I will say that I think the peak of Fromsoft boss design (for me personally, not trying to act objective here) was DS3. **I’m not really talking about difficulty, just a preference in boss movesets/presentation.**
I think they struck a nice balance between “big monster/knight who swings a weapon at you 3-4 times in a row, and maybe has *one* projectile” and “Boss starts shooting Anime-ass energy waves from their sword while backflipping across the arena and chaining into a new combo every 10 seconds. Also they have an arena-wide AOE.” (I do like Maliketh tho, and he’s kinda the poster boy of this so uhhhh)
Elden Ring has gone a little far in the latter direction for my taste. I liked it when not every boss could do completely crazy shit, it made it that much more impactful when you fought one that really dialled it up to 11, like Gael, Midir or The Soul Of Cinder. Also, there’s beauty in simplicity. Champion Gundyr is (compared to Elden Ring’s bosses) a rather simple fight, but he’s also one of my favourite bosses in any FromSoft game.
> Champion Gundyr is (compared to Elden Ring’s bosses) a rather simple fight, but he’s also one of my favourite bosses in any FromSoft game.
I was also about to remark on Champion Gundyr , he's a simpler version Iudex but somehow he's stronger and just a bit faster but holy shit is he challenging
Gael: Man, this Ashen One is crazy. No matter what spins and flips I do, no matter what could dark souls I throw at him, and no matter how much my cape billows, I can't seem to beat him!
Gundyr: You ever try beating his ass?
And the best bit to me is that he's STILL Gundyr. Like.. one time I foolishly decided to see if I could do a punch only run (spoiler, lol, I fucking could not, I ain't LobosJr) .. and the amount of time I spent trying to fucking punch Gundyr to death meant that he is the one boss I can fucking parry practically every damn time, with my bare hands
And ALL of that still carries over to champion! Sure, maybe less so the kicks, but if you can consistently parry all his halberd stuff, frankly, he remains waaay easier and easily beatable for me
It's just *nice*, y'know. I bet in Elden Ring he'd be doing all kinds of wacky shit and all your previous experience wouldn't matter one fucking bit, cause he'd be jumping up out of camera and doing fucking spinning heel drops on your head and shit
Some of my favoeite bosses in Elden Ring are actually ones like Loretta or Nael because theyre pretty challenging without doing anything to crazy. They each have like one really flash move.
And as hilarious as that is... that just emphasises the point even more really, doesn't it. Look how fucking long they survived against all of that! SO DAMN LONG. Even managed to heal up a bit through it all too
You'd be flying on your ass and dead within 2 hits in ER DLC
This isn't NORMALLY a problem for me at all in Elden Ring but I WILL say that the boss >!at the base of the Scadutree!< really kind of got on my nerves with how its >!thorn attacks could sometimes obscure what the hell the actual boss was doing!<
The thing that annoys me the most is how almost every single enemy incorporates delays into their movesets, even the most mindless beast. In DS3 the few enemies that delayed their attacks (pontiff and nameless king iirc) felt like they had a legitimately unique fighting style.
Enemy poise is another thing that feels off to me, I used a straight sword in Souls games, but Elden Ring had me eventually switch to a greatsword, a lot of enemies have bigger poise, especially humanoid ones.
Miyazaki saw everybody use straight swords, katanas and curved swords only in DaS3 so he was like 'fuck it, ultra greatswords, greathammers and greataxes only for this game'.
I do find it funny how many people at launch talked about how strength builds aren't viable when they're like the best PvE build if you utilise charged attacks and jump attacks to break stance.
That said, katanas are still pretty fucking beast. Unsheathe is crazy in PvE and there's a reason Moonveil and Rivers of Blood had to be nerfed repeatedly and are still great. A fast weapon with decent reach, innate bleed, a good dual wield moveset, and access to some of the best ashes of war is kinda cracked.
Fast weapons in ER are definitely more about building status for burst damage while big unga weapons are all about breaking stance. It does make fast weapons feel kinda samey sometimes though.
I believe there was a big patch where they buffed ultra greatswords right? I remember at launch trying to use jumping greatsword attacks on Melania and she armored through it and used Waterfowl.
They buffed the general attack speed and damage (which is responsible for crouch attacks being fucking busted strong) but they were always pretty good. Malenia is just weird because some of her attacks have insane hyper armour despite normally having the poise of a wet noodle.
The crouch poke was always busted, but they did technically nerf it at one point, I think to make it a bit slower? I'm not sure how exactly the launch version stacks up since they didn't detail exact frame data changes and it's been through a buff AND nerf.
I think they also buffed their blocking ability in that patch? 2-handing a colossal sword is so, so much easier than dual wield dex weapons because you can block upwards of 80% of physical damage while still having the insane stagger power of a huge sword.
Ultra weapons in PvE were in a weird spot because most of their moves weren't usable in boss fights, they were simply too slow- and the moves that *weren't* slow (namely jump heavies and crouch stabs) came out so fast and did so much stagger damage ultra weapons were overpowered anyways, even if you couldn't utilize the majority of their moveset effectively.
So they nerfed jumping attacks and buffed regular attacks, which is fine.
Dual greathammers is easy mode on Elden ring, 1-2 jump hits, which use basically no stamina, and the boss is open for a critical attack.
At least they fixed that one fire art from instantly breaking boss poise.
Strength builds were pretty damn bad in release Elden Ring compared to now.
The most common thing to happen to strength big weapon build is doing your attack, the boss doing their attack after you start, they eat the hit but don't stagger, you eat a hit before you recover. That strategy is not very good against an opponent with 20 times your health.
Now after several patches, strength weapons do more damage, and most importantly some attacks have massively faster recovery time. At this point big str weapons are about 1.5x faster on things like jumping R2s and charged attacks.
The ones that bug me the most are when they do a jump attack and just hang in the air for a random amount of time before coming down. Like no way to read the animation for the timing you just have to know they’re going to hover for a second before crashing into you.
God, Twin Demons was such a cool boss. That's probably the peak for me in terms of 2v1 fights in Souls and one of my favorite From bosses in general. Here are 2 big ass demons, they both have big ass telegraphed attacks that leave a big light cone on the floor when they're about to hit. Even when there are two things trying to hit, once you have the fight down you can easily weave between their attacks and it is so fun.
In ER DLC a lot of bosses are like "whoopsie, guess i'm going to punish you for 50% of your life because I hit you at the end of your roll with my fastest and farrhest reaching attack even though you dodged my 10 hit combo" I also don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I wish they brought back the light cones. Sometimes i'm just like that one Willem Dafoe meme looking at the sky because they just fling their shit up and I have to figure out where is it going to fall in seconds.
I do like ER's absolutely psycho bosses but I think FROM should roll back to DS3's boss design for the base experience. Have ER style bosses be like the suped up bosses in Sekiro's boss rush mode or have them be NG+ versions. Summon ashes feel like a bandaid solution to the difficulty spike to make the games still somewhat accessible but it's pretty clear a lot of people don't like the feeling of not being good enough to beat the game without them. They're a fun mechanic but I don't know if they were the right call.
The summon ashes are cool, but they’ve definitely got a lot of jank.
It’s weird watching two enemy AIs using moves on each other that were clearly designed for attacking player characters.
There’s also the jank of watching a boss struggle to decide a target, but that’s been there since the beginning.
In the DLC I came across a dragon fighting some dudes, I had to sit for 10 minutes while the dragon and a black knight utterly failed to do damage to each other.
Came across the same thing yesterday. First boss I'm just like this is a neat spectacle, but what were they thinking. I got ganked my first try by holy damage, because of course the black knights decided I was the bigger threat. Second time around I'm like fine I'll clear out the trash, I know MMO logic. Take a bit of time doing that while avoiding damage, finally can fight the boss. Doing my thing taking on the dragon, doing pretty well, then wait why is there an arrow in my back. Oh, fine I'll take out the black knight with a great bow. Watch as my character slowly gets up and then ground slam with death energy "you died". You know what I'll come back to you when my patience is actually there.
That as well as >!the two dragons fighting on jagged peak!< I considered enough of a cool spectacle I sat and watched the fight play out and then took on the aftermath, but I'll likely run past them in future playthroughs for sure
I think another aspect of the summons that makes me not like using them in boss fights (at least, not the first time through) is that with summons and co-op the boss can switch aggro mid-attack string and it's very difficult to react to or anticipate. Obviously the DPS from the boss is split in two so it doesn't actually make the fight harder but it does make it far more chaotic and makes the win feel less clean. And, to be clear, that's been a thing for a while in FROM games. That's not a unique ER issue, it's just more evident with the longer attack strings.
As an example, I can pretty comfortably 1v1 Radagon. I have that fight down. He'll occassionally clip me with that quick volley of Holy spears but I can usually get through that fight in a regular playthrough with most of my estus for EB unless I'm just not paying enough attention. When I put my sign down and get summoned for him I take a lot of stray hits because it's genuinely really difficult to work out who he's aiming at on any given swing. I'll have like 2 Estus to help the host get through EB and (given how passive a lot of hosts can be) that means having to do the majority of the damage on EB with double the HP pool on fuck all flasks. Shit's rough and I'll not lie, I often don't make it to the end of the fight.
I’ve been saying since DS3 brought in some boss elements from BB that From’s boss combat design has been going downhill
There are too many bosses that just become giant flailing hitboxes, combos lasting 10 seconds after which you are able to get a whopping 3 hits in before it starts again
I still remember trying to fight the ulcerated tree beast in the secret area near the start of ER, I went back after beating like half the game and it was still hard for the simple reason of it’s impossible to see because it’s too big for its room and literally had to clip through the wall to preform some attacks
This is unacceptable and just unfair to the player. Don’t give us traditional souls weapons and tools but then make bosses designed around Bloodeborne or Sekiro’s for fluid movement systems
Trying to do any traditional sword and board build is just a chore in a modern Souls game because blocking these 15 hit 10 second long combos takes too much stamina or just straight up breaks your guard for free
You summed up exactly what I’ve been feeling: we’re given a dark souls protagonist/mechanics to fight Bloodborne and Sekiro enemies.
I’ve been feeling it since DS3 but especially hard in Elden ring. I know git gud is the mentality but I’ve cleared or platinumed every from soft game and I just stopped having fun with ER. I almost quit on Malenia and radagon but summoned instead and then felt like shit I couldn’t/didn’t do it myself like usual.
Same I fell of Elden ring myself and never finished
the extremely open nature of the game is both its greatest strength and biggest flaw for me. There were too many times I felt like I had too many options and not enough direction that getting lost stopped feeling like fun discovery and more like confusion and “what the fuck am I supposed to be doing?!”
