I love Elden Ring. To me it's honestly game of the year. Complete product on release, voice actors giving it their all and most definitely delivering, the animations and visuals are stunning, and the gameplay is rewarding like when you fell that boss that was giving you trouble.
After finishing the game and trekking through my second playthrough, I'm not sure I'd say it's a "complete" game. Complete enough to justify it's purchase price? Absolutely. I got more enjoyment, experienced more things, and spent more hours in Elden Ring than most games before the flaws really started getting glaring. That said, it's obvious that the decision to ship the game regardless if they were behind schedule or not. They tacitly acknowledge this in patches with half-finished questlines getting fixed (hopefully one day Patches will get his patch). Unacknowledged but still obvious though is how much of the game falls off after Leyndell. If you play with spirit summons or co-op then it might not be quite as apparent, but the difficulty ratchets up exponentially once you get to Mountaintops of the Giants to a degree that doesn't feel natural. On top of that, the entire snow region (including Consecrated Snowfield) feels really empty compared to the areas that you explore before it. There's also a distinct lack of unique content at that point. Consider Haligtree. The entire trek from exiting the Grand Lift until defeating Malenia doesn't have a single unique enemy; Malenia aside, all of the normal mobs, bosses, and minibosses are at best slight reskins of previous enemies. There are a couple unique spells/equipment in Consecrated Snowfield but once you hit the tree itself everything the only unique weapon is Miquellan Knight Sword (the rest are rot versions of previous weapons) and all of the talismans are upgraded versions of older talismans. The environment of the area is stunning and it's clear that they spent a good amount of time designing the actual layout and aesthetics of the environment, but then it's like they ran out of time and just copy/pasted the content to fill it. Anyway, it's still a great game that I recommend everyone play. It's just too bad it stumbles near the end.
I just realised that Souls games aren't hard. The hard part is not giving up. You just need to put your time into the game and the rest will follow. Elden Ring did eventually push me to finish Dark Souls 1 and now I am halfway through Dark Souls 2.
Excuse me for this rant upfront, had to get this off my chest in one way or another. I've played for about 14 hours now. In other souls games I'd be at the mid to endgame by this point. In ER tho? I'm still exploring around Limgrave and discovered the Weeping Peninsula not long ago (doing the underground bit now, pretty sure I'm underleveled/undergeared for it tho). I beat Margit only by summoning. I don't usually summon the first playthrough but I couldn't be arsed with Margit anymore and wanted to see more of the game (I didn't know weeping peninsula existed). Honestly thought going mage would give me just as an unfair advantage as in any other souls game (knowing this game is much bigger thus I need more time to complete it/wanting to have a quicker first playthrough) but I couldn't for the live of me find anyone who'd sell me spells, finally found someone and their spells are shit (and I read that if you give THAT npc scrolls, they might die later so it's best to save up for later in the game for an npc that isn't likely to just keel over dead). So I'm STILL using the pebble pretty much exclusively alongside a +2 shortsword. I LIKE this game but I don't LOVE it thus far. There are pretty visuals and it's much akin to Dark Souls but different enough (mostly) boss wise that it some time's feels almost unfair? Like Bloodborne bosses dropped into a Dark Souls game.
I pretty much had the same experience for about the first 50 hours or so. All I can say is if you want to use cool spells just look up where to find them. I tried to play it blind, but a lot of the usefull spells are hidden in stupid spots or require questlines. I can see why people want to play the game blind the entire time, but personally I just wanted to use something other than pebble and actually have fun w the game. There's still a ton of content in Elden Ring so looking at guides for a few spells wont spoil most of the game anyways.
@@Jermzzzzz Yea, I looked up where to find npc's that sold spells and that's how I found out about the npc in limgrave and then the one that doesn't just die if ya don't do their quest correctly. Will look it up once I'm past stormveil or at least have the npc that enables spirit ash upgrades. I've spoiled more for myself by looking at pvp vids and the like then looking up 'how to get the wolfboi down from his perch'.
@@KLK01 I wouldn't say the bosses aren't fun. They're fine if you summon (spirit ashes included in this) when you can it just isn't the sparring match of old. P.s: to anyone reading this going 'I solo'd everything barehanded SL1, gitgud' good for ya. I don't have the time rn to bang my head against the wall for 10+ hours just to be able to maybe get through a boss solo.
