Ashes of Ariandel Impressions

What's everyones thoughts on this?

I'm surprised to say but I really didn't like this DLC. I didn't have any fun with it whatsoever. I found the areas to be sparse and uninteresting to explore, the enemies didn't have any new types of behaviours and all worked based on an amalgamation of existing enemy types from the previous games. The bosses were incredibly underwhelming with one of them being a blatant rip from Bloodborne and the other had trouble convincing me it was worthy of a boss healthbar.

On top of the general combat/enemy encounters being poor the new weapons introduced initially seem very cool, but sadly all fall victim to the terrible upgrade system that DS3 has. None of the ones I've tried/wanted to use are any good because they require Twinkling Titanite upgrades which as we all know makes the weapon terrible by default in DS3. There aren't many new armour sets and there's barely any new spells.

This DLC even fails to nostalgia bait DS1 fans. This is easily the worst DLC in the franchise.

Anyone else feel the same? Or am I just a victim of Souls fatigue? For clarity I liked DS3, but its certainly my least favourite Dark game. This however is probably the worst set of content in the entire franchise with only the terrible Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne eclipsing it.

I just started but I literally have the opposite impression that you have. It's clearly pandering to the Painted World of Ariamis with the crow people, snowy weather, and architecture and I love that. DS3 was full of references to DS1 so I'm glad the DLC kept it going. The world is big and connected, the enemies have an interesting "HEY EVERYBODY GET OVERHERE" mechanic that messed me up numerous times until I could handle it, and there's interesting environmental mechanics that I liked.

I generally play the Souls games for the story and the bosses, so what you might hate I might ignore. Granted I haven't fought any bosses yet, so I don't know my opinion on that yet, but I'm enjoying what I'm playing so far. The only disappointing thing I've experienced so far is I expected Vilheim to be more of a fight like Garl Vinland.

I had to resort to using my glass-cannon mage because my main was on NG++ so I might be in for a harder time than usual. She's only at SL 57 so I wonder if I need to level up a bit before I go on.

@burncoat: You're right I'm not denying that the DLC attempts to pander to the DS1 fans but I just feel like it didn't do it in any meaningful or cool way. It's just a "hey remember this?" At least the stuff in the main game did something with its references. I also don't think the large areas are to the DLC's benefit as like I said I feel like they're for the most part sparse and just not that interesting to explore. They don't have much to see that I haven't seen before and the general structure of the level design is for the most part open-ish areas with a whole lot of the same enemy copy pasted around the perimeter. In DS2's DLC they had cool new environmental interactions like the blizzard that changed what enemy types were visible or aggro or the Idols that would give enemies Resurrection abilities as well as the ability to curse you. This is just more "we put a bunch of archer guys around the place that hassle you while you fight off 10 wolves at the same time."

I'd be interested to hear what you think when you're done because I was willing to look past all my issues with the levels if the bosses were fun and the items were good/plentiful, but they really bummed me out.

I didn't even know this was out already. I just started my season on Diablo 3, playing Battlefield 1, and now this?

There's just not enough time!

These games have been based on one another for a long time. Demons souls, dark souls and dark souls 2 were very similar. Bloodborne was a fresher feeling game, and then dark souls 3 they drew on all of them. The point of all these games and their dlcs has basically been for more of it. This seems like more dark souls.

I disagree pretty much entirely. The level design and enemy placement of the DLC is excellent, all distinct encounters are interesting and build off each other in meaningful ways. The one thing I'd agree on is the visuals being drab, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And the ropebridge with the church looks great.

I enjoyed it, it's pretty much straight in line with a Dark Souls 2 DLC except that you get the added benefit of the totally ridiculous 6 person FFA PvP; which has actually brought new life into the most dead aspect of the game for me; just seems really entertaining. Firebombs still rule the day. Not Maria is certainly the best fight in the game, even if it's not as good as 3 or 4 Bloodborne bosses /shrug Must get new badges that no one understands next to my name! I will have the most "Win" of anyone, the epitome of "Win", not kills, not victories, not even the plural wins, merely "Win." The other boss is more or less in line with a typical Dark Souls 3 boss, not particularly memorable but perfectly fine.

