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A Goodbye Letter to Modern FromSoftware's Game Design
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- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2024
- This time, I thought I'd do something different. This video is based on a review, I wrote an backloggd, where I am regularly logging my games. The video is spoiler-free and only features footage from the first area of the DLC. Let me know if this kind of video is interesting. If people enjoy this, I will upload more videos like this in the future.
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The review can be found here:
www.backloggd....
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Music used:
Demon's Souls - Maiden in Black
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree - Shaman Village
Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria - Divine View
Gothic 2 - Gothic Piano
Dragon's Crown - A Moment of Rest
Dark Souls - Firelink Shrine
Wow, I did not expect this kind of response. This is a super small channel and I honestly didn’t think this video would take off the way it did. Since the comment section feels more like a battlefield mostly occupied by extraordinarily passionate FromSoft cultists, let me make a few things clear about what this video is and what it isn’t.
This video is not a comprehensive critique of Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree or the game design philosophy behind modern FromSoftware’s latest titles. It is also not a call for action or change, nor did I intent to “complain” about anything. I simply recorded my thoughts and reasons for why I have come to the conclusion that FromSoftware has changed significantly in how they design their games and what elements they focus on. It’s a personal video concerned with my subjective experience with their games, in particular Shadow of the Erdtree, which, in my opinion, is emblematic for a greater shift in FromSoft’s approach to video game design that probably started sometime around the development of Dark Souls II. The video certainly isn’t perfect, but it is only meant as a reflection on why I fell out of love with this company that I used to love so much.
Now, let me address a few points that were raised in the comments by the more obnoxious part of the Souls “community”. First off, many here claim to know what “these games” are all about. Many commentors have pointed out, that they have always been about overcoming challenges in an unforgiving world that doesn’t care for you. That Souls is about failure and how to overcome it in the face of relentless adversity. Let me be as clear as possible. If you believe to know what these games are about, you are wrong. You do not know. I do not know. There is no universal, objective truth in this matter. Souls games and Souls-adjacent games mean different things to different people. There are a million reasons why people enjoy these games. To boil it all down to defeating difficult bosses and overcoming challenges is a painful and embarrassing testament to people’s media literacy or lack thereof. Challenge has always been a crucial factor in these games, that much is true, but to claim that this has always been at the core of the experience for everybody since Demon’s Souls is laughable.
It is absolutely fine if you disagree with the points I bring up in this video. I expected as much and I made this video in the first place to encourage discussion. The point was to present an opinion based on personal experience that might differ somewhat from the mainstream. I like videos that challenge my views and opinions and make me reflect on my own biases. I hope this video can do that for some people. For this reason, I would like to keep the comment section active. I have read some constructive criticisms here and I don’t want people to feel excluded. However, the insane amount of insults, your typical braindead “get goods”, gaslighting and overall disrespectful tone will not be tolerated. Please stay civil even if you heavily dislike this video and its content. Thank you.
yap
Don’t feel bad man, these frombots have been attacking anyone criticizing this dlc.
I respect your opinion. I just feel bad that your putting down Fromsoftware games. In my opinion if you do that, It's time to pack up gaming in general. Them, Capcom, and Nintendo are like the best right now. It might be time to find a new hobby 🤷
@@jeremybolt8950Because they all parrot the same points with no other insight lmao
@@jobbersupreme8720 you’re correct, they do.
Iv literally seen people say “skill issue” to criticizing the empty open world, these fanboys are brain dead.
I kind of don't understand the part where you say that you have to learn the boss pattern and adapt your play style to them because from my point of view, it is the essence of the from software boss, to learn and adapt and thrive for victory. This is this combination of hard to find lore and hard fight that create alchemy in these game and give them this charm.
To add to that that is also the essence of every fromsoft game. Putting you in a dangerous environment and giving you the tools to adapt the that environment and overcome overwhelming odds.
yeh I have a feeling his first game was base elden ring, where patterns are mostly rng and trading shots is viable -- not so much the case in ds3 and bloodborne. Had he criticized different things about the combat, this clip would be more credible. There are real issues, but many of the ones he listed just are not issues.
@@12rasalazar it has nothing to do with RNG.
Agreed. To me, what is great about soulslike games is that practically every boss you encounter makes you feel like a beginner again when you first encounter it. You have to gradually learn the fight through trial and error. Some people act like people who like these games because they are hard are just egotistical and trying to beat the bosses without summons/magic/etc. just for bragging rights to claim how good they are, but I don't think beating a boss like that means you're "good" it means you were persistent enough and embraced the learning process to eventually get through a tough boss fight by learning the mechanics and how to deal with them.
These aren't like FPS games where you can just get good at the game itself or the genre and steamroll through content on skill/reaction alone; the bosses in souls games can go from seeming nearly impossible, to being totally intuitive after lots of practice, but that process pretty much sets back to square 1 each time you reach a new boss. Souls games give the player the opportunity to embrace the learning process at every step of the way.
@@DrnMontemayor There is rng involved + frame 1 reactions from enemies, recovery/attack animation cancelation, etc. their behaviour is much more erratic than before and has less rythm and no strict sequences/patterns -- point is his argument makes no sense, because this is the fromsoft game in which you havethe most avenues of attack, and as I said, trading shots without learning patterns is more viable than ever in the base game. The dlc is less forgiving, so learning patterns is crucial, which has always been the case prior to base elden ring. Some bosses like midra and romina are very reminiscent of dark souls type of combat, w more strict flow, and noticeable pauses allowing the player to do dmg.
I'm with you 100%. I do prefer way slower and methodical combat on des, ds1, and ds2. It's kinda bad that the majority of the fanbase rn are consist of ds3 sucker who only care about the bosses. Souls game isn't just only about the bosses.
I saw a comment on the wiki that went "Can't see shit cap'n". Pretty much sums up most of the "flashy" bosses.
@@Xuhtig they're open, it's just that all I see is flashes of red and white on the screen.
The game is still not hard enough so they have to turned you blind. And then the fromsoft meatrider goes like "Wow, hard but fair 10/10 game design!!!"
maybe these games just aren't for you man. fighting the bosses, learning their movesets and dodging their attacks is what's fun and satisfying about them. people who describe souls bosses as "banging your head against the wall until you win" i think have the wrong idea, it's not about racing to the finish line but enjoying the way there, you know... enjoying the game? these bosses are a fun way to test your sharpness skills and get engaged in immersive combat.
messmer for example, is a fun boss fight not because i managed to beat him lol, but because he was fun to fight, and honestly i was sad once i beat him because that meant i wasn't able to fight him again.
i think you're exactly right 👍
1. Pve is not skill, youre remembering movesets.. like taking a test. Pvp is skill because you dont know what theyre going to do.. 2. Now pay attention this is the part droids can never grasp.. its not that its difficult, its the way in which they acheive it. Regardless of how you feel about it, this is undeniably true and you should be thankful some people recognise it. If inept toddlers keep praising them for cheap qnd lazy design thats what well get. "Artificial difficulty" their most blatant example would have to be puting 6 guys with guns around every mini boss in sekiro. Its not hard because its innovative and creative. What should be an enjoyable mini boss becomes monotonous task of taking the gunmen out just to fight the mini boss. Their games are not fun to play as a result of the endless persuit of difficulty. The irony is the only thing you need to learn to beat elden ring is to no panic roll.
@@Mini-vi8oois there a game you can give as an example that doesn't fall under this criticism?
Maybe videos with constructive criticism about things you like just aren't for you man. You can take a break from the internet for a while bud, no one's making you live on Twitter. Relax a little
@@Mini-vi8oo you can’t just say it’s an undeniable fact, it’s not, especially when your ‘fact’ is incorrect. Your example with sekiro isn’t bad design, it’s designed to get you to interact with the stealth mechanics in order to take out the ranged enemies first. Same with Elden ring none of the bosses are poorly designed, they are all designed to be tackled in different ways. Just because you don’t want to adapt and change the element or resistances you are using doesn’t mean the game is bad, it means you’re not playing it right. So no your point isn’t a fact it’s a lie.
The only boss that felt like a chore was phase 2 final boss. The only one I was just relieved to be done. I might never fight that one without ashes or summons again.
The old souls games were more then just bosses, they were about exploration, getting lost in maze like levels and unlocking shortcuts. It was about survival, trying to survive to the next bonfire(if there was one). Bosses were the reward for overcoming a difficult area. But that's no longer the case, and big thanks to that is the community that arose around these games. They turned difficulty into a fetish, obsessed over bosses and FromSoft payed attention to these things, and the result was Elden Ring. Very popular with the masses and the people that think these games are about bosses.
But for us, that were there since the start, when Demon Souls was officially released, we know that these games used to be a lot more then just a collection of hard boss fights. I still enjoy Elden Ring, and I enjoyed the DLC as well, but I will always prefer their older works.
Elden Ring is just the bosses? What are you talking about? Best level design in From is in ER.
Elden Ring only bosses? My friend, what game have you played.
I mean Elden Ring has more exploration built into the game than the other titles. You can be upset at what the game gives you for exploring, but MOST of the content and lore is easily missable if you don't explore.
The exploration also adds a lot to the lore of the game, which is leaps and bounds deeper and more layered than any of their other titles.
In saying that, I am first and foremost a bloodborne simp, and I miss their smaller dungeon styled games. Although it does exist in areas - Stormveil is one of my absolute favorite FS levels - I miss having a full game of that.
Ah yes, the average annoying Elden ring hater
miyazaki's honour is the challenge not the victory. you can watch rl1 fights from the dlc bosses and see how beautiful they really are. mastery is a core part of japanese culture, if you didnt learn how to beat the boss maybe you had too much help, thats why you didnt feel accomplished. sorry but you dont have to "memorize every attack" to prevail.
also exploring is part of the game, you could still upgrade or learn the fight better. putting good items predictably at the end of every hard area is silly as well, when has that ever been the standard in souls games?
As if I couldnt love you more Launders, you also play Elden Ring?!? I fully agree with you
The git gud argument or what people with brains read "ive got nothing" the fact you think the game was that hard only speaks to how much trouble you had with it, as everyones granny beat elden ring bud. Youre just missing the point and have no argument. "Ive got nothing" pve is not skill 🤦♂️🤣
Love you launders hope your having a good day and enjoying the DLC
You can absolutely beat this games without understanding what happened, they're a terrible measure of skill.
I'll normally defend From, but I saw one complaint about SOTE I just couldn't dispute:
"This is like fighting Sekiro-paced bosses with an unmodded Dark Souls character." It's not true about all of them, but Rellana is almost the Platonic Form of that.
OH MY GOD! Same stroy with DS3! I was so confused how people can like it so much
People have really forgotten why DS1 was so good.
Elden Ring and SotE aren't bad games, but they definitely don't understand the methodical part that made DS1 so special. The audience apparently also forgot and are dazzled by the cool art and feel proud of being so good at finishing the game that they can't see that, maybe, it's not nearly as good as it could have been.
i personally blame the prepare to die marketing
That was DeS (obviously no one played it or care and the remake is a joke) DkS under Bandai Namco was already a bastardization of DeS and clearly pointing towards where we are now.
@@kotzer71 Excatly, and that was on the first Dark Souls trailer so...
@@eggmiths3642 Yeah, I only played the remake. It was a breath of fresh air too. I do believe Dark Souls improved on some things, but I can see the path from there as well.
To be fair, I also think Elden ring improved some things, but the things it lost are just too great.
im ngl i really miss areas like blighttown and tomb of the giants. something we will never see again
I'm in the same boat as well, the brutal difficulty and the insane over-the-top anime boss fights were never what drew me to the series starting from Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. While the challenge really helped in selling the game's bleak but beautiful world, it was clearly not the entire point of those games as bosses were far more grounded, very learnable and are still a joy to fight to this day as they are built perfectly around the slower style of gameplay. Now that From seems to be catering only to the hardcore "git gud" crowd, continuously upping the ante and ignore the criticism of long-time fans, it's clear that these boss fights are just going to be poorly designed action game bosses but woefully misunderstanding what makes RPGs and action games so much fun.
