It’s an area that has a recommended level of 70 to play (though I was 100 and it was still tough), that has some new enemies, fan-service (surely that wolf is related to Sif somehow), and a few areas that recycle ideas from the main game (rope bridge, anyone?). This is a short piece of content, with no trophies, no ending, one proper boss, and a new PVP area unlocked by killing an optional boss.
Rather than discovering something new and exciting, to actually access the content you’ve paid for, it requires you to jump through hoops (albeit it less so than previous games), and something about it has suddenly struck me as shitty.īut that’s not why Ashes of Ariandel is disappointing. I don’t know, but something about that feels almost lazy. It relies on (excellent, I might add) community. But then, if you’d played that much how would you even know where to look? It requires community. If you were playing Dark Souls 3 for the first time, this would just feel like another area to visit – it’s only us 50+ hour players that notice it’s new. I can respect how the DLC works, because it’s clearly intended to never feel separate to the main game. It requires you to be a set way along in the game, and you’ll meet a dude who asks you to enter the painted world.
In fact, Sony sent it over with a guide on how to access it, because otherwise, how would you find it in a game that big?Īshes of Ariandel is similar. Now, it’s immediately on the internet, and we all know how to do it thanks to guides on day one of release. At least, that’s how it would have had to play out in the old days. Someone, somewhere, must have happened upon it, or been told by someone on the dev team. But even accessing Bloodborne’s DLC required a herculean effort. The Orphan Of Kos was an absolute bastard, I still hate him, though I can respect how fantastic the boss battle is. We wanted more, and the two pieces put into one lengthy chunk was brilliant. Dark Souls 3 felt almost like a backward step from Bloodborne, which I do believe is the pinnacle of the genre, and indeed, one of my favourite games of all time.īack when The Old Hunters DLC hit for Bloodborne, we were all rabid. Bloodborne remains my only platinum trophy, and I’d give my right nut for a sequel. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, and that’s cool.
Those people aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are, and FromSoft’s series just isn’t for everyone. I won’t ever tell you to “get gud” either. Frame drops are never pretty, and when a game isn’t pushing the boundaries of the technology, I think it should be better. At launch, Dark Souls 3 had some areas where slowdown was awful. But I won’t forgive its flaws to the extent many will.
I love the series, having first dabbled with Demon’s Souls on PS3 and seeing a game that, despite numerous technical flaws, was doing something different and interesting, rewarding concentration, discovery, and making us learn patterns and skills to defeat incredible odds in a world that wanted to kill us over and over again. I reinstalled it, grabbed my save, and awaited for the hour that it would unlock. But I loved the game, and my 9/10 suggests as much, so the realisation we were finally getting some new content after absolutely rinsing the game was brilliant. It feels like it has been a long time coming, especially for someone like myself who played through the entire game to completion for review on a debug console, meaning I lost my save and had to start over with a fresh character on a retail PS4.