How did this DLC get so many 9 & 10/10's...

[stuck in gold in Jerkmate ranked]

Before I say anything, I want to say first that I do not dislike the DLC nor am i calling it bad, because its not, I think it's pretty fun, the story is nice, and I absolutely love the way it all looks, but even so, there's just too many issues going on at once that make it seem like a 6/10, maybe even a 7.

First off is the optimization. I'm inclined to believe it's not my hardware that's an issue since I've seen people with 40 series cards and much better equipment than me still struggle to run the game at 60 fps in certain areas due to how much it drops. For example, in the Gravesite Plains, the first area you introduced, it instantly drops to 30, or in the Ruins of Rauh, I look in one direction and have a perfect 60, then look to my right and half my fps drops. It's even worse in boss fights because, at least when I'm outside frolicking with 30 fps, I can still do what I want, but during a fight, I can almost hardly keep track of what's going on, what with them spamming AOE moves non-stop and thinking that they're rabbits, making it very hard to see what's going on. Even in the lowest settings, this happens. In the base game, this doesn't happen, only in the DLC areas, and it's bad.

Second, there is the difficulty. Now, of course, we all know how "hard" the bosses are here; however, they're not hard in the sense that we lack the skill to defeat them. They're hard in the sense that they're just doing way too much, and there's too little we can do to stop it. When a boss is jumping 30 feet in the air despite being the size of a plane, zooming across the arena in an instant, or swinging their weapon with a 30-hit combo and then immediately following up with 10 AOE moves back to back, it gets pretty hard to tell what exactly is going on. It gets so bad to the point that when I beat them, I don't feel satisfied or accomplished. I just think to myself, "Thank ♥♥♥♥, that dipstick is dead," and move on to the next overly exaggerated boss. You may call me trash, but deep down, we know that a majority of these bosses are just difficult for the sake of being difficult.

Thirdly, the map. Obviously, with this being a DLC and not a full game, the map is going to be smaller, which is fine, but even so, the map just kind of feels a little empty. There are quite a few areas you can visit where it just seems like nothing is going on and that it's just here to be here. For example, in The Gravesite Plains, in the base game, Limgrave has plenty of things to do the moment you step out, but in the plains, there's barely anything at all for you to do. Even the Cerulean Coast is like this; the only things here are the same re-used ghostflame dragon you saw three times already and one mausoleum off in the distance on a lonely island, a whole area with barely anything in it. Also the actual coast near the water, no hidden dungeon, no field boss, just some fingers guarding one glove-wart Ive gotten many times already. This especially applies to the Abyssal Woods; this was my most anticipated spot to visit, and when I visited, I was kind of disappointed. "Aging Untouchable" is not a threat pretty much in anyway, and the only thing in the area is Midra's manse in the corner of the woods; that's it. The worst part of it, though, is the verticality. So many areas of the map have you going very high or low, and you can hardly tell where you would have to go because the map does a piss poor job at distinguishing certain areas.

Lastly, the Dungeons. For the most part, the dungeons remained the same and acted as you'd expect, until they didn't. Given that this is my first soul's like, and having seen the other dungeon's in the base game, I expected them to be about the same, but they weren't. The dungeons felt really long to finish while not providing any real danger, and on top of that, some of them don't even have bosses. I've visited 3 different Ruined Forges (which are considered dungeons) expecting to fight some nasty creatures, but no, you can literally just run in, grab whatever is in there, and leave. You never have to swing your weapon once due to how weak the TWO enemies are, and you never see a boss down there, and I was left a little upset with that.

This was simply my view of the DLC. As you can see, I'm not a professional reviewer, and I love to yap, and I don't know all there is to it for games like these, but nonetheless, I just felt like these issues are what kind of brought down the DLC for me. It's still fun and very pretty, and I will continue to play, but I just don't think it deserves all the hype and high ratings it got.

[Northstrider]

There is a faction of the fan base which is like a cult, praising lord Miyazaki and then there are paid reviews by the large journalist platforms.

The DLC is empty indeed, the exploration got messed up by the Scadutree system for it's the only item worth chasing after and it's limited in quantity so you have to flip every rock and consequently the whole balance was built around it. Since the exploration sucks, people tend to skip it, resulting in running into the dungeons underscaled.

Most of the performance issues of the DLC originale from the waterfalls in the map. For some reason they tank the fps REALLY hard which I think it because of the transparency in the water.

Difficulty is a two-edged blade, because one of the two difficulty problems is that the scadu blessing system ruins the scaling and then there is this lazy adhd boss move design where the game just keeps blasting attacks way beyond what the game formula can handle.

