The Ringed City Review (Dark Souls 3 DLC)

the one word I would use to describe ring city would be bittersweet it is for now the end of Dark Souls although I'm sure from will release something similar in the near future whether that's a sequel to blood-borne or a new direction for the same core ideas I'll also be shocked if we don't see anything on Dark Souls 4 or something of a series reboot before 2024 now though Dark Souls is over Dark Souls 3 on the other hand is over for good I don't anticipate a remixed version of the game like we had for Dark Souls 2 ring city is the end it's always a little sad to witness the conclusion of something you enjoy so much but I think it's for the best and the break is welcome the content of Ring City is bittersweet in another way I enjoyed it a lot I've played it around three times now and it's some of my favorite content for this game but it comes with a bit of baggage there are two elephants in the room here not just one first let's review what exactly is in Ring City and get our usual spoiler warning out of the way I'm about to show all of the levels and the bosses so turn back if you want to play it yourself first if you're a fan of souls and it's worth your time ring city has two main areas and for bosses for levels you have the opening in the drej keep in a large area from which the DLC takes its name you can break these down into more precise pieces the drej keep which players were given a preview of in the base game before the final fight of soul of cinder can be split into two the first part where you explore one of the most vertically inclined levels in the series this crushed and mangled mess of lothric and then the remains of earthen peak from Dark Souls 2 which sits as a swampy mess at the bottom of all ring city itself can be broken down into three areas the introduction to the city and your descent through part of its streets then exploring another swamp which is to me visually distinct from others so far in the series it's far more Moody and thankfully does employees in your slow your movement lastly there's a cliffside area with a dragon that leads to a short climb through a tower and a grand Cathedral the difference between these two larger areas is that ring city feels more interconnected the swamp leads back to the streets in two ways and your climb through the tower loops back to the beginning of the level to reuse a bonfire for some bosses there's also a large area that you can explore at the end but this is more like an arena for the final boss fight of the four bosses I feel confident in saying that three are well worth seeing for almost every fan of the series for some they might be among the best in all of the games the only one that's questionable is the PvP fight in the cathedral this is the concept that is being done in both Demon Souls and Dark Souls 2 another player can be someone to become the boss you fight against my issue with the fight is that its quality will largely depend on who you end up fighting or if there's anyone available to fight you at all aside from the usual connectivity issues that some may face online you could get someone who has no idea what they're doing and you get an easy win or you could get someone who has prepared themselves with a rocky training montage to be able to heal of miracles prolong the fight and play cleverly with the npc helpers to overwhelm and destroy you since it's not a one-on-one duel at worst this is a glorified NPC phantom invasion if no one is available I like the concept of this fight and I think it might be a favorite for some people who love this part of the game and it also might be a great hook for some players to get drawn into PvP in souls that typically avoid it ultimately I think my disappointment comes from two sources how a pic the cathedral looked when I approached it so I thought it was going to lead to a really cool boss fight like pontiff Sullivan in his Cathedral and that I heard ahead of time that ring city has four bosses when in reality this was three for me personally because this was just a PvP invasion with a health bar having reconciled those warped expectations I like the inclusion of this encounter but it's important to say that this isn't going to be something everyone enjoys the other three boxes range from good to great although one in particular has been the source of some disagreement the only boss from the drej chief level is a two phase fight two demons to begin with and then a much larger one at the end after the PvP fight Galen ring City is the final boss of the game and as a standard duel that reminds me of a mix of orphan of cause and artorias dark eater m'dear is arguably the real final boss however you can fight him before Gale and the pvp encounter but I think he's meant to be done after both of them especially given Fromm's comments about this being the ultimate challenge for fans of the series you fight this dragon twice the first time is on a cliff above the swamp and it's unavoidable if you want to get to the other bosses when you beat him he falls away and suspiciously Awards no souls which I think there's a clever way of indicating that you should be prepared for his return or to go looking for him the real boss fight is through a hidden door in an elevator ride and then a fake wall inside of that area a secret within a secret these are three substantial new fights that are fairly challenging I don't think any of them are quite as difficult as sister Freda from the ashes DLC which is a good way to address the first elephant in the room when I reviewed ashes of aerion del the biggest piece of criticism I laid against it was a lack of content for the price in terms of quality the DLC is good but there was only one