I think the review lost me when you said you used a controller while playing. There's a girl who beat this game with her mind so if you can't do that you're not REALLY playing Elden Ring.
You are not the Elden Ring gatekeeper! Stop telling ppl they didn’t play the game when they clearly did! No one has to do it the way you did! It’s your game play how you want and have fun!!
you ONLY REALLY beat elden ring if you play the game with no multiplayer, no summons, no ashes, no cheese, no magic, no dex (not even one point), no great runes, no rune farming, no armour, no stupid physick bullshit (crutch for new players), no weapons I don't like, no roll spamming, no shield, messages off, no deaths, level 1, no map, no hands, feet only, no monitor, Rock Band drums, still no hands, no thinking, no buffs (you already should not be using buffs), no guides or wikidiving, no 'hints' from your 'friends', and no socks.
That's nothing. I beat Elden Ring and the DLC within seconds of each one coming out. I completed my no-hit, no-item, no-leveling run using neural inputs from a gold fish that I trained to play Elden Ring. Anyone who says it's "too hard" needs to git gud and train their goldfish harder.
Elden Rings biggest issue is that it is trying to be Dark Souls. So it ends up trying to be hard because DS was hard. But DS was not hard just because it is cool to be hard, it was trying to immerse the player into the world and give a certain type of experience. Now ER is meta where you have to look up good builds, weapons and strats for bosses. It sacrifices the experience for "This boss is really hard right? that is what you wanted since DS was hard" It just loses what made DS special and becomes a parody of itself.
@@vege4920 If you have to "look up good builds and strats for bosses", then I am saddened to inform you that you have a terrible condition called "skill issue" and advice you to engage with an activity often referred to as "git gud"
Guts in Berserk is also known as " The Struggler " and considering the heavy amount of Berserk inspo in all of these games I think Miyazaki just put the character template of our character being The Struggler rather than being a victim
I love these games but the dlc is unbalanced. If you have to have 11 scadutree fragments just to survive the first area it's bad balancing and don't get me started on the poise these mobs got too much poise that some I can't even stagger with a colossal sword. Like I had to use Wolf Assault on the black knight twinblade boss just to stagger and knock back. Their practically an upgraded version of the knights in the base game. Now the ones with the hammer is understandable to them it's practically a colossal hammer but for freak sake their blocking is down right devious. Bosses..... Bosses are meant to be challenging but not bullshit. If you have 11 scadutree fragments or max and still get one shot. That's bullshit that isn't even hard just pure bull crap. I understand the game is supposed to be hard but to what "extent"? I play games to relieve stress not add more.
I was helping my uncle with the final boss after he got really close to killing him and I’m not joking we got him to basically 0 hp and my uncle got a bit too greedy died and my attack PHASED THROUGH HIM and I didn’t get the kill I’m surprised he didn’t break anything
@@HenrySvazas This happens so often that I'm absolutely convinced that they added some kind of a hidden mechanic to the bosses to keep them at literally 1 HP after a hit that CLEARLY should've finished them.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer i think yakko was pretty accurate when he diagnosed this as people being angry that the build they can stomb base-game bosses with can't stomp DLC bosses
Not a veteran but many people who are saying that and failing to do that are just ppl who suffered a lot in earlier games, got good enough to pass it and thought they became a superior player for it
I will point out the ONLY thing they nerfed on the AC6 boss was the missile tracking. Pre-nerf the missiles could literally do a 180 midair to hit you which was a bit much and IIRC was actually a bug. They didn't touch anything else IIRC. Its the same with Radahan in the base game. The didn't nerf him, they fixed his wonky hitboxes on his attacks he had on release, they did then nerf his health but within a month they had reverted that change.
Yeah, Ibis no longer predicts player movement when using the energy slashes too. Also, Radahn had his bow projectile tracking reduced so it can no longer hit you on horseback among other things. Movesets generally aren't changed, just tracking hp and poise values(poor sea spider getting reduced to like 1/2 hp)
The missile tracking was what made Baletus hard in the first place, this nerf turned him into a joke and was very dissapointing to see. This is why I always disable updates on from games, the inevitable nerfs.
@@sethoricalco1709 I agree. The problem was that previous missions failed to acclimate you to that kind of encounter. Had they just tweaked the tracking a little and it would've been better
its not a difficulty problem, its a fun boss problem. Father Owl from Sekiro took me longer to kill than Radahn, but It was fun and fair all the way through. Radahn one shot me multiple times with some World of Wacraft Raid boss ability, and when I got him down felt more like RNG from his attacks. Phase 1 was great, Idk why they fucked up so much in phase 2
I think the biggest reason the DLC left me feeling frustrated was kinda addressed in the video. These games have always had RPG DNA in them and the challenge in the DLC really seems to be straining that aspect of the game to its limit. Just the fact that so many people feel forced to summon, respecc, use bleed, read a wiki to build for damage negation etc. seems to be a good clue that this is happening. There’s nothing wrong with any of these tools; I don’t care if you want to use all or none of them, but if I have a fun build from the base game that I want to try and the DLC throws wall after wall at me…eventually I’m just going to throw in the towel out of exhaustion. Fromsoft does so many things well but I think their focus on difficulty (primarily boss difficulty) is kinda dragging down their games.
What I really dislike is how any fair, valid criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree is immediately undermined because so many of the people spouting it either ignore the Scadutree Fragments or are mainly a bunch of terminally-online circle-jerkers who feel entitled to destroying everything with their uber-powerful base-game build without learning how to play the game. The DLC has problems, a myriad of them, however the Day 1 response to it has been mind-numbing and is almost completely the fault of people rushing to their keyboards before rushing to find a solution. Hopefully in a month or so we'll be able to hold hands and discuss it fairly like civilised adults.
I think the point of "wait a bit before fully judging" is good mindset cause try finding a solution for few months, if there is no solution a WHOLE COMMUNITY cant find then there's smth wrong with design, but a WHOLE COMMUNITY will probably find a solution in a month
@@WishIWasClever I can think of literally one single problematic attack in the entire DLC. I found a solution to everything else, and it wasn't hard to figure out
i think the elden ring dlc is not too easy or too difficult, it's too medium. it exists in a purgatorial state of dharmic perdition, a sea of murky grey. disclosure that before i played the dlc i was thrust from the cycle of samsara into a nightmarish mezzanine between life and death, so that may influence my opinion.
real talk though basically every dlc fight is straight gas. lion, hippo, messmer, gaius, putrescent knight - all among my favorite bosses in the game. also i balanced all of my stats so i could switch between like fifteen different weapons for fun maxxing. beating messmer with beast claws was raw adrenaline.
I would change one thing only, or either of two: 1) The cracked tear that gives you Deflects lasting until death/rest, like the Crimson Cracked Tear. 2) The Flask replenishment also refreshing your Physik. Every single fight I engaged with was way more enjoyable with Deflecting.
honestly whilst it would absolutely fucking break PvP (not that I PvP but I understand people DO enjoy it) instead of having it be a Crystal tear, having the deflection be a talisman and being able to fully turn the game into Sekiro would have been a cool option.
@@luketfer this could be fixed to not work on players, but even for PvP you have tools to dispelling buffs, and 3 minutes is more than enough for any boss or pvp fight
@@shutup1037 precisely, just like the Crimson Bubble tear that you can apply every time you die gaining basically a "second chance" buff. I envy PC players who will be able to easily mod this in, and you can BET it will be one of the most popular mods.
I actually feel kinda lucky with this, I'm using a strength build and most of the NPCs I've been able to completely stun lock, I'm kind of feeling like it's one of the only redeeming thing about this build in this dlc, it feels so damn hard to get any kind of consistent punishes off on these enemies. Literally I think I would've been cooked if I didn't follow the crowd swapping to use great shields.
even with a collosal sword Mesmer takes a while to break poise, and even then the stab animation does a little..then they stand up to do all their combos while youre barely recovering stamina.
My problem is people very obviously ignoring the DLCs problems with "git gud", "skill issue" or "just get more fragments" Some of these bosses require you to change your build which im not a fan of because the point of a build is so you can play the way you want to so forcing people to change makes everything less fun. Either youre not having fun because you are using a build you dont enjoy or youre not having fun because youre using a build that doesnt work. If you dont change your build there are certain attacks like the double slash that you literally cannot dodge. I also think the final boss has terrible visibility. Miquellas hair obscures what radahn is doing if your behind the light beams flashbang you every 4 seconds (I had to step away from the game multiple times because my eyes were hurting from the flashing lights) Scadutree fragments are another problem in my opinion. They feel like they have very little effect on your power level. It also isnt fun to go on an easter egg hunt to find them. Unlike the golden seeds and sacred tears, they are not easy to find as some can be in completely random places. The golden seeds are mostly found along the main path in the game so you rarely miss them and the sacred tears are in churches which you can easily see on your map. With the scadutree fragmentd i could be bothered collecting them all because they felt like they had very little effect past a certain point and it was annoying looking up a map of the locations only to find you collected it already. Another problem is the furnace golems. These are perhaps one of the worst fights in any game ever. They are long, tedious and boring This DLC is great especially with the Bayle, Midra and Messmer fights but there is also a lot of problems with the DLC that shouldnt be ignored such as half of Radahns fight
Not a single boss, not even Radahn, ever made me change my build. And I’m running a slow-ass great sword. Not gonna deny the visibility and reading issues with him, but if you can beat him with a greatsword, every other weapon type is just an easier time. Don’t know about your Scadutree take either. The difference between me throwing my head against the wall that was Rellana and beating her first try was a couple of fragment levels. The damage diff was INSANE. It’s kinda weird how you see it as an “Easter egg hunt” and I see it as exploring the game like normal. Are you just blitzing through the dlc without exploring anything? You almost have to deliberately avoid them. I had lvl 16 or 18 (outta 20) before fighting Radahn without even trying to look up where they were. Not trying to invalidate your experience, it’s just weird because mine was the exact opposite.
None of the bosses require you to change your build. You're just not up to the challenge of a 10 minute boss fight. Yeah you do barely any damage with most builds. I like that a lot. You're just used to killing bosses in 15-20 hits. Now it takes 40-50. Beating the dlc feels like more of an accomplishment than the base game. Furnace golems suck. The map is pretty empty. Scadutree fragments are lame. These are all fair criticisms.
I changed my build for every boss. Not just in the DLC, but also the base game and even DS and Sekiro lol. It seems pretty insane to play an RPG and try and brute force your way through it using one weapon and armour set. Maybe this is why I never found any of these games too difficult.
One thing I want to point out is that the dlc requires you to beat mohg in order to play it, a pretty late game boss of elden ring. And I'm guessing that most people who have played the dlc are people who have already beaten the game in the past. I've been seeing a lot of people immediately discount other peoples thoughts on the dlc being too difficult at points which I think is unwarranted considering how most of the people playing it aren't casuals
I think the whole difficulty argument misses the point. The bosses are frustrating because it isn't clear where you need to improve, or when you should attack, at the start of the DLC I too was frustrated by this, but I kind of got used to it. As I see it the bosses in the DLC were designed according to a different philosophy than the base game bosses were. That's mostly just a suspicion than a known fact :^)
"The bosses are frustrating because it isn't clear where you need to improve, or when you should attack" well... isn't that the whole point? I hate games that hold your hand and tell you how to do everything, even the hard things, the bosses which (as bosses) are supposed to be hard. That's why you feel satisfied once you beat them, because you figured out what you need to improve, their movements or when you should attack. Why would I ever want to have a boss fight where I already know what to do at every turn? It completely defeats the purpose of it, the fact that it's a challenge.
@@BlueNorth313 The point I'm trying to make is not that someone took my training wheels off and now I'm crying. It's that in the base game all the bosses have gimmicks or very clear attack patterns and downtime between attacks, whereas the DLC designed the bosses to be harder by lowering the downtime and obfuscating attack patterns thus making it harder to see where you need to improve. As I said, I got used to the difference in design, and started to love the bosses of the DLC as well. Even though it was tough at the beginning.
@@theives6817No they don't have that in the base game. In fact many dlc bosses have it better than base game ones. But it doesn't help when half of them need hours to even comprehend and even longer to master. Definitely didn't feel that it was my fault i was dying like i did in original games
I dunno if I can agree with changing your build being the recommended strategy when stuck when it’s restricted to an item you only have so many of. I feel like Armored core 6 did that far better with changing your build being free and a direct option on the death screen
@@bloorb0569 Why would you dump 99 points into STR when it when you could put in 60, than use the other 39 points into INT or FTH and have a much better build?
I think one or 2 of the npc's should have been found searching for these leaves for some canonical reason. Like varre telling you to follow the funny lights and smack gordrick.
I'm not a particular fan of -final boss-, I dislike that his attacks make my xbox lag a bit, and it irks me that I can barely tell what he is doing half the time due to white background+bright attacks+spoiler's hair. But y'know such is life, can't love everything.
I 100% agree with you. The final boss was the only one who I just didn't enjoy. Phase 1 is fun and fair, but phase 2 is a constant barrage of flash bang after flash bang.
So stop fighting him passively. Fight him like you fight Midir. Stay in his face, stay calm, dodge all of his attacks INTO their direction, then punish. Stop rolling away in a panic. That's literally the only thing causing visual clutter. You don't even see the after effects if you dodge into him while locked on.
@@TheStraightestWhitest Quite correct, the reason I made my comment was because rolling backwards is my instinct to get away from bosses to study their movesets, the next day I tried different roll directions like I had with Malenia and it worked a treat for visual clearness. Still have not beat him, and I'm still not a fan of the pillars following swings as getting hit by those seems inevitable, but maybe I'm rolling poorly. Gonna get him eventually.
@@TheStraightestWhitest Rolling forwards does not solve the fact that I'm still blind in that fight. I did the fight just fine once I understood what each move was doing through the white flashes. They need to improve visibility in this fight.
I think a big thing that gets lost in the sauce of people going through hell and highwater with this DLC is that of the 50 Scadutree fragments you need all 50 to max out your blessing. Sure you might not ever need to get a maxed blessing to beat the DLC but even in base Elden Ring there are more Golden Seeds around the map than you'll need to max out your flask, OR if they were so insistent on doing a Sekiro style "item to upgrade" system for the DLC then having major bosses give you a full blessing upgrade would have gone a long way to ease this rough patch people have. People liked exploring in Elden Ring base because it was a fun thing to do and you were usually rewarded with new items and spells or weapons it was a choice they made and they felt good for making that choice, but in the DLC you're being FORCED to explore or be locked out of seeing the rest of the DLC which I think is something that is really getting to a lot of people.
I see your point, but I’m not sure I fully agree. As you said, people don’t need to have full blessings to beat the dlc and between like 18 or 20. And people have been playing without blessings at all, despite how challenging it is. I honestly feel like some players need to have every fragment is a case of FOMO and consumer brain. That they will have an inferior experience if something is missed, which has influenced a lot of modern game design
A Radar would be nice, or at the very least a goddamn tracker of the locations you've found them. It's not required to get them all, but when up against a big roadblock it feels it might be. Going further, it'd be really nice if those Miquella cross maps were legible without putting my face up to the monitor!
To be honest, my issue is that the bosses feel like you're just dodging for like 5 minutes straight, throw out one R1, and then get back to rolling through these obnoxiously long combos. I'd consider myself decently skilled at these games, hell I beat Malenia at 9 vigor, and I just don't think these bosses are well balanced and fun to fight. There's no back and forth between you and the boss, you're forced to play their game and dodge for an eternity before you get to actually hit them. Every fight feels like a massive slog, which you really can't say about any of the fights in the base game, even Malenia feels like you're being more active in fighting and not just rolling for 5 minutes straight.
Same way I've felt about most bosses. The difficulty is not the problem, it's the overly aggressive nature and long combos of all the bosses that just become annoying. The fun trial and error of main game bosses is gone. Now you just roll everything until you finally get your turn, do your damage then get back to rolling. It makes the gameplay loop of dying over and over until you learn, much less enjoyable. Rellana was the only boss I felt like there was kind of a traditional back and fourth.
I can't really say I agree. In my fights against the final DLC boss there were numerous attack chains where the delay to the follow up was long enough to get an extra hit in. There are attacks that you can jump over for an extra jumping attack, or attacks where you can roll behind the boss and attack because the follow up doesn't have any tracking. If your attacks have any hyperarmor, you can choose to take the hit if it's worth the trade. There are boss moves that are safe to attack against, ones that are safe to weapon art, ones that are safe to heal or even heavy attack. If I'm out of range after an area of effect attack I might throw a projectile. I'm constantly looking for opportunities and planning my response. And then there's also stance breaks. There were numerous times where I could feel a stance break coming up, so I do a heavy attack right into the boss' own attack. Some bosses even have extra options like Margit's and Mogh's shackles or the blasphemous claw. Some bosses are weak to certain status effects that you can build your strategy around. I'd argue that this is the most responsive that bosses have ever been in this format, especially compared to the Dark Souls series
The only change I'd make to this game would be making respecing infinite and free (or cheap), and letting you reuse smithing stones or gloveworts to allow you to experiment with weapons and summons respectively. A game this open in terms of design should allow you to play around with it. Can be modded in, probably, but I want it to be the status quo, inviting everyone to craft their perfect build.
I absolutely agree with both points (free/cheap respec and less annoying resource drain for wanting to try new weapons in their powerful state). I wouldn't mind having to upgrade weapon slots instead, so that you have a +25 normal/+10 somber slot that you can put any weapon into.
What I hate about the souls community is the bias towards certain styles of play, and bias against the rest. "summons gay", "magic gay", "very specific weapon gay", mostly because they don't know how to counter them, or their specific build doesn't allow them to. I've been called a "coward" a hundred times just for being a mage; even when I don't use the "cheese" spells. I think mages are badass, so I play them. It's hilarious seeing the exact same people complain about difficulty.
Too many people hear “mage” and think “Azur’s Comet”. I bet if they fought Malenia on a mage build, without using cheese they found on UA-cam, they’d agree that fighting her with spells is actually harder than fighting her with melee. Same goes for most endgame bosses that dodge and close gaps very consistently. But I’ve bet they never tried it, which is specifically why they think you can just BB gun the boss from afar while they slow walk towards you.
What's funny is that unga Bunga strength builds focus on stun locking and poise breaking, so they're arguably "cheaper" I beat the dlc with great stars and the meteor greatsword thing so I'm not against it, just pointing out the hypocrisy
some bosses in elden ring are harder for mages IE renalla elden beast i remember mohg lord of blood being a pain for my mage but with a melee build he was cake. I never used magic before elden ring always seemed like easy mode but its not in this game. Im sure theres many times you casted a spell only to get hit during the animation.
@joeytoofly5139 You outlined something important here. Bosses require different strategies all the time. The Wiki shows all enemies have varying weaknesses all. But "No dodge roll bleed is the only way." smh.
