That first mimic made me SOOO suspicious. I mean, look at it. It’s all cock-eyed at an extreme angle and blocking the middle of your path. Rewards go in the dark corner at the end of a hall. They’re aligned with the wall because that’s what people do with furniture and it helps their lines blend into the environment. The mimic is placed like someone desperately wanted you to find it. Almost like as if the only way that they can feed themselves is by making sure you open that chest.
If you are open to constructive criticism I think this videos flow just doesn't really make any sense. You start with a video essay about mimics and the relationship of the developer with the player and then it turns into a SOTE critique. I'm just not seeing the connection. Maybe make those into two separate videos? This feels more like a mish mash of ideas you had about fromsofts titles.
The two issues stem from the same cause. Dark souls 1 hit you with the first mimic a third of the way through the game. Dark souls 3 made the very first chest you're going to see a mimic. No training. No introduction of new mechanics for players that might not have played a game your company released 2 or 3 console generations ago. You're in the deep end of the pool, and it's up to you to sink or swim. Dark souls 1 had slow ponderous bosses that could be handled with an understanding of AI pathing and a few castings of the better spells in the game. Since Dark souls 1, the speed of boss fights has doubled with each new FromSoft game put out. To the point where the final boss of SotE is a rhythm game without visual indicators showing you the upcoming buttons. The scope of the boss mechanics has ballooned while player mechanics have advanced at a crawl. Of course, this all falls apart when you factor in the fact that most "gamers" are playing the game wrong. Elden ring bosses are designed to be attacked in groups and have aggro split up among multiple targets. If you aren't using spirit ashes, you are playing the game wrong.
The argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when you look at the fact that Elden Ring is their most mainstream and best selling game they've ever made, demonstrably becoming more accessible to thousands of new players. Elden Ring lowered the skill floor for new players and raised the skill ceiling for veterans. Spirit ashes and NPC summons make the game extremely accessibile to new players, while crazy new attacks like Radahn's that you couldn't figure out give new challenges for vets to overcome. (You need to start sprinting as soon as he starts rising into the air, and when the pillars of light come out you need to briefly stop locking onto him and look at the ground so you can position yourself accordingly) I do agree with the critique that the first appearance of a mimic in DS3 isn't as impactful as the one from DS1, but would repeating the schtick have been any better? IMO Elden Ring's spin on the trick chest was refreshing.
I think that Consort Radahn second phase is very flawed and its made only for the best elden ring players (the ones who can take him down in that phase on any level with any build). I have the trouble with Elden Ring dodge timings and overall bullshit that his second phase is. That boss is simply made badly and overcoming him feels like 'oh gosh its finally over'. Another boss that feels like cheap fuck is Rellana with her insane poise and 3 hour combos that hit 40% of the time even when you dodge them 5o erase half or all of your hp.
"The argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when you look at the fact that Elden Ring is their most mainstream and best selling game they've ever made, demonstrably becoming more accessible to thousands of new players." Uh... it kinda doesn't, actually. It means a lot of people bought it, not that all of those people were really good at it or enjoyed playing it. Just saying.
@@wexdust I had a ton of fun fighting both of those bosses. They've got long combos but they're still learnable and once you know them out-maneuvering them feels awesome. You get into a good flow of dodging, blocking, guard countering, I had a blast. To each their own.
It's weird, and I can't agree at all because you simultaneously have people saying Elden Ring is too easy. Yeah, the bosses can be flashy and aggressive, but it also gives the player a lot more tools and opportunities to take advantage and be aggressive back than I ever felt with earlier games. And whenever there's points brought up of it being too hard, it's consistently about Malenia and now Consort Radahn, who are respectively a secret completely optional boss and the end of a DLC that's made to be a challenge for, at least Elden Ring veterans, if not the veterans of modern Fromsoft as a whole.
I would say that Malenia and Consort Radahn are flawed experimenal bosses that could be great but first Malenia is annoying with her massive heals removing any time you spent carefuly punishing her simply by overhealing. That's the annoying part that makes her unfun with different setups other than some broken builds that overcome her. Consort Radahn however cannot be easily defeated without some careful planings and certain builds. Because of his second wtf phase that is completely unfair and unnecessary. It exceeds acceptable skill limit while going into the realm of bullet hell. That's how it feels to me. It doesn't help that my pc slows down during that phase as well.
I appreciate that he never leaned into the easy "it's objectively bad because I don't like it" and firmly dedicated the video as a subjective opinion to be placed in the fromsoft comment box
Wow this is a enormous disappointment for me. I clicked on a video about DS3 and mimics in the first 10 minutes were pretty solid in fact the first 5 minutes may have been some of the greatest writing I've seen about mimics and developers. And then my video about DS3 and mimics starts to shift over to a conversation about difficulty and before lawn we're talking about elden ring a game that is separated by over half a decade from DS3 doesn't even have mimics of its own and otherwise is completely separated from the topic at hand. I don't know what the plan was or why we needed a a critique well more accurately a long winded complaint about difficulty and how hard you find things in a video about DS3 and mimics. Because call me crazy here but a video about DS3 and mimics should be about DS3 and mimics. I like the way you write and you got a good voice for this so don't give up or get too discouraged just next time stay on topic again that first 5 minutes is gold. Tldr this video is a bit confusing and disappointing because it's not actually about DS3 and mimics
Man, I low-key hate how, if you want to comment on difficulty in FromSoft games, you have to add a zillion qualifiers just in case the community flips its shit at you for finding the difficult game difficult and not being too insecure to say so. And then they do it ahyway. Elden Ring's design is frustrating primarily because of the way it is defended - where we're just told to "learn their moveset". I don't enjoy doing that - I'm a Bloodborne guy so I refuse to be patient, ever - but in later Elden Ring bosses, it goes beyond that. When every other move wipes out half your health bar... how do you learn that? What opportunity do you have to learn that? Putting a death, a loading screen and a runback between every attempt to learn... just makes learning exhausting and unrewarding. And very often, when I do win, it's not because I learned anything - it's because I got lucky and fluked it. I don't think I'm alone in that. Most people who beat Malenia know that at least half the battle is just how often she does Waterfowl Dance - not how well they managed to counter it. That's the biggest issue for me. It's what shifts me from a sense of achievement after defeating a boos... to relief that it's over, and dread about having to do it again next time I play it.
If you don’t want to spend time learning bosses I don’t think Elden ring is for you man. It’s okay to just go play a different game instead of complaining about Elden Ring.
@@Finn-ev2lx - Eh, I finished the game and the DLC. And it's a criticism more than a complaint. I just prefer learning on the fly, which you can totally do when attack animations are relatively intuitive.
I have to disagree with your initial point about the DS3 mimic. DS3 was my first Fromsoft game. I didn't even know that chest was there as there's no way to get through it besides through the dragon. Most other games put an environmental hazard like that dragon as a wall. I came to this impass and ran the other way. Most other games will used "Door Locked" and big dragon as more interesting brick walls, new players like me will not think twice about this. It wasn't until nearing the end of my first playthrough that I understood the intention FS uses over most other devs. That mimic is for experienced players, not new ones. The first mimic intended to punish new players is in cathedral deep IMO. As for the rest of the content of the video , I think FS are very aware of both new and old players at every iteration and I don't envy the position they're in. You have to make a boss challenging enough for the veterans and yet approachable so as to not scare off the newcomers. You also to make a world that will achieve the same. I think elden ring is in the hardest position in this regard. I had only beaten BB when I first tried and the open world nature was certainly overwhelming. Since then ive learned that each FS game demands you learn how to play it before it'll reveal the fun. I don't mean in a git gud way but in a remapping your gamer senses way. I think because elden ring has the most options for the player with range and magic and other builds being more viable, and ash of wars, it makes the bosses demand more and be more individually tailored for certain approaches because they'd be pushovers if they were just skillfully melee 1v1 till win. More of feature creep issue than a power creep one. Overall I enjoy all the FS experiences I've had and I'd say they're all made with an incredible amount of talent and all deserve to be praised, but they may not all be for everyone. If I understand your subtext here you think BB is the best game they've made recently, and I'd say subjectively it's my favorite too, but I think in other players eyes it takes some big steps over the line in design intention too like the vial system and the length of the chalice dungeons in the same way elden rings boss aggression does. Every game is going to have differences because FS overall is very good at what they do and have the integrity to not just milk the exact same product over and over again. Not every decision is going to resonate with every player but I don't think it's indicative of them heading backwards or are painting themselves into a corner. I think it's just the natural tweaks to expect from fighting rpg games trying to stay true to their roots while innovating at the same time. Sorry for answering your video essay with an essay, thanks for reading if you do, despite disagreeing with most of your points I think your video is good and thought provoking and look forward to checking out some more. Peace
This argument depends on the idea that the players won't explore the levels. A monumentally stupid notion. The devs put a back door and an obvious path to the mimic in high wall for the same reason they put the two crystal lizard bosses in the tutorial zone literally right next to the spawn point. Players who explore are to be rewarded, but rewards are locked behind challenges. That's half the point of these games. Saying the first "real" mimic is in cathedral of the deep is like saying the first "real" boss is the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. You're just ignoring the first half of the game to hide your own ignorance of game design.
You, like many others, are neglecting the fact that buildcraft and adaptation are also important aspects of "skill" at Soulsborne games, not just hitting the buttons at the right time. That's without even going into the impact that NPC summons, Spirit summons, and Scadutree fragments have on your experience with the tougher bosses in the game. There are specific builds and methods you can employ to make fights like Malenia and Radahn less monotonously stressful for yourself. There are several movement/evasion AOWs that make it much harder for Malenia to regen off hitting you and attack types that will do more damage to her (Frost, Bleed, Fire, Stuns). There are also more "tanky" builds and tactics that include regen, status, stance breaks, and buffs which can completely change the Radahn fight. Thinking outside the box like that with your build and tools was always a way to make boss fights easier going all the way back to DS1. Or did you never think to equip a bow or a ranged spell to make the Moonlight Butterfly less of a chore?
On a side note I'm so mad that I finished ds1 more than 20 times now. And I have NEVER used range against moonlight butterfly as a means to make the fight less of a chore, never thought about it.
I've always found that Elden Ring and Sekiro reward being aggressive the most (I haven't played Bloodborne, still waiting for ShadPS4 updates), for the simple fact that every boss has a Posture bar that you can break. I couldn't manage to break the poise bar of some DS3 bosses (Pontiff and Demon Prince for example), but I managed to do it with EVERY SINGLE boss in Elden Ring (and Sekiro of course), at least once and more often than not twice or thrice (even Prime Consort Radahn). Those 2 games only really gave me trouble whenever I tried playing defensively.
Man, as someone who jumped in at DS3, I can tell you I did not have an incomplete experience. In fact, it made me a life-long fan and ive beaten every soulsborne game at this point. And yes, that first mimic got me
I usually don't comment on videos. Or even click on the random less-than-1k-views recommendations RUclips throws at me. But I'm glad I did it now. Great analysis, dude! Especially the part when you talk about Hollow Knight, because when I'm discussing about these games with friends, I usually bring it as an example of a game that understand the Souls formula, sometimes better than From Software itself. But I share the same feeling (except the part when you said you hate Sekiro, but I get it). The first Dark Souls changed my perception of videogames and Bloodborne and Sekiro are two of my favorite games ever. And in my opinion, Elden Ring (with its DLC) is the apex and the bottom of From Software design at the same time. I'm still willing to play any game Miyazaki puts his hands on, but I also feel like they reached a point where they need to take a step back to analyze what they're doing and what are the limitations of their signature gameplay style. I just hope they don't look at Elden Ring's sales numbers and think "so that's what people like".
Imo aggression is even more rewarding than in the previous games in elden ring. The new posture system is great. It forces aggression so that the meter doesn’t drop and you have to start over.
Not to mention how many fights in Elden Ring can go from extremely hard to trivial if you manage to combo your opponent appropriately. Look at the knight enemies for example, the DLC's Black Knights especially. They're very tough opponents, but with the right combos you can stun lock them for the entire fight.
I agree. I gravitate more towards the bloodborne style of play, and that made Elden Ring pretty easy for me. The fact he says he's dodging for 15 minutes is the reason he was having a hard time.
This is such a weird perspective. Elden Ring is BY FAR FROM's best-selling title. By a country mile. By a continental mile. You're getting so into the weeds with boss design at a level of minutia that something like MAYBE .001% of the fan base can connect with or even understand, and then you finish the video with like, a warning that this incredibly slim margin of the fanbase could leave because of this quibble. Gotta say, it feels ENTITLED.
Having come in from Ds3 as my first game, i just can't agree or see why people praise Ds1, it is the second least enjoyable fromsoft soulslike for me, unbearably slow and easy, absolutely atrocious second half, the combat is not enjoyable whatsoever, not to say that games like Ds3 and Elden Ring are better because they're somewhat more difficult, but that difficulty and skill expression does help otherwise dull moments that Ds1 is full of. Ds1 is, at least for the first half, a very competent game and generally well put together, but I enjoy playing Ds2 far more, because its a much more interesting and actually enjoyable game despite it's massive flaws, because the combat and exploration actually have substance. You have 8-way rolling, making evasion immediately more satisfying, movesets are generally more varied, powerstancing, and very unique weapons compared to the first game. In Ds1, an example of being rewarded for exploration is going through blighttown and discovering ash lake, even though ash lake has nothing in it, but in ds2, you have stuff like the pig digging up the pickaxe, finding hidden areas to tackle gauntlets of npcs to fight one of my favorite bosses ever, Darklurker, and NG+ switching up enemies, mimics, and giving new encounters, and Shadow of the Erdtree feels like it goes back to that sort of philosophy. If Ds1 had the depth of combat that Ds2, Ds3, or Elden Ring have, then maybe I could agree, but it feels like a much lesser experience, and again, difficulty would help, but given I 3 tried Radahn with the deflecting hardtear the first time I got to him, it wouldn't make too much of a difference, it would just be less braindead. Also, Demon's Souls is the least enjoyable gaming experience in my life, what a travesty
Yeah 😂 always check the direction of the chain before opening or at least hit it once first 😂 But in DS2 in the NG+ modes they change which chest are mimics so thats a little cool but fucked up 😂
Uhm, I didn’t go into that mimic room on my first DS3 playthrough, not even on my second. There’s a HUGE DRAGON blocking the way to the entrance. That mimic feels kind of “veteran only” because the room is only by people who played more of it and aren’t scared to run through the fire, I think.
I almost agree with what you're saying here, but not quite 100%. I think you've correctly identified some of the problems that ER has, but perhaps not correctly identified why veteran Souls players generally don't like the game. The things you mentioned about ER, to me, don't seem like difficulty issues, but rather fairness issues, so to speak. The things you mentioned, (i.e. Delayed charge attacks, boss tank combos, bosses no longer having stamina, etc), aren't traditional difficulty issues so much as they are devs stacking the deck against players. ER is unquestionably the easiest From game, but it's also probably the least fair, which is why I think vet souls players struggled to get into it. And to be clear, that's not a problem per se, a lot of games aren't fair to the player. But the central contrivance of the Soulsborne games before ER was "The world is unforgiving, but fair." From has been slowly moving away from that design ethos and you are right that it's a choice that seems to be leaving some players behind.
