Elden Ring

[Scream Aim Fire]

This is going to sound retarded, but I find Elden ring to be the most difficult Souls game, not because it's actually hard, but because I want to play it like I did the older Dark Souls games, where being just a knight with a great sword was viable. If you knew what you were doing and played carefully you could use a sub optimal build and still have fun. Now the game has become so obtuse and demanding with its difficulty that if you aren't using every exploit available to you, you will get outclassed by nearly everything you haven't memorized.

This was my issue with ER as well; I prefer playing Sword/Axe + Greatshield, but it just never felt fun or viable in ER compared to the more "meta" builds because of the artificial difficulty. I don't hate the game, it just feels like FROM was trying too hard to cater to the no-life guys that want to make everything difficult.

How could from give Wylder the greatest grappling hook since Just Cause while making every other class hoof it across the map like plebs? I mean Ironeye is pretty fun but I keep craving that sweet, sweet grappling hook action.

I prefer dive-bombing enemies and teammates as Guardian, personally.

Really need to play the game more; got a ridiculous backlog of other games and crap that I need to finish up first, unfortunately.

 

[Sneedifarms]

You know you can enjoy something and criticize its flaws, ultimately if you do like the games you are fully aware of that they have things that can be criticized and pointed out as the bullshit they are and notice the improvements made

Except I have criticized the game too. I just don’t agree with copypasted /v/ talking points.

you can beat the entirety of Sekiro using only basic attacks and parries

You can beat the entirety of Sekiro using parries alone, this doesn’t disprove my point. Outside of Demon of Hatred, R1 is a borderline useless button and doing damage in and of itself is not the point of the game. In a way, the posture bar is the real damage bar.

The rhythm game is just better than the open world game and that's okay.

Not really, no.

it's just that I've seen what came before it and they did the same things better than it and it's also taken things those previous games did poorly and improved upon them.

Sekiro did a lot of things better than Souls games. It also did a lot of things, like build customization and replay value, worse. It’s hard to see it as a better game when it’s fundamentally so different.

 

[Nameless One]

Yeah, having a job makes you realise that the soulsbournes are overrated time sinks that are purposely designed to waste your time and make you feel your mortal existence decay every time you die. Great games none the less but there are better games.

Parrying in Sekiro damages the enemies posture bar, rolling only drains my stamina and does not damage the enemy in any way at all. Yes, you could use the armour of thorns set as the substitute but you're not given it from the start of the game whereas parrying is core to the combat for Sekiro in the same way as rolling is for the soulsbournering.

I recommend Nioh 1 and 2 and maybe 3. Very good games and they reward your time and skill and they're so optimized they can run 60fps on the PS4 (1 & 2). Team Ninja is such a better developer than Fromsoft when it comes to raw gameplay.

 

[Spud]

It’s hard to see it as a better game when it’s fundamentally so different.

It's my personal reason why it's the better game, I wanted ER to have an expanded version of the combat from Sekiro where every class has unique fighting styles with their own drawbacks and strengths, rather than just another numbers game.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

On the subject of Rykard, they really should have put the weapon against him in a quest somewhere else.

 

[Sneedifarms]

It's my personal reason why it's the better game, I wanted ER to have an expanded version of the combat from Sekiro where every class has unique fighting styles with their own drawbacks and strengths, rather than just another numbers game.

Sekiro made me realize how slow the turnaround is with implementing new features from experimental side-games into their main game. From my understanding, the reason Elden Ring has practically no Sekiro features is because the two games were developed concurrently; even though Sekrio came out 3 years before Elden Ring's release, somehow it was too late for FromSoft to implement stuff like a baseline deflect mechanic. On the other hand, once they started from scratch with the DLC, they were able to posthumously add it in using flask tears.

In a way, Nightreign is basically what you're describing. The combat is fundamentally still Souls rather than Sekiro, but all the classes play entirely differently with unique skillsets and moves. I very much enjoy it and I'm interested in seeing how they might implement these ideas into their next mainline game without crippling build variety like Sekiro did.