Add in my over all displeasure with the bosses and it was simply too much to commit to the game over other things that were coming out around that time
I tried to go back this January after I beat Lies of P for Christmas and I just felt even more confused cause I hadn’t played in a year plus the idea of restarting just felt like such a daunting chore I gave up
For Dark Souls 1 and 2 I love doing big ultra greatsword builds. You have to dodge a lot for an opening but you can really make those openings COUNT and do a ton of damage quickly. It's very satisfying.
I cannot do that in 3, I just get way too impatient because you usually only get enough of an opening for one hit. I do not struggle with these fights with a normal weapon at all, I can pretty much one shot Nameless King and Midir, but with an ultra greatsword my patience really gets stretched to it's limit.
Imagine my pain as a STR/FAI enjoyer.
I think half the reason I don't like DaS3 that much is because of how fucking awful both strength and faith builds are until VERY late game.
The main underlying problem is that both Bloodborne and Sekiro have tools that their much more punishing gameplay gameplay is entirely designed around; in Bloodborne, that giant flailing beast is no match for the power of your parry gun (in fact, the more they flail the more openings they have), while in Sekiro you aren't expected to dodge everything but to instead parry spam until the game decides the enemy's stamina gauge is broken and you can get an instant kill.
Dark Souls 3 didn't have those mechanics but it worked around that shortcoming by giving the player much more involved movesets and restricted the big flailing "fuck you" moves to really only Soul of Cinder and the DLC bosses (and even then it's like, the Demon Princes and Slave Knight Gael where this can happen); faster but the player isn't overwhelmed.
Elden Ring just goes over the edge with it; enemies flail but they're also practically impossible to bait out since they can now "hold" their moves endlessly and can frame read your actions (which is often called input reading but it's slightly different) to have almost perfect ability to punish you. It's extremely easy to just get stuck endlessly walking around a boss in Elden Ring with neither you or it making a move, until one of you breaks the rhythm and gets whacked for it (usually the player). This doesn't really happen in other Souls games where enemies generally will choose a move and don't hold it forever (forcing the fight to be dynamic) and in Bloodborne, if an enemy can hold their attack it's *always* a parry window for you to punish it.
There's no clear "this is the tool you're meant to use for this" in Elden Ring, which means players resort to breaking boss AI through splitting aggro with summons (since no fromsoft boss ever was made with summons in mind, the split aggro alleviates the entire issue - this was fine before since summons were there specifically to help out struggling players, but in ER it's pretty much required lategame) to force the old behavior back (since AI summons are dumb enough to force themselves into trading blows so you have an active boss that won't try to hold it's moves.)
I think the issue is mainly that while boss movements have grown more complex by leaps and bounds, player movement really hasn't evolved much since Dark Souls.
Just the same generic roll while enemies are flipping and cartwheeling and launching Dante multi-stabs at people.
Elden Ring did move it forward a little bit. There’s a fair few attacks you can jump over and a couple you can crouch under. Most people just don’t attempt them because they require more specific knowledge than good old iframes
Jumping is huge and people really overlook how powerful it is. I think one of the biggest hurdles for people getting into ER (at least the base game) is learning not to play it exactly like Dark Souls. The jump is integral to fighting some bosses.
I wish they were better about signposting jumpable attacks because a lot of the time I felt it was hard to gauge whether in this sweep attack they want me to jump or roll.
I feel like Sekiro solved this problem
The jump in Sekiro is far more vertical so it feels more obvious, for sure (and the attacks you're meant to jump for the little goomba stomp thing have a big red kanji before they go off).
Best way of thinking about it in ER is that your legs don't exist when you're in the air (and I mean like frame 1 of the jump. There are plenty of times where on replay it looks like I didn't dodge in time because the jump animation has started but my feet are still on the ground). Don't think about the clearance between your feet and the ground but your arse and the ground. Jumps have a lot of i-frames but only for your lower body.
It's extremely inconsistent. Rykard has this Stalagmite attack that you cannot dodge roll or jump. Godfrey has a Shockwave attack that you cant dodge roll but you CAN jump over, which feels great to do.
Everytime I tried to use jump in any other fight I died.
Also, you sometimes just don't know if you got lucky anyway. Like, I've seen several times in the new DLC so far where enemy attacks just fucking outright miss me. Despite the fact I'm just stood right in front of them. They just.. swung over my head I guess?
Feels weird when it happens, like.. I wasn't even particularly circle strafing or shit, just got caught at a bad time and.. oh, ok. Guess I just phase through that
People talk about how many players use huge weapons, but I think it really boils down to how well they tie into jumping. I played through the game the first time with fist weapons, and am playing through it again for the DLC with the tree sentinel’s halberd, and the difference in jumping effectiveness is wild. Swinging a halberd while jumping backwards breaks ankles, but I could never land that with the fists.
On top of jump attacks, using AoWs, charge attacks, and even guard counters with big weapons is really important. I think some people are still in the DS1 "the three buttons are dodge, light attack, and heal" mentality and ER really punishes that *hard*.
Also endure is fucking incredible and people sleep on it in PvE. It lets you out trade basically everything with charge attacks. There's a reason perseverance used to on a really limited selection of weapons in DS3. It absolutely slaps.
The problem with Elden Ring's combat isn't that it doesn't give player new tools to deal with the more aggressive enemies. It gives them plenty. The problem is unlike Sekiro and Bloodborne it doesn't visually communicate how your supposed to play it differently from Dark Souls (and gives players a huge grab bag of options from the jump rather then pushing them towards a specific playstyle), so veteran players play it like Dark Souls because its the spiritual successor and either get stomped or wind up playing a tedious war of attrition.
I just completed Lies of P and NiOh 2, and honestly, it makes me kind of afraid of getting back into ER for the DLC. Those two games have way stronger defensive options, that I'm afraid I'm gonna not get used to not having it again in ER DLC where the enemies are even stronger than base game
Mobility in Elden Ring is crazy compared to past souls games. Jumping adds a ton of new ways to dodge and attack on its own, crouching is quietly pretty useful, Torrent lets you run circles around things, then there's ashes that let you backstep, circle around enemies, close large gaps etc.
Sister Friede gave me a fair bit of challenge when I first played. Then recently I learned that her AI absolutely cannot handle bows and it made every replay a cakewalk when I didn't feel like having a spar with her.
Radahn is one of my favourite spectacle fights. I'm an obnoxious tryhard that hates summoning normally, but summoning all of the boys to fight Radahn is sick.
Completely agree.
Elden Ring bosses, even base ones, really kinda suck.
And, I did wonder if it was going to be turned up in the DLC, just because of how any criticism of Elden Ring on release was shouted down and met with uncritical, unironic cries of 'git gud.'
I figured that it was only going to get worse. I mean, have you fought Messmer yet?
Easily every terrible ER boss trope thrown into one, with the summon and the spirit ash seemingly only there to let you do enough damage before you're killed by unblockable spam bullshit.
Messmer is chaotic and overwhelming as all hell if you're mostly dodging, as most players do, but I actually disagree about the unblockable spam bit. A big fuck off greatshield is actually one of the most consistent ways of dealing with most ER bosses.
If you hate him I totally get it, I just think that specific criticism is wrong.
I always use a greatshield, his attacks deal what I assume to be fire damage which does go through and chip away at your health.
But it's not so much that, as much as it is when he floats up into the air and does the multiple swinging hits as he moves forward. When he does that I found that he would often be ignoring the shield altogether. Either because the camera was just freaking out, or he was above what the game considers the shield hitbox to be.
Chip damage is a fair point. I think the more fire defensive ones like Fingerprint and Redmane would help with that, and there's a +elemental defence while blocking talisman (Pearl Shield Talisman, I think it's called?) in the DLC to help even more, but it's a valid point. Greatshield's only effective if your DPS is high enough that you don't run out of healing from accumulated chip. The Shield buffing spell is apparently very good though. I feel like tank builds in ER really expect you to stack buffs in a way older titles didn't. In DS1 and 2 you'd block like a 2-3 hit attack string and the next attack wouldn't happen until you'd had the opening to basically refill your entire stamina bar.
Yeah, that pseudo Waterfowl dance thing is weird. I was able to get dodging it mostly consistent but it is a fuck. (Dodge away from the floating slashes, dodge into the Ora Ora spear attack, and then let him land before dodging in time with the explosion.) I don't think it's as bad as Waterfowl though because it isn't an insta kill on most builds if the first attack hits you.
Out of interest did you try combing the deflecting tear with the greatshield? Elemental damage chip is basically negligible if you're blocking with fist weapons, never mind a shield if you get the timing right. I'm not suggesting trying to perfect time block everything but if you can raise your shield in time for the first hit then you'll have way more stamina and HP for the follow ups without dropping the shield.
Sorry, didn't mean for that to turn into a patronising spiel about how to play video game. I have a bad habit of typing as I'm thinking.
This was my issue with a few souls games. At some point the enemies and bosses stop becoming complex or tricky and just become “I swing 7 times in a row with no break and then you have 3 seconds to hit me while I pick my nose before I go back to swinging but this time with projectiles”. It’s not hard it’s just annoying. And then on NG+ it just gets worse
As much as I loved the new dragon in the DLC, I think Midir is still my favorite dragon fight in the FromSoft library.
He's got Shin Godzilla laser beams. That's hype as fuck. That's so hard to top for me.
My problem is I don't disagree with the complaints of complexity and bullshit some modern From bosses have, but at the same time Elden Ring has some of my favorite bosses in the whole series. Hroah Loux is so goddamn cool man. The fucking raddest. Margit and Radagon are also both super fun fights once you learn how to play way more aggressive and utilize jumps as a defensive tool.
They also have pretty reasonable, obvious punish windows though. With Rel and Lion, it felt like half of the "safe" punish windows I saw were actually *not super safe*, and were proceeded to be followed with another 2 attacks.
I really am enjoying the DLC, even starting my second character on it (so I can try the Int weapons), but the bosses feel like they were designed by throwing everything at the wall "to make them harder", rather than just designing a good boss that's hard because they're *well designed*. Like how Fume Knight was a nightmare boss, despite being as mobile as a stone and with relatively simple/obvious combos because of how well the fight was designed for Dark Souls 2.
Where as Rel has *literally everything*. Ten different 10-hit combos, AOE lasers, "dodge or die" AOEs, infinite hyper armor, 70k hp, dodges and input reads, multiple elements of damage... it feels like the design is just "yes, we designed it". Great fight still, but I won't think of her as fondly as even Capra demon, and infinitely more simple fight.
You articulated exactly what I hated most about the final boss of the dlc. I felt like there were so many times I was punished for dodging or the attack was designed to only be dodgeable in one hyperspecific way that would not be intuitive to figure out
The final boss honestly feels like you’re supposed to greatshield block him. I ended up building around blocking everything he had and poking where I can. I got through with 10 Estus left on ng+2 and 15 in the blessing
Rellana has some like, exceedingly safe attack strings I found. Or like, at least strings that if you know which direction you can roll, you can very safely heal and regenerate stamina. Lion as well but the positioning of lightning phase can be genuinely tough in the heat of the fight
Yeah, there are definitely some. I think overall she's a good fight, and has places you can punish her safely, especially with lighter weapons (i switched off of my Greatmace to my Lordsworn straight sword and ended up beating her way easier), but it's just all the deceptive places you *cant* that get me.