@@Zeverouis endgame bosses are the least fun and most boring fights. Like at that point I just want to get this over with. Everything before is amazing.
My first run I ran into margit over and over until I got lucky and killed him the same time he killed me but my second run I decided to clear all of limgrave before stormveil castle and at that point margit was no different than most of the dungeon bosses in difficulty
That's the good stuff. The second time I played Dark Souls I remember coming back through the Undead Burg on a fresh character and realizing how easy it was. You level up as a player more than your character ever does.
I think the big thing with this game that ppl need to learn in order to enjoy this game is if a boss is way too hard go explore and lvl up then come back they show u this with the tree sentinel when you first step into the world
"The game doesn't WANT you to feel frustrated, it's just willing to LET you feel frustrated." I think that line sums up difficulty in fromsoft games really well.
As a FS veteran I love the difficulty curve in this game. On my first playthrough I had self imposed restrictions. I used no summons, no spirit ashes, no looking stuff up, and I stopped at 125 in order to stop at meta level for dueling. That difficulty was pretty intense at the end, but i find that to fun. If you use sorceries, summon friends, research the meta weapons for the current patch, and use the spirit ashes the game becomes easier and therein more fun for people. Everyone plays differently I suppose.
This might not reach people, but I just fought the final boss on ng+. Spoilers. After getting whipped by radagon I was fighting elden beast... After a while I ran out of everything and the boss was literally one shot. He decided to do the elden grab (you know... The one that might one shot you) and I sh1t you not I was 1 hp from dying but I actually got him. That's a gamer moment that I might not forget.
Around there, yeah. For me I noticed a spike in difficulty as soon as my feet hit snow, but I was underleveled. I think the bosses also have less balanced mechanics from then on, at least for melee.
Fire giant felt fair despite the bit of increased damage going out. I felt like the difficulty stupidly spiked during Farum but I suspect that's just duo being bullshit.
@@whiteglint8714 fire giant is easy, but the shit tier camera this game has combined with the constant rolling makes this stupid boss annoyingly hard for no reason.
I don't know if I'm lucky or good, but I beat Elden Ring with KB+M, and trying to play on a controller made me so bad I couldn't even beat Soldier of Godrick.. Now this made me want to play other Dark Souls games
I started playing souls games on controller because everyone said thats the norm, but recently my ds4 controller broke so I had to play on my keyboard... it was rough, all my muscle memory made me do all the wrong imputs, until it clicked. Idk how but at some point I just got it ( I am also mainly a PC player so kb/m is very comfortable to me) I went from Morgott to finishing the game in around 4 days of constant playing and by the end kb/m didn't feel that weird to me, honestly it felt better sometimes because of the easier to control camera. After I finished elden I started ds3 and rn I am the 2 princes and played kb/m only and it felt great. So as someone that can comfortably play on both I can say that it's not that big a difference. Maybe the controls where bad in ds1/ds2 (haven't played ds1 on kb/m and haven't played ds2 at all) so the stigma remained that kb/m = bad
I played and beat elden ring with the sole purpose of beating it, and I didn’t enjoy a lot of it. I’ve been playing through it again just exploring and taking my time and have found basically a whole other games worth of content that I didn’t get my first two play throughs. Elden ring is pretty epic.
I think it’s hard in the sense that they designed a lot of bosses around the spirit ash system. So, if you play solo, the bosses are a lot more unfair than the previous souls games. For instance, boss moves are a lot faster, with faster recovery time, and a lot of attack strings combining into other attack strings. For you to beat a boss solo, especially in the end game, you have to either get lucky or wait after a few minutes of dodging attacks to get a single hit in. This game wants you to utilize split aggro, which is what has always been a kind of broken system in previous souls game, but this time you have to play into it rather than it being optional. The only options you have to make a boss fight bearable is: 1. Use spirit ashes 2. Summon phantoms 3. Explore the open world enough till you’re overpowered Before it was much more possible to just go from boss to boss with enough skill and level up and gain power that way. You can’t just step out of the grave in this game and kill Margit in a straight path. Unless you summon people, or upgrade spirit ashes, or get enough flasks and weapon/weapon upgrades to beat him. Although this new system is neat and appeals to a much wider audience due to how easy it is to modify the difficulty, for veterans, it becomes tedious. I’m about 10 characters in and I probably spend 4-7 hours just running around the map and grabbing gear so I can beat the game in 3-4 hours. It’s frustrating, and it’s a really fast way to burn out from a game. As said earlier, if you were good enough, you could just rely on your skill to progress through the game until a point you’re satisfied. It’s just not possible here. The game has its ups and downs but it definitely feels like the hardcore players got shafted the most from this system. The game is either too easy with spirit ashes and summons, or too hard for playing solo and having to grind your character out.
noticed this too one my first playthrough. margit felt like the game telling use spirit ashes, use guard counter. and then felt prominent at the last stages of the game
@goggles789 how is that contradicting myself? I didn’t realize I was being graded tf. What you want me to edit it and say “the few options you have is” Same shit
As a casual player, I was able to go through the game just fine while playing solo, and I never had to change my greatsword build or grind levels. I agree the game is too easy with spirit summons, but I personally disagree when you say the game is too hard when playing solo. The only boss that took me more than 20ish tries was Malenia at around 60, and even in the Malenia fight I never felt cheated, every death was a result of my own dumb mistakes.
For a lot of people, bosses taking 20ish tries means the game is too hard. You're just cut from a different cloth. I totally get your perspective, and I have personally had the most fun with these games when I've been stuck on a boss for a while and finally overcome it. But your threshold for pain is higher than average.
I am the degenerate who plays these games with a keyboard, in seriousness they have improved the keyboard setup a LOT since sekiro , you can actually bind the keys now :D and oh Elden ring's difficulty is based on build choice and what tools you decide to use , does it get frustrating ? YES , is it unbeatable NOPE
I find Elden ring to be the easiest of all the games. You can't say the game isn't easier mechanically. Flasks replenish throughout most the game by killing groups of enemies. You have a horse. You have summons for most boss fights and spirit ashes if you don't have internet or mess up quest lines. You have the stakes of Marika so you don't have to run back to boss. You have a map. Three minute buffs for the wonderous flask. Graces every ten feet. You have the Golden effigy that puts your summon sign at multiple spots. The game is most certainly easier from a mechanical standpoint.
All true. Worth noting though that almost all of those things are actually quality of life improvements, or ways to bypass content. I can't say whether they are good or bad things on the whole, but they sometimes run antithetical to the Souls formula (slow, methodical exploration and combat). Meanwhile, when it comes to the mechanical difficulty of boss fights, for example, the game is plainly more difficult than the original Dark Souls. You're given easier access to cheese strategies through spirit ashes and the ability to respec frequently, but if you walk into every fight alone as a melee character the challenge is going to be enormously greater than it used to be. Which I think is alright, really, because series veterans need more difficulty at this point, and newer players can lean heavily on the aforementioned cheese if they want to. So while you have a lot of control over how difficult the game is for you, the question I eventually turned to was more about the difficulty curve, i.e., the pacing of the game along a natural leveling path. That's where I think the game is a little bit awkward. I suspect they found it was a little bit too easy to become OP in playtesting, and adjusted the leveling curve accordingly, but the result is a bad compromise for me. It doesn't have a huge impact on people who are super serious about the game and plan to exhaustively explore every inch of it, but for more casual players, it turns the experience into a 120 hour grind. Which is another, probably less enjoyable, kind of difficulty.
People have always said this about Souls games, and I never thought it was that big of a deal, but in this game the difference feels pretty huge. Most of the endgame bosses seem to be designed for ranged players.
It's a pretty big time investment, but not a bad first Souls experience if you're looking for something to really sink your teeth into. Combat in the first Dark Souls is slower and simpler, and obviously it's a much shorter game, so it could be the better entry point for some people. But yeah you definitely have to play one of them immediately.
I think they gave up too quick, this game takes time, you can't just leave because you lost a few times. I played with a broken controller, the best way to fight bosses or get through hard areas is to go slow, stay away and observe attack patterns, it's a rhythm game.
Nah the endgame is trash with artificial difficulty and stupid aoe bosses. No casual has the time to get past that. So summons are required to beat this game’s endgame trash. Everything before mountain top is a 10/10 and fun. After that it’s bland.
@@KLK01 I consider myself a casual and never had to summon for anything. It really is as simple as what the OP says, just stay calm, learn the moves of the enemies, and punish accordingly. The game really isn't hard, you probably just got impatient towards the end.
@@KLK01 i have a friend who is a casual, he did the end game bosses without any summons, and he did maliketh first try, how you explain that? also farum azula is amazing
The thing is, this game has an amazing open world, but the bosses are just stupid and the mobs also. They do stupid damage just for the sake of it. What’s the point of armor or vigor if you’re just going to get 1 or 2 shot either way. After 300 hours I have uninstalled the game. Thing got bland real quick.
I have decided to interpret this comment as you being 70 hours in and not having used a site of grace yet and learning that enemies respawn. Impressive.
@@Randybobandy024 - it’s a compliment to the game. I’ve slaughtered every enemy, every boss, yet I salivate for more when I find big empty areas. See, it’s responses like these from people in this chat that lead people to believe that the Souls community is inherently toxic. I tend to agree. You ALL should be ashamed of yourselves. 👉🏿😐
I love Elden Ring. To me it's honestly game of the year. Complete product on release, voice actors giving it their all and most definitely delivering, the animations and visuals are stunning, and the gameplay is rewarding like when you fell that boss that was giving you trouble.
TOGETHAAAA
After finishing the game and trekking through my second playthrough, I'm not sure I'd say it's a "complete" game. Complete enough to justify it's purchase price? Absolutely. I got more enjoyment, experienced more things, and spent more hours in Elden Ring than most games before the flaws really started getting glaring. That said, it's obvious that the decision to ship the game regardless if they were behind schedule or not. They tacitly acknowledge this in patches with half-finished questlines getting fixed (hopefully one day Patches will get his patch). Unacknowledged but still obvious though is how much of the game falls off after Leyndell. If you play with spirit summons or co-op then it might not be quite as apparent, but the difficulty ratchets up exponentially once you get to Mountaintops of the Giants to a degree that doesn't feel natural. On top of that, the entire snow region (including Consecrated Snowfield) feels really empty compared to the areas that you explore before it. There's also a distinct lack of unique content at that point.
Consider Haligtree. The entire trek from exiting the Grand Lift until defeating Malenia doesn't have a single unique enemy; Malenia aside, all of the normal mobs, bosses, and minibosses are at best slight reskins of previous enemies. There are a couple unique spells/equipment in Consecrated Snowfield but once you hit the tree itself everything the only unique weapon is Miquellan Knight Sword (the rest are rot versions of previous weapons) and all of the talismans are upgraded versions of older talismans. The environment of the area is stunning and it's clear that they spent a good amount of time designing the actual layout and aesthetics of the environment, but then it's like they ran out of time and just copy/pasted the content to fill it.
Anyway, it's still a great game that I recommend everyone play. It's just too bad it stumbles near the end.
I just realised that Souls games aren't hard. The hard part is not giving up. You just need to put your time into the game and the rest will follow. Elden Ring did eventually push me to finish Dark Souls 1 and now I am halfway through Dark Souls 2.
Don't you dare go hollow.
Excuse me for this rant upfront, had to get this off my chest in one way or another.
I've played for about 14 hours now. In other souls games I'd be at the mid to endgame by this point. In ER tho? I'm still exploring around Limgrave and discovered the Weeping Peninsula not long ago (doing the underground bit now, pretty sure I'm underleveled/undergeared for it tho). I beat Margit only by summoning. I don't usually summon the first playthrough but I couldn't be arsed with Margit anymore and wanted to see more of the game (I didn't know weeping peninsula existed).
Honestly thought going mage would give me just as an unfair advantage as in any other souls game (knowing this game is much bigger thus I need more time to complete it/wanting to have a quicker first playthrough) but I couldn't for the live of me find anyone who'd sell me spells, finally found someone and their spells are shit (and I read that if you give THAT npc scrolls, they might die later so it's best to save up for later in the game for an npc that isn't likely to just keel over dead). So I'm STILL using the pebble pretty much exclusively alongside a +2 shortsword.
