The theme of incest in Game of Thrones is an indictment of monarchy as a system - if bloodline is what bestows power upon you, the most effective strategy to maintaining the "purity of the bloodline" is to arrange marriages between family members. George Martin's whole thing in the books is taking the tropes of the fantasy genre - beautiful kingdoms, fair maidens, knights in shining armor - and twisting them into grotesqueries in order to demonstrate how transparently bad feudalism was without the veil of romanticism that fairy tales put over it. This theme is also why characters in Elden Ring have those weirdly similar names; having this syllabic connection to the names of other people in the royal family is another way of legitimizing power - it's why the Targaryens have six different Aegons and the English Royal Family named like 40 people George.
I would love it if some creator had the guts to talk about how corporatism perpetuates some of the worst aspects of feudalism, how nepotism is modern hereditary monarchy, and how capitalism inherently works towards instating a form of neo-feudalism. Best recent example I've seen is the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga, which outright refers to Rufus Shinra as the "heir to the throne" of his father's corporate empire.
I don't even think incest is a part of the joining of Radahn as Miquella's Lord. I think the position of godhood requires the position of Elden Lord as more of a political marriage. "A crown is warranted with strength", "Strength befitting of a lord", these kinds of things showing up makes me thing strongly that the reasoning behind having an Elden Lord at all is as an enforcer to put down any thoughts or attempts at rebellion or ascension of another person to godhood. I think the reason why Marika had children with Godfrey and Radagon are in service to the same reason she cut down rival Empyreans like the Gloam Eyed Queen. It was never that she loved Godfrey, or loved Radagon, or that sex is NECESSARILY an implied duty of a god and a lord, but that she wanted to strengthen her claim to her throne, and to extend the period of time that the erdtree would remain as the core of the world's order. By having more people who would be inclined to defend the erdtree with their lives with the powers of demigods, and having those who would be less inclined to stand against Marika as their mother, she ensured a stronger sense of security to her reign as god. I think that she made the tarnished what they are so that they might achieve a similar goal as a course of action for extreme emergencies, and that the Night of Black Knives signified one of these, leading to her shattering the Elden Ring and returning the tarnished to the Lands Between.
@@GrahamChapman It would be really interesting for someone to create a setting where late capitalism has produced the same extreme power stratification and social immobility as feudalism, while wealthy people recreate the social conventions and aesthetics of the medieval court as a result of new money chasing the perceived stability and legitimacy as old money, and old money in turn trying to emulate the aristocracy. They . uh. Would not suffer for a lack of inspiration.
@@TheEveryDayC I think this is a really strong point. Elden Ring keeps the mechanics of godhood in the lands between pretty vague, which I think was a good call - especially with the reveal that The Greater Will has been absent since before the Golden Order was established. I totally agree that the position of consort always seemed more important than simply being a sexual partner. Consorts are referred to in-game as if they are as vital to the actual status of a god’s divinity as the god themselves, beyond simply being the means by which that god creates an heir. Heirship is also ambiguous because not all of Marika’s offspring are empyreans and who gets to be one seems random. I don’t think the theme of incest is irrelevant to the story of the Golden Lineage, but I do totally agree that the role of consort is more complicated than a sexual/reproductive one. And honestly, I don’t mind that this has never been explained in detail and all the NPCs speak about it as if the Chosen Tarnished already knows all about it - it creates the impression of this vast, complex system of power that might actually exist, or simply be stuff Marika made up along the way and/or all the Fingers being deranged.
I find it ironic that Radahn, even in his prime, is weak to Scarlet Rot, and that translates to Miquella's downfall that some madman with a towershield a scarlet rot laced rapier defeats his Consort...
@@UNOriginalDrawnot really he just has increased resistances in phase 2 it takes 2 scarlet Aeonians instead of 1 the damage the proc does feel about even
Im not sure if Bricky reads these, but I'm at 46:40 and felt it neat to share cause I do love the world of ER Because of his charming abilities, its implied that Miquella is the strongest of the demigods. Ansbach, when he brought his scythe against him for charming Mogh was IMMEDIATELY done so as well, and I remember someone in vanilla saying that because of his power to wield love, it made him the scariest demigod out of everyone. Miquella wanted to make the world a better place, but he was doomed to fail because he abandoned all parts of himself that would have made that possible.
He abandoned his fear, his love, his heart, and all of his flesh and body. The only things left were his goals and a desire to fix the mistakes he saw his mother and father make. But in his pursuit, he failed to consider what actions Marika took, and whether or not he was replicating her path.
For what Miquella is doing, they are attempting to become a god in the same idea as Marika was a god, except that he would have no higher being pulling his strings (like the elden beast/greater will did to Marika). The difference seems to be that without a sponsor-deity Miquella must manually ascend to godhood, requiring him to ritually sacrifice his flesh and humanity before using the soul gate at the top of enir ellim (marika also used this gate to ascend to godhood but seemingly did not have to sacrfice herself since she had a sponsor-deity). Like Marika's consortship with Godfrey and Radagon, a king consort is required of Miquella (likely to be their protector and enforcer of their will) of which he chose Radahn. Essentially, Radahn is the elden lord to Miquella's new order. Mohg had attempted to take this role by keeping miquella in his dominion and having him become a god with the formless mother (blood god) as his sponsor-deity, but Miquella refused and had in actuallity been charming and using mohg to get access to the land of shadow. Miquella then used Mohg's body as a new vessel for Radahn to inhabit and ressurected him to become their king consort/elden lord (also boss rembrances are not explicitly souls like they are in DS, they are simply a "memory" of them hewn into the erdtree that can be extracted and utilized). This is also why consort Radahn has blood magic, lingering effects of inhabiting Mohg's body. Also small aside, it is likely that the hornsent where trying to either ascend to godhood/create a god of the crucible or divine beasts through the use of enir elim's soul gate, but Marika used it instead to become a god of the golden order. This is why the hornsent see Marika as a traitor (and the creation of the golden order as a "affair of gold") because she was likely supposed to be used in a ritual for the hornsent's own ends but she rebelled at the last minute.
Great exposition. Now curiously, this does bring in the question that how does Ranni's Age of Stars works in practice? Since she created a whole new order outside of the Golden without a sponsor deity.
@@TwolfS3041some think the Dark Moon is actually a deity and that’s why she can ascend to divinity the moment she kills her Two Fingers. There’s no real evidence for it, but that’s what some people believe. Although in truth, Ranni had already long discarded her flesh, so ascending to divinity would have been quite simple for her
character having golden eyes mean they have grace I think. that's why we are tarnished because we had our grace stripped from us and that's also why Godfrey doesn't have golden eyes. although in Messmers case that was a seal placed there by Marika and not actually an eye.
Here's the entire lore plot from what I discovered: Miquella from the base game lore had disillusioned and already denounced the Golden Order (his Mom and Dad's order) because it could not cure his Sister- Malenia of her Scarlet Rot ['Miquella rings of light' item description]. Later, he discovered Marika's 'original sin' (the eradication of the Hornsent) and believed his bloodline was tainted [Count Ymir's dialogue after ringing the 2nd bell] which is why he feels like he needed to 'divest himself of all Gold so he may rise as a new God' [Story trailer's dialogue and Sir Ansbach's dialogue]. Miquella wanted to become a God of a new order and usher in the 'Age of Compassion'. But to become a God of a new age in The Land Between, you'll also need an Elden Lord- and thus Miquella picked Radahn. Radahn (supposedly) denied the offer of being Miquella's consort, so Miquella sent his sister to fight Radahn and nuked Caelid [Young Radahn armor set's item description]. At the same time, he charmed and manipulated Mogh to 'kidnap' and hide his body so he could a) Use Mogh's body to use as Radahn's new body, and b) 'Die' so he can go to the Land of Shadow since all manners of death wash up to the Land of Shadow [Suppressing Pillar's plaque]. The problem with Miquella's plan was that he also threw away his passion and love (You can actually find this 'love' he threw away and talk to it if you explore it a bit more). "How would your Order save those who are unloved when you can't save your other self?"- [Ghost NPC dialogue]. Miquella's curse was not 'eternal youth', it's 'nascenty'- "It beggars belief, but… I'm afraid Tender Miquella fails to grasp the humiliation implied by this act" [Ansbach's dialogue]. Miquella wanted to charm the whole world [Circlet of Light's item description], but that's not 'compassion' like he promised it's manipulation. By doing so he's no different that Marika and the Golden Order (a shining world and promises that hide something darker underneath) and he needed to be stop ["Make Miquella stop... Don't turn the poor thing into a god... Godhood would be Miquella's prison. A caged divinity... is beyond saving. You must kill Miquella... Grant him forgiveness." - St Trina dialogue]
Nowhere is it said that Miquella wanted to charm the whole world, we do not exactly know what the age of compassion would entail. Radhan didn't accept the proposition to become consort but Miquella made a promise to him in exchange [cinematic after radhan] which he respected, Malenia telling so to Radhan [young lion set] (I suppose he promised to make Radhan and Malenia fight or to make Radhan lose in a fight, but can't say for sure). I believe st. Trina wanted to stop reasons, she know Miquella would fail for two reasons: 1. He separated himself to what made his legendary compassion possible 2. The lords are puppet to greater forces and are only here as proxies which a small bit of agency to influence the lands between (like Marika removing the rune of death from the elden ring).
Brickness isn't wrong about there being Egyptian themes in Enir-Ilim. Yes, the area is mostly Babylonian/Mesopotamian inspired, but some things in the area (like the little ritual boat statues/altars you see everywhere) are partially Egyptian inspired. In fact, a lot of the DLC, especially the Gravesite Plain, gave me Field of Reeds/Aaru (Egyptian Afterlife) vibes.
@@pedroportela6476 which is fair. But one of the things I've liked most about ER is being able to go through it without using a shield. Radahn's final fight without one feels... bad, for lack of a better word.
My issue with the final boss is that sometimes you just can’t see what they’re doing. I had to figure out their move set by sheer trial of error at some points.