Edit: 3v3 is consistently more interesting than 6 player FFA, also queue times are quicker; FFA is kind of at the mercy of builds, if you get a decent variety its fun but if 4 out of 6 players are using Yhorm's Great Machete or whatever it ceases to be entertaining.

It's disappointing. Easily the worst of any Dark Souls DLC ever. Art design is kinda just bland everywhere in comparison to other souls stuff. It's extremely short. Optional boss is not very worthy of that boss health bar. Final boss I really really liked though.

The saving grace? It's more souls, and that's fun. And....*drum roll*......the pvp arena is a much welcome addition. Actual matchmaking in a souls game. Yes please. I've been having fun with that.

how to make a game more difficult, throw more of the same thing at once at you ... You can do better then that Dark Souls.

You're not wrong but the DLC's of the previous games and Bloodborne have introduced either a large amount of content or new elements that affect the world interaction or enemy interaction. This DLC did neither, and is chock full of 100% recycled enemies with different character models.

I just don't see it, they didn't do anything creative with the enemy placement and attempted to increase challenge via numbers. Which never works because of how easy it is to bait enemies into areas that put the odds in your favour.

It's not even difficulty, it's just tedious I only died a few times and each time I had run back I had 0 interest in fighting the enemies again. Usually I'll fight the enemies several times before I tire but here I went straight to "run past everything" mode. Except against the Corvians, they were challenging and fun to fight.

I'm fairly deep into it now, and just... this is easily the worst DLC From has ever put out. What a dreadfully boring area filled with dreadfully boring enemies. There's just such a general lack of effort here compared to how well-made most of the main game sections are. I'm just kind of shocked by this. From's DLC content is usually better than the actual main-games they come from. I'm hoping the remaining part of the DLC will turn things around, as so far this is just so mediocre.

Spoilers for up to the yucky cellar:

I'm pretty sure the character I used wasn't ready for this. At 75 she's got 40 intelligence and a little something-something in all the other stats, and even with a crystal Astora Greatsword the damage isn't happening. I don't think it was possible for me to beat the human NPC fight alone, so I ran out onto the edge of that cliff and thankfully managed to make him tumble off. Idiot.

Not before I put down my summon sign and tried to help someone else beat him though... Only to realize he's an NPC, and I can't damage NPCs. Shit! I'm so sorry, Host!

Anyway, I quite liked the early area. That little bit with just Follower Knights, and then suddenly the ground crumbles and it's WOLVES, WOLVES EVERYWHERE. I ran a straight(or rather, zigzagging and curly) line from there to the bonfire and haven't looked back yet. I don't like the enemies that just hide as dead bodies and scream, they always startle me. I kinda like the regular Follower Knights in the second forest too. They are tough in pairs or when they get the drop on you, but I can Assassin's Creed my way through them or take them on alone no problem. The other enemies are all either monsters I only cheese through walls or stealth by with hidden body/spook(Ninja Birds, Giant Hammer Men) or very, very easy (Wolves, Pretend Dead Dirds, Regular Birds, Flies).

I wonder if Elfriede is the same as sister Friede. I presume so, but the item descriptions say Elfriede is the leader of the Sable Church. Friede clearly knows about them, and acknowledges in dialogue that I'm the Lord of Hollows, but she just wants me out of there to rule my own people. I thought you were my people, Friede.

The girl in the attic(Ariamis?) that I freed from Vilhelm is cute. She talks about painting a cold, dark place and I'll tell you right now, if this is more time travel shenanigans and she paints the world of Ariamis I'll be a little miffed. She says I entered into an agreement with her uncle Cael, so I presume that's the Slave Knight. I hope the lore goes a bit deeper, I was expecting either some Velka or Priscilla lore. And if this is the Londor lore we're getting, I wanted some content in the land of Hollows, hopefully with some primordial serpents, not this stuff where they're just hogging a similar painting world from Dark Souls 1. It was somewhat disappointing to run up that rope bridge and find a completely different area than in Dark Souls 1.