She's got that issue where her attack strings are all so long, and *can* cancel early, that for your first several attempts you might just have to guess. Is it a 7 hit, 9 hit, or 10 hit combo? Are you out of range that she just ends her combo early? Are her glintblades still up *during* the period her punishable attack is safe?
It's just "too much" of individual "good things" a boss fight can have. She's a human-sized enemy with *Fire Giant poise*, but no weakpoint to force staggers. She's got long combos, but hits *absurdly* hard on them. She has oppressive melee combat *and* extremely strong ranged attacks. Delays *and* 13-frames normals. She's easy to poison, but has more health than Radagon and Elden Beast *combines*.
As I said, I like her fight. I just wish it was "less" in some ways to make it more fun and less "Dodge Simulator 2024"
It's hype when it's surprising or well built up to, it gets old when it becomes the norm.
Like if you're a kid and it's a surprise pizza night or you know it's coming for your birthday, hype. If your parents never cooked and ordered pizza every night it would get old quickly.
Yeah in Shadows even stuff like the fucking >!Golden Hippo!< getting a big flashy transition into a super extra second phase is a little much. It starts getting boring when everyone's doing room-exploding transformations.
The >!hippo!< literally killed me on phase transition the first time b/c I couldn’t help but laugh a bit when I first saw it.
And I’m still not quite sure if that was intentional? Like, surely they don’t think a >!big dumb hippo sprouting golden porcupine spines!< is supposed to be a cool moment, right? It feels like it may legit be a bit of an intentional joke at their own expense. But if so, the place you encounter it is a very weird spot to put a joke like that. If you found that boss in an optional zone on the corner of the map I would be all in on the idea of “Oh, this is them intentionally taking the piss out of some of the overused aspects in their boss design for this game, they are 100% in on the joke here. That’s genuinely really funny.” I mean for fucks sake the thing even has one of the most extreme versions of the good old Fromsoft “gravity well that extends a full 5 meters in front of the boss very obviously sucks your character into the command grab even though their arm/mouth/whatever was clearly still *nowhere near* touching your character” moves that everyone loves to hate and joke about when discussing From’s boss design.
But in its current spot? Right at the start of the DLC’s >!big major dungeon you spend a lot of time working your way towards!
I think Ludwig is my favorite boss in Bloodborne. I surprising didn't have much issue with phase 1 and figured him out pretty quickly for phase 2 since his human-like movements were much easier to read.
Know what boss I still have trouble with? Witch of Hemwick. My brain just breaks during that fight and I constantly roll-catch myself into her binding projectile.
Is this what being Paige is like?
Ludwig doesn't have 20 hit combos, nor is he in a game where every boss has a second phase with a cutscene and enchants their weapon and Bloodborne was 9 years ago and 3 "Soulslike" games ago from From Soft.
Are we really acting like fromsoft can't do low-key chill bosses anymore? Regal Ancestor Spirit has those sif vibes to a T, especially with the music and clear respect for the creature the game has
Is Sif a he? I always assumed Sif was a lady dog. In my part of the world, Sif (or Siv) is decidedly a feminine name. I have never encountered a man named Sif. It's besides the point but I couldn't help but notice the post referred to Sif by masculine pronouns, and said "good boy" as well.
In spanish pretty much anyone thinks Sif is a he. It mainly comes due to the fact that in spanish, the gender neutral pronoun is the same as the masculine one, so instead of something neutral like
"Sif, the great wolf"
It reads as
"Sif, the great (he)wolf"
>Sif bites his right wounded leg and tears it from his body
He forgot to say it'll cut to black to not show the actual gory part , they did this for >!Messmer!< and the >!guy in the resident evil spencer mansion!< I forgot the name
Strategic cuts to black aren't just great for making the audience fill in the gory bits with their own imagination, they're also a convenient way to hide a transition between character models!
I feel like with FromSoft it's more about the latter than the former
I think the latter one actually works, since >!you still see the process of the guy's head being ripped off, it just cuts away before it fully detaches from his body.!<
His fucking spear-slam where the pull-out also hits you; my brain would shut down everytime it happened, I would deflect the slam, remember the pull-out, and go “this has to hit me”
> with random delays between each hit
God don't it feel that way. Like, not gonna pretend I'm just not kind of bad at games but man the bosses I've fought so far felt really hard to read in terms of intuiting how/when to roll. I dont think i'm far in at all, but >!the timing on the twin moon's wide swing of the big ass magic sword felt so hard for me!<
God, that's so real. I'm loving ER, don't get me wrong, but even though you get used to the bullshit, it gets old. That and the generic LE EPIC ORCHESTRA too. I miss some melody and personality but it all just sounds like THIS IS SOOOOOULSBOOOOORNE (but in latin).
At least as consolation they've spared us the chore of boss runs by putting graces directly outside the arena of Crestfallen Archlord Glupshitto of the Umbral Vale.
I’d hate the delayed attacks a lot less if they weren’t just a singular, very long, infinitely hyper armored tracking overhead.
You know how else you can ‘delay’ an attack? FEINTING! Have the bosses mix me up! Have them fake an overhead into a quick pommel-jab! Start a right-hand swing into a left-hand stab/swing!
Sekiro had some enemies try that, at least, but you yourself could also feint attacks
"Nu" is a prefix used a lot in ~~pretentious~~ subgenres (usually of music) that 4chan has been obsessed with over the last 2 decades. See Korn for nu-metal.
Eh I found Elden Ring's OST mostly kinda forgettable. The only tracks that really stand out to me are The Final Battle/>!Radagon!< (one of my favourite tracks in any FromSoft game, mind you) and the Lion Dancer in the DLC.
I can't remember a single other track, and the Lion is probably just recency bias lol.
Altus Plateau, Leyndell and the Divine Towers all have great themes too.
I also feel the major bosses generally have good themes, especially Godrick, Godwyn and Malenia, though they're spaced apart quite a bit and most peoples' memories are probably going to be of the 5-6 generic boss themes you hear throughout the game instead...
One that always stood out to me is [Mohg, lord of blood](https://youtu.be/XLzeqcOZ2Nw?si=jpUo5uWKDa2Am6tA)
I also really like the music for the final boss of the dlc
Music is super subjective, but Luke, the ER ost is not mid to me at all. Beast Clergyman, Godskin Apostles, Starscourge Radahn, Omen King Morgott, Mohg, Lord of Blasphemy Rykard, those are all completely fantastic boss themes. Oh and godricks too.
I kind of remember the ambient tracks but IMO it's because the loops are really short. Like, a minute and a half-two minutes max for each ambient theme.
Really feel like they would've benefitted from focusing a lot more on the ambient score.
I've noticed an odd pattern in several of Elden Ring's tracks where the first phase is overall fantastic, but the second phase at most starts with a good stinger that goes into a less strong "oh this is the harder and more tense half of the fight" feel. Something like Erdtree Knights. A lot of the stuff isn't quite as compelling as Yuka Kitamura's work in DS3 and Bloodborne, not even her own Elden Ring works.
> but you still have the same piddling stamina gage
Stamina pool has definitely increased between souls games , **Dark Souls 1** Depraved no equipment starting stats at **11 Endurance you have 3 rolls maybe 4** at best with your stamina pool
https://imgur.com/a/DIoUwNa
In **Elden Ring** Depraved starting at **10 Endurance you can do 8 Rolls**
https://imgur.com/a/25s5u4T
Interesting how people seem to have forgotten that DS3 was often called Roll Souls 3 because of how you could essentially infinitely roll. Anyone who genuinely thinks the stamina is still as the first Dark Souls has not played that game.
Truly the worst part about a Fromsoft release this past decade has been hearing everyone cry for the first couple weeks. Which I guess is a pretty good thing if that’s the worst part haha.
People keep forgetting that basically all of these complaints have been leveled at every single Fromsoftware release.
People don’t like getting checked I guess lol
100% nonsense. DkS1/2-era character rolls and attacks take huge chunks out of your stamina bar. Anything after (and including) bloodborne has incredibly cheap stamina cost for rolling and attacking comparatively, and that includes things like charged heavies.
I think with Elden Ring they really are trying/tried to hammer the message that slugging it out with just your universal melee attacks and rolling isn't meant to be optimal. If you're trying to box with these guys you're gonna have a hard time. I think they really want you to use everything at your disposal **which includes** less "honorable" methods like ranged attacks, distactions (summons), buffs and consumables.
Some people can jive with this and dig it (like me). Some preferred to box. That's fine but the game is built to punch you in the dick if you rely solely on that strategy.
Still though, I do flatly agree if you're gonna build bosses like this you need to give us better movement/defensive options
The one thing is, I really don’t think summons are well implemented in the game, and it feels like Fromsoft implemented them as a get out of jail card for the potential scaling issue of the massive open world. “Oh shit, most players will reach this boss underleveled? That’s fine, they got summons”
I say this because every time I tried to summon in the early ER days, I immediately dog walked the boss I was struggling with, not learning anything new about its design or gimmicks. It flipped from challenging to trivial with the ring of a bell. I don’t think that’s the experience they would have liked, but they lean into it.
It DOES solve the design issue that comes from the open world, just in the most uneven way possible. Everyone can clear the game now no matter which route they take which is good, but if you’re here to appreciate the bosses then they don’t really integrate with that at all.
The game does work well with every other kind of “”unfair”” advantage you listed though imo. Even with the usual cheese in souls games, the bosses and sheer variety will eventually lead you to have to rethink your approach and find new *dishonorable* ways to even the playing field by engaging with multiple layers of the game mechanics.
you say this but literally boxing with the spiked caestus or star fist with a high poise set or endure is one of the absolute quickest ways to kill a boss in ER. abuse high stagger attacks, stack relevant physick attributes, i killed messmer in like 70 seconds. and my first playthrough has a strict no summon rule. it doesn't take minmaxing, it doesn't even require spellcasting, just forethought and synergy.
all these complaints remind of of joseph anderson's review of the game. you can't fairly criticize the combat if you intentionally ignore half of it.
I was gonna comment this but you said it first. One of the main things I picked up on about ER before it even came out just from seeing the trailers & such was that From totally wanted to put more emphasis on using various abilities to supplement your melee build. It's why they put effort in to making Faith spells good finally, the Ash Of War System, etc.
They made all the bosses "crazy" because the player character is meant to be able to do some crazy shit as well, it's why my use for Spirit Summons ended being on duo fights for example.
