Shadow of the Erdtree Critique: Stagnation Sets In

Miazaki = Gwyn The souls formula = the age of fire

I'd like to see a brand new engine and an update in storytelling for the next game/series

wtf i didnt even know the lion grab did that

Sekiro did the shadowtree fragments better with putting them behind boss kills as memories. witch rewards you for boss kills instead of exploration, because the problem with hiding them behind exploration is that once you have played trough it once, it becomes extremely tedious to do a second time and makes it feel like homework to get them, while behind boss kills it becomes rewarding because the point of these games are always the bosses no matter how many playtroughs, so they should just continue doing that.

I have to say, as someone who really really enjoys lore stuff 99% of the time, the interesting lore is just not enough to carry the stagnant ass plot for both base game and the DLC. In the other non open world FS games this murky kind of storytelling worked caused the game was small / short enough that the info you do get / interactions you do have are enough to keep you intrested until the next exciting fight. The info ER gives you (& the info it keeps from you) creates too many questions and not enough answers to be engaging. I don't feel like I'm on an adventure, I feel like I'm stumbling around in someone's incoherent dream. Dunno if anyone shares this feeling, feels like kind of a taboo thing to say.

It’s weird, I simultaneously don’t disagree with a lot of your criticisms but I still enjoyed the DLC regardless. I will say, however, that I do heavily agree that if Fromsoft doesn’t change their approach next time, I won’t be interested in playing. I beat Consort Radahn with no summoning, and I found a lot of his moves just absolutely agonizing and actively broke the flow of combat that I enjoy from a lot of the other bosses like Radagon or even Melania. I love the game, but I think it could mark the end of my time with Soulsbourne if they continue in this direction.

Miyazaki: “My games are not difficult for difficulty sake”. Miyazaki: -Consort Radahn.

Been saying it since I beat the game the first time, if the legacy dungeons are the best parts of the game then what is the point of the open world (other than to provide filler content in order to justify the size of the open world).

I miss how slow and chill ds1 feels now

Just to put this in perspective: Before Radahn, the only other boss (aside from the NPC encounters just before which are kind of a world event to wrap up the questlines), we fought Romina, either that or Messmer himself. How do we go from that to Consort Radahn in terms of difficulty curve ? This boss is exponentially more difficult than any of the immediate previous bosses. Also, to put this in perspective is how this compares to the base game. No way this kind of sudden difficulty spike happens there. After beating him with the aid of ashes on my first run, and soloing him without the aid of ashes, NPC or runes on my second, I can confidently say that this fight was ABSOLUTELY designed with the use of ashes in mind. Finally, I do belive that this is the source of most people's frustration, to have that last boss to be designed in this way, so that most people can't beat him without the aid of ashes unlike the base game. Melania was a build breaker but at least she was optional (a crappy move, but fine). Whereas Radahn is a build breaker WHILST being a final boss.

The funniest thing about the whole "pushing the stamina-based combat system to its limits" that FromSoft did here in regards to their boss design in this DLC is that they already found a solution in Sekiro, which was in development along side the base game of Elden Ring. Instead of being concerned with stamina, they removed that in favor of parrying/deflecting. Developing an understanding of a boss to the point of deflecting an entire combo string stopped that boss doing an extention of that combo, which removed that RNG aspect entirely while giving you more room to punish them for using that specific set of attacks in the first place. The only thing they really did with that system in Elden Ring is adding the Deflecting Hardtear for your Wonderous Physick Flask in the DLC. If you tap the block button with a shield (or a weapon that's able to block) at the right time before getting hit AT ALL while the deflection flask is active, you can deflect every single instance of damage from fast-hitting attacks such as Malenia's Waterfowl, dragons breathing fire at you, and just about everything DLC Radahn throws at you in phase 2. All for a fraction of the stamina cost and time it takes to roll. And you can punish those moves with an enhanced guard counter which will break their posture faster than normal attacks, opening them up to more critical attacks. Yet FromSoft locks this mechanic behind a mini-boss in the DLC of an open world game where you've spend triple digit hours engaging in a different combat style. Where you've most likely cleared just about everything in the base game in that particular playthrough, meaning you can't use this playstyle to fight bosses in the main game since they'll most likely be dead in your progression into the end-game, where the DLC resides. And once you do unlock it, it only lasts a certain amount of time unless you want to sit a grace after chugging your physick flask every 5 minutes. Everyone who uses this hardtear absolutely loves it to the point they think it should be a baseline mechanic like rolling, as it makes interacting with the bosses of Elden Ring easier. But most players won't even know this playstyle is even an option, let alone engage with it in a meaningful way to the point of understanding and mastering it.

