Sekiro did the shadowtree fragments better with putting them behind boss kills as memories. witch rewards you for boss kills instead of exploration, because the problem with hiding them behind exploration is that once you have played trough it once, it becomes extremely tedious to do a second time and makes it feel like homework to get them, while behind boss kills it becomes rewarding because the point of these games are always the bosses no matter how many playtroughs, so they should just continue doing that.
Not really a fan of the Sekiro strategy as it felt more linear, which is kind of the antithesis of what I gather this is supposed to be. It's intended to be explored and thus explicitely awards exploration with power rather than just concentrating on boss fights while also giving reason to explore when you come up against a wall instead of the game just being about bashing your head into it until it caves.
Promised Consort Radahn just feels like Miyazaki’s response to everyone who were calling elden ring the easiest soulslike game by making the most unfair artificially difficult boss ever for the sole purpose of shutting people up and spiting them. and phase one of the fight is great, phase 2 is just a nuclear bomb that you cant see half the time because of miquella’s giant ass hair and all the flashing lights
@@wafflboixyeah, Souls fans complained with OG Radhan was nerfed in a patch. It was everywhere online. People were angry. So they got what they asked for, a buffed Radhan. And now they are unhappy. The discourse around ER is frustrating
@@botondkunos1774 yeah Sekiro's storytelling is great. It's direct but also has lots of bonus conversations that is not handed to the player, also with some conversations that you eavesdrop plus it still has item description to cover some lore.
Sekiro seems to be the project that they should "revitalize" for the next game, they clearly have all the innovations down in their pockets, and had to cash in the elden ring's success with this DLC (and probably more?). I think they know, having drawn a lot from Sekiro themselves already, that the direction for the future is that one.
Just to put this in perspective: Before Radahn, the only other boss (aside from the NPC encounters just before which are kind of a world event to wrap up the questlines), we fought Romina, either that or Messmer himself. How do we go from that to Consort Radahn in terms of difficulty curve ? This boss is exponentially more difficult than any of the immediate previous bosses. Also, to put this in perspective is how this compares to the base game. No way this kind of sudden difficulty spike happens there. After beating him with the aid of ashes on my first run, and soloing him without the aid of ashes, NPC or runes on my second, I can confidently say that this fight was ABSOLUTELY designed with the use of ashes in mind. Finally, I do belive that this is the source of most people's frustration, to have that last boss to be designed in this way, so that most people can't beat him without the aid of ashes unlike the base game. Melania was a build breaker but at least she was optional (a crappy move, but fine). Whereas Radahn is a build breaker WHILST being a final boss.
Why do yall cry over ashes so much? Even the best ash can die in seconds if it acts wrong so it's not an instant win cheat like you act like it is. Use the damn ash and beat the boss, why torture yourself when you know damn well its not designed like that and it's purely ego. Thats like saying I'm getting mad the final boss isn't dying to a pistol when I have a freaking rocket launcher in my pocket.
@@dinolover your arguments is dumb to a baffling extent, if the boss needs external help, then its not designed well, the boss has to account for almost every playstyle, as in ultra weapons, ranged, no summons, etc. You are the only one crying over ashes, methinks you want ashes to be mandatory for every battle lol
To be fair Miyazaki himself admitted to using spirit ashes. I'm not surprised that the dlc bosses were designed with them in mind especially when people wants more difficult content. Personally I also consider solo play without summons or spirits a form of challenge run, you are literally avoiding a big part of your toolkit. Sure the experience feels more rewarding without them but the dlc wasn't designed with solo play in mind which is backed up by all the major bosses having at least 1 npc summon. The base game also has this for most of the major bosses but it felt significantly easier once you get used to it. I thought a majority of the dlc was fine, it's only phase two of the final boss that felt bad to solo. A lot of the visual effects were obstructive, caused performance issues and there is a quick double slash that both phases share that can roll-catch consistently which feels cheap along with the light pillars that punished you for trying to create some space. You were forced to play close and aggressive consistently or have a good shield for all the chip damage OR summon to help spread the boss' attention. I don't think malenia was a build breaker. I've used pure faith, arcane, str, int on her and can usually beat her in a few tries unless I'm using something VERY unoptimal. Slow and fast weapons included. The only thing she punished was shield tanking but you only needed to change your playstyle to avoid healing her too much. Final dlc boss on the other hand has up to 4 damage types and phase 2 wants you to block I think. I haven't mastered them yet unlike Malenia so I can't add much more to the conversation.
@@nadaburner hm an actual response that is thought out and isnt worthless, splendid! jokes aside i do agree with you with how every boss is geared with having a summon with you, which sucks due to how incosistent they really are, now this might be a glitch but for me atleast igon literally did nothing vs bayle, as in he just swapped his weapons for the whole fight, or when summons would just stand back and not do anything during messmer and romina
@@nadaburner I agree with everything you said, it's just that DLC is bad in comparison to the game. It's not bad in and of itself. Base game had is issues and whereas they did went too far in a few places there, in the DLC they went too far in a lot of places. There are bosses now whose entire moveset is straight out of anime, but it's like you said, it's balanced towards the use of ashes, but is it fun? It wasn't as much as I wanted for me, and I wish From wouldn't be so obsessed about designing the DLC bosses to break meta builds that destroyed the base game. I just wish they'd have more confidence in their original design instead of this obsession with how you clear a boss. If people want to one shot bosses, just let them. Who cares?
@@jvmango3057Yep. Perfect world design, combat that adds to the game but isn't the be all and end all. Izalith could've done with more time in the oven, sure. It's just a big open plane with enemies you run past and no good loot. Omg, izalith is the prototype for elden ring...
@@ennayanne Don't be ridiculous...izalith Is a terrible tunnel filled with bad and stupid enemies. Even the worst Elden ring Areas are Better than that
I blame bloodborne and darksouls 2 for starting this anime bullcrap where every boss has crazy anime moves while all your character has is an generic swing attack
One of the main issues with Elden Ring and now Shadow of the Erdtree is that many activities in the open world do not lead to any progression. You ride through a lot of empty space and only rarely find something that is of value for your own build. I agree that at least to some degree this problem has been tackled with the Scadutree Fragments. However, when I am now thinking of playing the DLC again and take into consideration that before I am going to fight any boss I might want to collect all the free blessings pickups, which will take a huge amount of time even with a guide, my motivation to start a new playthrough is drastically lowered. There would have been a very simple way to combine the classical linear Dark Souls levels with the open world: just make a map that is segmented such that each part of it is protected behind a boss who needs to be defeated (like Fire Giant in the base game or like Jori in the DLC, for example). There is no greater reward than having unlocked a new part of the world to be discovered. The best open world games are the ones which contrain the freedom of the player and where one needs to progress through the game (like winning boss fights and the like) in order to be able to go to certain places on the map.
@@skipjacks85 Wrong. An open world with various entries to unknown locations on the map that are protected by bosses (as an example). This is not a linear design, just as neither DS1 (and DS2+DS3, but to a lesser degree) were not linear games. Because if there would be only two entries to some new locations on the map you have already two different options to choose from.
@@heideknight7782 the fact that u think DS III is a non-linear game says it all. I mean c’mon dude. DS III is about as linear as it gets. And if bosses are acting as area gatekeepers, walling off progression, how is it open world? So they should have just made Dark Souls IV instead? That’s your position? In addition, this open world/linear path hybrid would have been terrible for build construction & challenge runs as the overwhelming majority of loot would be partitioned behind bosses you will be in all likelihood, severely underleveled.
@@skipjacks85 DS3 has many side paths which one can choose from which make the progression non linear. As an example, you can choose to fight the Dancer of the Boreal Valley early to be able to enter Lothric Castle. Many speedrunners do this actually, because then you can then get access to titanite chunks to upgrade a weapon to +9. Another sidepath is the Smouldering Lake which is completely optional. But it also has upgrade material (large titanite), so is also worthwhile to explore this area. In general, if the game offers one to choose between different paths to follow, it has a non linear structure. The idea that bosses should protect certain areas in the open world to provide a segmentation and thereby more transparent progression system of the game you can find even implemented in Elden Ring. The Draconic Tree Sentinel needs to be defeated to be able to enter Leyndell capital. Fire Giant needs to be defeated to be able to reach Farum Azula. Both bosses are mandatory to finish the game. But I think that it is still concensus that Elden Ring is an open world game. So having certain areas locked behind a boss or some other obstacle is not a contradiction to an open world design. It is often necessary to implement a meaningful progression path into an open world game. Regarding you last point I would reccomend you to watch the video "Why speedrunners hate Elden Ring" by YoJosherino. You can find it here on RUclips on Josh's channel.
@@UsernameGeri nice try copying my comment and replacing it with "fromsoft fanboy". do you really think i'm blind enough to not see the flaws of fromsofts games?
“instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on youtube, how about just including the actual story in the game” couldn’t have said it better, this is a great video.
I honestly beleive that the open world only makes the game worse, Elden Ring would be better had it been a more linear game. I know the freedom adds a punch but you could go for a more metroidvania style rather than a full open world. You could still have exploration and freedom and lots of optional stuff, just in a tighter package and with (probably) less repetition. Both the base game and the dlc have peaks of absurd quality, just imagine what they could have done if time and resources had not been wasted in populating a big ass open world
Elden Ring is the first game I've seen that is conceptually flawed, rather than just flawed in execution. "Open World Soulslike" should be considered an oxymoron.
The funniest thing about the whole "pushing the stamina-based combat system to its limits" that FromSoft did here in regards to their boss design in this DLC is that they already found a solution in Sekiro, which was in development along side the base game of Elden Ring. Instead of being concerned with stamina, they removed that in favor of parrying/deflecting. Developing an understanding of a boss to the point of deflecting an entire combo string stopped that boss doing an extention of that combo, which removed that RNG aspect entirely while giving you more room to punish them for using that specific set of attacks in the first place. The only thing they really did with that system in Elden Ring is adding the Deflecting Hardtear for your Wonderous Physick Flask in the DLC. If you tap the block button with a shield (or a weapon that's able to block) at the right time before getting hit AT ALL while the deflection flask is active, you can deflect every single instance of damage from fast-hitting attacks such as Malenia's Waterfowl, dragons breathing fire at you, and just about everything DLC Radahn throws at you in phase 2. All for a fraction of the stamina cost and time it takes to roll. And you can punish those moves with an enhanced guard counter which will break their posture faster than normal attacks, opening them up to more critical attacks. Yet FromSoft locks this mechanic behind a mini-boss in the DLC of an open world game where you've spend triple digit hours engaging in a different combat style. Where you've most likely cleared just about everything in the base game in that particular playthrough, meaning you can't use this playstyle to fight bosses in the main game since they'll most likely be dead in your progression into the end-game, where the DLC resides. And once you do unlock it, it only lasts a certain amount of time unless you want to sit a grace after chugging your physick flask every 5 minutes. Everyone who uses this hardtear absolutely loves it to the point they think it should be a baseline mechanic like rolling, as it makes interacting with the bosses of Elden Ring easier. But most players won't even know this playstyle is even an option, let alone engage with it in a meaningful way to the point of understanding and mastering it.
They need to add the sekiro combat system to their future games and improve on it further , get rid of the stamina system completely , it is antiquated at this point imo
They dropped the ball by making this a tear, a talisman slot would've sufficed hell even attach it to a specific shield or group of shield within the DLC. Make it an ash of war buff dude there were SO MANY ways they could've implemented this. And this is coming from someone that has been using it non stop.
@@AkiRa22084it only trivializes the game because ER was not made with it in mind, even the dlc bosses have this issue Every single hard ER boss would be easier than genechiro in sekiro
I really appreciate your take the dlc left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled for many of the reasons you’ve stated while many people brush off my frustrations claiming to be satisfied with nothing but pretty visuals or accusing me of being one of those hard=bad people
Yup. They dismiss you with their tried and true "mad cuz bad. Git gud" or just smash their faces against the keyboard hoping whatever gibberish comes out is enough to shut you up and convince you Miyazaki does not make any mistakes. It's always a breath of fresh air when you talk to people who remember these are just video games made by fallible humans and not god himself creating the ultimate masterpiece with no flaws
I think beyond the stagnant gameplay and the open world issues, the setting of ER really adds to the stagnant feeling. I could never really get into it, because to me it seemed like a kitchen sink setting, like a greatest hits mix where they threw in every previous concept from their games without a thematic reason, making it seem watered down and just being there for no real reason. Case in point, the frenzied flame stuff. In bloodborne the whole story and world is built around the concept of madness and so the game's setting stands out and the concept is given depth. In contrast in ER it's just one of many curses like undeath and isn't given much thought. Same with the existence of lovecraftian gods like those from bloodborne don't feel impactful because they share the world with traditional fantasy gods and other entities that you stumble upon, and so are not as threatening nor thematic to the world and so lose their intrigue, awe and depth. This was cemented for me in the DLC when you meet the Winter lantern reskins in the Abyssal woods, which had zero impact since I've seen it before and it has none of the thematic weight behind them. Doesn't help that rune loss is completely irrelevant at that point and they're in an open area so you can just run around them. All of this can also be applied to the concept of undeath and hollowing that is so strong in Dark souls and informs the entire game and mechanics, but are again just watered down and one of many concepts in the lands between. I would argue that in dark souls and bloodborne you will feel a resonance when experiencing the story even if you don't know the story in depth, because it's thematically resonant despite the plot being obtuse. In ER there were so many moments where I just felt like characters were speaking (a lot more than in previous entries) but not saying anything and you couldn't intuit wtf was going on, like the Margit encounters. His design with horns and a monster-tail who throws holy magic against you, which is aeshetically incoherent at a glance and you need lore to have it make sense. In dark souls this guy would have been undead but wear priest robes and be called "abbott" or something, so when he throws holy magic at you you understand why and it feels coherent. Then as insult to injury when you've finally conquered the capital, do you get a new boss? No, here's that guy again, which you can't intuit why and have to learn lore to appreciate. And it feels off. In Sekiro they play with the same themes of immortality and breaking cycles as they always do, but they stick to that one concept and look, and when they add more spoken dialogue they tie it with a more explicit story, with hidden lore as a supplement to this. It makes it all feel coherent and fresh despite sharing similar themes from previous entries. It also makes a world that is primarily filled with living people feel more believable. In contrast, ERs world just feels a bit off where it's not nearly as fallen as in dark souls where everyone was undead, and yet normal people don't speak and just act as if they were, unlike in Sekiro where they all emote and speak. For this reason, going into a military camp just feels odd in ER, it's like they just hang around acting like undead without much reason, same reason why I wasn't as wowed by the capital as everyone else seems to be, because it just feels dead in a way they're not really going for. And I believe this all stems from having too many concepts and themes in the game, while also refusing to evolve the narrative style to fit the story they want.
@@gnanay8555yes, in linear game you can get away with not having too many friendly NPCs or normal cities. But in open-world game like Elden Ring? No. If you think a bit, nothing in this world makes any sense just because it's built like their previous games.
I feel you one the world feeling ded part often I would think about lore explanations for all these random factions to be here. Even more wierd, when separate factions inherit the same areas. The hands in Ryan lucaria and the mountaintop are friendly with no real explanation why. Why do the soldier not axe them off the land, they do it to me. Why dint the rabid dogs eat them, is cursed hand worse than tarnished aas? Diabolical
Yea you walk into leyndell and it's just empty asf. All the Golden knights are hiding in dark corners around the city instead of patrolling the streets
Been saying it since I beat the game the first time, if the legacy dungeons are the best parts of the game then what is the point of the open world (other than to provide filler content in order to justify the size of the open world).
I dont get the hate for the openworld in the DLC. I get the point abt repetitive enemies but aside from that was the base game's openworld that much better in comparison? The most memorable moments for me in base game was still the legacy dungeons. Or is it because it's the expansion and ppl expected a more robust open world because of the time they had to work on it?
Fromsoft da best!11 They can never make any errors, their open world is the best!1 Seriously though, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 was better as an open world for me because I could hunt animals for upgrades or plants for small boosts. 90% of the times I can either get a bell bearing, get items from normal exploration in dungeons or just DON'T need boosts at all. The other 10% of the time I just happen to be spamming the collect button while on torrent. A VERY wasteful opportunity. The crafting system is meh, like the only thing I used it for was to feed torrent and the way I gathered the materials to feed him was by riding him lol
Personally, I just think it's pretty and nice and adds a relaxing break in tension between the legacy dungeons. My problem with the Dark Souls games was that the oppressive atmosphere was unrelenting. I understand that was the artistic vision, but it made it a real mental slog to play at times. It was hard to look forward to finishing a dungeon when you'd be rewarded with more of the same. The openness between dungeons adds a nice, less dense and less tense section to play before hopping back into a catacomb or dungeon.
I‘m honestly not a fan of the Scadutree-fragments past the first playthrough. They just become another thing you have to ride through the game and gather before you can tackle the real meat of the game. On my first playthrough of the dlc it was a cool reward for the exploration, but now that I‘m trying a new character it feels a little bit tedious. But maybe this is only because of the open world, because I didn‘t mind the prayer beads in Sekiro. Possibly also, because you get many of them as a reward for overcoming a miniboss and not mindlessly riding from point A to point B. Kinda related to the topic, I really liked your idea of replacing the individual weapon upgrades with ones that are active for all weapons. This would make it really easy to just try out a new weapon that you just received, without investing any recources. And I mean from a „realism“-standpoint does weapon upgrading even make much sense? (I’m not a weapon-smith, so I don’t know for sure) Maybe weapon upgrades should just be a relic of the past like weapon durability.
As someone who watched a lot of challenge runs of Elden Ring, something I always noted is that they always seem to spend the first few hours zipping around three-quarters of the map to snap up all the golden seeds and sacred tears. In the SOTE runs I've seen, the same thing happens with the blessings. It's even worse if it's a video where the streamer put a timer on so you can absolutely tell that he spent the first four hours of his run just revealing the map and collecting fragments without fighting a single boss. This might be controversial, but Elden Ring's open world should have been much more segmented. Godrick should need to be beaten to access Liurnia. Throw down a fort to bar entrance to Caelid instead of just having Anastasia and a low wall you can jump over. Make the Dectus Medallion something looted from Raya Lucaria or remove it entirely so that you're forced to go through Makar to reach Altus. Your power being tied to progression was something I always found neat in previous titles, and it also prevented the scenario I've seen occur in Elden Ring where the start of most playthroughs just ends up being several hours of running all across the map to collect upgrade items.
Schadu tree fragments really aren't as essential on subsequent playthroughs, when a player should be more adapt at fighting the bosses with their own skill. Doubly so because in base NG difficulty, it's entirely possible to get by without needing to find all of them, and because the blessings carry over into NG+ while all fragments respawn, it's quite simple for a player just finish reaching the max upgrade there.
@@thatlonzoguydon’t you upgrade weapons with materials from hunts though in Monster Hunter? That’s pretty much the same as smithing stones. I’d argue that it’s more annoying as you have to hunt particular monsters multiple times to get certain parts in specific ways to upgrade the weapons.
Dawg I thought I was the only one who called that dude out for being a cut clear shill, even though he didn’t start out that way I know but it’s clear as day now. Fromsoft could create a boss that you only have a millisecond to defeat or it’s instant death & VV will make 100 cringey lore videos & die on the hill defending why that’s not an obnoxious boss design.
@@timekeeper2538how does that make their formula any less outdated? That line of thinking with the majority rule is filled with fallacies and makes you a complacent sheep.
It’s weird, I simultaneously don’t disagree with a lot of your criticisms but I still enjoyed the DLC regardless. I will say, however, that I do heavily agree that if Fromsoft doesn’t change their approach next time, I won’t be interested in playing. I beat Consort Radahn with no summoning, and I found a lot of his moves just absolutely agonizing and actively broke the flow of combat that I enjoy from a lot of the other bosses like Radagon or even Melania. I love the game, but I think it could mark the end of my time with Soulsbourne if they continue in this direction.
@@timekeeper2538 Because some people actually like to play the game and not have it play itself. Too hard is more fun than brain dead easy because at least you have to think while playing
@@loganberkheimer1857 Ok and not one summon ash can be described as making ANYTHING in the game "brain dead easy", it's literally the intended difficulty bro.
@timekeeper2538 How is a boss ignoring you for 50% of the fight while your own damage effectively doubled not brain dead easy? You literally attack something that isn't looking at you 😂
I react easily to all bosses in this DLC. You know whom doesn't react properly? my character:) for this DLC to be alright boss wise, they needed to drastically reduce the recovery time of pretty much all weapons
"Instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on RUclips, how about just including the story in the fucking game". Truer words were never spoken.
Hell, the problem isn't that the lore isn't there, it is in item descriptions, the problem is that it's ONLY in item descriptions. More of the information about stuff in item descriptions should be just out in the world somewhere. Like in location design or dialogue. Like Jesus, just put the lore somewhere else.
11 minutes in... Someone finally says it. Yes. FromSoft could indeed have mystery and discovery... AND just have an explicitly told story in the game. These things can exist... Many other games do this. FromSoft games are 93% lore and environmental storytelling and it gets tiresome.
