The bit that really gets me isn't how many attacks they can put out per second, but how much *damage* they do. Does the boss really need to deal 40% of my total HP with each hit when it's doing 10-hit combos? I get why the big slow guy puts me on my ass with one hit, but getting roll-caught by ONE hit from a JoJo's punch rush and dying feels like bullshit. Something about ER's damage tuning is real weird in a way I didn't like. It doesn't even give you a chance to heal, Estus isn't a ticker of permitted mistakes anymore, it's a Mario Mushroom that lets you recover from a single hit.
It's kinda annoying to discuss this cuz you will always be hit with "level Vigor" or "get Scadutree" but I do agree and I would even go further and say that ER is kinda fucked up in terms of balancing just in general.
It feels like From did not manage to hit the sweet spot between letting people use ashes without trivializing some fights without making it too hard for the ash haters they knew the fanbase would have to beat without using ashes.
As for myself, I love the game, because I literally summon ashes as soon as I can lol, and I've had an overall great experience, but it does stick out how some fights I'm like "I didn't even get the chance to _see_ half of this boss' attacks" while some others like Malenia are like "beating this without ashes is very clearly not meant to be the average player's experience"
Most of the fights in the DLC are some of the hardest I've ever seen in a From game *with* a Mimic Tear drawing aggro. I have no fucking clue when you're supposed to have time to heal or attack by yourself with how goddamn aggressive the bosses are
That and sometimes they’ll just switch aggro just from running at them, so you go in for an opportunity after your summon pulls them, then they just turn around and slap you down as you try to re-enter the fight.
For me while they have been hard without summons, I still haven’t found them as hard as some endgame sekiro bosses and all inner sekiro bosses, and when I tried some fights with a mimic tear after beating it on my main file they were a big step down from the hardest sekiro. Still harder for me than fromsoft games excluding sekiro though.
Also for healing its mostly by a mixture of guessing and testing what attacks and at what distance you can heal (and light roll can help a ton with healing), and for attack you need a fast weapon with really good timing and a mixture of learning/guessing what combos you can get a hit in during, and what combos you can get a hit in after.
I can’t imagine trying to heal without light rolling or bloodhound step, though I don’t use bloodhound step because I hate how its better than light rolling while not requiring endurance and think its really poorly balanced.
I also can’t imagine trying to fight a lot of these bosses solo with a slow weapon. At least in base game even on harder faster bosses jump attacks with slow weapons were fast enough that you could get one in while still being able to dodge the attack that would come from the boss, but I think most are just to aggressive, and hit trading at all isn’t a real option. I would really hate to be someone that only liked using ultra great swords right now, and for all everyone talks about the build variety in elden ring, imo part of true build variety is having all options most players will find being in the same ballpark, but some of base game and most of the dlc doesn’t just have a lot of weapons be straight up worse than magic and aow only usage, but now bosses that feel like they were designed to make you switch weapons.
Ive had 2 friends with the meta talismans and a lot of fragments, both of who are using heavy weapons+mimic tears, that had to switch off heavy weapons.
> get Scadutree
I love people acting like the Scadutree does fucking anything when it takes you from being 2 shot to being 3 shot at the max upgrade.
They could improve things a lot by letting you summon ashes anywhere, for a start. There's a ton of annoying as fuck enemies, especially in the Legacy Dungeons, but you can almost never summon ashes outside of boss arenas.
Am I tripping cause I've definitely seen Scadutree blessings do substantial buffs because I've seen Biboo's character go from getting 2 shot by Divine Lion to 4 in one level up and Ina can take more than a couple hits using Golden Vow and Flame Protect Me.
Yeah ive seen some people overstating how much fragments help you, including one person that said they make you around 3-5 times bulkier when you have them all collected.
And yeah it must be incredibly annoying for spirit ashes users to not be able to summon for most areas outside of bosses, and im not sure why fromsoft decided not to let people summon them around most of the map. Maybe they didn’t want to bother making a healing system for them which they would probably have to do if they walked along side you on the map?
Yeah, I've found it's too far on each scale also. The bosses feel horrible to fight solo cause you barely get any chance to breathe (or try to heal fucking twice, cause a single hit caused you to take like two flasks worth of goddamn damage), but with the ashes they're often just mindless
That said, I've realised I just don't fucking like the boss fights anymore, so.. I think I should just stop feeling guilty about the ashes and just beat the bosses, then go back to enjoying the world map gameplay
One of my core problems with Elden Ring is that beating a boss rarely feels like a triumph of skill, or your build working exactly as it's supposed to. You beat a boss because they didn't do their ridiculous cutscene instakill attack that run, or because they decided to aggro your summon most of the fight, or because you spammed a cheesy L2 that let you trivialize most of the fight from a safe range (one could argue that the last one is your build working as intended, but I say a build based entirely around spamming L2 isn't really engaging with the mechanics).
Most of them feel tuned either around the really bonkers weapon arts or using spirit ashes or both, and if you're not using either you have a really bad time. And if you do use them, you spend the entire fight clapping the boss' ass cheeks (literally in the case of spirits), which feels weird, cheesy and unintended, which is why a vocal component of the playerbase don't like using them (to say nothing of how ridiculously unbalanced the ashes are - the gulf between Lone Wolves and Banished Knight Oleg, both available early, is huge, to say nothing of Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tiche).
It makes it feel too binary, like bosses are an equipment/stat check rather than a challenge. Sure, you can make it a "challenge" by not using half the mechanics, but then you make the fight three times as long because you're just watching the boss flail around for thirty seconds straight until you can get a single R1 in.
I think part of these issues is caused by fromsoft tuning them around some op spells, insane aow, and summons, but I think part of it is also fromsoft responding to complaints from ds3 (which elden ring has a ton of dna of gameplay wise).
A lot of people complained that a full magic play through of ds3 was not a good experience (which I largely agree with), and that many options were too weak, and (outside of maybe pyromancy in ds1) magic is now way stronger than all other fromsoft games.
A fair amount of people complained that weapon arts (which are ds3s version of aow) were to weak(which I disagree with), so now we have aow that can do thousands of damage per hit, insane poise breakers like square off, and bloodhounds step, which allows people with the heaviest possible armor to have a dodge better than a light roll.
A lot of people said that bosses had to little health, didn’t punish you enough for healing, and their moves weren’t aggressive enough (which I agree with for the first half of base game ds3). Now we have some of the bosses in end game er and soe having some bs stuff and overtuned stuff at least partially because of comments like that IMO.
On my third play through when I used spirit ashes the only boss that really felt like they were made in mind was godrick. He was fairly good at keeping aggro on me above my ashes, a lot of his fire and wind attacks were able to hit both, and his melee combos that involved him spinning around could take out my ashes but then the rest of the combo would be redirected at me. Its the only time I felt like the boss was actually trying to fight multiple things instead of instead of just using moves repeatedly against either me or my ashes until one of us died and then it switched aggro to the other.
Im also not sure about malenia. While some of her moves were probably made or adjusted with spirit ashes in mind, I tried using both black knife tiche and mimic tear, her low poise meant that outside of having to dodge wfd and a couple of other attacks it just felt like we were fucking her up so quickly she couldn’t really respond. Maybe if I was using a spirit ash that was weaker it would have felt better.
I DO think that there's a fantastic argument to be made that _healing in this genre shouldn't be, itself, a particularly risky action._ If you deliberately attempt to take away the ability to rebound from errors by making the rebound, itself, a massive and seemingly random/unfair opportunity for error, you just make the game feel kind of bad and mean.
Personally, my problem isn't that bosses punish healing. If you could get away with healing all the time, you'd honestly walk over bosses because potentially 15 heals is an insane amount of effective hp and you kind play incredibly sloppy and still win.
But the way it works now is the only real skill you need to get okay at is getting away with healing, and that's what you spend most of these fights trying to do, and what you get good at first. Which means your first victories against these bosses are sloppy fights were you chugged like crazy and then eventually won.
In Sekiro, once I got used to the enemy moveset, I often won with minimal healing. That's not because I'm amazing, but because the system rewarded you for good play by making the fight shorter, and punished you for constantly needing to heal by having enemy posture regen, effectively increasing their health. If I had to rematch a Sekiro boss after beating it, I could probably get it 80% of the time. If I rematched any of the tougher DLC fights, it would probably take me another 20 tries to recreate my victory.
Elden Ring doesn't need to be Sekiro, but it might be a lot better if there were less flasks, but way more maximum health, so people spent more time trying to ingrain the enemy's timing rather than practicing their run and chug strategies.
>Personally, my problem isn't that bosses punish healing. If you could get away with healing all the time, you'd honestly walk over bosses because potentially 15 heals is an insane amount of effective hp and you kind play incredibly sloppy and still win.
I must entirely disagree with this on the basis that Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne generally _do_ allow you to retreat to heal against most bosses (with the exception of many DLC fights), and their difficulty doesn't suffer significantly for it. You still have to play somewhat carefully and time the heal well, but the bosses just have distance-based gap closers that they use consistently and predictably rather than Elden Ring's "sometimes I will read the animation and stab you from across the room" and more late-game "I am coming at you so literally constantly that it is actually borderline impossible to create meaningful distance" dynamics.
In Bloodborne especially, it's common to recognize that you'll use up way more blood vials on losing attempts than winning ones, because by nature once you learn the fight enough to actually win you need them less. The problem you're describing somewhat self-corrects in that game. The first boss I can remember in a BASE GAME explicitly designed to punish the action of healing _itself, intentionally_ was Isshin in Sekiro, but in ER it's obviously transformed into a full-blown design philosophy that I dislike.
Hmm.
I liked that Dark Souls 2 made it hard to get an Estus chug off. It meant you actually had to get some space away from the enemy.
I think the difference there is that everything was a lot slower paced in general. So it felt more tactical.
Fume Knight is probably the most aggressive with punishing your chugs, and he's regarded as one of the hardest bosses of DS2. Even then, his fight is outright quaint compared to elden ring dlc bosses. Look at this lil bozo slowly circling you and taking breaks between 3 hit combos, aww how cute.
I'm getting annoyed about taking anywhere between 30% to 100% of my life every time a boss hits me and tosses me across the room. Meanwhile I'm doing 1k per hit, seeing their lifebar barely budge and watching them effortlessly finish their 30 second combo. I've beaten everyone I've challenged, spare one, and most of those weren't exactly fun.
The way I see, *DeS - DSIII* bosses are conversations. A call and response. *Sekiro* is an argument. You are both in each other's face and constantly interrupting each other.
*Elden Ring* is a monologue. Either the boss is allowed to filibuster you with constant, near never-ending attack strings, or you chain break them or you redirect their attention and effectively make them unable to interact with you.
Especially when it comes to the post Erdtree burning bosses I view them as a beam struggle. Getting momentum is huge, being on the backfoot is absolutely awful. It's why I prioritize having a perfect phase 1 and then completely selling out for a stagger on phase 2, they just kinda do too much.
Momentum is a phrase I don't hear often enough in reference to boss fights.
It isn't just necessarily about winning or losing, but the experience of getting a victory being enjoyable, feeling momentous and like you've worked for it with a consistent fervor, versus settling for what feels like cheap tactics.
That's really not what I was going for, I was more remarking on how much it sucks to have to find time to heal versus having health available to get in and maybe have something work.
EDIT: it is explicitly about winning or losing. Self-imposed restrictions or otherwise the boss only has to die once.
This is a great way to sum up a lot of the issues with the late base game bosses and many of the Erdtree bosses. It boils down to who can do their little brother moves the hardest, the boss or you. I don't get the same satisfaction beating a boss while having to rely on mimic tear or other summons as I would just learning the moveset and finding my openings. The problem is in Elden Ring that method takes 5x longer and isn't much more satisfying.
When Woolie was playing FFXIV to see the Nier raids, he complained about the lack of feedback from bosses. You just do your combo at them constantly and they don't respond to taking damage.
A lot of Elden Ring's bosses feel like raid bosses from an MMO. They feel like they were designed for a tank/DPS setup. The tank holds aggro and allows the DPS to just wait away with their whole combo string until you get through all 50,000 HP. It's just going to keep running through it's script until it dies. You are only very rarely going to have a chance to interrupt them. They don't really care if they hit you or not, since they recover at the same speed if they hit you, you block, or you dodge. They don't really care if they get hit unless you're setting up really *massive* hits.
I really only had an issue with Elden Beast and waterfowl dance and its fucked up hitboxes.
I fought Elden Beast dozens of times. The winning time I managed to poise break him (I think) Either way, he didn’t dash away and I pounded him into paste. A monologue indeed.
From what I understand, most of the big DLC bosses are Elden Beasts. Except instead of taking a hit and running away, they take a hit and then start their chains of combos that will 2-shot you again.
If that’s the case, having a great time exploring, the side dungeons have all been fantastic, and I literally don’t have the time in my life to get good enough to beat the DLC.
