Elden Ring

> Radahn

I think he is going to be the main boss with the most divided fanbases. On one hand, despite his massive size, he has unreasonable tracking distance and bullshit patterns solely designed to kill the up-close melee builds. There are some players who actually nailed down no-damage/solo Radahn, but I think, for most people, it's not gonna be a fun battle to solo-run unless they are overleveled.

On the other hand, he has the greatest lore out of all demi-gods so far, the phase transition is jaw-dropping and the concept of summoning an infinite amount NPC to engage the battlefield is a unique way of FROM a making memorable boss fight instead of using the stale gimmick over and over. In fact, I must say that the three rune-bearer bosses I fought have some neat gameplay mechanics tied to them, and I felt like FROM actually cared about "memorable" encounters with the bigger bosses. Something that we could have in Demon's Souls, but more engaging and difficult.

>builds

As a classic RPG standard, it makes sense that some encounter is unreasonably hard to deal with certain builds. You have made a choice to make that build, and therefore the world is reacting to you positively or negatively. After all, old crpgs punished players by making players can't make certain choices as a long-term consequence of the mistakes made a long time ago, such as leveling up wrong stats or poor choice on the quest lines.
The problem is that this game is an action game at the baseline, and the enemy-pattern-study and positioning was the strongest part of the series even with the basic combat system. And from what I've experienced, aside from bow-builds (Sorry, birdman) all build in souls series had an opportunity to see and defeat everything with the knowledge about the real-time actions you could make. That's why the souls series has been -despite some issues- always satisfying as action games. In Elden Ring, since the unique enemies are extremely difficult unless you specialized in certain builds, I can see that people feel frustrated about Elden Ring's approach.

I'm trying to fight Malenia, the valkyrie boss from every Elden Ring advertisement. I can't see how to beat this boss unless you leveled up your stamina to maximum and fully upgraded a big beefy shield. Of course, I'll find a way to beat this boss with my mage-knight build, but I'm sure it's gonna be kinda luck-based, unlike the older "hard" bosses like Friede which can be dealt with consistently.

> (Sorry, birdman)
I'm going to kill everything in this game with the bow now.

A lot further in, still confused about the title. On the one hand I'm loving it, on the other there's just constant frustrations. Exploration is a joy, but you're constantly stonewalled by encounters that see you deal 0.00001% damage per hit. Upgrading is a lot more simple now, but stones are super rare and expensive, meaning you'll generally only have 1 weapon leveled. Damagevalues are very high and often %based, meaning you'll never really tank hits. The world is filled with content, but after 20 or so hours every side dungeon just blends together.

I find it really hard to generate an opinion on the game as a result.

When things align and I'm doing fun fights, it's great and exploring is a blast too. But it often is a game that also shits itself.

For the combat, I think they added such monsterous tracking to have enemies by default be able to deal with your horse, I think. Not sure.

>find it hard ton generate an opinion
I’m completely in the same boat in a lot of ways.

As much as I hate open worlds, this one is a joy to explore and find things in. Combing over the map and seeing what I can find(not just items, but general encounters) is so enjoyable. I also love how game-y the whole thing is: no main character talking every 5 seconds, no waypoints, just you and the ability to find shit. It’s great.

On the other hand, it’s time for me to just come to a sad realization: I’m beyond sick of this combat. From Soft has more or less been pulling the same tricks and using the same mechanics since 2009, and in ways it’s actually become worse with how much they try to make the recent games action titles without the depth and variance to back it up. Adding in some special attacks doesn’t change the fact that most fights play out the same way: approach target, learn their moves, smack them in between openings.

This isn’t so bad when fighting normal enemies, at least then I can reliably use magic, backstabs, charged heavy attacks, etc. But then there’s the bosses, which are just fucking exhausting. Judging by what I’ve read and seen I’m only about 30% through the game(if that) and I don’t know how long I can last because of these bosses. Every single one goes the same way, like I said before. You go in, lock on and have them eat the camera, try to block their attacks before the last attack of their string inevitably breaks your guard, try to dodge attacks before you realize it’s yet another enemy with delays on their overhead sword slash/hammer strike, and then die before you have a grasp on the moves. But then you die a few more times, learn the moves, and most importantly, learn when to roll, and then you eventually win by restraining yourself from unleashing too many attacks in a row. This is the same kind of design they’ve done since DS2 and I’m sick of it. Yes the bosses look amazing, but the fights themselves suck ass.

I saw a comment saying the tracking on the attacks sucks and needs to stop, which I fully agree with. It was met with a reply that read something like, “why do people complain about this? This has been happening since DS2, you should know it’s happening”. Nope. Not how this works. Just because shitty design keeps happening doesn’t make it suddenly excusable. The tracking isn’t really that different from Arkham style shit I hate so much when I think about it. Spacing becomes meaningless, and all attacks in the entire game might as well be the same thing because at the end of the day, the solution is identical: roll at the last second. It’s fucking lame.

Part of me is starting to get worried because I’m realizing that as much as I love exploring, a lot of the “meaningful” routes will lead to more bosses, which is the last thing I want to engage with. Stretching out the content and rewards into this massive world is also starting to have diminishing returns for me as well, since I spend a great deal of time looking for things only to find some lame crafting items, or the occasional weapon my build can never use.

Madd:
>Radahn
>divided
Maybe, but the cool aspects of his fight only last for a while since they're mostly visual aspects, everything about the boss itself is the worst From can cook up while being toned up to eleven under the excuse that you can summon 5 jobberbots, the former lasts for a while, the latter however will bash you in the head for countless runs. I think the consensus is that it's a trash boss and most of the people defending him will be Larpers who only watched videos of the game and can't accurately judge how terrible he is.

>Malenia
Did her with Wave of destruction spam and a Mimic, I'll probably leave how bullshit the boss is to another post, I just know that by now I'm having more fun finding exploits and cheeses than actually "playing" the game by doing the legacy roll for ages and poke. Mogh is also dead so I'll probably just do Placidusax and finish the rest of the main bosses.

