Honestly only other game that ever made me marvel at it was rdr 2 and i will always stand by that lol. Also played all of the souls games except 1 and 2. Bloodborne being my introduction is naturally one of my favorites like a first love. And sekiro and it truly baffles me when people say its one of the hardest, i feel like its one of the easiest, as soon as you get the rhythm and parry at the right time the game literally becomes so easy i had to actually make it harder by ringing that demon bell and the thing you can give kuro in ng+ and it was still too easy cause all that mattered was breaking the enemies poise
One thing that I would love for every Fromsoft game to have is somekind of Boss rush or gauntlet. I wouldn't have too get through another new game plus cycle just to challenge the boss again. This feature just makes me love Sekiro even more, and I hope Fromsoft adds it to all their titles moving forward.
Agreed. It's also so nice for capturing footage. I don't have a lot of storage space and end up having to delete old gameplay a lot, so being able to hop into sekiro and immediately capture footage from any boss is such a blessing. For the other games I sometimes need to use clips from other people cause I can't be bothered to play 10 hrs of ds1 over again just to get 5 seconds of orenstein and smough footage
Adding onto this. A feature I want from every game with bosses at all is the ability to go into like a training mode with the boss and test the ai. Learning from bashing your head against a boss until you magically beat it or watching a pro beat it don’t necessarily help all the time. If I want to practice dodging waterfowl just lemme fight malenia who spams waterfowl of my own free will.
I don't mind fighting in a closed space where my weapons bounce off the walls. I mind that the boss's weapons do not. There's tons of unfair bullshit like that in Souls games. Projectiles going through other enemies so they still kill you. Enemy weapons literally hurting you through the walls. Same with fire.
That's an interesting point that I haven't actually noticed, but it's a fair critique. Enemies hitting you through walls is definitely odd and doesn't really mesh with the logic and setting of the games. You learn to deal with it eventually but yeah, definitely a fair criticism
On the other hand: Balteus kinda teaches you that tweaking your mech is an option. A lot of playes prefer to enclose themselves into a box of sorts in any Fromsoft game. Decide on a build early, ignore other tools and just keep bashing their head against any wall they see until it eventually breaks.
I would agree with you if your money wasn't so low by the Balteus fight. Even if you do everything before balteus you only really have enough money to make slight alterations or trade in all the stuff you bought to buy a couple new things. It's way less easy to quickly add and hotswap your build, not to mention that if you wanna go to the garage and buy stuff (not just use stuff you already have) you need to exit the level first and then replay the whole thing, and it's one of the longer missions in the game. If anything I remember that ENCOURAGING me to stick with a build and bash my head against the wall over and over cause I didn't wanna do the whole mission over with a new build considering I didn't even know if it would be better or not
@@AsadAnjum Also I'd say FS is pretty bad at actually teaching stuff. They make good exams, that you usually can only pass if you understand how to play the game, but they kinda let you learn on your own. Rule discovery is fine and rewarding, but their games are also very punishing and some systems aren't necessarily the most obvious. Sometimes you don't even know there's something to learn.
"just keep bashing their head against any wall" - ye, it's called R in RPG :) If we're talking about ER then changing your entire build works a bit different in Souls, considering you need respec and even then you are usually stuck with 1-2 weapons you were able to upgrade because materials are scarce on 1st run. I don't think comparison to AC is 1) fair 2) at all needed - stop blending these games in your head into one Fromsoft product - let's have some variety instead of everyone running every build.
@@justaquietpeacefuldance Yes and no. You can still mess around with buffs, consumables, summons, weapon arts(or prosthetics in Sekiro). I have a friend who just sells everything and claymores his way through the game. Lies of P does this very well by the way. You can tweak around a lot without full respec.
After Balteus, I don’t understand any of the controversy with the difficulty spikes in ac6- it’s a game about experimentation and adaptation and if you can manage that then the game’s difficulty is fine
Balteus in NG is the closest thing to an actual challenge in the entire game, and it's still nothing compared to any other from software game's hardest challenges (Manus, Friede, Frigid Outskirts, Orphan, Malenia, etc.)
@@spiceforspice3461 If there is one thing you should know as a FromSoft fan it's that the difficulty is extremely subjective, and varies vastly person to person. Some gimmick bosses are obviously easier (like Yhorm, Witch of Hemwick etc.), and I feel like it's objective to say the bosses in Demons Souls are easier than pretty much any other FromSoft game bosses, but some of the bosses in ACVI gave me much more trouble than Manus, Friede and a few Elden Ring bosses.
I personally found AC6 much more difficult than any of the bosses you mention. I’m experienced and skilled in souls combat, much less so in mech combat.
Funnily enough, Balteus was hard but felt very beatable so the multiple attempts didn’t feel frustrating. “I’m so close, I got this!” I’d say to myself. But when I hit Ibis, I wound up putting the game down for a few days because it felt like I needed a 5hr session to feed myself to the meat grinder and hope I won via luck. Extra feel-bads when I came back to a nerfed Ibis and nuked it first try, which made me think “was I just tilted and needed a break or did they neuter Ibis THAT much?”
I just wanna say that Rykard was such a breakthrough in Fromsoft boss design. We’ve gotten so many garbage gimmick bosses over the years, such as ceaseless discharge, yhorm, Wolnir, and executioner’s chariot. Rykard actually showed us how good a gimmick boss could be, by giving the weapon used to defeat him a varied and dynamic moveset, allowing him to be fought with other methods like spells, and genuinely making him methodical and hard to dodge, with small homing attacks constantly peppering you during the second phase. Fromsoft finally evolved the gimmick boss into what it was supposed to be: a Mario boss that’s nuanced and nails your balls to the floor.
I personally hate rykard. His ground quake is only possible to dodge if your close but has a position spit attack that forced you away. Also second phase skull attack just makes you run around for ages and also the lava has poorly telegraphed hitboxes on it and he also makes every build use the storm ruler. Now your probably thinking doesn’t yhorm and storm king make you do the same? And actually no. Yhorm has a visceral mechanic for only non storm ruler damage where if you hit his weapon arm what he conveniently lets you hit after every attack he does you will get a stagger that allows you to get a storm ruler damage riposte. With storm king at least other ranged damage completely demolishes his health bar because he actually has very low health. Ancient wyvern once learned is easier to fight straight up with magic and status then plunge. Btw with both yhorm and ancient wyvern I actually prefer fighting them this way. Oh just to mention even divine dragon you can kill except the last hit without engaging with the gimmick at all. I think fromsoft have actually done gimmick fight’s amazingly previously and purposely given other ways to fight them for the experienced. This design philosophy really wasn’t given to rykard so I hate him for that alone. Regardless I don’t like the fight though.
This video makes more fair points that I assumed. I also very much agree with your take on the unfair stuff in these games, like with dying to a mimic or getting hit by a fire barrel, which is unfair sure, but you can come back later and know what to do next time. But something like the bed of chaos just has no ways to prevent death sometimes
You're actually fighting a pulse shield mini-mini(micro?)-boss in the mission with the stealth enemies. Which is also a mission that focuses heavily on aerial movement especially in the last section. And this mission comes pretty much directly before Balteus. Maybe even exactly before Balteus, can't quite remember. You're also given the bubble guns right before that which absolutely destroy his shield and deal significant burst damage which is great for punishing stagger windows. All things that make Balteus rather simple. So you definitely have the tools to beat him and the game does prepare you for at least 2 of the mechanics that make his fight difficult. Absolutely cannot agree with those criticisms. However his moveset is just really difficult to read and avoid without any I-frames and multiple tries and there is just no preparing for that other than practicing the general gameplay flow. And that difficult to dodge moveset was one of the things they nerfed actually. Wasn't a numbers downgrade or artificial nerf (if that is even a thing) it was a slight change in behaviour to make it more forgivable and easier to adjust for a new player. E: Walter also repeatedly reminds you to use your aerial movement to your advantage starting from the very first mission where he tells you to dodge the helicopter's grenades by getting into the air. The game does give you hints. They're just not super in your face and maybe a lot of people miss them because it can be easy to miss dialogue when you're busy fighting for your life.
You list all those things but clearly it didnt work. There's a burden on the player to learn but there's also a burden on the developer to teach. Clearly the scale isnt balanced or they wouldnt call Balteus "the filter". Your argument is anecdotal -based on your experience and doesnt reflect the typical player.
@@Web-jz9rg Yeah Sulla is also one of the many enemies that punishes you for being on the ground with his bazooka. He also shows off a bubble gun. But I didn't want to bring him up as he only shows up literally seconds before Balteus and anything that you may have learned from him regarding gear you may not be able to translate into something useful immediately. Maybe if he had a separate missions it would have helped but I somehow doubt it.
@@austin0_bandit05Then the game isn't for the "typical player". Whatever that even means. Fromsoftware has always had this approach. They never spoonfeed you information be it lore or gameplay. They expect you to be a functioning adult who can pay attention and absorb information which I for one can appreciate. It's the same thing back when Sekiro came out and people complained that there was no easy mode. If the game is too hard for you then it just isn't for you. The devs have a vision and they have finalized it. And are now trying to adjust the game as much as possible without ruining their own vision. And it's not entirely anecdotal evidence either. I have watched I'd say between 5 and 10 playthroughs now and there seemed to be a 33/33/33 split of people who got him within maybe 5 tries, people who took hours to beat him but enjoyed it and people who took hours to beat him and got frustrated. Now granted watching 6 or however many people is still rather anecdotal but it is not just my experience.
@@austin0_bandit05he tutorial missions and the first mission gives you a lot of tips and how things work like projectiles, explisions movility types of legs and so much more, if the player can adapt and use that info is their fault
I love this video. You articulated exactly what my unintelligible monkey brain was thinking about Fromsoft's recent approach to difficulty and the hasty nerfs these bosses are getting. The recent boss nerfs in Life of Pi also made me feel this way when the patch came in during my playthrough. I don't mind bosses doing bullshit, I just want a way to solve and punish that bullshit and do a "no u". I think that why Sekiro feels so satisfying to play. And also I didn't get to play Elden Ring on release, so when I did defeat Radhan I felt lowkey sad because I was unable to experience the frustration that everyone else felt and I wish I got to fight him in his prime
I feel like the biggest problem is that most of the time they make the bosses and enemies just go against the core mechanica of the games. All of them do this but for the first chapters i think its ok, the camera system was new to them too (kinda at least) but with Ds3 i started getting bitter about enemies just janking the camera during combat. With Elden ring, after more than 10 years of working with the same camera feature, its a cardinal sin to me. Because you can put one Ulcerated tree spirit in a place where half of it doesnt fit, but at after you do that for i dont know how many times just fuck off. I love how elden ring goes against the most basic idea of “dont try to screw yourself up” every time it can. The problem to me is that, fuck balancing on lategame bosses they are also kinda meant to be straight up unfair. Not elden beast though, its just kinda boring unfortunately.
I just wish they would make seamless co-op. I don’t have a problem getting through the games alone it’s just more fun with friends. Especially Elden Ring.
Elden Ring had too many cheap deaths thrown in. Obviously there were a lot of times where I saw the mistake I'd made right before I died and thought "yeah, that's a learning moment" but a lot of the time I just died and was left thinking "Well I guess I'll just keep doing what I was doing and hope the RNG doesn't throw an unavoidable 1 hit kill with no tell at me again" or "Oh good, input reading. Guess those mechanics are off the table".
Think so too! Too many cheap shots. Both times i finished Elden Ring i had 160+ Levels. Softcapping Vit to 40 is essential if you dont want to ride the Razors Edge of survival and thats often not enough, considering how hard Enemies hit later on.
@@christopherschneider2968only 40? You need that at 50-60 in endgame. It’s really frustrating honestly, I could easily beat DS3 at 27 vigor and never felt like I was too fragile, meanwhile 60 vigor in elden ring's endgame is necessary to avoid most basic enemies two shotting you! its more stat investment for less returns, which takes away from builds, which in return funnels players into meta builds to accommodate the relatively lower amount of stat investment they can afford to put into everything else. Having to dump vigor just….isn’t fun.
@@iheartblock3792 What i ment was softcapping to 40 is minimum. Sorry for the confusion. I agree with the Vigor Dump! Its not fun grinding levels so much.
@@iheartblock3792 I mean, I was lvl 160 by the end of Elden Ring while I was at the most 90 by the end of Dark Souls 3. Where are all those levels gonna go? Stats I don't need? The game is much longer so obviously you can't scale it the same as the other souls games. If DS3 was twice as long you probably would've needed twice as much HP.
Your description of learning how the movement works in AC6 is exactly why they emphasized before the game came out that "This is an Armored Core game, NOT a soulslike." They operate on fundamentally different systems.
The boss with the staircase was specifically designed to help you cheese/get away from the boss without being overwhelmed by the dogs….I use those stairs specifically to separate the 2 dogs from the boss so I can than 1v1 that boss.
I actually don’t mind the Capra demon. The point wasn’t to throw the player off, but to show the player that using the arena to your advantage can trivialize what at first seems to be an impossible gank.
Oh yeah "tough but fair" is BS, but since it's a difficult game I think for a lot of people the instinct is to say "I'm not good enough so it's on me". Like when I complain about the inconsistent input buffers, people who don't understand what this is say there is no issue for them 😤 There's also that trend in the Souls community to play a very specific way with a pretty specific build that not only makes the games easier (despite what they say) but also avoids encountering a lot of the issues. So unless you talk to people who invested *a lot* of time and are good enough, you don't see a lot of meaningful criticism. Anyways all this to say good video, refreshing to hear. Also the mention of poise inevitably makes me think back to Elden Ring which basically didn't have a poise system until patches a few months later. That's the kind of stuff that makes you think "was this really playtested though?" Because when 90% of the spells are useless it's weird enough. But when they all suddenly get buffed patch after patch to a thing that seems obvious and what people were asking for, it does look like they just didn't finish making the game. Same for the AC6 shop system honestly, I haven't played it but from what I've heard/saw there's really no reason for it being presented that way and not being more permissive. People are usually not switching strategies in games when it's free and easy.
In my opinion, i think fromsoft wants to balance the casuals and hardcore players to play fromsoft games that's why the difficulty design has no balancing, you can make the game either easy or hard depends on your build. That's what i think
Tbh, I've only played elden ring, it was an amazing experience for me, every fight was challenging yes, but, I've never fought one boss more than 5 times before beating them, I don't understand why people dislike the difficulty, I've got platinum and I'm sitting at ng+7 on my longest save ... I've loved every moment and never found it too hard
This is an extremely good analysis video! Great work. When it comes to Dark Souls 1, I like to call it a masterclass in hostile game design. Because it does exatly these things you described. It's meant to infuriate and be unfair. It uses its bad camera to fuck you over, for example. I'm not saying it's not allowed to do that, as you mention, there's definitely an aspect of "overcoming the game itself", but to claim it's a fair game is delusional. :D
Definitely a good way to describe it. Imo ds1 is harder to get into for a new player than even demons souls because of how it's levels and encounters are set up (even tho DeS has a few more QoL problems)
i think for the most part ds1 is mostly fair. i'm not denying that there were a few moments where it felt unfair and undeserved. the only things i consider truly unfair in the game is bed of chaos and gwyn, but i have developed a tolerance for the former over the latter.
note: what i've previously said is merely personal experience. i try not to be opinionated, which unfortunately a great chunk of the internet and a lot of people tend to be with anything.
