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

[toro]

Well, I just spent 40 minutes trying to beat

Spoiler

Mohg

and I finally did it.

By far the best boss of the game for me at this point. What an amazing fight.

Yeah. It's one of the best bosses in game. I did help a lot of players with him.

Spoiler

for a special ending you might have to beat him again

 

[toro]

I'm too tired to write something readable but I will try.

By the end the game turns into a complete turd. The story makes no sense. The combat fairness is gone. The game stutters in the most critical moments.

For example the mobs from the last areas have constant spazzing and their hp could make elephants blush. Really, at lvl 120 with weapon +10, I cannot kill one rat in one hit.

Had the same sentiment at the end of Sekiro, thought Father Owl, Rage Demon and Sword Saint are a total bullshit fights. Good to see FS doubed down. Well at least you have Ashes and you can summon.

Btw it's clear all the 10/10 journos didn't get anywhere close to the endgame, or you'd hear thousand voices crying out about easy mode.

Btw no. 2 - you had only +10 weapon in the late game? I have +13 already and I'm only about 40% in (Limgrave, Liurnia and Caelid fully explored, but killed only Godrick so far).

Regular weapons can be upgraded to +25
Somber weapons can be upgraded to +10

 

[Shrimp]

Just finished one-on-oneing Margit with that bloodhound blade. Going back to try that Crucible Knight before I get too deep into the castle.

Does finishing Stormveil Castle cause all the NPCs storylines in Limgrave to progress? I'm tempted to see how much area I can unlock in pursuit of gear but I'm worried about failing those storylines.

Based on my own observations so far it feels like a lot of NPC storylines don't behave the same way as in Souls games where they just check if you have performed certain actions (usually talking to them in specific locations, giving them a certain item etc) by the time you kill a certain boss or enter a certain area.
So far it feels like a lot of the storylines in Elden Ring can be done retroactively even if you're long past the area you were 'expected' to do them in. I managed to essentially start and finish a questline that I had completely overlooked in an early area. I could simply go back and pick it up. I guess it's intentional since the open world design means it's very easy to run past NPCs or miss them in their initial locations.

 

[Silva]

Speak what you will of Bloodborne toro , but it had vision, focus and cohesion, both from a gameplay and artistic standpoint (just like DS1 or Sekiro really).

This has nothing of the sorts. This is a pastiche. Of delicious slices of salmon sashimi and pellets of stinking dung mixed in. Because of this, it will never match the experience of those From titles.

 

[toro]

Radahn is quite nasty 15+ attempts and only around 20-25% of times got into a second phase. Some of his magic is nearly impossible for me to dodge. Guess using a horse most of fight is not a good idea probably just hug him and try to stay behind

Spoiler

roll into him

 

[Thac0]

25 hours in, liking the game a lot so far. Cleared both Limgraves and the Weeping Peninsula as well as Stormveil Castle. I am taking it very slow, as I will definitly replay this game, so I want to find everything.
This is the best open world I have seen yet so far, and it achieves this by having really good progression systems.
To elaborate, a lot of the "great" open world games of the past, like Twitcher, Skyrim and Ghost of Tsushima have no to very weak rpg mechanics. The stuff you stumble upon in the world are mostly linear uprades, sometimes stuff you can't use or are too strong for so it is shit clutter which you sell. Elden Ring has dozens of interesting weapons, having very wacky stat requirements as well as the entire stamina system. Armor is pretty good this time around as well, so you can't just go naked and wield your favourite weapons, that will get you oneshot by a stiff breeze. With these weapons very few pieces of loot are either a direct upgrade to your playstile, and few are unusable. Instead you have a lot of weapons which you might use if you put two more points in dex and apply the appropriate ash of war to give it your scaling of choice. As a faith build with good strength and decent dex the only items which are completely useless for me are items with intelligence scaling, the rest I am giving a try at least.
This treasure trove of stuff that is usefull for you makes traversing the overworld section much more fun, which shows mostly good level design in itself.
Yes there are too many wolves. Yes there are parts of the overworld where the density of loot, enemies and dungeons is too little, and as such you feel like you are wasting your time there. Yes the catacombs want you to play content that is basically Chalice Dungeon tier, only a tiny bit better as they are all handmade and not algorithmical generated. All of these are drawbacks that come with the new open world system, but overall I am really enjoying the gameplay loop between the horseback exploration, the mid tension of doing minidungeons and exploring locations in the overworld and the full on Soulsborne experience inside of the Legacy Dungeons.

