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

[Hell Swarm]

The fact remains, and this IS indeed a fact, that even with the dubious design decisions introduced by this open world experiment, Elden Ring still remains infinitely more mechanically complex and difficult than almost anything out there, certainly more so than anything that one would consider "mainstream".

A single weapon in Devil may cry is infinitely more mechanically complex than elden ring is. Once you add in Dante's styles, his devil trigger and multiple weapons it's a joke. If Elden ring complexity was a glass of water than DMC5's complexity would be the Atlantic ocean.

You're so desperate to find some reddit term you think can save you from how wrong you are but you can't. Claiming it's all dishonest or strawman or technically right but not really is just a confession you don't have an argument. You don't play action games, you don't play open world games that inspired Elden ring. You have no experience, no knowledge and yet you demand people take your opinion seriously. Well no sir, I do not take your opinion seriously. You're a joke. You can't even argue in 'good faith' because you haven't played the biggest influence on From in making Eldrn ring. BOTW blew Japanese game dev's minds. Completely floored them despite it being quite awful in many ways. And when you look at Elden ring's open world you see BOTW written on every goddamn pixel.. And then you realize it has none of the depth, none of the polish. Frankly it has none of the soul BOTW has. Because despite BOTW being a nintoddler game on the Wiiu, it was actually engaging because the devs had a vision and a purpose in everyone of it's mechanics. It took the spirit of Dark souls self expression and it applied it to an open world sandbox.. And what did From take from that? Here's a jumping point and some grave stones to climb down. No soul, no personality, utter goyslop fusing together a worn out genre that's come to the end of it's life with the most popular fad in gaming and Japan being late to the party.

Elden ring is peak goyslop. It's taking 2 popular games, shoving them in a blender and having none of the personality, love or quality of either of them. BOTW mogs Elden ring using less of literally everything to make something excellent. BOTW is Demon's souls. Elden Ring is IGN's game of the year with bandai namco winning goyslop publisher yet again.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The question is whether one can tolerate the inevitable padding that is inherent in open world design to get to the "good parts".

I keep asking this myself every time I try to resume my playthrough, and I think I may be done for real this time, one day is all it took for boredom to settle in again. The butter is spread way too thin. Level and encounter design definitely got dumbed down to sleep inducing sameness.

If we are talking about the open world, i think that is likely intentional on some level.

One of the reasons the game feels so exhaustingly long, aside for being in fact very long, is that it's also quite hard as well. This likely induces a level of stress which compounds itself until people feel too burn out to continue. If you had to fight every inch of the game in the open world areas as you would in a traditional Dark Souls level, nobody would ever be able to finish this thing. Open world areas were likely intended to be relatively stress free to go through besides a few key points precisely so that people could "relax" in them (spirit ashes were likely introduced originally to make the open areas even more stress free. It's the only place where i ever used them myself). You are there mostly for the ambiance and the feel you are traversing a "real" world and all that inane LARPing shit normies absolutely seem to love for some reason (it seems they want games to be a surrogate life of sort, which also involves a desire for the game "never to end", which explains why open world games also have to be so massive).

All of this could have been avoided by just not making an open world game, but that's a moot point the game is what it is. Notice however that when people critisize the open world areas, accuse them on being "empty" etc, what they are then asking for is not a more traditional Souls design, with more clever enemy placement and greater challenge. They are asking for more "activities" and things to "explore" etc, I.E., more LARPing stuff that is more commonly found in other open world games. Frankly, this is a pandora box FromSoft should have never opened but it's too late now i guess. Will be interesting how they are going to fix this problem in Elden Ring 2. So far the DLC feels like it gave up on the open world aspect (the open areas are even less dangerous than they were in the base game) but that could just be a result of having to thin out resources even more since this is an expansion. The prerogative of the DLC was to be "very large" because open world games have to be large, so once again they were forced to prioritize and compromise.

 

[Lyric Suite]

map markers manifesting in-world as beams of light

Lmao, i was actually about to make a sarcastic joke about you retards making a comparison between the beams of grace and the quest markers found in modern slop (they are not even remotely the same thing), and you guys literally did the meme. Fucking hell.

