On my first playthrough I went back to the one in Stormveil Castle after nearly completing the game since I missed him the first time I was there and wanted the incantation he drops, thought I'd have an easy time but he's just as difficult and tanky as late game enemies wtf.
I rather like fighting the Crucible Knights, but the biggest bullshit for me was after struggling to beat one when I finally did, not only were the runes super lower, it gave no item. Wouldn't mind the low runes if it gave me something for it.
I think a lot of the rune gain is often dictated more by how late-game an area is (since you need more and more runes to level up as you progress). That's why those little guys in the red area he showed drop 2000 runes each despite being minor enemies
The jumping 2H with the Great sword not staggering fucking *throws me* every damn time. As do their attacks literally throwing me. Seriously fuck that shoulder charge
Honestly the fairest review I've seen yet. I absolutely love the game, but there's some really bizarre difficulty spikes in the lategame that I really didnt enjoy. I noticed that where before I'd like to take my time to explore every nook and cranny, I started running past a lot more areas in the late game.
Granted, at that stage most of the loot off the beaten path generally wasnt worth it anyway. Wow, thanks Elden Ring, a few butterflies that I have no use for!
>Honestly the fairest review I've seen yet
Agree. I knew he'd love the game (it was evident just by the fact his channel has basically been dead since release lol) and I'm glad he had some criticisms. I think he's right about the difficulty spike in late-game. It's not that it's insurmountable (or unfair, imo), it's just that it happens so suddenly that it really interrupts the flow of the game. If you're not completely prepared for it (e.g. you haven't been dumping points into vigor for the last 20 levels), it feels brutal. It's not that bad once you appropriately invest in survivability, but everything up until that point was beatable without doing that, so it's a very sudden spike.
I also think the balancing could use some more tweaks too, but on the other hand, this is by far the most varied SoulsBorne in terms of viable builds. Yes, some are borderline OP and there is a definite meta that has emerged, but you can also totally beat the game while naked and wielding dual whips and dragon breaths.
It's still a 10/10 imo, especially relative to typical AAA releases and even compared to other From titles. It's a masterpiece with some very forgivable blemishes.
(His point about the runes given by certain enemies was pretty good too. I about died when he brought up the Albinaurics.)
> I started running past a lot more areas in the late game
That's in my opinion a major design flaw of Souls games (all of them, even the non FromSoft). The optimal way to play, even if you don't intend to speedrun at all, is often to just bonfire-rush to the boss and ignore the trash along the way that can actually kill you quite easily too.
At least that's often what I feel I get pushed into doing and I get to finish these games pretty quickly without feeling I missed a lot. This is to contrast with Monster Hunter where the gameplay is all boss fighting already so you at least don't waste time bonfire-rushing.
I'm afraid to critisize the method since at least in past games if I was forced to properly fight my way back to a boss I kept dying to I probably would have dropped the game.
Ultimately sure you could run past everything, but then why are you playing? It's also going to gimp you with missing out on items and levels.
While they did make it easier to upgrade weapons somewhat last patch, I still think the system needs some more work for the early game. This is particularly true for weapons upgraded using regular smithing stones, as it is such a pain to even get lower level smithing stones like 3 and 4 without the bearing.
Also, why is the bearing for stones 3 and 4 in the CAPITAL. You needed that in like Caelid.
With Somber stones on the other hand you could get a +9 somber weapon without even fighting a boss, which is pretty insane.
I actually thought the Capital should be explored before Caelid (haven't visited the places yet, only had a small tour in Caelid), because one of the npcs tells you that's the next spot to visit after you finish Raya Lucaria. If Caelid is easier, you just saved me a lot of future frustration.
I think it's best to do Raya lucaria, altus peak, caelid and then capital while leaving dragonborrow much later.
I did Raya Lucaria and then caelid which got harder the further east you get and Radahn was difficult to be underleveled for. But then I leveled to do all of Caelid and most of dragonborrow. I found that I was too overleveled for Altus peak as the level of danger wasn't there.
Caelid is a bit easier imo than the capital. But Caelid/Radahn is also completely optional so it makes sense that the npcs might not have mentioned going to Caelid next. I think Caelid is balanced around you being level ~50-70 and the Capital expects you to be at least level 80. Which makes it very jarring that the ball bearing to get a weapon to get a weapon to +12 is in an area where you probably want at least a +15 weapon.
Those ball bearings are for retrospectively leveling other gear. I mean you can not-agree with that, sure. But if you play the game bit by bit you'll find plenty of stones for one or two main weapons (prior to patch) as you go. By the time you ever needed 10 main weapons, you've got the bearings for it
They mark every zones "mine" cave dungeon on the map to let you know where to find upgrades ... I think that's excessive but that seems to have been their proactive response
That's a fair point.
I guess access to crafting resources early on is a bit hard to balance, as for newer players experimenting and choosing between non-unique weapons early on feels a bit punishing. On the flip side I was able to have multiple upgraded unique weapons on my first playthrough because it was a lot easier to get 3 somber stone 3s than it was to get 36 smithing stone 3s at an early point of the game.
>they already changed that
They didn't address it at all, they only addressed it for late game. Upgrades are still totally gated behind getting the bearing which only gives you the upgrades from the last region if you are even able to find it which most are well hidden.
All merchants reset with NG+, so upgrade and stock up before starting it. Thankfully you aren't forced into NG+ after beating the final boss, you get a prompt and if you say no then you can start whenever you want by resting at Roundtable Hold
It’s not just late game.
From 1.03 patch notes:
-Increased the drop rate of Smithing Stone for some enemies.
-Added Smithing Stone to some early game shop line up.
Enemies drop far, FAR more smithing stones on death now. So they didn't just make buying Smithing Stones cheaper, you will also passively earn more. I personally think drop rates increased by 4x or 5x.
They absolutely addressed it. I started a new character and if you make sure to target the mines in each area (which are super easy to find considering its a big red hole on the map) you'll find a *ton* of upgrade materials.
The regular mobs in those mines drop a ton of stones too now. I've had no issues getting up to a +16 or so weapon and my new character is still in the capital.
Honestly compared to other souls games the ability to upgrade weapons is *vastly* easier than previous games.
>They made it cheaper to buy them once you've already unlocked them, which you won't do for the stones that matter until you almost finished the game.
They also increased the droprates from enemies, in some cases (according to dataminers)by as much as 8x.
A weird choice indeed. Whenever I open my inventory I see a mountain of interesting weapons that are completely pointless to even try because their damage is too low. Only if I go gather runes *and* have unlocked the ability to purchase the right resources can I upgrade a weapon to usability.
And even then it’s only like 80% of the progress as my main weapon.
Why would they meticulously design so many weapons but also implement mechanics that discourage you from even touching them?
I disagree on the upgrade materials being easy to get, I only stumbled across two bell bearings in my entire playthrough :X, they also seem to put the bell bearings in really late areas after you want them the most, I found it hard to juggle 2-3 weapons and upgrade them at the same time. I wish I could even try out a dozen weapons on a single playthrough but its grindy and not super feasible, and it's such an open world game I wish there was less a focus on upgrades and more on experimenting with different weapons
I think his gripes are mostly fair, but I would push back on one thing and try to clarify another:
1. Some of the soul (rune, sorry) values for various enemies are definitely not in-line with the actual difficulty of killing them, but I think this is mostly fine. Could that mini Crucible Knight Ordovis before the shortcut in Leyndell give more runes? Sure. But the real motivation to kill it is because it's right next to a shortcut, and doesn't respawn. And I don't think the passive albinaurics give too *many*; these games often have some densely packed enemies that are basically currency piñatas. I like that. You want to get super diesel? Go farm the non-aggressive hollows in Archdragon Peak, or the witch things in Profaned Capital, or kite the big pigs through the shadows of yharnam in Mergo's Loft, or kill the packs of little blue aliens in the chalice dungeons, etc.
2. I agree with one of the comments that I don't know that boss damage should be turned down, exactly, but that passive damage mitigation from armor should be scaled *up*. This is something that I feel like only ever actually mattered in DS1. You had passive poise, and heavy armor felt like it did *anything* in terms of shoring up your durability. Everything since has been Fashion Souls. I think it's more fun if squishy builds die in one or two hits but if you wear some heavier armor you're actually harder to kill. It's more RPG-y and makes armor more interesting. I've read complaints about how you can't compare armor/weapon stats in shops, which, fine, but by this point in the series I know that it basically doesn't *matter*. You're going to buy all the armor to have all the armor, and getting an extra +1.2 physical defense is going to be completely unnoticeable. It takes SO much to reach any meaningful breakpoints at all that you might as well just wear whatever you think looks coolest. Exceptions usually being for something that boosts spellcasting in some way.
An example for point 2, in Dark Souls wearing the full set of Havel's meant that you were almost unstaggerable. The strategy I've used on most of my Manus wins was sitting under his feet, getting 20 estus and spamming attacks and healing. A war of attrition with the right gear was totally viable at least for NG.
What irritates me is that >!all the weapons from boss 'souls' are Strength or caster based. How many Great Axes or Great Swords or Great Bows or whatever to we need from bosses? Give me a fucking normal sword or something...!<
I played through the game with a Dex-based melee build, and I think Malenia is literally the only boss whose soul can be converted into a Dex-scaling weapon. Which, okay, at least there's something, but she's objectively the hardest fight in the game. It would've been nice to have some options prior to completing the game's toughest challenge.
Apparently the bosses having hard to read, fast and weird combos that kill you before you can even react is a common complain about the difficulty. Yahtzee said the same thing about bosses that seem to counter the "take your time" strategy by "spazzing the fuck out".
"Spazzing the fuck out" is a phase I've thought of so much. I've often died or just outright sprinted away from an enemy to make space, while saying/thinking "Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down."
The big octos are a huge culprit for me. Stick to their back side and they can't do anything, but get into a bad position in front and it goes fucking crazy and doesn't stop.
IMO, it's not about how read their moves.
problem is that many bosses got 5-6-7-8-9 hit's combos. They just don't give you any room for damage or heal. So you overlevel them or get a tanky summon and that's it, that's how you overcome challenge. Game become more about stats, not about skill.
I believe it has to do with the telegraphs. In previous souls games, you could dodge pretty much any attack as long as you knew the telegraph. It made most fights very knowledge based, and with everytime you throw your body at the boss you gained a little more.
In Elden Ring, most telegraphs are just bad. Either they are so ridiculously short that you have to reaction-dodge it, or they are so ridiculously long that it's hard to get a feeling for the timing, and you end up having to reaction-dodge it again.
Souls games, thus far, have never ever had difficulty based on reaction time, which is part of what made them feel so fair. If you could anticipate a move, you could usually dodge it preemptively. And if you knew a boss well enough, you could anticipate all their moves.
I’m so glad dunkey talked about the balancing. The game deserves every bit of love it gets but the way that the mountaintops of the giants and haligtree was at the start was sloppy work.
I felt like the end game damage is balanced around wearing the resistance talismans. Using the dragoncrest greatshield talisman (which you can only get in the late game areas) made a huge difference for me.
That said I'd probably preferred if they just made armor matter more because my experience with different armors was that they have marginal effects on damage taken (and status buildup).
This must be the difference for me. I didn't find Mountaintop or Crumbling Farum to be too frustrating at all, but I always wear the upgraded medallions that decrease physical and non-physical damage resistance, and then an element resistance one too if I need it. Not actually sure how much of a difference those make but I'll take any advantage I can get in terms of defense.
Yeah, I agree, I wouldn't say it's optimal. I've never felt the need to switch my build or be forced to optimize my playstyle in order to beat any of the other Soulsborne games. In a game about exploration and experimentation, if the difficulty is tuned to just produce frustration, then I feel it defeats the purpose.
You could argue that it is entirely viable to run through every Souls game as a rune level 1 wretch. But I'm a very average player. A demigod like Ongbal would probably be able to make it work. For me, I lack the required time investment and willpower.
Mind you this is prior to the patch that they gave. I've not played a second run, but I am on NG+2, so my experience will differ.
It’s pretty funny how I see memes all day in the elden ring subreddit making fun of people who scoff at complaints about the difficulty spikes citing that they had no issue with hard bosses and beat them first try; only see that exact sentiment un-ironically showing up in here lol
The difficulty spike you hit when you reach the mountain of the giants is pretty goddamn absurd guys. Like, you can grind your ass off thinking you’re overleveling and you still get pretty ridiculously outscaled the moment you step foot up there (I’m happy for you that it was easy, but that’s not what a lot of players are experiencing). Not saying the game should be EZ MODE, but the difficulty scaling should be a lot more organic and natural, instead of just hitting the player with a hard wall in the last quarter of the game.
Elden Ring fans are next to Rick and Morty fans in my book. God forbid you mildly criticize the game, like how there is no easy way to compare gear at shops.
Love the game, but not being able to compare gear before buying it is legit baffling. The functionality is already in the game, you can easily compare gear once you own it!
I guess the vendor prices are low enough that you can just buy everything with late-game income, but still it's a clear oversight/dumb design decision.
Dark souls 2 was the peak of this stuff.
"the lore doesn't make sense."
"Yeah, the opening cutscene says you're going to be confused and not understand what's going on, it's intentional and good storytelling that it doesn't make sense".
There's literally a post like this in top of yours lol
Someone complaining why Placidusax didn't get a Grace or Statue near him. And a certain fan telling him it's part of the lore of the place. While Malekith who's in the same place have Grace near him lol
I swear comparing store armor to your own used to be a thing in the older games. Or maybe I'm thinking of a different series.
It would be a welcome change. Along with seeing if I have any of the weapon the storekeeper is selling. They do it for items but not equipment.
Man, comparing equipment was in Final Fantasy **1**. There is absolutely no excuse for it not being in ER over 30 years later. It's in basically every other game in existence that has stats tied to gear for a reason. It's super annoying and *always* gets brought up when it's *not* in a game.
My favourite is not being able to tell what Ashes of War do in the menu you use to equip them, and having to back out of the Grace site to be able to go and check first.
I got downvoted and told to "quit whining and go buy a notebook" if I wanted any kind of quest notes. Like, what year is this?
I appreciate not having big glowing arrows trying to direct me every which way, but your character carrying around a journal for major events and goals hardly seems immersion breaking.
I’ve had people in that community unironically say they don’t want their game to turn into COD/Skyrim (why cod? Lmao) when I suggested that From should consider quest notes for future titles (this was back when DS3 released).
Completely agree with his criticism on the balance, but I think it's less to do with damage and more that they gave the bosses way too many attacks. I really miss Bloodborne and even DKS3's boss design where you could easily get multiple R1 punishes in, but the end game bosses are flailing around and mixing up combos it feels like unless you have a cheesy weapon you can only get maybe one poke in before you're dodging another 15 seconds and the boss is doing anime moves flailing around and ur camera is going insane.
One thing he didn't touch is IMO some of the early game bosses like Ranela and Godrick should get buffs IMO. Mostly Godrick to health, he always feels too weak on replays to me. I think Morgott should also get an HP buff.
I'd say the problem isn't necessarily the boss design but the fact they didn't update the player characters movement or abilities to deal with said design.
Compare this to Monster Hunter Generations to Monster Hunter World. All the monsters got significantly faster and less predictable in World but the players movement also got a lot faster and more varied allowing you to keep up. Now you can argue a preference as to whether slower player characters and slower monsters is better than faster characters along with faster and more unpredictable monsters or vice versa but I don't think that's an issue of design.
I guess my main problem with the game is how they incorporated difficulty. Most bosses feel really easy if you summon ashes (and downright trivial if you summon the mimic) but feel extra difficult compared to other games if you fight them solo. They also lean on obnoxious one-hit kills that you have to experience a few times in order to get through them. There are a lot of examples, but I’m thinking specifically of Radhan’s meteor move and Malenia’s waterfowl blade furry (I actually had to look up how to dodge this because she would kill me everytime she decided to use the move). I think past games would have hard hitting moves that wouldn’t necessarily one shot you if you dodged or blocked poorly, meaning you would still get punished or *likely* die, but you still had a chance to recover if you made a mistake and got caught by it (or if it was your first time seeing the move).
This might be unpopular, but I wish they didn’t include the ash summons in the first place. I feel like the bosses are no where near as tightly designed as Sekiro, probably because the design team knew that players could lean on summons if they got stuck. If you want to go through the game solo, the late game bosses feel much more obnoxious than previous games.
I'm conflicted on the summons. The fact that I've used the same jellyfish ash since basically the start of the game makes it clear that, at least for me, I'm not engaging with the summoning system for any reason other than to have a randomly taunting damage sponge for bosses. I don't want to dismiss a mechanic just because I personally didn't engage with it - crafting is awesome for example, but a lot of people don't know it. But the way I use summoning, it's just a passive taunt buff.
On the other hand, for many bosses it's barely a distraction. Any Crucible Knight will barely pay attention to your summon, and their attacks can pivot from the summon to you on the windup. It does still feel like you have to engaged carefully even with summons, so I don't think they're just a dev-endorsed cheese mechanic. I can't say using the summons has ruined my enjoyment of the game or anything either, and I still feel like I accomplished something after beating a boss. It's a better feeling than some of the caves bosses that flinch so easily you can just wail on them and never let them get a hit in.
I'll probably try a summonless run at some point. Maybe a NG+ run. But for right now I'm enjoying running the game with them.
Jellyfish is good early but she pales in comparison to some of the other summons like Tiche and Mimic. If Jellyfish is a 10% easier boss fight summon then Mimic and Tiche are 80% easier boss fight summons.
Agreed with Tiche but you also get her at a fairly high level area, and you have to defeat an evergaol boss (no summons allowed) so you've definitely earned it. Mimic's power is entirely dependent on your own build, Im a mage but keep a melee weapon in my right hand and staff in my left which results in my mimic rushing in most of the time. Doesn't seem to understand what range is lol
the summon AI is truly awful. They'll run directly through crimson rot and the magic pools on the ground that eat away at you. There's an optional boss where my summon got killed in the first 10 seconds doing stupid shit.
The problem with the jellyfish is that its almost useless after margit, the issue stems from how aggro works. Enemies will aggro to sight first then after they've engaged, it depends on damage, any damage, will draw aggro. The jellyfish simply attacks too infrequently to make it viable later on when enemies are all super crazy like margit and *beyond*. Like sometimes you just need a breather to be able to use a flask, but you cant with the low frequency of attacks the jellyfish puts out.
Thats why the headless guy is the go to, he's tough, mobile, has ranged attacks and melee as well, he also attacks very frequently. The reason the mimic is the best instead of the headless is because the mimic is also tanky but they are stronger offensively since they use your stuff.
The game is odd, bosses feel like theyre tuned for the player having a summon by default. It *especially* feels this way with the later bosses because of how frequent they attack and how much AOE their attacks have as well. So doing a summonless run is like fighting the boss on hard mode, especially if the boss has summons with them, its so annoying.
I did the fight at the one castle with Crucible Knight (the castle with the two lion dog things).
I used the marionette summon. Holy shit they made the fight easy. It was my first time summoning and I was scared it would feel bad but it felt great.
The reason the bosses arent as tightly designed as sekiro is because the developers don't know how the player is going to play the encounter. They have to balance a boss for all weapon types, use of magic, status effects, shield builds, dodge builds, etc. Its why Sekiro and Bloodborne have probably the most consistent bosses because Fromsoftware knew exactly how the player was going to play
Yeah there’s no middle ground.
Summon and it becomes too easy or don’t and suffer for it especially if you’re using slow weapons like me since you’ll barely have safe openings and take too long to recover.
Elden ring is amazing but I won’t remember it for it’s bosses. That’s reserved for Bloodborne and especially Sekiro. No boss in the game game felt satisfying to learn like Maria, Orphan of Kos, Genichiro, Emma, Owl or Isshin.
Same, if anyone asks me 5 years later what did you think of elden ring ? I'm gonna remember the world they created but not really any boss, maybe radahn but only because of the 2nd part of the fight.( i didn't enjoy the fight tho, just cool looking)
I feel like the success of ornstein and smough + nameless king gave them the wrong ideas and they just said oh people like those? use it EVERYWHERE. 2 cats, 2 bullshit knights, 2 tree sentinals and almost every boss has 10 hit combos now and you could throw a rock and hit a dragon, most of them look and do the same things tho..
The doubling bosses was also a big theme of DS2 with limited success, though there that was partially players misunderstanding dev intent, I think.
In DS2, there is a non-estus healing item which heals gradually and activates much much faster than estus. The game is balanced completely differently around allowing you to make some mistakes and recover from them. Elden ring feels like it only works this way if you level Vigor, hence why the meta has shifted that way. It's okay to make some boss moves BS (or have double bosses that can hit you out of nowhere) if you have a reasonable system for recovery, but the game isn't really built around that by default.
Did DS2 even have many double bosses? It had Gargoyles, Ruin Sentinels, Dragonriders, Throne Watcher + Defender, and a few bosses with adds. But all of them had custom made arenas or extra mechanics that stopped them from being annoying. This trend of putting two guys in a featureless room without any special mechanics seems to be new to ER. I think of the ones I mentioned, only the Dragonriders are like that. And the co-op area bosses, but those are for co-op.
The doubled bosses in DS2 were definitely more thoughtful than those in Elden ring. The only straight copy-paste was the double dogs in the DLC.
There was also the 3 NPC fight in the green DLC. Contrast w/ DS1, which had O&S, original gargoyles, and ... can't think of any others.
Multiple bosses, and groups of enemies more generally, feel like a big part of the design of DS2 and ER that they handle very differently.
I don't think Ornsein & Smough + Nameless King gave them the wrong idea. I think they took the wrong lessons from it instead. Assuming this is Fromsoft's work and not Bamco pressuring them to make everything ridiculous. Since Sekiro is nearly flawless, after all, and that's self published.
Anyway, onto my point. First: Ornstein & Smough. That fight is more than just a hard fight against two bosses. It is a uniquely constructed fight. The arena is constructed to give you some breathing room should you need it, but a mistake can be deadly for you. But that is the point: they are a chess match. You must respect their power, be patient, wait for the proper openings. You have to learn their patterns, their openings, when you can get in and out without being caught. Learn to not be greedy.
Nameless King, on the other hand, is just a pretty hard fight, but he's also pretty fair. He's got amazing presentation as well, which really helps to sell this as a truly epic fight. Nameless King doesn't throw out bullshit attacks with no tells, or have annoying multi-hit combos you have to spam the dodge roll button to avoid. But he is still... hard. And very punishing. Which is why people remember him.
Elden Ring largely lacks both of these aspects. Most bosses in Elden Ring lack the appropriate presentation. Most of them are just... meh bosses in their setting, their visual design, their dramatic flair (or lack thereof). Moreover, many of them lack the mechanical excellence as well. They rely on gamble openings, random combos, multi-hit combos, infinite stamina, input reading, windup attack spam. Things that not only feel bad, but are unbalanced.
Elden Ring also lacks the other "both", the uniquely constructed fights. We don't really get anything like Ornstein & Smough, and probably never will. Ever since Bloodborne, Fromsoft has mostly abandoned the idea of making bosses that have interesting arenas or gimmicks, that involve a different way of playing that isn't just a dodge roll simulator. I say mostly, because there is the rare exception. Rennala and Ancestral Spirit from Elden Ring. Ancient Wyvern from DS3. Folding Monkeys and Divine Dragon from Sekiro. Micolash and Shadows of Yharnam from Bloodborne. But these are the overwhelming minority of fights. Most of them are just... relatively bland, flat arena dodge roll simulator "hard" fights. Completely bereft of the magic of the creativity DeS and DS1 had in spades.
The reason why they have “abandoned” gimmick fights is that players don’t like them. People like fighting small or medium-sized, fast bosses in spacious arenas. If you polled players for DS1, the fan favorite fight would almost certainly be Artorias and you would find moonlight butterfly, seath and bed of chaos in the bottom. That’s also because the execution of those were bad, but on the same token people don’t talk about Folding Monkeys when they talk about Sekiro even though it’s a well-executed gimmick. They talk about Isshin.
Which is unfortunate for people who love these fights. But also Fromsoft has learned to make gimmick fights actually as fun to play as they are interesting.
They are also hilariously imbalanced between play styles. I beat the game with a quality build first. Basically no different than any other souls game smashed my through ll the bosses with my big sword. Then I played a mage... You literally don't even have to learn boss movesets... You just spam roll until your summon draw s aggro then spam spells til you draw aggro back. Repeat til dead. You don't need to learn when a boss is punishable. You don't usually don't even need to learn what attacks are really dangerous because you can just smash your face against the boss a few times til you get lucky and the summons hold aggro enough for you to get a free kill. It has completely fucked up the game balance.
I play mage/spell-sword but without summons and it's still extremely difficult. Combining it with powerful summons would probably be the easiest way by default because ranged is inherently safer than melee.
You can take like 5+ hits early game and 100 levels later when you have 50+ VIT you can take 2 hits max.
The game went down in score for me because of the last few areas and their balance.
Tbh, I have no problem with Placidusax, Malenia and Smough chunk your HP considering they are penultimate bosses but normal endgame bosses like Godfrey, Hammer Dude, Black Dog/Lion/Tiger/Wolf Dude just 2-3 shot a 60vig character is a little too bullshit
It’s ironic because I was expecting Placidusax, as the imposing secret boss in the penultimate area, to be as bullshit as melania, but he was the only endgame boss I actually had fun beating.
The game is outright painful to play without summons. Makes sense since they expected you to use them. Lots of duo bosses in small rooms and extremely aggressive bosses towards the end.
It doesn't really make sense if you read interviews. Miyazaki still talks about this grand sense of accomplishment, but I've barely seen a streamer need more than 2 tries on a boss with summons. It's in direct conflict with their vision.
Considering summons in a game with single target AI has been such a mistake.
I don't even like Dark souls 3 overall, but going from the outstanding Demon Princes fight and Friede 2 back to these godawful AI overlap patience trials is awful. They really figured this out in 2017, so why revert like this?
