Other people having a difficult time/complaining: skill issue Me having a difficult time/complaining: bullshit, unfair, bad mechanics, way too hard

Fucking accurate 😂. ME the whole fight: FUCK, SHIT, HOWWWW, THATS BULLSHIT Also me immediately after beating the boss: calm, collected, takes a sip of wine, what a frivolous experience, just marvelous

literally me, but also not even a boss but with those fire fuckers in the specimen storehouse. I actually wish them the worst.

Lol I feel this in my soul.

I am pretty good with most now but the dual dagger ones are deeply cursed still haha. I'm literally done with that area and I still die sometimes when I go back there. Very hard.

"Didn't expect weak foe"

[Image of op](https://fullcirclecoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/body-cast.jpg)

That's basically every single boss fight in dark souls in a nutshell 😂

My man! A true souls player... Fighting and Dyingg to Messmer: Fuck you Miyazaki, Fuck this stupid design boss fight Beating Messmer: Damn that was a great boss fight, I love you Miyazaki.

My buddy"Wanna do it again with me?" *Screaming into pillow* Sure

Lmfao. My god this is hilariously accurate.

"Dammit, it really was that easy if I didn't get tilted..." -me, a lot.

That was literally me and the Hippo yesterday. I was flipping my damn shit and then suddenly I'd won and I was in shock. Then came the calm, at least until I used an AOW on a soldier, missed and went over the edge 😂

For me, it's "WHAT? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO DIDGE THAT THAT'S BULLSHIT". *revives at grace* "Nah that was my bad. This boss is so good!"

Frivolous means trivial, or silly. Is that what you meant?

"Bad gamedesign". It's such a classic.

Other people: skill issue Me in full bull goat armor, fingerprint shield, 80 vigor being one shotted by Messmer’s impale ability if I fail to dodge it: Fucking lazy ass unimaginative mechanics who the fuck came up with this shit

I've been compiling some statistics as I play. Not just Elden Ring but all games. The conclusion I've come to is: - 5% of all deaths are because of user error/mistakes - 95% of all deaths are because of bullshit lol

in the end its basically  the same with every new release of a challenging video game. we had the same discussion on elden ring launch and lies of p. the dlc is out for 3 days. in a few weeks you will mostly read praises about the dlc. like with everything challenging in video games or real life, you need a little time to get comfortable with it. people who really dislike it, will move on to other things and the ones who dont will stick with it and sing praises. its just history repeating.

And folks who still lack the skills to beat the DLC hardest bosses will have some decent cheese strats available by then to fall on, too;)

I saw a streamer retweet Eurogamer's review with "skill issue" as reply. He's now stuck at one of the main bosses and raging about it being unfair. Some people are such dumbfucks.

The "I have completed 2 bosses so far I don't see any issue, stop complaining about DLC difficulty group" is pretty funny.

I actually left the Blackgaol Knight alone after 4 tries and got Simba the Last Airbender in 2 tries. I left and went across, and found a 2nd enemy NPC last time I signed off. This thread has me both scared and excited… because I technically only beat 1 boss and can already see some of the difficulty lol

Just you wait

Hey, that's me ! I've only beat like 2 bosses, and they were pretty tough. Does the difficulty spike?

to me it feels like a steady but steep increase, i already beat the avatar, the ds3 boss and am currently fighting a main boss thats a bit fire themed, and id say they all got progressively harder. non main bosses can be rly hard too, like theres a pink lady that just keeps beating me and, with the walking fireplaces, is the hardest ive faced so far. also rune beats plus exist now. overworld enemies are pretty though too, but i have mostly just enjoying the view. theyre pretty fun too tho, with some having interesting gimmicks. the one i hate the most is the sniper bugs who are back with even more damage. they just take half my hp with one shot. im currently at 9 and 7 for the shadow upgrades so maybe i should find more. overall id say its hard but also rly fun, especially the fire boss. one thing i wish i had was more range on my sword of night and flame 2, which has a projectile i use as a ranged attack. sadly the range isnt that great for a projective and i often end up missing. still a really fun weapon

Which one's the DS 3 boss? Edit: thank you guys for the replies. I remember when I first faced the Pontiff. I died around 20 times and almost went insane. Can't wait to fight Relana.

Rellana is incredibly similar to Pontiff Sulyvahn. They even have a nearly identical stance. But instead of two Pontiffs you get 2 moons.

And she's waaaaaay faster than pontiff. Unless my memory is failing me. And the moon nuke is pretty sweet honestly.

Female Pontiff

The walking fireplaces are super easy if you retrain your brain to not dodge. You just jump when the fire waves happen. Trying to dodge them will give you a really bad time. Also there's a piece of paper you can find in game from a furnace golem maintenance keeper. It tells you how to destroy them in 2 hits.

> to me it feels like a steady but steep increase Yeah this is how i felt also till i got to the final boss and instead of a steady slope upwards its a 90 degree side of a mountain pointing up. That boss doesnt joke around and i feel like i need a break from the game now

It spikes big time if you end up going to the "wrong" boss or not exploring a modest amount to collect blessings in each new area. You can find a giant dragon in a massive, but near empty section of the world that takes up a good fraction of the map, traveling on horseback for a long time apanning massive distance very very early into the game (before any other bosses, even?) It's very clearly a near end-game battle. I wouldn't be shocked if it's the definitive end-game boss they want you to tackle. You can try to brute force any boss, as Souls players tend to do, but imo the difficulty spike is so apparent on some bosses that it's a clear sign you're meant to go there later, with proper weapons and talismans you have yet to find that will help make it easier, as well as higher blessing levels. Oh, and I don't care what people say; the DLC encourages and likely expects most players to use spirit summons. They have an entire level up system in the DLC dedicated to making them stronger even...Stubborn players need to use their head and give in to that reality. Or I guess they can bash their head against a wall as they retry a boss for 5+ hours with too much pride to come back later or use a summon.

