Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel Review (Kincaid, the Rat Bastard)
This is being written with the context that you probably bought the big edition of DS3 and did NOT spend $15 on this. You just simply have it bundled in.
Ashes of Ariandel in my personal experience is like stopping at a blood donation bus with the promise of a T-Shirt at the end. You go into it with good hopes and then uh oh! The nurse misses your vein 7 times and while you're donating, people won't stop moving so the bus is shaking you around in your chair. It sucks, it doesn't feel good but my GOD is that T-Shirt awesome.
The DLC is rather short with a clog of so many enemies jam-packed together that it loses that charm of methodically picking off one by one and instead opts to have you fight packs of enemies all at once. There's enough wolves that bombard you to turn half the DLC into Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2011 and the Corvian Knights are so insufferably unrelenting that you'll find literal 1 second windows to do anything before another 20-hit bombard plows you. If you need to hit the Estus against these guys, be prepared to run a hail mary down the trail just for safe space. The area is gorgeous per usual (FromSoftware never fails in that department) and the intro with the momma wolf on the cliffside watching over you was a dope intro to the DLC. The other boss this expansion comes with kind of blows as well but the weapons throughout are unique.
Once you reach that final boss though it makes everything else feel worth it up to now. Father Ariandel and Sister Friede live up to their hype that's been built. I summoned for this fight (sue me) not because of the difficulty but because there were so many summons available that I wanted to see how it was with more than one person. Four of us (one being the NPC summon) rushing down the two was such a hype-inducing fun time -- it felt like we were trying to juggle an assassin and a frenzied gorilla at the same time. Music is gorgeous, the fight is intense throughout all, and Friede will hand your ass to you on a plate with a side of OJ.
I recommend going through the DLC if you got the edition that hands the expansions on sale with base game but I'm thumbs down on this because of just how goddamn sloggy everything is up to that final boss fog gate. You best put a video on in the BG for this one till then because you are gonna need it. Terrible enemy density and fuck the Corvian Knights. Call it a skill issue but my lord they are some of the most unfun I've fought in the series so far.