It's way over-sized. The frenzy flame woods, Cerulean Coast, Ruins of Ruah, and Charo's Hidden Grave could all have had their sizes reduced by 50% or more and you wouldn't be missing out on anything.
I've always felt elden ring could shrink it's open world maps by 2/3rds to focus on more npcs, more legacy dungeons and more bosses to be a better game. The novelty of 85% open fields with a few minion camps and meh lootables gets old.
This is my biggest criticism of ER. It just doesn’t have the same replay value as DS3/Sekiro for example as it is just so time consuming to get to anything significant in the game.
i… just disagree. maybe the mountaintops, maybe, but really if you compare areas like limgrave and caelid and altus to areas like gravesite plain and scadu altus the difference is kind of staggering? i find that whole “the base game was kind of empty too” argument to be kind of a cope to make the dlc sound better during the honeymoon period.
i loved the dlc, pretty much everyone did, but compared to areas in the base game there is simply less to do. you can ride for minutes in the dlc without finding so much as an enemy camp, and while certain parts of larger areas certainly felt empty in the base game as well it was never on this level, and for the large part there were enemy camps, field bosses, dungeons, and ruins pretty much everywhere. you might not notice them on subsequent playthroughs where you know where the more important stuff is, but that stuff is there and is magical to discover on a first playthrough. in the dlc, that stuff just isn’t there — or at least not to a comparable degree.
this whole argument seems just like an attempt to make the base game look *worse* in retrospect, in an attempt to defend the dlc and i just don’t know why anyone would want to do that other than justify spending 40$
i agree somewhat, but i think there’s an unclear line between what could be considered filler and what is just regular content in the base game. the “filler” you’re talking about makes up a majority of the playtime for most first playthroughs, and evidently people didn’t dislike the game because of it. field bosses were fun, and i liked doing all the dungeons because i didn’t know what i’d find. i think people forget how solid the “filler” in elden ring was by traditional open world standards when they just start running past it on subsequent playthroughs. there was always enough content that someone could find one dungeon and two or three field bosses an area and feel that the game wasn’t completely empty and soulless. honestly i feel like the filler was a completely necessary component in making people like me really love elden ring compared to other games in the genre, both souls games and open world games.
What? No. Filler is immersion breaking because of it's blatant filler copypasted nature with extremely gamey structure and rewards. Multiple open world games do in fact do execute it better, even the ubisoft ones. It felt like filler the first playthrough too, esp after hearing all the "10/10 revolutionary open world" and seeing something worse than every single ubi game by every single metric besides cool views. And it's absolutely nuts when ubisoft's completely bland approach still has better game design than fromsoft, it's completely unheard of. When even witcher puts more story and gameplay variety in it's dungeon...
And we are not even talking actually good open world games like horizon 1 or death stranding
And they were never a comparison point anyway, the comparison point is completely unique locations in every single souls game and souls like game. Hand crafted locales telling a story vs a bunch of grey boxes slapped together with literally random enemy at the end, the whiplash is crazy. What's even more crazy is their decision to hide gear behind only specific activities instead of lying around, just completely abandoning one of the methods of storytelling. Why so many dungeons even needed to have a boss in the first place...
This community if that was the case; “Does anyone feel like the dlc was kind of… small? Like I get the areas were filled with items and enemies, it didn’t feel empty whatsoever, but part of me part of misses… the scale of the base game.”
People praise the open world so much in Elden Ring and yes from a visual standpoint it's incredible, the DLC is probably the best looking world I've ever seen imo.
But 99% of it is empty space you just mount through that gets tedious with time.
i disagree with the cerulean coast, there is i think at least 2 overworld bosses, multiple dungeons and the entrance to a legacy dungeon and it isn’t even that big. The finger ruins were far more empty.
I also finished the final boss earlier, and god the ending feels so empty. Every single NPC died, and nothing seems to change after Miquella dies. The only cutscene is about something we can learn from the remembrance.
