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

[Lutte]

Another thing that adds to the burnout is the fact that Elden Ring's concepts are still mostly rehashes of something that was already introduced in previous souls games.

Stormveil is really good, but there's only so many times you can rehash a castle theme before it becomes stale, and Stormveil is basically Boletaria/High wall of Lothric but on steroids. Same with Raya Lucaria Academy, it's basically an Anor Londo/Duke's Archive mishmash.

But even then, the worst is just the amount of rehashing this game does.. of itself. Post game, I'm looking for a few loose ends and items I've missed during the playthrough, saw that I missed a gaol, went there and.. it was just Godrick with another name. Look, reusing some minor bosses once or twice is okay, dark souls reused the asylum two times and it didn't make me lose my mind, but Elden Ring does it an infinite amount of time with minor bosses, and actually dares to reuse major main story bosses too. This is just.. I mean..

 

[Cromwell]

Just beat Radahn with my fourth try. He wasnt as hard as people made it out to be but I didnt really fight him in melee maybe thats the issue. What I did was ride around and summon all I could and then ride from afar into his back and dismounted which made me jump and then hit him with a heavy attack followed by my art. Mount up again ride away repeat. When summons died I stayed away until I could summon someone again to make him not attack me but instead attack the summons so my tactic worked. I almost thought there would be a second phase the way people here ranted about him, luckily there wasnt because I wouldnt have made it.

 

[Tacgnol]

I'm honestly more curious to see how the game's success (measured in sales and general positive reception) will affect other games. Are we in for a decade of cheap ER knockoffs now?

We've had a decade of cheap souls knockoffs (some of which have actually turned out okay surprisingly), so probably.

 

[Funposter]

As stated a page or two ago, I've now 100%'d the game after about 80 hours and I wanted to note down all of my thoughts on it. Be warned, this won't really be in any coherent or logical order and there will be SPOILERS AHEAD.

We'll start with the good aspects of the game. The environmental design is gorgeous and the legacy dungeons are some of the best in the series. There are so many "wow!" moments when you look down a precipice at all of the explorable content below, or you cross the crest of a hill and see a sprawling vista in the distance - a brand new part of the world to go adventuring in. The first 20 hours or so really feels like an adventure as you get to grips with the world and its geography, the setting, the brand new mechanics and all of the little NPC quests going on. A lot of people were comparing it to Dragon's Dogma and I absolutely got that vibe as I trawled through Limgrave, finding exciting little side dungeons and gearing up to take on Stormveil Castle or mentally preparing to fight the Dragon in the lake. The feeling of exploration and adventure continues in the legacy dungeons, with Stormveil Castle and Raya Lucaria starting you at the foot and slowly ascending, while Leyndell and Crumbling Farum Azula give you the view from up top and have an immediate, and immense, sense of scale as you take in the fact that you'll be exploring this entire, massive environment. Leyndell becomes even more ludicrously massive when you find out that it has a sewer system, which on its own could be a legacy dungeon. I'm comfortable saying that if the legacy dungeons were connected by flimsy cutscenes, or even a set of teleporters ala the Nexus from Demon's Souls, that I would have been quite happy to play a game which was just those dungeons and nothing else.

For the first time ever, I get the sense that all builds are viable. I played through as a Faith/Strength character, and was pleasantly surprised to see that split damage weapons were actually viable for the first time since the original Dark Souls, and that split damage weapons with scaling were actually viable (and indeed, optimal) for the first time since Demon's Souls. The one thing I'll say is that the length and breadth of the game probably encouraged even pure melee builds to invest in some magic, with the proliferation of Memory Stones available from side dungeons, and many useful sorceries and incantations requiring very little stat investment to be cast. Rotten Breath jumps to mind immediately as something that even "pure" melee builds would probably be using. Maybe this doesn't make them "pure" as such, and the traditional Dark Souls method of rolling+melee attacks only is now outdated, but it seems like an intentional decision by the devs to make players experiment with the wide range of options available to them. The ease of access to re-speccing also makes me think that FromSoft wanted players to experiment with different builds and ideas if they got stuck or felt they had made a mistake. Options for all builds are available to the player very early on, and while Sorcery-based builds sort of get shafted in the early game, the ability for players to skip straight to Liurniua of the Lakes and the continuing updating of wikis will probably ease some of the frustration felt by the community in this regard as optimal routes through the game become more common knowledge.

So, the gameplay balance is relatively good and the dungeons are a lot of fun. Sounds great, but what are the problems with the game?

Well, there are actually a lot. I said that the first 20 hours feel like an adventure, but that feeling eventually disappears as you see how formulaic the world design actually is. Once you've left Limgrave, you'll be comfortable with all of the new mechanics, the different types of side dungeons and the re-used bosses. Asset re-use has always been a part of FromSoft games, with different enemy types appearing across different zones and the occasional boss being palette-swapped, but Elden Ring features the most egregious and frustrating examples of it in any Souls game so far. For basic enemies, I guess I'll just use Rats as an example. In the original Dark Souls, you'll find a solitary Rat in the aqueduct above Firelink Shrine, a few in the Undead Parish, and then they are the most common enemy type in The Depths. Across these three zones, the Rats never really "scale" to the player and they maintain a consistent and logical level of strength. They start at 80 HP and eventually get up to 112, but in a game where base damage for a Longsword is 80, players will always be killing them in one or two hits, regardless of how strong or weak they are. In Elden Ring, Rats are an enemy type in every single zone and their HP scales to the recommended level of those zones. This means that Rats found in Limgrave will have low amounts of HP (around 200) while Rats found in endgame zones like the Consecrated Snowfields will have over 1,000. My god-slaying Level 160 character was not able to kill these Rats in one hit with a +10 Magma Wyrm Scalesword even with 45 STR and 45 FAI. This is level scaling and it is an obscene example of it, even worse than the kind found in Oblivion. Why FromSoft thought that certain kinds of enemy needed to be a consistent level of threat to the player is beyond me, because it makes the world feel extremely artificial.

Re-used common enemies are not the only example of asset re-use. Some bosses are copy+pasted into side dungeons or on the overworld. In some cases, this is logical and consistent while in others it is not. Erdtree Avatars are an example of this which don't annoy me, since they are skippable overworld encounters found at the exact type of location on the map every time. The player need only fight them if they want extra Tears to mix into their Wondrous Physick, otherwise they can be safely ignored. It doesn't even bother me that they're clearly just re-skinned Asylum Demons from Dark Souls 1 and 3, either. I think that in a game this large, some asset re-use is to be expected and even if it's an enemy type that long-time players are well acquainted with, it may as well be thrown in there. Mounted Knight bosses such as the Tree Sentinels and Night's Cavalry are also good examples of this, as they are spread out through the game enough and sometimes only accessed under certain conditions, which means in an 80 hours playthrough you end up fighting maybe one every 10 hours. I don't mind that (Draconic) Tree Sentinels, Night's Cavalry and the Royal Knight bosses are simply palette swaps of the same enemy type wielding Lightning, Holy, Bleed and Magic damage respectively, since that at least gives me some basic variation and something to prepare for an counter through the use of different armours, shield and spells. It's a bit like the Demon Firesage in the original Dark Souls. It's just the Stray Demon with fire damage and that's fine, because by the time I fight it, it's been hours since I fought the Stray Demon and I'm used to the attack patterns, so I can happily breeze through it and gobble up all of the Souls and gear. Thank you very much.

The big problem is that some bosses aren't even palette swaps. Anyone who has fought Astel, Naturalborn of the Void at the end of Ranni's questline will know what a cool and sort of spooky moment it is when you first confront that boss. It's totally unlike anything else you've fought - an eldritch abomination from outer space, born from a shooting star that destroyed one of the Eternal Cities and the same sort of shooting star that just tore half of East Limgrave apart. And you're expected to fight it all by yourself. Unfortunately, this moment is cheapened when you encounter a boss named Astel, Stars of Darkness at the bottom of a random Mine side dungeon in the Consecrated Snowfields endgame zone. To rub salt in the wound, it also has twice as much HP as that original abomination from beyond the stars that you fought in a big story moment with lots of lore implications. This isn't the only instance of this happening, although it is the most egregious - the first major story boss, Godrick the Grafted, has a clone in a random Evrgaol. Mohg, Lord of Blood, one of the endgame Demigod bonus bosses that you don't need to defeat to finish the game, has his first form sitting in the sewers guarding access to an ending which the character himself has no relation to. Why? What's going on here?