Given how they recycled way too many enemies from the base game, how many empty or worthless areas there are and the overall experience suffering from the scadu blessing itemization, I agree that it's a 7/10 at best.

[Kim]

Messaggio originale di Northstrider:

There is a faction of the fan base which is like a cult, praising lord Miyazaki and then there are paid reviews by the large journalist platforms.

The DLC is empty indeed, the exploration got messed up by the Scadutree system for it's the only item worth chasing after and it's limited in quantity so you have to flip every rock and consequently the whole balance was built around it. Since the exploration sucks, people tend to skip it, resulting in running into the dungeons underscaled.

Most of the performance issues of the DLC originale from the waterfalls in the map. For some reason they tank the fps REALLY hard which I think it because of the transparency in the water.

Difficulty is a two-edged blade, because one of the two difficulty problems is that the scadu blessing system ruins the scaling and then there is this lazy adhd boss move design where the game just keeps blasting attacks way beyond what the game formula can handle.

Given how they recycled way too many enemies from the base game, how many empty or worthless areas there are and the overall experience suffering from the scadu blessing itemization, I agree that it's a 7/10 at best.

How can you rate something 7/10 with this speech?

I would have guessed 3/10, tops.

[John Titor]

Messaggio originale di Kim:

Messaggio originale di Northstrider:

There is a faction of the fan base which is like a cult, praising lord Miyazaki and then there are paid reviews by the large journalist platforms.

The DLC is empty indeed, the exploration got messed up by the Scadutree system for it's the only item worth chasing after and it's limited in quantity so you have to flip every rock and consequently the whole balance was built around it. Since the exploration sucks, people tend to skip it, resulting in running into the dungeons underscaled.

Most of the performance issues of the DLC originale from the waterfalls in the map. For some reason they tank the fps REALLY hard which I think it because of the transparency in the water.

Difficulty is a two-edged blade, because one of the two difficulty problems is that the scadu blessing system ruins the scaling and then there is this lazy adhd boss move design where the game just keeps blasting attacks way beyond what the game formula can handle.

Given how they recycled way too many enemies from the base game, how many empty or worthless areas there are and the overall experience suffering from the scadu blessing itemization, I agree that it's a 7/10 at best.

How can you rate something 7/10 with this speech?

I would have guessed 3/10, tops.

Probably because "seven" rhymes with "bad design"... to some people anyway.

[Wheee333ee33e3e]

Optimisation is dogwater, but everything else is average.

Difficulty was good. After the smoke cleared from the frustration, I realised it brought me back to the early days of fighting margit and seeing the fog gate many times before I beat him. I think we're at the absolute upper limit with radahn, but I feel it's still doable by most of the player base with enough patience.

The issue with gamers these days is they want to clear content in hours to join the cool kids club, when it used to take weeks or even months.

If people were more patient, they'd enjoy being beaten by radahn and slowly learning his patterns. He's actually one of the most interesting bosses from has ever made.

[patrol]

If you're wondering why games/movies get high critic scores, but mediocre or low audience score, there are many factors, such as:
1) Rating the game highly gives you a better chance to review any future games of this developer before they're available to the public
2) Reviewers often are out of touch with the fandom of the game and focus on stuff very few (if any at all) players will care about
3) They do often test the games in perfect environment, on the best machines available
4) In the current age, reviewers aren't allowed to write anything that might be "controversial", like criticizing poorly written characters, which often times happen to be nothing but a checklist for diversity
5) As a reviewer you want to publish your work ASAP as you're racing against others, which often times leads to the review of the whole game being written from experiencing the first hour or two

There are more reasons but i don't feel like writing the whole essay about it

[⛧Vinn⛧]

Did you guys really read all of that internet essay?

[GermanyMan]

Who cares?
Play it or dont.

/case closed

[Lynfinity]

Why is the Erdtree talking? And why is it jealous of its brother Scadutree?

[grandma_moses]

Messaggio originale di Northstrider:

Since the exploration sucks, people tend to skip it, resulting in running into the dungeons underscaled.

Second, there is the difficulty. Now, of course, we all know how "hard" the bosses are here; however, they're not hard in the sense that we lack the skill to defeat them.

Most of the performance issues of the DLC originale from the waterfalls in the map. For some reason they tank the fps REALLY hard which I think it because of the transparency in the water.

Difficulty is a two-edged blade, because one of the two difficulty problems is that the scadu blessing system ruins the scaling and then there is this lazy adhd boss move design where the game just keeps blasting attacks way beyond what the game formula can handle.

