DLC is just being difficult for the sake of being difficult

[Serin]

So I just beat the Final Boss of the DLC yesterday and I want to share some of my thought about this DLC.

Phase 1 is kinda fun once I learned all his obnoxious delay roll-catch move, it feels fair except for the quick double slash move where I don't have enough time to roll the second swing because it swings too fast. Sure with perfect timing, I think I can roll both of the slashes with one roll, but the timing is very tight. Overall, a good boss design.

Now phase 2, is where the utter bs begin. There are a lot of issue with phase 2, one of them is obviously how over the top the boss attacks while our character can't keep up with the boss speed, it feels like I'm fighting Sekiro bosses but with Dark Souls 1 character.

And I'd say the worst part is not even the boss attacks, it's the visual clarity. Most of the time, the screen is just filled with Miquella's white holy magic spam . It might looks cool in cinematic experience, but while in gameplay, its just a visual mess.

Even worse Miquella body model is literally hiding half of Radahn body model so we can't see what attack is the boss even doing unless we have completely memorized the boss pattern. Reacting their attack on 1st try is almost impossible, it feels like the developer wants us to die first and keep on dying to do trial and error.

There are times when fromsoft designed a boss with fun factor as priority while using difficulty as tools to achieve that level of fun. Slave Knight Gael is one example, it was hard, but fun to fight (except maybe the random lightning strike).

But in this DLC, I don't feel like that with most of the bossses. So many cheap boss that is poorly designed in DLC ( Jori is definitely designed to aggravate the player ). I feel like fromsoft is just making the game difficult just for the sake of being difficult, to achieve attention and sensation so that everyone talked about "wow look this game is hard".

Oh and also, exploration is utter disappointment most of the case. Like really? Spamming smithing stone(2) or random ghost glovewort as reward in a place where everyone has already beaten Mohg with mostly fully upgraded weapon? They should at least reward us with Scadutree Fragment on every dungeon clear, often times I just cleared a dungeon and got this useless spirit ash that I will never use or just random cookbooks. Truly a rewarding experience.

Just my 5 cent about this DLC. The art direction and music is great though, so it's not all bad. But damn, fromsoft has fallen kinda low.

[Interknet]

Jori isn't hard at all (and in fact, the easiest boss so far that I've encountered in the DLC, ridiculously easy!). I came across him and melted his health with a +25 DLC twinblade that has bleed on it within maybe 15 seconds (not even exaggerating). He only managed to teleport once and summon 2 things before he died.

I think some bosses are gonna be harder/easier depending on your build, not really the fact the bosses are difficult. If you want to talk about aggravating bosses, the Fire Giants might be up there for me.

[zab]

I wish it wasn't so damn laggy nor full of AoE that blinds you

[Nauct]

Every game is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Anything enjoyable in life is only enjoyable because success isn't guaranteed.
The most enjoyment you'll have in gaming is always something just a bit above your current skill level

[Todd Howard]

Jori wasn't difficult, just equip throwing knives when he does the summons and they die in one hit.

Gael's boss fight is archaic at this point in time. He does three attacks then tposes and waits for you to attack him or his moves take so long to hit that you can get easy hits off with his starting animation. All of his moves all highly telegraphed

[burn1none]

I found the entire dlc to be quite amazing and well balanced until the end. The final boss felt not only unfun but also unoriginal due to who it actually is. Struggled for a long time and felt no sense of satisfaction on winning. Even the final cutscene felt lackluster.

[NONAME]

The open world content of the DLC is way easier than the later levels of the main game.

The bosses are mostly Malenia-level of hard and for the same reason (insanely damaging attacks).

[PandaSav]

Again Sekiro is way way difficult. No npcs to summon, no mimic, and especially no online budddies

[NONAME]

Originally posted by PandaSav:

Again Sekiro is way way difficult. No npcs to summon, no mimic, and especially no online budddies

Sekiro doesn't have any bosses that wipe you out in 2 hits.
Sekiro allows you to make a bunch of mistakes and still win.

