Alright, Nine, I see that you have the DLC.
Is it worthwhile? I’m hugely skeptical since it only has 2 bosses and ~4 hours of content for $15.
Well, I haven’t played it enough to state the actual value of the expansion. Of the brief bit I have played with it so far, the general mechanics of enemies that I’ve seen is they hit very hard and they are in fairly large groups almost all the time. This makes it so any slight mistake is instantly punished and makes fights feel like endurance matches instead of strategic puzzles. Rather than approaching a fight and learning the mechanics behind it, I’m finding myself sniping enemies with a bow just so I don’t have to fight 5+ enemies at once every time I walk 10 feet. If I had to do this only once in a while it would be fine, but so far it has been the case with almost every single fight and when it isn’t the case, you are usually placed in a situation where your movements are highly restricted.
Perhaps my opinion will change once I’ve completed the DLC, but at the very least the opening to it uses very obnoxious design choices to create an artificial difficulty that encourages cheese tactics and misses the entire point behind what makes Dark Souls 3 challenging.
I’ve gone through the DLC, and here are my opinions (as opinions, take with a grain of salt)…
The DLC is somewhat of a mixed bag for me personally. I really like the aesthetics of the environments, as they are creepy & foreboding. The maps have multiple paths which allows you to explore, but also can get you lost, forcing you to backtrack quite a bit. There is never any clear indication as to where to go, so I found myself lost quite a bit. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is hard to say, but overall I enjoyed exploring the environments.
Enemies are nicely varied, and there are new enemies to face here. I really liked the normal enemy designs, especially the fly ones, but there is a caveat to them. Like a previous poster mentioned, the DLC has a tendency to throw mobs of enemies at you. While it doesn’t happen all the time, it happens fairly frequently, which left me with the impression that it was kinda cheap. Imagine you are exploring a snow covered landscape with frost obscuring your field of view, and then having about 6-enemies get up in your face, and as you try to gain some distance you find yourself being attacked not only by the 6-enemies, but also multiple fire based projectiles that are heat seeking and follow you around. A little further down you see that it is the trees hurling fire-balls at you, and you start encountering packs of wolves, and the wolves themselves can howl causing even more packs of other wolves to show up. The best way I can describe it is annoying. But again, the basic enemy design is fairly good, and I was genuinely creeped out by some of their designs.
There are new armor sets and weapons to discover, which I was happy with. Some of the new weapons are actually pretty good. The armor sets were decent and I can’t complain about the variety. There are also some new spells to find, which I don’t use magic, but there are some new ones, which are different from the base game spells.
Overall the DLC is decent, and in some ways pretty good, but my biggest gripes are with the bosses and the way the DLC finished. When I was done with the DLC it felt like there should be more, and I wasn’t even sure if I had completed it or not, as there is no satisfying way to tell when its over…you just get to a point where there is nothing else to find and you ask yourself was that it? Only to discover through trial & error that yup, that’s all there is to it. There wasn’t any indication that I had finished it, just an expectation of something else that was not to come.
Bosses were unsatisfying to me personally. There are only 2, but the number doesn’t bother me, only their encounters do. They felt cheap to me. One has attacks that seem way to fast, as the boss will lunge, do a 180 and attack again, and again (multiple times) in the span of a second. It just seemed way too sped up. The other boss has 3-phases, which felt like over-kill to me…kill it once, okay you gotta do it again, kill it again, that should do it…Nope, gotta do it one more time. Are you F’n kidding me? I just felt that the bosses weren’t handled very well, and that the Devs were trying too much to artificially increase difficulty through cheap ways. But that’s just me.
So overall I was satisfied, but also felt that it was lacking in some ways. There are some good, and some bad associated with it. I managed to go through the DLC in about 3 and half hours, but some may take longer or shorter. There is also a pvp arena, which I didn’t try, as I don’t give two F’s about multi-player. So as far as my own opinion goes, the DLC felt new and that is always a good thing, but also felt lacking in some ways. I also wished that there was some way that I was notified for beating it, but never got it, so I was also left with the feeling of…“what, is it over, is that it?”.
Not as meaty as say the DLC of DS1 or 2 or even Bloodborne, but its more Dark Souls, and so it deserves some credit for that. There is also one more DLC to drop early next year, so I’ll have to wait for that. If I had to rate this DLC, I’d give it a 7 out of 10. Some good and some disappointments.
Certainly feels as though the PvP arena is a big part of the expansion (which isn’t for everyone, understandably) As the main area was a bit on the short side, and while some weapons were indeed pretty cool. (i mean, who wouldn’t want a flail that allows you to flog yourself?) It just kinda felt like a lot of the gear (and some small areas like the infested cellar looking room) took more inspiration from Bloodborne than Dark Souls which was a bit odd. As for a lasting effect it’s very hit or miss as well, some people might enjoy themselves for a couple hours while others might be enjoying it for days. (But i guess this is where the arena comes in…)
All in all, it’s a mixed bag overall and people will either really love it for what it offers, or they’re just gonna see right through the things it does well and whine and moan about how its short duration and (arguably) silly boss fights were. Then they’ll stop talking about it and go back to pontiff fight clubs til the next DLC comes out
(i don’t think my coherence got any better since last time i tried to explain something, sorry…)
This video isn’t directly related to DS3, but it’s an interesting insight into the history of the Souls games.
THE SECRET ORIGINS OF DARK SOULS
http://www.ign.com/videos/2016/10/27/the-secret-origins-of-dark-souls
i really enjoyed the dlc area. The last boss is one of the toughest ive fought in the souls series. Very difficult but rewarding once you learn the patterns.
Interesting that there hasn’t been any update here even after the Ringed City. 
Beat the game fully (off stream, sorry arnge/Klobber). Really enjoyed the Ringed City. There were a few aspects to it that I think it’d be better off without (fucking Curse, why is it everywhere?). Midir kind of annoyed me more than Nameless King, albeit for the same reasons. Camerawork just doesn’t…work with large enemies like that, and guaranteed multihit attacks feel excessive in a Souls game where player control is usually streamlined and important.
Was both underwhelmed and elated with the final boss, too. It only took me two tries, with a painfully slow Fume UGS to boot. The boss is incredibly easy when you understand his attacks. Not even necessarily his patterns or combos, but just learning how quickly he can pull something out and how far it’ll hit trivializes him. Having said that, the fight looks amazing and feels like a solid sendoff to the series. It’s basically an amped-up Artorias fight from DS1. I hope it’s a little more difficult in NG+. I intend to take my character to NG++, but don’t know if I want to go any further than that.
Looking forward to doing some invasions when my internet isn’t shitting itself. If you see ‘Samael’ with a FUGS and Vilhelm’s armor, give me a wave!
Build: https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls3/184096
Edit: Wonder if Grava will get to give it a go again after GDX…