Roy:

>confused
For me the game starts as a solid 9, beautiful map, fun exploration, lots of potential then it drops to a 8.5 after Margit because you get that feeling of "okay so this is how its gonna be huh". The game then becomes this mess where ironically the combat is the worst part of the game but it doesn't really has anything other than the combat holding the game together. The exploration is fun but not following a guide means you'll be ages searching for upgrades thanks to how pidgeonholed mats are for upgrades, also you risk locking yourself out of quests by not methodically following a guide. After the second half of the game and having to deal with recycled bosses every single area and finding out that a lot of interesting looking places aren't nearly as interesting they looked early on the game drops to a 7.5 for me. I'll probably do a more detailed writeup after I'm done with the game for a less biased review, for now I honestly just wanna get it over with.

Infinity

>Sick of the combat
It's fun for me that while I haven't touched anything past DS1 the character I made basically played the exact same as I did 12 years ago with the exception of heavy jumping attack replacing the regular poke.

>the solution is the same
You start getting some better answers to deal with mobs later on like upgrading spirits, getting the mimic Tear to synergize with whatever you're building around, getting weapons with insane skills, etc. The problem is that your generic Fromdrone consider all of these "cheating" so the base combat never really expands outside its stactic gameplay from 10 years ago aside from having tweaks every game.

Royta/Raeng wrote:...but you're constantly stonewalled by encounters that see you deal 0.00001% damage per hit.

As someone on the fence, this is way more offputting than any of the traditional Souls systems/mechanics I've previously not enjoyed. I really don't gel with this approach, feels very "artificial" if that's the right way to describe it. I think I'll probably end up giving this game a miss.

> the combat
They really need to start working with some minor other elements, like knockdowns and making certain bars visible like stagger values or stamina-bars like Nioh. Perhaps play more with moves that have innate dodges(?) in them. Something to keep the flow going beyond "lol block/dodge for 5 hits, do one hit, rinse repeat". I just beat Godskin somethingoranother boss, whose chains could at times literally be 12 attacks. 12. All with tight delays and whatnot.

One big crux I'm noticing though is damage-values; I think if they scaled down the damage you take a bit, while maybe giving enemies higher agression, it would balance itself out a bit more. Now it always is immediately "oh a new move, I wonder what it doe-YOU DIED".

> get used to shitty design
Twitter was having a seizure over Elden Ring getting a pause-button modded in.

> Souls future
I think we have to realize that the series won't evolve beyond what it is. Sekiro already showed us that the developer is content where they are, and they'll do some nifty things from time to time but generally speaking combat just isn't their strong suit. I still wish they'd make a (survival/action)horror game at one time. Just completely new, third-person shooter or w/e. Their strongest suit is still worldbuilding, level-aesthetic/design etc. Imagine a RE-type game made by them, I'd be all for it (though the combat would suck donkeydick).

Also can we talk about just how unoptimized it is, again? I really wish they'd hire some technical experts.

@5does

I kind of get that, what you noted about the rating. Except mine goes 9>8>4>6>10>8>2 and just keeps floating.

> game hasn't changed in 12 years aside from jumping attacks
FML.

> using abilities is cheating
I dare them to confront my Jellyfish and live.

@greg

Note that i'm a bit exaggerating. But the differences are there. The game is basically divided in 'islands' sort-a-speak. Each one has its own powerlevel, Limgrave is for starting players, but the southern zone is for those that have a few levels up. But say you go to the north you'll be in a level-100 area and you'll do shit damage and be OHKO'd by being sneezed at. You can technically still win, sure, but it takes a long while.

If melee was all there was I wouldn't touch a game like this.

I hate the bosses except for the ones in the open parts because the others lock you into their arena where you can't use cover/terrain (from what I've seen) or your horse. With a bow you can't block, combo or can't make space. Only summons give me a chance.

I would not have been able to beat the demi humans and their minions without calling for help.

I imagine later bosses are going to be a matter of overleveling and killing them in a few shots or summoning other players.

How did Dragon's Dogma mix the open world stuff with Action RPG?

By the way, would you recommend that game? Is the combat system as deep as in Nioh or more comparable to Miyazaki's games?

>How did Dragon's Dogma mix the open world stuff with Action RPG?
I don't full understand this question.

The main world is nowhere near as big as recent games. But kind of the same format where you'll run into small groups or large monsters here and there. The real meat is in Bitterblack Isle, a huge dungeon. Make sure to get the Dark Arisen version for this.

>would you recommend that game
Yes but you may still hate it.

>Is the combat system as deep as in Nioh or more comparable to Miyazaki's games?
I don't have much experience with either of those. I only ever used bows in Souls.

Bow classes are way better in DD. You can aim freely, arrows are infinite and you have more special attacks.
Only special moves use stamina.

Movement is way better. It's not lock on and roll combat. Most classes don't have rolls anyway.

Builds are harder to do because each class has different stat gains so you'd have to switch to get the stats you want.

Done with the game, I definitely had more fun with it than I did with Sifu. Despite its issues it was the first AAA I played in ages and 60 hours for a single playthrough is definitely a good mileage.

Will probably gather my thoughts and write a few more observations tomorrow about it, doubt I'll touch newgame+.

They're dodging my arrows now.

Why don't summons work anywhere?

Greatbow has insane damage and range but too heavy and slow to really use outside of sniping and only 30 arrows.

Don't think I'll be playing this for much longer.

Finally did the Academy yesterday, was vastly overleveled and basically nuked the boss. I hate this sort-of balance, really. It was such a cool fight visually but mechnically I nuked it in a few seconds.

> bow free aim
Every souls game has this too though

> why don't summons work everywhere
Probably 'balance' reasons (lol).

> dodge arrows
Use stealth I think, once they're aggro'd they tend to dodge. Especially bigger enemies.

@Birdman
>The main world is nowhere near as big as recent games
Got it. I thought it was bigger than it is.

>I only ever used bows in Souls
Any particular reasons for that? It seems you really love bows, because I remember you chose them in MH and other games.

>in DD you can aim freely, arrows are infinite and you have more special attacks
Have enemies special weak spots which you can exploit with arrows? Can you create some sort of trap with elemental arrows? Any debuffs or status effects?

>Movement is way better, no lock on and roll combat
Do you find blocking useful or evasion is the way to go? I know Itsuno directed DD, so is there something similar to Royal Guard?

