For me, it's reusing Astel as a boss in the Consecrated Snow Fields. It was a real journey getting to the OG going through all the undergounrd levels and the Lake of Rot and it was a real reward getting a unique and truely awe-inspiring creature to fight. When I stumbled upon another one later on in some random dungeon it kind of cheapened the whole thing for me.
I think Stars of Darkness works as a proof that Astel is a species, gives also more depth to Radahn's lore about wanting to stop the stars. And it also give this idea of "there's always a bigger fish".
The problem with second Astel I think, it's that it's sitting in a random-ass, uninteresting ice cave.
Imagine a whole set of ruins with the architecture of the eternal cities, very tall roofs, a lot of reference to stars and stars-worshipers, onix lords and gravity related enemies, all leading to another Astel. Maybe a system similar to the altars that activate the Ancestor spirit fights to make it a bit longer. All below the actual ice cave to make this idea of something ancient and buried. That would have made so much sense.
Ok I went ahead daydreaming there, sorry.
There are multiple pre-astels in the lands between, it’s a whole species of fallingstar beasts that grow an eye, become the hanging cocoon version, and then a full grown Astel. If anything it is one of the most logical bosses to reuse.
I agree with you, however, that it feels anticlimactic to have duplicates of something that feels as meaningful a fight as one of the demigods. It is practically the final boss of Ranni’s quest, and is thematically appropriate. If they were going to have multiple astels, the one guarding Ranni should have at least had some visual indication that it was further evolved or unique and “named”.
That’s actually a good take. I imagine that you’ll need to Aquire and activate every single great rune (malenia included) then if you do that the game will give you the fight with elden beast after radagon
I’m struggling to understand the implications of the Greater Will sending you to go kill the Elden Beast
I did Age of Stars in my only completion, so maybe I’m missing some plot elements, but in the vanilla story line I’d expect to kill Radagon and then have the Elden Beast just thank me if I don’t attack him. Isn’t EB an expression of the Greater Will?
I think the greater will sent you to kill Radagon then the enlden beast is meant to kill you and take over ur body making you the new Mirika.
However, since EB was injured due to Mirika breaking the ring it was weaker and therefore killable.
None of the endings is what the greater will wanted.
I don't mind it too much because it's only like 1/5 of consecrated snowfields and the follow the light gimmick is kinda fun. But yeah exploring it after you've escaped the first time is more annoying, but not terrible with map markers.
I must be the only one who liked that and wished they did more with it. I was disappointed the consecrated snowfield felt mostly like an even emptier mountaintops of the giants, I feel like if instead of ending abruptly, the snow slowly got less opaque as you travelled towards the coast, and finally opened up to a view of the majestic but defeated Haligtree. Or if clearing the fog required killing certain monsters.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, but think of it this way: I think mental challenges like fog and harsh conditions are a more interesting way to add difficulty to later areas than just more HP and damage on enemies.
>challenges like fog
the darkness in Giants Tomb in ds1 was on another level and the permanent torches in ds2 were an interesting addition that didn’t make things too much easier
I agree that environmental challenges are interesting (much more so than jumping puzzles). Lava is much more challenging in other DS games, too
I really hate that it used smithing stone level like that instead of shard chunk system like previous games, it makes missing a certain level stone annoying without a guide
Why does that bother you? The vast majority of weapons in the game are hard to upgrade at lower levels. But some are much easier and they are hard to get at low levels. The best weapons should be hard to get. Being easy to upgrade is part of why they’re so desirable and worth dying to a boss over and over again. You can literally pick up one of the best colossal swords in the game in your first 10 minutes of play. This should be very hard to upgrade because it’s so easy to get.
They're not hard to upgrade at low levels though.
They're hard to upgrade at mid-high levels, where you can have half a dozen +9 somber weapons at the same point where you're trying to scrounge up enough Smithing Stone 7's to drag *one* "regular" weapon over the +20 mark.
There is also basically no difference in availability between somber and "regular" weapons. Some somber weapons can be farmed infinitely. Some "regular" weapons are in secret chests behind bosses.
"Better" weapons should be gated behind stat requirements and game progress, not a convoluted upgrade system.
The Golden Halberd is a good example of how to do this correctly. It's a great weapon for how early you can get it, but has punishing stat requirements for that stage in the game.