 

[Max Damage]

Difficulty is subjective matter, but personally the game feels piss easy outside of boss fights. I think Souls games did well with breather levels, which doesn't really work here when dungeons are often even easier than scattered war camps and chest caravans. They should've put more complex closed/semi-open areas on the map, most of it is empty fields/forests/swamps.

 

[Silverfish]

They are asking for more "activities" and things to "explore" etc, I.E., more LARPing stuff that is more commonly found in other open world games.

If you're gonna do it, do it right.

Lmao, i was actually about to make a sarcastic joke about you retards making a comparison between the beams of grace and the quest markers found in modern slop (they are not even remotely the same thing), and you guys literally did the meme. Fucking hell.

Since I'm a retard, explain the functional difference to me. If I place a map marker in Fallout 4, a hovering arrow appears over the corresponding point in the game world. In Elden Ring, if I place a map marker, a blue beam of light appears in the corresponding point in the game world. Apparently, these are different somehow.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Lmao, i was actually about to make a sarcastic joke about you retards making a comparison between the beams of grace and the quest markers found in modern slop (they are not even remotely the same thing), and you guys literally did the meme. Fucking hell.

Since I'm a retard, explain the functional difference to me. If I place a map marker in Fallout 4, a hovering arrow appears over the corresponding point in the game world. In Elden Ring, if I place a map marker, a blue beam of light appears in the corresponding point in the game world. Apparently, these are different somehow.

We could explain, but you wouldn't be able to comprehend the answer, so why bother?

Anyway, has From said anything about any future projects at this point? Just curious.

 

[abija]

A single weapon in Devil may cry is infinitely more mechanically complex than elden ring is. Once you add in Dante's styles, his devil trigger and multiple weapons it's a joke. If Elden ring complexity was a glass of water than DMC5's complexity would be the Atlantic ocean.

You're so desperate to find some reddit term you think can save you from how wrong you are but you can't. Claiming it's all dishonest or strawman or technically right but not really is just a confession you don't have an argument.

But it's exactly what it is and you even start with an example. You keep comparing singular aspects of various games vs Elden Ring (in this case mechanical complexity of DMC). Game A that focuses on combat does combat better, game B that focuses on open world does ow better, game C that focuses on story does story better and so on. Everything blended with a strong dose of shitlib consoletard taste and "logic" and sprinkled with the most absurd gaslighting this forum has ever seen.

Here's another example. Silverfish says map and compass are dumbing down.
1. It's wrong because those are needed to show points of interest since you can't just have everything in the player route now.
2. The way the argument is presented is peak shitlib. Suddenly we jump back from comparing ER vs some open world game and we're back to comparing to previous instalments.

And even more, comparing punctual aspects of old installments because he knows well he doesn't have any ground to stand on otherwise. Every change cannot have any other reason than dumbing down. It would be really wild if devs took into consideration the length of the game and amount of runs people will do when balancing systems like weapon upgrade materials, respec tokens or ease of swaping weapon arts. Neah that can't be it, they surely just gathered one day and brainstormed what can be dumbed down.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Difficulty is subjective matter, but personally the game feels piss easy outside of boss fights. I think Souls games did well with breather levels, which doesn't really work here when dungeons are often even easier than scattered war camps and chest caravans. They should've put more complex closed/semi-open areas on the map, most of it is empty fields/forests/swamps.

Difficulty is indeed relative but even as a Souls veteran i found you need to pay attention to what you are doing at all times. Dark Souls 1 too has sections that are piss easy but where you can still die if you grow careless. This aspect of Souls, that you NEED to keep focus even when facing simple or easy enemies is still true in Elden Ring. In either case, the open world structure is meant to be rather lose, with only a few "dangerous" enemies sprinkled here and there, as well as some field bosses. And i think that was by design, because this is how open world usually operates. Only MMOs tend to fill up every square inch of terrain with tough encounters, but doing that with Souls combat, in areas that are this large and this numerous. I don't think anybody would have been able to finish the game with that level of grind. The fact the open areas have a lot of "dead" moments allows you to speed up your traversal of them which is for the best IMHO.

