Ashes of Ariandel
big open snowy battlefield new enemies like big wolves and viking
warriors. fun level design and entertaining new fights and scenario's.
there are new items that i genuinely got excited to find, but overall
they're not too amazing. the graphics and world design is beautiful.
some really difficult sections as usual. there are sections where it
seems you can choose multiple paths, lots of branching options,
interesting scenery and villages to explore.
the bosses: champion gravetender is kind of shit, its just Sif and
some NPC humans to fight. not much to say. its Sif from dark souls 1.
Sister fride is a really fun fight, with amazing cinematic and moving
dialogue. it's similar to ornstein and smough in that its 2 vs 1. its a
really intense fight, and sister firede has amazing ninja mechanics that
are fun to learn and master. the has multiple stages and eventually
turns into blackflame friede. Really hard, but fair. and satisfying in
the end.
a short, well added bonus to dark souls 3.
7/10
________________________________________________
The Ringed City
this is the final conclusion to the souls saga. this is the last
piece of content to be released ever, apparently. breath taking visuals,
a big destroyed city floating in the sky almost. it has challenging
archer parts which require good timing and patience. interesting
architecture, cryptic new npc's and places to discover. the new ringed
enemies are challenging and fun, with massive blades and dexterous
movesets.
there is even a ornstein fight in the water, its unnamed and tucked
away in a corner but its clearly ornstein clone. you get dragonslayer
armor for killing him, its a really cool addition. the new armor and
equipment is awesome and fun to acquire.
there is an optional boss Darkeater Midir which is one of the
hardest souls bosses to date! this guy took me hours to try to beat, god
damn difficult but I guess it paid off. the feeling of accomplishment
overcoming so difficult. hes slightly bullshit in his 1 hit kills, but
it was fun to try to learn.
other bosses, demon in pain demon from below was another tag team
fight, slightly generic, medium difficult. decent fight overall.
Halflight spear of the church is a pretty worthless fight. its like the
online invasion gimmick from demons souls, yet another NPC human fight.
feels pointless and easy to cheese.
then is the final area of the souls franchise, a big barren desert
with nothing in it but a crawling soul warning you of whats to come,
then you find the last boss Slave knight gael. this fight is awesome and
one of the best of the series. he does crazy ariel acrobatics, jumps
around and has a very unique moveset. hes not too tricky to figure out,
but the fun is one of the most fun of the game.
and then the game ends after that, with no cutscene, no end credits.
just nothingness. intentionally to leave you with a wondering of
purpose and meaning of the game's message. you deliver an item to a
child infront of a painting and a little cutscene plays nudging you to
question the meaning of it all. a very poignant last message.
8/10
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
RE-REVIEW REPLAY 2025
Ashes of Ariandel
About
half way through the game you go inside a small church and there is an
npc there, after talking to him he teleports you to the first DLC.
Although I waited until I beat the original content before doing this
DLC, because I wanted to separate them in my mind. So yes, I may have
been overlevelled, but that isnt going to critically influence my
judgement here. You arrive in a snowy vast land, much like the painted
world in DS1. Its a big open field, with many winding paths to go down.
You come across new enemies such as these villager type monsters
breathing fire at you with a torch, and big metal knight soldiers, as
well as many wolves and living monster trees that shoot spells at you.
The graphics of the snow area is nice, and its interesting to get a
change of scenery, however I have some problems with this DLC. First,the
opening area is too aimless. There are many paths and not many
landmarks so you kind of just wander around not feeling like youre doing
much. Second, there is a common trend in this DLC to trap the player
and not let them return to previous areas. It happens a handful of
times. In the beginning, you stand on a snowbank and it collapses and
you cannot return back up unless you teleport, this sucks because I want
to keep exploring the previous area, meaning I have to just reset the
whole area. This happens a few times.