1. I don't think it sucks, who are those people? You? My steam friends never once uttered any complain whatsoever. I'd like to be introduced to these people you speak of, about whom you seem to think that they represent some sort of majority.

2. They are not? Strange, I defeated them the same way I defeated the other 200+ bosses since Demon's Souls. Learning, dying, resurrecting, gitting gud, beating them. Apart from camera issues on Lion and Bayle I never found any boss 'did too much', or had combos that weren't precisely telegraphed.

Strange how two perceptions can differ so vastly.

3. I experienced a few stutters in boss fights and a few drops of fps during DLC. Not one made me die, not one enraged me to the point of going 'this is worse than every other new AAA game these days ( which all stutter at release )'. Sure, it's not perfect technically, but it's such a minor nuisance, out of multiple dozens of hours there overall wasn't a single complete minute that was spent on stuttering or lagging.

4. Why are claims such as 'the game formula cannot handle it' simply put out without even trying to argue for or against it?

Just by the facts, the bosses work and you can beat them and you can dodge their every move. How do you arrive at the conclusion that it is too much for the game formula? Who even is the benchmark for 'too much'?

[Arthur Morrigan]

My two main issues with the DLC so far are:
-Overworld navigation and general dungeon design aren't particularly interesting or difficult. The legacy dungeons I've done so far have been effortless cakewalks that pose no challenge whatsoever, and the designs themselves are too simplistic to be engaging to explore.

-While I wouldn't say any of the bosses are too difficult so far, they have been mostly obnoxious to fight. Waiting for the boss to stop flailing around the arena while murdering visibility with particle effects so that you can get one or two hits in at the end of their 30 hit combo, isn't fun, it's tedious. Another issue is that bosses both do and/or take too much damage. Potentially fun fights end in seconds, win or lose, because either the boss killed you in three hits or you killed it. Or it's just a damage sponge.

[1100011]

Messaggio originale di The Erdtree:

the map just kind of feels a little empty. There are quite a few areas you
can visit where it just seems like nothing is going on and that it's just here to be here. The worst part of it, though, is the verticality. So many areas of the map have you going very high or low, and you can hardly tell where you would have to go because the map does a piss poor job at distinguishing certain areas.

Messaggio originale di Northstrider:

The DLC is empty indeed, the exploration got messed up by the Scadutree system for it's the only item worth chasing after and it's limited in quantity so you have to flip every rock and consequently the whole balance was built around it. Since the exploration sucks, people tend to skip it, resulting in running into the dungeons underscaled.

A toxic mix which landed them my negative review.

Once I learned how to work around that*, it turned out they had hidden a pretty good game in the tedium, too good to leave the review at negative.

* beeline for the map fragments indicated on the blind map. The tree fragments are mostly located at points of interest, so mark these on the map and only go there, ignore the fluff. Also: traversal map[eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com], Google, Fextra (preventing me to waste many more hours, no shame).

[Haru]

Messaggio originale di The Erdtree:

Before I say anything, I want to say first that I do not dislike the DLC nor am i calling it bad, because its not, I think it's pretty fun, the story is nice, and I absolutely love the way it all looks, but even so, there's just too many issues going on at once that make it seem like a 6/10, maybe even a 7.

First off is the optimization. I'm inclined to believe it's not my hardware that's an issue since I've seen people with 40 series cards and much better equipment than me still struggle to run the game at 60 fps in certain areas due to how much it drops. For example, in the Gravesite Plains, the first area you introduced, it instantly drops to 30, or in the Ruins of Rauh, I look in one direction and have a perfect 60, then look to my right and half my fps drops. It's even worse in boss fights because, at least when I'm outside frolicking with 30 fps, I can still do what I want, but during a fight, I can almost hardly keep track of what's going on, what with them spamming AOE moves non-stop and thinking that they're rabbits, making it very hard to see what's going on. Even in the lowest settings, this happens. In the base game, this doesn't happen, only in the DLC areas, and it's bad.

Second, there is the difficulty. Now, of course, we all know how "hard" the bosses are here; however, they're not hard in the sense that we lack the skill to defeat them. They're hard in the sense that they're just doing way too much, and there's too little we can do to stop it. When a boss is jumping 30 feet in the air despite being the size of a plane, zooming across the arena in an instant, or swinging their weapon with a 30-hit combo and then immediately following up with 10 AOE moves back to back, it gets pretty hard to tell what exactly is going on. It gets so bad to the point that when I beat them, I don't feel satisfied or accomplished. I just think to myself, "Thank ♥♥♥♥, that dipstick is dead," and move on to the next overly exaggerated boss. You may call me trash, but deep down, we know that a majority of these bosses are just difficult for the sake of being difficult.