>each class has different stat gains so you'd have to switch to get the stats you want
I hope switching doesn't involve too much grinding or busy work.

>Exploration
First and foremost, I think exploration should be talked first because it is without a doubt the selling point of the game, Elden ring without its vast world is just Dark Souls. The wonder of exploring a full blown Fromsoftware world is great and it lasts for a good time, it should for most people just wear off during 50+ hours when they start fighting recycled bosses(which happens A LOT in this game), finding unique bosses which are cool like Godskins, Dragons, the Astral monster things just to realize you'll fight them at least 2+ times in different map layouts slowly kills the will to blindly venture in. Personally I recommend people to just go in blindly to experience the game and then start resorting to information looking in the internet when they realize exploring isn't fun anymore and you just want to get good gear instead.

>Level scaling
ER for some reason is much more reliant on levels, as noted before each area has its own regional level and even if you sequence break yourself into Caelid or other places you'll be having to deal with mobs that can oneshot you with the pressure of wind meaning that exploration takes a bit of a hit as the most you'll be able to do on those areas is fetch items laying on the ground while you strife around dodging mobs that not only can oneshot you but will often feature archers with the accuracy of Simo Hayha, obviously the good stuff is mostly if not always locked behind bosses. Another thing to note is that if you just play the game you WILL end up pretty overleveled as later bosses gives you insane amounts of runes, even by skipping a lot of stuff and basically avoiding fighting with every single late game regular mob I still managed to reach level 130-ish by killing mostly bosses and fetching consumable rune giving items on the floor. Staying underleveled for "a challenge" is either done by skipping every single piece of content and fighting only main bosses or purposedly not leveling up.

>Lore
It sucks, nothing new.

>Combat
The combat as noted over and over, is simple. It hasn't really evolved much from the past titles beyond giving you insane abilities on weapons, a horse, jumping attacks and "legit" co-op.

>Str melee
Str melee on this game will be for the most part forcing your way with posture breaking, R2 with its good range and insane posture damage can down big bosses on their knees in a few attacks, regular mobs can not only be staggered on jumping r2 but depending on your weapon even a regular r1 can take them down and it's possible to stunlock them with regular attacks, something interesting I've noted is that while mobs react to a button press, it's possible to frametrap them with a slightly delayed attack, this works every now and then but it has its own set of problems related to how poise and posture is presented in the game.

>Poise and posture
Despite being the main gimmick of melee and specially str characters, for some reason From has opted to not make posture visible to players and Poise(their resistenca to stagger) changes values depending on attacks, this makes it really hard to be properly relied on as mobs can arbitraly just start an anime attack out of nowhere with near infinite amount of poise and just oneshot you for being too agressive. I honestly think it shouldn't be that big of a deal to be able to see a posture gauge so players could play around it instead of just being forced to trial and error and having to magically understand how close they are to breaking the posture of mobs for reliable attacks.

>Skills and weapons
Another great addition to the game, they start off slowly as simple skills but rapidly scale into anime bullshit moves that can make even str builds play like magic casters, the game features a vast amount of weapon variation and customization, you can either slowly customize a generic weapon to your liking or get unique weapons that usually comes with unique skills that are more than often completely broken. The amount of skills in this game is so vast and offers so much utility that often having secondary weapons just to use utility skills is a viable idea, definitely one of the best aspects of ER.

>Weapons upgrades
An annoying system that locks you into playing very few select weapons, upgrading weapons in this game not only gives you insane amounts of damage(most of your damage upgrade will come from upgrading weapons) but the way it is handled needs you to have certain amounts of upgrading materials that comes in 10 tiers, this makes upgrading very limiting throughtout the game as unless you follow guides you might have trouble fetching a good amount of them, they are in the very least buyable from vendors later on the game, the downside of course is that by the time you unlock the option to buy almost every of material you're basically done with the game and is at most just preparing yourself to new game+ or experimenting with weapons for the fun.

>Summons(Ashes)
The biggest difference in combat for every single build is definitely having a "legitimate" summon which completely changes the way you'll be tackling on bosses because you have someone taking aggro for you. Lots of fandrones will claim that Summoning ashes is considered as cheating but the system itself presents its own set of restrictions(mp cost, limited areas to summon, etc), it also features a vast amount of summon choices for players and it features its own system of reinforcement, so it's definitely meant to be used even if stuff like Mimic Tear is more than just a bit overtuned. If I had to complain about it, it would be that I'd rather have the game balanced around not having ashes but since it does I'll just use it because I don't see why I wouldn't.

>Shields
Really viable, often comes with unique skills and can be customized or swapped out so you can use your mainhand weapon skill. Even small shields often feature 100% phys res which makes fight much easier, Greatshields are their own level of good and often cause mob attacks to recoil on top of making you an unstoppable tank. They should be a viable option for anyone that can use them unless powerstancing offense leads to a better and faster kill.

>Parry
I'm tired of parries, never really used them. But as the game stands they're just one of the many skills at your disposal so while people consider it to be essential Souls combat, in this game it's just one of the many gimmicky skills that you have access to and should be used only if you like it.

>Bows
Haven't touched it

>Bosses
The absolute worst part of the game, everything is really fast, giant stone mobs without wings can fly across distances for whatever reason, everything has massive aoes, hard to tell attacks, god knows how many patterns and variations, most if not all attacks can be cancelled into safer attacks, lingering hitboxes, massive bosses that often spaz out of the screen, anime attacks and more attacks, anime attacks everywhere. Out of these my biggest gripe is obviously the anime attacks which often boils down to "it's my turn now for the next 10 seconds so eat shit", mobs usually get unreal amounts of poise and then follow it with insane hitboxes attacks that only give you the option of running away, more than not so often being in the vicinity while a mob starts unleashing their anime attack, usually means death and you can't do anything about it. Another terrible thing as Noted by Raeng is that simply, you can't really do anything about new attacks and the mobs in this game usually save them for later phases, this creates this annoyance where every fight you die whenever the boss decides to do something new you'll be dead.
For the most part fighting the bosses in this game will boild to:
A)Use summons and hit them while they're not focused on you.
B)Spam ranged magic or good weapon skills
C)Use your huge unga weapon to crush poise and stagger
D)Disregard everything because you're a L33t dark souls player and just roll and poke for 10 hours.