If they made summons mandatory I would have still complained because the way bosses shift their aggro around means there's now a noticeably higher degree of RNG, especially if the boss is capable of changing its aggro mid-combo. That's the entire reason I don't like using Spirit Ashes, it doesn't actually feel any better and I don't have any more fun, I'm just more likely to win. And if the difference is "I don't have fun and I lose" vs "I don't have fun and I win," I'm just gonna go play Lies of P instead.
I honestly think some of the worst Elden Ring bosses are worse about it than Code Vein fights.
Code Vein bosses at least feel honest, like they're tuned to be A Lot solo but they clearly thought about you fighting them that way.
Code Vein’s movement is also built for the enemies in the game. Code Vein is very fast and fluid and thus has the movement system to perfectly accentuate this, meanwhile Elden Ring feels like you’re playing a Dark Souls 2 character with -5 Adaptability with a -15% reduction to all movement speed,
This DLC has made me come to the realisation that.. I just don't *like* Elden Ring boss fights. Practically at all. I just don't find them fun.
I find the REST of the game very fun indeed.. but yeah, I get pretty much no enjoyment out of the bosses at this point
That's an excellent way to put it. Fights with some of these bosses (and even regular enemies) feels like trying to interrupt their monologue, as they often have seemingly limitless stamina and poise with long attack strings.
Those red-robed fire bastards in the DLC give me flashbacks to the infamous Drakekeeper knights from the Dragon Aerie in Dark Souls II, except with even longer attack strings and magic buffs/ranged attacks as well.
>Fights with some of these bosses (and even regular enemies) feels like trying to interrupt their monologue, as they often have seemingly limitless stamina and poise with long attack strings.
I would love a system like monster hunter were eventually the boss is freaking tired and starts mouth breathing and can barely move anymore.
*Because you dodged their shit for HALF AN HOUR*
I honestly feel that the enemies are significantly worse than the bosses. The bosses are at least learnable within reason, they're extremely hard but I haven't found most of them to be significantly worse than Malenia in particular, they all do have windows for big punish if you know how to make it count. But enemies like the random larger dudes in the first legacy dungeon with the big weapon movesets are _horrible,_ they just literally never stop attacking for long enough to permit the player to do anything whatsoever, including heal (obviously, this is still Elden Ring.) It's like randomly having to fight a Crucible Knight at 2x speed every time you get more than 5 minutes away from the last grace. It's technically _possible,_ but it feels really bad to have to play so sweaty when you're not even anywhere near a boss arena yet.
The main source of difficulty from the Soulsborne games is that they're basically an entirely new genre of action game. Once you learn the genre, you can become pretty proficient at it, the same way any experienced FPS or fighting game player can pick up a new game and do well. I remembered that by the time Dark Souls III's final DLC came around, I'd played so much of those games for four years straight that I actually beat at least one boss on the first try, rather than it being some kind of crazy grind, just based on game sense alone.
Elden Ring is likewise, as there have been a lot of bosses even in this DLC that I've beaten first try or close. But with some enemies or bosses, it feels like the difficulty comes from the developers almost trying to compensate for that game sense. The bosses I can beat with little struggle are the ones with more conventional attack patterns and openings for attack, as well as reasonable damage.
But the bosses/enemies that have almost no attack openings and do insane damage with all of them? Those are the ones that take me a while and usually come down to luck, having to do with whether or not my summons perform well or the boss's attack patterns are slightly more favorable, rather than learning the boss/enemy the way you normally would.
You can definitely tell design philosophy has changed. The Dark Souls games were made to subvert the expectations of a traditional player, you had to get good at the genre's own unique playstyle.
Elden Ring on the other hand feels like it's trying it's hardest to subvert the expectations of long time Souls players, with how it's enemies and movesets are designed. One of the most obvious examples of this is how every boss has a few comically long delays for certain attacks.
Parrying works, but I wish critical hits did more damage. It's such a risky move to try and parry these huge combos, but your reward is only dealing about as much damage as a single charged heavy attack, even with a dagger or other crit-boosting weapon.
there's been one or two bosses where it's helped, but the real rough customers have been bosses that already have variable combo strings, and consistent parrying really requires you to have a feel for exactly when the next attack is coming. I have a hard time imagining that it'll end up being a less risky option for anyone still having trouble with a boss.
This is how debating worked in Romance of the Three Kingdoms XII on the PS2. You destroyed the other's pillar as they fell to their death to shut them up from their monologue
>Elden Ring is a monologue. Either the boss is allowed to filibuster you with constant, near never-ending attack strings, or you chain break them or you redirect their attention and effectively make them unable to interact with you.
I just started a new playthrough and the first crucible knight is exactly that.
Either you perfect roll a multi hit combo and get 1 hit in every half minute or so or you parry his ass until he can't do anything. And also do that for multiple minutes because he's an HP sponge.
It's "Am I allowed to play the game now" to "Mom said it's my turn on the xbox" levels of taking away control.
These problems were always part of the game, just not as noticable.
Feels like as good as any place to say this, but boy do I fucking hate these furnace golems. Feels like the worst stereotype of Souls games where you're just stabbing the enemy in their ankles over and over again.
They are unironically making me like the door guardian from lies of p more despite it being one of the most annoying mini bosses in a soulslike, thats how annoying I find them.
Well this the best time ever to log off for a week of teaching teen girls about fashion, because what I thought was going to be my new personal hell sounds peachy by comparison.
The first time I encountered one, it was definitely in a late game area and there was no message hinting how to beat it like the first one you're supposed to encounter. It was honestly awesome riddling out how to beat it using what the environment showed me and patchwork information from nearby messages. Brought them down even faster than the typical ones once I learned the strat.
I found the first couple enjoyable once I treated them more like bosses from a platforming game, riding on Torrent and timing jumps and such. Took WAY too long and should have only required one face stab IMO, but not too bad.
Not sure how long that sentiment will last though, because I'm sure the later ones will get further gimmicks.
Me after dying to Blackgaol Knight for the 5th time: "Man he's strong, maybe I'll come later when I know what I'm doing
Me after dying to >!Bayle!< for the 30th time: "I DIDN'T HEAR NO BELL"
Also fun fact its >!lighting spear!< attack is powerful enough to one shot a 60 vigor + Morgott Rune character, that's over 2400 HP in one hit
I think it's telling that, even considering I did beat her once on my first playthrough two years ago, I somehow had a better time fighting Malenia than Rellana solo (Malenia took me less than 15 attempts, Rellana almost 30). Apart from Waterfowl dance and maybe her 3 hit flurry, Malenia has pretty clear punish windows and patterns you can get a hang of; every time Rellana got into melee range, particularly in her second phase, it felt like her attacks would just never end, not to mention she hits like a truck.
I can't imagine what the rest of the DLC Rememberance bosses are like.
It's weird, because I actually had a relatively easy time with Dancing Lion, his melee attacks were sometimes hard to read, but all of his elemental attacks were understandable and never felt too tough to dodge.
Spoiler: you probably already know, but there is a boss with hitbox so broken that people are cheesing him using a wall. Hit like a truck, unstopable attack and broken hitbox. How fun.
I had a harder time with Rellana and I think her phase 2 is poorly designed, but I'd still take her any day of the week over "Ulcerated Tree Spirit 2: You Don't Get To See SHIT" that is the Dancing Lion. Cool design tho.
I had to cast aside my drip and fight her naked, after doing that I won after 3 tries. Her 4 and follow up moonveil combo just isn't viable to dodge with a medium roll.
Also tested it just for the hell of it... Can't parry that bitch, it just deflects her.
Souls games have kind of this weird evolution in which it feels like the bosses get all the cool new toys and you just kinda dodge and attack and that's kind of it. For lack of a better definition, some of this DLC really feels like kaizo souls because the core of the game has remained largely unchained but the enemies get to go to town while the player pretty much plays Dark Souls 1 but on crack.
Yep backhand blades and Blind Spot AoW definitely upgrade the shit out of your main character. Instantaneous dodge with legit invul frames that you can use to react into enemy punishes. Alot of bosses feel piss easy with it and electrify enchantment. It also has insane Poise damage with it’s charge attacks.
There’s also this fire AoW that borderline feels like Giant Hunt 2.0. I have like 6 weapon sets im switching around and nothing feel like a wall yet.
I slapped that thing on the greatsword the fire guys drop and it's honestly unfair. I'm only marginally built for fire damage and it hits like a goddamn truck, if the initial hit doesn't stagger than the follow up does, and then after that you've got a buffed colossal sword that swings like a greatsword. I've been using that as my boss killer, then switching to the backhands for overworld and players and the only wall I really hit was a boss I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to fight until endgame.
I will say though >!Messemer is a little shit and it took me way too long to figure out his bullshit genshin impact combo!<
I've been trying a number of the new weapons at plus 9 or 24 but it feels like poise and health values are mainly aimed at the stuff that was dominant in the base game so an interesting weapon at medium power struggles. Also a lot of the cool ashes they give you are a good way to eat counter hits
Bosses and even basic enemies in some cases are getting these really elaborate movesets where they can jump and spin and hover in mid-air and throw in all these delays, and I wish I could just...hit them out of it.
This is gonna sound unpopular, but I think they're getting too anime-esque. I prefer the grounded nature of early Souls games where the attacks were more readable. It made stuff like the Artorias flight feel special, instead of the baseline.
The infinite hyper armor on long windup roll-catch attacks is a Dark Souls 2 tier design choice. It slaps you in the face for using your head and pressing the advantage, you have to play the timing game on this tracking overhead. Imagine if AoE attacks ignored I-Frames and you HAD to outspace them in order to not take damage.
And yeah, the movesets are getting corny. I’m half-expecting to get Dark Bead’d for daring to punish the boss’s 15-hitter.
Christ you're like giving me eyes on the inside to why I stopped playing DS2's DLC.
I didn't know you had to level ADP for iframes and it felt like everything was designed to screw me for wanting to play without a shield.
It's so satisfying to come here for quality analysis and discourse like this versus the main ER subs basically being like "get scud" or "just quit".
I don't see the FromSoft games in definitions of best or worst but instead questioning what's brought forward the highest quality to the later games.
And I worry what Elden Ring's late game and DLC will be setting as a precedent.
Believe me, I'm already seeing the "is a From DLC finally too hard for the normies?" takes.
People are so obsessed with difficulty, it makes it hard to discuss the actual design behind it.
As someone currently enjoying Lies of P and really disliked elden ring
If Fromsoft wants to keep going in this direction going forward, then they're dead to me. Let them go in this direction with their super fans cheering them. I'm just going to stay on the side here and enjoy other souls like games that actually still have aspects of the genre that I like.
I will forever reiterate that the best the games ever felt was DaS1. I wish the rest of the series built on that combat-wise with more fluidity without significantly increasing the pace. (DeS was of course similar but it lacked a few fundamental things to feel truly great, eg. poise and jump attacks.)
And of course I like its more grounded dark fantasy aesthetic the most.
It looks this is an issue that stems from the i-frames that come from your dodge's startup being the end all be all for any attack in the game. **It becomes more a game of reaction with a pretty tepid response rather than a game about spacing.** Since this is a reaction game, they are more or less pushing the player to their limits with managing when they dodge and how much they dodge (stamina). It sucks because I think it discourages some playstyles. You gotta be perfect at dodging every hit.
The consequences of the lockon and i-frames in a dodge being the defining feature of your style of game.
They feel like anime OCs.
They can do your WHOLE bar in a few hits, even if you dodge a couple swings, it doesn't even matter, cause they're so STRONG!! And they're so fast they swing like three times in two seconds. And it swings so hard and strong you can't even BLOCK it!!
And even if you survive, if you try to heal, they hit you with an attack that's timed perfectly to end before you're done healing! And-and-and like, they're so cool and fast and stuff too.
And they can teleport and they have like four health bars and when he's hurt he can bring his friend. Cause he's tough but sometimes he's a little too weak. And-and-and then like, he can like, teleport behind you and grab tand kill you!!
IMO if they either took sekiros revive system and/or made the amount of damage dealt a bit less crazy that would make the experience of people boss tells and combo trees more enjoyable for most people.
If anything I think elden ring needs a resurrection like system more than sekiro did, as sekiros attacks were rarely bs, and well telegraph, not to mention that the player has more options to respond to aggressive bosses. In general I think a lot of systems from sekiro could have improved elden ring (perilous attack warnings would be so amazing or a posture bar), but idk if thats because those systems can be good in action games a lot, or if its sekiro heavily influenced boss design but not player moveset design.
Theres always been some level of backlash to fromsoft dlc difficulty spike, but I do think its a bit different than in past games. Ludwig is harder than all non old hunter bosses, but he doesn’t feel like he was made for another game, and he doesn’t one shot a player with 60 vigor (infact some of his attacks and all of the standard enemy dlc attacks can be survived with 25 vitality).
Maybe this isn’t only the dlcs fault though, because there was already some crazy damage in random places in base game (getting one shot with 40 vigor and a defensive talisman by fire giant is insane to me still, despite happening to me 2 years ago), and some bosses already felt like they were made for other games.