The first area has a big
wolf enemy mini boss that shows up, which is a neat little fight. Then
you go find some tower building you can climb to find various items,
after that you progress a bit and come across a bonfire next to a bridge
and a giant epic looking castle. The visual here is beautiful , and
looks very cinematic. But again the same problem happens. There are two
paths, and one of them you have to jump down, locking you out of going
to the castle, so you have to reset the area again. At the castle is NPC
Sister Frede who has interesting, but mysterious dialogue, surrounded
by all sorts of weird paintings. The other path leads you to a sort of
village area which can be quite annoying and ardous. Its a bunch of
locked doors and gates and you have to climb across buildings and go to
these narrow paths, optionally falling into buildings with not much in
them just wasting your time. Eventually you progress through it and come
to a church kinda area and get attacked by an NPC invader which is a
pretty epic and memorable fight, its this knight guy that slowly walks
towards you and says anime villian type dialogue. He casts cool spells
and can even block you from doing magic. There is another NPC you come
across, this small girl who is a painter sitting on a table, she is
interesting, says some vague weird lines, but that is about it.
The
next area is probably the worst, its another snowy field type area but
this time on a mountain side, with lots of bumps and cliffs and hills.
This place is just aimless, and it has a ton of copy pasted generic
soldier enemies. You just wander all around not knowing what youre
supposed to do, the level design and memorable set pieces arent really
there. Theres a giant bell on the ground, but thats it. The whole DLC
looks the same too for the most part. I get its a big snow world, but
something could be different. Eventually I find how to progress and it
leads to some wooden hut mine tunnel thing with a poison swamp and a
bunch of flying insects. Kinda annoying area but at least its different.
You find a lever, pull it, and then you get a shortcut back to the
castle with sister Frede, a passage opens to the final boss fight of the
DLC.... Thats it? Yes, that is it. Turns out I missed an entire boss
fight. The bridge to the first boss, you have to cut the bridge ropes,
and then climb it down. Kinda bullshit, I know you do this same thing in
the original game, but its just so forgettable. After climbing down the
bridge its an area reminescent of Great Hollow from DS1 where youre
climbing down tree branches while getting shot at arrows, fair enough, a
decent challenging area. At the bottom is a big icy pit, which looks
beautiful, but theres not much there. Just two big crabs, thats kinda
it. Then you go to the first boss and its just a regular NPC human guy,
and Sif copy pasted from DS1... I mean.. I like Sif, but was expecting
something new. Thats kinda it. Kill them without much hassle and then
its just back to the castle to fight the last boss of the DLC.
Before
I talk about the last boss, how is the item discovery here? Well, I was
playing Sorcery so I didnt find a single useful thing. It didnt seem
like there were that many interesting things to find anyway. No rings, I
dont think. Maybe a handful of melee weapons. Maybe one armor set.
Kinda disappointing with the sense of wonder and discovery here , also.
Now
the last boss you go down into a tomb of sorts and fight Sister Frede.
It is cinematically epic, with great music. She has a giant scythe, and
is sort of this ninja which can go invisible and appear behind you, her
moveset is frantic but coherent, shes challenging but fun. A great boss
fight. After you kill her, she goes into phase 2 where this big hulking
giant comes to her aid. Very intense, and duo boss fights are always
hype. And guess what, when you kill her and the guardian this time?
Phase 3, thats right. Now its giga Frede, shes even harder and more
intense. A very fun but hard fight. Basically the only good thing in the
DLC really... The level design is mostly annoying, with far too many
aimless wandering annoying locations and enemy spam, theres not much to
it. You just have a big field, a village, a mountain field, an ice pit
with 2 enemies, a church with an npc, like thats it. Visually it can be
stunning, and the change of scenery is nice, some of the new enemies are
fascinatnig, but overall A very lukewarm DLC
6/10
____________________________________
The Ringed City
The Ringed City is the last area, and final DLC of Dark Souls 3. Its suggested by the devs that you do it at high level, around 100, before or after you finish the main game. You enter it from a bonfire at the final are Kiln of First Flame, then the bonfire simply teleports you to Dreg Heap which is the DLC area. Its weird theres no cutscene or special introduction or any special way you find the teleport, its just plopped down at the last area in a kind of lazy way. Once you arrive in Dreg Heap you talk to a hump back NPC, like the others youve seen before, not sure how to describe it. But it sells you a few basic consumables. Then you do a series of hopping down platforms onto this broken castle like area. The enviornmental details are stunning. Its like the whole world is twisted sideways or upside down, the castle going along the side of the sky, crumbled and contorted is quite the sight to behold. We got a small glimpse of this at the final area in the base game, but its really expanded upon here.