The game is simply too big and stretched too thin. A common sentiment I've found among friends is that they start to lose steam at the Mountaintop of the Giants, having expected to finish the game after reaching the Erdtree for the first time. Instead they find out that there's one more mandatory zone to journey through, another Legacy Dungeon, and an entire bonus zone and two bonus Legacy Dungeons which aren't necessary for completing the game. It's supposed to be the end and then they find out that they're maybe only 3/4 of the way through - there's another 20-25 hours left if they're actually good at the game, far more if they're having trouble with the difficulty of bosses or dungeons. Speaking of the difficulty, this game is full of bullshit encounters and some of the most degenerate boss design seen in a video game. I'd describe it as a mix between the worst aspects of Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3. You have the random duo bosses and bosses with adds that Dark Souls 2 was so fond of, combined with the screen-consuming, 12-hit combo, spastic, gigantic, leaping bosses of Dark Souls 3. When I had to fight two Crucible Knights at the bottom of a random catacomb dungeon, I just rolled my eyes. I felt the same way when I had to fight the big Misbegotten and a Crucible Knight at Redmane Castle - what relation do these two enemy types share? The Godskin Duo boss is notorious for just being a total shitfight, made even better by the fact that the boss healthbar is more than the combined HP of the singular enemies, meaning that one or both will actually respawn. Not a single duo encounter features enemies specifically designed to be fought as a pair, like Ornstein and Smough or the Bell Gargoyles from the original Dark Souls. Instead, these are always clumsy encounters featuring two enemies flailing into and amongst one another as they stunlock you to death. The enormous, spastic bosses in the style of Dark Souls 3 are even better. The Unalcerated Tree Spirit enemy is routinely placed in rooms which are two small for its animations to play out properly, often having half of its body clipping through wall and with tells that are basically non-existent. The extent of strategy for dealing with it is just rolling if it looks like it's going to attack, and hoping that you have enough HP to tank the hit if you messed up. This also applies to the multitude of bosses with long mix-up combos, weaving through fast, slow, delayed and sometimes instantaneous attacks specifically design to catch the player off guard and punish them for mistiming rolls or thinking that they can get a quick hit in on the boss. The developers either expect players to engage in a perverse form of Simon Says, or they simply want players to stumble through all encounters by pumping VIG and just accepting that they'll need to routinely trade hits. I've used the word "spastic" several times after seeing it used to describe the combat earlier in this thread, because it's just so fitting. It's a spastic, clumsy experience of basically tripping through boss encounters and it doesn't feel satisfying.

There are two exceptions to this in my experience, and one of those is the copy-pasted bosses. You fight enough Horseback Knights, Dragons, Erdtree Avatars and Crucible Knights that one on one fights with those enemies are relatively painless and even sometimes fun, since you'll basically have the attack patterns engrained into your muscle memory by the end of the game. Lichdragon Fortissex was a fun fight, simply for being an Ancient Dragon with an extra gimmick of spreading the Death status. Despite being my first proper encounter with the Ancient Dragon subtype, I knew broadly what I needed to do to deal with him, and I knew which resistances I needed to stack on my gear and with Incantations in order to make the fight as easy as possible. This is one of those fun RPG moments where the breadth of possibilities available to the player finally enhances the experiences. Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon was another fight that I really enjoyed for the same reason. She has a simple first phase (basically Deacons of the Deep 2.0) and then the second phase is much more challenging, a fight against the setting's master Sorcerer on a moonlit lake set to an understated string score accompanied by chanting which reminded me of Kenji Kawai's soundtrack to Ghost in the Shell. It's great, and I wish more bosses followed her example. A simple setup with an obvious way of countering her (stack magic resistance!) and the composer having the courage to step away from the usual bombastic, orchestral score that underpins the rest of the game's soundtrack. Some bosses nearly get there. Malenia, the game's secret superboss, would be fantastic were it not for a single move in her repertoire which can easily kill players immediately with very little warning. The aforementioned Astel would be a lot more fun if not for his teleporting grab attack which would always one-shot me even with hugely pumped VIG for that stage in the game. The Regal Ancestor Spirit is very cool, has nice music which again is totally different from the rest of the soundtrack and it's unfortunate that it was just a piece of side content and not something with important to the overall setting or narrative. Then again, maybe it's a good thing that it was just side content. If it were important to the main story, FromSoft would have decided that it needed to have a 19 hit combo and be able to do backflips around the arena.

I haven't even talked about shit like the Fallingstar Beast in the Sellia Crystal Tunnel that attacks you before you finish walking through the fog gate, or the fact that bosses are nearly all susceptible to Bleed and Rot, not because it makes sense for them to be, but because I think FromSoft needed them to be in order for players to realistically beat them. Rot in particular as a status is invaluable because of its damage over time effect, which is so helpful and keeping boss HP ticking down since the players has so few openings to actually deal damage. You'll often have dealt 25-50% of the bosses HP pool while having only been able to get 2 or 3 hits in, due to how insanely aggressive the bosses can be and how few genuine openings they leave. Spirit Summons also trivialize the game's difficulty, the Mimic Tear in particular. This feels like another case of FromSoft making a mechanic intentionally overpowered in order to compensate for the absolute bullshit that they make the player deal with. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are games that I would describe as tough but fair. They didn't rely on too much mechanical mastery or amazing reflexes, they just wanted the player to observe their surroundings, pay attention and most importantly, be patient. Looking back of Dark Souls and particularly Demon's Souls, you'll find that bosses which relied on memorizing attack patterns and executing with mechanical precision were the exception rather than the rule. Demon's Souls really only has Flameluker and False King Allant, while Dark Souls has the Bell Garogyles, Quelaaq, Sif, Ornstein and Smough, Four Kings and Gwyn if the player doesn't parry. The focus didn't really shift until the Artorias of the Abyss DLC, where the Sanctuary Guardian is probably more difficult than every vanilla fight bar OnS, and the other three bosses (Artorias, Kalameet, Manus) really set the tone for what the rest of the series would be focusing on. A big guy with a sword who does anime flips and powers up throughout the fight, a Dragon fight with breath attacks that consume the arena, and a camera-blocking monstrosity with a 10 hit combo attack designed to one shot players who mistime a single roll.

I wish I could love this game, but it's left me feeling somewhat bitter. There was so much about it that was great, but it's just drowned in a tide of copy-pasted, formulaic content and cancerous design decisions. You could remix and cut this game down to a satisfying, 30 hour experience that people would love to replay once or twice every year. Instead, FromSoft have created an unwieldy behemoth that I really don't think I will ever play again. There's just too much to dislike, and unfortunately a lot of it is tied to the game's primary progression path. Maybe I'll warm up to it with time, but I just don't see it happening. Did I enjoy myself? I'll say that I did enjoy the game more often than not, but there was a significant amount of time where I wasn't having fun, and from about Caelid onwards I was starting to feel like the game was more of a grind that I had an obligation to finish, rather than an experience that was so much fun that I couldn't put it down. More good than bad, but a lot of bad to balance out all of the good. I'll finish with a music analogy:

Physical Graffiti, at 82 minutes and 59 seconds, is nearly twice as long as Led Zeppelin IV. That doesn't make it the better album.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm honestly more curious to see how the game's success (measured in sales and general positive reception) will affect other games. Are we in for a decade of cheap ER knockoffs now?

dodgeroll has been the meme mechanic in games for years now, this will change nothing

 

[Lutte]

I'm honestly more curious to see how the game's success (measured in sales and general positive reception) will affect other games. Are we in for a decade of cheap ER knockoffs now?

We've had a decade of cheap souls knockoffs (some of which have actually turned out okay surprisingly), so probably.

Open world games are expensive to make, even when you count all the asset and creature reuse. It's unlikely there'll be much knockoffs of ER, in the same way as there's no knockoff of Skyrim or Oblivion, and only studios with decent financial backings had made knockoffs of GTA. If there's an ER knockoff it can only come from a major studio and the big studios seem unlikely to make a soulslike, much less an open world one, just look at the dev reactions on twitter about ER. Even From Software could not have made this game before they had earned a ton of money from the souls franchise.