Thirdly, the map. Obviously, with this being a DLC and not a full game, the map is going to be smaller, which is fine, but even so, the map just kind of feels a little empty. There are quite a few areas you can visit where it just seems like nothing is going on and that it's just here to be here. For example, in The Gravesite Plains, in the base game, Limgrave has plenty of things to do the moment you step out, but in the plains, there's barely anything at all for you to do. Even the Cerulean Coast is like this; the only things here are the same re-used ghostflame dragon you saw three times already and one mausoleum off in the distance on a lonely island, a whole area with barely anything in it. Also the actual coast near the water, no hidden dungeon, no field boss, just some fingers guarding one glove-wart Ive gotten many times already. This especially applies to the Abyssal Woods; this was my most anticipated spot to visit, and when I visited, I was kind of disappointed. "Aging Untouchable" is not a threat pretty much in anyway, and the only thing in the area is Midra's manse in the corner of the woods; that's it. The worst part of it, though, is the verticality. So many areas of the map have you going very high or low, and you can hardly tell where you would have to go because the map does a piss poor job at distinguishing certain areas.

Lastly, the Dungeons. For the most part, the dungeons remained the same and acted as you'd expect, until they didn't. Given that this is my first soul's like, and having seen the other dungeon's in the base game, I expected them to be about the same, but they weren't. The dungeons felt really long to finish while not providing any real danger, and on top of that, some of them don't even have bosses. I've visited 3 different Ruined Forges (which are considered dungeons) expecting to fight some nasty creatures, but no, you can literally just run in, grab whatever is in there, and leave. You never have to swing your weapon once due to how weak the TWO enemies are, and you never see a boss down there, and I was left a little upset with that.

This was simply my view of the DLC. As you can see, I'm not a professional reviewer, and I love to yap, and I don't know all there is to it for games like these, but nonetheless, I just felt like these issues are what kind of brought down the DLC for me. It's still fun and very pretty, and I will continue to play, but I just don't think it deserves all the hype and high ratings it got.

I'll keep my thoughts brief.

You cannot trust gaming review articles for weighty opinions on a product. Heck, I wouldn't even trust those metrics at all, especially if they're weighted that heavily. That's just unrealistic.

The optimisation should be better, yes.

The boss and enemy mechanics are perfectly fine, outside of glitches or technical issues. It isn't because you're trash. It's because you likely aren't making use of a lot of the features within the game to engage more with the enemies you're fighting. Most people I've seen with this take have extremely linear play styles or fixed approaches, then get pissed off when these don't work.

The 'map is empty'. It really isn't. I'll challenge your example of the Cerulean Coast.

Mauseleum, Ghostflame Dragon, Side-Beach with Mutant Queen and Glintstone Lightsaber, lots of those giant coffins littered around with grave ghostwart, lots of ghosts to kill, cemetary shades, master yoda, huge ravine that master yoda guards, continuation of Thiollier's questline, items specific to that area, sleep pot throwing giant, huge ravine surrounded by silver slimes, beach full of finger creepers leading to next area - etc. You can call that empty, but that's disingenuous, imo.

I will not deny, however, that the Abyssal Woods is one of the worst areas ever designed by Fromsoft, and that the Finger Ruins are more like set pieces as opposed to being playable areas. The rewards for the side quest are garbage, and the only thing you have to do at these ruins is mass murder lampreys or collect finger mimics. I'll grant you, these specific areas are not particularly engaging or fleshed out beyond being set pieces.

The dungeons were fine. They were never a strength of the base game. But I did appreciate the jar dungeons and some of the forges. It was nice to be able to run into a place without being expected to kill a boss at the end for a change. Also, some of the new crypt dungeons are awesome invasion hot spots.

[Ted]

The DLC is not perfect just like any From game but it is still light years ahead of most games as far as exploration and the combat goes. There are a lot of games out there and most of them are mediocre with only a few attaining greatness.

It isn't perfect just like ER but what it does it does so much better than other games

[Wolfguarde]

Messaggio originale di The Erdtree:

How did this DLC get so many 9 & 10/10's...

I mean no disrespect by not reading the body of your post; I don't need to in order to answer your title question.

Review ratings are bought and paid for. That is all.

[Janthis]

OP, I totally agree with your review but I wouldn't expect any support here. Even if you say you loved the game except for 1 or 2 things, you'll be told "skill issue" and "git gud". This forum is filled with meme-spewing clowns and zealots who take any criticism of the game like a personal attack and treat Fromsoft like gods that can do no wrong. Just post your review on the game's store page (though I wish you could give it a point score instead of just positive/negative, but it is what it is.)