level and only one real proper boss as far as I saw it whether or not you agreed with how extreme my opinion was on the matter isn't all that important anymore because Ring City has proven without a shadow of a doubt that ashes was strangely priced even with a generous estimation of the content in the first DLC it's undeniable that ring city has so much more of everything and it costs the same amount at the end of that review I speculated that from originally planned to have only one DLC pack and that the decision was made later to split them in two likely so the game could advertise a season pass for more sales or so the game would have two DLC releases to promote the base game instead of just one I think it's clear now that this is exactly what happened especially given how connected both of the DLCs are for examples the NPC that grants you access to the ash as DLC ends up being the final boss in Ring City the reason he's there is linked to the painter in arendelle you can go back there and give her an item after killing Gale at the end of the DLC if you do ring city first though then Gale is dead and is no longer at the Cathedral of the deep in order to teleport you to arendelle you have to interact with a scrap of the painting here instead with a different cutscene that plays this is how intertwining the DLC content is it feels to me that ashes may have originally meant to be last so you start in the drej heap which would make the DLC have a much smoother transition from that disturbing image er you saw the end of the base game in Dark Souls 3 you fight your way through their travel to the more exotic ring city and learn about Gale after defeating him you would return to something more familiar in the series with arendelle which as a single level in a larger DLC would be a substantial way to end Frida would be the final big tough three phase fight and then you can end the story of Gale and area and alright then by talking to the painter as it is now splitting the DLC men that Ariane doll was the only choice to go first since it would have been unacceptable to go with the larger DLC and then end with a much shorter one since they cost the same amount all of this isn't a huge problem but I find myself in the unfortunate position of wishing I hadn't bothered playing ashes of aerion dell until all of the DLC was out it's this really weird way of looking at it that I'm finding difficult to reconcile individually I think that ashes is a ripoff but all of the DLC bundled under the season passes good value not great especially compared to the old hunters in the dark souls 2 dlc but still good i feel like as a big fan of the series that i made the wrong choice in being excited to play this content as soon as it came out that's all I'll say on the matter for this video because it's no longer important I doubt many will be buying ashes on its own from this point onward so let's get back to the levels and bosses in Ring City dreg keep is a cool idea that feels like something new even if the series has done tall vertical levels in the past what is entirely new however is the addition of ash piles that you can land in and prevent fall damage sort of like those piles of hay in Assassin's Creed this is such a big change that from decided to include developer messages to make sure you understand that you'll survive the fall damage at almost every point that you have to do it there's also a really cool trick that shows you there's no limit to the damage prevention when you're lured to this item and fall far below through a window to a new area this caused a shift in perception for me I wasn't just looking ahead to where I could go next I was looking down to see if there are any piles of ash that led to secret areas unfortunately this mechanic isn't used much in the level likely for the same reasons that from included those helper messages it can be a little difficult to tell what's safe to land on and they must have been afraid many players would try to get to places die and be angry with all of the trial and error there were only two secret places that I found to fall one at the beginning which makes it faster to get into the level after dying and the second was a drop at the end of an optional path to an alternate route to the swamp at the bottom it's possible that I might have missed another secret that uses this mechanic and I still enjoy that the level successfully tried something new but I think the result is more of a fun gimmick than a really interesting feature that's fully fleshed out the major problem with the way this works is that it requires backtracking through the level via bonfire warps or death so if you want to see everything you are going to have to do the earlier part of the level again this is fine for a one-off area like this but it may have been another reason why secret paths that use the falls were limited to reduce how many level resets the player would have to go through to get back up to the top to make the fall the minor problem is that I think the dust piles themselves look really lame your character simply clips through them like it's a raised part of the floor having a unique animation of your character getting stuck and pulling themselves out like the sand or snow in Mario 64 would probably have been too much work and slowed down navigation through the level too much to be worth it but maybe simply landing on top of the ash would have been an easier and better way to avoid this awful looking cliff two other things worth mentioning in the drej keep are the angels and an unexpected shortcut halfway through the level this winged monster appears in the air and starts spewing lasers at you the idea is that you run away from it dodging when you can and use