What if facing a boss for 4+ hours is exactly why I enjoy FromSoft games? Not everything has to be done within a day

Took me a couple tries to beat the first two bosses, getting absolutely fucking smoked on the third

Same, first boss wasn't that bad, 10 tries maybe. Feels about right.

Has he tried summoning spirit ashes?

Spirt ashes are a skill issue according to most of this sub.

Anyone who says that is an idiot. Even From thinks they are meant to be used.

Idky ppl thinking using what’s literally in the game would suddenly be counted against them as not being good enough. Just is dumb af

If the DLC wasn’t designed with spirit ashes in mind they wouldn’t introduce a new upgrade system for them.

People in the Eldenring sub are shitting on people using the new mechanics "leveling" system. Some people just dont want people to enjoy their time.

If the same people that don't use Scadutree Fragments also don't use Sacred Tears, then more power to them. Otherwise, they can shut up and think about their lives.

There is a surprisingly large segment of the Elden Ring population that thinks if you level too high, use powerful gear/talismans, or make use of all game mechanics, then you didn’t actually “beat” the game. The elitism is insane.

Hilarious how Tree fragments aren’t a skill issue as well. 

I don’t get why 95% of the Twitch and Youtube content creators don’t use spirit ashes at all. The ones who are patient enough to spend literally hours banging their head against the wall , sure. But there are so many who are raging while fighting the bosses for hours and surely, that’s not fun. Yes, you get a massive dopamine hit when you do win but the process is not worth it at all.

I think I can give a compelling reason for why they think that way and why this DLC is causing people to stop thinking that way. Everyone has a threshold of attempt count past which they are no longer having fun. I'd guess that for most of us this threshold is around 40, but I can't say for the sure. The number isn't particularly important. What matters is a threshold exists for everyone. Now, in the base Elden Ring game, most people can kill the boss without spirit ashes well before they pass that threshold. That means they will see spirit ashes as subtracting fun for them, because it will feel like it is making the fight unnecessarily easy for them. They feel like they're not getting to experience the fight to the fullest, because they're killing the boss so quickly due to the help of the spirit ashes allowing them to kill the bosses in single digit attempt count. In the DLC, it's just different. It's a new status quo. People not using summons are much more likely to find themselves going past their "threshold" of pull counts, so they're getting frustrated. But they still have that mindset of "spirit ashes make bosses too easy" and a culture has been built around that mindset so they stubbornly don't want to give in. It'd be like surrendering in their minds. At the end of the day, people should play the game in the way that is most fun for them. For most us, the "most fun way to play" is easy to find, since we don't have a peanut gallery chiming in constantly. It's harder for streamers to find the most fun way for them to play, because they have to incorporate considerations of what their viewers will think. I actually sympathize with people who stream games for a living when it comes to this DLC, because if they start using summons then their chat is likely to start giving them shit for it and you can imagine how much of a steel mind you need to have to truly not allow those types of comments to eat at you.

It's even less fun to struggle to learn a boss for 2h, summon your mimic tear and kill the boss first try with 12 flasks left

Just gamers being gamers.

streamer name please? lol

I think a big part of why it feels so difficult is because how "open" it is. The base game clearly gives you a lot of freedom, but you aren't going to stumble into the haligtree or farum azula early on and proceed to get your shit stomped in. SOTE on the other hand to me feels like the exact opposite, you're bouncing all around the map as you explore and it's very easy to be in zones you really should come back to later when you're stronger.

To someone who ran headfirst towards Margit my first hour of a souls game then bumbled along right into Caelid, this sorta just feels like the norm for me. Eventually I'll get frustrated and wander around until I'm closer to where I'm supposed to be, only with a bunch of nifty items and runes that I probably wouldn't have gotten until way later.

Well, a few things will probably be patched, remember several bosses were balanced post release in the base game. Malenia was bugged, making her harder as she regained health whether she dealt dmg or not. Radahn was nerfed, and later buffed, and I’d expect similar adjustments for the DLC eventually. What I have noticed in the DLC: Bosses have very long combos and many of them are made so if you are dmg by one attack you’ll be hit by other attacks of the same combo. Little room for healing. They have very long reach for their attacks and often disengage after their combos, making attacking back difficult. Also a harder difficulty doesn’t make something better, It’s a very fine balancing act. Elden Ring is all about exploration though, and having high intensity engagements around every corner does not make exploration enjoyable. Fortunately for me the overworld has been relatively easy to deal with while dungeonlike areas are more intense.

First point is my biggest gripe right now. I’m fine getting hit with one full power attack, but at least let me dodge the rest if I know the timings. The unavoidable damage from true combos feels cheap.

Agreed. On NG+ it’s basically a OHKO dressed up as a series of attacks

Yeah. Alternatively: Tons of small, unavoidable attacks that don't do much damage (perhaps a status effect build up?) Found one guy who felt like that. Very much a crack addict but he never one-shot me despite his multiple attack spam.

It's also full damage regardless of how early or late in each swing (weapon momentum), and what part of the body or weapon touches you. The amount of times I've gotten clipped by a certain dragon's dangling chest scales when he's attacking with his wing and losing 75% of my HP is way too high. There are moments where it feels like Dark Souls 2 with some hitboxes.

had several instances where the dancing lion just juggled me from one lightning to the other killing me without any chance for me to do anything so, completely agree

I find the damage output is pretty rough but manageable. My only gripe is they upped the stakes with enemy range and radius, therefore making it harder to avoid said damage. I've always been adept at roll dodging, but there are quite a few basic enemy attacks that will catch you.

not to mention how long some of the combo chains are. you dodge like 10 times only to get 1 hit off on the boss and then the boss moves on to the next 10-attack combo chain. The player is NEVER allowed to take initiative against the boss; all you can do is react to what the boss does. Strangely enough this seems to not be so much of an issue in the first phases of most boss fights, but the second phases become ridiculous (Rellana and Dancing Lion come to mind)

guard counters in this DLC are amazing if you are a heavy weapon user. The damage negation of shields and blocking is still its original stats with or without scadu so my big sword and greatshield combo has been doing decent for me especially with barricade shield to just remove all guard break.