I was just replaying Dark Souls 3 and hearing you talk about Elden Ring reminded me of moments of me playing DS3. The bosses, and enemies, are generally smoother, faster, and have a tendency to combo around for a little too long (I'm largely thinking of the Dancer but it applies to other bosses as well). I'm always enjoy fighting Gael at the end of the game because he has always felt the most like a classic Dark Souls boss where he attacks, pauses, stands up again and reorients himself towards you. Then there's some bosses like Midir and the Demon Princes where I'm left running a marathon across a boss arena to launch one or two attacks before doing that again. And hope I don't get hit by a devastating attack on the way over.
I strongly disagree with the take here. Ds3 was designed for veterans very obviously. Ds3 has an extremely unforgiving tutorial with iudex gundyr. It’s silly to me how many people forget dark souls is a trilogy… you are supposed to play in order 1,2,3. Because of that, the game is made for veterans and the mimic is a reward for remembering the mechanic from ds1 and ds2. Now about SOTE. Elden ring for sure has created a lot of bosses that are “misses” and abide closely to the “bigger combos, less downtime, more aggressive” style you talk about. In fact, a lot of the time it is actually unfair (Elden stars, valiant gargoyles briefly having both aggro, metyr laser attack). But Elden ring’s bad design in those cases are forgiven because those bosses aren’t that hard. When the poor design is paired with a hard boss (waterfowl, cross slash), then outrage is created. But I think the only way to validly criticize these bosses and their attitudes/attacks is if you are on the position of playing without summons. The reality is, when you use summons (which you clearly do in the video), the tiny punish windows are completely acceptable, due to being able to attack the boss while they are attacking a summon. Essentially, when they are attacking the mimic, that is their opening since they probably won’t switch aggro mid combo. So essentially, it is definitely created for veterans if you choose not to summon, but with summons it is completely manageable.
I'm a diehard fan of the FromSoft games, as well as a person that lives and breathes off of video essays and such. I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciated this video. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but your train of logic was exactly my thinking, and honestly one of the main reasons that I wasn't as happy with Elden Ring as with their other titles. That being said, I'm extremely excited for Nightreign, and will definitely be playing it, even if I do have to, as they say, "Git Gud". Keep up the amazing work!
I do understand what you are trying to say, but I dont think it follows. New players have an easier time with Elden Ring than people who's favorite game is Dark Souls 1. Maybe you are being left behind, but maybe that is because you are unwilling to change?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's nice to hear opinions shared as opinions rather than facts. Similarly I'd like to share my thoughts on a few of your points. Firstly the mimic in DS3. I actually like it's placement. I barely touched DS1 before calling it trash and walking away (a mistake I've gladly rectified) so I came as a fairly new player to this type of game. The mimics placement to me acts as a wake up call to new players and a call back for veterans. You compared it to DS1 but don't forget DS2 PUNISHED players for attacking chests randomly. So people who came from DS2 wouldn't know they could "safely" attack to test. Also, nobody would expect it and only veterans and those pre warned would even stop to look. Secondly, I don't think the games are strictly getting harder. I've noticed each game is made to be played differently. Often punishing players who rely on tricks from old games (first example that comes to mind is roll catching that DS3 did with it's bosses attack timing to catch out DS1 players who spam rolled). Each game shows learning from previous ones but also experiments with something new. As such, the key for veterans is to play a bit like new players. To learn and use what's new and not get caught out by old habits (a lesson elden ring taught me) Lastly, what makes a boss fight good. Personally I think the key to a good souls-like boss is the variety of build and play styles you can use to win and still be challenged. This is obviously a massive task to balance well and is part of why so many players can and do disagree as to which boss was easiest or hardest. I agree that player agency in the fight is evidence of how well this is done. This is probably also the one issue I have with Sekiro and possibly bloodborne. Yes they are cool, but the play variety is far more narrow. This actually brings me back to my previous point; they are different games intended to be played differently. Yes you CAN just grab a claymore or zweihander and just carry on like you did before, but tbh, so far I've yet to play any 2 of the games the same way for very long before I discover a new play style I prefer to use and THAT is where I find the fun and overcome the challenges. Sorry for the short essay but figured this was as good a place as any to unload my thoughts. Thank you if you've read this far. As a bonus not: I wouldn't call a souls-like a 3d metroidvania. Metroidvanias tend to make you go back to previous areas with new abilities to access previously inaccessible areas. Souls-likes tend to only circle around to unlock shortcuts and put the focus heavily in the combat. They can be similar but definitely different. Anyway, thanks again.
As a fan of Ds3 and a lot of Fromsoft's more recent games, I really respect the effort put into this video and I agree with some of the points you made. However, the argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when looking at Elden Ring, which is their best-selling game and incredibly mainstream. Though I do only realy play these games for the bosses/combat, so what do I know
I'm doing my first DS1R playthrough, got to the Sens chest and my brain went "aren't these usually organized and not usually thrown around like this? odd..... This is a trap isn't it? Oh well, loot if it isn't"
I felt the way you do about consort radhan and decided to put a blood antspur rapier in my right hand and a greatshield in my left hand, give myself all the holy+physical damage negations that was possible and proceed to bleed and rot the boss to death. I did this pre nerf and I did it in 2 tries when I got tired of my regular build kind of falling short. This is without summoning, spirit summons or buff stacking out the arse. This is a casual way of beating radhan with some limitations (I play alone, dont like spirit summons or buff stacking). Dark souls has done so many elden ring players wrong in their thought process, because it tells them to ignore all the helpful items because they aren't needed mostly. Shields, status, items, spirit summons etc. are the way to nerf a boss to your own level. I DO realize that players prefer the dlc to be easier to bring their builds or preferred weapons to every fight (and I think there is an argument for doing so). Also malenia is pretty predictable. If you start the fight by getting her HP down to like 70-80% and then run away from most things she will waterfowl while you run, allowing you to dodge through the second and you can basicly stand still and the third will not hit you. She heals less from waterfowl than any other attack, she also has a smaller hp-bar than other bosses in similar areas to compensate for the healing. Yes there is a skillfloor to malenia, but she is in no way broken or impossible to do. You can also do what I did against consort radhan with her if you want to and just use some of the ashes that do work. I found dragon halberd and zamor curved sword to be the best ones to cheese her with. All in all I think the perspective that elden ring is bad because not all players can use any build to beat the hardest bosses is flawed. You can litteraly change your build to accomodate your skill floor, it's not on the game if you refuse to do so.
I would have to disagree with the point that Elden ring bosses don’t let you attack Messer is the perfect example of a boss that is both hyper aggressive but allows the player to get substantial damage on him almost all of his combos are 4 hit with either quick delayed or super delayed attacks all of his attacks urge the player to get in close for when his combos end and he enters his transition phase where you can do damage he punishes those who stay far with flame attacks with massive outward hit boxes ie rolling backward means you’ll most likely get hit while rolling forward enables you to dodge the attack and get a rolling attack of your own in while his animation resets since that flame attack has a longer animation Elden ring promotes aggression through different avenues like strafing and jumping.
Why does this video on game design become a rant on bosses you don't like the moment it could've gotten interesting? I genuinely think that the mimics alone and how they're used could've been a really interesting video instead of a rant that the games made to be hard are challenging you and you aren't adapting to them. I've already seen the consensus on the DLC switch from "its too hard" to "its the same level of hard".
I played all the souls games backwards im finally on ds1 and tbh you catch on no matter what and the people saying you just jump around from topic to topic are kinda right but it was still entertaining
I really enjoyed the first part it was well construction and criticism was valid. They later half only feels slightly related and I think could make a good video if it was separate and had some more time to cook. It would benefit your view to take a look at the design of some stuff from Elden ring like you did for the mimic and make for a more interesting video. Also you know the direction of the chains on chest are different for mimic and normal chests.
The mimic in ds3’s demon ruins can be pitted against the demon below. The placement is perfect and it’s the best mimic encounter in the series. Also why are you ignoring the mimics in DS2? This video is a bunch of pseudo intellectual nonsense to me.
from a lot of the elden ring gameplay im seeing, i can understand fully how you hate just standing around waiting, but a bunch of enemy attacks can be jump and attack overtop leading to more knockdowns and a much more fluid fight that doesent leave you just waiting the entire time, a LOT more attacks than you think are just meant to be jump i framed
Hi, I'm seeing a lot of negativity in the comments, some constructive, some not so much. I just wanted to say I enjoyed this video and found the argument to be well constructed. I generally like your essays and retrospectives. That's all.
The soulsborne games are really popular and have tons of fans, so it's kind of normal that most of them wouldn't accept even the slightest critic about the games. You could make a video criticizing some aspects of DS1 and most of the comments would, probably, be negative towards said video even if you highlight obvious weak points that the game had (Capra Demon, Blighttown, BoC, etc.).
I thought Sekiro was fine, but yeah it wasn't as enjoyable an experience as I'd had with the Soulsborne games I _liked._ Which honestly was only Bloodborne, Souls1 and Souls3. Maybe Demon's Souls, though the original game was not interesting to me, the remake was appreciated. And some games from _other_ developers that fall in the same genre/vibe. Souls2 is not for me, and those who like it are just very different people from me. Good for them. I'm sure I like games they couldn't get into. Mostly, the influence of the Soulsborne games on others has made things interesting, though like so many times before, the industry tends to go overboard with adopting a new idea into almost every game so that it gets old fast. Like open world games. Elden Ring ... look, I cannot stand open world games. Individually many are pretty good, but when the majority of single player games (or games with full single-player options, anyway) are open world games, well, that's boring. It gets old. And the way open world games are created tends to make them feel crappy. And a lot of their tropes just aren't fun in the 20th game you're running across them in. I recall that many people praised Elden Ring for doing open world right. But WTF are they talking about? It's got all the same fundamental hallmarks of open world trash. The main difference is that there's not a marker/compass to point you to objectives, which is fine, and no quest log which is less fine (some means of tracking them would be nice -- or at least a means to re-discover them because you forgot about them or were interrupted when the NPC was telling you a thing and you didn't catch it -- too bad, either start a new game or look for it online to figure out what the quest is. And open world design is an antithesis to how Souls games, at least the ones I liked most, were laid out. Labyrinths that fold back on themselves in ways that are obvious as well as ways that are surprising. Learning your way through the layout is part of the fun, I think. But open world, you just slog along in a direction and you'll eventually get to wherever. You'll run into not-bandit-camp sections and other random-encounter-style monsters sprinkled around the map. But there's a lot of emptiness too, because open worlds need to be big but developers only have so much time to spend putting stuff in them. There are ruins to explore but most of those felt like poorly implemented randomly generated dungeons that I remember being a big deal in the late nineties and early 00's before storage space increases allowed purposeful design to reassert itself. Elden Ring, for me, felt like a waste of my time. I tried getting into it, but I realized that I just didn't give a damn about playing the game. The few interesting moments I had weren't enough to carry my through the bits I was bored by. I want tight, well-crafted experiences. Open world games just are not this. They cannot be, they are meant to be excesses of the form. Editing something down so it doesn't have any filler is antithetical to open worlds. Keep it all in, add in more and more, have things take as long as possible, if there's dialog, make it as much dialog as you can, if there are collectibles there needs to be _soo many,_ if there's an interesting combat mechanic, copy and paste it ad nauseum around the severely oversized map so it feels "full". Obviously some people really, really like E.R. A coworker of mine started with Elden Ring and now has adopted a bit of a "Soulsborne veteran" personality about games. You know the one. It's kind of cringe, a bit embarrassing for an adult even if it's minimized to just when he's directly talking about video games. But I also know that some people like open worlds for the very reasons I cannot stand them -- they waste time. If you do not value your free time away from work and other chores, then I guess it makes sense you just want to fill it up as easily as possible with an activity. Do you like pushing the analog stick in a direction and hitting X or B or A or Square at various intervals to loot or interact? Hey, have we got a game style for you...
The issue i have with Promised consort Radahn is that, unlike other fromsoft bosses, he isnt satisfying to beat. Even with her flaws, Malenia is a satisfying victory. He isnt. He isnt designed to challenge you, he isnt designed to make you re-think your approach. He is designed to break you. Ive watched reaction videos to people beating hardest bosses in FS games. From Orphan of Kos, to Malenia, slave knight Gael, the majority to beating them is joy or a sense of satisfaction for overcoming a hard fight. With PCR the overwhelming response is indifference because, at that point, they just want it to be over. And is the only boss that ive seen people cry or break a controller when WINNING. I cant remember the streamer off the top of my head but i vividly remember him defeating PCR and immediately breaking his controller and crying. He won, but he still felt like he lost because the fight broke his will to play
I do not think that Nightmare King and Soul Tyrant are that similar concerning the available agressien of the player. Soul Tyrant can be reliably hit after only two specific moves in his first and one move in his second phase (excluding the stagger). Nighmare King can be hit while doing all but two moves. You can decide if you want to wait for his easy openings or just hit him whenever he is in zipping past you. Bosses in Elden Ring are similar. If you can space correctly, you can hit the bosses between moves and are rewarded with more damage. My plan for fighting Malania was similar. I equipped two ultra greatswords and roll attacked after some moves and jump attacked into different ones to duck beneath them. If she ran away i used the ash of war of the ruined greatsword to keep up aggression and managed to stagger her twice in the first and again twice in the second phase. This obviously cannot work flawlessly, but even the hit regen is not that meaningfull, if i can regularly crit her. Waterfowl dance is definitely annoying though.
Your points look pretty valid, though I love Elden Ring, I think it's my favorite of the bunch. But I would be highly interested in a video about Sekiro, because that game just doesn't click for me. It's not that it's too hard or anything like that, can't put my finger on it, but the combat is just ... not fun somehow. Maybe seeing your perspective would help me understand it better
I played elden ring for 3 months straight. Now I'm back to ds3 and I'm breezing through the game , and I'm loving it. I love that i Don't have to fight fire giant and foreskin duo and radhan
This is the problem, fromsoft knows they need to raise the difficulty because the old games are too easy for veterans now. Souls games aren’t supposed to be breezed through they are supposed to be a challenge
@Finn-ev2lx no old games are still difficult. I've had my fair share of ds1 and 2 and i just came back to them and died approximately 500 times between the two games . Ds3 is just ez , i think rolling in that game is too overpowered, it doesn't consume any stamina and the i-frames are pretty good
Good essay. I needed a great shield/barricade shield to survive the DLC. Somehow summons made the boss fights harder. I shudder at what Fromsoft might do next.
17:42 on the topic of this, You obviously have my sentiments for not enjoying it or feeling capable of "really" overcoming it. I certainly feel that I *"see"* where this is coming from, and I get it. But I disagree that we're necessarily at the limit. Radahn's fatal flaw at the end of the day is that he offers very little in terms of counterplay. Hit-trading is nearly unavoidable, damage is borderline unacceptable, jumping has little place in the fight, dodging can feel hopeless inconsistent and tedious, blocking/countering/parrying all require insane experience unless you adjust your equipment specifically for those strategies. Radahn is in one's face faster than they can perform any extraneous animations, like summoning spirits. I would have been happier with Radahn if his attack patterns were designed to be intentionally responded to in a variety of ways, more like Sekiro. The thing that sets Malenia apart in this context is that she's simply less mobile and less aggressive than Radahn when at neutral. You can adjust the pace of the fight far more reliably and safely against the Goddess of Rot than the Promised Consort. I fought Radahn at least a hundred times, and I hated every second of it. Until I committed to an uchigatana guard counter quickstep strategy, and basically turned the battle into a rhythm game. I'll be honest, it still wasn't easy, but it was satisfying. Really satisfying. Especially the victory.
