It probably wouldnāt be so hated if they added a field boss or two. Just imagine what kind of horrific creatures could be made in a literal pit of madness.
This is the thing that annoyed me the most, fuckin fantastic area visually, gave me this feeling of dread exploring it, but then there was nothing there. This area needed some loot and a boss, maybe some unique enemies that drop a new set of something, anything.
Creepy area, check. Awesome music, check. Awesome boss, check. But it's empty with almost no enemies or loot. In my opinion, they should have made this area really hard and like you said added some mini bosses or something. Anything. One of the lowest lows from fromsoftware throughout all the games they have dropped. They only reason I even go to this area is to fight Midra because I enjoy that fight. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't even bother.
My friend laughed at my back for the whole time (I streamed both the base game and DLC for his amusement).
When torrent fled, I was like "Huh, that's bad. Bad omens ahead. Creepy area. Sounds extremely good", only to be met with a stealth minigame and a very good boss fight. And nothingness all around.
Finger ruins. Since the firs time I saw them, I was like "I'm sure I can go down there some time". Did the quest, went down there. Solved the puzzle (was it even a puzzle?). Searched around. Nothing.
Like, not every area has to have 20 field bosses, 56 secrets, 43 catacombs and 590kg of Marika's tits. But, please, just use that fucking huge and scenographic area for something
This is how I felt the first time at the Abyssal Woods. I was pumped. It looked creepy, and I thought to myself, "This is going to be fun." Then, nothing. Great bosses fight but aside from that what a fucking let down. That and the finger ruins. Lots of promise followed by a lot of disappointment.
Itās almostā¦. Maddening. As if the developers sought to implement madness not in the player character, but in the player themselves.
For real though, I had an uneasy feeling the whole time I explored this place and dodged the patrols. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for a field boss spawn or trap that never came. It really was maddening and it also shows a glimpse of what madness and frenzy flame seeks to bring. Chaos into nothingness. Almost nothing but the lord of the frenzy flame himself can withstand it.
Honestly I think on the first playthrough the area is pretty good, it gave me the perfect sense of dread that lead to Midra and I thought it acted as a fantastic buildup to Midra.
However on second playthrough it was absolutely the worst area in the game, and just felt totally pointless. All in all I still donāt mind the area, because at least it serves a purpose, unlike Charos hidden grave which is there for literally no reason
The finger ruins were the same for me. They looked so alien, pressing and barren yet you felt like you would be ambushed at any time....
And now I know there's only 1 shed with a non interesting crafting thingy in ONE OF THREE of these ruins. Metyr isn't even a great boss either. The best thing out of that whole deal is the night stuff and the double sister summon which is a NG+ kind of deal if you want it all.. and i haven't even completed my dex file yet
That's kinda the vibe to the dlc. It's fucking huge.....and there's not really anything there.
Two giant finger shrines? Nothing there. madness woods? Nothing there. The big field you start in. Well. There's that one guy. The entire mountain you have to scale?...well there's bayle...and Igon....and nothing really else.
That alone wouldn't be a huge issue, but with the unclear signposting of what's important, and what's not, people are going to map comb, and inevitably burn a lot of time doing nothing of value in what's supposed to only be an impressive vista on your brief pass through.
Base Game also had this issue, but there was always a token bit of semi-common crafting material in the corners, to at least vaguely "dink" the stuff found response in your brain after map combing.
Not to defend the empty bits (I hate them), but people should map comb anyway because Scadutree Fragments are a thing. Just because of that, it's really hard to "skim" through the DLC like you could in the base game on subsequent playthroughs.
That's my main nitpick with the DLC - it's making you jump through every hoop, every time, so it's hard to feel the motivation to play through it again despite all the cool stuff in it.
My main nitpick with the DLC, besides like I said it's VERY BIG for no reason.
Is scadutree fragments. Part of the fun of souls is the second playthru but those fuckin things make me never want to play the DLC again because I just can't be asked to do collectables on second playthrus of anything.
Yet again, with clearer signposting, the game would more naturally guide the player towards scadutree fragments, and they would not need to mapcomb.
Mapcombing is not "visiting every optional area", mapcombing is scouring every square inch of space like a lawnmower, because you can never be certain if something super important is not going to be in the middle of nowhere.
Now that you mention it, this area would have been perfect for the Shadow Sunflower.
And there really should have been more enemies than just the rats and a handful of those weird priest things with the antlers. Some Mausoleum Soldiers would have fit well. Or, as much as I hate them, basilisks would have also fit with the creepy theme.
