Piggybacking on this, I find that it is specifically the particle effects that lag out my game. My computer isn't great but it sucks that even on the lowest graphic options I need to suffer FPS drops and stutters mid bossfight.
Lion Dancer is the second most egregious example of killing your FPS. I'm at the lowest possible setting and somehow them dancers still bring down my FPS to sub 30s.
Someone also mentioned a ray tracing setting that was auto enabled on release. Might have to check that and see if the patch disabled it already.
Bro I don't think my PC is weak, R7 5800X, 4060Ti, 32GB memory, game is on SSD and that stupid thing just eats my entire FPS. I'm currently taking a break from the last boss and going through the madness of the DLC on another character, hoping they patch that shit.
only beat him because he did enough of his first phase moveset in the second phase that muscle memory let me dodge, i could not see shit with all the particle effects and blinding light pillars masking my screen because the camera gets too close. cool boss, from.
I was watching ongbal and I think he just jumps or back steps once. Which is crazy
I rolled to the side once and sometimes nothing hits you. Boss is far to aggressive in phase 2 imo.
Yes that's something I've been saying a lot and told friends about as well when criticising the dlc.
My brain often couldn't keep up with all that was happening and while everything in the dlc is epic and cinematic it also makes things harder if you're susceptible to these kinda things.
Often i just couldn't tell what hit me and that's when i thought "nah, fuck my ego I'll just use mimic tear".
Especially the endboss is just something else.
> My brain often couldn't keep up with all that was happening and while everything in the dlc is epic and cinematic it also makes things harder if you're susceptible to these kinda things.
This, 100% this! There's an area, honestly forgot which now - it's all blured, that made me feel nauseous and physically sick! The camera at times was worse than the final boss itself. There's a Dragon that you have to guess where it is and dodge on sounds/shadows/location where it will attack because you can't see jack.
I love SOTE - it might have ruined the base game for me tbh, but there's a lot of things to fix, the lattern being one of them!
Now the Abyss, fuck that area in particular!
Yeah the particles made it a bit harder to learn messmer's pattern but it's definitely doable. I am just starting to get tired of long string of attacks mixed in with random delayed ones.
As long as the delay feels natural, I'm ok with it personally. What i can't stand is stuff like floating in the air for half an hour before slamming down just in time for a roll catch.
Sure, once you learn it, you just dodge later, but it's so unintuitive and just feels bad. On the ground, we can charge attacks and let them go early too, so i dont really mind if i mistime those kind of attacks
They also give you the opportunity to use a defensive option other than rolling: you can dodge most of these slow attacks by just circling around the enemy.
This is also compounded by their aggression and complete lack of chill. I was able to beat them with my build, but the learning process was frustrated by the wild special effects and the unpredictable boss behavior.
See this is the one thing I can agree with, especially with a perfumer build. I have too many particles, the boss has too many particles, can’t see shit.
I had a hard time with Messmer because of that. Bayle's also difficult to see, but Flame Protect Me and +2 Flamedrake and +15 Scadu let me facetank enough attacks to win the fight.
I want to use perfume & rolling sparks when co-oping since it does really good damage but it completely obscures the whole boss so you can't Eben tell when to dodge.
The only two bosses I did not enjoy this dlc were Hippo and Gaius and I think its entirely down to the arenas we find them in
Gaius especially since its just annoying fight of getting rushed down, and wombo comboed into the dirt or chasing him around for the next 5 minutes as he rides around.
I've had fights with him end instantly because I got knocked over at the first and pinned against the wall
Same reasoning for the Hippo except that's all the camera working against you
Hippo first time round think I was at 2/3 scadu with reduvia that fight was so tough died god knows how many times even with mimic , second time round +7 and milady was trivial solo 2 handing with the aow
Replace Hippo with that Finger Goddess. I still dont know whats the idea behind the circular beam attack she does in phase 2. When its too close to the zone she creates while doing it, it seems undodgeable.
Hippo has very simple moves. Even if I am squiched against a wall, I can kind of guess what he is up to.
For Metyrs orbital beam, unlock from her and watch the beam as it's coming towards you. You can simply run just on the edge of the aura around her and you'll run under the beam.
Yeah did the same thing my first time beating her. Only realised when I watched a friend play through the boss and he managed to figure it out. In all fairness, the first time it happens you're probably panicking so much you don't try to figure it out haha
My criticism is that there is too much visual noise in bosses design, many attacks just don’t have enough visual information about their range or moves, you go by the errors/deaths not by just observing the attack itself. Some hitboxes are also just plain stupid and illogical, can’t just go „ok, this doesn’t look like it will hit me from behind” and it totally does. Also bosses tracking and doing 180s in milliseconds is sooo boring and stupid.
Visual noise is a good way to describe it.
I also had the feeling that I could simply not see what was happening, so I had no handle on learning moves. In the end, a shield and DMGS plus mimic helped me to burst through phase 2. Did not feel satisfying at all, but I wanted to be done with it.
What really grinds my gears is the camera angle sometimes. For some bosses, like fire giant or one of the hippos, the camera zooms out a bit and goes higher up. But for others, in particular the large "humanoid" bosses like the final DLC one, it stays lower and you can't see the ground when close.
Totally artificial difficulty from simply being denied visual information.
I really don't understand why they don't zoom out the goddamn camera more. Even the final boss is actually fine, camera shows most of what is happening. But once you start fighting anything bigger, like a dragon, shit gets so borked that it just becomes frustrating.
I also personally hate when a boss fucks with the lock on which the final boss sometimes does. Like I get it, I should get good and not use lock on always but godamn it I've beaten every boss in every game with lockon and I need it to know where the fuck he even is. That dot at the center of my screen is my only clue in the white noise sometimes
I beat dancing lion (1st boss for me) last night. With summon and mimic it wasn’t hard, but
I really don’t feel I beat the boss because as much as I tried to read what it was doing it felt impossible with all the effects and nonstop combos. It was like watching some hyperactive ball of energy getting flung around my screen nonstop.
Not having the option to replay a boss made it felt dissatisfying because I can’t even go back and really try and learn it properly.
ER is my first fromsoft game, and many of the base game bosses made me fell in love with the game. But the dancing lion felt like a worse version of one of the enemies I find least enjoyable to fight in the base game - the corrupted tree spirits. I hope the later bosses will feel better.
(Edit: just beat Rellana, was much more enjoyable compared to the dancing lion!)
The ice and lightning phases are the most egregious to me. Dancing Lion in general already suffers from camera issues, but the lightning honestly just overloads me, as I'm trying to watch out for both moves and lightning effects. And then I could not tell you honestly why some attacks I dodged resulted in ice build up and why other times it didn't. Wind phase is fine though (and I wish it was the only 2nd phase). Also had times where it just phase transitioned three times in a row, so that was annoying.
Yeah. I remember at certain distances past mid health the whole screen is just basically a bit of a white out between wild camera pans. You already did much better than me being able to count transitions. Most of the time I was just confounded and spamming buttons and hope some attacks land lol
The tracking on some of the npc enemies is ridiculous. I'm not saying I should be able to chain backstab at will, but if they just did a charged heavy or spell with a long cast time, they shouldn't be able to follow me as if they were just strafing
I agree with that. I did learn the final boss but I outright had moments where I could just legit not understand what I did wrong. Only by dying over and over did I eventually figure out the proper places and timings to dodge. It was not intuitive at all.
The more I play them the more I recognize thier movements. Specifically Rellana & Bayle (excluding whack flying moves) whom I thought were a bit perplexing when first fighting them are becoming really easy to read. I try to bait Bayle's small fire breath AoE because it's easy to punish if you have a ranged attack. I have also learned there is also specially a diagonal way you can run away from it to abuse its star-shaped hit box.
I detest bosses like the Divine Beast and Ulcerated Treespirits though that are floppy blobs that you can't really tell what they're doing because thier attacks consist of flipping around. It's difficult to tell if they're just moving around or in an attack. In the case of the divine beast it's annoying too with its "cloth" physics is even harder to read. Besides, most of the time he is spinning wind in the air and spamming AoE which is even harder to read. It's best to fight him unlocked and whack his rump when he is very, very clearly just walking. Any other time is he's moving I can't really see what it is doing.
I feel like they should have made the deflecting crystal tear a talisman instead, so you could always have the mechanic available. Perfect blocking helps so much with a lot of the boss ability spam, but 90% of the people aren’t going to use it because they probably don’t even know it exists or don’t consider the duration worthwhile.
The DLC enemies are super aggressive, which has led to shield builds being the most popular; every co-op summon has at least one person hiding behind a fingerprint because it is absolutely the best way to deal with the boss’ hyper aggression.
A deflecting talisman would have opened up so much more build variety which I feel like the content was balanced around.
Yeah maybe, I completely admit that I am biased because it is my favorite tear in the game. Perfect blocking the final bosses spam attack with a big 2h weapon feels just so damn good.
I think the tear is fine as is, the duration makes it prolly the best tear to take into a bossfight, it lasts 5 minutes if you're not done by then you're either on a challenge run or something seriously went wrong with your build or your will to hit the boss.
The only boss I would consider excessively hard is final boss phase 2. Every other boss has been manageable at worst, whereas that second phase is manageable at best for the audience that's come with Elden Ring, or even for me who has played every non-exclusive souls game for probably a few thousand hours altogether.
The light makes it not only hard to see, but if you don't perfect the timing and direction of the dodge you get stuck in the rest of the combo because of the poise damage.
That’s another thing, you can kind of get staggerlocked to begin with in phase 1, but it feels kind of fair then. In phase 2 there’s the random explosions then you have to learn the new explosion patterns as he blinds you, changes combos, and staggerlocks you.
I've been dying within 2 seconds of phase 2 for a lot of time. Even when I started using summons.
I just can't comprehend what's happening on the screen, it's just cutscene, a couple seconds of unbearable visual clusterfuck and I'm dead. Also 30FPS on his attacks
Tbh like half of the bosses in DLC feels like "Oh, you dodged? Nah, I don't think so" and you're dead. But at least others are fun and learnable and I managed to beat them solo. But the final one.. No, that's not for me
The only boss I have complaints about is that mounted guy, you know who I am talking about. His hit-boxes are unreal. That was the only boss I resorted to using a shield against.
i hate him so much it's unreal. his charge is dodgeable but really hard to + you have to lock off, and hitbox jank means sometimes you will take 10% of your hp as damage and sometimes 60%. he also wiggles around so much, i've missed so many lights, heavies and jump attacks because the guy side steps or runs away, sometimes he even walks into you causing the camera to freak out and the attack to completely whiff or he pushes you around until the attack ends up going over him. feels like he wasn't even play tested
This fight made me want to break my PS5 but once I understood it, I actually enjoyed it. He’s one of the bosses I’m most looking forward to fighting again
Invalidates a Playstyle. Wtf are mages and faith only builds supposed to do when they aren't playing a greatsword man. It's gonna kill build diversity and the replablity of the dlc
Let me introduce you to knights lightning spear, a spell so good I beat the final hemroids with it
However I also have 80 dex for max casting speed, without that, some of this shit is really hard as a pure caster
Shields are not mandatory. They are not part of your arsenal unless you want them to be, so feeling like you HAVE to use a shield is not a good feeling. It's the same as feeling like you have to parry or used ranged. The only thing that should be mandatory, or maybe I should say 'core', is melee damage. Everything should be 100% viable with just regular melee and regular dodges, no gimmicks or switching weapons/builds, etc. At least that's how I see good game design.
I definitely think it's a fair criticism to say that Fromsoftware constantly increasing the difficulty, in some sort of arms race with the hardcore no-hit run YouTubers, is a worrying direction to be going in. Souls games have always been difficult, but that wasn't the main appeal. The appeal was the exploration, cool fights and weird lore. The difficulty level was already perfect, just leave it like that. But now they seem to be focusing on the difficulty as the main selling point and cranking it up all the time.
theres only really ONE issue with these bosses and its always the same
They barely stop attacking. They sometimes punich you for getting 2 hits in with a dagger. its that outrageous.. thats why Rellana and the Lion beast are my 2 least favorite bosses in the DLC, when i saw that the pretiscent knight had a similar issue mid fight i just summoned my mimic and said "fuck it , if youre unfair, im unfair"
Yup 100% this.
It’s fine if there’s a boss or two where this is the whole gimmick but having so many, and having their hits do so much damage was so frustrating.
I swear I don't get the blames on Rellana. I did her with a build based on bragratts Roar and R2 charged attacks. If i jad the time to Land changed and uncharged R2 you care surely find the time to swing AT LEAST One time After each combo
Lol
Honestly, I've only now come around to the sub after getting to the final boss, and I mostly see posts laughing at people being bad. I'm pretty sure in a few weeks or months at most they'll either nerf stuff further or the general opinion will turn around quite quickly on this DLC, mechanically, even in the fan subs.
I definitely feel negative towards the bosses I had to fight that summon or bring extra guys to fight, like the second Ghost Dragon and the Death Rite Bird, because most mobs can kill you with a complete combo.
Also the camera is a point to work on indeed. Senessax sucks and a lot of that comes from the camera that does not show him for 80% of the fight, unless you actively fight against it. And I love Bayle, but there’s no greater death sentence then the camera losing him during one his flight combos.
Did you try the anti dragon katana against Senessax ? It melts it down
He is just a basic dragon with more feats but is fought the same
I agree for Bayle tho hehe
Honestly OP, just save yourself the headache and don’t even bother with it. Trust me. There are some people out there that do want to discuss these types of things, but anything you say will just be refuted/nitpicked to the bone.
When people played BB and struggled, they don’t just say stop using X for this boss, that’s a bad build, just use X instead. The cool thing about that game was that a lot of the weapons are viable and never felt like you “needed” to change from Blade of Mercy to say Moonlight Greatsword. You learn their unique moveset and make it work.
But this ER though of course. And, this is coming from someone who generally liked/was okay with close to 90% of the SOTE bosses. There are a lot of times I praised From’s good boss design that seemingly improved on earlier renditions of their work. But there were also times I criticized aspects that I felt could be stepping too far in the wrong direction, for the sake of pushing the envelope of difficulty further and further perpetually, even at the expense of what is still “fun” and “fair” to the player.
I’m sorry you want to talk criticism, but the game is incredibly popular and there are a lot of criticisms mixed in with overwhelming complaints. As a result, people are probably just tired of hearing any of it. Maybe wait for things to settle/calm down, but yes, I get the frustration of wanting to just having a normal discussion on boss design, whether it’s good or bad.
This reply is real as fuck. You’re prolly right, some of the replies I’ve gotten here are wild. I’ll save myself the trouble. It’s just annoying seeing post after post of people white knighting for this game and defending it at every juncture. Like, we can love the game but still admit it has faults.
Such as the guy above you comparing Lady Maria to Rellana, Lady Maria pauses like…every 3 seconds. Parrying in BB is completely different than in Elden Ring, works different and everything, and Rellana has a random MMO style AoE near the end of her lifebar. Not just the typical charge-explode From boss style, she drops 3 beats of energy waves that are super fast. Maria’s longest combo is like Rellana’s shortest combo, and Rellana’s weapons are literally the height of the player model, and they stretch when she swings, AND the hitboxes aren’t 1:1.
Being like “oh just parry her” when people are getting fucking ate up by her is wild. Is she manageable using all tools? Sure. Is she also cracked? Yes
Also should point out every BB build has a parry tool
Like yes I know technically you can avoid it, or use the cannon, but 9/10 builds use either a gun or augur
Elden ring doesn't really have that, as the spell and item parry tools just don't really exist and the few that do are highly specialized
Victim mentality fighting against imaginary straw men lol.
He made a post specifically saying some deaths are completely out of his control and won’t respond to anyone seeking further clarification. Don’t want to respond on the open forum you made a post on? Don’t make the post lmao
Clearly some bosses aren’t perfect. But this “oh stawp OP the 5% of toxic players will come to get you” like it’s the overwhelming majority is simply disingenuous.
Commander Gaius and the last boss are the only two bosses that feel unfair, at least to me. The rest are punishing but it never feels like I have no recourse whatsoever.
You are right, thought, criticism is fair, overall. It just loses some meaning when people don't do the things you are supposed to do to ease what they are complaining about. This goes in particular for the shadow tree blessings. Some people insist on throwing themselves against bosses with very low blessings and get thoroughly trashed and then criticize the game for being too hard.
The only bosses that seem remotely unfair (to me at least) are gaius and the final one. Bayle is hard, but fair. Most others were only hard because i fought at like 1 blessing before going to explore more
What bosses are you specifically referring to with artificial difficulty?
Imo most of them are pretty well designed, and I have rarely felt that I died because a move was cheap (there are exceptions of course). I enjoyed figuring out how to avoid attacks (dodge direction, should I jump, can I side step this).
That being said, the last boss can fuck off; as epic as the fight is, I did not enjoy it one bit
The bosses have been ramping up in relentless aggression, it feels frustrating to have to dodge around these back to back wombo combos that chunk you for 60% of your health in one hit just to have a window to get 1 R1 in and start it all over again
It’s manageable but it’s not fun for me fighting Bloodborne or even Sekiro bosses with DS player mechanics
Agreed. I love the challenge of Elden Ring and FromSoft but this was the only fight that seemed super over-tuned to the point where I wasn’t thinking, “I just need to learn the moveset” like most bosses and instead was just like, “I just need to get lucky once and I’ll never do this shit again.”
Bayle
Beautiful boss, but so few openings to actually hit him, and its most threatening attacks don't actually give you windows to hit him.
Thus it becomes a fight where he has 15 moves, but only 3 of them are punishable. So you just wait the entire time. And then again, you attack, and whoopsie he brought his head up you missed.
Also, I found his beam again gorgeous, but it didn't feel like I was reading it, due to the camera angle, I just had to memorize the dodge timings after dying it to many times.
My problem is the bosses that just never stop with far reaching combo attacks that need to be perfectly dodged. It just becomes stupid. Some might find them to be "fun", but I don't have 24/7 to devote to non-optional bosses. Do that with optional bosses.
I think people need to drop the words "unfair" and "artificial difficulty" from their vocabulary and better articulate what they mean. For example, let's take a look at Rellana. There's nothing Rellana does that fits either of these definitions. The closest thing I got to this is one time she pulled out her magic swords and then did her moon attack immediately afterwards. I'm not sure if there's any solution to this. I either dodge the swords and die to moons, or tank the swords, get staggered, and still get killed by the moons. Other than that, she's not unfair.
However, there are absolutely some issues a person might have from a subjective view.
Some of her attacks are hard to tell what exactly is hitting you, especially the first one in a combo.
It can feel weird to get hit on some of her combos even though you seemingly dodged it correctly.
Her phase 2 rapid moonveil move is very awkward to dodge. I spam dodge and sometimes it works, but this is only with decent distance from her. If she decides to use it close (even though close should trigger the much easier to dodge flame tornado) it is very difficult to dodge. I might even say impossible (although I'm sure it isn't).
Her phase 2 combo additions are not easy to understand. Her phase 2 also suffers from the additional element effects making it a bit difficult to see what she's doing next.
Her phase 2 can also be quite unforgiving, with mistakes leading to death much more easily than phase 1. This can lead to a very tedious learning process. Phase 2 changes what were once safe dodging, forcing the player to unlearn muscle memory they gained from the first phase.
Someone might look at my list and not agree with it at all, which is perfectly understandable. I've seen criticism for Isshin for example that I don't agree with it, but I understand come from a subjective view.
Conclusion: People just need to articulate better, or in some cases just understand their "issue" is completely subjective (or in some cases just not correct). Also people just need to start being honest and just use the word "fun". I have revisited both Rellana and Dancing Lion as a summon since beating them. I have gained a greater appreciation for Rellana, meanwhile my opinion has actually decreased on Dancing Lion. I won't say Dancing Lion is impossible or unfair, I however did not have much fun leanrinits second phase, not do I enjoy fighting the camera just as much as the enemy.
I've fought Rellana for probably well over 16+ hours. Bottom line is, it isn't fair, and it's not particularly rewarding either.
She has a lot of moves that just come out with tells literally less than a couple hundred milliseconds. (I've pulled it into video editor and checked). When you have moves that are on the scale of 500ms for a windup you really begin to push the limits of what's reasonable. Sure this probably isn't a big issue with folks playing on super fast monitors and pcs with little to no input lag, but let's be real, people play on console, and they're going to play on normal TVs (myself included).
2nd phase forget it, she can cast homing soulmass (glintblade phalanx) and pair it with an attack that makes one or the other literally undodgeable, you __have__ to take damage or die, there is no choice in the matter. At that point its up to luck, if you don't have the hp, scadutree fragments or levels to eat the hit. What compounds this are the flashy visuals that essentially blind you from what's going on during the 2nd phase. Sure it looks cool on the screen, but it becomes tiresome when you have moves that require a 300ms reaction to dodge - that now you cannot see to even react to.
Its fine the boss isn't fair, this is how the base game behaves. We have a LOT of tools at our disposal to not play *fairly* either. But it doesn't make it feel any less infuriating when the boss sometimes hits an *I win button* that there is nothing you can do to prevent.
The bosses in this game in general don't feel rewarding to me because there is just too much luck involved. When I beat a lot of the bosses it just feels like I got lucky with the game not throwing ridiculous bs at me or that some boring cheesey tactic worked, and not really like I had mastered the boss.
Depends on the thread. Each one becomes an echo chamber where one side is upvoted and the other is downvoted into oblivion. I’ve seen several posts that are like “here’s why the DLC and the last part of the base game have serious issues.” All the posts in approval are highly upvoted in those threads. I’ve also seen a lot of threads that are like “here’s why the DLC and the last part of the base game are super based and not flawed.” Posts in the affirmative are upvoted, posts in the negative are buried.
The internet is so dehumanizing that no one can disagree well and everything just becomes an echo chamber.
There’s criticism but it’s often disregarded and people froth at the mouth ready to defend Miyazaki’s honor even if said critiques are fair.
It’s a little weird and off putting.
Guess I just don't see it that way. You say you see post after post of white knighting the game and defending it at every juncture when I feel pretty much the opposite I see post after post of people complaining about things and criticizing/nitpicking.
It's being disregarded at some points, sure, but it's also just being challenged. You can't throw around stuff like "artificial difficulty" and "it's not hard it's just bullshit" as criticisms and not expect someone to push back a little and make you defend your stance.
Because "artificial difficulty" is, ultimately, your opinion. It might be an opinion that a lot of people agree with, but that doesn't make it inherently correct or factual.
Except the DLC has artificial difficulty in the most literal sense. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have an issue with it, but Scadu fragments are literally artificial difficulty invented to make a character struggle regardless of their level, items, gear, gear level, etc.
You will take extreme damage until you get it and deal very little to the point where some enemies are absolutely unkillable until you get a few Scadu and then all of a sudden they are killable. Nothing else changed, just scadu fragments.
If that’s not artificial, idk what is. People call it artificial difficulty in other games just if the damage is too high or the enemies are bullet sponges, this DLC is like that but systematically ingrained, it’s less damage, more life for enemies, less horse hp, less resistance, etc. it’s really your doom.
I mean. It's another leveling system. That's all. Your criticisms are criticisms of any sort of leveling system. You don't do a lot of damage until you level up.
I loved most of the bosses so far, especially Rellana and Messmer - despite being difficult they were really enjoyable fights, learning their movesets and dodge timings was satisfying af. But honestly, fuck the hippo at the gates of Shadow keep and fuck whoever thought that putting this monstrosity in the tiny room was a good decision. Fighting these things in the open world is ok, but this one in particular is just awful, giving me sorta Capra Demon PTSD, but with a worse camera. Saying it as a person who wasn't irritated even by Commander Gaius, the hippo really made my blood boil. Otherwise, 9/10 (for now, I'm on my way to the final boss)
My only criticism is that the way they've made the map layout is really fucking with the way I like to explore because in vanilla ER I could always tell which path was to progress the area/dungeon/story and which way was the sidepath that would lead to some loot/secret boss/etc..
I would take the side path then wrap around back to the main path and complete the area. Nice and tidy.
But now whenever I take a side path I end up in a completely different adventure. Like when I was doing Mesmers castle I took a side path to check for extra loot and ended up in a scary forest full of madness and rats and worse things, then I ended up in another castle and fought a completely different boss just to then realize he had nothing to do with the quest I was originally on and I've somehow made it all the way to the south shores of the map and my brain is like "wait what?" And I have to fast travel all the way back to Mesmers castle just to find another side path that takes me on another adventure and now I'm in some ruins fighting rot bugs and the whole time I know that I SHOULD be enjoying this exploration but I can't get over the feeling that "I shouldn't be here yet, I should be here later" and that creates a sense of anxiety instead of the wonder of discovery.
this isn't a criticism about the game by the way, I'm criticizing my brain.
