Sekiro did the shadowtree fragments better with putting them behind boss kills as memories. witch rewards you for boss kills instead of exploration, because the problem with hiding them behind exploration is that once you have played trough it once, it becomes extremely tedious to do a second time and makes it feel like homework to get them, while behind boss kills it becomes rewarding because the point of these games are always the bosses no matter how many playtroughs, so they should just continue doing that.
Not really a fan of the Sekiro strategy as it felt more linear, which is kind of the antithesis of what I gather this is supposed to be. It's intended to be explored and thus explicitely awards exploration with power rather than just concentrating on boss fights while also giving reason to explore when you come up against a wall instead of the game just being about bashing your head into it until it caves.
Promised Consort Radahn just feels like Miyazaki’s response to everyone who were calling elden ring the easiest soulslike game by making the most unfair artificially difficult boss ever for the sole purpose of shutting people up and spiting them. and phase one of the fight is great, phase 2 is just a nuclear bomb that you cant see half the time because of miquella’s giant ass hair and all the flashing lights
@@wafflboixyeah, Souls fans complained with OG Radhan was nerfed in a patch. It was everywhere online. People were angry. So they got what they asked for, a buffed Radhan. And now they are unhappy. The discourse around ER is frustrating
One of the main issues with Elden Ring and now Shadow of the Erdtree is that many activities in the open world do not lead to any progression. You ride through a lot of empty space and only rarely find something that is of value for your own build. I agree that at least to some degree this problem has been tackled with the Scadutree Fragments. However, when I am now thinking of playing the DLC again and take into consideration that before I am going to fight any boss I might want to collect all the free blessings pickups, which will take a huge amount of time even with a guide, my motivation to start a new playthrough is drastically lowered. There would have been a very simple way to combine the classical linear Dark Souls levels with the open world: just make a map that is segmented such that each part of it is protected behind a boss who needs to be defeated (like Fire Giant in the base game or like Jori in the DLC, for example). There is no greater reward than having unlocked a new part of the world to be discovered. The best open world games are the ones which contrain the freedom of the player and where one needs to progress through the game (like winning boss fights and the like) in order to be able to go to certain places on the map.
@@skipjacks85 Wrong. An open world with various entries to unknown locations on the map that are protected by bosses (as an example). This is not a linear design, just as neither DS1 (and DS2+DS3, but to a lesser degree) were not linear games. Because if there would be only two entries to some new locations on the map you have already two different options to choose from.
@@heideknight7782 the fact that u think DS III is a non-linear game says it all. I mean c’mon dude. DS III is about as linear as it gets. And if bosses are acting as area gatekeepers, walling off progression, how is it open world? So they should have just made Dark Souls IV instead? That’s your position? In addition, this open world/linear path hybrid would have been terrible for build construction & challenge runs as the overwhelming majority of loot would be partitioned behind bosses you will be in all likelihood, severely underleveled.
@@skipjacks85 DS3 has many side paths which one can choose from which make the progression non linear. As an example, you can choose to fight the Dancer of the Boreal Valley early to be able to enter Lothric Castle. Many speedrunners do this actually, because then you can then get access to titanite chunks to upgrade a weapon to +9. Another sidepath is the Smouldering Lake which is completely optional. But it also has upgrade material (large titanite), so is also worthwhile to explore this area. In general, if the game offers one to choose between different paths to follow, it has a non linear structure. The idea that bosses should protect certain areas in the open world to provide a segmentation and thereby more transparent progression system of the game you can find even implemented in Elden Ring. The Draconic Tree Sentinel needs to be defeated to be able to enter Leyndell capital. Fire Giant needs to be defeated to be able to reach Farum Azula. Both bosses are mandatory to finish the game. But I think that it is still concensus that Elden Ring is an open world game. So having certain areas locked behind a boss or some other obstacle is not a contradiction to an open world design. It is often necessary to implement a meaningful progression path into an open world game. Regarding you last point I would reccomend you to watch the video "Why speedrunners hate Elden Ring" by YoJosherino. You can find it here on TH-cam on Josh's channel.
“instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on youtube, how about just including the actual story in the game” couldn’t have said it better, this is a great video.
I really wish Miyazaki or Fromsoftware would start using a different story fomurla that isn't item descriptions. it worked the first 457 times they did it, but at the 458th with elden ring its getting old. you can make lore vague and up to interpretion while still having it in the actual game.
That's part of the story. You come to a strange place knowing nothing where everyone wants to kill you. So seeing as you can't fully believe anything anyone tells you ,you have to figure out what's really going on through detective work
@@dpearson898 item descriptions not relating to story items are lame ass detective work. That’s just me collecting a random sword and inexplicably learning from it the secrets of elden ring
@@botondkunos1774 yeah Sekiro's storytelling is great. It's direct but also has lots of bonus conversations that is not handed to the player, also with some conversations that you eavesdrop plus it still has item description to cover some lore.
Sekiro seems to be the project that they should "revitalize" for the next game, they clearly have all the innovations down in their pockets, and had to cash in the elden ring's success with this DLC (and probably more?). I think they know, having drawn a lot from Sekiro themselves already, that the direction for the future is that one.
The funniest thing about the whole "pushing the stamina-based combat system to its limits" that FromSoft did here in regards to their boss design in this DLC is that they already found a solution in Sekiro, which was in development along side the base game of Elden Ring. Instead of being concerned with stamina, they removed that in favor of parrying/deflecting. Developing an understanding of a boss to the point of deflecting an entire combo string stopped that boss doing an extention of that combo, which removed that RNG aspect entirely while giving you more room to punish them for using that specific set of attacks in the first place. The only thing they really did with that system in Elden Ring is adding the Deflecting Hardtear for your Wonderous Physick Flask in the DLC. If you tap the block button with a shield (or a weapon that's able to block) at the right time before getting hit AT ALL while the deflection flask is active, you can deflect every single instance of damage from fast-hitting attacks such as Malenia's Waterfowl, dragons breathing fire at you, and just about everything DLC Radahn throws at you in phase 2. All for a fraction of the stamina cost and time it takes to roll. And you can punish those moves with an enhanced guard counter which will break their posture faster than normal attacks, opening them up to more critical attacks. Yet FromSoft locks this mechanic behind a mini-boss in the DLC of an open world game where you've spend triple digit hours engaging in a different combat style. Where you've most likely cleared just about everything in the base game in that particular playthrough, meaning you can't use this playstyle to fight bosses in the main game since they'll most likely be dead in your progression into the end-game, where the DLC resides. And once you do unlock it, it only lasts a certain amount of time unless you want to sit a grace after chugging your physick flask every 5 minutes. Everyone who uses this hardtear absolutely loves it to the point they think it should be a baseline mechanic like rolling, as it makes interacting with the bosses of Elden Ring easier. But most players won't even know this playstyle is even an option, let alone engage with it in a meaningful way to the point of understanding and mastering it.
They need to add the sekiro combat system to their future games and improve on it further , get rid of the stamina system completely , it is antiquated at this point imo
They dropped the ball by making this a tear, a talisman slot would've sufficed hell even attach it to a specific shield or group of shield within the DLC. Make it an ash of war buff dude there were SO MANY ways they could've implemented this. And this is coming from someone that has been using it non stop.
@@AkiRa22084it only trivializes the game because ER was not made with it in mind, even the dlc bosses have this issue Every single hard ER boss would be easier than genechiro in sekiro
@@timekeeper2538how does that make their formula any less outdated? That line of thinking with the majority rule is filled with fallacies and makes you a complacent sheep.
Been saying it since I beat the game the first time, if the legacy dungeons are the best parts of the game then what is the point of the open world (other than to provide filler content in order to justify the size of the open world).
I dont get the hate for the openworld in the DLC. I get the point abt repetitive enemies but aside from that was the base game's openworld that much better in comparison? The most memorable moments for me in base game was still the legacy dungeons. Or is it because it's the expansion and ppl expected a more robust open world because of the time they had to work on it?
Fromsoft da best!11 They can never make any errors, their open world is the best!1 Seriously though, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 was better as an open world for me because I could hunt animals for upgrades or plants for small boosts. 90% of the times I can either get a bell bearing, get items from normal exploration in dungeons or just DON'T need boosts at all. The other 10% of the time I just happen to be spamming the collect button while on torrent. A VERY wasteful opportunity. The crafting system is meh, like the only thing I used it for was to feed torrent and the way I gathered the materials to feed him was by riding him lol
Personally, I just think it's pretty and nice and adds a relaxing break in tension between the legacy dungeons. My problem with the Dark Souls games was that the oppressive atmosphere was unrelenting. I understand that was the artistic vision, but it made it a real mental slog to play at times. It was hard to look forward to finishing a dungeon when you'd be rewarded with more of the same. The openness between dungeons adds a nice, less dense and less tense section to play before hopping back into a catacomb or dungeon.
I think beyond the stagnant gameplay and the open world issues, the setting of ER really adds to the stagnant feeling. I could never really get into it, because to me it seemed like a kitchen sink setting, like a greatest hits mix where they threw in every previous concept from their games without a thematic reason, making it seem watered down and just being there for no real reason. Case in point, the frenzied flame stuff. In bloodborne the whole story and world is built around the concept of madness and so the game's setting stands out and the concept is given depth. In contrast in ER it's just one of many curses like undeath and isn't given much thought. Same with the existence of lovecraftian gods like those from bloodborne don't feel impactful because they share the world with traditional fantasy gods and other entities that you stumble upon, and so are not as threatening nor thematic to the world and so lose their intrigue, awe and depth. This was cemented for me in the DLC when you meet the Winter lantern reskins in the Abyssal woods, which had zero impact since I've seen it before and it has none of the thematic weight behind them. Doesn't help that rune loss is completely irrelevant at that point and they're in an open area so you can just run around them. All of this can also be applied to the concept of undeath and hollowing that is so strong in Dark souls and informs the entire game and mechanics, but are again just watered down and one of many concepts in the lands between. I would argue that in dark souls and bloodborne you will feel a resonance when experiencing the story even if you don't know the story in depth, because it's thematically resonant despite the plot being obtuse. In ER there were so many moments where I just felt like characters were speaking (a lot more than in previous entries) but not saying anything and you couldn't intuit wtf was going on, like the Margit encounters. His design with horns and a monster-tail who throws holy magic against you, which is aeshetically incoherent at a glance and you need lore to have it make sense. In dark souls this guy would have been undead but wear priest robes and be called "abbott" or something, so when he throws holy magic at you you understand why and it feels coherent. Then as insult to injury when you've finally conquered the capital, do you get a new boss? No, here's that guy again, which you can't intuit why and have to learn lore to appreciate. And it feels off. In Sekiro they play with the same themes of immortality and breaking cycles as they always do, but they stick to that one concept and look, and when they add more spoken dialogue they tie it with a more explicit story, with hidden lore as a supplement to this. It makes it all feel coherent and fresh despite sharing similar themes from previous entries. It also makes a world that is primarily filled with living people feel more believable. In contrast, ERs world just feels a bit off where it's not nearly as fallen as in dark souls where everyone was undead, and yet normal people don't speak and just act as if they were, unlike in Sekiro where they all emote and speak. For this reason, going into a military camp just feels odd in ER, it's like they just hang around acting like undead without much reason, same reason why I wasn't as wowed by the capital as everyone else seems to be, because it just feels dead in a way they're not really going for. And I believe this all stems from having too many concepts and themes in the game, while also refusing to evolve the narrative style to fit the story they want.
@@gnanay8555yes, in linear game you can get away with not having too many friendly NPCs or normal cities. But in open-world game like Elden Ring? No. If you think a bit, nothing in this world makes any sense just because it's built like their previous games.
I feel you one the world feeling ded part often I would think about lore explanations for all these random factions to be here. Even more wierd, when separate factions inherit the same areas. The hands in Ryan lucaria and the mountaintop are friendly with no real explanation why. Why do the soldier not axe them off the land, they do it to me. Why dint the rabid dogs eat them, is cursed hand worse than tarnished aas? Diabolical
Yea you walk into leyndell and it's just empty asf. All the Golden knights are hiding in dark corners around the city instead of patrolling the streets
To be fair to Fromsoftware, their last three games have been Sekiro, Elden Ring and ACVI, all of which have tried very hard to innovate. Sekiro’s gameplay was completely new and inspired a lot of deflection based clones. Elden Ring experimented with the open world, which was clearly successful despite the many drawbacks of an open world (I’m with you I prefer the semi-open structure). ACVI was an awesome modern advancement of that series. So I don’t think they aren’t trying to innovate, but I definitely agree they absolutely cannot just release Elden Ring 2 next and have it be more of the same. Personally I want them to try and iterate on the DS1 formula, no fast travel, one big interconnected world where the whole game feels like one big legacy dungeon. I just loved the immersion this gave to exploration. I know it will never happen though as it’s a bit too inconvenient for modern day AAA game design
ER's core mechanics have not innovated that much. It's still the basic dodge rolling against every boss attack. And the dlc bosses push this to it's limit to the point where I just can't see it being evolved more unless they add faster player combat.
As someone who played DS1 for the 1st time right after SOTE, I completely agree. The world design was as solid as some other fav classic titles I enjoyed like Gothic series, and describing it as feeling like one big legacy dungeon nails it. To add, mby it wouldn't hurt for them to play more with gimmicks but not make it ALL about gimmicks, rather just make it an extension of a boss's moveset where sure it gives advantage if you understand & can counter it, but it's also possible w/o that. I got this idea when playing BG3 on Honor Mode, and enjoying all the Legendary Actions bosses have which add both more personality/identity as well as challenge. Sometimes my build & party setup allowed me to circumvent the gimmick, entirely, others I had to play completely around it and everyone's experience is different depending on their setup & how they approach the game. This would be a way to keep the difficulty curve since I'm confident they don't wanna dial it back anymore, but in a fresh way, rather than the obnoxious & tired methods of "give every boss gap closers, strong melee & range attacks, near-perfect 180 tracking, delayed attacks on almost everything, and flashy aoes that cover the whole arena + unstaggerable" . Like say, imagine if vs Radahn & Miquella, within the arena you'd have some pillars leading to the heavens which you could somehow redirect to use either defensively or offensively. One could get even more creative and do something like adding some player choice via say... at some point in phase 2 ,like when close to death, Miquella will absorb the power within those pillars to heal Radahn, amount healed depending on the pillars left standing, cause the player would have the option to destroy the pillars earlier, OR use them to help against the boss. 'Dis is just an idea, I'm sure some creative game devs could do a lot more... To not make it feel as obnoxious, Radahn would need some reduced mobility as he tries to chase you down when you go for the pillars, and like ffs let him walk or run more, cause it's like every boss forgot how to and just teleports near ya.
@@ManlyTear Glad you feel that way, especially coming from someone who played DS1 recently after experiencing Elden Ring. I absolutely love the feeling of immersion DS1 gives you, there’s nothing quite like it
Just to put this in perspective: Before Radahn, the only other boss (aside from the NPC encounters just before which are kind of a world event to wrap up the questlines), we fought Romina, either that or Messmer himself. How do we go from that to Consort Radahn in terms of difficulty curve ? This boss is exponentially more difficult than any of the immediate previous bosses. Also, to put this in perspective is how this compares to the base game. No way this kind of sudden difficulty spike happens there. After beating him with the aid of ashes on my first run, and soloing him without the aid of ashes, NPC or runes on my second, I can confidently say that this fight was ABSOLUTELY designed with the use of ashes in mind. Finally, I do belive that this is the source of most people's frustration, to have that last boss to be designed in this way, so that most people can't beat him without the aid of ashes unlike the base game. Melania was a build breaker but at least she was optional (a crappy move, but fine). Whereas Radahn is a build breaker WHILST being a final boss.
Why do yall cry over ashes so much? Even the best ash can die in seconds if it acts wrong so it's not an instant win cheat like you act like it is. Use the damn ash and beat the boss, why torture yourself when you know damn well its not designed like that and it's purely ego. Thats like saying I'm getting mad the final boss isn't dying to a pistol when I have a freaking rocket launcher in my pocket.
@@dinolover your arguments is dumb to a baffling extent, if the boss needs external help, then its not designed well, the boss has to account for almost every playstyle, as in ultra weapons, ranged, no summons, etc. You are the only one crying over ashes, methinks you want ashes to be mandatory for every battle lol
To be fair Miyazaki himself admitted to using spirit ashes. I'm not surprised that the dlc bosses were designed with them in mind especially when people wants more difficult content. Personally I also consider solo play without summons or spirits a form of challenge run, you are literally avoiding a big part of your toolkit. Sure the experience feels more rewarding without them but the dlc wasn't designed with solo play in mind which is backed up by all the major bosses having at least 1 npc summon. The base game also has this for most of the major bosses but it felt significantly easier once you get used to it. I thought a majority of the dlc was fine, it's only phase two of the final boss that felt bad to solo. A lot of the visual effects were obstructive, caused performance issues and there is a quick double slash that both phases share that can roll-catch consistently which feels cheap along with the light pillars that punished you for trying to create some space. You were forced to play close and aggressive consistently or have a good shield for all the chip damage OR summon to help spread the boss' attention. I don't think malenia was a build breaker. I've used pure faith, arcane, str, int on her and can usually beat her in a few tries unless I'm using something VERY unoptimal. Slow and fast weapons included. The only thing she punished was shield tanking but you only needed to change your playstyle to avoid healing her too much. Final dlc boss on the other hand has up to 4 damage types and phase 2 wants you to block I think. I haven't mastered them yet unlike Malenia so I can't add much more to the conversation.
@@nadaburner hm an actual response that is thought out and isnt worthless, splendid! jokes aside i do agree with you with how every boss is geared with having a summon with you, which sucks due to how incosistent they really are, now this might be a glitch but for me atleast igon literally did nothing vs bayle, as in he just swapped his weapons for the whole fight, or when summons would just stand back and not do anything during messmer and romina
@@nadaburner I agree with everything you said, it's just that DLC is bad in comparison to the game. It's not bad in and of itself. Base game had is issues and whereas they did went too far in a few places there, in the DLC they went too far in a lot of places. There are bosses now whose entire moveset is straight out of anime, but it's like you said, it's balanced towards the use of ashes, but is it fun? It wasn't as much as I wanted for me, and I wish From wouldn't be so obsessed about designing the DLC bosses to break meta builds that destroyed the base game. I just wish they'd have more confidence in their original design instead of this obsession with how you clear a boss. If people want to one shot bosses, just let them. Who cares?
What I really liked about Dark Souls 1 was that the combat felt slow and methodical... maybe even strategic! Every FromSoftware game I have played since has felt manic and "spazzy", for lack of a better term. The difficulty in DS1 was so satisfying because the slow pace allowed me to actually focus more on my attack strategy and play smartly. Now, in games like DS3 and Elden Ring I feel like each boss fight is a test of my twitch reflexes and rote memorization of relentless attack patterns. TBH I lost interest trying to explore the Haligtree and other late game areas in Elden Ring, and I didn't even bother getting the DLC because it looks like more of the same absurd twitchy difficulty. The magic is long gone for me :(
Ds3 boss fight is 10 000 time better . I played Ds3 after my Elden Ring playthought .The delay attack feel smoother more natural the boss are fast but your character is fast too i got more than 0.5 second to heal . Almost every fight in ds3 im out of flask at the end the fight felt challenging but more fair and fun
11 minutes in... Someone finally says it. Yes. FromSoft could indeed have mystery and discovery... AND just have an explicitly told story in the game. These things can exist... Many other games do this. FromSoft games are 93% lore and environmental storytelling and it gets tiresome.
@@jvmango3057Yep. Perfect world design, combat that adds to the game but isn't the be all and end all. Izalith could've done with more time in the oven, sure. It's just a big open plane with enemies you run past and no good loot. Omg, izalith is the prototype for elden ring...
@@ennayanne Don't be ridiculous...izalith Is a terrible tunnel filled with bad and stupid enemies. Even the worst Elden ring Areas are Better than that
I blame bloodborne and darksouls 2 for starting this anime bullcrap where every boss has crazy anime moves while all your character has is an generic swing attack
"Instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on TH-cam, how about just including the story in the fucking game". Truer words were never spoken.
Hell, the problem isn't that the lore isn't there, it is in item descriptions, the problem is that it's ONLY in item descriptions. More of the information about stuff in item descriptions should be just out in the world somewhere. Like in location design or dialogue. Like Jesus, just put the lore somewhere else.
@@unoriginal2552 "Like in location design" There is equally if not more story revealed in the architecture and npc placement than there is in item descriptions.
@@unoriginal2552 God forbid you have to read in order to get the full picture of the lore. Other RPG's just drop books around the world; Fromsoft simply combines that same system with its equipment in order to save time and money (they were not a AAA studio until arguably today). I don't see people complaining that you need to read books in Skyrim to understand the lore (which you absolutely need to do if you want to understand wtf is actually going on, aside from surface level plot points).
I honestly beleive that the open world only makes the game worse, Elden Ring would be better had it been a more linear game. I know the freedom adds a punch but you could go for a more metroidvania style rather than a full open world. You could still have exploration and freedom and lots of optional stuff, just in a tighter package and with (probably) less repetition. Both the base game and the dlc have peaks of absurd quality, just imagine what they could have done if time and resources had not been wasted in populating a big ass open world
Elden Ring is the first game I've seen that is conceptually flawed, rather than just flawed in execution. "Open World Soulslike" should be considered an oxymoron.
In some ways its harder to make a metroidvania because that causes the devs to have to think of how the player traverses each area and how those areas can connect to one-another. with open world you can just say "lol lets just add a big field that is purposeless and just wastes time looking pretty" instead of "this is an open area in a more closed-in game, how will I make it so the player has fun and a challenge traversing this?" you end up thinking less about levels or stages
I‘m honestly not a fan of the Scadutree-fragments past the first playthrough. They just become another thing you have to ride through the game and gather before you can tackle the real meat of the game. On my first playthrough of the dlc it was a cool reward for the exploration, but now that I‘m trying a new character it feels a little bit tedious. But maybe this is only because of the open world, because I didn‘t mind the prayer beads in Sekiro. Possibly also, because you get many of them as a reward for overcoming a miniboss and not mindlessly riding from point A to point B. Kinda related to the topic, I really liked your idea of replacing the individual weapon upgrades with ones that are active for all weapons. This would make it really easy to just try out a new weapon that you just received, without investing any recources. And I mean from a „realism“-standpoint does weapon upgrading even make much sense? (I’m not a weapon-smith, so I don’t know for sure) Maybe weapon upgrades should just be a relic of the past like weapon durability.
As someone who watched a lot of challenge runs of Elden Ring, something I always noted is that they always seem to spend the first few hours zipping around three-quarters of the map to snap up all the golden seeds and sacred tears. In the SOTE runs I've seen, the same thing happens with the blessings. It's even worse if it's a video where the streamer put a timer on so you can absolutely tell that he spent the first four hours of his run just revealing the map and collecting fragments without fighting a single boss. This might be controversial, but Elden Ring's open world should have been much more segmented. Godrick should need to be beaten to access Liurnia. Throw down a fort to bar entrance to Caelid instead of just having Anastasia and a low wall you can jump over. Make the Dectus Medallion something looted from Raya Lucaria or remove it entirely so that you're forced to go through Makar to reach Altus. Your power being tied to progression was something I always found neat in previous titles, and it also prevented the scenario I've seen occur in Elden Ring where the start of most playthroughs just ends up being several hours of running all across the map to collect upgrade items.
Schadu tree fragments really aren't as essential on subsequent playthroughs, when a player should be more adapt at fighting the bosses with their own skill. Doubly so because in base NG difficulty, it's entirely possible to get by without needing to find all of them, and because the blessings carry over into NG+ while all fragments respawn, it's quite simple for a player just finish reaching the max upgrade there.
@@thatlonzoguydon’t you upgrade weapons with materials from hunts though in Monster Hunter? That’s pretty much the same as smithing stones. I’d argue that it’s more annoying as you have to hunt particular monsters multiple times to get certain parts in specific ways to upgrade the weapons.
Dawg I thought I was the only one who called that dude out for being a cut clear shill, even though he didn’t start out that way I know but it’s clear as day now. Fromsoft could create a boss that you only have a millisecond to defeat or it’s instant death & VV will make 100 cringey lore videos & die on the hill defending why that’s not an obnoxious boss design.
I really appreciate your take the dlc left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled for many of the reasons you’ve stated while many people brush off my frustrations claiming to be satisfied with nothing but pretty visuals or accusing me of being one of those hard=bad people
Yup. They dismiss you with their tried and true "mad cuz bad. Git gud" or just smash their faces against the keyboard hoping whatever gibberish comes out is enough to shut you up and convince you Miyazaki does not make any mistakes. It's always a breath of fresh air when you talk to people who remember these are just video games made by fallible humans and not god himself creating the ultimate masterpiece with no flaws
The combo extension of these bosses would have been great if.....you could cancel your animations. Then, you could respond on the fly if the combo was longer than expected, rather than just eating damage because you couldn't predict what would happen. Sekiro works so well because you CAN cancel into a block (at least early into the attack), and your attacks in general are much faster, so you are never committed for long.
@@upsideproductions2 I’d argue that Messmer, Midra, putrescent knight, Rellana, Rhadan and Romina are all better. Bayle is only cool to look at, when it comes down to gameplay the fight sucks.
Apologies for the wall of text: I try and convince myself that I enjoy the exploration but, in reality, my headspace when I'm playing ER as a souls vet is thus: "Okay here I am in this field, where to go next? Well okay off to the right is a forest and off to the left is a town/village/ruin. Better save left for last because I know instinctually that's where FromSoft actually tried!" I think there was maybe one single armor set in the entire dlc just out in the over world somewhere. All the good rewards are inside structures. Now, also as a souls vet, I can say confidently that besides Commander Gaius, every boss in this dlc took me less than 20 attempts. Some like Messmer and Rellana took sub 10. Meanwhile, I've thrown myself at Radahn 50+ times and haven't even seen his health go down into his boss name plate lol. FromSoft needs to change. They have most assuredly stagnated. Now, the only novel thing they can do is crank a final or hidden boss difficulty up to 12/10 for the tryhards and streamers. I've basically been playing the same FromSoft game for almost two decades. And the worst part, is that they absolutely destroyed all the ER lore that they had setup in the base game. I personally believe Radahn is a lazy retcon because it was so much easier to animate his model and attacks because they already existed in the base game. I thoroughly believe we were supposed to get Godwyn or Marika or just someone more important at the end of Shadow. So, while I agree prime Radahn is certainly a choice they could've made, I will never see it more than a lazy rewrite. Add onto this the whole "shaman village x Hornsent phenomenon and you have the beginning of a compelling story. But oops, nobody ever explains WHY the Hornsent committed genocide against Marika's people. In Dark Souls 1, Gwyn made a decision about his empire and how it would continue. In Dark Souls 2, the human king was honey-potted into attacking the giants, in Dark Souls 3, the Twins wanted the world to errode. In Sekiro, it's a revenge story. In Elden Ring SOTE, they thought they had written an inciting incident. What they actually wrote was nonsense. Not to mention the entire lore basically just breaks down to "aliens invade, upset blonde woman agrees to their weird space powers to fight her enemies, hijinks ensue." Nobody bothers to explain why the Hornsent did what they did. And thus the entire lore of Elden Ring has no proper beginning, and in essence, is completely irrelevant. Which I think is the worst lore offering we've ever received from Miyazaki. One TH-cam comment I read summarized it all: "It's like the SOTE team never played base Elden Ring and had an AI summarize the cliff notes for them." There's some good fun to be had in SOTE for sure but, by itself, it does not warrant a replay. And it destroyed all its lore and replaced it with the wacky hair dude from history channel saying "ALIENS" over and over. Which is just unforgivable.
I really don't see any reason to make Radahn Miquella's consort beyond fanservice. Lorewise, Godwyn or even fucking Malenia make more sense than Radahn
@@lordepsilon7023 my guess is that it was the more justifiable pick , being that radahn was always said to be a very kind person and overall wholesome compared to the rest of his sibling demigods. Which we never got to see because duh he is basically a zombie when when fight him.
That's how I feel in Elden Ring's open world in general, not just the DLC. It's just a big space of...nothing. It's all enemies and loot. There is no "world", no people, no community, nothing to make it a world and not just a video game setting. Don't tell me exploration is why you should play the Open World, I explore in all kinds of games, metroidvanias and the like. But ER? The entire open world just seems pointless.
@@UsernameGeri nice try copying my comment and replacing it with "fromsoft fanboy". do you really think i'm blind enough to not see the flaws of fromsofts games?
I hate how the NPC quest structure is set up in Elden ring, and the DLC did it so much worse. I think you make a good point, when everything's so cryptic to need a video essay explaining things to the player, it's just not an engaging story. I think Lies of P did story a lot better since I never felt lost or wondering "Why I'm out here doing this nonsense in the first place". And Lies of P also had some pretty engaging points as to why the world was as morbid as it was, without being cryptic. What I dont like, is trying to do an NPC quest, only to mash through a bunch of cryptic dialogue that tells me nothing about what they're doing most the time, and needing to "refresh" the game to progress it, just to have them disappear someplace random in the world. Dark Souls 1 can kind of get away with that since it's a more linear experience, but Elden Ring is open world. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Oh and the DLC actually punishes you for exploring it, since if you reach a certain threshold, something big happens, and a bunch of quests will randomly progress without your knowledge. There's good parts in Elden Ring that does open world arguably better than most sandbox games, but it's quest structure is so anti-open world. Plus, DLC rewards just... Suck. I hate going into a new place only to find mostly tier 1-3 upgrade materials when my gear is probably max tier at this point. I hate that they introduce entire new schools of magic that have only 1-2 spells in them instead of building onto what already exists. (My annoyance of this being they have types of magic in base game that only have about 2-3 spells in them. There's like 20 glintstone sorceries, but only 2 "briar" sorceries. And yet they also have a staff and some unique gear that buffs the already mediocre "Briar" school of sorceries.) I hate that they include entire new weapon classes but only have an entire 1-3 weapons in them (There's a throwing knife weapon you can find, which is it's own weapon class, and there's ONLY 1 throwing knife weapon. Why..?). Why waste time making entire new weapon subclasses but only making 1-3 weapons for each type?
Their formula isn’t stale, it’s just that the open world design doesn’t suit their traditional level design and combat. All the work went into legacy dungeons
@@JacksonL1238 The combat is getting stale too. What the hell were they thinking with some of these bosses? Like was said in the video, you basically dodge 10 attacks in a row, sometimes without a tell to know if they'll extend a combo or not, only to get a very small opening to EITHER heal OR get a single attack in before they start another combo. It has already been pushed past the point where it's fun and challenging to actually become tedious. The combat needs a revamp. What makes me hopeful about this is that they DID introduce some very nice mechanics in Bloodborne and Sekiro that made combat more streamlined and flowing, but for some reason those things either didn't make into ER or were only partly introduced. I guess it has to do mostly with the build variety. But they at least attempted some new things here such as LGS' flowing movesets (milady) and the deflect tear, which worked pretty well imo and should be made a permanent standard.
@Homiloko2 I think the new talismans and crystal tears that give I-Frames to backsteps and improve spotaneous guards and counter attacks are FromSoftware testing new combat mechanics for the future. But, if you look at a game like Nioh 2, the combat is always gonna feel a little stagnant in comparison. They need to add more ways for the player to create custom combos and cancel recovery animations in a skillful way to create more fluidity.
I react easily to all bosses in this DLC. You know whom doesn't react properly? my character:) for this DLC to be alright boss wise, they needed to drastically reduce the recovery time of pretty much all weapons
@@e.t.v.1255I was fighting Rellana, trying to learn her moveset. I remember I tried a running jump R2, and as I was was already swinging down, she dashed away. She literally ran faster, from a neutral stance, than I could attack midswing. Granted, I was using a greatsword, but still, it seems ridiculous how fast FROM is making the bosses now.
eh, this is literally what people used to say about any harder and more complicated souls boss... yeah sure if you have to heal you might miss the window to deal damage - that's how it always worked. Besides, Radahn attacks so quickly and so often you'll get your next window in 5 secs tops.
@@GreatAdos No not really at all. Compare a boss people thought was hard like Lady Maria to any of these guys and you see that while you do less damage (they have more hp) you also get more opportunities to hit them back. Same with Kos. Same with Ludwig.
Miyazaki is in the Kojima position, I feel. He clearly WANTS to do something good else. Always mentions a traditional JRPG and liking horror like Bloodborne for atmosphere…but the money is in Dark Souls. LET THE MAN MAKE SOMETHING OTHER THAN METAL GEAR! 😂
It’s weird, I simultaneously don’t disagree with a lot of your criticisms but I still enjoyed the DLC regardless. I will say, however, that I do heavily agree that if Fromsoft doesn’t change their approach next time, I won’t be interested in playing. I beat Consort Radahn with no summoning, and I found a lot of his moves just absolutely agonizing and actively broke the flow of combat that I enjoy from a lot of the other bosses like Radagon or even Melania. I love the game, but I think it could mark the end of my time with Soulsbourne if they continue in this direction.
@@timekeeper2538 Because some people actually like to play the game and not have it play itself. Too hard is more fun than brain dead easy because at least you have to think while playing
@timekeeper2538 How is a boss ignoring you for 50% of the fight while your own damage effectively doubled not brain dead easy? You literally attack something that isn't looking at you 😂
11:06 I disagree with this. I love the fact that I'm not being constantly bombarded with cutscenes and am sent straight to the action. Story is second to gameplay imo. Sekiro had a good a more standardized way of story telling but the game was so good that I just didn't care about it. Then, If I care about the lore, watching a 20m lore video is better than wasting hours on in game cutscenes, I assume it's also in the developers interests to do it like this not just because it gives the story more room for player interpretation but it severely shifts development costs onto other more important areas of the game.
Also where does he think those lore TH-camrs get the lore from exactly? They get it from the game. So yes, the story is obviously in the game just not told to you in a conventional way. It is told in a way that actually utilises the medium of video games instead of just imitating movies.
I think my biggest issue with Elden Ring as a whole was the open world. There's so much to explore and collect, but most of the time these things are neither enjoyable nor rewarding, especially on consecutive playthroughs. But I like that they improved upon that, i.e. less caves and the world itself is more interesting to explore, seeing as it's on multiple layers and whatnot. But both in the main game as in the DLC, the big closed-off areas like the shadow keep, Farum Azula or Miquella's Haligtree are the most interesting and enjoyable. You really feel like you can actually interact with the environment, find shortcuts or some secret areas and are actually rewarded for actively looking around and get familiar with the place. I hope Fromsoft will take their next project away from the open world again or find a way to make the vast areas more enjoyable
also you can run and jump away from his "gravity grab" attack if you get hit by the first part. that was the most frustrating attack for me before realizing that
26:40 Not to defend this train wreck of a boss, but if you get hit by the first gravity attack, immediately running back and jumping as the attack closes in allows you to “dodge” the follow up
And this is why Radahn is just following the same cycle as all dlc bosses that are "unfairly hard." No one knows how anything works, but assumes their lack of skill is a fault of the "trainwreck boss design."
@jackreacher7495 This right here needs to be pointed out more often. This happens for every single fromsoft release in the exact same way every time. Before this expansion, the base game got mixed reviews on steam shortly after the release, for the same reasons, and eventually rose to above 90%. Ringed city dlc released and was criticized in much the same way as this dlc was when it released. Gael was a controversial boss when the dlc came out contrasting to the extremely high praise he gets now. Even back to dark souls 1, a bunch of the mechanics and combat of ds1 were way more criticized when it released, before everyone learned about how the game works. It seems to me, as time goes on this dlc will be getting more and more vocal praise, in the same cycle that every fromsoft game goes through.
Rellana can in fact use Twin/Double Moon spell more than once. I just fought her yesterday and I think the trigger is that once she's on 25% of health left, she will do the spell but if you linger on the fight long enough, she can do the spell again which what happened to me. Thankfully the move is really well telegraphed and she can't spam it over and over like Malenia with Waterfowl. The problem (and this goes for most bosses in Elden Ring base game and DLC) is that those super attacks rarely reward you with punish window. So you succesfully dodge super attack that can beat you but you're not rewarded with a window to do. Even if you get a window to punish, the best you can do is just 1 attack. I beat Rellana with dagger and shield parry but even with a dagger, you can only attack 3 times at a time at most. There's not really a dance in Elden Ring (except for a couple bosses like Godfrey or Radagon), most of the time you're watching a boss having a good time
A, the same old same old BS people used to say about the ER base game bosses and which was proven so gloriously wrong. It's a dance. You are just asked to actually participate in it instead of passively waiting for your turn.
@@shiroamakusa8075 can't you read my last paragraph? I'm not playing passive but even with a dagger, you can only do 1-3 attack after bosses long combo
@shiroamakusa8075 No it's okay keep repeating the same mindless retorts as every other indoctrinated modern FS fanboy as if they can do no wrong. It's almost like you think the people criticizing the game haven't beat it, likely multiple times. Is it doable? Absolutely. Is it fun? No. It just feels sloppy. I love Fromsoft just as much as the next person but the mixed reviews the DLC has garnered are 100% justified. It's sad to see where this community went post-ds3/sekiro.
First off, Fromsoft needs to learn how to program a camera that isn't constantly trying to romance the player's colon. Then they need to drop the stamina bar all together, along with weight burden, and environmental weapon deflection that only the player is victim to. Divorce themselves from the concept of locking the player into various animations which they can't cancel out of, and which lock out their controls. Separate the game currency that you spend at shops, from the experience points you spend leveling up your character, as this will dramatically reduce the time players have to spend grinding enemies for levels and equipment. And speaking of grinding, for the love of God stop giving the best items and equipment such obnoxiously low drop rates! Not to mention padding out the list of items enemies can drop, with crafting materials that are readily available all over the map. If I wanted to spend my time performing mind-numbingly boring and repetitive tasks, I'd go to work! At least in that case, my reward for all my time and effort would be given consistently, and not left up to random chance. As for weapon upgrading, simply bring back Bloodborne's blood gem system, and have us upgrade the gems instead of the weapons. That way when we find a new weapon that we want to try, we can simply put our upgraded gems on the new weapons to raise it to the appropriate level. Then if we don't like a weapon or find something new, we just switch our gems to our preferred weapon to bring it up to speed. Oh! And pause the damn game while we're in the menu! No being able to pause during online interactions with other players makes perfect sense. But when we're just playing solo PvE, there's no good reason why the game shouldn't pause while we're in the menu.
While i do not disagree with everything said in this Video I have to say your take on the Bosses like Radahn is somewhat flawed since all you do is spam Jump attacks and then complain about getting punished. Radahn has quite a lot of punish windows in his longer combos and after his attacks that you just never utilized because you only do one attack.
This is why Sekiro is peak FromSoft combat and level design, minus fashion. I want a new King’s Field. It could be the culmination of everything FS has perfected from DeS to ER.
The perfect FromSoft game would have the interconnected level design of Dark Souls 1, Elden Ring's depth of combat choices and QOL features, Sekiro's story telling, fluidity of movement, and parrying, and Bloodborne's themes and lore.
They already know how to mix up the gameplay because thats exactly what they did with both Bloodborne and Sekiro. Why they integrated NONE of what they learmed in those 2 games and decided "DS3 movement but somehow slower" is a mystery
When i finished the DLC it left me absolutely baffled. Yes, the lore has to have blank spots but why in hell would you not integrate any of the open ends the fans obviously want to investigate so badly. A super-hard boss or an almost empty level would cause so much less backlash if we would actually fight someone related to the GEQ or Godwyn or anything or actually investigate an ancient battlefield mentioned in the OG lore or some ancient source of power. Why add new things noone really cares about if you have a quiver full of open ends that would make the DLC be perceived so much more positively? Man, i really respect Miyazaki but goddamn why throw potential away like this? The fact that this DLC leaves a bitter taste is so unnecessary.
My thoughts entirely brother. I honesty think Elden ring lore simply dosent actually have answers. The team just likes to add detail, but can’t decide how things really happened. Take st Trina. According to the fan video she might have been miquellas alter ego, girlfriend, or twin. And they may have grown from a plant , and she may have been copying his recreation of radhan , and they may have wanted to merge as silver and gold. Ultimately we have no real clarification who or what she is and how she relates to the story. I believe From never bothered deciding
He didn't throw it away, his writers simply had no possible way to cleanly take care of loose threads. The game doesn't have an actual story other than following the path of a seemingly robotic in nature Tarnished character that just goes and destroys everything in his path seemingly because he simply feels like. For things to really get cleaned up, there would have to be logical coherence, but that doesn't exist since the game doesn't explain the baseline laws of nature in the reality this game takes place. Basic questions like what a tarnished even is, or how the game treats the Law of Identity is extremely problematic. The only type of storytelling of this sort that exists, is rooted in ancient religious story-telling, where you get bits and pieces of certain events/groups of people - but everything is told from what can also be interpreted as heavily metaphoric (due to the extremely ambiguous and unfulfilling manner). Stories in holy texts usually talk about people, yet none of them behave like any rational or sane human would. Likewise occurs in this game, everything goes on and functions like some non-sentient element in nature (like fire that burns, or water that flows), and that's it. There's no hard-set/definitive/correct interpretation of anything (just like holy texts), and is why you can't disprove anyone's theory for the most part. Also, Miyazaki in an interview said he doesn't want to make the mistake in his prior entries where he simply locks-away the possibility of returning to a genre. I think the story of this game (from the very down to earth GR Martin's foundation groundwork with normal humans in a fantastical setting - to the time skip warp of humans into supernatural beings that Miyazaki's writing team was tasked to do), is just too complex for them to neatly tie up and not be some eye-rollingly bad trash. So with all that, they just abandoned it rather than ruining it potentially. The only problem is, they left wayyyy to much up to interpretation (even the third-person narration is unreliable when you read item descriptions where it says things like "it has been said" or "people believe". Showing that not even the writers have decided what's going to be true in the game. Also wish the community as a collective would stop targeting Miyazaki as if he's writing anything. As a director he doesn't really do anything other than give final say on large progress from each team. It's not like he's going in there and juggling frame-data, or damage values (because if he was, he's one of the worst balance leads basically in modern gaming with 50%+ of items being borderline useless and redundant).
@@samogonbrother I disagree! They are similar in that they hugely invite fan theorizing . But Elden ring seems not to have any conclusive way to discern what realy happened in any given lore event. Eden ring also does not ever actually set up a mystery that is meant to be solved or that it eventually reveals itself. Asoiaf sets up many mysteries and then it gives us answers eventually , and asoiaf seems to really have a concrete understanding of what actually happened . Eg the knight of the laughing tree
i'm not against the idea of open-world dark souls, but for elden ring, they honestly should've cut the entire world in half and condensed it, with a heavier focus on the legacy dungeons. for the open-world elements, these could've been surprising and dynamic, with random enemies, random loot, and random encounters. a better, more effective crafting system would've been great too, and, i wouldn't've even minded semi-customizable magic and alchemy (but that might be too much to ask for tbh). with the way elden ring is right now, (especially with NG+), wandering the open world feels more like a long trudge through stagnant, un-interractive spaces i've already been to, filled to the brim with enemies i've already fought a billion times before. the magic wears off quickly, and i just feel uninterested and disillusioned - one of the worst feelings to have when playing these games
this happens every single time a new fromsoft game comes out, people just say the same critiques and act like it’s exclusive to the most recent release as if it hasn’t been an issue forever. getting kinda tiring ngl
Most memorable dlc moment was the soldiers of Messmer fighting a dragon, i wish there was more NPCs wars like this. And fighting leda with Ansbach and thiollier, epic Midra and Bayle also very fun with a lot of build up before the fight
A lot of fair criticism here! Although I would like to suggest perhaps not emphasizing your points on weather it's "fun" or not. Fun is a nebulous concept that can easily be picked apart. Despite understanding how frustrating the final boss is. I found Promised Consort Radahn to be an incredible boss fight. And yet, my positive outlook on this boss is circumstantial evidence at best. Is Elden Ring's combat design holding back the greater potential in boss fights? Yes, I agree that we must move on from this. (Weather Fromsoftware will do something about it or not remains to be seen). Since the base game I've always wished Elden Ring had Sekiro like combat. The parry system is objectively better.
I think you’re starting from a bad position. Your arguing that stagnation is starting to set in, where I’ve seen in since Ds1. It’s not a secret that demonsouls has been the foundation of soft game design for over a decade, and go back and look at DemonSouls and I mean really look. There were so many more ideas and concepts from mob design, encounter design, gear design that effectively was cut out and never returned. Soft immediately cut off so many branches, sure they would have more content but sitting on way fewer beaches. Stagnation didn’t set in with Shadow of the Erdtree, it set in with Darksouls it only took this long for player to bother paying attention enough to see it. Look at boss arena as the most in your face example of soft curing and simplifying to an easy and very stagnant design. Your looking a simple geometric near featureless arenas, compared to the many bosses arenas that were levels of their own for Demon souls. Also I never know that the dev thought I would take their game seriously and coshish. Soft doesn’t really have that many idea when it comes to encounters and they played all their tricks more then ten years ago. When predicting the roll of a dice is harder then what soft will do it’s not really that impressive, or maybe most players just have really bad attention spans.
I'm having to push myself to get to the end of this DLC. I cant believe I've come to a point where I'm no longer excited for a new Fromsoft release. Ill buy and play the next game on day one, but there has been a shift in perception for sure, and it makes me pretty sad.
Don't just mindlessly buy Day one. Wait to see if they genuinely innovated. Telling them they are guaranteed to have your money is what will make them never want to change or get better
@@thedoomslayer5863 sure, generally. But this is the first time I've felt like a game of theirs missed the mark in 15 years. I have over 350 hours in Elden Ring, so I've played it, platted it even. I did enjoy it, really. It just doesn't evoke the same vibe as their previous games. It feels weirdly shallow, almost formulaic in its design, and the DLC really cranks that feeling of artifice way up while the wonder from experiencing it for the first time isn't there to gloss it all over. So to your point, I agree it is usually best to wait on dlc, but Fromsoftware's track record gave no indication that it wouldn't deliver. And in such a weird, vague manner.
Armored Core 6 felt like a breath of fresh air for a company that has been working on one type of game for more than a decade. Also LotF and Lies of P have shown how far outdated Fromsoft's soulslike design has been.
@@scissors0009 Well lesson learned for you i hope, even CDPR a once universally beloved games company failed tragically with the release of their latest game on day one. These companies we hold in such high regard can fail and at some point likely will. Larian studios makers of baldurs gate 3, one of my favorite games of all time, their next game i will wait and see before i buy it. NEVER give your money day 1 or say they are 100% going to get your money. You learned this lesson hopefully now and i encourage you to spread it to others in a similar boat to you.
@@aryabratsahoo7474lies of p is notable in that it's the first souls like to outclass from soft. Not saying it's better than dark souls 1 or bloodborne(because it isn't) but comparing it to Elden Ring and it's dlc, From Soft's most recent efforts feel kinda sloppy in comparison.
How does the upgrade system discourage experimentation? If you're playing with a late game character and have explored all or most of the base game (or just know how to beeline to the bearings) you can pretty much buy materials and upgrade anything to right before max level at any time, and fully respec multiple times per cycle if you want to adjust your build or meet different requirements. Combine that with the talismans and ashes of war and it's probably the most experiment friendly game in the series. And then obviously if you don't care about the community level caps you can just level up your stats to whatever thresholds you want anyway and you'll eventually be able to use pretty much any weapon or armor set.
There are actually new elements introduced. 1)the necessity to find items like hearts in Zelda where in the base game you could compensate by over levelling. 2)Verticality being introduced on a larger scale, the whole shadow lands is a multilayered big dungeon much more than the lands between was 3)Events happening in real time. You're not bothering demigods rotting in their castles by who knows how much, Miquella plan is unfolding now. Quite a departure from the souls narration I'd say.
Interesting take on your criticism and well exposed. I see this is not a game you enjoyed which is fine. Fun and art is subjective after all. I do disagree with most of your points though which is fine as well.
A lot of your issues with this DLC were mostly resolved in Sekiro. I would have much preferred the upgrade items be linked to beating bosses and mini bosses like Sekiro does, but I get that they wanted you to explore for them in this DLC instead. Having only one main weapon and a bunch of secondary tools to mess around with in Sekiro also made fighting bosses more puzzle like as well since some tools were really effective against certain bosses in that game. Sekiro also has barely any grinding as a result of it's upgrade systems unless you want to be a completionist and get the platinum trophy. Sekiro is actually more annoying than Elden Ring in this regard and requires getting up to new game +7 to make the grind a lot less annoying. Elden Ring's Trophies are more exploration based so it's actually much more manageable. I kind of want From Soft to try and make another game like Sekiro where the upgrading system is way more skill based rather than stat based, but at the same time I know Sekiro has a high barrier to entry as a result of that and is definitely the most git gud game in the souls series. Then again once you do git gud at it it becomes oddly one of the easiest and most fun games in the series.
You're absolutely correct. Remember when you'd die to a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne and be super excited to get back to the fog gate with what you just learned and test your wits against them again? Well almost every time I died to a boss in Shadow of the Erdtree I just felt cheated because FromSoft clearly designed them to be relentlessly punishing. There are no clever tricks to defeating these bosses. There's only cheese builds, summoning or robotically executing dozens of perfectly timed dodges and poking them to death.
Ya, like I remember how I was so exited to fight bosses like living failures, bed of chaos, amygdala, take off the rose tinted glasses, bosses in base game fromsoft didn’t get real good until Ds3
@@tbrown5836Living Failures isn’t that bad, Amygdala is fine (why do people hate this boss?), and Bed of Chaos is easy, the DLC bosses aren’t easy, they’re just grueling, well kinda a lie, most of the bosses are decent.
I think you would REALLY enjoy Armored Core VI, as it's probably one of the more distinct games From has made after Dark Souls fame (Alongside Sekiro and Deracine). Ignore any prejudices and preconceptions you might might see about mechas (not to mention those would be kinda dumb, as mecha is just sci-fi), ACVI tackles many of the issues you see in the Souls games combat, and probably had FS try to implement AC bosses onto the Souls format (with inconsistent results) in order to compensate for the simplistic core combat.
Yeah ac6 is pretty damn good. It does exactly what it needed to do, gives the og fans what they want while also improving the mechanics in every way. It won't appeal to most people, but it sold well enough that hopefully we'll see another entry within the decade.
@@Crow12619 Not quite. Mechanically it's a heavily simplified version of what they have done before. It's a good game, but it is hardly the best entry in the franchise (aesthetics aside). Linear evolution doesn't really work with FROM games, as they constantly change things around, even among their same franchises.
The example of the Shaman Village might just be the single most glaring example of not even trying to engage with the world design. All it takes is reading the description for the two unique items found in this location to figure out it is Marika's original hometown. Thus, likewise, the entrance to the area being guarded by two of her golden knights isn't just a lazy copy paste, it's part of the story. Seriously, it only takes reading the description of two items to figure most of this out, it's not all that obscure. ... Also, on a side note about runes, there is never a reason to ever feel conflicted about losing them to a boss and the entire situation mentioned with the Dancing Lion could have been avoided by just mixing the Twiggy Cracked Tear into the Flask of Wonderous Physicl (both base game items) allowing for easy retrieval.
@@Yive.: Yes, just for a piece of lore. Lore that connects to one of the single most important figures in the entire game, providing hints to her origins and motivations. That's the way FromSoft games have always worked. Stories inferred through level design and item placement rather than told outright in cutscenes. Elden Ring is just more of the same on a larger scale. I mean, just consider something like Ash Lake in DS1 and how little there is to actually do there. It'd be easy for someone who never stops and considered the implications to write it off as a pointless side area, and yet its existence helps add insight into the age of dragons that preceded everything.
@@SmokeADig: I'm not telling you, the game is. _"Secret incantation of Queen Marika. Only the kindness of gold, without Order... Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."_ --Minor Erdtree _"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother... What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."_ --Golden Braid
About the combat and stamina stuff, I think they have reached the limit of this system. If they want to make such complex bosses that requires us to dodge, run, defend, attack, in a very fast, dynamic and long time without having time to breathe, they need to change this. We are leveling up the stamina since elden beast and it’s never enough. And it’s gets better, because they already have the solution and It’s called Sekiro, they need to put more sekiro combat mechanics in souls games, I hope they realize it and pray that this could be a new game in the future, Sekiro is the best game I ever played and I love it so much, I’m also a huge fan of the souls series. I really don’t get it why they are not going more deep into Sekiro mechanisms after it’s success in all aspects, why are they not ducking exploring it ?
everyone forgets that Elden Ring is just a better version of Dark Souls 2 (but its still Dark Souls 2). the expansion power creep also follows the same cadence of DS2
This is kinda long and kinda rant-ish, Sorry. I've been playing Elden Ring since day 1 and since then I've created and completed 36 characters across 4 profiles with a 37th about half done (pre-dlc) all with mostly different builds typically built around a theme of some kind to prevent too much crossover between them and I'm kinda self strict about staying on theme What I'm saying is that I have a bit too much experience with this game and no I'm not burned out. Anyways, having started from the top of my character list and worked my way down, I have 7 complete runs through the dlc with my 8th just started and I have some opinions. Despite using a wide variety of builds my main preference is colossal swords, my first and main character is a super high level Omni build of sorts but still intended to use a colossal sword. There's more than 1 scenario in this dlc that don't feel balanced for colossal swords, I'm left dodging for minutes on end wondering when I could possibly attack without being punished. This is kinda annoying because I'm reminded of early in the games life before colossal weaponry got 4 different speed and cool down buffs to make them viable in base game, they feel good to use now that they're faster. Honestly it was abysmal back then. The dlc just resets it back to square 1 again... And it's really annoying. My biggest gripe is with Mique-Dahn, yes I've beaten them 7 times, none of those times ever felt legit. He's not the only boss I struggle with (the other being Rellana) but he is the only one I feel like I have to summon to survive and heavy weapons are just not usable without some kind of distraction. My first time was by abusing the at-the-time broken dueling shield block-poke attack. My second time was the fabled great shield poke strat. The 5 other times were panic summoning my mimic and praying to RN-Jesus that I get a good run where Mique-Dahn doesn't spam their omega seizure "I win, now die!" attacks 10 times in a row. This is the only boss whose moveset still alludes me and I haven't at least partially "clicked" with yet. I really hope FROM does something to address this boss because this is just too much. There is "good hard" and "bad hard" and this boss is way in the deep end on the bad hard side. FROM is not above nerfing bosses after all. base game Radahn, AC6 Balteus, and AC6 Cell 240 come to mind as recent examples so it's not unheard of. It's a real shame because everything in-between the problem bosses is really good imo.
The game is great but unfortunately the boss design brings it down and clings onto being difficult for the sake of being difficult for no reason. Difficulty isnt always a bad thing but fromsoft needs to find a good balance between difficult but fair or just straight up unfair. You can make the game more difficult by turning your monitor off when u enter boss room or the game makes your keyboard and mouse disconnect when you fight the boss randomly, we cant argue that this isnt difficult, but is it fun, is it engaging and fair? Thats how I feel when fighting half of the late game bosses in Elde Ring. Is it fun to watch maliketh fly across the arena and swing his blade 20 times and dodge all of that while waiting for your time to do some damage then he lands and flies back to the other side of arena completely negating your punishing window? Is it fun to watch fire giant roll away every time you get to him, completely denying you any damage? We as a player character remained almost exactly the same since Dark Souls 3 probably even worse, since our character now doesnt even have s on backstep and has slower dodge roll while only getting the jump button, Bloodborne introduced the rally mechanic alongside backstep with more s that allowed you to be more aggresive and rewarded you taking the initiative in boss fight since you could get HP back from good trades, Sekiro got guard and mikiri counters as a core mechanic, while Elden Ring gave us jump button which is only usefull in some situations and completely overshadowed by dodge roll, meanwhile half of the bosses in later half of the game look like they got steroids and crack cocaine and should belong to Sekiro (I'm looking at you Malenia and Rellana). And it gets even more obscure since Elden Ring is probably the easiest game FromSoftware ever made since, for the whole cost of one or two flasks you can summon your own Pokemon which will fight alongside you and tank all the damage while you destroy the boss with frost, bleed or magic build with the right talismans in 60-90 seconds while not seeing the bosses whole moveset and at that point every other boss fight becomes "oh again, another hyperactive cocaine fed boss, lets get this over quickly so i can go back and explore.
Excellent video. I too really hope From will make something completely new next time. Or- if it's still the same formula, I hope they will slow the enemies and bosses way way down. They can't simply make everything faster for ever... I'm sure they can challenge us in more ways than by just hitting the dodge button at the right time.
Was along for the ride until that silly comment about “Fromsoft paying shills” what are you talking about 🤣 Forming the conclusion that the DLC “discourages” testing new things (spirit ashes, weapons) is also a wild take. It literally stuffs you full of smithing stones and gloveworts of all types, and the new DLC weapons scale mostly off their upgrades, not stats for this very reason.
Fair to say that the souls formula has peaked with elden ring. They should definitely try to build upon the mechanics of sekiro for future installments. Which will allow the player the tools needed to combat the ever more complex and over the top bosses in a more fun and engaging way instead of just waiting to press L2 or R1 between each 15 hit combo
@@私はクソな中国人です that and expand movesets for weapons. look at the radahns new swords, it shouldve had both ashes of war, not one or the other with two different weapons that are otherwise identical.
@@brynntall6811 he definitely seems like a great fight and i love their concept of a boss fight attacking to the rhythm of the music. my only issues with the boss fight is that lightning weather cycle does get obnoxious at times, and, if you play on the ps4 version like i do, the fps will work against your favor, making his second phase much worse to deal with.
They feel like they have to keep making larger spectacles of each boss, and the AoE and nuke moves are more annoying and infuriating than strategic and fun. The boss formula peaked in early to mid game ER or DS3 even
I agree, fromsoft needs to go back to the roots of the series to re-analyze why people like these games. ER, Sekiro, Bloodborne and dark souls are at this point different genres and the worst sin ER commits is that it is trying to cater to every type of player, while still using the skeleton of the Demons Souls gameplay systems, ER is essentially 3-4 games stapled together, with little to no cohesion at places. The company needs to (and they seem to be in the process of) exploring vastly different genres than the souls formula, and let other directors attempt high profile projects, I hope they take a long break from souls type projects before the next one, and go back to their older titles (Kings Field and Eternal Ring) and some of their weird one off attemps at different genres. Fromsoft had such a huge variety of games in the past (JRPGS, Horror,Character Action) and they need to go back and experiment again in order to not stagnate. I hope we get more Deracine, Kuon, enchanted arms and Shadow Tower like games from them, before another souls like title, and even then i hope they vastly re-work the entire experience for another open world title.
Up to this point I used to think that ER's boss design felt wrong mostly because of their unfair nature but replaying DS1 after about 7 years made me realise something; Souls games have always been unfair, the reason they are challenging is becuase they put you in seemingly impossible scenarios and expect you to overcome these unhinged odds. The process of beating a boss or an obstacle was never truly "fun" to me, succiding was. I'm currently stuck on Orstein and Smough and let me tell you it's actual torment. I'm using a greataxe that has insanely slow attacks, low range and long recovery animations and it makes the fight really tough for me. It immidiately reminded me of the suffering I went through while fighting Bayle or Consort Radahn. Here's the difference tho: the duo bossfight is the first roadblock I've encountered in the entire game, every obstacle before them I overcame through caution and patience. It only makes sense that this is the first major spike in difficulty for me; I'm literally fighting 2 giant warriors by myself. Obviously it should be hard and when I eventually defeat them using my dogshit weapon I will feel like a god but the main point is that the bossfight is challenging just because I have to fight 2 dudes instead of one but it's sufficient enough because it's the only duo bossfight in the entire game and makes sense from the game's world perspective, it would make sense that fighting two guys at the same time would be an insane challange. For contrary in SOTE literally every single boss is like that. Every single bossfight is some kind of a roadblock with some crazy shit that's suppoused to gradually increase the difficulty more and more but in consequence makes every other encounter less and less unique. The problem with that is the souls combat is perfect for dungeon crawling, for the slow and methodical approach where caution and high consequence of actions are the core of challange. That segways into another important point; the spectacle and high octane movesets of ER's bosses make the combat look fucking goofy. Look at aforementioned Radahn for example: he shoots giant rocks, shatters the ground and in his second phase he literally creates waves of light and explosions that would destroy a castle yet literally all our character has to do to avoid it is to roll. It just looks silly. Feels like the game's immersion suffers a lot because of the missmatch between the spectacle and the souls combat even with all of it's modifications. I'm not saying DS1 and DeS didn't have aoe attacks that could be dodged with roll but in ER and the dlc the dial is turned up to 11 going over and beyond reason. I feel like we're often too focused on the mechanical aspects of the combat and don't look at the bigger picture of what it's design accomplishes in the grander picture. I can actually see the vision behind these bosses and why they were made the way they are but it falls apart for me simply because that vision colides with the nature of Souls combat.
I agree with this comment so hard it's crazy. There was always this feeling in this game when fighting the literal greatest swordswoman to exist, master magic users that studied for centuries, a literal creator god - does it really make sense that a little roll would save me against the holy light of a god? It's kind of immersion breaking in a way that earlier souls games, armored core, and sekiro aren't. It was at that point that I realized that playing it with just rolling and not using bloodhounds step or other ashes of war just wasn't as fun for me. I get that it's supposed to be about disempowerment and trying to overcome the impossible, like you said, but it really just doesn't feel right anymore, and it looks and feels silly. I heard Nioh and lies of P do great things with their player kits so I'll have to check those out
@@mr.b89 Nioh 2 is a better game than elden ring IMO. The combat is in a completely different level, like youcould take a thousand hours to truly master it and even then you could probably push it even further, it's more like dmc with stamina. And the story and everything is simple but satisfying, they play to their strengths. Elden ring fell apart under the weight of it's own ambition for me and the DLC is just a rushed, lazy cash grab
I have to disagree with the word unfair about Ds1, on of the most though out games in terms of gameplay and worldbuilding (lets ignore some unfinished areas) the game gives a tool for every situation. If you get decent at rolling you can even no hit most of the fights or use a big shield and laugh.. The highest peak in difficulty being O&S offers you the pillars to control the pace of the fight and even that one is as fair as it can get. In struggle a lot of people seem to use the words "tedious" and "unfair" too lightly.
@@Hyde_Lawrence I see what you mean but actually the point I was making is to present the feeling of unfairness as a positive aspect of the game. Maybe I worded myself insufficiently but what I was getting into is how the game isn't overly-concerned with providing a fair and honourable challenge and does so with sensible justification wich helps to solidify the world as hostile and real.
@@slei4676 I'll say that the games never felt unfair by any means. I know a lot of people that strugle and say "unfair" but even up to sekiro which was consider way harder, you play that game and you have an answer for each and every move while being extremely clean, satisfactory and challenging. A lot of people like to quote early miyazaki's interviews where he repeats over and over again that difficulty was never the objective of the games, maybe he started to change his mind after a few games but not by the time of Ds1.
GIT GUD Haha but serious 5:14 I killed that Imp Cannon with a greatbow on my first playthrough when he was still on the elevated pillar and thus unable to get the item ... only to find out weeks later its just a great ghost glovewort 😆
It really sad to see people who obviously are DS3 fans criticize this game and comparing it to DS3. I remember reddit was screaming in rage when DS3 came out and shunned the game for being too short and messed a lot of things lore wise. but I said back then people are resistant to change. and here we are again. to begin with i would to make a blunt statement. while DS3 is great game, it not the best. the game suffered of a lot of issues and everyone who played DS1 and compared it to DS3 know this very well. DS1 is fairly superior to DS3. And if we want to be fair, DS2 lore and NPC characters is still better than DS3 except the gameplay mechanics. the game is far more enjoyable for real fans of the series and not people who like "boss rush" and "Hack and slash" gameplay, or what is called "drive by" gameplay. For the gameplay and speed of the game. i think DS3 veterans are leading this assault on the Elden ring. and these very same people who are criticizing Elden ring are the same people who defended DS3 when it was criticized by DS1 fans of it being overtly fast and the having absurd damage numbers alongside other thrown weird arguments about DS3. Here is the fact, the souls games are evolving, and evolving in pace with player base. try going back to DS1, you might see how slow that game was and say "how on earth people used to say this is too difficult". same thing would happen to people who will jump from Elden ring and play DS3. Yes, there is some issues in Elden ring, but still its a more polished game than DS3. it give more content, more battles and more tense encounters than any other previous titles by miles (Still the PVP could be better). Even the new DLC arguably could be bigger than DS3 map including DS3 both DLCs. which should be something to think about when we consider the price. DS3 first DLC gave us a small map with 2 bosses for 15$, how much content did we get for 40$ ? how many bosses did we get ?? These should be taken into consideration when making an argument about he price. how much I did pay and how much did i get in return. Its a questions of value. so the price argument isn't fair in all honesty. if you hate the game for hating the game, then this is being emotional and not objective in the analysis. As for Elden ring, its the sum of all the previous experiences fromsoft learned from previous titles except bloodborne and sekiro to a some extent. while sekiro is on its own league and shouldn't be objectively called a souls game cause the mechanics are far different (combat wise), people should be comparing Elden ring previous classical souls games. For the recycled content argument. I believe its an unfair argument, for many reasons. One of them is if you define content as every thing found in the world, then Elden ring has more content than all of the previous titles by miles, especially if you take the environmental story telling and other stuff found in the game. And if you argument is about bosses then we have to be objective in our approach while talking about this topic So for ER we have these bosses without the DLC 1. Godrick 2. Rennala 3. Radhan 4. Rykard 5. Morgott 6. Mohg 7. Malenia 8. Maliketh 9. Godfrey 10. Fire Giant 11. Radagon/Elden Beast 12. Placidusax if we are going to take the unique encounter of a repeated boss, then we have even more raising to 13. Fortissax 14. Ancestor Spirit 15. Astel 16. Loretta 17. Godskin Noble 18. Godskin apostle 19. Magma Wyrm Makar 20. Dragonkin of Nokstella 21. Commander Niall 22. Elemer of the Briar 23. Mimic Tear 24. Flying Dragons 25. Erdtree Avatar 26. Ulcerated Tree Spirit 27. Fallingstar Beast 28. Giant Wormface 29. Tree Sentinel 30. Draconic Tree Sentinel 31. Night's Cavalry 32. Deathbirds/Death rite Birds 33. Demi-Human Queen So overall there's probably about 30-35 unique boss based on how you define Bosses, while on the other hand Demons Souls - 22 without the DLC Dark Souls (base game) - 20 unique Dark Souls 2 (base game) - 32 (ER nearly matches it) Dark Souls 3 (base game) - 19 (the least in the souls series) Bloodborne (base game) - 24 (including Dungeons) Sekiro - ill say 28 (keeping in mind that they should be 17) This "unique bosses" argument should be put to rest, cause it does not make any sense based on the numbers. As for the empty space argument, its an inherent problem in the open world genre and knows it. and if we want to be honest it reflects how our real world actually looks like, there are empty spaces around us if we look out of the window. so that could be part of it mimicking how the real world is. Having that said, this so called empty space is packed with lore content and environmental story telling for the real and only real souls/born fans who will keep on discussing the game until they become one of the undead XD Another thing to add, emotional argument means nothing if we want to objectively analyze the souls games. the games we checked are without the DLC content FYI. However, souls games gameplay mechanics are evolving. I think trick weapons in bloodborne (although its a short game, i must say) are one of the fun mechanics that can be brought and added to the game but based on the ER theme but I highly doubt that. I believe covenant mechanic should be brought back cause it was fun and it can fix PVP. also, PVP should be reworked entirely. expand the weapon attack styles and it will be better than what we have currently, which is why they added new styles in the first place. As for throwing and abandoning the classical leveling system, thats a whole topic and i think the post is pretty long enough. i will agree with some of your critiques regarding the death knights and lion but still, what you are mainly asking is breaking the souls formula and adopt something similar to sakiro where there is no real leveling system at all. There are only unlocks. Skills unlock with points you gain from killing, other things unlock by finding prerequisite items. Meaning a new formula that isn't souls fundamentally speaking cause you are tired of it. having that said, sekiro is not a souls game from a fundamental perspective. its a great game but not a souls game. truth to be told, its more like DMC style game more than a souls game. if that is your cup of tea you can go enjoy the old GOW, bayonettas and DMC all you want. Also, let this be a mark here and a reminder for the future, if fromsoft releases a new DLC for Elden ring, you are going to play it and you are going to be unreasonably liberal in your critique toppling down the basics and the fundamentals of all souls games, cause what you are really suffering is souls fatigue. best course of action here is to move on and play other game genre. you can go and play armored core if you want new experiences from fromsoft. if we want to be objective, we need measure the length of something using a ruler/meter and not with scale !! I won't go on comparing apples to oranges and say why apples are not as sour as oranges, cause i like the taste of orange. if you like orange, go eat orange. You can not compare sekiro to DS3 or ER.