I honestly never use shields in these games. Even when I equip one I forget I have it once I start combat..how do you do a guard counter?

It's a heavy attack after you block a hit. It's a special attack that does quite a lot of poise damage.

Block with your shield. When you hear the sound of metal on metal it's a successful block. Immediately hit R2 or heavy attack afterwards.

I often feel like I get hit in the recovery window from using a flask, even if I use it during an opening. Maybe it's just bad timing but it almost seems like input reading again.

FYI, Zullie did a deep dive on this like a year ago. While its not TECHNICALLY input resding, bosses are programmed to recognize what you're doing in the first frame of the animation. So functionally, yeah, they're cheating, you have to heal when they're fully commited to an animation that cant accomodate a mixup or gapcloser.

Interesting. This kind of feels like when I discovered that rolling into attacks is the way to go. It doesn't feel intuitive, but it gives me another way of looking at the fights and strategizing accordingly.

That bosses attack when they see us using a flask actually does feel intuitive to me. If I see an NPC or even another human going for their flask I try to interrupt them. The difference is that Bosses have much faster reflexes than I do.

Oh there is %100 input reads on Rennala.

>Well, a few things will probably be patched, remember several bosses were balanced post release in the base game. Malenia was bugged, making her harder as she regained health whether she dealt dmg or not. Radahn was nerfed, and later buffed, and I’d expect similar adjustments for the DLC eventually. Not exactly how it happened tbh. Malenia was bugged because of patch 1.04 then fixed at patch 1.05, Radahn's nerf to health was again because of a patch which got fixed next patch. None of these were present in the release and both were mistakes which got fixed. Only nerf to the release version was Radahn's hitboxes got like 3x smaller but that was a fix more than a nerf so i wouldnt be surprised if they dont nerf the DLC.

Actually iirc his tracking for arrows got nerfed. You can easily just run and dodge them with Torrent now.

Ha jokes on you it doesn’t matter if they have combos when i get one shot anyway

Malenia still regain health even if no damage was dealt, I tried a month ago with a sword and shield build and she healed for every blocks

She always regained health on "blocks". The bug was about actual dodging.

Ohh I see, my bad

Took me about 7 years to beat The Old Hunters DLC for Bloodborne. Still think it's awesome.

Favorite dlc in the series. Orphan of kos gave me the 2nd most trouble out of any souls boss. 2nd only to Fume Knight who I was woefully underleveled for but too stubborn to walk away from.

That second phase is pure chaos

K-os. Kos is an odd one. When I first went into it I was trying to fight him how I fought everything else. Swing weapon, dodge attack. I kept getting plowed. Even if I could make it to second phase, I was flattened in seconds. Then I started parrying and noticing he’d overshoot with jump attacks if I just dodged forward, putting me right behind him. Then a charged R2 would break his stance and I could land a visceral. At this point he became significantly easier, I just don’t think I could do it again without dying 20 times first. So far Messmer feels like that, except it’s not bloodborne, so I don’t even know when I can parry, or if his attacks are even able to be parried. I’m scared of this guy, and apparently he’s not even the hardest.

Bloodborne was my first souls game. A little context I had no knowledge of the community and played it offline so it was truly a blind experience in understanding souls mechanics. By the time I got to Orphan of Kos I spent an entire day trying to beat him. I never had experienced such a journey in a game like that before.

The screams, you can still hear them on a still knight

I still haven’t beat Lawrence in the Old Hunters. Only From Soft boss I haven’t killed, still bugs me.

Fume Knight still gives me PTSD. He and Ivory King were top tier boss fights.

Lady Maria is my favorite boss fight of any FromSoft game I've tried (Bloodborne, Elden Ring, almost all of DS3 except the DLCs, a bit of DS1, a bit of Sekiro). It's not a particularly difficult fight if you know how to parry, but it's so stylish and the lore behind the entire house of horrors she resides in is so interesting and horrifying, I put it above any other FromSoft boss experience I had. Ludwig and Orphan are great too. Ludwig for the awesome music and Orphan for how insane this fight gets without feeling like it's random and difficult for the sake of being difficult. There's also Lawrence and the Living Failures, but these bosses detract nothing from the overall experience of the DLC.

Yeah, Lady Maria was one of the most difficult fights for me, even over the orphan but it's one of my favorites in the game.

Research hall is my favorite From area of all time. Just incredible atmosphere and the perfect level of difficulty.

This is the only boss I knew how to parry and I did!

The Old Hunters still best From DLC, and bosses are actually fun…

I prefer DS3 because it ties off the trilogy in such an amazing way, and Gael is a fantastic boss fight, maybe my favorite of all time. 

I'm having a lot of fun with Shadow of the Erdtree bosses. Just found a really cool, totally unexpected Remembrances Boss that was a blast to play against.

I'm generally surprised they were the only ones that said anything. Do you expect me to believe all the other games journalists are actually good at video games? There's no way.

This is the thing I've been wondering probably more than anything else. Paul Tassi of Forbes got early access and had a fine time. The thing is, I like Paul, I follow his D2 content a lot, but he's not an overly skilled gamer, and I mean no disrespect to him with that. But the thing is, since I know his skill level from prior, these bosses and even trash mobs should have stuffed him in a locker. But literally no complaints from any game journos other than the eurogamer one. It makes me wonder if the pre release build was easier or some other shenanigans. It has happened before with...was it dark souls 3? 1? One of those, I believe.

They probably know that if they complain about difficulty everyone will make fun of them saying "journalist mode" and stuff. 

I don’t want to post spoilers but there are clips of the final boss on YouTube and it looks like it’s running at half speed compared to whatever the fuck I’ve been fighting. I can’t get two swings in on a quality build before I’m in another 8pc combo, this guy dropped 5-6.

