Back again with more criticisms.
*SPOILER WARNING*
At the end of the last post,I mentioned that I felt defeated at the Leda fight because it was supposed to be this grand and wild spectacle, but because of how I fucked up all the NPC questlines, it was just boring and anticlimactic.
When I reached Shadow Keep, if I had looked up the storylines, I would have been able to set things up better. I didn’t want to do that, though, because I like to do my first playthrough as spoiler-free as possible. I can’t deny, though, that I was unhappy at the end of the game by how much I fucked up the NPC questlines. I will say that in the video from the last post, he mentioned something from Lies of P that he thought would have been a good addition to this game. It’s that when you look at the list of…whatever they’re called in that game–basically, bonfires, there will be a picture of someone or something if they are related to something you can do in that area. That way, you knew when to go back to an NPC, for example, after doing a step in their quest.
I really appreciated that. I didn’t like the game in general, but I liked that I could tell in a glance if I needed to do more with an NPC or important thing in the area. I would really like it if FromSoft would do this. They could do it by putting a picture next to the Site of Grace fairly easily, I feel. Even following a Wiki with my second playthrough, I’m so paranoid that I will miss something with the NPCs. For example, only by reading the RKG Discord Elden Ring forum did I realize that you could do something with the Dragod Priestess, but you had to do something completely unrelated to her (with another character, Thiollier) by a certain point in order to get a different scene with her.
I’m sure there are people who got this on their first playthrough, but I doubt there is anyone who got it all in one playthrough without a guide. I know that’s part of the point–to get people to replay the DLC. You can say the same thing about any of their games. It’s a choice, and it’s vaild. However. That means that anyone who only plays it once will be losing out.
My first playthrough is what I consider to be my canon playthrough. I always have a soft spot in my heart for that character because they are my stand-in. I’m going into any From game, not knowing what the hell I’m doing. I do what I want regardless of how optimal it is. There’s a running joke in the RKG Retry Elden Ring episodes that Rory has a smorgasbuild. It’s a little of this, a little of that, and a little of what’s over there. He is a magpie and is attracted to the last cool thing he saw. I mean, most of us are, but he’s especially so.
As a result, they used a larva tear and respecced before the second series. They tried to focus more on faith and dex, kind of, but they still spread their points a bit thin. Which is fine! It was just kind of funny beacuse they talked about doing ,an actual build, which was not what they did.
Again, I relate to that. I have respecced, but not to make a better build–just to give me more vigor. This was with my first character. It was the best decision I had made because that meant I could take three or four hits rather than one or two. Other than that, however, my character ‘build’ is just as messy as it’s always been. My second character’s build is more straightforward, but that’s because that character is a chonk-a-bonk and mostly just likes to hit things hard. Although I’m leveling up faith and making the character a paladin.
I know I’ve been harping on this, but one of my biggest issues with the DLC is how easy it is to fuck up the NPC questlines. I was reading how to make sure to get the brawl at the end with all the NPCs, and people are still not sure how to make cerntain that you get them all. Most of them, yes, but there are a few that seem to have different expectations. One is Hornsent. Part of the issue is that he has two steps in near tandem (with two sperate mandatory bosses. You can only do one then the other, but…I think you can at least get to where the thing with Hornsent happens at the same time).
I’m looking up how to do Redmane Freyja’s questline (as I’m watching two co-streamers just fuck it up). You have to meet Sir Ansbach in the Shadow Keep library. I completely missed this in my first playthrough because this legacy dungeon is so goddamn labyrinthian. It hurts. He was just in a room off the first floor site of grace, but it’s a bit of a dip and dive to get there. I did not look it up, obviously, but I’m still sad that I messed it up.
I did find Redmane Freyja near the seventh floor site of grace. She was MUCH easier to find because she was in the same room as the site of grace. Here’s the thing, though. You have to go back down and talk to Sir Ansbach about it, get a letter from him to give to her, and then she’ll move on. The co-streamers I’m watching assumed that you gave Sir Anbach the secret scroll he was looking for and that would get him to do the thing to move Freyja, but, no. That’s not how it works.
Sure, it makes some kind of sense if you squinted after you read the guide about how to do it. But the majority of people were not going to do that. Also, the guides weren’t all written at that time. I think I didn’t mind as much in the other games because they weren’t as long or as dense. Yes, there were points when you could lock shit out, but I knew I was going to play another time, so it didn’t matter as much. Also, I knew taht I could do NG+ with my main character to experience the NPC questlines.
I love Elden Ring. It’s tied as my top game of all time (with Dark Souls III). However, I have only finished it four times. Three times for the plat and one time with my stronk character. I have finished all the Dark Souls games probably at leasta dozen times each. Including the DLCs for half of those. Dark Souls III is the longest of them all, and that took me maybe 100 hours for my first run? Without the DLCs. I honestly can’t remember. Probably between 80 and 100. If that’s the case, then it was one third to half my first playthrough in Elden Ring.
Another criticism in the DLC that carries over from the main game–the goddamn platforming. I was just doing the first part of Shadow Keep, and there’s a place where you have to jump up on a misshapen beast (that was put together by someone), climb up it (and it’s huge), and then jump from its head to the balcony. Except I missed the first time and fell to my death. I just sighed heavily because it felt like it was such a bullshit death.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow.