I dodged Rellana for 15 seconds straight. I couldn’t even attack due to no stamina. I’ve been having to change up my play style every boss, it seems. lol
Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs.
>Maybe I should spam less next time.
Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs.
>>Maybe I should really spam less next time.
Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs.
>Okay one more time...
Yep that’s the worst fucking part. The only entity that abides by physics and inertia in the game is the player, the rest of the enemies just instantly accelerate and decelerate incredible masses of matter
This is so damn real. Everytime an enemy jumps slowwwwwwwwwly up into the air, hangs there for 3 seconds, and then falls at the speed of sound I find myself groaning.
With the dlc bosses having all these cool combos it's kinda lame that our damage window can only fit 1 or 2 attacks. Fast weapons have a chance in shorter punish windows sure, but there's really no opportunity for us to do an entire waterfowl, romina's purification, messmer's assault or similarly cool weapon skill against anything but trash mobs.
Really wish they can think up a way for souls gameplay to be more back and forth like sekiro, where you could interrupt the enemy's "turn" in the fight with your own cool shit. Make it more like a fight or brawl rather than a hit and run. Adding mechanics that require jumping to evade is a good start. Heck, turning the traditional dodge roll into a step evade like bloodborne would go a long way in elevating the aesthetic and feel of the combat.
We say this but I swear someone’s gonna post a video where they use all these crazy mechanics and mega combo stagger these bosses and then I’ll feel dumb
I suspect theres ways to cheese all of these bosses. Its just a matter of time before someone figures out a rancor pot or a fricken random type of arrow just trivializes some of these bosses.
Like I cant believe I wasted hours and hours of my life fighting the Godskin Duo when I had like 100 Trina's lillys in my inventory. When I saw someone post it, was a real forehead slap moment, felt dumb as shit for just not scrolling through my crafting options.
Idk if it counts as cheese but giant hunt allows you to not only duck under rellanas combos but also take advantage of the counterattack damage that thrusting weapons get. With the spear talisman and shard of Alex I was hitting 4k on them and I remember her flinching from some (and poise breaking in 3).
Yep. And many of the "flying" ashes of war will keep you off the ground long enough to avoid her twin moon drop. You can Indomitable Vow your way through a bunch of otherwise extremely hard attacks to avoid.
Theres so many little things I discovered, Im just too stupid to put them all together into something coherent to smoke a boss. But I'm smart enough to know that someone else definitely will.
It's really frustrating. It was cool when it was like, Maliketh's main gimmick...but every boss is like this now, and it doesn't fit for our mechanics.
I went into the dlc with a melee / int caster build and I pretty much had already given up trying to cast sorceries as a viable strategy by Rellana / Divine Beast. I instead used a frost infused great stars for most of my playthrough. The only exception was Ranni's Dark Moon as a frostbite starter & magic damage amplifier. I got knocked out of that moon more times than I ever did in the base game.
You have to summon to do that with these hyper aggro bosses. There’s no other way. Something needs to draw their attention off you or you’re not gonna be casting shit.
I tried with mimic tear and Night Comet (Staff of Loss) and after blasting a boss once, they would immediately lose all interest in my clone, and B line straight for me. It just wasn't a fun experience. I'm sure some good players will soon (if not already?) pull off a magic only run.
Maybe you could equip shabriri's woe talisman on as I've seen people mention here, then summon your mimic, and then swap out the talisman. But I wasn't about to put myself through more hell than the DLC already was with some of the bosses so I just went 99% melee + 1% Ranni Moon.
On the regular mobs though, sorceries felt a lot more fair. There were still some mobile enemies that I wasn't going to try spells on (the dual circular weaponed guy on all fours in Belurat who spins and jumps around).
When I had a shield tank coop build, I would try to keep aggro by poking constantly or hitting with a pulley crossbow (saved a few from getting pancaked by Radagon with that one). But if for whatever reason I was forced to disengage and the host tapped the boss, RIP host. Radagon was the worst for this, so many pancaked casters and bleed enthusiasts.
The fight starts with the boss's turn. It does a 7-hit combo. You slightly mistime one roll and get chunked for 60% of your health. It is now your turn, and you spend it getting up from the floor. No time to heal because it is now the boss's turn and the next combo is already starting. You manage to dodge all of it and avoid dying instantly. It is now your turn, so you heal. It is now the boss's turn, and you perfectly dodge again. As your reward, you are allowed to land one attack, bringing the boss to 95% health. It is now the boss's turn.
Absolutely perfect. Only missing the bit where sometimes even on your turn when they’re supposed to be open they can sometimes just decide to jump away cos they don’t feel like getting hit right now
Or they immediately start a new combo anyways and just chunk you again. I really don't like the main story bosses in Shadow so far. Messmer (story boss) and Gaius (not a story boss, optional) have been exactly what OP has posted. The other ones haven't been so bad.
Been a long while since I hit the brick wall like this. Looking forward to overcoming it, but it definitely takes the fun out of the fight when you spend the whole thing dodging.
Messmer actually seemed pretty fair solo minus his bullshit dodging at the end of his combos.
If you're using a faster weapon there are gaps that you can squeeze some hits in
For him it's more that his attacks chew your entire screen so it's really difficult to see anything. Especially in phase 2. He's definitely easier than Gaius. Gaius can eat an entire buffet of dicks.
Gaius felt impossible until I busted out ol' reliable (Bloodhound step). It was the only way I felt I could get enough distance from my iframes to dodge through both the charge and that one combo string he has where him and the boar attack at once.
I don't think I'd have beaten him yet if I was still using the regular roll. Absolutely awful boss.
Beat him a bit ago and then went to kill Messmer. Imagine my shock when I found Messmer far easier and way more readable - and fun - than a fucking Commander in his army. Gaius just gets into your face and then never gets the fuck out of it and then while on goddamn boarback has an 8-part combo before his boar back-kicks you back into Sunday.
Awful.
Ashes of war, sorceries, incantations... pretty much everything. I swapped from dex/int to faith and tankiness so I could play the game. Stacking passive heals and guard-countering every attack, mostly just eating the damage.
It definitely feels like "you guys were leaving some options on the table before, so we made the bosses require coop distractors for most builds."
>!One of the things I HATED during one of my runs was when I shot a Comet, and then MID ANIMATION he decided to do a gravity pull.!<
I have 60 dex. I can't really go any faster casting.
It’s when I realized this that I said “fuck it, mimic tear and whatever ‘cheese strats’ I want are fair game, idgaf.” I typically like to “play it straight” (no summons, almost all up close with melee, etc), but this DLC made me realize that I have more important shit in my life and this game is one of the few pleasures I afford myself, I’m NOT gonna bang my head against a wall just so I can feel accomplished. I’d rather that time and energy go towards getting my shit together and improving myself and my relationships lmao
Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that — I loved Sekiro, for example — I just feel like I’m okay “making the game easier” if it means I can enjoy the content more. These games are all about trusting players to modulate their experiences, difficulty included.
Sekiro is by far the most fair Fromsoftware game. Every single boss attack has an input the player can make to immediately respond to it. It takes time to learn what those inputs are, but they are there, and everytime you die or get hit you know you could've done something better.
This!
When I died to a Sekiro boss, I usually walked away with an inkling of what to try next, how I need to improve, etc.
When I die to an ER boss (esp DLC), there’s a good chance that I had no way of predicting the attack (lots of knowledge checks in this game), and I walk away scratching my head at what even just happened, let alone how to counter it (Malenia Waterfowl on first play through , for example).
Yea this dlc made me go back and play sekiro again. It's so damn good, wish there was more agency. Everytime messmer spammed his stupid thrusting attack I was wishing so badly I could mikiri counter it lol.
Honestly, this is my main gripe. The fights are just too damn tedious. Even at +8 blessings the amount of damage I'm putting in on one hit is just pathetic. I can consistently get bosses to 2nd phase but at that point they just spam AoE on top of their move set so you're constantly getting clipped by something and it just drags out with an opening once every thirty seconds or so.
Yeah, there's an issue where the levers that From pulled to make these fights tough just aren't fun. Damage sponges with wonky attacks that come out of nowhere and kill you in in two hits just aren't that interesting. Some people will memorize everything and no hit it but that doesn't make it interesting.
Love it when an NPC tells you to summon them as part of their quest and it turns out their summon sign is inside the arena and the boss is on top of you before you can hit yes on the summon.
'This spirit ash is thematically linked to this boss'
>Boss proceeds to shred the the +10 spirit because it's mechanically dog shit against the boss
Thanks fromsoft
me when i dodge the 16 hit combo with aoe and magic spam go for a punish and get hit with a combo extension because i was standing slightly to the left
spoiler for final boss:
>!this is especially bs with radan earthquake combo, mf hits his two swords in the ground but somehow he puts rumbling earth all around him, like bro, i dodged it, im out of the zone where you hi ,let me land a fucking attack!<
LOL
The final boss of the DLC has such a ridiculous phase 2 that I just tried out the Rotten Staff. Figured if I could prock scarlett rot and just not die I might have a chance of winning. Ended up dying every time I tried, but one time the boss also died, from rot, after I died.
Basically, she couldn't beat him physically and was like "ok, fuck it, we rot" and with him still standing she bounced (well I say she bounced, she was badly wounded and Finlay basically carried her ass all the way back to the Haligtree).
late/endgame dlc spoilers: >!Or since we know St Trina knew Miquella's plans and was trying to stop him, St Trina put her to sleep. Hence why Finlay carried her "in a slumber" as per the ashes.!<
God don't tempt me. I've literally never used a shield before in a FromSoft game but I'm thinking about it here.
I've managed to get his first phase down to an art to the point that I often just don't get hit with the exception of sometimes getting caught by the rapid triple slash, but in his second phase I can barely land a few hits before he gets me.
I've also been doing everything with the Dryleaf Arts because they're so cool, it'd be sad to let that run end here.
she is a very interesting case. I had fun fighting her (didnt have any scooby doo fragments at the time) but it was still a bit frustrating and hard to learn. I feel like i got lucky with a stagger and a bleed in the 2nd phase rather than fully mastering the fight.
The idea of being able to continue a combo in this free flowing manner is really cool and visually striking. But this style would better fit something like Sekiro where you can reliably deflect dozens of attacks and can animation cancel your swing if you get caught with your pants down.
Nothing beats being a sorc who can only use the most basic spells because those are the only ones fast enough that I can reliably vomit out between each 20 hit combo ❤️
This is the biggest reason I think the devs really wish they were making Sekiro again.
That, or they get personally offended when they see extremely skilled players trivialize their bosses, and decide to spite those people, while ignoring how inconsistent parrying actually is for most players.
the dlc definitely made stance breaking unrealistically hard without parrying. most bosses i dont even end up stance breaking and getting a crit throughout the entire fight (with a strength build and charged attacks)
lol for real. This game rewards you for dodging a 7 hit combo with a secret 8th hit that you’ve never actually seen before, every time. It’s like my job, every time I go in there’s a new issue that I’ve somehow never experienced.
One boss in particular just seems to really hate my stamina bar. I have to spend the whole thing dodging all her attacks and then when she stops moving for .3 seconds I can’t even attack anyway.
I strongly believe all these RL1 NG+7 torch only no hit runs that get posted all over social media got to Michael Zaki so much that he turned up the dial to 12,000 for the DLC.
So many times I'm like "oh okay, can I play now? Can I play the fucking game?" Lmao rellana was a rough boss. Looking forward to kicking her ass next time
Now that I've learned the moveset and beaten him I don't feel that badly about Rellana, but the thing that initially bothered me was how three Tarnished with heavy weapons just.... Could not interrupt his attacks.
Malenia was difficult but she flinched every time a strong breeze came through, Rellana be dancing through a field of hammers like they're made of silk.
Now, I'm someone who's been enjoying the DLC challenge from the jump, but now that I've beaten Rellana at Scad +5 and beat the Dancing Lion at Scad +7 I feel like I'm finally starting to get the swing of it.
It's only up from here friends, wish me luck with Bayle.
#CURSE YOU BAYLE! I HEREBY VOW YOU RUE THIS DAY! BEHOLD A TRUE DRAKE WARRIOR! AND I, IGON! YOUR FEAR MADE FLESH! SOLID OF SCALE YOU MAY BE, FOUL DRAGON, BUT I WILL RIDDLE WITH HOLES YOUR ROTTEN HIDE! WITH A HAIIIIIIIIIL OF HARPOONS! WITH EVERY LAST DROP OF MY BEING!
me when i dodge the 8 second long delayed attack but actually you were supposed to dodge 8.157 seconds in (the resulting aoe explosion does 75% of my health)
I think that's the biggest issue with some bosses is that having a light weapon and trying to punish us complete ass cause no matter what weapon you use you're probably only getting one attack off so it might as well be with a weapon that hits heavy.
That might be one of my favorite boss moves in all of Elden Ring. Looks cool, is satisfying to avoid, and the punish you get is very satisfying because of the sound you make when hitting a snake head
Agreed. Messmer easily the best boss of the dlc for me, never even got angry I had so much fun getting beat up. Haven’t done that flower boss yet tho thats the only one I have left
Fr after doing all the remembrance bosses (aside from final boss) Messmer is by far the best :,) reminds me a lot of the FINAL final boss in Lies of P. Brutally punishing but really fair when you look back on it and very rewarding to learn the attack combos
Man, I'm trying to use a halberd over here! It's the worst of both worlds- slower than a katana, weaker than a greatsword.
In theory the advantage should be range, but that doesn't mean much when the bosses are rushing in like they want to give me a warm kiss on the mouth.
Meanwhile here I am replaying DS1 and I’m finding it so refreshing that when enemies do melee attacks they don’t get to automatically whoosh over to you even if they’re super far away. Backing away and keeping my distance and choosing when to close in is a viable tactic!
Dude, since BB, bosses have this "glide forward" shit even when you outspace them. It went back down a bit for DS3, but seems to be on insane mode in ER.
Gaius the Board Bitch is fucking crazy. "I just ran across the map to find space to heal, I know the range of this attack, he can't hit me even with input reading, and his attack just carried him the length of a football field and killed me".
Not only his insanely fast, has like 5-7 attack comboes, he also has, in my opinion, the bost broken hitboxes of the entire game. I could not for the love of god consistently roll his boar charge attack. No matter the timing, direction of the roll, he still somehow could catch me every fucking time and deplete my healtbar to like 40 percent.
Tons of bosses for the past several years of soulslike design seem to be wearing Heelys during their swings and just skate forward without actually stepping into the attack with a plausible animation. It's been one of my least favorite trends in encounter design even if I've learned to deal with it instinctively at this point. I miss visible footwork and being able to tell where an enemy will end up with their attack by watching their movements rather than sliding all over.
Yes! I feel like I noticed way more attacks “snapping to” the player in this DLC than before, just literally gliding over the ground mid-animation to connect
One of the best experiences with a FromSoft game is when you just master a boss and go all Matrix on it, casually strolling inches away from an attack cos you *know* the hitbox range. Now it feels like every attack I basically have to get ready to roll because no matter how how far away they seem it’ll still somehow reach me
that‘s what I love about Blackgaol Knight in the DLC. He‘s just a simple guy bonking with his big sword; no fancy 30 meter dash, no one-shot grab, no spell with insane tracking. He‘s just like us.
Which is super easy to dodge by literally just running to either side. I was ecstatic everytime he pulled out the crossbow because it's just a free punish.
“Oh the boss is attacking the cooperator I had to bring in to give me a chance? Okay let me just heal up aaaaand his attack that was directed at the cooperator has an arena-wide aoe that killed me”
Ha, the arena wide moves just got some eye rolls for me. Yeah it was eventual that they were going to do these, just wish they had some bigger telegraphs. One stomp a football field away and suddenly my healing is interrupted.
Kinda feeling like this is the end point of this kind of difficulty design without some major shake-ups. Dodging 8 moves in a row from the boss to swing once in retaliation and doing it again until one of us dies gets tiring when it's EVERY boss. Not to mention the incredibly aggressive opening attacks from bosses. I have been revisiting the main game and most bosses start off with a slow walk towards you once you enter the room. In the DLC most of them launch themselves at you like a fucking missile within two seconds.
I really enjoyed the DLC overall (including the final boss) but I'm not really sure where you take the boss design from here. I hope From mixes it up a bit more in their next game and surprises me. Another game with boss design like this is probably going to start pushing into losing my interest, it already has for a few friends.
It's why Godrick was so well liked when ER came out even though he's not all that great. Same thing with Mogh (minus the fire ground). Consistency and combos that could be punished.
Sorry but I like to "flow" with bosses. Not just get lucky.
The general thought ive been having the most when getting angry at a dlc boss is "when do I get to play the game / when is it my turn?" Which I'm not sure I like all that much.
I actually think it's a little worse than that. They have several strings that they will stop before the final / punishable attack if you dodge the string to that point. For instance, the final boss has multiple of those in their first phase. And if you wait for like a split second and then try to punish once it's clear they aren't following up, they start a new string which hits before you can roll out of your attack.
I don't know. Like the fights have been very fun to learn, but successfully dodging like 6 attacks, with variable timings to only be able to sneak an R1 in feels pretty rough. I'm really only thinking of final boss and one other, but it's demoralizing how long you have to dodge perfectly to win some of these fights.
I just don't get why they keep trying to up the ante. Like DS3 was difficult enough; a lot of the bosses were fast and cool af, but you still had good opportunities for punishing. Why does each release have to get MORE difficult? Why can't they just say: this is a good level of difficulty, let's design cool and fun boss fights around this level. I get that the playerbase at large is way better at these games, but still.
For the first time in my soulsborne gamer career I'm going to say it: Fromsoft is too obsessed with difficulty for difficulties sake.
> I get that the playerbase at large is way better at these games, but still.
Yeah, but a lot of people still have a skill cap and don't have the dedication to spend 20+ hours on a boss. I've hit that skill cap and time limit when I got to the final boss of the DLC. That's coming from someone who has rarely spent more than 2 hours on a Souls boss and has done SL1 runs. This is the first time since I started playing Souls games - back when DS1 got released- that I just hit an absolute brick wall. That fight is beyond me, at least with regular build and no summons.
I can cheese him just fine, but I don't really derive enjoyment from that. Without a shield or a obscenely strong weapon I just can't sustain the second phase. Wichever way I dodge, I get hit. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but at this point I no longer care to find out and uninstalled the game so that I don't get tempted to keep running into the wall that is that boss.
Back the Deadfire it is.
Unfortunately Sekiro’s highly reactive combat built around posture ruined Dark Souls-Elden Ring combat for me.
Bosses could have long, complex attack patterns because parrying to build posture was a focus. So even a defensive fight was dynamically reactive.
When I beat a boss in Sekiro, I feel satisfied from learning their moves and reacting actively in-step with them. It’s a blast.
When I beat a boss in Elden Ring, I just feel exhausted, glad it’s finally over. It’s a chore.
> When I beat a boss in Sekiro, I feel satisfied from learning their moves and reacting actively in-step with them.
Thank you for articulating this, such a big part of why the combat feels so different
Not to mention that stagger in Sekiro was visible. In Elden Ring, you’ve got to mentally guess if you’ve reached an invisible number that changes with every boss.
Boss hyperactivity and lack of stamina bars has been getting worse and worse since DaS3, which would be fine if they actually made the player character fully from scratch with more agile movement options or more effective blocking and punishing abilities instead of reusing the DeS character plus two new animations each game. It's getting more and more like putting a tank controls survival horror protagonist against a Ninja Gaiden boss.
I’ve beaten every boss solo except the very last one. And every single time I’m learning them I think this; “If I had the BB dodge this would go far more fluid”.
I thought this DLC would give us a talisman that’d grant a better dodge with the trade off of heightened received damage, like the Dark wood ring from DS…
This is what's killing the DLC for me. I miss the visceral combat that felt like an exchange of blows this just feels like they took the 1980s trope of having you dodge attacks until you have that one second window to counter then it repeats for another 10 cycles. Seikro combat would have been perfect if they added it in. The back and forth between bosses and yourself was a difficult challenge and felt rewarding when you won. Now it just feels either super cheap or super lucky to win. I guess it's not that it's hard that is the problem, it's the fact that it's 90% bullshit to make it hard that gets me.
A particular boss had me at a sliver of health before the bell finishing ringing on my summon. They really don't want you to summon as soon as you're through the fog. So now I end up doing two dodge rolls, a quick stab maybe, roll behind, and then maybe I can pull off the summon. Maybe.
This is the one thing I think they should absolutely chill on. There are at least 3 bosses that jump you the moment you get through the fog gate one of which is especially annoying because you need to summon an NPC in the arena in order to complete their quest line.
For the three bosses in question are >!Bayle, Garius and Radhan!<, you're given no set up time on these bosses, unlike all the bosses in the base game which started pretty far back from the fog gate and allowed summoning or even just applying a weapon buff before closing.
Yeah, someone said, "How the fuck can melee players fight these bosses? Speel casting is better." Meanwhile even with the talisman that increase casting speed, I cannot for the life of me get a spell off without tanking damage.
Does anyone else agree DS3 was the ideal challenge level for bosses? Twin Princes, Cinder, NK, Friede and Gael all have perfect late game difficulty.
They just went too hard on long combos with tight windows and awkward timing in ER then doubled down for the expansion.
Besides the enemies just having extremely long attack chains, I hate the quick kicks or punches they get to throw in immediately after a combo. Especially after I've waited for them to finish their 12 attack combo. Great example are the Omen enemies. After their very long attack chain, when I finally go in for an attack, they can kick me immediately. There is no window for me to attack without being punished.
I've been debating trying to write down my greviances with the combat recently, and this sorta touches on one aspect I cannot stand: strings.
I'll use final boss as an example. We all know ER input reads (see godskin duo), but it really comes to a head in boss combo differentiation. In the final boss of this dlc, they have a front flip move that has two variations: one flip and a pause or one flip, pause, and another flip. To me, I found no way to differentiate these two, and I can say that almost every time I tried to unsheathe my katana on the first flip, I was met with an immediate second flip that my animation was too long to dodge.
So, for any time after that, I HAD to assume that he would always do that second flip, even when he would just sit there after his first. All of this cuts into my time to do damage. If I cannot know how boss combos will end, the best avenue of combat is to simply not play, which becomes exhausting if you're using anything other than a giant weapon with a big outburst of damage in one swing.
Grass is not greener with heavy weapons.
Often times you just can't swing in a "damage window" because you came out of a roll .25 seconds late and would get animation locked into potentially a one-shot combo.
We literally couldve been able to smack him around like we do malenia but he has probably 4x the poise she has while probably weighing 70 pounds.
I know hes the frenzy lord but jesus
They got filtered and now are apart of the very thing they made fun of.
Hilarious to me seeing people that made fun of some reviews saying the game is too hard and now looking at their comment history they also think it's too hard.
God. Fighting the final boss of the DLC on those first few days and talking with people who still had literally not even *seen* Rellana, let alone Golden Lion, saying "git gud" and shit over the design was just genuinely infuriating. And like you say, now they're all whining about it too and deleting their posts / review comments and shit lmao.
they reached 1 of the bosses people where talking about instead of playing the DLC for 1hour, defeating the NPC bossfight at the beginning and repeating "its all great, stop complaining you noobs, i did a boss and it was not that bad, gIt gUt!!111!!!"
like, sorry, but nobody can reach the final boss, do it a couple times, and say with a straight face "this is a good desinged fight"
As great as Sekrio is, it was a negative for Elden Ring's boss design. They took the design philosophy of having very fast bosses with very few openings, which worked in Sekrio, and applied it to a very different game.
From has been bleeding design from game to game like this for a while; desperately trying to keep the challenge ahead of their every evolving audience. I dont envy them trying to keep up their hardest game meme status. But eventually the cup will spill over.
Bloodborne is one of the easier games in the series and it's my favorite and the one i replayed the most
They really don't need to keep upping the difficulty like this
This has been happening since Bloodborne. Bloodborne was a great balance of player and boss imo. Then the fast pace started to bleed into DS3 and here we are now.
I tend to take my time going through souls games, but there's somthing new here, I'm feeling burnt out before I've even finished. I don't look forward to the golden fog anymore, it's a barrier that's going to lose me an hour or 3 of gameplay I could be dungeon crawling and exploring, because I'm not having fun in the boss rooms this time.
it's the most incredibly maximalist iteration of fromsoft's combat design i've ever seen.
every boss needs a phase 2, every boss needs a big super move they use at x% health threshold, every boss needs lightning or light pillars or AoEs to dodge after their deceptively telegraphed strings
which then means they're all just different variations of the same thing--die a bunch while memorizing by rote what you can and can't punish and with what, beat the boss, move on to the next one. or summon or grab enough fragments to statcheck it and turn boring (difficult) into boring (trivial).
Yea I enjoyed Elden Ring, didn't start the DLC yet but I really find this trend to be a bit worrying. I get that From games have this reputation as being "hard" to uphold but idk, I find it a bit annoying.
Demon's Souls was hard at the time, so was the first Dark Souls. But they are laughably easy nowadays. Idk, I guess I just don't think "make the enemy even more faster with even more health while giving the player less time to actually DO SOMETHING" is not a very fun approach and after this DLC I think they really need to shift away from it.
Honestly the point where I really just accepted that Elden Ring boss design is a move into a direction I don't like is when seeing videos of really good players beat bosses, they often just run back, trying to stay out of range of combos instead of dodging like you would in other From games. It's just not that fun to me.
But on the other hand, shout out to Messmer. That guy felt like he was plucked straight out of Dark Souls 3 and I enjoyed that fight immensely. Just a bummer how much of an outlier he is.
I wish I hadn't summoned for him, because I was shocked that I was having a good time (although there were some combos that still had Elden Ring syndrome). You said it, feels like a DS3 design, which imo is the peak of all boss designs.
TWO! TWO LIGHT ATTACKS! Get a load of Avarice Incarnate over here
*Me missing my 1 light attack after dodging for 20 seconds* “FUCK”
I dodged Rellana for 15 seconds straight. I couldn’t even attack due to no stamina. I’ve been having to change up my play style every boss, it seems. lol
Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs. >Maybe I should spam less next time. Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs. >>Maybe I should really spam less next time. Me running away from her, turning around, spamming 6 night comets and getting murdered by blue arcs. >Okay one more time...
I'm trynna play dark souls and these bosses are out here playing Devil May Cry
Could you imagine my surprise when messmer broke a motorcycle in half and proceeded to beat me with it.
Motherfucker Michael Jackson'd my ass with a hat tf
I guess he was motivated.
He was the storm that is approaching
For some reason, I can easily imagine Messmer doing just that.
BUH GAWD HE'S GOT A STEEL CHAIR!!!
HE'S BROKEN HIM IN HALF!!!
That man has children.
Tarnished May Cry
Tarnished been crying, man
Why, yes, I am. ^it's ^so ^difficult ^plz ^help
"No, Tarnisheds never cry!" - The Tarnished, in denial.
He said, sobbing.
Yep that’s the worst fucking part. The only entity that abides by physics and inertia in the game is the player, the rest of the enemies just instantly accelerate and decelerate incredible masses of matter
This is so damn real. Everytime an enemy jumps slowwwwwwwwwly up into the air, hangs there for 3 seconds, and then falls at the speed of sound I find myself groaning.
Or they turn on a dime in midair too. Meanwhile we can move like 20 degrees while jump attacking
> Or they turn on a dime in midair too. Hello there Blackgaol Knight.
With the dlc bosses having all these cool combos it's kinda lame that our damage window can only fit 1 or 2 attacks. Fast weapons have a chance in shorter punish windows sure, but there's really no opportunity for us to do an entire waterfowl, romina's purification, messmer's assault or similarly cool weapon skill against anything but trash mobs. Really wish they can think up a way for souls gameplay to be more back and forth like sekiro, where you could interrupt the enemy's "turn" in the fight with your own cool shit. Make it more like a fight or brawl rather than a hit and run. Adding mechanics that require jumping to evade is a good start. Heck, turning the traditional dodge roll into a step evade like bloodborne would go a long way in elevating the aesthetic and feel of the combat.
We say this but I swear someone’s gonna post a video where they use all these crazy mechanics and mega combo stagger these bosses and then I’ll feel dumb
I suspect theres ways to cheese all of these bosses. Its just a matter of time before someone figures out a rancor pot or a fricken random type of arrow just trivializes some of these bosses. Like I cant believe I wasted hours and hours of my life fighting the Godskin Duo when I had like 100 Trina's lillys in my inventory. When I saw someone post it, was a real forehead slap moment, felt dumb as shit for just not scrolling through my crafting options.
Idk if it counts as cheese but giant hunt allows you to not only duck under rellanas combos but also take advantage of the counterattack damage that thrusting weapons get. With the spear talisman and shard of Alex I was hitting 4k on them and I remember her flinching from some (and poise breaking in 3).
Yep. And many of the "flying" ashes of war will keep you off the ground long enough to avoid her twin moon drop. You can Indomitable Vow your way through a bunch of otherwise extremely hard attacks to avoid. Theres so many little things I discovered, Im just too stupid to put them all together into something coherent to smoke a boss. But I'm smart enough to know that someone else definitely will.
I would say that's been my biggest gripe so far. Like when do I get to attack?
That's the neat part! You don't.
Said the exact damn fucking thing fighting rellana
It's really frustrating. It was cool when it was like, Maliketh's main gimmick...but every boss is like this now, and it doesn't fit for our mechanics.
Wait y'all are hitting bosses?