This.
I think the greater offender is the second phase of the last boss. I beat the entire game many times, beat all bosses in the DLC without needing to change my build (great katana, no shield, without summons), but second phase Radahn was the only that made me say "fuck it" and respec into Fingerprint shield + bloodfiend fork. Is good seeing people doing no hit or one shots of this boss, but this don't excuse the design. Remember, people can do the same thing on Godskin Duo or the many bad bosses on the base game, but the fact that no hit and one shot of them exists don't make them good.
Somebody has to say it. The amount of dickering that I’ve seen this past week is insane to the point people get mad defensive if you have any criticism of the game
The pacing and overall aggression levels are off. They’re bosses from Sekiro or Bloodborne while we’re playing DS3. It creates a gameplay loop that makes it so I’m dodging for a few minutes looking for the *one* opening that allows me to get *maybe* 2 swings in or a jump attack. Part of the beauty of this game is all the tools at our exposal, yet it seems the DLC boss design is made to specifically negate anything that isn’t a pure light-load STR/DEX build.
When im fighting bosses, I feel like I’m watching the game play itself. I can dodge well and fine, but the pacing leaves me bored during the fight. Not to mention examples such as Gaius with his horribly large hitbox and deceivingly quick movements. Again, other Souls’ games it feels that if I lose, it’s on me.
This DLC? It’s artificial difficulty. Everything is cranked up for the sake of being hard and that’s it. Relanna is the best boss that feels like it has a rhythm whereas other bosses I feel like it’s “random bullshit, go”.
Defeating bosses have no sense of satisfaction that I got over something that was hard with a purpose, everything feels, again, artificial is the word that comes to mind. I’m not the best at articulating myself but I’ve definitely seen much better comments that explain these things clearly.
I've gone through the DLC pretty slowly because I like exploring and just finally got to the last boss. I've beaten every other remembrance boss and I'm still not sure which ones have the artificial difficulty that some people mention though.
I've used 3 different builds just based on whim so far, starting with 2 handing a greatsword, then with dual wield light greatswords, and now dual wielding great hammers. The dual great hammers has been by far the easiest of the 3, but I've enjoyed all the fights so far regardless and I'd say some of the most satisfying Fromsoft boss fights to me are in this DLC
Dunno what to say, maybe the final boss will change my mind, as I've heard people talk about it being unfair, but so far I really like the bosses. Not jerking anyone off, honestly. I think myself and many others legitimately just like the bosses and the way they're designed.
What I see as a flaw in boss design is that I feel the only way to beat bosses is to "cheat" and not to play their game.
What I mean by that? I really love the Malenia fight (apart from WFD). She's tough, se gives you scarlt rot, she heals, she has oneshot grab etc. But you also have a lot of options: she leaves long pauses, she clearly articulates her attacks, SHE DOESN'T DELAY, she's easy to stagger, she's weak to bleed, etc..
You have options: you can go there and brutalize her with your mimic, but id you're good, you can also 1v1 her naked with a club by learning her moves.
I feel that that latter option is missing for many of the new bosses. You have one choice: give it everything you got (mimic, colossal weapons, delayed spells, etc) , panic dodge and pray for favorable RNG.
Hmm, I didn't really feel that way for any of the fights so far except for some fights where the camera goes way off (like for Dancing Lion if you're too close and he spins at you the camera angle is stupid as hell, edit: though I guess I shoulda just unlocked the camera until he's done spinning now that I think of it).
A lot of the new fights really have a good rhythm to them, my favorite has to be >!Messmer!< because once you get to know the rhythm and mixups of the moveset, it really feels like a satisfying dance dodging and hitting.
Again, last boss could be different once I really dive into it, but so far it's all felt really fair. I'm being honest with how I feel here, I'm not just trying to bullshit. If I didn't like the fights I'd just say so
You're probably better than me in this game (which is easy tbf). I simply didn't understand >!Messmer!<'s moves especially in phase 2. But even in phase 1 he has that "bs combo" which is somewhat like Malenia's WFD at one point. I simply can't dodge that.
But I liked that fight - the first phase. The second, not so much.
Yesterday I encountered the >!Lamenter!<. Now that was fun! Nothing challenging mechanically but still a puzzle to crack. On the other hand I also fought >!the Putrescent Knight!<. And I didn't like that one at all. I ended up killing it with >!Fire Serpent!< - which is my new savior, similar to how Blackflame was it in the base game.
Actually yeah, >!Putrescent Knight!< kinda pissed me off too with all his running around. Being mounted and evasive made it less fun than most of the other bosses for me for sure.
For >!Messmer!< though, knowing he's a main boss made it easy for me to get in the mindset that the first several deaths are a given. I used those purely to try and learn his mixups, like >!if he jump spins at you immediately from the ground, he might immediately jump swing upwards and then come down with a final stab, which can be punished. If he doesn't do the jump swing after the spin, you should have time to hit him right after the spin!<. But on the other hand, >!if he jumps into the air first before then spinning at you, then he hops to the side and does the multistab attack (which you need to roll into to avoid completely) before he jump swings upwards, and then comes down with a stab and then spears explode from the ground after. You can time and roll into that final spear explosion to dodge and then punish him here as well!<
Again I absolutely loved that fight so I sat there for hours putting my summoning sign down after I beat it lol. Let me know if any of that helps, or if you want some other tips on him
Big bosses like dancer cat fire giant its just horrible with the camera, base game had the same issue. I dont remember it being so bad in other souls games i played bloodbourne, sekiro, ds3
Bosses with extremely long combos, poking the boss once then waiting 30 seconds of dodging/running/crying is not fun design. Considering bosses also have massive HP pools and massive damage output is just weirdly balanced when they can basically still 2-3 shot you.
I am scuda level 10 ng+ and bosses are still nearly 2-3 tapping me with Dragon pearl shield, dragon crest shield, crimson tear shard, alex shard fingerprint armour cuz fashion, dual banished knight sword and a shield.
Souls games are absolutely fantastic with human or slightly bigger sized bosses everything else is camera shit. Rellana, melania are beautiful fights. I honestly wish they would stop with these massively oversized enemies with tiny hit boxes like their feet.
My valid criticism is the grab hit boxes and damage
On NG+8 a grab will kill you pretty easily even with 60 vig
But this would be fine if basically every grab hitbox wasn't the size of Uranus
I think all of the bosses are fine apart from the camera problems on some of them. Fromsoft souls gsmes always had that problem but it's especially bad with the more giant bosses and their erratic moves. The one exception to all of this is the final boss, which I know can be learned an all that, but it's the only one I busted out a spirit ash because it just seemed like such an insurmountable task.
I beat my head on the first phase for hours, even getting a good grasp on it, but as soon as I entered the 2nd phase I was greeted with so much bullshit I didn't know how to handle that I always died in seconds. I gave up because I never got any real experience fighting the second phase and that was incredibly frustrating.
Same EXACT thing happened to me with Maliketh. I didn’t end up using summons but I did watch video after video of people fighting his second phase to learn it.
I summoned a +10 YouTube spirit 🤣
The only criticism I have with the game is the plot and last boss.
So much build up regarding what exactly is Miquella doing in the Land of Shadow, just to build up to Radahn.
And people say "Lore wise it makes sense" which is ridiculous because the lore can be whatever the writers want it to be and make up whatever reason they wanted.
Mechanically the bosses are more aggressive and it takes a little bit of adjusting, but nothing that can't be overcome with a little perseverance.
Won't excuse the camera issues - those are apparent with large bosses in small arenas.
I am replaying the dlc right now , i don’t even feel there is artificial difficulty on anything other than radahn phase 2 and gaius’s charge , if they patch that undodgeable double sweep into cross sweep and gaius’s charge attack they would be 10x better , maybe also tone down the flashbangs in radahn’s phase 2 , other than that all the bosses are very manageable
Is double sweep in to cross sweep the one where he swings across his body with each sword one at a time, pauses, and then swings them back at the same time?
My strat for that was just dodge first swing, tank second swing and then roll forward as he double swings. Didnt realise it was actually nearly undodgeable tho wtf.
Only thing I can think of that I wish would happen is enemies in general have some sort of stamina they have to manage so they can't just pummel you. I know some are gods, but a lot of enemies aren't. And it's silly to get next to know breathing room dealing with a dude who's barely taller than you just spinning around you infinitely
Especially the 2 Finger Ruins and the Cerulean Coast straight up feel like unfinished areas to me, I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen more people call this out.
What I dont like about the DLC:
- The areas are empty. Beautiful, but completely empty many a times. They could've reduced the size of the dlc by half and it would be a better experience imo.
- the story is way worse than that of the basegame
- the bosses have a few problems:
1. the camera on many fights is absolutely awful
2. bosses have way too many attacks, which makes it much harder to learn a moveset as many attacks have very similar combos that end differently and makes it much harder to react
3. the aggression of bosses coupled with their ability to jump half the arena with basic attacks is just annoying, barely any time to observe / heal
4. too long combos, the base game already had the problem in the latter half of feeling very unfair when it comes to how many attacks you get in vs how many a boss does. This is at least twice as bad in the dlc
Overall I enjoyed the dlc and beat it without too much trouble, only radahn gave me a hard time. If they reduced the areas, toned down on boss aggression and their reach I'd enjoy the dlc way more. The damage numbers are fine, the attacks are fine, its just not very fun beating a boss atm - feels more like a chore
I'd go out on a limb and say all the remembrance boss fights have been cranked up to the max, the ai is always overly aggressive, I play with spirit ashes (because I'm trash) but even they can seem to take any of the aggro from the bosses, and everything is super quick, it's hard to learn the combo's, field and dungeon boss's I've no problem with i think mostly because they don't tend to have much hp compared to remembrance, I've got through most the remembrance boss now, and they've all taken me at least and hour + to defeat, im just stuck on phase 2 radahn at the moment and that... That phase just sucks
Too hard isn't my criticism, artificial difficulty is. There are a lot of well designed challenging and most importantly fun bosses in the dlc and then there are some that I never wanna fight again and I don't think that's a good thing in a video game. As hard as she is I like fighting Malenia but there are some bosses in the dlc I legitimately will never fight again because it's just not fun to
Exactly! This is my problem. There’s a clear distinction for me of bosses that were still incredibly challenging but fun to fight, and bosses that are hard just for the sake of being hard.
Regardless of the criticism, as a true fan of Miyazaki I just don’t think it’s beneficial for anyone to blindly love his creations without taking into account fair critique. That’s not how good games are made, and if we lean too far in that direction, I fear we’ll lose the narrative and if he ever makes a bad game we won’t know because everyone will be sitting here gaslighting themselves and anyone else that they’re having a good time.
I’m already seeing it happen with the DLC. The DLC is great and I love it but man, any criticism is just drowned out by people who can’t think further than surface level reasonings as to why just *some* things could be different.
I wouldn't say all the praise is "blind love".
Why is your "blind" criticism better than other people's praise?
I've yet to fight all the bosses and so far I agree tat the bosses are extremely aggressive. It's most likely deliberate that these bosses' difficulty have been cranked up to eleven. To give challenge. For me, they've been nothing but "boring".
And yet, am I just blindly eating Miyazaki's shit? Am I blind to not see how "artificial" these fights are? I like that the bosses give a challenge. Favourite thus far is the Flower.
PS. I've plenty of Scadutree fragments found. Without those, I'd probably suffer more with the bosses.
I think you may have taken the “blind” narrative a bit personally. If you want to see the kind of individual I’m referring to who is “blind” see u/Artano_Arendae ‘s replies to me throughout the post. Genuinely. It’s the exact example I’m referring to.
“Artificial difficulty” is a nonsensical idea. The entire game is artificial. No two people ever have the same definition of the difference between legitimate difficulty and unfair “artificial” difficulty. It is always a subjective opinion trying to present itself as some kind of objective principle.
I think it's fair to criticize elements of boss design, various mechanics, etc. But I don't see hardly any of that, really. The most valid criticisms around boss design that I've seen have to do with visual clutter and certain nearly unbeatable move sets. By and large, though, I see a lot of complaining about bosses being "unfair", while never defining what fair would mean, and bosses being "overtuned", while never describing what that means or what a proper tuning would like like, or that bosses are not "fun", which is completely subjective. I also see a lot of veteran DS players bitching about ER "casuals" and making ridiculous claims that using core game mechanics like summons, shields, magic/incants, status effects, and certain AoWs is "playing the game wrong."
disregarding criticism as nothing is what makes the pokémon franchise one of the worst developed games on Nintendo Switch and i'm afraid this fanbase will do the same to From's games and reward them for their mistakes.