@@Kenkyou_Nogata Buy yeah with mohg I had to be up in his face as a mage and that was an uncomfortable fight I did hardly any damage to rennala. As a strength build malenia was just terrible she would dodge back and use her waterfowl or the thrust attack she does. I think Godfrey was hard AF as a magic build I was able to stance break him pretty easily as a strength build
I think the funniest thing about this difficulty situation is that the exact same thing happened when the game first released, almost beat for beat. New players were caught off guard by the difficulty, old players were caught off guard by new enemy attack patterns and mechanics, everyone either complained or said "get good." Give it a month and everyone will be back to calling the game "Peak" again just like the first time.
I remember beating the final boss of the dlc, and was immediately like "that was BS, fromsoft needs to nerf this." Then a day later I'm "like that boss was awesome, another masterpiece by fromsoft." The cycle repeats itself.
also, if you respecced 10 times that IS a problem with the game. some builds can be better suited for bosses, but every boss should be beatable with every build
I went into the DLC completely blind (barring the trailers) and I don't regret it at all. I did have a lot of trouble with the bosses, but it reminded me of my first run-through of... well, hell, _all_ the other soulslike games. I've 100%'d Elden Ring's base game all three Dark Souls games, including the DS1 remaster and both versions of DS2, and I literally play these games to _relax_ at this point because the world's are so comfortingly familiar to me, but the DLC bosses kicked my ass in the same way that Elden Ring's base game bosses did when I first played it. I still remember geting my ass handed to me by Godrick the Grafted - fucking _Godrick!_ The Runt of the demigods who's whole claim to fame is losing to everybody else and running away to hide in his treehouse! I remember pre-nerf Starscourge Radahn, I remember throwing myself against Melania for around three solid hours and getting mad at Waterfowl dance, and I remember all of it fondly. I summoned for every boss in the DLC, I used spirit ashes, I explored the map until I had maxed out my Scadutree and Revered Ash blessings, I respecced around six times on a single boss, and - aside from phase 2 of the final boss - I had a blast with all of it! I'm currently in a NG+ playthrough of the same character working my way back towards entering the DLC so that I can do the NPC quests fully and try the bosses again with more foreknowledge, and I'm actively looking forward to revisiting it! My only issues with the DLC are that I do feel phase 2 on the final boss is a litle _too_ bs even for souls veterans (I had to cheese it on my first runthrough using an absolutely busted perfumer build and it _still_ took around 4 attempts). I also don't like how walking too far in the wrong directly completely destroys the NPC quests midway through with no hope to reset them. I let it ride on my first run because it was what the developers intended but looking back it was pretty frustrating as it felt like the game was punishing me for exploring. Lastly I agree with a of people that the final boss's lore could have been a lot more interesting if they'd just traded one demigod for another. Spoilers below but: It should have been Godwyn the Golden, since there was a closely established history between him and Miquella in a lot of base game lore and we even get to see Godwyn's Death Knights in the DLC. Making Miquella's consort Radahn felt like a bit of an ass-pull since the only (very vague) connection between the two was Melania and Radahn's battle, and while the DLC recontextualizes that in an interesting way, the existing theory of "Melania attacked Radahn because she thought he was responsible for Miquella's disappearance" matched up very well, especially with Mogwyn Palace being right under Caelid. Beyond that there was never any indication that Radahn and Miquella had any sort of prior relationship, let alone a promise to become eachother's consorts! I'm all for the DLC basically being one big gay soap opera but it would have worked much better if it'd been Godwyn instead of Radahn.
Honestly, I didn't have trouble with the blessing level, I had an issue with the map and the items spread so far and so thin that exploring felt like a chore. Most of the time the areas were large and empty. Sometimes you could find a blessing but I think the bigger issue is the open world dynamic is fine and worked in elden ring, but in sote it's so open that you can stumble into the last boss after 2 fights. Idk about others but I don't want to run around for 3 hours on my horse looking for a blessing to give myself a slight advantage in a fight.
While I agree that spending a lot of time against a boss has its fun side, it largely depends on the boss. So far the three bosses I spent the most time to beat were Messmer, Gaius and Mitra. Messmer was actually the one I took the longest, but it's still my favourite boss in the DLC, his attacks may hit hard, but he also has clear windows for you to punish, and the pattern felt mostly consistent. The biggest issues that made the fight a little annoying were the attacks were he travels a decent distance in the arena, either because sometimes it would mess with the camera (which is the one point that the DLC feels way worse than the base game for me), or which is specifically in the second phase, it's like he is constantly running from you. For Midra it was weird. For me he was kinda like Radagon where I just couldn't get his timings, but in a completely opposite way. Radagon felt like he was both too fast and too delayed at the same time, and I was always confused of when to dodge, while for Midra, specially his sword attacks, it was like he was just kinda slow, but without feeling that it's a big delay, but in a way that wuld just feel weird to fight, Even in the way he walked, like I would try to get some distance to heal, but it was like he covered half the arena with one step, even if he isn't walking very fast (I know it's not a big arena, but still). And Gaius was just awful. From the charge attack at the begining which he has invicibily and you can't miss the dodge by one milisecond, otherwise you get hit by the boar, that ultra long combo, big hitboxes and, at least that was my impression, he mixes his attacks a lot, making reading his patterns way harder because of the inconsistency. There some there that is also about the type of bosses I had the most trouble figuring their movements in this DLC, which were Romina and Metyr, which all fight like non-humanoid bosses, and specially in the case of Romina and Metyr they als have a lot of legs.
Honestly my problem with DLC is not the exploration bit of the game because that's fun, for the collectathon thing. My biggest problem with the DLC is is massive balancing issues and not simply just damage that's like an obvious kind of deal. The balancing I have a problem with is the fact some bosses are enemies kind of breaks the rules of the game like the fact some enemies and bosses feel like they're from a different game like they are far too aggressive and unflinching compared to the base game counterpart. Especially much more prevalent with the main humanoid bosses that can just face tank everything despite the frames like both Rellana and Messmer. Which honestly unfortunately that haunts the elden rings boss design and especially much more in the DLC is the Nameless King Poise that pretty much is the foundation of the Elden Ring stance break, because of the nameless King poise system it makes trading blows not fun because well bosses don't flinch including Messmer despite him being extremely light frame. And also they're really aggressively fast with the inclusion of nameless King poise meaning effectively a lot of weapons that big and slow are pretty obsolete because they defeated the point of big weapons job of dealing damage and knocking because they are dealing with an impenetrable wall that will never be pushed down. Which honestly how the bosses design I feel like they're more designed to be raid boss than a actual one-to-one kind of soulsborne boss because it really does feel like you need a team effort to comfortably beat these bosses, but yeah I don't mind the idea of very aggressive bosses it's just unfortunately this is the wrong game for it especially the stamina system that is not designed to have bosses that have the aggression level of endgame Kingdom Hearts 2 and Devil May Cry bosses. Like John Elden ring is just not built for that kind of deal when John bloodborne is more fitted against these kind of bosses sense John bloodborne is all about the aggressive play style. But yeah to finish it off I am just disappointed that I'm just so much used to bosses in previous games that beat you fair and square in the sense of the realms of they fight you in a way that your character can actually handle while the rest is up to you, which I just really wish Elden ring learns from the boss design of Slave Knight Gael because to me he's the idea of Boss design of he is designed fairly but still will kick your fucking ass and also he's not a wall which makes fights feel more intense because he actually reacts to your hits like it truly excites me when a hard boss feels like a living creature that can be harmed. I miss the desperation of both sides desperately trying to kill each other before they die. I miss that excitement!
The issues the DLC has (Which are valid complaints) is that the bosses are fought in a unfun way, when i only get to have 2 hits in while the boss does their 50 hit combo for the 10th time, it becomes frustrating, its the reason why sekiro's combat is generally seen as the best souls combat ever made. I cleared the DLC and done all its side content as well, its a enjoyable experience and the bosses can be fun, but a lot of the time arent due to the lack of defensive options on the players side, the deflect mechanic i see as a required thing to be added to base game, as honestly as the bosses get more and more offensive options and mixups while the players is stuck with a total of 3 defensive mechanics (Dodge/Jump/Block) just feels unfun
this sounds like something that the mod Elden Ring Reforged would fix for you personally. It gives extra defensive options (ducking, sekiro style deflects) making for some more dynamic and less obnoxious experience because of ridiculous attack strings from bosses.
I think the reason people would call the new bosses poorly designed is due to the fact that in past souls games, nearly every boss on some level felt like something you COULD beat on the first try, if you were good enough. The toughest fights were hard, but fair, and all their moves felt quite intuitive to dodge. The hardest fights in Elden Ring no longer feel like this. Nearly all the DLC bosses, and ESPECIALLY the final boss, all have moves that are so unintuitive to dodge that you actively have to either die to or get hit by them in order to eventually learn how to dodge them through trial and error. To me (I say me but the only bosses that have ever truly frustrated me are Malenia and the DLC Final Boss), and I suppose to others, this is not very fun. The game starts to feel less like a test of my abilities, and more like Geometry Dash, where I make a mistake and that's it, you get a do-over. It is worth mentioning however, that this opinion is heavily build dependant, and additionally, heavily dependent on how you choose to approach Elden Ring. In past souls games, going at it all on your own felt like an entirely acceptable thing to do, whereas now, it feels like the game is balanced around Spirit Summons. This is not bad game design, however it is DIFFERENT to what the community is used to. The bosses are relentless now, but the spirit summons will create those openings for you that you got from older games in the series. It's just a different type of boss design. I think the problem here is that for many, including myself, spirit summons trivialise fights a bit too much. The fights go from too hard, to suddenly, too easy, and the challenge you are looking for is now gone. One could argue that the challenge is perhaps in showing up to a fight well prepared rather than learning the fight itself, but I don't agree. Either way, if you wanted to do a solo playthrough like in the older games, i don't believe it to be as fun or to be as satisfying. Whilst playing the final boss of the DLC, I eventually changed my build to something that was a lot more effective in order to beat it solo. The build was borderline cheesy, but I had gotten to a point where I realised that if I had the time, I could beat it normally, but that I didn't want to invest the time into learning the fight because it just felt like a waste, which is a feeling no other souls game has given me. I have beat every boss in every souls game ( except DS2 which I haven't played) solo, and Elden Ring was the only one where I felt the experience of learning a fight to no longer be enjoyable.
I feel the exact opposite regarding the final boss. Just beat him today, his attacks are all completely dodgeable or avoidable, except for maybe the cross slash (I think you can avoid it if you dodge to the right twice in a row but I've yet to pull that off). I think the problem with people within the community is that y'all cannot think out of the box. Countless times have I seen people constantly dodge into Rellana's attacks for example, even though she attacks faster than you can dodge. If you cannot roll as fast as the boss can attack, then you have to avoid the attacks entirely by outspacing and positioning favorably. With the final boss it's the exact opposite, it's almost always good to circle him around, dodge into him and to the side, for reasons you may already know. The whys and hows of the dodges become just as important as the timing, that's always been an Elden Ring thing, and many other people (including myself) enjoy that complexity infinitely more than the muscle memory based bossfights Soulsborne games usually had. Do you know what the beauty of an attack like Waterfowl is? People figuring out ways to deal with it. I've seen people use greatshields, bloodhound step, an invulnerability ash of war, freeze pots, the lots. Elden Ring has a distinct focus on rewarding the players for their curiosity with tools. Ashes of War, weapons, consumables, spells, incantations, etc. If every single player out there looked at every single boss for the very first time and thought to themselves "My dodge and R1 should be enough" then what would the purpose of all those tools be, exactly? If an encounter does not make you think "This is not working, maybe I should try something new" what are the hundreds of skills and weapons sitting on your inventory good for? The truth is, there has always been a divide between what Fromsoft actually intends their games to be and what the community sees them as. Noah Caldwell-Gervais has an incredible video essay on the Dark Souls trilogy that highlights exactly that: Fromsoftware creates unforgiving worlds not to challenge the player to journey them naked with a +0 wooden club, but to help the player get a sense of accomplishment by overcoming difficult odds. Fromsoftware creates the unforgiving worlds and then subtly helps you navigate them. They have always given you tools to rise above the odds, it just so happens that in the Dark Souls trilogy those used to come in the form of consumables and environmental hints, while in Elden Ring that help comes in the form of freedom of choice. Anyone can beat any Soulsborne game because Fromsoft never gives you a challenge without also providing ways to manage its difficulty through aspects that exist within the game's fiction like soul levels. They never give you an obstacle that they do not expect you to clear, because they've always rewarded you with ways to uniquely express how you would more easily rise above your enemy. The developers actively want you to make the game easier for yourself and this is even more true for Shadow of The Erdtree, the DLC which showers you with upgrade material as a clear hint that you should try new things as often as you'd like. Fromsoftware's Soulsborne games aren't about dodging and pressing R1, they've about overcoming difficulty and feeling good for it. Elden Ring divorces itself from many of the combat design philosophies other Soulsborne games usually go by for the exact purpose of preserving adversity in the face of so many tools and so much freedom and by extent expects you to use those tools more than any other Fromsoft game. I went through Elden Ring's DLC blind for this exact reason, I wanted to see what solutions I came up with for the problems presented to me. I ended up beating the final boss in around thirty tries and enjoyed the fight quite a bit due to the particular solutions I came up with for every one of his attacks and patterns. Not every solution was rolling, mind you, even though the boss is quite well telegraphed.
@@Erick-tv8oq I don’t think you’re wrong, Elden Ring is a different type of souls game and that’s okay. However, I think part of the problem lies in that new design philosophy. It wants you to use the tools it provides to overcome ever-increasing challenges, but for many the “challenge” in the series wasn’t about figuring out the strongest tools, it was about beating challenges with the limited toolset available. The reason those sl1 runs of DS or bloodborne were appealing is because the bosses were so well designed that it was something fairly achievable. Now the late game bosses are so inflated difficulty wise that a whole playstyle is almost invalidated. You are supposed to use the tools they give you, however they do trivialise the experience and I think if you want to solely rely on dodge and r1 you should be able to. I feel the mark of a good boss IS that you could simply dodge and r1 and it still feels manageable (i know you can still do this but it is a lot less doable for the the majority of the playerbase now). The problem with bosses like Radahn is that whilst it is possible to dodge nearly all of their attacks, it is not intuitive to do so. His attacks are not readable, you don’t dodge them through having learnt the game, rather through trial and error. Therein lies the issue. It is not fun to die to a boss when you feel every other attack should not have hit you. It’s not fun to die to a move after dodging it several different ways to no avail. It creates a challenge that now feels very artificial, rather than genuine. You can day that the soulsborne games before weren’t about dodging and pressing r1, but I don’t think that’s correct. That playstyle is what the entire playerbase resorted to for a reason, and whether fromsoft likes it or not it was always the most optimal way of playing the game. The reason Sekiro is so good is because it removes that sense of doubt about whether you are playing the game wrong and offers you one single path forward, which is why it’s their best imo.
@@Erick-tv8oq sorry if my followup wasn’t super coherent btw. You sent a very long reply and it was hard to keep track of all of it when replying on my phone haha. Appreciate the discussion though :)
@@Erick-tv8oq also just to add on one last thing, I feel waterfowl dance exemplifies the problem with the boss design. It has a lot of ways to deal with it, but none are intuitive or even optimal. Shields make her heal, and freeze pots are a limited resource for example. The sign of a well designed move is one that you can feasibly avoid all damage for with a well timed dodge. Waterfowl dance’s first flurry has a single, incredibly specific and unintuitive way to dodge it which is also incredibly difficult to pull off. That’s why it is a bad move, because it is designed to hit you, and that stops the fight from feeling challenging but fair, and just makes it feel unfair.
@@brinsk7151 I agree with you, I think From boss design peaked in Dark Souls 3, the newer ones are good and more challenging, but I just don't think they're that fun
I've been enjoying the DLC but you have to admit a large amount of it punishes spellcasters and weaker spirit summons. It feels like it was designed to counter popular powerful tactics but as a side effect it nullifies a lot of weaker weapons and options. Many of the bosses almost never stance break now and are using massive AOEs ad a crutch. Melania broke the combat a bit too but the final boss of the DLC is tearing it apart with lots of particle effects and AOE spam. When you suggest people lean on OP strategies to beat Malenia and the DLC when they didn't have to for the base game you're moving away from build freedom.
Dont see the point of having a lot of build variety if its not viable on All bosses(also pretty sure the base game has like 12 larval tears so i really doubt tge game expects you to change your build to every fight)Also there is The problem of People dont find all builds fun, me for exemple i think summons and Mage builds are just boring if i need to use them to have a fair chance i dont wanna play anymore
I can’t get behind this idea of completely changing your build for each fight being the “correct” way to go. Even if the game gives you plenty of opportunities to respec, what’s the point of slowly crafting a build of your choosing over the course of the game if you’re constantly expected to change it at a moment’s notice? At that point, why even have any stats other than HP, FP, and Stamina? Obviously some builds are gonna have an easier time against some bosses than others, that’s a given However, if a boss requires a specific build for the player to even have a chance, it doesn’t matter how easy it is to respec when that ultimately spits in the face of the player choice that Elden Ring champions so frequently, especially if the game never properly communicates that to the player. And when it comes to changing a build at a moments notice, it’s a lot harder than just reallocating some stats. You have to fully upgrade weapons as well, which costs tens of thousands of runes for each individual weapon meaning you have to potentially grind before you can use a new build to its fullest extent. Switching up flask allocation also isn’t taken into account, as switching from a melee-focused build to even a spell-blade build means the player must get used to having access to less healing. Refusal to change up a build isn’t a refusal to engage with new game mechanics. It’s players wanting to play the game their way, as the base game has encouraged them to do. And if the tools that are necessary to combat certain bosses are restricted to certain builds or limited-use cases, that is intentional obfuscation on the part of the devs to artificially increase the difficulty of the game.
For the final boss, i liked the challange but it was bogged down by me literary not seeing whats happening. All the spell effects and the outfit change (without spoiling) made for a visualy cluttered fight imo. I just used a shield to combat that but it left a bad aftertaste
Honestly, my main criticisms of the DLC aren't even remotely related to difficulty -- I'm surprised the major discussions aren't about basic quality of life measures. I would've loved to see a "sandbox" feature where you could try out maxxed weapons and play around with stats before committing (i.e using larval tear/playing smithing stone fetch quest). This way, you could still put a limit on respecc-ing and max level weapons, but still be able to experiment.
I would like to ask how everyone feels about quest breakability in this dlc. I feel like most of the quests can be broken so easily that you need a guide to not miss very cool questlines and items.
When it came time to fight radahn I had already watched several others playthrough the game, so i knew how difficult it was going to be going in. After about 20 ish attempts with 17 getting him to second phase i realised that for the first time in the game i was legitimately not having any fun. So i summoned a stranger and beat him on that try. I felt no regret or satisfaction i just wanted to move on. Side note the rewards are ass so i feel even less bad because i dont want to struggle for that shit.