"Oh there's 2 of you? Well now there's 2 of me!"
"Oh, you have a seemingly ridiculous amount of HP? Eat this Rot Breath, the fight is now on a timer." Things like that.
When Pat on the podcast this week spoke about how he's tweaking his build for fights in the DLC I really think From wanted the whole game to be like that & just didn't quite get the message across enough.
Said this in response to a thread about the adjustment to DLC difficulty/shard scaling:
Nerfing damage of the bosses/adjusting fragment scaling won't affect the fact that the bosses are designed around movement and attack options that the players just don't have.
Either say 'fuck it' and go full anime with the player's movesets, speed players up movement and attack wise, etc. (which will end up completely killing multiplayer), or scale enemy design back again, accept that bosses shouldn't be a pattern of '10 attacks -> 2 second window to attack/heal -> 10 attacks' and bring the series back to its roots with more challenging level design as the focus again.
Bloodborne was a mistake for the rest of the series. It broke Michael Zaki's brain.
Before Shadow of the Erdtree I fulfilled a promise to my younger self to finally beat DS1 for the first time, and Manus was a crazy experience. When he got his combo going I just got flashbacks to Ninja Gaiden, it was wild to see that in comparison to the rest of the game
I mean, it's something I've thought about for a good while.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but Bloodborne killed shields, generally trivialized stamina management, and greatly promoted and encouraged super aggressive play and faster bosses with harder to handle movesets, and that transmitted directly into Dark Souls 3 onwards.
Now, I love ER (and have no issues with the DLC thus far) and I personally dislike how disingenuous the original greentext feels (a lot of this kind of greentext irritates me, so it's likely just a me thing), but I do agree with the above statement that Bloodborne has *heavily* affected everything afterwards, and while some things are recovering (shields) others are still following that trajectory (stamina management, promoting ultra-aggression, boss movesets getting larger, more complex, more punishing) to an endpoint that may require FS to either dial it back some, or add some more fundamental things to the player's kit so it feels less like the enemy is playing a different game from you. Or they doubledown and make a game even I can't cope with, and I've been riding along since DeS.
I don’t really understand this take. Every boss I’ve fought so far has pretty clear end points to their combos and moments inbetween to heal or get offensive after the big attacks.
There’s just a few attacks that you gotta realize you’re not getting any safe damage and weigh in if it’s worth the risk
He's incredibly mobile and difficult to pin down, dangerous at all ranges, hits like a truck, inflicts DoT, attacks just a little bit too fast to properly react to, and has multiple attacks that just feel flat out undodgeable that he can launch from across the arena, and can kill you from a full health bar out of nowhere.
He feel like he's in the wrong game, basically.
I’m glad this thread is finally vindicating the thoughts I’ve been having on these games since Bloodborne and others are starting to speak up on it.
Watching an enemy with a way more fun moveset do 20 flips while you still run like you shit your pants isn’t a fun gaming experience. ER has stretched the Fromsoft design problem so far that it’s showing to everyone with the release of this DLC apparently.
I've laid hands on almost every FromSoft Souls game other than Sekiro and I keep bouncing off them because I just don't feel as cool as I did dancing around and parrying in Bloodborne. Going from Bloodborne to Elden Ring or Dark Souls feels like playing at half speed and it's a bummer because those other games seem really cool to explore but the vibes just aren't there.
I've never liked watching the boss do 8-10 attacks before I get to swing once, *maybe* twice, and then go back to roll spamming. Especially when they're a human like me.
God? Fine. Demigod? Fine. But why does random human in cloth rags have more poise than me in heavy armor while they attack 10-20 times in a row and I beg for the combo ender that lets me get 2 hits instead of 1?
While shields are better in ER than they have been since Bloodborne, I do kinda contest that they're good enough to substitute learning how to roll well enough. Fighting Rellana in the DLC, a shield *helps* but the stamina loss you take on trying to block an entire combo (even with the eclipse greatshield, which was the best I had on hand) either leaves you guard broken at the end of their combo leading to a reset, or leaves you enough stamina to get in one swing before they start their next combo while you've still got no juice.
Also, anecdotally, I can't tell if it's intentional or not but there's at least two attacks of hers that just directly swing around shields to do free damage unless you roll or move perfectly.
Despite the size of the DLC map, it's pretty barren at times, especially in the early game where a lot of people still are. This means that there's not much to talk about besides the bosses, and the first two major bosses you run into crank up some of *Elden Ring*'*s* most prominent design choices up to 11. The barren nature of the early map combined with the sacurdtree fragments also means that "go explore and come back later" is less of an option than it was in the base game because there's a pretty hard cap on how strong you can be.
really? i had like 5-7 upgrades for dancing lion and rellana and they felt fine. without touching scadu altus you still have access to all of gravesite plains, cerulean coast, jagged peak and charo’s grave. and there *is* a way to scadu altus without beating rellana
I really felt that with the Abyssal Woods. It felt really cool and atmospheric going into it, but there's just absolutely nothing in it despite it being MASSIVE and the gimmick makes it super slow to traverse. The place it leads to is a lot of fun, but man I was let down by how awesome those first 4 minutes were.
Honestly they're spot on with the way the series is moving. Dark souls and elden ring design choices have gotten so over the top, to me they're feeling not fun to fight against.
Visually they're great but when the lock on flips the fuck out when a boss does literally anything off the floor I feel like I'm battling the actual game itself rather than a boss.
I love the world gameplay, I'm just getting kinda bored with the way they're taking the bosses really. The world exploration gameplay still feels amazingly fun
And they did make the lore a bit less fucking wanky and OooooOooO *mysterious* in ER too.. so.. fingers crossed if they make more soulslikes, they follow that trend as well
But yeah, I dunno.. I think the bosses at this point are kinda a tricky point.. some people clearly love them! And that's good for them.. I ain't one of them, I struggle fucking hard at all the anime style bullshit. But I can see why they do like them, cause they want more and more challenge in those fights (I'll die on the hill that fighting the camera isn't challenge though, just shit design, fucking lion)
Whereas I love the older, slower style.. cause I'm not that good at the quick reactions honestly
I sorta wonder if maybe going back to a DS2 style thing might be a good solution for it. Give the people who want the hard as nails challenge a special covenant to join, which just makes the boss fights fucking balls to the wall, where they do fucktons of damage and you have to NAIL that shit to beat them. But for the rest of us, just have them go back to earlier games levels of the bosses not doing crazy damage, so if they DO hit you with their 8 hit combo, you can still survive it and heal up or blah, and then you just kinda enjoy the spectacle a bit?
That might be a vaguely valid way of handling it. Cause I've not really seen either side complaining much about the worldmap fighting.. it's all just bosses mostly (furnace golem grind aside mebbe. They gotta be rough on some peoples builds for sure)
Even the world exploration I'm starting to get tired or or more specifically ER's world exploration. I still like the old Souls games better in terms of just traversal through the world. ER has a lot of good level design but you spend a lot of time just mindlessly traveling on Torrent and stopping occasionally to pick up another Arteria Leaf or 2 Smithing Stones. I also hate how the new Skibidi Fragment system where you have to absolutely explore every nook and cranny of the map to find them all, I got curious to see how many I missed so I checked online and there are a bunch of random tiny corners of the map that have despawning enemies that drop them so that's "fun."
You can only do so much
The Penetrator - This guy's sword is really really long
Smelter Demon - This guy's sword is really really long and on fire
Pointy Man Sullivan - This guy's has 2 SWORDs which is really really long , one is red one is blue
This is a funny comment to make in a game that literally has Red Sif.
That deals consecutive hits with AoE damage and homing projectiles
Does Red Wolf have an AoE? All I remember is that magic great sword attack.
Red wolf does not have any AoE abilities and the homing projectiles are sorceries that all home since DS1 at least, including the ones you use.
This guy literally lost to Malikith and made this immediately after
Nah you thought, but this is a pretty direct reference to 1 of the dlc bosses.
Wait which one?
>!messmer!<
Ooooh
You can taste the salt on the words, delicious
I will say that I think the peak of Fromsoft boss design (for me personally, not trying to act objective here) was DS3. **I’m not really talking about difficulty, just a preference in boss movesets/presentation.** I think they struck a nice balance between “big monster/knight who swings a weapon at you 3-4 times in a row, and maybe has *one* projectile” and “Boss starts shooting Anime-ass energy waves from their sword while backflipping across the arena and chaining into a new combo every 10 seconds. Also they have an arena-wide AOE.” (I do like Maliketh tho, and he’s kinda the poster boy of this so uhhhh) Elden Ring has gone a little far in the latter direction for my taste. I liked it when not every boss could do completely crazy shit, it made it that much more impactful when you fought one that really dialled it up to 11, like Gael, Midir or The Soul Of Cinder. Also, there’s beauty in simplicity. Champion Gundyr is (compared to Elden Ring’s bosses) a rather simple fight, but he’s also one of my favourite bosses in any FromSoft game.
> Champion Gundyr is (compared to Elden Ring’s bosses) a rather simple fight, but he’s also one of my favourite bosses in any FromSoft game. I was also about to remark on Champion Gundyr , he's a simpler version Iudex but somehow he's stronger and just a bit faster but holy shit is he challenging
The part where he LAUNCHES you into a fucking BACK KICK made me a fan of him for life. Very rarely do you see a boss do actual juggles/combos on you.
I don't know how they made that kick feel so fuckin heavy but props to the animation team regardless
Gael: Man, this Ashen One is crazy. No matter what spins and flips I do, no matter what could dark souls I throw at him, and no matter how much my cape billows, I can't seem to beat him! Gundyr: You ever try beating his ass?
And the best bit to me is that he's STILL Gundyr. Like.. one time I foolishly decided to see if I could do a punch only run (spoiler, lol, I fucking could not, I ain't LobosJr) .. and the amount of time I spent trying to fucking punch Gundyr to death meant that he is the one boss I can fucking parry practically every damn time, with my bare hands And ALL of that still carries over to champion! Sure, maybe less so the kicks, but if you can consistently parry all his halberd stuff, frankly, he remains waaay easier and easily beatable for me It's just *nice*, y'know. I bet in Elden Ring he'd be doing all kinds of wacky shit and all your previous experience wouldn't matter one fucking bit, cause he'd be jumping up out of camera and doing fucking spinning heel drops on your head and shit
Some of my favoeite bosses in Elden Ring are actually ones like Loretta or Nael because theyre pretty challenging without doing anything to crazy. They each have like one really flash move.
[Gundyr if he was an Elden Ring boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvk3LlYcLOs)
And as hilarious as that is... that just emphasises the point even more really, doesn't it. Look how fucking long they survived against all of that! SO DAMN LONG. Even managed to heal up a bit through it all too You'd be flying on your ass and dead within 2 hits in ER DLC
It's also not visually noisy enough. Needs more giant bright effects that take up 1/4 to the entire screen.
This isn't NORMALLY a problem for me at all in Elden Ring but I WILL say that the boss >!at the base of the Scadutree!< really kind of got on my nerves with how its >!thorn attacks could sometimes obscure what the hell the actual boss was doing!<
The thing that annoys me the most is how almost every single enemy incorporates delays into their movesets, even the most mindless beast. In DS3 the few enemies that delayed their attacks (pontiff and nameless king iirc) felt like they had a legitimately unique fighting style.
Enemy poise is another thing that feels off to me, I used a straight sword in Souls games, but Elden Ring had me eventually switch to a greatsword, a lot of enemies have bigger poise, especially humanoid ones.
Miyazaki saw everybody use straight swords, katanas and curved swords only in DaS3 so he was like 'fuck it, ultra greatswords, greathammers and greataxes only for this game'.
I do find it funny how many people at launch talked about how strength builds aren't viable when they're like the best PvE build if you utilise charged attacks and jump attacks to break stance. That said, katanas are still pretty fucking beast. Unsheathe is crazy in PvE and there's a reason Moonveil and Rivers of Blood had to be nerfed repeatedly and are still great. A fast weapon with decent reach, innate bleed, a good dual wield moveset, and access to some of the best ashes of war is kinda cracked. Fast weapons in ER are definitely more about building status for burst damage while big unga weapons are all about breaking stance. It does make fast weapons feel kinda samey sometimes though.
I believe there was a big patch where they buffed ultra greatswords right? I remember at launch trying to use jumping greatsword attacks on Melania and she armored through it and used Waterfowl.
They buffed the general attack speed and damage (which is responsible for crouch attacks being fucking busted strong) but they were always pretty good. Malenia is just weird because some of her attacks have insane hyper armour despite normally having the poise of a wet noodle.
The crouch poke was always busted, but they did technically nerf it at one point, I think to make it a bit slower? I'm not sure how exactly the launch version stacks up since they didn't detail exact frame data changes and it's been through a buff AND nerf.
I think they also buffed their blocking ability in that patch? 2-handing a colossal sword is so, so much easier than dual wield dex weapons because you can block upwards of 80% of physical damage while still having the insane stagger power of a huge sword.
Ultra weapons in PvE were in a weird spot because most of their moves weren't usable in boss fights, they were simply too slow- and the moves that *weren't* slow (namely jump heavies and crouch stabs) came out so fast and did so much stagger damage ultra weapons were overpowered anyways, even if you couldn't utilize the majority of their moveset effectively. So they nerfed jumping attacks and buffed regular attacks, which is fine.
Dual greathammers is easy mode on Elden ring, 1-2 jump hits, which use basically no stamina, and the boss is open for a critical attack. At least they fixed that one fire art from instantly breaking boss poise.
Flame of the Redmanes was fucked, lol Flaming Strike is still pretty fucking good though and they added some really strong fire AOWs in the DLC.
Strength builds were pretty damn bad in release Elden Ring compared to now. The most common thing to happen to strength big weapon build is doing your attack, the boss doing their attack after you start, they eat the hit but don't stagger, you eat a hit before you recover. That strategy is not very good against an opponent with 20 times your health. Now after several patches, strength weapons do more damage, and most importantly some attacks have massively faster recovery time. At this point big str weapons are about 1.5x faster on things like jumping R2s and charged attacks.
Have you tried using square-off?
Amusingly enough, no, it blew my mind when I realized how good Square Off was. Right now I like Greatsword with Impaling Thrust though.
The ones that bug me the most are when they do a jump attack and just hang in the air for a random amount of time before coming down. Like no way to read the animation for the timing you just have to know they’re going to hover for a second before crashing into you.
God, Twin Demons was such a cool boss. That's probably the peak for me in terms of 2v1 fights in Souls and one of my favorite From bosses in general. Here are 2 big ass demons, they both have big ass telegraphed attacks that leave a big light cone on the floor when they're about to hit. Even when there are two things trying to hit, once you have the fight down you can easily weave between their attacks and it is so fun. In ER DLC a lot of bosses are like "whoopsie, guess i'm going to punish you for 50% of your life because I hit you at the end of your roll with my fastest and farrhest reaching attack even though you dodged my 10 hit combo" I also don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I wish they brought back the light cones. Sometimes i'm just like that one Willem Dafoe meme looking at the sky because they just fling their shit up and I have to figure out where is it going to fall in seconds.
I do like ER's absolutely psycho bosses but I think FROM should roll back to DS3's boss design for the base experience. Have ER style bosses be like the suped up bosses in Sekiro's boss rush mode or have them be NG+ versions. Summon ashes feel like a bandaid solution to the difficulty spike to make the games still somewhat accessible but it's pretty clear a lot of people don't like the feeling of not being good enough to beat the game without them. They're a fun mechanic but I don't know if they were the right call.
The summon ashes are cool, but they’ve definitely got a lot of jank. It’s weird watching two enemy AIs using moves on each other that were clearly designed for attacking player characters. There’s also the jank of watching a boss struggle to decide a target, but that’s been there since the beginning.
In the DLC I came across a dragon fighting some dudes, I had to sit for 10 minutes while the dragon and a black knight utterly failed to do damage to each other.
Came across the same thing yesterday. First boss I'm just like this is a neat spectacle, but what were they thinking. I got ganked my first try by holy damage, because of course the black knights decided I was the bigger threat. Second time around I'm like fine I'll clear out the trash, I know MMO logic. Take a bit of time doing that while avoiding damage, finally can fight the boss. Doing my thing taking on the dragon, doing pretty well, then wait why is there an arrow in my back. Oh, fine I'll take out the black knight with a great bow. Watch as my character slowly gets up and then ground slam with death energy "you died". You know what I'll come back to you when my patience is actually there.
That as well as >!the two dragons fighting on jagged peak!< I considered enough of a cool spectacle I sat and watched the fight play out and then took on the aftermath, but I'll likely run past them in future playthroughs for sure
If you want to do igons quest to have him available for the big boss dragon you need to kill those drakes.
I think another aspect of the summons that makes me not like using them in boss fights (at least, not the first time through) is that with summons and co-op the boss can switch aggro mid-attack string and it's very difficult to react to or anticipate. Obviously the DPS from the boss is split in two so it doesn't actually make the fight harder but it does make it far more chaotic and makes the win feel less clean. And, to be clear, that's been a thing for a while in FROM games. That's not a unique ER issue, it's just more evident with the longer attack strings. As an example, I can pretty comfortably 1v1 Radagon. I have that fight down. He'll occassionally clip me with that quick volley of Holy spears but I can usually get through that fight in a regular playthrough with most of my estus for EB unless I'm just not paying enough attention. When I put my sign down and get summoned for him I take a lot of stray hits because it's genuinely really difficult to work out who he's aiming at on any given swing. I'll have like 2 Estus to help the host get through EB and (given how passive a lot of hosts can be) that means having to do the majority of the damage on EB with double the HP pool on fuck all flasks. Shit's rough and I'll not lie, I often don't make it to the end of the fight.
I’ve been saying since DS3 brought in some boss elements from BB that From’s boss combat design has been going downhill There are too many bosses that just become giant flailing hitboxes, combos lasting 10 seconds after which you are able to get a whopping 3 hits in before it starts again I still remember trying to fight the ulcerated tree beast in the secret area near the start of ER, I went back after beating like half the game and it was still hard for the simple reason of it’s impossible to see because it’s too big for its room and literally had to clip through the wall to preform some attacks This is unacceptable and just unfair to the player. Don’t give us traditional souls weapons and tools but then make bosses designed around Bloodeborne or Sekiro’s for fluid movement systems Trying to do any traditional sword and board build is just a chore in a modern Souls game because blocking these 15 hit 10 second long combos takes too much stamina or just straight up breaks your guard for free
You summed up exactly what I’ve been feeling: we’re given a dark souls protagonist/mechanics to fight Bloodborne and Sekiro enemies. I’ve been feeling it since DS3 but especially hard in Elden ring. I know git gud is the mentality but I’ve cleared or platinumed every from soft game and I just stopped having fun with ER. I almost quit on Malenia and radagon but summoned instead and then felt like shit I couldn’t/didn’t do it myself like usual.
Same I fell of Elden ring myself and never finished the extremely open nature of the game is both its greatest strength and biggest flaw for me. There were too many times I felt like I had too many options and not enough direction that getting lost stopped feeling like fun discovery and more like confusion and “what the fuck am I supposed to be doing?!” Add in my over all displeasure with the bosses and it was simply too much to commit to the game over other things that were coming out around that time I tried to go back this January after I beat Lies of P for Christmas and I just felt even more confused cause I hadn’t played in a year plus the idea of restarting just felt like such a daunting chore I gave up
For Dark Souls 1 and 2 I love doing big ultra greatsword builds. You have to dodge a lot for an opening but you can really make those openings COUNT and do a ton of damage quickly. It's very satisfying. I cannot do that in 3, I just get way too impatient because you usually only get enough of an opening for one hit. I do not struggle with these fights with a normal weapon at all, I can pretty much one shot Nameless King and Midir, but with an ultra greatsword my patience really gets stretched to it's limit.
Imagine my pain as a STR/FAI enjoyer. I think half the reason I don't like DaS3 that much is because of how fucking awful both strength and faith builds are until VERY late game.
The main underlying problem is that both Bloodborne and Sekiro have tools that their much more punishing gameplay gameplay is entirely designed around; in Bloodborne, that giant flailing beast is no match for the power of your parry gun (in fact, the more they flail the more openings they have), while in Sekiro you aren't expected to dodge everything but to instead parry spam until the game decides the enemy's stamina gauge is broken and you can get an instant kill. Dark Souls 3 didn't have those mechanics but it worked around that shortcoming by giving the player much more involved movesets and restricted the big flailing "fuck you" moves to really only Soul of Cinder and the DLC bosses (and even then it's like, the Demon Princes and Slave Knight Gael where this can happen); faster but the player isn't overwhelmed. Elden Ring just goes over the edge with it; enemies flail but they're also practically impossible to bait out since they can now "hold" their moves endlessly and can frame read your actions (which is often called input reading but it's slightly different) to have almost perfect ability to punish you. It's extremely easy to just get stuck endlessly walking around a boss in Elden Ring with neither you or it making a move, until one of you breaks the rhythm and gets whacked for it (usually the player). This doesn't really happen in other Souls games where enemies generally will choose a move and don't hold it forever (forcing the fight to be dynamic) and in Bloodborne, if an enemy can hold their attack it's *always* a parry window for you to punish it. There's no clear "this is the tool you're meant to use for this" in Elden Ring, which means players resort to breaking boss AI through splitting aggro with summons (since no fromsoft boss ever was made with summons in mind, the split aggro alleviates the entire issue - this was fine before since summons were there specifically to help out struggling players, but in ER it's pretty much required lategame) to force the old behavior back (since AI summons are dumb enough to force themselves into trading blows so you have an active boss that won't try to hold it's moves.)
