From Software Elden Ring - From Software's new game with writing by GRRM

[HumanTotemPole]

I have a few theories about this. One is that this being an open-world, filler content and meaningless connective tissue are inevitable, and those tend to cheapen an otherwise concise experience. The other is the conflicting goals the game gives you, there's the main objective but, at the same time, you're encouraged to lose yourself on the way and explore side content, compared to previous entries where it was: ring bell, kill boss, etc (you could sequence break and try alternate routes, but it was always a straight line). Combine the wandering with the fact that the optional activities can be very unfulfilling (it can do nothing for your build or shed no new light on the plot threads you're following) and you get the feeling of aimlessness.

Nail on head re open world malaise. I suspect I'm more annoyed than I should be by it in this case because it's not something I expect from a Soulslike.

 

[Curratum]

So, I just got to the hub by accident...

How immensely daft must you be if you're stuck on Margit for hours, yet you didn't take the time to explore.

I found the path before I even entered Stormveil or saw the boss, and not because I was looking for it, I just saw you could to down from the edge of the ruined bridge and went to see what's there...

Guess I'll go back and smack the boss around, I'm lvl 25 and have a +7 spear, as well as a ton of fire damage resins.

Spoiler

One of the merchants in the hub also sells a 5000-rune item that claims to "hold the boss down to the ground" (and I guess someone else sells it too, but I offed him and now the merchant serves like Milentia from DS2), which I think is even more help for people who really struggle with him. Maybe I will too, we'll see.

 

[toro]

The game overstayed his welcome. I'm close to become numb or burned out.

It's true that the sense of adventure and exploration was great in the beginning but after 40+ hours I cannot say that I feel it anymore despite the fact that the world design is spectacular. It's a good game where the quantity of garbage combat is actually on par with a retarded mmorpg.

Also most dungeons are Skyrim level and most bosses are spastics with infinite stamina. There is no point in learning their pattern when you can simply brute force your way into victory. This is basically the combat philosophy of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. I was never fond of it.

The open world aspects are dragging down the entire experience. FromSW tried to hide the issues with an unimaginable amount of content but it simply doesn't work on long term.

That being said: I will take a break and on return I will probably focus on the main story.

 

[Jinn]

Kind of a surprising 180 from you on this one, toro. I will venture to say that 40 hours in three-ish days is bound to burn anyone out. At 30 myself, I'm been planning to slow down a lot more in the coming days.

 

[Wunderbar]

Have anyone figured out how PvP works in this game. I've been playing for some time and the only invaders that I met were bots. I've read that it's only possible to be invaded if you co-op, but is there a way to enable PvP even if I play alone? I like the occasional random invade to spice things up.

You get it

Spoiler

by defeating the invader on the ground floor in the Roundtable Hold hub area

lmao i thought it was a shield with a weird name, and ignored it.

 

[fork]

It's kind of a 180 for me, too. Or more like a 360 actually.

Spoiler

I went in thinking it'd probably be shit, open world, crafting, a horse, that Martin hack. But it's From after all, so I gave it a try. And after initial disappointment over the cheap intro, the game surprised me: great visual design, hard enemy right in the starting area, the dragon, teleporter trap to that crystal cave and Caelid, the trashmob transforming into a bear, Stormveil Castle etc. and it just kept getting better. But after 10 hours or so the hype started to deflate: I still didn't get what the story was about; the NPCs are all utterly uninteresting, without exception; the world is too fucking big; dozens of copy-pasted dungeons and other copy-pasted stuff; forgettable soundtrack; and yes, the spastic DS3/BB combat. Occasionally, some wow-moments managed to pull me back in temporarily, like that aforementioned elevator leading deep down beneath eastern Limgrave, or another teleporter trap to that giant in the Anor Londo style place, and a few more. But the moments of refreshed enthusiasm got shorter and shorter. And now, every time I get the itch playing, when reading this thread for example, and I stop for a moment to think about it, the itch goes away immediately.

The game simply doesn't work.

 

[Silentstorm]

Finally doing Stormveil Castle, hey, look, a Black Knight...that you can sneak attack on, and look, another knight with a spear...i hope it didn't drop anything good because it fell down a hole and i just found a Grace site and decided to rest and play some more tomorrow, only now really starting with the legacy dungeon, i know, but it's fine...certainly bigger than a cave, also, poor newbies that lose to the first Black Knight and don't realize you can sneak attack, there is no statue and it's good old fashioned Soulsborne walk a few easy minutes back to an enemy that killed you kind of thing.