@@tyomega9939 genocide isn't a plus, and whether a character does good or bad things in the plot has no bearing on the quality of the character, the motivation for why they do those things does
Favorite part of this fight was the sound track. Its possibly the best theyve ever cooked. I also love how this was actually a hard fight, i never struggled with the main bosses until him
@@seeking4948 Building a shining kingdom on the innumerable bodies of his followers without a care? just look at the bottom of the towers and the gate he walks from, not exactly inspiring and kinda reminisce of when griffith used the beherit.
@@Dracowinges what I mean is that Miquella is sacrificing everything for the world. He believes he can help everyone with his compassion and mind control. Griffith would with no doubt sacrifice everything his friends,lovers,family anything for his own greed. Griffith cares about only himself in stark contrast Miquella is the opposite.
@@Dracowinges The gate already looked like that before miquella. Also his goals were truly altruistic not selfish. he is trying to make a better world. Its just that he ruined that goal when he made the grave mistake of throwing away his own love, causing him to go full "by any means necessary".
Is it really PRIME Radahn? It is young Radahn. I thought Radahn was at his peak right before Malenia fight and her rot infection. He was a lot bigger at least and on a HORSE. Yeah I mean, surely this Radahn buffed by Miquella is stronger than any other version of himself, but still
it's stronger than prime. While he doesn't have his great rune so he isn't as big, he has a god supporting him with beams of light and granting him light speed attacks
@@namirakira7138 Technically no, but Mohg's body definitely does, I'm willing to bet Mohg has more natural strength than Radahn being the hornsent son of Hourah Loux
As much as I don't like the Radahn fight it's terrifying to note that this is 1. Radahn in his prime before getting scarlet rotted and 2. Without also holding the stars in stasis so full focus on killing your ass. I ended up using the fingerprint shield and my dark moon greatsword to get him.
I wish the Scadutree Fragments were split up into two categories: "Fragments" and "Splinters" Base Scadutree Fragments are used to level defense and attack. It would be nice if instead Fragments leveled Defense and Splinters leveled Attacked. Reason being it would make finding items more enjoyable. I'll be honest, it felt demoralizing going to a new area, exploring around, finding an item, and it's a Smithing Stone [7]. I can't begin to describe the disappointment of getting to that beautiful blood red field that is Charon's Grave, only for me to fight 3 reused bosses from base game + another Wicker Man. Hell, throw a caravan with a Solitude Knight guarding it. Instead of reusing a Tibia Mariner, instead reuse one of those gazebos from base game with a portal leading to that Scadutree Chalice way up North. There are so many more interesting options that take very little extra work and are so much more worth than just throwing a reused boss into your absolutely BEAUTIFUL open world. Messmer and Rellana were brilliant, could keep fighting them all day. Consort Radahn was more cancerous than Scarlet Rot. I wanted to fight Prime Radahn. I loved the first phase. Not whatever Miquella infused BS the second phase was. I wish beyond wish that Radahn in the second phase, broke Miquella's charm because his love of war was so great and he wanted to fight us at full capacity. More gravity attacks, more devastation, hell even throw some Horah Loux levels of cinema with smacking us away with a gravity strike and then following it up with a downward strike into the ground. I would have LOVED a fight like that versus what we got. That feel when you can excuse everything else Miquella did, but ruining Radahn's boss fight was the breaking point 🤣
And those garvity attacks couldnt cause visual issues with the effect? Its not the idea of miquella that ruined the fight, its the execution that failed
I think theres just more ambient tracks compared to previous souls game where theŕe was just no music during every level so the boss music doesnt stand out AS much, but yeah, shit take, every boss theme, Leyndell, Caelid and main theme fucking slap.
@LukasJampen I've legit been listening to the Divine Beast Dancing Lion ost on repeat for the past 2 weeks. Easily my new favorite from this entire game.
@emc5210 saying the base game didn't have much good music either is kinda crazy too ngl. There is a lot of "filler" tracks sure yea, made for catacomb bosses for example, but basically every single main boss/ remembrance boss, (dragon themes too) has incredible music. Mohg and Godrick's are my personal favorites.
I legit feel like Bricky is coping a bit too hard on the "Malenia invalidates shield builds" thing, because no she doesnt. The startegy hes doing here can still beat Malenia, and fairly easier compared to Radahn as she can get staggered by your pokes as you block, and doesnt attack anywhere near as frequently as him either. You can outdamage her healing especially if you have stamina to do so. This isnt mentioning greatsbields like the Palisade or Briar ones that have bleed build up, which you can infuse Shield Crash to have Cold affinity, and thus do crap loads of status effect damage when you use it at the right moments. Theres also the fact that, you know, dont have to block literally every attack she does. Just block the ones that you need to and to set up shield crash for. This isnt even mentioning Vow of Indomitable which makes you invulnerable, or learning to parry her.
@@tyomega9939 the only way I was able to beat malenia was with a shield poke bleed build lol it was a war of attrition where I simply had to outlast here despite her lifesteal.
@Jormyyy yeah beating Malenia using a shield just frankly requires more creativity and which attacks to block, unless you have the DPS to ourdamage her healing. The fact people still use that as a swrious critique against her fight when there are a lot of strategies shield users can do to counter her is disingenuous.
@@pedroportela6476 being passive makes ER's bosses so much harder. Be aggressive, run around and jump over attacks instead of just rolling, block with shields or the weapon you have to guard counter.
While it did end up taking taking almost three hours for me to beat the final boss, I took breaks between those hours, and during my third session I just locked in and was in the zone. It's perfectly possible to beat the final boss with any build (I did a faith, caster focused build with Scarlet Aeonia saved for second phase since he heals status ailments when changing to phase two), it's just like fighting Malenia - learning what is the right action, like running in a circle if you're right at her feet when she starts her dance or running away if you have some distance, then dodging the correct direction for the other two parts of it, or better yet, just have Bloodhound Step ready on a dagger to soft swap to when she goes in the air. We as gamers don't HAVE to win with no summons (though I'm proud I did), no blocking (same again), only dmg bonus talismans (I had 3 defence and boost crimson flask healing) etc, but so many are trapped by their own ego and avoid using the tools at their disposal. Elden Ring is as hard as you want it to be - lvl 1 no hit runs are for those few who are GamersTM, which is probably less than 10% of those that have beaten Elden Ring. I'm proud I can beat the dlc with most builds and no summons, but it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to use summons, just that I have the skill and luck for it, and sadly a lot of players just don't have that, wether it's because they aren't From Software veterans or just don't have the time in their life to actually "git gud" isn't important.
20:09 I'm sorry, but DS2 has way more issues specific to it than those 3. The horrible janky hitboxes that lie, the nonsensical area/world design, the attack aiming being extra shite, the weird movement system they snuck in that forces your character to turn at very small angled increments rather than having true 360 degree movement like in previous games(this is real). There's many other issues that game has, and on average the game's design is worse than the other DS games, but the ones above belong to it exclusively. I don't think DS2 is overhated. I think it rightly gets blasted, but to be clear, I have no problem with anyone who liked it. It's bad, but it's not the worst thing ever. I absolutely despised the experience of playing it, but hey, power stancing is neat.
A few months ago it was quite the experience grabbing it on Steam, having played through it only once when it initially came out and having spent the last decade hearing that it's actually a lot better than I remember... yeah no, DS2 is just absolute dogshit, I genuinely do not see a single reason I would ever choose to play it between DS1, 3 and Bloodborne, and I don't even like Bloodborne all that much!
If you don't progress thiolier's quest he doesn't become your enemy and just stays there. He even says how he's sad no one visits him anymore besides you.
It's so crazy to me that everyone ends up resorting to using a shield as if it means "giving up" somehow when no one seems to realize you can just use the deflecting hardtear and turn the fight into Sekiro but with added super-powered guard counters that stance break Radahn in 3 hits. Guarding is a part of the game. Remember when guard counters being revealed was this WTF moment and then everyone went on to never ever use it in-game? I think the big thing I find unforgivable in most of the critiques of this DLC and the game in general is how people refuse to assess Elden Ring on its own terms. Just because the same people that made it also made Dark Souls doesn't mean it's a Dark Souls game. There are so many elements and mechanics that are unique to Elden Ring that so many people just patently ignore because they either weren't in Dark Souls, weren't *good* in Dark Souls, or are TOO good and therefore don't count. It's actually so frustrating having to listen to all of these people who are doing what amounts to a self-imposed challenge run and then complaining about the difficulty. I'm just so done with it.
Well, Bricky was too much of a coward to ever fight any of the Furnace Golem, so he never got the new tears. Also there's this stupid stigma about using shields that the Souls community made up as to being pussies and that you should always roll everything. I hate that. Shields are completely viable and you should use them if you feel like it, and yes, guard counters are very good if you get the timing right. EDIT: Regarding those people you talked in the end, I'm confident in saying that nobody likes those losers in the community, gate keeping people from using anything that they don't deem "worthy". They are all a bunch of pathetic losers that thinks they are hot shit because they beated Dark Souls one time using an Ultra Greatsword. I choose to wield a colossal sword too, but not because it's the only good way to play, it's because I like big fuck off sword to smack people with.
@@Babadui I agree, I don't even care if people use mimic tear, personally, even though I decided not to use it myself for the DLC. I did use it for all of the base game because it was fun and I was experimenting with everything the game had to offer. Even when I'm using a STR build though, I love making the big pots, using greases, clawmark seal for rock throwing and buffing, a greatbow and the jar cannon, and yes, even a greatshield. Like, it's a strength build, why not use your strength! People think that if they pick INT they can only cast spells and if they pick STR they can only jump heavy with double colossals. It's like no, dude, you're literally not even playing most of the game. I do not understand what enjoyment people get out of looking at a million viable options and saying "no, I pick one and if it doesn't work on even a single boss then I will complain that the game is unbalanced and not a true RPG even though there are items and skills I could be using right now that are fully within my build parameters." This whole conversation just really gets my goat.
My problem is not so much the fact those mechanics exist, but the fact that they are hard to counter unless you use said Tear that should have been a base mechanic or talisman instead of being limited by time and used once.