Very comprehensive and well put together video! When you said that the game "Isn't Dark Souls IV" it really hit me and caused me to re-examine the way I play Elden Ring. I realize now that my insistence on not using spirit summons is rooted in my good memories playing the Souls series solo where all the bosses were designed to be beaten alone in case you didn't have access to an internet connection or friends lol. Elden Ring introduced Spirit Summons in an attempt to free themselves from that constraint and open the game up to allow for more variety in builds. Big problems I had with the balancing around things like spells and bows no longer applies because the Spirits are there to take aggro while you charge up your spells or knock a greatarrow. I try very hard not to be an elitist who holds people to the standard of having to not play with summons, but I wasn't giving myself that grace under the false pretense that the game would provide me with a better experience if I played that way. Granted there were a solid few fights where I was proven right. Malenia, Mohg, and Radagon in particular were so rewarding to bash my head into over and over again and really reinforced the idea that not using summons was more fun. But upon reflection, bosses I found tedious and a little unfair like Astel, Rykard, and the Fire Giant were always genuinely more fun when I had help from a summon. Hell, Radahn's whole fight was just to show how awesome this game can be when you're not the only one fighting, but unfortunately I, and many others, saw Radahn as an exception in this way instead of a thesis statement, likely resulting in his nerf. I am now able to see that as the tragedy it really is, as Fromsoft is unfortunately being held to a standard and legacy that they can't seem to escape from. (Another fantastic example that you brought up was Balteus in AC6 which I still mourn to this day.) Despite all this I do still think Radahn 2 is ridiculous but this is getting long and I probably should write my own essay instead of a super long UA-cam comment so I think imma go do that instead lol. Thank you for your time
The camera continues to be Elden Ring's worst boss design and hey guess what you get to fight it throughout the entire DLC! Seriously I don't understand how a game can be such a masterpiece in so many ways, but utterly fumble something as basic and fundamental as the damn camera. Otherwise, I just hate the amount of waiting you have to do. No longer are the days of satisfying pushing and pulling and dancing, trading blows. Now you just have to wait 30 seconds for an 8000 combo to end and hope that it doesn't immediately chain into the next 8000 hit combo.
Unlock your camera more often. Use a ranged ash of war that you can attack the boss with good spacing with it's combos, jump attack the last attack of a combo to get guaranteed damage should it want to continue a combo
@@internetguy7319 The dumb thing is they already solved the Camera problem on larger bosses for Sekiro. For bigger bosses (like the great ape) the camera actually pulls out during the fight, meaning the whole boss is always in frame, I don't know why they didn't have this happen during the boss fights in Elden Ring.
The main problem with the game isn't the difficulty, here are the real problems(not in order ranking): - many useless incantations to the point it feels like a joke to include them - exploration is not rewarding, by the time you arrived in the DLC you already have unlimited smithing stones access and they decided to put smithing stone as a reward for most of the time and when you find purple drop thinking you'll get cool weapon you'll be rewarded with cookbook - many empty and gimmicky area like cerulean coast, ruin of unte, and that giant finger thing (there's 2 of them dedicated only to one quest, no boss in the area, no meaningful rewards), even there's not much you can do in the starting area aside from 1 furnace giant which is very different than what we had with the base game or even limgrave only - lack of new weapon type, we only get like 3 light greatsword, 3 great katana, 3 backhand blade and a gazillion CGS, this is also connected to my first point, because there aren't many new unique weapons they decided to put smithing stone or cookbook as reward - overtuned boss design that could cover up the entire screen while having soo many particles at the same time
List of problems with DLC 1: Very bad camera 2: Massive frame drops 3: Unforgivable bosses that give no time to heal and give a chance to attack back. 4: Idiots saying that it is a skill issue while youre LITERALY always getting your health dropped by almost EVERY ENEMY even with all blessings maxed! 5: Terrible and mediocre boss rewards. Most rewards you get always make you go back to the meta build because 80% of weapons/spells/incantations suck and never get used. I have been playing since day one and I agree with most people that the DLC is too difficult for an average Fromsoft player.
The game is not too hard but some of the more "spectacular" fights definitely need to be optimized better. Especially the first and last boss. The game runs like it has both legacy dungeons fully rendered during those fights even though theyre completely out of view
It isn't too hard, it's just too annoying. All the ways they made bosses hard feel like you're adapting to weird stuff the developers are trying to kill you with, instead of adapting to the enemy. Also delayed attacks don't punish recklessness, they punish proper judgement. You counter them by dying and remembering that that specific animation doesn't line up with what would actually happen. Same with extreme gap closures for heal punishes. It's memorization through brute force and not really learning outside of it's most basic conception. It is fair but only because unlimited attempts means memorization matters and correct judgement doesn't.
I'd rather have my "mindset focused on improving" while I learn new skills irl and not in some game I play for fun, tyvm. And I don't really get why every souls-fan UA-camr had to film a response to some dlc getting mixed reviews for a few days (it's up in "mostly positive" now), like it's a big deal. Not that it matters, but it has already sold like, what, 5 mil copies? What are y'all defending it from? > "Not a good place to facilitate conversation", what is a good place then?
"this game shows people the game isnt as miserable as you would expect" shows a clip of him getting absolutely fucked over by the game for no reason at all
I’ve played and beaten it twice. It’s a phenomenal game but it’s too hard in a bullshit way. Hit boxes are nonsensical and every boss is “ok second phase where we will just add an AoE on top of the absurd hit boxes” and it just really only leaves one feasible way to play
Promised consort radahn was my breaking point. the rest of the DLC was a mixed bag, but i had a lot of fun especially on rellana and messmer. But radahn was just too much aggression followed by a phase 2 that should have came with an epilepsy warning
My favorite part of any souls games is having to adapt my playstyle if I'm getting wrecked by a boss! Changing my build up is fun, but I still tend to play a build within my stats (because I think respec is a pain)
This just highlights how rigid Elden ring is when it comes to easy switch ups for builds, you need a consumable limited item to even respec and you need to do it at a specific place every single time, it would be good if the game just allowed me to do it at every grace if that's really what it aims to do but that's clearly not the design mindset behind respecs
@@reyalfa18 There are like 18 of the item for respec in the main game. They are not rare and you can just fast travel to the grace to respec. It is easy to respec if you want to.
I never bothered respeccing. You can overcome most challenges by trying a different weapon, armour or swapping spells and talismans. The DLC also constantly throws materials at you so you can craft loads of the new livers that reduce damage by 22% and the new dragon item that boosts your stats by 32 levels.
Seriously. The only reason people struggled with Malenia is that bullshit waterfowl dance. It's completely unfair, any other developer would be roasted for that kind of mechanic, but Fromsoft can do no wrong for their fanboys.
16:37 The biggest way to protect one's ego with "leaving a boss and saving it for later" is understanding that you "leaving the boss" is really just letting your brain download the fight in the background. Even if you're not squaring up against the boss every minute of your playtime, you're still getting better at it by ingraining habits that will help you later. I always find that to be more helpful than just mindlessly running into the boss arena for hours on end.
I think my main problem is that bosses and their difficulty continue to evolve with the player barely changing from DS3 At it's core Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4 and I can't deny that The biggest difference is that it's an open world And don't give me that "It's not technically dark souls" when it's using an almost identical formula for how the player moves and operates And at least I personally feel like constantly upping the difficulty each game isn't going to be fun anymore I personally have been playing these games for years at this point, DS3 and Bloodborne are some of my favourite games of all time But with Shadow of the Erdtree it feels like it's hard for being hard's sake It doesn't feel Nuanced at all, delayed attacks are overused to the point where it just gets cheap, and long attack combos from bosses just makes the fight drawn out more than it needs to be If From continues to make their games harder and harder just for the sake of a challenge I'm not going to be able to enjoy it anymore And that genuinely upsets me
Its not too 'hard' its just too 'frustrating' as they over tuned the bosses aggression and speed while keeping the player the same dark souls speed, its just not fun when all you can do is stiff bunny hop and roll through 8+ attacks only to be able to get one hit in and possibly get punished for daring to attack in the first place
"Fromsoft can't just keep building the same boss fights or playing the same tricks over and over again" when every boss goes bayblade-mode + aoe spam, it's basically that.
I think the complaints about it being "overtuned" are true tbh.Max level skibidi blessing essentailly doubles your restistances and output, which is needed to not get 2 pieced/actually deal damage where as in the base game you could just put on better armor or level vigor. The previous dlc's didn't have a scavenger hunt mechanic that was required to progress, nor did they expect you to to have a sense of growing threat because numbers go up. Repeat playthrus are going to be a fucking chore because you have to skibidi bop every single time even if you know the moveset because we're not all Gino and cant pull off no hits. The blessing also negates the (imo) core difficulty option over over levelling, learning when you're op, then coming back when you're not. I refuse to call a scavenger hunt a level up mechanic.
The only bad thing in the DLC is the Promised Consort Literally a BS Tohou fight If he didn't have the abundance of undodgeable attacks and Light Pillars shitting all over the floor he would be 100% more enjoyable and still hard
Bro it's not too hard, it just feels like shit to learn regardless of the build pretty much. I had to balance my own build to not accidentally steamroll everything, shit's skyrim level broken. And regarding that From can't make same bosses forever - maybe stop making fucking DS3 forever? There are other types of combat yknow. DS3 was great, let it rest. Make a unique game, not a ds3 mod, and all problems with difficulty woll disappear on themselves.
So on the subject of getting stuck, I was stuck on Maliketh of almost a solid week and holy shit I hated it and still do every time I replay the game. It didn't make me feel challenged just miserable
Here's the thing. Elden ring is actually a rhythm game. Learn the tempo, learn the dance. That is how you play the game. If that doesn't work for you, then use a plus 10 mimic tear and a cheese weapon of your choice. I prefer Mohg's Spear.
@@yesmansam6686 For me his rhythm was just so… weird. I never fully got the hang of every attack but did eventually beat him. Hardest base game boss for me by far
@@yesmansam6686 Souls have pretty much always been rhythm games to a degree, this one is just more tedious if you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to learning a boss.
I never understood the big deal about that guy. I beat him first try. He's like the most classic boss ever. Well-telegraphed slashes, some telegraphed explosions with projectiles, and a phase transition that makes him easier if anything. Only negative thing about him are his hitboxes, but just dodge to be safe and you'll be alright.
My problem with the DLC is that I play Elden ring to play Elden ring. Elden ring was the easiest souls game and that's how I liked it it was about the freedom, the open world, the freedom to play with any build, or just go to Margit without having to go to the weeping peninsula just to get some fragments to level up. The DLC is a lot less free and more like Dark Souls I love Dark Souls but I'm not playing Elden ring to play Dark Souls. I just want to have fun without being force to do the things that Elden ring wants because I'll do it on my own I don't want to be forced to explore just to make bosses manageable I want to do it at my own pace. I don't want to have to respec and change my build 50 times because I have to fight a new boss that's what I liked about Malenia I could use my own build or whatever I wanted I just had to get better instead of changing to a build i night not even like. Plus there's some other things I want to mention like some bosses not really being interesting like the base game even easy bosses like Godrick having cutscene that make them really memorable where as people like Rellana or Romina not being as memorable or as impactful as they don't even get a cutscene. This DLC just wasn't what i wanted from Elden ring this would be fine as a dark souls DLC I just wanted more of that Elden ring freedom.
I think my main issue with difficulty is that it doesn't play out evenly. Using my normal playstyle i would have never beaten the final boss, heck I barly got to phase 2 with near max scedu spirit summons and a ton of defence buffing. Then I swapped to a greatshield build and then won my 3rd attempt and only loss the first two tries to insta death grabs. The bosses used to be weak to patience but now it's a brude force memorization of your reflexes, especially with the camera doing what it does. So only a few weapons and playstyles really make it past end game bosses.
No, you can beat the boss with any playstyle. Just because certain builds had it easier does not make the game flawed. Certain strategies will always be better in any game of this nature. it is simply how varied builds and encounters work. You could have beaten the boss without swapping playstyles, it was just hard and you decided to quit and try an easier method. That isn't a bad thing, but its not really a great criticism either. I beat the final boss using my same old quality build. Using my heavy thrusting sword. Am I a god gamer? No, I just learned the boss' moveset after getting bodied for two hours. I could have swapped to an easier build, but I saw no need to do so. I knew I could learn how to beat the boss my way, and you could have if you wanted. Also, the bosses still require patience. You need patience to properly learn movesets and the ability to not get tilted because you made the wrong choices. The bosses have not changed, they are just new and still hard. You always needed good reflexes to recognize attacks, and the patience and knowledge to know when and where to roll or stand. Newer bosses are just getting more complex movesets, as From has literally made like 6/7 soulsborne games. You can't expect the bossses to still do swings of the same speed in the same ways. If anything, they need more patience now than ever to beat. To help expand on why I find what you say to be flawed. In fighting games are zoners and grapplers poorly designed because the zoners naturally counter the grapplers? The answer is no. Unique builds or characters will lead to some naturally countering others. Just because you looked up or decided to try the easiest strategy does not mean the game has a difficulty balancing issue. Some builds are disproportionally strong, but perfect balance between all builds is literally not possible. You want a perfectly balanced game? Play a game where you don't have the choice to build different ways. Multiple options will always lead to some being better than others for different things.
Certain builds making the boss easier is the point, its the games soft difficulty modes. If you can only beat the final boss with summons and op builds, that just means you aren't skilled enough to do it on "hard mode"
It's a matter of degrees. I think the way they pushed difficulty has resulted in less interesting play. Sure some play styles being stronger for some bosses has always been a thing but this has stretched that beyond the point of being fun or engaging. One way is a brick wall you are bashing your head against to perfectly time, build muscle memory and then maintain for an extended fight with few mistakes allowed lest you catch the begining of a combo that will one shot you. And the other is piss easy, where you hardly need to pay attention to the boss except for a single grab attack and a few openings to heal chip damage. I like hard bosses but this ain't interesting. Something like the Fume Knight was interesting because it had complex but fair movesets and provided an even challenge to all play styles. The over reliance on long combo strings and mass AoE with minimal room for error naturally pushes us down this route of less interesting fights because the boss fight has just turned into a rhythm game and not a strategic battle where you make decisions, now you only react. It's this kind of brainstem only play that made Sekiro less enjoyable for me.
@@spudermoth it's like the very basics of RPGs. If the enemy is a fire type you want to use the armour that protects you against fire and the weapon that's strong against fire. I've realised the reason people think Dark Souls is a hard game, is because these people are really dumb and ignored 90% of the game's mechanics.
One time when I staggered the hippo boss fight his head went through the wall and I couldn't crit him, and then he killed me. One of the funniest things that happened to me in Elden Ring 10/10,
My favorite part about that fight is how I struggled for hours on it,and when I won my friend called me up to help him fight his version of the same boss,and it was so rewarding to fight that boss again but essentially destroy it because I memorized it to a T
Nothing in the dlc was more infuriating than slapping a furnace golem's heels for five minutes to knock it over only for the head to be sitting out of reach for a critical
@@Rusty_Spy Oh yes! Happened to me in the last area. Golem fell over and had its head over the cliff TWICE in one fight. Another time the head landed on a pile of stones and was too high up to do a critical. I jumped off the cliff both times. :/
It depends what kind of build you are playing... Every single boss is hyper aggressive with full arena gap closers and able to link the end of any combo into another combo in way less time than a lot of the longer animations. So if your build relies on any animation that takes longer than a second, you are going to be miserable. If you are playing a quick melee build or a quick casting build, you will be fine. . I don't think it's "too hard." I just think it doesn't have enough variety. They tried too hard to make hard bosses hard through the lens of hyper-aggression. Hyper aggressive bosses can be interesting, but hyper aggressive bosses are by nature, much easier to beat with certain builds than others. There are other ways to make a boss difficult that can reward other styles of play. . Variety rewards different builds in different ways, which is one of the things I always loved about soulsborn games. I play through the games multiple times and experience the unique challenges certain builds face. But when every boss is hyper aggressive... you might as well just play a cookie cutter katana build and call it a day.
even with dumb fragments bosses still can combo you almost all your health. ive been playing online seeing people just die because they got combo slamed or Aoe hit. All it takes is one wrong step. This Dlc broke my illusion that fromsoft makes any fair game.
I have to admit, every time a boss fight is a little bit more challenging I’m cursing every developer involved in the game alongside their families, yet after finally beating the boss I’m like “yeah, good job guys, that was cool”
The only boss that I have yet to do that to is the last boss of the DLC. Completely psychotic, most bullshit 2nd phase ever. Even after I beat it, it was a complete hollow victory. No joy at all.
I think the difference between a good boss and a bad one is that with a good one, after killing it you want to fight it again just for fun, with a bad one you don't, after having beaten Malenia without summons (I have nothing against people who use summons, it's just that I don't like how they break the bosses AI and break the game balance) I never felt like fighting that boss ever again, it's just not fun.
I think the issue is less the actual difficulty, and more the boss design philosophy of "cheeze it or die" being tiring as hell to go through. I personally have not been stuck on a boss too long, the longest was Rellana for a little under two hours, but having that same aggression and intensity be prevelant for EVERY major boss has made the experience lopsided Speaking as a Souls veteran whose been playing since Bloodborne, my issue with the bosses in Elden Ring is that I don't feel like I'm learning the fight at all. The lopsided nature of the encounters either kill me too quickly to learn something, or I kill the bosses too quickly and I don't see everything they have to offer Like I ended my session last night by killing what I'm considering the games hidden "super boss" in an old abandoned mansion (iykyk) FAIRLY handedly. I had 7 red flasks left, and the boss went down before I really saw its moveset If either I or the boss am dying before I can see what its about, then thats more than a little disappointing to me, and thats been fairly common in Shadow of the Erdtree, despite the games attempts to number crunch stats with the Scaduu fragments system
The hand written lore notes! Really wished that I did the same with all these games, I could just imagine how fun it would be to lore hunt and get "Aha!" revelations about the underlying story.
One thing this game made sure to grind in the players' mind is that the guard counter mechanic exists. It does a fuckton of posture damage and is a more damaging hit than the standard LB attack. Make sure you guard counter every time you're allowed to, and you'll have more guardbreaks than you can count. Independently of your SL.
Yeah, I hope they go back to a more linear design in the next game. Open worlds cause a lot of problems for souls design. More linear leads to a more consistent difficulty and I feel it is a more fair experience.