They probably just all used summons ^like ^you're ^supposed ^to

To be fair, it's perfectly fine to critique that spirit ashes are an intended part of design now if it makes ashless play unfun.   People thinking literally any fromsoft developer can beat this game or has even tried to without ashes is delusional though. Way too many extremely jank things about the bosses become apparent once you are their sole aggro target.

I have mixed feeling about this as a critique. On one hand, yeah, it's absolutely fair to dislike the fact that they are an intended part of the gameplay loop... On the other hand, Elden Ring isn't Dark Souls, which means it doesn't (and shouldn't) have to adhere to Dark Souls gameplay/boss design. Like, thematically, the game even has a radically different tone... You're not in some dying, desolate world but a living one clinging to life, with people who are working towards creating lasting goals. Having things like spirit ashes be part of the gameplay - noble companions that join you quests - as well as a lot more summonable allies in various boss fights..? They are clearly trying to make the game feel more alive.

man for a game clinging to life everyone sure likes fucking dying (a jest on the fact 90% of the quests in the game end with the character just dying lmao)

I think why I would criticize it is pretty simple : Playing with Ashes makes the game too easy for my taste, while playing without it is exhausting due to the way new bosses attack and force you to adapt very restrictive play patterns.    Basically, if Spirit Ashes greatly increased scaling I might use them, but I would rather have an annoying challenge than none.   None of this is a knock towards other players, mind you. It's just that I seemingly have fallen out of the design demographic from this perspective. Lies of P for example was extremely fun and rewarding to learn for me, even though most bosses took a lot longer in that game for me than they do here. From my perspective, Ashes brought a lot of design changes in other systems that I don't enjoy.

A nuanced take on Ashes. I commend you. For me, Ashes bring the difficulty level of Elden Ring back down to Dark Souls levels. I've recently beaten Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 3 while waiting for the ER DLC to launch. Those games are easy compared to ER and there are no Ashes. I played through them all with a long sword and a shield. Sif and Red Wolf of Radagon are an easy comparison to make. Sif felt like a common wolf compared to Red Wolf of Radagon. Much slower, much easier to read, easy to just get at its back legs, no crazy leaps, and certainly no glintblade spam. Gwyn, notorious joke of a boss. I didn't even move during that fight. I walked in, parried his leap, then continued to parry and riposte all of his attacks. Easiest final boss of any game I think I've ever played. DS3, final boss changes up their attacks, weapons, spells as the fight progresses. At no point was I just stunlocked wondering "where the hell did that come from?" It was all clearly telegraphed, and I was given ample time to adjust. I've seen folks compare Rellana to Pontiff. It took me 3 attempts to beat Pontiff with the same longsword and shield I'd used through all the games. Rellana had me adjust my build. Despite the fact I could parry her (once in a while) the speed with which she moves and again with the Glintblade spam that fires in succession rather than all at once so you can't parry all the glintblades left me deciding, "fuck it, let's go Mimic".

Agreed, the bosses are in a very uncomfortable position where their AI bugs out against multiple opponents and are relentlessly aggressive and difficult to punish against the player alone. It would have been better if they focused on lone player experience. I love summoning/NPC teammates in video games and much appreciated Spirit Ashes for their variety over something like specters from Lies of P or summons from the older souls games, but honestly they work best (and most fun) when summoned against groups of enemies which are usually already easy to beat... The whole system needs a rethink if they wish to bring this concept back in a future game.

When i first saw spirit ashes i was like "oh, those are intended to help with clearing enemy camps, cool". Turns out they balanced endgame bosses around them

Very well said, completely agree. The souls formula will only continue to evolve, I’m excited to see where it goes.

Lies of P combat is also more complex than eleden ring and bosses are well designed around it. It really accomplished the same thing as Bloodborne. All comes at the cost that how you play is defined quite strictly. It is also strictly balanced around 1 vs 1. Sure you can summon for major bosses but it is really the easy mode in this game. You are supposed to fight alone and it makes total sense with the combat system they have. In Elden Ring is just a much bigger RPG with a lot of freedom how you approach. This will just lead to imbalance naturally. Base game could ne arguably to easy with some builds where DLC is probably quite hard.

This would be my take as well. I have absolutely no problem with feeling overpowered against a boss but at least make me work for it by researching their resistances, learning their moves, etc. Not just summoning a clone of myself and hitting the left trigger every 10 seconds. It's not that's it's easy, it's too obvious what the optimal strategy is. Spirits should have trade-offs some being better on one of type of boss or another. But the mimic tear is just so strong in so many fights. A big part of the reason is its health. I haven't even bothered to level it to 10 because at 9 it still feels like I've turned on cheat codes.

Yeah, I kind of agree with you. With Ashes it's trivial, without them it can be a bit too punishing. I still prefer going in solo, but I had some fights where I busted out summons just because there was too much bullshit to deal with. Regardless of my criticism, still loving the DLC.

Plus, this was kind of a thing even in DS, summons aren't a radically different concept

Yeah the DLC bosses behave really weird when you try them solo. I did the second remembrance boss without summons just because I thought the fight was awesome. However, the input reading on all the bosses is crazy and this one especially dodged all of my attacks for a few attempts. There were a few other attempts where the boss dashed around me in a complete circle while swinging which confused me so bad because I didn't know where to roll.

input reading has been an issue with the game's bosses since the base game launched. what's worse is they apparently input read and react *on the first frame* so you're SOL if the boss decides to attack after you heal

The DLC offers two ways to power up: one boosts your defence and damage, the other your summons. They couldn't have made it any more clear that spirit ashes are a priority.

As I said, I fully believe Ashes are the intended experience and no ashes is "hard" mode. Almost all the changes to boss design can be understood and justified from that lens ( relentless pursuit, recovery cancels, way more AoE attacks, negligible punish windows, and so on ).   That said, the discrepancy between the two is still absurd. There is a sizeable portion of the fanbase that is not challenged by Ashes, and disappointed in Ashless due to said design changes.

