Elden Ring

[filthyfrench]

Only issues I genuinely have with the game is that

1) its difficulty reminds me more of Elex than other from soft games, which means the later half of the game might not be as difficult as the first.

2) the bosses tend to incorporate bad traits of both DS3 and Sekiro, which makes them more annoying than fun.

3) due to how sparsely populated the game world is, finding sidequests, dungeons and extra shit is annoying

4) the Worldbuilding and lore feels like dog shit compared to the other games.

Overall though, those are small complaints and the game is utterly fantastic. Don't know if its better than BOTW, but being the second best "ubisoft game" is still pretty damn good.

 

[Urbanmech]

Has anyone tried out the Armament spells? Just curious if they are worth it or not.

 

[Haramburger]

A lot of the issues I have with DS 1 just comes down to the placement of bonfires and NPC's. Bed of Chaos is the most egregious example but there's more where if you fail you have to backtrack 5 minutes to get back to where you were. Or, if you need to get to a specific NPC like a blacksmith that's another 5 minutes of running to get there.

The other issue I have is that once you get fast travel you cannot travel to just any bonfire and that just creates more needless time wasting. I'm not saying fast travel needed to be available from the get go. But once you get it there is no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to travel to any bonfire you have visited just like every other subsequent game has done. It's for that reason whenever I go through Blighttown to fight the spider I don't rest at a bonfire and just homeward bone out of there the instant I beat the spider.

Then there's other niggling things: getting boss weapons didn't need to be made so very cryptic. Then there's some boss fights that are just bad. Capra Demon isn't difficult at all it's JUST THAT FUCKING TREE THAT BLOCKS YOUR LINE OF SIGHT. That tree didn't need to be there. Because of that tree and the extremely small arena it forces you to play a very specific way to just kill the Capra Demon ASAP. Oh, and if you failed at the fight because of that fucking tree or the hit-detection just fucked you over when killing one of those dogs and you get stun-locked and the Capra Demon one shots you, guess what? ANOTHER 5 MINUTES OF RUNNING BACK TO THAT SPOT.

Centipede Demon: terrible fight. You have to play a very specific way and just stay on this narrow platform waiting for it to come at you. Not a hard fight at all once you know what to do but it's badly designed.

Bed of Chaos needs no introduction. The main problem I have with this fight is the 5 minutes it takes to get back to this boss every single time you fail. Just put a bonfire next to the boss and the Remastered version could have easily done that.

Gravelord Nito: again, not a hard fight once you know what to do. But, staying in a little spot and just hugging the boss and tanking aoe or equipping a holy weapon to get rid of the basic bitch skeletons was just poorly thought out.

I don't know what to think of the Four Kings but it suffers from the same problem where if you fail you have to backtrack 5+ minutes.

Oh and stun-locking is bullshit. I was glad to see that gone in the later games.

It's a japanese game doing japanese things. Your entire post could be slightly modified to describe Tower of Druaga or the first Legend of Zelda and it would be a 98% match. The japanese love games that are an absolute cunt to you, and they crave the pre-wiki days and sharing discoveries in the first week via 2ch and IRC. We're just eating their leftovers.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

General Radahn feels like the Bed of Choas of this game. Really cool concept that loses its novelty quickly just as soon as you realize how much RNG is involved in your success. At least it doesn't take five minutes to get back to gambling with where his attention sticks.

I feel really bad for pure-melee builds that don't have access to a ranged option, so for-sure try to keep an eye out of a ranged weapon that scales with your primary attributes, or a melee weapon that doubles as ranged if you happen to be focused purely on melee. It's still possible to do the fight like that, but it'd be even more frustrating than it already is.

 

[BrunoMattei]

It's a japanese game doing japanese things. Your entire post could be slightly modified to describe Tower of Druaga or the first Legend of Zelda and it would be a 98% match. The japanese love games that are an absolute cunt to you, and they crave the pre-wiki days and sharing discoveries in the first week via 2ch and IRC. We're just eating their leftovers.

I get that but this aint 1984. But there's no "discovery" or "Wiki chan" bullshit to forcing the player to waste 5+ minutes every single time to re-do a boss or get to an NPC. But I also get that's a weirdly obstinate nip thing where things have to do be done a certain way because reasons.

I suffer as a STR user. It feels like Bloodborne with Dark Souls 2. Anytime I stagger a boss they recover much faster than I can and ranged builds are preferred it seems.