I think its interesting how angry it makes people if you dont like the DLC. People's egos are tied to it being a good game so when you say "its not for me" they hear "your game is trash bruh". I feel similarly to you. I "got good" but I dont like the direction they're design philosophy is going. People say "well their games have always been hard" which I would counter that they've always been CHALLENGING. I know thats semantics but those like us will understand. I fear that because they became known as the studio that makes "hard games" they've made that their identity. And tbh their games have never been THAT hard. But their games were more than just hard. Demon Souls is precious to me. To this day im still a luttle bummed they dropped the sort of "puzzle" boss design of their early games. It wasnt hard only. It was engaging. It was interesting. It was unique. Im not saying that Elden Ring is bad by any stretch but its the continuation of a long trend that I've dreaded. These games arent being made for you and me anymore. ER set a precedent. Future bosses are going to be harder than Messmer and [redacted]. Its just a slog and a chore for me. But I am not trying to take that away from anyone who enjoys the DLC
Big agree, I absolutely loved the puzzle boss design in Demon's Souls. I see so many people giving bosses like Fool's Idol tons of crap just because it's a "gimmick boss", even though it's a great boss that challenges not only the player's ability to avoid damage but to also pay attention to their surroundings since the arena is also a huge part of the boss fight. Clearing the clutter, paying attention to the freezing sigils on the floor and finding the right cover from the clones to zero in on the real one is fantastic. They might have tried something similar with the Lamenter but there's not a single boss that's anything like Fool's Idol. And that's not even mentioning my favourite Souls boss of all time, which is Maiden Astraea.
@bumtism Yeah forget about all that, people with tiktok brains will call it boring, they want R1 and roll spam with bragging rights, they don't give a shit about how unique a game feels, it's a question of identity as a "hardcore" player nothing else.
@eggmiths3642 ds3 was their first game. They dont know what made dark souls a masterpiece and they just want to run in a straight line then spam roll and r1.
Gimmick and puzzle bosses can be interesting but my issue when Fromsoft does it is that it always results in feeling very frustrating to do. I do really want them to do interesting gimmick fights but from DS 1 - Elden ring, I have not seen a single interesting gimmick bossfight personally (I haven't played demon souls yet). I'm actually a bit glad they got rid of that in Elden ring considering they most recently tried to do that in Sekiro and that gimmick fight wasn't that great imo.
@@renar3339 That's because since DkS1 the priority is always frustration, BoC is designed to just cause the most internet salt/strategy guide views possible, if you check Astraea, Fool's Idol, or Adjudicator they were not THAT bad.
I don't think every Boss in the Dlc is bad like you said, but I also think that the majority really is. I personally really like Romina and Putrecent Knight a lot, but whenever I say that to someone they are always cofused why I like these Bosses more than the other Bosses in the Dlc and the Base Game. The reason is simple, I think that these 2 Bosses have only a little or no Bullshit in their fight. Romina is by far the most fair fight in my opinion with no stupid delay shit, no stupid AOE attacks, but cool combo strings that feel good to dogde, nothing flashy I can't see shit moments, has good tells for every move and not over the top with her moveset in general. Same for Putrecant Knight in my opinion. He has some delay attacks, but these are not as stupid as Messmar's or Midra's in my opinion. His horse combo String is also likely my favourite to dogde in the entire game. His Blue Flame stuff is also cool and not stupid to doge like it maybe seems. In general I think these Bosses are ez to learn, but this also doesen't mean, that they are too ez as well. Just 2 good Bosses in my opinion in a giant pot full of shit bosses. Every other boss in the base game and dlc has either stupid delay attacks, 2-3 stupid AOE's, I can't see shit moments, health steal, bullshit camera, stupid out of nowhere attacks and sometimes even undogable attacks that you can only dogde with luck or the right Pixel perfekt standing. The dlc in general was fun for me most of the time, but the bosses are still bullshit like in the base game. (only my opinion)
Personally, as a more reactive player, I 100% agree with your favourite bosses. Sadly though it's hard to say to most people in the community that you actually liked Romina as their first instinct is to assume that you hate challenge when in reality I prefer a reactable boss where its difficulty comes from maintaining a constant tempo. Delayed attacks with broken rhythm are very unfun for me and learning them feels mechanically sterile, and bosses with attacks that have incredibly subtle distinctions in telegraphing or require AI exploits or camera control (ie Elden Stars, close range Waterfowl, Deathrite Birds and Ancient Dragons) break all the immersion they created in what should be an RPG. I imagine those bosses are great for challenge runners but there's a cost to designing a boss like that and it's the reason why a lot of people compare them to modded content since lots of modded content is designed to challenge the hardcore players who have hit the skill ceiling of the base game. No boss I've fought in any game I've played has come close to Nightmare King Grimm in terms of seriously enjoyable challenge and honestly the way Elden Ring designed a lot of their bosses is only moving further away from that potential imo
@@AR-bj5etI completely agree with you, I mean I beat all the bosses, but was it fun to beat them especially when you try to always stick to the no summon role? I think defenitly no! Don't get me wrong, I also like other bosses as well from the main game or the Dlc, but I just didn't want to talk about all of them, because the comment shouldn't be to long. The thing is that I'm a reactive Player as well and these Bosses gave me that, but the majority just didn't.
For me it is about the fun and not dufficulty. If a boss is hard it can also be fun like Midir, Friede or Fume Knight.
Hey thank you for this video. I somehow felt pretty sad too after finishing the dlc. It took me a while trying to understand what happened- and some similar conclusions came up as you presented- boss fights could be too much. Visual clutter, so many delayed attacks, and long consecutive attacks are the main reasons that make it hard for me to enjoy. I actually picked up Lies of P again and damn I enjoyed playing it so much, reminiscent of playing earlier Fromsoft games. It is kinda like a reminder that moderation is always important.
In terms of the lore, I like what we have here, and Marika’s part is my favorite; but there is gotta be another dlc. if not they are not doing justice to their own masterpiece.
I have yet to play Lies of P but that sounds very promising, might give it a try soon :)
For many people, beating a hard video game boss is the crowning achievement of their lives.
It’s okay if you can’t do it without mimic , but shaming players who enjoy souls games is reflective of who you are as a person. A shitty one.
its not skadoo as in doodoo or shadoo as in doodoo, its shado(w). its just a weird take on the Old/Middle English spelling of the word Shadow.
Doodoo 🤣
The first From-Software game I ever played was DS2; I loved that game to bits. I endearingly called it the best Castlevania game I'd played up to that point. I remember feeling very overwhelmed with the bosses and faster-paced combat when I first played Dark Souls 3. I use to find it pretty rough and I hated getting gatekept by the bosses. After some time I eventually came to find the appeal in the faster combat, but SOTE has been the tipping point where where it's started to lose its appeal for me.
In previous games, I swear most bosses still gave ample time to pull off your cool attacks and spells, but for half of the bosses or so in SOTE and ER I would be lucky if I got off one quick spell or heavy attack without being immediately punished for it. I've reached my limit for how much the bosses are demanding of me, and I've personally gotten quite tired of it.
It doesn't help that most bosses in Elden Ring are fought the same way, too. There's barely any gimmick or puzzle bosses and they just end up mostly feeling the same to fight.
Nameless king worked bc that was his thing, noone else really delayed moves in that game. Everyone does it in er to ridiculous levels not to mention the tons of other artificial bs
That's so true
Love seeing all these salty fromsoft fanboy comments, and yet the like to dislike ratio of this video shows that most people are fed up with the way things are heading. Good video
I wish they can do another Sekiro, you have 2 lives, and posture bar. It just makes the fight longer for the player, thus learning is also faster. Unlike ER where you just get smacked and see the loading screen right after.
Boss agressiveness also benefits Sekiro, In ER you just watch and wait for enemy long animations.
You make valid points ngl, I partially agree with you: I think it's OK for fromsoft to do these crazy flashy bosses, but they should have the simpler bosses like you spoke of in the video. A good ballance.
The problem of the final boss In the dlc is that it caused epilectic attacks
And the hairs make difficult to see what he's doing
I don't suffer from epilepsy myself, but I can totally see it being genuinely problematic for issues like that. For me the sheer amount of nonsense obscuring the boss just turns the fight into a complete blur for me and I can't even begin to focus, my brain just switches off the moment the pillars of light starts happening and messes up any sense of timing and strategy I had.
completely agree-
after every boss i beat i just felt like, "okay cool i guess"
i would like it much more if it were better balanced
sekiro is not really anything like ds3 so I dont know what your issues were, unless it was that the boss quality was too good which you'd be right
That's a good point. Let me try to explain what I meant by that. When playing Sekiro, I felt like the developer designed boss fights in this game in a way to specifically mess with players who had a "Souls" mindset when picking up Sekiro. In a way, it felt like the game was designed for the player or at least with the player in mind. Approaching Sekiro like a Souls game didn't work even though the game did feature similar mechanics. The game actively punished you if you played it like a Souls title.
And that's where it felt somewhat similar to Dark Souls 3. Challenge didn't feel as natural anymore. Bosses were hard because they needed to be hard, not because it would make sense for this specific boss to be hard. It's a little difficult to explain. Let me give an example. In Dark Souls 1, the final boss isn't the hardest in the game. That makes sense because of his backstory. That character, by the time you meet him at the end of the game, is a hollow, a shadow of himself, nothing is left of his former glory. So, why would he be the hardest boss in the game even though there are other powerful creatures who haven't literally burnt themselves to a crisp to keep the first flame going? He isn't. Can you imagine Sekiro not having the hardest fight at the end? No, because difficulty is what FromSoft started focusing on at some point. Sekiro's final boss had to be the hardest because that's what the game was about. I felt the same way about Dark Souls 3, that's why I drew the comparison there. But it wasn't always like this and Dark Souls 1 is a good example of that.
yeah I havent been having much fun in the DLC either. Main problem is the 2-hit kill combo chains that go on and on giving you barely enough time to do any damage yourself. Even random mobs out in the world do this like the Horned Warriors. Are we really expected to fight these respawning enemies multple times? So learn the timing. Sure, do that but then theres another combo chain that looks almost identical but with slightly different timing. And you have to keep track of all of this with your vision obscured by particle effects and the camera failing to keep up with the boss leaping all over the arena. Oh, and every time you get knocked down, the camera untargets and it can be a real struggle to get it to lock on again.
You summarize my feelings exactly. I could not bear myself to buy and play the DLC knowing that it would just be more head-bashing against a brick wall. But unfortunately these days elitist fanboys are everywhere, and FromSoft Souls-like games has become completely impervious to any sort of constructive criticism.
But I loved Armored Core 6, so FromSoft isn't completely hopeless. They can still make good action games.
I think there's a lot of valid criticism to be made about Elden Ring bosses but at the same time, I see many veteran Souls players who insist on using a mele weapon without using ashes of war, I was guilty of it myself, these things don't even exist in 1 and 2 and they're very situational in 3. In Elden Ring, they are extremely important and bosses became a lot easier once I understood that. It became a lot easier to deal damage and break stances.
Another important thing is you can (and very much should) stack a lot of defense before a boss fight. Opaline hard tear, talismans, boiled crab and various buffs will make the game a lot easier and more enjoyable.
Again, there's a lot of valid criticism to be made about Elden Ring and its bosses, I hope they realize what they're doing at From Soft and tone it down a little because some of those bosses are walking a fine line between challenging and annoying.