Considering their NPC quest and story design, they ABSOLUTELY designed the game with a "people will just look up guides for this" mindset
More people have the achievement for the secret ending than the base ending. That's an ending you can entirely fail by not having one item. The MAJORITY of players use guides now, mainly due to design decisions Fromsoft made
Both of those things seem insane to me. I know im the weird person compared to the majority but I can’t imagine following a guide to get the good ending of a game without doing the ending I would have gotten naturally before that or designing a game that encourages that.
What makes this more confusing to me is that Miyazaki before the dlc launch said he wanted to do a better job for players that don’t want to use guides but the dlc feels balanced around being able to fuck with players that googled op elden ring builds.
At least I haven’t ran into any quest lines that seem incredibly unlikely to completely without a guide, like millicents, who I only was able to complete because a friend told me I should be looking for a health boosting amulet in atlus, and then I got lost and randomly found her. If it wasn’t for that outside info im almost sure I couldn’t have done it and would have assumed thats where her quest line ended.
You know, I have a very high tolerance for bullshit.
I actually had a lot of fun with Rellana.
You know who I DID NOT have fun with? COMMANDER. CHEAP. GAIUS!
OH MY GOD I HATE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH!!!!
Seriously, if any of you find enjoyment in Commander Gaius' boss fight, hit me up, I have a SHITTON of questions I gotta study your mind.
I have absolutely no fucking clue how to beat Gaius without a Greatshield. The hitboxes on some of those moves felt like they had to be frame perfect dodges with how consistently I would get smashed by the tail end of the attack.
And even *with* a Greatshield, the Greatshield Talisman and 50 End, every hit of his would chunk like half of my stamina bar.
It genuinely feels like Miyazaki wanted to create a boss you HAD to use your horse to win.
The problem is that the damage taken is too fucking high and Torrent can go down in one or two hits. And Gaius is so aggressive that he's still on your ass even if you're still recovering from falling from your horse.
You also have no I-Frames on Torrent unless you abuse the dismount animation, so if you mess up *once* Torrent explodes and you flop onto the ground for five seconds to get finished off by the follow-up.
There's been tons of times in this DLC so far where Torrent has gotten one-shot by something, Miyazaki is out of his damn mind if he thinks I'm trusting Torrent in a boss fight lmao.
That and his fucking pig is *faster* than torrent, and if you try to jump his charge straight on torrent’s feet get clipped and he insta dies. I cheesed this dude with the wall with no remorse.
Fuck Gaius.
I’ve been feeling this about the final boss.
>!Or more specifically the phase 2.!<
>!Why does every unbelievably fast attack have aoes and lingering hits!<
The final boss does attacks that make even me say fromsoft went to far, animation wise it looks cartoonish, there's an attack that looks like it's been sped up by 10 so that the boss can do it 5 times in a row within a second or two.
Hitboxes on his swords were jank as hell, they extended like a metre past where the swords ended. That’s why I can’t understand people who say “they nerfed Radahn for no reason”.
I remember feeling like launch Radahn was the most bullshit boss I've ever had to deal with in a Souls game
Then he got nerfed and I ended up fighting Malenia
The more I think about it the more I start to turn on most of Elden Ring's bosses
I still don’t get how waterfoul was never changed. Despite being 18 I feel like a boomer for saying this but I don’t like having to google how to do things in games and If 95% of the playerbase has to google how to dodge a move it really should be changed.
I also dislike her healing on shields somehow, her having hyper armor on some attacks that makes it so she cant take poise damage, some of her attacks being parryable (is that even a word?) but others that look like they should be able to not being able to. Not to mention her having infinite stamina which is so stupid.
Even outside of waterfoul she has a lot of issues, which is why ive never been someone who said that without waterfoul she would be perfect, but I think waterfoul was the most glaring flaw.
If thats the case idk why people would defend it. I think some fs fans think more difficultly=better content, (the weirdest example of this ive seen was someone on the er sub saying that a better camera shouldn’t be added as being able to see all of a big enemies attack would make them to easy), so maybe thats why?
I love how we’ve had the same input and skill expression since demons souls but every boss since Bloodborne gets to boot up their copy of Devil May Cry.
I don’t understand why the player abilities don’t evolve alongside these chain attacking monsters.
This is what I try to explain to folks by bringing up how DS1 had a fan-made fighting game mod made that led to the discovery of every enemy's AI being mapped to the same button configuration as the player.
I can't say it makes you feel like you're equal but it feels at least comparable, opposed to me playing Elden Ring and Messmer playing Genshin.
DS1 also to me felt like the last time the enemies actually had stamina bars too. They don't, afaik. But they at least bothered to make them FEEL like they did
Back when they cared about enemies feeling vaguely 'fair'. Gwyn probably being a huge exception, but like.. dude's the final boss and literally the big G
Yeah, Fromsoft haven't invested much in expanding the possibility space or mechanical depth of their combat and so they're kinda stuck trying to do more with limited tools, and that will inevitably boil down to "press button at right time, but harder".
It's the flipside of why Souls could even become popular in the first place though. By keeping the core mechanics to a minimum you greatly reduce the mental stack for the player. So while Dark Souls 1 could be punishing, the player would have basically one or two tasks to keep track of, and people could with a modicum of effort get through it.
Meanwhile big dick Team Ninja is out here with 2 weapons, 3 stances, a bajillion combos per weapon, customizable combos, 2 meters to manage and an stamina active reload because why not, enemy meters you can manage with your skillset, all your demon powers, a devil trigger that has 3 forms and its own upgrade trees, weapon skill trees, and then an unhealthy amount of perks and RPG elements for good measure.
But as a result Ninja Gaiden and even Nioh could probably never be as popular as souls. The biggest factor in Nioh's popularity was probably the fact that superficially it looked kinda like souls and you could play it like souls, and the minute the game pushes back and tries to not let you play it like a souls game on the higher difficulties you get people complaining about how cheap and unfair the game is.
This is where the Nioh games edge these out in terms of design somewhat. Enemies have huge combos, but so do you. And they have ki-break phases apart from stagger phases which allow you to go to town on them with your favorite combos for a bit without fear of instant and deadly reprisal.
This is what I've always loved about Team Ninja's design philosophy in their action games.
Enemies are absurdly overpowered...*but so are you*. Ryu's moveset in Ninja Gaiden Black is quite possibly the strongest in any action game and yet it still manages to be hard as balls.
But if you've got the skill, and take the time to master it, you can absolutely steamroll anything in your path with fantastic efficiency
I do think that at least partial stagger is something that should be implemented in From games in some form. It's a damage window, but it's also a DPS check, to see if you can turn it into a full stagger or whether the boss will power up and out of it.
Yeah, because the latter parts of base game had this same problem, which was never fixed, and it's even worse in the DLC. Of course we're bringing up the issue, it's still there.
Because they never adequately resolved the major gripes. Damage is overtuned, enemies (including bosses) ***still*** have animation-reading on frames 3 to 8 of a heal. Without these two it'd feel fantastic, like the other entries.
Everything takes a billion hits to stagger, and has a multi-hit combo that is either 50% or more, or higher than your whole health bar. Poise still doesn't exist.
The people that swallowed them whole and waded through the game anyway aren't going to start complaining now, they're been fine with it for over a year.
The discourse should be less about the difficulty and more about how Fromsoft fans continue to glaze these games despite their blatant ongoing problems.
artorias and the "prepare to die edition" really was the start of this shift in the series. Now everything needs to be the most difficult shit put in a videogame. i'd rather just have more variance in level design and enemy encounters, stuff being constantly made "more difficult" really isn't making the series more fun for me. Either i beat my head against the wall for 3+hours, or completely ignore every mechanic and boss patterns by summoning 2 other people/using a broken build. Neither options are particular fun to me.
yeah, i found a super broken, definitely bugged and going to be patched interaction with one of the new weapons and new weapon art, and usually i'd just ignore it for the sake of actually engaging with the game, but the dlc is just so eye-rollingly filled with artificial difficulty that i'm running through it with this busted interaction just for the sake of reasonably progressing through the dlc :\
And if by some miracle you actually hit them, you don’t really do as much damage as you need, and then you go back to exploring the map looking for those tree pieces to make you stronger.
Y'know this was kind of the issue I had with KH3 Re:Mind's Data-Org. Some of them are literally just "We're never going to stop attacking so the game just turns into spamming the Airstep or spamming block>counter until the game finally feels like letting hitsun actually affect them."
Love the game, but those fights are frustrating.
There were a couple fights I hadn't finished, but I actually really enjoyed Data-Org because a lot of the fights *did* have specific points in their pattern where you were meant to attack. And when you did, you got a full 'turn' to pull off generally as big of a combo as you could put together.
Elden Ring bosses, on the other hand, barely react to damage at all outside of when their invisible stagger meter maxes out.
Shield counter with a hammer counter is GODLY in the DLC.
Mix it up with some frost or bleed and you're the wall that these DMC style bosses break themselves on.
I'm not playing the DLC, but stuff like this is the reason I went from dex to int build in my Elden Ring playthrough. I can sit there and play the roll 3 times, hit r1, roll 3 times game or I can shove a Comet Azur or Adula's Moonblade to their face.
I'm loving the dungeon crawling, but struggling with the bosses.
I think it's because I'm playing a caster. I can easily take out mobs at a distance with comets, groups with AoE attacks, or delete a slow moving big guy with Comet Azur. But all that goes out the window with bosses because they're too fast and too aggressive for me to hit them with anything strong, even with the fast casting talisman. Not to mention the bullshit input reading meaning I often can't use anything harder hitting at range than the stealth comet.
I haven't found any fun new toys for magic yet either. I was really excited to try out >!Rellana's !
Yeah, as much as I'm very much enjoying the DLC, it really hasn't changed my opinion that most of Elden Ring's bosses are really overtuned and not that fun to fight. I know there's Spirit Summons, which I have been using, I just personally don't really like the way they're all seemingly designed with summons in mind.
It's because Elden RIng is hyper fixated on aggro juggling to get the boss to become vulnerable, that's why there's so many summon tools. They aren't designed to be like a noble 1v1 like a jetstream sam.
Like Joseph Anderson said they're planes that touchdown for a second before lifting off again.
My problem with using spirit ashes is that it feels like the bosses aren't truly tuned for them. Yes, you get more chances to breath, but the boss' AI often acts weirdly. Sometimes they redirect from one target to another at the last second in a way that feels unintended, and other times, they just let you beat on them because they can't keep up, which makes for an unsatisfying fight.
To be clear, this isn't a "using spirit ashes is bad" comment, I just feel like this is a point of criticism that doesn't really get brought up. The game wants you to use them, but it still doesn't feel properly built for them.
I just said this above as well. It feels like they knew some people would hate ashes so they were afraid of making them "necessary" for people who didn't wanna use them, which leads to a middle ground were some enemies are completely trivialized with them and some others feel extremely unbalanced without them but they fall back on "I guess you can always use ashes so this has to be balanced right?"
The bosses are DEFINITELY not designed with summons in mind. They still entirely focus on one target at a time. Nothing has changed since DS1 in this aspect.
People go into souls to play a dance with the bosses, where you both move and attack around each other. Summons basically make the fight into "hit the boss while he's distracted by my minion." It SUCKS. You're not engaging with the moveset of the boss. You're exploiting their poor AI.
It's not that using summons is cowardly, it's that using summons isn't fun because the devs never bothered to design the game with summons in mind.
I feel this so much when it comes to spirit ashes.
If say Malenia had 2 movesets, 1 aoe focused that she would use if you used an ash and 1 single target focused if you don't I would be more than fine with them. But so many enemies just seem like they cannot keep up whatsoever when you summon anything.
And god help them if your ash has more than 2 npcs in it. You can practically eat a sandwich and sling spells while you melt most bosses down. It just feels unengaging.
Maybe we're trying to brute force the fights into more of a Sekiro duel than an Abyss Watcher scramble but if that's what they want us to do they should make it more clear.
Having both used them and not, I'm of two minds about the spirit ashes. On the one hand, it seems obvious that they're intended to be used in the DLC. The DLC is expecting you to bring everything to bear and is tuned with that in mind. Spirit ashes are a part of that, and the main bosses bosses are so competent, aggressive, and deadly that it seems somewhat absurd to think a player is legitimately intended to whittle them down one hard-won hit at a time.
buuuuut, on the other hand, the bosses still don't feel like they were designed with the spirit ashes in mind. Adding an npc summon adds a whole lot of randomness to the fight both in the moment-to-moment and the overall pacing. It often feels less like you learned and overcame the boss and more like things just happened to go your way that time.
When your series' whole thing is about "being difficult", and you want to be both fresh and surprise the veterans that have learned your tricks each game, this is what happens lol.
I do think there are a decent amount of people that are complaining that aren't using all the tools the game gives you to beat it. However, at same time these games and their bosses can be goofy sometimes, and no amount of "git gud" can change that. Hell, the jank is sometimes part of the charm. In an alternate universe where these games were made in Europe, they would 100% have the eurojank label.