It seems like they designed multiple bosses and mini-boss types specifically to fuck over 2-hand Strength players.

 

[endangeredspecies]

don't play your first go with spirits or NPCs or summon fighting the bosses.
makes game so much easier and boring.
learned it the hard way.
Only good thng to do there is lvl up

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'm about 15-ish hours in. I do like it but it's not as good as the Souls trilogy. Note: I didn't like Sekiro and didn't like Demons Souls (original) when played on an emulator. Waiting for the PC ports of Bloodborne and the Demons Souls remake.

There's design elements that completely goes against how Souls is designed. Example: you see a large group of enemies or 1-2 tough enemies around an item. There's a risk/reward element where do you go out and face them to get the item? Do you sacrifice however many souls you have and go for a suicide run to get the item? And etcetera. That's really not a thing in Elden Ring. You can just run by all the enemies or use the horse and get the item and go.

Another thing is that a lot of the bosses are really easy excluding the likes of Margit. I feel like this game is going to get a pass regarding that despite Dark Souls 2 doing the same thing: a majority of the bosses are really easy especially if you've played a Souls game before. Okay, Dark Souls 2 had a lot of humanoid bosses and there's obviously more of a mix going on in Elden Ring regarding boss design. If you encounter a really tough boss then you can fuck off, go explore, level up, find shit to upgrade the flask, etc. You couldn't really do that too much in Souls. You were mostly forced to git gud without going the DSP route and grinding weak enemies and dumping points over several hours.

INB4 some fag goes "This isn't Souls! It's Elden Ring!"

Yeah, it just plays almost exactly like all previous Souls games. Totally different experience... By the same logic then Bloodborne isn't Souls. You can make more of an argument that Sekiro isn't Souls.

Edit: I think FROM is generally bad at enemy A.I. Allow me to explain. Combat-wise the A.I. is fine but everything else sucks. Stealth exists in Elden Ring (as it did in Sekiro) but that's just it. It exists. You don't need to do it because you can just run by the enemies. Unlike Sekiro, the time to use stealth is when back-stabbing strong enemies and that's it. Use it when you have to but otherwise it's optional and as I mentioned earlier you can just run by most of the enemies even when you're indoors.

It looks like FROM doesn't know what to do with stealth. If you have stealth in your game then you need good A.I. in order to make that rewarding.

 

[caonima]

I'm about 15-ish hours in. I do like it but it's not as good as the Souls trilogy. Note: I didn't like Sekiro and didn't like Demons Souls (original) when played on an emulator. Waiting for the PC ports of Bloodborne and the Demons Souls remake.

There's design elements that completely goes against how Souls is designed. Example: you see a large group of enemies or 1-2 tough enemies around an item. There's a risk/reward element where do you go out and face them to get the item? Do you sacrifice however many souls you have and go for a suicide run to get the item? And etcetera. That's really not a thing in Elden Ring. You can just run by all the enemies or use the horse and get the item and go.

Another thing is that a lot of the bosses are really easy excluding the likes of Margit. I feel like this game is going to get a pass regarding that despite Dark Souls 2 doing the same thing: a majority of the bosses are really easy especially if you've played a Souls game before. Okay, Dark Souls 2 had a lot of humanoid bosses and there's obviously more of a mix going on in Elden Ring regarding boss design. If you encounter a really tough boss then you can fuck off, go explore, level up, find shit to upgrade the flask, etc. You couldn't really do that too much in Souls. You were mostly forced to git gud without going the DSP route and grinding weak enemies and dumping points over several hours.

INB4 some fag goes "This isn't Souls! It's Elden Ring!"

Yeah, it just plays almost exactly like all previous Souls games. Totally different experience... By the same logic then Bloodborne isn't Souls. You can make more of an argument that Sekiro isn't Souls.

Edit: I think FROM is generally bad at enemy A.I. Allow me to explain. Combat-wise the A.I. is fine but everything else sucks. Stealth exists in Elden Ring (as it did in Sekiro) but that's just it. It exists. You don't need to do it because you can just run by the enemies. Unlike Sekiro, the time to use stealth is when back-stabbing strong enemies and that's it. Use it when you have to but otherwise it's optional and as I mentioned earlier you can just run by most of the enemies even when you're indoors.

