Recent reviews by Mazrix

Whole bunch of cool new items and lore, gorgeous new lands to explore and a few phenomenal boss fights... marred horribly by a few that aren't. Spoilers ahead, obviously

Divine beast dancing lion: Great boss, loved it. The one in Rauh that spawns ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ basilisks can suck it, though.
Rellana: Very cool fight overall, though wish it would stagger from heavy hits at least sometimes, and there's that 1 combo that's flat out too damn long
Romina: Incredible spectacle, with fun to learn combos that set a good pace for dodging.
Mesmer: Fantastic sound design, clear, but fairly tough dodge windows and overall really good fight. No complaints.
Midra: My personal favorite; the whole fight just feels like a dance and I'm here for that. The tattered cloak also goes incredibly hard and I wish I could get it as an armor
Bayle: The only fight I'll summon for. Igon deserves to be there even if he's kinda useless. Very fun fight, fantastic character design, just wish his big belly didn't stop me from getting to his stump

Heck, I even like the Golden Hippo and Scadu avatar (bar the nuke).

But then there're the rest... Just the number of reused enemies in certain areas is kinda disappointing, I absolutely could've gone without fighting another Ancient Dragon that comes with extra AoE. Tibia Mariners also have no business summoning the worst enemy of the main game. Rune bears are irritating even when they're painted red. A few of the human mausoleum bosses are also just irritating to fight. Namely Rakshasa and Blackgaol knight who don't seem to stagger consistently and do just silly amounts of damage per hit; I don't always wanna fall back to parrying stuff, but that just felt like what you were supposed to do. The horned warriors can also go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Can't back stab 'em, can't stagger 'em and their combos are too long for respawning field enemies.

I'm also pretty irritated by how easy it is to lock yourself out of NPC quests just by walking around. I missed out on a whole bunch of pretty cool gear and ashes of war just because I took a few steps too far.

And then... there are the actual stains on the DLC, from best to worst. Metyr's face smash attack seems to have different hit timings for when her belly hits the floor and when her face does, and that really blows to deal with when doing distance with a light roll. The finger creeping attack she sometimes does when you're off to her seems night impossible to fully dodge if you're close up when it starts. The second phase is very visually cluttered and mass black hole attack especially always had me get hit from behind by an off-screen explosion. The megabeam attack honestly wasn't that bad IMO, just rush under the boss.

Putrescence Knight. His hitbox is completely wack. I spent a decent time shoving my monk fists into his bones and just didn't get contact. Also hate that he sometimes just holds his cleaver up in the air with both arms while rushing at you, but doesn't actually attack. It's really irritating.

Gaius... Everyone already knows that charge attack is broken beyond belief and is 90% of what makes this boss just bad. The long combo is manageable, but the hit area for the boar facesmacks feels inconsistent. One of the more rare attacks, the big sideswipe he does if you're too far off to his side definitely has less time to dodge it than the average human reaction time allows.

And then... ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Promised Consort Radahn. Never have I ever felt, despite my gripes with the other bosses, that I have to fully change my build to use a shield, summon a spirit and maybe even respec to feel like I'm not just some kinda dog-toy being ripped around. Phase 1 is fine. It's got a couple of annoying combos (mostly the input read gravity pull followed by AoE stones), but I don't have huge issues with it. I love that he's actually doing Lion's Claw. It could in general have more windows to attack with something other than just R1. Phase 2 however, is just too damn much of everything. The amount of glowy explosions on screen is completely jarring, not just to me, but my RX5700XT as well. The nuke especially chugs my PC, not to mention there's literally 0 tell to when the explosion itself starts. There's no way to intuit that, just have to memorize the timing or just shield tank it. All the combos from phase 1 now always have a bunch of small explosions following them, so you're damn near forced to dodge away from the boss, making punishing the window without taking a hit extremely short. The weird echo attacks felt very inconsistent on when they hit you and when they didn't. It just wasn't fun to fight.
After I was finally done with him, I didn't feel happy. I was just glad it was done; mentally exhausted and irritated. That's not a feeling I usually get after Fromsoft's bosses. All to end to DLC on a short, underwhelming cutscene. I honestly thought I had to go do something by the divine gate thing, but nah, that was it.

I already kinda felt early on, that this is pretty much at the very upper edge of what you can do with bosses before they stop being fun challenges and just become masochistic. Radahn overstepped that cliff by a lot. There was still a lot I enjoyed in the DLC, and _overall_ I had a good time, but these specific things just drag the experience down so, so much. I don't recommend this DLC, not because it isn't overall worth playing, but because I don't want Fromsoft to push their boss designs in that kind of direction any further.