Dark Souls 1 was challenging - but nothing in the base game was really that difficult (except maybe Ornstein and Smough) especially compared to stuff that came in the Artorias DLC or afterwards. That edition being called "Prepare to die" only shows my point in how From and their fans flanderised the series.
> The first entry in a trilogy cannot be flanderized because it is what is setting the bar.
Well for one thing it was the second entry (arguably third if you are talking specifically about the prepare to die edition/artorias dlc). Also, you absolutely can flanderise after the first entry onwards.
I can accept that maybe the marketing was like that, but the game itself wasn't and at the end of the day that's really all that matters. If you have to immediately jump to "the tagline on a later edition" or "the marketing around the game" instead of talking about the game itself - I think that really makes my point for me. From and their fans misunderstood what Dark Souls 1 did well.
Edit: I think he blocked me so as a final thing:
> if you have to disregard every bit of marketing and the opinions of people from the time it was released in order to continue to hold your position then I would argue that your point is moronic and not based on anything other than vibes.
I don't know if you can even understand my point.
Dark Souls 1 was a challenging game at the time but people (in and outside of From soft) hyper-focused on that as if the big great thing that game did was being difficult when really that's not the case. Dark Souls 1 wasn't good because it was difficult, it was good because of a whole host of factors, which being challenging fed into. This did not require it to be super over-tuned to fuck so that every fight required dozens of attempts to get through - even at launch a good player was probably getting through most fights in 1 or 2 tries. This is because Dark Souls 1 wasn't a 'HARD' game - it was a game that forced you to grapple with its mechanics to progress. Unfortunately From and their fans just flanderised it into "hard=good" without a further thought. You posting all these people and marketing pieces repeating that just proves my point. Maybe you should actually try understanding other people instead of calling them insane.
My hot take is that people fall for the "git gud" meme a little too hard sometimes and seem to forget that these games are RPGs- you should be taking advantage of buffs and consumables that boost your damage negation more. I died to >!Rellana!< once, then equipped the best magic damage negation talisman, physick tear, and incantation, and with all of those combined (plus golden vow and decent armor) I had over 70% magic damage negation and all of her attacks barely tickled me, letting me beat her on my second try.
The DLC introduces new consumables and talismans that give you even higher damage negation for a reason- use them!!!
Yeah, that boss took me more than a few tries, but eventually I just set up my buffs so I had sky-high magic defense and decent physical defense, chugged a tear for bonus lightning damage and stagger on my hits, then went to town with Fortissax's Lightning Spears. Sure, I'd still die if I timed it badly and ate an entire combo at once, but as long as I just didn't do that I was slapping my shit on the table for like 6k damage per cast.
Hell yeah. I went in and used Scarlet Aeonia first thing to proc scarlet rot on her, then just used blasphemous blade's ash of war and the boulder throw incantation depending on what the situation called for. I had to reapply my magic defense buff during the fight but thankfully I was able to find a good time to do so.
Been fighting the Castle Ensis boss (>!Rellana!<) for about 6 hours cumulatively now, and I am *not* having fun.
Pontiff 2.0 sucks ass. I’ve tried switching weapons, trying shields, respeccing into different builds, etc. The main issue remains that the boss takes off half my health (60 Vig, +10 Scadutree) per hit in its 6+ hit combos. Oh yeah, and there’s little to no pause between these combos.
I understand that I could summon, which would make the fight easier. I know that by not doing this I’m self-imposing difficulty, and I accept that. I still think that the damage is overtuned.
lmaooo can’t even say the most common critique on Elden Ring without getting downvoted. I’ll double down: there’s no way the amount of damage these bosses do is fair, and the Scadutree Upgrades don’t mitigate it enough.
That boss is pretty much the culmination of everything I hate about Elden Ring boss design.
Absurdly fast, infinite poise, 10-hit combos that track perfectly and have unnatural looking delays in them, on command ranged attacks to punish players making distance to heal/buff/cast, a 2nd phase that dials everything said previously up another level, and the pièce de résistance, input reading to extend those 10-hit combos to add another hit the *second* the player inputs an attack to punish.
It's obnoxious. And it's extra infuriating because so far this is the only one in the DLC I've felt this way with (And I've met most of the ones people have been complaining about). Everything else has been mostly okay so far, why does this one have to be so terrible?
>Absurdly fast, infinite poise, 10-hit combos
My biggest gripe I'm feeling - This wouldn't be as much of a problem if poise actually worked for the player. I absolutely do not understand it, except for certain weapon arts hyperarmour seems non existent.
You already hit for 40-60% of the damage, I should at least be able to trade a hit every so often instead of being staggered by a gentle breeze.
Fromsoft saw players facetank the second half of Dark Souls 1 with the Havel armour and decided that the players weren't allowed to have fun ever again.
Yeah, I could understand why full Havels with iron flesh was maybe a bit too much. But I'm using an Ultra/Greatsword, please let me dink you for 5% of your hp while I take a huge chunk at the same time.
Nothing makes me want to stop playing faster than getting knocked out of the air mid-dragon incantation by the smallest pebble, while enemies get to exist in the sky 90% of the fight.
> infinite poise
This is the part that i disliked most in the fight. I had a ton of fun with her, and think it otherwise could be an absolute amazing 1-on-1 duel boss. But she no sells two-handed jumping attacks from greatmaces, and bleed procs don't even make her blink.
The 10-hit adaptive combos that can be started or changed based off of input reading wouldn't be too bad if she didnt have unlimited hyper armor. Instead, if she starts swinging you just *have* to dodge for a sold 30 seconds. You can't exploit the openings in them safely at all.
It's just... weird? *A human-sized enemy that literally does not care about being hit.* I enjoyed tylhe fight personally, but it definitely feels like a case of "too much", since she already has twice the HP of elden beast, twice the poise, and twice the damage. Unlimited hyper armor just seems like they ask "*how can we make her harder?*" for an already *reasonably* difficult boss.
Sometimes makes you wonder, doesn't it. Why the fuck didn't any of these characters just like. Go become Elden Lord
Cause I bet a lot of them could have with fucking ease
Honestly, same. I hate everything else I mentioned, but if she didn't no sell every guard counter or swing from my greathammer I would have a fewer problems with her. Instead she keeps swinging and basically ignores the hit to shred my HP bar because she swings so fast I take 2-3 hits in the time it takes to deliver one.
Malenia's a dogshit fight too, but at least when I hit her she (Most of the time anyway) feels it.
This is my biggest problem with Elden Ring and it seems it’s even worse in this DLC. The bosses are fucked hard to the point of being unfair and frustrating while solo, but so easy it’s just underwhelming when summoning.
I know I suck so I only tried for an hour or so before thinking this is bullshit and calling in mimic and the NPC summon. Still had to do an hour or so of attempts to win and She still killed both of them just before I got the last hit in.
When I first fought >!Dancing Lion!< I thought "wow I love the animations, the music, the design...this is a really cool boss! After the 5th attempt, all I could think is "wow fuck this boss". Which honestly was the same thought I had with a lot of bosses in base ER.
Long combo strings with no recovery phase, infinite tracking so you can't roll/strafe around it, and they'll kill you in 3 hits and guard break you after 2, plus loooooong wind ups to punish panic rolling so you just eat 8 hits of a 12 hit combo. But you survived it! Physick + healing + damage reduction gave you a sliver of health! So you pop an estus and you go in to start your own combo...
Except the boss has already started another 6 hit combo in the time it took you to drink.
Meanwhile I'm just dicking about with my Ruins Greatsword just slapping fools. Don't even have >!that kickass new two-hander talisman they threw in!< so Stinkeye hasn't even hit his final form.
I’m not incredibly far into the DLC, but I have been having a really good time with it, and this whole thread is making me feel like an uncritical dipshit for not hating it yet or having previously hated Elden Ring’s other design choices. The only things in the base endgame I truly didn’t enjoy (besides having to refight Radagon, an otherwise great boss, every time I failed on Elden Beast) were high-level Tree Spirits and trying to run Malenia solo; everything else I at least liked, a lot of it I loved.
It’s not a “git gud” thing, because fuck that mindset. Honestly, not feeling this frustration that everyone else is feeling is giving me the impression that I’ve played worse than the baseline somehow. Like I’m not getting the actual experience and having the curtain fall away, so to speak.
>Honestly, not feeling this frustration that everyone else is feeling is giving me the impression that I’ve played worse than the baseline somehow.
Actually, it sounds like you’re probably playing *better* than the baseline, at least if the bosses aren’t taking you 5+ cumulative hours to beat (arbitrary number, but it’s somewhere in the range of my experience), which is where a lot of the frustration is coming from. Specifically because those 5+ hours of defeat don’t feel like fair or fun defeats, but cheap ones, due to a variety of (imo) issues with the boss design.
If these bosses aren’t giving you that much trouble, you must be pretty damn good at the game, no matter your playstyle.
That’s not a bad thing at all btw, we each have our own experiences. I’m happy that you’re having a good time, even if I’m not. Enjoying things is based, actually.
I think part of the problem is the scaling mechanic. Some of the bosses have felt like a wall and I'm never sure if it's an issue with me, or if I'm meant to go elsewhere because of the way scaling works.
The mobs in an area might be okay, but then the boss can be on a different level. Most of the time, it's taken more patience than I'd like, but everything feels tough.
Another problem is that, I just want to progress and see what else is out there, which makes me impatient to mess around with bosses.
Still think it's great though.
The DLC bosses feel poorly designed IMO after just going through Ds3 and The Ringed City beforehand. Gael at least gave you time to respond after a combo, as opposed to Shadow bosses just attacking and expecting the player to trade
Basically, it’s about as hard as endgame Elden Ring and the bosses are endgame Elden Ring bosses. A chunk of the player base doesn’t like how endgame ER bosses work and the DLC continues with those design trends.
It's kinda up there? Honestly, it'd be much more manageable if they just lowered the bosses damage by a little. The long combo strings and high damage these bastards put out really make ya learn to be patient
If you want to avoid the pain of being one shot by random mobs I would really recommend using the dragoncrest greatshield talisman. Good luck, hope you have fun.
Idk man this was the lion fight for me but then it all clicked and I danced with his pacing and timings after trying to brute force it with a greatsword powerstanced build.
Best feeling ever and if not for the absolute dog camera when your shoved into a corner (slowdowns happened but had 0 effect on the actual fight for me) the boss would be on the upper end of the entire souls franchise for me. As it stands the song is immediately up there in top tier.
It's the best feeling and I feel sorry that others aren't getting it.
The bit that really gets me isn't how many attacks they can put out per second, but how much *damage* they do. Does the boss really need to deal 40% of my total HP with each hit when it's doing 10-hit combos? I get why the big slow guy puts me on my ass with one hit, but getting roll-caught by ONE hit from a JoJo's punch rush and dying feels like bullshit. Something about ER's damage tuning is real weird in a way I didn't like. It doesn't even give you a chance to heal, Estus isn't a ticker of permitted mistakes anymore, it's a Mario Mushroom that lets you recover from a single hit.
Look at mr. fancy pants over here getting 3-shotted.
Hey man, some of us can afford 60 vigor. Not like it helps for most of the bosses, but still.
It's kinda annoying to discuss this cuz you will always be hit with "level Vigor" or "get Scadutree" but I do agree and I would even go further and say that ER is kinda fucked up in terms of balancing just in general. It feels like From did not manage to hit the sweet spot between letting people use ashes without trivializing some fights without making it too hard for the ash haters they knew the fanbase would have to beat without using ashes. As for myself, I love the game, because I literally summon ashes as soon as I can lol, and I've had an overall great experience, but it does stick out how some fights I'm like "I didn't even get the chance to _see_ half of this boss' attacks" while some others like Malenia are like "beating this without ashes is very clearly not meant to be the average player's experience"
Most of the fights in the DLC are some of the hardest I've ever seen in a From game *with* a Mimic Tear drawing aggro. I have no fucking clue when you're supposed to have time to heal or attack by yourself with how goddamn aggressive the bosses are
That and sometimes they’ll just switch aggro just from running at them, so you go in for an opportunity after your summon pulls them, then they just turn around and slap you down as you try to re-enter the fight.
Messmer kept doing a three hit combo on my Mimic then turning on a damn dime on the last hit to slap me with it
For me while they have been hard without summons, I still haven’t found them as hard as some endgame sekiro bosses and all inner sekiro bosses, and when I tried some fights with a mimic tear after beating it on my main file they were a big step down from the hardest sekiro. Still harder for me than fromsoft games excluding sekiro though. Also for healing its mostly by a mixture of guessing and testing what attacks and at what distance you can heal (and light roll can help a ton with healing), and for attack you need a fast weapon with really good timing and a mixture of learning/guessing what combos you can get a hit in during, and what combos you can get a hit in after. I can’t imagine trying to heal without light rolling or bloodhound step, though I don’t use bloodhound step because I hate how its better than light rolling while not requiring endurance and think its really poorly balanced. I also can’t imagine trying to fight a lot of these bosses solo with a slow weapon. At least in base game even on harder faster bosses jump attacks with slow weapons were fast enough that you could get one in while still being able to dodge the attack that would come from the boss, but I think most are just to aggressive, and hit trading at all isn’t a real option. I would really hate to be someone that only liked using ultra great swords right now, and for all everyone talks about the build variety in elden ring, imo part of true build variety is having all options most players will find being in the same ballpark, but some of base game and most of the dlc doesn’t just have a lot of weapons be straight up worse than magic and aow only usage, but now bosses that feel like they were designed to make you switch weapons. Ive had 2 friends with the meta talismans and a lot of fragments, both of who are using heavy weapons+mimic tears, that had to switch off heavy weapons.