@@emc5210 I kinda disagree, I think certain bosses should be weaker to certain play styles than others to add diversity in difficulty. But I do think the fact that most of them play like a DS3 or Sekiro fight is pretty annoying. 1) DS3 was good but it gets old (looking at you Pontiff Sullivan). 2) the Sekiro-esque fights have no counter unless you use the tier for it. Which can only be cast once and lasts for 5 minutes. The fact it doesn’t last till death is stupid because I need the time to practice that mechanic. And instead I gotta reset every 5 minutes to learn it.
What I would have liked for the DLC is to be somewhat midgame accessible, like other before, where you can make a detour to it during a normal playthrough, get some higher level upgrade materials in exchange for the increased difficulty. Like in Bloodborne you can get a lot of higher level bloodstones before even fighting Ludwig, so its even in a normal playthrough it is almost always worth to go there. Naturally, lorewise this is what makes sense, so I am not gonna complain about it.
I actually loved Radahn, he's so over the top but thats why he's the strongest boss Fromsoft ever made. He's the strongest AND the fastest AND the tankiest AND uses magic AND is helped by his twink mindcontrolling brother, its the full package and the best final challenge i can think of for elden ring, a game that gives so much more customization options and overpowered bullshit to the players to make them powerfull and flashy than in their previous games. In previous souls tittles we see Midir, Nameless King, Artorias, Kalameet, Gwyn and we could only say "damn, imagine if we could fight them at their prime". This time Miyazaki said "you wanted prime, you wanted the peak of power in the lore, here's why we called him the strongest demigod"
I stay saying the first phase of the fight is one of the most fun fights I've done in the game. The second phase is annoying because of the effects and the amount of AOE
of all the things he didnt like... why the boss music? its by far the best music fromsoft has put out for any of the souls games so far.... nvm i guess he misspoke the first time he listed his points lmao
Just feeling the need to put it out there because I disagree so hard on the community's overwhelming criticism of the final boss. Same as with Malenia, the Soulslike community seems to love challenge and defend the virtues of said challenge, until it reaches a certain threshold, at which point everything is "annoying", "overtuned" and "unfair". And I just don't get it. I feel like many players don't want to be genuinely challenged. They want to be able to go into a fight and know that they'll probably beat it within a few hours no summons just rolling and hitting. How are Fromsoft designers meant to truly challenge their players if everything is expected, if they don't introduce new ways to be challenged? We've simply reached the point where they've come to expect more of their players. Either use the tools the game gives you or get good enough to dodge and poke him to death. I'm not saying From are above criticism, the performance issues are very real and you're free to simply enjoy and not enjoy whatever you like. But the vast majority of perceived "objective" criticism of this fight is just wrong, imo. Every move is manageable, just like waterfowl dance was. He's clearly beatable with any build or self-imposed restriction if you're willing to put the time in. And maybe this is more of a personal thing, but I genuinely never struggled to see what he was doing. Like, the fight is very intentionally designed to be overwhelming when you hit the 2nd phase the first few times. But once you begin fighting through and understanding the different moves, I don't see any issues with readability.
To me a boss is bad when it is unfun. I do not think challenge is a part of that. Godrick is very fun to fight at least for me even though he is super easy. If Fromsoftware just gave a little longer attack window between one of Radah's major combos it would have been a much more enjoyable fight. Most of my issues with the boss actually come from how boring I find the lore. They should have set Miquella and Radahn up a little more in the DLC because he just sorta shows up at the end. I know Ansbach has some lines but it still feels like it is coming out of left field and honestly leaves us with more questions that will never get answered because this is the last Elden Ring content we will get :(
My criticism of the boss is when he just randomly decides he’s going to fly for 5 minutes and attack at the same time non stop, because he did that very frequently when I was fighting him. It was like trying to chase down Elden Beast except if Elden Beast was also raining artillery the entire time and you simply weren’t allowed to do anything but run until you were out of stamina, then he’d come back down to do a 20 hit massive AOE combo ending in an explosion the moment you ran out of stamina. And that’s not an issue of low Endurance, I had 50 Endurance at the time and he’d constantly run me down with zero counter play. I wasn’t allowed to attack at range while he flew because his clones would interrupt everything, I wasn’t allowed to attack up close because he’d just run away with a beam of light and start flying again. It was just a genuinely frustrating experience. I respecced to 80 Arcane and grabbed the Maternal Staff to throttle Impenetrable Thorns damage to the absolute maximum and just killed him with that on a lucky run where he didn’t just fly around for the entirety of his second phase. If that behaviour of his was just bugged, then I could maybe forgive it, but I will never forget how aggravating it was.
Not gonna get into the Radahn fight but people are 100% right to call Malenia a bad fight, thing is that she is 95% good... and then you have Waterfowl Dance, one of if not the single most badly designed moves in the history of Souls, so much so that it singlehandedly ruins the entire experience and doesn't work for several reasons: 1.Quick indicator off the start is that it's basically necessary to lock off of Malenia to properly dodge it which is something 95% of the moves in the game do not require meaning a fundamental mechanic of the game fucks you over. 2.Normally it starts after a pause but here and there Malenia will decide to do immediately after being done with an attack whose first dodge requires you to get some distance starting at point blank making it ten times more difficult to avoid, it's inconsistency suggesting to either play assuming this will happen which just ruins the pace of the fight or take an unnecessary risk 3.The frostbite pot being able to stop her is not something you can use to prove it's well designed (I see too many people pointing to this and going "See? You can counter it, you're just stupid") cause this is an unintended loophole an extremely tiny minority of people would ever figure out without research outside of the game, this partly also applies to most people having to research the exact steps for dodging it because it's not intuitive 4.The attack being a damaging sphere of rapid damage coupled with her healing mean that along with it's hitbox being unreasonable you are heavily punished for the slightest mistake in both HP you lost and HP gained by Malenia, not to mention the Rot buildup in the second phase 5.Despite being a frequently used extremely high damage attack with very demanding execution there is no reward upon a successful dodge, in fact it's very likely you'll immediately have to dodge yet another attack. There is no other attack in the entire game with this combo of demanding execution, high punishment for slight mistakes and lack of reward for avoiding it, it is simply unreasonably overtuned
I agree that there were a good amount of areas in the DLC that I felt were just too big & empty. The Finger Ruins, the abyssal woods ESPECIALLY, and Radahn’s 2nd phase just being so overwhelming with the Holy Explosions. Other than that, I think this DLC was such a big improvement onto an otherwise amazing game. I still have my gripes like in the base game (reused enemies/bosses and the open areas not as engaging), but goddamn what I would give to relive my first experience of base game and DLC, over & over.
I do agree that the finger ruins and the abyssal woods needed something more to find or more enemy variety, but to me the open world in Elden Ring in generals was very good, and yes, I agree that I would pay a lot to relieve the feeling I had when first exploring both the main game and the DLC. I'm still not sure if this is better than Old Hunter or Ringed City in terms of quality, but it's definitely up there and there's not much margin between them.
I am one of those reused assets apologists that hard disagreed with bricky’s earlier take on just making more stuff for the game in the same amount of time (God knows the games industry has a crunch problem already), but I do agree that if they plan to keep making big open worlds they need to keep up with the quality, so for now they have to be smart about where they put their effort. The DLC i think is the result of this: the legacy dungeons are better (castle ensis is good even though it uses basic castle assets) and the regular dungeons and towns have much better atmosphere, but the emptier areas are made pretty but kept empty (what the mountaintops should have been, i think). But can we also appreciate the changes they made to their classic bullshit (aside from the camera please god its not funny anymore)? The maps and letters for the quests, the more obvious hidden walls in Midra’s manse, even the text in front of the hidden entrance to Marika’s village?
Hot take: the final boss is the best boss fight in the game, and is less bullshit than Malenia. If you didn't like for one reason or another, that's fine, that's the joy of these games. But people going around saying the boss is trash because it's hard give me the same energy as those Game Journalist who used a mod to slow Sekiro down so they could beat it. The fact it forces you to use all your tools or change things up rather than just Unga Bunga-ing your way through it is what sold me on the boss. And plus, you're fighting the most powerful of the demigods in his prime, AND A NEWLY ASCENDED GOD. It's not. Supposed. To be easy.
It's not supposed to be easy, but it also shouldn't have to be an absolute cluster fuck of visual clutter and near instant attack animations meanwhile we the player take 3 seconds to swing and recover once with a club
"Forces you to use all your tools" is framed extremely incorrectly here. With how you describe Unga-Bungaing in this context it's just that the game supports build variety, no matter what build or playstyle you're in the mood for you go for it and you can beat any boss with it, it's a big reason why this game is so fun. Then I see that basically everyone who reaches this fight realizes their tools don't work and that tanking everything with a shield is significantly more effective than any other strat. People don't change the way they fight this boss because they had to reevaluate their approach, they just realized this fight made the gameplay systems that have carried them through 99% of Elden Ring not work properly
I personally dont agree with everyone saying radahn is too much, Its the final boss of the dlc of course it should be difficult. Bricky beat it in one sitting without maxing the fragments and not using too many consumables. My complaint is not getting enough info or enough of anything with that final cutscene
For real. After beating the final boss it just feels so empty. All we got is some small answers and even more cryptic lore.... I also hate that I can't even climb up to see between the Crucible/Gate of Divinity. The fight is obviously the climax of the DLC and we get literally nothing after it. The way the tension goes from an extreme high to immediately off a cliff in terms of story telling is so jarring, like there is literally no falling tension. This DLC would be better if it wasn't the last piece of Elden Ring content we are going to get. It is truly sad that we will have so many questions with no possible answers. Melina is the prime example. We will never know what she truly is because we have so little information about her. I was hoping to get more substantial lore or interactions with the outer gods. As far as I know Bloodbourne is the only game where we get to directly interact with one of the outer gods. It would have been cool to at least see or get a better understanding of what they are or look like.
