Whereas Crown of the Iron King was focused on exploration and puzzle solving, Crown of the Iron King takes the opposite approach and is almost entirely focused on combat. I feel that this lets them play off of each other really well.
The start of this expansion managed to lull me into a false sense of security. Finding the fragments of Nadalia didn't seem like it would be too hard (and it's not as long as you're not dumb like me) and the enemies seemed to be easier than the ones in Shulva and the Dragon Sanctuary (You'd think beings created from iron would have higher poise). As soon as I reached the first room where you had to deal with both enemies and a fragment of Nadalia the game told me that this expansion would be far from easy. A single room with no ranged enemies (aside from the one throwing fire bombs that might as well not have existed) managed to kill me multiple times! That hasn't happened since I was getting my footing back in the Forest of Fallen Giants! I actually had to come up with a strategy to get through this room in one piece instead of just running in and blundering my way to victory like I usually do. It was great! Unique combat encounters like that pretty much defined this area for me. Whether it was an NPC invader that runs away from you in order to lead you into a trap, being targeted by a pack of Predators (They call them Prowlers but we all know what they're meant to be), or sorcerers that create and AoE field of damage where their spells hit, I was always kept on my toes.
As you saw from my previous posts, I managed to completely miss the path to the second set of smelter wedges (and also Sir Alonne) but that wasn't a failing of the level design, it's because I'm a fucking idiot. For some reason I assumed that only the two elevators at the bottom of the tower were turned on and I'd activate the others later. Asa result of this dumb thought I didn't even bother to check the others before heading down to Fume Knight. I really enjoyed hitting the statues on this path to use them against the enemies and manipulating the gunpowder barrel guys to blow up destructible walls.
Fume Knight was a pretty cool boss. The way he swings that huge chunk of iron around (Can that thing even be called a sword?) caught me off guard and took me quite a while to figure out how to dodge. It's a good thing he has a really long recovery time after his swings so I was given ample time to heal. I was kinda disappointed in the second phase of the fight. I was expecting a huge change, but outside of two attacks all that really happened was him getting slightly stronger and slightly faster. His attack where he summoned that dark fire orbs that spin out from a circle was really great so I wish the second phase had more attacks like that. It would have drastically changed the way you had to approach the boss. As it stands now Fume Knight is just a standard boss. There's nothing bad about the fight but it just kinda blends in with nothing to make it standout. If he was a boss in the base game like Velstadt it would be a fine fight but when you consider that he's the main boss of the expansion I can't help but be a bit disappointed.
The first optional area of the expansion is the Iron Passage and FUCK THIS PLACE. The path to the boss is a straightforward cave where nothing really stands out like the Cave of the Dead from Sunken King, but as soon as you go off the beaten path and try to find treasure everything goes to hell. Fuck the gates that you can only open once per life for some stupid fucking reason. Fuck the enemies that block your way as you're running to the open gates. Fuck that clerics than can cast slow on you. Fuck the salamander statues. FUCK THE GODDAMN INVISIBLE WALLS THAT STOP YOU FROM GOING UNDER A GATE WHEN THERE'S CLEARLY ENOUGH ROOM FOR YOU TO FIT THROUGH. There's no question in my mind that this is the worst area in the game. It's even worse than Lost Izalith from the first Dark Souls.
At the end of a shit area there's a shit boss waiting for you. It's the Smelter Demon from the base game but this time it's fire is blue. Yay. I think the length of it's sword when bathed in fire is longer but other than that the fight is the exact same. At least the blue flames looked cool.
Did the Sir Alonne fight really need to be set in a memory? For all I know the time limit could have been an hour or longer, but the game doesn't communicate that to you. I actually ran out of time in one of the giant memories so for quite a while I was stressed that I would be kicked out of the fight right before dealing the finishing blow. This made me make incredibly stupid moves in order to try and kill the boss quickly which led to me dying over and over again. The room that his armor was in should have been an elevator that takes you to the fight.
The fight itself is actually really damn good once you get past the time limit BS, expect for one thing. The hitbox on his dark energy grab is complete bullshit.
Here's a little diagram. The horizontal line is the boss' sword and the vertical lines are where the hit box extends to.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
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IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
That's inexcusable.
It's a real shame too cause the rest of the fight is amazing. The boss is fast (I swear he's practically teleporting), aggressive, has a nice variety of attacks, and has some amazing mind games (The delayed dash attack in particular got me so many damn times). This boss would be one of my favorites in the series if it wasn't for that broken hitbox. Sadly it does exist so the fight is merely great instead of being amazing like it should have been.
I didn't mention the bits of the memory leading up to Sir Alonne because they're so basic that they don't deserve to be mentioned.
Overall this expansion was a mixed bag. When it was good it was among the best content that the game has to offer, but when it was bad it was among the worst content the game has to offer. Needless to say I greatly preferred the Sunken King expansion. Despite all of my issues with it I'd say that this was still worth the $10 price when ti was first released.