Hum...Some well thought out points but others miss the point pun intended. Best idea is making some kind of universal weapon upgrade system. This game should ABSOLUTELY make it as easy as possible to change classes and try out a whole bunch of magicks and weapons and ashes of war and summons. Added to the open world, THAT is where this game's richness lies, in all the things you can do. Yes, you can get some Miner's bells and farm for runes and buy all kinds of smithing stones and then spend them on upgrading weapons...but why bother. Yes, you can go an collect larval tears and teleport to Renalla and respec...I say just make these two things instantly accessible, and drop the larval tears. Let us be able to respec at graces and try whatever we want. I intuit they kept those limits to keep exploration meaningful, and make all those smithing stones and larval tears so precious, and I can understand that. But I'm sure they could still keep exploration good and rewarding while somehow making those two things different. About the story and lore and monotone NPCs...I agree with you. FromSoft needs to AT LEAST make every npc quest easier to track, like Lies of P did, with character icons present on the map. But mysterious lore you have to think about it a trademark now. Hate it or Love it, that's how FromSoft does story. When I see the success of lore youtube channels, I think something works. This ain't no Last of Us for sure. About the open world, I agree. Nothing extraordinary here, except the sheer beauty of it. Content wise the best content is by far legacy dungeons and some smart, original mini dungeons. About bosses, first off their visual design is top of the market, let's give them that. Secondly, I suspect if they let us respec and change builds and weapons that much easier, a good part of the difficutly would be more bearable. I agree that they went too far with the spectacle over playability tho, 100 percent. Bosses tend to be non interactable, except rolling or spacing out, for far too long. The random extended combos are not a bad idea tho. Keeps you on your toes. I discovered I got better at the game when I stopped playing it like Dark Souls, which is deliberate and very much slow compared to this. I enjoyed your video tho, thank you!
i agree with pretty much everything said in this video, the barren open world clashing with classic souls formula along with the usual slop open world gives serving as filler and the outdated combat mechanics though one thing i personally find dissapointing in the DLC is that none of the dungeons came close to the quality of the base game with the exception of shadow keep if i'm being horribly generous
Completely agree. The 2 dungeons where a huge disappointment. Didnt come close to leyendell, stormveil or even volcano. manor... Shadow keep is big but most of it is just recycled grand archives from ds3 and the theme is "black moody fortress"... Wow, we've never seen that before.
Going off what that other guy said, you could force structure to an open world by locking the scadu fragments behind important boss kills so that some kind of order was established, that would beat having to hunt the wilderness (this causes a realistic gameplay loop of players simply memorizing routes online, DISCOURAGING the very exploration it was hinged upon. What you need for exploration is a good variety and intermittent reward.
It's very funny to see a lot of the complaints that people bashed on when the game first came out now be in the forefront when numbers and difficulty are cranked up even higher. The humbling of the "git gud" crowd is mildly satisfying lol. Regardless, I agree with a lot of the points in this video. I really appreciate the concise and focused criticism of the open world, which I've also had similar thoughts on since week 1 of vanilla Elden Ring. Torrent needing to have i-frames coming back into the discussion was lovely to hear as well, along with mentions of the story and many other things. I've said more here than I usually do in a comment, but per your point of the video, this series is in dire need of retirement or a major shift. Quite frankly, I just want someone to make another genre defining game like Dark Souls was in its heyday. It's time for something new. This video was really a treat, thanks c:
after the ds3 and bloodborne dlcs i was like "holy shit that was good, i wanna do this again" after the elden ring dlc i was like "its finally over, thank god"
hit the nail on the head 6 minutes in. i remember for hours i was excited to explore the northeast part of the map and all that's there is a fucking falling star beast, copy pasted tree sentinel fight, and the stupid finger ruins. the shaman villiage lore is cool, though. but everything cool in this game is surrounded by 10 other things that are dogshit.
Part of the challenge managing the camera with bosses like dancing lion is knowing when to take the lock off. Most spells and attacks can still be manually aimed by controlling your camera and looking at your target.
So glad some people are able to look at this game clearly. It drives me mad how much of an echo chamber the souls community can be and how they struggle to see how bad a lot do this dlc was
The internet creates echo chambers. And people flock to them to hear their own opinions and bias spit back at them and don't like being challenged. Not just video games unfortunately. I have enjoyed the DLC and think it's great but it definitely has it's flaws.
You would probably not be so mad about things like this if you were more understanding of the subjectivity of art. You speak as though you've discovered a truth that the DLC is bad, not that you've developed an opinion that the DLC is bad, which is what has actually happened. No one is blind to some gospel you've uncovered, they just engaged with the same piece of media that you did and felt differently about it. There doesn't need to be some battle on the internet to win over the opinions of those people, it worked for them and not for you, discuss the difference to your hearts content but at least understand that it's all subjective. You're not any more correct if you get someone to agree with you than you were before.
@@andothersuchnonsense2685 This honestly. I personally felt that this DLC improved upon all of the things I disliked about the base game. I can understand why someone might feel different though. I wasn't particularily hyped about this DLC myself, as I had most of the same complaints as the detractors had about the base game. My experience with the DLC was completely different though. This was honestly the most fun I've had with a Soulsborne game since my first playthrough of Bloodborne back in 2015. Considering the fact that I had a burning hatred for most of the bosses in the base game, I was pleasantly surprised by just how good I found most of these new ones to be. While definitely more challenging, they somehow felt more intuitive to me. One thing I really loved was how much more balanced around summons these bosses were. In the base game, it almost felt like I had a choice between agonizingly frustrating or just piss easy, depending on wether or not I chose to summon. With the DLC though it felt more like a choice between an endurance fight or not. It was nice to finally feel like the summons were there as a tool to make it more managable rather than to completely cheese through the game. As someone who genuinly loved my time with the DLC, it's a bit disheartening to see people trying to discredit my opinion as me just being blind to From Softwares faults. Because how could someone possibly like something they dislike for any valid reasons?
I could articulate my thoughts thoroughly in a comment but tbh the DLC already ran my patience dry so I'll just say "FAX, BRUDDER, SPIT UR SHIT" Pleasant video, can't think of much i disagree with so i might be biased on it but still.
Good analysis. I think open worlds don’t suit fromsoft level design. They peaked with DS3-Bloodborne in terms of striking the right balance with world size. The reused dragons and tree spirits are just lazy, and I feel like it’s because all the work went into legacy dungeons (which aren’t that good compared to base Elden ring game)
Elden ring did way better in numbers compare to Bloodborne and Sony expectation to bloodborne didnt match it was a fail compare to other exclusive ps games
@@wiliex0687 maybe instead of making another souls game they try something else is what I’m saying they typically do good and plus FS meat riders will by it anyway
Sekiro/Bloodborne mechanics in a more "plasingly" themed game would work well IMO, financially too. Also, they can ride this Success wave to popularize the sekiroborne style more.
@@jonathanprivitera9394 both Bloodborne and sekiro sales can’t match Elden Ring Fromsoft doesn’t own the IP of all their games but Bandai will let a Elden ring 2
Paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos? C'mon man. Really? That's what you're really putting into your video because you don't care enough about the lore to read item descriptions? I totally get that Elden Ring lore is obscure, confusing, and fragmentary, but everything you need to know to have at least an 80% understanding of what say, Mesmerr is doing when he pulls out his eye is right there in the game if care to look for it (and the remaining 20% in my opinion lends and air of mystery to the whole affair whatever lore detail you're talking about). Same goes for the open worlds stuff. Is it the most compelling from a purely "is this challenging my dexterous skills right now?" sense, no... but from a lore standpoint they're doing good work making the world seem believably lived in, with a history, thematically supporting the game's broader ideas, and not infrequently featuring clues about what the heck is actually going on for the sharp eyed and really dedicated lore hunters (and that's entirely aside from the joy of exploration, which you appear to be entirely immune to.) I'll give you the point on the Ruins of Rauh though. Easily the least compelling section of the DLC.
this is possibly one of the worst sote critique videos i've seen so far, simply because this brit jabbed at the lore youtubers. it feels like people are jumping on the bandwagon of sote hate, and use it as an excuse to shit on all of the other souls games too. i get that the dlc isn't perfect like every other video game ever and has its own quirks; i say this as someone who thinks that promised consort radahn is heavily flawed, and is the main reason, among a few other minor issues i have with the game, is why i give the elden ring dlc an 8/10. but was it REALLY necessary to give massive disrespect to the people that have worked for about a fucking decade piecing the lore together so that many of us can get a better grasp of the story and lore? it goes to show how many people are vehemently allergic to media that doesn't conform to traditional storytelling...i could go on and on, applying this argument to other certain games like yume nikki and kingdom hearts, but you're already smart enough to know that some people in this world are simpletons.
I liked the final boss both lore and gameplay wise despite those two bullshit moves he has that should be changed. But that fight made me realize one thing, let me explain. The Fine Crucible Feather Talisman improves your backstep in a way that you can use it to dodge attacks just like Bloodborne dodge. You can use this to counter the dumb undodgeble move of Radahn by backstepping the first hit and rolling the last 2 (easier said than done as it's fast but with practice it's fairly doable) but you shouldn't have to search or know this detail, it's just a talisman, most people can just skip it by not exploring enough. In fact, I think the property that this talisman gives you should be the default in the character's movement options, it makes the gameplay so much more interesting. I don't know why the heck they decided to put that into a Talisman, in the DLC, which is accessible in the endgame. I think it should be a core mechanic, so much that on my new playthrough that talisman has a reserved slot on all my builds, it's that good. They should have done like Monster Hunter Iceborn, as part of the DLC, add more core mechanics to the game that are usable from the start of any playthrough just by having the DLC.
I disaggre with the scadutree fragments. Like I actively dislike those. They do make exploring meaningfull and discourage farming runes on safe spots, but once the exploration part is done, it just becomes a chore you have to do to actually go to the rest of the content. On second playthroughs they become absolutely obnoxious, since you basically have to either actively ignore them or go search every easy-access one as soon as possible. So this easily turns into 1/2-1 hour of "stuff I have to do to get started". Besides I don't think you deciding to leave the fight and go farm some levels is something that should be prevented. Like levels don't even matter that much. You played with basically the "Bonk build" (heavy double weapon and spam jump heavy for massive damage and posture break) which is probably one of the strongest simple builds. You could literally have 100 levels less than a guy using some mix stats on dex-arc-faith and still have an easier time on a boss than them. Builds matter waaaaaaaay more than levels, ask no-hitters. Also, I don't think it is fair to say the map is empty, it is not. Sure the finger zones are empty, but they are like... intentionally empty, like they are trying to convey there is nothing there other than roamming weirdos. I do agree they are lame though. But saying there is nothing on the top part of the map is a lie. You have to go there to progress with a quest that culminates on a pretty cool rememberance boss (one I think you didn't even mention, so maybe you missed it?), you have I think 3 unique spells, a bunch of deep lore and a trinket that is REALLY helpfull against the final boss. On the cerulean coast you also have a deathbird (yes, another repeated boss) with unique loot and even more loot scattered around. Also the undead dragons are unique, their moveset, while similar to the original ones, has some tweaks on timing areas and follow ups (and some extra special moves), that actually makes you fight them differently. The one at the cerulean coast summons a freaking army of undead, where you have to make the choice of either slowly kill them while dodging the dragon or ignoring them and try to fight the dragon while they are there (that's pretty cool if you ask me, not amazing, but it spices up the fight). The zone is not great in terms of content, but it is far from empty. I do agree with everything else though, that's totally fair.
I agree with some of your points, but I do think saying it’s okay for an area to be empty just because it was “intentional” is lazy. Empty areas are not engaging, barely add to lore, and are just time sinks to explore through. Like the video claimed, a big reason many explore in Elden Ring is because 1/10 times it leads to something incredible but the 9/10 times the rewards are a scenic view or lackluster item. On repeat playthroughs most people are just going to skip it entirely or rush to the objective which begs the question why spend time creating a space if you’re not going to fill it? To market the expansion to be bigger than it really is?
Scadutree blessing were a fix to a problem that never existed. I have no idea what we're they thinking with this leveling system, when we the player can control our stats and weapon levels.
we already have a game where FromSoft proved they can do over the top fights without the combat collapsing on itself. It's called Armored Core VI (and it's my favorite FromSoft game)
@@deadair101101 I think the heavy emphasis on stagger is pretty annoying when looking at the overall franchise but overall it was very satisfying and fun to me. What did you find bad about it?
With how much we get pummeled with Sekiro and Bloodborne style bosses in Elden Ring I’m hoping their next game will be more like BB and Sekiro mechanically so we can have fluidity with fast paced and aggressive bosses you have to be aggressive right back at.
10:36 Lmfaooo this line killed me it's so accurate. The cutscene where Godrick chops his arm off, and then how the camera pans to the side as he begins spouting nonsense towards the dragon head legitimately had my side in shambles, and they just keep doing the exact same thing over and over
Morgott scene in Leyndell struck me particularly for this reason. Nothing that he said makes any sense. "What is thy business with these thrones" Tf you're saying dude? I don't give a f about these thrones and you know that since we fought before. Then he mentions all of the demigods as if player character didn't learn about them already. Does he spends his days walking around this arena and sulking about his siblings? It seems so, because the capital is in complete ruin and a good king should do something about. But nah, sulking it is.
@@skinnytimmy1The turtle pope doesn't tell you radagon is marika. You have to do a convoluted quest line involving gold mask and the law of regression
I'm not sure what you're talking about? There's nothing convoluted or nonsensical about what he's saying, he just goes "truest of dragons, lend me thy strength" a subtle nod to the fact he's putting it's head on his arm and using it as a flamethrower, and then he goes "forefathers one and all, bear witness!" cause he thinks he's fucking cool and that his ancestors would look fondly on him, really not that deep or hard to parse maybe you're just retarded?
The "softly spoken shills" part got me, because is true🤣 Souls games are mostly really cool and have defined an entire genre of games in the past years, but the community sometimes gets too pedantic😅
every elden ring critique video attacks the community. EVERY SINGLE ONE. its ridiclous to simplify the community by looking at a couple of idiots and saying they are all the same. literally braindead
If you've played Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1/2/3, then there's nothing new here tbh, other than visual improvements and open world. It's the same rehash, movement is the same, some of the weapons are the same, bosses are copied and pasted in with a different armor/visuals, etc. Nothing new is introduced. The lore is hard to piece together and its not as good as previous games, the game is only fun when you're facing a difficult boss but there's no connection to the game. Bloodborne is still their best game. Combat was fast paced and engaging, lore was really interesting, simple yet complex, the world setting was incredible and beautiful, lets not talk about weapons and the music, that was special. If they come out with Bloodborne 2 I would love to play that, other than that if they come out with a new souls game, im out. Might get it on discount if im really bored.
@@voidy6836 Lol, literally every single boss is way more memorable than Elden ring boss which for the most part copied bloodborne and dark souls bosses. But Father Gascoigne, Gehrman, Martyr Logarius, seeing AMYGDALA for the first time was crazy, blood starved beast, Darkbeast pearl, Vicar Amelia. Lol, lets not talk about the DLC. LUDWIG MUSIC AND SECOND PHASE, LADY MARIA (MALENIA COPY PASTE), ORHAN OF KOS? Are you mad bro? lol
"10 year old combat system" is an understatement, Demon’s Souls came out in 2008. Now I won’t deny that these games have evolved in that time, but the base combat system is still very similar Edit: sorry, 2009 lol
I do not understand this sentiment, there's only so much you can do with game mechanics before you're making a different game. I'm happy there's multiple games with this combat system, it's fucking awesome. Genuinely asking what you think they could change?
@@jayyoung1338everything, stop making souls games all together. They are only getting more boring with time and iterations. They made sekiro, they can make another innovative title.
@@gitnjur Fair enough, I'd also like something new. I guess I interpreted the original message as the game mechanics are 'aged' which I think is stupid but maybe they meant they are 'stale' which is up to them
The randomizer basically fixes the issues with exploration. Since you always want to find every item since it could always be something new and useful.
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
Sekiro did the shadowtree fragments better with putting them behind boss kills as memories. witch rewards you for boss kills instead of exploration, because the problem with hiding them behind exploration is that once you have played trough it once, it becomes extremely tedious to do a second time and makes it feel like homework to get them, while behind boss kills it becomes rewarding because the point of these games are always the bosses no matter how many playtroughs, so they should just continue doing that.
Not really a fan of the Sekiro strategy as it felt more linear, which is kind of the antithesis of what I gather this is supposed to be. It's intended to be explored and thus explicitely awards exploration with power rather than just concentrating on boss fights while also giving reason to explore when you come up against a wall instead of the game just being about bashing your head into it until it caves.
@@henryzweihander8282 exploration should be rewarded with unique items. Going on a scavenger hunt to collect 20 of the same item is not fun.
@@skinnytimmy1 To you perhaps, growing stronger is fun for me and that's exactly what the fragments do.
@@henryzweihander8282 L buddy
@@copyninja8756 Ok.
"its an rpg, you are supposed to stick to your character's build"
but also
"if you are stuggling with your current build, try other builds (respec)"
"But also, like everything else, we've limited that to an arbitrarily finite number of times as well."
And the respec itself feels dirty. Larval tear? Ewww
Miyazaki: “My games are not difficult for difficulty sake”.
Miyazaki: -Consort Radahn.
Promised Consort Radahn just feels like Miyazaki’s response to everyone who were calling elden ring the easiest soulslike game by making the most unfair artificially difficult boss ever for the sole purpose of shutting people up and spiting them. and phase one of the fight is great, phase 2 is just a nuclear bomb that you cant see half the time because of miquella’s giant ass hair and all the flashing lights
Miyazaki has either lost his true vision or he wasn't that involved in these games.
@@bronmill33 There is definitely something bitter and cynical about many aspects of Elden Ring... I hope Miyazaki can move away from that.
"We wanna fight prime radahn" "ok lol"
@@wafflboixyeah, Souls fans complained with OG Radhan was nerfed in a patch. It was everywhere online. People were angry. So they got what they asked for, a buffed Radhan. And now they are unhappy. The discourse around ER is frustrating
Miazaki = Gwyn
The souls formula = the age of fire
@@yeeyeeagamer4331 Gwyn created the undead curse, the dark ring
Life imitates art
@@ennayanne Miyazaki created us, people that are hollow until next game/dlc releases
@@norbertgierczak6957 gwyn didnt create pygmies tho
@@ennayanne tho u said that he created the curse, Miyazaki hooked as to yearn for more games from him, like a curse or spell was casted on us
One of the main issues with Elden Ring and now Shadow of the Erdtree is that many activities in the open world do not lead to any progression. You ride through a lot of empty space and only rarely find something that is of value for your own build. I agree that at least to some degree this problem has been tackled with the Scadutree Fragments. However, when I am now thinking of playing the DLC again and take into consideration that before I am going to fight any boss I might want to collect all the free blessings pickups, which will take a huge amount of time even with a guide, my motivation to start a new playthrough is drastically lowered.
There would have been a very simple way to combine the classical linear Dark Souls levels with the open world: just make a map that is segmented such that each part of it is protected behind a boss who needs to be defeated (like Fire Giant in the base game or like Jori in the DLC, for example). There is no greater reward than having unlocked a new part of the world to be discovered. The best open world games are the ones which contrain the freedom of the player and where one needs to progress through the game (like winning boss fights and the like) in order to be able to go to certain places on the map.
So a completely linear, restricted and confined, open world game? Sounds horrendous...
@@skipjacks85 Wrong. An open world with various entries to unknown locations on the map that are protected by bosses (as an example). This is not a linear design, just as neither DS1 (and DS2+DS3, but to a lesser degree) were not linear games. Because if there would be only two entries to some new locations on the map you have already two different options to choose from.
@@heideknight7782 the fact that u think DS III is a non-linear game says it all. I mean c’mon dude. DS III is about as linear as it gets.
And if bosses are acting as area gatekeepers, walling off progression, how is it open world? So they should have just made Dark Souls IV instead? That’s your position?
In addition, this open world/linear path hybrid would have been terrible for build construction & challenge runs as the overwhelming majority of loot would be partitioned behind bosses you will be in all likelihood, severely underleveled.
@@skipjacks85 Reading skill issue 😂. You didn't even read the dudes comments before arguing like the good from npc you are
@@skipjacks85 DS3 has many side paths which one can choose from which make the progression non linear. As an example, you can choose to fight the Dancer of the Boreal Valley early to be able to enter Lothric Castle. Many speedrunners do this actually, because then you can then get access to titanite chunks to upgrade a weapon to +9. Another sidepath is the Smouldering Lake which is completely optional. But it also has upgrade material (large titanite), so is also worthwhile to explore this area. In general, if the game offers one to choose between different paths to follow, it has a non linear structure.
The idea that bosses should protect certain areas in the open world to provide a segmentation and thereby more transparent progression system of the game you can find even implemented in Elden Ring. The Draconic Tree Sentinel needs to be defeated to be able to enter Leyndell capital. Fire Giant needs to be defeated to be able to reach Farum Azula. Both bosses are mandatory to finish the game. But I think that it is still concensus that Elden Ring is an open world game. So having certain areas locked behind a boss or some other obstacle is not a contradiction to an open world design. It is often necessary to implement a meaningful progression path into an open world game.
Regarding you last point I would reccomend you to watch the video "Why speedrunners hate Elden Ring" by YoJosherino. You can find it here on TH-cam on Josh's channel.
“instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on youtube, how about just including the actual story in the game” couldn’t have said it better, this is a great video.
I really wish Miyazaki or Fromsoftware would start using a different story fomurla that isn't item descriptions. it worked the first 457 times they did it, but at the 458th with elden ring its getting old. you can make lore vague and up to interpretion while still having it in the actual game.
@@melchiorsmokes They did it in armored core 6
@@brogoyle i know but i meant a souls game
That's part of the story. You come to a strange place knowing nothing where everyone wants to kill you. So seeing as you can't fully believe anything anyone tells you ,you have to figure out what's really going on through detective work
@@dpearson898 item descriptions not relating to story items are lame ass detective work. That’s just me collecting a random sword and inexplicably learning from it the secrets of elden ring
I'd like to see a brand new engine and an update in storytelling for the next game/series
Sekiro's Sake conversations were a good direction. We got a better idea of who these characters are.
nah storytelling goated
@@botondkunos1774 yeah Sekiro's storytelling is great. It's direct but also has lots of bonus conversations that is not handed to the player, also with some conversations that you eavesdrop plus it still has item description to cover some lore.
Sekiro seems to be the project that they should "revitalize" for the next game, they clearly have all the innovations down in their pockets, and had to cash in the elden ring's success with this DLC (and probably more?).
I think they know, having drawn a lot from Sekiro themselves already, that the direction for the future is that one.
This. New engine would x100 any new title from them
I experienced mid-game tedium in this DLC all the way until after Consort Radahn. Glad to be done with it.
The funniest thing about the whole "pushing the stamina-based combat system to its limits" that FromSoft did here in regards to their boss design in this DLC is that they already found a solution in Sekiro, which was in development along side the base game of Elden Ring.
Instead of being concerned with stamina, they removed that in favor of parrying/deflecting. Developing an understanding of a boss to the point of deflecting an entire combo string stopped that boss doing an extention of that combo, which removed that RNG aspect entirely while giving you more room to punish them for using that specific set of attacks in the first place.
The only thing they really did with that system in Elden Ring is adding the Deflecting Hardtear for your Wonderous Physick Flask in the DLC. If you tap the block button with a shield (or a weapon that's able to block) at the right time before getting hit AT ALL while the deflection flask is active, you can deflect every single instance of damage from fast-hitting attacks such as Malenia's Waterfowl, dragons breathing fire at you, and just about everything DLC Radahn throws at you in phase 2. All for a fraction of the stamina cost and time it takes to roll. And you can punish those moves with an enhanced guard counter which will break their posture faster than normal attacks, opening them up to more critical attacks.
Yet FromSoft locks this mechanic behind a mini-boss in the DLC of an open world game where you've spend triple digit hours engaging in a different combat style. Where you've most likely cleared just about everything in the base game in that particular playthrough, meaning you can't use this playstyle to fight bosses in the main game since they'll most likely be dead in your progression into the end-game, where the DLC resides. And once you do unlock it, it only lasts a certain amount of time unless you want to sit a grace after chugging your physick flask every 5 minutes.
Everyone who uses this hardtear absolutely loves it to the point they think it should be a baseline mechanic like rolling, as it makes interacting with the bosses of Elden Ring easier. But most players won't even know this playstyle is even an option, let alone engage with it in a meaningful way to the point of understanding and mastering it.
They need to add the sekiro combat system to their future games and improve on it further , get rid of the stamina system completely , it is antiquated at this point imo
They dropped the ball by making this a tear, a talisman slot would've sufficed hell even attach it to a specific shield or group of shield within the DLC. Make it an ash of war buff dude there were SO MANY ways they could've implemented this.
And this is coming from someone that has been using it non stop.
It trivializes the game. Sekiro itself had moments where you could just spam block and spam dodge and kill bosses without taking damage.
@@AkiRa22084it only trivializes the game because ER was not made with it in mind, even the dlc bosses have this issue
Every single hard ER boss would be easier than genechiro in sekiro
@@V2ULTRAKill Exactly, that's why it's a temporary buff.
wtf i didnt even know the lion grab did that
i remember seeing the hp bar extend , but i just thought it was my hp
I fought him right away with like +1 Skibidi Blessing so I never survived the grab to begin with lol
The souls formula has been stretched too thin now. I hope FROM realizes this as well and tries to branch out in different ways.
They've never made more money or been this famous, what the hell are you talking about?
Yeah it's time for it to evolve. Be more like Nioh, From Software.
@@paledrake Nioh 2 is the GOAT
@@timekeeper2538how does that make their formula any less outdated? That line of thinking with the majority rule is filled with fallacies and makes you a complacent sheep.
@@timekeeper2538because all the normies coming in because grrm was involved and its open world. They aren't true from fans anyway.
Been saying it since I beat the game the first time, if the legacy dungeons are the best parts of the game then what is the point of the open world (other than to provide filler content in order to justify the size of the open world).
I dont get the hate for the openworld in the DLC. I get the point abt repetitive enemies but aside from that was the base game's openworld that much better in comparison? The most memorable moments for me in base game was still the legacy dungeons. Or is it because it's the expansion and ppl expected a more robust open world because of the time they had to work on it?
@@madwilli3205 I’m criticizing the open world as a whole, base game and DLC.
Fromsoft da best!11 They can never make any errors, their open world is the best!1
Seriously though, Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 was better as an open world for me because I could hunt animals for upgrades or plants for small boosts. 90% of the times I can either get a bell bearing, get items from normal exploration in dungeons or just DON'T need boosts at all. The other 10% of the time I just happen to be spamming the collect button while on torrent. A VERY wasteful opportunity. The crafting system is meh, like the only thing I used it for was to feed torrent and the way I gathered the materials to feed him was by riding him lol
@@kaiserfakinaway5909 Bad take
Personally, I just think it's pretty and nice and adds a relaxing break in tension between the legacy dungeons. My problem with the Dark Souls games was that the oppressive atmosphere was unrelenting. I understand that was the artistic vision, but it made it a real mental slog to play at times. It was hard to look forward to finishing a dungeon when you'd be rewarded with more of the same. The openness between dungeons adds a nice, less dense and less tense section to play before hopping back into a catacomb or dungeon.
I think beyond the stagnant gameplay and the open world issues, the setting of ER really adds to the stagnant feeling. I could never really get into it, because to me it seemed like a kitchen sink setting, like a greatest hits mix where they threw in every previous concept from their games without a thematic reason, making it seem watered down and just being there for no real reason. Case in point, the frenzied flame stuff. In bloodborne the whole story and world is built around the concept of madness and so the game's setting stands out and the concept is given depth. In contrast in ER it's just one of many curses like undeath and isn't given much thought. Same with the existence of lovecraftian gods like those from bloodborne don't feel impactful because they share the world with traditional fantasy gods and other entities that you stumble upon, and so are not as threatening nor thematic to the world and so lose their intrigue, awe and depth.
This was cemented for me in the DLC when you meet the Winter lantern reskins in the Abyssal woods, which had zero impact since I've seen it before and it has none of the thematic weight behind them. Doesn't help that rune loss is completely irrelevant at that point and they're in an open area so you can just run around them. All of this can also be applied to the concept of undeath and hollowing that is so strong in Dark souls and informs the entire game and mechanics, but are again just watered down and one of many concepts in the lands between. I would argue that in dark souls and bloodborne you will feel a resonance when experiencing the story even if you don't know the story in depth, because it's thematically resonant despite the plot being obtuse. In ER there were so many moments where I just felt like characters were speaking (a lot more than in previous entries) but not saying anything and you couldn't intuit wtf was going on, like the Margit encounters. His design with horns and a monster-tail who throws holy magic against you, which is aeshetically incoherent at a glance and you need lore to have it make sense. In dark souls this guy would have been undead but wear priest robes and be called "abbott" or something, so when he throws holy magic at you you understand why and it feels coherent. Then as insult to injury when you've finally conquered the capital, do you get a new boss? No, here's that guy again, which you can't intuit why and have to learn lore to appreciate. And it feels off.
In Sekiro they play with the same themes of immortality and breaking cycles as they always do, but they stick to that one concept and look, and when they add more spoken dialogue they tie it with a more explicit story, with hidden lore as a supplement to this. It makes it all feel coherent and fresh despite sharing similar themes from previous entries. It also makes a world that is primarily filled with living people feel more believable. In contrast, ERs world just feels a bit off where it's not nearly as fallen as in dark souls where everyone was undead, and yet normal people don't speak and just act as if they were, unlike in Sekiro where they all emote and speak. For this reason, going into a military camp just feels odd in ER, it's like they just hang around acting like undead without much reason, same reason why I wasn't as wowed by the capital as everyone else seems to be, because it just feels dead in a way they're not really going for. And I believe this all stems from having too many concepts and themes in the game, while also refusing to evolve the narrative style to fit the story they want.
Well said ! This is the most important problem for me with ER.
@@gnanay8555yes, in linear game you can get away with not having too many friendly NPCs or normal cities. But in open-world game like Elden Ring? No. If you think a bit, nothing in this world makes any sense just because it's built like their previous games.
I feel you one the world feeling ded part often I would think about lore explanations for all these random factions to be here.
Even more wierd, when separate factions inherit the same areas. The hands in Ryan lucaria and the mountaintop are friendly with no real explanation why.
Why do the soldier not axe them off the land, they do it to me. Why dint the rabid dogs eat them, is cursed hand worse than tarnished aas?
Diabolical
@@N07NA this may be an unforeseen/unintended consequence of using someone else’s, George’s, vision.
Yea you walk into leyndell and it's just empty asf. All the Golden knights are hiding in dark corners around the city instead of patrolling the streets
To be fair to Fromsoftware, their last three games have been Sekiro, Elden Ring and ACVI, all of which have tried very hard to innovate. Sekiro’s gameplay was completely new and inspired a lot of deflection based clones. Elden Ring experimented with the open world, which was clearly successful despite the many drawbacks of an open world (I’m with you I prefer the semi-open structure). ACVI was an awesome modern advancement of that series. So I don’t think they aren’t trying to innovate, but I definitely agree they absolutely cannot just release Elden Ring 2 next and have it be more of the same.
Personally I want them to try and iterate on the DS1 formula, no fast travel, one big interconnected world where the whole game feels like one big legacy dungeon. I just loved the immersion this gave to exploration. I know it will never happen though as it’s a bit too inconvenient for modern day AAA game design
A sensible and nuanced take, we need more of these ❤
ER's core mechanics have not innovated that much. It's still the basic dodge rolling against every boss attack. And the dlc bosses push this to it's limit to the point where I just can't see it being evolved more unless they add faster player combat.
As someone who played DS1 for the 1st time right after SOTE, I completely agree. The world design was as solid as some other fav classic titles I enjoyed like Gothic series, and describing it as feeling like one big legacy dungeon nails it.
To add, mby it wouldn't hurt for them to play more with gimmicks but not make it ALL about gimmicks, rather just make it an extension of a boss's moveset where sure it gives advantage if you understand & can counter it, but it's also possible w/o that. I got this idea when playing BG3 on Honor Mode, and enjoying all the Legendary Actions bosses have which add both more personality/identity as well as challenge. Sometimes my build & party setup allowed me to circumvent the gimmick, entirely, others I had to play completely around it and everyone's experience is different depending on their setup & how they approach the game. This would be a way to keep the difficulty curve since I'm confident they don't wanna dial it back anymore, but in a fresh way, rather than the obnoxious & tired methods of "give every boss gap closers, strong melee & range attacks, near-perfect 180 tracking, delayed attacks on almost everything, and flashy aoes that cover the whole arena + unstaggerable" .
Like say, imagine if vs Radahn & Miquella, within the arena you'd have some pillars leading to the heavens which you could somehow redirect to use either defensively or offensively. One could get even more creative and do something like adding some player choice via say... at some point in phase 2 ,like when close to death, Miquella will absorb the power within those pillars to heal Radahn, amount healed depending on the pillars left standing, cause the player would have the option to destroy the pillars earlier, OR use them to help against the boss. 'Dis is just an idea, I'm sure some creative game devs could do a lot more... To not make it feel as obnoxious, Radahn would need some reduced mobility as he tries to chase you down when you go for the pillars, and like ffs let him walk or run more, cause it's like every boss forgot how to and just teleports near ya.
@@ManlyTear Glad you feel that way, especially coming from someone who played DS1 recently after experiencing Elden Ring. I absolutely love the feeling of immersion DS1 gives you, there’s nothing quite like it
No fast travel? Lol, lmao even. No thanks.
Just to put this in perspective: Before Radahn, the only other boss (aside from the NPC encounters just before which are kind of a world event to wrap up the questlines), we fought Romina, either that or Messmer himself. How do we go from that to Consort Radahn in terms of difficulty curve ? This boss is exponentially more difficult than any of the immediate previous bosses.
Also, to put this in perspective is how this compares to the base game. No way this kind of sudden difficulty spike happens there. After beating him with the aid of ashes on my first run, and soloing him without the aid of ashes, NPC or runes on my second, I can confidently say that this fight was ABSOLUTELY designed with the use of ashes in mind.
Finally, I do belive that this is the source of most people's frustration, to have that last boss to be designed in this way, so that most people can't beat him without the aid of ashes unlike the base game. Melania was a build breaker but at least she was optional (a crappy move, but fine). Whereas Radahn is a build breaker WHILST being a final boss.
Why do yall cry over ashes so much? Even the best ash can die in seconds if it acts wrong so it's not an instant win cheat like you act like it is. Use the damn ash and beat the boss, why torture yourself when you know damn well its not designed like that and it's purely ego. Thats like saying I'm getting mad the final boss isn't dying to a pistol when I have a freaking rocket launcher in my pocket.
@@dinolover your arguments is dumb to a baffling extent, if the boss needs external help, then its not designed well, the boss has to account for almost every playstyle, as in ultra weapons, ranged, no summons, etc. You are the only one crying over ashes, methinks you want ashes to be mandatory for every battle lol
To be fair Miyazaki himself admitted to using spirit ashes. I'm not surprised that the dlc bosses were designed with them in mind especially when people wants more difficult content.
Personally I also consider solo play without summons or spirits a form of challenge run, you are literally avoiding a big part of your toolkit. Sure the experience feels more rewarding without them but the dlc wasn't designed with solo play in mind which is backed up by all the major bosses having at least 1 npc summon. The base game also has this for most of the major bosses but it felt significantly easier once you get used to it.
I thought a majority of the dlc was fine, it's only phase two of the final boss that felt bad to solo. A lot of the visual effects were obstructive, caused performance issues and there is a quick double slash that both phases share that can roll-catch consistently which feels cheap along with the light pillars that punished you for trying to create some space. You were forced to play close and aggressive consistently or have a good shield for all the chip damage OR summon to help spread the boss' attention.
I don't think malenia was a build breaker. I've used pure faith, arcane, str, int on her and can usually beat her in a few tries unless I'm using something VERY unoptimal. Slow and fast weapons included. The only thing she punished was shield tanking but you only needed to change your playstyle to avoid healing her too much. Final dlc boss on the other hand has up to 4 damage types and phase 2 wants you to block I think. I haven't mastered them yet unlike Malenia so I can't add much more to the conversation.
@@nadaburner hm an actual response that is thought out and isnt worthless, splendid! jokes aside i do agree with you with how every boss is geared with having a summon with you, which sucks due to how incosistent they really are, now this might be a glitch but for me atleast igon literally did nothing vs bayle, as in he just swapped his weapons for the whole fight, or when summons would just stand back and not do anything during messmer and romina
@@nadaburner I agree with everything you said, it's just that DLC is bad in comparison to the game. It's not bad in and of itself. Base game had is issues and whereas they did went too far in a few places there, in the DLC they went too far in a lot of places.
There are bosses now whose entire moveset is straight out of anime, but it's like you said, it's balanced towards the use of ashes, but is it fun?
It wasn't as much as I wanted for me, and I wish From wouldn't be so obsessed about designing the DLC bosses to break meta builds that destroyed the base game.
I just wish they'd have more confidence in their original design instead of this obsession with how you clear a boss. If people want to one shot bosses, just let them. Who cares?
What I really liked about Dark Souls 1 was that the combat felt slow and methodical... maybe even strategic! Every FromSoftware game I have played since has felt manic and "spazzy", for lack of a better term. The difficulty in DS1 was so satisfying because the slow pace allowed me to actually focus more on my attack strategy and play smartly. Now, in games like DS3 and Elden Ring I feel like each boss fight is a test of my twitch reflexes and rote memorization of relentless attack patterns. TBH I lost interest trying to explore the Haligtree and other late game areas in Elden Ring, and I didn't even bother getting the DLC because it looks like more of the same absurd twitchy difficulty. The magic is long gone for me :(
Ds3 boss fight is 10 000 time better . I played Ds3 after my Elden Ring playthought .The delay attack feel smoother more natural the boss are fast but your character is fast too i got more than 0.5 second to heal . Almost every fight in ds3 im out of flask at the end the fight felt challenging but more fair and fun
11 minutes in... Someone finally says it. Yes. FromSoft could indeed have mystery and discovery... AND just have an explicitly told story in the game.
These things can exist... Many other games do this. FromSoft games are 93% lore and environmental storytelling and it gets tiresome.
They did that it’s called DemonSouls. So they are just choosing to not write story and using lore as a cover.
I miss how slow and chill ds1 feels now
Even going back to ds3 you feel such a difference in game speed and combat pace
Ds1 is the perfect benchmark for soulslike imo
@@jvmango3057Yep. Perfect world design, combat that adds to the game but isn't the be all and end all. Izalith could've done with more time in the oven, sure. It's just a big open plane with enemies you run past and no good loot. Omg, izalith is the prototype for elden ring...
@@ennayanne Don't be ridiculous...izalith Is a terrible tunnel filled with bad and stupid enemies. Even the worst Elden ring Areas are Better than that
I blame bloodborne and darksouls 2 for starting this anime bullcrap where every boss has crazy anime moves while all your character has is an generic swing attack
The flame is fading.
"Instead of paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos on TH-cam, how about just including the story in the fucking game".
Truer words were never spoken.
Hell, the problem isn't that the lore isn't there, it is in item descriptions, the problem is that it's ONLY in item descriptions. More of the information about stuff in item descriptions should be just out in the world somewhere.
Like in location design or dialogue. Like Jesus, just put the lore somewhere else.
@@unoriginal2552or finding journals etc.
@@unoriginal2552 "Like in location design"
There is equally if not more story revealed in the architecture and npc placement than there is in item descriptions.
@@youtubepoop-u8j and how do you find out the importance of where those things are placed?
That's right! Reading item descriptions.
@@unoriginal2552 God forbid you have to read in order to get the full picture of the lore. Other RPG's just drop books around the world; Fromsoft simply combines that same system with its equipment in order to save time and money (they were not a AAA studio until arguably today). I don't see people complaining that you need to read books in Skyrim to understand the lore (which you absolutely need to do if you want to understand wtf is actually going on, aside from surface level plot points).
I honestly beleive that the open world only makes the game worse, Elden Ring would be better had it been a more linear game. I know the freedom adds a punch but you could go for a more metroidvania style rather than a full open world. You could still have exploration and freedom and lots of optional stuff, just in a tighter package and with (probably) less repetition. Both the base game and the dlc have peaks of absurd quality, just imagine what they could have done if time and resources had not been wasted in populating a big ass open world
Elden Ring is the first game I've seen that is conceptually flawed, rather than just flawed in execution. "Open World Soulslike" should be considered an oxymoron.
In some ways its harder to make a metroidvania because that causes the devs to have to think of how the player traverses each area and how those areas can connect to one-another. with open world you can just say "lol lets just add a big field that is purposeless and just wastes time looking pretty" instead of "this is an open area in a more closed-in game, how will I make it so the player has fun and a challenge traversing this?" you end up thinking less about levels or stages
I‘m honestly not a fan of the Scadutree-fragments past the first playthrough. They just become another thing you have to ride through the game and gather before you can tackle the real meat of the game. On my first playthrough of the dlc it was a cool reward for the exploration, but now that I‘m trying a new character it feels a little bit tedious.
But maybe this is only because of the open world, because I didn‘t mind the prayer beads in Sekiro. Possibly also, because you get many of them as a reward for overcoming a miniboss and not mindlessly riding from point A to point B.
Kinda related to the topic, I really liked your idea of replacing the individual weapon upgrades with ones that are active for all weapons. This would make it really easy to just try out a new weapon that you just received, without investing any recources. And I mean from a „realism“-standpoint does weapon upgrading even make much sense? (I’m not a weapon-smith, so I don’t know for sure) Maybe weapon upgrades should just be a relic of the past like weapon durability.
Weapon sharpening makes sense, but monster hunter already does that...
As someone who watched a lot of challenge runs of Elden Ring, something I always noted is that they always seem to spend the first few hours zipping around three-quarters of the map to snap up all the golden seeds and sacred tears. In the SOTE runs I've seen, the same thing happens with the blessings. It's even worse if it's a video where the streamer put a timer on so you can absolutely tell that he spent the first four hours of his run just revealing the map and collecting fragments without fighting a single boss.
This might be controversial, but Elden Ring's open world should have been much more segmented. Godrick should need to be beaten to access Liurnia. Throw down a fort to bar entrance to Caelid instead of just having Anastasia and a low wall you can jump over. Make the Dectus Medallion something looted from Raya Lucaria or remove it entirely so that you're forced to go through Makar to reach Altus.
Your power being tied to progression was something I always found neat in previous titles, and it also prevented the scenario I've seen occur in Elden Ring where the start of most playthroughs just ends up being several hours of running all across the map to collect upgrade items.
Schadu tree fragments really aren't as essential on subsequent playthroughs, when a player should be more adapt at fighting the bosses with their own skill. Doubly so because in base NG difficulty, it's entirely possible to get by without needing to find all of them, and because the blessings carry over into NG+ while all fragments respawn, it's quite simple for a player just finish reaching the max upgrade there.
@@thatlonzoguydon’t you upgrade weapons with materials from hunts though in Monster Hunter? That’s pretty much the same as smithing stones. I’d argue that it’s more annoying as you have to hunt particular monsters multiple times to get certain parts in specific ways to upgrade the weapons.
Dawg I thought I was the only one who called that dude out for being a cut clear shill, even though he didn’t start out that way I know but it’s clear as day now. Fromsoft could create a boss that you only have a millisecond to defeat or it’s instant death & VV will make 100 cringey lore videos & die on the hill defending why that’s not an obnoxious boss design.
I really appreciate your take the dlc left me feeling depressed and unfulfilled for many of the reasons you’ve stated while many people brush off my frustrations claiming to be satisfied with nothing but pretty visuals or accusing me of being one of those hard=bad people
😢
Oof, a DLC leaving me depressed is something I would never want to happen.
