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

[Damned Registrations]

His attacks have a very long wind up for a reason (same for Crucible Knights where the game is actually begging you to parry them since it's such a pain in the ass to kill them any other way. Another example is the spear Crystalians), but then check what happens at the 1:00 mark. He lounges forward for his first "undodgeable" flurry combo right after his rain of knives or whatever that is and if you pay attention his sword flashes right as he is about to rush towards you, which is a big give away. A single well placed parry can stop the entire sequence in its tracks, and i'm pretty sure that was always the intended way.

This logic makes no sense though. His sword only flashed because he summoned a huge, glowing, obviously can't be parried hammer right before the charge. And the massive delays on enemy attacks doesn't make them easier to parry, it makes them more difficult because you need to memorize how long the delay is instead of being able to intuitively time the parry with a smooth trajectory of an incoming attack. Is that windup slam from the watchdog statue parryable? I have no idea, I'm sure as fuck not going to try, but you're implying it should be because it's slow. What about the shit Radahn does? I don't recall people parry spamming him, but it's not like he's that much bigger than Morgott. What about those dragonkin soldiers? Loretta's lightsaber halberd? None of this seems parryable to me but who the fuck knows. The only things I'd expect to by parryable are enemies that are more or less human sized. A godskin noble is probably where I'd draw the line for what seems intuitively possible, and only because it's a rapier. If you can parry anything bigger than that then I fail to see any logic to it and would just as easily assume you can parry the fucking Elden Beast or a tree spirit.

 

[Silva]

I guess we are just wired differently but i always have a blast figuring out patterns but it usually doesn't take me as long. If i'm doing 70 tries it's because i'm going for a no-hit run. Still, i don't generally get bored if i'm doing a boss over and over to discover openings and practice counters. Maybe i'm just autistic lul.

It's about whether I find the design of difficulty to be fun or annoying kind. In ER it didn't seem to me that bosses play by same rules as me and that tends to annoy me. And then my butthurt becomes a major obstacle to me getting properly focused on learning the fight, I start doing more mistakes. Often same mistakes over and over. In recent years I've had tough fights that made me die a lot of times in Sekiro and Nioh 2 as well. But because I enjoyed their approach to combat a lot more, especially in Nioh 2, I didn't mind grinding them and eventually got to the point were I could reliably destroy these bosses without breaking a sweat. Since you don't find ER combat to be annoying then of course you will learn these bosses without butthurt. But it's not for me, Souls combat lost its appeal to me starting DS III. The series was never mainly about combat to me in the first place, it was about exploring cool levels. I thought first two games just had ok combat, it wasn't anything spectacular. But it didn't need to be. But once they started amping up combat difficulty it became lacking.

In other words, in Sekiro the fight system welcomes you to master it, while in Elden Ring it welcomes you sideline it and spam Rivers of Blood/Moonveil/Kamihamiha.

 

[Multidirectional]

In other words, in Sekiro the fight system welcomes you to master it, while in Elden Ring it welcomes you sideline it and spam Rivers of Blood/Moonveil/Kamihamiha.

And I wasn't even good enough at spamming Rivers of Blood, still got raped by a lot of bosses.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This logic makes no sense though. His sword only flashed because he summoned a huge, glowing, obviously can't be parried hammer right before the charge.

No. The sword flashes to draw your attention to it. He lounges forward with his sword drawn in front right after it flashes it seems pretty explicit to me. Normally your focus would be on the big hammer that's why they made sure the sword was right in your face during the charge.

And the massive delays on enemy attacks doesn't make them easier to parry

It's not that the wind up makes it easier to nail the timing, it's just one big indication that a parry opportunity is available. Usually those long wind up attacks come from enemies that just seem difficult to handle head on. Not always, but it's usually a good rule of thumb.

Is that windup slam from the watchdog statue parryable? I have no idea

Yes:

Radahn... dragonkin soldiers...

Nah, those are clearly too large.

Loretta's lightsaber halberd?

Yes:



Also this guy:

The only things I'd expect to by parryable are enemies that are more or less human sized.

I think it's size but also the shape. You say Morgott is large. To me he is not large enough to go over the threshold but even if he was there's just something humanoid about him. The same goes for that halberd dark knight guy. Yes it's a big weapon but it still feels human size.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I guess we are just wired differently but i always have a blast figuring out patterns but it usually doesn't take me as long. If i'm doing 70 tries it's because i'm going for a no-hit run. Still, i don't generally get bored if i'm doing a boss over and over to discover openings and practice counters. Maybe i'm just autistic lul.