I hate how the NPC quest structure is set up in Elden ring, and the DLC did it so much worse. I think you make a good point, when everything's so cryptic to need a video essay explaining things to the player, it's just not an engaging story. I think Lies of P did story a lot better since I never felt lost or wondering "Why I'm out here doing this nonsense in the first place". And Lies of P also had some pretty engaging points as to why the world was as morbid as it was, without being cryptic. What I dont like, is trying to do an NPC quest, only to mash through a bunch of cryptic dialogue that tells me nothing about what they're doing most the time, and needing to "refresh" the game to progress it, just to have them disappear someplace random in the world. Dark Souls 1 can kind of get away with that since it's a more linear experience, but Elden Ring is open world. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Oh and the DLC actually punishes you for exploring it, since if you reach a certain threshold, something big happens, and a bunch of quests will randomly progress without your knowledge. There's good parts in Elden Ring that does open world arguably better than most sandbox games, but it's quest structure is so anti-open world. Plus, DLC rewards just... Suck. I hate going into a new place only to find mostly tier 1-3 upgrade materials when my gear is probably max tier at this point. I hate that they introduce entire new schools of magic that have only 1-2 spells in them instead of building onto what already exists. (My annoyance of this being they have types of magic in base game that only have about 2-3 spells in them. There's like 20 glintstone sorceries, but only 2 "briar" sorceries. And yet they also have a staff and some unique gear that buffs the already mediocre "Briar" school of sorceries.) I hate that they include entire new weapon classes but only have an entire 1-3 weapons in them (There's a throwing knife weapon you can find, which is it's own weapon class, and there's ONLY 1 throwing knife weapon. Why..?). Why waste time making entire new weapon subclasses but only making 1-3 weapons for each type?
13:47 So you felt stressed about losing runes, but also runes are pointless. Ok? Firstly runes represent time so they're never entirely pointless, unless you don't value your time. Second if you want to retrieve runes from a dangerous place, use a twig. Third, dumping runes is a non-issue because there's always something to be gained in doing so. You also complained about upgrading weapons, well how about burning those runes on upgrades and materials? The only really limiting factor for upgrading weapons and ashes later in the game is the final level, there is absolutely nothing wrong with upgrading something to 9 or 24 to try it out, or even beating up low lvl enemies.
"Firstly runes represent time so they're never entirely pointless" Bruv... Mogh's Palace slope IF you value your time... Runes are useless. Especially if you look at them from PVP perspective or Build crafting perspective. You need a limited amount of them to get to a desired level and weapon upgrades. After that they might as well not be in the game. They just gate you from having a desired build and after that they are objectively an afterthorught.
@@ky58065 I... What even... Are you sane? Exploit in a context of any IT or computer thing is: a) a loophole/weakness/vulnerability in soft This is definition copy paste, go check it. Moghwyn palace slope is an IN GAME PLACE. A place on the world map. With normal enemies. With legal and not bugged or glitched spawns. It has never been patched or changed. Killing the mobs on the slope is literally a legit method of getting souls/runes. It is NOT an exploit you dingus. Literally by definition it is not. Your reply is a waste of time. You don't even have a point to make. You just wanted to be a contrarian. You go touch some grass now, I'm gonna block you.
@@ky58065 Not really, because oh-so-mighty Fromsoft left it in and never once considered "hey, this area with easily farm-amble enemies can be accessed as early as Liurnia." You also have the Gatefront soldiers and the Vulgar Militia outside the Beast Sanctum.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj No I was talking about shooting the bird next to the grace which causes him to fall off cliff. can get you like 100k runes in a minute, way faster than killing the enemies
When i finished the DLC it left me absolutely baffled. Yes, the lore has to have blank spots but why in hell would you not integrate any of the open ends the fans obviously want to investigate so badly. A super-hard boss or an almost empty level would cause so much less backlash if we would actually fight someone related to the GEQ or Godwyn or anything or actually investigate an ancient battlefield mentioned in the OG lore or some ancient source of power. Why add new things noone really cares about if you have a quiver full of open ends that would make the DLC be perceived so much more positively? Man, i really respect Miyazaki but goddamn why throw potential away like this? The fact that this DLC leaves a bitter taste is so unnecessary.
My thoughts entirely brother. I honesty think Elden ring lore simply dosent actually have answers. The team just likes to add detail, but can’t decide how things really happened. Take st Trina. According to the fan video she might have been miquellas alter ego, girlfriend, or twin. And they may have grown from a plant , and she may have been copying his recreation of radhan , and they may have wanted to merge as silver and gold. Ultimately we have no real clarification who or what she is and how she relates to the story. I believe From never bothered deciding
He didn't throw it away, his writers simply had no possible way to cleanly take care of loose threads. The game doesn't have an actual story other than following the path of a seemingly robotic in nature Tarnished character that just goes and destroys everything in his path seemingly because he simply feels like. For things to really get cleaned up, there would have to be logical coherence, but that doesn't exist since the game doesn't explain the baseline laws of nature in the reality this game takes place. Basic questions like what a tarnished even is, or how the game treats the Law of Identity is extremely problematic. The only type of storytelling of this sort that exists, is rooted in ancient religious story-telling, where you get bits and pieces of certain events/groups of people - but everything is told from what can also be interpreted as heavily metaphoric (due to the extremely ambiguous and unfulfilling manner). Stories in holy texts usually talk about people, yet none of them behave like any rational or sane human would. Likewise occurs in this game, everything goes on and functions like some non-sentient element in nature (like fire that burns, or water that flows), and that's it. There's no hard-set/definitive/correct interpretation of anything (just like holy texts), and is why you can't disprove anyone's theory for the most part. Also, Miyazaki in an interview said he doesn't want to make the mistake in his prior entries where he simply locks-away the possibility of returning to a genre. I think the story of this game (from the very down to earth GR Martin's foundation groundwork with normal humans in a fantastical setting - to the time skip warp of humans into supernatural beings that Miyazaki's writing team was tasked to do), is just too complex for them to neatly tie up and not be some eye-rollingly bad trash. So with all that, they just abandoned it rather than ruining it potentially. The only problem is, they left wayyyy to much up to interpretation (even the third-person narration is unreliable when you read item descriptions where it says things like "it has been said" or "people believe". Showing that not even the writers have decided what's going to be true in the game. Also wish the community as a collective would stop targeting Miyazaki as if he's writing anything. As a director he doesn't really do anything other than give final say on large progress from each team. It's not like he's going in there and juggling frame-data, or damage values (because if he was, he's one of the worst balance leads basically in modern gaming with 50%+ of items being borderline useless and redundant).
@@lynxyu11 I disagree! They are similar in that they hugely invite fan theorizing . But Elden ring seems not to have any conclusive way to discern what realy happened in any given lore event. Eden ring also does not ever actually set up a mystery that is meant to be solved or that it eventually reveals itself. Asoiaf sets up many mysteries and then it gives us answers eventually , and asoiaf seems to really have a concrete understanding of what actually happened . Eg the knight of the laughing tree
also you can run and jump away from his "gravity grab" attack if you get hit by the first part. that was the most frustrating attack for me before realizing that
Excellent video. I too really hope From will make something completely new next time. Or- if it's still the same formula, I hope they will slow the enemies and bosses way way down. They can't simply make everything faster for ever... I'm sure they can challenge us in more ways than by just hitting the dodge button at the right time.
Most memorable dlc moment was the soldiers of Messmer fighting a dragon, i wish there was more NPCs wars like this. And fighting leda with Ansbach and thiollier, epic Midra and Bayle also very fun with a lot of build up before the fight
Apologies for the wall of text: I try and convince myself that I enjoy the exploration but, in reality, my headspace when I'm playing ER as a souls vet is thus: "Okay here I am in this field, where to go next? Well okay off to the right is a forest and off to the left is a town/village/ruin. Better save left for last because I know instinctually that's where FromSoft actually tried!" I think there was maybe one single armor set in the entire dlc just out in the over world somewhere. All the good rewards are inside structures. Now, also as a souls vet, I can say confidently that besides Commander Gaius, every boss in this dlc took me less than 20 attempts. Some like Messmer and Rellana took sub 10. Meanwhile, I've thrown myself at Radahn 50+ times and haven't even seen his health go down into his boss name plate lol. FromSoft needs to change. They have most assuredly stagnated. Now, the only novel thing they can do is crank a final or hidden boss difficulty up to 12/10 for the tryhards and streamers. I've basically been playing the same FromSoft game for almost two decades. And the worst part, is that they absolutely destroyed all the ER lore that they had setup in the base game. I personally believe Radahn is a lazy retcon because it was so much easier to animate his model and attacks because they already existed in the base game. I thoroughly believe we were supposed to get Godwyn or Marika or just someone more important at the end of Shadow. So, while I agree prime Radahn is certainly a choice they could've made, I will never see it more than a lazy rewrite. Add onto this the whole "shaman village x Hornsent phenomenon and you have the beginning of a compelling story. But oops, nobody ever explains WHY the Hornsent committed genocide against Marika's people. In Dark Souls 1, Gwyn made a decision about his empire and how it would continue. In Dark Souls 2, the human king was honey-potted into attacking the giants, in Dark Souls 3, the Twins wanted the world to errode. In Sekiro, it's a revenge story. In Elden Ring SOTE, they thought they had written an inciting incident. What they actually wrote was nonsense. Not to mention the entire lore basically just breaks down to "aliens invade, upset blonde woman agrees to their weird space powers to fight her enemies, hijinks ensue." Nobody bothers to explain why the Hornsent did what they did. And thus the entire lore of Elden Ring has no proper beginning, and in essence, is completely irrelevant. Which I think is the worst lore offering we've ever received from Miyazaki. One RUclips comment I read summarized it all: "It's like the SOTE team never played base Elden Ring and had an AI summarize the cliff notes for them." There's some good fun to be had in SOTE for sure but, by itself, it does not warrant a replay. And it destroyed all its lore and replaced it with the wacky hair dude from history channel saying "ALIENS" over and over. Which is just unforgivable.
I really don't see any reason to make Radahn Miquella's consort beyond fanservice. Lorewise, Godwyn or even fucking Malenia make more sense than Radahn
@@lordepsilon7023 my guess is that it was the more justifiable pick , being that radahn was always said to be a very kind person and overall wholesome compared to the rest of his sibling demigods. Which we never got to see because duh he is basically a zombie when when fight him.
That's how I feel in Elden Ring's open world in general, not just the DLC. It's just a big space of...nothing. It's all enemies and loot. There is no "world", no people, no community, nothing to make it a world and not just a video game setting. Don't tell me exploration is why you should play the Open World, I explore in all kinds of games, metroidvanias and the like. But ER? The entire open world just seems pointless.
It's very funny to see a lot of the complaints that people bashed on when the game first came out now be in the forefront when numbers and difficulty are cranked up even higher. The humbling of the "git gud" crowd is mildly satisfying lol. Regardless, I agree with a lot of the points in this video. I really appreciate the concise and focused criticism of the open world, which I've also had similar thoughts on since week 1 of vanilla Elden Ring. Torrent needing to have i-frames coming back into the discussion was lovely to hear as well, along with mentions of the story and many other things. I've said more here than I usually do in a comment, but per your point of the video, this series is in dire need of retirement or a major shift. Quite frankly, I just want someone to make another genre defining game like Dark Souls was in its heyday. It's time for something new. This video was really a treat, thanks c:
eh, this is literally what people used to say about any harder and more complicated souls boss... yeah sure if you have to heal you might miss the window to deal damage - that's how it always worked. Besides, Radahn attacks so quickly and so often you'll get your next window in 5 secs tops.
@@GreatAdos No not really at all. Compare a boss people thought was hard like Lady Maria to any of these guys and you see that while you do less damage (they have more hp) you also get more opportunities to hit them back. Same with Kos. Same with Ludwig.
What I really liked about Dark Souls 1 was that the combat felt slow and methodical... maybe even strategic! Every FromSoftware game I have played since has felt manic and "spazzy", for lack of a better term. The difficulty in DS1 was so satisfying because the slow pace allowed me to actually focus more on my attack strategy and play smartly. Now, in games like DS3 and Elden Ring I feel like each boss fight is a test of my twitch reflexes and rote memorization of relentless attack patterns. TBH I lost interest trying to explore the Haligtree and other late game areas in Elden Ring, and I didn't even bother getting the DLC because it looks like more of the same absurd twitchy difficulty. The magic is long gone for me :(
Ds3 boss fight is 10 000 time better . I played Ds3 after my Elden Ring playthought .The delay attack feel smoother more natural the boss are fast but your character is fast too i got more than 0.5 second to heal . Almost every fight in ds3 im out of flask at the end the fight felt challenging but more fair and fun
I think my biggest issue with Elden Ring as a whole was the open world. There's so much to explore and collect, but most of the time these things are neither enjoyable nor rewarding, especially on consecutive playthroughs. But I like that they improved upon that, i.e. less caves and the world itself is more interesting to explore, seeing as it's on multiple layers and whatnot. But both in the main game as in the DLC, the big closed-off areas like the shadow keep, Farum Azula or Miquella's Haligtree are the most interesting and enjoyable. You really feel like you can actually interact with the environment, find shortcuts or some secret areas and are actually rewarded for actively looking around and get familiar with the place. I hope Fromsoft will take their next project away from the open world again or find a way to make the vast areas more enjoyable
While i do not disagree with everything said in this Video I have to say your take on the Bosses like Radahn is somewhat flawed since all you do is spam Jump attacks and then complain about getting punished. Radahn has quite a lot of punish windows in his longer combos and after his attacks that you just never utilized because you only do one attack.
Their formula isn’t stale, it’s just that the open world design doesn’t suit their traditional level design and combat. All the work went into legacy dungeons
@@JacksonL1238 The combat is getting stale too. What the hell were they thinking with some of these bosses? Like was said in the video, you basically dodge 10 attacks in a row, sometimes without a tell to know if they'll extend a combo or not, only to get a very small opening to EITHER heal OR get a single attack in before they start another combo. It has already been pushed past the point where it's fun and challenging to actually become tedious. The combat needs a revamp. What makes me hopeful about this is that they DID introduce some very nice mechanics in Bloodborne and Sekiro that made combat more streamlined and flowing, but for some reason those things either didn't make into ER or were only partly introduced. I guess it has to do mostly with the build variety. But they at least attempted some new things here such as LGS' flowing movesets (milady) and the deflect tear, which worked pretty well imo and should be made a permanent standard.
@Homiloko2 I think the new talismans and crystal tears that give I-Frames to backsteps and improve spotaneous guards and counter attacks are FromSoftware testing new combat mechanics for the future. But, if you look at a game like Nioh 2, the combat is always gonna feel a little stagnant in comparison. They need to add more ways for the player to create custom combos and cancel recovery animations in a skillful way to create more fluidity.
You're absolutely correct. Remember when you'd die to a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne and be super excited to get back to the fog gate with what you just learned and test your wits against them again? Well almost every time I died to a boss in Shadow of the Erdtree I just felt cheated because FromSoft clearly designed them to be relentlessly punishing. There are no clever tricks to defeating these bosses. There's only cheese builds, summoning or robotically executing dozens of perfectly timed dodges and poking them to death.
Ya, like I remember how I was so exited to fight bosses like living failures, bed of chaos, amygdala, take off the rose tinted glasses, bosses in base game fromsoft didn’t get real good until Ds3
@@tbrown5836Living Failures isn’t that bad, Amygdala is fine (why do people hate this boss?), and Bed of Chaos is easy, the DLC bosses aren’t easy, they’re just grueling, well kinda a lie, most of the bosses are decent.
I think you would REALLY enjoy Armored Core VI, as it's probably one of the more distinct games From has made after Dark Souls fame (Alongside Sekiro and Deracine). Ignore any prejudices and preconceptions you might might see about mechas (not to mention those would be kinda dumb, as mecha is just sci-fi), ACVI tackles many of the issues you see in the Souls games combat, and probably had FS try to implement AC bosses onto the Souls format (with inconsistent results) in order to compensate for the simplistic core combat.
Yeah ac6 is pretty damn good. It does exactly what it needed to do, gives the og fans what they want while also improving the mechanics in every way. It won't appeal to most people, but it sold well enough that hopefully we'll see another entry within the decade.
@@Loathsome_Lynx Not quite. Mechanically it's a heavily simplified version of what they have done before. It's a good game, but it is hardly the best entry in the franchise (aesthetics aside). Linear evolution doesn't really work with FROM games, as they constantly change things around, even among their same franchises.
this happens every single time a new fromsoft game comes out, people just say the same critiques and act like it’s exclusive to the most recent release as if it hasn’t been an issue forever. getting kinda tiring ngl
Fair to say that the souls formula has peaked with elden ring. They should definitely try to build upon the mechanics of sekiro for future installments. Which will allow the player the tools needed to combat the ever more complex and over the top bosses in a more fun and engaging way instead of just waiting to press L2 or R1 between each 15 hit combo
@@user-vh7ks8px3s that and expand movesets for weapons. look at the radahns new swords, it shouldve had both ashes of war, not one or the other with two different weapons that are otherwise identical.
@@brynntall6811 he definitely seems like a great fight and i love their concept of a boss fight attacking to the rhythm of the music. my only issues with the boss fight is that lightning weather cycle does get obnoxious at times, and, if you play on the ps4 version like i do, the fps will work against your favor, making his second phase much worse to deal with.
They feel like they have to keep making larger spectacles of each boss, and the AoE and nuke moves are more annoying and infuriating than strategic and fun. The boss formula peaked in early to mid game ER or DS3 even
10:36 Lmfaooo this line killed me it's so accurate. The cutscene where Godrick chops his arm off, and then how the camera pans to the side as he begins spouting nonsense towards the dragon head legitimately had my side in shambles, and they just keep doing the exact same thing over and over
Morgott scene in Leyndell struck me particularly for this reason. Nothing that he said makes any sense. "What is thy business with these thrones" Tf you're saying dude? I don't give a f about these thrones and you know that since we fought before. Then he mentions all of the demigods as if player character didn't learn about them already. Does he spends his days walking around this arena and sulking about his siblings? It seems so, because the capital is in complete ruin and a good king should do something about. But nah, sulking it is.
@@skinnytimmy1The turtle pope doesn't tell you radagon is marika. You have to do a convoluted quest line involving gold mask and the law of regression
I'm not sure what you're talking about? There's nothing convoluted or nonsensical about what he's saying, he just goes "truest of dragons, lend me thy strength" a subtle nod to the fact he's putting it's head on his arm and using it as a flamethrower, and then he goes "forefathers one and all, bear witness!" cause he thinks he's fucking cool and that his ancestors would look fondly on him, really not that deep or hard to parse maybe you're just retarded?
26:40 Not to defend this train wreck of a boss, but if you get hit by the first gravity attack, immediately running back and jumping as the attack closes in allows you to “dodge” the follow up
And this is why Radahn is just following the same cycle as all dlc bosses that are "unfairly hard." No one knows how anything works, but assumes their lack of skill is a fault of the "trainwreck boss design."
@jackreacher7495 This right here needs to be pointed out more often. This happens for every single fromsoft release in the exact same way every time. Before this expansion, the base game got mixed reviews on steam shortly after the release, for the same reasons, and eventually rose to above 90%. Ringed city dlc released and was criticized in much the same way as this dlc was when it released. Gael was a controversial boss when the dlc came out contrasting to the extremely high praise he gets now. Even back to dark souls 1, a bunch of the mechanics and combat of ds1 were way more criticized when it released, before everyone learned about how the game works. It seems to me, as time goes on this dlc will be getting more and more vocal praise, in the same cycle that every fromsoft game goes through.
Interesting take on your criticism and well exposed. I see this is not a game you enjoyed which is fine. Fun and art is subjective after all. I do disagree with most of your points though which is fine as well.
Elden ring did way better in numbers compare to Bloodborne and Sony expectation to bloodborne didnt match it was a fail compare to other exclusive ps games
@@wiliex0687 maybe instead of making another souls game they try something else is what I’m saying they typically do good and plus FS meat riders will by it anyway
Sekiro/Bloodborne mechanics in a more "plasingly" themed game would work well IMO, financially too. Also, they can ride this Success wave to popularize the sekiroborne style more.
@@jonathanprivitera9394 both Bloodborne and sekiro sales can’t match Elden Ring Fromsoft doesn’t own the IP of all their games but Bandai will let a Elden ring 2
A lot of fair criticism here! Although I would like to suggest perhaps not emphasizing your points on weather it's "fun" or not. Fun is a nebulous concept that can easily be picked apart. Despite understanding how frustrating the final boss is. I found Promised Consort Radahn to be an incredible boss fight. And yet, my positive outlook on this boss is circumstantial evidence at best. Is Elden Ring's combat design holding back the greater potential in boss fights? Yes, I agree that we must move on from this. (Weather Fromsoftware will do something about it or not remains to be seen). Since the base game I've always wished Elden Ring had Sekiro like combat. The parry system is objectively better.
People always bring up the cost of upgrades, but... Is it really that bad? At this point in the game I had all the bell bearings, since most of them are pretty easy to find if you've beaten the game. All you really need is runes (again a pretty trivial cost at this point) and the max level smithing stone, which isn't actually all that necessary, especially if you just want to test a new weapon. That last level is only gonna boost your damage by a little bit, so you can mess around with it for an hour or two before you commit. The DLC also gave us a lot of the ancient dragon stones. I think most of your points are totally valid but this one always confuses me, at least when talking specifically about the DLC which needs to be tackled pretty far into the game.
Even without all the bell bearings, the DLC provided plenty of resources to upgrade weapons. I don’t have the later bell bearings and used the resources provided to me by exploring and was able to upgrade my weapons
So glad some people are able to look at this game clearly. It drives me mad how much of an echo chamber the souls community can be and how they struggle to see how bad a lot do this dlc was
The internet creates echo chambers. And people flock to them to hear their own opinions and bias spit back at them and don't like being challenged. Not just video games unfortunately. I have enjoyed the DLC and think it's great but it definitely has it's flaws.
You would probably not be so mad about things like this if you were more understanding of the subjectivity of art. You speak as though you've discovered a truth that the DLC is bad, not that you've developed an opinion that the DLC is bad, which is what has actually happened. No one is blind to some gospel you've uncovered, they just engaged with the same piece of media that you did and felt differently about it. There doesn't need to be some battle on the internet to win over the opinions of those people, it worked for them and not for you, discuss the difference to your hearts content but at least understand that it's all subjective. You're not any more correct if you get someone to agree with you than you were before.