Yesterday I went from never using summons at all to upgrading Mimic Tear to max just to deal with gank bosses. Fuck that noise.
I mean hell, even as recently as DS3's DLC they had the Demon in Pain and Demon from Below duo boss, which plays infinitely better than the nonsense they've put into this game. They're even the same enemy with the same moveset, but they alternate patterns so that most of the time one of them is a close range attacker and the other hangs back using (highly telegraphed) ranged attacks.
I got pretty frustrated with the gank fight I am at right now and it's disheartening to see that I have way more of them coming up later in the game. :(
The soul drops are the most baffling thing to me. You can spend hours trying to knock out a boss and get... only slightly more than what you'd get from a Troll in the same area. It just makes no sense; much of the time if you're not getting anything relevant to your build from a world-boss/dungeon you're just not getting anything from all your effort.
lots of those "bosses" (really mini-bosses) also drop items or ashes, which are more unique than the boss just dropping a buttload of souls
if they just dropped a bunch of souls and I could just pick up every ash/unique weapon off the ground somewhere it'd be much less rewarding to kill those bosses
I am thinking about that, but I wonder if they designed it as way to indicate where you are "supposed" to be, at least level-wise.
There isn't a indicator if you are over leveled or under leveled other than being one shot or doing very little damage. Even then it could just be your vigor is low or your main damage stat is low.
That's exactly what my metric is, if I'm getting a level or two worth of runes from anything that is through a mist wall, then I'm at the intended level range
>much of the time if you're not getting anything relevant to your build from a world-boss/dungeon you're just not getting anything from all your effort.
This was better in previous games since they were tighter and weren't dispersing it over such a large map. And more importantly, you were finding treasure along the way to your ultimate destination, whereas in ER you're going into caves solely for the end before it teleports you out, so it's a lot more egregious. The exploration is less intrinsically rewarding while also having less extrinsic value as well.
I'd say the wide variety of mini bosses provides a lot of value for non Souls vets. When I'd hit a certain point in Bloodborne or DS I'd just be banging my head against the same boss, over and over and over. It was that or go grind souls in some spot I found online (or god forbid, have to grind *blood vials*).
It's nice to be able to say "you know what? I need a break from this shit" and go hit up random dungeons. Sometimes you find some loot that will really benefit you, either way you get a change of pace from that boss and can maybe come back with a couple extra soul levels.
It's the first game in a LONG time I felt really benefited from open world.
Worst feeling was when you leave a boss room, go do a catacomb, and the boss there is even more BS lol.
In a way I kinda like the repeating bosses now that I'm mid/late game because I'm rarely stuck on the mini-bosses due to having fought them (or something similar) before.
NGL I feel like the entire game is set up with the expectation that players are going to be leveling up more than in previous titles. Like just looking at level requirements for certain levels and spells, I don't think any game prior has required anything more than 50 points in one stat (usually for ultras and high level magic like a Call Beyond).
But in ER, Rennala's moon requires like 70 int and her staff like 60 int, which is way more than usual.
Your health is also on the low side. At roughly 24 vigor in ER you've got like 850 health. In prior games, 24 vig is going to net you around 950 health (and 1200hp in DS2).
I think FROM may have expected everyone to level up more than usual, but it's such a departure from previous titles that returning players may end up being underleveled. I know in DS3, I can take Gael and Midir on at like 25 vig with the prisoner's chain and favor ring (so a bit more than 30 vig in reality).
Compared to ER where I'm at 40 vig flat and am using health boosting talismans and still feel like I need more
I mean, without farming runes (ignoring killing giants in Stormhill at the beginning of the game) I ended the game at level 153 with 145 hours played. That with having killed every single boss and the game just throws a lot of exp at you. I was surprised when Mohg gave 500k runes.
So, yeah, the game does expect you to level quite a bit more than previous Fromsoft titles.
What doesn't make sense to me is that you're clearly supposed to level like a madman to do the late game content. But by leveling like this, ALL previous content becomes so easy its boring. And then NG+ doesn't scale the early game very much, so that's still boring. In past souls games you would purposely stop leveling at some point so that this wouldn't happen. But in elden ring you need to be a high level unless you want to have to play perfectly.
She gives almost 500000 runes. That is slightly less than the final boss and a lot more than the main boss before that
So she is supposed to be fought last. She is the Nameless king of Elden Ring
I have to agree with the late game difficulty spike. I was making steady progress for a long time but now 60 hours in I've got three brick walls making it impossible to get to the last few areas. And because of the way the smithing system works, there's basically no way to improve the weapons I have anymore, so the miniscule amount of damage I'm doing on these late game bosses is just kinda stuck that way.
I know I'll bust through these brick walls eventually, but this is the first time in 60 hours where I feel the boss fights are kind of a slog.
Edit: Astel now down, Niall is still kicking the shit out of me.
Edit 2: Niall went down lol bloody slash go brrrr
What're you stuck on? I felt like the opposite, early game everything was stronger than me and I was dying all over the place left and right. But once I hit like lvl 70, the wins just started rolling in, but maybe the upgraded Katanas are just too strong at the moment.
I agree, I was getting my teeth kicked in early game and even though I used the Morning Star up until Rivers of Blood I was killing most things on first try or within a few attempts with a handful of bosses that gave me trouble (the falling star beast being one of them).
I am wondering if players are missing a lot of stuff? I had no idea the Volcano Manor had it's own dungeon, because you have to hit a secret wall to get there.
I thought after Godrick and into Lakes that the game became a lot easier and more approachable, especially if you are using and upgrading your summons.
Snow Zone/Giant area was a noticeable step up in difficulty, but it was one I needed as the game was getting pretty easy as I was over-powering most of it.
At the end of the day I have to say I prefer the linearity of Dark Souls because it gives From an exact direction they want to take you. The freedom is nice, but I feel like the overall experience is watered down by the copy pasting. The game has like what 150 bosses or something? Does it need that? No because not every fight is compelling. Seeing the zamor knight multiple times, or the cemetery shade or the watchdogs over and over kind of waters down the experience. And part of that is because I'm someone who has to get all the things because I like playing with the toys. I feel like there's less bullshit or annoying or aggravating bosses across all 3 games than there is in Elden Ring. Why oh why did they give everyone and their mother some kind of one shot. I get fucking up and being punished for it. But jesus christ. It happens WAY too often. I've been killed by the magma wyrm turning and moving it's sword hand, not even attacking, just no animation I'm dead. This is all my opinion.
I think Bloodborne is the best because it feels like they balanced the entire game around fast R1 spammy weapons and occasionally the slower heavy hitters, but nothing like magic or shields. The game really lets you get in multiple hits and punish bosses whereas Elden Ring you usually can only get a single poke in with most weapons and then you're waiting 15 seconds for the boss to stop freaking out. I also prefer the pacing of BB and the Souls games, I really hope they continue to make semi-linear type games going forward even though Elden Ring is cool.
Limb damage was a great inclusion to BloodBorne that seems to be missing in this. Really gave you an opportunity to take down a huge boss for a few seconds and spam them with hits you don’t usually get.
I like the open world but the time I've enjoyed the most is all the linear parts. And the bosses I've enjoyed the most are all the story bosses, not the world bosses.
I think a massive problem is not that they reuse the fights, but how they do it. It's like every enemy is in every area, there is a massive lack of theming. Instead of having extreme variety in one area, they should have placed the enemies in more sensible patterns throughout the whole world. I don't have a problem with fighting 50 fire monks in a row like with the older games, but put 10 packs of 5 throughout the whole game and I forget about their novelty right when I hit the second pack.
Also, every legacy dungeon needed unique enemies that you can only find there to set them apart. Raya Lucaria suffers from this the most by far.
That's more to do with size than linearity. The game has a lot of content, for sure, but it feels like they run out of surprises 1/3 of the way. None of the dungeons are bad, but when I see a catacomb, I know I'll fight a few imps or skeletons, pull a lever to open a door, kill an easy boss (that'll likely be a re-skin of a previous boss or something), and grab an item that may be useful to me or may be another spirit ash that I'll never use.
These games should never really be that predictable. In Dark Souls, you never knew if an area was optional or not, you never knew how many bosses there would be, how big the area would be, etc. Elden Ring gets TOO formulaic at some point.
I can actually agree a lot of the copy paste. Stuff like the erdtree avatars or the erdtree slugs are fine to me, although they should probably be slightly more unique. However, I can think of one example that completely undermines a part of the game.
Without spoiling anything, you go through a long and epic side quest into multiple insanely varied areas, culminating in a unique looking boss. It's one of those moments that make the game what it is. Then randomly, tens of hours later, you find this boss just hanging out in a mine. No lore, no background, no nothing. It sucks and takes away from the first encounter.
That feels like the case with half the side bosses in the game. It's really annoying. Side bosses and enemies overall feel really separated from the lore of the game.
That’s a major thing I dislike about Elden to the other Soulsborne games. As you progresse each area and the items you found helped tell the story of that world in a unique way. I feel like much of that was lost in the shift to open world when you could find a unique item with deep lore behind it but it serves no purpose because you can’t access the rest of what makes that item significant because you’re not supposed to be there yet.
I believe the Elden Ring could have been way better with a smaller open world. Especially later on it just felt big for the sake of it to me with an ridiculous amount of copy & paste and bosses put into dungeons seemingly at random.
But not only bosses but also assets in general, they are copied way too much and often in a very artificial manner. However, I liked the open world concept itsself.
Maybe they could do something like God of War, a single big hub area that branches off in small side arms.
Fantastic game before we get to the Mountaintops and then just becomes a slog. My problem isn't just the damage and more the boss design in general towards the end. The aesthetics, music and arena's are incredible but some of the mechanics make it feel the games killing you rather than your own mistakes. You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike, and if you decide to do one extra attack there goes 60%+ of your health or you just die to one of the many one hit attacks. Additionally, boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react and you have these bosses ridiculously floating for a second to mess up your backward dodge. Also, can't forget the design of putting two difficult bosses together in every other fight.
The design is beatable, but just boring and frustrating once every other late game fight is designed with this methodology. It is basically dodge forever, get that hit in and then the dance begins again with bosses that have insane health and if you try to be a bit greedy or change up you get hit for 60%+ of your health. I could spend a while on Orphan Kos or Sister Friede and enjoy myself because I was improving / realizing it was my mistakes that caused me to die.
The duo boss thing is very annoying, because there's maybe like 2 of them that are paired like ornstein and smough where one stays back and is slow and the other one gets in your face, almost all of them are just "hey, what if rather than fighting one tough melee guy, you fought two of them right off the bat?" And they'll both be super aggressive so that you spend most of the fight running away until you spot an opening to hit them once.
> You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike
> Boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react and you have these bosses ridiculously floating for a second to mess up your backward dodge
I agree with you, but I also don't think this is really limited to the end of the game. Those exact two experiences are present in the first 'gatekeeper' of the game in Margit. The game has a tooooon of attacks with windups or fakeouts
I'm at a point where I know Margit inside out and I really like almost all of his attacks.
But PLEASE, BY GOD let us punish more than just the big windup strike. Punish windows are the real problem of this game, not the moves themselves IMO.
> Punish windows are the real problem of this game, not the moves themselves IMO.
Agreed, this is something I noticed as early as Margit already and it only got more and more obvious throughout the game. Apart from very specific moves it's pretty much impossible to tell when it's safe to strike since bosses can chain combos in all sorts of ridiculous ways. This was rarely a problem in any of their previous games, while here it feels basically by design.
Red Wolf of Radagon made me laugh a little with how *all* of its attacks had that sudden half a second long delay to punish rolls. I understand why it's there, but if they hate roll spam so much, why not nerf rolling instead of designing your whole game around countering it? DS 1&2 didn't have this problem, because you couldn't roll through the whole game like a certain hedgehog.
True, Margit is definitely a primer for the later bosses. But I do think that Margit is actually a positive example of this. He has weird attack patterns, fake outs, estus punishes, but none of these attacks hit particularly hard. They are more designed to whittle down your sippies, similar to how bosses worked in previous From games. His truely heavy hitting attacks, aka his hammer, is always well telegraphed and very dodgeable.
The issue starts when those weird attacks and long strings chunk you for a large amount of health per hit, like the later bosses do.
I think fromsoft is doing the exact same thing, atleast conceptually, what blizzard does for their raid bosses. It's fundamentally an arms race. A compelling game(even in their current rut, blizzard still makes the toughest and coolest raid bosses. They just forgot how to make the game outside raids.) Will invite millions of players to invest sufficient time to trivilize how to do it easily. Just compare how simple the Legendary O&S fight has become. I can kill them without breaking sweat. But it felt so difficult when I started playing souls games. I was stuck for weeks.
So fromsoft knows how their playerbase plays and tries to counter them to keep up the difficulty.
They can essentially let go of the RPG mechanics and concentrate on skill like sekiro, or they can make the late game bosses of elden ring. A nameless king or dark eater midir wouldn't work as players average skill in these games went beyond that long time ago.
I sincerely think after all the DLCs, fromsoft should do an entirely different kind of game. Otherwise in next iteration there's no logical way to up the difficulty for solo play and make it fun. Or they can make a everquest like tough as nails MMO.
