Herman Pettersson

Aspiring Gameplay- And Systems Designer

Rants

Here I post my ramblings to the void with zero expectations of anybody reading them.
Do so at your own risk. Profane and vulgar language included.

Shadow Of The Erdtree

Absolutely peak Fromsoft with level design reminiscent of Dark Souls 1.

Level Design is godlike, they've taken the best level design in the series (ds1 first half) and applied it to an area more than 4 times the size and it's insane. There's of course a lot of old enemies that are reused a bunch and so are bosses. I've given them a lot of shit in the past for doing exactly that, but it kind of works differently in an open world game like elden ring compared to DS2 smelter demon & blue smelter demon (also applies to the base game, not just this DLC).I definitely understand why people are saying that the game is too hard but it is literally a case of git gud. If your build isn't working, that's on you, not the game. They give the player so many (intended) ways to lower the difficulty that if people are not using them, that's on the player, not the game. While the final boss was crazy, he still doesn't break the rules of the game like Malenia does. If anything, what makes the second phase hard is the fact that you can't see shit during certain attacks. It's not even the first time they've done that gimmick (attacks coming out with a delay after other attacks), it's just not done well like with the last boss of DS3 DLC (Gael).The new weapon types are cool as fuck, they're pretty much what I've wanted since the game came out and I think they covered a lot of other niche build styles with the previous weapon types too. Sure, some of them are OP right now, but that's to be expected, that's always the case in any from game lol.
Now for the less good parts. I absolutely loathe the way they did item drops that weren't weapons or other equipment in this DLC. Stop giving the player weapon upgrade materials for the fucking mid-game. I would even take useless new crafting materials than weapon upgrade materials, it's goddamn worthless. Nothing felt worse than going around killing annoying enemies in hard to find areas just to get trash for it.The Scadutree upgrade system is good in theory, but not in practice. It worked completely fine in Sekiro, because there weren't a lot of other parameters that the player could play around with to change the innate strength of their character. But in Elden Ring, there is a lot of ways to improve the character, so it's hard to know when something is strong, if the player just needs to git gud, if their build sucks or if they actually need more scadutree fragments. Sure it's a way to get players to explore the world more, but all the new fancy equipment (not to mention amazing level design) already does that.The NPCs. I think they did a good job tying the different factions together and make an interesting story around that using the NPCs, but good lord are they still bad at showing the player how to do their questlines. I almost managed to do the entirety of St Trina's questline blind, but to do the entire quest, you need to kill yourself with her poison 4 fucking times before you start getting any dialogue. I did not figure that out, because I only did it 3 times...
Not to mention the hardlock on most questlines if you kill Mesmer. I actually prefer the inconsistency of questlines in the base game where you could have a character in 2 different "states" at the same time at different locations, just so it was much harder to miss/fuck up. At the very least, the hardblock could've been much later in the game than it was.Last but not least, the story/setting. I think they did a good job covering most of the different factions in a satisfactory manner, but at the same time I am a bit disappointed because the 2 I felt needed more exposure are clearly missing, that being Those Who Live In Death and The Godskins. I can understand why the first faction isn't super relevant because most of the things in the DLC are relevant to before the shattering but there are plenty of undead around. I think Asmongold said it best by saying "Imagine if Miquella revived Godwyn the golden instead of Radahn, that would be unexpected", and yes I completely agree. The cynical idiot in me says that they only did what they did with the last boss to save money & dev time, but there's still a fuckton of work that goes into it, so I don't think that is the case, but it is nonetheless a bit disappointing.As for the second faction, that's simply because we don't get a lot of lore or story about them in the first game. Most are under the impression that Melina is the leader of the faction, but it is never confirmed nor denied, the faction itself isn't even mentioned at all in the entire DLC. It feels like such a missed opportunity to not go into more detail on this faction. It was pretty much confirmed that Melina is the child of Marika by new lore text, but she also just says it in the base game so it's not super relevant and the only mention of her in the entire DLC, not even by name.

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Mushoku Tensei

A popular isekai novel series that has no right to be as good as it is.

One of my many guilty pleasures in life is unfortunately bad isekai manga/manwha and anime. For the most part I am okay with this because I know what to expect going into it, which is to say, the same old tropes repeated with slight variations.The main character is OP either from the very start, or after the first small struggle they encounter. The world is filled with many tropes that are mostly the same in every series. The same old classic stat systems, a medieval europe fantasy setting with stone castles and low technology levels, instead replaced by magic. Goblins, slimes, wolves, orcs, dragons, the same old monsters you find in any generic fantasy setting.A lot of these tropes and many, many more are also part of Mushoku Tensei. But there is something that Mushoku Tensei manages to do that many other isekai series fall completely flat on, World Building.

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Monster Hunter World

Why MH World is the future of the Monster Hunter franchise and MH Rise is a step backwards.Also why the Clutch Claw is horrible and I am very glad that the ICE community mod exists.

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