Elden Ring Is Not A 10/10 Game
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Lets talke about why Elden Ring isn't as good as it's reviews have claimed. From absolutely terrible PC performance, to an obtuse story, to frustrating boss designs Elden Ring is good but not as good as From's last 3 games. Pliny The Welder writes quite a bit on a range of topics. His game centric blog featureing his articles before they become videos can found at:
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There's literally no way to follow through with NPC questlines and locations without meticulously following a guide. It's ridiculous. They should've had some kind of quest tracker feature. The other souls games were more linear so that wasn't as necessary, but in this massive open world, a quest tracker/journal system is necessary I think.
That's the beauty of the design...
You don't *have* to follow the quests step-by-step...you can just keep going and you'll automatically skip some steps. For eg, Yura's questline. All you have to do is activate his questline by fighting Nerijus. After that, his questline progresses whether you directly interact with him or not. Rya, she will appear at the Volcano Manor regardless of whether you talked to her in Liurnia or not. Blaidd, who's questline is tied into Ranni's, will meet you at Siofra whether you helped him fight Darriwill or not. I think your problem is that you're too paranoid of missing steps because you're so used to the conventional quest design of having a cluttered up quest log.
As for literally no way...you can't be serious right? When you free Alexander for the first time, he tells you that he's "heading to Redmane Castle to take part in the festival of champions". If you can't pick up on that simple hint then you must be blind or not paying attention. Boc, he literally tells you about the Coastal Cave, which is like, the second step of his questline, and after that he shows up at places as you progress through the areas. Rodericka, she literally tells you that there's something in the Stormveil Castle, and once you bring that to her she literally tells you she's heading to the Roundtable Hold. Only Yura is the only one who doesn't outright tell you where he's headed, but then again, as I said, Yura's questline progresses on its own regardless of player interaction.
@@cosmic2750 Gonna have to disagree. This design worked for the previous games, since they were more linear and you would be more likely to organically run into NPCs and follow their questlines, but for a huge open world I think some guidance is necessary, or at the very least some kind of journal to keep track of where a questline is or the steps you've completed.
And when I say there's no way, I meant to be able to follow ALL the NPC's side quests or the majority of them, which I don't know about you but I think that's where a lot of the interesting things in this game lie, is within all the different questlines, so of course I'd want to follow as many as possible to their completion. But it just started to get ridiculous after a certain point because if I don't follow a guide, I'd miss steps or completely lock out a quest, like for example I failed Rogier's cause he died, I apparently lost out on the entire questline with the lady of Volcano Manor and some other NPCs there cause I killed Rykard too early I guess, and I have no idea where the guy who sells prawns is anymore at this point.
It's all just a lot to keep track of, and good for you if you can follow all of it with no issues, but some of us do need a bit of assistance with this stuff, ESPECIALLY for open world games.
@@shadyjoanneboots I both agree and disagree. The quests are as comfortable as they could possibly be, given the world Elden Ring has. Basically all of them start in locations that you literally cant miss and then give you fairly good hints on where to go. Some of the exceptions are meeting Diallos in Liurnia (the only quest I missed on my first playthrough), Hyettas absolutely stupid second position besides the ruins and the classic "Talk to X NPC 3 times" but this time with a random Ranni Doll at a Site of Grace.
That makes the quests fairly comfortable to follow, while I still get caught up on the little weird things in (for example) the Cathedral Portions of Siegwards/Patches Quest in DS3. For someone who has ran through that area multiple dozens of times, the path they want you to take in order to spawn patches is very inorganic. Some of the other Quests seem even more random, like the Irithyll Girl with the veiled Armor (forgot her name) who basically gives you no information and then expects you to summon her at random places.
@@cosmic2750 Half the npcs don't tell you how to advance their questline. When they do, it's very vague. Sometimes, you don't even know that you just started an NPC quest since the npc is telling you "I'm gonna go somewhere, bye!"
@@Tim_593 Gotta disagree about the “strong hints on where to continue a quest.” I think quest design was balls in their other games too though. I’ve yet to meet _EVEN A SINGLE_ person who knew to eat 3 umbilical cords right before fighting Gehrman in Bloodborne _without_ hearing about it from a guide or friend. Or the ridiculous steps required to activate “the best ending” in Sekiro. Pickup X talk to Y then to Z then Y again then Z again... ok fine, no major issue there... BUT THEN... eavesdrop on a character that you’ve never been able to eavesdrop on, then rest, then eavesdrop on them again (which can only be done from one spot in the room), then rest, then go eavesdrop on another character u couldn’t eavesdrop on previously, in a place you’ve never seen them before AND THEYVE GIVEN YOU NO indication that they’re going there. Rest. Go somewhere else, eavesdrop on them again. Then go talk to Z again and then Y again etc etc etc.
Those little tiny “requirements” to progress/complete a certain quest chain in From games (esp Sekiro ending) are frankly kinda ridiculous and unreasonable to expect someone to know without being told by a guide or someone who has been told by a guide.
I’m nowhere near the ending in ER yet, so I can’t say if the quests are equally as frustrating. But if it’s filled with super obtuse random actions that lock/unlock a quest for the entire playthrough, then it’d be just as wack.
(That said, Sekiro is my fav game gameplay+combat-wise of all time. It’s the only game I’ve ever platinumed in my life, and I wasn’t even trying to. And I profoundly adore Bloodborne, and am very much enjoying ER.)
I am a souls veteran like you and this was the first time a souls game makes me so frustrated (after Leyndell*) that I almost uninstalled it. I pushed on and even learned how to beat Malenia flawlessly... but it remains bullshit. Bullshit that now I can kinda manage, but still bullshit.
Right. I can manage it but it didn't feel as good as mastering Sekiro.
yea same here, i got to about the mid game and havent played it in over two months, ive lost all intrest, the other games even 2 didnt do this to me
@@PlinyTheWelder sekiro is easy compare Elden ring. That’s why it’s easier to master.
What’s bullshit exactly? You didn’t say.....
@@xShinobiXx Here we go (not a specific order, just as they come to mind): waterfowl dance cannot be reliably and consistently evaded without using specific strategies that are all but intuitive, inconsistent hyperarmor (some attacks have, some attacks don't, some have it only for some frames), like all other bosses she input-reads you and makes healing a chore (all while having a stupidly high damage output... like all other endgame bosses). Whats the point of having an hp bar and flasks if you deplete it in one hit and I can't heal? She has stupidly short recovery frames in between combos (and sometimes can entirely skip them depending on the input-reading), reducing drastically the number of attack windows you have and taking damage you do not deserve. Her second phase has a lot of attacks with really similar wind-up animations but that end up in totally different outcomes that need to be evaded in different ways. Sometimes her stupid wings completely cover her and you can't see what she is doing.
If it's ok with you I will stop here. Yes, a lot of these problems become meaningless if you use a bleed build. But in my experience souls games are about learning a bossfight and engaging with its mechanics, and there is no doubt that hers (and lets be honest, most of the endgame bosses') are bullshit.
Note that I did not put her regen ability in the bullshit list, because it isn't. If she were fair, it would be a fun gimmick to the bossfight. But she is not. Like all other endgame bosses. If you want, I can list all of their bullshit too.
From Lyndell on, the game just felt tedious, I’m only continuing to play to beat the game. Once I do, I’m done with this game for a while. I’ll go back to playing Sekiro, where bosses aren’t cheap bullshit and don’t become regular world enemies after a period of time.
Elden ring is good game,but not bloodborne or ds3 tier
Of course they’re gonna copy and paste some of the bosses, it’s one of the biggest games of all time come on
@@bleedingrevo Some bosses? Erdtree avatar (8x), Nights Cavalry (10x), Ulcerated Tree Spirit (6x), Crucible knight (5x), Watchdogs (6x), Ball Bearing Hunter (5x), Deathbird (5x), Dragon (6x), Godskin Apostel and Noble (4x each), Crystalian (8x), and so on and so forth.
That's pretty bad tbh. And it's not even couting the bosses you encounter 'only' 2,3, or 4 times or bosses that are reused as normal enemies later down the line. They could have made the world half the size and you would still constantly encounter reused bosses, but they way it is they are literally just filler material for dungeons and space inbetween in the open world. From the 212 boss encounters in the world only 12 are unique encounters.
@@slart1bartfast587 here’s the type of guy that sees 2 bosses that are alike and overreacts and starts shitting on the game saying there are only 12 unique bosses when there’s more than 70
@@bleedingrevo unique bosses as in 'not reused'. hey I loved the game, but this is glaringly obvious. When I am in the 5th dungeon with the same boss in the end I am, well, a bit disappointed.
A big flaw for me with regards to the story/lore is that I don’t know the characters’ motivations for two CRUCIAL events. I don’t know why The Night of the Black Knives occurred and why they wanted Godwyn the Golden dead. I also don’t know why Marika broke the Elden Ring and set everything in motion. This is made even more confusing when you find out Radagon and Marika are one and the same, and that he tried to repair the Elden Ring after she destroyed it. So now I really don’t know what to think because the god behind everything is seemingly schizo and tried to take two actions that are seemingly opposed to one another.
I kind of need to understand WHY characters are doing what they’re doing if I’m to feel at all invested in and care about what’s going on in the story. This is especially true in games like this where you often don’t directly interact with the major players in the story outside of maybe a late/endgame boss fight. I know why Gwyn did what he did, so I can better appreciate the story of DS1. I say all of this after having read every item description for everything I’ve found. Maybe I missed or have forgotten something in someone’s dialogue, so if anyone can point out anything to illuminate either of the two things I referenced please feel free.
Isn't that part of the fun? Seeing what theories people can come up with or coming up with one of your own?
@@sparkyspinz9897 ehhh tbh the vague methods of conveying the story are not only getting kind of stale (Sekiro, apart from combat deviation, also was a lot more straightforward with the story and it didn't ruin the experience of the game imo) it just does *not* work nearly as well in a massive open world that we know has a gigantic backstory.
In previous titles the games were linear but open enough to not feel restrictive and the worlds were cohesive and contained enough that their storytelling methods worked fine with it.
@@sparkyspinz9897 no it's just laziness. From has everyone convinced that lazy story is better because it's mysterious.
@humblepotatofarmer bingo. Stale is the perfect word, especially for the combat. It's getting crazy the shit from gets away with. Ragnarok got shit on because of the crawl spaces but elden didn't get docked anything for the awful technical performance on literally every platform
@@johndodo2062 a few people have said this and I agree - if Elden Ring was not a AAA Fromsoft Game it would have been criticized and judged much more harshly. People have such a weirdly blind love for these games that they refuse to even have a discussion about the game's flaws.
Elden ring in later parts just become takes a boss that you went through so much trouble to beat once earlier and now you fight them as normal mobs in tight spaces. so dumb. Thats not increasing difficulty in a meaningful way, thats just lazy game design.
I think we need to be more appreciative of the amazing bosses they gave us. Yes, I agree there are too many repeat bosses. But to call their games design lazy kind of rubbed me the wrong way. The amount of detail in this game is head and shoulders above most others. We got so many unique bosses maybe in the future they can produce 100 unique bosses!
@@Dr.Smelly Yeah, you're not the only one as far as being rubbed the wrong way from him saying it's just lazy game design. The game has over 100 bosses and many of them are unique boss designs. I'm guessing the guy complaining either didn't even play much of the game or dislikes the game simply because it's not his usual AAA hand holding game.
I still remember when one of Horizon Forbidden West's lead game designers called Elden Ring's game design bad. He just wound up making himself look very jealous and salty since Elden Ring's success is huge.
I think a better way to describe it is " artificial difficulty". Giant pumpkin heads and other large enemies in rooms they clearly shouldn't even be able to fit in, shoving the camera up your ass and making you fight the mechanics instead of the enemy.
Most of the repeated boss are their to show your progression to show how you once struggle with this boss now your not since you have lvled up enough.
@Far Stox that was just as an example of an enemy clearly artificially placed somewhere it has no logical way of getting, where the enemy is 3x the size of any doorway etc
Giving the player an op summon doesn't make littering the area with aoe spam, breaking the camera's man's neck 4 times a minute during attack chain long and anime enough to have there own filler arcs that tracking the player harder then a federal revenue service...
... fun. Difficultly is a required part of challenge, but there is a fine line between that a long tedious BS. A line that DS3 crossed over too at times, butbelden ring jumps for the moon
There's a few spots in DS3 and Bloodborne for sure. Obviously the jailer enemies are ridiculously annoying. There were the dudes with the chains in the dragon area. The NPC hunters in bloodborne were outrageous. There was the two shark dudes in the pit in the DLC that was one of the stupidest things I've ever played. But in general theyve kept that shit pretty rare. There'd be a few spots in every game that felt over the line. But theres just much more of it here.
@@PlinyTheWelder I think that much like giving lifegems "allowed" Fromsoft to make alot more not "unavoidable" per say, but more so "unreasonable" damage that was annoying to avoid entirely, the inclusion of spirt summoning let's them "get away" with much the same. All of the more annoying fights all had spirt summons enabled and none of the traditionally balanced or easy ones did, and I doubt that's coincidental
This is ironically why an easy mode is bad, it mess with the "fair and balanced" experience as you can then justify more bs
@@danielnolan8848 I would really like to know where most of the "unavoidable" damage is, that you mention, as the only attack/enemy that really is unavoidable and has a mega tracking super combo, is well, Malenia. I guess the bloodhount hunter too in a way because his gimmick is teleporting to you, fair.
And ofc there is crucible knight and other enemies that wait for players to make a move and then reacts to it by punishing them, mainly punishing estus consumption
@@Ankastraa estus input reads is pretty cheep, as are attack imput reads as some bosses will change there combo if the player initiates an attack, not land it (easy way to test is to use night comet as that shouldn't* be input read by the ai), most of the open world double fights will work rather weird with input reads.
Large bosses who are too large to see their telegraphs if in melee range also are pretty cheap as well.
And i clarified as "unreasonable" rather then entirely "unavoidable" as alot of the the input reads are both unreactable and non-interactive. It's not impossible to avoid, but doing so just comes down to rote memorization tests, which can be fun if used sparingly, not a prolonged exam
@@danielnolan8848 I dont really remember a single attack you cant react to, the starting combo of noble has a clear telegraph and sure the followup attacks of combos sometimes dont, but thats the same for fights like sister friede too, dodging a combo isnt just about reaction but also proper knowledge on how to dodge and where to dodge.
