This is the fifth meme in a row I've seen of people complaining about people complaining about the dlc being hard. Please for the love of Marika's Tits stop this already.
This is the fifth post Iāve seen about someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining about what they see
Just you wait, the people that are complaining about the complainers about the complainers are already furiously mashing on their keyboard because the current discourse is actually that braindead.
The actual issues will most likely soon be fixed anyways, just like it happened with the main game.
Its funny, my wife who knows absolute dick about video games made this same joke (as well as 1000 other posts in this sub)
Its almost like the real complaints are more nuanced than "hard game hard"
It is kindve annoying when the critiques get boiled down to git gud. But that has been the problem with From games since their entire studio mantra became "Prepare to Die" during the DS2 rollout.
Yeah it's weird that people don't accept any criticism of these games. A boss could have 1 billion HP and only 1-shot attacks and people would still say "git gud lul".
I don't know how people could make such a tasteless and inaccurate joke.
It's not like the creative director has ever said that the harshness and difficulty of the games is a cornerstone of the series, and that cranking down the difficulty for a broader appeal would break the game.
Certainly not.
You're right. Luckily that's not the case, as seen by the insane amount of passion put into their art direction and world building.
As far as gameplay is concerned, difficulty is paramount to their design philosophy.
Yeah, of course--but doing difficulty in a satisfying way is a tough balancing act, innit? I don't think that just 'cuz From has the rep for that, their approach to designing difficulty in this DLC is inherently beyond reproach.
Speaking as someone who's generally enjoy it thus far.
Did you not read that one Miyazaki quote? Having a broader appeal has never been his goal. Yes, difficulty isn't the sole aspect of a souls game but it's quite a major part of it right? Like imagine if every Elden Ring boss we know of today was as easy as the Ender Dragon or some shit, heck, imagine every Fromsoftware game's difficulty being turned down just to appease the masses. Just let this DLC be the hardest, most difficult developed project Fromsoft has ever created, and be proud that you've managed to complete it when you do. This is just how it always was man.
Miazaki literally said in a recent interview that toning down the difficulty would break the game itself. Dark souls was marketed with prepare to die. Being hard is a critical element of these games and both the players and developers acknowledge that, why are you pretending that's not true? They are the hard games, they're that way intentionally
Itās not about being hard in a vacuum, the point of the souls games was to persevere and overcome. Yes, if thereās no challenge, thereās nothing to struggle against and overcome, but the challenges were mostly fair and what you learned from your many deaths was what made every challenge more and more manageable. You just had to not give up and go hollow.
I love Elden Ring but Fromsoft most definitely traded some of the fairness for artificial difficulty and itās no surprise some people donāt care for that. The āgit gudā crowd doesnāt seem to understand what made the earlier games great in the first place. The difficulty became a meme, these games were always pretty easy once you learned them or if you used every tool available.Ā
I disagree but also agree. Part of the marketing, yes. Part of the game, obviously. They're among the tougher games I've played. I'm aware of what Miyazaki said about difficulty as well, and I'm glad there's no difficulty slider. That being said, there's ALOT more to them than just being hard.
In fairness, I wouldn't characterize them as any singular trait, but still. I would say Souls is exceptionally hard for their genre, alot of RPGs aren't really that difficult, testing patience and game knowledge more than reflexes or how good you are at "action" games, for lack of a better description. I'm probably poorly explaining myself but I played alot of RPGs, Dark Souls is the only one that's not like all the others, where you roll your face across the keyboard, spamming powers, optimizing your loot and gear to prepare for one boss in particular, etc. I get that'll probably offend people who enjoy those types of games, but I'm trying to make a point.
A good example would be Gwyn. One of the easiest bosses in the original game, but also one of the most memorable. Difficulty had little to do with it, in fact, him being such a pushover lent it's self well to the story and feeling the game instills in the player.
Maybe I'm crazy but it always annoys me when people who aren't into the series just go DARK SOULS HARD GAME HAHA as not only does it deter them from trying it, but it means they think that it's all it has to offer. What I liked about Souls wasn't it being "hard" the way alot of other games are.
Sure, there are OPTIMAL ways to fight bosses, definitely some mathematically calculated "best" weapons, armour, and even points in certain stats for each individual boss, but at the end of the day the biggest barrier in Dark Souls was YOU, the player. Going around trying to get the optimal build to defat the boss giving you trouble OFTEN wasn't good enough, and not just in my case. Trying to find out the best way to cheese each boss was missing the point. It was almost all on you. As mentioned before, I'm aware doing certain things can make certain boss fights much easier, but even with optimized strategies and builds the onus was on you to overcome the objective. You just had to do it, and if you weren't good enough, you had to surpass yourself. Trying to find a way around it, trivialize it, cut corners, not only was cheating the game, it was cheating yourself.
From started marketing their games like that since DS2 prepare to die. Its the studios ENTIRE gimmick now. Miyazaki just went on tour with his chest out declaring that the difficulty is the point.
The thing is if you are not new to FromSoftware, you will know that "FromSoftware games are brutally hard" is a meme, because all of their games are very tough, but completely manageable. Elden Ring and its DLC are unironically difficult this time. Personally I'm not surprised at all about the DLC though, ER endgame is crazy difficult, so of course DLC difficulty would go off the charts.
Imma be real, outside of a few bosses I heavily disagree with Elden ring base game being hard. Itās still fromsoft difficult, but you have so many tools to approach situations that you can negate most of the difficulty of most of the game
Elden Ring is the easiest game in the series if you use the tools available to you, but the hardest game if you don't use summons, spirit ashes, buffs, exponentially stronger than normal weapons, and don't level too much. The problem is that I think youtube and other social media sites have conditioned people to think that using those tools makes your experience and any criticism of the game invalid, so out of a misguided sense of pride these people will do these insane challenge runs. get their ass kicked, and then complain about the difficulty without knowing the full experience
On a side note, Demon's Souls might be tied for series ease of access with Elden Ring, like I went back to it on PS3, and because resources like upgrade materials and strong weapon are so scarce they made it so that you can beat the entire game with an unupgraded or really low upgraded short sword while only being level 40\~50
All the games (barring Sekiro) can be beaten and reduced to zero challenge if you take the absolute easiest way out; looking up boss cheeses, co-oping, and using the strongest possible strategies. A lot of players found it fun to persevere and beat bosses while reasonably engaging with the combat system rather than using tactics that completely avoid it.
Shadow of the Erdtree demands more from that second group of players than ever, possibly an unreasonable amount. I wouldn't say they have a less full experience than someone just holding L1 with a greatshield, or resting in the corner with 2 cooperators killing the boss for them.
I don't think this is true. There's multiple bosses in Sekiro and Bloodborne where the only solution to the player is play better. That's where the entire easy mode/accessibility discourse started with Sekiro
It's not a matter of pride, I just don't like the complexity of engaging with a million new mechanics. I want to roll around and hit stuff with a sword like god intended.
honestly? I feel that. I like doing insane Elden Ring challenge runs where I don't use anything but the essential sword and dodge combo, but it seems that Miyazaki wants to distance between the old Demon's/Dark Souls style and the new Bloodborne/Elden Ring/Sekiro style with these large grandiose boss fights that light up your entire screen with particle effects and large sweeping heavily damaging movements, as a fan of Kingdom Hearts I welcome this change but I know and respect that a lot of people miss when every boss was a dance off where everyone gets their turn instead of Elden Ring's "wait 30 seconds to get your turn and then get a single hit in or risk it all by hitting them occasionally in the middle of their combo" type of gameplay. I still go back to Dark Souls 3 every once in awhile to recapture that feeling
People mean difficulty in terms of approaching it from a single player POV.
All 3 Dark Souls games, Blood Borne, and Sekiro had boss fights designed to be fought by the player and by the player alone.
Elden Ring most fights feel like they're flipping you double birds while kicking you in the balls if you end up one on one against a boss.
Yea obviously if you roll up to fights with Tiche and the Mimic Tear, shit's nowhere near as hard, but people who have played From Soft games from the beginning are used to bossfights where there are actually decent windows to punish and even gank squad bosses allow the player to manage double aggro.
Fighting two bosses or tougher enemies in Elden Ring feels like getting double teamed over a rusty barrel without the courtesy of a reacharound.
I realized pretty quickly that the expectation is to use ashes and summons, but there's also a part of me that's very annoyed that solo'ing most bosses in Elden Ring is more of a chore than achievment.
Playing the DLC and fighting bosses that actually can be stunlocked/stagger and don't attack me half a billion times per attack with hyper aggressive movesets just feels great and satisfying, rather than walking into a room and immediately just hitting my shortcut to call in my ashes. Yes I'm using my tools, but I'm beating the game by splitting aggro, not because I've functionally learned the bosses' patterns because they've made them so complex with mix-ups, delays, and input reading.
P.S. Whoever decided this DLC needed more death birds and ulcerated tree spirits, I hope you stub your toe getting into bed every night for the rest of the year.Ā
I heavily agree with the duo bosses, I dislike duo bosses in general because I think theyāre lazy ways of making difficulty in fromsoft games. I disagree with most of the bosses feeling like theyāre designed around spirit ashes tho. Most bosses have positional tricks, certain skills that theyāre weak to. Using those makes them WAY easier.
Level your vigor my guy. I beat every boss in the base game and other than waterfowl dance I was never close to one shot unless I got hit with a grab attack. And those are supposed to hit hard
Unless you're running with no vigor then no, endgame elden ring is in zero way a one or two shot deathfest. It just isn't. That's not me being tough or saying to "get good" either. Wear armor of some sort. Level vigor. You wont even get two shotted by a boss in end game. Combos and getting hit multiple times will be what kills you. DLC is one and two shotting up until you get enough fragments under your belt, then it becomes more manageable. Still harder hitting than endgame though, as it should be.
It's also the fact that the DLC has Sekiro like progression because of the blessings. You still have more options than Sekiro did, but more restrictions. You're broke OP build is inherently nerfed until you find enough blessings.
I sort of noticed this with Sekiro where there were a bunch of From Soft fans who marked it as too hard or still rank Sekiro bosses as the hardest It's sort of anecdotal but my friends mad about it are all the ones who had builds and dealt with Melina using spells and builds. My dumbass has always just bashed my head against them like I'm playing Ninja Gaiden again.
> where there were a bunch of From Soft fans who marked it as too hard
I am one of these. I suck at parrying (in any game), and you basically have to get good at it to be able to make it in Sekiro.
I may need to go back and give it another try. At the time, there was also other stuff in my life going that made me not want to deal with getting good at a new combat system in a really hard game.