cover until it takes a break between each barrage this first angel is fairly simple and your urge to rush forward after being prompted to fall from a Ledge here after you take cover in a church you have to defeat two of the Knights from lothric which proves how challenging an early enemy can still be if you pump up their health and damage a little after this your presence triggers the collapse of a tower which leads to another opening where the angel can shoot you this time you're next to this strange corpse flower thing though and when you kill it the angel in the sky withers and dies two things happen here the first is that if you die after the tower collapse you get the surprise of seeing that the back wall of that church with the Knights has been busted open to reveal an unexpected path through the level I'm taking the time to point this out because it helps support something I've said in two of the previous videos on the soul games I want more unexpected shortcuts like this instead of the usual locked doors and broken elevators I really enjoyed the surprise and I hope I'm not alone in that and I want to see more of it the other thing is that the game uses these angels and teaching you to find their route to kill them as something that's almost like a shortcut as well that may seem like a stretch but it's similar to those spectral nights in the dark souls 2 dlc or the second crystal stage fight in the grand archives these areas have a mechanic that makes the level a lot more difficult your first time through which after you conquer it makes exploring the level easier it's not a concept I would like to see used a lot in this series but it does appeal to me enough that I think it's worth exploring in a few more levels of each game the giant seed weapon and smoldering lake is another example and one that could have been a lot more interesting if the area you're exploring well it's shooting you had more to see and do there are two more angels in the swamp of the second half of drag heap I think swamps have been used too much in the series now and I don't find them interesting anymore this one is quite small and may have been included out of necessity after deciding that this area would be a collapsed earthen peak from Dark Souls 2 considering how much criticism this level received for not making sense and game I have to wonder if this was done out of spite or something either way I thought it was cool and I didn't expect to find it here you need to use cover to hide from the angels between fairly long runs to new locations or you can time dodges to avoid most of the lasers while searching for their routes something I like is that most players will find the route to the second angel before the first one for me this made this section feel a lot more desperate that I was out of my depth scrambling to beat the second angel when I hadn't even gotten rid of the first one yet especially since there are other enemies to fight along the way while you're hiding behind cover like there isn't enough room for both of you using these branches as passed is one of the best times the series has done this and it was clear what you could walk on and what you could not and I enjoyed using higher branches for cover and then feeling relief when I finally did kill both angels like I had now claimed these areas and had to earn the right to pillage them doing this will lead you to the final bonfire area keep and the fault of the demon bosses before we get to that though let's look at the new enemy types that were introduced here unique to the drej keeper the abyss corpses these appear in a bubbling up from the flooring and be spawned by the magic wielding versions these guys are the fodder of dread keep and are easy to defeat there's not much to say about them except that they double as traps in an early part of the level to ambush you when you go to pick up items and that the spell casters can also turn into humanity specters and rush you for a lot of damage if you don't dodge them it's the larger headless Knights that are a lot more interesting to me specifically because they're just so easy to kill they look intimidating and have a lot of health but their attacks are slow predictable and leave massive openings for counter-attacks I find this interesting because it makes me wonder what the intention was with these guys later on in ring city they show up in groups there are six of them in this area with a stared street leading to the swamp so it would make sense that they were made to be less challenging individually since you can end up fighting more than one of them here there are a larger fodder monster but in the drej heap they're introduced to you as big threats there guarding treasure they look like they demand your attention and are tucked away from most of the other enemies so you can fight them solo with the exception of the patrolling one in the swamp this is a conflict I don't have an answer for other than to point it out the strange especially if you compare them to other big enemies in the base game like the angel mites or the crabs or maybe it's just said this enemy clicked with me and I found it easier than most people will it's not a bad thing but because of their large health and bland attacks I ended up getting bored after the first few times it's the smaller ring Knights that are more challenging but we'll get to those after the demon boss demon in pain and demon from below or at the bottom of another long fall you are given this massive arena to fight them in which isn't all that necessary at first this is my favorite boss fight in Ring City but not by a lot I think that Galen MIDI are really good too I like the demons because the first phase is a really enjoyable fight against