I could articulate my thoughts thoroughly in a comment but tbh the DLC already ran my patience dry so I'll just say "FAX, BRUDDER, SPIT UR SHIT" Pleasant video, can't think of much i disagree with so i might be biased on it but still.
27:18 This is so silly and also describes another big problem I have with elden ring. Rolling does not make any sense, logically, to avoid Radahns Gravity Pull, does it? I mean it pulls everything into it like its nothing but you suddenly rolling would change that? Quite the opposite: Rolling (and therefore losing touch with the ground) would make you be pulled in even easier. The underlying problem here is, as in other areas, that it is (to my taste) way too "gameified". It does not make sense, its just so that the gamer has something to interact with. Its the same as the worldbuilding you mentioned, that does not evoke the feeling of an actual once inhabitated place, its just a game level. Or the very long windup of boss attacks are not "realistic" at all and just designed to counter a game mechanic and tricking the player. It does not feel right to just roll through an apocalyptic universe destroying aoe amageddon with s. It does not make sense do my brain and it feels fake. Or these stupid enemies who linger in the air for too long e.g. Romania but also dancing lion or even these stone cats in the catacombs from the base games (watchdogs, thats what they are called, they are the worst). They are just hovering in the air which clearly counteracts the physics layed out in this game (why else would bats and birds and gargoyls have wings if gravity was not an issue?) Its again just gameified further amplifying your point that the standard formular has kind of played its cards. Dont get me started on these god damn Rolls of bosses. They also dont make sense at all. Look at Roamia when she rolls at you, half of her Model clips through the ground, it does not make sense. Same with Godskin Noble. How does he even move while rolling? And if he is actually a snake why does he have feet? Or Godrik - Even he rolls around. It is completly out of the logic of physics (even within this game) and is just there to give the player something to deal with. And all this stuff you dont "dodge" by moving out of the way (while s assist you to make things less tedious) but rather you "phase" through everything with iframs. Thats also not the way I remember previous souls games. If the player has phase ability, give him one but dont pretend he is dodign with a roll. It is so unplausible to doge for example Radahns gravity pull by rolling that it feels just silly doing it. Just get rid of: - Crazy AOE Attacks the player cant logically dodge - Long artificial wind ups just to trick the player - Hovering enemies in the air breaking immersion even further - Stupid rolls of enemies clearly not designed to be a hedgehog Those things are all stupid in my opinion and add nothing of value to the table. Well, this turned to be more of a rant than I expected. Anyway, thank you for your video you nailed some stuff. Best regards :)
I have the same issue as you with the whole "roll through explosions" travesty, and I could only counteract it by reducing my rolls to a minimum and adopting other strategies to neutralise certain attacks: backsteps, deflections, jumps, sorceries such as Cherishing Fingers, weapon arts that feature an invincible dash - a great instance of this are the Death Knights' axes and longhaft axe, whose Blinkbolt skill turns your character's body into a bolt - or a jumping dash - such as Milady's Wing Stance, or Aspects of the Crucible: Wings. This way, combat feels way less gamey and more immersive. But yeah FromSoftware has to overhaul its defensive and evasive gameplay. As it is now, it often doesn't feel like you are dodging attacks, but rather timing your i-frames through attacks. Sekiro worked wonderfully with its deflections, jumps and mikiri counters: you always felt like you were neutralising attacks in a credible way. Maybe a step in the right direction would be to make jumps and ducks as integral as the quickstep/roll: just as in Sekiro, one would need to learn a specific response to a specific type of attack, instead of having the roll as a passepartout. They wouldn't necessarily have to get rid of i-frames altogether, but they could still elegantly "conceal" their presence to the player this way.
1:05 "A lot less than 50% of the encounters will be new to the player." WHAT!? Did you play this DLC at all? I did a count and even by the most conservative of measures, it's WELL over 50% for new content to this DLC. This just isn't remotely true. Edit: The note about the NPCs and story is surprising as well. The NPC quests in the DLC were so much more straightforward and I found myself completing these easily on my own and learning a ton about the story this time around.
@@INeedBloodborne2Strawman. Jagged Peak is not over 50% of the DLC. Yeah, there’s repeated content. It’s just not nearly as much he’s making it out to be.
Same. This video immediately starts with spreading misinformation and supposedly high price tag even though 40 dollar price is even low for the abundance of new content in the expansion.
Rellana can in fact use Twin/Double Moon spell more than once. I just fought her yesterday and I think the trigger is that once she's on 25% of health left, she will do the spell but if you linger on the fight long enough, she can do the spell again which what happened to me. Thankfully the move is really well telegraphed and she can't spam it over and over like Malenia with Waterfowl. The problem (and this goes for most bosses in Elden Ring base game and DLC) is that those super attacks rarely reward you with punish window. So you succesfully dodge super attack that can beat you but you're not rewarded with a window to do. Even if you get a window to punish, the best you can do is just 1 attack. I beat Rellana with dagger and shield parry but even with a dagger, you can only attack 3 times at a time at most. There's not really a dance in Elden Ring (except for a couple bosses like Godfrey or Radagon), most of the time you're watching a boss having a good time
A, the same old same old BS people used to say about the ER base game bosses and which was proven so gloriously wrong. It's a dance. You are just asked to actually participate in it instead of passively waiting for your turn.
@@shiroamakusa8075 can't you read my last paragraph? I'm not playing passive but even with a dagger, you can only do 1-3 attack after bosses long combo
@shiroamakusa8075 No it's okay keep repeating the same mindless retorts as every other indoctrinated modern FS fanboy as if they can do no wrong. It's almost like you think the people criticizing the game haven't beat it, likely multiple times. Is it doable? Absolutely. Is it fun? No. It just feels sloppy. I love Fromsoft just as much as the next person but the mixed reviews the DLC has garnered are 100% justified. It's sad to see where this community went post-ds3/sekiro.
everyone forgets that Elden Ring is just a better version of Dark Souls 2 (but its still Dark Souls 2). the expansion power creep also follows the same cadence of DS2
It would be nice to be more accurate when you make these critiques. You claim there are "at least 6 Ghostflame dragons". This is not the case. There are only 3. I also find it weird how much the presence of a boss HP bar seems to piss people off when it's not a totally unique enemy. Like, no one cares that there are 4 hippo enemies in the open world that drop scadu blessings. They don't have boss HP bars so people just view them as elite enemies and they don't care. Same goes for the furnace golems, of which there are 8. No boss HP bar = no issue, apparently. On the other hand, 3 Ghostflame dragons is somehow an affront and an egregious example of repetition, because they do have boss HP. I just find it very silly that something purely cosmetic, like the presence of a boss HP bar, could have such a massive influence on how people perceive these enemies. Ultimately the boss HP is just a UI choice, it doesn't actually change anything. To me having field bosses repeated is irrelevant. They are basically just elite enemies, or mini-bosses if you will. Almost all games re-use elite enemies / mini-bosses to some extent. And the field bosses are totally optional. Don't wanna fight a 3rd dragon? Well don't. You can ride past it. So to me it's almost a total non-issue. The most important thing is whether these fights are fun or not. If the Ghostflame dragon was an incredibly fun fight, then I wouldn't mind fighting it even 10 times. I've fought Isshin in the Sekiro boss rematches dozens and dozens of times, because it's insanely fun. That's the core issue imo. A lot of fights in Elden ring are not that fun imo, and I think that is a much bigger concern than simply repeating a dragon mini-boss a couple times. Again, if it was a great mini-boss that people were eager to fight, it would be totally fine. Or if it just didn't have a boss HP bar, I guess, lol. That said I do agree with some of your other criticisms. Some aspects of the combat and boss design in particular are indeed getting stale for me, which is sad. I'd also add that while you said FS have been essentially re-using the same combat system for 10 years, the truth is it has been 15+ years. Demon's Souls came out in Feb 2009, and let's be real, despite all the additions and refinements, the combat in Elden ring is still essentially the basic Demon's Souls template. So yeah, imo they definitely need to massively revamp it. Sekiro was a great example of innovative design with some Souls influence but a lot of its own DNA as well. They need to something else in that vein.
Funny enough, the thing with people getting hung up on the boss-HP bar is pretty much how gamers have always worked. World of Warcraft initially had a system where you got less XP after playing for too long. Players were up in arms. Blizzard reduced all XP you got and made the game give you more XP when you didn't play too long - resulting in the exact same numbers as before, but now everyone was happy because they got a bonus. This is the equivalent of a store raising prices and then doing a sale, and gamers as whole are ignorant enough to fall for it. Also, am I the only one who likes the Flying Dragons? It's like fighting Darkeater Midir, but way less stressful, I dig it.
I think the main gripe about the Ghostflame dragon is that 2/3 of them are exactly the same fight, while 1 of them at least has a unique move by summoning adds (which could be a critique since it essentially make it the same fight as the one in Scadu plateau)
Adding an HP bar is definitely not just a cosmetic choice, it creates expectations and in consequence different reception of the enemy. Developer slapping in a boss indicator is a clear sign that we as a player should pay it more attention than the regular enemies, that it's a different kind of encounter, it's a bigger deal. Imagine all enemies without exception had bossfight hp bars and musical theme. I'd bet you would find it feeling wrong.
Yeah NGL this is not survival horror. This series doing this sort of storytelling schtik was just a fact, not the objectively correct approach. Some people might want to read item descriptions, some might just ignore them or maybe some people will not even bother looking at them due to use of guides and other external resources. At the end of the day there are just better ways of telling a story. "Show, don't tell" and so on...
12:05 YES!!! This is the first review who said this and I always get this way!!! I hated getting a new weapon, kinda liking it but then not knowing if, once fully upgraded , it was actually viable. The +15 upgrade system is nothing but a barrier to experimentation . It’s not fun . It’s just a resource sink and time sink. Literally why even have the upgrade system ? Just make it go to +3 or something, with very little numerical difference in damage. Make the difficulty come from the actions and intelligence of the enemy not from big numbers and big hp pool
this content is supposed to be endgame..if you finished the end game & did not have the bell bearings or the very popular rune farm unlocked already, then thats kinda on you..I never had problem with upgrade mats & fully upgrading most new weapons since I can freely buy them anyway
@@aNsWeRkEy02 It's Not thats its hard to get bell brings or materials - its that it is a CHORE. Yes I went to do the generic dungeons to get the bellbarings. yes I pursued materials. then I went to the Smith and the maiden husks to buy more and the n press button multiple times to upgrade my new weapon. So much faff and chores to even evaluate my new weapon. and mostly it wasn't actually very good so I felt I wasted that time. None of this is good design.
Miyazaki is in the Kojima position, I feel. He clearly WANTS to do something good else. Always mentions a traditional JRPG and liking horror like Bloodborne for atmosphere…but the money is in Dark Souls. LET THE MAN MAKE SOMETHING OTHER THAN METAL GEAR! 😂
Good analysis. I think open worlds don’t suit fromsoft level design. They peaked with DS3-Bloodborne in terms of striking the right balance with world size. The reused dragons and tree spirits are just lazy, and I feel like it’s because all the work went into legacy dungeons (which aren’t that good compared to base Elden ring game)
I have to say, as someone who really really enjoys lore stuff 99% of the time, the interesting lore is just not enough to carry the stagnant ass plot for both base game and the DLC. In the other non open world FS games this murky kind of storytelling worked caused the game was small / short enough that the info you do get / interactions you do have are enough to keep you intrested until the next exciting fight. The info ER gives you (& the info it keeps from you) creates too many questions and not enough answers to be engaging. I don't feel like I'm on an adventure, I feel like I'm stumbling around in someone's incoherent dream. Dunno if anyone shares this feeling, feels like kind of a taboo thing to say.
I've said this a hundred times, better to give me 80% of the lore and keep 20% mystery than to give me 20% of the info on something and the remaining 80% is just bs I have to figure out. There's things that it's fine to keep to yourself, we don't need lore on who the bearded guy of the dynastic remains is, or whatever Rauh used to be as a society, but the fact that we can't even piece together the timeline of events in the game and the relationships between characters feel so disjointed is not good at all. Ranni orchestrated the night of black knives, she says it in the game and... that's it, she just says it, we don't get more info, we don't confront her, she gives no motives of hatred for Godwyn, she doesn't show concern for Radahn or Rykard? her brothers? What about Melina? She was a whole lot of nothing wasn't she?
It feels like playing a traditional RPG with disabled scripted events. You can run around, pick up items, pre-placed enemies aggro and you can kill them, but nothing special ever happens anywhere, as if you weren't meant to be there yet. Every place feels like you have missed some event that's supposed to make it react to you somehow. Like having broken Morrowind's main questline and living in a doomed world, but worse, because even all the side quests are gutted. It's IKEA storytelling, do our work for us by assembling it on your own, and you will even grow attached to it. And it became a massive hit, just like IKEA. For me it's pretty hard to get intrigued by such a world to the point that I piece together bits of lore from item descriptions, vague monologues and semi-random environmental storytelling. Demon's, Dark Souls 1 or Bloodborne were pretty focused games, their minimalist storytelling worked, because they were being vague about simple concepts and you kept getting clues that reinforced them. Even if you weren't clear about the exact events, things made sense. ER is being vague about multiple convoluted storylines that don't have any common themes beyond the dying world established all the way back in Demon's Souls. It's sad, because you can still see all the effort and passion put in there, but it's all marred by attempting to reignite the same flame over and over again. Break your chains, tell us what you really think, mister Miyazaki. You don't have to be a slave to your claim to fame. People fell in love with your games because they had a spark to them, not because they were exactly the way they were. It's ironic that the series' strongest theme ends up being one of its biggest issues IRL. "Don’t you understand? No one wishes to go on..." - FromSoft devs these days, probably
Personally I love how rich in themes and worldbuilding this game is - people who love playing architect and historian can find a lot to glean from, and that makes Elden Ring feel more transparent as you use your inductive reasoning in addition to item descriptions. IMO half the fun is being forced to draw your own interpretations of the lore and characters - like the Miquella Radahn thing is going to be talked about and debated forever, even though I think more signs point to its genuinity and Radahn's willingness than not, and quite obviously, but you have to be someone who is willing to connect the dots given in a way that suits your narrative either way. Whether or not you like that depends on your mileage. I'm sure I'm going to find a lot of people in this video who don't like that formula, though, and want someone more transparent like Sekiro.
If we're talking about the games boss fights, I agree, we're about at the breaking point. However, this formula has plenty of life left to explore a title that returns to the idea that the games difficulty is 50/50 between combat and exploration. Could you imagine a game world designed with the same idea as OG Dark Souls with traversal mechanics that aren't terrible? Exhibit A: Another Crab's Treasure
26:54 blatantly untrue, you can immediately sprint in the other direction and roll before he slams, and continue to roll through the spikes with no damage.
was it that intuitive tho? I've beat him already but I never understood why this game always just throws random attacks that need specific combinations of moves to dodge properly. I get it they punish you for not dodging the gravity attack but it's excessive. I randomly dodged the spikes by my own a handful of times and never really replicated it when I wanted to. That wasn't fun, or enlightening or anything. I was just like "oh I dodged it, ok".
@@kaiserfakinaway5909 i figured out how to dodge it very quickly. literally just sprint opposite of radahn and roll in time with the sword slam, then roll until you're out. its certainly more intuitive to avoid than waterfowl.
@@pigeonking4683 I found dodging waterfowl more intuitive than this one. I did get hit on both but I was more reliably able to dodge a bit better on waterfowl. Guess different people have different experiences.
Great points! I blame most of the game's flaws on the decision to make it an open world game. I don't mind the huge empty areas so much (they do create an atmosphere), but I am bothered by the underwhelming "rewards" hidden in them. Especially in the DLC, the amount of trash treasures was bothersome. So many f***ing cookbooks! The entire crafting system was introduced to bloat the treasure count to keep up with the huge map. It was there to create the illusion that you were finding interesting stuff. While you can do a full consumable-only run, it is a very niche play-style. It's a bit weird how most of the stuff you pick up, is crafting related. Making the really good recipes dependent on the limited "exceedingly rare" ingredients ruins this system. In a game where you have try bossfights over and over again, limiting the consumables in such a way is a bad design choice.
I disaggre with the scadutree fragments. Like I actively dislike those. They do make exploring meaningfull and discourage farming runes on safe spots, but once the exploration part is done, it just becomes a chore you have to do to actually go to the rest of the content. On second playthroughs they become absolutely obnoxious, since you basically have to either actively ignore them or go search every easy-access one as soon as possible. So this easily turns into 1/2-1 hour of "stuff I have to do to get started". Besides I don't think you deciding to leave the fight and go farm some levels is something that should be prevented. Like levels don't even matter that much. You played with basically the "Bonk build" (heavy double weapon and spam jump heavy for massive damage and posture break) which is probably one of the strongest simple builds. You could literally have 100 levels less than a guy using some mix stats on dex-arc-faith and still have an easier time on a boss than them. Builds matter waaaaaaaay more than levels, ask no-hitters. Also, I don't think it is fair to say the map is empty, it is not. Sure the finger zones are empty, but they are like... intentionally empty, like they are trying to convey there is nothing there other than roamming weirdos. I do agree they are lame though. But saying there is nothing on the top part of the map is a lie. You have to go there to progress with a quest that culminates on a pretty cool rememberance boss (one I think you didn't even mention, so maybe you missed it?), you have I think 3 unique spells, a bunch of deep lore and a trinket that is REALLY helpfull against the final boss. On the cerulean coast you also have a deathbird (yes, another repeated boss) with unique loot and even more loot scattered around. Also the undead dragons are unique, their moveset, while similar to the original ones, has some tweaks on timing areas and follow ups (and some extra special moves), that actually makes you fight them differently. The one at the cerulean coast summons a freaking army of undead, where you have to make the choice of either slowly kill them while dodging the dragon or ignoring them and try to fight the dragon while they are there (that's pretty cool if you ask me, not amazing, but it spices up the fight). The zone is not great in terms of content, but it is far from empty. I do agree with everything else though, that's totally fair.
I agree with some of your points, but I do think saying it’s okay for an area to be empty just because it was “intentional” is lazy. Empty areas are not engaging, barely add to lore, and are just time sinks to explore through. Like the video claimed, a big reason many explore in Elden Ring is because 1/10 times it leads to something incredible but the 9/10 times the rewards are a scenic view or lackluster item. On repeat playthroughs most people are just going to skip it entirely or rush to the objective which begs the question why spend time creating a space if you’re not going to fill it? To market the expansion to be bigger than it really is?
Scadutree blessing were a fix to a problem that never existed. I have no idea what we're they thinking with this leveling system, when we the player can control our stats and weapon levels.
Your assumption about the notes being left there if you missed something is incorrect. Those notes from Leda and other NPCs are always in those locations, it has nothing to do with missing quests or dialogue.
@@stefanostsougkranis5851 There's legit criticism to be had against Fromsoft but damn I'm seeing some unreasonable negativity too, and I say this as someone who can talk for hours of what Elden Ring did wrong and how the DLC improves on some things and makes others worse, overall it's still way more fun than most other games out there to me though. From has talent, I wanna see them do their best, what I know they can do, bullshit lightshow bossfights like Radahn and pointless shortcuts because there are 9 graces on a single legacy dungeon is not their best, it hurts the game.
i'm not against the idea of open-world dark souls, but for elden ring, they honestly should've cut the entire world in half and condensed it, with a heavier focus on the legacy dungeons. for the open-world elements, these could've been surprising and dynamic, with random enemies, random loot, and random encounters. a better, more effective crafting system would've been great too, and, i wouldn't've even minded semi-customizable magic and alchemy (but that might be too much to ask for tbh). with the way elden ring is right now, (especially with NG+), wandering the open world feels more like a long trudge through stagnant, un-interractive spaces i've already been to, filled to the brim with enemies i've already fought a billion times before. the magic wears off quickly, and i just feel uninterested and disillusioned - one of the worst feelings to have when playing these games
Some of these arguments seem to come from a place of misunderstanding. Legacy dungeons and the open world are not the same thing, They're not supposed to be. Enjoy it for what it is rather than hating it for what it's not. If you don't like open worlds in general that's fine, the genre comes with pros and cons like everything else. I do agree that the vague npc quests don't work very well in an open world. Not understanding the lore doesn't mean the lore is bad or pointless. The way many Fromsoft games are designed we come in after everything has happened and it's up to the player to make sense of it all based on what remains. The Shaman Village is kind of a big deal and it doesn't take much digging to find out why. As far as the idea of stagnation is concerned, I'm amazed we still have the same item and spell system since Demon's Souls. If you ask me that's the one thing in desperate need of updating. I'm also not a fan of the massively reduced windows to do anything in boss fights; Sekiro did it right because you could build up the enemies' posture bars while they attack you by deflecting so even if a boss attacks non stop you can still do something beyond simply surviving. In Elden Ring it sometimes feels like playing a game with a 6 year old that wants to have all the fun without letting you play, we have so many awesome weapons and spells and ashes of war but can't get much use out of them which is a real shame.
I'm having to push myself to get to the end of this DLC. I cant believe I've come to a point where I'm no longer excited for a new Fromsoft release. Ill buy and play the next game on day one, but there has been a shift in perception for sure, and it makes me pretty sad.
Don't just mindlessly buy Day one. Wait to see if they genuinely innovated. Telling them they are guaranteed to have your money is what will make them never want to change or get better
@@thedoomslayer5863 sure, generally. But this is the first time I've felt like a game of theirs missed the mark in 15 years. I have over 350 hours in Elden Ring, so I've played it, platted it even. I did enjoy it, really. It just doesn't evoke the same vibe as their previous games. It feels weirdly shallow, almost formulaic in its design, and the DLC really cranks that feeling of artifice way up while the wonder from experiencing it for the first time isn't there to gloss it all over. So to your point, I agree it is usually best to wait on dlc, but Fromsoftware's track record gave no indication that it wouldn't deliver. And in such a weird, vague manner.
