This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviewed Horizon Forbidden West. www.escapistmagazine.com/horizon-forbidden-west-zero-punctuation/ Watch it early on TH-cam and support our content via TH-cam Memberships for just $2/month. th-cam.com/channels/qg5FCR7NrpvlBWMXdt-5Vg.htmljoin
Spoilers: he hated it in a way I really do not get, and that kinda made me a bit mad. I'm not sure why. The Horizon games are my favourite games ever, and I effing love Alloy as a protagonist. So seeing Yatzhee, who was pretty positive on the first game, suddenly turn around and go "what was I thinking? These games are shit, and if you like them, why don't you just commit bodily harm instead you twats?" feels like a betrayal. Sorry, I know he's just a comedian, this is just a game, I shouldn't care, but somehow his HFW review kinda hurts. You are now free to mock me for it.
If there’s anything I learned getting an English degree, its that you can stretch the most surface level concepts to whatever length you want if you use enough words lol.
I've been a fan for yeaaaaaaars. And when I think he's tapped out and reached his limit as a writer and narrator, I'm wrong. He does something new and hilarious and spot on. It's why I keep coming back.
@@timebomb4562 one of the problems with reviews especially ones that aren’t independent that’s why a lot of them want easy mode for souls cause they want to rush throu the game so, they can get the first review out
@@mitchwilliamson5552 sure but, with ER it’s different he game changes during the mid-late game I love the game but, the difficulty spike in the late game is insane
@@BenDover-sl9zx God I hope so. I just got the Altus Plateu or something yestarday, and so far playing mage feels like cheating. I wanted to venture to other play styles beyong STR/DEX, but it seems Dragon Knight Faith would have been better, although I admit throwing meteorides at bosses is super fun, Can-t wait till I can start throwing fucking MOONS at them!
Holy shit this new "jump" technology they invented is the best thing ever. Seriously though there was nothing worse thant the "platforming" in Dark Souls. The Jump button is a godsend
Jumping, and to a lesser extent crouching, also really help highlight just how precise the hitboxes of enemy attacks are in this game. By the end of it I was hopping over or ducking under as many attacks as I could to get in some cheeky pokes and it was glorious. Well, when I didn't end up getting swatted out of the sky like some unfortunate fly, that is.
@@DrHammerr I learned the hard way to be careful with jumping when I was fighting Margit. The amount of time he batted me back to the ground was ridiculous. I'm having better luck with jumps against the more human-sized enemies, when they haven't ganged up on me and stunlocked me to death, that is.
It's also really opened up the world, I ran straight past a ton of secrets in Stormveil because I hadn't yet gotten my head around actually being able to jump over walls and obstacles (while in previous souls games a wall or a fence was usually there to tell you to go somewhere else). It's weird how much of a difference such a small change can do to the exploration part
@@Dasspapirfly I haven't started exploring Stormveil properly since I want to go down south in Limgrave to that peninsula and such before I get into the castle. That said, I also forget about jumping when exploring. I remember I can jump when on Torrent and when I'm fighting on foot, but someone reason when exploring on foot I forget that I can just jump over stuff. Not being able to jump is so ingrained into me from previous titles. Except Sekiro, but the setting is so different that I don't forget in that game.
@@ForeverLaxx Yeah, I also do the little hop when I get items from NPCs etc. I try to just see it as my character getting really excited about getting a gift (or picking something off of a corpse) xD
In defense of the crafting system, it's mostly been implemented to replace needing to purchase four billion arrows in order to actually play a bow based character. Having a truly infinite supply of consumable items means you can fully incorporate them into your build, instead of endlessly holding onto a piece of grass in case you really need the extra stamina for Four Kings.
Yeah I like the crafting system, the resources give you something to do on your way across the vast distances and the actual crafting is so hands-off things practically craft themselves
Yeah I love it, apart from the placements of recipes - for example I missed the recipe for crafting Fire Grease, so I had a much harder time early game than my friend because of it. Apart from that it's a nice little system to just throw in and give people more options to use and ways to get consumables.
The crafting system is largely ignorable if you don't want it. I only every really crafted holy pots for sekeltons, throwing knives for agro, boluses for status effects until I found Flame Cleanse Me, and arrows. You can ignore it if you want to no real detriment, you only really craft if you find yourself stuck on something.
I also think it provides a good balance off-set for people who wants to play non-spell builds. Range options and buffs are so advantaged in Elden Ring that int and faith builds would have too big of an advantage without the crafting system giving fighter types steady ammo and oils. I’m on a faith run rn, but am seriously considering a second character with no spells just to engage more with the crafting.
@@stevenhetzel6483 it’s just foreigners. Yanks are so easily entertained you don’t have to actually be funny. Yahtzee left europe and Oz years ago. He’s not surrounded by funny people anymore.
@Fat Metalhead Nerd he's essentially stopped in the second main boss.. I reached that boss with about 15h game hours.. I'm about 60 hours now and only halfway to the end... Sure you can rush the game and finish in 30 hours ..but there's so much side content and exploration to od
@@juliantapia1407 still, how much can you really say about this game before facing the severed breast of the unholy shelf? I understand the pressure, but this is more like first impressions, you know?
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p that's a valid point, and one that's been made about his videos for years now. He usually goes more in depth once he gets a chance through supplementary videos or articles, but his 'first impressions' usually go pretty in depth in regards to the way the game functions and utilizes his own experiences in the games industry and with other similar games these last couple decades. He may be a bit harsh at times, but he's clear about always looking at the bad stuff first and focusing on it, and it's usually pretty easy to tell by how vehement he gets whether they're small potatoes or party crasher issues.
The scale of the game is mind-blowing. I visited several areas (sometimes involuntarily) and realized how massive this game is. My jaw is still on the floor. About 24 hours in and still hanging around Limgrave area, can't stop scanning every inch of the map. The marriage of Souls and Open World is definitely a happy one.
It could have very easily been utterly disastrous. I think it's less about Dark Souls + Open World = good game, but rather, Fromsoft very deliberately bucked all the industry standard bullshit that plagues open world games and went their own route with it, which made it 1000x better.
Same...I'm about 90 hours in ...it's addictive as hell...the greatest part is the game can be as easy or hard as you make it...i prefer harder ...but im alsa completionist so I level up arcane more than i would if i was trying to be over powered...ithas the added benefit of better drop rates so i have more gear than most people who i see withearly game armor halfway through...the most amazing thing is also the fact that From doesn't care if you do all the content...so many areas are hidden really well...I'd say 90+ % of the game is optional and they treat the players with respect ...they believe you can find these things by hints and looking at the map/environmental clues
@@ForeverLaxx I watched RTGame's video on Elden Ring after playing it a bit, and the video is basically a tutorial on how to do all the hardest possible things in the worst possible order while still having a great time. As he sits outside the third main story boss's room while level 1 with nothing but the starting club and no idea how to level up. It was funny as fuck.
I recall part of the original _Dark Souls_ charm was that if _one_ area was feeding you your own teeth, you could leave it for a while and try a _different_ one. Hardly surprising, then, that the way to improve upon that feature is for _literally every direction_ to be a different area -- I was already Level 50 by the time I remembered I had a castle to storm, for all the _fun_ I was having exploring.
Granted, not even half a day after I posted this, I lost over 10,000 runes (10,993, if anyone wants the _exact_ number) to the ol' 'tough enemy ambush/falling from a platforming section' double-whammy that the _Souls_ series likes so much. Nothing knocks the fun out of the experience quite as fast as losing five figures to rotten luck, even if that total doesn't cover half a level anymore.
@@0Dexter00 Yeah, I know, and I did precisely that already. It's more the _principle_ of the thing, really -- just because failure and setbacks are part of how the game teaches you doesn't mean it doesn't still sting when it happens.
I love that the first "mandatory" boss is designed to not be the first boss you should fight. Its so tough it kicks your ass until you decide to go explore and fight other enemies
I don’t think Margit is actually mandatory, at least not until the Capitol entrance to the Erdtree where he’s Margott Omen King. I got there without killing Radahn, Renala, or the other two because I just wandered in. I think the only truly mandatory bosses so far are Godfrey the first Elden lord and Margott Omen King in the capitol.
and here i am with 3 characters all of which beat that boss at level 12 and the next boss at level 15 without ever upgrading my weapon once. Then again i did challenge runs like level 5 sorc all boss run on DS1 (Including the dlc) and getting dark bead.
I did not get that memo, lmao. I legit just thought they chose violence and decided that the first boss of the game would be some Orphan of Kos/Pontiff Sulyvahn bullshit. Took me like two hours of beating my head against to overcome... at least I've learned my lesson now. Better late than never?
@@vogunBurgundy but then Godrick ended up a disappointment .. until roundtable guys chilled you out confirming Godrick is a lil beach :D Haven't gotten to Renala, yet been roasted till almost 'done' by some optionals, now i kinda dread bosses that majority of playerbase seem to be plagued by...
See that's the funny thing, Godrick was second try for me, and Rennala was first try. I think that's just the way this game has to work by virtue of being open-world, your mileage (in this case, how hard a boss was for you) will very wildly vary from experience to experience.
Ah yes, good old Rennala phase 2. Spend a couple minutes wailing on some helpless mooks, enter the second phase and get the actual fucking Moon dropped on your head.
I got to that fight, got my shit absolutely pushed in for 20 minutes and decided to put a pin in and go explore Caelid first. Did that, found some new snazzy legendary sword, go it to +9, got side tracked in a lot of underground cities and eventually remembered to come back to her. Only to get my shit pushed in again, because she kept backing off and shooting the moon at me lol. Actually got her then on the 3rd try because my extended health bar graced me with the ability to soak a bunch of those hits. God I love this game
@@greez6463 I decided to make my very first Elden Ring run a dual wield colossal swords run because I'm a crazy person and actually liked Dark Soul II. I did not have a good time with Raya Lucaria.
Fromsofts answer to the roll behind smack the boss on the ass was to add an additional attack luring you into a false sense of security. But what really fools you is if you are not in range of that extra attack the AI won't do it, luring you into a bigger false sense of security since you think "that's the end of that attack combo I can sneak some damage in when he does that attack animation again".
Or to give the attack more range courtesy of bullshit hitboxes. I don't know how many times I've gotten smacked by weapons that really, really shouldn't have hit me. Margit was the main culprit for that bs with the hitboxes. I had to be careful with my jump attacks because he kept swatting me out of the air too.
@@SolaScientia Ah yes, Margit, lord of the ass pull... all those looong slow devastating attacks with his stupid stick, and then he ALSO has the power to whip out a shiv of pure light in 0.01 seconds and slash you twice in the next 0.02 seconds. Which is all before he starts doing his second-phase nonsense where he starts pulling entire longswords or greatswords of light from his butt, as well. Mid-combo. And the combos are like... nine hits long, with some hits seemingly too close together to even allow correctly timed dodge rolls, let alone any semblance of attacking him back. And of course the hitboxes. I do frequently find myself going "Yeah, no, that sword didn't touch me? It was over here. I was over THERE. Zero points of contact for even a scrape."
@@hazukichanx408 I think I avoided the light shiv slashing he did, usually because I'd backed off to heal from some other nonsense he'd pulled. In my final attempts against him I got to where I could predict the stupid jumping attack with the giant hammer, but the wave from it would still hit me half the time. The shackle was very useful, but I didn't read the description of it and didn't realize I had just 2 uses per fight with it. It also doesn't work after the second phase starts up. I'm glad I looked it up afterward. Damn thing cost me 5000 runes so I wanted to see about selling it if it didn't have any further use. Nope, it can be used in a later boss fight so I'll be hanging onto it. I mean, looking back on the fight, it's not the worst boss fight I've had to do; that goes to the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst even though he's not an actual major boss. I haven't gotten to the DLC bosses yet to compare them to him.
@@brooks6651 I absolutely hate him. I mean, neat boss fight with such a skilled hunter, but it took me ages to get the pattern down. I'd die so quickly too at first that I know it took me more attempts than any other boss ever. It took ages for me to get the hang of only attack him when he put the goddamn gun away and had the decency to stab himself for me. I just hate toward the end when he stops healing that he also stops using the sword and keeps the gun out. I had to be so careful with my attacks so he wouldn't fucking parry me into oblivion. I know he can be parried, but I've still not gotten the hang of timing my shots to interrupt attacks, so the gun doesn't get much use to be honest. Even Djura's ally helping him in Old Yharnam wasn't as bad and I was a moron in that fight. I fought him without taking Djura out first, so my dumb ass was busy dodging Djura's bullshit gatling gun while also staying alive long enough to land hits on his pal.
When I first fought Margit, I immediately said "oh fuck that" and I picked a random direction on the map and just went. 2 hours later I was underground and fighting a giant spiritual moose. Never change Fromsoft.
To be honest I thought the horse not being allowed into castles and dungeons was intended as a loving tribute to Yoshi's debut in Super Mario World where he had to wait by the door for no adequately explained reason.
...why? Do you really think his overall view of the game is going to change after completing it? Do the mechanics completely and utterly change in the second half? About the only way his opinion would be like to change by the end would be if he thought the game had a really disappointly shit ending worth tearing a strip off it for.
Elden Ring made me realize I'd brick wall an area meant to be explored 3/5ths of the way through the game for a red head with a questline that can only be described as golden needle in a scarlet rot poison swamp haystack.
I found the needle after running around for a bit on horse back. Since I don't think torrent can get scarlet rot it wasn't too back. The boss was a pain because I have that stupid bug where the enemies are just straight up unrendered 70% of the time, so I'd have my ass mulched by a hoard of invisible fucks. Otherwise it was a pretty neat boss.
You should probably be upgrading your weapons if the first phase is a slog. Without exploring more than limgrave and the area before that boss I was killing her the first time the orb broke 3/4 times. To describe it as a slog I’m guessing you were needing to down her more than that which is probably a dps issue. Not defending the boss design ( not that I found it to be much of an issue) just trying to help
@obsolete18 A big portion of it was figuring out the mechanics first. The first 2 times I was just swinging at every minion. Around the 3rd one was finding the necessary minions while trying not to die. It starts to feel like a slog by the 4th+ time because it turns out the 2nd phase is enough of a boss fight in itself, making Phase 1 feel like retroactive busywork.
