What are your thoughts on The Old Iron King DLC?

[Edmund Kemper]

So... what do you think about The Old Iron King DLC? Here's my opinion about it. Please respect everyone in their opinion, because yours will be respected as well.

Here are my thoughts about it:

I hated this DLC with a deep intensity. The only reason I played through it completely, is to kill all the bosses in the game & being able to obtain all items. Why do I think this DLC was so bad? Here are the reasons:

1. They were unoriginal with the normal enemies in the area. All they did was creating reasonably damaging enemies that have pretty much the same attack pattern as any other AI with their weapons. And to make things 'challenging' for the players, they simply copy and pasted them a lot of times. Instead they could have done something original with the enemies, such as only putting in a few enemies with high health high damage, and enabling the player to 1v1 (or 2v1) those. Take DS1 for example: enemies weren't spammed all over the place there. There always was a tactic, always a way to fight them in relatively small groups. And DS1 was hard with the way their attack mechanics worked. They did not have to spam hundreds of enemies to just make it hard.

2. The area layout was bad. 99% of the time you are in 1 single tower, killing enemies and trying to fight your way to the next bonfire. This DLC did not contain anything else but fighting, walking, fighting walking lighting a bonfire and repeat that untill you finally get to the fume knight. They did barely implement any trick-jumps, hidden necessary paths,puzzles or anything of that sort. Instead they just forced the player to fight for a few hours straight, without having to use his brains.

3. The smelter demon copy-paste. Really? I know this might be an important thing to the lore, but the blue smelter demon fight is nearly identical to the original fight. Besides, even if it is relevant to the lore it doesn't make sense. The smelter demon is in the Iron keep, where the player encounters him. There should not be a second 1 because historically seen there never even was a 2nd demon. Awful choise of ripping off your customers there Fromsoftware.

4. Broken Fume-Knight mechanics. Now I'm not going to lie on this one. YES I am on ng++++, making the fume knight a lot harder then he originally is, but still. His hit-boxes are way off, causing the player to sometimes get hit without making a mistake, instead the hitboxes fail to be placed properly. Next to that the pauses between the knight's attacks are so small, that people with a relatively low ADP struggle to even be able to heal up. The knight also has an attack, in which he moves 1 leg slightly in front of him, and then swings his big sword at you, which can be dodged by walking around the Fume Knight: but since his leg was placed slightly forward it's likely that you get stuck causing you to get hit once again. Also Carhillion of the Fold is completely useless for the fight, I don't see why they have put him in there.

5. More broken hitboxes. There are plenty of spots through the DLC where if you want to use your bow, your arrows get blocked by an invisible walls. Sometimes even like 1 metre away from where the actual wall is. This brings forth a lot of frustration, and proves the developers were too lazy to properly place all the hitboxes and things of those sort. As I do have expirience with modelling, it does really not take that much longer to immidiatly place the hitboxes on the right spot when you model the area, then when you have to place them properly in a later patch. Once again a very dumb choise of not actually finishing their work @ Fromsoftware.

I'd rate the DLC 4.5/10.

[Zorelnam]

fume knigth killed me while i was stabbing him on the back lol 1 shot i hate this monster

[Edmund Kemper]

Originally posted by destroier07:

fume knigth killed me while i was stabbing him on the back lol 1 shot i hate this monster

They really messed the Fume Knight up yes. Extremely high damage, attackrate and HP. That's not a fun way to making a fight hard: instead it would have been cooler by giving him some interesting mechanics in which the player is forced to tactically dodge attacks, and sometimes disabling the player from attacking back. Just simply pumping up his attack speed/damage and hp is stupid.

[a531]

yeah, I played DS2 to NG+++, saw the DLC's pre-order videos and they looked too much the same as the DS2. imo, no orginality. A letdown for me.

[<3 farmers cuz füd]

For the most part I agree.
Some enemies are really fun/creative in my opinion, like the barrel goblins and the bowmen that can disconnect their arms. The flame statues that you can push down lanes were also fun.

Sadly enough there were so many parts that were stupid or bland in design that I just cannot recommend the DLC to any of my friends.

[TonkatsuRamen]

I absolutely loved it!
The level design was fantastic. With Gedosato enabled it even look marvelous!
Boss fights were actually challenging (smelter made me rage pretty hard) but very enjoyable. The vertical leveldesign made the whole DLC feel "connected" like it was in DS1. I even thought the enemies were fun to fight!