Combat is great, Bloodborne/Dark Souls 3 but heavy weapons and armor are no longer useless. Still no poise, but breaking the posture of enemies is really really good, and that helps heavy weaponry stay afloat. Armor does a lot, wearing proper armor makes fights much easier. Spirit summoning is surprisingly great, most bosses have movesets meant to punish most spirits, so they are far from trivialising bosses, and if you want a big help from your spirits chosing the right spirits for the boss is surprisingly engaging. Particularily the monster spirits are great, it is plain fun to fight with some of the more degenarate summons like Warhawks or Jellyfishes at your side.

If Stormveil Castle is representative for the rest of the game, then there is nothing wrong with the level design in legacy dungeons either. The place is huge, and has more hidden secrets, including entire secret areas and bossfights, than any person could reasonably find. There is so much stuff hidden in there I am almost convinced that even with a walkthrough the first time you will find new secrets on a replay. It is also chock full of traps, branching paths and just generally interesting level design. One thing I realised is that the prelevance of "Does Not Open From This Site" doors is greatly reduced. I wonder if FromSoft reacts to community feedback here? Recently some voices have become loud that FromSoft is flanderising themselves with the overuse of this design tool, here they are almost completely gone.

I also think the lore is better than usual for FromSoft. They are less beating around the bush this time, NPCs straight up tell you some things, which could have been terrible if the lore was bad, but honestly I am digging it. I am surprised by this myself a bit, as I strongly dislike ASOIAF, but I guess I have no problems with GRRM if he writes actual high fantasy instead of gritty War of the Roses remixes.

So it has good combat, good character building, good level design, good lore, a good open world, what is missing?
Almost nothing really. The hub area is a bit boring, every prior hub has it beat in interactivity, amount of NPC interaction and secrets. The ratio between open world exploration and legacy dungeon exploration is a bit off, it feels more like 75% 25% if you are thorough, I would prefer a spit closer to 50/50 %. The game is maybe a bit too kind when it comes to QOL, attaching and disattaching Ashes of War for example is literally free, the random player hostility is never what Dark Souls was about, but still it is surprising to see Elden Ring be so generous with QOL stuff. There need to be more enemies which make interesting challenges on horseback, 80% of the stuff you fight on horseback in the early areas are humans, wolves or giants. That or these little bat fuckers. Instead of putting all the bears into that misty forest they should have spread out a few of them across the world.
Considering it is a huge change in the gameplay formula to go from no open world to this, it is impressive they hit the mark so much.

There are dozens of breaking points where this could have gone wrong, from open world traversal to r1 spam fest to spirit summoning, but the game dodges pretty much all of these pitfalls.
This is good, my second favourite FromSoft after Bloodborne, and as Bloodborne is much further from an rpg this will become the FromSoft game to enter my rpg top 10 lists from now on.

That is if nothing changes in the later levels of course, but with Elex 2 and a really good Battle Brothers Ironman run I started it will take months for me to finish this

 

[Lutte]

As an example: I watched Hob trying to do it with a mage but he got triggered by the Foreskin Duo. Basically that boss will be the death of many attempts. 100% no hit runs will be very hard to pull off in ER.

The funny thing is that mages have some of the better weapons for the godskin cunts, it's just that spells are garbage. After I respecced to INT instead of dex and went with the moonlight katana + magic uchigatana power stance, I was doing some pretty serious ranged damage with my katana power art, while being rather safe because the art animation is not as long as any of the mage spells.

Magic is, surprisingly, actually very, very good in this game. It's just that you should cast your magic through a weapon that has magic arts, rather than casting actual spells with a catalyst. none of the spells in this game are worth as much as the moonlight katana weapon art R2. And I say this while having 69 INT (one point short of getting 70 just to see the look of that queen spell)

A bonus of the katana is also that if you can handle melee range, your hits will also cause some serious stance breaking.

 

[cvv]

This has nothing of the sorts. This is a pastiche.

Sure but pastiches aren't automatically bad. ER is a bundle of all that's great about FS' previous games, on steroids and without any of the flaws.

It's not instanced like DeS, doesn't have bad bosses and unfinished levels like like DS1, lacks the nonsensical world of DS2, isn't phoned-in and half-assed like DS3, unlike BB has actually a usable PvP and unlike Sekiro is an actual, well thought out RPG.