 

[The Regulator Guy]

Warning: possible lore spoilers, if my crackpot theory turns out to be true.

Enjoying the game so far, though I'm getting my ass kicked, being the kind of guy who has only put a couple hours into Dark Souls 2 but put 145 hours into Far Cry 6 and doesn't regret a moment of it. But I have a theory about George Railroad Martin's lore that may or may not prove out.

From what I understand so far, the big queen of the realm is named Marika, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

My suspicion -- and please correct me if there's any reason to suspect it's not accurate -- is that Marika is meant to be an allegory of America (the country where GRRM lives, pronounced Uh-Marika) during the previous administration, which GRRM did not care for, and we will find out that she is now insane, diseased, evil, or all of the above.

I could be wrong, but I'd bet a few bucks on it if I wanted to deal with any of you outside the forums, which I don't.

 

[Belegarsson]

Frankly, I really like how this game has no journal or quest log at all. NPC interactions have been sparse and they speak in comprehensive, non-obtuse English (a first for Souls games) which made every conversion kinda stuck in my mind. A girl near the bridge at the end of the map asked me to deliver a letter to her commander father in a castle, a knight near a grave next to the bridge that has a roaming pumpkin monster warned me about the nearby cursed village, the pot guy Alexander told me he's making a trip to a castle that I forgot its name but surely I'll stumble upon it along my way. It's a combination of where they are, who they look like, what they told me made them distinct and memorable. The Tarnished doesn't strike me as a figure who writes journal or draw sketches either.

I'm extremely forgetful IRL but this game, I don't feel the need to be reminded of what I need to do at all. I can wander around and suddenly stumble upon somewhere completely new that made me go "wait how the fuck did I miss this place when I came across this area earlier???", ah shit now I'm fighting Bloodhound Knight or whatever that thing is. The Stormveil Castle so far seems like standard Souls' classic linear dungeon, I feel overwhelmed, I head back to the open world and jerk off around, it's so damn refreshing after 40 hours of Dying Light 2 which was designed around icons and map markers.

 

[Funposter]

Red Wolf of Radagon - not a hard boss, took me 4 tries (all but one of which were two hits away from winning) but another great example of the much maligned "spastic combat" which has been mentioned in this thread. The camera whips around as he jumps all over the screen, at least one combo is so fast that rolling to avoid the first attack would lead to me consistently being hit by the second, and he's placed in a room with nooks and crannies where if he gets stuck in the corner, his enormous reaching attacks will reach through level geometry to hit you, but if you get stuck in that same corner, it's game over as your weapon bonks the wall. Absolutely cancerous boss imo.

 

[Jackpot]

Frankly, I really like how this game has no journal or quest log at all. NPC interactions have been sparse and they speak in comprehensive, non-obtuse English (a first for Souls games) which made every conversion kinda stuck in my mind. A girl near the bridge at the end of the map asked me to deliver a letter to her commander father in a castle, a knight near a grave next to the bridge that has a roaming pumpkin monster warned me about the nearby cursed village, the pot guy Alexander told me he's making a trip to a castle that I forgot its name but surely I'll stumble upon it along my way. It's a combination of where they are, who they look like, what they told me made them distinct and memorable. The Tarnished doesn't strike me as a figure who writes journal or draw sketches either.

I'm extremely forgetful IRL but this game, I don't feel the need to be reminded of what I need to do at all. I can wander around and suddenly stumble upon somewhere completely new that made me go "wait how the fuck did I miss this place when I came across this area earlier???", ah shit now I'm fighting Bloodhound Knight or whatever that thing is. The Stormveil Castle so far seems like standard Souls' classic linear dungeon, I feel overwhelmed, I head back to the open world and jerk off around, it's so damn refreshing after 40 hours of Dying Light 2 which was designed around icons and map markers.

My problem with the quests is that with such a big open world its easy to miss where they start, and if you do miss their start then it becomes even easier to miss their next step.

For instance, wolf guy.

