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

[cvv]

You faggots got all butthurt by my praise of Lies of P, but the truth is: it's got the super tight combat and tense moment to moment play that makes DS1 and BB so awesome.

I don't think I will ever learn to love constant delayed "gotcha!" attacks.

In ER the gotcha delayed bullshit is used as sprinkling, to spice up the combat. Sometimes the spice is a bit too heavy for my taste but overall tolerable.

In LoP the combat is 90% spice. It literally drove me to abandon the game in the final area. Just couldn't take that garbage any more.

 

[Jinn]

The problem with Lies of P is the fairly rudimentary level design moreso than the combat. Claiming it's a better game than Elden Ring is just 1.) Outing yourself as someone who's not really a fan of exploration in these games, or 2.) Hipsterism - going against the thing that is popular.

In no reality is Lies of P a better game than Elden Ring. Is it still a good game? Yes. Just not anywhere close to how good this game is.

 

[Skinwalker]

In no reality is Lies of P a better game than Elden Ring. Is it still a good game?

No.

 

[Silva]

The problem with Lies of P is the fairly rudimentary level design moreso than the combat. Claiming it's a better game than Elden Ring is just 1.) Outing yourself as someone who's not really a fan of exploration in these games, or 2.) Hipsterism - going against the thing that is popular. In no reality is Lies of P a better game than Elden Ring. Is it still a good game? Yes. Just not anywhere close to how good this game is

Are you implying ER exploration is any good? Because aside from a few legacy dungeons (Stormveil, Academy, Leyden) it is not, and some of those are so lategame (eg: haligtree) you're too tired to care at that point. Sure, LoP has worse exploration but it's moment to moment play is, IMO, way better than ER. By that I mean tight / non-cheeseble combat coupled with good encounters and great atmosphere, which together makes you hesitant to turn that corner over there, and every inch of map explored feels like a feat (like DS1 and BB did in spades). Exploration without great m-t-m play is flacid for me, which is exactly the case of ER due to it's cheesy Supers combat and nonstop-heli-bosses.

That said, I'm still halfway through it and things could go south. Still, and so far, I'd put it easily above ER and DS3 as a Souls game. Probably on the same tier as DS2. My rank right now..

1 - DS1, BB
2 - Sekiro
3 - DS2, Lies of P
4 - Elden Ring, DS3

(reminding that even the worst there is still better than 90% of the industry and yadayada)

 

[Jinn]

Are you implying ER exploration is any good?

Yes, and you're insane if you think Lies of P - or DS3 - is better in any way.

Probably on the same tier as DS2.

Not even close.

 

[Nathir]

The problem with Lies of P is the fairly rudimentary level design moreso than the combat. Claiming it's a better game than Elden Ring is just 1.) Outing yourself as someone who's not really a fan of exploration in these games, or 2.) Hipsterism - going against the thing that is popular.

In no reality is Lies of P a better game than Elden Ring. Is it still a good game? Yes. Just not anywhere close to how good this game is.

3.) You like playing as a Timothy Chalameet looking twink.

 

[cvv]

Are you implying ER exploration is any good?

Yes, and you're insane if you think Lies of P - or DS3 - is better in any way.

As I said many times, I'm not a fan of open-world exploration in soulslikes. That said Stormveil is prolly my favourite soulslike level ever made and there are other amazing levels like Academy, Leyndell, Haligtree.

Anyway I wasn't too bummed out with LoP exploration, surprisingly, even tho as an exploration-fag. It was better than I expected (to be more precise, I expected something utterly brainless and I got something fairly acceptable).

And even the chardev and build customization wasn't as bad. In the end the combat was my only real complaint. In hindsight it's a solid 7-8/10, depending on how much the stupid gotcha combat gets on your nerves.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yes,

I feel ambivalent about it. On the one hand, the feeling of playing the game the first time, seeing the map keep expanding, finding new caves, dungeons, castles, prisons and such, looking out for merchants and chests, was great. The game provides just a massive amount of novelty for a good 30 hours or so.