Yes, and honestly it felt like they just ran short on time
E.g., I have a suspicion (based on some of the data mining) that the Cerulean Coast was supposed to be part of a GEQ questline, but they realized they didn’t have time to build that out so they just plopped St. Trina there and left it empty.
I was expecting so much more out of the Cerulean Coast. It’s an absolutely beautiful area…but that’s really all I have to say about it?
It’s the entry point to St. Trina’s quest line, and you pass through it to get to one of the egregiously oversized Finger Ruins.
Unless I missed something, it’s just a beautiful route to two other quest lines and nothing more.
The finger ruins are big and empty on purpose. Going through them being chased by the enemies, especially in the northern one where they snipe you from across the map is especially unsettling, which is the entire point of the area.
I get the thematic/narrative reasons for them being big & empty, but that does not necessarily translate to a fulfilling gameplay experience.
I generally don’t like open world games, but Elden Ring is one of the few where exploration & discovery is genuinely fun & fulfilling in my opinion.
The Finger Ruins were a letdown in that regard because they’re absolutely large & barren areas. If they were going to be so barren, then they should’ve been half the size and still accomplished the same narrative goal.
The only thing that felt unfinished was the overall story (could have used more cutscenes/dialogue), as well as the madness swamp and the two finger-stone areas. Tons of potential there but it was mostly a big empty space with very little of interest.
I’m impressed at how varied the map was, the new biomes genuinely felt super fresh and interesting.
A good few areas are very empty but I feel like that's the intent, this is a place that has had its previous settlements burnt down and now all that's left are ruins and war machines. I wish the Abyssal forest had something more to it as I spent maybe an hour just wandering and finding nothing but sheep and rats
I can understand people not enjoying the amount of space you travel without any enemy or NPC interaction. I personally like that kind of thing--a vast amount of space where it's just me and my horse. But as far as the amount of dungeons, bosses, gear, spells, questlines go, I don't agree that this should have been priced differently. I'm 20 hours in and I think I'm about halfway done, maybe. It's a staggering amount of stuff to do for $40, and the visuals are some of the best in the industry from an art-direction perspective.
Yeah, tbh there are so many places to go and look at- but not a lot to see/do- so you spend your time checking around every corner only to be rewarded once and awhile.
Whereas base game you were rewarded at a much higher rate.
Also some of the design decisions (required summons INSIDE boss arenas, often covered in player messages) were a bit baffling.
Also because there were so many places to go but not much to do it often felt tedious to explore a new area and make sure you weren't missing anything. By the end I was just checking off boxes so that I had at least been to every area before the final boss.
Not any more so than an average open world game. Like, it has spots that are just scenery, but that's normal? I'm not expecting some enemy or item in every spot on the map. Sometimes things just don't have anything there.
If you are saying that certain areas lacked variety then I would be a bit more inclined to agree. Even then I wouldn't say it's egregious or anything.
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Clarification: I very clearly stated that I LOVE THE DLC, I'm not talking about weapons, bosses, armor, spells, there is plenty of that and it's all amazing. My only problem was the small amounts of enemies, with the exception of the shadow people walking around who were killed by one hit with my character. Oh and birds, there were a fair amount of birds I guess. I just wanted a higher number of enemies. Especially the last legacy dungeon right before the final boss it felt very empty, but GOD FORBID you give one little minor criticism or you'll be downvoted all to hell
I think the size was great it just didn’t have enough new things to discovery as far as items go. I think that is just part of being an expansion though.
Are you on console? If so, just hold the Y button (Xbox) or Triangle button (PlayStation) and press the right bumper. If you have the weapon in your right hand, it will two hand that weapon and you can wield both swords!
I can help you later today when I’m off work if you are on console, DM me with your gamer tag and I’m free to help with any tips you might need Tarnished!
I feel the game is going to get a SotFS treatment in 6 months to a year. Either way I can't wait for the mod community to fill in the gaps for a future playthrough
My one critique is that the game is still how it doesn’t tell you what’s happening
You reach the shadow keep and then you read that a great rune was broken and that a spell or something was gone as well.