I 100% agree with you on most of what you stated. I dont think souls games have been the same since DS1 and DS2. The bosses in Elden Ring do have a ton of AOE attacks and fight aggressively to the point where there are minimum openings for counter attacks. If this was Sekiro it would not be as big of an issue as the speed of your weapons and attacks can match it. As a result, dex weapon types are more viable than heavy weapon types, which is disappointing. In the older games, every weapon type was viable, and the bosses were balanced around them all. Souls games may never be the same again, which is a shame, but at least i can still go back to DS1 and DS2 whenever I want to.
sorry, but anyone who says dex is more viable than heavy has never used a good heavy build
@MrFRNTIK Unless you are spamming ash of war, heavy weapons are slow against boss that have fast attack strings with minimal punish windows. This was not the case with older titles as the punish window lasted longer in-between attacks. Im not saying its not possible, just not as viable as it used to be. 🤷♂️
@@yoshomiamoto first playthrough was collosal weapons and I don't use ashes of war. You can get a couple hits in, dodge, hit again, eventually break their poise and stagger them. Heavy weapons were always slow and I don't recall a souls game where you can get more than two hits on a boss during your opening.
Gotta start first off, I thought when I clicked the video it was about level design of the content in modern FromSoftware material. I'm gladly now enlightened after watching it, that my eyes were indeed just fooling me and the title was indeed what the video was about 😅
Now, in terms of the dlc content and Elden Ring, although I extremely disagree with you on some points and hold entirely different thoughts on angles of another, I find that you're moderately decent with not just saying that they suck and it's just utter trash. You just give it as you understand it and can respect the honestly without you getting too down into it. For me this was my most excitement in a while, as I now had stuff to further extend my craving for difficulty and having something worthy of being overcome. The older stuff gets boring if there's no fun to it, which is why I love the difficulty so much. Perhaps not raw stat increases or the idea of having to explore everything to have a universal weapon/equipment upgrade material permanently for all stuff to be used, though that's a debate for another thing altogether imo based on complaints I've heard from others before on the base game and former FromSoftware games.
So, I agree to disagree, but you have my respect. Hope whatever you wanna get in terms of FromSoftware though, you'll one day be able to get back again.
Maybe a bit bold, but I don't think the "trial and error" boss design is a post ds1 thing. Maybe i missed something you said, but most bosses in ds1 easily fuck you up if ill prepared, and can be made a LOT easier if you explored or did questlines beforehand. Think of the demon with the two dogs in ds1. Unless you picked a bulkier class, you will have a much harder time without the poise from their armor. At the same time, getting a massive poise boost from the forest is literally a 2 minute walk from the blacksmith, and you can choose from the poise ring, the elite knight set, or both. You can also just skip said demon if you stumble into the hidden forest path to blighttown. This is also true for elden ring, you just have the mechanics or flow from ds3\sekiro. I understand not liking the enemy design, but this trial and error to win mechanically, or go and gear up and come back design has always been around since dark souls.
I agree that trial and error played a huge role when dealing with bosses since the early days. That is not a unique trait of the Souls series, boss fights in any RPG are designed as a kind of puzzle for the player to solve. In a Souls game, you solve that puzzle by observing the enemy, trying out different strategies, builds and so on. It's a journey that ultimately leads to success if you keep trying. The main question is if that journey is fun. To me, in the earlier games like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, I found it extremely fun. That's what I tried to express in that video. Fighting a boss in Dark Souls feels like a dance, a back and forth between the player and the boss. The boss is throwing everything they have at you and so do you. But it feels fair. Bigger bosses are naturally slower, smaller bosses are faster. Attacks are readable and give you time to respond. Bosses don't keep spamming attacks until the end of time and when they hit you, it's rarely a one shot. It's still trial and error but you don't have to die through a fight for 5 hours before making any progress or rely on any cheese strategy.
In Shadow of the Erdtree, the bosses feel like they are playing a different game than you. They feel like they aren't part of the same universe as the player. As I said in the video, bosses keep delaying their attacks in unnatural ways. The boss raises their sword into the sky. When are they going to attack? Directly? Or will they wait 5 seconds before slamming down? Or only 2 seconds? Maybe sometimes they will hold it for 5 seconds and the next time only for 2. There's no way to know intuitively. You learn that of course by getting hit in the face 10 times until you memorize every action of the boss and how to respond to it. In Shadow of the Erdtree, getting hit 10 times means dying 10 times. And so, I asked myself if that was fun. And the answer to me is no, it's lame. It's boring as hell.
@@Dungeorge Tbh if a boss is doing a charge animation I've never had insufficient reaction time for when they decide to start their swinging their sword to dodge. If they are holding their attack, you should reasonably be expecting it to happen eventually and will have better reaction time anyway. And the next time I see it, I understand that I have enough time for a R1 or R2. Or maybe I can jump the swing and get a jumping R2 etc.
You're absolutely correct. Dark Souls is a slow game, but the player and boss abilities are balanced. Bloodborne is a fast game, but balanced. Elden Ring's bosses are so overtuned that the combat mechanics of the game can no longer keep up with them. This forces players to compensate by using cheese builds, summoning or forsaking their own enjoyment of the game to perfectly memorize every attack and dodge/poke the boss to death. Some of the bosses are easy, others are punishingly difficult, but very few of them are actually fun to fight, and that's the key point the bleating fanboys don't understand.
I'd like to thank you for putting out this valuable perspective, even if it might be against the mainstream. As you mentioned, there are a lot of different aspects to FromSoftware's games and as many different reasons why players would enjoy them. I always found it rather weird that the difficulty always seemed to be an overpronounced topic in that regard and many players were mainly looking forward to the boss fights as the 'highlights'. I played and enjoyed all Souldborne games of FromSoftware. For me, it was never about 'overcoming a challenge' as the main point of it. It was about the exploration, the feeling of surprise and awe in the face of a new fascinating universe that opens up in front of you; the secrets, investigation and lore hunting, the philosophy and the deeper theme to the world and story. It was the video game equivalent of looking at the night sky in full awe while soaking up a feeling of being small inside an endless space. I would even go as far to say, I probably liked these games despite their difficulty, not because of it. That said, the last boss seemed outright ridiculous to me in terms of combat. There are just some people that do not enjoy the repetitive 'learning' of boss patterns and trying the same thing over and over. I don't mind giving a nice boss a try for 3-8 times, but did I have fun fighting Malenia, the Elden Beast and the last DLC boss dozens of times? Nope, I personally didn't. I understand your frustation, but I also think that still, FromSoftware is delivering us the best quality in this segment compared to their competition. Despite all the critique, the games are still very outstanding and I am far away from turning my back on them. Curious what the future brings.
i feel exactly how u do. long gone r the days of demons souls, dark souls, n bloodborne. we wont ever get those quality games from FROM again. too much pressure from bandai namco n dude bro doritos munchin mountain dew chuggers for "hardcore dude" games.
If you haven't, try Armored Core 6. You won't regret it.
Goated game,loved it
I dont believe he would like that game because there are just as much visual stimuli that he mentioned he didnt like
no, ac6 was an unfinished mess, and felt more like a tech demo youd show to investors rather than a full game.
@@scragglie That's literally one of the worst takes i've ever hear.
@@_Sin_ FCK the chapter 4 end boss, but everything else is very great
I really am starting to feel that this might be the consensus with people who started with Demon's Souls, maybe Dark Souls 1. As someone who started with Demon's, I'm also really just tired of each game seemingly upping the difficulty in the way it has. I'd really prefer a return to a King's Field type approach, something where the difficulty is found in not the incredibly hard bosses and memorising combos, but in the stamina required to overcome well designed encounters, spot and avoid traps, managing resources, to feel like a dungeon crawling adventurer. To those who say "this series isn't for you", I feel like they're talking about every game after Dark Souls 2, where it feels like a pretty sudden turn was made.
Great video, as someone who's been playing these games since 2010, and has gone back to hit up the classic Fromsoft catalgoue, a lot of this rang true for me.
You remind me of my friend who's banging his head against the wall on the final boss. Totally unwilling to change his playstyle to beat any bosses, saying its lazy design if every build isn't somehow viable for every boss.
Furthermore he gimps himself by saying he cant use Npc/player summons or Ashes summons or rot or poison or bleed basically constantly limiting himself less and less because its cheap and he saw someone else do it.
It's designed to be winnable through sheer memory regardless of builds for the most part some will struggle more than others and some might feel borderline impossible. You dont prove anything beating something designed to be beaten. PvP on the other hand is a different animal.
You act like the special effects vomit doesn’t tank fps constantly because From poorly optimized the DLC. That and you just can’t see crap.
Didn't you know? You only beat a boss if you did it with the most awful nonsense build possible. Personally I use a strength build with only 10 points in strength and 99 in Int because investing in useful stats is cheese.
@@jacobtrout2303 please point out where I claim special effects don't tank fps.
iv been noticing this kind of videos and opinions more and more. which doesnt surpris me. The combat of this games is so simple that elden ring as a whole made it a chore with so many battle encounters. The issue imo isnt the bosses, the bosses on a bubble are fine but the way to beat them feels the same. you go, roll sometimes, memorize the atatcks and see if you passed the vigor check to not get one shoted. i didnt feel like i was fighting consort radahn, ranalla the sister or rennala,comander gauis the old friend of radahn or the frenzied flame lord...i felt i was fighting a computer. people will say other games are about overcoming big challenges and they are right...but they have more challeneges than jsut the bosses, traps, sparce bonfires, difficult traverse,game deciding options and harder management on stamina make them over all a harder first expereince than anythihg on elden ring. If only one part of elden ring is hard then it makes for subpar experience. And dont take me wrong i had fun and i think you probably had fun too otherwise you wouldnt have finsihed the dlc. I think we both liked the game...but we didnt love it as previous one and in retrospection we see the flaws of this game. i will buy the new FS game when it comes out since i like being entertained but i know that the things i loved are no longer here. And my favorites would still be the older titles.
Most Of the skill in Elden ring is in how many times you have to die to learn the boss and picking a guide on the internet, then people pretend they "Got gud" After watching a Boss guide that shows you exactly when to dodge the attacks or dying hundreds of times in the process. These same people are the ones who debate about the difficulty online
... You know most bosses can just be walked around right? Like, within a few attempts of the dancing lion I figured you can mostly run under his body for most attacks. People turn these games into rhythm games when they don't have to be, even in sekiro you can dome most things in a few seconds with the tools. Maybe try some other options the next time you play, if you ever do. Edit: also yes, these bosses to take 10 plus attempts for me personally so far, but I feel like I'm learning something almost every attempt. You say people die on bosses as if they're throwing constant insta kill things at you, but if you sit down and think between each attempt you'll find some nifty ways to dodge things that feel like you're own. Also change your weapon, obviously. Idk why people seem to not do that. The lion seemed pretty weak to fire from my testing, as an example.
@@knivy6160You can only do this on some attacks. On others you will be hit by tracking moves. Again this is memorization which is what the OP said. You memorize what attacks you can walk around and which you can't. That doesn't require much technical skill. Mostly memorization skills.
its 100% possible to learn elden ring bosses without guides, and even if you do use guides who cares lol learning from other people is really cool. also the notion that perfecting something through trial and error/learning from other people isnt "getting good" is a little strange to me. if that doesnt count as "getting good" then i have no idea what does. both trial and error and learning from others are how anyone gets good at anything
@@rusticlocust8255 Its possible but it will take more time because you have to experiment yourself and you might die and then have to walk back to the boss. If you watch a video you will already know what you have to work on. Whats more important is having a strong build which is where guides are even more important because you wont waste all your time looking for items you want without knowing what stats you need to use them
@@knivy6160 Yet sometimes attacks keep tracking infinitely, sometimes they don't track at all or have a limit on how much they can track but ONLY in one direction, sometimes attacks are clearly going through you and do nothing, sometimes they're clearly NOT close to you and you die, camera is constantly a disaster, and so are many things. Basically, yeah, it's bashing your head against nonsense.
dying to a boss in a souls game is a GREAT thing, bc it means u get to fight them again! the fight itself is where the fun is, not beating it. I adored the nameless king, partly because it took me so long to beat him that by the end, it would be this perfect, almost meditative dance. Theres nothing more satisfying imo
theres a lot to say abt elden ring bosses being overtuned to the point of being occasionally unfair imo, but if u dont enjoy the basic concept of fighting & learning bosses for a long time, idk, thats kinda the whole point of souls games
Big problems with elden ring fights is that a lot of the time they are not built for the fight, they are built for spectacle.