You're pretty wrong. For instance, the final boss has MANY attacks that either close the distance or require the player to sit in their armpit where they cant see wtf is even going on. And that's not to mention all the annoying af overstimulation that is the AOEs. I'm kinda sick of dodge rolling through nukes, even if it is cool. 🤷♂️ My immersion is just completely and utterly shattered most of the time
My problem with the dlc is the exploration. The open world and minor catacombs are just boring. The beauty of seeing a new area is great, but the actual content feels unpolished compared to the legacy dungeons. The open world has so many copy paste enemies that get stale very fast. The big fire dudes are especially annoying. Even with a high scadu blessing they still have so much health. But they arent hard, just tedious. They only have a couple moves, none of which are hard to dodge so you just loop the situation slowly scratching its ankles until it dies. Apparently you can throw those big jars at their head, but i didnt know that and im guessing neither did the vast majority of people. The repeat dragon, another putrid spirit avatar thing, so many hands, npc "boss" fights, etc... it just isnt up to the amazing standard of for example shadow keep which is amazing. I understand that the game is big, so you can say it's unfair to expect all the content to be top tier, but why did the game need to be so big? Id rather have less content but have it be really good than have more content thats mediocre. The exploration felt like a chore to be able to actually get to the good part. I'm starting to think i just dont like open world because i found Zelda botw to be boring too
These discussions about difficulty end up taking the focus away from the incredible things about the game and the DLC. The best part of the fight against Bayle for me is hearing Igon screaming like a lunatic while shooting arrows at the dragon. Getting to know ST Trina and Thiollieer's quest (his armor set is beautiful, by the way). Reaching that flower field after so much suffering left me deeply moved, I won't lie. Seeing the fate of the NPCs guided by Miquella. Testing new builds with the new weapons and spells. This whole new sense of discovery, like when you were playing Elden Ring for the first time, is incredible.
How is it a good thing, LMAO? How the fuck is an RPG forcing you to respec a good thing? Seems like you played too much MMOs or MOBAs, dude. The whole appeal of a good RPG, is that you are able to enjoy it while playing it the way YOU like, as it was well designed to accommodate for every play style, not the way the game demands you it should be played or the way metakids tell you is the best way to play. But I guess modern industry is so devoid of good RPGs nowadays that kids have no idea what is that and think that respeccing 10 times is a good thing. Sad, really.
Well, elaborate when it ain't. I guess for the people who just wanna stick to 1 playstyle only without ever wanting to change they would see it as a bad thing. Well tough shit mate.
The difficulty is what it is but regarding just how the whole game is received at this point it feels like any sort of criticism aimed at it seems to garner so many essays reconstructing the arguments. Criticism of media/art is entirely subjective and I believe thoughtful critiques good or bad should be respected. My issues were with the boss fight designs more so than the difficulty. Elden ring with just how massive it is kinda milked the souls genre to its limit, like there are only so many places the centerpiece of its gameplay (it's boss fights) can go. The endless combo strings in the base game kinda took away that idea of everyone is the game being beholden of the same rules (ie stamina and limited attack volume), it kinda led to players including me choosing hit and run tactics very much revolving around single shot/overtime effects damage than the back and forth in the pocket combat that got me into soulsborne. There's nothing with switching up approaches towards bosses since it's a entirely new IP BUT is it really? Player characterd very much still operate like and are attuned like dark souls 3 whole bosses have now have multi hit chains that pushes you towards playing form the outside in rather then staying within the action, games are still bearable make no mistake but it's very much using a set formula that it kinda beats all praise about the game being so open ended. The DLC chooses to go all in on screen filling AoE attacks, again same hit and run strategy is viable and if you go against it you're supposed to battle the boss and the visual diarrhoea from the AoE. Fromsoft still is stubborn enough to not give you the options to adjust the field of view in bossfights which to me has been the biggest example of using obtuse design choices to beef up the difficulty and if you speak on it suddenly the devs' "vision" is being trampled on. Souls games have always been built on enforcing artificial difficulty by willfully using obtuse choices in UI and non difficult related accessibility features and it's subset of Stans have turned any justified criticism into "it was intended that way" whataboutism. Last thing, the Eurogamer reviewer also rightly pointed out the dlc's decision to forcefeed the player exposition and fasttarcking you to the endgoal. The writing in fromsoft games often is very dissociated from the individual, so having it centred so suddenly just felt incredibly forced (take for instance that cringeworthy monologue during the bayle fight). Those points by the reviewer were entirely ignored by fanboys doing their typically childish ganging up on even the mildest criticism of the game. At this point anything soulsborne by fromsoft is above critique acc to its diehards. Imagine ppl sending threats to Mark Kermode if he gave a cold review to their favourite actors/directors. Forcing elden ring as a standard in RPGs is just so tired at this point, it just speaks of an entitled subset of fans.
The DLC is a matter of adapting to each and every challenge - that is until you use the greatshied talisman, buff a greatshield and use a spear that procs bleed - then you pretty much win against any and every boss first try
I feel like he would you would like penny's big breakaway. It's this fun 3d platformer with fun movement mechanics that revolve around using a yoyo. It has a fun style and story and it's kinda like sonic with the momentum based yoyo riding. Overall I think you should atleast try it.
I’m so tired of people pretending that Elden Ring doesn’t have an entire shield system that has a block, counter, and parry mechanic that the game ACTIVELY encourages you to use. They ONLY use the dodge roll and it’s beyond ridiculous to think it’ll work perfectly 100% of the time unless you’re a god gamer.
two things that I discover from this DLC is shield + guard counter is absolutely broken, and you don't have to lock on 24/7. I'm sick of people forcing their only way to play and got pulverized and later complained about it. I've tried multiple weapon for multiple bosses, having success from backhand blade, nagakiba, Bloodhound fang, dragon halberd, almost every weapon is viable as long as I'm familiar with it enough, some people above actually having success with dual dagger which I can never get comfortable due to the incredibly low poise damage. Point is, these complainers are too busy complaining rather than trying the VAAASTTT mechanic and option this game gave them. I'm sure some of these complainers are RoB/bleed spammer or moonveil one trick.
Maybe becuz some of us prefer power stancing or dual wielding. I enjoyed power stancing more than shield and another weapon unless it is a shield and a weapon build.
I'm so tired of people pretending that it's okay for bosses to force you to change build WHEN THE GAME INTRODUCED DUAL WIELDING. MW you can beat DS1 without ROLLING.
It doesn't matter what negatives you lay against a souls game. The community will say either Get Gud or Skill Issue regardless of whether your criticism is valid or not
finally someone mentioned the deflecting hardtear, its criminal how nobody talks about how good and game changing it is, it makes every humanoid fight into a different kind of dance. Malenia now resembles much of her original sekiro design when able to be deflected, including waterfowl dance which yes can be deflected if you know the timing. this applies to rellana heavily too.
It literally carried me in the final boss. Blocking with my Greatsword had been a saving grace for me throughout the base game, so it feels serendipitous that blocking would become the lynchpin for beating the final boss of the dlc
I got a gripe with that tweet trying to use iceborne against this dlc, monster hunter’s gameplay loop is kill monster to make its weapons and armor to kill more monsters. Elden Ring is an open world game where you can challenge things whenever you want and the bosses do not gatekeep any straight up upgrades all of those are found outside of bosses, hell even in dark souls if you don’t explore enough you aren’t upgrading your weapons
To be fair, getting assblasted by the gank fight and then the final bullshit of a boss leads me to believe the reviews aren't entirely fabricated on lack of skill.
feels those players aren't fully utilizing what the game provides and just do the build they did before expecting the same results it's like Mohg's fight People though his Nihil move is dumb and bs when it's the easiest to counter with Melania thinking she is busted is bs when people also found a way to counter her so what I say is Give it time and let it simmer then let's see
@@lag00n54 "Simmering" won't do anything about the gank fight. Unless you get at least 2 other NPCs to help it just devolves into hit and run or getting blendered. When it comes to the final boss, I haven't tried it personally however everyone including the souls vets agree it's overtuned so I'm compelled to agree.
@@anitaremenarova6662 eitherway my point was rn it seems too difficult but knowing how people find and be creative there is a way Besides apparently few days ago they buffed the blessings for easier access early game in dlc
I think you made your points really well. I feel like while it boils down to "git gud" as usual, the one issues is I see that if the DLC was its own game no one would complaign. However it is DLC for Elden Ring, and yet it somehow does not really feel like Elden ring? Now the bosses requiring so much patience and you being mostly on defensive feels really strange and like a shift in what the OG game was. Even with smaller things like some bosses not even really letting you summon for free which just felt cheap. One of the the main mechanicks in the game suddenly restricted and it makes the diffuclty spike caused by it a little cheap. In the end you are correct mostly, lot of this is subjective, but it still does not change that the shift in the way bosses acts in DLC will put a lot of people off or just be straight up not fun. I do not like having to roll around and defend until boss finishis his 25 hit combo so he lets me do one thing (and yes I did not ignore how you found out you can create more openings, but there was also quite a caviat and specific way you had to look for that didn't you? LIke "just use back hand blades" well if you have game that dozens of options but the only option against an enemy being to respecc to a specific weapon to get more openings that I don't think that is a good thing.).
The Problem with Elden Ring’s DLC isn’t that the bosses are “HARD” persay. But they are hard to the point where LEARNING them isnt FUN. People had fun learning bosses in Dark Souls. People don’t have fun learning bosses in the DLC because they can’t because they are dying in 2-3 hits even WITH their scadutree blessings that people keep bringing up. Me personally I don’t mind i just put on god mode to learn and have my fun. But most players cant or dont lol
If you're getting killed in a couple of hits it's because your build is trash or you're getting punished for badly timed rolling, (being hit while rolling or jumping does significantly more damage than just standing still). The SCB only offers a maximum of 50% damage reduction.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer i guarantee I am better than you at all of these games as I’ve literally no hit majority of Elden Rings base game bosses. If your not dying in 2 or 3 hits then im pretty sure you just havent even played the game lmao.
@Idontevenknowman779 I'm literally using a build with 40 vigor. Not had an attack do more than 1/4 my HP that wasn't a hugely telegraphed AoE or grab, but this has always been the case in Souls Games. Finished with STB lv17, so didn't even have to hunt all the upgrade items to best the bosses.
The older souls games had much better boss design. These Elden ring bosses are all spectacle with with extremely limited interactions. You dodge 90% of time, hit them once and then back to dodging for another hour (of you’re forced into using a shield build)
I do feel that the discussion and arguments about SotE being overtuned is a fair one to have. And by overtuned I don't mean things like enemy and boss movesets, but rather the scaling multipliers for their damage, HP, defense values etc. All this is related to the scadutree blessing mechanic. Preface: I love the DLC, it's great. These are just my honest thoughts on the subject of DLC scaling. I've played through the DLC twice now, and currently doing a third on NG+. First time blind of course. I knew about the importance of scadutree fragments, so I tried my best to look for them and explore before pushing the main story and its bosses. At around 50-60 vigor and having gotten my scadutree blessing to about +4, basically every slightly tough enemy and boss could easily 2-shot or even 1-shot me (often with grabs) starting from the lion, then Rellana, and even some "minibosses" from dungeons and such (admittedly, their HP reserves were much lower to compensate for their damage output). Not only that, bosses were incredibly tough damage sponges with such an enormous HP pool that even when it felt like I was playing good, learning the dodge timings and punish windows and lasting for a long time, after making one mistake and getting 2-shot I see that I've barely gotten about 1/5th (or even less) of their HP down. This was with Bloodhound's Fang +25 with buffs such as bloodflame blade and golden vow. I felt this especially with Rellana, where even hitting a full weapon art with BF looked like chip damage. I was enjoying learning the boss movesets, but the crazy HP pools of some of the bosses and not finding more scadutree fragments got me relying a lot on summons just to get more damage in. I can see the point when people argue that the same can happen in base game, but the difference is that unlike in early-mid-base game (for example, Radahn and Margit as shown in the video) most players going into the DLC will have a maxed out weapon, vigor probably at 50-60, which can even withstand the late game difficulty and scaling spike at Farum Azula, all the talismans their build might need, etc... Base game players have lots to explore, level up and upgrade if they're stuck, much much more than DLC players, who can only hope to find scadutree fragments. Even with an end-game build and a few levels into scadutree blessing, the very first bosses of the DLC make you feel like you like you're a level 1 wretch going up against Margit. After beating Rellana and finding a bunch of scadutree fragments and getting to about +8, I felt that the DLC's scaling felt much more sensible and the feeling of "overtunedness" dissipated thankfully and that remained true for the rest of my first playthrough of the DLC. On my 2nd playthrough on a different character, after I found out that you can skip Castle Ensis and get to the area without beating Rellana, I ran around for a couple hours getting an around +8 blessing before killing a single boss. At +8 and upwards, the DLC felt like the scaling made much more sense and felt fair. I wasn't dishing out ridiculous damage, bosses still took a fair amount of hits but my attacks didn't feel like chip damage anymore. Bosses could still 2-shot me with their stronger attacks, but not nearly all attacks would instantly delete me anymore. Bosses were punishing of course, but not incredibly so to the point where it feels ridiculous. So on my 2nd playthrough I beat all bosses without summons starting at +8 blessing and leveling more as I progressed, beating the final boss at +18. The scaling felt perfect with this. TL;DR I think the difficulty of the DLC is fine. It's supposed to be hard. Beating the final boss with no summons took me probably 6+ hours of practice and tries at +18 blessing. The bosses have great movesets that have fair openings when you learn them. No complaints there (nitpicks at best). I also think the scadutree blessing as a mechanic is fine as it encourages exploration, which imo is easily the best part of the DLC (even as a player who likes From games most for their bosses). However I do think that the first few levels provide(d) such negligible improvements to your damage and defense that I would consider the beginning of the DLC to be somewhat "overtuned" as I would think most players going blind to the DLC probably won't find that many scadutree fragments before facing the first two "big bosses". And as we know, From did make an update to the blessings to scale up more at lower levels to address the issue. Also, there are a few outlying examples of just straight up borked scaling. For example the NPC knight at Castle Ensis, who at NG+, 60 vigor, talismans boosting defense and a maxed out +20 scadutree blessing, took away 7/8 of my HP with a quick rollcatch poke attack. This is more damage with a measly poke than what the final boss of the DLC, hailed as the hardest From boss in history can do with most of their attacks. Excluding maybe the nuke attack which has a 10 second long spectacle animation before it hits. Not to mention the NPC enemies in the DLC seem to have infinite poise, which is ridiculous. I do agree with most of what is said in the video. Good stuff. Especially the end remarks, there's much more to Souls games than their boss design and difficulty. Messmer best boss btw
Dodging 10 attack chain to heal and then dodgin another 10 attack chaing to attack once or twice isnt a problem if only 1 mistake didn't kill you. So learning isn't fun. I know you can collect more of those fragments but that will boost my dmg too much for the fight. For example on Messmer I didn't want any MORE dmg I just wanted him to not kill me after my 1 mistake. It's okay die on a boss but only if you had an opportunity to try something on that try. Having a chance to try 1 thing and dying after it is the opposite of fun for me. Half (if not more) of the new location being empty or full of copy paste enemies from the main game doesn't help with any positive thoughts of the game either.
Things i hate about the bosses in this dlc,It's that they don't stop, like, you can get combos of 7 hits and in the end barely land a hit that does almost no damage and get chained up by another combo, while almost every attack one shot or two shot you,bro i don't want a fight that last 20 min
I think the review lost me when you said you used a controller while playing. There's a girl who beat this game with her mind so if you can't do that you're not REALLY playing Elden Ring.
I play on console so I only play with controller
You are not the Elden Ring gatekeeper! Stop telling ppl they didn’t play the game when they clearly did! No one has to do it the way you did! It’s your game play how you want and have fun!!
you ONLY REALLY beat elden ring if you play the game with no multiplayer, no summons, no ashes, no cheese, no magic, no dex (not even one point), no great runes, no rune farming, no armour, no stupid physick bullshit (crutch for new players), no weapons I don't like, no roll spamming, no shield, messages off, no deaths, level 1, no map, no hands, feet only, no monitor, Rock Band drums, still no hands, no thinking, no buffs (you already should not be using buffs), no guides or wikidiving, no 'hints' from your 'friends', and no socks.
@@chelleville83 blud took it seriously 💀💀💀
That's nothing. I beat Elden Ring and the DLC within seconds of each one coming out. I completed my no-hit, no-item, no-leveling run using neural inputs from a gold fish that I trained to play Elden Ring. Anyone who says it's "too hard" needs to git gud and train their goldfish harder.
shadow of the erdtree is the dark soul of elden ring
woah...
This is the next level of game journalism
Elden Rings biggest issue is that it is trying to be Dark Souls. So it ends up trying to be hard because DS was hard. But DS was not hard just because it is cool to be hard, it was trying to immerse the player into the world and give a certain type of experience. Now ER is meta where you have to look up good builds, weapons and strats for bosses. It sacrifices the experience for "This boss is really hard right? that is what you wanted since DS was hard"
It just loses what made DS special and becomes a parody of itself.
Agreed
@@vege4920 If you have to "look up good builds and strats for bosses", then I am saddened to inform you that you have a terrible condition called "skill issue" and advice you to engage with an activity often referred to as "git gud"
greatsword
real
Okaysword 😈
Midsword at best.
Adequatesword maybe.
Exactly
This game is nowhere near a turn base. it's an RPG, and you roleplay as the *Victim*
Guts in Berserk is also known as " The Struggler " and considering the heavy amount of Berserk inspo in all of these games I think Miyazaki just put the character template of our character being The Struggler rather than being a victim
This is gonna be etched in my brain forever. Sensational
Love Maxor's Elden Ring videos lmao
Legendary clip reference, love it.
I love these games but the dlc is unbalanced. If you have to have 11 scadutree fragments just to survive the first area it's bad balancing and don't get me started on the poise these mobs got too much poise that some I can't even stagger with a colossal sword. Like I had to use Wolf Assault on the black knight twinblade boss just to stagger and knock back. Their practically an upgraded version of the knights in the base game. Now the ones with the hammer is understandable to them it's practically a colossal hammer but for freak sake their blocking is down right devious. Bosses..... Bosses are meant to be challenging but not bullshit. If you have 11 scadutree fragments or max and still get one shot. That's bullshit that isn't even hard just pure bull crap. I understand the game is supposed to be hard but to what "extent"? I play games to relieve stress not add more.
Boss does 15 combo attack string with wide aoe.
Tarnished landing two light attacks: damn I got greedy
I was helping my uncle with the final boss after he got really close to killing him and I’m not joking we got him to basically 0 hp and my uncle got a bit too greedy died and my attack PHASED THROUGH HIM and I didn’t get the kill I’m surprised he didn’t break anything
@@HenrySvazas This happens so often that I'm absolutely convinced that they added some kind of a hidden mechanic to the bosses to keep them at literally 1 HP after a hit that CLEARLY should've finished them.
@@AikanaroSauron ikr
Fromsoft players who tell you to Git Gud when they have to actually Git Gud
Like 99% of them?
IKR lol, Elden Ring is my first Souls game and I already gitted gudder than many claiming to be elite hardcore Souls gamers.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer i think yakko was pretty accurate when he diagnosed this as people being angry that the build they can stomb base-game bosses with can't stomp DLC bosses
Not a veteran but many people who are saying that and failing to do that are just ppl who suffered a lot in earlier games, got good enough to pass it and thought they became a superior player for it
@@capperbunsor most of them are trolls ik i say that just to f with people
I will point out the ONLY thing they nerfed on the AC6 boss was the missile tracking. Pre-nerf the missiles could literally do a 180 midair to hit you which was a bit much and IIRC was actually a bug. They didn't touch anything else IIRC. Its the same with Radahan in the base game. The didn't nerf him, they fixed his wonky hitboxes on his attacks he had on release, they did then nerf his health but within a month they had reverted that change.