 

[Nameless One]

Every combat option and martial art in sekiro is both situational and meaningful because it's basically a new Tenchu in all but name and a few extra mechanics.
No souls game ever gave me the satisfaction even with variety that the tools in sekiro did (although fuck the long grinds).

Everything has its purpose. Only really useless thing is the lizard form most players will never know about. I'd gladly take this over Souls "build variety", which is to say just achieving the highest set amounts of damage close combat or long range. I take great combat over build variety that involves traveling all the way to Nigger Lake in some obscure path you won't have any reason to revisit beyond getting the tools and talismans necessary for your own fucking build which worked better in semi linear souls games. Bloodborne and Sekiro deliver. Nightreign is just a frankenstein of souls slop mashed into something a modder could have done better if offered their tools.

 

[Incredible Mister]

A Godwyn boss would make zero sense in Elden Ring lore. The point of the guy is that his soul is completely dead. Zilch. Nada. His corpse is an unthinking inanimate tumor that uncontrollably spreads through the world. There is no circumstance in which a Godwyn boss would make any sense in the game beyond time travel fuckery, and Artorias of the Abyss this is not.a

When the BIG HAND grabbed you in ds1 and took you back in time to oolacile it made sense... because it just does ok it was good because the lore said it made sense, it wasn't just random bullshit to facilitate fighting a character the fans found cool. There's about a billion ways you could work Godwynn into the dlc without him even needing a soul, Miquella could steal his body or something, we could fight his corpse or a memory, but no, reddit told me the lore said it couldn't be done

 

[TheMonkeyMan]

I thought there were some extremely incomplete animations for a Godwin battle in the game’s code, did I just hallucinate that?

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

I thought there were some extremely incomplete animations for a Godwin battle in the game’s code, did I just hallucinate that?

i hallucinated it as well and there's a video of it somewhere on youtube. doesn't godwyn also shoot out homing skulls if you attack fia?

 

[Nameless One]

When the BIG HAND grabbed you in ds1 and took you back in time to oolacile it made sense... because it just does ok it was good because the lore said it made sense, it wasn't just random bullshit to facilitate fighting a character the fans found cool. There's about a billion ways you could work Godwynn into the dlc without him even needing a soul, Miquella could steal his body or something, we could fight his corpse or a memory, but no, reddit told me the lore said it couldn't be done

They brought back Radahn for no fucking reason and didn't bother to make him look like Mohg. Godwyn's big mermaid corpse has a model they could have used. Fuck lorespergs.

 

[Sneedifarms]

Every combat option and martial art in sekiro is both situational and meaningful because it's basically a new Tenchu in all but name and a few extra mechanics.

The entire Temple Arts skill tree was by and large a niche, with the exception of High Monk. Shadowrush and Shadowfall were also kind of useless in comparison to Floating Passage or Sakura Dance, which achieved similar movement with better damage.
As for prosthetics, I really don’t see people using Sabimaru or the Mist Raven much. Above all, I see the Shuriken for movement, the Axe for posture damage, the Umbrella for defense, and then niche items like the Loaded Spear, Flame Vent, Firecracker, and Divine Abduction for the handful of bosses and enemies where they apply.
As a whole, it’s a much better balanced game just because of how much less variety there is, but it’s still not perfect from a balancing standpoint. The only difference between it and the other Souls games is how much fat there is to be trimmed.

which is to say just achieving the highest set amounts of damage close combat or long range.

I managed to get a lot of gameplay milage building my characters around specific weapon types or schools of magic. The game becomes a lot more fun when you stop thinking about it in terms of minmaxing stats and start thinking about it in terms of what looks cool and how to make that work within a set level limit.

Nightreign is just a frankenstein of souls slop mashed into something a modder could have done better if offered their tools.

Have you actually tried playing it? Or are you just shitting on it because you heard some guy on /v/ refer to it as Fortnite Elden Ring?

