Hey, really appreciate all the comments (even the not-so-nice ones) but just wanted to clarify for anyone that isn't finishing the video or isn't having the message come through, I do love Elden Ring. I think it's fantastic. I think it gets so much right about what a game should be. My issues represented here are that I'm disappointed with it for numerous reasons and I feel it's important to critique something I love and respect because I want it to be better. I get a lot of comments from people who played Elden Ring before any other souls game and it only makes sense that those people would be hard-pressed to find fault. I'm the same way with Dark Souls, even though I know it has many glaring issues. I just want to reassure everyone that I only think Elden Ring is "bad" in a very subjective sense, and all of my arguments are going to be largely subjective. For me, that's in the nature of debate and all art is subjective. There is never going to be an objective good or bad when it comes to this kind of presentation and I don't want people to get the wrong idea that I'm suggesting the game is poorly made or anything like that. All my issues, even the ones I consider more objective, are all deliberate design choices (possibly some oversights) that do not devalue Elden Ring's position as a masterpiece and work of art, only that FromSoftware seems to have gone in a direction that I think cost the game a lot more than it gained in a lot of ways. Depending on how robust the DLC is, I'm not confident I'll go back and play Elden Ring years later. I can't know for sure but I wanted to express my feelings and talk about a wonderful game without treating it like an untouchable, unquestionable titan of gaming (though in many ways it is). Again, I love Elden Ring and could not be happier that FromSoftware is getting the attention and accolades they deserve. I'd just like to see them avoid some of the things I see as mistakes in future titles. Thanks for reading and thanks for watching!
One big issue I have with the believability of Elden Ring's world is the lack of meaningful infrastructure. I'm fine with a kingdom being small in scale, but it shouldn't just be one big castle with a few huts and maybe one village in its entire sphere of influence. A really good example of this is how most mines are just random caves from the outside. There's no railways to transport ores or stones to the outside, no storage huts, not even any major roads leading from/to the mines. Elden Ring's world feels like an amusement park with various disconnected attractions that you can choose to visit, not a world that people live or used to live in.
man imagine how many cool cities they could've put in with their own lore & look. I remember feeling particularly dissapointed with just how underbaked Sellia was
The devs knew about burnout, I am convinced thats why the mimic tear exists. It is at the perfect point of the game to just say fuck it and sleep walk to the end.
I can see this, but I don't know why they would invalidate the entire spirit summons system with something so blatantly overpowered. It would be nice if every boss was vulnerable to 1 or a couple different ones for novelty's sake and they all upgraded together... but that's asking way too much. At least make them all busted so I have the variety.
Or just design the game so you dont get burned out and actually enjoy it? I played ds3 with two dlcs twice through in a week, never got burnt out. Elden ring made me burnt out after 11 hours lol
Well. they just did that with the DLC and it ended up being pretty crappy. I think it's a skill issue on the devs part tbh. A lot of this screams Dark souls 2 Bteam handling the bulk of the design while the main team does the legacy dungeons and such. Honestly they even outsourced some stuff to india...
@@RelaxingNostalgiaDS2 DLC suffered only not having enough bonfires (specifically slog runs if you died in certain areas) Elden Ring DLC suffered from everything the base game suffered, multiplied by 1.5x, and then with a McGuffin collection system. While also suffering more from base game poor handling.
@RelaxingNostalgia seriously, ds2 has some of the best features, and yet people still go on with the tired "b team is bad" bullshit. Oh the worst souls game has the best NG+, best covenants, best multiplayer, best variety of areas, most armours and weapons, best weapon catalysts, best infusion system that allowed you to infuse EVERYTHING, soul vessels, best npc invaders and most generous in giving you many upgrade materials with making slabs farmable.
They really went off the beaten track with the armour designs. Even the basic knight set looks boxy and fat. I assume they wanted to be more 'high fantasy' but it went overboard. I think most of them look awful.
@@ianwilliams2632 they're awful, they did took some real life armors and helmet for banished knight but the rest are just meh. how come a game like chivalry 2 and mordhau have better armor designs than ELDEN RING Is beyond me.
@@emotionaljonxvx it's hard to mix and match true! it's because of the color of the tint of those armors, the only thing that i manage to mix up in that game is to just mix veteran helmet and gauntlet with banished knight chest and then top it off with scaled leggings.
Siofra River sums up how I feel about the game. Going down the super long elevator ride was a spectacle and it lured me with the promise of something amazing ahead. Then you get there and there are no interesting enemies to fight, a boring boss, no good items and to add insult to injury, Fromsoft made me waste my time lighting all the candles to even get to the boss. Then you get to the end and go up the elevator to Caeled and the cycle repeats again.
There were no interesting enemies TO YOU. I felt like Siofra was great and the boss at the end was a spectacle. Yeah, lighting the torches was a bit annoying but I would disagree that there were “no interesting enemies.” What exactly were you expecting then?
My biggest gripes with Elden RIng: 1. Multiplayer: A. Seamless Coop should've been built into the base game, as it's an Open World and not a series of corridors/rooms like the previous games. The fact that you can't cooperatively go from Open World, to Dungeon, to Open World is frustrating to say the least. It's also a shame that the cooperator is kicked out every single time a Field Boss is slain. B. The distinct lack of Covenants also makes the online experience with other players fairly bland, as other than the baseline Blue, Gold, and Red summons, there are no rewards or unique functions that make them stand out from previous games. I personally wish there was a Carian Royal Family covenant, just so that I could get Starlight Shards as a reward instead of the 999th Rune Arc. C. If a Host uses a Rune Arc, with cooperator or not, they should be open to invasions like previous games. As an Invader, it's a constant pain to always invade a gank squad each and every time. It was also a missed opportunity to not have a Tongue weather effect, like we have for the Erd Tree Leaves effect that buffs Rune Acquisition. 2. Lack of Caster gameplay improvements: A lot of people call Elden Ring the second Dark Souls 2, but for Casters, almost every single improvement that DS2 brought forward for Casters was completely ignored. Seals/Staves have no access to Infusions or Ash of Wars, and Cast Speed is once again trapped into Dexterity instead of Mind (Attunement). We also are missing out on unique armor effects that support Casters beyond just increasing damage. (A deeply annoying trend in Elden Ring's design for Casters) In Dark Souls 2, you could cast WAY MORE spells at mid-to-high levels than in Elden Ring. We also got a plethora of Spell Recovery options and even a passive recovery option that's completely missing in Elden Ring. (Iron King Crown is passive; Ancestral Spirit Horn is not, as it requires a death trigger to activate. Also, the fact that all FP recovery is flat, whereas HP recover is flat + a % of total HP, punishes Casters even further.) It also doesn't help that Seals/Staves are treated as a back-up tool and not a Caster's primary weapon. While the current setup works great for Spellblades, since there is a crazy amount of support for that style of play, but it's absolutely terrible for Casters. It's baffling that FromSoft couldn't be bothered to improve Seal/Staff gameplay instead of using damage stacking equipment/buffs as a substitute. As is, Seals/Staves have these common problems: R2: Is essentially a dead button, as it does a pitiful amount of damage if you do make an attack with your Seal/Staff. Unlike quite a few other games that offer Casters a way to attack with Cantrip spells (Basic Attack, no FP cost), it seems FromSoft wants Casters to use a weapon instead and play as a Spellblade. (A common trend in Elden Ring) L1 (Two-Handed): Is also essentially a dead button. When was the last time you've ever seen a player block with their Staff? Never, I bet. Plus, even if you do block with your Staff, you're not even allowed to Guard Counter with it. So, if blocking with a Staff is so pointless for Casters, I don't see why we can't have a Ward (Shield) Spell or a Spell Wheel selection option for that button. L2: Outside of the *ONE* singular Ash of War, out of 93+ available Ash of Wars, Casters have basically zero access to a whole gameplay mechanic unless they play as a Spellblade instead. Like seriously, why couldn't we get access to the Spell-like Ash of Wars at least? Not even Ice Spear for Staves or Lifesteal Fist for Seals? As a Caster main, excluding the very-very minimal improvements that were done for Casters, I found Elden Ring to be a big disappointment.
Might as well say coop doesn't exist. You summon folks then you can't get to areas you need to with torrent. Have to send the summons away. Very poorly designed.
DLC flopped even harder than base Kinda worried other studios like Round 8 will end up making better souls games over time if From keeps this direction up They really need to take a hard look at DS1 and BB for world design philosophy and what made their games the cream of the crop
Miyazaki is a smart guy and he himself said he doesn't understand why Elden ring was selling as well as it was... I think he knew he didn't have something special on his hands this time. It was more of a "satisfactory" game than the next big thing, not innovative enough to make a new era of souls.
What made DS1 "Cream of the crop" was the most easily influenceable generation coupled with the rise of social media. Pure herd behavior. Regardless of what one might think of the "good" part of DS1 HALF of the game is literally the lowest point in the entire series, pure garbage cobbled together levels, bosses and enemies. The "highlight" of the base game is a pretty skybox while 85% of the level is actually spent looking at featureless indoor white walls. Yet all of it gets completely ignored and DS1 is just the best because that's what everyone else says. I guess to be fair i have to keep in mind that a lot of people missed Demons Souls so the DS1 was a novel concept to them. I can understand that. But now you can look back at the entire series objectively and DS1 doe snot have the novelty or the quality.
I thought the developers had forgotten about the base game lore when the dlc came out then I figured out it is actually redecorated content trashed from the base game... Then I realized the developers never had an actual game story to begin with just random lore facts, random location scenarios and backstory. ER always seemed like an incomplete game with a very good concept.
The story is very complete. The problem with Elden Ring's narrative is that it's so spread out in this behemoth of a game that you won't see most of it even in 2-3 playthroughs unless you use a guide to find items, bosses and NPCs
@@anthonypedraza3017 I'm certain that's fully to blame on Miyazaki for asking that hack of George R R Martin to create the lore background for the game; which basically screwed the game's story as a result because the foundations are not good or well-thought, Miyazaki and Martin wrote a gigantic and deep lore just for the sake of being gigantic and deep.
@@TheBatman39 I don't think you even know what you're talking about. You're talking about the lore sucking, then saying they made it gigantic and deep, which implies a large, well thought out story. I'm beginning to suspect you just bounced off Soulslike storytelling with this game because of how it didn't mesh all that well with the open-ended design of the map on your first few runs.
@@anthonypedraza3017 George R R Martin lowkey sucks at writing. He still has yet to finish the books that made his famous, so its not far fetched that this story is unfinished. He started to write one of the best medieval-fantasy stories, and just banks off of the idea of it. No idea why they hired him to write the "lore" for this game.
Having played Sekiro, the game's even more disappointing because many bosses and enemies essentially use Sekiro mob moves and animation skeletons, forcing you to face them with a DS moveset rather than a Sekiro toolset which makes them frustrating and unfair to fight.
True. When you next hop on test the dodge button. You will realise its actually delayed by about half a second to a second, and when bosses are chucking out moves that are fast as hell it becomes impossible. Every boss is a cheese fest. Im never played sekiro but i thought they were like bloodborne speed with dark souls rolls. It just sucks.
@@sbslctvit’s not that it’s delayed, the issue is the dodge button is mapped to the same button as sprinting, and sprinting only registers when you hold it. That means that dodge will only be registered when you release the button, not when you press it. That’s why it feels like a delay.
@@Areis1997 he never said "hard", stop being brainlet goblin. ER is not hard, its repetetive and badly designed. saying this as someone who played FS games since PS2.
Elden Ring made me question do I even enjoy souls games anymore, but when I went back to DS1 and 3 I still love them, especially DS3 I found to be better than I remembered. ER also was the first game I didn't want to play again, I just couldn't find a good reason for second playthrough.
Playing Elden ring I miss the deliberately crafted encounters that require more from you than dodging and hitting. When I think about dark souls 1 one of the 1st things that comes to mind is one of the most inconsequential moments in the game, after you’ve beat the Taurus demon and go underneath the bridge guarded by the dragon and there’s an undead enemy with a spear and shield. It’s a narrow path with a wall on your right and a drop to your death on your left, if you try and attack him mindlessly your swing collides with the wall and leaves you vulnerable to him. It’s an encounter you can’t steamroll over and you have to treat carefully every single time no matter how much you play or how good you are at the game. Elden ring is definitely a souls game combat wise but with how powerful you can become and how fast you are lots of the game borders on the line of hack and slash, even in some boss fights. I worry about the future of these games and that fromsoft are struggling to find a way to make these games more difficult other than just making them faster and more reaction focused.