BTW, i think it's fair to say the best open world experience in this game is Limgrave? I mean it's not just because it's the first you find, so everything is new, but it seems to be the area that is more packed with activities. More secrets, more NPC encounters and so forth. I wonder if that is how they planned the whole game to be like and they just ran out of resourced to do it all the way through. The DLC doesn't quite get there either. I can only assume they planned a certain "goal" for how large they wanted the game to be and then tried their best to meet that target, cutting corners here and there once they realized they basically bit more than they could chew. Personally, i would have downsized the scope of the project once it became obvious what kind of herculean effort making this game was going to be, but i sense a bit of self-indulengence on the part of Miyazaki. I get the feeling this was supposed to be his "magnus opus" so he just didn't want to compromise on his "vision", even after it became clear he didn't have the resources to pull it off completely.

This is why i don't buy this notion they grew "lazy" with this game. I think they tried their hardest it just couldn't be done. They tried to do too much with too high a standard to maintain.

 

[Silverfish]

1. It's wrong because those are needed to show points of interest since you can't just have everything in the player route now.

Why not? From trusted us to navigate their games before.

2. The way the argument is presented is peak shitlib. Suddenly we jump back from comparing ER vs some open world game and we're back to comparing to previous instalments.

Is being able to make more than one comparison exclusive to shitlibs? Furthermore, why would you frame your point in a way that makes libs, who I assume you dislike based on context, sound way more intelligent than you?

Anyway, to help clarify, I'll break the comparisons down into three categories for easier consumption.

1. Compared to other open-world games, ER struggles because it lacks the interactivity and variety of Bethesda games or Breath of the Wild-style Zelda. Nor does it leverage its world for some kind of survival-based challenge like Outward. And being so combat-centric, it's also not much of a "dick around and do what you like" sandbox like Minecraft.

2. Compared to previous Souls games, ER is simplified and more casual. I already mentioned a few things,

Just off the top of my head: map, compass, map markers manifesting in-world as beams of light, removal of item durability, stamina no longer drains outside of combat, stamina and carry weight are once again merged into one stat after being separated in DS2 and 3, power stance no longer requires stats being 50% above the weapon's minimum requirements, summoning bell, summons that expend health instead of focus so that non-mages can still gain an advantage without being punished for their builds & ashes of war can be swapped at sites of grace so you don't have to think too hard or be stuck with a bad weapon art.

One more that just occurred to me is how ashes of war being swappable also renders weapon choice largely irrelevant. In previous games, you could get stuck with a weapon you didn't really like if you'd already sunk a certain amount of upgrade materials into it. In ER, just swap the ash of war and essentially use the weapon as a casting tool, other strengths or weaknesses be damned.

3. Compared to straight-up action games, ER is lacking to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I don't go into Souls games expecting the next Ninja Gaiden or anything, but since the series has leaned increasingly heavily on its combat as time has gone on, I'd like to have more staples of the action genre present. Give me some launchers (Yes, I know about the weapon art some greatswords have. No, it doesn't count because there's no follow through), gap closers, ukemi, aerial combos, anything other than Demon's Souls combat mechanics regurgitated one more time.

It would be really wild if devs took into consideration the length of the game and amount of runs people will do when balancing systems like weapon upgrade materials, respec tokens or ease of swaping weapon arts.

More likely they took into consideration the substantial returns on games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and Minecraft.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lmao, i was actually about to make a sarcastic joke about you retards making a comparison between the beams of grace and the quest markers found in modern slop (they are not even remotely the same thing), and you guys literally did the meme. Fucking hell.

Since I'm a retard, explain the functional difference to me. If I place a map marker in Fallout 4, a hovering arrow appears over the corresponding point in the game world. In Elden Ring, if I place a map marker, a blue beam of light appears in the corresponding point in the game world. Apparently, these are different somehow.

We could explain, but you wouldn't be able to comprehend the answer, so why bother?

Anyway, has From said anything about any future projects at this point? Just curious.

