Nightreign The Forsaken Hollows DLC – First Impressions
In this Elder Ring Night Rain video, I’m going to be talking about my first impressions playing the Forsaken Hollows DLC, which just came out earlier today. And I basically been playing all day non-stop. I’ve been playing the new classes, both Schar and Undertaker. I got to check out the new shifting earth/map. We’ll talk a little bit about that. And I think generally I’ve had fun so far playing with these things, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit disappointed. And I will elaborate why in this video. So, I’m going to talk about the things that I like first before getting to the things that I don’t like about the Forsaken Halls. The first thing that I really like about the Forsaken Hollows is the new bosses. From Software is the king of boss fights. This is one thing that I don’t believe they will ever be dethroned in. They just make exceptionally good boss fights. And the new boss fights are good. The returning boss fights like the Demon of Hatred, Demon of Pain, Artorius, they’re all really, really fun. I cannot understate how just adding a few bosses to this game really shakes things up. And you know, back when the Everdark Sovereign bosses were added to the game, that was like one boss was being added a week. And it was even a boss that had already been in the game itself that was kind of rehashed and changed a bit, and that made the game feel new and fresh and exciting for at least a few days or a week for most people. So, the fact that we have, you know, a a few or a good number of new bosses really adds to the freshness of the game, and that’s something that we need in Night Ramp. So, the next thing that I really, really like about The Forsaken Hollows is the freshness of the new map. The new map is kind of in this weird place where it’s like it’s technically called a shifting earth, but it actually feels like a separate map since you can’t access the base game map. And in my estimation, it’s much larger than the area of a shifting earth. Or at least I’d say it’s probably double or triple the size of a traditional shifting earth if I had to guess. I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but it’s drastically different in style and tone in the way that it’s designed. So, it doesn’t just feel like you’re playing more of Night Rain’s base game. It feels like you’re playing something a little bit different. And when you first start playing it too, it feels almost like you’re having to relearn how to play the game because you don’t have the patterns memorized and it kind of gives you a little bit of that like feeling that From Software is known for where it’s familiar but it’s different enough that you have to learn something new and I really really like that. The next thing that I quite enjoyed in the DLC is having the two new classes in the game. They’re fun to play. It’s nice to have a new variety of things you can do and new party combinations and the stories of those characters are interesting and they’re well realized and it just again added to the freshness of the feel of the game when you’re not just playing Iron Eye every time or Raider every time or whatever your main is. You’re not just playing that one character or those two characters. there’s like a little something new to try out and play and that can make the game even the base game since you can play them in the base game feel different because you’re not tackling the obstacles in the same way that you normally would. You’re not looking for the same weapons that you normally would or the same spells. So, I really really like that they have two new classes and I really really hope that they continue to add more classes as we move forward. And the last thing that I enjoyed about this patch is not something that’s specific to the forsaken hollows necessarily, but there were new passives on weapons that were added like melee damage, dash or damage after dashing, damage after rolling that I really like to see that gives some more variety to the things you can get and some more useful ones too, not ones that are necessarily like useless. There’s also new chalicees that was added for each of the existing nightfairs, including the new nightfares as well. So, you can have different combinations and experiment with that, which adds a little bit of freshness to the game. And there are new relics as well. The ones that stand out to me are the ones that can change the starting spell on your starting, you know, seal or staff, which can really kind of get you off to a better start if you have a preferred spell. I don’t think this is something you’re probably going to see much on like recluse, but if you’re using it on like a faith-based character, then it might be giving you a much better faith-based spell than what you start out with because starting see what you start out with on most faith-based characters is terrible. So, it’s really nice to see that. It allows you to kind of get off to a better start with a better spell. Unfortunately though, that’s kind of where it ends for me. Those are the things I like and those are not small things by any measure, but that’s pretty much where the things I like about the DLC end. Again, this is a first impressions video, by the way. This is not my final opinion. This is my first impressions after playing about 6 to 8 hours today. And as we know from software games can be a bit rough when you first start playing them the first time. And it takes a little bit before it clicks, before people fall in love with them generally. This is one of the reasons I spend so much time doing guides for these games is because once you get over the hump and you start playing the game instead of struggling against the mechanics of it, it is a ton of fun to play. So, my final opinion on this may change, but there are quite a few things I don’t like about the DLC. So, the first thing is that there seems to be a major verticality issue with the new map. And it’s not that you can go really high or go down really low. it’s that there is a big chunk of the map that’s actually like if you fall off you die and it can be very problematic. At least that’s my impression so far. As I memorize the map more and you know the layouts and runs and things, it’ll probably become less of an issue and I would imagine that would be true for anyone else. But right now it is a bit of a problem. And the reason why is because in the base game when you’re playing Night Rain, the positioning of yourself where you’re fighting a boss is not super important. If you notice that the Night Rain is starting to close, no matter where you are, even if you’re on the very edge of the ring, you can run all the way across to the circle and get to the tree and and fight the end of day boss no problem. As long as you head out in a timely fashion, you will get there on time and you won’t die. That is not the case with the shifting earth. And in the forsaken hollows, you can be in certain positions where you simply cannot get to where you need to go. Even if you can see it, even if you have time to get there, there’s simply not a way for you to get there without running through the night rain and probably dying or losing half your flash when getting there. So, you’re automatically at a disadvantage. And what it does is it puts more of a focus on your positioning and where you are in the map and running around to be in the optimal position rather than fighting and combat which I think is the best part of the game. The combat in Night Rain is my favorite combat probably, you know, besides maybe games like Neo2 and the First Birkon. It’s it may even be better than that. Like it’s it’s that good. It’s so good in this game. I don’t want to be worried about running around as much as I want to be fighting in this game. and it takes some of that focus off fighting and puts it on your positioning and it can make for some really unfun situations where you just die and there’s nothing you can do. And on top of that, sometimes after you die in that scenario where the night rain just pushes you off a ledge basically when you spawn in, you spawn in the night rain or in another position where you’re basically screwed again. Like it’s just it feels like it very much was not play tested because I feel like a lot of play testers would have told from software this is not fun. It’s cool looking, but just generally speaking, it’s kind of rough. And maybe once you’ve memorized the patterns and where to go, it won’t be so bad. But when you’re first starting out, it is really rough. And it you definitely kind of have to push through it. And kind of piggybacking off this, there is a new encounter in the Forsaken Hollows area where you basically have to kill three Gladius bosses or three Tricos bosses that are spread out all over the map. And you’re basically taking damage over time while you’re trying to find them. And again, if this was the base game, this would be hard enough to do on its own, but because the way the map is laid out and it’s difficult to traverse and to know exactly where to go, particularly when you’re new. When you get this thing, there’s just no way for you to get to these things. Like, you you can see where they are on the map, but you can’t in a reasonable manner get to them with enough time to defeat them before the night reign gets in. So, you’re kind of screwed. I think that’s just an oversight on their part. And again, it’s a it’s another thing that’s really not that fun. It’s it’s tedious. It’s challenging, but it’s not fun. The next thing is that while I’m really happy they added two new nightfares to the game, I will say that they seem kind of unoriginal or uninspiring. I will say that the Scher feels more creative than the Undertaker from a mechanics perspective, but neither one of them is stellar in terms of their gameplay. The Undertaker is extremely straightforward. You simply buff yourself and use your ultimate. Like, that’s basically how you play Undertaker. there’s not a lot of nuance to that character. Scholar has a lot more nuance in terms of the things that you can do, whether you want to focus on using items or you want to focus on buffing or debuffing enemies uh and buffing your team and yourself. But it’s on paper it sounds really good, but the the debuff and buff is really hard to use every time it’s off cooldown because it’s quite lengthy in terms of time to use and your spacing needs to be perfect. And the ultimate ability that the scholar has is not useful in 90% of boss fights. It’s useful for trash on the landscape, which is typically not where you have the a lot of problems anyway. So, I really felt like, you know, usually when you get a DLC for a game and they have new classes, at least one of those classes is going to be the class. Like, it’s going to be, you know, S tier, A tier class that everyone’s playing cuz it’s so good. I honestly don’t expect in a week or two weeks time too many people to be playing Undertaker or Scholar anymore simply because the content in the night uh the new DLC area is much more challenging than the base game and they’re going to default back to better characters that they’re more familiar with that simply perform better and that’s a real shame. I think it would be great if we saw moving forward those classes get a buff in some way. At least this is my first impression. We’ll see how it shakes out later, but I simply feel like they’re just not that interesting at the moment. And the next thing is that it doesn’t really feel like there’s any reason to keep playing