Ashes of Ariandel Review (Dark Souls 3 DLC)
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Channel: Joseph Anderson
Views: 440,436
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: dark souls, dark souls 3, ashes of ariandel, review, critique, analysis, video game, FROMsoftware
Id: JYtnqS5Pwls
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)
Published: Sat Nov 26 2016
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.
WARNING: SPOILERS - same level of spoilers as the review itself; my comment mentions the names and mechanics of certain enemy types encountered in the Dark Souls 3: Ashes of Ariandel DLC.
Found myself agreeing with basically every point, especially about the lack of content, over-reliance on giant health pools, mob fights and ambushes, and the bloodborne-like enemies feeling like a symptom of running out of ideas. Though I really liked the visual and mechanical design of the wolves, the crow warriors and Friede herself, they definitely felt like they fit more into Bloodborne's world than Souls. Their mobbing, long combo chains and quick dashes made me feel slow in comparison, and made them feel out of place.
The difficulty is another point; I didn't find most of the parts 'challenging' as much as 'tedious', which is how I felt with some parts of DS2. A lot of the encounters feel more like From throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us in an attempt to 'challenge' us or deprive us of some estus, instead of cleverly or smartly designed encounters that bring something new to the table. The biggest difference is that a lot of these encounters are more about patience than mastery.
Obviously, it's too much to expect consistent, repeated genius and novelty with a series that's essentially on its 5th iteration. For what it's worth, AoA has a lot going for it. The visuals were incredible, Friede is clearly a fan-favorite and very deserving of it. The fight is atmospheric, mechanically challenging, and audiovisually gorgeous. At the end of it though, once the excitement is over, it's difficult not to get the 'that's it?' feeling. It's not even about getting my money's worth, more a comparison to my expectations that the series has set up so far, especially with Artorias and Old Hunters.
In the end, I'm still happy with the purchase, and I'm not sure if it was 'kept back' to be sold separately, or is 'blatantly disrespecting' the fanbase; while this is certainly a possibility, it would probably be the most cynical way of looking at it. I tend to lean on thinking of it as, like I said before, a sign that From is beginning to run out of new ideas, and/or that Miyazaki is ready to move on from the series - which is something he's been hinting at pretty consistently for a while now.
Really can't say that I agree with some of his views on Friede, as much of his issues seems to stem from misguided conclusions.
Finding her when she's gone invisible in the first phase is immediately solved by standing within 20 feet of her when she initiates this, because 99% of the time the AI reads this position as "okay, we can jump behind the player, lets do that". It's also solved by just doing a 360 sweep with the camera in conjunction to this. I can safely say that she's never successfully gotten off an invis attack once I realized this.
His says the second phase is his likely favorite, and while I can't say that this is inherently wrong, I also don't think he's really looked into the fight all too well. You can almost ignore Friede entirely in this phase unless she's healing, as she just goes almost entirely passive once you start attacking Ariandel, who's defense stats seem to be a bit lower than hers. This is, at least for me and the people I know, the easiest phase.
Because of the prior points, I can't agree with his criticism of the third phase. On your first few run throughs, I can see this criticism making sense. However digging into the details of the fight makes it abundantly clear that most experienced players will eventually be making it to the third phase without much issue. It's very easy to counter the first phase's most potent tool, and the second phase is an absolute breeze once you recognize Friede stands back a majority of the time. It actually got to a point where I was disappointed if I used more than one or two estus by the time the third fight started.
I won't say the boss is perfect, but I can't help but feel like he missed out on some (almost,) key mechanics of the fight.
Have they released the cover song for this DLCs trailer yet?
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=8utVkoTkkfo
I remember being very exited for the dark souls 3 dlc when i played the base game. But hearing news about how small they are going to be and watching short clips, it killed basically all my interest in them. I am still content with my dark souls 3 experience and i don't need any enhancements for it.
I like a lot of Anderson's videos, but I've never been fond of his Souls' videos. He always seems to grade on unusual criteria, impose his own ruleset and then hold the game accountable for it, or just ignore large portions of content. This review still fits that mold to me.
Right off the bat, I think he's wildly off the mark in how much "area" there is in the DLC. He gives the previous DLCs huge leeway in what's considered a complete "area" while downplaying the content in Ashes. AotA is not that large, it just has many excellent bosses that slow your pace through it. None of the DaS2 DLCs can be honestly cut into three areas. Calling the pyramid it's own area in DLC1 and double counting the tower in DLC2 while counting the entirety of Ashes as 1.5 is downright dishonest. BB is the only exception here, but that's because it was a double DLC sold as one. I think it might have been fair to chop up the Ashes area into snowfields + tower, and town + cliffs + rot as two "area"s, and that still leaves the descent to the gravewatcher fight as an additional .5. The fake "objectivity" here really bugged me.
And even if you did that, I think he severely downplayed the density of content in the Ashes DLC. There is a huge variety in enemies with large, distinct movesets, and the game moves you from one to the next and combines the enemy types with one another all very quickly. I think besides the BB DLC (which is again, the exception) it's pretty easily got more variety and depth of content than any other DLC levels.