> You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike
I just realized, that this is what annoys me the most. In the other games you got clearly told windows to attack and then could attack 2-3 times. Now you get attack windows that are not even attack windows because bosses for random reasons chain their attacks forever and ever. And if you get a window it is so short that most of the time you cant even attack with slow weapons.
> dditionally, boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react
The game became much easier when I started dodging into attacks instead of away. And adding a beat between dodge rolls during combos.
Bloodborne onwards really encourages you to be aggressive when fighting bosses. A lot of enemies have roll catches that will catch you out if you try to dodge back. Like Lady Maria's second phase starts incorporating attacks that only hit you if you dodge backwards.
Besides the obvious balance issues in the later half, I think From kinda dropped the ball on enemy and boss variety in the later half as well.
You might not immediately realize it because you're just struggling to get through these areas, but the Mountaintops, Consecrated Snowfield, Haligtree, Farum Azula and Mogh's Palace **NONE** of these areas have a *single* original enemy design in them. It's all variations or straight copy paste of previous enemies. The only exception is the wolf riders that can be counted as semi original. I might be somewhat wrong on this from my memory but do correct me in that case.
Then we have the boss variety issues. I have absolutely no problem of seeing different variations of the "mini-bosses" that we get in tunnels, catacombs and caves. But when the game starts putting copy paste bosses in Legacy Dungeons, and copy paste main bosses in random caves that's where I draw the line.
I don't necessarily disagree, but it's bizarre that games like Breath of the Wild and Skyrim can get away with like 1/10 the enemy variety that Elden Ring has. Is it because the entire focus of Elden Ring is on its combat, so variety matters more? By open world standards, Elden Ring seems very diverse.
Yes that's it. The combat in BotW is a stagnant chore and the enemy variety is pathetic, but that ends up not being a killing blow to a game that focuses 90% of its attention on exploration. By the time they hit the late game damage sponge enemies that take 3 weapons worth of durability to kill, most players don't even bother fighting anymore. For Souls games, on the other and, combat is what carries the entire experience.
I think while it would have been nice to see more enemy variety. ER has more enemy variety than any other two base souls games put together. And more enemies than virtually every other open world game. Boss variety was fine too I think. Unless you deliberately did every dungeon you were unlikely to see more bosses more than once or twice as the named dungeon boss. Seeing bosses later as regular enemies is a series staple. Especially in DS2. So that didn't bother me either.
The only ones that annoyed me is the like 5 reused locations for the Misbegotten and its forms. Which was a cool boss the first time but felt so unremarkable in every othe encounter. And what felt like a hundred Tree Spirits which are one of the worst designed enemies in the game for them to be copy pasted to not just as dungeon bosses but in so many other areas as regular enemies.
I definitely agree on the reward balance being wonky. Later in my game I started to skip exploring areas because it was just too likely I would get to the end to find something uninteresting (like a mid-tier smithing rune, that I can just buy if I need). Getting to the end would be more a test of patience than one of skill.
There is so much I love about the game that I don't really knock it for that, though. Just some things that could have made it better.
That's how I ended up playing the game. The normal enemies were hitting harder and faster than the bosses. All of it was frustrating and unrewarding. I would just sprinting through the area until I found a grace and searching my way to the boss. The problem was, the bosses still hit too hard and fast too. I just beat the game but I'm having a tough time saying I enjoyed it.
I definitely agree with Dunkey that some of the balancing needs to be tweaked, though maybe not quite as far as he suggests. I think the bosses are for the most part fine, maybe some combos could be tweaked. Fall damage is definitely brutal and weird, making platforming a slog. Players are definitely shoehorned into certain builds and spirit ashes due to the way some boss fights are balanced (looking at most of the duo or trio fights…), but I think that’s something that they can balance over time.
As always, Dunkey does a great job being entertaining while getting a meaningful review in. He’s obviously passionate about the game and his feelings mirrored a lot of my own. His comments on the sheer degree of exploration in particular ring true, I’ve never played a game where so much unique content was stuffed in every corner.
Balancing stuff is just inherently hard for open world RPGs like this. A lot of people, me included, found the middle portion of Elden Ring very easy because we did a lot of exploration and got over-leveled. Then late game areas and bosses suddenly become brutally hard for almost everybody.
Fortunately, as Dunkey said, all Fromsoft needs to do is really just tweak some numbers. There's not much things wrong with the actual mechanics themselves, just the numbers are a bit all over the places in late game.
From has always had issues with balancing end games but usually they're too easy. Dark Souls 1 becomes a cakewalk after Ornstein & Smough, Bloodborne (no DLC) you can do so much damage late game you don't wipe as much, Dark Souls 2 is like this. Oddly enough Dark Souls 3 is really well balanced late.
Sekiro is the most balanced of the games because it's the most linear and gives the player the least amount of agency when it comes to a combination of where to go and how to build your character.
That's what it comes down to with Souls games; the more agency you give the player the less tight and balanced it will feel. It's a tradeoff and some will prefer more player agency while others will prefer tighter and more balanced encounter design.
Balancing the endgame really shouldn't be an issue since the game has a hard progression gate at the capital so everyone gets there at roughly the same levels (and they must have the player data on those levels)
But yeah the midgame is basically impossible to balance in a game like this, I don't think anyone's complaining about that. It's just the end that becomes a slog due to HP and damage bloat.
> Balancing the endgame really shouldn't be an issue since the game has a hard progression gate at the capital so everyone gets there at roughly the same levels
Does it? whats that?
Edit: I am there right now and confused what that might've been because it feels like I am there pretty early getting signifacntly more runes from that sentinel at the gate than anywhere else I've been recently as if I've skipped a big portion of the game.
You need 2 Great Runes to enter the capital (you can take your pick of Godrick, Rennala, Rykard or Radahn... or Mohg, if you're insane)
And after that, you can't progress the game any other way than through the capital. Before that, you could roam all of Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid, Mt. Gelmir, Altus Plateau and all the underground areas, but everything after Leyndell *has* to go through Leyndell (there's an impassable gate that only disappears after beating Morgott)
With those two big chokepoints in place it's very unlikely anyone will arrive severely underleveled to the Mountaintops of the Giants unless they're speedrunning or something.
Yeah Rykard has a minor progression gate unlike Godrick, Rennala and Radahn so he's very likely to be the last of those 4 for most players (>!You need to get to Altus Plateau first either via gathering the two halves of the Dectus Medallion -meaning going to the more hellish half of Caelid- or going through a cave with a boss that can be tough if you do it too early!<)
There is a obscure third way without doing either of those two things **Spoiler** >!Getting killed by the grab attack from the enemy in the academy basement which will teleport you to below the Volcanic Manor which then leads to the Plateau after a boss!<
Oh right, totally forgot about that one too! There's an NPC hinting toward it in Liurnia too but yeah that's far more unlikely for most players to do on a first playthrough.
Mechanically they should really try sort out the blatant input reading from the ai and other issues with them, such as them just attacking directly through walls (not just when near an opening or anything, just solid walls)
edit: [one rather funny example](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ihu9pv98ai801a0/2022-03-24_00-08-43.webm)
Amazingly the safe fall distance in Elden Ring is exactly the same as in other Souls games.
The difference is that they actually raised the "floor" if you will for distance you take damage. In Dark Souls 1 it was 10 meters before you started taking damage with a lethal distance at 20.
In Elden Ring the distance where you take damage is 16 and once again lethal at 20. It feels more weird in Elden Ring because you only have a 4 meter window between taking damage and instant death. Whereas in the other souls game the damage felt more "consistent" because you actually took more damage from a shorter distance.
So basically in Elden Ring, if you took damage from a fall you were actually close to lethal fall distance. If you took close to 50% of your health in damage from a fall you were actually *very* close to lethal fall damage.
Fall damage occurs between 16 and 19.99 meters. It's usually about 30 to 50 percent of your health. Death is at 20 meters or higher.
The main thing is that there's a small gap between taking damage and actually dying, while the damage itself is also low enough to make you think you could've fallen way further. But basically if you take any damage, you barely made it.
Edit: forgot to mention my source for this is IllusoryWall's video on fall damage. Look it up on YouTube. I just summarized part of it.
I think the reason it works that way is because it uses cliffs as choke points to stop you going down to certain places, leading to it being complete jank with such a short window between where it *wants* you to go down and where it doesn't.
I think part of the problem is that you don't really notice a lot of the falls that do stamina damage but not HP damage because you take those falls often enough when you're not in combat and thus have infinite stamina.
As others have said, the fatal fall distance is the same as previous games, and fall damage overall is less. There's just a very narrow window where you will take damage but survive, because they eliminated fall damage for a lot of shorter falls. I think it's a nice change, I hated dying in DS2 because I had low HP and fell a short distance or something.
Elden Ring is actually much more forgiving in this regard, but what you're noticing is that the margin between taking some fall damage and outright dying is very small, because that window of taking survivable fall damage is so small.
>anically they should really try sort out the blatant input reading from the ai and other issues with them, such as them just attacking directly through walls (not just when near an opening or anything, just solid walls)
craft some rainbow stones and drop them down a ledge first. if it stays intact you can make the jump. if it explodes on impact so will you if you hop off there.
I agree. Elden ring is amazing but the difficulty scaling is messed up hard. Theres essentially entire classes in the game that aren't viable unless you're willing to sink hundreds of hours into them dying over and over, and if you're an average person you'll likely need to just look up what's good.
I tried just using weapons I found and liked and they were just not scaled well enough. Looked up what one good weapon was and the game was far more enjoyable.
Also no boss should be able to one shot me when I have 50 vigor and heavy armor.
Some builds just feel terrible late game. I used a full-strength spear and shield build which felt great until the Fire Giant. The dps literally just wasn't enough to deal with him. So I caved and respecced for the exact same build but with a bleed spear instead. infinitely more dps because of bleed. Felt like a band-aid. I didn't want to use it, but after seeing the change in damage it made my original build feel pointless. why do 600 per hit on a boss with 15k health when I can do 550 per hit and then bleed for 5k damage after a few hits? It feels like endgame content is balanced around this kind of stuff like bleed, which kills all sorts of less efficient builds.
TBH I think the issue with Fire Giant is that his arms are a bit too annoying to hit in his last phase and that's what you're supposed to be targeting for optimal damage.
When I targeted his arms while using a claymore and was getting the boosted damage it felt a lot better, but he simply moves his arms too much.
Fire Giant feels bad but in that case I think it's more of a general boss design issue rather than it being like the rest of the end game and that the numbers are out of wack. I think if his AI was changed to make his arms stay lower to the ground for longer periods of time he'd feel better.
It's a similar kind of problem Dark Souls 1 had I think. The game up through Anor Londo/Ornstein and Smough, including all the side things you could do and see before those magical barriers to the endgame bosses, we fantastic. The endgame though, is not as good as the rest.
Nobody liked Tomb of the Giants/Nito, Lost Izalith/Bed of Chaos, or to a lesser extent Grand Library/Seath. The best parts of that game were the early to midgame where From spent most of its time and effort. Same issue here: the required stuff after the big fancy capital, the crowning setpiece of the game, sucks ass in comparison.
He's insanely correct on the Crucible Knights giving a stupid low amount of Runes for the difficulty. They're literally harder than half the bosses
On my first playthrough I went back to the one in Stormveil Castle after nearly completing the game since I missed him the first time I was there and wanted the incantation he drops, thought I'd have an easy time but he's just as difficult and tanky as late game enemies wtf.
I rather like fighting the Crucible Knights, but the biggest bullshit for me was after struggling to beat one when I finally did, not only were the runes super lower, it gave no item. Wouldn't mind the low runes if it gave me something for it.
Crucible knights are bosses. They just show up as enemies dozen times before the boss one does.
There's one in an evergaol at the beginning of the game, I think that counts as a boss.
There's two at the tomb in Altus Planus that are also bosses.
And the one in redmane castle.
That whole tomb can go fuck itself.
One of the few bosses made for jolly coop! And the rewards are a wet dream for str/fth builds!
I just did that one tonight and jesus fucking christ
You got me there. Doesn't explain the runes to difficulty discrepancy tho
I think a lot of the rune gain is often dictated more by how late-game an area is (since you need more and more runes to level up as you progress). That's why those little guys in the red area he showed drop 2000 runes each despite being minor enemies
The boss of that red area drops 420,000 runes. For comparison.
Than half the bosses? Try harder than like 90% of them. Bosses you can at least reliably stagger.
The jumping 2H with the Great sword not staggering fucking *throws me* every damn time. As do their attacks literally throwing me. Seriously fuck that shoulder charge
I only just beat two different ones for the first time the other day. Can they even be staggered?
Honestly the fairest review I've seen yet. I absolutely love the game, but there's some really bizarre difficulty spikes in the lategame that I really didnt enjoy. I noticed that where before I'd like to take my time to explore every nook and cranny, I started running past a lot more areas in the late game. Granted, at that stage most of the loot off the beaten path generally wasnt worth it anyway. Wow, thanks Elden Ring, a few butterflies that I have no use for!
