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?
Overall pretty positive, though it's definitely soured by the ending.
I think the skibidi scaling works as intended if you go straight for Dancing Lion, then Rellana, then Messmer, but breaks down after that as the world opens up and you become too powerful, right up until the final boss where the difficulty spikes into the stratosphere and you have to go find more. I made it to the final boss at SB level 10 and stood no chance despite first-trying the boss immediately prior, went and fucked off to explore, fight every other boss, and got up to SB 17 before I beat it (went back a few times to grind my face into the wall in the interim to little success). Also I guess it's worth noting that he attacks your PC directly which made it annoying.
Revered Spirit Ashes are way worse, because even with all of them, everything but mimic tear dies ridiculously fast to the final boss. On the subject of DLC spirit ashes, mimic tear is still just the best and from what I've seen none of the new ones are even Tiche-tier.
Some of the new weapons/armors are neat, while others are just pointlessly bad. Like eg the perfumer weapons are fun, but the madness one is just bad because every enemy in the game except NPC invaders is immune to madness. I switched my UGS out for a different one for the final boss but otherwise didn't really try out other stuff. Blue Blessed Dew talisman fucking slaps and should have been in the base game.
All the low level upgrade materials or crafting materials for pots (which I won't use because they're terrible) were pointless, and while it was nice to get some more max level upgrade materials, I think they could have accomplished the same thing by just making a bell bearing for them.
The experiment with more verticality is neat, but frustrating at times when the map just doesn't show you anything helpful. This is compounded by areas like Abyssal Woods and Dragon Mountain where the map just doesn't show you anything at all. Having fewer, longer dungeons was also a fun changeup.
The NPCs and their storylines were interesting and made an astonishing amount of sense for a fromsoft game, due to events happening while you were playing as opposed to long in the past.
Boss tierlist (obvious spoilers):