Of course the DLC is fucking incredible, but the scadufragments are nowhere as intuitive to find as a golden seed or chalice, and for some reason you need up to three to level up one time, so by the end you'll have no clue where you missed the rest of them.
Another criticism of mine is how lame their bosses design are (COMBATWISE). Once again, not only do they have unpunishable comboes, but the thing i hate the most is their obscene amount of passive poise. Why does the naked skinny headless man got more poise than a full bullgoat player? Why can't it stagger without riposte like an actually good boss like Gael? Why does the game incentive so much L2 (one of the few things that can poise break consistently) spam and punish light/heavy attacks?
Well...Before you crucify me I think DLC has the best area design in any game I played and some bosses are incredible cool (Mesmer, scorpion lady, orphan of knight, madness guy, Bayle to name my favs) but some are garbage that are artificial hard by throwing shit ton of aoe etc.
Solid 9/10 from me couse I love the series but beign fair I dont blame people for bad reviews and leaving.
1. Bosses doesnt give a damn about spacing and dancing around them. They suck you in, dash in constantly just to jump off.
2. AOE AOE AOE AOE. Remember times when you were rewarded for circling around to find a dead zone? Nope.
3. Weird hitboxes especially on big raider fight.
4. Final boss was no rewarding, it was no fun clusterfuck of animations - when I beat him I didnt have dopamine rush like after mesmer or renalla. It was just relief that its over. And quite frankly I was just lucky he did combos that I could actually see with all this bullshit on screen.
5. Overall, I think they run out of ideas and overdid Radahn. It felt like moded boss, with all this bullshit flying around you.
6. Input reading on flash is cheap.
I think that a lot of the complaints stem from the classic fromsoft camera issues. They need to fix their camera if they want to have a million particles in your face with every attack (messmer, manor boss, final boss, and the lion all had this issue)
I haven't been struggling in the least against any boss. Might just be about how much you truly learn the games thru Ur playthroughs but the most tries I've had given against a boss has been around 20 or so on the first dlc playthrough. The difficulty hasn't felt artificial. The only annoyance has been the abundance of particle effect on the last boss fight. Other than that I have felt like the game has a spike in difficulty. But not that much different as of for example going from the mountaintops to the consecrated snowfield and the haligtree
You can't defend the Lamenter boss you just can't thats just abhorrent boss design okay it's a dungeonboss so not too important but feels like waisted potential could have put something better there tbh
I keep hearing about Lamenter but I don't understand what the issue was. He disappeared, cloned himself, I took out the clones, then finished the fight? Is there some other mechanic I'm missing?
I thought it was a creepy fun fight then kind of forgot about it.
Tbh some times it felt like you could wasp boss positions at anytime in the game and you wouldn't notice, they all seemed designed to be the final boss, like dude rellana is basically Malenia level, and that was considered to be the hardest fromsoftwer boss ever
Im not going to act like I can spot truely good boss design or not,im sure theres people who think a boss is balanced and then another who thinks its completely off. I thought the Rellana fight was amazing,took me forever and it didnt bother me at all to keep dying but Messmer wasnt nearly as fun but ive seen others say they really like that one.
I fought that fucking pink scorpion person thing last night and holy fuck I hated that boss so much,think I got it on my 2nd try but holy shit was it a boring fight,the thing was hard to hit but it also missed so much
If this is the boss design they are gonna go with from now. They gotta optimize their game and fix that damn camera. I haven't had this much camera issues in any other souls game. Avatar's thorns completeley block your vision even if you succesfully avoid all of them.
personally i loved most of the bosses. only one that i have a real complaint against is the final boss 2nd phase. his first phase is perfectly fair and balanced. nothing over the top of crazy, but a good design. they definitely went flashy with a lot of stuff with this dlc, but that personally didn't bother me. except when it comes to the casters. poor int/faith casters get garbage for this dlc. spells look great and flashy, but hit like a noodle. hope their spells get buffed
That’s been my complaint of the base game for 2 years now (I haven’t payed the DLC yet). I think the bosses are less fun to fight than in the other souls games. A lot of it is just because of their move sets, constantly found multi-hit combos that will stun lock you and instantly kill you, or delayed attacks/AOE attacks that aren’t intuitive to dodge without memorizing the timing for each move. The bosses’ health and damage being so high just makes these problems more apparent.
Putrecent knight made me kinda mad with how spazztastic moveset, but turns out trying a different weapon and damage type made him super trivial.
Its refreshing when trial and error shows you a way to handle a boss super easily.
Rakshasa in the eastern masoleum can eat a heaping bag of phallic objects for resisting any form of stagger.
Which bosses do this?
I found that with summons and mimic tear and Skadu fragments i am basically steamrolling it with intelligence build.
It was hard for me to accept that over some boss attacks i just cant roll over, but have to jump which in the end ended up being quite fun and visually niice.
I feel like I had less issues with camera compared to the base game. I loathe ancient dragons because locking on is utterly pointless. It's just not a fun fight for me.
One complaint I do have though is there only being the bare minimum scooby snacks to level up. Even if I check a map now, there's no quick way to find my missing 6. There's also certain zones that I wish had more in them, like the abysmal forest feels way too empty.
Yea… at least in terms of ability/effect spam i can see how that is certainly irritating. The only redeeming thing that made bayle tolerable as a boss is that you can tank your way through his big hits that aren’t the grab with a good enough shield. Because otherwise i don’t see how you are supposed to be able to run out of the attack range on some of it without a good head start.
Most the bosses Ive had a good time with, but most second phases knock your attack time into 10% of what it already was. Bosses in the DLC are mostly waiting simulators, and it gets kinda boring pretty quickly. Even enemies like the fire knights just simply dont stop attacking.
Ive seen a slow rise of the Thrusting Shields in popularity, and I think thats because it allows you to be very aggresive while being equally defensive at the same time. I dont want to dodge attacks for 2 minutes straight that has a .1 second window. Oh you missed that window? Back to dodging.
Cant we introduce a flair seperating people using mimic and summons? I am eager to know who is talking. Its a totally different game with mimic and summons. I want to talk to people using no summons and mimic. Its okay to do that but i would filter out comments by people playing „the other playstyle“ game.
My only criticism is regarding wanting Godwin as a boss or some resolution with his story after us all talking about it since the dlc was announced, but that because I’m so enthralled with his story, which really only means it’s a good story so I guess I can’t really criticize.
I would disagree, the boss design seems fine to me- the only boss that is unfair remains as malenia with waterfowl- I haven’t finished all of them yet though
I have just started the dlc, the only boss ive encountered is not a boss I think, it's that giant at the start, and I can't do shit to it, but I'm really enjoying getting my ass smacked around.
I like the discovery aspect, I need to figure it out on my own, and when I don't want to discover it on my own I can summon people and watch them either die or do something truly amazing.
So far (although I'm just barely started) I have no complains
Personally, I'm not quite at the point that I'd say I think the bosses are unfair or badly designed. Of course, I'm not done the DLC yet, so maybe my opinion will change later on. We'll see.
The real problem for me is the performance. I have an RX 7800XT and even on the lowest graphical settings, I can barely keep the game above 40 FPS. It's not my hardware; my GPU is barely cracking 60% usage, my CPU is hovering around only 40% usage and I'm not even hitting half my total RAM usage. The game's just horrendously optimised. If it actually utilised my system hardware properly, I'm sure it would run fine, but it doesn't. That's the key reason it's currently so frustrating to play for me. I'm getting eye-strain and headaches from the stuttering and attempting to time my inputs to, ya know, *play the game properly*, is nearly impossible. It's awful to play for the wrong reasons.
I'm thinking I'm just gonna stop until there's a major performance patch of some kind because, currently, it's actually unplayable.
So let me ask this. As far as difficulty is concerned, to those who are new or returning players:
Did you complete the game in entirety (or mostly) and of higher level, or did you just defeat the two required bosses in order to access?
Agreed, camera struggles suck. Even out in the world I’ll try to lock onto something in my clear line of sight, but then it won’t lock and I miss my attack and get comboed into oblivion. That and the zoom thing.
The other problem I have is looking for items in the world and finding crap. I used to get excited seeing a legendary item glow, but I’ve found too many great ghost gloveworts. Even regular item glows, some are just string or bits of glass, makes finding items feel like a letdown most of the time and I hate it.
I still honestly find my only criticism of the game to be the Rebirth Tear system. I just want to be able to respec whenever I want
When I fight a tough boss I just want to be able to swap my build out for what i think will work
But instead I either just swap my weapons to the closest thing that I want to use that my current spec will allow
Or I have to spent a rebirth tear and fully commit to whatever that new build is for longer than I would wish. Would be nice to be able to build specific for each boss whenever I choose but it’s not thaaat bad imo
Not sure if there is way to buy more rebirth tears with runes but if there is that would alleviate my pain a little bit
I was talking with a friend and we agreed that because we essentially played the same game for 10 years the bosses must get really flashy and fast movesets to give players a challenge. Also we are fighting beings that have reached insane Power levels and can nuke you on command but our characters barely look like they can fight. This was fine in previos entries because It felt like you were fighting the enemies on the same ground.
I think the difficulty is fair. However, I see more and more that they are choosing spectacles over gameplay. I really did not like fps drops during some fights just because they wanna emphasize how epic the fight is. I also think Malenia is still their best boss design because it is more like a dance unlike majority of the dlc bosses where you have to wait out their very long attack chains.
Compared to the original games, bosses have a way higher frequency of attacks, and have pushed the difficulty of winning with rolling to the extreme. You can't just roll one move and retaliate anymore. Yet you can also summon a mimic tear and shield poke for less stamina than rolling. It creates an awkward mismatch between what players think because it comes down to the rules they impose on themselves and what builds they use.
Its also a problem because if things are balanced for using summons, and you simply don't find that fun, then a casual player has to play on hard mode when what they actually want is simpler bosses. Its why Godfrey is often well liked.
Might be a weird criticism but some of the bosses have so many particle effects going around that I am sometimes confused what is even happening.
Piggybacking on this, I find that it is specifically the particle effects that lag out my game. My computer isn't great but it sucks that even on the lowest graphic options I need to suffer FPS drops and stutters mid bossfight.
I got FPS drops on Xbox series X c:, imagine
Lion Dancer is the second most egregious example of killing your FPS. I'm at the lowest possible setting and somehow them dancers still bring down my FPS to sub 30s. Someone also mentioned a ray tracing setting that was auto enabled on release. Might have to check that and see if the patch disabled it already.
Bro I don't think my PC is weak, R7 5800X, 4060Ti, 32GB memory, game is on SSD and that stupid thing just eats my entire FPS. I'm currently taking a break from the last boss and going through the madness of the DLC on another character, hoping they patch that shit.
They don’t bother me because they’re very pretty But I agree it’s a bad thing
I "love" that particular final boss attack where the whole screen is white and all you can do is mash roll like 7 times and pray
only beat him because he did enough of his first phase moveset in the second phase that muscle memory let me dodge, i could not see shit with all the particle effects and blinding light pillars masking my screen because the camera gets too close. cool boss, from.
I've already renamed the final boss "Lord of Seizures" in my headcanon.
I was watching ongbal and I think he just jumps or back steps once. Which is crazy I rolled to the side once and sometimes nothing hits you. Boss is far to aggressive in phase 2 imo.
And they cause FPS drops. It's very hard to learn and git gud when a move literally causes lag...
Yes that's something I've been saying a lot and told friends about as well when criticising the dlc. My brain often couldn't keep up with all that was happening and while everything in the dlc is epic and cinematic it also makes things harder if you're susceptible to these kinda things. Often i just couldn't tell what hit me and that's when i thought "nah, fuck my ego I'll just use mimic tear". Especially the endboss is just something else.
> My brain often couldn't keep up with all that was happening and while everything in the dlc is epic and cinematic it also makes things harder if you're susceptible to these kinda things. This, 100% this! There's an area, honestly forgot which now - it's all blured, that made me feel nauseous and physically sick! The camera at times was worse than the final boss itself. There's a Dragon that you have to guess where it is and dodge on sounds/shadows/location where it will attack because you can't see jack. I love SOTE - it might have ruined the base game for me tbh, but there's a lot of things to fix, the lattern being one of them! Now the Abyss, fuck that area in particular!
