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

[Jinn]

I like how the later areas in the game stop feeling like ubisoft games with no markers

I feel like the early areas don't feel like this to begin with, as do many others in this thread. They feel like what you've described about later areas, except without the horse part.

 

[perfectslumbers]

I feel like the early areas don't feel like this to begin with, as do many others in this thread. They feel like what you've described about later areas, except without the horse part.

Tbh I'm not sure how to describe it, it's much better than a Ubisoft game obviously but they're still filled with dungeons made from tilesets and ruins with stairs down to a chest. You're right though that every area feels very "level-like," although this aspect becomes stronger in the later areas.

 

[Jinn]

Tbh I'm not sure how to describe it, it's much better than a Ubisoft game obviously but they're still filled with dungeons made from tilesets and ruins with stairs down to a chest. You're right though that every area feels very "level-like," although this aspect becomes stronger in the later areas.

It's because of what I was saying in this earlier post. There's a hypersensitivity to this and a hyper-focus that's only been exacerbated by people forcing themselves to do these very optional things when they aren't completely necessary. I've done 5, maybe 6 of those dungeons through my entire 40 hour playthrough so far. They aren't designed to be gone through one by one, autistic completionism style. They're there to maybe pop in to when you don't have as much time to play, or you're finishing up a session or something. I feel like the minor comparison to Chalice Dungeons was apt in a way. There's tons of naturally occurring, Dark Souls-like areas all over the world that provide the exploration and progression you might need to continue on with things like Legacy Dungeons and main bosses.

HeatEXTEND said it best here.

Kinda feel bad for the people mindscrewing themselves into thinking this isn't a great game because of muh open-world tropes. 99% of open-world games are indeed shit, this one is not.

 

[perfectslumbers]

here's a hypersensitivity to this and a hyper-focus

Ty for the psychoanalysis but I wouldn't say that's necessarily the case. From Soft games are designed in such a way that builds can revolve entirely around a few items, so it's very natural to approach the game in a completionist manner (at the very least, this is the mentality I approached the game with.) This contrasts heavily to the Bethesda school of design where everything is random and the rewards you get depend entirely on your level, so you can go wherever you want and do anything you want.

I'm just impressed by the way the content was paced. Even though I've approached the game in a completionist way the game evolved and got more focused as it went along in a way that ensured that I never got bored. I posted earlier that right when I got bored of the catacombs and caves the game evolved and the pacing changed.

 

[Lutte]

Amazingly, even with the way I fine combed every map, I feel like my inventory is pretty bare compared to the amount of weapons and armors I'd be able to try in a typical souls. So, so many hours in and the only other katana I found other than the uchigatana I had on my starter class is a piece of shit for strength builds (was that even a thing in the other souls games? I legit don't remember a strength scaling katana), like, what the fuck. I might not have been autistic enough yet.

 

[Curratum]

Daily reminder that if you're using spirit ashes you're denying yourself the struggle of perseverance and conquest and are essentially cheating. Spirits trivialize the game and bosses.

Fuck this mentality, honestly. The Leonine Misbegotten boss (who is somehow a major boss with an achievement tied to it for some reason??) was kicking my ass left and right even with the wolves. I was using the +0 wolf spirits and a +7 spear.

Got the wolfies to +2, bleed uchigatana +5 and wrecked him so bad, it wasn't even funny, didn't need to drink a single flask.

The disparity between pretty much all other weapon enchantments / ashes of war and the bleed effect / ash is so big, it's a bit silly.

Edit: Also, to the people saying you are shit at the game if you need to do all side content, open world mobs barely give you any fucking xp. All my levels are from bosses and from gold runes collected in the world that I ate.

The only thing you gain from doing the side content is weapons and items.

 

[Jermu]

100 limit for map markers seems retarded decision

Fought against third watchdog hope there is not like 10 of these

 

[Lutte]

Edit: Also, to the people saying you are shit at the game if you need to do all side content, open world mobs barely give you any fucking xp. All my levels are from bosses and from gold runes collected in the world that I ate.

The only thing you gain from doing the side content is weapons and items.

Mob loot tables are also pretty terrible at dropping anything of interest so I don't even bother killing anything when I discover a new camp, I just circle around to fuck the AI then drop off the horse to collect the chests content. I feel I had weapons and armor pieces much more often in previous games, this game insteads gives you a ton of loot for crafting useless shit.

 

[Curratum]

Also, why is weapon upgrading SO expensive? I can understand the tiered materials, it's always been like that. But even inside the same tier, say +1 to +3, each consecutive upgrade costs more and more items. It takes 1+2+4 mats to go from +0 to +3.

I'm level ~30 and I only managed to get the katana to +5. I've only ever upgraded one other weapon to +3...

