Gene is pretty spot on with his mention of encouraging people to start a new character from the start to see how difficult Elden Ring actually was, I started a new character from scratch for the DLC and replayed the entire base game and it was a nice ramp up to help me prepare for the DLC so I wasnt rusty.
exactly. people forget Margit the Fell Omen would kill you easily in 2-3 hits. they just maintained that level of difficulty for the beginning of this DLC.
I play offline and made it all the way to radahn with moonveil and carian regal scepter. After trying multiple times i felt i wasn't going to ne able to do it. I turned on summons for the 1st time in elden ring. My ally tanked him the whole fight while i casted spells. We were victorious. I did not lose sleep over that choice. I'm happy.
Gene hit the nail on the head. We don’t need an Elden ring 2. This is the whole package right here and it’s a 10/10. Time to move on to something else, preferably a smaller experience
Hyped for this one! Edit: regarding the listener question about Elden Ring boss move sets: this game isn’t Dark Souls, and you can’t always play it like it’s Dark Souls. It’s Elden Ring! Bosses are simply much faster. Replaying Dark Souls 3 right now and I’ve made it to Farron Keep and haven’t died once to a boss. They are very slow in comparison to *most* Elden Ring bosses.
@@JimmyTheShinobi absolutely. You can really see the Bloodborne influence in how much faster enemies and bosses are in DS3 compared to 1&2 and I remember thinking that back in 2016 when it released.
@@tweeeeeex you can jump/crouch and work around those combos it doesn't matter if they're faster, the delayed attacks even let you recover stamina. Again this isn't dark souls so stop playing like it is.
@@HardcoreGamer101508 he’s the most popular streamer in the world, Kevin hart and lebron James are visiting HIM for clout. So i dunno why this is so weird to you that you have to keep commenting this on multiple channels lol
@@GenePark Yo, Gene. Didn’t mean anything bad by it. It’s just very noticeable, no matter the podcast, and I don’t really pay much attention to the streaming scene lol Appreciate your commentary regardless and respect for responding to people in the comments
I appreciate you guys bringing up Zelda. Even though I loved Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom didn’t really speak to me and I’ve felt for awhile that the Souls series is the closest we’re getting right now to the feelings I felt playing Ocarina and Majora’s Mask back in the day. After being a huge Souls fan, Zelda’s lack of a real loot system leaves me feeling kind of empty when I play the last two games. Outside of enjoying puzzles there’s really nothing in the shrine system in Breath or Tears that makes them worth it to me.
My build of choice on my first run was primarily faith and had 100%ed the main game so was pretty high level. Sacred Relic Sword nuked almost everything in the DLC, taking no damage from any NPC fight, with spells like Frenzied Burst and Ancient Dragon's Lightning Strike for other scenarios, and stacked enough buffs to survive bosses enough to learn and beat them first try most of the time (total of 4 deaths to the remembrance bosses, 0 on Radahn). DLC was easy for me because I used everything available, and still had a great time. The Good: World design and exploration was CRAZY good. Beautiful areas, and never knew where I'd end up when following each path I found. Most remembrance bosses are excellent, with great moves, music and spectacle. Shadow Keep is really cool as a "dungeon/hub". Ansbach and Igon were awesome NPCs, and loved the idea of the big NPC battle royale. Easily worth the price. The Bad: For as "late-game" as the requirements are for entering the DLC, a huge number of weapons/ashes/spells/items in the DLC are garbage and are objectively worse than base game options you're likely to already have, hopefully with several more balance updates coming to fix that. Probably too many Furnace Golems, and repeats from the base game with basically nothing added felt like padding. A lot of lore missteps IMO, like Godwyn being totally forgotten (this could've been fixed with a single line), only one tiny mention of Melina, and nothing in the DLC is changed by your decisions in the base game and vice versa. Nothing cool like the Sif cutscene change in DS1, unless there's something out there no one's found yet.
Really enjoyed the discussion of Fromsoft's evolution of boss design, and a healthy debate between Brad and Gene. I can see both sides, i definitely think boss fights have kept getting better, but it would be cool to see a bit of the old weirdness and innovation. I dont think its completely disappeared but they don't lean into it as much as they used to. There's certainly a balance to be found. In terms of this DLC, my favourite has to be Bayle. Loved everything about it - the whole area of the Jagged Peak (and how you even find your way there in the first place), the atmosphere of the world and how you have to keep battling these dragons to reach Bayle. The journey up and up just felt so epic, and how the the lightning kept building. And then the boss arena itself, and the face off with Bayle. Loved the actual fight and his moveset, and the music was top tier. And then of course Igon, what a great questline to get him back to Bayle, and the voice actor performance was fantastic lol
@@tweeeeeex People say the moveset hasn't evolved very much but I think what people don't realise is that in previous games most of the moveset wasn't actually useful. Elden Ring does two things differently than DS3 1) it makes posture breaking easier and more significant 2) and gives bosses longer combos with differently paced attacks. The effect of 1 is that using heavies, charged heavies (and the new jumping attacks) an actually useful so R1 should not be your default punish for combo closers. The effect of 2 is that you're supposed to find openings within combos instead of just at the end of them. So many of the delayed attacks people people complain about are actually openings for light attacks, important for keeping posture damage from resetting, or can be strafed instead of rolled and then punished with heavy attacks. Messmer is a really good example of this. He has this long combo where he pokes with his spear, throws fire, does a sweep, and then a delayed spear drag. I found just by experimenting a bit that if you roll the fire throw properly you end up at his back and can hit him before dodging the sweep, then can hit him again as he does the delayed spear drag, and then hit him with a charged heavy at the end. You can do all sorts of crazy things with Messmer like strafing the move where he jumps over you and throws down a hail of spears and hitting him while he does this. This is not to mention the fact that long combos can almost always be punished somewhere with a jumping heavy that will low-profile subsequent attacks, another opening within a combo for large posture damage, but for some reason people still seem to think jumping is this weird unnecessary accessory and not a core combat mechanic. Roll is also less frequently a free evasion the way it was in DS3. Bosses have branching combos based on positioning so you actually have to pay attention to what direction you're rolling. Elden Ring is probably the least "press R1 and circle" of any Souls game (much to the dismay of everyone who wishes it were just DS3), and is based a lot more on experimentation than Sekiro. This is not to throw shade on Sekiro, but Sekiro has three basic and well telegraphed responses to anything an enemy does. It's fun and intuitive, but (especially without prosthetics) nowhere near as complex as Elden Ring is if you're actually trying to take full advantage of its basic systems (this is excluding things like ashes of war, shields and their counters of parrying, deflecting, and guard-countering, and spells, all of which had additional layers of complexity).