Apropos of Slave Knight, The Slave Knight Armor is the first pants armor to consist of just leggings and briefs, as far as I know. I did some co-op farming at Ancient Wyvern before taking on the DLC and already people are wearing just the pants and then nothing. That's the Dragon's Dogma way, that is.

The new weapons I've found are super cool. I've got the rapier and knives set that makes you do a ninja jump while throwing four knives, and the double Vega claws. IVDAMKE is right about the upgrade path though, upgrading them to a level where they do good damage probably isn't possible until I'm nearly done with the main game(I'm currently at Lothric Castle. I've got another character that has beaten the game, so I'll try with that one later).I also found a new miracle called Way of White Corona, which makes a boomerang out of light. It's a bit shit, though. I have 18 Faith and it didn't come anywhere near to destroying a Regular Bird with two hits.

So far, I dunno. I like it, but it's definitely more of the same, and feels like more of the Undead Village from the beginning of the game rather than the painted world. I don't know if I'd say it's their worst DLC though. I'm a sucker for the snow setting, and unlike Dark Souls 2 I actually really enjoy the act of just controlling the character. I vaguely remember that in a similar DLC topic about DS2 I said I was impressed by the content, but kinda didn't like playing it. That's just not the case here, even if it's got no snowstorm, huge snowball, sprawling city and fun invader NPCs like in Eleum Loyce yet.

@ivdamke: Okay, after finishing it I can see what you're saying and I think I agree on some points. I still love the area and the layout, but you were right in that it feels underutilized. There's a tiny area devoted to nothing but a lack-luster spell that's outclassed by a titanite slab. The Gravetender was really disappointing and I thought the Wolf I encountered a couple of times was going to play into something special and different, not a watered-down version of Sullyvan's monsters.

There's also a couple of areas where it really felt like they rushed to get this thing finished. There's a little bit of the level they didn't even bother to model or texture right next to a ladder so you can just see through the level. The wolves' models were really wonky and would freak out when they went rag-doll, and by freak out I mean their torsos would spin independently from their hind legs.

All in all it felt very bland. It was fun in a couple of places, but otherwise I can't believe this is what they put out as DLC when you compare it to the Old Hunters. I'm hoping the next DLC (which might take place in the Sable Church?) is better. There are some tiny hints that this DLC isn't complete without the second one and I hope I'm not looking too into it.

Would you guys recommend just waiting for the other DLC and playing everything at once?

Loved Old Hunters and I don't want to jump back into this if it feels incomplete.

I really liked the bosses, specially the three part fight with the girl and her dad(?), the wolf+dude fight was good too, but when I finished the DLC I was like "is this it? just 2 bosses?".

The part I didn't liked was the forest/hill with A BAZILLION ENEMIES, sure they were weak (I was playing with a SL90 character) but damn, that was boring/frustrating.

And the ninja-crow-dudes are rad as hell

I wouldn't say it feels incomplete in any way, it just isn't substantial by any means. Everything in this dlc is pretty minor to your enjoyment of the overall game, whereas something like The Old Hunters or Artorias of the Abyss was easily some of the best content in their respective games, offering a huge range of weapons and stuff to take back into the base game as well. I feel like you wouldn't be missing much by waiting but also waiting wouldn't necessarily make the content feel more whole, so it's really up to you. I would personally not really bother returning just for this piece of content. It might actually feel more meaningful if you had an additional piece of dlc to play right after since this one is fairly short and ends rather abruptly.

@ktargo: It takes some time for me to build up the desire to go down a Dark Souls hole. So I suppose doing that once per year is enough so I'll save these DLC's til 2017.

I think I may have thoroughly explored the first area, which took roughly 90 minutes. Last thing I did was crossing a rope bridge that seemed to lead to the next area. I don't know, so far, the Painted World seems on par with the better areas in the main game, which isn't saying much, since I didn't particularly enjoy exploring most of them. But to be fair, for an open-ended space, it's far better designed than say, The Royal Wood or The Road of Sacrifices. I also think it looks pretty nice. The lore references to The Painted World of Ariamis have not been as overt as what I have come to expect, which I appreciate.