Spoiler

I explored around for 40 hours, deep into the east and the entire south. On a whim I travel back to the church at the start and talked with the trader, and he has an option to ask him something. I ask him and he gives me a new emote and instructions on where to use it.
No idea why or why I had to talk to him in particular but maybe I missed something while exploring.
I do what he says and talk to a wolf guy who asks me to let him know if I see someone. I recognize the name but don't remember where it's from. So I move on and explore more before getting curious and looking up who he was talking about.
Turns out its a boss I already beat. I couldn't tell him that I already killed the guy, I have to go to the boss location and talk to him like I had summoned him to help.

After all that I ended up spoiling myself on the wiki a little, just looking at the NPCs, and I found out I missed like 3 of them in the starting area alone.
I've always had this issue a little in dark souls games, missing out on quests just because I didn't go down a particular hallway before beating a boss, but it seems especially egregious in this game.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Is this game actually easier or it's just that after playing this shit for so many years everybody got a bit too gud?

It's the first From game in a long time where you can beat bosses by being smarter or preparing well, rather than just bashing your head against them until you finally win. Also one of the games main mechanics is a powerful upgradeable summon.

 

[The Regulator Guy]

It's an interesting design decision to make you agree to an EULA every time you want to quit the game.

 

[Funposter]

Rennala is far and away the best boss in the game so far. It's not even close.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

This game is too hard. I give up. Uninstall

 

[Jenkem]

got sidetracked and started to explore more instead of go further in the academy... WOW there were a lot of places I missed in earlier areas.. Worth giving generally unmarked areas of the map a second or even third time... found a couple caves and optional fights I completely missed my first time through....

 

[Filthy Sauce]

To all those saying this game is a 10/10. You're a fag. If I see you on the streets I'll chock the turds right out of your asshole.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Niggers

 

[Ventidius]

Just beat Godrick, definitely a solid boss, but I don't think he's as well-designed as Margit.

I felt he was somewhat reminescent of Gael, with the way many of his moves chain, level of agression, close the gap, and the lingering effects of some moves that require absolute perfect timing of dodges and annihilate any possibility of using positioning to your advantage.

I enjoyed Gael a lot, so normally I should also praise Godrick but... his character model I found rather difficult to read in movement and I was very thankful that he didn't have the amount of HP Gael has or I would have ragequit.

Oh, he is not a bad boss by any means. And you are right on both counts, he's similar to Gael and Gael is a great boss; but at the same time, he lacks some of the things that really round out Gael's menacingness, since I felt his ranged and area denial options were much less threatening. And as you point out, his durability is nowhere even close.

So far, all of the "serious" boss fights have been above average, including Godrick. It's just that I found both Margit and the Tree Sentinel more impressive. The Sentinel breaks the DS3 clone mold while being a tough fight in his own right, and Margit takes after the Nameless King with those combo delays while also having some tools in his kit that in some ways make him more of a pain (!) than the latter. I also found Margit the toughest overall, so that likely colors my opinion as well.

In general, I think it's a bit crazy that they are throwing endgame-tier bosses at us this early on. Even Sekiro didn't really kick into gear until Genichiro. That said, I think I like it overall. As great as something like Gascoigne is in terms of easing new players into the mechanics, I don't think veterans really get much out of starting the learning curve from scratch with every game (unless it's very different like Sekiro). Better to get straight to business. I feel bad for the newbies though, they are in for some pain.

 

[Kruno]

 

[DemonKing]

Someone wrote an entire article complaining that while you could play a black character in Elden Ring you couldn't have a "black" hairstyle:

Elden Ring’s character creator fails Black players

You can do just about anything with the character creator except have a Black hairstyle

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/25/22951205/elden-rings-character-creator-black-hairstyles

 

[Funposter]

the black female preset is actually the best looking one and it has a black hairstyle so idk what they're talking about

 

[DemonKing]

the black female preset is actually the best looking one and it has a black hairstyle so idk what they're talking about

To be fair the writer does say there is one "black" hairstyle - but it's ugly so doesn't count:

they have one — an afro — and an ugly one at that.

 

[Doktor Best]

I never understood why people watch this dumbo playing vidya. Its even more frustrating knowing he makes a fortune off of this.

 

[Kruno]

I never understood why people watch this dumbo playing vidya. Its even more frustrating knowing he makes a fortune off of this.

I didn't watch the video so I don't know. You should go through my posting history...

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