@@tweeeeeex except combat certainly has evolved, jumping, crouching and ashes of war are a huge part of it. Circle strafing and rolling R1 are no longer the most effective or consistant strategies anymore.
The last boss has the issue of making you respec, or being "too hard" because of how insanely powerful we can be with all the tools we have. If the boss is going to be reasonably difficult for enough people to warrant a last boss fight, and in Elden Ring there are so many different ways to play with so many powerful options, then From have to design the boss a bit crazy which ends up being a little cheesy and unfair feeling sometimes... but our characters are often using the most broken and cheesy stuff also. Unlike say Sekiro which is a much more narrow system so can be much more tightly balanced. It kinda is what it is.
A valid complaint about the bosses is that now it has shifted more towards pattern recognition as opposed to reaction combat. Doing a boss no hit first try in DS1 is not that far fetched, whereas doing that in ER on Margit for instance is not possible.
I love this one dude here who was at max character level with all stats at lvl 99, he uses mimic and in the end used asmongolds ultimate cheese turtle build to beat radahn. Then has the gall to talk about some people not being good enough to beat the dlc. Then he mentioned pride month and so the penny dropped as I realised he's a goofy mook
It's hard to take anything Gene said about the DLC's difficultty seriously based on how he approached his build and the use of spirit ashes. How can you exploit everything possible and be confident enough to downplay others? Absolutely clueless. The point a lot of people made is precisely the distate of having to resort to this type of "strategy" to be able to beat some of the content. Worse yet, is that these challenges aren't even tied to the game mechanics, but often to camera limitations, poor visual presentation, or inflated numbers. But I guess when you summon the mimic and watch him fight the bosses, these things aren't issues.
@@GeneParkI must have missed the in-game text encouraging me to research the internet for broken gear so that I can build my chatacter around that. Same thing with grinding for max level and specifically using the mimic. Engage the game however you want, but treating this playstyle as the baseline is a bit too much.
you didn't need to respec to make the dark moon greatsword build "viable" against radahn. Just mix in some spells like Rock Sling to help with stagger or just don't worry about stagger and focus on damage
I thought it was too hard when I started and then soon realised that it was my issue for not having played the game, ran through on NG+ and then recked the DLC apart from the final boss.
As people said, imagine going blind into elden ring now and slaying Mogh and entering the shadow of the erdtree dlc... how big isnt this game? Speaking of the lore, it is intresting about the shamans being able to mend with others, makes you wonder- was that what happened to Radagon and Marika at some point? Now that we know you can mend her people together with others. Here we got Marika, fighting a "slave rebellion" to free her people from being mended together into some saintly potion meanwhile it looks like the GW or its puppet, the beast, did exactly that back to Marika with the "loyal hound" to the golden order, Radagon.
I'm feeling like I need to respec. Strength Faith Build and I've got him down to maybe 35% but it also felt like a fluke like Dustin said. I've put in 6 or 7 sessions and don't feel any sense of progression which is my biggest issue with the fight.
I have to say, the dragons dogma 2 pushback for me was just how uninspired it was to fans of the first game. The story payoff is questionable at best, and no new Mobs or designs even? Just straight up everything but 4K with ray tracing lol. It’s gorgeous to look at no doubt, combat is fun (but repetitive). It’s really shallow once you actually golden path it.
Been playing FromSoft games since Demon’s Souls PS3. A decade+ of playing their stuff has taught me the difference between the legitimate struggle to git gud and the occasional poorly designed encounter. DLC is mostly great stuff, but make no mistake: certain select bosses are straight up awful.
Im sorry but the mere idea that this DLC is a 10/10 is laughable, the DLC has issues you get overwhelmed when you try to put them in order. The camera vs big bosses is atrocious its even more egregious when said bosses are always aggressive towards you which makes managing the camera a chore(Bayle), you would think they would have addressed this but nope. The bosses utilize input reading way too much (bosses will extent attacks if you try to punish them which results with you losing most of your health) and some attacks arent easily avoidable without perfect rolling, the end game DLC bosses denying you flask healing in an attempt to "increase the difficulty" only increases the friction you have to endure in order to figure out the fight, if that wasnt enough the increased friction duo to needless deaths devalues the fear of death since its very unlikely to beat a boss on your first attempt. Questionable hitboxes cause of course Fromsoft wouldn't dare stop that tradition, did you know Gaius hitbox is messed up when he charges you? did you also know he is immune while he does his charge. The Scadutree Fragment system was bad in its implementation, its very easy to miss a few fragments in your first playthrough all cause you didnt explore the DLC areas to death, this affects your next playthroughs as well since now you have this boring collectable item to collect in order to try and keep up with the increased stats the enemies have in the DLC area, instead of having an excessive supply of them in world much like the golden seeds or reward them for killing bosses we get this half assed implantation that's in place in order to address the fact that most characters that enter the DLC have already reached their potential. The rewards for exploring this new world are a joke, entering this end game DLC being gatekeeped by Mohg who is one of the three vanilla end game bosses that offers 400k+ runes after a kill, a zone where mobs have even more health and damage and we get smithing stone 1+ as a reward.... WHY who ever needs smithing stone +1s already has an infinite supply of them in the roundtable hold but hey its a one off right? NOPE the DLC areas are so huge that very rarely ever have rewards to toy with and some zones are completely empty of ANYTHING(looking at you finger ruins). A sizeable amount of ashes of war or incantations are terrible, they deal very little damage, they dont have hyper armor so you cant use them vs most fights and they cost too much FP to boot while other ones are the exact opposite, i want someone to explain to me how Impenetrable Thorns and Rellanas twin moons are balanced. Now i could mention a few more but this comment is already too big but i will end it with the following, Fromsoft took to heart some of the criticism of Elden Ring and they added Sekiros perfect blocking to the game BUT they focked it up on how they added it, instead of adding it to the base game or introducing a talisman that you can start the game with, they instead gave you a crystal tear that lasts for 5 minutes and grants you a functional Sekiro perfect block, but because its a tear you cant use perfect blocking in the open world or when you do dungeons....... This DLC screams missed potential.
