It's pretty clear the intended path is to go toward stormveil, get blocked by Margot, explore limgrave into the Weeping area, then do Stormveil. Caelid will either push your shit in or make you go fuck this creepy place, so you avoid it.
tbf, I think Elden Beast has been changed a bit since release. I've *heard* you chase him around a lot less, and he uses melee over ranged attacks more but I'm not 100% sure on that. I can't specifically remember how much he used to fly around compared to week 2 vs nowFinally beat Elden Ring today! Only took me like 2 months, but I persevered!
Here are my final thoughts on the game:
- My thoughts on enemy aggression haven't changed. There are certain attack that seem almost impossible to dodge with the Dark Souls III-style movement in Elden Ring. Thankfully, I also learned to take advantage of the other options the game has for defense, such as guard counters and the more forgiving parry.
- I ultimately wound with an Arcane/Dex build (yeah yeah, boo me) since I found out Bleed is broken as fuck and would trivialize certain bosses. I mohg'd Mohg before he even entered his second phase and I was honestly confused, everyone online said he's supposed to be one of the hardest bosses in the game.
- Almost every area in this game is breathtaking to behold, and it's nuts how Elden Ring manages to achieve this all the way through to the end.
- Farum Azula is the typical pain in the ass endgame level that almost every FromSoft game seems to have, with incredibly annoying enemies, awkward platforming, bottomless pits everywhere, and a confusing layout that discourages exploration. Like Eddy, I discovered I hate birds.
- My Ashes ended up carrying me through a lot of the game, but given the way Elden Ring is balanced it didn't feel like cheating like it did in the Dark Souls games.
- Elden Ring does a much better job getting you to care about NPCs than the earlier Souls games. Yes, in typical FromSoft tradition, there's a 98% chance things won't end well, but damn if I didn't want to see Millicent and Alexander's stories through to the end.
- On a related note, despite the sheer scale I never ran across any areas I could honestly call phoned-in. The fact exploring in the oddest nooks and crannies turns up items and encounters shows they took great care building every little detail of this game to a degree shown by nobody else except maybe Rockstar (call RDR2 and GTAV what you want, but you can't call them lacking for detail). Elden Ring really feels like it needed 6 years to make, and not just because of bloat.
- I honestly thought Radagon was harder than the Elden Beast. The only hard thing about the Beast is its massive healthbar and its homing attacks.
- If there's something this game nailed better than anything I can ever remember playing, it's the feeling of progression from nobody to godhood. I can't remember the last time I played a game that truly felt like such a incredible triumph, where the sheer amount of time I spent in the game made it feel like I actually accomplished something. The Souls games tend to be good at this, but Elden Ring gets number one in my list of the most epic games I've ever played.
- That said, with this game being so massive, I'm not sure if I'm going to do a NG+ like I did with the earlier Souls games. It took me 2 months to beat this one with the limited time I have for video games, I now want to move on to other games in my backlog. I did really enjoy my time with this game, and I will never forget it.
I'm on NG6 and I don't feel like EB's teleing has gotten better. I feel like I only see it use its sword when its doing the 4 ranged swipes.
Elden Ring is only as hard as you want to make it for yourself. If you really want, you can look up builds, strategies, and farming spots that trivialize the game. Then on top of player summons and NPC summons as with previous games, there are now also Spirit Ashes (upgradable enemy mob summons) to make bosses easier on yourself. Take into consideration to what extent you want to rely on these various kinds of summons or just take on your world's bosses solo. It's pretty much the main way to set the game's difficulty. Personally, I thought that bosses were appropriately challenging solo play and not really balanced well with summons included. If I found a boss too difficult, I just go exploring somewhere else and return later.
The sayings that ER is the easiest Souls is true. You have more techniques at your disposal to overcome anything.
NG+ takes only a few hours to beat.
Put points into HP. For a while. I had some real trouble when a larger enemy or boss could smack me, survivable, then blow me a kiss and I died while getting up.
The way all souls games handle things is that every level up (or every other level at higher levels) provides a slight increase to defense.
Glad to hear it as I'm not really in the mood for something ULTRA difficult right now.
For bosses, MH actually translates pretty well. Smaller mobs may give you some grief until you get into the flow of things, but being used to item management, learning boss movesets and timing, and knowing you can’t just brute force it will prepare you for most medium to large bosses.
Try Bewitching Branches....
As soon as I went after River of Blood, the game turned into Onimusha. Give that a shot, you might enjoy it.
Pretty much, bosses will kill you in about 3 hits, 4 max. All of their attacks have telegraph, so nothing super unfair.