His criticisms of the bosses just seemed like him deliberately hamstringing himself or misrepresenting the boss. It's not "weird" that the gravetender can attack while guarding. That's a unique property of this NPC's weapon which is why they're a boss. There's no inconsistency in finding Friede if you just run toward her to break the stealth. It gives you a clear idea where she lands 100% of the time. There's absolutely no need to suicide into Ariandel's fire when Friede runs off to heal. Use the alone time to wreck him. If he starts doing a close range attack, turn around and knock Friede out of the animation. It's a really long cast time. Most of the time I could do both. I don't understand his complaint about phase 3's attack chains being inconsistent or unreadable. There are a couple of very clear ending moves, and it's not hard to move in for damage after them. Her most deadly moves are all highly telegraphed and easy to dodge and punish. It feels like Anderson made the leap from "I couldn't do it" to "It can't be done" without very much experimentation.
Lastly, I think it's pretty dishonest to talk about the DLC without mentioning the additions to multiplayer and the new weapons. The new PvP arenas are sure to keep many players busy and are a welcome addition for people who want a more organized experience. The weapons introduced are pretty damn unique and extremely fun. I can't think of another Dark Souls DLC that added this much cool stuff that I felt the need to try out. The scythe, lionheart, and the corvian weapons in particular are extremely fun and offer something not found yet in the game. The millwood axe and hammer have really cool weapon arts as well. Follower weapons look pretty fun to use for invasions. New spells are underwhelming, and that would be a fair point to make if he had mentioned any of this content in the review. But this doesn't really come across as a review. More of a half baked criticism that he tacked some arbitrary numbers on.
I really liked the DLC, but I feel like I could craft a more convincing "do not buy" than what was presented here.
I'm sorry that this will seem really lazy and/or self-indulgent but I'm just going to repost what I responded to the review itself with - I typed a lot and I honestly don't feel like retyping it again with slightly different wordings >_>
My thoughts on the review, worded as a response to Joseph:
Hey I finally have something to actually contribute in a comment! I think this is the first time I've disagreed with you outright on something, even accounting for difference in perspectives and preferences, so that's interesting. The video was very well put together and expressed as usual but for the first time I don't feel you managed to give the content a fair evaluation even within your chosen perspective. I completely understand if you don't feel like responding to the massive upcoming tl;dr but I wanted to put it out there anyway. I want to be really clear that I think all your content including this video is really excellent and if I end up coming across as blunt or inappropriately harsh it's only because I don't have half your eloquence. Wanted to say that as well only because I know how conversations on the internet and not least in youtube comments can often come across, it's hard to judge tone and what kind of respect is actually being offered the other party.
The main thing is the content. I really, really think you are just flat out wrong about the size of the level and have done the game and From a disservice by putting this assertion out there. I hope that doesn't come across too harshly but to me this is like both of us looking at a red wall and you saying it's blue. Saying that Artorias levels are double the amount of content of Ariandel's is just flat out inarguably wrong as far as I'm concerned. Two thirds is also missing the mark by a lot.
I wasn't entirely clear on how you arrived at your conclusion but let's go through it briefly. Royal Wood is about equivalent to the snowfield. I feel like you might disagree here but then I'd really like to hear how you arrive at that disagreement. If you count the amount of enemies in each it's similar though I'd be willing to wager that Ashes is ahead, maybe by a large margin. The main path forward is pretty short in both but there's a decent chunk of optional parts to dig into with loot and more enemies. The physical space is probably in RW's favor but is more physical space to walk across with less to actually do a point in its corner when evaluating content? Oolacile Township is bigger than the Corvian Settlement but not by a huge amount. Chasm of the Abyss is smaller than the final part in the snowy forest so already Ariandel is ahead or on par. Then you have the chapel basement AND the climb and frozen lake with its basically-a-boss battle against 3 recycled enemies just like the Dual Sanctuary Guardians. Obviously the basement and climb are far more substantial than the 3 dogs on the way to Kalameet.
I'm certain beyond the realm of doubt that you made some kind of mistake in your evaluation of the objective sizes and amount of enemies/stuff in these areas to arrive at the conclusion that Ariandel has half of it. Especially when you admit that Royal Wood is largely Darkroot reskinned and yet still count it as a full area, but later you give the brand new wolf enemy half a point on bosses just like Smelter Demon 2.0 while Ariandel's areas actually all being new doesn't count for anything.