The only 3 unreasonable attacks to avoid in the game are waterfowl dance, starbeasts gravity attack in the caelid mine and mohgs blood ritual
I personally believe dark souls is a harder game than dark souls 3 but thats just me. The lore is fairly straightforward. More understandable than bloodborne lol. However, the late game is my only main gripe about this game. Enemies 2-3 shot you and it just become a sloagfest
really? I don't know half of the bosses motifs bar trying to stop you lol.
DS is definitely harder than DS3.
My entry into the series was DS3. Then I went back to play DS1 and 2. I think there's a lot of bias based around what people played first that's informing what they think was the most difficult. All of the games are difficult, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my experience with DS3 would have felt far easier if I had the prior experience of playing the other two first. I don't think the same is true in reverse. For example, upon reaching Firelink I immediately went into New Londo and cleared everything until I reached Ingward and realized that "oh, I'm in a late game area, the game doesn't want me to be here yet"; my brain was still running on DS3 difficulty settings which allowed me to take on the area that most first-time players would quit on. The rest of the game until Sen's Fortress didn't live up to the same 'Dark Soul's' stereotype of difficulty for me.
@@walter1383 how did you kill all the phantoms in new londo with low health and bad weapons?
@@pedromello7835 Transient Curse drops, caution and tenacity. Like I said my brain was still in "Ringed City DLC mode" so I didn't get the hint that the area was to high level for me until Ingward told me I couldn't progress, lol. At least I got some extra levels and a Estus Flask +1 before the Undead Burg though.
Thank you for giving an honest critique, I absolutely agree with basically all of your points. You mentioned Radogan and how you didn't even know who that character was supposed to be and I felt exactly what you meant. The final damn boss besides the Eldenbeast and it leaves zero impact on the average player other than maybe being hard-ish. Despite the massive amount of bosses there are actually surprisingly few that are memorable. Think in five years time when you haven't played the game in a long while, will you still remember anyone besides the rune bearers or Malenia, who is only memorable because she is pure cancer? Not really, especially compared to the other games and how almost every boss encounter there is engraved in my mind.
To be fair the ost of radagon being the main menu theme is very memorable. Also basically all the main remembrance bosses are incredibly memorable but I don't think I will remember most of the regular dungeon bosses tho but I'm fine with that
A lot of us actually give a shit about the lore and pay attention. So yes, in 5 years I will remember the characters. Radagon, Marika, Renalla, Radahn, Godrick, Godfrey, Ranni, Blaidd, Iji, all very important and memorable characters if your a lore nut. If you just playthrough the game normally and don't care sure you probably won't remember or care who is who and their significance
What blows my mind, is I’ve seen numerous polls giving melenia the title of best boss fight in the game. It’s trash imo. Sure it looks cool, but that one attack takes the fight from an easy 10/10 to an 2/10. I died 50 times to that one attack before resigning to looking up how to dodge it because I just couldn’t figure it out. I don’t want to give that boss anywhere near a decent rating because that further enforces that frustrating bs is how bosses should be designed
I completely agree with you. The game at times is not fun but infuriating for the sake of being infuriating. Why not just make the game fun all the way through. Elden ring is a good game but no where near a 10 in my opinion. I hate the "get good mentality" Id rather just enjoy a game. When I heard the game was accessible I did not know this was what I was getting myself into.
Getting good is the enjoyment of it... it's probably just not your type of game but that's not the games fault.
I got SO bored seeing bosses repeated or showing up in other boss fights (like "ok so they're remaking an Ornstein and Smough fight, but both of the enemies walk at the same speed, nice. So now I just have to level my character to do enough damage so I can kill one of them quickly"). The dragons are JANKY AS HELL, watching them jump around the map only to have to RESET THEMSELVES when they get stuck on a hill, completely ruining the excitement of the fight.
So many times I've walked around into little alleyways and crevices only to be rewarded with NOTHING or a tiny reward.
Its far too easy to wonder into areas you're not meant to, then come back to a 5th of the game that's way too easy for you now. There needs to be a difficulty scaler like in Resident Evil 4, or something that keeps the massive game interesting when you accidentally skip a huge chunk of it by wondering in the wrong direction.
The game would be AMAZING if it were just a boss rush, because there are so many beautiful and unique bosses in the game, but everything in between just feels tedious.
I was one of those players who was tricked into buying this game. I tried and tried and tried and tried until I gave up. I uninstalled it and not looking back. My time is so limited, and all I want is to relief stress not get more stressed before I started the game.
perhaps get good
😅 welcome to souls my man. As a souls veteran I’ll tell you where the relaxation comes from in souls. That’s when you clocked in the hours that it becomes second nature. Now it’s relaxing. Until then. It’s not Suppose to be relaxing. It’s an action rpg
@@ikeamonkey7372 what a loser
@@ikeamonkey7372 wow, what an original comment. Quit being a toxic d bag
Must be a noob because Elden Ring is one of the easiest games they've made and it's one of the most relaxing games I've played in awhile. Besides those chariot dungeons, those got my blood pressure thought the roof. Mostly the game is chill, just exploring a beautiful land clearing caves and dungeons, it was a real Breath of the Wild/ Skyrim vibe for me. Most of the bosses in this game that aren't main story related are super easy
Completely right about all the criticism on Elden Ring but let's not pretend dark souls 2 is harder than 1. The only hard boss or levels in ds2 are in the dlc
I'd say ds1 is more challenging than ds2, with ds2 just being hard for the sake of being hard, tedious and annoying
Ds2 is by a huge margin the easiest once you've played it a couple times. I'm one of those odd men out who actually prefers it to the other 2 though so I have tons of hours in it 😂
From videos I've watched the "difficulty" of DS2 more so falls on the wonky mechanics of the game, enemy placement/spambushes/gank squads, weird platforming requirements, obnoxious boss runs, SotFS apparently making things even worse etc. I know it becomes a lot easier when you throw life gems into the mix but I can see why people would see DS2 as being harder.
Which isn't true difficulty imo but that's just my 2 cents.
*Shrine of Amana has entered the chat*
Agreeing 100% with you. Veteran fromsoft player here. And I still completely agree with you. There is no “get gud” here. There is only “get luky”.
I didn't know that you get to choose your ending. When I finished it Ranni popped up and was like the moon is big and we're out
Yeah, because you did Ranni’s quest.
@@jordanlutz8307 Ah okay, I didn't even know the game had quests really. I just ran around and did random things 😂
You still have to summon her at the end. She doesn't just pop up.
@@Salacious_T My memory must be horrible because I don't remember summoning her. I just remember it going to the cutscene after I killed the Elden beast. I could be wrong though
How do you do rannis questline on accident
Elden Ring was the only souls game I felt I had to play a mage in as melee combat is such a chore. Bloodborne is truly the besf
I used magic more in ER than in every other souls game combined. Bloodborne is probably the best. I really have come to love Sekiro and I have probably played DS3 more than any other one.
@@PlinyTheWelder ds3 felt so fair and balanced. Even a quick strong fight like Gael had room for punishment. Every dodge leads to you getting a hit in. Elden ring has such little windows for attacks and end game, the bosses do too much damage. I don’t want to learn them. I take the most op weapon I have and the mimic.
@@PlinyTheWelder ds3 and bloodborne are still my favorite soul games, but elden ring got a solid 3rd place at the moment without dlcs
Bloodborne and ds3 were amazing. Getting summoned for the spear church was a blast! The final boss of BB and sekiro, memorable. ER final boss. Biggest bullshit ever. So damn boring like he said get one hit in and the thin runs across the entire arena then chases you with lasers
Bloodborne is amazing, the boss fight balance is so well done. I finished my BL10 challenge in Bloodborne after Elden Ring and those fights are so much better, you understand moves, you have tools to avoid them, fights feel fair. I was able to fight Orphan of Kos for a week almost (BL10) without having bad emotions, but during my boss fight with Malenia or Maliketh I almost broke my controller for the first time playing any FromSoftware game.
There are so many repeated bosses. I've finished the game and I am scanning wiki map... oh... aother troll, another erdtree avatar, another watchdog. Each boss is repeated at least 2 to 12 times. Every single one I think.
And it's true about attacks that are hard to dodge. The enemies are straight up sekiro guys but we have dark souls moveset. They have infinite stamina, aoe attacks and no wind up for some slashes.
I love the game but it's not m fav souls. I much prefer tighter pacing and unique level design and bosses in the trilogy
They have infinite stamina and you also have crazy stamina regeneration, is ok.
Boss repetition is bad in a couple of occasions (astel, for instance), but in most cases is lore related, there is nothing wrong with that as long they are optional (which they are) and the amount of unique or at least first good impression of a repeated boss is good.
I mean, did you want them to fill each catacomb with unique bosses? That is not very realistic. Is an open world, a big one, that is one of the tradeoffs. Now if you'd prefer a smaller but more unique world, that is totally fair to ask.
@@JonathanOrtegaLobo astel is a good reskin because of new attacks.
I’m on the opposite. This game might be my biggest disappointment of 2022
Hard agreed. 0-40 hrs in ER is a solid 10/10, 40-80 hrs wavering dangerously between 7 and 8, and the last few areas and bosses just made me want to play something else bc it was just not fun anymore. I have about 600 hrs in DS3 purely doing coop at mostly Nameless and Gael and NEVER got bored. They are such fun bosses to fight against. This game though, I'd avoid facing most of the main bosses again, especially the endgame ones. No thank you. Just no.
Also just checked out your Sifu and Doom vids, both very well done. Thank you. You got yourself a new sub sir.
I wanna ask, which souls games are worth playing, and are not frustrating but fun like you said
@@amirphoenix2327 It's purely subjective. I mean your first souls game will always be frustrating to a certain degree, but ultimately satisfying and fun. DS1 is slow, clunky but classic; DS2 is even clunkier but has the most balanced weapons; BB is arguably the best of the souls formula; DS3 is fast and I'd say a good start for newcomers; Sekiro has the fastest and best combat but is not technically a souls game. Then again if you don't care much about the 1v1 challenge and just want to see some cool bosses with cool moves, you can even start with Elden Ring, just don't expect a fair fight from it, go with the summon ash system, stay back and enjoy the show.
@@marcimao622 he said in video that every game except dark souls 2 isn't frustrating, I started dark souls 1 couple of days ago, so I think I won't play dark souls 2 and elden ring (unless developers change something to not be frustrating)
@@amirphoenix2327 Yeah DS1 is a great start. All these games have some bs moments and DS2 unfortunately has a lot of them. Still got the best pvp though. Too bad From took down all the Souls pc servers and still hasn't done shit about them, so no online for you atm...
This just sounds like a skill issue
I have platinum Bloodborne, Sekiro, and I finished DS3. I guess can say I am a good average player on souls borne games. Elden Ring is definitely bad balanced and has an artificial difficulty in many parts. I am also strongly disappointed with a standing copy paste enemies. You are right.
copy and paste everything. bosses, churches, ruins, dungeons, caves...
It could be a masterpiece. From learned from all their successes and victories yet didn't even address let alone learn from their failures and defeats and Elden Ring is still full of the same problems as all the other games. On top of that they let the DS2 director have his way with the game and the late and very late game is so full of artificial difficulty it makes DS2 blush. Not to mention the game needed another couple years to polish and play test as well as fill the mid to late game with content that is very much lacking, most of the mid to late game content is halved compared to the early game. From dropped the ball hard. 7/10 at best. It needed atleast another 2 years AT LEAST before release.
If you platinum those games i would say you are better tham average. In the tough boss battles in bloodborne that i eventually overcame i felt like it was truly overcoming my shortcomings. There were about 5 bosses in elden ring where i am sure i just lucked out with the RNG in what moves the boss did, but i also had a brick hammer strength build
Every game copy pastes enemies. You guys are talking like only elden ring does it. In Zelda breath of the wild a game so highly critically acclaimed you see the same enemies everywhere.
@@GeekRaj yes you are right and that must be stoped, at least in that amount which is scandalous in ER. Besides I didn’t mentioned BW cause I also didn’t like it.
watching the isshin fight in the middle of this just brought it all home. difficult as hell but engaging, crisp, satisfying. this was a rare feeling in elden ring. i love soulsborne, and have played 1000s of hours in DS1, 2, bloodborne in particular. but elden ring i was genuinely bored and/or frustrated for a lot of the time. for half the game it feels like NG+ in NG. dodging 10 attacks in a row to do chip damage with a +25 weapon is awful, feels like a challenge run.
and one thing rarely mentioned is how the PvP and multiplayer in general has gone backwards since DS2. DS1 had some of the most insanely fun multiplayer of any game (both co-op and PvP) with genuinely innovative mechanics and a life of its own through organic gameplay and organised meta fighting. DS2 actually improved it in some ways. and then that turned into... nothing.
At this point I'm just tired of exploring and getting shot by some asshole just so I find an underwhelming boss that doesn't give me anything useful
Not sure what you mean but sekiro is an overall easier game compare Elden ring
@@xShinobiXx your comment again. No one gives a shit if ER is harder than Sekiro, we care if the game is sastisfying once mastered.
Damn am I crazy or something? Because Elden Ring is way too easy compared to any other From game. I think yall are making bad builds if otherwise because I've beat the game 5 times now and the vast majority of the game is just way too easy. Every playthrough I go through 80% of the game way too easy. The only hard parts are the poorly balanced endgame fights. Elden Ring is too easy most the time then too hard the rest of it. It's too easy to become way too op
PvP before DS3 is so boring.
I agree ER PvP is boring too but the only reason for this are bad connection (like every FS game) and because the game is only out for less than a year so the game is unbalanced.
I have done the 100% steam achievement of DS1 and DS2 and the pvp part was so boring that I end up doing it pve only, while on DS3 I did all pvp achievement because the gameplay is actually good lmao.
My biggest complaint is the catacombs mob density gank squad and the one shot kills at 25%-50% on atleast 5 bosses.
I feel like they didn't have time to play the game they made because some of it is just too much.
They may have had to make the game harder due to the summons easy mode which makes all the other fights a one shot kill for you.