OTOH, once you've explored for those 30 hours or so, it starts to feel really, really stale. Aside from all the reused assets, there's just not a lot of reward for exploring. There's just enough upgraded versions of talismans and spells out there to keep you hooked, but like 95% of the time you open a really fancy chest or kill a boss and get a drop, it's just a huge disappointment as you get rewarded with a talisman of "It's slightly harder to inflict poison on you but it lasts longer too so don't ever use this" or the sword of "This shifts the scaling from 45/55 DEX/STR to STR/DEX so it might improve your damage by like 10% if your build is completely wrong or by 2% if you actually levelled both stats but in only a slightly wrong way."

Suffice to say, I don't think spending an hour exploring and only finding disappointing things I don't even want cluttering my inventory to be 'good exploration.' I assume this is where the lore autists get their fix, reading the descriptions of every type of codpiece in the land, but I can't be bothered, personally. I find that breaks up the game flow too much.

 

[Ravielsk]

And even the chardev and build customization wasn't as bad. In the end the combat was my only real complaint. In hindsight it's a solid 7-8/10, depending on how much the stupid gotcha combat gets on your nerves.

Lies of P has a similar problem to Sekiro. It does not properly make the player aware that some attacks are meant to be dodged and some are meant to be parried. The game in essence announces the existence of both options but besides that there is no effort made to distinguish what the devs consider to be the optimal response. So most fights and boss fights can turn into this game of "guess what bitch" where if you guess right the fight continues, if not you get to restart. It also does not help that some bosses are simply atrociously balanced and basically one shoot you if you make the wrong move.

 

[Stoned Ape]

I thought the first few areas I explored in Elden ring were satisfying and fun, I loved Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid, Mount Gelmir, and the capital. The first eternal city I reached I found extremely satisfying to explore too, as was the ruined eternal city in the Elden Tree deep roots.

I didn't enjoy Mountaintop of the Giants or the Consecrated snowfield, and the Hailigtree area was beautiful but spoilt by the crappy platforming section using unsuited controls on narrow tree branches and all of the juiced up copy/pasted mobs and shitty encounter design. It was only saved by Malenia actually being a fun and well-designed boss fight (I was worried that fighting her would be hell after some of the other late-game bosses, but it was probably the fight I enjoyed most in the game).

I still think the thrill of finding new weird and creepy areas during the first 3/4 of the game and the generally fantastic design makes the world one of the most interesting visual spaces I've encountered in game design. I was probably getting a bit jaded towards the end which was partly why the final sections felt less exciting to me (well, that and all the copy/pasted, juiced-up mobs).

 

[Skinwalker]

As I said many times, I'm not a fan of open-world exploration in soulslikes

Stop posting.

 

[Ravielsk]

Suffice to say, I don't think spending an hour exploring and only finding disappointing things I don't even want cluttering my inventory to be 'good exploration.' I assume this is where the lore autists get their fix, reading the descriptions of every type of codpiece in the land, but I can't be bothered, personally. I find that breaks up the game flow too much.

It is a inbuilt flaw of the souls formula. In DS1 they made the choice to have few NPCs with sparse dialog and it just stuck as a staple even though it no longer fits the game. The world would really benefit from having more NPCs with some quests and actual dialog. It would certainly be more immersive to find some soldier bemoaning how the scarlet rot drove his compatriots to madness rather than reading about it in the description of some recolored thong piece.

The obscure style of storytelling has at this point become a hinderance because it only makes it more difficult to relate to a world where at best 50% of the time you have no context for anything. For example Marika and the Elden Tree are 100% core to the story of the game yet we basically know less about Marika than we knew about Allant in DeS and the Elden Tree... well I actually have no clue how it factors into anything because besides giving me upgrades nothing is concretely said about it. Its as if our world revolved around Mickey Mouse and drinking Pepsi while no one ever mentioned Micky is a mouse and Pepsi is a soda you drink. Its just obtuse for the sake of being obtuse.

