Elden Ring: An Overrated Masterpiece ( Critique 2022 )
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ส.ค. 2022
- Masterpiece? Overrated? Somewhere in the middle? Let's dive in.
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Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy the video. And I try to be as fair as possible with both praise & criticism. So I hope you'll watch til the end. My next couple of videos will be surrounding the upcoming release of THYMESIA, I have beaten the game already & plan to do a review as well as a boss ranking & more.
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Use your ashes, they want you too, don't be such a Chad
@@diegofigueredo4745 I will play games how I live my life, suffering & alone 😂😤
Great video, I hope you don't get too much hate for criticising the game👍
@@KratosisGod I hope I do cause I like trolling comments that attack me 😂
@@EndymionTv Then I hope you get your wish 🤣
I always hated that I wanted to be a tanky build while my brother was a damage build, and yet, despite me having 1500 hp and my brother having 900hp, me wearing heavy armor set and my brother wearing lighter sets, we both still get killed by 2 hits. Only difference, my brother would take one hit and have like 20hp left, while I would take one hit and have 700hp left. In the end, we still die from 2 hits.
Then you know what to do.
@@TheTraveler980 Having 60 vigor (The standard if you care about multiplayer, meta RL 125-150) You still get 2 or 3 shot by end game bosses so, yeah. Even with 99 vigor and it being NG, you still get deleted pretty easily by end game bosses.
@@TheTraveler980 Play a better game? Agreed.
@@OzzyBlazeGaming Thats was pretty much with all Souls games lmao.
Tankiness hmis not Surviving 400 hits and go out unscathed, is being able to trade hits and hild your ground, the game wants you to be skilled at not getting hit, and even then there are MULTIPLE builds that lets you beat the game overemcumbered
@@DronesOverTheMoon Just watched some fights on Soul of Cinder to refresh myself, properly leveling vigor and heavier armor 100% made a significant difference when compared to Elden Ring. Either way though, point is, I understand avoiding hits is obviously best and when the game is most fun, but still wish heavier armor provided more damage negation. Dying in 5 or 6 hits compared to 3 is significant in my eyes.
Tip for players: The followup L2 attack with the Serpent Hunter does like 4 times as much damage as the first press of L2.
underrated tip, died 6 times before i realised this
@@sunriseparrabellum5505 skill issue
@@deadbodybaby1🤓🤡
@@VENENOSEASON Skill issue.
Better tip: keep using the first attack to keep the 🐍 stunlocked.
Godrick is so well designed that he ends up being too easy for the game he's in, because many Elden Ring bosses actively rely on bullcrap to kill you and raise the difficulty artificially.
Personally i think almost all the bosses are balanced but what do i know
Godrick is amazing yeah. But stuff like Malenia/Godskin Duo is not very cash money
@@EndymionTv Malenia is very fair. She punishes hyper aggression.
Foreskin Duo is meh, though.
@@Xeno455 Waterfowl dance and the phase 2 phantom attack are the opposite of very fair
@@Shyguymask the phantom attack is fair imo
It's interesting because outside of the godskin duo fight, the farum azula level has to be one of my favorite in the game, so having it as a late game reward felt great to me
That’s fair. I liked Farum. I just hated the spirit summon ashes and how hard enemies hit in the end game to compensate for that imo
@@EndymionTv explore more or level ur vigor. faram azula damage is fine at 50 with good armor. also how is hating ashes have anything to do with the quality of faram azula? its easily the best final area they made in aesthetics and level design, something elden ring is far beyond the other games in.
look, no offense, but fromsoft veteran youtubers should really stop pretending to be game devs. the biggest reason why late game enemies hit so hard is the fact that the potential souls and upgrade materials you can get before getting to mountaintops and especially azula, have never been so gigantic. that even shows with the raised level caps. do you how much optional content is there before getting to them? man thank god fromsoft completely ignores their fanbase and just do what they want, otherwise we wouldve kept getting boring bb and ds1 clones.
@@flamingmanure nobody wants to explore more or level vigor
It’s boring shit
@@flamingmanure no other souls game has ever had this damage issue. High vigor is basically mandatory late game and this has has never been the case in any other game. Spirit summons have also made balancing worse because they balanced the game around them instead of solo play.
@@-Nihilus- Because no other Souls game were this big and also ER don't ask you waste souls in magic slot or carry weight, meaning the standard Lvl +150 character has more than enough points for damage and vigor.
Honestly I think the Godskin Apostle is the definitive example of a good elden ring boss (in the sense of an overworld boss). He has fast attacks that feel just right when u dodge them, he may have delayed attacks but he doesn't rely on them as it's only a small part of his moveset, a 'get off me' move in the form of his black flame tornado that has a reasonable tell and a badass phase transition that is so simple as it only gives him 3 new moves yet so effective cause it makes u apply everything u learnt in the 1st phase and adapt it to his new moves. But Fromsoft really just had to ruin the magic of the fight and paired him up to form the 'Foreskin Duo'.
He was an Ok boss......
Before you had to fight him 37 fucking times.
I really enjoyed that fight as well - I actually struggled a lot more with Godrick
I hated this fight. Kicked my ass so many times (holy build and he has crazy holy resist).
My last match with him, 20 something try, we killed each other and I got the credit...I live to suck another day.
@@jamesloucks2562
Godskin Apostle being reused makes sense though. There was supposed to be an army of them.
18:30 actually Aldia gains A LOT of magic resistance when on fire and only melee attacks work on him properly, so if that boss if punishing someone definitely is the spell casters
You've definitely convinced me on spirit ashes, particularly with respect to the late game. I got one or two shotted so often even with 60 Vigor, frankly all those bosses need rebalancing.
The rebalancing IS THE SPIRIT ASHES dunce
60 vig here, youre either lying about being one shot or u were wearing napkins.
This video is spot on. I love Elden Ring but I did notice that the difficulty in the end ramped up like the gas prices. Fighting Godrick I felt like I was paying a comfortable $4.25 but then I got Maliketh and it shoots up to $6.75. I can't even get a full tank now. I should have gotten a Prius.
Definitely. End game got fucking absurd.
@@evanpetelle5669 Yes, extremely absurd.
@@scaryhours2220 I didn’t even care to memorize & tackle some of those bosses on my own. Simply summoned someone for coop & got that shit over with.
@@evanpetelle5669 lol I hear you. It did get insanely annoying.
@@evanpetelle5669 skill issue
What I think is the worst about Malenia is that when you've played the entire game with a shield, suddenly you have to respec because every hit on your shield heals her. I get that dealing damage would heal her, but a shield?? Where's the logic in that? What's stopping her from healing by hitting a wall?
Hey, nice video. I agree about the first playthrough vs. repeated playthrough sentiments quite a bit. I think you go a bit hard on the Spirit Ashes though. I don't think the idea of them is bad, but I would agree the implementation of them could have used refinement. It's not the Spirit Ashes that are the problem, it's the general looser/sloppier design of the final act of the game. Are they related? Sure, but they are still different.
One way Spirit Ashes could work better imo would be if they could be charged through damaging enemies. It'd force people to interact with bosses more, and depending upon the tier of the ash, they could be summoned faster or slower. With a system like this, I think it could've allowed more experimentation as well since a lot of the Spirit Ashes were inaccessible to a lot of builds due to their FP costs.
The only boss I felt was “unfair” was the Godskin Duo. Every other boss I was able to find the “dance” and was just a matter of refining it.
fromsoft likes to do this, where it wants us to use different strategies to beat some bosses. like the duo is weak to sleep so you can use that to ur benefit.
but of course as stubborn as we fans are, we wana just go all Monke mode and smash.
The godskin duo is overrated. Sure, it's bad, but it doesn't come close to the atrocity that it's the duo gargoyle fight. Two strong agile, big enemies that were designed to be fought 1 on 1, even more than the godskins, and while being close to them. Without mentioning the poison cloud, a move that has no telegraph, does a lot of damage, poisons you, obviously. It's basically random unavoidable damage because looking at the other gargoyle while fighting one is near impossible.
Summon Bernahl. He's there for a reason. Godskin Duo difficultly is extremely overrated by people who want to handicap themselves for no reason.
@@jy1178 I would’ve summon him, but never saw his sign. Plus, they gave me trouble the first time I fought them ( literally the second day the game came out). Every time time after that was a walk in the park
@@kobi-wanaenobi7080 Some of us can't deny the monke mode, so oof
Summon ashes is great because it can replace the co-op summons in singleplayer. 15 years into the future you might wanna replay the game but the online is going to be dead.
Yes. Plus that is the same with all the other Soulsborne game, where you could summon offline npc to help against some bosses ( Dark Souls 1,2,3 and Bloodborne ).
Well said. I don't think the problem is the summons. The problem is the bosses launching nearly unavoidable one hit kill attacks on the player. It's too frustrating...
Let's say for example you're fighting a boss and it's super neck and neck and at the very last last split second, they decide to RNG spam their most unblockable and annoying attack. You're phucked lol.
I can understand getting hit sooo hard that you now only have one chance to get far enough away to heal, but hit so hard that there is nothing you can do about it except have your mimic take that hit instead? To me that's just lame lol.
Gamers in general HATE IT when video games allow a player to waste minutes getting somewhere only to then have those minutes wasted in the blink of a eye because of some cheap azz bs from a AI baddy. It's like if you spent 5 minutes walking to the store only to realize you forgot your wallet lol. That feeling sucks!
In that case, they should've made Spirit Ashes require using a Furlcalling Finger Remedy.
Real men play alone
@@adamlindfors5082 It'a a video game, Mr. Lintfurs. Relax.
Godfrey/Horoah Loux in my opinion is the best and most fair boss fight in the late game. No crazy gimmicks like lifesteal, HP drain, etc. Just a straight up fight. His attacks are well telegraphed and his arena wide stomps can be simply jumped over or rolled with good timing.
Imo every end game boss is fair and if you think otherwise its your inability to think and adapt. But yes godfrey is the best boss in elden rjng and quite frankly the best boss ever made by from softwsre
@@raafeyalikhan4400 I agree. I never said any of the bosses are unfair. But yeah Godfrey is a chad. His fight is just too damn fun. I spend a lot of my time co-oping, helping other people beat him. Fun way to farm rune arcs lol.
@@TheKarateeKidd haha I do the same thing. And my bad most people say the bosses are too difficult with too many moves abd no time to attack and heal and that is insanely wrong lmao people rly be doing anything but getting better.
@@raafeyalikhan4400 beatable doesn't equal fair.
@@matsimurf_5900 i never said they werent fair lmao every single boss deisgn is well and can be countered. If you arent willing to adappt then thats why rly powerful weapons and spirit summons exist as a support its on you to do betterr.
I really liked it, put little over 200 hrs and loved every minute, I loved Sekiro, but the range of freedom and types of styles... It's the best game i've played in a very long time
Fair enough
Agreed. I feel like nostalgia for the Souls and a hipster mentality due to Elden Ring becoming much more mainstream than any of the other games makes people hate on the game more than they would otherwise.
@@jakestocker4854 nah man, I wanted to love ER, I was super hyped. By the end of the game I was just tired of it, the bosses are really tedious and not fun.
@@Glitch47278 I completely disagree, I think a large chunk of them are the best bosses in any of the From Souls like games and they were probably my favorite part of the game outside of weapons and build variety.
@@jakestocker4854 "hipster mentality" 🎯 Nailed it! 👏🏻👍🏻
Apologies in advance for the length of this, I was taking a mid-paper break to eat and watch this video.
Hot take but I actually don't mind the vague descriptions on talismans. I think it adds to the feeling of finding some lost, ancient artifact and trying to decipher the forgotten language that might be inscribed upon it, and it does a bit to discourage a focus on min/maxing and breaking out a calculator every time you pick up an item. This could distract from the overall experience and can make players feel overwhelmed to a degree, especailly when there are so many items to find and experiment with.
