Elden Ring would've felt more alive if it had actual villages with living humans. Would've made the deadlands like Caelid and the windmill village stand out much more.
Oh absolutely that's the only reason i might still boot up Skyrim once in a while, i need some friendly villages to stay under a roof the watch the rain by a fireplace
That's one of the things I loved about the Elder Scrolls games (and BOTW). It makes the world feels so much more alive, compared to Elden Ring where everyone and everything just tries to straight up murder you. Not that Elden Ring's world is bad, it's just different game design philosophies.
Then it wouldn't be a souls game because souls games take place far into the future of civilizations that long since collapse, all that remains is a hostile world that is impossible to thrive in. You however are the exception because you go around killing everyone who is hostile to you until no one can stand a chance.
Completely agree with mostly everything you said especially about the quests. I was actually really excited to write quest notes down and look over my notes and stuff and it worked up to a point but eventually an NPC just gives you absolutely no direction on where to go next and I'm just left wondering if that's it or if I beat a boss I shouldn't have and now it's not completable or something. I don't mind writing stuff down and taking notes instead of having a constant quest marker but I feel like if they're not going to have quest markers or logs they should at least make it clear what I'm supposed to do next through dialogue without me having to randomly stumble upon the NPC somewhere in the open world.
The quests *have* always been shit and obscure though. Playing through DS3 has made me realize that Elden Ring's quest design isnt unique, this is just how fromsoft does quests (which I dont like)
I agree with u on this, elden ring should give a way to take notes in game at the very least. So that at least people who want to follow quests and revisit certain areas later can make a note of it in game, as opposed to having other outside means of taking notes
The enemies with no stamina limit gets really infuriating late game when even with 60 vigor your getting two shotted by knights who never stop attacking.
I felt that the first three areas were gold. The last ones were just lazy. The difficulty spike with the last boss were insane. I beat it and still enjoyed it, but the replayability for me is pretty low. I think they needed a quest log
@@vikarsan3296 This is a meme right? People run marathons on their hands blindfolded while solving rubik cubes, whats your excuse for being a fat lazy gamer? Things can be hard even if then someone is good at them or practices, or has more experience etc, the world doesn't revolve around you, what you did isn't impressive, nothing in your life is or ever will be. ( and same goes for mine or anyone elses )
The open world really wasn't a big deal, in my opinion. It didn't make or break the game for me. What really ruined the game for me was the endgame. From the fire giant onward, it just wasn't fun. Yes I beat the game. No I did not enjoy it. When it was over I felt exhausted and never wanted to touch it again. If you tell me "git gud," you are seriously missing the point. This game killed me desire to get good. I say this as someone who has beaten most of the previous souls games.
makelith, godfrey,radagon and dragonlord were the best bosses in the game for me, so i cant say i agree with this (malenia was also a good challenge, altho not as fun as the others)
@@rubi3050 Agree 100%. I beat every boss no more than 3 attempts all game up until the end. Was getting a little worried that I had accidentally over leveled, even though I never farmed, but explored as much as possible. So glad end game proved me wrong. Still haven’t beaten malenia, but Maliketh, Mohg and all final bosses were insanely cool, epic, challenging and sooo much fun. Maliketh is my favorite, but loved everything from fire giant and onward.
I would also add as much as I love elden ring, the repetition of some bosses can be a drag and don’t get me started on the gank bosses lol. Dark souls 3 bosses are probably the most consistent ones. But at of all the soulsborne games I’ve played bloodborne is still my absolute favourite.
Bloodborne will always be Miyazaki's best game, I haven't been able to put Elden Ring down since launch though. It seems to go on even more the more you play and explore everything. The only reason they re-used bosses is because they came up with the lore they did for them, and if you know the lore, then the re-used bosses kind of make sense. Could have been done with different versions of those bosses though is my only gripe with this game. They did it in bloodborne with the butcher and how many different iterations their was of that and other bosses. They could have done that here, but seems most of the effort was put into the Dragons, Caelid, the main bosses and story, and the multiple npcs and their questlines. It's still a masterpiece of a souls like to me though, probably the best one when compared to dark souls 1, 2 and 3 and Demon Souls. I still say Bloodborne and Sekiro are from softs best titles so far though.
People hate that hot take because they look at bosses like Malenia or Godfrey and go “SEE! A QUALITY BOSS!” But they overlook the many copy paste bosses or reused dungeons and sometimes uninspired puzzles.
I think Stakes of Marika were an absolute necessity in this game, and they are entirely optional for people who want to run back to the bosses. I think back to something like Dark Souls 2 which had absolutely awful boss runs which were just frustrating. Also I will echo a lot of the comments here that the endgame bosses do way to much damage. Never before in a From game have you needed 60 vigor to survive most boss attacks. If they would tone that damage down I would love this game so much, but right now I usually will get to Radahn then play something else. I 100%ed it and have no intention of going into NG+ to refight some of those bosses.
I really enjoyed Dragon's Dogma and was excited for NG+, but then it turned out apparently my character was attracted to little girls and I was so disturbed that I never touched the game again. A major design flaw right there.
@@Blirre That's Japan for you. They literally promote Pedophilia in a good chunk of their animes, mangas, and games that I'm surprised they haven't been brought to court or banned for it.
yea the first few weeks was "BEST GAME EVER" "BETTER THAN BOTW AND WITCHER 3" " BEST GAME OF THE LAST 10 YEARS" I truly believe its the best game of the last 5 years, but dark souls 1 is still the superior souls game imo. I still put skyrim, witcher 3, and botw above it as well.
@@barkley8285 skyrim was my favorite game before elden ring, i beat it countless times and modded it to death, even still occasionally hop on skyrim to try some wacky build for a few hours. But elden ring is absolutely a better game, dark souls 1 isnt even dark souls 1, demon souls was far too small to be put over ds3 or elden ring, even with its remaster, ds1 had horrendous stiff mechanics and gameplay, saying ds1 is better than ds3 is like saying fallout 3 is better than fallout new vegas, which is rediculous because new vegas is just a better version of fallout 3. Also i disagree with the botw comparison, graces are blatantly markers that even commonly point in the direction of major quests, its literally just open world dark souls, the botw comparisons were unreasonable.
@@gabrielbro8083 fallout 3 is better than new vegas. Dark souls 1 is much better than ds3. Ds3 didnt capture the magic of ds1. I never compared botw to elden ring, i just said I liked zelda better
@@barkley8285fallout 3 had cooler dlc but new vegas is overall an improved version of fallout 3 with a far better storyline. Idk what you mean by "the magic" in ds1 the game was hard to enjoy after playing ds3 because of how janky it was, i guess the nostalgia plays a factor for you and it matters which game you played first.
@@gabrielbro8083 fnv was a buggy mess in the most boring landscape ive ever seen. Fo3 capital wasteland was atmospheric as shit in 2008 and epic. The quests were all top notch and fun, much better game. What nostalgia do you mean? I played ds1-2-3 one after another and ds1 had better story, ost, npcs, environments, world, emotional impact, etc. Pretty much everyone agrees ds1 is the best dark souls game.
I agree with a good bit of what you say in this video, however I don't think the bosses are very good. I believe it's toward the end of the video where you say it has good bosses. Are the a handful yes. But overall I think alot of the replayability of fromsoft games comes from doing new games and running to all of the cool bosses. I have very little interest in doing alt character like I have with the souls games.. I got excited about trying the dancer at lvl 20 to see if I could do it.. Yet the thought of doing radahn at lvl 20 sounds like a nightmare
@@GAsh0012 well the different regions have distinct environments to them. But yea, the ruins and some dungeons are literal copy paste. But the castles have unique layouts and passageways.
The absurd enemy health to damage ratio is also a deal breaker for a second playthrough. I should not have to waste HALF of my endgame build levels into HP just so I can have the luxury of dying within two hits instead of one. And considering the bosses have ridiculously overbloated health pools of their own and that Vigor ROBS you of levels that you should be putting into your damage stats the game basically twists your arm and forces you to rely on status effects like Rot and Bleed to compensate in the DPS race.
For NPC quests, many of them allow you to skip stages and still complete the questline, granted some form of quest log would be very helpful. You can compare gear though, stats reflect changes from what you're currently wearing, you can also sort by highest damage/protections, my only complaint here is that the game offers little detail as to what "boosts holy attacks" entails, it'd be nice to have those numbers somewhere.
Not Millicent's quest...... After starting her quest and setting her off on her "journey" (which she gives absolutely no indication about), I progressed my main quest up to the Mountaintop of the Giants where she was supposed to spawn later on, but I did not find her there. She was still in Altus Plateau, which I had already been to before I even started her quest, so I had no reason of thinking to go back there. In order to for her to leave her spawn in Altus Plateau, you first need to give her the Valkyrie Prosthesis (which I had found on my own) WHILE she's still there. There was absolutely no way for me to figure this out without consulting a guide, or just mindlessly scouring the entire map. There are two ways the game could have fixed this: either give some kind of quest log, specifically one like Morrowind where they still keep locations vague, or have it so she appears at her different spawning locations as I progress through the main story, with the expense of only missing parts of her questline like you said (like her helping with the Godskin Apostle or the Gargoyle).
The arms race between player skill at avoiding damage and boss damage output reminds me of late 2009 in world of Warcraft where tanks were getting so much avoidance gear that they were able to outright avoid 80% of boss attacks. To ensure the challenge was there blizzard increased boss damage output to the point where tanks were nearly getting killed in one hit on the rare occasion they were hit at all. In the next raid (ICC) they gave everyone a debuff that reduced avoidance by 30% and reduced boss damage to smooth out those damage spikes. I feel like the last 3-4 bosses in elden ring needed something like this. Rolling to entirely avoid damage is really quite easy once you know the bosses attack pattern but dying over and over because you fucked up the timing once or just got plain unlucky (like if Elden beast just decides to fly around spamming ranged attacks) is not fun. I guess the point I’m making is that there needs to be more ways to challenge the player other than their frame perfect rolling ability.
Of COURSE it's not perfect. The Perfect Open World game would be simultaneously not too big but infinite, full of infinite lore that all loops back on itself perfectly with no loose ends, and infinite replayability so that people would be able to play it forever. Obviously, with our current technology, that's impossible. Script-writing algorithms need to go a LOT further to procedurally generate lore, much less cohesive lore, and the work required for even a little bit of this theoretical perfect game would be beyond the comprehension of any writer, team of writers, or possible collaborative effort. It's just outright Impossible to make a perfect game. That elden ring got so good however, is worth its praise.
I absolutely love From Software games and this game too as I finished NG3 just the other night. But some of the bosses are straight out of Bloodborne plus steroids. The long combos, infinite endurance and OP AOE attacks turn everything into you doing 95% avoiding and 5% attacking. Then you have the Elden Beast itself in which the camera is the real boss. Another gripe I have is Haligtree and the enemy placement. You're better off just running past everything because they stick mobs in tight corridors and rooms along with cheap ambushes. Don't even get me started on the enemies at the bottom, where they not only poison you and aggro with these ridiculous combos but they warp around you as well. At least Haligtree is optional though. Either way, I like they they were ambitious with Elden Ring and its by far the best game I've played in a long while. Here's hoping they improve on for another one
Hard agree on the enemy scaling being a problem. It seems like a lot of people are biased by their love of the game and there’s nothing wrong with that. However you end up hearing justifications for game flaws as if they are completely unavoidable. Great commentary here. I watch a lot of these kinds of videos and this one is better than most.
No they’re right. The later bosses like Maliketh or Malenia I feel are a bit too fast. I wouldn’t mind their speed if you could stagger them with your weapon, but you can’t. Malenia is stagger able on “some” of her attacks as she has hyperarmor. Which is bullshit with how damaging and fast she is. Why does she need hyperarmor?
The sheer number of reused bosses is honestly unacceptable. People shit on Bloodbornes chalice dungeons for being copy and paste, but literally every cave in elden ring is copy and pasted with a reused boss at the end. Bloodborne at least had bosses unique to the chalice dungeons. Reusing bosses is fine in the open world. I’d prefer they just made a smaller world and re-used less, but I get it and it’s not a deal breaker. But reusing MAIN story bosses like Margit/morgott or Godfrey? Way beyond the pale. I’ve never been so disappointed or confused in a game before than when morgott came out of that stairwell at leyendell. Equal parts dumbfounded and disappointed. This game already reused every single animation from prior souls games, as well as dozens and dozens of enemy types. What have they been doing for 6 years if they can’t even create a unique story experience? Even Godfrey’s second phase, horah loux, has animations ripped directly from father gascoigne in Bloodborne. Radhaan might as well be Ludwig from Bloodborne, the fight is that similar. Fromsoft needs to move on and make a new game. This coulda been dark souls 4. This didn’t need to be a new IP. They’re clearly out of ideas, even elden rings story is entirely derivative. Swap out “hunter” or “unkindled” with “tarnished” and it’s an identical plot.
I considered mentioning the reuse bosses/animations. The bosses bothered me less because at least they mixed then up each time. Sometimes it was nice fighting a boss a second time and realizing how much you had learned. Still not great though...
@@21salbatic13 radhan is on his horse, ludwig is half horse. They both wildly swing a sword around while galloping every where. Radhan and Ludwig are more different than horah loux is to gascoigne. Horah Louxs attack combos are identical to the second phase of gascoigne when he transforms. Rewatch both fights on RUclips. That forward rush horah does where swipes wildly looks like it was lifted directly out of BB. I admit, this is nitpicky, but these are just the most recent examples that come to mind of asset reuse and the most clever. There are 1000 things way lazier and blatantly lifted directly from previous games with almost 0 changes to make them fit the aesthetic. Edit: the point is, in a vacuum, these might not be so egregious, but when I’m playing “elden ring”, a supposedly *NEW IP* and almost everything is lifted a la carte from the other games, the lack of originality in design becomes more apparent. I might not have noticed how derivative those two bosses are if the rest of the game had an identity unique to “elden ring” but it doesn’t.