There was a rumor that they were hiring people for more Armored Core, likely some DLC as that's an Armored Core tradition and the game could actually use some. This is good because Armored Core presents a good diversion from more Souls (which is definitely needed). It's bad because the Sekiro guy was in charge of Armored Core 6 and as long as he is doing this he isn't doing Sekiro 2.

 

[abija]

Why not? From trusted us to navigate their games before.

Their games were big blocks with few exits chained together and everything was put along the path (except secrets ofc). There wasn't open space between those blocks.

Is being able to make more than one comparison exclusive to shitlibs? Furthermore, why would you frame your point in a way that makes libs, who I assume you dislike based on context, sound way more intelligent than you?

Anyway, to help clarify, I'll break the comparisons down into three categories for easier consumption.

There's nothing to clarify, you're doing the exact same thing you were accused of. You are comparing selective features from games that barely do anything else worthwile with their implementation in ER.

Using selective comparisons to get your point around arguments is not about ability but about being scum enough to do it. Just because Path of Exile destroys in build diversity any game doesn't mean that all the other games that include builds are shit. Unless you are arguing as a shitlib which is exactly what you do in this case.

 

[Silverfish]

Their games were big blocks with few exits chained together and everything was put along the path (except secrets ofc). There wasn't open space between those blocks.

So is that From can't design an open world that can be navigated organically, or that the players are too stupid to figure things out?

You are comparing selective features from games that barely do anything else worthwile with their implementation in ER.

Note that Elden Ring was released after these games. Seems reasonable that the devs might take a few notes.

Unless you are arguing as a shitlib which is exactly what you do in this case.

I have to ask, since Lyric brought this up once and you have twice, what's the correlation between being underwhelmed by a video game & stating why and left wing politics?

 

[abija]

So is that From can't design an open world that can be navigated organically, or that the players are too stupid to figure things out?

You are projecting some defficiency on the game again just because their previous game didn't need a map. Even the games you compared the open world to have maps.

Note that Elden Ring was released after these games. Seems reasonable that the devs might take a few notes.

And PoE was released before many games including builds, you keep forcing the same retarded argument.

Taking notes doesn't make a game. You don't just take notes, clap and are matching those games. Time and manpower are needed and different directors focus on different things. Overall ER does plenty of things at least well, while being a behemoth of a game. You are trying very hard to not see the forest from the trees and my guess is you are doing it deliberately.

I have to ask, since Lyric brought this up once and you have twice, what's the correlation between being underwhelmed by a video game & stating why and left wing politics?

I brought it up more than that and it's not about politics but about the style of arguing that is very specific. Pilling tons of bad faith arguments on top of few real ones trying to use volume as a weapon. Whenever something is pointed out as wrong, you derail and project shit on others or start flip flopping between arguments. Hypocrisy and gaslighting taken to the extremes.

Like your desperate grasping at straws about ER being dumbed down. You added map and compass (and ooc stamina and number of attributes and spirit ashes and mimic using health) there just to pad the list then doubled down and went to gaslight mode when being called on it. All while starting the argument 100% in bad faith since the games you compare with are overall considerably less complex.

 

[Hell Swarm]

But it's exactly what it is and you even start with an example. You keep comparing singular aspects of various games vs Elden Ring (in this case mechanical complexity of DMC). Game A that focuses on combat does combat better, game B that focuses on open world does ow better, game C that focuses on story does story better and so on. Everything blended with a strong dose of shitlib consoletard taste and "logic" and sprinkled with the most absurd gaslighting this forum has ever seen.

No one is asking for ultra combos in dark souls games. They're asking that the games stop presenting challenges the player isn't equipped to fight with the moveset given. I don't expect Elden ring to let me juggle hollows, go into devil trigger and burst a boss down using gravity vortexs. I do expect them to look at their past flaws and find ways to improve on them and to make the player and enemy's function like they're in the same game. Adding a jump button and guard counter is not enough to balance out even the earliest of bosses you encounter.

Is being able to make more than one comparison exclusive to shitlibs? Furthermore, why would you frame your point in a way that makes libs, who I assume you dislike based on context, sound way more intelligent than you?

