Recent reviews by Samba De Amiibo

Overall not worth the money at the moment.
Opinions from someone who completed the DLC on NG+3 starting at level 200 and has completed every Fromsoft soulsborne game.

-Constantly finding varied locations that are engaging to explore, including many good legacy dungeons
-New weapon types, most of which being both useful and fun
-Continues the amazing art direction/atmosphere of the base game with beautiful enemy design
-An emphasis on a likable cast of characters and choices that affect them

-Price. For 4/6 the price of the base game, you are not getting 4/6 the content. A much smaller map, most basic enemies being reused from the base game, and in general not enough content to justify the price.

-Horrible performance. Really bad micro-stuttering which is constant. FPS hovers around 40-50 but will drop to as low as 15-20 in certain boss fights and areas, as well as outright freezing sometimes before resuming 5 seconds later. It's not a game-wide issue, as you can fast travel to the base game map and notice a giant increase in performance.

-Reused bosses. This was a major problem in the basegame, and unfortunately it still is here. Some major DLC story bosses are repeated, as well as many minor bosses from the base game. It's lame to conquer a boss just to fight a slight variation on it hiding in some random corner, like it was never really important to begin with.

-Poor camera. Another problem from the base game that has been totally ignored, if not worsened. Large enemies (half the bosses) are impossible to see since the camera doesn't zoom out in any way to see the action; which was a problem solved in Sekiro but reverted for Elden Ring. Some bosses have strange or outstretched weak points, such as a dragon's head (some unique new bosses have similar weakpoints too but I'd rather not spoil). In these scenarios the camera will swing wildly all over the place while locked on, OR it will literally not even display the target on screen while your character faces backwards towards the camera. It is insane how awful it is. It can be ignored for most of the game since normal humanoid or smaller enemies don't allow you to really encounter this- but when the problem is bad it is truly horrible. I also don't really think it's good game design for you to be at the foot of a dragon and just having to remember certain specific quirks of how it's feet or tail moves in order to dodge a move from it's wings or head- since sometimes you're unable to see them due to the camera. The fact they had 2 years to fix this glaring problem and totally ignored it is what makes this inexcusable in my eyes.

-Requiring beating Mohg. A lot of soulsborne DLC has had pretty silly or late-game requirements for entering the new areas. Unfortunately I feel like it is too great of an ask in such a large game. Doing the same trick as your smaller-scale games doesn't quite work here in my opinion. If you want to start a new DLC run here's most likely what you'll be doing:
•You'll be playing on an old NG+/mostly completed file so you won't have to play over half the game.
•You'll do the multiplayer method of being teleported to his palace and gun for the cheesey Rune-farm until you feel comfortable enough to beat Mohg/start the DLC.
•You'll play over half the game.
I just feel like a totally different method or some kind of quick-start would go a long way in anyone wanting to replay this DLC. I know I personally was turned-off by the idea of replaying most of the game, which is why I went with my old NG+3 file.

-Scadutree Fragments, a new collectible that boosts damage dealt/negated. Sounds great as a collectible on paper, until you realize you need to collect nearly all of them to have a fighting chance in half of the fights of the game. This is another inhibitor to starting a new run, unfortunately, as unless you want to deliberately cripple yourself you'll need to run across the entire map before taking on the hardest challenges.

-Abysmal balancing. I wasn't the biggest fan of late-game fights in the base game which make you dodge for 20 seconds then give you little room for counter-attacking or healing. This is all this DLC has to offer-- boring fights where you get to watch the boss play the game. Fromsoft's boss design is no longer about specialized bosses that are good at certain things, thus making the player have to adapt or learn around the boss. The bosses are now literally good at everything to a point where it is insane.
The bosses each have most, if not all of the following:
•1-shot AOEs
•Long reaching AOEs with delayed timing ontop of continuations with even longer delayed timing
•Status inflictions
•5-15 hit combos, which can randomly continue into longer combo strings or 1-shot AOEs; meaning you're better off not even trying to punish half the bosses moves
•Attacks/combo strings with 360 degrees of coverage; meaning you can't even roll behind a boss and hit them mid combo, nor can you attack while you have summoned allies taking aggro
•Engage moves
•Disengage moves
•Tracking projectiles
•1-shot grabs
•Massive HP pools
•Multiple phases
•Normal attacks that do 75%-100% of your HP pool
•Little-to-no downtime in between actions
•etc, etc, etc.