I would like to comment that i love hearing you guys no matter what the topics. Very great to hear elden ring talk that much more. Hi Dustin, Brad, and Gene!! 👋
Dustin, Ive been thinking about that other anime villian you referenced for so long now. My only other weeb friend fucked up the in game system that lets you access that content so im starved ror that convo too
It’s mostly learning enemy patterns same with Returnal same with Mike Tyson’s PunchOut. I think many people get put off with game length or redundancy but if you stick with it it becomes second nature
CHANNEL CRITIQUE I avoided this podcast many times in the past because I didn’t know who was on it at all. On my phone at least, the title is so long it cuts off and the thumbnails are possible the worst. No mention of the guests in the thumbnail? Like you only got me listening because I went out of my way to search for Gene Park, and this was probably the third result and I even skipped it at first glance. Even the title doesn’t mention guests. Like I’m just so confused why you would make a podcast, have guests and then make it impossible for anyone to know who is on it unless they click it and see the video or read the description. I assume you want this podcast/channel to grow, so put the guests names in the thumbnail or do something more. I bet if people that browse like me knew you had great guests on all the time then you’d have more listeners. I’m really shocked you aren’t doing this because it seems like every other podcast does this. An extra 5 minutes (probably 1 or two) working on a thumbnail would undeniably get you more viewers, and possibly a lot more. Please make this change
Blah, difficulty discussion reduced to hurr durr the game is perfect just use skibidi fragments and mimic GOD can some of you people THINK before you speak? What makes good difficulty? WHAT ARE PEOPLE ACTUALLY COMPLAINING ABOUT. Mimic steals aggro from the boss so you don't interact with the base systems of the game and take turns dealing damage. it's bad game design coping for making the bosses too aggressive and players outmatched. The combat design is plain unbalanced. There is no problem with fast bosses as long as you have similar tools to match. not the case in ER. boss flashbangs you with fake attacks, hiding his real attack so you have to count how many flashbangs he did? please. that's trash design. There's fun difficult(balanced) - DMCV, Nioh 2, God Hand and there's trash unbalanced design like ER. Play some real action games before attempting to critique difficulty. And try going a little more in depth instead of being extremely basic and casual.
Right, and it is baffling to me how for ex take the twitch streamer and veteran of souls games "miss mikka" who people are amazed how she can defeat the bosses with a dance board... well, she died like 1000+ times in her playthrough of shadow of the erdtree and was stuck for days at the last boss dying like 500+ of times playing it normally at launch- her twitch stream showed that. now I dont care that she makes a living out of playing elden ring 24/7 and can now finish the same boss with 2 controllers (im sure me and greyfeather would also be able to crush radahn at some point if our life was just playing elden ring 24/7 on twitch but thats not a normal persons lives or gaming experience)- IF someone is one of the best souls players out there AND you die like 500+ times on a boss, its not "OKAY". Meanwhile, Synthetic man, finished the boss on his 2nd try by using a summon mimic. I mean, come on. The difficulty clearly isnt "right" if some of the best players are stuck for days on the same boss. AND you can beat it on your first tries with a summon. I took 17 attempt with a summon btw. But I guess I played it wrong and should have died 500 times and spent days playing 24/7 like these streamers do for a living. Also you are right, DMC, NG, NIOH etc are the right balance. ps! if streamers play badly to make their streams last longer to get their donations is obviously an argument, but I dont buy into it.
Does Gene always take 1 minute to start and stop the points he's trying to make? I'm a new Patron and I'm not feeling him at all, most of his takes are recycled from @PatStaresAt and others, I've heard them made before, verbatim. He also took over and spoiled the Rurikahn spoiler mode with FightinCowboy
Gene tends to walk a fine line when it comes to spoiling stuff (outside the spoiler discussions). It’s probably just enthousiasme….but it bugs te hell out of me sometimes. I had to skip multiple shows forward when he does the talking, or just takes over when someone is having their say. Gene’s heart is in the right place and he’s very knowledgeable. But yeah, it’s an annoyance at most.
I hated lies of p. Every attack is so misleading even from the trash mobs. And this is coming from someone that beat ever fromsoft game solo (except millennia)
I lean a lot more towards Gene's opinion than Brad's, have for a while now. I still love Fromsoft's games, Elden Ring is pretty damn good even if I hate a lot of the modern post BB design choices, but the community as a whole desperately needs to resist "GIT GUUD" brain rot. Any kind of critical or nuanced discussion goes out the window the moment you throw that at people.
Bosses are not as satisfying as they used to be. Sure they are more complicated, look better, attack in more interesting patterns. But the summons plus game breaking builds pushed the bosses too far. If you don’t want to use summons, if you do not have all stats at 99… it becomes too frustrating. That is a problem. We pay for the boss fights, we should not want to get overpowered or use overpowered methods to beat these bosses. Or maybe I am getting old and no longer want to try as hard as I used to. Probably a mix of both
Going through demons souls again and man the bosses are just terrible. Sure every game has its ups and downs when it comes to bosses but overall the fights are better nowadays. I love demon souls (ive been there since day one) with its amazing atmosphere and level design, but i completely disagree with Gene. Brad is right that those gimmick fights were never good, especially on replays. Every game has its great fights and yes it would be cool if they brought more fresh ideas but lets not revert back to those old battles.
i literally say those gimmick bosses suck but we need more variety. i should’ve mentioned it but Radahn in the base game is a great new example: that big arena with all the summons made it feel like normandy beach. memorable moments like that
@GenePark yeah I get your point and I don't disagree with the idea of more variety. You just heavily leaned on Demon's souls and the abstract point of design philosophy. I think that was also Brad's hangup tbh. The fights in Demons was epic at the time but are just easy and boring nowadays. The original Radahn fight is absolutely epic! I found the civil war battle to be a great expansion of that idea. With it including your personal narrative decisions as well, it made it one of the most interesting fights. Anyways great pod as usual. I always enjoy some discourse so thanks for the explanation gene.