@@JoseViktor4099 swear dude
Yup. They dismiss you with their tried and true "mad cuz bad. Git gud" or just smash their faces against the keyboard hoping whatever gibberish comes out is enough to shut you up and convince you Miyazaki does not make any mistakes.
It's always a breath of fresh air when you talk to people who remember these are just video games made by fallible humans and not god himself creating the ultimate masterpiece with no flaws
That's an odd thing to say while claiming a game made you depressed. If it's just a game why did it provoke that response?
The combo extension of these bosses would have been great if.....you could cancel your animations. Then, you could respond on the fly if the combo was longer than expected, rather than just eating damage because you couldn't predict what would happen.
Sekiro works so well because you CAN cancel into a block (at least early into the attack), and your attacks in general are much faster, so you are never committed for long.
They are turning the boss fights into MMO raids 😭
Consort is a fucking superboss 💀💀💀
Still blows my mind that there are people who think Radahn is anywhere near the level of Messmer, Midra or Bayle
It blows my mind that people think Bayle is a good boss whatsoever
@@DreyfusLagoon lmao git gud scrub
@@DreyfusLagoonbecause he’s the best in the dlc lol.
@@domagoj5572 I don’t think he’s very difficult at all I just think he’s bad. All spectacle
@@upsideproductions2 I’d argue that Messmer, Midra, putrescent knight, Rellana, Rhadan and Romina are all better. Bayle is only cool to look at, when it comes down to gameplay the fight sucks.
Apologies for the wall of text:
I try and convince myself that I enjoy the exploration but, in reality, my headspace when I'm playing ER as a souls vet is thus:
"Okay here I am in this field, where to go next? Well okay off to the right is a forest and off to the left is a town/village/ruin. Better save left for last because I know instinctually that's where FromSoft actually tried!"
I think there was maybe one single armor set in the entire dlc just out in the over world somewhere. All the good rewards are inside structures.
Now, also as a souls vet, I can say confidently that besides Commander Gaius, every boss in this dlc took me less than 20 attempts. Some like Messmer and Rellana took sub 10. Meanwhile, I've thrown myself at Radahn 50+ times and haven't even seen his health go down into his boss name plate lol.
FromSoft needs to change. They have most assuredly stagnated. Now, the only novel thing they can do is crank a final or hidden boss difficulty up to 12/10 for the tryhards and streamers. I've basically been playing the same FromSoft game for almost two decades.
And the worst part, is that they absolutely destroyed all the ER lore that they had setup in the base game. I personally believe Radahn is a lazy retcon because it was so much easier to animate his model and attacks because they already existed in the base game. I thoroughly believe we were supposed to get Godwyn or Marika or just someone more important at the end of Shadow. So, while I agree prime Radahn is certainly a choice they could've made, I will never see it more than a lazy rewrite. Add onto this the whole "shaman village x Hornsent phenomenon and you have the beginning of a compelling story. But oops, nobody ever explains WHY the Hornsent committed genocide against Marika's people. In Dark Souls 1, Gwyn made a decision about his empire and how it would continue. In Dark Souls 2, the human king was honey-potted into attacking the giants, in Dark Souls 3, the Twins wanted the world to errode. In Sekiro, it's a revenge story. In Elden Ring SOTE, they thought they had written an inciting incident. What they actually wrote was nonsense. Not to mention the entire lore basically just breaks down to "aliens invade, upset blonde woman agrees to their weird space powers to fight her enemies, hijinks ensue." Nobody bothers to explain why the Hornsent did what they did. And thus the entire lore of Elden Ring has no proper beginning, and in essence, is completely irrelevant. Which I think is the worst lore offering we've ever received from Miyazaki. One TH-cam comment I read summarized it all:
"It's like the SOTE team never played base Elden Ring and had an AI summarize the cliff notes for them."
There's some good fun to be had in SOTE for sure but, by itself, it does not warrant a replay. And it destroyed all its lore and replaced it with the wacky hair dude from history channel saying "ALIENS" over and over. Which is just unforgivable.
In the game it’s explained that Marika’s people were used in rituals because their flesh combined well with stuff. Thats why they were stuffed in Jars
I really don't see any reason to make Radahn Miquella's consort beyond fanservice. Lorewise, Godwyn or even fucking Malenia make more sense than Radahn
@@lordepsilon7023 my guess is that it was the more justifiable pick , being that radahn was always said to be a very kind person and overall wholesome compared to the rest of his sibling demigods. Which we never got to see because duh he is basically a zombie when when fight him.
That's how I feel in Elden Ring's open world in general, not just the DLC. It's just a big space of...nothing. It's all enemies and loot. There is no "world", no people, no community, nothing to make it a world and not just a video game setting. Don't tell me exploration is why you should play the Open World, I explore in all kinds of games, metroidvanias and the like. But ER? The entire open world just seems pointless.
@@lordepsilon7023 you're just mad your headcanon isn't true 😂. Miyazaki has himself said radahn is his favorite
Fromsoft loves the environment bc they never stop recycling
are you a fromsoft hater or smth?
@@yoman5029 are you a fromsoft fanboy or smth?
@@UsernameGeri nice try copying my comment and replacing it with "fromsoft fanboy". do you really think i'm blind enough to not see the flaws of fromsofts games?
@@yoman5029 why the question though, lmao
@@bunny_apocalypse about asking the dude if he was a fromsoft hater?
Miyazaki himself felt my sigh when I came upon the fallingstar beast hole
I hate how the NPC quest structure is set up in Elden ring, and the DLC did it so much worse. I think you make a good point, when everything's so cryptic to need a video essay explaining things to the player, it's just not an engaging story. I think Lies of P did story a lot better since I never felt lost or wondering "Why I'm out here doing this nonsense in the first place". And Lies of P also had some pretty engaging points as to why the world was as morbid as it was, without being cryptic.
What I dont like, is trying to do an NPC quest, only to mash through a bunch of cryptic dialogue that tells me nothing about what they're doing most the time, and needing to "refresh" the game to progress it, just to have them disappear someplace random in the world. Dark Souls 1 can kind of get away with that since it's a more linear experience, but Elden Ring is open world. It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
Oh and the DLC actually punishes you for exploring it, since if you reach a certain threshold, something big happens, and a bunch of quests will randomly progress without your knowledge. There's good parts in Elden Ring that does open world arguably better than most sandbox games, but it's quest structure is so anti-open world. Plus, DLC rewards just... Suck. I hate going into a new place only to find mostly tier 1-3 upgrade materials when my gear is probably max tier at this point.
I hate that they introduce entire new schools of magic that have only 1-2 spells in them instead of building onto what already exists. (My annoyance of this being they have types of magic in base game that only have about 2-3 spells in them. There's like 20 glintstone sorceries, but only 2 "briar" sorceries. And yet they also have a staff and some unique gear that buffs the already mediocre "Briar" school of sorceries.) I hate that they include entire new weapon classes but only have an entire 1-3 weapons in them (There's a throwing knife weapon you can find, which is it's own weapon class, and there's ONLY 1 throwing knife weapon. Why..?). Why waste time making entire new weapon subclasses but only making 1-3 weapons for each type?
You were definitely right when you said Fromsoft was one game away from their formula becoming stale. This is that game.
Their formula isn’t stale, it’s just that the open world design doesn’t suit their traditional level design and combat. All the work went into legacy dungeons
@@JacksonL1238 The combat is getting stale too. What the hell were they thinking with some of these bosses? Like was said in the video, you basically dodge 10 attacks in a row, sometimes without a tell to know if they'll extend a combo or not, only to get a very small opening to EITHER heal OR get a single attack in before they start another combo. It has already been pushed past the point where it's fun and challenging to actually become tedious.
The combat needs a revamp. What makes me hopeful about this is that they DID introduce some very nice mechanics in Bloodborne and Sekiro that made combat more streamlined and flowing, but for some reason those things either didn't make into ER or were only partly introduced. I guess it has to do mostly with the build variety. But they at least attempted some new things here such as LGS' flowing movesets (milady) and the deflect tear, which worked pretty well imo and should be made a permanent standard.
Heyyyyy…I know this guy!
@Homiloko2 I think the new talismans and crystal tears that give I-Frames to backsteps and improve spotaneous guards and counter attacks are FromSoftware testing new combat mechanics for the future. But, if you look at a game like Nioh 2, the combat is always gonna feel a little stagnant in comparison. They need to add more ways for the player to create custom combos and cancel recovery animations in a skillful way to create more fluidity.
I react easily to all bosses in this DLC.
You know whom doesn't react properly? my character:) for this DLC to be alright boss wise, they needed to drastically reduce the recovery time of pretty much all weapons
Yeah the speed of the player character is like a snail compared to these spidermonkey bosses. Doesn't help that attacks animation-lock you too much.
The heal are so fucking slow its so annoying . The heal mecanics in bloodborne and da3 was perfect why its so fucking slow in this game 😅
@@e.t.v.1255I was fighting Rellana, trying to learn her moveset. I remember I tried a running jump R2, and as I was was already swinging down, she dashed away. She literally ran faster, from a neutral stance, than I could attack midswing. Granted, I was using a greatsword, but still, it seems ridiculous how fast FROM is making the bosses now.
@@rogalcorn734 some boss was like that in other games too like Sister Friede with a greatsword sound like hell to me 🤣
You encapsulated my thoughts on Radahn perfectly.
If you need to heal you have nothing to show for the last 30 seconds of dodging... It's not fun.
eh, this is literally what people used to say about any harder and more complicated souls boss... yeah sure if you have to heal you might miss the window to deal damage - that's how it always worked. Besides, Radahn attacks so quickly and so often you'll get your next window in 5 secs tops.
@@GreatAdos No not really at all. Compare a boss people thought was hard like Lady Maria to any of these guys and you see that while you do less damage (they have more hp) you also get more opportunities to hit them back. Same with Kos. Same with Ludwig.
@@paledrake radhan has too much downtime but its only in select parts of his boss fight. Not the entire boss fight
Ds1 is still the goat in terms of world design it seems.
seems like it'll be that way forever
Nope its demon souls
@@WhySoSeriousSenpai Haven’t played Demon’s Souls but since it’s the predecessor to Dark Souls, you have my respect.
@@voidd392 its the same garbage
Its ds1 and demons souls X 100 and thats the issue
Uninspired trash
@@FEAST4It’s obviously very different if you actually played the games, which I’m sure you didn’t.
Miyazaki is in the Kojima position, I feel. He clearly WANTS to do something good else. Always mentions a traditional JRPG and liking horror like Bloodborne for atmosphere…but the money is in Dark Souls. LET THE MAN MAKE SOMETHING OTHER THAN METAL GEAR! 😂
Then he's going to have to refuse Bandai Namco.
It’s weird, I simultaneously don’t disagree with a lot of your criticisms but I still enjoyed the DLC regardless. I will say, however, that I do heavily agree that if Fromsoft doesn’t change their approach next time, I won’t be interested in playing. I beat Consort Radahn with no summoning, and I found a lot of his moves just absolutely agonizing and actively broke the flow of combat that I enjoy from a lot of the other bosses like Radagon or even Melania. I love the game, but I think it could mark the end of my time with Soulsbourne if they continue in this direction.
Who told you to beat radahn with no summoning? That sounds like a personal problem.
@@timekeeper2538 Because some people actually like to play the game and not have it play itself. Too hard is more fun than brain dead easy because at least you have to think while playing
@@tmbfreak_16 Ok and not one summon ash can be described as making ANYTHING in the game "brain dead easy", it's literally the intended difficulty bro.
@timekeeper2538 How is a boss ignoring you for 50% of the fight while your own damage effectively doubled not brain dead easy? You literally attack something that isn't looking at you 😂
@@tmbfreak_16 I don't know of any boss that ignores you for half the time when there's a summon bro, it really isn't as easy as you think.
11:06 I disagree with this. I love the fact that I'm not being constantly bombarded with cutscenes and am sent straight to the action. Story is second to gameplay imo. Sekiro had a good a more standardized way of story telling but the game was so good that I just didn't care about it. Then, If I care about the lore, watching a 20m lore video is better than wasting hours on in game cutscenes, I assume it's also in the developers interests to do it like this not just because it gives the story more room for player interpretation but it severely shifts development costs onto other more important areas of the game.
Also where does he think those lore TH-camrs get the lore from exactly? They get it from the game. So yes, the story is obviously in the game just not told to you in a conventional way. It is told in a way that actually utilises the medium of video games instead of just imitating movies.
Radahns first phase is awesome, and really fun...the second phase though... omg
The combat and mechanics do not match or have a flow like previous games. Give me difficult but give me fun and engaging mechanics to deal with it.
I think my biggest issue with Elden Ring as a whole was the open world. There's so much to explore and collect, but most of the time these things are neither enjoyable nor rewarding, especially on consecutive playthroughs. But I like that they improved upon that, i.e. less caves and the world itself is more interesting to explore, seeing as it's on multiple layers and whatnot. But both in the main game as in the DLC, the big closed-off areas like the shadow keep, Farum Azula or Miquella's Haligtree are the most interesting and enjoyable. You really feel like you can actually interact with the environment, find shortcuts or some secret areas and are actually rewarded for actively looking around and get familiar with the place. I hope Fromsoft will take their next project away from the open world again or find a way to make the vast areas more enjoyable
also you can run and jump away from his "gravity grab" attack if you get hit by the first part. that was the most frustrating attack for me before realizing that
Yep run away as soon as you’re caught and jump when he slams, you’ll almost certainly be fine
like most youtubers, jumping is only for attacks.
26:40
Not to defend this train wreck of a boss, but if you get hit by the first gravity attack, immediately running back and jumping as the attack closes in allows you to “dodge” the follow up
And this is why Radahn is just following the same cycle as all dlc bosses that are "unfairly hard." No one knows how anything works, but assumes their lack of skill is a fault of the "trainwreck boss design."
Radahn was a brutal blast
@@jackreacher7495 How does one answer to one move absolve the rest of his complaints?
@@GrandHac it's about the spirit of the argument obviously
@jackreacher7495 This right here needs to be pointed out more often. This happens for every single fromsoft release in the exact same way every time. Before this expansion, the base game got mixed reviews on steam shortly after the release, for the same reasons, and eventually rose to above 90%. Ringed city dlc released and was criticized in much the same way as this dlc was when it released. Gael was a controversial boss when the dlc came out contrasting to the extremely high praise he gets now. Even back to dark souls 1, a bunch of the mechanics and combat of ds1 were way more criticized when it released, before everyone learned about how the game works. It seems to me, as time goes on this dlc will be getting more and more vocal praise, in the same cycle that every fromsoft game goes through.
Rellana can in fact use Twin/Double Moon spell more than once. I just fought her yesterday and I think the trigger is that once she's on 25% of health left, she will do the spell but if you linger on the fight long enough, she can do the spell again which what happened to me. Thankfully the move is really well telegraphed and she can't spam it over and over like Malenia with Waterfowl. The problem (and this goes for most bosses in Elden Ring base game and DLC) is that those super attacks rarely reward you with punish window.
So you succesfully dodge super attack that can beat you but you're not rewarded with a window to do. Even if you get a window to punish, the best you can do is just 1 attack.
I beat Rellana with dagger and shield parry but even with a dagger, you can only attack 3 times at a time at most. There's not really a dance in Elden Ring (except for a couple bosses like Godfrey or Radagon), most of the time you're watching a boss having a good time
A, the same old same old BS people used to say about the ER base game bosses and which was proven so gloriously wrong. It's a dance. You are just asked to actually participate in it instead of passively waiting for your turn.
rellana's twin moon attack is always a free jump r2 window
@@shiroamakusa8075 can't you read my last paragraph? I'm not playing passive but even with a dagger, you can only do 1-3 attack after bosses long combo
@shiroamakusa8075 No it's okay keep repeating the same mindless retorts as every other indoctrinated modern FS fanboy as if they can do no wrong. It's almost like you think the people criticizing the game haven't beat it, likely multiple times. Is it doable? Absolutely. Is it fun? No. It just feels sloppy. I love Fromsoft just as much as the next person but the mixed reviews the DLC has garnered are 100% justified. It's sad to see where this community went post-ds3/sekiro.
@@anthonyhertlein4629 Git gud, scrub.
First off, Fromsoft needs to learn how to program a camera that isn't constantly trying to romance the player's colon. Then they need to drop the stamina bar all together, along with weight burden, and environmental weapon deflection that only the player is victim to. Divorce themselves from the concept of locking the player into various animations which they can't cancel out of, and which lock out their controls. Separate the game currency that you spend at shops, from the experience points you spend leveling up your character, as this will dramatically reduce the time players have to spend grinding enemies for levels and equipment. And speaking of grinding, for the love of God stop giving the best items and equipment such obnoxiously low drop rates! Not to mention padding out the list of items enemies can drop, with crafting materials that are readily available all over the map. If I wanted to spend my time performing mind-numbingly boring and repetitive tasks, I'd go to work! At least in that case, my reward for all my time and effort would be given consistently, and not left up to random chance.
As for weapon upgrading, simply bring back Bloodborne's blood gem system, and have us upgrade the gems instead of the weapons. That way when we find a new weapon that we want to try, we can simply put our upgraded gems on the new weapons to raise it to the appropriate level. Then if we don't like a weapon or find something new, we just switch our gems to our preferred weapon to bring it up to speed.
Oh! And pause the damn game while we're in the menu! No being able to pause during online interactions with other players makes perfect sense. But when we're just playing solo PvE, there's no good reason why the game shouldn't pause while we're in the menu.
I liken the world design for this to a wacky mini golf course
While i do not disagree with everything said in this Video I have to say your take on the Bosses like Radahn is somewhat flawed since all you do is spam Jump attacks and then complain about getting punished. Radahn has quite a lot of punish windows in his longer combos and after his attacks that you just never utilized because you only do one attack.
This is why Sekiro is peak FromSoft combat and level design, minus fashion. I want a new King’s Field. It could be the culmination of everything FS has perfected from DeS to ER.
If they had sekiros combat system but with a bunch of different weapon types and playstyles it would be pretty much perfect
The perfect FromSoft game would have the interconnected level design of Dark Souls 1, Elden Ring's depth of combat choices and QOL features, Sekiro's story telling, fluidity of movement, and parrying, and Bloodborne's themes and lore.
They already know how to mix up the gameplay because thats exactly what they did with both Bloodborne and Sekiro. Why they integrated NONE of what they learmed in those 2 games and decided "DS3 movement but somehow slower" is a mystery
Therea are litealy soo many bloodborne and sekiro mechanics in elden ring. Do you lie for fun?
@@Oknahidwin Less fun bastardized versions, maybe
@@tmbfreak_16 So you want them to copy paste the same mechanics in a game that isn't sekiro or bloodborne and functions differently? GREAT IDEA DUDE
Copying mechanics is a from soft classic move, wdym
When i finished the DLC it left me absolutely baffled.
Yes, the lore has to have blank spots but why in hell would you not integrate any of the open ends the fans obviously want to investigate so badly.
A super-hard boss or an almost empty level would cause so much less backlash if we would actually fight someone related to the GEQ or Godwyn or anything or actually investigate an ancient battlefield mentioned in the OG lore or some ancient source of power.
Why add new things noone really cares about if you have a quiver full of open ends that would make the DLC be perceived so much more positively?
Man, i really respect Miyazaki but goddamn why throw potential away like this? The fact that this DLC leaves a bitter taste is so unnecessary.
My thoughts entirely brother. I honesty think Elden ring lore simply dosent actually have answers. The team just likes to add detail, but can’t decide how things really happened. Take st Trina. According to the fan video she might have been miquellas alter ego, girlfriend, or twin. And they may have grown from a plant , and she may have been copying his recreation of radhan , and they may have wanted to merge as silver and gold. Ultimately we have no real clarification who or what she is and how she relates to the story. I believe From never bothered deciding
He didn't throw it away, his writers simply had no possible way to cleanly take care of loose threads. The game doesn't have an actual story other than following the path of a seemingly robotic in nature Tarnished character that just goes and destroys everything in his path seemingly because he simply feels like. For things to really get cleaned up, there would have to be logical coherence, but that doesn't exist since the game doesn't explain the baseline laws of nature in the reality this game takes place. Basic questions like what a tarnished even is, or how the game treats the Law of Identity is extremely problematic. The only type of storytelling of this sort that exists, is rooted in ancient religious story-telling, where you get bits and pieces of certain events/groups of people - but everything is told from what can also be interpreted as heavily metaphoric (due to the extremely ambiguous and unfulfilling manner). Stories in holy texts usually talk about people, yet none of them behave like any rational or sane human would. Likewise occurs in this game, everything goes on and functions like some non-sentient element in nature (like fire that burns, or water that flows), and that's it. There's no hard-set/definitive/correct interpretation of anything (just like holy texts), and is why you can't disprove anyone's theory for the most part.
Also, Miyazaki in an interview said he doesn't want to make the mistake in his prior entries where he simply locks-away the possibility of returning to a genre. I think the story of this game (from the very down to earth GR Martin's foundation groundwork with normal humans in a fantastical setting - to the time skip warp of humans into supernatural beings that Miyazaki's writing team was tasked to do), is just too complex for them to neatly tie up and not be some eye-rollingly bad trash. So with all that, they just abandoned it rather than ruining it potentially. The only problem is, they left wayyyy to much up to interpretation (even the third-person narration is unreliable when you read item descriptions where it says things like "it has been said" or "people believe". Showing that not even the writers have decided what's going to be true in the game.
Also wish the community as a collective would stop targeting Miyazaki as if he's writing anything. As a director he doesn't really do anything other than give final say on large progress from each team. It's not like he's going in there and juggling frame-data, or damage values (because if he was, he's one of the worst balance leads basically in modern gaming with 50%+ of items being borderline useless and redundant).
@@JayJayYUP I agree.
Elden Ring lore has same issues that plagues A Song of Ice and fire, which makes sense as its GRR Martin .
@@samogonbrother I disagree! They are similar in that they hugely invite fan theorizing . But Elden ring seems not to have any conclusive way to discern what realy happened in any given lore event. Eden ring also does not ever actually set up a mystery that is meant to be solved or that it eventually reveals itself. Asoiaf sets up many mysteries and then it gives us answers eventually , and asoiaf seems to really have a concrete understanding of what actually happened . Eg the knight of the laughing tree
i'm not against the idea of open-world dark souls, but for elden ring, they honestly should've cut the entire world in half and condensed it, with a heavier focus on the legacy dungeons. for the open-world elements, these could've been surprising and dynamic, with random enemies, random loot, and random encounters. a better, more effective crafting system would've been great too, and, i wouldn't've even minded semi-customizable magic and alchemy (but that might be too much to ask for tbh).
with the way elden ring is right now, (especially with NG+), wandering the open world feels more like a long trudge through stagnant, un-interractive spaces i've already been to, filled to the brim with enemies i've already fought a billion times before. the magic wears off quickly, and i just feel uninterested and disillusioned - one of the worst feelings to have when playing these games
people have been saying basically the same stuff since Dark Souls 1 came out
Glad someone actually points this out.