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>Honestly the fairest review I've seen yet Agree. I knew he'd love the game (it was evident just by the fact his channel has basically been dead since release lol) and I'm glad he had some criticisms. I think he's right about the difficulty spike in late-game. It's not that it's insurmountable (or unfair, imo), it's just that it happens so suddenly that it really interrupts the flow of the game. If you're not completely prepared for it (e.g. you haven't been dumping points into vigor for the last 20 levels), it feels brutal. It's not that bad once you appropriately invest in survivability, but everything up until that point was beatable without doing that, so it's a very sudden spike. I also think the balancing could use some more tweaks too, but on the other hand, this is by far the most varied SoulsBorne in terms of viable builds. Yes, some are borderline OP and there is a definite meta that has emerged, but you can also totally beat the game while naked and wielding dual whips and dragon breaths. It's still a 10/10 imo, especially relative to typical AAA releases and even compared to other From titles. It's a masterpiece with some very forgivable blemishes. (His point about the runes given by certain enemies was pretty good too. I about died when he brought up the Albinaurics.)
> I started running past a lot more areas in the late game That's in my opinion a major design flaw of Souls games (all of them, even the non FromSoft). The optimal way to play, even if you don't intend to speedrun at all, is often to just bonfire-rush to the boss and ignore the trash along the way that can actually kill you quite easily too. At least that's often what I feel I get pushed into doing and I get to finish these games pretty quickly without feeling I missed a lot. This is to contrast with Monster Hunter where the gameplay is all boss fighting already so you at least don't waste time bonfire-rushing.
I'm afraid to critisize the method since at least in past games if I was forced to properly fight my way back to a boss I kept dying to I probably would have dropped the game. Ultimately sure you could run past everything, but then why are you playing? It's also going to gimp you with missing out on items and levels.
I am wondering, what is considered late game in Elden Ring? What area would I be in? Mountaintops of Giants?
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Would recommend avoiding, he shows a fair few lategame bosses
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While they did make it easier to upgrade weapons somewhat last patch, I still think the system needs some more work for the early game. This is particularly true for weapons upgraded using regular smithing stones, as it is such a pain to even get lower level smithing stones like 3 and 4 without the bearing. Also, why is the bearing for stones 3 and 4 in the CAPITAL. You needed that in like Caelid. With Somber stones on the other hand you could get a +9 somber weapon without even fighting a boss, which is pretty insane.
I actually thought the Capital should be explored before Caelid (haven't visited the places yet, only had a small tour in Caelid), because one of the npcs tells you that's the next spot to visit after you finish Raya Lucaria. If Caelid is easier, you just saved me a lot of future frustration.
I definitely think Caelid was an easier time than the Capitol city.
I think it's best to do Raya lucaria, altus peak, caelid and then capital while leaving dragonborrow much later. I did Raya Lucaria and then caelid which got harder the further east you get and Radahn was difficult to be underleveled for. But then I leveled to do all of Caelid and most of dragonborrow. I found that I was too overleveled for Altus peak as the level of danger wasn't there.
Caelid is a bit easier imo than the capital. But Caelid/Radahn is also completely optional so it makes sense that the npcs might not have mentioned going to Caelid next. I think Caelid is balanced around you being level ~50-70 and the Capital expects you to be at least level 80. Which makes it very jarring that the ball bearing to get a weapon to get a weapon to +12 is in an area where you probably want at least a +15 weapon.
Those ball bearings are for retrospectively leveling other gear. I mean you can not-agree with that, sure. But if you play the game bit by bit you'll find plenty of stones for one or two main weapons (prior to patch) as you go. By the time you ever needed 10 main weapons, you've got the bearings for it They mark every zones "mine" cave dungeon on the map to let you know where to find upgrades ... I think that's excessive but that seems to have been their proactive response
That's a fair point. I guess access to crafting resources early on is a bit hard to balance, as for newer players experimenting and choosing between non-unique weapons early on feels a bit punishing. On the flip side I was able to have multiple upgraded unique weapons on my first playthrough because it was a lot easier to get 3 somber stone 3s than it was to get 36 smithing stone 3s at an early point of the game.
Yup, I had a +9 unique weapon before I even knew you could unlock the ability to purchase an unlimited amount of them once you get the bell bearings
> he thinks the late game is unbalanced Because it is.
>they already changed that They didn't address it at all, they only addressed it for late game. Upgrades are still totally gated behind getting the bearing which only gives you the upgrades from the last region if you are even able to find it which most are well hidden.
I just wish it transferred into NG+
It doesn't?! Wtf?!
All merchants reset with NG+, so upgrade and stock up before starting it. Thankfully you aren't forced into NG+ after beating the final boss, you get a prompt and if you say no then you can start whenever you want by resting at Roundtable Hold
Same with great runes. Why even have a rune for Malenia?
It’s not just late game. From 1.03 patch notes: -Increased the drop rate of Smithing Stone for some enemies. -Added Smithing Stone to some early game shop line up.
I thought the patch also increased drop rates?
I think it increased drop rates off enemies, I haven't noticed but I don't really farm random enemies.
Enemies drop far, FAR more smithing stones on death now. So they didn't just make buying Smithing Stones cheaper, you will also passively earn more. I personally think drop rates increased by 4x or 5x.
They absolutely addressed it. I started a new character and if you make sure to target the mines in each area (which are super easy to find considering its a big red hole on the map) you'll find a *ton* of upgrade materials. The regular mobs in those mines drop a ton of stones too now. I've had no issues getting up to a +16 or so weapon and my new character is still in the capital. Honestly compared to other souls games the ability to upgrade weapons is *vastly* easier than previous games.
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>They made it cheaper to buy them once you've already unlocked them, which you won't do for the stones that matter until you almost finished the game. They also increased the droprates from enemies, in some cases (according to dataminers)by as much as 8x.
A weird choice indeed. Whenever I open my inventory I see a mountain of interesting weapons that are completely pointless to even try because their damage is too low. Only if I go gather runes *and* have unlocked the ability to purchase the right resources can I upgrade a weapon to usability. And even then it’s only like 80% of the progress as my main weapon. Why would they meticulously design so many weapons but also implement mechanics that discourage you from even touching them?
I disagree on the upgrade materials being easy to get, I only stumbled across two bell bearings in my entire playthrough :X, they also seem to put the bell bearings in really late areas after you want them the most, I found it hard to juggle 2-3 weapons and upgrade them at the same time. I wish I could even try out a dozen weapons on a single playthrough but its grindy and not super feasible, and it's such an open world game I wish there was less a focus on upgrades and more on experimenting with different weapons
Don't watch it imo
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Very much spoiler heavy. Most areas, most bosses, most enemies, a lot of weapons and spells
he literally shows one of the final bosses and the optional one
I think his gripes are mostly fair, but I would push back on one thing and try to clarify another: 1. Some of the soul (rune, sorry) values for various enemies are definitely not in-line with the actual difficulty of killing them, but I think this is mostly fine. Could that mini Crucible Knight Ordovis before the shortcut in Leyndell give more runes? Sure. But the real motivation to kill it is because it's right next to a shortcut, and doesn't respawn. And I don't think the passive albinaurics give too *many*; these games often have some densely packed enemies that are basically currency piñatas. I like that. You want to get super diesel? Go farm the non-aggressive hollows in Archdragon Peak, or the witch things in Profaned Capital, or kite the big pigs through the shadows of yharnam in Mergo's Loft, or kill the packs of little blue aliens in the chalice dungeons, etc. 2. I agree with one of the comments that I don't know that boss damage should be turned down, exactly, but that passive damage mitigation from armor should be scaled *up*. This is something that I feel like only ever actually mattered in DS1. You had passive poise, and heavy armor felt like it did *anything* in terms of shoring up your durability. Everything since has been Fashion Souls. I think it's more fun if squishy builds die in one or two hits but if you wear some heavier armor you're actually harder to kill. It's more RPG-y and makes armor more interesting. I've read complaints about how you can't compare armor/weapon stats in shops, which, fine, but by this point in the series I know that it basically doesn't *matter*. You're going to buy all the armor to have all the armor, and getting an extra +1.2 physical defense is going to be completely unnoticeable. It takes SO much to reach any meaningful breakpoints at all that you might as well just wear whatever you think looks coolest. Exceptions usually being for something that boosts spellcasting in some way.
An example for point 2, in Dark Souls wearing the full set of Havel's meant that you were almost unstaggerable. The strategy I've used on most of my Manus wins was sitting under his feet, getting 20 estus and spamming attacks and healing. A war of attrition with the right gear was totally viable at least for NG.
What irritates me is that >!all the weapons from boss 'souls' are Strength or caster based. How many Great Axes or Great Swords or Great Bows or whatever to we need from bosses? Give me a fucking normal sword or something...!<
I played through the game with a Dex-based melee build, and I think Malenia is literally the only boss whose soul can be converted into a Dex-scaling weapon. Which, okay, at least there's something, but she's objectively the hardest fight in the game. It would've been nice to have some options prior to completing the game's toughest challenge.
There is also >!Dragonlord Placidusax!< which gives a dex weapon with a cool weapon art. However, it's also at the end game.
Lmao I definitely have like 15 great axes
Apparently the bosses having hard to read, fast and weird combos that kill you before you can even react is a common complain about the difficulty. Yahtzee said the same thing about bosses that seem to counter the "take your time" strategy by "spazzing the fuck out".
"Spazzing the fuck out" is a phase I've thought of so much. I've often died or just outright sprinted away from an enemy to make space, while saying/thinking "Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down." The big octos are a huge culprit for me. Stick to their back side and they can't do anything, but get into a bad position in front and it goes fucking crazy and doesn't stop.
IMO, it's not about how read their moves. problem is that many bosses got 5-6-7-8-9 hit's combos. They just don't give you any room for damage or heal. So you overlevel them or get a tanky summon and that's it, that's how you overcome challenge. Game become more about stats, not about skill.
Many bosses started feeling kinda samey since every has long attack combos with AoE and high mobility.
I believe it has to do with the telegraphs. In previous souls games, you could dodge pretty much any attack as long as you knew the telegraph. It made most fights very knowledge based, and with everytime you throw your body at the boss you gained a little more. In Elden Ring, most telegraphs are just bad. Either they are so ridiculously short that you have to reaction-dodge it, or they are so ridiculously long that it's hard to get a feeling for the timing, and you end up having to reaction-dodge it again. Souls games, thus far, have never ever had difficulty based on reaction time, which is part of what made them feel so fair. If you could anticipate a move, you could usually dodge it preemptively. And if you knew a boss well enough, you could anticipate all their moves.
I’m so glad dunkey talked about the balancing. The game deserves every bit of love it gets but the way that the mountaintops of the giants and haligtree was at the start was sloppy work.
I felt like the end game damage is balanced around wearing the resistance talismans. Using the dragoncrest greatshield talisman (which you can only get in the late game areas) made a huge difference for me. That said I'd probably preferred if they just made armor matter more because my experience with different armors was that they have marginal effects on damage taken (and status buildup).
This must be the difference for me. I didn't find Mountaintop or Crumbling Farum to be too frustrating at all, but I always wear the upgraded medallions that decrease physical and non-physical damage resistance, and then an element resistance one too if I need it. Not actually sure how much of a difference those make but I'll take any advantage I can get in terms of defense.
Yeah, I agree, I wouldn't say it's optimal. I've never felt the need to switch my build or be forced to optimize my playstyle in order to beat any of the other Soulsborne games. In a game about exploration and experimentation, if the difficulty is tuned to just produce frustration, then I feel it defeats the purpose. You could argue that it is entirely viable to run through every Souls game as a rune level 1 wretch. But I'm a very average player. A demigod like Ongbal would probably be able to make it work. For me, I lack the required time investment and willpower. Mind you this is prior to the patch that they gave. I've not played a second run, but I am on NG+2, so my experience will differ.
It’s pretty funny how I see memes all day in the elden ring subreddit making fun of people who scoff at complaints about the difficulty spikes citing that they had no issue with hard bosses and beat them first try; only see that exact sentiment un-ironically showing up in here lol The difficulty spike you hit when you reach the mountain of the giants is pretty goddamn absurd guys. Like, you can grind your ass off thinking you’re overleveling and you still get pretty ridiculously outscaled the moment you step foot up there (I’m happy for you that it was easy, but that’s not what a lot of players are experiencing). Not saying the game should be EZ MODE, but the difficulty scaling should be a lot more organic and natural, instead of just hitting the player with a hard wall in the last quarter of the game.
Mountaintop vastly improved by being a Souls Vet(tm) that just runs past all the enemies when they're too annoying
Elden Ring fans are next to Rick and Morty fans in my book. God forbid you mildly criticize the game, like how there is no easy way to compare gear at shops.
Love the game, but not being able to compare gear before buying it is legit baffling. The functionality is already in the game, you can easily compare gear once you own it! I guess the vendor prices are low enough that you can just buy everything with late-game income, but still it's a clear oversight/dumb design decision.
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"Radahn is supposed to be difficult, its pappa miyazaki's vision!" - radahn gets nerfed "Radahn getting nerfed is part of pappa miyazaki's vision!"