I LIKE this game but I don't LOVE it thus far. There are pretty visuals and it's much akin to Dark Souls but different enough (mostly) boss wise that it some time's feels almost unfair? Like Bloodborne bosses dropped into a Dark Souls game.
I pretty much had the same experience for about the first 50 hours or so. All I can say is if you want to use cool spells just look up where to find them. I tried to play it blind, but a lot of the usefull spells are hidden in stupid spots or require questlines. I can see why people want to play the game blind the entire time, but personally I just wanted to use something other than pebble and actually have fun w the game. There's still a ton of content in Elden Ring so looking at guides for a few spells wont spoil most of the game anyways.
@@Jermzzzzz Yea, I looked up where to find npc's that sold spells and that's how I found out about the npc in limgrave and then the one that doesn't just die if ya don't do their quest correctly. Will look it up once I'm past stormveil or at least have the npc that enables spirit ash upgrades.
I've spoiled more for myself by looking at pvp vids and the like then looking up 'how to get the wolfboi down from his perch'.
Yes! The game is fun til you meet a boss and it gets even worse as you progress.
@@KLK01 I wouldn't say the bosses aren't fun. They're fine if you summon (spirit ashes included in this) when you can it just isn't the sparring match of old.
P.s: to anyone reading this going 'I solo'd everything barehanded SL1, gitgud' good for ya. I don't have the time rn to bang my head against the wall for 10+ hours just to be able to maybe get through a boss solo.
@@Zeverouis endgame bosses are the least fun and most boring fights. Like at that point I just want to get this over with. Everything before is amazing.
My first run I ran into margit over and over until I got lucky and killed him the same time he killed me but my second run I decided to clear all of limgrave before stormveil castle and at that point margit was no different than most of the dungeon bosses in difficulty
That's the good stuff. The second time I played Dark Souls I remember coming back through the Undead Burg on a fresh character and realizing how easy it was. You level up as a player more than your character ever does.
I think the big thing with this game that ppl need to learn in order to enjoy this game is if a boss is way too hard go explore and lvl up then come back they show u this with the tree sentinel when you first step into the world
"The game doesn't WANT you to feel frustrated, it's just willing to LET you feel frustrated."
I think that line sums up difficulty in fromsoft games really well.
As a FS veteran I love the difficulty curve in this game. On my first playthrough I had self imposed restrictions. I used no summons, no spirit ashes, no looking stuff up, and I stopped at 125 in order to stop at meta level for dueling. That difficulty was pretty intense at the end, but i find that to fun. If you use sorceries, summon friends, research the meta weapons for the current patch, and use the spirit ashes the game becomes easier and therein more fun for people. Everyone plays differently I suppose.
This might not reach people, but I just fought the final boss on ng+. Spoilers.
After getting whipped by radagon I was fighting elden beast... After a while I ran out of everything and the boss was literally one shot. He decided to do the elden grab (you know... The one that might one shot you) and I sh1t you not I was 1 hp from dying but I actually got him.
That's a gamer moment that I might not forget.
This is probably the best take on "difficulty" on ER I've seen.
The first part is easy, but after the fire giant it really ramps up in difficulty
Around there, yeah. For me I noticed a spike in difficulty as soon as my feet hit snow, but I was underleveled. I think the bosses also have less balanced mechanics from then on, at least for melee.
Fire giant felt fair despite the bit of increased damage going out. I felt like the difficulty stupidly spiked during Farum but I suspect that's just duo being bullshit.
@@whiteglint8714 fire giant is easy, but the shit tier camera this game has combined with the constant rolling makes this stupid boss annoyingly hard for no reason.
I don't know if I'm lucky or good, but I beat Elden Ring with KB+M, and trying to play on a controller made me so bad I couldn't even beat Soldier of Godrick.. Now this made me want to play other Dark Souls games
Never actually tried it. I played my first Souls games on console though, so I'm probably set in my ways.