@@CFU I don’t mind that, it’s part and parcel to every RPG. But reusing MAIN story bosses, sometimes as another MAIN story boss, is beyond the pale. I’ve never in my gaming life been so confused/dissapoitned/deflated to get through leyendell and see “morgott” walk down the steps. I couldn’t believe fromsoft was that brazen.
Yeah, they certainly saved a lot of money while developing this "new ip". The worst part for me was the open world, they created this beautiful and huge world and didn't really take advantage of it. They just stuffed it with filler content, reused mini dungeons and subpar bosses. Basically it's the same experience you get from the classic linear levels but vastly inferior in quality and diluted in a huge map. It left me with a strange feel of monotony and disappointment that no other souls game has managed to give me.
Well thought-out review of an amazing but frustrating game. Plus points for the mention of the awesome Dragon's Dogma. Hopefully Capcom will release Dragon's Dogma 2 especially after the financial success of Elden Ring.
Honestly I think steaks of Marisa are a blessing. Most of the time running back to a boss isn’t challenging; just boring and time consuming. With increased rate in attempts per unit time, I think this would have been a good opportunity to make the bosses harder with more varied movesets to offset the time saved from mindless running
For real.... everytime I have to do the "walk/run of shame" back to a boss I contemplate just cheat engine'ing the shit out of every mob then turning it off for the boss... I beat them numerous times I know I can beat them now it's just fucking tedious them standing between me and the thing that actually killed me
Well, the health-cut after a death is just a matter of perspective. ER also has this system in place, it just comes a bit later in the form of Great Runes. You pop a rune arc (Human Effigy, Ember) and boom... more health (or whatever buff the rune provides). You die, it's gone. It's basically the same as always, just introduced way later. And in terms of perspective, you just have to ask yourself: "Does this item raises my health to 100% or do I get a max health bonus?"
I also think they scaled the weapon upgrade drops wrong, too often did I only have enough smithing stones to upgrade 1 weapon far above others, reducing the effective weapon variety of a play through. I think if they had replaced some of the higher level stones early locations with more lower level ones. This would mean that even if you’re a bit over levelled for an area, your weapon upgrade level would keep the difficulty more constant
@@CFU Just finnished a second palythrough and didnt notice much improvement tbh, although i did know i wanted to try moonveil and darmoon gs. I think in caelid i seem to stumble upon a high level somber smithing stones, leaving me with like a +8 and everything else +6. I think evening out the stone cost of upgrades would also help, it takes 10 somber stones to get a +10, but like 120 for a +25 that has roughly the damage etc
i personally explored every nook and cranny in the game and im sure i missed a bit here and there but the majority of it was explored in my first playthrough. i got every Ending Rune except the Golden order one (because radagons statue is impossible to get in Ashen Capital) i killed every Boss and got every Achievement except the multi ending ones (bc first ending duh). and im honestly not willing to play it again. the Replayability is pretty bad in my opinion. it was 10/10 the first time but i dont want to do it again. The game is a tad too long and the sheer Amount of re-used Bosses is honestly unacceptable.
i save scummed for all 3 ending trophies and i’m glad i did. how is the biggest fromsoft game the least replayable… i’ve been bloodborne and ds1 over a dozen times each….
I'm going to start by asking for forgiveness if I seem like I'm ranting but that's because I use voice to text cuz I'm on phone and have fat fingers so it's hard for me to use the phone's keyboard so I just use voice to text instead. Alright now for my first issue with your critique is the opening statement you make is asinine. What I mean by that is that to say Elden ring is just Dark Souls 4 implies to me that you haven't actually bother to look into the differences between Elden ring and Dark Souls three which is the most similar game to Elden ring and still in that sense I would say they are very different games in how the combat works.
Now as for the combat system in the massive differences between Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring as I personally feel that well all fromsoft games are niche I feel like each game in the soulsborne series are their own Niche within that greater niche with when you look at games like Dark Souls 2 where powerstancing became a thing and Poise was well, pointless if you'll pardon the pun. Dark Souls 3 included a machform of the poisonous them but it wasn't really there yet with the best Edition that Dark Souls 3 added on that front with hyper armor but that's not even the biggest point is the biggest change between Dark Souls 2 in Dark Souls 3 ended up being the speed of combat with a much heavier emphasis on having quick reaction times and being able to predict what your opponent will do beforehand rather than just having precise movement like in the previous games especially when you look at things like backstab counters and things like that.
Honestly the amount of new features and the Jurassic Lee different importance of what is or isn't good in a fight between Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring and really all soulsborne games before Elden ring and Elden ring now isn't the same as theirs powerstancing coming back as a viable option that in PVE is super broken if you used to colossal greatswords and just jump attack bosses and let's not forget that Shields have become actually very viable strategy to the point that you could be completely stuck with fat rolls and yet so long as you learn how to use your Shield right oh, you can deal with any fast fucker who's coming after you and guard counters are thing now which means she'll have even more valuable part to play in any person's build. Oh yeah and let's not forget that the police system is truly back in my opinion where you can take several hits and so long as you don't mindlessly just take it's like you would in Dark Souls 1 and make sure their time when you take hits and make sure that you get in enough hits to refill your Poise bar you can go through a fight doing numerous trades without even coming close to having been staggered
That's just a small amount by the way of different things that I'll have differing importance and drastically changed the way that the game plays out to the point that saying Elden ring is just Dark Souls 4 even in a small jest is not a good sign when it comes to showing that you have a deep enough understanding to actually be speaking on the matter with any amount of good objective points...
One question why would you show ONLY one way to get to the “ladder” boss, and manipulate it into thinking that’s the way to do it, when there is LITERALLY a jump-teleporter you can use with your horse?
I liked the game, but it was also exhausting and it took up an uncomfortable amount of my free time for like a month. After finishing it all I wanted was to be done with it, even if it is pretty good overall. I wanna try a more magic driven build in the future maybe, but.......idk. I need to do other things for awhile
@@SystemBD I agree that the game shouldn’t be smaller because someone else has less time but at the same time the game does waste your time deliberately and it gets tiring, especially when the game is so large and when you have little time
@@bipolarexpress9827 I have many cool. Buts what this your holding my hand I see. Ahh oh yes indeed let me checky map... Ok what's this... Ok I see I know where to go now.
For me, the game suffers the same issue of other Open Worlds, even the good Open Worlds like BOTW: the game is so big that mid/end game is just a repetition of things you already did; same bosses, same enemies and you are just walking like a robot to finish the path. I know, even with better engines it's hard to think a trully original Open World with 100% original content from the start to end, but for me this is the main reason that I don't like Open World games, it NEEDS the repetition to create some pattern and use less resource. With the repetition problem, i would like to add that is TOO MUCH sites of grace, and because of that you dont have the weakness sensation of old Souls games that you have to carry a bunch of souls/runes with the fear to get killed. You just walk 2 secs and theres is a site of grace. Both the motives killed the vibe for me in the mid and end game, and i think in a Souls game scale (considering just the souls with Demon, Dark 1,2 and 3 and Elden Ring - not Bloodbourne and Sekiro), I put Elden Ring just in front of Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 1, 3 and Demon Souls are better games for my style.
My thoughts exactly. I would also put elden right above ds2. Honestly elden feels more like ds2 than any other souls game even though its mechanically ds3.
Less sites of grace would not change the issue of Torrent : you can simply avoid everything in your path to get again your runes. It's one of the biggest downgrade the open world bring. Every step in the other souls was a sort of victory. In ER? Who cares, you can simply ignore everything, walk away, even jump over them.
I feel like some of the technical issue complaints are a little overblown. Personally I hardly notice the frame rate issues on my PS4 even though some claim it’s unplayable.
Replayability lacks for sure. Beyond going back to find a 2nd unique weapon for dual wielding, it loses its magic right away. In a couple years it'll be a blast to go back to though
Way too many repeated bosses, way too much combo spamming with bosses, I hate those 2 second long wind ups, it looks really stupid when they just float in the air in slow mo and then just crash down, the map is way too big with way too much repeated stuff.. I'm gonna get my playthrough finished and most likely never play this again.. also, I love dragons dogma, I have 100% it multiple times through the years.. I can't see myself doing the same with elden ring..
I think from software realized since DS3 and even more so very apparently in Sekiro, that boss run backs do not add to the challenge whatsoever, and just causes players to enter a boss fight with less than max estus, which they do not intend. So stakes of mar-i-ka (marika) are a welcomed site, this is coming from a person who does challenge runs like sl1, ng+7 fresh start
I'm so glad more people are talking about the quest design. I've been absolutely in love with this game, but for the first few weeks, people seemed intensely reluctant to hear that perhaps, there were formula staples that didn't make a great transition to the open world. I get that some people can bring across their criticism in some combative ways, but fundamentally, the issues were real and worth talking about. Great review, I think I agree with a lot of what you've pointed out. Hopefully, these sorts of critiques gain traction and make it in front of the devs if/when they make another open world game. I think they struck gold, but it could easily be diamonds the second go-around.
Honestly the quest design haven't changed at all with the open world. Sure the game is bigger but obscure quest objectives like using a gesture in front of a statue or finding illusory walls have always been a thing..
@@BBQcheese that was fine for the atmosphere and world of linear and dreary Dark Souls where the world was undying and decaying with everyone expected to die/go hollow regardless of what you did but IMO the backtracking of Elden Ring sidequests with random NPC appearances in previous locations or random locations with no warning is as bad as the worst skyrim fetchquests just this time you get to look on a wiki/youtube to find your map markers and questlog
If I replay this game I'm gonna end it at Morgott because that's near where the game should've ended. I was actually baffled when I realized there was still another quarter of the game left.
@@moonpresence9707 and that's why open world games are pretty trash. They're great the first time around then you don't want to touch it again. Tbh the only reason this game is so heavily praised is because the state of the games industry is just so fuckin terrible.
@@jonathanmayland3162 I don't think open world games are trash, and I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a potentially 100 hour game just once; I feel like I got well over my money's worth if I liked the game enough to invest 100 hours in the first place. There's just a difference between quality over quantity in content. Forbidden West has multiple of the same dungeons (cauldrons, ruins) but every single one is visually and mechanically distinct. On top of there not even being 10 of each. Compare to ER, where by the time I finished 2 regions i had done the same 2 dungeon types (catacombs, caves) at least 10 times each, probably more. None of them were visually distinct from one another, all had essentially the same mechanics, and a sample pool of like 4-5 bosses that I fought repeated in each one.
I watched alot of Elden Ring reviews in the last few days as i finally reached the endgame and this one really nailed it. Very well done video and i agree with everything you said (especially the part about the quest system). You are not afraid of criticising the game despite the dreaded soulslike fanbase but you didn't try to bash it just for the sake of it. I'm really impressed by your honest work here and i enjoyed watching every second of it!
I'm not sure on how I feel. I like the game, but some parts feel downright unfair. I've taken my time and explored area extremely thoroughly. I explored everywhere I could but the late game areas are pretty tough. To the point where farming felt necessary. I've never had to grind in any souls games. It always felt like a steady progression where I didn't have to halt my progress to grind. Snow top mountains and the next section are extremely tough. And don't even get me started on some of these "Gank Bosses" I love Elden Ring but some things definitely need some tuning.
i never had the feeling i should have farmed and couldnt wrap my head around so many youtube videos explaining farming methods. if you explore everything before, you are im sure up there in upgrades, so most minions get 2-3 shotted except the very big ones but thats natural in all souls games
@@CILinkzSpre3 the minions aren't giving me trouble at all. And when I mean farming don't do that whole think where people get millions of runes. If I'm close to my next level up then I'll go put my sign next to a boss room so I can get some points quickly and safely. But my point being is it feels so forced. I've never had a souls game where I needed to halt progress to grind for some points. Every boss felt fair and challenging. Even a triple Gank boss felt fair in Bloodborne. The late game bosses here feel ridiculous. The fights flat out feel unfair and unbalanced.
I beat the game at RL 128 and didn’t have to grind for runes once. If I hit a wall I would just turn around and do something else like continue Fia or Rannis quest line or go explore the valcano manor or the ainsel river well or Farouk azula because I knew there was hidden bosses
@@DreyfusLagoon but there's too many factors you have to take into account. Builds. Summon or no summons. Magic. That kind of stuff. I have finally defeated Godskin Duo solo. And everything up to the final boss solo. I've been using the Bloodhound claws with the Bloodhound step ash of war. I'm also using a Greatsword that I found in Caelid. I've found more areas with bosses. Participated in more PVP. It's difficult but I'm managing better than I was when I posted this.
What do you think of the enemy repetition? What REALLY annoys me is that Mountaintops of the Giants doesn't have a single unique enemy. The variety is really something to behold tho
It wouldn't have been as bad if the game just wasn't so long. This also kills replayability for me. This game is just too long with too few highlights. Of all the bosses, I just enjoyed Margit, Godrick, Radahn and Morgot. The rest were unfun, especially the lategame. The reused enemies made it unfun as well. Look at Dark Souls 3. It has so many fun bosses. Nameless King, Twin Princes, Abyss Watchers, Sulyvahn, Soul of Cinder, Sister Friede, Gael. It has so many bangers. And don't get me started on Sekiro. Besides DoH and Twin Apes, every boss is more fun than any in Elden Ring.
First time I played Elden Ring, all the NPC's talked about Stormveil as if that was the penultimate area of the game and from my perspective it stood relatively close to the Elder Tree(I get it's called the "Erdtree" but that's how I've nicknamed it). Imagine my shock when I discovered the map was much much larger.
When you said there was no punishment for death other than runes you can easily get back u completely forgot to mention rune arch’s and the one of many different abilities you lose
The quest design did irritate me. It's fine in dark souls where generally you'll progress quests along your path as you go. NPCs in this game are all over the shop. Without guides or when I was playing on release and nobody knew anything it was a real pain to progress or even find quests without unintentionally ruining them in the process. I'm okay with failable quests. But its so easy to fail them in Elden Ring that on playthrough one I ended up deciding to just not bother with them and just kill NPCs on sight where possible to see if I can get their cool armor or weapon etc.
