izigame.me

The Ringed City is what people who haven’t played Dark Souls think Dark Souls is. Trial and error gameplay? Gank mobs? Ridiculous health bars and getting two shot by mooks? It’s so hard! So Dark Souls!
Dark Souls 3 was punishing, but ultimately rewarded players for being careful, deliberate and not drawing too much aggro. The bosses were aggressive, punishing foes that demanded you learn their moveset, not time consuming slogs with three health bars. The Ringed city starts by making you run through a city being pelted by an invincible attack helicopter while being swarmed by infinitely respawning enemies. Eventually, assuming you didn’t just follow a guide, you’ll find the creature that will despawn the helicopter through trial and error, and make your way through the first of TWO swamps. After that you fight two bosses at once (both with health bars longer than the final boss), which then revive as a single super boss. It’s a very cool fight, but it makes the three stage Friede marathon from the last DLC look like a light jog.
Once past this it’s another trial and error sequence avoiding some spectral archers before entering the city proper. two elite enemies at once are challenging – so like, six will be super hard (and thus super better) right? In the end I just gave up fighting the enemies, as they seem to be designed to be as spongy and annoying as possible, and the rewards just weren’t worth the hassle. This seems to be a common sentiment for this DLC, and it’s a damning indictment that many people did all they could to avoid combat in a Dark Souls game.
The end of the DLC has three more bosses (one of which is optional). One of the mandatory ones is just a glorified invasion, and is a bit of a weird inclusion as the difficulty will depend entirely on which player is pulled in. I got a chump, and thus won first time but most of the PVP players I’ve fought in the main game have left me with seriously clapped cheeks so I think I just got lucky. The mandatory final boss reminds me of Artorias from the first game’s DLC in terms of speed and aggression, and is a real rush to fight, at least at first. Like the previous bosses he suffers from being a massive damage sponge which means you end up slogging away long after you’ve mastered his moveset. Still a damn cool fight though.
The optional super boss is, as you’d expect, probably the hardest fight in all of Dark Souls. While I still think that he’s unnecessarily spongy, he does have the excuse that he’s the mega hard optional super boss so I’m less bothered (you knew what you were signing up for when you threw down with him). What’s less excusable is his janky hitboxes, temperamental lock on and OHKOs.
Overall I just didn’t find the Ringed City very entertaining, and it shows how difficult it can be to get the balance right between hard and needlessly frustrating. It also shows just how right the main game got this balance, almost without exception – I must have died 20 times to Pontiff Sulyvhan, but I never felt like I was just banging my head against a wall of HP. It took me around a week and a half to finish Dark Souls 3. It took a further week to go through the DLC, not because I found it difficult, but because I frequently just couldn’t be bothered.