So here we are, 8 months after SotS first released, and roughly 6 months after they announced the roadmap to fix the DLC, and tbh, i feel like this was a massive letdown in all honesty.

Part 1 the item reworks
out of everything released in the DLC, this was probably the most important thing that they needed to fix, and imho, the reworked items fall into three separate categories: perfectly fine, good idea but flawed execution, and fundamentally flawed. The items i find to be perfectly fine would be S. star, C. doll, L. solitude, and W. bonds (yep, that’s it) because they have next to no problems design-wise, and are items I enjoy having. The second category would encompass antlers, lantern, thorn, boomerang, beads, transmitter, lens, and nectar, and these items often have concepts I find to be absolutely amazing, but also absolutely ruined by poor balance decisions and item scaling. Growth nectar, for example, gives you extra states when you have a unique buff, which is a really cool item concept, but it’s ruined by the fact that it only gives +4% stats for each unique buff, and caps out at 4 buffs, which is +16% at max stacks, which feels like next to nothing in game. Finally, there are fundamentally flawed items, with those being W. echo, C. Expansion, B. Fin (the worst in my opinion), L. shot, S. whispers, and Seed of life (in singleplayer, in multiplayer it’s perfectly fine), and these item quite honestly just need a full blown rework because they are just fundamentally flawed items that are not conceptually fun or interesting in any way for me. Overall, i only count 4/18 as well designed items, with the rest in serious need of a rework or balance adjustment in order to be fun to use.

Part 2: False Son Rework
This rework barely feels like anything has changed besides now having the adaptive armor. he still teleports and slams you down really fast in phase one, still spawns golems that only serve to annoy you in phase 2, still has a laser attack that requires you to sit behind a pillar to dodge it for a long ass time, and so on. Nothing has really changed in terms of enjoyability with this fight, and I genuinely have no clue what they were trying to accomplish with this "rework." he is a ♥♥♥♥♥ to fight in eclipse 8 tho, as while he's doing his laser (which he can now spam do to the cooldown reduction of E7), he'll speed over to you with his E4 movespeed buff and slam your ass into the ground, which basically means you have a death wish if you go to fight him in E8.

Part 3: Enemies
Im not gonna sugarcoat it. all of these enemies ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suuuuuuuuuuck. Scorch wurms can burrow into the ground and become immune to damage. Halcyonites have way too much range on their jab attack, too much health when summoned from a shrine, and have a lame ass spinning attack that allows them to fly for some reason??? This all pales in comparison to the Child, who, on top of teleporting upon taking damage, becoming immune to damage when they teleport, being immune to dying from fall damage, does 2.8x the damage of blind pests at lvl 1 (84 damage exactly), which is ABSOLUTELY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RIDICULOUS! awful enemy design all across the board.

Part 4: Survivor Reworks
when it comes to the three stages of the reworks, the survivor reworks are probably the best changes gearbox has made, but id only say theyre about 7/10 at best. Every SotS survivor has recieved +2 abilities to put them on par with Hopoo survivors, as well as some nice balance changes to make them feel a lot better overall. Seeker is at around a 7/10 because while they made her much more fun to play with her various balance changes, her new abilities are underwhelming imo, and the fact that she can revive herself is way, WAY to OP. The super-secret-survivor is at around a 9/10 because all of his abilities have a way better “flow” to them, his slam got the nerf it needed, and his new abilities are very fun and unique. Chef on the other hand, sucks, as they made his default shift so ungodly fact at max charge that it’s genuinely hard to control and often leads to taking fall damage, his alt utility feels like a modded ability, and instead of making his cleavers work like how they did in RoR1, they doubled down on the recall gimmick, gave it less damage, kept it’s 3 charges, velocity, and 0.5 proc chance, and gigabuffed it’s attack speed, making it an overall better ability, but comparable to Engi’s M1, in terms of power imo.

Part 5: New stages
My feelings on the new stages are rather mixed to say the least. they look rather pretty, are fun to traverse, and all feel very natural to the planet of Petrichor V. but almost every map has at least one problem that just drags the experience down a peg or two, and that's just kind of a shame. Shattered abodes is way to big for a stage 1, Reformed alter is mostly fine, just outclased by aqueduct like all other stage 2's, treeborn colony has chests that will drop their items off of a cliff if u get unlucky with generation, Helminth Hatchery is way to vertical and spawns white multishops instead of green (kind of a nitpick, but still a problem in my eyes), and its just way to easy to fall off of prime meridian because of the map design and lightning strikes. there's also 3 new bulwark ambry varients, which i dont really care much about tbh, but i hope that others enjoy it where I cannot. there's also the issue of the nighttime varients of the stages, or more specifically, the lack thereof. they advertised this like it was gonna be this big new thing that would revolutionize the looping experience, but when release came, we only got 3 nighttime stages, which was a major letdown for me as i was really excited about those stages.

Part 6: New Elites
god im so glad these ♥♥♥♥♥ got nerfed into the ground. gilded elites were a huge middle finger to DoT characters and builts, and Twisted Elites were a big middle finger to those who liked looping. would I say their new iterations are good? no, not really. their both kinda bland in their execution and feel more like bullet sponges than anything. do I give a ♥♥♥♥? HELL NO!!!

Conclusion
I really, really wanted to give the RoR2 team the benefit of the doubt on this one, but i genuinely feel like i wasted my time thinking these changes would be good. my rating of pre-patch SotS was around a 2/10, and now I feel as it's gone up to about a 5 or 6/10, and can only recommend this DLC to diehard RoR2 fans such as myself. these past 8 months have taken any remaining hope for RoR2 as a franchise I had and shattered it into a million pieces, and I cannot see any future for this franchise that doesnt devolve into modern gaming AAA slop in a few years time. and even if the next DLC turns out to be absolutely fantastic, with no bugs, issues, or controversies, this DLC has irreperably scarred the reputation of this franchise, meaning more people in the future will turn away from this great game because of how bad SotS was.

so thanks Randy, thanks for dragging RoR through the mud. I hope this DLC helped fund your precious new Borderlands game considering your movie sure as hell failed to do so.