 

[Curratum]

Edit: Also, to the people saying you are shit at the game if you need to do all side content, open world mobs barely give you any fucking xp. All my levels are from bosses and from gold runes collected in the world that I ate.

The only thing you gain from doing the side content is weapons and items.

Mob loot tables are also pretty terrible at dropping anything of interest so I don't even bother killing anything when I discover a new camp, I just circle around to fuck the AI then drop off the horse to collect the chests content. I feel I had weapons and armor pieces much more often in previous games, this game insteads gives you a ton of loot for crafting useless shit.

I think they just manually placed all the loot and you need to find it in locations. Mobs to drop some cool fashion now and then, though, so I usually kill everything. Hope I find the "item drop++" item sooner rather than later. Your char's item drop chance scales up with one of the casting stats and I'm doing a quality build so I have the lowest possible item drop :L

 

[Funposter]

I beat Radahn last night and have woken up with a headache this morning. I'm choosing to believe that these two things are related.

 

[Lutte]

There's also a problem with the idea that one can and should just ignore the open world if they're tired of it, there's too many NPCs tied to it that you will just miss out on if you don't. I revisited a few early areas I didn't comb hard enough and found two questlines I missed, nothing major, but still.
It was always easy to miss out on some side content in the souls, but with the scope of a large open world it's kinda...

Ah well, I'm already at the point in the game where most people are dying off or just committing suicide because what would a souls game be without everyone being crushed in despair, From doesn't even try to change this formula a bit.

 

[Smocaine]

52 hours in, no longer enjoying the game, there are a number of issues with it but for the sake of brevity I'll attempt to keep it to an easy to read list rather than walls of text

• the best moments of the game are those that are not open-world - Sofria and Ainsel River, Eternal City, Legacy Dungeons, Castle Morne, Shaded Castle etc
  
• whilst the teleport traps excite at first, it becomes an annoyance when you have to break out of a random place just to get back to the content you were actually trying to do. it would also be more tonally consistent if you were taken somewhere within the actual immediate vicinity (like in Bloodborne). at the bottom of Raya Lucaria an iron maiden coffin enemy captured me and took me all the way to the Volcano Manor, nowhere near Raya Lucaria
• the game has a severe lack of armor sets, or at least it is very obtuse in giving them to you. I'm aware that you can use the silver claws to raise item discovery, but having to farm penguins and slaughter generic enemies for 15-30 minutes at a time isn't exactly compelling gameplay
  
• overworld enemies are copy-pasted constantly, mostly just with slight alterations to color and subtle gear differences - knights, soldiers, giants and dragons
  
• a lot of the encounters feel as if they're forcing your hand into using Spirit Summons, they should be an aid, not a necessity; Burial Watchdog with 4 mini-gargoyles, Demi-Human Chief. these fights mirror the worst of DS2
• why wasn't the most recent CGI story trailer in the final game as the intro? instead we got a slideshow featuring minor demi-gods. was expecting the intro to be expanded and be present in the final game since it was far better made and more interesting
  
• the overworld filler enemies encourage you to fight them on horseback, but the mounted combat is extremely basic and limited to only 4 basic attacks. you spam R1 on small enemies and hug them, attack the ankles of giant ones and drive-by hit mounted enemies
• reused bosses are unacceptable, it greatly cheapens the feeling of the game and retroactively lessens the impact of the previous encounter with it. duo bosses with them are even worse, and I'd prefer not to have a boss at all instead of a repeat. learning that the Ancestor Spirit (which was in my mind a great boss) is reused later on near completely shattered my confidence in the game. why not reuse Rennala too? just throw her in a cave or evergaol somewhere and call it a day
  
• why did I have the option to tell Kalé about howling in the Mistwoods? a lot of the dialogue choices for NPCs makes it seem like I'm selecting their dialogue for them, when normally an NPC would tell me something of their own accord in relation to a requirement I have or haven't met
  
• weapon upgrade system is a mess, especially when you want to switch weapon, but nothing too new there
  