How is it a deeply personal and interesting journey to find the abyssal woods by hitting a fake wall and going inside a coffin when that is the only possible way of reaching the abyssal woods? There's nothing personal about it. It's incredibly linear, unintuitive, and unsatisfying, and will likely result in the majority of players just googling how to get to the abyssal woods rather than finding it organically themselves. Makes for a poor gameplay experience.
He used the word "feels" like its personal. Their are some secrets ive had to look up but most of them can be found just exploring. Its an amazing feeling that the designers are willing to hide half the content they spent years making for those who want to seek it out. Just playthrough once on your own and see what you can really find. Use the second go around to look stuff up.
@gregoryjoslin3173 but they're NOT hiding it. They present you with the abyssal woods, scaduview, and other locations pretty openly. The only thing they're hiding is access to those locations behind gesture activated statues and invisible walls and other totally unintuitive+exclusive entry points. This is what that reader question was talking about. There is little to no player expression or creativity when it comes to map exploration. If you want to get to the abyssal woods, there is only one very narrow and obtuse method for doing so. No possibility of swapping fun stories about how you and a friend each found scaduview in different ways. And like I said, most people just end up looking up the answer elsewhere, like Gene getting Fightingcowboy to tell him how to reach the hinterlands. This design approach worked well in their old games, but it translates poorly to an open world game.
@@rainmaker6261I found the abyssal woods completely by accident and my jaw dropped when I did. Felt like I was the only person who found it (obviously not true). But it feels special when you find a secret place on the map. FromSoft has never catered to the crowd that wants to see and do everything. You gotta work for it. And man, for those of us that love the mystery and wonder of finding beautiful areas behind secret passages, FromSoft hits the spot. It’s like the feeling from Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, where going through the wardrobe leads to Narnia.
I found the abyssal woods on my own no problem. If you're being thorough I don't know how you could miss it. They literally put an item next to the ladder so you would see it. Moreover, the online component of the game is meant for players to direct other players towards the obscure stuff they could miss, like hidden walls. Maybe you don't play with that on, but it's a core part of the game, like paying attention to environment. I also found the Hinterland on my own. These games give you a gesture in some lore-significant part of the game. My immediate assumption is that this might have a use somewhere. Lo and behold, when you use the 'Mother' gesture at the statue of Queen Marika on the place on the map that looks like it leads to the Hinterland with the dev message right next to it, it leads to the Hinterland! It just requires you pay some attention to the context in which you find things in the game, and it was extremely rewarding for me to find it myself. Not everything has to be reachable through multiple ways to make its discovery feel personal, it just needs to be motivated by the player's own agency. There are plenty of other things that can be reached through multiple ways like Scadu Altus or the Shadow Keep or the Cerulean Coast.
Gene and the writer are wrong. I love Demon’s Souls but Flamelurker and bosses like him are the template they’ve built on. And they’re better for it. Anyone complaining about delayed attacks needs to “git gud.”
@@TheMaestro116 most delayed attacks in the game aren't bad, they add character to the animations and let you recover stamina without having to back out. You don't counter them by counting the timing but by reacting to the eventual swing. You don't even need to dodge the worst offenders either.
@@gaming2438 idk can't say I agree. There's too much going on and there are so many debuffs that it covers your character and you can't see as well. The first one was fine, the second one I hate
@@dtanobo The trick with the second one is to just let them come at you at their own pace, they only aggro one at a time and the big brother only comes out when one is left.
@@Ghorda9 but they only pace themselves like a fraction of the time. Usually the attack you collectively while one of them is a bit more aggressive. I'm getting all 3 debuffs at once usually (which covers the whole character model) and parry timing is so wonky. I personally hate that boss.
@@dtanobo only one of them comes at you and the others will just go for the occasional ranged attack, they also attack you if you get too close. The only other thing is that they tag team and switch places every so often.
also Gene talking lore is so much fun, I love his passion for it and it makes it so enjoyable to hear him talk about it
Best part of the episode
I enjoy these spoilercasts/deep dives so much.
Do they use mimic tears?
Gene is pretty spot on with his mention of encouraging people to start a new character from the start to see how difficult Elden Ring actually was, I started a new character from scratch for the DLC and replayed the entire base game and it was a nice ramp up to help me prepare for the DLC so I wasnt rusty.
exactly. people forget Margit the Fell Omen would kill you easily in 2-3 hits. they just maintained that level of difficulty for the beginning of this DLC.
@@GenePark nothing humbled me quite like strolling into that first catacomb past the tree sentinel and getting 2 shotted by the little stone imps 😭
I play offline and made it all the way to radahn with moonveil and carian regal scepter. After trying multiple times i felt i wasn't going to ne able to do it. I turned on summons for the 1st time in elden ring. My ally tanked him the whole fight while i casted spells. We were victorious. I did not lose sleep over that choice. I'm happy.
Gene hit the nail on the head. We don’t need an Elden ring 2. This is the whole package right here and it’s a 10/10. Time to move on to something else, preferably a smaller experience
Hyped for this one!
Edit: regarding the listener question about Elden Ring boss move sets: this game isn’t Dark Souls, and you can’t always play it like it’s Dark Souls. It’s Elden Ring! Bosses are simply much faster. Replaying Dark Souls 3 right now and I’ve made it to Farron Keep and haven’t died once to a boss. They are very slow in comparison to *most* Elden Ring bosses.
And in DS3 they were so much faster than DS1&2, I remember a lot of people complained about DS3 being too fast which is pretty funny now.
@@JimmyTheShinobi absolutely. You can really see the Bloodborne influence in how much faster enemies and bosses are in DS3 compared to 1&2 and I remember thinking that back in 2016 when it released.
@@tweeeeeex you can jump/crouch and work around those combos it doesn't matter if they're faster, the delayed attacks even let you recover stamina. Again this isn't dark souls so stop playing like it is.