@@yoman5029 It's mentioned in another comment, but the most unfair part about it is that any of the rules about weapon hitboxes, range, etc. don't apply to enemies. They swing through walls and other NPCs, their magic has unlimited range, they see you around the corner and land a perfect hit. That kinda stuff. Otherwise it goes into hostile territory in my opinion. Not unfair, but designed to specifically frustrate you into rage. All the tiny rooms where your camera is the actual boss, all the tiny walkways on ledges and the enemies placed there, the archers in Anor Londo, the toxic darts in Blighttown, the ghosts in New Londo, Bed of Chaos, I could just go on like that. And I don't want to call any of this unfair or change it in any way, but it's undeniably hostile and doesn't leave any room for mistakes. And there's a point to be made about perseverance here, but also it's one of the reasons many people bounce off of DS1. And then there's Sen's Fortress, one of the most hated levels, which I think is neither unfair nor hostile. I think it's brilliant, because it's a puzzle. You actually have room for mistakes, everything is telegraphed, everything can be avoided/dealt with if you find the right way to do it.
Elden Ring and lies of p both implement a summons system to help struggling players with certain fights, and both are an absolute necessity for those late game boss fights if you don't want to simply "git gud". I really like these implementations because they still kept the boss experience epic and fun, while also not making it too easy. Lies of P has like eight of the eleven story bosses have second phases or second health bars which gave them entirely new move-sets and status effects. Having a summon to tank agro while I finished the first phase was really nice because it allowed me to learn combos and parry timings for those second phases while also allowing me to retain my heals. I really liked the summons implementations in these games but they're not for everyone. I didn't summon for Simon manus or Melania because I really enjoyed those fights and felt like I was depriving myself of that feeling that I am simply built different upon their defeat. Idk, cool system. And I know most soulsbornes have a summon system, but being able to summon a copy of myself is sick asf
As a ds1 fan. I really only struggled with early game elden ring bosses, late game were difficult but not frustrating. It was more just going through the motions, die a few times, learn the moves. Nothing of note. I wouldnt say it was fun tho. More just something I finished because I started it.
THIS!! This is the biggest problem with Elden Ring. Such a waste of resources even in it's current state. Game looks absolutely gorgeous, plays like ass then mocks you for failing whilst changing the rule set half way through EVERY single boss fight. (Margit with 11 hit combos, Godrick adding fire damage to many attacks, adding EXTRA hits to previous combos, Rennala just summoning dragons and armies of bloodhound knights, Godskins literally reading your inputs, Mohg healing and instant bleeding you, Morgott getting arena hazards and extending 11 hit combos into 20, Radahn's hitbox sometimes just has shockwaves on the ground for no reason, Magma Wyrms glitching into infinite lava breath, Night's Calvary-s resummoning their horse even if you killed the damn thing, big enemies being stance broken, then unable to be critical'd because geometry said f-you!, Making super open arenas then sticking 2 hyper aggressive enemies with long combos and input reading in your face and saying goodluck (godskin, crucible knight + misbegotten, duo watchdogs, duo tree sentinels) Rykard having AoE stagger around him at all times both phases, overlapping attack patterns in second, Malenia...) Damn, I can keep going, think the point's been made. Hopefully people will call them out for this because frankly, it didn't feel like a Souls' game, it felt like Kaizo Mario type stuff, or I Wanna be the Guy, just with a FromSoft asset swap
@@Valrok1870 The problem has never been the game changing the rules from boss to boss. The problem has always been the players approaching different challenges in the exact same way over and over again, even after the game offers you thousands of different approaches. Absolutely every single one of your examples are countered by a mechanic the game gives you. Git gud.
I find there's something weird with a lot of Elden Ring bosses. A lot of them are reasonably hard, but it's as though their move sets were specifically designed to be as annoying as possible. Most DS1 bosses have fairly simple move sets, with timings that (for the most part) aren't that too difficult to predict. You can come back to that game after not playing it for years, and have a fairly easy time with most bosses as long as you remember the overall strategy. Your general intuition which you acquire over the course of the game is good enough to dodge most attacks. A lot of ER bosses have unpredictable, variable length combos, with timings that specifically exploit your general intuition to constantly catch you with your pants down. You just have to learn the specific patterns for every new boss individually. Whenever I beat these bosses it doesn't really feel like I got better at the game. Instead I just got better at dealing with a specific boss. It's great fun when there's a few bosses that really throw me off balance. Those tend to be my favourite bosses in these games! But it gets old when it feels like they're all like that. Part of the problem, (if you can even call it that,) is just that ER is such a large game with a looong endgame. At least if you try to do all the major bosses. It's so long that you have time to get a bit tired of it. It's a bit paradoxical really, because in isolation a lot of ER bosses would easily be my favourite boss in the game, but there's so many of them in this style that none of them really stand out to me in a positive way. Instead I just remember them being annoying. Maye my opinion will sweeten over the years. Sekiro left me extremely salty after my first playthrough, but I grew to love that game after playing it again. However the difference is that with Sekiro it just took me a long time to get accustomed to instinctively deflecting EVERYTHING, rather than dodging. Once I got that through my thick skull it wasn't nearly as tough. I haven't noticed any such shift in perspective during my second run of ER.
@@someoneinsomewhere8079 that's not true. Dark souls 1 too forces you to change your approach every fight, same for Demon's souls. ER literally has less things you can change than first 3 souls games, yet it demands more.
@@someoneinsomewhere8079 that's not true. Dark souls 1 too forces you to change your approach every fight, same for Demon's souls. ER literally has less things you can change than first 3 souls games, yet it demands more.
I think some of it stems from the Souls games being designed with an experienced player base in mind. Dark Souls 2 felt like they were placing enemies to prevent people running through areas. As the games went on, (especially after Bloodborne) enemy attack strings got longer. One of the reasons I dropped off the Dark Souls 3 DLCs was due to bosses that send hit after hit your way. But then how do you grow along with the players without adding more swings and bigger numbers?
Yeah a lot of their designs are reactive and take feedback from pervious games , which despite sometimes resulting in over corrections , it's very much necessary . Like with elden ring trying to reduce R1 spam compared to ds3 and make ashes of war / weapon arts useful . Or bosses requiring multiple parries ...etc Some of these changes aren't perfect though , for example delayed attacks are there to change up combat and discourage you from roll spamming but they're so frequent that it's more annoying than anything As for the long combos , i think for the most part it's a good change, especially with them trying to tighten the combat and make bosses look more cinematic . Going back to old games shows just how easy and simplistic 95% of bosses are and i don't think they can go back to that with the skill of the fanbase increasing like you said
Yeah, they’re trying to stick to a very basic combat and movement system that needs more serious changes if they want to keep up with the increasing speed, complexity, and aggression of bosses. This is something Bloodborne and Sekiro exceed in, and I think Elden Ring only kind of does, by allowing you to become just as bullshit as the bosses, and power creep is so unfun.
This has been the exact thing thats been bothering me with their last few games. Worried not because they're bad but because I'm worried the pendulum might be swinging to fat in the opposite direction. I remember when Orphan of Kos was the peak difficulty boss in their games. And they have like 3 bosses with maybe equivalent difficulty in Elden Ring and AC6 I think videos like Joseph Anderson's and theDeModcracy's critiques of the boss design seem to confirm that this is something being felt across the board. And its hard to talk about because I think people take the critiques as meaning that the game is bad when it isnt. It could just be better Edit: Thank you for being controversial. Ive found myself disagreeing with as many of your videos as I wholeheartedly agree with. Its refreshing if not a painful experience to have my preconceived notions challenged. There's a need for people who push the boundaries and critique established ideas. But there's less of an audience. Its comfortable and pleasing to hear people reaffirm my feelings but it necessary to have them challenged. Thank you.
AC6 doesn't even have anything as difficult as Shadows of Yharnam, let alone Orphan of Kos lmao. Genuinely the easiest game they have released in many years.
@@spiceforspice3461 Firstly, Shadows of Yharnam isn't hard unless you refuse to parry. Genuinely the easiest game theyve released? Yeah that doesnt sound genuine at all. Youre being intentionally oblivious. From's games have always had people complaining about difficulty and unfairness but theyve been particularly loud with Elden Ring and AC6. So I mean, quantitatively youre just wrong. Orphan is an endgame DLC boss whereas Balteus is very early in the game. There's a reason they called him "The Filter". And in a game where build customization is paramount its crazy that they'd introduce him so early when players have very little gear at this point in the game without quitting out and farming previous levels. The biggest testament to this is on my 2nd playthrough I beat him first try (pre nerf). Or consider how many players go into that fight not understanding the rock-paper-scissors of "energy weapons beat shields". Or just how important omnidirectional movement is in this games esp for evading the fire swipes. Or even the storm of rockets. None of these thigs are "bad" design. What makes them bad is that its all at once this early in the game. If you had told me he was an endgame boss, I would have believed you. And honestly there's only a handful of bosses after Balteus that are even nearly as challenging. Minus Ibis, Sea Spider and the final boss, I'd say none of them trump Balteus in terms of difficulty. Fromsoftware really needed to convey certain lessons before this boss fight. Which is weird because they used to be really good at this (like teaching plunging attacks in DS1). And thats not even mentioning input reading, the ricochet mechanic and how both of those make most mid to long range weapons obsolete
it's mainly because you went into them thinking you were le epic souls veteran and didn't need easy mode just to get filtered by enemies slightly delaying their attacks so you can't spam roll
@@austin0_bandit05 "The same guy who directed and designed Dark Souls 3 bosses (miyazaki) and the same guy in charge of Bloodborne's combat, Sekiro's combat and bosses (yamamura) completely forgot how to make good boss fights in just 2 years" I think my theory of you thinking it was going to be a breeze is more likely, new players aint complaining it's always the ones that came prior thinking it's going to be a cakewalk, refusing to acknowledge that you may need to git gud again
15:10 I agree she didn't need a nerf. But also machine guns work fine on her. I beat her using two cheng submachine guns, a laser dagger swap and a sweet sixteen swap on a light build. I think they nerfed her tracking on her melee wave attacks. But if you know how the targeting system works in this game it becomes really easy to dodge. Most attacks in this game shoot out where you are going to be. Not where you are. So if you are moving left, dont dodge left. Dodge to the right. The attacks track your movement so you need to dodge in the opposite direction that you were just going in to confuse the fcs tracking.
as a huge malenia hater, I really appreciated this video, as I think the biggest problem with malenia is how little the game does to prepare you to fight her my biggest problem with elden ring in general is actually that it's too easy, and a big part of that is how poorly it prepares you for the few challenges it does present
I mean there’s no rule that the game has to “prepare” you for anything. Also, she’s a secret optional boss that’s supposed to be super hard. It’s not supposed to be something you’re very prepared for. She’s supposed to feel jarringly powerful. Also, challenge can be very subjective. Not just based on skill but also build and playstyle. So what fights are blowouts and what fights are challenging is going to differ person to person. So you may have felt like most of the game was easy, but others may have been challenged all the way through.
Balteus is by far the hardest challenge in AC6. Honestly the knowledge from the fight alone makes you ready to tackle everything the game as the offer with relative ease, I'm by no means an expert at AC 6. I played under 30hrs, but I went back and beat him with the default AC equipped only with the pulse blade
My only problem with DS2 is that nobody could ever beat it without a guide. There’s so many very specific and often obscure things you have to do to progress the main game. It’s a minor nitpick because I otherwise love the game, and this issue can be solved by using a guide, but I feel like the main way forward should be clear even on a blind playthrough. In Elden Ring, the only time I ever had an issue playing blind was figuring out that you have to rest at gatefront to gain the ability to level up. Otherwise, the path forward is either clear, or an alternative is pretty easy to figure out with exploration, such as climbing the precipice if you don’t know about the dectus medallions.
Umm a hard or at least annoying enemy with pulse shield is placed before Balteus in an earlier mission. The helicopter teaches you how to dodge salvos of missiles and even looking for visual and ambient clues to when a big attack is coming. The bubble blower is also available very early in the game. You are given and taught everything needed to kill Balteus. Heck right before him, you fight an AC with a very viable build against him.
But AC6 does teach you to fly to avoid attacks. They explicitly tell you to fly over missiles in the tutorial boss. The chopper's two main lessons are to fly over missiles and to be aggressive. Same with the Juggernaut. You need to get close, assault boost over it and hit it's weak spot, ideally while still flying because it's elevated behind armor and then you need to fly over its land mines. Even the Strider teaches you to manage your flight. But players suck at learning new systems and if you tell them what to do, they'll forget about it right after they've won (like flying over missiles) so Fromsoft needs a wall, they need a do or die situation to hammer the game's play style into the players' minds. I actually think Balteus' biggest difficulty is the shield as it prevents stagger which means a lot of the most powerful builds in the game don't work against him but that is necessary to force players to get the message. The power of stagger is an imbalance that plagues the entire single player campaign but that's not really a flaw with Balteus. And yes, they did put that one mini-boss before Genijiro but Geni was still a massive wall for most players because we are trained to be stubborn
I personally didn't understand why people had so much trouble on balteus. I killed him 1st try (pre nerf). I just stayed close as much as possible. Used the ransetsu rf, haldeman, missiles, and the pulse blade. It was close but I got him. Then again I did come in to ac6 with a much better idea of how to play it well. I'm an AC veteran of the series. Also I'm a loser that plays way too much video games and I tend to get VERY good at games rather quickly. Understanding how to make effective use of the games verticality is super important. Also I've seen a lot of people really mess up capitalizing on stagger windows. The most effective builds follow a formula. You have a few weapons that are meant to build stagger, then you have either one or two weapons meant to do damage in acs overload. You really can't go wrong with this set up. Unfortunately AC6 has a few weapons that I believe are FAR too powerful and make the game pretty trivial. But you absolutely DO NOT need to use these on any bosses to beat them. I went through the game completely avoiding all the well known broken weapons on purpose to make it more challenging. Despite doing this I never once spent multiple hours on any boss. Hell I don't think any boss took me over like 20 deaths. Most of them I beat in under 5 tries or I one shot them. Idk if my perspective is just very skewed because I'm a freak, but in all honesty this game is nowhere near as hard as some people are saying it is. It's super fun. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I can honestly say that if you are struggling with it and are relying on the OP stuff. Try branching out. There's a lot more fun weapons and builds in this game. Don't just fall back on the same cookie cutter meta that everyone does. The game is the most fun when you use builds that you put together yourself that's unique. Don't just download code someone else's powerful build to beat it.
I was expecting this video to be "wah wah game need easy mode" But you actually gave legit reasons why these games feel unfair,i applaud you for that,but also get good
Im gonna disagree with one thing here. You stated that, before the Balteus encounter, the game makes the tools given hard to access. That doesnt make alot of sense to me as you can buy and resell any parts in the shop without values being altered, so you never really lose money. You just temporarily misplace it. The design on this portion of the game was very on point if you ask me. The reason i feel that way is because AC6 doesnt overwhelm you with hundreds of part combos. It gives you a basic version of each type of armament and keeps you limited to all types of builds you could possibly need to beat this boss AT THAT POINT IN THE GAME. This allows the players to sift through only a few choices at a time without overly strict consequences or wasted time and thought. This also teaches the player a very critical part of AC6: Adaptation and critical thinking. Examples being: If im not tanky/fast enough, alter frame. If im not breaking its shields, add pulse damage. Missles overwhelming me, rework booster system. To summarize, Balteus is an encounter that has the singular purpose of showing the player that there is no such thing as the perfect build, and that you will forever be adapting and reworking things according to the situation.
