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

[Sunri]

Finished the game today, the last sequence of bosses is pretty ridiculous, to be honest. Last boss was very underwhelming.

Right now I rank it as the worst out of From's latest games, unfortunately. Yes, even worse than DS3. Mechanically it's a better game, but it just killed all my goodwill, I don't think I'd ever seen a game do that before. I wanted to finish it but I didn't feel like playing it at all.

Also, I'm the farthest thing removed from a storyfag but usually these games keep me at least somewhat interested in some of the story (Bloodborne had me really hooked) tidbits I glean from items, etc. Elden Ring was dry as shit and I didn't care at all about anything that was going on.

Anyway, if the devs had dialed way back on the repetition and made it about 40 hours shorter, it probably would have ranked among one of the best.

Fav bosses were Melania, Mohg and Astral (only 1 of those isn't recycled). Main story bosses were all weak except maybe for Margit and Godwyn because the first 20 hours of the game were great.

I don't see myself replaying this at all.

Radagon was also great, and his music theme is the best in the game, but I can understand not liking Elden Beast fight is quite tedious

 

[Great Deceiver]

I mean, Radagon's theme is basically the

Spoiler

title theme

but yeah, it's pretty good.

Fighting him wasn't very exciting tbh. Run of the mill air attack, run of the mill grab into 100%, run of the mill everything. At least he didn't spam too much.

 

[Volrath]

They still did bloodborne and Sekiro after DS1, so I'm still hopeful that from time to time they do something original with the formula. We'll see.

But.. those games are shit?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

For me the best Dark Souls is still Soul Reaver.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lmao fuck sake i got ganked by some goofy chicken looking monster in Limgrave and right as i was about to have him i get ganked by goats.

 

[Zizka]

Anyway, if the devs had dialed way back on the repetition and made it about 40 hours shorter, it probably would have ranked among one of the best. I can only imagine what the game would have been like with two or three of the main map areas, tightly focused and with no trivialization of 90% of the content through recycling.

Truer words could not be said. The issue is that they’re being rated 10/10 so will they consider the bloat as a flaw?

 

[Shrimp]

Anyway, if the devs had dialed way back on the repetition and made it about 40 hours shorter, it probably would have ranked among one of the best. I can only imagine what the game would have been like with two or three of the main map areas, tightly focused and with no trivialization of 90% of the content through recycling.

Truer words could not be said. The issue is that they’re being rated 10/10 so will they consider the bloat as a flaw?

A large number of the 10/10 reviews explicitly stated they didn't even have time to finish the game, so the ratings likely only reflect their initial impressions of the game. Unfortunately the damage has already been done the moment the reviews were published.

 

[Curratum]

Anyway, if the devs had dialed way back on the repetition and made it about 40 hours shorter, it probably would have ranked among one of the best. I can only imagine what the game would have been like with two or three of the main map areas, tightly focused and with no trivialization of 90% of the content through recycling.

Truer words could not be said. The issue is that they’re being rated 10/10 so will they consider the bloat as a flaw?

A large number of the 10/10 reviews explicitly stated they didn't even have time to finish the game, so the ratings likely only reflect their initial impressions of the game. Unfortunately the damage has already been done the moment the reviews were published.

The horrible thing is, Miyazaki could have put foot porn and cat pictures in the last 30-40% of the game, and the game would have still been rated a 10/10 and the greatest masterpiece ever made.

I am not sure how reviewers are allowed to get away with this by their publications. And even if you only played to, let's say, the entrance to Leyndell, this is already a lot of dead space, bloat and repetition.

 

[Zizka]

Regardless, good sales and perfect reviews are incentives to pursue the current trend. I don’t see FS scaling down the world in their next entry. In order to make a game of this scale profitable, some areas need to be fleshed by A.I. and character models need to be recycled as unique models+animations+stats would be too expensive if they were to populate each area with something unique. The stats is likely done with an algorithm as well. They probably don’t hand tune each version of the rat in each area by hand. It’s probably all done automatically with zones.