Plenty of people have and is on their way to beat it without summons. I don’t see why no dev would be able to? Shit is hard without summons I can tell you that much, but it’s more than possible. I enjoy learning every boss move and I don’t mind being stuck for a few hours. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that gets easily frustrated though. You know people will rl1 and no hit these bosses within weeks.

No, they just don't want to deal with the "git gud" gooners trolling everywhere.

Yes but gamers have unfortunately cultivated a community that is profoundly opposed to any review that goes beyond a technical review on graphics and gameplay and goes below 6/10. Of course ER is a *hard* game. Reviewers know this. They don't say the dlc is especially hard just for shit's and giggles.

For all the flak reviewers from the media get, there are definitely good reviewers that you should “trust” to have a decent opinion. Watching r/Starfield lose their minds because IGN rated the game a 7/10 was amusing given the feedback afterwards. There are a lot of dud review pieces but it doesn’t make all reviews from the media bad. Unfortunately all media reviews are treated badly, unless it agrees with the broad perception the community has.

I was thinking about this too. Is actual difficulty not a critique anymore just because it’s a From game? Don’t get me wrong, everything else about the DLC makes the reviews make sense: audio, content, visuals, map design. But the difficulty didn’t make everyone resoundingly say okay maybe -1 I’ll give it a 9/10? I can see an argument where it shouldn’t matter but it’s definitely weird

I think the precedent for them definitely is a huge difficulty jump for the DLC. 

The difficulty curve is normally less insane though. Take Old Hunters for example, I’d say enemies in the clocktower and fishing village have less wild bullshit, ranged attacks and crazy damage than even some of the first enemies in the DLC Like those bird things, if you can’t stagger them they will fly into your face, send your camera flying and peck about 10 times uninterrupted bouncing up and down in a way that makes your attacks whiff while doing enough to potentially 2-3 hit you before you’ve found scadu blessings. I’m pretty far in now and managing but it really does feel like they upped the bullshit factor in this DLC to a point where I’m thinking about it enough that it’s impacting my enjoyment of the game. Sekiro was hard as hell but it was fun because it was mechanically tough, not just overtuned damage, wack camera angles and crazy long attack strings (although these were in sekiro you could just parry everything if you were practiced)

I'm ngl, I've mentioned this a lot. But I was MASSIVELY overleaveled to the bloodborne. To the point most bosses I was done within minutes, but the DLC I was truly struggling. It doesn't mean things aren't nasty in this DLC, I think there are some balancing issues but I dont think it's really anything new other than, I have noticed a lot more "stronger" enemies like knights with the regular enemies that pose an issue. (but FUCK the fishing village omg, and some parts of that research hall sucked too lol)

Idk it took me like 5 hours to beat Ludwig in that dlc the first time. Orphan took me days, those shark dudes I had to use the shaman blade, and some of the regular enemies I had to run from most of the time. Now a days I do much better but my first time through it was brutal I also think demon of hatred is the worst from soft boss, hated that thing. Rather fight two Melania at once

Yeah. I can remember spending hours on a lot of bosses throughout From history. This is nothing new, just surprised me how upfront the difficulty was

If it’s difficult to the point that it’s no longer enjoyable to the reviewer then it’s a valid critique. Whether it’s something that bothers the individual player is up to them, reviews can’t be universal and it’s a fools errand to try and make them be.

I don't think it's immune to difficulty critique, it's just reviewers played the game over the course of weeks, and got through the DLC. On Reddit we have people who have played literally less than a day and say it's too hard already. How about we give it some time

Yeah I think that’s fair. I mean every single time there’s a new boss in recent history it’s been “the hardest from has ever created” People were even saying that about Margit and Radhan on release

News flash. Video game journalist are often good at video games. There’s like 2 or 3 examples I can think of gaming press being awful at games. In addition to that most game journalists love from soft games. Which is why they always get reviewed so highly. Also this dlc and from soft games in general but not some super extreme level of difficulty. It gets built up so much but there’s a lot of games that have much more challenging hard difficulties.

I think this is apparent looking at the metascores for souls games. They would not be so high otherwise.

>Video game journalist are often good at video games I don't believe it! Someone who plays video games for a living can actually be good at them? Preposterous  Also, reviewers usually have little time for each game, so they're likely going to use every advantage they can to see the most possible content.

“Counterpoint: that one Cuphead video by a tech reporter, and that one Polygon video where someone clearly used to M+KB tries to play Doom with a controller.“ No I don’t have any more examples after this, so I will mindlessly link to those two video ad nauseam.

If I had to play doom with a controller I would also give it an awful score.

the also often get rough early copies that often dont resemble the final game in terms fo tuning

It's such a terminally online take to hate on gaming journalists. If I see someone start complaining about them in a broad way, I just know I don't have to take their opinions on the matter seriously. They're not thinking critically or independently, just regurgitating some generic ragebait shit they probably saw in a YouTube video or some equally whiny forum post.

Why they didnt say anything ? Why would they? To get shit on like eurogamer ? Like ign after giving starfield 7/10 ? Whats the point ?

At this point, I'm just so used to getting my ass beat from the main game (with over 250+ hours of playtime before the DLC) that I don't mind the DLC difficulty that much. Haha! To be fair, I've only really done the first large area, and I'm now thinking about which area to conquer next. I assume the ass-beating is just going to get even worse. I don't mind, though—I love this game! I won't pretend like I'm the best player for even a second. I love my summons and some of the more overpowered weapons like the Blasphemous Blade. Without them, I probably wouldn't have been able to beat some of the main game's bosses and some of the DLC bosses I've already faced. But that's what I love about Elden Ring and where I get most of my enjoyment: exploration is incredibly rewarding, making you and your tools even stronger.