It looks like FROM doesn't know what to do with stealth. If you have stealth in your game then you need good A.I. in order to make that rewarding.

As someone who only played sekiro and had to give up on nioh 2 eventually, I'm really enjoying this game, it's hard and I'm dieing a lot, but with the open world opportunities to go find some cave or somewhere to get some more souls and level up a bit before the next boss it makes it feel half like I've got to git gud, and half like if I level my stuff up a bit more that'll help git more gudder.

 

[CHARizard]

Level 104 right now, avoided this thread for spoilers but I am already through all the main story stuff I care about now.

This game really hits everything I want in a game. Exploration with purpose (loot, interesting locations) and a large variety of bosses. The glitches were really shitty first day with stutters, but seems to be ok after that.

The summon mechanic is awesome, but extremely overpowered once you get a certain one.

Spoiler: Summon spoiler

Theres a mimic summon that copies you character exactly, down to inventory and spells. I have had it solo several bosses for me. You get it with the Ranni questline

Spoiler: Major game crashing glitch, late game boss

The fucking Fire Giant fight sucks, if you get to phase 2 while mounted it will hard crash your game everytime. Make sure to dismounnt before letting him hit the 50% marker.

Didnt want to doublepost but I wanted to mention I am using a strength build and I am currently using a Golden Halberd +9 and Chained Flail +21 with the bleed shield. Bleed is absurdly good at chunking bosses down in this game and the shield has 70 bleed loss built into its bash, so I can bash, flail, bash, flail and get blood loss off. Starting to put points into faith and more magic stuff for all the buffs.

 

[Gimmick Account]

Still no idea what the 40FTH Nerdtree Seal is for. I have it at +8 (it uses somber so only goes to +10) and it still seems worse than the Godslayer Seal was at +20. And it doesn't even have a bonus.
It's 0 weight though so I guess that's cool.

I'm about 15-ish hours in.

You're too early in. For example the game has enormous dungeons you can't use a horse in that put together are probably bigger than a regular souls game, so risky items are just as common as ever. The overworld is different because you get to use a horse, because they added a horse. Why would it be better if it played exactly the same on horseback?
Also as soon as you start saying shit like "the bosses are easy except the ones that aren't" you should realise your opinion is retarded.

 

[Fools Idol]

I'm about 15-ish hours in. I do like it but it's not as good as the Souls trilogy. Note: I didn't like Sekiro and didn't like Demons Souls (original) when played on an emulator. Waiting for the PC ports of Bloodborne and the Demons Souls remake.

There's design elements that completely goes against how Souls is designed. Example: you see a large group of enemies or 1-2 tough enemies around an item. There's a risk/reward element where do you go out and face them to get the item? Do you sacrifice however many souls you have and go for a suicide run to get the item? And etcetera. That's really not a thing in Elden Ring. You can just run by all the enemies or use the horse and get the item and go.

Another thing is that a lot of the bosses are really easy excluding the likes of Margit. I feel like this game is going to get a pass regarding that despite Dark Souls 2 doing the same thing: a majority of the bosses are really easy especially if you've played a Souls game before. Okay, Dark Souls 2 had a lot of humanoid bosses and there's obviously more of a mix going on in Elden Ring regarding boss design. If you encounter a really tough boss then you can fuck off, go explore, level up, find shit to upgrade the flask, etc. You couldn't really do that too much in Souls. You were mostly forced to git gud without going the DSP route and grinding weak enemies and dumping points over several hours.

INB4 some fag goes "This isn't Souls! It's Elden Ring!"

Yeah, it just plays almost exactly like all previous Souls games. Totally different experience... By the same logic then Bloodborne isn't Souls. You can make more of an argument that Sekiro isn't Souls.

Edit: I think FROM is generally bad at enemy A.I. Allow me to explain. Combat-wise the A.I. is fine but everything else sucks. Stealth exists in Elden Ring (as it did in Sekiro) but that's just it. It exists. You don't need to do it because you can just run by the enemies. Unlike Sekiro, the time to use stealth is when back-stabbing strong enemies and that's it. Use it when you have to but otherwise it's optional and as I mentioned earlier you can just run by most of the enemies even when you're indoors.

It looks like FROM doesn't know what to do with stealth. If you have stealth in your game then you need good A.I. in order to make that rewarding.