Players need either better movment, more fluid combo chains, and more defensive mechanics besides turtling. All of which seemingly have been experimentally adressed with some of the new weapons(things like milady and the backhand blades), flask tears, and... actually the movment is still the same. From has a fine baseline, but movment and combat needs better flow.
first of all, this comment section is condescending as heck. I completely agree, I've played every FromSoft title since DS1 and it's just been escalating and escalating with Consort Radahn being the upper limit. I cannot beat him, I have tried but he just has way too much health and damage resistance, even with the tried and true bleed build I can't do it. I've maxxed out my health and damage stats but it's no good if I don't get an opportunity to deal that damage, it's not fun at all, just frustrating. Bayle on the other hand was a whale (heh) of a time, Igon's monologue and Bayle's orange lightning make it a showstopper while Igon's support fire and the clearly telegraphed moves make it a mechanical masterpiece, unlike every other dragon fight in the entire game bar Placidusax. Back to Super Inc*st Bros., we have screen wide flashbang attacks that obscure his movements, the most miniscule of attack openings and an overwhelming amount of damage and health and to top it all off: rollcatching.
Brother you're getting annihilated by the usual crowd in the comments but you put into words so much of what I've been feeling since DS3. These are games made for the most committed fans of their previous games now, but they simultaneously continue to punish the playstyle needed for their other games. I certainly have been finding that they're on a constant mission to make larger weapons completely obsolete with how much smaller windows for attack have been getting, and as a fan of bonky sticks that's always a disappointment for me. If they'd just drop the pretense that there's a breadth of choice of weapons and make us use a straight sword like Sekiro did with the katana I'd respect it more.
People will always have something to cry about. Yes fromsoft makes games with their veteran audience in mind and that’s a good thing. The games are difficult and that’s the point, that’s always been the point. If they made the game as easy as ds1 people would complain about that too.
You literally tell on yourself for being incorrect by with the sekiro dodge. That game, like hollow knight, rewards aggression very heavily. I feel you saying you don’t like sekiro and not talking about it shows you failed to ever reach the point of understanding with that game that it requires. Elden ring has many tools to allow you to get past the tougher bosses. Sekiro is hard but becomes a simple but extremely satisfying rhythm game once you meet it at its own level. I honestly am terrible at souls games but beat sword saint isshin on my own because that game rewards aggression and creative thinking in its boss fights. Your video starts by talking about a mimic and you don’t ever manage to make me understand what your point about it was. Also the prestige reference was confusing and unnecessary. Also as others pointed out, no new player will ever see that chest first. I bet most new players won’t actually see that chest or mimic AT ALL on first playthrough. Because, actually to your point, getting to that chest is only intuitive to someone who has done the tail shooting trick on the hellkite. Sorry for saying so but this video is a big L take that makes me question your understanding of fromsoftware games.
Consort Radhan is the first fromsoft boss I physically can't beat and don't even want to try to get better at. Malenia I found her pretty fun and my first time beating her was even with a cosplay challenge with the tree spear, it was hard but not unfair on every single level.
I've had a similar experience to you, although I did not focus on raw difficulty. Each new iteration of Souls game feels less grounded than the last, with bigger, flashier moves, and I don't like how over the top they've gotten. Early Souls games had you throwing lightning and blue darts, sure. And bosses had their fair share of big attacks, like Smough's butt slam. But in Dark Souls 3 and especially Elden Ring, now it feels like every other boss attack is a screen wide AOE. Now every other weapon the player gets has a massive energy attack attached to L2. Now the casters are hovering in the air as they channel dragon breath across the entire fight arena. And these things are cool; I harbor no ill will toward the people who enjoy this direction. But I don't enjoy it. I feel a kind of "when everything special, nothing is" attitude toward it. Sure, I can opt out of using these personally, but I can't stop the bosses from all having 15 of them. I can't stop my weapon options being highly limited because I'm not interested in rending the earth with my swings. I feel, as you put it, left behind.
As someone who started with Elden Ring and just recently beat DeS, DS1, and DS2… I completely agree and was surprised when I ended up liking the older entries more and I loved Elden Ring too dont get me wrong and I think what you described fits how I feel perfectly.
I know a lot of people will disagree, but honestly as brutal as melania is, she’s my favorite fight in the game, and my favorite in the series minus some bloodborne bosses (bloodborne is still my favorite overall game)
I agree with some of your points but not others. I do agree that consort Radhan and malelnia are needlessly difficult and is not very enjoyable, but on the topic of allowing player aggression vs defensiveness within fights, Elden ring is not unique in forcing the player to be defensive and wait their turn, for example: gaping dragon from DS1. Also agression is possible in many of the newer fromsoft games, for example: in Sekiro you can be extremely aggressive but you have to know what tools and moves to use ( Mr ongbal) and in elden ring, the use of the deflecting hard-tear allows the player to be very agressive even in consort Radhan’s boss fight (in fact that is how I beat him, cosplaying as Raksha)
I think the main problem with elden ring is that the bosses have to be oppressive. The pace of dodges and the forgiving stamina compared to previous titles together make it basically mandatory that the bosses have 1. Delayed attacks to punish early rolls and 2. Long combos. In dark souls 3 if you waste your stamina dodging early you miss your attack window because you need stamina to dodge after you punish. In elden ring you never run out, so to still add challenge the bosses tend to go out of reach more often, have delays designed to roll catch, and of course the long combos. And overall i think elden ring isn't actually harder than dark souls, it's just inflated. More damage, more health, more dodges, more stamina, more options etc. And also the fact that the hardest bosses are in essence superbosses. Imagine lingering will being the final boss of kh2, that would suck. But consort radahn is a "required story boss" for the dlc. In a souls game it just becomes mentally taxing because you are expected to kill every boss, preferably without help. Nobody would blame someone for not beating a superboss in any other game, but for the souls genre beating every boss is almost more important than beating the game itself, which adds to the weight and frustration of elden ring and sekiro, which also has story bosses that would be better as superbosses
You are the 1st person that I have heard of that does not identify a mimic BY ITS DESIGN That and that chest in ds3 is the 2nd or 3rd chest you can come across in a play through unless that is the very 1st optional area you explore
The mimic chest in high wall is 100% the first chest in DS3, it's about 30 feet away from the first bonfire in the main game. The area isn't optional at all and there are no other chests before it.
@@ytmndan You have to get past the dragon fire anyway to progress through the level. The High Wall is literally the first area of the main game, it’s not even a little bit optional.
@@ianloughney9570 The low path past the dragon fire is easy and completely bypasses the mimic. The high path requires good timing and taking a significant amount of damage to get to the mimic. Most noobs will fail this a few times and be like, "fuck it. Taking the low path". Hell I wasn't even a noob on my first playthrough and did that, and then one day, when I was bored, overleveled, and looking back for shit I skipped earlier... I was like "oh shit. There's a mimic in the first major area of the game!"
@@ytmndan The high and low paths converge at either end of the mimic room. The room is accessible from either path. Tbh I have no idea how you could've missed it.
I agree with some of what you're saying, but I almost feel like some stuff isn't reaching the same conclusions I was expecting or necessarily make sense all the way through to me, and I definitely don't mean to dog on you or anything. Because I feel like the beginning is really solid, but to me it highlights a different sort of issue in a similar area as what you're speaking on here. The chest in ds3, I don't think it's meant to necessarily just respect veterans of the series, but I genuinely do think it's to get the "game hard" sentiment in there early, and I don't think I"m being jaded in saying that. I would say ds3 and on I have had a really hard time liking anything beyond the broader ideas and designs. I think the biggest, most core issue to me is that I've been playing these games for so long because I want an atmospheric, moderate pace dungeon crawler, where I can hunt down and equip gear and find secrets and build different ways to experience different things. This, to me, is lost in ds3 and onward, instead feeling more like sprawling worlds and quicker paced gameplay that tries to have the cake and eat it too, pulling between bloodborne's stellar flow and the previous entries' methodical pacing. In ds2, combat is expanded by having more nuanced movesets (largely) and interesting power stancing properties to let you kinda flex your build options around. In ds3 and er, you hit a button to break the flow of combat and do a cool move. Moonveil was busted, but it was so fun because it felt like you just had extra moves to chain into your combos, it felt like it was coming closer to the snappy bloodborne combat. But, it just isn't bloodborne, you aren't playing with limited, very fleshed out weapons that you learn inside and out, you're playing with a few archetypes that have a gimmick or two and some customization options. And that's cool! I'm glad people like that too, but it feels so rough up against what you were saying, the way bosses just continue to feel spiteful and aggressive instead of a back and forth. Like, a humanoid boss in dark souls is usually kinda lame, but in bloodborne? Maria and Gehrman? Those fights are excellent! Using all the tools from the more limited options you have at your disposal in a fight that respects the way you'll be trading blows and staying aggresive. With the souls games though, you have a lot of options to build up some cool things, more weird little circumstantial items and spells to use that can give you the edge, and finding them and knowing when to use them are part of the challenge. But, in ds3 and er, it feels more like knowing what color of grease or bomb you crafted will let you deny the mechanics for long enough for you to do your gameplan. And I can't say that isn't the case in other games either sometimes! For sure it is. But it's like I was saying earlier, the previous entries feel more like a dungeon crawler where you planned, explored, played smart and got your game plan off to either blast through the issue with no problem, or just barely make it through by the skin of your teeth with your limited resources stretched as far as you could take them. I'm not really the kind of person to say these games are really super difficult, mechanically, but I would never dog on somebody for saying they are! It's just that they're a learned experience, and the more you learn, the more you can be rewarded for playing with the systems, outside of the box, etc. It's fun! DS3 and er though I feel remove a lot of the impact of that thinking and building and pacing, and turn fights into trying to get quick hits in between huge combos and knowing when to dodge ten times in a row. Which, the dodging becoming pretty goofy in ds3 and er is definitely a pretty big personal gripe of mine, and I think it ties into this as a whole, but it's a bit of a symptom and an issue with the core problem. It just isn't bloodborne, and it isn't the older games, and I don't particularly think that anything newer has offered much to older fans? Seeing the same enemy types, reused fights, all the same themes, music that doesn't really stick with you, and ds3 just really, really feeling in part like a post-ds2 fan backlash entry mixed with multiplat bloodborne appeasement along the lines of "oh man... remember ds1? oh, uh and I guess ds2?" All of this to say, I'm glad people are having fun enjoying the newer stuff, and I think you kind of come close to capturing what I feel is maybe the biggest issue and shift in these games lately. These games are hard, but I don't play them for fast paced action stuff, I play them to build and explore and mess with weird items and systems. If I want good action combat and bosses, I don't look at ds3 and er, I go play nioh 2 or monster hunter. Anyway, have fun and play what you like and love with your whole damn heart.
1 thing I want to say on how to not get left behind: Improve the other kind of skill in these games. That being build crafting. You want aggression? full bullgoats, overloaded, verdigies talisman, shard of alexander, lord of bloods, old lords, bleed infused swordlance with bloody tax ash of war, and iron jar aromatic, plus malenia's great rune for fun. Can't roll as you are overloaded and won't need to heal due to regen, plus you are so tanky you can just stand there and L2. Too cheesy or op? Lower you amount of armor to medium load and drop the aromatic, drop buff if still too easy. Now we have a setup that can be aggressive due to health regen from attacking. Or just run away and cast, or oneshot the bosses with a glass cannon, or level one unupgraded club only. The difficulty, pace, and style of game is in your hands as a player. That's why Elden Ring has 40 weapon categories, 213 spells, 156 armor sets, 154 talismans, tons of ashes of war and even spirit summons. Look at all that and tell me the player has no agency in how a fight goes. Elden Ring is just as aggressive, just as hard, just as engendering to passivity as you want it to be. You just need to be willing to use your head and experiment. Something that is easier than ever with all the respects you get in this game and all the smithing stones that DLC feeds down your throat. Then there is sekiro the hardest rhythm game ever and bloodborne that's only real customization is weapon choice. Just something the video never even entertained so I felt it should be brought up.
Hollow Knight had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to keep going, explore and enjoy, but the combat proofed too much, and the final boss was beyond my limit. I never beat him legit, and I had to give up at the game. Elden Ring was tough too at times. The delayed attacks, overlong hangtimes etc are all bad. But I have the biggest gripe with the camera which is still unchanged from DeS. As in, just for once I'd like to meelee fight a dragon boss I can actually see! And screen shake can go eat a brick, I don't want to get sea sick from my ges.
Uh. So dark souls 2 original release breaks your from the habit of hitting every chest because you can break normal ones. The chain is different in ds3, they have a lock in ds2 and ds1 is the same as ds3 being the chain is different
Firstly, I thought your video was good. I may disagree with you, but I want you to know I respect your opinions on ER and From's direction concerning difficulty. I really don't think the comments in defense of ER here are disrespectful at all and make good, clear points. I think your opinion on Malenia is really what From's direction is (and has been): experimentation and learning from their misses. Miyazaki has said that he values experimenting in his games and after ER he wants to give new directors/devs the chance to do just that. Demon Souls was an experiment that took a game that was almost canned and turning it into something great, for example. After reading Miyazaki's opinion it actually made me rethink why I didn't like DS2 . I think it experimented too much. Which is perfectly fine and exactly why DS2 has it's own dedicated fans. As for Radahn, I bounced off him pretty hard at first. I love the DLC and my first playthrough was so much fun. But at a certain point I really thought that Radahn was too hard for me. But I was also knowingly limiting myself by ignoring summons and not using any buffs (offensive or otherwise). So I stuffed my pride and summoned my mimic. We DESTROYED that boss after a few attempts and ya know what? I don't regret it. It ended so cool with me and the mimic last hitting the boss at the same time. At some point I'll go back and solo Radahn since I enjoy soloing bosses. In the end though it was really my pride keeping me from enjoying the fight. Well that and the double swipe/light show. But they adjusted the fight so it's a lot easier to see and the swipe isn't as fast. I'm a little bummed I didn't solo him before the nerf but hey, I still get to say if fought pre-patch Radahn at least lol. Again I got nothing but respect for other opinions. I just think some of the criticisms are a personal thing (which is totally fine). From is going to do something new next (like Sekiro or Bloodborne) and I think we should all be excited to see what they come up with. They may keep ramping/adjusting difficulty to some extent but they also always give the player tools to make their own difficulty. Or they patch things lol.
So you have a problem with some of the newer boss being too aggressive and not giving the player enough agency (which I agree with in some cases especially promised consort Rahdan), but don’t seem to like sekiro the game that gives the player the most agency and freedom of aggression in combat?