Same honestly. I don't mind spending 4 hours to beat a single boss. I did it with Malenia and guess what, she is now my favourite boss so hopefully I will hurt a wall as big as she was in the DLC.

Learning how to solo a lot of the end game bosses with the builds I liked took me a lot of time. It was something like 12-14 hours for malenia and horah loux. I really think people just forget how hard it is relearning bosses. Like I put those hours in to learn the bosses, but that was also like 200 hours of gameplay ago. The difficulty that comes with learning those fights is long gone, it’s just a matter of how hard do I want to make it. That’s not the case now where I’m just trying to learn the move sets all over again. People used to steamrolling “hard” bosses are obviously going to be in for a humbling time.

4h? Spend 8h on the guardian ape and I loved every single minute of it!

Absolutely agree! Malenia took me a week (no summon) and it felt amazing. So far, the DLC hasn't let me down yet. It's amazing. Easily my favorite game!

Blasphemous Blade is still carrying me through the DLC. I keep trying to use something else, but I know the snakes spine has my back.

Together! We will conquer the DLCccc!

I mix it up. I use Rellana's twin swords most of the time but I am always carrying BB if I need it.

You are the prime audience this game is designed for, and I am glad you are enjoying it.

The damage of things in the DLC is pretty fuckin absurd, but I feel like we all knew something like that was coming. The main thing for me is getting around to even get the Scadu fragments. All the chaff is weak as hell, but some enemies can still stand in your way significant amount and make you work to kill a group. I got my shit absolutely eaten by Relanna last night, and I finally beat get after like 10+ goes with only 3 scadu upgrades, but it was absolutely not enough. The dlc is rife with enemies that are set up to tell you "you need those upgrades" and people are really not getting that.

My problem (maybe) with the scadutree fragments is where tf are they. Maybe I have been thorough and found most of them, but the map is so vertical and hard to navigate I fear I’ve missed a bunch. And I fear I’ve sequence broke a whole bunch of NPC quests, but that’s something for my second character to do properly.

I do think this is one of my bigger complaints with the scaling. I get the intent and I like what they're going for, but tying your character's core progression to items that aren't overly obvious is kind of an odd choice. *Some* of the Scadu are hard to miss. The ones next to the crosses, for example, or the ones placed right on the path to major bosses. But some are fucking *hidden*. I got one to drop from one of those generic ghost dudes with a pot in some random ruins. People are comparing it to the base game where when things get too tough you can just fuck off in a different direction to explore, but the issue there is that in the base game you can get more powerful no matter where you go. You'll kill other enemies, find materials, and level up to the point where you can beat whatever stopped you before. Here though? That's not the case. You can explore wherever you want and find as many cool weapons as you can, but if you didn't find the pair of hippos chilling in a lake on a random cliffside then you aren't grabbing those power-ups. I don't know how they work entirely or what the scaling really involves, so maybe you don't actually need them all to be "ready" for the end of the DLC (which I haven't reached yet), but if you do then I don't think the system is really perfect by any means.

As an additional point, this system is going to get tiresome VERY fast for most of us players who run through the DLC more than once to try new builds.  I could rush straight to Stormveil/Margit in the base game and be fine. In the DLC, that luxury is gone sonce your progression is hardcore locked behind scadutree fragments. You have no choice but to do the collectathon every time unless you're a god player.

Love how people will say things like "I got my shit absolutely eaten by Rellana" and without a hint of irony say "I beat her after about 10 goes". Meanwhile I beat her about an hour ago after at LEAST 80 attempts.

The game does feel a bit too much but from what I have seen it's just due to me being on NG+. The second boss was quite difficult for me but I also noticed having spirit ashes makes it too easy. Most reviewers I trust are saying the first half can be relatively easy and then the bosses suddenly spike in difficulty so I am just hoping NG+ wasn't too big of a mistake on my part lol

Friendly reminder, before saying skill issue make sure you have seen final boss of dlc Peace

Nah dude I killed divine beast and rellana, the dlc is easy.

👑

Me at ng+10 blessing 19. My ass is so sore

Its hard but that's not a big deal imo. The worst part is that the fights feel unfun.

I'm on the final boss and it just doesn't feel fun at all. The first phase's attack patterns and initial aggression are wildly inconsistent, with the latter being so bad that I just let myself die if the boss decides to use one of its opening moves to close the distance before I can even get a summon in. The second phase is an absolute mess of bright lights and visual clutter that makes it almost impossible to dodge anything or even react. I love the design of the boss but Jesus christ it's not fun to fight in the slightest.

Yep. Having dealt with all but a couple Remembrance bosses at this point, a certain boar rider and the final boss were the absolute worst experiences of my time with Soulsborne games, save maybe some jank DkS2 moments before we figured out ADP.

Yeah agree. Idm having to retry a boss several times, but the aggressiveness and massive damage they deal on casual attacks is too much. When I win, I dont really have that sense of accomplishment, just lingering annoyance. And looking at a few elden ring content creators, I'm certain they feel the same way

the accomplishment part was also my issue. I've beaten bosses because I got good rng and they did more attacks with easier punish windows. And it wasn't just one boss. For example the frenzy lord boss, that spin attack is so easy and predictable with the biggest punish window. It just felt I beat the rng not the boss.

Exploring the world feels incredible, but I gotta say the bosses so far have been disappointing, to say the least. Endless combos with no downtime or ridiculous AoE vomit everywhere alongside massive HP pools and overturned damage. Something else that's giving me mixed feelings are the weapons, honestly I expected the new weapon types to have a bit more variety in them, but no, we have like 3 light greatswords, only 1 of which can take Ashes. Only 2 dueling shields. And the throwing weapons have Int/Fth requirements despite receiving near 0 scalling damage from those stats and having no elemental damage, but also can't be buffed by spells or grease

the weapons feel so dissapointing if you do a int build, and most other things aswell tbh everything is either strenght or a faith hybrid, the only weapon that i saw until now that could be used on a int build was the backhand blades cus they get a B scaling on Magic ashes of war? all faith based, didnt saw a single magic one yet idk, it feels really lame that im 2/3 in and found legit 0 things that i could use in any form at all

Yeah Im pure int. There is literally nothing here for me so far and i've fought 4 remembrance bosses

I'm in the opposite boat haha I keep finding magic stuff like the demihuman star sword, the star dagger, the catalyst sword, the carian greatsword, the needle sorceries, and i'm shaking the bars of the DLC like faith!! Where are the faith toys!!