Great game but quantity over quality. Loved the gimmick bosses though (Rykard) and they should have did more like this.
why would you said quantity over quality when there's no microtransaction what so ever
@@garciasth217 because that can apply to any part of a game. ER does it by having too many bosses that are reused, sometimes twice at once and treated as a unique encounter.
@@garciasth217 there is quantity in this game, but there is no quality. Reused dungeons which look and act exactly the same, reused bosses turned into regular mobs (Margitt ftw), Erdtree Avatar who is basically Asylum Demon move et wise is reused 13!!! times, Crucible Knights are reused at least 5 times or something, Night Cavalry is reused 9 times... With same move sets, Mohg is also reused and so are few other bosses, like Red Wolf, that Leo Misbegotten guy is reused 3 times at least...
Then you have bs duo fights like Godskin Duo, Gargoyles Duo, Crucible Knights Duo, etc.
This game was not meant to be Open World game. If they did locations like legacy dungeons this game would have been a blast. Half of the locations are for you just to travel on horse back with nothing to do.
1- 2 shot what is your vigor stat?
@@Prawnsacrifice it was 40 so 2nd soft cap I believe.
The game uses RNG mechanics on some bosses and they can suddenly change their attacks, so you think you can attack them cause you did a fight 6 times already, then suddenly, they continue their combo and beat crap out of you on 7th try.
You can watch Joseph Anderson in depth review called Elden Ring - A Shattered Masterpiece. Especially last 2 segments talking about such issues. It's worthwhile as it basically sums up what I was facing. Being on PC didn't help either as stutters in middle of a boss fight could be death of you.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I saddens me a bit that this will be the formula for their future, the numbers speak for themselves. I'd much rather have the Sekiro experience - basically locking the player out of options in terms of weapons, spells, summons, co-op, etc. and forcing him into a very limited number of choices makes it so much better to balance the game. Every boss fight in Sekiro is meticulously balanced due to this.
Also I agree with the story part, I watched a few lore videos on youtube by people who have the time to put it together, and it's honestly amazing lore - yet they hide it so deep, instead of presenting it to the player. And yeah, there is really no story to be found, I mean, I still haven't figure out what our motivation, as a player, is to even seek out the Elden Ring. There is just nothing.
One thing I absolutely hated about the camera, was in the fire giant fight, I swear the camera would just randomly target his chest, or if I’m targeted at his chest, randomly move to his legs for…….whatever reason, making the fight that much more obnoxious.
I have allot more issues with the game but it’s a loooong list that I won’t get into, but all n all after finishing my play through of it I’d give it a 7 maybe an 8/10 if I were to give it a number score, the later areas (mountain top of giants, the haligtree area) really bring the game down for me, that and also the mass reuse of bosses, it just gets obnoxious, if the open world was shrunk down I think it really would have benefited the game.
Bro all u had to do was not lock on to him lmao mans huge u dont have to lock on at all
@@whereami5434 Na bro, I gotta MAKE SURE I hit them toes.
Dude, some bosses have to be fought locked off. Smaller bosses like, Margit, or Godrick, which don't have several different lock on points are pretty good fighting locked on, but other larger bosses with multiple points of lock on, like the Tree Spirits, or Fire Giant, are better fought locked off. This game is about flexibility and adapting, so don't blame the game if you find it hard to adapt to the game as it progresses.
@@Kevin00685 bro ur just bad at the game yes the only bad thing about the camera is it zooming on the character when touching an object but other than that its fine ive had so much fun with the game and ive had no issues with the camera other than that
@@cosmic2750 then why do they let you lock on if it doesnt work?
I wonder if people even finished the game before dropping these 10/10s! It was a 10/10 for me until Caelid, but then the repetition started creeping up, and after Leyndell, I was burned out. Now, I'm pushing myself to finish it. I've given up on critics a few years ago, since every cringey mediocre game is now at least a 9, and the terrible cookie-cutter games are at least an 8.
Elden Ring, is a great game that is quite enjoyable. The level design is immaculate, and the art design, is jaw-dropping! I have over 240 hours on my first playthrough, but the game has a lot of issues that you rightly point out. (Only a select few have the gall to call it out, and I appreciate you for that!) Very few in the Souls community are rational enough to understand these problems, as most are elitists with the tiresome "Git gud" mentality. Inconsistent boss designs? Git gud. Don't like the multiplayer? Git gud. Poor optimization? "Git gud" hardware. Artificial difficulty? Git gud. Not fond of the repetitive enemies/encounter design in the optional areas? Ignore, or you know, "GIT GUD". FFS!
I finished Sekiro, Bloodborne, and Demon's Souls (Remake) and I loved all of them. (BB and Sekiro are some of my favorites of all time - BB, with DLC, is in my top 10!) They had frustrating moments, but they were few and far between, and the artificial difficulty was pretty much non-existent. They were balanced to be challenging, while some optional content (mostly a boss or two) were annoying. In ER, most content after Leyndell is designed to annoy the sh*t out of you. Your point on Elphael's Erdtree Avatar with multiple enemies shooting at you with one-shot bolts, is so perfectly spot on that I couldn't help but have a big smile on my face. The enemies were also so buffed up during that segment (and a few other late game areas) that my "God Slaying" weapon(s) took over 7 hits each to bring some of them down. LOL!
Couldn't agree more on DOOM Eternal, what an extremely rare gem in the modern era of gaming!
The problem is that the game isn't hard. You're just playing it wrong.
@@aidenless3479 late but "playing the game wrong" get tf out of here you annoying ass gatekeeper. There is no way to play these games "wrong". People play the games in whatever way brings them the most enjoyment. Some people do co op, some people use guides, some people go in blind, some use ash summons and some don't, some prefer 2 handing and dodging and some prefer using shields, some exploit the hell out of AoW to make things easier, the list goes on.
I don't enjoy a dex spam build with bleed/rot buildup and Rivers of Blood, and I'm not going to play a specific build because that's the new meta because that's never been what these games have been about.
I disagree with your comment that dark souls plot is simple to understand because what you are told in the game, about being the chosen undead destined to link the flame, is just characters in game lying to you and the actual plot is difficult to puzzle out.
The fact that they are lying to you doesn't change the fact that the player understands what the two choices mean. He might not know the exact why without the lore, but nonetheless it's obvious what linking the flame does.
I really dont know how anybody could throw around those 10/10 ratings for this game. I was in awe up until i finished Leyndell, then the first cracks showed. And by the end i was just glad it was over. Litteraly the worst enemy design From ever did. Tanky af, fast like straight out of Dragonball. And not just the Bosses, even normal mobs. There are Bosses that litteraly two-shot me al lvl 158 with 60 Vig on NG. Bosses that go Super Saian on you while you roll around like a yerk trying to avoid ten attacks and five AoEs in a row. But I know that there will alway be those FromSoft Super Fans that defend anything that Myazaki does with a simple "GitGud". And I am really fed up with this BS, and thats coming from someone who loves Soulsborne games. Increasing difficulty does not mean increaas the BS. I was really looking forward to get the Platinum Trophy on this game as I have done with all Soulsborne games, but I do not think that I want to go through all that again two more times.
Yeah, where are my five string combos and jumping mobility. Oh wait, that's Ninja Gaiden or Sekiro. For f sake if the bosses can jump around let us
The toxic fanbase and Tanimura's philosophy on difficulty ruined the souls series.
this game has lots of flow yes, expecialy the boss design for the secondary bosses,and the calice dungeons stuff again was a mistake,but still,i can't lie i haven't had this much fun in a game since doom eternal and botw,also it's open world was way more fulfilling then botw and rdr2 imo, it's not a 10/10 game obviously,but in the end does it even matter? I've never trusted abstract and meaningless scores anyways(pathologic 2 has a 69 and it's one of my favorite games ever),and the great dungeons and exploration of this game alongside endgame bosses made up from the flaws of this game for me
also,you shouldn't care about the toxic side of the community of a game in this point, after spending a lot of time with the Megaten and doom fanbase,can safely say most of the time is just a waste of time ranging out with those people,but sometimes they also make cool stuff so it's mostly a case of filtering the good from the bad
@@junpei6180 The thing is, if I would not like the game I would just quit it and be done. Maybe because Souls games are so close to my heart I am more critical. I have cooled down a bit since the initial coment and the game still is great but an unbalanced mess. I just dont want to see future Souls Games to go further down that line just so they get ever more difficult. Especially since most critics dont mention those faults and call it a 10/10.
@@johnnybravo816 true,i must admit i also was extremely frustrated at times with Elden ring on my first hours,like screaming and cursing the developers and all,the BS in this game sometimes can easily over throne the ones from DS2(maybe aside from frigid outskirts but that shit was a whole another level),and it sucks major reviews are not coming up with this, i think,i haven't read any big site reviews (but i suspect it was most likely because they rushed the game,so the major flaws of it, being the BS optional bosses and copypasted dungeons got unchecked,on ng+ it's pretty clear that the game is much more fun when you already know what to do and how to avoid filler content,even if most of the joy on the first hours are the discovery)
Still,in retrospect I really liked it,i wasn't expecting a perfect game,i wasn't even that hyped tbh,just played it because a friend of my mine bought it,so i was pleasantly surprised at the end,i just couldn't bring myself to believe it would be a perfect game from the start,from is known for junky stuff it's just that the pros normally really outweighs the cons,and Elden ring is no different imo
Also for i think from should stop making souls games even if they probably won't,i love the series but they need to do something else already, Maybe a new armored core or any other old franchise or something new again i dunno, always wanted to play those old from games,just not in the mood right now as I played already too much clunky old Atlus games at this point
open world concept has more minuses than plus
I finished the game 2 days ago and I also played DS1-3 multiple times (and enjoyed Sekiro very much, but played it only once). I agree with almost all of your critique in your video. ER is a great open world game with a lot of variety in game play and enemies. But I feel, too, that from a certain part in the game onwards the game wants me to actually use the powerful magic+incantations stuff or even go for summon ashes to make bosses easier. In DS1-3 that was never needed, you can even beat those games with the broken straight sword on SL1 (and I enjoyed very much SL3,1,1 runs I did for DS1,2,3). Sure, it was never supposed to beat DS games that way, but the fact that it is possible shows that one can almost completely ignore the role playing impact of those games and just beat them with own skills in combat. I think that this does not hold true anymore for ER. Ok, I had seen that Lobos was able to beat ER on RL1, but for me it doesn't seem to be something I would enjoy very much due to the unbalanced to even unfair endgame bosses in the game.
Another critique I have with the game is that weapon scaling is almost completely disabled with all the starting weapons one gets (katana perhaps being an exception). Most of them have like D+D scaling (or even E+E or combinations) on STR+DEX and that only improves much later in the game when you are able to get it to +12 and higher. This means that there is almost no point in leveling those attributes until that point where the scaling sets in. This is not a very good design decision in my opinion. The most questionable point in this context is the scaling of bows: the 'best' scaling bow in the game is the short bow that reaches a D+D scaling at +24 (and can not be improved with any ashes). Why, Fromsoft?
I think if your name is Heideknight you can't be called a hater. Yeah it's kinda weird with scaling. Almost all your damage comes from upgrades with very little scaling. Even A scaling weapons seem like it makes very little difference.
@@PlinyTheWelder Thank you, yes, knights from the ancient lands of Heide are one of the few non hostile enemies in the game series (as long as you don't attack them yourself). Just watched your video a second time and remembered there is another example of a very frustrating level in the Raya Lucaria academy that can be added to the list. Namely the way from the schoolroom class site of grace to the red wolf boss. There are those three sorcerers protecting a chest (+plus one of those huge jars). As long as you can sneak by them: good. But if one of them is aggroed its literally over, because all the three of them can spam their glintstone magic without interruptions that deals a ton of damage and stunlocks you to death. In all the DS games there was at least always a short delay when a sorcerer casted two spells in a row, but this seems to be not true anymore in ER. So sorcery seems to be much too op in ER even in this respect.
Can't please everyone if they made it less difficult but kept the summon all the new players that use summons like they're the flask vs the vets that refuses to use them out of solo pride then new ppl like me would think it was too easy, in 85% cases it was.
Although its still a very good game, i also feel like the game is more quantity than quality, it just doesn't have that refined creative design of places and enemies/bosses. Not once did i sit and admire the vistas in ER like i did in ds3 and ds1. and alot of repetition with the bosses too.I also had issue with the games pacing. Just feels like a bland big map with some big castles and caves. it feels like the open world watered down the game in that respect. On another note the combat was improved in terms of variety with ashes of war and powerstancing, definately the combat is up there.
I gave the game another chance and tried a bow-only run. As far as I remember this worked phantastic in DS2 and DS3 where I almost felt invicible towards the end of the game. In ER with a level 166 character (!) it still feels like trying to beat the game with a level 1 character even with fully upgraded blackbow, serpent bow and Albinauric bow. My character has 50 vigor now which corresponds to about 1700 HP. But then still the following bosses can one-shot you easily: Fire Giant, Maliketh (2nd phase), Gideon with his comet azur spell, Hoarah Loux with grab attack or the one combo attack, Astel with the grab attack. I have not checked out Malenia (not sure if I wanted to), Mohg and the final boss, yet, but I am sure they will also fall into the one-shot category. So the question is how much health is needed to survive some of the end game bosses attacks? Vigor=60, vigor=70...or vigor =99? The critique in the video is well justified that the game is not well balanced regarding the high damage many of the bosses can deal. I have seen that Gino Machino (currently trying no-hit all remembrances) uses CheatEngine (switching to god-mode) in order to learn the bosses movesets. But as is argued in your video, something like this should not be necessary and also was not necessary in DS1-3. The only case I remember where a large health bar is destroyed completely by a bosses attack was the laser attack in Midir's second phase. In ER almost any end game boss have this capability (+2 times or +3 times the health of Midir of 16K HP).
So my main take away from this video is that game lacks directions for the player in many areas. Which I completely agree with but I also understand why it's this way. Story would definitely have benefit from being more clear cut rather than less compared to previous games.