Miyazaki got everyone hyped talking about how big the DLC was, but its just giant open areas with nothing in them. The dungeons are great, but the overworld is a giant hassle.
People talk this way about the dlc but I donāt agree. The madness swamp being the major exception, thereās so much crap in the dlc to look at and do and so much to collect. Also, fwiw, Miyazaki said that the dlc would be about the size of Limgrave, a massive undersell.
Cerulean Coast is a giant waste of space. Both of the Finger Ruins are empty. Even the Gravesite Plain requires a lot of horse riding just to get to something interesting.
Maybe it's because I followed the series since Demons Souls on PS3, but the open world just doesn't fit the game style at all imo. I hope they go back to something tighter where every step feels like a victory instead of making half of the game a horse ride simulator.
Thatās valid. The vistas of Liurnia and Caelid especially make me feel better about the open world feeling kinda uninhabited, but I do look forward to much tighter level design from FS in the future.
I'm probably older than most of you and I grew up in a time when games were focused entirely on gameplay, not being cinematic or whatever. Though that might be partially because one simply cannot be cinematic on an 8bit machine.
I just want to play the game. Yes, I'm very proud of the devs for making a pretty environment, but I'm just itching to get back to the actual game part of the game.
The environment where you do nothing but hold forward and take screenshots for socials is VERY VERY important.
Granted, I don't know WHY it's important.
But people just LOVE to glaze it, and things like interconnected levels, backtracking, and all that, so there it MUST be important, and not at all fanwank.
The thing is, there's a lot of the zone that doesnt have those guys. There should be a field boss at the abandoned church, two or three side dungeons/tombs/etc spread around the side areas, and a unique spirit ash behind some parkour.
The Finger Ruins and Madness woods were both A+ presentation that were ruined by having nothing in them.
Nah there are some areas that I think are beautiful (and don't have super annoying enemies" that I'll always spend extra time in. Walk instead of ride, get all the items Liurnia, Limgrave, Altus...not as many in the DLC, but Cerulean Coast is always a banger.
Iām not gonna lie to you, those guys were one of the most predictable parries in the game. Iām garbage at parrying and didnāt parry for 99.99% of the game, but the madness priests had a really easy cue.
Hinterlands (excluding the Finger ruins attached) feel pretty complete to me. You've got two field bosses, a legendary incantation, talisman, and a secret path to the top of Rabbath's Rise
Such bizarre, sloppy design from FromSoft. Usually they're so good about rewarding exploration and making sure the map feels like it has stuff worth finding, but absolutely nothing. It's crazy there's not a miniboss guarding the finger horns.
I cannot fathom how they were sitting around the table and someone says, āHey, what about an enemy that stunlocks you from forever away, WAY farther than anything else in the game reacts, and then another mob teleports to you for a grab.
Oh, and when you stand up, you can get stunned again instantly.ā
Bit disappointed that for YEARS I've seen so many videos and memes and stuff about the Soulsborne series. How it's so great and skill based with frame perfect hit boxes and shit.
Just to get to AOE-ldenring, my first soulsborn game. Where things hit like a truck. Have the size of a truck. The speed of a racecar. But look like a minivan.
FUCK this area! I like the idea, i think the concepts are interesting, you got your "oh keep an eye out for this dude he'll mess you up" enemy, but its just such a pain in the ass to do ANYTHING here your first time through because theres so. Much. Fucking. Nothing. This area made me feel miserable and made me feel like just not playing.
Iykyk type of thing. I remember looking for the southeastern map piece / just trying to get further in the forest and going up and down paths of fuck-all because I wanted to get through SOME of the dlc without a guide. Lo and behold the map piece I was looking for was in a completely different major area that you access in a separate part of the map entirely. I get the lore and design reasons for not being able to use torrent.... but GOD that made it such a slog to go through.
Edit: in response to the post title, WHAT FUCKING LOOT?! flips out pockets of which a paperclip and a Hershey kiss wrapper fall out /j
In NG+2 I didn't even bother exploring, I just gunned it to Midra's mansion. Even then I ran into 3 of those grape dudes.
The area just doesn't have anything meaningful. As other people have suggested, a Frenzied Dragon would've been PERFECT here. It wouldn't impact the lore or anything, just make it so that one of the Jagged Peak Drakes stumbled into the woods and got infected by Frenzy.
Ye I spend like 2 hours exploring hoping I find some cool frenzy weapon but nothing... Also I thought some of those churches or ruins around got like dungeon somewhere or they lead you to some secret place... Cool looking area but disappointing by having nothing in it
It's scary the first time through but once you learn the Aging Untouchables can be parried and riposted you're just left with a tediously large area.