When the BIG HAND grabbed you in ds1 and took you back in time to oolacile it made sense... because it just does ok it was good because the lore said it made sense, it wasn't just random bullshit to facilitate fighting a character the fans found cool. There's about a billion ways you could work Godwynn into the dlc without him even needing a soul, Miquella could steal his body or something, we could fight his corpse or a memory, but no, reddit told me the lore said it couldn't be done

Like I said, time travel is the bullshit copout solution. In this case, it’s clearly not what Miyazaki or FromSoft wanted (from the very start, he said the DLC would not involve time travel), so why cry about it when it was obvious from the getgo that it wasn’t going to be in the question?

To add to that, thematically speaking, the central conflict of the game starts with Godwyn’s death. He’s not a shardbearer at any point (unlike Miquella) and as such the player character thematically has no reason to fight him. I also think it’s a lot more interesting that his influence (deathroot, cultists, death knights, etc.) is a lot more pervasive than his actual self, much like Ranni who is the opposite side of the same coin.

I thought there were some extremely incomplete animations for a Godwin battle in the game’s code, did I just hallucinate that?

Not that I know of. I’d be interested in seeing it though, if it exists.

doesn't godwyn also shoot out homing skulls if you attack fia?

Definitely not, she does that herself.

 

[Incredible Mister]

Like I said, time travel is the bullshit copout solution. In this case, it’s clearly not what Miyazaki or FromSoft wanted (from the very start, he said the DLC would not involve time travel), so why cry about it when it was obvious from the getgo that it wasn’t going to be in the question?

To add to that, thematically speaking, the central conflict of the game starts with Godwyn’s death. He’s not a shardbearer at any point (unlike Miquella) and as such the player character thematically has no reason to fight him. I also think it’s a lot more interesting that his influence (deathroot, cultists, death knights, etc.) is a lot more pervasive than his actual self, much like Ranni who is the opposite side of the same coin.

What thematic reason is there to fight Commander Gaius Putrescent knight or Romina, these bosses are not shard bearers and have no significance to the plot or even lore until after you kill them

 

[Sneedifarms]

Commander Gaius

Best friends with both Messmer and Radahn, two major antagonists of the DLC.

Putrescent knight

Gatekeeper for St. Trina. Was quite literally a non-sentient pile of cursed flesh before she gave it purpose.

Romina

You're quite literally invading her home by trying to access the Sealing Tree. Despite how little relevance she has to the major players in the DLC, she's bizarrely enough telegraphed as a boss fight in the story trailer for the DLC. She's the lady holding the weird bulb object (according to her item descriptions, this turns out to be her spear in the actual boss fight) in the flames.

The point is, all of these bosses may not be major players in the lore, but nothing is stopping them from having some sort of direct conflict with the player character. On the other hand, not only would re-killing the guy whose very death led to the entire story of the game seem to be missing the point, but Godwyn's current place in the lore is effectively as the source of an unliving tumor that spreads unchecked throughout the world and has effectively become an entire new aspect of it that previously did not exist. It wouldn't be so different from demanding to fight and kill the Rot God that cursed Malenia; some of these beings are meant to be more powerful than the player character can comprehend in the Lovecraftian Bloodborne sense.

 

[Nameless One]

-snip fromdrone loresperging-

What was the significance in fromsoftware botching Miquella's intrigue pre-dlc with suddenly resurrecting Mohg and Radahn, the faggots you already fought just to enter the DLC? What was the significance with joining the Mohg follower only for them to just die by the end? I'd take Miquella fighting you with st. Trina or the goddamn sunflower instead over this gay and predictable shit.

Fromsoft DLCs usually involve their final bosses being an unseen plot element. This was their longest dlc to make and had interesting bosses somewhat, but that's their ending? Fucking what? You go from Artorias and Manus, DS2's dlc final bosses, Bloodborne's dlc bosses, DS3's, to this shit. It's like if you just made Nito or Sseath come back because reasons alongside Artorias or Gael.

This boss is if you just mashed Gwyn and Artorias or any other dead character into a resurrected character for a DS3 dlc and called it a day. I'd be less appalled if unseen characters you didn't get to kill were resurrected.

 

[Incredible Mister]

Best friends with both Messmer and Radahn, two major antagonists of the DLC.