I don't worry about knockoffs coming, but I worry that this may on the other hand end up setting From onto a course of only making games like ER.

 

[Funposter]

SO true

 

[cvv]

Just beat Radahn with my fourth try. He wasnt as hard as people made it out to be but I didnt really fight him in melee maybe thats the issue. What I did was ride around and summon all I could and then ride from afar into his back and dismounted which made me jump and then hit him with a heavy attack followed by my art. Mount up again ride away repeat. When summons died I stayed away until I could summon someone again to make him not attack me but instead attack the summons so my tactic worked. I almost thought there would be a second phase the way people here ranted about him, luckily there wasnt because I wouldnt have made it.

Yeah I didn't realize you can simply beat him with summons, they seemed so weak at first sight and also I didn't even realize you can re-summon them, I was so absorbed in trying to melee Radahn.

Anyway in both cases - riding around and summoning or trying to melee this fucking kitchen blender - it's THE worst boss fight in any FS game in my book. As for Bed of Chaos, at least you can get it over with quickly if you know what to do.

 

[Tacgnol]

As stated a page or two ago, I've now 100%'d the game after about 80 hours and I wanted to note down all of my thoughts on it. Be warned, this won't really be in any coherent or logical order and there will be SPOILERS AHEAD.

You should consider asking Infinitron to post that as a review (maybe with some minor edits). It's very detailed.

 

[Shrimp]

Lichdragon Fortissex was a fun fight, simply for being an Ancient Dragon with an extra gimmick of spreading the Death status. Despite being my first proper encounter with the Ancient Dragon subtype, I knew broadly what I needed to do to deal with him, and I knew which resistances I needed to stack on my gear and with Incantations in order to make the fight as easy as possible. This is one of those fun RPG moments where the breadth of possibilities available to the player finally enhances the experiences. Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon was another fight that I really enjoyed for the same reason. She has a simple first phase (basically Deacons of the Deep 2.0) and then the second phase is much more challenging, a fight against the setting's master Sorcerer on a moonlit lake set to an understated string score accompanied by chanting which reminded me of Kenji Kawai's soundtrack to Ghost in the Shell. It's great, and I wish more bosses followed her example. A simple setup with an obvious way of countering her (stack magic resistance!)

I agree with pretty much everything you said since I had very similar experiences throughout my playthrough, but I'd like to add something to this point since I think there's one thing the game actually does well that I haven't had the chance to mention earlier in the thread.
You can access the Magic/Divine/Flame Fortification incantations almost right away and their FTH requirements (10) are all low enough that most starter classes can use them with minimal level investments.
They last for what feels like 60-90 seconds and I think they negate about 25-30% damage. I played as a STR/FTH based character and very frequently made use of these spells. While I have no idea how often they might have saved my hide I definitely liked the RPG aspect of actually preparing for the fights ahead by shielding myself against the damage type I was about to face.

Very late game spoiler:

Spoiler

I even made use of the resistances against the final boss. With Lord's Divine Fortification, the +2 holy resistance talisman and the regular armour set I was using I ended up at 70% damage negation against holy damage. This is absolutely not an unsubstantial amount of damage negation and definitely made it far more manageable to get hit by the occasional stray aoe. Having the final boss' point blank explosion only chip me for negligible damage because of my damage mitigation spells felt great.

 

[Cromwell]

it's THE worst boss fight in any FS game in my book.

Personally I am not sure about that. for me its a RPG Fight, a gargantuan demigod and you have to find a way to bring this monster down. It would probably be better if they gave you more ways todo this sice the standard way doesnt work very well in this case and the boss itself isnt presented in the standard way. But I wish they had more fights that dont entirely revolve around beating the boss down with your weapon.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I can only imagine Elden Ring clones will be worse than Dark Souls clones, because the open world will give them an excuse to go popamole on at least one area of the Souls formula, level design.