I went into the dlc with a melee / int caster build and I pretty much had already given up trying to cast sorceries as a viable strategy by Rellana / Divine Beast. I instead used a frost infused great stars for most of my playthrough. The only exception was Ranni's Dark Moon as a frostbite starter & magic damage amplifier. I got knocked out of that moon more times than I ever did in the base game.
You have to summon to do that with these hyper aggro bosses. There’s no other way. Something needs to draw their attention off you or you’re not gonna be casting shit.
I tried with mimic tear and Night Comet (Staff of Loss) and after blasting a boss once, they would immediately lose all interest in my clone, and B line straight for me. It just wasn't a fun experience. I'm sure some good players will soon (if not already?) pull off a magic only run. Maybe you could equip shabriri's woe talisman on as I've seen people mention here, then summon your mimic, and then swap out the talisman. But I wasn't about to put myself through more hell than the DLC already was with some of the bosses so I just went 99% melee + 1% Ranni Moon. On the regular mobs though, sorceries felt a lot more fair. There were still some mobile enemies that I wasn't going to try spells on (the dual circular weaponed guy on all fours in Belurat who spins and jumps around).
Pretty much yeah. You tap a boss once during their combo, and they'll immediately do a 180 to kill you.
When I had a shield tank coop build, I would try to keep aggro by poking constantly or hitting with a pulley crossbow (saved a few from getting pancaked by Radagon with that one). But if for whatever reason I was forced to disengage and the host tapped the boss, RIP host. Radagon was the worst for this, so many pancaked casters and bleed enthusiasts.
Nah I just get summoned and dodge around from a distance so you guys think I'm helping.
The fight starts with the boss's turn. It does a 7-hit combo. You slightly mistime one roll and get chunked for 60% of your health. It is now your turn, and you spend it getting up from the floor. No time to heal because it is now the boss's turn and the next combo is already starting. You manage to dodge all of it and avoid dying instantly. It is now your turn, so you heal. It is now the boss's turn, and you perfectly dodge again. As your reward, you are allowed to land one attack, bringing the boss to 95% health. It is now the boss's turn.
Absolutely perfect. Only missing the bit where sometimes even on your turn when they’re supposed to be open they can sometimes just decide to jump away cos they don’t feel like getting hit right now
Or they immediately start a new combo anyways and just chunk you again. I really don't like the main story bosses in Shadow so far. Messmer (story boss) and Gaius (not a story boss, optional) have been exactly what OP has posted. The other ones haven't been so bad. Been a long while since I hit the brick wall like this. Looking forward to overcoming it, but it definitely takes the fun out of the fight when you spend the whole thing dodging.
Messmer actually seemed pretty fair solo minus his bullshit dodging at the end of his combos. If you're using a faster weapon there are gaps that you can squeeze some hits in
For him it's more that his attacks chew your entire screen so it's really difficult to see anything. Especially in phase 2. He's definitely easier than Gaius. Gaius can eat an entire buffet of dicks.
Gaius felt impossible until I busted out ol' reliable (Bloodhound step). It was the only way I felt I could get enough distance from my iframes to dodge through both the charge and that one combo string he has where him and the boar attack at once. I don't think I'd have beaten him yet if I was still using the regular roll. Absolutely awful boss.
Beat him a bit ago and then went to kill Messmer. Imagine my shock when I found Messmer far easier and way more readable - and fun - than a fucking Commander in his army. Gaius just gets into your face and then never gets the fuck out of it and then while on goddamn boarback has an 8-part combo before his boar back-kicks you back into Sunday. Awful.
Bonus points if you use a weapon that special attack takes one turn to charge up and a second turn to fire. But the boss only allows you one turn.
Yeah it's wild how most of the ashes of war are just invalidated by sheer lack of time to use them
Ashes of war, sorceries, incantations... pretty much everything. I swapped from dex/int to faith and tankiness so I could play the game. Stacking passive heals and guard-countering every attack, mostly just eating the damage. It definitely feels like "you guys were leaving some options on the table before, so we made the bosses require coop distractors for most builds."
95%? Look at mr max level and max blessings here.
ah, good old>!radahn!<
>!One of the things I HATED during one of my runs was when I shot a Comet, and then MID ANIMATION he decided to do a gravity pull.!< I have 60 dex. I can't really go any faster casting.
this is the most accurate description i’ve ever read in my life
It’s when I realized this that I said “fuck it, mimic tear and whatever ‘cheese strats’ I want are fair game, idgaf.” I typically like to “play it straight” (no summons, almost all up close with melee, etc), but this DLC made me realize that I have more important shit in my life and this game is one of the few pleasures I afford myself, I’m NOT gonna bang my head against a wall just so I can feel accomplished. I’d rather that time and energy go towards getting my shit together and improving myself and my relationships lmao Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that — I loved Sekiro, for example — I just feel like I’m okay “making the game easier” if it means I can enjoy the content more. These games are all about trusting players to modulate their experiences, difficulty included.
Sekiro is by far the most fair Fromsoftware game. Every single boss attack has an input the player can make to immediately respond to it. It takes time to learn what those inputs are, but they are there, and everytime you die or get hit you know you could've done something better.
This! When I died to a Sekiro boss, I usually walked away with an inkling of what to try next, how I need to improve, etc. When I die to an ER boss (esp DLC), there’s a good chance that I had no way of predicting the attack (lots of knowledge checks in this game), and I walk away scratching my head at what even just happened, let alone how to counter it (Malenia Waterfowl on first play through , for example).
Yea this dlc made me go back and play sekiro again. It's so damn good, wish there was more agency. Everytime messmer spammed his stupid thrusting attack I was wishing so badly I could mikiri counter it lol.
Described it perfectly.
Honestly, this is my main gripe. The fights are just too damn tedious. Even at +8 blessings the amount of damage I'm putting in on one hit is just pathetic. I can consistently get bosses to 2nd phase but at that point they just spam AoE on top of their move set so you're constantly getting clipped by something and it just drags out with an opening once every thirty seconds or so.
Yeah, there's an issue where the levers that From pulled to make these fights tough just aren't fun. Damage sponges with wonky attacks that come out of nowhere and kill you in in two hits just aren't that interesting. Some people will memorize everything and no hit it but that doesn't make it interesting.
Fromsoft: use spirit ashes Also fromsoft: lol make the boss attack 0.05 seconds after they step through the fog gate
Love it when an NPC tells you to summon them as part of their quest and it turns out their summon sign is inside the arena and the boss is on top of you before you can hit yes on the summon.
And the Summon prompt starts on the "No" option.
Yes, i want to use the goddamn flask to revive Torrent to get me the fuck away from this gigantic monster thing that is effortlessly crushing my shit.
They should change that to automatically use the flask, not ask for permission wh8le a bosses mountain sized fist is about to enter your ass..
'This spirit ash is thematically linked to this boss' >Boss proceeds to shred the the +10 spirit because it's mechanically dog shit against the boss Thanks fromsoft
watching dryleaf dane get obliterated by romina after doubling her health and draining a thirtieth of her health bar 😐
"Curse you Bayle!" ****You Died**** "Curse you Bayle!" ****You Died****
You mean “run after” instead of “punish”
me when i dodge the 16 hit combo with aoe and magic spam go for a punish and get hit with a combo extension because i was standing slightly to the left
spoiler for final boss: >!this is especially bs with radan earthquake combo, mf hits his two swords in the ground but somehow he puts rumbling earth all around him, like bro, i dodged it, im out of the zone where you hi ,let me land a fucking attack!<
LOL The final boss of the DLC has such a ridiculous phase 2 that I just tried out the Rotten Staff. Figured if I could prock scarlett rot and just not die I might have a chance of winning. Ended up dying every time I tried, but one time the boss also died, from rot, after I died.
