The questline from the Weeping Peninsula does not end with killing Edgar though. It picks up before that right after you kill Godrick. Hyetta is Irena, or the body is the same at least, Hyetta is some sort of spirit of Frenzied Flame similar to Shabriri who takes over corpses of those who die in despair. The quest does not pick up at Edgar in the hut being mad at you, it picks up with Hyetta and then continues through the whole game, including Yura towards the end since he too died in despair felled by his lover. The plot about who killed Irena isn't really all that important since we know that it was the Misbegotten. The important part of the Weeping Peninsula part of that quest is the despair and hate within Edgar. And it is not out of the blue either. When you explore the Weeping Penninsula you'll find a small village completely consumed by the madness caused by the Flame of Frenzy. It is called the Weeping Peninsula after all. You of course won't understand that at first since the concept of the Frenzied Flame is foreign to you at that point in the game, but much later if you follow Hyettas questline you'll learn what the Flame of Frenzy is all about, and you'll then know why and how you got the Shabriri Grape from Edgar, why his eyes were yellow with chaos flame. Other questlines are much more conventional. You'll follow Millicent throughout the lands on her journey to the Haligtree where you find her conclusion, same with Cohryn as he searches for the Gold Mask, and Nepheli as she goes from Stormveil to the Albinauric Village, and of course Yura as he travels around the Limgrave lake, through Liurnia, into the Altus Plateau where you find his personal conclusion but then continues into the Mountaintops of the Giants when Shabriri has his body. Most long questlines follow you on your journey. Some go back and forth like Diallos, but theres a bit of everything. It sounds like you were focusing a bit too much on making sure you didn't miss anything so you missed what the game was trying to tell you. It clearly wasn't about to take you on a long Misbegotten genocide quest in the Weeping Penninsula, it was sowing the seeds of one of the big endings, the saddest one about antinatalism.
I hear all the time people complaining about the game feeling cheap when you come back to a boss you were struggling on only to destroy it with your newfound levels and weapons and mitigate the challenge, but to be honest that stomping almost feels more rewarding to me than brute forcing my way through a boss. It sounds like you feel the same to some degree with your Malenia experience. I’m glad that it mended your love for the game, fellow tarnished!
Yeah, It's funny too because that's kind of the point of progression based RPGs; to grow in strength and ability and eventually defeat foes you couldn't have dreamed of besting before; the experience of growth, development and, well, progression haha
Elden Ring satisfies both parties. If you want to beat your head over and over again fighting the same boss until you beat them then you can. If you want to leave and get stronger then you can.
"If the boss cheeses me, then you can be goddamn sure I'm gonna cheese them back" ~ this guy while stun locking Malenia with the blasphemous blade Great video btw
I saw this on my recommended list and played this while working and I ended up watching the whole damn thing. I agree and shared the same experience as you. Currently on new game plus exploring different builds, now the challenge for me is facing these bosses with a more concrete playstyle and build rather than just last minute preps and exploits.more power man, I'm now a subscriber!
ER is the first Souls game I played, yet while I didn't feel frustrated enough to take a long break from it, I feel your character arc. Funny how my first character, despite being a samurai who naturally mutated into a pre-nerf RoB spawn also ended up with the blasphemous blade in the end. After going the way of pure bonk for much of my playthrough, my fourth character ended up using the prayerful strike ash and proceeded to kill Malenia, Radagon, and the Elden Beast with far less difficulty. Souls games had the reputation of being hard, but I also heard of its reputation of requiring the player to learn to be more methodical and learn boss patterns. ER, however, felt like I had to counter unga with bunga instead, so I do get it. I think why I found it less frustrating was because, having started as a samurai, I quickly learned how devastating bleed was, especially after the arcane fix, AND I was encouraged to explore and grind before tackling a challenge. Also, I looked for ways to unga bunga. Godskin Duo was a comical fight with a huge lull in between when I summoned both mimic tear AND Bernahl. Thanks for sharing your story, and glad you found a way to enjoy the game in the end.
I don’t know if you pursued the rest of that first quest, but I think it was on purpose for it to be that obscure. Since it’s part of one of the endings it fits for that ending that it’s difficult esoteric and forces you to explore aimlessly to complete it. Other big quest have decent markers for where to find the NPCs, ranni’s quest is nearly linear, and you can sido most things fine just by following what NPCs say. Same thing with Alexander, the vulcano manor and Millicent’s, the vulcano manor has literal map markers.
The quest style is not one everyone will appreciate, especially when you can look it up online. The obscurity is more novel if the player continues for multiple play throughs and are hit with the "ah hah" moment when they discover the purpose for the "random" and "useless" items they acquire, etc.
@Pollymacho it's crazy to me that people struggle with that. Just craft sleep pots/arrows. They game has an NPC recommend the crafting kit for a reason. If you chose not to use every resource available to you then you have no one to be mad at but yourself.
Really enjoyed the way you presented the video as a character arc. It makes it clear that it is one person's experience and perspective, whereas other video essays I've seen sometimes makes it feel like their opinion is fact (they don't say it's fact, but makes sound like their opinion is correct and opposing ones are wrong). This video made me think back about my own character arcs for each of the Fromsoft games and even my experience of playing all the Fromsoft games as a whole. Awesome video :)
elden ring is my first fromsoft game. i played it for a couple hours the first time, managed to clear the first godrick soldiers camp after a lot of tries, got to margit and couldnt beat him, got frustrated and quit. i watched DJ peach cobblers elden ring review, with his main takeaway being that elden ring gives you an empty toolbelt, and by exploring you fill it. each weapon or spell is meant to be used in certain situations. yeah i can use my giant greatsword the whole playthrough, but something would be objectively more effective for certain fights. doesnt stop me from using my greatsword tho. my best takeaway for this game is that it is amazing, and made itself one of my favorites of all time, thoroughly ruining skyrim, botw and all other open world games for me, but you should totally cheat yourself in a bunch of larval tears at the start of your run, so you can change your build whenever
SPOILERS!!! Irina's quest actually continues afterwards as an add-on to the Frenzied Flame quest as her body gets possessed by someone else and she goes on with the name "Hyetta"
There are a few maidens you can use for Varre's quest and both Irina and Hyetta work if you kill them. But Irina's body doesn't. Why? Perhaps the dead body is not actually her, but another corpse to stage her death so that she, or perhaps someone who has taken over her body, could leave and also drive Edgar mad with frenzy. Why else would her face be hidden? And the positioning of her and the blade are strange all around. Why would the misbegotten leave it's blade behind? Im pretty sure its an oversight that Irina can still be alive since all you need to do is pick up the letter from her first dialogue to spawn Hyetta into the game. This is not my theory its from a video by OptiziArt.
Having experience with open world games I seriously struggle to understand people's dissatisfaction with the mini dungeons. It's not like they're identical or badly designed. If someone feels they're monotonous then wouldn't that be an issue with the game as a whole? A couple more distinct bosses I can understand but can we expect unique assets for each cave, mine, and crypt? I guess they could have had more puzzles but then people would complain about the effort required being disproportional to the rewards. It's also funny seeing complaints about the loot now that it's open world when even in something like DS3 (criticised for it's linearity) most items went unused by the average player and people seemed to accept this as just a part of the RPG aspect.
That's a really good point. The mini-dungeons certainly aren't terrible (I got stuck in them, but that's more of a me problem). In fact, there are a few surprises that were really cool and caught me off guard. it was more me starting to lose that magic the game first created with how fresh everything first was, then them being awful. Thanks for your comment! e
Yes I agree with this heavily, I had almost zero issues with the mini dungeons even after doing all of them. I felt that every one had a unique challenge and enemy placement that kept things interesting.
I think the problem with the catacombs is mostly visual. They all look the same, so most players don't appreciate much how they become more complex as the game goes on, which is a shame. I think the easiest solution would be to have different assets per region. If the catacombs are the same in Limgrave, but different from the ones Liurnia and those from the ones in Altus/Caelid/Mountains, the surprise factor could be maintained till the endgame. The complains that some people have about the loot are just nitpicking. I won't say that everything you find is great or that you will use everything, but I think there's plenty of good things that reward exploration and more importantly, they are unique. Every weapon, spell, talisman, ash of war, cookbook and summon is unique. Weapons of the same class may share movesets (which is actually the common thing for most games), but the models are different, usually with different stats, scaling, range and description. Anything you get in Elden Ring and other souls games can be upgraded and used through the whole game. There's nothing truly useless, even if there are some better options. In other games, you usually get a loot box that gives you 575578 pieces of common loot, some "rare" weapons and if you get some "epic" or unique, then there's a big change that it would be worse than what you already have or, if it's better, it will eventually lose its usefulness as you progress through the game. That or you will get crafting materials to create weapons which isn't better. Another thing that makes Elden Ring and other souls stand out in the loot aspect, it's that you're not locked in one class. If you start as unga bunga and get an staff and some spells , there's nothing keeping you from investing some points in intelligence of faith and become a magical caveman, so there's not reason to complain about not being able to use everything.
The difficulty talks about this game from all these youtubers always feels so foreign to me. Did you all really not think to try the many cool and strong weapons and magics before the Godskin Duo? The game has so many cool new things but so many youtubers seem to want to stick to a DS1 playstyle. If bosses in Elden Ring were balanced for that then the game would be extremely easy. These games have difficulty modes. You can play naked with an unupgraded club or torch using no summons for the hardest difficulty, and you can oneshot every boss with a lazer for the easiest difficulty. I didn't actually care much about this when I started playing since I always play what I think is coolest either way, but the coolest things in the game are strong. I started using the Blasphemous blade instantly, before that I used the Sword of Night and Flame because it's badass, and I spammed Rivers of Blood in a different playthrough not because it was good, but because it was cool. How did all these youtubers manage to stick to the blandest playstyles for so long? Feels like you guys just wanted to play DS1 DLCs rather than actual new fromsoft games. I have a feeling that so many influencers played in a barebones way initially because they just wanted to do it an elists way, which is why all these youtubers only started complaining about that aspect of the community in Elden Ring. If you cheesed the earlier games people would say it was like playing on easy mode and everyone agreed because most people could play it in a barebones way, the influencers were silent. But now Elden Ring is much harder so people can't just panic roll out of everything, influencers find excuses. Now it's the game that is wrong and the people who flaunt their achievements of beating it with a knife are just toxic people who ruin the community and yada yada. I'm not a fan of it, I think theres too much pride going around. Sure some hardcores can be too prideful in their underplaying how how difficult the game is to play ethically, but to actually take offense to that is equally prideful, it's just unearded bride on top of that. We should all be able to admit that some people are better at the game than we are if we need to use things like summons and cheese builds. Pride is the only thing that makes someone take offense to that. Instead of calling the people who tell you to "just learn the patterns and dodge at the right times" toxic elitists, you can just say "nah mate I'm not good enough to do that on Malenia or Mogh" and then move on. Most people did that, not only because they needed to cheese to win, but because it's more fun to use the coolest weapons. Though I think the difficulty of not cheesing is overstated. I have played the game with a colossal sword alone and it wasn't that unforgiving, harder than blashpemous blade, but not that much of a struggle fest, especially not when you take the time to explore enough to level your stuff up, including vigor, alot of people forget to level vigor and it makes the game 10 times harder. And as far as I know the Royal Greatsword is not OP or anything, especially not when I'm only wearing Alberichs altered clothes. I'm not some souls pro but everything was very much beatable when using summons for tag-team bosses.
Fair enough I'll admit I was the same it only became fun when I started playing the way the game was telling me too this ain't darksouls and people need to learn this the game littrealy tells you to become a god from the getgo ffs.
Watch « what Joseph Anderson got wrong about elden ring ». It’s the best video on Elden ring out there, all the other just don’t understand the game mechanics
Loved this video and I loved your later section about being experimental. Yes it is “open world Dark Souls” but at the same time it’s not. You can’t play it the same you have to experiment. Especially with the bosses which is why I feel many get them wrong and don’t enjoy them. On my first playthrough they were great, after that they got a lot worse until I sat down and decided to do weird shit, I crouched under attacks, jumped over others and weaved my own attacks into their combos and they started getting destroyed. Most bosses are just patterns and learning them, I highly recommend sitting down with some and just playing around. I did this with Morgott, I’m a casual player yet I felt compelled to fight him with a +7 dagger doing 65 damage at a time and it was amazing even though it was a 12 minute fight.
Yes, most of the people that criticize the game on TH-cam (Joseph Anderson, neverknownbest) don’t understand the combat mechanics of Elden Ring and think if you can’t no-hit a boss with ultra greatsword first try the bosses is therefore bad. He doesn’t understand that elden ring has a stagger mechanic and trading damage is a big part of ultra weapons gameplay.
I will always look on my time learning to beat malenia fondly. I tried to play defensively as i had learned to over the course of the game, and once i realised it wasnt going to work, i took to summoning black knife tiche and then absolutely battering her with moonlight greatswords weapon art, i barely gave her the chance to use waterfowl dance, and staggered her repeatedly until i won, it felt so cool to win by using a new strategy and take her down by not giving her space to breathe
I do not think i will ever fully understand what people are searching for in these games when they share similar experiences/opinions as you. I do not mean it in a negative way, i genuinely dont understand the real reason you are playing. The main thing i dont understand is why "fun" is the word people use when they describe things like this. Describing something as "fun" and "not fun" literally means nothing because while everything is subjective, fun is like one of the most subjective things. To me, fighting IS the main point, the engagement, the back and forth, not the reward nor the end, but the fight itself. And i fully understand that things like summons and stunlocking bosses to the point where they cant fight back can be "fun" for some people, since that is why they are in the game. But at the same time its just so... sad to see. Not only because i feel like from my experience and life knowledge so far, i cannot imagine how that can feel more rewarding, but also for the fact that especially from bloodborne and onward, there is so much work, love and care being put into these games that bosses have become so complex they are, if fought, look like moving art pieces every frame. I dont know, maybe i am the one who isnt getting what that "fun" is people are talking about.
I'm glad that you didn't let pride get in the way of using all the available systems and enjoying the game. However, watching your footage I'm reminded that From didn't do a great job teaching players how useful jumping is as a defensive option against sweeping attacks, and how when enemies do a big telegraphed undodgeable attack it's a good idea to sprint away and make some space. Bit of a shame, really, mixing those elements in with dodging makes defense a lot more interesting to me and makes the bosses a lot less overwhelming than fighting with rolls alone.
When it comes to difficult bosses, mine was Mohg. Between his attack patterns, resistances, and despite being able to wail on him during his nihil stage (because I had the lord of blood tear) he was still able to destroy me. Godskin Duo was easier for me since I was able to focus on the round one and dodge the other with ease, I won't deny that It's partially because of luck that I happen to be behind a pillar when the godskin did his rolling attack while his counterpart was dead, so I was able to spam shard spiral at him.
My main character is the Salamander Apostle. And now I shall roleplay post for no apparent reason. I started off as a strength user, wielding a great curved sword. My flaw was my rage, I would both enter and leave battle furious as any berserker. I walked the bloodied path until fate would set me before the Beast Clergyman. Already I felt kinship with the mighty being, nothing wrathful of me could dare meet the strength such as that. I had to grow stronger, and Gurranq lead me to do so. Although rudimentary, I obtained the first scraps of magic through his tutelage. Annihilating Those Who Live In Death was...pitiful. It wasn't the challenge I needed, discarding these weaklings to the mass graves was as worthless as the start. Although I needed my mentor's teachings, there was no way I could remain satiated with these bony fools. These hunts were unbefitting, and would never allow me to grow. It was only later that a strange woman called me aside, she had a strange demeanor about her but a pleasant air. I had to deal with another Tarnished it seems. Worst of all, when I found him he was all talk. But, if there's one thing I respect it's food so he gets to live. All he wanted was a pittance of runes. What a hopeless trade. Yet the lady on my return would lead me towards a manor in the distance, she said she saw the stuff of champions in me. What's a little detour from the guidance of the Beast? All I had to do was scale a passway. The last thing deterring me from that godforsaken hollow was something that enchanted me greatly. A flaming creature that crawls like a bestial monster yet had the strength of a sword-arm to blow us all back from the mere shockwave. It's breath was magma that stuck to one of my cohort so much it killed them outright. It's strength had to be mine and soon it would be. The final frenzy of my attack laying it low as I peeled it's very sword from it's soon-to-be-rotting corpse. I felt it for the first time, an element I had only heard of but never felt to harness itself: Fire. I carved out it's heart and cast myself to the fate of it's design, forcefully taking not only it's weapon but it's very essence into my being. My blood a boiling river of lava itself which flowed out from the hilt of my sword and refused to harm me. I sat in the pools of fire too hot for any forge and my flesh refused to char. I discarded my weapon that day and acquired my fate from the teeth of that wyrm. I am the Salamander, and I am Flame Incarnate.
You’re wrong when you say you can’t play a « noble knight » in Elden Ring, the bosses were not made to counter your playstyle it’s just you that doesn’t want to adapt the way you play with your build to Elden Ring. This game doesn’t work like Dark souls 3, or Sekiro, or Bloodborne… You need to learn the combo patterns and find solution on how to position yourself to dodge most attack. You need to understand the posture mechanic and when it’s good to trade damage with the boss.
I did a pure faith build on my first 200lvls playthrough and decided to be a 2 handed sword master for the ng+, kinda nerfed myself a little so its not too little a challenge
My first play through was a pure strength broadsword build. I used weapon arts and consumables and I did every boss in the game on my first run so I could get the most out of the game. Doing EVERY boss caused me to get fairly over leveled and i think that is why I didn’t struggle as much as you. The only bosses that took me more than 3 or 4 tries was malenia and Maliketh. Both of them are absurdly hard to beat with pure melee, malenia especially because I was using a broadsword and shield and when she hits the shield she still gains HP. This was extremely annoying because it made half of my kit a detriment. I ended up two handing a the great sword (the dragon slayer) and managed to finally beat her. I think every boss should be as fairly balanced for as many builds as possible so when I found out that malenia hard counters shields I was pissed. Elden rings biggest criticism has been it’s boss design which has suffered a lot because of the open world having to be filled with boss fights. In other souls games all the bosses were unique and well tuned in elden ring only a handful of bosses aren’t repeated and because of how many possible builds there are they aren’t well tuned for all of them. Elden rings biggest strength is build variety and exploration but it’s a double edged sword because it caused bosses to become much worse than they were in previous games.
Well done on your playthrough, that's really impressive! And I can understand for a design perspective to reuse bosses to fill the huge open world they made. Though I really enjoy the linear progression in previous games where encounters were built with a particular toolkit in mind.
How can you say malenia is absurdly hard if you beat her in 4 tries ? There is more unique bosses in Elden Ring than in other souls game, the difference is that they are more spread out around the world. And no Malenia doesn’t hard counter shield, it’s shield that hard-counter Malenia since you can tank Waterfowl dance.
@@ni9274 you didn’t read what I said… I said MORE THAN 3-4 tries, malenia took me around 30 tries to beat. Most of the dungeon bosses are easy and they are worse tthan ds3 bosses who have more unique move sets and generally seemed more well thought out than the vast majority of the bosses in elden ring imo. The only bosses that can compare to the bosses in ds3 and sekiro (the other souls games ive played) are the remembrance bosses and even then a lot of them aren’t as good as bosses like vordt, soul of cinder, the sword saint, or abyss watchers. They are equally memorable designs but gameplay wise I prefer the other souls games bosses. She does hard counter shields because even if I can take some attacks she still heals even if I block, making it so I get punished for blocking. And I was using a medium shield so no I couldn’t just block the entirety of waterfowl, if you try to tank a huge attack like that your guard will probably break and you will die.
There are a number of things that I disagree with, but they are mostly personal preference so won't get into that. However, malenia is one of the best designed bosses in fromsoft history, and if you cheese her, you have wasted a playthrough. I have fought her countless times with all kinds of weapons, and I believe it is beyond worth it to fight her properly. I know this sounds pretentious, but if you practice her enough, you will understand how well she is designed.
I agree with you, but some people just don’t like to spend time learning a moveset. So cheesing her is perfectly valid if you don’t play souls game for the boss design.
Same, I'm a believer that searching up how to fight something is fine as long as it's not cheese strats. There are plenty of vids on how to dodge it, and all you really need to do is survive the first two flurries. The rest is easy.
I had a similar arc with malenia. Throughout the game I experimented with 5-6 different builds and when I reached her I got my ass handed to me every.single.time But ultimately the unthinkable happened, I re-speced to a pure 70 str build with the prelate's hammer which had a charged r2 that would send her flying and the ash of war 'lion's claw' that would pancake her. The most fun I had with a boss lmao Although I partially agree that pure melee is the harder of the builds but lupineOs has a video countering Joseph Anderson's video regarding this topic, you should check it out if you're interested
I mean, yeah, you can only respec 18 times max in a playthrough and there are hundreds of weapons and spells, but it’s not like your dex build will only work with one weapon. Same goes for any other build you might wanna give a go. I think respecing more than 5 times in a single playthrough is crazy. You should be able to find your preferred style in less than 18 tries, my guy.
I feel the exact same way with the quests I’ve heard fromsoft were like that and heard things like you would need to write stuff down which honestly sounded even better. The whole arc with milicient I had no idea she just rocks up at a place and she starts fighting with you in bosses a missed the whole getting stretched part because I didn’t know where she turned up and it made me sad 😩
Call me a masochist but I think the bosses are most fun when playing melee only no summons (except foreskin duo, fuck that boss, I want the shit miyazaki was smoking when designing it)
I'm still in the 2 or 3 zone and in a pretty similar boat I stick very hard to a character theme and very rarely deviate I get the most fun out of souls likes that way and usually using anything outside of that theme breaks my immersion and I don't have as much fun even if it would make it easier for example the build I finally beat the game with a death themed build stuff that would have originated from the death ruin or has some relation with godwyn the golden the build itself isn't that great while also being a pain in the ass to make considering for anything even remotely useful you have to go to the soft caps for int and faith and since the spells aren't really that great I also went a little into strength and dex so I could use the 3 death weapons as a backup sure it's diverse but significantly worse than most other builds especially at the level I was I've seen quite a few people make the build viable through the use of buffs but those buffs don't have any relation to the concept of death in the universe and sure it wouldn't hurt anything to use those buffs I'm just too stubborn to add them and they break my immersion of being a disciple of death. Finally I'm also one of those people that won't use summons I've been that way since bloodborne due to me finally getting the game long since it's playerbase was actively there I learned to play solo and had a blast much more than I did from playing 2 and 3
so you're saying that the bosses becoming harder is bad? They punish you for panic rolling because it rewards learning the timing and overall just getting better at the game.The entire point of the franchise is the difficulty.
There are different types of difficulty, some more fun that others regardless of their challenge. FS games are renown for the *quality* of their difficulty, not just that they *are* hard. I believe the panic roll checks were just a small example of the point being made about the duo fight's challenge as a theme for *how* the difficulty is expressed in Elden ring as opposed to other FS titles.
@@andrewmason6245 I don’t think there is many unfair boss fight in elden ring outside the godskin duo and valiant gargoyle. The other bosses are all amazingly fair and challenging, you can even tweak the difficulty at your liking with summons.
All that matters is if you had fun doing what you did I personally like to struggle against a boss until I finally beat them without the cheese but that's just me
I get this perspective, but for me, I just can't help feeling that they are missing out if they use cheese. If they would just apply themselves a little more or look at videos to find out how to dodge certain attacks, they would feel much better.
Count yourself lucky, Irina's father never even spawned for me, and I went to the top of the tower where he is supposed to be before I fought the boss down at the bottom.
easily the best fromsoft game by miles! god what i would do wipe my memory of this game and play it again...the other fromsoft games were fantastic too but frankly other than a few boss moments none match elden ring in sheer awe, art design and exploration...well in my opinion atleast. dark souls 2 is the only game left i havent played and i hear bad things about it but then again, most souls vets are delusional tryhards that played ER stubbornly wrong and then blamed the game for it and are filled with nostalgia bias towards the older games, especially the bb fanboys **shudders*
There is defiantly a lot to like about Elden Ring, a lot of what you mentioned are fantastic parts. I will say while Dark Souls 2 has its problems there are defiantly cool aspects for sure, Majula the hub area is great, there's a lot of variety in it's locations, and the dlc are cool. As one of those Bloodborne fanboys who took a while to fully get into it, Elden Ring is groovy and I'm interested in diving into it's expansion when it comes out. Thanks for watching!
Joseph Anderson is completely WRONG about the combat of Elden Ring, I recommend this video to better understand how Elden Ring work « What Joseph Anderson got wrong about Elden Ring combat ».
yeah , you're right. We have to admit that while the open-world is great, and the combat is great, the quests....specially the side quests...are just plain bad and nonsensical. Somtimes, part of the quest is to actually RELOAD the game to see the change you have made
The « quest » are not really quest, the dev want you to play the game and naturally interact with the npc. It’s not big deal if you miss something on your first playthrough, but the moment you go check a wiki you’re going against the dev vision of questing in this game.
@@ni9274 the moment the dev launch the game, every player is gonna have its own vision. And as it is, most players use guides to find quest, and few play blind. Slight changes on that part would make Elden Ring much better, such as an in-game diary where the character writes down what he has done and seen. It doesn't have to be a marker, or arrows pointing directions
The questline from the Weeping Peninsula does not end with killing Edgar though. It picks up before that right after you kill Godrick. Hyetta is Irena, or the body is the same at least, Hyetta is some sort of spirit of Frenzied Flame similar to Shabriri who takes over corpses of those who die in despair. The quest does not pick up at Edgar in the hut being mad at you, it picks up with Hyetta and then continues through the whole game, including Yura towards the end since he too died in despair felled by his lover.
The plot about who killed Irena isn't really all that important since we know that it was the Misbegotten. The important part of the Weeping Peninsula part of that quest is the despair and hate within Edgar. And it is not out of the blue either. When you explore the Weeping Penninsula you'll find a small village completely consumed by the madness caused by the Flame of Frenzy. It is called the Weeping Peninsula after all. You of course won't understand that at first since the concept of the Frenzied Flame is foreign to you at that point in the game, but much later if you follow Hyettas questline you'll learn what the Flame of Frenzy is all about, and you'll then know why and how you got the Shabriri Grape from Edgar, why his eyes were yellow with chaos flame.
Other questlines are much more conventional. You'll follow Millicent throughout the lands on her journey to the Haligtree where you find her conclusion, same with Cohryn as he searches for the Gold Mask, and Nepheli as she goes from Stormveil to the Albinauric Village, and of course Yura as he travels around the Limgrave lake, through Liurnia, into the Altus Plateau where you find his personal conclusion but then continues into the Mountaintops of the Giants when Shabriri has his body.
Most long questlines follow you on your journey. Some go back and forth like Diallos, but theres a bit of everything.
It sounds like you were focusing a bit too much on making sure you didn't miss anything so you missed what the game was trying to tell you. It clearly wasn't about to take you on a long Misbegotten genocide quest in the Weeping Penninsula, it was sowing the seeds of one of the big endings, the saddest one about antinatalism.
I hear all the time people complaining about the game feeling cheap when you come back to a boss you were struggling on only to destroy it with your newfound levels and weapons and mitigate the challenge, but to be honest that stomping almost feels more rewarding to me than brute forcing my way through a boss. It sounds like you feel the same to some degree with your Malenia experience. I’m glad that it mended your love for the game, fellow tarnished!
I heartily agree, when it clicks with whatever strat you go with, it is incredibly satisfying, thanks for your thoughts!
Yeah, It's funny too because that's kind of the point of progression based RPGs; to grow in strength and ability and eventually defeat foes you couldn't have dreamed of besting before; the experience of growth, development and, well, progression haha
Elden Ring satisfies both parties. If you want to beat your head over and over again fighting the same boss until you beat them then you can. If you want to leave and get stronger then you can.
@@Pollymacho it might be worth watching someone beat her at rune level 1 just to see how they do it.
"If the boss cheeses me, then you can be goddamn sure I'm gonna cheese them back" ~ this guy while stun locking Malenia with the blasphemous blade
Great video btw
It's so nice to see TH-cam recommending small channels more often :)
Thanks! feels pretty sick to get comments like this.
I saw this on my recommended list and played this while working and I ended up watching the whole damn thing. I agree and shared the same experience as you. Currently on new game plus exploring different builds, now the challenge for me is facing these bosses with a more concrete playstyle and build rather than just last minute preps and exploits.more power man, I'm now a subscriber!
I'm honored Philip, thanks for checking this out! And glad to hear you are enjoying the game again and trying out some new fun ways to fight bosses!
Great analysis!! Keep going 💪🏻
Great quality for a small channel I got randomly recommended this video and I wasn’t disappointed
Ah the algorithm entity has blessed me today, thanks for watching!
ER is the first Souls game I played, yet while I didn't feel frustrated enough to take a long break from it, I feel your character arc. Funny how my first character, despite being a samurai who naturally mutated into a pre-nerf RoB spawn also ended up with the blasphemous blade in the end. After going the way of pure bonk for much of my playthrough, my fourth character ended up using the prayerful strike ash and proceeded to kill Malenia, Radagon, and the Elden Beast with far less difficulty. Souls games had the reputation of being hard, but I also heard of its reputation of requiring the player to learn to be more methodical and learn boss patterns. ER, however, felt like I had to counter unga with bunga instead, so I do get it.
I think why I found it less frustrating was because, having started as a samurai, I quickly learned how devastating bleed was, especially after the arcane fix, AND I was encouraged to explore and grind before tackling a challenge. Also, I looked for ways to unga bunga. Godskin Duo was a comical fight with a huge lull in between when I summoned both mimic tear AND Bernahl.
Thanks for sharing your story, and glad you found a way to enjoy the game in the end.
Dude thank you for sharing yours too! This was a great read!
I don’t know if you pursued the rest of that first quest, but I think it was on purpose for it to be that obscure. Since it’s part of one of the endings it fits for that ending that it’s difficult esoteric and forces you to explore aimlessly to complete it.
Other big quest have decent markers for where to find the NPCs, ranni’s quest is nearly linear, and you can sido most things fine just by following what NPCs say. Same thing with Alexander, the vulcano manor and Millicent’s, the vulcano manor has literal map markers.
The quest style is not one everyone will appreciate, especially when you can look it up online. The obscurity is more novel if the player continues for multiple play throughs and are hit with the "ah hah" moment when they discover the purpose for the "random" and "useless" items they acquire, etc.
the gs duo slander is absolutely needed I can't believe that haven't changed it yet
Glad to do that service.
We can laugh at that brick wall together.
@Pollymacho it's crazy to me that people struggle with that. Just craft sleep pots/arrows. They game has an NPC recommend the crafting kit for a reason. If you chose not to use every resource available to you then you have no one to be mad at but yourself.
For me duo bosses are left to the players' discretion whether to use summons or not. Non duos should have no summons.
@The Maverick you don't need that strat. A summon is plenty enough.
@@unidentified2026 don't even need that tbh
Really enjoyed the way you presented the video as a character arc. It makes it clear that it is one person's experience and perspective, whereas other video essays I've seen sometimes makes it feel like their opinion is fact (they don't say it's fact, but makes sound like their opinion is correct and opposing ones are wrong). This video made me think back about my own character arcs for each of the Fromsoft games and even my experience of playing all the Fromsoft games as a whole. Awesome video :)
Glad to hear that Jung, thank you!
elden ring is my first fromsoft game. i played it for a couple hours the first time, managed to clear the first godrick soldiers camp after a lot of tries, got to margit and couldnt beat him, got frustrated and quit.
i watched DJ peach cobblers elden ring review, with his main takeaway being that elden ring gives you an empty toolbelt, and by exploring you fill it. each weapon or spell is meant to be used in certain situations. yeah i can use my giant greatsword the whole playthrough, but something would be objectively more effective for certain fights. doesnt stop me from using my greatsword tho.
my best takeaway for this game is that it is amazing, and made itself one of my favorites of all time, thoroughly ruining skyrim, botw and all other open world games for me, but you should totally cheat yourself in a bunch of larval tears at the start of your run, so you can change your build whenever
first vid i watched this year, and it didnt disappoint.
Happy new years Alex!
Aw thanks dude, I'm honored!
SPOILERS!!!
Irina's quest actually continues afterwards as an add-on to the Frenzied Flame quest as her body gets possessed by someone else and she goes on with the name "Hyetta"
And thematically that side of the quest takes place all in Liurnia for the grapes so technically it does stay on theme.
There are a few maidens you can use for Varre's quest and both Irina and Hyetta work if you kill them. But Irina's body doesn't. Why? Perhaps the dead body is not actually her, but another corpse to stage her death so that she, or perhaps someone who has taken over her body, could leave and also drive Edgar mad with frenzy. Why else would her face be hidden? And the positioning of her and the blade are strange all around. Why would the misbegotten leave it's blade behind? Im pretty sure its an oversight that Irina can still be alive since all you need to do is pick up the letter from her first dialogue to spawn Hyetta into the game. This is not my theory its from a video by OptiziArt.
@@Dartium yeah it's probably an oversight due to how many things they had to take into consideration with a game this massive
Such a well done video. You deserve so many more views, likes, and subs.
Thanks Brogan, it's really cool to hear that!
Wonderful intro and great editing my friend. May the elden stars carry you far!
Thanks dude! May the Elden Stars carry us all to victory!
Having experience with open world games I seriously struggle to understand people's dissatisfaction with the mini dungeons. It's not like they're identical or badly designed. If someone feels they're monotonous then wouldn't that be an issue with the game as a whole? A couple more distinct bosses I can understand but can we expect unique assets for each cave, mine, and crypt? I guess they could have had more puzzles but then people would complain about the effort required being disproportional to the rewards. It's also funny seeing complaints about the loot now that it's open world when even in something like DS3 (criticised for it's linearity) most items went unused by the average player and people seemed to accept this as just a part of the RPG aspect.
That's a really good point. The mini-dungeons certainly aren't terrible (I got stuck in them, but that's more of a me problem). In fact, there are a few surprises that were really cool and caught me off guard. it was more me starting to lose that magic the game first created with how fresh everything first was, then them being awful. Thanks for your comment! e
Yes I agree with this heavily, I had almost zero issues with the mini dungeons even after doing all of them. I felt that every one had a unique challenge and enemy placement that kept things interesting.
I think the problem with the catacombs is mostly visual. They all look the same, so most players don't appreciate much how they become more complex as the game goes on, which is a shame. I think the easiest solution would be to have different assets per region. If the catacombs are the same in Limgrave, but different from the ones Liurnia and those from the ones in Altus/Caelid/Mountains, the surprise factor could be maintained till the endgame.
The complains that some people have about the loot are just nitpicking. I won't say that everything you find is great or that you will use everything, but I think there's plenty of good things that reward exploration and more importantly, they are unique. Every weapon, spell, talisman, ash of war, cookbook and summon is unique. Weapons of the same class may share movesets (which is actually the common thing for most games), but the models are different, usually with different stats, scaling, range and description. Anything you get in Elden Ring and other souls games can be upgraded and used through the whole game. There's nothing truly useless, even if there are some better options. In other games, you usually get a loot box that gives you 575578 pieces of common loot, some "rare" weapons and if you get some "epic" or unique, then there's a big change that it would be worse than what you already have or, if it's better, it will eventually lose its usefulness as you progress through the game. That or you will get crafting materials to create weapons which isn't better.
Another thing that makes Elden Ring and other souls stand out in the loot aspect, it's that you're not locked in one class. If you start as unga bunga and get an staff and some spells , there's nothing keeping you from investing some points in intelligence of faith and become a magical caveman, so there's not reason to complain about not being able to use everything.
Really good video man...I was surprised when I saw your subscriber count
Thanks Colin, I'm honored to make something worth your time!
The difficulty talks about this game from all these youtubers always feels so foreign to me. Did you all really not think to try the many cool and strong weapons and magics before the Godskin Duo? The game has so many cool new things but so many youtubers seem to want to stick to a DS1 playstyle. If bosses in Elden Ring were balanced for that then the game would be extremely easy.
These games have difficulty modes. You can play naked with an unupgraded club or torch using no summons for the hardest difficulty, and you can oneshot every boss with a lazer for the easiest difficulty. I didn't actually care much about this when I started playing since I always play what I think is coolest either way, but the coolest things in the game are strong. I started using the Blasphemous blade instantly, before that I used the Sword of Night and Flame because it's badass, and I spammed Rivers of Blood in a different playthrough not because it was good, but because it was cool. How did all these youtubers manage to stick to the blandest playstyles for so long? Feels like you guys just wanted to play DS1 DLCs rather than actual new fromsoft games.
I have a feeling that so many influencers played in a barebones way initially because they just wanted to do it an elists way, which is why all these youtubers only started complaining about that aspect of the community in Elden Ring.
If you cheesed the earlier games people would say it was like playing on easy mode and everyone agreed because most people could play it in a barebones way, the influencers were silent. But now Elden Ring is much harder so people can't just panic roll out of everything, influencers find excuses. Now it's the game that is wrong and the people who flaunt their achievements of beating it with a knife are just toxic people who ruin the community and yada yada. I'm not a fan of it, I think theres too much pride going around. Sure some hardcores can be too prideful in their underplaying how how difficult the game is to play ethically, but to actually take offense to that is equally prideful, it's just unearded bride on top of that.
We should all be able to admit that some people are better at the game than we are if we need to use things like summons and cheese builds. Pride is the only thing that makes someone take offense to that. Instead of calling the people who tell you to "just learn the patterns and dodge at the right times" toxic elitists, you can just say "nah mate I'm not good enough to do that on Malenia or Mogh" and then move on. Most people did that, not only because they needed to cheese to win, but because it's more fun to use the coolest weapons.
Though I think the difficulty of not cheesing is overstated. I have played the game with a colossal sword alone and it wasn't that unforgiving, harder than blashpemous blade, but not that much of a struggle fest, especially not when you take the time to explore enough to level your stuff up, including vigor, alot of people forget to level vigor and it makes the game 10 times harder. And as far as I know the Royal Greatsword is not OP or anything, especially not when I'm only wearing Alberichs altered clothes. I'm not some souls pro but everything was very much beatable when using summons for tag-team bosses.
Fair enough I'll admit I was the same it only became fun when I started playing the way the game was telling me too this ain't darksouls and people need to learn this the game littrealy tells you to become a god from the getgo ffs.
Watch « what Joseph Anderson got wrong about elden ring ».
It’s the best video on Elden ring out there, all the other just don’t understand the game mechanics
Loved this video and I loved your later section about being experimental. Yes it is “open world Dark Souls” but at the same time it’s not. You can’t play it the same you have to experiment. Especially with the bosses which is why I feel many get them wrong and don’t enjoy them. On my first playthrough they were great, after that they got a lot worse until I sat down and decided to do weird shit, I crouched under attacks, jumped over others and weaved my own attacks into their combos and they started getting destroyed. Most bosses are just patterns and learning them, I highly recommend sitting down with some and just playing around. I did this with Morgott, I’m a casual player yet I felt compelled to fight him with a +7 dagger doing 65 damage at a time and it was amazing even though it was a 12 minute fight.
You absolute lad! Thanks for the tip!
@@Pollymacho your welcome, hope it helps. Took me too long to experiment with it and then bosses become much better.
Yes, most of the people that criticize the game on TH-cam (Joseph Anderson, neverknownbest) don’t understand the combat mechanics of Elden Ring and think if you can’t no-hit a boss with ultra greatsword first try the bosses is therefore bad.
He doesn’t understand that elden ring has a stagger mechanic and trading damage is a big part of ultra weapons gameplay.
I will always look on my time learning to beat malenia fondly. I tried to play defensively as i had learned to over the course of the game, and once i realised it wasnt going to work, i took to summoning black knife tiche and then absolutely battering her with moonlight greatswords weapon art, i barely gave her the chance to use waterfowl dance, and staggered her repeatedly until i won, it felt so cool to win by using a new strategy and take her down by not giving her space to breathe
I feel like you get more than enough larval tears for all the respecs you could possibly want in a playthrough.
I do not think i will ever fully understand what people are searching for in these games when they share similar experiences/opinions as you. I do not mean it in a negative way, i genuinely dont understand the real reason you are playing.
The main thing i dont understand is why "fun" is the word people use when they describe things like this. Describing something as "fun" and "not fun" literally means nothing because while everything is subjective, fun is like one of the most subjective things.
To me, fighting IS the main point, the engagement, the back and forth, not the reward nor the end, but the fight itself. And i fully understand that things like summons and stunlocking bosses to the point where they cant fight back can be "fun" for some people, since that is why they are in the game. But at the same time its just so... sad to see. Not only because i feel like from my experience and life knowledge so far, i cannot imagine how that can feel more rewarding, but also for the fact that especially from bloodborne and onward, there is so much work, love and care being put into these games that bosses have become so complex they are, if fought, look like moving art pieces every frame.
I dont know, maybe i am the one who isnt getting what that "fun" is people are talking about.
I'm glad that you didn't let pride get in the way of using all the available systems and enjoying the game. However, watching your footage I'm reminded that From didn't do a great job teaching players how useful jumping is as a defensive option against sweeping attacks, and how when enemies do a big telegraphed undodgeable attack it's a good idea to sprint away and make some space. Bit of a shame, really, mixing those elements in with dodging makes defense a lot more interesting to me and makes the bosses a lot less overwhelming than fighting with rolls alone.
Blasphemous Blade is a weapon, I won't regret using, even if i am called upon using it , it's just so good
It's an incredible weapon. Glad it's serving you well!
When it comes to difficult bosses, mine was Mohg. Between his attack patterns, resistances, and despite being able to wail on him during his nihil stage (because I had the lord of blood tear) he was still able to destroy me.
Godskin Duo was easier for me since I was able to focus on the round one and dodge the other with ease, I won't deny that It's partially because of luck that I happen to be behind a pillar when the godskin did his rolling attack while his counterpart was dead, so I was able to spam shard spiral at him.
Mohg doesn't mess around. That guy can be challenging. Glad to hear you bodied the Godskin Duo with ease!
My main character is the Salamander Apostle.
And now I shall roleplay post for no apparent reason.
I started off as a strength user, wielding a great curved sword. My flaw was my rage, I would both enter and leave battle furious as any berserker. I walked the bloodied path until fate would set me before the Beast Clergyman. Already I felt kinship with the mighty being, nothing wrathful of me could dare meet the strength such as that. I had to grow stronger, and Gurranq lead me to do so. Although rudimentary, I obtained the first scraps of magic through his tutelage.
Annihilating Those Who Live In Death was...pitiful. It wasn't the challenge I needed, discarding these weaklings to the mass graves was as worthless as the start. Although I needed my mentor's teachings, there was no way I could remain satiated with these bony fools. These hunts were unbefitting, and would never allow me to grow. It was only later that a strange woman called me aside, she had a strange demeanor about her but a pleasant air. I had to deal with another Tarnished it seems. Worst of all, when I found him he was all talk. But, if there's one thing I respect it's food so he gets to live. All he wanted was a pittance of runes. What a hopeless trade. Yet the lady on my return would lead me towards a manor in the distance, she said she saw the stuff of champions in me. What's a little detour from the guidance of the Beast? All I had to do was scale a passway.
The last thing deterring me from that godforsaken hollow was something that enchanted me greatly. A flaming creature that crawls like a bestial monster yet had the strength of a sword-arm to blow us all back from the mere shockwave. It's breath was magma that stuck to one of my cohort so much it killed them outright. It's strength had to be mine and soon it would be. The final frenzy of my attack laying it low as I peeled it's very sword from it's soon-to-be-rotting corpse. I felt it for the first time, an element I had only heard of but never felt to harness itself: Fire.
I carved out it's heart and cast myself to the fate of it's design, forcefully taking not only it's weapon but it's very essence into my being. My blood a boiling river of lava itself which flowed out from the hilt of my sword and refused to harm me. I sat in the pools of fire too hot for any forge and my flesh refused to char. I discarded my weapon that day and acquired my fate from the teeth of that wyrm. I am the Salamander, and I am Flame Incarnate.
Woah this was a great read! Thanks for taking the time to share it!
You’re wrong when you say you can’t play a « noble knight » in Elden Ring, the bosses were not made to counter your playstyle it’s just you that doesn’t want to adapt the way you play with your build to Elden Ring.
This game doesn’t work like Dark souls 3, or Sekiro, or Bloodborne…
You need to learn the combo patterns and find solution on how to position yourself to dodge most attack.
You need to understand the posture mechanic and when it’s good to trade damage with the boss.
I did a pure faith build on my first 200lvls playthrough and decided to be a 2 handed sword master for the ng+, kinda nerfed myself a little so its not too little a challenge
Great video
My first play through was a pure strength broadsword build. I used weapon arts and consumables and I did every boss in the game on my first run so I could get the most out of the game. Doing EVERY boss caused me to get fairly over leveled and i think that is why I didn’t struggle as much as you. The only bosses that took me more than 3 or 4 tries was malenia and Maliketh. Both of them are absurdly hard to beat with pure melee, malenia especially because I was using a broadsword and shield and when she hits the shield she still gains HP. This was extremely annoying because it made half of my kit a detriment. I ended up two handing a the great sword (the dragon slayer) and managed to finally beat her. I think every boss should be as fairly balanced for as many builds as possible so when I found out that malenia hard counters shields I was pissed.
Elden rings biggest criticism has been it’s boss design which has suffered a lot because of the open world having to be filled with boss fights. In other souls games all the bosses were unique and well tuned in elden ring only a handful of bosses aren’t repeated and because of how many possible builds there are they aren’t well tuned for all of them. Elden rings biggest strength is build variety and exploration but it’s a double edged sword because it caused bosses to become much worse than they were in previous games.
Well done on your playthrough, that's really impressive! And I can understand for a design perspective to reuse bosses to fill the huge open world they made. Though I really enjoy the linear progression in previous games where encounters were built with a particular toolkit in mind.
How can you say malenia is absurdly hard if you beat her in 4 tries ?
There is more unique bosses in Elden Ring than in other souls game, the difference is that they are more spread out around the world.
And no Malenia doesn’t hard counter shield, it’s shield that hard-counter Malenia since you can tank Waterfowl dance.
@@ni9274 you didn’t read what I said… I said MORE THAN 3-4 tries, malenia took me around 30 tries to beat. Most of the dungeon bosses are easy and they are worse tthan ds3 bosses who have more unique move sets and generally seemed more well thought out than the vast majority of the bosses in elden ring imo. The only bosses that can compare to the bosses in ds3 and sekiro (the other souls games ive played) are the remembrance bosses and even then a lot of them aren’t as good as bosses like vordt, soul of cinder, the sword saint, or abyss watchers. They are equally memorable designs but gameplay wise I prefer the other souls games bosses.
She does hard counter shields because even if I can take some attacks she still heals even if I block, making it so I get punished for blocking. And I was using a medium shield so no I couldn’t just block the entirety of waterfowl, if you try to tank a huge attack like that your guard will probably break and you will die.
really good video :D
Thanks Adrian! I really appreciate it!
There are a number of things that I disagree with, but they are mostly personal preference so won't get into that. However, malenia is one of the best designed bosses in fromsoft history, and if you cheese her, you have wasted a playthrough. I have fought her countless times with all kinds of weapons, and I believe it is beyond worth it to fight her properly. I know this sounds pretentious, but if you practice her enough, you will understand how well she is designed.
I agree with you, but some people just don’t like to spend time learning a moveset.
So cheesing her is perfectly valid if you don’t play souls game for the boss design.
Awsome video!!
Thanks Justin!
what would you call a dex/int character, use cold curved sword, moonveil, cold greatsword, cold hammer ?
you can just run from the waterfowl dance and dodge it perfectly, I hate how people call the move cheap even though its actually quite easy to dodge.
Same, I'm a believer that searching up how to fight something is fine as long as it's not cheese strats. There are plenty of vids on how to dodge it, and all you really need to do is survive the first two flurries. The rest is easy.
@@unidentified2026 I didn't even search it, I learned that I needed better positioning and just ran and it works
You can also throw a freezing pot to cancel the move
I had a similar arc with malenia. Throughout the game I experimented with 5-6 different builds and when I reached her I got my ass handed to me every.single.time
But ultimately the unthinkable happened, I re-speced to a pure 70 str build with the prelate's hammer which had a charged r2 that would send her flying and the ash of war 'lion's claw' that would pancake her. The most fun I had with a boss lmao
Although I partially agree that pure melee is the harder of the builds but lupineOs has a video countering Joseph Anderson's video regarding this topic, you should check it out if you're interested
I may just have to check that out, thanks for the recommendation!
I mean, yeah, you can only respec 18 times max in a playthrough and there are hundreds of weapons and spells, but it’s not like your dex build will only work with one weapon. Same goes for any other build you might wanna give a go. I think respecing more than 5 times in a single playthrough is crazy. You should be able to find your preferred style in less than 18 tries, my guy.
I feel the exact same way with the quests I’ve heard fromsoft were like that and heard things like you would need to write stuff down which honestly sounded even better. The whole arc with milicient I had no idea she just rocks up at a place and she starts fighting with you in bosses a missed the whole getting stretched part because I didn’t know where she turned up and it made me sad 😩
Aw man that sucks, sorry it turned out like that.
Call me a masochist but I think the bosses are most fun when playing melee only no summons (except foreskin duo, fuck that boss, I want the shit miyazaki was smoking when designing it)
If that's how you enjoy the game, that's awesome! Right on!
Same here, but I believe that every player is capable enough to do that as well and that they should strive for it.
I'm still in the 2 or 3 zone and in a pretty similar boat I stick very hard to a character theme and very rarely deviate I get the most fun out of souls likes that way and usually using anything outside of that theme breaks my immersion and I don't have as much fun even if it would make it easier for example the build I finally beat the game with a death themed build stuff that would have originated from the death ruin or has some relation with godwyn the golden the build itself isn't that great while also being a pain in the ass to make considering for anything even remotely useful you have to go to the soft caps for int and faith and since the spells aren't really that great I also went a little into strength and dex so I could use the 3 death weapons as a backup sure it's diverse but significantly worse than most other builds especially at the level I was I've seen quite a few people make the build viable through the use of buffs but those buffs don't have any relation to the concept of death in the universe and sure it wouldn't hurt anything to use those buffs I'm just too stubborn to add them and they break my immersion of being a disciple of death. Finally I'm also one of those people that won't use summons I've been that way since bloodborne due to me finally getting the game long since it's playerbase was actively there I learned to play solo and had a blast much more than I did from playing 2 and 3
Hope you get out of that section and it clicks with you soon with a concept that you can enjoy!
so you're saying that the bosses becoming harder is bad? They punish you for panic rolling because it rewards learning the timing and overall just getting better at the game.The entire point of the franchise is the difficulty.
There are different types of difficulty, some more fun that others regardless of their challenge. FS games are renown for the *quality* of their difficulty, not just that they *are* hard. I believe the panic roll checks were just a small example of the point being made about the duo fight's challenge as a theme for *how* the difficulty is expressed in Elden ring as opposed to other FS titles.
@@andrewmason6245 I don’t think there is many unfair boss fight in elden ring outside the godskin duo and valiant gargoyle.
The other bosses are all amazingly fair and challenging, you can even tweak the difficulty at your liking with summons.
All that matters is if you had fun doing what you did I personally like to struggle against a boss until I finally beat them without the cheese but that's just me
Right on man!
I get this perspective, but for me, I just can't help feeling that they are missing out if they use cheese. If they would just apply themselves a little more or look at videos to find out how to dodge certain attacks, they would feel much better.
Count yourself lucky, Irina's father never even spawned for me, and I went to the top of the tower where he is supposed to be before I fought the boss down at the bottom.
That's incredibly dumb that he didn't show up, what a tool!
Check out "What Joseph Anderson got wrong about Elden Ring" by LupineOs
Literally the best video on Elden Ring combat out there.
Every critic TH-camr should watch it before releasing their retrospective.
blasphemes blade carried me through 4 playthroughs lol
that moment when you discover the foreskin apostles arent immune to sleep they become a joke lol
Now do it without summons and Blasphemes blade:)
😬 I'm not strong enough for that mental warfare.
@@Pollymacho Fair, it takes great patience and extra time on your hands.
@@MrBjornar1 it's not that hard man lol
@Pollymacho you beat sekiro. You are plenty strong enough.
IS THAT PROFESSOR LAYTON I HEAR?!
You beat it is!
My brother, have u heard of the most reviled man in eldenring history. Shabriri?
Oh yeah, I remember that guy. Just looked at the questline and see how it works.
Bruh
The term you are looking for is.....
blue balls
easily the best fromsoft game by miles! god what i would do wipe my memory of this game and play it again...the other fromsoft games were fantastic too but frankly other than a few boss moments none match elden ring in sheer awe, art design and exploration...well in my opinion atleast. dark souls 2 is the only game left i havent played and i hear bad things about it but then again, most souls vets are delusional tryhards that played ER stubbornly wrong and then blamed the game for it and are filled with nostalgia bias towards the older games, especially the bb fanboys **shudders*
There is defiantly a lot to like about Elden Ring, a lot of what you mentioned are fantastic parts. I will say while Dark Souls 2 has its problems there are defiantly cool aspects for sure, Majula the hub area is great, there's a lot of variety in it's locations, and the dlc are cool.
As one of those Bloodborne fanboys who took a while to fully get into it, Elden Ring is groovy and I'm interested in diving into it's expansion when it comes out. Thanks for watching!
Not a huge deal but melee is pronounced may-lay
THAT'S RIGHT KIDS, JUST CHEESE IT, CHEESE IT TODAY 10/10 WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE not
Really enjoyed the vid, but fyi, it's pronounced MAYLAY ;
Joseph Anderson is completely WRONG about the combat of Elden Ring, I recommend this video to better understand how Elden Ring work « What Joseph Anderson got wrong about Elden Ring combat ».
Thanks for the recommendation! I have recently checked out that video, and it was very informative.
How do you not even have a thouand subscribers. Ive seen youtubers with millions of subs with worse quality videos
Its really nice to hear that. Thank you!
yeah , you're right. We have to admit that while the open-world is great, and the combat is great, the quests....specially the side quests...are just plain bad and nonsensical. Somtimes, part of the quest is to actually RELOAD the game to see the change you have made
The « quest » are not really quest, the dev want you to play the game and naturally interact with the npc.
It’s not big deal if you miss something on your first playthrough, but the moment you go check a wiki you’re going against the dev vision of questing in this game.
@@ni9274 the moment the dev launch the game, every player is gonna have its own vision. And as it is, most players use guides to find quest, and few play blind. Slight changes on that part would make Elden Ring much better, such as an in-game diary where the character writes down what he has done and seen. It doesn't have to be a marker, or arrows pointing directions
To be fair that's the way it's been in every souls games with side quests.
@@WokeandProud so I've seen, but Elden Ring was my first soulsgame, and I did really liked it.
I adore the whole video dearly.
However: lmao he got the fia ending what a simp
Glad to hear it.
And lol you caught me in 1080p
😇 *Promo sm*
This game cheats, so you gotta cheat back.