Also, the fact that Godrick is so well telegraphed, relatively easy to time, and equally approachable with all builds I think says something about why it is the first intended major boss. While balance is important for all builds, I don't believe it's necessary that they all have the same degree of ease in fighting each boss or enemy type. Of course nothing in the game should be totally unreasonable to approach with any given build, but all builds have their pros and cons, all enemies have their strengths and weaknesses, and these differences should carry some weight. Also, with regard to Aldia and other bosses who lend themselves to ranged approaches, all builds have options in this regard. Strength builds have greatbows and crossbows, dex builds have regular bows and crossbows, and of course magic focused builds have spells. Consumable items are also an option, we all know we don't need to hold onto every firebomb we've come across in the game for the final boss, and Elden Ring's crafting system makes this approach a bit more viable than in the previous games as well. That being said, Godrick is still an amazing fight, and I do love battles which use similar, dynamic mechanics.
I thought the later half of the game, while certainly difficult, was nonetheless enjoyable. The only real complaint I have is with Malenia's waterfowl dance move which, as you said, sometimes just feels like you need to be lucky to dodge. I enjoyed the rest of her fight, and enjoyed the battle with Maliketh and Horah Loux, and don't see these fights as downsides in the game. They may take some getting used to, some adjustments to your tactics or build, or may encourage the use of some consumables to help you get through, but I still think they were fun and exciting.
I don't believe spirits should be viewed as merely a tool to help those who 'aren't as good at the game' but rather just another tool, like a throwing pot or crimson flask, albeit generally much stronger. They are part of the game which can make a lot of encounters much more dynamic, and allow players to engage in a bit of jolly cooperation when their internet is out, their friends are offline, or when the servers finally close some day. I know we've all seen those no-hit and lvl 1 runs, and while these are certainly very challenging, it just goes to show that even the most widely used items and mechanics in the game can be circumvented with the appropriate skill and strategy, and the same can be said for the spirit summons. If you feel it makes the fight too easy, and you don't feel good about the win, you don't have have to use them. While difficult, you can certainly beat each of the bosses on your own. Furthermore, Elden Ring was targeted at a much larger audience, and I would much rather have spirit summons act as an invisible, temporary difficulty slider, rather than having an easy mode, and while imperfect I appreciate the effort put in here. The inclusion of this mechanic allowed many players who would otherwise quit at the sight of Godrick to enjoy the game, recommend it to others who are unfamiliar with the genre, and thus help fund more games to come without any of the cheap gacha or pay to play mechanics mentioned earlier in the video.
Anyway, there were some solid points in this video, and that's my take on a few of them. Time to finish my homework.
My issue with the ER bosses is less about the end game difficulty curve and more about how many times some a reused as mini-bosses. I think the Spirit Ash issue you mentioned could also be fixed by making the summons provide buffs/status effects rather than being an aggro magnet. We kind of got this with the Jellyfish and poison, but there could also be ashes that give you resistances to certain damage types, or give you small HP/MP heals, and I think the Spirit Ash mechanic would feel less like an easy mode for bosses.
They could have just balanced the game with out spirit Ashes. Literally fix every problem. It was like adding life gems to ds2 as a band aid to how they fucked up the remake
They could even make it that you can't heal yourself until your summon is dead.
I got elden ring a few days ago, I'm at the elden beast and I really enjoyed my time with the game
Just got it and you’re at the end? Well have fun!
Yeah I've played none stop since I got it, I have about 150 hours in game. I've been going for all trophies/achievement
Haha you must have a lot of free time on your hands cause I'm a souls vet and it still took me weeks to beat the game even though it was all I played for a majority of my free time.
@@ppf_7213 you gotta make it to new game plus 7 lol
Game still sucks objectively
" full of crazy stuff " .... the level:" stairs ... planks ... more stairs "
Though I’m a traditional souls vet and have zero tolerance for summons and op/meta weapons, when I heard Elden Ring would have optional npc summons for less-sweaty players I was pleasantly surprised.
I thought it was a pretty cool way of adding a pseudo easy mode instead of having different difficulty options, and because of that many of my friends who hadn’t beaten any of these games would finally get into them (and lo and behold, they have).
But towards the final act of the first playthrough and all subsequent playthroughs I’ve done, I also feel like many bosses, including single-enemy bosses, are designed around the assumption that you will be using spirit summons.
Which wouldn’t be a problem, but it seems like they’ve made using spirit summons the standard difficulty, and those who opt not to use them are actually playing on hard mode, instead of no summons being the standard and summons being an easier mode.
The amount of bosses with 5-10 hit combos with 50/50 chance of extending them even further, combined with 2 second attack windows makes me wonder when a normal player is supposed to get a reasonable hit in, and the more I see of the game the more I feel like you create attack windows using summons, op weapon ashes, and ranged attacks. Playing the traditional way now forces you to dodge through 5-10 delayed, sporadic and lightning fast attacks that can all 2-3 shot you, only to scramble to get a hit in during the 2 seconds that you can.
I just think of bosses like slave knight Gael who were half as fast as Malenia and needed 3-4 hits to kill you at endgame vigor, and it’s hard not to see certain Elden Ring bosses as overkill.
I think the game just wants you to make use of busted gear and summons, which is extremely frustrating for me because I’m good enough to turn the game into a cake walk when I use op gear which is why I stray from them, but now I’m left with dealing with a ton of frustrating close-combat mechanics.
And don't forget there is no tension in ER. Bonfires/Graces everywhere so you don't have to learn, just ride and spam as much as possible.
I'm weird but I like how endgame bosses play not fair and force you to use everything what you can use to win
Fair enough but there’s a fine line between good and frustrating and unfair IMO
They don't even do that. Endymion just kinda had a skill issue tbh. You can RL1 every single one of these bosses without getting hit. They don't force you to do anything besides get better at the game.
This game is definitely not overrated at all. It's really more so that some people are just salty that a game is so highly praised by so many people that they go out of their way to find little nitpicks to attempt to stand out as a contrarian.
No game is absolutely perfect and neither is Elden Ring. That being said, this game stands up there with some of the best games ever made.
Cringe take lol, the game is the definition of overrated - blind praise for a deeply flawed game that comes nowhere close to any of its predecessors by FromSoftware.
Yeah, ds games are not perfect. ER is a mess in comparison, that's the point. It exasperates the flaws those games already had.
The Argument against Spirit Ashes sounded a lot like my internal grumbling against shields in Soulsborn games. I don't like using them so I don't, but I don't blame the hits I take as a result on a mechanic that is clearly meant to be in the game. I experimented with the spirite ashes and it was like trying out new weapons or *shudder* shields, fun. If it isn't your style don't do it but claiming it ruins other players fun is really arrogant. I have to admit the mimic sometimes feels too powerful but the other ashes are far more situational and claiming that the game is designed around one specific summon is a little odd. I don't think thats how game design works. Everything else i can mostly agree with it's a great game, but keep in mind just because you like play one way doesn't mean that others can't have fun in a different way.
Shields don't turn you into the sidelined audience of your own bossfight.
Black Knife Tiche can solo bosses all the way to the mountaintops with good blade of death RNG and can turn any fight into a sure win when she's supporting the player as is designed, Dung Eater puppet inflicts a percentage based burst damage status and is one of the most tanky entities in the game, and while mimic tear requires some small amount of build optimization and game knowledge to get the full effect out of. if geared correctly the mimic can often times fight the boss better than the actual player, pulling off similar damage numbers, having the ability to heal, and actually has a defense rating/health pool comparable to the bosses strength.
Legendary spirit ashes just shouldn't be a thing in general, if the mechanic MUST continue to be included keep it confined to typical low level mook enemy summons.
On the flipside one healthy way to double down on it would be to have the ability to summon NPC's you've befriended, gaining their essence as a spirit ash reward at the end of some of their questlines with them becoming them willingly like Latenna did to aid you, so you could summon anyone for any fight after their questline, regardless if they'd survived or not, including the additional boss modifiers that've always come with summoning phantoms.
I do like alot how different each ash can be used as tactics
No, spirit summons absolutely do ruin the game. The comparison to shields is pathetic and I'm assuming you're referencing Dark Souls 1. Have you ever actually played Dark Souls 1? Locked off shieldless roll builds in that game aren't punished, they make the game straight up easier than were you to use shields.
@Alice in Wonderland It's not about shields that was to point out that it's whiny to blame trouble in a game on a mechanic I chose not to engage with. I played DS 1-3 without shields and whenever i see a let's play with a Tower shield tank hits that I had hard time dodging it feels unfair, but it isn't. The game was deliberatly designed this way. Back to the Ashes I had fun using them and you and others seemingly had not. Claiming it to be a universally bad thing just because it doens't fit your playstyle is overdramatic. I agree they could or should be adjusted a timer sounds nice or nerfs. But the game is still a lot of fun to a lot of people despite it being "ruined" by summons. I personally got bored of the open world after a while but I would never claim it has ruined my experience. It's not Dark Souls it's something new and it is fun while being imbalanced. Saw a Mage blast Mohg with a single spell and was happy for him that it is possible. Enjoy what you like, hate what you want but don't claim your experience is universal. This very much an argument about feelings since there is no objective science of games, feel free to disagree.😃
@@lonelykraut It's not whiny, it's perfectly fair criticism, and spirit summons aren't a playstyle nor are they fun, they exist purely so you can trivialise every single encounter in the game which is why it's pathetic to bring up shields as a comparison, because the use of shields provides an actually engaging and interesting playstyle, because it forces you to engage bosses in a different and unique way. What do spirit summons offer in terms of variety and engagement besides dropping them in so you can spam your ash of war over and over and over and over again? For gank bosses they at least serve to even the playing field, but otherwise there is no need for their existence.
Use sleep on godskin bosses for an easy time. The Dolores Sleeping Arrow summon for people who like spirit ashes, or the St. Trinia Blade which has a sleep ash of war. You can put the godskin bosses to sleep several times for free hits.
While I do agree that the end game damage scaling is a bit too high of a jump after Morgott, the mechanics of each boss really isn't as unfair as people make it out to be, its just harder than what most people are used to. The fact of the matter is, most of the bosses in this game are much more complex to figure out than any other boss in previous games. It takes more than one or two playthroughs to truly master them and know everything about them, unlike the previous games. I'd hate to be the guy that says its a skill issue but it really is. Most people just aren't good enough to beat bosses like Malenia or Malaketh consistently in the same amount of time as any previous bosses in the other games without summons. However, that doesn't mean that only a few players can master them, it just requires more time to learn them then most souls players are generally used to. Because of this, players want to pass them off as bullshit bosses with broken mechanics when really they just can't accept the fact that they can't figure them out as quickly as they think they should. I've beaten this game now many times with multiple builds and not only have I now beaten all the big bosses like Malenia on the first try with no real problems with multiple builds but I also continue to learn new things about them too. The only exception is Godskin Duo because its a gank fight with two repeats that clearly aren't meant to be together. Other than that, every other major boss in the game is completely reasonable to deal with, you just got to execute. For example Mogh, stay close to him so that the blood flames go over you and remember that pretty much every attack he has is delayed. For fire giant, stay on torrent as much as possible so that you have the enhanced mobility because while he has attacks that cover a lot of ground, they are also the slowest and most telegraphed in the game. If he catches you on the horse and kills you in 1 or 2 hits than he was going to do that even if you are off the horse, so you might as well keep your mobility. For Malenia, remember to take your time, don't get too greedy when staggering her because she can use hyper armor to punish you, and if she hasn't used waterfowl in a while back off. Also she only starts waterfowl after you get her to around 70% health, not counting if she healed from you though. In short look up how people do each boss without taking any damage and you will see that they almost always have a consistent strategy to beat them. Even Malenia.
It's quite the opposite... there are too many builds that make boss fights super easy.
Compared to other fromsoft games this one gives you much more opportunities to level up improve before tackling the boss that is blocking your progress.
Malenia is bs
couldnt agree more. I hate the easy out of people saying spirit ashes ruin the game. I would argue that magic makes the game too easy. You are given the choice. If you choose to not use spirit ashes you are in essence asking for a more difficult experience. (shocked Pikachu face) If you are playing to win then whatever tools you can use you will use to accomplish that. If you are playing to satisfy your ego (i.e. - no magic, no summons, no armor, only bows, no lvling runs) and test yourself then why is it to hard? I felt more accomplished in the end game because I pushed to my limits. I thought i was never going to beat malenia but after beating her i realize it wasnt her healing or water foul dance or some other sense of unfairness i felt but my own inexperience and flaws. I will not argue that spirit ashes dont decentralize you as a target and no amount dmg they is worth than that but that doesn't guaranty your victory or remove your agency. As only a casual player i cant speak to much but what is the difference in spirit summons and phantoms in dark souls 3?