Yo my exact same thought with this final boss too. "Ok cool it my turn yet?" Followed by being immediately punished for thinking literally any instance is a safe opportunity to attack or heal. "Aight dawg you right thats my bad for thinking its my turn finally." I had just finally beat this boss last night after being stuck for a couple days. I have such mixed opinions on this fight. The first phase is straightforward, and I learned it pretty quickly and enjoyed doing so... but then the dreaded second phase is just... soooooo much happening. There is an insanely high amount of attacks that feel never-ending or some that literally cheat and come out faster than the human brain can compute and react, thus the only way to avoid them is to anticipate and act ahead of time. So many factors of this boss' second phase feel overtuned and fundamentally flawed to their core. This coming from someone who has played every single one of these souls games to completion like a hundred times over (minus Sekiro). I hate that it felt like i was forced to respec just to beat it. Literally have myself 99 vgr + health & defense talismans and Tree Sentinel armor, and went a str build with Gaius' heavy thrusting sword and poked him to death (i also gave up on rolling beause it legit does not work I stg so I used the deflect tear instead). Edit: I hate this because I have never enjoyed playing "meta". I much prefer playing character driven/ thematic builds in these games. So to feel forced into a specific build and playstyle for this final boss felt awful to me. I wasn't able to play MY character the way I wanted to. Not unless I felt like banging my head against the boss for another week or so by trying to land a single Dragon Communion incantation against him. I have never been so relieved to finally beat a boss in these games so that I can say I did it once and unless they adjust it in an update at some point, I will likely never fight them ever again. Even the more I think about the lore around it the less it makes sense and the less I like it. The DLC was (mostly) so good up until this final point, and it feels kinda sour ending on that note.
Compared to all the early whining aboht how hard the dlc is and elden ring base game bosses being so unrelenting and unfun to fight, Consort Radahn actually is the boss people complained about for once
@@Asutora-chan the 99 vgr, edtree favor +2, vgr talisman +3 helped me survive this insane onslaught of visual clutter and damage. It literally did not matter which way I rolled every single attack caught me. How many times am I expected to roll in that second phase? Example; Radahn swings twice, so I have to dodge twice, but yet at the same time there are light beams coming down where I am, but they aren't timed with Radahn's swings, so I roll the swing but get hit by the beam because we quite literally can not execute the inputs fast enough to avoid both. This is why I started deflecting all of his melee attacks and stacked defense to eat the holy beams.
@@tyomega9939 I had a few issues with the dlc at first feeling slightly overtuned in some aspects/ enemies. Like I get it, I'm not gonna steamroll it all, nor did I want to but I was almost lvl 200 when I started it and even the dogs and rats and little hollow guys still dealt so much damage even at 60 vgr and heavy-ish armor. Like tf?
I agree with bricky's assesment of the dlc only thing I would say about scadu fragments is that I would rather have them just increase damage and not increase DR. Just scale the damage of everything in the dlc to like 8-17 lvl scadu blessing damage done to me depending on the enemy and I am happy. I am fine with bosses having high health and a way to increase my damage through exploration but I am not ok when shit is two shotting me at 60 vigor because I haven't explored enough. Also fuck Bayle, Igon probably greatest NPC in elden ring but Bayle can go eat gravel.
I think the problem with that is that like that would mean that a lot of people would just throw themselves at bosses and just accept the fact rhat they do 0.01% health damage because they themselves aren't taking that much damage
50:30 personally, i think the skibidi feagments were completely unnecessary, and just an excuse to make you explore every nook and cranny of the dlc, unless you want to fight comically overtuned bosses. On a first run it's fine, but every new save you are gonna have to run arond the entire dlc. Artorias of the Abyss and The old Hunters were also accessible pretty early, but they were still balanced as endgame areas After all, even in base Elden Ring, you can literally fight Mogh as your 3rd boss, right after Margit and Godrick, and that's not a bad thing
If fragments weren't a thing, you would have just breezed through the bosses on your lv300 character and complained that it was too easy. You also would have complained that there was no reason to explore.
@@Sharkofspace you could use your lv300 character to breeze through the dlc of previous games, that didn't make them any less good, did it? As for the exploration, maybe thay could have made the world a bit smaller, since base ER already suffers from a lack of "less is better" mentality
@@Negative_KD90 They aren't even remotely comparable. If they made it smaller, you would have complained that it was too small for 40$ + two years of waiting.
@@Negative_KD90 The franchise was extremely niche until well after DS3's DLC had dropped. For the majority of players, the DLC was just another part of the game that they probably experienced blind on their first playthrough. Compare that to Elden Ring, where the base game was already the best-selling game in the franchise and the genre was fully mainstream. More people than ever had years to pick the game apart and do multiple playthroughs before getting overleveled and sitting at the door waiting for the DLC to drop so they could experience and critique it like a stand-alone game. It's like comparing an MMO from 2004 to an MMO from now. The experience is completely different. It makes perfect sense to have some system in place to stop players from accidentally trivializing the DLC before they even start it. Plus, considering most people are a pretty high level when they start the DLC, it allows for there to be some sort of progression that isn't just "One point in a stat every couple hours that probably doesn't even help you because your build is already finished."
I agree 100% with Bricky. I like Elden Ring, but I don't LOVE it. I prefer their older games, too many bosses have those dragging attacks, very little time to attack, and the music is mid/forgettable. It's like they put Sekiro/bloodborne bosses in Dark Souls 3.
If there is one thing I will die on it is elden ring have "mid music". Actually, yea, some of the music feels like "filler" for bosses in dungeons and catacombs. But all the main remembrance bosses, flying and ancient dragon, as well as the Night Cavalary's music is all phenomenal that it totally makes up for the "filler" tracks. Also, the dlc does not have a single bad track. Between the ambience and the even better than base game main boss themes, they're all good. The Divine Beast Dancing Lion is easily in my new top 10 maybe top 5 favorite tracks ever.
I think he meant the base game music isn't as good as the dlc music. Which, yea there is a lot of "filler" tracks for like catacombs and dungeon bosses. But every main/ remembrance boss, flying and ancient dragon, and Night Cavalry, all have amazing music.
He's referring to base game music, which yeah, it's good and all but we're talking about music in a series where it's pretty common that when I talk to someone about the previous entries they can remember it's soundtracks off the top of their head. Safe to say this is a criticism FromSoft took very personally because the OST in this expansion is absolutely stellar the whole way through
The theme of incest in Game of Thrones is an indictment of monarchy as a system - if bloodline is what bestows power upon you, the most effective strategy to maintaining the "purity of the bloodline" is to arrange marriages between family members. George Martin's whole thing in the books is taking the tropes of the fantasy genre - beautiful kingdoms, fair maidens, knights in shining armor - and twisting them into grotesqueries in order to demonstrate how transparently bad feudalism was without the veil of romanticism that fairy tales put over it. This theme is also why characters in Elden Ring have those weirdly similar names; having this syllabic connection to the names of other people in the royal family is another way of legitimizing power - it's why the Targaryens have six different Aegons and the English Royal Family named like 40 people George.
People also completely lose their minds when they see fictional incest in media. EZ shock value = free publicity.
I would love it if some creator had the guts to talk about how corporatism perpetuates some of the worst aspects of feudalism, how nepotism is modern hereditary monarchy, and how capitalism inherently works towards instating a form of neo-feudalism. Best recent example I've seen is the Final Fantasy VII Remake saga, which outright refers to Rufus Shinra as the "heir to the throne" of his father's corporate empire.
I don't even think incest is a part of the joining of Radahn as Miquella's Lord. I think the position of godhood requires the position of Elden Lord as more of a political marriage. "A crown is warranted with strength", "Strength befitting of a lord", these kinds of things showing up makes me thing strongly that the reasoning behind having an Elden Lord at all is as an enforcer to put down any thoughts or attempts at rebellion or ascension of another person to godhood. I think the reason why Marika had children with Godfrey and Radagon are in service to the same reason she cut down rival Empyreans like the Gloam Eyed Queen. It was never that she loved Godfrey, or loved Radagon, or that sex is NECESSARILY an implied duty of a god and a lord, but that she wanted to strengthen her claim to her throne, and to extend the period of time that the erdtree would remain as the core of the world's order. By having more people who would be inclined to defend the erdtree with their lives with the powers of demigods, and having those who would be less inclined to stand against Marika as their mother, she ensured a stronger sense of security to her reign as god. I think that she made the tarnished what they are so that they might achieve a similar goal as a course of action for extreme emergencies, and that the Night of Black Knives signified one of these, leading to her shattering the Elden Ring and returning the tarnished to the Lands Between.
@@GrahamChapman It would be really interesting for someone to create a setting where late capitalism has produced the same extreme power stratification and social immobility as feudalism, while wealthy people recreate the social conventions and aesthetics of the medieval court as a result of new money chasing the perceived stability and legitimacy as old money, and old money in turn trying to emulate the aristocracy. They . uh. Would not suffer for a lack of inspiration.
@@TheEveryDayC I think this is a really strong point. Elden Ring keeps the mechanics of godhood in the lands between pretty vague, which I think was a good call - especially with the reveal that The Greater Will has been absent since before the Golden Order was established. I totally agree that the position of consort always seemed more important than simply being a sexual partner. Consorts are referred to in-game as if they are as vital to the actual status of a god’s divinity as the god themselves, beyond simply being the means by which that god creates an heir. Heirship is also ambiguous because not all of Marika’s offspring are empyreans and who gets to be one seems random. I don’t think the theme of incest is irrelevant to the story of the Golden Lineage, but I do totally agree that the role of consort is more complicated than a sexual/reproductive one. And honestly, I don’t mind that this has never been explained in detail and all the NPCs speak about it as if the Chosen Tarnished already knows all about it - it creates the impression of this vast, complex system of power that might actually exist, or simply be stuff Marika made up along the way and/or all the Fingers being deranged.
"How powerful is Miquella, to be able to charm us twice and we swear fealty?"
There's a reason Malenia called him the Fiercest Empyrean.
Ansbach, on Miquella:
"He wields love to shrive clean the hearts of men. There is nothing more terrifying."