Small Elden Ring is such a promising concept that it’s hard to fully put into words. On my latest build, I was trying to beat the whole game at RL 15 with +2 weapons. Most bosses melted pretty fast with the easy-mode status effect strats, and it got pretty boring. But then I ran into challenges that weren’t just about combat. Stuff like Ordina town, where a single sniper could one-shot me from 200 feet. In that moment I engaged with a different part of my brain and remembered there were other mechanics to interact with. I crafted a Sleep Pot and free aimed it over a building to knock out the snipers at key choke points. And suddenly I remembered - OH. This is Dark Souls. Specifically Dark Souls 1 and 2. I hadn’t worked my brain in this way, arriving at an unusual solution to an extreme difficult puzzle, since I first played those games. And Small Elden Ring could have potentially had more of these moments, placed more densely together, for an experience that felt like it was truly capturing the magic of its inspirations. But that’s the danger of what-ifs. There’s really no saying if Small Elden Ring could’ve really spared Fromsoft the resources to develop more meaningful content. For all we know, the open fields could’ve been 1% of the development cost, and removing them would’ve changed ostensibly nothing for the other content in the game. I’d still prefer the game smaller, but I think the issue lies with the design fundamentals of the game itself. It’s not an ideal Souls game because it doesn’t present substantive obstacles for the vast majority of its runtime. It’s also not an ideal open world game, because the world fails as a sandbox for play - it’s almost all set dressing that is usually only enjoyed as a vista to vacantly absorb while on horseback. There is no interactivity to be seen aside from fighting enemies or mashing the item pickup button. It is firmly in the shadow of better, more innovative open worlds with more interactive mechanics such as Breath of the Wild/TOTK, and it fails to offer meaningful non combat choices in narrative and gameplay as would be found in, say, an Obsidian open world RPG. And frankly, Small Elden Ring wouldn’t fix that. The fundamental design choices would need to be different from the get-go. The combat is in dire need of more depth, particularly as it gets overshadowed by the legacy of Sekiro, which can be enjoyed for an Elden Ring amount of time despite being 1/10 of its size, thanks mostly to its vastly more demanding combat. The open world is in dire need of more varied content and more mechanical interactivity. The narrative is in dire need of more interesting character interactions and meaningful player choices. But still, moments can shine through, when the challenge is steep and the interactive solutions are at your fingertips, when you can remember to craft a sleep pot and stealth through Ordina, where the game reveals its true potential. And that’s what’s so tantalizing to me about the promise of these games. Thats what makes the what-ifs brainworms so hard to get rid of. Honestly, we’d be better off enjoying the DLC for what it is, and then delve into different hobbies and interests while we await the next game. I used to be a “I don’t play non-Souls game” type, but I’m so very glad I got over that. Because frankly, there are things I value that Fromsoft isn’t currently doing, and a lot of stuff they’ve never done at all. And that stuff can only be found hidden under the big pile of AAA bloatware taking up all the oxygen in the room, in smaller games from more creative minds, who almost never receive the light of day. Dig a bit and there’s more than enough truly stellar games out there. And even if there aren’t, it’s probably best for all our health that we get a break from Souls addiction, and do something other than gaming for a bit 😅
Small Elden Ring would be something for sure. I'm excited for the DLC and even if it's nothing I want, I'll still have a great time with it. Elden Ring was a ton of fun for me and still can be, I just want so many little changes I end up wanting a big change or a different game. As far as other games, I wish I had the interest. I want too specific of a thing and I'm open to any other developer. I've just never found anything even remotely competent at replacing what these games can do. Single Player and Multiplayer and PVP and Character Creation and Build Making all on a single playthrough with no Microtransactions, no Subscription, and no gimmick. If it's out there, I'm open to it. I want to believe. Otherwise, I spend most of my game time playing TTRPGs. Just a better hobby overall if you like to have control over the game and customize your experience. But I still need my easy access online gaming fix and right now it's Souls games or bust.
@@zwidowca1 I make my own! I did play D&D for years but since WotC burned the community back at the end of 2022 I've pretty much sworn off their stuff. Anything I make is basically just D&D with an emphasis on dungeon crawling and tactical strategy combat.
@@emotionaljonxvx Solid choice! I also quit the normal DND and made my own Hack of it after the OGL douchebaggery. Aside from that I play a slew of things from Fantasy Flight Games, Vampire and some Warhammer/Alien.
This isn’t an easy topic to talk about because in the community if you criticize Elden Ring you are just made to feel like you’re just nitpicking. Because clearly the game is great nobody can really argue that it isn’t a beautiful game or isn’t a success -20 million+ copies sold its the best FromSoft game right?? No. I mean, I’ve even gaslit myself in this regard. Because from jump I’ve known that this game is not From’s best work like so many others seem to think, yet I keep coming back to play it for like hundreds of hours at this point. So I wonder if my criticism are valid even though I enjoy the game and yeah… they are valid this game is very flawed. I think some of the aspects that made this game so wildly popular are the things that make is also not as great of a game compared to the others: The open world and the design choices that make this the most approachable and easy game in the series. The open world is really beautiful, probably the most beautiful game they have made, but beauty in itself does not a great game make. And the open world is really lacking like you said. I don’t think that the majority of players have tried replaying the game 3+ times because the emptiness of the world shows after a while. Once you have gone and explored every nook there is so little incentive to go back to places in subsequent playthroughs unless it has the talisman, weapon, spell or other thing you need for the build you’re going for. Legacy dungeons are the only places I will seek out intentionally because they actually have some semblance of level design and fun dungeon crawling that makes these games inherently fun to play without the gimmick of being super big and nice to look at. Traversing the big world isn’t even fun, there is no forced encounter in the open world since you can always opt out; too much choice isn’t fun. Doing challenge runs are the only thing that keeps this game interesting at times because it is so insanely easy to become powerful and just plow through the game. Some people have fun with that but for me the games have always been the best when they are a challenge. This time around you have to opt in to the challenge. I really think this is part of why Elden Ring is more popular than all the other games. Elden Ring is a great game but it is far from the greatest Fromsoft game in many ways. There are so many little things I could say about Elden Ring since I’ve played this game so damn much I’ve got a lot of critique but damn this just a UA-cam comment I need to chill. Great video EmoJon 👍
I used 2-3 Fire Pots on 7-8 attempts at an area, and in order for that to be sustainable I need to "go play minecraft" for an hour before I can make my next 7-8 attempts. I think that was when I realized that I do not like this game, that it is punishing me with busywork for engaging with it in a way that isn't strictly discouraged. I could only help but be reminded of Breath of the Wild, dancing like an idiot for 5 seconds at a campfire for every individual HP replenishing item you want to cook.
I'm still surprised that no other game but Nioh actually took a step forward in terms of consumables- it had a stat and skill tree built around their use, and the particular consumables it covered would refresh at checkpoints
They're bad programmers who shutter at the thought of complex programming, and it doesn't help that miyazaki doesn't know anything about game development. He's a book writer at best.
Everyone says Elden was made to be immersful but whats immersive about warping like fkn mario. Not one time ever playing elden did i feel i had to find a bon fire with that lovley panic. I will never undersatnd why tbey made elden like this and i will never understand why there are no covenants. Such a dumb, dumb desicion to not have them. The fashion sucks so bad too, it really does. Elden is just a bloated mess and it could have been so good if they didnt bite off more than they could chew.
Agreed , Also , DS and Monster hunter games are same genre in asia , MH has more players playing for far more hours . I preferred armored core by FS than these janky MH alternatives. Elden is indeed a bloat filled upgraded DS game. 390 hours to platinum and it didn't feel as much of an accomplishment as previous DS games or as thrilling as MH multiplayer hunts .
Honestly, I just want more cool knight guy armors that mix well together. A lot of the armors in Elden Ring, I think, are either too unique to mix and match, or are just a retexture of another set like the regional soldiers and knights are. The sets in the dlc look interesting from what I've seen, there's also the fact that they decided to make the regional knight and soldier enemies a bit more varried, like the knight helm and chest pieces is different enough and they even use different weapons like greathammers and twinblades instead of the typical knights sword and partisan. That's not to say you can't mix and match at all to make something cool, you still can, but your options might be limited
You're not the only one. This game just lacks that spark all the others up to ds3 had that made me put hundreds of hours into them. The truly depressing thing is that fromsoft is guaranteed to keep going in this direction to appeal to larger audiences, as every new project a game company makes needs to make more money than the previous one to satisfy investors. The DLC is perfect evidence of this with From doubling down on everything I hated about the main game. I finished the DLC and all I can feel about this franchise anymore is apathy. I just don't care what they make next, and I know no game will ever come out - from them or anyone else - that will make me feel the way playing through ds1 or bloodborne for the first time did.
The dlc is basically redecorated content that was cut off from the base game because it is trash. I feel the same apathy. Sekiro and DS3 was good but ER is terrible.
@@azureascendant994 yeah it's depressing, this was the only game i've been looking forward to for the last 2 years, really though they would improve on the main game's issues
I'm confused about your complaint regarding the stake of marika sites. Would you rather prefer a long runup each time to a boss that might kill you dozens of times before you figure things out? now if thats not wasting the player 's time, i don't know what is
I got 165 hours into it and just got so bored I walked away. And I don't miss it. It simply wasn't fun getting my butt kicked in a new area, grinding for 20 hours, making a little progress, getting my butt kicked again... rinse and repeat over and over for infinity.
It's insane how hard they killed the sense of adventure - learning legacy dungeon layout doesn't matter since you can use the map to leave whenever you want - shortcuts are meaningless to find since there's a checkpoint outside every boss - knowing anything about the open world is pointless since you have the map - conserving healing resources is pointless since you get tons every time you respawn And they disabled fast travel in the one place that causes maximal annoyance (caves and catacombs).
Bruh, wait for the people to learn that homeward bones exist in every fucking Soul game allowing you to backtrack to the bonfire WITH YOUR SOULS DURING COMBAT and fast travel same way as it works in ER. I swear, you don't even play the games that you glaze. Literally trying to apply DS1 logic (that gets thrown away in the second half of the game btw) to the series is an exercise in futility.
FromSoft : Reuse the hell out of the main game... Castle Ensis=The Acadamy of Raya Lucaria model reuse fest + No cutscene + No voice + The boss area almost look like Caria Manor boss fight area // Final boss is 100% model reuse... save the budgets // So many empty space and pointless point of interests // So many reuse mobs Ultra soul cultists : Wow, 12/10.
You should stop saying the game is good. They had 5 titles that revolved around overcoming difficult situations, but with ER, you can avoid a lot while using torrent. Because of shady reviewers, this game tricked a lot of people, and even while there are legit people who enjoy it, they enjoy grinding, which was not mandatory in the previous games. This game is designed badly. They had to fill the world with challenges, but the challenges are also designed badly. That makes this game the worst in the series.
Notice how fast they stopped reporting sales and Miyazaki left team to join Armored core team after first patch . People have a really wrong idea of what a game director actually does.
@@Shendapy optimism just ain't the word, the word you're looking for is have some "delusional belief". there's no hint that DLC will enhanced PvP, the fact that they haven't made any patch ever since 1.10 drops says to me that they don't care about pvp anymore. and hell already broke loose in ELDEN RING glitching is now part of that game's pvp something that i know was inevitable after seeing how DS3 ended up.
@@LyllianaofMirrahcounterpoint they haven't done any new updates because they are focused on the dlc going smoothly and chances are they release patches with the dlc
Heavily disagree on the Lies of P take. I find the gameplay so engaging as a bloodborne fanboy. I truly think the developers of Lies of P do actually "get it"
Fair enough. I really just meant that they aren't making the same kind of game I'm looking for. It's got a ton of souls elements (especially Bloodborne) but is missing some fundamental aspects that are must-haves for me, like multiplayer, PVP, and character creation. I'm sure it's plenty good, just not something I'm at all interested in personally. Didn't mean any disrespect to the devs.
The open world is just so boring for me. I literally stopped playing because I realized I was forcing myself to like it. This is the first time I actually didn't enjoy a From software game.
This is a 6/10 game at best. The whole game feels like lazy dark souls 3.2. Worst thing is how trash the multiplayer systems are. The 'story' or lack thereof made for lore UA-camrs, who can make a 6 hours lore stream on a 2 minute trailer, and write hours long essays on a table in stormveil caste.
Imagine if the open world areas had some type of Pursuer, not just like the one in Dark Souls 2, but something more like Mr. X or Nemesis from Resident Evil. A roaming boss that will start tracking you from a completely different area depending on your actions. Imagine that you are in Liurnia and then you get a message saying "the Pursuer is chasing you and is currently in Limgrave" something like that. This character could be a very strong boss that is almost impossible to beat in early game, and if you manage to kill him, it could reapear where you least expect it later in the game. You could use Torrent to stay ahead of it, but if you take too much time in an area, and he gets close to you, you automatically dismount and have to face him. Of course, you would be safe from him in catacombs and legacy dungeons. I think this could have made the open world more engaging.
@@Dankmemeslover69 Elden Ring is not dark souls... but it has the combat system of DS3 with some small changes, the same style of level design, the stamina mechanic, almost identical weapon upgrade system, the same summoning system for coop and pvp, a bunch of weapons have the same movement set that DS3, the exact same healing mechanics that DS3, the story is very similar in many aspects to DS, DS2, DS3, the same checkpoint/bonefire system, the same fast travel system between bonfires, the typical optional area with a boss that is harder than the final one (Malenia/Nameless King), the same way of leveling up, the same stats with adition of a couple of new ones, the same weapon scaling system, among many other things. Sorry but it's hard no to compare this game with the Dark Souls games when it should be called Dark Souls 4.
interesting quest design, story telling is there if u want it but u can ignore it (u really can play detective to find all the details), really interesting character (including boss stories). this game is maybe not perfekt but absolutely worth it
Okayish story but bad storytelling, meaning nothing really to interest you if you don't like the core gameplay mechanics a lot. Quest Design too is bad. I don't understand how two sided people are to hate on games when the quest deisng is go there ans get that item back or talk to that person and come back.. but don't say that enough for this game. The characters are nice. But the problem again is that due to the bad storytelling you will never really learn enough about them unless you are ready to scour through different items and notes etc to find details. The problem with this approach is that there is no initial interest instilled in the player to know anything more. The only interest instilled is on how to beat the boss and get stronger. I mean 10 years ago it may be fine but by modern gaming standards it's really poor. Games are no longer just puzzle solve or skill test applications. They are much more. They offer a complete experience. And elden ring offers little in that regard. The world is big and diverse yet it feels dead. The saving grace of this game is the amazing build variability and customisation you can do. It kinda makes it fun to find parts to suit your playstyle. And ofcourse boss killing after 100 failed attempts gives you a nice boost of adrenaline. But this game ain't no greatest if all time. It's an 8/10 game. It's good but it lacks in way too many areas by modern gaming standards to be considered amazing. But i understand why it got so much praise. In a world where mainstream gaming is dominated by cash grab low effort stuff.. this was a breath of fresh air. But if you take time away from the mainstream you'll realise there are many games which offer you much better experiences. While also satisfying your hunger for a chalenge if you want.