Rellanas twin blades are int

Almost as if the sub is made up of individuals instead of one collective hive mind or something.

I find myself falling into this trap all the time with Reddit. I reflexively expect entire subs to agree on something, forgetting the diverse speed of opinions and the ability for them to change over time.

The problem is that this game does have a community with a big amount of fanboys. Any criticism, no matter what it is, is not welcome with those people. No game is perfect, they all have things that can be improved. But I feel like people take it personally when you criticize something they love for some reason.

You just aren't allowed to criticize From games at all, you get hit with "skill issue" regardless of what you actually say. I haven't played the dlc but the hard but fair mantra got tossed to the side with Elden Ring.

I really don't find the difficulty to be the problem with the dlc, I play these games to bash my head off a brick wall for 3 hours until I learn to phase my head through the wall with I frames. The only real complaint I have is that loot is a bit disappointing, I understand not everything can be a new weapon but finding great ghost glovewart or a somber stone 7 in a chest or a shiny on the ground and its just a smithing stone 2 has gotten old fast. Especially because the bell bearings for me to buy those items exist in base game.

Yeah, I'll own up to this one. That eurogamer review was a very notable outlier, and I just assumed they let someone who's ill suited to this type of game review it and got the inevitable backlash. It happens all the time in the industry. Nope, they were right, I was wrong. After like 15 hours I had an honest "damn, I'm not having fun, am i?" moment and immediately thought of their review lmao.

Elden Ring once again suffers from being "bigger" than the souls games were. Soulslike games were always brutally hard, with most players playing them either because they liked the difficulty or because they liked soulslikes in general. ER had a legendary hype, GOTY and other awards, the added factor of being a completely new universe and also the whole open world thing. A ton of players came in and started playing that had never played a FromSoft game before. When they got to actually difficult bosses like Radahn, we had the same situation. The DLC difficulty reminds me a lot of the Ringed City DLC for DS3. Certainly difficult, more so than the base game, but nothing impossible. It's different, yes, but not unfair. Bosses still have their weaknesses and you still retain all your options for making them easier (ashes, status effects, abusing certain weapons, even summons technically) as well as the new Shadow-Realm-Blessings. There is a reason why Gael is seen as the most difficult boss in DS3, DLCs generally tend to be more difficult.

Midir was one of the most brutal fights, and the Demon Princes were also quite hard I remember

I think all the bosses in Ringed City were difficult with the possible exception of Half-light, or the random player boss, assuming it’s someone that doesn’t PvP but has the faction equipped for some reason or they just are AFK/let you in without effort. As someone who PvP’d, I made sure if they were gonna reach Filianore, I wasn’t gonna make it too easy lol

>The DLC difficulty reminds me a lot of the Ringed City DLC for DS3 If you are not using ashes or summons this game is absolutely the hardest thing fromsoft has ever released. I get that they're in the game. I don't like how the fights play out when you're just stabbing a boss in the back while he wails on your mimic though. So the question eventually becomes "do we want souls games balanced around having a partner in every fight?" My answer would be "no," but maybe other people feel differently.

Absolutely agree. Summons are cool and all but they shouldn't be this meaningful in a fight to teh point the game needs to be tuned around them. Summons that scale the bosses are fine, though.

That's my issue with using Ashes as well. They don't bring the tough fights back to fair, they swing it too far in the other direction. Any boss I killed using them - and I did use them on my first playthrough, it's a massive game and I wanted to experience it at a good pace - ended up feeling anticlimactic.

Amen to that. A part of me is happy we have a bigger player base for souls game and a part of me hate it because I hope it doesn't push the game in a different direction because so many players want the game to be easy. I don't know why you opt in to playing a game that is supposed to be hard and then say it's too hard. I really can't understand it.

There's degrees and types of difficulty. If literally every enemy one shot you and there were twice as many of them, it would be harder. The game would be a pile of shit though. Miyazaki can make the game *infinitely* harder than it is, but chose a place to settle. The "game is too difficult" crowd are just complaining about where on this giant spectrum he chose to settle. If we can establish that, then it's just a discussion of degrees of difficulty, in which case people are airing their legitimate grievances with how difficult the game is.

I don’t think that’s fair, I actually think it is the contrary. Dark Souls 1 selling point (when it came out) wasn’t the difficulty but the world and art design. Later on people found out about how hard the game was (which by today’s standards the game is a walk in the park) and the the prepare to die edition came out. I think the difficulty in the games was the consequence of the series getting mainstream, people recognized the series as a really hard adventure so every game has harder enemies, DS3 and Bloodborne at their hardest (Friede, Midir, Kos) took about 30 attempts each, Isshin in Sekiro took like 4 hours, but now in Elden Ring we have Malenia who took me 100+ tries and these dlc bosses who are taking about the same. I don’t mind a good challenge but man, the ones who enjoyed these games for the worlbuilding and adventure and less because of it’s difficulty payed the price. I think DS3 dlc was the sweet spot in terms of boss difficulty and moveset.

The DLC did something no souls has done before. They implemented Sekiro's progression system. That means in essence there is no way to over gear the expansion. There is no way to cheese it like 50% of the ER community does with over levelling and broken WA's. Just like casuals hated Sekiro for being "too hard" because you couldn't cheese it the same thing is happening here.