>Combat fun
Ultimately I did have some fun with the combat but mostly because the game offers so many insane builds and broken options, I do think that playing around a bit more it's possible to cook up cheesey builds that work even without the need of summons, I think the ceiling for creativity in this game is an all time high and I really like it. Sticking with the roll->poke mindset for this game is definitely a huge loss.

>Overall experience
Summing up, it's a really fun game thanks to its RPG mechanics, I think that at later hours the game starts to get a little tiring because you'll be just doing From's combat for nearly 100 hours. The Combat is the weakest part of the game and it just flips between you being too strong for everything(After beating Malenia the Uber boss by doing nothing but spamming a single skill I just went on a carnage and absolutely destroyed every single late game boss) and being too weak for whatever you're trying to deal with, finding a sweet spot for "balance" in a game with so many stuff to do and different areas is a huge hassle so it's funnier to just find something that breaks the game and steamroll through it while everyone else complains about how they can't beat X boss without flasks/summons/magic/etc. If it ever gets a dlc I'll definitely come replay this game but for now I don't really feel like touching NG+ or finding out different builds, I'm just glad to have done the whole game as a STR Unga build. Will probably pick up Nioh2 in the nearby future to see how TeamNinja has been handling the Souls combat.

>Every souls game has this too though
It's slow and horrible and has to go into first person. I barely touch it. DD lets you aim anywhere on normal shots. The zoomed sniper shot on Rangers is similar to Souls but fast and more zoom.

>Use stealth I think, once they're aggro'd they tend to dodge. Especially bigger enemies.
Then all I'll get is one shot before they go dodge crazy.

>Any particular reasons for that?
I like ranged in RPGs where I can customize and the monsters freak me out.

>because I remember you chose them in MH and other games
At first. Then changed to light bowgun.

>Have enemies special weak spots which you can exploit with arrows?
All enemies have a weak spot. Usually their head. For Cyclops it's their eye. If not a dedicated weak point they'll still have weaknesses or different parts. The chimera is one of my favorites.

>Can you create some sort of trap with elemental arrows?
Trap?

>Do you find blocking useful or evasion is the way to go?
I don't touch blocking classes. I don't think either is better. Depends how you like to play.

>so is there something similar to Royal Guard?
Fighters have perfect parties. Not sure about Mystic Knights.

>I hope switching doesn't involve too much grinding or busy work.
I think it has less than most RPGs I've played. Max level is 200. Late levels can be fast if you know how. Problem is switching to a class you don't want to play as but this is min-maxing. You don't have to do it.

>busy work.
The quests suck. The real fun is combat in Bitteblack Isle.

So yeah, I beat the game. Here's my review in backloggd if you are interested in: https://www.backloggd.com/u/MaddisonBaek/review/334718/

I usually didn't mind the simple side of the souls-like melee combat. Yeah, it gets repetitive especially nowadays where you CAN'T escape from the market catering to souls-like fans, but combined with the options on your movements, enemy variety, and the dungeon crawling aspects, things can produce the maximum amount of dopamine for my brain. At least that's how I felt when I played Bloodborne. I felt like I played that game for more than 700 hours? I sometimes play it these days too.

Also, I have to say, we may disagree on some elements about action aspects in this game, but we can collectively agree that Malenia and the final boss of Elden Ring is a god damn train wreck in every regard.

Solid review, I skipped some of the spoiler-y parts but I think we're still on one page (depending on my mood haha). Personally I do think if weapon upgrades were made easier, I'd enjoy the game a lot more as I'd switch weapons more often to experiment.

Wanted to add that I fought Rahdan and honestly he might be my favourite boss in the series. This is exactly the type of experimental gimmick fight I was looking for, though I can see that a lot of more 'serious' players will hate him since he's just a giant screen eating monster. But I adored his concept.

Good write ups in here. I’m way behind all of you guys but for all the problems, I’m still in the period of absolutely loving going around the world. Hope it keeps up because just seeing what I stumble upon is such a joy. I also finally got new incantations after like, 25 hours.

I'm loving it, but I'm also slowly hoping it's coming to an end. I'm at 77 hours played now and it feels like I'm not even halfway. Kinda hoping it'll end soon.

>Roy
I've got some bad news...

Yeah I made a post on Gamefaqs and it was legit confirmed to me I'm probably only halfway. Fucking shoot me. Taking a few days break from it haha

How you 'all faring so far?

I'm coming up on 100 hours, I'm almost done I think. Still having fun but it's kinda exhausting, definitely ready for it to wrap up.

I'm also at the point where I'm using most of my magic/spirit summoning tools in the boss fights, earlier I did a few with roll and hit but there's just way too many bosses for me to bother. Combat is ehh but with mage you can subvert it, my favorite is using the gravity spell to pull enemies off ledges. Scarlet rot arrows also work for bigger stuff.

Areas are still awe-inspiring, FromSoft can crank them out come hell or high water.

Played this a bunch, think it's my favorite of the souls games handily. Unlike a lot of people here I think the bosses are a strong point and more engaging than previous games (on average). Ran a straight forward melee build (single straight sword) with a couple utility spells on the side and a bow.
Did a NG+ run without leveling up (sticking to lv120) using halberd later and might go for that again on ng+2.
I do get the impression slower weapons like greatswords and ultragreatswords aren't that great in this game. Many fights feel designed for katana speedclass up to halberd. But this is mixed up by the ashes of war being potentially faster/stronger than your weapon, making your shield stronger or giving a different evade.

Malenia I think has some bad design like someone mentioned earlier. Very random and covering up strong moves with fast ones to make them safe. Instead of getting a punish for doing a very difficult defensive move the player can get potentially screwed by luck repeatedly. It's weird as this is built up as a major character but the gameplay design is bizarre and looks lower effort than some minor bosses (apart from happening to be very challenging).
This fight only made sense to me if you have some type of iframe skill equipped (vow of the indomitable, any of the quicksteps, maybe more) to deal with one of the moves. Was thinking the other day you can probably get more creative and use manually aimed ashes of war to dodge around too.