Ibis also had an AI nerf so it doesn't run away and force you to chase it. That's a great nerf.
Yeah, Ibis no longer predicts player movement when using the energy slashes too. Also, Radahn had his bow projectile tracking reduced so it can no longer hit you on horseback among other things.
Movesets generally aren't changed, just tracking hp and poise values(poor sea spider getting reduced to like 1/2 hp)
@enman009 but is a great nerf, having to chasing him is more annoying than hard
The missile tracking was what made Baletus hard in the first place, this nerf turned him into a joke and was very dissapointing to see. This is why I always disable updates on from games, the inevitable nerfs.
@@sethoricalco1709 I agree. The problem was that previous missions failed to acclimate you to that kind of encounter. Had they just tweaked the tracking a little and it would've been better
"Brute force is no longer... " You underestimate my unga bunga brother. Now I have BLOOD UNGA BUNGA
Long live unga bunga builds.
We even got dex unga banga with the giga katana from that chick on the waterside
I unga,
therefore I bunga.
@@Hangishtaare you the unga because you're bunga, or are you bunga because you're unga
True. I’ve seen ang Unga Bunga user soamming the jump attacks all away to Consort Radahn
its not a difficulty problem, its a fun boss problem. Father Owl from Sekiro took me longer to kill than Radahn, but It was fun and fair all the way through. Radahn one shot me multiple times with some World of Wacraft Raid boss ability, and when I got him down felt more like RNG from his attacks. Phase 1 was great, Idk why they fucked up so much in phase 2
I think the biggest reason the DLC left me feeling frustrated was kinda addressed in the video. These games have always had RPG DNA in them and the challenge in the DLC really seems to be straining that aspect of the game to its limit. Just the fact that so many people feel forced to summon, respecc, use bleed, read a wiki to build for damage negation etc. seems to be a good clue that this is happening. There’s nothing wrong with any of these tools; I don’t care if you want to use all or none of them, but if I have a fun build from the base game that I want to try and the DLC throws wall after wall at me…eventually I’m just going to throw in the towel out of exhaustion. Fromsoft does so many things well but I think their focus on difficulty (primarily boss difficulty) is kinda dragging down their games.
Fromsoft doesntt focus on boss difficulty, they have said that themselves
@@taistelusammakko5088words are not greater than actions/results
i’m getting through the dlc with no summons, spells, or incantation. The least you can do is not use summons it’s super doable.
What I really dislike is how any fair, valid criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree is immediately undermined because so many of the people spouting it either ignore the Scadutree Fragments or are mainly a bunch of terminally-online circle-jerkers who feel entitled to destroying everything with their uber-powerful base-game build without learning how to play the game.
The DLC has problems, a myriad of them, however the Day 1 response to it has been mind-numbing and is almost completely the fault of people rushing to their keyboards before rushing to find a solution. Hopefully in a month or so we'll be able to hold hands and discuss it fairly like civilised adults.
I think the point of "wait a bit before fully judging" is good mindset cause try finding a solution for few months, if there is no solution a WHOLE COMMUNITY cant find then there's smth wrong with design, but a WHOLE COMMUNITY will probably find a solution in a month
A myriad of problems is vastly overstating it. This is one of the best action rpgs ever made, and the DLC is no different.
most complainers dont use summons or jolly coop because "its cheating"
@@WishIWasClever I can think of literally one single problematic attack in the entire DLC. I found a solution to everything else, and it wasn't hard to figure out
@@WishIWasCleverpeople like who are who this comment is written about
“NUH UH THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER” yeah, 300 iq level of discussion
i think the elden ring dlc is not too easy or too difficult, it's too medium. it exists in a purgatorial state of dharmic perdition, a sea of murky grey. disclosure that before i played the dlc i was thrust from the cycle of samsara into a nightmarish mezzanine between life and death, so that may influence my opinion.
real talk though basically every dlc fight is straight gas. lion, hippo, messmer, gaius, putrescent knight - all among my favorite bosses in the game. also i balanced all of my stats so i could switch between like fifteen different weapons for fun maxxing. beating messmer with beast claws was raw adrenaline.
ancient philosophers can't hold a candle to people who have beaten the elden ring dlc
@@roramdin "fun maxxing" you're so real for that one
@@yakkocmn fun maxxing is the only way u get to use the karate, so it's the only way i will ever play
@@yakkocmn Don't even get achievement on ps5
I would change one thing only, or either of two:
1) The cracked tear that gives you Deflects lasting until death/rest, like the Crimson Cracked Tear.
2) The Flask replenishment also refreshing your Physik.
Every single fight I engaged with was way more enjoyable with Deflecting.
honestly whilst it would absolutely fucking break PvP (not that I PvP but I understand people DO enjoy it) instead of having it be a Crystal tear, having the deflection be a talisman and being able to fully turn the game into Sekiro would have been a cool option.
What the fck? It last forever until you die and then you can just recharge again?
@@luketfer this could be fixed to not work on players, but even for PvP you have tools to dispelling buffs, and 3 minutes is more than enough for any boss or pvp fight
@@shutup1037 precisely, just like the Crimson Bubble tear that you can apply every time you die gaining basically a "second chance" buff.
I envy PC players who will be able to easily mod this in, and you can BET it will be one of the most popular mods.
@@matheusmterra daaamnn. I'm running the base game with this lol
The only thing that has me tilted is the tarnished bosses having infinite poise
getting hyperarmour'd will never not feel like absolute bs
@@chickennugget6684 It's not hyper armor, homie. They have poise while doing nothing.
@@TheSkelzore it's worse when it's one in light armour inexplicably poising too
I actually feel kinda lucky with this, I'm using a strength build and most of the NPCs I've been able to completely stun lock, I'm kind of feeling like it's one of the only redeeming thing about this build in this dlc, it feels so damn hard to get any kind of consistent punishes off on these enemies. Literally I think I would've been cooked if I didn't follow the crowd swapping to use great shields.
even with a collosal sword Mesmer takes a while to break poise, and even then the stab animation does a little..then they stand up to do all their combos while youre barely recovering stamina.
My problem is people very obviously ignoring the DLCs problems with "git gud", "skill issue" or "just get more fragments"
Some of these bosses require you to change your build which im not a fan of because the point of a build is so you can play the way you want to so forcing people to change makes everything less fun. Either youre not having fun because you are using a build you dont enjoy or youre not having fun because youre using a build that doesnt work. If you dont change your build there are certain attacks like the double slash that you literally cannot dodge. I also think the final boss has terrible visibility. Miquellas hair obscures what radahn is doing if your behind the light beams flashbang you every 4 seconds (I had to step away from the game multiple times because my eyes were hurting from the flashing lights)
Scadutree fragments are another problem in my opinion. They feel like they have very little effect on your power level. It also isnt fun to go on an easter egg hunt to find them. Unlike the golden seeds and sacred tears, they are not easy to find as some can be in completely random places. The golden seeds are mostly found along the main path in the game so you rarely miss them and the sacred tears are in churches which you can easily see on your map. With the scadutree fragmentd i could be bothered collecting them all because they felt like they had very little effect past a certain point and it was annoying looking up a map of the locations only to find you collected it already.
Another problem is the furnace golems. These are perhaps one of the worst fights in any game ever. They are long, tedious and boring
This DLC is great especially with the Bayle, Midra and Messmer fights but there is also a lot of problems with the DLC that shouldnt be ignored such as half of Radahns fight
Not a single boss, not even Radahn, ever made me change my build. And I’m running a slow-ass great sword. Not gonna deny the visibility and reading issues with him, but if you can beat him with a greatsword, every other weapon type is just an easier time.
Don’t know about your Scadutree take either. The difference between me throwing my head against the wall that was Rellana and beating her first try was a couple of fragment levels. The damage diff was INSANE.
It’s kinda weird how you see it as an “Easter egg hunt” and I see it as exploring the game like normal. Are you just blitzing through the dlc without exploring anything? You almost have to deliberately avoid them. I had lvl 16 or 18 (outta 20) before fighting Radahn without even trying to look up where they were.
Not trying to invalidate your experience, it’s just weird because mine was the exact opposite.
None of the bosses require you to change your build. You're just not up to the challenge of a 10 minute boss fight. Yeah you do barely any damage with most builds. I like that a lot. You're just used to killing bosses in 15-20 hits. Now it takes 40-50. Beating the dlc feels like more of an accomplishment than the base game.
Furnace golems suck. The map is pretty empty. Scadutree fragments are lame. These are all fair criticisms.
I changed my build for every boss. Not just in the DLC, but also the base game and even DS and Sekiro lol.
It seems pretty insane to play an RPG and try and brute force your way through it using one weapon and armour set. Maybe this is why I never found any of these games too difficult.
Last boss constantly flashbanging and dropping fps was indeed a challenge.
One thing I want to point out is that the dlc requires you to beat mohg in order to play it, a pretty late game boss of elden ring. And I'm guessing that most people who have played the dlc are people who have already beaten the game in the past. I've been seeing a lot of people immediately discount other peoples thoughts on the dlc being too difficult at points which I think is unwarranted considering how most of the people playing it aren't casuals
I think the whole difficulty argument misses the point. The bosses are frustrating because it isn't clear where you need to improve, or when you should attack, at the start of the DLC I too was frustrated by this, but I kind of got used to it. As I see it the bosses in the DLC were designed according to a different philosophy than the base game bosses were. That's mostly just a suspicion than a known fact :^)
"The bosses are frustrating because it isn't clear where you need to improve, or when you should attack" well... isn't that the whole point? I hate games that hold your hand and tell you how to do everything, even the hard things, the bosses which (as bosses) are supposed to be hard. That's why you feel satisfied once you beat them, because you figured out what you need to improve, their movements or when you should attack.
Why would I ever want to have a boss fight where I already know what to do at every turn? It completely defeats the purpose of it, the fact that it's a challenge.
@@BlueNorth313 The point I'm trying to make is not that someone took my training wheels off and now I'm crying. It's that in the base game all the bosses have gimmicks or very clear attack patterns and downtime between attacks, whereas the DLC designed the bosses to be harder by lowering the downtime and obfuscating attack patterns thus making it harder to see where you need to improve. As I said, I got used to the difference in design, and started to love the bosses of the DLC as well. Even though it was tough at the beginning.
@@theives6817No they don't have that in the base game. In fact many dlc bosses have it better than base game ones. But it doesn't help when half of them need hours to even comprehend and even longer to master. Definitely didn't feel that it was my fault i was dying like i did in original games
I dunno if I can agree with changing your build being the recommended strategy when stuck when it’s restricted to an item you only have so many of. I feel like Armored core 6 did that far better with changing your build being free and a direct option on the death screen
What's even the point of having a build if it can not work? That's bad design
What he meant is change your weapon and armor
@@shutup1037 Ah yes let me change to the katana to kill this boss with my 6 dex and 99 strength build.
@@bloorb0569 why would you even use katana. Not other str weapon
@@bloorb0569 Why would you dump 99 points into STR when it when you could put in 60, than use the other 39 points into INT or FTH and have a much better build?
I think one or 2 of the npc's should have been found searching for these leaves for some canonical reason. Like varre telling you to follow the funny lights and smack gordrick.
I'm not a particular fan of -final boss-, I dislike that his attacks make my xbox lag a bit, and it irks me that I can barely tell what he is doing half the time due to white background+bright attacks+spoiler's hair.
But y'know such is life, can't love everything.
I 100% agree with you. The final boss was the only one who I just didn't enjoy. Phase 1 is fun and fair, but phase 2 is a constant barrage of flash bang after flash bang.
@@Grumpy1174 Stop rolling backwards. Literally solves all of this.
So stop fighting him passively. Fight him like you fight Midir. Stay in his face, stay calm, dodge all of his attacks INTO their direction, then punish. Stop rolling away in a panic. That's literally the only thing causing visual clutter. You don't even see the after effects if you dodge into him while locked on.
@@TheStraightestWhitest Quite correct, the reason I made my comment was because rolling backwards is my instinct to get away from bosses to study their movesets, the next day I tried different roll directions like I had with Malenia and it worked a treat for visual clearness.
Still have not beat him, and I'm still not a fan of the pillars following swings as getting hit by those seems inevitable, but maybe I'm rolling poorly. Gonna get him eventually.
@@TheStraightestWhitest
Rolling forwards does not solve the fact that I'm still blind in that fight. I did the fight just fine once I understood what each move was doing through the white flashes. They need to improve visibility in this fight.
I think a big thing that gets lost in the sauce of people going through hell and highwater with this DLC is that of the 50 Scadutree fragments you need all 50 to max out your blessing. Sure you might not ever need to get a maxed blessing to beat the DLC but even in base Elden Ring there are more Golden Seeds around the map than you'll need to max out your flask, OR if they were so insistent on doing a Sekiro style "item to upgrade" system for the DLC then having major bosses give you a full blessing upgrade would have gone a long way to ease this rough patch people have.
People liked exploring in Elden Ring base because it was a fun thing to do and you were usually rewarded with new items and spells or weapons it was a choice they made and they felt good for making that choice, but in the DLC you're being FORCED to explore or be locked out of seeing the rest of the DLC which I think is something that is really getting to a lot of people.
I see your point, but I’m not sure I fully agree. As you said, people don’t need to have full blessings to beat the dlc and between like 18 or 20. And people have been playing without blessings at all, despite how challenging it is.
I honestly feel like some players need to have every fragment is a case of FOMO and consumer brain. That they will have an inferior experience if something is missed, which has influenced a lot of modern game design
@@dylanwins9839yes, which is why developers should compensate for that.
A Radar would be nice, or at the very least a goddamn tracker of the locations you've found them.
It's not required to get them all, but when up against a big roadblock it feels it might be.
Going further, it'd be really nice if those Miquella cross maps were legible without putting my face up to the monitor!
@@chickennugget6684isnt there an nqpc that marks them on the map?
Yes there is. People just dont bother to read in the inventory lol. They give you map where to find the Maquiella mark@@Weppi4
To be honest, my issue is that the bosses feel like you're just dodging for like 5 minutes straight, throw out one R1, and then get back to rolling through these obnoxiously long combos. I'd consider myself decently skilled at these games, hell I beat Malenia at 9 vigor, and I just don't think these bosses are well balanced and fun to fight. There's no back and forth between you and the boss, you're forced to play their game and dodge for an eternity before you get to actually hit them. Every fight feels like a massive slog, which you really can't say about any of the fights in the base game, even Malenia feels like you're being more active in fighting and not just rolling for 5 minutes straight.
Same way I've felt about most bosses. The difficulty is not the problem, it's the overly aggressive nature and long combos of all the bosses that just become annoying. The fun trial and error of main game bosses is gone. Now you just roll everything until you finally get your turn, do your damage then get back to rolling. It makes the gameplay loop of dying over and over until you learn, much less enjoyable. Rellana was the only boss I felt like there was kind of a traditional back and fourth.
I can't really say I agree. In my fights against the final DLC boss there were numerous attack chains where the delay to the follow up was long enough to get an extra hit in. There are attacks that you can jump over for an extra jumping attack, or attacks where you can roll behind the boss and attack because the follow up doesn't have any tracking. If your attacks have any hyperarmor, you can choose to take the hit if it's worth the trade. There are boss moves that are safe to attack against, ones that are safe to weapon art, ones that are safe to heal or even heavy attack. If I'm out of range after an area of effect attack I might throw a projectile. I'm constantly looking for opportunities and planning my response. And then there's also stance breaks. There were numerous times where I could feel a stance break coming up, so I do a heavy attack right into the boss' own attack. Some bosses even have extra options like Margit's and Mogh's shackles or the blasphemous claw. Some bosses are weak to certain status effects that you can build your strategy around.
I'd argue that this is the most responsive that bosses have ever been in this format, especially compared to the Dark Souls series
The only change I'd make to this game would be making respecing infinite and free (or cheap), and letting you reuse smithing stones or gloveworts to allow you to experiment with weapons and summons respectively. A game this open in terms of design should allow you to play around with it. Can be modded in, probably, but I want it to be the status quo, inviting everyone to craft their perfect build.
I absolutely agree with both points (free/cheap respec and less annoying resource drain for wanting to try new weapons in their powerful state). I wouldn't mind having to upgrade weapon slots instead, so that you have a +25 normal/+10 somber slot that you can put any weapon into.
What I hate about the souls community is the bias towards certain styles of play, and bias against the rest. "summons gay", "magic gay", "very specific weapon gay", mostly because they don't know how to counter them, or their specific build doesn't allow them to.
I've been called a "coward" a hundred times just for being a mage; even when I don't use the "cheese" spells. I think mages are badass, so I play them.
It's hilarious seeing the exact same people complain about difficulty.
Too many people hear “mage” and think “Azur’s Comet”. I bet if they fought Malenia on a mage build, without using cheese they found on UA-cam, they’d agree that fighting her with spells is actually harder than fighting her with melee. Same goes for most endgame bosses that dodge and close gaps very consistently.
But I’ve bet they never tried it, which is specifically why they think you can just BB gun the boss from afar while they slow walk towards you.
What's funny is that unga Bunga strength builds focus on stun locking and poise breaking, so they're arguably "cheaper"
I beat the dlc with great stars and the meteor greatsword thing so I'm not against it, just pointing out the hypocrisy
some bosses in elden ring are harder for mages IE renalla elden beast i remember mohg lord of blood being a pain for my mage but with a melee build he was cake. I never used magic before elden ring always seemed like easy mode but its not in this game. Im sure theres many times you casted a spell only to get hit during the animation.
@joeytoofly5139 You outlined something important here. Bosses require different strategies all the time. The Wiki shows all enemies have varying weaknesses all. But "No dodge roll bleed is the only way." smh.
@@Kenkyou_Nogata Buy yeah with mohg I had to be up in his face as a mage and that was an uncomfortable fight I did hardly any damage to rennala. As a strength build malenia was just terrible she would dodge back and use her waterfowl or the thrust attack she does. I think Godfrey was hard AF as a magic build I was able to stance break him pretty easily as a strength build
I think the funniest thing about this difficulty situation is that the exact same thing happened when the game first released, almost beat for beat.
New players were caught off guard by the difficulty, old players were caught off guard by new enemy attack patterns and mechanics, everyone either complained or said "get good."
Give it a month and everyone will be back to calling the game "Peak" again just like the first time.
Happened with Sekiro too, and with the Ringed City. This has been the FromSoftware Cycle since 2017
@@OmnicroneREDHappened with Armored Core 6 as well lol.
"Delayed attacks are sooo unfair" XD
I remember beating the final boss of the dlc, and was immediately like "that was BS, fromsoft needs to nerf this." Then a day later I'm "like that boss was awesome, another masterpiece by fromsoft." The cycle repeats itself.
