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

[Wunderbar]

Margit had a lot more delayed strikes, aoe-sweeps, and fake-outs when he seemingly stopped attacking only to throw a magic dagger out of his ass. Meanwhile Godrick, while being hard to read due to a ton of grafted appendages, gave player quite a few decent openings (especially in his second phase where you can safely hit him three times during his dragonbreath flamethrower move).

 

[Shrimp]

^

That is some serious bullshit, and I guess the progression of From turning Dark Souls into Dodge Souls and building the meta around it.

Good thing I despise rolling as a mechanic in these games and go full block bro.

Bad news that From is clearly doubling down on roll/dodge for every game now.

You could argue that playing around dodge rolls and player expectations was the natural evolution of Souls combat if their goal was to make it increasingly difficult, but that just begs the question if this was necessary in the first place. Time has proven that people are willing to buy the next From game regardless of whether or not it's more difficult than the previous instalment.
Personally I want to say that I can tolerate some of the delayed attacks various bosses and enemies have, but when it becomes too abundant it just starts to feel like the developers are metagaming too much. For fuck sake, even regular crab enemies have a delayed swipe attack.
Memorising attack patterns and responding appropriately has always been a core part of the games' combat, but I dislike moving even further away from reaction and intuition based gameplay in favour of raw memorisation.

 

[Matador]

I can't make up my mind if Malenia is harder or easier than Orphan of Kos/Nameless King/Isshin.

Probably easier than OoK and Isshin, but harder than NK for me.

Isshin is god-tier boss design.

I have never beaten OOK. Was the first From boss I really hated. Doesn't help that you have to farm Blood Vials if you empty your existances.

Ishin is glorious. He is hard, but very satisfying to fight.

 

[cvv]

Objectively Ishin is the best (and probably hardest) boss FS has ever created but goddamn, the motherfucker took me 6 hours to beat.

Still, when thinking about replaying Sekiro I'm actually looking forward to his fight again. Unlike Radahn who I'm definitely gonna cheese with sunbros.

 

[Matador]

I can't make up my mind if Malenia is harder or easier than Orphan of Kos/Nameless King/Isshin.

Probably easier than OoK and Isshin, but harder than NK for me.

Isshin is god-tier boss design.

But is she as fun as those?

I found Isshin much more fun then both OoK and NK. I think Sekiro perfected the boss fights myself.

Eh... probably as fun as Orphan of Kos... which isn't terribly fun. They're both hyper aggressive and closer to the "unfair" side. I don't mind Malenia being difficult though, as From clearly has her earmarked for the "super hard boss" of the game. And unlike the other three bosses, you can probably significantly outlevel the fight to give yourself a strong advantage.

Or just drop mimic tear and have the fight be a cakewalk. I tested mimic just for the first half of the fight and we wrecked her shit so hard that I had to suicide out of the battle.

Isshin is straight up probably the best boss I've seen in an arpg, if not any videogame ever. The environment, the movesets, the full incorporation of everything you've learned in the game so far...

Fun thing is I thought they had peaked before in that game with Lady Butterfly, and after that Genichiro, superb duels. And Boom, they surpass themselves once more in the final Bossfight.

 

[toro]

I can't make up my mind if Malenia is harder or easier than Orphan of Kos/Nameless King/Isshin.

Probably easier than OoK and Isshin, but harder than NK for me.

Isshin is god-tier boss design.

But is she as fun as those?

I found Isshin much more fun then both OoK and NK. I think Sekiro perfected the boss fights myself.

Eh... probably as fun as Orphan of Kos... which isn't terribly fun. They're both hyper aggressive and closer to the "unfair" side. I don't mind Malenia being difficult though, as From clearly has her earmarked for the "super hard boss" of the game. And unlike the other three bosses, you can probably significantly outlevel the fight to give yourself a strong advantage.

Or just drop mimic tear and have the fight be a cakewalk. I tested mimic just for the first half of the fight and we wrecked her shit so hard that I had to suicide out of the battle.

Isshin is straight up probably the best boss I've seen in an arpg, if not any videogame ever. The environment, the movesets, the full incorporation of everything you've learned in the game so far...