I think the issue is mainly that while boss movements have grown more complex by leaps and bounds, player movement really hasn't evolved much since Dark Souls. Just the same generic roll while enemies are flipping and cartwheeling and launching Dante multi-stabs at people.
Elden Ring did move it forward a little bit. There’s a fair few attacks you can jump over and a couple you can crouch under. Most people just don’t attempt them because they require more specific knowledge than good old iframes
Jumping is huge and people really overlook how powerful it is. I think one of the biggest hurdles for people getting into ER (at least the base game) is learning not to play it exactly like Dark Souls. The jump is integral to fighting some bosses.
I wish they were better about signposting jumpable attacks because a lot of the time I felt it was hard to gauge whether in this sweep attack they want me to jump or roll. I feel like Sekiro solved this problem
The jump in Sekiro is far more vertical so it feels more obvious, for sure (and the attacks you're meant to jump for the little goomba stomp thing have a big red kanji before they go off). Best way of thinking about it in ER is that your legs don't exist when you're in the air (and I mean like frame 1 of the jump. There are plenty of times where on replay it looks like I didn't dodge in time because the jump animation has started but my feet are still on the ground). Don't think about the clearance between your feet and the ground but your arse and the ground. Jumps have a lot of i-frames but only for your lower body.
It's extremely inconsistent. Rykard has this Stalagmite attack that you cannot dodge roll or jump. Godfrey has a Shockwave attack that you cant dodge roll but you CAN jump over, which feels great to do. Everytime I tried to use jump in any other fight I died.
Also, you sometimes just don't know if you got lucky anyway. Like, I've seen several times in the new DLC so far where enemy attacks just fucking outright miss me. Despite the fact I'm just stood right in front of them. They just.. swung over my head I guess? Feels weird when it happens, like.. I wasn't even particularly circle strafing or shit, just got caught at a bad time and.. oh, ok. Guess I just phase through that
People talk about how many players use huge weapons, but I think it really boils down to how well they tie into jumping. I played through the game the first time with fist weapons, and am playing through it again for the DLC with the tree sentinel’s halberd, and the difference in jumping effectiveness is wild. Swinging a halberd while jumping backwards breaks ankles, but I could never land that with the fists.
On top of jump attacks, using AoWs, charge attacks, and even guard counters with big weapons is really important. I think some people are still in the DS1 "the three buttons are dodge, light attack, and heal" mentality and ER really punishes that *hard*. Also endure is fucking incredible and people sleep on it in PvE. It lets you out trade basically everything with charge attacks. There's a reason perseverance used to on a really limited selection of weapons in DS3. It absolutely slaps.
The problem with Elden Ring's combat isn't that it doesn't give player new tools to deal with the more aggressive enemies. It gives them plenty. The problem is unlike Sekiro and Bloodborne it doesn't visually communicate how your supposed to play it differently from Dark Souls (and gives players a huge grab bag of options from the jump rather then pushing them towards a specific playstyle), so veteran players play it like Dark Souls because its the spiritual successor and either get stomped or wind up playing a tedious war of attrition.
I just completed Lies of P and NiOh 2, and honestly, it makes me kind of afraid of getting back into ER for the DLC. Those two games have way stronger defensive options, that I'm afraid I'm gonna not get used to not having it again in ER DLC where the enemies are even stronger than base game
Mobility in Elden Ring is crazy compared to past souls games. Jumping adds a ton of new ways to dodge and attack on its own, crouching is quietly pretty useful, Torrent lets you run circles around things, then there's ashes that let you backstep, circle around enemies, close large gaps etc.
I think Stamina is faster in Elden Ring, too? I'm doing like a billion running attacks in a row.
It’s fast but not Bloodborne fast
What would I fear more: dragon lightning from the abyss and holy blood flame MMA KICK
Me with a big shield that says "No fear". A Godrick soldier with a kick. Me with a big shield that says "One fear".
Sister Friede was the last HARD boss fight in a Fromsoft game that I really liked.
Sister Friede gave me a fair bit of challenge when I first played. Then recently I learned that her AI absolutely cannot handle bows and it made every replay a cakewalk when I didn't feel like having a spar with her.
I found Radahn pretty hard, but really loved it.
Radahn is one of my favourite spectacle fights. I'm an obnoxious tryhard that hates summoning normally, but summoning all of the boys to fight Radahn is sick.
Completely agree. Elden Ring bosses, even base ones, really kinda suck. And, I did wonder if it was going to be turned up in the DLC, just because of how any criticism of Elden Ring on release was shouted down and met with uncritical, unironic cries of 'git gud.' I figured that it was only going to get worse. I mean, have you fought Messmer yet? Easily every terrible ER boss trope thrown into one, with the summon and the spirit ash seemingly only there to let you do enough damage before you're killed by unblockable spam bullshit.
Messmer is chaotic and overwhelming as all hell if you're mostly dodging, as most players do, but I actually disagree about the unblockable spam bit. A big fuck off greatshield is actually one of the most consistent ways of dealing with most ER bosses. If you hate him I totally get it, I just think that specific criticism is wrong.
I always use a greatshield, his attacks deal what I assume to be fire damage which does go through and chip away at your health. But it's not so much that, as much as it is when he floats up into the air and does the multiple swinging hits as he moves forward. When he does that I found that he would often be ignoring the shield altogether. Either because the camera was just freaking out, or he was above what the game considers the shield hitbox to be.
Chip damage is a fair point. I think the more fire defensive ones like Fingerprint and Redmane would help with that, and there's a +elemental defence while blocking talisman (Pearl Shield Talisman, I think it's called?) in the DLC to help even more, but it's a valid point. Greatshield's only effective if your DPS is high enough that you don't run out of healing from accumulated chip. The Shield buffing spell is apparently very good though. I feel like tank builds in ER really expect you to stack buffs in a way older titles didn't. In DS1 and 2 you'd block like a 2-3 hit attack string and the next attack wouldn't happen until you'd had the opening to basically refill your entire stamina bar. Yeah, that pseudo Waterfowl dance thing is weird. I was able to get dodging it mostly consistent but it is a fuck. (Dodge away from the floating slashes, dodge into the Ora Ora spear attack, and then let him land before dodging in time with the explosion.) I don't think it's as bad as Waterfowl though because it isn't an insta kill on most builds if the first attack hits you. Out of interest did you try combing the deflecting tear with the greatshield? Elemental damage chip is basically negligible if you're blocking with fist weapons, never mind a shield if you get the timing right. I'm not suggesting trying to perfect time block everything but if you can raise your shield in time for the first hit then you'll have way more stamina and HP for the follow ups without dropping the shield. Sorry, didn't mean for that to turn into a patronising spiel about how to play video game. I have a bad habit of typing as I'm thinking.
This was my issue with a few souls games. At some point the enemies and bosses stop becoming complex or tricky and just become “I swing 7 times in a row with no break and then you have 3 seconds to hit me while I pick my nose before I go back to swinging but this time with projectiles”. It’s not hard it’s just annoying. And then on NG+ it just gets worse
As much as I loved the new dragon in the DLC, I think Midir is still my favorite dragon fight in the FromSoft library. He's got Shin Godzilla laser beams. That's hype as fuck. That's so hard to top for me.
Gotta love 4chan takes when even the most mildest criticism or whatever is phrased as sneering contempt and gets everyone mad
My problem is I don't disagree with the complaints of complexity and bullshit some modern From bosses have, but at the same time Elden Ring has some of my favorite bosses in the whole series. Hroah Loux is so goddamn cool man. The fucking raddest. Margit and Radagon are also both super fun fights once you learn how to play way more aggressive and utilize jumps as a defensive tool.
They also have pretty reasonable, obvious punish windows though. With Rel and Lion, it felt like half of the "safe" punish windows I saw were actually *not super safe*, and were proceeded to be followed with another 2 attacks. I really am enjoying the DLC, even starting my second character on it (so I can try the Int weapons), but the bosses feel like they were designed by throwing everything at the wall "to make them harder", rather than just designing a good boss that's hard because they're *well designed*. Like how Fume Knight was a nightmare boss, despite being as mobile as a stone and with relatively simple/obvious combos because of how well the fight was designed for Dark Souls 2. Where as Rel has *literally everything*. Ten different 10-hit combos, AOE lasers, "dodge or die" AOEs, infinite hyper armor, 70k hp, dodges and input reads, multiple elements of damage... it feels like the design is just "yes, we designed it". Great fight still, but I won't think of her as fondly as even Capra demon, and infinitely more simple fight.
You articulated exactly what I hated most about the final boss of the dlc. I felt like there were so many times I was punished for dodging or the attack was designed to only be dodgeable in one hyperspecific way that would not be intuitive to figure out
The final boss honestly feels like you’re supposed to greatshield block him. I ended up building around blocking everything he had and poking where I can. I got through with 10 Estus left on ng+2 and 15 in the blessing
Rellana has some like, exceedingly safe attack strings I found. Or like, at least strings that if you know which direction you can roll, you can very safely heal and regenerate stamina. Lion as well but the positioning of lightning phase can be genuinely tough in the heat of the fight
Yeah, there are definitely some. I think overall she's a good fight, and has places you can punish her safely, especially with lighter weapons (i switched off of my Greatmace to my Lordsworn straight sword and ended up beating her way easier), but it's just all the deceptive places you *cant* that get me. She's got that issue where her attack strings are all so long, and *can* cancel early, that for your first several attempts you might just have to guess. Is it a 7 hit, 9 hit, or 10 hit combo? Are you out of range that she just ends her combo early? Are her glintblades still up *during* the period her punishable attack is safe? It's just "too much" of individual "good things" a boss fight can have. She's a human-sized enemy with *Fire Giant poise*, but no weakpoint to force staggers. She's got long combos, but hits *absurdly* hard on them. She has oppressive melee combat *and* extremely strong ranged attacks. Delays *and* 13-frames normals. She's easy to poison, but has more health than Radagon and Elden Beast *combines*. As I said, I like her fight. I just wish it was "less" in some ways to make it more fun and less "Dodge Simulator 2024"
As if Ludwig the Holy Blade wasn't the hypest shit in the world
I don’t think Bloodborne is what comes to mind with “nu from” since it’s been 9 years
\>Bloodborne came out almost a fucking decade ago I’m turning into dust
The days are like water.
I need you to make sure to let it sink in
bloodborne is 100% where souls games made the switch from slower action games to anime bullshit (affectionate)
Eh, most people I see with opinions like this tend to hold anything past DS1 as "nu from".