A lot of bosses are designed to have hyperspecific gaps for counterattack unlike others where they just have gaps that weren't put there on purpose, but a natural byproduct of the reasonable moveset.
In soulsborne boss is a fun process, in elden ring bosses are spectacle to overcome. And it's especially designed around massive amounts of in universe accessibility features like summons. Soulsborne games were always designed around player being alone Vs elden ring players never being alone.
@@piece-kun4168 yea thats a fair point for elden ring for sure, i also dislike a lot of design choices that they made prioritising spectacle over a fair & fun moveset - i think its a mess in terms of balancing (summons being the tip of the iceberg imo) w the open world & so many tools being made available to the player that they maybe felt they had to make the bosses completely ridiculous at points. i think i maybe misunderstood you in thinking you generally dislike having to fight bosses over & over again in fromsoft titles across the board - i think only elden ring & its bs oneshot attack combos make that a chore, its a pleasure in previous titles imo - rlly didnt mean for my comment to come across as if i'm just toxically saying "git gud" or something lol
thats so similar to my fight with ishhin. Almost to a point to where I either dont get hit or I die cuz I messed up once. Its really beautiful, to the point to where you lose a fight because you know if you win it is over
the problem is fighting and learning boss's for a long time was not the whole point of souls games and i would not say that is true till ds2 demon souls and darksouls 1 were made to be challenging everything past that was made to be hard for the sake of being hard
most boss's up until late ds2 and bloodbourne era you could beat first try reasonable and if you failed well it was your fault
the newer game's boss's are designed to kill you 1/2 a sec and require you to know how to dodge 10 hit combo's before you get 1 hit in
and don't get me started on these 30 foot boss's fliping and flying across arena's and the over abundance particle effect's making keeping track of these boss's a chore
Comments like this are what make me think that masochism is a requirement when it comes to enjoying these games if you're not a challenge runner
I completely see where this guy is coming from.
I feel bad for people who felt they needed to summon just to beat the final boss.
I stubbornly did it with my Greatsword with the only changes needed were guarding and using Golden Vow. It's not the worst, but it doesn't feel like I beat it on my own terms.
In previous FromSoft games like DS, DS3, Bloodborne I would go through the game with my preferred equipment and beat it in a fun and fair way.
In Chalice dungeons were your HP is cut in half and the enemies 1 shot you, it was still fun getting through the labyrinth and fighting the bosses even if I could only make 1 or 2 mistakes and ended spending the entire afternoon on them.
This is because the boss didn't feel unfair, if I messed up a timing it was my fault, and while that is true for Elden Ring, the difference is, I didn't have to perfect 7 dodges in a row to survive.
Messing up the timing of a 3 hit combo or a long wind up hit is fine, messing up the dodge between Rellana's 3rd and 4th swing while she's dashing and the camera is swinging around is so unsatisfying and annoying.
Elden Ring is a great game, I dont ever want to beat it again. Too much traversal for rewards I dont care about, crafting sucks.
Only thing that I have to say: Curse you, Defiled Watchdog and Defiled Amygdala!
Thank you. Thank you so much for this video! I also had a weird feeling about the DLC. But I didn't know how to express my feelings about it. Your video pretty much describes everything what I had in my mind about this.
You can say it's a perfect explanation of my view of the DLC!
I really don't get your criticisms about the nameless king. Some of attacks are a but slower so that makes him bad? because you have to hold off rolling slightly and not just spam it? also he was already in the lore of dark souls 1. The destroyed statue and references to Gwyn's firstborn who they erased from history books. So I don't get how actually putting that in DS3 makes it tacky? if there was no mention to another child of Gwyn in the first game and they they just added it in for DS3 I would agree but that's not the case.
Also is avoiding the bosses attack and then getting a hit in yourself not 90% of bosses in like every video game with bosses in?
A lot of the enemy attacks are delayed to such an insane degree it's as counter intuitive as possible, how inertia works in this animations (it doesn't) is ridiculous. Like, how are they trying to condition you? if a rythm game had "songs" as nonsensical as possible to a degree that couldn't be called music and there was no metric or pattern to follow, it would surely be, very, very annoying, don't you think?
@@eggmiths3642 I was just specifically talking about namelsess king. His attack timings feel completely natural the delays aren't that bad at all. Also that is a dumb comparison. Delaying attacks in fights is literally a strategy to catch out opponents
Hello, so allow me to do my word here. I will say, as a bit of a disclaimer, I'm over 3k hours in so my vision on this may be a bit biased.
I played the entire DLC start to finish all 45 bosses on my first run-through without shadutree blessings. I enjoyed most of the game, but by the time I reached the final boss. I also reached a point of being exhausted.
I'm a very good player, so this extra challenge did not really get me stuck anywhere or anything. Just meant that some bosses took longer than they needed to because of the damage I took. A self-imposed challenge, of course.
This made me think why I didn't enjoy the DLC and why I got exhausted. The difficulty was not the problem because, as I stated I made it as hard as possible on myself to begin with.
After Rellana (the first rememberence boss), all the bosses besides maybe the hippo become high maintenance fights, meaning you have to play well in order to squeeze out a win. This is where I think a lot of the DLC went wrong. We all know by know that only two out of the 45 bosses are mandatory to get to the final boss by now. I have seen a lot of people get to the final boss relatively quickly because they didn't care for the exploration as much and this set them back big time. Underprepated and just fighting high maintenance boss after high maintenance boss. The visual clutter will make anyone, no matter how good they are, exhausted.
I took away my enjoyment by implementing my self-imposed rule, but by doing so, I also became more aware of the average player experience. I will say five bosses (dancing Lion, Messmer, Gaius, Dancing Lion 2, Bayle and the final boss) all to me feel visually very stimulating. While I think Messmer is very well designed, I don't necessarily think the others are.
To give a couple of examples, Gaius hitboxes are bad, Dancing Lion can phase transition mid combos, which makes the fight super chaotic and visually cluttered. While something like the scadutree Avatar, I felt was really wel designed. Some others sometimes felt as a chore due to the amount of stuff they throw at you.
It is said that some of the more enjoyable, difficult bosses are tucked away in corners or as secrets. Even Bayle which is a very cool boss, the sound design combined with his attacks is a lot to take in sometimes, add the fact that he likes to keep moving, just gets very overwhelming, especially if you are trying to learn him.
So, TLDR... Bosses have a lot of visual stimulation, which can lead to the brain being overwhelmed to the point where you feel exhausted. Due to the mainline progression, a lot of the bosses seem to be high maintenance and therefore it CAN take away the enjoyment of the DLC. The majority of the content in regards to bosses don't seem to be this high maintenance. However, they are optional and therefore easily missed, therefore leading to an unbalanced, unfun experience.
Sorry for the long comment, I wanted to explain and express my findings with the intention that I might help people understand perhaps their frustration.
Don't be sorry, it was an interesting read, especially coming from someone who genuinely enjoys challenge runs. I thought for people who do enjoy these kinds of challenges, Shadow of the Erdtree would be like the best thing ever but apparently, that is not universally true either.
I think you should drop the ego and just use spirit summons to ignore most of the mechanics from the bosses. We can't go back to Demon Souls or Dark Souls 1 and 2, the vast majority of bosses on these games are too simple and too easy for the majority of the playerbase. And it wasn't Dark Souls 3 who started modern boss design, it was Dark Souls 1 with Manus.
Also, farming runes is boring as fuck, and I understand people that did that on previous games, but why the fuck would you do that with Elden Ring? Unless you want to get to your build faster on Moghwyn's Palace, you don't need to stop playing and start grinding to get stronger. Go somewhere else, find a dungeon, find another weapon or spell, defeat some side bosses. With the DLC, you do the same thing, but instead of doing it for the runes, you do it to get the new stuff and more fragments.
I first encountered Messmer when I was level 9, died in one combo rotation and realised immediately I wasn't ready for the fight. So I explored the map, found a lot of new stuff and fragments, got back at level 14, and the fight was way more fair. This is the main essence of Elden Ring, and the DLC delivered it.
I agree the only issue is that the way scadutree fragments are scattered around the map couldve been better.
I feel like half the bosses in this dlc were great while the other half not so much
Dark souls was actually perfectly balanced considering you can play the game with your preferred fighting style. You can make the game more difficult if you choose to, shadow of the erdtree is a 1 shot dlc no matter what without end game weapons and hours upon hours of searching for scadutree fragments. Not to mention I would bet 90%+ of players had to rely on mimic tear and summons. I played souls games offline with no summons and was captivated by the world. The souls series were based upon combat, shadow of the erdtree is based on how OP you can stack items buffs talismans and AOWs while still being overpowered by multi hit combos that can last forever. The last boss was horrible and the ending was underwhelming. It still doesn’t compare to the feeling of beating Gwynn lord of cinder, it was epic and balanced.
@@sm-ot6gzHow were you getting one shot? What was your vigor, did you have armor or damage reduction talismans?
You could even say False King was the first...but I'd say BB is the first in wich they really tried to complicate boss encounters overall, while your character and tools were great, and in DkS3 they tried to go 3 steps further, while your player and tools are absolute garbage. ER is like 35 steps forward from DkS3 and your character is still DkS3 protag...and yeah, it seems like there's no turning back, we can only imagine how the bosses will be in the next Eldens of the Blood or DemonBorne or whatever, and you don't get why this guy is just leaving? lol.
@@eggmiths3642 ds3 tools are garbage? I beat the game with the starting straight sword lol
I kinda agree, to me personally bosses in FromSoft games are the least exciting part. I'm all for exploration, atmosphere and combat in general. This escalation in difficulty regarding bosses will soon lead to something awful (unless devs will reconsider in next installments).
I've always struggled to find a way to articulate what the big difference is in things like Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne, and for me, games like The Surge 2 and some of the Koei Tecmo soulsian games as well as a lot of 2D souls-likes where you can make mistakes but it's not always about memorization. Its about giving you the pieces you need at all times instead of revealing pieces during a fight. I never felt out of my element in Bloodborne. At least in the base game. 90% of the boss fights were doable from the outset. And I don't know how to describe that to people who don't get it. I always considered it more skill based fights than memorization and repetition. But people tend to argue that memorizing and applying is skill itself. So what do we call it? There's definitely a distinction. Its more likely to enter a state of flow in the old games. And there's a lot less malicious game design in certain entries. A lot of games take the Dark Souls 2 approach of just being mean lol and it sounds like the DLC went this route. All the to say, on the third video I've watched if yours I'm right there with you, in the minority. I'm subscribing. Seems like we're kindred spirits and I look forward to what else I find on your channel
Thank you for your kind words. I truly appreciate it and hope that you'll like my future content; I got some plans.