@@d4nkdesu i feel like its the point of the game that it does just give u the story. u hsve to figure it out and the story is amazing. and what gaming standarts are there? i agree that elden ring is not perfekt but still better than most of the trash that is released by the AAA studios (indie studios are a different story) and tbh when playing other games i really see where i miss elden ring. instead i feel like playing brain dead simulator. but like i said indie games are (atleast for me) an escape for the braindead loop oh and before i think im the guy who says that every gsme should be like elden ring. no! pls not xD but many open world can inspire in some things
I do like the idea of an open world game with Souls mechanics. The idea of playing Souls in a high fantasy setting like Zelda would be a dream come true. What I do not like is having padded content, re-used content, grindy mechanics, and a limited selection of just high fantasy armours (Give me everything!). I think there is merit and roleplay in having the player experience the scope of the lands by traveling from place to place with a horse. However, not finding a way to weave and balance that mechanic in multiplayer--instead opting to cut it out entirely was a horrendous design choice. I love the idea of being able to pick up random trinkets and being able to craft items. . . when it is a bonus. Making certain items gated by that mechanic and that mechanic alone rather than available through vendors turns what could have been a bonus into a chore. However, the thing that I do not like the most, is that FromSoft limited the player count back down to four in their game with the largest open world! Just look at Elden Ring's entire playspace, and tell me that it's just not begging to have Runescape style dedicated server where 1000 players can join at once and live out their highest PvP and RP fantasies! The closest we will ever get to that point unfortunately is the Seamless mod. With a few adjustments, namely balancing coop and invasions properly such that multiplayer is actually a double edged sword, Seamless should have been the way the game was originally designed. Thanks for listening to my rant, lol.
Honestly, i think my favorite area in terms of layout and progression was the first half of the haligtree, up in the branches with rot flowers and bubble blowers trying to snipe me every time i moved an inch. The reason? It reminded me of Blighttown from DS1. The narrow walkways and corridors, getting shot at by an enemy a half mile away, sneezing too hard and falling off a ledge. It was amazing, like a way to reexperience such an iconic place in gaming, while still being an original experience in itself. I just wish the game had more of these memorable areas. Someone mentions a dungeon/crypt? I probably wont remember which one it is. Haligtree Branches? I know EXACTLY what you are talking about, and i always will.
I lowkey wish Fromsoft had the balls to patch out mod support and cheat engine for all of their games so people can realize how bad they really are. Like nobody talks about how bad the multiplayer really is because Seemless Co-Op exists. I want people to be justifiably outraged so Fromsoft can be judged and held accountable for the games they actually release rather than what the fans do to them. Modern Minecraft and many other games suffer from the same issue.
I started playing ds1 in 2011 on ps3. I spent thousands of hours playing it. I almost played it every day (coop, pvp) until ds2 came out. I played it almost every day too until ds3 came out on ps4. I played it almost every day until elden ring came out ( almost 100 can$ on release). A month and half later (after the hype) i wished if i can get refunded and get my money back. Unfortunately, 1 single playthrough was enough to make me hate the game. Fromsoft did everything wrong on E.R. Ps: i played sekiro and bloodborne too on release, it's a solid good games. but these 2 games are short and don't have a long replayabilty .
I'm kind of an opposite mindset. I like the big world, though do recognize the issue with monster diversity and space usage (or lack therefor of.) I don't think the games' story would work if it was a contained and packed experience. And I am not too partial to in any game just milling about in one contained area, as it feels restrictive and containing to me. Not like being trapped, but like being limited and stuck on rails with little freedom or choice. Noting here, I rarely replay (on an alt -as I don't do that because I find it personally not fun), and rather have one character which I advance within the constraints of my niche interest in being a mage in any game I get my hands on and where it's possible. Contained areas tend to be very anti-mage due to always emphasizing close quarters fights and fisticuffs over ranged attacking. Never mind the fact in Elden Ring sorceries tend to be outside some examples dead easy to dodge for someone who knows what they are doing and isn't lagged out. Plus easy to close distance on. Making ironically ranged attacking a very poor option and the approach the optimal location to score hits on. On paper and in practice, the vast variety of landscaped and terrain should offer a very grand experience. I think the multiplayer system just fails to glue itself properly to the base of the game. Rather than an endless variety of different battlefields with need for different tactics and approaches, the strength fails to be taken advantage of. On the dungeons and catacombs - I was too busy trying not to die to really pay any attention to the repeat elements. This was my first Fromsoft game. For over half of the game, I was too busy fighting with the controls and trying to learn them as well. I rarely made use of Torrent (because learning how to control em takes a while and one too many mystery gravity deaths early on) and advanced slow and steady because it felt safer to be on foot. From the start till I ran out of things to do and spent a few weeks in the coliseums, I was incredibly entertained and amused. Just a month ago on my Newgame+2 run I found a dungeon I had never been in and was immediately interested and had great fun crawling through it. Despite knowing, it likely had nothing of interest to me, it was something I missed and was challenged by. This makes me have a thought. Perhaps Elden Rings design appeals more to newcomers like me than people who don't spend half a game figuring out the controls? So it was designed more with newcomers in mind than vets. And this is why many vets voice dissatisfaction with the experience. A new player like me is too busy having fun and trying not to get my goose cooked while figuring out the controls. The time it took running around allowed me to contemplate the illusion of the world and take it in far better, thus getting immersed. The checkpoint sites of grace won't serve a vet nearly as well as they do a newb. The amount of times I found relief in a mercifully located field site of grace was numerous, and they were always a sight for sore eyes.
Good to hear from someone for whom Elden Ring is their first Souls game. I think everyone is going to have a wildly different experience depending on where they come from, so it makes sense that without anything else to directly compare against, Elden Ring would just be an easy 10/10. I've also heard from people who bounced off right away because of the challenge or obtuse design or whatever else, so even for newcomers it can still be an issue. In any case, we still all have the DLC to look forward to and hopefully it'll make me feel a lot better about the experience overall.
I've tried to convince people for two years that ER is a fine game generally, but not a good/great souls game. This is mostly a question of taste: the quality of atmosphere, dialogue, lore, and voice acting (compared to the other titles), but also somewhat gameplay. For me the game made next to no emotional impact, which was very important in my embracing of Dark Souls. But in terms of gameplay, from PVP to PVE, it also feels needlessly over-long & tedious, as if the Souls formula has more or less played itself out. Several long time friends of mine agree: it needs to die and be replaced by a new or drastically upgraded style. As usual, haven't even started the video yet, but your titles provoke strong reactions in me... I look forward to watching lol
newcomers could've just start with DS1 instead of ELDEN RING like i did back in 2018. just give them a heads up on what scaling is or what weapon requirements and what stats soft caps is. hell tell them they can just wear armor and just poise through the game or use sword and board. tell them it's okay to run away from a fight or run past them. tell the newcomers to try DS1! do not tell them to try ELDEN RING. what happened is that we create more crybabies than we actually creating an actual Souls - Vets because we tell em to start from ER. and they would just complained more when they entered souls games. like what happened in DS3 steam forum some rando elden ringer asking for seamless co-op mod for DS3 is just beyond cringe
I’m glad you brought up the armor - I think almost all of the sets look hideous and it’s been kind of driving me crazy how nobody else does. I couldn’t find a single helmet besides the Knight helmet that didn’t look goofy or dumb. They’re all too wide or too tall and I’m not really into all the ornamentation with large fins or faux hair or giant horns etc. I was hoping the bloodhound set would be cool but I hate that helmet too. And I can’t really mix and match pieces without feeling like my character looks like a thrift store toy. Not to mention the Burger King heads you’ll have to wear as a mage. I think thumbprint is the best after the Knight set aside from the actual thumbprints making your character look like they just tanked a couple cannonballs. I just think it’s unfortunate that the only set I like is the one that’s a very intentional throwback
It's really annoying that all the decent looking sets belong to a specific, unique character. Makes it hard for me to fit in as my own tarnished, rather than cosplaying as someone I killed.
@@emotionaljonxvx lords of the fallen got it right by allowing you to dye armour sets so you can mix match and still make it look like am actual full set of armour and not a clown costume
Of all From games that had covenents, Elden ringe made the MOST sense to be utilized due to it literally being a MAJOR part in the story. And it doesnt exist. What the hell lol.
The problem is that Elden Ring IS a bad game, if any other developer name was attached to it, it’d be mocked as a bad dark souls clone and then forgotten. It’s a 6.5/10 at best. It still has so many problems both mechanically and technically; it was literally unplayable on launch which people defend for some reason… it over stays its welcome but doesn’t even have anything to offer from it, the enemies feel the most boring they’ve ever been, a whole lot of nothing in the open world, limgrave is front loaded with dungeons so it feels like content but even then it’s mostly reskins, it feels like weapon arts are only they to give the illusion of combat depth, spirit summons are the intended way to play but also break the game, crafting is worthless unless you force yourself to use it, etc. That’s not even to say I disliked playing it, it just got old fast. I’d sooner play bloodborne or ds3,2,1 again then Elden ring again and I know that the 40 DOLLAR dlc will fix nothing.
How come spirit ashes are the inteded way to play? There are a bunch of encounters like evergaols and some field bosses that straight up don't give you an ability to summon. You summon them if you struggle, that's it
People think the game is hard, but personally, I think they designed it to be a mechanical catch 22 or dodging impossible combos for 10-15 seconds at a time to only rreally barely land 1 maybe 2 attacks before BARELY having time to dodge the next onslaught of ridiculousness. I recently went back and played DS3, and noticed immediately how much more care and thought I had to put into everything compared to ER. "Git Gud" was a meh meme as well, since most of the game feels like it either requires cheese, that its not worth how long it takes to fight and thus more efficient to cheese which takes away from being able to ACTUALLY play normally and actually git gud, or its just a dodge-fest where you catch strays sometimes from the super weak but well-positioned and well-times attack from a waiting enemy that almost guarantees death.
Having pondered about what makes a game likable/dislikable to some, even more so than the actual game mechanics, really comes down to whether the individual _believes_ the fictionality portrayed. A lot of the issues EmoJon had with ER, i can appreciate bc DS2 was that for myself, i simply did not buy into the fictionality of DS2. The world design and structure just could not suspend my disbelief, it felt designed by Tecmo, not Fromsoft. On a side note, this is why BioShock is such a well regarded title even though the actual gameplay is kinda blocky and thin. It's fictionality is highly persuasive.
this is exactly how i feel, i just played ds1 for the first time and it became one of my fav games ever, came back to see if i would have a better time in elden ring, did for a little while and got soooo burnt out by the horrible combat and enemy design. I did beat the black blade kindred which is my favorite fight in the game now, though trying to do other bosses after that i just realized most of them are just spamaholics. i want to enjoy the game so badly, i just cant
Overpraised because a couple overrated streamers said it was “a masterpiece”. Imagine calling a linear slasher with no good story and pukey colors a “masterpiece” lol
I think it's reasonable to expect the DLC will have a feel closer to bloodborne. A big city to explore. I do share a lot of your sentiments re: PvP though. It felt like Fromsoft really turned their back on invasions in this game. I guess I'm still delusionally holding out hope there will at least be some kind of trespasser invasion area in the DLC but I think that is highly unlikely.
The wait has just made me fester. It's literally the only game I play and I barely play it. Having sub-1000 hours is something I would have never imagined pre-release. I need SotE to be everything it can be and then some.
I also hold out hope that the DLC will be a much tighter experience. Like Central Yharnam-Cathedral Ward, or the core loop of Firelink-Burg-Parish that awed us so much when we first played. No more sprawling open fields, please, something curated and claustrophobic. If it's true that it's only slightly larger than Limgrave, the number of large dungeons we've seen hints of is promising. Return to form? Please... please!
I only properly started enjoying this game by deciding to dig deep into the lore for the first time in a Souls game. I really love the mysteries. I got exhausted on my first playthrough and after that I found it quite empty until recently. I don’t invade, but I miss getting invaded at random and I hope that makes a return in the DLC.
Totally agree, and been playing SOTE just proved your points: mostly unrewarding exploration that YOU HAVE to do in order to hunt down the scadutree fragments. Also the dungeons are still repetitive.
I think Elden Ring had to be open world for the sake of mass appeal. Sekiro got GOTY awards but didn’t bring in new players who just didn’t want to experience stapling a testicle to your thigh in game form. I was one such person, but after hearing how good it was for a month and it being an open world, I said fine give me that stapler. I was sure I’d play it for a few hours then be over it as I have limited play time and give up on fishing most games out of boredom. Instead it was the first game I ever platinumed, and am now looking other staplers.
boring af I played it and i never finished it and its so forgetful i cant even remember the characters and the stories, which make sense since no one talk about that shitty game anymore
I am not a completionist. I explore the world the way it feels natural to me. I see a road I go down it. Does it mean I missed almost 60% of thr catacombs, minor dungeons etc. Yes. I think ER was built to promote immersion, from no hub and stamina while not in combat, to the general scale of the world, it was meant for a very natural progression, rather than like in DS games where you look at an obvious side path and explore it for cool loot. While I can see it antagonising a vast majority of souls players, I am a new player. Started with ER. Secondly the scale. I generally did not find the world too exhausing because of th aforementioned point. Hoonestly repeat bosses were Ok as long as they were fun to fight. Like many people consider all tree sentinels to be alike, but the have significantly different timings on many attacks. Do I think the boos reuse is a bit much, yes. Does it make the game unfun for me... no. While I still hold ER too be my favorite as a primarily PvEer, does it mean I want another open world, no. Imo the open world is at times positively boring. However over time I have learned to appreciate the open world as an excellent 1st attempt. What I love about it is well, how open ended your routing can be. So many components for your build is often behind so many bosses in DS3, it detracts from the fun of build crafting. This was especially true for Magic builds. In DS3 magic essentially came down to forward moving prjectiles of 5 kinds go. It was boring. Also, Magic builds in these games (except DS2) need way more stats and way more items to be viable, so it meant 50% of the game b4 u can get your build set up. ER removing attunement and adding so many items ring at the start mean most playthrough can get setup quick and fight bosses at their full potential. I completely agree with you about the consumables. Many random exhalted fleshes could have been replaced by bell bearings for usable crafting items associated with a given faction. Throw one for Trina's lily and Miquella's lily in the snowfields. One for Aeonian and Nacent butterlies in thr Swamp of Aronia etc. It would make exploration feel more rewarding. While I love ER to death, and I dont particularly miss the oppressive nature of the old games (I prefer oppressive boss fights over oppressive areas), I would like a return to a smaller scale world with the High Fantasy feel of ER and Sekiro. Edit: Forgot to discuss replayability. As a PvEer, I genuinely cannot play DS3 without mods anymore. I felt in DS3 most weapons felt the same. Every weapon class was R1 with the sword. So once u have tried a class, u are mostly done. Most "unique" WAs are just reskinned basic ones. So I never really found much reason to replay DS3 PvE after my SL1. In contrast the variety of AoWs, infusions etc. In ER make it far more replayable to me personally.