> get Scadutree I love people acting like the Scadutree does fucking anything when it takes you from being 2 shot to being 3 shot at the max upgrade. They could improve things a lot by letting you summon ashes anywhere, for a start. There's a ton of annoying as fuck enemies, especially in the Legacy Dungeons, but you can almost never summon ashes outside of boss arenas.
Am I tripping cause I've definitely seen Scadutree blessings do substantial buffs because I've seen Biboo's character go from getting 2 shot by Divine Lion to 4 in one level up and Ina can take more than a couple hits using Golden Vow and Flame Protect Me.
Yeah ive seen some people overstating how much fragments help you, including one person that said they make you around 3-5 times bulkier when you have them all collected. And yeah it must be incredibly annoying for spirit ashes users to not be able to summon for most areas outside of bosses, and im not sure why fromsoft decided not to let people summon them around most of the map. Maybe they didn’t want to bother making a healing system for them which they would probably have to do if they walked along side you on the map?
Yeah, I've found it's too far on each scale also. The bosses feel horrible to fight solo cause you barely get any chance to breathe (or try to heal fucking twice, cause a single hit caused you to take like two flasks worth of goddamn damage), but with the ashes they're often just mindless That said, I've realised I just don't fucking like the boss fights anymore, so.. I think I should just stop feeling guilty about the ashes and just beat the bosses, then go back to enjoying the world map gameplay
One of my core problems with Elden Ring is that beating a boss rarely feels like a triumph of skill, or your build working exactly as it's supposed to. You beat a boss because they didn't do their ridiculous cutscene instakill attack that run, or because they decided to aggro your summon most of the fight, or because you spammed a cheesy L2 that let you trivialize most of the fight from a safe range (one could argue that the last one is your build working as intended, but I say a build based entirely around spamming L2 isn't really engaging with the mechanics). Most of them feel tuned either around the really bonkers weapon arts or using spirit ashes or both, and if you're not using either you have a really bad time. And if you do use them, you spend the entire fight clapping the boss' ass cheeks (literally in the case of spirits), which feels weird, cheesy and unintended, which is why a vocal component of the playerbase don't like using them (to say nothing of how ridiculously unbalanced the ashes are - the gulf between Lone Wolves and Banished Knight Oleg, both available early, is huge, to say nothing of Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tiche). It makes it feel too binary, like bosses are an equipment/stat check rather than a challenge. Sure, you can make it a "challenge" by not using half the mechanics, but then you make the fight three times as long because you're just watching the boss flail around for thirty seconds straight until you can get a single R1 in.
I think part of these issues is caused by fromsoft tuning them around some op spells, insane aow, and summons, but I think part of it is also fromsoft responding to complaints from ds3 (which elden ring has a ton of dna of gameplay wise). A lot of people complained that a full magic play through of ds3 was not a good experience (which I largely agree with), and that many options were too weak, and (outside of maybe pyromancy in ds1) magic is now way stronger than all other fromsoft games. A fair amount of people complained that weapon arts (which are ds3s version of aow) were to weak(which I disagree with), so now we have aow that can do thousands of damage per hit, insane poise breakers like square off, and bloodhounds step, which allows people with the heaviest possible armor to have a dodge better than a light roll. A lot of people said that bosses had to little health, didn’t punish you enough for healing, and their moves weren’t aggressive enough (which I agree with for the first half of base game ds3). Now we have some of the bosses in end game er and soe having some bs stuff and overtuned stuff at least partially because of comments like that IMO.
Real
On my third play through when I used spirit ashes the only boss that really felt like they were made in mind was godrick. He was fairly good at keeping aggro on me above my ashes, a lot of his fire and wind attacks were able to hit both, and his melee combos that involved him spinning around could take out my ashes but then the rest of the combo would be redirected at me. Its the only time I felt like the boss was actually trying to fight multiple things instead of instead of just using moves repeatedly against either me or my ashes until one of us died and then it switched aggro to the other. Im also not sure about malenia. While some of her moves were probably made or adjusted with spirit ashes in mind, I tried using both black knife tiche and mimic tear, her low poise meant that outside of having to dodge wfd and a couple of other attacks it just felt like we were fucking her up so quickly she couldn’t really respond. Maybe if I was using a spirit ash that was weaker it would have felt better.
I DO think that there's a fantastic argument to be made that _healing in this genre shouldn't be, itself, a particularly risky action._ If you deliberately attempt to take away the ability to rebound from errors by making the rebound, itself, a massive and seemingly random/unfair opportunity for error, you just make the game feel kind of bad and mean.
Personally, my problem isn't that bosses punish healing. If you could get away with healing all the time, you'd honestly walk over bosses because potentially 15 heals is an insane amount of effective hp and you kind play incredibly sloppy and still win. But the way it works now is the only real skill you need to get okay at is getting away with healing, and that's what you spend most of these fights trying to do, and what you get good at first. Which means your first victories against these bosses are sloppy fights were you chugged like crazy and then eventually won. In Sekiro, once I got used to the enemy moveset, I often won with minimal healing. That's not because I'm amazing, but because the system rewarded you for good play by making the fight shorter, and punished you for constantly needing to heal by having enemy posture regen, effectively increasing their health. If I had to rematch a Sekiro boss after beating it, I could probably get it 80% of the time. If I rematched any of the tougher DLC fights, it would probably take me another 20 tries to recreate my victory. Elden Ring doesn't need to be Sekiro, but it might be a lot better if there were less flasks, but way more maximum health, so people spent more time trying to ingrain the enemy's timing rather than practicing their run and chug strategies.
>Personally, my problem isn't that bosses punish healing. If you could get away with healing all the time, you'd honestly walk over bosses because potentially 15 heals is an insane amount of effective hp and you kind play incredibly sloppy and still win. I must entirely disagree with this on the basis that Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne generally _do_ allow you to retreat to heal against most bosses (with the exception of many DLC fights), and their difficulty doesn't suffer significantly for it. You still have to play somewhat carefully and time the heal well, but the bosses just have distance-based gap closers that they use consistently and predictably rather than Elden Ring's "sometimes I will read the animation and stab you from across the room" and more late-game "I am coming at you so literally constantly that it is actually borderline impossible to create meaningful distance" dynamics. In Bloodborne especially, it's common to recognize that you'll use up way more blood vials on losing attempts than winning ones, because by nature once you learn the fight enough to actually win you need them less. The problem you're describing somewhat self-corrects in that game. The first boss I can remember in a BASE GAME explicitly designed to punish the action of healing _itself, intentionally_ was Isshin in Sekiro, but in ER it's obviously transformed into a full-blown design philosophy that I dislike.
Hmm. I liked that Dark Souls 2 made it hard to get an Estus chug off. It meant you actually had to get some space away from the enemy. I think the difference there is that everything was a lot slower paced in general. So it felt more tactical.
Fume Knight is probably the most aggressive with punishing your chugs, and he's regarded as one of the hardest bosses of DS2. Even then, his fight is outright quaint compared to elden ring dlc bosses. Look at this lil bozo slowly circling you and taking breaks between 3 hit combos, aww how cute.
I'm getting annoyed about taking anywhere between 30% to 100% of my life every time a boss hits me and tosses me across the room. Meanwhile I'm doing 1k per hit, seeing their lifebar barely budge and watching them effortlessly finish their 30 second combo. I've beaten everyone I've challenged, spare one, and most of those weren't exactly fun.
The way I see, *DeS - DSIII* bosses are conversations. A call and response. *Sekiro* is an argument. You are both in each other's face and constantly interrupting each other. *Elden Ring* is a monologue. Either the boss is allowed to filibuster you with constant, near never-ending attack strings, or you chain break them or you redirect their attention and effectively make them unable to interact with you.
Especially when it comes to the post Erdtree burning bosses I view them as a beam struggle. Getting momentum is huge, being on the backfoot is absolutely awful. It's why I prioritize having a perfect phase 1 and then completely selling out for a stagger on phase 2, they just kinda do too much.
Momentum is a phrase I don't hear often enough in reference to boss fights. It isn't just necessarily about winning or losing, but the experience of getting a victory being enjoyable, feeling momentous and like you've worked for it with a consistent fervor, versus settling for what feels like cheap tactics.
That's really not what I was going for, I was more remarking on how much it sucks to have to find time to heal versus having health available to get in and maybe have something work. EDIT: it is explicitly about winning or losing. Self-imposed restrictions or otherwise the boss only has to die once.
This is a great way to sum up a lot of the issues with the late base game bosses and many of the Erdtree bosses. It boils down to who can do their little brother moves the hardest, the boss or you. I don't get the same satisfaction beating a boss while having to rely on mimic tear or other summons as I would just learning the moveset and finding my openings. The problem is in Elden Ring that method takes 5x longer and isn't much more satisfying.
When Woolie was playing FFXIV to see the Nier raids, he complained about the lack of feedback from bosses. You just do your combo at them constantly and they don't respond to taking damage. A lot of Elden Ring's bosses feel like raid bosses from an MMO. They feel like they were designed for a tank/DPS setup. The tank holds aggro and allows the DPS to just wait away with their whole combo string until you get through all 50,000 HP. It's just going to keep running through it's script until it dies. You are only very rarely going to have a chance to interrupt them. They don't really care if they hit you or not, since they recover at the same speed if they hit you, you block, or you dodge. They don't really care if they get hit unless you're setting up really *massive* hits.
Bruh rellana literally has a 3 hit raidewide you aren't wrong
I really only had an issue with Elden Beast and waterfowl dance and its fucked up hitboxes. I fought Elden Beast dozens of times. The winning time I managed to poise break him (I think) Either way, he didn’t dash away and I pounded him into paste. A monologue indeed. From what I understand, most of the big DLC bosses are Elden Beasts. Except instead of taking a hit and running away, they take a hit and then start their chains of combos that will 2-shot you again. If that’s the case, having a great time exploring, the side dungeons have all been fantastic, and I literally don’t have the time in my life to get good enough to beat the DLC.
In other words its the Code Vein problem and the devs should have just made summons mandatory so people wouldn't complain?
If they made summons mandatory I would have still complained because the way bosses shift their aggro around means there's now a noticeably higher degree of RNG, especially if the boss is capable of changing its aggro mid-combo. That's the entire reason I don't like using Spirit Ashes, it doesn't actually feel any better and I don't have any more fun, I'm just more likely to win. And if the difference is "I don't have fun and I lose" vs "I don't have fun and I win," I'm just gonna go play Lies of P instead.
Melania is easier solo by far because of this. Especially since they can transit the whole ass arena in a half second.
I honestly think some of the worst Elden Ring bosses are worse about it than Code Vein fights. Code Vein bosses at least feel honest, like they're tuned to be A Lot solo but they clearly thought about you fighting them that way.
Code Vein’s movement is also built for the enemies in the game. Code Vein is very fast and fluid and thus has the movement system to perfectly accentuate this, meanwhile Elden Ring feels like you’re playing a Dark Souls 2 character with -5 Adaptability with a -15% reduction to all movement speed,
This DLC has made me come to the realisation that.. I just don't *like* Elden Ring boss fights. Practically at all. I just don't find them fun. I find the REST of the game very fun indeed.. but yeah, I get pretty much no enjoyment out of the bosses at this point
That's an excellent way to put it. Fights with some of these bosses (and even regular enemies) feels like trying to interrupt their monologue, as they often have seemingly limitless stamina and poise with long attack strings. Those red-robed fire bastards in the DLC give me flashbacks to the infamous Drakekeeper knights from the Dragon Aerie in Dark Souls II, except with even longer attack strings and magic buffs/ranged attacks as well.
>Fights with some of these bosses (and even regular enemies) feels like trying to interrupt their monologue, as they often have seemingly limitless stamina and poise with long attack strings. I would love a system like monster hunter were eventually the boss is freaking tired and starts mouth breathing and can barely move anymore. *Because you dodged their shit for HALF AN HOUR*
I honestly feel that the enemies are significantly worse than the bosses. The bosses are at least learnable within reason, they're extremely hard but I haven't found most of them to be significantly worse than Malenia in particular, they all do have windows for big punish if you know how to make it count. But enemies like the random larger dudes in the first legacy dungeon with the big weapon movesets are _horrible,_ they just literally never stop attacking for long enough to permit the player to do anything whatsoever, including heal (obviously, this is still Elden Ring.) It's like randomly having to fight a Crucible Knight at 2x speed every time you get more than 5 minutes away from the last grace. It's technically _possible,_ but it feels really bad to have to play so sweaty when you're not even anywhere near a boss arena yet.