Armored Core 6 felt like a breath of fresh air for a company that has been working on one type of game for more than a decade. Also LotF and Lies of P have shown how far outdated Fromsoft's soulslike design has been.
@@scissors0009 Well lesson learned for you i hope, even CDPR a once universally beloved games company failed tragically with the release of their latest game on day one. These companies we hold in such high regard can fail and at some point likely will. Larian studios makers of baldurs gate 3, one of my favorite games of all time, their next game i will wait and see before i buy it. NEVER give your money day 1 or say they are 100% going to get your money. You learned this lesson hopefully now and i encourage you to spread it to others in a similar boat to you.
@@aryabratsahoo7474lies of p is notable in that it's the first souls like to outclass from soft. Not saying it's better than dark souls 1 or bloodborne(because it isn't) but comparing it to Elden Ring and it's dlc, From Soft's most recent efforts feel kinda sloppy in comparison.
Thank you very much for making this video, it echoes the majority of my thoughts after beating the dlc yesterday. I played DS 1, 2 and 3 before ER. Hated DS2, loved and still love 1 and 3. The ER base game was an overall great experience, although it made me realise that open world games aren't my cup of tea. Too much space to fill makes it impossible to fill it meaningfully. The novelty factor of the base game paired with my collector's drive buffered against that. Not so in the DLC, due to the reasons that you outlined well. At some point in the dlc, maybe 6-8h in, I caught myself saying "Wtf, I've explored this whole area just to get some stupid leaves that I'll use?" After this, I played with the fextralife map open alongside the game, filtering out all the crap I don't need at this stage of the game - and that showed me how vast areas of the dlc are absolutely pointless to explore! This brings me to my second biggest issue with the game: there are no clues where you're supposed to go. And yes, you are supposed to go to places in a certain order - otherwise you'll simply miss out on events, dialogue, loot and lore. This is truly the dumbest part of Elden Ring for me, because it wastes so much potential. Imagine having a fantastic lore in your game that creates millions of views when channels like Vaatividya tell it, only to make it completely missable in the actual game because you didn't read what it said on one of the 4000 items, or you missed a (cryptic) dialoge from an NPC because you progressed in a way that you shouldn't have progressed (in an open world, which sole purpose is free exploration!) 😂👍 Half of the map size would have done the trick, too. And legacy dungeons are far more enjoyable for me, to a point where I will deliberate long before I ever play an open world game again. Regarding the bosses: I was really disappointed by Messmer and the scorpion lady (she died so fast on my first attempt, I didn't even remember the name 😅) being far too easy. Conaort Radahn however felt way too overdone for the reasons you described. I encountered him and got rekt maybe 10 times, and then decided to change my build to a shield poke build. That killed him first try. Sure, I could have spent hours to study his move set, like I did with Malenia. However, Radahn is a broken design, whereas to me, Malenia is the most difficult boss of all the fromsoft games I played while still fair. Beating her felt rewarding. Seeing how people beat Radahn by dodging for 30 seconds to get one hit in isn't my definition of fun or a challenge. The shield poke victory over him didn't feel like an accomplishment, but more like a relief along the lines of "I'm glad this dlc is now over". All good things must come to an end, and I hope FS learns this with elden ring before they try to cling on to an era of the past with their next game. Given their own lore, you'd hope they know it's sometimes necessary to burn away the old to make room for the new.
You know you can buy infinite smithing stones if you collect the bell bearing from the main game, which you should have done by that point considering the DLC is endgame, right? You dont have to farm the materials... And yes, if you have a game with that much build variety and you just play with a single weapon the whole playthrough, then of course you will get "pointless rewards" for your build if you refuse to switch it up.
I have been playing souls games for 10 years, and I’ve maybe read 20 item descriptions. 99% of players get there lore from a RUclips video, and then will call it a good story. Kinda misses the whole “playing the video game” point. The delivery is just as important as what’s hidden beneath the surface. If we all had to read 300 item descriptions and create our own versions of the story, we’d enjoy it much less.
The DLC was still a huge success though and a pleasure to playthrough. I dunno, as a game dev myself, I don't really care that a boss is reused here and there, or that the game doesn't justify every single thing lorewise. But then, I don't play these games for lore, I do it for the environment, spectacle, and tight gameplay.
the world build is good. empty? I dont think so, some of u probably play for stats, build , blabla, ofc u just care if the open world have any item for u, so u think it is empty. but look at the world, imagine about the story that happen here. look for item descriptions if a falling star beast there, then there is story go along with it. it fall right next to finger ruin that lead to mother of all fingers, see connnection? cant put a gozilla there instead of a falling star. those who dont have name create the theme for them, u want to give them name? nameless mauloseum have name huh? if there are 6 balck dragon, therre are story go along with them, at least u could think about it that way. why u think give them diferent color make any diferent? only thing matter is is there any story related to them 6 identical dragon? even when u give them 6 diferent color, the question is the same. u critique the open world without a single mention about how it relate to the story. so ur critique is weak to critique an open world, u have to talk about the stories it represent, without talking about that, u cant talk about open world. also, all the critique about boss hard is just u ppl got angry bc u cant tell other ppl to get gud anymore, cant feel superior anymore so u complain. cant put ppl bad at this game down anymore so u turn back to the game. to be honest, only hard boss in thiss game is radahn.
Up to this point I used to think that ER's boss design felt wrong mostly because of their unfair nature but replaying DS1 after about 7 years made me realise something; Souls games have always been unfair, the reason they are challenging is becuase they put you in seemingly impossible scenarios and expect you to overcome these unhinged odds. The process of beating a boss or an obstacle was never truly "fun" to me, succiding was. I'm currently stuck on Orstein and Smough and let me tell you it's actual torment. I'm using a greataxe that has insanely slow attacks, low range and long recovery animations and it makes the fight really tough for me. It immidiately reminded me of the suffering I went through while fighting Bayle or Consort Radahn. Here's the difference tho: the duo bossfight is the first roadblock I've encountered in the entire game, every obstacle before them I overcame through caution and patience. It only makes sense that this is the first major spike in difficulty for me; I'm literally fighting 2 giant warriors by myself. Obviously it should be hard and when I eventually defeat them using my dogshit weapon I will feel like a god but the main point is that the bossfight is challenging just because I have to fight 2 dudes instead of one but it's sufficient enough because it's the only duo bossfight in the entire game and makes sense from the game's world perspective, it would make sense that fighting two guys at the same time would be an insane challange. For contrary in SOTE literally every single boss is like that. Every single bossfight is some kind of a roadblock with some crazy shit that's suppoused to gradually increase the difficulty more and more but in consequence makes every other encounter less and less unique. The problem with that is the souls combat is perfect for dungeon crawling, for the slow and methodical approach where caution and high consequence of actions are the core of challange. That segways into another important point; the spectacle and high octane movesets of ER's bosses make the combat look fucking goofy. Look at aforementioned Radahn for example: he shoots giant rocks, shatters the ground and in his second phase he literally creates waves of light and explosions that would destroy a castle yet literally all our character has to do to avoid it is to roll. It just looks silly. Feels like the game's immersion suffers a lot because of the missmatch between the spectacle and the souls combat even with all of it's modifications. I'm not saying DS1 and DeS didn't have aoe attacks that could be dodged with roll but in ER and the dlc the dial is turned up to 11 going over and beyond reason. I feel like we're often too focused on the mechanical aspects of the combat and don't look at the bigger picture of what it's design accomplishes in the grander picture. I can actually see the vision behind these bosses and why they were made the way they are but it falls apart for me simply because that vision colides with the nature of Souls combat.
I agree with this comment so hard it's crazy. There was always this feeling in this game when fighting the literal greatest swordswoman to exist, master magic users that studied for centuries, a literal creator god - does it really make sense that a little roll would save me against the holy light of a god? It's kind of immersion breaking in a way that earlier souls games, armored core, and sekiro aren't. It was at that point that I realized that playing it with just rolling and not using bloodhounds step or other ashes of war just wasn't as fun for me. I get that it's supposed to be about disempowerment and trying to overcome the impossible, like you said, but it really just doesn't feel right anymore, and it looks and feels silly. I heard Nioh and lies of P do great things with their player kits so I'll have to check those out
@@mr.b89 Nioh 2 is a better game than elden ring IMO. The combat is in a completely different level, like youcould take a thousand hours to truly master it and even then you could probably push it even further, it's more like dmc with stamina. And the story and everything is simple but satisfying, they play to their strengths. Elden ring fell apart under the weight of it's own ambition for me and the DLC is just a rushed, lazy cash grab
I have to disagree with the word unfair about Ds1, on of the most though out games in terms of gameplay and worldbuilding (lets ignore some unfinished areas) the game gives a tool for every situation. If you get decent at rolling you can even no hit most of the fights or use a big shield and laugh.. The highest peak in difficulty being O&S offers you the pillars to control the pace of the fight and even that one is as fair as it can get. In struggle a lot of people seem to use the words "tedious" and "unfair" too lightly.
@@Hyde_Lawrence I see what you mean but actually the point I was making is to present the feeling of unfairness as a positive aspect of the game. Maybe I worded myself insufficiently but what I was getting into is how the game isn't overly-concerned with providing a fair and honourable challenge and does so with sensible justification wich helps to solidify the world as hostile and real.
@@slei4676 I'll say that the games never felt unfair by any means. I know a lot of people that strugle and say "unfair" but even up to sekiro which was consider way harder, you play that game and you have an answer for each and every move while being extremely clean, satisfactory and challenging. A lot of people like to quote early miyazaki's interviews where he repeats over and over again that difficulty was never the objective of the games, maybe he started to change his mind after a few games but not by the time of Ds1.
This is why Sekiro is peak FromSoft combat and level design, minus fashion. I want a new King’s Field. It could be the culmination of everything FS has perfected from DeS to ER.
The perfect FromSoft game would have the interconnected level design of Dark Souls 1, Elden Ring's depth of combat choices and QOL features, Sekiro's story telling, fluidity of movement, and parrying, and Bloodborne's themes and lore.
Rellana's twin moons actually can go twice of the fight goes on for long enough. And "long enough" in my experience is one every fifteen minutes or once per two minutes
dissagree about Bayle fight. For me was one of the most epic and fair in history of souls but agree with radahan. Radahan was worst dlc fight from all souls series, extremly bad designed on many areas
True, Bayle was the most fun dragon fight in all of Elden Ring period and I'm thankful you can only lock on into his head cause the game is basically screaming at you that the viable way to fight him is just focusing on it rather than doing bullshit tactics of attacking his tail or something.
@@Yama-qg3ilthe only problem is that even if you stay in front his head curls around the camera togeter with his thick body and arms, it's so hectic even Ongbal can't keep it under control. Adding an extra lock on point to his center of mass would have somewhat remedied that.
The example of the Shaman Village might just be the single most glaring example of not even trying to engage with the world design. All it takes is reading the description for the two unique items found in this location to figure out it is Marika's original hometown. Thus, likewise, the entrance to the area being guarded by two of her golden knights isn't just a lazy copy paste, it's part of the story. Seriously, it only takes reading the description of two items to figure most of this out, it's not all that obscure. ... Also, on a side note about runes, there is never a reason to ever feel conflicted about losing them to a boss and the entire situation mentioned with the Dancing Lion could have been avoided by just mixing the Twiggy Cracked Tear into the Flask of Wonderous Physicl (both base game items) allowing for easy retrieval.
@@Yive.: Yes, just for a piece of lore. Lore that connects to one of the single most important figures in the entire game, providing hints to her origins and motivations. That's the way FromSoft games have always worked. Stories inferred through level design and item placement rather than told outright in cutscenes. Elden Ring is just more of the same on a larger scale. I mean, just consider something like Ash Lake in DS1 and how little there is to actually do there. It'd be easy for someone who never stops and considered the implications to write it off as a pointless side area, and yet its existence helps add insight into the age of dragons that preceded everything.
@@SmokeADig: I'm not telling you, the game is. _"Secret incantation of Queen Marika. Only the kindness of gold, without Order... Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."_ --Minor Erdtree _"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother... What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."_ --Golden Braid
9:16 haha, my reaction when I got there was identical. In fact, that was my reaction every time I ran into another Agheel, Tree Spirit, or other reused enemy/boss form the main game. I just couldn't believe this cost me 40$. The only hope I have for From's games in the future is that maybe the backlash on this DLC will get through to them this time. Elden Ring was a good but extremely flawed game, and it seems like the mindless praise it got made From not take into consideration any of the criticism while making this DLC.
I kinda dislike the fact that no hits aren't really possible without op attack builds though. Like in Sekiro and (less but still) in souls games you can always no hit good bosses, but when you goof up you loose a lot of health. In AC6 (yez I only played that one 0_0. At least I 100%ed it), you often get hit but don't take that much damage :/ If they fixed that AC6 would be my favorite game of them besides Sekiro I think
40$ surprisingly expensive for 40-60 hours of more content, a whole new map, lots of new bosses, weapons, armor sets? Most full price games nowadays are not half as long or creative as this DLC. 40$ is surprisingly CHEAP, you gotta clickbait some views I guess, sad.
Yea, I really don't understand that criticism. It's almost literally a whole game you get as a DLC. Also, it seems like the dude is not so wary of the current games and their fckin' 70+ dollars price tag for base game and the ~120 dollars price tag for the ultimate edition (fckin' Ubisoft). Like imagine developing a game and then selling a part of the game as DLC with the game launch. Fromsoftware has my trust when it comes to value for money
@@bipolarexpress9827 calm down pipsqueak, thing is, there is no greatness in you, therefore you can't be fromsoft. How does me thinking 40$ being fair for 60 hours quality content, make me a fanatic, is beyond me, but I guess difficult games are not for you, and that's ok, skill issue is a real thing.
Ffs, if you all just considered the other person's perspective for 2 seconds you would realise that both sides are correct. The game costs around 2/3 the price of the full game. It is not 2/3 the content of the full game, therefore it is expensive compared to the full game. It is cheaper than the average game and has way more content than the average game. Therefore compared to the average full priced game, it is not expensive (/is a good deal). Isn't thinking about things fun! Seriously guys, this isnt rocket science.
@@stevie-c1471 Didn't compare it to the full game though, as a DLC, in general, I feel 40$ for that amount of content is fully justified. Fromsoft's DLCs in the past would cost 20$ and offer 2-3 bosses, rarely 4 and would include way less areas to explore, yet they were fun and people did not complain. This DLC is huge and double the price compared to the older DLCs but it is way longer with way more bosses, minibosses, and basically everything else. There are elements to be criticized, sure, but price is not one of them.
First off, Fromsoft needs to learn how to program a camera that isn't constantly trying to romance the player's colon. Then they need to drop the stamina bar all together, along with weight burden, and environmental weapon deflection that only the player is victim to. Divorce themselves from the concept of locking the player into various animations which they can't cancel out of, and which lock out their controls. Separate the game currency that you spend at shops, from the experience points you spend leveling up your character, as this will dramatically reduce the time players have to spend grinding enemies for levels and equipment. And speaking of grinding, for the love of God stop giving the best items and equipment such obnoxiously low drop rates! Not to mention padding out the list of items enemies can drop, with crafting materials that are readily available all over the map. If I wanted to spend my time performing mind-numbingly boring and repetitive tasks, I'd go to work! At least in that case, my reward for all my time and effort would be given consistently, and not left up to random chance. As for weapon upgrading, simply bring back Bloodborne's blood gem system, and have us upgrade the gems instead of the weapons. That way when we find a new weapon that we want to try, we can simply put our upgraded gems on the new weapons to raise it to the appropriate level. Then if we don't like a weapon or find something new, we just switch our gems to our preferred weapon to bring it up to speed. Oh! And pause the damn game while we're in the menu! No being able to pause during online interactions with other players makes perfect sense. But when we're just playing solo PvE, there's no good reason why the game shouldn't pause while we're in the menu.
totally agree, especially in the current era of game development tbh it could’ve had 1/4 of the content and still would’ve been the best value game released this year (so far)
@@kappa0981 11 remembrance bosses The size of limgrave + weeping + caelid if you consider the fact that there are often multiple layers of areas and while the base game often has gaps in it, and an edge that cuts in and out while each area in the dlc areas are fully filled It has the content of at least 3/4 of the base game
Sekiro did the shadowtree fragments better with putting them behind boss kills as memories. witch rewards you for boss kills instead of exploration, because the problem with hiding them behind exploration is that once you have played trough it once, it becomes extremely tedious to do a second time and makes it feel like homework to get them, while behind boss kills it becomes rewarding because the point of these games are always the bosses no matter how many playtroughs, so they should just continue doing that.
Not really a fan of the Sekiro strategy as it felt more linear, which is kind of the antithesis of what I gather this is supposed to be. It's intended to be explored and thus explicitely awards exploration with power rather than just concentrating on boss fights while also giving reason to explore when you come up against a wall instead of the game just being about bashing your head into it until it caves.
@@henryzweihander8282 exploration should be rewarded with unique items. Going on a scavenger hunt to collect 20 of the same item is not fun.
@@skinnytimmy1 To you perhaps, growing stronger is fun for me and that's exactly what the fragments do.
@@henryzweihander8282 L buddy
@@copyninja8756 Ok.
Miyazaki: “My games are not difficult for difficulty sake”.
Miyazaki: -Consort Radahn.
Promised Consort Radahn just feels like Miyazaki’s response to everyone who were calling elden ring the easiest soulslike game by making the most unfair artificially difficult boss ever for the sole purpose of shutting people up and spiting them. and phase one of the fight is great, phase 2 is just a nuclear bomb that you cant see half the time because of miquella’s giant ass hair and all the flashing lights
Miyazaki has either lost his true vision or he wasn't that involved in these games.
@@bronmill33 There is definitely something bitter and cynical about many aspects of Elden Ring... I hope Miyazaki can move away from that.
"We wanna fight prime radahn" "ok lol"
@@wafflboixyeah, Souls fans complained with OG Radhan was nerfed in a patch. It was everywhere online. People were angry. So they got what they asked for, a buffed Radhan. And now they are unhappy. The discourse around ER is frustrating
Miazaki = Gwyn
The souls formula = the age of fire
@@yeeyeeagamer4331 Gwyn created the undead curse, the dark ring
Life imitates art
@@ennayanne Miyazaki created us, people that are hollow until next game/dlc releases
@@norbertgierczak6957 gwyn didnt create pygmies tho
@@ennayanne tho u said that he created the curse, Miyazaki hooked as to yearn for more games from him, like a curse or spell was casted on us
wtf i didnt even know the lion grab did that
i remember seeing the hp bar extend , but i just thought it was my hp
I'd like to see a brand new engine and an update in storytelling for the next game/series
Sekiro's Sake conversations were a good direction. We got a better idea of who these characters are.
nah storytelling goated
@@botondkunos1774 yeah Sekiro's storytelling is great. It's direct but also has lots of bonus conversations that is not handed to the player, also with some conversations that you eavesdrop plus it still has item description to cover some lore.
Sekiro seems to be the project that they should "revitalize" for the next game, they clearly have all the innovations down in their pockets, and had to cash in the elden ring's success with this DLC (and probably more?).
I think they know, having drawn a lot from Sekiro themselves already, that the direction for the future is that one.
This. New engine would x100 any new title from them
Just to put this in perspective: Before Radahn, the only other boss (aside from the NPC encounters just before which are kind of a world event to wrap up the questlines), we fought Romina, either that or Messmer himself. How do we go from that to Consort Radahn in terms of difficulty curve ? This boss is exponentially more difficult than any of the immediate previous bosses.
Also, to put this in perspective is how this compares to the base game. No way this kind of sudden difficulty spike happens there. After beating him with the aid of ashes on my first run, and soloing him without the aid of ashes, NPC or runes on my second, I can confidently say that this fight was ABSOLUTELY designed with the use of ashes in mind.
Finally, I do belive that this is the source of most people's frustration, to have that last boss to be designed in this way, so that most people can't beat him without the aid of ashes unlike the base game. Melania was a build breaker but at least she was optional (a crappy move, but fine). Whereas Radahn is a build breaker WHILST being a final boss.
Why do yall cry over ashes so much? Even the best ash can die in seconds if it acts wrong so it's not an instant win cheat like you act like it is. Use the damn ash and beat the boss, why torture yourself when you know damn well its not designed like that and it's purely ego. Thats like saying I'm getting mad the final boss isn't dying to a pistol when I have a freaking rocket launcher in my pocket.
@@dinolover your arguments is dumb to a baffling extent, if the boss needs external help, then its not designed well, the boss has to account for almost every playstyle, as in ultra weapons, ranged, no summons, etc. You are the only one crying over ashes, methinks you want ashes to be mandatory for every battle lol
To be fair Miyazaki himself admitted to using spirit ashes. I'm not surprised that the dlc bosses were designed with them in mind especially when people wants more difficult content.
Personally I also consider solo play without summons or spirits a form of challenge run, you are literally avoiding a big part of your toolkit. Sure the experience feels more rewarding without them but the dlc wasn't designed with solo play in mind which is backed up by all the major bosses having at least 1 npc summon. The base game also has this for most of the major bosses but it felt significantly easier once you get used to it.
I thought a majority of the dlc was fine, it's only phase two of the final boss that felt bad to solo. A lot of the visual effects were obstructive, caused performance issues and there is a quick double slash that both phases share that can roll-catch consistently which feels cheap along with the light pillars that punished you for trying to create some space. You were forced to play close and aggressive consistently or have a good shield for all the chip damage OR summon to help spread the boss' attention.
