Today, I was talking with Ian about how great it is when games have choices that you can make which will influence things later on. He’s playing Horizon Forbidden West right now and mentioned something in the first game that happened in that way.
*SPOILER WARNING*
Consider this a blanket spoiler warning because I’m going to spoil something in HZD, even though I never played it. You can do side quests in which you bring settlements to your cause. Then, the leaders will help you with the final battle later on. Obviously, I could not tell him that there was something similar in the Elden Ring DLC (he has not played it yet). Depending on what you do with the NPC questlines, you will have a different next-to-last boss fight. I mentioned in a past post that Needle Knight Leda’s fight can be drastically different depending on which NPC questlines you do. First time, I fucked everything up and had me and the rando Sanguine Noble against Leda and Dryleaf Dane. It was pretty pathetic for what was supposed to be an epic fight.
On my second playthrough, I did almost everything right. So in that fight, I got Thiollier and Ansbach on my side, and we had to fight Dryleaf Dane, Redmane Freyja, Sir Moore, and Leda. I didn’t invite Hornsent to the party, but I may do so in the future–just to have everyone in the mix. It wasn’t hard, but it was so much more fun and chaotic with the whole gang there.
I go back and forth about how esoteric the NPC questlines are. Because of how twisty and turny Shadow Keep is, I fucked up all the questlines. Also, because I inexplicably ignored one of the three ways to go at the three-way site of grace. It’s called something pretty close to that. My memory sucks, though, and I should have put a marker the way I didn’t go. Because of that, I did not find Thiollier until it was too late to actually move his questline forward.
The latter was completely on me. The former, though, was not. I have seen other people get hopelessly lost in Shadow Keep as well. There are two ways to get into Shadow Keep, and then it’s just so fucking twisty and turny. I’m sure I missed a bunch even when I went back to look it over. Plus, I hate when they do the ‘traverse the rafters’ bullshit and put enemies on said rafters. And in this case,
I was talking about the incantations of the DLC in the last post. There are a few that are clearly S-Tier (Knight’s Lightning Spear. It’s the best incantation in the whole game, overall.), but there are more that are either meh or out-and-out terrible. And with my first character who I play as almost a pure caster, it was a letdown that I did not get much cool stuff to play with. I understand why so many of the finds were smithing stones, but that’s not as interesting as a cool new incanation or weapon.
I will say that on my second character who started as a pure strength character with a bit of faith and turned into a paladin, it really trivilialized several bosses. It made a few harder, but having enough faith to use several mid-to-higher tier incantations eased the range issues that pure melee characters often struggle with.
Which takes us to the last boss. The one that made me nearly quit the DLC and called it absolute trash. There is someone in the RKG Discord who gave up on on the boss today. There’s another who just does not want to struggle with that boss any further.I will say that I had a much easier time the second go round and I probably could have done him with the NPCs and my Mimic Tear. I just didn’t want to. I don’t play the games for the bosses (I really don’t), and I did not want to spend even another hour on the final boss, let alone several.
I will say that I could at least block most of the attacks, unlike the first time around. I still couldn’t see shit, though. I think my biggest issue with the fight is that it’s so visually cluttered. Every action has a follow up action with sparkles, and you can be three or four actions deep with the visuals all overlapping. In my first playthrough, I just could not see what the hell was going on. And I did not have enough stamina to tank hits. I am stubborn (some would say unnecessarily so), which means that my first character is always a shit character. Rory has gotten a lot of grief for his smorgasbuild, but that’s a valid way to play. I have always leveled up unwisely in From games, and the first thing I did when I went into the Shadow of the Erdtree was to slap 20 points into Vigor. I was feeling the pain and did not enjoy dying in one or two hits to common enemies.
I’ve watched different reviews of the game. The one above is from Fextralife, who does the main wiki of From games. Most of the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. There are a few that are really negative. And there are some that are mostly positive with some big negatives. I find myself agreeing witnh something from almost every review. Sometimes, even when the comments are contrary to each other. The DLC is more Elden Ring, yes. The DLC adds something new, yes. The DLC is more straighforward with the questlines, true. The DLC made me care more about the NPCs in a shorter period of time (on my second playthrough), yes. The lore is still there. Well….that’s more complicated.
I think the lore of the DLC is one of the weakest aspects, to be honest. It feels like they retconned a lot of the lore from the main game to make it fit the DLC. People in the RKG Discord have been discussing the lore, and they are mostly on the side of it being pretty weak in the DLC. All we knew about Miquella in the main game was that he was the brother of Malenia and was afflicted with a curse that made him perpetually young (just as Malenia was afflicted with Scarlet Rot). Mohg kidnapped Miquella and put him in an egg.
Simultaneously, we were told that Miquella was very charming and could make people do whatever he wanted. He was supposedly kind and wanted to help the beleaguered and the downtrodden. I was immediately suspicious of him because anyone who proclaims themselves as nice and wanting to do help others usually wasn’t and didn’t. Or if they wanted the latter, it was in a very specific way that may or may not actually be beneficial.
When it turned out that he was going to be the main protagonist (and I use that word loosely) of the DLC, my spirit sank. Of all the characters in the story, he was probably the one I cared least about. I would have liked to hear more about Malenia or Melina, Radagon, Rykard, or literally anyone but Miquella.
That’s all for today. More tomorrow.