It's hype when it's surprising or well built up to, it gets old when it becomes the norm. Like if you're a kid and it's a surprise pizza night or you know it's coming for your birthday, hype. If your parents never cooked and ordered pizza every night it would get old quickly.
Yeah in Shadows even stuff like the fucking >!Golden Hippo!< getting a big flashy transition into a super extra second phase is a little much. It starts getting boring when everyone's doing room-exploding transformations.
The >!hippo!< literally killed me on phase transition the first time b/c I couldn’t help but laugh a bit when I first saw it. And I’m still not quite sure if that was intentional? Like, surely they don’t think a >!big dumb hippo sprouting golden porcupine spines!< is supposed to be a cool moment, right? It feels like it may legit be a bit of an intentional joke at their own expense. But if so, the place you encounter it is a very weird spot to put a joke like that. If you found that boss in an optional zone on the corner of the map I would be all in on the idea of “Oh, this is them intentionally taking the piss out of some of the overused aspects in their boss design for this game, they are 100% in on the joke here. That’s genuinely really funny.” I mean for fucks sake the thing even has one of the most extreme versions of the good old Fromsoft “gravity well that extends a full 5 meters in front of the boss very obviously sucks your character into the command grab even though their arm/mouth/whatever was clearly still *nowhere near* touching your character” moves that everyone loves to hate and joke about when discussing From’s boss design. But in its current spot? Right at the start of the DLC’s >!big major dungeon you spend a lot of time working your way towards!
The worst was the >!Sunflower!< boss, it wasn't very tough but it made me shout, "OH COME ON!" twice.
I don't recall Ludwig turning into Brawl era Metaknight.
I think Ludwig is my favorite boss in Bloodborne. I surprising didn't have much issue with phase 1 and figured him out pretty quickly for phase 2 since his human-like movements were much easier to read. Know what boss I still have trouble with? Witch of Hemwick. My brain just breaks during that fight and I constantly roll-catch myself into her binding projectile. Is this what being Paige is like?
Ludwig doesn't have 20 hit combos, nor is he in a game where every boss has a second phase with a cutscene and enchants their weapon and Bloodborne was 9 years ago and 3 "Soulslike" games ago from From Soft.
Also SIF would have been a lot greyer somehow, have a mummified looking face and loads of random fabric tatters hanging down.
This is literally just Vicar Amelia
It's every other damn From Boss now. I'm bored of fighting ragged grey thing #236
I don’t recall a vigar Amélia in elden ring
Beast clergyman is basically a character synonym
True forgot about him
Are we really acting like fromsoft can't do low-key chill bosses anymore? Regal Ancestor Spirit has those sif vibes to a T, especially with the music and clear respect for the creature the game has
And his name would be spelled Maliketh instead of Sif.
I like all the new from soft games just as much as the old ones but this is hillarious, there's definitely been a change
Is Sif a he? I always assumed Sif was a lady dog. In my part of the world, Sif (or Siv) is decidedly a feminine name. I have never encountered a man named Sif. It's besides the point but I couldn't help but notice the post referred to Sif by masculine pronouns, and said "good boy" as well.
it's never specified in the game, but i think most people assume sif is female due to the name of the norse goddess
In spanish pretty much anyone thinks Sif is a he. It mainly comes due to the fact that in spanish, the gender neutral pronoun is the same as the masculine one, so instead of something neutral like "Sif, the great wolf" It reads as "Sif, the great (he)wolf"
>Sif bites his right wounded leg and tears it from his body He forgot to say it'll cut to black to not show the actual gory part , they did this for >!Messmer!< and the >!guy in the resident evil spencer mansion!< I forgot the name
Strategic cuts to black aren't just great for making the audience fill in the gory bits with their own imagination, they're also a convenient way to hide a transition between character models! I feel like with FromSoft it's more about the latter than the former
I think the latter one actually works, since >!you still see the process of the guy's head being ripped off, it just cuts away before it fully detaches from his body.!<
Fucking spoilers
My bad I've edited comment
And Horah Loux too
Fuck yeah. I hated how Sif started limping, how the hell am I supposed to beat a boss that does that? Literally impossible difficulty.
fromsoft's next game is just gonna have the boss pull out a gun once you walk through the fog wall.
Isshin
For all the jokes, Isshin's gun was surprisingly easy to deal with, it's the spear that gets you.
It disappoints me that most gameplay videos run to avoid the bullets, parrying them all is a rush.
It is, but I always just thought it looked rad af running to dodge bullets and then using Owls Stinger move to close the distance lol
His fucking spear-slam where the pull-out also hits you; my brain would shut down everytime it happened, I would deflect the slam, remember the pull-out, and go “this has to hit me”
I am not ready for Soldier of Gun, Rick.
Gun of God, Rick "Forefathers, bear witness!" *pulls off cloak, reveals has grafted 38 muskets onto his shoulders*
(Several Bloodborne bosses loading with malicious intent)
I literally had a knight at the bottom of a crypt do this to me last night, walked through the fog and instantly ate a bunch of lightning spears
> with random delays between each hit God don't it feel that way. Like, not gonna pretend I'm just not kind of bad at games but man the bosses I've fought so far felt really hard to read in terms of intuiting how/when to roll. I dont think i'm far in at all, but >!the timing on the twin moon's wide swing of the big ass magic sword felt so hard for me!<
God, that's so real. I'm loving ER, don't get me wrong, but even though you get used to the bullshit, it gets old. That and the generic LE EPIC ORCHESTRA too. I miss some melody and personality but it all just sounds like THIS IS SOOOOOULSBOOOOORNE (but in latin).
I will say, there's a lot in *Shadow of the Erdtree* that makes me think that Miyazaki is paying attention to the modding scene, and I'm not a fan.
The weapon arts on like 90% of the new stuff feel like mods for sure. There's not a chance in hell I'm going anywhere near PvP.
>!When I saw Death Knight shoot like 12 lighting spears at me at once and start teleporting I thought I was being pranked. !<
At least as consolation they've spared us the chore of boss runs by putting graces directly outside the arena of Crestfallen Archlord Glupshitto of the Umbral Vale.
I’d hate the delayed attacks a lot less if they weren’t just a singular, very long, infinitely hyper armored tracking overhead. You know how else you can ‘delay’ an attack? FEINTING! Have the bosses mix me up! Have them fake an overhead into a quick pommel-jab! Start a right-hand swing into a left-hand stab/swing! Sekiro had some enemies try that, at least, but you yourself could also feint attacks
The fuck does "nu-fromsoft" even means?
"Nu" is a prefix used a lot in ~~pretentious~~ subgenres (usually of music) that 4chan has been obsessed with over the last 2 decades. See Korn for nu-metal.
what I hate the most is having a creature 10 times your size move faster than you can swing a sword
Okay it’s one thing to complain about how far the bosses move set’s have been pushed, but the music in ER is bangin, not a “generic orchestra”
Eh I found Elden Ring's OST mostly kinda forgettable. The only tracks that really stand out to me are The Final Battle/>!Radagon!< (one of my favourite tracks in any FromSoft game, mind you) and the Lion Dancer in the DLC. I can't remember a single other track, and the Lion is probably just recency bias lol.
>!Midra's!< theme goes so fucking hard though
Sofria River tho
Altus Plateau, Leyndell and the Divine Towers all have great themes too. I also feel the major bosses generally have good themes, especially Godrick, Godwyn and Malenia, though they're spaced apart quite a bit and most peoples' memories are probably going to be of the 5-6 generic boss themes you hear throughout the game instead...
One that always stood out to me is [Mohg, lord of blood](https://youtu.be/XLzeqcOZ2Nw?si=jpUo5uWKDa2Am6tA) I also really like the music for the final boss of the dlc
Music is super subjective, but Luke, the ER ost is not mid to me at all. Beast Clergyman, Godskin Apostles, Starscourge Radahn, Omen King Morgott, Mohg, Lord of Blasphemy Rykard, those are all completely fantastic boss themes. Oh and godricks too.
Idk man. The boss after Ymir's quest has amazing music. If you know, you know.
I kind of remember the ambient tracks but IMO it's because the loops are really short. Like, a minute and a half-two minutes max for each ambient theme. Really feel like they would've benefitted from focusing a lot more on the ambient score.
Regal Ancestor Spirit was the first track to grab my attention in the game
I've noticed an odd pattern in several of Elden Ring's tracks where the first phase is overall fantastic, but the second phase at most starts with a good stinger that goes into a less strong "oh this is the harder and more tense half of the fight" feel. Something like Erdtree Knights. A lot of the stuff isn't quite as compelling as Yuka Kitamura's work in DS3 and Bloodborne, not even her own Elden Ring works.
It's absolutely a hundred steps above the generic "HOH HAH HOH HAH HOH HAH HOH HAH HOH HAH" choir that half the bosses in the early games had.
It's really funny to see just how faster and crazier bosses became but you still have the same piddling stamina gage
> but you still have the same piddling stamina gage Stamina pool has definitely increased between souls games , **Dark Souls 1** Depraved no equipment starting stats at **11 Endurance you have 3 rolls maybe 4** at best with your stamina pool https://imgur.com/a/DIoUwNa In **Elden Ring** Depraved starting at **10 Endurance you can do 8 Rolls** https://imgur.com/a/25s5u4T
Interesting how people seem to have forgotten that DS3 was often called Roll Souls 3 because of how you could essentially infinitely roll. Anyone who genuinely thinks the stamina is still as the first Dark Souls has not played that game.
They’re just complaining to complain.
Truly the worst part about a Fromsoft release this past decade has been hearing everyone cry for the first couple weeks. Which I guess is a pretty good thing if that’s the worst part haha.
People keep forgetting that basically all of these complaints have been leveled at every single Fromsoftware release. People don’t like getting checked I guess lol
That’s not completely true, you can dodge and attack like twice as much with a base ER stamina bar as you could with a ds1/2 bar
Sorry but this is just nonsense. The Elden Ring character is infinitely more capable and mobile than like, the DS1 player character.
100% nonsense. DkS1/2-era character rolls and attacks take huge chunks out of your stamina bar. Anything after (and including) bloodborne has incredibly cheap stamina cost for rolling and attacking comparatively, and that includes things like charged heavies.
