Reviews and reflections

I've been replaying Elden Ring using the Reforged mod, and I'm really coming to understand that the points of frustration the dlc have were always true of the whole thing. I'm particularly thinking in terms of the long combos, the little space to attack or heal or even just regain some stamina. The Reforged mod didn't make any changes to that particular complaint, so going into it straight off of the end of the DLC, it seems like the whole difference between Margit and [DLC boss you hate the most] is just context.

It was cool and exciting to best Margit because he was representing Elden Ring asking us to approach this game on its own terms, not as Yet Another Dork Souls. I fully agree with the idea that he was teaching us, adjusting our expectations and sharpening our skills for what was yet to come. And I'd say it was a good move, given the very direct mechanical and aesthetic connection to the mainline Dark Souls games. We could all have been forgiven for thinking their design approach would be the exact same, and it was good to have Margit let us know early that the pace is different, that our skills need to evolve more than from Dark Souls 2 to 3.

Meanwhile, the DLC is inherently only accessible to people for whom "guy with 5+ chain combos" is old, annoying hat in a game in which it's status quo. We cannot even enter the DLC without beating at least two, but most likely a full handful of guys with 5+ chain combos. I don't think any of the new bosses recaptured that "rethink how you play" idea that made the excessive combos feel acceptable, and it was always going to be tough to live up to the promise of "Elden Ring DLC" without bringing along the baggage. The entire concept of a DLC is a promise of some degree of "more of the same". I honestly don't think any of the problems are meaningfully worse in the DLC, they're just more obvious because we — as in Fromsoft afficionados who were salivating over Elden Ring at launch — have had plenty of time for the shiny new toy feeling of the base game to wear off. Even worse, the way that many Elden Ring gremlins went and created new DLC builds and replayed the base game out of excitement.

One of the complaints that I still don't think holds as a design criticism is the complaint that there's not enough reward for exploring. Clearly, people have been feeling this since before Erdtree, given that it's one of the complaints Reforged addresses by hiding new goodies in all sorts of corners. This criticism doesn't work for me because I think the reward for exploration is the gorgeous vistas, and the need for goodies in all corners or else it's "empty" and unrewarding strikes me as a very gamer-brained perspective. All the same, I understand it, and I wouldn't want to suggest that everyone should just be satisfied with the things that satisfy me. No one has to like it, but that's not proof of bad design.

Related to this, one thing I think Elden Ring did very smartly was the progression of exploration. Liurnia is as wide open, go everywhere, see everything as you can get. By the time we get to the Altus Plateau, we have options for paths, but those paths are closer to distinct paths than wide open maps. Mountaintops of the Giants and the Haligtree are so narrowed, it's debatable whether or not they're just plain linear. I think this was a smart choice because, by Leyndell, most people probably have exploration fatigue. There's been so much to see and find in the first few areas, and it was so fun and cool! And I'm sort of over it now. I'm ready for a change up.

And I think these last two things, the replaying of the entire game and the point of exploration fatigue being long crossed by Mohg's Palace, means the DLC beginning with another Liurnia-type wide open space necessitates explicit goodies in exchange for poking around every corner. I think that may be what happened to a lot of people. Maybe it would have happened to me, had I not already had a character with access to Miquella's egg from two years ago. That's my theory, anyway.

Personally, I really enjoyed the new vistas and additional story and dramatic set pieces within boss encounters. I didn't really get a lot of the DLC crit at first, still don't agree with a lot of it. I loved the chance to explore again, I enjoyed all of the new characters, and I think the new story fits in with and reframes the story contained in the base game. But letting that DLC experience percolate and also re-experiencing base game even as it's been changed by Reforged has me reflecting on how many of my deaths in both happen while I'm fully drained of stamina and yelling, "Stop stop stop stop stop STOP."