@@Rahx3phon1 phantoms made DS3 EZ mode too, just like they and spirit ashes do in ER.
Remember everyone, whenever you see the word "overrated" it just means they are saying "people like this thing more than I do" or " this doesn't deserve as much admiration as I believe it does"
Not true at all… I’ll give you a couple other over rated games. Call of duty games(all of them) Bethesda games(all of them). They are overrated because humans don’t have the ability to think for themselves anymore, if other hate on it everyone will hate on it. If people are praising it no one has the balls to speak against it do to fear of unpopular opinion. Elden ring is bloated to the point the game after lyndell doesn’t need to exist. If you are cramming re-used bosses in every single catacomb, cabe, tunnel…is a good sign this is to much and it can be trimmed.
remember everone, there will always be sycophants who cant accept critique and will throw a temper tantrum.
@@codyrisling3253 is it overhyped? Maybe. Is there another worthy game where this hype can go? Not really
@@treasurewuji8740 you are correct, I wont argue that. My anger is more towards the populace behind the game that die defending it thinking it’s the best game ever. It’s a good game! Imma fromsoft fanboy, no joke.. I’ve played all the fromsoft games(og dark souls to elden ring) hundreds of times(I used to stream challenge runs). Because of that you can really really feel that this game was heavily developed during covid, it has that chucked together and missing pieces feel to it all the other games have. The heart and soul just isn’t in it when it comes to elden ring. It’s a mashed up story(because it open world and developed during covid so I think but have no proof. People had sections of the game to work on from home but because there wasn’t actually a team together coordinating they failed at piecing it together correctly) don’t be surprised if the dlc retcons a shitload from the main story. But because of this the game is shallow as a piss puddle, there is never enough story or lore into something to really make someone interested or care. It’s easy to see, anyone with souls game play experience can feel something is off but still die defending it. It’s ok to criticize a form of art, it’s a part of the job. You put your work out there in the world you better expect critical thinking and criticism. Bandwagon mentality has formed and everyone is blinded by wanting to fit in with the popular opinion. I’m on ng+45 on elden ring(one character level 656) I adore the game but also feel it’s subpar compared to ds1 or bloodborne/ds3.
Lol no. This is an absurd take. With this logic you could never have a change in mass opinion. Which btw happens a lot.
While somethings can be trimmed doesn't mean that it damages the overall quality of the game. In elden ring's case, the quality, as you say, is phenomenal all the way to Leyendell. Receiving mountaintop of giants is excessive but welcome. The entire area is essentially optional as you don't need to access castle sol-area at all to finish the game. It is more of a good thing simply.
The people willing to die on the hill that is the best game ever, have more reason than any other game of doing so. What elden ring does, it does right and it does it well enough whilst also being an evolution of what came before. It doesn't have to be perfect. I've also played all souls games, well before Elden ring was even announced, done all kinds of runs and while I can admit that it does have its flaws, the other souls games share the same ones. You're comparing Dark souls 1,2,3 to Elden ring. Even then the game generally comes out ahead. Some details some games do better, but as an entire experience Elden ring is on another level.
It is ok to critique games but when doing so, you should have solid arguments and not describe lore/story as "shallow as a piss puddle" as it just isn't. "there is never enough story or lore into something to really make someone interested or care". Like what? The overall views for Vaati's videos exceed 20 million and that is just vaati...
In regards to Malenia and summons: I never had the experience (beat her on about 10 runs now) that I was helped with a mimic or summon… every single time she’d wail on the summon and heal up, giving me an enormous disadvantage instead.
In general I feel like summons are not a bad mechanic, but that may have been due to how I used them, especially on my first run. i tended to use them to give me more time to learn mechanics instead of overwhelming the boss. And then again, different people enjoy the game differently. Some like to have the powerfantasy, others like the challenge. The summons seem to be quite a nice modifier for these purposes. While I can agree to some extent bosses were a bit tuned with summons in mind, they are also tuned with item usage in mind. If you use neither I can imagine the fights get an undair feel very fast.
Fair enough
Maybe it depended on the build, I had the same experience (I resorted to summon after she killed me cancelling a spirit slash into WFD at 20% health), but as you can see in the video the moment your build has a ranged ash she is fucked
As Promised I am gonna write up my long comment now after watching the whole video. Gonna admit this video is genuinely great. I love the way you articulate the points you make, especially those that you have the major issues with. The transitions between chapters are really smooth and nice and the titles are quite nice as well. Overall the video is great.
I gotta preface my next thing with the fact that i am a big fan of Long form analysis and from what i've seen your channel generally features shorter videos, definitely shorter than what i personally prefer, so my next criticism might be superfluous as that's just not your style, and from the ending not one that suits your back haha. But I would love it if you added more explanations to certain points you make - for a quick example you said The Haligtree is one of the best designed areas in the game, now this could be a personal opinion but i would still like some quick explanation as to why, is it the visuals or the mechanics or simply the enemies, one maybe two sentences here and it would be a great point, this way i am simply in a disagreement but i can't think more about where we disagree. Other thing which again can be a nitpick is that i personally would've prefered a tad more structure during the portion of the Demi-Gods and the boss design. When the section started I was expecting a detailed run down of each boss bit by bit dissecting their kits why they are good and which issues they have. You spent a great deal on Godrick, much less on Rennala and then when talking about Radanh you introduced the way you judge these fights on the basis of mechanics, music and story. This is definitely not an issue for a regular fan of your channel but for a newcomer it's kinda jarring because for the previous two fights music and story simply weren't mentioned and it feels kinda confusing, after this you jump to Placidusax and Rykard who you sadly had bugs with (these are definitely the best spectacle fights in the series) and then back onto Morgott which again felt kinda confusing. After which the point was made clear that you were omitting the bosses with major issues intentionally to point out their flaws in your next part. but in my eyes the much better way to do this simply because of how the issues themselves appear is to talk about the bosses in order while explaining your judging criteria at the start, and simply naturally transition into your next section the exact same way. This would, at least in my opinion, achieve a bit more structure and make the video even easier to follow while hammering the distinct dip in quality of balance down even further. My final nitpick is that I would really want you to spend more time on some points and i know this is purely because i am a huge fan of long form content and i'd love to know more about your opinions on crafting, ashes of war and so on so forth. Especially there at the end it felt like after a deep and detailed 25 minute section you kinda just rushed through your last complaints just to mention them and there genuinely is a lot of criticism to be had for those last few aspects, and i get it you definitely didn't care about them as much and this is where my preference of loving everything to be explained comes back up
Now I wanna go a bit point by point and tackle certain points in the video
1. Gonna refer to my other comment here as i outlined my issue with the first part
2. I absolutely love how you articulated the point about the talismans. They, along with gear pieces, offer absolutely no stats to showcase what the function of the item is which is absolutely dumbfounding when considering this is the most RPG a FromSoft game has been. Every weapon has it's stats exhibited, same with the leveling system. I'd love a bit more commenting on how the leveling system is kinda subideal which you mentioned a bit later in terms of the weakness mages have in comparisons to melee builds where they need to level mind int vigor endurance and possibly another stat to properly play the game. I think you should've delved deeper here into the point of RPG mechanics and the genuine issues the game has with them cause it would've perfectly followed up on the variety point in the first section with weapons.
3. Then you go into the bosses And i have a few disagreements here. Firstly There is a big and clear divide in boss types in this game, there are the Spectacle bosses and the Mechanically challenging bosses. Godrick, Morgot, Malenia, Radagon , etc are all bosses meant to purely challenge you on a mechanical basis, their kits are designed to force you to think on your feet and be fast about your decisions, meanwhile other bosses like Placidusax (while still mechanically challenging), Rennala, Radanh, Rykard the Fire Giant and the Elden Beast are there to be a show stopping opportunity for the player to absolutely sit there in awe of these creatures and the beauty the game can offer while pairing it with amazing music and storytelling. I would've loved to see you talk in depth (which might be already on your channel) as to why you like or dislike certain aspects of these bosses. Another really interesting point a friend and i had discussed was Boss arens whch really do deserve a talking point when it comes to boss design.
But where my main disagreement comes from is with Godrick being the gold standard for design. I agree that he is possibly the best designed boss in the game, however this doesn't say much. He has few attacks that don't have tells or windups like his wind gusts that form around him which are rather hard to intiially react to, he has a great mix of aoes with tells, but he suffers from the issue that many elden ring bosses have and that's wasting too much time waiting to swing his weapon in order to force the player to make a mistake because from the point the swings start and end aka by the time the hitbox is active to the time it finishes attacking the player simply doesn't have enough time to react, while the tells are really misleading. This same issue happened with Pontiff Sulyvanh among others in DS3. For example i had just today an experience where Godrick was running being stuck on my character model with his axe during a long wind up to a swing which simply looks ridiculous and it's not a bug. Furthermore While yes Godrick is fairer than most in terms of how hard he is for melee and range he still is way more susceptible to range cheese than some other enemies. He takes really long time to get to the player and he is often content in just casualy walking while having magic spammed at him. His second phase is quite similar and using summons makes this boss obsolete but we'll get there.
Another point you didn't mention is resistances and how they effect the bosses. Rennala for example is a nightmare for a magic user as she has incredible magic resistance, while pure faith simply doesn't work on the elden beast. These things do make sense mechanically and lore wise but seem unfair when that's what your build is. So people who have been playing faith for the entire game are best of respeccing before fighting the final boss.
And one more issue with Radanh is the ever problematic fromsoft camera. if you happen to get too close you are simply unable to see what's happening, this happens with plenty of dragons, the firegiant and the elden beast. It's simply impossible to properly experience the visaul masterclass and dodge the hits when all you are seeing is Leonard's booty.
4. Now i am gonna bundle up bits of the ashes of war criticism and the Bad bosses criticms togeher for the final point.
You raised an interesting point where you are saying that FromSoft designed the mechanic of the mimic before some of the bosses and then decided to rebuff the bosses to compensate, however i feel the complete opposite happened.
I feel like FromSoft tried to make bosses that are incredibly difficult to deal with and incredibly hard because that's one of the main selling points for their games and they simply messed up the scaling in an open world game and made incredibly difficult to dodge moves and in order to mitigate this they created the ashes mechanic to accompany the summons in order to make these fights easier.
This comes from my observation that the mechanics that The player have simply aren't fully capable of dealing with the mechanics the Bosses have. The bosses have incredibly long combo chains with really little time in between. Plenty of times in this video you'd dodge a combo go for a jump heavy or a heal even and get punished. You mentioned this with Malena and her water fowl dance but i believe the entire game has bosses that are more suited for the Sekiro combat, fast paced, quick dodges, reflects and not slow rolls and slow weapons. I beat the game multiple times with a katana build, a mage build, a greatsword build and a colossal sword build, and it's incredibly interesting as to how vastly different the openings are and how inferior the slower weapons are to the fast ones, especially fast ones with status effects. The bosses are simply too fast in general for the player to reactively respond to everythng they do and learning their combos isn't much easier as they have unpredictable combos which can change based on rng. This is why i think FromSoft introduced the spirit ashes to deal with the overwhelming lack in raw mechanics the player has, refering to R1 R2 and dodge rolls. The player is simply too slow to properly respond to everything the bosses have to offer, so here have Oleg let him tank and go to town.
This is where i think the bosses simply have way too much damage in the end game, they are meant to be overly hard and overly punishing to advertise the game as this incredibly hard challenge. This is why the first real boss you meet the Tree Sentinel can 1 shot you, this is why Margit is incredibly frustrating.