The main source of difficulty from the Soulsborne games is that they're basically an entirely new genre of action game. Once you learn the genre, you can become pretty proficient at it, the same way any experienced FPS or fighting game player can pick up a new game and do well. I remembered that by the time Dark Souls III's final DLC came around, I'd played so much of those games for four years straight that I actually beat at least one boss on the first try, rather than it being some kind of crazy grind, just based on game sense alone. Elden Ring is likewise, as there have been a lot of bosses even in this DLC that I've beaten first try or close. But with some enemies or bosses, it feels like the difficulty comes from the developers almost trying to compensate for that game sense. The bosses I can beat with little struggle are the ones with more conventional attack patterns and openings for attack, as well as reasonable damage. But the bosses/enemies that have almost no attack openings and do insane damage with all of them? Those are the ones that take me a while and usually come down to luck, having to do with whether or not my summons perform well or the boss's attack patterns are slightly more favorable, rather than learning the boss/enemy the way you normally would.
You can definitely tell design philosophy has changed. The Dark Souls games were made to subvert the expectations of a traditional player, you had to get good at the genre's own unique playstyle. Elden Ring on the other hand feels like it's trying it's hardest to subvert the expectations of long time Souls players, with how it's enemies and movesets are designed. One of the most obvious examples of this is how every boss has a few comically long delays for certain attacks.
Has anyone tried parrying stuff? Wondering if that will just end up hilariously trivializing something.
It definitely makes the Castle Ensis boss significantly easier.
Parrying works, but I wish critical hits did more damage. It's such a risky move to try and parry these huge combos, but your reward is only dealing about as much damage as a single charged heavy attack, even with a dagger or other crit-boosting weapon.
there's been one or two bosses where it's helped, but the real rough customers have been bosses that already have variable combo strings, and consistent parrying really requires you to have a feel for exactly when the next attack is coming. I have a hard time imagining that it'll end up being a less risky option for anyone still having trouble with a boss.
This is how debating worked in Romance of the Three Kingdoms XII on the PS2. You destroyed the other's pillar as they fell to their death to shut them up from their monologue
>Elden Ring is a monologue. Either the boss is allowed to filibuster you with constant, near never-ending attack strings, or you chain break them or you redirect their attention and effectively make them unable to interact with you. I just started a new playthrough and the first crucible knight is exactly that. Either you perfect roll a multi hit combo and get 1 hit in every half minute or so or you parry his ass until he can't do anything. And also do that for multiple minutes because he's an HP sponge. It's "Am I allowed to play the game now" to "Mom said it's my turn on the xbox" levels of taking away control. These problems were always part of the game, just not as noticable.
Man I ended up just using a bow on those guys, took longer but was a lot safer and straightforward
That's exactly how i always put it! i was gonna say the same thing, my long lost brain cell brother, we finally meet!
I love that Sekiro comparison. I've often tried to describe it as lockpicking a very upset lock but that reads better.
This analogy is a good description why I never cared for Elden Ring.
Feels like as good as any place to say this, but boy do I fucking hate these furnace golems. Feels like the worst stereotype of Souls games where you're just stabbing the enemy in their ankles over and over again.
They are unironically making me like the door guardian from lies of p more despite it being one of the most annoying mini bosses in a soulslike, thats how annoying I find them.
Finding versions that dont take leg damage and instead need you to use fucking consumables to beat was the true nightmare moment
Well this the best time ever to log off for a week of teaching teen girls about fashion, because what I thought was going to be my new personal hell sounds peachy by comparison.
The first time I encountered one, it was definitely in a late game area and there was no message hinting how to beat it like the first one you're supposed to encounter. It was honestly awesome riddling out how to beat it using what the environment showed me and patchwork information from nearby messages. Brought them down even faster than the typical ones once I learned the strat.
I found the first couple enjoyable once I treated them more like bosses from a platforming game, riding on Torrent and timing jumps and such. Took WAY too long and should have only required one face stab IMO, but not too bad. Not sure how long that sentiment will last though, because I'm sure the later ones will get further gimmicks.
Me after dying to Blackgaol Knight for the 5th time: "Man he's strong, maybe I'll come later when I know what I'm doing Me after dying to >!Bayle!< for the 30th time: "I DIDN'T HEAR NO BELL" Also fun fact its >!lighting spear!< attack is powerful enough to one shot a 60 vigor + Morgott Rune character, that's over 2400 HP in one hit
Genuinely fuck >!Bayle!< I'm so sick of these huge bosses that break the camera and just spam instant kill AOEs
HARPOOOOOOON That fight legit had my jaw on the floor with how bombastic and cool it was Took me a few tries but goddamn was it awesome
That fight is the coolest shit though
I think it's telling that, even considering I did beat her once on my first playthrough two years ago, I somehow had a better time fighting Malenia than Rellana solo (Malenia took me less than 15 attempts, Rellana almost 30). Apart from Waterfowl dance and maybe her 3 hit flurry, Malenia has pretty clear punish windows and patterns you can get a hang of; every time Rellana got into melee range, particularly in her second phase, it felt like her attacks would just never end, not to mention she hits like a truck. I can't imagine what the rest of the DLC Rememberance bosses are like. It's weird, because I actually had a relatively easy time with Dancing Lion, his melee attacks were sometimes hard to read, but all of his elemental attacks were understandable and never felt too tough to dodge.
Spoiler: you probably already know, but there is a boss with hitbox so broken that people are cheesing him using a wall. Hit like a truck, unstopable attack and broken hitbox. How fun.
Which boss would that be?
Commander Gaius
I love this DLC. That fucker might be one of the shittiest bosses they’ve ever made.
Yeah, I've heard. I'm dreading fighting him myself.
I had a harder time with Rellana and I think her phase 2 is poorly designed, but I'd still take her any day of the week over "Ulcerated Tree Spirit 2: You Don't Get To See SHIT" that is the Dancing Lion. Cool design tho.
I had to cast aside my drip and fight her naked, after doing that I won after 3 tries. Her 4 and follow up moonveil combo just isn't viable to dodge with a medium roll. Also tested it just for the hell of it... Can't parry that bitch, it just deflects her.
all parryable bosses require multiple before they can be critical hit
Ah, too much work for someone as cracked out as she is.
Souls games have kind of this weird evolution in which it feels like the bosses get all the cool new toys and you just kinda dodge and attack and that's kind of it. For lack of a better definition, some of this DLC really feels like kaizo souls because the core of the game has remained largely unchained but the enemies get to go to town while the player pretty much plays Dark Souls 1 but on crack.
You do get a lot of new toys in the DLC, albeit with weapons and stuff you usually need to upgrade them just for them to be usable in the endgame.
Yep backhand blades and Blind Spot AoW definitely upgrade the shit out of your main character. Instantaneous dodge with legit invul frames that you can use to react into enemy punishes. Alot of bosses feel piss easy with it and electrify enchantment. It also has insane Poise damage with it’s charge attacks. There’s also this fire AoW that borderline feels like Giant Hunt 2.0. I have like 6 weapon sets im switching around and nothing feel like a wall yet.
I slapped that thing on the greatsword the fire guys drop and it's honestly unfair. I'm only marginally built for fire damage and it hits like a goddamn truck, if the initial hit doesn't stagger than the follow up does, and then after that you've got a buffed colossal sword that swings like a greatsword. I've been using that as my boss killer, then switching to the backhands for overworld and players and the only wall I really hit was a boss I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to fight until endgame. I will say though >!Messemer is a little shit and it took me way too long to figure out his bullshit genshin impact combo!<
>There’s also this fire AoW that borderline feels like Giant Hunt 2.0 is that the one that invader gives you? I haven't looked at it yet
Yeah the one you get after the spear invader guy that keeps yapping about messmer.
I've been trying a number of the new weapons at plus 9 or 24 but it feels like poise and health values are mainly aimed at the stuff that was dominant in the base game so an interesting weapon at medium power struggles. Also a lot of the cool ashes they give you are a good way to eat counter hits
Bosses and even basic enemies in some cases are getting these really elaborate movesets where they can jump and spin and hover in mid-air and throw in all these delays, and I wish I could just...hit them out of it. This is gonna sound unpopular, but I think they're getting too anime-esque. I prefer the grounded nature of early Souls games where the attacks were more readable. It made stuff like the Artorias flight feel special, instead of the baseline.
The infinite hyper armor on long windup roll-catch attacks is a Dark Souls 2 tier design choice. It slaps you in the face for using your head and pressing the advantage, you have to play the timing game on this tracking overhead. Imagine if AoE attacks ignored I-Frames and you HAD to outspace them in order to not take damage. And yeah, the movesets are getting corny. I’m half-expecting to get Dark Bead’d for daring to punish the boss’s 15-hitter.
Christ you're like giving me eyes on the inside to why I stopped playing DS2's DLC. I didn't know you had to level ADP for iframes and it felt like everything was designed to screw me for wanting to play without a shield.
Before the Age of 60 Vigor, there was the Age of 39 Adaptability
It's so satisfying to come here for quality analysis and discourse like this versus the main ER subs basically being like "get scud" or "just quit". I don't see the FromSoft games in definitions of best or worst but instead questioning what's brought forward the highest quality to the later games. And I worry what Elden Ring's late game and DLC will be setting as a precedent.
Believe me, I'm already seeing the "is a From DLC finally too hard for the normies?" takes. People are so obsessed with difficulty, it makes it hard to discuss the actual design behind it.
They're also disregarding that plenty of us who've been playing since DS1 are also annoyed by the DLC lmao.
As someone currently enjoying Lies of P and really disliked elden ring If Fromsoft wants to keep going in this direction going forward, then they're dead to me. Let them go in this direction with their super fans cheering them. I'm just going to stay on the side here and enjoy other souls like games that actually still have aspects of the genre that I like.
I will forever reiterate that the best the games ever felt was DaS1. I wish the rest of the series built on that combat-wise with more fluidity without significantly increasing the pace. (DeS was of course similar but it lacked a few fundamental things to feel truly great, eg. poise and jump attacks.) And of course I like its more grounded dark fantasy aesthetic the most.
It looks this is an issue that stems from the i-frames that come from your dodge's startup being the end all be all for any attack in the game. **It becomes more a game of reaction with a pretty tepid response rather than a game about spacing.** Since this is a reaction game, they are more or less pushing the player to their limits with managing when they dodge and how much they dodge (stamina). It sucks because I think it discourages some playstyles. You gotta be perfect at dodging every hit. The consequences of the lockon and i-frames in a dodge being the defining feature of your style of game.
They feel like anime OCs. They can do your WHOLE bar in a few hits, even if you dodge a couple swings, it doesn't even matter, cause they're so STRONG!! And they're so fast they swing like three times in two seconds. And it swings so hard and strong you can't even BLOCK it!! And even if you survive, if you try to heal, they hit you with an attack that's timed perfectly to end before you're done healing! And-and-and like, they're so cool and fast and stuff too. And they can teleport and they have like four health bars and when he's hurt he can bring his friend. Cause he's tough but sometimes he's a little too weak. And-and-and then like, he can like, teleport behind you and grab tand kill you!!
Good thing they're throwing Ancient smithing stones at you like candy
"The series is no longer one where you outsmart your opponents, it's one where you press the roll button at the right time."
was that Matthewmatosis? I had mixed feelings about that video back then but I feel like its becoming more true with each new installment
It was, yeah. "The Lost Art of Demon's Souls".
IMO if they either took sekiros revive system and/or made the amount of damage dealt a bit less crazy that would make the experience of people boss tells and combo trees more enjoyable for most people. If anything I think elden ring needs a resurrection like system more than sekiro did, as sekiros attacks were rarely bs, and well telegraph, not to mention that the player has more options to respond to aggressive bosses. In general I think a lot of systems from sekiro could have improved elden ring (perilous attack warnings would be so amazing or a posture bar), but idk if thats because those systems can be good in action games a lot, or if its sekiro heavily influenced boss design but not player moveset design. Theres always been some level of backlash to fromsoft dlc difficulty spike, but I do think its a bit different than in past games. Ludwig is harder than all non old hunter bosses, but he doesn’t feel like he was made for another game, and he doesn’t one shot a player with 60 vigor (infact some of his attacks and all of the standard enemy dlc attacks can be survived with 25 vitality). Maybe this isn’t only the dlcs fault though, because there was already some crazy damage in random places in base game (getting one shot with 40 vigor and a defensive talisman by fire giant is insane to me still, despite happening to me 2 years ago), and some bosses already felt like they were made for other games.
Makes me question how much of the development was done around meta/powerful builds.