I don't think malenia was a build breaker. I've used pure faith, arcane, str, int on her and can usually beat her in a few tries unless I'm using something VERY unoptimal. Slow and fast weapons included. The only thing she punished was shield tanking but you only needed to change your playstyle to avoid healing her too much. Final dlc boss on the other hand has up to 4 damage types and phase 2 wants you to block I think. I haven't mastered them yet unlike Malenia so I can't add much more to the conversation.
@@nadaburner hm an actual response that is thought out and isnt worthless, splendid! jokes aside i do agree with you with how every boss is geared with having a summon with you, which sucks due to how incosistent they really are, now this might be a glitch but for me atleast igon literally did nothing vs bayle, as in he just swapped his weapons for the whole fight, or when summons would just stand back and not do anything during messmer and romina
@@nadaburner I agree with everything you said, it's just that DLC is bad in comparison to the game. It's not bad in and of itself. Base game had is issues and whereas they did went too far in a few places there, in the DLC they went too far in a lot of places.
There are bosses now whose entire moveset is straight out of anime, but it's like you said, it's balanced towards the use of ashes, but is it fun?
It wasn't as much as I wanted for me, and I wish From wouldn't be so obsessed about designing the DLC bosses to break meta builds that destroyed the base game.
I just wish they'd have more confidence in their original design instead of this obsession with how you clear a boss. If people want to one shot bosses, just let them. Who cares?
"its an rpg, you are supposed to stick to your character's build"
but also
"if you are stuggling with your current build, try other builds (respec)"
I miss how slow and chill ds1 feels now
Even going back to ds3 you feel such a difference in game speed and combat pace
Ds1 is the perfect benchmark for soulslike imo
@@jvmango3057Yep. Perfect world design, combat that adds to the game but isn't the be all and end all. Izalith could've done with more time in the oven, sure. It's just a big open plane with enemies you run past and no good loot. Omg, izalith is the prototype for elden ring...
@@ennayanne Don't be ridiculous...izalith Is a terrible tunnel filled with bad and stupid enemies. Even the worst Elden ring Areas are Better than that
I blame bloodborne and darksouls 2 for starting this anime bullcrap where every boss has crazy anime moves while all your character has is an generic swing attack
One of the main issues with Elden Ring and now Shadow of the Erdtree is that many activities in the open world do not lead to any progression. You ride through a lot of empty space and only rarely find something that is of value for your own build. I agree that at least to some degree this problem has been tackled with the Scadutree Fragments. However, when I am now thinking of playing the DLC again and take into consideration that before I am going to fight any boss I might want to collect all the free blessings pickups, which will take a huge amount of time even with a guide, my motivation to start a new playthrough is drastically lowered.
There would have been a very simple way to combine the classical linear Dark Souls levels with the open world: just make a map that is segmented such that each part of it is protected behind a boss who needs to be defeated (like Fire Giant in the base game or like Jori in the DLC, for example). There is no greater reward than having unlocked a new part of the world to be discovered. The best open world games are the ones which contrain the freedom of the player and where one needs to progress through the game (like winning boss fights and the like) in order to be able to go to certain places on the map.
So a completely linear, restricted and confined, open world game? Sounds horrendous...
@@skipjacks85 Wrong. An open world with various entries to unknown locations on the map that are protected by bosses (as an example). This is not a linear design, just as neither DS1 (and DS2+DS3, but to a lesser degree) were not linear games. Because if there would be only two entries to some new locations on the map you have already two different options to choose from.
@@heideknight7782 the fact that u think DS III is a non-linear game says it all. I mean c’mon dude. DS III is about as linear as it gets.
And if bosses are acting as area gatekeepers, walling off progression, how is it open world? So they should have just made Dark Souls IV instead? That’s your position?
In addition, this open world/linear path hybrid would have been terrible for build construction & challenge runs as the overwhelming majority of loot would be partitioned behind bosses you will be in all likelihood, severely underleveled.
@@skipjacks85 Reading skill issue 😂. You didn't even read the dudes comments before arguing like the good from npc you are
@@skipjacks85 DS3 has many side paths which one can choose from which make the progression non linear. As an example, you can choose to fight the Dancer of the Boreal Valley early to be able to enter Lothric Castle. Many speedrunners do this actually, because then you can then get access to titanite chunks to upgrade a weapon to +9. Another sidepath is the Smouldering Lake which is completely optional. But it also has upgrade material (large titanite), so is also worthwhile to explore this area. In general, if the game offers one to choose between different paths to follow, it has a non linear structure.
The idea that bosses should protect certain areas in the open world to provide a segmentation and thereby more transparent progression system of the game you can find even implemented in Elden Ring. The Draconic Tree Sentinel needs to be defeated to be able to enter Leyndell capital. Fire Giant needs to be defeated to be able to reach Farum Azula. Both bosses are mandatory to finish the game. But I think that it is still concensus that Elden Ring is an open world game. So having certain areas locked behind a boss or some other obstacle is not a contradiction to an open world design. It is often necessary to implement a meaningful progression path into an open world game.
Regarding you last point I would reccomend you to watch the video "Why speedrunners hate Elden Ring" by YoJosherino. You can find it here on RUclips on Josh's channel.
Fromsoft loves the environment bc they never stop recycling
are you a fromsoft hater or smth?
@@yoman5029 are you a fromsoft fanboy or smth?
@@UsernameGeri nice try copying my comment and replacing it with "fromsoft fanboy". do you really think i'm blind enough to not see the flaws of fromsofts games?
@@yoman5029 why the question though, lmao
@@bunny_apocalypse about asking the dude if he was a fromsoft hater?
“instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on youtube, how about just including the actual story in the game” couldn’t have said it better, this is a great video.
I honestly beleive that the open world only makes the game worse, Elden Ring would be better had it been a more linear game. I know the freedom adds a punch but you could go for a more metroidvania style rather than a full open world. You could still have exploration and freedom and lots of optional stuff, just in a tighter package and with (probably) less repetition. Both the base game and the dlc have peaks of absurd quality, just imagine what they could have done if time and resources had not been wasted in populating a big ass open world
Elden Ring is the first game I've seen that is conceptually flawed, rather than just flawed in execution. "Open World Soulslike" should be considered an oxymoron.
The funniest thing about the whole "pushing the stamina-based combat system to its limits" that FromSoft did here in regards to their boss design in this DLC is that they already found a solution in Sekiro, which was in development along side the base game of Elden Ring.
Instead of being concerned with stamina, they removed that in favor of parrying/deflecting. Developing an understanding of a boss to the point of deflecting an entire combo string stopped that boss doing an extention of that combo, which removed that RNG aspect entirely while giving you more room to punish them for using that specific set of attacks in the first place.
The only thing they really did with that system in Elden Ring is adding the Deflecting Hardtear for your Wonderous Physick Flask in the DLC. If you tap the block button with a shield (or a weapon that's able to block) at the right time before getting hit AT ALL while the deflection flask is active, you can deflect every single instance of damage from fast-hitting attacks such as Malenia's Waterfowl, dragons breathing fire at you, and just about everything DLC Radahn throws at you in phase 2. All for a fraction of the stamina cost and time it takes to roll. And you can punish those moves with an enhanced guard counter which will break their posture faster than normal attacks, opening them up to more critical attacks.
Yet FromSoft locks this mechanic behind a mini-boss in the DLC of an open world game where you've spend triple digit hours engaging in a different combat style. Where you've most likely cleared just about everything in the base game in that particular playthrough, meaning you can't use this playstyle to fight bosses in the main game since they'll most likely be dead in your progression into the end-game, where the DLC resides. And once you do unlock it, it only lasts a certain amount of time unless you want to sit a grace after chugging your physick flask every 5 minutes.
Everyone who uses this hardtear absolutely loves it to the point they think it should be a baseline mechanic like rolling, as it makes interacting with the bosses of Elden Ring easier. But most players won't even know this playstyle is even an option, let alone engage with it in a meaningful way to the point of understanding and mastering it.
They need to add the sekiro combat system to their future games and improve on it further , get rid of the stamina system completely , it is antiquated at this point imo
They dropped the ball by making this a tear, a talisman slot would've sufficed hell even attach it to a specific shield or group of shield within the DLC. Make it an ash of war buff dude there were SO MANY ways they could've implemented this.
And this is coming from someone that has been using it non stop.
It trivializes the game. Sekiro itself had moments where you could just spam block and spam dodge and kill bosses without taking damage.
@@AkiRa22084it only trivializes the game because ER was not made with it in mind, even the dlc bosses have this issue
Every single hard ER boss would be easier than genechiro in sekiro
@@V2ULTRAKill Exactly, that's why it's a temporary buff.
I really appreciate your take the dlc left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled for many of the reasons you’ve stated while many people brush off my frustrations claiming to be satisfied with nothing but pretty visuals or accusing me of being one of those hard=bad people
😢
Oof, a DLC leaving me depressed is something I would never want to happen.
@@JoseViktor4099 swear dude
Yup. They dismiss you with their tried and true "mad cuz bad. Git gud" or just smash their faces against the keyboard hoping whatever gibberish comes out is enough to shut you up and convince you Miyazaki does not make any mistakes.
It's always a breath of fresh air when you talk to people who remember these are just video games made by fallible humans and not god himself creating the ultimate masterpiece with no flaws
That's an odd thing to say while claiming a game made you depressed. If it's just a game why did it provoke that response?
I think beyond the stagnant gameplay and the open world issues, the setting of ER really adds to the stagnant feeling. I could never really get into it, because to me it seemed like a kitchen sink setting, like a greatest hits mix where they threw in every previous concept from their games without a thematic reason, making it seem watered down and just being there for no real reason. Case in point, the frenzied flame stuff. In bloodborne the whole story and world is built around the concept of madness and so the game's setting stands out and the concept is given depth. In contrast in ER it's just one of many curses like undeath and isn't given much thought. Same with the existence of lovecraftian gods like those from bloodborne don't feel impactful because they share the world with traditional fantasy gods and other entities that you stumble upon, and so are not as threatening nor thematic to the world and so lose their intrigue, awe and depth.
This was cemented for me in the DLC when you meet the Winter lantern reskins in the Abyssal woods, which had zero impact since I've seen it before and it has none of the thematic weight behind them. Doesn't help that rune loss is completely irrelevant at that point and they're in an open area so you can just run around them. All of this can also be applied to the concept of undeath and hollowing that is so strong in Dark souls and informs the entire game and mechanics, but are again just watered down and one of many concepts in the lands between. I would argue that in dark souls and bloodborne you will feel a resonance when experiencing the story even if you don't know the story in depth, because it's thematically resonant despite the plot being obtuse. In ER there were so many moments where I just felt like characters were speaking (a lot more than in previous entries) but not saying anything and you couldn't intuit wtf was going on, like the Margit encounters. His design with horns and a monster-tail who throws holy magic against you, which is aeshetically incoherent at a glance and you need lore to have it make sense. In dark souls this guy would have been undead but wear priest robes and be called "abbott" or something, so when he throws holy magic at you you understand why and it feels coherent. Then as insult to injury when you've finally conquered the capital, do you get a new boss? No, here's that guy again, which you can't intuit why and have to learn lore to appreciate. And it feels off.
In Sekiro they play with the same themes of immortality and breaking cycles as they always do, but they stick to that one concept and look, and when they add more spoken dialogue they tie it with a more explicit story, with hidden lore as a supplement to this. It makes it all feel coherent and fresh despite sharing similar themes from previous entries. It also makes a world that is primarily filled with living people feel more believable. In contrast, ERs world just feels a bit off where it's not nearly as fallen as in dark souls where everyone was undead, and yet normal people don't speak and just act as if they were, unlike in Sekiro where they all emote and speak. For this reason, going into a military camp just feels odd in ER, it's like they just hang around acting like undead without much reason, same reason why I wasn't as wowed by the capital as everyone else seems to be, because it just feels dead in a way they're not really going for. And I believe this all stems from having too many concepts and themes in the game, while also refusing to evolve the narrative style to fit the story they want.
Well said ! This is the most important problem for me with ER.
@@gnanay8555yes, in linear game you can get away with not having too many friendly NPCs or normal cities. But in open-world game like Elden Ring? No. If you think a bit, nothing in this world makes any sense just because it's built like their previous games.
I feel you one the world feeling ded part often I would think about lore explanations for all these random factions to be here.
Even more wierd, when separate factions inherit the same areas. The hands in Ryan lucaria and the mountaintop are friendly with no real explanation why.
Why do the soldier not axe them off the land, they do it to me. Why dint the rabid dogs eat them, is cursed hand worse than tarnished aas?
Diabolical
@@N07NA this may be an unforeseen/unintended consequence of using someone else’s, George’s, vision.
Yea you walk into leyndell and it's just empty asf. All the Golden knights are hiding in dark corners around the city instead of patrolling the streets
Been saying it since I beat the game the first time, if the legacy dungeons are the best parts of the game then what is the point of the open world (other than to provide filler content in order to justify the size of the open world).
I dont get the hate for the openworld in the DLC. I get the point abt repetitive enemies but aside from that was the base game's openworld that much better in comparison? The most memorable moments for me in base game was still the legacy dungeons. Or is it because it's the expansion and ppl expected a more robust open world because of the time they had to work on it?
@@madwilli3205 I’m criticizing the open world as a whole, base game and DLC.
Fromsoft da best!11 They can never make any errors, their open world is the best!1
Seriously though, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 was better as an open world for me because I could hunt animals for upgrades or plants for small boosts. 90% of the times I can either get a bell bearing, get items from normal exploration in dungeons or just DON'T need boosts at all. The other 10% of the time I just happen to be spamming the collect button while on torrent. A VERY wasteful opportunity. The crafting system is meh, like the only thing I used it for was to feed torrent and the way I gathered the materials to feed him was by riding him lol
@@kaiserfakinaway5909 Bad take
Personally, I just think it's pretty and nice and adds a relaxing break in tension between the legacy dungeons. My problem with the Dark Souls games was that the oppressive atmosphere was unrelenting. I understand that was the artistic vision, but it made it a real mental slog to play at times. It was hard to look forward to finishing a dungeon when you'd be rewarded with more of the same. The openness between dungeons adds a nice, less dense and less tense section to play before hopping back into a catacomb or dungeon.
I‘m honestly not a fan of the Scadutree-fragments past the first playthrough. They just become another thing you have to ride through the game and gather before you can tackle the real meat of the game. On my first playthrough of the dlc it was a cool reward for the exploration, but now that I‘m trying a new character it feels a little bit tedious.
But maybe this is only because of the open world, because I didn‘t mind the prayer beads in Sekiro. Possibly also, because you get many of them as a reward for overcoming a miniboss and not mindlessly riding from point A to point B.
Kinda related to the topic, I really liked your idea of replacing the individual weapon upgrades with ones that are active for all weapons. This would make it really easy to just try out a new weapon that you just received, without investing any recources. And I mean from a „realism“-standpoint does weapon upgrading even make much sense? (I’m not a weapon-smith, so I don’t know for sure) Maybe weapon upgrades should just be a relic of the past like weapon durability.
Weapon sharpening makes sense, but monster hunter already does that...
As someone who watched a lot of challenge runs of Elden Ring, something I always noted is that they always seem to spend the first few hours zipping around three-quarters of the map to snap up all the golden seeds and sacred tears. In the SOTE runs I've seen, the same thing happens with the blessings. It's even worse if it's a video where the streamer put a timer on so you can absolutely tell that he spent the first four hours of his run just revealing the map and collecting fragments without fighting a single boss.
This might be controversial, but Elden Ring's open world should have been much more segmented. Godrick should need to be beaten to access Liurnia. Throw down a fort to bar entrance to Caelid instead of just having Anastasia and a low wall you can jump over. Make the Dectus Medallion something looted from Raya Lucaria or remove it entirely so that you're forced to go through Makar to reach Altus.
Your power being tied to progression was something I always found neat in previous titles, and it also prevented the scenario I've seen occur in Elden Ring where the start of most playthroughs just ends up being several hours of running all across the map to collect upgrade items.
Schadu tree fragments really aren't as essential on subsequent playthroughs, when a player should be more adapt at fighting the bosses with their own skill. Doubly so because in base NG difficulty, it's entirely possible to get by without needing to find all of them, and because the blessings carry over into NG+ while all fragments respawn, it's quite simple for a player just finish reaching the max upgrade there.
@@thatlonzoguydon’t you upgrade weapons with materials from hunts though in Monster Hunter? That’s pretty much the same as smithing stones. I’d argue that it’s more annoying as you have to hunt particular monsters multiple times to get certain parts in specific ways to upgrade the weapons.
Dawg I thought I was the only one who called that dude out for being a cut clear shill, even though he didn’t start out that way I know but it’s clear as day now. Fromsoft could create a boss that you only have a millisecond to defeat or it’s instant death & VV will make 100 cringey lore videos & die on the hill defending why that’s not an obnoxious boss design.
The souls formula has been stretched too thin now. I hope FROM realizes this as well and tries to branch out in different ways.
They've never made more money or been this famous, what the hell are you talking about?
Yeah it's time for it to evolve. Be more like Nioh, From Software.
@@paledrake Nioh 2 is the GOAT
@@timekeeper2538how does that make their formula any less outdated? That line of thinking with the majority rule is filled with fallacies and makes you a complacent sheep.
@@timekeeper2538because all the normies coming in because grrm was involved and its open world. They aren't true from fans anyway.
I liken the world design for this to a wacky mini golf course
It’s weird, I simultaneously don’t disagree with a lot of your criticisms but I still enjoyed the DLC regardless. I will say, however, that I do heavily agree that if Fromsoft doesn’t change their approach next time, I won’t be interested in playing. I beat Consort Radahn with no summoning, and I found a lot of his moves just absolutely agonizing and actively broke the flow of combat that I enjoy from a lot of the other bosses like Radagon or even Melania. I love the game, but I think it could mark the end of my time with Soulsbourne if they continue in this direction.
Who told you to beat radahn with no summoning? That sounds like a personal problem.
@@timekeeper2538 Because some people actually like to play the game and not have it play itself. Too hard is more fun than brain dead easy because at least you have to think while playing
@@loganberkheimer1857 Ok and not one summon ash can be described as making ANYTHING in the game "brain dead easy", it's literally the intended difficulty bro.
@timekeeper2538 How is a boss ignoring you for 50% of the fight while your own damage effectively doubled not brain dead easy? You literally attack something that isn't looking at you 😂
@@loganberkheimer1857 I don't know of any boss that ignores you for half the time when there's a summon bro, it really isn't as easy as you think.
Radahns first phase is awesome, and really fun...the second phase though... omg
I react easily to all bosses in this DLC.
You know whom doesn't react properly? my character:) for this DLC to be alright boss wise, they needed to drastically reduce the recovery time of pretty much all weapons
Yeah the speed of the player character is like a snail compared to these spidermonkey bosses. Doesn't help that attacks animation-lock you too much.
The heal are so fucking slow its so annoying . The heal mecanics in bloodborne and da3 was perfect why its so fucking slow in this game 😅
"Runes have no value to the player."
But also,
"I'm too scared to fight bosses because I might lose my runes."
Which is it?
Ds1 is still the goat in terms of world design it seems.
seems like it'll be that way forever
Nope its demon souls
@@_CrimsonBlade Haven’t played Demon’s Souls but since it’s the predecessor to Dark Souls, you have my respect.
@@voidd392 its the same garbage
Its ds1 and demons souls X 100 and thats the issue
Uninspired trash
@@FEAST4It’s obviously very different if you actually played the games, which I’m sure you didn’t.
"Instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on RUclips, how about just including the story in the fucking game".
Truer words were never spoken.
Hell, the problem isn't that the lore isn't there, it is in item descriptions, the problem is that it's ONLY in item descriptions. More of the information about stuff in item descriptions should be just out in the world somewhere.
Like in location design or dialogue. Like Jesus, just put the lore somewhere else.
@@unoriginal2552or finding journals etc.
Still blows my mind that there are people who think Radahn is anywhere near the level of Messmer, Midra or Bayle
11 minutes in... Someone finally says it. Yes. FromSoft could indeed have mystery and discovery... AND just have an explicitly told story in the game.
These things can exist... Many other games do this. FromSoft games are 93% lore and environmental storytelling and it gets tiresome.
They are turning the boss fights into MMO raids 😭
I hate how the NPC quest structure is set up in Elden ring, and the DLC did it so much worse. I think you make a good point, when everything's so cryptic to need a video essay explaining things to the player, it's just not an engaging story. I think Lies of P did story a lot better since I never felt lost or wondering "Why I'm out here doing this nonsense in the first place". And Lies of P also had some pretty engaging points as to why the world was as morbid as it was, without being cryptic.
What I dont like, is trying to do an NPC quest, only to mash through a bunch of cryptic dialogue that tells me nothing about what they're doing most the time, and needing to "refresh" the game to progress it, just to have them disappear someplace random in the world. Dark Souls 1 can kind of get away with that since it's a more linear experience, but Elden Ring is open world. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
Oh and the DLC actually punishes you for exploring it, since if you reach a certain threshold, something big happens, and a bunch of quests will randomly progress without your knowledge. There's good parts in Elden Ring that does open world arguably better than most sandbox games, but it's quest structure is so anti-open world. Plus, DLC rewards just... Suck. I hate going into a new place only to find mostly tier 1-3 upgrade materials when my gear is probably max tier at this point.
I hate that they introduce entire new schools of magic that have only 1-2 spells in them instead of building onto what already exists. (My annoyance of this being they have types of magic in base game that only have about 2-3 spells in them. There's like 20 glintstone sorceries, but only 2 "briar" sorceries. And yet they also have a staff and some unique gear that buffs the already mediocre "Briar" school of sorceries.) I hate that they include entire new weapon classes but only have an entire 1-3 weapons in them (There's a throwing knife weapon you can find, which is it's own weapon class, and there's ONLY 1 throwing knife weapon. Why..?). Why waste time making entire new weapon subclasses but only making 1-3 weapons for each type?