I started playing souls games on controller because everyone said thats the norm, but recently my ds4 controller broke so I had to play on my keyboard... it was rough, all my muscle memory made me do all the wrong imputs, until it clicked. Idk how but at some point I just got it ( I am also mainly a PC player so kb/m is very comfortable to me) I went from Morgott to finishing the game in around 4 days of constant playing and by the end kb/m didn't feel that weird to me, honestly it felt better sometimes because of the easier to control camera. After I finished elden I started ds3 and rn I am the 2 princes and played kb/m only and it felt great. So as someone that can comfortably play on both I can say that it's not that big a difference. Maybe the controls where bad in ds1/ds2 (haven't played ds1 on kb/m and haven't played ds2 at all) so the stigma remained that kb/m = bad
I played and beat elden ring with the sole purpose of beating it, and I didn’t enjoy a lot of it. I’ve been playing through it again just exploring and taking my time and have found basically a whole other games worth of content that I didn’t get my first two play throughs. Elden ring is pretty epic.
I think it’s hard in the sense that they designed a lot of bosses around the spirit ash system. So, if you play solo, the bosses are a lot more unfair than the previous souls games.
For instance, boss moves are a lot faster, with faster recovery time, and a lot of attack strings combining into other attack strings. For you to beat a boss solo, especially in the end game, you have to either get lucky or wait after a few minutes of dodging attacks to get a single hit in.
This game wants you to utilize split aggro, which is what has always been a kind of broken system in previous souls game, but this time you have to play into it rather than it being optional.
The only options you have to make a boss fight bearable is:
1. Use spirit ashes
2. Summon phantoms
3. Explore the open world enough till you’re overpowered
Before it was much more possible to just go from boss to boss with enough skill and level up and gain power that way. You can’t just step out of the grave in this game and kill Margit in a straight path. Unless you summon people, or upgrade spirit ashes, or get enough flasks and weapon/weapon upgrades to beat him.
Although this new system is neat and appeals to a much wider audience due to how easy it is to modify the difficulty, for veterans, it becomes tedious.
I’m about 10 characters in and I probably spend 4-7 hours just running around the map and grabbing gear so I can beat the game in 3-4 hours. It’s frustrating, and it’s a really fast way to burn out from a game. As said earlier, if you were good enough, you could just rely on your skill to progress through the game until a point you’re satisfied. It’s just not possible here.
The game has its ups and downs but it definitely feels like the hardcore players got shafted the most from this system. The game is either too easy with spirit ashes and summons, or too hard for playing solo and having to grind your character out.
noticed this too one my first playthrough. margit felt like the game telling use spirit ashes, use guard counter. and then felt prominent at the last stages of the game
@goggles789 did you read when I said I beat the game 10 times? Of course I learned their movesets.
Edit: 3:22-4:04 illustrates my point
@goggles789 how is that contradicting myself? I didn’t realize I was being graded tf.
What you want me to edit it and say “the few options you have is”
Same shit
As a casual player, I was able to go through the game just fine while playing solo, and I never had to change my greatsword build or grind levels. I agree the game is too easy with spirit summons, but I personally disagree when you say the game is too hard when playing solo. The only boss that took me more than 20ish tries was Malenia at around 60, and even in the Malenia fight I never felt cheated, every death was a result of my own dumb mistakes.
For a lot of people, bosses taking 20ish tries means the game is too hard. You're just cut from a different cloth.
I totally get your perspective, and I have personally had the most fun with these games when I've been stuck on a boss for a while and finally overcome it. But your threshold for pain is higher than average.
Subscribed! Great video, writing, and editing!
i just came across your channel your video is very professional for a small channel keep the good work
really nicely pointed out, keep up the good work
I just found you and I love this channel already
I am the degenerate who plays these games with a keyboard, in seriousness they have improved the keyboard setup a LOT since sekiro , you can actually bind the keys now :D and oh Elden ring's difficulty is based on build choice and what tools you decide to use , does it get frustrating ? YES , is it unbeatable NOPE
Can you rate the difficulty on kirby and the forgotten lands next?
Oh my yes
@@fancydink Thank you so much
Elden Ring is both the easiest souls game and the hardest game, it depends on the context and how you approach it
I find Elden ring to be the easiest of all the games.
You can't say the game isn't easier mechanically.
Flasks replenish throughout most the game by killing groups of enemies.
You have a horse.
You have summons for most boss fights and spirit ashes if you don't have internet or mess up quest lines.