I've been re-playing through the main game and had just finished the Dukes Archive at level 59 so I figured I'd dive into this. Boy, do I feel under-leveled. I've had to run through many of the encounters. Almost took down that gravewarden and his wolf on my first shot though.

@nevergameover: 59 Is for sure underleveled, I jumped into it at 65 and gained a few levels while I was there. I would stab a guess the intended level is 70-80 range.

Finished the DLC this morning. It took me closer to like 4 hours than 2, but I did take my time and explored everything. My opinion didn't really much change overall in saying this felt like a 3/5 piece of content at best. Yes, the Sister Friede boss fight was really good, but not so good to make up for a mostly lackluster set of areas. The usual From touches were just missing overall. For instance, they drop a slew of new weapons on you, but barely any upgrade materials with which to have fun leveling them up. Sure, most upgrade materials are fairly easy to grind at this point. At least they do give you a slab. By and large, the environment does little to really expand upon the lore or really visually convey much. Most of the enemies are just lame and not terribly fun or challenging to fight. And when they fail to individually provide challenge, From starts doubling down on the ganks, which has always been the sign of some of the weakest content From makes.

There is some interesting stuff sprinkled in there, and there are encounters that are really well-done the tower you need to get to and climb to get to the Captain's Ashes. But the good is just sprinkled too thin atop the malaise.

Highlight of the DLC for me was that Crow Village. The shift from weak little punk enemies to those hyper crow knights was a cool moment. The Crow Knights in general are just so cool, their weapons are practically trick weapons (well one of them at least).

I liked the final boss well enough but three phases was more frustrating than fun, especially when the 2nd phase can bea little tedious and the third phase can kill you so quickly...

I agree with the overall sentiment that this DLC is a tad on the small side, but I still enjoyed all the content. Only area that felt especially lacking design wise was the snowy mountain passage after you find the painter girl. That kinda just felt like Dark Souls 2 style "enemy copy-pasta'd everywhere" placement.

To be honest, it's bad. But then again, Dark Souls in general is bad, with DS1 being the exception, and Dark Souls 3 being fucking terrible.

I think it's bad. It's the penultimate piece of content for the series and we get... side stories that have no real connection or substance in regards to the main story, just more questions. I thought the wolves were interesting and the final boss fight is good. Of course it's pretty to look at it, but I felt it just didn't have any real life to it. There's not a whole lot of interesting stuff in the DLC, coupled with how short it is... just a bummer. I'd really hoped that the final pieces of DLC were going to give some kind of closure/answers to the series but I guess that's not going to be the case.

This thread is bumming me out. I was looking forward to buying this.

I'm playing through the game for the first time on PS4 and haven't technically beaten it (I'm finishing up Archdragon before going into the archives) but I have finished Yuria's questline and this still happened to me which is interesting. I guess the game just checks to see if you have 8 dark sigils in your inventory?

But yeah, this DLC is the worst From DLC by far. The enemy design appears to be based in the idea of having lots of things like in Bloodborne which is actively hostile to non-Bloodborne builds like I'm playing with. Also, the final boss fight would be cool if there were only two stages, three is far too much to ask and just becomes trial and error until you can dodge literally every attack for the first two phases so you have Estus for the final section.

I will say that the arena is fun as hell. 6 man brawl is a hilarious nightmare.

The second character I fought the boss with. The urge to play Dark Souls games immediately upon release only to shit on them continuously is still baffling, similarly playing them once through or only until you get the platinum seems like an incomplete experience at best. Even if hardly anyone considers 3 the best it's still a perfectly functional game that's superior to virtually everything else that tries to imitate it; I suspect while Nioh will have superior controls (inferior to Bloodborne's of course) it will have a large variety of bad design decisions and repetition involved; i.e. what people tend to bitch about in Dark Souls sequels. Queue the endless Nioh praise in February (note: I'm super hyped for Nioh personally).

DS3 now has 21 bosses, still 1 less than Dark Souls had at launch; will the next DLC bring the total up to 23!?