What's crazy is if you look at the wiki's recommended levels, they say to be around 50-60 to beat her, but it also says to have weapon only around +5 while I suck and needed mine to be +12
@@demonintellect9834 Call it a hot take but I would rather be hit with it immediately than halfway through the second phase so I feel even worse about it.
I actually can’t believe how much i’m loving this game. I get the usual butt munching difficulty, with the freedom of ignoring every mandatory boss. This is beautiful!
I find very few games get the crafting elements right. To my mind you need to get a few things right that most AAA games don't understand. First, the stuff you craft needs to be blatantly better than the junk you find lying around. Second, it needs to be flexible enough to make you feel smart when you make some crafting combination and it works. Third, don't make crafting resources feel like dirt cheap or failing that. Make good crafting materials exist along side a lot of bad ones so you feel you need to collect them in case they might be just what you need to turn you whatever into a boss killing whatever.
Yep, the "stuff you craft needs to be blatantly better than the junk you find lying around" is kinda obvious but people seem to ignore this. I remember saving up money (to buy the schematics) and resources to craft a sword in The Witcher 2 just to find one much better inside the sewers 30 minutes later.....
I usually don't bother with crafting in most games when it comes to weapons and armor and such. I do like that in Elden Ring I can craft firebombs, bolts/arrows, and such rather than spending runes to buy them up like in previous titles. That said, going around gathering a ton of resources and then selling them is an easy way to bank runes for leveling up or upgrading weapons and such.
The only game I've ever genuinely enjoyed crafting things in was Dark Cloud 2. Resources were plentiful because they were used for EVERYTHING. You could buy them but they had a steep-ish price, Going through one or two dungeon level would generally result in supplies being rained down on you and it was a really satisfying loop. I never felt like I was constantly running out, but I also never felt like I was drowning in them. I had to ration *just* enough that my choices felt meaningful, it was a fantastic experience.
I actually liked the crafting system because it cut out the parts where you travel to a place and wait for a loading screen to stack up on equipment just to see another loading screen to get back where you were at in the first place.
I distrust crafting systems because my first exposure was Dead Space 3 and it exitsted entirely to sell you toolboxes full of resources, game balance be buggered.
While not gushing, he's gone out of his way for Extra-Punctuation with praising this game's open world design vs the obligatory JimineyCockThroat. Great video, and it's my new number one go-to-argument of why I'll still prefer games like BotW (Or Elden Ring) over boring in scope titles akin to Horizon and Far Cry 3+.
I'm just glad that elden ring has stuff in all parts of its massive map, unlike a lot of "open worlds" where it's just some empty space to make it seem bigger. And then there is an entire underground...
elden ring was the most empty vacant feeling game i have ever played in terms of “good” rpg “open worlds”. Seriously the game is so void of any feeling or meaning its hillarious. No rewards for anything except b grade graphics. The combat is kickass but they ruined it with ridiculous anime fights with stupid AOE spam.
Gonna play Yahtzee bingo (haven't watched it yet): - Mentions his love of Dark Souls - Mentions the need to test yourself against bosses til you see a red mist - Laments the fact it's gone open world like everything else - Praises the exploration being similar to BotW - Laments the need for *crafting* - Gives it a pretty positive review, even if he somewhat thinks it's not as good as Dark Souls
Pretty spot on, but I do think he may like it better than regular dark souls. He just hasn't had the time to play it all the way through since its massive
@@shipkipsamazingchannel3248 Distortion (speedrunner) just beat the game (only missed a few of the mini-dungeons, got all the main bosses and field stuff). And it only took him 72ish hours...
@@c.wubby.u861 Chris Carter of Destructoid best the game and for all Achievements for it in 84 hours Dude is a beast, he reviewed Horizon Zero Dawn/Breath of the Wild/Nioh at the same time in 2017.
I share his sentiment with Renalla. A fight that could’ve been great if it weren’t for the first phase. Wasn’t difficult, just tedious. Like running up to Radhan.
I think that could be solved by making her second phase be permanent. As in, after the first time you trigger it, the next attempts already begin in that arena in the second phase.
The first phase was "fun" at first in that it was actually pretty fun being in a new situation and coming up with a strategy, even if it was a pretty simple strategy. And then that's it. I decided to wait until I was overwhelmingly overpowered instead of bother with the fun tax.
@@joaoassumpcao3347 Hell, they saved your progress with Bed of Chaos, and that was unequivocally the worst Souls boss ever. So ffs, why couldn't they do that with Rennala?
@@BabaIsViewer Just imagine Bed of Chaos not giving checkpoints. One of the easiest bosses would become the hardest boss Fromsoft has ever made. Remember, you kill the BoC in a single hit, and you get checkpoints for basically every 10 steps you take.
I didn't find it tedious the first phase isn't very long at all and the second phase is easy to handle so most people won't by on that boss long anyways
3:19 i have that workbench, harbor freight for like 100 bucks. solid bench, nice drawers, has a power strip on the side. doesnt come with the hooks for the board though, those are seperate. does come with a nice little light though.
It is my first experience with Souls like games. And i must say turning into farmhouse chutney 5000 times before i progress would be tedious and dull if it wernt for the fact that it feels so rewarding when you learn how to get past the enemy and get the ntoficiation enemy felled.
Give DS1 a shot too. It's much more condensed of an experience, and even strays close to a Metriodvania in design. The fights are comparatively a lot more relaxed than all the sequels. You're going to hate the "jump" button though, after playing ER.
It is kinda sad that Yahtzee had to stop at that point, since it was where things start to open up lore wise. Which is kinda ironic even more since it tells me that he didn't get caught by the various map teleport traps that would have challenged his Dark Souls trained instincts more......
Those very Dark Souls trained instincts might be what saves anyone from the boxy mist. I've always been on edge around chests more so than I am with bosses!
The teleport traps were kinda fun actually as they always led to some fine loot plus you can just teleport back anywhere after finding a grace. Nowhere near as threatening as mimics.
Over the past week I watched most my friends play Elden Ring seeing one of them reminisce on the various planter and parking-lot-concrecte-ball shaped monsters as he rode along the cliffside to go and kill what I can only describe as a Castle Greyskull playset mounted on top of the gonarch from half-life had a weird charm to it
one thing i appreciate about crafting. because (for common items) the resources are quite plentiful, but you can only carry a maximum amount and can't craft in combat. this is one of the first times i actually used consumable items in a souls game. as one who doesn't like to look up the wiki for every boss's weakness... i have beaten entire games without using firebombs because "oh no, i might need these on a later mob and i don't want to farm endless souls to buy more when those souls could instead go to more stats" because you generally have the materials for lots, but can only use a few at a time, that actually encouraged me to use the items instead of hording them incessantly. so at the very least i appreciated that. because now i can actually test out "does this thing take more from fire?" without feeling like i've permanently lost my chance to use one of these annoyingly uncommon items on a boss that REALLY needs it
As a fellow Souls vet, I’m glad to see that Yahtzee also found some of these bosses more difficult than previous ones. There are a handful of late-game fights that will make you feel like you’re losing your edge. Some of these enemies feel like they were designed for Bloodborne, but they’re in a markedly slower and more methodical Souls game. Still freaking love Elden Ring though, it’s possibly my new favorite game of all time.
arguably being a souls vet makes elden ring harder than not being one because we are more likely to glinse over stuff like actually using heavy attacks to break super armor and go for a critical hit or using guard counters i found myself using only R1 for hours having trouble with margit until i tried weaving in guard counters jump attacks (which also avoid enemy ground slam attacks btw) and charged R2's and suddenly margit was going on his knees ready for a hefty crit multiple times and it got fairly doable
@@that_legion_main If you're having trouble, getting Rotten Breath from the dragon church is super useful. It does a hell of a lot of damage over time and makes longer boss fights that you're not sure when to go for hits in much more manageable.
Pretty much agree, but I would note that doing side content and finding treasure almost always gets you unique loot (weapons, ashes of war, etc) crafting materials are instead usually littered about, so it's not as bad as it sounds. Crafting is actually pretty useful but I ignored it anyway. And lol, poor Yahtz has a long long way to go before he's done.
If they would just change the particle effect for the Arteria Leaf and Nascent Butterfly to the normal item one instead of the rare item one, I'd be fine with the whole system for the most part.
I'm so glad he brought up how the bosses in From Soft games lately have boiled down to "boss flails their arms around like a crazy person", because it's so annoying to deal with.
I feel like that depends on the boss like bosses that are supposed to be unskilled like Godrick feel like they're just flailing about randomly and a hit can come from any one of his 20+ limbs at any moment meanwhile bosses that are supposed to be more skilled like Morgott feel like they have much more deliberate swings.
Same. Bonus points to him realizing the jump attack is the best attack in the whole game cuz it's true. That is my biggest problem with this game. Almost everything else is sublime, but my god the combat and the bosses are just the most annoying spam fests. The bears, the poison horror army ladies, the crabs, the lobsters, the hands, all waving their arms and bodies around like bats out of hell. I'm not even to end, end game where I heard the bosses are worse. Souls' AI is getting better but your character has barely any more *useful* tools than they did in 2009. (And spirit tuning doesn't count, it's boring and trivializes most bosses without adding to the fun.)
Most of the bosses have that one combo that you really don’t want to get caught in, but I’d argue they only pull it out every once in a while and most of the attacks in between are shorter and easier to deal with.
If Yahtzee keeps playing I think what he will appreciate more is just how big and grandiose much of the game feels, even compared to previous entries. Dark Souls has always been about you, some small insect, taking on a grand, powerful god, but are only able to do so because they have decayed and rotted. Yes, the first gimmick boss was a bit of a let down in gameplay, but the other two big boss gimmicks are fantastic and really make you feel the weight of how powerful they were in their primes, especially because they are still quite challenging.
I'm assuming the first gimmick boss you're talking about is Renallia, but I'm not sure about the other two. Is it Radahn and Rykard (all three start with an 'r' lol)? Those are my best guesses, but I wouldn't exactly call Radahn a gimmick boss, you still fight him pretty much the same way you would fight most bosses, except you have a bunch of summons.
@@satincartoon2213 I mean... you can fight Radahn normally, but then it was also entirely possible to fight Rykard (assuming you have some method of attacking from range), Yhorm, the Ancient Dragon, the Folding Screen Monkeys, the Adjudant, the Tower Knight, Phylanx, the Old Hero (I'm starting to realize how many gimmicky fights Demon Souls had), and the Storm King (assuming you have some method of attacking from range) normally. Rennala and Sekiro's Divine Dragon are the only ones that feel like you're really forced to play with their gimmiks.
@@Eclipsed_Embers saying you *can* fight Radahn normally rings with the same tune as saying you can bench press a car. Sure, maybe it’s possible for the absolute best with hundreds of hours of training, but realistically no one’s going to do that, so in the end pretty much everyone does *have* to resign to his gimmick of summoning tons and tons of summons and pray he doesn’t target you as “he who will eat shit today”
Fair enough lads, I just wasn't sure it could be called a gimmick cuz I expected people to still ride into the thick of it and fight him head on along with the summons
The first time I fought that boss with the phase 1 shield I was playing with a friend, and there was no shield or special minions generating the shield... But she was still invincible. With all of the actual fight mechanics missing, we resorted to experimentation and eventually discovered that she wasn't immune to status effects, so we killed her via my mate's bleed spell (until he quickly ran out of magic flasks) and the tiny tick damage from my one black flame spell. A literal 20 minutes later we got her down, discovered phase 2 and had our flask-less faces beaten in. Attempt 2 and the mechanic of the shield and minions was glaringly obvious because they hadn't been there when we were scouring the arena for clues on the previous attempt. Oh, then when we did it in my friend's world he died on phase 2 and respawned INSIDE the boss room with all the enemies calmly staring at him. I think it genuinely freaked him out a little based on how glad he seemed that he could fast-travel out.
I was initially annoyed to see that there was a crafting system but then I realized cracked pots recharge after use and basically every component has a grace point somewhere that makes it easy to farm. I can now actually have a limitless supply of crystal throwing knives and firebombs without having to spend time farming souls and it's no longer just for late game only. I can now use all my favorite items and don't have to just horde them for pvp. My biggest fear was I was going to just be bored out of my mind. Breath of the Wild is nice to look at but so boring to play. ER is incredibly dense and its average quality is so high, I still enjoy Limgrave when playing new characters.
Yes! I always keep a supply of Holy Urns on hand whenever I find myself up against Undead. While Necromancers prevent you from perma-killing undead normally. If they’re killed by Holy damage, they don’t even enter the revive state!
God! I haven't seen a Zero Punctuation video in YEARS! It's good to hear Yahtzee ramble on again and hilarious as always. Was not expecting the sass at the end though. A good little relevant jab and wholely welcome.
One of my favorite moments so far was the dragon in Limgrave, got tired of banging my head against Margit's wall and went exploring, found some ruins and went a killin', chose a direction, rode that way, and got sat on by a fucking dragon, it was great. Also love the giant's pulling the cart up to the church ruins, spent a good couple minutes trailing the thing, I love the touches like that, as far as I can tell nothing really happens, but it goes a long way in making it feel like a massive world, I really love the way soulsborne games make you feel small, like none of the enemies are waiting there to kill you, you're just another moving part in a big sprawling world and it's sick
I knew that dragon would spawn in so I avoided the lake for a bit. I finally triggered its arrival and I had one fight against it that went very badly. In my vague defense I didn't have a long weapon on me at the time. I had my starting scimitars and I might have found the flail by then. Short weapons are trash for horseback fighting. I found the twinblade in the ruins though and it's been great fun. I need another crack at that dragon. The cart does have loot. I had a go at the guys trailing it. It was going okay until I summoned Torrent to ride closer to the cart. I shouldn't have bothered. I ended up seated on an invisible horse and I couldn't do a damn thing. Nothing responded at all. Then I spontaneously died for no obvious reason. I didn't return to the cart after that, lol. I'll have another try at it again soon though; especially now that Margit is no longer a problem and I've leveled up a tad.
@@SolaScientia the dragon is a teacher it teaches you the value of heavy attacks jump attacks and torrent it also teaches you that this is not darksouls you can not burry your head up their ass and chip away You learn to mount and unmount in battle because of its wide area dragonfire you need to mount up and run out then go back in jump or go for the head 3 or 4 jump/charged r2s will stagger it and leave it open for a critical hit But if all you do is light attacks at its back like in darksouls you'll die
@@sean00172 I was figuring that out when I died to its fire, lol. I'll try again later. I'm already not playing like it's Dark Souls. I also had only my starting scimitars when I found it. I feel better with my twinblade +2 now.