So hes just a guy in armor with no speaking lines a la DS2, never mentioned before or after you fight him

Gatekeeper for St. Trina. Was quite literally a non-sentient pile of cursed flesh before she gave it purpose.

so hes a literal pile of shit never mentioned before or after you fight him

The point is, all of these bosses may not be major players in the lore, but nothing is stopping them from having some sort of direct conflict with the player character.

nothing is stopping the writers from creating a reason for Godwynn to be relevant

On the other hand, not only would re-killing the guy whose very death led to the entire story of the game seem to be missing the point, but Godwyn's current place in the lore is effectively as the source of an unliving tumor that spreads unchecked throughout the world and has effectively become an entire new aspect of it that previously did not exist. It wouldn't be so different from demanding to fight and kill the Rot God that cursed Malenia;

If the lore prevents me from fighting cool characters like Godwynn then the lore is shit and needs to be redone,

 

[Sneedifarms]

What was the significance in from botching Miquella's intrigue with suddenly resurrecting Mohg and Radahn, the faggots you fight just to enter the DLC?

I don't see what intrigue Miquella had in the first place beyond Youtuber fantheories. There were obviously plans in development for him to play some role relating to Malenia in the main game, but these were scrapped, likely to make way for their plans for the DLC. This is just one of many questlines that were cut but still exist in some substantial form in the base game; for example, Kale discovering the truth about the merchant caravan and the Frenzied Flame and gradually going insane, or Millicent originally being intended to essentially be groomed by the player character into becoming Malenia herself. For one reason or another (lack of time, excessively convoluted questlines, losing fondness for the idea, insert your reason here, etc.), none of these plans materialized.

Ultimately, creative work generally goes through multiple iterations that we never even think to imagine of before arriving at the final product, which usually results as a cumulative result through repeated iteration and derivation. Even something as immediately recognizable as the Ode to Joy melody from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony went through untold revision and reiteration, sometimes unrecognizable and downright bizarre, before arriving at a final version that has become universally recognizable and culturally iconic. There is little point beyond trivia for the end consumer to peer through such revisions and attempt to analyze them without the requisite theoretical and contextual background knowledge required to understand why certain decisions were made, regardless of one’s own agreement with them, which is definitely not something we currently have with FromSoft (but do have with Beethoven).

nothing is stopping the writers from creating a reason for Godwynn to be relevant

The problem is the exact opposite. Godwyn is extremely relevant in a way that makes direct conflict with him counterintuitive to the plot of the game.

If the lore prevents me from fighting cool characters like Godwynn

I don’t really understand why people are so fixated on Godwyn specifically. You fight practically every ally, scion, and minion that he has; is it really so vitally important to the story and combat of the game that you fight one of the only characters deliberately left outside of the player’s reach? Do you also demand to fight Velka or the Ancient Dragons in Dark Souls?

If anything, there are so many other interesting characters in Elden Ring that are left as footnotes and never appear in any substantial fashion. For example, the Blue Dancer that cured Malenia’s rot simply does not appear outside of item descriptions in the game, and there is an entire aspect of death in Elden Ring surrounding the Death Rite Birds and Tibia Marriners that simply goes unexplained for little reason. I would rather see figures like these tied into the game in a physical way rather than demand to fight the one character who exists not to be fought directly.

 

[Nameless One]

The dream + bestiary mechanic should have stayed.

"I don’t really understand why people are so fixated on Godwyn specifically. "

He is literally shown in the character intros jackass that's why. We fight every other character but him which is a rarity for their intros.

And then we see this:

And deathblighted crabs and other environmental afflictions likely from him. Like Stormveil. How the fuck don't you want to fight this? Are you some cuckold? That's gotta be it. Fromfags are all cucks for God Emperor Miyazaki's directorial misfirings.

Imagine if Gravelord Nito just up and died in the intro of DS1 and you never fight him just because the story said so, but you still explore his domain and all that's left are shitty gank squad phantoms from his faction to fight. And then you hug his wife at his coffin to end the quest. Fuck that shit.