Exactly!
Glad it's being ignored
this happens every single time a new fromsoft game comes out, people just say the same critiques and act like it’s exclusive to the most recent release as if it hasn’t been an issue forever. getting kinda tiring ngl
I mean, it's still true. It's just getting worse and worse. Time will pass and people will figure things out, but it's absolutely getting worse.
Most memorable dlc moment was the soldiers of Messmer fighting a dragon, i wish there was more NPCs wars like this.
And fighting leda with Ansbach and thiollier, epic
Midra and Bayle also very fun with a lot of build up before the fight
A lot of fair criticism here! Although I would like to suggest perhaps not emphasizing your points on weather it's "fun" or not. Fun is a nebulous concept that can easily be picked apart. Despite understanding how frustrating the final boss is. I found Promised Consort Radahn to be an incredible boss fight. And yet, my positive outlook on this boss is circumstantial evidence at best. Is Elden Ring's combat design holding back the greater potential in boss fights? Yes, I agree that we must move on from this. (Weather Fromsoftware will do something about it or not remains to be seen). Since the base game I've always wished Elden Ring had Sekiro like combat. The parry system is objectively better.
I agree.
I think you’re starting from a bad position. Your arguing that stagnation is starting to set in, where I’ve seen in since Ds1. It’s not a secret that demonsouls has been the foundation of soft game design for over a decade, and go back and look at DemonSouls and I mean really look. There were so many more ideas and concepts from mob design, encounter design, gear design that effectively was cut out and never returned. Soft immediately cut off so many branches, sure they would have more content but sitting on way fewer beaches.
Stagnation didn’t set in with Shadow of the Erdtree, it set in with Darksouls it only took this long for player to bother paying attention enough to see it.
Look at boss arena as the most in your face example of soft curing and simplifying to an easy and very stagnant design. Your looking a simple geometric near featureless arenas, compared to the many bosses arenas that were levels of their own for Demon souls.
Also I never know that the dev thought I would take their game seriously and coshish. Soft doesn’t really have that many idea when it comes to encounters and they played all their tricks more then ten years ago. When predicting the roll of a dice is harder then what soft will do it’s not really that impressive, or maybe most players just have really bad attention spans.
I'm having to push myself to get to the end of this DLC. I cant believe I've come to a point where I'm no longer excited for a new Fromsoft release. Ill buy and play the next game on day one, but there has been a shift in perception for sure, and it makes me pretty sad.
Don't just mindlessly buy Day one. Wait to see if they genuinely innovated. Telling them they are guaranteed to have your money is what will make them never want to change or get better
@@thedoomslayer5863 sure, generally. But this is the first time I've felt like a game of theirs missed the mark in 15 years. I have over 350 hours in Elden Ring, so I've played it, platted it even. I did enjoy it, really.
It just doesn't evoke the same vibe as their previous games. It feels weirdly shallow, almost formulaic in its design, and the DLC really cranks that feeling of artifice way up while the wonder from experiencing it for the first time isn't there to gloss it all over.
So to your point, I agree it is usually best to wait on dlc, but Fromsoftware's track record gave no indication that it wouldn't deliver. And in such a weird, vague manner.
Armored Core 6 felt like a breath of fresh air for a company that has been working on one type of game for more than a decade.
Also LotF and Lies of P have shown how far outdated Fromsoft's soulslike design has been.
@@scissors0009 Well lesson learned for you i hope, even CDPR a once universally beloved games company failed tragically with the release of their latest game on day one. These companies we hold in such high regard can fail and at some point likely will.
Larian studios makers of baldurs gate 3, one of my favorite games of all time, their next game i will wait and see before i buy it.
NEVER give your money day 1 or say they are 100% going to get your money. You learned this lesson hopefully now and i encourage you to spread it to others in a similar boat to you.
@@aryabratsahoo7474lies of p is notable in that it's the first souls like to outclass from soft. Not saying it's better than dark souls 1 or bloodborne(because it isn't) but comparing it to Elden Ring and it's dlc, From Soft's most recent efforts feel kinda sloppy in comparison.
How does the upgrade system discourage experimentation? If you're playing with a late game character and have explored all or most of the base game (or just know how to beeline to the bearings) you can pretty much buy materials and upgrade anything to right before max level at any time, and fully respec multiple times per cycle if you want to adjust your build or meet different requirements. Combine that with the talismans and ashes of war and it's probably the most experiment friendly game in the series. And then obviously if you don't care about the community level caps you can just level up your stats to whatever thresholds you want anyway and you'll eventually be able to use pretty much any weapon or armor set.
There are actually new elements introduced.
1)the necessity to find items like hearts in Zelda where in the base game you could compensate by over levelling.
2)Verticality being introduced on a larger scale, the whole shadow lands is a multilayered big dungeon much more than the lands between was
3)Events happening in real time. You're not bothering demigods rotting in their castles by who knows how much, Miquella plan is unfolding now. Quite a departure from the souls narration I'd say.
Interesting take on your criticism and well exposed. I see this is not a game you enjoyed which is fine. Fun and art is subjective after all.
I do disagree with most of your points though which is fine as well.
based
Excellent video. From has lost the plot and whether or not they are willing and able to see that snd course correct will be interesting to see.
A lot of your issues with this DLC were mostly resolved in Sekiro. I would have much preferred the upgrade items be linked to beating bosses and mini bosses like Sekiro does, but I get that they wanted you to explore for them in this DLC instead. Having only one main weapon and a bunch of secondary tools to mess around with in Sekiro also made fighting bosses more puzzle like as well since some tools were really effective against certain bosses in that game.
Sekiro also has barely any grinding as a result of it's upgrade systems unless you want to be a completionist and get the platinum trophy. Sekiro is actually more annoying than Elden Ring in this regard and requires getting up to new game +7 to make the grind a lot less annoying. Elden Ring's Trophies are more exploration based so it's actually much more manageable.
I kind of want From Soft to try and make another game like Sekiro where the upgrading system is way more skill based rather than stat based, but at the same time I know Sekiro has a high barrier to entry as a result of that and is definitely the most git gud game in the souls series. Then again once you do git gud at it it becomes oddly one of the easiest and most fun games in the series.
You're absolutely correct. Remember when you'd die to a boss in Dark Souls or Bloodborne and be super excited to get back to the fog gate with what you just learned and test your wits against them again? Well almost every time I died to a boss in Shadow of the Erdtree I just felt cheated because FromSoft clearly designed them to be relentlessly punishing. There are no clever tricks to defeating these bosses. There's only cheese builds, summoning or robotically executing dozens of perfectly timed dodges and poking them to death.
Artorias and Kalameet tail flashback
Ya, like I remember how I was so exited to fight bosses like living failures, bed of chaos, amygdala, take off the rose tinted glasses, bosses in base game fromsoft didn’t get real good until
Ds3
@@tbrown5836true, after SOTE going back to the older games shows they have flaws in bosses that are ignored by the community
Aight bro that's exaggeration sounds like cope now. I'm a huge DS1 fanboy and I can acknowledge ER solos easy.
@@tbrown5836Living Failures isn’t that bad, Amygdala is fine (why do people hate this boss?), and Bed of Chaos is easy, the DLC bosses aren’t easy, they’re just grueling, well kinda a lie, most of the bosses are decent.
I think you would REALLY enjoy Armored Core VI, as it's probably one of the more distinct games From has made after Dark Souls fame (Alongside Sekiro and Deracine).
Ignore any prejudices and preconceptions you might might see about mechas (not to mention those would be kinda dumb, as mecha is just sci-fi), ACVI tackles many of the issues you see in the Souls games combat, and probably had FS try to implement AC bosses onto the Souls format (with inconsistent results) in order to compensate for the simplistic core combat.
Yeah ac6 is pretty damn good. It does exactly what it needed to do, gives the og fans what they want while also improving the mechanics in every way. It won't appeal to most people, but it sold well enough that hopefully we'll see another entry within the decade.
Interesting if people play ac, if they don't know, who did the game?) 😂
@@Crow12619 Not quite. Mechanically it's a heavily simplified version of what they have done before. It's a good game, but it is hardly the best entry in the franchise (aesthetics aside). Linear evolution doesn't really work with FROM games, as they constantly change things around, even among their same franchises.
The example of the Shaman Village might just be the single most glaring example of not even trying to engage with the world design. All it takes is reading the description for the two unique items found in this location to figure out it is Marika's original hometown. Thus, likewise, the entrance to the area being guarded by two of her golden knights isn't just a lazy copy paste, it's part of the story.
Seriously, it only takes reading the description of two items to figure most of this out, it's not all that obscure.
...
Also, on a side note about runes, there is never a reason to ever feel conflicted about losing them to a boss and the entire situation mentioned with the Dancing Lion could have been avoided by just mixing the Twiggy Cracked Tear into the Flask of Wonderous Physicl (both base game items) allowing for easy retrieval.
so theres a whole empty area with only base game bosses in it just for a piece of lore? might as well have just removed the area around shaman village
Nice try. You’re telling me MARIKA’S hometown is just 3 repeat bosses and 4 shacks? Really? Oh wait, the huge field of leech monsters. Wow. Epic. 🙄
@@Yive.: Yes, just for a piece of lore. Lore that connects to one of the single most important figures in the entire game, providing hints to her origins and motivations.
That's the way FromSoft games have always worked. Stories inferred through level design and item placement rather than told outright in cutscenes. Elden Ring is just more of the same on a larger scale.
I mean, just consider something like Ash Lake in DS1 and how little there is to actually do there. It'd be easy for someone who never stops and considered the implications to write it off as a pointless side area, and yet its existence helps add insight into the age of dragons that preceded everything.
I appreciate people like you because I cant be bothered enough to explain why people like the dude who made this video are lost on these games
@@SmokeADig: I'm not telling you, the game is.
_"Secret incantation of Queen Marika. Only the kindness of gold, without Order... Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."_ --Minor Erdtree
_"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother... What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."_ --Golden Braid
About the combat and stamina stuff, I think they have reached the limit of this system. If they want to make such complex bosses that requires us to dodge, run, defend, attack, in a very fast, dynamic and long time without having time to breathe, they need to change this. We are leveling up the stamina since elden beast and it’s never enough.
And it’s gets better, because they already have the solution and It’s called Sekiro, they need to put more sekiro combat mechanics in souls games, I hope they realize it and pray that this could be a new game in the future, Sekiro is the best game I ever played and I love it so much, I’m also a huge fan of the souls series.
I really don’t get it why they are not going more deep into Sekiro mechanisms after it’s success in all aspects, why are they not ducking exploring it ?
everyone forgets that Elden Ring is just a better version of Dark Souls 2 (but its still Dark Souls 2). the expansion power creep also follows the same cadence of DS2
18:45 she’s used it twice in one of my runs so I don’t think it’s one use.
This is kinda long and kinda rant-ish, Sorry.
I've been playing Elden Ring since day 1 and since then I've created and completed 36 characters across 4 profiles with a 37th about half done (pre-dlc) all with mostly different builds typically built around a theme of some kind to prevent too much crossover between them and I'm kinda self strict about staying on theme
What I'm saying is that I have a bit too much experience with this game and no I'm not burned out.
Anyways, having started from the top of my character list and worked my way down, I have 7 complete runs through the dlc with my 8th just started and I have some opinions.
Despite using a wide variety of builds my main preference is colossal swords, my first and main character is a super high level Omni build of sorts but still intended to use a colossal sword.
There's more than 1 scenario in this dlc that don't feel balanced for colossal swords, I'm left dodging for minutes on end wondering when I could possibly attack without being punished.
This is kinda annoying because I'm reminded of early in the games life before colossal weaponry got 4 different speed and cool down buffs to make them viable in base game, they feel good to use now that they're faster. Honestly it was abysmal back then.
The dlc just resets it back to square 1 again... And it's really annoying.
My biggest gripe is with Mique-Dahn, yes I've beaten them 7 times, none of those times ever felt legit. He's not the only boss I struggle with (the other being Rellana) but he is the only one I feel like I have to summon to survive and heavy weapons are just not usable without some kind of distraction.
My first time was by abusing the at-the-time broken dueling shield block-poke attack.
My second time was the fabled great shield poke strat.
The 5 other times were panic summoning my mimic and praying to RN-Jesus that I get a good run where Mique-Dahn doesn't spam their omega seizure "I win, now die!" attacks 10 times in a row.
This is the only boss whose moveset still alludes me and I haven't at least partially "clicked" with yet.
I really hope FROM does something to address this boss because this is just too much. There is "good hard" and "bad hard" and this boss is way in the deep end on the bad hard side.
FROM is not above nerfing bosses after all. base game Radahn, AC6 Balteus, and AC6 Cell 240 come to mind as recent examples so it's not unheard of.
It's a real shame because everything in-between the problem bosses is really good imo.
The game is great but unfortunately the boss design brings it down and clings onto being difficult for the sake of being difficult for no reason. Difficulty isnt always a bad thing but fromsoft needs to find a good balance between difficult but fair or just straight up unfair. You can make the game more difficult by turning your monitor off when u enter boss room or the game makes your keyboard and mouse disconnect when you fight the boss randomly, we cant argue that this isnt difficult, but is it fun, is it engaging and fair? Thats how I feel when fighting half of the late game bosses in Elde Ring. Is it fun to watch maliketh fly across the arena and swing his blade 20 times and dodge all of that while waiting for your time to do some damage then he lands and flies back to the other side of arena completely negating your punishing window? Is it fun to watch fire giant roll away every time you get to him, completely denying you any damage? We as a player character remained almost exactly the same since Dark Souls 3 probably even worse, since our character now doesnt even have s on backstep and has slower dodge roll while only getting the jump button, Bloodborne introduced the rally mechanic alongside backstep with more s that allowed you to be more aggresive and rewarded you taking the initiative in boss fight since you could get HP back from good trades, Sekiro got guard and mikiri counters as a core mechanic, while Elden Ring gave us jump button which is only usefull in some situations and completely overshadowed by dodge roll, meanwhile half of the bosses in later half of the game look like they got steroids and crack cocaine and should belong to Sekiro (I'm looking at you Malenia and Rellana). And it gets even more obscure since Elden Ring is probably the easiest game FromSoftware ever made since, for the whole cost of one or two flasks you can summon your own Pokemon which will fight alongside you and tank all the damage while you destroy the boss with frost, bleed or magic build with the right talismans in 60-90 seconds while not seeing the bosses whole moveset and at that point every other boss fight becomes "oh again, another hyperactive cocaine fed boss, lets get this over quickly so i can go back and explore.
Excellent video. I too really hope From will make something completely new next time. Or- if it's still the same formula, I hope they will slow the enemies and bosses way way down. They can't simply make everything faster for ever... I'm sure they can challenge us in more ways than by just hitting the dodge button at the right time.
Was along for the ride until that silly comment about “Fromsoft paying shills” what are you talking about 🤣
Forming the conclusion that the DLC “discourages” testing new things (spirit ashes, weapons) is also a wild take. It literally stuffs you full of smithing stones and gloveworts of all types, and the new DLC weapons scale mostly off their upgrades, not stats for this very reason.
Fights like Divine Beast and PCR feel like the game itself is breaking. This formula cannot go any farther.
Fair to say that the souls formula has peaked with elden ring. They should definitely try to build upon the mechanics of sekiro for future installments. Which will allow the player the tools needed to combat the ever more complex and over the top bosses in a more fun and engaging way instead of just waiting to press L2 or R1 between each 15 hit combo
@@私はクソな中国人です that and expand movesets for weapons. look at the radahns new swords, it shouldve had both ashes of war, not one or the other with two different weapons that are otherwise identical.
Hacent pcr yet but for divine beast i found him to be a great fight if you use jumps along with the rolling to fight him
@@brynntall6811 he definitely seems like a great fight and i love their concept of a boss fight attacking to the rhythm of the music. my only issues with the boss fight is that lightning weather cycle does get obnoxious at times, and, if you play on the ps4 version like i do, the fps will work against your favor, making his second phase much worse to deal with.
They feel like they have to keep making larger spectacles of each boss, and the AoE and nuke moves are more annoying and infuriating than strategic and fun. The boss formula peaked in early to mid game ER or DS3 even
I agree, fromsoft needs to go back to the roots of the series to re-analyze why people like these games.
ER, Sekiro, Bloodborne and dark souls are at this point different genres and the worst sin ER commits is that it is trying to cater to every type of player, while still using the skeleton of the Demons Souls gameplay systems, ER is essentially 3-4 games stapled together, with little to no cohesion at places.
The company needs to (and they seem to be in the process of) exploring vastly different genres than the souls formula, and let other directors attempt high profile projects, I hope they take a long break from souls type projects before the next one, and go back to their older titles (Kings Field and Eternal Ring) and some of their weird one off attemps at different genres.
Fromsoft had such a huge variety of games in the past (JRPGS, Horror,Character Action) and they need to go back and experiment again in order to not stagnate.
I hope we get more Deracine, Kuon, enchanted arms and Shadow Tower like games from them, before another souls like title, and even then i hope they vastly re-work the entire experience for another open world title.
elden ring isn't dark souls, get over it.
@@Ghorda9 You're right, it's dark souls but worse.
Up to this point I used to think that ER's boss design felt wrong mostly because of their unfair nature but replaying DS1 after about 7 years made me realise something; Souls games have always been unfair, the reason they are challenging is becuase they put you in seemingly impossible scenarios and expect you to overcome these unhinged odds. The process of beating a boss or an obstacle was never truly "fun" to me, succiding was. I'm currently stuck on Orstein and Smough and let me tell you it's actual torment. I'm using a greataxe that has insanely slow attacks, low range and long recovery animations and it makes the fight really tough for me. It immidiately reminded me of the suffering I went through while fighting Bayle or Consort Radahn.
Here's the difference tho: the duo bossfight is the first roadblock I've encountered in the entire game, every obstacle before them I overcame through caution and patience. It only makes sense that this is the first major spike in difficulty for me; I'm literally fighting 2 giant warriors by myself. Obviously it should be hard and when I eventually defeat them using my dogshit weapon I will feel like a god but the main point is that the bossfight is challenging just because I have to fight 2 dudes instead of one but it's sufficient enough because it's the only duo bossfight in the entire game and makes sense from the game's world perspective, it would make sense that fighting two guys at the same time would be an insane challange.
For contrary in SOTE literally every single boss is like that. Every single bossfight is some kind of a roadblock with some crazy shit that's suppoused to gradually increase the difficulty more and more but in consequence makes every other encounter less and less unique. The problem with that is the souls combat is perfect for dungeon crawling, for the slow and methodical approach where caution and high consequence of actions are the core of challange. That segways into another important point; the spectacle and high octane movesets of ER's bosses make the combat look fucking goofy. Look at aforementioned Radahn for example: he shoots giant rocks, shatters the ground and in his second phase he literally creates waves of light and explosions that would destroy a castle yet literally all our character has to do to avoid it is to roll. It just looks silly. Feels like the game's immersion suffers a lot because of the missmatch between the spectacle and the souls combat even with all of it's modifications. I'm not saying DS1 and DeS didn't have aoe attacks that could be dodged with roll but in ER and the dlc the dial is turned up to 11 going over and beyond reason.
I feel like we're often too focused on the mechanical aspects of the combat and don't look at the bigger picture of what it's design accomplishes in the grander picture.
I can actually see the vision behind these bosses and why they were made the way they are but it falls apart for me simply because that vision colides with the nature of Souls combat.
I agree with this comment so hard it's crazy. There was always this feeling in this game when fighting the literal greatest swordswoman to exist, master magic users that studied for centuries, a literal creator god - does it really make sense that a little roll would save me against the holy light of a god? It's kind of immersion breaking in a way that earlier souls games, armored core, and sekiro aren't.
It was at that point that I realized that playing it with just rolling and not using bloodhounds step or other ashes of war just wasn't as fun for me. I get that it's supposed to be about disempowerment and trying to overcome the impossible, like you said, but it really just doesn't feel right anymore, and it looks and feels silly. I heard Nioh and lies of P do great things with their player kits so I'll have to check those out
@@mr.b89 Nioh 2 is a better game than elden ring IMO. The combat is in a completely different level, like youcould take a thousand hours to truly master it and even then you could probably push it even further, it's more like dmc with stamina.
And the story and everything is simple but satisfying, they play to their strengths. Elden ring fell apart under the weight of it's own ambition for me and the DLC is just a rushed, lazy cash grab
I have to disagree with the word unfair about Ds1, on of the most though out games in terms of gameplay and worldbuilding (lets ignore some unfinished areas) the game gives a tool for every situation. If you get decent at rolling you can even no hit most of the fights or use a big shield and laugh.. The highest peak in difficulty being O&S offers you the pillars to control the pace of the fight and even that one is as fair as it can get. In struggle a lot of people seem to use the words "tedious" and "unfair" too lightly.
@@Hyde_Lawrence I see what you mean but actually the point I was making is to present the feeling of unfairness as a positive aspect of the game. Maybe I worded myself insufficiently but what I was getting into is how the game isn't overly-concerned with providing a fair and honourable challenge and does so with sensible justification wich helps to solidify the world as hostile and real.
@@slei4676 I'll say that the games never felt unfair by any means. I know a lot of people that strugle and say "unfair" but even up to sekiro which was consider way harder, you play that game and you have an answer for each and every move while being extremely clean, satisfactory and challenging. A lot of people like to quote early miyazaki's interviews where he repeats over and over again that difficulty was never the objective of the games, maybe he started to change his mind after a few games but not by the time of Ds1.
GIT GUD
Haha but serious
5:14 I killed that Imp Cannon with a greatbow on my first playthrough when he was still on the elevated pillar and thus unable to get the item ... only to find out weeks later its just a great ghost glovewort 😆
It really sad to see people who obviously are DS3 fans criticize this game and comparing it to DS3. I remember reddit was screaming in rage when DS3 came out and shunned the game for being too short and messed a lot of things lore wise. but I said back then people are resistant to change. and here we are again.
to begin with i would to make a blunt statement. while DS3 is great game, it not the best. the game suffered of a lot of issues and everyone who played DS1 and compared it to DS3 know this very well. DS1 is fairly superior to DS3. And if we want to be fair, DS2 lore and NPC characters is still better than DS3 except the gameplay mechanics. the game is far more enjoyable for real fans of the series and not people who like "boss rush" and "Hack and slash" gameplay, or what is called "drive by" gameplay.