A lot of fair criticism here! Although I would like to suggest perhaps not emphasizing your points on weather it's "fun" or not. Fun is a nebulous concept that can easily be picked apart. Despite understanding how frustrating the final boss is. I found Promised Consort Radahn to be an incredible boss fight. And yet, my positive outlook on this boss is circumstantial evidence at best. Is Elden Ring's combat design holding back the greater potential in boss fights? Yes, I agree that we must move on from this. (Weather Fromsoftware will do something about it or not remains to be seen). Since the base game I've always wished Elden Ring had Sekiro like combat. The parry system is objectively better.

the DLC is just too damn hard to be fun. Sure, the open world is pretty barren which is a bit of a letdown but it's the never ending combo chains and 1-2 hit kills that ruins it for me. If not for that, I dont think the "souls formula" will ever get old.

I think beyond the stagnant gameplay and the open world issues, the setting of ER really adds to the stagnant feeling. I could never really get into it, because to me it seemed like a kitchen sink setting, like a greatest hits mix where they threw in every previous concept from their games without a thematic reason, making it seem watered down and just being there for no real reason. Case in point, the frenzied flame stuff. In bloodborne the whole story and world is built around the concept of madness and so the game's setting stands out and the concept is given depth. In contrast in ER it's just one of many curses like undeath and isn't given much thought. Same with the existence of lovecraftian gods like those from bloodborne don't feel impactful because they share the world with traditional fantasy gods and other entities that you stumble upon, and so are not as threatening nor thematic to the world and so lose their intrigue, awe and depth. This was cemented for me in the DLC when you meet the Winter lantern reskins in the Abyssal woods, which had zero impact since I've seen it before and it has none of the thematic weight behind them. Doesn't help that rune loss is completely irrelevant at that point and they're in an open area so you can just run around them. All of this can also be applied to the concept of undeath and hollowing that is so strong in Dark souls and informs the entire game and mechanics, but are again just watered down and one of many concepts in the lands between. I would argue that in dark souls and bloodborne you will feel a resonance when experiencing the story even if you don't know the story in depth, because it's thematically resonant despite the plot being obtuse. In ER there were so many moments where I just felt like characters were speaking (a lot more than in previous entries) but not saying anything and you couldn't intuit wtf was going on, like the Margit encounters. His design with horns and a monster-tail who throws holy magic against you, which is aeshetically incoherent at a glance and you need lore to have it make sense. In dark souls this guy would have been undead but wear priest robes and be called "abbott" or something, so when he throws holy magic at you you understand why and it feels coherent. Then as insult to injury when you've finally conquered the capital, do you get a new boss? No, here's that guy again, which you can't intuit why and have to learn lore to appreciate. And it feels off. In Sekiro they play with the same themes of immortality and breaking cycles as they always do, but they stick to that one concept and look, and when they add more spoken dialogue they tie it with a more explicit story, with hidden lore as a supplement to this. It makes it all feel coherent and fresh despite sharing similar themes from previous entries. It also makes a world that is primarily filled with living people feel more believable. In contrast, ERs world just feels a bit off where it's not nearly as fallen as in dark souls where everyone was undead, and yet normal people don't speak and just act as if they were, unlike in Sekiro where they all emote and speak. For this reason, going into a military camp just feels odd in ER, it's like they just hang around acting like undead without much reason, same reason why I wasn't as wowed by the capital as everyone else seems to be, because it just feels dead in a way they're not really going for. And I believe this all stems from having too many concepts and themes in the game, while also refusing to evolve the narrative style to fit the story they want.