Bloody Slash, just melts everything moon lady boss included. It's one of the "Guds" that you can "Git." Maybe even disappointingly good, in that I'm disappointed in myself for just crushing my enemies. Hahaha
2 phase bosses are cool, but when every boss has 2 phases. It really starts to grind on you. One of my least favorite bosses in Dark Souls 3 was Lady Freya. She wasn't a hard boss by any means, but when I have to patiently wait out phase 1 and phase 2 just to attempt the actual fight part of the fight, it just feels like a waste of my time.
I assume you mean Sister Friede? And I like the way most were done in Elden ring, I prefer having one health bar and adding a couple of new attacks at half rather than some bosses like Friede as you say just having 3x the HP and a phase that isn't really anything like the other. Though I'm surprised you say she isn't hard, she is probably like the 3rd hardest boss in that game for me.
@@SuperSecretAgentNein I like ones like that. I'll look up about the boss after the fight and then wonder why it's listed as having 2 or 3 phases because to me it all seemed like one phase. That said, I've played enough Bloodborne and DS3 to tell when the different phases hit. Although, calling it a second phase just because the weapon is switched to a slightly different form seems a tad ridiculous to me. Like Gascoigne changing to the long form of the axe and such.
@@TheMirksta Yeah, I often forget about soft phase 2s. If a phase 2 adds a new moveset on top of an existing one then it doesn't really bother me that much. Elden Ring just has a shit ton of back to back real phase 2 bosses where the second phase is just a completely new boss entirely. And as for Friede being hard or not, I really think it's just a misconception that she is hard because dying to her is really punishing.
I know a lot of people are having issues running it on their systems, and they’re right to want those issues addressed (though, to be clear, I’m over 60 hours in at this point and I’ve yet to encounter any problems of that nature), and as far as the crafting mechanic goes, I agree that it’s probably the game’s most extraneous feature; 95% of the time I’m just using it to make more arrows because it’s more convenient to use the massive pile of animal bones I’m practically suffocating under than warping back to a merchant to spend runes on a perpetually diminishing resource. Other than those two points, however, more than any other FromSoft game I’ve played (save perhaps Bloodborne), Elden Ring has completely blown every expectation I had out of the water. I’ve fallen in love with this game _so damn hard_ and I cannot recommend it enough, regardless of whether you’re a Souls veteran or a series newcomer.
Nah. Greases, boluses, firebombs, & throwing knives. I guarantee you the crafting system will make all of these tools more common & accessible for players to use as the game enters the second or third month of its (probably three or four year) life cycle. It's been EASILY implemented better than anything related to Bloodborne's chalice dungeons, for eg, where the only acceptable path through was via a save edited route that dramatically reduced most of the content, & even truncated, it was a samey slog that filled your inventory with useless dreck to make more samey dungeons. I'l take Elden Ring's crafting over that literally every single day
I mean you pretty much nailed the reason why the crafting system exists, having to warp back and restock consumables at a merchant is tedious as heck, but now you just need to pause the game outside of combat whenever you need to restock. Still kinda wishing they'd cut down on crafting resource loot and given you more upgrade stones though...
@@GameDevYal Honestly they don't even need to give you more material, the material for Somber weapons was just fine IMO, but regular weapons are way too expensive to upgrade. 12 of each tier is a hell of a lot for one weapon when you find then in 1s or 3s most of the time.
Jumping attacks are definitely my go-to. I finally found a long enough weapon to use while on Torrent, so I can actually hit whatever I'm running at. When I had just my scimitars and a flail I couldn't hit shit until I was basically standing on whatever I wanted to hit; and then that usually resulted in me getting stunlocked to death. Yay. Torrent got despawned when I was clearing an area, but then I saw I could summon him again. I summoned him except he didn't appear. I was sitting on an invisible horned horse for a bit until I spontaneously died. That was fun... I didn't return to that area (trying to clear out the enemies around that first traveling caravan thing) after that, but it's on my list now that I've leveled up a bit more. I also just need to sit and mark out places of interest on the map, because I keep getting sidetracked on my way to a specific location and then I forget what I was originally setting out to do. I'm 9 hours in and have done only the first mandatory boss. I've done 3 small, pretty easy dungeon bosses (I guess it's technically 4, but I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't found it yet) and whole lot of wandering around avoiding anything bigger than me. I guess I should try to fight the guys also on horses, as well as those massive trolls. As for the shield, I'm just two-handing my twinblade at this point and haven't equipped my shield in ages. I do keep forgetting that in Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 I can't beat my health back out of whatever took it. Although I did learn that there's an ash of war that gives players that ability, so I'll be hunting that down asap. The tutorial reminds me of the starting asylum area in Dark Souls in that it's deceptively easy. I went through it like it was nothing and then was swiftly corrected as soon as I started exploring Limgrave properly.
The Berserk Greatsword and the Starscourge Greatsword are the absolute best for jump attacks. Berserk Greatsword has the range, the other has the damage.
@@D2v0n Good advice. It's how I've survived in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 so far. Thankfully nearly all the bosses in Bloodborne telegraph their AoE attacks. What I'm finding with Elden Ring so far is that I have the same issue I have with Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne: common enemies are more trouble than the bosses most of the time. I didn't have much trouble with any Bloodborne boss until I hit Ebrietas. The Bloody Crow is entirely option and he's been the worst so far. Same goes for DS3. Margit gave me trouble in Elden Ring until I got that shackle. The regular enemies have been more of a problem. The 3 dungeon bosses I've fought were pretty easy, especially once I brought out a spirit to help me. I love the spirits we can use, lol.
@@utisti4976 I saw a clip of the fun attack the claymore can do and it looks awesome. The only trouble with those swords is that I'm doing a dex build, lol. I'm putting enough levels in strength to let me use a cross bow and maybe some other stuff I eventually find, but I'm focusing my levels on health, stamina, and dex for the most part. Demon's Souls is the only FS game that sees me using a claymore or any slower weapon really thanks to most of the enemies being slow af. Well, I've used the hunter axe in Bloodborne some, but it's still faster than most of the slower DS3 weapons. I like faster weapons that let me get in a lot of hits without completely eating my stamina with just 2 or 3 hits.
" I do keep forgetting that in Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 I can't beat my health back out of whatever took it." There is an amulet somewhere in early game that gives you a pretty substantial heal whenever you perform a critical attack (backstab etc.). I don't remember where exactly it is, but I'm somewhat certain it must be in a dungeon in the area before Stormveil Castle, because I had that in the castle itself, and in my playthrough I actually spent a lot of time in this region before going to the castle, and started really exploring other regions once I killed Godrick.
This has to be one of my favorite ZP's in a long time. I only really played Bloodborne so this game was like a breath of fresh air. The enemies that flail around randomly really are just terrible.
@@akhannar9368 I saw a streamer fight them. She was hitting them with a giant fucking sword, then they decided to not get staggered anymore and start flailing around, stunlocked her to death. Oh and they have no windup to do that so....Fun :D
@@Yorikoification There are some with wigs later in the game. They don't fly too much, but if you thought that the walking marionettes' flailing was annoying, you better brace for the winged...
Dang I’m curious to hear his thoughts once he gets farther because it sounds like he barely scratched the surface if he only made it to Raya Lucaria by the time of this review
@@akhannar9368 yeah that’s what I’m saying. Raya Lucaria is less than halfway through the game, assuming he is following the traditional path of limgrave first and liurnia second. That means he has such a massive amount of content he has yet to explore. It’s a shame journalists have to try and get these reviews out as soon as possible. I was just saying it’d be nice to hear his thoughts again once he has enough time to fully explore the game
I enjoyed the game so much more when I switched from pursuing the main plot to just exploring. Not only was discovering hidden enemies and treasure much more fun and rewarding than throwing myself endlessly at Margit, the You-Can-Catch-These-Hands Man. But, by the time I was satisfied with my exploring, I came back and trounced the same bosses that had given me so much trouble before.
miyazaki even said that that's the way he intended for people to play. He made the earlier bosses extra hard on purpose just to push people towards giving up brute forcing it and explore the world around them instead
I have never been able to get into Souls games and am pretty terrible at them, but I am still enjoying the game a lot. The fact that you can beat your head on a boss for hours and just decide to go do other stuff when you get too frustrated is a god send. And it certainly doesn't hurt that it is quite possibly the best looking game ever made.
So I feel this video should have been longer, because theres a number of things worth talking about. The most important perhaps being the small litany of amateur dev mistakes that were made, that were seemingly never made in previous souls titles. And secondly, the difficulty, which Yahtz touched on. With regards to mistakes, I think the most important are the UI, and the failure to respect player choice in a number of instances. UI: The intrusive menu prompts are terrible. The naming conventions for upgrade materials was likewise terrible, and I'm glad Yahtz touched on that. Now, lets remind ourselves that Elden Ring allows us to chug as much Sunny D as we want, but the moment we want to resurrect our horse, it suddenly gives a shit, and tosses us a menu prompt about whether we want to lose one crimson flask charge to get our horse back, which we have to navigate and respond to, while we're in the middle of combat. Look personally, I just want my horse back so I don't die, it doesn't matter how much OJ I have if I'm dead. Player choice: You can turn Melina's accord down, which you could be forgiven for assuming would set you on a more difficult path, without torrent, and possibly leveling, which would change the later story the game somewhat, or at least allow you to progress normally-ish. However no, about halfway through, the game forces you to accept the accord, and won't allow you to progress further once you reach the Lyndell. Why bother giving the player the choice at all then, if the story is going to force the player back onto the rails eventually? The difficulty: It's strange. Elden Ring strives to be a middle ground between a challenge for vets, and an easier souls challenge for new players. Positional rolling is now extremely important, especially for the later bosses, the chess maneuvering roll dodges which are required to not be hit bosses are rarely intuitive and are muscle memory intensive. But of course, players can always just use a 100% physical resist tower shield in order to help mitigate the need to use the dodge roll. And this being an "open world" means that players can go somewhere else level up and come back to a harder challenge later, presumably with all their friends. And if they're stuck in offline mode, they can use their STANDS to help them through.
4:46 - This is both the key to Souls games' combat and the reason why I find most of them boring. It's not a game about super quick reactions or combining different types of moves, it's a game about memorising patterns and timing the appropriate counters. I loved the original Dark Souls's atmosphere and world design (the way everything connected in unexpected ways, like an Escher drawing), but once I figured out the combat (namely, that enemies would be locked into a full attack animation, same as the player, once they started it), it became pretty easy and a bit repetitive. There's no AI, as such. Just learn their attacks and how long they'll be stuck doing them for, and either counter with a faster attack or get out of range. Repeat a few times, win. And you can learn most enemy moves simply by walking slowly backwards in a big circle while blocking. The main difficulty tends to come from some different attacks (ex., one with tracking and one without) having similar wind-up animations, so sometimes you think you can just walk to the boss' side for a quick hit but you do it during an attack that can track you horizontally, and which you should have just backed off from instead.
Rennala ain't random. It's the one with the golden aura. That's throwing books at you. And singing, just to give you an audio cue if it's behind a bookshelf somewhere.
One really cheeky little detail is the stamina drains slower in Elden Ring, so all our Dark Souls learned dodging tactics end too soon for the bosses. Getting used to extending dodging cycles by a couple of seconds really changed things up for me.
re: getting off the horse to go inside the castle - Brings to mind Super Mario World, where you get that little cutscene of hopping off Yoshi and leaving him outside castles and ghost houses
From watching the review and his post game streams, he missed most of the first zones things, let alone the rest of the game. It is doubtful he had even seen Radahn. I think the game world feels large rather than is large. I was overwhelmed by Limgrave at first as a Souls fan, but after a few days of exploration, it really doesn't feel that large, especially because of fast travel. What still feels overwhelming is the sprawling dungeons. Reaching areas like lake of rot and then the rest of it, or Deeprooth Depths felt like a real adventure. Not just that, because of the ability to jump on horse and on foot, a lot of secretive location that probably just some upgrade materials compels me to seek them out, hoping to find something rare. Verticality adds a lot of layers to locations, and makes the world really feels gigantic, even if physically they are not that large nor intricate. Raya Lucaria is probably comparable to the Duke's archive, but because of the ability to jump, leaping from ledges to other areas, exploring Raya Lucaria takes a lot longer than the Duke's archive, outside of combat. I can say the same to Stormveil and the rest. Reaching the area boss wouldn't take very long, but to explore the entire place is an entire different matter. I think a lesson for copycats like Darksiders is to give the player an overview of the area more often. Don't box them into a series of rooms like a 2D MetroidVania. Even 2D MetroidVania played with it with high ceilings and paths on top of paths. For 3D, it is vital to give the player a perspective of the entire area's layout, that gives the player's an idea about the scale of the area they are exploring, as well as a good grasp of the layout, that they don't have to have a map to traverse. This is why "dungeons" in God of War, Zelda, Souls games are so easily memorable, and almost never needed a map to explore. Darksiders did environmental design better in 1, for some reason, and got progressively worse. It is also better if the environment feels natural, deceptively so would be fine. Continuing with what Yahtze described as '"making the environment first before figuring out how to traverse it", Elden Ring environment provides ample vantage points for the players to have a clear view of what they are about to conquer. It doesn't highlight ledges that you can jump on top of railings and drop down, but it makes no attempt to hide it. It entices the player with shiny loots to draw attention to ledges. That makes exploration more satisfying, because you feel like you discover something when it is the game designer that points them there. All of this makes Elden Ring feels larger than it actually is, and such a memorable experience. It's something very simple, but none of the other studios seem interested in imitating. They would rather imitate the duelling combat, or dropping currency on death.
i played this game since it came out and I was initially hooked to it because it was pretty fun. but having beaten the game and doing most of the content, i'm somewhat lukewarm on the game. at a certain point, the game became a slog and I just wanted to finish it asap. in the initial week of playing the game I was like "i'm going to do all the mini-dungeons and whatnot." to now "I can't be assed to get the rest of the endings." no idea why. the world is great, the combat is nice. i really like that you can change the angle of your attack if the enemy moves so you don't whiff a mad slow attack. for what it's worth, I cruised through the game using a +24 dismounter and +10 bloodhound fang. the OP dex bleed stuff, but the OP part of bloodhound fang is it's skill. straight up stuns everything and does a ton of damage. the dismounter wasn't exactly necessary, but I did enjoy jump attack powerstancing so I just kept it since it helped me beat a certain bullshit boss. all in all, I would certainly recommend this game, but pace yourself cuz you might get burn out like I did and just want to get through with it. I'll probably play it again some months from now.
This, I enjoyed my time playing it, it was amazing, but after beating it once I don't feel like another playthrough, at least not yet. I should've paced myself more, as I tend to burn out on games quickly. I'll definitely come back, probably in a week or two, and enjoy the hell out of it again, but ye, I got too hyped and didn't pace myself enough.
Yeah same even though I'm just at the mountain. It's a weird thing I'm seeing with a lot of people. I think it's the volume of bosses. This game throws them at you like free samples. And many of those bosses are honestly poorly designed spam fests, unfair duos for no reason or just kind of there with little narrative reason. When I beat the bosses I don't get that souls feeling of satisfaction, I'm just relieved it's over. The combat is not satisfying like their other recent games. Oh and a decent amount of the rewards for the dungeon are completely irrelevant to your build. I swear I have 40+ weapons and only use 3 or so? I went in thinking I'd look for most dungeons but now I'm just tired and want it to be over. Didn't feel that way about sekiro or demon souls remake at all.
I'm prone to burning out when it comes to games, so I've been pacing myself out of this fear. I'm just 9 hours into Elden Ring. I've done 3 optional dungeon bosses; 4 if you count a certain NPC in a cave near the lake (avoiding spoilers since it was spoiled for me). All 3 were pretty easy. I spent most of those 9 hours dying to Margit until I got that shackle and even then I died a lot. It was a satisfying fight though. I'm hoping I don't get tired of the big mandatory bosses, but I can see all the optional dungeon bosses becoming annoying after a while. I'm finally at level 21 (was 18 when I defeated Margit) and I'm planning on going back into Limgrave before going deeper into Stormveil. I'm hoping I can actually stand a chance against the giant trolls and anything that's on a horse. I've only had success against one mounted enemy and it's only because he was kind enough to yeet himself off a cliff for me, lol. I plan on getting the bloodhound fang since I've heard it's a good dex weapon. I'm enjoying the twinblade right now since I finally have a long weapon to use while on Torrent.
They definitely should've had another color for the "loot on a corpse who is hanging off the side of a building like every other corpse" when it's just another pointless crafting material. White should be for normal loot, purple for special loot (not F**KING nascent butterflies!) and yellow or something for the crafting junk.
As someone who’s beaten Elden Ring more times than I can count, it’s funny to hear Rennala described as the “weird shitty boss.” I know he’d only played up to that point in a week, so Im just imagining what his reaction was when he got to Godskin Duo… (and yes, I know he made a visual reference to them in the best of list, but that best example I can think of for “weird shitty boss,” since all of the others either good or amazing…
My only real complaint is that they didn't let me name the horse. Calling out "Come Derpy! WE RIDE!!" would be a lot more fun without my little muderpony rolling its eyes every time.
Some of the environments and enemy designs made me realize I want FromSoft to make a genuine horror game, maybe psychological or survival horror Edit- We ride together we die together, Oleg for life
defensw of the crafting system: if you come across one of the 20 poison swamps you can now immediately craft an antidote (if you have the recepie, that is)
I don't feel like he's nitpicking when he's complaining about the bullshittiness of the enemies and the fact that the game just cancels out your mount when you go into a "dungeon" area. Two things you'll be facing a hecking lot in this game
The problem I have with Elden Ring is that it is a Ubisoft open world if you just take the icons off the map... until you visit the place, then the icons are literally on the map. Hell, if you can read the Elden Ring map, you can see where every mine, gaol, cathedral, church, erdtree avatar and fort is, as well as most of the ruins. And the thing is once you really get into the game, things start looking the same. Every region has it's night cavalry boss, it's dragon boss, it's deathrite bird, it's tibia mariner, it's erdtree boss, a chariot dungeon, a lift to the cellar of the world, at least 1 gaol, at least 1 mine, a memory stone puzzle, a few ruins that all have a collection of dudes above and then a staircase to the basement with something below. Here's the biggest variety: Sometimes it's got enemies, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes the staircase is behind an illusionary wall, but it's always there. I would be fine with this if there was universal quality here, but all of the "bosses" you fight in these are just copy pastes from elsewhere and most of the time, they are just fucking bad. Quick rundown of some of my least favorite of these: Watchdogs: Found all over the place. Very jerky moveset on delays with their delayed attacks having 2 triggers. If time runs out, or if the player is in the attack's range from a certain point. Black knife assassins: There are 2 that are fine. My problem isn't their moveset. It's that half of these bastards require you to have a specific torch equipped and held to see them. Someone genuinely tried to defend the fact that about half the builds in the game are directly punished for having a build by saying that there was someone on youtube who beat them without using the torch. Someone on youtube can beat the game at sl1 in 7 minutes. Most players can't. Doesn't help that they have 1000+ damage grabs that have almost no audio cue and come at the end of a long dash. Couple that with punishing every build that uses both hands to fight them and it's a shit enemy. Every enemy with a ranged attack that isn't a crossbow or a giant. They have localized sounds, long range, and shoot so fast that everyone I know collectively refers to the attack as a sniper rifle. This applies to the dudes with the horns, lobsters, and albinauric archers in the consecrated snowfields, except the archers in the snow fields get to shoot at you during a blizzard that provides visual and audible cover from their suppressed sniper bullshit that deals over 700 damage through medium armor. I'm not saying that they are too fast or hit too hard. I'm saying that one of those is too extreme and they should either be slowed down a little to make dodging with anything but a roll more viable, or that the damage should be reduced a little so that someone with medium armor and 35 vigor should survive 3 shots.
This was the first From Souls game I actually have gotten into, and I found it much easier to get into the groove with than dark souls. Granted, I kind of went of the rails, so I killed the Tree Sentinel before anything else and ended up level 54 before fighting the first plot boss. Whoops.
I feel like Yahtz needs to go review the DS3 DLCs bc if he doesn't like Rennala's two-stage bossfight he must have hated Friede's three-stage extravaganza
I mean... there have been times in Elden Ring where I've gotten the map out and thought "huh, that place looks a bit empty, I'm willing to bet that I missed something there" or "there's a bit of a dead zone for sites of grace around there, I probably missed one, time to go look for it" it does definitely feel more natural than Ubisoft games, there's nothing more pushing me to those zones besides my hunch that they just looked a little too empty on the map.
Can understand the initial annoyance at have to press two buttons to two hand a weapon, but the amazing trade off is that you can now two hand the weapon in your left hand as well, giving your more variability in the middle of a fight. Especially since you can then make use of: - Right hand Ash of War - Left hand Ash of War - Powerstancing all without having to swap out a weapon.
Some of these two phase fights like the shield dude and especially the ones where the bosses' mate unexpectedly drops in half way through, do get quite tiresome after a while.
I feel ya on the Moon Lady boss slog. But then I realised that you can hear the minions you need to attack directionally and it's usually accompanied by a slew of books heading in your direction from the daft cow too.
If you think it’s hard at first, just wait until endgame areas. Enemies have crap tons of health, do shit tons of damage, and are everywhere. It’s pretty unbalanced.
But you should also have shit tons of health and be doing shit tons of damage. The higher your level the less damage you take as levels directly effect your defenses
@@obsolete18 that’s just how strong the enemies are. I’m currently lv 168, and they still annoy the crap outta me. Going through endgame areas just isn’t fun.
@@MasterfulPeon Level 168?? I explored every area a hell of a lot and finished the game at 130, are you sure you're levelling your vigor and upgrading your weapons?
@@TheMirksta jeez I’m assuming I’m fairly close to the end at lvl 110 and feel like I’m pretty tanky and doing pretty decent damage. At lvl 160+ and still be having issues I’m gussing his stats are hybrid to hell and not using a viable weapon.
I’ve noticed a lot of mini bosses decide to take the witch of hemwick elective in that you aren’t threatening yourself yet you can summon dudes that range from actual threat to obstacles that try your patience. Thumbs up for the really cool quest line that forces to fight at my current time of playing two of these guys.
This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviewed Horizon Forbidden West. www.escapistmagazine.com/horizon-forbidden-west-zero-punctuation/ Watch it early on TH-cam and support our content via TH-cam Memberships for just $2/month. th-cam.com/channels/qg5FCR7NrpvlBWMXdt-5Vg.htmljoin
I’ll admit as a huge fan of that game, his review kind of stung.
Spoilers: he hated it in a way I really do not get, and that kinda made me a bit mad. I'm not sure why. The Horizon games are my favourite games ever, and I effing love Alloy as a protagonist. So seeing Yatzhee, who was pretty positive on the first game, suddenly turn around and go "what was I thinking? These games are shit, and if you like them, why don't you just commit bodily harm instead you twats?" feels like a betrayal. Sorry, I know he's just a comedian, this is just a game, I shouldn't care, but somehow his HFW review kinda hurts. You are now free to mock me for it.
It's really good but balls hard
sound like a video to look foward to
@@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109 Totally with you in there. I am loving the hell out of HFW.
If the next few games he reviews are short games we know he's trying to play Elden Ring again
"played it until the desire to play Elden Ring overcame me, 5/10 now off with you"
Hi yac
If there’s anything I learned getting an English degree, its that you can stretch the most surface level concepts to whatever length you want if you use enough words lol.
Welcometo politics, or your average Yahtzee review
One or the other
"Spectacular backdrops and droptacular backstabs."
Pure poetry
Yeah that was a highlight for me too lol. Absolute gold.
I've been a fan for yeaaaaaaars. And when I think he's tapped out and reached his limit as a writer and narrator, I'm wrong. He does something new and hilarious and spot on. It's why I keep coming back.
@@tarnetskygge He did it for D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die and E3 2014 as well.
For once, it's his job's deadline that actually does him in from having fun with the game.
Never seen that happen before.
@@BluntsNBeatz if anything I think that's why he initially complained demon's souls was too hard
@@timebomb4562 one of the problems with reviews especially ones that aren’t independent that’s why a lot of them want easy mode for souls cause they want to rush throu the game so, they can get the first review out
He's mentioned running out of time quite a few times on new releases he enjoyed.
@@mitchwilliamson5552 sure but, with ER it’s different he game changes during the mid-late game I love the game but, the difficulty spike in the late game is insane
@@BenDover-sl9zx God I hope so. I just got the Altus Plateu or something yestarday, and so far playing mage feels like cheating. I wanted to venture to other play styles beyong STR/DEX, but it seems Dragon Knight Faith would have been better, although I admit throwing meteorides at bosses is super fun, Can-t wait till I can start throwing fucking MOONS at them!
I was dying at the reference to putting a ton of fingers in pages in a choose your own adventure book. I did that all the time as a kid!
I'd be surprised if most people didn't, lol
I rememver i had a goosebumps one and that crap would just be like "you decided to join the circus and you died! In a really abrupt way!
Well it's not like if I hit "you died", I'm going to restart the book from the beginning. It's like a checkpoint in a game.
Yeah, anyone that had those kinds of books did. They were all so weird though...
Mark a page with two fingers, mark another page with three fingers.
Holy shit this new "jump" technology they invented is the best thing ever.
Seriously though there was nothing worse thant the "platforming" in Dark Souls. The Jump button is a godsend
Jumping, and to a lesser extent crouching, also really help highlight just how precise the hitboxes of enemy attacks are in this game. By the end of it I was hopping over or ducking under as many attacks as I could to get in some cheeky pokes and it was glorious. Well, when I didn't end up getting swatted out of the sky like some unfortunate fly, that is.
@@DrHammerr I learned the hard way to be careful with jumping when I was fighting Margit. The amount of time he batted me back to the ground was ridiculous. I'm having better luck with jumps against the more human-sized enemies, when they haven't ganged up on me and stunlocked me to death, that is.
It's also really opened up the world, I ran straight past a ton of secrets in Stormveil because I hadn't yet gotten my head around actually being able to jump over walls and obstacles (while in previous souls games a wall or a fence was usually there to tell you to go somewhere else). It's weird how much of a difference such a small change can do to the exploration part
@@Dasspapirfly I haven't started exploring Stormveil properly since I want to go down south in Limgrave to that peninsula and such before I get into the castle. That said, I also forget about jumping when exploring. I remember I can jump when on Torrent and when I'm fighting on foot, but someone reason when exploring on foot I forget that I can just jump over stuff. Not being able to jump is so ingrained into me from previous titles. Except Sekiro, but the setting is so different that I don't forget in that game.
@@ForeverLaxx Yeah, I also do the little hop when I get items from NPCs etc. I try to just see it as my character getting really excited about getting a gift (or picking something off of a corpse) xD
In defense of the crafting system, it's mostly been implemented to replace needing to purchase four billion arrows in order to actually play a bow based character. Having a truly infinite supply of consumable items means you can fully incorporate them into your build, instead of endlessly holding onto a piece of grass in case you really need the extra stamina for Four Kings.
Yeah I like the crafting system, the resources give you something to do on your way across the vast distances and the actual crafting is so hands-off things practically craft themselves
+ depending on your build, you might not use it at all ( spare the odd curative for that damn Scarlet Gonorhea )
Yeah I love it, apart from the placements of recipes - for example I missed the recipe for crafting Fire Grease, so I had a much harder time early game than my friend because of it. Apart from that it's a nice little system to just throw in and give people more options to use and ways to get consumables.
The crafting system is largely ignorable if you don't want it. I only every really crafted holy pots for sekeltons, throwing knives for agro, boluses for status effects until I found Flame Cleanse Me, and arrows. You can ignore it if you want to no real detriment, you only really craft if you find yourself stuck on something.
I also think it provides a good balance off-set for people who wants to play non-spell builds. Range options and buffs are so advantaged in Elden Ring that int and faith builds would have too big of an advantage without the crafting system giving fighter types steady ammo and oils. I’m on a faith run rn, but am seriously considering a second character with no spells just to engage more with the crafting.