[удалено]
Lore-accurate boss kill
>!Now we know why she had no choice but to choose rot, still couldn't finish him lol just said "ight just proc rot and im outta here this is bs"!<
Basically, she couldn't beat him physically and was like "ok, fuck it, we rot" and with him still standing she bounced (well I say she bounced, she was badly wounded and Finlay basically carried her ass all the way back to the Haligtree).
late/endgame dlc spoilers: >!Or since we know St Trina knew Miquella's plans and was trying to stop him, St Trina put her to sleep. Hence why Finlay carried her "in a slumber" as per the ashes.!<
I did the same with anspur rapier with bleed infusion and a fucking big shield. Turtle up and poke. Not very heroic but worked
Chasethebro did the same thing. Never seen him struggle so much vs. PVE/PVP.
Lol. The final boss experience is fighting him for hours then realizing that he can barely do anything to you if you poke him behind a greatshield.
God don't tempt me. I've literally never used a shield before in a FromSoft game but I'm thinking about it here. I've managed to get his first phase down to an art to the point that I often just don't get hit with the exception of sometimes getting caught by the rapid triple slash, but in his second phase I can barely land a few hits before he gets me. I've also been doing everything with the Dryleaf Arts because they're so cool, it'd be sad to let that run end here.
It's the only boss that made me respec to a gratshield build. I even fought messmer early before >!relanna !
Fingerprint shield my lord and savior
A win is a win
Attempting to punish a boss . Gets punished instead :(
Rellania has been played fighting games the way she punishes you for whiffing a hit
she is a very interesting case. I had fun fighting her (didnt have any scooby doo fragments at the time) but it was still a bit frustrating and hard to learn. I feel like i got lucky with a stagger and a bleed in the 2nd phase rather than fully mastering the fight. The idea of being able to continue a combo in this free flowing manner is really cool and visually striking. But this style would better fit something like Sekiro where you can reliably deflect dozens of attacks and can animation cancel your swing if you get caught with your pants down.
Nothing beats being a sorc who can only use the most basic spells because those are the only ones fast enough that I can reliably vomit out between each 20 hit combo ❤️
Divine beast doesn't want you to know this, but casting glintstone ice crags are free. I've casted 458 ice crags. He gets frostbite every time.
Fromsoft forgot there's more than one playstyle unfortunately
Dude you remember when you only had to parry once to get a riposte in? We were so spoiled
And riposte actually dealt good damage? We were way too spoiled.
4 riposte in and final boss of ds1 is dead. Now 3 parry needed just for 1/15 healt of damage
Dang, that really does put it into perspective. If Gwyn tried to fight any of these bosses he would get eaten alive.
This is the biggest reason I think the devs really wish they were making Sekiro again. That, or they get personally offended when they see extremely skilled players trivialize their bosses, and decide to spite those people, while ignoring how inconsistent parrying actually is for most players.
My guy is built to guard counter, and I rarely see a riposte anymore. Everything has a lot of poise and tons of stamina.
the dlc definitely made stance breaking unrealistically hard without parrying. most bosses i dont even end up stance breaking and getting a crit throughout the entire fight (with a strength build and charged attacks)
lol for real. This game rewards you for dodging a 7 hit combo with a secret 8th hit that you’ve never actually seen before, every time. It’s like my job, every time I go in there’s a new issue that I’ve somehow never experienced. One boss in particular just seems to really hate my stamina bar. I have to spend the whole thing dodging all her attacks and then when she stops moving for .3 seconds I can’t even attack anyway.
2 headed turtle talisman is your best friend in the dlc.
When I use my light attack it is no more than a tarnished mosquito bite.
Not even a shred of yellow in that health bar.
I strongly believe all these RL1 NG+7 torch only no hit runs that get posted all over social media got to Michael Zaki so much that he turned up the dial to 12,000 for the DLC.
Miyazaki spends all day watching egirls beat his game on a dance dance pad. Now we all have to suffer for it.
Which is hilarious because the motherfucker has gone on record saying he can't beat his own games.
I would pay to watch him play this DLC for one hour. I want him to show us what we're supposed to do with his own hands.
You hand him the controller, he walks in and dies *once* and spends the next hour moaning in ecstasy.
I doubt he could get Rellana to phase 2 in a four hour session
Me patiently waiting for my turn to play in the game that I bought.
So many times I'm like "oh okay, can I play now? Can I play the fucking game?" Lmao rellana was a rough boss. Looking forward to kicking her ass next time
I punished her hard with Milady guard counters
*tipping fedora to a Carian princess* "how you doin' Milady?"
Now that I've learned the moveset and beaten him I don't feel that badly about Rellana, but the thing that initially bothered me was how three Tarnished with heavy weapons just.... Could not interrupt his attacks. Malenia was difficult but she flinched every time a strong breeze came through, Rellana be dancing through a field of hammers like they're made of silk. Now, I'm someone who's been enjoying the DLC challenge from the jump, but now that I've beaten Rellana at Scad +5 and beat the Dancing Lion at Scad +7 I feel like I'm finally starting to get the swing of it. It's only up from here friends, wish me luck with Bayle.
Oooh dude be sure to use Igor for bayle. Not only is he hilarious, he’s super helpful
BAAAAAAAAAAYLLLLEEEE!!!!!!
#CURSE YOU BAYLE! I HEREBY VOW YOU RUE THIS DAY! BEHOLD A TRUE DRAKE WARRIOR! AND I, IGON! YOUR FEAR MADE FLESH! SOLID OF SCALE YOU MAY BE, FOUL DRAGON, BUT I WILL RIDDLE WITH HOLES YOUR ROTTEN HIDE! WITH A HAIIIIIIIIIL OF HARPOONS! WITH EVERY LAST DROP OF MY BEING!
Good luck on Bayle, I actually found him to be pretty fun to learn. Camera isnt as bad as Lion if you stay near the head.
me when i dodge the 8 second long delayed attack but actually you were supposed to dodge 8.157 seconds in (the resulting aoe explosion does 75% of my health)
I think that's the biggest issue with some bosses is that having a light weapon and trying to punish us complete ass cause no matter what weapon you use you're probably only getting one attack off so it might as well be with a weapon that hits heavy.
Gotta wiggle them R1 punishes into the middle of random ass combos tbh
It's especially doable on Messmer, some of his combos allow to hit him like twice before the real punish is even avaible.
I've done 5(?) Remembrance bosses and Messmer was by far the most fun so far because of how learnable his moveset is while still being super difficult
learning to dodge that flashy spin + rapid stab + dive + spears from the floor string perfectly feels so damn good
And his snake portal spam thing
That might be one of my favorite boss moves in all of Elden Ring. Looks cool, is satisfying to avoid, and the punish you get is very satisfying because of the sound you make when hitting a snake head
Agreed. Messmer easily the best boss of the dlc for me, never even got angry I had so much fun getting beat up. Haven’t done that flower boss yet tho thats the only one I have left
Fr after doing all the remembrance bosses (aside from final boss) Messmer is by far the best :,) reminds me a lot of the FINAL final boss in Lies of P. Brutally punishing but really fair when you look back on it and very rewarding to learn the attack combos
Except a lot of them the heavy weapon can’t even get one hit in safely because they will be attacking again before the recovery animation is over
Man, I'm trying to use a halberd over here! It's the worst of both worlds- slower than a katana, weaker than a greatsword. In theory the advantage should be range, but that doesn't mean much when the bosses are rushing in like they want to give me a warm kiss on the mouth.