the new shifting earth area after you’ve completed it. There is no like unique stuff you get from it. The relics you get from it are the same relics that you get in the base game. You know, it’s not like you you can only get DLC character relics there. You can also get them in the base game as well. Um there’s no equipment to get. There’s there’s not really like any there’s no unique skins to farm. Like you’re either going to play it because you want to play that map and those bosses or you’re going to just play the base game and play one of the new classes basically. And I don’t know because of the verticality, because of some of the things I’ve said, the way that the new map is laid out, I don’t know how many people are going to fall in love with that map and just want to keep playing that map. But because that map is smaller and has less content than the base game map, I think eventually people are just going to go back and play the base game map and then all that content is just sitting there not getting played. And you know that’s kind of disappointing the way it’s set up right now. And the last point that I’ll make here with things that I dislike is I think something that everyone kind of feels that’s playing this game, maybe not everyone, but I would say a lot of people that are still playing this game uh that really love Night Rain kind of feel similarly to me cuz I really love Night Rain. But it’s it’s a bit of a strange situation because in the review for it, we said that this is one of the smartest asset flips in gaming history because they took all the stuff from previous games, put it into new game, and it’s a really fun game to play. However, I think what’s really disappointing about Night Rain in general, not just with this DLC, is kind of how stingy it feels like they’ve been with content updates with content that they’ve already created. It’s not like they’re trying to create these things out of thin air and bring them into Night Re and it takes time to do that. These are things they already have. I mean, Night Rain has no new weapons that I’ve seen except for the, you know, the characters themselves with their starting gear. It has no new spells. It has no new talismans. It does have relics, but it just feels like why not bring those over to the game or give us some of them? like at what point are we going to see them and in what quantity are we going to see them? And there’s so many other bosses they could use, so many more enemies they could use. And it’s kind of sad because like if you take a look at like Monster Hunter for instance, Monster Hunter is another game that’s kind of similar to Night Rain in the sense that it’s not a live service game. It’s another co-op game where they did weekly updates and added content over time. And it felt like Monster Hunter had their [ __ ] together, for lack of a better word, a lot more than From Software does with Night Ring. And it’s not like, you know, Capcom didn’t recycle, you know, monsters in in that game either. They they’ve been recycling the same monsters for a long time. So, they’ve definitely done it, but I feel like they did it in a better way. It was more consistent. It was more in line with what the expectations were from the Monster Hunter community. And with Night Rain so far to me, it feels like we’re always lagging a little bit behind where I feel like we should be. And I think part of the reason for that is that we started with a $40 game instead of a $60 game. When the game is from Software, no matter how much money the game costs, you have a certain expectation. And I feel like From Software didn’t put the effort into it that they would into a $60 or $70 game because it was $40. But the reality is, if someone had said all of these things to me, I would still go out and buy the DLC because I love Night Rain that much. And even just a little bit more Night Rain is enough for me. And $15 doesn’t really buy you that much these days anyway. And I feel like, you know, if you love Night Rain, you’re going to play this and you’re going to enjoy it to some degree. I’m just not sure it’s going to be to the degree that you actually want it to be. You’re going to be happy it’s there. You’re going to be happy to play the content. Believe me, it’s still fun. I enjoy myself. I’m going to be playing, you know, throughout the weekend, etc. doing guides and things like that, but I was hoping for a little bit more, and I hope that there will be more in the future. What do you guys make of the things I’ve said? Have you been playing the Night Rain DLC? What do you make of it so far? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you somewhere in the middle? What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What do you want to see with Night Rain moving forward? We’ll probably do another video about this at some point. Let me know in the comments below. Heat. Heat.
Nightreign The Forsaken Hollows DLC – First Impressions
In this Elden Ring Nightreign video, I’m going to be talking about my first impressions playing the Forsaken Hollows DLC, which just came out earlier today, and I basically been playing all day nonstop. I’ve been playing the new classes, both Scholar and Undertaker, and I got to check out the new Shifting Earth / Map. We’ll talk a little bit about that.
Elden Ring Nightreign Wiki: https://eldenringnightreign.wiki.fextralife.com/Elden+Ring+Nightreign+Wiki
Timestamp:
0:00 Nightreign the Forsaken Hollows Impressions
0:27 The things I like about the DLC
1:26 The New Map
2:21 New Classes
3:09 New Passives
4:13 The things I don’t like about the DLC
5:00 Vertical Issues
7:26 New Encounter
8:15 Nightfarers
10:02 Reason to play the new Map
11:19 Asset Flips
13:16 FromSoftware Expectations
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