6:33 That's a really narrow minded view. I did play Lies of P because I've heard a lot of good things about it, and I really liked the game, and I would in fact say, that its devs *do* get it. They do understand what makes a souls game great. Whereas I've only really heard negative things about Lords of the Fallen, so I haven't bothered.
So I get this comment in various forms a lot and all I really meant when I said they “don’t get it” is that even if they absolutely nail one aspect of the experience, they do it by completely omitting another. Lies of P lacks character creation and most RPG aspects of progression. And on the most significant level, it lacks multiplayer (especially PVP). A souls game, at least to me, needs to have all of those things in addition to great combat, lore, storytelling, dungeons, and bosses. It’s an incredibly high bar and I’ve never seen another developer get it right. That’s why I’m so narrow-minded about my views regarding FromSoftware. There simply isn’t an alternative.
@@emotionaljonxvx You barely even talked about multiplayer at all. I would've expected that point to be more fleshed out if it was that important to you. I didn't get to understand your view on multiplayer, because all you said about it is that it's bad. Pretty much the whole video was about the open world only. About character creation tho, I don't really understand this complaint, like, at all. This isn't Mass Effect, or The Witcher, or KotOR... this is an action game. You aren't playing any role at all, you're going through a predetermined path in the story, and the only choice you have is what loadout you'll use- something that is available in Lies of P in great quantities. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it has a much much deeper and more complex combat system than ER, simply because of the hilt+blade weapon combination options and the legion arm options, not to mention all the quartz upgrades. If you think you're roleplaying as a mage, just because you've put points into intelligence, you're playing make-believe, it doesn't matter.
@@UsernameGeri So I think we're maybe mixing signals. My issues with Elden Ring are largely related to the open world. Multiplayer is also a sore spot for the game but because it's not as robust as it was in previous games. I make lots of videos about my issues with the multiplayer and didn't want to make that the focus of this one. My issue with games from other developers (like Lies of P) is that they omit much of the RPG experience and only focus on action. I want a game that is a full Action RPG (ie. a souls game). If the primary value of the games for you is their action and you don't care about the RPG elements like character creation or whatever else, that's completely fair. It's just something that's non-negotiable for me.
most of your dark souls and bloodborne playthrough is fighting. most of elden ring FEELS like just running. is it actually? I don't know I haven't timed it but it sure feels like alot of running and running and running when I explore in elden ring I always get some shit ass item, every fucking time. another flame butterfly or mushroom I totally agree with you on sekiro and the mountaintops. it really is just boring if you're on PC I have a suggestion. try modding Dark Souls 2: Seeker of Fire 2.0 Dark Souls 3: Convergence Elden Ring: Convergence there are more but these are the ones I've personally played and really think are worth giving a chance
@5:34 there should have been some weapon or armor at the face of stormvale but the big special thing is the story and lore. Rewards don't always have to be items
Yeah. I know about lore. I know about the story. It's just not that special. Maybe the DLC will make Godwyn a little more interesting but as a player, I didn't get a whole lot out of finding his silly corpse and then not having any real follow-up other than "that's where deathroot comes from." On the whole, I don't think the lore of Elden Ring is especially exciting. Certainly not bad by any means, but left me wishing there was a little more to it.
@@emotionaljonxvx I do agree some sort of item should have been there, but that's an interesting reveal. One of the biggest issues is the Lord got cut up between base game and DLC, so I hope the dlc really fills the hole since the lore feels like it's missing a huge chunk.
The addition of an Open World in ER is very much a trend-chasing effort, as all of the big high profile games (MGSV, TLoZ, Nier and many others) were all going Open World as well in recent years. Personally It's something I'm genuinely tired of seeing, it adds nothing of value and just destroys replayability.
I get the conceptual appeal, but outside of a game that is centered around zones for social player hubs and trading (MMOs, basically) I just never found it all that fun. It's all the same ideas as any other game but with a lot of extra space in between.
Elden Ring is my first experience of a From Software game. A significant amount of my friends have played their previous titles, sometimes well back into their childhoods, but I was not one of them. Since beating the game, I have bought DS1, DS3, Sekiro, am torn between getting and not getting DS2, and I want to get Bloodborne at some point (hopefully as a PC game - someday). Elden Ring is one of my most favourite games of all time. Be it the lore, visuals, gameplay, bosses, spectacles, exploration, what have you. DS1, so far, has not been as good of a game as I had hoped. It is a masterpiece, but it is hard to look past the lack of polish that ER has spoiled me with. At the time of writing this comment, I have beaten Seath. I know this is far from the entire game, but I've heard of how even more unpolished the later half of the game is. Truthfully, I am worried. DS1, in my eyes, is FAR from being better than Elden Ring and I mean that to the fullest extent. I doubt that DS1 will surpass ER as a better game once I am done with it. I can respect it and its charm, but its just not as good - maybe the age is showing for me, I suppose. DS3 may be much closer to achieving that feat, but I honestly still doubt that it will overtake ER for me. Maybe I am simply a different type of player than you, but that is my view of things. I expect to be pleasantly surprised - but not enough so. Elden Ring is a flawed game on a significant amount of levels, but what it does have to offer is so polished, beautiful and compelling that I simply can't agree that it's not one of the best/better Souls games - not completely, at least. I will never forget each of the bosses, legacy dungeons, or places like Nokron and Siofra. I know that I am mentioning the non-filler parts of the game, but still. It's just how I feel, whether warranted or not. Will that change? Unlikely I feel, but it is very possible. I still have a ways to go with its predecessors. The PVP I enjoy, but dislike a lot as well. I realize how much better it can be and it makes me sad that it's not utilized to its fullest potential. Covenants are a system that could work well in ER's world, too, and I find that to be a missed opportunity as well - at least from what I've experienced of the system in DS1. I expect the DLC to bring ER even higher in my own ranking. Will it fix the issues with PVP, farming and its filler? Probably not, but the singleplayer portion of the expansion I know is gonna be killer. It will be. I have experienced enough of From Software to know that.
I think to really appreciate Dark Souls you have to appreciate the sort of game it is. It's probably a lot harder to work backward through the series than forward but I don't have any insight on that front. It's the sort of game where you either get it or you don't and that's what I love about it. Elden Ring has a lot more broad appeal but that has its tradeoffs. Dark Souls just told a story I cared about in a way I cared to learn it. But it was hard to learn. I assume going back now Dark Souls is remarkable easy with just how much players have learned about the series. I suspect so much of the appeal, for any of these games, comes from it being the first. Whichever you experience for the first time is the first way you'll learn to love what you're presented. Probably the same reason Elden Ring doesn't hold much charm for me. It's my sixth souls game and it's not the best take on the formula (for me, at least). In regards to scenery, Elden Ring is pretty, no doubt. But I never wanted beauty. I wanted tone, atmosphere, setting, and to find the beauty in the dark. Elden Ring is, above most things, conventional. It's not a crime by any measure and it's an excellent game no doubt. It just isn't quite as special as I had hoped.
@@emotionaljonxvx Man there's some pissy replies in this video. I don't think anyone who didn't experience DS1 first, back in the day, can understand why it was so emotionally compelling. ER is pretty, and that's the problem. It's mostly only pretty. Finding luminous darkness and warmth in the cold is far harder. The themes, symbolism, and characters of Souls hit me like a truck. Maybe it just takes a certain type of person, and FromSoft does not want to appeal to that type anymore, or at least didn't with ER.
@@ianwilliams2632 That's fair. I get how the gritty, dark fantasy theme the earlier titles show can be more appealing and to an extent I agree. I think what you and Jon said about experiencing what game first is exactly the case here. It's sort of a matter of bias, is how I could describe it? You struggle to understand why ER is more compelling to ME, and I find it hard to understand why DS1 is so emotionally compelling to YOU. I find the first game's themes, symbolism and the like extremely interesting, and characters to an extent as well (I've only really noticed Solaire and the onion guy as people particularly interesting, but that's besides the point) but the game that holds those undertones is showing age. Maybe I am more strict with my view of it, or something, but I can't not be bothered with it. ER's themes, story, and symbolism, however, are just as compelling, if not more. You can't not agree at least to a degree - the lore is absolutely great, stuff like Godwyn's corpse is some of the coolest shit I've personally ever learnt about. There's very good merits to both, and I just happen to be on the ER side here.
7:48 That to me sounds like a common thing for people these days, it sounds undisciplined and demanding, not being able to commit to something just because the baby needs something new or else he's already bored -_- I've played dark souls 1 since it came out And I have NEVER been bored, in fact I ALWAYS HAVE FUN AS IF IT WAS THE FIRST DAY, look I had an addiction to video games and I wanted to quit them COMPLETELY and I did it with all video games except dark souls, dark souls for me is the only one video game that DESERVES my valuable TIME, if I couldn't play dark souls I would prefer to do SOMETHING MORE USEFUL WITH MY TIME before playing other video games
Although I want to be clear, I only play Dark Souls when I WANT, I don't play many hours in fact because I PREFER to do more USEFUL things with MY invaluable TIME
ER was my first From Soft game, and my first playthrough was absolutely magical, and I wanted to do and interact with as many things as I could possibly find. But going back in the series and playing through the Souls games, I get what you mean with enjoying being trapped somewhere and needing to push through anyway. ER was magical, but DS1 was an unforgiving and unforgettable experience and I cherished every second of it. Excellent video mate, wishing you success. Your video essays are brilliant.
I love that there's so much in the game but it's often too much. Especially when a lot of it doesn't necessarily feel warranted. It's a tough thing for sure
It was a real phenomenon I noticed in just the first few months after release. All of ChaseTheBro's regulars in his stream chats stopped bothering to post, flooded with new people that didn't have the old souls comradeship and sense of fun. Old stalwarts like Schwa Akari tried PVPing once or twice and stopped. Amir made only one ER PVP stream and stopped. Old lore channels gave up, and the lore fanbase was consolidated into just a few people (Smoughtown, Archaeologist, etc.). The game just failed to capture the imagination of the older players. The fire fades, such is the way of things.
@@ianwilliams2632 another reason is because the lore is maybe not as intriguing like dark souls were, because dark souls has different countries outside the main location they taking place in.
and yeah I kinda see that ELDEN RING Is more High Fantasy than it is Dark Fantasy. i just want them to just go back and made something dark fantasy again! like anything! hell i am not mad if they want to create like roman empire era world with a dark fantasy twists on it because why not. or go back to medieval dark fantasy once again something like Demon's Souls.
@@dev4159 looking at the reveal gameplay i think it could be. i started seeing those giant flies enemy from painting world, and possibly more monsters that were berserk style
It's def not a bad game but it's also not a GREAT game let a lone a masterpiece as so many idiots on the internet seem to label it as. It's an approachable game for casuals but less so for ppl who prefer their older design philosophy of taking accountability for making poor calculated choices. The open world is there as a distraction for those who needed that mental break of what little challenge they've been forced to actually deal w/ when not being able to run away on Torrent. That's what ER is.
Having watched it now, you basically summed up all my thoughts at the end: "everything about it I found interesting, I found more interesting in an earlier title". Yes, indeed. Here's to another 6 years...
It is If It wastes this time. A good game would not be considered a waste of time... I have 500 hundred hours on Bloodborne and little of It was useless inside the game content. Elden ring is just doing stuff as a chore to not use in any content because this game multiplayer is trash... 80% of the Bosses are reused and arent EVEN good, 90% of the dungeons are reused and arent good, etc... I like Elden ring, but its the most frustrating game I ever bought.
Elden Ring was fun but lately it got me bored. Everything is so depressive and sad. I got headache out of it. Thats why i stopped playing it. But there is Mario Oddissey atleast 😄🙌🏻
The first five minutes of this video were absolutely prophetic. Because, let's be honest, how you described the DLC would turn out is completely reflective of what it is. It neglected all the issues you put forth and further emphasized what you have disdain towards. While I had my fun with the DLC and saw it as worth my time, it's also totally legit if you just sum it up as "not for me" and don't buy it.
17:00 I'd thought about it, and I feel like Elden Ring actually has *fewer* weapons than older Souls games, in a way- It feels like there are an incredibly small number of them with unique movesets
As a DS1 fan boy I can sympathize. My first play though I ran past most of the open world because it felt pointless to kill difficult enemies for no reward. In past games you had to fight to progress.
I can’t stand the game it’s too slow and the camera is so annoying to use, I hate not being able to fully see what I’m fighting because it’s too big to fit in the frame
Elden ring feels like a Baby's first souls game. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a little grating if you've played the rest of the series. There really is no excuse for how they mangled the PvP system though. Also, the increased accessibility of this game meant that after years of trying to get my family to play souls games, they finally clicked with this one.
It's really funny because I've gotten a bunch of comments on this video (and every video, really) from people who disagree with me about whatever and then also throw in that Elden Ring is their first Souls game. Not that it's bad or anything, everyone starts somewhere. Just a funny throughline for where my opinions hold weight and with whom they resonate.
game is an unbalanced slog. the last half is pathetic. this is the future of From. They have to keep one upping their bullshit bosses, with new bullshit moves and speed. the, "tools", they give you are as usual, useless. they, "balance", the entire game around the trash ashes of war, all of which are useless. anything that was strong, the morons nerf to death, as usual. i cant wait for the From shit to end.