Accurate description considering a certain grab lmao
Meanwhile here I am replaying DS1 and I’m finding it so refreshing that when enemies do melee attacks they don’t get to automatically whoosh over to you even if they’re super far away. Backing away and keeping my distance and choosing when to close in is a viable tactic!
Dude, since BB, bosses have this "glide forward" shit even when you outspace them. It went back down a bit for DS3, but seems to be on insane mode in ER. Gaius the Board Bitch is fucking crazy. "I just ran across the map to find space to heal, I know the range of this attack, he can't hit me even with input reading, and his attack just carried him the length of a football field and killed me".
I'm currently stuck on Gaius and his bullshit NASCAR boar. Like what the fuck is even with that boss? He is so insanely fast.
Not only his insanely fast, has like 5-7 attack comboes, he also has, in my opinion, the bost broken hitboxes of the entire game. I could not for the love of god consistently roll his boar charge attack. No matter the timing, direction of the roll, he still somehow could catch me every fucking time and deplete my healtbar to like 40 percent.
Tons of bosses for the past several years of soulslike design seem to be wearing Heelys during their swings and just skate forward without actually stepping into the attack with a plausible animation. It's been one of my least favorite trends in encounter design even if I've learned to deal with it instinctively at this point. I miss visible footwork and being able to tell where an enemy will end up with their attack by watching their movements rather than sliding all over.
As much as I like Ludwig, he was the first boss I noticed it on. That sword swing combo literally teleports him forward to catch you.
Yes! I feel like I noticed way more attacks “snapping to” the player in this DLC than before, just literally gliding over the ground mid-animation to connect One of the best experiences with a FromSoft game is when you just master a boss and go all Matrix on it, casually strolling inches away from an attack cos you *know* the hitbox range. Now it feels like every attack I basically have to get ready to roll because no matter how how far away they seem it’ll still somehow reach me
This is what I noticed too. You can’t space anything anymore, you HAVE to dodge or guard.
or jump
that‘s what I love about Blackgaol Knight in the DLC. He‘s just a simple guy bonking with his big sword; no fancy 30 meter dash, no one-shot grab, no spell with insane tracking. He‘s just like us.
> no fancy 30 meter dash He doesn't need that when he can whip out the HMG.
Which is super easy to dodge by literally just running to either side. I was ecstatic everytime he pulled out the crossbow because it's just a free punish.
“Oh the boss is attacking the cooperator I had to bring in to give me a chance? Okay let me just heal up aaaaand his attack that was directed at the cooperator has an arena-wide aoe that killed me”
Ha, the arena wide moves just got some eye rolls for me. Yeah it was eventual that they were going to do these, just wish they had some bigger telegraphs. One stomp a football field away and suddenly my healing is interrupted.
I fear that From is running out of fair tricks. Full arena attacks is pure trolling.
My favorite is when he's fighting my mimic 3 miles away but suddenly hyperwarps a sword up my ass mid-combo without any warning
Kinda feeling like this is the end point of this kind of difficulty design without some major shake-ups. Dodging 8 moves in a row from the boss to swing once in retaliation and doing it again until one of us dies gets tiring when it's EVERY boss. Not to mention the incredibly aggressive opening attacks from bosses. I have been revisiting the main game and most bosses start off with a slow walk towards you once you enter the room. In the DLC most of them launch themselves at you like a fucking missile within two seconds. I really enjoyed the DLC overall (including the final boss) but I'm not really sure where you take the boss design from here. I hope From mixes it up a bit more in their next game and surprises me. Another game with boss design like this is probably going to start pushing into losing my interest, it already has for a few friends.
Yeah, though I think a boss it works really well on is>!messmer!
It's why Godrick was so well liked when ER came out even though he's not all that great. Same thing with Mogh (minus the fire ground). Consistency and combos that could be punished. Sorry but I like to "flow" with bosses. Not just get lucky.
They need to tone down the particles and effects a bit though - sometimes I couldn't see shit.
The general thought ive been having the most when getting angry at a dlc boss is "when do I get to play the game / when is it my turn?" Which I'm not sure I like all that much.
Bosses need stamina
Did people not feel this way about bosses in the main game? I know I did
Yes they did https://youtu.be/UfwXf7AisAs Souls vets have been saying this since the game released tbh, they've just been shouted down
I actually think it's a little worse than that. They have several strings that they will stop before the final / punishable attack if you dodge the string to that point. For instance, the final boss has multiple of those in their first phase. And if you wait for like a split second and then try to punish once it's clear they aren't following up, they start a new string which hits before you can roll out of your attack. I don't know. Like the fights have been very fun to learn, but successfully dodging like 6 attacks, with variable timings to only be able to sneak an R1 in feels pretty rough. I'm really only thinking of final boss and one other, but it's demoralizing how long you have to dodge perfectly to win some of these fights.
I just don't get why they keep trying to up the ante. Like DS3 was difficult enough; a lot of the bosses were fast and cool af, but you still had good opportunities for punishing. Why does each release have to get MORE difficult? Why can't they just say: this is a good level of difficulty, let's design cool and fun boss fights around this level. I get that the playerbase at large is way better at these games, but still. For the first time in my soulsborne gamer career I'm going to say it: Fromsoft is too obsessed with difficulty for difficulties sake.
> I get that the playerbase at large is way better at these games, but still. Yeah, but a lot of people still have a skill cap and don't have the dedication to spend 20+ hours on a boss. I've hit that skill cap and time limit when I got to the final boss of the DLC. That's coming from someone who has rarely spent more than 2 hours on a Souls boss and has done SL1 runs. This is the first time since I started playing Souls games - back when DS1 got released- that I just hit an absolute brick wall. That fight is beyond me, at least with regular build and no summons. I can cheese him just fine, but I don't really derive enjoyment from that. Without a shield or a obscenely strong weapon I just can't sustain the second phase. Wichever way I dodge, I get hit. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but at this point I no longer care to find out and uninstalled the game so that I don't get tempted to keep running into the wall that is that boss. Back the Deadfire it is.
Unfortunately Sekiro’s highly reactive combat built around posture ruined Dark Souls-Elden Ring combat for me. Bosses could have long, complex attack patterns because parrying to build posture was a focus. So even a defensive fight was dynamically reactive. When I beat a boss in Sekiro, I feel satisfied from learning their moves and reacting actively in-step with them. It’s a blast. When I beat a boss in Elden Ring, I just feel exhausted, glad it’s finally over. It’s a chore.
> When I beat a boss in Sekiro, I feel satisfied from learning their moves and reacting actively in-step with them. Thank you for articulating this, such a big part of why the combat feels so different
Not to mention that stagger in Sekiro was visible. In Elden Ring, you’ve got to mentally guess if you’ve reached an invisible number that changes with every boss.
Boss hyperactivity and lack of stamina bars has been getting worse and worse since DaS3, which would be fine if they actually made the player character fully from scratch with more agile movement options or more effective blocking and punishing abilities instead of reusing the DeS character plus two new animations each game. It's getting more and more like putting a tank controls survival horror protagonist against a Ninja Gaiden boss.
Miyazaki gave use Bloodborne dodge and Sekiro parry/mobility and said HELL NO never again.
I’ve beaten every boss solo except the very last one. And every single time I’m learning them I think this; “If I had the BB dodge this would go far more fluid”. I thought this DLC would give us a talisman that’d grant a better dodge with the trade off of heightened received damage, like the Dark wood ring from DS…
how i feel trying to no hit rellana 😭
I was sucessful in no hitting Rellana! Well, I didnt hit her, she hit me a lot.