Yeah pretty much
Even currently, the praise is slowly raising again the more people finished it and the more "cheese guides" are posted
also, if you respecced 10 times that IS a problem with the game. some builds can be better suited for bosses, but every boss should be beatable with every build
I went into the DLC completely blind (barring the trailers) and I don't regret it at all. I did have a lot of trouble with the bosses, but it reminded me of my first run-through of... well, hell, _all_ the other soulslike games. I've 100%'d Elden Ring's base game all three Dark Souls games, including the DS1 remaster and both versions of DS2, and I literally play these games to _relax_ at this point because the world's are so comfortingly familiar to me, but the DLC bosses kicked my ass in the same way that Elden Ring's base game bosses did when I first played it.
I still remember geting my ass handed to me by Godrick the Grafted - fucking _Godrick!_ The Runt of the demigods who's whole claim to fame is losing to everybody else and running away to hide in his treehouse! I remember pre-nerf Starscourge Radahn, I remember throwing myself against Melania for around three solid hours and getting mad at Waterfowl dance, and I remember all of it fondly.
I summoned for every boss in the DLC, I used spirit ashes, I explored the map until I had maxed out my Scadutree and Revered Ash blessings, I respecced around six times on a single boss, and - aside from phase 2 of the final boss - I had a blast with all of it! I'm currently in a NG+ playthrough of the same character working my way back towards entering the DLC so that I can do the NPC quests fully and try the bosses again with more foreknowledge, and I'm actively looking forward to revisiting it!
My only issues with the DLC are that I do feel phase 2 on the final boss is a litle _too_ bs even for souls veterans (I had to cheese it on my first runthrough using an absolutely busted perfumer build and it _still_ took around 4 attempts). I also don't like how walking too far in the wrong directly completely destroys the NPC quests midway through with no hope to reset them. I let it ride on my first run because it was what the developers intended but looking back it was pretty frustrating as it felt like the game was punishing me for exploring. Lastly I agree with a of people that the final boss's lore could have been a lot more interesting if they'd just traded one demigod for another. Spoilers below but:
It should have been Godwyn the Golden, since there was a closely established history between him and Miquella in a lot of base game lore and we even get to see Godwyn's Death Knights in the DLC. Making Miquella's consort Radahn felt like a bit of an ass-pull since the only (very vague) connection between the two was Melania and Radahn's battle, and while the DLC recontextualizes that in an interesting way, the existing theory of "Melania attacked Radahn because she thought he was responsible for Miquella's disappearance" matched up very well, especially with Mogwyn Palace being right under Caelid. Beyond that there was never any indication that Radahn and Miquella had any sort of prior relationship, let alone a promise to become eachother's consorts! I'm all for the DLC basically being one big gay soap opera but it would have worked much better if it'd been Godwyn instead of Radahn.
Honestly, I didn't have trouble with the blessing level, I had an issue with the map and the items spread so far and so thin that exploring felt like a chore. Most of the time the areas were large and empty. Sometimes you could find a blessing but I think the bigger issue is the open world dynamic is fine and worked in elden ring, but in sote it's so open that you can stumble into the last boss after 2 fights. Idk about others but I don't want to run around for 3 hours on my horse looking for a blessing to give myself a slight advantage in a fight.
While I agree that spending a lot of time against a boss has its fun side, it largely depends on the boss. So far the three bosses I spent the most time to beat were Messmer, Gaius and Mitra. Messmer was actually the one I took the longest, but it's still my favourite boss in the DLC, his attacks may hit hard, but he also has clear windows for you to punish, and the pattern felt mostly consistent. The biggest issues that made the fight a little annoying were the attacks were he travels a decent distance in the arena, either because sometimes it would mess with the camera (which is the one point that the DLC feels way worse than the base game for me), or which is specifically in the second phase, it's like he is constantly running from you.
For Midra it was weird. For me he was kinda like Radagon where I just couldn't get his timings, but in a completely opposite way. Radagon felt like he was both too fast and too delayed at the same time, and I was always confused of when to dodge, while for Midra, specially his sword attacks, it was like he was just kinda slow, but without feeling that it's a big delay, but in a way that wuld just feel weird to fight, Even in the way he walked, like I would try to get some distance to heal, but it was like he covered half the arena with one step, even if he isn't walking very fast (I know it's not a big arena, but still).
And Gaius was just awful. From the charge attack at the begining which he has invicibily and you can't miss the dodge by one milisecond, otherwise you get hit by the boar, that ultra long combo, big hitboxes and, at least that was my impression, he mixes his attacks a lot, making reading his patterns way harder because of the inconsistency. There some there that is also about the type of bosses I had the most trouble figuring their movements in this DLC, which were Romina and Metyr, which all fight like non-humanoid bosses, and specially in the case of Romina and Metyr they als have a lot of legs.
Honestly my problem with DLC is not the exploration bit of the game because that's fun, for the collectathon thing.
My biggest problem with the DLC is is massive balancing issues and not simply just damage that's like an obvious kind of deal.
The balancing I have a problem with is the fact some bosses are enemies kind of breaks the rules of the game like the fact some enemies and bosses feel like they're from a different game like they are far too aggressive and unflinching compared to the base game counterpart.
Especially much more prevalent with the main humanoid bosses that can just face tank everything despite the frames like both Rellana and Messmer.
Which honestly unfortunately that haunts the elden rings boss design and especially much more in the DLC is the Nameless King Poise that pretty much is the foundation of the Elden Ring stance break, because of the nameless King poise system it makes trading blows not fun because well bosses don't flinch including Messmer despite him being extremely light frame.
And also they're really aggressively fast with the inclusion of nameless King poise meaning effectively a lot of weapons that big and slow are pretty obsolete because they defeated the point of big weapons job of dealing damage and knocking because they are dealing with an impenetrable wall that will never be pushed down.
Which honestly how the bosses design I feel like they're more designed to be raid boss than a actual one-to-one kind of soulsborne boss because it really does feel like you need a team effort to comfortably beat these bosses, but yeah I don't mind the idea of very aggressive bosses it's just unfortunately this is the wrong game for it especially the stamina system that is not designed to have bosses that have the aggression level of endgame Kingdom Hearts 2 and Devil May Cry bosses.
Like John Elden ring is just not built for that kind of deal when John bloodborne is more fitted against these kind of bosses sense John bloodborne is all about the aggressive play style.
But yeah to finish it off I am just disappointed that I'm just so much used to bosses in previous games that beat you fair and square in the sense of the realms of they fight you in a way that your character can actually handle while the rest is up to you, which I just really wish Elden ring learns from the boss design of Slave Knight Gael because to me he's the idea of Boss design of he is designed fairly but still will kick your fucking ass and also he's not a wall which makes fights feel more intense because he actually reacts to your hits like it truly excites me when a hard boss feels like a living creature that can be harmed.
I miss the desperation of both sides desperately trying to kill each other before they die.
I miss that excitement!
The issues the DLC has (Which are valid complaints) is that the bosses are fought in a unfun way, when i only get to have 2 hits in while the boss does their 50 hit combo for the 10th time, it becomes frustrating, its the reason why sekiro's combat is generally seen as the best souls combat ever made. I cleared the DLC and done all its side content as well, its a enjoyable experience and the bosses can be fun, but a lot of the time arent due to the lack of defensive options on the players side, the deflect mechanic i see as a required thing to be added to base game, as honestly as the bosses get more and more offensive options and mixups while the players is stuck with a total of 3 defensive mechanics (Dodge/Jump/Block) just feels unfun
dude just use a shield parry or literally any other weapon that gives s.
this sounds like something that the mod Elden Ring Reforged would fix for you personally. It gives extra defensive options (ducking, sekiro style deflects) making for some more dynamic and less obnoxious experience because of ridiculous attack strings from bosses.
That just means you're too hesitant to take punish windows when they appear. Don't worry. You'll learn.
it's kind of weird that we have to play more realistic (shield&poke) but the bosses are just more pokemon
@@flappyflap2693 so those are the only tools for playing in a way to have fun?
I think the reason people would call the new bosses poorly designed is due to the fact that in past souls games, nearly every boss on some level felt like something you COULD beat on the first try, if you were good enough. The toughest fights were hard, but fair, and all their moves felt quite intuitive to dodge. The hardest fights in Elden Ring no longer feel like this. Nearly all the DLC bosses, and ESPECIALLY the final boss, all have moves that are so unintuitive to dodge that you actively have to either die to or get hit by them in order to eventually learn how to dodge them through trial and error. To me (I say me but the only bosses that have ever truly frustrated me are Malenia and the DLC Final Boss), and I suppose to others, this is not very fun. The game starts to feel less like a test of my abilities, and more like Geometry Dash, where I make a mistake and that's it, you get a do-over.
It is worth mentioning however, that this opinion is heavily build dependant, and additionally, heavily dependent on how you choose to approach Elden Ring. In past souls games, going at it all on your own felt like an entirely acceptable thing to do, whereas now, it feels like the game is balanced around Spirit Summons. This is not bad game design, however it is DIFFERENT to what the community is used to. The bosses are relentless now, but the spirit summons will create those openings for you that you got from older games in the series. It's just a different type of boss design.
I think the problem here is that for many, including myself, spirit summons trivialise fights a bit too much. The fights go from too hard, to suddenly, too easy, and the challenge you are looking for is now gone. One could argue that the challenge is perhaps in showing up to a fight well prepared rather than learning the fight itself, but I don't agree. Either way, if you wanted to do a solo playthrough like in the older games, i don't believe it to be as fun or to be as satisfying. Whilst playing the final boss of the DLC, I eventually changed my build to something that was a lot more effective in order to beat it solo. The build was borderline cheesy, but I had gotten to a point where I realised that if I had the time, I could beat it normally, but that I didn't want to invest the time into learning the fight because it just felt like a waste, which is a feeling no other souls game has given me. I have beat every boss in every souls game ( except DS2 which I haven't played) solo, and Elden Ring was the only one where I felt the experience of learning a fight to no longer be enjoyable.
I feel the exact opposite regarding the final boss. Just beat him today, his attacks are all completely dodgeable or avoidable, except for maybe the cross slash (I think you can avoid it if you dodge to the right twice in a row but I've yet to pull that off).
I think the problem with people within the community is that y'all cannot think out of the box. Countless times have I seen people constantly dodge into Rellana's attacks for example, even though she attacks faster than you can dodge. If you cannot roll as fast as the boss can attack, then you have to avoid the attacks entirely by outspacing and positioning favorably. With the final boss it's the exact opposite, it's almost always good to circle him around, dodge into him and to the side, for reasons you may already know. The whys and hows of the dodges become just as important as the timing, that's always been an Elden Ring thing, and many other people (including myself) enjoy that complexity infinitely more than the muscle memory based bossfights Soulsborne games usually had.
Do you know what the beauty of an attack like Waterfowl is? People figuring out ways to deal with it. I've seen people use greatshields, bloodhound step, an invulnerability ash of war, freeze pots, the lots. Elden Ring has a distinct focus on rewarding the players for their curiosity with tools. Ashes of War, weapons, consumables, spells, incantations, etc. If every single player out there looked at every single boss for the very first time and thought to themselves "My dodge and R1 should be enough" then what would the purpose of all those tools be, exactly? If an encounter does not make you think "This is not working, maybe I should try something new" what are the hundreds of skills and weapons sitting on your inventory good for?
The truth is, there has always been a divide between what Fromsoft actually intends their games to be and what the community sees them as. Noah Caldwell-Gervais has an incredible video essay on the Dark Souls trilogy that highlights exactly that: Fromsoftware creates unforgiving worlds not to challenge the player to journey them naked with a +0 wooden club, but to help the player get a sense of accomplishment by overcoming difficult odds. Fromsoftware creates the unforgiving worlds and then subtly helps you navigate them. They have always given you tools to rise above the odds, it just so happens that in the Dark Souls trilogy those used to come in the form of consumables and environmental hints, while in Elden Ring that help comes in the form of freedom of choice. Anyone can beat any Soulsborne game because Fromsoft never gives you a challenge without also providing ways to manage its difficulty through aspects that exist within the game's fiction like soul levels. They never give you an obstacle that they do not expect you to clear, because they've always rewarded you with ways to uniquely express how you would more easily rise above your enemy. The developers actively want you to make the game easier for yourself and this is even more true for Shadow of The Erdtree, the DLC which showers you with upgrade material as a clear hint that you should try new things as often as you'd like.
Fromsoftware's Soulsborne games aren't about dodging and pressing R1, they've about overcoming difficulty and feeling good for it. Elden Ring divorces itself from many of the combat design philosophies other Soulsborne games usually go by for the exact purpose of preserving adversity in the face of so many tools and so much freedom and by extent expects you to use those tools more than any other Fromsoft game.
I went through Elden Ring's DLC blind for this exact reason, I wanted to see what solutions I came up with for the problems presented to me. I ended up beating the final boss in around thirty tries and enjoyed the fight quite a bit due to the particular solutions I came up with for every one of his attacks and patterns. Not every solution was rolling, mind you, even though the boss is quite well telegraphed.
@@Erick-tv8oq I don’t think you’re wrong, Elden Ring is a different type of souls game and that’s okay.
However, I think part of the problem lies in that new design philosophy. It wants you to use the tools it provides to overcome ever-increasing challenges, but for many the “challenge” in the series wasn’t about figuring out the strongest tools, it was about beating challenges with the limited toolset available. The reason those sl1 runs of DS or bloodborne were appealing is because the bosses were so well designed that it was something fairly achievable. Now the late game bosses are so inflated difficulty wise that a whole playstyle is almost invalidated. You are supposed to use the tools they give you, however they do trivialise the experience and I think if you want to solely rely on dodge and r1 you should be able to. I feel the mark of a good boss IS that you could simply dodge and r1 and it still feels manageable (i know you can still do this but it is a lot less doable for the the majority of the playerbase now).
The problem with bosses like Radahn is that whilst it is possible to dodge nearly all of their attacks, it is not intuitive to do so. His attacks are not readable, you don’t dodge them through having learnt the game, rather through trial and error. Therein lies the issue. It is not fun to die to a boss when you feel every other attack should not have hit you. It’s not fun to die to a move after dodging it several different ways to no avail. It creates a challenge that now feels very artificial, rather than genuine.
You can day that the soulsborne games before weren’t about dodging and pressing r1, but I don’t think that’s correct. That playstyle is what the entire playerbase resorted to for a reason, and whether fromsoft likes it or not it was always the most optimal way of playing the game. The reason Sekiro is so good is because it removes that sense of doubt about whether you are playing the game wrong and offers you one single path forward, which is why it’s their best imo.
@@Erick-tv8oq sorry if my followup wasn’t super coherent btw. You sent a very long reply and it was hard to keep track of all of it when replying on my phone haha. Appreciate the discussion though :)
@@Erick-tv8oq also just to add on one last thing, I feel waterfowl dance exemplifies the problem with the boss design. It has a lot of ways to deal with it, but none are intuitive or even optimal. Shields make her heal, and freeze pots are a limited resource for example.
The sign of a well designed move is one that you can feasibly avoid all damage for with a well timed dodge. Waterfowl dance’s first flurry has a single, incredibly specific and unintuitive way to dodge it which is also incredibly difficult to pull off. That’s why it is a bad move, because it is designed to hit you, and that stops the fight from feeling challenging but fair, and just makes it feel unfair.
@@brinsk7151 I agree with you, I think From boss design peaked in Dark Souls 3, the newer ones are good and more challenging, but I just don't think they're that fun
I've been enjoying the DLC but you have to admit a large amount of it punishes spellcasters and weaker spirit summons. It feels like it was designed to counter popular powerful tactics but as a side effect it nullifies a lot of weaker weapons and options. Many of the bosses almost never stance break now and are using massive AOEs ad a crutch. Melania broke the combat a bit too but the final boss of the DLC is tearing it apart with lots of particle effects and AOE spam. When you suggest people lean on OP strategies to beat Malenia and the DLC when they didn't have to for the base game you're moving away from build freedom.
Dont see the point of having a lot of build variety if its not viable on All bosses(also pretty sure the base game has like 12 larval tears so i really doubt tge game expects you to change your build to every fight)Also there is The problem of People dont find all builds fun, me for exemple i think summons and Mage builds are just boring if i need to use them to have a fair chance i dont wanna play anymore
I can’t get behind this idea of completely changing your build for each fight being the “correct” way to go. Even if the game gives you plenty of opportunities to respec, what’s the point of slowly crafting a build of your choosing over the course of the game if you’re constantly expected to change it at a moment’s notice? At that point, why even have any stats other than HP, FP, and Stamina?
Obviously some builds are gonna have an easier time against some bosses than others, that’s a given However, if a boss requires a specific build for the player to even have a chance, it doesn’t matter how easy it is to respec when that ultimately spits in the face of the player choice that Elden Ring champions so frequently, especially if the game never properly communicates that to the player.
And when it comes to changing a build at a moments notice, it’s a lot harder than just reallocating some stats. You have to fully upgrade weapons as well, which costs tens of thousands of runes for each individual weapon meaning you have to potentially grind before you can use a new build to its fullest extent. Switching up flask allocation also isn’t taken into account, as switching from a melee-focused build to even a spell-blade build means the player must get used to having access to less healing.
Refusal to change up a build isn’t a refusal to engage with new game mechanics. It’s players wanting to play the game their way, as the base game has encouraged them to do. And if the tools that are necessary to combat certain bosses are restricted to certain builds or limited-use cases, that is intentional obfuscation on the part of the devs to artificially increase the difficulty of the game.
Agreed.
For the final boss, i liked the challange but it was bogged down by me literary not seeing whats happening. All the spell effects and the outfit change (without spoiling) made for a visualy cluttered fight imo. I just used a shield to combat that but it left a bad aftertaste
I love messmier, but his second phase is just pure cancer with how much my camera move trying to follow the snake
Honestly, my main criticisms of the DLC aren't even remotely related to difficulty -- I'm surprised the major discussions aren't about basic quality of life measures. I would've loved to see a "sandbox" feature where you could try out maxxed weapons and play around with stats before committing (i.e using larval tear/playing smithing stone fetch quest). This way, you could still put a limit on respecc-ing and max level weapons, but still be able to experiment.
I would like to ask how everyone feels about quest breakability in this dlc. I feel like most of the quests can be broken so easily that you need a guide to not miss very cool questlines and items.
The typical Souls quest design just doesn't work in an open world, simple as that.
When it came time to fight radahn I had already watched several others playthrough the game, so i knew how difficult it was going to be going in. After about 20 ish attempts with 17 getting him to second phase i realised that for the first time in the game i was legitimately not having any fun. So i summoned a stranger and beat him on that try. I felt no regret or satisfaction i just wanted to move on.
Side note the rewards are ass so i feel even less bad because i dont want to struggle for that shit.
Very comprehensive and well put together video! When you said that the game "Isn't Dark Souls IV" it really hit me and caused me to re-examine the way I play Elden Ring. I realize now that my insistence on not using spirit summons is rooted in my good memories playing the Souls series solo where all the bosses were designed to be beaten alone in case you didn't have access to an internet connection or friends lol. Elden Ring introduced Spirit Summons in an attempt to free themselves from that constraint and open the game up to allow for more variety in builds. Big problems I had with the balancing around things like spells and bows no longer applies because the Spirits are there to take aggro while you charge up your spells or knock a greatarrow. I try very hard not to be an elitist who holds people to the standard of having to not play with summons, but I wasn't giving myself that grace under the false pretense that the game would provide me with a better experience if I played that way.