Fun thing is I thought they had peaked before in that game with Lady Butterfly, and after that Genichiro, superb duels. And Boom, they surpass themselves once more in the final Bossfight.

Owl Father is the best fight in Sekiro.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I can't make up my mind if Malenia is harder or easier than Orphan of Kos/Nameless King/Isshin.

Probably easier than OoK and Isshin, but harder than NK for me.

Isshin is god-tier boss design.

But is she as fun as those?

I found Isshin much more fun then both OoK and NK. I think Sekiro perfected the boss fights myself.

Eh... probably as fun as Orphan of Kos... which isn't terribly fun. They're both hyper aggressive and closer to the "unfair" side. I don't mind Malenia being difficult though, as From clearly has her earmarked for the "super hard boss" of the game. And unlike the other three bosses, you can probably significantly outlevel the fight to give yourself a strong advantage.

Or just drop mimic tear and have the fight be a cakewalk. I tested mimic just for the first half of the fight and we wrecked her shit so hard that I had to suicide out of the battle.

Isshin is straight up probably the best boss I've seen in an arpg, if not any videogame ever. The environment, the movesets, the full incorporation of everything you've learned in the game so far...

Fun thing is I thought they had peaked before in that game with Lady Butterfly, and after that Genichiro, superb duels. And Boom, they surpass themselves once more in the final Bossfight.

Owl Father is the best fight in Sekiro.

Pretty sure Jetstream Sam is the best.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Sigh...Another 10 years of souls Elden ring clones and worse sequels to be expected.

if it produce something akin to the surge 2 or nioh (at least in term of combat), all the other garbage will be worth it

 

[CyberWhale]

Half of these tips are obvious, but the other half might be helpful for peeps still playing the game.

 

[Haplo]

Margit had a lot more delayed strikes, aoe-sweeps, and fake-outs when he seemingly stopped attacking only to throw a magic dagger out of his ass. Meanwhile Godrick, while being hard to read due to a ton of grafted appendages, gave player quite a few decent openings (especially in his second phase where you can safely hit him three times during his dragonbreath flamethrower move).

Fighting Margit was fine for me. As long as I did not become greedy and was satisfied with 1 counter stab after his moves (not that I can do more against most bosses with a colossal sword and my skillz), I was almost perfectly safe. And was able to reliably poise break him twice from these counter-stabs.

Godrick... I just let Nephali Loux engage him and landed some blows on his back when he was distracted. I was not risking being hit by his rolling boulder moves or earthquake moves. Yeah, did get some hits and sometimes even poise-broke him after he pulls his noob flamethrower attack, creating a wide opening. But otherwise I let the NPC summon do the bulk of the job.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So I got summoned for co-op and ended up fighting the guy with the two hammers, except this time he had a big axe instead.

How come? I tired getting summoned again and he had the two hammers how come he was different with that other host?

 

[Lutte]

I had no issues whatsoever with the Godrick and Margit fights. The delayed stuff can be annoying but there isn't that much to memorize once you know that they're doing. They were fun fight and when I encountered Godrick's clone, Margit again, then Morgott, I felt they were all pushovers. (Margit, by the way, is the most animu boss of any Fromsoft game. Dude stalks you from the beginning of the game, acts like he was defeated, comes back in front of the capital, then pulls off an "This wasn't even my final form, by the way, call me Morgott" within the capital.)

Truth is, I found most main story bosses enjoyable. I find where the game really can get kicked in the arse is in the optional fights. First, the catdog shit. I never really managed to learn how to react to them, they have almost no animation to their moveset and just suddenly do things, I never died to those fights because they have little hp and don't do one shot level of damage to you but they were among the worst when it comes to how to implement an action game moveset IMHO by far.
The various fat noble enemies : who is the fuckhole who thought the infinite roll was a good move to implement in the game?
Malenia : slashlashslashslashslashslashslashslashslashslashslashslashsalshalsdhjsfheuaroi nvytgnsgbreshglbrsumgn sr
The crystalian trio : I did it on the second try, but this is again exactly the sort of fight that is so thoroughly unfun to do even when it's not inherently hard. You spend so much time sprinting away to leave yourself room to hit one of them.
Commander Niall and his two adds that hit like trucks and stick to you like glue with constant close gap spam : is that fight even doable without summons?
The various putrid tree thing that spazz around the whole room often clipping into walls and generally being very annoying to read.