Damn dude, Gene had a lot of jaffe energy this video
Gene is obsessed with Kai Cenat lol
@@HardcoreGamer101508 he’s the most popular streamer in the world, Kevin hart and lebron James are visiting HIM for clout. So i dunno why this is so weird to you that you have to keep commenting this on multiple channels lol
@@GenePark Yo, Gene. Didn’t mean anything bad by it. It’s just very noticeable, no matter the podcast, and I don’t really pay much attention to the streaming scene lol
Appreciate your commentary regardless and respect for responding to people in the comments
@@HardcoreGamer101508 no prob bro thanks for listening man
Loved the dlc glad they went straight into spoilers great episode!
I appreciate you guys bringing up Zelda. Even though I loved Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom didn’t really speak to me and I’ve felt for awhile that the Souls series is the closest we’re getting right now to the feelings I felt playing Ocarina and Majora’s Mask back in the day. After being a huge Souls fan, Zelda’s lack of a real loot system leaves me feeling kind of empty when I play the last two games. Outside of enjoying puzzles there’s really nothing in the shrine system in Breath or Tears that makes them worth it to me.
My build of choice on my first run was primarily faith and had 100%ed the main game so was pretty high level. Sacred Relic Sword nuked almost everything in the DLC, taking no damage from any NPC fight, with spells like Frenzied Burst and Ancient Dragon's Lightning Strike for other scenarios, and stacked enough buffs to survive bosses enough to learn and beat them first try most of the time (total of 4 deaths to the remembrance bosses, 0 on Radahn). DLC was easy for me because I used everything available, and still had a great time.
The Good: World design and exploration was CRAZY good. Beautiful areas, and never knew where I'd end up when following each path I found. Most remembrance bosses are excellent, with great moves, music and spectacle. Shadow Keep is really cool as a "dungeon/hub". Ansbach and Igon were awesome NPCs, and loved the idea of the big NPC battle royale. Easily worth the price.
The Bad: For as "late-game" as the requirements are for entering the DLC, a huge number of weapons/ashes/spells/items in the DLC are garbage and are objectively worse than base game options you're likely to already have, hopefully with several more balance updates coming to fix that. Probably too many Furnace Golems, and repeats from the base game with basically nothing added felt like padding. A lot of lore missteps IMO, like Godwyn being totally forgotten (this could've been fixed with a single line), only one tiny mention of Melina, and nothing in the DLC is changed by your decisions in the base game and vice versa. Nothing cool like the Sif cutscene change in DS1, unless there's something out there no one's found yet.
Really enjoyed the discussion of Fromsoft's evolution of boss design, and a healthy debate between Brad and Gene. I can see both sides, i definitely think boss fights have kept getting better, but it would be cool to see a bit of the old weirdness and innovation. I dont think its completely disappeared but they don't lean into it as much as they used to. There's certainly a balance to be found.
In terms of this DLC, my favourite has to be Bayle. Loved everything about it - the whole area of the Jagged Peak (and how you even find your way there in the first place), the atmosphere of the world and how you have to keep battling these dragons to reach Bayle. The journey up and up just felt so epic, and how the the lightning kept building. And then the boss arena itself, and the face off with Bayle. Loved the actual fight and his moveset, and the music was top tier. And then of course Igon, what a great questline to get him back to Bayle, and the voice actor performance was fantastic lol
@@tweeeeeex People say the moveset hasn't evolved very much but I think what people don't realise is that in previous games most of the moveset wasn't actually useful. Elden Ring does two things differently than DS3 1) it makes posture breaking easier and more significant 2) and gives bosses longer combos with differently paced attacks. The effect of 1 is that using heavies, charged heavies (and the new jumping attacks) an actually useful so R1 should not be your default punish for combo closers. The effect of 2 is that you're supposed to find openings within combos instead of just at the end of them. So many of the delayed attacks people people complain about are actually openings for light attacks, important for keeping posture damage from resetting, or can be strafed instead of rolled and then punished with heavy attacks. Messmer is a really good example of this. He has this long combo where he pokes with his spear, throws fire, does a sweep, and then a delayed spear drag. I found just by experimenting a bit that if you roll the fire throw properly you end up at his back and can hit him before dodging the sweep, then can hit him again as he does the delayed spear drag, and then hit him with a charged heavy at the end. You can do all sorts of crazy things with Messmer like strafing the move where he jumps over you and throws down a hail of spears and hitting him while he does this.
This is not to mention the fact that long combos can almost always be punished somewhere with a jumping heavy that will low-profile subsequent attacks, another opening within a combo for large posture damage, but for some reason people still seem to think jumping is this weird unnecessary accessory and not a core combat mechanic. Roll is also less frequently a free evasion the way it was in DS3. Bosses have branching combos based on positioning so you actually have to pay attention to what direction you're rolling. Elden Ring is probably the least "press R1 and circle" of any Souls game (much to the dismay of everyone who wishes it were just DS3), and is based a lot more on experimentation than Sekiro. This is not to throw shade on Sekiro, but Sekiro has three basic and well telegraphed responses to anything an enemy does. It's fun and intuitive, but (especially without prosthetics) nowhere near as complex as Elden Ring is if you're actually trying to take full advantage of its basic systems (this is excluding things like ashes of war, shields and their counters of parrying, deflecting, and guard-countering, and spells, all of which had additional layers of complexity).
@@tweeeeeex except combat certainly has evolved, jumping, crouching and ashes of war are a huge part of it. Circle strafing and rolling R1 are no longer the most effective or consistant strategies anymore.
Lets goo Elden Ring talk!!
hell yeah currently on my 3rd run of the DLC doing a bow only run
Do you work? lol dude go outside
The last boss has the issue of making you respec, or being "too hard" because of how insanely powerful we can be with all the tools we have. If the boss is going to be reasonably difficult for enough people to warrant a last boss fight, and in Elden Ring there are so many different ways to play with so many powerful options, then From have to design the boss a bit crazy which ends up being a little cheesy and unfair feeling sometimes... but our characters are often using the most broken and cheesy stuff also. Unlike say Sekiro which is a much more narrow system so can be much more tightly balanced. It kinda is what it is.