While Sekiro did do this with the mid-game Genichiro, the Guardian Ape, and the endgame Genichiro, I feel like the main one that it feels infuriating with is Genichiro. Struggling through all that for him to suddenly get a second wind and go "by the way, I can yeet lightning at you now." While it was hinted at with the Eel's Liver in the room prior with the Ashina Elite, it still would have been nice to see the final phase in the health bar beforehand to give a more cinematic transition and not just a "Surprise, have another phrase, fuckwit!" With the endgame Genichiro prior to Isshin, it didn't feel _as_ egregious, since it was a single health bar and all of his lightning stuff had been replaced with, if I remember right, a single move from the Black Mortal Blade, which is just the Enhanced Mortal Draw that Sekiro can also use. That fight screamed, "Okay, wait a second, this can't be the final boss, no way it's this simple," and then BAM, Isshin comes out.
Another growing problem From seems to have with its design is how much emphasis is being put on visual awe over readability. It's been a while since I played ER but I recall Elden Beast just filling my screen with effects I found it hard to see around and looking at AC6 there's just so much obscuring what happening, that last clip of AC in the video is quite hard to process there's so much; missile exhaust, manoeuvring jets, streaming energy weapons, an electric explosion, a flame trail, explosive ordinance all in a 3 second span... It makes me appreciate that bit in Spider-Man where Doc Ock gives Peter the design note about the white highlights in order to make enemies react slower; imagine if he wore the costume, had a strobing neon lining while setting fire to the place and throwing flashbangs and his webs had high vis fibres.
Over the years I realized that simply moving the camera farther away from your character when you fight larger enemies would be a massive help in FromSoftware games. I'm not a programming guru but it shouldn't be that hard to implement. They could write code that takes the enemy's height, length or width into consideration and moves the camera further in relation to that value. It would be especially helpful for melee oriented characters because dragon fights are a spectacle for miracle and sorcery users but for melee users it's just looking at dragon feet LOL. There are games that do this. Newer Assassin's Creed games come to mind first and they do it for regular human fights too because it's easier to react that way when 3 or 4 enemies surround you. Even From did it somewhat for Midir. When you walk up to him the camera moves farther a tiny bit.
placing enemies before a boss to ‘warm you up’ to the mechanics of said boss isn’t the only solution to new boss mechanics. For instance, I personally felt ac6 encouraged the use of different weapons and testing builds for different challenges, when i was met with balteus i tested new weapons, and ended landing on pulse blade and pulse guns for their effectiveness against pulse shields and critical damage. Players who ignored this and try to brute force their way through encounters with a single build will be punished by this.
Placing enemies that let the player see the mechanics of balteus before you encounter balteus would certainly make balteus more fair, but it would make a blander experience. What makes Balteus really memorable to me is the whole "oh shit" moment where this overwhelming enemy just appears as a surprise at the end of the level, and that moment would be much weaker if you understood how all of Balteus' mechanics worked before you got to the fight
Tough but fair to me means that although their games can be hard at times, all the games have many ways to make them easier and in some cases there are ways to straight up make the difficulty a joke. Some games, when they are hard are just hard and your going to struggle for hours and either get lucky or give up. I honestly believe anyone can beat the from games even if they have to look up some strats, some game, no amount of googling will help you with the game.
FromSoftware games became less Fair and Balance from DS3 on. And it makes sense,we have learn from Demon Souls/DS1/DS2 how to play this games and there is no way You can keep "Hard but Fair" forever. They had to find another way to keep the FromSoftware challenging gameplay or fanboys would have start bitching that "The game is too easy" or "This doesnt feel like a Souls Game".I love Elden Ring,but that game is a shit fest of unfair and unbalance,haha. And I take ir,because I understand FS is an víctim of there own fame and "Game concepts",they can't do "normal fair/balance games" like un the old days anymore.
Pre-nerf Balteus is the hardest boss I faced, and I'm about to finish NG1. I took 2 hours on him. 20 minutes on Ibis, 1 hour 30 minutes on the final boss for the fires of raven ending (both who died immediately after I took a missile boat out because I was tired of their dodge spamming at ranges farther than most weapons). Though to be fair, I was trying to keep my distance from Balteus when fighting him, because I thought that's what the game wants you to do. Part of the reason why I kept distance is because in a lot of shooters, you want to keep distance so you don't take damage, so I wanted to reduce as much damage as possible so I could live. Then on top of that the helicopter would shred me anytime I tried to close the distance, and it regularly goes out of bounds so you can't melee it even if you do try. So I thought the game was supposed to be played at range (also I didn't know about the richochet mechanic until the tutorial. I just never see it in gameplay). Doesn't help that I assumed the starter core was supposed to represent the "intended way to play", and the turner is rather long range and I had a lot of fun sniping things with it in the earlier levels until I replaced it. Turns out the entire game is all about closing the distance and being super aggressive. I only learned this with Balteus because I was getting so friggin bored of the boss fight that I wanted to do something silly and with the double Ludlows. This then made everything else in the game a cakewalk. In NG I played Balteus after the nerfs. My gosh they nerfed him so hard, I beat him on my first try. Only real difference is that I use 2 starter rockets, had 1 ludlow in the right hand, and had a pile bunker in the left hand. I was even being extremely sloppy. Gotta way for the next NG to out-missile Balteus now. I constantly ran out of ammo with Balteus and Spider before the nerfs, so it's weird to be able to mow them down with plenty of ammo to spare. The random difficulty spikes/whatever generally breaks the fourth wall so hard whenever I play AC 6. I had to take breaks a few times because of it. I'm just here to experience the pretty visuals, skating mechs, and story. (maybe pvp later)
The problem with Melania isn't any of her moves, it's the fact that in an action RPG she invalidates builds. You wanted to build you character with an emphasis on sheilds now that they actually gave some love to shield builds. No, she heals through the shield. Perhaps you created a paladin as thats super popular throughout all the souls games No, she has 80% holy resist People will say just respec into something for her but that shouldn't be the point of an RPG at all.
Unfortunetly most bosses in ER are holy resistant. I personally like how she counters tanks, but they probably could make it better, although I love her lifesteal. And I would say, that always some builds were pretty useless for some bosses in these games.
The holy resist may be bad, but you can still put the flame enchantment on your weapons instead of the holy one. The shields are absolutely not invalidated, they are balanced instead, if she wouldn't have the ability to lifesteal fighting her with shields would be ridiculously easy, like most other enemies in the game, you just got to roll every time she has a combo finisher, like the thrust attack. She's just asking you not to mindlessly hold L1 and spam R1, which you could have done until that point in the game, and you can easily outdamage her heal doing so. You can also infuse your poking weapon of choice with bleed and the fight will be over in 1 minute. You Malenia shield complainers never tried to use shields
The Sulla fight right before Balteus is the tutorial for Pulse Shields/Weapons. You unlock the first shield right before this mission and Sulla has a Pulse Rifle that melts it. You don't have a Pulse Rifle yet, but you start the game with a Pulse Blade and Ayre tells you Balteus has a Pulse Shield and you need a pulse weapon to counter it. So your own shield counters his missiles, and the Pulse Blade counters his shield. The game gives you all the tools and info you need unless you're one of those knuckleheads who skips all the cutscenes and dialog, only ever tries the one build and strategy, then complains "the game didn't tell me" how to do something.
For your information, the boss nerfs were very minor. Balteus took a small hit to missile tracking, sea spider has slightly less resistances, and cel240 deals slightly less damage on some phase-2-exclusive attacks. That's it
I played hollow knight and it‘s one of my favourite games because its hard but fair. What I think is a prime example is that in hollow knight the health is displayed in steps. Every hit deals one damage. This leads to the game having to make the bosses harder by design and not just seemingly random damage output.
As an absolutely fervent From fanboy at this point who genuinely sees these games as works of art, I must say that this analysis was really fair and well-reasoned, it towed the line between not being too critical while also pinpointing the flaws that do exist to some extent where the balancing issues are concerned. No game is flawless, and even though some of From's works like Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne and Elden Ring are among the best I have ever played, period (and AC6 was fantastic too now, as is Sekiro and basically all their other games, honestly), there are definitely trends and traits at play here that CAN be improved, and should be contemplated moving forward. Here's hoping the DLC of Elden Ring shows some real refinement on some of these fronts that you mentioned, and addresses the issues with balancing and excessive traits with boss fights in particular, so as to produce some really iconic bosses just as From's prior DLCs have managed so brilliantly (especially with The Old Hunters and the DaS3 DLCs). There is always room for improvement, and if anyone can keep raising the bar, it's Miyazaki and company at From. Either way, great video and cool analysis, glad I watched it, it expressed a lot of fair points I have contemplated before with others in a pretty eloquent and compelling manner!
deserves more views, great video with great editing. thoroughly explained with quick and abundant examples of each point. jokes were funny and illustrative too. i appreciate the representation of the sentiment we all feel about shit being annoying or obtrusive and overcoming it sometimes being the point and the conflicted feelings around it. i feel like these are problems most felt by the people who love the games the most. also cool AC
Fromsoft game difficulty be like: if your laying on your side or half awake or just lacking in a few braincells I can be the hardest game ever made” meanwhile ghost and goblins be like: you pressed the start button, now go back to the last checkpoint.
I get the sense that the developers at Fromsoft feel they have this obligation to live up to the public image they've garnered over the years (being the hardest games in the industry and all that jazz) for the souls games which in turn has kind of affected how they design the bosses and enemies. Bosses for instance just feel a lot more homogenized now since almost all of them have super crazy patterns to learn, fake gotcha moves to cover any conventional punishes you might have been thinking of doing and multi-phase fights are being used a lot more flippantly now than they were before. At a certain point it just gets a bit tedious without something less drastic to break them up, heck I wouldn't be surprised if they start having more bosses that just One Wing Angel you from across the field with no way to stop it going forward.
The HP bar is more of a psychological thing. Seeing your hits do tons of damage to a boss feels good ans will affect your approach. Seeing your weapon do a miniscule amount of damage will make you feel weak as fuck. Also, we all know how frustrating it feels dying to a boss with a small amount of health because you got greedy.
My example is the Dark Souls 3 Ringed City DLC. Dark Souls 3 is mostly on point in terms of overall gameplay challenge/ fairness feel. My list of complaints is basically just the Curse Rotted Greatwood being a test of your ability to wrestle the free aim camera,, Deacons of the Deep are a bit obtuse, the command grab of the Jailers is kinda jank, along with a small smudge on the Nameless King fight, where the combination of featureless ground and invisible walls was a bit eh. The Dreg Heap and Ringed City feels... different. Taps from small enemies deal very high damage, enemies in hitstun are no longer safe, and the sort of intuitive feeling of threat assessment gets broken, at least for me. It's like suddenly playing a different game. Which, maybe as the final DLC, that was intentional. I love Dark Souls 3, but the Ringed City is a bit of a sore thumb that feels more tedious than challenging to run into, If that makes sense.
One thing that makes from software stand out to me is just how much I can play the games before I get irreversibly bored of them. Most open world games I’ll play once or twice and never again cause the gameplay is never all that good but I’ve played Elden ring for 400 hours and I still pick it up every couple weeks which is really good considering it’s an very long game with lots of downtime. And then dark souls 3 I have over 1200 hours in. All of their games I can easily play over 200 and be satisfied with every playthrough and no other game besides arcade shooters can do that. Even then my sessions with shooters usually last less than 2 hours.
Personally in ER all I take issue with is enemy moves where there is no clear solution. Waterfowl and Maliketh's anime swish moves feel like good examples of it. I still feel like I have to be clairvoyant to dodge them consistently.
@@duckdodgers1953 have you played the game? The whole point of both of the moves I mentioned is that blocking them is not ideal in the slightest. Waterfowl can quickly tear through your stamina unless you've got a quite sturdy shield and heals Malenia a bunch, and Maliketh's anime swooshes deal a bunch of holy damage that penetrate most shields, and the destined death effect goes right through your shield. When moves leave you in a significantly worse position after blocking them, it feels like the game is *maybe* trying to tell you something...
@@jankbunky4279 Yes I have. Gamers just have a cognitive block around enemies healing themselves and chip damage. See also Marge's daggers, that can also be blocked (but people act like the chip on an already low damage attack makes blocking unviable) Block the first waterfowl flurry. Dodging the rest is easy afterwards. The ridiculous tracking is only on the first flurry, and Malenia getting 10% of her HP back per waterfowl is nothing if you can stay on the offensive instead of being passive For Maliketh: you can suck it up to some damage if you notice the ridiculous amounts of attacks that can be avoided just by walking/sprinting. Noticing those takes some trial and error, so people who skip on shield altogether often don't notice it My first playthrough was with 21/22 str/dex, longswords/guts sword/halberds/nagakiba depending on the mood. And a shield, because experimenting with defensive options when failure means eating up full damage is for masochists... or for people who think a game that gives everyone a shield doesn't want you to use shields
Completely agree. I think it boils down, ultimately, to one thing. From Software knows their games are known for being difficult. Because of that some of these bosses, like Melania, have mechanics that make it more of a chore to beat them than a fun challenge. I have personally never beaten Melania, not because she's "too hard", but because the health she gets after every attack makes her fight just straight up not fun to master. Like I said, it becomes a chore instead of a challenge. I think that's why I didn't end up beating AC6. As much as I wanted to love that game, and I really wanted to, there were too many aspects of the game that seemed like "hard for the sake of being hard" instead of a well-balanced fight that is fun to master. And that there is the key difference of AC6 from other From Software titles. Normally, I'd have no issue with the occasional boss being stupid like in the case with Melania and Balteus. But with AC6, it just felt like that boss after boss after boss. I'd get super easy arenas and areas to traverse with some easy bosses in the middle, then all of a sudden, a boss comes in that takes me HOURS to just get through the first phase of. I hope they iron this stuff out going forward, because I really do love From Soft and their games.
Haha, you’ve got excellent taste in games brother. For me, it’s Sekiro on top for having the best combat mechanics ever. 2- Elden Ring 3- Bloodborne Interesting perspective on Fromsoft. I can’t say I agree 100% but you make some good points. Good video, thanks! 😎👍
Yeah I sort of notice that a lot of the newer games just... don't tell you enough. I'd really appreciate knowing about things BEFORE i encounter them in a boss fight.
The fact they made Sekiro and AC6 as good as they did tells me they are more than just great Souls-like devs. They are IMO the top developer in the world right now. Personally I would prefer their next game be more Sekiro than Elden Ring but I would not be upset if the next game is Elden Ring 2.
I actually think the reason these games are so addictive and fun is because of it's unfairness. The game is actively spitting on you, and it's nice when I get to spit back. It's just always a challenge because you can truly never be sure you're safe.
