I meant what I said there, but equally, I mean it when I say that my favourite game of the Soulsborne series so far also has my favourite expansion released for them so far. This DLC lets you loose on the Hunter's Nightmare, and then lets every trick it has loose on you in return. Make no mistake, if you like the base game, this is definitely a worthy purchase, but I would recommend at the very least, you get to the Lecture Hall 2nd floor and do all the optional areas before this, and have a +9 weapon before you even consider taking this on. It's HARD.
A significant portion of the enemies in the first area are hunter NPC fights, there are traps galore, and god do the bosses in this expansion let you have it. I remember the first time I played this part of the game, and three out of the five new bosses you get took me literal days to beat. Crucially though, in keeping with the game's philosophy, they never felt insurmountable, and with time and practice, they crumbled before me, and of these five, three of them are easily in the top ten, maybe even top five best bosses in the game for me.
The other two though...one of them is okay to me, while the other one is a little disappointing. It has some new and interesting things about it, but mostly it kind of feels like it's copying a boss from the base game, which does kind of suck.
Speaking of copying from the base game, my only other complaint is that the first part of the Hunter's Nightmare is more or less just the Cathedral Ward from the main game reskinned, which feels pretty lazy and there isn't even a story reason for this as far as I could see.
But eeeeeeverything else in this expansion is top-quality stuff, easily on par with, if not better than things from the main game. The new areas are well designed and as gorgeous as ever, the new NPC's are interesting and well voice acted, and every single new weapon and armour set added has its uses and is so fun to mess about with.
And the lore of these new areas and characters is as interesting as it ever was, with the last area in particular being an absolute delight for fans of Lovecraft's works, it being easily the most directly inspired place from one of his stories, yet still has that distinct Bloodborne flavour that I adore so much.
At the end of the day, if you loved the original game as much as I do, the mere fact that this is more Bloodborne is probably enough to make this more than worth it to you, so bloody well get it already, what are you waiting for? It's nearly six years old you dummy.