Great point.
Anybody know what JRPG Dustin is referring to around 1:45:00 ish?
My guess would be persona 5 royales antagonist
@@14_IQ.points ohhhhh yeah ok I can see the connection now
A valid complaint about the bosses is that now it has shifted more towards pattern recognition as opposed to reaction combat. Doing a boss no hit first try in DS1 is not that far fetched, whereas doing that in ER on Margit for instance is not possible.
except dark souls 1 bosses where terrible save for dlc, elden ring is a lot more enjoyable to replay than DS1 thanks to how expressive combat is
I was tarnished when I went in, I was tarnished when I came out. That is all.
I love this one dude here who was at max character level with all stats at lvl 99, he uses mimic and in the end used asmongolds ultimate cheese turtle build to beat radahn. Then has the gall to talk about some people not being good enough to beat the dlc. Then he mentioned pride month and so the penny dropped as I realised he's a goofy mook
@@O-o-Azazel-o-O tourist
Shame you mention pride flag because it will be used to ignore your valid criticism to "he's racist so everything he said is irrelevant"
I'm starting to think Gene is the Maximillian Dood of Elden Ring
What an analogy 😂
Lmao great comment. I’m waiting on Max to get to Radahn with his under leveled build lol
I just want to hear Gene talk everything Fromsoft for 8+ hours. I'll pay for it even.
What a nerd you are
1:03:50
Yes, I totally agree. This is exactly the point Matthewmatosis was making with his videos a decade ago.
Busy workday these guys knew what I needed
Deflecting Hardtear is seriously amazing.
It's hard to take anything Gene said about the DLC's difficultty seriously based on how he approached his build and the use of spirit ashes. How can you exploit everything possible and be confident enough to downplay others? Absolutely clueless.
The point a lot of people made is precisely the distate of having to resort to this type of "strategy" to be able to beat some of the content.
Worse yet, is that these challenges aren't even tied to the game mechanics, but often to camera limitations, poor visual presentation, or inflated numbers. But I guess when you summon the mimic and watch him fight the bosses, these things aren't issues.
@@arbernardo7554 yes I’m playing the game as it’s meant to be played.
@@GenePark Elden Ring = one of the hardest games ever... but only if you restrict your play style.
@@quezcatol i swear these people never stop to think how they sound lol
@@GeneParkI must have missed the in-game text encouraging me to research the internet for broken gear so that I can build my chatacter around that. Same thing with grinding for max level and specifically using the mimic.
Engage the game however you want, but treating this playstyle as the baseline is a bit too much.
@@arbernardo7554 The fact that you even bring up mimic as a problem shows how much of a tourist you are in the souls community
you didn't need to respec to make the dark moon greatsword build "viable" against radahn. Just mix in some spells like Rock Sling to help with stagger or just don't worry about stagger and focus on damage
I thought it was too hard when I started and then soon realised that it was my issue for not having played the game, ran through on NG+ and then recked the DLC apart from the final boss.
How is this a review discussion and spoilercast? This covers like 15% of the expansion. These should be WAY MORE structured.
Loved this discussion. Thanks guys!
I dont consider myself a gay man but Brad got me questioning a few things...
I think I’ll be fighting Radahn for the rest of my life.
As people said, imagine going blind into elden ring now and slaying Mogh and entering the shadow of the erdtree dlc... how big isnt this game? Speaking of the lore, it is intresting about the shamans being able to mend with others, makes you wonder- was that what happened to Radagon and Marika at some point? Now that we know you can mend her people together with others. Here we got Marika, fighting a "slave rebellion" to free her people from being mended together into some saintly potion meanwhile it looks like the GW or its puppet, the beast, did exactly that back to Marika with the "loyal hound" to the golden order, Radagon.
I tried to mainline Elden Ring couldn't beat Margit. Love to watch these cause of the passion! Great trio here we go!
I'm feeling like I need to respec. Strength Faith Build and I've got him down to maybe 35% but it also felt like a fluke like Dustin said. I've put in 6 or 7 sessions and don't feel any sense of progression which is my biggest issue with the fight.
I have to say, the dragons dogma 2 pushback for me was just how uninspired it was to fans of the first game. The story payoff is questionable at best, and no new Mobs or designs even? Just straight up everything but 4K with ray tracing lol. It’s gorgeous to look at no doubt, combat is fun (but repetitive). It’s really shallow once you actually golden path it.
Radahn took me 2 full days with my lvl 150 dex character without summons.
Been playing FromSoft games since Demon’s Souls PS3. A decade+ of playing their stuff has taught me the difference between the legitimate struggle to git gud and the occasional poorly designed encounter. DLC is mostly great stuff, but make no mistake: certain select bosses are straight up awful.
51:58 who’s gonna tell him………
Im sorry but the mere idea that this DLC is a 10/10 is laughable, the DLC has issues you get overwhelmed when you try to put them in order.
The camera vs big bosses is atrocious its even more egregious when said bosses are always aggressive towards you which makes managing the camera a chore(Bayle), you would think they would have addressed this but nope.
The bosses utilize input reading way too much (bosses will extent attacks if you try to punish them which results with you losing most of your health) and some attacks arent easily avoidable without perfect rolling, the end game DLC bosses denying you flask healing in an attempt to "increase the difficulty" only increases the friction you have to endure in order to figure out the fight, if that wasnt enough the increased friction duo to needless deaths devalues the fear of death since its very unlikely to beat a boss on your first attempt.
Questionable hitboxes cause of course Fromsoft wouldn't dare stop that tradition, did you know Gaius hitbox is messed up when he charges you? did you also know he is immune while he does his charge.
The Scadutree Fragment system was bad in its implementation, its very easy to miss a few fragments in your first playthrough all cause you didnt explore the DLC areas to death, this affects your next playthroughs as well since now you have this boring collectable item to collect in order to try and keep up with the increased stats the enemies have in the DLC area, instead of having an excessive supply of them in world much like the golden seeds or reward them for killing bosses we get this half assed implantation that's in place in order to address the fact that most characters that enter the DLC have already reached their potential.