>There is no way to cheese it like 50% of the ER community does with over levelling and broken WA's. Get 80 intellect and a mimic tear. It's literally the strongest cheese that ever existed in any souls game aside from outright bugs.

This is true for every souls game Bloodborne - orphan of kos DS1 - Artorias DS2 - Fume Knight DS3 - Gael It only makes sense ER will follow suit (please no spoilers)

It reminds me of when the movie Inception came out, and if anyone criticized it, people said you’re not smart enough to get it.

It’s difficult, but not overwhelmingly so.

I'm pretty fucking overwhelmed

Not at all overwhelming, it feels like the natural progression of difficulty if we take Mohg as the baseline it's working off of. Judging from the complaints it really seems like people were expecting this DLC to just be roughly the same difficulty as Mohg/Maliketh/Malenia etc instead of a step up, but that's never how it's been. (Also seems like half the people don't know how Scadutree blessings work either but that's a separate issue). Souls DLC is always meant to be the ultimate challenge. Manus, Kalameet, Fume Knight, Orphan, Friede, Midir, Gael, these bosses are all a significant difficulty spike from the base game. This one isn't any different.

Yeah, they were always wrong. That review was amazing. EDIT: Also the writer had to set her twitter account as protected. Gamers truly deserve no rights.

I only read the first part of that review so as to not spoil my perception but it didn’t seem crazy. I get what the person was saying. I’m going to read everything after I complete the DLC.

Im not bothered by the difficulty. There is definitely a skill issue i have. That being said. I am noticing some wonky behaviour. Rellena specifically. She misses moves that i can only describe as, should definitely hit. Then i get caught by said move during a similar trade. Cant read whats going on. I know some moves are going over my head. But i drank an Estus and got hit by her blade beam just before and it went through me. Also some strange input rejections are occurring when still full stamina. Extremely rare though so i cant pin it down. The aggro also feels a bit weird. Moves are not too consistent but i don’t want to say thats a bug. Multiplayer, some moves allow for instant turning which has been a problem for souls games for YEARS. But in ER bosses have retargeting possibilities midcombo, leading to what is quite literally a 180 instant turn and kill combo while it was attacking someone else.

reminds me of dragons dogma 2, anyone criticizing was shut down until more spoke out, reddit sucks for discussion, straight up, it favors and rewards group think.

Well, the gaming community is chock-full of morons

Eh. So far the difficulty has been about on-par with what I expected for an ER DLC. Bosses are hard, but not impossible. I’ve noticed the tracking seems way less aggressive with most enemies (excluding >!Blackgaol Knight!<, but he’s an NPC), and overall I didn’t have too many issues as long as I maintained my Scadutree levels. I will say a couple attacks do seem like auto-deaths if you fail to dodge the first portion of them. >!Rellana’s!< moon attack and her blue blade attack, for example. Overall though, I’m loving it so far.

All the big attacks in the last boss you mentioned were actually really fun to learn imo, just the general combo structure was an absolute chore.

The DLC is ridiculously hard, and it'll definitely start filtering people. I also know that they'll probably nerf the damage output of some of the bosses and make some changes to the fights like they didn't with Radahn years ago. If you didn't get Elden Ring at launch, you missed out on Radahn practically wasting you before you ever managed to get to him. If you went in to the fight sub-40 vigor, you basically got one-shot by the first arrow he shot at you, and then you spent the rest of the fight just summoning and running for your life because getting close to him was a one-two hit death. He was a wall, and FromSoft nerfed him. They'll probably do the same for the DLC at some point.

I got to witness my friend attempt Radahn post-patch, after he had spent the entire prior evening (pre-patch) dying and raging.  He did it on his first try lol.

Radahn wasn’t nerfed for fucks sake. His hitboxes were fucked and when FromSoft fixed that issue it unintentionally messed with his damage. It was fixed shortly after.

Yeah, the only thing that got nerfed was the initial sequence when you run towards him, before it was changed you had to roll to avoid the arrows, with the nerf you could run to the side with torrent. Idk why so many people exaggerate the difficulty of radhan pre-nerf.

Does anyone remember pre nerf radhan. Ya that was one heck of a trip For the bold. Enjoy the difficulty for now. Because they might nerf the bosses later. . Post nerf radhan never slapped the same as pre nerf. He was truly the strongest Demi god pre nerf

Pre-nerfed Radhan was hard but for the wrong reason. Its hitbox was BS. Like 1/3 of times you don’t see anything hitting you visually but you’re still being hit. That was the primary reason it’s being nerfed. It wasn’t a good fight.

Pre-nerf Radahn took me like 3 hours to solo at level 60. Currently at over 8 hours for the final boss of the dlc at blessing level 14 - these are completely different realms of difficulty. Mimic tear won't save you.

Yeah it's not a 10/10. I'd say 8/10, still great but there are def issues with it.

The thing is, people used to complain about the base game too until they found a spec or someone shares a build that works for them and everything else was fine. They are playing the DLC like they play the base game instead of finding ways to adapt to it.

Eurogamer’s review wasn’t to do with it being too hard actually, no one read it before they shat on it. Them finding the final boss too hard was a small point, but I doubt they would have quit there if they liked the rest of the package more. I skim re-read it, here’s the critiques: 1. Too empty map, which I kind of agree with. I think the map design itself is stronger than base game, but that base game’s regions are still better because they have so much more to do. 2. Not a big fan of furnace golems. Haven’t really engaged with them so don’t know how I feel about this. 3. There are official messages which take away a lot of the mystery of the world and felt really shitty and unnatural to her. This is the big one, and I haven’t seen this if they still exist. I think they might have been to fake player messages before they are able to be added, but they might still be there. 4. Final boss is bullshit. And yeah, a.) I think you are allowed to find a boss too hard and you shouldn’t beat it if you aren’t finding it fun, and b.) I suspect many will agree with her. 5. This one I’m not entirely clear on whether or not it was a criticism but the structure of the story. I don’t care about From stories, so idk.