Dude idk if they’ve fixed performance with a patch but I’m on PC and running the game essentially locked at 60 FPS. During the first couple weeks, it frequently stuttered, especially in Liurnia and parts of Limgrave (especially around the tree sentinel). However, I’ve been essentially smooth sailing at 60 ever since I reached Altus Plateau a couple weeks ago up until I beat the game. Now in NG+ I’m not even dropping frames in Limgrave/Liurnia anymore! Someone told me I probably just got used to the drops, but I turned on a frame counter plug in, and I’ve been running a solid 60 uninterrupted for days now.
I finished the game twice. I have found 99.99% things on the game. All areas, all bosses and almost every weapon and other things. Now, this game has nothing to offer to me. I am done with thi elden ring. It's time to play something new.
@@CFU i did not beat one death bird boss that can only be found in the most north western part of the mountain of the giants near a church, in the frozen lake part where you can find a walking mausoleum spitting huge blue ball s of magic that can kill you from miles. that death bird boss was very tough. try to cheese him. I killed him after 10 attempts . he is holding one of the most op weapon of elden ring. death poker.
@@cenationofjnu the death rite bird with the ice flames? I just beat him today. He killed me like 15 times lol he’s one of the few bosses I had to use a spirit summons for. Tough enemy
@@pievancl5457 there are many death bird in the game. I don't know how many more are there. You would not believe it but I found a death bird in the morning in the game, in the mountain of the giants, near the castle sol. He was tough but stupid like previous death bird boss. Go and beat him. There are two or three more death birds in the game during night only in limgrave and liurnia region. I couldn't beat the death bird found near frozen lake.. His attacks do massive damage. And don't ask about flame. I had to use cheese method to kill him. 😂
Glad to see more channels waking up from the Domon Souls 5 mass fanatism into a more unbiased and honest opinions. *While Demon Souls 5 is AMAZING ON ITS OWN,* it does not offer innovation apart from the inclusion of jumping and open world(and sequel mandatory new features). Honestly my biggest disappointed was being offered the same old thing with a new name and some changes. At least the old thing was already amazing, and the new changes took it to another level. But I was expecting and hoping something as different as Bloodborne (which is Demon Souls but changed enough to make it different, unique and original) and as unique and original as Sekiro(Miyazaki's most unique, creative and original game). Specially since they hired George Martin... To end up doing the same old repeated narrative style, ehich is not bad, but again, I was hoping something truly new. Other games have bigger narratives and yet they success at keeping cryptic stories and lore.
@@CFU Well if they made the exploration to require jumping, obviously it'll feel big. But even veteran ds3 pvp RUclipsrs play mostly like ds3. Jumping offers new options in pvp combat, but dordn change do much like shooting snd no guard (Bloodborne) and posture mechanic (Sekiro). Nice addition though.
If you've watched all of the Digital Foundry videos you'll remember Rich having a smoother experience than Alex despite playing on a slower PC. Have a VERY similar PC to you (don't expect 3900X vs 3700X to behave differently either), yet from that clip of you fighting the Tree Sentinel, performance is different. I spent 99% of my time with the game locked to 60fps, I also enabled a frame time graph as well for a while and it was fine & not a single death on my playthrough was due to perf. That's not to say that it shouldn't be better or that there weren't areas where perf was also a problem for me (You know that bell tower later on in the game...? You know the one. Also some the big plants with homing glintstone projectiles).
Literally none lol. I dual wield colossal great swords and have never run out of stamina when I needed it. The game would break if you had limited stamina, they designed every boss fight to be a roll spam fast.
@@pievancl5457 He speaks facts. 20 End in elden ring is like having 30-40 End in past games. Stamina management isn't a thing you basically only upgrade it for equip load. Just another reason it's the easiest game they have made, except when it's being artificially difficult ofc at that point it's comparable to Dark souls 2
I know people would gripe, but I wish we had enemy levels displayed in elden. Make it optional, sure, but let us have a bit more guidance in such an open and silent world.
Not trying to say elden ring is perfect as no game is. However, I feel like elden ring gives a huge amount of player choice as far as difficulty is concerned. If you want a raw, classic souls experience, play without summons. If a player would rather have a an easier experience, use summons and level without grind areas. Personally, I think from software did an excellent job making a new player friendly souls game, while still allowing veteran players choose to have a classic, brutal souls experience.
I hate the fact we end the game fighting the Elden Beast, some comparisons I keep on using is that it would be like having to fight the Moonlight Butterfly after Gywn or like having to fight the Crystal Sage after fighting the Soul of Cinder or like having to fight Rom after Gehrman. All with no Bonfires or Lanterns separating the fights, its a jarring transition to go from fighting two very very very different bosses with no break. People will cite 'spectacle', but they forget you play a game to fight a boss, not fight a 'spectacle'. Spectacle should never take priority over making a fun and engaging boss, if a boss isn't fun to fight then its not a good boss. When it comes to the difficulty, after fighting the Fire Giant it felt like I switched games to Code Vein, in particular the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood part of Code Vein.
I kinda liked that it was a double boss. Was not a fan of you getting to Elden Beast and its got several 1 hit kill moves even with insane health. Basically forces you to do tons of runs to learn the moveset to avoid a few cheap moves.
If they had a break in between the bosses, then yeah it would be more slightly enjoyable to me. Some down time would allow to appreciate the Elden Beast more, and Radagon which I already really enjoy. But going back to my comparison, imagine fighting Gwyn and then being forced to fight the Moonlight Butterfly, no bonfire, no estus refill. Also, lets be honest. Torrent should be available for the Elden Beast, the only one that had have faith in you from the start and picked you out. Our trusty stayed with us through the thick and thin of it (and is one of view NPC that doesn't die), deserves to be there for the final ride. It would make things like the BS Elden Stars actually able to be dodged and be fair.
16:55 This is incorrect. As someone who got both the PS5 and PS4 versions platinum, I can confirm that the PS4 version on PS5 most definitely is not locked at 60FPS. Early game, yes it runs somewhat stable, however mid to late game, it starts to chug at points. I actually managed to get a consistent terrible stutter, by using a certain weapon. I don't remember which one it was, as it's been a while since I've played Elden Ring and I'm currently busy getting the platinum's for the other soul's games, but god damn, was it annoying, as I think I used that weapon for most of my playthrough. Excellent video, by the way!
Thanks for bringing up the quest markers thing cause it's a big issue for me. It's literally impossible to follow questlines in this game organically; you have to have a guide/walkthrough open for each NPC to keep track of where their stories are at, or even to know where they are, and sometimes I would block out an NPC's questline without even realizing it, all because I didn't stick carefully to the walkthrough and strayed a tiny bit. They should have added SOME kind of system to help keep track of side quests, because the NPCs and lore is all so interesting but what's the point if you can barely find where they are in this giant ass world.
@@CFU Definitely, in the previous souls games it worked fine, but I feel like for an open world game it's necessary to have some guidance for the side quests
I play this game on Linux and I can confirm that I have yet not encountered any problem playing the game. (No shader compillation issuses, nor crashes, etc.)
They definitely need to do something NEW. They have been refining Demon's Souls for over a decade now, and I would love to see them do something a little braver and newer... or at least make some serious innovations over the baseline we established ages ago.
Yeah i agree, feels a little disingenuous to say you want to stop making dark souls games because you want to make new IPs, only to then make a reskin of dark souls in an open world, with extra copy/paste
I do think we should at least acknowledge the fact that From addressed the (admittedly unacceptable) performance issues of Elden Ring and apologized for that, within a week of releasing the game. They vowed to fix this, and while it is definitely debatable how much they succeeded at this. But, they did publicly acknowledge some immediate, serious and valid criticisms with their game, apologized for them and have been at least working on fixing them. I mean, how many big AAA games have had a developer response like that?
I really don't see how Elden Ring pumps new life into the open world genre when it does *nothing* new. There is nothing in its open world that Skyrim didn't do already, aside from the souls combat, but even then modders have added souls combat to Skyrim long before Elden Ring was a thing. Sure it removed the map markers, but that's something that modders also already did years and years ago for Skyrim. About the only thing Elden Ring does 'different' is that its world map is much more bloated and excessively large, which just helps to ensure that the player will be utterly sick of the same copy-pasted shack, catacombs, ruins and churches before they even set one foot out of Limgrave. All filled with the same copy-pasted and reskinned enemies to boot, even down to reusing the same bosses over and over, just to really ram the point home that we've gone *nowhere* in the decade since Skyrim came out. And unlike Skyrim, Elden Ring doesn't even have some lively cities or more than a handful of npcs with intriguing or quirky storylines to ward off the tedium of running across another vast open field of copy-pasted environment filled with *nothing*. Nor does it have Skyrim's vast potential and support for mods that ensured the game's longevity long after its base vanilla content had grown stale. I keep seeing this "Elden Ring revives Open World games!" narrative everywhere and I just don't get it. Then again I didn't get that praise for BotW either, another game with a huge world filled with nothing but copy-pasted shrines, enemies and bosses (or what passes for them).
would have been nice if they added a scaling aspect to the NG+, the first playthrough is accessible to everyone, but once theyve beaten it and gotten use to mechanics theres no more completely destroying early areas after over levelling. Granted, every game has ridiculous OP builds but still. Also, the lack of quest markers and stuff, while overwhelming and frustrating at times, is what makes this game great. Im no 100% type guy, I like stories and when i would finish a big boss or questline, the X marks the spot type thing is what kept me going, but without it, it encourages me to explore. Yea sometimes i finished a boss and basically said "ok what do I do now?", but thats the beauty of it, it encouraged me to explore, fail and eventually succeed until I found the correct destination or better yet, find some cool ass item, which in turn showed me the reward for exploring and kept me going into tunnels and side areas that I wouldnt bat an eye at in any other game unless it housed the strongest weapon or armour.
Excluding Elden Ring froom this comment, I am, at last, in peace, for listening to someone else say it: Skyrim laid the foundation for Open World video games, period. I've been saying that to my friends when discussing Open World, the way I see Skyrim and the things it did or try to do but I saw the in every other RPG. Skyrim, while shallow for today's standards, is the GOAT for setting the foundations.
Im not sure about the "you cant compare gear" when you literally can, if you equip something and go to equip something else you can see the stats turn blue or red, blue meaning higher and red lower for every stats from weight poise and defensive stats. And if youre not sure what stats does there a help button that literally describe what their effect are on your defensive. The interface might not be the best for everyone especially newcomers. But once you know where to look you can easly flow through and know whats going on. You dont need to be spoon fed every bit of information. If most people took 5 mins to go through it with the help feature, they would have it all figured out after couple hours of acquiring those information.
@@CFU in that situation you cant but lets be honest if you dont own the gear you cant equip it anyway and most category of armor have really similar defensive stats except some armor like the raptor cloak have special effect. Lets be real even if they are the different by a couple points it make no difference it wont be the difference between life or death if you die with X even if the stats of a similar armor goes up by 2 points on all stats youre still dead.
You actually can compare weapons and armor in the inventory by selecting "compare". You mentioned that in previous games you would lose health after dying, but that isn't really the case in any of the games besides dark souls 2. You lose health after dying in elden ring pretty much the same way as the other games. Rune arc, ephemeral eye stone, humanity, human effigy, and embers are all items used to "power up" the player. The only difference is that elden ring doesn't "power up" your character after defeating a boss and you have to find the great runes and equip them individually in addition to using a rune arc if you want the true benefits. It seems like it's actually more difficult to gain that advantage in elden ring, especially since you also can't power yourself up from defeating a boss as a co-op summon.
I think a journal like you said would be better than quest markers, I like some npcs mark your map, and most don’t, because usually people don’t care enough about you to be that helpful, or they tell you a named location… which is why it should have a journal. But I haven’t actually had any problems personally remembering most things, except what the alburnic woman tells you.., that’s rude that she never repeats that, and all the other dialogue of npcs who know her simply tell you where to find her
Good review so far! Didn't watch it all the way yet. 14:15 - About durability and walks back to the boss, I think you're mistaking difficulty with tediousness. I don't really agree with your point of view on this take. Except if the mechanic is an integral part of the gameplay and experience (which doesn't seem to be the case with Elden Ring and other FromSoft games, because durability and walk backs are quasi non-existent in Elden Ring and that's just fine), it does add no gameplay, nor strategic decisions whatsoever. When you say "Can you afford to keep progressing in this area, or do you have to fall back to upgrade and restore your weapon durability", I just thought "Do you want to have fun, or go back to the hub and do it all over again because the game said you need to stop being happy". Well, gonna watch the rest of the video!
Good take - working on Bloodborne right now and I see it both ways. I REALLY need to commit to fighting the boss because I know I'll need to farm blood vials if I die. On the one hand I makes each run to the boss harrowing but on the other it super sucks burning 17 blood vials, dying when the boss is in second phase and needing to farm/do runs again.
Trivial? Trivial? My dude, this game never becomes trivial, at any level anywhere! Because I’m a suck ass casual (graduate of Skyrim academy), it doesn’t seem to matter how much HP I have, or what weapon I’m wielding, I never feel godlike. Everything can still kill me and it blows.
well it takes away the sense of acomplishment after beating a hard boss, like i was so happy when i beat the first big boss but then it turns out there r 4 more of them , also sticking with rolling rather than dodge is not a good mechanic in my opinion ,i wished they inspired more from sekiro rather than dark souls .