I had a blast playing it. Probably my favourite level of all (Dark and Demon Souls-)time.

I rate this DLC 9.5/10

[Lucathegreat]

I kinda liked the overall environments, but it was very linear compared to the first one.
New monsters weren't bad, maybe a bit uninspired, but they were ok.

I didn't like Fume Knight very much as a final boss, man, it was the FIRST boss I even met in the DLC, I thought, "ok, another knight with swords...", and guess what, DLC main quest was done after it.
I mean, really? First DLC had that badass awesome huge dragon at the end!
Also, if you read the description of some item you receive in this DLC, it says something like "they say the king even made a dragon out of metal" - and I was already hyped, who else could be the final boss??
Well, NOPE!

But the major flaw of this DLC for me is the abundance of ganker rooms, or however you want to call them, filled with 5-10 enemies (NG++ at least) awfully placed that are very hard to lure one by one and that can rape you with spells, arrows, 3+ guys attacking you, giants with maces, red phantoms, all at the same time.
Jesus Christ, this isn't supposed to be a musou game, that's not funny, it's just frustrating in the wrong way, especially when you put a boss fight after them, so if you die against it (and you'll die) you have to go through them again and again and again, and your only way to avoid sanity loss is to run, hoping you'll get to the boss unscathed.

As for the boss themselves, apart from Sir Alonne that was very quick but overall fair, Fume and Blue Smelter (cheap recycle, btw) attacks had a ridiculous hitbox, especially when they buff up with flames, and that's not good when they always 1-2HKO you.

I'd give it a 6/10, but I really hope the third one will be much more like the Sunken King one.

[76561198149290641]

Best DLC released in 5-10 years and top10DLC ever released for sure.

[Edmund Kemper]

Originally posted by WhitePonny:

Best DLC released in 5-10 years and top10DLC ever released for sure.

Really? how ?0_o there are so many much better DLC's out there for other games.. This DLC was not even original or anything.

[Husk720]

Originally posted by ImJustACowLol:

Originally posted by WhitePonny:

Best DLC released in 5-10 years and top10DLC ever released for sure.

Really? how ?0_o there are so many much better DLC's out there for other games.. This DLC was not even original or anything.

At least it is better than 1st DS2 DLC, simply because enemies don`t have high ass poise.

[Angrycontra]

I liked this dlc, and seriously am I the only one who doesn't really see these "wtf hitboxes" people keep talking about. Maybe I'm always in the "wrong" position to notice these, but I never felt that Fume Knight had bad hitboxes. In fact, a lot of his attacks actually missed even though I was sure I was in place where I should get hit. Same for Sir Alonne.

The area design was great and I loved the fact that the dlc took place in tower. That was one of the best parts of the whole thing, descending this dark twisted tower, activating elevators and looking for Nadalia's fragments here and there. Imo it was very cool how the dlc was designed. Also I think that the theme of this dlc was actually to use environment actively in combat where the first dlc was more of a puzzle/exploring -design. There was lot of cool rooms, where using firebreathing statues and exploding enemies allowed easy kills.

I do agree on some of the gank-rooms though. Some rooms (especially the one near the beginning, where there is 3 or 4 of those undead guys and then the big guy and healing statue, without bow that room is a pain in the ass) were bit annoying and the co-op area was pretty meh (though on ng, it is atleast perfectly soloable, ng+ makes the area quite frustrating with the extra enemies).

However I liked that this time ng+ made things more challenging with those red phantoms, unlike in Sunken king where there was no difference between ng+ and ng.

Bosses apart from Smelter Demon were great and I personally don't mind whether they are humanoids or not. In fact humanoid bosses are imo 90% of the time much more epic and fun than some big clumsy monster. Sir Alonne was for me one of the best bosses in the entire series, he was just so much fun.

I give this dlc 4 stars out of 5 (never liked 10-score system).

E*:

Originally posted by ImJustACowLol:

Really? how ?0_o there are so many much better DLC's out there for other games.. This DLC was not even original or anything.

This is not about other games. This is about Dark Souls 2 dlc. Do you really think I would buy game I don't like just because it has "better dlc" which btw is your opinion, not a fact. And what does even the "not even original or anything" mean? Sure some ideas were recycled but it has some challenges and enemy designs that have never been seen in Souls-series and the envinroment actually looks quite nice (atleast outside). Once again other people have different opinions, don't consider yours as a fact.