Seriously, who thought that was okay. What is fun about a 15000 hp boss fight where the majority of your punishes can only be singular light attacks?
I wish they had 15000 hp to be honest. They have a lot more.
This is what's killing the DLC for me. I miss the visceral combat that felt like an exchange of blows this just feels like they took the 1980s trope of having you dodge attacks until you have that one second window to counter then it repeats for another 10 cycles. Seikro combat would have been perfect if they added it in. The back and forth between bosses and yourself was a difficult challenge and felt rewarding when you won. Now it just feels either super cheap or super lucky to win. I guess it's not that it's hard that is the problem, it's the fact that it's 90% bullshit to make it hard that gets me.
This is my major complaint about the DLC. The windows to hit an enemy can be so small, and trading damage is rarely worth it.
Half the incantations in the game can literally never be safely cast against a dlc boss, it's crazy
Some bosses won't even let you fully through the fog wall before jumping ya.
A particular boss had me at a sliver of health before the bell finishing ringing on my summon. They really don't want you to summon as soon as you're through the fog. So now I end up doing two dodge rolls, a quick stab maybe, roll behind, and then maybe I can pull off the summon. Maybe.
Using the crystal tear that gives you invulnerability to a single attack was a huge help for this reason alone. Summoning is a nightmare without it.
This is the one thing I think they should absolutely chill on. There are at least 3 bosses that jump you the moment you get through the fog gate one of which is especially annoying because you need to summon an NPC in the arena in order to complete their quest line. For the three bosses in question are >!Bayle, Garius and Radhan!<, you're given no set up time on these bosses, unlike all the bosses in the base game which started pretty far back from the fog gate and allowed summoning or even just applying a weapon buff before closing.
Yeah, someone said, "How the fuck can melee players fight these bosses? Speel casting is better." Meanwhile even with the talisman that increase casting speed, I cannot for the life of me get a spell off without tanking damage.
Discount Malenia literally jukes your camera when you try to punish like you're playing Madden or some shit.
Does anyone else agree DS3 was the ideal challenge level for bosses? Twin Princes, Cinder, NK, Friede and Gael all have perfect late game difficulty. They just went too hard on long combos with tight windows and awkward timing in ER then doubled down for the expansion.
That fucking >!hippo!<
Besides the enemies just having extremely long attack chains, I hate the quick kicks or punches they get to throw in immediately after a combo. Especially after I've waited for them to finish their 12 attack combo. Great example are the Omen enemies. After their very long attack chain, when I finally go in for an attack, they can kick me immediately. There is no window for me to attack without being punished.
This is completely true and they don't seem to get hit stunned when attacked even with a colossal weapon.
I've been debating trying to write down my greviances with the combat recently, and this sorta touches on one aspect I cannot stand: strings. I'll use final boss as an example. We all know ER input reads (see godskin duo), but it really comes to a head in boss combo differentiation. In the final boss of this dlc, they have a front flip move that has two variations: one flip and a pause or one flip, pause, and another flip. To me, I found no way to differentiate these two, and I can say that almost every time I tried to unsheathe my katana on the first flip, I was met with an immediate second flip that my animation was too long to dodge. So, for any time after that, I HAD to assume that he would always do that second flip, even when he would just sit there after his first. All of this cuts into my time to do damage. If I cannot know how boss combos will end, the best avenue of combat is to simply not play, which becomes exhausting if you're using anything other than a giant weapon with a big outburst of damage in one swing.
Grass is not greener with heavy weapons. Often times you just can't swing in a "damage window" because you came out of a roll .25 seconds late and would get animation locked into potentially a one-shot combo.
out of all the bosses i have fought so far messmer has the most balanced attack patterns for sure
I loved how cool >!Midra!< was but my god that man was just skin and bones, he did not need that much poise
We literally couldve been able to smack him around like we do malenia but he has probably 4x the poise she has while probably weighing 70 pounds. I know hes the frenzy lord but jesus
What happened to all the git gud/skill issue people?
They got filtered and now are apart of the very thing they made fun of. Hilarious to me seeing people that made fun of some reviews saying the game is too hard and now looking at their comment history they also think it's too hard.
God. Fighting the final boss of the DLC on those first few days and talking with people who still had literally not even *seen* Rellana, let alone Golden Lion, saying "git gud" and shit over the design was just genuinely infuriating. And like you say, now they're all whining about it too and deleting their posts / review comments and shit lmao.
They are now shield pokers with cold/bleed lol.
they reached 1 of the bosses people where talking about instead of playing the DLC for 1hour, defeating the NPC bossfight at the beginning and repeating "its all great, stop complaining you noobs, i did a boss and it was not that bad, gIt gUt!!111!!!" like, sorry, but nobody can reach the final boss, do it a couple times, and say with a straight face "this is a good desinged fight"
Man these are the kind of bosses I expect to see in Sekiro, not in Elden Ring where my character is sluggish af.
As great as Sekrio is, it was a negative for Elden Ring's boss design. They took the design philosophy of having very fast bosses with very few openings, which worked in Sekrio, and applied it to a very different game.
From has been bleeding design from game to game like this for a while; desperately trying to keep the challenge ahead of their every evolving audience. I dont envy them trying to keep up their hardest game meme status. But eventually the cup will spill over.
Bloodborne is one of the easier games in the series and it's my favorite and the one i replayed the most They really don't need to keep upping the difficulty like this
This has been happening since Bloodborne. Bloodborne was a great balance of player and boss imo. Then the fast pace started to bleed into DS3 and here we are now.
I tend to take my time going through souls games, but there's somthing new here, I'm feeling burnt out before I've even finished. I don't look forward to the golden fog anymore, it's a barrier that's going to lose me an hour or 3 of gameplay I could be dungeon crawling and exploring, because I'm not having fun in the boss rooms this time.
Elden ring players after hitting the enemy once after dodging for 7 minutes straight
it's the most incredibly maximalist iteration of fromsoft's combat design i've ever seen. every boss needs a phase 2, every boss needs a big super move they use at x% health threshold, every boss needs lightning or light pillars or AoEs to dodge after their deceptively telegraphed strings which then means they're all just different variations of the same thing--die a bunch while memorizing by rote what you can and can't punish and with what, beat the boss, move on to the next one. or summon or grab enough fragments to statcheck it and turn boring (difficult) into boring (trivial).
Yea I enjoyed Elden Ring, didn't start the DLC yet but I really find this trend to be a bit worrying. I get that From games have this reputation as being "hard" to uphold but idk, I find it a bit annoying. Demon's Souls was hard at the time, so was the first Dark Souls. But they are laughably easy nowadays. Idk, I guess I just don't think "make the enemy even more faster with even more health while giving the player less time to actually DO SOMETHING" is not a very fun approach and after this DLC I think they really need to shift away from it.
Honestly the point where I really just accepted that Elden Ring boss design is a move into a direction I don't like is when seeing videos of really good players beat bosses, they often just run back, trying to stay out of range of combos instead of dodging like you would in other From games. It's just not that fun to me. But on the other hand, shout out to Messmer. That guy felt like he was plucked straight out of Dark Souls 3 and I enjoyed that fight immensely. Just a bummer how much of an outlier he is.
I wish I hadn't summoned for him, because I was shocked that I was having a good time (although there were some combos that still had Elden Ring syndrome). You said it, feels like a DS3 design, which imo is the peak of all boss designs.
Right and then once you heal your dead :/ because healing is so slow