Huge, full of content, new questlines, a ton of top notch bosses, heavy attention to details and much more. Plus it improved a lot the concept of open world in comparison to the base game: Like before, you can explore the huge majority of the land before even having to face one of the main bosses, but in the DLC it's done in a much more organic way than in the base game. And the fact that so much content is condensed in a smaller area makes it feel way less overwhelming than base game exploration.
Some enemies do in fact have too much poise, hp and damage, but you get used to it.

> Input reading: Fromsoftware absolutely ABUSED that here, to the point that many fights just became annoying as heck for no reason.
Heavy input reading is a fun mechanic to have in specific bosses that are supposed to be "expert duelists" or something, such as Champion Gundyr back in Dark Souls 3. But when random uncommon enemies start punishing every single action of yours things just stop being fun...
> Wombo Combo Goes BRRRRRR: There are a handful of enemies that just seem to think they are in a random Hack'n Slash game instead of a Souls-Like. They never got introduced to the concept of stamina or recovery time, and for some reason can cross entire hallways in an instant to get you with a melee hit. This alone wouldn't be too bad, but when you sum it up with the constant input reading it gets really annoying really quickly.

Not bad at all.
The game was terrible at launch, but right now it has improved a lot. The optimization is not the best, it feels way heavier than Falout 4 even though they basically look the same, but I rarely had any crashes and only a couple disconnects in my 300+h.
I really dislike the presense of membership plans and cash stores in paid games, but here those are way less aggressive than in games like ESO, for exemple. I've never felt like the membership was mandatory to have an actually good experience, you can actually recieve the cash currency by playing the game, and it's not a tiny fixed amount like most of these games do, and it doesn't have lootboxes.

The only major issue I'm seeing currently is the lack of content. I've finished pretty much all the story quests of the base game and DLCs at around level 100, and since then I've been living in a loop of repeating the same daily quests, events and challenges to farm gold for the Secret Service stuff and to unlock pretty stuff in the "choreboard"... But what for? To wander around with my cool-looking high level overpriced gear?
Imo this game really need some better end-game content. The closest thing we have are the Daily Ops, but those are very repetitive and boring...

Fake "Free-to-Play".
After some matches you have to pay a montlhy subscription even to play with bots...
smh

This game deserves way more love!
I hardly ever see anyone talking about it, and I really don't know why it's so under the radar...

It has almost everything I seek in a Souls-like:
- Very good combat and animations;
- Incredible athmosfere;
- A lot of exploration.

I must say this review will seem quite negative, but that's simply because I tend to remember things I dislike way more than things I like in pretty much everything I consume. But that doesn't necessarily mean my overall opinion is bad... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, let's begin:

The controlls all feel very familiar if you are a souls fan, and the combat is also very similar.
It's all about learning the time to dodge, to hit, learning the attack pattern of the enemies, and learning the best ways to use the moveset of your weapon.
I also like how the weapons got balanced. Those with higher damage will mostly have low critical chance or either a worse moveset, those with a better moveset will either lack raw damage or critical chance and so on. So there are options for all playstyles and there are very few objectively bad weapons.

The art in the game is simply beautiful and the atmosphere makes every area feel unique and give you a different feeling. Caves and dungeons get really dark, making it mandatory to carry a properly upgraded lamp. Which you can always place on the ground, in case you want to go for two-handed weapons in such places.
I also like how the areas are quite big and open, so there's plenty of room to explore and find secret items hidden in every corner. Sometimes you can even find hidden paths, but they are not always rewarding.

There are some interesting details like the ost played in the main town changing slightly as you progress through the game. The way as the town grows as you progress, and how the NPCs seem to gain better gear also makes you feel like you are making some actual difference in that world.
It has a quite interesting lore too, if you dig into it, but it's easily misseable. I may look more into it later...

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But of course, the game is not perfect. And has a few problems:

First the progression is a bit awkward: you spend the entire game saving Scoria and feeling like you never have enought to upgrade all the things you need. Until you get to the last two regions and suddenly gets overwhelmed with tons of it, so you get very excited to go back to the main town to do some real progress with your gear... Just to realize you was in the very final upgrade of pretty much everything, and no longer have anything actually important to use the whole bunch of Scoria you have left...

The bosses were a bit disapointing for me with a few exceptions.
Most of them just feel like regular enemies, but with a huge health bar...
They often have one unique mechanic in the fight, but it's never a big deal, and they have mostly generic movesets that willl hardly ever change during the fight. So they are fairly easy, to the point that there's only one boss in the entire game that I didn't kill in the first try... (without counting the DLC, since I didn't play it yet)

I also must say that I really dislike how Ashen deals with enemies respawns. It being by time instead of interacting with a checkpoint completely takes away the feeling of walking freely by a "clean" area. And it's even worse in closed dungeons. Meeting enemies you already killed when you walk backwards in a closed dungeon makes no sense at all!

Another issue is the multiplayer, which is pretty much dead if you don't call a friend to play with you. And even if you bring one, it's fairly easy to lose the possibility to connect in case you do a main objective before your friend.
And if you are alone you are left with the AI companion, which seems to alternate between two states of mind:
The "decent helper" and the "complete nuts". When in the second state, the AI will just do some nonsense like jump off the nearest cliff, become irresponsive at a random spot until you force it to respawn, get confused hitting the air while trying to save you from a grab attack, etc...

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And besides all that, the game could really use some quality of life changes such as:
- Unlimited storage space (honestly, you can't even store all the different weapons and armour in the storage...)
- Unrestricted inventory slots. I mean, why do I need to have a permanent empty slot just because I don't want to use potions? Why can't I just place any other consumable there? Or why can't I just have another one handed weapon equipped instead of my two handed?
- A better keybinding for the lances (having the same key as regular weapon swapping is just annoying, and creates bad situations when you need to swap between 1h and 2h quickly)
- Less multiplayer restrictions;
- And maybe the possibility to place markers in the map, so you don't have to remember everything by head when you backtrack...
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So, my final grade:
8.5/10 in coop
7/10 with AI

Probably the best souls-like I've played in a long time, but could be even better!