Here you encounter some new enemies, these crawling mummified looking zombies, a hulking two handed fat monster guy, some knight type enemies, but really nothing that memorable or exciting and actually the mummies are kinda a chore to fight, I think they endlessly respawn or something. After a brief series of fighting a few groups of monsters, and this awkward sequence where you walk onto a ledge where it cracks off and you fall down 100 feet but miraciously take no damage, the first half of the DLC reveals its core idea: Running past machine-gun like turret projectiles from unkillable butterfly enemies and doing platforming...thats what youll be doing.
The first half has a bunch of platforming sections, where it just defies its own games rules and logic where you have to fall off big cliffs to progress. There are developer messages everywhere and ghostly figures pointing down saying "Go fall, you wont die" ... its just kinda awkward and ugly and gamey...like they couldnt come up with anything better? Why am I not taking fall damage from these outrageously long falls? It doesnt make any sense. The fact they had to put dev messages just to clue the player in also adds to the stupidity and lack of reasoning. But as you keep falling down, you eventually come across the butterfly machine gut enemy. I was shooting spells at him, but could do no damage. He shoots yellow balls at you that will kill you quick, meaing you dont have any chance to engage in fighting enemies anymore, its just a series of running and platforming.
Then you come to a big open poison swamp...hooray. Its filled with enemies and potentially interesting places to go, but you cant do it because this damn machine gun turret is shooting at you nonstop. Its just not very fun. So after some trial and error you have to climb these vines going up and do... more platforming. There is a cool NPC invasion up here with some sort of pyromancer that wasnt a pushover, and was an engaging fight so it was a good break from the dodging platforming stuff. Like, yeah, its hard, but its hard in a bad way. I want the challenge to come from fighting enemies and interesting enviornmental hazards, not running away from machine gun spamming like I'm on D-Day or something. But luckily here you can find an optional path to kill a magic guy which controls the butterfly machine gun spammer, then you can explore the swamp with him dead. Not much to find that was useful, though, at least for a Sorcery character.
Then right after theres another damn butterfly, with more platforming... ugh. Then it opens to a big wasteland field with a bunch of buildings for cover and more butterfly projectile spam. At this point its just annoying.
Thankfully its quickly over after this, and you get to the actual Ringed City part of the DLC.
Once you arrive at Ringed City after a frankly bad first half/intro, its gotta be getting good from here, right? Well at least it looks beautiful, its sorta reminiscent of Anor Londo, it is very yellow and golden looking and almost heavenly. But no, guess what? It's more platforming and dodging past projectiles. Now the game spawns a bunch of unkillable magical archers you have to run past and do more cover and platforming....ughhhh are you kidding me?! I want to fight enemies, not run past projectiles and dodge for hours! Finally after this annoying section these parts are largely over and the DLC starts getting more enjoyable.
After this you find yourself in a series of Castle courtyards, fighting strong Knight enemies which really intense fun movesets, then you come to a staircase with a bunch of these giant hulking monsters to take down. Its cool and fun, but I couldnt help shake the feeling that this area was a bit too linear and hallway feeling.. Theres a door where a mysterious NPC talks to you, but not much comes of it.
After this area, you come across another big empty swamp, except you dont take poison damage at least.. This area is kind of bad... it just feels lazy. Its full of these insects that are frankly just boring to fight and are just there to spam up the screen. There are these weird grasshopper enemies with human faces that talk to you , which are kinda cool I guess. It also has these giant hulking monsters that spawn the afformentioned magical archers, which was OK in this context. There is something cool in this area , though, off in a tucked away corner you can find Ornstein and have a mini boss battle with him, and kill him to get his armor set, which was a fun novelty encounter.