My fear is that they'll never go back and fix/rework some design choices when it comes to weapons that feel like they should've had something unique to them but instead got some aow that can be found everywhere and sometimes not even a unique moveset. Im also sure whips that arent a somber weapon have no unique aow on their own and because they are whips they are locked out of many aow that directly do damage with the weapon. I get your frustration. I've never played souls games and i love elden ring but everytime i play, instead asking why i ask "why couldn't they have done this or that" around every corner. It always feels like something is missing due to either lore reasons, game balacing or maybe they just forgot or didn't have time. It bothers me that stuff like a majority of time is in fact set and stone with no justifiable answer. But other devs for other games are fully open to reworks, redesigns and whatnot so why not elden ring? Oh and as a console player it hurts to know there are mods that probably fix many issues i have with the game but I can't access. Which is why i can only pray.
Scold In all seriousness, I also had a very mixed experience with ER. Not the same as you, but I think that's a matter of taste. But i also experienced the fatigue of playing through as i neared the end. I largely attribute that to trying to binge the game rather than approach it from a reasonable pace for me.
I also played the game so much when it came out that exhaustion was all but guaranteed. It's just too much to do in a reasonable amount of time first time around. Then again, I did it with every other souls game and never had an issue. Elden Ring definitely tested my patience to the point of breaking them outright and that's really where so much of my frustration with the playthrough experience comes from. Everything else is all about how they backstepped on multiplayer. I'd forgive everything else if they just left the multiplayer like how it was in Dark Souls 3 or, even better, improved it.
Your points about rewards is inconsistent if you apply the same argument to any other souls game. Take DS1 for example. What is the "reward" for getting down to ash lake? A semi-interesting covenant with a mid (at best) sword? No. Your "reward" is the majesty and mystery of the place. The atmosphere. The music suddenly coming in. The story of it all. Now let's get back to Elden Ring. What is your "reward" for getting to the base of Stormviel? Is it the golden seed that's dropped by the spirit? The talisman? No, its the horror and mystery of seeing Godwyn the Golden's undying corpse. It's the almost lovecraftian design that evokes an almost otherworldly atmosphere. Its the subtle horror of seeing a bloodstain that is clearly different from the rest but still extremely cryptic as to what it entails which you don't find out till much later. The fact that you can ignore all of that and say, "lol no reward," has me questioning why you even played these games pve in the first place. Or what you enjoyed about them. Or if this whole thing is just some bitter cope and seethe session with almost no valid pve points (or points that are so subjective to the point of absurdity) because you hate the pvp (I do as well). DS3 has an almost identical ratio of enemy reuse as Elden Ring especially with the high wall of Lothric proportioned with the games size as a factor. It just seems like the only "criticism" is that you have a preference for more "cramped, tighter" level design... Except that the legacy dungeons in the game dwarf ANY zone in previous games in terms of enemy density, complexity, and overall layout. Leyndell is one of the most complex 3D spaces in video game history. No issue you raised with elden ring aside from maybe boss repetition seems to hold up to even the slightest scrutiny or consistent standards that you judge other "better" souls games by(aside from pvp stuff obviously).
I think the rewards are all subjective, as is the enjoyment of the game. I didn't care for what I found throughout Elden Ring because it just didn't hit the same way. I'm sure a lot of it comes down to a repeating formula but I think it's more complicated than that. I think everyone is going to get something out of the game but what I find lacking in Elden Ring is the player engagement through the lore and atmosphere. It's not like it does a bad job, and as I said I do love the all said, but it just doesn't work for me the same way it had in previous entries. I think Dark Souls 3 is weaker in a lot of these regards than Dark Souls 1, but at least 3 gave me a lot of things to do once I was past the PVE. I'm a PVP focused player, so I'm sure most of my issues stem from that. Elden Ring has very few systems for PVP and it's a major backstep from DS3. If it had better multiplayer, as I said in the video, I think I wouldn't care half as much. If you like the game, that's great, but criticism doesn't have validity based on what you find true. It's going to be subjective for each person. I think there are more objective criticisms but I can get past a lot of the stock asset use and copy-paste landscapes when I'm enthralled with the rest of the game. Elden Ring just has a lot of downtime for an Action RPG and virtually non-existent endgame/multiplayer so I spend most of my time with the game staring at everything that left me wanting. Sorry if that doesn't strike a chord with you though. I appreciate any discourse about this sort of thing and I obviously love talking about it. I just wanted to vent a bit before the DLC because I think the game gets a little too much praise and that can encourage complacency.
Only played this game for 1 hour 30 min before uninstalling. I want normal game not some controller game where you need to lock onto enemy, game in unplayable otherwise. I played dark souls 1, 2, 3 and with each new game combat was getting worse. This feels so bad its not worth my time.
First thing I thought when I saw the 10/10 reviews and huge sales in the first weeks. "We finally made casual souls, please make us rich now". And they did. I sense Bandai behind a lot of this.
You guys realize your opinions on the souls series are entirely subjective right? You argue the games are suffering but this is the most popular game by From and it gets way more love than hate this isn't a DS2 situation where majority agree the game sucks most are in agreeance this game is sick. Also it makes no sense wanting this game to be something it's not, it's not Dark Souls, it's Elden Ring just like how Sekiro is Sekiro, a lot of people in the comments are forgetting this.
You realise your opinions are entirely subjective too, right? That's the nature of an opinion. It's not clever to point that out. Anyway, who cares if it's popular or not? We can dislike things about it no matter what millions of other people may think. Going by your standard here, Fortnite or Skyrim get way more love than Elden Ring, so they must be better, right? Yeah ER is something different. And it could've done that something different a lot better than it did. That's my point, and I assume Emotional Jon's too.
@@ianwilliams2632 This is NOT a casual souls game. The difficult encounters can be trivialized easily with a bit of prep, but this is a choice. Underneath the OP builds are boss mechanics that put their other games to fucking shame. Seriously. DS3,2,1, DS, and BB bosses are pathetic joke encounters that hardly compare to even the lowest quality ER bosses. Not. Even. Close. This is not sensationalizing. Do a RL1 no hit with like +8 regular weapons. Then play any other FS game. Playing older FS games feels like playing fucking Oblivion. There hasn’t been a difficult FS game until ER (maybe Sekiro, but once you learn the trick, too many Boss combos last only 1-2 moves), and I respect them for it. They didn’t figure out how to design a boss mechanically until Sekiro. They didn’t implement that philosophy into Souls style games until ER. This is the ONLY FS game besides Sekiro that has complex, organic, difficult boss fights. In order to quickly no hit them, you need to use stance break on bosses that may not stop attacking even once in their entire fight.
Hello Jon, glad to hear your thoughts reflect my opinion also! My biggest gripe I have is actually balance. If you play anything other than collosal weapons or strength oriented weapons, R1s are significantly nerfed to a point where it makes to sense to use them. I tried to start a Dagger only run for fun, only to hit the wall immediatly seeing that R1s on it don't deal any significant poise or single hit damage. In DS3, I never had such an issue that I would need to hit a boss 40 times with R1s with the latest upgrades you can get before they die. Here in Elden Ring, this is a reality. Bosses have overinflated health, hold their weapons over their head for 5 seconds to roll catch. Why would anyone in real combat "charge" their weapon over their head for multiple seconds? It makes the fights not believable and unserious. L2s (Ashes of War) make the use of ANY other means or way to deal damage obsolete. The amount of damage you do with Ashes of War is absolute nuts and 100% the reason HP from bosses got power creeped. Why would I dare do any other action? I can press L2 once and deal around 5k damage lategame. There also seems to be no tradeoff, the FP cost is negligable. They honestly could skip this part entirely, no one has ever asked for this. Dodge rolling and R1s have been core for all Souls games so far, we don't need to re-invent the wheel. Thanks Jon again
25:14 Sorry, but I don't agree with you. The developers are not our relatives and they do not owe us anything. I'm sure that if it weren't for Namco, fromsoftware would have been working in other genres. And that's wonderful, isn't it? I'm an old AC fan. And I waited too long for AC6 to then hear the opinion that should continue to make games only in those genres that appealed to modern audiences. But there is also an old audience, there is an audience that has not touched these games at all. Give others a chance, don't be selfish. Enjoy what you have now, not what you didn't get. Try Sekiro, try AC6, play the studio's old games - Kuon or Kingsfield. And understand how wrong you are and how fixated you are on one thing. I appreciate your content, but I think sometimes you need to stop whining. You need to accept reality as it is. If Namco or Sony make an order, we will get another action RPG in the style of dark fantasy. If not, then the developers will choose their own path. When talking about the identity of the Dark Souls series, do not forget about the identity of the studio - this is more than 25 years of history, respect the heritage. P.S. sorry for my English, my native language is Ukrainian. Thanks for the content, I didn't mean to offend you with this comment.
At the same time, fans of the genre have somewhere to go. Give other studios a chance. Play Surge, for example. By supporting other developers you can help the entire genre. And by saying that no one can do what fromsoftware does, you are forcing your favorite studio into a framework. This is just a stereotype, everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
Hey, I get where you're coming from and I appreciate the engagement. What I'm trying to express is that not a single studio other than FromSoftware makes games I like. I don't want to (and obviously can't) force them into making any type of game. I'm just voicing my issues with how they're handling the games they do make. I've played Soulslikes in the past and they're all not very good. But even if they excel in one area, my problem is that they need to be good at every part to be worth my time. They have to have single player, multiplayer, pvp, character creation, build making, and tight combat that makes me want to play. It's a big, tough list to get right and only FromSoftware have been doing it. I'd play Elden Ring a lot more if the PVP and multiplayer were better focuses, they just didn't make those things a focus and it might be years and years till another title does.
So far the biggest complaint i have is who the hell decided to make the X button, the button you normally use to interact with everything in every Soulsborne game... THE JUMP BUTTON. I immediately swapped triangle and x.
I mostly agree with you in regards of ER in comparison to past souls games. I just recently started a new playthrough (after my initial release 120hr playthrough) due to the hype around the expansion and I thought after my long hiatus I could jump in and experience the game a new to hype myself up for the DLC but.......nope. What ended up happening was me kind of enjoying the first few hours until I came to the realization I was not really having fun, and everything felt pointless to interact with outside of the main dungeons and main bosses. The reason why I was not having much fun is because essentially everything that made me enjoy the previous souls game is 100% missing in ER: - After one playthrough, exploration is useless and the game becomes bee lining it to the items you need to make your build and pretty much boss rushing the game. - The premium zones like the initial castle are WEAK imitations of past FS level design because the combat puzzles of the past games are completely GONE in ER, as you can just run past everything and its easier then ever thanks to the new jump button. - The addition of a jump button and how high it lets the player jump, gives the player too many movement options to avoid enemies which essentially turns the game into one of the easiest of the FS souls-likes (also I hate how powerful jumping heavy attacks are compared to everything else). - Every enemy in the open world has no meaning outside of the few world bosses (dragons, birds, ...etc) because your horse can literally outrun anything, they have no special drops, they don't give much runes, and there is literally no incentive to attack or fight them. - There is no risk to entering higher level zones early because you can teleport at whim and once again you can ride past the most dangerous enemies with no risk of geting stuck or having to fight your way out of that harder zone. - Combat while clearly visually better looking, is the worst Feeling its ever been imo, as everything just feels too loose and floaty for my taste, and I believe this onec again goes back to the addition of the jump button which gives the player a little too much freedom in a game like this. I could go on and on, but let me stop here. Also let me note my whole perspective is 100% as a pve only player as I personally have never liked the souls PVP side of things because of usualy terrible netcode (I like the invasions, but not really the area type stuff). I don't think ER is a "bad game" (like you said), but it is a bad "souls-like" for sure and was clearly made to cater to much more casual audiences, which explains why it blew up in popularity so fast and attracted many of the people who never liked the original 4 Souls games. FS actuall game the people the "difficulty options" they wanted by making 99% of the content either brain dead easy or pointless to interact with. To end this long comment, I am 100% disagreement with you on your view of other souls-likes "not getting it" as there are many of them that get the CORE of the souls-like feel but they do their own take on it. Like Surge 1, which is a souls-like in terms of combat, leveling, level design, progression, boss fights,..etc, but almost feels like a dead space spin off with its errie scifi world the devs created. Also I actually enjoyed the Lords of the Fallen game A LOT (much more then ER) because I as a player that has played Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3,....etc, LotF actually NAILS that feeling I had when I booted up DS1 for the first time and got lost in the world cray world they laid out before me. I understand the viewpoint that no game can get the FS feel, but imo a game does not need to copy FS to be a good "souls-like" it just needs to get the core elements and build something unique/interesting around it. I should note that while I love the souls series I play A LOT more games/genres then just those, so I know there are thos die hard FS fans that literally play nothing else, to each their own I say. Great video though!
Good to hear from the PVE crowd for stuff like this. As far as other games "not getting it" I've just never found one that managed to tick every single box for me and make me consider it as a worthy addition/replacement. I'm very picky, but if a game can't get the core functions of the single player and multiplayer and PVP and lore and combat and setting and etc etc etc then I find I'm generally pretty dismissive. Not that I'm being all that fair to other developers but From set the bar pretty high when it comes to my very silly expectations. Thanks for the comment!
One of my main problems with the game isn't that there are so many reused enemies, bosses and assets overall, but that they created the most terrible enemies in any game to ever exist and reused THEM. Exploration also often felt disappointing for the same reasons you mentioned - when I thought that maybe I uncovered a secret area or path my reward would either be nothing or something very insignificant. Sometimes just uncovering a secret area or pretty view is enough of a reward, but if it's done so frequently, it discourages exploration. So basically the worst thing about this game is not reusing, but reusing bad stuff. I also feel very strongly both negatively and positively about the game(like I loved Leyndell and exploring the underworld, but even though this game consistently looked good in the design of the areas themselves, the areas, especially late game, were overcrowded with annoying and very powerful enemies that made the experience literal hell and I found very few bosses good and fun to fight... about a game that has over a hundred bosses, that's saying something...)