I'm convinced they're messaging each other trying to find ways to character assassinate. "From wanted you to be bored playing their games, it's intentionally empty" isn't a very good argument to some poor lad who's only just started playing the game and is so bored he wishes he hadn't.

3. Compared to straight-up action games, ER is lacking to say the least. Don't get me wrong, I don't go into Souls games expecting the next Ninja Gaiden or anything, but since the series has leaned increasingly heavily on its combat as time has gone on, I'd like to have more staples of the action genre present. Give me some launchers (Yes, I know about the weapon art some greatswords have. No, it doesn't count because there's no follow through), gap closers, ukemi, aerial combos, anything other than Demon's Souls combat mechanics regurgitated one more time.

Could you not use nigger fisting community terms please? Even making it so pressing R2 at a different point in each R1 combo changing the moveset or vice verse would work. And then make enemies where your combos matter.

Hell at this point i would settle for enemies that don't turn invincible after you knock them over. In my Soldier of Godrick video I posted you can see I repeatedly whiff attacks that clearly connect because I attacked before the god mode ran out. Why does an enemy need god mode once I've back stabbed them? Fucked if I know but there you go. Quality game where your attacks turn on/off randomly depending on the animations being played. This has been a problem since Poise and hyper armour broke the game for players and the earliest of enemies but the game never evolves so take a 3 second break for a stand up animation before you can hit enemies again.

Their games were big blocks with few exits chained together and everything was put along the path (except secrets ofc). There wasn't open space between those blocks.

In a serious famous for having too many swamps there wasn't open space between blocks.. Okay. Defintely no open areas in Demon's souls. Blight town doesn't exist.. Swamps in Dark souls 3? Never heard of it.

I have to ask, since Lyric brought this up once and you have twice, what's the correlation between being underwhelmed by a video game & stating why and left wing politics?

It's a bad faith argument, which is ironic considering how they talk.

I brought it up more than that and it's not about politics but about the style of arguing that is very specific. Pilling tons of bad faith arguments on top of few real ones trying to use volume as a weapon. Whenever something is pointed out as wrong, you derail and project shit on others or start flip flopping between arguments. Hypocrisy and gaslighting taken to the extremes.

I'm not going to engage you in political slap fighting but almost every post you and lyric make claiming this is extremely liberal in nature. Claiming bad faith is how the left always try to shut down conversations they don't want. They claim you don't believe what you believe so it's bad faith. They try to label your arguments technically true but lacking real meat (lyrics favourite) and then they claim you're gas lighting people and start throwing -isms at you. If you change the isms to the other shit you guys list it is beat for beat left wing discussion because it's all an attempt to character assassinate and shut down conversations you don't want to have.

The attempt to pull this into politics is also a good example of a midwit. There's much better places to discuss politics and much better things in politics to discuss. If you're unable to discuss Elden rings content and create a solid foundation for your arguments maybe you should stop arguing Russia is actually funding me and Silver to shit on Elden ring to destabilize codex.

 

[abija]

Nobody brought politics into anything, you are doing it now. When I call you a consoletard that argues like a shitlib I do not imply you own a console or are a liberal. You just manifest the disgusting taste and behavior of those 2 categories.

You construct absurd arguments starting from false claims and blame people for not debating them instead of pointing the absurdity. I called bad faith because it's a lesser asumption than you being a literal retard. Like here (among many other examples where you double down and gaslight):

In a serious famous for having too many swamps there wasn't open space between blocks.. Okay. Defintely no open areas in Demon's souls. Blight town doesn't exist.. Swamps in Dark souls 3? Never heard of it.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Nobody brought politics into anything, you are doing it now. When I call you a consoletard that argues like a shitlib I do not imply you own a console or are a liberal. You just manifest the disgusting taste and behavior of those 2 categories.

You construct absurd arguments starting from false claims and blame people for not debating them instead of pointing the absurdity. I called bad faith because it's a lesser asumption than you being a literal retard. Like here (among many other examples where you double down and gaslight):

In a serious famous for having too many swamps there wasn't open space between blocks.. Okay. Defintely no open areas in Demon's souls. Blight town doesn't exist.. Swamps in Dark souls 3? Never heard of it.

