Now that I've played Sekiro for some time, I can see why people have been saying that Malenia looks like a boss fight lifted straight from Sekiro. She has those varied sword combos that would feel right at home there, the gamut of perilous attacks with a sweep attack, a lunge lifted from phase 3 Genichiro, a grab and of course her Waterfowl dance is straight up Spiral Cloud Passage if the little drawings on the skill are anything to go by. It's only the second phase that feels a lot more Souls-like to me. I could really see her being a fun Sekiro boss where all those combos require different responses and give offensive opportunitues to punish her, but further reinforces my feeling that she just feels out of place and unfun in Elden Ring with its Souls-like combat mechanics.
Which brings me to my next point: I really wish From would use Sekiro's combat as the basis for their next games and I am retroactively very disapointed that they didn't do so for Elden Ring. Imagine that combat but with stronger RPG options, shields giving more generous but less effective deflection windows, heavy armour bouncing ligher hits but preventing good side-step/dodging, equip loads determining what combat arts are available to you, spells still here... This, frankly, would be my dream game, ever more so if From would put it in their trademark fevered dream version of some unusual setting like bronze age Mesopotamia. I get that not everyone liked Sekiro's combat, but Elden Ring's has not exactly been unanimous here either.
The typical Souls-like combat feels more and more inadequate the more they push its speed I find. It's still fun overall, but it felt so much more appropiate with the slower speed of Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1. Bloodborne strikes a delicate balance with its ranged parries, rally mechanic and quick side-stepping allowing for a more pro-active gameplay, but the speed and movesets of Elden Ring promotes a much more passive approach where the general tactic is to avoid a boss combo, get one attack in, wait for its next combo to finish, get one attack in, rinse and repeat. Sure, you can trade with a lot of bosses by good usage of defensive consumables, spells and weapon arts, but spamming Lion's Claw and Moonveil gets old quickly. I'll have to echo the sentiment of many other posters in that the speed of the bosses feels mis-matched to your options as a player. I still had fun with it, but it sits right at the edge of the envelope that From has kept on pushing in their last games, and I hope they are aware of it. Malenia for example sat just outside of it, where it was no longer fun to fight her within the parameters of the combat system for me.
That being said, From Soft has made 4 games that I would praise without hesitation since Demon Souls (DeS, DaS, BB and Sekiro) and three others that I still enjoyed greatly despite a fair bit of criticism (DaS 2 and 3 and Elden Ring) so I'll probably end up DAY 1 PURCHASING whatever they do next, but I'm very curious if not a little bit wary of where they'll go next.