I have unlocked the secret of pressing L1! Such skill, such valor:

IMO i think it was worth it for $15. The difficulty is the only thing extends the length of this game/dlc. Many people would have been above SL 80/120 while playing this dlc.

I think it was a bad idea making the dlc at SL60 as a good chunk of people who will be playing it will be over leveled for it unless they are on a NG+ run. I was SL 85 when I played though it and I ripped though the trash mobs like they were nothing, dying maybe twice to non-boss mobs. That being said I wasn't a huge fan of the 2 bosses this dlc has to offer. These bosses, to me at least, felt too much like gimmick bosses with the optional boss being a 2v1 boss with adds and the "final" boss being a 3 phase fight with a 2v1 section. These fights are cool if you can beat them the first time around but become increasingly annoying with each loss to the point where I heard myself saying "oh great, this phase again."

To me that is not Dark Souls. Dark Souls bosses are tough but fun, these bosses just felt like busy work. I wasn't happy I beat them, I was happy I didn't have to fight them anymore and that is hugely disappointing. I wanted to like this dlc so badly but I couldn't.

@novadth: Still one more to go though.

I don't feel the need to buy it. Its a series that's relied on callbacks far too often now and it's getting tiresome. On top of that, it seems light on bosses which is the thing I come to Dark Souls for.

Not sure how I feel about it. The new weapons are nice to mess around with for sure. The new rapier seemed just okay until I two-handed and used the L1 attack and holy crap does it seem powerful in PVE. Wailing on certain bosses was dealing upwards of 3000 damage within maybe 6 or 7 seconds, maybe less if I enchanted it. I can stunlock knights outside of the prince bossfight and kill them super fast.

I didn't get to spend as much time with it as I wanted, due to work and life, but the 6 hours it took me to finish it were rewarding in my opinion. My build is a dual-wield katana with no armor or shield, and I managed to solo it at 75. I found the enemy variety to be adequate and the boss fights were both satisfying. I'm pretty sure there's some stuff I missed but what I played was enjoyable, if somewhat brief. Looking forward to see what they do with the next add-on.

Patrick wrote a piece about the DLC over at Vice gaming (I guess it's Waypoint now). I haven't read it , but it sounded like he did not enjoy it either.

I didn't really like a lot of the mobs they throw at you but I really liked that end boss fight. I think it's one of my favourites in the game, a lot of the boss fights in the main game were quite easy to finish within max 3 runs. I feel like this one I actually learned how to beat each stage as I kept trying and finally beating it was satisfying. As for the army of wolves, if anyone else is having trouble with them, I would always run up to the edge of the cliff and fight them there and 90% of them would jump off the edge. So you can get rid of them within like 30 seconds.

I feel like they gave me a pass on this one, at this point two shots with a bow will kill almost any small enemy so they must have known people would mistake this guy.

Also, I was wondering does anything actually happen with you finish the DLC? I beat the boss and the girl upstairs says thanks and says she'll finish the painting but nothing really happens. Someone left a message in front of the altar in the boss room saying to do a gesture but I don't know if that's bs or not. I assume it's a reference to DS1 but I never finished it.

I don't know if anyone as mentioned this but I spoke to Yuria after beating the DLC and she had something interesting to say!

When the girl rezzed for the second time, I just said nope and turned it off. You're better than this Dark Souls.

I loved that part! Took me by surprise.

Her dialogue if you speak to her a second time after beating the boss:

I think we have Dark Souls 2 situation where the next DLC will end with some sort of key item we take to this DLC to trigger a cutscene.

@tennmuerti: Had the boss kill noise and everything, pretty great.

@tennmuerti: Well it would've been fine if it was a Nashandra situation, but having to go through two fairly boring fights to get to the tough one over and over is just not fun. They already addressed this sorta stuff with way better shortcut and bonfire placements in the sequels, but then revert back to that kinda tedium ? No thanks.

I guess hating on this is what the cool kids are doing, but I've enjoyed my time with this quite a bit. I don't really get the complaints about length, as it seems at least as long as DS1 DLC.