But all this couples into another huge issue with the game and that's poor scaling in general. The weakest area in the game is the weeping peninsula but it's not where you start out it's Limgrave, the Weeping Peninsula is not even the area the game is naturally pushing you towards it's the stormveil castle, and the much more simply accessible area from there is caelid and even Liurnia with a side path than the Weeping peninsula, The player after clearing out Limgrave and the Stormveil castle can have absolutely no issue going through the Weeping Peninsula, Liurnia, Raya Lucaria, and certain parts of Altus until they reach certain parts of Caelid and the capitol where there is a significant bump in difficulty again and A HUGE bump after beating Morgott. The game is overall poorly balanced in how it scales and a lot of it can come from the stat system itself as well as the overall scaling issues of area, but i'd wager it has a bit to do with the starting zone itself, i believe the player should be starting in the weeping peninsula and having the Castle Morne as it's first "legacy dungeon" it's smaller, has a great boss to teach mechanics and has lore implications as it can lead to Godrick, Then you can have smaller incremental bumps in difficulty to Liurnia and Raya Lucaria and altus and Volcano mannor, then the player should be somehow lead back into caelid and etc. But i believe a lot of these issues stem from the fact that fromsoft simply had too much to work on to properly finish the game. The mountaintop of the giants is huge and barren with way less content to work with than the rest of the game, and this could be argued has a lore implication and possible spots for a dlc or something but it definitely feels way too large and way to barren and i think fromsoft simply didn't have time to create enough content for the player to get buffed up as they did in previous sections so they kept the scaling and added the summons.
5. I definitely agree with How you say the summons should be changed, but i think the mechanic has a lot of potential and it could be a great fit for the game. Imagine a melee player who wnats to be in the heat of the battle tanking hits and avoiding them having an archer or mage frind in the back buffing the player or dealing extra damage, or a mage player who likes to sit back use sorceries but is way too squishy well they can summon a tank fella who does no damage. Sure this definitely would lower the quality of the experience for some and move the game further into an RPG gamestyle rather than the usual soulslike one but that's a preference thing. I definitely agree that they should be nerfed and their role should be vastly different than meat shields or pure dps cause it can be abused and is hard to balance.
I am going to incredibly and deeply apoloigise for this Long Winded comment but what can I do i am a Mauler fan. Overall gonna repeat the video is great, love how you articulate your points and genuinely glad i found your video. Looking forward for the future content!
Holy crap that's a long comment, you weren't kidding lol. You're worse than I am.
@@AmazingKevinWClark Yeah i think the best way to get one's opinions through to other people is by going in depth and trying to explain every detail
@@neyouno probably should of just made your own video😆
@@thaimperial97 maybe some day
I don't think having a million different weapon options is necessarily a good thing. I actually much prefer a game like sekiro where the boss fights are specifically designed for a specific playstyle. Unlike the mess we got in Elden Ring, where depending on what weapon u have the fights can be very boring and even unfair.
I highly disagree about the whole spirit summon argument. It may mix up the gameplay but it does not make the game any easier. On my first playthrough basically every main boss kicked my ass. With a summon I spent 3 hours trying to beat the dragonic tree sentinel. So the feeling of satisfaction is not reduced at all
Id be willing to bet it’s your 1st souls game as well. You can roll ANY boss with a +10 mimic. I just finished the game not using a summons and it’s infinitely more difficult and have also platinumed all 7 of the games (Demonms Souls, DS 1-3, Bloodborne Sekiro and ER. From pandered to the “new comers” and it’s not a good experience for vets.
@@Budd631 it’s not actually I’ve finished Sekiro at least 8 times, bloodborne and Dark souls 3. My mimic tear sucked ass it would repeatedly emote most of the times I summoned it
@@comedianmelvinstewart that’s a glitch then. Mimic +10 is borderline broken and basically holding your hand. I’ve used them and it’s the most unsatisfying feeling. I purposely just replayed through the game not using them and beat the game today (except Melania so far) and it’s so much harder and actually rewarding. FROM catered to the people that had NO hand in making the games popular and what they are today. It shows in the final product of Elden Ring and I’ll be called a gatekeeper. If that’s a gatekeeper…good. Im a gatekeeper.
@@comedianmelvinstewart Mimic tear makes bosses a complete joke you're simply wrong. My mimic basically put Godfrey to half health without me attacking him. They trivialise every boss except melania cause she can heal from it
@@Budd631 just don't use them?
I beat everything without even looking at summons im not understanding what the problem is
Dont agree with a lot of the takes on spirit ashes and the implication that players must experience and learn things in same way you did. The ashes and many other mechanics just provide options and let you experience the game how you want and in different ways. I'm sure plenty still felt satisfaction when their summon done the majority of the work. Some players play the game for the exploration and story and the bosses are just roadblocks to that.
Precisely this. They're an option to make the game more accessible, that's exactly why they exist. They're an easier mode baked into the game.
I completed Ds1, Ds3, Bloodborne and Sekiro before Elden Ring, and I fully appreciated the opportunity to not have to feel like to go through what I went through emotionally and physically with Orphan Of Kos again. I completed that boss fight and just felt drained, essentially like I'd wasted my time. Spirit Summons mean I can play through the amazing world of Elden Ring and be challenged but not feel like I want to die.
The option to not use them is there. If the game is too hard without them, dare I say it - git gud
He did get a bit extreme in his spirit ashes take.
But I think his main point is really valid, if a player wants to lower the difficult using them, by all means they should have the freedom to do so, the problems come when the game is actively balanced taking the presence of summons as the default since it leads to some pretty icky boss fights.
@@nopatiencejoe6376 I dont think they're really balanced for summons, they're more designed knowing that a large portion of the playerbase already knows the mechanics and combat of FROM games like the back of their hand. Speed, aggression, and delayed attacks are hallmarks of elden ring bosses and those are also ways to throw experienced players off balanced. Summons draw aggro and give you chance to breath and that's been their main benefit in any soulsborne games. It's just more noticeable in ED due to speed and aggression
Being a completionist i thought the game was to easy until after Lindel. Then it started to feel like a souls game again i forgot summons were a thing most of the time. For me Radon was the most broken bose but i played him week one before the nerf at that time he could oneshot you with any attack so i got good at dodgeing which made endgame boses a breaze.
The problem is that the end game is designed already to assume players will use ashes. If the bosses weren’t tuned from the get go because of this, then it would be fine.
But what you have is a end game curve where bosses are hitting you assuming you to have your ash active, which is precisely why it’s stupid.
I see your point about spirits. Even though I rarely used them, most of the time was for erdtree avatars and really only the skeletal spearmen. I legitimately forgot about spirits for half the game. I didn't even get the mimic tear I didn't even get bloodhound step though the whole game. Maybe that is why I quit for awhile after Malenia and by the end of the game everything felt easier to me. I played around with Radagon like the pool boy he is but after that I just didn't feel like playing through again.
Hey ENDYMION! Great video with some excellent points. You focused a lot on spirit summons which is a legit concern. I tend to agree that the trade-off with spirit summons was a deliberate choice on the developer's part, and seems to end up allowing for laziness for every party involved (players, developers, and the boss design). Ultimately, I agree with you on your remarks about the spirit summons being an opportunity for laziness but I must admit I did enjoy using them. One last thing and I will stop bothering the world of internet comments with my thoughts. A decent amount of content creators give Elden ring a hard time about replayability, and I think that an open-world game in essence is not necessarily geared towards multiple playthroughs as much as it is that first play-through. Obviously, some open-world games are more replayable than others, but I think Elden Ring's emphasis is much more on that first play through like you said. That being said bc most other souls games are so replayable the fact that this is one is decently less is painfully apparent. Overall though, love your content and your takes! Keep up the great work!
I'm going to push back on the talisman and spell descriptions. The vague effect and lack of data is what makes them feel like items to experiment with and try out in ways. The lack of hard data in those have caused many people to test those items and all of that data is on the wikis. The souls games are built purposely to require people to either explore and experiment to discover things and to talk to other fans to find the things you didn't. We are not meant to find everything on a single playthrough, nor are we meant to just understand the uses of everything we find without putting effort into it. It adds to the immersion and it bonds the souls community together.
Fair enough but I would still like an in game screen giving me actual numbers. At least when you equip like a talisman to increase your resistances, it has a screen to tell you exactly what’s what.
I need that for all talismans imo
it's a nice excuse for being lazy . remember ds3 not having a simple cloud save on steam? kinda of employees that say goodbye at 5:00 pm no matter what
@@EndymionTv about the item description thing, you can go into your menu and pop up the numerical stats on the right side of the menu. it shows you the info you were asking for in a lot of cases.
@@finix7419 bro, imagine calling the people who made this game lazy.
@@handtomouth4690 I know but how do you explain a big game like ds3 not having a simple cloud save?? did not even know this can be a thing in modern games and after reinstalling my windows bye bye all my saves that easy
nice video:) about the talismans: its quite cool to figure out how much a talisman enhances, basic math, experimenting etc.. rather than having the percentage explained. besides weapons have secret damage modifiers aswell... i like the fact you have to try.
Plus on top of that all the other souls games do the same exact thing I don’t see why he’s complaining about it especially since he’s 100% all the other souls games.
pretty much the entirety of elden ring is built on experimentation, so while i can see why someone might not like the vagueness, i don't think it can be used as an objective criticism. the "who knows" nature of talismans is cool because you have to choose whether you want the obvious benefits of the health-boost talismans (which you can see exact math of) or take a chance on the vague ones. it's simple trial and error
I agree with you 100% on the endgame and summon comparisons, I’ve been shit on for saying exactly that I’m so glad someone is finally talking about that
How funny would it be if the final boss of the DLC ends up being Miquella, Blade of Malenia, and is his opening attack are 10 waterfall dances and has life steal?
The tired Ubisoft open world formula made elden ring felt like a massive sense of fresh air and completely new
If not for spirit summon ashes & it’s final act, I would consider it a 10/10
@@EndymionTv Agreed
@@Mojavekight17 Spirit summon ashes needs to never exist again ever in its current form IMO
Kappa
@@EndymionTv you don’t need to use ashes.
I defy anyone to seriously say Fire Giant, Godskin Duo, Maliketh, Placidusax and Godfrey are off the difficulty curve with Morgott and Radahn. Mohg and Malenia are more challenging, but they are optional secret bosses.
Honestly the only one I had trouble with was Placidusax but that's because Im a dirty Dex-Faith user
@@mobiusone6994 saxxy boy will one hit kill you with those yellow lasers. I think that move is a bit bs but other than that, great dragon boss fight.
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 The magic piss-launched lasers are agony to dodge when you jist used your last bit of stamina to YEET lightning or fire
I largely agree with these points (I didn't have the same experience with spirit summons, but idk my stance on them), however, Maliketh was by far my favorite boss, style-wise, that leap in difficulty was fucking awesome in my opinion. The Duo was bs, but apart from that, Maliketh was the boss that really made me invest in fighting like a raging, leaping beast as much as Maliketh does, and with the enormous variety in magical styles and mixtures of magical scaling for sorceries and incants, that fight turned out to be by FAR my favorite fight in the game. It's fast, it's engaging, it's stylish as fuck, it comes with a tool you can use to parry him in certain situations, it's got stages and twists and rarer dialogue based on your actions beforehand, it is a fantastic fight imo.
That’s so funny seeing everyone saying they hard a hard time with that duo, I blew through it hardly realizing it was a boss fight😂 the two bosses that made me question the worth of the game and ultimately realize this game is a waste of time to keep playing after 1 playthrough we’re the Regal Deer and Maliketh. Everyone tells me they slapped that boss but the Deer bastard had me in a chokehold for about 2 and a half hours. Godskin duo, Fire giant, who were they to me tho😂
Maliketh is the best designed boss in gaming. Anyone calling him unfair has a massive skill issue and blames the game for their own incompetence. He's got early game health and even less poise.
I completely agree that From spiked up the difficulty to compensate for all the available options that make the fights trivial (I'm looking at you, mimic tear) ... even if I played my first playthrough as a magic user, I still wanted to try and beat bosses solo, and even just use the melee weapon I was using... but I would get destroyed.. I swear to god, at Malekith, I would dodge for up to a minute and would still not get a chance to do some damage without risking taking damage as well.. Malenia was ok from a punish window perspective, but I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to dodge her WFD without looking it up, and her lifesteal is ridiculous... The trouble with late game bosses is that you don't even get the chance to learn their move set, because they do sooo much damage and attack continuously that you get destroyed in 2 seconds and you have to spend a ridiculous amount of time to even get to the phase two, especially if your reactions are not that great to begin with...so I used ashes, because I don't have the kind of time needed to beat these bosses on my own.