"let's roll back a bit" is probably one of the funnier Yahtzee jokes I can remember for a while.
That's going right up there with, "Allow me to expand," from the Devil May Cry 4 review
Damn, TH-cam people be easy as fuck to entertain. The ADHD generation is not having a positive impact on media th content, that's for sure.
@@stevenhetzel6483 k
@@stevenhetzel6483 it’s just foreigners. Yanks are so easily entertained you don’t have to actually be funny. Yahtzee left europe and Oz years ago. He’s not surrounded by funny people anymore.
@@burn3978 sure is a lot going on in these two comments
Can't believe he did a review after being only like 2% in. Missed that incredible fight against the severed breast of the unholy shelf.
it's crazy what passes for review nowadays
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p well, remember that he's more of a critic, and he does have a schedule he has to keep to with other games in the queue
@Fat Metalhead Nerd he's essentially stopped in the second main boss..
I reached that boss with about 15h game hours..
I'm about 60 hours now and only halfway to the end...
Sure you can rush the game and finish in 30 hours ..but there's so much side content and exploration to od
@@juliantapia1407 still, how much can you really say about this game before facing the severed breast of the unholy shelf? I understand the pressure, but this is more like first impressions, you know?
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p that's a valid point, and one that's been made about his videos for years now.
He usually goes more in depth once he gets a chance through supplementary videos or articles, but his 'first impressions' usually go pretty in depth in regards to the way the game functions and utilizes his own experiences in the games industry and with other similar games these last couple decades.
He may be a bit harsh at times, but he's clear about always looking at the bad stuff first and focusing on it, and it's usually pretty easy to tell by how vehement he gets whether they're small potatoes or party crasher issues.
The scale of the game is mind-blowing. I visited several areas (sometimes involuntarily) and realized how massive this game is. My jaw is still on the floor. About 24 hours in and still hanging around Limgrave area, can't stop scanning every inch of the map. The marriage of Souls and Open World is definitely a happy one.
It could have very easily been utterly disastrous. I think it's less about Dark Souls + Open World = good game, but rather, Fromsoft very deliberately bucked all the industry standard bullshit that plagues open world games and went their own route with it, which made it 1000x better.
Same...I'm about 90 hours in ...it's addictive as hell...the greatest part is the game can be as easy or hard as you make it...i prefer harder ...but im alsa completionist so I level up arcane more than i would if i was trying to be over powered...ithas the added benefit of better drop rates so i have more gear than most people who i see withearly game armor halfway through...the most amazing thing is also the fact that From doesn't care if you do all the content...so many areas are hidden really well...I'd say 90+ % of the game is optional and they treat the players with respect ...they believe you can find these things by hints and looking at the map/environmental clues
I can assure you at 105 hours I'm still doing that just much farther away
@@ForeverLaxx I watched RTGame's video on Elden Ring after playing it a bit, and the video is basically a tutorial on how to do all the hardest possible things in the worst possible order while still having a great time. As he sits outside the third main story boss's room while level 1 with nothing but the starting club and no idea how to level up. It was funny as fuck.
Oh you have no idea just how big it really is. Have fun
I recall part of the original _Dark Souls_ charm was that if _one_ area was feeding you your own teeth, you could leave it for a while and try a _different_ one. Hardly surprising, then, that the way to improve upon that feature is for _literally every direction_ to be a different area -- I was already Level 50 by the time I remembered I had a castle to storm, for all the _fun_ I was having exploring.
Granted, not even half a day after I posted this, I lost over 10,000 runes (10,993, if anyone wants the _exact_ number) to the ol' 'tough enemy ambush/falling from a platforming section' double-whammy that the _Souls_ series likes so much. Nothing knocks the fun out of the experience quite as fast as losing five figures to rotten luck, even if that total doesn't cover half a level anymore.
@@Nitrinoxus You can just backstab 10 of the short guys in the area with the beastman church and get those back easily.
@@0Dexter00 even more if you use rune boosters.
@@0Dexter00 Yeah, I know, and I did precisely that already. It's more the _principle_ of the thing, really -- just because failure and setbacks are part of how the game teaches you doesn't mean it doesn't still sting when it happens.
@@Nitrinoxus Yeah, it took until Dark Souls 3 for me to learn to take every area slow and check my corners. I get it.
I love that the first "mandatory" boss is designed to not be the first boss you should fight. Its so tough it kicks your ass until you decide to go explore and fight other enemies
I don’t think Margit is actually mandatory, at least not until the Capitol entrance to the Erdtree where he’s Margott Omen King. I got there without killing Radahn, Renala, or the other two because I just wandered in. I think the only truly mandatory bosses so far are Godfrey the first Elden lord and Margott Omen King in the capitol.
and here i am with 3 characters all of which beat that boss at level 12 and the next boss at level 15 without ever upgrading my weapon once. Then again i did challenge runs like level 5 sorc all boss run on DS1 (Including the dlc) and getting dark bead.
I did not get that memo, lmao. I legit just thought they chose violence and decided that the first boss of the game would be some Orphan of Kos/Pontiff Sulyvahn bullshit. Took me like two hours of beating my head against to overcome... at least I've learned my lesson now. Better late than never?
@@vogunBurgundy but then Godrick ended up a disappointment .. until roundtable guys chilled you out confirming Godrick is a lil beach :D
Haven't gotten to Renala, yet been roasted till almost 'done' by some optionals, now i kinda dread bosses that majority of playerbase seem to be plagued by...
See that's the funny thing, Godrick was second try for me, and Rennala was first try. I think that's just the way this game has to work by virtue of being open-world, your mileage (in this case, how hard a boss was for you) will very wildly vary from experience to experience.
Ah yes, good old Rennala phase 2. Spend a couple minutes wailing on some helpless mooks, enter the second phase and get the actual fucking Moon dropped on your head.
@@ammonsnell3208 Thank you, Miyazaki.
I got to that fight, got my shit absolutely pushed in for 20 minutes and decided to put a pin in and go explore Caelid first. Did that, found some new snazzy legendary sword, go it to +9, got side tracked in a lot of underground cities and eventually remembered to come back to her.
Only to get my shit pushed in again, because she kept backing off and shooting the moon at me lol.
Actually got her then on the 3rd try because my extended health bar graced me with the ability to soak a bunch of those hits.
God I love this game
I just ignored the troll and ran towards her to make her stop magicking.
try blood loss
and thenblood loss
@@greez6463 I decided to make my very first Elden Ring run a dual wield colossal swords run because I'm a crazy person and actually liked Dark Soul II. I did not have a good time with Raya Lucaria.
To be fair, I enjoyed the first phase due to the fantasy of me being like anakin and take on the younglings in coruscant.
That's an interesting point of view
Yo what the fuck, how to delete someone else's comment?
They even look at you pleadingly, asking with their eyes "What are we going to do?"
You'd slaughter the younglings?🥺
@@SnuSnuDungeon
I know my next character's name now =)
Fromsofts answer to the roll behind smack the boss on the ass was to add an additional attack luring you into a false sense of security.
But what really fools you is if you are not in range of that extra attack the AI won't do it, luring you into a bigger false sense of security since you think "that's the end of that attack combo I can sneak some damage in when he does that attack animation again".
Or to give the attack more range courtesy of bullshit hitboxes. I don't know how many times I've gotten smacked by weapons that really, really shouldn't have hit me. Margit was the main culprit for that bs with the hitboxes. I had to be careful with my jump attacks because he kept swatting me out of the air too.
@@SolaScientia Ah yes, Margit, lord of the ass pull... all those looong slow devastating attacks with his stupid stick, and then he ALSO has the power to whip out a shiv of pure light in 0.01 seconds and slash you twice in the next 0.02 seconds. Which is all before he starts doing his second-phase nonsense where he starts pulling entire longswords or greatswords of light from his butt, as well. Mid-combo. And the combos are like... nine hits long, with some hits seemingly too close together to even allow correctly timed dodge rolls, let alone any semblance of attacking him back.
And of course the hitboxes. I do frequently find myself going "Yeah, no, that sword didn't touch me? It was over here. I was over THERE. Zero points of contact for even a scrape."
@@hazukichanx408 I think I avoided the light shiv slashing he did, usually because I'd backed off to heal from some other nonsense he'd pulled. In my final attempts against him I got to where I could predict the stupid jumping attack with the giant hammer, but the wave from it would still hit me half the time. The shackle was very useful, but I didn't read the description of it and didn't realize I had just 2 uses per fight with it. It also doesn't work after the second phase starts up. I'm glad I looked it up afterward. Damn thing cost me 5000 runes so I wanted to see about selling it if it didn't have any further use. Nope, it can be used in a later boss fight so I'll be hanging onto it.
I mean, looking back on the fight, it's not the worst boss fight I've had to do; that goes to the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst even though he's not an actual major boss. I haven't gotten to the DLC bosses yet to compare them to him.
@@SolaScientia The crow was the fucking worst
@@brooks6651 I absolutely hate him. I mean, neat boss fight with such a skilled hunter, but it took me ages to get the pattern down. I'd die so quickly too at first that I know it took me more attempts than any other boss ever. It took ages for me to get the hang of only attack him when he put the goddamn gun away and had the decency to stab himself for me. I just hate toward the end when he stops healing that he also stops using the sword and keeps the gun out. I had to be so careful with my attacks so he wouldn't fucking parry me into oblivion. I know he can be parried, but I've still not gotten the hang of timing my shots to interrupt attacks, so the gun doesn't get much use to be honest.
Even Djura's ally helping him in Old Yharnam wasn't as bad and I was a moron in that fight. I fought him without taking Djura out first, so my dumb ass was busy dodging Djura's bullshit gatling gun while also staying alive long enough to land hits on his pal.
"I'm here to serve up a footlong of sizzling meaty death to this MOON-y cow" - I see what you did there *Wink*
When I first fought Margit, I immediately said "oh fuck that" and I picked a random direction on the map and just went. 2 hours later I was underground and fighting a giant spiritual moose. Never change Fromsoft.
doing all of siofra river before margit is pretty ballsy lol
To be honest I thought the horse not being allowed into castles and dungeons was intended as a loving tribute to Yoshi's debut in Super Mario World where he had to wait by the door for no adequately explained reason.
He's just a little skeerd. He'll be back later haha
Nobody wants Dino shit in the Grand Hall to be fair
Yoshi is animal; he'd shit on the floor if you let him in a building.
@@kumquatelvis so will I but people don't kick me out til I do it
@@louiswalton431 If you tell me your
going to shit on my carpet, I'm letting you inside.
Would honestly love a second review of this from Yahtzee after he finishes the game
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Agreed.
...why? Do you really think his overall view of the game is going to change after completing it? Do the mechanics completely and utterly change in the second half? About the only way his opinion would be like to change by the end would be if he thought the game had a really disappointly shit ending worth tearing a strip off it for.
@@ArcaneAzmadilate game bosses and areas are undeniably controversial
Elden Ring made me realize I'd brick wall an area meant to be explored 3/5ths of the way through the game for a red head with a questline that can only be described as golden needle in a scarlet rot poison swamp haystack.
I know the dude you're referring to XD I still haven't gone back to get the needle.
I found the needle after running around for a bit on horse back. Since I don't think torrent can get scarlet rot it wasn't too back. The boss was a pain because I have that stupid bug where the enemies are just straight up unrendered 70% of the time, so I'd have my ass mulched by a hoard of invisible fucks. Otherwise it was a pretty neat boss.
You can kite that boss out into the swamp and circle him on your horse while the swamp geysers kill him.
@@wertjoe a friend pointed this out to me, it blew my mind that I could even leave the boss arena once his health bar appeared.
@@wertjoe you can just leave?!?
Rennala’s boss arena is amazing with the stars and full moon.
Nailed that boss fight on the head. "Cool. Finally done with that slog... wait, what? YOU DIED. Wait, WHAT?!"
You should probably be upgrading your weapons if the first phase is a slog. Without exploring more than limgrave and the area before that boss I was killing her the first time the orb broke 3/4 times. To describe it as a slog I’m guessing you were needing to down her more than that which is probably a dps issue. Not defending the boss design ( not that I found it to be much of an issue) just trying to help
@obsolete18 A big portion of it was figuring out the mechanics first. The first 2 times I was just swinging at every minion. Around the 3rd one was finding the necessary minions while trying not to die.
It starts to feel like a slog by the 4th+ time because it turns out the 2nd phase is enough of a boss fight in itself, making Phase 1 feel like retroactive busywork.
What's crazy is if you look at the wiki's recommended levels, they say to be around 50-60 to beat her, but it also says to have weapon only around +5 while I suck and needed mine to be +12
Sadly most of the major bosses have a phase 2 starting instakill attack. So you finally get to phase 2 and immediately die.
@@demonintellect9834 Call it a hot take but I would rather be hit with it immediately than halfway through the second phase so I feel even worse about it.
I actually can’t believe how much i’m loving this game. I get the usual butt munching difficulty, with the freedom of ignoring every mandatory boss. This is beautiful!
Truth! I decided to help a good doggo and went for a jaunt all the way to the Caria Manor in Northwestern Liurnia - I haven't even fought Margit yet.
@@sluttyMapleSyrup stormveil was my second legacy dungeon that i did XD
It was little on the easy side when i came back….
@@losersbecomewinners2043 I have a feeling Nokron's gonna be my first one (if it even is a story dungeon)...
@@sluttyMapleSyrup i’m still trying to find that place! Some NPC’s want me to find it, and i don’t know where to look!!!
@@losersbecomewinners2043 defeat the big dual wielding boss who tortures his tiny horse
Yahtzee the Maidenless 🕯️
Obligatory "He has a wife and kid" comment
Jokes on you he does have a maiden
@@starkiller332 Not a _maiden_ anymore ;)
@@starkiller332
MAIDENLESS
@@infinitypilot Oh my
"Serve up a sizzling footlong of meaty death to this moony cow!"
Could not stop laughing, love the writing for these reviews.
Ah, hearing my brother play this game has been COLORFUL to say the least, glad you all are having fun!
Colourful*
I find very few games get the crafting elements right. To my mind you need to get a few things right that most AAA games don't understand.
First, the stuff you craft needs to be blatantly better than the junk you find lying around.
Second, it needs to be flexible enough to make you feel smart when you make some crafting combination and it works.