The Isshin vs Malenia argument I find myself partly agreeing with. Her being more difficult due to more dangerous attacks as a side boss rather than mandatory (like Isshin) is totally fine. Hell I don't even necessarily disagree with needing to have a shield for example. The part I do have a problem is the lack of communication from the game about this. Needing to use specific tools for a boss can be great design, but again, it needs clear direction and needs to be communicated to the player. The game forcing you to use use every tool at your disposal, especially in side bosses is something I really like and in theory every build should be able to use a shield even if it's not optimal.
Heavy weapons being in sad state I agree with.
Enemy encounters being annoying I agree with. Altough I didn't have the same frustration with the preceptor I sure had my own share of annoying encounters that felt frustrating.
I think the map is great but I definitely wanted a quest journal. It should have been kept vague and not bullet point like quests. Like if your character was taking notes about what NPCs said or even a way to replay dialogue. Like maybe you have a spirit journal that recreates memories. There are so many ways this could have been done without becoming the ubisoft style we all have grown tired of.
Performance problems are inexcusable, I would rather the game have been delayed further so we get a much better experience. 100% agree.
I still think this game is a masterpiece. I don't like the 1-10 scale of grading since the lower grades are never used and it sort of misses the point of what a review should be. A tool to understand the quality and what type of game it is. For a game to be a masterpiece it doesn't have to be perfect and it's not objective fact either. For me and many other it's a masterpiece because it got us lost in a magical world which hasn't truly happened since childhood. But for others it will be a frustrating mess. I don't believe in perfection being achievable but rather a goal to strive for, something that Abathur in starcraft 2 openened my eyes too and has stuck with me ever since heart of the swarm.
There really isn't anything special I want to share with this comment, just my thoughts as I was watching the video. Even if I don't agree with everything, I thank you for your interesting take.
Bro did you ever play shadow of the Colossus, you’d hold your sword up to the sun and then a light would show you were the next boss is….. you’d never be lost ( I’m stuck at the Altus plateau for about 40+ hours unable to find the map)🤣
@@TechnoMaster2001 there is an icon on the map for where you can find the detailed map of the area.
Okay that doesn’t mean nothing theirs a broken bridge that you can’t get past, the icon is useless if I can’t actually get to where the icon is???
It’s a such a masterpiece they leave you lost and with no help 🤣🤷🏽♂️
@@TechnoMaster2001 I both agree and disagree. Finding out you need to go somewhere and the challenge then becoming how to get there is really fun. But some possible paths should at least be hinted at for that too work.
To me, a game doesn't have to be perfect to be a 10/10. DS1 was not a perfect game by A LONG SHOT, but that game completely reignited my passion for video games and I was truly stunned at how well-designed the first two thirds of that game are. It's better to me than a lot of games that are more polished and I'd argue have better execution of what they're trying to do. A 10/10 game to me has to do something so well that someone can easily brush aside the flaws and say that this game pushed the medium forward and is also a great game they had a ton of fun with, because I have yet to play a perfect game. Elden Ring arguably does that with its expansive open world that breathes some new life into a stagnant genre. To me, the story was pretty much as opaque as any other Soulsborne title, but I understand the criticism. The late game difficulty spike is indeed a serious issue that disadvantages certain builds as well as playstyles that don't incorporate summons. I'm much more forgiving than the community at large of certain bosses like Godskin Duo, but Malenia is absolutely taking the piss. I will say it appears that you weren't quite leveling vigor enough if a boss has more than one or two one-sho attacks, but overall, good video. I disagree with some of your critique, but you bring up a lot of valid points.
Love your comment, a lot of these nerds think a game has to be flawless to be a 10/10, which is impossible cause every game has flaws
You forgot about Malena's insta kill command grab where she throws you and impales you on her sword.
That's a very easy attack to dodge
What do you mean Elden Ring doesn't have a story? The game flat out tells you: "The fallen leaves tell a story." See?
@TrevorKl 23 that’s racist
@TrevorKl 23 the fuck does 'The fallen leaves tell a story' mean?
I think we need to stop saying that it's too difficult or easy or whatever. We should instead be focusing on if it's fun or boring, that's what really matters. A problem that comes with extremely high HP bosses with extremely high damage output is that there's no real room for the player to take any risks. Taking risks creates excitement, and that creates engaging and fun gameplay. But if the only viable option is to just play it safe, well what the hell, that's pretty boring. I think a perfect example of a fun fight is Manus. It's actually hard to beat manus without taking any risks, and that's a very good thing
^^^^^ this
I might be an idiot I've played 100+ hours of this game but what is the Elden Ring exactly?
No you're not, its the from software's story telling in a nutshell..
The best I have been able to gather is that it's the greatest of the great runes one can get from a lore perspective.
It's literally just a mcguffin.
I've watched a couple lore vids so spoilers ahead:
and it seems to be the thing that dictates the rules of world. Those who have it gifted to them become a God.
Who gifts it: the greater will
I think there's a real danger in trying to make each game harder than the ones before, You say Dark Souls 1 feels easy now- but that's only for souls veterans. I mean, you want your audience to grow, not to be stagnant. No they don't need an easy mode. But they don't have to keep making every game harder. How much harder can they make a game before they cross the line into cheap and artificial difficulty? Because I'd say that have done that with Elden Ring. And difficulty by itself isn't the point of souls games. The world building, characters, etc., are a big part of the appeal. For years I have told friends that anyone can beat these games with a little patience and determination,. But that doss not apply to Elden Ring.
I agree mostly. I feel like by making the game this hard it pushes you to use things like magic and the summons and to me that stuff kinda changes the core of the game. Makes it feel less predictable. I feel like a better way to make them harder would be less bonfires and longer boss fights but less damage. I never once ran out of flasks in this game because all of your deaths come from massively damaging attacks. I feel like more battles of attrition would allow the games to still be hard without being so frustrating.
@@PlinyTheWelder dude this would make the game SO MUCH funner than it is!
And even with artificial difficulty there will always be people who beat the game in 20 minutes, or as a level 1 wretch taking no damage. Both have already happened. So all they're accomplishing is annoying a huge portion of their fans.
Miyazaki said about early Souls games that he didn't set out to make them difficult. Now Fromsoft is saying that making difficult games is part of their identity. And I really feel like that shift in mindset shows in Elden Ring, which in many cases is hard for no reason.
@@aperson9847 Yes exactly. With Elden Ring, it feels like difficulty is literally the entire point of the game. That's not it was in the previous games. This is something that I can't can get on board with. If this is how their games will be from now on, then I'm done. Sorry but Elden Ring late game just wasn't fun for me. I beat the game. Beating it made me not want to play it again. That's something that has never happened to me in previous souls games.
@@deadpelicanguy I beat the game and immediately started again, and this time I beat all of the main bosses up until Morgott without summoning. But then with Morgott, just like the first time, I suddenly don't even understand what I'm supposed to do. He never stops attacking. When am I supposed to hit him if he never stops attacking?? I know that there are people who can beat him and make it look easy. Call me a noob, whatever, I've beat all these games so many times but this one I just don't understand.
There are difficult bosses in previous games that I beat (Pontiff Sulyvahn) or almost beat (Orphan of Kos) on my first try. And that's not because I'm brilliant at these games. It's because they made sense in the context of the player's combat mechanics. They were, wait for it, balanced. I could always tell what I was supposed to be doing even if pulling it all off was a challenge. So many bosses in Elden Ring just leave me going....HOW??? Or sometimes....WHY???? Or often both, which is fun.
It could be a masterpiece. From learned from all their successes and victories yet didn't even address let alone learn from their failures and defeats and Elden Ring is still full of the same problems as all the other games. On top of that they let the DS2 director have his way with the game and the late and very late game is so full of artificial difficulty it makes DS2 blush. Not to mention the game needed another couple years to polish and play test as well as fill the mid to late game with content that is very much lacking, most of the mid to late game content is halved compared to the early game. From dropped the ball hard. 7/10 at best.
Tanimura (dark souls 2 director) really needs to stay the hell away from these games. He's ruining the series.
@@JL-lu1ul lol no, ds2 is the best of the core ds games.
2/10 at best
Its hard because it is so unfair most of the time.. combine the hitboxes of DS2 with some bs undodgeable one shot attacks.
World is big but boring and bloated.
Bloodborne and Sekiro are best Souls games.
Elden Ring sits next to DS2. But DS2 has more replay value.
From Software can't improve when they don't have real critique.
i 100% agree with doom eternal being a 10/10 game,hell it made me feel like I was a kid again playing games for the first time,so good,very good to find more people who think that without being part of the fanatic doom community,i mean,it felt like it was inside of a cult lol
but on Elden ring,yeah I mostly agreed with you on the flaws, technically it's not from's best work by far,but still,imo it's probably the best open world of the generation,been so long since i felt a genuine sense of discovery and exploration this much since botw,and when you play ng+ and already know what to do,what the best shortcuts to use,the order you want do do stuff,and most importantly already know all the filler content to avoid,it genuinely gave me nostalgia to the first time i played dark souls 1 as a 10 years old
Isn't it weird how people's tastes vary? I loved Doom 2016 so much that Eternal was one of the only times i spent full price on a game.
I've had it for a year and I'm less than halfway through. I feel like they added a bunch of unnecessary mechanics and none of the upgrades were exciting. And then I got to the first boss and I literally closed the game and booted up 2016, started a new game and never went back.
I don't think it's a bad game BTW, it just wasn't for me.
Every encounter I had with an enemy or boss that was lazily copy/pasted from Dark Souls completely shattered my immersion. Elden Ring is supposed to be set in an entirely different universe. Bloodborne and Sekiro did this perfectly, so I don't see why FromSoft's supposed greatest game ever should get a pass for cheating on its homework.
10/10 review scores arent saying its perfect. A 10/10 is the level of recommendation the reviewer is giving the game. Beyond that... perfection is a very subjective thing
Seriously, people need to stop thinking of a 10/10 as an absolutely perfect game which is completely without flaw because that game will never exist as it’s literally impossible. Elden ring is a 10 for me, obviously it has flaws literally every game does but it’s still utterly fantastic
@@Ethman16 legit man, I'm actually getting so sick of seeing all these reviews get recommended to me by RUclips, thinking they're breaking new ground by stating Elden Ring isnt perfect... like fuck man, it's more pretentious than saying anything is a 10/10 purely because it shows a complete lack of understanding of what review scores are meant to represent
@@brandonvanzyl7725 you guys are allll sorts of wrong. A reviewer giving a game a 10/10 only means they give it a super super duper recommendation? And a 9/10 is only a super duper recommendation? And an 8 is only a super recommendation? Nah. Number scores don't mean how much they want you to play it, that is so dumb.
10's are given out for perfection at the medium the game was designed on. All of art has hierarchy, you will have to get over it. This game is objectively worse as a game than Bloodborne. You will also have to get over this.
@@theskyizblue2day431 wow... if you wanna tell us you're stupid just say that instead
@@theskyizblue2day431 i forgot that movies that get scored 5/5 by critics are literally perfect. Cannot be improved. Same with books. These are masterpieces, perfection on earth. 5 star chefs literally do not defecate.
Bro don’t get so invested in bad arguments. Absolutely nothing is perfect.
This is the most honest review I've found. I felt exactly like you. It's just that I'm at 25% of the game and my score would be 7.5, just because it tends to be boring as hell.
I appreciate your in-depth look into this game from the perspective of a soulsborne fan.
I am new to the franchise, I played a little of dark soils remaster which I enjoyed but couldn't resist trading for this once it was released.
I think to be accurate, LIMGRAVE is the most accessible soulsborne game haha.
I still got my arse handed to me numerous times, but I found it way easier to progress through the area than the first area I went to in Denons Souls. That said, even after playing through most of limgrave and the weeping peninsula I am finding a lot of liurnia and caelid near impossible. Even over level 30 I have hit a wall at stormveil with godrick.
I do agree the open world does a lot of things right and it was really refreshing playing this after what has become standard open world formulas, it has a few of its own cons.
The entirety of limgrave is stuffed with cool stuff to find, it gives a great impression.
As I branch out I am finding the rinse repeat dungeons and caves to be tedious, especially when a lot of them do not offer rewards that allow me to progress or enough runes to level up.
I like the lack of hand holding, but it's too far in that direction. Where's the story? What's pushing me forward other than the reward of getting better at repeat enemies/bosses?
I don't want a map full of bullshit, but even some better indicators of potential side stories and vague log would be better.
Like you said reading is good and games are good. Too much reading in games is not a good combination.
It is a good game and I'll come back to it I'm sure, but I've hit a wall in liurnia where there's not a lot of interest for me to continue with this.
Level 30 is the low end to fight godrick I'd say come back at 50 👍
yea the only way to level up after like level 30 is to spend hours just ruin farming l
Yes Limgrave is quite good. Except here's a bit of a problem. I followed the sites of grace things. So after fighting the Tree sentinel at level 1 and finally beating him (that's on me. I knew it was stubborn) I ended up at Margit at about level 9. Did Stormveil at like level 15 or so. Honestly the whole sites of grace showing you where to go probably shouldn't have just led you straight to stuff you should be a higher level to deal with. I cannot express how frustrating Stormveil and Godrick were at level 20 with a +3 weapon because for some reason my first playthrough I couldn't get to Roundtable until after I killed Godrick. IN fact my second playthrough I was stunned to find you get there earlier. I just assumed killing Godrick was what let you get there.
THen I did not get spirit ashes until after Stormveil either. Guess I got unlucky and only went to the church during the day because I didn't find Ranni until I was already into the Liurnia Lakes area. I think the game isn't nearly as directed as it should be.
@@Prawnsacrifice what really i though 25 was the norm?
This being my first real go at a soulsborn game, I also agree with the points you have made in this video in regards to the things this game could do better. I especially agree with the idea of a simple "quest log" but it doesn't even have to be a "this person wants this". I would be happy with just a "here is NPC's you have talked to, and what conversation dialogs you have had with them". I also really appreciated your explanation of the story vs lore issue with this game. I have felt this while playing and wasn't sure if I was missing something since others I have talked to and other content creators have gone on about how amazing the story is.
For some reason souls fans are against this with absolute fervor. Any suggestions online for that are met with harsh rebuke. And lots of Git Gud. "Your not supposed to understand it on your first playthrough." "This is an adult game go play a ubisoft game for that handholdy bullshit"
@@codycraddock4975 lmao, pretty much.