It’s a shame really. Market demands and low-risk start being a priority once a game production costs reach a certain number. Same thing can be said about movies. Kojima’s Death Stranding was a singularity in game design. A very risky (and courageous) endeavour.

Games become slaves to their own budget. Maybe Miyazaki will turn good on his own statement of “aggressively pushing for new ideas” but I doubt it. I think his financial responsibilities as president means he has very little incentive from releasing something different than a Dark Souls 5 with an open world and a new gimmick which might justify a ‘new franchise’.

 

[Zizka]

I am not sure how reviewers are allowed to get away with this by their publications.

I think certain franchises are ‘sacred goats’ in the industry. Certains games are expected to be reviewed favourably. I don’t even think it’s a conscious decision. New indie games are given somewhat impartial treatment, but if there’s a new Zelda coming or anything from FromSoft, there’s definitely some positive discrimination taking place. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad games, they’re just not as good as they’re made out to be.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

So when in the fuck do you start getting cooler weapons and armor? I'm like 30 hours in and I'm still wearing the Godrick shit I got near the beginning of the game. Ridiculous.

 

[Sunri]

So when in the fuck do you start getting cooler weapons and armor? I'm like 30 hours in and I'm still wearing the Godrick shit I got near the beginning of the game. Ridiculous.

You can get cool weapons in the first location if you look around, but it depends on what you think is cool.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

So when in the fuck do you start getting cooler weapons and armor? I'm like 30 hours in and I'm still wearing the Godrick shit I got near the beginning of the game. Ridiculous.

You can get cool weapons in the first location if you look around, but it depends on what you think is cool.

Giant greatswords

 

[Hrymr]

Regardless, good sales and perfect reviews are incentives to pursue the current trend. I don’t see FS scaling down the world in their next entry. In order to make a game of this scale profitable, some areas need to be fleshed by A.I. and character models need to be recycled as unique models+animations+stats would be too expensive if they were to populate each area with something unique. The stats is likely done with an algorithm as well. They probably don’t hand tune each version of the rat in each area by hand. It’s probably all done automatically with zones.

Not sure about the AI (I remember an interview where they have said that some objects, like trees or rocks are placed with the help of procedural generation), but it certainly feels like all the main zones have been created according to the checklist:
- Legacy Dungeon
- Minor Erdtree (with a copypasted boss)
- Walking Mausoleum thing
- small golden tree with a Golden Seed
- church with a Sacred Tear
- mine with upgrade materials (copypasted miners and boss)
- one or two copypasted merchants
- Evergoal (with a copypasted boss, or a new boss that will get copypasted later)
- some copypasted dungeons or catacoombs with some copypasted boss at the end
- copypasted soldiers/knights (but hey they are wearing different colors and using different magic)
- copypasted dragon fight (also different color and different breath element)
- copypasted graveyard
- copypasted caravan with giants pulling the cart
- copypasted night rider boss

Limgrave was a legit 9/10 area, so I kind of understand the journos reviews, because this is probably as much as they have seen, but after that it starts getting a bit repetitive.

 

[Sunri]

So when in the fuck do you start getting cooler weapons and armor? I'm like 30 hours in and I'm still wearing the Godrick shit I got near the beginning of the game. Ridiculous.

You can get cool weapons in the first location if you look around, but it depends on what you think is cool.

Giant greatswords

I think the closet to the starting arena is Zweihander then GREATSWORD

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i went back to the Tree Sentinel with my new toon. This time i'm SL9, so to up the challenge i decided to stagger him repeadely to let him know who is boss. Made a record for you guys to watch:



BTW, yes, i tried a few times to do a no hit run but i failed three times in a row and i got bored lmao. Fuck it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ho fuck sake HD still processing. Shit. You guys can see it, right? First time i uploaded a video on youtube lul.