I think that a lot of what attracts people to From’s games is their return to a form of game design which respects and challenges the player. I think this was their biggest innovation, the boldness to go backwards. And isn’t that what we see happen with BotW too? And before the bloated map marker filled success of Skyrim there was Elder scrolls 2 and 3, games which are far more about exploration and player driven experiences, regarded by those who played them as the best in the series. I wouldn’t be surprised if ES:VI follows the trend of going back to the series roots, and abandon this need to tell the player about everything up front for fear that they miss out on a fetch quest
Dragon's Dogma was a hidden gem at its finest. I remember my mom bought it for me on the PS3 because she picked it up for a few bucks. It sat on the shelf in it's shrink wrap for almost a year before I finally broke down and played it. I only did that because I had finished Fallout New Vegas and was out of games to play for a time before KH3 came and I got my PS4. OMG, I was missing out on such a fun rewarding game. I loved it so much I bought it again on my switch just so I could play it again when I had some free time. Character creation was awesome, and I built my companion to look like my wife. So it is like I am running around this huge world with my wife at my side. It had a very unique and interesting feature with your companions. They learned how to defeat monsters and bosses. So if you hired someone elses companion who had already faught a boss you didn't, they would tell you their weak point or tell you what they were weak against. To top it off, the story was pretty freaking cool. It gave me Final Fantasy 10 "Sin" vibes, *SPOILER* where the hero reincarnates at the final boss. Your end is the beginning. Seriously, I agree, pick this game up if you can, Dragons Dogma is a freaking awesome gem! It isn't a FROM SOFTWARE game, but it is Bandai Namco and has several familiar elements.
I don't think it was going to be From Software's best game. The level design in the legacy dungeons and quite a few side areas shows they still love to make games like this. The open world is great, but it shows the issue of scaling when they want to really challenge the player because it's either too easy or too hard. I personally think the bosses are unique, interesting, and have some nice ideas behind them such as Rykard, Radhan, Dragonlord, Tree Sentinel, etc. But that was the chance they took. The reason they did it wasn't for trends or to play it safe, but rather to explain how these games should work. As in, exploring and gathering tools to take down a boss rather thsn reflexes. This souls game is the best one at doing that. I'm glad they nerfed rolling because now it frees up my ability to parry, guard counter, and use magic. As for astel, ancestor spirit, Loretta, and godrick being reused, I think they did that because they gave them new gear and specifically regal ancestor spirit, godrick, and astel were rememberance bosses, which only gave you two items. I think they did that because they were like: "Oh shoot we want them to have this!" And then they put them in there. It would be more acceptable to many if those reskins added more extra attacks like Loretta, Regal Ancestor Spirit, etc.
Great video. Had the game feelings when I played the Outer Worlds, that they stuck too much to the Fallout: New Vegas formula. The same thing happened here and it prevented it from becoming something better. The ever grimer truth, however, is that not only they chose to "continue" the Souls formula, they made significant changes which I would consider bad. The fact that cameras, leveling, inventory management etc. hasn't been fixed for over a decade is something; boss design collapsing into dodge-spam is another. The most fun I've had in this game was with "spectacle" bosses like Rennala and Rykard, because it was FromSoft at their finest. As for the whole array of end-game bosses past Leyndell, I've had no fun whatsoever. All the bosses are from Bloodborne and Sekiro in their most broken versions with the most unfair combos imaginable, yet you are stuck in this stamina-shackled form coming from Dark Souls. I love Dark Souls for its atmosphere and "spectacle", but Bloodborne and especially Sekiro are objectively changes for good (with regards to boss design), and I can't see how the Souls combat and leveling can be fixed with such a disastrous performance by FromSoft.
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Elden ring definitely is a huge step forward for from software , you can always rely on their good character designs , level designs , weapons and bosses. given that Elden ring is an open world game the problem with leveling is always gonna happen without limiting harder areas until later. Elden ring is the product of every FS (from software) game . Whilst being extremely well made it does have some major flaws which hold the game down from being at its best. The scaling in some sections of the game feels genuinely unfair , the biggest example of this is the fire giant , why is a boss which is so large so quick . Not only did they give him lots of health they also made him hit like a truck which doesnt seem fair . FS needs to look at certain aspects of the game and nerf them This is clearer with the malenia boss fight which went overboard with its difficulty giving her nearly undodgable moves with 2 health bars. If FS wants to trying to patch the cheeses then they also need to attempt to make the bosses less broken but still managing to provide a challenge. Their is also certain builds in the game which are just not gonna work against certain bosses , pvp and genuine practicality. I tried using the great sword and went through all the effort to +15 it only to be absolutely destroyed by pvp , bosses and tougher areas . Honestly the side quests are also another flaw the game has. A player has to usually rely on google to help them complete a quest when all FS has to do is add markers on the map. For example a symbol with a witches hat can symbolise Ranni and helps the player with doing the quest. The main bosses in the game are hit or miss (in my opinion) . my favorites being morrgot , godrick , astel , rykard , radahan and maybe godfrey. the rest of the bosses were either so tedious or hard that it just made the experience unfun and stressful. the fire giant is just an unenjoyable experience and malenia is just malenia , FS really needed to look at what made their past games successful in terms of boss fights and scaling. One example is DS1 in the beginning of the game your weaker and theirs no good weapons for you , however as you progress theirs more souls on offer and better weapons and armour for you , in DS1 i felt like i was stronger towards the end and felt at my best with the last fight with Gwyn , constrasting to elden ring i was still getting my ass whooped by the fire giant and elden beats even though i tried using the +9 starscouge sword. Even the bosses in Elden ring felt weaker than every other FS game (DS2 excluded ) you fight a variation of morrgot 3 different times and they reskin enemies (bosses) a little to much. some of them didnt even feel like they were tested enough one example is the godskin duo , they did not complement each other like other duo bosses have done in previous entries o +S from DS1 is the best example of this , it just felt they they were thrown in their for the sake of being there. Speaking of learning from past bosses they shouldve adapted the yhom bossfight as a spine for the fire giant (minor nitpick but why is a endgame boss called fire giant) yhom was easier to read and hit like a truck die to this, now look at fire giant : high damage +high health and they wonder why people cheese the boss .you may want to believe your build is good however it all falls apart when u realize that bleed weapons are the best in the game .I didnt have any issues with frame rates because i have a ps5 and the game ran very smoothly even on launch day. Despite all these issues i respect FS alot for what they stand for because they still have no difficulty setting to ensure every player has the same experience , they dont do terrible season passes or pay to win skills or armor sets and they also made a new game with fresh gameplay which still feels like a soulsbourne game. In conclusion Elden rings is an amazing game combining zelda (botw) , skyrim and every game of their own to create something truly special and worth experiencing. Is Elden ring a masterpiece like DS1 ? - No , Does Elden ring deserve 10/10 ratings ? - No but Is Elden Ring an amazing game ? - Yes its a solid 8/10 for me die to broken bosses , unusable builds , bad level scaling and the bosses not really living up to past bosses, what FS does good they perfect in elden ring and its only a step forward in the right direction for FS. most of my issues can be fixed with reworks and patches. Maybe my boss opinion will change if they add more DLC because artorius is my favourite FS boss and hes a DLC boss. Elden ring is not perfect but its not a bad/mediocre game either.
The Demon Souls mechanic of extra punishing your death making you loose health percentage only result in players have to stupidly pump health as an attribute to circumvent this arbitrary decision, since it is by design as you discuss, that you will die a lot. That's the thing I despised the most in that game.
Yeah From does similar stuff often. Even in Elden Ring with the single use Great Runes. From loves buffs which most players will realistically rarely have active. Can be frustrating for sure.
While i agree ekden ring wouldve felt more alive with more npcs and even a village or two. Eldeb ring fixes a major part of modern gaming without those. Alot of modern ganes have way gtoo many npcs abd they will say the same shit over an over and will give you washed out side quests. Everytime i find an npc in elden ring thet all have unique diolague. They feel fresh. Sometimes i come across an npc that i can follow a unique side quest for. Some of the sidequests can give you alternate endings. Some side quests last the whole game. Also having villages full of people doesnt collaborate well with the world of elden ring from a story and lore perspective The game isnt perfecr and while it still feels like souls, it has some huge formula improvements. Also on the xbox 1 version i never had a problem with it. Maybe they fixed it by the time i got to the game? Also the fact they did so much right with the game with only 3 to 4 years of development is insane. Also the devs who shit on elden rings design are the same people who made cyberpunk and battlefield 2042. Those devs have no right to shit on the games design 😂. Also most of the things that specific tweet showed then shitting on elden ring were all about the fact that the game doesnt have enough player accesibility which is falls. The user experience is really good and much better then the games those ubisoft devs have worked on
im glad it was released because it's a unique experience but the open world felt so unnecessary, limgrave was great but it starts to fall apart as it progresses, most of the dungeons use 1 of 2 tilesets (catacomb or mineshaft) and are incredibly boring, which hurts even the rare unique dungeons because they use the repetitive tilesets (shadow enemy dungeon), most of the side bosses feel like enemies with boss HP bars, and even the real bosses suffered for it in quality decline, although some are great like morgott. overall id probably put it only above demons souls
they could have added more different types of enemies and bosses. i expected to see something different as i progress in this big world. this is my one nitpick.
This game does have by far the most number of unique enemies in a AAA game. What probably would've helped is to just cut down some of the repeats and reduced the scope of the world. But I guess they expected players to skip a lot of the areas.
Dragons Dogma is great, but its a grindy mess jesus christ. I stopped playing it due to how soullessly grindy it becomes, especially especially in the dungeon.
17:47 I played the entire game on Linux on my desktop. There were a few performance issues until Valve improved the shader compilation stuff, and since then I've had a locked 60 FPS for 150 hours. Linux still suffers from the same random crashes Windows does though.
This is a great game, but people give breathe of the wild abit way too much credit for a ton of faults it wears blatantly- which is very typical when it comes to nintendo games. I could build an essay on the flaws of breath of the wild, but i think most forgive it because it's a Zelda game that shocked people on expectations of a ZELDA game but beyond that, it's also a betrayal TO said zelda games whether you loved the game or not.
@@CFU Ehy. Much Respect, regardless of what you do, good vids. XD soz sometimes i go crazy with the praise that goes to BoTW like it's the 2nd coming of christ.
new fire emblem engage review!
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Elden Ring would've felt more alive if it had actual villages with living humans. Would've made the deadlands like Caelid and the windmill village stand out much more.
Good idea!
Oh absolutely that's the only reason i might still boot up Skyrim once in a while, i need some friendly villages to stay under a roof the watch the rain by a fireplace
That's one of the things I loved about the Elder Scrolls games (and BOTW). It makes the world feels so much more alive, compared to Elden Ring where everyone and everything just tries to straight up murder you.
Not that Elden Ring's world is bad, it's just different game design philosophies.
The dialogue animations are super stiff, feels like they are mannequins or puppets trying to act human.
Then it wouldn't be a souls game because souls games take place far into the future of civilizations that long since collapse, all that remains is a hostile world that is impossible to thrive in. You however are the exception because you go around killing everyone who is hostile to you until no one can stand a chance.
Completely agree with mostly everything you said especially about the quests. I was actually really excited to write quest notes down and look over my notes and stuff and it worked up to a point but eventually an NPC just gives you absolutely no direction on where to go next and I'm just left wondering if that's it or if I beat a boss I shouldn't have and now it's not completable or something. I don't mind writing stuff down and taking notes instead of having a constant quest marker but I feel like if they're not going to have quest markers or logs they should at least make it clear what I'm supposed to do next through dialogue without me having to randomly stumble upon the NPC somewhere in the open world.
The quests *have* always been shit and obscure though. Playing through DS3 has made me realize that Elden Ring's quest design isnt unique, this is just how fromsoft does quests (which I dont like)
I agree with u on this, elden ring should give a way to take notes in game at the very least. So that at least people who want to follow quests and revisit certain areas later can make a note of it in game, as opposed to having other outside means of taking notes
The enemies with no stamina limit gets really infuriating late game when even with 60 vigor your getting two shotted by knights who never stop attacking.
The insistence on dumping into vigor was super annoying...
Git.
@@deathpig.9847 I've platinumed the game and every other souls game it's valid criticism.
@@wilfredwayne7139 Gud.
I felt that the first three areas were gold. The last ones were just lazy. The difficulty spike with the last boss were insane. I beat it and still enjoyed it, but the replayability for me is pretty low. I think they needed a quest log
I think fromsoftware got burned out making it just as much as I did playing it
Hard? I beat it with a level 20 character with a level zero weapon what is your excuse?
@@vikarsan3296 This is a meme right? People run marathons on their hands blindfolded while solving rubik cubes, whats your excuse for being a fat lazy gamer? Things can be hard even if then someone is good at them or practices, or has more experience etc, the world doesn't revolve around you, what you did isn't impressive, nothing in your life is or ever will be. ( and same goes for mine or anyone elses )
@@vikarsan3296 watch out weve got a real gamer over here
damn i thought the starting areas sucked but if you say it gets worse i dont want to continue playing
The open world really wasn't a big deal, in my opinion. It didn't make or break the game for me. What really ruined the game for me was the endgame. From the fire giant onward, it just wasn't fun. Yes I beat the game. No I did not enjoy it. When it was over I felt exhausted and never wanted to touch it again. If you tell me "git gud," you are seriously missing the point. This game killed me desire to get good. I say this as someone who has beaten most of the previous souls games.
Giant was my least favorite boss -_-
makelith, godfrey,radagon and dragonlord were the best bosses in the game for me, so i cant say i agree with this (malenia was also a good challenge, altho not as fun as the others)
@@rubi3050 Agree 100%. I beat every boss no more than 3 attempts all game up until the end. Was getting a little worried that I had accidentally over leveled, even though I never farmed, but explored as much as possible. So glad end game proved me wrong. Still haven’t beaten malenia, but Maliketh, Mohg and all final bosses were insanely cool, epic, challenging and sooo much fun. Maliketh is my favorite, but loved everything from fire giant and onward.
If you beat it despite being challenged to the point of not even enjoying it anymore - you my good Sir, actually did “git gud”.
@@lukass8711 i didnt use mimic tear and because of that the bosses were really fun. And radagon/elden beast is imo top tier.
I would also add as much as I love elden ring, the repetition of some bosses can be a drag and don’t get me started on the gank bosses lol. Dark souls 3 bosses are probably the most consistent ones. But at of all the soulsborne games I’ve played bloodborne is still my absolute favourite.
A couple comments here mentioning the bosses. Certainly not a great look but at least they mixed them up each time.