So the the game's design goes completely against how the Souls games are then but also plays the same? Sure it's got tons of Souls DNA but it is still a different game. What it sounds like you wanted is Dark Souls 4.

 

[SomeDingus]

I'm around level 65 right now, and the sword I've been using (The Bloodhound's Fang +5) has been shredding through everything it touches (Except some bullshit bosses like the one that lives in the Sellia Crystal Tunnel.) I'm honestly scared I'm not gonna find a better weapon for a STR/DEX build. I feel like it should've been in ANY other area instead of the starting one.

 

[Brain Problems]

Didnt want to doublepost but I wanted to mention I am using a strength build and I am currently using a Golden Halberd +9 and Chained Flail +21 with the bleed shield. Bleed is absurdly good at chunking bosses down in this game and the shield has 70 bleed loss built into its bash, so I can bash, flail, bash, flail and get blood loss off. Starting to put points into faith and more magic stuff for all the buffs.

+21?? Is that a typo? I just started using the Reduvian dagger and really love it. Finding upgrade materials in this game is a slog but I think I'm just spoiled with knowing where to go in the other games to get what I want. I ended up farming the Vulgar Militiamen because I didn't realise it needed 18 goddamn arcane to wield. The backstab damage is awesome.

For people who've finished the game or are balls deep: are there any bosses/enemies that are unstaggerable or unparriable that obviously wouldn't be? Like, I don't expect to parry a dragon swipe but if you were pro could you just parry any melee weapon type attack?

 

[Gimmick Account]

Things that use regular stones go to +25

I'm around level 65 right now, and the sword I've been using (The Bloodhound's Fang +5) has been shredding through everything it touches (Except some bullshit bosses like the one that lives in the Sellia Crystal Tunnel.) I'm honestly scared I'm not gonna find a better weapon for a STR/DEX build. I feel like it should've been in ANY other area instead of the starting one.

I mixed that up with the motherfuckers in Sellia Hideaway and was about to sympathise.
After my incants finally got good I went around the map cleaning up every cave boss and evergaol I'd missed, and went into those dicks overconfident and lost a whole level worth of souls.
Three crystal fuckers with magic who do huge plague damage, even more hatable than Fellstar Beast.
I just beat em in mushroom cosplay but geez, shitty trap if you're not geared up specifically since the cave's enemies aren't like that.

 

[CHARizard]

+21?? Is that a typo?

+20 sorry

Flails are fucking cool looking so I decided to go all in on this one since it scales with strength.

Spoiler: Spoiler about weapon upgrade mats

You can find Ball Bearings to give to the twin vendor in the Roundtable hold that let you buy Smithing stones 1-4 and Somber 1-4, I dont think theres any that you can buy after that sop its up to farming.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Ok so it's not item collecting that's going to fuck you over for runs

it's dialogue choices

Well at least it's open world so I can just head to the location next run.

 

[Shamino]

What do you lot think about twinblade weapons?. The basic one scale with both STR and DEX but the scaling rank is pretty low (D), so I have to keep alloting points in both stats or look for other twinblade that favor either STR or DEX more?.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

A lot of quality weapons only have D scaling between STR/DEX, since you're getting value from either of the two stats. The main advantage here is that they tend to do pretty good base damage, so you can just hit the requirements and then put some points into utility spell attributes, or buff up your health/focus/stamina. With how big the damage is on plenty of enemies, dumping a good bit into straight health isn't a bad idea, once you've got a weapon you like and stamina enough to use it effectively.

 

[Marissa Moira]

A lot of quality weapons only have D scaling between STR/DEX, since you're getting value from either of the two stats. The main advantage here is that they tend to do pretty good base damage, so you can just hit the requirements and then put some points into utility spell attributes, or buff up your health/focus/stamina. With how big the damage is on plenty of enemies, dumping a good bit into straight health isn't a bad idea, once you've got a weapon you like and stamina enough to use it effectively.

>sharing space with Dex fags
This is almost as shitty as the Dung Eater X Daenerys shipping that's going on.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I have played 2½ hours now and fuck those fast stone goblins. If they get a shot in my level 5 bandit is done.

Performance update: I actually checked RAM usage this time, it seems to use 5-6GB on top of everything else that is running in windows. I'm very early in the game so that might change a bit but of course their sysreq factors in the system itself using memory.
Their minimum spec seems to be high settings all across the board at 1080p which is interesting.