26:54 blatantly untrue, you can immediately sprint in the other direction and roll before he slams, and continue to roll through the spikes with no damage.

I hate how the NPC quest structure is set up in Elden ring, and the DLC did it so much worse. I think you make a good point, when everything's so cryptic to need a video essay explaining things to the player, it's just not an engaging story. I think Lies of P did story a lot better since I never felt lost or wondering "Why I'm out here doing this nonsense in the first place". And Lies of P also had some pretty engaging points as to why the world was as morbid as it was, without being cryptic. What I dont like, is trying to do an NPC quest, only to mash through a bunch of cryptic dialogue that tells me nothing about what they're doing most the time, and needing to "refresh" the game to progress it, just to have them disappear someplace random in the world. Dark Souls 1 can kind of get away with that since it's a more linear experience, but Elden Ring is open world. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Oh and the DLC actually punishes you for exploring it, since if you reach a certain threshold, something big happens, and a bunch of quests will randomly progress without your knowledge. There's good parts in Elden Ring that does open world arguably better than most sandbox games, but it's quest structure is so anti-open world. Plus, DLC rewards just... Suck. I hate going into a new place only to find mostly tier 1-3 upgrade materials when my gear is probably max tier at this point. I hate that they introduce entire new schools of magic that have only 1-2 spells in them instead of building onto what already exists. (My annoyance of this being they have types of magic in base game that only have about 2-3 spells in them. There's like 20 glintstone sorceries, but only 2 "briar" sorceries. And yet they also have a staff and some unique gear that buffs the already mediocre "Briar" school of sorceries.) I hate that they include entire new weapon classes but only have an entire 1-3 weapons in them (There's a throwing knife weapon you can find, which is it's own weapon class, and there's ONLY 1 throwing knife weapon. Why..?). Why waste time making entire new weapon subclasses but only making 1-3 weapons for each type?

One of the main issues with Elden Ring and now Shadow of the Erdtree is that many activities in the open world do not lead to any progression. You ride through a lot of empty space and only rarely find something that is of value for your own build. I agree that at least to some degree this problem has been tackled with the Scadutree Fragments. However, when I am now thinking of playing the DLC again and take into consideration that before I am going to fight any boss I might want to collect all the free blessings pickups, which will take a huge amount of time even with a guide, my motivation to start a new playthrough is drastically lowered. There would have been a very simple way to combine the classical linear Dark Souls levels with the open world: just make a map that is segmented such that each part of it is protected behind a boss who needs to be defeated (like Fire Giant in the base game or like Jori in the DLC, for example). There is no greater reward than having unlocked a new part of the world to be discovered. The best open world games are the ones which contrain the freedom of the player and where one needs to progress through the game (like winning boss fights and the like) in order to be able to go to certain places on the map.

13:47 So you felt stressed about losing runes, but also runes are pointless. Ok? Firstly runes represent time so they're never entirely pointless, unless you don't value your time. Second if you want to retrieve runes from a dangerous place, use a twig. Third, dumping runes is a non-issue because there's always something to be gained in doing so. You also complained about upgrading weapons, well how about burning those runes on upgrades and materials? The only really limiting factor for upgrading weapons and ashes later in the game is the final level, there is absolutely nothing wrong with upgrading something to 9 or 24 to try it out, or even beating up low lvl enemies.

I really appreciate your take the dlc left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled for many of the reasons you’ve stated while many people brush off my frustrations claiming to be satisfied with nothing but pretty visuals or accusing me of being one of those hard=bad people

You encapsulated my thoughts on Radahn perfectly. If you need to heal you have nothing to show for the last 30 seconds of dodging... It's not fun.