Also - and yes, halfway through I think I can safely say it - the level design in this game is the best FromSoft has ever created, surpassing even DS1.

 

[hackncrazy]

The capital is absolutely huge. I think it's probably even From's biggest individual level in terms of pure size. I've spent most of the day just running around the streets and rooftops, often without having any sense of direction. I'm probably missing so many random side ways and optional items and minibosses just because I keep following paths that end up taking me elsewhere.

Also it feels like I am grossly overlevelled and/or overgeared for the boss fights here. I'd been holding off from entering the capital until I had done everything I could think of in the other regions. So far inside the capital I've encountered two main bosses and both of them got absolutely devastated by my attacks.

Legacy Dungeons indeed are impressive as fuck. Seeing places like Stormveil, Raya Lucaria and Leyndell makes me which from software makes a game in the future only with legacy Dungeons, because the level desing I've seen in them is closest to the best stuff FS has ever made.

 

[Curratum]

Guys, a little help?

I am doing Raya Lucaria, I got several bonfires, killed the orange doggo, looped up and around the rooftops and kicked a ladder down but that just brought me back to above the Church of the Cuckoo bonfire.

I have no idea where to go now, and I've been looking around for about an hour...

 

[Silva]

This has nothing of the sorts. This is a pastiche.

Sure but pastiches aren't automatically bad. ER is a bundle of all that's great about FS' previous games, on steroids and without any of the flaws.

Are you writing this with a straight face? I doubt it.

Horse that controls like a top-down shooter that obviates exploration (and some enemies), sterile open-world, copy-pasta dungeons, videogamey AI, teleport anytime anywhere, infinite combo bosses, DS3 mindless weight thresholds, derivative lore and unplausible world that resembles my old D&D GM lazily scratching something in 5 minutes for our Sunday game ("Damn I forgot the demographics and where those inhabitants actually live! Nah, just don't think too hard about it and we're good").

There's probably more I forgot. Aren't those shitty elements for you C? I agree the game does a lot of things right (Legacy dungeons, builds openess, some bosses, etc) and is actually a positive experience better than 90% of what's out there. But come on..

 

[Jermu]

Guys, a little help?

I am doing Raya Lucaria, I got several bonfires, killed the orange doggo, looped up and around the rooftops and kicked a ladder down but that just brought me back to above the Church of the Cuckoo bonfire.

I have no idea where to go now, and I've been looking around for about an hour...

do you have debate parlor bonfire?

 

[Curratum]

Guys, a little help?

I am doing Raya Lucaria, I got several bonfires, killed the orange doggo, looped up and around the rooftops and kicked a ladder down but that just brought me back to above the Church of the Cuckoo bonfire.

I have no idea where to go now, and I've been looking around for about an hour...

do you have debate parlor bonfire?

That's where you kill the red doggo, yes, I do have it. However, only openings I saw were outside to the courtyard with the iron maiden hook-axe chariot and back to the stairs with the mages where you access the boss.

 

[Lutte]

That's where you kill the red doggo, yes, I do have it. However, only openings I saw were outside to the courtyard with the iron maiden hook-axe chariot and back to the stairs with the mages where you access the boss.

When you leave the bonfire area, there's a place where you can jump onto to your right. It's at the far end and close to where the spinning chariot bullshit is.

 

[cvv]

it.

Horse that controls like a top-down shooter that obviates exploration (and some nemies), sterile open-world, copy-pasta dungeons, videogamey AI, teleport anytime anywhere, infinite combo bosses, DS3 mindless weight thresholds, derivative lore and unplausible world that resembles my old D&D GM lazily scratching something in 5 minutes for our Sunday game ("Damn I forgot the demographics and where those inhabitants actually live! OK, let's say their settlements were all coastal and dragged by the ocean, how about that!?")

P. all of that is "it's just, like, your opinion man". Game is bad because is boring and bad. 'K.

And by "any of the flaws" I didn't mean ER is perfect. Nothing is.

I meant any of the well-known, widely-agreed upon flaws of the previous games, not your "videogamey AI, unplausible world, bad exploration" individual gripes (I disagree with all of them except the teleporting from aynwhere thing, that's indeed a major problem and decline; I've complained about it ITT already btw).