• the repetition would be alleviated if there were things to do besides just slaughtering everything you see. the idea of nothing but combat for the next 50 hours isn't too appealing when I've done that for the last 50 hours already
• puzzles or friendly towns would help break up the monotony, hell anything to break it up, since as of right now it's starting to feel a bit like an open-world Diablo game. the combat of a From game really isn't good enough to carry it for 100+ hours
• the lore, or rather the lack of meaningful lore and story there is and just how scatterbrain it all is. there are countless nonsense terms and names used seemingly interchangeably, and the game never does much to actually show you it, it's mostly a case of telling and not showing. it seems as if the game underwent some heavy rewrites and the dev team itself was very confused during development
• in addition to the above point, GRRM's naming system is something we could have done without. Rennala, Renna (Ranni), Radagon, Rykard, Radahn, Margit, Morgott, Miquella, Marika, Malenia, Melina
• NPC quests are more convoluted than ever before, this might be the most wiki-required one of them all
• NPCs aren't terribly interesting, most are rather one-note and character archetypes we've seen before
• shameless reuse of NPCs and enemies found in previous games. I get that Patches is a fan favorite, but it's a new IP and it's beyond tiring at this point. the game also reuses the Dark Souls basilisk, they even have the tiny eyes above the fake ones
• the world doesn't feel reactive or alive. it takes much more than scattering about deer, eagles and 'rabbitgaroo' around the world to bring it to life. I understand that they weren't going to make huge bustling cities with NPCs, but we don't even get abandoned cities or towns that formerly inhabited life, so where the fuck does everyone live, and where did they live? all we have is ruins, churches and caves. other From games at least shown you settlements in the distance, or let you explore their remains. you also get the impression that you are the only person actively exploring the world since there is absolutely nobody else non-static and non-hostile exploring but you
• soundtrack is yet again more of the usual over-the-top wailing epic orchestras and chanting, the same it's been ever since Bloodborne. the tracks are virtually indistinguishable from those found in DS3. the only two tracks I'm fond of are Ancestor Spirit and Rennala's, they're a nice change of pace and more melancholic, fitting the tone of their bosses well

others in this thread already made some points that I agreed with, so I'll copy and paste what they said

• the open-world is underwhelming once you've seen everything it has to offer and know what to expect. mini-dungeons, mines, towers with a simple puzzle, evergaols with some reused Bloodborne boss, walking mausoleum, churches with estus upgrade - the game is very formulaic during overworld exploration
  
• since I'm not a fan of modern FromSoft bosses, the only thing I really enjoy is the Legacy Dungeons (this is a key point, I found Raya Lucaria and Stormveil to be very enjoyable, but the playtime of those in hours of the 52 total would be short indeed)
  
• the sense of wonder of being spat out to somewhere like Caelid after the Siofra River only lasts for about 20 minutes until you realize you're grossly underpowered, so you can't reasonably stay there and explore
  
• the feeling of being "stuck" in an area starts to grate when you know there's 30 more hours of content ahead and that moving onto later areas will be somewhat fruitless since you're just exploring, rather than progressing

all in all, I'm greatly disappointed and unsure if I'll bother finishing it. it was easily my most anticipated game and has been for the last few years, but it seems they bit off more than they could chew and it didn't pay off, at least not for me. as for the 10/10 reviews claiming that it's some gaming revolution, I'm not sure what they were smoking

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Give me Ranni wife!

 

[Funposter]

The Renna/Ranni naming has to be the absolute weirdest choice among all of them. You changed two letters in your name to hide your identity from someone who wouldn't know who you are anyway.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i loaded the game, and was greeted by a type A or type B "body" selection.

Really? Even Japanese games are now succumbing to this insanity?

 

[Tyranicon]

Seriously considering respeccing for pure INT build after discovering the

Spoiler

Vergilesque Katana

version of the moonlight greatsword. Fast Ash of War with reach and versatility, and procs bleed?

Hella.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, is it me or has the music of those games declined a bit as well?

It seems to have become a bit more sterile than it used to be, something i noticed first with Dark Souls 3, and i just listened to the main theme in the menu of Elden Ring and i think it has gone worse still, but then it's just the opening theme i hope the individual tracks in the game are better than this.

 

[MapMan]

I'm about 15 hours in and tbh the game feels like DS3 stretched real thin. Things that used to be obtainable through a clever puzzle, exploration or quest are now in some filler open world content like a meaningless dungeon or some shit. Open world games are truly a cancer upon gaming. One more game that asks me to collect flowers and I swear I'm gonna lose it.

 

[Funposter]

BTW, is it me or has the music of those games declined a bit as well?

It seems to have become a bit more sterile than it used to be, something i noticed first with Dark Souls 3, and i just listened to the main theme in the menu of Elden Ring and i think it has gone worse still, but then it's just the opening theme i hope the individual tracks in the game are better than this.

Take my opinion on this with a grain of salt, since audio such as dialogue, music and all cutscenes keep cutting in and out for me. The dragon boss music is one of the few songs I've been able to consistently listen to without it bugging out, and while I think it's good, it's absolutely derivative and sounds like every other song from Dark Souls 3. The main menu music is forgettable. The one boss theme that I did enjoy, for the same reason as the fight itself, was for 'Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon'. It's not bombastic or attempting to be epic, it's a somber string piece that slowly introduces subdued female chanting, which reminded me of the soundtrack to Ghost in the Shell of all things. The bombastic tracks are rarely bad, but they all sort of blend together unless there's some piece of specific instrumentation or a refrain that makes it stick out in your mind. The Abyss Watchers theme from DS3 isn't really that different to any of the others, but it has the tolling of the bell at the beginning as the music swells. The Soul of Cinder theme is utterly generic until it starts re-using the piano from Gwyn's track in DS1.