Bloodborne will always be Miyazaki's best game, I haven't been able to put Elden Ring down since launch though. It seems to go on even more the more you play and explore everything. The only reason they re-used bosses is because they came up with the lore they did for them, and if you know the lore, then the re-used bosses kind of make sense. Could have been done with different versions of those bosses though is my only gripe with this game. They did it in bloodborne with the butcher and how many different iterations their was of that and other bosses. They could have done that here, but seems most of the effort was put into the Dragons, Caelid, the main bosses and story, and the multiple npcs and their questlines. It's still a masterpiece of a souls like to me though, probably the best one when compared to dark souls 1, 2 and 3 and Demon Souls. I still say Bloodborne and Sekiro are from softs best titles so far though.
@@C0smicr3aper who cares about the lore. No one wants to fight the same boss 10 times
Ds3 has the best bosses
@@C0smicr3aper elden ring is the most ambitious and successful game of from software.
Elden ring is Quantity over quality IMHO. Sadly that's a spicy take that many won't even tolerate.
Valid though. It’s all gorgeous, but most of it is just full of fruit!
People hate that hot take because they look at bosses like Malenia or Godfrey and go “SEE! A QUALITY BOSS!” But they overlook the many copy paste bosses or reused dungeons and sometimes uninspired puzzles.
@@LonesomeKrow ironically I think they're the ones that have no copies of bosses.
I think Stakes of Marika were an absolute necessity in this game, and they are entirely optional for people who want to run back to the bosses. I think back to something like Dark Souls 2 which had absolutely awful boss runs which were just frustrating.
Also I will echo a lot of the comments here that the endgame bosses do way to much damage. Never before in a From game have you needed 60 vigor to survive most boss attacks. If they would tone that damage down I would love this game so much, but right now I usually will get to Radahn then play something else. I 100%ed it and have no intention of going into NG+ to refight some of those bosses.
Def think the vigor spike was to try to balance summons.
Seriously tho getting one shotted with 60 vigor is too crazy
Dragons Dogma is underrated as fuck, thank you for giving it a spotlight!
I really enjoyed Dragon's Dogma and was excited for NG+, but then it turned out apparently my character was attracted to little girls and I was so disturbed that I never touched the game again. A major design flaw right there.
Does that game has no stamina regen out of combat and practically no teleporting? And doesn't it reskin like crazy as well?
@@shawnmarcum8078 Sir what the actual fuck are you even trying to say?
@@Blirre That's Japan for you. They literally promote Pedophilia in a good chunk of their animes, mangas, and games that I'm surprised they haven't been brought to court or banned for it.
My favorite open world game, no contest. The repetition didn't bother so much because the combat was way more interesting overall.
I love how recency bias is now passing and people are beginning to be more genuine
yea the first few weeks was "BEST GAME EVER" "BETTER THAN BOTW AND WITCHER 3" " BEST GAME OF THE LAST 10 YEARS" I truly believe its the best game of the last 5 years, but dark souls 1 is still the superior souls game imo. I still put skyrim, witcher 3, and botw above it as well.
@@barkley8285 skyrim was my favorite game before elden ring, i beat it countless times and modded it to death, even still occasionally hop on skyrim to try some wacky build for a few hours. But elden ring is absolutely a better game, dark souls 1 isnt even dark souls 1, demon souls was far too small to be put over ds3 or elden ring, even with its remaster, ds1 had horrendous stiff mechanics and gameplay, saying ds1 is better than ds3 is like saying fallout 3 is better than fallout new vegas, which is rediculous because new vegas is just a better version of fallout 3. Also i disagree with the botw comparison, graces are blatantly markers that even commonly point in the direction of major quests, its literally just open world dark souls, the botw comparisons were unreasonable.
@@gabrielbro8083 fallout 3 is better than new vegas. Dark souls 1 is much better than ds3. Ds3 didnt capture the magic of ds1. I never compared botw to elden ring, i just said I liked zelda better
@@barkley8285fallout 3 had cooler dlc but new vegas is overall an improved version of fallout 3 with a far better storyline. Idk what you mean by "the magic" in ds1 the game was hard to enjoy after playing ds3 because of how janky it was, i guess the nostalgia plays a factor for you and it matters which game you played first.
@@gabrielbro8083 fnv was a buggy mess in the most boring landscape ive ever seen. Fo3 capital wasteland was atmospheric as shit in 2008 and epic. The quests were all top notch and fun, much better game. What nostalgia do you mean? I played ds1-2-3 one after another and ds1 had better story, ost, npcs, environments, world, emotional impact, etc. Pretty much everyone agrees ds1 is the best dark souls game.
I agree with a good bit of what you say in this video, however I don't think the bosses are very good. I believe it's toward the end of the video where you say it has good bosses. Are the a handful yes. But overall I think alot of the replayability of fromsoft games comes from doing new games and running to all of the cool bosses. I have very little interest in doing alt character like I have with the souls games.. I got excited about trying the dancer at lvl 20 to see if I could do it.. Yet the thought of doing radahn at lvl 20 sounds like a nightmare
The world also is boring... Everything looks the same. All the castles and waters and ruins and everything looks the same
@@GAsh0012 well the different regions have distinct environments to them. But yea, the ruins and some dungeons are literal copy paste. But the castles have unique layouts and passageways.
The absurd enemy health to damage ratio is also a deal breaker for a second playthrough. I should not have to waste HALF of my endgame build levels into HP just so I can have the luxury of dying within two hits instead of one. And considering the bosses have ridiculously overbloated health pools of their own and that Vigor ROBS you of levels that you should be putting into your damage stats the game basically twists your arm and forces you to rely on status effects like Rot and Bleed to compensate in the DPS race.
am i the only one who feels like the world is just big for the sake of being big? i hate riding on the horse he so damn slow
@@_CrimsonBlade luckily the # of flames help with that.
For NPC quests, many of them allow you to skip stages and still complete the questline, granted some form of quest log would be very helpful. You can compare gear though, stats reflect changes from what you're currently wearing, you can also sort by highest damage/protections, my only complaint here is that the game offers little detail as to what "boosts holy attacks" entails, it'd be nice to have those numbers somewhere.
Not Millicent's quest...... After starting her quest and setting her off on her "journey" (which she gives absolutely no indication about), I progressed my main quest up to the Mountaintop of the Giants where she was supposed to spawn later on, but I did not find her there. She was still in Altus Plateau, which I had already been to before I even started her quest, so I had no reason of thinking to go back there. In order to for her to leave her spawn in Altus Plateau, you first need to give her the Valkyrie Prosthesis (which I had found on my own) WHILE she's still there. There was absolutely no way for me to figure this out without consulting a guide, or just mindlessly scouring the entire map.
There are two ways the game could have fixed this: either give some kind of quest log, specifically one like Morrowind where they still keep locations vague, or have it so she appears at her different spawning locations as I progress through the main story, with the expense of only missing parts of her questline like you said (like her helping with the Godskin Apostle or the Gargoyle).
The arms race between player skill at avoiding damage and boss damage output reminds me of late 2009 in world of Warcraft where tanks were getting so much avoidance gear that they were able to outright avoid 80% of boss attacks. To ensure the challenge was there blizzard increased boss damage output to the point where tanks were nearly getting killed in one hit on the rare occasion they were hit at all. In the next raid (ICC) they gave everyone a debuff that reduced avoidance by 30% and reduced boss damage to smooth out those damage spikes. I feel like the last 3-4 bosses in elden ring needed something like this. Rolling to entirely avoid damage is really quite easy once you know the bosses attack pattern but dying over and over because you fucked up the timing once or just got plain unlucky (like if Elden beast just decides to fly around spamming ranged attacks) is not fun.
I guess the point I’m making is that there needs to be more ways to challenge the player other than their frame perfect rolling ability.
i went back to darks souls 3 after elden ring and i enjoyed DS3 way more the bosses were just better period
in your opinion right?
Agreed 🤝
Of COURSE it's not perfect. The Perfect Open World game would be simultaneously not too big but infinite, full of infinite lore that all loops back on itself perfectly with no loose ends, and infinite replayability so that people would be able to play it forever. Obviously, with our current technology, that's impossible. Script-writing algorithms need to go a LOT further to procedurally generate lore, much less cohesive lore, and the work required for even a little bit of this theoretical perfect game would be beyond the comprehension of any writer, team of writers, or possible collaborative effort. It's just outright Impossible to make a perfect game.
That elden ring got so good however, is worth its praise.
I explored every optional part of the map and was still doing dogshit damage by the end of the game because i wasn t using a bleed weapon
I absolutely love From Software games and this game too as I finished NG3 just the other night. But some of the bosses are straight out of Bloodborne plus steroids. The long combos, infinite endurance and OP AOE attacks turn everything into you doing 95% avoiding and 5% attacking. Then you have the Elden Beast itself in which the camera is the real boss.
Another gripe I have is Haligtree and the enemy placement. You're better off just running past everything because they stick mobs in tight corridors and rooms along with cheap ambushes. Don't even get me started on the enemies at the bottom, where they not only poison you and aggro with these ridiculous combos but they warp around you as well. At least Haligtree is optional though.
Either way, I like they they were ambitious with Elden Ring and its by far the best game I've played in a long while. Here's hoping they improve on for another one
there are a ton of attack windows that you're not taking advantage of.
Hard agree on the enemy scaling being a problem. It seems like a lot of people are biased by their love of the game and there’s nothing wrong with that. However you end up hearing justifications for game flaws as if they are completely unavoidable.
Great commentary here. I watch a lot of these kinds of videos and this one is better than most.
Thanks so much!
Mad cause bad
dark souls character speed with bloodborne boss speeds. not always a fun experience, it can be, but it does get annoying after a while.
Nah it doesn’t this is the complaint ppl had ab ds3 at first and now ds3 is widely considered to have the best boss quality overall
No they’re right. The later bosses like Maliketh or Malenia I feel are a bit too fast. I wouldn’t mind their speed if you could stagger them with your weapon, but you can’t. Malenia is stagger able on “some” of her attacks as she has hyperarmor. Which is bullshit with how damaging and fast she is. Why does she need hyperarmor?
The sheer number of reused bosses is honestly unacceptable. People shit on Bloodbornes chalice dungeons for being copy and paste, but literally every cave in elden ring is copy and pasted with a reused boss at the end. Bloodborne at least had bosses unique to the chalice dungeons.
Reusing bosses is fine in the open world. I’d prefer they just made a smaller world and re-used less, but I get it and it’s not a deal breaker. But reusing MAIN story bosses like Margit/morgott or Godfrey? Way beyond the pale. I’ve never been so disappointed or confused in a game before than when morgott came out of that stairwell at leyendell. Equal parts dumbfounded and disappointed.
This game already reused every single animation from prior souls games, as well as dozens and dozens of enemy types. What have they been doing for 6 years if they can’t even create a unique story experience? Even Godfrey’s second phase, horah loux, has animations ripped directly from father gascoigne in Bloodborne. Radhaan might as well be Ludwig from Bloodborne, the fight is that similar.
Fromsoft needs to move on and make a new game. This coulda been dark souls 4. This didn’t need to be a new IP. They’re clearly out of ideas, even elden rings story is entirely derivative. Swap out “hunter” or “unkindled” with “tarnished” and it’s an identical plot.
I considered mentioning the reuse bosses/animations. The bosses bothered me less because at least they mixed then up each time. Sometimes it was nice fighting a boss a second time and realizing how much you had learned. Still not great though...
Fair points but where tf do you see any sort of similarity between hoarah loux and gascoine or radahn and ludwig???
@@21salbatic13 radhan is on his horse, ludwig is half horse. They both wildly swing a sword around while galloping every where. Radhan and Ludwig are more different than horah loux is to gascoigne.
Horah Louxs attack combos are identical to the second phase of gascoigne when he transforms. Rewatch both fights on RUclips. That forward rush horah does where swipes wildly looks like it was lifted directly out of BB. I admit, this is nitpicky, but these are just the most recent examples that come to mind of asset reuse and the most clever. There are 1000 things way lazier and blatantly lifted directly from previous games with almost 0 changes to make them fit the aesthetic.
Edit: the point is, in a vacuum, these might not be so egregious, but when I’m playing “elden ring”, a supposedly *NEW IP* and almost everything is lifted a la carte from the other games, the lack of originality in design becomes more apparent. I might not have noticed how derivative those two bosses are if the rest of the game had an identity unique to “elden ring” but it doesn’t.
@@CFU I don’t mind that, it’s part and parcel to every RPG. But reusing MAIN story bosses, sometimes as another MAIN story boss, is beyond the pale. I’ve never in my gaming life been so confused/dissapoitned/deflated to get through leyendell and see “morgott” walk down the steps. I couldn’t believe fromsoft was that brazen.
Yeah, they certainly saved a lot of money while developing this "new ip".
The worst part for me was the open world, they created this beautiful and huge world and didn't really take advantage of it. They just stuffed it with filler content, reused mini dungeons and subpar bosses. Basically it's the same experience you get from the classic linear levels but vastly inferior in quality and diluted in a huge map. It left me with a strange feel of monotony and disappointment that no other souls game has managed to give me.
Well thought-out review of an amazing but frustrating game. Plus points for the mention of the awesome Dragon's Dogma. Hopefully Capcom will release Dragon's Dogma 2 especially after the financial success of Elden Ring.
Glad you enjoyed it! Hoping the Nvidia and Capcom leaks point towards a DD2 in our future :)
Honestly I think steaks of Marisa are a blessing. Most of the time running back to a boss isn’t challenging; just boring and time consuming. With increased rate in attempts per unit time, I think this would have been a good opportunity to make the bosses harder with more varied movesets to offset the time saved from mindless running
Stakes.
They aren't made of cow.
They certainly keep the blood pressure down :P
Damn autocorrect 😂
Why not just put a regular respawn point? Too logical I know, let's invent an adhock shitty respawn point.
For real.... everytime I have to do the "walk/run of shame" back to a boss I contemplate just cheat engine'ing the shit out of every mob then turning it off for the boss... I beat them numerous times I know I can beat them now it's just fucking tedious them standing between me and the thing that actually killed me
Well, the health-cut after a death is just a matter of perspective.