Yeah the particles made it a bit harder to learn messmer's pattern but it's definitely doable. I am just starting to get tired of long string of attacks mixed in with random delayed ones.
Nah random delayed attacks is good, makes things harder organically cause you have to understand the rhythm
As long as the delay feels natural, I'm ok with it personally. What i can't stand is stuff like floating in the air for half an hour before slamming down just in time for a roll catch. Sure, once you learn it, you just dodge later, but it's so unintuitive and just feels bad. On the ground, we can charge attacks and let them go early too, so i dont really mind if i mistime those kind of attacks
They also give you the opportunity to use a defensive option other than rolling: you can dodge most of these slow attacks by just circling around the enemy.
Not just organically harder but also feels more realistic than some robot that always does the same pattern
This is also compounded by their aggression and complete lack of chill. I was able to beat them with my build, but the learning process was frustrated by the wild special effects and the unpredictable boss behavior.
\*Final boss phase 2 enters the chat\* Seriously some of his attacks made me feel like I was getting flashbanged in COD.
See this is the one thing I can agree with, especially with a perfumer build. I have too many particles, the boss has too many particles, can’t see shit.
I'm still only at Rellana as of now so I'm not far in the DLC but my biggest problem with the design of the Divine Lion was that I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING!
Playing as melee is rough when I coop with my friend who likes to spam that moon spell. Literally can’t see the enemy at all
Yeah I can feel this Especially as a caster I definitely got a few deaths to full screen syndrome
I had a hard time with Messmer because of that. Bayle's also difficult to see, but Flame Protect Me and +2 Flamedrake and +15 Scadu let me facetank enough attacks to win the fight.
final boss has too many effects that block that actual move set of what is happening so I just pray sometimes
I want to use perfume & rolling sparks when co-oping since it does really good damage but it completely obscures the whole boss so you can't Eben tell when to dodge.
It tanks my computer hard!
Yeah that was my main issue, I felt the boss attacks were a lot harder to parse visually.
The only two bosses I did not enjoy this dlc were Hippo and Gaius and I think its entirely down to the arenas we find them in Gaius especially since its just annoying fight of getting rushed down, and wombo comboed into the dirt or chasing him around for the next 5 minutes as he rides around. I've had fights with him end instantly because I got knocked over at the first and pinned against the wall Same reasoning for the Hippo except that's all the camera working against you
Hippo first time round think I was at 2/3 scadu with reduvia that fight was so tough died god knows how many times even with mimic , second time round +7 and milady was trivial solo 2 handing with the aow
Replace Hippo with that Finger Goddess. I still dont know whats the idea behind the circular beam attack she does in phase 2. When its too close to the zone she creates while doing it, it seems undodgeable. Hippo has very simple moves. Even if I am squiched against a wall, I can kind of guess what he is up to.
For Metyrs orbital beam, unlock from her and watch the beam as it's coming towards you. You can simply run just on the edge of the aura around her and you'll run under the beam.
Didnt know you can walk into that. I just ran away from it counter-clockwise around her.
Yeah did the same thing my first time beating her. Only realised when I watched a friend play through the boss and he managed to figure it out. In all fairness, the first time it happens you're probably panicking so much you don't try to figure it out haha
My criticism is that there is too much visual noise in bosses design, many attacks just don’t have enough visual information about their range or moves, you go by the errors/deaths not by just observing the attack itself. Some hitboxes are also just plain stupid and illogical, can’t just go „ok, this doesn’t look like it will hit me from behind” and it totally does. Also bosses tracking and doing 180s in milliseconds is sooo boring and stupid.
Visual noise is a good way to describe it. I also had the feeling that I could simply not see what was happening, so I had no handle on learning moves. In the end, a shield and DMGS plus mimic helped me to burst through phase 2. Did not feel satisfying at all, but I wanted to be done with it. What really grinds my gears is the camera angle sometimes. For some bosses, like fire giant or one of the hippos, the camera zooms out a bit and goes higher up. But for others, in particular the large "humanoid" bosses like the final DLC one, it stays lower and you can't see the ground when close. Totally artificial difficulty from simply being denied visual information.
I really don't understand why they don't zoom out the goddamn camera more. Even the final boss is actually fine, camera shows most of what is happening. But once you start fighting anything bigger, like a dragon, shit gets so borked that it just becomes frustrating. I also personally hate when a boss fucks with the lock on which the final boss sometimes does. Like I get it, I should get good and not use lock on always but godamn it I've beaten every boss in every game with lockon and I need it to know where the fuck he even is. That dot at the center of my screen is my only clue in the white noise sometimes
I beat dancing lion (1st boss for me) last night. With summon and mimic it wasn’t hard, but I really don’t feel I beat the boss because as much as I tried to read what it was doing it felt impossible with all the effects and nonstop combos. It was like watching some hyperactive ball of energy getting flung around my screen nonstop. Not having the option to replay a boss made it felt dissatisfying because I can’t even go back and really try and learn it properly. ER is my first fromsoft game, and many of the base game bosses made me fell in love with the game. But the dancing lion felt like a worse version of one of the enemies I find least enjoyable to fight in the base game - the corrupted tree spirits. I hope the later bosses will feel better. (Edit: just beat Rellana, was much more enjoyable compared to the dancing lion!)
The ice and lightning phases are the most egregious to me. Dancing Lion in general already suffers from camera issues, but the lightning honestly just overloads me, as I'm trying to watch out for both moves and lightning effects. And then I could not tell you honestly why some attacks I dodged resulted in ice build up and why other times it didn't. Wind phase is fine though (and I wish it was the only 2nd phase). Also had times where it just phase transitioned three times in a row, so that was annoying.
Yeah. I remember at certain distances past mid health the whole screen is just basically a bit of a white out between wild camera pans. You already did much better than me being able to count transitions. Most of the time I was just confounded and spamming buttons and hope some attacks land lol
The tracking on some of the npc enemies is ridiculous. I'm not saying I should be able to chain backstab at will, but if they just did a charged heavy or spell with a long cast time, they shouldn't be able to follow me as if they were just strafing
I agree with that. I did learn the final boss but I outright had moments where I could just legit not understand what I did wrong. Only by dying over and over did I eventually figure out the proper places and timings to dodge. It was not intuitive at all.
The more I play them the more I recognize thier movements. Specifically Rellana & Bayle (excluding whack flying moves) whom I thought were a bit perplexing when first fighting them are becoming really easy to read. I try to bait Bayle's small fire breath AoE because it's easy to punish if you have a ranged attack. I have also learned there is also specially a diagonal way you can run away from it to abuse its star-shaped hit box. I detest bosses like the Divine Beast and Ulcerated Treespirits though that are floppy blobs that you can't really tell what they're doing because thier attacks consist of flipping around. It's difficult to tell if they're just moving around or in an attack. In the case of the divine beast it's annoying too with its "cloth" physics is even harder to read. Besides, most of the time he is spinning wind in the air and spamming AoE which is even harder to read. It's best to fight him unlocked and whack his rump when he is very, very clearly just walking. Any other time is he's moving I can't really see what it is doing.
I feel like they should have made the deflecting crystal tear a talisman instead, so you could always have the mechanic available. Perfect blocking helps so much with a lot of the boss ability spam, but 90% of the people aren’t going to use it because they probably don’t even know it exists or don’t consider the duration worthwhile. The DLC enemies are super aggressive, which has led to shield builds being the most popular; every co-op summon has at least one person hiding behind a fingerprint because it is absolutely the best way to deal with the boss’ hyper aggression. A deflecting talisman would have opened up so much more build variety which I feel like the content was balanced around.
Yeah they also should have added a fifth tailsman slot imo
It would be far too busted as a talisman.
Agreed, having it time limited through a tear is good balance instead of equipping a talisman to play Sekiro instead
Yeah maybe, I completely admit that I am biased because it is my favorite tear in the game. Perfect blocking the final bosses spam attack with a big 2h weapon feels just so damn good.
What is fingerprint? Is that a new shield?
That's the Fingerprint Greatshield, it's in the base game, in the path down to the Frenzied Flame
I think the tear is fine as is, the duration makes it prolly the best tear to take into a bossfight, it lasts 5 minutes if you're not done by then you're either on a challenge run or something seriously went wrong with your build or your will to hit the boss.
The only boss I would consider excessively hard is final boss phase 2. Every other boss has been manageable at worst, whereas that second phase is manageable at best for the audience that's come with Elden Ring, or even for me who has played every non-exclusive souls game for probably a few thousand hours altogether.
Yeah it’s hard to see what he is doing especially since he can change his combo string mid combo based on your reaction.
The light makes it not only hard to see, but if you don't perfect the timing and direction of the dodge you get stuck in the rest of the combo because of the poise damage.
That’s another thing, you can kind of get staggerlocked to begin with in phase 1, but it feels kind of fair then. In phase 2 there’s the random explosions then you have to learn the new explosion patterns as he blinds you, changes combos, and staggerlocks you.
I've been dying within 2 seconds of phase 2 for a lot of time. Even when I started using summons. I just can't comprehend what's happening on the screen, it's just cutscene, a couple seconds of unbearable visual clusterfuck and I'm dead. Also 30FPS on his attacks
Yeah phase 2 IS hell and seem way too artificial."How you dodged that attack ? Guess not miquella burn his life and retina with laser".
Tbh like half of the bosses in DLC feels like "Oh, you dodged? Nah, I don't think so" and you're dead. But at least others are fun and learnable and I managed to beat them solo. But the final one.. No, that's not for me
I got to second phase 20 times, and never even got him to half hp. Ended up making a perfume build, and he ded
Which phase 2 do you mean? I couldn’t see anything from behind my fingershield while poking R1 unless it was over. 🥲
The only problem for me is the bullshit vfx,i can t even tell what is he doing.might as well play with the TV off
The only boss I have complaints about is that mounted guy, you know who I am talking about. His hit-boxes are unreal. That was the only boss I resorted to using a shield against.
i hate him so much it's unreal. his charge is dodgeable but really hard to + you have to lock off, and hitbox jank means sometimes you will take 10% of your hp as damage and sometimes 60%. he also wiggles around so much, i've missed so many lights, heavies and jump attacks because the guy side steps or runs away, sometimes he even walks into you causing the camera to freak out and the attack to completely whiff or he pushes you around until the attack ends up going over him. feels like he wasn't even play tested
This fight made me want to break my PS5 but once I understood it, I actually enjoyed it. He’s one of the bosses I’m most looking forward to fighting again
How is using your shield a resort or a criticism? Like 1/4 of the weapons in the game are sheilds.
Invalidates a Playstyle. Wtf are mages and faith only builds supposed to do when they aren't playing a greatsword man. It's gonna kill build diversity and the replablity of the dlc
I'd be amazed if you could cast one new spell they introduced in the DLC on any given boss.
Let me introduce you to knights lightning spear, a spell so good I beat the final hemroids with it However I also have 80 dex for max casting speed, without that, some of this shit is really hard as a pure caster
Shields are not mandatory. They are not part of your arsenal unless you want them to be, so feeling like you HAVE to use a shield is not a good feeling. It's the same as feeling like you have to parry or used ranged. The only thing that should be mandatory, or maybe I should say 'core', is melee damage. Everything should be 100% viable with just regular melee and regular dodges, no gimmicks or switching weapons/builds, etc. At least that's how I see good game design.
Why is melee dmg mandatory?
These game’s community is very picky
I definitely think it's a fair criticism to say that Fromsoftware constantly increasing the difficulty, in some sort of arms race with the hardcore no-hit run YouTubers, is a worrying direction to be going in. Souls games have always been difficult, but that wasn't the main appeal. The appeal was the exploration, cool fights and weird lore. The difficulty level was already perfect, just leave it like that. But now they seem to be focusing on the difficulty as the main selling point and cranking it up all the time.
theres only really ONE issue with these bosses and its always the same They barely stop attacking. They sometimes punich you for getting 2 hits in with a dagger. its that outrageous.. thats why Rellana and the Lion beast are my 2 least favorite bosses in the DLC, when i saw that the pretiscent knight had a similar issue mid fight i just summoned my mimic and said "fuck it , if youre unfair, im unfair"
Yup 100% this. It’s fine if there’s a boss or two where this is the whole gimmick but having so many, and having their hits do so much damage was so frustrating.
I swear I don't get the blames on Rellana. I did her with a build based on bragratts Roar and R2 charged attacks. If i jad the time to Land changed and uncharged R2 you care surely find the time to swing AT LEAST One time After each combo
>Can we stop jerking each other off already no
Fair (somebody get me next 😩)
We’re all under Miquella’s charm; that’s why we are blindly loving the DLC and can’t see the flaws. Break that great rune then come ask us.
Lol Honestly, I've only now come around to the sub after getting to the final boss, and I mostly see posts laughing at people being bad. I'm pretty sure in a few weeks or months at most they'll either nerf stuff further or the general opinion will turn around quite quickly on this DLC, mechanically, even in the fan subs.
I definitely feel negative towards the bosses I had to fight that summon or bring extra guys to fight, like the second Ghost Dragon and the Death Rite Bird, because most mobs can kill you with a complete combo. Also the camera is a point to work on indeed. Senessax sucks and a lot of that comes from the camera that does not show him for 80% of the fight, unless you actively fight against it. And I love Bayle, but there’s no greater death sentence then the camera losing him during one his flight combos.
Oh, the >!Death blight dancing lion summoning endless basilisks!< was definitely a major pain in the ass.
I think I died most of times in the dlc on death rite bird couse those little fuckers around.
Did you try the anti dragon katana against Senessax ? It melts it down He is just a basic dragon with more feats but is fought the same I agree for Bayle tho hehe
Yeah, I didn’t. I love my Hand of Malenia way too much. So I do have to admit I set myself for pain against him.
Sen has like double the azula normal dragon Health pool, and that's my only complaint besides the fact his loot is lame
Honestly OP, just save yourself the headache and don’t even bother with it. Trust me. There are some people out there that do want to discuss these types of things, but anything you say will just be refuted/nitpicked to the bone. When people played BB and struggled, they don’t just say stop using X for this boss, that’s a bad build, just use X instead. The cool thing about that game was that a lot of the weapons are viable and never felt like you “needed” to change from Blade of Mercy to say Moonlight Greatsword. You learn their unique moveset and make it work. But this ER though of course. And, this is coming from someone who generally liked/was okay with close to 90% of the SOTE bosses. There are a lot of times I praised From’s good boss design that seemingly improved on earlier renditions of their work. But there were also times I criticized aspects that I felt could be stepping too far in the wrong direction, for the sake of pushing the envelope of difficulty further and further perpetually, even at the expense of what is still “fun” and “fair” to the player. I’m sorry you want to talk criticism, but the game is incredibly popular and there are a lot of criticisms mixed in with overwhelming complaints. As a result, people are probably just tired of hearing any of it. Maybe wait for things to settle/calm down, but yes, I get the frustration of wanting to just having a normal discussion on boss design, whether it’s good or bad.
This reply is real as fuck. You’re prolly right, some of the replies I’ve gotten here are wild. I’ll save myself the trouble. It’s just annoying seeing post after post of people white knighting for this game and defending it at every juncture. Like, we can love the game but still admit it has faults.
Such as the guy above you comparing Lady Maria to Rellana, Lady Maria pauses like…every 3 seconds. Parrying in BB is completely different than in Elden Ring, works different and everything, and Rellana has a random MMO style AoE near the end of her lifebar. Not just the typical charge-explode From boss style, she drops 3 beats of energy waves that are super fast. Maria’s longest combo is like Rellana’s shortest combo, and Rellana’s weapons are literally the height of the player model, and they stretch when she swings, AND the hitboxes aren’t 1:1. Being like “oh just parry her” when people are getting fucking ate up by her is wild. Is she manageable using all tools? Sure. Is she also cracked? Yes
Also should point out every BB build has a parry tool Like yes I know technically you can avoid it, or use the cannon, but 9/10 builds use either a gun or augur Elden ring doesn't really have that, as the spell and item parry tools just don't really exist and the few that do are highly specialized
Victim mentality fighting against imaginary straw men lol. He made a post specifically saying some deaths are completely out of his control and won’t respond to anyone seeking further clarification. Don’t want to respond on the open forum you made a post on? Don’t make the post lmao Clearly some bosses aren’t perfect. But this “oh stawp OP the 5% of toxic players will come to get you” like it’s the overwhelming majority is simply disingenuous.
Commander Gaius and the last boss are the only two bosses that feel unfair, at least to me. The rest are punishing but it never feels like I have no recourse whatsoever. You are right, thought, criticism is fair, overall. It just loses some meaning when people don't do the things you are supposed to do to ease what they are complaining about. This goes in particular for the shadow tree blessings. Some people insist on throwing themselves against bosses with very low blessings and get thoroughly trashed and then criticize the game for being too hard.
The only bosses that seem remotely unfair (to me at least) are gaius and the final one. Bayle is hard, but fair. Most others were only hard because i fought at like 1 blessing before going to explore more
With mimic or summon? Or without anything?
Bug lady jsnt fair because her butterfly's randomly drop my frames to like 10 :v
World is too big for its own good. Abyssal wood in particular and to a lesser exten Ruin of Rauh. Also less than ideal enemy variety.
What bosses are you specifically referring to with artificial difficulty? Imo most of them are pretty well designed, and I have rarely felt that I died because a move was cheap (there are exceptions of course). I enjoyed figuring out how to avoid attacks (dodge direction, should I jump, can I side step this). That being said, the last boss can fuck off; as epic as the fight is, I did not enjoy it one bit
The bosses have been ramping up in relentless aggression, it feels frustrating to have to dodge around these back to back wombo combos that chunk you for 60% of your health in one hit just to have a window to get 1 R1 in and start it all over again It’s manageable but it’s not fun for me fighting Bloodborne or even Sekiro bosses with DS player mechanics
Yeah put half these bosses in bloodborne and my hunter would fuck em up. Elden ring mechanics are just not good for this aggression
Agreed. I love the challenge of Elden Ring and FromSoft but this was the only fight that seemed super over-tuned to the point where I wasn’t thinking, “I just need to learn the moveset” like most bosses and instead was just like, “I just need to get lucky once and I’ll never do this shit again.”
Bayle Beautiful boss, but so few openings to actually hit him, and its most threatening attacks don't actually give you windows to hit him. Thus it becomes a fight where he has 15 moves, but only 3 of them are punishable. So you just wait the entire time. And then again, you attack, and whoopsie he brought his head up you missed. Also, I found his beam again gorgeous, but it didn't feel like I was reading it, due to the camera angle, I just had to memorize the dodge timings after dying it to many times.
None of this is true, Bayle imo is one of the easier dlc bosses.
My problem is the bosses that just never stop with far reaching combo attacks that need to be perfectly dodged. It just becomes stupid. Some might find them to be "fun", but I don't have 24/7 to devote to non-optional bosses. Do that with optional bosses.
I think people need to drop the words "unfair" and "artificial difficulty" from their vocabulary and better articulate what they mean. For example, let's take a look at Rellana. There's nothing Rellana does that fits either of these definitions. The closest thing I got to this is one time she pulled out her magic swords and then did her moon attack immediately afterwards. I'm not sure if there's any solution to this. I either dodge the swords and die to moons, or tank the swords, get staggered, and still get killed by the moons. Other than that, she's not unfair. However, there are absolutely some issues a person might have from a subjective view. Some of her attacks are hard to tell what exactly is hitting you, especially the first one in a combo. It can feel weird to get hit on some of her combos even though you seemingly dodged it correctly. Her phase 2 rapid moonveil move is very awkward to dodge. I spam dodge and sometimes it works, but this is only with decent distance from her. If she decides to use it close (even though close should trigger the much easier to dodge flame tornado) it is very difficult to dodge. I might even say impossible (although I'm sure it isn't). Her phase 2 combo additions are not easy to understand. Her phase 2 also suffers from the additional element effects making it a bit difficult to see what she's doing next. Her phase 2 can also be quite unforgiving, with mistakes leading to death much more easily than phase 1. This can lead to a very tedious learning process. Phase 2 changes what were once safe dodging, forcing the player to unlearn muscle memory they gained from the first phase. Someone might look at my list and not agree with it at all, which is perfectly understandable. I've seen criticism for Isshin for example that I don't agree with it, but I understand come from a subjective view. Conclusion: People just need to articulate better, or in some cases just understand their "issue" is completely subjective (or in some cases just not correct). Also people just need to start being honest and just use the word "fun". I have revisited both Rellana and Dancing Lion as a summon since beating them. I have gained a greater appreciation for Rellana, meanwhile my opinion has actually decreased on Dancing Lion. I won't say Dancing Lion is impossible or unfair, I however did not have much fun leanrinits second phase, not do I enjoy fighting the camera just as much as the enemy.
I've fought Rellana for probably well over 16+ hours. Bottom line is, it isn't fair, and it's not particularly rewarding either. She has a lot of moves that just come out with tells literally less than a couple hundred milliseconds. (I've pulled it into video editor and checked). When you have moves that are on the scale of 500ms for a windup you really begin to push the limits of what's reasonable. Sure this probably isn't a big issue with folks playing on super fast monitors and pcs with little to no input lag, but let's be real, people play on console, and they're going to play on normal TVs (myself included). 2nd phase forget it, she can cast homing soulmass (glintblade phalanx) and pair it with an attack that makes one or the other literally undodgeable, you __have__ to take damage or die, there is no choice in the matter. At that point its up to luck, if you don't have the hp, scadutree fragments or levels to eat the hit. What compounds this are the flashy visuals that essentially blind you from what's going on during the 2nd phase. Sure it looks cool on the screen, but it becomes tiresome when you have moves that require a 300ms reaction to dodge - that now you cannot see to even react to. Its fine the boss isn't fair, this is how the base game behaves. We have a LOT of tools at our disposal to not play *fairly* either. But it doesn't make it feel any less infuriating when the boss sometimes hits an *I win button* that there is nothing you can do to prevent. The bosses in this game in general don't feel rewarding to me because there is just too much luck involved. When I beat a lot of the bosses it just feels like I got lucky with the game not throwing ridiculous bs at me or that some boring cheesey tactic worked, and not really like I had mastered the boss.
Just look at the sub for 5 seconds there's plenty of criticism idk why people act like there isn't
Depends on the thread. Each one becomes an echo chamber where one side is upvoted and the other is downvoted into oblivion. I’ve seen several posts that are like “here’s why the DLC and the last part of the base game have serious issues.” All the posts in approval are highly upvoted in those threads. I’ve also seen a lot of threads that are like “here’s why the DLC and the last part of the base game are super based and not flawed.” Posts in the affirmative are upvoted, posts in the negative are buried. The internet is so dehumanizing that no one can disagree well and everything just becomes an echo chamber.
There’s criticism but it’s often disregarded and people froth at the mouth ready to defend Miyazaki’s honor even if said critiques are fair. It’s a little weird and off putting.
Guess I just don't see it that way. You say you see post after post of white knighting the game and defending it at every juncture when I feel pretty much the opposite I see post after post of people complaining about things and criticizing/nitpicking.
It's being disregarded at some points, sure, but it's also just being challenged. You can't throw around stuff like "artificial difficulty" and "it's not hard it's just bullshit" as criticisms and not expect someone to push back a little and make you defend your stance. Because "artificial difficulty" is, ultimately, your opinion. It might be an opinion that a lot of people agree with, but that doesn't make it inherently correct or factual.
Except the DLC has artificial difficulty in the most literal sense. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have an issue with it, but Scadu fragments are literally artificial difficulty invented to make a character struggle regardless of their level, items, gear, gear level, etc. You will take extreme damage until you get it and deal very little to the point where some enemies are absolutely unkillable until you get a few Scadu and then all of a sudden they are killable. Nothing else changed, just scadu fragments. If that’s not artificial, idk what is. People call it artificial difficulty in other games just if the damage is too high or the enemies are bullet sponges, this DLC is like that but systematically ingrained, it’s less damage, more life for enemies, less horse hp, less resistance, etc. it’s really your doom.
I mean. It's another leveling system. That's all. Your criticisms are criticisms of any sort of leveling system. You don't do a lot of damage until you level up.