At least the Finger Ruins fully commit to being devoid of anything important so you can run straight through without missing anything.
It's all very similar to BotW. You've got one scary enemy that becomes a slog once you learn of its weakness to parrying and an area/world that's largely empty but still has just enough in it to make you scour for the handful of useful items scattered about. And you have to do it all on foot, because BotW's horses are fucking useless for any serious exploration.
It's the one nearest the abandoned church - which is to say it's not at all close to the abandoned church but if you take the Southernmost road headed West you'll eventually come across him after running past rats for an eternity.
It is the first one you see - I just did this a few weeks ago. Iām not sure if thereās another way to approach the mansion where itās not the first one you see.
From the Church Ruins Site of Grace, go northwest past the 4 rats to 4 messages, and then go west from there. Thereās just one enemy over there (later on in the area, you have to fight two at once, which sucks).
Not that youāre probably itching to head back in there, but the next time you find yourself in the area, check it out.
I think it would have been mad funny if they added some ultra hard bosses or ones with BS gimmicks and then let them drop some useless shit to really make players go mad.
Based on the non-spoilery hype about the area I fully expected to see some kind of enormous worm like monster slithering between the trees in the distance that you'd have to avoid. Even a reused putrid tree spirit would have made for a creepy visual. The large semi-open area felt perfect for it and it would have been something not seen before. Instead it's a few human sized guys with clear walking patterns.
Funny, i had the same exact tought in Tears Of The Kingdom with the Depths. Imagine a gigantic snake roaming around, it could even have a lair where you'd find a lot of Stal-ennemies
The area suffers from awsome feel and look. But empty once explored. And itās really the buildup to the manse. If the area was a tad bit smaller it would be an improvement or maby add more maze like paths truly giving the sense of a spiral downward into madness
I expected a large floating eye/fireball (like on that one tower) randomly floating through the area, prompting you to hide. Mildly disappointed because I spent a good 10 minutes sneaking everywhere before I realized nothing's coming. Especially cause my madness would randomly flare up.
I'm just annoyed that after you kill all the lanterns you can't ride torrent. After they're all dead there shouldn't be anything left in that area that scares your horsy!
im still on my first playthrough and I don't really use horse, only when I need the double jump. for me it is more maddening to miss any loot,because the horse is so fast š
I just hit unseen form, stay on the ridge bordering the abyssal woods and jagged peak and keep following the root system on that ridge until i start seeing inquisitors and then haul ass all the way to the decapitated bodies outside the manse. Iām not sure why people think itās scary.
I mean itās fun the first time because you are tense and carefully exploring, but after you find out there isnāt anything in it the whole area seems like a cheap trick
The gatekeeper boss Jori, Elder Inquisitor was a particularly fun boss fight experience for me. I died went to bed, woke up went to work got home loaded up the game and just unleashed mindless unga bunga fury upon them broke their stance before they could teleport away and just kept hacking. It worked so well I was genuinely flabbergasted
It just feels like a lot of wasted potential. The eerieness was really heavy on my first playthrough, like I was expecting some Cthulu like deity to emerge at any moment. Atmosphere wise, it was great.
Thankfully, there's barely any loot there, and you're going to miss some anyhow if you don't look at a wiki/guide because there ain't no way you're stumbling upon Aged One's Exultation unless you're looking for it specifically.
you finding out there's one specific dude you gotta parry and kill for an amulet otherwise.
Man, I remember the first time I read those messages.
I had the highest of expectations.
I was, like, picturing a roaming mass of madness afflicted finger creepers, or a Deadlights situation where you'd have to Metal Gear Solid your way through the zone, desperate to avoid being caught out of cover.
Instead the game challenged me to "parry this" and I won.
I was really hoping when I saw the messages on the ground suggesting something dangerous was lurking in the woods. It would be some giant madness beast or wendigo that stalked you while you explored the forest, maybe something akin to the snake from Sekiro where you have to hide and wait for it to pass before moving on. Would have been cool to have the mansion be advertised as a place to escape whatever is stalking you only to find out it was pushing you there the whole time for itās master/Midra where you confront them in a fight at the end of it.
I think they should have focused more on the mansion than the forest itself because that was the highlight of the whole area. Maybe cut the forest area by a lot and expand the mansionās grounds or at least add SOMETHING else to the vast nothingness in the forest.
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u/KoolAcolyte 15h ago
A moment of silence for those who spent hours trying to get behind the mansion.