ER also has this system in place, it just comes a bit later in the form of Great Runes.
You pop a rune arc (Human Effigy, Ember) and boom... more health (or whatever buff the rune provides).
You die, it's gone.
It's basically the same as always, just introduced way later.
And in terms of perspective, you just have to ask yourself:
"Does this item raises my health to 100% or do I get a max health bonus?"
I also think they scaled the weapon upgrade drops wrong, too often did I only have enough smithing stones to upgrade 1 weapon far above others, reducing the effective weapon variety of a play through. I think if they had replaced some of the higher level stones early locations with more lower level ones. This would mean that even if you’re a bit over levelled for an area, your weapon upgrade level would keep the difficulty more constant
Oooo forgot to mention the stones. I think patch 1.03 made them more available at merchants but it was still a bit annoying.
@@CFU
Just finnished a second palythrough and didnt notice much improvement tbh, although i did know i wanted to try moonveil and darmoon gs. I think in caelid i seem to stumble upon a high level somber smithing stones, leaving me with like a +8 and everything else +6. I think evening out the stone cost of upgrades would also help, it takes 10 somber stones to get a +10, but like 120 for a +25 that has roughly the damage etc
i personally explored every nook and cranny in the game and im sure i missed a bit here and there but the majority of it was explored in my first playthrough. i got every Ending Rune except the Golden order one (because radagons statue is impossible to get in Ashen Capital) i killed every Boss and got every Achievement except the multi ending ones (bc first ending duh). and im honestly not willing to play it again. the Replayability is pretty bad in my opinion. it was 10/10 the first time but i dont want to do it again. The game is a tad too long and the sheer Amount of re-used Bosses is honestly unacceptable.
Might play it again but I think it would be in 5 years or something.
Mainline stuff of ng+ took like 3 hours
i save scummed for all 3 ending trophies and i’m glad i did. how is the biggest fromsoft game the least replayable… i’ve been bloodborne and ds1 over a dozen times each….
I will be active in the comments! :D
If I wanna get into souls games, which ones are balanced, cause I am fine with tough but fair progress, but not being frustrated
I'm going to start by asking for forgiveness if I seem like I'm ranting but that's because I use voice to text cuz I'm on phone and have fat fingers so it's hard for me to use the phone's keyboard so I just use voice to text instead. Alright now for my first issue with your critique is the opening statement you make is asinine. What I mean by that is that to say Elden ring is just Dark Souls 4 implies to me that you haven't actually bother to look into the differences between Elden ring and Dark Souls three which is the most similar game to Elden ring and still in that sense I would say they are very different games in how the combat works.
Now as for the combat system in the massive differences between Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring as I personally feel that well all fromsoft games are niche I feel like each game in the soulsborne series are their own Niche within that greater niche with when you look at games like Dark Souls 2 where powerstancing became a thing and Poise was well, pointless if you'll pardon the pun. Dark Souls 3 included a machform of the poisonous them but it wasn't really there yet with the best Edition that Dark Souls 3 added on that front with hyper armor but that's not even the biggest point is the biggest change between Dark Souls 2 in Dark Souls 3 ended up being the speed of combat with a much heavier emphasis on having quick reaction times and being able to predict what your opponent will do beforehand rather than just having precise movement like in the previous games especially when you look at things like backstab counters and things like that.
Honestly the amount of new features and the Jurassic Lee different importance of what is or isn't good in a fight between Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring and really all soulsborne games before Elden ring and Elden ring now isn't the same as theirs powerstancing coming back as a viable option that in PVE is super broken if you used to colossal greatswords and just jump attack bosses and let's not forget that Shields have become actually very viable strategy to the point that you could be completely stuck with fat rolls and yet so long as you learn how to use your Shield right oh, you can deal with any fast fucker who's coming after you and guard counters are thing now which means she'll have even more valuable part to play in any person's build. Oh yeah and let's not forget that the police system is truly back in my opinion where you can take several hits and so long as you don't mindlessly just take it's like you would in Dark Souls 1 and make sure their time when you take hits and make sure that you get in enough hits to refill your Poise bar you can go through a fight doing numerous trades without even coming close to having been staggered
That's just a small amount by the way of different things that I'll have differing importance and drastically changed the way that the game plays out to the point that saying Elden ring is just Dark Souls 4 even in a small jest is not a good sign when it comes to showing that you have a deep enough understanding to actually be speaking on the matter with any amount of good objective points...
One question why would you show ONLY one way to get to the “ladder” boss, and manipulate it into thinking that’s the way to do it, when there is LITERALLY a jump-teleporter you can use with your horse?
I don't believe he played the game.
@@AnANas00-x3p he probably gonna say “i didnt see it” but It’s literally unmissable, the ladder is more missable than the jump-teleporter
Ladder boss == funny MGS3 joke. There are several ladder bosses in the game. That one does have a jump pad nearby though.
:o why don't you think I played the game?
@@CFU I was just about to say “he probably gonna say it’s a joke” lmao
I liked the game, but it was also exhausting and it took up an uncomfortable amount of my free time for like a month. After finishing it all I wanted was to be done with it, even if it is pretty good overall. I wanna try a more magic driven build in the future maybe, but.......idk. I need to do other things for awhile
Agree - it consumed way too much of my life 😬
@@CFU yeah it just drags on way too long, I never really felt that way with the other games cos I enjoyed them much more besides shitty ds2 lol.
But how much of that is your own fault? I'm playing around ten hours per week and I'm enjoying my time immensely.
@@SystemBD it isn't about fault. I'm not like blaming the game, but I also found it exhausting and I just wanted to finish it and be done
@@SystemBD I agree that the game shouldn’t be smaller because someone else has less time but at the same time the game does waste your time deliberately and it gets tiring, especially when the game is so large and when you have little time
Best game I have ever played.
It really is a piece of gaming history.
Must not have played very many games
@@bipolarexpress9827
I have many cool.
Buts what this your holding my hand I see.
Ahh oh yes indeed let me checky map... Ok what's this... Ok I see I know where to go now.
@@bipolarexpress9827 why do people like you care that so many others love this game?
@@pievancl5457 because he probably spent hours dying to the tree sentinel
For me, the game suffers the same issue of other Open Worlds, even the good Open Worlds like BOTW: the game is so big that mid/end game is just a repetition of things you already did; same bosses, same enemies and you are just walking like a robot to finish the path.
I know, even with better engines it's hard to think a trully original Open World with 100% original content from the start to end, but for me this is the main reason that I don't like Open World games, it NEEDS the repetition to create some pattern and use less resource.
With the repetition problem, i would like to add that is TOO MUCH sites of grace, and because of that you dont have the weakness sensation of old Souls games that you have to carry a bunch of souls/runes with the fear to get killed. You just walk 2 secs and theres is a site of grace.
Both the motives killed the vibe for me in the mid and end game, and i think in a Souls game scale (considering just the souls with Demon, Dark 1,2 and 3 and Elden Ring - not Bloodbourne and Sekiro), I put Elden Ring just in front of Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 1, 3 and Demon Souls are better games for my style.
My thoughts exactly. I would also put elden right above ds2. Honestly elden feels more like ds2 than any other souls game even though its mechanically ds3.
Less sites of grace would not change the issue of Torrent : you can simply avoid everything in your path to get again your runes.
It's one of the biggest downgrade the open world bring. Every step in the other souls was a sort of victory. In ER? Who cares, you can simply ignore everything, walk away, even jump over them.
I feel like some of the technical issue complaints are a little overblown. Personally I hardly notice the frame rate issues on my PS4 even though some claim it’s unplayable.
PS4 was much better than PC and Xbox One.
Replayability lacks for sure. Beyond going back to find a 2nd unique weapon for dual wielding, it loses its magic right away. In a couple years it'll be a blast to go back to though
Way too many repeated bosses, way too much combo spamming with bosses, I hate those 2 second long wind ups, it looks really stupid when they just float in the air in slow mo and then just crash down, the map is way too big with way too much repeated stuff.. I'm gonna get my playthrough finished and most likely never play this again.. also, I love dragons dogma, I have 100% it multiple times through the years.. I can't see myself doing the same with elden ring..
Oh man the two second wind ups... this game loves to bait rolls!
I think from software realized since DS3 and even more so very apparently in Sekiro, that boss run backs do not add to the challenge whatsoever, and just causes players to enter a boss fight with less than max estus, which they do not intend. So stakes of mar-i-ka (marika) are a welcomed site, this is coming from a person who does challenge runs like sl1, ng+7 fresh start
I'm so glad more people are talking about the quest design. I've been absolutely in love with this game, but for the first few weeks, people seemed intensely reluctant to hear that perhaps, there were formula staples that didn't make a great transition to the open world. I get that some people can bring across their criticism in some combative ways, but fundamentally, the issues were real and worth talking about.
Great review, I think I agree with a lot of what you've pointed out. Hopefully, these sorts of critiques gain traction and make it in front of the devs if/when they make another open world game. I think they struck gold, but it could easily be diamonds the second go-around.
Glad you liked the review - thanks for the kind words!
Honestly the quest design haven't changed at all with the open world. Sure the game is bigger but obscure quest objectives like using a gesture in front of a statue or finding illusory walls have always been a thing..
@@Ocean5ix and, they've always been unnecessarily obtuse
@@BBQcheese that was fine for the atmosphere and world of linear and dreary Dark Souls where the world was undying and decaying with everyone expected to die/go hollow regardless of what you did but IMO the backtracking of Elden Ring sidequests with random NPC appearances in previous locations or random locations with no warning is as bad as the worst skyrim fetchquests just this time you get to look on a wiki/youtube to find your map markers and questlog
If I replay this game I'm gonna end it at Morgott because that's near where the game should've ended. I was actually baffled when I realized there was still another quarter of the game left.
After Morgott is when the level scaling gets a bit crazy for me.
That's a symptom of the open world. I was also feeling somewhat fatigued by Morgott but the icy mountains just completely pushed me over the edge.
Good for you i was sad at the thought of the game ending after stormville
@@moonpresence9707 and that's why open world games are pretty trash. They're great the first time around then you don't want to touch it again. Tbh the only reason this game is so heavily praised is because the state of the games industry is just so fuckin terrible.
@@jonathanmayland3162 I don't think open world games are trash, and I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a potentially 100 hour game just once; I feel like I got well over my money's worth if I liked the game enough to invest 100 hours in the first place.
There's just a difference between quality over quantity in content. Forbidden West has multiple of the same dungeons (cauldrons, ruins) but every single one is visually and mechanically distinct. On top of there not even being 10 of each. Compare to ER, where by the time I finished 2 regions i had done the same 2 dungeon types (catacombs, caves) at least 10 times each, probably more. None of them were visually distinct from one another, all had essentially the same mechanics, and a sample pool of like 4-5 bosses that I fought repeated in each one.
I watched alot of Elden Ring reviews in the last few days as i finally reached the endgame and this one really nailed it.
Very well done video and i agree with everything you said (especially the part about the quest system).
You are not afraid of criticising the game despite the dreaded soulslike fanbase but you didn't try to bash it just for the sake of it.
I'm really impressed by your honest work here and i enjoyed watching every second of it!
Glad you liked it :D
I'm not sure on how I feel. I like the game, but some parts feel downright unfair. I've taken my time and explored area extremely thoroughly. I explored everywhere I could but the late game areas are pretty tough. To the point where farming felt necessary. I've never had to grind in any souls games. It always felt like a steady progression where I didn't have to halt my progress to grind. Snow top mountains and the next section are extremely tough. And don't even get me started on some of these "Gank Bosses" I love Elden Ring but some things definitely need some tuning.
I feel similarly. I love the game, but a little balance would go a long way.
i never had the feeling i should have farmed and couldnt wrap my head around so many youtube videos explaining farming methods. if you explore everything before, you are im sure up there in upgrades, so most minions get 2-3 shotted except the very big ones but thats natural in all souls games
@@CILinkzSpre3 the minions aren't giving me trouble at all. And when I mean farming don't do that whole think where people get millions of runes. If I'm close to my next level up then I'll go put my sign next to a boss room so I can get some points quickly and safely. But my point being is it feels so forced. I've never had a souls game where I needed to halt progress to grind for some points. Every boss felt fair and challenging. Even a triple Gank boss felt fair in Bloodborne. The late game bosses here feel ridiculous. The fights flat out feel unfair and unbalanced.
I beat the game at RL 128 and didn’t have to grind for runes once. If I hit a wall I would just turn around and do something else like continue Fia or Rannis quest line or go explore the valcano manor or the ainsel river well or Farouk azula because I knew there was hidden bosses
@@DreyfusLagoon but there's too many factors you have to take into account. Builds. Summon or no summons. Magic. That kind of stuff. I have finally defeated Godskin Duo solo. And everything up to the final boss solo. I've been using the Bloodhound claws with the Bloodhound step ash of war. I'm also using a Greatsword that I found in Caelid. I've found more areas with bosses. Participated in more PVP. It's difficult but I'm managing better than I was when I posted this.
What do you think of the enemy repetition? What REALLY annoys me is that Mountaintops of the Giants doesn't have a single unique enemy. The variety is really something to behold tho
It didn't bug me as much as a lot of people in the comments. What bugged me more weirdly was the reused weapons/animations/enemies across old games.
It wouldn't have been as bad if the game just wasn't so long. This also kills replayability for me. This game is just too long with too few highlights. Of all the bosses, I just enjoyed Margit, Godrick, Radahn and Morgot. The rest were unfun, especially the lategame. The reused enemies made it unfun as well.
Look at Dark Souls 3. It has so many fun bosses. Nameless King, Twin Princes, Abyss Watchers, Sulyvahn, Soul of Cinder, Sister Friede, Gael. It has so many bangers. And don't get me started on Sekiro. Besides DoH and Twin Apes, every boss is more fun than any in Elden Ring.
First time I played Elden Ring, all the NPC's talked about Stormveil as if that was the penultimate area of the game and from my perspective it stood relatively close to the Elder Tree(I get it's called the "Erdtree" but that's how I've nicknamed it). Imagine my shock when I discovered the map was much much larger.