 

[Curratum]

So i went back to the Tree Sentinel with my new toon. This time i'm SL9, so to up the challenge i decided to stagger him repeadely to let him know who is boss. Made a record for you guys to watch:



BTW, yes, i tried a few times to do a no hit run but i failed three times in a row and i got bored lmao. Fuck it.

Imagine being able to time your rolls in that battle because you have more than 28 fps!

 

[Wunderbar]

why are you subscribed to Pewdiepie

 

[Lyric Suite]

why are you subscribed to Pewdiepie

It was way back when they were going after him and i subscribed out of spite lmao. Then completely forgot.

I usually just subscribe to people to remember they exist and a lot of my subscriptions are from the 2016 meme wars days and they are mostly just people i wanted to check out at one point or another so i subscribed to them to remind myself and eventually i ended up leaving it like this.

I'm very unconcerned about this shit and i'm ultra lazy too.

 

[Sunri]

why are you subscribed to Pewdiepie

that's why

 

[Haplo]

So when in the fuck do you start getting cooler weapons and armor? I'm like 30 hours in and I'm still wearing the Godrick shit I got near the beginning of the game. Ridiculous.

You can get cool weapons in the first location if you look around, but it depends on what you think is cool.

Giant greatswords

I think the closet to the starting arena is Zweihander then GREATSWORD

Yep, Greatsword is at the beginning of Caelid, you can get there on Torrent moving trough roads, without fighting anything (well, picking it up from the wagon is tricky, might need to distract or loose some oversized rabid dogs and birdies).

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

As much as I agree with the criticism towards late game locations, copypasting mobs and their high hp or overall fatigue with the game seemingly never ending I just can't wrap my head around people saying the bosses in the late game are shit. Reusing bosses is an issue obviously but the overall quality of them is easily the strongest point of ER. Looking at the last 5 bosses you have to fight, ER is second only to Sekiro in my opinion.

If i recall correctly my last playthroughs it was more or less something like that(excluding dlc bosses from the last stretch in the game):

Sekiro:
ape - true monk - divine dragon - father owl - ishin

ER:
Astel - Malenia - Malekith - Godfrey - Radagon

DS3
Oceiros - Gundyr - Nameless King - Twins - Soul of Cinder

BB
Ebrietas - Micolash - Nurse - Gehrman - Moon presence

DS2
Vendrick - Darklurker - Giants King - Throne Duo - Nashandra

DS1
Bed of Chaos - 4Kings-Seath-Nito-Gwynn

DeS
Dragon God - Storm King - Astrea - Penetrator - Alant

DS3 had a pretty good final and I think Gehrman was easily the best fight in the base game in BB but all of the games gained a lot thanks to the great boss fights in DLCs.

Also Rykkard > Storm King/ Yorg. Easily best implementation of the gimmick weapon. I liked how the main theme of the game was used in the final battle only slightly retouched. Radagon fight slaps Gwyn back to the age of dark.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

I find it fascinating that Ranni has become beloved while it seems like Melina, the poster girl, is rather unpopular. I wonder if Fromsoftware intended for that, or if there was some sort change of plans during development.

I think it's because Ranni has a better and more interesting backstory, and gives you a much better ending alternative than the super lame "standard" ending.

Thank you anons! You are both good anons! I do love cute based moonpilled Ranni wife anons! I do! I do want cute Melina wife anons but she does not existence anons in game anons! Does not! She is more cut content anons than American foreskin anons! It is true anons! It is! You are both good anons!

Meanwhile Melina is just... there?

No!

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Margit is a cheap piece of shit. Fuck From Software. I just summoned somebody to kill him. I don't give a fuck anymore. There's nothing rewarding anymore about wasting countless hours on From's bullshit bosses. It's nothing but a giant waste of time.

Do not worry anon it is okay anon because summon is cute based moonpilled friendship battle kino anon! It is true anon! It is!