It’s kinda crazy that I generally agree with most of your points on a base level. But even so I can’t help but feel Elden Ring is my favorite Souls game as a complete package. Even after replaying the Souls trilogy and Sekiro I still have such this warm feeling towards Elden Ring that I genuinely can’t help but start up a new play through when I’m bored with other games. It just hits all the right notes for me, even with its problems.
Glad to hear you have fun with it. The guys at FROM always put their all, tho I feel that it's a bit much for my tastes the previous games might've influenced my palette but it still holds up.
yea I agree. I can objectively see the many flaws of the game, and yet I love it. there's just some magic that the devs sprinkled into the lands between when they built this world. also, there's no experience in gaming quite like Elden ring, even previous soulsbornes. I believe it will stand the test of time and be remembered quite fondly even 10 years from now. the impact of a first, blind playthrough through ER is something I'll never forget in the gaming realm.
if we are not kidding ourselves, the reason why you go back to elden ring is because of the world, its beauty, its majesty, the art direction, and the feelings that the areas evoke. elden ring is ultra immersive in ways that many games today are not, the pale but vibrant textures and the slightly foggy lighting, with that sense of coldness that the world emits. i need a mechanically good game, elden ring is not mechanically good enough for me, but the experience of playing elden ring is second to none.
>the reusing of bosses takes away from the original experience yes , thankyou , someone gets it , this is a fantastic review , at no point in playing ER did i have have.... yeah yeah make anime game reviews instead like me LOL..... the music for the theme of the duo foreskin apostle fights (of which there are like 6 copy/pastes of) that fromsoft made communicates to me that they think they made something truly grand and amazing here , that this is peak video game design that you can't get anywhere else , that their worked really hard to serve me this 5star meal squilliam style when in reality what they did was take a beautiful painting of orstein and smough with their names engraved on the frame , pulled down their pants , and take a huge shit right in the center of the painting , scratched "foreskin apostle duo" over their name , and served it to me as their main course and im not even a simp for the orstien and smough fight like most others are , but as i sat there to watch all of it , it was such an insult to me personally as well as to good game design , that i knowingly accepted their plate with a scowl on my face and dined on their fresh pile of shit , it was the worst bossfight i had ever eaten , and after i beat that boss i uninstalled the game , and nothing will ever be able to compel me to play it ever again , and makes me wish pirating had an option where i could be granted some of the dev's money for how much of my time they wasted playing their game.......
The fact they reused the same ruined "Shack" over and over again really pissed me off.. pisses me off even more when you realize that same shack was used for the first proper Undead Settlement bonfire in DS3..
Elden ring is a game that i feel absolutely no guilt or shame for quitting. I just got fed up of contrived bs difficulty. Im just gonna go replay ds 3 😂 nice video.
Elden Ring has to be the easiest but most fun souls game I played 😮 This is coming from someone who played Elden Ring as my first souls game, afterwards moving to the dark souls genre
@nakiangoderich3014 that's fair enough. I did end up having another go and completed it. But I definitely found it the hardest and in the least fun way 😆
For me God of War and Elden Ring are the GotYs of 2022 but Elden Ring is not a 10/10 or masterpiece, for being a masterpiece it has to many flaws. Tbh I would give it a 7,5/10 that means not its bad omg, but it is to big for its own good. :( And yeah From Software can't make good oversized bosses. When I want to fight oversized bosses Capcom has a really good series for this! 😊 Like in Armored Core, the best fights are against enemies they are in your size and have "equal" abilities of the player. And From Software need more critique, than without critique they can't improve.
I like how its a whole thing to circlejerk about souls fanboys whenever a critical elden ring video comes out. The video itself is fine, bro has opinions some i think are ok some i think are aight, but in the comments i constantly see people saying stuff like “ wow! You validated my opinion on this game. Im glad you arent like those souls fanboy. I cant believe this game was GOTY. It is so flawed!” Aight
It seems to happens with negative video essays in general, people that comment those type of comments are ironically fanboys of videos like these ones. Which is why I have gotten sick of people using that word.
I really hate how cultish some, seemingly a lot, of Fromsoft fans have become. You literally cannot criticize this game at all in any way without being told you are just bad, to "git gud" and how the game is perfect because it's hard. I saw one guy say that he actively decided to dismiss all criticism of the game because 1 time he saw 1 guy say 1 stupid thing and therefore all criticism is invalid. I asked him if he thought Fromsoft was perfect and above flaw and he told me he wouldn't answer because it was a bad faith question.
Exactly there's a reason any video criticizing this game in any way has a literal 5 minute long disclaimer starting the video so people dont instantly rage. I like this game but it has a lot of problems,duo crucible knight for example pretty bad design and I've beat them still doesn't mean it was good.
Elden has the exact same glaring issue that Breath of the Wild did. It is waaaaaaaaay too much physical space. When you make the game world so large, all you are doing for yourself as a developer is making things way too difficult for yourself and also guaranteeing that people are going to get exhausted and bored playing your game, especially in terms of replay value. Cut the amount of catacombs/caves/mines in half or more, carve off huge chunks of land, and suddenly Elden Ring becomes a far more enjoyable experience. I still love the game but they could have cut the game size and cut-and-paste locales in half, made the remaining areas much more unique and detailed and bam! Could have been the greatest game of all time. Well, if they fixed the boss designs too. Bullcrap like Malenia, Maliketh, Elden Beast(at least give us Torrent for crap sake), Fire Giant, Astel, Godskin duo, Crucible Knights(they just feel unfair the first time you fight them and it only gets worse), Commander Nial, Gideon and his neverending barrage of spells...pretty much everything from Leyndell onwards just sucks, boss and area wise. I do love Radagon though. That guy is a boss.
It's assuredly not. There's a very funny statistic about Elden Ring from the time before they implemented blatant markers for NPC questlines: More people had one of the more hidden endings (Ranni's) than the basic ending(s). Why? Because the majority of people ended up playing this game with a guide. That really says it all right there. Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 were obtuse at times - but some brain juice got you there, for the _most part._ Elden Ring? I _still_ don't feel like I really get what even happened in that game or why, and that extends to trying to progress quests and character stories; I played before the markers (which are not a solution, just a Ubisoft-style band-aid) but refused to use a guide, so I finished... like... one or two, I think? Bottom line, they tried to transplant the side quest model from their prior, more linear games 1 : 1 into Elden Ring's gargantuan open world - and even From themselves clearly admit it didn't work, for otherwise they wouldn't have caved and added markers.
It's nothing like that. With fromsoft fans, there are those that play for bosses and combat, and those that play for exploration and world design. Elden ring aligns better with the latter, so the former feels that the game is inferior to the other ones. It's that simple.
@@unidentified2026 I disagree with that assement. ER was easily the best of the souls boss design to the point most of the remmeberance bosses outrank the best of other souls game bosses. The bosses feel much more reactive and there are so much more ways to interact with them as a result. The difference I feel is that souls prioritised a means of play where the player doesn't have to do any mechanical exploration, just getting the foundations is enough, while ER prioritised exploring the mechanics to their fullest in fights. This is why most of the people I see state their dislike of ER bosses seem to play ER like any other DS where the bottom line is rolling and waiting out for a safe time to use R1 and end up saying things like they are fighting a Sekiro boss in DS1. While most people I see enjoy the game are fully using posture breaks, hit-trading, jump attacks, charge attacks and weapon arts in their gameplay allowing them to 'keep up' with bosses. This is not to say ER doesn't have its faults (repeated content and the mountain top of the giants are the biggest offenders) but I really don't think its faults are what most people consider them to be.
@theresnothinghere1745 right sadly, the souls games were just roll and spam r1... almost a rhythm game. Elden ring you have to use the whole move set you have
" I think we need a little more criticism in the from software community" THANK YOU DUDE I'm a big fan of fromsoftware but i think elden ring have so much bad thing, it's a really good game, but it's a low/average fromsoftware game and for those who think an open world make a good game you're wrong, you can't have a fucking good level design ( Like dark souls 1 for example) with an open world because it's too big and you can't focus on that Well i'll start the video now i'm already hype :D
its laughably the best fromsoft game by a gigantic margin, not a single level from ds1 comes even close to even 1 legacy dungeon, combine those with the handcrafted open world, and it makes ds1s level design look cute in comparison. "with an open world because it's too big and you can't focus on that" well considering the level design is better than ds1 and its cute 40 hours of small corridors and cute shortcuts, they focused on ERs level design even more, not to mention it took them 3 years to make, unlike the lazier older games, where they shat them out year after year. lol souls veterans and their delusions of nostalgia disguised as thoughtful critique XD a game being open world doesnt make it better, but in elden rings case, it made it far FAR better than older games.
The FS community has a strong bond from being able to take these intentionally hard games, and from the rush that comes when you FINALLY beat that one boss, and there's also the camaraderie that you get from being fans of something "not for normies". Problem with an excess of that attitude is, that makes the community toxic towards people who have any issue with the game ("git gud scrub" being the answer given to even the most valid and unanimouscriticisms) and it also has a bad feedback effect, when the designers start making bosses based on the feedback of people who can beat the Orphan of Kos / Sister Friede / Swordsaint Isshin with only a toothpick, so you get a general upscaling in the challenge and complexity of bosses, until half of them can jump across the arena and fire off a ten-hit combo (any of which can one- or two-shot you at max health) ending in a disengage, and then immediately do it again. A lot of the combat design here feels like a step BACK from Bloodborne and Sekiro, at least in terms of player options. They went for a combat paridigm of aggressive / fast enemies, and then gave you the tools to be just as aggressive / fast as your foes. Whereas ER felt like playing against Sekiro / Bloodborne bosses with a DS1 character.
@@paulgibbon5991 "Whereas ER felt like playing against Sekiro / Bloodborne bosses with a DS1 character" i totally agree with that and it's probably my biggest problem with the game and for" when the designers start making bosses based on the feedback of people who can beat the Orphan of Kos / Sister Friede / Swordsaint Isshin with only a toothpick" you can take feedback from them honestly it's not the problem, because the three fight you talk about are hard but really fair compare to most elden ring bosses so i don't think the problem came from that You can make incredible looking boss with awesome moveset, just let them breath instead of having a fight where you run most of the time just to approach a boss and if you don't want the boss to breath you need to have tools like sekiro , in sekiro you can parry , posture ... you know the purpose of the posture gauge, we needed something like that ( no for everything but some bosses felt like they came from sekiro and it felt really weird) i like to compare dark souls with monster hunter because you fight almost the same way here it was like fighting a frontier monster with the moveset of MH1, it's beautiful but you can't do shit because the boss always flee and you're not quick enough to do something, it's really passive, almost more than DS1 even though the game is much faster Less is more Quality over quantity We already got quantity with dark souls 2 , and people don't like it because it have tons of problems Elden ring feel the same for me, too much thing, but nothing relevant because almost everything has problems compare to previous games ( DES/DS1/BB/DS3/Sekiro, even tho each one have different problem they're not as frustrating as DS2/elden ring)
@@Elyakel One of the big problems with bosses is the summon system. They make the fight easier, but in a very unsatisfying way by basically making the boss go stupid. I banged my head against Margit for hours, then beat him on my second try after using summons, just because he repeatedly turned his back on me to fight the skeletons who were doing single-digit damage. So many bosses end up being way too hyper-aggressive if you don't use summons, and much to easy if you do.
Bosses roaming the world, mobs fighting in random skirmishes, npcs with actual quests, fractions. Interesting pvp systems and areas. Yeah, I imagined a lot during that year when we all waited for ER 😐
Elden Ring is definitely too large. As evidenced by their inability to actually fill it with interesting content. You could cut half of the world, and actually make for a better game. Get rid of EverGaols, all the extra catacombs, the Mountaintop of the Giants, make some of the areas smaller. Focus on the legacy dungeons and the underground. Also, this game would have been made so much better if it had Sekiro's progression system. If you were getting something like Prayer Beads from these mini bosses, you would feel better about fighting them. Big bosses give you attack power, so we don't need to waste time with upgrade materials and upgrading weapons (which I always found an unneeded mechanic), Minibosses give health upgrades, and otherwise you can get experience to unlock skills and other abilities. An Elden Ring with Sekiro combat-progression would have been a legendary game....
ommf thank god fromsoft dont listen to their delusional fanbase that pretend to be game devs, brah half ur changes would make the game far worse and more empty, and the game has laughably more interesting and memorable content than older games no contest, the only thing i agree with here is cutting half the catacombs, they should replace mountains with a big legacy dungeon, the rest should stay the same. its too big if u explore all the content, which u never would on a 2nd playthrough anyway.
mainly there is no such progression in the game because it's a rpg not an action game, it's not the game's problem that you don't like those elements you just don't like the rpg system :)
@@mochoxd2185 you do know that all souls games, bloodborne and elden ring are Action/RPG game?))) Elden ring is not a pure rpg game. SO what you said to the other person is wrong.
To me, it seems you play these games exclusively for bosses and combat. I think you get minimal value from exploration, especially considering your complaint about hollowknight. As for me, I value exploration, navigation, level design, enemy encounters, and secrets equally as much as I like bosses. I get as much satisfaction from finding an obscure secret as beating a boss in elden ring. So when I'm exploring the open world I'm constantly running into things that are valuable to me. When you go through the open world, you run into things that are not bosses or bosses that are reused, so you can't enjoy it.
What are you smoking dude, what level design? Where? It's mostly a painfully standard big open map. You are actually constantly punished with abysmal findings like crafting materials locked in a treasure chests. You literally walk to the edge of the world to discover nothing of any importance. To me it seems like Lands Between is most enjoyed by tourists who like to stare at painted postcards and from time to time, deal with the sporadic consequential gameplay elements like "navigation, level design, enemy encounters" that in case of Elden Ring exist only within legacy dungeons. Even in those, truly interesting level designs with a single bonfire and looping paths like Cathedral of the Deep, just don't exist anymore. Riding Torrent is fun and remains as my only joy of this open world. And the views, the views are nice 😮💨
It's funny to me because soloing that boss is always a highlight of my playthroughs. After 29 playthroughs, I still love them. They oddly get worse when you use a summon. They're more manageable as a solo fight because they become more predictable.
"having to look for things to do is not something I attribute as a positive to the open world" ...wait what? I couldn't disagree more. That's what I woudl consider an actual good open world....because it facilitates actual exploring, which so few open worlds do (this and Outer wilds are the best imo)
You misunderstood the quote. ER's problem is that wherever you go, there is nothing to do - in other words: "having to look for things to do" and finding no game mechanics. Just vast, empty spaces... like those minds of Hosts who walk around aimlessly and pretend to be doing a lore field analysis 😂
@@justaquietpeacefuldance "Just vast, empty spaces.." It's objectively not that at all? Had you said you found the content there boring that'd be one thing but between the world bosses, dungeons, npc's, item's guarded by enemies, unlockable paths to other areas, major dungeons, etc... There reallly isn't much empty space in ER. Try highlighting any 'empty' section of the overworld map and I very much bet that it really won't be that big once everything is accounted for (except for the Radhan battlefield, the sole exception due to the nature of the boss)
11:40 That's where you go wrong. Fromsoft's tourists love having f^ck all to do besides taking screenshots, imagining they're a character in the next Vaati video 🤯 😂 Perhaps we should look at it like it's Witcher 3 but even then my criticism remains, it just shifts from the lack of difficulty and "zero stakes exploration" to other, more specific shortcomings of this "intricate Open World". Like poorly implemented, few and far between quests, NPCs that are just shadows of the fascinating and cryptic figures of DS1 and feel totally out of place - world is the size of the Continent but, yet again, we get same ol' tiny group of dead-already characters Miyazaki likes to present since Demons... why? Sure, it would be cool to compare the living World of W3 with Lands Between, if these lands weren't so flat and stagnant in comparison. Not to mention that Witcher's naturalistic looking caves were actually more impressive in 2015... when on the other hand, Fromsoft was perfecting their level design with the release of Bloodborne, even making a genious (imo) use of randomised content, introducing Chalices. Now those been turned it into Catacombs and I'm supposed to... not notice it?? wtf? Hey Wafe, check out "Elden Ring Dissected #1 - Fall Damage Explained" by illusory wall, if you haven't already. There are some "design choices" that still bind all From games together, surprisingly. (It's an amazing video! And yours as well, hah 😊)
The balancing of Elden ring is horrible and grinding levels seems to be the standard method to ensure you’re not one shored by the bosses. Poor effort by the from soft
you don't need to grind levels at all, margit is perfectly fine with just 15 vigor and a +2 starting weapon and 30-40 vigor for end game with a talisman or/and opaline hard tear.
I always have incredibly fond memories of my first elden ring playthrough. I think up until Leyndell the game was borderline fantastic - everything after that was a significant dip in quality and the repetition starts to drag the exoerience down.
Only things i liked from the end game areas are certain things you can get like the fire giant spells and ancient dragon spells, plus Malenia and Godfrey otherwise it started feeling like a huge waste of time after a while.
And yet, even with all its flaws, 10million + people went to watch the shadow of the erdtree teaser trailer. Despite its flaws Elden Ring is still a fun game.
good critique, i love ER but i also have a lot complaints that align with yours. i trust FromSoftware will look at the critical feedback on the internet and make ER2 a better game. on a unrelated note, why did you choose that icon for your channel?
You are one of the few channels on here for which I have the notifications turned on. I might not be able to watch this now but I'm looking forward to it when I have time. :)
sekiro is one of my favourite games ever and knowing how miyazaki likes fumito huedas work made me think elden ring would be differnet but has a lot of problems that ds2 got just wantting making a bigger game more bosses more weapons. Its a good game and much better than latest tripleA games but i spected something differnet.
Malenia Blade of Retribution lmfao, Godefroy the Grafted is like when you go to a local discount store to buy some knockoff brands of your favourite products... Yeah, this one hurts. 33:22 or mini-DSA in the Ringed City swamp? Shadows of Yharnam casually patrolling a regular nightmare area? How about out of the blue Ornstein in a Heide's Tower of Flame? Seriously, there isn't now and there wasn't before, enough critique you can put on the games you love, how the hell those npc-fans don't understand that?? "Praise the pointless" was a message left at the end of an empty corridor that you went on exploring nonetheless, lead by the nose with impeccable level design. You were actually surprised that the game, so well designed and dedicated to not wasting player's time has... played you. Message on the floor was never a critique but rather an expression of gratitude towards devs for respecting us. And also just a cheeky little message 😂
After one year, there are some aspects that aged like fine wine, others like aged milk. Fine Wine: > Bosses -- They have some of the most complex, fast, and fun movesets in the entireFromSoftware catalogue. I also love the emphasis on how positioning can radically change boss ai and influence combo branches. Because of this, it's much easier to bait out both easier attacks and hard cool-ass combos. No joke, some of the bosses here rival the great DLC greats of DS3 and Bloodborne. Only issue for me is asset reuse, delayed attacks, and infuriating mechanics slowing down the pace of the fight and forcing player passivity. > Combat / Player Moveset & Abilities -- It's basically Dark Soul's combat but refined to perfection. Dodging is responsive, instantaneous, and has the perfect amount of i-frames. Parrying feels super satisfying and there are many different types to choose from. Ashes of war add great customizability to weapons that make even basic ones have personality. Every weapon is viable, even the colossal weapons. Class variety is INSANE and abundant, meaning more player freedom and expression. There is no softcap for stamina/endurance which means you don't have to worry about pausing or halting the pace of the fight too much, so level-up that endurance stat. It also has great hidden mechanics that can elevate fights and solve problems. JUMPING HAS i-FRAMES for 2/3rds OF YOUR BODY, as wells as skills, sorceries, and incantations that make you jump, levitate, or float. Jumping can be used in places when dodging feels much more tight and awkwardly timed like jumping over shockwaves, AOEs, 2 attacks you have dodge with one roll, etc. Because of this, you can capitalize on these dangerous attacks by jump attacking which let's you simulataneously dodge and punish your enemies' low hanging attacks which further blends the line between defense and offense that I loved so much in Sekiro. Jumping can also turn seemingly BS bosses into fun ones like Maliketh and Godfrey. The only thing I don't like is the addition of adding a slow final attack because it ruins the pace of fights and won't allow me to be as aggressive. I missed it in Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne when your player character won't slow down their final attack. Your light attack combo back then didn't have a slow final attack with a long recovery window, which meant that the light attack combo, once finished, would instantly cycle again repeatedly. Other than this, the combat system in this game is simple yet perfection. > Music - Aside from just the fire banging Boss Themes, I also really love the environmental soundtracks. My favorites of the environmental / background tracks are the ones for Caelid, Haligtree, Elphael, and ... there's just so much. Honestly, the soundtrack brims with so much personality that any of the tracks are memorable enough to become classics, with some of the background music even rivaling Minecraft's in my opinion. However, the boss themes though... those go so fricking hard, especially the Rememberance Boss themes. Hoarah Loux's sounds like a hyped-up viking/barbarian theme that increases my adrenaline and testosterone; Regal Ancestral Spirit is spiritual and breathtaking; Lichdragon Fortissax oozes so much power and awesomeness with it's organs and choir giving it this unique vampiric vibe; and my personal favorite being Maliketh's heroic yet desperate last stand theme being so frenetic and dynamic. In my opinion, this is the one aspect of Elden Ring that legitimately has no flaws Aged Like Milk: > Common Enemies & Enemy Variety-- I hate how much the common soldiers and knights are repeated. They ruin the uniqueness of the Legacy Dungeons, arguably the best areas of the game. If the demigods are at war with each other, then why frick are the usng same soldiers? Wouldn't they each have armies different from one another? This is something I missed in Sekiro as there is so much enemy variety in that game, some common enemies existing for a single part of a Legacy Dungeon. I also hate how you can just R1 / light attack spam them. Fighting them isn't as fun as the fighting bosses in this game, but at least make them fun to fight. They don't offer much in terms of combat because all you have to do is just attack and roll occassionally. Chad of Astora did a great video on Sekiro's common enemies which is something this game has to learn from. > The Open World - While I love the abundance of places to explore, the places you end up going to have bland level design, stale layouts, samey viduals, and formulaic. This is why I don't ever bother going to caves, catacombs, or tunnels since they are super boring compared to the legacy dungeons and heroes' graves which offer much more detailed level design, awe-inspiring art direction, fun layouts, and variety. Even though there are many of these side areas, I don't to explore any of them anymore. It feels as though they went with a bit more of a quantity over quality approach here which I don't like. I also hate that the entrances of these side areas are always the same. Formula: go through doors to get into catacombs, openings for caves, and mine entrances for tunnels. It's very formulaic. Wouldn't it be cool if you fell through a hole somewhere while exporing the open world only to land in a complex labyrinth of a catacomb that you can't get out of until you put int the hard work to escape it? Woudn't it be also cool if tunnels connected to other tunnels and you break walls like you're mining to access other ones? What if instead just going into the same old small cave hole to enter a cave, you see this giant hole in the moutain that reveals the expanse of the mountain's insides. This doesn't just have to apply to entrances, but exits as well kind of like those trap chests teleporting you to an overleveled side area only for you to get out of them and be in an entirely dfferent zone. There's also that one dungeon in Caelid that, if you complete it, allows you to go through an exit that gives you access to other parts of Limgrave. Stuff like the lack of entrance and exit variety for side areas could've elevated them, but they were always the same which made them formulaic and boring. I also don't like the fact there are basically no villagers just people in general which is very immersion breaking. In the lore, you go on hearing about the gods and demigod's people and how they were affected by their deities, but I don't see nobody. In the lore, there are still normal bystanders and people living in the lands between which is why it puzzles me that there are almost no neutral settlements or poeople walking about in Legacy Dungeons. It would be cool if the structures in Legcay Dungeons / Kingdoms were inaccessible, but there are transparent windows where you can see people living their day-to-day life in the broken and post-apocalipticlike Lands Between. I also think it would be cool if people, especially in Leydell, saw you traversing the Legacy Dungeon by roof jumping and alerted the guards or something. I want to see people praying in churches for whatever Outer God they devot themselves to, or peasants buying from merchants, or angry villagers rallying while soldiers hold them back. Stuff like this would've made Elden Ring even more immersive because you actually get to see for yourself how the world AND IT'S PEOPLE are affected by the Shattering and living in the Lands Between. There's only one peaceful settlement in this game, but all they do is just stay in the same looping animation with almost no changes. I also would've liked to see characters and NPCs actually talking to each other instead of just you since almost all of them are very opinionated. it would've been cool to see a falling out between Nepheli and Gideon, a wholesome interaction between Roderika and Hewg, battle plans with Bernhal and the Recusants, or Ranni plotting with you and Blaidd for her ext move. Instead, all we get are just he-said-she-said or I-said-they-said from them while you are the only able to talk to them. I dunno, but it's always been a thing that has bothered me with the FromSoftware games. Sekiro actually followed through on this. I still love Elden Ring despite all this. Let's all hope that the DLC will be good. For now, I give Elden Ring an 8.5/10. It's my second FromSoftwre game, with Sekiro being my first.
"This is something I missed in Sekiro as there is so much enemy variety in that game, some common enemies existing for a single part of a Legacy Dungeon." elden ring literally has 4 times the enemy variety of sekiro. and i disagree completely, theres alot of bland areas in all the games, youre also forgetting that exploring the open world itself is fantastic, especially when u take into account the underground, dont really care about the catacombs, those are optional and theyre basically like the chalices of bloodborne but actually designed. the fodder knights your complaining about are far worse in sekiro, fighting normal enemies in sekiro is frankly boring as u just spam L1 rather than R1 like in ER, and elden ring has laughably more mini bosses and elite poise heavy enemies than sekiro. " but it's always been a thing that has bothered me with the FromSoftware games. Sekiro actually followed through on this." it did that with a single npc pair and thats ishin and the girl which i forget her name, sekiro easily has the most forgettable narrative and npcs next to bloodborne. legit remember the first few npcs of ER more than the entirety of sekiro and bb combined.
This game screamed "lazy and cut corners" so many reused assests from prior games and many of the side dugeons are copy paste with a common enemy givin a health bar at the end.
The full grown falling star Beast follows a pattern just like every other boss I learned the fight 2 days ago. I ruined my first play through being a caster so now I'm going through as a strength/faith Build. I'm actually learning the fights This Time and I'm having a blast! I honestly Don't agree with most of what you're saying but that's what opinions are for.
You don't need to be a lore genius to figure out that the world of elden ring is post-apocalyptic. If you expected actual villages and cities with npcs like skyrim then that's on you but yeah this was not a fun watch. You sound so angry that it makes you come across as unreasonable and unlikable. I would personally recommend toning it down and adding a little more humor so perfectly reasonable critiques don't come across as hyperbolic rants. Remember the title of the video is "A Serious Critique of Elden Ring" not "Elden Ring Rant"
The anger is ironic, especially since it's a scripted video, so the anger is obviously intentional. I'm usually pretty monotone. The anger was actually supposed to be the comedic part; sad it didn't come off this way :/ Appreciate the criticism though.
But even post-apocalyptic open world's have "lived" elements. Fallout being the obvious example with settlements and enemy factions roaming about the world
@@benjeesilv1596 are you new to fromsoft games? these games are actually apocalyptic, far more than fallout, which is only apocalyptic in narrative but doesnt feel like it when u actually play the game.
A really well-made video! Your style is engaging, and I like the fact you always have a sense of a structure to your points and argument progression, even if doesn't make sense sometimes. As it happens, I'm also writting an ELDEN RING essay, however, the pain levels have stopped me from finishing it for now, as I'm actually writing about every single dungeon and every single boss attack, so that I can show just how shit these are (in the case of boss attacks, I'm taking how ridicilous the delays are sometimes). As for your criticisms, I'd like to have the time to adress them deeper, but I just haven't, so sorry for that. The point about confusion isn't handled well, as you bring little evidence and don't show a lot of examples, and it doesn't help that you yourself aren't sure if it's a criticism. There were some more minor things in between, but overall the rest of the video was valid. As for the boss segment though... You really have to elaborate if you wish for this to be a propore critique. Of course, if you don't and want to appear more in line with the video's character, that's fine, but it diminishes your argument. You call some really bad bosses, such as Maliketh, good and bosses that aren't that bad, sunch as Rykard, bad. Altough I definetly really fucking like Maliketh and his moveset, and everything about him, his recovery cancels are just unfair and a time waster. Of course, Maliketh is sadly made bad because of Beast Clergyman. You make a point about how it's possible to get hits in mid-combo, but fail to show a lot of examples, and funnily enough, you claim that in Godfrey's fight you have to dodge trhough all of the shit, but it's the one fight I know that I can do this in. As I said, asside from what I think are badly formulated sentences here and there, your video is mostly very good. I hope I brought up some points that could help you improve, and the mist important, I think, is more elaboration and examples. Please don't stop making videos, as I think I just found a really passionate content creater, who's teying to make best of a critique and comedic commentary.
Your part about good bosses being called bad and vice versa is kind of a mute point because it's all subjective. You'll never convince me Maliketh is bad because I subjectively think he's fucking amazing. No amount of your subjective feelings on him will change my subjective feelings on him. If you're writing a game critique, remember that. Assuming that your opinions are facts are a great way to come off as a prick to your audience.
Great video. Glad to see more people being rightfully critical about ER's faults. My one issue with this video however, is Loretta. Loretta is easily the most balanced boss in the game. She has no bad hitboxes, no garbage combos, every move is fair and avoidable, and she has no gimmick that makes or breaks the fight like Mogh. She is quite literally, the quintessential perfectly designed boss. Honestly, Loretta rivals even the best bosses in the series in terms of mechanics, and I'd say she might even be better than some of the best. Objectively speaking form a mechanical perspective, she might be less interesting than bosses like Gael, Ivory, and Dragonslayer, but she's so much more balanced than all of them. Even Gael suffers from the funny hitbox syndrome every once and a while, but Loretta has none of that. Even her lore is built well and rivals some of the best. If it wasn't for he three games of build-up, I'd say she'd rival Gael in terms of interesting lore, but she fits perfectly in that tertiary character lore role that other characters like The Ivory King, Raime, Alonne, Sir Yorgh, Sir Vilhelm, and the Dragonslayer Armour all fit into, that being the character who's somehow more badass, powerful, and awesome than the final boss for some reason. It feels like you rated her low because you personally found her mechanical perfection boring. It's interesting how there's always a fine line between unbalanced and too balanced. Loretta is probably, objectively speaking, the best boss they've ever made, but because her quality is so perfect, most players find her boring. While I understand it's opiniated, it's very disappointing seeing even more people throw Loretta under the bus. She's definitely in the leagues of Raime in boss design perfection, but people just always neglect her. She's somehow reached the underrated level of Dragonslayer Armour, that being the level where they're some of the best bosses in the game, but they have this aura that causes amnesia so almost nobody knows how perfect they actually are. Also, very spicy putting Mogh that low.
@@therook6198 I mean, you can say that, but you'd be wrong. Obviously if you'd have been stating your opinion, than sure. But you're stating as fact that Loretta is mediocre, which is objectively wrong. The only "Main Bosses" that are even close to her level are Goldfrey, Lord of Blood Mogh, and Leonine Misbegotten from Castle Morne. And only Mogh is able to contend with Loretta's lore. So no. There is not a single main boss except for Mogh that could even contend with Loretta. And before you say it, no, simple does not equate bad.
None of you accurately diagnose the problem with Elden Ring or Fromsoftware. The actual problem is the combat is shit. Not just outdated but repetitive shit. Elden ring just exposed that. Great combat translates to any design. Fromsoftware is not good at combat which is why they used tighter areas to hide the bad combat. Get in a big open free area and its jarring how restrictive the combat really is.
I'm happy to see people aren't letting thr critiques in elden ring go past by that other games get blasted for for example repeated bosses and reused dungeons etc and some unavoidable flaws in open world games get in the way of them loving the game. i hated how people are blasting almost all games with reused stuff but elden ring got away with it because of biases ( especially people like theactman who just never critiqued the game fairly). I love genshin, it's a game for Anime asthetics lovers more then people who love a medevil atmosphere, i play genshin and haven't played any soul games because my pc couldn't handle them, so I play genshin on my shit phone and the accessibility and casual nature of the game attracts me with its incredibly designed open world, music and character and some misunderstood and amazing lore, ik I'll love elden ring regardless of the reused stuff because I don't find these criticisms good or game breaking because there's no solution to balance games that try the large open world rpg story character building route otherwise the storage requirements would go haywire, most people can't afford such equipment, i don't mind linear and ubisoft formulas because they are really casual player friendly who don't have time to spend hours on a game so these criticisms fall apart for me fortunately , i can just turn of navigation and not look up minimap if I want to go the pro gamer move and have time but since most don't it's fine for us. there's lot of quests in genshin especially enkanomiya region which is something of an artistic masterpiece and the quests there aren't directly telling me where to go but point to general areas and hints from npcs and figuring puzzles which aren't obvious like many starting areas , from elden ring critiques I've watched which are many, there's isn't much different in genshin and elden ring except artstyle and combat, it has similar elements of fetch quests, npcs, combat in genshin is more complicated and structured because of team structures and micromanagement of buffs with all the possible combinations of elemental reactions and sequence in which you arrange your characters and slightly harder in elden ring but being honest the difficulty is badly balanced in elden ring enemy scales with region in genshin and your adventure rank , in elden ring the thing I love is its emptiness tbh i feel like I'm an post apocalyptic, idk the lore properly because it didn't find it that interesting unlike genshin which is its own manga that people actually don't know about. overall i want to play elden rn.
elden eing still has the highest enemy and boss variety in open world history, the game has 60 unique bosses and mini bosses and 150 unique enemies, the balance of ER is fine if youre exploring correctly and enough, but i guess fromsoft shouldnt have trusted players to do that.
The fact that there are only 8 unique actual bosses, really shows that the game went overboard with its quantity over quality. On my first playthrough, I really thought it was a good idea to have a regular enemy as a boss and then as a regular enemy to show how far you've come, but it honestly does feel like tons and tons of filler just to say they have over 200 bosses. Honestly the reskin I hated the most was the dragons.
Also the fact that Elden Ring has more unique bosses than all their other games really shows that Fromsoft didn't want to spent five years making a game.
laughably false and delusional souls veteran opinion thats mostly mindless and stems from blind nostalgia, especially the quantity over quality comment, brah this games mini bosses can go toe to toe against alot of their older games main bosses XD and there are 40 unique ones of those, let alone the actual main bosses, not to mention that all the reuses are actually optional, and the reskins usually have actually new looks and quite a few new moves, unlike the lazy ds1 and bb lol. half the reused bosses are in evergoals and catacombs, and those are basically like bbs chalices but laughably better designed and designed in the world rather than lazily teleported to them.
New Mandela effect: Godrick isn't an Elden Lord. Excuse my lore.
It’s kinda crazy that I generally agree with most of your points on a base level. But even so I can’t help but feel Elden Ring is my favorite Souls game as a complete package. Even after replaying the Souls trilogy and Sekiro I still have such this warm feeling towards Elden Ring that I genuinely can’t help but start up a new play through when I’m bored with other games. It just hits all the right notes for me, even with its problems.
Glad to hear you have fun with it. The guys at FROM always put their all, tho I feel that it's a bit much for my tastes the previous games might've influenced my palette but it still holds up.
Same
yea I agree. I can objectively see the many flaws of the game, and yet I love it. there's just some magic that the devs sprinkled into the lands between when they built this world. also, there's no experience in gaming quite like Elden ring, even previous soulsbornes. I believe it will stand the test of time and be remembered quite fondly even 10 years from now. the impact of a first, blind playthrough through ER is something I'll never forget in the gaming realm.
if we are not kidding ourselves, the reason why you go back to elden ring is because of the world, its beauty, its majesty, the art direction, and the feelings that the areas evoke. elden ring is ultra immersive in ways that many games today are not, the pale but vibrant textures and the slightly foggy lighting, with that sense of coldness that the world emits.
i need a mechanically good game, elden ring is not mechanically good enough for me, but the experience of playing elden ring is second to none.
Never played Bloodborne huh?
>the reusing of bosses takes away from the original experience
yes , thankyou , someone gets it , this is a fantastic review , at no point in playing ER did i have have....
yeah yeah make anime game reviews instead like me LOL.....
the music for the theme of the duo foreskin apostle fights (of which there are like 6 copy/pastes of) that fromsoft made communicates to me that they think they made something truly grand and amazing here , that this is peak video game design that you can't get anywhere else , that their worked really hard to serve me this 5star meal squilliam style
when in reality what they did was take a beautiful painting of orstein and smough with their names engraved on the frame , pulled down their pants , and take a huge shit right in the center of the painting , scratched "foreskin apostle duo" over their name , and served it to me as their main course
and im not even a simp for the orstien and smough fight like most others are , but as i sat there to watch all of it , it was such an insult to me personally as well as to good game design , that i knowingly accepted their plate with a scowl on my face and dined on their fresh pile of shit , it was the worst bossfight i had ever eaten , and after i beat that boss i uninstalled the game , and nothing will ever be able to compel me to play it ever again , and makes me wish pirating had an option where i could be granted some of the dev's money for how much of my time they wasted playing their game.......
by the time i got to the end of the game, after 9 months of time and 100 hours of gameplay, i was so happy for it to be over
Yep. The final blow to EB should come with joy, for most it doesn't though. It's just a chore you want over and that is not how a good game ends
The fact they reused the same ruined "Shack" over and over again really pissed me off.. pisses me off even more when you realize that same shack was used for the first proper Undead Settlement bonfire in DS3..
Warmaster's Shack
Artist's Shack
Cringelord's Shack
Craftsman's Shack
Elden ring is a game that i feel absolutely no guilt or shame for quitting. I just got fed up of contrived bs difficulty. Im just gonna go replay ds 3 😂 nice video.
Elden Ring has to be the easiest but most fun souls game I played 😮
This is coming from someone who played Elden Ring as my first souls game, afterwards moving to the dark souls genre
@nakiangoderich3014 that's fair enough. I did end up having another go and completed it. But I definitely found it the hardest and in the least fun way 😆
For me God of War and Elden Ring are the GotYs of 2022 but Elden Ring is not a 10/10 or masterpiece, for being a masterpiece it has to many flaws.
Tbh I would give it a 7,5/10 that means not its bad omg, but it is to big for its own good. :(
And yeah From Software can't make good oversized bosses. When I want to fight oversized bosses Capcom has a really good series for this! 😊
Like in Armored Core, the best fights are against enemies they are in your size and have "equal" abilities of the player.
And From Software need more critique, than without critique they can't improve.
I like how its a whole thing to circlejerk about souls fanboys whenever a critical elden ring video comes out.
The video itself is fine, bro has opinions some i think are ok some i think are aight, but in the comments i constantly see people saying stuff like “ wow! You validated my opinion on this game. Im glad you arent like those souls fanboy. I cant believe this game was GOTY. It is so flawed!” Aight
thats just how legendary this game is.
It seems to happens with negative video essays in general, people that comment those type of comments are ironically fanboys of videos like these ones. Which is why I have gotten sick of people using that word.
I really hate how cultish some, seemingly a lot, of Fromsoft fans have become. You literally cannot criticize this game at all in any way without being told you are just bad, to "git gud" and how the game is perfect because it's hard. I saw one guy say that he actively decided to dismiss all criticism of the game because 1 time he saw 1 guy say 1 stupid thing and therefore all criticism is invalid. I asked him if he thought Fromsoft was perfect and above flaw and he told me he wouldn't answer because it was a bad faith question.
Exactly there's a reason any video criticizing this game in any way has a literal 5 minute long disclaimer starting the video so people dont instantly rage. I like this game but it has a lot of problems,duo crucible knight for example pretty bad design and I've beat them still doesn't mean it was good.
Elden has the exact same glaring issue that Breath of the Wild did. It is waaaaaaaaay too much physical space. When you make the game world so large, all you are doing for yourself as a developer is making things way too difficult for yourself and also guaranteeing that people are going to get exhausted and bored playing your game, especially in terms of replay value. Cut the amount of catacombs/caves/mines in half or more, carve off huge chunks of land, and suddenly Elden Ring becomes a far more enjoyable experience. I still love the game but they could have cut the game size and cut-and-paste locales in half, made the remaining areas much more unique and detailed and bam! Could have been the greatest game of all time. Well, if they fixed the boss designs too. Bullcrap like Malenia, Maliketh, Elden Beast(at least give us Torrent for crap sake), Fire Giant, Astel, Godskin duo, Crucible Knights(they just feel unfair the first time you fight them and it only gets worse), Commander Nial, Gideon and his neverending barrage of spells...pretty much everything from Leyndell onwards just sucks, boss and area wise. I do love Radagon though. That guy is a boss.
8:10
Its all on you. Both hollow knight and elden ring allow you to mark the map so you can go back to places of interest later.
It's assuredly not. There's a very funny statistic about Elden Ring from the time before they implemented blatant markers for NPC questlines: More people had one of the more hidden endings (Ranni's) than the basic ending(s). Why? Because the majority of people ended up playing this game with a guide. That really says it all right there. Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 were obtuse at times - but some brain juice got you there, for the _most part._ Elden Ring? I _still_ don't feel like I really get what even happened in that game or why, and that extends to trying to progress quests and character stories; I played before the markers (which are not a solution, just a Ubisoft-style band-aid) but refused to use a guide, so I finished... like... one or two, I think? Bottom line, they tried to transplant the side quest model from their prior, more linear games 1 : 1 into Elden Ring's gargantuan open world - and even From themselves clearly admit it didn't work, for otherwise they wouldn't have caved and added markers.
Speaking facts. Ignore the cult-like fromsoft bots who can't handle the sad reality of this sub par game
I can smell the smugness
It's nothing like that. With fromsoft fans, there are those that play for bosses and combat, and those that play for exploration and world design. Elden ring aligns better with the latter, so the former feels that the game is inferior to the other ones. It's that simple.
@@unidentified2026 I disagree with that assement.
ER was easily the best of the souls boss design to the point most of the remmeberance bosses outrank the best of other souls game bosses.
The bosses feel much more reactive and there are so much more ways to interact with them as a result.
The difference I feel is that souls prioritised a means of play where the player doesn't have to do any mechanical exploration, just getting the foundations is enough, while ER prioritised exploring the mechanics to their fullest in fights.
This is why most of the people I see state their dislike of ER bosses seem to play ER like any other DS where the bottom line is rolling and waiting out for a safe time to use R1 and end up saying things like they are fighting a Sekiro boss in DS1. While most people I see enjoy the game are fully using posture breaks, hit-trading, jump attacks, charge attacks and weapon arts in their gameplay allowing them to 'keep up' with bosses.
This is not to say ER doesn't have its faults (repeated content and the mountain top of the giants are the biggest offenders) but I really don't think its faults are what most people consider them to be.
@theresnothinghere1745 right sadly, the souls games were just roll and spam r1... almost a rhythm game. Elden ring you have to use the whole move set you have
when your only contribution to a channel is discouraging healthy discussion 😂
good job, you are very smart
" I think we need a little more criticism in the from software community"
THANK YOU DUDE
I'm a big fan of fromsoftware but i think elden ring have so much bad thing, it's a really good game, but it's a low/average fromsoftware game
and for those who think an open world make a good game you're wrong, you can't have a fucking good level design ( Like dark souls 1 for example) with an open world because it's too big and you can't focus on that
Well i'll start the video now i'm already hype :D
its laughably the best fromsoft game by a gigantic margin, not a single level from ds1 comes even close to even 1 legacy dungeon, combine those with the handcrafted open world, and it makes ds1s level design look cute in comparison.
"with an open world because it's too big and you can't focus on that" well considering the level design is better than ds1 and its cute 40 hours of small corridors and cute shortcuts, they focused on ERs level design even more, not to mention it took them 3 years to make, unlike the lazier older games, where they shat them out year after year. lol souls veterans and their delusions of nostalgia disguised as thoughtful critique XD
a game being open world doesnt make it better, but in elden rings case, it made it far FAR better than older games.
@@flamingmanureYour blatant disrespect of DS1 level design is clear to me and any other Fromsoft fan your opinion doesn't matter.
The FS community has a strong bond from being able to take these intentionally hard games, and from the rush that comes when you FINALLY beat that one boss, and there's also the camaraderie that you get from being fans of something "not for normies".
Problem with an excess of that attitude is, that makes the community toxic towards people who have any issue with the game ("git gud scrub" being the answer given to even the most valid and unanimouscriticisms) and it also has a bad feedback effect, when the designers start making bosses based on the feedback of people who can beat the Orphan of Kos / Sister Friede / Swordsaint Isshin with only a toothpick, so you get a general upscaling in the challenge and complexity of bosses, until half of them can jump across the arena and fire off a ten-hit combo (any of which can one- or two-shot you at max health) ending in a disengage, and then immediately do it again.
A lot of the combat design here feels like a step BACK from Bloodborne and Sekiro, at least in terms of player options. They went for a combat paridigm of aggressive / fast enemies, and then gave you the tools to be just as aggressive / fast as your foes. Whereas ER felt like playing against Sekiro / Bloodborne bosses with a DS1 character.
@@paulgibbon5991 "Whereas ER felt like playing against Sekiro / Bloodborne bosses with a DS1 character"
i totally agree with that and it's probably my biggest problem with the game
and for" when the designers start making bosses based on the feedback of people who can beat the Orphan of Kos / Sister Friede / Swordsaint Isshin with only a toothpick"
you can take feedback from them honestly it's not the problem, because the three fight you talk about are hard but really fair compare to most elden ring bosses so i don't think the problem came from that
You can make incredible looking boss with awesome moveset, just let them breath instead of having a fight where you run most of the time just to approach a boss
and if you don't want the boss to breath you need to have tools like sekiro , in sekiro you can parry , posture ... you know the purpose of the posture gauge, we needed something like that ( no for everything but some bosses felt like they came from sekiro and it felt really weird)
i like to compare dark souls with monster hunter because you fight almost the same way
here it was like fighting a frontier monster with the moveset of MH1, it's beautiful but you can't do shit because the boss always flee and you're not quick enough to do something, it's really passive, almost more than DS1 even though the game is much faster
Less is more
Quality over quantity
We already got quantity with dark souls 2 , and people don't like it because it have tons of problems
Elden ring feel the same for me, too much thing, but nothing relevant because almost everything has problems compare to previous games ( DES/DS1/BB/DS3/Sekiro, even tho each one have different problem they're not as frustrating as DS2/elden ring)
@@Elyakel One of the big problems with bosses is the summon system. They make the fight easier, but in a very unsatisfying way by basically making the boss go stupid. I banged my head against Margit for hours, then beat him on my second try after using summons, just because he repeatedly turned his back on me to fight the skeletons who were doing single-digit damage. So many bosses end up being way too hyper-aggressive if you don't use summons, and much to easy if you do.
Bosses roaming the world, mobs fighting in random skirmishes, npcs with actual quests, fractions.
Interesting pvp systems and areas. Yeah, I imagined a lot during that year when we all waited for ER 😐
Did it happen the way you wanted?
Holy shit man, what a great video. Hope you continue to create more of these.
Elden Ring is definitely too large. As evidenced by their inability to actually fill it with interesting content.
You could cut half of the world, and actually make for a better game. Get rid of EverGaols, all the extra catacombs, the Mountaintop of the Giants, make some of the areas smaller. Focus on the legacy dungeons and the underground.
Also, this game would have been made so much better if it had Sekiro's progression system. If you were getting something like Prayer Beads from these mini bosses, you would feel better about fighting them. Big bosses give you attack power, so we don't need to waste time with upgrade materials and upgrading weapons (which I always found an unneeded mechanic), Minibosses give health upgrades, and otherwise you can get experience to unlock skills and other abilities. An Elden Ring with Sekiro combat-progression would have been a legendary game....
ommf thank god fromsoft dont listen to their delusional fanbase that pretend to be game devs, brah half ur changes would make the game far worse and more empty, and the game has laughably more interesting and memorable content than older games no contest, the only thing i agree with here is cutting half the catacombs, they should replace mountains with a big legacy dungeon, the rest should stay the same. its too big if u explore all the content, which u never would on a 2nd playthrough anyway.
mainly there is no such progression in the game because it's a rpg not an action game, it's not the game's problem that you don't like those elements you just don't like the rpg system :)
this is why you’re not a game dev lmao
@@mochoxd2185 you do know that all souls games, bloodborne and elden ring are Action/RPG game?))) Elden ring is not a pure rpg game. SO what you said to the other person is wrong.
To me, it seems you play these games exclusively for bosses and combat. I think you get minimal value from exploration, especially considering your complaint about hollowknight. As for me, I value exploration, navigation, level design, enemy encounters, and secrets equally as much as I like bosses. I get as much satisfaction from finding an obscure secret as beating a boss in elden ring. So when I'm exploring the open world I'm constantly running into things that are valuable to me. When you go through the open world, you run into things that are not bosses or bosses that are reused, so you can't enjoy it.
What are you smoking dude, what level design? Where? It's mostly a painfully standard big open map. You are actually constantly punished with abysmal findings like crafting materials locked in a treasure chests. You literally walk to the edge of the world to discover nothing of any importance. To me it seems like Lands Between is most enjoyed by tourists who like to stare at painted postcards and from time to time, deal with the sporadic consequential gameplay elements like "navigation, level design, enemy encounters" that in case of Elden Ring exist only within legacy dungeons. Even in those, truly interesting level designs with a single bonfire and looping paths like Cathedral of the Deep, just don't exist anymore. Riding Torrent is fun and remains as my only joy of this open world. And the views, the views are nice 😮💨
I love how across the Fandom everyone shits on the Godskin duo equally
indeed
It's funny to me because soloing that boss is always a highlight of my playthroughs. After 29 playthroughs, I still love them. They oddly get worse when you use a summon. They're more manageable as a solo fight because they become more predictable.
More like Godcringe duo
Even though they're easy to deal with once you learn what to do. There's many many other bosses that are a lot worse
"having to look for things to do is not something I attribute as a positive to the open world" ...wait what? I couldn't disagree more. That's what I woudl consider an actual good open world....because it facilitates actual exploring, which so few open worlds do (this and Outer wilds are the best imo)
You misunderstood the quote. ER's problem is that wherever you go, there is nothing to do - in other words: "having to look for things to do" and finding no game mechanics. Just vast, empty spaces... like those minds of Hosts who walk around aimlessly and pretend to be doing a lore field analysis 😂
@@justaquietpeacefuldance "Just vast, empty spaces.."
It's objectively not that at all?
Had you said you found the content there boring that'd be one thing but between the world bosses, dungeons, npc's, item's guarded by enemies, unlockable paths to other areas, major dungeons, etc...
There reallly isn't much empty space in ER.
Try highlighting any 'empty' section of the overworld map and I very much bet that it really won't be that big once everything is accounted for (except for the Radhan battlefield, the sole exception due to the nature of the boss)
11:40 That's where you go wrong. Fromsoft's tourists love having f^ck all to do besides taking screenshots, imagining they're a character in the next Vaati video 🤯 😂 Perhaps we should look at it like it's Witcher 3 but even then my criticism remains, it just shifts from the lack of difficulty and "zero stakes exploration" to other, more specific shortcomings of this "intricate Open World". Like poorly implemented, few and far between quests, NPCs that are just shadows of the fascinating and cryptic figures of DS1 and feel totally out of place - world is the size of the Continent but, yet again, we get same ol' tiny group of dead-already characters Miyazaki likes to present since Demons... why? Sure, it would be cool to compare the living World of W3 with Lands Between, if these lands weren't so flat and stagnant in comparison.
Not to mention that Witcher's naturalistic looking caves were actually more impressive in 2015... when on the other hand, Fromsoft was perfecting their level design with the release of Bloodborne, even making a genious (imo) use of randomised content, introducing Chalices. Now those been turned it into Catacombs and I'm supposed to... not notice it?? wtf?
Hey Wafe, check out "Elden Ring Dissected #1 - Fall Damage Explained" by illusory wall, if you haven't already. There are some "design choices" that still bind all From games together, surprisingly. (It's an amazing video! And yours as well, hah 😊)
The balancing of Elden ring is horrible and grinding levels seems to be the standard method to ensure you’re not one shored by the bosses. Poor effort by the from soft
laughably false, u just barely explored and went up to bosses underleveled. mountaintops is the only place thats overtuned, the rest is great.
you don't need to grind levels at all, margit is perfectly fine with just 15 vigor and a +2 starting weapon and 30-40 vigor for end game with a talisman or/and opaline hard tear.
@@flamingmanure mountaintops isn't over tuned, just don't fight the big enemies.
@flamingmanure agreed, I completed every area organically before going to the mountain tops. The numbers increase was a slight jump in difficulty.
Agree. Elden Ring kind of sucks. It gets a pass from so many people because it's From.
Nah its just you.
@@therook6198nah its your mom i did yesterday night 3 times in a row giving her pies in that creamy oven ;)))))))
I always have incredibly fond memories of my first elden ring playthrough. I think up until Leyndell the game was borderline fantastic - everything after that was a significant dip in quality and the repetition starts to drag the exoerience down.
i think the snowy areas are a bit boring but farum azula and haligtree are great
Only things i liked from the end game areas are certain things you can get like the fire giant spells and ancient dragon spells, plus Malenia and Godfrey otherwise it started feeling like a huge waste of time after a while.
what an awesome piece of commentary, I'm so glad youtube brought me here :)
I wonder how much covid affected the amount of content in this game. Hopefully in the sequel they don't have to make compromises
Or the DLC due to it taking a lot of time.
nah itsw just fromsoftware being lazy, the DLC shows all the same problems base game had
@@jakeislavic3024 the dlc was also made in 2 years. An overhaul to the mechanics of the game probably wasn't feasible.
You forgot Elden Beast on unique 1 time encounters
Thanks for the video! :)
And yet, even with all its flaws, 10million + people went to watch the shadow of the erdtree teaser trailer. Despite its flaws Elden Ring is still a fun game.
good critique, i love ER but i also have a lot complaints that align with yours.
i trust FromSoftware will look at the critical feedback on the internet and make ER2 a better game.
on a unrelated note, why did you choose that icon for your channel?
You are one of the few channels on here for which I have the notifications turned on. I might not be able to watch this now but I'm looking forward to it when I have time. :)
sekiro is one of my favourite games ever and knowing how miyazaki likes fumito huedas work made me think elden ring would be differnet but has a lot of problems that ds2 got just wantting making a bigger game more bosses more weapons. Its a good game and much better than latest tripleA games but i spected something differnet.
Malenia Blade of Retribution lmfao, Godefroy the Grafted is like when you go to a local discount store to buy some knockoff brands of your favourite products... Yeah, this one hurts. 33:22 or mini-DSA in the Ringed City swamp? Shadows of Yharnam casually patrolling a regular nightmare area? How about out of the blue Ornstein in a Heide's Tower of Flame? Seriously, there isn't now and there wasn't before, enough critique you can put on the games you love, how the hell those npc-fans don't understand that??
"Praise the pointless" was a message left at the end of an empty corridor that you went on exploring nonetheless, lead by the nose with impeccable level design. You were actually surprised that the game, so well designed and dedicated to not wasting player's time has... played you. Message on the floor was never a critique but rather an expression of gratitude towards devs for respecting us. And also just a cheeky little message 😂
What the heck are you doing?
Stop it. Not watching every VaatiVidya video?!?!? I mean come on bro! Get your life straightened out.....
did humans even make elden ring? Semes like it was made by some otherworldly beings. The game just seems impossible.
After one year, there are some aspects that aged like fine wine, others like aged milk.
Fine Wine:
> Bosses -- They have some of the most complex, fast, and fun movesets in the entireFromSoftware catalogue.
I also love the emphasis on how positioning can radically change boss ai and influence combo branches.
Because of this, it's much easier to bait out both easier attacks and hard cool-ass combos.
No joke, some of the bosses here rival the great DLC greats of DS3 and Bloodborne.
Only issue for me is asset reuse, delayed attacks, and infuriating mechanics slowing down the pace of the fight and forcing player passivity.
> Combat / Player Moveset & Abilities -- It's basically Dark Soul's combat but refined to perfection.
Dodging is responsive, instantaneous, and has the perfect amount of i-frames.
Parrying feels super satisfying and there are many different types to choose from.
Ashes of war add great customizability to weapons that make even basic ones have personality.
Every weapon is viable, even the colossal weapons.
Class variety is INSANE and abundant, meaning more player freedom and expression.
There is no softcap for stamina/endurance which means you don't have to worry about pausing or halting the pace of the fight too much, so level-up that endurance stat.
It also has great hidden mechanics that can elevate fights and solve problems.
JUMPING HAS i-FRAMES for 2/3rds OF YOUR BODY, as wells as skills, sorceries, and incantations that make you jump, levitate, or float.
Jumping can be used in places when dodging feels much more tight and awkwardly timed like jumping over shockwaves, AOEs, 2 attacks you have dodge with one roll, etc.
Because of this, you can capitalize on these dangerous attacks by jump attacking which let's you simulataneously dodge and punish your enemies' low hanging attacks which further blends the line between defense and offense that I loved so much in Sekiro.
Jumping can also turn seemingly BS bosses into fun ones like Maliketh and Godfrey.
The only thing I don't like is the addition of adding a slow final attack because it ruins the pace of fights and won't allow me to be as aggressive.
I missed it in Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne when your player character won't slow down their final attack.
Your light attack combo back then didn't have a slow final attack with a long recovery window, which meant that the light attack combo, once finished, would instantly cycle again repeatedly.
Other than this, the combat system in this game is simple yet perfection.
> Music - Aside from just the fire banging Boss Themes, I also really love the environmental soundtracks.
My favorites of the environmental / background tracks are the ones for Caelid, Haligtree, Elphael, and ... there's just so much.
Honestly, the soundtrack brims with so much personality that any of the tracks are memorable enough to become classics, with some of the background music even rivaling Minecraft's in my opinion.
However, the boss themes though... those go so fricking hard, especially the Rememberance Boss themes.
Hoarah Loux's sounds like a hyped-up viking/barbarian theme that increases my adrenaline and testosterone;
Regal Ancestral Spirit is spiritual and breathtaking; Lichdragon Fortissax oozes so much power and awesomeness with it's organs and choir giving it this unique vampiric vibe; and my personal favorite being Maliketh's heroic yet desperate last stand theme being so frenetic and dynamic.
In my opinion, this is the one aspect of Elden Ring that legitimately has no flaws
Aged Like Milk:
> Common Enemies & Enemy Variety-- I hate how much the common soldiers and knights are repeated.
They ruin the uniqueness of the Legacy Dungeons, arguably the best areas of the game.
If the demigods are at war with each other, then why frick are the usng same soldiers?
Wouldn't they each have armies different from one another?
This is something I missed in Sekiro as there is so much enemy variety in that game, some common enemies existing for a single part of a Legacy Dungeon.
I also hate how you can just R1 / light attack spam them.
Fighting them isn't as fun as the fighting bosses in this game, but at least make them fun to fight.
They don't offer much in terms of combat because all you have to do is just attack and roll occassionally.
Chad of Astora did a great video on Sekiro's common enemies which is something this game has to learn from.
> The Open World - While I love the abundance of places to explore, the places you end up going to have bland level design, stale layouts, samey viduals, and formulaic.
This is why I don't ever bother going to caves, catacombs, or tunnels since they are super boring compared to the legacy dungeons and heroes' graves which offer much more detailed level design, awe-inspiring art direction, fun layouts, and variety.
Even though there are many of these side areas, I don't to explore any of them anymore.
It feels as though they went with a bit more of a quantity over quality approach here which I don't like.
I also hate that the entrances of these side areas are always the same.
Formula: go through doors to get into catacombs, openings for caves, and mine entrances for tunnels.
It's very formulaic.
Wouldn't it be cool if you fell through a hole somewhere while exporing the open world only to land in a complex labyrinth of a catacomb that you can't get out of until you put int the hard work to escape it?
Woudn't it be also cool if tunnels connected to other tunnels and you break walls like you're mining to access other ones?
What if instead just going into the same old small cave hole to enter a cave, you see this giant hole in the moutain that reveals the expanse of the mountain's insides.
This doesn't just have to apply to entrances, but exits as well kind of like those trap chests teleporting you to an overleveled side area only for you to get out of them and be in an entirely dfferent zone.
There's also that one dungeon in Caelid that, if you complete it, allows you to go through an exit that gives you access to other parts of Limgrave.
Stuff like the lack of entrance and exit variety for side areas could've elevated them, but they were always the same which made them formulaic and boring.
I also don't like the fact there are basically no villagers just people in general which is very immersion breaking.
In the lore, you go on hearing about the gods and demigod's people and how they were affected by their deities, but I don't see nobody.
In the lore, there are still normal bystanders and people living in the lands between which is why it puzzles me that there are almost no neutral settlements or poeople walking about in Legacy Dungeons.
It would be cool if the structures in Legcay Dungeons / Kingdoms were inaccessible, but there are transparent windows where you can see people living their day-to-day life in the broken and post-apocalipticlike Lands Between.
I also think it would be cool if people, especially in Leydell, saw you traversing the Legacy Dungeon by roof jumping and alerted the guards or something.
I want to see people praying in churches for whatever Outer God they devot themselves to, or peasants buying from merchants, or angry villagers rallying while soldiers hold them back.
Stuff like this would've made Elden Ring even more immersive because you actually get to see for yourself how the world AND IT'S PEOPLE are affected by the Shattering and living in the Lands Between.
There's only one peaceful settlement in this game, but all they do is just stay in the same looping animation with almost no changes.
I also would've liked to see characters and NPCs actually talking to each other instead of just you since almost all of them are very opinionated.
it would've been cool to see a falling out between Nepheli and Gideon, a wholesome interaction between Roderika and Hewg, battle plans with Bernhal and the Recusants, or Ranni plotting with you and Blaidd for her ext move.
Instead, all we get are just he-said-she-said or I-said-they-said from them while you are the only able to talk to them.
I dunno, but it's always been a thing that has bothered me with the FromSoftware games.
Sekiro actually followed through on this.
I still love Elden Ring despite all this.
Let's all hope that the DLC will be good.
For now, I give Elden Ring an 8.5/10.
It's my second FromSoftwre game, with Sekiro being my first.
Funny cause I still love the open world for my first playthrough and hate the bosses
"This is something I missed in Sekiro as there is so much enemy variety in that game, some common enemies existing for a single part of a Legacy Dungeon." elden ring literally has 4 times the enemy variety of sekiro.
and i disagree completely, theres alot of bland areas in all the games, youre also forgetting that exploring the open world itself is fantastic, especially when u take into account the underground, dont really care about the catacombs, those are optional and theyre basically like the chalices of bloodborne but actually designed. the fodder knights your complaining about are far worse in sekiro, fighting normal enemies in sekiro is frankly boring as u just spam L1 rather than R1 like in ER, and elden ring has laughably more mini bosses and elite poise heavy enemies than sekiro.
" but it's always been a thing that has bothered me with the FromSoftware games.
Sekiro actually followed through on this." it did that with a single npc pair and thats ishin and the girl which i forget her name, sekiro easily has the most forgettable narrative and npcs next to bloodborne. legit remember the first few npcs of ER more than the entirety of sekiro and bb combined.
So glad to see this, I really love your past videos, ones of the best of soulsborne critiques! Keep it up!!
This game screamed "lazy and cut corners" so many reused assests from prior games and many of the side dugeons are copy paste with a common enemy givin a health bar at the end.
The full grown falling star Beast follows a pattern just like every other boss I learned the fight 2 days ago. I ruined my first play through being a caster so now I'm going through as a strength/faith Build. I'm actually learning the fights This Time and I'm having a blast! I honestly Don't agree with most of what you're saying but that's what opinions are for.
You don't need to be a lore genius to figure out that the world of elden ring is post-apocalyptic. If you expected actual villages and cities with npcs like skyrim then that's on you but yeah this was not a fun watch. You sound so angry that it makes you come across as unreasonable and unlikable. I would personally recommend toning it down and adding a little more humor so perfectly reasonable critiques don't come across as hyperbolic rants. Remember the title of the video is "A Serious Critique of Elden Ring" not "Elden Ring Rant"
I'm sorry if I sound too harsh tho I really do like your channel
The anger is ironic, especially since it's a scripted video, so the anger is obviously intentional. I'm usually pretty monotone. The anger was actually supposed to be the comedic part; sad it didn't come off this way :/ Appreciate the criticism though.
But even post-apocalyptic open world's have "lived" elements. Fallout being the obvious example with settlements and enemy factions roaming about the world
@@benjeesilv1596 are you new to fromsoft games? these games are actually apocalyptic, far more than fallout, which is only apocalyptic in narrative but doesnt feel like it when u actually play the game.
Cry!
You like Witcher 3 💀
A really well-made video!
Your style is engaging, and I like the fact you always have a sense of a structure to your points and argument progression, even if doesn't make sense sometimes.
As it happens, I'm also writting an ELDEN RING essay, however, the pain levels have stopped me from finishing it for now, as I'm actually writing about every single dungeon and every single boss attack, so that I can show just how shit these are (in the case of boss attacks, I'm taking how ridicilous the delays are sometimes).
As for your criticisms, I'd like to have the time to adress them deeper, but I just haven't, so sorry for that.
The point about confusion isn't handled well, as you bring little evidence and don't show a lot of examples, and it doesn't help that you yourself aren't sure if it's a criticism.
There were some more minor things in between, but overall the rest of the video was valid.
As for the boss segment though... You really have to elaborate if you wish for this to be a propore critique. Of course, if you don't and want to appear more in line with the video's character, that's fine, but it diminishes your argument.
You call some really bad bosses, such as Maliketh, good and bosses that aren't that bad, sunch as Rykard, bad. Altough I definetly really fucking like Maliketh and his moveset, and everything about him, his recovery cancels are just unfair and a time waster. Of course, Maliketh is sadly made bad because of Beast Clergyman.
You make a point about how it's possible to get hits in mid-combo, but fail to show a lot of examples, and funnily enough, you claim that in Godfrey's fight you have to dodge trhough all of the shit, but it's the one fight I know that I can do this in.
As I said, asside from what I think are badly formulated sentences here and there, your video is mostly very good. I hope I brought up some points that could help you improve, and the mist important, I think, is more elaboration and examples. Please don't stop making videos, as I think I just found a really passionate content creater, who's teying to make best of a critique and comedic commentary.
Your part about good bosses being called bad and vice versa is kind of a mute point because it's all subjective. You'll never convince me Maliketh is bad because I subjectively think he's fucking amazing. No amount of your subjective feelings on him will change my subjective feelings on him. If you're writing a game critique, remember that. Assuming that your opinions are facts are a great way to come off as a prick to your audience.
Great video. Glad to see more people being rightfully critical about ER's faults.
My one issue with this video however, is Loretta. Loretta is easily the most balanced boss in the game. She has no bad hitboxes, no garbage combos, every move is fair and avoidable, and she has no gimmick that makes or breaks the fight like Mogh. She is quite literally, the quintessential perfectly designed boss. Honestly, Loretta rivals even the best bosses in the series in terms of mechanics, and I'd say she might even be better than some of the best. Objectively speaking form a mechanical perspective, she might be less interesting than bosses like Gael, Ivory, and Dragonslayer, but she's so much more balanced than all of them. Even Gael suffers from the funny hitbox syndrome every once and a while, but Loretta has none of that. Even her lore is built well and rivals some of the best. If it wasn't for he three games of build-up, I'd say she'd rival Gael in terms of interesting lore, but she fits perfectly in that tertiary character lore role that other characters like The Ivory King, Raime, Alonne, Sir Yorgh, Sir Vilhelm, and the Dragonslayer Armour all fit into, that being the character who's somehow more badass, powerful, and awesome than the final boss for some reason. It feels like you rated her low because you personally found her mechanical perfection boring. It's interesting how there's always a fine line between unbalanced and too balanced. Loretta is probably, objectively speaking, the best boss they've ever made, but because her quality is so perfect, most players find her boring.
While I understand it's opiniated, it's very disappointing seeing even more people throw Loretta under the bus. She's definitely in the leagues of Raime in boss design perfection, but people just always neglect her. She's somehow reached the underrated level of Dragonslayer Armour, that being the level where they're some of the best bosses in the game, but they have this aura that causes amnesia so almost nobody knows how perfect they actually are. Also, very spicy putting Mogh that low.
Loretta is a bit mid. All of the other main bosses are better than her.
@@therook6198 I mean, you can say that, but you'd be wrong. Obviously if you'd have been stating your opinion, than sure. But you're stating as fact that Loretta is mediocre, which is objectively wrong. The only "Main Bosses" that are even close to her level are Goldfrey, Lord of Blood Mogh, and Leonine Misbegotten from Castle Morne. And only Mogh is able to contend with Loretta's lore.
So no. There is not a single main boss except for Mogh that could even contend with Loretta. And before you say it, no, simple does not equate bad.
You lost me at objectively.
The definition of objective is to not be influenced by opinions.
@@therook6198 In that case, I'm surprised you even managed to look at my first comment with going blind.
None of you accurately diagnose the problem with Elden Ring or Fromsoftware. The actual problem is the combat is shit. Not just outdated but repetitive shit. Elden ring just exposed that. Great combat translates to any design. Fromsoftware is not good at combat which is why they used tighter areas to hide the bad combat. Get in a big open free area and its jarring how restrictive the combat really is.
skill issue lol
Souls combat is one of the BEST combat out there.
I'm happy to see people aren't letting thr critiques in elden ring go past by that other games get blasted for for example repeated bosses and reused dungeons etc and some unavoidable flaws in open world games get in the way of them loving the game. i hated how people are blasting almost all games with reused stuff but elden ring got away with it because of biases ( especially people like theactman who just never critiqued the game fairly).
I love genshin, it's a game for Anime asthetics lovers more then people who love a medevil atmosphere, i play genshin and haven't played any soul games because my pc couldn't handle them, so I play genshin on my shit phone and the accessibility and casual nature of the game attracts me with its incredibly designed open world, music and character and some misunderstood and amazing lore, ik I'll love elden ring regardless of the reused stuff because I don't find these criticisms good or game breaking because there's no solution to balance games that try the large open world rpg story character building route otherwise the storage requirements would go haywire, most people can't afford such equipment, i don't mind linear and ubisoft formulas because they are really casual player friendly who don't have time to spend hours on a game so these criticisms fall apart for me fortunately , i can just turn of navigation and not look up minimap if I want to go the pro gamer move and have time but since most don't it's fine for us. there's lot of quests in genshin especially enkanomiya region which is something of an artistic masterpiece and the quests there aren't directly telling me where to go but point to general areas and hints from npcs and figuring puzzles which aren't obvious like many starting areas , from elden ring critiques I've watched which are many, there's isn't much different in genshin and elden ring except artstyle and combat, it has similar elements of fetch quests, npcs, combat in genshin is more complicated and structured because of team structures and micromanagement of buffs with all the possible combinations of elemental reactions and sequence in which you arrange your characters and slightly harder in elden ring but being honest the difficulty is badly balanced in elden ring enemy scales with region in genshin and your adventure rank , in elden ring the thing I love is its emptiness tbh i feel like I'm an post apocalyptic, idk the lore properly because it didn't find it that interesting unlike genshin which is its own manga that people actually don't know about. overall i want to play elden rn.
Are you seriously comparing genshin impact to El ring
elden eing still has the highest enemy and boss variety in open world history, the game has 60 unique bosses and mini bosses and 150 unique enemies, the balance of ER is fine if youre exploring correctly and enough, but i guess fromsoft shouldnt have trusted players to do that.
first off, this one is serious
The fact that there are only 8 unique actual bosses, really shows that the game went overboard with its quantity over quality. On my first playthrough, I really thought it was a good idea to have a regular enemy as a boss and then as a regular enemy to show how far you've come, but it honestly does feel like tons and tons of filler just to say they have over 200 bosses. Honestly the reskin I hated the most was the dragons.
Also the fact that Elden Ring has more unique bosses than all their other games really shows that Fromsoft didn't want to spent five years making a game.
laughably false and delusional souls veteran opinion thats mostly mindless and stems from blind nostalgia, especially the quantity over quality comment, brah this games mini bosses can go toe to toe against alot of their older games main bosses XD and there are 40 unique ones of those, let alone the actual main bosses, not to mention that all the reuses are actually optional, and the reskins usually have actually new looks and quite a few new moves, unlike the lazy ds1 and bb lol.
half the reused bosses are in evergoals and catacombs, and those are basically like bbs chalices but laughably better designed and designed in the world rather than lazily teleported to them.
there are 15 unique remembrance bosses and a lot of unique mini bosses, i can tell that you never played the game.
Keys without e :)@@Ghorda9