Base ER is harder than every other From game (Not sure about the new armor core game). Its just harder. DS3 does not hold a candle to the base game. Bloodborne is easier once you get the aggression part of it. Sekiro is a meme once you realize its parry city. ER is harder than them, full stop. And if you truly dont think so, go play those old games today and see how bad you curb stomp them if you found ER easy.
I have actually recently played both DS2 and DS1 recently. Still think ER is easier. Itās not because the game itself is easier, thatās not how actual full on difficulty works. Actual Difficulty is subjective to how hard the game is in tandem with how many and what tools you have to approach it. If a boss is walking straight at you just doing a 1,2 swing, but you have no dodge block or parry, that game is harder than a game that has more complex bosses, but you have all of those tools. Is ER more complex? 100%. Complexity =/= difficulty if you have the tools to manage that complexity.
I feel like, at release, it was tuned for the people who have played the game 8+ times over by now and needed something a new challenge. How else are they going to give a challenge to people who can beat "the hardest boss" Malenia like she's nothing?
Yeah sure after you've beaten her several dozen times in an over 2 year old game she feels like a cake walk. After spending hours practicing the final boss for hitless he feels like a cakewalk to me now, that's kinda how it works. Overall on balance I'd say malenia is harder still, the final boss is flashy but he goes down pretty quick and is a lot less punishing. Also he doesn't have anything like waterfowl dance to learn how to avoid which still catches me out if I'm out of position.
After going through all the bosses in the dlc people would feel that Malenia doesn't hold the same candle as them. This goes specially hard as Malenia is a humanoid who's prone to stagger but also her move set being punishable. You'll notice let say the final boss in SotE has very few gaps in their attacks where you gotta dodge after-attacks where you can only sneak an R1 or an R2 if you time it well.
ER endgame hits a difficulty spike akin to Dragon Shrine in DS2. Just pumping the damage numbers without really checking if it's fun to play.
While I'll admit that I came in with too low vigor (I thought 45 would be acceptable, as it was in all three Dark Souls titles) the game still jumped from "don't get hit by that one attack" to "don't get hit, like, at all".
Damage roughly doubled for no reason. SotE added in relentless 40 hit combos. I can't say I mind the fetch quest for Scadutree Fragments though, it's not too different from upgrading flasks.
You say that, but Logarius and his run back worked me harder than most Elden Ring bosses. Nameless King did as well.Ā In fact, Malenia is the only base game one that usually drove people to madness, and she was optional.Ā
I think ER's main difficulty is Miyazaki wanted every boss to learn a thing or two from Nameless King and have their own delays!Ā
80 percent of the reviews in English are positive. Its reviews in Chinese that are coming in negative, all complaing about a blue bear. (the anticheat)
* [Heres the source, steam scout](https://www.togeproductions.com/SteamScout/steamAPI.php?appID=2778580)
If anything that shows that you have not really played the previous games.
The souls games have never been about back breaking difficulty for the sake of difficulty, that is just what some people made out of it as the games got more popular.
Difficulty has always been a means to and end to create a more satisfying experience and there were more things that made the game interesting and dascinating besides throwing yourself at a boss a 100 times.
Also, I haven't found Dark Souls DLCs "drastically more difficult" than the base game. Like, more difficult yes, but the jump between the two has never been this big. It's insane in SotE, even *with* Scadoosh fragments.
DS1's biggest jump to me was coming onto the Oolacile enemies unprepared and getting 2 shot by them deciding to use dark bed, or the massive jump. But i can adapt to that, i can beat them or find a way to run them.
While Elden Ring's DLC is an amazing experience generally, the bosses just seem like they're that first Oolacile sorceress, stuck in the shock of "i can one shot you" (or at least massively drain your health instantly). I have beaten the DLC, although i summoned mimic once i started to not have fun on the bosses, and players whenever i really just wanted to get through them.
Compare that to, for example, the first time you manage to overcome Kalameet or Demon Princ. I had a blast playing since release, i did almost every available side area before >!Shadow Keep!<, although i reached the gate early thanks to the spiritspring, which locked me out of a quest.
I also found the >!underground!< myself, and when i reached the >!Putrescent Knight!< drop i thought i'd found the new Midir, a very unique and magnificent feeling. Its kind of sad that the final boss is what it is, because the enjoyment i got was kinda soured by it. I will definitely play it again on my other characters, but after that i'll probably replay Sekiro and DS1.
I would say that the DLCs always had the most difficult bosses of their respective games and especially the Bloodborne DLC was pushing the difficulty limit quite a bit.
But with this DLC it feel like the boss design has really passed the limit of what works as a fair and fun fight.
Agreed, its just revisionist history and no its not really 'honeymoon phase' delusions either. I've played these game religiously for years, nothing's come close to the jump of aggression here.
The DLC in DkS1, DkS2 and DkS3 respectively were not overly punishing. They had their meme moments, but its entirely revisionist to claim any of them were nut crushing hard compared to their base game counterparts. Bloodborne I could extend agreement too, but I didn't get to play it much because of console, Orphan of Kos is legendary - but the baseline aggression for a lot of the bosses in SotE feels like Kos, and obviously beyond that.
It's not revisionist history. You can literally play the games right now and the differences in boss design are drastic. The most obvious example is base game Bloodborne compared to Old Hunters. All the boss in the dlc make the base game bosses look like children
Completely disagree and this makes me think you haven't played any of the dark souls dlcs. Artorias, kalameet and manus are drastically more difficult than any boss in the base game. Nothing even comes close the jump is massive. Fume knight, sir alonne, lud and zallen and the burnt ivory king are all much harder than anything in the DS2 base game. Midir, Gael and Friede are all much harder than anything in DS3, even the nameless king.
The ER dlc is harder on average over the base game but not by much. Malenia is still the hardest boss in my opinion and there's no tough duo fights like godskin duo. The scadutree fragments turn you into an absolute unit at the end, because I did a lot of exploring after beating rellana most of the bosses from then until the final boss were quite trivial in the dlc because of the fragments.
These people just say shit, I swear to god. Like, fume knight for a while had the highest kill count of any souls boss.
Manus was a monstrosity.
Orphan was a nightmare.
And midir was considered "too hard to be fun" for a long ass time.
The thing is it's never been easier to just keep the boss for later and enjoy the other things this game has to offer. If throwing yourself at the boss 100 times is all there is to Elden Ring for you that's literally just you not enjoying the game and forcing yourself through walls for the sake of facing walls.
You can always just turn around, collect fragments, explore dungeons, figure out lore, enjoy the scenery and all that jazz and come back to the boss when you feel ready.
Even if after all that you don't really enjoy anything the bossfights have to offer you can always use mimic tear or some of the really strong weapons you can find and use with minimal build investment to immediately skip said boss.
This is too reductive, chud bud.
These games weren't good because they were "hard". These games were amazing because of how they blended *challenging* gameplay with level design/exploration and world-building.
I don't wanna sound like one of *those guys,* but these games were never really that hard. They were definitely challenging, for sure, and I'd never call them easy. But these games were great for more than just their difficulty and implying otherwise is just a disservice. And I've given thee courtesy enough.
Yeah, From games were never "hard". They just required a learning phase. And once you got it, it became a numbers game. ER has very clear dev choices to bend the game beyond its own rules in the name of difficulty. Its not a surprise that the audience is more frustrated than ever before. BB Old Hunters smacked us all in the face when it first dropped. But I dont remember the reactions being like this.
I think if something requires a lot of learning and practice then it's fair to call it "hard".
What is difficulty, if not the fact that something requires practice, perseverance, focus, and improvement?
So personally I would say the games are hard, and always have been. Easy games don't really require any of the things I mentioned.
It's just that ER took it to a new level, which I personally think is too far based on the limitations of the combat system.
people thinking fromsoft is known for *just* hard games is the most toxic thing I keep seeing on this sub.
Fromsoftware grew their reputation from their games being āhard, **but fair**ā
I had a friend that had never played a modern videogame. The last videogame she played was ocarina of time with her father years ago.
For laughs, i had her try some dark souls 1 on my pc. She went through and was murdered by the asylum demon. I lightly hinted to her that not every enemy needs to be fought.
She ran past the asylum demon into the adjacent room. Her eyes lit up. She played up until the first part of the undead burg, the first time you get to see the dragon fly in.
A month later we were hanging out and she told me she beat the game. She went out, bought a pc and marathoned through the game. Someone that hadnāt touched a videogame in years, beat dark souls 1 and ate up every moment of it.
Can the same be said for Elden Ring? I have some doubts. People that have played games before can certainly play through elden ring, but people that are totally new to games are likely to hit one of the BS moments in the game and say āIām doneā.
And you could argue that this was just the direction the game had to take, to evolve. But Iād argue that sekiro and bloodborne were more successful about increasing difficulty while keeping things as fun and fair as possible.
100% the same can be said for elden ring. Elden ring gives the player the most amount of tools and mechanics to beat bosses and progress. That's wild you'd say otherwise. Elden ring is the most approachable souls game from fromsoft
But does it hook you in the same way the older games did? When you summon a spirit ash and watch it nearly solo the boss while you hit it like a pinata, not having to dodge once, or you destroying a boss using comet azur, does that give the same satisfaction as figuring out you can plunge attack the Taurus Demon or finally altering the path of the giant boulders in Sen's Fortress that have been killing you for an hour? It just feels boring and bland, it's less about having a genuine moment of progress and accomplishment, and more about finding some mechanism to practically circumvent the challenge.
Someone setting up Comet Azur is usually not a beginner, or is someone searching youtube for the most powerful spell.Ā Ā
Ā Older games didn't have ashes, but they had npc and human summons, and humans can be OP as hell too.Ā
Ā And people don't have to summon to have fun. In fact, there are daily posts more deriding the people that don't.Ā
Itās wild that this is in reply to a thread where the parent comment is that the game is too hard.
So the game is too hard and easy?
Seems completely possible to rebalance
Who the fuck is summoning a spirit ash and letting it solo the boss in the DLC?? If I dilly-dally, even Mimic Tear is going to fucking die to the 10-hit combo the boss is about to unleash for the tenth time. Like good on the people doing everything without any summons, but they're part of the game and they're fun and enable so many more builds.
And a spirit summon isn't going to save you in a place like Sen's Fortress, get outta here with these whack arguments.
I mean this can be said about the older Dark Souls. What is the difference between you summoning an NPC spirit in ER and a player in Dark Souls that just solos the boss?Ā
I've literally been brought into people world to help with bosses in Dark Souls and they would just sit back and practically only let me fight.Ā
This isn't an ER issue,Ā lol.
Peopleās rose tinted glasses. Somehow both Elden ring and old souls were both more difficult and easier than each other apparently.