People who keep saying "learning the boss is part of the experience" either never played any souls game beside elden ring or don't undestand how fromsoft used to design their bosses. In past games, bosses had intuitive movesets that followed real-life logic of how one would wield a weapon/move around. You could beat a lot of bosses first-try by being reactive rather than memorizing their movesets. Even the hard bosses followed the rule of being intuitive to fight - their movesets were just more complex, making you more likely to die several times. Every single boss in the DLC has delayed attacks, fake combo finishes that bait you into attacking, rollcatches and ridiculous tracking to the point where poitioning is meaningless. There is a difference between a boss that's hard but doesn't have an annoying moveset, making him a fun and memorable fight, and a boss that's hard because he has 20 different cheap "gotcha" moves designed to punish you for playing intuitively, that you can only learn after you get hit by them. A perfect example is rellana's moon attack: there is no way of figuring out you're supposed to jump to avoid it the first time you see her fly into the air and become a moon. If anything, having fought renalla before her, you expect it to be a projectile you dodge. Once the attack comes out, it's already too late to recognise you should jump, and getting hit by the first hit guarantees you die. You'll respawn having likely figured out you should jump to avoid it next time, but there was no way of figuring that out before you got hit by it. It's cheap trial and error nonsense that you find in those shitty patformer rage games youtubers used to play, and has no place in a souls game.
I am someone who believes that first thing and I think my perspective comes from always being bad at these games. Pontiff, Gael, Manus etc probably took me just as many tries if not more than Rellana on the first go. I've never felt like I could know these movesets intuitively. So I'm used to that and I enjoy it. I play these games because I want to understand the bosses as if they were each a whole game. But I can see the shellshock coming from someone who was good at the games before.
I feel the same about the hard boss design of souls as well, but whats funny is I absolutely hated DS3 and I love Elden Ring and its DLC. DS3 felt like just about every boss had some long ass pattern of attacks to dodge which I absolutely hated and then the levels would sprinkle a ton of tanky enemys with long combo strings too. Its probably the Souls game where I avoided the enemies the most and just ran through because of how much a chore it was to fight them. ER has its obnoxious bosses too but I didnt feel like it had that same level of annoying design as DS3. I actually enjoy the difficulty of souls games but the way I see it is that its about managing offense and defense and the worst bosses are the ones where you are on defense for 90% of the fight. I was cool with most bosses in the DLC (I especially love the Mesmer fight) because it felt like I found a ton of openings in their attacks but that Final Boss was absolutely fucking horrible because it felt like I had to spend 90% of the fight rolling before landing 1 or 2 hits that delt chip damage and going back to rolling. I tried a bunch of different strategies and then I found out that summoning allies just made the fight harder. So I completed it Solo, no summons or spirits (mostly because they just fucking died before they did anything so it was a waste of time) and it was not fun for me at all.
The camera is the only real complaint I have about this game. You're spot on about targeting... Jesus H., it's a pile of trash lol.
I agree with your points. The game only became fun to me when I became OP and overleveled and had basically every scadutree by the third boss. Challenging is fine. Difficult is fine. Why does everything need two phases? Why do some need three phases? Why does the AoE have to hit you every time? You hit the nail on the head when you said, "im never plahing these games again." i caught myself in love with the world and dlc. But continiously just kept thinking "i cant wait until this is over so I can move on." It was like my farewell to FromSoft. I love the genre, but ill be playing the souls like spin offs that are still fun from now on
I understand you but I feel like people play elden ring as if it was dark souls 4, the game introduced guard counters, an accessible jumping button and crouching to the character's movement options
The bosses are designed around the probability of the player using said defensive manouvers, my only complaint is that the world is too vast for its own good and hinders the replayability
Er gave too many freedoms and variables then made bosses around those freedoms. So when you are a veteran player not wanting to use ash summons and cheese builds, you’re going up against a design philosophy that wasn’t created and balanced for you which is why they are merciless and unfair. Playing ER as if you’re playing ds3 is a self imposed challenge on top of the initial challenge when not using the ash summons, and it’s not good. Looking ahead , at this pace one can say FSW may make a coop only souls game next.
I agree with a lot of what you said, personally I've been feeling the same way lately with Fromsoftware's games. I think From's design team has really refined and polished the boss design, for the most part I liked the bosses in the base game and in this DLC from what I've heard are pretty good. However, the sort of boss design in DS3 and in Elden Ring isn't for me just like you said. It sort of feels monotonous, like a test in a bad way. It feels like I'm just playing along to the tune of the bosses the developers made rather than overcoming them, and finding my own ways to take them down.
From's design philosophy has shifted from making tough, but fair games that test your ability to respond to unique situations to creating, hard but, "fair" bosses and some relatively fun and interesting level design in between. These games aren't made for the fans of Demon Souls or Dark Souls 1 anymore, they're made for a more generic vague audience that likes hard games. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I would have preferred if they developed the world building, atmosphere, level design, and challenging aspects of Demon Souls and DS1 & DS2.
What I'm worried about is From's ability to evolve from this, as it was seen in ER's base game the developers had to start an arm's race against the player to sustain the game being, "hard." From has lost sight of what made those challenging parts of DS1 challenging, not because of some quantifiable variable, but because they were unique and made you think instead of, B and R1. So, they make bosses that can one shot / two shot you instead because they need to fill out the vast world they've created, which is awful and lazy.
I think one thing could have been made more clear in your video though, changing a playstyle in a From game to beat a boss is part of the fun. I think you meant to say, re-specking and changing your entire character to beat one boss isn't fun and shouldn't be necessary. ER had the system that allowed you to do that in place as a crutch, so that people could actually beat the fucking game. Because a lot of people had to re-speck to beat bosses like the Fire Giant or Malenia.
This DLC made me want to replay DS3 and Bloodborne. I have no desire to learn Rellana the twirling schizo. I'll refight Sister Friede and Maria. Not interested in getting sunglasses to fight Radahn, I'll just refight Gael or Orphan of Kos.
That feeling you described about seeing a place and being able to go there, I first had that feeling playing the classic Tomb Raider games. Only, some of those areas in the game were not accessible to explore. Elden Ring was a game that truly removed those boarders from the classic era of gaming and allowed me to experience the true meaning of an open world with similar architecture and world design.
If people played their games for years and got used to the systems ofc they will change the system and bring more challenges to their very experienced players not to bore them.
I understand what you're saying and the bosses seem unfair at times with the delayed attacks in weird contorted ways but that is essentially what made Dark souls so infamous. It isn't a game for everyone, the joy "is" to learn the bosses I find myself actually enjoying the game when I'm in the heat of battle and over coming an attack that was once seen as "impossible" to dodge. I do agree with the part where once slaying the boss it doesn't feel rewarding, simply just to move on to the next area. Those twitch streamers you see screaming and jumping for joy when they get done with a boss is all just an act. It is the streamers job to entertain the audience and what more gets people to click on their streams than acting like a fool on camera. I agree that It is tiring seeing the same gameplay design loop for bosses with the spinning around the arena for 20 seconds while just having to run to the side before having to time a dodge. I want to see Miyazaki implement more mind games into the bosses rather than just having to sit down like a good boy and learn the boss's 1,2,3,4,5th attack in their combo as if we're taking a test. There could be bosses that have a sort of miniature game that gets played with the players and you have to decipher it somehow rather than just robot it out.
Thank you for this video. It's nice to know at least a few people out there feel similarly.
Sorry you had a bad time with this game, I get some of your points. Like the bosses killing you in two hits which can be annoying. But that’s where it pretty much ends. I’m still gonna enjoy all these games and hopefully anything else that fromsoft has come out. I’m going to beat share of the year tree and probably play Elden ring all over again. It was fascinating to hear your take. hope you have a good day.
I don’t think you hate “modern FromSoftware design”, you just don’t like MIyazaki’s direction. He has talked about how he designs this game around making players feel a certain way - and what you describe about not liking the design is his intent. His intent is for challenges to feel impossible, for you to know you can’t defeat the boss… and then you do. This is what you liked about Dark Souls.
However, with many Dark Souls fan (i.e. Joseph Anderson, matthewmatosis, etc.), they develop a certain entitlement. Like “I’m good at these games, they should be a breeze”, and they resent the new and different challenges the new games offer. Meanwhile, without these new challenges, these games would be pointless.
The Nameless King wasn’t even hard. A lot of people play these games with trash builds, that they do not fix because they expect the game to be unfairly hard. The difficulty of these games exist to provide a sense of progression and to make you engage with the game’s mechanics - using resins, using miracles, buffs, prosthetics in Sekiro, perfumes in Elden Ring, etc. And through your engagement with the game, you triumph. It’s literally perfect. But a lot of people who play Dark Souls, tend to put themselves in a cage when playing the latter entries (Joseph Anderson especially), rather than approaching each new game as something distinct to be learned and mastered.
It’s the FromSoft fan rot. It’s what Miyazaki talks about all the time with item descriptions - stagnation, being in a mental cage, refusing to adapt, change and evolve with the world will rot you. It will fill your blood with vermin (Bloodborne), it will stagnate you and you will become impure.
FromSoft games have never been for everyone. And they definitely aren’t for people who do not like to adapt. Because FromSoft games are all about adapting.
In Armored Core 6, there’s a repeated hint that if you’re struggling it’s because your build is bad. This is true for every single FromSoft game released in the past 15 years.
And another thing - your complaint about the lore not revealing too much about Destined Death - I think that would be like complaining that Artorias of The Abyss doesn’t reveal too much about Velka. Throughout the entirety of the Dark Souls franchise, Velka is an everpresent god that never gets revealed. We only get her statue in Dark Souls 3, and that statue does contain some revelations, but Velka is never revealed. And I think great beings like Velka, like the god of destined death, like the Gloam-eyed queen should remain a mystery. We still can’t know for certain if Melina is the gloam-eyed queen or merely her agent. What if
WHAT IF wait a second… a seduction and a betrayal. Melina is linked both to Marika and the Gloam-eyed queen. What if that is the seduction that’s talked about - that Marika became consort to the Gloam-eyed queen, created Melina with her, and then Marika killed (betrayed) the gloam-eyed queen.
What if that thing we see in the beginning, the vessel of the golden order that Marika pulls the strings from is the gloam-eyed queen.
It’s probably not the case, but it kinda makes the point why that lore should remain mysterious. It is vital to never reveal that part of a Souls-like.
Nothing in og DkS is even mildly difficult
@@eggmiths3642 What makes these games hard is the lack of knowledge. Even Sekiro is easy once you know it. Dark Souls was hard at the time it came out - it’s why it developed that reputation. It was hard, because we didn’t know builds, paths, strategies.
Same with Elden Ring. When it came out, it had the exact same conversations about its difficulty as this expansion. These conversations were borne out of ignorance, just like they are with the expansion, and in a few months people will agree the expansion’s difficulty is fine. Just like they did with Elden Ring.
None of these games are hard. If people want to play hard, they can go play Nioh or Ninja Gaiden. FromSoft’s point isn’t to make hard games, it is to make engaging games that make you feel a specific way. Challenge is a means of engaging the player.
Every new FromSoft game is hard on release, then becomes easy as players develop their mastery of it. Mastery that carries to their other games as well. Like if you can parry in Dark Souls, you can also parry in Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, etc.
It’s important for FromSoft fans to not forget this cycle of the fandom - new game drops, it is impossible, how could they do this, bleh bleh, then a few months pass by, and it’s now an easy game.
I have to say, I don’t understand the idea at all that the bosses in DS1 and Demon’s Souls are preferable to the bosses in DS3 and SotE. Excellent games, but they were very clunky by comparison. DS3 is most well-known as the game where the bosses started to get really good. I thought that learning the attacks, the patterns, and finding your openings was the entire point of these fights. Very odd criticism of a souls game. Idk man, I don’t get these complaints at all. Many fights were tough but every one of them was fun.
In the base game, Elden Ring's world is great to explore, and the bosses are extremely challenging. You can enjoy the exploration and fight the bosses, interacting with the game mechanics to make the game as difficult as you want or just completely trivialize the encounters if you don’t like the boss design. The DLC is just more Elden Ring, for better or for worse.