I would just like the point out the person calling you a shitlib and arguing like a liberal DID NOT bring politics into this. He absolutely DID NOT imply anything political about the way people post and if you think he did.. Well you're just gaslighting him and doubling down on having more knowledge about a game than him.

 

[abija]

See, when you deliberately replace "arguing like a shitlib" with "shitlib and arguing like a liberal", you are doing exactly what I am accusing you of.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I like when people put try jumping messages near a cliff.

 

[Dark Souls II]

Playing Dark Souls 2 at the moment. The world design is... certainly something. For me, Elden Ring area design and coherency is superior to some of the things FromSoft achieved with peak DS2.

Like it or not, Dark Souls II is the pinnacle of game environment design. Drangleic is a shattered world, it's supposed to feel surreal and defy the laws of logic. You're supposed to feel like in a dream. It's not some servicable George R.R. Martin goyslop, it's a true work of art.

Vid related, here's a clip of Naotoshi Zin brainstorming some of the levels in Dark Souls II:

Spoiler

 

[Stoned Ape]

Playing Dark Souls 2 at the moment. The world design is... certainly something. For me, Elden Ring area design and coherency is superior to some of the things FromSoft achieved with peak DS2.

Spoiler

Like it or not, Dark Souls II is the pinnacle of game environment design. Drangleic is a shattered world, it's supposed to feel surreal and defy the laws of logic. You're supposed to feel like in a dream. It's not some servicable George R.R. Martin goyslop, it's a true work of art.

Vid related, here's a clip of Naotoshi Zin brainstorming some of the levels in Dark Souls II:

Spoiler

I cannot argue with your flawless analysis, that video does wonders to prove your argument!

 

[Max Damage]

This is why i don't buy this notion they grew "lazy" with this game.

The parts that can be compared 1:1, like actual levels and encounters, definitely got half-assed and dull to play through as result. Open world part is also one of the laziest both visually and in gameplay, and even declines as you move from Limgrave to something like Caelid, which is just vast field of fuck all between a couple points of interest. Magnus opum, this isn't.

 

[Hell Swarm]

This is why i don't buy this notion they grew "lazy" with this game.

The parts that can be compared 1:1, like actual levels and encounters, definitely got half-assed and dull to play through as result. Open world part is also one of the laziest both visually and in gameplay, and even declines as you move from Limgrave to something like Caelid, which is just vast field of fuck all between a couple points of interest. Magnus opum, this isn't.

I would highly recommend you don't try to engage with Lyric on this. He will unironically reply with "Of course Caelid is boring and empty, it's supposed to be a rotted area. It was designed to be a vast field of fuck all and I like it that way!" His ideal game is a spreadsheet with a pretty screensaver and he doesn't like action games. So when action gamers complain it's boring he tries to argue From designed it to be boring and that's what makes it so good.

 

[Silverfish]

You are projecting some defficiency on the game again just because their previous game didn't need a map. Even the games you compared the open world to have maps.

Yes, but those other games aren't sequels to Demon's Souls.

Taking notes doesn't make a game.

Unless the game you're taking notes from is Skyrim.

Like your desperate grasping at straws about ER being dumbed down. You added map and compass (and ooc stamina and number of attributes and spirit ashes and mimic using health) there just to pad the list then doubled down and went to gaslight mode when being called on it. All while starting the argument 100% in bad faith since the games you compare with are overall considerably less complex.

"Grasping at straws, pad the list, gaslight mode, bad faith." Bro, I would really appreciate it if you just said "I like the game. Fuck you, you stupid motherfucker." rather than use a bunch of accusatory buzzwords you heard in a Sargon or Destiny debate video that don't even refute my points anyway.

I'm convinced they're messaging each other trying to find ways to character assassinate.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that isn't the case. If this is the result of a coordinated effort, Good Lord.

Could you not use nigger fisting community terms please?

Hey, that's not fair. The FGC also has like three Chinese guys and one Italian.

When I call you a consoletard that argues like a shitlib I do not imply you own a console or are a liberal.