The production has become better over the years, but it's come at the cost of the composer attempting to be original or daring in any way, or attempting to tell a story with the music. It's worth noting that the Demon's Souls soundtrack was composed by Shunsuke Kida, and Dark Souls by Motoi Sakuraba, while everything from Dark Souls 2 onwards is by Yuka Kitamura. That's probably why the first two games have such distinct soundtracks and everything else feels the same.

 

[deem]

Demon's Souls soundtrack was the most compelling and diverse IMO. Dark Souls had memorable tunes. The decline begun with DS2 and continued in its sequel where almost every track features a pompous choir.

 

[Ramnozack]

New computer finally came in, time to finally play this shit with some good framerates.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

New computer finally came in, time to finally play this shit with some good framerates.

Can't wait for his 'The game runs like shit on my superpower computer. REFUNDED' post.

 

[Lutte]

• the lore, or rather the lack of meaningful lore and story there is and just how scatterbrain it all is. there are countless nonsense terms and names used seemingly interchangeably, and the game never does much to actually show you it, it's mostly a case of telling and not showing. it seems as if the game underwent some heavy rewrites and the dev team itself was very confused during development

It's so much more convoluted than DeS and DS. For all the stupid lorefaggotry people go on tangent about, Dark Souls is a straightforward story at heart. You don't need to go deep lore mode to understand the power structure of the world, the ambitions and the nature of the main protagonists.
The tone of Elden Ring sits between an attempt at building an epic ala Greek and a crossover with lovecraftian stuff (yes, it IS channeling some pretty bloodborney stuff in there without going into details, but it clashes severely with the normal tone much of the game has) and so far hasn't yet made any sense at all. Still no luck on making sense what exactly the two fingers are which are like the one main faith of the game (despite all the various churches and gods). Or what is an elden lord and why is it needed.
Item descriptions are also very lacking, compounded with the fact that you don't really find that many items in this.

NPC quests are more convoluted than ever before, this might be the most wiki-required one of them all

I found the ones that assign missions to you pretty straightforward, but it's guaranteed only the most autistic person in the world will be able to follow through the more random encounters ie NPCs that are travelling around whenever you exhaust their dialogue at a place, with a world that big it's unreasonable to attempt to follow through a lot of them.

you also get the impression that you are the only person actively exploring the world since there is absolutely nobody else non-static and non-hostile exploring but you

Ah no, you are wrong here, there really is quite a few out there, but as I said, with the large structure of the world, it's also quite problematic to even meet with them, since there's about the same number of active NPCs as there would be in a typical souls game, but scattered around the place here. Some are really unexpected and you wonder how they even survive though, like a certain

Spoiler

weakling seamster who was bullied by his people that somehow manages to reach a late game site of grace. What sort of dogshit luck that creature have?

Content density of a normal souls, spread very, very thin.

the sense of wonder of being spat out to somewhere like Caelid after the Siofra River only lasts for about 20 minutes until you realize you're grossly underpowered, so you can't reasonably stay there and explore

The worst was the abduction by a random mob.
When it happened, I thought I was going to get the Yahar'gul experienc from Bloodborne once again. I was wrong. It's 100% pointless if you can just port out at will. It's a major let down because when it happens if you've played BB you really get hyped up for what is coming.

BTW, is it me or has the music of those games declined a bit as well?

It seems to have become a bit more sterile than it used to be, something i noticed first with Dark Souls 3, and i just listened to the main theme in the menu of Elden Ring and i think it has gone worse still, but then it's just the opening theme i hope the individual tracks in the game are better than this.

BB had a wonderful track IMHO, and while Sekiro's isn't too memorable, it worked pretty well with the theme and atmosphere. I barely pay attention to Elden Ring's though.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

BTW, is it me or has the music of those games declined a bit as well?

It seems to have become a bit more sterile than it used to be, something i noticed first with Dark Souls 3, and i just listened to the main theme in the menu of Elden Ring and i think it has gone worse still, but then it's just the opening theme i hope the individual tracks in the game are better than this.

The main menu theme is a real clunker. Very generic "epic" music like the Witcher 2 menu theme. The overworld combat & exploration tracks wear thin quickly as well. Boss tracks are serviceable enough from what I've heard so far.