In bosses attacks mostly needing to be iframed due to high tracking: while playing I assumed this was a mix of making enemies more aggressive ala bloodborne, and a balancing concern to keep the huge amount of bosses challenging.
The game has an absurd amount of weapons, weapon arts and spells (also very strong rings/talismans). Many weapon arts move significantly during the action and could make a bunch of things semi-randomly whiff while also doing more damage than normal attacks if boss attacks had weak properties. Making boss attack properties strong as your default gets mostly rid of needing to balance the whiffing of boss attacks. Funnily a couple later bosses have whiffing problems with little player interaction and they eat a ton of damage for this. Possibly giving the player huge reward for the boss randomly doing a bad move.

If the devs thought the worst case is constant whiffs on random bosses by walking behind them or spamming mobile weapon arts I agree with them, that is a worst case. Walking behind bosses in dark souls 2 and spamming R1 while watching them whiff is the most boring experience I had in any of these games.
Regardless of all that the weapon arts are extremely strong and even actively trading damage with a boss is viable on many fights. This stuff really looks like a balancing thing to me, both the bosses AND the player are stronger in this game. You are given a lot of crazy tools and the bosses are also crazier. To me that kind of game is often more fun than a bland one (even Malenia for some of its nonsense isn't boring and somewhat memorable). I was afraid Elden Ring would be on the bland side here.
As for spacing attacks Margit is definitely one of the worst for this, there are bosses where spacing is much more important. But it kind of goes all over the place. At least shields are still strong.

For upgrade materials being scarce (and having more steps) I got the impression they wanted to gate progress more heavily because the game is so large. Making sure players don't gain overleveled weapons by one or two diversions to a high level area but more of a commitment actually reaching that part of the game. The diversity of weapons you can use before endgame is low as a result, but I'm not sure what's a good alternative here. One weapon level has a bigger effect than a few player levels, so being off level could easily make people's combat experience be all over the place. Seemed like an OK compromise to me but that's because I wasn't too hung up on not being able to use a lot of weapons on my first run.

The game is also pretty clear about where you can gather upgrade materials when wanted if you explored a bit and are past the early game. Those who want to use a lot of weapons have to farm some materials. I did to some extent and didn't mind it too much, as the main game areas do give you plenty of materials to keep your main weapon(s) upgraded. It is strangely easy to miss some areas with the first tier of upgrade material though.. I can see this potentially being patched for quality of life like they did to boss drops in dark souls 1.

Summon ashes seemed like an alright solution to having an easy mode, but it's bizarre how much their performance varies between bosses and how simple it is to see how it messes with the boss AI. A lot of the fights definitely felt broken so on a second playthrough I decided not to use them at all to see what's different.

Endgame spoilers, favorite boss etc.:

I was really surprised how solid the level and world design stayed despite the scale of the game. It is probably too big for its own good, but the straight forward route to the end of the game on replays can be pushed to ~3 hours. That's not so bad and in line with the other souls games.
This games open world was more rewarding than than I expected. Looking around the world for paths and details is rewarded instead of just running around like an idiot and that is strangely rare in itself. Also very much liked the design many world areas in the game.

Favorite areas:

For bows I found the Black Bow to be pretty much the only one that's fun to use. It's a longbow with the controls of a shortbow so has rapid shots available while running or after rolling. Though even longbows can do jumping shots which are faster than firing normally funny enough. Bows seem OK and better than previous games but the damage scales very badly with your stats, meaning they scale poorly to endgame and ng+. With more damage they could have been very strong, I assume the devs really wanted them to keep a utility role.

Avoided using spirit summons in NG+1 and was pretty fun.

I don't really recommend NG+ here apart from if you want to keep playing your character; enemy hp, damage and knockdown resistance go up but not by enough for the first 2/3 of the game to pose any challenge at NG+1. It does make a couple bosses better who are squishy to the point you barely have to learn them at lower health. Say it's a fight with a form change but you can kill off most of remaining health during their powerup animation.

Spoiler:

Think I'll play through NG+2 at level 120 sometime soon and wait till the inevitable DLC. Kinda curious about a SL1 run if the weapons involved are any fun. Unfortunately the most straight forward way around such a run might be spamming a strong weapon art without the base weapon mattering.

Yeah I can see some of the points you're making, I imagine it could be fun if you really sat down with some of the fights and leveraged the ashes of war (which is a cool system). For me I think the problem is that I'm just exhausted of the combat at this point, partially because the game is so damn long. Also the animations are heinous in this game, having to memorize arbitrary timings for every other enemy because they have delayed moves or strings that can't be sight-read has really worn on me over time. I think if that wasn't as big of an issue then I would be more willing to meet the game on a combat level but as it stands I don't have the motivation.

Still really like the game, world is great and you can get creative with builds. Too long though.

@HotPocketHPE

>game is so damn long
I was horrified to learn that after 45 hours I’m only about 40% through the game. There’s virtually no chance I’m actually going to beat the game since I’m already getting fatigued.

> having to memorize arbitrary timings for every other enemy because they have delayed moves or strings that can't be sight-read has really worn on me over time.
Perfectly said. Partially why I’m so sick of parry/dodge/counter focused combat systems, they really become games of memorization and reactive play and I don’t find it interesting at all. And a lot of the major bosses I just go in thinking, “okay, I’m going to have to die a few times to actually have time to memorize the moves”. Defense is just too shit against bosses to be able to sight-read the fights, as you said.

I actually let out an enormous sigh when I encountered yet another dragon swooping in from no where, and then 5 minutes later running into dual tree sentinels. If this is already happening then my interest is going to completely die.

@zaa / Aaro

> feels more built for katana
Feeling this as well. I'm using both the Halo Scythe, Great Hammer and Blasphemy Blade, the latter more for healing when needed. I find it nearly impossible to find safe openings with the Great Hammer, especially in the 'just put them together' dual-boss fights like double crucible knights.

I agree Ashes do fill a void in this, though a lot of the faster ones aren't available to heavier weapons. Also feel damage-scaling is still a bit wack (+9 quick weapon deals more damage than a +8 heavy weapon should never be the case imo).

> Malenia
Haven't fought her yet, but saw some no-damage runs. Fact that nobody has been able to find a way to dodge her first attack from the chain outside of switching to a greatshield with barricade is...unique. Didn't expect that from a FromSoft game.