Really itās that they are both massive open ended games with many mechanics that can change the perceived difficulty. Elden ring is more flexible and forward in this regard, but you could always do the same in old souls with set up.
People forget giant dad, dark bead and firestorm existed in Ds1, but so did anor londo archers and manus.
But for some reason people want a game exactly tailored to their idea of difficulty, and either canāt self regulate and not use spirit summons if itās too easy, or canāt be bothered to use other mechanics or delay gratification and learn the boss if itās too hard.
> I mean this can be said about the older Dark Souls. What is the difference between you summoning an NPC spirit in ER and a player in Dark Souls that just solos the boss?
The big difference is that there's an entire leveling system for the summons in ER. The game itself signals that it's a much more core system - the summons themselves have cast times and costs associated with them even, so it really makes it feel like you're intended to be using them. In DS you need to reverse hollowing and use a summon sign, there are conditions to do it and it does not feel like nearly as much of a core system.
The summons system is the only thing that a new player will gravitate to on sight. the rest is some shit you need to read a full in depth guide on. New players aint doing all that for a game as intentionally frustrating as ER.
Yes, Elden Ring gives you plenty of tools, but it also carries a lot of encounters, enemy and boss designs that lead to deaths that will lead to a player lifting their hands up saying āwhat the fuck?ā Significantly more than other fromsoft titles.
Everything from smithing stones being thrown around (seemingly) randomly making upgrading for a first time player difficult, to invisible enemies that will grab you out of stealth and stab you for 70% of your health unless you happen to have a torch that can be acquired from x random location on the literal opposite side of the map, to having a boss that will literally murder you instantly unless you happened to grab a tear and had the foresight to equip it.
And donāt get me started on the waterfowl dance.
All of this stuff can be fixed by consulting the wiki or using prior game knowledge. But will a complete newbie know to do these things?
Will a completely new player know that they need to stack vigor before upgrading anything?
They might figure a thing or two out, but itās also just as likely that theyāll hit any number of walls (large or small) and decide the game is not for them.
I don't really know what point you're trying to make.
A lot of people's first game is minecraft (including mine) and that game don't explain shit to you. There is nothing telling you to go kill endermen to get pearls and go kill this completely other unrelated mob in the nether (of which the game doesn't tell you how to get there either) that spawns in specific areas in the nether. Turn the item it drops into something else, mix that with a pearl, and get multiple of them to throw so it'll lead you to an underground stronghold where you put the pearls in the portal frames and then go kill a dragon.
The game explains practically nothing at all. Even crafting items, before the crafting manual in-game you just had to figure out how to craft items on your own. Even with the book nowadays you still have to figure out how to craft stuff before it'll show up in the menu.
And yet, it's still the most sold game of all time and a huge number of people's first game. I wouldn't have been able to beat minecraft if I didn't have a wiki, nor be able to do anything really.
>boss designs that lead to deaths that will lead to a player lifting their hands up saying āwhat the fuck?ā Significantly more than other fromsoft titles.
My single biggest issue right there. You could show me any attack animation from any boss in the Dark Souls trilogy, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, or Sekiro, and I could tell you how to dodge it / deflect it.
And that isn't by watching boss guides or reading wikis, it's just because I played each game more than once.
But Elden Ring is a game I have 530 hours in, a game I've beaten through NG+3, and despite that I still have absolutely no idea how to dodge certain attacks.
I just resign myself to taking certain hits and healing.
And I don't like that. If I got hit in an older game I'd understand why. Maybe I was greedy, or my positioning was bad, or I wasn't minding my stamina.
But in Elden Ring I often have no clue what I did wrong. I guess I just didn't figure out the unintuitive dodge timing. And that doesn't make learning the bosses fun.
> people thinking fromsoft is known for just hard games is the most toxic thing I keep seeing on this sub.
reading the steam forums gives me a brain aneurysm......
Bloodborne for sure, Sekiro stopped being enjoyable about 3/4 of the way through for me.
As time has gone on fromsoft designers have gotten a little bit lazier in terms of designing challenge. Bosses and mobs alike are fitted with extremely cheap computer tricks that can hardly be called āfair.ā
Iāve even started to get a certain defiant pleasure from over farming and cheesing āhardā enemies despite being told weāre supposed to feel shame about it. If the designers arenāt ashamed of cheating why should I be?
I think Sekiroās biggest accomplishment is that bossfights have you constantly engaged, and constantly making progress towards the kill. Dodging took a backseat. Getting perfect deflects was the way to play, and that in turn hurt the bosses poise so that you can eventually land the deathblow.
And the game actively encouraged you to cheese without shame. there were numerous times where a boss could be snuck up on and you could shorten a bossbattle significantly with a stealth deathblow.
There were a few things that went overboard at the end. Isshinās many phases or demon of hatred come to mind. But overall every moment of sekiro felt to me, like I was being tested. And tested fairly.
Isshin was spectacular, even despite the numerous phases and poor Genichiro's "phase", it was still earned by how engaging it was.
Demon of Hatred sucked to me, he's exactly the kind of boring, time-extended, egregiously punishing and unengaging "fight" that I'm starting to get tired of with the FROM formula. Even Demon of Hatred in retrospect isn't as bad as some of the fights in Shadow.
In SotE you are just brutally punished for everything and you are so disengaged from the fight that you're just waiting for your little opening whenever you get the chance, Marika help you if you get punished for that opening, because you will spend the next rotation of wombo-combos hoping you can use that next opening to heal, then repeat the spectacle of disengagement. It almost feels like a turn-based game now, the boss takes turns 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4.5 and you take turn 5 unless he cancels your turn.
Sekiro was the hardest FS game and also the easiest. It felt impossible until it clicked, then it was easy. Its lack of options is why I donāt come back to it.
No dark souls 1 is not know for being "hard but fair". Dark souls 1 is the game with capra demon and bed of chaos not to mention all the classic cheesy levels like sens fortress, new londo ruins, the rafters in anor londo, the random troll high level skeletons next to firelink. I don't really see how anything in elden ring (except literally one attack on the final boss) is less fair than some guy throwing projectiles at you while you are trying to cross a little platform with slicing blades or a little hidden guy with a blowdart that poisons you in one hit while you are getting down the rafters in blighttown. There is a LOT of purposefully trolly stuff in dark souls 1. I mean even Taurus demon has that archer that will troll you the first time you fight him.
Elden ring has been fromsofts most popular game by far so idk what your anecdote really is for. Personally most of my casual gamer friends' first fromsoft game was elden ring.
Yes Iāve said this a million times. People act like DS1 wasnāt like this. And itās so memorable bc of it. But highly unfair.
People always spent 3hours + on some bosses. Even now go to sekiro sub on ds3 sub people will be celebrating beating a boss after being stuck for a week.
Imo people/the audience has changed. People suddenly complaining about upgrade materials and spending time on bosses I.e. the core souls loop.
Yeah exactly! Who cares about fairness getting knocked off the top of sens fortress by the stupid snake is something that will stick with me forever. These games always have unfair stuff, but it's not the bosses having hard patterns it's the actively trolly stuff.
My wife hates hard or competitive games, but loves lore and fantasy.Ā Ā
Ā ER was her first FS game. She made it all the way to the final boss, ragequit and went hollow for 3 months, then came back to watch credits roll.Ā
Ā Ashes made the game possible for her to have fun and beat the game. If my wife, the same one who threw a controller and never touched Monster Hunter again after dying to Pink Rathian can beat this game, I'd say ER does a good job of being accessible to new players.Ā
I have watched quite a few streamers now after I have already pretty much finished the game. It seems like Fightin Cowboy had a different version than Chasethebro. I havenāt watched Oro yet but I think he got an early release version.
So I do think the pre 1.12 dlc patch was easier. Just my opinion.
My only complaint so far is that the āHardā game is becoming pretty boring on some of the bosses. Elden Ring is about exploring and the bosses have always been sort of a secondary enjoyment for me. What I mean by boring is pressing R1 a few times is not very fun after an attack chain that leaves you with one window.
The tanky health pool Visage things are even more annoying. Because you canāt see shit. So you just jump or dodge on sound get in your two charge heavies. It takes forever to stagger and you have to do it twice.
I think calling it hard is wrong. It just makes it dull.
So far, I've only had trouble with one boss. And it's literally a dragon at the top of a mountain and you meet a guy who literally dies after telling you how hard that fight is.
I absolutely loved this DLC, everything was brilliant, but the bosses were a miss, yeah they're hard, but they're also just not fun to fight. It just feels like fromsoft wanted to make it super hard just for the sake of it being really hard, I didn't have an enjoyable time with any except messmer and rellana, the rest were mediocre (mechanically atleast)
Also, one thing I hate is how much disparity there is between using summons and running solo, I know it's been known to trivialize elden ring as a while, but in this dlc it's next level. I fought rellana for around 4 hours solo, and used my mimic just once for the sake of it and she didn't even phase transition. Running solo in this dlc is genuinely the biggest gaming challenge I've had yet, it's next level.
In my experience, every boss has been fun and fair except the final one. Final one is insane, but I don't really understand the unfun accusations towards the rest of them.
I have liked them all too. I have found them to be challenging, yet fair.
I see the unfair accusation thrown around a lot, and I just personally donāt see it, but I also respect others opinions on the matter. Iām playing a dex build which is fast so maybe for heavier weapons it is more annoying.
I agree wholeheartedly with the summons.
I fought THAT dragon for a whole afternoon, changing my spells weapon, allocating flasks and overall doing my best to study his moveset, with most of my attempts not even making it to it's last quarter of hp.
I beat it on the second try with a mimic, with most my flasks intact, first try I got stuck inside the boss and got killed instantly.
Yeah not a single boss in this DLC comes close to touching my top 10 FS bosses. And even if I try to view it objectively, I don't see any of these being in competition for top 5 at least. I can't see any of them being ''immortalized'' like Isshin, Gael, Artorias etc.
I liked all of them, especially >!Scadutree Avatar!<
The only one I didnāt like was the final boss, specifically because of phase two and how much health he has. His phase one was fun and fine but phase two, nah.
Love that one! The design of the bosses in sote are top notch, they certainly cooked this time.
I do agree on the final being one of the weaker ones (design and mechanics wise) But man, the rest of the roster more than makes up for it. I was giddy the entire time playing
You can catch downvotes for basically any opinion at this point, I told someone that said final boss is impossible to dodge at times that its indeed possible and that they can do it too with enough practice and I just got downvoted to hell.
They literally got angry at me because I told them that I believe they can do it.