It's about whether I find the design of difficulty to be fun or annoying kind. In ER it didn't seem to me that bosses play by same rules as me and that tends to annoy me. And then my butthurt becomes a major obstacle to me getting properly focused on learning the fight, I start doing more mistakes. Often same mistakes over and over. In recent years I've had tough fights that made me die a lot of times in Sekiro and Nioh 2 as well. But because I enjoyed their approach to combat a lot more, especially in Nioh 2, I didn't mind grinding them and eventually got to the point were I could reliably destroy these bosses without breaking a sweat. Since you don't find ER combat to be annoying then of course you will learn these bosses without butthurt. But it's not for me, Souls combat lost its appeal to me starting DS III. The series was never mainly about combat to me in the first place, it was about exploring cool levels. I thought first two games just had ok combat, it wasn't anything spectacular. But it didn't need to be. But once they started amping up combat difficulty it became lacking.

In other words, in Sekiro the fight system welcomes you to master it, while in Elden Ring it welcomes you sideline it and spam Rivers of Blood/Moonveil/Kamihamiha.

Still not sure what's prevent you from mastering the fight system in Elden Ring.

Also Sekiro doesn't exactly "welcome" you to master the system. You just have no choice on the matter. Elden Ring is more lax in giving normies some leeway to cheese the game but i don't get what's there that would prevent anyone from mastering the game would they wish to do so.

 

[Remain Nameless]

https://twitter.com/ELDENRING/status/1760076880764449173

Wonder if it will actually release on the anniversary.

 

[Elttharion]

 

[Lyric Suite]

Fuck, that means itz coming right?

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'm still not seeing any pattern connecting these various attacks. At all. Loretta's only parryable attack is a weird jab with the blunt end. Night's cavalry is when it's an overhead, first one handed then two, but not the horizontal swings. Morgott has horizontal slashes that finish dashes and are midway through combos that can be parried, and horizontal slashes that can't because he uses them to backflip? What the fuck is the logic here? Morgott 'sword flash' is literally just the motion blur they put on everything. Crucible knights have that during their diving attack. Why can't you parry that? You can parry Maliketh's crazy somersaulting death energy blade, but not Loretta's halberd when it's glowing?

It doesn't seem to matter what direction the attack comes from, the size of the wielder, the speed of the attack, whether one or two hands get used... there's just no fucking tells for this shit. All you can do is try parry everything start over when you die.

Edit: This basically sums up my experience with trying to parry in ER:



Why the fuck would I keep trying after shit like that?

 

[REhorror]

Trailer midnight today boys.
https://www.videogamer.com/news/elden-ring-shadow-of-the-erdtree-gameplay-trailer-start-time/
Me excited.

I wonder if this will be FROM Software this time, or they will include in Bamco?

 

[Elttharion]

Release date​

Although we are not 100% certain, we believe that the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC would release on June 21, 2024 .

Why are we not sure, quite simply because this date of June 21, 2024 corresponds to the release date of several special editions of the game on the different platforms. Here is the list of these special editions.

Source

This dude (BillBil-kun) is right like 99% of the time. Article is in french and google translated to english.

 

[REhorror]

June, that's a good date, I can't think of any big release during that time?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

June, that's a good date, I can't think of any big release during that time?

Also just in time for summer break in northern hemispheres.

The DLC will dwarf anything released then anyways.

I've tried time and time again to restart the game... I don't have it in me, to go through those 120 hours again. Zanzibart... I've failed...

 

[REhorror]

June, that's a good date, I can't think of any big release during that time?

Also just in time for summer break in northern hemispheres.

The DLC will dwarf anything released then anyways.

I've tried time and time again to restart the game... I don't have it in me, to go through those 120 hours again. Zanzibart... I've failed...

I think I'm gonna replay the whole thing by the time I finish Dragon's Dogma 2, assuming Dragon's Dogma 2 turns out to be swell....

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

June, that's a good date, I can't think of any big release during that time?

Also just in time for summer break in northern hemispheres.

The DLC will dwarf anything released then anyways.

I've tried time and time again to restart the game... I don't have it in me, to go through those 120 hours again. Zanzibart... I've failed...

I think I'm gonna replay the whole thing by the time I finish Dragon's Dogma 2, assuming Dragon's Dogma 2 turns out to be swell....