20:32 This is my least thoughtful comment of all, but did you know that in Dark Souls 3 you can have 7 people in the world without hacks, it's crazy and I KNOW how to provoke it CONSISTENTLY (sometimes 8 but I've only seen it 3 times and I don't know how to provoke it without hacks (game on play)
Hey, really appreciate all the comments (even the not-so-nice ones) but just wanted to clarify for anyone that isn't finishing the video or isn't having the message come through, I do love Elden Ring. I think it's fantastic. I think it gets so much right about what a game should be. My issues represented here are that I'm disappointed with it for numerous reasons and I feel it's important to critique something I love and respect because I want it to be better. I get a lot of comments from people who played Elden Ring before any other souls game and it only makes sense that those people would be hard-pressed to find fault. I'm the same way with Dark Souls, even though I know it has many glaring issues.
I just want to reassure everyone that I only think Elden Ring is "bad" in a very subjective sense, and all of my arguments are going to be largely subjective. For me, that's in the nature of debate and all art is subjective. There is never going to be an objective good or bad when it comes to this kind of presentation and I don't want people to get the wrong idea that I'm suggesting the game is poorly made or anything like that. All my issues, even the ones I consider more objective, are all deliberate design choices (possibly some oversights) that do not devalue Elden Ring's position as a masterpiece and work of art, only that FromSoftware seems to have gone in a direction that I think cost the game a lot more than it gained in a lot of ways. Depending on how robust the DLC is, I'm not confident I'll go back and play Elden Ring years later. I can't know for sure but I wanted to express my feelings and talk about a wonderful game without treating it like an untouchable, unquestionable titan of gaming (though in many ways it is).
Again, I love Elden Ring and could not be happier that FromSoftware is getting the attention and accolades they deserve. I'd just like to see them avoid some of the things I see as mistakes in future titles. Thanks for reading and thanks for watching!
That we didn't get Covenants when we interact with more gods than every other souls game collectively is... stupid.
man elden ring its a full on 10 out 10, you are a FOOL
One big issue I have with the believability of Elden Ring's world is the lack of meaningful infrastructure. I'm fine with a kingdom being small in scale, but it shouldn't just be one big castle with a few huts and maybe one village in its entire sphere of influence. A really good example of this is how most mines are just random caves from the outside. There's no railways to transport ores or stones to the outside, no storage huts, not even any major roads leading from/to the mines. Elden Ring's world feels like an amusement park with various disconnected attractions that you can choose to visit, not a world that people live or used to live in.
the mines in Demon's Souls were more interesting even
This is a valid point I remember feeling off around the mines the abandoned one in the ravine was most realistic
man imagine how many cool cities they could've put in with their own lore & look. I remember feeling particularly dissapointed with just how underbaked Sellia was
@@Munnwort??? This comment makes no sense lmao
@@xEcuador1 what about my comment are you not comprehending lol
"Everything about it I find interesting, I found more interesting in a previous title."
Damn it, that line is perfect.
It’s not since Elden Ring is better than all of them
It really is ironic how the biggest game feels like it has the smallest world.
The devs knew about burnout, I am convinced thats why the mimic tear exists. It is at the perfect point of the game to just say fuck it and sleep walk to the end.
I can see this, but I don't know why they would invalidate the entire spirit summons system with something so blatantly overpowered. It would be nice if every boss was vulnerable to 1 or a couple different ones for novelty's sake and they all upgraded together... but that's asking way too much. At least make them all busted so I have the variety.
Or just design the game so you dont get burned out and actually enjoy it? I played ds3 with two dlcs twice through in a week, never got burnt out. Elden ring made me burnt out after 11 hours lol
This game would've benefitted from being about 40% smaller.
Well. they just did that with the DLC and it ended up being pretty crappy. I think it's a skill issue on the devs part tbh. A lot of this screams Dark souls 2 Bteam handling the bulk of the design while the main team does the legacy dungeons and such. Honestly they even outsourced some stuff to india...
@@spitfiremanlizerd"screams dark souls 2 bteam"
yet dark souls 2 has the best dlcs of the series
and wasnt made by miyazaki,which elden ring was.
@@RelaxingNostalgiaDS2 DLC suffered only not having enough bonfires (specifically slog runs if you died in certain areas)
Elden Ring DLC suffered from everything the base game suffered, multiplied by 1.5x, and then with a McGuffin collection system. While also suffering more from base game poor handling.
@RelaxingNostalgia seriously, ds2 has some of the best features, and yet people still go on with the tired "b team is bad" bullshit. Oh the worst souls game has the best NG+, best covenants, best multiplayer, best variety of areas, most armours and weapons, best weapon catalysts, best infusion system that allowed you to infuse EVERYTHING, soul vessels, best npc invaders and most generous in giving you many upgrade materials with making slabs farmable.
Or, conversely, filling up the 40% of empty space.
i guess I am not the only one who saw a decline in armor design of ELDEN RING good to know.
They really went off the beaten track with the armour designs. Even the basic knight set looks boxy and fat. I assume they wanted to be more 'high fantasy' but it went overboard. I think most of them look awful.
@@ianwilliams2632 they're awful, they did took some real life armors and helmet for banished knight but the rest are just meh. how come a game like chivalry 2 and mordhau have better armor designs than ELDEN RING Is beyond me.
I hate the way the sets are so hard to mix and match. It's not impossible, just a lot less appealing than previous games.
@@emotionaljonxvx it's hard to mix and match true! it's because of the color of the tint of those armors, the only thing that i manage to mix up in that game is to just mix veteran helmet and gauntlet with banished knight chest and then top it off with scaled leggings.
@@LyllianaofMirrah W chiv 2 and mordhau enjoyer. my favorite medieval dress up games.
Siofra River sums up how I feel about the game. Going down the super long elevator ride was a spectacle and it lured me with the promise of something amazing ahead. Then you get there and there are no interesting enemies to fight, a boring boss, no good items and to add insult to injury, Fromsoft made me waste my time lighting all the candles to even get to the boss. Then you get to the end and go up the elevator to Caeled and the cycle repeats again.
There were no interesting enemies TO YOU. I felt like Siofra was great and the boss at the end was a spectacle. Yeah, lighting the torches was a bit annoying but I would disagree that there were “no interesting enemies.” What exactly were you expecting then?
My biggest gripes with Elden RIng:
1. Multiplayer:
A. Seamless Coop should've been built into the base game, as it's an Open World and not a series of corridors/rooms like the previous games. The fact that you can't cooperatively go from Open World, to Dungeon, to Open World is frustrating to say the least. It's also a shame that the cooperator is kicked out every single time a Field Boss is slain.
B. The distinct lack of Covenants also makes the online experience with other players fairly bland, as other than the baseline Blue, Gold, and Red summons, there are no rewards or unique functions that make them stand out from previous games. I personally wish there was a Carian Royal Family covenant, just so that I could get Starlight Shards as a reward instead of the 999th Rune Arc.
C. If a Host uses a Rune Arc, with cooperator or not, they should be open to invasions like previous games. As an Invader, it's a constant pain to always invade a gank squad each and every time. It was also a missed opportunity to not have a Tongue weather effect, like we have for the Erd Tree Leaves effect that buffs Rune Acquisition.
2. Lack of Caster gameplay improvements:
A lot of people call Elden Ring the second Dark Souls 2, but for Casters, almost every single improvement that DS2 brought forward for Casters was completely ignored. Seals/Staves have no access to Infusions or Ash of Wars, and Cast Speed is once again trapped into Dexterity instead of Mind (Attunement). We also are missing out on unique armor effects that support Casters beyond just increasing damage. (A deeply annoying trend in Elden Ring's design for Casters)
In Dark Souls 2, you could cast WAY MORE spells at mid-to-high levels than in Elden Ring. We also got a plethora of Spell Recovery options and even a passive recovery option that's completely missing in Elden Ring. (Iron King Crown is passive; Ancestral Spirit Horn is not, as it requires a death trigger to activate. Also, the fact that all FP recovery is flat, whereas HP recover is flat + a % of total HP, punishes Casters even further.)
It also doesn't help that Seals/Staves are treated as a back-up tool and not a Caster's primary weapon. While the current setup works great for Spellblades, since there is a crazy amount of support for that style of play, but it's absolutely terrible for Casters. It's baffling that FromSoft couldn't be bothered to improve Seal/Staff gameplay instead of using damage stacking equipment/buffs as a substitute.
As is, Seals/Staves have these common problems:
R2: Is essentially a dead button, as it does a pitiful amount of damage if you do make an attack with your Seal/Staff. Unlike quite a few other games that offer Casters a way to attack with Cantrip spells (Basic Attack, no FP cost), it seems FromSoft wants Casters to use a weapon instead and play as a Spellblade. (A common trend in Elden Ring)
L1 (Two-Handed): Is also essentially a dead button. When was the last time you've ever seen a player block with their Staff? Never, I bet. Plus, even if you do block with your Staff, you're not even allowed to Guard Counter with it. So, if blocking with a Staff is so pointless for Casters, I don't see why we can't have a Ward (Shield) Spell or a Spell Wheel selection option for that button.
L2: Outside of the *ONE* singular Ash of War, out of 93+ available Ash of Wars, Casters have basically zero access to a whole gameplay mechanic unless they play as a Spellblade instead. Like seriously, why couldn't we get access to the Spell-like Ash of Wars at least? Not even Ice Spear for Staves or Lifesteal Fist for Seals?
As a Caster main, excluding the very-very minimal improvements that were done for Casters, I found Elden Ring to be a big disappointment.
Rune arcs should not open you to invasion. That’s just plain dumb
Might as well say coop doesn't exist. You summon folks then you can't get to areas you need to with torrent. Have to send the summons away. Very poorly designed.
I didn't expect to agree as much as i did. Miss the claustrophobia and aprehension since DS1
It's the price we pay for "accessibility".
Than play DS1
@@debater452 i do. Also miss the armor ASMR
@@debater452 but also, now i don't feel those things anymore, since i know how far i am from the next bonfire
@@marcellocoppede7237That's your opinion. You can't critique Elden ring for not having the thing you want.
DLC flopped even harder than base
Kinda worried other studios like Round 8 will end up making better souls games over time if From keeps this direction up
They really need to take a hard look at DS1 and BB for world design philosophy and what made their games the cream of the crop
Miyazaki is a smart guy and he himself said he doesn't understand why Elden ring was selling as well as it was... I think he knew he didn't have something special on his hands this time. It was more of a "satisfactory" game than the next big thing, not innovative enough to make a new era of souls.
Round 8 will absolutely surpass from soft.
What made DS1 "Cream of the crop" was the most easily influenceable generation coupled with the rise of social media. Pure herd behavior. Regardless of what one might think of the "good" part of DS1 HALF of the game is literally the lowest point in the entire series, pure garbage cobbled together levels, bosses and enemies. The "highlight" of the base game is a pretty skybox while 85% of the level is actually spent looking at featureless indoor white walls. Yet all of it gets completely ignored and DS1 is just the best because that's what everyone else says.
I guess to be fair i have to keep in mind that a lot of people missed Demons Souls so the DS1 was a novel concept to them. I can understand that. But now you can look back at the entire series objectively and DS1 doe snot have the novelty or the quality.
@@deathtoraiden2080 That's a lotta words
@@BasedChadman is it? Maybe Twatter is more your speed, bud
I thought the developers had forgotten about the base game lore when the dlc came out then I figured out it is actually redecorated content trashed from the base game... Then I realized the developers never had an actual game story to begin with just random lore facts, random location scenarios and backstory. ER always seemed like an incomplete game with a very good concept.
The story is very complete. The problem with Elden Ring's narrative is that it's so spread out in this behemoth of a game that you won't see most of it even in 2-3 playthroughs unless you use a guide to find items, bosses and NPCs
@@anthonypedraza3017 I'm certain that's fully to blame on Miyazaki for asking that hack of George R R Martin to create the lore background for the game; which basically screwed the game's story as a result because the foundations are not good or well-thought, Miyazaki and Martin wrote a gigantic and deep lore just for the sake of being gigantic and deep.
@@TheBatman39 I don't think you even know what you're talking about. You're talking about the lore sucking, then saying they made it gigantic and deep, which implies a large, well thought out story.
I'm beginning to suspect you just bounced off Soulslike storytelling with this game because of how it didn't mesh all that well with the open-ended design of the map on your first few runs.
@anthonypedraza3017 Very true is easily the hardest of the games for me to theory craft on my own because of it
@@anthonypedraza3017 George R R Martin lowkey sucks at writing. He still has yet to finish the books that made his famous, so its not far fetched that this story is unfinished. He started to write one of the best medieval-fantasy stories, and just banks off of the idea of it. No idea why they hired him to write the "lore" for this game.
Having played Sekiro, the game's even more disappointing because many bosses and enemies essentially use Sekiro mob moves and animation skeletons, forcing you to face them with a DS moveset rather than a Sekiro toolset which makes them frustrating and unfair to fight.
Utterly disgusting
True. When you next hop on test the dodge button. You will realise its actually delayed by about half a second to a second, and when bosses are chucking out moves that are fast as hell it becomes impossible. Every boss is a cheese fest. Im never played sekiro but i thought they were like bloodborne speed with dark souls rolls. It just sucks.
@@sbslctvit’s not that it’s delayed, the issue is the dodge button is mapped to the same button as sprinting, and sprinting only registers when you hold it. That means that dodge will only be registered when you release the button, not when you press it. That’s why it feels like a delay.
@@dathunderman4 so it’s delayed then….