The DLC then continues on with some bridge areas where a dragon swoops down and breathes fire at you, like its origins in Demon's Souls. Decent enough, but also just more platforming and dodging.. It leads to a prison maze type area with more platforming which is just kinda meh because you keep dropping up and down and getting turned around without much points of interest. You then fight a big Stationary dragon mini-boss, he kinda just sits there and swoops at you and breathes fire. If you just hide behind the wall and use Magic you can just chunk his health down from safety... theres not much to say about it, kinda meh encounter.
At this point I/we (co-op) realized we missed an optional boss. Back around the courtyard bonfire area is a secret elevator you can jump off which leads to another short secret area which leads to a secret Dragon boss fight. This boss is the hardest boss in all of Dark Souls III. It took us a handful of attempts. it was pretty fun and challenging. Its a dragon that flies around, comes down breathes fire at you, casts Dark magical spells and AOE effects, swipes at you with his tail, has tons of health, etc. The only annoying part is the run to the boss has an elevator, jumping off at right time, going down stairs, going down ladder, etc. Probably the best part of the DLC, and its easily missed.
After all this, you enter a castle room which contains a "boss". I say boss because its more like that fight in Demons Souls where it will randomly pick a human player to put in your game and you must kill the human player, and that is the "boss". The other player cannot use flasks, at least. Yeah this gimmick is kinda fun, but it should of been expanded upon. There should have been another boss as well, I know there are painted guardians that spawn, but its not enough to keep it fresh. And infact, if you play single player you do get a unique NPC fight, which honestly is better. Luckily after failing a few times on real humans, it gave us the NPC fight so at least we got to experience it.
So really all the DLC's boss fights are kinda back to back, they arent spread around at all so it doesnt give you a good sense of progression or variety. Its just like right at the end of the DLC you get a boss rush... not a big fan of that. Because after all this you come across a little castle room with a lady clutching an egg. Its a very interesting sight, and very cinematic. You get a cutscene where the egg crumbles and then it teleports you to a big, empty, barren deserty ash area I guess symbolizing the egg breaking destroyed the Ringed City or something. Well this area is pretty underwhelming. Yeah, maybe its lore accurate and makes sense, and it looks cinematic, but its literally just a big empty field. Like it feels like it probably took 1 hour to create for the devs. There is a single Knight enemy that spawns in the corner that drops a slab, and then when you wander around you come across the final boss of the DLC: Gale. This is a humanoid type fight where he jumps around, has projectiles, is fast, is decently challenging, but its not as cool or cinematic and epic as something like the boss of the first DLC. Its just a decent, fun final fight. I think he has two phases, but it only took us 2 or 3 tries to shoot him down with our spells.. after you kill him, thats it. Theres no cutscene, no nothing. You just wander around this empty barren field some more. You can actually find another building with this NPC lady fight, this girl that shoots a bow, with magical yellow arrows at you, shes actually decently challenging and should have had her own boss bar. A fun fight that shouldnt be missed. Past that theres not much else to do. You can actually go back to the painting lady from the first DLC and talk to her and give her the Dark Soul of Gale that you obtain from the boss fight, the girl thanks you and says she will paint a wonderful painting for you or something, but I searched around and apparently it never actually comes to fruition and thats the end of the interaction, she just keeps saying she will paint you a world.. Kinda disappointing ending? I wanted a cutscene or something, it feels so unfinished, I don't know.
So thats The Ringed City. Sadly, neither of the DLC's are particularly great. I think its mostly in part that they are not produced by Miyazaki, who knows. Feels like most of Ringed City is just a series of platforming and an obstacle course, and the fighting parts arent particularly amazing or anything , neither are the new enemies. As for interesting items to find, well I did come across some neat +3 rings like Clthoranthy, and a few others I forget honesty - so yeah it does have some neat items to fid, but the locations and dodging past unkillable enemies the whole time doesnt really entice you to want to explore very much so... Its just another lukewarm DLC experience.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment