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Elden Ring Critique(s)

illuknisaa

Cipher
Joined
Dec 23, 2013
Messages
671
I like ER are a lot but feel a bit disappointed. From could have improved stuff like the ui or or character progression but they didn't. Leveling up just is so lame. Gain very small increments at each level up. Even oblivion had perks that you could unlock. The fact that you have to scroll past equipped items and spells is so clunky. I think something like weapon wheel seen in other games would have been better. There is also new game+ which does nothing to spice things up. No randomized enemies/tougher enemies earlier in the game, no quest or npc dialoque etc. Just stats have been increased.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,157
For anyone who doesn't know, holding the button cycles you back to the first item in your spell list, as well as your items belt.

Hey, it's something.
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Playing a souls game stretched out across an open world like this kind of ruined the Fromsoft formula for me. All they really have going for them is combat which, after playing this same game for the fourth or fifth time, is just... really not very good and makes me appreciate games like Nioh more.
Bingo. By now it's proved this combat can't carry the formula alone, and quality atmosphere, map design and environmental challenges are what made DS1 and BB masterpieces.

Also, a good sense of purpose from the story side. DS1 and BB had me enthralled to their worlds/lore like a 11-yo kiddo, it was Ultima 4 and Final Fantasy 6 all over again, but ER had so many "why am I doing this again?" moments, the central quest feeling pointless and flacid like my grandpa dick.
 

Serious_Business

Best Poster on the Codex
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
3,909
Location
Frown Town
My opinion of this one dropped sharply after 50 hours. Just dropped it and didn't touch it again. Very tedious, I was just waiting for it to finish and apparently I probably had still 50 more hours to go. Dark Souls 4 with open world, yeah... maybe would be a good concept if I didn't play these games for over 300h+, not counting the 200 of Bloodborne. I highly value originality in design and this does nothing. I think the difficulty has some serious problems, too, which were discussed elsewhere. Essentially it's either too hard or too easy, and most of it is balanced around summoning or using specific overpowered options. I guess it has a more rpg component in so far as it all requires less skill and more game knowledge. Not great, but your grandma can play it if you give her a Moonveil and some spells. And then Sekiro was the opposite, so there you go. I never got to Sekiro really, this makes me want to play it sooner or later. At least it was a significant variation in the formula, this is nothing. It does have some amazing art, though, even though the lore and music all feel tired.
 
Self-Ejected

Lim-Dûl

Self-Ejected
Joined
Apr 11, 2022
Messages
388
This game doesn't have good, simple longswords without rags hanging off of them or sparks coming out of them. Each good Souls game had at least one versatile, refined and grounded longsword. Notice how this game's combat is unhinged anime fighting mostly with ugly, disproportionate weapons and retarded movesets where players spam their over the top moves until someone dies without regard for strategy and maneuvering.
 
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random_name

Novice
Joined
Feb 24, 2022
Messages
24
As I started playing this I was excited, ready to experience a new game like with Sekiro, instead I found myself playing Dark Souls 4. The moment I stepped out into the open world I was already bored. I knew that for the next 100 hours or so I would be rolling and rolling and getting killed over and over by some giant dude or a fast slim guy. We already played 3 Dark Souls games, do we really another one? Dark Souls 1 was magical when it came out, this is just a chore. Stopped playing out of boredom after 35 hours or so. I also find it annoying that the bosses talk to you (like in DS3). Why can't they shut up like in Dark Souls 1? Do we really need to hear the same anime line over and over?

All in all, I think if you never played Dark Souls games before or you really, really like the rolling gameplay you will love this game. As for me I had enough.
 

ELEXmakesMeHard

Learned
Joined
Jun 19, 2021
Messages
807
It should've been possible to rub miniature Ranni's tiny cunny and harvest the precious blue secretions dripping out, and then bottle them & sniff them for stamina regen buff. Maybe in the DLC!
 
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
399
It'll be interesting to revisit opinions on Elden Ring in a few years time once we're inclined towards a more sober appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I often think of the disappearance of Oblivion from the imaginary of wider gaming culture since its release when I see a game with obvious and pervasive flaws like this hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, as Oblvion was. Elden Ring is a much better game than Oblivion but I have a feeling a that a similar decline in universal adualtion may occur over time.
 