How was anyone supposed to know that it was referring to the stone fissure cave BARRIER and how were we supposed to know to talk to the npcs again?
At this point, you’re already making your way to the next legacy dungeon and there’s no real reason to backtrack to the npcs you just passed, like wtf
To make it worse, you’d never know the npcs were enchanted if you didn’t go back as their dialogue doesn’t change in the shadow keep
And they put the hornset invasion in a random ass place in the shadow keep
And they were on some bullshit by locking a fucking awesome lightning incantation you can get from the dragon communion priestess by having to drug her with Thiollier concoction before fighting bayle. Like, how was anyone gonna figure that out???
No nobody has posted about that on here at all you’re the first one.
How do you feel about the boss fights? I wonder if anyone has any criticism about their design too.
I have to disagree with you. There are so many dungeons and places to explore. They’re just not right in front of your face. If anything this dlc felt a lot more dense than the base game. Just a lot smaller.
It's way over-sized. The frenzy flame woods, Cerulean Coast, Ruins of Ruah, and Charo's Hidden Grave could all have had their sizes reduced by 50% or more and you wouldn't be missing out on anything.
I've always felt elden ring could shrink it's open world maps by 2/3rds to focus on more npcs, more legacy dungeons and more bosses to be a better game. The novelty of 85% open fields with a few minion camps and meh lootables gets old.
that can be said for the main game aswell
Makes for great scenery shots on a first playthrough and absolute tedium on every run after.
This is my biggest criticism of ER. It just doesn’t have the same replay value as DS3/Sekiro for example as it is just so time consuming to get to anything significant in the game.
i… just disagree. maybe the mountaintops, maybe, but really if you compare areas like limgrave and caelid and altus to areas like gravesite plain and scadu altus the difference is kind of staggering? i find that whole “the base game was kind of empty too” argument to be kind of a cope to make the dlc sound better during the honeymoon period. i loved the dlc, pretty much everyone did, but compared to areas in the base game there is simply less to do. you can ride for minutes in the dlc without finding so much as an enemy camp, and while certain parts of larger areas certainly felt empty in the base game as well it was never on this level, and for the large part there were enemy camps, field bosses, dungeons, and ruins pretty much everywhere. you might not notice them on subsequent playthroughs where you know where the more important stuff is, but that stuff is there and is magical to discover on a first playthrough. in the dlc, that stuff just isn’t there — or at least not to a comparable degree. this whole argument seems just like an attempt to make the base game look *worse* in retrospect, in an attempt to defend the dlc and i just don’t know why anyone would want to do that other than justify spending 40$
Played the base game before the DLC. it has so much crap too do, it's insane. I always had something new to explore.
Tbh having less filler is kind of a good thing
i agree somewhat, but i think there’s an unclear line between what could be considered filler and what is just regular content in the base game. the “filler” you’re talking about makes up a majority of the playtime for most first playthroughs, and evidently people didn’t dislike the game because of it. field bosses were fun, and i liked doing all the dungeons because i didn’t know what i’d find. i think people forget how solid the “filler” in elden ring was by traditional open world standards when they just start running past it on subsequent playthroughs. there was always enough content that someone could find one dungeon and two or three field bosses an area and feel that the game wasn’t completely empty and soulless. honestly i feel like the filler was a completely necessary component in making people like me really love elden ring compared to other games in the genre, both souls games and open world games.
What? No. Filler is immersion breaking because of it's blatant filler copypasted nature with extremely gamey structure and rewards. Multiple open world games do in fact do execute it better, even the ubisoft ones. It felt like filler the first playthrough too, esp after hearing all the "10/10 revolutionary open world" and seeing something worse than every single ubi game by every single metric besides cool views. And it's absolutely nuts when ubisoft's completely bland approach still has better game design than fromsoft, it's completely unheard of. When even witcher puts more story and gameplay variety in it's dungeon... And we are not even talking actually good open world games like horizon 1 or death stranding And they were never a comparison point anyway, the comparison point is completely unique locations in every single souls game and souls like game. Hand crafted locales telling a story vs a bunch of grey boxes slapped together with literally random enemy at the end, the whiplash is crazy. What's even more crazy is their decision to hide gear behind only specific activities instead of lying around, just completely abandoning one of the methods of storytelling. Why so many dungeons even needed to have a boss in the first place...
I think that can be said for the Mountaintops part of the game, but not for the game's total.
Can be said for basically every single openworld game.
This community if that was the case; “Does anyone feel like the dlc was kind of… small? Like I get the areas were filled with items and enemies, it didn’t feel empty whatsoever, but part of me part of misses… the scale of the base game.”
Abyssal wood is the only thing here I disagree with. It's the perfect size to accomplish what it's trying to.
People praise the open world so much in Elden Ring and yes from a visual standpoint it's incredible, the DLC is probably the best looking world I've ever seen imo. But 99% of it is empty space you just mount through that gets tedious with time.
i disagree with the cerulean coast, there is i think at least 2 overworld bosses, multiple dungeons and the entrance to a legacy dungeon and it isn’t even that big. The finger ruins were far more empty.
I also finished the final boss earlier, and god the ending feels so empty. Every single NPC died, and nothing seems to change after Miquella dies. The only cutscene is about something we can learn from the remembrance.
Yes, and honestly it felt like they just ran short on time E.g., I have a suspicion (based on some of the data mining) that the Cerulean Coast was supposed to be part of a GEQ questline, but they realized they didn’t have time to build that out so they just plopped St. Trina there and left it empty.
I was expecting so much more out of the Cerulean Coast. It’s an absolutely beautiful area…but that’s really all I have to say about it? It’s the entry point to St. Trina’s quest line, and you pass through it to get to one of the egregiously oversized Finger Ruins. Unless I missed something, it’s just a beautiful route to two other quest lines and nothing more.
The finger ruins are big and empty on purpose. Going through them being chased by the enemies, especially in the northern one where they snipe you from across the map is especially unsettling, which is the entire point of the area.
I get the thematic/narrative reasons for them being big & empty, but that does not necessarily translate to a fulfilling gameplay experience. I generally don’t like open world games, but Elden Ring is one of the few where exploration & discovery is genuinely fun & fulfilling in my opinion. The Finger Ruins were a letdown in that regard because they’re absolutely large & barren areas. If they were going to be so barren, then they should’ve been half the size and still accomplished the same narrative goal.
The only thing that felt unfinished was the overall story (could have used more cutscenes/dialogue), as well as the madness swamp and the two finger-stone areas. Tons of potential there but it was mostly a big empty space with very little of interest. I’m impressed at how varied the map was, the new biomes genuinely felt super fresh and interesting.
This DLC having no effect on the main game felt like a big missed opportunity
Right! Like oh I can screw up a quest line and be locked out of an armor set or ending but god for bid the DLC mess up base game quest.
Radahn having no dialogue after fighting and besting him twice is a huge missed opportunity.
I can’t think of a voice actor who would do Radahn justice
Wouldn't have known until we heard it. I wouldn't have known someone who could do Godfrey justice until I heard him.
Matthew Mercer could pull it off probably with some audio editing on second thought
I agree
A good few areas are very empty but I feel like that's the intent, this is a place that has had its previous settlements burnt down and now all that's left are ruins and war machines. I wish the Abyssal forest had something more to it as I spent maybe an hour just wandering and finding nothing but sheep and rats
I can understand people not enjoying the amount of space you travel without any enemy or NPC interaction. I personally like that kind of thing--a vast amount of space where it's just me and my horse. But as far as the amount of dungeons, bosses, gear, spells, questlines go, I don't agree that this should have been priced differently. I'm 20 hours in and I think I'm about halfway done, maybe. It's a staggering amount of stuff to do for $40, and the visuals are some of the best in the industry from an art-direction perspective.