Map is absolutely insane.
When you said there was no punishment for death other than runes you can easily get back u completely forgot to mention rune arch’s and the one of many different abilities you lose
Good point!
The quest design did irritate me. It's fine in dark souls where generally you'll progress quests along your path as you go.
NPCs in this game are all over the shop. Without guides or when I was playing on release and nobody knew anything it was a real pain to progress or even find quests without unintentionally ruining them in the process.
I'm okay with failable quests. But its so easy to fail them in Elden Ring that on playthrough one I ended up deciding to just not bother with them and just kill NPCs on sight where possible to see if I can get their cool armor or weapon etc.
Stakes of Marika are a huge quality of life addition.
They'll give us that but god forbid you compare equipment at a shop.
@@CFU haha totally agreed. What is up with that!?
Dude idk if they’ve fixed performance with a patch but I’m on PC and running the game essentially locked at 60 FPS. During the first couple weeks, it frequently stuttered, especially in Liurnia and parts of Limgrave (especially around the tree sentinel). However, I’ve been essentially smooth sailing at 60 ever since I reached Altus Plateau a couple weeks ago up until I beat the game. Now in NG+ I’m not even dropping frames in Limgrave/Liurnia anymore! Someone told me I probably just got used to the drops, but I turned on a frame counter plug in, and I’ve been running a solid 60 uninterrupted for days now.
This was played on patch 1.02 - hopefully 1.03 is better
I finished the game twice. I have found 99.99% things on the game. All areas, all bosses and almost every weapon and other things. Now, this game has nothing to offer to me. I am done with thi elden ring. It's time to play something new.
Sounds like you got your $60 worth!
@@CFU i did not beat one death bird boss that can only be found in the most north western part of the mountain of the giants near a church, in the frozen lake part where you can find a walking mausoleum spitting huge blue ball s of magic that can kill you from miles. that death bird boss was very tough. try to cheese him. I killed him after 10 attempts . he is holding one of the most op weapon of elden ring. death poker.
@@cenationofjnu the death rite bird with the ice flames? I just beat him today. He killed me like 15 times lol he’s one of the few bosses I had to use a spirit summons for. Tough enemy
@@pievancl5457 there are many death bird in the game. I don't know how many more are there. You would not believe it but I found a death bird in the morning in the game, in the mountain of the giants, near the castle sol. He was tough but stupid like previous death bird boss. Go and beat him. There are two or three more death birds in the game during night only in limgrave and liurnia region. I couldn't beat the death bird found near frozen lake.. His attacks do massive damage. And don't ask about flame. I had to use cheese method to kill him. 😂
Glad to see more channels waking up from the Domon Souls 5 mass fanatism into a more unbiased and honest opinions. *While Demon Souls 5 is AMAZING ON ITS OWN,* it does not offer innovation apart from the inclusion of jumping and open world(and sequel mandatory new features). Honestly my biggest disappointed was being offered the same old thing with a new name and some changes. At least the old thing was already amazing, and the new changes took it to another level. But I was expecting and hoping something as different as Bloodborne (which is Demon Souls but changed enough to make it different, unique and original) and as unique and original as Sekiro(Miyazaki's most unique, creative and original game). Specially since they hired George Martin... To end up doing the same old repeated narrative style, ehich is not bad, but again, I was hoping something truly new. Other games have bigger narratives and yet they success at keeping cryptic stories and lore.
Jumping do be big tho :P
@@CFU Well if they made the exploration to require jumping, obviously it'll feel big. But even veteran ds3 pvp RUclipsrs play mostly like ds3. Jumping offers new options in pvp combat, but dordn change do much like shooting snd no guard (Bloodborne) and posture mechanic (Sekiro). Nice addition though.
If you've watched all of the Digital Foundry videos you'll remember Rich having a smoother experience than Alex despite playing on a slower PC.
Have a VERY similar PC to you (don't expect 3900X vs 3700X to behave differently either), yet from that clip of you fighting the Tree Sentinel, performance is different.
I spent 99% of my time with the game locked to 60fps, I also enabled a frame time graph as well for a while and it was fine & not a single death on my playthrough was due to perf.
That's not to say that it shouldn't be better or that there weren't areas where perf was also a problem for me (You know that bell tower later on in the game...? You know the one. Also some the big plants with homing glintstone projectiles).
There’s stamina management in elden ring?
Literally none lol. I dual wield colossal great swords and have never run out of stamina when I needed it. The game would break if you had limited stamina, they designed every boss fight to be a roll spam fast.
@@TheTinyTimmyTimTim uhh what?
@@pievancl5457 He speaks facts. 20 End in elden ring is like having 30-40 End in past games. Stamina management isn't a thing you basically only upgrade it for equip load. Just another reason it's the easiest game they have made, except when it's being artificially difficult ofc at that point it's comparable to Dark souls 2
I know people would gripe, but I wish we had enemy levels displayed in elden. Make it optional, sure, but let us have a bit more guidance in such an open and silent world.
Not trying to say elden ring is perfect as no game is. However, I feel like elden ring gives a huge amount of player choice as far as difficulty is concerned. If you want a raw, classic souls experience, play without summons. If a player would rather have a an easier experience, use summons and level without grind areas. Personally, I think from software did an excellent job making a new player friendly souls game, while still allowing veteran players choose to have a classic, brutal souls experience.
Generally agree - playing Bloodborne right now.
I hate the fact we end the game fighting the Elden Beast, some comparisons I keep on using is that it would be like having to fight the Moonlight Butterfly after Gywn or like having to fight the Crystal Sage after fighting the Soul of Cinder or like having to fight Rom after Gehrman. All with no Bonfires or Lanterns separating the fights, its a jarring transition to go from fighting two very very very different bosses with no break.
People will cite 'spectacle', but they forget you play a game to fight a boss, not fight a 'spectacle'. Spectacle should never take priority over making a fun and engaging boss, if a boss isn't fun to fight then its not a good boss.
When it comes to the difficulty, after fighting the Fire Giant it felt like I switched games to Code Vein, in particular the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood part of Code Vein.
I kinda liked that it was a double boss. Was not a fan of you getting to Elden Beast and its got several 1 hit kill moves even with insane health. Basically forces you to do tons of runs to learn the moveset to avoid a few cheap moves.
If they had a break in between the bosses, then yeah it would be more slightly enjoyable to me. Some down time would allow to appreciate the Elden Beast more, and Radagon which I already really enjoy. But going back to my comparison, imagine fighting Gwyn and then being forced to fight the Moonlight Butterfly, no bonfire, no estus refill.
Also, lets be honest. Torrent should be available for the Elden Beast, the only one that had have faith in you from the start and picked you out. Our trusty stayed with us through the thick and thin of it (and is one of view NPC that doesn't die), deserves to be there for the final ride. It would make things like the BS Elden Stars actually able to be dodged and be fair.
16:55 This is incorrect. As someone who got both the PS5 and PS4 versions platinum, I can confirm that the PS4 version on PS5 most definitely is not locked at 60FPS. Early game, yes it runs somewhat stable, however mid to late game, it starts to chug at points. I actually managed to get a consistent terrible stutter, by using a certain weapon. I don't remember which one it was, as it's been a while since I've played Elden Ring and I'm currently busy getting the platinum's for the other soul's games, but god damn, was it annoying, as I think I used that weapon for most of my playthrough.
Excellent video, by the way!
Thanks for the intel! Digital Foundry usually does early area testing - interesting you found it to buckle later.
Thanks for bringing up the quest markers thing cause it's a big issue for me. It's literally impossible to follow questlines in this game organically; you have to have a guide/walkthrough open for each NPC to keep track of where their stories are at, or even to know where they are, and sometimes I would block out an NPC's questline without even realizing it, all because I didn't stick carefully to the walkthrough and strayed a tiny bit. They should have added SOME kind of system to help keep track of side quests, because the NPCs and lore is all so interesting but what's the point if you can barely find where they are in this giant ass world.
Certainly worked better in a more linear game.
@@CFU Definitely, in the previous souls games it worked fine, but I feel like for an open world game it's necessary to have some guidance for the side quests
I play this game on Linux and I can confirm that I have yet not encountered any problem playing the game. (No shader compillation issuses, nor crashes, etc.)
Glad there is some Linux rep in the comment section!
lol okay the existence of penguins, hand enemies, and a big guy with two swords does not make it a copy of Zelda
The penguin was a joke :P
They definitely need to do something NEW.
They have been refining Demon's Souls for over a decade now, and I would love to see them do something a little braver and newer... or at least make some serious innovations over the baseline we established ages ago.
Yeah i agree, feels a little disingenuous to say you want to stop making dark souls games because you want to make new IPs, only to then make a reskin of dark souls in an open world, with extra copy/paste
Play Sekiro. Its a completely different game from all Soulsborne titles and much better imo.
You can compare armors, put one on, inspect another. You get Blue numbers and Red numbers indicating changes
No way to compare from shops right?
@@CFU if you're comparing with what you have equipped, yes you can compare from shops too
I do think we should at least acknowledge the fact that From addressed the (admittedly unacceptable) performance issues of Elden Ring and apologized for that, within a week of releasing the game.
They vowed to fix this, and while it is definitely debatable how much they succeeded at this.
But, they did publicly acknowledge some immediate, serious and valid criticisms with their game, apologized for them and have been at least working on fixing them.
I mean, how many big AAA games have had a developer response like that?
Yeah the review was deep in production by the time 1.03 hit... Good thing they are addressing things though!
I played on a Xbox one X had almost no issues with lag, stuttering, or frame drop.
I really don't see how Elden Ring pumps new life into the open world genre when it does *nothing* new. There is nothing in its open world that Skyrim didn't do already, aside from the souls combat, but even then modders have added souls combat to Skyrim long before Elden Ring was a thing. Sure it removed the map markers, but that's something that modders also already did years and years ago for Skyrim. About the only thing Elden Ring does 'different' is that its world map is much more bloated and excessively large, which just helps to ensure that the player will be utterly sick of the same copy-pasted shack, catacombs, ruins and churches before they even set one foot out of Limgrave. All filled with the same copy-pasted and reskinned enemies to boot, even down to reusing the same bosses over and over, just to really ram the point home that we've gone *nowhere* in the decade since Skyrim came out. And unlike Skyrim, Elden Ring doesn't even have some lively cities or more than a handful of npcs with intriguing or quirky storylines to ward off the tedium of running across another vast open field of copy-pasted environment filled with *nothing*. Nor does it have Skyrim's vast potential and support for mods that ensured the game's longevity long after its base vanilla content had grown stale.
I keep seeing this "Elden Ring revives Open World games!" narrative everywhere and I just don't get it. Then again I didn't get that praise for BotW either, another game with a huge world filled with nothing but copy-pasted shrines, enemies and bosses (or what passes for them).
would have been nice if they added a scaling aspect to the NG+, the first playthrough is accessible to everyone, but once theyve beaten it and gotten use to mechanics theres no more completely destroying early areas after over levelling. Granted, every game has ridiculous OP builds but still. Also, the lack of quest markers and stuff, while overwhelming and frustrating at times, is what makes this game great. Im no 100% type guy, I like stories and when i would finish a big boss or questline, the X marks the spot type thing is what kept me going, but without it, it encourages me to explore. Yea sometimes i finished a boss and basically said "ok what do I do now?", but thats the beauty of it, it encouraged me to explore, fail and eventually succeed until I found the correct destination or better yet, find some cool ass item, which in turn showed me the reward for exploring and kept me going into tunnels and side areas that I wouldnt bat an eye at in any other game unless it housed the strongest weapon or armour.
Excluding Elden Ring froom this comment, I am, at last, in peace, for listening to someone else say it: Skyrim laid the foundation for Open World video games, period. I've been saying that to my friends when discussing Open World, the way I see Skyrim and the things it did or try to do but I saw the in every other RPG. Skyrim, while shallow for today's standards, is the GOAT for setting the foundations.
Certainly set the standard of the last decade - it made a lot of money and got a lot of attention.
Lmao I put a message at the bottom of that ladder saying “Snake!” A couple days after release. So glad someone else thought like me.
Tbh if it wasn't for the marketing I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you that George R R Martin was involved in the creation of elden ring
Im not sure about the "you cant compare gear" when you literally can, if you equip something and go to equip something else you can see the stats turn blue or red, blue meaning higher and red lower for every stats from weight poise and defensive stats. And if youre not sure what stats does there a help button that literally describe what their effect are on your defensive. The interface might not be the best for everyone especially newcomers. But once you know where to look you can easly flow through and know whats going on. You dont need to be spoon fed every bit of information. If most people took 5 mins to go through it with the help feature, they would have it all figured out after couple hours of acquiring those information.
So if you don't own the gear (shop for example) how do you compare?
@@CFU in that situation you cant but lets be honest if you dont own the gear you cant equip it anyway and most category of armor have really similar defensive stats except some armor like the raptor cloak have special effect. Lets be real even if they are the different by a couple points it make no difference it wont be the difference between life or death if you die with X even if the stats of a similar armor goes up by 2 points on all stats youre still dead.
You actually can compare weapons and armor in the inventory by selecting "compare". You mentioned that in previous games you would lose health after dying, but that isn't really the case in any of the games besides dark souls 2. You lose health after dying in elden ring pretty much the same way as the other games. Rune arc, ephemeral eye stone, humanity, human effigy, and embers are all items used to "power up" the player. The only difference is that elden ring doesn't "power up" your character after defeating a boss and you have to find the great runes and equip them individually in addition to using a rune arc if you want the true benefits. It seems like it's actually more difficult to gain that advantage in elden ring, especially since you also can't power yourself up from defeating a boss as a co-op summon.
Ah I also meant the temporary health loss in Demon's Souls.
Sorry, I can't take the title serious when it's not even 3 hours long
I think a journal like you said would be better than quest markers, I like some npcs mark your map, and most don’t, because usually people don’t care enough about you to be that helpful, or they tell you a named location… which is why it should have a journal. But I haven’t actually had any problems personally remembering most things, except what the alburnic woman tells you.., that’s rude that she never repeats that, and all the other dialogue of npcs who know her simply tell you where to find her
Yeah at least let us review the text that they have said.
