The main area in this DLC is beautiful and nice to explore. I really enjoyed the snow area.

I did not enjoy the idea of backtracking the whole thing after "unlocking" those sealed ice things, though, and it felt like a cheap way of padding content.

This DLC also has the worst area of the entire souls series: frozen outskirts.

I'm honestly relieved to be done with Dark Souls II's DLC. It's extremely overhyped. I always heard that Dark Souls II's DLC was what made the game worth playing and I'll tell you right now, whoever says that is full of shit. There's really nothing all that great here. It's the same stuff you got in the base game, but at times, even more annoying. The frigid outskirts is particularly terrible. I reached the boss once and then decided it wasn't worth it.

I initially thought it was a mandatory fight, but the instant I found out it was optional, I yeeted the hell out of there. What an absolute waste of time! Lets just have the previous mandatory fight, but this time, there's two of them and the boss run is the worst one we've ever made! God damn! Why even bother? Keep in mind that I'm the guy who's okay with the Blue Smelter Demon boss run. I'd always been the guy who'd fight as many bosses as I could in these games, but this time around, I honestly couldn't be bothered.

To be fair, the DLC integrates the level design with the boss fights in a way that is an echo of other bosses in the base game. However, it's just a chore in my book. I didn't enjoy the final boss much, which greatly encourages the player to find four knights to serve them during the boss fight. Neat idea in concept, but in execution, it was just a hectic mess of a fight. I easily preferred the bosses from Iron King or even Sunken.

It's not terrible, but it might be my least favorite DLC from DS2. Not enraging like Sunken was at times, but also lacks the high highs that that DLC had to offer in the form of those standout boss fights. What a disappointment. Hopefully DS3's DLC is better...

Dark Souls II's final DLC, while not as strong as the first two, is still a decent time, containing a fun area and an excellent boss. The Frozen City is HUGE with many branching paths and initially blocked areas that I got a bit overwhelmed. It's still fun to traverse through, but the enemies here are pretty tough and deal a lot of damage. Enemy placement here was also just right, being maybe a little bit more difficult than Brume Tower and Shulva as you have multiple invaders (who are douches I might add), spellcasters and frozen knights coming after you, however I never found it to be a gank fest which is nice. The bosses here range from meh to incredible. Aava and it's two copy cats are nothing to write home about, very average bosses (maybe a bit below for the second fight as it's just the same boss copy pasted twice). However, this is all forgiven as the boss fight with the Burnt Ivory King is fantastic. Not only does it require you to explore the city fully for the knights to assist you, (which is awesome) the presentation here is gorgeous, which DS2 happens to already excel at. This boss fight is just below Fume Knight only because I feel that fight begins quickly and is a great 1v1. Otherwise, an awesome and unique boss fight that I loved encountering. Also, the fridged outskirts area is probably the worst area in the entire series, even more so than Shrine of Amana. Thankfully, it's optional and only leads to the copy paste cat fight I mentioned earlier. A solid way to end off DS2, the DLCs are a good time and I recommend them.

I actually think the Frigid Outskirts is a great area, It is specifically designed to be as horrible to play as possible, it blinds you, spams fast annoying enemies, has no valuable items whatsoever and ends with a annoying boss fight that isn't even a unique enemy.

There's literally no purpose to going through it, the DLC is plenty big enough without it, so I love that it includes this horrible frustrating area with absolutely no benefit to completing it. It's funny to imagine people who know full well how pointless and frustrating it is subjecting themselves to it anyway and then getting mad (which is exactly what I did and I regret nothing).

>Only thing that's talked about this DLC is how unbelievably bad and agonizing Frigid Outskirts is.

>Frigid Outskirts ends up as one of my favorite locations in the entire game.

Funny how that works. I guess the area designed for Co-Op is enhanced by actually using Co-Op, who knew.

This DLC by far was the most bullshit and least enjoyable out of them all, really cementing the things I hate about Dark Souls 2, with uninteresting yet bullshit enemies and horrible placement of said enemies. The final boss I would've really enjoyed if you didn't have to go through an enemy gauntlet every time you wanted to fight him. Once again, Dark Souls 2 does not drop the ball in the visual department, as the sights were really cool to look at, and really is the only good thing about this DLC.

This is probably the best DLC for Dark Souls 2 I've played yet. I think the area you explore looks amazing visually, it can be stunning. And I think the exploration is decent. I do think the enemies are a bit annoying though like the Sonic The Hedgehog clones or the stronger crystal guys with shields but running away is viable most of the time. The final boss elevated this DLC quite highly, was the hardest boss yet. Finding the knights was a cool gimmick but even with them it is hard. It's a fun multi wave fight at the start followed by a great bout against the King. Playing well in the first phase makes the second phase much easier so high aggression is encouraged. It's a really well designed fight all around, took me most of my playtime to beat that one boss compared to exploring the area lol.