Granted there were a solid few fights where I was proven right. Malenia, Mohg, and Radagon in particular were so rewarding to bash my head into over and over again and really reinforced the idea that not using summons was more fun. But upon reflection, bosses I found tedious and a little unfair like Astel, Rykard, and the Fire Giant were always genuinely more fun when I had help from a summon. Hell, Radahn's whole fight was just to show how awesome this game can be when you're not the only one fighting, but unfortunately I, and many others, saw Radahn as an exception in this way instead of a thesis statement, likely resulting in his nerf. I am now able to see that as the tragedy it really is, as Fromsoft is unfortunately being held to a standard and legacy that they can't seem to escape from. (Another fantastic example that you brought up was Balteus in AC6 which I still mourn to this day.)
Despite all this I do still think Radahn 2 is ridiculous but this is getting long and I probably should write my own essay instead of a super long UA-cam comment so I think imma go do that instead lol. Thank you for your time
The camera continues to be Elden Ring's worst boss design and hey guess what you get to fight it throughout the entire DLC! Seriously I don't understand how a game can be such a masterpiece in so many ways, but utterly fumble something as basic and fundamental as the damn camera.
Otherwise, I just hate the amount of waiting you have to do. No longer are the days of satisfying pushing and pulling and dancing, trading blows. Now you just have to wait 30 seconds for an 8000 combo to end and hope that it doesn't immediately chain into the next 8000 hit combo.
Cameras actually suck to code
The bosses are so fast and in the air all the time that the camera can barely keep up. I hated the Commander Gaius fight.
Unlock your camera more often. Use a ranged ash of war that you can attack the boss with good spacing with it's combos, jump attack the last attack of a combo to get guaranteed damage should it want to continue a combo
@@ama9385-w2g oh I'll try that thanks
@@internetguy7319 The dumb thing is they already solved the Camera problem on larger bosses for Sekiro. For bigger bosses (like the great ape) the camera actually pulls out during the fight, meaning the whole boss is always in frame, I don't know why they didn't have this happen during the boss fights in Elden Ring.
The main problem with the game isn't the difficulty, here are the real problems(not in order ranking):
- many useless incantations to the point it feels like a joke to include them
- exploration is not rewarding, by the time you arrived in the DLC you already have unlimited smithing stones access and they decided to put smithing stone as a reward for most of the time and when you find purple drop thinking you'll get cool weapon you'll be rewarded with cookbook
- many empty and gimmicky area like cerulean coast, ruin of unte, and that giant finger thing (there's 2 of them dedicated only to one quest, no boss in the area, no meaningful rewards), even there's not much you can do in the starting area aside from 1 furnace giant which is very different than what we had with the base game or even limgrave only
- lack of new weapon type, we only get like 3 light greatsword, 3 great katana, 3 backhand blade and a gazillion CGS, this is also connected to my first point, because there aren't many new unique weapons they decided to put smithing stone or cookbook as reward
- overtuned boss design that could cover up the entire screen while having soo many particles at the same time
List of problems with DLC
1: Very bad camera
2: Massive frame drops
3: Unforgivable bosses that give no time to heal and give a chance to attack back.
4: Idiots saying that it is a skill issue while youre LITERALY always getting your health dropped by almost EVERY ENEMY even with all blessings maxed!
5: Terrible and mediocre boss rewards. Most rewards you get always make you go back to the meta build because 80% of weapons/spells/incantations suck and never get used.
I have been playing since day one and I agree with most people that the DLC is too difficult for an average Fromsoft player.
The game is not too hard but some of the more "spectacular" fights definitely need to be optimized better. Especially the first and last boss. The game runs like it has both legacy dungeons fully rendered during those fights even though theyre completely out of view
It isn't too hard, it's just too annoying.
All the ways they made bosses hard feel like you're adapting to weird stuff the developers are trying to kill you with, instead of adapting to the enemy.
Also delayed attacks don't punish recklessness, they punish proper judgement. You counter them by dying and remembering that that specific animation doesn't line up with what would actually happen. Same with extreme gap closures for heal punishes. It's memorization through brute force and not really learning outside of it's most basic conception.
It is fair but only because unlimited attempts means memorization matters and correct judgement doesn't.
Most of the DLC bosses are not annoying at all if you have a normal build.
I'd rather have my "mindset focused on improving" while I learn new skills irl and not in some game I play for fun, tyvm.
And I don't really get why every souls-fan UA-camr had to film a response to some dlc getting mixed reviews for a few days (it's up in "mostly positive" now), like it's a big deal. Not that it matters, but it has already sold like, what, 5 mil copies? What are y'all defending it from?
> "Not a good place to facilitate conversation", what is a good place then?
"this game shows people the game isnt as miserable as you would expect"
shows a clip of him getting absolutely fucked over by the game for no reason at all
I’ve played and beaten it twice. It’s a phenomenal game but it’s too hard in a bullshit way. Hit boxes are nonsensical and every boss is “ok second phase where we will just add an AoE on top of the absurd hit boxes” and it just really only leaves one feasible way to play
Promised consort radahn was my breaking point. the rest of the DLC was a mixed bag, but i had a lot of fun especially on rellana and messmer. But radahn was just too much aggression followed by a phase 2 that should have came with an epilepsy warning
My favorite part of any souls games is having to adapt my playstyle if I'm getting wrecked by a boss!
Changing my build up is fun, but I still tend to play a build within my stats (because I think respec is a pain)
Respec also kind of hurts role-playing immersion. My lord of frenzied flame character is not respecing to intelligence build
This just highlights how rigid Elden ring is when it comes to easy switch ups for builds, you need a consumable limited item to even respec and you need to do it at a specific place every single time, it would be good if the game just allowed me to do it at every grace if that's really what it aims to do but that's clearly not the design mindset behind respecs
@@reyalfa18 There are like 18 of the item for respec in the main game. They are not rare and you can just fast travel to the grace to respec. It is easy to respec if you want to.
You need also to level a weapon to 25
I never bothered respeccing. You can overcome most challenges by trying a different weapon, armour or swapping spells and talismans.
The DLC also constantly throws materials at you so you can craft loads of the new livers that reduce damage by 22% and the new dragon item that boosts your stats by 32 levels.
It boggles my mind when a lot of people can so easily dismiss unfair moves and combos that bosses can do. Some times yes it is unfair
Seriously. The only reason people struggled with Malenia is that bullshit waterfowl dance. It's completely unfair, any other developer would be roasted for that kind of mechanic, but Fromsoft can do no wrong for their fanboys.
16:37 The biggest way to protect one's ego with "leaving a boss and saving it for later" is understanding that you "leaving the boss" is really just letting your brain download the fight in the background. Even if you're not squaring up against the boss every minute of your playtime, you're still getting better at it by ingraining habits that will help you later. I always find that to be more helpful than just mindlessly running into the boss arena for hours on end.
I think my main problem is that bosses and their difficulty continue to evolve with the player barely changing from DS3
At it's core Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4 and I can't deny that
The biggest difference is that it's an open world
And don't give me that "It's not technically dark souls" when it's using an almost identical formula for how the player moves and operates
And at least I personally feel like constantly upping the difficulty each game isn't going to be fun anymore
I personally have been playing these games for years at this point, DS3 and Bloodborne are some of my favourite games of all time
But with Shadow of the Erdtree it feels like it's hard for being hard's sake
It doesn't feel Nuanced at all, delayed attacks are overused to the point where it just gets cheap, and long attack combos from bosses just makes the fight drawn out more than it needs to be
If From continues to make their games harder and harder just for the sake of a challenge
I'm not going to be able to enjoy it anymore
And that genuinely upsets me
Its not too 'hard' its just too 'frustrating' as they over tuned the bosses aggression and speed while keeping the player the same dark souls speed, its just not fun when all you can do is stiff bunny hop and roll through 8+ attacks only to be able to get one hit in and possibly get punished for daring to attack in the first place
"Fromsoft can't just keep building the same boss fights or playing the same tricks over and over again"
when every boss goes bayblade-mode + aoe spam, it's basically that.
Yeah, I have no idea what he's talking about with that.
Thanks for the music list in the description!
I'm an atheist, but people who do that will in fact go to Heaven.
Beaten the Dancing Lion and honestly loved learning how and when to dodge its attacks
I think the complaints about it being "overtuned" are true tbh.Max level skibidi blessing essentailly doubles your restistances and output, which is needed to not get 2 pieced/actually deal damage where as in the base game you could just put on better armor or level vigor. The previous dlc's didn't have a scavenger hunt mechanic that was required to progress, nor did they expect you to to have a sense of growing threat because numbers go up. Repeat playthrus are going to be a fucking chore because you have to skibidi bop every single time even if you know the moveset because we're not all Gino and cant pull off no hits. The blessing also negates the (imo) core difficulty option over over levelling, learning when you're op, then coming back when you're not. I refuse to call a scavenger hunt a level up mechanic.
The only bad thing in the DLC is the Promised Consort
Literally a BS Tohou fight
If he didn't have the abundance of undodgeable attacks and Light Pillars shitting all over the floor he would be 100% more enjoyable and still hard
Bro it's not too hard, it just feels like shit to learn regardless of the build pretty much. I had to balance my own build to not accidentally steamroll everything, shit's skyrim level broken.
And regarding that From can't make same bosses forever - maybe stop making fucking DS3 forever? There are other types of combat yknow. DS3 was great, let it rest. Make a unique game, not a ds3 mod, and all problems with difficulty woll disappear on themselves.
So on the subject of getting stuck, I was stuck on Maliketh of almost a solid week and holy shit I hated it and still do every time I replay the game. It didn't make me feel challenged just miserable
Did you try using the Blasphemous Claw?
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer I've used it on subsequent play throughs but didn't know about it my first time
Here's the thing. Elden ring is actually a rhythm game. Learn the tempo, learn the dance. That is how you play the game. If that doesn't work for you, then use a plus 10 mimic tear and a cheese weapon of your choice. I prefer Mohg's Spear.
@@yesmansam6686 For me his rhythm was just so… weird. I never fully got the hang of every attack but did eventually beat him. Hardest base game boss for me by far
@@yesmansam6686 Souls have pretty much always been rhythm games to a degree, this one is just more tedious if you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to learning a boss.
"Folks ram their head for 7 hours againsta single boss."
Yeah, I fought Fume Knight dude.
Yeah, that one killed me more than Mallenia or any Elden ring boss ever did
I never understood the big deal about that guy. I beat him first try. He's like the most classic boss ever. Well-telegraphed slashes, some telegraphed explosions with projectiles, and a phase transition that makes him easier if anything. Only negative thing about him are his hitboxes, but just dodge to be safe and you'll be alright.
God that brought back memories,
and i didn't regret a second of it
@@TheStraightestWhitestI didnt find him hard either.
@@beri4138 Right? He's so simple. At least Alonne had a few nasty timings to figure out.
Yakko, please CHRIST try Sekiro since you loved the Deflecting Hard Tear!!!!
My problem with the DLC is that I play Elden ring to play Elden ring. Elden ring was the easiest souls game and that's how I liked it it was about the freedom, the open world, the freedom to play with any build, or just go to Margit without having to go to the weeping peninsula just to get some fragments to level up. The DLC is a lot less free and more like Dark Souls I love Dark Souls but I'm not playing Elden ring to play Dark Souls. I just want to have fun without being force to do the things that Elden ring wants because I'll do it on my own I don't want to be forced to explore just to make bosses manageable I want to do it at my own pace. I don't want to have to respec and change my build 50 times because I have to fight a new boss that's what I liked about Malenia I could use my own build or whatever I wanted I just had to get better instead of changing to a build i night not even like. Plus there's some other things I want to mention like some bosses not really being interesting like the base game even easy bosses like Godrick having cutscene that make them really memorable where as people like Rellana or Romina not being as memorable or as impactful as they don't even get a cutscene. This DLC just wasn't what i wanted from Elden ring this would be fine as a dark souls DLC I just wanted more of that Elden ring freedom.
I think my main issue with difficulty is that it doesn't play out evenly. Using my normal playstyle i would have never beaten the final boss, heck I barly got to phase 2 with near max scedu spirit summons and a ton of defence buffing.
Then I swapped to a greatshield build and then won my 3rd attempt and only loss the first two tries to insta death grabs.
The bosses used to be weak to patience but now it's a brude force memorization of your reflexes, especially with the camera doing what it does.
So only a few weapons and playstyles really make it past end game bosses.
No, you can beat the boss with any playstyle. Just because certain builds had it easier does not make the game flawed. Certain strategies will always be better in any game of this nature. it is simply how varied builds and encounters work. You could have beaten the boss without swapping playstyles, it was just hard and you decided to quit and try an easier method. That isn't a bad thing, but its not really a great criticism either. I beat the final boss using my same old quality build. Using my heavy thrusting sword. Am I a god gamer? No, I just learned the boss' moveset after getting bodied for two hours. I could have swapped to an easier build, but I saw no need to do so. I knew I could learn how to beat the boss my way, and you could have if you wanted.
Also, the bosses still require patience. You need patience to properly learn movesets and the ability to not get tilted because you made the wrong choices. The bosses have not changed, they are just new and still hard. You always needed good reflexes to recognize attacks, and the patience and knowledge to know when and where to roll or stand. Newer bosses are just getting more complex movesets, as From has literally made like 6/7 soulsborne games. You can't expect the bossses to still do swings of the same speed in the same ways. If anything, they need more patience now than ever to beat.
To help expand on why I find what you say to be flawed. In fighting games are zoners and grapplers poorly designed because the zoners naturally counter the grapplers? The answer is no. Unique builds or characters will lead to some naturally countering others. Just because you looked up or decided to try the easiest strategy does not mean the game has a difficulty balancing issue. Some builds are disproportionally strong, but perfect balance between all builds is literally not possible. You want a perfectly balanced game? Play a game where you don't have the choice to build different ways. Multiple options will always lead to some being better than others for different things.
Certain builds making the boss easier is the point, its the games soft difficulty modes.
If you can only beat the final boss with summons and op builds, that just means you aren't skilled enough to do it on "hard mode"
My little brother just beat the final boss, no bleed , no frost, fragment level 18, with a total of 20ish hours on the final bosd alone.
It's a matter of degrees. I think the way they pushed difficulty has resulted in less interesting play. Sure some play styles being stronger for some bosses has always been a thing but this has stretched that beyond the point of being fun or engaging.
One way is a brick wall you are bashing your head against to perfectly time, build muscle memory and then maintain for an extended fight with few mistakes allowed lest you catch the begining of a combo that will one shot you.
And the other is piss easy, where you hardly need to pay attention to the boss except for a single grab attack and a few openings to heal chip damage.
I like hard bosses but this ain't interesting. Something like the Fume Knight was interesting because it had complex but fair movesets and provided an even challenge to all play styles.
The over reliance on long combo strings and mass AoE with minimal room for error naturally pushes us down this route of less interesting fights because the boss fight has just turned into a rhythm game and not a strategic battle where you make decisions, now you only react.
It's this kind of brainstem only play that made Sekiro less enjoyable for me.
@@spudermoth it's like the very basics of RPGs.
If the enemy is a fire type you want to use the armour that protects you against fire and the weapon that's strong against fire.
I've realised the reason people think Dark Souls is a hard game, is because these people are really dumb and ignored 90% of the game's mechanics.
One time when I staggered the hippo boss fight his head went through the wall and I couldn't crit him, and then he killed me. One of the funniest things that happened to me in Elden Ring 10/10,
My favorite part about that fight is how I struggled for hours on it,and when I won my friend called me up to help him fight his version of the same boss,and it was so rewarding to fight that boss again but essentially destroy it because I memorized it to a T
I haven't seen this happen to anyone else, but divine beast lion once pushed me through the fog wall with his head and I couldn't get back in.
@@masonrockwood7732 he didnt want to fight anymore, pretty funny.
Nothing in the dlc was more infuriating than slapping a furnace golem's heels for five minutes to knock it over only for the head to be sitting out of reach for a critical
@@Rusty_Spy Oh yes! Happened to me in the last area. Golem fell over and had its head over the cliff TWICE in one fight. Another time the head landed on a pile of stones and was too high up to do a critical. I jumped off the cliff both times. :/
Boss fights are my least favorite parts of these games so this review hasn't convinced me that the DLC is for me.
SPOILERS:
I've had no problems in the DLC until I got to Radahn. The number of openings he gives you is almost non-existent in phase 2.
It depends what kind of build you are playing... Every single boss is hyper aggressive with full arena gap closers and able to link the end of any combo into another combo in way less time than a lot of the longer animations. So if your build relies on any animation that takes longer than a second, you are going to be miserable. If you are playing a quick melee build or a quick casting build, you will be fine.
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I don't think it's "too hard." I just think it doesn't have enough variety. They tried too hard to make hard bosses hard through the lens of hyper-aggression. Hyper aggressive bosses can be interesting, but hyper aggressive bosses are by nature, much easier to beat with certain builds than others. There are other ways to make a boss difficult that can reward other styles of play.
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Variety rewards different builds in different ways, which is one of the things I always loved about soulsborn games. I play through the games multiple times and experience the unique challenges certain builds face. But when every boss is hyper aggressive... you might as well just play a cookie cutter katana build and call it a day.
i dont mind much for the damage scaling or the difficult moves, but they seriously shouldnt be overly tanky.
While the final boss is tanky messmer certainly dies a bit quickly, it broke my immersion a bit
it's a mix of both, if the boss takes a billion hits to kill it shouldn't 3 shot me. (cough final boss cough)
@@chickennugget6684 cough every single boss before the scadutree balance update cough
even with dumb fragments bosses still can combo you almost all your health. ive been playing online seeing people just die because they got combo slamed or Aoe hit. All it takes is one wrong step. This Dlc broke my illusion that fromsoft makes any fair game.
@@peacefusion which bosses?
I have to admit, every time a boss fight is a little bit more challenging I’m cursing every developer involved in the game alongside their families, yet after finally beating the boss I’m like “yeah, good job guys, that was cool”
Omg I can relate. I am like "what the hell were they thinking, those fools!!!" And then "Jesús, that was amazing 10/10 would die to it again"
The only boss that I have yet to do that to is the last boss of the DLC. Completely psychotic, most bullshit 2nd phase ever. Even after I beat it, it was a complete hollow victory. No joy at all.
@@WhyNot-sb9vx Skill issue.
I think the difference between a good boss and a bad one is that with a good one, after killing it you want to fight it again just for fun, with a bad one you don't, after having beaten Malenia without summons (I have nothing against people who use summons, it's just that I don't like how they break the bosses AI and break the game balance) I never felt like fighting that boss ever again, it's just not fun.
@@TheStraightestWhitest Of course a fromsoft fanboy who thinks everything they put out is good.