Okay, due to IRL circumstances I haven't had the chance to play SotE yet so I'm tapping out after the spoiler warning. That all said, I also have a bit of a problem with the hyper aggression of Elden Ring bosses. The never ending attack strings are really frustating. Also super mad at Malenia. I don't think I've ever beaten her "fair" (whatever that is supposed to mean). There's just too many frustrating things at once working against you there (My biggest peeve is the hyper armor all of the time). But I DO have over 800 hours of Elden Ring. I think it's fair to say that, in quite a few ways it IS my favourite FromSoft game (haven't played Sekiro or BB yet), and I'm a veteran all the way from Demon's Souls BUT ALSO I think the issue with DS3 specifically goes a bit deeper You started this by talking about DS3, a game I actually took a long time to play. I'm towards the tail end of my first playthrough only now (at Midir, Gael and Soul of Cinder) and one thing that I found very very grating with that game is how it resists having its own identity. I feel that in response to the bad reception of DS2 back in the day (which went to great lengths to not be a straightforward continuation to DS1), DS3 went overboard in trying to pander to an audience that wanted more DS1. So it feels that it keeps spinning it feels trying to every 5 minutes, show you something and go "HEY, YOU! REMEBER THIS FROM DARK SOULS 1?!?!? YOU LIKE DARK SOULS 1 RIGHT!!!". And it's just odd in a way that's interesting to think about but unpleasant to experience. Most of these feel very surface level too, just there for repetition's sake. It quickly made me jaded to most of the game and I'm not sure that was intended. "Remember Siegmeyer? Here's another Catarina knight that has almost the same quest beat for beat! And he randomly dies in the end because Siegmeyer died in his quest back in the day". "Hey, remember Quelana? There she is. Also, this place is Izalith! How so? Shut up! here's lava!", "ooohh, a dodgy Carim Knight that's around a trapped firekeeper... hmmmmmm", "Anor Londo Archers?!?!? Do that exact same thing again but this time with more archers!!!" It just never stops and it kind of smothers what DS3 seems to be trying to go towards, but it DOES align in some ways.... In DS3 the world itself is exhausted, tired from all the Dark Souls, and then the game makes you tired of it. I like that they double down on some of this in the DLCs. Ariandel sucks (though Friede is probably my favourite fight in all of Souls) but it just keeps telling you "Dark Souls needs to end and it's stupid to try and keep going at it". And in the Dreg Heap it feels like the implication is that Dark Souls too, the series itself, is also destined to be just junk in a pile, discarded trash. And that is fine, it's just how it is So it's weird. Ultimately the mimic straight off the bat made me think more of this desperation to reference DS1 than anything else. And just set up a tone for DS3 from which it struggles to deviate With the ending of the game in sight we'll see how things wrap up, and I also still haven't done the whole hollowing questline. Left that for a NG+ or whatever so there's some time for DS3 to come forward with its own ideas but so far it's struggled a bit to get any real traction (but it does have some good highs, don't get me wrong)
From what I can see you are someone who does use all mechanics to your advantage in these games. You might be surprised to learn that Malenia and Radahn are easy with the right builds. Malenia, you just need freezing pots to knock her out of the waterfowl wind up, the rest of her moves are not that hard to deal with and most of them are punishable. For Promised Consort, you can just go full turtle poke with defensive talismans and blood infusion. Only things you need to keep track of are stamina and preiodically your health. You can just poke away through most of his attacks.
The statement that ds3 isn't built for newcomers is just what you felt like playing it but as a newcomer myself it's the most fun I had on any soulsborne game. I was so bad at the time it took me like 15 try to beat gundyr and it felt very rewarding beating him! Then I was stuck at the lothric knight right after the mimic and felt very rewarded beating this mimic since it gave me a very powerfull weapon making the lothric knight easy.and making me be suspicious of any other chest in the game. Then I played every other soulsborne and frankly speaking DS1 was probably the worst one with the tomb of the giant, the stupid sith runback while he has an attack that just build up curse and can kill you stupidly and other stuff like that just made it not fun to beat.
I know why a lot of people find the newer games too hard, it's becouse they dont learn how to play the game, most of those people cheese through the game by summoning, using overpowered build or they just let their friends solo the game for them meanwhile they learn nothing and at the second they can't "cheese" something they are left by themselves and their no skill get owned and cry about it. Sekiro was a game that solved this problem perfectly, no co op no summons no overpowered bs just you and your skills, it teaches you how to play and overcome the challenge.
I finished the whole game without summons and by just using str build no cheesy strat and i think elden ring bosses are overall too frustrating and not enjoyable too learn, too much obligatory deaths in order to learn to dodge some moves, one example promised consort gravity pull into the aoe, what in this attack gives a clue to indicate aoe? Nothing , the first times i dodged this shit o was frame perfect and wasnt even on the little rocks sticking out the ground and still got hit. Too avoid the aoe when you don't dodge the pull successfully you have too spam rolls backwards instant, you'll be on the visual clue of the attack but i guess the aoe doesn't tick on this timing, but tbh i don't even know cause the attack is literally just rocks sticking out of the ground and thats it. I'll kill him eventually but the whole process of learning him isn't enjoyable. Do you really enjoy beating these bosses or do you enjoy telling people you beat these bosses and acting like you are superior online? What point are you trying to make? If ppl cheese or summon its because they find the boss too hard not the other way arround 😂 you're trying to say that ppl aren't persistent enough but a game is supposed to be somewhat enjoyable throughout the process of learning it, it can't be on the player to keep playing "the good way" if he hasn't felt pleasure in learning a dodge or punish in hours
@@toodlepip7061 well that promised condort move is easy to dodge by dodging the pull, if u fail u just need to run, sure u are going to get hit the first time but the game is designed like this "learn from ur mistakes" and this applies to everything except waterfowl that move is bs and u need to search online the way to dodge it cuz its not intuitive at all. The process of learning a boss is the fun part and when u finally beat the boss u feel satisfied, isn't it the point of the game? overcoming an hard challenge? cuz if u remove the learning part where is the satisfaction of beating a boss? would u like every boss to be a pinwheel? and bro im not superior i beat a game that is designed to be beaten as u did if u didnt like it that's ur opinion and that's not gonna change how the game is designed. If someone summons or cheese trough the game i dont care they are ruining their own experience not mine but then they should not cry at every challenge they cant overcome using their shit tactics
@@EzSdunzed06 my point is that the learning experience isn't good cause lack of readability in favor of aesthetics (partly) you can't tell me that attack is well designed
Excellent analysis. You know, I really couldn't get into DS3 despite trying really hard and beating every boss, it just felt so much worse and so much less rewarding than DS1 or DS2 and I think you perfectly articulated why. I know DS3 only has this problem to a lesser degree, since many bosses still have their single attacks and openings, etc. But I just feel cheated every time I play that game because of how much player aggression is punished, both by bosses and enemies, while the damage numbers have also increased significantly. That delicate dance was only broken a few times in DS1 and DS2, largely for gank bosses, but in 3 even great bosses like Pontiff will pull out a 5 hit combo with delays and they all punish mistakes with death, usually. It sucks so much because from a purely technical standpoint, DS3 is so fluid and responsive but the difficulty just doesn't feel legitimate. It sucks because I really did fall in love with these games but from everything I've heard, Elden Ring is even worse in this regard. I just miss bosses like DS2's Fume Knight or The Pursuer. 1 - 3 hits vs 1 - 3 hits back and forth. I guess I'l just wait until they slow their games down again, if that ever happens, and play DS2 and 1 in the meantime. Great video though and very clever move to use the mimic as a way to highlight your point, not surprised you're a writer tbh.
The step forward for fromsoft is to follow the Sekiro design. Not necessarily a Sekiro 2, but have a new combat mechanic that they can build the games around. Elden Ring feels like the peak of dodge-roll DS combat for sure. Changing the combat mechanic and designing the game around the new mechanic would allow for a fresh start on the difficulty curve. But i fear you would feel left behind by that as well due to your dislike of Sekiro, which i personally think is absolute peak combat. It is quite literally the closest you can get to a "dance". At the end of the day its all about adaptation. If we cant adapt, we will be left behind... if we do adapt, Fromsoft has to adapt or they get left behind. So, on goes the cycle until it is unsustainable. So, do you re-light the fire? Or let it fizzle out into darkness?
funny thing they reused a dark souls 2 npcs moveset (with the name veragel or something simular i just remember he is that one npc looking for his body)for the final boss of the erd tree dlc but gave him some original moves which made consort Radhan easy to fight compared to a boss like Maleina but even she is easy to beat over all the from softweare games has always been a game series that rewards players for patience and punishes them for not being patient every boss in they have made is easy if you focus on defensive play style and dodging all of their attacks or blocking them how ever if you focus agression you are gonna get stomped like players in pvp when you have a +10 chaos dagger in your pocket after parrying someone :P
From soft i have to say if you take one thing from this then make a ds3-esque roster easier with like 1 or 2 pontiff+ level fights and then 1 malenia level to keep the vets entertained (No npc bosses, they suck)
idk dude, sounds like you failed to adapt your build and use the tools at your disposal. On my very first playthrough of Elden Ring I found Malenia to be of quite reasonable difficulty. Using mimic tear, and weapon with high stagger damage, I was able to effectively stun lock her for like half the fight. I happened to be a bit lucky, but I found a build that countered her quite well. I had a friend who was using the RoB build at the time who was struggling, I suggested he respeced, and he beat her after just a couple tries. I did indeed find Radan to be quite challenging with my big bonk slow AF str build, but switching to a build that had much faster attacks made him a lot easier when I had more consistent damage. You're playing the game with arbitrary self imposed restrictions. You don't have to do that, From gives you ton and tons of build options and tools to overcome these difficult challenges. Try using consumables, try a different build.
You kinda skipped the chests in Dark Souls 2. DS2 teaches you wildly attacking wooden chests runs the risk of breaking its contents making you more reserved and shifting how you approach them, Honestly studying the chest and chest trap/mimic evolution in these games would be interesting delve
bruh you can't say that elden ring is too hard when the game literally gives you a lot of overpowered tools to deal with bosses. if you don't want to dodge long strings of attack just pick up a great shield, or you can just push them with dps by picking up a weapon with status build up and I'm not even talking about spells that can literally melt bosses. i think elden ring is more about adaptation rather than mechanical skill.
I had a great bleed build that with a little adjustments did manage all the DLC bosses except Radahn. Simply my aggressive playstyle was outmatched by Radahns aggression, staggers, and hyper armor. Also damage he did to me was insane. And while l managed first phase and can argue that it's somewhat fun, the second wtf phase is where l lost it. It's pure bullshit. I had to switch to defensive setup poking radahn to death hiding behind greatshield. I reminded myself of adapting to situations and changing your style in order to win, in this case defensive as the boss is too aggressive. However l didn't think that the fight was fun because of that. It was more adapt and overendure then win with skill. Unlike him which second phase l still find bullshit for example Midir l learned to overcome with any playstyle while first overcoming him with pestilent mist. As my skill rose l was able to defeat him without cheese, for which l can't say for consort radahn, the most bullshit boss that fromsoft made. And l didn't like original radahn either.
I'll have to disagree here a little. Elden Ring is more mechanically overwhelming than the souls trilogy. There's too much delayed attacks with unique times, AoE attacks that don't convey their damage areas very well, enemies that can weasel their way out of a stun lock, enemies with confusing hitboxes, bad camera issues, crippling frame drops and so on. I'm not saying it's bad, matter of fact i played elden ring for about a year now since I got my new pc. But it's undeniable that the approach to difficulty changed since dark souls 3. Back then, the narrative was pushed by the difficulty, easy and hard served as devices to making the experience more complete. Pinwheel is very easy, but it's easy for a bunch of lore and mechanical reasons, and it's not a "poorly designed boss" by any means. The hardest bosses in ds3 are way more memorable, despite being easier than the ones in ER. That's because elden ring focus way too much on giving the player a sense of overcoming impossible odds instead of motivation for doing so. Malenia is a great boss, I think that level of difficulty works for what the design is going for. But sadly, every main boss operates on the same standards (endless combos, AoE's, delayed attacks, huge HP bars...). I can, if I'm willing to, explore a lot. Find the best tools and equipment and farm unlimited runes to get op. But that process takes dozens of hours, and most of the resources people often talk about are way to complicated to get without searching on the wiki. The game should have a way better guidance system on that matter. Even so, the late game scaling funnels players into specific playstyles, crushing build diversity at some capacity. It's undeniable that at some point, you'll be playing in a standardized way. Usually I see people showing the most boring playstyles imaginable as a defense for the game balancing, like spamming jump attacks with bleed build-up, spamming one single spell, not minding the boss attack patterns because it's just too much to pay attention to.
I'm glad I'm not alone in hating how fast the bosses have gotten and how many attacks you have to dodge. its starting to feel like every boss is capra just more space (in most cases). It's why I couldnt do bloodborn. I miss the methodical dance of DS1 and to an extent DS3. Demon souls was more of a puzzle but still had timing be a factor.
Your complaints make no sense. You say that you have no time to attack or you have to wait until the boss is finished with his combo to attack. That’s not true at all. Everything depends on YOUR build and YOUR play style. You just said that you’re using the great katana for the DLC. That’s a slower weapon requiring you to have a different play style. Slower weapon requires you to dodge a bunch and get a hit or two in before you repeat. A faster weapon allows you to attack between hits of the combo so you can remain aggressive. Learn to parry so you can skip the whole combo. THE GAME IS AS HARD AS YOU MAKE IT. You complain about fromsoftware games getting too hard but we all know that if every boss had a 3 hit combo and just sat there for 5 minutes before attacking again, you would be complaining that the games are too easy. The only reason you find it too difficult is because you try to compare it to a game that came out 7 years ago.
It should be noted that the boss aggro problem in elden ring is caused by one simple fact. The vast majority of players are playing the game wrong. This isn't a "git gud" argument you'd hear from most chuds. The bosses in elden ring are designed to be attacked in groups and to have their aggro split up among multiple opponents. If you aren't using spirit ashes, you are playing the game wrong. Got get Black Knife Tieche or the Shield Bro Squad.
Like idk? At sometimes you are right but sonetimes it's just skill issue. Your pcr and malenia clips were pretty bad. Not saying that pcr is good but he's not that bad Edit: holy shit the soul turant opinion is so bad
Soul master is an almost perfect boss, he is a dance, a fluid dance of dodging the easy to dodge attacks that come one after another, having trouble with him, and being "forced to be passive" is stupid, as you just do your job moving from one attack to another, and while he is vulnerable you deal massive amount of damage relative to his health, which doesn't take much time.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
That first mimic made me SOOO suspicious. I mean, look at it. It’s all cock-eyed at an extreme angle and blocking the middle of your path. Rewards go in the dark corner at the end of a hall. They’re aligned with the wall because that’s what people do with furniture and it helps their lines blend into the environment. The mimic is placed like someone desperately wanted you to find it. Almost like as if the only way that they can feed themselves is by making sure you open that chest.
If you are open to constructive criticism I think this videos flow just doesn't really make any sense. You start with a video essay about mimics and the relationship of the developer with the player and then it turns into a SOTE critique. I'm just not seeing the connection. Maybe make those into two separate videos? This feels more like a mish mash of ideas you had about fromsofts titles.
It's about the fact that the mimic in ds3, much like the bosses in elden ring, are only satisfying for veterans.
The flow of criticism itself is convoluted.
@@leodaly2310 Just like time in Lordran
Absolutely agree
The two issues stem from the same cause.
Dark souls 1 hit you with the first mimic a third of the way through the game.
Dark souls 3 made the very first chest you're going to see a mimic.
No training. No introduction of new mechanics for players that might not have played a game your company released 2 or 3 console generations ago. You're in the deep end of the pool, and it's up to you to sink or swim.
Dark souls 1 had slow ponderous bosses that could be handled with an understanding of AI pathing and a few castings of the better spells in the game.
Since Dark souls 1, the speed of boss fights has doubled with each new FromSoft game put out. To the point where the final boss of SotE is a rhythm game without visual indicators showing you the upcoming buttons.
The scope of the boss mechanics has ballooned while player mechanics have advanced at a crawl.
Of course, this all falls apart when you factor in the fact that most "gamers" are playing the game wrong. Elden ring bosses are designed to be attacked in groups and have aggro split up among multiple targets. If you aren't using spirit ashes, you are playing the game wrong.
The argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when you look at the fact that Elden Ring is their most mainstream and best selling game they've ever made, demonstrably becoming more accessible to thousands of new players.