@@codycraddock4975 "There are plenty of lore videos go watch them".
As much as I love the Soulsborne series and love watching hours of lore videos their storytelling methods overall suck, and it especially falls flat when you're in a game as massive as ER.
I could ignore the story and enjoy the atmosphere and experience of the previous games but it felt like something was missing with ER.
@@chopsandtoots especially with the marketing and Martin's name attached
@@codycraddock4975 I guess he had very little to do with the overall story. I believe a few years ago he had written a general concept for the world and whatnot and some of the characters but I think that was it.
This game feels like, imagine you haven't watched ANY of Game of Thrones and it's Season 8 and your character is dropped into that world with 0 context and not told much of anything and you're supposed to make sense of all of it.
ER has arguably one of the largest stories while also being pretty superficial. Despite how immense the map was the game didn't feel very atmospheric for a good portion of the game.
Saddest thing for me is I dont really enjoy all the end game bosses, which I really like helping people out and placing my sign for random end game bosses in souls games, but literally every endgame boss in Elden Ring is such a chore, either i have to cheese it to kill it more than half the time, or end up with the host dying 9/10 times. I just wish they had more bosses like Soul of Cinder, actually fun. I'm fine with difficult but damn they make all end bosses have so much aoe/teleporting I dont really see myself wanting to keep fighting them for more than a few months. I enjoy Stormveil the most just because there is mostly humanaoids/knights which i actually love fighting, even if they still have spammy aoe and teleporting lmao
That's true. Just yesterday, I finally beat Dark Souls 3 for the first time against the Soul of Cinder in my second attempt. No videos on his moveset to prepare for me. Just went in, time everything to dodge or avoid as best I can, and managed to beat him.
Honestly after the Fire Giant, I wanted the game to end. But seeing Crumbling Azula as a mandatory dungeon just to later fight another boss to then reach the final boss is fucking ridiculous.
Ans the second phase of the final boss. I found that utter bullshit. First, the area seems big enough that Torrent was needed for the fight but was scrapped. And second phase seems completely unnecessary for thr basic ending. Maybe for Ranni's ending it would make sense, since she despise the Greater Will and Two Fingers. But not mandatory for all 6 endings. It's fucking ridiculous.
@@pancholopez8829 I just killed Fire Giant on my 2nd playthrough and am finding myself throwing any excuse not to enter Faruum Azula. That’s how I know it’s just not as fun, the only reason I do want to is because I kind of enjoy Melania and Elden Beast fights after fighting them 50+ times each so now I have good strats for both and makes co-op enjoyable. But getting there uhhhh I really don’t want to go through the snowfield or Faruum azula again lol. Torturous
@@evanthompson6355 yea. While I swear, the balance is for level 150+ players since even with vigor 50, I die in a couple of hits, or straight up one shot.
@@pancholopez8829 a lot of the end bosses are so much easier with shields so I tend to just use a spear/shield to make it easy lol. I’m at 40 vigor on my current run but 30 endurance and honestly I feel pretty tanky, as long as you just block some attacks you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to dodge. Gives you a lot more leniency
@@evanthompson6355maybe, but I uninstall the game since I ask "why!?"
If anything, this game made me appreciate Dark Souls 3 more. And I stopped playing that for Elden Ring since at least ER had poise. But after all that shit, I went back to it and started my NG+ run now.
Cmon man what're you talking about? I thought everything From does is flawless perfection and any issues anyone has with their games means they're just bad???
-Average From Soft Simp
Every enemy and boss all have a spinning wombo combo attack and a bs one hit kill outta nowhere move lol
There are a plethora of wombo combos for sure.
increase your vigor and dont use talisman that sacrifice defense .
i swear most noob have such low vigor and low defense all they think about is attack
The waterfowl dance has multiple counters, it can be blocked if you build around shields (for example, barricade shield or the fingerprint stone shield and the great shield talisman) (although this is a pretty bad idea given her healing) you can outrun it, you can dodge in a few different ways, you can use bloodhound step, you can throw a pot at her while she’s in midair, not only are there more options to counter this attack than most other attacks, but they’re also all intuitive, you’ll notice waterfowl dance consists of a series of lunges in a fixed direction towards you, so with any thought you might come up with the idea that you can misdirect her lunge and avoid damage, this is clear and can be reasoned very easily, same with bloodhound step, giving yourself increased invincibility frames is a pretty obvious solution, the shield solutions are also very intuitive, if you’re trying to block the attack and running out of stamina, increasing your shield stability is the clear solution. This is the boss that is meant to be the ultimate test of your game knowledge and ability, so it is entirely reasonable for the game to ask you to problem solve, it’s an unusual attack, but that’s entirely the point, you’re given a plethora of tools that you can chose to use to overcome it
Also literally everybody can heal / inflict status through shields, even you as a player can use attacks that heal yourself to heal through shields, it’s very much established as a mechanic
Also if you needed a simple quest log, using an example you gave “ranni needs you to find the Maguffin” why not write that on a piece of paper, or the notes app everyone has on their phone these days. Part of what fromsoftware’s “obtuse” game design hopes to achieve is a sense of a real world, it’s not supposed to feel super video game-y, in real life, if you find someone who asks you to complete a task, you don’t have a quest log, you can either remember it or write it down, I’m fairly certain this is what they hoped to achieve when designing the quests for games like dark souls and Elden ring, a quest log feels insanely artificial
(It is definitely not a 10, and sekiro and bloodborne are better than it, that I agree on, I just feel like a lot of the points in this video aren’t necessarily true, and if a game is going to be criticized it shouldn’t be done so sloppily)
The most accessible least accessible argument is also pretty stupid to me. Nobody is saying it’s the most accessible because they think it’s the easiest, easiest and most accessible are not the same thing, it’s accessible because there’s so much possibility for leaving and coming back stronger. On my first ever attempt at a play through of dark souls 3 I had never played a souls game before, I got to gundyr and got destroyed repeatedly and even though I liked the idea of the games a lot, I didn’t re rent it because I just didn’t get it and couldn’t beat the first boss, I ended up playing sekiro and that’s when the series clicked for me and I was able to go back and enjoy dark souls 3 and bloodborne fully, but it absolutely wasn’t accessible, it was an immediate wall. Elden ring gives you so much more content right off the bat, if I can’t beat the first boss there are like 100 other places I could be going to explore other things and I could them come back to Margit with far more experience and at a higher level. This is not something you can do with the first boss in dark souls 3, or even really in bloodborne with such a small (although great) first area
i sunk more than 3000 hours into dark souls 3 , bloodborne and sekiro alone , this is by far the most unfair bullcrap bosses i have encountered , its clearly balanced around you using summons which for a mele player like me is just not fun , not to mention the amount of time i was just wondering around on torrent not knowing where to go next , malenia is simply unbeatable no matter how good you are unless you use specific builds and summons .
that being said its hands down the best open world game ever made :D
So you make it harder for yourself by not summoning and saying its too hard without summons?
Also people beat malenia as a level1 wretch so it does matter how good you are.
Skill issue
My issues with Elden Ring started to become apparent as soon as I hit Liurnia. I thought it would be a crazy, wacky magic enhanced area with a big academy in the center.
Instead it's just Limgrave with some water in the middle. And an academy.
I'd been teleported to Caelid and I thought every area was gonna be different. I'd reached the Weeping Peninsula before and I thought "okay, just kind of Limgrave with rain. Fine. At least it's kind of different." Then it just... Wasn't.
So when I got to Liurnia my expectations were kind of.... Meh? I wanted something new, and instead I got more of the same. My disappointment then made me realize how poorly the dungeons and exploration was done. I hadn't even gotten past Liurnia before I'd just flat out stopped exploring and started just looking up where stuff that affected me was. Most of the dungeons had either crafting materials (which I never used, literally never crafted in this game), upgrade components (which I DID use, but I started using guides to find where the next component I needed were because the game is so inconsistent with where they put upgrade components), or a sorcery.
I went through the rest of the game with low expectations. Altus Plateau was just Limgrave but Pissier, Mt. Gelmir was neat but it's such a maze with such little content in it that it's not worth going to outside of the first experience, Leyndell was pretty cool but still soaked in ungodly amounts of PISS, and the mountains are unfathomably boring. Farum Azula was real neat conceptually, but I feel like it was really missing that.... That special spark. There are tornadoes everywhere and dragons, but everything still feels so static and bland. It's saved by Maliketh and the dragon being the coolest fucking bosses in the game. I absolutely LOVED those two. By the time I got to the Haligtree I was so pissed to see another Asylum Demon that I just raced through to Malenia, got her rune, and then moved on to finish the game.
I feel like this game was severely missing the love and misery. It felt like it was built on the idea of Demon's Souls Jank rather than the fun and frustration of learning and overcoming. They just wanted to Get One Over On You, rather than genuinely crafting a set of enemies and monsters to impose that dread and fear of walking into a new area. Especially when they just fucking plop the same enemies over and over again. The cool dog t-rexes felt real special to Caelid, and then I find them in the Mountains and at the Haligtree. Great. Cool. Obviously these games DO reuse enemies and scale them up to fight later, but they often feel like they fit together well. Elden Ring paints a story of different demigods and factions going to war, and then it ends up feeling like they're all just using the same monsters against each other. Kind of ruined the magic for me, and it made me feel like they really just didn't give a shit.
I dunno, those were my feelings. I'm glad that I'm not alone in my frustrations. I still enjoyed the game, but I'd probably rate is like a 6.5/10. It had more problems for me than it did positives, but the positives that are there are SO FUCKING GOOD. The character customization, the easy respecs, the availability of components to just pump a shit ton of weapons up so you can use anything you want. It's so GOOD. I respeced like six times just to play around with new shit as I was getting along in the game. I just wish the gameplay was better to complement that freedom.
I agree with most of the points you made in your video, but I honestly think the open world in a souls game takes away more than it adds. As you mentioned it is the most unbalanced game souls like game yet, some bosses are really easy then it suddenly gets hard and you got to run around looking for content. In other soulslike games, I felt the content was everywhere, but in this one, there is lots of content all hidden and so much time is wasted finding it. I do not agree on Elden ring being the least approachable game though, you can just go off and do shitty mini-bosses in a half assed made dungeons to get xp and come back.
The side levels are not half ass... they are side levels. There are barely any identical caves or catacombs.
What game has better side levels? Skyrims identical caves? Infintes identical banished bases? How about some dying light identical sewer levels?
Fuck for that matter those games main content is not as individual and well well made as the side levels here.
Have you found sofia river? Underground side cave that happens to strech under into another biome.
Yea bosses are repeated but arent there enough main bossrs and variances in the side bossrs to be acceptable? I think so. Those extra bosses are a bonus
Again please tell me who is doing side bosses better?
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Hey, I didn't notice your comment until now. Your argument is side levels are not half-ass because they are side levels. Implicitly stating that side content does not have to hold the same standards as the main game. I am talking about side content as a whole, not levels and indeed Skyrim does have better side content than Elden Ring. The dark brotherhood and thieves guild is completely optional side content that is engaging with varied gameplay. I found it much more fun than the main Skyrim story. The Witcher 3 had side content in the form of Gwent, this side content was so unanimously applauded that they developed two games that were based on it. I have 100% the Elden Ring and since you asked, I have seen Sodia River. I don't think more content in the form of extra bosses which give the game a longer playtime equates to a better game, less is more in this instance. You are entitled to your opinion, although, you suffer from a few logical fallacies. Have a good day!
@@Joker17407 nah bro dark brothrhood needs to be compared to volcano manor and other npc side quests.
Remember when you found an entire level behind daek brotherhood and had to kill a god... oh that didnt happen...
You compare the caves in elden ring to the caves in skyrim. Since it is their c and d tier content.
Skyrims caves are trash af
If you want to be honest the side questlines are trash to. Do 3 side missions and become the leader of a guild.
Elden rings npc quests are about as good except skyrims entire point is these kind of npc interactions and it has terrible combat
The witcher also has caves... which are basic as fuck
I have illogical fallacies yet your holding elden rings caves up to other games B and A tier content instead of comparing their c and d stuff.
Which is my point. As c and d content. The caves and catacombs are better
@@Joker17407 i see you didnt mention skryims side bosses... regular dude with good armor
@@Joker17407 and yes the side content does not have to be as good as main game.
Skryims b content is as good as its a content...
Because its a content is mediocre, not becssue the b content isnt
Blood build plus mimic tear equals easiest Fromsoft game ever
The most approachable Elden Ring review.
I disagree on something here: I don't feel it makes sense that these games are getting harder with each entry. One, you can only make a game so hard before you _have to_ resort to bullshit to go further - exhibit A, Elden Ring.
And two... why _does_ that make sense? Why _does_ each game have to get harder? I remember a time when difficulty was just a means to the ends of From's artistic vision, not half the darn main point of a game. And where does that leave people who _didn't_ play every entry since Demon's Souls on release over years and years?
"There are builds that are basically easy mo-" That's _not_ how that works. From fans can't just point to broken builds and say that every newcomer or less skilled player should just use those - that's not what build variety in a game is meant to be _for;_ in fact, that advice and statement goes directly against the intended point of build variety.
Bottom line - no, these games don't have to get harder and harder, and it doesn't simply "make sense". Longtime fans already do challenge runs for more difficulty anyway - or heck, include a hard mode, or maybe even a customizable challenge mode; the solution can't and shouldn't just be to raise the difficulty with each new game. It results in bullshit, inevitably, unavoidably - again, exhibit A.
i love the game but i wish it wasn't open world i'm sick of fighting the same boss again and exploring the same dungeon again
Exactly ! theres this HUGE open world but NO CONTENT. Its a legit copy and past every 10 feet
@Far Stox Repeated content and not enough quality content for its size.
Seethe and cope harder
2:34 how can you on one hand say you don’t know what they mean when they say it’s the most approachable.
But then say it’s objective lies?
Why don’t you actually read the articles in question, cite why they say it’s approachable and actually debunk those points.
This whole blurb is completely meaningless otherwise.
The overall arguments about difficulty seem to really boil down to “the game doesn’t cater to my arbitrary play style” and tbh I don’t think the game necessarily has to.
One might think that you should be able to choose any class play style etc and do well in all encounters but if that was really the intent why make these games where enemies have different weaknesses to different weapons and elements?