Simply put the basic souls formula does not scale well past a certain point and elden ring exceeds that point before even hitting the midway point.

 

[cvv]

And even the chardev and build customization wasn't as bad. In the end the combat was my only real complaint. In hindsight it's a solid 7-8/10, depending on how much the stupid gotcha combat gets on your nerves.

Lies of P has a similar problem to Sekiro. It does not properly make the player aware that some attacks are meant to be dodged and some are meant to be parried.

Yeah kindda. My biggest problem tho is the erratic, "puppety" movement of most mobs, consisting of jerky, robotic swings with barely any windups or tells, making them extremely annoying to read and react to.

You just can't rely on your reactions most of the time, you literally have to memorize entire attack patterns to come up on top, with all the usual delays and fake-outs to boot. I actually liked the rest of the game enough to put up with this, all the way to the final level when I finally got enough. I think I had like 2 hours until the final boss when I uninstalled the game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

And even the chardev and build customization wasn't as bad. In the end the combat was my only real complaint. In hindsight it's a solid 7-8/10, depending on how much the stupid gotcha combat gets on your nerves.

Lies of P has a similar problem to Sekiro. It does not properly make the player aware that some attacks are meant to be dodged and some are meant to be parried.

Yeah kindda. My biggest problem tho is the erratic, "puppety" movement of most mobs, consisting of jerky, robotic swings with barely any windups or tells, making them extremely annoying to read and react to.

You just can't rely on your reactions most of the time, you literally have to memorize entire attack patterns to come up on top, with all the usual delays and fake-outs to boot. I actually liked the rest of the game enough to put up with this, all the way to the final level when I finally got enough. I think I had like 2 hours until the final boss when I uninstalled the game.

I actually liked the jerky puppet/robot style movements just because they fit thematically. That's more important to me than action reads or whatever.

I just found LoP boring. Very pretty, with some cool ideas like mix and matching hilts and blades, but meh. Had no desire to keep playing it.

 

[Silva]

Suffice to say, I don't think spending an hour exploring and only finding disappointing things I don't even want cluttering my inventory to be 'good exploration.' I assume this is where the lore autists get their fix, reading the descriptions of every type of codpiece in the land, but I can't be bothered, personally. I find that breaks up the game flow too much.

Pretty much this.

And no, that's not how lore autists get their fix cause I'm one of them and couldn't care less for ER lore. It's the least interesting, more vanilla worldbuilding in all Soulsdom.

 

[baba is you]

The problem with Lies of P is the fairly rudimentary level design moreso than the combat. Claiming it's a better game than Elden Ring is just 1.) Outing yourself as someone who's not really a fan of exploration in these games, or 2.) Hipsterism - going against the thing that is popular.

In no reality is Lies of P a better game than Elden Ring. Is it still a good game? Yes. Just not anywhere close to how good this game is.

It is true that LoP lacks exploration elements. Elden Ring's play time is over 100 hours, and LoP is about 80 hours, but there are some aspects of combat that are better in LoP.

I've been playing FromSoftware games since King's Field, but Fromsoft's exploration design follows a certain line. But I think LoP crosses a certain line. The level design is intentionally combat-centric rather than rudimentary.

Actually, it's a bit surprising that games these days are so obsessed with combat. If things like combat and exploration are not balanced, they will eventually be quickly forgotten.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Only 16 GB and people are confused

Same people denied leaks saying ER takes only 60 GB

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Not surprising. DS DLCs are relatively small areas that are densely packed with content - something where From shines better than the mid attempt at open world they made with ER.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

The problem with Lies of P is the fairly rudimentary level design

qft

 

[Skinwalker]

Lies of Poo is basically "baby's first Dark Souls", it is vastly inferior even to Lords of the Fallen, let alone real soulsgames. It doesn't even rise to the level of "we have dark souls at home".