It's like he thinks hard games didn't exist before 60fps
Good review so far! Didn't watch it all the way yet.
14:15 - About durability and walks back to the boss, I think you're mistaking difficulty with tediousness. I don't really agree with your point of view on this take. Except if the mechanic is an integral part of the gameplay and experience (which doesn't seem to be the case with Elden Ring and other FromSoft games, because durability and walk backs are quasi non-existent in Elden Ring and that's just fine), it does add no gameplay, nor strategic decisions whatsoever. When you say "Can you afford to keep progressing in this area, or do you have to fall back to upgrade and restore your weapon durability", I just thought "Do you want to have fun, or go back to the hub and do it all over again because the game said you need to stop being happy".
Well, gonna watch the rest of the video!
Good take - working on Bloodborne right now and I see it both ways. I REALLY need to commit to fighting the boss because I know I'll need to farm blood vials if I die. On the one hand I makes each run to the boss harrowing but on the other it super sucks burning 17 blood vials, dying when the boss is in second phase and needing to farm/do runs again.
Trivial? Trivial? My dude, this game never becomes trivial, at any level anywhere! Because I’m a suck ass casual (graduate of Skyrim academy), it doesn’t seem to matter how much HP I have, or what weapon I’m wielding, I never feel godlike. Everything can still kill me and it blows.
well it takes away the sense of acomplishment after beating a hard boss, like i was so happy when i beat the first big boss but then it turns out there r 4 more of them , also sticking with rolling rather than dodge is not a good mechanic in my opinion ,i wished they inspired more from sekiro rather than dark souls .
I think that a lot of what attracts people to From’s games is their return to a form of game design which respects and challenges the player. I think this was their biggest innovation, the boldness to go backwards. And isn’t that what we see happen with BotW too? And before the bloated map marker filled success of Skyrim there was Elder scrolls 2 and 3, games which are far more about exploration and player driven experiences, regarded by those who played them as the best in the series. I wouldn’t be surprised if ES:VI follows the trend of going back to the series roots, and abandon this need to tell the player about everything up front for fear that they miss out on a fetch quest
I've been playing on PS4 and haven't had any issues with technical playability.
Nier Replicant Review dropped! Proud of this one! Please enjoy!
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Dragon's Dogma was a hidden gem at its finest. I remember my mom bought it for me on the PS3 because she picked it up for a few bucks. It sat on the shelf in it's shrink wrap for almost a year before I finally broke down and played it. I only did that because I had finished Fallout New Vegas and was out of games to play for a time before KH3 came and I got my PS4. OMG, I was missing out on such a fun rewarding game. I loved it so much I bought it again on my switch just so I could play it again when I had some free time. Character creation was awesome, and I built my companion to look like my wife. So it is like I am running around this huge world with my wife at my side. It had a very unique and interesting feature with your companions. They learned how to defeat monsters and bosses. So if you hired someone elses companion who had already faught a boss you didn't, they would tell you their weak point or tell you what they were weak against. To top it off, the story was pretty freaking cool. It gave me Final Fantasy 10 "Sin" vibes, *SPOILER* where the hero reincarnates at the final boss. Your end is the beginning. Seriously, I agree, pick this game up if you can, Dragons Dogma is a freaking awesome gem! It isn't a FROM SOFTWARE game, but it is Bandai Namco and has several familiar elements.
Really hoping for a sequel but ER works for now :P
I don't think it was going to be From Software's best game. The level design in the legacy dungeons and quite a few side areas shows they still love to make games like this. The open world is great, but it shows the issue of scaling when they want to really challenge the player because it's either too easy or too hard. I personally think the bosses are unique, interesting, and have some nice ideas behind them such as Rykard, Radhan, Dragonlord, Tree Sentinel, etc. But that was the chance they took. The reason they did it wasn't for trends or to play it safe, but rather to explain how these games should work. As in, exploring and gathering tools to take down a boss rather thsn reflexes. This souls game is the best one at doing that. I'm glad they nerfed rolling because now it frees up my ability to parry, guard counter, and use magic. As for astel, ancestor spirit, Loretta, and godrick being reused, I think they did that because they gave them new gear and specifically regal ancestor spirit, godrick, and astel were rememberance bosses, which only gave you two items. I think they did that because they were like: "Oh shoot we want them to have this!" And then they put them in there. It would be more acceptable to many if those reskins added more extra attacks like Loretta, Regal Ancestor Spirit, etc.
Great video. Had the game feelings when I played the Outer Worlds, that they stuck too much to the Fallout: New Vegas formula. The same thing happened here and it prevented it from becoming something better. The ever grimer truth, however, is that not only they chose to "continue" the Souls formula, they made significant changes which I would consider bad. The fact that cameras, leveling, inventory management etc. hasn't been fixed for over a decade is something; boss design collapsing into dodge-spam is another. The most fun I've had in this game was with "spectacle" bosses like Rennala and Rykard, because it was FromSoft at their finest. As for the whole array of end-game bosses past Leyndell, I've had no fun whatsoever. All the bosses are from Bloodborne and Sekiro in their most broken versions with the most unfair combos imaginable, yet you are stuck in this stamina-shackled form coming from Dark Souls. I love Dark Souls for its atmosphere and "spectacle", but Bloodborne and especially Sekiro are objectively changes for good (with regards to boss design), and I can't see how the Souls combat and leveling can be fixed with such a disastrous performance by FromSoft.
Good comparison
Weapon durability system is something I can never enjoy. Also, there is ember in this game. It is called Rune Arc.
Its basically 90% bloodchalice dungeons find a cave pull the lever kill the boss
Those I kinda wrote off as being the same as shrines from BOTW.
Catacombs are way better than those fricking chalice dungeons.
It's around 10% caves and dungeons.
He just said "stakes of Maryka!" Lmao
If you want to learn more about how I make videos/learn more about RUclips check out my 5 year anniversary video!
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Elden ring definitely is a huge step forward for from software , you can always rely on their good character designs , level designs , weapons and bosses. given that Elden ring is an open world game the problem with leveling is always gonna happen without limiting harder areas until later. Elden ring is the product of every FS (from software) game . Whilst being extremely well made it does have some major flaws which hold the game down from being at its best. The scaling in some sections of the game feels genuinely unfair , the biggest example of this is the fire giant , why is a boss which is so large so quick . Not only did they give him lots of health they also made him hit like a truck which doesnt seem fair . FS needs to look at certain aspects of the game and nerf them This is clearer with the malenia boss fight which went overboard with its difficulty giving her nearly undodgable moves with 2 health bars. If FS wants to trying to patch the cheeses then they also need to attempt to make the bosses less broken but still managing to provide a challenge. Their is also certain builds in the game which are just not gonna work against certain bosses , pvp and genuine practicality. I tried using the great sword and went through all the effort to +15 it only to be absolutely destroyed by pvp , bosses and tougher areas . Honestly the side quests are also another flaw the game has. A player has to usually rely on google to help them complete a quest when all FS has to do is add markers on the map. For example a symbol with a witches hat can symbolise Ranni and helps the player with doing the quest. The main bosses in the game are hit or miss (in my opinion) . my favorites being morrgot , godrick , astel , rykard , radahan and maybe godfrey. the rest of the bosses were either so tedious or hard that it just made the experience unfun and stressful. the fire giant is just an unenjoyable experience and malenia is just malenia , FS really needed to look at what made their past games successful in terms of boss fights and scaling. One example is DS1 in the beginning of the game your weaker and theirs no good weapons for you , however as you progress theirs more souls on offer and better weapons and armour for you , in DS1 i felt like i was stronger towards the end and felt at my best with the last fight with Gwyn , constrasting to elden ring i was still getting my ass whooped by the fire giant and elden beats even though i tried using the +9 starscouge sword. Even the bosses in Elden ring felt weaker than every other FS game (DS2 excluded ) you fight a variation of morrgot 3 different times and they reskin enemies (bosses) a little to much. some of them didnt even feel like they were tested enough one example is the godskin duo , they did not complement each other like other duo bosses have done in previous entries o +S from DS1 is the best example of this , it just felt they they were thrown in their for the sake of being there. Speaking of learning from past bosses they shouldve adapted the yhom bossfight as a spine for the fire giant (minor nitpick but why is a endgame boss called fire giant) yhom was easier to read and hit like a truck die to this, now look at fire giant : high damage +high health and they wonder why people cheese the boss .you may want to believe your build is good however it all falls apart when u realize that bleed weapons are the best in the game .I didnt have any issues with frame rates because i have a ps5 and the game ran very smoothly even on launch day. Despite all these issues i respect FS alot for what they stand for because they still have no difficulty setting to ensure every player has the same experience , they dont do terrible season passes or pay to win skills or armor sets and they also made a new game with fresh gameplay which still feels like a soulsbourne game. In conclusion Elden rings is an amazing game combining zelda (botw) , skyrim and every game of their own to create something truly special and worth experiencing. Is Elden ring a masterpiece like DS1 ? - No , Does Elden ring deserve 10/10 ratings ? - No but Is Elden Ring an amazing game ? - Yes its a solid 8/10 for me die to broken bosses , unusable builds , bad level scaling and the bosses not really living up to past bosses, what FS does good they perfect in elden ring and its only a step forward in the right direction for FS. most of my issues can be fixed with reworks and patches. Maybe my boss opinion will change if they add more DLC because artorius is my favourite FS boss and hes a DLC boss. Elden ring is not perfect but its not a bad/mediocre game either.
I certainly dont think it is bad/mediocre. Def GOTY contender. Thanks for such a good comment!
Elden is overrated
The Demon Souls mechanic of extra punishing your death making you loose health percentage only result in players have to stupidly pump health as an attribute to circumvent this arbitrary decision, since it is by design as you discuss, that you will die a lot. That's the thing I despised the most in that game.
Yeah From does similar stuff often. Even in Elden Ring with the single use Great Runes. From loves buffs which most players will realistically rarely have active. Can be frustrating for sure.
Demon souls mechanic is excellent
While i agree ekden ring wouldve felt more alive with more npcs and even a village or two.
Eldeb ring fixes a major part of modern gaming without those.
Alot of modern ganes have way gtoo many npcs abd they will say the same shit over an over and will give you washed out side quests. Everytime i find an npc in elden ring thet all have unique diolague.
They feel fresh. Sometimes i come across an npc that i can follow a unique side quest for.
Some of the sidequests can give you alternate endings.
Some side quests last the whole game.
Also having villages full of people doesnt collaborate well with the world of elden ring from a story and lore perspective
The game isnt perfecr and while it still feels like souls, it has some huge formula improvements.
Also on the xbox 1 version i never had a problem with it.
Maybe they fixed it by the time i got to the game?
Also the fact they did so much right with the game with only 3 to 4 years of development is insane.
Also the devs who shit on elden rings design are the same people who made cyberpunk and battlefield 2042. Those devs have no right to shit on the games design 😂.
Also most of the things that specific tweet showed then shitting on elden ring were all about the fact that the game doesnt have enough player accesibility which is falls.
The user experience is really good and much better then the games those ubisoft devs have worked on
im glad it was released because it's a unique experience but the open world felt so unnecessary, limgrave was great but it starts to fall apart as it progresses, most of the dungeons use 1 of 2 tilesets (catacomb or mineshaft) and are incredibly boring, which hurts even the rare unique dungeons because they use the repetitive tilesets (shadow enemy dungeon), most of the side bosses feel like enemies with boss HP bars, and even the real bosses suffered for it in quality decline, although some are great like morgott. overall id probably put it only above demons souls
I hope this video goes viral, great channel!
Thanks so much!
I'm playing on Xbox one. I rarely have any frame rate issues. It's not really an issue.
Sucks for the people that had performance issues but I've had none on PC since release. Constant 60fps since release with 1440p at max settings.
they could have added more different types of enemies and bosses. i expected to see something different as i progress in this big world. this is my one nitpick.
Lots of reskined enemies/bosses/animations from prior games also.
This game does have by far the most number of unique enemies in a AAA game. What probably would've helped is to just cut down some of the repeats and reduced the scope of the world. But I guess they expected players to skip a lot of the areas.
I think it’s a good average game,, been done to death now though ,
Along with open worlds
Holy shit dude. Calm down. Unplayable on the xbone? It's hardly noticable in 90% of cases
Dragons Dogma is great, but its a grindy mess jesus christ. I stopped playing it due to how soullessly grindy it becomes, especially especially in the dungeon.
Certainly a bit messy - but some brilliant ahead of its time ideas!
@@CFU cant argue against this
17:47 I played the entire game on Linux on my desktop. There were a few performance issues until Valve improved the shader compilation stuff, and since then I've had a locked 60 FPS for 150 hours. Linux still suffers from the same random crashes Windows does though.
Nice to get some Linux reporting!
There is no way he played Elden Ring and says Marika's name wrong 😐
Sekiro Review is up! Includes a section on the Steam Deck! ruclips.net/video/lRUNIlJAiLA/видео.html
That opening was savage 🤣😂 good work as always. Young squire.
Thanks! Love the support as always!
@@CFU bruh I'm not a bra 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Maybe one day, we will climb bosses like in Dragon's Dogma but with souls combat
I've played PS4 version of Elden Ring on my ps5 for about 250 hours and never had any technical issues at all..always run smooth as silk.
This is a great game, but people give breathe of the wild abit way too much credit for a ton of faults it wears blatantly- which is very typical when it comes to nintendo games. I could build an essay on the flaws of breath of the wild, but i think most forgive it because it's a Zelda game that shocked people on expectations of a ZELDA game but beyond that, it's also a betrayal TO said zelda games whether you loved the game or not.
Zelda ain't perfect. Maybe i'll review it one day.
@@CFU Ehy. Much Respect, regardless of what you do, good vids. XD soz sometimes i go crazy with the praise that goes to BoTW like it's the 2nd coming of christ.