The original Dark Souls had a deliberately restrictive gameplay to emphasize clearing the cleverly designed levels to get to rudimentary bosses ,they were mechanically simple by design to accommodate for the players gameplay restrictions. These bosses provided story and lore explanations while acted as a small puzzle at the end of each level to be a victory lap for clearing the level rewarding the player with a fair amount of XP and opening more levels to clear , which are the highlights in these games. Looking at their approach realistically, now days it is a relatively outdated game design, and it peaked with Dark Souls 1.after ds1 and the fumble that is ds2 FromSoftware had a choice to make, to either keep makinb lesser versions of DS1 or evolve and make new games while holding the same philosophy.
New FromSoft games increased the flexibility of the player's gameplay, which made clearing the levels less of an actual challenge and therfore less of a highlight of the game. The boss degsin approach is more sophisticated and complex now that you have a gameplay that is well-equipped to complement it. So bosses are more visually and mechanically cohesive and technically engaging. They demand sharp reactions, good observation, analytical thinking, spatial awareness, a sense of timing, and pattern recognition skills,it is a bigger and intricate puzzle that requires a fair deal of technical precision in the execution to piece all of it together. It is an extremely clever boss design, very engaging and rewarding if you put in the effort to interact with it, however...
FromSoftware knows that not everyone prefers this approach or derives any enjoyment out of it at all, even those who played the old games. That’s why they provided the RPG mechanics, all well integrated into the game seamlessly with a lot of thought behind them, to modulate the boss encounters into a spectrum of difficulties upon choice. So you don’t get hard stuck on bosses, restricting your enjoyment of the exploration.
it is just Dark Souls AND is it an action thriller, It is what you want it to be. You like the bosses and enjoy the technical aspects of the fight? Go there ride torrent and turn the game into a boss rush. You enjoy the classic Dark Souls experience? Take your gear and explore the world, clear all the high-quality levels and dungeons, then use all the Ashes of War, incantations, Ash summons, sorceries, talismans, and wondrous physic tears that you found in your exploration to make the bosses as easy as DS1 bosses. Beat them and explore the rest. Don’t feel bad for making them a less of a challenge , you prefer to not deeply interact with the bosses and make them more demanding, and the game knows that , the game intended for you to make them as easy or difficult as you want. There is no normal difficulty in this game. You can go rune level one with a club and spend hours upon hours on bosses if you enjoy it that way Or one-shot the boss with mimic tear, and these are two extremes for a spectrum of possible challenges you choose possible by the useful and versatile mechanics the game provide ,all is valid, and all enjoy the aspects of the game that they like the most. And Elden Ring unlike previous games, provided all of them.
I see where you are coming from but I strongly disagree with one crucial assumption you make. You said that "The boss design approach is more sophisticated and complex now that you have a gameplay that is well-equipped to complement it." I do not think that this is the case. I think the gameplay in Elden Ring and its DLC is still very basic and has not advanced that much from the early days of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Yes, you are equipped with a bunch of new gimmicks like sneaking, jumping, summoning a horse, power stance and so on. But when it comes down it and you're facing a boss, you still approach the fight in a very similar fashion as you would in those older games -> dodging, blocking, parrying. So, and this is again a very personal feeling, it feels like I'm still playing an embellished version of Dark Souls while the bosses are playing a fast-paced character action game.
Now, you also mentioned that FromSoft provided the tools to deal with challenging situations in the form of summons, spirit ashes and other mechanics you can use. This is true and I am the last person of Earth to mock players for using them. However, for me, they only partially alleviate my frustration with the boss design. First off, I feel like refusing to engage with the boss if I use those tools. It's like you said, if "you prefer to not deeply interact with the bosses" that's the way to go but it doesn't feel rewarding at all. Boss fights were an aspect I enjoyed in previous games and I didn't need summons or anything to have fun with them. Moreover, using summons can really mess with a fight, turning it into a chaotic spectacle where it is even harder to see what is going on. I used summons for some of the later fights in the DLC and it made the bosses even more unpredictable and tedious to fight. So, on the one hand, bosses feel like they were designed around this mechanic but on the other hand, the fight kind of breaks into madness when you use them.
I think this is one of those "agree to disagree" situations. I thank you for your comment and your perspective on things. I get what you mean and it's totally valid but I just don't feel the same way.
@@Dungeorge
I will spare you the existential rant of what a fair challenge in a game is, what subjectivity is, and whether a collective one constitutes an objective standard for general artistic taste, but it does not hold any realistic power outside of that semi-isolated system. Bottom line is these games are for fun, and the discussion, hearing ideas, and gaining new perspectives is the point. As much as I would like for you to enjoy the combat system and the bosses in *Elden Ring*-because for me they are the pinnacle of what gaming has to offer and I think missing out on that would be a shame-I ultimately don't dwell on changing someone's opinion as much as trying to understand it while justifying mine.
So I will share my experience with *Elden Ring's* base game because it changed how I approached the DLC.
*Elden Ring* changed the speed of the gameplay. The movement is much smoother and more flexible, with changes in dodging i-frames, input priorities, cleaner hitboxes, and a whole lot of polishing and technical stuff. Still, a long way for the camera and a couple of other aspects-the game has its fair share of technical flaws, but it's not a big detriment to the gameplay overall. The stamina is the most forgiving in all of their games other than *Sekiro* because it doesn't have it. *Dark Souls 1* and *Dark Souls 2* were slow, deliberate, and methodical in their own way because of these simple restrictions, and I think taking off these limiters changes everything. So again, if you fought a *Dark Souls 1* or *Dark Souls 2* boss with an *Elden Ring* character, it would be overkill. So, as sad as it is, we can't have those back, and surely something has to change about the bosses. What should change and how much is the question.
And I can only talk about my experience.
Me enjoying the bosses and liking this approach is less of an innate attraction and more of a mentality that I adopted gradually during my first playthrough of *Elden Ring* because I wanted to have all the fun there is to be had in this game. I agree the bosses in *Elden Ring*, in respect to my own medium capabilities in these kinds of games, are extremely hard puzzles to solve, but only if I tried to solve them in a bubble, bare-bone, on a medium roll, and with a melee weapon. I could bang my head against every boss for days under these conditions and solve them, but would that be a fun experience for me playing this game for the first time? My answer was no. I wasn't capable of beating the bosses while having fun, but I did not close the door on the satisfaction I might get from learning them, just not under these conditions. I recognized that these bosses had merit to them-a lot of mechanical complexity you can interact with, but I did not have fun doing so. However, I still found it intriguing. These bosses have extensive mechanical details. You can do a Rune Level 1 no-hit run and still not know and interact with every branch for every flowchart and every positional requirement, so aiming at knowing everything is as extreme as interacting with minimal to none at all and one-shotting the boss. So I just misphrased that in my previous comment because not interacting with bosses deeply is like 100% of every first playthrough of anyone ever. It's more of a balance of how much interaction is enough to beat it and how much until it affects my enjoyment at the moment. I kept that in mind and said I will have fun now and come back to these bosses. So every move I did not know how to dodge and did not care to, I Bloodhound Stepped it-an extremely helpful tool. Sure, I will miss out on a mechanic and the "proper" way of dodging it, but I valued the smooth flow of my experience more than grinding a dodge for two hours at the time. If I lacked damage, I just whipped out bleed to make the fight a bit manageable. I will make it shorter and miss out on mechanics and moveset, but I will have my fun, see some of the moveset, and a reasonable amount of challenge. Good enough for me. Sure, summons split the aggro and make the bosses behave unnaturally for me, so I was against them until I talked to some people, especially newcomers, who did not have that preconceived idea of what a boss fight should look and feel like in these games. They had so much fun with the summons and did not feel like they were missing out on anything, so I changed my mind about them. I had fun melting Malenia's first phase with my naked mimic so he dies by the Scarlet Aeonia in the second phase and I interact with the second phase properly, just a naked mimic to make grinding through the first phase a bit easier, a bit less tedious. That's the whole mentality I adopted, knowing that these bosses are interesting, a lot of work and thought was put into them, so I assumed they are worthwhile. But I will hold judgment on how fun they are to master for now and I will be coming to interact with as much as possible of these bosses under the near hardest difficulty conditions in later playthroughs. This liberated me from the idea of missing out, which made me utilize everything in the game to just have a good time with any level of challenge I felt at that given moment.
Then I did go back, fought for hours, got to know every boss intimately, and optimized how to play against them. It was fun because I had a goal in mind and was not restricted by conditions to reach it. Some I couldn't figure out myself, so I just looked it up-how to dodge Waterfowl, how to hitless Malekith. I saw someone do it, and from then on I enjoyed the execution. Now I love doing it. Just beating the bosses on a medium roll with a melee weapon that was initially too hard and tedious became too easy. Me, who is not a god gamer-I don't even like bullet hell games and high-intensity shooting games-but because there is so much strategy and clever tricks and a nice flow behind beating the boss flawlessly, a dance hiding behind the intimidating anime over-the-top seemingly never-ending combos, so me, not a god gamer and with my mediocre reflexes and subpar pattern recognition, and with my newfound knowledge and muscle memory, I did a Rune Level 1 run and enjoyed that because it became the only natural challenge in this journey. The bosses are so complex and nuanced, and only after all this investment then I have found the execution of beating them to be more engaging than anything I have ever found in any game. The variety of ways you can approach them even under bare-bone near-max difficulty made the replayability value much higher than other Souls games. I can only explore an area once, but a well-designed boss, finding new ways to beat it and executing it, honing my skills and mastering the deep combat loop of the game is the ultimate fun I have had with any game, period. But again, that is my experience, and for reasons in and out of my control, that's how I reacted to this change in the Souls genre. Every experience is valid. The types of interactions that are more fun to you are the ones you should pursue, and the extent you are willing to go with a game to enjoy certain mechanics is up to you.
The only thing that compelled me to engage with this video is the phenomenal quality and presentation, clear and comprehensive ideas, and your great microphone😂. So I'd hope you would continue to make more vids . Sorry for the long text, I just like rambling. Don't even entertain me in the next comment section😂 Have a good one brother.
Thank you for sharing your experience in this comment. Even though I cannot relate, it was a very interesting read and it gave me a new perspective on the matter. Also, thank you for the kind words at the end, we'll see what the future may hold ;)
@@Dungeorge Just to let you know that "I hardly disagree" means you agree.
I believe the boss shenanigans actually started with the old hunters dlc. With bosses like Ludwig and the orphan. Since then it seems like they've been in a loop of trying to outdo themselves game after game when it comes to difficulty. They have made a couple of incredible bosses in that time period however. Gael and Midir are both exceptional with the former being probably the best boss ever put to a video game.
At least Bloodborne allowed you to be faster
The quickstep, the rally mechanic, parry from afar with the gun
Yeah, i had that feeling. I just felt like the lore in the DLC and its bosses was odd.
I kinda agree. I've played souls games since Demons' souls. The best part of souls games for me has always been the exploration, the cool weapons, the lore. I've struggled with a few bosses from time to time (Artorias, Manus, Sir Alonne, Pontiff Sullyvahn, Nameless King, Midir, etc) but nothing came close to this dlc bosses. I liked some of them but the final boss...well, that's a different story. It took me 3 weeks and I had to change my entire strategy and focus on parrying and waiting for him to stop his unending attacks. Yeah learning is cool, but not so much when he can kill you in two strikes and then you have to re-do the entire battle for the 3000th time. Second phase was almost impossible mostly due to the amount of things happening on screen. I sometimes wondered if I was actually having fun or just rolling with it.
