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

[Jinn]

It is not, I just read this today. Remember the fella you encounter on the castle gate, the one that says that you should take a side entrance? Apparently, if you look well enough, you can see him following you, and he's the one stealing your souls.

Apparently, after beating the boss, you can kill this guy and recover your souls.

Well, that's even cooler than I thought. I swear this has happened to me later in the game. I wonder if I have any other rune thieves following me around?

 

[perfectslumbers]

So, if you die in Stormveil Castle you recover around 3000 runes less than what you had.

Spoiler

You know the shady dude that tells you to take the side entrance? If you kill him BEFORE Godrick, you'll get all your lost souls back.

Most people who have this opinion don't mind Bloodborne by itself, they just dislike how it influenced Dark Souls 3 (and now Elden Ring)

Yeah Bloodborne is cool, I love Lovecraftian shit so I think it's good. But I like that Des/DS1/DS2 rewarded careful deliberation and patience over reflexes like DS3 and Elden Ring do.

 

[Old Hans]

Is it just me or From lost their way with their mythos? If DS1 and BB felt cohesive and tight as a virgin pussy, this feels completely disjointed, a pastiche of euro cliches that barely fit - christian sinners/tarnished expelled from a garden of eden/lands between, ruled by a greek-roman family of bickering gods, who praise some germanic/norse world tree/aerdtree, in a world with ethereal cues reminiscing from fae(ry) tales, arthurian roundtables, etc. And somebody above even spoiled the existence of 'outer gods', which I assume means some flavor or Cthulhu. WHAT A MESS.

It's very dark souls. It's got ancient dragons and everything. I kind of look at it using Tolkiens Silmarillion & what would happen if Valinor turned to shit

 

[hackncrazy]

like the ones made pre-Bloodborne again

Bloodborne's excellent, what are you on about?

Most people who have this opinion don't mind Bloodborne by itself, they just dislike how it influenced Dark Souls 3 (and now Elden Ring)

This reminds me of the old tale of Resident Evil 4 being a great game but a curse to the gaming industry because there were 200 games every year trying to be RE4. In a decade, when someone reads page 200 of this thread, they'll be reminded that Skyrim 7 and Fallout 6 tried so hard to be Elden Ring and failed up miserably.

 

[Lutte]

I preface this first by stating I never played the DLC and my judgement is only on the main game : Bloodborne was a lot, lot easier than DS3, and more forgiving. The parry was insanely strong on the bosses that could be parried, it was safer (it wasn't uncommon to wiff a parry and still not get hit since it's a ranged mechanism), many of the bosses could be stunlocked to death (continuous stagger by breaking limb by limb), you could make insane character builds with loot from the chalice dungeons, the health you regained by hitting an enemy after missing a dodge was not negligeable and the only bosses I had to retry a lot was Gascoigne (when I was still getting used to this) and Ebrietas.

This was all playing the game on PSNow streaming with the controls latency that it induces.

DS3 is the game that pivoted toward being hardcore on reflexes. It featured many downright infuriating mobs like the shield spear lothric knights of infinite stamina, the "how do I even read when it's going to attack" spazzing Pus of Man, the "360 all days every day" boreal outrider knights, and amplified some of the issues the series have with their engine/fov/camera that also persisted with the giant enemies in Elden Ring, like The Nameless King whose first phase I only managed to learn how to dodge by sound and timing memorization like a rhythm game because the visuals are all fucked. Elden Ring featured quite a bit more of this, like the fire giant, and it always infuriates me when I see this kind of game design still seeing approval for release. I didn't die many times to the giant, compared to other bosses that I did like, but the few times I died, I felt it was the epitome of unfair and very much going against the internet meme that "from soft games are hard but fair". Lol no, it isn't fair when you're losing just because the camera just doesn't work and a giant enemy does things you can't see.

It really doesn't help that From privilegies visual spectacle over working within their engine/mechanics limitation and accepting that this sort of encounter should just gtfo.

 

[Shrimp]

like the ones made pre-Bloodborne again

Bloodborne's excellent, what are you on about?