It's the god damned DSIII archdragon peak giant dragon in the mountain and the old wolf of farron all over again and no one likes that. It's not very fun. Only for them to finally use them in Elden Ring. So yeah. Obviously people want to fight this Ungodly monstrosity, and you are actually fucking retarded to think otherwise.

 

[Sneedifarms]

The dream + bestiary mechanic should have stayed.

I get why they cut it, but I do agree it should have stayed in some form. Lots of weird mechanics that should have been there and weren't.

He is literally shown in the character intros jackass that's why.

So is Ranni. Are you begging to fight Ranni?

We fight every other character but him which is a rarity for their intros.

Not really, the Demon's Souls intro includes quest NPCs, not bosses. You can fight some of them, but that's obviously not the point of the intro. Not to mention the Elden Ring intro itself has a character lineup of more quest NPCs, this time of characters that can affect the ending (and also Gideon for some reason).

And deathblighted crabs and other environmental afflictions likely from him. Like Stormveil. How the fuck don't you want to fight this?

I fight all those environmental afflictions, and the numerous cults around him, and the game makes it clear that it's the extent of his influence because he no longer has a consciousness through which to directly enact his own will. Satisfying to me.

Fromfags are all cucks for God Emperor Miyazaki's directorial misfirings.

"It's a directorial misfiring because it doesn't satisfy the exact flavor of fanwank I demand!"

Imagine if Gravelord Nito just up and died in the intro of DS1 and you never fight him just because the story said so

Nito was framed as a major boss that the player ends up fighting. Godwyn was framed as a major plot point that occurs before the game. It's more like if you saw the Everlasting Dragons at the beginning of DS1 and went "why can't I fight those instead?". Beyond the fact that one is an amorphous concept and the other is a fairly substantial character with a real name, there is basically no difference between the two regarding their place in their respective games' lores.

It's the god damned DSIII archdragon peak giant dragon in the mountain and the old wolf of farron all over again and no one likes that.

Is it really though? We know those were intended to be some sort of boss because we have datamined animations from them that weren't used. People haven't posted the supposed bossfight animations of Godwyn yet. I'll believe it when I see it.

Obviously people want to fight this Ungodly monstrosity

Again, I don't, for the same reason I have no interest in fighting the Everlasting Dragons or Formless Odeon. If I wanted fanservice wankery, I'd just play the Convergence mod or some shit.

 

[VM_]

The dream + bestiary mechanic should have stayed.

"I don’t really understand why people are so fixated on Godwyn specifically. "

He is literally shown in the character intros jackass that's why. We fight every other character but him which is a rarity for their intros.
View attachment 7587064
And then we see this:
View attachment 7587067
And deathblighted crabs and other environmental afflictions likely from him. Like Stormveil. How the fuck don't you want to fight this? Are you some cuckold? That's gotta be it. Fromfags are all cucks for God Emperor Miyazaki's directorial misfirings.

Imagine if Gravelord Nito just up and died in the intro of DS1 and you never fight him just because the story said so, but you still explore his domain and all that's left are shitty gank squad phantoms from his faction to fight. And then you hug his wife at his coffin to end the quest. Fuck that shit.

It's the god damned DSIII archdragon peak giant dragon in the mountain and the old wolf of farron all over again and no one likes that. It's not very fun. Only for them to finally use them in Elden Ring. So yeah. Obviously people want to fight this Ungodly monstrosity, and you are actually fucking retarded to think otherwise.
View attachment 7587080
View attachment 7587083
View attachment 7587084

I view Godwyn as an Attis/Osiris figure, Marika as Cybele/Isis, and Ranni as Set (god of disorder/murderer of Osiris). Ranni touched the golden bough and challenged the King, but she botched the killing. Godwyn represents the sacrificial king/god who is ritually killed; his body infects the world as a result of the botched murder, and you are Horus/Jesus sent on a mission to potentially cure and revitalize the world after this botched murder. Now it wouldn't make sense to resurrect an already dead character in order to have a gimmick boss fight since you are fixing the world that resulted from his death and filling in for him as Elden Lord when you beat the game. That's the whole point.