It's gonna be great. No reason for it not to be, considering it's just an updated version of the first game. I think I'll play through DDDA again though. My pc will need a bit of an upgrade before I jump into DD2.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Don't release it next month you cocksuckers.

 

[Bloodeyes]

While I'm looking forward to the DLC, I'm also kind of dreading it. I'm going to need to acquire every new weapon, spell, ash of war, talisman, site of grace and crafting material. All at RL9 +0. I did this for the base game and I have a really awesome mule now, but it was a mammoth project.

If the DLC is as big as rumored it'll be like starting that all over again only worse because nobody will have the new stuff on their mules yet so I'll have to farm it instead of getting it dropped.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

If it's too big it might as well be a standalone game.

 

[REhorror]

I'm fine with it being a standalone game i.e. Armored Core's tradition (one number game, one expansion/standalone).

 

[Skinwalker]

Altus plateau is the most beautiful location in Elden Ring, and for some reason also my least favorite one so far. Not as boring as the endless snowfields, but something feels... disjointed there. And too big. All these open-world locations are too big. Why did they need to make this an open-world RPG, again?

 

[Cryomancer]

Agreed Skinwalker, the game in many location fells too "bloated". Being open world is not a problem, because Gothic 1 was open world and din't fell bloated. Would be better if instead of multiple mines, they had only one or two very big and well designed mine(s).

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Altus plateau is the most beautiful location in Elden Ring, and for some reason also my least favorite one so far. Not as boring as the endless snowfields, but something feels... disjointed there. And too big. All these open-world locations are too big. Why did they need to make this an open-world RPG, again?

I don't know. Why does any game need to be open world? Also name a better one in the last decade.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

I'll say this. You can argue that From Software switching to a open world format is decline compared to their usual stuff. Fair argument. That being said their open world is still better than all the rest, because their trademark brilliantly designed levels/dungeons still exist within the open world, and that makes exploration in their open world better than everybody elses' open world. You're not gonna find a From Software style area in shit Skyrim, or even the new Zeldas. That's why Elden Ring is better than the rest. I also think their open world is more interesting than all the rest.

 

[Child of Malkav]

H. P. Lovecraft's Cat So because there are a few legacy dungeons on the map that makes the open world good? Not random encounters, or dynamic events of any kind or just literally anything else that would differentiate this open world from another?

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm still not seeing any pattern connecting these various attacks.

It helps if you see the parry frame in terms of a circle. Whenever i'm parrying, it feels more like i'm parrying the hands than the weapon. It's hard to explain but it becomes kinda second nature once you get an instinct for it.

Loretta's only parryable attack is a weird jab with the blunt end.

I think there's a few more you can parry i just didn't feel comfortable doing it. You can also parry her magic bolts with Carian but like an idiot i forgot to do it lol.

I know for a fact there's a few attacks from the Night's Cavarly that can also be parried because i managed to do it, but again i wasn't too sure of myself when i made the video so i didn't try it then.

Edit: This basically sums up my experience with trying to parry in ER:



Why the fuck would I keep trying after shit like that?

Like i said it's more about parrying the hands. It's like you have to be able to enter the enemy's guard. There's an attack in your video where the banished knight makes a little backstep before coming down with an overhead swing, that's probably why that couldn't be parried.

I also got the distinct impression not all parry tools are the same. Maybe i was imagining things but i found Carian Retaliation for instance had a more "rounded" parry hit box that made it easier to parry overhead swings, where as Golden Parry had a more horizontal hit box witih a longer parry range. I don't know what the parry hit box is on the shield that guy is using but i wouldn't be surprised if it's not as good as some of the others. I think only the buckler proper is comparable with weapon arts like Carian or Golden Parry, none of the regular shields compare, including the small shields. Unless i'm remembering wrong that is.

Keep in mind it's not like you HAVE to parry everything. I'm not arguing that parry is a universal counter for everything the game throws at you. It's more that whenever you feel that the game is doing something that just seems outright impossible or unfair, it's because you failed to use the proper counter. That you can just clear of Morgott's entire flurry combo of death by stepping behind him may seem a bit strange but it shows the kind of logic the designers are using. It feels like they have gone a bit avantguard with this game. If Dark Souls is Bach or Beethoven, Elden Ring is Wagner or something. Having run out of ways to up the challenge in a conventional way, they decided to get esoteric and unconventional. Some people say it's a degeneration but i also can understand their point of view (the designers i mean) as what else can they do? I mean short of shelving the combat system altoghether, which they can't do given Dark Souls is still their main bread and butter.