> bosses
The tracking is my biggest issue, mostly since it was something that players blasted Dark Souls II for (and rightfully so) when coming from Dark Souls 1 where smart positioning played a bigger role.

It's a difficult thing to do though, since you can circle-strafe most bosses to death in that game if you know what direction to walk.

What's your take on boss-damage output? I've found it's very hard to experiment with strats since every hit is either an OHKO or deals like 75% damage despite having 50 Vigor.

> shields
Great shields really still are the secret easy-mode most people don't talk about, especially now that guard-counters are a thing of beauty.

> upgrade materials gating
Aside from the update of today changing that, once you have the know how you can legit have a +10 Somber weapon within a few hours of walking around.

I kinda hope they move to a more 'upgrade your bracelet, which powers your weapon' kinda setup in future games, that allows you to swap weapons while retaining your upgrade-level. Or just remove upgrades entirely. It's fine in a shorter 10-20 hour game. But in a 100 hour game I really need to constantly switch up weapons to keep it interesting, lest I burn out.

> summons
I think it's a fantastic addition, same with FromSoft giving players more options in general (like free memory slots instead of tying it to leveling). They really want you to play every which way. I agree their AI and performance is very, very inconsistent. My Stray Dog sometimes nukes bosses, other times he just stands in acid and dies instantly. Mimic seems the most consistent, but also has absolute brainfart moments.

> SL1 run
I'm very interested in this personally, since there's a lot of stat-enchancement gear which barely existed before, allowing SL1 runs to still toy around with higher levels, be it through talismens, headpieces or greater runes.

Beat it, holy shit the final boss is bad. Trainwreck fight, wtf happened?

Overall I'd give the game a 3.5/5 or 4/5. The open world is really good and the art direction is godly. Main dungeons are still fun to explore, though it's a bit too easy. Ash of war, jumping, and guard counter are great additions. The first half of the game is mostly very good.

Bosses are exhausting, more so later on (see my post above for reasons). Horse combat is janky and cheesy in a weird way. Game is way too long, last half could have been compressed by 50% at least. In general the game gets much worse in the back end, sorta a DS1 problem. If there was less straight combat or the combat was better I wouldn't mind as much.

Last boss left a bad taste in my mouth so I'm dropping this for the foreseeable future, picked up Sol Cresta so gonna play that.

For insight, I just reached the sewers in Lyndell and have completed all other accesible areas including Mogh, how long do you think I still have to go?

> Final boss is a wreck
Curious to hear why.

> jump, counter, ash
Agreed. Also surprised that you can jump over so many attacks which is fun.

> horse
It's such a weird system.

>How long to go
Straight to the end with normal gameplay: 10 hrs, do optional stuff: 40 hrs

>Final boss
1st phase is kinda the usual ER version of lame. Bunch of tracking attacks, annoying gap-closers, and unusually some janky anti-jump hitboxes on ground attacks.
2nd phase is a whole new can of worms. Camera battles galore, everything two-shots + shitloads of HP (so when you die you have to do p1 again, fun!) some heinous projectiles that I have no idea how to realistically dodge without Bloodhound Step.

If you get lucky the p2 AI can get bugged and give you a free win. I wasn't so fortunate.

Just 'beat' Godwyn's true self. Honestly I've given up on the combat at this point, I did his first phase 'legit' and then came the "is this a grab, is this not a grab" set of retries (since even with 60 vigor his grabs nearly two-shot you). Got tired of it and decided to just skip the fight by nuking him with all the tools.

It's downright impressive how dead this combat system gets with bosses for me sometimes. There are moments when I really enjoy it, and some bosses that really make me go "YES!" but this was not one of them.

You mean Godfrey? because afaik there's no boss fight with Godwyn.
Also, seems like you are at the journey's end. Hope you can tolerate the final boss.

Sorry, yeah, Godfrey/Horax Louix. Should I do the Malina sideboss first? Or after?

I don't know what build you have, but I recommend you to fight Malenia after you upgraded some big-ass shield, or equipped Hound Step ash. Also, if your weapon can inflict bleed/frost and has a faster end-delay, it's better. You can deal with her anytime just like you could fight Nameless King or DLC bosses in DS3 after seeing the ending.

Ah so the game doesn't force you into NG+? that's nice.

I have a +25 greatshield so that helps a lot I think. Going to see how it goes.

Now that a few of you have beat it and it’s been out a few weeks, where would you all say ER stacks up compared to the other From outputs? I’m still at Leyndell so I can’t comment, though I hear the game goes downhill after this…

I'm pretty rough on it honestly, I think if this is your first one it could easily count as 'the best game ever made', but as the millionth entry in a series that barely changes it's pretty rough for me honestly.

Currently I still rank them:

Demons > Dark 1 > Dark 2Scholars > Elden > Dark 3 > Dark Souls 2 vanilla

It does some cool stuff and I can appreciate its ambition and art-design, and it has some fantastic new additions and some of its 'legacy' dungeons are an absolute joy. But the bossdesign, general combat, lackluster RPGmechanics etc. are all pretty killer for me. As well as the bloat/reuse. Feels like Chalice Dungeons just inserted at random.

Note that I don't put BB or Sekiro there, since they're too different imo.

>compared to the other From outputs

I'm gonna be ultra-subjective here.

As a first-time experience, I would say BB>>>>>>>>>DaS>Elden>DS3=DeS>Sek>DS2.
There were genuinely fascinating moments in this game, and I can sense that they almost captured the magic of the early part of DaS. Though the unpolished/janky combat aspect, dreadful final boss, and the repeating contents ruined my experience a bit at the end.  

As for replayability, it goes DS3=DS2>DaS=BB>Elden>DeS=Sek. I put Elden Ring there because even though it has some genuinely cool build variety and gimmick-playthrough potential, it's too tiresome to play the whole thing again, and the NG+ is way too easy for level 130. I'll hold this game until they update the PVP arena thing or DLC areas.
(I put DS3 high because it's just easier to make new builds in that game, thanks to the linear progression.)

But if I rate them one by one for how "special" they are in the whole gaming landscape, I would make a tier list like this.

[A textbook example tier]
-DaS: You know the reason why.