For the gameplay and speed of the game. i think DS3 veterans are leading this assault on the Elden ring. and these very same people who are criticizing Elden ring are the same people who defended DS3 when it was criticized by DS1 fans of it being overtly fast and the having absurd damage numbers alongside other thrown weird arguments about DS3. Here is the fact, the souls games are evolving, and evolving in pace with player base. try going back to DS1, you might see how slow that game was and say "how on earth people used to say this is too difficult". same thing would happen to people who will jump from Elden ring and play DS3. Yes, there is some issues in Elden ring, but still its a more polished game than DS3. it give more content, more battles and more tense encounters than any other previous titles by miles (Still the PVP could be better). Even the new DLC arguably could be bigger than DS3 map including DS3 both DLCs. which should be something to think about when we consider the price. DS3 first DLC gave us a small map with 2 bosses for 15$, how much content did we get for 40$ ? how many bosses did we get ?? These should be taken into consideration when making an argument about he price. how much I did pay and how much did i get in return. Its a questions of value. so the price argument isn't fair in all honesty. if you hate the game for hating the game, then this is being emotional and not objective in the analysis.
As for Elden ring, its the sum of all the previous experiences fromsoft learned from previous titles except bloodborne and sekiro to a some extent.
while sekiro is on its own league and shouldn't be objectively called a souls game cause the mechanics are far different (combat wise), people should be comparing Elden ring previous classical souls games.
For the recycled content argument. I believe its an unfair argument, for many reasons. One of them is if you define content as every thing found in the world, then Elden ring has more content than all of the previous titles by miles, especially if you take the environmental story telling and other stuff found in the game. And if you argument is about bosses then we have to be objective in our approach while talking about this topic
So for ER we have these bosses without the DLC
1. Godrick
2. Rennala
3. Radhan
4. Rykard
5. Morgott
6. Mohg
7. Malenia
8. Maliketh
9. Godfrey
10. Fire Giant
11. Radagon/Elden Beast
12. Placidusax
if we are going to take the unique encounter of a repeated boss, then we have even more raising to
13. Fortissax
14. Ancestor Spirit
15. Astel
16. Loretta
17. Godskin Noble
18. Godskin apostle
19. Magma Wyrm Makar
20. Dragonkin of Nokstella
21. Commander Niall
22. Elemer of the Briar
23. Mimic Tear
24. Flying Dragons
25. Erdtree Avatar
26. Ulcerated Tree Spirit
27. Fallingstar Beast
28. Giant Wormface
29. Tree Sentinel
30. Draconic Tree Sentinel
31. Night's Cavalry
32. Deathbirds/Death rite Birds
33. Demi-Human Queen
So overall there's probably about 30-35 unique boss based on how you define Bosses, while on the other hand
Demons Souls - 22 without the DLC
Dark Souls (base game) - 20 unique
Dark Souls 2 (base game) - 32 (ER nearly matches it)
Dark Souls 3 (base game) - 19 (the least in the souls series)
Bloodborne (base game) - 24 (including Dungeons)
Sekiro - ill say 28 (keeping in mind that they should be 17)
This "unique bosses" argument should be put to rest, cause it does not make any sense based on the numbers.
As for the empty space argument, its an inherent problem in the open world genre and knows it. and if we want to be honest it reflects how our real world actually looks like, there are empty spaces around us if we look out of the window. so that could be part of it mimicking how the real world is. Having that said, this so called empty space is packed with lore content and environmental story telling for the real and only real souls/born fans who will keep on discussing the game until they become one of the undead XD
Another thing to add, emotional argument means nothing if we want to objectively analyze the souls games. the games we checked are without the DLC content FYI. However, souls games gameplay mechanics are evolving. I think trick weapons in bloodborne (although its a short game, i must say) are one of the fun mechanics that can be brought and added to the game but based on the ER theme but I highly doubt that. I believe covenant mechanic should be brought back cause it was fun and it can fix PVP. also, PVP should be reworked entirely. expand the weapon attack styles and it will be better than what we have currently, which is why they added new styles in the first place. As for throwing and abandoning the classical leveling system, thats a whole topic and i think the post is pretty long enough.
i will agree with some of your critiques regarding the death knights and lion but still, what you are mainly asking is breaking the souls formula and adopt something similar to sakiro where there is no real leveling system at all. There are only unlocks. Skills unlock with points you gain from killing, other things unlock by finding prerequisite items. Meaning a new formula that isn't souls fundamentally speaking cause you are tired of it. having that said, sekiro is not a souls game from a fundamental perspective. its a great game but not a souls game. truth to be told, its more like DMC style game more than a souls game. if that is your cup of tea you can go enjoy the old GOW, bayonettas and DMC all you want.
Also, let this be a mark here and a reminder for the future, if fromsoft releases a new DLC for Elden ring, you are going to play it and you are going to be unreasonably liberal in your critique toppling down the basics and the fundamentals of all souls games, cause what you are really suffering is souls fatigue. best course of action here is to move on and play other game genre. you can go and play armored core if you want new experiences from fromsoft.
if we want to be objective, we need measure the length of something using a ruler/meter and not with scale !! I won't go on comparing apples to oranges and say why apples are not as sour as oranges, cause i like the taste of orange. if you like orange, go eat orange. You can not compare sekiro to DS3 or ER.
Sure, in my case too I have 'souls' fatigue, thanks for sharing your thoughts
Hum...Some well thought out points but others miss the point pun intended.
Best idea is making some kind of universal weapon upgrade system. This game should ABSOLUTELY make it as easy as possible to change classes and try out a whole bunch of magicks and weapons and ashes of war and summons. Added to the open world, THAT is where this game's richness lies, in all the things you can do. Yes, you can get some Miner's bells and farm for runes and buy all kinds of smithing stones and then spend them on upgrading weapons...but why bother. Yes, you can go an collect larval tears and teleport to Renalla and respec...I say just make these two things instantly accessible, and drop the larval tears. Let us be able to respec at graces and try whatever we want.
I intuit they kept those limits to keep exploration meaningful, and make all those smithing stones and larval tears so precious, and I can understand that. But I'm sure they could still keep exploration good and rewarding while somehow making those two things different.
About the story and lore and monotone NPCs...I agree with you. FromSoft needs to AT LEAST make every npc quest easier to track, like Lies of P did, with character icons present on the map. But mysterious lore you have to think about it a trademark now. Hate it or Love it, that's how FromSoft does story. When I see the success of lore youtube channels, I think something works. This ain't no Last of Us for sure.
About the open world, I agree. Nothing extraordinary here, except the sheer beauty of it. Content wise the best content is by far legacy dungeons and some smart, original mini dungeons.
About bosses, first off their visual design is top of the market, let's give them that. Secondly, I suspect if they let us respec and change builds and weapons that much easier, a good part of the difficutly would be more bearable. I agree that they went too far with the spectacle over playability tho, 100 percent. Bosses tend to be non interactable, except rolling or spacing out, for far too long. The random extended combos are not a bad idea tho. Keeps you on your toes. I discovered I got better at the game when I stopped playing it like Dark Souls, which is deliberate and very much slow compared to this.
I enjoyed your video tho, thank you!
I listen to this video at least once a week while at work.
i agree with pretty much everything said in this video, the barren open world clashing with classic souls formula along with the usual slop open world gives serving as filler and the outdated combat mechanics though one thing i personally find dissapointing in the DLC is that none of the dungeons came close to the quality of the base game with the exception of shadow keep if i'm being horribly generous
My man what are you on? The dungeons are peak fromsoft
Completely agree. The 2 dungeons where a huge disappointment. Didnt come close to leyendell, stormveil or even volcano. manor... Shadow keep is big but most of it is just recycled grand archives from ds3 and the theme is "black moody fortress"... Wow, we've never seen that before.
Going off what that other guy said, you could force structure to an open world by locking the scadu fragments behind important boss kills so that some kind of order was established, that would beat having to hunt the wilderness (this causes a realistic gameplay loop of players simply memorizing routes online, DISCOURAGING the very exploration it was hinged upon. What you need for exploration is a good variety and intermittent reward.
It's very funny to see a lot of the complaints that people bashed on when the game first came out now be in the forefront when numbers and difficulty are cranked up even higher. The humbling of the "git gud" crowd is mildly satisfying lol.
Regardless, I agree with a lot of the points in this video. I really appreciate the concise and focused criticism of the open world, which I've also had similar thoughts on since week 1 of vanilla Elden Ring. Torrent needing to have i-frames coming back into the discussion was lovely to hear as well, along with mentions of the story and many other things.
I've said more here than I usually do in a comment, but per your point of the video, this series is in dire need of retirement or a major shift. Quite frankly, I just want someone to make another genre defining game like Dark Souls was in its heyday. It's time for something new. This video was really a treat, thanks c:
after the ds3 and bloodborne dlcs i was like "holy shit that was good, i wanna do this again"
after the elden ring dlc i was like "its finally over, thank god"
hit the nail on the head 6 minutes in. i remember for hours i was excited to explore the northeast part of the map and all that's there is a fucking falling star beast, copy pasted tree sentinel fight, and the stupid finger ruins. the shaman villiage lore is cool, though. but everything cool in this game is surrounded by 10 other things that are dogshit.
Part of the challenge managing the camera with bosses like dancing lion is knowing when to take the lock off. Most spells and attacks can still be manually aimed by controlling your camera and looking at your target.
I appreciate this kind of review
So glad some people are able to look at this game clearly. It drives me mad how much of an echo chamber the souls community can be and how they struggle to see how bad a lot do this dlc was
Every community is like, very rarely you get a game community that isnt an echo chamber
The internet creates echo chambers. And people flock to them to hear their own opinions and bias spit back at them and don't like being challenged. Not just video games unfortunately. I have enjoyed the DLC and think it's great but it definitely has it's flaws.
@@angeltzepesh1 I agree to an extent but from soft fans really sound and behave like a cult sometimes
You would probably not be so mad about things like this if you were more understanding of the subjectivity of art. You speak as though you've discovered a truth that the DLC is bad, not that you've developed an opinion that the DLC is bad, which is what has actually happened. No one is blind to some gospel you've uncovered, they just engaged with the same piece of media that you did and felt differently about it. There doesn't need to be some battle on the internet to win over the opinions of those people, it worked for them and not for you, discuss the difference to your hearts content but at least understand that it's all subjective. You're not any more correct if you get someone to agree with you than you were before.
@@andothersuchnonsense2685 This honestly. I personally felt that this DLC improved upon all of the things I disliked about the base game. I can understand why someone might feel different though. I wasn't particularily hyped about this DLC myself, as I had most of the same complaints as the detractors had about the base game.
My experience with the DLC was completely different though. This was honestly the most fun I've had with a Soulsborne game since my first playthrough of Bloodborne back in 2015. Considering the fact that I had a burning hatred for most of the bosses in the base game, I was pleasantly surprised by just how good I found most of these new ones to be. While definitely more challenging, they somehow felt more intuitive to me.
One thing I really loved was how much more balanced around summons these bosses were. In the base game, it almost felt like I had a choice between agonizingly frustrating or just piss easy, depending on wether or not I chose to summon. With the DLC though it felt more like a choice between an endurance fight or not. It was nice to finally feel like the summons were there as a tool to make it more managable rather than to completely cheese through the game.
As someone who genuinly loved my time with the DLC, it's a bit disheartening to see people trying to discredit my opinion as me just being blind to From Softwares faults. Because how could someone possibly like something they dislike for any valid reasons?
I could articulate my thoughts thoroughly in a comment but tbh the DLC already ran my patience dry so I'll just say "FAX, BRUDDER, SPIT UR SHIT"
Pleasant video, can't think of much i disagree with so i might be biased on it but still.
Good analysis. I think open worlds don’t suit fromsoft level design. They peaked with DS3-Bloodborne in terms of striking the right balance with world size. The reused dragons and tree spirits are just lazy, and I feel like it’s because all the work went into legacy dungeons (which aren’t that good compared to base Elden ring game)
FromSoft level design in an open world is literally the reason Elden Ring is as big as it is.
I want another sekiro-like game or bloodborne not another Soulslikr game
Elden ring did way better in numbers compare to Bloodborne and Sony expectation to bloodborne didnt match it was a fail compare to other exclusive ps games
@@wiliex0687 maybe instead of making another souls game they try something else is what I’m saying they typically do good and plus FS meat riders will by it anyway
Sekiro/Bloodborne mechanics in a more "plasingly" themed game would work well IMO, financially too.
Also, they can ride this Success wave to popularize the sekiroborne style more.
@@jonathanprivitera9394 both Bloodborne and sekiro sales can’t match Elden Ring Fromsoft doesn’t own the IP of all their games but Bandai will let a Elden ring 2
Bloodbone is still a soulslike
You can dodge Radahn's slam after the pull in the final fight. When he pulls you in and raises his swords, you run away and when he slams you jump.
Paying shills to make softly spoken lore videos? C'mon man. Really? That's what you're really putting into your video because you don't care enough about the lore to read item descriptions? I totally get that Elden Ring lore is obscure, confusing, and fragmentary, but everything you need to know to have at least an 80% understanding of what say, Mesmerr is doing when he pulls out his eye is right there in the game if care to look for it (and the remaining 20% in my opinion lends and air of mystery to the whole affair whatever lore detail you're talking about). Same goes for the open worlds stuff. Is it the most compelling from a purely "is this challenging my dexterous skills right now?" sense, no... but from a lore standpoint they're doing good work making the world seem believably lived in, with a history, thematically supporting the game's broader ideas, and not infrequently featuring clues about what the heck is actually going on for the sharp eyed and really dedicated lore hunters (and that's entirely aside from the joy of exploration, which you appear to be entirely immune to.)
I'll give you the point on the Ruins of Rauh though. Easily the least compelling section of the DLC.
this is possibly one of the worst sote critique videos i've seen so far, simply because this brit jabbed at the lore youtubers. it feels like people are jumping on the bandwagon of sote hate, and use it as an excuse to shit on all of the other souls games too. i get that the dlc isn't perfect like every other video game ever and has its own quirks; i say this as someone who thinks that promised consort radahn is heavily flawed, and is the main reason, among a few other minor issues i have with the game, is why i give the elden ring dlc an 8/10. but was it REALLY necessary to give massive disrespect to the people that have worked for about a fucking decade piecing the lore together so that many of us can get a better grasp of the story and lore? it goes to show how many people are vehemently allergic to media that doesn't conform to traditional storytelling...i could go on and on, applying this argument to other certain games like yume nikki and kingdom hearts, but you're already smart enough to know that some people in this world are simpletons.
@@yoman5029total vaati death
@@Sneedseednfeed vaatians must live smh......
I liked the final boss both lore and gameplay wise despite those two bullshit moves he has that should be changed. But that fight made me realize one thing, let me explain. The Fine Crucible Feather Talisman improves your backstep in a way that you can use it to dodge attacks just like Bloodborne dodge. You can use this to counter the dumb undodgeble move of Radahn by backstepping the first hit and rolling the last 2 (easier said than done as it's fast but with practice it's fairly doable) but you shouldn't have to search or know this detail, it's just a talisman, most people can just skip it by not exploring enough. In fact, I think the property that this talisman gives you should be the default in the character's movement options, it makes the gameplay so much more interesting. I don't know why the heck they decided to put that into a Talisman, in the DLC, which is accessible in the endgame. I think it should be a core mechanic, so much that on my new playthrough that talisman has a reserved slot on all my builds, it's that good. They should have done like Monster Hunter Iceborn, as part of the DLC, add more core mechanics to the game that are usable from the start of any playthrough just by having the DLC.
I disaggre with the scadutree fragments. Like I actively dislike those. They do make exploring meaningfull and discourage farming runes on safe spots, but once the exploration part is done, it just becomes a chore you have to do to actually go to the rest of the content. On second playthroughs they become absolutely obnoxious, since you basically have to either actively ignore them or go search every easy-access one as soon as possible. So this easily turns into 1/2-1 hour of "stuff I have to do to get started". Besides I don't think you deciding to leave the fight and go farm some levels is something that should be prevented. Like levels don't even matter that much. You played with basically the "Bonk build" (heavy double weapon and spam jump heavy for massive damage and posture break) which is probably one of the strongest simple builds. You could literally have 100 levels less than a guy using some mix stats on dex-arc-faith and still have an easier time on a boss than them. Builds matter waaaaaaaay more than levels, ask no-hitters.
Also, I don't think it is fair to say the map is empty, it is not. Sure the finger zones are empty, but they are like... intentionally empty, like they are trying to convey there is nothing there other than roamming weirdos. I do agree they are lame though. But saying there is nothing on the top part of the map is a lie. You have to go there to progress with a quest that culminates on a pretty cool rememberance boss (one I think you didn't even mention, so maybe you missed it?), you have I think 3 unique spells, a bunch of deep lore and a trinket that is REALLY helpfull against the final boss. On the cerulean coast you also have a deathbird (yes, another repeated boss) with unique loot and even more loot scattered around. Also the undead dragons are unique, their moveset, while similar to the original ones, has some tweaks on timing areas and follow ups (and some extra special moves), that actually makes you fight them differently. The one at the cerulean coast summons a freaking army of undead, where you have to make the choice of either slowly kill them while dodging the dragon or ignoring them and try to fight the dragon while they are there (that's pretty cool if you ask me, not amazing, but it spices up the fight). The zone is not great in terms of content, but it is far from empty.
I do agree with everything else though, that's totally fair.
I agree with some of your points, but I do think saying it’s okay for an area to be empty just because it was “intentional” is lazy. Empty areas are not engaging, barely add to lore, and are just time sinks to explore through. Like the video claimed, a big reason many explore in Elden Ring is because 1/10 times it leads to something incredible but the 9/10 times the rewards are a scenic view or lackluster item. On repeat playthroughs most people are just going to skip it entirely or rush to the objective which begs the question why spend time creating a space if you’re not going to fill it? To market the expansion to be bigger than it really is?
Scadutree blessing were a fix to a problem that never existed.
I have no idea what we're they thinking with this leveling system, when we the player can control our stats and weapon levels.
@@dvdivine1962 it was made to stop over levelled characters from easily sweeping through the dlc
"Runes have no value to the player."
But also,
"I'm too scared to fight bosses because I might lose my runes."
Which is it?
we already have a game where FromSoft proved they can do over the top fights without the combat collapsing on itself. It's called Armored Core VI (and it's my favorite FromSoft game)
The combat is just bad in that games case. Insult to the franchise it came from.
@@deadair101101totally agree
@@deadair101101 I think the heavy emphasis on stagger is pretty annoying when looking at the overall franchise but overall it was very satisfying and fun to me. What did you find bad about it?
Yet the game was highly praised and won action game of the year, an award given on the basis of its combat system. No satisfying everyone I guess.
@@henryzweihander8282 is that supposed to mean anything. Especially since it’s from people that never played previous titles.
With how much we get pummeled with Sekiro and Bloodborne style bosses in Elden Ring I’m hoping their next game will be more like BB and Sekiro mechanically so we can have fluidity with fast paced and aggressive bosses you have to be aggressive right back at.
10:36 Lmfaooo this line killed me it's so accurate.
The cutscene where Godrick chops his arm off, and then how the camera pans to the side as he begins spouting nonsense towards the dragon head legitimately had my side in shambles, and they just keep doing the exact same thing over and over
Morgott scene in Leyndell struck me particularly for this reason. Nothing that he said makes any sense.
"What is thy business with these thrones"
Tf you're saying dude? I don't give a f about these thrones and you know that since we fought before.
Then he mentions all of the demigods as if player character didn't learn about them already. Does he spends his days walking around this arena and sulking about his siblings? It seems so, because the capital is in complete ruin and a good king should do something about. But nah, sulking it is.
Once the big turtle pope at church of vows told me that radagon is marika, i just gave up on trying to understand the lore.
@@skinnytimmy1 me when I lie
@@skinnytimmy1The turtle pope doesn't tell you radagon is marika. You have to do a convoluted quest line involving gold mask and the law of regression
I'm not sure what you're talking about? There's nothing convoluted or nonsensical about what he's saying, he just goes "truest of dragons, lend me thy strength" a subtle nod to the fact he's putting it's head on his arm and using it as a flamethrower, and then he goes "forefathers one and all, bear witness!" cause he thinks he's fucking cool and that his ancestors would look fondly on him, really not that deep or hard to parse maybe you're just retarded?
Yeah the same formula for 10+ years aside from 2 games does get kinda old huh
Yeah...
The "softly spoken shills" part got me, because is true🤣
Souls games are mostly really cool and have defined an entire genre of games in the past years, but the community sometimes gets too pedantic😅
every elden ring critique video attacks the community. EVERY SINGLE ONE. its ridiclous to simplify the community by looking at a couple of idiots and saying they are all the same. literally braindead
If you've played Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1/2/3, then there's nothing new here tbh, other than visual improvements and open world. It's the same rehash, movement is the same, some of the weapons are the same, bosses are copied and pasted in with a different armor/visuals, etc. Nothing new is introduced. The lore is hard to piece together and its not as good as previous games, the game is only fun when you're facing a difficult boss but there's no connection to the game. Bloodborne is still their best game. Combat was fast paced and engaging, lore was really interesting, simple yet complex, the world setting was incredible and beautiful, lets not talk about weapons and the music, that was special. If they come out with Bloodborne 2 I would love to play that, other than that if they come out with a new souls game, im out. Might get it on discount if im really bored.
there are like maybe two memorable bosses in bloodborne’s base game 😭😭 this glazing has gotta stop
@@voidy6836 Lol, literally every single boss is way more memorable than Elden ring boss which for the most part copied bloodborne and dark souls bosses. But Father Gascoigne, Gehrman, Martyr Logarius, seeing AMYGDALA for the first time was crazy, blood starved beast, Darkbeast pearl, Vicar Amelia. Lol, lets not talk about the DLC. LUDWIG MUSIC AND SECOND PHASE, LADY MARIA (MALENIA COPY PASTE), ORHAN OF KOS? Are you mad bro? lol
"10 year old combat system" is an understatement, Demon’s Souls came out in 2008. Now I won’t deny that these games have evolved in that time, but the base combat system is still very similar
Edit: sorry, 2009 lol
I do not understand this sentiment, there's only so much you can do with game mechanics before you're making a different game. I'm happy there's multiple games with this combat system, it's fucking awesome. Genuinely asking what you think they could change?
@@jayyoung1338everything, stop making souls games all together.
They are only getting more boring with time and iterations.
They made sekiro, they can make another innovative title.
@@gitnjur Fair enough, I'd also like something new. I guess I interpreted the original message as the game mechanics are 'aged' which I think is stupid but maybe they meant they are 'stale' which is up to them
The randomizer basically fixes the issues with exploration. Since you always want to find every item since it could always be something new and useful.