@@sbslctvyes lmao he basically said what u said but with a paragraph
One more thing he forgot to mentions is the bosses are either forgettable or their design is just bad
Skill issue
@@Areis1997 he never said "hard", stop being brainlet goblin.
ER is not hard, its repetetive and badly designed. saying this as someone who played FS games since PS2.
@@Areis1997loser fanboy nerd
@@Areis1997 Moron issue
@@Areis1997 Boring and unoriginal lol
Elden Ring made me question do I even enjoy souls games anymore, but when I went back to DS1 and 3 I still love them, especially DS3 I found to be better than I remembered. ER also was the first game I didn't want to play again, I just couldn't find a good reason for second playthrough.
Playing Elden ring I miss the deliberately crafted encounters that require more from you than dodging and hitting. When I think about dark souls 1 one of the 1st things that comes to mind is one of the most inconsequential moments in the game, after you’ve beat the Taurus demon and go underneath the bridge guarded by the dragon and there’s an undead enemy with a spear and shield. It’s a narrow path with a wall on your right and a drop to your death on your left, if you try and attack him mindlessly your swing collides with the wall and leaves you vulnerable to him. It’s an encounter you can’t steamroll over and you have to treat carefully every single time no matter how much you play or how good you are at the game. Elden ring is definitely a souls game combat wise but with how powerful you can become and how fast you are lots of the game borders on the line of hack and slash, even in some boss fights. I worry about the future of these games and that fromsoft are struggling to find a way to make these games more difficult other than just making them faster and more reaction focused.
Fr
The first half of dark souls 1 is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had and I think this is a big reason why
Small Elden Ring is such a promising concept that it’s hard to fully put into words.
On my latest build, I was trying to beat the whole game at RL 15 with +2 weapons. Most bosses melted pretty fast with the easy-mode status effect strats, and it got pretty boring. But then I ran into challenges that weren’t just about combat. Stuff like Ordina town, where a single sniper could one-shot me from 200 feet.
In that moment I engaged with a different part of my brain and remembered there were other mechanics to interact with. I crafted a Sleep Pot and free aimed it over a building to knock out the snipers at key choke points.
And suddenly I remembered - OH. This is Dark Souls. Specifically Dark Souls 1 and 2. I hadn’t worked my brain in this way, arriving at an unusual solution to an extreme difficult puzzle, since I first played those games. And Small Elden Ring could have potentially had more of these moments, placed more densely together, for an experience that felt like it was truly capturing the magic of its inspirations.
But that’s the danger of what-ifs. There’s really no saying if Small Elden Ring could’ve really spared Fromsoft the resources to develop more meaningful content. For all we know, the open fields could’ve been 1% of the development cost, and removing them would’ve changed ostensibly nothing for the other content in the game. I’d still prefer the game smaller, but I think the issue lies with the design fundamentals of the game itself.
It’s not an ideal Souls game because it doesn’t present substantive obstacles for the vast majority of its runtime. It’s also not an ideal open world game, because the world fails as a sandbox for play - it’s almost all set dressing that is usually only enjoyed as a vista to vacantly absorb while on horseback.
There is no interactivity to be seen aside from fighting enemies or mashing the item pickup button. It is firmly in the shadow of better, more innovative open worlds with more interactive mechanics such as Breath of the Wild/TOTK, and it fails to offer meaningful non combat choices in narrative and gameplay as would be found in, say, an Obsidian open world RPG.
And frankly, Small Elden Ring wouldn’t fix that.
The fundamental design choices would need to be different from the get-go. The combat is in dire need of more depth, particularly as it gets overshadowed by the legacy of Sekiro, which can be enjoyed for an Elden Ring amount of time despite being 1/10 of its size, thanks mostly to its vastly more demanding combat. The open world is in dire need of more varied content and more mechanical interactivity. The narrative is in dire need of more interesting character interactions and meaningful player choices.
But still, moments can shine through, when the challenge is steep and the interactive solutions are at your fingertips, when you can remember to craft a sleep pot and stealth through Ordina, where the game reveals its true potential. And that’s what’s so tantalizing to me about the promise of these games. Thats what makes the what-ifs brainworms so hard to get rid of.
Honestly, we’d be better off enjoying the DLC for what it is, and then delve into different hobbies and interests while we await the next game. I used to be a “I don’t play non-Souls game” type, but I’m so very glad I got over that. Because frankly, there are things I value that Fromsoft isn’t currently doing, and a lot of stuff they’ve never done at all. And that stuff can only be found hidden under the big pile of AAA bloatware taking up all the oxygen in the room, in smaller games from more creative minds, who almost never receive the light of day. Dig a bit and there’s more than enough truly stellar games out there.
And even if there aren’t, it’s probably best for all our health that we get a break from Souls addiction, and do something other than gaming for a bit 😅
Small Elden Ring would be something for sure. I'm excited for the DLC and even if it's nothing I want, I'll still have a great time with it. Elden Ring was a ton of fun for me and still can be, I just want so many little changes I end up wanting a big change or a different game.
As far as other games, I wish I had the interest. I want too specific of a thing and I'm open to any other developer. I've just never found anything even remotely competent at replacing what these games can do. Single Player and Multiplayer and PVP and Character Creation and Build Making all on a single playthrough with no Microtransactions, no Subscription, and no gimmick.
If it's out there, I'm open to it. I want to believe.
Otherwise, I spend most of my game time playing TTRPGs. Just a better hobby overall if you like to have control over the game and customize your experience. But I still need my easy access online gaming fix and right now it's Souls games or bust.
@@emotionaljonxvx what/which TTRPGs specifically good sir?
@@zwidowca1 I make my own!
I did play D&D for years but since WotC burned the community back at the end of 2022 I've pretty much sworn off their stuff.
Anything I make is basically just D&D with an emphasis on dungeon crawling and tactical strategy combat.
@@emotionaljonxvx Solid choice! I also quit the normal DND and made my own Hack of it after the OGL douchebaggery.
Aside from that I play a slew of things from Fantasy Flight Games, Vampire and some Warhammer/Alien.
This isn’t an easy topic to talk about because in the community if you criticize Elden Ring you are just made to feel like you’re just nitpicking. Because clearly the game is great nobody can really argue that it isn’t a beautiful game or isn’t a success -20 million+ copies sold its the best FromSoft game right?? No. I mean, I’ve even gaslit myself in this regard. Because from jump I’ve known that this game is not From’s best work like so many others seem to think, yet I keep coming back to play it for like hundreds of hours at this point. So I wonder if my criticism are valid even though I enjoy the game and yeah… they are valid this game is very flawed.
I think some of the aspects that made this game so wildly popular are the things that make is also not as great of a game compared to the others: The open world and the design choices that make this the most approachable and easy game in the series.
The open world is really beautiful, probably the most beautiful game they have made, but beauty in itself does not a great game make. And the open world is really lacking like you said. I don’t think that the majority of players have tried replaying the game 3+ times because the emptiness of the world shows after a while. Once you have gone and explored every nook there is so little incentive to go back to places in subsequent playthroughs unless it has the talisman, weapon, spell or other thing you need for the build you’re going for. Legacy dungeons are the only places I will seek out intentionally because they actually have some semblance of level design and fun dungeon crawling that makes these games inherently fun to play without the gimmick of being super big and nice to look at.
Traversing the big world isn’t even fun, there is no forced encounter in the open world since you can always opt out; too much choice isn’t fun. Doing challenge runs are the only thing that keeps this game interesting at times because it is so insanely easy to become powerful and just plow through the game. Some people have fun with that but for me the games have always been the best when they are a challenge. This time around you have to opt in to the challenge. I really think this is part of why Elden Ring is more popular than all the other games.
Elden Ring is a great game but it is far from the greatest Fromsoft game in many ways. There are so many little things I could say about Elden Ring since I’ve played this game so damn much I’ve got a lot of critique but damn this just a UA-cam comment I need to chill. Great video EmoJon 👍
I used 2-3 Fire Pots on 7-8 attempts at an area, and in order for that to be sustainable I need to "go play minecraft" for an hour before I can make my next 7-8 attempts. I think that was when I realized that I do not like this game, that it is punishing me with busywork for engaging with it in a way that isn't strictly discouraged. I could only help but be reminded of Breath of the Wild, dancing like an idiot for 5 seconds at a campfire for every individual HP replenishing item you want to cook.
I'm still surprised that no other game but Nioh actually took a step forward in terms of consumables- it had a stat and skill tree built around their use, and the particular consumables it covered would refresh at checkpoints
The lack of multiplayer improvements is also significantly impacting my view of this dlc as well.
They're bad programmers who shutter at the thought of complex programming, and it doesn't help that miyazaki doesn't know anything about game development. He's a book writer at best.
The dlc is basically redecorated content that was cut off from the base game because it is trash.
@@vagous3029they had the multiplayer right in dark souls 3
@@DreyfusLagoon Honestly. They've bent the knee to industry wide bureaucracy and are just making what casuals will buy.
Ds3 was amazing in pvp man I miss it and really hoped elden ring was gonna nail it but they went way backwards instead
The fashion in elden ring is god awful. I hope dlc brings some new dresses for my dolly. .
It's really funny to have a single title end the term "Fashion Souls" and not because of the name.
Than I quess DS3 also has shit fashion
@@debater452compared to ds2, yes.
Found it exhausting too at times. I got burn out many times.
Everyone says Elden was made to be immersful but whats immersive about warping like fkn mario. Not one time ever playing elden did i feel i had to find a bon fire with that lovley panic. I will never undersatnd why tbey made elden like this and i will never understand why there are no covenants. Such a dumb, dumb desicion to not have them. The fashion sucks so bad too, it really does. Elden is just a bloated mess and it could have been so good if they didnt bite off more than they could chew.
Agreed ,
Also , DS and Monster hunter games are same genre in asia , MH has more players playing for far more hours . I preferred armored core by FS than these janky MH alternatives.
Elden is indeed a bloat filled upgraded DS game. 390 hours to platinum and it didn't feel as much of an accomplishment as previous DS games or as thrilling as MH multiplayer hunts .
Honestly, I just want more cool knight guy armors that mix well together. A lot of the armors in Elden Ring, I think, are either too unique to mix and match, or are just a retexture of another set like the regional soldiers and knights are. The sets in the dlc look interesting from what I've seen, there's also the fact that they decided to make the regional knight and soldier enemies a bit more varried, like the knight helm and chest pieces is different enough and they even use different weapons like greathammers and twinblades instead of the typical knights sword and partisan.
That's not to say you can't mix and match at all to make something cool, you still can, but your options might be limited
You're not the only one. This game just lacks that spark all the others up to ds3 had that made me put hundreds of hours into them. The truly depressing thing is that fromsoft is guaranteed to keep going in this direction to appeal to larger audiences, as every new project a game company makes needs to make more money than the previous one to satisfy investors. The DLC is perfect evidence of this with From doubling down on everything I hated about the main game. I finished the DLC and all I can feel about this franchise anymore is apathy. I just don't care what they make next, and I know no game will ever come out - from them or anyone else - that will make me feel the way playing through ds1 or bloodborne for the first time did.
The dlc is basically redecorated content that was cut off from the base game because it is trash.
I feel the same apathy. Sekiro and DS3 was good but ER is terrible.
@@azureascendant994 yeah it's depressing, this was the only game i've been looking forward to for the last 2 years, really though they would improve on the main game's issues
@@azureascendant994ds3 was the worst of the series.
@@RelaxingNostalgia No, Frankly I enjoyed DS3 more than ER.
Ds3 was the best pvp EVER
I'm confused about your complaint regarding the stake of marika sites. Would you rather prefer a long runup each time to a boss that might kill you dozens of times before you figure things out? now if thats not wasting the player 's time, i don't know what is
Skill issue that mechanic, has been a fundamental mod every FS game and that's what he means by feeling trapped.
Made in*
I got 165 hours into it and just got so bored I walked away. And I don't miss it.
It simply wasn't fun getting my butt kicked in a new area, grinding for 20 hours, making a little progress, getting my butt kicked again... rinse and repeat over and over for infinity.
So you got 165 hours of entertainment but that means the game failed to entertain you?
@@youcantbeatk7006he got bored of it, read harder
@@youcantbeatk7006
Bad logic, mate.
@@dimitrifake53 I mean it’s pretty fair, I’ve never spent hundreds of hours playing a game that didn’t entertain me lol
@martymcyourflysdown6872
Is everyone you?
Try to avoid arguing with the argument being "me".
It's insane how hard they killed the sense of adventure
- learning legacy dungeon layout doesn't matter since you can use the map to leave whenever you want
- shortcuts are meaningless to find since there's a checkpoint outside every boss
- knowing anything about the open world is pointless since you have the map
- conserving healing resources is pointless since you get tons every time you respawn
And they disabled fast travel in the one place that causes maximal annoyance (caves and catacombs).
Excellent design choices to make the game more accessible to new players to the souls games.
Bruh, wait for the people to learn that homeward bones exist in every fucking Soul game allowing you to backtrack to the bonfire WITH YOUR SOULS DURING COMBAT and fast travel same way as it works in ER. I swear, you don't even play the games that you glaze. Literally trying to apply DS1 logic (that gets thrown away in the second half of the game btw) to the series is an exercise in futility.
It is so refreshing to see other people with like minded opinions on this game, I personally think ds3 was the peak of from software
no, its dark souls 1 and sekiro the rest lacks many qualities for instance ds3 world is so linear
FromSoft : Reuse the hell out of the main game... Castle Ensis=The Acadamy of Raya Lucaria model reuse fest + No cutscene + No voice + The boss area almost look like Caria Manor boss fight area // Final boss is 100% model reuse... save the budgets // So many empty space and pointless point of interests // So many reuse mobs
Ultra soul cultists : Wow, 12/10.
You should stop saying the game is good.
They had 5 titles that revolved around overcoming difficult situations, but with ER, you can avoid a lot while using torrent.
Because of shady reviewers, this game tricked a lot of people, and even while there are legit people who enjoy it, they enjoy grinding, which was not mandatory in the previous games.