 

[Funposter]

Lichdragon Fortissex was a fun fight, simply for being an Ancient Dragon with an extra gimmick of spreading the Death status. Despite being my first proper encounter with the Ancient Dragon subtype, I knew broadly what I needed to do to deal with him, and I knew which resistances I needed to stack on my gear and with Incantations in order to make the fight as easy as possible. This is one of those fun RPG moments where the breadth of possibilities available to the player finally enhances the experiences. Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon was another fight that I really enjoyed for the same reason. She has a simple first phase (basically Deacons of the Deep 2.0) and then the second phase is much more challenging, a fight against the setting's master Sorcerer on a moonlit lake set to an understated string score accompanied by chanting which reminded me of Kenji Kawai's soundtrack to Ghost in the Shell. It's great, and I wish more bosses followed her example. A simple setup with an obvious way of countering her (stack magic resistance!)

I agree with pretty much everything you said since I had very similar experiences throughout my playthrough, but I'd like to add something to this point since I think there's one thing the game actually does well that I haven't had the chance to mention earlier in the thread.
You can access the Magic/Divine/Flame Fortification incantations almost right away and their FTH requirements (10) are all low enough that most starter classes can use them with minimal level investments.
They last for what feels like 60-90 seconds and I think they negate about 25-30% damage. I played as a STR/FTH based character and very frequently made use of these spells. While I have no idea how often they might have saved my hide I definitely liked the RPG aspect of actually preparing for the fights ahead by shielding myself against the damage type I was about to face.

Very late game spoiler:

Spoiler

I even made use of the resistances against the final boss. With Lord's Divine Fortification, the +2 holy resistance talisman and the regular armour set I was using I ended up at 70% damage negation against holy damage. This is absolutely not an unsubstantial amount of damage negation and definitely made it far more manageable to get hit by the occasional stray aoe. Having the final boss' point blank explosion only chip me for negligible damage because of my damage mitigation spells felt great.

Yeah, I didn't go into detail but for Rennala specifically I used Magic Fortification, the Magic Defense talisman and my best Magic defense gear for the fight which got me up above 50%. The fight with Royal Knight Loretta at the Haligtree I did the same thing (except with the upgraded Magic Barrier incantation) and was up above 75%. It's very nice to get hit by a spell and barely get hurt. You also get access to physical defense fortification in the late game, but it's arguably too late for it be be particularly useful. The problem with a lot of later bosses is that they have access to more than one type of damage, such as Dragonlord Placidusax having what I think is Holy damage for the breath attack but Lightning damage for all of his other AOE moves, and then having combined Lightning/Phys for the claw strikes.

 

[Funposter]

As stated a page or two ago, I've now 100%'d the game after about 80 hours and I wanted to note down all of my thoughts on it. Be warned, this won't really be in any coherent or logical order and there will be SPOILERS AHEAD.

You should consider asking Infinitron to post that as a review (maybe with some minor edits). It's very detailed.

paging jewfinitron Infinitron

 

[cvv]

snip

I actually agree with most of this, except for "FromSoft making a mechanic intentionally overpowered in order to compensate for the absolute bullshit that they make the player deal with". FromSoft wants you to use all the tools they give you and so they make regular engagements with some bosses extremely difficult.

I love that in theory, at least you can utilize all the shit you've been gathering, the problem is execution. The Radahn fight is the perfect example - yes you can use the tools FS is offering (repeated summons), it's just they turn the fight into a protracted boring slog. Or sometimes the balance is stretched too far - there's TOO much bullshit so some tools have to be too OP, like the Mimic Tear which fully upgraded is p. much indestructible. So a fight with two crucible knights is super tough to solo (impossible in fact, unless you're a parrying god or a top 0,001% autist) but too easy with the Mimic. Just tone it down a bit FFS.

Plus, idk, summons STILL feel like cheesing. FS combat always felt like you're SUPPOSED to solo everything. But yeah, in previous Souls it was within the capabilities of most players (DeS, DS1 and DS2 aren't actually that hard), but starting with Bloodborne that percentile started to get narrower and narrower.