You have the stakes of Marika so you don't have to run back to boss.
You have a map.
Three minute buffs for the wonderous flask.
Graces every ten feet.
You have the Golden effigy that puts your summon sign at multiple spots. The game is most certainly easier from a mechanical standpoint.
All true. Worth noting though that almost all of those things are actually quality of life improvements, or ways to bypass content. I can't say whether they are good or bad things on the whole, but they sometimes run antithetical to the Souls formula (slow, methodical exploration and combat).
Meanwhile, when it comes to the mechanical difficulty of boss fights, for example, the game is plainly more difficult than the original Dark Souls. You're given easier access to cheese strategies through spirit ashes and the ability to respec frequently, but if you walk into every fight alone as a melee character the challenge is going to be enormously greater than it used to be. Which I think is alright, really, because series veterans need more difficulty at this point, and newer players can lean heavily on the aforementioned cheese if they want to.
So while you have a lot of control over how difficult the game is for you, the question I eventually turned to was more about the difficulty curve, i.e., the pacing of the game along a natural leveling path. That's where I think the game is a little bit awkward.
I suspect they found it was a little bit too easy to become OP in playtesting, and adjusted the leveling curve accordingly, but the result is a bad compromise for me. It doesn't have a huge impact on people who are super serious about the game and plan to exhaustively explore every inch of it, but for more casual players, it turns the experience into a 120 hour grind. Which is another, probably less enjoyable, kind of difficulty.
playing mage makes elden ring a breeze
People have always said this about Souls games, and I never thought it was that big of a deal, but in this game the difference feels pretty huge. Most of the endgame bosses seem to be designed for ranged players.
Great video, man! Still on the fence with Elden Ring. 🤣
Whether you like it, or whether you should even try it?
@@fancydink whether I try it as a never played a souls game type o' guy.
It's a pretty big time investment, but not a bad first Souls experience if you're looking for something to really sink your teeth into.
Combat in the first Dark Souls is slower and simpler, and obviously it's a much shorter game, so it could be the better entry point for some people.
But yeah you definitely have to play one of them immediately.
I think they gave up too quick, this game takes time, you can't just leave because you lost a few times. I played with a broken controller, the best way to fight bosses or get through hard areas is to go slow, stay away and observe attack patterns, it's a rhythm game.
Nah the endgame is trash with artificial difficulty and stupid aoe bosses. No casual has the time to get past that. So summons are required to beat this game’s endgame trash. Everything before mountain top is a 10/10 and fun. After that it’s bland.
@@KLK01 I consider myself a casual and never had to summon for anything. It really is as simple as what the OP says, just stay calm, learn the moves of the enemies, and punish accordingly. The game really isn't hard, you probably just got impatient towards the end.
@@KLK01 i have a friend who is a casual, he did the end game bosses without any summons, and he did maliketh first try, how you explain that?
also farum azula is amazing
@@sfogel it’s called rng or he is really good at using op builds like bleed, ice, or mage.
@@dsbmaldia13 beat the game 6 times and not a single one of them was fun towards the end. Endgame is bland and unbalanced.
Very funny mate
Nice voice, nice video.
The thing is, this game has an amazing open world, but the bosses are just stupid and the mobs also. They do stupid damage just for the sake of it. What’s the point of armor or vigor if you’re just going to get 1 or 2 shot either way. After 300 hours I have uninstalled the game. Thing got bland real quick.
Why level Endurance and get a shield when it will only allow you to survive two more hits in the bosses 15 hit combo
0:50. Dislike
Oh my god is that Paul blart!
Stab.
No.
Too hard? More like too empty! I’m running out of enemies to kill! 😡🤬🗡🩸☠️
I have decided to interpret this comment as you being 70 hours in and not having used a site of grace yet and learning that enemies respawn. Impressive.
@@fancydink - dude, goodbye. ✌🏿
What is that comment
@@Randybobandy024 - it’s a compliment to the game. I’ve slaughtered every enemy, every boss, yet I salivate for more when I find big empty areas.
See, it’s responses like these from people in this chat that lead people to believe that the Souls community is inherently toxic.
I tend to agree. You ALL should be ashamed of yourselves. 👉🏿😐