To me that implies the game wants you to engage in its various systems as tools to overcome these challenges, not to mindlessly cling to your favorite greatsword and bonk everything. Otherwise all those systems would be meaningless to the game as a whole.
Everything else you said was 100% subjective and was heavily lacking with tangible examples. Just a ton of assertions. Not to say there aren’t any nuggets of truth here and there in the vid. It just really comes across as highly opinionated and not enough objectivity to back it up
I'm not sure I would place Doom Eternal anywhere near a 10/10, but Elden Ring definitely is not at that level either. So much that needs to be addressed if they ever want to revisit this tired, rotting formula.
Nah doom sucks as well
I would say the game is approachable and also fairly easy until the endgame. Once you get yo malekith the difficulty spikes. So the game is approachable in the sense you can get overpowered to fight margit and godrick and rennala is a joke. Leyndall is a little more difficult but again you can level up through the open world making it doable and there is also the option to summon. I will say the game is too long and the boss difficulty spikes at malekith and that is when it's no longer "approachable" especially for new players. People who have played soulsborne games are more familiar with the challenge and grinding needed to beat some bosses but it got a little ridiculous at the end. Especially malenia...
One of the things that really angered me was the bad hitboxes. Why? I would do the bosses almost perfectly, but then I die because of the high damage and bad hitbox. Man if I don’t get hit by a specific spot of the weapon then it shouldn’t do as much damage.
Skill issue
Elden ring has best and most acurate hit boxes of all Fromsoftware games. So acurate you can just jump over some attacks
@@Atilakus You can duck under a ton of them as well. He's blaming his losses on really good hit boxes.
@@Atilakus ER has the same hitboxes of DS 3, but somehow less precise.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Nice completely missing the criticism. Get good at understanding and paying attention.
I agree with this whole assessment.
A very real problem I have with Elden Ring is there is HUGE pacing problem with the game and literally no place to just “Catch your Breath”.
After to beat Astel Naturalborn of the Void, I went to Aisnel or whatever it’s called and I go 5 feet and I get met with a dragon. No choice but to run passed it and save my runes by finding the next Grace.
Then I ran into these poisonous witches that came from underground and disappeared and dropped down on you and spewed poison AND THEN I ran into like 6 of those Crystaline enemies and THEN the RED WOLF FOR THE 4th TIME! Twice in a dungeon and Twice in an open world. That’s just beyond ridiculous.
The game is Really Good: 8-8.5/10 certainly not a perfect or even close to a 10 game.
The Cardinal Sin of ANY GAME is *Griefing the Playerbase*
Dude that section fucking tilted me. The 3 crystal guys was insanely annoying. Then the wolf jumping all over the place. I forgot about that part. The multiple dragons at once. The whole part with the dudes disappearing and pelting you with magic? Yeah that section was extremely frustrating.
25:56 I'm at this part as of right now and it's god awful, the ordovis mini boss fight is a double team with almost no openings and ai that has ridiculous precision attacks, having two difficult soulgames bosses in one arena should be illegal
As far as I can tell, from what I've seen - Lyndell-onward is where the difficulty starts to become artificial by virtue of cranked up damage inflation from enemies. It's hard to say which is worse between the bosses or the mobs, but both are definitely just awful. It makes that high Vigor investment feel like a sudden joke, and then there's the aggressive style of enemies vs your character's mobility. Bosses and a handful of enemies have the aggression and mobility of Bloodborne bosses but cranked up, while in comparison to you as a player, are rendered to the equivalent of a DS3 Fat-Roller. They really do drop the ball towards that latter end-game portion, and it's what is making me skeptical and uncertain for what they will do for DLC, the arbitrary damage inflation.
And as for all the marketing pushing for Multiplayer, it is abominable. For a series they are trying to push as it's own new IP, starting with the shitty DS3 summon restrictions is a god-awful start (Inactive Rune Arc/Great Runes, Halved and Rounded-Down Flasks, Brutal Scaling Down), honestly it feels like Bloodborne had some of the funner cooperation by virtue that there wasn't that obnoxious weapon grade restriction to also be a factor in multiplayer, which as we all know by now, reared in afterward onto DS3 and carried into DSR. By a very flawed, incompatible design and by the atrociously imbalanced design between Boss Aggression/Damage Inflation/Mobility vs Character Sluggish Pace, it's really making me worry about Elden Ring's longevity.
The illusion of playstyle choice goes out the window real quick when you consider the weaknesses of Faith and Strength builds, ironically Faith with the abysmal cast speeds, expensive FP costs, and weak total damage ratio to said FP cost - You're left vulnerable trying to cast them. Str builds with arbitrarily slow wind-ups that ultimately punish you after your attack with that window of vulnerability. If you're not running Sorcery or Arcane (Bleed specifically) builds by the end of the game, good luck.
I love this game, I do. But the critiques absolutely deserve to be echoed out, for FromSoft's own benefit.
Edit: By virtue of calling itself a new IP, then there's poise. Instead of Hyper Armor exclusively, it really should have been poise proper as in Dark Souls 1. Don't even get me started on the bullshit of how lightly clothed enemies have tank poise like Pages/High Pages and Raya Lucaria mages.
Malenia is pretty much a Sekiro boss placed in a Dark Souls game. While I love this game and it really is the best I've played in years, I have to agree with you. Elden Ring goes all in on the bullshit after the Royal Capital, and I stopped caring about beating bosses "legit".
I started ng+ but stopped because you're INSANELY op! Like I beat Stormveil without sitting at a site. So I rolled a new character. Even my second time through it really does still get frustrating. My second time through Sekiro was amazing. Once that game clicks it's so damn good. I honestly wish they just had tuned some of the more egregious bullshit down. It would not hurt the game at all. It's plenty challenging even without the teleporting Revenant bullshit
I have to disagree with having the most convoluted story, in fact besides sekiro it has the most straightforward and easy to understand plot. Same thing with difficulty, I do think that besides the few instances of cheap artificial difficulty ds3 and bloodborne are harder than elden ring. And yes the endgame is flawed, made to be frustrating just for the sake of it
There are times where I'll be progressing through an area and doing fine if not good and then I'll come across a new area or cave/tower where I just can't kill ANYTHING and start dying a lot again. It can get really frustrating to suddenly feel like I have zero grasp on the skills I've been using throughout the game.
i bought this 9 days ago and this was the first souls game i’ve really played. i absolutely fucking love it and already on NG+ with over 150 hours in it. so fun.
also malenia took 7 tries. i saw she was easy to stagger so if i put dps’d her i won. 😂
Yeah, I agree Elden Ring is one of my favorite games, my main issue is that way too many bosses have unending combos they can pull out of their butt any time they want.
Endurance both is needed and completely useless for lots of bosses because you need the endurance to dodge or block the unending chain but since its unending it won't matter how much endurance you have.
@@clintriggen3554 see i like that its difficult but also encourages players not to spam roll. i learned this the very hard way
good for you.
I think the approachability of Elden Ring is the fact that you can skip shit that's too hard and non story related. And you have so many low effort tools and ootions available to you which allows you to not have to learn enemy moves in order to beat them. When going melee then yeah, this game is fucking hard.
This sounds more like a salty rant than a review. I was thinking the same way on my first run but the more I replayed the game the more I learned on how the game expect me to play.
The game gives lots of options to overcome obstacles (not talking about summonings).
I didn't mind repeat bosses most of them are optionnal, give different rewards and have a different trick most of the time. I think repeat is forgivable in a game with an already large enemy variety and of that scale, imo.
Major bosses were good to me with no exceptions. F.e. : Godskin duo, just use sleeping pots on one and the fight gets way easier (don't be scared to use the options the game gives you). Malenia was for me one if not the best 1vs1 fights. It was so satisfying to beat her after so many tries learning the fight. Her waterfall dance is hard to deal with but has many possibilities to be avoided (there are multiple videos on youtube showing on this topic). Other than that she's fine. Yes, she's really hard but she's a super optionnal boss so, not a problem.
Players complain about the unfairness of ER bosses because of their unwillingness to learn these fights mechanics. Are these fights more unforgiving than previous titles? Yes, definitely. Are they unfair? No. Would people be able to beat these fights no hit, lvl1, no parry, solo, no ashes of war if those were unfair? I think not. Also, the game gives the player lots of tools to deal with every encounter (again not talking about spirit ashes). Why are player so unwilling to use jump and crafting? Those can save you in multiple situations. People say the game lacks innovation but at the same time refuse to use the new mechanics, odd.
It's always the same complains everytime From releases a new piece of content : First, it was Laurence, then, Nameless King, then, Friede, then, Midir, then, Demon of hatred. Now, these bosses are considered great despite being called trash when they got released.
Bosses in ER are great because they keep you on your toes even when you know the fights because they're designed to punish greed and panic rolls unlike most bosses in previous games. I like DS3 but despite having some of the best bosses in the series lots of them can be beaten with pure greed, even some late game bosses (which shouldn't be possible in this kind of game).
The honeymoon phase is now over and we entered the phase gets trashed by fans (who praise now games they used to trash, lol) over nitpicking. It'll be like that until From releases their next game and people start saying how much of a masterpiece ER was. It's always the same.
I agree with a lot of things said but I think this critique would have been better if it'd been released later , after more reflexion and cool down but it's just my opinion.
He started off okay then went straight to unreasonable
@@angrypenguin2039 Yes, guy deviated way too much by the end sounded so salty. I actually found the game ridicously easy once i figured it out. There is so many ways around bosses.
Out of the 100+ 'boss encounters', as in, named enemy with a health bar at the bottom, there's about 10 truly unique encounters. As in, you fight them once and never again. Funnily enough, 3 of the lore important bosses (Margit, Godrick, and Godfrey) have more than one iteration, with Margit having 3 total iterations. It'd be one thing if the cave/catacomb bosses were reused, but the major cutscene bosses? Come on, that's not cool.
Godskin Duo is an absolute dogshit fight. It seems akin to an O&S style fight, but instead of them being opposites, both Fat and Slim have crazy attack speeds, crazy range, and I *think* the hitbox for Fats rolling attack is much larger than it looks (a common theme with a lot of attacks), or medium rolling is just useless. That's not even getting into the fucking INPUT READING bosses do; boss finishes a combo and you're at a distance and need to take a sippy? Before your animation even starts, the boss is already doing a lunge, or in the case of Godskin Duo, lobbing fireballs at you. But that's an overall issue, not just for Godskin (can't count how many times the fucking Crucible Knight lunged 25 meters and either outright killed me or undid the healing I just drank).
Malenia is an issue because she's not balanced around every playstyle. A lot of videos you see of people beating her are using medium to fast attacking weapons (daggers, katanas, ect), usually with Frost and/or Bleed (like Let Me Solo Her). But go in with a Colossal weapon, and you're in for some hurt. Unless they fixed it in the recent 1.04 patch, while she is easily staggered by big weapons, her recovery time is bonkers; she can go from being staggered by a powerstanced Colossal Sword jumping attack into starting up Waterfowl Dance before you *can even recover from your own attack animation*. Or any attack for that matter. So if you're in melee range on startup, you're likely dead unless you know exactly how to dodge it, and having to *look up a video* on how to dodge it is not how bosses are supposed to work. Yes, she's an optional boss, but so is Nameless King (a boss I beat on NG+2 for the final ring I need for the achievement), so is Artorias (since it's DLC), and so is Sir Alonne (never fought him myself because DS2 DLC mobs are absolute ass, but again, he's DLC), and people loved those fights.
It FEELS like bosses are unfair because of how aggressive and fast they can be compared to the combat system you're given. As well, bosses can switch up which combo they're actually doing; take Margit for example. He can end his combo with a jump back while flinging a dagger or a slam. Or he can slam and THEN jump back while flinging a dagger. If you attacked after he did the slam and he decides to jump away, you're now punished for what you originally thought was a safe opening. Then there's the fact that bosses will often have 5+ hits to a combo and this is at the beginning of the game.
>but you can just go explore and come back
The first natural major boss players *should* run into is Margit, because that's where the grace is telling you to go. If the general consensus to beating him is 'come back OP', how is that right? Yeah, it will make the fight easier, but aside from pounding your head against a brick wall until you win (hurr git gud), if that's your only recourse, there's issues.
And the reason a lot of players don't jump or use crafting is because of the core gameplay style; it's just Dark Souls. Jumping was restricted to sprinting and outside of some niche situations, using throwables is damn near useless in previous Souls games. Yes, people have beaten the entire game using throwables, but that's just masochism. And again, with the input reading, using a throwable will likely just get you punished. "New" and neat mechanics, but if bosses are balanced around REQUIRING them, while never indicating you need to use them (since HOW you hold your weapon can determine if a jump actually dodges some attacks), that's an issue. Telling people 'just use sleep pots on Godskin duo lol ez' because that seems to be *the only strategy* is wrong.
With how aggressive bosses can be and how wild their attacks are, and with how much damage you take, it feels like the game was indeed balanced around using spirits. If the boss is on the spirit, you can heal or use items without worry. But then that can ruin the entire feel of beating it, especially from players who've beat the previous games without summoning at all. You said yourself that people "refuse to use the new mechanics", but according to interviews, it sounded like Miyazaki INTENDED to balance it that way. And again, Souls veterans like taking on bosses 1v1, but being put at such a severe disadvantage because you're not using the INTENDED spirit summoning that the game is balanced around (and note, this is still the same exact gameplay system players have been using since Demon's Souls), there's an issue. Yes, people have already done RL1 runs, no hit runs, meticulous challenge runs. Have you? Does the average Joe with a 40 hour work week that also needs to take care of a house and/or family have that time, energy, focus, and/or patience? Just because some RUclipsrs and streamers have doesn't mean everyone has and that it's "easy". It just means they've spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours already playing ER. I currently have 120 hours played since launch. That's roughly 2 hours per day, though most of that was the week after it came out since I had vacation time.
ER is most definitely not the 10/10 people claim it is, because if it was, there wouldn't be such a divide. I suggest watching ruclips.net/video/nEyjdc-DIb8/видео.html if you want a more thorough and focused, though longer, look at the game. Because the title says it all; ER is a shattered masterpiece.