Most people who have this opinion don't mind Bloodborne by itself, they just dislike how it influenced Dark Souls 3 (and now Elden Ring)

This reminds me of the old tale of Resident Evil 4 being a great game but a curse to the gaming industry because there were 200 games every year trying to be RE4. In a decade, when someone reads page 200 of this thread, they'll be reminded that Skyrim 7 and Fallout 6 tried so hard to be Elden Ring and failed up miserably.

Wouldn't even surprise me. Dark Souls ended up being one of the more influential games of the previous decade and caused a fair share of soulless spin-offs and copies to be made by other studios attempting to emulate the formula.
We're still not out of the open world craze, so I can easily imagine we will end up seeing future open world games adopt mechanics or elements found in Elden Ring. Currently it feels like open world games are the final frontier (and often a dead end) for current AAA studios. I can't quite say if it's because they just happen to be popular among the wider audience or if it's because the higher-ups at the studio feel they have to 'prove' they are one of the big boys by making their own open world game.
I guess only time will tell what ends up happening, both with open world games in general but also with FROM's games. Given how many copies the game must be selling I'm sure we'll see some Elden Ring DLC either this year or the next, but who knows what lies beyond that? I for one don't really want them to just make Elden Ring 2 since it's already basically Dark Souls 4 in a different setting.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Is it just me or From lost their way with their mythos? If DS1 and BB felt cohesive and tight as a virgin pussy, this feels completely disjointed, a pastiche of euro cliches that barely fit - christian sinners/tarnished expelled from a garden of eden/lands between, ruled by a greek-roman family of bickering gods, who praise some germanic/norse world tree/aerdtree, in a world with ethereal cues reminiscing from fae(ry) tales, arthurian roundtables, etc. And somebody above even spoiled the existence of 'outer gods', which I assume means some flavor or Cthulhu. WHAT A MESS.

In completely unrelated news, From Software paid George R.R. Martin to establish the background setting for Elder Souls Elden Ring.

 

[perfectslumbers]

DS3 is the game that pivoted toward being hardcore on reflexes

Another thing they introduced in DS3 is attacks that have the same startup but can come out at different speeds, making it impossible to memorise and only able to be reacted to. Pontiff Sulyvhan did this a lot. Thankfully I noticed it much less, if it all, in Elden Ring.

 

[d1r]

Man, why do the same enemies must have different stat values the further you go from the starter map? Eggpods in the starter area have around 300HP, the same stupid enemies five hundred meters away in a different region have 1000HP. Absolute garbage enemy design that they copied from Dark Souls 3.

Can't they at least be somewhat consistent with enemy health values when it comes with that....?

 

[Kjaska]

After going in completely blind, stumbling into Margit, the Fell Omen very early on and getting completely manhandled by him repeatedly without seeing any progress, I was ready to write the devs off as trolls and either just quit the game or reroll into Astrologer and cheese the game with summons.

Caved in and read a general newb guide. Collected myself and started exploring some. Killed the Agheel dragon. Have to admit, it felt really great. Kiting Agheel into the stack of poison turtles and the crab to cook them. Seeing the crab react to the fire breath and try to escape it made me feel like it's an actual life form. The design in this game is a couple of standard deviations above everything else sometimes.

 

[hackncrazy]

Currently it feels like open world games are the final frontier (and often a dead end) for current AAA studios. I can't quite say if it's because they just happen to be popular among the wider audience or if it's because the higher-ups at the studio feel they have to 'prove' they are one of the big boys by making their own open world game.

In my opinion, the open world "trend" is more like a financial one. When you make a 60 USD game, consumers demand a lot of content, even if it's completely soulless. That's why Ubisoft releases a Assassin's Creed game every year with increasing playtimes. AC Valhalla goes up to 100 hours of "content" that consists of you doing fetch quests and getting collectibles around the world. And customers are very happy with it.

God forbid if a company decides to release a game like Outer Wilds, which is one of the best of the last decade, but charges 60 bucks for a 15 hour experience. There would be chaos and madness on gaming communities.