[Todd Howard]

Originally posted by NONAME:

Originally posted by PandaSav:

Again Sekiro is way way difficult. No npcs to summon, no mimic, and especially no online budddies

Sekiro doesn't have any bosses that wipe you out in 2 hits.
Sekiro allows you to make a bunch of mistakes and still win.

Guardian ape can two shots you

[PandaSav]

Dunno, I never finished the final flame demon nor the Old man in sekiro. Did clear Final boss in Erd tree, after multiple attempts

[Serin]

Originally posted by Interknet:

Jori isn't hard at all (and in fact, the easiest boss so far that I've encountered in the DLC, ridiculously easy!). I came across him and melted his health with a +25 DLC twinblade that has bleed on it within maybe 15 seconds (not even exaggerating). He only managed to teleport once and summon 2 things before he died.

I think some bosses are gonna be harder/easier depending on your build, not really the fact the bosses are difficult. If you want to talk about aggravating bosses, the Fire Giants might be up there for me.

Yes, that is my point, Jori is easy, but that boss is specifically designed to annoy the player because it keeps teleporting away. I also got easy time with it because I just stacked a lot of holy negation and face tanked a lot of it's bs. But I can't imagine how I would run RL1 against that spammy mage. Jori is probably a run killer in any challenge no hit run, I'm curious to see streamers deal with Jori.

[Serin]

Originally posted by burn1none:

I found the entire dlc to be quite amazing and well balanced until the end. The final boss felt not only unfun but also unoriginal due to who it actually is. Struggled for a long time and felt no sense of satisfaction on winning. Even the final cutscene felt lackluster.

This is what I felt too, all those bs and all we got is this 10 second cutscene that doesn't add anything we don't know already. I know souls lore are meant to be read through item descriptiion, but come on, at least give us something more for the ending.

[Agoraphobic Meep]

I dunno, it was harder but most of the bosses and harder enemies felt intuitive to learn.

Divine lion really generously rewarded you for strafing correctly and rolling into him at the right times so you were behind him during certain moves, which gave you big punishes, not to mention being able to keep track of where the lightning and ice is to avoid damage. Fun fight.

Messmer tested your ability to separate different visual cues during combos, like whether he does the slow horizontal swipe, which indicates he'll follow up with a slow thrust, or he does a quick stab, which indicates he'll finish with a quick flourish instead. There's a bunch of other combos he can chain into which just makes the fight ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick.

Midra is just an endurance test, which I liked. He's tanky, but he has simple patterns and big punish windows, and he incentivized being aggressive so you could keep him staggered more often.

Bayle was just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gauntlet. Big, fast aoes, a heavy focus on positioning so that you were able to hit the head properly during his punish windows, and a lot of strafing required to avoid the lightning AOE's in second phase. Sick ass fight, felt like midir on crack.

I don't really remember metyr, she was kind of easy outside of that one laser attack, but her vibes were cool, reminded me of ebrietas. Not much to say about her idk.

And radahn was awful and I have zero praise for that fight till they make it less visually cluttered.

Still, pretty solid score for most of the bosses. It's harder than previous fromsoft games, but it still hasn't reached "difficulty for the sake of it" tier yet, y'know?

[Serin]

Originally posted by Nauct:

Every game is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Anything enjoyable in life is only enjoyable because success isn't guaranteed.
The most enjoyment you'll have in gaming is always something just a bit above your current skill level

If a game is designed to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult, then that game would not be fun to play. In the end, we play games because we seek entertainment and fun factor while playing, and difficulty is just one of many tools to achieve that.

For example, pre-nerf one shotting chariot is a difficult content yes? But is it fun to play to instantly die every time a pixel of chariot hitbox hits the player? I doubt it, that's why fromsoft admit such mistakes and made a revision.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hard and difficult content way above my skill ceiling, that's why I persevere through the final boss without shield cheese or summons. But is it fun? Unfortunately that was not the case.

[Birb Enjoyer]

Skill issue