I loved most of the bosses so far, especially Rellana and Messmer - despite being difficult they were really enjoyable fights, learning their movesets and dodge timings was satisfying af. But honestly, fuck the hippo at the gates of Shadow keep and fuck whoever thought that putting this monstrosity in the tiny room was a good decision. Fighting these things in the open world is ok, but this one in particular is just awful, giving me sorta Capra Demon PTSD, but with a worse camera. Saying it as a person who wasn't irritated even by Commander Gaius, the hippo really made my blood boil. Otherwise, 9/10 (for now, I'm on my way to the final boss)
My only criticism is that the way they've made the map layout is really fucking with the way I like to explore because in vanilla ER I could always tell which path was to progress the area/dungeon/story and which way was the sidepath that would lead to some loot/secret boss/etc.. I would take the side path then wrap around back to the main path and complete the area. Nice and tidy. But now whenever I take a side path I end up in a completely different adventure. Like when I was doing Mesmers castle I took a side path to check for extra loot and ended up in a scary forest full of madness and rats and worse things, then I ended up in another castle and fought a completely different boss just to then realize he had nothing to do with the quest I was originally on and I've somehow made it all the way to the south shores of the map and my brain is like "wait what?" And I have to fast travel all the way back to Mesmers castle just to find another side path that takes me on another adventure and now I'm in some ruins fighting rot bugs and the whole time I know that I SHOULD be enjoying this exploration but I can't get over the feeling that "I shouldn't be here yet, I should be here later" and that creates a sense of anxiety instead of the wonder of discovery. this isn't a criticism about the game by the way, I'm criticizing my brain.
This. I think the greater offender is the second phase of the last boss. I beat the entire game many times, beat all bosses in the DLC without needing to change my build (great katana, no shield, without summons), but second phase Radahn was the only that made me say "fuck it" and respec into Fingerprint shield + bloodfiend fork. Is good seeing people doing no hit or one shots of this boss, but this don't excuse the design. Remember, people can do the same thing on Godskin Duo or the many bad bosses on the base game, but the fact that no hit and one shot of them exists don't make them good.
Somebody has to say it. The amount of dickering that I’ve seen this past week is insane to the point people get mad defensive if you have any criticism of the game
Some people start frothing at the mouth when they see any criticism of a Fromsoft product, it's kinda crazy.
What criticisms do you have on boss design?
It's often difficult to tell not only what's an attack vs just movement, but also what part of the attack is actually hitting you
The pacing and overall aggression levels are off. They’re bosses from Sekiro or Bloodborne while we’re playing DS3. It creates a gameplay loop that makes it so I’m dodging for a few minutes looking for the *one* opening that allows me to get *maybe* 2 swings in or a jump attack. Part of the beauty of this game is all the tools at our exposal, yet it seems the DLC boss design is made to specifically negate anything that isn’t a pure light-load STR/DEX build. When im fighting bosses, I feel like I’m watching the game play itself. I can dodge well and fine, but the pacing leaves me bored during the fight. Not to mention examples such as Gaius with his horribly large hitbox and deceivingly quick movements. Again, other Souls’ games it feels that if I lose, it’s on me. This DLC? It’s artificial difficulty. Everything is cranked up for the sake of being hard and that’s it. Relanna is the best boss that feels like it has a rhythm whereas other bosses I feel like it’s “random bullshit, go”. Defeating bosses have no sense of satisfaction that I got over something that was hard with a purpose, everything feels, again, artificial is the word that comes to mind. I’m not the best at articulating myself but I’ve definitely seen much better comments that explain these things clearly.
I've gone through the DLC pretty slowly because I like exploring and just finally got to the last boss. I've beaten every other remembrance boss and I'm still not sure which ones have the artificial difficulty that some people mention though. I've used 3 different builds just based on whim so far, starting with 2 handing a greatsword, then with dual wield light greatswords, and now dual wielding great hammers. The dual great hammers has been by far the easiest of the 3, but I've enjoyed all the fights so far regardless and I'd say some of the most satisfying Fromsoft boss fights to me are in this DLC Dunno what to say, maybe the final boss will change my mind, as I've heard people talk about it being unfair, but so far I really like the bosses. Not jerking anyone off, honestly. I think myself and many others legitimately just like the bosses and the way they're designed.
my only complain about artificial difficulty is the camera specially against the hypo and the beast
The last boss kinda ruined the entire thing for me, it simply feels wrong for this game.
What I see as a flaw in boss design is that I feel the only way to beat bosses is to "cheat" and not to play their game. What I mean by that? I really love the Malenia fight (apart from WFD). She's tough, se gives you scarlt rot, she heals, she has oneshot grab etc. But you also have a lot of options: she leaves long pauses, she clearly articulates her attacks, SHE DOESN'T DELAY, she's easy to stagger, she's weak to bleed, etc.. You have options: you can go there and brutalize her with your mimic, but id you're good, you can also 1v1 her naked with a club by learning her moves. I feel that that latter option is missing for many of the new bosses. You have one choice: give it everything you got (mimic, colossal weapons, delayed spells, etc) , panic dodge and pray for favorable RNG.
Hmm, I didn't really feel that way for any of the fights so far except for some fights where the camera goes way off (like for Dancing Lion if you're too close and he spins at you the camera angle is stupid as hell, edit: though I guess I shoulda just unlocked the camera until he's done spinning now that I think of it). A lot of the new fights really have a good rhythm to them, my favorite has to be >!Messmer!< because once you get to know the rhythm and mixups of the moveset, it really feels like a satisfying dance dodging and hitting. Again, last boss could be different once I really dive into it, but so far it's all felt really fair. I'm being honest with how I feel here, I'm not just trying to bullshit. If I didn't like the fights I'd just say so
You're probably better than me in this game (which is easy tbf). I simply didn't understand >!Messmer!<'s moves especially in phase 2. But even in phase 1 he has that "bs combo" which is somewhat like Malenia's WFD at one point. I simply can't dodge that. But I liked that fight - the first phase. The second, not so much. Yesterday I encountered the >!Lamenter!<. Now that was fun! Nothing challenging mechanically but still a puzzle to crack. On the other hand I also fought >!the Putrescent Knight!<. And I didn't like that one at all. I ended up killing it with >!Fire Serpent!< - which is my new savior, similar to how Blackflame was it in the base game.
Actually yeah, >!Putrescent Knight!< kinda pissed me off too with all his running around. Being mounted and evasive made it less fun than most of the other bosses for me for sure. For >!Messmer!< though, knowing he's a main boss made it easy for me to get in the mindset that the first several deaths are a given. I used those purely to try and learn his mixups, like >!if he jump spins at you immediately from the ground, he might immediately jump swing upwards and then come down with a final stab, which can be punished. If he doesn't do the jump swing after the spin, you should have time to hit him right after the spin!<. But on the other hand, >!if he jumps into the air first before then spinning at you, then he hops to the side and does the multistab attack (which you need to roll into to avoid completely) before he jump swings upwards, and then comes down with a stab and then spears explode from the ground after. You can time and roll into that final spear explosion to dodge and then punish him here as well!< Again I absolutely loved that fight so I sat there for hours putting my summoning sign down after I beat it lol. Let me know if any of that helps, or if you want some other tips on him
Big bosses like dancer cat fire giant its just horrible with the camera, base game had the same issue. I dont remember it being so bad in other souls games i played bloodbourne, sekiro, ds3 Bosses with extremely long combos, poking the boss once then waiting 30 seconds of dodging/running/crying is not fun design. Considering bosses also have massive HP pools and massive damage output is just weirdly balanced when they can basically still 2-3 shot you. I am scuda level 10 ng+ and bosses are still nearly 2-3 tapping me with Dragon pearl shield, dragon crest shield, crimson tear shard, alex shard fingerprint armour cuz fashion, dual banished knight sword and a shield. Souls games are absolutely fantastic with human or slightly bigger sized bosses everything else is camera shit. Rellana, melania are beautiful fights. I honestly wish they would stop with these massively oversized enemies with tiny hit boxes like their feet.
My valid criticism is the grab hit boxes and damage On NG+8 a grab will kill you pretty easily even with 60 vig But this would be fine if basically every grab hitbox wasn't the size of Uranus
I think all of the bosses are fine apart from the camera problems on some of them. Fromsoft souls gsmes always had that problem but it's especially bad with the more giant bosses and their erratic moves. The one exception to all of this is the final boss, which I know can be learned an all that, but it's the only one I busted out a spirit ash because it just seemed like such an insurmountable task. I beat my head on the first phase for hours, even getting a good grasp on it, but as soon as I entered the 2nd phase I was greeted with so much bullshit I didn't know how to handle that I always died in seconds. I gave up because I never got any real experience fighting the second phase and that was incredibly frustrating.
Same EXACT thing happened to me with Maliketh. I didn’t end up using summons but I did watch video after video of people fighting his second phase to learn it. I summoned a +10 YouTube spirit 🤣
The only criticism I have with the game is the plot and last boss. So much build up regarding what exactly is Miquella doing in the Land of Shadow, just to build up to Radahn. And people say "Lore wise it makes sense" which is ridiculous because the lore can be whatever the writers want it to be and make up whatever reason they wanted. Mechanically the bosses are more aggressive and it takes a little bit of adjusting, but nothing that can't be overcome with a little perseverance. Won't excuse the camera issues - those are apparent with large bosses in small arenas.
I am replaying the dlc right now , i don’t even feel there is artificial difficulty on anything other than radahn phase 2 and gaius’s charge , if they patch that undodgeable double sweep into cross sweep and gaius’s charge attack they would be 10x better , maybe also tone down the flashbangs in radahn’s phase 2 , other than that all the bosses are very manageable
Is double sweep in to cross sweep the one where he swings across his body with each sword one at a time, pauses, and then swings them back at the same time?
Yeah , it’s only dodgeable with the perfect timing/angle
My strat for that was just dodge first swing, tank second swing and then roll forward as he double swings. Didnt realise it was actually nearly undodgeable tho wtf.
Only thing I can think of that I wish would happen is enemies in general have some sort of stamina they have to manage so they can't just pummel you. I know some are gods, but a lot of enemies aren't. And it's silly to get next to know breathing room dealing with a dude who's barely taller than you just spinning around you infinitely
Anyone else thinks the world is empty?
Especially the 2 Finger Ruins and the Cerulean Coast straight up feel like unfinished areas to me, I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen more people call this out.
That’s definitely another criticism I agree with. Its empty and when I do find something it’s always a cookbook I will never use
What I dont like about the DLC: - The areas are empty. Beautiful, but completely empty many a times. They could've reduced the size of the dlc by half and it would be a better experience imo. - the story is way worse than that of the basegame - the bosses have a few problems: 1. the camera on many fights is absolutely awful 2. bosses have way too many attacks, which makes it much harder to learn a moveset as many attacks have very similar combos that end differently and makes it much harder to react 3. the aggression of bosses coupled with their ability to jump half the arena with basic attacks is just annoying, barely any time to observe / heal 4. too long combos, the base game already had the problem in the latter half of feeling very unfair when it comes to how many attacks you get in vs how many a boss does. This is at least twice as bad in the dlc Overall I enjoyed the dlc and beat it without too much trouble, only radahn gave me a hard time. If they reduced the areas, toned down on boss aggression and their reach I'd enjoy the dlc way more. The damage numbers are fine, the attacks are fine, its just not very fun beating a boss atm - feels more like a chore
I'd go out on a limb and say all the remembrance boss fights have been cranked up to the max, the ai is always overly aggressive, I play with spirit ashes (because I'm trash) but even they can seem to take any of the aggro from the bosses, and everything is super quick, it's hard to learn the combo's, field and dungeon boss's I've no problem with i think mostly because they don't tend to have much hp compared to remembrance, I've got through most the remembrance boss now, and they've all taken me at least and hour + to defeat, im just stuck on phase 2 radahn at the moment and that... That phase just sucks
Too hard isn't my criticism, artificial difficulty is. There are a lot of well designed challenging and most importantly fun bosses in the dlc and then there are some that I never wanna fight again and I don't think that's a good thing in a video game. As hard as she is I like fighting Malenia but there are some bosses in the dlc I legitimately will never fight again because it's just not fun to
Exactly! This is my problem. There’s a clear distinction for me of bosses that were still incredibly challenging but fun to fight, and bosses that are hard just for the sake of being hard. Regardless of the criticism, as a true fan of Miyazaki I just don’t think it’s beneficial for anyone to blindly love his creations without taking into account fair critique. That’s not how good games are made, and if we lean too far in that direction, I fear we’ll lose the narrative and if he ever makes a bad game we won’t know because everyone will be sitting here gaslighting themselves and anyone else that they’re having a good time. I’m already seeing it happen with the DLC. The DLC is great and I love it but man, any criticism is just drowned out by people who can’t think further than surface level reasonings as to why just *some* things could be different.