 

[hackncrazy]

DS3 is the game that pivoted toward being hardcore on reflexes

Another thing they introduced in DS3 is attacks that have the same startup but can come out at different speeds, making it impossible to memorise and only able to be reacted to. Pontiff Sulyvhan did this a lot. Thankfully I noticed it much less, if it all, in Elden Ring.

As I said before, my whole focus and love in From Soft games comes from gameplay and exploration, and speaking about gameplay, the delayed attack mechanic is (again, for me) one of the best things about these games, because they require the player not only to learn how the patterns work, but also to adapt to them since there are different speeds.

 

[BlackGoat]

I think Elden Ring actually frees them up a little bit to do other types of games, at least in the immediate future. There were some leaked images of a new Armored Core game, but I can see how the success of Elden Ring would give them the security to do some more experimental projects. And it's not like they can just churn out an Elden Ring 2 the way they were able to (apparently) churn out much smaller games like DS2/3 and Bloodborne

 

[BlackGoat]

The key to many of these bosses is realizing it's better to roll towards an attack rather than away from it. Was struggling with the Crucible Knight for awhile, but then started rolling into his attacks and he became trivial. Similar with Margit and Godrick, knowing they'll completely whiff their flying flip attacks if you just move a few steps forward. Learned this banging my head against the Orphan of Kos during a recent Bloodborne replay. Works with Sekiro, too. Dodging forward instead of back or to the side.

 

[Lutte]

The part where the game punishes you for smashing the dodge button the second an enemy even twitches is the part I like

The previous games didn't even nearly need to pay attention to that much, except for people going end game / overlevelling, stamina management was a real thing (meanwhile, I don't ever pay attention to my stamina bar in DS3, or right now, in Elden Ring, despite having only 25 endurance right now) so the punishment for having done the wrong roll right after unloading your attack chain on a boss was being unable to do another dodge when you need it.
I remember being affected most by this in DS2 against bosses like Fume Knight, I was always careful not to do too many attacks too even when I could because having no stamina was very dangerous in these.

DS1 and DS2 had very well thought, simple but effective game mechanics that were just plain lost in the transition. At this point they could remove stamina and the endurance stats and nothing would be lost from Elden Ring.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Just beat Starscourge Radahn and I think this will be very divisive boss. It is very style over substance fight but I can see where Miyahaki was going with this "raid boss" concept. Needed like 4 tries and actually had a lot fun on and off horse fighting him but I also saw people bitching about his moveset on reddit.

Gameplaywise he is nowhere near as good as Ishin, Father Owl of even Fume Knight but the presentation is just fucking bonkers. Easily top3 next to Ludwig, Gael or Ivory King.

Also his theme is great and that choral part from 4:40 onwards... shit fucking slapswish I could repeat this fight like in Sekiro. Probably will spend some time trying to help others as a summon

 

[Nathir]

Just finished Raya Lucaria and beat the last boss. What a beautiful and well designed zone.

 

[deem]

Has anyone here completed the main quest yet?

 

[Ghulgothas]

Bought and installing. I don't think I've touched a souls game since DS3, hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Picking a quality build, as all first playthrough must be. I think I'll fuck about with wizardry afterwards. Saw some gnarly shit with one of the curved greatswords, think I'll build towards that.

 

[Silva]

Just beat Starscourge Radahn and I think this will be very divisive boss. It is very style over substance fight but I can see where Miyahaki was going with this "raid boss" concept. Needed like 4 tries and actually had a lot fun on and off horse fighting him but I also saw people bitching about his moveset on reddit.

Gameplaywise he is nowhere near as good as Ishin, Father Owl of even Fume Knight but the presentation is just fucking bonkers. Easily top3 next to Ludwig, Gael or Ivory King.

Also his theme is great and that choral part from 4:40 onwards... shit fucking slapswish I could repeat this fight like in Sekiro. Probably will spend some time trying to help others as a summon

Amazing indeed. Goosebumps just from hearing it, can't wait to play the fight.