The rewards for exploring this new world are a joke, entering this end game DLC being gatekeeped by Mohg who is one of the three vanilla end game bosses that offers 400k+ runes after a kill, a zone where mobs have even more health and damage and we get smithing stone 1+ as a reward.... WHY who ever needs smithing stone +1s already has an infinite supply of them in the roundtable hold but hey its a one off right? NOPE the DLC areas are so huge that very rarely ever have rewards to toy with and some zones are completely empty of ANYTHING(looking at you finger ruins).
A sizeable amount of ashes of war or incantations are terrible, they deal very little damage, they dont have hyper armor so you cant use them vs most fights and they cost too much FP to boot while other ones are the exact opposite, i want someone to explain to me how Impenetrable Thorns and Rellanas twin moons are balanced.
Now i could mention a few more but this comment is already too big but i will end it with the following, Fromsoft took to heart some of the criticism of Elden Ring and they added Sekiros perfect blocking to the game BUT they focked it up on how they added it, instead of adding it to the base game or introducing a talisman that you can start the game with, they instead gave you a crystal tear that lasts for 5 minutes and grants you a functional Sekiro perfect block, but because its a tear you cant use perfect blocking in the open world or when you do dungeons.......
This DLC screams missed potential.
I would like to comment that i love hearing you guys no matter what the topics. Very great to hear elden ring talk that much more. Hi Dustin, Brad, and Gene!! 👋
Dustin, Ive been thinking about that other anime villian you referenced for so long now. My only other weeb friend fucked up the in game system that lets you access that content so im starved ror that convo too
No matty or fightincowboy?!
It’s mostly learning enemy patterns same with Returnal same with Mike Tyson’s PunchOut. I think many people get put off with game length or redundancy but if you stick with it it becomes second nature
Great show! Great show!
CHANNEL CRITIQUE
I avoided this podcast many times in the past because I didn’t know who was on it at all. On my phone at least, the title is so long it cuts off and the thumbnails are possible the worst. No mention of the guests in the thumbnail? Like you only got me listening because I went out of my way to search for Gene Park, and this was probably the third result and I even skipped it at first glance. Even the title doesn’t mention guests. Like I’m just so confused why you would make a podcast, have guests and then make it impossible for anyone to know who is on it unless they click it and see the video or read the description.
I assume you want this podcast/channel to grow, so put the guests names in the thumbnail or do something more. I bet if people that browse like me knew you had great guests on all the time then you’d have more listeners. I’m really shocked you aren’t doing this because it seems like every other podcast does this. An extra 5 minutes (probably 1 or two) working on a thumbnail would undeniably get you more viewers, and possibly a lot more. Please make this change
3:17 Gene is a shill confirmed ✅
Gene you’re awesome man. Love your appreciation and enthusiasm with this.
Blah, difficulty discussion reduced to hurr durr the game is perfect just use skibidi fragments and mimic
GOD can some of you people THINK before you speak? What makes good difficulty? WHAT ARE PEOPLE ACTUALLY COMPLAINING ABOUT.
Mimic steals aggro from the boss so you don't interact with the base systems of the game and take turns dealing damage. it's bad game design coping for making the bosses too aggressive and players outmatched.
The combat design is plain unbalanced. There is no problem with fast bosses as long as you have similar tools to match. not the case in ER.
boss flashbangs you with fake attacks, hiding his real attack so you have to count how many flashbangs he did?
please. that's trash design.
There's fun difficult(balanced) - DMCV, Nioh 2, God Hand and there's trash unbalanced design like ER.
Play some real action games before attempting to critique difficulty. And try going a little more in depth instead of being extremely basic and casual.
Right, and it is baffling to me how for ex take the twitch streamer and veteran of souls games "miss mikka" who people are amazed how she can defeat the bosses with a dance board... well, she died like 1000+ times in her playthrough of shadow of the erdtree and was stuck for days at the last boss dying like 500+ of times playing it normally at launch- her twitch stream showed that. now I dont care that she makes a living out of playing elden ring 24/7 and can now finish the same boss with 2 controllers (im sure me and greyfeather would also be able to crush radahn at some point if our life was just playing elden ring 24/7 on twitch but thats not a normal persons lives or gaming experience)- IF someone is one of the best souls players out there AND you die like 500+ times on a boss, its not "OKAY". Meanwhile, Synthetic man, finished the boss on his 2nd try by using a summon mimic. I mean, come on. The difficulty clearly isnt "right" if some of the best players are stuck for days on the same boss. AND you can beat it on your first tries with a summon. I took 17 attempt with a summon btw. But I guess I played it wrong and should have died 500 times and spent days playing 24/7 like these streamers do for a living. Also you are right, DMC, NG, NIOH etc are the right balance. ps! if streamers play badly to make their streams last longer to get their donations is obviously an argument, but I dont buy into it.
Gene continues to have some of the best takes.
Gene Park has some of the best takes.
Elden John is the best character in Elden Ring 💍
Does Gene always take 1 minute to start and stop the points he's trying to make? I'm a new Patron and I'm not feeling him at all, most of his takes are recycled from @PatStaresAt and others, I've heard them made before, verbatim. He also took over and spoiled the Rurikahn spoiler mode with FightinCowboy
Gene tends to walk a fine line when it comes to spoiling stuff (outside the spoiler discussions). It’s probably just enthousiasme….but it bugs te hell out of me sometimes. I had to skip multiple shows forward when he does the talking, or just takes over when someone is having their say. Gene’s heart is in the right place and he’s very knowledgeable. But yeah, it’s an annoyance at most.
i mean pat takes a lot of talking points from me. pat and i talk to each other almost every day so it’s why we sound the same a lot
also i saw you comment on khans podcast lol
@@GenePark Of course
Gene and Chris are annoying and cringe
Everyone is awesome. Fantastic show.
I hated lies of p. Every attack is so misleading even from the trash mobs. And this is coming from someone that beat ever fromsoft game solo (except millennia)
I lean a lot more towards Gene's opinion than Brad's, have for a while now.