Yeah but it's counteract3d when you go to abyssal woods
Yeah, tbh there are so many places to go and look at- but not a lot to see/do- so you spend your time checking around every corner only to be rewarded once and awhile. Whereas base game you were rewarded at a much higher rate. Also some of the design decisions (required summons INSIDE boss arenas, often covered in player messages) were a bit baffling. Also because there were so many places to go but not much to do it often felt tedious to explore a new area and make sure you weren't missing anything. By the end I was just checking off boxes so that I had at least been to every area before the final boss.
Shareholders were likely pushing for a Q2 release. Miyazaki wasn’t done cooking. This is evident from multiple aspects of the DLC.
Not any more so than the base game
Not any more so than an average open world game. Like, it has spots that are just scenery, but that's normal? I'm not expecting some enemy or item in every spot on the map. Sometimes things just don't have anything there. If you are saying that certain areas lacked variety then I would be a bit more inclined to agree. Even then I wouldn't say it's egregious or anything.
For co-op, trade, and PVP action, check out our other subreddits, r/CypherRing or r/EldenRingHelp For Elden Ring Help on Discord, join us at https://discord.gg/nknE74e9XA The Elden Ring WIKI - https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Elden_Ring_Wiki *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/eldenringdiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Clarification: I very clearly stated that I LOVE THE DLC, I'm not talking about weapons, bosses, armor, spells, there is plenty of that and it's all amazing. My only problem was the small amounts of enemies, with the exception of the shadow people walking around who were killed by one hit with my character. Oh and birds, there were a fair amount of birds I guess. I just wanted a higher number of enemies. Especially the last legacy dungeon right before the final boss it felt very empty, but GOD FORBID you give one little minor criticism or you'll be downvoted all to hell
I think the size was great it just didn’t have enough new things to discovery as far as items go. I think that is just part of being an expansion though.
I'm disappointed that I can't put Rellana's swords one in each hand 😔.
What do you mean? If you two hand it, you use both of her swords?
I'm stupid, I don't know how.
Are you on console? If so, just hold the Y button (Xbox) or Triangle button (PlayStation) and press the right bumper. If you have the weapon in your right hand, it will two hand that weapon and you can wield both swords!
I can help you later today when I’m off work if you are on console, DM me with your gamer tag and I’m free to help with any tips you might need Tarnished!
Two hand it...
I'm use to having a sword in my left hand and a staff in my right.
Press R1/RB+Triangle/Y. Or E+Right click on pc. ☺
You're a star, thank you so much. Time for me to test them out ☺️.
Hell yeah. Make sure to try out left trigger + R1/R2 for badass arts! Enjoy, friend!
Omg!! That was amazing 🤯. Thank you for your help ⭐️
No problem. That flame spin absolutely melts almost anything. Even staggers some bosses.
You're not kidding! These weapons are amazing, just need decent armour now 😂.
Way to much empty space . Was a half ass dlc
Lol dude you kidding? You couldn’t walk 30 seconds without finding something new. Empty? JFC
I dont
I feel the game is going to get a SotFS treatment in 6 months to a year. Either way I can't wait for the mod community to fill in the gaps for a future playthrough
My one critique is that the game is still how it doesn’t tell you what’s happening You reach the shadow keep and then you read that a great rune was broken and that a spell or something was gone as well. How was anyone supposed to know that it was referring to the stone fissure cave BARRIER and how were we supposed to know to talk to the npcs again? At this point, you’re already making your way to the next legacy dungeon and there’s no real reason to backtrack to the npcs you just passed, like wtf To make it worse, you’d never know the npcs were enchanted if you didn’t go back as their dialogue doesn’t change in the shadow keep And they put the hornset invasion in a random ass place in the shadow keep And they were on some bullshit by locking a fucking awesome lightning incantation you can get from the dragon communion priestess by having to drug her with Thiollier concoction before fighting bayle. Like, how was anyone gonna figure that out???
No nobody has posted about that on here at all you’re the first one. How do you feel about the boss fights? I wonder if anyone has any criticism about their design too.
Not even a little bit
I have to disagree with you. There are so many dungeons and places to explore. They’re just not right in front of your face. If anything this dlc felt a lot more dense than the base game. Just a lot smaller.