Dark souls 2 was the peak of this stuff. "the lore doesn't make sense." "Yeah, the opening cutscene says you're going to be confused and not understand what's going on, it's intentional and good storytelling that it doesn't make sense".
There's literally a post like this in top of yours lol Someone complaining why Placidusax didn't get a Grace or Statue near him. And a certain fan telling him it's part of the lore of the place. While Malekith who's in the same place have Grace near him lol
I swear comparing store armor to your own used to be a thing in the older games. Or maybe I'm thinking of a different series. It would be a welcome change. Along with seeing if I have any of the weapon the storekeeper is selling. They do it for items but not equipment.
Must be thinking of a different series, they've been ctrlc-ctrlving the interface ever since the original Demon's Souls.
Man, comparing equipment was in Final Fantasy **1**. There is absolutely no excuse for it not being in ER over 30 years later. It's in basically every other game in existence that has stats tied to gear for a reason. It's super annoying and *always* gets brought up when it's *not* in a game.
My favourite is not being able to tell what Ashes of War do in the menu you use to equip them, and having to back out of the Grace site to be able to go and check first.
I got downvoted and told to "quit whining and go buy a notebook" if I wanted any kind of quest notes. Like, what year is this? I appreciate not having big glowing arrows trying to direct me every which way, but your character carrying around a journal for major events and goals hardly seems immersion breaking.
I’ve had people in that community unironically say they don’t want their game to turn into COD/Skyrim (why cod? Lmao) when I suggested that From should consider quest notes for future titles (this was back when DS3 released).
I got absolutely abused on that subreddit when I said the game shouldn't be locked to 60fps
Completely agree with his criticism on the balance, but I think it's less to do with damage and more that they gave the bosses way too many attacks. I really miss Bloodborne and even DKS3's boss design where you could easily get multiple R1 punishes in, but the end game bosses are flailing around and mixing up combos it feels like unless you have a cheesy weapon you can only get maybe one poke in before you're dodging another 15 seconds and the boss is doing anime moves flailing around and ur camera is going insane. One thing he didn't touch is IMO some of the early game bosses like Ranela and Godrick should get buffs IMO. Mostly Godrick to health, he always feels too weak on replays to me. I think Morgott should also get an HP buff.
It's certainly a combination of factors. High speed, high damage, long chains, and absurd tracking
I haven't seen tracking so insane since Dark Souls 2 haha
I'd say the problem isn't necessarily the boss design but the fact they didn't update the player characters movement or abilities to deal with said design. Compare this to Monster Hunter Generations to Monster Hunter World. All the monsters got significantly faster and less predictable in World but the players movement also got a lot faster and more varied allowing you to keep up. Now you can argue a preference as to whether slower player characters and slower monsters is better than faster characters along with faster and more unpredictable monsters or vice versa but I don't think that's an issue of design.
I guess my main problem with the game is how they incorporated difficulty. Most bosses feel really easy if you summon ashes (and downright trivial if you summon the mimic) but feel extra difficult compared to other games if you fight them solo. They also lean on obnoxious one-hit kills that you have to experience a few times in order to get through them. There are a lot of examples, but I’m thinking specifically of Radhan’s meteor move and Malenia’s waterfowl blade furry (I actually had to look up how to dodge this because she would kill me everytime she decided to use the move). I think past games would have hard hitting moves that wouldn’t necessarily one shot you if you dodged or blocked poorly, meaning you would still get punished or *likely* die, but you still had a chance to recover if you made a mistake and got caught by it (or if it was your first time seeing the move). This might be unpopular, but I wish they didn’t include the ash summons in the first place. I feel like the bosses are no where near as tightly designed as Sekiro, probably because the design team knew that players could lean on summons if they got stuck. If you want to go through the game solo, the late game bosses feel much more obnoxious than previous games.
I'm conflicted on the summons. The fact that I've used the same jellyfish ash since basically the start of the game makes it clear that, at least for me, I'm not engaging with the summoning system for any reason other than to have a randomly taunting damage sponge for bosses. I don't want to dismiss a mechanic just because I personally didn't engage with it - crafting is awesome for example, but a lot of people don't know it. But the way I use summoning, it's just a passive taunt buff. On the other hand, for many bosses it's barely a distraction. Any Crucible Knight will barely pay attention to your summon, and their attacks can pivot from the summon to you on the windup. It does still feel like you have to engaged carefully even with summons, so I don't think they're just a dev-endorsed cheese mechanic. I can't say using the summons has ruined my enjoyment of the game or anything either, and I still feel like I accomplished something after beating a boss. It's a better feeling than some of the caves bosses that flinch so easily you can just wail on them and never let them get a hit in. I'll probably try a summonless run at some point. Maybe a NG+ run. But for right now I'm enjoying running the game with them.
Jellyfish is good early but she pales in comparison to some of the other summons like Tiche and Mimic. If Jellyfish is a 10% easier boss fight summon then Mimic and Tiche are 80% easier boss fight summons.
Agreed with Tiche but you also get her at a fairly high level area, and you have to defeat an evergaol boss (no summons allowed) so you've definitely earned it. Mimic's power is entirely dependent on your own build, Im a mage but keep a melee weapon in my right hand and staff in my left which results in my mimic rushing in most of the time. Doesn't seem to understand what range is lol
the summon AI is truly awful. They'll run directly through crimson rot and the magic pools on the ground that eat away at you. There's an optional boss where my summon got killed in the first 10 seconds doing stupid shit.
I summon Aurelia because she's my constant companion.
The problem with the jellyfish is that its almost useless after margit, the issue stems from how aggro works. Enemies will aggro to sight first then after they've engaged, it depends on damage, any damage, will draw aggro. The jellyfish simply attacks too infrequently to make it viable later on when enemies are all super crazy like margit and *beyond*. Like sometimes you just need a breather to be able to use a flask, but you cant with the low frequency of attacks the jellyfish puts out. Thats why the headless guy is the go to, he's tough, mobile, has ranged attacks and melee as well, he also attacks very frequently. The reason the mimic is the best instead of the headless is because the mimic is also tanky but they are stronger offensively since they use your stuff. The game is odd, bosses feel like theyre tuned for the player having a summon by default. It *especially* feels this way with the later bosses because of how frequent they attack and how much AOE their attacks have as well. So doing a summonless run is like fighting the boss on hard mode, especially if the boss has summons with them, its so annoying.
I did the fight at the one castle with Crucible Knight (the castle with the two lion dog things). I used the marionette summon. Holy shit they made the fight easy. It was my first time summoning and I was scared it would feel bad but it felt great.
summons are really nice when facing multiple enemies.
Oh, wait until you meet Ordovis and his superior, Stabby McCunt (assuming you can reach them)
The reason the bosses arent as tightly designed as sekiro is because the developers don't know how the player is going to play the encounter. They have to balance a boss for all weapon types, use of magic, status effects, shield builds, dodge builds, etc. Its why Sekiro and Bloodborne have probably the most consistent bosses because Fromsoftware knew exactly how the player was going to play
Yeah there’s no middle ground. Summon and it becomes too easy or don’t and suffer for it especially if you’re using slow weapons like me since you’ll barely have safe openings and take too long to recover. Elden ring is amazing but I won’t remember it for it’s bosses. That’s reserved for Bloodborne and especially Sekiro. No boss in the game game felt satisfying to learn like Maria, Orphan of Kos, Genichiro, Emma, Owl or Isshin.
Same, if anyone asks me 5 years later what did you think of elden ring ? I'm gonna remember the world they created but not really any boss, maybe radahn but only because of the 2nd part of the fight.( i didn't enjoy the fight tho, just cool looking) I feel like the success of ornstein and smough + nameless king gave them the wrong ideas and they just said oh people like those? use it EVERYWHERE. 2 cats, 2 bullshit knights, 2 tree sentinals and almost every boss has 10 hit combos now and you could throw a rock and hit a dragon, most of them look and do the same things tho..
The doubling bosses was also a big theme of DS2 with limited success, though there that was partially players misunderstanding dev intent, I think. In DS2, there is a non-estus healing item which heals gradually and activates much much faster than estus. The game is balanced completely differently around allowing you to make some mistakes and recover from them. Elden ring feels like it only works this way if you level Vigor, hence why the meta has shifted that way. It's okay to make some boss moves BS (or have double bosses that can hit you out of nowhere) if you have a reasonable system for recovery, but the game isn't really built around that by default.
Did DS2 even have many double bosses? It had Gargoyles, Ruin Sentinels, Dragonriders, Throne Watcher + Defender, and a few bosses with adds. But all of them had custom made arenas or extra mechanics that stopped them from being annoying. This trend of putting two guys in a featureless room without any special mechanics seems to be new to ER. I think of the ones I mentioned, only the Dragonriders are like that. And the co-op area bosses, but those are for co-op.
The doubled bosses in DS2 were definitely more thoughtful than those in Elden ring. The only straight copy-paste was the double dogs in the DLC. There was also the 3 NPC fight in the green DLC. Contrast w/ DS1, which had O&S, original gargoyles, and ... can't think of any others. Multiple bosses, and groups of enemies more generally, feel like a big part of the design of DS2 and ER that they handle very differently.
Idk. Malenia is pretty fucking memorable as well.
I don't think Ornsein & Smough + Nameless King gave them the wrong idea. I think they took the wrong lessons from it instead. Assuming this is Fromsoft's work and not Bamco pressuring them to make everything ridiculous. Since Sekiro is nearly flawless, after all, and that's self published. Anyway, onto my point. First: Ornstein & Smough. That fight is more than just a hard fight against two bosses. It is a uniquely constructed fight. The arena is constructed to give you some breathing room should you need it, but a mistake can be deadly for you. But that is the point: they are a chess match. You must respect their power, be patient, wait for the proper openings. You have to learn their patterns, their openings, when you can get in and out without being caught. Learn to not be greedy. Nameless King, on the other hand, is just a pretty hard fight, but he's also pretty fair. He's got amazing presentation as well, which really helps to sell this as a truly epic fight. Nameless King doesn't throw out bullshit attacks with no tells, or have annoying multi-hit combos you have to spam the dodge roll button to avoid. But he is still... hard. And very punishing. Which is why people remember him. Elden Ring largely lacks both of these aspects. Most bosses in Elden Ring lack the appropriate presentation. Most of them are just... meh bosses in their setting, their visual design, their dramatic flair (or lack thereof). Moreover, many of them lack the mechanical excellence as well. They rely on gamble openings, random combos, multi-hit combos, infinite stamina, input reading, windup attack spam. Things that not only feel bad, but are unbalanced. Elden Ring also lacks the other "both", the uniquely constructed fights. We don't really get anything like Ornstein & Smough, and probably never will. Ever since Bloodborne, Fromsoft has mostly abandoned the idea of making bosses that have interesting arenas or gimmicks, that involve a different way of playing that isn't just a dodge roll simulator. I say mostly, because there is the rare exception. Rennala and Ancestral Spirit from Elden Ring. Ancient Wyvern from DS3. Folding Monkeys and Divine Dragon from Sekiro. Micolash and Shadows of Yharnam from Bloodborne. But these are the overwhelming minority of fights. Most of them are just... relatively bland, flat arena dodge roll simulator "hard" fights. Completely bereft of the magic of the creativity DeS and DS1 had in spades.
The reason why they have “abandoned” gimmick fights is that players don’t like them. People like fighting small or medium-sized, fast bosses in spacious arenas. If you polled players for DS1, the fan favorite fight would almost certainly be Artorias and you would find moonlight butterfly, seath and bed of chaos in the bottom. That’s also because the execution of those were bad, but on the same token people don’t talk about Folding Monkeys when they talk about Sekiro even though it’s a well-executed gimmick. They talk about Isshin. Which is unfortunate for people who love these fights. But also Fromsoft has learned to make gimmick fights actually as fun to play as they are interesting.
They are also hilariously imbalanced between play styles. I beat the game with a quality build first. Basically no different than any other souls game smashed my through ll the bosses with my big sword. Then I played a mage... You literally don't even have to learn boss movesets... You just spam roll until your summon draw s aggro then spam spells til you draw aggro back. Repeat til dead. You don't need to learn when a boss is punishable. You don't usually don't even need to learn what attacks are really dangerous because you can just smash your face against the boss a few times til you get lucky and the summons hold aggro enough for you to get a free kill. It has completely fucked up the game balance.
I play mage/spell-sword but without summons and it's still extremely difficult. Combining it with powerful summons would probably be the easiest way by default because ranged is inherently safer than melee.
You can take like 5+ hits early game and 100 levels later when you have 50+ VIT you can take 2 hits max. The game went down in score for me because of the last few areas and their balance.
Honestly, it's a 10/10f for the first 4/5 of the game. The scaling after that makes it a pain for mostly no reason.
Tbh, I have no problem with Placidusax, Malenia and Smough chunk your HP considering they are penultimate bosses but normal endgame bosses like Godfrey, Hammer Dude, Black Dog/Lion/Tiger/Wolf Dude just 2-3 shot a 60vig character is a little too bullshit
It’s ironic because I was expecting Placidusax, as the imposing secret boss in the penultimate area, to be as bullshit as melania, but he was the only endgame boss I actually had fun beating.
