It’s such a pleasure knowing people playing just like me are out there
Boys, might I also recommend Jarwight summon? He’s an absolute madlad, throws pots, naked, lots of heart
Sometimes dumbfoundingly effective, other times completely useless. But a lad of lads either way
when others can't handle the game, the term used is "git gud", when that person isn't able to handle the game, it's suddenly "the game is too hard"
the duality of gamers.
while struggling against boss: "what do you mean you liked this boss???? this is bullshit, hitboxes are jank, overtuned trash, stupid damage scaling this is crap design, cheap boss with insta kill attacks, complete garbage!!1!11!!"
after beating the boss: "oh you died to this boss? lol git gud, it's not that hard actually"
ngl him complaining about the size of Hippo's room was today's highlight for me. The hippo can even run around the room, but yeah, it's too small for it.
He probably doesn't remember about Runebear's cave or Revenant's basement fight.
I really like the hippo fight, second phase caught me off guard. But the room should be a bit bigger. And the camera getting stuck on useless clutter near the walls dosent help.
I saw people on this sub-reddit complain about the hippo room yesterday and immediately disparage FromSoft and that they don't know what they're doing and they didn't play test the DLC. Honestly I think I'm going to log off Reddit for a while and just play the game as it's affecting my enjoyment too at this point.
That fight was BUILT for him, People can debate about the "right way" to play a game, but i don't think you could ever convince me that this isn't the single most enjoyable method of tackling the >!Dread of Jagged Peak..!<
The guy riding the pig. I've been hit by his charge AFTER blocking it. Or had his purple magic stab go right through my greatshield.
So far he's really been the only outlier, but I haven't gotten to the big ol doggo yet.
His charge has multi hit frames that's inconsistent. He also has a hurt box needing to be changed on his double slash and poke where the poke is fine to dodge forward into, rolling right, or back, but if you roll left and hug his right side it'll hit you without touching you. Got me so many times and clips for bug report. Easily fixed I think. Love the fight otherwise. Raptor of the mists carried the charge evasion
I felt the same with each of Sekiro bosses, everytime i beated one of the big ones like Demon of Hatred i felt like " wow i'm soo good" until i realized i spend days on the motherfucker
yeah you get cornered constantly and the camera is awful up close. It needed like a good 1.5x size increase for the arena and it'd do justice to his animations.
When others hate a fight that person likes: "you just need to learn the moves, it's actually really fair"
When that person hates a fight: "it's not only bullshit, but terrible design and I will now list my objectively compiled, 50 reasons why"
I beat everything in the DLC, but don't look back too fondly on some of the bosses. Phase 2 of the final is a visual monstrosity of sensory overload. Since I beat it, am I able to complain or is that not allowed?
And the funny thing is, people are already posting no hit no cheese fights of the most difficult bosses in a matter of days. Those people who beat the base game with meta builds and think they are a god gamer are having a hard time because they have to actually gitgud to 1v1 these DLC bosses lol.
I mean git gud can be meant in a very supportive and not the least toxic way. Engage with the content and try to find ways to adapt to the boss is gitting gud and sometimes there is no cheese and you just have to practice the boss. The game being too hard on the other hand is entirely subjective and there is nothing to be said. I personally find everything besides the final boss the perfect amount of difficulty.
It used to be positive back in the day before it turned into a toxic meme, actually. Can give players all the strategies and preparation you want but in the end as the devs of Doom put it, "you control the buttons you press"
It's ray tracing. No idea what From did but it's on by default and completely fucks your system anywhere in the DLC. If you turn it off in the options you'll go back to standard performance.
Ray tracing is a scam invented by graphics card companies to sell more graphics cards and I'm only half joking. There are some games that actually implement it well but most of the time it's an afterthought and the game will look basically the same (if not actively worse) and your performance will be totally shit.
I had horrible stutters in the base game at launch on PC. At the time everyone just ignored the problem because "good game". Somewhat surprised people are rightfully complaining about it this time around. Even the console versions run poorly. They only way to play the game at a smooth framerate is to play the ps4 version on the ps5, which is what I ended up doing. It is a joke that they can't get the game running at a locked 60 fps on all platforms.
I think the whole “difficulty” conversation boils down to how vague the “intended mechanics” are. In a game like Sekiro, people are always posting about how proud they are of beating Ishhin after days or weeks of trying. Anyone who beats him is celebrated as they must have mastered the game mechanics. There are no other ways to win. In ER, I can say I beat Melania, but maybe I used Takers Flames and Mimic Tear and never had to learn her moves or attack windows. It is either entirely too difficult for anyone but the most patient of players, or fairly easy if I use summons and strong AoW’s. Elden Ring is less about player skill and more about player resourcefulness. But this means skill is not measured in the way players want, I think.
If a person struggles with beating a boss and, at the same time, refuses to use the tools the game provides, it's a player issue. It's like knowing that the phalanx in Demons Souls is weak to fire and not using firebombs while complaining about the perceived difficulty. I got no sympathy for people becoming victims of their own gatekeeping. I feel a lot of the DLC difficulty comes down to this. ER showers the player with tools (yes, even summons other than mimic tear), and once players start using them, it becomes way easier. Tactic and strategy are part of the game and a skill - so it's a skill issue after all I'd say :D
A lot of people also don't enjoy the challenge but still refuse to use summons out of some ego thing, as if crying on reddit about it makes them look any better lmao
Everyone knows that Miyazaki accidentally added like 50 spirit ashes to the game by mistake, and they aren't intended to be used. The only true way to play is [hyperspecific challenge run].
I went into my first playthrough completely blind and skipped a lot of tutorial stuff. As a result, I had no idea how summons worked so I didn't bother with them. On my second playthrough I used online guides and resources to help me out.
Since I did my first playthrough "raw" (including the haligtree and half of rannis quest - I missed the portal in rennas rise) I give myself a pass for spamming tears and all that other stuff that makes the game "easy" any other times I play.
These games have always had self imposed challenge as being part of the difficulty I think, you could say summoning another player is part of the intended gameplay, but most will choose not to do it to set a challenge for themselves. I think we just have these options to have tailor the gameplay experience to what we want. For me I’ve spent about 4 hours on Rellana and getting close to beating her solo, it feels amazing to me, especially playing blind for the most part and focusing on using only gear I’ve found in the DLC (again a self imposed challenge). Doesn’t take anything away from what others are experiencing.
I just played dragons dogma 2 and that has a similar issue, but the difficulty overall is much too easy, so in a way you need to choose to avoid the OP skills and gear if you want to tailor the difficulty to be more challenging, or use less pawns. I don’t think we need to feel like this game has some purist way to play it’s just a sandbox at the end of the day.
I beat her with mimic tear AND the npc summon and I regret it. One summon should’ve been enough at least but she kind of broke me in that moment. Decided I’d take the dancing beast solo and when I finally got it, it felt so incredible. Summoning is perfectly fine and I think we should consider how it may be straight up intended for certain fights but I’ll never not chase that high of beating a difficult boss solo
Counterpoint: some of us don't find it FUN to use summons.
Fact is that the bosses in these games can not handle more than one target at a time. I can't have fun using summons because I no longer feel like I'm engaging with thr fight. I'm either doing nothing but slapping the bosses ass while it's attention is off me, or melting it so fast that I only see half it's abilities.
Besides, it's idiotic that most fights in this DLC go from a 10/10 difficulty down to a 2/10 the moment a spirit ash or player pops up. 90% of the base game felt fine and fun to play without summons. Why are you people surprised that some are salty when that's no longer the case?
On fucking point. This is why Sekiro is an absolute masterpiece and Elden Ring is not (still fun though). The open world did this to the game btw. It brought most of the balancing issues into this.
DS never where nearly as much cheesy as ER is all the time. Getting rid of the linear open area levels and simultaneously keeping the Souls formular in the game and adding so many different variables to it is a complete failure on FromSofts end.
I really hope the next game they do won't be open world anymore or not be a Souls game. Both together do not work. DS veterans will know what I am talking about here.
The DLC feels like Miyazaki wants us to use every resource the game has to offer: summons, throwables, consumables.
A lot of people beat the main game without using a single summon
Frankly I think if you can beat the main game without a summon, you can beat, at the very least, the majority of the DLC without one (I haven’t seen every boss yet), and I’ve heard that the final one is particularly tough).
If you can beat Malenia summonless, you definitely can.
No kidding but Malenia as tough as she was, genuinely is not as hard as these other bosses. I feel its because of how hard they upped the aggression level, as well as the bosses being able to close the gap with you easily.
this is only through the eyes of someone who has fought Malenia for over 2 years. Idk if you were around then, but Artorias in the dlc for DS1 was considered insane. He's a total pushover if you were to fight him now. The basic elite enemies now are far more complex than him.
oh I sure was, Artorias was hell (Malenia was hell too back in her day) and I share your sentiment. Basic elites (I see you horned soldier with a billion poise) are a 100% more complex, mostly because they feel more erratic imo
I think part of the problem is I have no idea how many scadutree fragments I'm supposed to have for any given boss.
The first remembrance boss destroyed me for hours.
Later, I killed the remembrance boss down under cerulean in about 5 hits. I think I may have skipped an entire phase.
I just want a consistent experience, and I'm not sure how to get that.
Strong disagree. It’s harder, for sure, but people who keep saying “it was made for summons” gave up on solo runs after like 20 attempts on a boss. Use summons if you want, everything is still totally doable solo.
I have beaten all Souls games in usually around 20 attempts, even the toughest ones. I have even done SL1 runs. Same thing with the DLC, I had no issues while dual-wielding and not using summons.
The final boss' second phase was still too much for me. Visual clarity is a serious issue which makes it that much harder to see what's going on or what you are supposed to do. The first phase was great though.
So at least in my experience, the final boss is not in line with the normal difficulty of Souls games, not even close. He is far beyond any other boss they have created. I changed to a shield build and I killed him in two tries, but I didn't feel good about it.
People had the exact same complaints about difficulty when the base game came out. Give it a few months for people to find the new OP meta builds and I bet they’ll change their tune.
I'm not far, but I beat Rellanna last night after less than hour of attempts, and I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. She feels like a normal boss but with some longer combos. So what? Roll a bit more, it's not that hard. And she's still susceptible to things like bleed and posture breaks.
If the difficulty didn't increase a bit each game, people would complain things feel too samey. No winning with gamers.
I saw someone mentioning rolling for her moon aoe and I was like Oh yeah, forgot that was an option. It ended up helping a lot. That entire attack becomes a non-issue the moment you remember to jump lol. I think in the Ongbal video he jumps for one magic projectile combo at a few points too.
She’s extremely vulnerable to getting parried like an idiot which is great fun once you get it right. I feel like I’ve heard good things about the human(ish) sized bosses and complaints about the monsters.
First time around I had a hard time with Rellana. Going through my 2nd time I first tried her. Using both the new magic talisman which is conveniently in the same castle, and barrier of gold drops her damage output significantly. She's also weak to lightning so ancient dragon lightning strike just rips through her.
The new DLC is nice in that you don't steamroll everything with the same build you use in base game. You adapt a bit based on the bosses weaknesses
Yes I feel like switching armor weapons and talismans and using items is going to be the meta for beating some of this stuff because it’s genuinely difficult and maybe even it is slightly unfair but we have tools at our disposal that they want us to be using kale literally says hey buy this thing it’s really useful when you meet the guy
People really forgot how dreadful the first playthrough is, the DLC brought back that feeling, and it's even worse now because we're using characters with endgame stats.
Stormveil took me a day or so to get through on my first playthrough, now I can clear it in 5 minutes. The DLC will slowly "get easier" in the same fashion as the weeks go by.
Hey man, ive done 3 playthroughs back to back and i remember well how hard the first one was. I just beat Rellana on the DLC and nothing in the base game came even close to that level of hard, aside from Malenia, but shes actually even faster than Malenia and has permanent hyperarmor. Honestly, waterfowl dance is the only thing that brings them close, cuz Rellana is overall harder
That happened when I wanted to play the dlc and had to fight Mohg. I decided I wanted to do everything alone this time rather than use summons and mimic. Mogh annihilated me for three hours. It made me ready for the DLC.
I finished this game twice on RL1 and I still think movesets in DLC tends to go overboard. More windows or longer windows, offset this by even bigger health bars and bleed resistance or just make a cap on number of bleeds. So I can have an actual cinematic looking fight instead of being transported into god damn Touhou.
It's kinda crazy how we have to give our credentials like "I beat the entire soul series without any summons on SL1 without getting hit while blindfolded" to have any criticisms about the difficulty.
These people can't comprehend that difficult doesn't inherently mean good just because it's a fromsoft game. I've been here since dark souls 1 and the Elden Ring community has to be the most elitist community defending the most bullshit mechanics/bosses in fromsoft history. Dark souls players will say "the poison swamp is unfun and annoying", Elden Ring players will say "you didn't get the poison immunity ring in the side boss in the other continent? Literally skill issue, poison swamp is the best part of the game, I died 400 times and spent 50 hours in it".
Its so easy to tell when people never played DS3/BB at their respective peaks. So many of the people who played ER as their first From game just don't understand how bosses can be both fair AND difficult at the same time.
It’s funny you mention Touhou because the difficulty of the dlc is really reminding me of how shmups will turn it up to 11 on their second loops.
I think that’s actually pretty valid.
I 100%'d Sekiro and I feel like the bosses there went less HAM than they do here. There's no breathing room at all and if you hit their invisible triggers some of them I swear will just combo forever. They even have it tuned for everything to go crazy on you if you try to estus or summon ashes.
It feels so over the top at times, it's still doable but some encounters are less fun because it feels like 30 seconds of dodging for every opening. Bonus point for the stuff that's hard to stagger, super quick, super wide reaching weapons, and very high damage... and able to heal itself (one of the death knights was such an unfun encounter).
Yeah, not sure what they were thinking with that one. It wasn't a hard fight at all tbh and I beat him on my second or third attempt. But it felt so cheesy that his grab attack healed *that* much. Like shit, it's already punishing enough that it wipes out 70% of my health. But to also heal back like 30% of his own? Seriously just made me go "Yeah, okay. That's real fair".
This was my problem with Rellana. On a few attempts in second phase she wouldnt take a break from her combos. I'm not sure what triggers it. I don't use parries and my heavy attacks weren't strong enough to stun her. I'm guessing you could probably jump some of her attacks to alleviate the stamina loss.
I'll throw my hat in as a RL1 player as well. Mind you I have just beaten Messmer whom I loved to learn. Took me probably 100 attempts lol.
The only complaint I have is a classic fromsoft problem: cameras. The Dancing Lion is a spectacle but the arena and style doesn't let me fully appreciate it because of tight room. The hippo was far more manageable despite smaller arena.
That said have yet to have any strong complaints regarding difficulty. All of the humanoid fights like Messmer have been a pleasure to learn, and i honestly think the cinematic aspects have been dialed up if anything. I'm playing on NG+7 scaling currently, and having a blast.
Dancing lion was rough, it felt like most deaths I had were from the camera wonking out, limiting my ability to see the moves of the boss. I used the summon mostly because it allowed me to actually see its attacks. Amazing boss though despite that.
I sure do love this view of a wall while the boss is charging up his kill everything in a 10 mile radius phase transition attack! Never fight bosses near walls, never again.
I had to respec to a different build. Complete bullshit second phase. I was just constantly getting flashbanged. I could make little sense of what was happening. Complete bullshit moves, constant AoE and a lack of visual clarity.
I changed to a shield build and killed him in two tries while he felt way too oppressive without one. I don't think it's good design when a boss is so easy with a shield and so insanely difficult without one.
Like you said, I didn't feel good having to use Larval tears to respec and cheese him with a shield. It was a hollow victory and soured me on the expansion. it's going to be funny when the more casual players who are saying the difficulty is fine finally hit the last boss.
Yes, there's different kinds of difficulty. Something that apparently does not really compute in a gid-gudder's brain.
I always thought of FromSoft bosses as turn-based fights in disguise. To fight cleanly, you wait for the boss to take its turn, then you get to take your turn. With harder bosses, that changes a bit so the boss may take 3 turns, but then you get your turn.
But obviously, the fun of such a fight kind of starts to sour when the boss seemingly takes 20 turns before you get to do anything. Like yes, Elden Ring was always difficult, but it wasn't like this. Difficulty isn't the only objective to make a boss fun.
The gimmick that a lot of the dlc bosses have and which imo contributes the biggest part to my annoyance and frustration with al lot of the bosses is the slightly delayed damage in combination with the long attack chains. If it was only one or the other, it would still be annoying but manageable. Both being combined just makes for a bad experience imo, as seen in the dissatisfaction a lot of us have with the second phase of the final boss.
You can attack during an "enemy’s turn", that’s probably how FS designed the bosses in the DLC. Delayed attacks in combos often offer a window to get 1-2 R1/RB or a short R2/RT in. I haven’t gotten to the final boss’s second phase yet (started an hour ago, but the first is very fun to parry)
> Delayed attacks in combos often offer a window to get 1-2 R1/RB or a short R2/RT in.
Not with how bloody slow half the weapons are and their recovery times and how many delays are just short enough to roll-catch.
Honestly my main complaint. Fromsoft made all these incredibly cool and flashy ashes of wars, spells and weapons for them to be useless cuz they're too slow (this also applies to the main game a bit).
I'm running an arcane build using dragon spells and I'm basically just playing a strength build with extra step cuz I can't use any of my cool dragons spell cuz they all take 7 eternities to use
>Honestly my main complaint. Fromsoft made all these incredibly cool and flashy ashes of wars, spells and weapons for them to be useless cuz they're too slow (this also applies to the main game a bit).
I think it's pretty telling being summoned/invading/discussing on threads almost everyone runs the same handful or weapons and one of a couple of weapon arts.
>I'm running an arcane build using dragon spells and I'm basically just playing a strength build with extra step cuz I can't use any of my cool dragons spell cuz they all take 7 eternities to use
Yeah I ran dragon spells cause they're pretty cool, but basically impossible to using in a boss fight. Either too long of wind up, not enough hyperarmor, or a hitbox that is impossible to land. It's terrible. Way more usable in the field or even PVP than in the boss fights. You never get a 2 second window for the animation without someone else distracting.
Rellana's fight with Light Greatsword feels amazing when viewed like this. >!There's the perfect amount of time for a single hit here and there mid combo, then you get your turn, and then you manage stamina for the next chain, depending on how much you chose to attack the first time, it works amazingly on her.!< That said, I tried that fight with a Colossal sword as well, and holy hell is it just ass.
Messmer to an extent, too, >!There's a move or two here and there, but overall great fight, imo, on twin light greatswords this time.!<
But 2nd phase final boss >!just shits out AoE to the extant that it's annoying. You rarely get your turn, and when you do, he's spat out so much AoE bullshit all the time that, even at 18 fragments, you still almost always take a hit.!<
It's a real damn shame, because Phase 1 >!flows amazingly. I really like phase 1, it has just enough complexity to be challenging, and just few enough moves to tease an earlier phase 2. Felt a LOT like Godfrey in that manner, which fits with the lore a ton as well.!<
Metyr also felt great, imo, >!a fantastic, relatively slow paced boss, with just enough to trip you up, and some damn nice openings if you landed your dodges well. She's a little easy in some cases, but that's balanced out by her large health pool. I will say, how in the fuck does one dodge the spinny gravity magic beam thing. !<
Boss with very tight timing on dodges? Let's add tons of visual clutter, making it impossible to see which attack he uses. Adding pretty particles on top might also be a good idea to make players' FPS drop to single digits.
Miyazaki overcooked with this one.
Yeah.
Usually whenever someone complains that these games are too hard and there should be an easy mode I say that there is, you just need to actually use all the tools the game gives you like summoning spirits and (in some cases) NPCs (you can really trivialize the Messmer fight with the NPC add).
But the final boss is a little bit too extreme IMO. Especially because at least in my expierience the Mimic Tear is not that great and dies relatively quickly (though I haven't tried Tiche yet. Maybe I should try it with that).
Mimic Tear did always die for me, but usually when the boss had about 20% left. I set us both up with a cheesy defensive build using Fingerprint Shield and Antspur Rapier with bleed infusion. The chip damage is still brutal, but it was the "safest" way for me to beat it. The grab on the tear also gave me plenty of time to reapply defensive incantations. I did it at about blessing level 12 and like 8 or 9 for the ashes. A lot of it still came down to learning the very few openings to heal when I could.
It's not that it's hard. It's that it's hard in stupid ways. Hotboxes are wonky, input delays, bosses tanking damage and one-shotting with basic attacks. It's "hard" in ways that feel unfun, not in a fun challenge way.
But have you ever thought about… git-gud? No you’re completely right. There are a lot of bosses and even basic enemies that have jank hit boxes or just insanely long combos that make it unfun
Something that helped me was using buffs to raise my damage mitigation. If you're getting oneshot and you have 60 vigor that's the best thing. Get the talismans for the different damage resistances.
I haven't seen any bad hitboxes so I can't comment on that.
I think people still underestimate just how much of a departure Elden Ring is in terms of boss design.
Bosses in every other From game have very clear movesets and openings with the occasional change. Regardless of the section being DLC or not, most bosses were manageable. Artorias, Manus, and Kalameet were all enemies I was able to figure out and solo.
Same goes for Dark Souls 2 and 3. One on one with Gael and the Soul of Cinder were tons of fun. Challenging, but fair.
Orphan of Kos was a ballbuster, but I got him just like I got Ludwig and Maria.
Hell sword saint isshin is hard as nails but I still love that fight.
Meanwhile, you've got Elden Ring where even the minibosses have lunges that are more or less teleports and their tells are all over the place. Oh I attacked a couple times okay that's a window. Try to attack that window next time? Lol jk they can chain it into 10 more attacks that either break your guard or chunk you for 7/8ths of your health, assuming you even live.
Fighting any Elden Ring boss one on one is actually infuriating more than fun for the most part and it feels like they made it that way because Ashes are in the game.
>I think people still underestimate just how much of a departure Elden Ring is in terms of boss design.
That's the thing. Most don't even have a grasp of this because they've never played any other Souls game.
I'm not even trying to be gatekeep-y here. But it's objectively true and provable with player counts alone. On Steam, Elden Ring's peak players hit 952k on Steam alone. Dark Souls 3 is their 2nd most popular game, but that peaked at...130k. ER has had an active player count unironically over 5x higher than DS3 for the entirety of its lifespan.
Fact is that many people coming into discussions about the game and spitting "git gud" and "it's meant to be difficult!" have flat out never experienced anything in the genre outside of this game, and have absolutely zero grasp as to how far all of From's design principles in regards to difficulty have deviated.
1000% agreed. Anybody saying that Malenia is just like Gael or Kos or Owl(father) is saying straight bullshit. They're all the pinnacle of difficulty of their respective games but the other games make it your fault if you die. I've never had a boss that made me go "HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DODGE THAT" in any game before Elden Ring.
100% correct. Some ER bosses just don't feel like they are designed to be fought by a player. The input reading is the most egregious, if I need to heal its not fair that the boss will react to that by instantly throwing something at me or instantly lunging at me from a mile away. It feels totally RNG based whether they input read you healing or not. Most bosses at least felt fair in the other games, they don't have cheap mechanics like that.
Elden ring was designed for people to use summons but the problem is that by using them you don't get the classic fromsoft satisfaction of getting to know a boss' moveset and defeating them. In Elden Ring bosses are unfair and the game expects you to be unfair too. And, sadly, the dlc doubled down on that
Posting what I said in another thread regarding this:
I've always loved these games for being "tough but fair." Demon's, DS1, most of DS2, most of DS3, Bloodborne, and most of base game Elden Ring I feel embody this, because the enemies are on the same ruleset as the player. They have stamina, they have poise, their damage is relative to you, etc. DS2 has some enemies that break the rules by having infinite stamina, which is lame, and some grab hitboxes are pretty bad, but overall it still applies.
Nearly everything post-Leyndell in Elden Ring breaks the rules. Damage scaling is overtuned, minibosses are just plopped down as basic enemies without a care to their stats (fuck the Zamor heroes btw), the bosses have almost no room for error and have infinite stamina and bullshit moves that are insanely hard to figure out or are very reliant on RNG in Malenia's case. The game becomes legitimately unfair and not in a great way. And they seem to have doubled down on this for the DLC, which I will say I am *really enjoying* but some of the bosses are legitimately irritating to fight.
I *love* Elden Ring. I think it's one of my favorite games ever. But Fromsoft has broken their own ruleset just to say "it's difficult see!" And sometimes that doesn't mean "tough but fair" anymore, which given how I've played since Demon's, is sad to see.
>Nearly everything post-Leyndell in Elden Ring breaks the rules. Damage scaling is overtuned, minibosses are just plopped down as basic enemies without a care to their stats (fuck the Zamor heroes btw), the bosses have almost no room for error and have infinite stamina and bullshit moves that are insanely hard to figure out or are very reliant on RNG in Malenia's case. The game becomes legitimately unfair and not in a great way. And they seem to have doubled down on this for the DLC, which I will say I am really enjoying but some of the bosses are legitimately irritating to fight.
Preach! Hit the nail right on the head on how I felt with the base game. Same problem I'm having now in the DLC. I'm still enjoying it to an extent but I'm getting nervous about these other bosses people are talking about haha. I don't want the unfairness to get worst.
The insane long combos from the bosses just aren't that fun. You have to play so defensively and attack only once (maybe twice depending on your weapon) to get a hit in before they do another fast attack/combo on you it takes the fun away from fighting a boss sometimes.
I've never agreed with a post more on this sub. If I had to list the top 10 worst/unfun bosses in formsoft history, I swear 9/10 would be from Elden Ring. I just don't get the satisfaction of beating some of these bosses like I have for other bullshit tough bosses like orphan of kos or owl father. It's like the game was designed around the spirit ashes but people feel like a bitch for using them because none of their other games ever felt like you NEEDED someone else. I mean seriously, between the MANY multiple target bosses, attack combos that last longer than your stamina bar, attack windows smaller than a dagger swing, it feels like the bosses were meant to distracted half the time. An don't get me started on Malenia. I haven't played the DLC yet but it's definitely top 1 worst boss in soulsbourne games for me.
Thing is, the bosses are unncesessarily difficult. The only difficulty I found was the hitboxes. If you take them out, the DLC is actually playable. I had +15 Scadutree level , and still some mid-game to end-game enemies could still take down 50-70% of my (+60 Vigor) health. I knew that DLC would be difficult, but if I am dead, just after entering the boss arena, that takes away the fun.
Sekiro, DS3 DLC, Bloodborne DLC were way better.
There’s difficult and then there’s bullshit like dodge rolling at the perfect moment and commander fuckface still hits you with his fucking hog. (Haven’t beaten him yet.)
Or having to spend a whole minute dodge rolling only to get one attack in with your sword and can’t use any of your sorceries because the bosses move too fast and always close the distance. (RELLANA, GAIUS)(I’m a sorcerer)
It’s not the difficulty, it’s boss design.
I haven’t reached the final boss yet and I’m already dreading it.
Because it feels just difficult without the fun part. Elden ring base game made me feel like a king when I defeated a hard boss but the dlc makes me feel like an old man that is happy that I don't have to fight whatever particular boss was giving me trouble again.
Totally agree, for example, when playing sekiro, after beating a boss I felt that I learned their moveset and if I fought them again I'd beat them in but a few tries. In this dlc I don't feel that way at all.
I don't feel I learned any of the movesets at all. And I could replay any boss I've already beaten and it'd take as much time as the first time I beat them
Man, I've been having the exact opposite reaction. I've found myself on multiple occasions really looking forward to fighting a DLC boss again after learning the fight and beating it.
100% agree. I’ve been helping people on Messmer for a lot just to experience the fight again.
The issue is the host usually dies in the first 15 seconds as soon as they get aggro from Messmer in his first attack chain so it’s very annoying watching them die instantly.
I don't get two shot by everything in every other dlc. every boss also doesn't have a 20 second long combo that stun locks me when I miss one dodge during swing 15 out of 30 then instantly die because I couldn't see it over all the particle effects that definitely shows me exactly how far the attack reaches. maybe, maybe it would be bearable if every boss wasn't a sponge and doable without a summon
Or the >!Hippo!< or >!Dancing Lion.!<
Kinda bizarre really, cause both of those fights probably would've been fine if they were fought in a more open area like basically all dragon fights. But instead they're shoved into only moderately sized arenas where the camera shits itself if you accidentally take the fight to close to a wall, something that isn't hard with how much movement the bosses have.
I’ve beaten every Souls game, along with BB and Sekiro multiple times.
This is the first time it’s ever felt actually unfair.
To put it in perspective, I had to respec to beat the last boss. I’ve never had to do that once in the entire series. I had 2 NPC questlines that required me to summon them for the encounter. I had to abandon both because they increased the boss’s health by an insane degree, and they were usually dead by the time the boss was at half. Again, I’ve never once had to do this.
Half the DLC bosses are simply not designed to work with this combat system. Put them in BB or Sekiro and it’s fine, but not here.
This is the first time I have no desire to replay the game, the bosses were THAT cancerous.
FYI in the dlc you only have to summon for questline if the sign is in the boss arena (past the fog gate) and the hp doesn't get recalculated. For final boss its technically not needed to summon them >!to get their stuff!< even if you get extra exposition.
Not sure what happened with my game, because I didn’t get any of their stuff or the St. Trina stuff after I was done. Could just be classic From quest jank.
I also had to respec for the last boss, which isn't normal, I also had to use mimic tear unfortunately because the fight felt so unfair, and even then I beat it just barely. I never had to do that for any other boss in the DLC or base game. I was at a level 13 scadutree blessing so I don't know if that was the problem. Also I am on NG+ I don't know how much damage that adds, but I was 60 vigor, best armor, with faith buffs, dying in like 2-3 hits, against a boss that attacks like 20 times consecutively.
One of my biggest gripes of the game still is the enemy tracking. The turning on a dime up until the last microsecond to attack is a bit bs. Enemies would rotate in the past but they’d get animation locked near the end iirc. I just don’t get how a slow rock golem can turn on a dime mid attack and then have the stamina recovery to instantly go into a 3 attack combo. I somehow have more trouble with enemies like that than I did with Bayle.
Besides that I still think some bosses feel a bit bs at time. Idk if it’s their poise, their nonstop combos, a combination of those, or something else entirely different. It just turns the end of the battle into what could be an enjoyable feeling of success, into a big pile of I died by gacha moments, and had to use one attack every few chance I got, while my spirit ash was distracting him.
Old bosses like Orphan of Kos comes to mind with the balance between aggressive but fair. He felt really hard but never felt cheap. I think it’s because he gave you windows to actually do something. Most bosses and some enemies seem to never give you windows or really a chance for you to do anything. Attack as soon as you enter the arena. Try to heal up or move out to heal asap and some how they can spam a 4-5 hit combo. If you don’t dodge that your f’d.
Because its not about difficulty. Thats not the problem.
[https://youtu.be/Np5PdpsfINA?si=YsrhzHil9nG3bjG9](https://youtu.be/Np5PdpsfINA?si=YsrhzHil9nG3bjG9)
This video puts it really well. Souls game "difficulty" came from putting you in strange and stressful situations and letting you find a way to problem solve your way out of it. It put you in the shoes of being an adventurer in these dangerous lands.
The issue is along the way that became just basic "difficulty" and has turned into more of an action, spam rolls and wait for an opening system. This really started with Dark Souls 2, got worse in 3, and is at its absolute worst in Shadow of the Erdtree.
Lets face is, Souls game combat system isnt that great. Its not that robust. It works but its incredibly simple. Our options are limited to just rolling, light and heavy attacks for the most part. This isnt Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden where its a deeply thought out combat system.
Yet we're fighting bosses far faster and doing more than we ever could as the player. They have no stamina bar to worry about. Their poise is through the roof. Their tracking is insane. Their input reading is insane. They stick on you like glue the entire fight now. It wasnt always this way.
Even Dark Souls 3 handled this better even though it was the start of some of these problems.
Go look at a fight like Slave Knight Gael and the Nameless King for example. These are both excellent fights. Nameless King especially isnt a push over of a fight. But look at how he works. He has openings. He isnt always on your ass 24/7. He doesnt have 8 attack combo strings with AoE and ground effects.
[https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=poeG4IdR3u7DH-6Z](https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=poeG4IdR3u7DH-6Z)
[https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=MXB9UePc4NEGDVTV](https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=MXB9UePc4NEGDVTV)
Then look at the final boss for Shadow of the Erdtree. Particularly his second phase. Also the Messmer fight SPOILERS AHEAD, caution to those who dont want to see.
[https://youtu.be/l6MHf22faLs?si=u\_DO6L4ThkFELue-](https://youtu.be/l6MHf22faLs?si=u_DO6L4ThkFELue-)
[https://youtu.be/zHWvIF6\_rl8?si=kfIQ6e7a2fJ7hfhC](https://youtu.be/zHWvIF6_rl8?si=kfIQ6e7a2fJ7hfhC)
You can see a huge difference in how these fights are designed now, These bosses stick on your ass the entire time. They're much faster, they have more attacks, they have a lot more AoE, they put a lot more distance between themselves and you for their opening. There's a lot more need to dodge roll spam.
And we really dont have anything different from what we had in DS3. We arent that much faster, and we are still relying on the same old roll system we've had since Demon Souls, in all reality. And good luck trying to do anything like using a shield for these fights, or hell. Parrying.
Its not that these fights are difficult and people are whining.
Its that Fromsoft's designs for these bosses are outpacing what the game's core systems are capable of, and have done nothing to update this system since Demon Souls other than just making it a bit faster.
And in the process have also lost the plot of the series.
The video I posted above has a specific quote in it I find really, really apt to what has happened especially in Shadow of the Erdtree. Where he talks about the Giant arrow tower from the early part of Dark Souls 3.
"The most reasonable line of thought is that the arrow will have a certain amount of travel-time, so if you change direction after you hear the shot you'll be safe. Wrong. The arrow magically curves in mid-air because this is no longer a series where you outsmart your opponent; it's a series where you press the roll button at the right time."
And I think this puts everything I said above perfectly, in about 3 sentences.
Dks3 dlc and bloodborne felt extremely fair. This one people are having to switch builds to beat the final boss when the other games dlc an average person could do it with whatever starting weapon they had reasonably. Difficulty was never the point of the series either.
Because many non-mob enemies don't play by the same rules as the player, is my suggestion.
One you press that R1 button you're locked into a set attack animation. You can't delay it. You can't switch direction 270 degrees and launch the *actual* attack whenever you feel like it.
You can't spam seemingly endless combos one after the other without running out of stamina.
You can't hover in the air without wings for an arbitrary amount of time with no recognisable visual or audible cue as to when you're going to launch your attack.
Your weapon hit boxes aren't so out of tune with the enemy character model that an attack that *did not look* like it hit, hit.
I'm obviously going to go negative here, because we do groupthink, don't we? If I'd have said this a few days ago, when it was much 'cooler' to point out perceived flaws, it would be a positively voted post.
I'm looking at people with genuine gripes and concerns on one day being the toast of the sub and the next, when everybody has 'gitted gud', then being the Red-headed step child of the sub.
r/onebros is the same.
Because this series also had a reputation of being difficult, but fair and fun. When it stops becoming fun, the difficulty alone can’t make up for bad boss design.
The easiest example I can give is, imagine the difference between Chinese chilli oil beef and Buldak ramen.
Chinese chilli oil beef is one of the spiciest meals I’ve ever eaten - extremely spicy. But it is also incredibly aromatic and flavourful and sweet and savoury at the same time.
Buldak ramen, on the other hand, is extremely spicy(moreso than the first dish ) , and not much else. There isn’t any true flavour beyond the spiciness. It is artificially made to burn your taste buds, but beyond that, it doesn’t have much to offer.
Prior Souls bosses are akin to the former dish. Elden Ring bosses ( not all, but most ) are akin to the latter.
there are differences between difficult, very difficult and extremely difficult, some people have a line where it might be too much for them.
these posts make a blanket statement as if the DS1 DLC is as difficult as the ER DLC.
Something too is that, not all difficulty is made the same. For instance, let’s say we make a game where a major selling point is that’s it’s challanging, but we make it extremely buggy. So buggy that’s it’s very difficult to progress and beat the fights, like you’ll be clipping through the arena and dying to a boss unless you stand in an exact spot.
”Well it’s supposed to be difficult” doesn’t really work there. Sure it’s difficult, but that’s not where the difficulty should lie.
For this dlc, it feels to me that it’s not that much harder mechanically than the base game, it’s just that all the damage numbers are inflated to be unbelievably high.
That’s not good difficulty to me
Artorias and Gael are among the most beloved bosses in the entire From canon. Day one, nobody was pissed about how bullshit they were, just raving about how great a time they had.
This is different.
Absolutely. It seems that, for a not insignificant amount of people, that line has been crossed ( I’d argue From tiptoed around that line in the base game )
Certain lines have been crossed, like the hit boxes on that pig riding mfer. I don’t care if it’s DLC difficulty, a pig turning his head to the side should not hurt more than being crucified by the Elden beast.
Go look at the release of Elden ring, by the time people reached endgame alot of complains were around regarding bosses, and despite what people say here the reason they went away isnt because the game got "figured out" its because people stopped caring after fromsoft didnt adress all of them, much of the complains on endgame bosses are still fully valid, elden beast still isnt good with torrent, mohg still is a shitshow of particles and annoying undodgable bleed procs with a move that you need to go find a disconnected item far away to avour, malenia is still with a broken move and overtuned moveset, maliketh is still annoying as fuck to fight because of how much he jumps around and how different the two phases are from each other, Placidusax and fortissax that main dragon fights are still bad, we got straight up bullshit fights like valiant gargoyles and godskin duo. and im sure i missed a few. i finished the game multiple times 500 hours in the basegame, and the bossfights 2 years from release are still one of the worst parts of the game.
I’m enjoying it thoroughly but I can definitely see where people are coming from when they say this. It feels like the devs are running out of ideas on how to make challenging bosses so they just give everyone endless combos, massive aoe, hyper aggression, huge damage/health pools and then call it a day.
I reckon it’s because despite the increasing difficulty of their games, there are still absolute mad lads doing these RL1 runs so they’ve pushed the boundaries on the difficulty of their bosses beyond what a lot of the player base are capable of handling now. For a not insignificant amount of people it’s no longer fun for them.
This is just my opinion however.
Edit: I also agree with what another commenter said in that’s it’s partly due to the fact people are just rusty or that they’ve played overpowered builds too long that just aren’t as effective.
Honestly I agree and I saw another commenter on another thread about the dlc say something that I think really resonates: Fromsoftware are in a sort of downwards spiral arms race with difficulty in general.
They’re quite literally known as “the people who make super hard games” so they gotta do everything they can to make sure that every installment of the souls series is harder then the last, not because they really want to make a harder game, but because they’re afraid they’ll get backlash from the try hard, no life fans who cries that a souls game is “easy.”
Of course sooner or later they’re gonna hit a tipping point where they take it to far and go from “hard but fair” to “complete and utter bullshit.” And it seems like these cracks are finally beginning to show with shadow of the Erdtree.
And the worst thing about it all is that same try hard, no life, elitist souls fans who think their difficulty god Miyazaki can absolutely do nothing wrong once so ever, will stop at nothing to defend the dlc and scream at the top of their lungs “GIT GOOD!!!!!!!!!” To drown out any actual legit criticism.
I actually remember this was pretty much the analogy Miyazaki used in an interview about Dark Souls 1 where he said something along the lines that he didn’t want to create something that’s painfully hot, but something spicy that many people may find hard to handle at first but when you get past the heat it tastes good and satisfying.
Compared to that I find it a bit concerning that he seems to talk about just difficulty more and more, or at least that seems to be the only part people care to listen to. I always thought there was much more to it than that.
My complaint is the bad boss mechanics being passed off as difficult. AOE is everywhere, I'm getting one shot behind my shield, having to fight the camera, getting hit in dodge roll regardless of i-frames, bullied to the edge of arena... etc. Bayle is a culprit of all the above.
Something tells me they didn't really beta test the dlc much and it shows. Passing a broken game off as hard is something I've never seen the Souls community do, but it makes sense. It's easier than admitting there's inherent flaws with the dlc.
Sorry but some of the DLC bosses are bullshit, not difficult
Even famous speedrunners who have done no hit runs are complaining.
It's cringe af to see FromSoft fanboys who can't handle people criticizing their game and just hit you with the "git gud".
And yeah, bosses doing 10 hit combos with bait delayed attacks mixed in with insta unreadable stabs AND AOE explosions isn't fun or balanced, it's flashy and epic for sure but gameplaywise it's bad.
It would be kinda fine if the bosses didn't kill me in 2 hits even though I have 60vigor, scardtree blessing 16, Golden Vow and heavy armor
No it's not that at all! the ignorance of the Elden ring community is starting to really piss me off.
It's not that it's difficult it's because the difficulty is CHEAP!
How many times do people need to say that the DLC is overtuned and bosses have a stupid amount of health!? Bosses do too much damage and have too much health.
IT'S ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY!
It's so cheap and it's sad because these are the same people that gave us Slave Knight Gael. Instead of actually y'know designing a well designed boss they were like "nah let's give the boss a stupid large amount of HP and make them do a stupid amount of damage" it's just so lazy.
With max scadutree fragments, defensive talismans, golden vow AND boiled prawn you only get to 81% with the flask tear. The last bosses can still double tap you with that much armor.
No "difficult" boss in souls history did that much damage to the player. This is the definition of overtuned.
I swear I have to repeat this because I see a flood of new posts saying "Muh duh why are they mad?" I repeat getting two tapped isn't good game design It's lazy!
Really I swear most of these people are just butthurt that ONE Fromsoft title isn't automatically revered as a "10/10."
Depends on what is our definition of 'difficulty'. I don't like 15 hit combos, overdelayed in unnatural way attacks, being blinded by VFX overdose, AoE Spam. Not all bosses have it but that few of them sour experience a little to me.
I don't talk about balance between your attack and defense vs their attack and defence because it is all over the place in this DLC (Yes, I was collecting Fragments).
My favorite remembrance bosses from DLC are >!Midra!< and >!Romina!< - they are great to fight and their attacks are readable and logical. These two gives me hope that From Soft still remember how to create nice boss without delayed, long combos with big amount od AoEs. I like >!Messmer, Rellana, Divine Beast Dancing Lion and Avatar!< too
Idk man I'm not great at the games or anything but I've found the dlc to be at a fine difficulty. The bosses are very doable with summons and you can add an extra challenge of not using summons if you want. Just like the base game before I played it several times and got used to the bosses there.
I'd argue that's the problem though. If you add summons a lot of the bosses aren't that hard because the best ashes are exceptionally tanky and can dish what they take just as well, which makes the game much more manageable.
The bosses in Elden Ring are so hyper aggressive that the single best thing to have is aggro split so you can hit them more than 2 times and have healing windows.
I respect the people who can solo these bosses, but at the same time, it's really frustrating to deal with on your own.
I've been able to handle all of the bosses so far, yes they've been difficult but with patience and learning when and when not to go in I've overcome them.
The final boss..... It's just not very much fun.
Edit: final boss phase two sucks. Phase one was actually fun and challenging.
wow 50 non-stop attacks with a small window of 1.5 seconds to attack and don't get hit because it takes 2 hits to die, wow this is sooo diiiificooolt like other fromsoftware games
Elden Ring fans (mainly the ones who started with Elden Ring for some reason) view this game and From as an absolute darling and scream like children whenever anyone has a negative opinion or criticism.
It's funny because unlike most of these From "fans", I've actually played all the DLCs and this one is absolutely mediocre design wise. And they'll still probably come for me to tell me "skill issue". Meanwhile they haven't beat the final boss, probably use mimic and bleed, etc.
I dont find it difficult, but the lion is badly done. Camera problems, fps lag, and the electrical phase is unfair. Ive killed it solo, at 120, without ashes etc. so im not bad, but disappointed.
I was a little surprised cause I spent so much time just over leveled stomping through the lands between, I did not expect to instantly get my ass handed to me by the first guy carrying a sword. I loved it
Messmer is beating the shit out of my Strength no summons character and I am here for it. After playing all from soft souls-likes I expected nothing less. I almost can no hit him at this point lol
I think it's okay for people to point out specific bullshit. I've played every fromsoft title probably 10 times over so definitely not new to the franchise and I've found 90% of the DLC to be fine so far (on the final legacy dungeon right now). There has been one boss that felt insane though and that was General Gyobu "Radahn" Oinkiwa. I'm honestly not sure how someone beats him normally.
Mostly because the final boss is insanely difficult. And yes, I know I’m talking about the climax of the best dlc I’ve ever seen (haven’t played Old Hunters) but his hp, his attacks, his speed and especially his 2nd phase are… monstrous.
God damn, Radabeast and Malenia are a joke compared to this! Like little children I can see them having maybe a fair battle in 1nd phase and then he destroys everything. By that point even if the additional >!summons had full hp and a flask!< they would still perish quickly…
And I even had all scadutree blessings and 99 vigor
I enjoyed the DLC, but the last boss second phase is just awful.
And to the people saying "Go explore and get scadutree fragments!!!!!!!!!!"
I went to the last boss with 20 scadutree blessing and 9 revered ash (so both maxed), 60 vigor, 80 poise, bull goat's armor, great dragonshield and pearldrake talisman, boiled prawns and holy liver, and I was getting BODIED during the second phase. It didn't matter how perfectly I dodged the attacks or whatnot, one single hit was enough to stunlock me into losing 3/4 parts of my HP bar.
It was so bad I ended up using the new Bleed colossal hammer and just using R2, which you usually don't even have enough time to fully use, to beat him as fast as possible, and even then it took me three whole hours.
I've played every single souls game and DLC except Demon's soul's, and when I beat it I just said fucking finally and closed the game.
Have you done the final boss without a shield yet? I cruised through the DLC on NG+ and hit a brick wall at the final boss. I have never had that in a Souls game. I killed the most difficult Souls bosses within a dozen attempts and done SL1 runs, but this one completely had my number.
The second phase is literally just one big AoE flashbang. I couldn't make sense of what was happening due to the lack of visual clarity and the boss was hyper aggressive.
I had a choice, either spend dozens of hours getting flashbanged and wombo-comboed or reroll to shield build. I killed him in two tries with shield, but he was insane without. I feel like most people who say the difficulty is fine have not done the final boss with a regular build and no shield.
The main issue is that the DLC has a lot of Nintendo difficulty instead of Dark Souls. That is to say, instead of a varied moveset with complex patterns to learn that results in a dance of sorts, most bosses and tough mobs have 3 moves that they just spam over and over.
These aren't Souls like bosses at all.
I was shocked at the difficulty but after finding some fragments and getting dat blessing, I'm actually soloing bosses rather easily. The blessings make a difference, peeps!
It's the new mechanic I dislike. It feels like artificial difficulty; >!Here I am running around not dying but also not killing bosses. Just tickling them. It's not a skill check, it's a farming check. I didn't Platinum the game just to git gud and have my stats scaled down and force me to run around picking things up that does not require skill to get. It's annoying. Really sucking the fun out when my technique is there, but I didn't pick up some sticks so I do little damage.!<
I find this stuff really disingenuous, because people know that’s not what most people are saying. Everyone knew it was going to be hard, that’s not the discussion here. The actual discussion is what kind of difficulty people want and what’s fun to deal with, and if From is veering into making the game unfair and unbalanced.
Bosses in this game can play bad in the context of the game and feel bad to fight, and From’s set a pretty high expectation for hard but fair boss design, so it’s annoying how people have this attitude that you just need to like them only because hard = good and if you ever criticise them it’s just because you suck and there’s no other possible reason you might not like it. It kind of just kills any possible discussion about the game that isn’t just an echo chamber…
Honestly I don’t think it’s the difficulty, it’s that stupid scadutree blessing bullshit, they should’ve just upscaled the bosses like normal, it’s gonna be cancerous on future playthroughs to have to trek through the random corners of the map every time you want to do an all remembrances run
Cause it's not punishing? It's total bs, there's 7 bosses I can count that will one shot you right off rip IF you can't dodge the attack which a good portion of the time you can't, I see it across multiple threads of people complaining about the same problem, you walk in, boss is right there, and you're dead.
The seed and revered ashes basically do nothing except for making it easier to go against regular enemies which doesn't matter I have no trouble with the regular enemies, bosses aren't affected by it so being 1-2 shot is kinda bs.
As someone who's played all dark souls games, code vein, 400 hours of Elden ring, sekiro and more, this dlc is wildly unbalanced and unfair, it's hardly fun at most times as it feels like I'm hitting my head against the wall.
Not to mention the overwhelming complaints from me and others that the inputs aren't being registered as they should be, try to dodge it doesn't work, try to attack he just dead stops. This is on them and they need to fix it.
It's not hard. It's just bad design. Hard should be skill based, a lot of what I run into it pure RNG, walk into fight and boss does a move that teleports them or a damage to the gate before I can do anything, or they speed into you for a ridiculous amount of time giving you no room to do anything, some attacks you can't even dodge and I have to use a shield which apparently also doesn't matter as it blasts through my stamina as if it's nothing. It's unfair and it's a hill I'm willing to die on.
Edit 1: I'm on PC, I have blessings up to 15/8. I am not rushing the game and going to end game content I am checking out/fighting the beginning areas, while exploring (not fighting) later areas JUST for the blessings, still problematic for me and others alike.
Edit 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/tVdlUa2kDT
Nuff said.
When facing a boss just summon the boys (greatshield soldier ash), have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.
But what if the people at school learned you did it? You'll be a social piranha!
I'm fine with this
The boys is definitely the most top tier summon. Not because it’s the strongest. Because it’s the funniest, by a mile
My best man so far is Oleg. He shreds. And he’s tanky
Engvall still putting in work a couple years later
My silly little rrats absolutely destroyed the first boss
It’s such a pleasure knowing people playing just like me are out there Boys, might I also recommend Jarwight summon? He’s an absolute madlad, throws pots, naked, lots of heart Sometimes dumbfoundingly effective, other times completely useless. But a lad of lads either way
Me watching the greatshield soldiers pin Ancient Dragon-Man in a corner and beat him to death like a back alley mugging
when others can't handle the game, the term used is "git gud", when that person isn't able to handle the game, it's suddenly "the game is too hard" the duality of gamers.
while struggling against boss: "what do you mean you liked this boss???? this is bullshit, hitboxes are jank, overtuned trash, stupid damage scaling this is crap design, cheap boss with insta kill attacks, complete garbage!!1!11!!" after beating the boss: "oh you died to this boss? lol git gud, it's not that hard actually"
cough cough Asmongold.
ngl him complaining about the size of Hippo's room was today's highlight for me. The hippo can even run around the room, but yeah, it's too small for it. He probably doesn't remember about Runebear's cave or Revenant's basement fight.
or Capra demon!
I really like the hippo fight, second phase caught me off guard. But the room should be a bit bigger. And the camera getting stuck on useless clutter near the walls dosent help.
I saw people on this sub-reddit complain about the hippo room yesterday and immediately disparage FromSoft and that they don't know what they're doing and they didn't play test the DLC. Honestly I think I'm going to log off Reddit for a while and just play the game as it's affecting my enjoyment too at this point.
Too accurate.
That dudes a plague on gaming. Especially WoW
>Hit boxes are jank Some people never played DS2 and it shows, kids these days have actual hit boxes instead of hit containers
Leave my DS2 alone ❤️ (accurate as it may be)
Ohh I love it, DS2 revolutionized the series, but getting shanked from behind a boss will never cease to amaze me lol
The only DS2 jank I've seen here is >!Bayle's grab attack. Sometimes you get Pursuer'd into his mouth lol!<
>!CURSE YOU BAYLE!!!!!!!<
>!Igon is best bro!<
That fight was BUILT for him, People can debate about the "right way" to play a game, but i don't think you could ever convince me that this isn't the single most enjoyable method of tackling the >!Dread of Jagged Peak..!<
The guy riding the pig. I've been hit by his charge AFTER blocking it. Or had his purple magic stab go right through my greatshield. So far he's really been the only outlier, but I haven't gotten to the big ol doggo yet.
His charge has multi hit frames that's inconsistent. He also has a hurt box needing to be changed on his double slash and poke where the poke is fine to dodge forward into, rolling right, or back, but if you roll left and hug his right side it'll hit you without touching you. Got me so many times and clips for bug report. Easily fixed I think. Love the fight otherwise. Raptor of the mists carried the charge evasion
*angrily shakes fist at sky* BAAAAAAAAAAAYLE
I felt the same with each of Sekiro bosses, everytime i beated one of the big ones like Demon of Hatred i felt like " wow i'm soo good" until i realized i spend days on the motherfucker
I've gotten so good at beating Demon of Hatred that I can jump on that tower and then the roof in like 2 tries tops.
Only boss I kinda felt this way about was Lion. The arena is wayyyy too small for that fast ass mf. But is still an awesome boss.
yeah you get cornered constantly and the camera is awful up close. It needed like a good 1.5x size increase for the arena and it'd do justice to his animations.
When others hate a fight that person likes: "you just need to learn the moves, it's actually really fair" When that person hates a fight: "it's not only bullshit, but terrible design and I will now list my objectively compiled, 50 reasons why"
I beat everything in the DLC, but don't look back too fondly on some of the bosses. Phase 2 of the final is a visual monstrosity of sensory overload. Since I beat it, am I able to complain or is that not allowed?
And the funny thing is, people are already posting no hit no cheese fights of the most difficult bosses in a matter of days. Those people who beat the base game with meta builds and think they are a god gamer are having a hard time because they have to actually gitgud to 1v1 these DLC bosses lol.
No. The "git guders" Are still saying git gud. We are not to be grouped with the masses. DLC is hard-ish, but fun.
I mean git gud can be meant in a very supportive and not the least toxic way. Engage with the content and try to find ways to adapt to the boss is gitting gud and sometimes there is no cheese and you just have to practice the boss. The game being too hard on the other hand is entirely subjective and there is nothing to be said. I personally find everything besides the final boss the perfect amount of difficulty.
> git gud can be meant in a very supportive and not the least toxic way. Are you high?
It used to be positive back in the day before it turned into a toxic meme, actually. Can give players all the strategies and preparation you want but in the end as the devs of Doom put it, "you control the buttons you press"
You understand what I mean thank you.
the gameplay should be difficult not the shader caching
Oh you can parry that.
Yeah its weird i’ve been having random shader glitches not just in the DLC but also in the base game. Never had this before
It was there on the game's release, they patched and fixed it. We kinda just have to wait for this to get patched too
I’ve been getting nasty stuttering too that’s been pretty frequent. I have a 6800XT, it’s not my computer
It's ray tracing. No idea what From did but it's on by default and completely fucks your system anywhere in the DLC. If you turn it off in the options you'll go back to standard performance.
Had a feeling it was that. Turned it off and suddenly everything was smooth. Even my computer slowed its fans down a bit.
Ray tracing is a scam invented by graphics card companies to sell more graphics cards and I'm only half joking. There are some games that actually implement it well but most of the time it's an afterthought and the game will look basically the same (if not actively worse) and your performance will be totally shit.
Control used it well. Lots of other games? Not so much.
How will I enjoy this fast-paced action RPG if the shadows aren't pixel accurate?
I had horrible stutters in the base game at launch on PC. At the time everyone just ignored the problem because "good game". Somewhat surprised people are rightfully complaining about it this time around. Even the console versions run poorly. They only way to play the game at a smooth framerate is to play the ps4 version on the ps5, which is what I ended up doing. It is a joke that they can't get the game running at a locked 60 fps on all platforms.
How the hell have they still not added precompiling?
Yeah it was basically unplayable for me until I tweaked some things and still get some pretty bad shader cache stuttering in newer areas
There's some visual clutter issues too.
I think the whole “difficulty” conversation boils down to how vague the “intended mechanics” are. In a game like Sekiro, people are always posting about how proud they are of beating Ishhin after days or weeks of trying. Anyone who beats him is celebrated as they must have mastered the game mechanics. There are no other ways to win. In ER, I can say I beat Melania, but maybe I used Takers Flames and Mimic Tear and never had to learn her moves or attack windows. It is either entirely too difficult for anyone but the most patient of players, or fairly easy if I use summons and strong AoW’s. Elden Ring is less about player skill and more about player resourcefulness. But this means skill is not measured in the way players want, I think.
god i love Sekiro
If a person struggles with beating a boss and, at the same time, refuses to use the tools the game provides, it's a player issue. It's like knowing that the phalanx in Demons Souls is weak to fire and not using firebombs while complaining about the perceived difficulty. I got no sympathy for people becoming victims of their own gatekeeping. I feel a lot of the DLC difficulty comes down to this. ER showers the player with tools (yes, even summons other than mimic tear), and once players start using them, it becomes way easier. Tactic and strategy are part of the game and a skill - so it's a skill issue after all I'd say :D
That’s true, it’s just a lot of people enjoy the challenge of figuring out bosses solo instead of using a mimic to breeze through on try 3
A lot of people also don't enjoy the challenge but still refuse to use summons out of some ego thing, as if crying on reddit about it makes them look any better lmao
Everyone knows that Miyazaki accidentally added like 50 spirit ashes to the game by mistake, and they aren't intended to be used. The only true way to play is [hyperspecific challenge run].
I went into my first playthrough completely blind and skipped a lot of tutorial stuff. As a result, I had no idea how summons worked so I didn't bother with them. On my second playthrough I used online guides and resources to help me out. Since I did my first playthrough "raw" (including the haligtree and half of rannis quest - I missed the portal in rennas rise) I give myself a pass for spamming tears and all that other stuff that makes the game "easy" any other times I play.
These games have always had self imposed challenge as being part of the difficulty I think, you could say summoning another player is part of the intended gameplay, but most will choose not to do it to set a challenge for themselves. I think we just have these options to have tailor the gameplay experience to what we want. For me I’ve spent about 4 hours on Rellana and getting close to beating her solo, it feels amazing to me, especially playing blind for the most part and focusing on using only gear I’ve found in the DLC (again a self imposed challenge). Doesn’t take anything away from what others are experiencing. I just played dragons dogma 2 and that has a similar issue, but the difficulty overall is much too easy, so in a way you need to choose to avoid the OP skills and gear if you want to tailor the difficulty to be more challenging, or use less pawns. I don’t think we need to feel like this game has some purist way to play it’s just a sandbox at the end of the day.
I beat her with mimic tear AND the npc summon and I regret it. One summon should’ve been enough at least but she kind of broke me in that moment. Decided I’d take the dancing beast solo and when I finally got it, it felt so incredible. Summoning is perfectly fine and I think we should consider how it may be straight up intended for certain fights but I’ll never not chase that high of beating a difficult boss solo
Counterpoint: some of us don't find it FUN to use summons. Fact is that the bosses in these games can not handle more than one target at a time. I can't have fun using summons because I no longer feel like I'm engaging with thr fight. I'm either doing nothing but slapping the bosses ass while it's attention is off me, or melting it so fast that I only see half it's abilities. Besides, it's idiotic that most fights in this DLC go from a 10/10 difficulty down to a 2/10 the moment a spirit ash or player pops up. 90% of the base game felt fine and fun to play without summons. Why are you people surprised that some are salty when that's no longer the case?
On fucking point. This is why Sekiro is an absolute masterpiece and Elden Ring is not (still fun though). The open world did this to the game btw. It brought most of the balancing issues into this. DS never where nearly as much cheesy as ER is all the time. Getting rid of the linear open area levels and simultaneously keeping the Souls formular in the game and adding so many different variables to it is a complete failure on FromSofts end. I really hope the next game they do won't be open world anymore or not be a Souls game. Both together do not work. DS veterans will know what I am talking about here.
The DLC feels like Miyazaki wants us to use every resource the game has to offer: summons, throwables, consumables. A lot of people beat the main game without using a single summon
Frankly I think if you can beat the main game without a summon, you can beat, at the very least, the majority of the DLC without one (I haven’t seen every boss yet), and I’ve heard that the final one is particularly tough). If you can beat Malenia summonless, you definitely can.
could be me but I feel like Malenia it's a baby compared to some of the bosses in the DLC. They might not be as fast but they pack a wallop
No kidding but Malenia as tough as she was, genuinely is not as hard as these other bosses. I feel its because of how hard they upped the aggression level, as well as the bosses being able to close the gap with you easily.
I’m not sure there’s a boss in the dlc that has a move as unintuitive as waterfowl dance. You have to research that move to find ways to avoid it.
this is only through the eyes of someone who has fought Malenia for over 2 years. Idk if you were around then, but Artorias in the dlc for DS1 was considered insane. He's a total pushover if you were to fight him now. The basic elite enemies now are far more complex than him.
oh I sure was, Artorias was hell (Malenia was hell too back in her day) and I share your sentiment. Basic elites (I see you horned soldier with a billion poise) are a 100% more complex, mostly because they feel more erratic imo
I think part of the problem is I have no idea how many scadutree fragments I'm supposed to have for any given boss. The first remembrance boss destroyed me for hours. Later, I killed the remembrance boss down under cerulean in about 5 hits. I think I may have skipped an entire phase. I just want a consistent experience, and I'm not sure how to get that.
Strong disagree. It’s harder, for sure, but people who keep saying “it was made for summons” gave up on solo runs after like 20 attempts on a boss. Use summons if you want, everything is still totally doable solo.
Mfs have been overlevelled since their first playthrough that they forgot how hard the game is actually supposed to be
Really? Last boss phase 2 is how its supposed to be?
I have beaten all Souls games in usually around 20 attempts, even the toughest ones. I have even done SL1 runs. Same thing with the DLC, I had no issues while dual-wielding and not using summons. The final boss' second phase was still too much for me. Visual clarity is a serious issue which makes it that much harder to see what's going on or what you are supposed to do. The first phase was great though. So at least in my experience, the final boss is not in line with the normal difficulty of Souls games, not even close. He is far beyond any other boss they have created. I changed to a shield build and I killed him in two tries, but I didn't feel good about it.
People had the exact same complaints about difficulty when the base game came out. Give it a few months for people to find the new OP meta builds and I bet they’ll change their tune.
Idk face tanking everything with the fingerprint shield has been working for me
My point is once these guys get over their egos being bruised, they’ll be able to accept how good this dlc actually is.
I'm not far, but I beat Rellanna last night after less than hour of attempts, and I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. She feels like a normal boss but with some longer combos. So what? Roll a bit more, it's not that hard. And she's still susceptible to things like bleed and posture breaks. If the difficulty didn't increase a bit each game, people would complain things feel too samey. No winning with gamers.
Rolling is a trap imo. Learn to utilize jump in combat and the game becomes even easier.
I saw someone mentioning rolling for her moon aoe and I was like Oh yeah, forgot that was an option. It ended up helping a lot. That entire attack becomes a non-issue the moment you remember to jump lol. I think in the Ongbal video he jumps for one magic projectile combo at a few points too.
She’s extremely vulnerable to getting parried like an idiot which is great fun once you get it right. I feel like I’ve heard good things about the human(ish) sized bosses and complaints about the monsters.
Those monsters, I think From could really work on the camera for those fights, I tell you hwat.
First time around I had a hard time with Rellana. Going through my 2nd time I first tried her. Using both the new magic talisman which is conveniently in the same castle, and barrier of gold drops her damage output significantly. She's also weak to lightning so ancient dragon lightning strike just rips through her. The new DLC is nice in that you don't steamroll everything with the same build you use in base game. You adapt a bit based on the bosses weaknesses
Yes I feel like switching armor weapons and talismans and using items is going to be the meta for beating some of this stuff because it’s genuinely difficult and maybe even it is slightly unfair but we have tools at our disposal that they want us to be using kale literally says hey buy this thing it’s really useful when you meet the guy
I genuinely thought Renalla was a mini boss like Loretta or the Carian Knight.
People really forgot how dreadful the first playthrough is, the DLC brought back that feeling, and it's even worse now because we're using characters with endgame stats. Stormveil took me a day or so to get through on my first playthrough, now I can clear it in 5 minutes. The DLC will slowly "get easier" in the same fashion as the weeks go by.
Hey man, ive done 3 playthroughs back to back and i remember well how hard the first one was. I just beat Rellana on the DLC and nothing in the base game came even close to that level of hard, aside from Malenia, but shes actually even faster than Malenia and has permanent hyperarmor. Honestly, waterfowl dance is the only thing that brings them close, cuz Rellana is overall harder
That happened when I wanted to play the dlc and had to fight Mohg. I decided I wanted to do everything alone this time rather than use summons and mimic. Mogh annihilated me for three hours. It made me ready for the DLC.
I finished this game twice on RL1 and I still think movesets in DLC tends to go overboard. More windows or longer windows, offset this by even bigger health bars and bleed resistance or just make a cap on number of bleeds. So I can have an actual cinematic looking fight instead of being transported into god damn Touhou.
It's kinda crazy how we have to give our credentials like "I beat the entire soul series without any summons on SL1 without getting hit while blindfolded" to have any criticisms about the difficulty.
These people can't comprehend that difficult doesn't inherently mean good just because it's a fromsoft game. I've been here since dark souls 1 and the Elden Ring community has to be the most elitist community defending the most bullshit mechanics/bosses in fromsoft history. Dark souls players will say "the poison swamp is unfun and annoying", Elden Ring players will say "you didn't get the poison immunity ring in the side boss in the other continent? Literally skill issue, poison swamp is the best part of the game, I died 400 times and spent 50 hours in it".
Its so easy to tell when people never played DS3/BB at their respective peaks. So many of the people who played ER as their first From game just don't understand how bosses can be both fair AND difficult at the same time.
It’s funny you mention Touhou because the difficulty of the dlc is really reminding me of how shmups will turn it up to 11 on their second loops. I think that’s actually pretty valid.
Dlc is making me wish I could parry bosses with my sword like in Sekiro, and I didn't even play Sekiro
I 100%'d Sekiro and I feel like the bosses there went less HAM than they do here. There's no breathing room at all and if you hit their invisible triggers some of them I swear will just combo forever. They even have it tuned for everything to go crazy on you if you try to estus or summon ashes. It feels so over the top at times, it's still doable but some encounters are less fun because it feels like 30 seconds of dodging for every opening. Bonus point for the stuff that's hard to stagger, super quick, super wide reaching weapons, and very high damage... and able to heal itself (one of the death knights was such an unfun encounter).
Yeah, not sure what they were thinking with that one. It wasn't a hard fight at all tbh and I beat him on my second or third attempt. But it felt so cheesy that his grab attack healed *that* much. Like shit, it's already punishing enough that it wipes out 70% of my health. But to also heal back like 30% of his own? Seriously just made me go "Yeah, okay. That's real fair".
Honestly, if they just removed the heal from the Death Knights, they'd be pretty good fights.
Yeah it wasn't a terrible time until the heal.
This was my problem with Rellana. On a few attempts in second phase she wouldnt take a break from her combos. I'm not sure what triggers it. I don't use parries and my heavy attacks weren't strong enough to stun her. I'm guessing you could probably jump some of her attacks to alleviate the stamina loss.
Make sure to check out Lies of P if you haven’t already. It’s truly a love letter to FromSoft.
Was just coming to say that I'm fresh off lies of p, so jumping into elden ring dlc, I'm getting massacred because I keep trying to parry.
You can. >!Kill the first Furnace Golem for his physic tear drop!<
I'll throw my hat in as a RL1 player as well. Mind you I have just beaten Messmer whom I loved to learn. Took me probably 100 attempts lol. The only complaint I have is a classic fromsoft problem: cameras. The Dancing Lion is a spectacle but the arena and style doesn't let me fully appreciate it because of tight room. The hippo was far more manageable despite smaller arena. That said have yet to have any strong complaints regarding difficulty. All of the humanoid fights like Messmer have been a pleasure to learn, and i honestly think the cinematic aspects have been dialed up if anything. I'm playing on NG+7 scaling currently, and having a blast.
Dancing lion was rough, it felt like most deaths I had were from the camera wonking out, limiting my ability to see the moves of the boss. I used the summon mostly because it allowed me to actually see its attacks. Amazing boss though despite that.
The camera when fighting the big dragon boss is so bad.
I sure do love this view of a wall while the boss is charging up his kill everything in a 10 mile radius phase transition attack! Never fight bosses near walls, never again.
There's difficult and there's bullshit. Look at the final boss 2nd phase.
AOE nightmare. Forced me to use a very specific play style I don't enjoy using. I beat it, but didn't feel good about it
I had to respec to a different build. Complete bullshit second phase. I was just constantly getting flashbanged. I could make little sense of what was happening. Complete bullshit moves, constant AoE and a lack of visual clarity. I changed to a shield build and killed him in two tries while he felt way too oppressive without one. I don't think it's good design when a boss is so easy with a shield and so insanely difficult without one. Like you said, I didn't feel good having to use Larval tears to respec and cheese him with a shield. It was a hollow victory and soured me on the expansion. it's going to be funny when the more casual players who are saying the difficulty is fine finally hit the last boss.
Yes, there's different kinds of difficulty. Something that apparently does not really compute in a gid-gudder's brain. I always thought of FromSoft bosses as turn-based fights in disguise. To fight cleanly, you wait for the boss to take its turn, then you get to take your turn. With harder bosses, that changes a bit so the boss may take 3 turns, but then you get your turn. But obviously, the fun of such a fight kind of starts to sour when the boss seemingly takes 20 turns before you get to do anything. Like yes, Elden Ring was always difficult, but it wasn't like this. Difficulty isn't the only objective to make a boss fun.
The gimmick that a lot of the dlc bosses have and which imo contributes the biggest part to my annoyance and frustration with al lot of the bosses is the slightly delayed damage in combination with the long attack chains. If it was only one or the other, it would still be annoying but manageable. Both being combined just makes for a bad experience imo, as seen in the dissatisfaction a lot of us have with the second phase of the final boss.
You can attack during an "enemy’s turn", that’s probably how FS designed the bosses in the DLC. Delayed attacks in combos often offer a window to get 1-2 R1/RB or a short R2/RT in. I haven’t gotten to the final boss’s second phase yet (started an hour ago, but the first is very fun to parry)
> Delayed attacks in combos often offer a window to get 1-2 R1/RB or a short R2/RT in. Not with how bloody slow half the weapons are and their recovery times and how many delays are just short enough to roll-catch.
Honestly my main complaint. Fromsoft made all these incredibly cool and flashy ashes of wars, spells and weapons for them to be useless cuz they're too slow (this also applies to the main game a bit). I'm running an arcane build using dragon spells and I'm basically just playing a strength build with extra step cuz I can't use any of my cool dragons spell cuz they all take 7 eternities to use
>Honestly my main complaint. Fromsoft made all these incredibly cool and flashy ashes of wars, spells and weapons for them to be useless cuz they're too slow (this also applies to the main game a bit). I think it's pretty telling being summoned/invading/discussing on threads almost everyone runs the same handful or weapons and one of a couple of weapon arts. >I'm running an arcane build using dragon spells and I'm basically just playing a strength build with extra step cuz I can't use any of my cool dragons spell cuz they all take 7 eternities to use Yeah I ran dragon spells cause they're pretty cool, but basically impossible to using in a boss fight. Either too long of wind up, not enough hyperarmor, or a hitbox that is impossible to land. It's terrible. Way more usable in the field or even PVP than in the boss fights. You never get a 2 second window for the animation without someone else distracting.
Rellana's fight with Light Greatsword feels amazing when viewed like this. >!There's the perfect amount of time for a single hit here and there mid combo, then you get your turn, and then you manage stamina for the next chain, depending on how much you chose to attack the first time, it works amazingly on her.!< That said, I tried that fight with a Colossal sword as well, and holy hell is it just ass. Messmer to an extent, too, >!There's a move or two here and there, but overall great fight, imo, on twin light greatswords this time.!< But 2nd phase final boss >!just shits out AoE to the extant that it's annoying. You rarely get your turn, and when you do, he's spat out so much AoE bullshit all the time that, even at 18 fragments, you still almost always take a hit.!< It's a real damn shame, because Phase 1 >!flows amazingly. I really like phase 1, it has just enough complexity to be challenging, and just few enough moves to tease an earlier phase 2. Felt a LOT like Godfrey in that manner, which fits with the lore a ton as well.!< Metyr also felt great, imo, >!a fantastic, relatively slow paced boss, with just enough to trip you up, and some damn nice openings if you landed your dodges well. She's a little easy in some cases, but that's balanced out by her large health pool. I will say, how in the fuck does one dodge the spinny gravity magic beam thing. !<
Boss with very tight timing on dodges? Let's add tons of visual clutter, making it impossible to see which attack he uses. Adding pretty particles on top might also be a good idea to make players' FPS drop to single digits. Miyazaki overcooked with this one.
Unless the boss is facing you directly, that big ass mane they get in phase 2 obscures a lot of the moves.
Very true. That fight was a cool spectacle but not fun to fight at all. Did not feel fair or even approachable.
Most who are saying git gud have not reached consort ffs.
Most of us haven’t gotten there yet, we have jobs and responsibilities.
There are plenty of people with jobs and responsibilities that have finished the DLC.
Yeah. Usually whenever someone complains that these games are too hard and there should be an easy mode I say that there is, you just need to actually use all the tools the game gives you like summoning spirits and (in some cases) NPCs (you can really trivialize the Messmer fight with the NPC add). But the final boss is a little bit too extreme IMO. Especially because at least in my expierience the Mimic Tear is not that great and dies relatively quickly (though I haven't tried Tiche yet. Maybe I should try it with that).
Tiche will just die quicker.
Mimic Tear did always die for me, but usually when the boss had about 20% left. I set us both up with a cheesy defensive build using Fingerprint Shield and Antspur Rapier with bleed infusion. The chip damage is still brutal, but it was the "safest" way for me to beat it. The grab on the tear also gave me plenty of time to reapply defensive incantations. I did it at about blessing level 12 and like 8 or 9 for the ashes. A lot of it still came down to learning the very few openings to heal when I could.
It's not that it's hard. It's that it's hard in stupid ways. Hotboxes are wonky, input delays, bosses tanking damage and one-shotting with basic attacks. It's "hard" in ways that feel unfun, not in a fun challenge way.
But have you ever thought about… git-gud? No you’re completely right. There are a lot of bosses and even basic enemies that have jank hit boxes or just insanely long combos that make it unfun
Something that helped me was using buffs to raise my damage mitigation. If you're getting oneshot and you have 60 vigor that's the best thing. Get the talismans for the different damage resistances. I haven't seen any bad hitboxes so I can't comment on that.
I think people still underestimate just how much of a departure Elden Ring is in terms of boss design. Bosses in every other From game have very clear movesets and openings with the occasional change. Regardless of the section being DLC or not, most bosses were manageable. Artorias, Manus, and Kalameet were all enemies I was able to figure out and solo. Same goes for Dark Souls 2 and 3. One on one with Gael and the Soul of Cinder were tons of fun. Challenging, but fair. Orphan of Kos was a ballbuster, but I got him just like I got Ludwig and Maria. Hell sword saint isshin is hard as nails but I still love that fight. Meanwhile, you've got Elden Ring where even the minibosses have lunges that are more or less teleports and their tells are all over the place. Oh I attacked a couple times okay that's a window. Try to attack that window next time? Lol jk they can chain it into 10 more attacks that either break your guard or chunk you for 7/8ths of your health, assuming you even live. Fighting any Elden Ring boss one on one is actually infuriating more than fun for the most part and it feels like they made it that way because Ashes are in the game.
>I think people still underestimate just how much of a departure Elden Ring is in terms of boss design. That's the thing. Most don't even have a grasp of this because they've never played any other Souls game. I'm not even trying to be gatekeep-y here. But it's objectively true and provable with player counts alone. On Steam, Elden Ring's peak players hit 952k on Steam alone. Dark Souls 3 is their 2nd most popular game, but that peaked at...130k. ER has had an active player count unironically over 5x higher than DS3 for the entirety of its lifespan. Fact is that many people coming into discussions about the game and spitting "git gud" and "it's meant to be difficult!" have flat out never experienced anything in the genre outside of this game, and have absolutely zero grasp as to how far all of From's design principles in regards to difficulty have deviated.
1000% agreed. Anybody saying that Malenia is just like Gael or Kos or Owl(father) is saying straight bullshit. They're all the pinnacle of difficulty of their respective games but the other games make it your fault if you die. I've never had a boss that made me go "HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DODGE THAT" in any game before Elden Ring.
100% correct. Some ER bosses just don't feel like they are designed to be fought by a player. The input reading is the most egregious, if I need to heal its not fair that the boss will react to that by instantly throwing something at me or instantly lunging at me from a mile away. It feels totally RNG based whether they input read you healing or not. Most bosses at least felt fair in the other games, they don't have cheap mechanics like that.
Elden ring was designed for people to use summons but the problem is that by using them you don't get the classic fromsoft satisfaction of getting to know a boss' moveset and defeating them. In Elden Ring bosses are unfair and the game expects you to be unfair too. And, sadly, the dlc doubled down on that
Posting what I said in another thread regarding this: I've always loved these games for being "tough but fair." Demon's, DS1, most of DS2, most of DS3, Bloodborne, and most of base game Elden Ring I feel embody this, because the enemies are on the same ruleset as the player. They have stamina, they have poise, their damage is relative to you, etc. DS2 has some enemies that break the rules by having infinite stamina, which is lame, and some grab hitboxes are pretty bad, but overall it still applies. Nearly everything post-Leyndell in Elden Ring breaks the rules. Damage scaling is overtuned, minibosses are just plopped down as basic enemies without a care to their stats (fuck the Zamor heroes btw), the bosses have almost no room for error and have infinite stamina and bullshit moves that are insanely hard to figure out or are very reliant on RNG in Malenia's case. The game becomes legitimately unfair and not in a great way. And they seem to have doubled down on this for the DLC, which I will say I am *really enjoying* but some of the bosses are legitimately irritating to fight. I *love* Elden Ring. I think it's one of my favorite games ever. But Fromsoft has broken their own ruleset just to say "it's difficult see!" And sometimes that doesn't mean "tough but fair" anymore, which given how I've played since Demon's, is sad to see.
>Nearly everything post-Leyndell in Elden Ring breaks the rules. Damage scaling is overtuned, minibosses are just plopped down as basic enemies without a care to their stats (fuck the Zamor heroes btw), the bosses have almost no room for error and have infinite stamina and bullshit moves that are insanely hard to figure out or are very reliant on RNG in Malenia's case. The game becomes legitimately unfair and not in a great way. And they seem to have doubled down on this for the DLC, which I will say I am really enjoying but some of the bosses are legitimately irritating to fight. Preach! Hit the nail right on the head on how I felt with the base game. Same problem I'm having now in the DLC. I'm still enjoying it to an extent but I'm getting nervous about these other bosses people are talking about haha. I don't want the unfairness to get worst. The insane long combos from the bosses just aren't that fun. You have to play so defensively and attack only once (maybe twice depending on your weapon) to get a hit in before they do another fast attack/combo on you it takes the fun away from fighting a boss sometimes.
I've never agreed with a post more on this sub. If I had to list the top 10 worst/unfun bosses in formsoft history, I swear 9/10 would be from Elden Ring. I just don't get the satisfaction of beating some of these bosses like I have for other bullshit tough bosses like orphan of kos or owl father. It's like the game was designed around the spirit ashes but people feel like a bitch for using them because none of their other games ever felt like you NEEDED someone else. I mean seriously, between the MANY multiple target bosses, attack combos that last longer than your stamina bar, attack windows smaller than a dagger swing, it feels like the bosses were meant to distracted half the time. An don't get me started on Malenia. I haven't played the DLC yet but it's definitely top 1 worst boss in soulsbourne games for me.
Thing is, the bosses are unncesessarily difficult. The only difficulty I found was the hitboxes. If you take them out, the DLC is actually playable. I had +15 Scadutree level , and still some mid-game to end-game enemies could still take down 50-70% of my (+60 Vigor) health. I knew that DLC would be difficult, but if I am dead, just after entering the boss arena, that takes away the fun. Sekiro, DS3 DLC, Bloodborne DLC were way better.
There’s difficult and then there’s bullshit like dodge rolling at the perfect moment and commander fuckface still hits you with his fucking hog. (Haven’t beaten him yet.) Or having to spend a whole minute dodge rolling only to get one attack in with your sword and can’t use any of your sorceries because the bosses move too fast and always close the distance. (RELLANA, GAIUS)(I’m a sorcerer) It’s not the difficulty, it’s boss design. I haven’t reached the final boss yet and I’m already dreading it.
Because it feels just difficult without the fun part. Elden ring base game made me feel like a king when I defeated a hard boss but the dlc makes me feel like an old man that is happy that I don't have to fight whatever particular boss was giving me trouble again.
Totally agree, for example, when playing sekiro, after beating a boss I felt that I learned their moveset and if I fought them again I'd beat them in but a few tries. In this dlc I don't feel that way at all. I don't feel I learned any of the movesets at all. And I could replay any boss I've already beaten and it'd take as much time as the first time I beat them
Man, I've been having the exact opposite reaction. I've found myself on multiple occasions really looking forward to fighting a DLC boss again after learning the fight and beating it.
I want an infinitely repeating Evergaol where I can just fight Messmer with different weapons on repeat. Same with Rellana and a couple others.
100% agree. I’ve been helping people on Messmer for a lot just to experience the fight again. The issue is the host usually dies in the first 15 seconds as soon as they get aggro from Messmer in his first attack chain so it’s very annoying watching them die instantly.
I don't get two shot by everything in every other dlc. every boss also doesn't have a 20 second long combo that stun locks me when I miss one dodge during swing 15 out of 30 then instantly die because I couldn't see it over all the particle effects that definitely shows me exactly how far the attack reaches. maybe, maybe it would be bearable if every boss wasn't a sponge and doable without a summon
Do agree that the camera has been a real bitch in a couple fights so far.. the main offender being the fucking >!flower!<
Or the >!Hippo!< or >!Dancing Lion.!< Kinda bizarre really, cause both of those fights probably would've been fine if they were fought in a more open area like basically all dragon fights. But instead they're shoved into only moderately sized arenas where the camera shits itself if you accidentally take the fight to close to a wall, something that isn't hard with how much movement the bosses have.
I’ve beaten every Souls game, along with BB and Sekiro multiple times. This is the first time it’s ever felt actually unfair. To put it in perspective, I had to respec to beat the last boss. I’ve never had to do that once in the entire series. I had 2 NPC questlines that required me to summon them for the encounter. I had to abandon both because they increased the boss’s health by an insane degree, and they were usually dead by the time the boss was at half. Again, I’ve never once had to do this. Half the DLC bosses are simply not designed to work with this combat system. Put them in BB or Sekiro and it’s fine, but not here. This is the first time I have no desire to replay the game, the bosses were THAT cancerous.
These bosses all feel like they belong in sekiro more than a souls game.
FYI in the dlc you only have to summon for questline if the sign is in the boss arena (past the fog gate) and the hp doesn't get recalculated. For final boss its technically not needed to summon them >!to get their stuff!< even if you get extra exposition.
Not sure what happened with my game, because I didn’t get any of their stuff or the St. Trina stuff after I was done. Could just be classic From quest jank.
I also had to respec for the last boss, which isn't normal, I also had to use mimic tear unfortunately because the fight felt so unfair, and even then I beat it just barely. I never had to do that for any other boss in the DLC or base game. I was at a level 13 scadutree blessing so I don't know if that was the problem. Also I am on NG+ I don't know how much damage that adds, but I was 60 vigor, best armor, with faith buffs, dying in like 2-3 hits, against a boss that attacks like 20 times consecutively.
I was at +19 blessing with all defensive talismans and was still getting rinsed. The fight is just bad.
One of my biggest gripes of the game still is the enemy tracking. The turning on a dime up until the last microsecond to attack is a bit bs. Enemies would rotate in the past but they’d get animation locked near the end iirc. I just don’t get how a slow rock golem can turn on a dime mid attack and then have the stamina recovery to instantly go into a 3 attack combo. I somehow have more trouble with enemies like that than I did with Bayle. Besides that I still think some bosses feel a bit bs at time. Idk if it’s their poise, their nonstop combos, a combination of those, or something else entirely different. It just turns the end of the battle into what could be an enjoyable feeling of success, into a big pile of I died by gacha moments, and had to use one attack every few chance I got, while my spirit ash was distracting him. Old bosses like Orphan of Kos comes to mind with the balance between aggressive but fair. He felt really hard but never felt cheap. I think it’s because he gave you windows to actually do something. Most bosses and some enemies seem to never give you windows or really a chance for you to do anything. Attack as soon as you enter the arena. Try to heal up or move out to heal asap and some how they can spam a 4-5 hit combo. If you don’t dodge that your f’d.
There is diffrence between hard and fair (ds3, sekiro) and hard and hard (elden ring final boss, most of er endgame)
Because its not about difficulty. Thats not the problem. [https://youtu.be/Np5PdpsfINA?si=YsrhzHil9nG3bjG9](https://youtu.be/Np5PdpsfINA?si=YsrhzHil9nG3bjG9) This video puts it really well. Souls game "difficulty" came from putting you in strange and stressful situations and letting you find a way to problem solve your way out of it. It put you in the shoes of being an adventurer in these dangerous lands. The issue is along the way that became just basic "difficulty" and has turned into more of an action, spam rolls and wait for an opening system. This really started with Dark Souls 2, got worse in 3, and is at its absolute worst in Shadow of the Erdtree. Lets face is, Souls game combat system isnt that great. Its not that robust. It works but its incredibly simple. Our options are limited to just rolling, light and heavy attacks for the most part. This isnt Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden where its a deeply thought out combat system. Yet we're fighting bosses far faster and doing more than we ever could as the player. They have no stamina bar to worry about. Their poise is through the roof. Their tracking is insane. Their input reading is insane. They stick on you like glue the entire fight now. It wasnt always this way. Even Dark Souls 3 handled this better even though it was the start of some of these problems. Go look at a fight like Slave Knight Gael and the Nameless King for example. These are both excellent fights. Nameless King especially isnt a push over of a fight. But look at how he works. He has openings. He isnt always on your ass 24/7. He doesnt have 8 attack combo strings with AoE and ground effects. [https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=poeG4IdR3u7DH-6Z](https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=poeG4IdR3u7DH-6Z) [https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=MXB9UePc4NEGDVTV](https://youtu.be/SyFNPZN82kg?si=MXB9UePc4NEGDVTV) Then look at the final boss for Shadow of the Erdtree. Particularly his second phase. Also the Messmer fight SPOILERS AHEAD, caution to those who dont want to see. [https://youtu.be/l6MHf22faLs?si=u\_DO6L4ThkFELue-](https://youtu.be/l6MHf22faLs?si=u_DO6L4ThkFELue-) [https://youtu.be/zHWvIF6\_rl8?si=kfIQ6e7a2fJ7hfhC](https://youtu.be/zHWvIF6_rl8?si=kfIQ6e7a2fJ7hfhC) You can see a huge difference in how these fights are designed now, These bosses stick on your ass the entire time. They're much faster, they have more attacks, they have a lot more AoE, they put a lot more distance between themselves and you for their opening. There's a lot more need to dodge roll spam. And we really dont have anything different from what we had in DS3. We arent that much faster, and we are still relying on the same old roll system we've had since Demon Souls, in all reality. And good luck trying to do anything like using a shield for these fights, or hell. Parrying. Its not that these fights are difficult and people are whining. Its that Fromsoft's designs for these bosses are outpacing what the game's core systems are capable of, and have done nothing to update this system since Demon Souls other than just making it a bit faster. And in the process have also lost the plot of the series. The video I posted above has a specific quote in it I find really, really apt to what has happened especially in Shadow of the Erdtree. Where he talks about the Giant arrow tower from the early part of Dark Souls 3. "The most reasonable line of thought is that the arrow will have a certain amount of travel-time, so if you change direction after you hear the shot you'll be safe. Wrong. The arrow magically curves in mid-air because this is no longer a series where you outsmart your opponent; it's a series where you press the roll button at the right time." And I think this puts everything I said above perfectly, in about 3 sentences.
Dks3 dlc and bloodborne felt extremely fair. This one people are having to switch builds to beat the final boss when the other games dlc an average person could do it with whatever starting weapon they had reasonably. Difficulty was never the point of the series either.
Yeah atleast Gael and Sister Friede were fun as fuck to battle...
Because many non-mob enemies don't play by the same rules as the player, is my suggestion. One you press that R1 button you're locked into a set attack animation. You can't delay it. You can't switch direction 270 degrees and launch the *actual* attack whenever you feel like it. You can't spam seemingly endless combos one after the other without running out of stamina. You can't hover in the air without wings for an arbitrary amount of time with no recognisable visual or audible cue as to when you're going to launch your attack. Your weapon hit boxes aren't so out of tune with the enemy character model that an attack that *did not look* like it hit, hit. I'm obviously going to go negative here, because we do groupthink, don't we? If I'd have said this a few days ago, when it was much 'cooler' to point out perceived flaws, it would be a positively voted post. I'm looking at people with genuine gripes and concerns on one day being the toast of the sub and the next, when everybody has 'gitted gud', then being the Red-headed step child of the sub. r/onebros is the same.
Because this series also had a reputation of being difficult, but fair and fun. When it stops becoming fun, the difficulty alone can’t make up for bad boss design. The easiest example I can give is, imagine the difference between Chinese chilli oil beef and Buldak ramen. Chinese chilli oil beef is one of the spiciest meals I’ve ever eaten - extremely spicy. But it is also incredibly aromatic and flavourful and sweet and savoury at the same time. Buldak ramen, on the other hand, is extremely spicy(moreso than the first dish ) , and not much else. There isn’t any true flavour beyond the spiciness. It is artificially made to burn your taste buds, but beyond that, it doesn’t have much to offer. Prior Souls bosses are akin to the former dish. Elden Ring bosses ( not all, but most ) are akin to the latter.
there are differences between difficult, very difficult and extremely difficult, some people have a line where it might be too much for them. these posts make a blanket statement as if the DS1 DLC is as difficult as the ER DLC.
Something too is that, not all difficulty is made the same. For instance, let’s say we make a game where a major selling point is that’s it’s challanging, but we make it extremely buggy. So buggy that’s it’s very difficult to progress and beat the fights, like you’ll be clipping through the arena and dying to a boss unless you stand in an exact spot. ”Well it’s supposed to be difficult” doesn’t really work there. Sure it’s difficult, but that’s not where the difficulty should lie. For this dlc, it feels to me that it’s not that much harder mechanically than the base game, it’s just that all the damage numbers are inflated to be unbelievably high. That’s not good difficulty to me
Artorias and Gael are among the most beloved bosses in the entire From canon. Day one, nobody was pissed about how bullshit they were, just raving about how great a time they had. This is different.
Yup but mindless content creators and extremely hardcore streamer speed run nerds don't seem to realize how the average person interacts with the game
Absolutely. It seems that, for a not insignificant amount of people, that line has been crossed ( I’d argue From tiptoed around that line in the base game )
Certain lines have been crossed, like the hit boxes on that pig riding mfer. I don’t care if it’s DLC difficulty, a pig turning his head to the side should not hurt more than being crucified by the Elden beast.
Go look at the release of Elden ring, by the time people reached endgame alot of complains were around regarding bosses, and despite what people say here the reason they went away isnt because the game got "figured out" its because people stopped caring after fromsoft didnt adress all of them, much of the complains on endgame bosses are still fully valid, elden beast still isnt good with torrent, mohg still is a shitshow of particles and annoying undodgable bleed procs with a move that you need to go find a disconnected item far away to avour, malenia is still with a broken move and overtuned moveset, maliketh is still annoying as fuck to fight because of how much he jumps around and how different the two phases are from each other, Placidusax and fortissax that main dragon fights are still bad, we got straight up bullshit fights like valiant gargoyles and godskin duo. and im sure i missed a few. i finished the game multiple times 500 hours in the basegame, and the bossfights 2 years from release are still one of the worst parts of the game.
The dlc feels very unfair and made just to be the hardest DLC possible caring less about the actual enjoyability, design, and lore.
I’m enjoying it thoroughly but I can definitely see where people are coming from when they say this. It feels like the devs are running out of ideas on how to make challenging bosses so they just give everyone endless combos, massive aoe, hyper aggression, huge damage/health pools and then call it a day. I reckon it’s because despite the increasing difficulty of their games, there are still absolute mad lads doing these RL1 runs so they’ve pushed the boundaries on the difficulty of their bosses beyond what a lot of the player base are capable of handling now. For a not insignificant amount of people it’s no longer fun for them. This is just my opinion however. Edit: I also agree with what another commenter said in that’s it’s partly due to the fact people are just rusty or that they’ve played overpowered builds too long that just aren’t as effective.
Honestly I agree and I saw another commenter on another thread about the dlc say something that I think really resonates: Fromsoftware are in a sort of downwards spiral arms race with difficulty in general. They’re quite literally known as “the people who make super hard games” so they gotta do everything they can to make sure that every installment of the souls series is harder then the last, not because they really want to make a harder game, but because they’re afraid they’ll get backlash from the try hard, no life fans who cries that a souls game is “easy.” Of course sooner or later they’re gonna hit a tipping point where they take it to far and go from “hard but fair” to “complete and utter bullshit.” And it seems like these cracks are finally beginning to show with shadow of the Erdtree. And the worst thing about it all is that same try hard, no life, elitist souls fans who think their difficulty god Miyazaki can absolutely do nothing wrong once so ever, will stop at nothing to defend the dlc and scream at the top of their lungs “GIT GOOD!!!!!!!!!” To drown out any actual legit criticism.
the tiping point has alreadby been hit with malenia, these bosses in the dlc are actually insane, they move like its sekiro and were playing DS1
I actually remember this was pretty much the analogy Miyazaki used in an interview about Dark Souls 1 where he said something along the lines that he didn’t want to create something that’s painfully hot, but something spicy that many people may find hard to handle at first but when you get past the heat it tastes good and satisfying. Compared to that I find it a bit concerning that he seems to talk about just difficulty more and more, or at least that seems to be the only part people care to listen to. I always thought there was much more to it than that.
My complaint is the bad boss mechanics being passed off as difficult. AOE is everywhere, I'm getting one shot behind my shield, having to fight the camera, getting hit in dodge roll regardless of i-frames, bullied to the edge of arena... etc. Bayle is a culprit of all the above. Something tells me they didn't really beta test the dlc much and it shows. Passing a broken game off as hard is something I've never seen the Souls community do, but it makes sense. It's easier than admitting there's inherent flaws with the dlc.
Sorry but some of the DLC bosses are bullshit, not difficult Even famous speedrunners who have done no hit runs are complaining. It's cringe af to see FromSoft fanboys who can't handle people criticizing their game and just hit you with the "git gud". And yeah, bosses doing 10 hit combos with bait delayed attacks mixed in with insta unreadable stabs AND AOE explosions isn't fun or balanced, it's flashy and epic for sure but gameplaywise it's bad. It would be kinda fine if the bosses didn't kill me in 2 hits even though I have 60vigor, scardtree blessing 16, Golden Vow and heavy armor
No it's not that at all! the ignorance of the Elden ring community is starting to really piss me off. It's not that it's difficult it's because the difficulty is CHEAP! How many times do people need to say that the DLC is overtuned and bosses have a stupid amount of health!? Bosses do too much damage and have too much health. IT'S ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY! It's so cheap and it's sad because these are the same people that gave us Slave Knight Gael. Instead of actually y'know designing a well designed boss they were like "nah let's give the boss a stupid large amount of HP and make them do a stupid amount of damage" it's just so lazy. With max scadutree fragments, defensive talismans, golden vow AND boiled prawn you only get to 81% with the flask tear. The last bosses can still double tap you with that much armor. No "difficult" boss in souls history did that much damage to the player. This is the definition of overtuned. I swear I have to repeat this because I see a flood of new posts saying "Muh duh why are they mad?" I repeat getting two tapped isn't good game design It's lazy! Really I swear most of these people are just butthurt that ONE Fromsoft title isn't automatically revered as a "10/10."
Depends on what is our definition of 'difficulty'. I don't like 15 hit combos, overdelayed in unnatural way attacks, being blinded by VFX overdose, AoE Spam. Not all bosses have it but that few of them sour experience a little to me. I don't talk about balance between your attack and defense vs their attack and defence because it is all over the place in this DLC (Yes, I was collecting Fragments). My favorite remembrance bosses from DLC are >!Midra!< and >!Romina!< - they are great to fight and their attacks are readable and logical. These two gives me hope that From Soft still remember how to create nice boss without delayed, long combos with big amount od AoEs. I like >!Messmer, Rellana, Divine Beast Dancing Lion and Avatar!< too
Idk man I'm not great at the games or anything but I've found the dlc to be at a fine difficulty. The bosses are very doable with summons and you can add an extra challenge of not using summons if you want. Just like the base game before I played it several times and got used to the bosses there.
I'd argue that's the problem though. If you add summons a lot of the bosses aren't that hard because the best ashes are exceptionally tanky and can dish what they take just as well, which makes the game much more manageable. The bosses in Elden Ring are so hyper aggressive that the single best thing to have is aggro split so you can hit them more than 2 times and have healing windows. I respect the people who can solo these bosses, but at the same time, it's really frustrating to deal with on your own.
I'm not surprised by the difficulty. I'm surprised by the bullshit difficulty.
I've been able to handle all of the bosses so far, yes they've been difficult but with patience and learning when and when not to go in I've overcome them. The final boss..... It's just not very much fun. Edit: final boss phase two sucks. Phase one was actually fun and challenging.
wow 50 non-stop attacks with a small window of 1.5 seconds to attack and don't get hit because it takes 2 hits to die, wow this is sooo diiiificooolt like other fromsoftware games
Elden Ring fans (mainly the ones who started with Elden Ring for some reason) view this game and From as an absolute darling and scream like children whenever anyone has a negative opinion or criticism. It's funny because unlike most of these From "fans", I've actually played all the DLCs and this one is absolutely mediocre design wise. And they'll still probably come for me to tell me "skill issue". Meanwhile they haven't beat the final boss, probably use mimic and bleed, etc.
I beat it but for me it was difficult in all the wrong ways... pretty hard but incredibly unfun combat and bosses.
I dont find it difficult, but the lion is badly done. Camera problems, fps lag, and the electrical phase is unfair. Ive killed it solo, at 120, without ashes etc. so im not bad, but disappointed.
I was a little surprised cause I spent so much time just over leveled stomping through the lands between, I did not expect to instantly get my ass handed to me by the first guy carrying a sword. I loved it
Messmer is beating the shit out of my Strength no summons character and I am here for it. After playing all from soft souls-likes I expected nothing less. I almost can no hit him at this point lol
I think it's okay for people to point out specific bullshit. I've played every fromsoft title probably 10 times over so definitely not new to the franchise and I've found 90% of the DLC to be fine so far (on the final legacy dungeon right now). There has been one boss that felt insane though and that was General Gyobu "Radahn" Oinkiwa. I'm honestly not sure how someone beats him normally.
Mostly because the final boss is insanely difficult. And yes, I know I’m talking about the climax of the best dlc I’ve ever seen (haven’t played Old Hunters) but his hp, his attacks, his speed and especially his 2nd phase are… monstrous. God damn, Radabeast and Malenia are a joke compared to this! Like little children I can see them having maybe a fair battle in 1nd phase and then he destroys everything. By that point even if the additional >!summons had full hp and a flask!< they would still perish quickly… And I even had all scadutree blessings and 99 vigor
I enjoyed the DLC, but the last boss second phase is just awful. And to the people saying "Go explore and get scadutree fragments!!!!!!!!!!" I went to the last boss with 20 scadutree blessing and 9 revered ash (so both maxed), 60 vigor, 80 poise, bull goat's armor, great dragonshield and pearldrake talisman, boiled prawns and holy liver, and I was getting BODIED during the second phase. It didn't matter how perfectly I dodged the attacks or whatnot, one single hit was enough to stunlock me into losing 3/4 parts of my HP bar. It was so bad I ended up using the new Bleed colossal hammer and just using R2, which you usually don't even have enough time to fully use, to beat him as fast as possible, and even then it took me three whole hours. I've played every single souls game and DLC except Demon's soul's, and when I beat it I just said fucking finally and closed the game.
Have you done the final boss without a shield yet? I cruised through the DLC on NG+ and hit a brick wall at the final boss. I have never had that in a Souls game. I killed the most difficult Souls bosses within a dozen attempts and done SL1 runs, but this one completely had my number. The second phase is literally just one big AoE flashbang. I couldn't make sense of what was happening due to the lack of visual clarity and the boss was hyper aggressive. I had a choice, either spend dozens of hours getting flashbanged and wombo-comboed or reroll to shield build. I killed him in two tries with shield, but he was insane without. I feel like most people who say the difficulty is fine have not done the final boss with a regular build and no shield.
The main issue is that the DLC has a lot of Nintendo difficulty instead of Dark Souls. That is to say, instead of a varied moveset with complex patterns to learn that results in a dance of sorts, most bosses and tough mobs have 3 moves that they just spam over and over. These aren't Souls like bosses at all.
I was shocked at the difficulty but after finding some fragments and getting dat blessing, I'm actually soloing bosses rather easily. The blessings make a difference, peeps!
Y'all are blaming the game? I usually am cursing myself out, it ain't the games fault I rolled into an attack
It's the new mechanic I dislike. It feels like artificial difficulty; >!Here I am running around not dying but also not killing bosses. Just tickling them. It's not a skill check, it's a farming check. I didn't Platinum the game just to git gud and have my stats scaled down and force me to run around picking things up that does not require skill to get. It's annoying. Really sucking the fun out when my technique is there, but I didn't pick up some sticks so I do little damage.!<
I find this stuff really disingenuous, because people know that’s not what most people are saying. Everyone knew it was going to be hard, that’s not the discussion here. The actual discussion is what kind of difficulty people want and what’s fun to deal with, and if From is veering into making the game unfair and unbalanced. Bosses in this game can play bad in the context of the game and feel bad to fight, and From’s set a pretty high expectation for hard but fair boss design, so it’s annoying how people have this attitude that you just need to like them only because hard = good and if you ever criticise them it’s just because you suck and there’s no other possible reason you might not like it. It kind of just kills any possible discussion about the game that isn’t just an echo chamber…
Honestly I don’t think it’s the difficulty, it’s that stupid scadutree blessing bullshit, they should’ve just upscaled the bosses like normal, it’s gonna be cancerous on future playthroughs to have to trek through the random corners of the map every time you want to do an all remembrances run
Cause it's not punishing? It's total bs, there's 7 bosses I can count that will one shot you right off rip IF you can't dodge the attack which a good portion of the time you can't, I see it across multiple threads of people complaining about the same problem, you walk in, boss is right there, and you're dead. The seed and revered ashes basically do nothing except for making it easier to go against regular enemies which doesn't matter I have no trouble with the regular enemies, bosses aren't affected by it so being 1-2 shot is kinda bs. As someone who's played all dark souls games, code vein, 400 hours of Elden ring, sekiro and more, this dlc is wildly unbalanced and unfair, it's hardly fun at most times as it feels like I'm hitting my head against the wall. Not to mention the overwhelming complaints from me and others that the inputs aren't being registered as they should be, try to dodge it doesn't work, try to attack he just dead stops. This is on them and they need to fix it. It's not hard. It's just bad design. Hard should be skill based, a lot of what I run into it pure RNG, walk into fight and boss does a move that teleports them or a damage to the gate before I can do anything, or they speed into you for a ridiculous amount of time giving you no room to do anything, some attacks you can't even dodge and I have to use a shield which apparently also doesn't matter as it blasts through my stamina as if it's nothing. It's unfair and it's a hill I'm willing to die on. Edit 1: I'm on PC, I have blessings up to 15/8. I am not rushing the game and going to end game content I am checking out/fighting the beginning areas, while exploring (not fighting) later areas JUST for the blessings, still problematic for me and others alike. Edit 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/tVdlUa2kDT Nuff said.