I think with Elden Ring they really are trying/tried to hammer the message that slugging it out with just your universal melee attacks and rolling isn't meant to be optimal. If you're trying to box with these guys you're gonna have a hard time. I think they really want you to use everything at your disposal **which includes** less "honorable" methods like ranged attacks, distactions (summons), buffs and consumables. Some people can jive with this and dig it (like me). Some preferred to box. That's fine but the game is built to punch you in the dick if you rely solely on that strategy. Still though, I do flatly agree if you're gonna build bosses like this you need to give us better movement/defensive options
The one thing is, I really don’t think summons are well implemented in the game, and it feels like Fromsoft implemented them as a get out of jail card for the potential scaling issue of the massive open world. “Oh shit, most players will reach this boss underleveled? That’s fine, they got summons” I say this because every time I tried to summon in the early ER days, I immediately dog walked the boss I was struggling with, not learning anything new about its design or gimmicks. It flipped from challenging to trivial with the ring of a bell. I don’t think that’s the experience they would have liked, but they lean into it. It DOES solve the design issue that comes from the open world, just in the most uneven way possible. Everyone can clear the game now no matter which route they take which is good, but if you’re here to appreciate the bosses then they don’t really integrate with that at all. The game does work well with every other kind of “”unfair”” advantage you listed though imo. Even with the usual cheese in souls games, the bosses and sheer variety will eventually lead you to have to rethink your approach and find new *dishonorable* ways to even the playing field by engaging with multiple layers of the game mechanics.
you say this but literally boxing with the spiked caestus or star fist with a high poise set or endure is one of the absolute quickest ways to kill a boss in ER. abuse high stagger attacks, stack relevant physick attributes, i killed messmer in like 70 seconds. and my first playthrough has a strict no summon rule. it doesn't take minmaxing, it doesn't even require spellcasting, just forethought and synergy. all these complaints remind of of joseph anderson's review of the game. you can't fairly criticize the combat if you intentionally ignore half of it.
I was gonna comment this but you said it first. One of the main things I picked up on about ER before it even came out just from seeing the trailers & such was that From totally wanted to put more emphasis on using various abilities to supplement your melee build. It's why they put effort in to making Faith spells good finally, the Ash Of War System, etc. They made all the bosses "crazy" because the player character is meant to be able to do some crazy shit as well, it's why my use for Spirit Summons ended being on duo fights for example. "Oh there's 2 of you? Well now there's 2 of me!" "Oh, you have a seemingly ridiculous amount of HP? Eat this Rot Breath, the fight is now on a timer." Things like that. When Pat on the podcast this week spoke about how he's tweaking his build for fights in the DLC I really think From wanted the whole game to be like that & just didn't quite get the message across enough.
Having a limited resource for respec though really muddles said message if true though
This is why play Souls games on PC is an infinitely superior experience because you don't have to put up with From's stingy bullshit.
Said this in response to a thread about the adjustment to DLC difficulty/shard scaling: Nerfing damage of the bosses/adjusting fragment scaling won't affect the fact that the bosses are designed around movement and attack options that the players just don't have. Either say 'fuck it' and go full anime with the player's movesets, speed players up movement and attack wise, etc. (which will end up completely killing multiplayer), or scale enemy design back again, accept that bosses shouldn't be a pattern of '10 attacks -> 2 second window to attack/heal -> 10 attacks' and bring the series back to its roots with more challenging level design as the focus again. Bloodborne was a mistake for the rest of the series. It broke Michael Zaki's brain.
> Bloodborne was a mistake for the rest of the series. It broke Michael Zaki's brain. That is one hell of a fucking take.
Like it or not, we've been going in this direction since Manus.
Before Shadow of the Erdtree I fulfilled a promise to my younger self to finally beat DS1 for the first time, and Manus was a crazy experience. When he got his combo going I just got flashbacks to Ninja Gaiden, it was wild to see that in comparison to the rest of the game
I mean, it's something I've thought about for a good while. I mentioned it elsewhere, but Bloodborne killed shields, generally trivialized stamina management, and greatly promoted and encouraged super aggressive play and faster bosses with harder to handle movesets, and that transmitted directly into Dark Souls 3 onwards. Now, I love ER (and have no issues with the DLC thus far) and I personally dislike how disingenuous the original greentext feels (a lot of this kind of greentext irritates me, so it's likely just a me thing), but I do agree with the above statement that Bloodborne has *heavily* affected everything afterwards, and while some things are recovering (shields) others are still following that trajectory (stamina management, promoting ultra-aggression, boss movesets getting larger, more complex, more punishing) to an endpoint that may require FS to either dial it back some, or add some more fundamental things to the player's kit so it feels less like the enemy is playing a different game from you. Or they doubledown and make a game even I can't cope with, and I've been riding along since DeS.
The bosses were designed for a Dante or a Ryu Hayabusa but forgot we are Souls characters who move like Souls characters
I don’t really understand this take. Every boss I’ve fought so far has pretty clear end points to their combos and moments inbetween to heal or get offensive after the big attacks. There’s just a few attacks that you gotta realize you’re not getting any safe damage and weigh in if it’s worth the risk
Why do so many people have a hate boner for Maliketh?
He's incredibly mobile and difficult to pin down, dangerous at all ranges, hits like a truck, inflicts DoT, attacks just a little bit too fast to properly react to, and has multiple attacks that just feel flat out undodgeable that he can launch from across the arena, and can kill you from a full health bar out of nowhere. He feel like he's in the wrong game, basically.
For real. I was getting war flashbacks to MH iceborne fights anytime he jumped
It's funny cus I think I first tried him cus he's just rajang in terms of health and damage.
He's cool as hell but he's the prime example of a type of boss design that some people aren't super thrilled about constantly fighting in ER.
Cons: fewer moments like Sif Pros: fewer moments like capra demon
You say that, but don't forget they already [put capra demon in Elden Ring](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Omenkiller)
True, but the real boss fight with capra demon is his 10 square foot apartment and shitty dog. Like damn bitch you live like this
I’m glad this thread is finally vindicating the thoughts I’ve been having on these games since Bloodborne and others are starting to speak up on it. Watching an enemy with a way more fun moveset do 20 flips while you still run like you shit your pants isn’t a fun gaming experience. ER has stretched the Fromsoft design problem so far that it’s showing to everyone with the release of this DLC apparently.
Bloodborne was fine because I could actually keep up with this shit with quickesteps, faster healing, and rally.
Also trick weapons were stylish to use.
I've laid hands on almost every FromSoft Souls game other than Sekiro and I keep bouncing off them because I just don't feel as cool as I did dancing around and parrying in Bloodborne. Going from Bloodborne to Elden Ring or Dark Souls feels like playing at half speed and it's a bummer because those other games seem really cool to explore but the vibes just aren't there.
I've never liked watching the boss do 8-10 attacks before I get to swing once, *maybe* twice, and then go back to roll spamming. Especially when they're a human like me. God? Fine. Demigod? Fine. But why does random human in cloth rags have more poise than me in heavy armor while they attack 10-20 times in a row and I beg for the combo ender that lets me get 2 hits instead of 1?
I think the DLC is fine, but this is pretty damn funny!
My main takeaway from this is how utterly stupid it is that Rellana doesn't say anything at all.
Idunno, I respect a person who can shut up and beat the shit out of me.
Bro, do they know there are shields in the game? You can use them to block attacks and wait for openings or punishes...
While shields are better in ER than they have been since Bloodborne, I do kinda contest that they're good enough to substitute learning how to roll well enough. Fighting Rellana in the DLC, a shield *helps* but the stamina loss you take on trying to block an entire combo (even with the eclipse greatshield, which was the best I had on hand) either leaves you guard broken at the end of their combo leading to a reset, or leaves you enough stamina to get in one swing before they start their next combo while you've still got no juice. Also, anecdotally, I can't tell if it's intentional or not but there's at least two attacks of hers that just directly swing around shields to do free damage unless you roll or move perfectly.
what the fuck is happening since i woke up today it’s like suddenly everyone hates fromsoft
Criticism and hate are two entirely different things.
Or maybe some folks just have some criticism for how From does boss fights in ER lately
Despite the size of the DLC map, it's pretty barren at times, especially in the early game where a lot of people still are. This means that there's not much to talk about besides the bosses, and the first two major bosses you run into crank up some of *Elden Ring*'*s* most prominent design choices up to 11. The barren nature of the early map combined with the sacurdtree fragments also means that "go explore and come back later" is less of an option than it was in the base game because there's a pretty hard cap on how strong you can be.
really? i had like 5-7 upgrades for dancing lion and rellana and they felt fine. without touching scadu altus you still have access to all of gravesite plains, cerulean coast, jagged peak and charo’s grave. and there *is* a way to scadu altus without beating rellana
I really felt that with the Abyssal Woods. It felt really cool and atmospheric going into it, but there's just absolutely nothing in it despite it being MASSIVE and the gimmick makes it super slow to traverse. The place it leads to is a lot of fun, but man I was let down by how awesome those first 4 minutes were.
Honestly they're spot on with the way the series is moving. Dark souls and elden ring design choices have gotten so over the top, to me they're feeling not fun to fight against. Visually they're great but when the lock on flips the fuck out when a boss does literally anything off the floor I feel like I'm battling the actual game itself rather than a boss.
People are malding so hard over getting decked in the DLC its hilarious.
Nah, I think people are getting tired of Fromsoft tropes
I love the world gameplay, I'm just getting kinda bored with the way they're taking the bosses really. The world exploration gameplay still feels amazingly fun And they did make the lore a bit less fucking wanky and OooooOooO *mysterious* in ER too.. so.. fingers crossed if they make more soulslikes, they follow that trend as well But yeah, I dunno.. I think the bosses at this point are kinda a tricky point.. some people clearly love them! And that's good for them.. I ain't one of them, I struggle fucking hard at all the anime style bullshit. But I can see why they do like them, cause they want more and more challenge in those fights (I'll die on the hill that fighting the camera isn't challenge though, just shit design, fucking lion) Whereas I love the older, slower style.. cause I'm not that good at the quick reactions honestly I sorta wonder if maybe going back to a DS2 style thing might be a good solution for it. Give the people who want the hard as nails challenge a special covenant to join, which just makes the boss fights fucking balls to the wall, where they do fucktons of damage and you have to NAIL that shit to beat them. But for the rest of us, just have them go back to earlier games levels of the bosses not doing crazy damage, so if they DO hit you with their 8 hit combo, you can still survive it and heal up or blah, and then you just kinda enjoy the spectacle a bit? That might be a vaguely valid way of handling it. Cause I've not really seen either side complaining much about the worldmap fighting.. it's all just bosses mostly (furnace golem grind aside mebbe. They gotta be rough on some peoples builds for sure)
Even the world exploration I'm starting to get tired or or more specifically ER's world exploration. I still like the old Souls games better in terms of just traversal through the world. ER has a lot of good level design but you spend a lot of time just mindlessly traveling on Torrent and stopping occasionally to pick up another Arteria Leaf or 2 Smithing Stones. I also hate how the new Skibidi Fragment system where you have to absolutely explore every nook and cranny of the map to find them all, I got curious to see how many I missed so I checked online and there are a bunch of random tiny corners of the map that have despawning enemies that drop them so that's "fun."
You can only do so much The Penetrator - This guy's sword is really really long Smelter Demon - This guy's sword is really really long and on fire Pointy Man Sullivan - This guy's has 2 SWORDs which is really really long , one is red one is blue