multiples that isn't too challenging but isn't a pushover either the big demon Prince in phase 2 has a lot more attacks and it's that part of the fight that I enjoy the most it's also when the big arena is required to compensate for how much leaping around he does in his massive area attacks for the first phase there's a flow to this fight that is unique among boss encounters with multiples in the series at least I can't think of another that functions this way both of the demons have the same move set that they cycle through but they're on different timers each of them moves between two phases being on fire and then burning out into exhaustion the one on fire will typically be way more aggressive and chase you with melee attacks whereas the other will favor hanging back and use poison breath and spit what I really like about this interaction is that the demon in range mode creates a warning line on the floor to let you know the attack is coming so that you can dodge away from the melee demon without having to constantly look back at what the ranged one is doing the melee attacks aren't all that demanding of your attention on their own but combined with the second demon can make for some more challenging overlap that feels fair to fight against that said the demons do not always work this way and I think it could be argued that this is something you might have to make happen yourself by luring the aggressive demon away from the other even doing that I often felt that the exhausted demon wouldn't always act like it and that both of them would end up flailing around together the demons are both large enough that it still feels fair like this since it's easy to dodge away and rush back in for some hits when they leave themselves open but can be some waiting around for this to happen the fight feels more fun when it's you against one demon with the other in ranged mode the demon switching between these modes can also be punished when you learn to recognize those changes for openings especially if you hit them enough to trigger a stagger in a big hit both demons have to be killed before going into the next phase and demon Prince is different depending on which one was the last to die the bosses core moveset is a more advanced version of the two demons that came before he's a lot bigger but much of the clawing and rampaging is similar he can jump into the air for a slime attack as well as flying away for a fiery dive or to do one of two special moves if demon in pain was the last to die then demon Prince can summon fire orbs that spit at you and then begin charging a massive storm of fire this takes a while to complete and is difficult to avoid when it's at full power as far as I can tell the test here is to run at him while dodging the fire spit and hit him enough to interrupt the building storm before too many as the fireballs can spawn if demon from below died last and demon Prince can jump away like before oh now he charges a massive laser breath that sweeps over the arena this can be handled in a similar way as the other move close the distance between you and attack while he's busy with the laser the main difference is that you're safe once you're close whereas the fire attack can still get you meaning that the fight is easier if teaming from below is killed last demon Prince doesn't use these moves often however so it's not a big difference and my guess is that most players won't realize that the order in which you kill the first demons even matters they'll think demon Prince simply has some moves he rarely shows most of the fight is responding to his mix of melee attacks jumps and when he starts to fly he reminds me a lot of sin even though he's not a dragon which is probably why I enjoy the fight so much after this you go through the wrecked version of the Firelink shrine pond room and wave another flag in the wind for another blind gargoyle flight to the next area this is the third one in the series I think this is very similar to the journey to enter Londo in Dark Souls 1 and the visuals here are equally appealing I'll be speaking a bit about this at the end but for now this is how you arrived at Ring City your first encounter here is similar to the Angels in drag keep you have to use cover and are unable to fight back until you get through this area first I like this part on its own especially the sound the giant makes is that summons these ghosts but it feels like retreading the same concept too soon after the previous level although I think it's a little funny for me to realize that if this had simply been another angel I probably would have just accepted it as a continuation of that monster instead of recycling an idea so I guess it's ok it's kind of weird how that perception works after this ring city feels like a victory lap for the series you're going through part of a city and a swamp there are some cryptic NPCs that tell you about the bosses you'll be fighting there's a cathedral and some beautiful views the ring Knights remind me of the dark race there's the usual humanoid fodder enemies shortcuts or locked doors and elevators and the bosses are a dragon who breathes fire over a long stretch that you have to run through and a duel against an armored guy with a big weapon and this is good it really is I don't mind that Fromme decided to play it safe with this final DLC and make great new versions of content fans like to see is a good buy in terms of gameplay anyway I don't know how fans of the lore will appreciate all of this it ties in to why I described the DLC is that our suite at the beginning though since there was something disappointing here that we'll get to at the end something missing having said that I don't mean to imply that ring city does nothing