I honestly want to say that I agree with a good portion of your sentiments. I have a friend who recently got me into the monster hunter world space that I absolutely loved and been dying to get me into dark souls like games as well i like very flashy and visually appealing games something that to me the souls games didn’t peak my interest. I also started to an attempt with from soft with DS3 and it just never clicked then fast forward to Elden ring, where I feel like I finally found that happy medium of RPG meets flashyness for me in the sense of the tools you choose to fight with not just poking and jumping out of a boss fight waiting for your moment like some kind of extreme Pokémon battle but being able to fight in a legitimate style that suits every players sense of combat. Getting to the point of this comment I never understood the sadistic appeal of spending hours upon hours studying an overtuned boss with your only options being to stick and move hit and run tactic because to me that doesn’t even feel like much of a fight it feels robotic and limiting to the players experience where the end goal is beat the boss does it really matter how you get to that point is suffering really a side reward that every player should thrive for? I just don’t get it to me a real boss fight is using all the tools you can in a 50/50 split where you an the boss goes head to head but the from soft formula to me feels shallow and always stacked against the player base elden ring fixed that allowing you to level then come back to combat the boss only to seemingly retract that same sentiment through scadu fragments limiting how you play the game and making the fights a lot of the time in favor of the bosses which to me makes it feel like some lame attempt at artificial difficulty by cutting a players stats in half so the boss would appear stronger or allow them to hit harder then their suppose to wasn’t trying to turn this into some complaining rant more so to express a different point of view where suffering and replaying a boss for hours is not an appealing game to some just to gain some intangible piece of bragging points or social validation.
It seems like your main problem with these bosses are that you need to have a learning period where you figure out how to fight them through trial and error, instead of high-action (I don't use this word insultingly) spectacles that might take a lot of effort in the moment but not your time or brain space. AC6 is a Fromsoft game that does the latter while still being fun. Going past Elden Ring Miyazaki said he would like to let younger talent direct future games to experiment more (which was case with AC6), so I would still keep them in mind if you do end up enjoying it.
honestly, i don't think ds3 is that punishing in terms of boss design. The bosses don't do way too much damage and have generally lesser health. There are only a few attacks that do one-shot a 50 vigor player. And yes, there is trial and error involved with these bosses but I never really find it egregious mainly cus the bosses, from my POV, aren't that punishing.
But I do agree that shadow of the erdtree has bosses that deal way too much damage, especially when many of the remembrance bosses require countless hours of trial and error. Ofc, trial and error is a pivotal aspect of learning a boss. But i feel, SoTE bosses can stretch it out for way too long at times. Why? Cus, some of the bosses just one or two shot you which gives you less room to improve your skills. Then again, I won't take high damage into consideration when ranking the quality of a specific boss and i'd rather blame it on general game design instead.
And, i kinda want another compact yet intricately layered map design like dark souls: small yet maze-like and easy to get lost (in a good way). I wish there's a modern fromsoftware game that also focuses on that aspect as well as insane bosses. Best for both worlds.
I understand the hate on Elden rings bosses but the dlc had good bosses but why hate on ds3 that game was good asf😭😭🙏🙏🙏
I feel the same way but hey, at least on the bright side, we will always have Dark Souls to enjoy and nothing can take that away from us. :)
like many i'm not ashamed to admit i used mimic tear and npc summons in every boss fight, otherwise they'd be more of a chore than fun and intuitive
My problem with these is they make the game too easy for my taste and I really hate to rely on split aggro, it's hard to find a middle ground between too easy and punishingly hard. OP ashes of war + good defense works quite well for me but I had to do some tweaking to find out what worked.
Dark Souls 3 will always be my favorite but Elden Ring in my opinion is the successor.
I admit the dlc fealt very empty at times less enemies i found in the open field
I hope From Software would never release Elden Ring 2, at least not with the team that made the DLC
Idk how you can shit on ds3 when that game took what DeS and Ds1/2 did to a greater scale. Bosses in ds3 are the greatest because they are fair and balanced.
Er DLC bosses are also, only if you use the tools the game gives you like ash summons and the OP weapon arts. I don’t like summoning and cheesing bosses, so my problem was , playing the DLC solo with a normal weapon (like I would for any souls game) put me at a major disadvantage. And that’s essentially the problem with the DLC. The bosses are designed for players who use the tools the game gives you. FSW has made a mistake in assuming everyone is gung hoe about summoning and cheesing that they completely forgot about the traditional souls player. Trying to fight these bosses without ash summons and cheese weapons is like fighting Yhorm without the stormcaller. That’s why you, me and everyone else had a huge issue with the dlc bosses. And we have the right to feel this way. Merely soloing a souls game should NEVER be a self imposed challenge. It should be the standard mode. And in the dlc, it isn’t the standard mode, and what that says for the future is very alarming. At this rate, they might make a full blown cooo only souls game from the ground up.
Huh I really like the bosses, especially Messmer, he´s my second favourite boss ever. A shame you don´t like them man
"it took away some of my freedom of how I want to explore the world (your referencing the fragments)" I don't understand what you mean when you say that because no matter how you explore the world there's a fragment in every corner not literally but you get what I mean.
For example, in my first run, I obviously did all of gravesite. I did castle ensis then did maybe just a little bit of plateau then found the coast and the bottom and jagged peak Then went back to the plateau. Did shadow keep and the rest of this history now on my second play through I did a completely different route besides my starting area I then went to the coast, then did the jagged, then finish the plateau then went straight to the ruins then Black to Plateau my route was completely different and I explored the world freely and still had enough fragments to progress. Never forced to go find more fragments.
After finishing it the only boss fight I have a real problem with is the last one. No of the fights particularly fun besides Messmer but the last one is just hard just trash. Its just broken. Its completely unfun. Fromsoft are a victim of their own success in that they just need to keep making things harder and harder to keep up with their reputation. I hope this is the peak and in their next title they concentre on making bosses that are fun and satisfying to fight like Messmer was.
He Wo longed for more.. but the real wo was the friends we longed along.. 😔
I didn’t like that game
Maybe keep your expectations low, and not overly play the game to the point of burnout. And also, its ok to take an hiatus from these games, i suggest 5yrs off till the next fromsoft ip.
I mostly agree with u there are less viable options to have fun in the DLC
and u don't have the proper tool to match the bosses agro unlike in sekiro or bloodborn
but if u want u can still have an incredibly easy experience
I beat every boss in the DLC solo in under 50 sec with my Blessing only lv 10
I beat the Final Boss solo in Under 45 sec Blessing lv 18
and no i don't used any op stuff that they patched i used mostly base game wepons
u just need the right build for the right Boss
and YES I made a video for every boss so u can check it out urself if u dont believe me
this game is huge and it hides some truly broken stuff and if u build ur character properly
-best buffs before the fight (golden vow flame grant, me strenght,damage negation spell depending on the boss)
-best consumables boiled crab + blood boil aromatic
-best tears in ur mixed physick pysick (a tear that boosts the element damage ur using+ Bloodsucking tear)
-best armor Bullgoat if u want to tank or the rakshasa armor if u want extra damage + white mask if u use a blood build
- the 4 best talisman for exact this fight
-the perfect weapo for exact this thight with the ideal ash of war + scaling
like u have so much tool and so on u can legit 1 shot the final boss if u stack theese buffs
even after patch because it is all intended and doesn’t require any glitch
but despite it I still agree with u that it isnt fun watching the boss doing a 30sec combo waiting for ur turn just for the boss do run away again and u couldt even punish
they need to improve ur tools to match the bosses like in sekiro with the perfect parry
and players need to see the difference between good and bad difficulty
some bosses have really bad hitboxes (messmers snakes in phase 2 and the hippo for example but I think they already patched the hitbox of the hippo), + they do input reading and the moves are not well telegraphed so u cant tell when to dodge so u need to find out trough many trys to learn a boss
my fav bosses are :
messmer really liked the movset he was good to read he did much damage but his health was also really low so it felt fair
but the hitboxes of his snakes i phase 2 were really bad
the other perfect Boss was midra really fair movest and an epic atmosphere movset was fair and if u use consumables against madness the fight is fun and fair
Bayle the atmosphere was EPIC the Voice behind igor needs a rise the only fight i used a summon just to hear the voice the fight was fair even tough the boss uses arena wide AOW attacks it still felt fair and epic
Probably the only good dragon fight were u not just slash his feet the entire fight wghout seeing even his full body unlike other dragon fights
I think this comment pretty much summarizes my opinion
DLC is great
But the open world feels a bit empty and the rewards could be better
Smithing stones and cookbooks are not satisfying rewards
Also really don’t like that the have the exact number of fragments in the game to reach the max lv
I mean even in the base game u have way more golden seeds than u need to get lv max feels like a step backwards
But remember this is criticism on such a high lv
Comparing this game to any late Ubisoft titles
This is a 9,4
While any Ubisoft title is a 2,4/10
Yeah we can criticize from software and it think criticisms is indeed needed
Because look how good the game already is and how good it can be if it gets constructive criticism
What I would add is
-Some areas are really empty (I get it some are empty because of lore and for the atmosphere but still)
-The rewards of exploring could be better a cookbook or a smithing stone is not a good reward
-infinite rebirth is needed so u can change ur build as often as u want
(U already have much larval tears but some players rather safe them for a harder boss and ending up finishing the game without using them once
So don’t limit them)
-Loadouts would be great so u can safe a build (talisman weapon armor spells consumables)
So u can switch ur build faster
-The open world is fantastic and enormous huge but it felt like the map was to small for the content it contained
If they improve this the game would be a 10/10
From software is already one of the last if not the last studio that cares about the customer and their content and not about the investors
I really love their gameplays formula and the limited UI u really play the game urself and find ur own paths and soulutions if u care u finish some quest on ur own but if u don’t pay attention u finish the game without finding any quests
In any other modern games u don’t play the game urself u have exactly the same experience as any other player
I follow the markers on ur minimal and check up the quest lock do all quest makers on the minimap
Grind XP to process because they force u to because of bad scaling so the game time is longer but they sell u XP booster so u can grind faster
And in the and u finish the story
Non of ur decisions made any difference and u have the same experience and ending as any other person who played the game
"[...] no i don't used any op stuff [...]" Video of you using Spinning Gravity Trust on a bleed greatsword LMAO
@@jakeislavic3024 sorry forgot that AoW are too OP next time I’m doing a lv 1 run with bare fists to make it more fair
In a game that sells itself as an rpg in wich you're a variety of classic roles like Cleric or Mage, respecing conveniently for every boss encounter to be an aberration of Havel/Ninja/Sorcerer normally involving great shields, bleed, or both looks and feels like shit ngl.
The thing is that in older games you could finish the fights in 9 seconds, naked, maintaining YOUR build consistent, and you didn't even needed to be that good to manage that.
Just seeing how some of your builds look makes me not want to touch anything FROM ever again in my life, if that's the alternative I have, this was sold as mainly a sword and board game, that was the face of the series, it LITERALLY was in the cover, now it's a Havel Mage simulator? (or Verdigris Ninja, even worse) nah, not worth it.
I perosally loved EVERY boss in the dlc, except for Midra and Radahn. What kills me is the ridiculous hitboxes and AoE attacks that hit you no matter what. Radahn honestly made me lose interest in playing so much that I decided to move on to ng+ until they nerf him a little. I think er is a masterpiece, but some bosses are so cheesy they were just unpleasant. Radahn made me almlst quit on the entire franchise, and thats never happened before.
I don't share the same view at all, but this video was interesting to listen to as you presented your thoughts very naturally.