@@thedarkgenious7967 Ansbach was easily my favorite NPC. Love me an Old Man character.
better question, How powerful are we to resist it once?
I find it ironic that Radahn, even in his prime, is weak to Scarlet Rot, and that translates to Miquella's downfall that some madman with a towershield a scarlet rot laced rapier defeats his Consort...
He only weak to rot on phase 1 btw
It's like poetry, it rhymes. Or something like that. It's not a loop; it's a spiral.
To be fair, that is not Radahn´s body. It is Mogh´s. That´s why he can also use blood skills.
Yeah just remember that isn't prime radahn, thats not his body. Although he is getting a boost from miquella
@@UNOriginalDrawnot really he just has increased resistances in phase 2 it takes 2 scarlet Aeonians instead of 1 the damage the proc does feel about even
"So when do I get to attack?"
"That's the neat thing! You don't."
average elden ring player when there's 3 moves out of eight that can't be punished
the mohglester was actually moghlested. now we got miquellester on our hands
Wait, Brickles real name is Taylor? That explains so MUCH
He does have a lot of Taylor moments.
I've been calling him Brickwardo Brickems for years
They say Taylor was a good boy, never one to be late, complain, express ideas in his brain
They say he once went by the name of the Brickster
Yo he's Taylor?
32:15
Notice the subtle look away by Radan. Someone help that man!
Im not sure if Bricky reads these, but I'm at 46:40 and felt it neat to share cause I do love the world of ER
Because of his charming abilities, its implied that Miquella is the strongest of the demigods. Ansbach, when he brought his scythe against him for charming Mogh was IMMEDIATELY done so as well, and I remember someone in vanilla saying that because of his power to wield love, it made him the scariest demigod out of everyone.
Miquella wanted to make the world a better place, but he was doomed to fail because he abandoned all parts of himself that would have made that possible.
He abandoned his fear, his love, his heart, and all of his flesh and body.
The only things left were his goals and a desire to fix the mistakes he saw his mother and father make. But in his pursuit, he failed to consider what actions Marika took, and whether or not he was replicating her path.
Ya the saddest part by far is when you realize Miquella just followed in Marikas exact footprints all the while decrying her mistakes and weaknesses.
I love that the corner where Freyja and the skellys were in is just absolutely soaked in blood
The what and where??
For what Miquella is doing, they are attempting to become a god in the same idea as Marika was a god, except that he would have no higher being pulling his strings (like the elden beast/greater will did to Marika). The difference seems to be that without a sponsor-deity Miquella must manually ascend to godhood, requiring him to ritually sacrifice his flesh and humanity before using the soul gate at the top of enir ellim (marika also used this gate to ascend to godhood but seemingly did not have to sacrfice herself since she had a sponsor-deity). Like Marika's consortship with Godfrey and Radagon, a king consort is required of Miquella (likely to be their protector and enforcer of their will) of which he chose Radahn. Essentially, Radahn is the elden lord to Miquella's new order. Mohg had attempted to take this role by keeping miquella in his dominion and having him become a god with the formless mother (blood god) as his sponsor-deity, but Miquella refused and had in actuallity been charming and using mohg to get access to the land of shadow. Miquella then used Mohg's body as a new vessel for Radahn to inhabit and ressurected him to become their king consort/elden lord (also boss rembrances are not explicitly souls like they are in DS, they are simply a "memory" of them hewn into the erdtree that can be extracted and utilized). This is also why consort Radahn has blood magic, lingering effects of inhabiting Mohg's body.
Also small aside, it is likely that the hornsent where trying to either ascend to godhood/create a god of the crucible or divine beasts through the use of enir elim's soul gate, but Marika used it instead to become a god of the golden order. This is why the hornsent see Marika as a traitor (and the creation of the golden order as a "affair of gold") because she was likely supposed to be used in a ritual for the hornsent's own ends but she rebelled at the last minute.
Great exposition. Now curiously, this does bring in the question that how does Ranni's Age of Stars works in practice? Since she created a whole new order outside of the Golden without a sponsor deity.
@@TwolfS3041some think the Dark Moon is actually a deity and that’s why she can ascend to divinity the moment she kills her Two Fingers. There’s no real evidence for it, but that’s what some people believe. Although in truth, Ranni had already long discarded her flesh, so ascending to divinity would have been quite simple for her
character having golden eyes mean they have grace I think.
that's why we are tarnished because we had our grace stripped from us and that's also why Godfrey doesn't have golden eyes.
although in Messmers case that was a seal placed there by Marika and not actually an eye.
"Get up come on get down with Brickness" was a missed opportunity here Over_Jander. . . 2:35
Here's the entire lore plot from what I discovered:
Miquella from the base game lore had disillusioned and already denounced the Golden Order (his Mom and Dad's order) because it could not cure his Sister- Malenia of her Scarlet Rot ['Miquella rings of light' item description]. Later, he discovered Marika's 'original sin' (the eradication of the Hornsent) and believed his bloodline was tainted [Count Ymir's dialogue after ringing the 2nd bell] which is why he feels like he needed to 'divest himself of all Gold so he may rise as a new God' [Story trailer's dialogue and Sir Ansbach's dialogue]. Miquella wanted to become a God of a new order and usher in the 'Age of Compassion'. But to become a God of a new age in The Land Between, you'll also need an Elden Lord- and thus Miquella picked Radahn. Radahn (supposedly) denied the offer of being Miquella's consort, so Miquella sent his sister to fight Radahn and nuked Caelid [Young Radahn armor set's item description]. At the same time, he charmed and manipulated Mogh to 'kidnap' and hide his body so he could a) Use Mogh's body to use as Radahn's new body, and b) 'Die' so he can go to the Land of Shadow since all manners of death wash up to the Land of Shadow [Suppressing Pillar's plaque].
The problem with Miquella's plan was that he also threw away his passion and love (You can actually find this 'love' he threw away and talk to it if you explore it a bit more). "How would your Order save those who are unloved when you can't save your other self?"- [Ghost NPC dialogue]. Miquella's curse was not 'eternal youth', it's 'nascenty'- "It beggars belief, but… I'm afraid Tender Miquella fails to grasp the humiliation implied by this act" [Ansbach's dialogue]. Miquella wanted to charm the whole world [Circlet of Light's item description], but that's not 'compassion' like he promised it's manipulation. By doing so he's no different that Marika and the Golden Order (a shining world and promises that hide something darker underneath) and he needed to be stop ["Make Miquella stop... Don't turn the poor thing into a god... Godhood would be Miquella's prison. A caged divinity... is beyond saving. You must kill Miquella... Grant him forgiveness." - St Trina dialogue]
Nowhere is it said that Miquella wanted to charm the whole world, we do not exactly know what the age of compassion would entail.
Radhan didn't accept the proposition to become consort but Miquella made a promise to him in exchange [cinematic after radhan] which he respected, Malenia telling so to Radhan [young lion set] (I suppose he promised to make Radhan and Malenia fight or to make Radhan lose in a fight, but can't say for sure).
I believe st. Trina wanted to stop reasons, she know Miquella would fail for two reasons:
1. He separated himself to what made his legendary compassion possible
2. The lords are puppet to greater forces and are only here as proxies which a small bit of agency to influence the lands between (like Marika removing the rune of death from the elden ring).
Brickness isn't wrong about there being Egyptian themes in Enir-Ilim. Yes, the area is mostly Babylonian/Mesopotamian inspired, but some things in the area (like the little ritual boat statues/altars you see everywhere) are partially Egyptian inspired.
In fact, a lot of the DLC, especially the Gravesite Plain, gave me Field of Reeds/Aaru (Egyptian Afterlife) vibes.
Behold the Raging Brickman
had the exact same feeling with Bricky on final boss, solid very fun Phase 1, Phase 2 is just plain unfun.
Yeah, it's cool and flashy af, but it's a bitch to actually play
@Drocksas Unless you use one those dueling shields and the Deflecting Hard tear. Then that shit turn into a joke.
@@pedroportela6476 which is fair. But one of the things I've liked most about ER is being able to go through it without using a shield. Radahn's final fight without one feels... bad, for lack of a better word.
@@Drocksas I know it's prob not what u meant, but the other build to nuke him is (even nerfed) bloodfiends arm, blood infusion, lions claw, spam bonk.
@@Drocksas but yeah it feels like a bit much
23:19 "Waelsh!" (Derogatory)
“Waelsh” (slur)
the leda brawl is one of my favorite fights in elden ring.
23:17 as someone who is Welsh I am deeply offended that he would say such a thing
The funniest thing is that this dlc just makes me want to play the old hunters again. Or like the Ringed City.
My issue with the final boss is that sometimes you just can’t see what they’re doing. I had to figure out their move set by sheer trial of error at some points.
Average STR player moment 9:13
And the omen twins are still the best characters.
Messmer clears imo. Cool friends, best army, treats his soldiers with respect and care, genocides the hornsent, awesome boss fight, hes got everything
@@tyomega9939 genocide isn't a plus, and whether a character does good or bad things in the plot has no bearing on the quality of the character, the motivation for why they do those things does
@@tyomega9939 meh don't care.
“OH MY GOD THEIR SHOOTING ROPES”
Favorite part of this fight was the sound track. Its possibly the best theyve ever cooked. I also love how this was actually a hard fight, i never struggled with the main bosses until him
Miquella was pulling a Griffith. Sorry I mean GRIIIFIIIIIIIIIIIIIITH!!!!!!!!!!
have you read Berserk? then you would know that Grifith is nothing like Miquella.
@@seeking4948 Building a shining kingdom on the innumerable bodies of his followers without a care? just look at the bottom of the towers and the gate he walks from, not exactly inspiring and kinda reminisce of when griffith used the beherit.
@@Dracowinges what I mean is that Miquella is sacrificing everything for the world. He believes he can help everyone with his compassion and mind control.
Griffith would with no doubt sacrifice everything his friends,lovers,family anything for his own greed.
Griffith cares about only himself in stark contrast Miquella is the opposite.
@@Dracowinges The gate already looked like that before miquella. Also his goals were truly altruistic not selfish. he is trying to make a better world. Its just that he ruined that goal when he made the grave mistake of throwing away his own love, causing him to go full "by any means necessary".
Is it really PRIME Radahn? It is young Radahn. I thought Radahn was at his peak right before Malenia fight and her rot infection. He was a lot bigger at least and on a HORSE. Yeah
I mean, surely this Radahn buffed by Miquella is stronger than any other version of himself, but still
it's stronger than prime. While he doesn't have his great rune so he isn't as big, he has a god supporting him with beams of light and granting him light speed attacks
@@lebron73 yeah, but if I have a guy on my back throwing grenades for me, does that really add to MY strength?
@@namirakira7138 Technically no, but Mohg's body definitely does, I'm willing to bet Mohg has more natural strength than Radahn being the hornsent son of Hourah Loux
The bricky sickness? So one could even say….. the brickness?
As much as I don't like the Radahn fight it's terrifying to note that this is 1. Radahn in his prime before getting scarlet rotted and 2. Without also holding the stars in stasis so full focus on killing your ass. I ended up using the fingerprint shield and my dark moon greatsword to get him.
19:54 This is easily the best Dark Souls 2 take I have ever heard
Deflecting tear for this fight was SO much fun i loved this.
This boss is probably the only one where fighting it with a poker and great shield is what the majority of players did to beat him, including me
I wish the Scadutree Fragments were split up into two categories: "Fragments" and "Splinters"
Base Scadutree Fragments are used to level defense and attack. It would be nice if instead Fragments leveled Defense and Splinters leveled Attacked. Reason being it would make finding items more enjoyable. I'll be honest, it felt demoralizing going to a new area, exploring around, finding an item, and it's a Smithing Stone [7].
I can't begin to describe the disappointment of getting to that beautiful blood red field that is Charon's Grave, only for me to fight 3 reused bosses from base game + another Wicker Man. Hell, throw a caravan with a Solitude Knight guarding it. Instead of reusing a Tibia Mariner, instead reuse one of those gazebos from base game with a portal leading to that Scadutree Chalice way up North. There are so many more interesting options that take very little extra work and are so much more worth than just throwing a reused boss into your absolutely BEAUTIFUL open world.
Messmer and Rellana were brilliant, could keep fighting them all day. Consort Radahn was more cancerous than Scarlet Rot. I wanted to fight Prime Radahn. I loved the first phase. Not whatever Miquella infused BS the second phase was.
I wish beyond wish that Radahn in the second phase, broke Miquella's charm because his love of war was so great and he wanted to fight us at full capacity. More gravity attacks, more devastation, hell even throw some Horah Loux levels of cinema with smacking us away with a gravity strike and then following it up with a downward strike into the ground.
I would have LOVED a fight like that versus what we got.
That feel when you can excuse everything else Miquella did, but ruining Radahn's boss fight was the breaking point 🤣
And those garvity attacks couldnt cause visual issues with the effect? Its not the idea of miquella that ruined the fight, its the execution that failed
First game where you can canonically die of Simping
Honestly, I liked the multiple dragon boss fights leading to Bayle. Felt good to fight his minions and then him, plus Igon is great
28:38 the eyes run into the famely all of them have it
Watching Brick tackle this game is so fun
I like how he completely misses a new weapon and armor set with the spiritspring at the start
16:44 Bricky passed a brick
Wait boss music wasn't good in the base game? Did we play the same game? Sure there were some duds but when it went hard, it went fucking hard.
I think theres just more ambient tracks compared to previous souls game where theŕe was just no music during every level so the boss music doesnt stand out AS much, but yeah, shit take, every boss theme, Leyndell, Caelid and main theme fucking slap.
@LukasJampen I've legit been listening to the Divine Beast Dancing Lion ost on repeat for the past 2 weeks. Easily my new favorite from this entire game.
I’m sure you already know, but he says it’s good at 49:11.
I was just as baffled as you were.
He was saying that the base game didn’t have good good music not the dlc
@emc5210 saying the base game didn't have much good music either is kinda crazy too ngl. There is a lot of "filler" tracks sure yea, made for catacomb bosses for example, but basically every single main boss/ remembrance boss, (dragon themes too) has incredible music.
Mohg and Godrick's are my personal favorites.
Here is the grab in 39:48
I legit feel like Bricky is coping a bit too hard on the "Malenia invalidates shield builds" thing, because no she doesnt. The startegy hes doing here can still beat Malenia, and fairly easier compared to Radahn as she can get staggered by your pokes as you block, and doesnt attack anywhere near as frequently as him either. You can outdamage her healing especially if you have stamina to do so.
This isnt mentioning greatsbields like the Palisade or Briar ones that have bleed build up, which you can infuse Shield Crash to have Cold affinity, and thus do crap loads of status effect damage when you use it at the right moments.
Theres also the fact that, you know, dont have to block literally every attack she does. Just block the ones that you need to and to set up shield crash for.
This isnt even mentioning Vow of Indomitable which makes you invulnerable, or learning to parry her.
@@tyomega9939 the only way I was able to beat malenia was with a shield poke bleed build lol it was a war of attrition where I simply had to outlast here despite her lifesteal.
Yeah, Malenia only invalidates shield builds if you're passive and don't deal damage back.
@Jormyyy yeah beating Malenia using a shield just frankly requires more creativity and which attacks to block, unless you have the DPS to ourdamage her healing. The fact people still use that as a swrious critique against her fight when there are a lot of strategies shield users can do to counter her is disingenuous.
@@pedroportela6476 being passive makes ER's bosses so much harder. Be aggressive, run around and jump over attacks instead of just rolling, block with shields or the weapon you have to guard counter.
@@tyomega9939 Yeah, this game isn't Bloodborne or anything, but being mindfully aggressive pays off more often than not.
They deleted the flashbang at the Bandai Namco logo only to put it 20 times in this boss lmao
OMFG LOL
While it did end up taking taking almost three hours for me to beat the final boss, I took breaks between those hours, and during my third session I just locked in and was in the zone. It's perfectly possible to beat the final boss with any build (I did a faith, caster focused build with Scarlet Aeonia saved for second phase since he heals status ailments when changing to phase two), it's just like fighting Malenia - learning what is the right action, like running in a circle if you're right at her feet when she starts her dance or running away if you have some distance, then dodging the correct direction for the other two parts of it, or better yet, just have Bloodhound Step ready on a dagger to soft swap to when she goes in the air.
We as gamers don't HAVE to win with no summons (though I'm proud I did), no blocking (same again), only dmg bonus talismans (I had 3 defence and boost crimson flask healing) etc, but so many are trapped by their own ego and avoid using the tools at their disposal. Elden Ring is as hard as you want it to be - lvl 1 no hit runs are for those few who are GamersTM, which is probably less than 10% of those that have beaten Elden Ring. I'm proud I can beat the dlc with most builds and no summons, but it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to use summons, just that I have the skill and luck for it, and sadly a lot of players just don't have that, wether it's because they aren't From Software veterans or just don't have the time in their life to actually "git gud" isn't important.
First time fighting Consort Radahn was on max NG difficulty. Idk if I can beat him solo 😭
oh ahahah gotta get down with the Brickness
14:10 that would be a great spot for a fight club
GET UP
CMON GET DOWN WITH THE BRICKNESS
20:09 I'm sorry, but DS2 has way more issues specific to it than those 3. The horrible janky hitboxes that lie, the nonsensical area/world design, the attack aiming being extra shite, the weird movement system they snuck in that forces your character to turn at very small angled increments rather than having true 360 degree movement like in previous games(this is real). There's many other issues that game has, and on average the game's design is worse than the other DS games, but the ones above belong to it exclusively.
I don't think DS2 is overhated. I think it rightly gets blasted, but to be clear, I have no problem with anyone who liked it. It's bad, but it's not the worst thing ever. I absolutely despised the experience of playing it, but hey, power stancing is neat.
A few months ago it was quite the experience grabbing it on Steam, having played through it only once when it initially came out and having spent the last decade hearing that it's actually a lot better than I remember... yeah no, DS2 is just absolute dogshit, I genuinely do not see a single reason I would ever choose to play it between DS1, 3 and Bloodborne, and I don't even like Bloodborne all that much!
The Miquolester
He's down with the Brickness.
Get him boys! Oh Shit!
All I'm saying is that Godwyn in some incarnation would have been waaaaaaay cooler than Radahn pt 2.
First thing I said when I saw miquella was “ahh, the original femboy” and I’m glad bricky thought the same thing lmfao
Congrats Mohg on becoming Miquellas Consort like you always wanted 😊
HES DOWN WITH THE BRICKNESS!!!
This just makes me want to complete all the quest lines and have another Radahn Festival version 2
24:40 Unfortunately Dane brought a fist to a finger fight.
Oh no brickle is down with the brickness
Has the Brickler considered playing Dragon's Dogma 2?
I feel like he might enjoy it quite a bit!
mohg was cleared of all charges.
Jokes on bricky I entered this dlc at level 320 and still got clapped a ton
Prime Radahn is here to take away your main character status form you Bricky.🐱
19:56 Nah, DS2 is hated just the right amount. Absolutely nothing that it did well or introduced come anywhere near making up for Soul Memory alone
This is how i find brickwards real name is taylor
48:48 Wait how?? How is he still alive!
If you don't progress thiolier's quest he doesn't become your enemy and just stays there. He even says how he's sad no one visits him anymore besides you.
@@kuroitsurugi7169 ohhh. Bricky missed out. TY for the info!
What the heck? Why does he only have 10 flasks?
If you want to learn more FatBrett has a great video about Miquella and his "allies"
It's so crazy to me that everyone ends up resorting to using a shield as if it means "giving up" somehow when no one seems to realize you can just use the deflecting hardtear and turn the fight into Sekiro but with added super-powered guard counters that stance break Radahn in 3 hits. Guarding is a part of the game. Remember when guard counters being revealed was this WTF moment and then everyone went on to never ever use it in-game?
I think the big thing I find unforgivable in most of the critiques of this DLC and the game in general is how people refuse to assess Elden Ring on its own terms. Just because the same people that made it also made Dark Souls doesn't mean it's a Dark Souls game. There are so many elements and mechanics that are unique to Elden Ring that so many people just patently ignore because they either weren't in Dark Souls, weren't *good* in Dark Souls, or are TOO good and therefore don't count. It's actually so frustrating having to listen to all of these people who are doing what amounts to a self-imposed challenge run and then complaining about the difficulty. I'm just so done with it.
Well, Bricky was too much of a coward to ever fight any of the Furnace Golem, so he never got the new tears.
Also there's this stupid stigma about using shields that the Souls community made up as to being pussies and that you should always roll everything. I hate that. Shields are completely viable and you should use them if you feel like it, and yes, guard counters are very good if you get the timing right.
EDIT: Regarding those people you talked in the end, I'm confident in saying that nobody likes those losers in the community, gate keeping people from using anything that they don't deem "worthy". They are all a bunch of pathetic losers that thinks they are hot shit because they beated Dark Souls one time using an Ultra Greatsword.
I choose to wield a colossal sword too, but not because it's the only good way to play, it's because I like big fuck off sword to smack people with.
@@Babadui I agree, I don't even care if people use mimic tear, personally, even though I decided not to use it myself for the DLC. I did use it for all of the base game because it was fun and I was experimenting with everything the game had to offer.
Even when I'm using a STR build though, I love making the big pots, using greases, clawmark seal for rock throwing and buffing, a greatbow and the jar cannon, and yes, even a greatshield. Like, it's a strength build, why not use your strength! People think that if they pick INT they can only cast spells and if they pick STR they can only jump heavy with double colossals. It's like no, dude, you're literally not even playing most of the game.
I do not understand what enjoyment people get out of looking at a million viable options and saying "no, I pick one and if it doesn't work on even a single boss then I will complain that the game is unbalanced and not a true RPG even though there are items and skills I could be using right now that are fully within my build parameters."
This whole conversation just really gets my goat.
My problem is not so much the fact those mechanics exist, but the fact that they are hard to counter unless you use said Tear that should have been a base mechanic or talisman instead of being limited by time and used once.
It’s kinda ridiculous that the game forces you into one play style though, every play style should work on every boss
@@emc5210 I kinda disagree, I think certain bosses should be weaker to certain play styles than others to add diversity in difficulty. But I do think the fact that most of them play like a DS3 or Sekiro fight is pretty annoying. 1) DS3 was good but it gets old (looking at you Pontiff Sullivan). 2) the Sekiro-esque fights have no counter unless you use the tier for it. Which can only be cast once and lasts for 5 minutes. The fact it doesn’t last till death is stupid because I need the time to practice that mechanic. And instead I gotta reset every 5 minutes to learn it.
I think Hornsent has a West Country accent, like Cornwall or Dorset.
Honestly was not expecting Bricky to complain this much about the dlc.
What I would have liked for the DLC is to be somewhat midgame accessible, like other before, where you can make a detour to it during a normal playthrough, get some higher level upgrade materials in exchange for the increased difficulty. Like in Bloodborne you can get a lot of higher level bloodstones before even fighting Ludwig, so its even in a normal playthrough it is almost always worth to go there.
Naturally, lorewise this is what makes sense, so I am not gonna complain about it.
Imagine getting a turn to attack in current fromsoft game design
If you didn't actually had time to attack, you wouldn't defeat any bosses. Quit your bitching and get to learning, scrub.
@@Babadui Damn, I'd love to learn if the boss was actually fun.
I actually loved Radahn, he's so over the top but thats why he's the strongest boss Fromsoft ever made. He's the strongest AND the fastest AND the tankiest AND uses magic AND is helped by his twink mindcontrolling brother, its the full package and the best final challenge i can think of for elden ring, a game that gives so much more customization options and overpowered bullshit to the players to make them powerfull and flashy than in their previous games. In previous souls tittles we see Midir, Nameless King, Artorias, Kalameet, Gwyn and we could only say "damn, imagine if we could fight them at their prime". This time Miyazaki said "you wanted prime, you wanted the peak of power in the lore, here's why we called him the strongest demigod"
I stay saying the first phase of the fight is one of the most fun fights I've done in the game. The second phase is annoying because of the effects and the amount of AOE
Well Taylor, wish you the best
of all the things he didnt like... why the boss music? its by far the best music fromsoft has put out for any of the souls games so far.... nvm i guess he misspoke the first time he listed his points lmao
I seem to be in the past as It still is Friday.
Fighting Radahn again was nothing short of amazing and an absolute honour
Rona?
I know Joe got it
Just feeling the need to put it out there because I disagree so hard on the community's overwhelming criticism of the final boss. Same as with Malenia, the Soulslike community seems to love challenge and defend the virtues of said challenge, until it reaches a certain threshold, at which point everything is "annoying", "overtuned" and "unfair". And I just don't get it. I feel like many players don't want to be genuinely challenged. They want to be able to go into a fight and know that they'll probably beat it within a few hours no summons just rolling and hitting. How are Fromsoft designers meant to truly challenge their players if everything is expected, if they don't introduce new ways to be challenged? We've simply reached the point where they've come to expect more of their players. Either use the tools the game gives you or get good enough to dodge and poke him to death. I'm not saying From are above criticism, the performance issues are very real and you're free to simply enjoy and not enjoy whatever you like. But the vast majority of perceived "objective" criticism of this fight is just wrong, imo. Every move is manageable, just like waterfowl dance was. He's clearly beatable with any build or self-imposed restriction if you're willing to put the time in. And maybe this is more of a personal thing, but I genuinely never struggled to see what he was doing. Like, the fight is very intentionally designed to be overwhelming when you hit the 2nd phase the first few times. But once you begin fighting through and understanding the different moves, I don't see any issues with readability.
To me a boss is bad when it is unfun. I do not think challenge is a part of that. Godrick is very fun to fight at least for me even though he is super easy. If Fromsoftware just gave a little longer attack window between one of Radah's major combos it would have been a much more enjoyable fight. Most of my issues with the boss actually come from how boring I find the lore. They should have set Miquella and Radahn up a little more in the DLC because he just sorta shows up at the end. I know Ansbach has some lines but it still feels like it is coming out of left field and honestly leaves us with more questions that will never get answered because this is the last Elden Ring content we will get :(
My criticism of the boss is when he just randomly decides he’s going to fly for 5 minutes and attack at the same time non stop, because he did that very frequently when I was fighting him. It was like trying to chase down Elden Beast except if Elden Beast was also raining artillery the entire time and you simply weren’t allowed to do anything but run until you were out of stamina, then he’d come back down to do a 20 hit massive AOE combo ending in an explosion the moment you ran out of stamina. And that’s not an issue of low Endurance, I had 50 Endurance at the time and he’d constantly run me down with zero counter play. I wasn’t allowed to attack at range while he flew because his clones would interrupt everything, I wasn’t allowed to attack up close because he’d just run away with a beam of light and start flying again. It was just a genuinely frustrating experience. I respecced to 80 Arcane and grabbed the Maternal Staff to throttle Impenetrable Thorns damage to the absolute maximum and just killed him with that on a lucky run where he didn’t just fly around for the entirety of his second phase. If that behaviour of his was just bugged, then I could maybe forgive it, but I will never forget how aggravating it was.
Not gonna get into the Radahn fight but people are 100% right to call Malenia a bad fight, thing is that she is 95% good... and then you have Waterfowl Dance, one of if not the single most badly designed moves in the history of Souls, so much so that it singlehandedly ruins the entire experience and doesn't work for several reasons:
1.Quick indicator off the start is that it's basically necessary to lock off of Malenia to properly dodge it which is something 95% of the moves in the game do not require meaning a fundamental mechanic of the game fucks you over.
2.Normally it starts after a pause but here and there Malenia will decide to do immediately after being done with an attack whose first dodge requires you to get some distance starting at point blank making it ten times more difficult to avoid, it's inconsistency suggesting to either play assuming this will happen which just ruins the pace of the fight or take an unnecessary risk
3.The frostbite pot being able to stop her is not something you can use to prove it's well designed (I see too many people pointing to this and going "See? You can counter it, you're just stupid") cause this is an unintended loophole an extremely tiny minority of people would ever figure out without research outside of the game, this partly also applies to most people having to research the exact steps for dodging it because it's not intuitive
4.The attack being a damaging sphere of rapid damage coupled with her healing mean that along with it's hitbox being unreasonable you are heavily punished for the slightest mistake in both HP you lost and HP gained by Malenia, not to mention the Rot buildup in the second phase
5.Despite being a frequently used extremely high damage attack with very demanding execution there is no reward upon a successful dodge, in fact it's very likely you'll immediately have to dodge yet another attack.
There is no other attack in the entire game with this combo of demanding execution, high punishment for slight mistakes and lack of reward for avoiding it, it is simply unreasonably overtuned
I agree that there were a good amount of areas in the DLC that I felt were just too big & empty. The Finger Ruins, the abyssal woods ESPECIALLY, and Radahn’s 2nd phase just being so overwhelming with the Holy Explosions.
Other than that, I think this DLC was such a big improvement onto an otherwise amazing game. I still have my gripes like in the base game (reused enemies/bosses and the open areas not as engaging), but goddamn what I would give to relive my first experience of base game and DLC, over & over.
I do agree that the finger ruins and the abyssal woods needed something more to find or more enemy variety, but to me the open world in Elden Ring in generals was very good, and yes, I agree that I would pay a lot to relieve the feeling I had when first exploring both the main game and the DLC.
I'm still not sure if this is better than Old Hunter or Ringed City in terms of quality, but it's definitely up there and there's not much margin between them.