I agree. One of my favourite moments in my second ds1 playthrough was getting up to the silver knight archers in Anor Londo. On my first playthrough, it took me about 20 attempts to cheese the knight into faling off the edge. My second playthrough, I parried him a couple times and killed them both first try. It's such a great moment when something finally clicks and what once felt completely unfair becomes something you can easily overcome.
Ac6 issue is balancing when it comes to your equipment. By the end of the game I only had 2-3 builds all of which used mostly the same weapons and parts. Elden rings main issue is having endgame bosses being designed like sekiro but not having sekiro counters. Sekiro does this by forcing you to fight demon of hatred like a souls boss but you have access to the combat of ds3 but in ER you don’t have deflects or any other mechanic to counter boss spam.
Bro i absolutely LOVE soulslikes but was drawn away from fromsoft games because of the infinite wank from their community. If i don't like something about a fromsoft game I'm somehow a bad gamer since fromsoft can do no wrong 😂. But recently they've been going above and beyond. My favourite FS game is Sekiro then Elden Ring tho both are equally goated to me
@johnysimps1191 Trust me fam i feel you, i legit skipped Elden Ring because i honestly wasn't interested at the time and for me it just didn't look different enough from the other games FromSoft made specifically the DS trilogy besides the open world aspect and jump button 🤷🏾♂️, not to say the game is bad but it just wasn't as hype to me as the general public felt about it. Lies Of P does have similarities ofcourse but the Fairy tale story, Weapon breaking and assembling system and other aspects about it made me feel like it was actually worth trying since it was atremtping to do atleast one thing different. Hopefully Lords Of The Fallen will go beyond my expectations like LOP did 💪🏾💯.
@@duveysgamingacademia6587 Elden Ring is basically ds4 so if the ds games weren't to your liking, it probably won't change your mind. For me, they made enough improvements for me to finally be on board with it and it's a pretty solid game altogether. The reason why i love the genre instead of the OG ds series is because everyone else *tries* to out their own spin on it. While ds is refining their same formula (which is a good formula). Naturally, this makes soulslikes hit or miss but once in a while we get bangers. Stuff like Thymesia, Nioh, salt and sanctuary, code vein etc. Aren't exactly perfect games but I'd play them anyday over most of the FS titles just because of how much they shake up the experience Edit: Check out the "Where winds meet" gameplay showcase. That game is looking like GOTY material
In Elden Ring you should need an easier progression to follow. I mean, once you beat Margit (from level 30 is manageable) you beat Godrick and then Rennala and these three feel balanced in progression. However, your next boss should be Radahn and he is ... well, too much difficult than Rennala (and also boring, because of the arrow thing). Then it becomes again balanced, because after that Leyndall and Ranni's mission are well balanced (even with astel, another pseudo-arrow bullshit thing). But then you get to late game and it becomes pain after pain. Enemies hit so hard you can't learn well how to deal with them, and you end up cheesing them. I didn't have this sensation in Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 (however, I don't like the DLC bosses in the latter as they feel a bit over the top for my taste for the same reasons the ones in Elden Ring do). I would rather have the games teach me how to play them than they just being difficult. I loved Dark Souls 1 and I still love it. I did enjoy a lot Demon's Souls for the same reason (and Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3). And some parts of Elden Ring. On the other hand, I think I should give Sekiro a second chance (I beat it, but I did not enjoy it as much as a Dark Souls because it was a bit frustrating and I had the sensation my character died too soon and I have to play it perfectly everytime, which destroyed the feeling of adventure I had in DS).
In Elden Ring I personally appreciate that progression isn't totally straightforward. After Liurnia you can go to Altus or Caelid and both are ok options.
@@jankbunky4279I agree, but it’s SO unclear and unsteady it’s a bit ridiculous. You don’t really have the information to make that choice, where if you did, the choice would be a lot more engaging. Limgrave to liurnia is fair, then you have to turn around and go to caelid, which is a MASSIVE difficulty spike, then you go to Ranni’s questline and Altus and Leyndell, which is fine and scales consistently, maybe even a little less than it could’ve been. Then you go to Mt Gelmir, which is a slight spike, but not unreasonable. Then you go to mountaintops, and every area past it, which are about 30-50 levels higher than the previous areas, and it becomes utterly ridiculous. You don’t scale fast enough with the areas. You go from being 5 shot by Morgott to being 1-2 shot by REGULAR ENEMIES. It’s ridiculous! Either the previous areas should have higher scaling to lower the spike and adjust the player scaling to accommodate, or the later areas should have had lower scaling. Personally, I would’ve preferred the former, but the fact that neither happened is SO frustrating, even as someone who loves elden ring. Difficulty spikes can be really fun and challenging, but when the difficulty spike is the ENTIRE last 1/3rd of the game, it becomes a serious problem.
I don’t get the complaints about Balteus. I beat him pre nerf without looking up any guide or tips just fine. Ya it was hard and took several attempts and changing parts. Which all felt appropriate given how the game hypes this fight as being the point in the story when you go from just earning a rep to plot getting thicker and the fight being setup as a fight for survival. It’s very much a “okay we gave you time to really get used to the controls, do some customization and get familiar with how missions and some bosses work. Now here’s the REAL test of what you’ve learned and earned so far.”
Props to you for offering critique to these fromsoft games. Folks like to be critical to soulslike while singing all fromsoft games praises when the very same criticism would apply to them. You gave a good example with the ds1 boss in a confined space with minions. If that was a level in Nioh everyone would clip and ship that shit up to TH-cam to trash it.
making fable and charge attacks not have poise in lies of p is one of the worsts things i ever saw in a game, because most enemies are REALLY fast and fable charges fairly slow, using fable arts(at least slower ones) feel like a gamble instead of a reward, if they would have gave poise to slow handles, it would greatly balance them to fast handles, even though their damage is roughly the same(assuming youre using the same blade)
Good video, but they're absolutely not even close to being the best game developer. Their PC ports are, at best, average, and they seem to essentially only release the same game repeatedly.
15:56 I hope they haven’t nerfed her I can’t really tell the difference but she is fair and somebody named “let me solo her” made it clear example that you can beat her with proper timing in fact, if you go to for farem mazula and get maliketh’s black blade and come back and kill her you can easily deal with
My issue is the fact they somehow mess up the multiplayer and pvp after making the same game 10 times, getting rid of covenants but still keeping blues? Cmon bruh
13ish+ years of playing DS1 and i still dont beat O&S first try. Definitely NOT a fair fight, no matter how pretentious people talk about them. You can beat them but there are absolutely times they will behave differently. Sometimes theyll bum rush you together and its not “one is fat and hard and one is fast and chippy”. Theyre both fast AF if they decide to be. Sometimes smough is slow, sometimes hes a bull the WHOLE time. But I LOVE that. Its still rewarding to beat them even all these years later! I love how unfair these games were, and love to challenge myself with stupid challenge runs and im not a streamer, just love the game that much. Its mah favorite of the whole bunch to this day.
You CAN tank though damage in lies of P with poise, particularly with the Holy Sword of The Ark (and other special weapons). The special weapon fable attacks seem to have a lot more poise than anything else in the game. I haven't noticed a single regular weapon skill that doesn't get interrupted. I feel like there is so much about Lies of P that isn't know yet. It's weird how so many people have different and often times conflicting information about the game, and don't know a lot about it's mechanics. For instance I've seen numerous youtubers say it's impossible to respec in the game (when you can respec more in the game than in any other Souls/Borne game - you just have to wait until a bit later in the game to do it). Gotta disagree with the argument about Balteus though. I beat him on my 3rd attempt (pre-patch) because there is a similar enemy that you encounter before him with a pulse shield, and I discovered energy weapons did a lot of damage. And you are given access to some of the best energy weapons in the game at this point (both for hands and shoulders). The main thing is you have to change your playstyle. He's much quicker and requires a lot more movement and boost to be used against him - I was constantly attack boosting. Honestly he didn't need a nerf at all, imo. IBIS on the other hand... I genuinely felt like some of her attacks were legit unavoidable, and that's one thing I don't like in these games. Everything should be able to be avoided if you have high enough skill. Lastly, I'll say that I do agree about the patches, nerfs and balancing. FromSoft has gotten insane with the amount of patches they're putting out. I understand with multiplayer, but the single player portion needs to be play tested to the point that patches aren't needed, or at the very least limited to one patch. The fact that they're STILL patching Elden Ring going on two years later is ridiculous. I'm tired of learning playstyles and weapons only to have them change. And it really sucks that they're doing it with Armored Core VI, which is such a smaller game that should have been balanced on launch. The player base should not be your play testers. Anyway, good video and I appreciated your opinions even if I didn't agree with them all.
You have everything you need to beat Balteus from the very beginning. My loadout at that time was a slightly lighter version of the starter build with a slightly stronger rifle. I beat him first try by brute forcing. He's very weak to melee tactics, as long as you're aggressive and stay on him he can't really hurt you too much. You're stronger than you think in AC6, and playing scared can get you killed. Kinda like Sekiro in that regard.
1:55 they are not that bad this is my first from soft game I feel like a lot of people don’t understand Elden ring gives you options 24 months ago you had, bleed builds, magic builds and mimic tear to fold anything that remotely looked at you and correctly currently You can a incantations build, magic build or Proc as many status as possible It’s only painful because you’re inflexible bastard if you want the game to be be easier without cheesing golden vow, plus dragon crest, great shield, talisman, pretty much alleviates and 90% of the problems you will have in the game when it comes to damage you’ll be taking and if for some stupid reason you’re like level 80 squaring up against Radagon the mimic tear and use black flame incantations this will get the job done. In fact, it will work on the majority of major bosses however it will not work with malekith or malenia but with enough elbow, grease and spit shine in the right kind of build centered around that one attack you beat pretty much everything in Eldon ring while your meat shield take some most of the damage you can also use magic or just malekith’s swords when you get a healthy level 150-180 is enough to make it to where you shouldn’t have to attempt the boss more than 20 times provided you’re paying attention my character is level 316 and you can just steamroller everything with enough level investment around this level, you start approaching the power of the demigods themselves with the right set up around 250 you can legitimately trade with them in combat and win. elden ring’s bosses aren’t unfair you’re just stagnant the game gives you too many tools to beat ass for you to complain and even so there’s nothing a higher level will not do in Elden ring remember people try to say the difference is marginal between levels 150 and 713 No the difference is astronomical between level 150 and 200 and the power gap is even more severe at level 300 in terms of PVP it’s irrelevant, but in terms of PVE you’re practically Unkillable when you’re trying
The tough but fair element to my understanding means you and them are on a similar playing field maybe advantage for them. It means you aren't op af, you can and will die but then you learn how to not die, unlike other games where it's very unfair for your enemy's. it's a tough game but fair enough they will mess you up like you can mess them up Edit: grammer
10.13-10.20 that's actually bad imo. it means that the normal mechanics don't mean shit. it's either you have the required item, or you don't. it's also unfair in cases like lady butterfly where you can't farm the required item. this is something i had about consumables in these games: so many of them are so limited, that it discourages experimentation: if you use them early to try out new ideas, then you won't have them later on when you've learned more about the boss. but if you want to us them late, then you have to first develop a very specific, very strict way of fighting the boss, before you get to try anything new
I agree with almost everything you said here. Though I want to bring up that the faults you pointed out in Dark Souls 1 are largely due to the unfinished nature of the 2nd half of the game (which you may already know), and Miyazaki himself apologized for Bed of Chaos. So at least that wasn't intentional on their part. I wonder why you presented Tomb of the Giants as if you are required to navigate it in pitch-black. The area before that gives you a light source to use (a skull lantern is a guaranteed drop from at least one of the necromancers in the Catacombs) and you can obtain the Sunlight maggot before this too. Did you have "camera auto wall-recover" turned on for DS1 too? That was the setting that made the camera have a seizure for me on my first time. Turning it off largely (but not completely) mitigated the problem.
I think there is also an argument to be made about the... QUESTIONABLE state of PVP in souls games... buuuuut that's a can of worms not everybody wants to open. Plus the points in the video were exclusively made about the PVE side of the games
I think its fine, or even good when these games have some unfairness, not saying they make deliberated unfairness, for most of the cases is either an oversight or the lack of testing and development, but if the stakes are low I think a bit of a reality check helps a lot to give a touch of authenticity, the world isn't fair and while videogames are meant to be played and beated many of these unfair situations and bosses were needed to push our limits in a truly unfair situation, and that makes even more satisfactory to beat them, because we overcome not just adversity but unfairness, when videogames imitates life to this point they don't feel like just games and thats awesome, I wish not just from soft, but more studios were confident on our ability to take a punch with maturity and add some unfairness on purpose
there's a mini boss at the end of the invisible enemy mission with pulse shields before Balteus though??? the pulse gun's description even says it's strong against pulse shields??? enemy ACs are the only ones that heal since they have everything you can have??? Walter even tells you to take to the air to avoid getting hit??? why does it feel like people playing ACVI can't pay attention??? or read??? I "got it" immediately and it was my first AC game?????????
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Miyazaki will be weeping into his mountain of gold
No this video will shake FS to their core and miyazaki will personally hire me as his assistant 😡
@@AsadAnjum You mean he will portray you and anyone who tries to stop him breaking into your house as a gank boss
*weeping in his mountain of feet
Souls*
Their biggest problem is making every other dev studio look like incompetent money grabbers
Wouldn't put "every" but a good chunk fs.
@@Comicbroe405 which studio/games do you think compare or are better? I'm not a fanatic. You can relax 😂
@@johnysimps1191 Larian Studios. CAPCOM's main teams. Grinding Gear Games.
Honestly only other game that ever made me marvel at it was rdr 2 and i will always stand by that lol. Also played all of the souls games except 1 and 2. Bloodborne being my introduction is naturally one of my favorites like a first love. And sekiro and it truly baffles me when people say its one of the hardest, i feel like its one of the easiest, as soon as you get the rhythm and parry at the right time the game literally becomes so easy i had to actually make it harder by ringing that demon bell and the thing you can give kuro in ng+ and it was still too easy cause all that mattered was breaking the enemies poise
@@johnysimps1191 I'd say Larian is very comparable to fromsoft when it comes to quality.
One thing that I would love for every Fromsoft game to have is somekind of Boss rush or gauntlet. I wouldn't have too get through another new game plus cycle just to challenge the boss again. This feature just makes me love Sekiro even more, and I hope Fromsoft adds it to all their titles moving forward.
Agreed. It's also so nice for capturing footage. I don't have a lot of storage space and end up having to delete old gameplay a lot, so being able to hop into sekiro and immediately capture footage from any boss is such a blessing. For the other games I sometimes need to use clips from other people cause I can't be bothered to play 10 hrs of ds1 over again just to get 5 seconds of orenstein and smough footage
Thank you DS2 for Bonfire Ascetic
Adding onto this. A feature I want from every game with bosses at all is the ability to go into like a training mode with the boss and test the ai. Learning from bashing your head against a boss until you magically beat it or watching a pro beat it don’t necessarily help all the time. If I want to practice dodging waterfowl just lemme fight malenia who spams waterfowl of my own free will.
convergence mod has this
@@dank-bongripper9836 I'm on console
I don't mind fighting in a closed space where my weapons bounce off the walls. I mind that the boss's weapons do not. There's tons of unfair bullshit like that in Souls games. Projectiles going through other enemies so they still kill you. Enemy weapons literally hurting you through the walls. Same with fire.
Lies of P is even worse. Most of the bosses are frustrating to fight against
Just beat the game, but I'm still salty about it lol
Or how magic has a limited range for you, but not for the enemies!
That's an interesting point that I haven't actually noticed, but it's a fair critique. Enemies hitting you through walls is definitely odd and doesn't really mesh with the logic and setting of the games. You learn to deal with it eventually but yeah, definitely a fair criticism
@@bunnydoriyaeven in AC6 snipers somehow have a unknown weapon that can full damage from far beyond your range of scan or attacks
On the other hand: Balteus kinda teaches you that tweaking your mech is an option. A lot of playes prefer to enclose themselves into a box of sorts in any Fromsoft game. Decide on a build early, ignore other tools and just keep bashing their head against any wall they see until it eventually breaks.
I would agree with you if your money wasn't so low by the Balteus fight. Even if you do everything before balteus you only really have enough money to make slight alterations or trade in all the stuff you bought to buy a couple new things. It's way less easy to quickly add and hotswap your build, not to mention that if you wanna go to the garage and buy stuff (not just use stuff you already have) you need to exit the level first and then replay the whole thing, and it's one of the longer missions in the game. If anything I remember that ENCOURAGING me to stick with a build and bash my head against the wall over and over cause I didn't wanna do the whole mission over with a new build considering I didn't even know if it would be better or not
@@AsadAnjum Also I'd say FS is pretty bad at actually teaching stuff. They make good exams, that you usually can only pass if you understand how to play the game, but they kinda let you learn on your own. Rule discovery is fine and rewarding, but their games are also very punishing and some systems aren't necessarily the most obvious. Sometimes you don't even know there's something to learn.
@AsadAnjum The balteus mission is really short though. You get there in like 5 minutes at worst, not counting any Sulla deaths.
"just keep bashing their head against any wall" - ye, it's called R in RPG :) If we're talking about ER then changing your entire build works a bit different in Souls, considering you need respec and even then you are usually stuck with 1-2 weapons you were able to upgrade because materials are scarce on 1st run. I don't think comparison to AC is 1) fair 2) at all needed - stop blending these games in your head into one Fromsoft product - let's have some variety instead of everyone running every build.
@@justaquietpeacefuldance Yes and no. You can still mess around with buffs, consumables, summons, weapon arts(or prosthetics in Sekiro). I have a friend who just sells everything and claymores his way through the game.
Lies of P does this very well by the way. You can tweak around a lot without full respec.
After Balteus, I don’t understand any of the controversy with the difficulty spikes in ac6- it’s a game about experimentation and adaptation and if you can manage that then the game’s difficulty is fine
Agreed. Pre-Balteus you don't have enough options like you do later which is a big contributer to why it feels so jarring
Balteus in NG is the closest thing to an actual challenge in the entire game, and it's still nothing compared to any other from software game's hardest challenges (Manus, Friede, Frigid Outskirts, Orphan, Malenia, etc.)
@@spiceforspice3461 If there is one thing you should know as a FromSoft fan it's that the difficulty is extremely subjective, and varies vastly person to person. Some gimmick bosses are obviously easier (like Yhorm, Witch of Hemwick etc.), and I feel like it's objective to say the bosses in Demons Souls are easier than pretty much any other FromSoft game bosses, but some of the bosses in ACVI gave me much more trouble than Manus, Friede and a few Elden Ring bosses.
After balteus everything was pretty easy tbh arquebus balteus was a complete joke.
I personally found AC6 much more difficult than any of the bosses you mention. I’m experienced and skilled in souls combat, much less so in mech combat.
Funnily enough, Balteus was hard but felt very beatable so the multiple attempts didn’t feel frustrating. “I’m so close, I got this!” I’d say to myself. But when I hit Ibis, I wound up putting the game down for a few days because it felt like I needed a 5hr session to feed myself to the meat grinder and hope I won via luck. Extra feel-bads when I came back to a nerfed Ibis and nuked it first try, which made me think “was I just tilted and needed a break or did they neuter Ibis THAT much?”
I just wanna say that Rykard was such a breakthrough in Fromsoft boss design. We’ve gotten so many garbage gimmick bosses over the years, such as ceaseless discharge, yhorm, Wolnir, and executioner’s chariot. Rykard actually showed us how good a gimmick boss could be, by giving the weapon used to defeat him a varied and dynamic moveset, allowing him to be fought with other methods like spells, and genuinely making him methodical and hard to dodge, with small homing attacks constantly peppering you during the second phase. Fromsoft finally evolved the gimmick boss into what it was supposed to be: a Mario boss that’s nuanced and nails your balls to the floor.
Mario bosses are the unsung heroes of boss design tbh
I personally hate rykard. His ground quake is only possible to dodge if your close but has a position spit attack that forced you away. Also second phase skull attack just makes you run around for ages and also the lava has poorly telegraphed hitboxes on it and he also makes every build use the storm ruler.
Now your probably thinking doesn’t yhorm and storm king make you do the same? And actually no. Yhorm has a visceral mechanic for only non storm ruler damage where if you hit his weapon arm what he conveniently lets you hit after every attack he does you will get a stagger that allows you to get a storm ruler damage riposte. With storm king at least other ranged damage completely demolishes his health bar because he actually has very low health. Ancient wyvern once learned is easier to fight straight up with magic and status then plunge. Btw with both yhorm and ancient wyvern I actually prefer fighting them this way. Oh just to mention even divine dragon you can kill except the last hit without engaging with the gimmick at all.
I think fromsoft have actually done gimmick fight’s amazingly previously and purposely given other ways to fight them for the experienced. This design philosophy really wasn’t given to rykard so I hate him for that alone. Regardless I don’t like the fight though.
This video makes more fair points that I assumed. I also very much agree with your take on the unfair stuff in these games, like with dying to a mimic or getting hit by a fire barrel, which is unfair sure, but you can come back later and know what to do next time. But something like the bed of chaos just has no ways to prevent death sometimes
And as for the other part of the video that comes up later with enemy balancing, I also do agree with you
I thought the same thing about malenia when i first fought her, i looked up "waterfowl parry" to see how to do it and was extremely disappointed.
You're actually fighting a pulse shield mini-mini(micro?)-boss in the mission with the stealth enemies. Which is also a mission that focuses heavily on aerial movement especially in the last section. And this mission comes pretty much directly before Balteus. Maybe even exactly before Balteus, can't quite remember. You're also given the bubble guns right before that which absolutely destroy his shield and deal significant burst damage which is great for punishing stagger windows. All things that make Balteus rather simple.
So you definitely have the tools to beat him and the game does prepare you for at least 2 of the mechanics that make his fight difficult. Absolutely cannot agree with those criticisms. However his moveset is just really difficult to read and avoid without any I-frames and multiple tries and there is just no preparing for that other than practicing the general gameplay flow. And that difficult to dodge moveset was one of the things they nerfed actually. Wasn't a numbers downgrade or artificial nerf (if that is even a thing) it was a slight change in behaviour to make it more forgivable and easier to adjust for a new player.
E: Walter also repeatedly reminds you to use your aerial movement to your advantage starting from the very first mission where he tells you to dodge the helicopter's grenades by getting into the air. The game does give you hints. They're just not super in your face and maybe a lot of people miss them because it can be easy to miss dialogue when you're busy fighting for your life.
The AC fight right before give an example build to fight the boss with. Light, mobile AC with pulse gun and explosive weapon.
You list all those things but clearly it didnt work. There's a burden on the player to learn but there's also a burden on the developer to teach. Clearly the scale isnt balanced or they wouldnt call Balteus "the filter". Your argument is anecdotal -based on your experience and doesnt reflect the typical player.
@@Web-jz9rg Yeah Sulla is also one of the many enemies that punishes you for being on the ground with his bazooka. He also shows off a bubble gun. But I didn't want to bring him up as he only shows up literally seconds before Balteus and anything that you may have learned from him regarding gear you may not be able to translate into something useful immediately. Maybe if he had a separate missions it would have helped but I somehow doubt it.
@@austin0_bandit05Then the game isn't for the "typical player". Whatever that even means. Fromsoftware has always had this approach. They never spoonfeed you information be it lore or gameplay. They expect you to be a functioning adult who can pay attention and absorb information which I for one can appreciate. It's the same thing back when Sekiro came out and people complained that there was no easy mode. If the game is too hard for you then it just isn't for you. The devs have a vision and they have finalized it. And are now trying to adjust the game as much as possible without ruining their own vision.
And it's not entirely anecdotal evidence either. I have watched I'd say between 5 and 10 playthroughs now and there seemed to be a 33/33/33 split of people who got him within maybe 5 tries, people who took hours to beat him but enjoyed it and people who took hours to beat him and got frustrated. Now granted watching 6 or however many people is still rather anecdotal but it is not just my experience.
@@austin0_bandit05he tutorial missions and the first mission gives you a lot of tips and how things work like projectiles, explisions movility types of legs and so much more, if the player can adapt and use that info is their fault
I love this video. You articulated exactly what my unintelligible monkey brain was thinking about Fromsoft's recent approach to difficulty and the hasty nerfs these bosses are getting. The recent boss nerfs in Life of Pi also made me feel this way when the patch came in during my playthrough. I don't mind bosses doing bullshit, I just want a way to solve and punish that bullshit and do a "no u". I think that why Sekiro feels so satisfying to play.
And also I didn't get to play Elden Ring on release, so when I did defeat Radhan I felt lowkey sad because I was unable to experience the frustration that everyone else felt and I wish I got to fight him in his prime
I feel like the biggest problem is that most of the time they make the bosses and enemies just go against the core mechanica of the games. All of them do this but for the first chapters i think its ok, the camera system was new to them too (kinda at least) but with Ds3 i started getting bitter about enemies just janking the camera during combat.
With Elden ring, after more than 10 years of working with the same camera feature, its a cardinal sin to me. Because you can put one Ulcerated tree spirit in a place where half of it doesnt fit, but at after you do that for i dont know how many times just fuck off. I love how elden ring goes against the most basic idea of “dont try to screw yourself up” every time it can. The problem to me is that, fuck balancing on lategame bosses they are also kinda meant to be straight up unfair.
Not elden beast though, its just kinda boring unfortunately.
"I'm not even complaining, I'm just analyzing, which is the same thing but more pretentious" 😂
I just wish they would make seamless co-op. I don’t have a problem getting through the games alone it’s just more fun with friends. Especially Elden Ring.
Elden Ring had too many cheap deaths thrown in. Obviously there were a lot of times where I saw the mistake I'd made right before I died and thought "yeah, that's a learning moment" but a lot of the time I just died and was left thinking "Well I guess I'll just keep doing what I was doing and hope the RNG doesn't throw an unavoidable 1 hit kill with no tell at me again" or "Oh good, input reading. Guess those mechanics are off the table".
The obvious input reading gets old very fast.
Think so too! Too many cheap shots. Both times i finished Elden Ring i had 160+ Levels. Softcapping Vit to 40 is essential if you dont want to ride the Razors Edge of survival and thats often not enough, considering how hard Enemies hit later on.
@@christopherschneider2968only 40? You need that at 50-60 in endgame. It’s really frustrating honestly, I could easily beat DS3 at 27 vigor and never felt like I was too fragile, meanwhile 60 vigor in elden ring's endgame is necessary to avoid most basic enemies two shotting you! its more stat investment for less returns, which takes away from builds, which in return funnels players into meta builds to accommodate the relatively lower amount of stat investment they can afford to put into everything else. Having to dump vigor just….isn’t fun.
@@iheartblock3792 What i ment was softcapping to 40 is minimum. Sorry for the confusion. I agree with the Vigor Dump! Its not fun grinding levels so much.
@@iheartblock3792 I mean, I was lvl 160 by the end of Elden Ring while I was at the most 90 by the end of Dark Souls 3. Where are all those levels gonna go? Stats I don't need? The game is much longer so obviously you can't scale it the same as the other souls games. If DS3 was twice as long you probably would've needed twice as much HP.
Your description of learning how the movement works in AC6 is exactly why they emphasized before the game came out that "This is an Armored Core game, NOT a soulslike." They operate on fundamentally different systems.
The boss with the staircase was specifically designed to help you cheese/get away from the boss without being overwhelmed by the dogs….I use those stairs specifically to separate the 2 dogs from the boss so I can than 1v1 that boss.
Lava level I’m with you there, not my favorite.
I actually don’t mind the Capra demon. The point wasn’t to throw the player off, but to show the player that using the arena to your advantage can trivialize what at first seems to be an impossible gank.
I mean this is only true with weapons that won’t bounce off of the wall. As well if you don’t have poise simply getting to the stair case can be rng.
Oh yeah "tough but fair" is BS, but since it's a difficult game I think for a lot of people the instinct is to say "I'm not good enough so it's on me". Like when I complain about the inconsistent input buffers, people who don't understand what this is say there is no issue for them 😤 There's also that trend in the Souls community to play a very specific way with a pretty specific build that not only makes the games easier (despite what they say) but also avoids encountering a lot of the issues.
So unless you talk to people who invested *a lot* of time and are good enough, you don't see a lot of meaningful criticism. Anyways all this to say good video, refreshing to hear.
Also the mention of poise inevitably makes me think back to Elden Ring which basically didn't have a poise system until patches a few months later. That's the kind of stuff that makes you think "was this really playtested though?" Because when 90% of the spells are useless it's weird enough. But when they all suddenly get buffed patch after patch to a thing that seems obvious and what people were asking for, it does look like they just didn't finish making the game.
Same for the AC6 shop system honestly, I haven't played it but from what I've heard/saw there's really no reason for it being presented that way and not being more permissive. People are usually not switching strategies in games when it's free and easy.
In my opinion, i think fromsoft wants to balance the casuals and hardcore players to play fromsoft games that's why the difficulty design has no balancing, you can make the game either easy or hard depends on your build. That's what i think
This is like the first good take I’ve seen about this, I love Elden ring but I think you handled this really compellingly and maturely! Good job 😊
Tbh, I've only played elden ring, it was an amazing experience for me, every fight was challenging yes, but, I've never fought one boss more than 5 times before beating them, I don't understand why people dislike the difficulty, I've got platinum and I'm sitting at ng+7 on my longest save ... I've loved every moment and never found it too hard
This is an extremely good analysis video! Great work. When it comes to Dark Souls 1, I like to call it a masterclass in hostile game design. Because it does exatly these things you described. It's meant to infuriate and be unfair. It uses its bad camera to fuck you over, for example. I'm not saying it's not allowed to do that, as you mention, there's definitely an aspect of "overcoming the game itself", but to claim it's a fair game is delusional. :D
Definitely a good way to describe it. Imo ds1 is harder to get into for a new player than even demons souls because of how it's levels and encounters are set up (even tho DeS has a few more QoL problems)
Me: Wow this game is so hard but fair
Kalameet's hitboxes: NOW THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR ME
i think for the most part ds1 is mostly fair. i'm not denying that there were a few moments where it felt unfair and undeserved. the only things i consider truly unfair in the game is bed of chaos and gwyn, but i have developed a tolerance for the former over the latter.
note: what i've previously said is merely personal experience. i try not to be opinionated, which unfortunately a great chunk of the internet and a lot of people tend to be with anything.
@@yoman5029 It's mentioned in another comment, but the most unfair part about it is that any of the rules about weapon hitboxes, range, etc. don't apply to enemies. They swing through walls and other NPCs, their magic has unlimited range, they see you around the corner and land a perfect hit. That kinda stuff. Otherwise it goes into hostile territory in my opinion. Not unfair, but designed to specifically frustrate you into rage. All the tiny rooms where your camera is the actual boss, all the tiny walkways on ledges and the enemies placed there, the archers in Anor Londo, the toxic darts in Blighttown, the ghosts in New Londo, Bed of Chaos, I could just go on like that. And I don't want to call any of this unfair or change it in any way, but it's undeniably hostile and doesn't leave any room for mistakes. And there's a point to be made about perseverance here, but also it's one of the reasons many people bounce off of DS1.
And then there's Sen's Fortress, one of the most hated levels, which I think is neither unfair nor hostile. I think it's brilliant, because it's a puzzle. You actually have room for mistakes, everything is telegraphed, everything can be avoided/dealt with if you find the right way to do it.
Elden Ring and lies of p both implement a summons system to help struggling players with certain fights, and both are an absolute necessity for those late game boss fights if you don't want to simply "git gud". I really like these implementations because they still kept the boss experience epic and fun, while also not making it too easy. Lies of P has like eight of the eleven story bosses have second phases or second health bars which gave them entirely new move-sets and status effects. Having a summon to tank agro while I finished the first phase was really nice because it allowed me to learn combos and parry timings for those second phases while also allowing me to retain my heals. I really liked the summons implementations in these games but they're not for everyone. I didn't summon for Simon manus or Melania because I really enjoyed those fights and felt like I was depriving myself of that feeling that I am simply built different upon their defeat. Idk, cool system. And I know most soulsbornes have a summon system, but being able to summon a copy of myself is sick asf
As a ds1 fan. I really only struggled with early game elden ring bosses, late game were difficult but not frustrating. It was more just going through the motions, die a few times, learn the moves. Nothing of note. I wouldnt say it was fun tho. More just something I finished because I started it.
THIS!! This is the biggest problem with Elden Ring. Such a waste of resources even in it's current state. Game looks absolutely gorgeous, plays like ass then mocks you for failing whilst changing the rule set half way through EVERY single boss fight. (Margit with 11 hit combos, Godrick adding fire damage to many attacks, adding EXTRA hits to previous combos, Rennala just summoning dragons and armies of bloodhound knights, Godskins literally reading your inputs, Mohg healing and instant bleeding you, Morgott getting arena hazards and extending 11 hit combos into 20, Radahn's hitbox sometimes just has shockwaves on the ground for no reason, Magma Wyrms glitching into infinite lava breath, Night's Calvary-s resummoning their horse even if you killed the damn thing, big enemies being stance broken, then unable to be critical'd because geometry said f-you!, Making super open arenas then sticking 2 hyper aggressive enemies with long combos and input reading in your face and saying goodluck (godskin, crucible knight + misbegotten, duo watchdogs, duo tree sentinels) Rykard having AoE stagger around him at all times both phases, overlapping attack patterns in second, Malenia...) Damn, I can keep going, think the point's been made. Hopefully people will call them out for this because frankly, it didn't feel like a Souls' game, it felt like Kaizo Mario type stuff, or I Wanna be the Guy, just with a FromSoft asset swap
@@Valrok1870 The problem has never been the game changing the rules from boss to boss. The problem has always been the players approaching different challenges in the exact same way over and over again, even after the game offers you thousands of different approaches. Absolutely every single one of your examples are countered by a mechanic the game gives you. Git gud.
I find there's something weird with a lot of Elden Ring bosses. A lot of them are reasonably hard, but it's as though their move sets were specifically designed to be as annoying as possible. Most DS1 bosses have fairly simple move sets, with timings that (for the most part) aren't that too difficult to predict. You can come back to that game after not playing it for years, and have a fairly easy time with most bosses as long as you remember the overall strategy. Your general intuition which you acquire over the course of the game is good enough to dodge most attacks.
A lot of ER bosses have unpredictable, variable length combos, with timings that specifically exploit your general intuition to constantly catch you with your pants down. You just have to learn the specific patterns for every new boss individually. Whenever I beat these bosses it doesn't really feel like I got better at the game. Instead I just got better at dealing with a specific boss. It's great fun when there's a few bosses that really throw me off balance. Those tend to be my favourite bosses in these games! But it gets old when it feels like they're all like that.
Part of the problem, (if you can even call it that,) is just that ER is such a large game with a looong endgame. At least if you try to do all the major bosses. It's so long that you have time to get a bit tired of it. It's a bit paradoxical really, because in isolation a lot of ER bosses would easily be my favourite boss in the game, but there's so many of them in this style that none of them really stand out to me in a positive way. Instead I just remember them being annoying.
Maye my opinion will sweeten over the years. Sekiro left me extremely salty after my first playthrough, but I grew to love that game after playing it again. However the difference is that with Sekiro it just took me a long time to get accustomed to instinctively deflecting EVERYTHING, rather than dodging. Once I got that through my thick skull it wasn't nearly as tough. I haven't noticed any such shift in perspective during my second run of ER.
@@someoneinsomewhere8079 that's not true. Dark souls 1 too forces you to change your approach every fight, same for Demon's souls. ER literally has less things you can change than first 3 souls games, yet it demands more.
@@someoneinsomewhere8079 that's not true. Dark souls 1 too forces you to change your approach every fight, same for Demon's souls. ER literally has less things you can change than first 3 souls games, yet it demands more.
I think some of it stems from the Souls games being designed with an experienced player base in mind. Dark Souls 2 felt like they were placing enemies to prevent people running through areas. As the games went on, (especially after Bloodborne) enemy attack strings got longer. One of the reasons I dropped off the Dark Souls 3 DLCs was due to bosses that send hit after hit your way.
But then how do you grow along with the players without adding more swings and bigger numbers?
Yeah a lot of their designs are reactive and take feedback from pervious games , which despite sometimes resulting in over corrections , it's very much necessary . Like with elden ring trying to reduce R1 spam compared to ds3 and make ashes of war / weapon arts useful . Or bosses requiring multiple parries ...etc
Some of these changes aren't perfect though , for example delayed attacks are there to change up combat and discourage you from roll spamming but they're so frequent that it's more annoying than anything
As for the long combos , i think for the most part it's a good change, especially with them trying to tighten the combat and make bosses look more cinematic . Going back to old games shows just how easy and simplistic 95% of bosses are and i don't think they can go back to that with the skill of the fanbase increasing like you said
Yeah, they’re trying to stick to a very basic combat and movement system that needs more serious changes if they want to keep up with the increasing speed, complexity, and aggression of bosses. This is something Bloodborne and Sekiro exceed in, and I think Elden Ring only kind of does, by allowing you to become just as bullshit as the bosses, and power creep is so unfun.
This has been the exact thing thats been bothering me with their last few games. Worried not because they're bad but because I'm worried the pendulum might be swinging to fat in the opposite direction. I remember when Orphan of Kos was the peak difficulty boss in their games. And they have like 3 bosses with maybe equivalent difficulty in Elden Ring and AC6
I think videos like Joseph Anderson's and theDeModcracy's critiques of the boss design seem to confirm that this is something being felt across the board. And its hard to talk about because I think people take the critiques as meaning that the game is bad when it isnt. It could just be better
Edit: Thank you for being controversial. Ive found myself disagreeing with as many of your videos as I wholeheartedly agree with. Its refreshing if not a painful experience to have my preconceived notions challenged. There's a need for people who push the boundaries and critique established ideas. But there's less of an audience. Its comfortable and pleasing to hear people reaffirm my feelings but it necessary to have them challenged. Thank you.
AC6 doesn't even have anything as difficult as Shadows of Yharnam, let alone Orphan of Kos lmao. Genuinely the easiest game they have released in many years.
@@spiceforspice3461 Firstly, Shadows of Yharnam isn't hard unless you refuse to parry.
Genuinely the easiest game theyve released? Yeah that doesnt sound genuine at all. Youre being intentionally oblivious. From's games have always had people complaining about difficulty and unfairness but theyve been particularly loud with Elden Ring and AC6. So I mean, quantitatively youre just wrong.
Orphan is an endgame DLC boss whereas Balteus is very early in the game. There's a reason they called him "The Filter". And in a game where build customization is paramount its crazy that they'd introduce him so early when players have very little gear at this point in the game without quitting out and farming previous levels. The biggest testament to this is on my 2nd playthrough I beat him first try (pre nerf).
Or consider how many players go into that fight not understanding the rock-paper-scissors of "energy weapons beat shields". Or just how important omnidirectional movement is in this games esp for evading the fire swipes. Or even the storm of rockets.
None of these thigs are "bad" design. What makes them bad is that its all at once this early in the game. If you had told me he was an endgame boss, I would have believed you. And honestly there's only a handful of bosses after Balteus that are even nearly as challenging. Minus Ibis, Sea Spider and the final boss, I'd say none of them trump Balteus in terms of difficulty.
Fromsoftware really needed to convey certain lessons before this boss fight. Which is weird because they used to be really good at this (like teaching plunging attacks in DS1).
And thats not even mentioning input reading, the ricochet mechanic and how both of those make most mid to long range weapons obsolete
it's mainly because you went into them thinking you were le epic souls veteran and didn't need easy mode just to get filtered by enemies slightly delaying their attacks so you can't spam roll
@@DonHaci Nope. Had the same concern with Elden Ring. I've played For Answer and beyond. Youre projecting
@@austin0_bandit05 "The same guy who directed and designed Dark Souls 3 bosses (miyazaki) and the same guy in charge of Bloodborne's combat, Sekiro's combat and bosses (yamamura) completely forgot how to make good boss fights in just 2 years"
I think my theory of you thinking it was going to be a breeze is more likely, new players aint complaining it's always the ones that came prior thinking it's going to be a cakewalk, refusing to acknowledge that you may need to git gud again
15:10 I agree she didn't need a nerf. But also machine guns work fine on her. I beat her using two cheng submachine guns, a laser dagger swap and a sweet sixteen swap on a light build.
I think they nerfed her tracking on her melee wave attacks. But if you know how the targeting system works in this game it becomes really easy to dodge. Most attacks in this game shoot out where you are going to be. Not where you are. So if you are moving left, dont dodge left. Dodge to the right. The attacks track your movement so you need to dodge in the opposite direction that you were just going in to confuse the fcs tracking.
btw, you can buy a torch to see in the dark areas (it aplies to every souls game + elden ring :d)
as a huge malenia hater, I really appreciated this video, as I think the biggest problem with malenia is how little the game does to prepare you to fight her
my biggest problem with elden ring in general is actually that it's too easy, and a big part of that is how poorly it prepares you for the few challenges it does present
I mean there’s no rule that the game has to “prepare” you for anything. Also, she’s a secret optional boss that’s supposed to be super hard. It’s not supposed to be something you’re very prepared for. She’s supposed to feel jarringly powerful.
Also, challenge can be very subjective. Not just based on skill but also build and playstyle. So what fights are blowouts and what fights are challenging is going to differ person to person.
So you may have felt like most of the game was easy, but others may have been challenged all the way through.
Balteus is by far the hardest challenge in AC6. Honestly the knowledge from the fight alone makes you ready to tackle everything the game as the offer with relative ease, I'm by no means an expert at AC 6. I played under 30hrs, but I went back and beat him with the default AC equipped only with the pulse blade
I genuinely think the last time I wanted to sub to a channel was like 3 years ago, good vid man
My only problem with DS2 is that nobody could ever beat it without a guide. There’s so many very specific and often obscure things you have to do to progress the main game. It’s a minor nitpick because I otherwise love the game, and this issue can be solved by using a guide, but I feel like the main way forward should be clear even on a blind playthrough. In Elden Ring, the only time I ever had an issue playing blind was figuring out that you have to rest at gatefront to gain the ability to level up. Otherwise, the path forward is either clear, or an alternative is pretty easy to figure out with exploration, such as climbing the precipice if you don’t know about the dectus medallions.
Umm a hard or at least annoying enemy with pulse shield is placed before Balteus in an earlier mission. The helicopter teaches you how to dodge salvos of missiles and even looking for visual and ambient clues to when a big attack is coming. The bubble blower is also available very early in the game. You are given and taught everything needed to kill Balteus. Heck right before him, you fight an AC with a very viable build against him.
Great analysis once again! Haven't looked at FS from this angle so really informative.
But AC6 does teach you to fly to avoid attacks. They explicitly tell you to fly over missiles in the tutorial boss. The chopper's two main lessons are to fly over missiles and to be aggressive. Same with the Juggernaut. You need to get close, assault boost over it and hit it's weak spot, ideally while still flying because it's elevated behind armor and then you need to fly over its land mines. Even the Strider teaches you to manage your flight. But players suck at learning new systems and if you tell them what to do, they'll forget about it right after they've won (like flying over missiles) so Fromsoft needs a wall, they need a do or die situation to hammer the game's play style into the players' minds. I actually think Balteus' biggest difficulty is the shield as it prevents stagger which means a lot of the most powerful builds in the game don't work against him but that is necessary to force players to get the message. The power of stagger is an imbalance that plagues the entire single player campaign but that's not really a flaw with Balteus. And yes, they did put that one mini-boss before Genijiro but Geni was still a massive wall for most players because we are trained to be stubborn
I personally didn't understand why people had so much trouble on balteus. I killed him 1st try (pre nerf). I just stayed close as much as possible. Used the ransetsu rf, haldeman, missiles, and the pulse blade. It was close but I got him. Then again I did come in to ac6 with a much better idea of how to play it well. I'm an AC veteran of the series. Also I'm a loser that plays way too much video games and I tend to get VERY good at games rather quickly.
Understanding how to make effective use of the games verticality is super important. Also I've seen a lot of people really mess up capitalizing on stagger windows. The most effective builds follow a formula. You have a few weapons that are meant to build stagger, then you have either one or two weapons meant to do damage in acs overload. You really can't go wrong with this set up.
Unfortunately AC6 has a few weapons that I believe are FAR too powerful and make the game pretty trivial. But you absolutely DO NOT need to use these on any bosses to beat them. I went through the game completely avoiding all the well known broken weapons on purpose to make it more challenging. Despite doing this I never once spent multiple hours on any boss. Hell I don't think any boss took me over like 20 deaths. Most of them I beat in under 5 tries or I one shot them. Idk if my perspective is just very skewed because I'm a freak, but in all honesty this game is nowhere near as hard as some people are saying it is.
It's super fun. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I can honestly say that if you are struggling with it and are relying on the OP stuff. Try branching out. There's a lot more fun weapons and builds in this game. Don't just fall back on the same cookie cutter meta that everyone does. The game is the most fun when you use builds that you put together yourself that's unique. Don't just download code someone else's powerful build to beat it.
I was expecting this video to be "wah wah game need easy mode"
But you actually gave legit reasons why these games feel unfair,i applaud you for that,but also get good
Lies of P was recently updated to give Fable Arts Hyperarmor.
I am still hoping they create a game engine that allows for dismemberment, that combined with the weighty combat would be sick.
Im gonna disagree with one thing here.
You stated that, before the Balteus encounter, the game makes the tools given hard to access. That doesnt make alot of sense to me as you can buy and resell any parts in the shop without values being altered, so you never really lose money. You just temporarily misplace it. The design on this portion of the game was very on point if you ask me.
The reason i feel that way is because AC6 doesnt overwhelm you with hundreds of part combos. It gives you a basic version of each type of armament and keeps you limited to all types of builds you could possibly need to beat this boss AT THAT POINT IN THE GAME. This allows the players to sift through only a few choices at a time without overly strict consequences or wasted time and thought. This also teaches the player a very critical part of AC6: Adaptation and critical thinking.
Examples being: If im not tanky/fast enough, alter frame. If im not breaking its shields, add pulse damage. Missles overwhelming me, rework booster system.
To summarize, Balteus is an encounter that has the singular purpose of showing the player that there is no such thing as the perfect build, and that you will forever be adapting and reworking things according to the situation.
While Sekiro did do this with the mid-game Genichiro, the Guardian Ape, and the endgame Genichiro, I feel like the main one that it feels infuriating with is Genichiro. Struggling through all that for him to suddenly get a second wind and go "by the way, I can yeet lightning at you now." While it was hinted at with the Eel's Liver in the room prior with the Ashina Elite, it still would have been nice to see the final phase in the health bar beforehand to give a more cinematic transition and not just a "Surprise, have another phrase, fuckwit!"
With the endgame Genichiro prior to Isshin, it didn't feel _as_ egregious, since it was a single health bar and all of his lightning stuff had been replaced with, if I remember right, a single move from the Black Mortal Blade, which is just the Enhanced Mortal Draw that Sekiro can also use. That fight screamed, "Okay, wait a second, this can't be the final boss, no way it's this simple," and then BAM, Isshin comes out.
Another growing problem From seems to have with its design is how much emphasis is being put on visual awe over readability. It's been a while since I played ER but I recall Elden Beast just filling my screen with effects I found it hard to see around and looking at AC6 there's just so much obscuring what happening, that last clip of AC in the video is quite hard to process there's so much; missile exhaust, manoeuvring jets, streaming energy weapons, an electric explosion, a flame trail, explosive ordinance all in a 3 second span...
It makes me appreciate that bit in Spider-Man where Doc Ock gives Peter the design note about the white highlights in order to make enemies react slower; imagine if he wore the costume, had a strobing neon lining while setting fire to the place and throwing flashbangs and his webs had high vis fibres.
Over the years I realized that simply moving the camera farther away from your character when you fight larger enemies would be a massive help in FromSoftware games. I'm not a programming guru but it shouldn't be that hard to implement. They could write code that takes the enemy's height, length or width into consideration and moves the camera further in relation to that value. It would be especially helpful for melee oriented characters because dragon fights are a spectacle for miracle and sorcery users but for melee users it's just looking at dragon feet LOL.
There are games that do this. Newer Assassin's Creed games come to mind first and they do it for regular human fights too because it's easier to react that way when 3 or 4 enemies surround you. Even From did it somewhat for Midir. When you walk up to him the camera moves farther a tiny bit.
Balteus didn’t have its health lowered in the patch. The only thing touched was the missile tracking.
placing enemies before a boss to ‘warm you up’ to the mechanics of said boss isn’t the only solution to new boss mechanics. For instance, I personally felt ac6 encouraged the use of different weapons and testing builds for different challenges, when i was met with balteus i tested new weapons, and ended landing on pulse blade and pulse guns for their effectiveness against pulse shields and critical damage. Players who ignored this and try to brute force their way through encounters with a single build will be punished by this.
Placing enemies that let the player see the mechanics of balteus before you encounter balteus would certainly make balteus more fair, but it would make a blander experience. What makes Balteus really memorable to me is the whole "oh shit" moment where this overwhelming enemy just appears as a surprise at the end of the level, and that moment would be much weaker if you understood how all of Balteus' mechanics worked before you got to the fight
Tough but fair to me means that although their games can be hard at times, all the games have many ways to make them easier and in some cases there are ways to straight up make the difficulty a joke. Some games, when they are hard are just hard and your going to struggle for hours and either get lucky or give up. I honestly believe anyone can beat the from games even if they have to look up some strats, some game, no amount of googling will help you with the game.
FromSoftware games became less Fair and Balance from DS3 on. And it makes sense,we have learn from Demon Souls/DS1/DS2 how to play this games and there is no way You can keep "Hard but Fair" forever. They had to find another way to keep the FromSoftware challenging gameplay or fanboys would have start bitching that "The game is too easy" or "This doesnt feel like a Souls Game".I love Elden Ring,but that game is a shit fest of unfair and unbalance,haha. And I take ir,because I understand FS is an víctim of there own fame and "Game concepts",they can't do "normal fair/balance games" like un the old days anymore.
Pre-nerf Balteus is the hardest boss I faced, and I'm about to finish NG1. I took 2 hours on him. 20 minutes on Ibis, 1 hour 30 minutes on the final boss for the fires of raven ending (both who died immediately after I took a missile boat out because I was tired of their dodge spamming at ranges farther than most weapons).
Though to be fair, I was trying to keep my distance from Balteus when fighting him, because I thought that's what the game wants you to do. Part of the reason why I kept distance is because in a lot of shooters, you want to keep distance so you don't take damage, so I wanted to reduce as much damage as possible so I could live. Then on top of that the helicopter would shred me anytime I tried to close the distance, and it regularly goes out of bounds so you can't melee it even if you do try. So I thought the game was supposed to be played at range (also I didn't know about the richochet mechanic until the tutorial. I just never see it in gameplay). Doesn't help that I assumed the starter core was supposed to represent the "intended way to play", and the turner is rather long range and I had a lot of fun sniping things with it in the earlier levels until I replaced it. Turns out the entire game is all about closing the distance and being super aggressive. I only learned this with Balteus because I was getting so friggin bored of the boss fight that I wanted to do something silly and with the double Ludlows. This then made everything else in the game a cakewalk.
In NG I played Balteus after the nerfs. My gosh they nerfed him so hard, I beat him on my first try. Only real difference is that I use 2 starter rockets, had 1 ludlow in the right hand, and had a pile bunker in the left hand. I was even being extremely sloppy. Gotta way for the next NG to out-missile Balteus now. I constantly ran out of ammo with Balteus and Spider before the nerfs, so it's weird to be able to mow them down with plenty of ammo to spare.
The random difficulty spikes/whatever generally breaks the fourth wall so hard whenever I play AC 6. I had to take breaks a few times because of it. I'm just here to experience the pretty visuals, skating mechs, and story. (maybe pvp later)
The problem with Melania isn't any of her moves, it's the fact that in an action RPG she invalidates builds. You wanted to build you character with an emphasis on sheilds now that they actually gave some love to shield builds.
No, she heals through the shield.
Perhaps you created a paladin as thats super popular throughout all the souls games
No, she has 80% holy resist
People will say just respec into something for her but that shouldn't be the point of an RPG at all.
Unfortunetly most bosses in ER are holy resistant. I personally like how she counters tanks, but they probably could make it better, although I love her lifesteal. And I would say, that always some builds were pretty useless for some bosses in these games.
The holy resist may be bad, but you can still put the flame enchantment on your weapons instead of the holy one.
The shields are absolutely not invalidated, they are balanced instead, if she wouldn't have the ability to lifesteal fighting her with shields would be ridiculously easy, like most other enemies in the game, you just got to roll every time she has a combo finisher, like the thrust attack. She's just asking you not to mindlessly hold L1 and spam R1, which you could have done until that point in the game, and you can easily outdamage her heal doing so. You can also infuse your poking weapon of choice with bleed and the fight will be over in 1 minute.
You Malenia shield complainers never tried to use shields
Great video, hope your channel will blow up!
The Sulla fight right before Balteus is the tutorial for Pulse Shields/Weapons. You unlock the first shield right before this mission and Sulla has a Pulse Rifle that melts it. You don't have a Pulse Rifle yet, but you start the game with a Pulse Blade and Ayre tells you Balteus has a Pulse Shield and you need a pulse weapon to counter it. So your own shield counters his missiles, and the Pulse Blade counters his shield. The game gives you all the tools and info you need unless you're one of those knuckleheads who skips all the cutscenes and dialog, only ever tries the one build and strategy, then complains "the game didn't tell me" how to do something.
you do get a pulse gun option before Balteus its you "reward" for going through the wall from Arquebus of course it aint free
For your information, the boss nerfs were very minor. Balteus took a small hit to missile tracking, sea spider has slightly less resistances, and cel240 deals slightly less damage on some phase-2-exclusive attacks. That's it
I played hollow knight and it‘s one of my favourite games because its hard but fair. What I think is a prime example is that in hollow knight the health is displayed in steps. Every hit deals one damage. This leads to the game having to make the bosses harder by design and not just seemingly random damage output.
As an absolutely fervent From fanboy at this point who genuinely sees these games as works of art, I must say that this analysis was really fair and well-reasoned, it towed the line between not being too critical while also pinpointing the flaws that do exist to some extent where the balancing issues are concerned. No game is flawless, and even though some of From's works like Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne and Elden Ring are among the best I have ever played, period (and AC6 was fantastic too now, as is Sekiro and basically all their other games, honestly), there are definitely trends and traits at play here that CAN be improved, and should be contemplated moving forward. Here's hoping the DLC of Elden Ring shows some real refinement on some of these fronts that you mentioned, and addresses the issues with balancing and excessive traits with boss fights in particular, so as to produce some really iconic bosses just as From's prior DLCs have managed so brilliantly (especially with The Old Hunters and the DaS3 DLCs). There is always room for improvement, and if anyone can keep raising the bar, it's Miyazaki and company at From.
Either way, great video and cool analysis, glad I watched it, it expressed a lot of fair points I have contemplated before with others in a pretty eloquent and compelling manner!
Capra demon made me cry out of anger, dude i almost quit Ds, but the h8 for the 2 dogs kept me going strong 😂😂😂😂😂.
deserves more views, great video with great editing. thoroughly explained with quick and abundant examples of each point. jokes were funny and illustrative too. i appreciate the representation of the sentiment we all feel about shit being annoying or obtrusive and overcoming it sometimes being the point and the conflicted feelings around it. i feel like these are problems most felt by the people who love the games the most. also cool AC
Fromsoft game difficulty be like: if your laying on your side or half awake or just lacking in a few braincells I can be the hardest game ever made” meanwhile ghost and goblins be like: you pressed the start button, now go back to the last checkpoint.
I get the sense that the developers at Fromsoft feel they have this obligation to live up to the public image they've garnered over the years (being the hardest games in the industry and all that jazz) for the souls games which in turn has kind of affected how they design the bosses and enemies. Bosses for instance just feel a lot more homogenized now since almost all of them have super crazy patterns to learn, fake gotcha moves to cover any conventional punishes you might have been thinking of doing and multi-phase fights are being used a lot more flippantly now than they were before. At a certain point it just gets a bit tedious without something less drastic to break them up, heck I wouldn't be surprised if they start having more bosses that just One Wing Angel you from across the field with no way to stop it going forward.
The HP bar is more of a psychological thing. Seeing your hits do tons of damage to a boss feels good ans will affect your approach. Seeing your weapon do a miniscule amount of damage will make you feel weak as fuck. Also, we all know how frustrating it feels dying to a boss with a small amount of health because you got greedy.
My example is the Dark Souls 3 Ringed City DLC.
Dark Souls 3 is mostly on point in terms of overall gameplay challenge/ fairness feel. My list of complaints is basically just the Curse Rotted Greatwood being a test of your ability to wrestle the free aim camera,, Deacons of the Deep are a bit obtuse, the command grab of the Jailers is kinda jank, along with a small smudge on the Nameless King fight, where the combination of featureless ground and invisible walls was a bit eh.
The Dreg Heap and Ringed City feels... different. Taps from small enemies deal very high damage, enemies in hitstun are no longer safe, and the sort of intuitive feeling of threat assessment gets broken, at least for me. It's like suddenly playing a different game. Which, maybe as the final DLC, that was intentional. I love Dark Souls 3, but the Ringed City is a bit of a sore thumb that feels more tedious than challenging to run into, If that makes sense.
One thing that makes from software stand out to me is just how much I can play the games before I get irreversibly bored of them. Most open world games I’ll play once or twice and never again cause the gameplay is never all that good but I’ve played Elden ring for 400 hours and I still pick it up every couple weeks which is really good considering it’s an very long game with lots of downtime. And then dark souls 3 I have over 1200 hours in. All of their games I can easily play over 200 and be satisfied with every playthrough and no other game besides arcade shooters can do that. Even then my sessions with shooters usually last less than 2 hours.
you forgot about all 17 armored core games witch came out before all soulsborne games
Melania can be dodged by rolling into and through her waterfowl. Its not impossible at all.
Personally in ER all I take issue with is enemy moves where there is no clear solution. Waterfowl and Maliketh's anime swish moves feel like good examples of it. I still feel like I have to be clairvoyant to dodge them consistently.
>dodge them consistently
Every single starter class gets a shield, except for the wretch/deprived. Maybe they were trying to give you a hint there?
@@duckdodgers1953 have you played the game? The whole point of both of the moves I mentioned is that blocking them is not ideal in the slightest. Waterfowl can quickly tear through your stamina unless you've got a quite sturdy shield and heals Malenia a bunch, and Maliketh's anime swooshes deal a bunch of holy damage that penetrate most shields, and the destined death effect goes right through your shield.
When moves leave you in a significantly worse position after blocking them, it feels like the game is *maybe* trying to tell you something...
@@jankbunky4279 Yes I have. Gamers just have a cognitive block around enemies healing themselves and chip damage. See also Marge's daggers, that can also be blocked (but people act like the chip on an already low damage attack makes blocking unviable)
Block the first waterfowl flurry. Dodging the rest is easy afterwards. The ridiculous tracking is only on the first flurry, and Malenia getting 10% of her HP back per waterfowl is nothing if you can stay on the offensive instead of being passive
For Maliketh: you can suck it up to some damage if you notice the ridiculous amounts of attacks that can be avoided just by walking/sprinting. Noticing those takes some trial and error, so people who skip on shield altogether often don't notice it
My first playthrough was with 21/22 str/dex, longswords/guts sword/halberds/nagakiba depending on the mood. And a shield, because experimenting with defensive options when failure means eating up full damage is for masochists... or for people who think a game that gives everyone a shield doesn't want you to use shields
Completely agree. I think it boils down, ultimately, to one thing. From Software knows their games are known for being difficult. Because of that some of these bosses, like Melania, have mechanics that make it more of a chore to beat them than a fun challenge. I have personally never beaten Melania, not because she's "too hard", but because the health she gets after every attack makes her fight just straight up not fun to master. Like I said, it becomes a chore instead of a challenge.
I think that's why I didn't end up beating AC6. As much as I wanted to love that game, and I really wanted to, there were too many aspects of the game that seemed like "hard for the sake of being hard" instead of a well-balanced fight that is fun to master. And that there is the key difference of AC6 from other From Software titles.
Normally, I'd have no issue with the occasional boss being stupid like in the case with Melania and Balteus. But with AC6, it just felt like that boss after boss after boss. I'd get super easy arenas and areas to traverse with some easy bosses in the middle, then all of a sudden, a boss comes in that takes me HOURS to just get through the first phase of.
I hope they iron this stuff out going forward, because I really do love From Soft and their games.
Haha, you’ve got excellent taste in games brother. For me, it’s Sekiro on top for having the best combat mechanics ever. 2- Elden Ring
3- Bloodborne
Interesting perspective on Fromsoft. I can’t say I agree 100% but you make some good points. Good video, thanks! 😎👍
utterly reasonable analysis & commentary. thanks! i don't think i disagreed with a single thing. =)
Yeah I sort of notice that a lot of the newer games just... don't tell you enough. I'd really appreciate knowing about things BEFORE i encounter them in a boss fight.
Sekiro miniboss which is just before Genichiro is much more easily dealt with dodging sideways.
Bro forgot the mini boss bzfore balteus who uses a pulse gun
The fact they made Sekiro and AC6 as good as they did tells me they are more than just great Souls-like devs. They are IMO the top developer in the world right now.
Personally I would prefer their next game be more Sekiro than Elden Ring but I would not be upset if the next game is Elden Ring 2.
I actually think the reason these games are so addictive and fun is because of it's unfairness. The game is actively spitting on you, and it's nice when I get to spit back. It's just always a challenge because you can truly never be sure you're safe.
Overcoming adversity at its most pronounced, nothing ever goes your way so you better adapt or die.
I agree. One of my favourite moments in my second ds1 playthrough was getting up to the silver knight archers in Anor Londo.
On my first playthrough, it took me about 20 attempts to cheese the knight into faling off the edge. My second playthrough, I parried him a couple times and killed them both first try.
It's such a great moment when something finally clicks and what once felt completely unfair becomes something you can easily overcome.
Ac6 issue is balancing when it comes to your equipment. By the end of the game I only had 2-3 builds all of which used mostly the same weapons and parts.
Elden rings main issue is having endgame bosses being designed like sekiro but not having sekiro counters. Sekiro does this by forcing you to fight demon of hatred like a souls boss but you have access to the combat of ds3 but in ER you don’t have deflects or any other mechanic to counter boss spam.
I very much appreciate someone actually calling out the constant B.S in FromSoft game design and putting an end to the endless wank 🙏🏾😭.
Bro i absolutely LOVE soulslikes but was drawn away from fromsoft games because of the infinite wank from their community. If i don't like something about a fromsoft game I'm somehow a bad gamer since fromsoft can do no wrong 😂. But recently they've been going above and beyond. My favourite FS game is Sekiro then Elden Ring tho both are equally goated to me
@johnysimps1191 Trust me fam i feel you, i legit skipped Elden Ring because i honestly wasn't interested at the time and for me it just didn't look different enough from the other games FromSoft made specifically the DS trilogy besides the open world aspect and jump button 🤷🏾♂️, not to say the game is bad but it just wasn't as hype to me as the general public felt about it. Lies Of P does have similarities ofcourse but the Fairy tale story, Weapon breaking and assembling system and other aspects about it made me feel like it was actually worth trying since it was atremtping to do atleast one thing different. Hopefully Lords Of The Fallen will go beyond my expectations like LOP did 💪🏾💯.
@@duveysgamingacademia6587 Elden Ring is basically ds4 so if the ds games weren't to your liking, it probably won't change your mind. For me, they made enough improvements for me to finally be on board with it and it's a pretty solid game altogether.
The reason why i love the genre instead of the OG ds series is because everyone else *tries* to out their own spin on it. While ds is refining their same formula (which is a good formula). Naturally, this makes soulslikes hit or miss but once in a while we get bangers. Stuff like Thymesia, Nioh, salt and sanctuary, code vein etc. Aren't exactly perfect games but I'd play them anyday over most of the FS titles just because of how much they shake up the experience
Edit: Check out the "Where winds meet" gameplay showcase. That game is looking like GOTY material
Good job you look quite presentable this time around mr. youtuber
That was uh… outrageously good
In Elden Ring you should need an easier progression to follow. I mean, once you beat Margit (from level 30 is manageable) you beat Godrick and then Rennala and these three feel balanced in progression. However, your next boss should be Radahn and he is ... well, too much difficult than Rennala (and also boring, because of the arrow thing). Then it becomes again balanced, because after that Leyndall and Ranni's mission are well balanced (even with astel, another pseudo-arrow bullshit thing). But then you get to late game and it becomes pain after pain. Enemies hit so hard you can't learn well how to deal with them, and you end up cheesing them. I didn't have this sensation in Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 (however, I don't like the DLC bosses in the latter as they feel a bit over the top for my taste for the same reasons the ones in Elden Ring do). I would rather have the games teach me how to play them than they just being difficult. I loved Dark Souls 1 and I still love it. I did enjoy a lot Demon's Souls for the same reason (and Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3). And some parts of Elden Ring. On the other hand, I think I should give Sekiro a second chance (I beat it, but I did not enjoy it as much as a Dark Souls because it was a bit frustrating and I had the sensation my character died too soon and I have to play it perfectly everytime, which destroyed the feeling of adventure I had in DS).
In Elden Ring I personally appreciate that progression isn't totally straightforward. After Liurnia you can go to Altus or Caelid and both are ok options.
@@jankbunky4279I agree, but it’s SO unclear and unsteady it’s a bit ridiculous. You don’t really have the information to make that choice, where if you did, the choice would be a lot more engaging. Limgrave to liurnia is fair, then you have to turn around and go to caelid, which is a MASSIVE difficulty spike, then you go to Ranni’s questline and Altus and Leyndell, which is fine and scales consistently, maybe even a little less than it could’ve been. Then you go to Mt Gelmir, which is a slight spike, but not unreasonable. Then you go to mountaintops, and every area past it, which are about 30-50 levels higher than the previous areas, and it becomes utterly ridiculous. You don’t scale fast enough with the areas. You go from being 5 shot by Morgott to being 1-2 shot by REGULAR ENEMIES. It’s ridiculous! Either the previous areas should have higher scaling to lower the spike and adjust the player scaling to accommodate, or the later areas should have had lower scaling. Personally, I would’ve preferred the former, but the fact that neither happened is SO frustrating, even as someone who loves elden ring. Difficulty spikes can be really fun and challenging, but when the difficulty spike is the ENTIRE last 1/3rd of the game, it becomes a serious problem.
I don’t get the complaints about Balteus. I beat him pre nerf without looking up any guide or tips just fine. Ya it was hard and took several attempts and changing parts.
Which all felt appropriate given how the game hypes this fight as being the point in the story when you go from just earning a rep to plot getting thicker and the fight being setup as a fight for survival. It’s very much a “okay we gave you time to really get used to the controls, do some customization and get familiar with how missions and some bosses work. Now here’s the REAL test of what you’ve learned and earned so far.”
To people still stuck with malenia's waterfowl,use FROST POT !!😅
Props to you for offering critique to these fromsoft games. Folks like to be critical to soulslike while singing all fromsoft games praises when the very same criticism would apply to them. You gave a good example with the ds1 boss in a confined space with minions. If that was a level in Nioh everyone would clip and ship that shit up to TH-cam to trash it.
making fable and charge attacks not have poise in lies of p is one of the worsts things i ever saw in a game, because most enemies are REALLY fast and fable charges fairly slow, using fable arts(at least slower ones) feel like a gamble instead of a reward, if they would have gave poise to slow handles, it would greatly balance them to fast handles, even though their damage is roughly the same(assuming youre using the same blade)
Good video, but they're absolutely not even close to being the best game developer. Their PC ports are, at best, average, and they seem to essentially only release the same game repeatedly.
From should stop nerfing the bosses & instead only tinker with tools of the trade.
Loved Elden Ring, DS1-3 and Armoured Core 6 but for me Sekiro is soo hard 😂
The combat follows a fluid set of rules that changes frequently, but ok
15:56 I hope they haven’t nerfed her I can’t really tell the difference but she is fair and somebody named “let me solo her” made it clear example that you can beat her with proper timing in fact, if you go to for farem mazula and get maliketh’s black blade and come back and kill her you can easily deal with
Bro, are you pausing to comment on the video every time?
My issue is the fact they somehow mess up the multiplayer and pvp after making the same game 10 times, getting rid of covenants but still keeping blues? Cmon bruh
13ish+ years of playing DS1 and i still dont beat O&S first try. Definitely NOT a fair fight, no matter how pretentious people talk about them. You can beat them but there are absolutely times they will behave differently. Sometimes theyll bum rush you together and its not “one is fat and hard and one is fast and chippy”. Theyre both fast AF if they decide to be. Sometimes smough is slow, sometimes hes a bull the WHOLE time. But I LOVE that. Its still rewarding to beat them even all these years later! I love how unfair these games were, and love to challenge myself with stupid challenge runs and im not a streamer, just love the game that much. Its mah favorite of the whole bunch to this day.
L player
You CAN tank though damage in lies of P with poise, particularly with the Holy Sword of The Ark (and other special weapons). The special weapon fable attacks seem to have a lot more poise than anything else in the game. I haven't noticed a single regular weapon skill that doesn't get interrupted. I feel like there is so much about Lies of P that isn't know yet. It's weird how so many people have different and often times conflicting information about the game, and don't know a lot about it's mechanics. For instance I've seen numerous youtubers say it's impossible to respec in the game (when you can respec more in the game than in any other Souls/Borne game - you just have to wait until a bit later in the game to do it).
Gotta disagree with the argument about Balteus though. I beat him on my 3rd attempt (pre-patch) because there is a similar enemy that you encounter before him with a pulse shield, and I discovered energy weapons did a lot of damage. And you are given access to some of the best energy weapons in the game at this point (both for hands and shoulders). The main thing is you have to change your playstyle. He's much quicker and requires a lot more movement and boost to be used against him - I was constantly attack boosting. Honestly he didn't need a nerf at all, imo. IBIS on the other hand... I genuinely felt like some of her attacks were legit unavoidable, and that's one thing I don't like in these games. Everything should be able to be avoided if you have high enough skill.
Lastly, I'll say that I do agree about the patches, nerfs and balancing. FromSoft has gotten insane with the amount of patches they're putting out. I understand with multiplayer, but the single player portion needs to be play tested to the point that patches aren't needed, or at the very least limited to one patch. The fact that they're STILL patching Elden Ring going on two years later is ridiculous. I'm tired of learning playstyles and weapons only to have them change. And it really sucks that they're doing it with Armored Core VI, which is such a smaller game that should have been balanced on launch. The player base should not be your play testers.
Anyway, good video and I appreciated your opinions even if I didn't agree with them all.
The only problem they have is where to put all that money
You have everything you need to beat Balteus from the very beginning. My loadout at that time was a slightly lighter version of the starter build with a slightly stronger rifle. I beat him first try by brute forcing. He's very weak to melee tactics, as long as you're aggressive and stay on him he can't really hurt you too much.
You're stronger than you think in AC6, and playing scared can get you killed.
Kinda like Sekiro in that regard.
1:55 they are not that bad this is my first from soft game I feel like a lot of people don’t understand Elden ring gives you options 24 months ago you had, bleed builds, magic builds and mimic tear to fold anything that remotely looked at you and correctly currently
You can a incantations build, magic build or Proc as many status as possible It’s only painful because you’re inflexible bastard if you want the game to be be easier without cheesing golden vow, plus dragon crest, great shield, talisman, pretty much alleviates and 90% of the problems you will have in the game when it comes to damage you’ll be taking and if for some stupid reason you’re like level 80 squaring up against Radagon the mimic tear and use black flame incantations this will get the job done. In fact, it will work on the majority of major bosses however it will not work with malekith or malenia but with enough elbow, grease and spit shine in the right kind of build centered around that one attack you beat pretty much everything in Eldon ring while your meat shield take some most of the damage you can also use magic or just malekith’s swords when you get a healthy level 150-180 is enough to make it to where you shouldn’t have to attempt the boss more than 20 times provided you’re paying attention my character is level 316 and you can just steamroller everything with enough level investment around this level, you start approaching the power of the demigods themselves with the right set up around 250 you can legitimately trade with them in combat and win. elden ring’s bosses aren’t unfair you’re just stagnant the game gives you too many tools to beat ass for you to complain and even so there’s nothing a higher level will not do in Elden ring remember people try to say the difference is marginal between levels 150 and 713 No the difference is astronomical between level 150 and 200 and the power gap is even more severe at level 300 in terms of PVP it’s irrelevant, but in terms of PVE you’re practically Unkillable when you’re trying
The tough but fair element to my understanding means you and them are on a similar playing field maybe advantage for them. It means you aren't op af, you can and will die but then you learn how to not die, unlike other games where it's very unfair for your enemy's. it's a tough game but fair enough they will mess you up like you can mess them up
Edit: grammer
10.13-10.20 that's actually bad imo. it means that the normal mechanics don't mean shit. it's either you have the required item, or you don't. it's also unfair in cases like lady butterfly where you can't farm the required item. this is something i had about consumables in these games: so many of them are so limited, that it discourages experimentation:
if you use them early to try out new ideas, then you won't have them later on when you've learned more about the boss. but if you want to us them late, then you have to first develop a very specific, very strict way of fighting the boss, before you get to try anything new
I agree with almost everything you said here. Though I want to bring up that the faults you pointed out in Dark Souls 1 are largely due to the unfinished nature of the 2nd half of the game (which you may already know), and Miyazaki himself apologized for Bed of Chaos. So at least that wasn't intentional on their part.
I wonder why you presented Tomb of the Giants as if you are required to navigate it in pitch-black. The area before that gives you a light source to use (a skull lantern is a guaranteed drop from at least one of the necromancers in the Catacombs) and you can obtain the Sunlight maggot before this too.
Did you have "camera auto wall-recover" turned on for DS1 too? That was the setting that made the camera have a seizure for me on my first time. Turning it off largely (but not completely) mitigated the problem.
I think there is also an argument to be made about the... QUESTIONABLE state of PVP in souls games... buuuuut that's a can of worms not everybody wants to open. Plus the points in the video were exclusively made about the PVE side of the games
I think its fine, or even good when these games have some unfairness, not saying they make deliberated unfairness, for most of the cases is either an oversight or the lack of testing and development, but if the stakes are low I think a bit of a reality check helps a lot to give a touch of authenticity, the world isn't fair and while videogames are meant to be played and beated many of these unfair situations and bosses were needed to push our limits in a truly unfair situation, and that makes even more satisfactory to beat them, because we overcome not just adversity but unfairness, when videogames imitates life to this point they don't feel like just games and thats awesome, I wish not just from soft, but more studios were confident on our ability to take a punch with maturity and add some unfairness on purpose
there's a mini boss at the end of the invisible enemy mission with pulse shields before Balteus though???
the pulse gun's description even says it's strong against pulse shields???
enemy ACs are the only ones that heal since they have everything you can have???
Walter even tells you to take to the air to avoid getting hit???
why does it feel like people playing ACVI can't pay attention??? or read??? I "got it" immediately and it was my first AC game?????????