Elden Ring lowered the skill floor for new players and raised the skill ceiling for veterans. Spirit ashes and NPC summons make the game extremely accessibile to new players, while crazy new attacks like Radahn's that you couldn't figure out give new challenges for vets to overcome. (You need to start sprinting as soon as he starts rising into the air, and when the pillars of light come out you need to briefly stop locking onto him and look at the ground so you can position yourself accordingly)
I do agree with the critique that the first appearance of a mimic in DS3 isn't as impactful as the one from DS1, but would repeating the schtick have been any better? IMO Elden Ring's spin on the trick chest was refreshing.
I think that Consort Radahn second phase is very flawed and its made only for the best elden ring players (the ones who can take him down in that phase on any level with any build). I have the trouble with Elden Ring dodge timings and overall bullshit that his second phase is. That boss is simply made badly and overcoming him feels like 'oh gosh its finally over'. Another boss that feels like cheap fuck is Rellana with her insane poise and 3 hour combos that hit 40% of the time even when you dodge them 5o erase half or all of your hp.
"The argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when you look at the fact that Elden Ring is their most mainstream and best selling game they've ever made, demonstrably becoming more accessible to thousands of new players."
Uh... it kinda doesn't, actually. It means a lot of people bought it, not that all of those people were really good at it or enjoyed playing it. Just saying.
@@FTZPLTC It's their best selling game, and it's the game that most players actually completed. It is absolutely their most accessible game.
@@wexdust I had a ton of fun fighting both of those bosses. They've got long combos but they're still learnable and once you know them out-maneuvering them feels awesome. You get into a good flow of dodging, blocking, guard countering, I had a blast. To each their own.
It's weird, and I can't agree at all because you simultaneously have people saying Elden Ring is too easy.
Yeah, the bosses can be flashy and aggressive, but it also gives the player a lot more tools and opportunities to take advantage and be aggressive back than I ever felt with earlier games.
And whenever there's points brought up of it being too hard, it's consistently about Malenia and now Consort Radahn, who are respectively a secret completely optional boss and the end of a DLC that's made to be a challenge for, at least Elden Ring veterans, if not the veterans of modern Fromsoft as a whole.
I would say that Malenia and Consort Radahn are flawed experimenal bosses that could be great but first Malenia is annoying with her massive heals removing any time you spent carefuly punishing her simply by overhealing. That's the annoying part that makes her unfun with different setups other than some broken builds that overcome her. Consort Radahn however cannot be easily defeated without some careful planings and certain builds. Because of his second wtf phase that is completely unfair and unnecessary. It exceeds acceptable skill limit while going into the realm of bullet hell. That's how it feels to me. It doesn't help that my pc slows down during that phase as well.
While l defeat All souls games at SL1 l dont even dare touch elden ring dlc (currently progressing base game rl1)
"you simultaneously have people saying Elden Ring is too easy. "
Yeah, but they say that to be assholes.
I feel.like eldern ring is a great mix between bloodborne and DS. I can be aggressive which fits my play style better.
This video was strange man. Jumping from place to place, you should've made multiple videos.
I appreciate that he never leaned into the easy "it's objectively bad because I don't like it" and firmly dedicated the video as a subjective opinion to be placed in the fromsoft comment box
Wow this is a enormous disappointment for me. I clicked on a video about DS3 and mimics in the first 10 minutes were pretty solid in fact the first 5 minutes may have been some of the greatest writing I've seen about mimics and developers.
And then my video about DS3 and mimics starts to shift over to a conversation about difficulty and before lawn we're talking about elden ring a game that is separated by over half a decade from DS3 doesn't even have mimics of its own and otherwise is completely separated from the topic at hand.
I don't know what the plan was or why we needed a a critique well more accurately a long winded complaint about difficulty and how hard you find things in a video about DS3 and mimics. Because call me crazy here but a video about DS3 and mimics should be about DS3 and mimics.
I like the way you write and you got a good voice for this so don't give up or get too discouraged just next time stay on topic again that first 5 minutes is gold.
Tldr this video is a bit confusing and disappointing because it's not actually about DS3 and mimics
Well for a lot of people that chest in DS3 is the second chest.
I thought this video was about mimics.
Man, I low-key hate how, if you want to comment on difficulty in FromSoft games, you have to add a zillion qualifiers just in case the community flips its shit at you for finding the difficult game difficult and not being too insecure to say so. And then they do it ahyway.
Elden Ring's design is frustrating primarily because of the way it is defended - where we're just told to "learn their moveset". I don't enjoy doing that - I'm a Bloodborne guy so I refuse to be patient, ever - but in later Elden Ring bosses, it goes beyond that. When every other move wipes out half your health bar... how do you learn that? What opportunity do you have to learn that? Putting a death, a loading screen and a runback between every attempt to learn... just makes learning exhausting and unrewarding.
And very often, when I do win, it's not because I learned anything - it's because I got lucky and fluked it. I don't think I'm alone in that. Most people who beat Malenia know that at least half the battle is just how often she does Waterfowl Dance - not how well they managed to counter it. That's the biggest issue for me. It's what shifts me from a sense of achievement after defeating a boos... to relief that it's over, and dread about having to do it again next time I play it.
If you don’t want to spend time learning bosses I don’t think Elden ring is for you man. It’s okay to just go play a different game instead of complaining about Elden Ring.
@@Finn-ev2lx - Eh, I finished the game and the DLC. And it's a criticism more than a complaint. I just prefer learning on the fly, which you can totally do when attack animations are relatively intuitive.
I have to disagree with your initial point about the DS3 mimic. DS3 was my first Fromsoft game. I didn't even know that chest was there as there's no way to get through it besides through the dragon. Most other games put an environmental hazard like that dragon as a wall. I came to this impass and ran the other way. Most other games will used "Door Locked" and big dragon as more interesting brick walls, new players like me will not think twice about this. It wasn't until nearing the end of my first playthrough that I understood the intention FS uses over most other devs. That mimic is for experienced players, not new ones. The first mimic intended to punish new players is in cathedral deep IMO.
As for the rest of the content of the video , I think FS are very aware of both new and old players at every iteration and I don't envy the position they're in. You have to make a boss challenging enough for the veterans and yet approachable so as to not scare off the newcomers. You also to make a world that will achieve the same. I think elden ring is in the hardest position in this regard. I had only beaten BB when I first tried and the open world nature was certainly overwhelming. Since then ive learned that each FS game demands you learn how to play it before it'll reveal the fun. I don't mean in a git gud way but in a remapping your gamer senses way. I think because elden ring has the most options for the player with range and magic and other builds being more viable, and ash of wars, it makes the bosses demand more and be more individually tailored for certain approaches because they'd be pushovers if they were just skillfully melee 1v1 till win. More of feature creep issue than a power creep one.
Overall I enjoy all the FS experiences I've had and I'd say they're all made with an incredible amount of talent and all deserve to be praised, but they may not all be for everyone. If I understand your subtext here you think BB is the best game they've made recently, and I'd say subjectively it's my favorite too, but I think in other players eyes it takes some big steps over the line in design intention too like the vial system and the length of the chalice dungeons in the same way elden rings boss aggression does.
Every game is going to have differences because FS overall is very good at what they do and have the integrity to not just milk the exact same product over and over again. Not every decision is going to resonate with every player but I don't think it's indicative of them heading backwards or are painting themselves into a corner. I think it's just the natural tweaks to expect from fighting rpg games trying to stay true to their roots while innovating at the same time.
Sorry for answering your video essay with an essay, thanks for reading if you do, despite disagreeing with most of your points I think your video is good and thought provoking and look forward to checking out some more. Peace
This argument depends on the idea that the players won't explore the levels. A monumentally stupid notion.
The devs put a back door and an obvious path to the mimic in high wall for the same reason they put the two crystal lizard bosses in the tutorial zone literally right next to the spawn point. Players who explore are to be rewarded, but rewards are locked behind challenges. That's half the point of these games.
Saying the first "real" mimic is in cathedral of the deep is like saying the first "real" boss is the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. You're just ignoring the first half of the game to hide your own ignorance of game design.
You, like many others, are neglecting the fact that buildcraft and adaptation are also important aspects of "skill" at Soulsborne games, not just hitting the buttons at the right time. That's without even going into the impact that NPC summons, Spirit summons, and Scadutree fragments have on your experience with the tougher bosses in the game. There are specific builds and methods you can employ to make fights like Malenia and Radahn less monotonously stressful for yourself. There are several movement/evasion AOWs that make it much harder for Malenia to regen off hitting you and attack types that will do more damage to her (Frost, Bleed, Fire, Stuns). There are also more "tanky" builds and tactics that include regen, status, stance breaks, and buffs which can completely change the Radahn fight.
Thinking outside the box like that with your build and tools was always a way to make boss fights easier going all the way back to DS1. Or did you never think to equip a bow or a ranged spell to make the Moonlight Butterfly less of a chore?
On a side note I'm so mad that I finished ds1 more than 20 times now. And I have NEVER used range against moonlight butterfly as a means to make the fight less of a chore, never thought about it.
I never use a bow. Well. That's not true. I used it to take out the albanaurics to get to the haligtree.
I've always found that Elden Ring and Sekiro reward being aggressive the most (I haven't played Bloodborne, still waiting for ShadPS4 updates), for the simple fact that every boss has a Posture bar that you can break. I couldn't manage to break the poise bar of some DS3 bosses (Pontiff and Demon Prince for example), but I managed to do it with EVERY SINGLE boss in Elden Ring (and Sekiro of course), at least once and more often than not twice or thrice (even Prime Consort Radahn). Those 2 games only really gave me trouble whenever I tried playing defensively.
Man, as someone who jumped in at DS3, I can tell you I did not have an incomplete experience. In fact, it made me a life-long fan and ive beaten every soulsborne game at this point. And yes, that first mimic got me
I usually don't comment on videos. Or even click on the random less-than-1k-views recommendations RUclips throws at me. But I'm glad I did it now.
Great analysis, dude! Especially the part when you talk about Hollow Knight, because when I'm discussing about these games with friends, I usually bring it as an example of a game that understand the Souls formula, sometimes better than From Software itself.
But I share the same feeling (except the part when you said you hate Sekiro, but I get it). The first Dark Souls changed my perception of videogames and Bloodborne and Sekiro are two of my favorite games ever. And in my opinion, Elden Ring (with its DLC) is the apex and the bottom of From Software design at the same time.
I'm still willing to play any game Miyazaki puts his hands on, but I also feel like they reached a point where they need to take a step back to analyze what they're doing and what are the limitations of their signature gameplay style. I just hope they don't look at Elden Ring's sales numbers and think "so that's what people like".
Imo aggression is even more rewarding than in the previous games in elden ring. The new posture system is great. It forces aggression so that the meter doesn’t drop and you have to start over.
Not to mention how many fights in Elden Ring can go from extremely hard to trivial if you manage to combo your opponent appropriately.
Look at the knight enemies for example, the DLC's Black Knights especially. They're very tough opponents, but with the right combos you can stun lock them for the entire fight.
I thought aggression was pretty rewarding in Bloodborne, too.
For sure, margit is so much easier when you just play dumb with a colossal or great wep and just ungabunga him
yeah, even at level 1 I'm able to shorten most fights to 2 minutes by just being aggressive.
I agree. I gravitate more towards the bloodborne style of play, and that made Elden Ring pretty easy for me. The fact he says he's dodging for 15 minutes is the reason he was having a hard time.
This is such a weird perspective.
Elden Ring is BY FAR FROM's best-selling title. By a country mile. By a continental mile. You're getting so into the weeds with boss design at a level of minutia that something like MAYBE .001% of the fan base can connect with or even understand, and then you finish the video with like, a warning that this incredibly slim margin of the fanbase could leave because of this quibble.
Gotta say, it feels ENTITLED.
Having come in from Ds3 as my first game, i just can't agree or see why people praise Ds1, it is the second least enjoyable fromsoft soulslike for me, unbearably slow and easy, absolutely atrocious second half, the combat is not enjoyable whatsoever, not to say that games like Ds3 and Elden Ring are better because they're somewhat more difficult, but that difficulty and skill expression does help otherwise dull moments that Ds1 is full of. Ds1 is, at least for the first half, a very competent game and generally well put together, but I enjoy playing Ds2 far more, because its a much more interesting and actually enjoyable game despite it's massive flaws, because the combat and exploration actually have substance. You have 8-way rolling, making evasion immediately more satisfying, movesets are generally more varied, powerstancing, and very unique weapons compared to the first game. In Ds1, an example of being rewarded for exploration is going through blighttown and discovering ash lake, even though ash lake has nothing in it, but in ds2, you have stuff like the pig digging up the pickaxe, finding hidden areas to tackle gauntlets of npcs to fight one of my favorite bosses ever, Darklurker, and NG+ switching up enemies, mimics, and giving new encounters, and Shadow of the Erdtree feels like it goes back to that sort of philosophy.
If Ds1 had the depth of combat that Ds2, Ds3, or Elden Ring have, then maybe I could agree, but it feels like a much lesser experience, and again, difficulty would help, but given I 3 tried Radahn with the deflecting hardtear the first time I got to him, it wouldn't make too much of a difference, it would just be less braindead.
Also, Demon's Souls is the least enjoyable gaming experience in my life, what a travesty
Imagine being a long time souls fan and still getting taken out by that first mimic. Wouldn't that bring a bunch of different emotions 😅
Yeah 😂 always check the direction of the chain before opening or at least hit it once first 😂 But in DS2 in the NG+ modes they change which chest are mimics so thats a little cool but fucked up 😂
Uhm, I didn’t go into that mimic room on my first DS3 playthrough, not even on my second. There’s a HUGE DRAGON blocking the way to the entrance. That mimic feels kind of “veteran only” because the room is only by people who played more of it and aren’t scared to run through the fire, I think.
I almost agree with what you're saying here, but not quite 100%. I think you've correctly identified some of the problems that ER has, but perhaps not correctly identified why veteran Souls players generally don't like the game. The things you mentioned about ER, to me, don't seem like difficulty issues, but rather fairness issues, so to speak. The things you mentioned, (i.e. Delayed charge attacks, boss tank combos, bosses no longer having stamina, etc), aren't traditional difficulty issues so much as they are devs stacking the deck against players. ER is unquestionably the easiest From game, but it's also probably the least fair, which is why I think vet souls players struggled to get into it. And to be clear, that's not a problem per se, a lot of games aren't fair to the player. But the central contrivance of the Soulsborne games before ER was "The world is unforgiving, but fair." From has been slowly moving away from that design ethos and you are right that it's a choice that seems to be leaving some players behind.
I was just replaying Dark Souls 3 and hearing you talk about Elden Ring reminded me of moments of me playing DS3. The bosses, and enemies, are generally smoother, faster, and have a tendency to combo around for a little too long (I'm largely thinking of the Dancer but it applies to other bosses as well). I'm always enjoy fighting Gael at the end of the game because he has always felt the most like a classic Dark Souls boss where he attacks, pauses, stands up again and reorients himself towards you. Then there's some bosses like Midir and the Demon Princes where I'm left running a marathon across a boss arena to launch one or two attacks before doing that again. And hope I don't get hit by a devastating attack on the way over.
I strongly disagree with the take here. Ds3 was designed for veterans very obviously. Ds3 has an extremely unforgiving tutorial with iudex gundyr. It’s silly to me how many people forget dark souls is a trilogy… you are supposed to play in order 1,2,3. Because of that, the game is made for veterans and the mimic is a reward for remembering the mechanic from ds1 and ds2.