It is a inbuilt flaw of the souls formula. In DS1 they made the choice to have few NPCs with sparse dialog and it just stuck as a staple even though it no longer fits the game. The world would really benefit from having more NPCs with some quests and actual dialog. It would certainly be more immersive to find some soldier bemoaning how the scarlet rot drove his compatriots to madness rather than reading about it in the description of some recolored thong piece.

They already implemented this concept in Elden Ring by adding a whole bunch of exposition ghosts, and I don't think it added much of value to the game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't think it added much of value to the game.

Maybe it would have added more if any of the ghosts weren't of drunken alzheimer's patients tripping balls. I can't remember a single thing about any of the ghosts except that I couldn't understand what the fuck they were on about.

Game easily had room for twice as many quest NPCs. IMO they should double down on that aspect of the series, have more quests, make more of them mutually exclusive, and tie more of the rewards and boss fights into them- it would make different people's playthroughs more unique and give a better reason to replay.

 

[Skinwalker]

I don't think it added much of value to the game.

Maybe it would have added more if any of the ghosts weren't of drunken alzheimer's patients tripping balls. I can't remember a single thing about any of the ghosts except that I couldn't understand what the fuck they were on about.

It's the trademark Miyazaki style, which is not too hard to understand if you activate a few braincells, and pay attention. Especially in Elden Ring, when the ghosts are literally always pointed at the thing they are talking about. Like, open your eyes, lol.

Game easily had room for twice as many quest NPCs.

I wouldn't mind it, but a much bigger problem is the opaque quest designs for the NPCs which they already have. They put more effort into making quest triggers comprehensible in this game than any previous one, but there are still quests where you have no way of knowing how to progress unless you randomly run into the next event, or guidescum.

 

[Silva]

And even the chardev and build customization wasn't as bad. In the end the combat was my only real complaint. In hindsight it's a solid 7-8/10, depending on how much the stupid gotcha combat gets on your nerves.

Lies of P has a similar problem to Sekiro. It does not properly make the player aware that some attacks are meant to be dodged and some are meant to be parried.

Yeah kindda. My biggest problem tho is the erratic, "puppety" movement of most mobs, consisting of jerky, robotic swings with barely any windups or tells, making them extremely annoying to read and react to.

You just can't rely on your reactions most of the time, you literally have to memorize entire attack patterns to come up on top, with all the usual delays and fake-outs to boot. I actually liked the rest of the game enough to put up with this, all the way to the final level when I finally got enough. I think I had like 2 hours until the final boss when I uninstalled the game.

I agree it's hard to read enemies' moves in Lies of P, which coupled with the parry window being even smaller than Sekiro, makes for some frustrating encounters.

OTOH it's balance between parry-block-dodge feels real nice. You can confidently adopt whatever style you prefer and it feels (well, so far) more or less balanced. Very different for eg from DS3 or ER where dodging/rolling is king, BB where parry is king, DS1 where shields/poise is king, etc. I can't see a clearly optimal style here, and this feels surprisingly refreshing for a souls game IMO.

 

[Silva]

 

[9ted6]

It is a inbuilt flaw of the souls formula. In DS1 they made the choice to have few NPCs with sparse dialog and it just stuck as a staple even though it no longer fits the game. The world would really benefit from having more NPCs with some quests and actual dialog. It would certainly be more immersive to find some soldier bemoaning how the scarlet rot drove his compatriots to madness rather than reading about it in the description of some recolored thong piece.

They already implemented this concept in Elden Ring by adding a whole bunch of exposition ghosts, and I don't think it added much of value to the game.

That's more because the writing sucks. Elden Ring's world is fundamentally limited, dumb and uninteresting. There's not much you could do to present it any better, because any reveal is going to be more of the same shit lore.

The other Soulsbornes aren't much better. Even DS1 fumbles it here and there but besides Sekiro it somehow manages to present the most coherent world and understandable NPCs of any other From game. At least its NPCs mostly talk like real people and don't puke exposition in incomprehensible pseudo Shakespeare melodrama like ER's. You know why the knight is at Firelink's and why he's depressed. You don't know why there's a turtle with a pope hat talking to you.