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

[Cromwell]

The problem with that train of thought is that it's still designed like as souls game at the core, but now with the thin spread of open world behind. I can't say I've solved every single npc quests of a souls on a single run, but for the most part, most "quests" followups are something you could reasonably stumble upon throughout one journey in a dark souls, while in this.. I've finished the game and am reading spoilers on NPCs atm and the amount I've missed on is gargantuan all in a game that took me three, possibly four times the amount of time to finish compared to a typical souls.

The same goes for upgrade resources, unique items etc.

The greater problem is not only do you miss it you know it could be there going by past experiences, you just have to check a massive area for npcs or other stuff that may be quest related. So for people really interested in this its either pure torture or use a guide.

 

[The Regulator Guy]

pus of man

I just did an image search on this and let me warn you, include the words "dark souls" as well, or you will get the combo platter.

 

[Lithium Flower]

85 hours in, SL 80, Limgrave(+WP,) Liurnia, and about half of Caelid thoroughly explored, Ren-sana and Godrick clapped, will probably do castle Redmane and Generallisimo in the next play session or two.

Possibly it's due to me being pre-Radahn but I am rather amused by some of the posts in this thread especially re: difficulty. The game is tuned radically different to the previous entries - it can be your easiest or your hardest Dark Souls game depending on how much exploration you do before boss fights. And I don't mean going to extremely specific areas in the map for OP gear, but simply learning the structure of the world to its natural conclusion.

Without looking at any guides or purposefully trying to be OP I got my main weapon to +15 by the time I faced moon mommy. I simply noticed that the places that looked like a miniature gaped asshole on the map all turned out to be mines full of smithing stones and have made them my first priority in every area I visited. Chasing these mines in Liurnia has naturally led me to the Altus Plates and its own mining tunnel where I believe I got the 5 and 6 tier stones.

This is precisely where From's open world meaningfully interacts with the game's mechanics, by allowing you to prioritize which upgrades and challenges you want to pursue and thus find your own progression route. You can save time and ignore exploration, following grace on map from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon, and have what should basically be a traditional semi-linear dark souls experience on steroids. Alternatively you can have an extra hard time at the beggining by exploring more dangerous lands first and be rewarded by streamrolling through easier parts of the game. Or simply moderate your exploration to one area until you "clear" it for an experience of intermediate difficulty.

This is also where the repeating themes of the mini-dungeons, as tiring as I also find them personally, have some utility to the player. The game is able to signal where the different upgrades without resorting to Ubisoft-tier retardproofing, so that you still need to use your eyes and some map sense to get around.

Looking for more spellslots? Look for wizards' towers that almost always have memory stones for you.

Looking to upgrade your spirit summons? Clear dungeons with the catacomb tileset, and look for statues that point towards them in the overworld.

Weapon upgrades? Like I said, mines and tunnels.

Certainly this means the game is not as tightly tuned as FromSoft's previous. But as an alternative to other solutions to balancing open world's, like level scaling, I think this is pretty compelling - particularly for fans of Gothic et al.

TL;DR if game is too hard just go to the hardest zone on the map unlocked to you and start playing Minecraft

Also bros actually use the new mechanics (charges strong attacks, motherfucker, do you use them?) and focus on breaking the enemy stance. If you are playing the game like OG dark souls, it's the exact same as just trying to kill bosses in Sekiro purely through HP damage and ignoring stances/finishers - you are making the game harder for yourself by orders of magnitude for no reason.

 

[Lutte]

The greater problem is not only do you miss it you know it could be there going by past experiences, you just have to check a massive area for npcs or other stuff that may be quest related. So for people really interested in this its either pure torture or use a guide.

It just doesn't work anymore, the formula, with such a world structure.
In DS1, before you get the lord vessel, you would often loop around the world to traverse through shortcuts and they could make npc encounters pretty random and you'd still stumble upon their next area, in DS2 NPC movement was implemented in such a way that they were likely to be in the next area you'd have to go through rather than randomly placing them around another side area after meeting them once (and more NPCs were stationary-ish in behavior). I didn't have to put in an effort to see moving NPCs like Lucatiel again until their last quest bit. DS3, AFAIK, was also like this and there was only one NPC that gave me trouble and whose quest I never bothered doing.

But this? holy shit, besides the huge scope of the map, there is also the immense freedom of traversal. When I went to do Millicent's quest in Caelid, I had already unlocked the plateau, when she left Sellia I wasn't in any way going to go back to where she ended up being in the plateau and it's one of the many NPCs I didn't care for enough to scour the world to find them again.
This is her parting note in Sellia :
>I'm considering leaving. On a journey. With the needle buried in my flesh, I've started to recall, but dimly... My destiny... My name is Millicent. I pray fate permits us meet again.

There isn't even an inkling of a suggestion of where she could be next.

 

[Lutte]

85 hours in [...] Possibly it's due to me being pre-Radahn

At this rhythm, you won't be finished before at least 200 more hours. I'm curious what your opinion will be when you meet some of the more bullshit encounters like the various nobles (mostly the infinite rolly boy), Radahn himself, Malenia, the continuous copy pasta, the snipers..

Limgrave and Liurnia aren't even 1/4th of the game content.

 

[Cromwell]

I'm considering leaving. On a journey. With the needle buried in my flesh, I've started to recall, but dimly... My destiny... My name is Millicent. I pray fate permits us meet again.

this in turn should give you a good feeling if you do meet her again because its more natural then "hello stranger thanks for doing x I will go now to Y *winkwink*" which is a bit more gamey. Although I like the latter for my peace of mind.

 

[cvv]

It's a long shot and a trifle but still, shit's been bugging me - from the "Nokstella, Eternal City" bonfire follow the stream past the annoying-ass ant-riders and the silvery blobs that chain explode if you kill one. Turn right, there are three ants grazing on a hillock and across there's an upper plateau with a golden tree (and presumably a golden seed). Can't figure out how to get there, any idea?

 

[perfectslumbers]

Can't figure out how to get there, any idea?

You come down there at the end of the level, if it's what I'm thinking of. It entirely loops back around

 

[Lutte]

this in turn should give you a good feeling if you do meet her again because its more natural then "hello stranger thanks for doing x I will go now to Y *winkwink*" which is a bit more gamey. Although I like the latter for my peace of mind.

I said it in the same post though, this works in a world like Dark Souls 1, in this overly fattened open world, it's just a joke.

 

[You]

How does Todd keep getting away with it?
He sold Skyrim AGAIN by turning it into an anime.

the truth beats banaghan, demon's souls was an attempt at an oblivion clone

Miyazaki: But with Armored Core for Answer, we were working on that in parallel with Demon’s Souls, so there were quite a few challenges. When Demon’s Souls was in the initial planning stages, and right around the time it was entering the prototype phase, I came on as the director, and at the time, it was a completely different and very difficult project compared to what it ended up becoming.

4Gamer: Is that so?

Miyazaki: Yes. One thing I remember was that the camera perspective was completely different.

At the time, the plan was to make it first-person, or more specifically, a game in which you switched between first and third-person perspectives.

4Gamer: Wow, really?

Miyazaki: Yeah. At the time, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a really big deal, and I think SCE wanted a game similar to that.

From my perspective, though, I didn’t think we could compete by taking the same approach as Oblivion, so I wanted to focus more on gameplay elements like battles and exploration, and had to do a lot to convince everyone that a third-person camera was the way to go.

they only just now got the money to make oblivion with souls

In a recent interview Miyazaki said this game is what he and From wanted DS to be from the very start, but they didn't have the skills, money and technology to pull it off so they took it step by step.

 

[cvv]

Can't figure out how to get there, any idea?

You come down there at the end of the level, if it's what I'm thinking of. It entirely loops back around

Afaik the "end of the level" is down, the Rot Lake. And I haven't found any second elevator in the Lake area that could take back up to the ants. Is there one?

 

[Lutte]

ER's approach to me is the same - enter new area, go clear tombs, go clear mines, go clear towers

Don't forget, go kill the local area asylum demon. I'm amazed people tolerate this, when the entire community shat on DS2 for things like the ornstein clone. There must be something like 15 asylum demons in Elden Ring, and there's even an area that has two of them at least (the haligtree city) almost next to each other.

 

[fork]

People are retards.
And the people who like Elden Ring are not the ones who like Dark Souls, unless they're NPCs.

 

[Curratum]

What the fuck is up with the Ringleader in the gaol?

I'm at 40 vigor, not gonna level that shit anymore at half hp increase now. Getting damn-near one-shot by what looks like distant-parry (parry-style damage and punish from well out of melee range), getting AoEd by melee dagger attacks when I'm even out of range of the red "magic splash" visuals. Did a stance crush and riposte punish, made maybe 5% damage on his health bar. Can barely find an opening to strike, he's only ever getting hit by a katana light combo ONCE, dodging all other hits.

I'm so fucking sick and tired of this Bloodborne++ level of enemy movement while I'm a DS tin can. Can't even fucking summon in evergaols and he dodges half my weapon arts too.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I played around 35 hours, not that much but I killed 3 of the "major bosses" and explored some areas completely. I'm really enjoying the game so far, exploring the areas and shit. It's true that there's a bunch of rehased content, like some structures like destoyed churches and ruins are very similar around the game's world. But there's always a thing that catches your attention. The game manages to have that sparkling,unexpected shit that keeps you looking around. Like in the south, in one of those catacomb-like undreground caves, I was expecting to find an item or a fake teleporting chest. But instead I found a character, a wizard chained on a wall. I just killed her but hey, it's the sensation of discovery what matters. Then I came back to that place and she resurrected. I don't know but she seems related to a secondary NPC questline.

The worst part of the game for me is the bullshit big bosses have in their movelists. They always have a cheap move that is ridiculously hard to dodge or it's unblockable. That shit did not happen in previous games, and it's frustating. It makes the fights less rewarding, turning some moments into 50/50 situations like your fighting fuckin Zangief in a Street fighter game.

 

[Curratum]

I played around 35 hours, not that much but I killed 3 of the "major bosses" and explored some areas completely. I'm really enjoying the game so far, exploring the areas and shit. It's true that there's a bunch of rehased content, like some structures like destoyed churches and ruins are very similar around the game's world. But there's always a thing that catches your attention. The game manages to have that sparkling,unexpected shit that keeps you looking around. Like in the south, in one of those catacomb-like undreground caves, I was expecting to find an item or a fake teleporting chest. But instead I found a character, a wizard chained on a wall. I just killed her but hey, it's the sensation of discovery what matters. Then I came back to that place and she resurrected. I don't know but she seems related to a secondary NPC questline.

The worst part of the game for me is the bullshit big bosses have in their movelists. They always have a cheap move that is ridiculously hard to dodge or it's unblockable. That shit did not happen in previous games, and it's frustating. It makes the fights less rewarding, turning some moments into 50/50 situations like your fighting fuckin Zangief in a Street fighter game.

As a fellow ER player, I wholeheartedly agree with this post. As a Zangief main, I also find this post highly offensive. :D

 

[Shrimp]

ER's approach to me is the same - enter new area, go clear tombs, go clear mines, go clear towers

Don't forget, go kill the local area asylum demon. I'm amazed people tolerate this, when the entire community shat on DS2 for things like the ornstein clone. There must be something like 15 asylum demons in Elden Ring, and there's even an area that has two of them at least (the haligtree city) almost next to each other.

Out of all the copypaste jobs in the game the Erdtree avatars is funnily enough the one that bothers me the least. But in all fairness I was never really among the crowd that hated DS2 either. With that being said I do think it's mildly interesting to see that a lot of the parts about DS2 that the wider audience hates (or at least claim to) also are present in Elden Ring, so it will be interesting to see how the general reception to the game will be in a couple of months.

While I would like to say that I am somewhat unfazed by bosses being reused as optional open world encounters I do think they could've done a bit more rather than just use the same Ulcerated Tree Spirits, Dragonkin soldiers and magma wyrms to pad out the open world. After seeing them twice you shouldn't expect them to be something unique. They essentially just get demoted to being a filler encounter, so you shouldn't consider them to be any more than that tbh

With that being said there were still some cases where the recycling definitely did bother me and left me with a very sour taste. While I can't say how many there were, the two that stuck out to me the most were

Spoiler

• Astel. Descending into the earth and travelling through ancient various underground cities and the pit of rot to find a temple hidden deep under the ground where there was a cosmic entity that might as well have come from Bloodborne was an amazing experience. Finding a boss with the same name and model in a random mine dungeon not only felt cheap, it almost retroactively ruined the memory of finding Astel at the bottom of the pit of rot. It went from being a unique boss locked behind a long adventure to being a generic filler boss that leaves you wondering if you'll find a third one before you finish the game.
  
• Godefroy the Grafted in a random evergaol in Altus. I don't even care if the game tries to pretend there's some in-universe explanation for this one. Using canon to explain shitty game mechanics, budget limitations or bad decisions from the development team or management is usually just something I roll my eyes at, but I simply can't let this one slide. You cannot reuse a shardbearer boss with the exact same model, attacks and even (almost) the same name and then just pass it off as an open world encounter.

When DS1 and DS2 reused bosses they at least had the courtesy to just present them as a unit or creature that existed multiple of. "Capra demon" or "Dragonrider" could just be a generic title or name. In the cases mentioned above Elden Ring tries to trick you into thinking you're fighting something unique by using naming conventions like "X, Y of Z" or "A the B"

 

[Ventidius]

So I finally beat this mammoth of a game. I found an enjoyable balance of exploration and progression in my approach, but focused more on the main campaign by the time I was satisfied with my build. Still took me a bit over 70 hours, and this definitely feels like the longest FS game, even though I have no doubt that a lot of the content can be skipped on critical path runs and speedruns.

I'd say the quality definitely takes a dip at around the Crumbling Farum. The dungeon itself is probably the weakest in the game, and the main story bosses, while retaining (arguably increasing) the difficulty, really stop being fun at about the Godskin Duo. The Duo itself is probably the worst offender in terms of cheese, and it will likely be patched (as it is worse than pre-patch Rom was). Frankly though, I think the late-game boss rush is the weakest part of the game by far. The best bosses are still the early game guys like Margit and Godrick.

That said, my view of that will perhaps change once we have a better understanding of the game's meta, and once some patches start rolling in. Also, if you are into this series for the "masochism" aspect (more challenge at any cost), you will likely have fun.

Even though I wouldn't put Elden Ring on par with the pre-DS3 Soulsbornes, I certainly don't think it's a bad game. Its positives outweigh the negatives and it is a good game overall. It is certainly epic as well. Let's give it some time, patching, and perhaps DLC; there is potential for greatness here despite everything.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Afaik the "end of the level" is down, the Rot Lake. And I haven't found any second elevator in the Lake area that could take back up to the ants. Is there one?

Yes there is an elevator that takes you to the backside of the stream and drops you off

In other news, I have a +8 greatshield and with the "barricade shield," ash of war I have gotten it down to 0 stamina consumption vs bosses. I can block a seemingly infinite amount of physical attacks without losing stamina or getting staggered Think I found the new meta. Don't know if it will change lategame but it's op for now.

 

[Shrimp]

Afaik the "end of the level" is down, the Rot Lake. And I haven't found any second elevator in the Lake area that could take back up to the ants. Is there one?

Yes there is an elevator that takes you to the backside of the stream and drops you off

In other news, I have a +8 greatshield and with the "barricade shield," ash of war I have gotten it down to 0 stamina consumption vs bosses. I can block a seemingly infinite amount of physical attacks without losing stamina or getting staggered Think I found the new meta. Don't know if it will change lategame but it's op for now.

I ended up using a greatshield with that ash of war to survive Malenia's flurry. Sure, she ended up recovering 10-15% of her health in the event that she used the attack, but it's better than dying to it and having to restart the encounter.

 

[hackncrazy]

One of the worst moments for me so far was when I discovered an elevator somewhere in the eastern part of Limgrave that took me down. Initially, I thought I landed in some cool ass dungeon. Underground, but the sky was full of stars and there were these weird looking stone people around. For a moment it felt like something straight out of Lovecraft. Then I cleared the surrounding area and realized that no, this is not the cool ass dungeon I was expecting but another part of the open world

That is funny to me because the moment I entered that elevator was one of the great moments of the game for me. I wasn't expecting an underground world at all, nevermind a big one as it is presented here.

But one thing I can agree in general: The legacy dungeons are so superior in design and exploration greatness than the rest of the game that the open world start feeling tireing after going through it. Then again, if the games was only Dungeons it would be like a 20 hour long game, which would be totally fine for me, but surely would have a lot of backlash.

Also, things could get a lot better with a DLC focused on, say, two huge legacy dungeons, but we all know that if a DLC come it will be another huge open world area to explore and one legacy dungeon at most.

 

[Tyranicon]

I think they copypasted some bosses because you kill them so quick, you barely get to see most of their moveset.

It's hard work to design a moveset. They want you to see it.

 

[Ghulgothas]

I think they copypasted some bosses because you kill them so quick, you barely get to see most of their moveset.

It's hard work to design a moveset. They want you to see it.

Like that crypt gargoyle boss.

One head, three heads, there has to be a version of him out there with five whole heads. Just waiting to be discovered.

 

[Kruno]

 

[ferratilis]