 

[hackncrazy]

Just beat Starscourge Radahn and I think this will be very divisive boss. It is very style over substance fight but I can see where Miyahaki was going with this "raid boss" concept. Needed like 4 tries and actually had a lot fun on and off horse fighting him but I also saw people bitching about his moveset on reddit.

Gameplaywise he is nowhere near as good as Ishin, Father Owl of even Fume Knight but the presentation is just fucking bonkers. Easily top3 next to Ludwig, Gael or Ivory King.

Also his theme is great and that choral part from 4:40 onwards... shit fucking slapswish I could repeat this fight like in Sekiro. Probably will spend some time trying to help others as a summon

I didn't enjoy the fight exactly because of the "raid boss" concept. Don't know how was your experience, but for me it was a fuckfest, calling npcs like crazy and praying not to be hit by his magic stuff. On a future playthrough, I might enjoy it a bit more, since I was waaay underleveled as well (it was my second demigod lmao).

 

[Silva]

I'm particularly looking forward for the Milena of Miquela bitch. She looks pretty badass in that CGI trailer.

Speaking of which, anybody else felt the CGI trailer more exciting than the actual intro in the game? I have nothing against a good slideshow but I found Elden's pretty underwhelming (see Demons Souls for a pretty good one).

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lost 8000 souls on that fucking cave with those crystal miners and those fucking insects. Thanks Elden Ring.

On the plus side, i got mad enough to clean the whole place out. Got a nice talisman for incantations (which i'll never use as i'm doing a quality build lmao).

Those insects though, fucking hell one of the most annoying enemies i've ever seen in this series. They are fast, with huge range, fucked up hit box, homing missile attacks and you got no room to fight them properly. The talisman was protected by two of them but i just ran in, grabbed it and noped myself out of the place lul. Fuck that shit.

I also found Patches, who has graciously (and suspiciously) offered me a chest. Something tells me not to go open it.

 

[Agame]

While the open area is knewl and atmospheric visually i think the traditional map design remains superior.

This is so obviously apparent because the "legacy" dungeons are really good, and actually feel like playing DS, and then you go back to muh open world...

I remember many times from previous games getting up to one of those amazing vistas and looking out into the misty background jpg, thinking wow wouldnt it be cool if you could explore out there. Clearly someone at From thought the same thing. But you know, like in storytelling some things are better left out.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Just beat Starscourge Radahn and I think this will be very divisive boss. It is very style over substance fight but I can see where Miyahaki was going with this "raid boss" concept. Needed like 4 tries and actually had a lot fun on and off horse fighting him but I also saw people bitching about his moveset on reddit.

Gameplaywise he is nowhere near as good as Ishin, Father Owl of even Fume Knight but the presentation is just fucking bonkers. Easily top3 next to Ludwig, Gael or Ivory King.

Also his theme is great and that choral part from 4:40 onwards... shit fucking slapswish I could repeat this fight like in Sekiro. Probably will spend some time trying to help others as a summon

I didn't enjoy the fight exactly because of the "raid boss" concept. Don't know how was your experience, but for me it was a fuckfest, calling npcs like crazy and praying not to be hit by his magic stuff. On a future playthrough, I might enjoy it a bit more, since I was waaay underleveled as well (it was my second demigod lmao).

I was there like level 70 with bloodfang+8 I do not know, the fight just clicked with me, probabaly mostly due the whole lore around Radahn and that "festival" atmosphere. Summoning the npcs everytime I had to repeat the fight was kind of frustrating but overall I enjoyed the concept of small army against huge dude. In first phase I rolled through the magic arrows on foot until I summoned everyone, once Radhan switched to the rain of arrows I hoped on the horse and engaged him in melee. He usually killed off all of the summon around his 50% of hp. Then in second phase I started on horse again summoning and escaping from meteors on Torrent. Once he summoned those 4 huge purple meteors I got closed and fought him on foot - could not dodge his attacks on horse and I do not have any range options.