Otherwise I agree with the criticism - reused bosses, rats with a 1k HP, world is too big, bosses too ridiculous (they're Nioh-level animu while your char has DS-level mobility). But despite it all I actually don't want it to end. I haven't been nolifing it, taking it at 3-4 hours a day. I'm about 60 hours in, at Leyndell now and I'm still having an absolute blast.

 

[Shrimp]

Honestly one of the most overlooked strengths of the mimic tear is the fact that it's summoned with HP rather than FP which makes it a lot more accessible to bring out.
I tried upgrading one of the legendary ashes of some spearfighter with a shield to +9 and used it against some monsters in a high level area and it also managed to hold its weight. While it's true that it doesn't have access to my item loadout and that I can't customise its equipment and/or spells one of the major weaknesses of it is that it required me to level up Mind to the point where I actually had enough FP to summon it. If you aren't doing a caster or at the very least a hybrid build you have very little reason to ever level the Mind stat, but everyone has plenty of good reasons to level Vigour for more health.

 

[Funposter]

snip

I actually agree with most of this, except for "FromSoft making a mechanic intentionally overpowered in order to compensate for the absolute bullshit that they make the player deal with". FromSoft wants you to use all the tools they give you and so they make regular engagements with some bosses extremely difficult.

I singled out the Scarlet Rot effect because it just seems to work on so many bosses that otherwise would be miserable to fight. Either they intended for it to be as goofily OP as it is, or they forgot to add resistances to bosses. Bleed is similar, with what feels like the majority of unique bosses being susceptible.

So a fight with two crucible knights is super tough to solo (impossible in fact, unless you're a parrying god or a top 0,001% autist)

Autist reporting in

 

[cvv]

So a fight with two crucible knights is super tough to solo (impossible in fact, unless you're a parrying god or a top 0,001% autist)

Autist reporting in

How exactly? Some kind of cheese or mano-a-mano?

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Rya is best girl!

Anonymous Wife Scholar which wife is best wife? Ranni or Rya?

Give me cute Age of Stars ending wife!

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Post your chars fags.

 

[cvv]

it's THE worst boss fight in any FS game in my book.

Personally I am not sure about that. for me its a RPG Fight, a gargantuan demigod and you have to find a way to bring this monster down. It would probably be better if they gave you more ways todo this sice the standard way doesnt work very well in this case and the boss itself isnt presented in the standard way. But I wish they had more fights that dont entirely revolve around beating the boss down with your weapon.

Sure, I like gimmicky fights too, always have, you're sacrificing gameplay for vibe which can be a welcome change of pace.

But in case of Radahn the gimmick is boring, annoying and makes the fight last too long. Also the vibe isn't THAT amazing either. Compare it to the Rennala fight, there the tradeoff is more than worth it.

 

[Funposter]

How exactly? Some kind of cheese or mano-a-mano?

Using a Greatshield was a big help, just back up and slowly whittle them down. Basically you need to focus on only attacking one until they hit 50% and go super saiyan, which is actually when the fight gets easier. You can now run around the arena and bait the swooping attack, and be far enough away from the other knight to be safe. Bait the swoop from the sword knight, rush in to punish, roll through both tail swipes, get maybe one or two hits in. I think I was down to only a single Estus once I started fighting the spear 1v1, but a single Crucible Knight is something you can beat reliably without needing to heal too much.

 

[Curratum]

Someone here asked a while ago if Leyndell is the best level in gaming. I can't ascertain whether it is or not because at this point I'm trying to just plough through it and find my way to whatever actual boss fight is in there that I haven't done 2+ times by now.

 

[cvv]

Using a Greatshield was a big help, just back up and slowly whittle them down.

Interesting. I actually beat the Gaol CK with parries, I'm p. average at parrying but the CKs are relatively easy to parry.

But the later ones have too much HP and the criticals don't do nearly enough damage, you'd need 15+ successful parries to beat them and that's above my head.

Btw seems mobs are differently susceptible to crits. For example if you down one of the iron giants, you chunk off 70% of his HP with a crit. But with CKs it's barely 10%. Has it always been like that in FS games?

 

[Tacgnol]

Very late game spoiler:

Spoiler

Wish I'd known that, I actually found Radagon harder than the Elden Beast. The latter was pretty easy as all his attacks were super telegraphed.