13:47 So you felt stressed about losing runes, but also runes are pointless. Ok? Firstly runes represent time so they're never entirely pointless, unless you don't value your time. Second if you want to retrieve runes from a dangerous place, use a twig. Third, dumping runes is a non-issue because there's always something to be gained in doing so.
You also complained about upgrading weapons, well how about burning those runes on upgrades and materials? The only really limiting factor for upgrading weapons and ashes later in the game is the final level, there is absolutely nothing wrong with upgrading something to 9 or 24 to try it out, or even beating up low lvl enemies.
"Firstly runes represent time so they're never entirely pointless" Bruv... Mogh's Palace slope IF you value your time... Runes are useless. Especially if you look at them from PVP perspective or Build crafting perspective. You need a limited amount of them to get to a desired level and weapon upgrades. After that they might as well not be in the game. They just gate you from having a desired build and after that they are objectively an afterthorught.
@@zwidowca1 Mohgwyn Palace farm is an exploit in the game. Weak argument
@@ky58065 I... What even... Are you sane?
Exploit in a context of any IT or computer thing is:
a) a loophole/weakness/vulnerability in soft
This is definition copy paste, go check it.
Moghwyn palace slope is an IN GAME PLACE. A place on the world map. With normal enemies. With legal and not bugged or glitched spawns. It has never been patched or changed. Killing the mobs on the slope is literally a legit method of getting souls/runes. It is NOT an exploit you dingus. Literally by definition it is not. Your reply is a waste of time. You don't even have a point to make. You just wanted to be a contrarian. You go touch some grass now, I'm gonna block you.
@@ky58065 Not really, because oh-so-mighty Fromsoft left it in and never once considered "hey, this area with easily farm-amble enemies can be accessed as early as Liurnia." You also have the Gatefront soldiers and the Vulgar Militia outside the Beast Sanctum.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj No I was talking about shooting the bird next to the grace which causes him to fall off cliff. can get you like 100k runes in a minute, way faster than killing the enemies
When i finished the DLC it left me absolutely baffled.
Yes, the lore has to have blank spots but why in hell would you not integrate any of the open ends the fans obviously want to investigate so badly.
A super-hard boss or an almost empty level would cause so much less backlash if we would actually fight someone related to the GEQ or Godwyn or anything or actually investigate an ancient battlefield mentioned in the OG lore or some ancient source of power.
Why add new things noone really cares about if you have a quiver full of open ends that would make the DLC be perceived so much more positively?
Man, i really respect Miyazaki but goddamn why throw potential away like this? The fact that this DLC leaves a bitter taste is so unnecessary.
My thoughts entirely brother. I honesty think Elden ring lore simply dosent actually have answers. The team just likes to add detail, but can’t decide how things really happened. Take st Trina. According to the fan video she might have been miquellas alter ego, girlfriend, or twin. And they may have grown from a plant , and she may have been copying his recreation of radhan , and they may have wanted to merge as silver and gold. Ultimately we have no real clarification who or what she is and how she relates to the story. I believe From never bothered deciding
He didn't throw it away, his writers simply had no possible way to cleanly take care of loose threads. The game doesn't have an actual story other than following the path of a seemingly robotic in nature Tarnished character that just goes and destroys everything in his path seemingly because he simply feels like. For things to really get cleaned up, there would have to be logical coherence, but that doesn't exist since the game doesn't explain the baseline laws of nature in the reality this game takes place. Basic questions like what a tarnished even is, or how the game treats the Law of Identity is extremely problematic. The only type of storytelling of this sort that exists, is rooted in ancient religious story-telling, where you get bits and pieces of certain events/groups of people - but everything is told from what can also be interpreted as heavily metaphoric (due to the extremely ambiguous and unfulfilling manner). Stories in holy texts usually talk about people, yet none of them behave like any rational or sane human would. Likewise occurs in this game, everything goes on and functions like some non-sentient element in nature (like fire that burns, or water that flows), and that's it. There's no hard-set/definitive/correct interpretation of anything (just like holy texts), and is why you can't disprove anyone's theory for the most part.
Also, Miyazaki in an interview said he doesn't want to make the mistake in his prior entries where he simply locks-away the possibility of returning to a genre. I think the story of this game (from the very down to earth GR Martin's foundation groundwork with normal humans in a fantastical setting - to the time skip warp of humans into supernatural beings that Miyazaki's writing team was tasked to do), is just too complex for them to neatly tie up and not be some eye-rollingly bad trash. So with all that, they just abandoned it rather than ruining it potentially. The only problem is, they left wayyyy to much up to interpretation (even the third-person narration is unreliable when you read item descriptions where it says things like "it has been said" or "people believe". Showing that not even the writers have decided what's going to be true in the game.
Also wish the community as a collective would stop targeting Miyazaki as if he's writing anything. As a director he doesn't really do anything other than give final say on large progress from each team. It's not like he's going in there and juggling frame-data, or damage values (because if he was, he's one of the worst balance leads basically in modern gaming with 50%+ of items being borderline useless and redundant).
@@JayJayYUP I agree.
Elden Ring lore has same issues that plagues A Song of Ice and fire, which makes sense as its GRR Martin .
@@lynxyu11 I disagree! They are similar in that they hugely invite fan theorizing . But Elden ring seems not to have any conclusive way to discern what realy happened in any given lore event. Eden ring also does not ever actually set up a mystery that is meant to be solved or that it eventually reveals itself. Asoiaf sets up many mysteries and then it gives us answers eventually , and asoiaf seems to really have a concrete understanding of what actually happened . Eg the knight of the laughing tree
also you can run and jump away from his "gravity grab" attack if you get hit by the first part. that was the most frustrating attack for me before realizing that
Yep run away as soon as you’re caught and jump when he slams, you’ll almost certainly be fine
like most youtubers, jumping is only for attacks.
Excellent video. I too really hope From will make something completely new next time. Or- if it's still the same formula, I hope they will slow the enemies and bosses way way down. They can't simply make everything faster for ever... I'm sure they can challenge us in more ways than by just hitting the dodge button at the right time.
Most memorable dlc moment was the soldiers of Messmer fighting a dragon, i wish there was more NPCs wars like this.
And fighting leda with Ansbach and thiollier, epic
Midra and Bayle also very fun with a lot of build up before the fight
Apologies for the wall of text:
I try and convince myself that I enjoy the exploration but, in reality, my headspace when I'm playing ER as a souls vet is thus:
"Okay here I am in this field, where to go next? Well okay off to the right is a forest and off to the left is a town/village/ruin. Better save left for last because I know instinctually that's where FromSoft actually tried!"
I think there was maybe one single armor set in the entire dlc just out in the over world somewhere. All the good rewards are inside structures.
Now, also as a souls vet, I can say confidently that besides Commander Gaius, every boss in this dlc took me less than 20 attempts. Some like Messmer and Rellana took sub 10. Meanwhile, I've thrown myself at Radahn 50+ times and haven't even seen his health go down into his boss name plate lol.
FromSoft needs to change. They have most assuredly stagnated. Now, the only novel thing they can do is crank a final or hidden boss difficulty up to 12/10 for the tryhards and streamers. I've basically been playing the same FromSoft game for almost two decades.
And the worst part, is that they absolutely destroyed all the ER lore that they had setup in the base game. I personally believe Radahn is a lazy retcon because it was so much easier to animate his model and attacks because they already existed in the base game. I thoroughly believe we were supposed to get Godwyn or Marika or just someone more important at the end of Shadow. So, while I agree prime Radahn is certainly a choice they could've made, I will never see it more than a lazy rewrite. Add onto this the whole "shaman village x Hornsent phenomenon and you have the beginning of a compelling story. But oops, nobody ever explains WHY the Hornsent committed genocide against Marika's people. In Dark Souls 1, Gwyn made a decision about his empire and how it would continue. In Dark Souls 2, the human king was honey-potted into attacking the giants, in Dark Souls 3, the Twins wanted the world to errode. In Sekiro, it's a revenge story. In Elden Ring SOTE, they thought they had written an inciting incident. What they actually wrote was nonsense. Not to mention the entire lore basically just breaks down to "aliens invade, upset blonde woman agrees to their weird space powers to fight her enemies, hijinks ensue." Nobody bothers to explain why the Hornsent did what they did. And thus the entire lore of Elden Ring has no proper beginning, and in essence, is completely irrelevant. Which I think is the worst lore offering we've ever received from Miyazaki. One RUclips comment I read summarized it all:
"It's like the SOTE team never played base Elden Ring and had an AI summarize the cliff notes for them."
There's some good fun to be had in SOTE for sure but, by itself, it does not warrant a replay. And it destroyed all its lore and replaced it with the wacky hair dude from history channel saying "ALIENS" over and over. Which is just unforgivable.
In the game it’s explained that Marika’s people were used in rituals because their flesh combined well with stuff. Thats why they were stuffed in Jars
I really don't see any reason to make Radahn Miquella's consort beyond fanservice. Lorewise, Godwyn or even fucking Malenia make more sense than Radahn
@@lordepsilon7023 my guess is that it was the more justifiable pick , being that radahn was always said to be a very kind person and overall wholesome compared to the rest of his sibling demigods. Which we never got to see because duh he is basically a zombie when when fight him.
That's how I feel in Elden Ring's open world in general, not just the DLC. It's just a big space of...nothing. It's all enemies and loot. There is no "world", no people, no community, nothing to make it a world and not just a video game setting. Don't tell me exploration is why you should play the Open World, I explore in all kinds of games, metroidvanias and the like. But ER? The entire open world just seems pointless.
@@lordepsilon7023 you're just mad your headcanon isn't true 😂. Miyazaki has himself said radahn is his favorite
It's very funny to see a lot of the complaints that people bashed on when the game first came out now be in the forefront when numbers and difficulty are cranked up even higher. The humbling of the "git gud" crowd is mildly satisfying lol.
Regardless, I agree with a lot of the points in this video. I really appreciate the concise and focused criticism of the open world, which I've also had similar thoughts on since week 1 of vanilla Elden Ring. Torrent needing to have i-frames coming back into the discussion was lovely to hear as well, along with mentions of the story and many other things.
I've said more here than I usually do in a comment, but per your point of the video, this series is in dire need of retirement or a major shift. Quite frankly, I just want someone to make another genre defining game like Dark Souls was in its heyday. It's time for something new. This video was really a treat, thanks c:
You encapsulated my thoughts on Radahn perfectly.
If you need to heal you have nothing to show for the last 30 seconds of dodging... It's not fun.
eh, this is literally what people used to say about any harder and more complicated souls boss... yeah sure if you have to heal you might miss the window to deal damage - that's how it always worked. Besides, Radahn attacks so quickly and so often you'll get your next window in 5 secs tops.
@@GreatAdos No not really at all. Compare a boss people thought was hard like Lady Maria to any of these guys and you see that while you do less damage (they have more hp) you also get more opportunities to hit them back. Same with Kos. Same with Ludwig.
@@paledrake radhan has too much downtime but its only in select parts of his boss fight. Not the entire boss fight
What I really liked about Dark Souls 1 was that the combat felt slow and methodical... maybe even strategic! Every FromSoftware game I have played since has felt manic and "spazzy", for lack of a better term. The difficulty in DS1 was so satisfying because the slow pace allowed me to actually focus more on my attack strategy and play smartly. Now, in games like DS3 and Elden Ring I feel like each boss fight is a test of my twitch reflexes and rote memorization of relentless attack patterns. TBH I lost interest trying to explore the Haligtree and other late game areas in Elden Ring, and I didn't even bother getting the DLC because it looks like more of the same absurd twitchy difficulty. The magic is long gone for me :(
Ds3 boss fight is 10 000 time better . I played Ds3 after my Elden Ring playthought .The delay attack feel smoother more natural the boss are fast but your character is fast too i got more than 0.5 second to heal . Almost every fight in ds3 im out of flask at the end the fight felt challenging but more fair and fun
I appreciate this kind of review
I think my biggest issue with Elden Ring as a whole was the open world. There's so much to explore and collect, but most of the time these things are neither enjoyable nor rewarding, especially on consecutive playthroughs. But I like that they improved upon that, i.e. less caves and the world itself is more interesting to explore, seeing as it's on multiple layers and whatnot. But both in the main game as in the DLC, the big closed-off areas like the shadow keep, Farum Azula or Miquella's Haligtree are the most interesting and enjoyable. You really feel like you can actually interact with the environment, find shortcuts or some secret areas and are actually rewarded for actively looking around and get familiar with the place. I hope Fromsoft will take their next project away from the open world again or find a way to make the vast areas more enjoyable
18:45 she’s used it twice in one of my runs so I don’t think it’s one use.
While i do not disagree with everything said in this Video I have to say your take on the Bosses like Radahn is somewhat flawed since all you do is spam Jump attacks and then complain about getting punished. Radahn has quite a lot of punish windows in his longer combos and after his attacks that you just never utilized because you only do one attack.
You were definitely right when you said Fromsoft was one game away from their formula becoming stale. This is that game.
Their formula isn’t stale, it’s just that the open world design doesn’t suit their traditional level design and combat. All the work went into legacy dungeons
@@JacksonL1238 The combat is getting stale too. What the hell were they thinking with some of these bosses? Like was said in the video, you basically dodge 10 attacks in a row, sometimes without a tell to know if they'll extend a combo or not, only to get a very small opening to EITHER heal OR get a single attack in before they start another combo. It has already been pushed past the point where it's fun and challenging to actually become tedious.
The combat needs a revamp. What makes me hopeful about this is that they DID introduce some very nice mechanics in Bloodborne and Sekiro that made combat more streamlined and flowing, but for some reason those things either didn't make into ER or were only partly introduced. I guess it has to do mostly with the build variety. But they at least attempted some new things here such as LGS' flowing movesets (milady) and the deflect tear, which worked pretty well imo and should be made a permanent standard.
Heyyyyy…I know this guy!
@Homiloko2 I think the new talismans and crystal tears that give I-Frames to backsteps and improve spotaneous guards and counter attacks are FromSoftware testing new combat mechanics for the future. But, if you look at a game like Nioh 2, the combat is always gonna feel a little stagnant in comparison. They need to add more ways for the player to create custom combos and cancel recovery animations in a skillful way to create more fluidity.
Excellent video. From has lost the plot and whether or not they are willing and able to see that snd course correct will be interesting to see.
You're absolutely correct. Remember when you'd die to a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne and be super excited to get back to the fog gate with what you just learned and test your wits against them again? Well almost every time I died to a boss in Shadow of the Erdtree I just felt cheated because FromSoft clearly designed them to be relentlessly punishing. There are no clever tricks to defeating these bosses. There's only cheese builds, summoning or robotically executing dozens of perfectly timed dodges and poking them to death.
Artorias and Kalameet tail flashback
Ya, like I remember how I was so exited to fight bosses like living failures, bed of chaos, amygdala, take off the rose tinted glasses, bosses in base game fromsoft didn’t get real good until
Ds3
@@tbrown5836true, after SOTE going back to the older games shows they have flaws in bosses that are ignored by the community
Aight bro that's exaggeration sounds like cope now. I'm a huge DS1 fanboy and I can acknowledge ER solos easy.
@@tbrown5836Living Failures isn’t that bad, Amygdala is fine (why do people hate this boss?), and Bed of Chaos is easy, the DLC bosses aren’t easy, they’re just grueling, well kinda a lie, most of the bosses are decent.
I think you would REALLY enjoy Armored Core VI, as it's probably one of the more distinct games From has made after Dark Souls fame (Alongside Sekiro and Deracine).
Ignore any prejudices and preconceptions you might might see about mechas (not to mention those would be kinda dumb, as mecha is just sci-fi), ACVI tackles many of the issues you see in the Souls games combat, and probably had FS try to implement AC bosses onto the Souls format (with inconsistent results) in order to compensate for the simplistic core combat.
Yeah ac6 is pretty damn good. It does exactly what it needed to do, gives the og fans what they want while also improving the mechanics in every way. It won't appeal to most people, but it sold well enough that hopefully we'll see another entry within the decade.
Interesting if people play ac, if they don't know, who did the game?) 😂
@@Loathsome_Lynx Not quite. Mechanically it's a heavily simplified version of what they have done before. It's a good game, but it is hardly the best entry in the franchise (aesthetics aside). Linear evolution doesn't really work with FROM games, as they constantly change things around, even among their same franchises.
I listen to this video at least once a week while at work.
people have been saying basically the same stuff since Dark Souls 1 came out
Glad someone actually points this out.
Exactly!
Glad it's being ignored
this happens every single time a new fromsoft game comes out, people just say the same critiques and act like it’s exclusive to the most recent release as if it hasn’t been an issue forever. getting kinda tiring ngl
Fights like Divine Beast and PCR feel like the game itself is breaking. This formula cannot go any farther.
Fair to say that the souls formula has peaked with elden ring. They should definitely try to build upon the mechanics of sekiro for future installments. Which will allow the player the tools needed to combat the ever more complex and over the top bosses in a more fun and engaging way instead of just waiting to press L2 or R1 between each 15 hit combo
@@user-vh7ks8px3s that and expand movesets for weapons. look at the radahns new swords, it shouldve had both ashes of war, not one or the other with two different weapons that are otherwise identical.
Hacent pcr yet but for divine beast i found him to be a great fight if you use jumps along with the rolling to fight him
@@brynntall6811 he definitely seems like a great fight and i love their concept of a boss fight attacking to the rhythm of the music. my only issues with the boss fight is that lightning weather cycle does get obnoxious at times, and, if you play on the ps4 version like i do, the fps will work against your favor, making his second phase much worse to deal with.
They feel like they have to keep making larger spectacles of each boss, and the AoE and nuke moves are more annoying and infuriating than strategic and fun. The boss formula peaked in early to mid game ER or DS3 even
10:36 Lmfaooo this line killed me it's so accurate.
The cutscene where Godrick chops his arm off, and then how the camera pans to the side as he begins spouting nonsense towards the dragon head legitimately had my side in shambles, and they just keep doing the exact same thing over and over
Morgott scene in Leyndell struck me particularly for this reason. Nothing that he said makes any sense.
"What is thy business with these thrones"
Tf you're saying dude? I don't give a f about these thrones and you know that since we fought before.
Then he mentions all of the demigods as if player character didn't learn about them already. Does he spends his days walking around this arena and sulking about his siblings? It seems so, because the capital is in complete ruin and a good king should do something about. But nah, sulking it is.
Once the big turtle pope at church of vows told me that radagon is marika, i just gave up on trying to understand the lore.
@@skinnytimmy1 me when I lie
@@skinnytimmy1The turtle pope doesn't tell you radagon is marika. You have to do a convoluted quest line involving gold mask and the law of regression
I'm not sure what you're talking about? There's nothing convoluted or nonsensical about what he's saying, he just goes "truest of dragons, lend me thy strength" a subtle nod to the fact he's putting it's head on his arm and using it as a flamethrower, and then he goes "forefathers one and all, bear witness!" cause he thinks he's fucking cool and that his ancestors would look fondly on him, really not that deep or hard to parse maybe you're just retarded?
rellana can use her moon attack multiple times im pretty sure
26:40
Not to defend this train wreck of a boss, but if you get hit by the first gravity attack, immediately running back and jumping as the attack closes in allows you to “dodge” the follow up
And this is why Radahn is just following the same cycle as all dlc bosses that are "unfairly hard." No one knows how anything works, but assumes their lack of skill is a fault of the "trainwreck boss design."
Radahn was a brutal blast
@@jackreacher7495 How does one answer to one move absolve the rest of his complaints?
@@GrandHac it's about the spirit of the argument obviously
@jackreacher7495 This right here needs to be pointed out more often. This happens for every single fromsoft release in the exact same way every time. Before this expansion, the base game got mixed reviews on steam shortly after the release, for the same reasons, and eventually rose to above 90%. Ringed city dlc released and was criticized in much the same way as this dlc was when it released. Gael was a controversial boss when the dlc came out contrasting to the extremely high praise he gets now. Even back to dark souls 1, a bunch of the mechanics and combat of ds1 were way more criticized when it released, before everyone learned about how the game works. It seems to me, as time goes on this dlc will be getting more and more vocal praise, in the same cycle that every fromsoft game goes through.
Interesting take on your criticism and well exposed. I see this is not a game you enjoyed which is fine. Fun and art is subjective after all.
I do disagree with most of your points though which is fine as well.
based
You can dodge Radahn's slam after the pull in the final fight. When he pulls you in and raises his swords, you run away and when he slams you jump.
I want another sekiro-like game or bloodborne not another Soulslikr game
Elden ring did way better in numbers compare to Bloodborne and Sony expectation to bloodborne didnt match it was a fail compare to other exclusive ps games
@@wiliex0687 maybe instead of making another souls game they try something else is what I’m saying they typically do good and plus FS meat riders will by it anyway
Sekiro/Bloodborne mechanics in a more "plasingly" themed game would work well IMO, financially too.
Also, they can ride this Success wave to popularize the sekiroborne style more.
@@jonathanprivitera9394 both Bloodborne and sekiro sales can’t match Elden Ring Fromsoft doesn’t own the IP of all their games but Bandai will let a Elden ring 2
Bloodbone is still a soulslike
$40 for an expansion that took me more than 40 hours to finish seems fair to me
Mommy. Omo mmmmomnmo moo mo m o⁹jll9lljⁿi
A lot of fair criticism here! Although I would like to suggest perhaps not emphasizing your points on weather it's "fun" or not. Fun is a nebulous concept that can easily be picked apart. Despite understanding how frustrating the final boss is. I found Promised Consort Radahn to be an incredible boss fight. And yet, my positive outlook on this boss is circumstantial evidence at best. Is Elden Ring's combat design holding back the greater potential in boss fights? Yes, I agree that we must move on from this. (Weather Fromsoftware will do something about it or not remains to be seen). Since the base game I've always wished Elden Ring had Sekiro like combat. The parry system is objectively better.