The Fire Giant fight though can fuck off. Of the story-must-kill this guy is so annoying. When in a 6 minutes boss fight you spend 3 minutes trying to catch up to the boss who keeps going away and away it just isn't fun, fuck off fromlimpdicks.

And of course all the dragon fights were garbage, including the optional major dragon bosses. Last one with his teleport/blend into shadow type moves was fun during his phase 2 but that's about it.

This game, has a lot of unfun and just garbage content.

 

[Curratum]

Commander Niall and his two adds that hit like trucks and stick to you like glue with constant close gap spam : is that fight even doable without summons?

Opened Youtube for cheese on this one. You just craft a bewitching branch, poke one of the boss knight summons with it and it kills the other...

 

[Strange Fellow]

the fact we have been trained by old school design to lawnmower over the entire gameworld that is leading to burnout.

Playing older games, I was satisfied enough after just beating it without doing every side quest and exploring everything the game has to offer.

Nowadays, however, the situation is quite different - games openly show you a checklist of things to do, and gaming ecosystems have built-in trophies/achievements for participating in every side activity and collecting every piece of garbage. Lawnmowering the gameworld is a modern thing.

It isn't just that though, many of From's design choices clash with the idea that the player should skip large amounts of content. Handplaced loot, scarcity of upgrade materials, NPCs in out-of-the-way areas, etc. I don't know yet how prominent these things are in Elden Ring, but from what I've seen of it so far it appears not to have changed very much.

Aside from that, there's the fact that From has made some of the most satisfying games to lawnmower that there's ever been. I don't generally feel the need to do everything there is to do in a video game, but From games are exceptions.

 

[Funposter]

Commander Niall and his two adds that hit like trucks and stick to you like glue with constant close gap spam : is that fight even doable without summons?

My tactic was to go greatshield + heaviest armour possible so I had the poise to avoid being stunlocked and could just play it safe. Run in and get a few free hits on one of the summons, then back off and try to engage them with Niall somewhere else in the arena. Once the adds are down, you just quickly menu and unequip the greatshield and whatever armour you can to get back to mid-roll so that you can fight Niall normally.

 

[Lutte]

Handplaced loot.

Yes, and 90% of the story is still in that loot item description. It's still a Dark Souls, only you need to profoundly lawnmawer it to get the full dark souls experience. Fuck the open world and the defenders of this nonsense.

 

[Silva]

^

That is some serious bullshit, and I guess the progression of From turning Dark Souls into Dodge Souls and building the meta around it.

Good thing I despise rolling as a mechanic in these games and go full block bro.

Bad news that From is clearly doubling down on roll/dodge for every game now.

You could argue that playing around dodge rolls and player expectations was the natural evolution of Souls combat if their goal was to make it increasingly difficult, but that just begs the question if this was necessary in the first place. Time has proven that people are willing to buy the next From game regardless of whether or not it's more difficult than the previous instalment.
Personally I want to say that I can tolerate some of the delayed attacks various bosses and enemies have, but when it becomes too abundant it just starts to feel like the developers are metagaming too much. For fuck sake, even regular crab enemies have a delayed swipe attack.
Memorising attack patterns and responding appropriately has always been a core part of the games' combat, but I dislike moving even further away from reaction and intuition based gameplay in favour of raw memorisation.

Yeah, the problem is not delays and long combos, it's seeing those in every fucking enemy. An intelligent fella like Margit delaying an attack makes sense but a crab?? An expert swordsmen dodging away after a combo is okay but a dumb fatass troll??

Also, these things are only the natural evolution of the series because it adopted Bloodborne high speed and tempo with DS3. If it kept DS1/2 slower speed and stamina-inefficient rolls we would be seeing a different, and probably more interesting, evolution of the bosses by now. As much as I love BB and find it the best FROM game, it was the fall of Souls formula.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

I'm on a roll tonight. So far I've killed Tree Knight, the swamp dragon, Death Bird, and some crazy teleporter guy that I got transported to.