-DeS: It's the first shot and they did almost everything right. Also, there aren't many games out there that have an esoteric nature of this game. This is the pure form of past-FROM's wackiness and nobody(including modern-FROM) would ever recreate this.  

[A good reference tier]
-BB: Out of all of the Souls titles, this one has the best baseline combat system, if I'm being honest.
I think the fast step-based repositioning and the health-regain system may have influenced many action games. I don't know any pre-BB action game that made a hit-to-heal system as a baseline, so if my guessing is wrong, feel free to correct me.  

-Sek: Yes, it's not the best form of action game they could have done, but the posture system and the UI structure showed enough potential to be used as an alternative stamina bar. And seeing Sifu and FFO's take on the posture system made me think that at least FROM created a new idea with this game.    

-Elden: I'm not even pretending to like the negative aspects in this game, but the difficult player-driven open-world game being THIS successful makes me hope that other big developers learn from this. (but the Ubisoft dev drama thing made me doubtful about that too)

[I can sense some mannerism tier]
-DS3: Content-wise, it's on the polished side. But it's not a new thing at all. Maybe aside from some good boss designs.

-DS2: As much as I love its janky nature and the DLC areas are fantastic. I'm still hesitant to say that this was impactful.

Btw, I included BB and Sekiro because even though they are different, I think they share the core philosophy of original Souls games.

So I beat the game, now I'm not going to lie and say I played a game for 99 hours and 26 minutes and hated every minute of it, but this game also definitely made me decide to not play another game from the studio in the future unless they really make some big changes to their formula.

The exploration is fantastic, the art-direction is great, the writing is mysterious and enticing. And it's been exactly the same since Demon's Souls. You can lay out the plot beat-for-beat, and all the reveals are rethreads of old reveals. Halig-tree was a beautiful area, in a series with beautiful similarly looking areas; so the impact was very lessened for me.

I think this is why I like Radhan so much, since he's different and fresh in every way. Unlike most bosses, you actually get a story-introduction to him, giving you a sense of what's going on with him, unlike most other bosses in the series where you don't know what it is you're killing or why until your third time killing him. He's got a cool gimmick we haven't seen before and a very interesting and unique scene-transition; it's what made me fall in love with Souls, this pushing the envelope and at times also saying "we know games do A, but we'll do B".

And that is also something I really missed in general, and have been missing since Dark Souls 2's DLC. Dark Souls 3 was guilty of it too, namely it started being very by the numbers.

Demon's had a blob as a final boss, since you expect a hard game to have a hard-epic-fight. Every action was permanent, from leveling to killing essential NPCs to w/e the fuck else. Now you can just resurrect dead NPCs, respec etc. It's slowly becoming a regular action-rpg with passing mentions of previous games.

And it loses a lot of what made the series good imo. Where are the traps? Where are the giant spiralling looping dungeons? Where is the creative bossdesign? Where are the unique ideas that push it further?

The emphasis on quantity over quality really hampered it further. There's over 40 Incantations that nearly all do the exact same thing, lightning-damage. There's over 120 bosses that are nearly all the same: rarely-staggerable input reading bosses that break guards in 3 hits. You get my point haha.

I am surprised that the bosses, especially near the end, started feeling like old arcade-fighting super bosses. Malenia would regularly just stand still, and when I pressed a button would immediately counter. Gave me flashbacks to fighting God Rugal in CVS2 haha.

I'm being a bit on the negative side (or fully haha), mostly since I always loved their entries and it's sad for me to see such a valued series go down the shitter of rehashes with little to no innovation while the world celebrates it for it.

@Madd

> ultra subjective
I fully agree on the list though. Sekiro was especially harsh imo on the first run, it grew on me a LOT more on subsequent runs. DaS was at the bottom for me though, since I played V1.0 prior to launch and it was an absolutely abysmall experience that I never want to do again.

Surprised to see you put DeS so low on the replay side. I replayed that game a ton, but it was the 'first' one at the time and also the only one. I always loved how in that game every run was unique since you could so quickly get your build set up and play stages in any order.

> no one will recreate DeS
Agreed, and not even From as you mentioned. That game had that distinct 'fuck it, who cares' charm when it came to its ideas. The series lost a lot of those ideas down the line, some for good reason, but others were just fantastic. The balance between soul-and humanform has yet to be matched in terms of online structure.

> the succes of Elden Ring
I think it'll be really interesting to see what lessons are taken from this, since despite positive reviews you also see a lot of harsh critism, despite each harsh response ends with "but def 10/10 best game ever made" since they're afraid to be lynched.

My biggest fear is that the lesson will be, less quality, more quantity - and that they take further notes from the bossdesign. Namely the floating-hitbox that reads inputs haha.

If I'd want them to take something from it though, a lesson to be learned, it's more the art-direction and its capability to carry a game further and that innovation should always be a part of your design.

This does beg the question for me: what did it innovate though? Because in terms of lessons learned from this game...I can't really think of anything it really does that's  "new" or shocking.

> DS3
Felt like a 'best of' album. I didn't like it at all haha.

EDIT: one final thing I failed to mention, and I've hated since Dark Souls 1, is boss immunity. I get you want things to be lore accurate, but having the final boss being nearly immune to holy-damage really felt like a middle-finger to faith-builds as I basically did shit damage.

>DeS so low on the replay side

Yeah, because I entered this series by DS: Prepare to Die edition and then BB. I played DeS much later for the research purpose. As I said, it had its own charm, but for someone who has played BB and DS3 first, there aren't many reasons to play that game more than two times, since the multiplay is dead and there weren't "new" extra dimension of things to explore once you have seen the ending. (On the contrary, BB and DS had shit tons of hidden areas and DS2&3 provided some interesting build variety)
Also, as there were many amazing levels in DeS, I don't want to go back to the Blight Town ver 0.5 ever again.

>what did Elden Ring innovate though?

I wouldn't say there were big innovations if you look at the content one by one(especially the general enemy design and the combat loop), but the early-mid part of the game caught the feeling of pure "adventure". Something that I couldn't feel from other "open-world" games. (Well, except BOTW. in some parts, BOTW did way better) I think the huge factors were the map design(the map you are using to find the waypoint), and the bamboozle elements. (Like the barbarian snipers and the teleporter box) If they are planning to make more open-world games, I want to see them implementing more troll-y or esoteric content.