Now about SOTE. Elden ring for sure has created a lot of bosses that are “misses” and abide closely to the “bigger combos, less downtime, more aggressive” style you talk about. In fact, a lot of the time it is actually unfair (Elden stars, valiant gargoyles briefly having both aggro, metyr laser attack). But Elden ring’s bad design in those cases are forgiven because those bosses aren’t that hard. When the poor design is paired with a hard boss (waterfowl, cross slash), then outrage is created. But I think the only way to validly criticize these bosses and their attitudes/attacks is if you are on the position of playing without summons. The reality is, when you use summons (which you clearly do in the video), the tiny punish windows are completely acceptable, due to being able to attack the boss while they are attacking a summon. Essentially, when they are attacking the mimic, that is their opening since they probably won’t switch aggro mid combo.
So essentially, it is definitely created for veterans if you choose not to summon, but with summons it is completely manageable.
Thank you for the new perspective about souls.
I'm a diehard fan of the FromSoft games, as well as a person that lives and breathes off of video essays and such. I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciated this video. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but your train of logic was exactly my thinking, and honestly one of the main reasons that I wasn't as happy with Elden Ring as with their other titles. That being said, I'm extremely excited for Nightreign, and will definitely be playing it, even if I do have to, as they say, "Git Gud".
Keep up the amazing work!
I do understand what you are trying to say, but I dont think it follows. New players have an easier time with Elden Ring than people who's favorite game is Dark Souls 1. Maybe you are being left behind, but maybe that is because you are unwilling to change?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's nice to hear opinions shared as opinions rather than facts. Similarly I'd like to share my thoughts on a few of your points.
Firstly the mimic in DS3. I actually like it's placement. I barely touched DS1 before calling it trash and walking away (a mistake I've gladly rectified) so I came as a fairly new player to this type of game. The mimics placement to me acts as a wake up call to new players and a call back for veterans. You compared it to DS1 but don't forget DS2 PUNISHED players for attacking chests randomly. So people who came from DS2 wouldn't know they could "safely" attack to test. Also, nobody would expect it and only veterans and those pre warned would even stop to look.
Secondly, I don't think the games are strictly getting harder. I've noticed each game is made to be played differently. Often punishing players who rely on tricks from old games (first example that comes to mind is roll catching that DS3 did with it's bosses attack timing to catch out DS1 players who spam rolled). Each game shows learning from previous ones but also experiments with something new. As such, the key for veterans is to play a bit like new players. To learn and use what's new and not get caught out by old habits (a lesson elden ring taught me)
Lastly, what makes a boss fight good. Personally I think the key to a good souls-like boss is the variety of build and play styles you can use to win and still be challenged. This is obviously a massive task to balance well and is part of why so many players can and do disagree as to which boss was easiest or hardest. I agree that player agency in the fight is evidence of how well this is done. This is probably also the one issue I have with Sekiro and possibly bloodborne. Yes they are cool, but the play variety is far more narrow. This actually brings me back to my previous point; they are different games intended to be played differently. Yes you CAN just grab a claymore or zweihander and just carry on like you did before, but tbh, so far I've yet to play any 2 of the games the same way for very long before I discover a new play style I prefer to use and THAT is where I find the fun and overcome the challenges.
Sorry for the short essay but figured this was as good a place as any to unload my thoughts. Thank you if you've read this far. As a bonus not: I wouldn't call a souls-like a 3d metroidvania. Metroidvanias tend to make you go back to previous areas with new abilities to access previously inaccessible areas. Souls-likes tend to only circle around to unlock shortcuts and put the focus heavily in the combat. They can be similar but definitely different.
Anyway, thanks again.
As a fan of Ds3 and a lot of Fromsoft's more recent games, I really respect the effort put into this video and I agree with some of the points you made. However, the argument that the games are designed for veterans falls apart when looking at Elden Ring, which is their best-selling game and incredibly mainstream. Though I do only realy play these games for the bosses/combat, so what do I know
I'm doing my first DS1R playthrough, got to the Sens chest and my brain went "aren't these usually organized and not usually thrown around like this? odd..... This is a trap isn't it? Oh well, loot if it isn't"
I felt the way you do about consort radhan and decided to put a blood antspur rapier in my right hand and a greatshield in my left hand, give myself all the holy+physical damage negations that was possible and proceed to bleed and rot the boss to death. I did this pre nerf and I did it in 2 tries when I got tired of my regular build kind of falling short. This is without summoning, spirit summons or buff stacking out the arse. This is a casual way of beating radhan with some limitations (I play alone, dont like spirit summons or buff stacking). Dark souls has done so many elden ring players wrong in their thought process, because it tells them to ignore all the helpful items because they aren't needed mostly. Shields, status, items, spirit summons etc. are the way to nerf a boss to your own level. I DO realize that players prefer the dlc to be easier to bring their builds or preferred weapons to every fight (and I think there is an argument for doing so).
Also malenia is pretty predictable. If you start the fight by getting her HP down to like 70-80% and then run away from most things she will waterfowl while you run, allowing you to dodge through the second and you can basicly stand still and the third will not hit you. She heals less from waterfowl than any other attack, she also has a smaller hp-bar than other bosses in similar areas to compensate for the healing. Yes there is a skillfloor to malenia, but she is in no way broken or impossible to do. You can also do what I did against consort radhan with her if you want to and just use some of the ashes that do work. I found dragon halberd and zamor curved sword to be the best ones to cheese her with.
All in all I think the perspective that elden ring is bad because not all players can use any build to beat the hardest bosses is flawed. You can litteraly change your build to accomodate your skill floor, it's not on the game if you refuse to do so.
I would have to disagree with the point that Elden ring bosses don’t let you attack Messer is the perfect example of a boss that is both hyper aggressive but allows the player to get substantial damage on him almost all of his combos are 4 hit with either quick delayed or super delayed attacks all of his attacks urge the player to get in close for when his combos end and he enters his transition phase where you can do damage he punishes those who stay far with flame attacks with massive outward hit boxes ie rolling backward means you’ll most likely get hit while rolling forward enables you to dodge the attack and get a rolling attack of your own in while his animation resets since that flame attack has a longer animation Elden ring promotes aggression through different avenues like strafing and jumping.
Why does this video on game design become a rant on bosses you don't like the moment it could've gotten interesting? I genuinely think that the mimics alone and how they're used could've been a really interesting video instead of a rant that the games made to be hard are challenging you and you aren't adapting to them. I've already seen the consensus on the DLC switch from "its too hard" to "its the same level of hard".
The point is using mimics to illustrate how FromSoft designs their games for their veteran players.
I played all the souls games backwards im finally on ds1 and tbh you catch on no matter what and the people saying you just jump around from topic to topic are kinda right but it was still entertaining
I really enjoyed the first part it was well construction and criticism was valid. They later half only feels slightly related and I think could make a good video if it was separate and had some more time to cook. It would benefit your view to take a look at the design of some stuff from Elden ring like you did for the mimic and make for a more interesting video. Also you know the direction of the chains on chest are different for mimic and normal chests.
I thought dark souls 3 was always meant more for the veterans, and the mimic was rewarding for them and also served to prepare new players early.
The mimic in ds3’s demon ruins can be pitted against the demon below. The placement is perfect and it’s the best mimic encounter in the series. Also why are you ignoring the mimics in DS2? This video is a bunch of pseudo intellectual nonsense to me.
It was a very thin ice with Nightmare King Grimm😅
from a lot of the elden ring gameplay im seeing, i can understand fully how you hate just standing around waiting, but a bunch of enemy attacks can be jump and attack overtop leading to more knockdowns and a much more fluid fight that doesent leave you just waiting the entire time, a LOT more attacks than you think are just meant to be jump i framed
Hi, I'm seeing a lot of negativity in the comments, some constructive, some not so much. I just wanted to say I enjoyed this video and found the argument to be well constructed. I generally like your essays and retrospectives. That's all.
The soulsborne games are really popular and have tons of fans, so it's kind of normal that most of them wouldn't accept even the slightest critic about the games.
You could make a video criticizing some aspects of DS1 and most of the comments would, probably, be negative towards said video even if you highlight obvious weak points that the game had (Capra Demon, Blighttown, BoC, etc.).
I thought Sekiro was fine, but yeah it wasn't as enjoyable an experience as I'd had with the Soulsborne games I _liked._ Which honestly was only Bloodborne, Souls1 and Souls3. Maybe Demon's Souls, though the original game was not interesting to me, the remake was appreciated. And some games from _other_ developers that fall in the same genre/vibe. Souls2 is not for me, and those who like it are just very different people from me. Good for them. I'm sure I like games they couldn't get into. Mostly, the influence of the Soulsborne games on others has made things interesting, though like so many times before, the industry tends to go overboard with adopting a new idea into almost every game so that it gets old fast. Like open world games.
Elden Ring ... look, I cannot stand open world games. Individually many are pretty good, but when the majority of single player games (or games with full single-player options, anyway) are open world games, well, that's boring. It gets old. And the way open world games are created tends to make them feel crappy. And a lot of their tropes just aren't fun in the 20th game you're running across them in.
I recall that many people praised Elden Ring for doing open world right. But WTF are they talking about? It's got all the same fundamental hallmarks of open world trash. The main difference is that there's not a marker/compass to point you to objectives, which is fine, and no quest log which is less fine (some means of tracking them would be nice -- or at least a means to re-discover them because you forgot about them or were interrupted when the NPC was telling you a thing and you didn't catch it -- too bad, either start a new game or look for it online to figure out what the quest is.
And open world design is an antithesis to how Souls games, at least the ones I liked most, were laid out. Labyrinths that fold back on themselves in ways that are obvious as well as ways that are surprising. Learning your way through the layout is part of the fun, I think. But open world, you just slog along in a direction and you'll eventually get to wherever. You'll run into not-bandit-camp sections and other random-encounter-style monsters sprinkled around the map. But there's a lot of emptiness too, because open worlds need to be big but developers only have so much time to spend putting stuff in them. There are ruins to explore but most of those felt like poorly implemented randomly generated dungeons that I remember being a big deal in the late nineties and early 00's before storage space increases allowed purposeful design to reassert itself.
Elden Ring, for me, felt like a waste of my time. I tried getting into it, but I realized that I just didn't give a damn about playing the game. The few interesting moments I had weren't enough to carry my through the bits I was bored by.
I want tight, well-crafted experiences. Open world games just are not this. They cannot be, they are meant to be excesses of the form. Editing something down so it doesn't have any filler is antithetical to open worlds. Keep it all in, add in more and more, have things take as long as possible, if there's dialog, make it as much dialog as you can, if there are collectibles there needs to be _soo many,_ if there's an interesting combat mechanic, copy and paste it ad nauseum around the severely oversized map so it feels "full".
Obviously some people really, really like E.R. A coworker of mine started with Elden Ring and now has adopted a bit of a "Soulsborne veteran" personality about games. You know the one. It's kind of cringe, a bit embarrassing for an adult even if it's minimized to just when he's directly talking about video games. But I also know that some people like open worlds for the very reasons I cannot stand them -- they waste time. If you do not value your free time away from work and other chores, then I guess it makes sense you just want to fill it up as easily as possible with an activity. Do you like pushing the analog stick in a direction and hitting X or B or A or Square at various intervals to loot or interact? Hey, have we got a game style for you...
Started a run to use lightning spear and when finally got to Sens the mimick jumped down the spike elevator nearby
The issue i have with Promised consort Radahn is that, unlike other fromsoft bosses, he isnt satisfying to beat. Even with her flaws, Malenia is a satisfying victory. He isnt. He isnt designed to challenge you, he isnt designed to make you re-think your approach. He is designed to break you.
Ive watched reaction videos to people beating hardest bosses in FS games. From Orphan of Kos, to Malenia, slave knight Gael, the majority to beating them is joy or a sense of satisfaction for overcoming a hard fight.
With PCR the overwhelming response is indifference because, at that point, they just want it to be over. And is the only boss that ive seen people cry or break a controller when WINNING.
I cant remember the streamer off the top of my head but i vividly remember him defeating PCR and immediately breaking his controller and crying. He won, but he still felt like he lost because the fight broke his will to play
idk man I fought radahnsort for two days and felt fucking amazing when I beat him so that sounds like a you thing
I do not think that Nightmare King and Soul Tyrant are that similar concerning the available agressien of the player. Soul Tyrant can be reliably hit after only two specific moves in his first and one move in his second phase (excluding the stagger). Nighmare King can be hit while doing all but two moves. You can decide if you want to wait for his easy openings or just hit him whenever he is in zipping past you. Bosses in Elden Ring are similar. If you can space correctly, you can hit the bosses between moves and are rewarded with more damage.
My plan for fighting Malania was similar. I equipped two ultra greatswords and roll attacked after some moves and jump attacked into different ones to duck beneath them. If she ran away i used the ash of war of the ruined greatsword to keep up aggression and managed to stagger her twice in the first and again twice in the second phase. This obviously cannot work flawlessly, but even the hit regen is not that meaningfull, if i can regularly crit her. Waterfowl dance is definitely annoying though.
Your points look pretty valid, though I love Elden Ring, I think it's my favorite of the bunch. But I would be highly interested in a video about Sekiro, because that game just doesn't click for me. It's not that it's too hard or anything like that, can't put my finger on it, but the combat is just ... not fun somehow. Maybe seeing your perspective would help me understand it better
In Dark souls 3 the first chest you open is a mimic.
Its real whole lotta fun.
I played elden ring for 3 months straight. Now I'm back to ds3 and I'm breezing through the game , and I'm loving it. I love that i Don't have to fight fire giant and foreskin duo and radhan
This is the problem, fromsoft knows they need to raise the difficulty because the old games are too easy for veterans now. Souls games aren’t supposed to be breezed through they are supposed to be a challenge
@Finn-ev2lx no old games are still difficult. I've had my fair share of ds1 and 2 and i just came back to them and died approximately 500 times between the two games . Ds3 is just ez , i think rolling in that game is too overpowered, it doesn't consume any stamina and the i-frames are pretty good
Me double triple hittng a random chest box to confirm it is not a mimic
Good essay.
I needed a great shield/barricade shield to survive the DLC.
Somehow summons made the boss fights harder.
I shudder at what Fromsoft might do next.
Yes summons raise boss health. They are not an easy button, they are a gameplay mechanic. Glad you adapted your build to get through it tho.
17:42 on the topic of this, You obviously have my sentiments for not enjoying it or feeling capable of "really" overcoming it. I certainly feel that I *"see"* where this is coming from, and I get it. But I disagree that we're necessarily at the limit. Radahn's fatal flaw at the end of the day is that he offers very little in terms of counterplay. Hit-trading is nearly unavoidable, damage is borderline unacceptable, jumping has little place in the fight, dodging can feel hopeless inconsistent and tedious, blocking/countering/parrying all require insane experience unless you adjust your equipment specifically for those strategies. Radahn is in one's face faster than they can perform any extraneous animations, like summoning spirits.
I would have been happier with Radahn if his attack patterns were designed to be intentionally responded to in a variety of ways, more like Sekiro. The thing that sets Malenia apart in this context is that she's simply less mobile and less aggressive than Radahn when at neutral. You can adjust the pace of the fight far more reliably and safely against the Goddess of Rot than the Promised Consort.
I fought Radahn at least a hundred times, and I hated every second of it. Until I committed to an uchigatana guard counter quickstep strategy, and basically turned the battle into a rhythm game. I'll be honest, it still wasn't easy, but it was satisfying. Really satisfying. Especially the victory.