[Foe]

Originally posted by WhitePonny:

Best DLC released in 5-10 years and top10DLC ever released for sure.

Like Skyrim - IGN 10/10

Nope, my thoughts are, the level design is "good", Fume and Sir Alonne are good, i only think Sir Alonne's attacks are a bit OP fast, it's not very intuitive to make a boss that hits hard like a truck and is fast as a Leopard jumping around in lightspeed. Smelter Blue is... it's just smelter in blue with a ton more HP, honestly i don't know why they used him again. You just have to hug him while eating heal items like crazy.
I really dislike the horde of enemies especially in NG+. There are some rooms filled with ~10 axt enemies and phantoms, they all have a good amount of HP so they don't die in one swing and they deal 30% to 50% of your HP as damage in one hit.
I rate this DLC 6/10 because of the enemy hordes and damage you can't avoid like from the big guys with the random lava flames. Actually it reflects the whole quality of Dark Souls 2, it's not very balanced, it has way too strong and way too much enemies (the combination of both makes it so worse).
This DLC kicks my most hated areas "Shrine of Amana/Dragonshrine" from the throne.

[gregthegrim]

9/10 AotA and the 2 Lost Crown DLCs provide some of the greatest moments of the series. I wouldn't complain even if the whole thing was only the Alonne fight, that soundtrack...

[Schrödinger's MMR]

Originally posted by ImJustACowLol:

So... what do you think about The Old Iron King DLC? Here's my

2. The area layout was bad. 99% of the time you are in 1 single tower, killing enemies and trying to fight your way to the next bonfire. This DLC did not contain anything else but fighting, walking, fighting walking lighting a bonfire and repeat that untill you finally get to the fume knight. They did barely implement any trick-jumps, hidden necessary paths,puzzles or anything of that sort. Instead they just forced the player to fight for a few hours straight, without having to use his brains.


4. Broken Fume-Knight mechanics. Now I'm not going to lie on this one. YES I am on ng++++, making the fume knight a lot harder then he originally is, but still. His hit-boxes are way off, causing the player to sometimes get hit without making a mistake, instead the hitboxes fail to be placed properly. Next to that the pauses between the knight's attacks are so small, that people with a relatively low ADP struggle to even be able to heal up. The knight also has an attack, in which he moves 1 leg slightly in front of him, and then swings his big sword at you, which can be dodged by walking around the Fume Knight: but since his leg was placed slightly forward it's likely that you get stuck causing you to get hit once again. Also Carhillion of the Fold is completely useless for the fight, I don't see why they have put him in there.

5. More broken hitboxes. There are plenty of spots through the DLC where if you want to use your bow, your arrows get blocked by an invisible walls. Sometimes even like 1 metre away from where the actual wall is. This brings forth a lot of frustration, and proves the developers were too lazy to properly place all the hitboxes and things of those sort. As I do have expirience with modelling, it does really not take that much longer to immidiatly place the hitboxes on the right spot when you model the area, then when you have to place them properly in a later patch. Once again a very dumb choise of not actually finishing their work @ Fromsoftware.

I'd rate the DLC 4.5/10.

these 3 points
i hope fromsoftware would remember this .
they cant please "casual gamer" and "hard gamer" at the same time .
they make it easier and hard gamer would whining and vice versa
i am not that good but i buying this game because the premise it is being hard .
not sure why some ppl complaint about the difficulties while they only fight these dlc bosses 3-5 times only (hello i managed to beat him alone in ng+3 on 22 attempt (mostly because i suck and lack of concentration ) and the feeling is so good after i beat it XD )

[Hadley]

My thoughts Fume Knight oh yeah

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=306544573

[stompie5]

I felt the level designs and enemies were bad, and I have no desire to play through any of the DLC worlds again. I don't think it is fun to inch forward and have to try and snipe every enemy with a bow. I'm on NG+4, and I think the bosses have way too much health. In fact, all of the DLC bosses have too much health. It makes fighting them so tedius. I think the Iron Pasage is entirely too difficult on any NG+ mode. I don't get it at all. If they want to make a co-op challenge area, why not give you competent NPC summons?

While I'm crying about it, I'd like to comment on how worthless magic is in the DLC areas. All the enemies have insane magic defense, and the good spells take so long to cast now and do so little damage. I don't even want to play through the Ivory Crown, because I know it is going to end up being the same chore again.