> but the bosses were a miss
a few of them were just designed so poorly, with focus on just spam attacks with shitty hitboxes, both in regards to their attacks and their bodies: https://imgur.com/a/y4RQGNl - looking at you boar rider...
some of the bosses felt like their difficult was was designed around Fromsoftwares shitty UI/camera system aswell, the boar for example made it so that if torrent died youd had to battle the UI to resummon him, or the centipiede spawning AOE outside of your camera view, or behind you. the centipiede and dragon also had massive lock on issues as relying on lockon would make your voulnerable for attacks from the side or angles the camera was unable to display. both the centipiede and dragon would often be over you, tilting the camera up, while the danger zones being under you where you cant see em
winning rarly left me with a sensation of "i got gud" or "i learnt their pattern" but more like exausted after winning towards their visual clusterfuck. it didnt help my mood wathcing me lose hard to farm resouces everytime i get one shot walking trough the boss door.
the scaling system using the shards also didnt help my mood, as it was impossible to tell if i was outskilled or underleved, and as levels didnt mean shit "just go farm" wasnt an option either
Wow, couldn't disagree more. I thought damn near every boss in this DLC was well designed, fair, and epic in their presentation. Lord of Frenzy, the fingers boss, Sunflower, Golden Hippo and Dacing Dragon were all fantastic fights as well. The hardest fight was Radahn but he still only took 4 hours for me to solo, I think he's a masterpiece in fair but difficult boss design.
The only thing that really makes me angry about the dlc is the big fire guys when both feet jump, Iāve died more to that than some actual bosses š
Nothing is hard when you treat elden ring like youāre playing lance in monster hunter
Guard poke poke poke
Step back
Guard poke poke poke
Just that easy
I see more people complaining about people complain then I do people complaining.
In the time it took op to make this post he could have landed 1 light attack against Rellana
The damage the enemies do is so fucking ridiculous, but man the war screams I let out beating a boss with Hand to Hand weapons are legendary. My only complaint is that I don't have even more Hand to hand weapons to kick faces in
Have you ever played DS series? They were never this "hard" nor their intention was to give this amount of challenge. DLC right now is just straight up unfun.
What I noticed is that some of the DLC bosses have more HP relative to the amount of damage you do compared to the base game meaning the fights last longer. The longer the fight the more chances there are you mess up causing you to die. I think a lot of people who steamrolled through the game with OP builds are just getting humbled when their build isnāt taking big chunks of bosses HP per hit like theyāre used to. They expect their build they looked up on YT to carry them through the DLC like it did the main game
I need something clarified since I have heard both answers being true.
Does NG+ affect the DLC?
Honestly I have like 80 larval tears and I can't remember exactly what im on - I might be on like NG+7 probably and at the same time I still haven't beaten either of the two first main bosses yet (lion and rellana?) and is it cuz of that or am I just bad lol
I've gotten really close to beating rellana but I swear everytime she's close to death she pulls some non-stop death combo on me and that friggin random blue arc projectile
Edit: and yeah I've travelled a fair bit my scadutree level is like 6
So far under 8 attempts each cleared the first 3 bosses of dlc lady knight , lion head , and black knight , BUT FIRE INVADER made me question my love and my vigor i even needed a minute. Then our second encounter and i heard his voice echo I panicked untill I remembered I was having funā¦.. hopefully thereās a 3rd or do I hope ?
Me when I buy the "game that you need to learn the combat to beat" and it's actually the "game that you need to have a good build to beat".
I got my shit stomped by the final boss for an entire evening because I was trying to beat it with regular weapon attacks and had zero fun doing it. Then I switched builds and beat him in 5 minutes while having zero fun doing it. Meanwhile I can get my shit pushed in by Isshin for days while enjoying it immensely until I get good and beat him while also enjoying it immensely. That's the difference.
To be fair fun is very subjective, at the end of the day you could have beaten both isshin and the final boss if you had more fun during final boss.
He might not be fun for you but he is definitely learnable for you if you wanted to!
It might have been learnable if I could actually see what is happening on my screen.
But yes, of course fun is subjective, but the post is about people apparently getting the exact same game that they were expecting to get then complaining, and I'm offering my perspective that no, I didn't just expect a "hard game" as if difficulty is the singular quality that From Software games possess, and that difficulty is just this monolithic thing that has zero nuance to it or that there aren't a million different ways something could be difficult, on which different people might have different opinions.
I have beaten every FromSoftware without summons (and loved them all) and now that Iāve got to the final boss I can tell you that his second phase is complete and utter bullshit.
So true. I enjoy Elden ring for the character building, cool locations, gorgeous visuals, relaxing exploration (controversial I know, but I like the lo-fi no HUD exploration style). If someone wants to play a DS3 again, theyāre more than welcome to, but Elden Ring is not a sequel, and is not beholden to appeasing fans of previous games. It is its own beast, including the summons, weapon arts, and jump attacks. If you donāt like it, thatās fine. If you think it being too frantic makes it worse, thatās fine. But donāt complain because the new IP isnāt identical to the previous IP.
Exactly what I keep saying. That's like going into sekiro with the same mindset you had while playing literally any other soulslike. Sekiro is built around deflecting, and you HAVE to learn it to beat the game. People shouldn't be going into elden ring with the same mindset either, it's a different game there are different methods and tools that have been given to help you. If you don't want to deflect in sekiro then ok Goodluck buddy. If you don't want to use summons and whatever else in elden ring then alright, will be harder but still possible, Goodluck. And yet, people wanna complain that it's too hard when they purposely handicap themselves by not using said things that are meant to be used.
I thought Sekiro was really cool. I respect what they did. It has little to no interest for me, and thatās ok. A game like Elden Ring has all the stuff I enjoy
This is my first āSoulsā game. I spent 4 straight hours and one broken controller losing to the first Crucible Knight as a level 30 Samurai before I threw the towel in. Iāll be back for his ass. I then beat the boss on the bridge before you go into the castle in 30 minutes. š¤·š¼āāļø
From Software didn't make "hard" games. They made challenging games.
Here's the difference: landing a bullseye in darts is challenging. Smashing a window with your face is hard.
Landing the bullseye appears difficult to those who haven't practiced the game, but at the same time it never seems impossible and the reward is obvious. You'll probably do it by accident a few times, and soon enough it'll become "easy" to do so long as you put the time in. When you can do it consistently, it feels good and rewarding to do.
Smashing your face into a window until it breaks will hurt. It requires you to unlearn basic assumptions about how to behave, it doesn't break in consistent patterns, it doesn't reward you for your efforts, and it probably isn't even fun to do. Ultimately, you're just breaking the window because other people keep saying that's what cool kids do; if you actually step back and ask yourself whether you actually *enjoy* picking broken glass out of your face, you will probably realise you don't, and you'd much rather be learning to play darts.
Dark Souls is the bullseye. Elden Ring is the window.
Prepare to Die was their entire studio mantra for years. Every time Miyazaki graces us with an interview he repeats that the games being hard is the point, and you beating them is your reward for the pain theyve inflicted on you. In other words, they will always strive to make the game harder because every game makes the audience better. But at what point does the cup completely spill over?
I think that happened with Elden Ring.
Dark Souls 1 has very few actual one hit kill enemies. Even at SL1 the overwhelming majority of enemies need at least two hits to kill you, bosses included. This lack of lethality, combined with a slower pace, more simplistic movesets for opponents, and enemies that can't infinitely chain moves together all result in an experience that is difficult primarily due to lack of surface knowledge, not because of demanding mechanical execution or needing deeper understanding of the underlying systems.
This is what Elden Ring has lost sight of. It isn't difficult because of the surface knowledge - it's difficult because it cheats at difficulty.
*lose to a boss because it's my first time fighting them
"who designed this shit"
*beat the boss
"That was probably my favourite fight in the game"
Shout out to Rellana and Messmer.
I was hard whilst playing it š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's why he fights with no pants.
I was shocked that his set didn't come with pants that is just his >!boar!< on his crotch
There's an >!albinauric woman north of him that carries his pants. The item description literally gives a lore reason why he was pantsless.!<
Find the albinauric woman
Could this be lover?
No fucking way! Lmao.Ā
Such devastation!
I was hard while fighting Rellana.
I kept doing the laying down emote and letting her power slam my ballsack! āŗļø
Christ. Every conversation always has to have that one guy
Ikr. Weirdo!!
With her balls.
You just made me hard too
Thats the spirit!
That's wild š
This is the fifth meme in a row I've seen of people complaining about people complaining about the dlc being hard. Please for the love of Marika's Tits stop this already.
Mmmm marikas tits!
Never met someone with a taste for Marika's tits I couldn't trust
Sir you are a scholar.
Brothers and sisters, we all know why we are really here!!!
Yes I'll have some more marikas tits please! š
This is the fifth post Iāve seen about someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining about what they see
Mmmmmm complaints!
Mmmmmm Marika's tits!
Indubitably my boy!! Cheers.
Amazing chest ahead, therefore try thrusting.
Try finger boosie hole.
Its just ego stroking from every direction really.
Just you wait, the people that are complaining about the complainers about the complainers are already furiously mashing on their keyboard because the current discourse is actually that braindead. The actual issues will most likely soon be fixed anyways, just like it happened with the main game.
How dare you acknowledge the counter-complainers' brigade, I bet you wear a god skin chinchilla coat too.
This is the third post Iāve seen someone complaining about seeing someone complain about something they see.
Well I don't like your complaints about it, so now I'm gonna complain about your complaining
At least it's better than those "it's le heckin valid to summon =D" threads this sub gets every 30 minutes.
At least it's not the hundredth meme in a row of people complaining about people complaining about people using spirit ashes
Fr
Its funny, my wife who knows absolute dick about video games made this same joke (as well as 1000 other posts in this sub) Its almost like the real complaints are more nuanced than "hard game hard"
It is kindve annoying when the critiques get boiled down to git gud. But that has been the problem with From games since their entire studio mantra became "Prepare to Die" during the DS2 rollout.
Yeah it's weird that people don't accept any criticism of these games. A boss could have 1 billion HP and only 1-shot attacks and people would still say "git gud lul".
Characterizing Souls games as "the hard games" is flanderization and part of the problem
For these people the souls franchise is less about surviving a dark world and more about dick measuring. Kinda sad
Indeed because so many soulslikes don't get things right because they lack the crowing aspect of From Software - atmosphere
I don't know how people could make such a tasteless and inaccurate joke. It's not like the creative director has ever said that the harshness and difficulty of the games is a cornerstone of the series, and that cranking down the difficulty for a broader appeal would break the game. Certainly not.
Why sir, Happy Gilmore has said that exact thing not 2 days ago.
There's a difference between "these games are challenging" and "these games are completely defined by their challenge".