Players need either better movment, more fluid combo chains, and more defensive mechanics besides turtling.
All of which seemingly have been experimentally adressed with some of the new weapons(things like milady and the backhand blades), flask tears, and... actually the movment is still the same.
From has a fine baseline, but movment and combat needs better flow.
first of all, this comment section is condescending as heck.
I completely agree, I've played every FromSoft title since DS1 and it's just been escalating and escalating with Consort Radahn being the upper limit. I cannot beat him, I have tried but he just has way too much health and damage resistance, even with the tried and true bleed build I can't do it. I've maxxed out my health and damage stats but it's no good if I don't get an opportunity to deal that damage, it's not fun at all, just frustrating. Bayle on the other hand was a whale (heh) of a time, Igon's monologue and Bayle's orange lightning make it a showstopper while Igon's support fire and the clearly telegraphed moves make it a mechanical masterpiece, unlike every other dragon fight in the entire game bar Placidusax. Back to Super Inc*st Bros., we have screen wide flashbang attacks that obscure his movements, the most miniscule of attack openings and an overwhelming amount of damage and health and to top it all off: rollcatching.
What the fk are you trying to say my man?
Brother you're getting annihilated by the usual crowd in the comments but you put into words so much of what I've been feeling since DS3. These are games made for the most committed fans of their previous games now, but they simultaneously continue to punish the playstyle needed for their other games. I certainly have been finding that they're on a constant mission to make larger weapons completely obsolete with how much smaller windows for attack have been getting, and as a fan of bonky sticks that's always a disappointment for me. If they'd just drop the pretense that there's a breadth of choice of weapons and make us use a straight sword like Sekiro did with the katana I'd respect it more.
"Dark Souls 3 is an incomplete experience without having played Dark Souls 1"
This game was stuck FIRMLY up Dark Souls 1's ass lol
People will always have something to cry about. Yes fromsoft makes games with their veteran audience in mind and that’s a good thing. The games are difficult and that’s the point, that’s always been the point. If they made the game as easy as ds1 people would complain about that too.
I never understood the hit every chest crowd. Just look at the chain and its immediately obvious.
You literally tell on yourself for being incorrect by with the sekiro dodge. That game, like hollow knight, rewards aggression very heavily. I feel you saying you don’t like sekiro and not talking about it shows you failed to ever reach the point of understanding with that game that it requires. Elden ring has many tools to allow you to get past the tougher bosses. Sekiro is hard but becomes a simple but extremely satisfying rhythm game once you meet it at its own level. I honestly am terrible at souls games but beat sword saint isshin on my own because that game rewards aggression and creative thinking in its boss fights. Your video starts by talking about a mimic and you don’t ever manage to make me understand what your point about it was. Also the prestige reference was confusing and unnecessary. Also as others pointed out, no new player will ever see that chest first. I bet most new players won’t actually see that chest or mimic AT ALL on first playthrough. Because, actually to your point, getting to that chest is only intuitive to someone who has done the tail shooting trick on the hellkite. Sorry for saying so but this video is a big L take that makes me question your understanding of fromsoftware games.
Consort Radhan is the first fromsoft boss I physically can't beat and don't even want to try to get better at.
Malenia I found her pretty fun and my first time beating her was even with a cosplay challenge with the tree spear, it was hard but not unfair on every single level.
I've had a similar experience to you, although I did not focus on raw difficulty. Each new iteration of Souls game feels less grounded than the last, with bigger, flashier moves, and I don't like how over the top they've gotten.
Early Souls games had you throwing lightning and blue darts, sure. And bosses had their fair share of big attacks, like Smough's butt slam. But in Dark Souls 3 and especially Elden Ring, now it feels like every other boss attack is a screen wide AOE. Now every other weapon the player gets has a massive energy attack attached to L2. Now the casters are hovering in the air as they channel dragon breath across the entire fight arena. And these things are cool; I harbor no ill will toward the people who enjoy this direction. But I don't enjoy it. I feel a kind of "when everything special, nothing is" attitude toward it. Sure, I can opt out of using these personally, but I can't stop the bosses from all having 15 of them. I can't stop my weapon options being highly limited because I'm not interested in rending the earth with my swings. I feel, as you put it, left behind.
As someone who started with Elden Ring and just recently beat DeS, DS1, and DS2… I completely agree and was surprised when I ended up liking the older entries more and I loved Elden Ring too dont get me wrong and I think what you described fits how I feel perfectly.
Elden Ring is not Dark Souls 4. Of course it feels thematically different, they chose to go in a more action fantasy direction with it.
I know a lot of people will disagree, but honestly as brutal as melania is, she’s my favorite fight in the game, and my favorite in the series minus some bloodborne bosses (bloodborne is still my favorite overall game)
I agree with some of your points but not others. I do agree that consort Radhan and malelnia are needlessly difficult and is not very enjoyable, but on the topic of allowing player aggression vs defensiveness within fights, Elden ring is not unique in forcing the player to be defensive and wait their turn, for example: gaping dragon from DS1. Also agression is possible in many of the newer fromsoft games, for example: in Sekiro you can be extremely aggressive but you have to know what tools and moves to use ( Mr ongbal) and in elden ring, the use of the deflecting hard-tear allows the player to be very agressive even in consort Radhan’s boss fight (in fact that is how I beat him, cosplaying as Raksha)
I think the main problem with elden ring is that the bosses have to be oppressive. The pace of dodges and the forgiving stamina compared to previous titles together make it basically mandatory that the bosses have 1. Delayed attacks to punish early rolls and 2. Long combos. In dark souls 3 if you waste your stamina dodging early you miss your attack window because you need stamina to dodge after you punish. In elden ring you never run out, so to still add challenge the bosses tend to go out of reach more often, have delays designed to roll catch, and of course the long combos. And overall i think elden ring isn't actually harder than dark souls, it's just inflated. More damage, more health, more dodges, more stamina, more options etc.
And also the fact that the hardest bosses are in essence superbosses. Imagine lingering will being the final boss of kh2, that would suck. But consort radahn is a "required story boss" for the dlc. In a souls game it just becomes mentally taxing because you are expected to kill every boss, preferably without help. Nobody would blame someone for not beating a superboss in any other game, but for the souls genre beating every boss is almost more important than beating the game itself, which adds to the weight and frustration of elden ring and sekiro, which also has story bosses that would be better as superbosses
You are the 1st person that I have heard of that does not identify a mimic BY ITS DESIGN
That and that chest in ds3 is the 2nd or 3rd chest you can come across in a play through unless that is the very 1st optional area you explore
The mimic chest in high wall is 100% the first chest in DS3, it's about 30 feet away from the first bonfire in the main game. The area isn't optional at all and there are no other chests before it.
@@ianloughney9570 It is 100% in an optional area. It's not even particularly easy to get to in the first place. Gotta get past that dragon fire.
@@ytmndan You have to get past the dragon fire anyway to progress through the level. The High Wall is literally the first area of the main game, it’s not even a little bit optional.
@@ianloughney9570 The low path past the dragon fire is easy and completely bypasses the mimic. The high path requires good timing and taking a significant amount of damage to get to the mimic. Most noobs will fail this a few times and be like, "fuck it. Taking the low path". Hell I wasn't even a noob on my first playthrough and did that, and then one day, when I was bored, overleveled, and looking back for shit I skipped earlier... I was like "oh shit. There's a mimic in the first major area of the game!"
@@ytmndan The high and low paths converge at either end of the mimic room. The room is accessible from either path. Tbh I have no idea how you could've missed it.
"ford the majority" has gotta be my new favorite eggcorn. Awesome vid as alwayss
I agree with some of what you're saying, but I almost feel like some stuff isn't reaching the same conclusions I was expecting or necessarily make sense all the way through to me, and I definitely don't mean to dog on you or anything. Because I feel like the beginning is really solid, but to me it highlights a different sort of issue in a similar area as what you're speaking on here. The chest in ds3, I don't think it's meant to necessarily just respect veterans of the series, but I genuinely do think it's to get the "game hard" sentiment in there early, and I don't think I"m being jaded in saying that. I would say ds3 and on I have had a really hard time liking anything beyond the broader ideas and designs.
I think the biggest, most core issue to me is that I've been playing these games for so long because I want an atmospheric, moderate pace dungeon crawler, where I can hunt down and equip gear and find secrets and build different ways to experience different things. This, to me, is lost in ds3 and onward, instead feeling more like sprawling worlds and quicker paced gameplay that tries to have the cake and eat it too, pulling between bloodborne's stellar flow and the previous entries' methodical pacing. In ds2, combat is expanded by having more nuanced movesets (largely) and interesting power stancing properties to let you kinda flex your build options around. In ds3 and er, you hit a button to break the flow of combat and do a cool move. Moonveil was busted, but it was so fun because it felt like you just had extra moves to chain into your combos, it felt like it was coming closer to the snappy bloodborne combat. But, it just isn't bloodborne, you aren't playing with limited, very fleshed out weapons that you learn inside and out, you're playing with a few archetypes that have a gimmick or two and some customization options. And that's cool! I'm glad people like that too, but it feels so rough up against what you were saying, the way bosses just continue to feel spiteful and aggressive instead of a back and forth. Like, a humanoid boss in dark souls is usually kinda lame, but in bloodborne? Maria and Gehrman? Those fights are excellent! Using all the tools from the more limited options you have at your disposal in a fight that respects the way you'll be trading blows and staying aggresive.
With the souls games though, you have a lot of options to build up some cool things, more weird little circumstantial items and spells to use that can give you the edge, and finding them and knowing when to use them are part of the challenge. But, in ds3 and er, it feels more like knowing what color of grease or bomb you crafted will let you deny the mechanics for long enough for you to do your gameplan. And I can't say that isn't the case in other games either sometimes! For sure it is. But it's like I was saying earlier, the previous entries feel more like a dungeon crawler where you planned, explored, played smart and got your game plan off to either blast through the issue with no problem, or just barely make it through by the skin of your teeth with your limited resources stretched as far as you could take them. I'm not really the kind of person to say these games are really super difficult, mechanically, but I would never dog on somebody for saying they are! It's just that they're a learned experience, and the more you learn, the more you can be rewarded for playing with the systems, outside of the box, etc. It's fun!
DS3 and er though I feel remove a lot of the impact of that thinking and building and pacing, and turn fights into trying to get quick hits in between huge combos and knowing when to dodge ten times in a row. Which, the dodging becoming pretty goofy in ds3 and er is definitely a pretty big personal gripe of mine, and I think it ties into this as a whole, but it's a bit of a symptom and an issue with the core problem. It just isn't bloodborne, and it isn't the older games, and I don't particularly think that anything newer has offered much to older fans? Seeing the same enemy types, reused fights, all the same themes, music that doesn't really stick with you, and ds3 just really, really feeling in part like a post-ds2 fan backlash entry mixed with multiplat bloodborne appeasement along the lines of "oh man... remember ds1? oh, uh and I guess ds2?"
All of this to say, I'm glad people are having fun enjoying the newer stuff, and I think you kind of come close to capturing what I feel is maybe the biggest issue and shift in these games lately. These games are hard, but I don't play them for fast paced action stuff, I play them to build and explore and mess with weird items and systems. If I want good action combat and bosses, I don't look at ds3 and er, I go play nioh 2 or monster hunter. Anyway, have fun and play what you like and love with your whole damn heart.
1 thing I want to say on how to not get left behind: Improve the other kind of skill in these games. That being build crafting. You want aggression? full bullgoats, overloaded, verdigies talisman, shard of alexander, lord of bloods, old lords, bleed infused swordlance with bloody tax ash of war, and iron jar aromatic, plus malenia's great rune for fun. Can't roll as you are overloaded and won't need to heal due to regen, plus you are so tanky you can just stand there and L2. Too cheesy or op? Lower you amount of armor to medium load and drop the aromatic, drop buff if still too easy. Now we have a setup that can be aggressive due to health regen from attacking. Or just run away and cast, or oneshot the bosses with a glass cannon, or level one unupgraded club only. The difficulty, pace, and style of game is in your hands as a player. That's why Elden Ring has 40 weapon categories, 213 spells, 156 armor sets, 154 talismans, tons of ashes of war and even spirit summons. Look at all that and tell me the player has no agency in how a fight goes. Elden Ring is just as aggressive, just as hard, just as engendering to passivity as you want it to be. You just need to be willing to use your head and experiment. Something that is easier than ever with all the respects you get in this game and all the smithing stones that DLC feeds down your throat.
Then there is sekiro the hardest rhythm game ever and bloodborne that's only real customization is weapon choice. Just something the video never even entertained so I felt it should be brought up.
Don't worry man they left me behind too.
Hollow Knight had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to keep going, explore and enjoy, but the combat proofed too much, and the final boss was beyond my limit. I never beat him legit, and I had to give up at the game. Elden Ring was tough too at times. The delayed attacks, overlong hangtimes etc are all bad. But I have the biggest gripe with the camera which is still unchanged from DeS. As in, just for once I'd like to meelee fight a dragon boss I can actually see! And screen shake can go eat a brick, I don't want to get sea sick from my ges.
Uh. So dark souls 2 original release breaks your from the habit of hitting every chest because you can break normal ones. The chain is different in ds3, they have a lock in ds2 and ds1 is the same as ds3 being the chain is different
Firstly, I thought your video was good. I may disagree with you, but I want you to know I respect your opinions on ER and From's direction concerning difficulty. I really don't think the comments in defense of ER here are disrespectful at all and make good, clear points. I think your opinion on Malenia is really what From's direction is (and has been): experimentation and learning from their misses. Miyazaki has said that he values experimenting in his games and after ER he wants to give new directors/devs the chance to do just that. Demon Souls was an experiment that took a game that was almost canned and turning it into something great, for example. After reading Miyazaki's opinion it actually made me rethink why I didn't like DS2 . I think it experimented too much. Which is perfectly fine and exactly why DS2 has it's own dedicated fans.
As for Radahn, I bounced off him pretty hard at first. I love the DLC and my first playthrough was so much fun. But at a certain point I really thought that Radahn was too hard for me. But I was also knowingly limiting myself by ignoring summons and not using any buffs (offensive or otherwise). So I stuffed my pride and summoned my mimic. We DESTROYED that boss after a few attempts and ya know what? I don't regret it. It ended so cool with me and the mimic last hitting the boss at the same time. At some point I'll go back and solo Radahn since I enjoy soloing bosses. In the end though it was really my pride keeping me from enjoying the fight. Well that and the double swipe/light show. But they adjusted the fight so it's a lot easier to see and the swipe isn't as fast. I'm a little bummed I didn't solo him before the nerf but hey, I still get to say if fought pre-patch Radahn at least lol.
Again I got nothing but respect for other opinions. I just think some of the criticisms are a personal thing (which is totally fine). From is going to do something new next (like Sekiro or Bloodborne) and I think we should all be excited to see what they come up with. They may keep ramping/adjusting difficulty to some extent but they also always give the player tools to make their own difficulty. Or they patch things lol.
ゲット・グッド
So you have a problem with some of the newer boss being too aggressive and not giving the player enough agency (which I agree with in some cases especially promised consort Rahdan), but don’t seem to like sekiro the game that gives the player the most agency and freedom of aggression in combat?
