Nah, I didn’t bother with Lawrence. It’s a cleric beast palette swap with a really annoying and repetitive second phase. He’s halfway to chalice dungeon levels of phoned in.
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this DLC is officially okay. I don’t think it’s worth what they’re charging, but like all of dark 3, it’s well-made enough, even if it’s not as evocative or interesting as the original painted world. I was also initially lukewarm on bloodborne’s DLC, though (for the linearity and the middling second area I think), which I’ve since substantially revised my opinion of. Got to the endboss but don’t feel like trying it so soon after finally beating orphan.
There are a lot more new weapons than I expected, which is nice.
also, I’d forgotten there was supposed to be one more chapter after this – wonder what they’ll do there.
I don’t get it, original painted world was mostly a mass of square housing with lots of repetitive fights featuring a single new enemy inside a big cube, with a simple perimeter attachments (entry bridge, a cliff, a basement and a bridge to a boss). I don’t hate it but I always saw it as slightly filler-ish and less developed than the best of DkS1. It shows its origins as a dick-around prototype area that was the first thing they built for DkS1.
As for this, the village alone (the area most directly referencing original painted world) surpasses it. The winding traversal of it is interesting and the helpless slaves set upon by vicious ninjas enriches the idea of the cursed birdpeople. I also really like how they did the hard-to-notice-lever-in-area-you-don’t-want-to-be-in thing again, but on the upper floor there is a chain hinting its position.
off the top of my head, the painted world benefited from:
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having a ridiculous mario 64 entrance point to a level that did not permit you to leave once you accessed it
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a pleasantly lower-fi sense of foreboding and not knowing what would come next
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identifiable, central architecture pieces (the coliseum, the first fort leading up from the bonfire)
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an interesting and unique boss that was closely linked to the world’s theme, rather than “oh idk this woman was worshipping a demon and the village has gone to shit, you need to break the curse”
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fewer of these spear mooks who I can’t be bothered to fight
this certainly isn’t bad at all, I just don’t think it adds anything – there’s a little bit of oolacile township, a little bit of forest of fallen giants. it’s fine.
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also weren’t all those neat phalanx enemies in the courtyard in the painted world too? or was that cainhurst castle? because that was another fun and unexpected thing if so.
Ariamis also had those spooky noises near the xanthous invasion area and that blobby head guy crying in a corner.
also having to repeat the first phase of this boss is boring. but I’m willing to believe I’m burnt out on souls because I totally dgaf what any of this new magic I found does
As underwhelming as the rest of Dark Souls 3 while technically competent. That final outside area feels like some real fucking around. A maze, but not. shortcuts, but not that really shortcuts, and there are so many shortcuts and the area isn’t that big that it undermines itself with a couple of them.
The boss is pretty fun.
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yeah, one side effect of the brighter palette in this area (which was also true of the dks3 starting area to an extent) is that “branching mountainside passes” design is dead boring in a way that it never was in e.g. the basin, which is fundamentally fairly similar to the more aimless parts of this but just looked better.
there are both too many shortcuts and bonfires in rapid succession (which is fairly endemic to DkS2 and 3) for what is a mostly linear design, and too much pastiche level design in general (which is unique to this level). I wonder if they shouldn’t have tried to get two separate areas out of this; it’s not really as coherent as either of bloodborne’s self-contained areas (hemwick and old yharnam). a lot of the platforming feels particularly hackneyed too.
I found the bonfires really well placed. They pretty much always happened around about where I thought they should be, so I find this complaint odd. They are technically close to one another which makes the fact that they initially seem so far away a really interesting design choice.
As for the lady, I can’t really say more than that she does have a reason for being the way she is (as with all characters in DS, you have to do some work to find out why). The painter is also a really refreshing character, needed in such a neutral space.
one thing I have liked a lot about DkS3 is that nearly all the tough bosses have NPC summons which I haven’t hesitated to use (with some exceptions; I don’t believe aldritch did but I didn’t find him too tough, and if memory serves I found lothric’s summon more trouble than it was worth). this was a fun boss but it was probably less than half as difficult as it would’ve been had I not indulged.
Wait, there’s an npc summon for the dlc boss? I must have missed that
i really like this element of scholar of the first sin. every boss in the game seems to have 1-2 npc summons
yeah, it’s to the left of the stairs.
I forgot to mention this in my earlier post but the NPC summons do trivialize bosses a bit less than they might otherwise by dint of forcing you to draw aggro off of them as much as possible lest they die and leave you with a stronger-than-normal boss (though if they eat it with the boss in critical condition it’s more dramatic if anything). it’d certainly have ruined something like O&S but against a boss with a lot of AOEs it’s still far from boring.
Well OK, but Blackflame Frieda has tons of targeted raycast type attacks and is weak to stagger, so I feel pretty confident in saying she is trivialized by the summon. To the extent that I don’t find I learn much useful for the solo fight from white phantoming her. And that’s the meat of the fight, the previous phases are about saving estus.
the most I learned from my failed runs is that when she disappears it’s always worth it to try to chase her down rather than bracing yourself for her attacks, and that you need to have a very good idea of when you can interrupt her because that’s when you’ll do 2/3 of your damage. on the latter, yes, the summon helps enormously.
also, different definitions of “trivialized,” perhaps – didn’t you say you went like 1 for 10 on phantoming? at some point you’re just deciding how much you want to suffer, and I’ll have you know that I just beat the orphan of kos this week.
I do love how immediately discernable and immediately scary her dark attacks are
Phase 2 of the fight was a problem for me because I kept losing Friede behind or around the big guy (and would then proceed to get rocked at some point). The fact that she can disappear was enough of a problem for me in phase one that it took me five tries to get to phase two and I don’t think I ever got to phase three without help. I only ever beat O&S by myself once and decided I was never doing that again.
My mage only has 24 VGR, so not having enough health could have been the issue. I was typically dying in two combos from most of the attacks.
When I was with help, I got caught by an instant death attack in phase three and it’s hard to describe how aggravating that was (had never seen the attack before).
O&S are surprisingly not so bad on repeat attempts (particularly once you know the game well enough to bring decent weapons). It was a brilliant roadblock in 2011 and a more or less perfectly fair and challenging implementation of a concept that from have since gotten significantly better at making more difficult encounters out of.
I can’t think of any notorious later-series bosses that can be trivialized to the same extent with soul spear, for example