I agree.
People always bring up the cost of upgrades, but... Is it really that bad? At this point in the game I had all the bell bearings, since most of them are pretty easy to find if you've beaten the game. All you really need is runes (again a pretty trivial cost at this point) and the max level smithing stone, which isn't actually all that necessary, especially if you just want to test a new weapon. That last level is only gonna boost your damage by a little bit, so you can mess around with it for an hour or two before you commit. The DLC also gave us a lot of the ancient dragon stones. I think most of your points are totally valid but this one always confuses me, at least when talking specifically about the DLC which needs to be tackled pretty far into the game.
Even without all the bell bearings, the DLC provided plenty of resources to upgrade weapons. I don’t have the later bell bearings and used the resources provided to me by exploring and was able to upgrade my weapons
So glad some people are able to look at this game clearly. It drives me mad how much of an echo chamber the souls community can be and how they struggle to see how bad a lot do this dlc was
Every community is like, very rarely you get a game community that isnt an echo chamber
The internet creates echo chambers. And people flock to them to hear their own opinions and bias spit back at them and don't like being challenged. Not just video games unfortunately. I have enjoyed the DLC and think it's great but it definitely has it's flaws.
@@angeltzepesh1 I agree to an extent but from soft fans really sound and behave like a cult sometimes
You would probably not be so mad about things like this if you were more understanding of the subjectivity of art. You speak as though you've discovered a truth that the DLC is bad, not that you've developed an opinion that the DLC is bad, which is what has actually happened. No one is blind to some gospel you've uncovered, they just engaged with the same piece of media that you did and felt differently about it. There doesn't need to be some battle on the internet to win over the opinions of those people, it worked for them and not for you, discuss the difference to your hearts content but at least understand that it's all subjective. You're not any more correct if you get someone to agree with you than you were before.
The combat and mechanics do not match or have a flow like previous games. Give me difficult but give me fun and engaging mechanics to deal with it.
I could articulate my thoughts thoroughly in a comment but tbh the DLC already ran my patience dry so I'll just say "FAX, BRUDDER, SPIT UR SHIT"
Pleasant video, can't think of much i disagree with so i might be biased on it but still.
27:18 This is so silly and also describes another big problem I have with elden ring. Rolling does not make any sense, logically, to avoid Radahns Gravity Pull, does it? I mean it pulls everything into it like its nothing but you suddenly rolling would change that? Quite the opposite: Rolling (and therefore losing touch with the ground) would make you be pulled in even easier. The underlying problem here is, as in other areas, that it is (to my taste) way too "gameified". It does not make sense, its just so that the gamer has something to interact with. Its the same as the worldbuilding you mentioned, that does not evoke the feeling of an actual once inhabitated place, its just a game level. Or the very long windup of boss attacks are not "realistic" at all and just designed to counter a game mechanic and tricking the player.
It does not feel right to just roll through an apocalyptic universe destroying aoe amageddon with s. It does not make sense do my brain and it feels fake. Or these stupid enemies who linger in the air for too long e.g. Romania but also dancing lion or even these stone cats in the catacombs from the base games (watchdogs, thats what they are called, they are the worst). They are just hovering in the air which clearly counteracts the physics layed out in this game (why else would bats and birds and gargoyls have wings if gravity was not an issue?) Its again just gameified further amplifying your point that the standard formular has kind of played its cards.
Dont get me started on these god damn Rolls of bosses. They also dont make sense at all. Look at Roamia when she rolls at you, half of her Model clips through the ground, it does not make sense. Same with Godskin Noble. How does he even move while rolling? And if he is actually a snake why does he have feet? Or Godrik - Even he rolls around. It is completly out of the logic of physics (even within this game) and is just there to give the player something to deal with.
And all this stuff you dont "dodge" by moving out of the way (while s assist you to make things less tedious) but rather you "phase" through everything with iframs. Thats also not the way I remember previous souls games. If the player has phase ability, give him one but dont pretend he is dodign with a roll. It is so unplausible to doge for example Radahns gravity pull by rolling that it feels just silly doing it.
Just get rid of:
- Crazy AOE Attacks the player cant logically dodge
- Long artificial wind ups just to trick the player
- Hovering enemies in the air breaking immersion even further
- Stupid rolls of enemies clearly not designed to be a hedgehog
Those things are all stupid in my opinion and add nothing of value to the table.
Well, this turned to be more of a rant than I expected. Anyway, thank you for your video you nailed some stuff.
Best regards :)
I have the same issue as you with the whole "roll through explosions" travesty, and I could only counteract it by reducing my rolls to a minimum and adopting other strategies to neutralise certain attacks: backsteps, deflections, jumps, sorceries such as Cherishing Fingers, weapon arts that feature an invincible dash - a great instance of this are the Death Knights' axes and longhaft axe, whose Blinkbolt skill turns your character's body into a bolt - or a jumping dash - such as Milady's Wing Stance, or Aspects of the Crucible: Wings. This way, combat feels way less gamey and more immersive.
But yeah FromSoftware has to overhaul its defensive and evasive gameplay. As it is now, it often doesn't feel like you are dodging attacks, but rather timing your i-frames through attacks.
Sekiro worked wonderfully with its deflections, jumps and mikiri counters: you always felt like you were neutralising attacks in a credible way.
Maybe a step in the right direction would be to make jumps and ducks as integral as the quickstep/roll: just as in Sekiro, one would need to learn a specific response to a specific type of attack, instead of having the roll as a passepartout. They wouldn't necessarily have to get rid of i-frames altogether, but they could still elegantly "conceal" their presence to the player this way.
@@andreacardino4651 Yes, I agree with your statement.
1:05 "A lot less than 50% of the encounters will be new to the player." WHAT!? Did you play this DLC at all? I did a count and even by the most conservative of measures, it's WELL over 50% for new content to this DLC. This just isn't remotely true. Edit: The note about the NPCs and story is surprising as well. The NPC quests in the DLC were so much more straightforward and I found myself completing these easily on my own and learning a ton about the story this time around.
Ah yes, the dozens of dragons from the base game you find in the jagged peak are all totally new content🙏
@@INeedBloodborne2Strawman. Jagged Peak is not over 50% of the DLC. Yeah, there’s repeated content. It’s just not nearly as much he’s making it out to be.
@@OwlScowling That whole area is filled with the same dragons as in the base, with the only unique one being Bayle💀.
You didn't even read my reply💀
Same. This video immediately starts with spreading misinformation and supposedly high price tag even though 40 dollar price is even low for the abundance of new content in the expansion.
Rellana can in fact use Twin/Double Moon spell more than once. I just fought her yesterday and I think the trigger is that once she's on 25% of health left, she will do the spell but if you linger on the fight long enough, she can do the spell again which what happened to me. Thankfully the move is really well telegraphed and she can't spam it over and over like Malenia with Waterfowl. The problem (and this goes for most bosses in Elden Ring base game and DLC) is that those super attacks rarely reward you with punish window.
So you succesfully dodge super attack that can beat you but you're not rewarded with a window to do. Even if you get a window to punish, the best you can do is just 1 attack.
I beat Rellana with dagger and shield parry but even with a dagger, you can only attack 3 times at a time at most. There's not really a dance in Elden Ring (except for a couple bosses like Godfrey or Radagon), most of the time you're watching a boss having a good time
A, the same old same old BS people used to say about the ER base game bosses and which was proven so gloriously wrong. It's a dance. You are just asked to actually participate in it instead of passively waiting for your turn.
rellana's twin moon attack is always a free jump r2 window
@@shiroamakusa8075 can't you read my last paragraph? I'm not playing passive but even with a dagger, you can only do 1-3 attack after bosses long combo
@shiroamakusa8075 No it's okay keep repeating the same mindless retorts as every other indoctrinated modern FS fanboy as if they can do no wrong. It's almost like you think the people criticizing the game haven't beat it, likely multiple times. Is it doable? Absolutely. Is it fun? No. It just feels sloppy. I love Fromsoft just as much as the next person but the mixed reviews the DLC has garnered are 100% justified. It's sad to see where this community went post-ds3/sekiro.
@@anthonyhertlein4629 Git gud, scrub.
everyone forgets that Elden Ring is just a better version of Dark Souls 2 (but its still Dark Souls 2). the expansion power creep also follows the same cadence of DS2
It would be nice to be more accurate when you make these critiques. You claim there are "at least 6 Ghostflame dragons". This is not the case. There are only 3. I also find it weird how much the presence of a boss HP bar seems to piss people off when it's not a totally unique enemy. Like, no one cares that there are 4 hippo enemies in the open world that drop scadu blessings. They don't have boss HP bars so people just view them as elite enemies and they don't care.
Same goes for the furnace golems, of which there are 8. No boss HP bar = no issue, apparently. On the other hand, 3 Ghostflame dragons is somehow an affront and an egregious example of repetition, because they do have boss HP.
I just find it very silly that something purely cosmetic, like the presence of a boss HP bar, could have such a massive influence on how people perceive these enemies. Ultimately the boss HP is just a UI choice, it doesn't actually change anything. To me having field bosses repeated is irrelevant. They are basically just elite enemies, or mini-bosses if you will. Almost all games re-use elite enemies / mini-bosses to some extent.
And the field bosses are totally optional. Don't wanna fight a 3rd dragon? Well don't. You can ride past it. So to me it's almost a total non-issue. The most important thing is whether these fights are fun or not. If the Ghostflame dragon was an incredibly fun fight, then I wouldn't mind fighting it even 10 times. I've fought Isshin in the Sekiro boss rematches dozens and dozens of times, because it's insanely fun.
That's the core issue imo. A lot of fights in Elden ring are not that fun imo, and I think that is a much bigger concern than simply repeating a dragon mini-boss a couple times. Again, if it was a great mini-boss that people were eager to fight, it would be totally fine. Or if it just didn't have a boss HP bar, I guess, lol.
That said I do agree with some of your other criticisms. Some aspects of the combat and boss design in particular are indeed getting stale for me, which is sad. I'd also add that while you said FS have been essentially re-using the same combat system for 10 years, the truth is it has been 15+ years.
Demon's Souls came out in Feb 2009, and let's be real, despite all the additions and refinements, the combat in Elden ring is still essentially the basic Demon's Souls template. So yeah, imo they definitely need to massively revamp it. Sekiro was a great example of innovative design with some Souls influence but a lot of its own DNA as well.
They need to something else in that vein.
Funny enough, the thing with people getting hung up on the boss-HP bar is pretty much how gamers have always worked.
World of Warcraft initially had a system where you got less XP after playing for too long. Players were up in arms. Blizzard reduced all XP you got and made the game give you more XP when you didn't play too long - resulting in the exact same numbers as before, but now everyone was happy because they got a bonus.
This is the equivalent of a store raising prices and then doing a sale, and gamers as whole are ignorant enough to fall for it.
Also, am I the only one who likes the Flying Dragons? It's like fighting Darkeater Midir, but way less stressful, I dig it.
I think the main gripe about the Ghostflame dragon is that 2/3 of them are exactly the same fight, while 1 of them at least has a unique move by summoning adds (which could be a critique since it essentially make it the same fight as the one in Scadu plateau)
Adding an HP bar is definitely not just a cosmetic choice, it creates expectations and in consequence different reception of the enemy. Developer slapping in a boss indicator is a clear sign that we as a player should pay it more attention than the regular enemies, that it's a different kind of encounter, it's a bigger deal. Imagine all enemies without exception had bossfight hp bars and musical theme. I'd bet you would find it feeling wrong.
"If this is my fault for not reading item descriptions" - "maybe put the story in the game"
You mean.. like in.. the item ... descriptions...?
I don't want to engage with the storytelling but it isn't my fault for not doing so
@@duckchen2676 Also anyone who enjoys this form of storytelling is a shill
Yeah NGL this is not survival horror. This series doing this sort of storytelling schtik was just a fact, not the objectively correct approach. Some people might want to read item descriptions, some might just ignore them or maybe some people will not even bother looking at them due to use of guides and other external resources. At the end of the day there are just better ways of telling a story. "Show, don't tell" and so on...
12:05 YES!!! This is the first review who said this and I always get this way!!! I hated getting a new weapon, kinda liking it but then not knowing if, once fully upgraded , it was actually viable. The +15 upgrade system is nothing but a barrier to experimentation . It’s not fun . It’s just a resource sink and time sink. Literally why even have the upgrade system ? Just make it go to +3 or something, with very little numerical difference in damage. Make the difficulty come from the actions and intelligence of the enemy not from big numbers and big hp pool
+15 upgrade system? what game are you playing that you are rambling about ?
this content is supposed to be endgame..if you finished the end game & did not have the bell bearings or the very popular rune farm unlocked already, then thats kinda on you..I never had problem with upgrade mats & fully upgrading most new weapons since I can freely buy them anyway
@@aNsWeRkEy02 It's Not thats its hard to get bell brings or materials - its that it is a CHORE. Yes I went to do the generic dungeons to get the bellbarings. yes I pursued materials. then I went to the Smith and the maiden husks to buy more and the n press button multiple times to upgrade my new weapon. So much faff and chores to even evaluate my new weapon. and mostly it wasn't actually very good so I felt I wasted that time. None of this is good design.
Miyazaki is in the Kojima position, I feel. He clearly WANTS to do something good else. Always mentions a traditional JRPG and liking horror like Bloodborne for atmosphere…but the money is in Dark Souls. LET THE MAN MAKE SOMETHING OTHER THAN METAL GEAR! 😂
Then he's going to have to refuse Bandai Namco.
Good analysis. I think open worlds don’t suit fromsoft level design. They peaked with DS3-Bloodborne in terms of striking the right balance with world size. The reused dragons and tree spirits are just lazy, and I feel like it’s because all the work went into legacy dungeons (which aren’t that good compared to base Elden ring game)
FromSoft level design in an open world is literally the reason Elden Ring is as big as it is.
I have to say, as someone who really really enjoys lore stuff 99% of the time, the interesting lore is just not enough to carry the stagnant ass plot for both base game and the DLC.
In the other non open world FS games this murky kind of storytelling worked caused the game was small / short enough that the info you do get / interactions you do have are enough to keep you intrested until the next exciting fight.
The info ER gives you (& the info it keeps from you) creates too many questions and not enough answers to be engaging. I don't feel like I'm on an adventure, I feel like I'm stumbling around in someone's incoherent dream. Dunno if anyone shares this feeling, feels like kind of a taboo thing to say.
Yeah I'm tired of the item description meta too. Yet another dept Sekiro is superior in
I've said this a hundred times, better to give me 80% of the lore and keep 20% mystery than to give me 20% of the info on something and the remaining 80% is just bs I have to figure out.
There's things that it's fine to keep to yourself, we don't need lore on who the bearded guy of the dynastic remains is, or whatever Rauh used to be as a society, but the fact that we can't even piece together the timeline of events in the game and the relationships between characters feel so disjointed is not good at all.
Ranni orchestrated the night of black knives, she says it in the game and... that's it, she just says it, we don't get more info, we don't confront her, she gives no motives of hatred for Godwyn, she doesn't show concern for Radahn or Rykard? her brothers?
What about Melina? She was a whole lot of nothing wasn't she?
It feels like playing a traditional RPG with disabled scripted events. You can run around, pick up items, pre-placed enemies aggro and you can kill them, but nothing special ever happens anywhere, as if you weren't meant to be there yet. Every place feels like you have missed some event that's supposed to make it react to you somehow. Like having broken Morrowind's main questline and living in a doomed world, but worse, because even all the side quests are gutted. It's IKEA storytelling, do our work for us by assembling it on your own, and you will even grow attached to it. And it became a massive hit, just like IKEA.
For me it's pretty hard to get intrigued by such a world to the point that I piece together bits of lore from item descriptions, vague monologues and semi-random environmental storytelling. Demon's, Dark Souls 1 or Bloodborne were pretty focused games, their minimalist storytelling worked, because they were being vague about simple concepts and you kept getting clues that reinforced them. Even if you weren't clear about the exact events, things made sense. ER is being vague about multiple convoluted storylines that don't have any common themes beyond the dying world established all the way back in Demon's Souls.
It's sad, because you can still see all the effort and passion put in there, but it's all marred by attempting to reignite the same flame over and over again. Break your chains, tell us what you really think, mister Miyazaki. You don't have to be a slave to your claim to fame. People fell in love with your games because they had a spark to them, not because they were exactly the way they were.
It's ironic that the series' strongest theme ends up being one of its biggest issues IRL.
"Don’t you understand? No one wishes to go on..." - FromSoft devs these days, probably
@Kaucukovnik666 bro facts. There's so much irony in the fact the games keep retelling the same story over and over.
Personally I love how rich in themes and worldbuilding this game is - people who love playing architect and historian can find a lot to glean from, and that makes Elden Ring feel more transparent as you use your inductive reasoning in addition to item descriptions. IMO half the fun is being forced to draw your own interpretations of the lore and characters - like the Miquella Radahn thing is going to be talked about and debated forever, even though I think more signs point to its genuinity and Radahn's willingness than not, and quite obviously, but you have to be someone who is willing to connect the dots given in a way that suits your narrative either way. Whether or not you like that depends on your mileage. I'm sure I'm going to find a lot of people in this video who don't like that formula, though, and want someone more transparent like Sekiro.
If we're talking about the games boss fights, I agree, we're about at the breaking point.
However, this formula has plenty of life left to explore a title that returns to the idea that the games difficulty is 50/50 between combat and exploration. Could you imagine a game world designed with the same idea as OG Dark Souls with traversal mechanics that aren't terrible?
Exhibit A: Another Crab's Treasure
…understandable, have a great day.
Yeah the same formula for 10+ years aside from 2 games does get kinda old huh
Yeah...
26:54 blatantly untrue, you can immediately sprint in the other direction and roll before he slams, and continue to roll through the spikes with no damage.
was it that intuitive tho? I've beat him already but I never understood why this game always just throws random attacks that need specific combinations of moves to dodge properly. I get it they punish you for not dodging the gravity attack but it's excessive. I randomly dodged the spikes by my own a handful of times and never really replicated it when I wanted to. That wasn't fun, or enlightening or anything. I was just like "oh I dodged it, ok".
Good god dude. Just because something is theoretically dodge-able doesnt make it dodge-able
@@kaiserfakinaway5909 i figured out how to dodge it very quickly. literally just sprint opposite of radahn and roll in time with the sword slam, then roll until you're out. its certainly more intuitive to avoid than waterfowl.
@@pigeonking4683 I found dodging waterfowl more intuitive than this one. I did get hit on both but I was more reliably able to dodge a bit better on waterfowl.
Guess different people have different experiences.
@@FROEZOEN its extremely easy to figure how to dodge that attack lmao idk what youre yapping about
Great points! I blame most of the game's flaws on the decision to make it an open world game. I don't mind the huge empty areas so much (they do create an atmosphere), but I am bothered by the underwhelming "rewards" hidden in them. Especially in the DLC, the amount of trash treasures was bothersome. So many f***ing cookbooks! The entire crafting system was introduced to bloat the treasure count to keep up with the huge map. It was there to create the illusion that you were finding interesting stuff. While you can do a full consumable-only run, it is a very niche play-style. It's a bit weird how most of the stuff you pick up, is crafting related. Making the really good recipes dependent on the limited "exceedingly rare" ingredients ruins this system. In a game where you have try bossfights over and over again, limiting the consumables in such a way is a bad design choice.
I disaggre with the scadutree fragments. Like I actively dislike those. They do make exploring meaningfull and discourage farming runes on safe spots, but once the exploration part is done, it just becomes a chore you have to do to actually go to the rest of the content. On second playthroughs they become absolutely obnoxious, since you basically have to either actively ignore them or go search every easy-access one as soon as possible. So this easily turns into 1/2-1 hour of "stuff I have to do to get started". Besides I don't think you deciding to leave the fight and go farm some levels is something that should be prevented. Like levels don't even matter that much. You played with basically the "Bonk build" (heavy double weapon and spam jump heavy for massive damage and posture break) which is probably one of the strongest simple builds. You could literally have 100 levels less than a guy using some mix stats on dex-arc-faith and still have an easier time on a boss than them. Builds matter waaaaaaaay more than levels, ask no-hitters.
Also, I don't think it is fair to say the map is empty, it is not. Sure the finger zones are empty, but they are like... intentionally empty, like they are trying to convey there is nothing there other than roamming weirdos. I do agree they are lame though. But saying there is nothing on the top part of the map is a lie. You have to go there to progress with a quest that culminates on a pretty cool rememberance boss (one I think you didn't even mention, so maybe you missed it?), you have I think 3 unique spells, a bunch of deep lore and a trinket that is REALLY helpfull against the final boss. On the cerulean coast you also have a deathbird (yes, another repeated boss) with unique loot and even more loot scattered around. Also the undead dragons are unique, their moveset, while similar to the original ones, has some tweaks on timing areas and follow ups (and some extra special moves), that actually makes you fight them differently. The one at the cerulean coast summons a freaking army of undead, where you have to make the choice of either slowly kill them while dodging the dragon or ignoring them and try to fight the dragon while they are there (that's pretty cool if you ask me, not amazing, but it spices up the fight). The zone is not great in terms of content, but it is far from empty.
I do agree with everything else though, that's totally fair.