I still love Fromsoft's games, Elden Ring is pretty damn good even if I hate a lot of the modern post BB design choices, but the community as a whole desperately needs to resist "GIT GUUD" brain rot. Any kind of critical or nuanced discussion goes out the window the moment you throw that at people.
Bosses are not as satisfying as they used to be. Sure they are more complicated, look better, attack in more interesting patterns. But the summons plus game breaking builds pushed the bosses too far. If you don’t want to use summons, if you do not have all stats at 99… it becomes too frustrating. That is a problem. We pay for the boss fights, we should not want to get overpowered or use overpowered methods to beat these bosses. Or maybe I am getting old and no longer want to try as hard as I used to. Probably a mix of both
Going through demons souls again and man the bosses are just terrible. Sure every game has its ups and downs when it comes to bosses but overall the fights are better nowadays. I love demon souls (ive been there since day one) with its amazing atmosphere and level design, but i completely disagree with Gene. Brad is right that those gimmick fights were never good, especially on replays. Every game has its great fights and yes it would be cool if they brought more fresh ideas but lets not revert back to those old battles.
i literally say those gimmick bosses suck but we need more variety. i should’ve mentioned it but Radahn in the base game is a great new example: that big arena with all the summons made it feel like normandy beach. memorable moments like that
@GenePark yeah I get your point and I don't disagree with the idea of more variety. You just heavily leaned on Demon's souls and the abstract point of design philosophy. I think that was also Brad's hangup tbh. The fights in Demons was epic at the time but are just easy and boring nowadays.
The original Radahn fight is absolutely epic! I found the civil war battle to be a great expansion of that idea. With it including your personal narrative decisions as well, it made it one of the most interesting fights.
Anyways great pod as usual. I always enjoy some discourse so thanks for the explanation gene.
@@Garoth4582 yep you get me now. I wish i said radahn in the pod it would’ve been a great example while still featuring good battle design
@@GenePark we got a lot variety in this DLC with Romina, Dancing Lion, Scadutree Avatar, Putrescent Knight, Bayle, Gaius and Metyr.
How is it a deeply personal and interesting journey to find the abyssal woods by hitting a fake wall and going inside a coffin when that is the only possible way of reaching the abyssal woods? There's nothing personal about it.
It's incredibly linear, unintuitive, and unsatisfying, and will likely result in the majority of players just googling how to get to the abyssal woods rather than finding it organically themselves. Makes for a poor gameplay experience.
He used the word "feels" like its personal. Their are some secrets ive had to look up but most of them can be found just exploring. Its an amazing feeling that the designers are willing to hide half the content they spent years making for those who want to seek it out. Just playthrough once on your own and see what you can really find. Use the second go around to look stuff up.
@gregoryjoslin3173 but they're NOT hiding it. They present you with the abyssal woods, scaduview, and other locations pretty openly. The only thing they're hiding is access to those locations behind gesture activated statues and invisible walls and other totally unintuitive+exclusive entry points.
This is what that reader question was talking about. There is little to no player expression or creativity when it comes to map exploration. If you want to get to the abyssal woods, there is only one very narrow and obtuse method for doing so. No possibility of swapping fun stories about how you and a friend each found scaduview in different ways.
And like I said, most people just end up looking up the answer elsewhere, like Gene getting Fightingcowboy to tell him how to reach the hinterlands. This design approach worked well in their old games, but it translates poorly to an open world game.
@@rainmaker6261I found the abyssal woods completely by accident and my jaw dropped when I did. Felt like I was the only person who found it (obviously not true). But it feels special when you find a secret place on the map. FromSoft has never catered to the crowd that wants to see and do everything. You gotta work for it. And man, for those of us that love the mystery and wonder of finding beautiful areas behind secret passages, FromSoft hits the spot. It’s like the feeling from Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, where going through the wardrobe leads to Narnia.
I found the abyssal woods on my own no problem. If you're being thorough I don't know how you could miss it. They literally put an item next to the ladder so you would see it. Moreover, the online component of the game is meant for players to direct other players towards the obscure stuff they could miss, like hidden walls. Maybe you don't play with that on, but it's a core part of the game, like paying attention to environment. I also found the Hinterland on my own. These games give you a gesture in some lore-significant part of the game. My immediate assumption is that this might have a use somewhere. Lo and behold, when you use the 'Mother' gesture at the statue of Queen Marika on the place on the map that looks like it leads to the Hinterland with the dev message right next to it, it leads to the Hinterland! It just requires you pay some attention to the context in which you find things in the game, and it was extremely rewarding for me to find it myself. Not everything has to be reachable through multiple ways to make its discovery feel personal, it just needs to be motivated by the player's own agency. There are plenty of other things that can be reached through multiple ways like Scadu Altus or the Shadow Keep or the Cerulean Coast.
Gene and the writer are wrong. I love Demon’s Souls but Flamelurker and bosses like him are the template they’ve built on. And they’re better for it.
Anyone complaining about delayed attacks needs to “git gud.”
And you need "brain cells".
Delayed attacks would be more appreciated if they didn't use it for a third of almost every major boss fight's attacks.
@@TheMaestro116 most delayed attacks in the game aren't bad, they add character to the animations and let you recover stamina without having to back out. You don't counter them by counting the timing but by reacting to the eventual swing. You don't even need to dodge the worst offenders either.
woah Gene whipped out 18 inches, wasn’t expecting that😮
No, the brotherhood boss fight from Lies of P was god awful. Garbage.
I thought it was great. To me, it was a gank fight done right
@@gaming2438 idk can't say I agree. There's too much going on and there are so many debuffs that it covers your character and you can't see as well. The first one was fine, the second one I hate
@@dtanobo The trick with the second one is to just let them come at you at their own pace, they only aggro one at a time and the big brother only comes out when one is left.
@@Ghorda9 but they only pace themselves like a fraction of the time. Usually the attack you collectively while one of them is a bit more aggressive. I'm getting all 3 debuffs at once usually (which covers the whole character model) and parry timing is so wonky. I personally hate that boss.
@@dtanobo only one of them comes at you and the others will just go for the occasional ranged attack, they also attack you if you get too close. The only other thing is that they tag team and switch places every so often.
#GenePark2024