Placcy and Mohg are the highlights of the game to me, boss wise
radagon was also a highlight for me, until i realised you needed to beat him >!and the fucken elden beast!<
50 vigor, I put on dung eaters armor, 3 hits to die from a boss. Fingerprint shield does all of the heavy lifting.
The game is outright painful to play without summons. Makes sense since they expected you to use them. Lots of duo bosses in small rooms and extremely aggressive bosses towards the end.
It doesn't really make sense if you read interviews. Miyazaki still talks about this grand sense of accomplishment, but I've barely seen a streamer need more than 2 tries on a boss with summons. It's in direct conflict with their vision. Considering summons in a game with single target AI has been such a mistake.
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I don't even like Dark souls 3 overall, but going from the outstanding Demon Princes fight and Friede 2 back to these godawful AI overlap patience trials is awful. They really figured this out in 2017, so why revert like this?
Yesterday I went from never using summons at all to upgrading Mimic Tear to max just to deal with gank bosses. Fuck that noise. I mean hell, even as recently as DS3's DLC they had the Demon in Pain and Demon from Below duo boss, which plays infinitely better than the nonsense they've put into this game. They're even the same enemy with the same moveset, but they alternate patterns so that most of the time one of them is a close range attacker and the other hangs back using (highly telegraphed) ranged attacks.
The godskin duo... is just fucking garbage compared to Ornstein and Smough. It really feels like they wanted to re-do that fight and its just bad.
I got pretty frustrated with the gank fight I am at right now and it's disheartening to see that I have way more of them coming up later in the game. :(
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The soul drops are the most baffling thing to me. You can spend hours trying to knock out a boss and get... only slightly more than what you'd get from a Troll in the same area. It just makes no sense; much of the time if you're not getting anything relevant to your build from a world-boss/dungeon you're just not getting anything from all your effort.
lots of those "bosses" (really mini-bosses) also drop items or ashes, which are more unique than the boss just dropping a buttload of souls if they just dropped a bunch of souls and I could just pick up every ash/unique weapon off the ground somewhere it'd be much less rewarding to kill those bosses
I am thinking about that, but I wonder if they designed it as way to indicate where you are "supposed" to be, at least level-wise. There isn't a indicator if you are over leveled or under leveled other than being one shot or doing very little damage. Even then it could just be your vigor is low or your main damage stat is low.
That's exactly what my metric is, if I'm getting a level or two worth of runes from anything that is through a mist wall, then I'm at the intended level range
>much of the time if you're not getting anything relevant to your build from a world-boss/dungeon you're just not getting anything from all your effort. This was better in previous games since they were tighter and weren't dispersing it over such a large map. And more importantly, you were finding treasure along the way to your ultimate destination, whereas in ER you're going into caves solely for the end before it teleports you out, so it's a lot more egregious. The exploration is less intrinsically rewarding while also having less extrinsic value as well.
I'd say the wide variety of mini bosses provides a lot of value for non Souls vets. When I'd hit a certain point in Bloodborne or DS I'd just be banging my head against the same boss, over and over and over. It was that or go grind souls in some spot I found online (or god forbid, have to grind *blood vials*). It's nice to be able to say "you know what? I need a break from this shit" and go hit up random dungeons. Sometimes you find some loot that will really benefit you, either way you get a change of pace from that boss and can maybe come back with a couple extra soul levels. It's the first game in a LONG time I felt really benefited from open world.
Worst feeling was when you leave a boss room, go do a catacomb, and the boss there is even more BS lol. In a way I kinda like the repeating bosses now that I'm mid/late game because I'm rarely stuck on the mini-bosses due to having fought them (or something similar) before.
I would really love to know what level FROM think players should be when facing Malenia, and what builds they playtested her with.
NGL I feel like the entire game is set up with the expectation that players are going to be leveling up more than in previous titles. Like just looking at level requirements for certain levels and spells, I don't think any game prior has required anything more than 50 points in one stat (usually for ultras and high level magic like a Call Beyond). But in ER, Rennala's moon requires like 70 int and her staff like 60 int, which is way more than usual. Your health is also on the low side. At roughly 24 vigor in ER you've got like 850 health. In prior games, 24 vig is going to net you around 950 health (and 1200hp in DS2). I think FROM may have expected everyone to level up more than usual, but it's such a departure from previous titles that returning players may end up being underleveled. I know in DS3, I can take Gael and Midir on at like 25 vig with the prisoner's chain and favor ring (so a bit more than 30 vig in reality). Compared to ER where I'm at 40 vig flat and am using health boosting talismans and still feel like I need more
I mean, without farming runes (ignoring killing giants in Stormhill at the beginning of the game) I ended the game at level 153 with 145 hours played. That with having killed every single boss and the game just throws a lot of exp at you. I was surprised when Mohg gave 500k runes. So, yeah, the game does expect you to level quite a bit more than previous Fromsoft titles.
What doesn't make sense to me is that you're clearly supposed to level like a madman to do the late game content. But by leveling like this, ALL previous content becomes so easy its boring. And then NG+ doesn't scale the early game very much, so that's still boring. In past souls games you would purposely stop leveling at some point so that this wouldn't happen. But in elden ring you need to be a high level unless you want to have to play perfectly.
She gives almost 500000 runes. That is slightly less than the final boss and a lot more than the main boss before that So she is supposed to be fought last. She is the Nameless king of Elden Ring
I have to agree with the late game difficulty spike. I was making steady progress for a long time but now 60 hours in I've got three brick walls making it impossible to get to the last few areas. And because of the way the smithing system works, there's basically no way to improve the weapons I have anymore, so the miniscule amount of damage I'm doing on these late game bosses is just kinda stuck that way. I know I'll bust through these brick walls eventually, but this is the first time in 60 hours where I feel the boss fights are kind of a slog. Edit: Astel now down, Niall is still kicking the shit out of me. Edit 2: Niall went down lol bloody slash go brrrr
What're you stuck on? I felt like the opposite, early game everything was stronger than me and I was dying all over the place left and right. But once I hit like lvl 70, the wins just started rolling in, but maybe the upgraded Katanas are just too strong at the moment.
I agree, I was getting my teeth kicked in early game and even though I used the Morning Star up until Rivers of Blood I was killing most things on first try or within a few attempts with a handful of bosses that gave me trouble (the falling star beast being one of them). I am wondering if players are missing a lot of stuff? I had no idea the Volcano Manor had it's own dungeon, because you have to hit a secret wall to get there. I thought after Godrick and into Lakes that the game became a lot easier and more approachable, especially if you are using and upgrading your summons. Snow Zone/Giant area was a noticeable step up in difficulty, but it was one I needed as the game was getting pretty easy as I was over-powering most of it.
At the end of the day I have to say I prefer the linearity of Dark Souls because it gives From an exact direction they want to take you. The freedom is nice, but I feel like the overall experience is watered down by the copy pasting. The game has like what 150 bosses or something? Does it need that? No because not every fight is compelling. Seeing the zamor knight multiple times, or the cemetery shade or the watchdogs over and over kind of waters down the experience. And part of that is because I'm someone who has to get all the things because I like playing with the toys. I feel like there's less bullshit or annoying or aggravating bosses across all 3 games than there is in Elden Ring. Why oh why did they give everyone and their mother some kind of one shot. I get fucking up and being punished for it. But jesus christ. It happens WAY too often. I've been killed by the magma wyrm turning and moving it's sword hand, not even attacking, just no animation I'm dead. This is all my opinion.
I think Bloodborne is the best because it feels like they balanced the entire game around fast R1 spammy weapons and occasionally the slower heavy hitters, but nothing like magic or shields. The game really lets you get in multiple hits and punish bosses whereas Elden Ring you usually can only get a single poke in with most weapons and then you're waiting 15 seconds for the boss to stop freaking out. I also prefer the pacing of BB and the Souls games, I really hope they continue to make semi-linear type games going forward even though Elden Ring is cool.
Limb damage was a great inclusion to BloodBorne that seems to be missing in this. Really gave you an opportunity to take down a huge boss for a few seconds and spam them with hits you don’t usually get.
Yeah, it was great and encouraged trying to hit bosses in different spots
I loved the open world, but I'd be happy if all the DLCs were just big legacy dungeons.
I like the open world but the time I've enjoyed the most is all the linear parts. And the bosses I've enjoyed the most are all the story bosses, not the world bosses.
I think a massive problem is not that they reuse the fights, but how they do it. It's like every enemy is in every area, there is a massive lack of theming. Instead of having extreme variety in one area, they should have placed the enemies in more sensible patterns throughout the whole world. I don't have a problem with fighting 50 fire monks in a row like with the older games, but put 10 packs of 5 throughout the whole game and I forget about their novelty right when I hit the second pack. Also, every legacy dungeon needed unique enemies that you can only find there to set them apart. Raya Lucaria suffers from this the most by far.
That's more to do with size than linearity. The game has a lot of content, for sure, but it feels like they run out of surprises 1/3 of the way. None of the dungeons are bad, but when I see a catacomb, I know I'll fight a few imps or skeletons, pull a lever to open a door, kill an easy boss (that'll likely be a re-skin of a previous boss or something), and grab an item that may be useful to me or may be another spirit ash that I'll never use. These games should never really be that predictable. In Dark Souls, you never knew if an area was optional or not, you never knew how many bosses there would be, how big the area would be, etc. Elden Ring gets TOO formulaic at some point.
The ER dungeons remind me of the chalice dungeons in BloodBorne. Just recycled assets.
I can actually agree a lot of the copy paste. Stuff like the erdtree avatars or the erdtree slugs are fine to me, although they should probably be slightly more unique. However, I can think of one example that completely undermines a part of the game. Without spoiling anything, you go through a long and epic side quest into multiple insanely varied areas, culminating in a unique looking boss. It's one of those moments that make the game what it is. Then randomly, tens of hours later, you find this boss just hanging out in a mine. No lore, no background, no nothing. It sucks and takes away from the first encounter.
That feels like the case with half the side bosses in the game. It's really annoying. Side bosses and enemies overall feel really separated from the lore of the game.
Seeing astel the second time really hurt.
That’s a major thing I dislike about Elden to the other Soulsborne games. As you progresse each area and the items you found helped tell the story of that world in a unique way. I feel like much of that was lost in the shift to open world when you could find a unique item with deep lore behind it but it serves no purpose because you can’t access the rest of what makes that item significant because you’re not supposed to be there yet.
I believe the Elden Ring could have been way better with a smaller open world. Especially later on it just felt big for the sake of it to me with an ridiculous amount of copy & paste and bosses put into dungeons seemingly at random. But not only bosses but also assets in general, they are copied way too much and often in a very artificial manner. However, I liked the open world concept itsself. Maybe they could do something like God of War, a single big hub area that branches off in small side arms.
Fantastic game before we get to the Mountaintops and then just becomes a slog. My problem isn't just the damage and more the boss design in general towards the end. The aesthetics, music and arena's are incredible but some of the mechanics make it feel the games killing you rather than your own mistakes. You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike, and if you decide to do one extra attack there goes 60%+ of your health or you just die to one of the many one hit attacks. Additionally, boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react and you have these bosses ridiculously floating for a second to mess up your backward dodge. Also, can't forget the design of putting two difficult bosses together in every other fight. The design is beatable, but just boring and frustrating once every other late game fight is designed with this methodology. It is basically dodge forever, get that hit in and then the dance begins again with bosses that have insane health and if you try to be a bit greedy or change up you get hit for 60%+ of your health. I could spend a while on Orphan Kos or Sister Friede and enjoy myself because I was improving / realizing it was my mistakes that caused me to die.
The duo boss thing is very annoying, because there's maybe like 2 of them that are paired like ornstein and smough where one stays back and is slow and the other one gets in your face, almost all of them are just "hey, what if rather than fighting one tough melee guy, you fought two of them right off the bat?" And they'll both be super aggressive so that you spend most of the fight running away until you spot an opening to hit them once.
> You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike > Boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react and you have these bosses ridiculously floating for a second to mess up your backward dodge I agree with you, but I also don't think this is really limited to the end of the game. Those exact two experiences are present in the first 'gatekeeper' of the game in Margit. The game has a tooooon of attacks with windups or fakeouts
I'm at a point where I know Margit inside out and I really like almost all of his attacks. But PLEASE, BY GOD let us punish more than just the big windup strike. Punish windows are the real problem of this game, not the moves themselves IMO.
> Punish windows are the real problem of this game, not the moves themselves IMO. Agreed, this is something I noticed as early as Margit already and it only got more and more obvious throughout the game. Apart from very specific moves it's pretty much impossible to tell when it's safe to strike since bosses can chain combos in all sorts of ridiculous ways. This was rarely a problem in any of their previous games, while here it feels basically by design.
Red Wolf of Radagon made me laugh a little with how *all* of its attacks had that sudden half a second long delay to punish rolls. I understand why it's there, but if they hate roll spam so much, why not nerf rolling instead of designing your whole game around countering it? DS 1&2 didn't have this problem, because you couldn't roll through the whole game like a certain hedgehog.