Okay, due to IRL circumstances I haven't had the chance to play SotE yet so I'm tapping out after the spoiler warning. That all said, I also have a bit of a problem with the hyper aggression of Elden Ring bosses. The never ending attack strings are really frustating. Also super mad at Malenia. I don't think I've ever beaten her "fair" (whatever that is supposed to mean). There's just too many frustrating things at once working against you there (My biggest peeve is the hyper armor all of the time).
But I DO have over 800 hours of Elden Ring. I think it's fair to say that, in quite a few ways it IS my favourite FromSoft game (haven't played Sekiro or BB yet), and I'm a veteran all the way from Demon's Souls
BUT ALSO I think the issue with DS3 specifically goes a bit deeper
You started this by talking about DS3, a game I actually took a long time to play. I'm towards the tail end of my first playthrough only now (at Midir, Gael and Soul of Cinder) and one thing that I found very very grating with that game is how it resists having its own identity. I feel that in response to the bad reception of DS2 back in the day (which went to great lengths to not be a straightforward continuation to DS1), DS3 went overboard in trying to pander to an audience that wanted more DS1. So it feels that it keeps spinning it feels trying to every 5 minutes, show you something and go "HEY, YOU! REMEBER THIS FROM DARK SOULS 1?!?!? YOU LIKE DARK SOULS 1 RIGHT!!!". And it's just odd in a way that's interesting to think about but unpleasant to experience.
Most of these feel very surface level too, just there for repetition's sake. It quickly made me jaded to most of the game and I'm not sure that was intended. "Remember Siegmeyer? Here's another Catarina knight that has almost the same quest beat for beat! And he randomly dies in the end because Siegmeyer died in his quest back in the day". "Hey, remember Quelana? There she is. Also, this place is Izalith! How so? Shut up! here's lava!", "ooohh, a dodgy Carim Knight that's around a trapped firekeeper... hmmmmmm", "Anor Londo Archers?!?!? Do that exact same thing again but this time with more archers!!!"
It just never stops and it kind of smothers what DS3 seems to be trying to go towards, but it DOES align in some ways.... In DS3 the world itself is exhausted, tired from all the Dark Souls, and then the game makes you tired of it. I like that they double down on some of this in the DLCs. Ariandel sucks (though Friede is probably my favourite fight in all of Souls) but it just keeps telling you "Dark Souls needs to end and it's stupid to try and keep going at it". And in the Dreg Heap it feels like the implication is that Dark Souls too, the series itself, is also destined to be just junk in a pile, discarded trash. And that is fine, it's just how it is
So it's weird. Ultimately the mimic straight off the bat made me think more of this desperation to reference DS1 than anything else. And just set up a tone for DS3 from which it struggles to deviate
With the ending of the game in sight we'll see how things wrap up, and I also still haven't done the whole hollowing questline. Left that for a NG+ or whatever so there's some time for DS3 to come forward with its own ideas but so far it's struggled a bit to get any real traction (but it does have some good highs, don't get me wrong)
I miss mimic’s. I miss never trusting chests and I think they should’ve been in Elden ring in some form
From what I can see you are someone who does use all mechanics to your advantage in these games. You might be surprised to learn that Malenia and Radahn are easy with the right builds. Malenia, you just need freezing pots to knock her out of the waterfowl wind up, the rest of her moves are not that hard to deal with and most of them are punishable. For Promised Consort, you can just go full turtle poke with defensive talismans and blood infusion. Only things you need to keep track of are stamina and preiodically your health. You can just poke away through most of his attacks.
the sen's fortress mimic made me have trust issues, i now in every game for every chest hit it to make sure it wont eat me,
So did you play through all of dark souls not knowing that the chain faces the wrong way on mimics? (If you mentioned it and I missed it my apologies)
The statement that ds3 isn't built for newcomers is just what you felt like playing it but as a newcomer myself it's the most fun I had on any soulsborne game.
I was so bad at the time it took me like 15 try to beat gundyr and it felt very rewarding beating him! Then I was stuck at the lothric knight right after the mimic and felt very rewarded beating this mimic since it gave me a very powerfull weapon making the lothric knight easy.and making me be suspicious of any other chest in the game. Then I played every other soulsborne and frankly speaking DS1 was probably the worst one with the tomb of the giant, the stupid sith runback while he has an attack that just build up curse and can kill you stupidly and other stuff like that just made it not fun to beat.
I know why a lot of people find the newer games too hard, it's becouse they dont learn how to play the game, most of those people cheese through the game by summoning, using overpowered build or they just let their friends solo the game for them meanwhile they learn nothing and at the second they can't "cheese" something they are left by themselves and their no skill get owned and cry about it. Sekiro was a game that solved this problem perfectly, no co op no summons no overpowered bs just you and your skills, it teaches you how to play and overcome the challenge.
I finished the whole game without summons and by just using str build no cheesy strat and i think elden ring bosses are overall too frustrating and not enjoyable too learn, too much obligatory deaths in order to learn to dodge some moves, one example promised consort gravity pull into the aoe, what in this attack gives a clue to indicate aoe? Nothing , the first times i dodged this shit o was frame perfect and wasnt even on the little rocks sticking out the ground and still got hit. Too avoid the aoe when you don't dodge the pull successfully you have too spam rolls backwards instant, you'll be on the visual clue of the attack but i guess the aoe doesn't tick on this timing, but tbh i don't even know cause the attack is literally just rocks sticking out of the ground and thats it.
I'll kill him eventually but the whole process of learning him isn't enjoyable.
Do you really enjoy beating these bosses or do you enjoy telling people you beat these bosses and acting like you are superior online?
What point are you trying to make?
If ppl cheese or summon its because they find the boss too hard not the other way arround 😂 you're trying to say that ppl aren't persistent enough but a game is supposed to be somewhat enjoyable throughout the process of learning it, it can't be on the player to keep playing "the good way" if he hasn't felt pleasure in learning a dodge or punish in hours
@@toodlepip7061 well that promised condort move is easy to dodge by dodging the pull, if u fail u just need to run, sure u are going to get hit the first time but the game is designed like this "learn from ur mistakes" and this applies to everything except waterfowl that move is bs and u need to search online the way to dodge it cuz its not intuitive at all. The process of learning a boss is the fun part and when u finally beat the boss u feel satisfied, isn't it the point of the game? overcoming an hard challenge? cuz if u remove the learning part where is the satisfaction of beating a boss? would u like every boss to be a pinwheel? and bro im not superior i beat a game that is designed to be beaten as u did if u didnt like it that's ur opinion and that's not gonna change how the game is designed. If someone summons or cheese trough the game i dont care they are ruining their own experience not mine but then they should not cry at every challenge they cant overcome using their shit tactics
@@EzSdunzed06 my point is that the learning experience isn't good cause lack of readability in favor of aesthetics (partly) you can't tell me that attack is well designed
Excellent analysis. You know, I really couldn't get into DS3 despite trying really hard and beating every boss, it just felt so much worse and so much less rewarding than DS1 or DS2 and I think you perfectly articulated why. I know DS3 only has this problem to a lesser degree, since many bosses still have their single attacks and openings, etc. But I just feel cheated every time I play that game because of how much player aggression is punished, both by bosses and enemies, while the damage numbers have also increased significantly. That delicate dance was only broken a few times in DS1 and DS2, largely for gank bosses, but in 3 even great bosses like Pontiff will pull out a 5 hit combo with delays and they all punish mistakes with death, usually. It sucks so much because from a purely technical standpoint, DS3 is so fluid and responsive but the difficulty just doesn't feel legitimate. It sucks because I really did fall in love with these games but from everything I've heard, Elden Ring is even worse in this regard. I just miss bosses like DS2's Fume Knight or The Pursuer. 1 - 3 hits vs 1 - 3 hits back and forth. I guess I'l just wait until they slow their games down again, if that ever happens, and play DS2 and 1 in the meantime. Great video though and very clever move to use the mimic as a way to highlight your point, not surprised you're a writer tbh.
Try throwing a Lloyd’s talisman at a mimic. Enjoy.
Honestly, you could have made a smoother transition into elden ring, by talking about midir. The first boss where blocking is literally unusuable.
The step forward for fromsoft is to follow the Sekiro design. Not necessarily a Sekiro 2, but have a new combat mechanic that they can build the games around. Elden Ring feels like the peak of dodge-roll DS combat for sure. Changing the combat mechanic and designing the game around the new mechanic would allow for a fresh start on the difficulty curve.
But i fear you would feel left behind by that as well due to your dislike of Sekiro, which i personally think is absolute peak combat. It is quite literally the closest you can get to a "dance".
At the end of the day its all about adaptation. If we cant adapt, we will be left behind... if we do adapt, Fromsoft has to adapt or they get left behind. So, on goes the cycle until it is unsustainable.
So, do you re-light the fire? Or let it fizzle out into darkness?
woah my friend you got lambasted by the comments
funny thing they reused a dark souls 2 npcs moveset (with the name veragel or something simular i just remember he is that one npc looking for his body)for the final boss of the erd tree dlc but gave him some original moves which made consort Radhan easy to fight compared to a boss like Maleina but even she is easy to beat
over all the from softweare games has always been a game series that rewards players for patience and punishes them for not being patient every boss in they have made is easy if you focus on defensive play style and dodging all of their attacks or blocking them how ever if you focus agression you are gonna get stomped like players in pvp when you have a +10 chaos dagger in your pocket after parrying someone :P
Who had Vengarls moveset?
@@HoneybadgerGamesconsort radahn
Bro u are a schizo, consort Radhan and Malenia isn’t easy.
From soft i have to say if you take one thing from this then make a ds3-esque roster easier with like 1 or 2 pontiff+ level fights and then 1 malenia level to keep the vets entertained
(No npc bosses, they suck)
16:33 good thing she is completely optional for a reason.
idk dude, sounds like you failed to adapt your build and use the tools at your disposal. On my very first playthrough of Elden Ring I found Malenia to be of quite reasonable difficulty. Using mimic tear, and weapon with high stagger damage, I was able to effectively stun lock her for like half the fight. I happened to be a bit lucky, but I found a build that countered her quite well. I had a friend who was using the RoB build at the time who was struggling, I suggested he respeced, and he beat her after just a couple tries. I did indeed find Radan to be quite challenging with my big bonk slow AF str build, but switching to a build that had much faster attacks made him a lot easier when I had more consistent damage. You're playing the game with arbitrary self imposed restrictions. You don't have to do that, From gives you ton and tons of build options and tools to overcome these difficult challenges. Try using consumables, try a different build.
It's not them. It's you.
You kinda skipped the chests in Dark Souls 2. DS2 teaches you wildly attacking wooden chests runs the risk of breaking its contents making you more reserved and shifting how you approach them, Honestly studying the chest and chest trap/mimic evolution in these games would be interesting delve
bruh you can't say that elden ring is too hard when the game literally gives you a lot of overpowered tools to deal with bosses. if you don't want to dodge long strings of attack just pick up a great shield, or you can just push them with dps by picking up a weapon with status build up and I'm not even talking about spells that can literally melt bosses. i think elden ring is more about adaptation rather than mechanical skill.
I had a great bleed build that with a little adjustments did manage all the DLC bosses except Radahn. Simply my aggressive playstyle was outmatched by Radahns aggression, staggers, and hyper armor. Also damage he did to me was insane. And while l managed first phase and can argue that it's somewhat fun, the second wtf phase is where l lost it. It's pure bullshit. I had to switch to defensive setup poking radahn to death hiding behind greatshield. I reminded myself of adapting to situations and changing your style in order to win, in this case defensive as the boss is too aggressive. However l didn't think that the fight was fun because of that. It was more adapt and overendure then win with skill. Unlike him which second phase l still find bullshit for example Midir l learned to overcome with any playstyle while first overcoming him with pestilent mist. As my skill rose l was able to defeat him without cheese, for which l can't say for consort radahn, the most bullshit boss that fromsoft made. And l didn't like original radahn either.
I'll have to disagree here a little. Elden Ring is more mechanically overwhelming than the souls trilogy. There's too much delayed attacks with unique times, AoE attacks that don't convey their damage areas very well, enemies that can weasel their way out of a stun lock, enemies with confusing hitboxes, bad camera issues, crippling frame drops and so on.
I'm not saying it's bad, matter of fact i played elden ring for about a year now since I got my new pc. But it's undeniable that the approach to difficulty changed since dark souls 3. Back then, the narrative was pushed by the difficulty, easy and hard served as devices to making the experience more complete. Pinwheel is very easy, but it's easy for a bunch of lore and mechanical reasons, and it's not a "poorly designed boss" by any means.
The hardest bosses in ds3 are way more memorable, despite being easier than the ones in ER. That's because elden ring focus way too much on giving the player a sense of overcoming impossible odds instead of motivation for doing so. Malenia is a great boss, I think that level of difficulty works for what the design is going for. But sadly, every main boss operates on the same standards (endless combos, AoE's, delayed attacks, huge HP bars...).
I can, if I'm willing to, explore a lot. Find the best tools and equipment and farm unlimited runes to get op. But that process takes dozens of hours, and most of the resources people often talk about are way to complicated to get without searching on the wiki. The game should have a way better guidance system on that matter. Even so, the late game scaling funnels players into specific playstyles, crushing build diversity at some capacity. It's undeniable that at some point, you'll be playing in a standardized way. Usually I see people showing the most boring playstyles imaginable as a defense for the game balancing, like spamming jump attacks with bleed build-up, spamming one single spell, not minding the boss attack patterns because it's just too much to pay attention to.
Try consort radahn with a shield, then let’s talk.
I'm glad I'm not alone in hating how fast the bosses have gotten and how many attacks you have to dodge. its starting to feel like every boss is capra just more space (in most cases). It's why I couldnt do bloodborn. I miss the methodical dance of DS1 and to an extent DS3. Demon souls was more of a puzzle but still had timing be a factor.
16:53 he was nerfed heavily
People in the comments love invalidating criticism that took 30 minutes to conclude. shoutout azul for the 5
Your complaints make no sense. You say that you have no time to attack or you have to wait until the boss is finished with his combo to attack. That’s not true at all. Everything depends on YOUR build and YOUR play style. You just said that you’re using the great katana for the DLC. That’s a slower weapon requiring you to have a different play style. Slower weapon requires you to dodge a bunch and get a hit or two in before you repeat. A faster weapon allows you to attack between hits of the combo so you can remain aggressive. Learn to parry so you can skip the whole combo. THE GAME IS AS HARD AS YOU MAKE IT. You complain about fromsoftware games getting too hard but we all know that if every boss had a 3 hit combo and just sat there for 5 minutes before attacking again, you would be complaining that the games are too easy. The only reason you find it too difficult is because you try to compare it to a game that came out 7 years ago.
It should be noted that the boss aggro problem in elden ring is caused by one simple fact. The vast majority of players are playing the game wrong.
This isn't a "git gud" argument you'd hear from most chuds. The bosses in elden ring are designed to be attacked in groups and to have their aggro split up among multiple opponents.
If you aren't using spirit ashes, you are playing the game wrong. Got get Black Knife Tieche or the Shield Bro Squad.
Like idk? At sometimes you are right but sonetimes it's just skill issue. Your pcr and malenia clips were pretty bad. Not saying that pcr is good but he's not that bad
Edit: holy shit the soul turant opinion is so bad
What is going on in this video 😭😭😭
Soul master is an almost perfect boss, he is a dance, a fluid dance of dodging the easy to dodge attacks that come one after another, having trouble with him, and being "forced to be passive" is stupid, as you just do your job moving from one attack to another, and while he is vulnerable you deal massive amount of damage relative to his health, which doesn't take much time.