I think the issue is less the actual difficulty, and more the boss design philosophy of "cheeze it or die" being tiring as hell to go through. I personally have not been stuck on a boss too long, the longest was Rellana for a little under two hours, but having that same aggression and intensity be prevelant for EVERY major boss has made the experience lopsided
Speaking as a Souls veteran whose been playing since Bloodborne, my issue with the bosses in Elden Ring is that I don't feel like I'm learning the fight at all. The lopsided nature of the encounters either kill me too quickly to learn something, or I kill the bosses too quickly and I don't see everything they have to offer
Like I ended my session last night by killing what I'm considering the games hidden "super boss" in an old abandoned mansion (iykyk) FAIRLY handedly. I had 7 red flasks left, and the boss went down before I really saw its moveset
If either I or the boss am dying before I can see what its about, then thats more than a little disappointing to me, and thats been fairly common in Shadow of the Erdtree, despite the games attempts to number crunch stats with the Scaduu fragments system
The hand written lore notes! Really wished that I did the same with all these games, I could just imagine how fun it would be to lore hunt and get "Aha!" revelations about the underlying story.
One thing this game made sure to grind in the players' mind is that the guard counter mechanic exists. It does a fuckton of posture damage and is a more damaging hit than the standard LB attack. Make sure you guard counter every time you're allowed to, and you'll have more guardbreaks than you can count. Independently of your SL.
i hate having to ignore every boss i find and collecting these tree fragments until they stop one-shotting me
Why do you think they build that huge map for?
Level vigor my guy. Nothing in most of the DLC is one-shotting 2000+ health and good defenses. Also don't use the soreseals, obviously.
Yeah, I hope they go back to a more linear design in the next game. Open worlds cause a lot of problems for souls design. More linear leads to a more consistent difficulty and I feel it is a more fair experience.
Careful, you are not allowed to have that opinion here!
Bro you are not meant for this game, if you cant figure out how to not get 1 shot
You're pretty wrong. For instance, the final boss has MANY attacks that either close the distance or require the player to sit in their armpit where they cant see wtf is even going on. And that's not to mention all the annoying af overstimulation that is the AOEs.
I'm kinda sick of dodge rolling through nukes, even if it is cool. 🤷♂️ My immersion is just completely and utterly shattered most of the time
My problem with the dlc is the exploration. The open world and minor catacombs are just boring. The beauty of seeing a new area is great, but the actual content feels unpolished compared to the legacy dungeons. The open world has so many copy paste enemies that get stale very fast.
The big fire dudes are especially annoying. Even with a high scadu blessing they still have so much health. But they arent hard, just tedious. They only have a couple moves, none of which are hard to dodge so you just loop the situation slowly scratching its ankles until it dies. Apparently you can throw those big jars at their head, but i didnt know that and im guessing neither did the vast majority of people.
The repeat dragon, another putrid spirit avatar thing, so many hands, npc "boss" fights, etc... it just isnt up to the amazing standard of for example shadow keep which is amazing.
I understand that the game is big, so you can say it's unfair to expect all the content to be top tier, but why did the game need to be so big? Id rather have less content but have it be really good than have more content thats mediocre.
The exploration felt like a chore to be able to actually get to the good part.
I'm starting to think i just dont like open world because i found Zelda botw to be boring too
I think there is also commentary to be made about how much free time you need to have to enjoy grinding dozens of times an area or a boss.
These discussions about difficulty end up taking the focus away from the incredible things about the game and the DLC. The best part of the fight against Bayle for me is hearing Igon screaming like a lunatic while shooting arrows at the dragon. Getting to know ST Trina and Thiollieer's quest (his armor set is beautiful, by the way). Reaching that flower field after so much suffering left me deeply moved, I won't lie. Seeing the fate of the NPCs guided by Miquella. Testing new builds with the new weapons and spells. This whole new sense of discovery, like when you were playing Elden Ring for the first time, is incredible.
"I respecd 10 times" like it's a good thing lmao
How is it a good thing, LMAO? How the fuck is an RPG forcing you to respec a good thing? Seems like you played too much MMOs or MOBAs, dude. The whole appeal of a good RPG, is that you are able to enjoy it while playing it the way YOU like, as it was well designed to accommodate for every play style, not the way the game demands you it should be played or the way metakids tell you is the best way to play. But I guess modern industry is so devoid of good RPGs nowadays that kids have no idea what is that and think that respeccing 10 times is a good thing. Sad, really.
Well, elaborate when it ain't. I guess for the people who just wanna stick to 1 playstyle only without ever wanting to change they would see it as a bad thing. Well tough shit mate.
@@alifpatria2135 It's a fucking RPG, not MMO.
The difficulty is what it is but regarding just how the whole game is received at this point it feels like any sort of criticism aimed at it seems to garner so many essays reconstructing the arguments. Criticism of media/art is entirely subjective and I believe thoughtful critiques good or bad should be respected. My issues were with the boss fight designs more so than the difficulty. Elden ring with just how massive it is kinda milked the souls genre to its limit, like there are only so many places the centerpiece of its gameplay (it's boss fights) can go. The endless combo strings in the base game kinda took away that idea of everyone is the game being beholden of the same rules (ie stamina and limited attack volume), it kinda led to players including me choosing hit and run tactics very much revolving around single shot/overtime effects damage than the back and forth in the pocket combat that got me into soulsborne. There's nothing with switching up approaches towards bosses since it's a entirely new IP BUT is it really? Player characterd very much still operate like and are attuned like dark souls 3 whole bosses have now have multi hit chains that pushes you towards playing form the outside in rather then staying within the action, games are still bearable make no mistake but it's very much using a set formula that it kinda beats all praise about the game being so open ended. The DLC chooses to go all in on screen filling AoE attacks, again same hit and run strategy is viable and if you go against it you're supposed to battle the boss and the visual diarrhoea from the AoE. Fromsoft still is stubborn enough to not give you the options to adjust the field of view in bossfights which to me has been the biggest example of using obtuse design choices to beef up the difficulty and if you speak on it suddenly the devs' "vision" is being trampled on. Souls games have always been built on enforcing artificial difficulty by willfully using obtuse choices in UI and non difficult related accessibility features and it's subset of Stans have turned any justified criticism into "it was intended that way" whataboutism. Last thing, the Eurogamer reviewer also rightly pointed out the dlc's decision to forcefeed the player exposition and fasttarcking you to the endgoal. The writing in fromsoft games often is very dissociated from the individual, so having it centred so suddenly just felt incredibly forced (take for instance that cringeworthy monologue during the bayle fight). Those points by the reviewer were entirely ignored by fanboys doing their typically childish ganging up on even the mildest criticism of the game. At this point anything soulsborne by fromsoft is above critique acc to its diehards. Imagine ppl sending threats to Mark Kermode if he gave a cold review to their favourite actors/directors. Forcing elden ring as a standard in RPGs is just so tired at this point, it just speaks of an entitled subset of fans.
The DLC is a matter of adapting to each and every challenge - that is until you use the greatshied talisman, buff a greatshield and use a spear that procs bleed - then you pretty much win against any and every boss first try
I feel like he would you would like penny's big breakaway. It's this fun 3d platformer with fun movement mechanics that revolve around using a yoyo. It has a fun style and story and it's kinda like sonic with the momentum based yoyo riding. Overall I think you should atleast try it.
I’m so tired of people pretending that Elden Ring doesn’t have an entire shield system that has a block, counter, and parry mechanic that the game ACTIVELY encourages you to use. They ONLY use the dodge roll and it’s beyond ridiculous to think it’ll work perfectly 100% of the time unless you’re a god gamer.
two things that I discover from this DLC is shield + guard counter is absolutely broken, and you don't have to lock on 24/7.
I'm sick of people forcing their only way to play and got pulverized and later complained about it. I've tried multiple weapon for multiple bosses, having success from backhand blade, nagakiba, Bloodhound fang, dragon halberd, almost every weapon is viable as long as I'm familiar with it enough, some people above actually having success with dual dagger which I can never get comfortable due to the incredibly low poise damage.
Point is, these complainers are too busy complaining rather than trying the VAAASTTT mechanic and option this game gave them.
I'm sure some of these complainers are RoB/bleed spammer or moonveil one trick.
I started with the brass shield and it was rough. Fingerprint on the other hand was way too broken to be fun
Maybe becuz some of us prefer power stancing or dual wielding. I enjoyed power stancing more than shield and another weapon unless it is a shield and a weapon build.
I'm so tired of people pretending that it's okay for bosses to force you to change build WHEN THE GAME INTRODUCED DUAL WIELDING.
MW you can beat DS1 without ROLLING.
meanshile i'm wondering if i'm going insane cause i swear shields are way more finicky than the other games
They are really good though.
It doesn't matter what negatives you lay against a souls game. The community will say either Get Gud or Skill Issue regardless of whether your criticism is valid or not
That is the reason why the quality of bosses only gets worse over time. These were my favorite games but the community is killing them slowly.
@@m.dave2141it sucks how quickly the boss design philosophy is becoming "if it's beatable, it's fair"
i think the worst part about it is the final boss honestly, the light speed attacks and amount of effects on screen is just really ridiculous,
finally someone mentioned the deflecting hardtear, its criminal how nobody talks about how good and game changing it is, it makes every humanoid fight into a different kind of dance. Malenia now resembles much of her original sekiro design when able to be deflected, including waterfowl dance which yes can be deflected if you know the timing. this applies to rellana heavily too.
It literally carried me in the final boss. Blocking with my Greatsword had been a saving grace for me throughout the base game, so it feels serendipitous that blocking would become the lynchpin for beating the final boss of the dlc
I got a gripe with that tweet trying to use iceborne against this dlc, monster hunter’s gameplay loop is kill monster to make its weapons and armor to kill more monsters. Elden Ring is an open world game where you can challenge things whenever you want and the bosses do not gatekeep any straight up upgrades all of those are found outside of bosses, hell even in dark souls if you don’t explore enough you aren’t upgrading your weapons
damn, what an insightful review, if only i could support this underated creator.
To be fair, getting assblasted by the gank fight and then the final bullshit of a boss leads me to believe the reviews aren't entirely fabricated on lack of skill.
feels those players aren't fully utilizing what the game provides
and just do the build they did before expecting the same results
it's like Mohg's fight People though his Nihil move is dumb and bs
when it's the easiest to counter
with Melania thinking she is busted is bs
when people also found a way to counter her
so what I say is Give it time and let it simmer then let's see
@@lag00n54 "Simmering" won't do anything about the gank fight. Unless you get at least 2 other NPCs to help it just devolves into hit and run or getting blendered. When it comes to the final boss, I haven't tried it personally however everyone including the souls vets agree it's overtuned so I'm compelled to agree.
@@anitaremenarova6662 with gank
Use summons
@@anitaremenarova6662 eitherway my point was rn it seems too difficult but knowing how people find and be creative there is a way
Besides apparently few days ago they buffed the blessings for easier access early game in dlc
@@anitaremenarova6662 friend of did not like using npc summon as it made final fight boss tankier
So he just opted without the npc
I think you made your points really well. I feel like while it boils down to "git gud" as usual, the one issues is I see that if the DLC was its own game no one would complaign. However it is DLC for Elden Ring, and yet it somehow does not really feel like Elden ring? Now the bosses requiring so much patience and you being mostly on defensive feels really strange and like a shift in what the OG game was. Even with smaller things like some bosses not even really letting you summon for free which just felt cheap. One of the the main mechanicks in the game suddenly restricted and it makes the diffuclty spike caused by it a little cheap.
In the end you are correct mostly, lot of this is subjective, but it still does not change that the shift in the way bosses acts in DLC will put a lot of people off or just be straight up not fun. I do not like having to roll around and defend until boss finishis his 25 hit combo so he lets me do one thing (and yes I did not ignore how you found out you can create more openings, but there was also quite a caviat and specific way you had to look for that didn't you? LIke "just use back hand blades" well if you have game that dozens of options but the only option against an enemy being to respecc to a specific weapon to get more openings that I don't think that is a good thing.).
15:40 ngl, I wouldn't mind a "Top 10 Games to play after a 9-5" tierlist
The Problem with Elden Ring’s DLC isn’t that the bosses are “HARD” persay. But they are hard to the point where LEARNING them isnt FUN. People had fun learning bosses in Dark Souls. People don’t have fun learning bosses in the DLC because they can’t because they are dying in 2-3 hits even WITH their scadutree blessings that people keep bringing up. Me personally I don’t mind i just put on god mode to learn and have my fun. But most players cant or dont lol
Just git gud wth
If you're getting killed in a couple of hits it's because your build is trash or you're getting punished for badly timed rolling, (being hit while rolling or jumping does significantly more damage than just standing still).
The SCB only offers a maximum of 50% damage reduction.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer i guarantee I am better than you at all of these games as I’ve literally no hit majority of Elden Rings base game bosses. If your not dying in 2 or 3 hits then im pretty sure you just havent even played the game lmao.
@@sebastianocampo71997 I’m better than you, trust me. I’ll upload my radahn no hit rn lmfao
@Idontevenknowman779 I'm literally using a build with 40 vigor. Not had an attack do more than 1/4 my HP that wasn't a hugely telegraphed AoE or grab, but this has always been the case in Souls Games.
Finished with STB lv17, so didn't even have to hunt all the upgrade items to best the bosses.
The older souls games had much better boss design. These Elden ring bosses are all spectacle with with extremely limited interactions. You dodge 90% of time, hit them once and then back to dodging for another hour (of you’re forced into using a shield build)
I became an actual thunder god with the new lightning spear incantation. That thing can chunk some bosses for like 7k damage on a good build
Knight's Lightning Spear? Got nerfed in the last patch. :(
I do feel that the discussion and arguments about SotE being overtuned is a fair one to have. And by overtuned I don't mean things like enemy and boss movesets, but rather the scaling multipliers for their damage, HP, defense values etc. All this is related to the scadutree blessing mechanic.
Preface: I love the DLC, it's great. These are just my honest thoughts on the subject of DLC scaling.
I've played through the DLC twice now, and currently doing a third on NG+. First time blind of course. I knew about the importance of scadutree fragments, so I tried my best to look for them and explore before pushing the main story and its bosses.
At around 50-60 vigor and having gotten my scadutree blessing to about +4, basically every slightly tough enemy and boss could easily 2-shot or even 1-shot me (often with grabs) starting from the lion, then Rellana, and even some "minibosses" from dungeons and such (admittedly, their HP reserves were much lower to compensate for their damage output). Not only that, bosses were incredibly tough damage sponges with such an enormous HP pool that even when it felt like I was playing good, learning the dodge timings and punish windows and lasting for a long time, after making one mistake and getting 2-shot I see that I've barely gotten about 1/5th (or even less) of their HP down. This was with Bloodhound's Fang +25 with buffs such as bloodflame blade and golden vow. I felt this especially with Rellana, where even hitting a full weapon art with BF looked like chip damage. I was enjoying learning the boss movesets, but the crazy HP pools of some of the bosses and not finding more scadutree fragments got me relying a lot on summons just to get more damage in.
I can see the point when people argue that the same can happen in base game, but the difference is that unlike in early-mid-base game (for example, Radahn and Margit as shown in the video) most players going into the DLC will have a maxed out weapon, vigor probably at 50-60, which can even withstand the late game difficulty and scaling spike at Farum Azula, all the talismans their build might need, etc... Base game players have lots to explore, level up and upgrade if they're stuck, much much more than DLC players, who can only hope to find scadutree fragments. Even with an end-game build and a few levels into scadutree blessing, the very first bosses of the DLC make you feel like you like you're a level 1 wretch going up against Margit.
After beating Rellana and finding a bunch of scadutree fragments and getting to about +8, I felt that the DLC's scaling felt much more sensible and the feeling of "overtunedness" dissipated thankfully and that remained true for the rest of my first playthrough of the DLC.
On my 2nd playthrough on a different character, after I found out that you can skip Castle Ensis and get to the area without beating Rellana, I ran around for a couple hours getting an around +8 blessing before killing a single boss. At +8 and upwards, the DLC felt like the scaling made much more sense and felt fair. I wasn't dishing out ridiculous damage, bosses still took a fair amount of hits but my attacks didn't feel like chip damage anymore. Bosses could still 2-shot me with their stronger attacks, but not nearly all attacks would instantly delete me anymore. Bosses were punishing of course, but not incredibly so to the point where it feels ridiculous. So on my 2nd playthrough I beat all bosses without summons starting at +8 blessing and leveling more as I progressed, beating the final boss at +18. The scaling felt perfect with this.
TL;DR I think the difficulty of the DLC is fine. It's supposed to be hard. Beating the final boss with no summons took me probably 6+ hours of practice and tries at +18 blessing. The bosses have great movesets that have fair openings when you learn them. No complaints there (nitpicks at best). I also think the scadutree blessing as a mechanic is fine as it encourages exploration, which imo is easily the best part of the DLC (even as a player who likes From games most for their bosses). However I do think that the first few levels provide(d) such negligible improvements to your damage and defense that I would consider the beginning of the DLC to be somewhat "overtuned" as I would think most players going blind to the DLC probably won't find that many scadutree fragments before facing the first two "big bosses". And as we know, From did make an update to the blessings to scale up more at lower levels to address the issue.
Also, there are a few outlying examples of just straight up borked scaling. For example the NPC knight at Castle Ensis, who at NG+, 60 vigor, talismans boosting defense and a maxed out +20 scadutree blessing, took away 7/8 of my HP with a quick rollcatch poke attack. This is more damage with a measly poke than what the final boss of the DLC, hailed as the hardest From boss in history can do with most of their attacks. Excluding maybe the nuke attack which has a 10 second long spectacle animation before it hits. Not to mention the NPC enemies in the DLC seem to have infinite poise, which is ridiculous.
I do agree with most of what is said in the video. Good stuff. Especially the end remarks, there's much more to Souls games than their boss design and difficulty.
Messmer best boss btw
Dodging 10 attack chain to heal and then dodgin another 10 attack chaing to attack once or twice isnt a problem if only 1 mistake didn't kill you. So learning isn't fun. I know you can collect more of those fragments but that will boost my dmg too much for the fight. For example on Messmer I didn't want any MORE dmg I just wanted him to not kill me after my 1 mistake. It's okay die on a boss but only if you had an opportunity to try something on that try. Having a chance to try 1 thing and dying after it is the opposite of fun for me. Half (if not more) of the new location being empty or full of copy paste enemies from the main game doesn't help with any positive thoughts of the game either.
Things i hate about the bosses in this dlc,It's that they don't stop, like, you can get combos of 7 hits and in the end barely land a hit that does almost no damage and get chained up by another combo, while almost every attack one shot or two shot you,bro i don't want a fight that last 20 min
You must hate monster hunter then.
@@erupter76500 never played it
Is it my turn to attack yet?
@@sepulcher8263 Nope, I'm doing my 50:50 option, enjoy the punish.
Can you reupload the video with the only difference being a slightly opaque luffy png appearing when you say one piece at 21:57 ?