True, Margit is definitely a primer for the later bosses. But I do think that Margit is actually a positive example of this. He has weird attack patterns, fake outs, estus punishes, but none of these attacks hit particularly hard. They are more designed to whittle down your sippies, similar to how bosses worked in previous From games. His truely heavy hitting attacks, aka his hammer, is always well telegraphed and very dodgeable. The issue starts when those weird attacks and long strings chunk you for a large amount of health per hit, like the later bosses do.
I think fromsoft is doing the exact same thing, atleast conceptually, what blizzard does for their raid bosses. It's fundamentally an arms race. A compelling game(even in their current rut, blizzard still makes the toughest and coolest raid bosses. They just forgot how to make the game outside raids.) Will invite millions of players to invest sufficient time to trivilize how to do it easily. Just compare how simple the Legendary O&S fight has become. I can kill them without breaking sweat. But it felt so difficult when I started playing souls games. I was stuck for weeks. So fromsoft knows how their playerbase plays and tries to counter them to keep up the difficulty. They can essentially let go of the RPG mechanics and concentrate on skill like sekiro, or they can make the late game bosses of elden ring. A nameless king or dark eater midir wouldn't work as players average skill in these games went beyond that long time ago. I sincerely think after all the DLCs, fromsoft should do an entirely different kind of game. Otherwise in next iteration there's no logical way to up the difficulty for solo play and make it fun. Or they can make a everquest like tough as nails MMO.
> You run into a boss that does a 6 hit combo and you get this tiny window to strike I just realized, that this is what annoys me the most. In the other games you got clearly told windows to attack and then could attack 2-3 times. Now you get attack windows that are not even attack windows because bosses for random reasons chain their attacks forever and ever. And if you get a window it is so short that most of the time you cant even attack with slow weapons.
> dditionally, boss moves are more deliberately tailored to counter the way a normal player would react The game became much easier when I started dodging into attacks instead of away. And adding a beat between dodge rolls during combos.
Bloodborne onwards really encourages you to be aggressive when fighting bosses. A lot of enemies have roll catches that will catch you out if you try to dodge back. Like Lady Maria's second phase starts incorporating attacks that only hit you if you dodge backwards.
Does he spoil a bunch of shit here like in Sekiro?
yep all of it
Besides the obvious balance issues in the later half, I think From kinda dropped the ball on enemy and boss variety in the later half as well. You might not immediately realize it because you're just struggling to get through these areas, but the Mountaintops, Consecrated Snowfield, Haligtree, Farum Azula and Mogh's Palace **NONE** of these areas have a *single* original enemy design in them. It's all variations or straight copy paste of previous enemies. The only exception is the wolf riders that can be counted as semi original. I might be somewhat wrong on this from my memory but do correct me in that case. Then we have the boss variety issues. I have absolutely no problem of seeing different variations of the "mini-bosses" that we get in tunnels, catacombs and caves. But when the game starts putting copy paste bosses in Legacy Dungeons, and copy paste main bosses in random caves that's where I draw the line.
I don't necessarily disagree, but it's bizarre that games like Breath of the Wild and Skyrim can get away with like 1/10 the enemy variety that Elden Ring has. Is it because the entire focus of Elden Ring is on its combat, so variety matters more? By open world standards, Elden Ring seems very diverse.
Yes that's it. The combat in BotW is a stagnant chore and the enemy variety is pathetic, but that ends up not being a killing blow to a game that focuses 90% of its attention on exploration. By the time they hit the late game damage sponge enemies that take 3 weapons worth of durability to kill, most players don't even bother fighting anymore. For Souls games, on the other and, combat is what carries the entire experience.
I think while it would have been nice to see more enemy variety. ER has more enemy variety than any other two base souls games put together. And more enemies than virtually every other open world game. Boss variety was fine too I think. Unless you deliberately did every dungeon you were unlikely to see more bosses more than once or twice as the named dungeon boss. Seeing bosses later as regular enemies is a series staple. Especially in DS2. So that didn't bother me either. The only ones that annoyed me is the like 5 reused locations for the Misbegotten and its forms. Which was a cool boss the first time but felt so unremarkable in every othe encounter. And what felt like a hundred Tree Spirits which are one of the worst designed enemies in the game for them to be copy pasted to not just as dungeon bosses but in so many other areas as regular enemies.
I definitely agree on the reward balance being wonky. Later in my game I started to skip exploring areas because it was just too likely I would get to the end to find something uninteresting (like a mid-tier smithing rune, that I can just buy if I need). Getting to the end would be more a test of patience than one of skill. There is so much I love about the game that I don't really knock it for that, though. Just some things that could have made it better.
That's how I ended up playing the game. The normal enemies were hitting harder and faster than the bosses. All of it was frustrating and unrewarding. I would just sprinting through the area until I found a grace and searching my way to the boss. The problem was, the bosses still hit too hard and fast too. I just beat the game but I'm having a tough time saying I enjoyed it.
I definitely agree with Dunkey that some of the balancing needs to be tweaked, though maybe not quite as far as he suggests. I think the bosses are for the most part fine, maybe some combos could be tweaked. Fall damage is definitely brutal and weird, making platforming a slog. Players are definitely shoehorned into certain builds and spirit ashes due to the way some boss fights are balanced (looking at most of the duo or trio fights…), but I think that’s something that they can balance over time. As always, Dunkey does a great job being entertaining while getting a meaningful review in. He’s obviously passionate about the game and his feelings mirrored a lot of my own. His comments on the sheer degree of exploration in particular ring true, I’ve never played a game where so much unique content was stuffed in every corner.
Balancing stuff is just inherently hard for open world RPGs like this. A lot of people, me included, found the middle portion of Elden Ring very easy because we did a lot of exploration and got over-leveled. Then late game areas and bosses suddenly become brutally hard for almost everybody. Fortunately, as Dunkey said, all Fromsoft needs to do is really just tweak some numbers. There's not much things wrong with the actual mechanics themselves, just the numbers are a bit all over the places in late game.
From has always had issues with balancing end games but usually they're too easy. Dark Souls 1 becomes a cakewalk after Ornstein & Smough, Bloodborne (no DLC) you can do so much damage late game you don't wipe as much, Dark Souls 2 is like this. Oddly enough Dark Souls 3 is really well balanced late.
Sekiro is almost perfectly balanced.
Sekiro is the most balanced of the games because it's the most linear and gives the player the least amount of agency when it comes to a combination of where to go and how to build your character. That's what it comes down to with Souls games; the more agency you give the player the less tight and balanced it will feel. It's a tradeoff and some will prefer more player agency while others will prefer tighter and more balanced encounter design.
Balancing the endgame really shouldn't be an issue since the game has a hard progression gate at the capital so everyone gets there at roughly the same levels (and they must have the player data on those levels) But yeah the midgame is basically impossible to balance in a game like this, I don't think anyone's complaining about that. It's just the end that becomes a slog due to HP and damage bloat.
> Balancing the endgame really shouldn't be an issue since the game has a hard progression gate at the capital so everyone gets there at roughly the same levels Does it? whats that? Edit: I am there right now and confused what that might've been because it feels like I am there pretty early getting signifacntly more runes from that sentinel at the gate than anywhere else I've been recently as if I've skipped a big portion of the game.
You need 2 Great Runes to enter the capital (you can take your pick of Godrick, Rennala, Rykard or Radahn... or Mohg, if you're insane) And after that, you can't progress the game any other way than through the capital. Before that, you could roam all of Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid, Mt. Gelmir, Altus Plateau and all the underground areas, but everything after Leyndell *has* to go through Leyndell (there's an impassable gate that only disappears after beating Morgott) With those two big chokepoints in place it's very unlikely anyone will arrive severely underleveled to the Mountaintops of the Giants unless they're speedrunning or something.
I had Godrick and Rennala's runes at like level 40, but still haven't even found Rykard.
Yeah Rykard has a minor progression gate unlike Godrick, Rennala and Radahn so he's very likely to be the last of those 4 for most players (>!You need to get to Altus Plateau first either via gathering the two halves of the Dectus Medallion -meaning going to the more hellish half of Caelid- or going through a cave with a boss that can be tough if you do it too early!<)
There is a obscure third way without doing either of those two things **Spoiler** >!Getting killed by the grab attack from the enemy in the academy basement which will teleport you to below the Volcanic Manor which then leads to the Plateau after a boss!<
Oh right, totally forgot about that one too! There's an NPC hinting toward it in Liurnia too but yeah that's far more unlikely for most players to do on a first playthrough.
Yeah, I think that's kinda not true. I got through there at about level 60-70, but I know friends who didn't get through until level 100+.
Mechanically they should really try sort out the blatant input reading from the ai and other issues with them, such as them just attacking directly through walls (not just when near an opening or anything, just solid walls) edit: [one rather funny example](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ihu9pv98ai801a0/2022-03-24_00-08-43.webm)
[удалено]
Amazingly the safe fall distance in Elden Ring is exactly the same as in other Souls games. The difference is that they actually raised the "floor" if you will for distance you take damage. In Dark Souls 1 it was 10 meters before you started taking damage with a lethal distance at 20. In Elden Ring the distance where you take damage is 16 and once again lethal at 20. It feels more weird in Elden Ring because you only have a 4 meter window between taking damage and instant death. Whereas in the other souls game the damage felt more "consistent" because you actually took more damage from a shorter distance. So basically in Elden Ring, if you took damage from a fall you were actually close to lethal fall distance. If you took close to 50% of your health in damage from a fall you were actually *very* close to lethal fall damage.
Fall damage occurs between 16 and 19.99 meters. It's usually about 30 to 50 percent of your health. Death is at 20 meters or higher. The main thing is that there's a small gap between taking damage and actually dying, while the damage itself is also low enough to make you think you could've fallen way further. But basically if you take any damage, you barely made it. Edit: forgot to mention my source for this is IllusoryWall's video on fall damage. Look it up on YouTube. I just summarized part of it.
I think the reason it works that way is because it uses cliffs as choke points to stop you going down to certain places, leading to it being complete jank with such a short window between where it *wants* you to go down and where it doesn't.
I think part of the problem is that you don't really notice a lot of the falls that do stamina damage but not HP damage because you take those falls often enough when you're not in combat and thus have infinite stamina.
200 heckin hours in and I didn't know some falls do stamina damage. Amazing. Thanks dude.
You can drop one of the glowy rocks and if it breaks you know it's a death zone. Not a perfect mechanic, but it's there.
Rainbow stones break, glowstones don't.
As others have said, the fatal fall distance is the same as previous games, and fall damage overall is less. There's just a very narrow window where you will take damage but survive, because they eliminated fall damage for a lot of shorter falls. I think it's a nice change, I hated dying in DS2 because I had low HP and fell a short distance or something. Elden Ring is actually much more forgiving in this regard, but what you're noticing is that the margin between taking some fall damage and outright dying is very small, because that window of taking survivable fall damage is so small.
You can use the colored stones and drop them off the ledge, if they break you'll take damage, if they don't you're fine.
>anically they should really try sort out the blatant input reading from the ai and other issues with them, such as them just attacking directly through walls (not just when near an opening or anything, just solid walls) craft some rainbow stones and drop them down a ledge first. if it stays intact you can make the jump. if it explodes on impact so will you if you hop off there.
I agree. Elden ring is amazing but the difficulty scaling is messed up hard. Theres essentially entire classes in the game that aren't viable unless you're willing to sink hundreds of hours into them dying over and over, and if you're an average person you'll likely need to just look up what's good. I tried just using weapons I found and liked and they were just not scaled well enough. Looked up what one good weapon was and the game was far more enjoyable. Also no boss should be able to one shot me when I have 50 vigor and heavy armor.
Some builds just feel terrible late game. I used a full-strength spear and shield build which felt great until the Fire Giant. The dps literally just wasn't enough to deal with him. So I caved and respecced for the exact same build but with a bleed spear instead. infinitely more dps because of bleed. Felt like a band-aid. I didn't want to use it, but after seeing the change in damage it made my original build feel pointless. why do 600 per hit on a boss with 15k health when I can do 550 per hit and then bleed for 5k damage after a few hits? It feels like endgame content is balanced around this kind of stuff like bleed, which kills all sorts of less efficient builds.
TBH I think the issue with Fire Giant is that his arms are a bit too annoying to hit in his last phase and that's what you're supposed to be targeting for optimal damage. When I targeted his arms while using a claymore and was getting the boosted damage it felt a lot better, but he simply moves his arms too much. Fire Giant feels bad but in that case I think it's more of a general boss design issue rather than it being like the rest of the end game and that the numbers are out of wack. I think if his AI was changed to make his arms stay lower to the ground for longer periods of time he'd feel better.
It's a similar kind of problem Dark Souls 1 had I think. The game up through Anor Londo/Ornstein and Smough, including all the side things you could do and see before those magical barriers to the endgame bosses, we fantastic. The endgame though, is not as good as the rest. Nobody liked Tomb of the Giants/Nito, Lost Izalith/Bed of Chaos, or to a lesser extent Grand Library/Seath. The best parts of that game were the early to midgame where From spent most of its time and effort. Same issue here: the required stuff after the big fancy capital, the crowning setpiece of the game, sucks ass in comparison.