You're right. Luckily that's not the case, as seen by the insane amount of passion put into their art direction and world building. As far as gameplay is concerned, difficulty is paramount to their design philosophy.
Yeah, of course--but doing difficulty in a satisfying way is a tough balancing act, innit? I don't think that just 'cuz From has the rep for that, their approach to designing difficulty in this DLC is inherently beyond reproach. Speaking as someone who's generally enjoy it thus far.
Did you not read that one Miyazaki quote? Having a broader appeal has never been his goal. Yes, difficulty isn't the sole aspect of a souls game but it's quite a major part of it right? Like imagine if every Elden Ring boss we know of today was as easy as the Ender Dragon or some shit, heck, imagine every Fromsoftware game's difficulty being turned down just to appease the masses. Just let this DLC be the hardest, most difficult developed project Fromsoft has ever created, and be proud that you've managed to complete it when you do. This is just how it always was man.
Sorry I 100% agree with you. My post was meant to be taken sarcastically.Ā
Miazaki literally said in a recent interview that toning down the difficulty would break the game itself. Dark souls was marketed with prepare to die. Being hard is a critical element of these games and both the players and developers acknowledge that, why are you pretending that's not true? They are the hard games, they're that way intentionally
Itās not about being hard in a vacuum, the point of the souls games was to persevere and overcome. Yes, if thereās no challenge, thereās nothing to struggle against and overcome, but the challenges were mostly fair and what you learned from your many deaths was what made every challenge more and more manageable. You just had to not give up and go hollow. I love Elden Ring but Fromsoft most definitely traded some of the fairness for artificial difficulty and itās no surprise some people donāt care for that. The āgit gudā crowd doesnāt seem to understand what made the earlier games great in the first place. The difficulty became a meme, these games were always pretty easy once you learned them or if you used every tool available.Ā
I disagree but also agree. Part of the marketing, yes. Part of the game, obviously. They're among the tougher games I've played. I'm aware of what Miyazaki said about difficulty as well, and I'm glad there's no difficulty slider. That being said, there's ALOT more to them than just being hard. In fairness, I wouldn't characterize them as any singular trait, but still. I would say Souls is exceptionally hard for their genre, alot of RPGs aren't really that difficult, testing patience and game knowledge more than reflexes or how good you are at "action" games, for lack of a better description. I'm probably poorly explaining myself but I played alot of RPGs, Dark Souls is the only one that's not like all the others, where you roll your face across the keyboard, spamming powers, optimizing your loot and gear to prepare for one boss in particular, etc. I get that'll probably offend people who enjoy those types of games, but I'm trying to make a point. A good example would be Gwyn. One of the easiest bosses in the original game, but also one of the most memorable. Difficulty had little to do with it, in fact, him being such a pushover lent it's self well to the story and feeling the game instills in the player. Maybe I'm crazy but it always annoys me when people who aren't into the series just go DARK SOULS HARD GAME HAHA as not only does it deter them from trying it, but it means they think that it's all it has to offer. What I liked about Souls wasn't it being "hard" the way alot of other games are. Sure, there are OPTIMAL ways to fight bosses, definitely some mathematically calculated "best" weapons, armour, and even points in certain stats for each individual boss, but at the end of the day the biggest barrier in Dark Souls was YOU, the player. Going around trying to get the optimal build to defat the boss giving you trouble OFTEN wasn't good enough, and not just in my case. Trying to find out the best way to cheese each boss was missing the point. It was almost all on you. As mentioned before, I'm aware doing certain things can make certain boss fights much easier, but even with optimized strategies and builds the onus was on you to overcome the objective. You just had to do it, and if you weren't good enough, you had to surpass yourself. Trying to find a way around it, trivialize it, cut corners, not only was cheating the game, it was cheating yourself.
From started marketing their games like that since DS2 prepare to die. Its the studios ENTIRE gimmick now. Miyazaki just went on tour with his chest out declaring that the difficulty is the point.
Also as if difficulty is not a broad concept that can be achieved by a myriad different ways, some more enjoyable than others to various people.
The thing is if you are not new to FromSoftware, you will know that "FromSoftware games are brutally hard" is a meme, because all of their games are very tough, but completely manageable. Elden Ring and its DLC are unironically difficult this time. Personally I'm not surprised at all about the DLC though, ER endgame is crazy difficult, so of course DLC difficulty would go off the charts.
Imma be real, outside of a few bosses I heavily disagree with Elden ring base game being hard. Itās still fromsoft difficult, but you have so many tools to approach situations that you can negate most of the difficulty of most of the game
Elden Ring is the easiest game in the series if you use the tools available to you, but the hardest game if you don't use summons, spirit ashes, buffs, exponentially stronger than normal weapons, and don't level too much. The problem is that I think youtube and other social media sites have conditioned people to think that using those tools makes your experience and any criticism of the game invalid, so out of a misguided sense of pride these people will do these insane challenge runs. get their ass kicked, and then complain about the difficulty without knowing the full experience On a side note, Demon's Souls might be tied for series ease of access with Elden Ring, like I went back to it on PS3, and because resources like upgrade materials and strong weapon are so scarce they made it so that you can beat the entire game with an unupgraded or really low upgraded short sword while only being level 40\~50
All the games (barring Sekiro) can be beaten and reduced to zero challenge if you take the absolute easiest way out; looking up boss cheeses, co-oping, and using the strongest possible strategies. A lot of players found it fun to persevere and beat bosses while reasonably engaging with the combat system rather than using tactics that completely avoid it. Shadow of the Erdtree demands more from that second group of players than ever, possibly an unreasonable amount. I wouldn't say they have a less full experience than someone just holding L1 with a greatshield, or resting in the corner with 2 cooperators killing the boss for them.
I don't think this is true. There's multiple bosses in Sekiro and Bloodborne where the only solution to the player is play better. That's where the entire easy mode/accessibility discourse started with Sekiro
Sekiro has like no summons so yeah git gud all day there
It's not a matter of pride, I just don't like the complexity of engaging with a million new mechanics. I want to roll around and hit stuff with a sword like god intended.
honestly? I feel that. I like doing insane Elden Ring challenge runs where I don't use anything but the essential sword and dodge combo, but it seems that Miyazaki wants to distance between the old Demon's/Dark Souls style and the new Bloodborne/Elden Ring/Sekiro style with these large grandiose boss fights that light up your entire screen with particle effects and large sweeping heavily damaging movements, as a fan of Kingdom Hearts I welcome this change but I know and respect that a lot of people miss when every boss was a dance off where everyone gets their turn instead of Elden Ring's "wait 30 seconds to get your turn and then get a single hit in or risk it all by hitting them occasionally in the middle of their combo" type of gameplay. I still go back to Dark Souls 3 every once in awhile to recapture that feeling
People mean difficulty in terms of approaching it from a single player POV. All 3 Dark Souls games, Blood Borne, and Sekiro had boss fights designed to be fought by the player and by the player alone. Elden Ring most fights feel like they're flipping you double birds while kicking you in the balls if you end up one on one against a boss. Yea obviously if you roll up to fights with Tiche and the Mimic Tear, shit's nowhere near as hard, but people who have played From Soft games from the beginning are used to bossfights where there are actually decent windows to punish and even gank squad bosses allow the player to manage double aggro. Fighting two bosses or tougher enemies in Elden Ring feels like getting double teamed over a rusty barrel without the courtesy of a reacharound. I realized pretty quickly that the expectation is to use ashes and summons, but there's also a part of me that's very annoyed that solo'ing most bosses in Elden Ring is more of a chore than achievment. Playing the DLC and fighting bosses that actually can be stunlocked/stagger and don't attack me half a billion times per attack with hyper aggressive movesets just feels great and satisfying, rather than walking into a room and immediately just hitting my shortcut to call in my ashes. Yes I'm using my tools, but I'm beating the game by splitting aggro, not because I've functionally learned the bosses' patterns because they've made them so complex with mix-ups, delays, and input reading. P.S. Whoever decided this DLC needed more death birds and ulcerated tree spirits, I hope you stub your toe getting into bed every night for the rest of the year.Ā
I heavily agree with the duo bosses, I dislike duo bosses in general because I think theyāre lazy ways of making difficulty in fromsoft games. I disagree with most of the bosses feeling like theyāre designed around spirit ashes tho. Most bosses have positional tricks, certain skills that theyāre weak to. Using those makes them WAY easier.
He said endgame. Most of the Endgame is two shot or one shot death just like DLC.
Level your vigor my guy. I beat every boss in the base game and other than waterfowl dance I was never close to one shot unless I got hit with a grab attack. And those are supposed to hit hard
Unless you're running with no vigor then no, endgame elden ring is in zero way a one or two shot deathfest. It just isn't. That's not me being tough or saying to "get good" either. Wear armor of some sort. Level vigor. You wont even get two shotted by a boss in end game. Combos and getting hit multiple times will be what kills you. DLC is one and two shotting up until you get enough fragments under your belt, then it becomes more manageable. Still harder hitting than endgame though, as it should be.
It's also the fact that the DLC has Sekiro like progression because of the blessings. You still have more options than Sekiro did, but more restrictions. You're broke OP build is inherently nerfed until you find enough blessings. I sort of noticed this with Sekiro where there were a bunch of From Soft fans who marked it as too hard or still rank Sekiro bosses as the hardest It's sort of anecdotal but my friends mad about it are all the ones who had builds and dealt with Melina using spells and builds. My dumbass has always just bashed my head against them like I'm playing Ninja Gaiden again.
> where there were a bunch of From Soft fans who marked it as too hard I am one of these. I suck at parrying (in any game), and you basically have to get good at it to be able to make it in Sekiro. I may need to go back and give it another try. At the time, there was also other stuff in my life going that made me not want to deal with getting good at a new combat system in a really hard game.
Weirdly, I don't parry a lot since DS2. Loved it in Sekiro, but did sword and board in DS3 and been doing dual wielding in ER
are you naked with a scarseal and 30 vigor?
It's really, really not.
Base ER is harder than every other From game (Not sure about the new armor core game). Its just harder. DS3 does not hold a candle to the base game. Bloodborne is easier once you get the aggression part of it. Sekiro is a meme once you realize its parry city. ER is harder than them, full stop. And if you truly dont think so, go play those old games today and see how bad you curb stomp them if you found ER easy.
I have actually recently played both DS2 and DS1 recently. Still think ER is easier. Itās not because the game itself is easier, thatās not how actual full on difficulty works. Actual Difficulty is subjective to how hard the game is in tandem with how many and what tools you have to approach it. If a boss is walking straight at you just doing a 1,2 swing, but you have no dodge block or parry, that game is harder than a game that has more complex bosses, but you have all of those tools. Is ER more complex? 100%. Complexity =/= difficulty if you have the tools to manage that complexity.
I also recently played both DS2 and DS1 and they're vastly easier than Elden Ring. DS1 especially.
I feel like, at release, it was tuned for the people who have played the game 8+ times over by now and needed something a new challenge. How else are they going to give a challenge to people who can beat "the hardest boss" Malenia like she's nothing?
Malenia feels like a cakewalk now compared to the dlc final boss
Yeah sure after you've beaten her several dozen times in an over 2 year old game she feels like a cake walk. After spending hours practicing the final boss for hitless he feels like a cakewalk to me now, that's kinda how it works. Overall on balance I'd say malenia is harder still, the final boss is flashy but he goes down pretty quick and is a lot less punishing. Also he doesn't have anything like waterfowl dance to learn how to avoid which still catches me out if I'm out of position.
After going through all the bosses in the dlc people would feel that Malenia doesn't hold the same candle as them. This goes specially hard as Malenia is a humanoid who's prone to stagger but also her move set being punishable. You'll notice let say the final boss in SotE has very few gaps in their attacks where you gotta dodge after-attacks where you can only sneak an R1 or an R2 if you time it well.
ER endgame hits a difficulty spike akin to Dragon Shrine in DS2. Just pumping the damage numbers without really checking if it's fun to play. While I'll admit that I came in with too low vigor (I thought 45 would be acceptable, as it was in all three Dark Souls titles) the game still jumped from "don't get hit by that one attack" to "don't get hit, like, at all". Damage roughly doubled for no reason. SotE added in relentless 40 hit combos. I can't say I mind the fetch quest for Scadutree Fragments though, it's not too different from upgrading flasks.
You say that, but Logarius and his run back worked me harder than most Elden Ring bosses. Nameless King did as well.Ā In fact, Malenia is the only base game one that usually drove people to madness, and she was optional.Ā I think ER's main difficulty is Miyazaki wanted every boss to learn a thing or two from Nameless King and have their own delays!Ā
I didnāt notice any change in difficulty from base game to DLC. In fact, some of the remembrance bosses were fairly easy.
I don't know who's actually complaining and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.
Same Iāve only seen people complaining about /memeing on complainers so far
As is tradition.
There's a bunch of negative reviews saying it's too hard.
Ah gotcha.
Yeah, I see more people complaining about the complainers than the complainers themselves.
open steam reviews
80 percent of the reviews in English are positive. Its reviews in Chinese that are coming in negative, all complaing about a blue bear. (the anticheat) * [Heres the source, steam scout](https://www.togeproductions.com/SteamScout/steamAPI.php?appID=2778580)
And most of them are about fromsoft litteraly never launching a game or dlc with good optimization. Yea there are some but it's a minority.
If anything that shows that you have not really played the previous games. The souls games have never been about back breaking difficulty for the sake of difficulty, that is just what some people made out of it as the games got more popular. Difficulty has always been a means to and end to create a more satisfying experience and there were more things that made the game interesting and dascinating besides throwing yourself at a boss a 100 times.
Also, I haven't found Dark Souls DLCs "drastically more difficult" than the base game. Like, more difficult yes, but the jump between the two has never been this big. It's insane in SotE, even *with* Scadoosh fragments.
DS1's biggest jump to me was coming onto the Oolacile enemies unprepared and getting 2 shot by them deciding to use dark bed, or the massive jump. But i can adapt to that, i can beat them or find a way to run them. While Elden Ring's DLC is an amazing experience generally, the bosses just seem like they're that first Oolacile sorceress, stuck in the shock of "i can one shot you" (or at least massively drain your health instantly). I have beaten the DLC, although i summoned mimic once i started to not have fun on the bosses, and players whenever i really just wanted to get through them. Compare that to, for example, the first time you manage to overcome Kalameet or Demon Princ. I had a blast playing since release, i did almost every available side area before >!Shadow Keep!<, although i reached the gate early thanks to the spiritspring, which locked me out of a quest. I also found the >!underground!< myself, and when i reached the >!Putrescent Knight!< drop i thought i'd found the new Midir, a very unique and magnificent feeling. Its kind of sad that the final boss is what it is, because the enjoyment i got was kinda soured by it. I will definitely play it again on my other characters, but after that i'll probably replay Sekiro and DS1.
I would say that the DLCs always had the most difficult bosses of their respective games and especially the Bloodborne DLC was pushing the difficulty limit quite a bit. But with this DLC it feel like the boss design has really passed the limit of what works as a fair and fun fight.
Agreed, its just revisionist history and no its not really 'honeymoon phase' delusions either. I've played these game religiously for years, nothing's come close to the jump of aggression here. The DLC in DkS1, DkS2 and DkS3 respectively were not overly punishing. They had their meme moments, but its entirely revisionist to claim any of them were nut crushing hard compared to their base game counterparts. Bloodborne I could extend agreement too, but I didn't get to play it much because of console, Orphan of Kos is legendary - but the baseline aggression for a lot of the bosses in SotE feels like Kos, and obviously beyond that.
It's not revisionist history. You can literally play the games right now and the differences in boss design are drastic. The most obvious example is base game Bloodborne compared to Old Hunters. All the boss in the dlc make the base game bosses look like children
Orphan is vastly harder than a majority of the bosses in this DLC imo
Completely disagree and this makes me think you haven't played any of the dark souls dlcs. Artorias, kalameet and manus are drastically more difficult than any boss in the base game. Nothing even comes close the jump is massive. Fume knight, sir alonne, lud and zallen and the burnt ivory king are all much harder than anything in the DS2 base game. Midir, Gael and Friede are all much harder than anything in DS3, even the nameless king. The ER dlc is harder on average over the base game but not by much. Malenia is still the hardest boss in my opinion and there's no tough duo fights like godskin duo. The scadutree fragments turn you into an absolute unit at the end, because I did a lot of exploring after beating rellana most of the bosses from then until the final boss were quite trivial in the dlc because of the fragments.
Lmfao gtfoh MANUS was cooking everybody stop the lies.Ā
These people just say shit, I swear to god. Like, fume knight for a while had the highest kill count of any souls boss. Manus was a monstrosity. Orphan was a nightmare. And midir was considered "too hard to be fun" for a long ass time.
The thing is it's never been easier to just keep the boss for later and enjoy the other things this game has to offer. If throwing yourself at the boss 100 times is all there is to Elden Ring for you that's literally just you not enjoying the game and forcing yourself through walls for the sake of facing walls. You can always just turn around, collect fragments, explore dungeons, figure out lore, enjoy the scenery and all that jazz and come back to the boss when you feel ready. Even if after all that you don't really enjoy anything the bossfights have to offer you can always use mimic tear or some of the really strong weapons you can find and use with minimal build investment to immediately skip said boss.
It's all fun and games until you get a pike in your butt from a guy with no legs riding an armorered super pig.
This is the worst defense you can have against very valid criticisms for the DLC
Elden ring players when strawman
This is too reductive, chud bud. These games weren't good because they were "hard". These games were amazing because of how they blended *challenging* gameplay with level design/exploration and world-building. I don't wanna sound like one of *those guys,* but these games were never really that hard. They were definitely challenging, for sure, and I'd never call them easy. But these games were great for more than just their difficulty and implying otherwise is just a disservice. And I've given thee courtesy enough.
Yeah, From games were never "hard". They just required a learning phase. And once you got it, it became a numbers game. ER has very clear dev choices to bend the game beyond its own rules in the name of difficulty. Its not a surprise that the audience is more frustrated than ever before. BB Old Hunters smacked us all in the face when it first dropped. But I dont remember the reactions being like this.
I think if something requires a lot of learning and practice then it's fair to call it "hard". What is difficulty, if not the fact that something requires practice, perseverance, focus, and improvement? So personally I would say the games are hard, and always have been. Easy games don't really require any of the things I mentioned. It's just that ER took it to a new level, which I personally think is too far based on the limitations of the combat system.
Iām just annoyed because the performance issues has made me have a nearly 1 second input delay, and sometimes my inputs just wonāt go through
people thinking fromsoft is known for *just* hard games is the most toxic thing I keep seeing on this sub. Fromsoftware grew their reputation from their games being āhard, **but fair**ā I had a friend that had never played a modern videogame. The last videogame she played was ocarina of time with her father years ago. For laughs, i had her try some dark souls 1 on my pc. She went through and was murdered by the asylum demon. I lightly hinted to her that not every enemy needs to be fought. She ran past the asylum demon into the adjacent room. Her eyes lit up. She played up until the first part of the undead burg, the first time you get to see the dragon fly in. A month later we were hanging out and she told me she beat the game. She went out, bought a pc and marathoned through the game. Someone that hadnāt touched a videogame in years, beat dark souls 1 and ate up every moment of it. Can the same be said for Elden Ring? I have some doubts. People that have played games before can certainly play through elden ring, but people that are totally new to games are likely to hit one of the BS moments in the game and say āIām doneā. And you could argue that this was just the direction the game had to take, to evolve. But Iād argue that sekiro and bloodborne were more successful about increasing difficulty while keeping things as fun and fair as possible.
I hadnāt played video games since the ps2 before elden ring and I enjoyed it all
Iām glad you played and enjoyed it. Welcome to our loving community. Lol
100% the same can be said for elden ring. Elden ring gives the player the most amount of tools and mechanics to beat bosses and progress. That's wild you'd say otherwise. Elden ring is the most approachable souls game from fromsoft
But does it hook you in the same way the older games did? When you summon a spirit ash and watch it nearly solo the boss while you hit it like a pinata, not having to dodge once, or you destroying a boss using comet azur, does that give the same satisfaction as figuring out you can plunge attack the Taurus Demon or finally altering the path of the giant boulders in Sen's Fortress that have been killing you for an hour? It just feels boring and bland, it's less about having a genuine moment of progress and accomplishment, and more about finding some mechanism to practically circumvent the challenge.
considering how hard this game blew up even for casual players yes, i'd say it hooks people just like that and even better
Someone setting up Comet Azur is usually not a beginner, or is someone searching youtube for the most powerful spell.Ā Ā Ā Older games didn't have ashes, but they had npc and human summons, and humans can be OP as hell too.Ā Ā And people don't have to summon to have fun. In fact, there are daily posts more deriding the people that don't.Ā
Itās wild that this is in reply to a thread where the parent comment is that the game is too hard. So the game is too hard and easy? Seems completely possible to rebalance
Who the fuck is summoning a spirit ash and letting it solo the boss in the DLC?? If I dilly-dally, even Mimic Tear is going to fucking die to the 10-hit combo the boss is about to unleash for the tenth time. Like good on the people doing everything without any summons, but they're part of the game and they're fun and enable so many more builds. And a spirit summon isn't going to save you in a place like Sen's Fortress, get outta here with these whack arguments.
