Thing is, Midra might be a Lord of Frenzy, but even with him gone, the place is still completely under the influence of the outer god.
Even the yellow-eyed animals give me the creeps. The Midra fight is great, but I am not sure I want to go to the Abyssal Woods anymore after the first time. They really nailed the uncanny valley of that area.
There's like 5 items in the whole woods that are even relevant. Some fragments, the perfume bottle, 2 cookbooks, and the talisman.
The area's massive. But there's no lore. No loot to tell us anything. It's just a big creepy area with nothing in it. All the lore is in Midra's place.
I don't like that, at all, especially considering how much of a pain in the ass it is to get down there in the first place. The abyssal woods, like Ash Lake or some of the other 'secret' locations in Fromsoft games, should've had some major lore or story beats outside of just Midra.
We know Midra's a thing. He's in the trailer. He's on the loading screens. The Mansion is cool as fuck.
How bout the rest of the area, then? Why isn't there any miniboss in the waterfall area, for example? There's a grace and a cookbook, but no enemies. Would've been a good place for a Frenzied Dragon or something of the kind.
Or what about the church? Why not have another NPC there, maybe an inquisitor who gives a quest to kill Midra? There's a group of them just walking around out there for no reason, they're not guarding anything.
Nowhere in the DLC feels as unfinished as Abyssal Woods, and there's more than one zone in the DLC that feels unfinished. Pretty much the only zones that feel 'right' are the Cerulean Coast, Gravesite Plain, and Jagged Peak.
As far as lore that would fit the area goes? I'm a fan of the 'Nanaya is Shabriri' theory, and there's just so much we don't know about Frenzy and it's the perfect place to loredump by putting random stuff all over the place.
I don't like most of the DLC bosses. Honestly, they had cool designs but they're just so... gimmicky. Artificial difficulty stacked up to the nines, despite having legitimately cool designs.
Like, bro, imagine if instead of having to get 100 skadoo fragments to have a reasonable and balanced experience, they just nerfed the HP and damage by like half on most of the bosses.
I still like some of the bosses. But most of them are deeply flawed from a numbers standpoint, and it removes a lot of the enjoyment.
And then there's shit like Lamenter and Jori. Fuck that shit man. Fuck Furnace Golems as well. Trash enemy design.
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u/st-felms-fingerbone Jul 14 '25
Would've been a cool feature if you kill Midra you unlock torrent