Third, don't make crafting resources feel like dirt cheap or failing that. Make good crafting materials exist along side a lot of bad ones so you feel you need to collect them in case they might be just what you need to turn you whatever into a boss killing whatever.
Yep, the "stuff you craft needs to be blatantly better than the junk you find lying around" is kinda obvious but people seem to ignore this. I remember saving up money (to buy the schematics) and resources to craft a sword in The Witcher 2 just to find one much better inside the sewers 30 minutes later.....
I usually don't bother with crafting in most games when it comes to weapons and armor and such. I do like that in Elden Ring I can craft firebombs, bolts/arrows, and such rather than spending runes to buy them up like in previous titles. That said, going around gathering a ton of resources and then selling them is an easy way to bank runes for leveling up or upgrading weapons and such.
The only game I've ever genuinely enjoyed crafting things in was Dark Cloud 2. Resources were plentiful because they were used for EVERYTHING. You could buy them but they had a steep-ish price, Going through one or two dungeon level would generally result in supplies being rained down on you and it was a really satisfying loop. I never felt like I was constantly running out, but I also never felt like I was drowning in them. I had to ration *just* enough that my choices felt meaningful, it was a fantastic experience.
I actually liked the crafting system because it cut out the parts where you travel to a place and wait for a loading screen to stack up on equipment just to see another loading screen to get back where you were at in the first place.
I distrust crafting systems because my first exposure was Dead Space 3 and it exitsted entirely to sell you toolboxes full of resources, game balance be buggered.
Didn’t say it’s a 10/10 instant classic flawless game that’s already defined the future of gaming
L + Ratio + Maidenless + Touch Grace
+ No Runes?
+ Jump technology
+ Unfit even to graft
+ Foul Tarnished
+ Foolish ambitions put to rest
I can't wait for a year to hear him gush over this game
"As i am forced to play CoD with zombies, i wish i didnt get bored of Elden Ring."
Who is this elf and why do people want her ring?
You honestly think GRRM will publish again in a year?
I don't like California's chances though...
@@AndyDillbeck At least it'll put out the fires....
While not gushing, he's gone out of his way for Extra-Punctuation with praising this game's open world design vs the obligatory JimineyCockThroat. Great video, and it's my new number one go-to-argument of why I'll still prefer games like BotW (Or Elden Ring) over boring in scope titles akin to Horizon and Far Cry 3+.
@@84jesterx he's praised far cry 3 in the past, it's a good game, just the beginning of a shitty design
Yahtzee Forgot To Talk About The Big Scary Bears That Come Out Of Nowhere
I'm just glad that elden ring has stuff in all parts of its massive map, unlike a lot of "open worlds" where it's just some empty space to make it seem bigger. And then there is an entire underground...
elden ring was the most empty vacant feeling game i have ever played in terms of “good” rpg “open worlds”.
Seriously the game is so void of any feeling or meaning its hillarious. No rewards for anything except b grade graphics.
The combat is kickass but they ruined it with ridiculous anime fights with stupid AOE spam.
BloodBorne and Sekiro were dope though
Lmao me and my mates are in our 40s and the phrase "spazzing the fuck out" has been used a LOT during our playthrough spot on.
i think yahtzee is about the same age, maybe 30's
im 21 and we always used that too. probs come from me parents tho
My friends usually go with the phrase "wilding out" to describe it, similar flavor.
Except that word has two very different meanings depending on what part of the English speaking world you live in lol
@@mrZanZibar777 you're right, I didn't think about that as an American
Gonna play Yahtzee bingo (haven't watched it yet):
- Mentions his love of Dark Souls
- Mentions the need to test yourself against bosses til you see a red mist
- Laments the fact it's gone open world like everything else
- Praises the exploration being similar to BotW
- Laments the need for *crafting*
- Gives it a pretty positive review, even if he somewhat thinks it's not as good as Dark Souls
Pretty spot on, but I do think he may like it better than regular dark souls. He just hasn't had the time to play it all the way through since its massive
@@shipkipsamazingchannel3248 unless you know someone, I’ve yet to hear a reviewer “complete” this game……
@@c.wubby.u861 most people haven't, at least to 100% yet. I know I still have a big chunk still left to play
@@shipkipsamazingchannel3248 Distortion (speedrunner) just beat the game (only missed a few of the mini-dungeons, got all the main bosses and field stuff).
And it only took him 72ish hours...
@@c.wubby.u861 Chris Carter of Destructoid best the game and for all Achievements for it in 84 hours
Dude is a beast, he reviewed Horizon Zero Dawn/Breath of the Wild/Nioh at the same time in 2017.
I share his sentiment with Renalla. A fight that could’ve been great if it weren’t for the first phase. Wasn’t difficult, just tedious. Like running up to Radhan.
I think that could be solved by making her second phase be permanent. As in, after the first time you trigger it, the next attempts already begin in that arena in the second phase.
The first phase was "fun" at first in that it was actually pretty fun being in a new situation and coming up with a strategy, even if it was a pretty simple strategy. And then that's it. I decided to wait until I was overwhelmingly overpowered instead of bother with the fun tax.
@@joaoassumpcao3347 Hell, they saved your progress with Bed of Chaos, and that was unequivocally the worst Souls boss ever. So ffs, why couldn't they do that with Rennala?
@@BabaIsViewer Just imagine Bed of Chaos not giving checkpoints. One of the easiest bosses would become the hardest boss Fromsoft has ever made. Remember, you kill the BoC in a single hit, and you get checkpoints for basically every 10 steps you take.
I didn't find it tedious the first phase isn't very long at all and the second phase is easy to handle so most people won't by on that boss long anyways
3:19 i have that workbench, harbor freight for like 100 bucks. solid bench, nice drawers, has a power strip on the side. doesnt come with the hooks for the board though, those are seperate. does come with a nice little light though.
It is my first experience with Souls like games. And i must say turning into farmhouse chutney 5000 times before i progress would be tedious and dull if it wernt for the fact that it feels so rewarding when you learn how to get past the enemy and get the ntoficiation enemy felled.
That's exactly what Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro is like and it's great.
Give DS1 a shot too. It's much more condensed of an experience, and even strays close to a Metriodvania in design. The fights are comparatively a lot more relaxed than all the sequels.
You're going to hate the "jump" button though, after playing ER.
Welcome to Souls games!
@@signa8 I'd say Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne are better introductions. Jumping into DS1 after Elden Ring is gonna be a chore for that person.
You're beginning to see why people love this franchise
It is kinda sad that Yahtzee had to stop at that point, since it was where things start to open up lore wise. Which is kinda ironic even more since it tells me that he didn't get caught by the various map teleport traps that would have challenged his Dark Souls trained instincts more......
Those very Dark Souls trained instincts might be what saves anyone from the boxy mist. I've always been on edge around chests more so than I am with bosses!
Yeah I immediatly hit roll when the mist appeared. Ofc I ended up letting it grab me anyways later on, just to see what fresh hell FS came up with.
The teleport traps were kinda fun actually as they always led to some fine loot plus you can just teleport back anywhere after finding a grace. Nowhere near as threatening as mimics.
Over the past week I watched most my friends play Elden Ring
seeing one of them reminisce on the various planter and parking-lot-concrecte-ball shaped monsters as he rode along the cliffside to go and kill what I can only describe as a Castle Greyskull playset mounted on top of the gonarch from half-life had a weird charm to it
AS I WROTE THIS I got TWO steam notifs of friends playing it, fromsoftware outdid themselves
@@Ayeloo What's fucked up is I know exactly where he is just based on that description, and it is exactly correct for what's going on
one thing i appreciate about crafting.
because (for common items) the resources are quite plentiful, but you can only carry a maximum amount and can't craft in combat. this is one of the first times i actually used consumable items in a souls game. as one who doesn't like to look up the wiki for every boss's weakness... i have beaten entire games without using firebombs because "oh no, i might need these on a later mob and i don't want to farm endless souls to buy more when those souls could instead go to more stats"
because you generally have the materials for lots, but can only use a few at a time, that actually encouraged me to use the items instead of hording them incessantly. so at the very least i appreciated that. because now i can actually test out "does this thing take more from fire?" without feeling like i've permanently lost my chance to use one of these annoyingly uncommon items on a boss that REALLY needs it
for me crafting is perfect. just what you need when you need, it's beautiful
As a fellow Souls vet, I’m glad to see that Yahtzee also found some of these bosses more difficult than previous ones.
There are a handful of late-game fights that will make you feel like you’re losing your edge. Some of these enemies feel like they were designed for Bloodborne, but they’re in a markedly slower and more methodical Souls game.
Still freaking love Elden Ring though, it’s possibly my new favorite game of all time.
70 hours in and i'm still like find large new areas, it's crazy!
Star scourge 😮💨 Jesus fuck that ones gonna be a wall
arguably being a souls vet makes elden ring harder than not being one because we are more likely to glinse over stuff like actually using heavy attacks to break super armor and go for a critical hit or using guard counters i found myself using only R1 for hours having trouble with margit until i tried weaving in guard counters jump attacks (which also avoid enemy ground slam attacks btw) and charged R2's and suddenly margit was going on his knees ready for a hefty crit multiple times and it got fairly doable
Defeating one of the bosses even gives you the ability to bring the rally mechanic back.
@@that_legion_main If you're having trouble, getting Rotten Breath from the dragon church is super useful. It does a hell of a lot of damage over time and makes longer boss fights that you're not sure when to go for hits in much more manageable.
Pretty much agree, but I would note that doing side content and finding treasure almost always gets you unique loot (weapons, ashes of war, etc) crafting materials are instead usually littered about, so it's not as bad as it sounds. Crafting is actually pretty useful but I ignored it anyway.
And lol, poor Yahtz has a long long way to go before he's done.
If they would just change the particle effect for the Arteria Leaf and Nascent Butterfly to the normal item one instead of the rare item one, I'd be fine with the whole system for the most part.
I'm so glad he brought up how the bosses in From Soft games lately have boiled down to "boss flails their arms around like a crazy person", because it's so annoying to deal with.
I feel like that depends on the boss
like bosses that are supposed to be unskilled like Godrick feel like they're just flailing about randomly and a hit can come from any one of his 20+ limbs at any moment
meanwhile bosses that are supposed to be more skilled like Morgott feel like they have much more deliberate swings.
90% of the bosses in Bloodborne are flailing, rampaging, screeching piles of shit.
@@snowblind9551 but you have the mobility to deal with them
Same. Bonus points to him realizing the jump attack is the best attack in the whole game cuz it's true. That is my biggest problem with this game. Almost everything else is sublime, but my god the combat and the bosses are just the most annoying spam fests. The bears, the poison horror army ladies, the crabs, the lobsters, the hands, all waving their arms and bodies around like bats out of hell. I'm not even to end, end game where I heard the bosses are worse. Souls' AI is getting better but your character has barely any more *useful* tools than they did in 2009. (And spirit tuning doesn't count, it's boring and trivializes most bosses without adding to the fun.)
Most of the bosses have that one combo that you really don’t want to get caught in, but I’d argue they only pull it out every once in a while and most of the attacks in between are shorter and easier to deal with.
If Yahtzee keeps playing I think what he will appreciate more is just how big and grandiose much of the game feels, even compared to previous entries. Dark Souls has always been about you, some small insect, taking on a grand, powerful god, but are only able to do so because they have decayed and rotted. Yes, the first gimmick boss was a bit of a let down in gameplay, but the other two big boss gimmicks are fantastic and really make you feel the weight of how powerful they were in their primes, especially because they are still quite challenging.
I'm assuming the first gimmick boss you're talking about is Renallia, but I'm not sure about the other two. Is it Radahn and Rykard (all three start with an 'r' lol)? Those are my best guesses, but I wouldn't exactly call Radahn a gimmick boss, you still fight him pretty much the same way you would fight most bosses, except you have a bunch of summons.
@@satincartoon2213 I mean... you can fight Radahn normally, but then it was also entirely possible to fight Rykard (assuming you have some method of attacking from range), Yhorm, the Ancient Dragon, the Folding Screen Monkeys, the Adjudant, the Tower Knight, Phylanx, the Old Hero (I'm starting to realize how many gimmicky fights Demon Souls had), and the Storm King (assuming you have some method of attacking from range) normally. Rennala and Sekiro's Divine Dragon are the only ones that feel like you're really forced to play with their gimmiks.
@@Eclipsed_Embers saying you *can* fight Radahn normally rings with the same tune as saying you can bench press a car. Sure, maybe it’s possible for the absolute best with hundreds of hours of training, but realistically no one’s going to do that, so in the end pretty much everyone does *have* to resign to his gimmick of summoning tons and tons of summons and pray he doesn’t target you as “he who will eat shit today”
@@satincartoon2213 I mean, you can beat Radahn without ever attacking him. The gimmick isn't mandatory, but it is certainly a gimmick.
Fair enough lads, I just wasn't sure it could be called a gimmick cuz I expected people to still ride into the thick of it and fight him head on along with the summons
Fun trivia fact: this is the first Zero Punctuation where Yahtzee uses the word "yeet." Unironically even.
The moment where I first went behind Stormveil Castle and saw the fog lifting to reveal Liurna of the Lakes was definitely a “wow” moment.
The first time I fought that boss with the phase 1 shield I was playing with a friend, and there was no shield or special minions generating the shield... But she was still invincible. With all of the actual fight mechanics missing, we resorted to experimentation and eventually discovered that she wasn't immune to status effects, so we killed her via my mate's bleed spell (until he quickly ran out of magic flasks) and the tiny tick damage from my one black flame spell.
A literal 20 minutes later we got her down, discovered phase 2 and had our flask-less faces beaten in.
Attempt 2 and the mechanic of the shield and minions was glaringly obvious because they hadn't been there when we were scouring the arena for clues on the previous attempt.
Oh, then when we did it in my friend's world he died on phase 2 and respawned INSIDE the boss room with all the enemies calmly staring at him. I think it genuinely freaked him out a little based on how glad he seemed that he could fast-travel out.
The "it's a Fromsoft Soulsy game therefore good" is the truest thing he's ever said lmao
I was initially annoyed to see that there was a crafting system but then I realized cracked pots recharge after use and basically every component has a grace point somewhere that makes it easy to farm. I can now actually have a limitless supply of crystal throwing knives and firebombs without having to spend time farming souls and it's no longer just for late game only. I can now use all my favorite items and don't have to just horde them for pvp.