Bosses. You give Gravetender the same treatment as Blue Smelter. I honestly struggle to see how you found this to be fair. It feels to me like your dislike of the fight on a qualitative level affected your judgment. The giant wolf is a brand new enemy. You may not have liked him but he's still new. It's sort of the boss version of the Frozen Outskirts in that regard. Him showing up earlier in the level is just like Pursuer showing up in the Forest of Fallen Giants - it doesn't make it any less of a full new boss design. The game is doing something interesting by letting you interact with a later boss early, combining it with some regular enemies to provide more dynamic challenges as you progress. If you're going to say that the wolves showing up again soil the fight then you have to consider recycled skeletons and Velstadt in the Elana fight (and Elana herself use some already existing spells and is obviously quite similar to Nashandra). Like you said the content evaluation is not about quality - it's about quantity. I can't agree it's remotely justifiable to give the Gravetender boss half a point while doing the same for Smelter and Aavas. This isn't a fair evaluation of the work From actually put in to make new content. I agree that qualitatively, the boss can't touch the main 6 bosses in Crowns but quantitatively it should absolutely count as a full point in the chart. Or Smelter/Aavas get 0 points.
There's also, and I don't want to harp on this point too much because I don't think it's very strong, the actual phases of the boss fight to consider. A boss like Aava has about 6 or so moves. The Friede fight probably contains well in excess of 20 and multiple different dynamics that it shifts through. It's a boss fight that I'm sure you'll agree nobody would've batted an eye at being counted as two if they were divided up through the DLC as 1+2 and later 3. Then suddenly the DLC would've had 3 bosses! But From opted to make it one gigantic fight instead in an attempt to do something fresh and interesting. And yet Smelter Demon and Aavas 2.0 + 3.0 put together somehow counts for the same amount overall. That's about all I want to say here because I do think this kind of reasoning can easily snowball down a slippery slope. But this much, at the very least, is fair to state.
There's another point as well. Enemy designs. Your analysis of the DLC's combat direction was excellent and I agree with it. But it's kind of strange that you go through all this effort and then it apparently doesn't count for anything? I honestly don't understand this fixation on just strictly levels and bosses when the standard enemies are such a big chunk of the content. The enemies here are more varied than in previous DLCs, especially the Crowns packs where I would argue that the standard knights border on being interchangeable. Including variations they are quite literally more than twice the amount that Artorias added. I can't agree that it's fair to be so selective when undergoing what's meant to be an objective, quantative evaluation of content. Artorias runs away with it in bosses but Ariandel is well ahead in enemies. I fully acknowledge that most people value bosses far higher and I'd agree to the statement that they are objectively more important. But there's more nuance here than your levels & bosses chart had room for.
One last point... I sympathize deeply with your disdain for From making us walk on narrow ledges but in my experience they have fixed the issue that used to exist in Dark Souls 1. I haven't noticed any bizarre slidey events taking place on the Great Hollowesque branches. I wasn't entirely clear on whether you had experienced them yourself or whether you didn't fully embrace the challenge because you were afraid the game would unfairly slide you off. If it's the latter I think you might be able to enjoy the thing more if you do engage with it, but if it's the former I'll have to admit that the issues might still exist and either I was lucky or you were unlucky.
Overall I can't help but remember the statement you made in your DS3 critique. You were baffled at how easily and quickly you cleared the game and you initially thought it was content deprived to the extreme, but later realized it was all more substantial than you felt at first. Watching the early parts of this review I felt like I was hearing from you in that same pre-realization state on Ashes.
Ignoring the whole pvp component of the DLC when talking about value proposition seems biased. The dlc has less pve content because it has pvp content.
Sure, if you dont like pvp, the value of that content is zero. However, if you do, its gargantuan and more than makes up for less pve.
I'm surprised he didn't go more in-depth on each enemy. I say this because when he talks about the AOA DLC or just Dark Souls 3 in general, he's always rightfully critical of the way the game constantly retreads the same old grounds or is just uninspired. This video would have been a great opportunity to do that kind of critical analysis for the specific enemies.
For example, at the very end of the video, when he talks about the possibility that From Software might have a blatant disrespect for Dark Souls fans, he says that while having footage of the ice crabs accompanying his words.
I thought he was going to use that opportunity to insert a quick jab at From Software here for lazily reskinning these crabs a second time (the first time they did it was in Smouldering Lake). But he didn't.
If anyone here wants a detailed breakdown for just how uninspired many of tthe enemies of the AOA DLC are, this guy goes into far more depth on the different enemies. Pay particular attention to his critiques of the Follower Knights/Farron Followers at 6:10.
Also, I didn't get the same smile Joseph Anderson got when he got surprised by the third phase. As I was fighting Sister Friede in her third phase, all I thought to myself was, "Why didn't the boss start with the Friede-Ariendal combo and have this as the second phase?".
Because it was really a chore it was to go through the first phase. If you die, you have to beat the boring first phase to get to the decent parts of the fight. Then again, I did not like this entire boss that much in the first place and think the community extremely overrates it.
i dont know why everyone complain about the length so much. i spent like the same amount of time on this dlc as every other souls dlc, bloodborne was 2 combined so it was a little longer. people like to think that the dark sousl 1 dlc was huge it really wasn't the 2nd area being so dang small the bosses were just so beastly (artorias manus an khalameet) it took them longer artorias being one of the best fights in the series. i feel like im the only one who doesnt have a problem with this dlc. not to sound like a hipster or somethin but i feel like this is more a symptom of popularity, consider yourself lucky any of these games have dlc...i know i still wish demons souls got it