 

[Silva]

Handplaced loot.

Yes, and 90% of the story is still in that loot item description. It's still a Dark Souls, only you need to profoundly lawnmawer it to get the full dark souls experience. Fuck the open world and the defenders of this nonsense.

But how would they evolve this aspect? I mean, DS1 probably peaked exploration design the same way Sekiro peaked bosses, but after three or so games the formula was getting a bit stale and a shake-up was (theoretically) welcomed. We would be probably whining now too if they sticked to it once more.

Someone above suggested Limgrave-Liurnia-Altus Plateau (with maybe an underground map like Syofria) would be a more comprehensible open world experience and, you know, that makes sense. Maybe they didn't fail by going open-world, but by going this so humongous content is spread thin open world? Don't know, just a thought.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

The crystalian trio : I did it on the second try, but this is again exactly the sort of fight that is so thoroughly unfun to do even when it's not inherently hard. You spend so much time sprinting away to leave yourself room to hit one of them.

Absolute dickheads the 3 of them. A hilarious cheese strat courtesy of a user on the wiki. Can confirm it works:

For the triple scarlet rot gang squad, I found it easiest to equip the assassins crimson dagger and lure out the spear one. I used barricade shield to make his attacks bounce off. Two guard counters will break his stance and you can riposte, which will heal you. Just spam counters and ripostes and you can ignore the rot because you're healing so much. Once the spear guy is gone, fish for backstabs on the staff enemy. Once he's dead just spam backstab the last one

Actually feels kind of DS1 old school backstabbing them to death.

 

[Silva]

What's the lore on the catacombs? I remember the first white spirit bumbling about "go back to the roots" or something, and an item explaining how the eardtree roots run underground to the minor eardtrees around, so people built catacombs as a way to send their deads straight to the roots. As if their conception of rest in peace is having your body entangled to these underground roots.

Makes sense or I'm reading too much into it?

 

[Lutte]

But how would they evolve this aspect? I mean, DS1 probably peaked exploration design the same way Sekiro peaked bosses, but after three or so games the formula was getting a bit stale and a shake-up was (theoretically) welcomed.

No. Personally I was fine with the way it was before. Games don't need to constantly revolutionize how we interact with levels, sorry. Doom (the originals, not nudoom shit) still has the more fun maps to interact with compared with any AAA fps that came out in the last decade. Similarly, Souls level design is the franchise strength, and continuing on that route is not a weakness.

"The Formula" is a lot more than just level design though and I agree souls are getting stale but that's because they keep doing the "end of the world, every creature except for 30 npc is an enemy to kill, all of the story is told though item descriptions, the combat uses simplistic moveset, a dodge, block and parry mechanism" etc.
Some of Elden Ring's changes would be welcome in a new soul. Guard counter is cool. A proper jump button is alright. The new weapon art mechanics and the boss hidden stagger bar you need to overcome to critical them is great. There you go, there's many things you can in fact change and retain in a proper souls game.

I'll say it again, FUCK. THE. OPEN. WORLD. Games don't need open world. Period. I have yet to play a game in which open world is a strength and not a piece of shit. Zelda BOTW is not the exception either.

Fuck. This. Open World. Trend.

 

[Zizka]

I have yet to play a game in which open world is a strength and not a piece of shit.

Amen to that.

Voice acting, open world and romance are not step forwards.

 

[Curratum]

I have yet to play a game in which open world is a strength and not a piece of shit.

Amen to that.

Voice acting, open world and romance are not step forwards.

Let's not get too carried away and put voice acting in there too... :D

 

[OneManArmyGames]

I have yet to play a game in which open world is a strength and not a piece of shit.

Nah, there are plenty of good early open world games like Stalker, Far Cry 2 or Just Cause 2, to name a few.
I'd argue that open world games don't mesh well with RPG mechanics though, since you either have level scaling or end up with very uneven difiiculty.

I made the mistake of pushing through Sellia Crystal Tunnel (except for the boss) after I got teleport-trapped there and have been steamrolling all the bosses until I got to north Caelid .