 

[Villagkouras]

If I use an Ash of War in a weapon and then replace it, do I lose the initial from my inventory?

 

[Lutte]

No. The game QOL is like that because they really want you to experiment with all. You lose nothing, and you can also remove the weapon art to get back to the weapon's initial state.

 

[perfectslumbers]

That's where you kill the red doggo, yes, I do have it. However, only openings I saw were outside to the courtyard with the iron maiden hook-axe chariot and back to the stairs with the mages where you access the boss.

Go into the courtyard and walk onto the circular big bridge/staircase on your right

 

[cvv]

Guys, a little help?

Go to the Debate Chamber bonfire, out on the plaza and right, on the broken staircase (you have to cross the stone beams).

 

[Ghulgothas]

Is crafting really all that necessary in this game? I keep seeing all these "Noun's Cookbooks" everywhere and they all cost a decent amount of runes. I've just been hawking all the plant pickups to the merchants to cover the costs of weapon upgrading. Aside from those gold-salve whatever-they-ares for seeing summon signs.

 

[Lutte]

Is crafting really all that necessary in this game? I keep seeing all these "Noun's Cookbooks" everywhere and they all cost a decent amount of runes. I've just been hawking all the plant pickups to the merchants to cover the costs of weapon upgrading. Aside from those gold-salve whatever-they-ares for seeing summon signs.

I bought them all, they were a waste of rune. Never found a single thing I'd want in the lot.

 

[cvv]

The upgrade mats poverty is really starting to piss me off. I'm 40 hours in, been using my Uchi for the last 30 hours and exactly ONE Ash - the Bloody Slash, since it's by far the best ash I have at this point.

I'd love to mix things up, use a different wep, maybe even respec but I just don't have enough stones to level up even a single weapon to the same level as my Uchi. Also even tho you can buy stones, they're p. expensive, soul farming is p. onerous and I don't have the bells for the higher ones anyway (nor an idea where the other Bell Bearing Hunters are).

 

[cvv]

Is crafting really all that necessary in this game? I keep seeing all these "Noun's Cookbooks" everywhere and they all cost a decent amount of runes. I've just been hawking all the plant pickups to the merchants to cover the costs of weapon upgrading. Aside from those gold-salve whatever-they-ares for seeing summon signs.

I bought them all, they were a waste of rune. Never found a single thing I'd want in the lot.

I crafted some arrows that inflict bleed which I used to kill one of those giant octopuses through a tunnel it couldn't get through. After that I ran out of bones to craft more and fuck if I'm going around killing squirrels in the forest to get more.

You can buy bones

Spoiler

if you offer the Twin Merchants in the Hold the right bell

Spoiler

you have to go to the Warmaster Shack, pass the time for the nightfall, rest again and walk into his hut

 

[Nathir]

Guys, a little help?

I am doing Raya Lucaria, I got several bonfires, killed the orange doggo, looped up and around the rooftops and kicked a ladder down but that just brought me back to above the Church of the Cuckoo bonfire.

I have no idea where to go now, and I've been looking around for about an hour...

do you have debate parlor bonfire?

That's where you kill the red doggo, yes, I do have it. However, only openings I saw were outside to the courtyard with the iron maiden hook-axe chariot and back to the stairs with the mages where you access the boss.

When you come out into the courtyard there is a broken staircase to your right. You can acess it by jumping on a rafter connecting the staircase and the courtyard. It's funny you say this, my brother also said he was looking around for like an hour before he figured this out lol.

 

[hackncrazy]

Guys, a little help?

I am doing Raya Lucaria, I got several bonfires, killed the orange doggo, looped up and around the rooftops and kicked a ladder down but that just brought me back to above the Church of the Cuckoo bonfire.

I have no idea where to go now, and I've been looking around for about an hour...

do you have debate parlor bonfire?

That's where you kill the red doggo, yes, I do have it. However, only openings I saw were outside to the courtyard with the iron maiden hook-axe chariot and back to the stairs with the mages where you access the boss.

When you come out into the courtyard there is a broken staircase to your right. You can acess it by jumping on a rafter connecting the staircase and the courtyard. It's funny you say this, my brother also said he was looking around for like an hour before he figured this out lol.

Isn't that like the first thing you see when you go out of the Debate Parlor? Really curious that people are missing it.

Anyway, Raya Lucaria is so amazing and the whole rooftops stuff is so intricate that I'm sure I missed some important item there.