"You argue in bad faith. Incidentally, I don't mean the things I say."

 

[Ghost Goat]

I just finished a "No Summons"-lite run of the base game and the DLC. I say "lite" because I made a couple exceptions for the DLC.

Welp. I'm going to jump on the side of those here who are calling bullshit on the DLC. I guess it's *possible" to commit to a build and make it work for the duration of the Land of Shadow, but hell if I could manage it.

I ran STR/FAI with a Banished Knight Greatsword/Blasphemous Blade until I gave up and went 100% Unga Bunga with the Giant Smasher. More on that later.

Impressions: the amount of roll catching is really too much. Some of the hit-boxes are complete bullshit (Radahn). The number of 20 hit combos some of these guys use ensures I'll never visit the Land of Shadow again. Also, I probably just suck.

Anyway, here's my after-game breakdown:

Dancing Lion --- hard, but once you get his moves down he's manageable. Good boss.
Knight in Gaol --- stun-locked with Giant Hunt. This worked for almost all of the bosses using the NPC model, and Death Knights.
Magic Demi-Human Guy --- went in there buffed up to all hell and burned him down with Taker's Flame. He got me a couple times, tho.
Golden Hippopotamus --- okay. these guys are manageable with decent positioning and some range. I spammed Taker's Flame and dodged. The big one got me a couple times.
Rellanna --- hard. but like Dancing Lion she's manageable once you learn her moves.

Furnace Golems suck and are un-fun. I killed the first one for the shield tear and ignored the rest.

Ghost-flame Dragons. I actually enjoyed fighting these. The dragons overall were fine. I never beat Bayle.

Metyr --- never beat her.
Midra --- OMG. This is where I started to be tempted to summon the Mimic Tear. I had to watch a couple YouTubes to figure him out. He went down without assistance but it was close.
Putrescent --- I had to get a great shield out for him. That's another thing: I'm sure I suck but there are quite a few nearly unavoidable attacks this time around that I simply had to figure out how to tank.
Messmer --- Fuck this guy. He flies across the arena as soon as you walk through the fog gate and has 3/4 different ways to be a wanna-be Malenia. Phase 2 is even worse with the camera flying all over the place.

This is where I gave up. I upgraded the Giant Smasher, respeced to full STR, summoned the Mimic and went to town on this nerd. You know what's better than 2 stun-locking, poise breaking, giant hammer wielding cavemen? Two of them.

I didn't summon for Gaius or that Giant Sunflower. I think I only ever summoned Mimic again at the final boss. But, I don't regret it, not for one damn second.

I put Prayerful Strike on the Hammer and tried to trade with him. Nope. Well, Mimic somehow could. I know it's cheesy as hell but I giggled like the Lord of Frenzy Flame himself while watching Mimic solo him across the arena with the HP regenerating Ash on his hammer. I really wanted this to be a fair fight but I lost my patience with From's bullshit during this fight. I noticed all the same problems everyone else has described: screen garbage all over the place, input reading, enlarged hit-boxes, FPS drops from Miquella's holy attack, etc. etc. So, I figured out how to survive his first couple 20 hit combos, ran the fuck away and summoned Mimic armed with the powered up HP regeneration hammer. I still had to dodge him if Mimic lost aggro, but Mimic miraculously survived all of his bullshit better than I ever could. It took a couple tries, but this got me through.

So, I persevered until the end with it, and I enjoyed the feeling of *almost* winning without summoning, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it overall. The silver lining here is that I went back to the base game and curb stomped Maliketh, Godfrey and Radagon/Elden Beast easily. So, not a total loss.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Furnace Golems suck and are un-fun. I killed the first one for the shield tear and ignored the rest.

You should kill the one in Unte at least (you get a Power Within cracked tear it's kinda worth it). In fact, you can kill them all really quickly if you just use Pest Threads on their legs at point blank range. They get staggered super fast that way.

Meanwhile, the ones with armored legs can be killed very fast as well. Just bait their arm swipes and dunk pots into their head. Don't even need Furnace Hefty Pots the other ones work too.