These DLCs took a lesson from DarkSouls 2 and think that annoying and frustrating are the same as difficult. The first DLC begins with one of the most annoying sections in DarkSouls. It starts with a group of enemies (always a fun way to introduce difficulty in Dark Souls) and follows that up with a section with a group of enemies. After that comes one good 1on1 fight followed by a group of enemies that you have to fight while two enemies shoot exploding arrows at you. This section literally screams "run through it" and does not even offer valuable items. The level design afterwards improves, but the enemies are either 1-hit or take way too many hits. I don’t mind hard hitting enemies with tight dodge windows but I want my hits to feel rewarding. Not one of 20 that are required to kill that enemy. This just incentivizes running through so much more. And this is also an issue with the final boss of the DLC. All phases of that boss itself are interesting but in total, the boss has again way too much health. Even with max level weapons and stats at the softcap, the boss is just a grindfest. I would like to learn the moveset of the last phase of the boss but I do not want to sit through the first phase again. I can do it perfectly (if I do not get greedy) but the large health pool only incentivizes greed when you fight that phase for the 10th time which leads to deaths literally caused by bad game design. After the main boss of the DLC, there is also an optional area/boss, but to get to him, you have to change the environment in a certain way that takes 1 button press and 20+ seconds of wait time. Just put a bonfire after that. I do not want to waste my time waiting for the essentially unskippable cutscene every time I try to get through the area (there is a bonfire before the boss though).
The second DLC has much better level design but, again, awful boss design. The first boss is basically the same huge enemy twice. No interesting differences or complementary attacks like Ornstein and Smaugh. Just almost identical enemies, whose attacks bug through each other all the time so you cannot even see them attacking properly. And with a summon, the boss becomes trivial because you can fight 1on1 and they have a huge blindspot. The boss afterwards, again, has way too much health and is simply annoying, mainly due to his large amount of HP. And the final boss, who would have thought, again has too much HP (50 % more than the final boss of DS3) together with high resistances against everything. The first two phases are quite easy, if you do not become greedy but this makes the boss, again, a grindfest. In the last phase, the boss has way too many effects to properly see his attacks, making the deaths here feel cheap instead of giving you something to improve at next time. The boss has a cool moveset and dodging his attacks feel really good but hitting him and seeing the health bar barely move does not.
I really enjoyed the main game of DS3 up to the DLCs. But after playing the DLCs, I just wanted the game to be over.