new the turtle clerics are a fun enemy that create void zones that damage you if you stand in them you're encouraged to keep moving but they also have high enough defense and control up for even more that you can't reliably rush and kill them without having to avoid at least one void zone this is especially true if there's more than one of them around I would have liked to see these guys use more often with other enemies in areas or maybe more of them could have been hiding in the swamp and emerged to join in the fight against other enemies so you have to dodge those void zones while dealing with another enemy I think there was only one part that that happened the insect like humans in the swamp are also one of my favorite twists on the basic humanoid enemy type they hover in place and have different attacks than the usual weapon swipes with two feet firmly on the ground many of their combos are telegraphed so well but are still dangerous that I enjoyed fighting groups of this enemy type more than any other in the DLC the ring Knights are also enemies you'll encounter in groups and it was these that I found to be the most difficult they can be very aggressive with long sweeping combos when they ignite their weapons but it was the heavy shield wielders that were the most substantial fights I think a minor flaw in Dark Souls 3 is that many enemies can be killed as long as you can just get one hidden from that initial stagger you can lock them down into a combo from full health to dead this is such a reliable way to kill so many enemies that there are honestly a few in the base game that I've never seen attack more than a few times because I can rush in and lock them down all you need to do is land one hit to sink your teeth in for the kill the shielded ring Knights can fight back against that which Wenning groups made them challenging it was interesting to fight these enemies because of that difference even if they are just stronger versions of the lothric Knights underneath that for some enemies that aren't so great there are the other fodder monsters these smaller humanoids come in two flavors the standard ambush type is fine if a little say me to the big hat guys from the base game but the cursed variant is the worst enemy in the DLC because it results in so much waiting around if you're a melee bill then you will fill up some of your cursed bar while fighting these and since they're often clumped in a narrow corridor together that means waiting around for the curse to deplete enough before you can safely go to the next one there is no challenge here this is a problem I've had for the whole series and it's a shame that were this many games and DLC in and a simple solution hasn't been implemented yet the same problem can be found in frenzied and blood-borne or even waiting for your poison build-up to go down when you're going through a swamp waiting is boring and it's often done with no enemies to fight while you do so the most obvious change here is to make it so the status effect bar speeds up its depletion rate with every second that you're safe so that the time is reduced the final enemy is a giant that roams the swamp this is similar to the one at the beginning of the level that summon the ghost archers to shoot you this one can do the same thing but his army is a lot smaller I found this guy a little awkward sometimes because it can be hard to see the archers he spawns if he ends up between you and them especially since if I did get hit that often meant I was stunned locked by their arrows all the way to death however I like this guy he looks imposing as all hell in the distance and the other ghost he can spawn melee guys and a few spellcasters felt a lot more manageable so it's possible that I just suck up the archers and there's a trick to it or maybe you're meant to run away and use cover when he does someone them there's also a third giant in a secret area that does the same thing in a more cramped environment this was strangely a lot easier to deal with because of all of the cover available for hit-and-run tactics or braking line of sight with the archers which leaves us with Gale the knight and Madeira the dragon let's go with Gale first because I think from intended for the dragon that we fought last Gale has quite possibly the most grandiose introduction of any boss in all of the souls games if you view the build-up to his reveal as part of the bosses package after the PvP fight in the church you ride an elevator to a set of stairs mean a mysterious sleeping woman with an even more mysterious object cradled in her lap then with a flashy cinematic you are transported through time to what appears to me like the conclude illusion of all of those levels smashing together in the drej heap the world is grinding itself to dust or ash and the woman is long dead and rotten you're allowed to roam around this massive area but this is mostly an arena for the Gale boss fight who gets his own cinematic with the very artorias like throw at the end of it all of this is for just one boss he even has a mid-fight cinematic when he increases his power level mechanically galas artorias on steroids his first phase was the most difficult for me since he has a lot of moves some decently long combos and some attacks that you really need to see a few times before you get the dodge timings down especially the one where he attacks and then quickly jumps away into another attack it's that jumping that reminds me of artorias and it's the thrashing that reminds me of orphan of cause after this phase the fight becomes slower the Gale starts using some ranged abilities he has a repeating crossbow and can throw out a spray of projectiles that are then pulled back to him from the same