Ialda

Learned
Joined
Oct 13, 2019
Messages
124
I think the open world structure is both the best and worst feature of ER : on the malus side, like any open world game that came before it, it feels way too much like work, it's exaustive, and there's way too much asset reuse and places that feels like padding; on the bonus side, From's offers a great take on classic open world gameplay by limiting 'cinematic'-type autism, highlighting player agency, and offering a sense of scope that play wonderfully with From usual environmental narrative design.

Also, probably the worst set of bosses of any modern From games, ugly looking armors (a far cry from iconic crap like the old elite set), and mechanic bullshit during fights that feels odd to come back to after a gem like Sekiro.

As a first open world game, ER is an incredible achievement for From. Congratulation to the team.
Now give me my next gen Armored Core game. TEN FUCKING YEARS DAMNIT.
 

ADL

Prophet
Joined
Oct 23, 2017
Messages
3,677
Location
Nantucket
From Software needs a new engine or at least such a significant rework that it might as well be a new engine because the one they're using now is unacceptable for such a large release. They're not a small, niche Japanese company anymore. They're the new Bethesda in the sense that they insist on using an engine a decade past it's expiration date that wasn't particularly great to begin with. Their PC ports suck ass too. At least you used to be able to fix them with relative ease but now Easy Anti-Cheat is getting in the way so I'd say this is the worst PC release they've done so far.

I'd gladly take Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition over this because that was fixed in a couple hours after releasing in a shoddy state. Meanwhile this is still a stuttering piece of crap with missing features that one would reasonably expect out of a PC game in 2022 two months after releasing with no significant improvement in sight. They need to invest in their technology and they need to outsource their PC games or something because it's extremely clear that they're incapable of doing it themselves.

Just outsource the PC port and use Unreal Engine for fuck's sake.
 

smaug

Secular Koranism with Israeli Characteristics
Patron
Dumbfuck
Joined
Feb 20, 2019
Messages
6,438
Location
Texas
Insert Title Here
This game is shit in every aspect.

  • Too many weapons, spells, and weapon arts. Complete filler bloat used to fill a “way to and unnecessarily large world”.
  • Half the game is reskinned and copy pasted enemies and bosses.
  • Crafting is just adding a completely pointless busywork rather than just, y’know, giving us the item instead of breaking everything down into a million pieces.
  • The open world is pointless copy and pasted busy work that should just be skipped with an online guide (IE look at items and dungeons beforehand to see if it’s anything you want.). There’s a few interesting side dungeons, but they’re pointless because there to tiny and don’t interconnect with actual levels.
  • Horse combat is fun for a couple hours, then you don’t ever see it utilized in any interesting way (both exploration and combat wise).
  • World is like MMO, level scaled enemies (not dynamically but copy pasted enemies with 10x more damage and hit points, same thing.), pointless lootables with an occasionally special item that you’ll never use (and the chance of it actually being useful to your character is minimal.). Best to use a wiki.
  • The majority of bosses are helicopters with delayed attacks, insta death combos that are just asking to be cheesed, no interesting gimmicks aside from a few. (No real good or interesting story bosses.)
  • Summoning is terribly balanced, tons of summons where only maybe 4 are actually good. Mimic tear is mainly the de facto one. It’s also badly balanced because with it, many bosses are to easy or there nearly impossible (the double fights) without summons creating a weird scenario for normal DS difficulty.
  • Stormveil is a genuinely good level, the mage place pales in comparison. The capital is also great, but the Haligtree and the rest just repeat a similar gimmick and feel very uninspired. This is like the 6th entry and they still don’t try interesting design? DS2 failed in execution mostly (main game level design, but at least it tried to be interesting) and that could have been remedied but from is a dead dev at this point.
  • The open world is retarded for so many reasons. The whole point of an open world game is consistency and logic (as it’s works in the setting.). Game world is empty and devoid of usual open world stuff. One moment your fighting Arthurian Knights and the next your fighting Cthulhu inspired storm giants and Japanese northmen riding horses. (Other DS games being leveled base didn’t suffer from this as much as it was divided into game levels with specific themes, but it really hurts in an open world design). You could say it’s supposed to be chaotic and warped, but that doesn’t excuse the asinine world and the lack of any interesting effort into it.
  • Did some quests, usual dark souls story of vagueness and few lines which don’t have any meaningful impact on the player. I only remember the blacksmiths quest, poor guy got dementia.
There’s so much more than can be bitched about (I don’t feel like writing more) but as the 6th (?) entry in the series it’s terrible, bland, very uninspiring design wise, and full of terrible design choices. This series peaked unironically with Demon’s Souls and it never got any better.

Good Riddance.:0/5:
 
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Self-Ejected

Lim-Dûl

Self-Ejected
Joined
Apr 11, 2022
Messages
388
From should rethink their combat system from the ground up. Rolling shouldn't have i-frames. Rolling, backstepping, etc should be for spacing, not for rolling "through" attacks. Attacks need precise and reasonable (ie not cover huge areas for long durations other than for rare exceptions) hitboxes so spacing and careful positioning can be the main ways of avoiding and inflicting damage. Rolling i-frames have allowed ridiculous and uninteresting enemy fighting tendencies to persist and develop unchecked, culminating in unintuitive delayed attacks and ridiculous combo attacks.

They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
 
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elverkongen

Learned
Joined
Apr 17, 2020
Messages
148
They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
It's too late, From has embraced the "fashion souls" meme and armor is now for looks only. Which is odd because ER has some of the worst looking armor in the series (yes, series; this is not even remotely differentiated enough from Souls to be considered a new IP).
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
The open world is retarded for so many reasons. The whole point of an open world game is consistency and logic (as it’s works in the setting.). Game world is empty and devoid of usual open world stuff. One moment your fighting Arthurian Knights and the next your fighting Cthulhu inspired storm giants and Japanese northmen riding horses. (Other DS games being leveled base didn’t suffer from this as much as it was divided into game levels with specific themes, but it really hurts in an open world design). You could say it’s supposed to be chaotic and warped, but that doesn’t excuse the asinine world and the lack of any interesting effort into it.
Truth. The open world is not only shit from a mechanic standpoint but from an aesthetical one too. It's bloated with elements that don't speak to each other, nor pass across verossimilitude. Ultima IV on ASCII gfx and adlib sounds suspend my disbelief better than this.
 
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cretin

Magister
Douchebag!
Joined
Apr 20, 2019
Messages
1,347
They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
It's too late, From has embraced the "fashion souls" meme and armor is now for looks only. Which is odd because ER has some of the worst looking armor in the series (yes, series; this is not even remotely differentiated enough from Souls to be considered a new IP).

This just simply isn't true. Armor is extremely strong in ER. It's perhaps the strongest its been in the souls series. Try taking on some of the late game mobs with no armor vs in full veteran's set, the difference is profound. That's also true in PVP.
 

Matador

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
1,631
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For me one of the main problems is devs metagaming expert and "pro" players. This happened first in DS3 although there are signs since Orphan of Kos in Bloodborne.

They seem very afraid the game is called easy by us that have +500 hours across previous games, or streamers that play 12 hours a day for a living cruising through the game the firsts 3 days.

The result? Pro players discover broken stuff in 5 days, and everyone is using in 7, without the well crafted encounters in previous games. You could also use cheesy stuff in those, but you could reasonable have fun beating bosses with normal tools. In Elden Ring there is not option to have fun, in an easy or hard mode organic difficulty selection.

The nailed catching off-guard old players in Sekiro introducing a new kind of gameplay. But you could master it, it´s FUN to do it and you had no shortcuts like the Mimic tear to beat the game. You were rewarded if you played the game well.

Now they include Sekiro enemies without those tools, so let´s spawn broken summons or spam cheesy arts to AFK bad designed fights.

They don´t get their previous games weren't good due to super high difficulty, but because you had to learn the mechanics, be aware of surroundings, move methodically and respect enemies to beat them, unlike western games you can beat spamming and hiding to refill health.
 

elverkongen

Learned
Joined
Apr 17, 2020
Messages
148
They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
It's too late, From has embraced the "fashion souls" meme and armor is now for looks only. Which is odd because ER has some of the worst looking armor in the series (yes, series; this is not even remotely differentiated enough from Souls to be considered a new IP).

This just simply isn't true. Armor is extremely strong in ER. It's perhaps the strongest its been in the souls series. Try taking on some of the late game mobs with no armor vs in full veteran's set, the difference is profound. That's also true in PVP.
Hmm good point, late game mobs kills me in 0.75 hits with no armor while they kill me in 1 hit with armor. If I cast Bergthomir's Divine Breastfeed buff and eat a Shabriri's Crumbled Dickcheese while wearing the Silver Signet Buttplug of Ygtribiblo the Trombonian then maybe I can fire off a Morgenthau's Rupturing Prolapse before I die in 2 hits.
 

mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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Sep 30, 2009
Messages
11,468
Location
Combatfag: Gold box / Pathfinder
Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
It's too late, From has embraced the "fashion souls" meme and armor is now for looks only. Which is odd because ER has some of the worst looking armor in the series (yes, series; this is not even remotely differentiated enough from Souls to be considered a new IP).

This just simply isn't true. Armor is extremely strong in ER. It's perhaps the strongest its been in the souls series. Try taking on some of the late game mobs with no armor vs in full veteran's set, the difference is profound. That's also true in PVP.
Hmm good point, late game mobs kills me in 0.75 hits with no armor while they kill me in 1 hit with armor. If I cast Bergthomir's Divine Breastfeed buff and eat a Shabriri's Crumbled Dickcheese while wearing the Silver Signet Buttplug of Ygtribiblo the Trombonian then maybe I can fire off a Morgenthau's Rupturing Prolapse before I die in 2 hits.

Yeah. Totally.

And I mentioned earlier that I was going to show a poise and armour comparison. It's not the best thing ever, but I think it at least shows that they aren't useless like some people have claimed for some reason (which is weird, because it's super obvious - but whatever).



https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-writing-by-grrm.128014/page-441#post-7922966
 

Vibalist

Arcane
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
3,583
Location
Denmark
They also need to think about how armor affects damage calculation and combat in other ways. Poise is retarded as a concept and strong armor like plate armor needs to be very useful for defending against at least some types of damage. If the attacker doesn't have enough armor penetration, you should be able to deflect the attack.
It's too late, From has embraced the "fashion souls" meme and armor is now for looks only. Which is odd because ER has some of the worst looking armor in the series (yes, series; this is not even remotely differentiated enough from Souls to be considered a new IP).

This just simply isn't true. Armor is extremely strong in ER. It's perhaps the strongest its been in the souls series. Try taking on some of the late game mobs with no armor vs in full veteran's set, the difference is profound. That's also true in PVP.

+1. For a while I was convinced 'fashion souls' was a real thing, so I ran around in light armor and equipped those talismans that buff your stats at the expense of physical resistance. I got fucking decimated.


Hmm good point, late game mobs kills me in 0.75 hits with no armor while they kill me in 1 hit with armor. If I cast Bergthomir's Divine Breastfeed buff and eat a Shabriri's Crumbled Dickcheese while wearing the Silver Signet Buttplug of Ygtribiblo the Trombonian then maybe I can fire off a Morgenthau's Rupturing Prolapse before I die in 2 hits.

I realize you're being a facetious dumbfuck, but the difference between dying in, say, 2 hits instead of one is massive in these games. And buffs + strong armor can absolutely improve your defensive capabilities enough that you can take three or more hits before dying, where you could only take one before.

Case in point: I went up against Radagon and his ridiculous holy damage with an incantation that took my holy resistance from roughly 30 percent to about 60 percent. I went from getting almost instakilled to basically facetanking the motherfucker. It almost trivialized the whole fight.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,157
Light armor got fucked in this game because light roll doesn't seem to be doing much of anything that i've seen.
 

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