Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-16047389-20140729143204/@comment-5632187-20140729153618

In terms of overall level lay out, everything was functional and flowed well. Enemy placement was very good, and I found myself being snuck up on multiple times by the Sanctum Knights. I disagree with the you said about the puzzles Beet, as you needed to activate some of the turnable pillars in a certain order to access things otherwise inaccessible to you(read: a bonfire). Speaking of bonfires, they were well placed and didn't force you to go through the levels tediously. Let's move on to enemies.

The enemies were overall very well designed, in my opinion. The Sanctum Knights didn't have tons of HP, and so the large amounts of poise was fine, especially given how susceptible they were to being backstabbed. The corrosive-fly-bug-things were really cool. Their clicking noises added to the creepy ambiance when you entered a room and just suddenly heard loud clicking noises behind you. As for the rooms the corrosive bugs were in, a bit overkill given that the bugs themselves could corrode your gear. The "Kinda Ghosts but not really Ghosts if you break their corporeal flesh" enemies were really interesting to me. The first time I found 2 of them in the Sanctum, I also saw the flesh glowing red on the coffins and so I shot at the corpses, and sure enough the 2 enemies materialized. I also found it interesting that in their ghost form, they were immune to all physical damage, and could only be hit by elemental. Perks of being a ghost, eh? Lastly, the Moose Magicians(or Sanctum Priestesses if you want to be "politically correct") were... Interesting, I suppose. Their ability to spam hexes nonstop was slightly annoying, but in return they were very squishy and had no close range defense. I also found their overall design just amusing as hell, so I just call them Moose Magicians. I think I touched on all the enemies, so moving on.

The boss fights were certainly a step in the right direction. Before I start, note I fought all these bosses NG+++ solo the first time I played through the DLC. On that note, I'll go in the order I fougt them, so starting with the Triple Gank Fight(Alva look-alike, Havel look-alike, Lucatiel hat-wearer). This fight was... Well when I entered my first reaction was, of course, "You've got to be f**king kidding me..." But then I actually got into the fight and I found it fun. I liked how all three enemies had adaptive AI. For example, when I parried the Alva look-alike, the Havel look-alike rushed in on me the moment I started my riposte to give me no time to recover from the riposte. As for the overall fight, it wasn't that difficult since I finished it in 3 attempts. Moving on to the Squalid Queen Lady Person, I found this fight much less enjoyable. She has interesting moves, and I'd be fine if she was only able to summon 3 skeletons, but her summoning Poison Velstadt is just ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. Her summoning him is just game over if you're not co-oping. If that part of the fight didn't exist, I'd find that fight pretty enjoyable. She makes you focus on constantly staying on the move and not overextending or getting greedy. When she's not summoning Velstadt, the fight is actually pretty fair and makes you think before you do something in the fight. Last but certainly not least, the only boss I will call by his actual name, Sinh the Slumbering Dragon. This fight was by far my favorite fight in the DLC. I don't know what you mean, Beet, by "Kalameet reskin" considering he only has a couple moves similar to Kalameet's, while possessing quite a few unique moves of his own. Sinh has very good hitboxes, fair movements, and will punish the ever-living sh*t out of you if you try to heal in front of him. He was a very fun fight, and probably my favorite in the game. Not to mention, he's pretty challenging to kill if you're fighting him NG+++ solo at 12:30 AM and not thinking straight(speaking hypothetically, of course). The bosses were overall pretty good with just a couple quirks in the end.

In total, I'd say the DLC was a very large improvement on the quality of the game. And let's not forget that everyone complaining about the Dark Souls II bosses claim that there's no boss in the game that "makes them feel like Artorias/Manus/Kalameet did" when those fights were DLC bosses. So let's not be so quick to hate on the Dark Souls II bosses, when the best fight(s) in the first game was also a DLC boss(es). If the next two DLCs are like this, I'll be very pleased with FromSoft. If they're better than this, I'll be even more pleased. My overall score for it would be a 9/10.