direction a little later the fight from this point onward is about positioning and not just dodging his sword strike so though he still does plenty of that his cloak is now a part of those attacks which acts as a sort of after trail or a follow-up to each slash at first this reminded me a lot of the fire trails and phase 2 of the abyss Watchers it still does in concept at least but my experience was that gales version didn't require multiple dodges for each attack but instead a better time dodged it was to punish dodging too early since if you avoided the sword then the cloak will get you instead phase 3 adds some lightning spells that are also about being mindful of your positioning in the arena just like the spell he throws out and then pulls back but all in all is you can probably tell I don't have many interesting things to say about this fight it feels like the end of the victory laps that the DLC is taking here's this great duel against an armored Knight with a big weapon who has some fun tweaks on that basic formula and some callbacks to earlier fights in the series it's the spectacle that stands out to me more than anything gales animations are fantastic especially the combo toward the end of the fight that hasn't jumped in the air and fire his crossbow as he drifts by he's not so challenging but I also think that's the point you're not meant to bash your head against him you're meant to enjoy the fight instead that's not to say he's really easy or anything don't get me wrong but if you've gotten this far then I doubt you'll be too much trouble m'dear on the other hand is the opposite of Gale in almost although he does have almost a spectacular and introduction as he swoops into Gardez cliff the path that leads to the boss fight itself is hidden and tucked away even then the room you find the entrance in is a small almost forgotten thing it's here that you fall down a long shaft into an arena about the same size as the one for the Double Diamond fight m'dear is one of the best dragon fights in the series that has a mixed bag of dragon fights I have a feeling that many players are going to have varying experiences of this boss there's a lot of does well and arguably more it does poorly for me it's in the top three below sin and calamy but I didn't feel that way until I killed him a second time the three biggest problems that I have with MIDI are all interact and compound to make each other worse first up is his gigantic health bar that makes this an endurance fight even though he has several moves that do an extraordinary amount of damage combine that with how ill-suited the camera is to keeping up with all the moves he can do and you can find yourself dying to a move you've never seen before just because you weren't able to see what was happening after you've spent a lot of time fighting through that huge health bar thirdly and perhaps worst of all the corpse run from the nearest bonfire is a full step over the line named ridiculous the distance itself isn't that long but you have to run from the bonfire right an elevator down to the bottom wait for it to reset then write it back up again and jump through a hidden door partway through then you have to run down to short corridors slide down the long ladder run across the room and then go through that fall from before even after doing all of this Medea is still far across the room and has a wake-up animation he plays as you run there not to mention any further delay you might have if you want to find your blood stain first the reason I feel comfortable pointing to this is something that feels like an intentionally cruel joke is that there are no enemies anywhere during this run the elevator and ladder also make it annoying since you have to stop and wait for both of them and it's all a waste of time there's no challenge it's not interesting there's no way to learn to do this faster or open a shortcut it's this drawn-out run to a boss that is drawn out even more with all of his health and I say all of that if someone who only died to the spa about six times when I first killed them which is a good way to address the fight I read some comments saying that m'dear is too difficult I don't really agree with that he's just awkward and has some cheap moments as I already said learning some of his moves like his tail swipe and his different fire breaths can be an exercise in trial and error because he's just so big the only way to keep him in view is to never go underneath him and instead attack his head which is where a big judgment call for the fight has to be made on my first kill i religiously ran underneath him and attacked his legs and then his tail many of his animations him deliberately made in order for him to shift his legs and tail away from you after you dodge an attack and get into position to strike it happened so much that it's either on purpose or a giant coincidence yet you can learn to compensate for this at the end of his tail for some good hits while he's channeling a fire breath you can also learn to dodge his counter-attack right afterward and then rush back in to keep hitting him his body takes half of the damage that his head does but this was worth the safety to me because staying locked on to his head made the camera whip around like crazy for too many of his moves basically i compensated and learned to account for the awkwardness and was able to get him down occasionally sneaking in some hits on his head as I ran back under him on my second kill I attacked the head exclusively and this is now what I considered to be the superior version of the fight and the way it was meant to be done there's a lot of things that support that the head is the only lock on point for him even though he's massive he doesn't