I actually got Malenia anxiety and dropped the game for a few months before going back to it and deciding to use ashes. In that time, I went back to Dark Souls, and man.... that game is a walk in the park compared, still difficult, but by no stretch of imagination close to ER. Love the review, exactly how I feel about the game.
Her attacks are not even lifesteal. I tried to counter her with a greatshield. And while I was taking no damage, she continued to gain HP as long as her attacks connected.
I love Eldenring. However I strongly dislike that there is a meta. I like how Dark Souls did it and almost every weapon was viable. That's really my only gripe.
there's met in all of the other souls games as well. I will be talking about ds3 with the murky hand Scythe and PKCS being the main meta weapons. But the main difference being you could absolutely use any weapon class you wanted and do well with them if you knew how to use them
How are some things not viable in Elden Ring in comparison? Everything has good damage now... and the caps for scaling are a lot higher... plus much more options, unlike previous games, where certain builds made the game so much harder no matter what level or skills you dumped points into when it comes to PVE. Never found myself using a meta on my playthrough unlike souls games.
Um....how do you not create a meta? The community will always find a meta...
So let me get this straight…sekiro boxing u into a certain play style is okay bc it limits ur options and it’s more contained but swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction and maximizing ur options is objectively bad bc u can’t play it like Dark Souls 3 pt.2? I like ur videos but this is obviously just following the current trend of walking back all the praise youtubers gave the game on release and disguising arm chair developer hot takes as legitimate criticism by putting the 2 next to each other while u list off bullet points on video game boss design. This game is full of bugs and bosses break at an unacceptable level are the only legit takes i heard u make. But u can’t make a whole video on that bc everyone already has.
I don't understand all these people and reviewers constantly trying to shit on Spirit summons. Easy mode? They're a mechanic of the game and are fun to use. If it makes the game too easy, then don't use them.
It's clear Fromsoft wanted to really give players the playstyle they want to use more than any other souls game out there. People try to knock it cause it may not be as hard as others. Most of the time, these guys are artificially finding shit to bitch about for the sake of it and make videos like this guy titled the dumbest things. At the end of the day, we're meant to have fun playing games and Elden Ring gives you every tool to have fun. Now we're just over analyzing and being nonsensical about the dumbest shit
@@cokejones the whole issue is that you can't not use them. This guy correctly points out that in the late game bosses deal way too much damage (getting caught in basically any attack combo means instant death) and do borderline unavoidable attacks (waterfowl dance, the beast clergy's rock throw, margit's unreactably fast knife swipe etc.), and again correctly attributes this to the fact that spirit emblems are way too powerful for splitting agro, allowing the player to stand by idly while the boss focuses on the summoned spirit.
Of course if you enjoy this mechanic then that is valid, but once you summon, the pendulum swings the other way and the game becomes absurdly easy. With the exceptions of Malenia and Elden Beast, I never died a single time to a boss that I used summons for, which is a huge problem for a game in the souls series which from the beginning has been about overcoming difficult challenges. This is the problem in essence, it isn't that a mechanic is being forced on the player; as mentioned in the original comment Sekiro is very limiting in terms of how you can play but it is still an excellent game; the issue is that the only two options are a frustrating, unbalanced and downright bullshit level of difficulty or an insultingly easy cakewalk with no middle ground.
@@jacobroe3653 u only think waterfowl is undodgeable bc youtubers told u that. U could have spent less time being terminally online and more time learning how to time ur dodge roll or just realizing that the hardest boss making u use all the tools in ur arsenal is not bad game design but in fact good game design. It’s not impossible it’s just rly rly fucking hard and that’s the entire point…is that Melania is willing to do anything to win so u better pull out all the stops. And as far as the elden beast well it’s a literal god….so u might have a hard time figuring it out but the solutions are there i promise. Also the once again borrowed narrative ur using about spirit ashes is cry baby bullshit. It’s a game mechanic. Complaining that the two hardest bosses in an entire series of hard bosses requires u to engage with all the games mechanics is the most unnecessary first world problem I’ve ever heard in my entire life. It’s a game enjoy it or go back to Dark Souls. Nobody cares.
@@jacobroe3653 I didn't use them. Oh sorry, guess that just makes me an exception.
@@jacobroe3653 Some chick just solo'd Malenia being level 1 using one hand. There are absolutely enough buff combos, spells, gear/weapon combinations to beat the game without stuggling b/c you don't have spirit summons. It's just a lazy excuse to complain about something.
To be fair. You seem to conflate "spirit summons" and "mimic tear" a lot here. It sounds like your problems are based on mimic tear. If we excuse the use of Alexander, blaidd, Okina in the radahn fight because of lore, then why not just use cleanrot knight Findlay to fight malenia based on that lore too?
Summons are fine becausebyou the player are free to use them or not. And even if you do use them, you are free to pick the difficulty buy selecting which summon you take since they are obviously not all created equal.
My personal take is that since these are warriors buried in the roots of the erdtree it's nice to fight alongside legendary heroes in a game that otherwise is a very solitary experience.
Great vid nonetheless 🙏🏿.
Radahn is designed for it to be a raid-like fight. So having all those warriors help you makes sense.
No other boss in the game is designed as a raid boss, so feeling obligated to summon something in order for a boss to feel fair is lame and ruins the fantasy
Lame? Yes; saying it "ruins the fantasy"? That's subjective: you sure you're not reaching?
I remember that i used spirit summons in the early game because i was excited by the feature, and when i got a mimic tear i was hyped about it. When i killed like 6 bosses, first try with the summon, i thought "Hey, lets ugm, stop using it and try to kill bosses solo like a true souls enjoyer", and so i killed radagon, morgot, godfry, melania, and so many. I only used my mimic in the fire giant, cause i had alexander too and i wanted to see how easily he can die, i used summon to malakith because i died like 10 times and i wanted to see how the dificulty would change ( i didnt plan to beat him just to see how far my mimic would go ) and my mimic killed him before i had the chance to dive and die on the edge.
And i summoned to duo skin because that fight made me suffer and to be honest it felt good killing them 2v2.
I wish they made the bosses moves as distinctive as they made the world. The word is so easily recognizable, watch a vid or screenshot and you just instantly recognize the location. The bosses moves however are often hard to see, sometimes because they are so big, other times because of the many similar attacks or attacks just follow up too fast
bro is trying to be different 💀
When you said it felt like it just kept going, that’s the feeling hollow knight gave me the first time I played it
After knowing the game has spirit summon mechanic I thought its maybe a whole new different class category like incantations and soceries, where your spirit summon get strongger by your upgrade stats. Never expect it be a forced filler mechanic and lack of lore depth like this.
@Professor Plebian I'm not gate keeping or telling people stop using that and gitgud. I was saying the spirit mechanic is too limited to boss fights and ganks when it could have been better.
Fun fact: cast healing on the revenants immediately as they spawn in for a stun and punish. Trivializes them.
Interesting
Naw. Using what the game offers to overcome an obstacle is so cheesy, y'know?
@@pgskills to be fair, that’s a pretty unknown strategy. I saw it on a TH-cam short once and that’s how I found it. Not typically something one would just think to do.
@@Pumba424 Yes. But people like Endymion think it should be spelled out in the spell description apparently. lol
@@pgskills you're the guy running bloodhound step with a bleed build against malenia who says "lol malenia is fair just git gud" aren't you 😂
I really loved this game, it's tied with Sekiro as my favorite Souls games. I know it has problems with bosses having Bloodborne speed while your character has Dark Souls 3 speed, the endgame, reused bosses etc, but I would rather have those problems than ubisofts and ea's unfinished mess, microtransactions, monetization, armor and weapon packs etc, and compared to other open world games, Elden Rings reused bosses and mini bosses are not as bad. Great video by the way.
Edit: Thanks for the heart.
Thank you for watching. Elden Ring isn’t perfect but it’s still far better than anything modern gaming has done in a long time
@@EndymionTv Yeah, I was never into open world games because most of them suffer from the same problems of over bloatedness, too many areas and the later areas are just so bland and boring, Elden Rings snow area while boring and bland still interested me because that area has some of the coolest mini dungeons.
@@EndymionTv its also far better than anything fromsoft has ever done, by a large LARGE margin.
Wouldn’t say far better. Bloodborne could be argued to be the better game, the only knock on BB is the chalice dungeon grind IMO but that’s circumvented easily now with the many in depth guides . And Sekiro is also up there while being a very unique entry in their catalogue.
@@devinthorn8182 no offense, but as a new souls player that started with elden ring then played bb immediately after because the bb fanbase just couldnt shutup about overhyping bb, its really not surprising to hear a bb fanboy say that, as ive noticed it has the most biased fanbase ive ever seen since metal gear. i have never seen a fanbase take critique so badly before. bb could be argued to be the better game the same way ds2 can be argued to be better than bb, so not really no. bias and preference is not really an argument. ER just raised the bar too high in too aspects. sekiro is also far more original and better than bb imo. overall its all opinions, but there are plenty of aspects ER just clobbers bb in objectively speaking. the level and exploration design alone makes bb look like an utter joke in comparison, let alone the better more varied combat and builds, higher quality aesthetic/art design etc etc. frankly speaking the only thing bb beats ER is balancing its equally boring end game and music. fuck micolash and azula is a far better area than mensis.
" the only knock on BB is the chalice dungeon grind IMO " the game is riddled with issues the fanbase doesn't like to admit, from its r1 spammy combat that lost half the strategy part of soulsborne combat, to its recycled and copy pasted environments and colorschemes(40 hours of 3 shades of grey didnt empress me, regardless of it being a lovecraft inspired game), its low half assed build variety and quality, god-awful AI etc etc. theres actually plenty of issues with bb and it objectively has plenty of knocks on its design. just like ds1, u can kill most half the bosses by strafe dodging towards the ass and just r1 buttpoke, rinseand repeat till the boss is dead. the crappy bloodgem grind is only one issue, and a very minor one compared to the rest.
This game needs organic ways to nerf the bosses idk maybe a talisman that makes you immune to malenia's life steal or a piece of armor that blocks malekith flames.
"name me one open world game with as many weapons or spells with the same or more variety than elden ring in terms of animations, unique skills tied to weapons and more"
there's around 160 weapon skills in elden ring and 101 incantations.
Most Pokemon games are generally progressively open world as they have no loading screens between areas except for interiors in the handheld 2D titles. The open world in the Johto region actually even has an entire separate region to explore that is fully open from the start called Kanto. gamefreak has these 2 regions remade in HGSS with 467 moves, countless passive abilities, and 493 weapons in the game to attach these skills to, obviously they are Pokemon.
When it comes to spirit summons, kinda in the middle. I just beat the game for the first time and im just collecting items before ng+ atm, and I used spirits for literally every boss. I mainly did this for fun since it's a new mechanic and I normally enjoy summoning npcs for lore purposes or quests. While I don't mind it being a part of the game, I will admit that my overall experience was probably for the worse since the boss fight didn't give me the same adrenaline as it would if I was solo ( minus maybe a handful of bosses) I do agree that some bosses feel almost like a necessity to summon like godskin duo which is ass. And the fact that you need such a high amount of vigor really can ruin some builds and feels pointless when you just die in a couple hits anyway. So you feel like you need a distraction to heal or maybe dish out a chunk of damage. It's an excellent and beautiful game but the balance is probably the worst it's ever been.
And your experience is the quintessential reason why the spirit summons ruin the game over all yet most players like yourself will feel obligated to use them which is also very bad too
@@EndymionTv also with the recurring bosses, I dont always mind when a boss makes another appearance. But I normally prefer it to show up once or twice as a normal enemy as a way to show that you've become strong enough to consider them a standard foe you'd encounter. But the number of times I saw the cat statue boss, whether it's an enemy or reused boss for the 5th time, I just can't stand them, same with the tree spirits. Way to over used in my opinion. In ds2 I didn't mind seeing the dragon rider as an enemy guarding Vendricks soul. But I agree that the duo boss was a bit underwhelming. If they just had that be a normal enemy duo in a room and then had another new boss it would of been much better
@@EndymionTv As someone who beat Dark Souls 3 offline so I had no choice but to be solo and learn it. Even doing offline in Elden Ring if it weren't for the summons there was 100% NO chance in hell my pure sorcery build was beating Malenia in a fair fight.
She's too fast and nimble and even with high stats and full flasks I entered phase two with at best three flasks just because of how hard the first phase was. Then phase two would wipe me with that BS shadow clone attack that hits me halfway across the map... I needed something to take the aggro off me to even attempt to stand a chance. And even still I had to change up my build using like 5 different sorc builds that I could use to finally wail her down with luck.
Otherwise without a summon, I probably would have been forced to go for a cheese bleed katana build totally upending my character with a stat reset JUST to beat a singular boss. Not to mention Horah's punch juggling later on took out over half my health in a single blow of the combo. So summons are useful unless you play a particular build.
That being said my next playthrough (not NG+) is with dual rapiers so I'm going to learn the hard way how melee is supposed to function. I've got +13 rapiers I think I'm almost ready to fight Margit now.
"Halig Tree is like if Anor Londo got bukkaked on by Blight Town and no one cleaned up the mess for like a thousand years"
You, sir, have such a poetic way with words. And speak such truth lol
Sure it's rough but I still love the haligtree
😂 Thank you for this
I felt rewarded even using summons. I get your point, but some bosses just feel like we’re made for summons
Which is why I hate it lol
@@EndymionTv the real reason they made it that way is for more ppl to play it. Easier means bigger fan base. More players mean more money. They know. This is the easiest of the franchise. Malenia has one broken move if you can learn to avoid it she’s not bad. That move alone is the problem not the health regen. Sekiro is the hardest.
@@VirgAlexJunchurriki That doesn’t make sense. They had to make bosses stronger then normal with the thought that summons are a factor, if they weren’t, the bosses would be easier and we would have had no change in appeal to new players.
@@EndymionTv I'm with you mann. Making if feel like a MUST SUMMON game sux. It should always be a optional feeling if you ask me. Those evergol bosses? Or some of the death birds? They are actually some of the toughest bosses in the game, at least on close to new game plus 7 ish at least. You can't summon for those fights and they can often feel like super epic challenging battles as a result.
I don't think summons are the problem though. I think the bosses being made as if they REQUIRE THE PLAYER to summon, is the problem.
Bosses who can one shot you or... basically one shot you even if you're 99 vigor, 99 end, 99 strength, with defensive talismans on, and full goat armor on...
Melania
Mohag
Maliketh
Ice dragon
Double centurion knight battle
God skin duo
The first Elden Lord
Elden beast/hammer bro guy
Those flesh gargoyle monster statue things with twin blades.
Fire giant a hole lol. He takes too many hits too! Dang meat sack.
And this aint a boss but those snowy rune bears don't phuck around! lol
Also don't get hit by a large ghost that shoots jizz streams at you. It's like getting hit by comet azur lol.
I'm playing new game plus 7 though so... Of course I'm going to bitch more than most lol.
As a Naruto weeb mimic is the best thing ever, it's not my fault the lands between can't handle 2 of me
Remove spirit ashes and increase the effect of stat increases and weapon upgrades. Then, continue the same difficulty curve as the early to mid game. There, problem solved. The difficulty is even more in the players’ hands, exploration is more rewarding, doing the repetitive catacombs and dungeons becomes much more worth the effort, etc.
great video, but I like my Spirit Ashes as a full Dragon incantation character. I rather have an easy time with bosses and move on towards the next part of the map. If I wanted to have a harder time, I'd play a melee character
For real this time. Overall I'd expect a video that came out in August to have some fresh new takes, but instead of hot shit in a champagne glass it's cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup.
18:17 complains about Aldia being unfriendly to melee, 20:10 says Rennala is a cool fight that doesn't punish any one style of player when even Bell-abusing speedruns would whip out a physical weapon to beat this boss because of her lore appropriate Magic Resist.
34:19 "Hey you need to learn the boss mechanics" -Man who died to Waterfowl Dance and Scarlet Rot dive bomb and called them unfair. Presumably you also play with game sound muted since everytime she kills you she says her own name and yet she's Millennia in your video essay.
34:41 "That doesn't feel good, nor does it feel rewarding. You're not learning anything, you're playing a passive role in what should be the most engaging part of a game like Elden Ring. And because this mechanic is so easily available FromSoft probably realized their endgame bosses were being melted because of this and cranked the damage and difficulty in order to compensate for it."
Quiz time! This common criticism describes a) Overpowered Ashes of War on overpowered weapons b) Spirit Ashes c) Overpowered Ashes of War on overpowered weapons combined with Spirit Ashes or d) Anyone playing the game in a way I don't approve of including but not limited to a) through c)
42:12 "Spirit Ash summons punish players like me!" -man whose clips of his own game play are summons and Blasphemous Blade AoW spam or Ruin Blade and Wave of Destruction spam.
Definitely agree with your post.
Play the way you want to play. Some builds and spirit ashes make it much easier. Some are middle of the road. Some you can do to make it harder for yourself.
The only thing I understand is that some duo bosses can be annoying, especially the God Skin Duo. The God Skin Duo, like someone else said in some video is that the two don’t compliment each other like most duo fights usually do which can make it oppressive.
Spirit ashes can take off the heat but they won’t straight up do it for you and players that aren’t very good will keep doing the same thing until they get lucky and/or do use a very broken weapon or build… but they know what they did and how the played the game. If that’s what they needed to beat the game then good for them. If someone wants to go harder and the “more legit route” that’s more in line with soulsborne veterans tha that’s good too. It’s not a small dick measuring contest because someone didn’t do it the way that you wanted them to do it.
@@amorfati4927 name a fight where a mimic tear doesn’t help.
@@Budd631 Well, MOST spirit ashes won’t do it for you. There are a couple out-liars like Tiche too.
Amazing video, and I agree with pretty much all of your points. I haven't played in like a year so I should try the new patched/balanced stuff and see how it goes.
Using optional mechanics that make the game easier isn’t a downside imo. All it does is make it more accessible because I’d much rather they put these optional things in before an easy mode. And just because players can’t stand their ground and adapt to the harder bosses in the game, doesn’t make the bosses or the mechanic bad. Just my thoughts though.
You definitely aren't the only one who doesn't like the vague talisman and spell data! I was really hoping Fromsoft would take more ideas from Nioh 2 as far as quality-of-life stuff in general (such as being able to use XP items right on the level-up screen instead of having to back all the way out).
Loved Elden Ring, it was my first Fromsoft game and I'm hooked now so.. yeah. Agree on the summons though. I used them on my first playthrough but playthroughs after I really felt like it was a detriment to the game. As cool as it is summoning something to help you, it's really imbalanced and it feels like they added a load of very unbalanced encounters like the Valiant Gargoyles, Godskin Duo and Malenia as the super secret boss to compensate, as well as giving bosses infinite stamina and huge AoEs and stuff.
Glad you can both see that the game is a masterpiece but still has flaws. Welcome to the community, there’s a lot to play so enjoy yourself 🤘🏻🔥
Go play Bloodborne now.
No lie when I got through most of the game and discovered The Halligtree location at the top of the map my mind was blown . I was in utter disbelief
3:26. Why does that horse have headlights?
10:55. Looks like the Loch Ness Monster with a sword.
Hmm, I'd argue that Malenia and Maliketh aren't exactly all that bad. Malenia, to me at least, felt like a real challenge in Elden Ring- not that the previous parts weren't difficult; trust an believe there were many a moment I kinda just hit the legs and avoided cumbersome enemies that could rock my shit- that required me to use the *full* kit that FS gave me. I summoned, of course, but my build was kinda shit in my first playthrough so when people recommended the Mimic Tear, I went and got it, +10'd it, summoned and lo and behold, just like me it died in moments lmao. So I just didn't summon it. It wasn't worth the lost flask to recover all the HP lost and it was real fun dueling her. On the run I actually beat her, I got incredibly lucky to evade her Waterfowl Dance in full. It didn't take me much time to beat her in comparison to Gael or Midir from Dark Souls 3. It took me maybe twenty tries and I got so good at her first phase, I could just hitless phase 1, then get phase 2 down to half pretty easily. She was kinda easy imo overall as a boss, especially once I started slapping bleed on my rapier.
First playthrough with Maliketh, I had no clue what I was doing because I still had no build in mind nor did I know what worked and what didn't, so a friend of mine just helped me out and after that, it was kinda easy. I really just bullied Maliketh on my second playthrough, no summon required and it wasn't me dealing so much massive damage to him that it trivialized the fight, it really was just "Man... that was kinda easy." Like I think he only hit me in phase 1 like twice and phase two maybe three times.
I personally think out of all the bosses, Radagon (and his phase two of Elden Beast) are what I'd consider unfair. No matter how powerful a build I've got, without something to take some of that EXTREME aggression Radagon has, I'd just get shredded. He doesn't have long combos, but holy fuck when they hit, they're nuclear. I kinda need that mimic to tank those blows for me. Elden Beast is a similar thing because it has a bunch of just... bullshit moves that it can do where if you don't spec for it with Bloodhound Step (which apparently is something a lotta folk don't like in PvE as well as PvP), you'll kinda just get shredded.
Malenia is luck based though and you mentioned how you only beat her due to luck. That's just one of the reasons why she is bs and unfair
Idk how you think Elden Beast is bullshit when Radahn, Mohg, Fire Giant, Maliketh, and Malenia are in the same game lol. Elden Beast is a bad boss because it runs away all the time and because it has can sometimes use two attacks at once causing you to take damage no matter what you do, but this is nothing compared to the other main bosses. And this is absolutely nothing when compared to the two godskins or the two gargoyles
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Radahn, Mohg, Fire Giant and Maliketh aren’t bullshit. You didn’t learn their fights.
@@leadfaun Classic response from a fromsoft fangirl who doesn't want to hear or accept the possibility that someone has valid criticism. I learned the bosses and for the most part I easily beat them. Just because they were easy/hard doesn't mean they can't be BS. I'm not the only person saying this stuff
I guess an attack from Mohg that damages you no matter what you do is not bullshit, right?
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 no, you misunderstand, I hated many of these fights until I understood how fair they are. My point is that your criticism is invalid. I’m not sure if you’re listening to what I’m saying?
I know you aren’t the only one calling these bosses bullshit. You’re not the only one who misunderstand them. This has been happening since DeS. People repeating the same point has no bearing on what I say. The only thing that would is you giving arguments for why the bosses are BS.
Nihil does a % of your health. You can survive it at any level, with or without the physick. He does it once. Not every attack has to be completely avoidable in every game, that’s just an arbitrary restriction on fight creativity. This isn’t like Waterfowl.
@@leadfaun I couldn't listen to what you were saying because you didn't offer any proof or argument. You just said I didn't learn the bosses (which is laughably false when I hear that) and you didn't say anything of value.
I am calling the Elden Ring bosses shit, not the other DS bosses. The other BS bosses for the most part are not bullshit.
My point is if nihil is unavoidable, it should do 0 damage. Everyone defines bullshit in different ways but something that you literally cannot avoid? That is easily definable as BS. Nothing about this is arbitrary. "Fight creativity" isn't a valid argument that you can just apply to any horrible boss in the franchise. Moonlight butterfly is shit you say? You're just trying to limit the creativity of the fight. And obviously you can probably survive it at full health but the player probably wont be at full health. What if they're trying to clutch the bossfight and they suddenly die to something they had no control over?
For future reference don't lead an argument by assuming the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're talking about and form actual arguments. Don't just throw around baseless statements like "fight creativity". Waterfowl is just fight creativity, right?
Favorite game all time can’t wait for the dlcs but I stopped playing it a month ago I have 800+ hours
Damn 800 hours that’s longer than I’ve been alive fr fr
You're the real MVP! I have 200 hrs in it myself. My first Souls and I'm completely obsessed with it as well. One of the most unique and capitivating experiences in atmosphere and lore.
I started playing Elden Ring 2-3 weeks ago. Currently around 35 hours. I decided to invest in strength and vigor and am currently having a blast, however I use spirit summons as I am quite new to the souls games. (Unless you consider 30 minutes of bloodborne, I initially quit that cause I had zero clue what I was doing… might go back and retry it.) I plan on using spirit summons for my first run, then on my second when I’m used to the mechanics I’ll do a run without any, and then on my third I wish to do online stuff.
Just got DS3, plan on playing it after im finished with Elden Ring (And not bad at it, either)
I agree with pretty much everything said here I do feel the same way still love the game more than I have prior from soft games it's genuine art but I agree with your points love the video this was my first of your videos and excited to see more of them definitely gonna check out the rest of your channel stay awesome and don't you dare go hollow
I'm of a vastly different opinion regarding the spirit ashes. Yes, sometimes they make things easier, but they function (in my experience) to balance the game better for people who *aren't* mega-melee protein bros. I've beaten all of the From Software Soulsborne games and killed each and every one of the optional bosses (except the Darklurker because, Christ, _why?_ ) and this is the first one where ranged combat felt fair. Unlike other games, playing a pure mage is much more doable without powerleveling to the point that every soul arrow is a one-hit kill on everything that isn't the boss and you're only able to kill the boss by landing every possible cast of soul spear, and where you don't have to play "find the exploit" with everything remotely tanky or magic resistant.
And I’m the opposite, Elden Ring if anything is the easiest game due to how much you can spam magic/spirit wise. And mega melee dudes are at the biggest disadvantage in this game than any other.
@@EndymionTv Well, that's sorta my point. For once, going full melee _isn't_ the intended way to do everything, and you can actually play a ranged build without being too reliant on jank, arena design, and luck¹.
That said, I suspect that a lot of the difference in experience has to do with the particular summons used. You kept bringing up the mimic, which was a summon that was essentially useless to a fragile mage like me (because having a second guy running around with almost no useful HP, but without the brain to dodge things, was less than helpful), as the mimic is a lot better if it can actually be expected to stay alive long enough to do real damage, or at least act as a reliable distraction. The only especially useful summons for me were Tiche, because she was literally the only one able to survive against Radagon despite him ignoring her for 98% of the fight, and the Dung Eater, because he could survive being hit as collateral damage long enough to pull aggro for a few seconds, right before my next spell caused everything to resume its attempts to murder me. But the damage output of summons was never particularly relevant to me at any point in the game.
¹ ignoring DS2, where dual crossbows was fun and practical, and a good amount of grinding could let you spam end-game spells without the stats needed.
That’s fine for people who like to play that way, but that isn’t fun for a lot of players. Many hardcore fans want to learn the mechanics, engage the boss in melee combat in a dance-like fashion. Split aggro ruins any semblance of dance-like combat, it discourages learning the mechanics and isn’t rewarding for a lot of players. It may help out people who would struggle otherwise, but it ends up alienating a lot of players in the process by balancing the game around summons.
@@EndymionTv yeah but thats exactly why the game is so popular,if the game was how you wanted it to be alot of people would have just got stuck put the game down and not told friends to buy...i understand your point but you are essentially arguing the game should be more niche which would hurt the game more in the long run,its no coincidence that this is the most successful souls game
@@grimreefer213 but how does me summoning a spirit stop you from doing what you are telling me to do..essentially get good by "learning" every possible movement the boss has...surely it makes more sense for those who want the ultimate challenge to take their own advice and learn to beat the boss by purely dodging and countering.no matter how hard any boss is,if you have learnt the moves you should in theory be able to not get hit..from soft made the right decisions hence this game being far more popular than the games you want this to be like...just get better and that will give u an even more inflated sense of achievement...beat ng 7 without any summons and I will have no objections to being called a spirit summoning scrub
18:18 even tough he lights itself on fire, he gains a huge damage resist, meaning that yes you can damage him with spells, but it would be useless since you would deal very low damage to him
I found on my first playthrough I felt the way you did in regards to it feeling uneven towards the end. That being said I beat the game with 30 vigor the first time, but I also used my Mimic.
I think spirit summons are fine, the Mimic is not. I wish they kept the Mimic questline, and instead of getting a Mimic summon we had the choice to kill off our main character and become the Mimic instead.
That would’ve been nucking futs
I personally loved Millenia. After I beat her I started putting my sign up to summon to help beat her and I had an absolute blast!
Spirit Summons:
I do agree with you. I fell into the trap of summoning my fully leveled up mimic tear (Which I felt was WAY too easy to obtain) during my first playthrough and I feel that it took a lot of joy out of the game for me. On my NG I'm fighting everything without them and HOLY JESUS is this game so much more fun (and difficult). I agree with all of your comments about them and wish they weren't in the game or weren't as powerful as they are. Mimic tear = easy button. If they wanted summoning help then have NPC quest lines that sync up with all of them. Like you know, make you work for it AND have the HP increase like with human players.
God skin duo can suck it.
Endgame boss ranking, Good:
Godfrey
Millenia
Malaketh
Fire Giant
Bad:
God Skin Duo
Bit of both:
Elden Beast (Why cant I summon Torrent?)
Elden beast is the worst final boss in the series for me and Fire giant is terrible. Melania and Maliketh were cool but pretty frustrating at times, radagon was probably my favourite late game boss.
@@-Nihilus- Radagon can suck my ass with his RNG parry/deflection. Played a caster my 4th play through and he just “randomly” kept grabbing every spell out of the air, turned it into a lightning bolt, and would throw it back all in .15 seconds.
Fire Giant is bad if you fight him blind for the first time, and you have no idea what he can do. Therefore, if you, like me, go pure-melee or main-melee, instinctively, you will stick to the ankle and miss all of the cool stuff flying around. In my next play, especially the third one, have a better understanding, I use Torrent to run around and, by having some distance with him, got a much more fun and cool fight.
God Skin Duo is a normal boss fight, not really good or bad. I just not understand all of the hate. Yes, it is tough, but there are a bunch of columns around to help you separate them for you to focus on one enemy at a time. Just don't rush them down blindingly.
@@huyvungodong6849 so you don't understand the hate of 2 bosses that already existed separately being recycled yet again for a lazy boring fight
@@-Nihilus- That I can understand, but if you reach that place, I guess you already kind of used to it :D
People scream that the duo is so hard and unfair is what I don't understand, and my reply above reflect that.
That place is an endgame area. You should have been at lease at 100-120 with some +10 weapons.
Another possible solution to summoning would perhaps be: Just don't let them pull aggro (or at least not as reliable). This way, you would still have some help, but needed to engage with the boss yourself. But yeah, overall my impression of the later bosses was, that they more of a puzzle ("find the right combination of equipment/summon") than a challenge.
I agree with your take on spirit ashes, especially mimic tear. I got through the entire game with the build of my choice until I hit Malenia, she forced me to use the mimic tear and redo my entire build just to be able to beat her. It felt like she was designed around players having the mimic tear.
An idea how to fix this, make the spirit summons optional. Put in an early npc who will track you down after you get the tool to summon it who offers you something in exchange for it. Should you give it up, bosses recalibrate some of their health and passive abilities to make them more favorable to fight solo. A "hard mode" but woven into the story.
Spirits need to be attacks that you need to charge via attacking/being hit. Each spirit can have one off attacks until you charge them again. Some can be offensive, other defensive etc.
But just “I summon a mimic of me” is so lazy. And yet so readily available. So unfortunately the end game is impacted by this
the mimic aint even that good, tiche or lhutul the headless are way better
I think, I would disagree on some of your critique, elden ring works as intended. (except for bugs) hear me out.😅 Every from software game is not about difficulty, its about game experience. Sure everything beyond Leyndell cranks up a lot in difficulty, but it have to, everything before is regulated, like comparing a park with a forest, surely a forest have to be more dangerous, dont you agree? The games teach you the mechanics everywhere, enter a new area, face the enemies "oh look, I'm a 2 hit, so maybe I'm to low🤔" or "oh look, I need 20 hits for a small critter, hmm maybe I'm to low🤔" this mechanic hasn't changed since DS1 but only this game is open world, so people thought Leyndell is the final Area and maybe tend to rush afterwards. My reaction was "oh this black gargoyle dude finished me in one swoop, so maybe I'll go back and check some areas I haven't visit yet😱" on my second try I was 20 level higher and had a better weapon than my lordsworn's straight sword from the beginning. The same goes for the bosses, I have a feeling, they were harder for from software veterans than for the newcomer. So maybe we shouldn't be so sassy and enjoy the experience. But as for the bugs, its unacceptable, it will ruin the first experience for sure.😩 And a hardcore gamer who tries his first run naked lvl 1 no death run, dont have the right to complain for example. so the title for the video feels like a click bait, overrated and elden ring in one sentence, dont feel it.🤐 but dont worry I have examples for overrated: fifa, battlefield, fortnite or diablo immortal 😘
Every Souls game allowed for you to summon help. I really don't see why spirit ashes are any different. It works the same, you split agro and avoid engaging directly with the boss for the most part.
Because now bosses are now both specifically designed around but also somehow still trivialized around split aggro
Because before if you summon someone the boss actually got stronger to compensate for that extra person.
Now it’s basically the boss is already in that state where you summoned someone even if you don’t. So it encourages you to summon otherwise you’re at a major disadvantage if that makes sense
I agree with your core premiss. The late game, past Morgot and the capital, is drastically scaled up in difficulty including bosses to account for spirit summons, suddenly. I remember my first playtheough and was caught off guard with how much damage enemies were doing.
I cant bring myself to say that the spirit summons mechanic should be out right taken out but i do agree that there needs to be greater trade-offs for using them.
If the spirit summon ashes got reworked into a mechanic where you fill a bar via attacking/taking damage & then you can unleash that spirit via a unique attack or something, I would be okay with it.
Like certain ashes could have defensive mechanics, other do damages. Some range, some melee etc. but just brain dead “I summon and that’s it” is stupid. Don’t care how much negative flack I get for saying that I’m sticking to it.
And I dig the Borderlands pfp thanks for watching 🤘🏻
I think we needed Elden ring. If we got dark souls 4 we would have hundreds of videos talking about some “tired souls formula” even tho all we needed was a dark souls 4 with the jumping mechanic. If there were truly sprawling dungeon areas and a more linear path connecting these “worlds” which were absolutely massive legacy dungeons with vertical design to accommodate the jumping I feel like it would have been the literal best game ever for me. I do not like torrent and I do not like the lands between. It drags visually to me and it feels unnecessarily humongous. Not saying it doesn’t look good, literally the graphics seem to drag. But I still think we needed to see and feel what this game would be like. Unfortunately that means we will not get the perfect dark souls 4 game I think we could have gotten instead. Like the game we never will realize how much we want
One way the summons could be implemented in future games is for it to be an optional part of the toolkit. A worthwhile part, but still optional. Like, imagine if it was described as a powerful artifact that could tip the balance in favor of the mere mortals that face monstrous odds. It would be there for the people who need it, while the developer would be able to adjust the difficulty of bosses depending on whether or not the player had access to the tool. Also if you had to earn the summons, it would feel like you brought all of the weapons you could to the final fight, and yet they still barely survived by the skin of their teeth.
People still confuse this game with DS4. It’s not. Big beefy man with big brick sword isn’t the intended play style. Personally, if i was fighting a full blown fucking demi god, i’d pull every unfair trick in the book because the odds are naturally against me. Just because i choose not to dual wield jump attack r2 spam with 2 big swords doesn’t mean I’m having less fun. These souls purist purposely nerf themselves, then complain that the game isn’t playing fair by a disadvantage that they chose to take on themselves. Regardless of how easy it is to miss, summons ARE a core part of Elden Rings gameplay, choosing not to use them is just like choosing not to use flasks. It’s doable, but not optimal.
Honestly, I ran through the Godskin Apostle duo because I did not complete that area until much later in the game, sort of mistakenly as I didn't figure out how to enter the volcano manor level, so I was very powerful when I fought them, I think that is the issue, which makes me love Elden Ring, if an area is hard, you can always just come back to it later, I think the issue is, how to tell what the recommended level is for an area since it doesn't scale dynamically (at least not that I know of). That would probably solve some of the difficulty issues.
Wat
“I did not complete that area until much later in the game”…
Bro it’s the final area
@@fahimtajwaar2521 oh shit, you're right, I thought it was Volcano Manor lol. Although, still, I got to them over leveled, I spent 90% of this game lost, doing all sorts of side areas.
Love long reviews. This one was awesome. Stay up and God bless.
Thank you 🤘🏻🔥
I checked the casting speed talisman at about 50 red and is just about doubles it it's insane especially when using the madness grab attack in pvp.
I think the spirit summons was genius. For people that don't want to memorize patterns or over level because they don't have time, spirit summons works perfectly. If you don't want to use them don't. There are multiple ways to beat all these bosses, find them. I never use the physick I don't think it's a crutch to use it, I just chose not to.
While I quite disagree with the bosses, I may am inclined to agree in some aspects with the video. I think the praise it had is well deserved, a masterpiece and mastered within Lore, level design and first playthrough. By far, my favorite game of all time and in the series, especially in the lore.
Overall, I understand where you are coming from, great video.
I don’t know how you could disagree with the boss critique. I just did solo runs through DS1, DS3, and bloodborne Nothing in any of those games even NG+ Ludwig doesn’t hit like anything post Leyndell. They have constant AOE attacks, 360 degree turns, attack cancelling, massive health pools, and input reading… I’ve platinumed this game twice over as it’s got some incredible aspects but if you don’t want to magic spam/weapon art spam, play with summons, or grind to being massively OP the late game bosses don’t feel rewarding at all. When you win it feels a lot more like they chose not to kill you. That Maliketh could’ve just continued hopping around spamming black blade from afar over and over. The stamina bar made Gael challenging but fun. When you’d best him it really felt like you’d figured it out and he couldn’t beat you. Same with Ghermin. ER doesn’t have that at the end. The summons killed boss balance 100%
@@cjzizzari2405 Once more, I've clarified my position interms of why I love these bosses to death in other critique videos, and so, you are also allowed to disagree. As for why I'm disacordant, and to add to that, the key word is some, I still love these bosses as they're, in my eyes and many think they're actually good fights, and to why it feels rewarding.
One more thing I have to clarify is it is all just but opinions, even yours, and so, I go by my own experience and not of what people think, once more, you're allowed to disagree with me and so I disagree with the video. (Not to mention, I never played with magic, summons or ashes. I have gone pure melee and just a mild status effect with the Moonlight Greatsword)
Let us start with Malekith; for he is my favorite by far in the series, the key to defeat him is positioning and to stay close as possible when he does his melee attacks, once he does his jumpy attacks (although, these moves isn't as annoying as people make it out to be) stay a little away for his final attack is a melee attack.
As for the unending, delayed combos and what bingus has you, it isn't an issue for me either, infact, I quite love it, especially the delayed ones as you can dodge it by *actually* paying attention to the boss movement. With the unending combos, this arguement may goes for Clergyman, Malenia (though, I love her boss fight exception for waterfowl dance) and to some degree, Radagon. (which is also my second favorite fight in the series) Godfrey also a big example as to how you could attack while he could attack by his unpredictable nature, not to mention punishing Hoarah Loux's attacks as he has long recovery and a fashioned way of delayed attacks which makes him so rewarding yet anxious to fight.
I do agree however that DS3 design wise, had the best bosses in the series, Bloodborne in my opinion is overrated as its only actual memorable bosses are Gascoigne, Ludwig, Laurence, Gehrman, Lady Maria and the Orphan of Kos.
As for damage tuning, from Limgrave to Leyndell, it is pretty much balanced interms of it, I'm unsure why you said post Leyndell as you should've said post Mountaintops of the Giants which I pretty much agree with sentiment.
In short, I disagree with him because I like these mechanics, I love Mohg's throwing at you the formless mother's blood to pressure you to come closer to him and aggres him rather than staying afar from him, Morgott's and Margit's foolish dance, Clergyman's and Malekith's methodical approach, Godfrey's unpredictability and Radagon's perfection of all what you've learned to become complete. I love these bosses because I feel they're rewarding and not that of BS, at least to some people like me. Yes it has issues, but it isn't as awful as people make it out to be.
Not forgetting Rykard's perfection of the gimmick boss side of things.
If you disagree, I judge you not nor I think I'm of the best and fairest of opinions, it is your experience and I cannot do anything about it. I respect it and I shant judge your experience. I thank you whole heartedly commenting.
@@AndrewThePoet I feel like FS are victims of their own success with Elden Ring. When Bloodborne came out, FS fans were bitching it out for 'forcing players to play in a specific way' and got boss fights that went too hard. When the Dark Souls DLC came out fans were bitching out the new bosses for being too hard.
Elden Ring came out, and now there's a small industry built around Soulsborne youtube commentary, so we're seeing all the same critiques about balance that used to be relegated to reddit and forums turning up on TH-cam. I really don't think the bosses are bad, they're just different and expect different things from the players.
We'll have "Elden Ring: A Misunderstood Masterpiece" videos in five years
@@squeemlives Saguine to read, and what you've spoken is pretty much truthful! I agree with your sentiment you've bestowed!
I feel very much the opposite on his endgame assessment. As someone who has put thousands of hours into the Souls series, elden ring was too easy until I got past Morgot and got into endgame. I look forward to the endgame boss rush and it’s definitely my favorite part of the whole game
I haven't played the game myself, but I've heard that there's another Spirit Ash summon that's also broken though maybe not as broken as people say the Mimic Tear is: It's the "Dung Eater Puppet" summon for those who are curious.
I absolutely hate the Radahn fight exclusively because of the camera. I cannot believe that they figured out how to zoom the camera out with big bosses in Sekiro and Bloodborne and then just decided not to implement it in this game. Not just Radahn either, so many bosses where you literally can't see what they are doing. Artificial difficulty at its finest
Fire Giant🙄
i felt the same way about the bosses and summons. they definitely designed the boss fights with summons in mind, especially a lot of the side dungeon bosses and end game ones as you mentioned. i kept telling myself that the dark souls 2 sotfs dev's had a massive hand in this game. but oh well it was something different they tried and i hope it never resurfaces in future games
I have finally decided to do a run without mimic tear (other than bosses I don’t care about) and with different builds which means I find a cool weapon and use it. This made me fall in love with the game again. Still not my favorite From game but it may be second after Bloodborne.
Retool waterfowl dance and change her healing to not trigger when blocking her attacks, and IMO Melania would be a top tier fight. Sadly that one move and the invalidation of shield builds really drag it down imo.
Radagon IMO is a really fun fight and would have been a good finale boss if not for elden beast. Elden Beast would be greatly improved if they let you ride Torrent during the fight. It would make the boss moving around less frustrating, and be a good sendoff since Torrent was the first and most firm believer in your potential.
Maliketh I just hate. I don't mind that he can cut off some of your max hp and has a dot, that's fine. I don't even mind that he does high damage. I just hate as a melee player how acrobatic he is flinging himself around the arena.
Any fight that makes you fight the godskins at the same time is bad. But especially the farum azula one where they have the weird shared healthbar. FS has done some good duo bosses in the past. But these feel like two separate boss fights crammed together rather than being built for one another.
I don't mind repeat boss fights in theory, I don't mind fighting several Hinoxes in Breath of the Wild for example. But I do mind the way some of them are handled. Fighting a guardian watchdog. Then a guardian watchdog with some adds. And then fighting TWO guardian watch dogs for example. This is just annoying. Fallen star beast feels like it was designed to fight on mt gelmir in a big open out door area on Torrent, but then they cram one into a small cave boss fight. Same with Astel who feels like he was built for the big ranni quest arena. Then shoved into a small cave room where he can teleport and then grabe and eat me while I'm still trying to figure out where he went. Two crucible knights is not a fun boss fight. It's just two very aggressive and similar enemies put in the same room. However, I don't really mind the outdoor boss repeats as much with the dragons and erd tree guardians as much.
In my first playthrough I used summon ashes a lot and it honestly kinda ruined the experience for me especially in the endgame when I was fighting bosses like Godfrey or Maliketh, they just felt too easy almost like pushovers and when I saw people gushing about these bosses' difficulty and design I felt robbed of a similar experience, so I started new game plus and didn't use any summons this time around and while the experience was way more difficult it was also more satisfying
Exactl6 how it went for me, now I have 4 total wins in the game and didnt use ashes on 3 of th
Good video, I disagree with some things but I think you make some fair points.
Personally I didn't feel the need of using spirit summons during the game and was quite happy for the difficulty spike in the endgame since I thought that, after the initial struggle and Radhan pre-nerf, Elden Ring was a bit too easy. I think if you explore well the end game doesn't feel impossible and it's actually very fun. I think Farum and Elphael are two of the best areas FromSoftware has ever made (although is true that Mountain Top, especially Snowfield, are a drop in quality for the open world).
Lastly I want to touch on the bosses, that a lot of people felt unfair. I disagree. I think that Elden Ring has a foundamentally different playstyle than DS3 even though both game from the outside seems quite similar. In Elden Ring a lot of bosses require you to learn their attacks and how to effectively counter them (similarly to Sekiro imo) and roll spamming is almost always ineffective. For example, Malenia: if you use a faster weapon (whips, katanas, curved swords...) you have time to hit her between her combos and resetting her attacks without being hit (it's not easy, I had to learn her whole moveset to do it). If you use heavy swords instead (colossal, heavy....) it's very easy to stagger her and do extra damage on reposte. On top of that you can use a strong ash of war or some that gives you a status effect like freeze/bleed to be even more effective. That works for every boss imo, especially the status effect since with the Ash of War system it can be changed for free.
Overall I felt that the game, if approached the same way of DS3, could feel like bullshit and overly difficult but instead you have to make use of the new mechanics Elden Ring gives you to your advantage and the game will feel much more fun and balanced.
I do agree with you on Duo bosses, they are way overused with some of them being not fun and only challenging, but with some good strategy they are also doable
Thanks for this. I still do think the endgame is bad but it’s nice to hear someone who had a different experience at least. Thanks for watching 🤘🏻
It does feel like bosses are designed to be played with summons
I find the late game bosses more manageable on later playthroughs but the early game insanely easy. I definitely felt the difficulty spike on my first playthrough and it forced me into a super optimal build with mimic that made the endgame super easy. Definitely think they missed the mark with godskin duo mostly. I don't have a huge issue with maliketh but he's hard to learn as its just the 2nd phase that's hard. I love malenia but it's brutal the first time.
It's insane to me that entire critique of Elden ring was literally just about the mimic tear spirit ash. I'd wager there was just some bad design choices because if the mimic tear solely had that much influence they would've taken the mimic tear out because there are literally dozens of other spirit ashes that are borderline ineffective. I assume the difficulty spike is just a result of the open world and trying to scale the difficulty when, like you pointed out, so much is actually just extra content and they cannot assume when players where go where especially since there are no levels or ways to gauge what is and is not an area you should be in
It wasn’t all about that, a section was yes cause it’s a massive problem IMO
@@EndymionTv yes it is indeed because this is the main entry to cheesing the whole game...there are dozens of other ways though: bleed, sorceries, many ash of wars are largely collaborating in the cheesing that plagues the game on top of other summons and the password-fuelled duping plague etc.... But this is understandable: the game was huge, precise tuning like in previous titles was impossible as you righfully pointed out.
@@EndymionTv I mean it is a section that takes almost 1/3 (15 minutes compared to most other sections that are 5-10 minutes) of the whole video. Saying that it is the entire critique is not far off.
@@sangdrako that literally makes no sense. Why are stupid people like you allowed to comment
Listening to your complaints about spirit ashes, I wonder if wearing Shabriri's Woe would help alleviate that problem (the talisman that attracts enemies aggro to you) might be worth experimenting with.
I personally liked overcoming the challenge of facing bosses solo in this game; maybe the balance is a bit unfair, especially with the amount of damage they do, but it wasn't to the point of ruining the experience for me. To me, they have made a game that has a higher skill ceiling but a lower skill floor if you want
Edit: I do share your fear of DLC bosses being insanely difficult actually...I agree they should not try to keep outdoing themselves with boss difficulty.
Masterpiece? The game plays like the designers only BARELY got it working before they shoved it out the door.
I agree 100% about summons, I had almost the same thoughts about a limited time of summons or just a single attack, it would have much more sense. No penalty for using summons, oh come on... Boss fights balance is pretty sick. Most bosses take 50% of health with each attack O_O even though your health bar takes almost half of the screen.
I finished all FS games (souls-like), including Bloodborne without leveling up, and Elden Ring was the only one that I felt I have to use summons and I did during my first playthrough for example when fighting with Malekith, because this fight is just so broken, if you fight melee you almost don't have any window to attack and if you hit more than once then often you get insta-killed.