My biggest fear was I was going to just be bored out of my mind. Breath of the Wild is nice to look at but so boring to play. ER is incredibly dense and its average quality is so high, I still enjoy Limgrave when playing new characters.
Yes! I always keep a supply of Holy Urns on hand whenever I find myself up against Undead. While Necromancers prevent you from perma-killing undead normally. If they’re killed by Holy damage, they don’t even enter the revive state!
Oh so this is how I learn cracked pots are reusable. I never threw them since "this is costing me so much precious xp I could be using to level up"
@@LarsWestergren not only cracked pots, but ritual pots and perfume bottles too!
God! I haven't seen a Zero Punctuation video in YEARS! It's good to hear Yahtzee ramble on again and hilarious as always. Was not expecting the sass at the end though. A good little relevant jab and wholely welcome.
"Spectacular backdrop and droptacular backstab"
Genius
"Boy howdy I wish I could fucking die" got my biggest belly laughs this week. Well done, as ever, yahtz
The line about keeping your fingers in Choose Your Own Adventure books is so specific and yet relatable, this is why I love Zero Punctuation
4:57 Tee Hee, "Moony Cow"... That fits so well :P
One of my favorite moments so far was the dragon in Limgrave, got tired of banging my head against Margit's wall and went exploring, found some ruins and went a killin', chose a direction, rode that way, and got sat on by a fucking dragon, it was great.
Also love the giant's pulling the cart up to the church ruins, spent a good couple minutes trailing the thing, I love the touches like that, as far as I can tell nothing really happens, but it goes a long way in making it feel like a massive world, I really love the way soulsborne games make you feel small, like none of the enemies are waiting there to kill you, you're just another moving part in a big sprawling world and it's sick
theres a treasure chest in the back of those carts you smack the giant they stop pulling you go to the rear of the cart hop on and loot
I knew that dragon would spawn in so I avoided the lake for a bit. I finally triggered its arrival and I had one fight against it that went very badly. In my vague defense I didn't have a long weapon on me at the time. I had my starting scimitars and I might have found the flail by then. Short weapons are trash for horseback fighting. I found the twinblade in the ruins though and it's been great fun. I need another crack at that dragon.
The cart does have loot. I had a go at the guys trailing it. It was going okay until I summoned Torrent to ride closer to the cart. I shouldn't have bothered. I ended up seated on an invisible horse and I couldn't do a damn thing. Nothing responded at all. Then I spontaneously died for no obvious reason. I didn't return to the cart after that, lol. I'll have another try at it again soon though; especially now that Margit is no longer a problem and I've leveled up a tad.
@@SolaScientia the dragon is a teacher it teaches you the value of heavy attacks jump attacks and torrent it also teaches you that this is not darksouls you can not burry your head up their ass and chip away
You learn to mount and unmount in battle because of its wide area dragonfire you need to mount up and run out then go back in jump or go for the head
3 or 4 jump/charged r2s will stagger it and leave it open for a critical hit
But if all you do is light attacks at its back like in darksouls you'll die
@@sean00172 I was figuring that out when I died to its fire, lol. I'll try again later. I'm already not playing like it's Dark Souls. I also had only my starting scimitars when I found it. I feel better with my twinblade +2 now.
Bloody Slash, just melts everything moon lady boss included. It's one of the "Guds" that you can "Git." Maybe even disappointingly good, in that I'm disappointed in myself for just crushing my enemies. Hahaha
The "thought I picked up 2 smithing stones" thing happened to me as well, super annoying.
2 phase bosses are cool, but when every boss has 2 phases. It really starts to grind on you.
One of my least favorite bosses in Dark Souls 3 was Lady Freya. She wasn't a hard boss by any means, but when I have to patiently wait out phase 1 and phase 2 just to attempt the actual fight part of the fight, it just feels like a waste of my time.
The best of them seem to be natural extensions of the previous phases. Lady Maria from Bloodborne comes to mind.
I assume you mean Sister Friede? And I like the way most were done in Elden ring, I prefer having one health bar and adding a couple of new attacks at half rather than some bosses like Friede as you say just having 3x the HP and a phase that isn't really anything like the other. Though I'm surprised you say she isn't hard, she is probably like the 3rd hardest boss in that game for me.
@@SuperSecretAgentNein I like ones like that. I'll look up about the boss after the fight and then wonder why it's listed as having 2 or 3 phases because to me it all seemed like one phase. That said, I've played enough Bloodborne and DS3 to tell when the different phases hit. Although, calling it a second phase just because the weapon is switched to a slightly different form seems a tad ridiculous to me. Like Gascoigne changing to the long form of the axe and such.
@@TheMirksta Yeah, I often forget about soft phase 2s. If a phase 2 adds a new moveset on top of an existing one then it doesn't really bother me that much.
Elden Ring just has a shit ton of back to back real phase 2 bosses where the second phase is just a completely new boss entirely.
And as for Friede being hard or not, I really think it's just a misconception that she is hard because dying to her is really punishing.
This review begs for a follow up in the future. It seems like there is still so much to talk about.
I know a lot of people are having issues running it on their systems, and they’re right to want those issues addressed (though, to be clear, I’m over 60 hours in at this point and I’ve yet to encounter any problems of that nature), and as far as the crafting mechanic goes, I agree that it’s probably the game’s most extraneous feature; 95% of the time I’m just using it to make more arrows because it’s more convenient to use the massive pile of animal bones I’m practically suffocating under than warping back to a merchant to spend runes on a perpetually diminishing resource.
Other than those two points, however, more than any other FromSoft game I’ve played (save perhaps Bloodborne), Elden Ring has completely blown every expectation I had out of the water. I’ve fallen in love with this game _so damn hard_ and I cannot recommend it enough, regardless of whether you’re a Souls veteran or a series newcomer.
Nah. Greases, boluses, firebombs, & throwing knives. I guarantee you the crafting system will make all of these tools more common & accessible for players to use as the game enters the second or third month of its (probably three or four year) life cycle.
It's been EASILY implemented better than anything related to Bloodborne's chalice dungeons, for eg, where the only acceptable path through was via a save edited route that dramatically reduced most of the content, & even truncated, it was a samey slog that filled your inventory with useless dreck to make more samey dungeons. I'l take Elden Ring's crafting over that literally every single day
I mean you pretty much nailed the reason why the crafting system exists, having to warp back and restock consumables at a merchant is tedious as heck, but now you just need to pause the game outside of combat whenever you need to restock.
Still kinda wishing they'd cut down on crafting resource loot and given you more upgrade stones though...
@@GameDevYal Honestly they don't even need to give you more material, the material for Somber weapons was just fine IMO, but regular weapons are way too expensive to upgrade. 12 of each tier is a hell of a lot for one weapon when you find then in 1s or 3s most of the time.
Turn. Off. Steam. overlay. minimize steam in the background. Boom. My friends 1060 can run it.
Jumping attacks are definitely my go-to. I finally found a long enough weapon to use while on Torrent, so I can actually hit whatever I'm running at. When I had just my scimitars and a flail I couldn't hit shit until I was basically standing on whatever I wanted to hit; and then that usually resulted in me getting stunlocked to death. Yay. Torrent got despawned when I was clearing an area, but then I saw I could summon him again. I summoned him except he didn't appear. I was sitting on an invisible horned horse for a bit until I spontaneously died. That was fun... I didn't return to that area (trying to clear out the enemies around that first traveling caravan thing) after that, but it's on my list now that I've leveled up a bit more. I also just need to sit and mark out places of interest on the map, because I keep getting sidetracked on my way to a specific location and then I forget what I was originally setting out to do.
I'm 9 hours in and have done only the first mandatory boss. I've done 3 small, pretty easy dungeon bosses (I guess it's technically 4, but I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't found it yet) and whole lot of wandering around avoiding anything bigger than me. I guess I should try to fight the guys also on horses, as well as those massive trolls. As for the shield, I'm just two-handing my twinblade at this point and haven't equipped my shield in ages. I do keep forgetting that in Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 I can't beat my health back out of whatever took it. Although I did learn that there's an ash of war that gives players that ability, so I'll be hunting that down asap.
The tutorial reminds me of the starting asylum area in Dark Souls in that it's deceptively easy. I went through it like it was nothing and then was swiftly corrected as soon as I started exploring Limgrave properly.
my advice to you is learn the boss "one-shot kill AOE moves" everything else will fall into place.
The Berserk Greatsword and the Starscourge Greatsword are the absolute best for jump attacks.
Berserk Greatsword has the range, the other has the damage.
@@D2v0n Good advice. It's how I've survived in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 so far. Thankfully nearly all the bosses in Bloodborne telegraph their AoE attacks. What I'm finding with Elden Ring so far is that I have the same issue I have with Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne: common enemies are more trouble than the bosses most of the time. I didn't have much trouble with any Bloodborne boss until I hit Ebrietas. The Bloody Crow is entirely option and he's been the worst so far. Same goes for DS3. Margit gave me trouble in Elden Ring until I got that shackle. The regular enemies have been more of a problem. The 3 dungeon bosses I've fought were pretty easy, especially once I brought out a spirit to help me. I love the spirits we can use, lol.
@@utisti4976 I saw a clip of the fun attack the claymore can do and it looks awesome.
The only trouble with those swords is that I'm doing a dex build, lol. I'm putting enough levels in strength to let me use a cross bow and maybe some other stuff I eventually find, but I'm focusing my levels on health, stamina, and dex for the most part. Demon's Souls is the only FS game that sees me using a claymore or any slower weapon really thanks to most of the enemies being slow af. Well, I've used the hunter axe in Bloodborne some, but it's still faster than most of the slower DS3 weapons. I like faster weapons that let me get in a lot of hits without completely eating my stamina with just 2 or 3 hits.
" I do keep forgetting that in Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 I can't beat my health back out of whatever took it."
There is an amulet somewhere in early game that gives you a pretty substantial heal whenever you perform a critical attack (backstab etc.). I don't remember where exactly it is, but I'm somewhat certain it must be in a dungeon in the area before Stormveil Castle, because I had that in the castle itself, and in my playthrough I actually spent a lot of time in this region before going to the castle, and started really exploring other regions once I killed Godrick.
This has to be one of my favorite ZP's in a long time. I only really played Bloodborne so this game was like a breath of fresh air. The enemies that flail around randomly really are just terrible.
I assume you have not met the marionettes in Elden Ring, have you?
@@akhannar9368 I saw a streamer fight them. She was hitting them with a giant fucking sword, then they decided to not get staggered anymore and start flailing around, stunlocked her to death. Oh and they have no windup to do that so....Fun :D
@@Yorikoification Did that include the winged marionettes?
@@akhannar9368 Oh they can fucking fly too?!
@@Yorikoification There are some with wigs later in the game. They don't fly too much, but if you thought that the walking marionettes' flailing was annoying, you better brace for the winged...
Dang I’m curious to hear his thoughts once he gets farther because it sounds like he barely scratched the surface if he only made it to Raya Lucaria by the time of this review
Is this a joke I don't understand, or did you actually miss the fact that he said that the last boss he fought was the final boss of Raya Lucaria?
@@akhannar9368 yeah that’s what I’m saying. Raya Lucaria is less than halfway through the game, assuming he is following the traditional path of limgrave first and liurnia second. That means he has such a massive amount of content he has yet to explore. It’s a shame journalists have to try and get these reviews out as soon as possible. I was just saying it’d be nice to hear his thoughts again once he has enough time to fully explore the game
@@akhannar9368 Depending on how far he explored that's barely getting past the start of the game.
Game is massive.
1:51 “Smithing stone 2: this time it’s personal “ is that a Periphery reference?
2:25 Ah yes, the ol' Lego Star Wars strat. Spamming the brokenly OP jumping ground slam. You can't beat the classics, I suppose!
I enjoyed the game so much more when I switched from pursuing the main plot to just exploring. Not only was discovering hidden enemies and treasure much more fun and rewarding than throwing myself endlessly at Margit, the You-Can-Catch-These-Hands Man. But, by the time I was satisfied with my exploring, I came back and trounced the same bosses that had given me so much trouble before.
miyazaki even said that that's the way he intended for people to play. He made the earlier bosses extra hard on purpose just to push people towards giving up brute forcing it and explore the world around them instead
I have never been able to get into Souls games and am pretty terrible at them, but I am still enjoying the game a lot. The fact that you can beat your head on a boss for hours and just decide to go do other stuff when you get too frustrated is a god send.
And it certainly doesn't hurt that it is quite possibly the best looking game ever made.
So I feel this video should have been longer, because theres a number of things worth talking about. The most important perhaps being the small litany of amateur dev mistakes that were made, that were seemingly never made in previous souls titles. And secondly, the difficulty, which Yahtz touched on. With regards to mistakes, I think the most important are the UI, and the failure to respect player choice in a number of instances.
UI: The intrusive menu prompts are terrible. The naming conventions for upgrade materials was likewise terrible, and I'm glad Yahtz touched on that. Now, lets remind ourselves that Elden Ring allows us to chug as much Sunny D as we want, but the moment we want to resurrect our horse, it suddenly gives a shit, and tosses us a menu prompt about whether we want to lose one crimson flask charge to get our horse back, which we have to navigate and respond to, while we're in the middle of combat. Look personally, I just want my horse back so I don't die, it doesn't matter how much OJ I have if I'm dead.
Player choice: You can turn Melina's accord down, which you could be forgiven for assuming would set you on a more difficult path, without torrent, and possibly leveling, which would change the later story the game somewhat, or at least allow you to progress normally-ish. However no, about halfway through, the game forces you to accept the accord, and won't allow you to progress further once you reach the Lyndell. Why bother giving the player the choice at all then, if the story is going to force the player back onto the rails eventually?
The difficulty: It's strange. Elden Ring strives to be a middle ground between a challenge for vets, and an easier souls challenge for new players. Positional rolling is now extremely important, especially for the later bosses, the chess maneuvering roll dodges which are required to not be hit bosses are rarely intuitive and are muscle memory intensive. But of course, players can always just use a 100% physical resist tower shield in order to help mitigate the need to use the dodge roll. And this being an "open world" means that players can go somewhere else level up and come back to a harder challenge later, presumably with all their friends. And if they're stuck in offline mode, they can use their STANDS to help them through.