change his wide fire breath on the floor as often which can lock you out of hitting him and many of these swipes and bites leave good openings for his head the best evidence of all however is that if you hit him enough he enters a stagger state that wipes out about a fifth of his health bar over 4000 HP meaning that the fight isn't as long as it first appears this doesn't happen if you don't go for his head however the game usually lets you choose your own way to fight bosses so for some this won't be acceptable or rather it won't be ideal I enjoyed the fight a lot more doing it like this but I had also already seen it a bunch and I knew what to expect if I had gone exclusively for the head from the start then maybe I would have had a rougher time an example being a horrendous in Phase two you can start charging a new type of bean breath attack that can kill you outright if it lands and there's no real way to anticipate how this is going to move until you've seen it once already maybe even twice if it kills you really quickly after taking so long to get to phase two this is a different pattern than the beam he uses on the cliff or in the first phase of the fight I had already seen it and knew what to expect on the second kill and maybe it's just as simple as that the fight is one that's more enjoyable once you've seen it enough instead of one that you can take to immediately if attacking the head was the way this was meant to be done though I wish they had made that more clear dealing half damage to his body isn't that bad considering you can often hit him multiple times compared to only one hit on his head I also had to learn to recognize when I should unlock my camera from his head in order to prevent it from whipping around this is something that could have been done for you before he starts his frenzy or when he starts fire breath he emits some sort of pulse that cancels your lock so you're not left wondering what's happening as the camera goes crazy once again it comes back to this series not communicating clearly enough that your lock-on is a tool to use only sometimes instead of something that should always be active I do understand why some people won't like this boss even if they do click with all of these little oddities his health is enough to make the encounter grueling although I personally enjoy it since it matches his large size this feels like exactly what you're doing fighting this massive dragon that you should have no business standing up to but here you are trying anyway but some of his moves don't mesh well with this bloated health since they encourage a lot of waiting many of his breath attacks forced you to retreat or run around him until the fire is over and worst of all is his forward rampage that he can spam it goes on for quite awhile and you just have to wait for it to finish after dodging the first part of it I don't quite understand what the idea behind that one was his standard claw and by the tax feel better defied again since you can time your dodges and counter-attack instead of just waiting for him to be done and with m'dear dead we can move on to the final point and the second of those two elephants in the room that I mentioned at the start it's linked a bittersweet feeling I talked about some of you may roll your eyes of this but this is the last bit of Dark Souls content for a while so I won't have a chance to say it again the biggest disappointment in Ring City came from this part here you're given this beautiful shot of the city itself are set down with this huge open area around you and can see all of these places you're going to be visiting and you never get to go there this is a tease on so many levels and I know it's not realistic to expect the DLC to be even larger but I also feel justified in being disappointed that I never got to see those distant city streets of the game called attention to instead you're kept on a small part of it that leads to another swamp my first time through I found the dragon in the cliff before I went to the other end of the swamp which I thought would eventually lead to a connecting area to another part of the city the one in the distance right now learning that the swamp was really all there was made me realize how much potential there was in this new area there could have been multiple levels weaving to and from the central hub of the tower the swamp in the top part of the Street where you started it felt like I was plopped down into the middle of this larger world and that I could explore all of it basically it felt like arriving at Firelink shrine in Dark Souls 1 again I said in my Dark Souls 3 critique that I'm giving up on ever seeing another connected world in the series maybe I still need to work on letting go of those expectations because I felt them so strongly here and was once again disappointed even though I know finding that in the DLC isn't reasonable but imagine instead if ring city had been the direction the base game of Dark Souls 3 had went with and that a full games worth of content could have spiraled out from the foundation instead of just a DLC that's why it feels bittersweet now that we're at the end of the first iteration and cycle of Dark Souls something I'm sure will be continued later a series that has in some ways gotten so much better and more consistent over time but in other ways isn't even trying to recapture the spark that made so many players enraptured to begin with you

Channel: Joseph Anderson

Views: 616,958

Rating: 4.8010578 out of 5

Keywords: dark souls, dark souls 3, dlc, ashes of ariandel, ringed city, FROMsoftware, analysis, review, critique, video game

Id: rXV3NzytRm4

Length: 36min 46sec (2206 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017