Lyrics having an autistic melt down today and still never responds to actual criticism and debates it. Just tries to character assassinate and shout "yea but what about X game!" as if he has any fucking clue about this genre when he admits he doesn't play games outside of From ones.
No, i'm not buying that argument. It's noticable only because you are comparing it to a game that exclipses Bethesda's slop to such a degree they don't even belong to same reality, namely, Dark Souls.
But in itself the dungeons in ER are infinitely more interesting than anything that as ever been in a Bethesda game since Shiblivion. Show me anything in Skyrim that was even remotely as clever as the Sainted Hero's Grave.
I don't like Bethesda games but I understand their side content can be NPC quest lines, loot, a puzzle dungeon, a combat dungeon, a single boss to fight or it could be an interesting underground town or whatever. I cannot think of a single Elden ring anything that isn't 'whack the enemy until it dies'. There's no puzzles beyond using gestures in the right place or a spell to reveal some lore. The catacombs you defend so religiously aren't puzzles, they're combat you have to run away from. Resident evil did puzzles better 20 years ago.
None of that would matter to someone like Hell Swarm. He would argue that it's "lazy" that the game has so few enemies (some of which, from what i understand, were even brought back from the orignal game). But he doesn't, because his shtick is to shit on FromSoft because he thinks he is being counterculture.
More character assassination I see. Really upset I'm willing to shit on a game series I love as it goes into deep decline and you can't handle it lol. Less enemies isn't a problem if you use those enemies in interesting ways. Elden ring goes "put 30 stone miners in a room, that'll get 'em!" or "Here's a soldier and a dog, they will never see that coming!" The combat system sucks for multiple enemies unless you have a big AOE to burst everything does, which are super common in ER. From design sucks for making multiple opponent fights and Elden ring never puts interesting enemies together because the system can't handle it and the player base will whine about Dark souls 2 again.
Elden ring DLC's most innovative and difficult trap is putting a dog behind a wall just enough you can't lock onto it until it jumps out of the boxes. There's no way to see the dog or lock onto the dog before it pounces you. Is this the same brilliance as Demon's souls and Dark souls? No, it is not. It's a badly designed and out of date lock on system being abused for a cheap ambush the player cannot reasonably prepare for or see coming. Frankly it's insulting to compare Nu From to Old From.
I would also point out that while it's true that in ER all your interaction with the enemies revolves around combat (nature of the game), the design of the enemies themselves aren't exactly easy. The way enemies fight and move in a FromSoft game is considerably more elaborated than in a lot of other games.
This is absolutely and undeniably false. Devil May cry 3 eclipses Elden ring in terms of enemy movement and options, if we get deeper into games like Bayonetta we're not on the same planet any more. Even Nier Automata which is an open world game with very few enemies (and a game I really enjoyed) finds ways to make those enemies do unique things or spam so many ranged attacks you're forced to play bullet hell for a few seconds. You don't even need complex enemies to make good and enjoyable combat. But From have the unique problem where their combat design was designed for roughly flat areas and 1 v 1ing mobs. And the biggest threat in Elden ring is rolling into a bumpy bit of terrain and getting smashed by a copy and pasted boss you already know how to beat. I played a few hours coop last night and the only deaths experienced were rolling into terrain and getting hit. You could say player error but the issue is how there is so little depth to the games.
When the video guy says Bosses don't explain things he's correct.
They don't have to, because the idea is that you have to figure out that shit on your own. Normies just want their dumbed down slop be honest.
From have never expected you to figure shit out on your own. If you went back and played Dark souls 1 you would notice many of the early mobs set you up for game mechanics early on. The game starts with a tutorial on plunging attacking Asylum demon and then the next obvious boss to run into has the exact same mechanic for it and it's barely used again in the game. There's so many tutorials in From games no different to Nintendo games. The difference is Nintendo don't copy and paste Sekiro content into boodborn... eh Dark so.. eh Elden ring and then expect the player to engage with it in a meaningful way and balance parts of the game around it. It is simply bad game design and you will never accept it because Souls games are an autistic obsession for you and you hate the genre except for these games because they're better made and less abusable.
Nioh is very different. You choose a weapon and abilities you'd like to focus on and have that weapon from the start and generally stick with it (although you can switch, if you want to), improving your mastery in it, learning its new abilities troughout the game.
And you find better versions of that weapon type troughout the game. Plus you get to choose from a plethora of pet spirits, which will enchance your combat abilities and offer extra powers (which are also tailored to specific playstyles and even weapons). Plus you gather equipment "sets", which bestow various powerful bonuses, some of which fit your playstyle well.
This is traditional loot systems in action RPGs. It's pretty standard for games to have loot systems where you find the same weapon but better. And Elden ring has the exact same thing where you can find many weapons which just upgrade from the previous one. A simple example of scaling on catalysts/talsimans/pyro gloves. And a lot of them are random enemy drops as well. 2% enemy drop rates sure as better than From do it right guys? Elden Ring uses a Diablo like loot system for the majority of it's gameplay.
For the record, this is not about ER versus DD2, Nioh or even Skyrim. I'm just pointing out there are things people hang on obstinately about ER that are given a pass in many other games without the slightest throught.
No, we're not giving those games a pass actually. I went to the DD thread and tried to get into it but I couldn't enjoy the combat or exploration. I shit on it worse than Elden ring. Right now I'm trying to get into Lords of the Fallen and I think it dumps way too many game mechanics on you with poor explanations. I also don't like when it takes from From and uses stuff worse. Vanguard was a cool way to end a tutorial. Being expected to die at the end of the tutorial is not cool or interesting when so many games have repeated it. In a genre about exploration and tough but fair challenges almost every single game in the last 5 years has forgotten major elements of what made the first 2 souls games work and replaced them with making the game faster or other genres mechanics that water the experience down (ER).
Now lyric has his post to ignore, I'll say I've been enjoying coop Elden ring but even in seemless coop the open world drags the game hard. In 4 hours of gameplay we went from the Academy to Atlus and then quit. The majority of that was running around to pick up loot for builds or having to go into identical mines to farm upgrade material. Having to ride 5 minutes to a mine, do a 5 minute dungeon to fight a crystaline and then do the same thing again shortly after but it was 2 of them was not quality game experience. It says a lot about these games where adding an extra player doesn't make the game more fun where it wouldn't be in other games. A dull game can be made more interesting with another player but there's nothing to enhance when you're both on Torrent running past 99% of the enemies in the game to do the same tunnel dungeon. It's just kind of sad and pathetic.
I do like throwing black flame pyromancies around though. It would have been nice to see them be something more unique though. It's such a big deal in the lore and yet it's fireball with a different shader or it's combustion with a different shader. If From want to do unique elemental types with the same style that's great but they should feel unique. Black flame could have used the spiral stuff or been like the homing fireballs in the DLC. Something that makes it unique except it applies a small poison effect after it hits.