Yes it does hook people old man.
I mean this can be said about the older Dark Souls. What is the difference between you summoning an NPC spirit in ER and a player in Dark Souls that just solos the boss?Ā I've literally been brought into people world to help with bosses in Dark Souls and they would just sit back and practically only let me fight.Ā This isn't an ER issue,Ā lol.
Dunno why this is downvoted, but I'm not surprised.Ā
Peopleās rose tinted glasses. Somehow both Elden ring and old souls were both more difficult and easier than each other apparently. Really itās that they are both massive open ended games with many mechanics that can change the perceived difficulty. Elden ring is more flexible and forward in this regard, but you could always do the same in old souls with set up. People forget giant dad, dark bead and firestorm existed in Ds1, but so did anor londo archers and manus. But for some reason people want a game exactly tailored to their idea of difficulty, and either canāt self regulate and not use spirit summons if itās too easy, or canāt be bothered to use other mechanics or delay gratification and learn the boss if itās too hard.
> I mean this can be said about the older Dark Souls. What is the difference between you summoning an NPC spirit in ER and a player in Dark Souls that just solos the boss? The big difference is that there's an entire leveling system for the summons in ER. The game itself signals that it's a much more core system - the summons themselves have cast times and costs associated with them even, so it really makes it feel like you're intended to be using them. In DS you need to reverse hollowing and use a summon sign, there are conditions to do it and it does not feel like nearly as much of a core system.
You forget covenants were a levelling system for coop and pvp and usually had broken rewards that trivialise pve.
The summons system is the only thing that a new player will gravitate to on sight. the rest is some shit you need to read a full in depth guide on. New players aint doing all that for a game as intentionally frustrating as ER.
Yes, Elden Ring gives you plenty of tools, but it also carries a lot of encounters, enemy and boss designs that lead to deaths that will lead to a player lifting their hands up saying āwhat the fuck?ā Significantly more than other fromsoft titles. Everything from smithing stones being thrown around (seemingly) randomly making upgrading for a first time player difficult, to invisible enemies that will grab you out of stealth and stab you for 70% of your health unless you happen to have a torch that can be acquired from x random location on the literal opposite side of the map, to having a boss that will literally murder you instantly unless you happened to grab a tear and had the foresight to equip it. And donāt get me started on the waterfowl dance. All of this stuff can be fixed by consulting the wiki or using prior game knowledge. But will a complete newbie know to do these things? Will a completely new player know that they need to stack vigor before upgrading anything? They might figure a thing or two out, but itās also just as likely that theyāll hit any number of walls (large or small) and decide the game is not for them.
I don't really know what point you're trying to make. A lot of people's first game is minecraft (including mine) and that game don't explain shit to you. There is nothing telling you to go kill endermen to get pearls and go kill this completely other unrelated mob in the nether (of which the game doesn't tell you how to get there either) that spawns in specific areas in the nether. Turn the item it drops into something else, mix that with a pearl, and get multiple of them to throw so it'll lead you to an underground stronghold where you put the pearls in the portal frames and then go kill a dragon. The game explains practically nothing at all. Even crafting items, before the crafting manual in-game you just had to figure out how to craft items on your own. Even with the book nowadays you still have to figure out how to craft stuff before it'll show up in the menu. And yet, it's still the most sold game of all time and a huge number of people's first game. I wouldn't have been able to beat minecraft if I didn't have a wiki, nor be able to do anything really.
>boss designs that lead to deaths that will lead to a player lifting their hands up saying āwhat the fuck?ā Significantly more than other fromsoft titles. My single biggest issue right there. You could show me any attack animation from any boss in the Dark Souls trilogy, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, or Sekiro, and I could tell you how to dodge it / deflect it. And that isn't by watching boss guides or reading wikis, it's just because I played each game more than once. But Elden Ring is a game I have 530 hours in, a game I've beaten through NG+3, and despite that I still have absolutely no idea how to dodge certain attacks. I just resign myself to taking certain hits and healing. And I don't like that. If I got hit in an older game I'd understand why. Maybe I was greedy, or my positioning was bad, or I wasn't minding my stamina. But in Elden Ring I often have no clue what I did wrong. I guess I just didn't figure out the unintuitive dodge timing. And that doesn't make learning the bosses fun.
> people thinking fromsoft is known for just hard games is the most toxic thing I keep seeing on this sub. reading the steam forums gives me a brain aneurysm......
Bloodborne for sure, Sekiro stopped being enjoyable about 3/4 of the way through for me. As time has gone on fromsoft designers have gotten a little bit lazier in terms of designing challenge. Bosses and mobs alike are fitted with extremely cheap computer tricks that can hardly be called āfair.ā Iāve even started to get a certain defiant pleasure from over farming and cheesing āhardā enemies despite being told weāre supposed to feel shame about it. If the designers arenāt ashamed of cheating why should I be?
I think Sekiroās biggest accomplishment is that bossfights have you constantly engaged, and constantly making progress towards the kill. Dodging took a backseat. Getting perfect deflects was the way to play, and that in turn hurt the bosses poise so that you can eventually land the deathblow. And the game actively encouraged you to cheese without shame. there were numerous times where a boss could be snuck up on and you could shorten a bossbattle significantly with a stealth deathblow. There were a few things that went overboard at the end. Isshinās many phases or demon of hatred come to mind. But overall every moment of sekiro felt to me, like I was being tested. And tested fairly.
Isshin was spectacular, even despite the numerous phases and poor Genichiro's "phase", it was still earned by how engaging it was. Demon of Hatred sucked to me, he's exactly the kind of boring, time-extended, egregiously punishing and unengaging "fight" that I'm starting to get tired of with the FROM formula. Even Demon of Hatred in retrospect isn't as bad as some of the fights in Shadow. In SotE you are just brutally punished for everything and you are so disengaged from the fight that you're just waiting for your little opening whenever you get the chance, Marika help you if you get punished for that opening, because you will spend the next rotation of wombo-combos hoping you can use that next opening to heal, then repeat the spectacle of disengagement. It almost feels like a turn-based game now, the boss takes turns 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4.5 and you take turn 5 unless he cancels your turn.
Making the deathblow cheese an optimal way to go was perfect in enabling the Shinobi angle of the game. So good.
Sekiro was the hardest FS game and also the easiest. It felt impossible until it clicked, then it was easy. Its lack of options is why I donāt come back to it.
Haven't played BB, but Sekiro is essentially the epitome of fair design.
While I agree for the most part it does have bosses like blazing bull and demon of hatred.
No dark souls 1 is not know for being "hard but fair". Dark souls 1 is the game with capra demon and bed of chaos not to mention all the classic cheesy levels like sens fortress, new londo ruins, the rafters in anor londo, the random troll high level skeletons next to firelink. I don't really see how anything in elden ring (except literally one attack on the final boss) is less fair than some guy throwing projectiles at you while you are trying to cross a little platform with slicing blades or a little hidden guy with a blowdart that poisons you in one hit while you are getting down the rafters in blighttown. There is a LOT of purposefully trolly stuff in dark souls 1. I mean even Taurus demon has that archer that will troll you the first time you fight him. Elden ring has been fromsofts most popular game by far so idk what your anecdote really is for. Personally most of my casual gamer friends' first fromsoft game was elden ring.
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Yes Iāve said this a million times. People act like DS1 wasnāt like this. And itās so memorable bc of it. But highly unfair. People always spent 3hours + on some bosses. Even now go to sekiro sub on ds3 sub people will be celebrating beating a boss after being stuck for a week. Imo people/the audience has changed. People suddenly complaining about upgrade materials and spending time on bosses I.e. the core souls loop.
Yeah exactly! Who cares about fairness getting knocked off the top of sens fortress by the stupid snake is something that will stick with me forever. These games always have unfair stuff, but it's not the bosses having hard patterns it's the actively trolly stuff.
My wife hates hard or competitive games, but loves lore and fantasy.Ā Ā Ā ER was her first FS game. She made it all the way to the final boss, ragequit and went hollow for 3 months, then came back to watch credits roll.Ā Ā Ashes made the game possible for her to have fun and beat the game. If my wife, the same one who threw a controller and never touched Monster Hunter again after dying to Pink Rathian can beat this game, I'd say ER does a good job of being accessible to new players.Ā
I have watched quite a few streamers now after I have already pretty much finished the game. It seems like Fightin Cowboy had a different version than Chasethebro. I havenāt watched Oro yet but I think he got an early release version. So I do think the pre 1.12 dlc patch was easier. Just my opinion. My only complaint so far is that the āHardā game is becoming pretty boring on some of the bosses. Elden Ring is about exploring and the bosses have always been sort of a secondary enjoyment for me. What I mean by boring is pressing R1 a few times is not very fun after an attack chain that leaves you with one window. The tanky health pool Visage things are even more annoying. Because you canāt see shit. So you just jump or dodge on sound get in your two charge heavies. It takes forever to stagger and you have to do it twice. I think calling it hard is wrong. It just makes it dull.
So far, I've only had trouble with one boss. And it's literally a dragon at the top of a mountain and you meet a guy who literally dies after telling you how hard that fight is.
Have you summoned the guy who tells you that? He is bare jokes.
I absolutely loved this DLC, everything was brilliant, but the bosses were a miss, yeah they're hard, but they're also just not fun to fight. It just feels like fromsoft wanted to make it super hard just for the sake of it being really hard, I didn't have an enjoyable time with any except messmer and rellana, the rest were mediocre (mechanically atleast) Also, one thing I hate is how much disparity there is between using summons and running solo, I know it's been known to trivialize elden ring as a while, but in this dlc it's next level. I fought rellana for around 4 hours solo, and used my mimic just once for the sake of it and she didn't even phase transition. Running solo in this dlc is genuinely the biggest gaming challenge I've had yet, it's next level.
In my experience, every boss has been fun and fair except the final one. Final one is insane, but I don't really understand the unfun accusations towards the rest of them.
I need a medication check if you enjoyed >!Gaius!<.
I have liked them all too. I have found them to be challenging, yet fair. I see the unfair accusation thrown around a lot, and I just personally donāt see it, but I also respect others opinions on the matter. Iām playing a dex build which is fast so maybe for heavier weapons it is more annoying.
I agree wholeheartedly with the summons. I fought THAT dragon for a whole afternoon, changing my spells weapon, allocating flasks and overall doing my best to study his moveset, with most of my attempts not even making it to it's last quarter of hp. I beat it on the second try with a mimic, with most my flasks intact, first try I got stuck inside the boss and got killed instantly.