@@Dimumouto Major bosses with a reuse is justified by the lore : Godfrey is a spirit like monk in Sekiro and Margit and Morgott are the same person (Margit is a projection of Morgott hunting Tarnished) and their movesets are very different. Godrick is the only offender.
If she's unbalanced for some playstyles, how come there are so many videos with players beating her with all kinds of builds, no damage and lvl1? Funly enough Nameless King was considered a trash boss when DS3 launched. Same with Friede and Midir. As time went on, people understood how those fights worked and now these fights are praised by the community. It'll be the same with ER bosses. By the day more and more players are praising these bosses because they start to get used their mechanics.
Fasts attacks aren't unfair if their dodgeable. The only difference is that bosses can mix their moves unlike previous games. This keeps players on their toes because opening are not always safe. But it's not hard to deal with.
Margit's hp and damage is a big enough hint that you're too early for that part of the game. The difference is that ER gives you other options to get prepared for the Castle wich is the hardest part of Limgrave. The grace indicates the main road but it doesn't forbid you to explore the rest of the world (it's there for a reason). The problem with ER is that players play it like previous games and want to go from point A to point B. But this game isn't designed to be played that way.
I never felt I "needed" these new tools to beat theses bosses since I ignored them on my first playthrough. They are a welcome option but at no point I felt the game was forcing me to use them. Now they make some fights easier but it's up to you to decide if you want to use them.
Spirit summon isn't the only reason the game is balanced the way it is. It's also because players can get very OP considering the amount of content the game offers. You can roll on endgame stuff without spirits.
Don't give me the classic no time excuse, many players can beat these game despite these restrictions (me included). It's a matter of perseverance and will.
No game is a 10/10 and ER isn't different. 10/10 doesn't mean flawless it reflects the player's personnal experience. I've always thought that scores were pointless and not to be taken seriously.
Think story wise all fromsofts games have same story structure: some godlike element beyond human understanding enforcing their will on world (changing eras in dark souls, outer will in elden ring, dragon in sekiro and the lovecraft stuff in bloodborne) someone trying to change things for better kickstarting current story (gwyn marika that guy who started the healing church) and similar boss structure before we gather deus ex thingy to make things better leading to final bosstrying to stop us leaving us to impose our will on world order after defeat. Only game that tried to deepen story wasrk souls 2, but miyazaki likes the same thing made more obscure over time, broblem whit that is when it comes too obscure its ever more obvious the plot structure is the same and more obscure it is less originality there is. Thats my read into fromsofts stories otherwise largly agree whit your take.
I agree that Elden Ring is not a 10/10, but I don't fully agree with why. Some stuff I'm with you on, the performance issues for sure. Repeated fights with bosses gets old, even if they were good fights. Those haphazard duo fights are just obnoxious, only one actually felt interesting to me (being a twin watchdog fight in a catacomb). Malenia is a complete stain on the boss roster. That said there are some things that I don't agree with you on, either fully or partially (mostly partially)
I don't agree with your take on the story, I feel like it was about as understandable as any other souls game at first play through. I was confused but I got a general gist as to what was going on. Perhaps the sheer length of the game and natural gaps between the major points was the cause, making it easy to forget stuff? That would make enough sense to me, I was able to keep track of it myself, but I could understand that point.
For the boss designs I see the issue less with the attack delays themselves, but the amount and variance of delayed attacks a boss has in their kit. Even more than that however is the issue I have with bosses mixing their patterns to react to you. On paper that sounds awesome, but in execution it can end up with bosses giving you extremely little time to breathe or just being too hard to reasonably read. It sways the balance more in their favor in a way that I don't like. I love me some hard souls bosses like Orphan or Ludwig, but some of those insane combos from Malenia and her quick reads on your inputs is just not fun to deal with, its too oppressive to feel enjoyable, and that's what is most crucial. Funny enough I think this issue has come from Sekiro with how the bosses in that game functioned, though the key difference here is you don't have the tools you did in Sekiro to actually make it manageable.
Finally as for the approachability and difficulty, I think Elden Ring can be the easiest, or it can be the hardest. One part is the open world giving you the freedom to decide to turn around and try something else and come back later (though this leads to an issue of accidentally over-leveling yourself). Another is the spirit summons, giving you an easy way to split aggro while also not increasing the boss HP total like in other games, making for a much easier fight when using them. Both of which is probably the root of "the most approachable souls game" claim (minus Malenia). However if you approach this game like past games, without summons, I agree it is one of if not the hardest in the series (in a good way or a bad way, that's up for debate).
Elden ring is not being called a masterpiece for being perfect, but for the absurd impact it had on the gaming world. Most people recognize that the game has flaws.
Which impact?
@James It's not even that great, tbh. This game would've been much better if it was linear like DS3, but bigger
This is such a BS explanation. If that were the case, games.like The Last Guardian would have scored perfect for having such an impact on some of the most impressive AI in gaming along with good physics and animation. But no, it received average scores from reviewers. The same things that got marked off for that game, people gave a pass to with Elden Ring. It was being compared to Zelda BotW, but the world felt so lifeless with static enemies, static environment, and lifeless NPC.
Yes most approachable (I know what it means), you have more tools to beat your foes in Elden Ring than ever before, the spirit ashes alone makes it more approachable. If you don't use those tools and it's just you and your weapons yes it's harder but that is a personal choice as to what you use to play that is available in the game. End game is a bit rough on the difficulty I will admit
10/10 doesn't mean it's perfect... it means it does MOST things correctly which makes it a game absolutely amazing for what it is because there's nothing called a "perfect game" objectively. Of course it has flaws BUT the flaws sometimes don't affect the whole game experience overall that's why people say it's a 10/10 and you can't deny it has done a LOT of things VERY amazingly but of course like every game ever made, not everything is perfect
-I do agree that that the one-shot stuffs are quite frustrating in the end game but keep in mind that the game didn't design to be beaten first try. Dying to the surprise trap, boss, makes you know that you should stay away from those.
-For Malenia case, I do agree that the move should be design for the player to figure how to deal with it by themselves. Still, she is an optional boss. You don't need to beat her. She provides the challenge for those who seeks for challenge. You can, choose not to fight her, or trial-and-error by yourself, or of course, ask the internet how to deal with her. It's totally up to you. There are various creative ways people came up with to beat her using the tools that the game provided and they're pretty amazing.
To be, no. To be able to, yes. Most of the traps and boss strategies had telegraphs that, if you were paying attention, you could generally properly prepare for well enough to overcome them if you had paid enough attention and thought it through. Adequate patience and discipline could get you through most things on the first go.
Elden Ring is probably the most overrated game of the decade, its simply amazing the quantity of ppl stating "ER is peak in gaming"
As someone who only played Demon's Souls back in the day I only had limited experience going into Elden Ring. I love this game I have 185 hours in it and I'm almost thru my 4th playthru. But I agree this game has some flaws. Malenia is one of those fights you're almost forced to use BStep to guard that Waterfowl Dance for example I don't think that should be a feature of the bosses
Not some flaws, too many flaws
elden beast fight should have let you use torrent to end the game
Uhh the delayed attacks were a Dark Souls 3 thing, Dark Souls 2 has pretty much normal timings, people just forget AGL is a thing in that game and forget to upgrade their roll-frames. No boss in Dark souls 2 pulls the stupid shit like holding a swing back for 3 whole seconds only to follow it up with 2 super fast strikes right after.
Fume knight, blue reskin smelter has diffent timings (particularly delayed ones), sir alone, 🔔 knight has delayed attacks, pursuers does as well depending on the encounter and ng cycle, etcetera
@@danielnolan8848 Yes except those are all well telegraphed and always play in the same tune. It's 2 fast attacks followed by a slow one. Or it's a single slow attack.
It's not a 7 attack combo with mixed timings where almost every roll has it's own rythm. Nevermind that Elden Ring is full of fast attacks you can't even dodge cause they hit twice in succession to catch you regardless.
In any case, I think FROM should take their time and play a bit more Monster Hunter to improve their combat in the future cause if this is how they will be upping the difficulty every installment I think ER might be my last game.
@@echoq7594 Monster Hunter Iceborne and Rise postgame has the same problem. As for for do bosses attack less in 2, sure stamina costs are much higher so I don't see the point. My point is that Fromsoft relying on delayed attacks to roll catch was annoying back in DS2 especially with moddifed/reused bosses, it wasn't AS long, but a roll catch is a roll catch. The long attack anime attack combos with filler arcs was more a bloodborne and sekiro thing then anything dark souls
@@danielnolan8848 I dunno, it never felt bad or oppresive to me in DkS2 and I've basically beaten that game with just the basic ass knife now, the most major examples of delays and swift attacks being mixed together for me is Pontiff and Dancer in DkS3, Nameless King too.
and yeah I'm aware, I havent played Bloodborne myself but I have watched playthroughs and a lot of the bosses do what I've affectionaly named the "Bloodborne flurry" attack, which unfortunately made it into DkS3 and onwards despite the combat not being exactly the same.
@@echoq7594 i certainly felt it, and remember alot of people complained that the timings on blue smelter were cheep especially after the gank fest to get to it. Similar complaints to sir alone. The combos being shorter is rather irrelevant given you get more rolls for ds3 and stamina can generally* be regend faster. For the amount of stamina DS2 gives you, I honestly find the shorter but still long combos worse to deal with, but that's rather hard to quantify. I just remember being out of stamina alot against fume, so i don't realy think stamina drain combos are unique to DS3
The reviewers of ELDEN RING did not beat the game before they praised the game with tens. I know this since most reviews never talked about late-game/end-game areas and I know critics did not have the time to beat a 100-hour game and release a full review in a couple of days. It really shows how critics rush video games to pump reviews as fast as possible before their competitors beat them to it.
Like you said; the first half of this game was great, but later the game is flooded with one-shot enemies, AOE attacks, unfair level design, and hard-to-follow questlines. I had to use a guide for ELDEN RING, and I didn't do that for DARK SOULS 3. I know people will tell me to "get good" but I really want you to think about this. Is the God-skin duo really a fair fight compared to Ornstein and Smough?, is one shot AOE damage from Fire Giant fair?, are Elden Beast tracking ball of light and Melania's air spam sword attack dodgeable?.
The game isn't bad, it's amazing, but it's not a 10/10 masterpiece.
A. both attacks from malenia and elden beast ARE in fact very much so dodgeable just not in the conventional way you may be used to. Waterfowl dance is probably the only example of a very unfair attack, as for a melee player you'd need frame perfect dodges to dodge the first 2 frenzy attacks while a ranged player can outsprint them. Fallen stars is super simple and easy to dodge tho
B. I really question the idea of unfair level design here, as levels like haligtree were one of the best souls levels i have ever played. the enemies all felt dodgable, there was cover when i needed cover, if i wanted to i could plan out skipping routes, ganks hardly came out of nowhere and even if they did all ganks could be worked around with throwing knives that you can craft on the fly. if anything, the double mages in front of loretta are the "least" fun point mainly because cannon of haima and hammer of haima have Knockback and you fight them on a really narrow bride, me no likey.
Is it possible that reviewers would dislike these areas more? sure i cant argue against that, but there is not a major design flaw with most of these. Farum Azula for example is actually a very beautiful area and while it uses very annoying enemies, all encounters here are very very doable and they try to continuesly keep a player on edge without making the area unfair.
I also really like that you bring up godskin duo, because godskin duo is actually as fair as ornstein and smough, just in a time where the game got overall faster. You have one aggressive combo heavy melee enemy, the godskin noble and one more midrange centric enemy the godskin apostle, while providing pillars to seperate them. The lunge attacks and the roll attack of noble further provide a good way to seperate them and pillars are amazing at seperating aggro. Are they a better boss than ornstein and smough? probably not, but they are definitely not a bad fight and definitely a fair fight.
Also i am kinda ??? on what oneshots you in the fire giant fight? by the time you reach here you surely reached atleast 40 vigor unless you skipped all optional content whatsoever and all of his attacks are massively telegraphed. sure he has his massive bonk attack, but he shows that very early on giving you major warnings that something hurting is coming and the attack doesnt even hit you if you are already at his feet. ofc the fight suffers from a feet centered camera disallowing the player from seeing what the main body is doing, atleast partially, but lets not pretend any other souls game did this any better.
For questlines the one thing you really missed is, that questlines in Elden Ring hardly ever fail. So while in dark souls 3 you'd need a guide to find out when you need to avoid doing smth or do smth to continue a quest or not fail it and if you didnt know you had to do it before you fight a boss the quest is gone, in elden ring almost all side quests, with a few exceptions, can be done at any given point and almost no quest has any failure conditions. this means that even if you MISSED content, you can, before going to ng+, discover it and continue it yourself. I'd even argue that questlines like that from sellen or rannis questline are WAY better made than previous souls questlines, as the npc give you actual hints or even tell you where to go, or give key items with descriptions that lead you somewhere.
@Ankastra Wow, I didn't think I would get such a thoughtful response; I agree with almost everything you said here.
1. The "air spam sword attack" was the Waterfowl move, I didn't know the name of it when I wrote that comment. The "light tracking ball" from Elden Beast is the Chasing Stars move.
In these attacks, you have to pre-prepare for the event. The Waterfowl move is a great example. If you attack Melania and she responds with the Waterfowl move; unless you have the Bloodhound Step, 9 out of 10 you're going to get hit by a string of attacks. Elden Beast's Chasing Star move I have no idea how to dodge it, the only way I saw people do it was to use the Bloodhound Step ash of war.
2. What one-shot me in the Fire Giant fight was the move in which he sets the floor on fire, I understand how it works now so it doesn't bother me anymore.
3. After thinking about the "unfair level design comment" I should have specified, (Lake of Rot, Path to the Haligtree, And Subterranean Shunning Grounds) To me were unenjoyable. The scarlet rot poison swamp that Hidetaka Miyazaki couldn’t help himself to plant in The Lake of Rot and Elphael was annoying; especially the damage you got from the Lake of Rot. Subterranean Shunning Grounds is a place I never want to be in again, some players like the maze and identical hallways for some reason, I will never understand those masochists. And lastly, the Path to the Haligtree just seems so unfinished, most of the area is downright empty and the areas where the point of interest is, have already been seen in other areas.