Especially in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2, the difficulty was mainly in the levels themselves with lots of traps/enemies to catch you, but the bosses were generally easy (some exceptions of course: O&S, DLC bosses for example). For Elden Ring, they designed a huge world with a stress-free traversal system and lots of grace points to make it a more welcoming experience for newcomers. The Legacy dungeons were also not that difficult compared to the levels in previous games. The difficulty of ER was then achieved by giving very complex and advanced movesets to bosses, with our character having a speed not quite comparable to the protagonist in Bloodborne or Sekiro.
It was still very fun for me to "crack" boss movesets and defeat them (even in SOTE), but I can see your point. Maybe you would be more comfortable with a comeback in the previous style, where the difficulty is more balanced between levels and bosses, not just bosses.
For their next game, it would be amazing to start from the foundation of Bloodborne's or Sekiro's gameplay/speed if they want to continue in that vein.
I think the level and the world design of Shadow of the Erdtree is much better then the main game. IHaven't had this much fun exploring since the first time since Dark Souls 1. Not to find fragments, items or weapons but simply just exploring to see what I can find. And how I can get to that mountain or that part of the map.
The weapons and new talismans are also really fun and opens up to new builds and completely new ways to play the game.
The lore was fine too in my opinion. Sure getting more info on the Gloomed eyed Queen and Godwyn would have been great but Dark Souls 1 never got a DLC about Velka and neither did Velka appear in any of the sequels either (even though a statue was in Dark Souls 3). So it's pretty much the same thing now just that back then not many people knew about Velka.
The bosses though is something I'm conflicted on. I think a lot of them are really good and then theres some that are too much or requires the player to change up the playstyle specifically for that one boss. Or you can just make a overpowered build and skip most annoying part of a boss and brute force it instead. Meaning the balancing of the game is pretty off and thats my biggest problem with the DLC and the game as whole.
For me i love the exploration. I think for me thats where the magic is and the dungeons. The combat and weapons and armor and visual design!
Look. I get your points. For lore they dropped the ball a little in the dlc. But the boss difficulty is also a very important aspect of from soft games. The truth is that from soft games are not for everybody. You can't please everybody when it comes to a game. Personally I love the challenge of the fight just as much as the lore and world building. I don't think from soft should lower the difficulty of their fights. Miyazaki clearly makes these games with a focus on the main souls fans that love the challenge. Right now, ,the dlc is considered hard but I'm sure that after some period everyone will start talking about how great the bosses are. This is what always happens. It happened for dark souls 3, sekiro, and even eldenring base game
Elden Ring is easy, just use summons, it's part of the toolkit after all, right? How can anyone say that Miyazaki cares about difficulty after the summons, consumables, buffs, broken AoW, etc...
Sekiro and lies of p are both my favorite combat in a video game. My favorite Game is elden ring. Overall I liked the DLC, I agree that the lore / story of the DLC needed more, they left some stuff alone, they should of did more with the story of the DLC. I personally though there was some solid bosses in thus DLC. I think second phase of final boss was insane, hard to see, they just have unlimited stamina. I think adjustments and adjusting to a boss makes boss battles fun.
People just got too good at these games so ER might just be the limit of what is possible within this combat system. I mean when a boss is really unfun for you, you can simply grab a greatshield and poke them to death at any time anyway which is pretty much the final stage of "adapting your playstyle". Sekiro was the logical next step from the old system but they went back in time with ER. At least you can get a taste of Sekiro via the new deflect tear item.
I mostly liked this DLC but there is SO MUCH empty space. This DLC isn't even half as big as it looks on the map. Which is sitll big, but still. It's a bit of an illusion.
Parrying all the time while fightng is just tedious
@@truthbetold7765 I'd say it's a bit easier than parrying in Souls, also you can stay in the action and attack whenever you aren't deflecting, no more rolling around and walking away while the boss does the same cutscene combo for the 500th time that doesn't let you act
I have similar feelings regarding the DLC bosses. I think that from Bloodorne onward FromSoft is always trying to speed up the pace of combat to make boss fights more spectacular, giving bossess a lot of combos and lot of AOE attacks too (seriously, I feel almost all ER DLC main bossess have a nuke AOE attack that almost (or not) oneshots you, see for example Messmer, Midra and Rellana). The things is, cooler fights from a visual standpoint are not necessarily cooler to play. I feel like between DS chosen undead and ER tarnished there isn't a big difference in term of attack speed and mobility, while bosses are a lot faster and more aggressive and this results in you passively dodging the bossess' long combos only to attack every once in a while, which to me feels very different from fighting a boss from the earliest titles. In the end, they are not that much harder but I think they are more frustrating to play against. I think that they struck the best balance with the combat being still deliberate but more action oriented with Bloodborne, since for example you had a faster way of dodging (the dash when you were locked on) and you healed yourself by hitting enemies, allowing you to match the adversary in terms of speed and aggression. Don't get me wrong, I still absolutely loved Elden Ring and I think that there are great boss fights, but I miss the feeling of playing against older bosses, where the combat was still difficult but slower and the bossess dealt less damage, allowing you to still beat a boss first try, because the game would allow you to learn and adapt to the boss in a single beautiful try, like the author of the video said too.
I respectfully disagree with your video.
I’m going to be honest. It just sounds like From Soft games are not meant for you. They’ve always been this way since day one. They are just better at making bosses that match current players skill levels. Aside from the exploration these games have always been about learning how to tackle the next boss.
Most bosses on the old games required A) Upgrade materials for the weapon B) Mashing buttons.
*The game is NOTHING like the series used to be, basically a Metroidvania with a few knowledge checks, instead of full tryhard action.
Sekiro is FromSoft’s best game yet and one of the best games ever made.
I agree. Sekiro is their best game and bloodborn is probably their best work of art.
DS1
@@nicolasvenezuelaverde1184 nope
I like Elden Ring and Bloodborne the most asthetically. I like the models of Dark souls 3 but the color is too bland. However, the original Dark souls made bosses that were execution based in the first half. If you can do a certain thing or dodge when the boss attacks, dodge puddles of lava on the floor, find openings, understand the gimic, or manage two enemies with complementary move sets you can execute the boss easily on your first try. However, it takes skill to execute these descisive victories. Elden ring is heavily build based, Tree fragment based, and memorization based. These are all skills however some are skills in crafting builds while some are skills in memory. However, not eberyone has the time or patience to memorize every move the boss does after dying multiple times to it. Tell me what tells does the waterfall dance give showing how to dodge it? There are so many unjumpable AOE or AOE that looks like ot shouldne be Jumpable but is. My last issue is the input reading and the felayed attacks. I like delayed attacks when done right, like with the Nameless King and Orphan of Kos they hold their weapons, however, their attacks come down at a speed where you can react to the swing itself. Many elden ring bosses hold their weapons up then after some time it instantly hits the floor. Reaction rolls are reacting to the swing in Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Elden ring has attacks which you dodge based on your memory of getting pummeled by that attack. Sometimes physics are broken to delay an attack like Godfrey's Jumpimg grab. The only boss that has a delayed jumping attack in dark souls would be Artorious if you Consider his flip a delay (even though his jump doesnt distort physics or gravity) and Gael's jumping crossbow attack which is a ranged attack and him floating for a bit doesnt affect when the attack lands. Overall, I enjoy Elden ring on first playthrough and once you memorize all of the boss's attacks, however, the kearning process isnt very fun in. It is the best when you are a newb or when you are a pro. There is no in between.
Dark souls 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. DS2 was so terrible I skipped DS3. Elden ring was a decent game but is very overrated game feels dated at this point in terms of graphics and gameplay
I thought some of the commenters here saying that maybe the games aren’t for you or that you were playing strange were simply misunderstanding you, but after fully watching the video I have to agree.
You complain about needing to collect items to strengthen your character? In an open world game? Shoot man, you already had to do that in the base game to upgrade your healing and weapons. You complain about Scadutree frags being limited in number, and that they weren’t farmable. That is such a foolish idea! If you could farm them, everyone would simply path the fastest route to that enemy and grind for 2 hours before they hit the max rank. The entire DLC would be trivialized.
Your point about the DLC bosses is strange too. It’s bad to have to learn the fight? Wtf were you doing in the previous games, face tanking until you won? While I personally dislike the FromSoft fans who prioritize the boss difficulty above all else, there is a reason the bosses are so iconic. I’ve likened it to a dance, the “flow” of the fight changes between you and the boss. It’s the reason I love bosses like Gael and Pontiff. Yes, they’re hyper aggressive, but there’s always a window to counter and deal damage after they’re done doing their move.
I feel at times ER whiffed this, but I still feel the DLC mostly nailed this. They’re at times still overtuned, but Scadu buffs + using the tools the game has given you (ie. Physicks, Talismans, Consumables) make the bosses more easily dealt with. Even if the windows to attack seem small, they’re still there. I was able to beat Promised Consort duel wielding greatswords without summons, so speed isn’t completely the issue at all.
Overall, I’m not sure why you like the series as a whole. The Vibes? The level design?
Apologies if anything in this comment comes off as incoherent, it’s 2:30 AM where I am right now and I most certainly botched something up above,
He means learning the boss to the point you'd do in Monster Hunter 4 as an example, perfectly, you didn't need that in DkS1 that's for sure.
On the other games rushing to one or two advanced items (DBS, Gravelord S) was normally more than enough to beat the game, and NG+, and ++, and +++, with the greatest ease, you didn't grind, you didn't farm, and you didn't fought a boss for 10 min. If you think this is better that's ok but don't pretend that this is what the series is about.
@@eggmiths3642 that just seems strange though. Weapons like those just trivialize the game and make it very easy.
And if the series isn’t about difficult combat, then what is it about?
@@nono-lz9qr It was clearly a metroid esque game, why all the elevators and walking if not? it looks like a combat focused game, like, say, DMC to you?
Yeah weapons such as those will work very well but so did Sunlight Blade (just one buff, not a combination of 35) any common weapon upgraded to + 11, etc. And if you ever upgraded in NG, anything to +15 (never mind understanding scaling and leveling stats accordingly) it was op, anything from a Battle Axe to a Claymore, not even talking the actually good PVE weapons like Falchion or Halberds.
In ER you can be 190 rl on NG with multiple buffs and maxed weapons and still chip through lifebars for 10 minutes, you can like this better of course, but it absolutely ISN'T Souls as the series was.
@@eggmiths3642 Agree to disagree on what type of game DS and the series is. I do agree though that the game is heavily overtuned, and I hope they ‘revert’ back to something on par with DS3 or Sekiro.
@@nono-lz9qr Agree, Gael seems like the limit of what they could reasonably throw at you with a DkS3 style of character, and Sekiro is another thing entirely.
Elden ring relies heavily on delayed attack and aoe’s. Its not a direction i particularly like but the game is still very good. The boss fights are so beautiful just their attacks are a bit boring and cheap. A great example of a really hard but fun and creative boss fight was the orphan of cos.
I think messmer and bayle and even midra were the best in this dlc mainly because they didnt rely on delayed attacks with 10 years of startup.
I agree especially mesmer he was a very cool boss and the fight felt awesome. Some of them are just shit fights tbh. Same with the main game. Delay hit floor spam aoe repeat.
@@Sephirothkingdom782Messmer has many delayed attacks so this comment really confuses me.
felt the same way, it was a nice ride. Im in my 30s so its time to let go and do other stuff.
Miyazaki seemed to indicate he is moving even further from Dark Souls into something new so we will likely get something none of us can predict. I think that Shadow of the Erdtree is a joy.
Bloodborne 2 would prob be the best direction the soulsborne franchise can go to
I don't enjoy learning bosses, it takes time and frustrations, I have no prefrontal cortex, instead I make cheesy enjoyable build and use fun summons. Beat most bosses in one or two tries switching from greatshield poke boy build to thonk boy build depending on how much running and stuff. Cheesing is more a part of the design now too than early souls, same with build switching, get a dozen or so of those larval tears.
Play lunacid its very kingsfield.