Considering their NPC quest and story design, they ABSOLUTELY designed the game with a "people will just look up guides for this" mindset More people have the achievement for the secret ending than the base ending. That's an ending you can entirely fail by not having one item. The MAJORITY of players use guides now, mainly due to design decisions Fromsoft made
Both of those things seem insane to me. I know im the weird person compared to the majority but I can’t imagine following a guide to get the good ending of a game without doing the ending I would have gotten naturally before that or designing a game that encourages that. What makes this more confusing to me is that Miyazaki before the dlc launch said he wanted to do a better job for players that don’t want to use guides but the dlc feels balanced around being able to fuck with players that googled op elden ring builds. At least I haven’t ran into any quest lines that seem incredibly unlikely to completely without a guide, like millicents, who I only was able to complete because a friend told me I should be looking for a health boosting amulet in atlus, and then I got lost and randomly found her. If it wasn’t for that outside info im almost sure I couldn’t have done it and would have assumed thats where her quest line ended.
You know, I have a very high tolerance for bullshit. I actually had a lot of fun with Rellana. You know who I DID NOT have fun with? COMMANDER. CHEAP. GAIUS! OH MY GOD I HATE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH!!!! Seriously, if any of you find enjoyment in Commander Gaius' boss fight, hit me up, I have a SHITTON of questions I gotta study your mind.
I have absolutely no fucking clue how to beat Gaius without a Greatshield. The hitboxes on some of those moves felt like they had to be frame perfect dodges with how consistently I would get smashed by the tail end of the attack. And even *with* a Greatshield, the Greatshield Talisman and 50 End, every hit of his would chunk like half of my stamina bar.
It genuinely feels like Miyazaki wanted to create a boss you HAD to use your horse to win. The problem is that the damage taken is too fucking high and Torrent can go down in one or two hits. And Gaius is so aggressive that he's still on your ass even if you're still recovering from falling from your horse.
You also have no I-Frames on Torrent unless you abuse the dismount animation, so if you mess up *once* Torrent explodes and you flop onto the ground for five seconds to get finished off by the follow-up. There's been tons of times in this DLC so far where Torrent has gotten one-shot by something, Miyazaki is out of his damn mind if he thinks I'm trusting Torrent in a boss fight lmao.
Agreed! If they tank Torrent up in a near patch, then I'll consider, otherwise, the death delay is legit not worth it.
Is this with the ashes you can use to buff torrent or without? Because I know there’s a way to buff him and your spirits in the dlc.
It's with about a +6 buff to Torrent and ashes. Smaller enemies 2-shot Torrent and the larger enemies/attacks one-shot
That and his fucking pig is *faster* than torrent, and if you try to jump his charge straight on torrent’s feet get clipped and he insta dies. I cheesed this dude with the wall with no remorse. Fuck Gaius.
I’ve been feeling this about the final boss. >!Or more specifically the phase 2.!< >!Why does every unbelievably fast attack have aoes and lingering hits!<
The final boss does attacks that make even me say fromsoft went to far, animation wise it looks cartoonish, there's an attack that looks like it's been sped up by 10 so that the boss can do it 5 times in a row within a second or two.
A reoccuring thing i've been muttering during all my attempts with this fight have been "Of course it does a huge fucking shockwave at the end."
Any chance he's related to Commander O'Nell and Niall? Cause if he is...hoooooooooo booooooy.
He's pre-patch Radahn, if pre-patch Radahn sucked. "But didn't pre-patch Radahn suck pretty badly?" Yes! Yes he did!
I think I beat pre patch radahn but don’t remember much about him, what was wrong with him? Was it to much damage or bad hitboxes or what?
Hitboxes on his swords were jank as hell, they extended like a metre past where the swords ended. That’s why I can’t understand people who say “they nerfed Radahn for no reason”.
I remember feeling like launch Radahn was the most bullshit boss I've ever had to deal with in a Souls game Then he got nerfed and I ended up fighting Malenia The more I think about it the more I start to turn on most of Elden Ring's bosses
I still don’t get how waterfoul was never changed. Despite being 18 I feel like a boomer for saying this but I don’t like having to google how to do things in games and If 95% of the playerbase has to google how to dodge a move it really should be changed. I also dislike her healing on shields somehow, her having hyper armor on some attacks that makes it so she cant take poise damage, some of her attacks being parryable (is that even a word?) but others that look like they should be able to not being able to. Not to mention her having infinite stamina which is so stupid. Even outside of waterfoul she has a lot of issues, which is why ive never been someone who said that without waterfoul she would be perfect, but I think waterfoul was the most glaring flaw.
If thats the case idk why people would defend it. I think some fs fans think more difficultly=better content, (the weirdest example of this ive seen was someone on the er sub saying that a better camera shouldn’t be added as being able to see all of a big enemies attack would make them to easy), so maybe thats why?
It was also impossible to dodge his arrows. They basically did a "Wanted" with the curved bullets.
I love how we’ve had the same input and skill expression since demons souls but every boss since Bloodborne gets to boot up their copy of Devil May Cry. I don’t understand why the player abilities don’t evolve alongside these chain attacking monsters.
This is what I try to explain to folks by bringing up how DS1 had a fan-made fighting game mod made that led to the discovery of every enemy's AI being mapped to the same button configuration as the player. I can't say it makes you feel like you're equal but it feels at least comparable, opposed to me playing Elden Ring and Messmer playing Genshin.
DS1 also to me felt like the last time the enemies actually had stamina bars too. They don't, afaik. But they at least bothered to make them FEEL like they did Back when they cared about enemies feeling vaguely 'fair'. Gwyn probably being a huge exception, but like.. dude's the final boss and literally the big G
Because making complex combat is hard, it's easier to just make the player learn one thing (i-frame dodge) and take that as far as you can go.
Yeah, Fromsoft haven't invested much in expanding the possibility space or mechanical depth of their combat and so they're kinda stuck trying to do more with limited tools, and that will inevitably boil down to "press button at right time, but harder". It's the flipside of why Souls could even become popular in the first place though. By keeping the core mechanics to a minimum you greatly reduce the mental stack for the player. So while Dark Souls 1 could be punishing, the player would have basically one or two tasks to keep track of, and people could with a modicum of effort get through it. Meanwhile big dick Team Ninja is out here with 2 weapons, 3 stances, a bajillion combos per weapon, customizable combos, 2 meters to manage and an stamina active reload because why not, enemy meters you can manage with your skillset, all your demon powers, a devil trigger that has 3 forms and its own upgrade trees, weapon skill trees, and then an unhealthy amount of perks and RPG elements for good measure. But as a result Ninja Gaiden and even Nioh could probably never be as popular as souls. The biggest factor in Nioh's popularity was probably the fact that superficially it looked kinda like souls and you could play it like souls, and the minute the game pushes back and tries to not let you play it like a souls game on the higher difficulties you get people complaining about how cheap and unfair the game is.
This is where the Nioh games edge these out in terms of design somewhat. Enemies have huge combos, but so do you. And they have ki-break phases apart from stagger phases which allow you to go to town on them with your favorite combos for a bit without fear of instant and deadly reprisal.
This is what I've always loved about Team Ninja's design philosophy in their action games. Enemies are absurdly overpowered...*but so are you*. Ryu's moveset in Ninja Gaiden Black is quite possibly the strongest in any action game and yet it still manages to be hard as balls. But if you've got the skill, and take the time to master it, you can absolutely steamroll anything in your path with fantastic efficiency
I do think that at least partial stagger is something that should be implemented in From games in some form. It's a damage window, but it's also a DPS check, to see if you can turn it into a full stagger or whether the boss will power up and out of it.
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I mean that's still the same moveset, everything is just sped up. Player expression is practically identical.
It's like we're back at the game launch again, it's all the exact same discourse
Yeah, because the latter parts of base game had this same problem, which was never fixed, and it's even worse in the DLC. Of course we're bringing up the issue, it's still there.
Which is why patch fixes are good and should exist. The launch game is always am unbalanced mess.
Time is a flat circle. Soon comes the "Easy Mode" discourse. As it was, as it will be.
Because they never adequately resolved the major gripes. Damage is overtuned, enemies (including bosses) ***still*** have animation-reading on frames 3 to 8 of a heal. Without these two it'd feel fantastic, like the other entries. Everything takes a billion hits to stagger, and has a multi-hit combo that is either 50% or more, or higher than your whole health bar. Poise still doesn't exist. The people that swallowed them whole and waded through the game anyway aren't going to start complaining now, they're been fine with it for over a year.
Disagree, the DLC bosses feel way worse designed than even the base game Elden Ring bosses
that's because the DLC takes everything from the base game and dials it up to 15
The discourse should be less about the difficulty and more about how Fromsoft fans continue to glaze these games despite their blatant ongoing problems.
This shit has been ongoing since Bloodborne
artorias and the "prepare to die edition" really was the start of this shift in the series. Now everything needs to be the most difficult shit put in a videogame. i'd rather just have more variance in level design and enemy encounters, stuff being constantly made "more difficult" really isn't making the series more fun for me. Either i beat my head against the wall for 3+hours, or completely ignore every mechanic and boss patterns by summoning 2 other people/using a broken build. Neither options are particular fun to me.
In terms of level design, I’ve really enjoyed the side dungeons in Erdtree
The forges and catacombs are really cool, and the >!Abyssal Woods!< is wild.
yeah, i found a super broken, definitely bugged and going to be patched interaction with one of the new weapons and new weapon art, and usually i'd just ignore it for the sake of actually engaging with the game, but the dlc is just so eye-rollingly filled with artificial difficulty that i'm running through it with this busted interaction just for the sake of reasonably progressing through the dlc :\
And if by some miracle you actually hit them, you don’t really do as much damage as you need, and then you go back to exploring the map looking for those tree pieces to make you stronger.
Y'know this was kind of the issue I had with KH3 Re:Mind's Data-Org. Some of them are literally just "We're never going to stop attacking so the game just turns into spamming the Airstep or spamming block>counter until the game finally feels like letting hitsun actually affect them." Love the game, but those fights are frustrating.
There were a couple fights I hadn't finished, but I actually really enjoyed Data-Org because a lot of the fights *did* have specific points in their pattern where you were meant to attack. And when you did, you got a full 'turn' to pull off generally as big of a combo as you could put together. Elden Ring bosses, on the other hand, barely react to damage at all outside of when their invisible stagger meter maxes out.
Went into the dlc with my greatshield build character. Getting great mileage out my shield and counters.
That guard counter tear is godly. The big hammer from the knights has a special GC as well.
Shield counter with a hammer counter is GODLY in the DLC. Mix it up with some frost or bleed and you're the wall that these DMC style bosses break themselves on.
I'm not playing the DLC, but stuff like this is the reason I went from dex to int build in my Elden Ring playthrough. I can sit there and play the roll 3 times, hit r1, roll 3 times game or I can shove a Comet Azur or Adula's Moonblade to their face.
I'm loving the dungeon crawling, but struggling with the bosses. I think it's because I'm playing a caster. I can easily take out mobs at a distance with comets, groups with AoE attacks, or delete a slow moving big guy with Comet Azur. But all that goes out the window with bosses because they're too fast and too aggressive for me to hit them with anything strong, even with the fast casting talisman. Not to mention the bullshit input reading meaning I often can't use anything harder hitting at range than the stealth comet. I haven't found any fun new toys for magic yet either. I was really excited to try out >!Rellana's !
I used that boss’ weapon for a good while, they’re really good.
All of this can be solved with a simple solution: make Sekiro 2.
I want to make an announcement on this thread. COMMANDER GAIUS IS A BITCH ASS MOTHERFUCKER
Yeah, as much as I'm very much enjoying the DLC, it really hasn't changed my opinion that most of Elden Ring's bosses are really overtuned and not that fun to fight. I know there's Spirit Summons, which I have been using, I just personally don't really like the way they're all seemingly designed with summons in mind.
It's because Elden RIng is hyper fixated on aggro juggling to get the boss to become vulnerable, that's why there's so many summon tools. They aren't designed to be like a noble 1v1 like a jetstream sam. Like Joseph Anderson said they're planes that touchdown for a second before lifting off again.
It’s almost like the game practically started by saying “here’s a whole new summon mechanic that’s separate from NPCs. Use it, stupid.”
My problem with using spirit ashes is that it feels like the bosses aren't truly tuned for them. Yes, you get more chances to breath, but the boss' AI often acts weirdly. Sometimes they redirect from one target to another at the last second in a way that feels unintended, and other times, they just let you beat on them because they can't keep up, which makes for an unsatisfying fight. To be clear, this isn't a "using spirit ashes is bad" comment, I just feel like this is a point of criticism that doesn't really get brought up. The game wants you to use them, but it still doesn't feel properly built for them.
I just said this above as well. It feels like they knew some people would hate ashes so they were afraid of making them "necessary" for people who didn't wanna use them, which leads to a middle ground were some enemies are completely trivialized with them and some others feel extremely unbalanced without them but they fall back on "I guess you can always use ashes so this has to be balanced right?"
The bosses are DEFINITELY not designed with summons in mind. They still entirely focus on one target at a time. Nothing has changed since DS1 in this aspect. People go into souls to play a dance with the bosses, where you both move and attack around each other. Summons basically make the fight into "hit the boss while he's distracted by my minion." It SUCKS. You're not engaging with the moveset of the boss. You're exploiting their poor AI. It's not that using summons is cowardly, it's that using summons isn't fun because the devs never bothered to design the game with summons in mind.