Thus this leads the player onto a couple different routes:
•Trickle in single light attacks for 10-25 minutes without ever getting hit
•Use broken cheese builds to annihilate the boss in only a couple blows
•Use summons which the game was still obviously not made around
None of these routes are fun or fulfilling.

A big problem is the player's speed does not at all match the bosses, ala Bloodborne or Sekiro. Your character is so pitifully slow that these bosses literally feel like they are in the wrong game. You have Dark Souls 1 animations (slow af) for the player movements and attacks, you have your Flask that takes 3 seconds for you to heal, you have bosses that have combos so long that even at 50+ Endurance you will run out of stamina trying to dodge them, and in general you are disincentivized from staying in the fight-- but you are also not allowed to disengage from the fight without getting chased by a screen-wide, fast, one-shot move. It is a confused mess. This game so badly needs a universal rally mechanic (Bloodborne), faster player animations, or a universal quick parry/posture bar (Sekiro)-- just something to keep the player engaged and actively playing if the boss is going to be doing all the footwork.

Regardless, the numbers are still totally overtuned. I personally I had 91 Vigor, HP-boosting talismans, & Radahn's armor equippped; and the least amount of damage I ever took from a boss was probably 60% of my HP, and that's the rare case of me not getting complete one-shot. I had max level legendary weapons ranging from 1200-1800 damage, but If I wasn't using status afflictions or cheese I was doing a tiny fraction of the bosses HP. I know that I'm on NG+3 but the scaling for this is so totally out-of-wack compared to the base game that this is clearly a glaring oversight or a fundamental design issue.

It is clear very little playtesting or polish was put onto these bosses, or the playtesting that did happen was the latter two routes I mentioned earlier; where they would've had to have employed some level of cheese to think it was manageable, fun, or fair. Unfortunately this poor balancing puts a damper on the whole DLC. While the legacy dungeons are genuinely fun and well designed- if what's waiting for you at the end is some boss that's going to endlessly spam long strings and insta-kill you, then what was the point? I think tweaking HP/Damage numbers and lengthening the window of opportunity for the player to counter-attack a bit can go a long way in at least making this more bearable-- but the bosses have pretty core design issues, and I still don't think even if those hypothetical nerfs happen will the DLC be totally worth $40.

I do think its commendable this feels like at least a 5-20 dollar product given to you for free in service of the full game, but regardless I don't think is a very good package.
It's presentation is nothing to complain about and is probably the strongest part of the game. The gameplay and level design unfortunately needs a lot of tuning and hopefully will be fixed in the full game.
The movement can potentially be fast and fluid (the way momentum carries into other actions, skidding across water, etc), but the levels aren't built around those aspects of your movement. Instead, its meandering through long vertical challenges where you are forced to do very finicky wall maneuvers- and if a jump is missed then it requires you to redo 30 seconds-2 minutes of gameplay you've already completed.. over and over.
I don't think the game is too hard on paper, though. It boils down to learning the constraints and oddities of how your character moves, which there is no good area built to simply screw around and learn those things, nor do they feel intuitive on their own. The way your character interacts with walls, vines, and ledges and how your character moves after jumping from those things are all different individually-- AND it depends on how your stick & camera are facing relative to any wall around you. Some walls let you walljump very easily between them, and some are impossible and kill any momentum. Sometimes your wallrun just makes you drop like a rock, sometimes you fly along the wall.
Nothing really feels natural when it comes to the movement you're required to do. Combine this will odd level design where its also not intuitive to know your next objective in the level and it leads to an overall very frustrating experience.
Despite the frustration I had enough fun with my time that I wanted to give it another shot. After closing and reopening the game all of my checkpoints are gone which I had just assumed would stay between instances, meaning I would need to replay any completed section to get coins later or to even just get back to where I was before I closed the game. Just an unfortunate experience overall.

good very good

the game's ingame updater physically refuses to install the update, so i can no longer play the game i purchased.

steam needs to bring back quality control to weed out unfinished games like this

this is the worst port ive ever seen in my life

genuinely one of the worst games ive ever had the misfortune of playing. received it as a gift from a friend and told it was the best dark souls, years later i now know that that was a sign. we are no longer friends.

games for windows live can suck my ass

0 good things about this game. i also had to make 3 accounts to play because the first 2 just didnt work.

wish this was alot longer. it's very fun and charming, but not alot to it. with new features and more worlds, a sequel would be absolutely incredible.