I think this video has my favourite visuals of any review. The "jump heavy attack" section caused me to choke with laughter.
It's them updated graphics Yahtzee did over January.
4:46 - This is both the key to Souls games' combat and the reason why I find most of them boring. It's not a game about super quick reactions or combining different types of moves, it's a game about memorising patterns and timing the appropriate counters.
I loved the original Dark Souls's atmosphere and world design (the way everything connected in unexpected ways, like an Escher drawing), but once I figured out the combat (namely, that enemies would be locked into a full attack animation, same as the player, once they started it), it became pretty easy and a bit repetitive. There's no AI, as such. Just learn their attacks and how long they'll be stuck doing them for, and either counter with a faster attack or get out of range. Repeat a few times, win. And you can learn most enemy moves simply by walking slowly backwards in a big circle while blocking. The main difficulty tends to come from some different attacks (ex., one with tracking and one without) having similar wind-up animations, so sometimes you think you can just walk to the boss' side for a quick hit but you do it during an attack that can track you horizontally, and which you should have just backed off from instead.
i actually love how the intro and outro rebind me so much of early youtube with metal and basic slideshow transitions. Never change, Escapist
Rennala ain't random. It's the one with the golden aura. That's throwing books at you. And singing, just to give you an audio cue if it's behind a bookshelf somewhere.
Yeah, out of MANY other bosses that could easily be classified as random, he decided to point out Rennala, which imo seemed pretty chill, easy even
Jump attacks are a godsend but also a curse, I leeroy jenkins my way into unstunnable enemies far more than I should
One really cheeky little detail is the stamina drains slower in Elden Ring, so all our Dark Souls learned dodging tactics end too soon for the bosses. Getting used to extending dodging cycles by a couple of seconds really changed things up for me.
RIP Zero Punctuation
re: getting off the horse to go inside the castle - Brings to mind Super Mario World, where you get that little cutscene of hopping off Yoshi and leaving him outside castles and ghost houses
From watching the review and his post game streams, he missed most of the first zones things, let alone the rest of the game. It is doubtful he had even seen Radahn. I think the game world feels large rather than is large. I was overwhelmed by Limgrave at first as a Souls fan, but after a few days of exploration, it really doesn't feel that large, especially because of fast travel. What still feels overwhelming is the sprawling dungeons. Reaching areas like lake of rot and then the rest of it, or Deeprooth Depths felt like a real adventure. Not just that, because of the ability to jump on horse and on foot, a lot of secretive location that probably just some upgrade materials compels me to seek them out, hoping to find something rare. Verticality adds a lot of layers to locations, and makes the world really feels gigantic, even if physically they are not that large nor intricate. Raya Lucaria is probably comparable to the Duke's archive, but because of the ability to jump, leaping from ledges to other areas, exploring Raya Lucaria takes a lot longer than the Duke's archive, outside of combat. I can say the same to Stormveil and the rest. Reaching the area boss wouldn't take very long, but to explore the entire place is an entire different matter. I think a lesson for copycats like Darksiders is to give the player an overview of the area more often. Don't box them into a series of rooms like a 2D MetroidVania. Even 2D MetroidVania played with it with high ceilings and paths on top of paths. For 3D, it is vital to give the player a perspective of the entire area's layout, that gives the player's an idea about the scale of the area they are exploring, as well as a good grasp of the layout, that they don't have to have a map to traverse. This is why "dungeons" in God of War, Zelda, Souls games are so easily memorable, and almost never needed a map to explore. Darksiders did environmental design better in 1, for some reason, and got progressively worse. It is also better if the environment feels natural, deceptively so would be fine. Continuing with what Yahtze described as '"making the environment first before figuring out how to traverse it", Elden Ring environment provides ample vantage points for the players to have a clear view of what they are about to conquer. It doesn't highlight ledges that you can jump on top of railings and drop down, but it makes no attempt to hide it. It entices the player with shiny loots to draw attention to ledges. That makes exploration more satisfying, because you feel like you discover something when it is the game designer that points them there. All of this makes Elden Ring feels larger than it actually is, and such a memorable experience. It's something very simple, but none of the other studios seem interested in imitating. They would rather imitate the duelling combat, or dropping currency on death.
My advice for old Souls-ers starting ER: Guard Counters are better than you think they are
i played this game since it came out and I was initially hooked to it because it was pretty fun. but having beaten the game and doing most of the content, i'm somewhat lukewarm on the game. at a certain point, the game became a slog and I just wanted to finish it asap. in the initial week of playing the game I was like "i'm going to do all the mini-dungeons and whatnot." to now "I can't be assed to get the rest of the endings." no idea why.
the world is great, the combat is nice. i really like that you can change the angle of your attack if the enemy moves so you don't whiff a mad slow attack. for what it's worth, I cruised through the game using a +24 dismounter and +10 bloodhound fang. the OP dex bleed stuff, but the OP part of bloodhound fang is it's skill. straight up stuns everything and does a ton of damage. the dismounter wasn't exactly necessary, but I did enjoy jump attack powerstancing so I just kept it since it helped me beat a certain bullshit boss.
all in all, I would certainly recommend this game, but pace yourself cuz you might get burn out like I did and just want to get through with it. I'll probably play it again some months from now.
This, I enjoyed my time playing it, it was amazing, but after beating it once I don't feel like another playthrough, at least not yet. I should've paced myself more, as I tend to burn out on games quickly. I'll definitely come back, probably in a week or two, and enjoy the hell out of it again, but ye, I got too hyped and didn't pace myself enough.
Yeah same even though I'm just at the mountain. It's a weird thing I'm seeing with a lot of people. I think it's the volume of bosses. This game throws them at you like free samples. And many of those bosses are honestly poorly designed spam fests, unfair duos for no reason or just kind of there with little narrative reason.
When I beat the bosses I don't get that souls feeling of satisfaction, I'm just relieved it's over. The combat is not satisfying like their other recent games. Oh and a decent amount of the rewards for the dungeon are completely irrelevant to your build. I swear I have 40+ weapons and only use 3 or so? I went in thinking I'd look for most dungeons but now I'm just tired and want it to be over. Didn't feel that way about sekiro or demon souls remake at all.
I'm prone to burning out when it comes to games, so I've been pacing myself out of this fear. I'm just 9 hours into Elden Ring. I've done 3 optional dungeon bosses; 4 if you count a certain NPC in a cave near the lake (avoiding spoilers since it was spoiled for me). All 3 were pretty easy. I spent most of those 9 hours dying to Margit until I got that shackle and even then I died a lot. It was a satisfying fight though. I'm hoping I don't get tired of the big mandatory bosses, but I can see all the optional dungeon bosses becoming annoying after a while. I'm finally at level 21 (was 18 when I defeated Margit) and I'm planning on going back into Limgrave before going deeper into Stormveil. I'm hoping I can actually stand a chance against the giant trolls and anything that's on a horse. I've only had success against one mounted enemy and it's only because he was kind enough to yeet himself off a cliff for me, lol.
I plan on getting the bloodhound fang since I've heard it's a good dex weapon. I'm enjoying the twinblade right now since I finally have a long weapon to use while on Torrent.
They definitely should've had another color for the "loot on a corpse who is hanging off the side of a building like every other corpse" when it's just another pointless crafting material. White should be for normal loot, purple for special loot (not F**KING nascent butterflies!) and yellow or something for the crafting junk.
For those who don't understand. He likes it and has criticisms which is a good thing
As someone who’s beaten Elden Ring more times than I can count, it’s funny to hear Rennala described as the “weird shitty boss.” I know he’d only played up to that point in a week, so Im just imagining what his reaction was when he got to Godskin Duo… (and yes, I know he made a visual reference to them in the best of list, but that best example I can think of for “weird shitty boss,” since all of the others either good or amazing…
By Yahtzee standards, this is what we call "glowing praise"
especially indicated when he's trying to think of a way to get time to play the rest of the game.
My only real complaint is that they didn't let me name the horse. Calling out "Come Derpy! WE RIDE!!" would be a lot more fun without my little muderpony rolling its eyes every time.
Some of the environments and enemy designs made me realize I want FromSoft to make a genuine horror game, maybe psychological or survival horror
Edit- We ride together we die together, Oleg for life
They did, it's called Bloodborne.
A fellow Oleg partisan I see
@@SparkSovereign true survival horror. It's not scary when you can fight back.
defensw of the crafting system:
if you come across one of the 20 poison swamps you can now immediately craft an antidote (if you have the recepie, that is)
Over years you slowly learn how much Yahtzee likes a game is by how much he nickpicks it.
you love the game that you criticize the most they say
I don't feel like he's nitpicking when he's complaining about the bullshittiness of the enemies and the fact that the game just cancels out your mount when you go into a "dungeon" area. Two things you'll be facing a hecking lot in this game
@@Yorikoification Yeah I get that but he says that most of his critques are nitpicks.
That is some bollocks I will admit
*Doom 2016 ZP flashback*
The problem I have with Elden Ring is that it is a Ubisoft open world if you just take the icons off the map... until you visit the place, then the icons are literally on the map. Hell, if you can read the Elden Ring map, you can see where every mine, gaol, cathedral, church, erdtree avatar and fort is, as well as most of the ruins. And the thing is once you really get into the game, things start looking the same. Every region has it's night cavalry boss, it's dragon boss, it's deathrite bird, it's tibia mariner, it's erdtree boss, a chariot dungeon, a lift to the cellar of the world, at least 1 gaol, at least 1 mine, a memory stone puzzle, a few ruins that all have a collection of dudes above and then a staircase to the basement with something below. Here's the biggest variety: Sometimes it's got enemies, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes the staircase is behind an illusionary wall, but it's always there. I would be fine with this if there was universal quality here, but all of the "bosses" you fight in these are just copy pastes from elsewhere and most of the time, they are just fucking bad. Quick rundown of some of my least favorite of these:
Watchdogs: Found all over the place. Very jerky moveset on delays with their delayed attacks having 2 triggers. If time runs out, or if the player is in the attack's range from a certain point.
Black knife assassins: There are 2 that are fine. My problem isn't their moveset. It's that half of these bastards require you to have a specific torch equipped and held to see them. Someone genuinely tried to defend the fact that about half the builds in the game are directly punished for having a build by saying that there was someone on youtube who beat them without using the torch. Someone on youtube can beat the game at sl1 in 7 minutes. Most players can't. Doesn't help that they have 1000+ damage grabs that have almost no audio cue and come at the end of a long dash. Couple that with punishing every build that uses both hands to fight them and it's a shit enemy.
Every enemy with a ranged attack that isn't a crossbow or a giant. They have localized sounds, long range, and shoot so fast that everyone I know collectively refers to the attack as a sniper rifle. This applies to the dudes with the horns, lobsters, and albinauric archers in the consecrated snowfields, except the archers in the snow fields get to shoot at you during a blizzard that provides visual and audible cover from their suppressed sniper bullshit that deals over 700 damage through medium armor. I'm not saying that they are too fast or hit too hard. I'm saying that one of those is too extreme and they should either be slowed down a little to make dodging with anything but a roll more viable, or that the damage should be reduced a little so that someone with medium armor and 35 vigor should survive 3 shots.
When you talked about the horse going away indoors, I was expecting a professor oak joke about a time and place for everything
GRRM has gone all the way to writing for videogames, just to procrastinate on finishing Song of Ice and Fire properly.
Awesome game btw!
in a shock that shocked no one, Dark souls 8 turned out to be a roaring success.
Who would of saw that? I want a futuresitic vr game where your ass has to do all the shit a dark souls game and see how that turns out. Would be fun.
4:07 I guess I'm not the only one who did that lol.
This was the first From Souls game I actually have gotten into, and I found it much easier to get into the groove with than dark souls. Granted, I kind of went of the rails, so I killed the Tree Sentinel before anything else and ended up level 54 before fighting the first plot boss. Whoops.
I feel like Yahtz needs to go review the DS3 DLCs bc if he doesn't like Rennala's two-stage bossfight he must have hated Friede's three-stage extravaganza
Ubisoft games make you feel like you're filling in a map. Elden Ring makes you feel like you're exploring a world.
I mean... there have been times in Elden Ring where I've gotten the map out and thought "huh, that place looks a bit empty, I'm willing to bet that I missed something there" or "there's a bit of a dead zone for sites of grace around there, I probably missed one, time to go look for it"
it does definitely feel more natural than Ubisoft games, there's nothing more pushing me to those zones besides my hunch that they just looked a little too empty on the map.
@@Eclipsed_Embers that sounds an awful lot like exploration fam
5:06 that hit hard
Can understand the initial annoyance at have to press two buttons to two hand a weapon, but the amazing trade off is that you can now two hand the weapon in your left hand as well, giving your more variability in the middle of a fight.
Especially since you can then make use of:
- Right hand Ash of War
- Left hand Ash of War
- Powerstancing
all without having to swap out a weapon.
Some of these two phase fights like the shield dude and especially the ones where the bosses' mate unexpectedly drops in half way through, do get quite tiresome after a while.
I feel ya on the Moon Lady boss slog. But then I realised that you can hear the minions you need to attack directionally and it's usually accompanied by a slew of books heading in your direction from the daft cow too.
If you think it’s hard at first, just wait until endgame areas. Enemies have crap tons of health, do shit tons of damage, and are everywhere. It’s pretty unbalanced.
But you should also have shit tons of health and be doing shit tons of damage. The higher your level the less damage you take as levels directly effect your defenses
@@obsolete18 that’s just how strong the enemies are. I’m currently lv 168, and they still annoy the crap outta me. Going through endgame areas just isn’t fun.
@@MasterfulPeon Level 168?? I explored every area a hell of a lot and finished the game at 130, are you sure you're levelling your vigor and upgrading your weapons?
@@TheMirksta jeez I’m assuming I’m fairly close to the end at lvl 110 and feel like I’m pretty tanky and doing pretty decent damage. At lvl 160+ and still be having issues I’m gussing his stats are hybrid to hell and not using a viable weapon.
I’ve noticed a lot of mini bosses decide to take the witch of hemwick elective in that you aren’t threatening yourself yet you can summon dudes that range from actual threat to obstacles that try your patience. Thumbs up for the really cool quest line that forces to fight at my current time of playing two of these guys.