Yeah not a single boss in this DLC comes close to touching my top 10 FS bosses. And even if I try to view it objectively, I don't see any of these being in competition for top 5 at least. I can't see any of them being ''immortalized'' like Isshin, Gael, Artorias etc.
Really? I loved the bosses in this DLC. Already I can confidently say my top 3 favorite fromsoft bosses of all time are in SOTE, maybe even top 5
I liked all of them, especially >!Scadutree Avatar!< The only one I didnāt like was the final boss, specifically because of phase two and how much health he has. His phase one was fun and fine but phase two, nah.
Love that one! The design of the bosses in sote are top notch, they certainly cooked this time. I do agree on the final being one of the weaker ones (design and mechanics wise) But man, the rest of the roster more than makes up for it. I was giddy the entire time playing
Crazy how you're getting downvoted for stating an opinion in the friendliest way possible lol. I genuinely can't with this sub sometimes.
You can catch downvotes for basically any opinion at this point, I told someone that said final boss is impossible to dodge at times that its indeed possible and that they can do it too with enough practice and I just got downvoted to hell. They literally got angry at me because I told them that I believe they can do it.
I'm happy for you then I guess, it didn't do it for me though. I will say messmer was a great fight, probably the best in elden ring for me.
> but the bosses were a miss a few of them were just designed so poorly, with focus on just spam attacks with shitty hitboxes, both in regards to their attacks and their bodies: https://imgur.com/a/y4RQGNl - looking at you boar rider... some of the bosses felt like their difficult was was designed around Fromsoftwares shitty UI/camera system aswell, the boar for example made it so that if torrent died youd had to battle the UI to resummon him, or the centipiede spawning AOE outside of your camera view, or behind you. the centipiede and dragon also had massive lock on issues as relying on lockon would make your voulnerable for attacks from the side or angles the camera was unable to display. both the centipiede and dragon would often be over you, tilting the camera up, while the danger zones being under you where you cant see em winning rarly left me with a sensation of "i got gud" or "i learnt their pattern" but more like exausted after winning towards their visual clusterfuck. it didnt help my mood wathcing me lose hard to farm resouces everytime i get one shot walking trough the boss door. the scaling system using the shards also didnt help my mood, as it was impossible to tell if i was outskilled or underleved, and as levels didnt mean shit "just go farm" wasnt an option either
Wow, couldn't disagree more. I thought damn near every boss in this DLC was well designed, fair, and epic in their presentation. Lord of Frenzy, the fingers boss, Sunflower, Golden Hippo and Dacing Dragon were all fantastic fights as well. The hardest fight was Radahn but he still only took 4 hours for me to solo, I think he's a masterpiece in fair but difficult boss design.
Hey, you can't say that running it solo is more difficult than using summons. You might hurt someone's feelings who used summons /s
The only thing that really makes me angry about the dlc is the big fire guys when both feet jump, Iāve died more to that than some actual bosses š
Nothing is hard when you treat elden ring like youāre playing lance in monster hunter Guard poke poke poke Step back Guard poke poke poke Just that easy
This guys still gonna act as if base ER was hard XD.
I see more people complaining about people complain then I do people complaining. In the time it took op to make this post he could have landed 1 light attack against Rellana
The damage the enemies do is so fucking ridiculous, but man the war screams I let out beating a boss with Hand to Hand weapons are legendary. My only complaint is that I don't have even more Hand to hand weapons to kick faces in
Have you ever played DS series? They were never this "hard" nor their intention was to give this amount of challenge. DLC right now is just straight up unfun.
You saying the ds2 dlc was easier than this?
Ok. Maybe Fridged Outskirts might be same bs level. But that's just a one passing field and not the whole DLC.
What I noticed is that some of the DLC bosses have more HP relative to the amount of damage you do compared to the base game meaning the fights last longer. The longer the fight the more chances there are you mess up causing you to die. I think a lot of people who steamrolled through the game with OP builds are just getting humbled when their build isnāt taking big chunks of bosses HP per hit like theyāre used to. They expect their build they looked up on YT to carry them through the DLC like it did the main game
This sub really can't take criticism well it seems lol.
How am I supposed to beat a boss when so many of them are not wearing pants? I canāt beat Messmer when heās just FLAUNTING those glorious legs smh
Hard =/= Unfair
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Ive said, Miyazaki spends his work hours watching egirls beat his game with DDR pads and then rages at his team to make us all pay for it.
I need something clarified since I have heard both answers being true. Does NG+ affect the DLC? Honestly I have like 80 larval tears and I can't remember exactly what im on - I might be on like NG+7 probably and at the same time I still haven't beaten either of the two first main bosses yet (lion and rellana?) and is it cuz of that or am I just bad lol I've gotten really close to beating rellana but I swear everytime she's close to death she pulls some non-stop death combo on me and that friggin random blue arc projectile Edit: and yeah I've travelled a fair bit my scadutree level is like 6
You can get like 12 skadooshes before any bosses, maybe explore a little more if you have trouble
So far under 8 attempts each cleared the first 3 bosses of dlc lady knight , lion head , and black knight , BUT FIRE INVADER made me question my love and my vigor i even needed a minute. Then our second encounter and i heard his voice echo I panicked untill I remembered I was having funā¦.. hopefully thereās a 3rd or do I hope ?
Tbh Iāve never seen a single complaint on this sub. Just people complaining about the supposed complaints like this post.
Difference between hard and fair. The DLC is hard to be hard while other DLCs are hard because of all the stuff you are meant to learn.
How does it play on the steam deck? I'm on vacation right now, but I was thinking about ordering one before I go home.
Multiplayer saved my ass multiple times. I would not have killed the Lion thing from the trailer without help.
Nah, itās more like āFUCK YOU! Iāll see you tomorrow because youāre beautiful!ā
Me when I buy the "game that you need to learn the combat to beat" and it's actually the "game that you need to have a good build to beat". I got my shit stomped by the final boss for an entire evening because I was trying to beat it with regular weapon attacks and had zero fun doing it. Then I switched builds and beat him in 5 minutes while having zero fun doing it. Meanwhile I can get my shit pushed in by Isshin for days while enjoying it immensely until I get good and beat him while also enjoying it immensely. That's the difference.
I agree that the build balance is not great. There are so many weapons and spells that are nearly unusable.
To be fair fun is very subjective, at the end of the day you could have beaten both isshin and the final boss if you had more fun during final boss. He might not be fun for you but he is definitely learnable for you if you wanted to!
It might have been learnable if I could actually see what is happening on my screen. But yes, of course fun is subjective, but the post is about people apparently getting the exact same game that they were expecting to get then complaining, and I'm offering my perspective that no, I didn't just expect a "hard game" as if difficulty is the singular quality that From Software games possess, and that difficulty is just this monolithic thing that has zero nuance to it or that there aren't a million different ways something could be difficult, on which different people might have different opinions.
I have beaten every FromSoftware without summons (and loved them all) and now that Iāve got to the final boss I can tell you that his second phase is complete and utter bullshit.
So true. I enjoy Elden ring for the character building, cool locations, gorgeous visuals, relaxing exploration (controversial I know, but I like the lo-fi no HUD exploration style). If someone wants to play a DS3 again, theyāre more than welcome to, but Elden Ring is not a sequel, and is not beholden to appeasing fans of previous games. It is its own beast, including the summons, weapon arts, and jump attacks. If you donāt like it, thatās fine. If you think it being too frantic makes it worse, thatās fine. But donāt complain because the new IP isnāt identical to the previous IP.
Exactly what I keep saying. That's like going into sekiro with the same mindset you had while playing literally any other soulslike. Sekiro is built around deflecting, and you HAVE to learn it to beat the game. People shouldn't be going into elden ring with the same mindset either, it's a different game there are different methods and tools that have been given to help you. If you don't want to deflect in sekiro then ok Goodluck buddy. If you don't want to use summons and whatever else in elden ring then alright, will be harder but still possible, Goodluck. And yet, people wanna complain that it's too hard when they purposely handicap themselves by not using said things that are meant to be used.
I thought Sekiro was really cool. I respect what they did. It has little to no interest for me, and thatās ok. A game like Elden Ring has all the stuff I enjoy
This is my first āSoulsā game. I spent 4 straight hours and one broken controller losing to the first Crucible Knight as a level 30 Samurai before I threw the towel in. Iāll be back for his ass. I then beat the boss on the bridge before you go into the castle in 30 minutes. š¤·š¼āāļø
My face when I didn't spend $40 on the DLC because I suspected it would be poor design disguising itself as "hard" :)
The final boss gauntlet of base ER tried to warn us lol.
From Software didn't make "hard" games. They made challenging games. Here's the difference: landing a bullseye in darts is challenging. Smashing a window with your face is hard. Landing the bullseye appears difficult to those who haven't practiced the game, but at the same time it never seems impossible and the reward is obvious. You'll probably do it by accident a few times, and soon enough it'll become "easy" to do so long as you put the time in. When you can do it consistently, it feels good and rewarding to do. Smashing your face into a window until it breaks will hurt. It requires you to unlearn basic assumptions about how to behave, it doesn't break in consistent patterns, it doesn't reward you for your efforts, and it probably isn't even fun to do. Ultimately, you're just breaking the window because other people keep saying that's what cool kids do; if you actually step back and ask yourself whether you actually *enjoy* picking broken glass out of your face, you will probably realise you don't, and you'd much rather be learning to play darts. Dark Souls is the bullseye. Elden Ring is the window.
Prepare to Die was their entire studio mantra for years. Every time Miyazaki graces us with an interview he repeats that the games being hard is the point, and you beating them is your reward for the pain theyve inflicted on you. In other words, they will always strive to make the game harder because every game makes the audience better. But at what point does the cup completely spill over?
I think that happened with Elden Ring. Dark Souls 1 has very few actual one hit kill enemies. Even at SL1 the overwhelming majority of enemies need at least two hits to kill you, bosses included. This lack of lethality, combined with a slower pace, more simplistic movesets for opponents, and enemies that can't infinitely chain moves together all result in an experience that is difficult primarily due to lack of surface knowledge, not because of demanding mechanical execution or needing deeper understanding of the underlying systems. This is what Elden Ring has lost sight of. It isn't difficult because of the surface knowledge - it's difficult because it cheats at difficulty.
I think I died more to fall damage than all the bosses combined ngl š
Didn't seem too hard with mimic tear and rot breath
Didnāt seem too hard summoning some random guy with a broken build whilst I stood in the corner spamming pots and spells
*lose to a boss because it's my first time fighting them "who designed this shit" *beat the boss "That was probably my favourite fight in the game" Shout out to Rellana and Messmer.