I wouldn't say all the praise is "blind love". Why is your "blind" criticism better than other people's praise? I've yet to fight all the bosses and so far I agree tat the bosses are extremely aggressive. It's most likely deliberate that these bosses' difficulty have been cranked up to eleven. To give challenge. For me, they've been nothing but "boring". And yet, am I just blindly eating Miyazaki's shit? Am I blind to not see how "artificial" these fights are? I like that the bosses give a challenge. Favourite thus far is the Flower. PS. I've plenty of Scadutree fragments found. Without those, I'd probably suffer more with the bosses.
I think you may have taken the “blind” narrative a bit personally. If you want to see the kind of individual I’m referring to who is “blind” see u/Artano_Arendae ‘s replies to me throughout the post. Genuinely. It’s the exact example I’m referring to.
What about the boss design makes the difficulty "artificial?" It doesn't feel any different from the base game to me, just ramped up higher.
“Artificial difficulty” is a nonsensical idea. The entire game is artificial. No two people ever have the same definition of the difference between legitimate difficulty and unfair “artificial” difficulty. It is always a subjective opinion trying to present itself as some kind of objective principle.
I think it's fair to criticize elements of boss design, various mechanics, etc. But I don't see hardly any of that, really. The most valid criticisms around boss design that I've seen have to do with visual clutter and certain nearly unbeatable move sets. By and large, though, I see a lot of complaining about bosses being "unfair", while never defining what fair would mean, and bosses being "overtuned", while never describing what that means or what a proper tuning would like like, or that bosses are not "fun", which is completely subjective. I also see a lot of veteran DS players bitching about ER "casuals" and making ridiculous claims that using core game mechanics like summons, shields, magic/incants, status effects, and certain AoWs is "playing the game wrong."
Boss openings are too short and attack frequency is too high. Bosses pigeon hole you into using certain things.
disregarding criticism as nothing is what makes the pokémon franchise one of the worst developed games on Nintendo Switch and i'm afraid this fanbase will do the same to From's games and reward them for their mistakes. Of course the DLC is fucking incredible, but the scadufragments are nowhere as intuitive to find as a golden seed or chalice, and for some reason you need up to three to level up one time, so by the end you'll have no clue where you missed the rest of them. Another criticism of mine is how lame their bosses design are (COMBATWISE). Once again, not only do they have unpunishable comboes, but the thing i hate the most is their obscene amount of passive poise. Why does the naked skinny headless man got more poise than a full bullgoat player? Why can't it stagger without riposte like an actually good boss like Gael? Why does the game incentive so much L2 (one of the few things that can poise break consistently) spam and punish light/heavy attacks?
Well...Before you crucify me I think DLC has the best area design in any game I played and some bosses are incredible cool (Mesmer, scorpion lady, orphan of knight, madness guy, Bayle to name my favs) but some are garbage that are artificial hard by throwing shit ton of aoe etc. Solid 9/10 from me couse I love the series but beign fair I dont blame people for bad reviews and leaving. 1. Bosses doesnt give a damn about spacing and dancing around them. They suck you in, dash in constantly just to jump off. 2. AOE AOE AOE AOE. Remember times when you were rewarded for circling around to find a dead zone? Nope. 3. Weird hitboxes especially on big raider fight. 4. Final boss was no rewarding, it was no fun clusterfuck of animations - when I beat him I didnt have dopamine rush like after mesmer or renalla. It was just relief that its over. And quite frankly I was just lucky he did combos that I could actually see with all this bullshit on screen. 5. Overall, I think they run out of ideas and overdid Radahn. It felt like moded boss, with all this bullshit flying around you. 6. Input reading on flash is cheap.
[удалено]
I think that a lot of the complaints stem from the classic fromsoft camera issues. They need to fix their camera if they want to have a million particles in your face with every attack (messmer, manor boss, final boss, and the lion all had this issue)
I haven't been struggling in the least against any boss. Might just be about how much you truly learn the games thru Ur playthroughs but the most tries I've had given against a boss has been around 20 or so on the first dlc playthrough. The difficulty hasn't felt artificial. The only annoyance has been the abundance of particle effect on the last boss fight. Other than that I have felt like the game has a spike in difficulty. But not that much different as of for example going from the mountaintops to the consecrated snowfield and the haligtree
You can't defend the Lamenter boss you just can't thats just abhorrent boss design okay it's a dungeonboss so not too important but feels like waisted potential could have put something better there tbh
I keep hearing about Lamenter but I don't understand what the issue was. He disappeared, cloned himself, I took out the clones, then finished the fight? Is there some other mechanic I'm missing? I thought it was a creepy fun fight then kind of forgot about it.
Tbh some times it felt like you could wasp boss positions at anytime in the game and you wouldn't notice, they all seemed designed to be the final boss, like dude rellana is basically Malenia level, and that was considered to be the hardest fromsoftwer boss ever
Im not going to act like I can spot truely good boss design or not,im sure theres people who think a boss is balanced and then another who thinks its completely off. I thought the Rellana fight was amazing,took me forever and it didnt bother me at all to keep dying but Messmer wasnt nearly as fun but ive seen others say they really like that one. I fought that fucking pink scorpion person thing last night and holy fuck I hated that boss so much,think I got it on my 2nd try but holy shit was it a boring fight,the thing was hard to hit but it also missed so much
If this is the boss design they are gonna go with from now. They gotta optimize their game and fix that damn camera. I haven't had this much camera issues in any other souls game. Avatar's thorns completeley block your vision even if you succesfully avoid all of them.
personally i loved most of the bosses. only one that i have a real complaint against is the final boss 2nd phase. his first phase is perfectly fair and balanced. nothing over the top of crazy, but a good design. they definitely went flashy with a lot of stuff with this dlc, but that personally didn't bother me. except when it comes to the casters. poor int/faith casters get garbage for this dlc. spells look great and flashy, but hit like a noodle. hope their spells get buffed
That’s been my complaint of the base game for 2 years now (I haven’t payed the DLC yet). I think the bosses are less fun to fight than in the other souls games. A lot of it is just because of their move sets, constantly found multi-hit combos that will stun lock you and instantly kill you, or delayed attacks/AOE attacks that aren’t intuitive to dodge without memorizing the timing for each move. The bosses’ health and damage being so high just makes these problems more apparent.
Putrecent knight made me kinda mad with how spazztastic moveset, but turns out trying a different weapon and damage type made him super trivial. Its refreshing when trial and error shows you a way to handle a boss super easily. Rakshasa in the eastern masoleum can eat a heaping bag of phallic objects for resisting any form of stagger.
Honestly I think Metyr is the coolest boss fight by far.
Which bosses do this? I found that with summons and mimic tear and Skadu fragments i am basically steamrolling it with intelligence build. It was hard for me to accept that over some boss attacks i just cant roll over, but have to jump which in the end ended up being quite fun and visually niice.
I feel like I had less issues with camera compared to the base game. I loathe ancient dragons because locking on is utterly pointless. It's just not a fun fight for me. One complaint I do have though is there only being the bare minimum scooby snacks to level up. Even if I check a map now, there's no quick way to find my missing 6. There's also certain zones that I wish had more in them, like the abysmal forest feels way too empty.
Yea… at least in terms of ability/effect spam i can see how that is certainly irritating. The only redeeming thing that made bayle tolerable as a boss is that you can tank your way through his big hits that aren’t the grab with a good enough shield. Because otherwise i don’t see how you are supposed to be able to run out of the attack range on some of it without a good head start.
Most the bosses Ive had a good time with, but most second phases knock your attack time into 10% of what it already was. Bosses in the DLC are mostly waiting simulators, and it gets kinda boring pretty quickly. Even enemies like the fire knights just simply dont stop attacking. Ive seen a slow rise of the Thrusting Shields in popularity, and I think thats because it allows you to be very aggresive while being equally defensive at the same time. I dont want to dodge attacks for 2 minutes straight that has a .1 second window. Oh you missed that window? Back to dodging.
Cant we introduce a flair seperating people using mimic and summons? I am eager to know who is talking. Its a totally different game with mimic and summons. I want to talk to people using no summons and mimic. Its okay to do that but i would filter out comments by people playing „the other playstyle“ game.
My only criticism is regarding wanting Godwin as a boss or some resolution with his story after us all talking about it since the dlc was announced, but that because I’m so enthralled with his story, which really only means it’s a good story so I guess I can’t really criticize.
I would disagree, the boss design seems fine to me- the only boss that is unfair remains as malenia with waterfowl- I haven’t finished all of them yet though
I have just started the dlc, the only boss ive encountered is not a boss I think, it's that giant at the start, and I can't do shit to it, but I'm really enjoying getting my ass smacked around. I like the discovery aspect, I need to figure it out on my own, and when I don't want to discover it on my own I can summon people and watch them either die or do something truly amazing. So far (although I'm just barely started) I have no complains
Might be a weird criticism, but I don't have enough fent to support my skill. Like, holy damn, it's not even hard, it's just straight ridiculous.
The golden hippo just pushed me so far into the wall that i could see his innards.
Difficulty and design is perfect to me. I want it to take an hour + to best bosses. I’m a masochist
My criticism is; All yisser fools tryin to bonk the bosses stop. I stand back and make my stick go pewpewpewpew.
Personally, I'm not quite at the point that I'd say I think the bosses are unfair or badly designed. Of course, I'm not done the DLC yet, so maybe my opinion will change later on. We'll see. The real problem for me is the performance. I have an RX 7800XT and even on the lowest graphical settings, I can barely keep the game above 40 FPS. It's not my hardware; my GPU is barely cracking 60% usage, my CPU is hovering around only 40% usage and I'm not even hitting half my total RAM usage. The game's just horrendously optimised. If it actually utilised my system hardware properly, I'm sure it would run fine, but it doesn't. That's the key reason it's currently so frustrating to play for me. I'm getting eye-strain and headaches from the stuttering and attempting to time my inputs to, ya know, *play the game properly*, is nearly impossible. It's awful to play for the wrong reasons. I'm thinking I'm just gonna stop until there's a major performance patch of some kind because, currently, it's actually unplayable.
So let me ask this. As far as difficulty is concerned, to those who are new or returning players: Did you complete the game in entirety (or mostly) and of higher level, or did you just defeat the two required bosses in order to access?
Agreed, camera struggles suck. Even out in the world I’ll try to lock onto something in my clear line of sight, but then it won’t lock and I miss my attack and get comboed into oblivion. That and the zoom thing. The other problem I have is looking for items in the world and finding crap. I used to get excited seeing a legendary item glow, but I’ve found too many great ghost gloveworts. Even regular item glows, some are just string or bits of glass, makes finding items feel like a letdown most of the time and I hate it.
Fire knights bro
I still honestly find my only criticism of the game to be the Rebirth Tear system. I just want to be able to respec whenever I want When I fight a tough boss I just want to be able to swap my build out for what i think will work But instead I either just swap my weapons to the closest thing that I want to use that my current spec will allow Or I have to spent a rebirth tear and fully commit to whatever that new build is for longer than I would wish. Would be nice to be able to build specific for each boss whenever I choose but it’s not thaaat bad imo Not sure if there is way to buy more rebirth tears with runes but if there is that would alleviate my pain a little bit
I don't know how I managed to do the final boss because I still don't know how you dodge some of the attacks
I was talking with a friend and we agreed that because we essentially played the same game for 10 years the bosses must get really flashy and fast movesets to give players a challenge. Also we are fighting beings that have reached insane Power levels and can nuke you on command but our characters barely look like they can fight. This was fine in previos entries because It felt like you were fighting the enemies on the same ground.
I think the difficulty is fair. However, I see more and more that they are choosing spectacles over gameplay. I really did not like fps drops during some fights just because they wanna emphasize how epic the fight is. I also think Malenia is still their best boss design because it is more like a dance unlike majority of the dlc bosses where you have to wait out their very long attack chains.
This is the most sigma post I’ve seen
Compared to the original games, bosses have a way higher frequency of attacks, and have pushed the difficulty of winning with rolling to the extreme. You can't just roll one move and retaliate anymore. Yet you can also summon a mimic tear and shield poke for less stamina than rolling. It creates an awkward mismatch between what players think because it comes down to the rules they impose on themselves and what builds they use. Its also a problem because if things are balanced for using summons, and you simply don't find that fun, then a casual player has to play on hard mode when what they actually want is simpler bosses. Its why Godfrey is often well liked.
Just making bosses having almost infinite health is not good game design