I agree with some of your points, but I do think saying it’s okay for an area to be empty just because it was “intentional” is lazy. Empty areas are not engaging, barely add to lore, and are just time sinks to explore through. Like the video claimed, a big reason many explore in Elden Ring is because 1/10 times it leads to something incredible but the 9/10 times the rewards are a scenic view or lackluster item. On repeat playthroughs most people are just going to skip it entirely or rush to the objective which begs the question why spend time creating a space if you’re not going to fill it? To market the expansion to be bigger than it really is?
Scadutree blessing were a fix to a problem that never existed.
I have no idea what we're they thinking with this leveling system, when we the player can control our stats and weapon levels.
@@dvdivine1962 it was made to stop over levelled characters from easily sweeping through the dlc
Your assumption about the notes being left there if you missed something is incorrect. Those notes from Leda and other NPCs are always in those locations, it has nothing to do with missing quests or dialogue.
What did you expect from these people. Deeply misinformed, as always.
@@stefanostsougkranis5851 There's legit criticism to be had against Fromsoft but damn I'm seeing some unreasonable negativity too, and I say this as someone who can talk for hours of what Elden Ring did wrong and how the DLC improves on some things and makes others worse, overall it's still way more fun than most other games out there to me though.
From has talent, I wanna see them do their best, what I know they can do, bullshit lightshow bossfights like Radahn and pointless shortcuts because there are 9 graces on a single legacy dungeon is not their best, it hurts the game.
The flame is fading.
i'm not against the idea of open-world dark souls, but for elden ring, they honestly should've cut the entire world in half and condensed it, with a heavier focus on the legacy dungeons. for the open-world elements, these could've been surprising and dynamic, with random enemies, random loot, and random encounters. a better, more effective crafting system would've been great too, and, i wouldn't've even minded semi-customizable magic and alchemy (but that might be too much to ask for tbh).
with the way elden ring is right now, (especially with NG+), wandering the open world feels more like a long trudge through stagnant, un-interractive spaces i've already been to, filled to the brim with enemies i've already fought a billion times before. the magic wears off quickly, and i just feel uninterested and disillusioned - one of the worst feelings to have when playing these games
Some of these arguments seem to come from a place of misunderstanding.
Legacy dungeons and the open world are not the same thing, They're not supposed to be. Enjoy it for what it is rather than hating it for what it's not. If you don't like open worlds in general that's fine, the genre comes with pros and cons like everything else. I do agree that the vague npc quests don't work very well in an open world.
Not understanding the lore doesn't mean the lore is bad or pointless. The way many Fromsoft games are designed we come in after everything has happened and it's up to the player to make sense of it all based on what remains. The Shaman Village is kind of a big deal and it doesn't take much digging to find out why.
As far as the idea of stagnation is concerned, I'm amazed we still have the same item and spell system since Demon's Souls. If you ask me that's the one thing in desperate need of updating.
I'm also not a fan of the massively reduced windows to do anything in boss fights; Sekiro did it right because you could build up the enemies' posture bars while they attack you by deflecting so even if a boss attacks non stop you can still do something beyond simply surviving. In Elden Ring it sometimes feels like playing a game with a 6 year old that wants to have all the fun without letting you play, we have so many awesome weapons and spells and ashes of war but can't get much use out of them which is a real shame.
I'm having to push myself to get to the end of this DLC. I cant believe I've come to a point where I'm no longer excited for a new Fromsoft release. Ill buy and play the next game on day one, but there has been a shift in perception for sure, and it makes me pretty sad.
Don't just mindlessly buy Day one. Wait to see if they genuinely innovated. Telling them they are guaranteed to have your money is what will make them never want to change or get better
@@thedoomslayer5863 sure, generally. But this is the first time I've felt like a game of theirs missed the mark in 15 years. I have over 350 hours in Elden Ring, so I've played it, platted it even. I did enjoy it, really.
It just doesn't evoke the same vibe as their previous games. It feels weirdly shallow, almost formulaic in its design, and the DLC really cranks that feeling of artifice way up while the wonder from experiencing it for the first time isn't there to gloss it all over.
So to your point, I agree it is usually best to wait on dlc, but Fromsoftware's track record gave no indication that it wouldn't deliver. And in such a weird, vague manner.
Armored Core 6 felt like a breath of fresh air for a company that has been working on one type of game for more than a decade.
Also LotF and Lies of P have shown how far outdated Fromsoft's soulslike design has been.
@@scissors0009 Well lesson learned for you i hope, even CDPR a once universally beloved games company failed tragically with the release of their latest game on day one. These companies we hold in such high regard can fail and at some point likely will.
Larian studios makers of baldurs gate 3, one of my favorite games of all time, their next game i will wait and see before i buy it.
NEVER give your money day 1 or say they are 100% going to get your money. You learned this lesson hopefully now and i encourage you to spread it to others in a similar boat to you.
@@aryabratsahoo7474lies of p is notable in that it's the first souls like to outclass from soft. Not saying it's better than dark souls 1 or bloodborne(because it isn't) but comparing it to Elden Ring and it's dlc, From Soft's most recent efforts feel kinda sloppy in comparison.
Thank you very much for making this video, it echoes the majority of my thoughts after beating the dlc yesterday.
I played DS 1, 2 and 3 before ER. Hated DS2, loved and still love 1 and 3.
The ER base game was an overall great experience, although it made me realise that open world games aren't my cup of tea. Too much space to fill makes it impossible to fill it meaningfully. The novelty factor of the base game paired with my collector's drive buffered against that.
Not so in the DLC, due to the reasons that you outlined well. At some point in the dlc, maybe 6-8h in, I caught myself saying "Wtf, I've explored this whole area just to get some stupid leaves that I'll use?"
After this, I played with the fextralife map open alongside the game, filtering out all the crap I don't need at this stage of the game - and that showed me how vast areas of the dlc are absolutely pointless to explore!
This brings me to my second biggest issue with the game: there are no clues where you're supposed to go.
And yes, you are supposed to go to places in a certain order - otherwise you'll simply miss out on events, dialogue, loot and lore.
This is truly the dumbest part of Elden Ring for me, because it wastes so much potential.
Imagine having a fantastic lore in your game that creates millions of views when channels like Vaatividya tell it, only to make it completely missable in the actual game because you didn't read what it said on one of the 4000 items, or you missed a (cryptic) dialoge from an NPC because you progressed in a way that you shouldn't have progressed (in an open world, which sole purpose is free exploration!) 😂👍
Half of the map size would have done the trick, too. And legacy dungeons are far more enjoyable for me, to a point where I will deliberate long before I ever play an open world game again.
Regarding the bosses:
I was really disappointed by Messmer and the scorpion lady (she died so fast on my first attempt, I didn't even remember the name 😅) being far too easy.
Conaort Radahn however felt way too overdone for the reasons you described.
I encountered him and got rekt maybe 10 times, and then decided to change my build to a shield poke build. That killed him first try. Sure, I could have spent hours to study his move set, like I did with Malenia. However, Radahn is a broken design, whereas to me, Malenia is the most difficult boss of all the fromsoft games I played while still fair. Beating her felt rewarding. Seeing how people beat Radahn by dodging for 30 seconds to get one hit in isn't my definition of fun or a challenge. The shield poke victory over him didn't feel like an accomplishment, but more like a relief along the lines of "I'm glad this dlc is now over".
All good things must come to an end, and I hope FS learns this with elden ring before they try to cling on to an era of the past with their next game. Given their own lore, you'd hope they know it's sometimes necessary to burn away the old to make room for the new.
You know you can buy infinite smithing stones if you collect the bell bearing from the main game, which you should have done by that point considering the DLC is endgame, right?
You dont have to farm the materials...
And yes, if you have a game with that much build variety and you just play with a single weapon the whole playthrough, then of course you will get "pointless rewards" for your build if you refuse to switch it up.
I have been playing souls games for 10 years, and I’ve maybe read 20 item descriptions. 99% of players get there lore from a RUclips video, and then will call it a good story. Kinda misses the whole “playing the video game” point. The delivery is just as important as what’s hidden beneath the surface. If we all had to read 300 item descriptions and create our own versions of the story, we’d enjoy it much less.
The DLC was still a huge success though and a pleasure to playthrough. I dunno, as a game dev myself, I don't really care that a boss is reused here and there, or that the game doesn't justify every single thing lorewise. But then, I don't play these games for lore, I do it for the environment, spectacle, and tight gameplay.
6:41 that one frame headshot LMAO
the world build is good. empty? I dont think so, some of u probably play for stats, build , blabla, ofc u just care if the open world have any item for u, so u think it is empty. but look at the world, imagine about the story that happen here. look for item descriptions
if a falling star beast there, then there is story go along with it. it fall right next to finger ruin that lead to mother of all fingers, see connnection? cant put a gozilla there instead of a falling star.
those who dont have name create the theme for them, u want to give them name? nameless mauloseum have name huh?
if there are 6 balck dragon, therre are story go along with them, at least u could think about it that way. why u think give them diferent color make any diferent? only thing matter is is there any story related to them 6 identical dragon? even when u give them 6 diferent color, the question is the same.
u critique the open world without a single mention about how it relate to the story. so ur critique is weak
to critique an open world, u have to talk about the stories it represent, without talking about that, u cant talk about open world.
also, all the critique about boss hard is just u ppl got angry bc u cant tell other ppl to get gud anymore, cant feel superior anymore so u complain. cant put ppl bad at this game down anymore so u turn back to the game. to be honest, only hard boss in thiss game is radahn.
Up to this point I used to think that ER's boss design felt wrong mostly because of their unfair nature but replaying DS1 after about 7 years made me realise something; Souls games have always been unfair, the reason they are challenging is becuase they put you in seemingly impossible scenarios and expect you to overcome these unhinged odds. The process of beating a boss or an obstacle was never truly "fun" to me, succiding was. I'm currently stuck on Orstein and Smough and let me tell you it's actual torment. I'm using a greataxe that has insanely slow attacks, low range and long recovery animations and it makes the fight really tough for me. It immidiately reminded me of the suffering I went through while fighting Bayle or Consort Radahn.
Here's the difference tho: the duo bossfight is the first roadblock I've encountered in the entire game, every obstacle before them I overcame through caution and patience. It only makes sense that this is the first major spike in difficulty for me; I'm literally fighting 2 giant warriors by myself. Obviously it should be hard and when I eventually defeat them using my dogshit weapon I will feel like a god but the main point is that the bossfight is challenging just because I have to fight 2 dudes instead of one but it's sufficient enough because it's the only duo bossfight in the entire game and makes sense from the game's world perspective, it would make sense that fighting two guys at the same time would be an insane challange.
For contrary in SOTE literally every single boss is like that. Every single bossfight is some kind of a roadblock with some crazy shit that's suppoused to gradually increase the difficulty more and more but in consequence makes every other encounter less and less unique. The problem with that is the souls combat is perfect for dungeon crawling, for the slow and methodical approach where caution and high consequence of actions are the core of challange. That segways into another important point; the spectacle and high octane movesets of ER's bosses make the combat look fucking goofy. Look at aforementioned Radahn for example: he shoots giant rocks, shatters the ground and in his second phase he literally creates waves of light and explosions that would destroy a castle yet literally all our character has to do to avoid it is to roll. It just looks silly. Feels like the game's immersion suffers a lot because of the missmatch between the spectacle and the souls combat even with all of it's modifications. I'm not saying DS1 and DeS didn't have aoe attacks that could be dodged with roll but in ER and the dlc the dial is turned up to 11 going over and beyond reason.
I feel like we're often too focused on the mechanical aspects of the combat and don't look at the bigger picture of what it's design accomplishes in the grander picture.
I can actually see the vision behind these bosses and why they were made the way they are but it falls apart for me simply because that vision colides with the nature of Souls combat.
I agree with this comment so hard it's crazy. There was always this feeling in this game when fighting the literal greatest swordswoman to exist, master magic users that studied for centuries, a literal creator god - does it really make sense that a little roll would save me against the holy light of a god? It's kind of immersion breaking in a way that earlier souls games, armored core, and sekiro aren't.
It was at that point that I realized that playing it with just rolling and not using bloodhounds step or other ashes of war just wasn't as fun for me. I get that it's supposed to be about disempowerment and trying to overcome the impossible, like you said, but it really just doesn't feel right anymore, and it looks and feels silly. I heard Nioh and lies of P do great things with their player kits so I'll have to check those out
@@mr.b89 Nioh 2 is a better game than elden ring IMO. The combat is in a completely different level, like youcould take a thousand hours to truly master it and even then you could probably push it even further, it's more like dmc with stamina.
And the story and everything is simple but satisfying, they play to their strengths. Elden ring fell apart under the weight of it's own ambition for me and the DLC is just a rushed, lazy cash grab
I have to disagree with the word unfair about Ds1, on of the most though out games in terms of gameplay and worldbuilding (lets ignore some unfinished areas) the game gives a tool for every situation. If you get decent at rolling you can even no hit most of the fights or use a big shield and laugh.. The highest peak in difficulty being O&S offers you the pillars to control the pace of the fight and even that one is as fair as it can get. In struggle a lot of people seem to use the words "tedious" and "unfair" too lightly.
@@Hyde_Lawrence I see what you mean but actually the point I was making is to present the feeling of unfairness as a positive aspect of the game. Maybe I worded myself insufficiently but what I was getting into is how the game isn't overly-concerned with providing a fair and honourable challenge and does so with sensible justification wich helps to solidify the world as hostile and real.
@@slei4676 I'll say that the games never felt unfair by any means. I know a lot of people that strugle and say "unfair" but even up to sekiro which was consider way harder, you play that game and you have an answer for each and every move while being extremely clean, satisfactory and challenging. A lot of people like to quote early miyazaki's interviews where he repeats over and over again that difficulty was never the objective of the games, maybe he started to change his mind after a few games but not by the time of Ds1.
This is why Sekiro is peak FromSoft combat and level design, minus fashion. I want a new King’s Field. It could be the culmination of everything FS has perfected from DeS to ER.
If they had sekiros combat system but with a bunch of different weapon types and playstyles it would be pretty much perfect
The perfect FromSoft game would have the interconnected level design of Dark Souls 1, Elden Ring's depth of combat choices and QOL features, Sekiro's story telling, fluidity of movement, and parrying, and Bloodborne's themes and lore.
Rellana's twin moons actually can go twice of the fight goes on for long enough. And "long enough" in my experience is one every fifteen minutes or once per two minutes
I agree with almost everything except the Elden ring 2 part. If they announce it i will be pretty darn excited.
Your opinion is well thought out but I would disagree with most of the things here. To each his own I suppose.
dissagree about Bayle fight. For me was one of the most epic and fair in history of souls but agree with radahan. Radahan was worst dlc fight from all souls series, extremly bad designed on many areas
True, Bayle was the most fun dragon fight in all of Elden Ring period and I'm thankful you can only lock on into his head cause the game is basically screaming at you that the viable way to fight him is just focusing on it rather than doing bullshit tactics of attacking his tail or something.
@@Yama-qg3ilthe only problem is that even if you stay in front his head curls around the camera togeter with his thick body and arms, it's so hectic even Ongbal can't keep it under control. Adding an extra lock on point to his center of mass would have somewhat remedied that.
Least favorite boss fight in the game for me.
The example of the Shaman Village might just be the single most glaring example of not even trying to engage with the world design. All it takes is reading the description for the two unique items found in this location to figure out it is Marika's original hometown. Thus, likewise, the entrance to the area being guarded by two of her golden knights isn't just a lazy copy paste, it's part of the story.
Seriously, it only takes reading the description of two items to figure most of this out, it's not all that obscure.
...
Also, on a side note about runes, there is never a reason to ever feel conflicted about losing them to a boss and the entire situation mentioned with the Dancing Lion could have been avoided by just mixing the Twiggy Cracked Tear into the Flask of Wonderous Physicl (both base game items) allowing for easy retrieval.
so theres a whole empty area with only base game bosses in it just for a piece of lore? might as well have just removed the area around shaman village
Nice try. You’re telling me MARIKA’S hometown is just 3 repeat bosses and 4 shacks? Really? Oh wait, the huge field of leech monsters. Wow. Epic. 🙄
@@Yive.: Yes, just for a piece of lore. Lore that connects to one of the single most important figures in the entire game, providing hints to her origins and motivations.
That's the way FromSoft games have always worked. Stories inferred through level design and item placement rather than told outright in cutscenes. Elden Ring is just more of the same on a larger scale.
I mean, just consider something like Ash Lake in DS1 and how little there is to actually do there. It'd be easy for someone who never stops and considered the implications to write it off as a pointless side area, and yet its existence helps add insight into the age of dragons that preceded everything.
I appreciate people like you because I cant be bothered enough to explain why people like the dude who made this video are lost on these games
@@SmokeADig: I'm not telling you, the game is.
_"Secret incantation of Queen Marika. Only the kindness of gold, without Order... Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."_ --Minor Erdtree
_"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother... What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."_ --Golden Braid
9:16 haha, my reaction when I got there was identical. In fact, that was my reaction every time I ran into another Agheel, Tree Spirit, or other reused enemy/boss form the main game. I just couldn't believe this cost me 40$. The only hope I have for From's games in the future is that maybe the backlash on this DLC will get through to them this time. Elden Ring was a good but extremely flawed game, and it seems like the mindless praise it got made From not take into consideration any of the criticism while making this DLC.
Time for Armored Core.
I kinda dislike the fact that no hits aren't really possible without op attack builds though. Like in Sekiro and (less but still) in souls games you can always no hit good bosses, but when you goof up you loose a lot of health. In AC6 (yez I only played that one 0_0. At least I 100%ed it), you often get hit but don't take that much damage :/
If they fixed that AC6 would be my favorite game of them besides Sekiro I think
@@YoannBB Fromsoft changed the series from avoiding attacks all together to reactionary gameplay with 6.
@@micshazam842 probably habit and apparently from what I've heard it's more casual friendly and the bosses are too souls-likey?
@@micshazam842 yeah I didn't know they were supposed to feel more equal lol because the only game I've played was AC6
40$ surprisingly expensive for 40-60 hours of more content, a whole new map, lots of new bosses, weapons, armor sets? Most full price games nowadays are not half as long or creative as this DLC. 40$ is surprisingly CHEAP, you gotta clickbait some views I guess, sad.
Yea, I really don't understand that criticism. It's almost literally a whole game you get as a DLC. Also, it seems like the dude is not so wary of the current games and their fckin' 70+ dollars price tag for base game and the ~120 dollars price tag for the ultimate edition (fckin' Ubisoft). Like imagine developing a game and then selling a part of the game as DLC with the game launch.
Fromsoftware has my trust when it comes to value for money
You’re right. If I were fromsoft I would’ve charged $100 and watched you fanatics gobble it up asking for more.
@@bipolarexpress9827 calm down pipsqueak, thing is, there is no greatness in you, therefore you can't be fromsoft. How does me thinking 40$ being fair for 60 hours quality content, make me a fanatic, is beyond me, but I guess difficult games are not for you, and that's ok, skill issue is a real thing.
Ffs, if you all just considered the other person's perspective for 2 seconds you would realise that both sides are correct.
The game costs around 2/3 the price of the full game. It is not 2/3 the content of the full game, therefore it is expensive compared to the full game.
It is cheaper than the average game and has way more content than the average game. Therefore compared to the average full priced game, it is not expensive (/is a good deal).
Isn't thinking about things fun! Seriously guys, this isnt rocket science.
@@stevie-c1471 Didn't compare it to the full game though, as a DLC, in general, I feel 40$ for that amount of content is fully justified. Fromsoft's DLCs in the past would cost 20$ and offer 2-3 bosses, rarely 4 and would include way less areas to explore, yet they were fun and people did not complain. This DLC is huge and double the price compared to the older DLCs but it is way longer with way more bosses, minibosses, and basically everything else. There are elements to be criticized, sure, but price is not one of them.
First off, Fromsoft needs to learn how to program a camera that isn't constantly trying to romance the player's colon. Then they need to drop the stamina bar all together, along with weight burden, and environmental weapon deflection that only the player is victim to. Divorce themselves from the concept of locking the player into various animations which they can't cancel out of, and which lock out their controls. Separate the game currency that you spend at shops, from the experience points you spend leveling up your character, as this will dramatically reduce the time players have to spend grinding enemies for levels and equipment. And speaking of grinding, for the love of God stop giving the best items and equipment such obnoxiously low drop rates! Not to mention padding out the list of items enemies can drop, with crafting materials that are readily available all over the map. If I wanted to spend my time performing mind-numbingly boring and repetitive tasks, I'd go to work! At least in that case, my reward for all my time and effort would be given consistently, and not left up to random chance.
As for weapon upgrading, simply bring back Bloodborne's blood gem system, and have us upgrade the gems instead of the weapons. That way when we find a new weapon that we want to try, we can simply put our upgraded gems on the new weapons to raise it to the appropriate level. Then if we don't like a weapon or find something new, we just switch our gems to our preferred weapon to bring it up to speed.
Oh! And pause the damn game while we're in the menu! No being able to pause during online interactions with other players makes perfect sense. But when we're just playing solo PvE, there's no good reason why the game shouldn't pause while we're in the menu.
$40 is definitely not expensive for a dlc this size
When the *size* has a significant portion of it being basically empty, then its size is false advertisement
The entire right half of the dlc contains practically nothing. The starting area is also extremely empty. They repeated many of bosses/minibosses.
totally agree, especially in the current era of game development
tbh it could’ve had 1/4 of the content and still would’ve been the best value game released this year (so far)
It's mostly barren, size of limgrave with the contents of consecrated snowfield 💀
@@kappa0981
11 remembrance bosses
The size of limgrave + weeping + caelid if you consider the fact that there are often multiple layers of areas and while the base game often has gaps in it, and an edge that cuts in and out while each area in the dlc areas are fully filled
It has the content of at least 3/4 of the base game