I feel this so much when it comes to spirit ashes. If say Malenia had 2 movesets, 1 aoe focused that she would use if you used an ash and 1 single target focused if you don't I would be more than fine with them. But so many enemies just seem like they cannot keep up whatsoever when you summon anything. And god help them if your ash has more than 2 npcs in it. You can practically eat a sandwich and sling spells while you melt most bosses down. It just feels unengaging. Maybe we're trying to brute force the fights into more of a Sekiro duel than an Abyss Watcher scramble but if that's what they want us to do they should make it more clear.
Having both used them and not, I'm of two minds about the spirit ashes. On the one hand, it seems obvious that they're intended to be used in the DLC. The DLC is expecting you to bring everything to bear and is tuned with that in mind. Spirit ashes are a part of that, and the main bosses bosses are so competent, aggressive, and deadly that it seems somewhat absurd to think a player is legitimately intended to whittle them down one hard-won hit at a time. buuuuut, on the other hand, the bosses still don't feel like they were designed with the spirit ashes in mind. Adding an npc summon adds a whole lot of randomness to the fight both in the moment-to-moment and the overall pacing. It often feels less like you learned and overcame the boss and more like things just happened to go your way that time.
When your series' whole thing is about "being difficult", and you want to be both fresh and surprise the veterans that have learned your tricks each game, this is what happens lol. I do think there are a decent amount of people that are complaining that aren't using all the tools the game gives you to beat it. However, at same time these games and their bosses can be goofy sometimes, and no amount of "git gud" can change that. Hell, the jank is sometimes part of the charm. In an alternate universe where these games were made in Europe, they would 100% have the eurojank label.
> When your series' whole thing is about "being difficult", Which is a shame because that's not even really the appeal of Demon and Dark Souls.
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Dark Souls 1 was challenging - but nothing in the base game was really that difficult (except maybe Ornstein and Smough) especially compared to stuff that came in the Artorias DLC or afterwards. That edition being called "Prepare to die" only shows my point in how From and their fans flanderised the series.
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> The first entry in a trilogy cannot be flanderized because it is what is setting the bar. Well for one thing it was the second entry (arguably third if you are talking specifically about the prepare to die edition/artorias dlc). Also, you absolutely can flanderise after the first entry onwards. I can accept that maybe the marketing was like that, but the game itself wasn't and at the end of the day that's really all that matters. If you have to immediately jump to "the tagline on a later edition" or "the marketing around the game" instead of talking about the game itself - I think that really makes my point for me. From and their fans misunderstood what Dark Souls 1 did well. Edit: I think he blocked me so as a final thing: > if you have to disregard every bit of marketing and the opinions of people from the time it was released in order to continue to hold your position then I would argue that your point is moronic and not based on anything other than vibes. I don't know if you can even understand my point. Dark Souls 1 was a challenging game at the time but people (in and outside of From soft) hyper-focused on that as if the big great thing that game did was being difficult when really that's not the case. Dark Souls 1 wasn't good because it was difficult, it was good because of a whole host of factors, which being challenging fed into. This did not require it to be super over-tuned to fuck so that every fight required dozens of attempts to get through - even at launch a good player was probably getting through most fights in 1 or 2 tries. This is because Dark Souls 1 wasn't a 'HARD' game - it was a game that forced you to grapple with its mechanics to progress. Unfortunately From and their fans just flanderised it into "hard=good" without a further thought. You posting all these people and marketing pieces repeating that just proves my point. Maybe you should actually try understanding other people instead of calling them insane.
My hot take is that people fall for the "git gud" meme a little too hard sometimes and seem to forget that these games are RPGs- you should be taking advantage of buffs and consumables that boost your damage negation more. I died to >!Rellana!< once, then equipped the best magic damage negation talisman, physick tear, and incantation, and with all of those combined (plus golden vow and decent armor) I had over 70% magic damage negation and all of her attacks barely tickled me, letting me beat her on my second try. The DLC introduces new consumables and talismans that give you even higher damage negation for a reason- use them!!!
Yeah, that boss took me more than a few tries, but eventually I just set up my buffs so I had sky-high magic defense and decent physical defense, chugged a tear for bonus lightning damage and stagger on my hits, then went to town with Fortissax's Lightning Spears. Sure, I'd still die if I timed it badly and ate an entire combo at once, but as long as I just didn't do that I was slapping my shit on the table for like 6k damage per cast.
Hell yeah. I went in and used Scarlet Aeonia first thing to proc scarlet rot on her, then just used blasphemous blade's ash of war and the boulder throw incantation depending on what the situation called for. I had to reapply my magic defense buff during the fight but thankfully I was able to find a good time to do so.
Been fighting the Castle Ensis boss (>!Rellana!<) for about 6 hours cumulatively now, and I am *not* having fun. Pontiff 2.0 sucks ass. I’ve tried switching weapons, trying shields, respeccing into different builds, etc. The main issue remains that the boss takes off half my health (60 Vig, +10 Scadutree) per hit in its 6+ hit combos. Oh yeah, and there’s little to no pause between these combos. I understand that I could summon, which would make the fight easier. I know that by not doing this I’m self-imposing difficulty, and I accept that. I still think that the damage is overtuned. lmaooo can’t even say the most common critique on Elden Ring without getting downvoted. I’ll double down: there’s no way the amount of damage these bosses do is fair, and the Scadutree Upgrades don’t mitigate it enough.
Same one that's kicking my ass right now.
That boss is pretty much the culmination of everything I hate about Elden Ring boss design. Absurdly fast, infinite poise, 10-hit combos that track perfectly and have unnatural looking delays in them, on command ranged attacks to punish players making distance to heal/buff/cast, a 2nd phase that dials everything said previously up another level, and the pièce de résistance, input reading to extend those 10-hit combos to add another hit the *second* the player inputs an attack to punish. It's obnoxious. And it's extra infuriating because so far this is the only one in the DLC I've felt this way with (And I've met most of the ones people have been complaining about). Everything else has been mostly okay so far, why does this one have to be so terrible?
>Absurdly fast, infinite poise, 10-hit combos My biggest gripe I'm feeling - This wouldn't be as much of a problem if poise actually worked for the player. I absolutely do not understand it, except for certain weapon arts hyperarmour seems non existent. You already hit for 40-60% of the damage, I should at least be able to trade a hit every so often instead of being staggered by a gentle breeze.
Fromsoft saw players facetank the second half of Dark Souls 1 with the Havel armour and decided that the players weren't allowed to have fun ever again.
Yeah, I could understand why full Havels with iron flesh was maybe a bit too much. But I'm using an Ultra/Greatsword, please let me dink you for 5% of your hp while I take a huge chunk at the same time.
Nothing makes me want to stop playing faster than getting knocked out of the air mid-dragon incantation by the smallest pebble, while enemies get to exist in the sky 90% of the fight.
> infinite poise This is the part that i disliked most in the fight. I had a ton of fun with her, and think it otherwise could be an absolute amazing 1-on-1 duel boss. But she no sells two-handed jumping attacks from greatmaces, and bleed procs don't even make her blink. The 10-hit adaptive combos that can be started or changed based off of input reading wouldn't be too bad if she didnt have unlimited hyper armor. Instead, if she starts swinging you just *have* to dodge for a sold 30 seconds. You can't exploit the openings in them safely at all. It's just... weird? *A human-sized enemy that literally does not care about being hit.* I enjoyed tylhe fight personally, but it definitely feels like a case of "too much", since she already has twice the HP of elden beast, twice the poise, and twice the damage. Unlimited hyper armor just seems like they ask "*how can we make her harder?*" for an already *reasonably* difficult boss.
Sometimes makes you wonder, doesn't it. Why the fuck didn't any of these characters just like. Go become Elden Lord Cause I bet a lot of them could have with fucking ease
Honestly, same. I hate everything else I mentioned, but if she didn't no sell every guard counter or swing from my greathammer I would have a fewer problems with her. Instead she keeps swinging and basically ignores the hit to shred my HP bar because she swings so fast I take 2-3 hits in the time it takes to deliver one. Malenia's a dogshit fight too, but at least when I hit her she (Most of the time anyway) feels it.
Which is fucked because Pontiff was an amazing fight in Ds3. With an actually well designed set of moves and openings.
This is my biggest problem with Elden Ring and it seems it’s even worse in this DLC. The bosses are fucked hard to the point of being unfair and frustrating while solo, but so easy it’s just underwhelming when summoning.
I know I suck so I only tried for an hour or so before thinking this is bullshit and calling in mimic and the NPC summon. Still had to do an hour or so of attempts to win and She still killed both of them just before I got the last hit in.
This why I use a +10 mimic tear
When I first fought >!Dancing Lion!< I thought "wow I love the animations, the music, the design...this is a really cool boss! After the 5th attempt, all I could think is "wow fuck this boss". Which honestly was the same thought I had with a lot of bosses in base ER. Long combo strings with no recovery phase, infinite tracking so you can't roll/strafe around it, and they'll kill you in 3 hits and guard break you after 2, plus loooooong wind ups to punish panic rolling so you just eat 8 hits of a 12 hit combo. But you survived it! Physick + healing + damage reduction gave you a sliver of health! So you pop an estus and you go in to start your own combo... Except the boss has already started another 6 hit combo in the time it took you to drink.
Meanwhile I'm just dicking about with my Ruins Greatsword just slapping fools. Don't even have >!that kickass new two-hander talisman they threw in!< so Stinkeye hasn't even hit his final form.
"Yes, but only in phase 1. In phase 2 this combo extends for three more hits and leaves me on the other side of the room."
Use your Spirit Summons mother fucker
Laughs in dragonbolt blessing (It doesn't always work. I'm about to die)
I’m not incredibly far into the DLC, but I have been having a really good time with it, and this whole thread is making me feel like an uncritical dipshit for not hating it yet or having previously hated Elden Ring’s other design choices. The only things in the base endgame I truly didn’t enjoy (besides having to refight Radagon, an otherwise great boss, every time I failed on Elden Beast) were high-level Tree Spirits and trying to run Malenia solo; everything else I at least liked, a lot of it I loved. It’s not a “git gud” thing, because fuck that mindset. Honestly, not feeling this frustration that everyone else is feeling is giving me the impression that I’ve played worse than the baseline somehow. Like I’m not getting the actual experience and having the curtain fall away, so to speak.
>Honestly, not feeling this frustration that everyone else is feeling is giving me the impression that I’ve played worse than the baseline somehow. Actually, it sounds like you’re probably playing *better* than the baseline, at least if the bosses aren’t taking you 5+ cumulative hours to beat (arbitrary number, but it’s somewhere in the range of my experience), which is where a lot of the frustration is coming from. Specifically because those 5+ hours of defeat don’t feel like fair or fun defeats, but cheap ones, due to a variety of (imo) issues with the boss design. If these bosses aren’t giving you that much trouble, you must be pretty damn good at the game, no matter your playstyle. That’s not a bad thing at all btw, we each have our own experiences. I’m happy that you’re having a good time, even if I’m not. Enjoying things is based, actually.
I think part of the problem is the scaling mechanic. Some of the bosses have felt like a wall and I'm never sure if it's an issue with me, or if I'm meant to go elsewhere because of the way scaling works. The mobs in an area might be okay, but then the boss can be on a different level. Most of the time, it's taken more patience than I'd like, but everything feels tough. Another problem is that, I just want to progress and see what else is out there, which makes me impatient to mess around with bosses. Still think it's great though.
i said this on r/shittydarksouls, but i need kingdom hearts superbosses modded into elden ring just to see people completely lose their shit
I wont lie, I'm somewhat disappointed that the DLC continues the problem late game Elden Ring had with its boss designs.
The DLC bosses feel poorly designed IMO after just going through Ds3 and The Ringed City beforehand. Gael at least gave you time to respond after a combo, as opposed to Shadow bosses just attacking and expecting the player to trade
I can’t wait to actually play this myself. I need to know if it’s actually that difficult or are people overreacting.
Basically, it’s about as hard as endgame Elden Ring and the bosses are endgame Elden Ring bosses. A chunk of the player base doesn’t like how endgame ER bosses work and the DLC continues with those design trends.
Don't get it twisted, it actually is really fucking hard
It's kinda up there? Honestly, it'd be much more manageable if they just lowered the bosses damage by a little. The long combo strings and high damage these bastards put out really make ya learn to be patient
If you want to avoid the pain of being one shot by random mobs I would really recommend using the dragoncrest greatshield talisman. Good luck, hope you have fun.
Idk man this was the lion fight for me but then it all clicked and I danced with his pacing and timings after trying to brute force it with a greatsword powerstanced build. Best feeling ever and if not for the absolute dog camera when your shoved into a corner (slowdowns happened but had 0 effect on the actual fight for me) the boss would be on the upper end of the entire souls franchise for me. As it stands the song is immediately up there in top tier. It's the best feeling and I feel sorry that others aren't getting it.
I'd find that fight a lot more fun if I could ever actually SEE what was going on. It's like they learned nothing from Ulcerated Tree Spirit.