The enemies are very tough, but reasonably fair (maybe not the infinite stamina vikings) especially compared to the invisible pop-up ambushes of the DS2 DLC. The claw-ninja guys were pretty neat and scary. The whole environment is really nice looking (even if the particle effects sometimes make it hard to see)

The optional boss fight was really cool, as was the npc fight in the library, and I haven't beat the final boss yet, so there's enough good stuff here to satisfy me, and that's just my first run through. Started with a lvl 73 char, and will probably run back through immediately after with my 90+ character just to roflstomp everything.

Yeah, this DLC is very good. I just think it needed more content. It doesn't anything especially unfair compared to the base game and past titles... there have always been ambushes and sniper archers, and this DLC isn't just that. A little too heavy on the hordes, but it's still nothing like Iron Keep in SOTFS, you can easily circumvent having to fight a pile of enemies by just remaining mindful of aggro range. And yeah, having to deal with the first two phases of the boss when the third phase is the really hard part is a bit annoying. But the base game had that issue as well.

I heard that the DLC second is a bit larger and I think as a pair, the DLCs will make a really compelling package(especially if they are connected by finding the dark soul of man to use as pigment for a new painted world, holy crap that's cool). Here's hoping it has at least three main bosses though, if the next DLC is two again I'll be very sad.

I know I'm over a month late to the party here, but I just got around to finally playing this DLC, and I found it pretty underwhelming.

I really dislike the wide open environment, since I just hate the feeling of being lost and not knowing where to go or what to do. It's like Farron Keep, but thankfully not quite as bad. That being said, the second part of the DLC, where you're wandering through the town is a bit better, but it's really small, and makes unlocking the shortcuts just sort of baffling to me, since each one saves like 30 seconds to a minute of time at best. The part after the town is yet another uninteresting snowy section, just like the first, and it just feels really uninspired. I didn't like Dark Souls 2 very much, and I felt the DLC for that game was too difficult, but at least they were all interesting and fun to navigate.

The fact that there were only TWO bosses is kind of a massive let down too. The optional boss was way too easy, with the only difficult part being the fact that there were two of them. The final boss in the meantime was a cool challenge, and the third phase of the fight caught me completely off guard, since I thought it was over once phase two ended. That third phase though, holy shit. I admit that I eventually just summoned the NPC phantom for the fight, since she was kicking my ass so hard. What makes it worse is that the first two phases are so freaking EASY, but you still have to be careful not to waste too many flasks during them, or else you're just screwed for the last phase. The phantom makes the last phase way too easy though, since they distract her attention away from you, awarding an easy backstab. I won the first time I used the phantom, and honestly, it trivialized it so much that I honestly didn't really feel like I earned the win, I wish I had kept trying to beat her on my own, but having to go through each phase all over again was just tedious and time consuming...

I guess you could say the DLC has an unofficial third boss - Mr. ONE-HIT-KILL bullshit man guarding the attic. The guy actually wasn't that hard, but if you fucked up ONCE and had him break your guard, you're dead. It was just so annoying to be punished so harshly for screwing up once, but at least the reward is a bonfire, so that was nice. There was also the secret invader NPC above the arena - he was pretty challenging, but since he didn't have a bullshit one-hit-kill mechanic, I was able to beat him on my first try. The normal mobs in the DLC were all - for the most part - really easy to deal with. I fucking hated those guys that screamed when you walked up to them though, I think every single one of them made me jump, and I just started swatting at every corpse I ran across making sure none of them would freaking do that.

On a different note, that painting girl you free from the attic is seriously adorable. The way she spreads her arms out and swings her feet on that ladder in front of her canvas was just too cute, and I also really liked her hair.

Overall though, the DLC was just kind of boring. The desolate, snowy environments were visually unappealing, and the level design and layout was too open for my taste. I know the castes tend to be really generic, but I love the linearity of them. I prefer a linear path with a few off-shoots that loop around rather than having this wide open space where I don't know where to go.

The Old Hunters was a MUCH better DLC package, so it's disappointing to see this not be that good.

I found the level design to be top of its class, bigly. I would have liked one more area with a boss but the whole time I was in it I couldn't understand why people were down on it