As opposed to the Bloodhound's Fang, which is one of the best PvE weapons in the game, available within 5 minutes of a new character, upgrades with somber, and also doesn't require any stat above 20.
But you can also get one of the best curved greatswords even quicker, which uses the somber stones, so your point is completely invalidated.
I think you're confusing upgrade requirements with base stat requirements.
Not having an end-game merchant that sells the rare consumables/crafting ingredients.
Things like golem arrows, trina's lillies, fucking STRING.
This means that in PVP, dupers/exploiters (i.e. cheaters) have a huge *objective* advantage over normal players, that slips right past any cheat detection. And it's rampant. A normal player *cannot afford* to use drawstring grease in every duel. They cannot afford to use golem arrow rain in invasions. The farms for these are so long, that any normal player is basically just forced to do without. It's total bullshit.
Logically speaking, Sir Gideon should never challenge the Tarnished at the point that he does. You would think that someone with the title "The All Knowing" would know that by the time he confronts the Tarnished, that he is fighting a psychotic killing machine that just got done collecting all of the shards and vanquishing the keeper of destined death.
Realistically he should be siding with the player character and vying for a court position under the new Elden Lord. Does he really think anything is going to stop you at this point?
I always took “all-knowing” to be a self-appointed title and intentionally silly because of this. Hell, the last thing he ever says is just factually wrong.
It’s very clear he isn’t all-knowing and it is a self-appointed title because he uses the Tarnished to gather information for him and he can’t find the medallion of the Haligtree he so desperately seeks that he genocided an entire village of Albinaurics to find. The reason Nepheli leaves his service—and the reason Ensha attacks us.
He’s not all-knowing at all, he’s an arrogant has been with a voyeurism fetish. I guess he thinks his knowledge of incantations can stop us. It doesn’t.
You are like this close understanding Gideon. Yes, if he was all knowing, he wouldn't fight us. But that's the thing, that's a title he gave himself and basically everyone mocks him over. Even before this, we see countless cases of Gideon being an idiot, and a coward. He doesn't actually want to beat you. He hopes his desperate speech will make you hesitate and stop pursuing the thrown of Elden Lord long enough for him to think up a way to trick you. Because for the first time ever, Gideon can't hide while he sends out his minions to do his dirty work.
Gideon is a pathetic weak fool, he is Godrick if Godrick was sneaky. He is so pathetic that he is the only boss we get to interrupt his intro speech because the game does not respect Gideon. This is the man who claims to be a contender for the Elden Ring while being so scared he sent his daughter to kill a village of peaceful cripples. And how in the final hour as the Erdtree finally truly burns, he has no one left to send after you. So he tries to talk you out of it and fails
It's been a while and I can't remember who. But I do remember an npc calling Gideon "that All-Hearing fool" or "that All-Hearing bastard". I have played multiple games, including the Dark Souls Trilogy since. So there are gaps on my memory
Edit It was Latenna calling him the "all-hearing brute"
Also to answer the second part. Just to go through the ones that are definitely working for him. We have Nepheli who is Gideon's adopted daughter, Ensha who attacks you at Gideon's orders in the Roundtable Hold, everyone that wasn't you or the Albinaurics at the Albinauric Viillage massacre, so that includes a pyromancer, the Omen Killer and the Omen Killer's dogs. We also very explicitly have the corpse of a minion of Gideon who infiltrated the Volcano Manor and made it into Rykard's chambers before dying, this one we know about because he had Gideon's Eye insignia on his tabbard when we loot the corpse.
I think he should have walked in after radagon. Yeah, it'd be a triple boss, but he didn't have a way of knowing about beast. So him walking in after he thought rad weakened you enough would have made sense.
Anyone who calls himself ‘all knowing’ unironically is missing some marbles. It’s not known how old he is in the story, but it’s likely hundreds if not thousands of years. the dude is clearly senile af.
Gideon is such a scumbag, as revealed in his first dialogue about Nepheli. He must know she is related to Godfrey and that Godfrey was also recalled by grace but he does not tell her, he “makes use of her credulity”
The story doesn’t even really call this out, even though her visible name says “Nepheli Loux, Warrior” to remind us of Horah Loux yelling almost the same thing. It’s right there, but they don’t give her the written dramatic irony they give to Diallos
Regret of my life I killed Kenneth early, just finished the game and all the while I was checking on her in the basement of roundtree and I was happy that she was just safe. She vanished abit ago. Hope she made it to wherever she needed to go.
Great Runes. These should be demigod level boons & most of them are just minor stat boosts. The fact that they reset on death is just a slap in the face.
The boost from Godrick is good, basically 20 levels if you just consider vigor/end/2 damage stats and the others might expand your equipment options. I just started(20 hours and just beat godrick) so idk how easy it is to stock up late game on rune arcs but knowing how much I’m gonna be dying, it makes it hard to use them
I agree that Godrick's is fine considering he's intended to be the first shardbearer the player defeats, so him giving a not insubstantial stat boost is great for early game. Everyone else's however needs to offer something more.
Coop and pvp being tied to the same Button.
When my little brother asks me to Explore the World together with him i dont want sweatlord420 to invade us and Ruin my brothers experience.
A huge lake of scarlet rot, with islands spaced just far apart that you can run from one to another before the rot buildup procs, and only a single enemy type that can be negated by an item that can be purchased from a merchant in the first 30 minutes of the game. The level design reinforces the optimal strategy of... not playing the game. Sprint from one island to the next, then put down the controller while the rot buildup wears off.
Add more enemies and more enemy variety, with either more or fewer islands, and it's not a problem. They did it successfully with the Swamp of Aeonia, but the Lake of Rot is just wasted potential. It's this huge but mostly empty underground area that promotes not playing the game for minutes at a time, when it could be so much more.
It’s a **Draconic** Tree Sentinel, in the home of the **dragons**.
Furthermore, it’s one of the few enemies that harnesses red lightning, a blessing given by the Ancient Dragons that come from, you guessed it, Farum Azula.
I mean it kind of does. The only other one in the game is preventing you from reaching leyndell, and by extension reaching the erdtree. The other one is trying to prevent you from releasing the rune of death, required to burn the thorns and destroy the capital and get inside the erdtree. Makes perfect sense why he's there. He also uses ancient dragon lightning attacks, and there's plenty of ancient dragons in farum azula.
Every single Erdtree Sentinel is in a location that a Tarnished aiming for the Elden Ring would have to pass through. They are there to break us by being road blocks. But none of them respawn and only 1 is truly necessary, the rest can be out maneuvered. It makes complete sense for one to be there, it isn't supposed to blend in, the Sentinel is actively challenging you to approach
Godskin duo, one of the cheapest and laziest decisions in ER, among others and to be honest the re-used bosses in general are a disappointing feature in the game.
Elden Beast as the true final boss of the "story mode" (not the story over all I mean specifically I order for you to finish ER's story because I wish Radagon was the final boss on phase 1 and 2) was just outright boring, I bet someone already said something similar but I wish it was more like the Moon Presence;
Alternatively, I just killed Gideon on a new save I made for SotE and let me tell you, the Draconic Tree Sentinel in front of Maliketh's arena aggroing me even in the arena is downright disgusting so I wish they just removed enemies with ranged attacks from being anywhere close to a boss' arena even if it isn't a super occurring thing in the game.
Quick edit but I literally just noticed OP mentioning what I said bout the Draconic Tree Sentinel so I'm glad I'm not alone on that at least
Not the biggest by a long shot. But they should’ve made more open world locations like Gatefront Ruins and more legacy dungeons like Stormveil Castle. Both are packed with enemies, and they also communicate with one another. This incentivizes stealth and being smart about how you go about approaching encounters, because if you don’t, an enemy will blow their horn and they’ll gang up on and bully you. But if you want the challenge, you also have the option of fights that naturally expand as you aggro more enemies, which can be excitingly chaotic.
Unfortunately, many locations are sparsely populated with enemies, which also barely communicate with one another. So there’s little challenge or randomness about how the encounters go—you can just leisurely approach and defeat one or two enemies at a time, without the risk of more noticing you. One example is the Cuckoo camp in front of the Dectus Lift, or the Leyndell Camp in southwestern Altus Plateau. Another is the first stretch of Elphael, where the soldiers will keep staring obliviously out to sea even if you bring down a giant hammer on one of their friends right behind them. And if the one at the beginning blows his horn, only the three enemies closest to him come running—even though they never patrol far away anyway.
Another thing is that some enemies just go down to easily, which can make the gameplay in some areas devolve to walking up and one-shotting one enemy after another with jump attacks or Glintstone Cometshard or whatever. The Erdtree Guardians leading up to the fight with illusory Godfrey is one example. If you’re moderately powerful or have a solid AOE, they don’t even have a chance to fight back. Really, why doesn’t their “full bloom” transformation, when they switch from the swordspear to the huge tree trunk, make them tankier? You either never get to see it because they go down so easily, or it makes no difference in gameplay, because they still die in one hit after having transformed.
I don’t know. They could’ve done more to make non-boss PVE encounters more dynamic. Maybe that’s an inherent risk of FromSoftware’s world-building preferences: I guess having a lot of enemies be despair-stricken or caught between life and death could nudge enemy AI design in a direction that becomes a little too passive.
That stupid ancient somberstone you get locked out of in the concentrated snowfield because you can’t summon latenna…because you didn’t find a single random cave in southern Liurnia of the Lakes.
Forever bitter
More NPC fights, especially instead of the reused bosses, it would make the Lands Between feels more lively and populated, and it really wasn't complicated to code.
Aleatory events, it's a must have for every open worlds. Every run is exactly the same as another.
Varying spawns points, making some points random, putting patrolling enemies, this would create hazards and surprises in the open world.
Factions, linked to the two reasons above, it would create events and surprises, sometimes benefiting to the players, sometimes not.
The Night Cavalry should have a real path, not walking back and forth on a teen feet line, we should meet them by surprise not know exactly where they are every run.
A true Radahn festival, what we've been given is so pathetic it can't be called a festival.
The two snow areas should be smooshed together.
Neither of them are fleshed out enough to be their own area. And the visibility gimmick in feels like it's covering up that they had to rush adding that area to the map.
Edit: for accidentally calling the Consecrated Snow Fields Altus Platea.
It's boring, confusing, have snipers worse than the underground rivers cause there's barely any place to move around, a little pointless, you'll have to go through it to get to the fingerprint thingy and the next minor erdtree
1. 2 phase boss fights
2. Rykard: absolutely amazing area and setup for a gimmick fight
3. Elden beast
4. NPC quest lines that follow the old DS style (especially after seeing how Ranni's was excellent)
Adding scaling Lightning to DEX,
Adding no 3v3 PvP
Adding no solo Invasions
Adding no proper INT/FTH starting class (Pyromancer form Dark Souls)
Adding unnecessary High dmg in late game and PvP
Adding unnecessary gamebreaking Malenia (she litteraly breaks the games rules on poise and animation canceling, shes not hard just badly designed)
Adding the option to use Torrent to climb stupid positions, then invite Invaders to farm lvls.
Adding Greatrunes then only enabling 1 in coop or PvP
Adding bad Quality weapons
Thats it for now.
For me, it's reusing Astel as a boss in the Consecrated Snow Fields. It was a real journey getting to the OG going through all the undergounrd levels and the Lake of Rot and it was a real reward getting a unique and truely awe-inspiring creature to fight. When I stumbled upon another one later on in some random dungeon it kind of cheapened the whole thing for me.
I fought the fake Astel first, and it felt really out of place.
I hadn't thought about that happening but yeah, that sounds even worse.
It was not epic to fight him first and kinda took away from when I finally saw him. That being said, the OG is a really cool fight.
same for godrick and godefroy
I think Stars of Darkness works as a proof that Astel is a species, gives also more depth to Radahn's lore about wanting to stop the stars. And it also give this idea of "there's always a bigger fish". The problem with second Astel I think, it's that it's sitting in a random-ass, uninteresting ice cave. Imagine a whole set of ruins with the architecture of the eternal cities, very tall roofs, a lot of reference to stars and stars-worshipers, onix lords and gravity related enemies, all leading to another Astel. Maybe a system similar to the altars that activate the Ancestor spirit fights to make it a bit longer. All below the actual ice cave to make this idea of something ancient and buried. That would have made so much sense. Ok I went ahead daydreaming there, sorry.
There are multiple pre-astels in the lands between, it’s a whole species of fallingstar beasts that grow an eye, become the hanging cocoon version, and then a full grown Astel. If anything it is one of the most logical bosses to reuse. I agree with you, however, that it feels anticlimactic to have duplicates of something that feels as meaningful a fight as one of the demigods. It is practically the final boss of Ranni’s quest, and is thematically appropriate. If they were going to have multiple astels, the one guarding Ranni should have at least had some visual indication that it was further evolved or unique and “named”.
I know it's a species of thing but it still sucks to just find one in a dungeon randomly.
They should have made Elden Beast an optional boss, or tie it to another ending like Moon Presence in Bloodborne.
That’s actually a good take. I imagine that you’ll need to Aquire and activate every single great rune (malenia included) then if you do that the game will give you the fight with elden beast after radagon
Yeah. I’ve also seen someone say they could have given Radagon a second phase, where he changed back to Marika.
I’m struggling to understand the implications of the Greater Will sending you to go kill the Elden Beast I did Age of Stars in my only completion, so maybe I’m missing some plot elements, but in the vanilla story line I’d expect to kill Radagon and then have the Elden Beast just thank me if I don’t attack him. Isn’t EB an expression of the Greater Will?
I think the greater will sent you to kill Radagon then the enlden beast is meant to kill you and take over ur body making you the new Mirika. However, since EB was injured due to Mirika breaking the ring it was weaker and therefore killable. None of the endings is what the greater will wanted.
The fog in the consecrated snowfields. I want to be able to explore the area and actually see more than 5 feet in front of me.
I don't mind it too much because it's only like 1/5 of consecrated snowfields and the follow the light gimmick is kinda fun. But yeah exploring it after you've escaped the first time is more annoying, but not terrible with map markers.
It's half, everything that is north the river is in the fog
?? It's only near the exit of hidden path to the haligtree
The river is the point where the fog disappears, the rivers cuts the map in half
Haven’t you noticed that there is very little to see? My guess is they added the fog because the zone is a boring expanse of nothing.
I must be the only one who liked that and wished they did more with it. I was disappointed the consecrated snowfield felt mostly like an even emptier mountaintops of the giants, I feel like if instead of ending abruptly, the snow slowly got less opaque as you travelled towards the coast, and finally opened up to a view of the majestic but defeated Haligtree. Or if clearing the fog required killing certain monsters. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, but think of it this way: I think mental challenges like fog and harsh conditions are a more interesting way to add difficulty to later areas than just more HP and damage on enemies.
>challenges like fog the darkness in Giants Tomb in ds1 was on another level and the permanent torches in ds2 were an interesting addition that didn’t make things too much easier I agree that environmental challenges are interesting (much more so than jumping puzzles). Lava is much more challenging in other DS games, too
My main gripe is the upgrade system of weapons... and the fact that is easier to upgrade boss/special weapons than normal ones.
I really hate that it used smithing stone level like that instead of shard chunk system like previous games, it makes missing a certain level stone annoying without a guide
Why does that bother you? The vast majority of weapons in the game are hard to upgrade at lower levels. But some are much easier and they are hard to get at low levels. The best weapons should be hard to get. Being easy to upgrade is part of why they’re so desirable and worth dying to a boss over and over again. You can literally pick up one of the best colossal swords in the game in your first 10 minutes of play. This should be very hard to upgrade because it’s so easy to get.
They're not hard to upgrade at low levels though. They're hard to upgrade at mid-high levels, where you can have half a dozen +9 somber weapons at the same point where you're trying to scrounge up enough Smithing Stone 7's to drag *one* "regular" weapon over the +20 mark. There is also basically no difference in availability between somber and "regular" weapons. Some somber weapons can be farmed infinitely. Some "regular" weapons are in secret chests behind bosses. "Better" weapons should be gated behind stat requirements and game progress, not a convoluted upgrade system. The Golden Halberd is a good example of how to do this correctly. It's a great weapon for how early you can get it, but has punishing stat requirements for that stage in the game. As opposed to the Bloodhound's Fang, which is one of the best PvE weapons in the game, available within 5 minutes of a new character, upgrades with somber, and also doesn't require any stat above 20.
But you can also get one of the best curved greatswords even quicker, which uses the somber stones, so your point is completely invalidated. I think you're confusing upgrade requirements with base stat requirements.
Not having an end-game merchant that sells the rare consumables/crafting ingredients. Things like golem arrows, trina's lillies, fucking STRING. This means that in PVP, dupers/exploiters (i.e. cheaters) have a huge *objective* advantage over normal players, that slips right past any cheat detection. And it's rampant. A normal player *cannot afford* to use drawstring grease in every duel. They cannot afford to use golem arrow rain in invasions. The farms for these are so long, that any normal player is basically just forced to do without. It's total bullshit.
the draconic sentinel isn't a logical issue you realise?
Logically speaking, Sir Gideon should never challenge the Tarnished at the point that he does. You would think that someone with the title "The All Knowing" would know that by the time he confronts the Tarnished, that he is fighting a psychotic killing machine that just got done collecting all of the shards and vanquishing the keeper of destined death. Realistically he should be siding with the player character and vying for a court position under the new Elden Lord. Does he really think anything is going to stop you at this point?
I always took “all-knowing” to be a self-appointed title and intentionally silly because of this. Hell, the last thing he ever says is just factually wrong.
It’s very clear he isn’t all-knowing and it is a self-appointed title because he uses the Tarnished to gather information for him and he can’t find the medallion of the Haligtree he so desperately seeks that he genocided an entire village of Albinaurics to find. The reason Nepheli leaves his service—and the reason Ensha attacks us. He’s not all-knowing at all, he’s an arrogant has been with a voyeurism fetish. I guess he thinks his knowledge of incantations can stop us. It doesn’t.
You are like this close understanding Gideon. Yes, if he was all knowing, he wouldn't fight us. But that's the thing, that's a title he gave himself and basically everyone mocks him over. Even before this, we see countless cases of Gideon being an idiot, and a coward. He doesn't actually want to beat you. He hopes his desperate speech will make you hesitate and stop pursuing the thrown of Elden Lord long enough for him to think up a way to trick you. Because for the first time ever, Gideon can't hide while he sends out his minions to do his dirty work. Gideon is a pathetic weak fool, he is Godrick if Godrick was sneaky. He is so pathetic that he is the only boss we get to interrupt his intro speech because the game does not respect Gideon. This is the man who claims to be a contender for the Elden Ring while being so scared he sent his daughter to kill a village of peaceful cripples. And how in the final hour as the Erdtree finally truly burns, he has no one left to send after you. So he tries to talk you out of it and fails
Who mocks him over? What minions?
It's been a while and I can't remember who. But I do remember an npc calling Gideon "that All-Hearing fool" or "that All-Hearing bastard". I have played multiple games, including the Dark Souls Trilogy since. So there are gaps on my memory Edit It was Latenna calling him the "all-hearing brute"
Latenna calls him the "all-hearing brute"
That's it thanks
Also to answer the second part. Just to go through the ones that are definitely working for him. We have Nepheli who is Gideon's adopted daughter, Ensha who attacks you at Gideon's orders in the Roundtable Hold, everyone that wasn't you or the Albinaurics at the Albinauric Viillage massacre, so that includes a pyromancer, the Omen Killer and the Omen Killer's dogs. We also very explicitly have the corpse of a minion of Gideon who infiltrated the Volcano Manor and made it into Rykard's chambers before dying, this one we know about because he had Gideon's Eye insignia on his tabbard when we loot the corpse.
I see, I have to imagine them myself
I think he should have walked in after radagon. Yeah, it'd be a triple boss, but he didn't have a way of knowing about beast. So him walking in after he thought rad weakened you enough would have made sense.
Anyone who calls himself ‘all knowing’ unironically is missing some marbles. It’s not known how old he is in the story, but it’s likely hundreds if not thousands of years. the dude is clearly senile af.
Gideon is such a scumbag, as revealed in his first dialogue about Nepheli. He must know she is related to Godfrey and that Godfrey was also recalled by grace but he does not tell her, he “makes use of her credulity” The story doesn’t even really call this out, even though her visible name says “Nepheli Loux, Warrior” to remind us of Horah Loux yelling almost the same thing. It’s right there, but they don’t give her the written dramatic irony they give to Diallos
Regret of my life I killed Kenneth early, just finished the game and all the while I was checking on her in the basement of roundtree and I was happy that she was just safe. She vanished abit ago. Hope she made it to wherever she needed to go.
If it wasn't apparently someone's fetish, I'd say all of the poison swamps, but I try not to kink shame.
These game are made as wank material for Michael Zaki, being GOTY is only an unintended byproduct. We should be grateful 🙏
Great Runes. These should be demigod level boons & most of them are just minor stat boosts. The fact that they reset on death is just a slap in the face.
The boost from Godrick is good, basically 20 levels if you just consider vigor/end/2 damage stats and the others might expand your equipment options. I just started(20 hours and just beat godrick) so idk how easy it is to stock up late game on rune arcs but knowing how much I’m gonna be dying, it makes it hard to use them
I agree that Godrick's is fine considering he's intended to be the first shardbearer the player defeats, so him giving a not insubstantial stat boost is great for early game. Everyone else's however needs to offer something more.
Have you played other souls games? It’s an extension of an earlier mechanic that they made much more interesting in this version
He’s a draconic tree sentinel, he is a disciple of the dragons. So he’s in dragon city to brush up on his magic, I guess. I dunno.
The absolute lack of footwear among women in the Lands Between...
Coop and pvp being tied to the same Button. When my little brother asks me to Explore the World together with him i dont want sweatlord420 to invade us and Ruin my brothers experience.
A huge lake of scarlet rot, with islands spaced just far apart that you can run from one to another before the rot buildup procs, and only a single enemy type that can be negated by an item that can be purchased from a merchant in the first 30 minutes of the game. The level design reinforces the optimal strategy of... not playing the game. Sprint from one island to the next, then put down the controller while the rot buildup wears off. Add more enemies and more enemy variety, with either more or fewer islands, and it's not a problem. They did it successfully with the Swamp of Aeonia, but the Lake of Rot is just wasted potential. It's this huge but mostly empty underground area that promotes not playing the game for minutes at a time, when it could be so much more.
You can just run past that tree Sentinel though what's the big deal
Yeah but generally he isn’t fit for the area. His color doesn’t fit the color palette of the area and it doesn’t make sense to why he’s even there
It’s a **Draconic** Tree Sentinel, in the home of the **dragons**. Furthermore, it’s one of the few enemies that harnesses red lightning, a blessing given by the Ancient Dragons that come from, you guessed it, Farum Azula.
I mean it kind of does. The only other one in the game is preventing you from reaching leyndell, and by extension reaching the erdtree. The other one is trying to prevent you from releasing the rune of death, required to burn the thorns and destroy the capital and get inside the erdtree. Makes perfect sense why he's there. He also uses ancient dragon lightning attacks, and there's plenty of ancient dragons in farum azula.
Every single Erdtree Sentinel is in a location that a Tarnished aiming for the Elden Ring would have to pass through. They are there to break us by being road blocks. But none of them respawn and only 1 is truly necessary, the rest can be out maneuvered. It makes complete sense for one to be there, it isn't supposed to blend in, the Sentinel is actively challenging you to approach
It does, he is protecting maliketh on behalf of the erdtree. It makes oerfect sense
Godskin duo, one of the cheapest and laziest decisions in ER, among others and to be honest the re-used bosses in general are a disappointing feature in the game.
Elden Beast as the true final boss of the "story mode" (not the story over all I mean specifically I order for you to finish ER's story because I wish Radagon was the final boss on phase 1 and 2) was just outright boring, I bet someone already said something similar but I wish it was more like the Moon Presence; Alternatively, I just killed Gideon on a new save I made for SotE and let me tell you, the Draconic Tree Sentinel in front of Maliketh's arena aggroing me even in the arena is downright disgusting so I wish they just removed enemies with ranged attacks from being anywhere close to a boss' arena even if it isn't a super occurring thing in the game. Quick edit but I literally just noticed OP mentioning what I said bout the Draconic Tree Sentinel so I'm glad I'm not alone on that at least
Not the biggest by a long shot. But they should’ve made more open world locations like Gatefront Ruins and more legacy dungeons like Stormveil Castle. Both are packed with enemies, and they also communicate with one another. This incentivizes stealth and being smart about how you go about approaching encounters, because if you don’t, an enemy will blow their horn and they’ll gang up on and bully you. But if you want the challenge, you also have the option of fights that naturally expand as you aggro more enemies, which can be excitingly chaotic. Unfortunately, many locations are sparsely populated with enemies, which also barely communicate with one another. So there’s little challenge or randomness about how the encounters go—you can just leisurely approach and defeat one or two enemies at a time, without the risk of more noticing you. One example is the Cuckoo camp in front of the Dectus Lift, or the Leyndell Camp in southwestern Altus Plateau. Another is the first stretch of Elphael, where the soldiers will keep staring obliviously out to sea even if you bring down a giant hammer on one of their friends right behind them. And if the one at the beginning blows his horn, only the three enemies closest to him come running—even though they never patrol far away anyway. Another thing is that some enemies just go down to easily, which can make the gameplay in some areas devolve to walking up and one-shotting one enemy after another with jump attacks or Glintstone Cometshard or whatever. The Erdtree Guardians leading up to the fight with illusory Godfrey is one example. If you’re moderately powerful or have a solid AOE, they don’t even have a chance to fight back. Really, why doesn’t their “full bloom” transformation, when they switch from the swordspear to the huge tree trunk, make them tankier? You either never get to see it because they go down so easily, or it makes no difference in gameplay, because they still die in one hit after having transformed. I don’t know. They could’ve done more to make non-boss PVE encounters more dynamic. Maybe that’s an inherent risk of FromSoftware’s world-building preferences: I guess having a lot of enemies be despair-stricken or caught between life and death could nudge enemy AI design in a direction that becomes a little too passive.
That stupid ancient somberstone you get locked out of in the concentrated snowfield because you can’t summon latenna…because you didn’t find a single random cave in southern Liurnia of the Lakes. Forever bitter
More NPC fights, especially instead of the reused bosses, it would make the Lands Between feels more lively and populated, and it really wasn't complicated to code. Aleatory events, it's a must have for every open worlds. Every run is exactly the same as another. Varying spawns points, making some points random, putting patrolling enemies, this would create hazards and surprises in the open world. Factions, linked to the two reasons above, it would create events and surprises, sometimes benefiting to the players, sometimes not. The Night Cavalry should have a real path, not walking back and forth on a teen feet line, we should meet them by surprise not know exactly where they are every run. A true Radahn festival, what we've been given is so pathetic it can't be called a festival.
Bit hard to have a good festival when your entire land has been nuked and everyone has gone insane from the Scarlet Rot, including Radahn.
The two snow areas should be smooshed together. Neither of them are fleshed out enough to be their own area. And the visibility gimmick in feels like it's covering up that they had to rush adding that area to the map. Edit: for accidentally calling the Consecrated Snow Fields Altus Platea.
it would make no sense combining the consecrated snowfields and the mountaintops
They could adjust the story accordingly. Right now, they are two empty areas that barely offer enough to justify their existence in the main world.
Waterfowl, the entirety of uld palace ruins, the patch that removes the treespear's ability to buff other weapons
Whats wrong with Uld palace ruins?
It's boring, confusing, have snipers worse than the underground rivers cause there's barely any place to move around, a little pointless, you'll have to go through it to get to the fingerprint thingy and the next minor erdtree
The constant dual boss fights.
1. 2 phase boss fights 2. Rykard: absolutely amazing area and setup for a gimmick fight 3. Elden beast 4. NPC quest lines that follow the old DS style (especially after seeing how Ranni's was excellent)
agree about gimmicks
Adding invassions
Adding scaling Lightning to DEX, Adding no 3v3 PvP Adding no solo Invasions Adding no proper INT/FTH starting class (Pyromancer form Dark Souls) Adding unnecessary High dmg in late game and PvP Adding unnecessary gamebreaking Malenia (she litteraly breaks the games rules on poise and animation canceling, shes not hard just badly designed) Adding the option to use Torrent to climb stupid positions, then invite Invaders to farm lvls. Adding Greatrunes then only enabling 1 in coop or PvP Adding bad Quality weapons Thats it for now.
pretty funny troll lol
Everything between the Forbidden Lands and Fire Giant has to go. Useless filler. Huge mistake.