As from dlcs go I actually had a much harder time enjoying this one over the others. Areas felt incomplete and empty, lots of main game copy paste content or even dlc copy paste content like the stupid hippos. The tedious easter egg hunt for skibbidy fragments and weird power scaling. And the atrocious final boss.
Overall I still enjoyed it and the map was beautiful to look at and fun to explore but it feels like a concentration of all the main games flaws. There's very few fun things to find in the world lots of crafting trash and upgrade materials, surprisingly few useful spells weapons or armor some just flat out worse than whats available in the main game. The skibbidy level scaling felt strange, i struggled with the dlcs bosses until i hit skibbidy level 17 and suddenly they melt within a few hits, i don't really know how many i need for each fight.
The boss fights that are there are solidly enjoyable, messmer is probably the most fun one to fight. The furnace golems are the STUPIDEST thing from has ever made, painfully tedious and very frustrating copy paste trash thats just a waste of time.
Final boss i had to respec cos no matter what i tried i got minced in the second phase. What worked? Fucking fingerprint shield and pokey stick. The most unenjoyable gameplay method of sitting behind a shield and its really effective. If i don't use that i need frame perfect dodges and perfect focus for 10 minutes or longer with bo opportunity to make mistakes. First phase was fine but wtf am i supposed to do in the second phase? Be perfect?
Many spoilers:
My overall thought is that it had some of the best boss fights I've ever experienced (Bayle, Messmer) and some of the worst (Radahn, that stupid moon lady). It felt like they relied heavily on phase change full room instagib attacks to make it hard and I thought that was lazy. Radahn especially with his final phase change, took me a while to learn how to spot him and where he was going to land. Felt way different than his OG fight. His second phase attacks are dodgeable of course but you won't have any stamina left to attack him and by the time you get it back he's back on his bullshit. Very very few openings means it was an EXTREMELY long and tiring fight without summoning. I did it but I won't pretend like I had fun doing it.
Once I killed one furnace golem I just ignored the rest. Absolutely ridiculously boring to kill. Just horse jump and smack their legs for 5 minutes wow so engaging much gameplay.
I agree the level scaling was weird but I understand why they did it, they kinda backed themselves into a corner by capping scaling and having the base game balanced around hitting at least some of those caps. It would have been cool to just up the scaling but that probably makes the end of the base game too easy. Which is also a thing I wish they would get away from, as someone who has thousands of hours across the souls games, who cares if it's too easy.
The world itself was beautiful but the pacing was so weird. You have entire areas that were an absolute joy to run around PACKED TO THE BRIM with things to do and then you have entire areas with nearly nothing (the finger ruins were egregiously empty). Why make this interesting beautiful areas and then put literally nothing inside them.
It felt to me like they had some ideas and they wanted to try them out. Some of those ideas were super cool...there are some seriously cool bosses, enemies, weapons, spells, etc. But some of those ideas had me scratching my head. Also spirit ashes still blow chunkies even if you use mimic tear and even if they're maxed out. For something that's supposed to act as a crutch they needed to fix their late game issues and they just didn't. All of them die hard on all of the instakill phase change attacks which I find very funny.
I hope this DLC was more of a play test for Elden Ring 2....a way for them to try some new stuff and see what folks like and what folks don't. Overall I enjoyed it but I'm a die hard fan of the series. I don't think it's for everyone who liked Elden Ring.
I got a lot of the dodging down but was always out of stamina, tried a few builds and strategies until i discovered he can't penetrate the fingerprint shield at all leaving only the meteor shower to evade. Fight was so easy with that shield i wasn't even looking at him but instead my stamina bar.
Renalla was fine it kinda reminded me of the lady maria boss fight where I had to learn how to parry then the fight became trivial. The twin moons aoe was fine when i realised my carian shield just nullified its damage.
I don't think i could stomach an Elden ring 2. The open world is just not for me I have very little desire to touch the game ever again unlike all the other from games i replay almost yearly.
I think I'm in agreement regarding Elden Ring 2. From Soft makes incredible games, but I think overall I enjoyed the souls, sekiro, and armored core more. It feels like games with levels allows them to reward exploration without the feeling of recycled content or incredible amounts of effort to make a huge map feel unique. Not to mention NPC quests you might completely miss because you did some part of the game in the wrong order. Glad to have experienced ER, but I'm looking forward to a non-open world next title