>about the bosses

I'm gotta say, if there's a sensible combat designer that can lead their own project in FROM, they should make a god damn stylish action game, because, if I'm being honest, I can sense that those late-game bosses would have worked out fantastically if the players could do some ridiculous amount of combat options. Like, this might sound like an absurd conceptualization but imagine the game played out like DMC, and you have a boss battle with Hora Loux. That fight could have been on the same tier as Cavaliere Angelo. heh.
If they have the know-how to make ridiculous pattern chains for the bosses, that would come in handy when making stylish action games.

>not play another game from the studio in the future unless they really make some big changes to their formula.

Unless they are money-hungry beasts like other triple-A developers, I'm sure they will make something entirely new next time. Even for them, sticking to souls-formula for the 8th time might be torturous.

Definitely not a weird thing to say regarding the bosses. The final few literally feel like a boss that could easily be copy pasted into Ninja Gaiden, DMC or Bayonetta and even then the protagonists might have trouble keeping up. Their movesets are very fast. I do feel they need more interesting stagger values, and this is an issue in the genre in general: far too many walking hitboxes that you wail on until they attack.

> demon's souls
Yeah you had to be there honestly. It was such a unique game with so many aspects to explore, from Tendency to Online to just generally how the game worked. I always prefered its 'blighttown' since you could just bee-line it to the end very easily once you knew the general layout. Meanwhile I do feel all its levels had something unique to them, which all makes them memorable.

> adventure
Fully agree. I think maybe if this continues on, hopefully they play into the random element a bit more. My most fun memory of Elden Ring was suddenly transporting to the end of the world with that chest: that was absolutely amazing. I think if they add a bit more stuff like that, day/night stuff and perhaps random events/encounters or just randomized chest-contents, the game would already open up more. Also maybe scale down the map a bit and remove fast-travel.

(I always found it weird how they literally did fast-travel best in demons and dark1, only to completely nuke it into the ground immediately in every title since)

> torturous development
I'm constantly amazed by this. I remember the Resident Evil crew legit threatening to quit en-mass unless they could make something new, yet they seem pretty content to do the same stuff constantly with minor variations. At this point I'd be happy if we get a game without bonfires/stamina-type meter. Could you imagine haha

Damn, Leyndell has to be one of the craziest areas of any game I’ve ever played. So many times I’m going one way, only to get sidetracked, then distracted, then come to another fork where I have to decide where to go again before thinking, “shit, what was I originally doing?”.

Also, stupid question: is Volcano Manor a dungeon or just that one area with NPCs? I keep seeing people say how far they are/what they’ve done and list Volcano Manor but I don’t see anything to do there…

Regarding Volcano Manor: it's both. If you do the quests for them it's basically just a single room where you take quests. But in your 'personal waiting room' there's a fake wall, if you go inside it, you can explore their manor and that's basically a 'traditional' Souls area.

Note that if you ENTER the final boss room-fog, you're boned and the Manor quest ends.

Also minor note: you can get to there very early by being kidnapped in the mage-academy by one of those coffins on wheels. In the first area you're in after that, you can actually jump down from a pretty big height and survive, which brings you to the actual Volcano Manor hahaha. I did this by accident and thus did the entire dungeon backwards which was pretty confusing but fun.

Started a new run with a new character, with a few restrictions:

- no Lantern;
- no Ashen Summons;
- I only do areas of my 'levelzone' (outside of the start to collect some specific gear pieces etc.)
- playing slowly (just a few hours a week)
- no shield, dual-katana only with magic

So far I'm enjoying it *far* more. Using the torch is always fun and the combat is far more bearable in chunks. Think I'll enjoy this run a lot more.

Wrote a short review, game has a lot of great aspects but I'm left feeling kind of bitter overall. https://www.backloggd.com/u/HotPocketHPE/review/360461/

Agree with your little write up. I don’t really have much to add to the discussion. But I think I’m done with the game, I’ve reached the part where everyone says the quality nosedives so I’m Just going to stop now.

Really agree with the final part. As you note it's a classic in the making, especially at the start when everything is magical. But it falls hard on its ass later-on and I think it takes a repeat playthrough of Dark Souls 1 to see what that is. I can't put my finger on it yet, but I rebooted DS1 yesterday and everything feels much more purposeful, and the world (strangely) more connected and open.

Open World games often feel like you're having fancy set dressing while going from A-to-B, which is cool at first but eventually you just race past everything without looking at the beautiful vistas. Since the tempo is so high in movement, while in DS1 you move slow and always take your time by default even if you're just going from A-to-B.

I share the feeling of bitterness to a regard, mostly to the fanbase and reception. It's clear that this is by far their most succesful game, but it's also a bit more homing in on what Matthew noted in his DS2 and LostSoulArts videos where you can literally insert Elden Ring footage over his complaints.

It has gone from a series that took risks because "fuck it, this game is doomed anyway" leading to some of the most innovate gamedesign I had seen. Dying makes the game harder? What? The final boss in this hard game is a blob because fuck you? What? Oh yes let's have a super weird NPC that kills important NPCs, sure why not. Oh you can just enter someone's single-player and fuck m over.

It was super daring. I can forgive Dark Souls 1 for being 'the same, but more honed with some new iterations' but since then it's become more and more clear that they're streamlining the hell out of things. I'm half surprised there aren't online lobbies anymore.

Things like the permanency to things is just gone now that we can revive killed NPCs or have like 10 respecs per NG-run etc.

I can't believe I'm saying this but Souls went massively mainstream and I fear for what comes next and what lessons they take from this.

I watched Matthew’s Soul Arts video multiple times just recently. It is absolutely mind-boggling how much ER fits into all his gripes about the series now. ER manages to be magical and intriguing for a few dozen hours, while also being incredibly predictable and safe.

>I fear for what comes
From listening to Casual inputs regarding the balance of a single player game and then nerfs stupid stuff 1 month in just to realilze that nerfing one of the most notorious bosses in the game was a dumb idea and then revert it in the next few weeks?

Oh wait we're already past that.