This was a pretty big improvement on Ashes Of Ariandel. It's much more creative, has a more interesting story, and crucially for most people complaining about the first expansion, there's more of it.
Mainly, there's now two new decent sized areas, both of which feel somewhat unique in the larger Souls area palette, at least partially. They both have aesthetic designs that are highly distinguishable from anything else seen in the franchise thus far, and yet...they just couldn't help themselves.
Some of you may know that it is a source of never-ending consternation for me that From Software insist on putting rubbish swamp areas in their games, almost none of which I find fun to play because they so often slow down your movement and poison you, and in addition are usually flat planes with nothing in them other than items hidden behind trees and rocks and annoying enemies.
Imagine how I feel then, when both of these new areas have swamp sections. At the very least, the one in the titular Ringed City isn't poisonous, nor does it slow you down, but it's still a flat plane that looks completely dry and tedious. Other than that though, the area design is pretty solid throughout this expansion.
Once again, all the new gear you can get looks really damn cool to me, even if I didn't use most of it because I had already figured out my build, and there's even a pretty cool new covenant that'll make anyone nostalgic for Demon's Souls pretty happy at the very least.
There's two new NPC's with interesting questlines (even if something you have to do to complete one of them is totally ludicrous logic), and every single one of the new bosses is amazing, and some of the hardest in the game, if not the whole series.
In short, aside from arguably being slightly anti-climatic and those damn swamps, this is just about everything Ashes Of Ariandel needed to be. And at worst, I don't think you can argue that it's at least a fitting end for the series.