I am one of those reused assets apologists that hard disagreed with bricky’s earlier take on just making more stuff for the game in the same amount of time (God knows the games industry has a crunch problem already), but I do agree that if they plan to keep making big open worlds they need to keep up with the quality, so for now they have to be smart about where they put their effort. The DLC i think is the result of this: the legacy dungeons are better (castle ensis is good even though it uses basic castle assets) and the regular dungeons and towns have much better atmosphere, but the emptier areas are made pretty but kept empty (what the mountaintops should have been, i think).
But can we also appreciate the changes they made to their classic bullshit (aside from the camera please god its not funny anymore)? The maps and letters for the quests, the more obvious hidden walls in Midra’s manse, even the text in front of the hidden entrance to Marika’s village?
I feel like ones enjoyment of Elden Ring and this DLC is based on your willingness to run pass stuff and Tolerance of repeat boss.
Hot take: the final boss is the best boss fight in the game, and is less bullshit than Malenia. If you didn't like for one reason or another, that's fine, that's the joy of these games. But people going around saying the boss is trash because it's hard give me the same energy as those Game Journalist who used a mod to slow Sekiro down so they could beat it.
The fact it forces you to use all your tools or change things up rather than just Unga Bunga-ing your way through it is what sold me on the boss. And plus, you're fighting the most powerful of the demigods in his prime, AND A NEWLY ASCENDED GOD. It's not. Supposed. To be easy.
or its just a bad overdesigned second phase
It's not supposed to be easy, but it also shouldn't have to be an absolute cluster fuck of visual clutter and near instant attack animations meanwhile we the player take 3 seconds to swing and recover once with a club
Malenia is way better of it wasn't for waterfowl she'd be a decent fight
"Forces you to use all your tools" is framed extremely incorrectly here. With how you describe Unga-Bungaing in this context it's just that the game supports build variety, no matter what build or playstyle you're in the mood for you go for it and you can beat any boss with it, it's a big reason why this game is so fun. Then I see that basically everyone who reaches this fight realizes their tools don't work and that tanking everything with a shield is significantly more effective than any other strat.
People don't change the way they fight this boss because they had to reevaluate their approach, they just realized this fight made the gameplay systems that have carried them through 99% of Elden Ring not work properly
hi me from the past
I personally dont agree with everyone saying radahn is too much, Its the final boss of the dlc of course it should be difficult. Bricky beat it in one sitting without maxing the fragments and not using too many consumables. My complaint is not getting enough info or enough of anything with that final cutscene
Radahn is 100% too much
For real. After beating the final boss it just feels so empty. All we got is some small answers and even more cryptic lore.... I also hate that I can't even climb up to see between the Crucible/Gate of Divinity. The fight is obviously the climax of the DLC and we get literally nothing after it. The way the tension goes from an extreme high to immediately off a cliff in terms of story telling is so jarring, like there is literally no falling tension.
This DLC would be better if it wasn't the last piece of Elden Ring content we are going to get. It is truly sad that we will have so many questions with no possible answers. Melina is the prime example. We will never know what she truly is because we have so little information about her. I was hoping to get more substantial lore or interactions with the outer gods. As far as I know Bloodbourne is the only game where we get to directly interact with one of the outer gods. It would have been cool to at least see or get a better understanding of what they are or look like.
@@kei7540 skill issue
@@omfg322 I beat radahn solo so no not a skill issue just a shitty boss
Yo my exact same thought with this final boss too. "Ok cool it my turn yet?" Followed by being immediately punished for thinking literally any instance is a safe opportunity to attack or heal. "Aight dawg you right thats my bad for thinking its my turn finally."
I had just finally beat this boss last night after being stuck for a couple days. I have such mixed opinions on this fight. The first phase is straightforward, and I learned it pretty quickly and enjoyed doing so... but then the dreaded second phase is just... soooooo much happening. There is an insanely high amount of attacks that feel never-ending or some that literally cheat and come out faster than the human brain can compute and react, thus the only way to avoid them is to anticipate and act ahead of time. So many factors of this boss' second phase feel overtuned and fundamentally flawed to their core. This coming from someone who has played every single one of these souls games to completion like a hundred times over (minus Sekiro).
I hate that it felt like i was forced to respec just to beat it. Literally have myself 99 vgr + health & defense talismans and Tree Sentinel armor, and went a str build with Gaius' heavy thrusting sword and poked him to death (i also gave up on rolling beause it legit does not work I stg so I used the deflect tear instead). Edit: I hate this because I have never enjoyed playing "meta". I much prefer playing character driven/ thematic builds in these games. So to feel forced into a specific build and playstyle for this final boss felt awful to me. I wasn't able to play MY character the way I wanted to. Not unless I felt like banging my head against the boss for another week or so by trying to land a single Dragon Communion incantation against him.
I have never been so relieved to finally beat a boss in these games so that I can say I did it once and unless they adjust it in an update at some point, I will likely never fight them ever again. Even the more I think about the lore around it the less it makes sense and the less I like it.
The DLC was (mostly) so good up until this final point, and it feels kinda sour ending on that note.
what do you mean? you mean you dont like being flashbanged every 2 seconds?
99 vigor doesn't do anything lmao. You don't need any of that nonsense, literally just roll forward instead of back and you avoid all his attacks.
Compared to all the early whining aboht how hard the dlc is and elden ring base game bosses being so unrelenting and unfun to fight, Consort Radahn actually is the boss people complained about for once
@@Asutora-chan the 99 vgr, edtree favor +2, vgr talisman +3 helped me survive this insane onslaught of visual clutter and damage. It literally did not matter which way I rolled every single attack caught me. How many times am I expected to roll in that second phase? Example; Radahn swings twice, so I have to dodge twice, but yet at the same time there are light beams coming down where I am, but they aren't timed with Radahn's swings, so I roll the swing but get hit by the beam because we quite literally can not execute the inputs fast enough to avoid both. This is why I started deflecting all of his melee attacks and stacked defense to eat the holy beams.
@@tyomega9939 I had a few issues with the dlc at first feeling slightly overtuned in some aspects/ enemies. Like I get it, I'm not gonna steamroll it all, nor did I want to but I was almost lvl 200 when I started it and even the dogs and rats and little hollow guys still dealt so much damage even at 60 vgr and heavy-ish armor. Like tf?
No views in 19 seconds damn
Fell off
I agree with bricky's assesment of the dlc only thing I would say about scadu fragments is that I would rather have them just increase damage and not increase DR. Just scale the damage of everything in the dlc to like 8-17 lvl scadu blessing damage done to me depending on the enemy and I am happy. I am fine with bosses having high health and a way to increase my damage through exploration but I am not ok when shit is two shotting me at 60 vigor because I haven't explored enough. Also fuck Bayle, Igon probably greatest NPC in elden ring but Bayle can go eat gravel.
I think the problem with that is that like that would mean that a lot of people would just throw themselves at bosses and just accept the fact rhat they do 0.01% health damage because they themselves aren't taking that much damage
50:30 personally, i think the skibidi feagments were completely unnecessary, and just an excuse to make you explore every nook and cranny of the dlc, unless you want to fight comically overtuned bosses.
On a first run it's fine, but every new save you are gonna have to run arond the entire dlc.
Artorias of the Abyss and The old Hunters were also accessible pretty early, but they were still balanced as endgame areas
After all, even in base Elden Ring, you can literally fight Mogh as your 3rd boss, right after Margit and Godrick, and that's not a bad thing
If fragments weren't a thing, you would have just breezed through the bosses on your lv300 character and complained that it was too easy. You also would have complained that there was no reason to explore.
@@Sharkofspace you could use your lv300 character to breeze through the dlc of previous games, that didn't make them any less good, did it? As for the exploration, maybe thay could have made the world a bit smaller, since base ER already suffers from a lack of "less is better" mentality
@@Negative_KD90 They aren't even remotely comparable.
If they made it smaller, you would have complained that it was too small for 40$ + two years of waiting.
@@Sharkofspace how are they not comparable?
@@Negative_KD90 The franchise was extremely niche until well after DS3's DLC had dropped. For the majority of players, the DLC was just another part of the game that they probably experienced blind on their first playthrough.
Compare that to Elden Ring, where the base game was already the best-selling game in the franchise and the genre was fully mainstream. More people than ever had years to pick the game apart and do multiple playthroughs before getting overleveled and sitting at the door waiting for the DLC to drop so they could experience and critique it like a stand-alone game.
It's like comparing an MMO from 2004 to an MMO from now. The experience is completely different.
It makes perfect sense to have some system in place to stop players from accidentally trivializing the DLC before they even start it. Plus, considering most people are a pretty high level when they start the DLC, it allows for there to be some sort of progression that isn't just "One point in a stat every couple hours that probably doesn't even help you because your build is already finished."
I agree 100% with Bricky. I like Elden Ring, but I don't LOVE it. I prefer their older games, too many bosses have those dragging attacks, very little time to attack, and the music is mid/forgettable. It's like they put Sekiro/bloodborne bosses in Dark Souls 3.
If there is one thing I will die on it is elden ring have "mid music". Actually, yea, some of the music feels like "filler" for bosses in dungeons and catacombs. But all the main remembrance bosses, flying and ancient dragon, as well as the Night Cavalary's music is all phenomenal that it totally makes up for the "filler" tracks. Also, the dlc does not have a single bad track. Between the ambience and the even better than base game main boss themes, they're all good. The Divine Beast Dancing Lion is easily in my new top 10 maybe top 5 favorite tracks ever.
49:03 Bricky says "boss music isn't very good" and then immediately says "boss music is amazing"
Is he stupid?
I think he meant the base game music isn't as good as the dlc music. Which, yea there is a lot of "filler" tracks for like catacombs and dungeon bosses. But every main/ remembrance boss, flying and ancient dragon, and Night Cavalry, all have amazing music.
@Jormyyy Which version of the base game music has he been listening because most the tracks are amazing.
He's referring to base game music, which yeah, it's good and all but we're talking about music in a series where it's pretty common that when I talk to someone about the previous entries they can remember it's soundtracks off the top of their head. Safe to say this is a criticism FromSoft took very personally because the OST in this expansion is absolutely stellar the whole way through