At this point, I'm pretty much being salty. Most of the game is amazing and I do have a more positive look on ELDEN RING after reading your reply. You changed my mind on this, happy you wrote it.
(edit spacing)
DS3 is definitely not harder than Bloodborne.
Jesus Christ, I HATED the camera in this game. I think I spent more time fighting the camera than fighting the cheap-ass endgame bosses. Can someone show From how cameras work, please? How they're supposed to zoom OUT when a boss takes up the entire fucking screen? So you can fucking see?
"Souls games have no story" by someone who didn't pay attention and who thinks Elden Ring is too hard.
I have played and finished DS1, DS2, DS3 and Bloodborne, I am in the process of completing this game, but honestly it has alot of parts that are just copy paste or badly designed or both.
And the old trick of gank squad+super enemy with tornado attack combo is feeling super cheap and old.
I really love this game but sadly it is going to be downhill from now on, Millenia,The Cleric Best and the Elden Beast really made me hate the game and I don't even want to beat them, they are honestly the cheapest enemies in the series and FS thinks they are the best so more Millenia in the future.
I love everything except boss and enemy design, bosses fall off most of the time and enemies feels to powerful to be fodder and to weak to warrant bosses yet they port some bosses to enemies and basic enemies to bosses.
Every duo battle sucked, no exceptions
Open world wasn't the best either, probably the reason why you have to fight every boss 5 times
yeah duo boss fight kinda suck but at least they still gives you some reward tough like duo crusible knight gives you full set crusible armor & sword
Skill issue
I am kinda really conflicted on the statement about duo bosses here. obviously, your opinion, fair, but they dont suck from a design standpoint. The Godskin duo for example with its pillars creates a good arena for kiting and seperating the godskin apostle from the godskin noble and their attack pattern synchs nicely, as in one of them is fairly melee centered wanting to hit combos with its rapier and rolling in, while the other has an array of midrange attacks.
Surely the dungeon fights are hit and miss, double gargoyles are just whatever, Crucible knights are love them or hate them, but none of these are aggregious bad design. and while i would put none of them on the level of Fridas second phase, Godskin duo is definitely designed to the same extent as Ornstein and Smough.
For Boss and Enemy design i gotta say, i dont see a single fault at it here. Enemies both have standard types you'd expact and really fucked up creatures. they have different weakspots creating different ways to dodge and beat enemy types, from giants to crabs to those slug things. Sure in some dungeons they repeat enemies, but in a game that already vastly has more enemy variety than previous souls games AND that is open world AND bigger, the enemy variety is massive. i think when people have this thought they never think about comparing it to other open world games, that reuse enemies way way more, like breath of the wild or witcher 3. Same goes for bosses, where the game has 83 bosses, around 50 bosses are unique here. this is a massive amount of unique bosses. Some bosses, like crucible knight, showing up early only to become elite mobs later, is also not laziness, but by design, as it gives players a way to prepare for encounters later in the game. It uses an enemy they designed to be more challenging in a setting where he becomes a boss, knowing that later on you'd vastly outlevel him.
The open world is also actually really really good, not only does each dungeon have its own small gimmick, but there is a constant swarm of things to go for. And the key importance here is that the open world itself replaces "farming". in open world games you often will have situations where smth is too strong and you go farming, in rpgs ofc. In Elden ring you never really have to go farming, as exploring the world replaces this and also allows you to seemlessly adjust the difficulty by exploring the world. Add to that that dungeons have a vast array of difficulties, hero graves have actual really interesting puzzles and some dungeon entrances suddenly lead to massive underground areas, each dungeon feels like it has smth new. Reusing some things is NORMAL in open world games and was accepted in other open world games too, but the dungeons have alot of variety with mechanics (like the PT Mechanic dungeons) that they are all interesting and worth pursuing.
@@Ankastraa if someone complains about boss design, it's usually because they had a hard time, there was no fight in the game that was unfun to me
@@BBBerti tbf i can totally see some of the reused bosses or double crucible knight not being fun, but i agree that all of the 50 unique bosses are super fun
Elden ring is the easiest souls games
Because if you’re stuck somewhere you can explore elsewhere else instead of beating your head against the same wall
This is my first experience of a From Softworks game. its really fun, but I wish there was a quest log, I keep getting locked out of quests because I don't go in the right direction right away.
Elden ring isn't the most approachable souls game? That's funny because my girlfriend and countless friends that could never get into souls games actually play elden ring regularly and a few have completed the game. The spirit summons and op magic make it the most approachable game yet by far.
#ApproachableEldenRing
I've played Dark Souls and a friend of mine didn't. Both of us have a blast exploring the world and follow some of the quests, while others feel very random. You can play without a guide, but may miss some portion of the game, which you could in any Souls game, I presume. But would you want to replay >100h of game, just to look more carefully? I just started a new playthrough after finding the fire giant, because there was so much I learned I've overlooked.
The open world is a bad medium to guide you. You may even overlook parts of a legacy dungeon -- I certainly did!
Torrent also allows you to reach or skip places where enemies are usually gatekeeping in other games.
Still, you can have more fun in the open world and its hidden corners than getting stuck in the Undead Burg and the Taurus Demon 😈
ER ist way harder than DS, but it let's you go places and hone your skills on easier Bosses before returning to Margit.
That was our experience.
(Still far away from the endgame, but the mountaintop of giants had a sudden difficulty increase, where the first enemy felt like a mini-boss.... That was *meh*)
I'll get it on sale for 15 bucks, like I did with every Souls game. Much less frustrating when it didn't cost half a weeks rent.
great review. I actually agreee. Didnt enjoy the story. Game had weird dificulty spikes at times. sometimes it is just frustrating in order to be frustrating, It reuses some bosses too often and yeah. I disagree about legacy dungeons tho. I think they were mixed well. Hands down: I only played Elden Ring because of the open world, as I love a great open world. But I sooo wished for a basic quest log. No location pointers but hell I forgot what NPC X said 20h ago when I talked to her...
Some thoughts as someone for whom Elden Ring was his first Souls game, and has since completed it twice and am very casually playing through for a 3rd time
1) As a Souls vet, I deeply appreciate your insight. I haven't played the other ones so I always assumed the way Elden Ring does things was the way other Souls games did them. Reviewers such as yourself and Joseph Anderson I've found have provided excellent windows of insight for me into how untrue this is. Thank you for this video!
2) I approached this game like an MMORPG rather than a Souls game (since I had never played one before, and since this game reminded me a great deal of Everquest) and I personally found this way of play extremely effective. So much so that, outside of Melania and Radagon/Elden Beast, I really didn't struggle with much with them. If Elden Ring is the most difficult of the Souls games, then I'm hopful for my playthroughs of the other games!
3) Agree with the points about the story and questing, and thought this was a shame. I really liked the setting and the characters/quests in this game.
Good review, thank you for posting!
Elden Ring is... odd. It's simultaneously the easiest and hardest. The hardest fights top those of other games but the vast majority of others are a complete joke. Either they are pretty easy, or by the time you find them you'll be so overleveled they're a joke. There's so many op items and builds that just shit on most enemies and bosses. Other Fromsoft games don't have this, so just keep mind if a boss is hard in Dark Souls, you have to overcome them as they are, there is no overleveling or OP gear (at least early on). Trust me, I've gone back to Dark Souls 3 and been getting my ass beat lol
@@sparkyspinz9897 that's a good way of putting it. Some areas and enemies were fine if not challenging but then I got to Castle Sol and what was that absolute bullshit?
Or like the video referenced, the stupid duo Pumpkin head fight, or even the grafted scion fight in that tiny room. Take even Leyendell; that area was challenging but a blast and I felt like I was at a very good level for the area. But then you have the sewer area - and design wise, I LOVED it. The enemies? Not so much. Granted, they are pretty decently spaced out but the absolute damage and health of those omen are insane. Even the basic imps that we've been seeing since Limgrave hit like dump trucks.
I typically always follow a guide so I'm coming at it with a different perspective, however, I can only imagine how much more difficult the game would have been had I gone in blind.
The amount of people that complain about no quest log in game is staggering. Here's an idea, instead of complaining, make your own irl quest log. Gasp 😱
Also helps to actually pay attention while you play, unless you just have a garbage memory
The game play
The cheesy boss fights
The summons
The catacombs are stupid for the most point
The grind of having to fight cheap enemy attacks
The camera will fudge you at anytime
Zero punishment for the bosses when they miss cause they’ll just spam 5 attacks at once giving you zero time to get a hit in “ sucks for close combat “
Why do you need to fight 2 tree sentinel ?
The hands sucks
This game didn’t become fun for me until my friends dropped me end game loot.
Progression felt like a chore rather than being fun
Open world with zero lore or nobody to really talk to who doesn’t want to end you for the most part.
Reused bosses
This game have 80% useless items .
This game isn’t balanced and I wouldn’t recommend it for first time souls players. This game is fun when you grind super heavy and get op. But it’s not fun when you’re low level
10/10 does not mean perfect. It simply means highest rating you can give.
God of war 2018 is not perfect but no one really had a problem with 10/10 rating, including myself.
Elden ring is 10/10 for me. I understand wholeheartedly why someone would not like it.
I have no idea what he's talking about half the time. I've beaten the game a few times. NG+4 and felt it was getting too easy. I started a complete fresh build about 2 weeks ago. No summons. No spirit ashes. No bleed build. Just faith and strength. Beat the game in 21 ish hours. The game isn't that hard and it's completely depending on the player's ability to overcome the challenge. You getting one shot seems a bit strange, I've been able to survive quite a bit of attacks even in late game areas.
The NG+ cycles are WAY too easy. THATS what I'm talking about. The game is badly balanced in many spots. I literally beat Stormveil and The Academy without sitting at a site of grace because you're monstrously over leveled by NG +1 to the point it's not even fun. I have another video going into better detail about this very thing. The problem is it's far too easy to either be under or over levelled in this game. My first time through the game I beat it at like level 98. Stormveil at about level 20. Melania at about level 75. My second playthrough I cleared the whole map and ended up massively over leveled to the point the game is far too easy. The only thing that could kill me were the spots where the game goes overboard because the player is so damn OP. You're so OP bosses need to have constant attacks to even touch you.
Watch the other video. It'll make the argument that Souls works best when it is not open world. You almost cannot end up over leveled in DS or Bloodborne. You'll fight Laurence or Orphan at basically the level the devs intended. You'll fight Nameless or Gael at basically the level the devs intended.
Here you might fight Melania at level 70ish like my first playthrough or level 130 like my second playthrough. The core of the game just does not work as well in an open world design where theres no way to know how powerful a player willbe at any given time.
@@PlinyTheWelder I understand what you're saying but read the end of my original comment. The game is balanced but it just depends on the player. A fresh build with absolutely zero assistance and zero cheese and I beat in in 21 hours. The game is completely doable. It just expects the player to take the time and learn it's systems. I'm completely against summons as it makes the fights absolutely a cake walk. The only boss that gave me a crazy tough time was Morgott. I feel overwhelmed by his speed but got the hang of his moveset after a few tries. This game isn't perfect it's pretty solid but it could use some more consistency in it's content. Limgrave and Liurnia felt fresh and there was plenty to discover. The end felt like a boss rush but nonetheless I enjoyed the bosses in the endgame. I loved playing Elden Ring on launch. The servers were down on Xbox for the first 2 days, my friend and I played side by side and shared our discoveries with each other and it was extremely enjoyable. Also the capital was a highlight too.
If you don’t like trial and error.. why are you even playing a fromsoftware game
Half of your knowledge comes from dying.
Sometimes I’ll die and notice a path of something else I didn’t notice the first other times.
Hell just think outside the box half the time and you’ll get what you need
obviously, no game is 10/10, and I haven't heard 1 person say elden ring is 10/10. anybody who says a game is 10/10 simply isn't being honest with themselves.
The only other game of this series that I've played is Sekiro. That game was hard cause u HAD to get good to progress. With elden ring all u have to do to progress is go someplace else......take time to get stronger, then come back and beat them down. I don't see how that's hard.
I will disagree with what you said at the start, There's no way DS3 is even close to as difficulty as Bloodborne is, and i played all DS series tens of times before i got the chance to play BB, was already good at the game, but it's just different in terms of difficulty, bosses and mobs especially, deal so much dmg, have huge attack chains that can true combo you to death, and sekiro, while yes it has a higher skill floor, once you get the hang of it, it's easier than DS3 or BB (but not easier than DS1 or DS2)
Elden Ring is both the easiest game in the series, and the hardest, if you play full melee, no bufs, nu spirits or summons, no magic or ranged, no buffs or flask of phisick, then yeah, definitely harder.
If you use all tools in elden ring and also explore an area fully before you move onto the next, it's basically easier than DS1 or Demon Souls, it's not even a Soulslike game if you use all the tools it gives you, it's garbage easy.
People complain about Malenia's waterfowl dance, sure, hard to dodge, but you can use Bloodhound step to get away, you can use a frost pot and it cancels the attack, or you can use barricade shield to completely ignore the dmg of the dance (although she will still heal) so yea, Malenia is the hardest Souls boss, IFFF you don't use the tools they gave you, if you do, then it's a medium difficulty boss at best and this is why i kinda gave the game 8 out of 10 (among other issues) they kinda betrayed their whole mentality around what these games should be, by practically implementing easy and very easy difficulties.
The bloodborne base game is much easier than DS3 for me. DLC, on the other hand, is probably the most difficult. Sekiro took over among all of them.
The entire section about difficulty can be summed up by "you failed the vigor check". Every single complaint you had stems from the fact you didn't level vigor. The game never tells you but you should have 20 Vig early game 40 vig mid game and 60 vig late game. Having any less when you hit these points is why you felt the massive difficulty spikes. Seeing that tiny HP bar when you were in the haligtree I knew exactly where this video was going from that point.
For a game that is supposed to have build variety, being forced to max level vigor because of artificial difficulty is really lame.
@@RektorNation you are forced to do this in literally every single other souls game to survive. Just not as much. Plus ER has easier ways to get runes since it's bigger and has more enemies/bosses
I dont know why the player character exists in the game... like am i suppose to claim the elden ring if its even a thing. Why do i care that everything fell to shit. Where am i suppose to go to accomplish anything...