, or don't. Who cares?

Ash summons in several cases are not enough to handle these bosses. Mimic made fiths like Malenia and Maliketh relatively easy but with bosses like Bayle and Messmer even the mimic is reaching its limits.

And Rellana also remains a very challenging opponent with Ash summons.

[LF]

If you have too much time to waste and you're a masochist then yeah you should probably buy the game

[milesprower06]

Originally posted by VanDerSol:

Originally posted by milesprower06:

This morning and afternoon have proven that the hardcore Souls community wants these games to return to obscurity where only jerkwads play them to make fun of lesser skilled players.

What does that even mean?

Use a summon, or don't. Who cares?

It means that all they've done the past 24 hours is screech and scream "GIT GUD" at anyone leaving a negative review due to boss design.

[Last Jackdaw]

I am loving the DLC, but I have to be honest:

Performance since the last patch is a bit worse than before. And the DLC areas are much more eye candy than base game, and tax the already badly optimized engine badly.

I have a Powerhouse computer (less than 6 months old) and I had to turn off raytracing in the DLC to get smooth frames.

[DreadLordAvatar]

The main problem I have with the DLC is it adds nothing to the base game for replay value.

[Trehek]

3) From what I've seen, there are several bosses who are aggressive and combo like Hoarah Loux or Radagon. Yes, they have some mean combos, but it's not as bad as some people say. It's really hard to pull of big combos of your own against them. Basically, you have to adapt your playstyle to some of the fights instead of L2 spamming your way to victory.

[pimleenders86]

1. I had a few stutters on the first day of release, but played about 6 hours today and had zero. I did have a small area of the map drop me into the low 30's for some reason. Playing on Ryzen 7 5800X3D with an RTX4080.

2. It is huge. Everytime I think that ''this has to be all'' I find another large area to explore.

3. Some combo's are quite long, but so are yours with many of the new weapons. Not sure how I feel about it personally. It takes some getting used to, but it still feels fair to me.

4. I have only fought a hand full of bosses and only found 1 to be a repeat of the base game. As far as the normal enemies go, many are recycled in new armor for the low level mobs. The elite's are all new as far as I can tell.

5. I have no idea about bosses scaling. You can level your character as you'd normally would. There are also seeds to increase your damage/negate incoming damage for yourself and your summon ashes. I'm on the fence about this one, because it does make me wonder if the game is needlessly hard to account for the seeds. And it is pretty challenging even for a veteran of the souls series and with over 840 hours into the base game for me.

All in all, the expansion is great, it is more Elden Ring. The bosses I have seen look amazing and some feel very different from anything else we've seen in the base game. There is a lot to find and discover and try. I couldn't imagine anybody who loves the base game actually hating the expansion. My only gripe with it is that some of the focus seems to be on flashy weapon ashes and there are a couple of weapons that have ashes that are very over the top and grandiose. Which is not really my cup of tea. If you liked the base game, you will like this expansion.