This game is designed badly. They had to fill the world with challenges, but the challenges are also designed badly.
That makes this game the worst in the series.
just bunch of boring chores
Notice how fast they stopped reporting sales and Miyazaki left team to join Armored core team after first patch . People have a really wrong idea of what a game director actually does.
@@DarkepyonXthat’s an interesting narrative you built for yourself
literally made a video on why Shadow of the Erdtree won't change nor improve the PvP.
You are making me go hollow, have some optimism 😭😭
@@Shendapy optimism just ain't the word, the word you're looking for is have some "delusional belief". there's no hint that DLC will enhanced PvP, the fact that they haven't made any patch ever since 1.10 drops says to me that they don't care about pvp anymore. and hell already broke loose in ELDEN RING glitching is now part of that game's pvp something that i know was inevitable after seeing how DS3 ended up.
@@LyllianaofMirrahcounterpoint they haven't done any new updates because they are focused on the dlc going smoothly and chances are they release patches with the dlc
@@FighTThePower. hopefully the patches rly going to fix all the known exploits or glitches.
@@LyllianaofMirrah the chainsaw as far as I know can't be changed due to how ps5 and PC works but Xbox is safe only got over leveled phantoms
I have zero hope for improved invasions with SOTE. Michael Zaki tasted that casual money and disowned invaders
Heavily disagree on the Lies of P take. I find the gameplay so engaging as a bloodborne fanboy. I truly think the developers of Lies of P do actually "get it"
Fair enough. I really just meant that they aren't making the same kind of game I'm looking for. It's got a ton of souls elements (especially Bloodborne) but is missing some fundamental aspects that are must-haves for me, like multiplayer, PVP, and character creation.
I'm sure it's plenty good, just not something I'm at all interested in personally. Didn't mean any disrespect to the devs.
To me, Lies Of P is better than any of the FromSoft games.
The open world is just so boring for me. I literally stopped playing because I realized I was forcing myself to like it. This is the first time I actually didn't enjoy a From software game.
This is a 6/10 game at best. The whole game feels like lazy dark souls 3.2. Worst thing is how trash the multiplayer systems are. The 'story' or lack thereof made for lore UA-camrs, who can make a 6 hours lore stream on a 2 minute trailer, and write hours long essays on a table in stormveil caste.
Imagine if the open world areas had some type of Pursuer, not just like the one in Dark Souls 2, but something more like Mr. X or Nemesis from Resident Evil. A roaming boss that will start tracking you from a completely different area depending on your actions. Imagine that you are in Liurnia and then you get a message saying "the Pursuer is chasing you and is currently in Limgrave" something like that. This character could be a very strong boss that is almost impossible to beat in early game, and if you manage to kill him, it could reapear where you least expect it later in the game. You could use Torrent to stay ahead of it, but if you take too much time in an area, and he gets close to you, you automatically dismount and have to face him. Of course, you would be safe from him in catacombs and legacy dungeons. I think this could have made the open world more engaging.
Sounds like a hassle more than anything. Elden ring is not Dark souls, no point in trying to transfer the constant dread of it to this game.
@@Dankmemeslover69 Elden Ring is not dark souls... but it has the combat system of DS3 with some small changes, the same style of level design, the stamina mechanic, almost identical weapon upgrade system, the same summoning system for coop and pvp, a bunch of weapons have the same movement set that DS3, the exact same healing mechanics that DS3, the story is very similar in many aspects to DS, DS2, DS3, the same checkpoint/bonefire system, the same fast travel system between bonfires, the typical optional area with a boss that is harder than the final one (Malenia/Nameless King), the same way of leveling up, the same stats with adition of a couple of new ones, the same weapon scaling system, among many other things. Sorry but it's hard no to compare this game with the Dark Souls games when it should be called Dark Souls 4.
@@enchorialdude2721correction it has the combat system of Dark Souls 2,Demon's Souls,and Bloodborne.
Bad storytelling, horrible quest design, uninteresting characters… this game got way too much praise.
interesting quest design, story telling is there if u want it but u can ignore it (u really can play detective to find all the details), really interesting character (including boss stories).
this game is maybe not perfekt but absolutely worth it
Okayish story but bad storytelling, meaning nothing really to interest you if you don't like the core gameplay mechanics a lot. Quest Design too is bad. I don't understand how two sided people are to hate on games when the quest deisng is go there ans get that item back or talk to that person and come back.. but don't say that enough for this game.
The characters are nice. But the problem again is that due to the bad storytelling you will never really learn enough about them unless you are ready to scour through different items and notes etc to find details.
The problem with this approach is that there is no initial interest instilled in the player to know anything more. The only interest instilled is on how to beat the boss and get stronger. I mean 10 years ago it may be fine but by modern gaming standards it's really poor.
Games are no longer just puzzle solve or skill test applications. They are much more. They offer a complete experience.
And elden ring offers little in that regard. The world is big and diverse yet it feels dead.
The saving grace of this game is the amazing build variability and customisation you can do. It kinda makes it fun to find parts to suit your playstyle. And ofcourse boss killing after 100 failed attempts gives you a nice boost of adrenaline.
But this game ain't no greatest if all time.
It's an 8/10 game. It's good but it lacks in way too many areas by modern gaming standards to be considered amazing.
But i understand why it got so much praise. In a world where mainstream gaming is dominated by cash grab low effort stuff.. this was a breath of fresh air.
But if you take time away from the mainstream you'll realise there are many games which offer you much better experiences. While also satisfying your hunger for a chalenge if you want.
@@d4nkdesu i feel like its the point of the game that it does just give u the story. u hsve to figure it out and the story is amazing. and what gaming standarts are there? i agree that elden ring is not perfekt but still better than most of the trash that is released by the AAA studios (indie studios are a different story)
and tbh when playing other games i really see where i miss elden ring. instead i feel like playing brain dead simulator. but like i said indie games are (atleast for me) an escape for the braindead loop
oh and before i think im the guy who says that every gsme should be like elden ring. no! pls not xD but many open world can inspire in some things
@d4nkdesu what REALLY pisses me off is other developers seeing high sales and now EVERY GAME that comes out is a soulslike🤬
@offlinebot5453 what is the story beat for beat then
I do like the idea of an open world game with Souls mechanics. The idea of playing Souls in a high fantasy setting like Zelda would be a dream come true. What I do not like is having padded content, re-used content, grindy mechanics, and a limited selection of just high fantasy armours (Give me everything!). I think there is merit and roleplay in having the player experience the scope of the lands by traveling from place to place with a horse. However, not finding a way to weave and balance that mechanic in multiplayer--instead opting to cut it out entirely was a horrendous design choice. I love the idea of being able to pick up random trinkets and being able to craft items. . . when it is a bonus. Making certain items gated by that mechanic and that mechanic alone rather than available through vendors turns what could have been a bonus into a chore.
However, the thing that I do not like the most, is that FromSoft limited the player count back down to four in their game with the largest open world! Just look at Elden Ring's entire playspace, and tell me that it's just not begging to have Runescape style dedicated server where 1000 players can join at once and live out their highest PvP and RP fantasies! The closest we will ever get to that point unfortunately is the Seamless mod. With a few adjustments, namely balancing coop and invasions properly such that multiplayer is actually a double edged sword, Seamless should have been the way the game was originally designed.
Thanks for listening to my rant, lol.
Honestly, i think my favorite area in terms of layout and progression was the first half of the haligtree, up in the branches with rot flowers and bubble blowers trying to snipe me every time i moved an inch.
The reason? It reminded me of Blighttown from DS1.
The narrow walkways and corridors, getting shot at by an enemy a half mile away, sneezing too hard and falling off a ledge. It was amazing, like a way to reexperience such an iconic place in gaming, while still being an original experience in itself. I just wish the game had more of these memorable areas. Someone mentions a dungeon/crypt? I probably wont remember which one it is. Haligtree Branches? I know EXACTLY what you are talking about, and i always will.
Its funny you say blighttown while I thought I was back at Anor Londo
I lowkey wish Fromsoft had the balls to patch out mod support and cheat engine for all of their games so people can realize how bad they really are. Like nobody talks about how bad the multiplayer really is because Seemless Co-Op exists. I want people to be justifiably outraged so Fromsoft can be judged and held accountable for the games they actually release rather than what the fans do to them. Modern Minecraft and many other games suffer from the same issue.
I started playing ds1 in 2011 on ps3. I spent thousands of hours playing it. I almost played it every day (coop, pvp) until ds2 came out. I played it almost every day too until ds3 came out on ps4.
I played it almost every day until elden ring came out ( almost 100 can$ on release).
A month and half later (after the hype) i wished if i can get refunded and get my money back. Unfortunately, 1 single playthrough was enough to make me hate the game. Fromsoft did everything wrong on E.R.
Ps: i played sekiro and bloodborne too on release, it's a solid good games. but these 2 games are short and don't have a long replayabilty .
I'm kind of an opposite mindset. I like the big world, though do recognize the issue with monster diversity and space usage (or lack therefor of.) I don't think the games' story would work if it was a contained and packed experience. And I am not too partial to in any game just milling about in one contained area, as it feels restrictive and containing to me. Not like being trapped, but like being limited and stuck on rails with little freedom or choice.
Noting here, I rarely replay (on an alt -as I don't do that because I find it personally not fun), and rather have one character which I advance within the constraints of my niche interest in being a mage in any game I get my hands on and where it's possible. Contained areas tend to be very anti-mage due to always emphasizing close quarters fights and fisticuffs over ranged attacking. Never mind the fact in Elden Ring sorceries tend to be outside some examples dead easy to dodge for someone who knows what they are doing and isn't lagged out. Plus easy to close distance on. Making ironically ranged attacking a very poor option and the approach the optimal location to score hits on.
On paper and in practice, the vast variety of landscaped and terrain should offer a very grand experience. I think the multiplayer system just fails to glue itself properly to the base of the game. Rather than an endless variety of different battlefields with need for different tactics and approaches, the strength fails to be taken advantage of.
On the dungeons and catacombs - I was too busy trying not to die to really pay any attention to the repeat elements. This was my first Fromsoft game. For over half of the game, I was too busy fighting with the controls and trying to learn them as well. I rarely made use of Torrent (because learning how to control em takes a while and one too many mystery gravity deaths early on) and advanced slow and steady because it felt safer to be on foot. From the start till I ran out of things to do and spent a few weeks in the coliseums, I was incredibly entertained and amused. Just a month ago on my Newgame+2 run I found a dungeon I had never been in and was immediately interested and had great fun crawling through it. Despite knowing, it likely had nothing of interest to me, it was something I missed and was challenged by.
This makes me have a thought. Perhaps Elden Rings design appeals more to newcomers like me than people who don't spend half a game figuring out the controls? So it was designed more with newcomers in mind than vets. And this is why many vets voice dissatisfaction with the experience. A new player like me is too busy having fun and trying not to get my goose cooked while figuring out the controls. The time it took running around allowed me to contemplate the illusion of the world and take it in far better, thus getting immersed. The checkpoint sites of grace won't serve a vet nearly as well as they do a newb. The amount of times I found relief in a mercifully located field site of grace was numerous, and they were always a sight for sore eyes.
you got that right it's not for Vets who've been through all the souls games and brute force into it without any wikipedia's help
Good to hear from someone for whom Elden Ring is their first Souls game. I think everyone is going to have a wildly different experience depending on where they come from, so it makes sense that without anything else to directly compare against, Elden Ring would just be an easy 10/10.
I've also heard from people who bounced off right away because of the challenge or obtuse design or whatever else, so even for newcomers it can still be an issue.
In any case, we still all have the DLC to look forward to and hopefully it'll make me feel a lot better about the experience overall.
I've tried to convince people for two years that ER is a fine game generally, but not a good/great souls game. This is mostly a question of taste: the quality of atmosphere, dialogue, lore, and voice acting (compared to the other titles), but also somewhat gameplay. For me the game made next to no emotional impact, which was very important in my embracing of Dark Souls. But in terms of gameplay, from PVP to PVE, it also feels needlessly over-long & tedious, as if the Souls formula has more or less played itself out. Several long time friends of mine agree: it needs to die and be replaced by a new or drastically upgraded style.
As usual, haven't even started the video yet, but your titles provoke strong reactions in me... I look forward to watching lol
newcomers could've just start with DS1 instead of ELDEN RING like i did back in 2018. just give them a heads up on what scaling is or what weapon requirements and what stats soft caps is. hell tell them they can just wear armor and just poise through the game or use sword and board. tell them it's okay to run away from a fight or run past them. tell the newcomers to try DS1! do not tell them to try ELDEN RING. what happened is that we create more crybabies than we actually creating an actual Souls - Vets because we tell em to start from ER. and they would just complained more when they entered souls games. like what happened in DS3 steam forum some rando elden ringer asking for seamless co-op mod for DS3 is just beyond cringe
I’m glad you brought up the armor - I think almost all of the sets look hideous and it’s been kind of driving me crazy how nobody else does. I couldn’t find a single helmet besides the Knight helmet that didn’t look goofy or dumb. They’re all too wide or too tall and I’m not really into all the ornamentation with large fins or faux hair or giant horns etc. I was hoping the bloodhound set would be cool but I hate that helmet too. And I can’t really mix and match pieces without feeling like my character looks like a thrift store toy. Not to mention the Burger King heads you’ll have to wear as a mage. I think thumbprint is the best after the Knight set aside from the actual thumbprints making your character look like they just tanked a couple cannonballs. I just think it’s unfortunate that the only set I like is the one that’s a very intentional throwback
It's really annoying that all the decent looking sets belong to a specific, unique character. Makes it hard for me to fit in as my own tarnished, rather than cosplaying as someone I killed.
@@emotionaljonxvx lords of the fallen got it right by allowing you to dye armour sets so you can mix match and still make it look like am actual full set of armour and not a clown costume
@@emotionaljonxvxI very much agree.
Bloodhound Helmet is clearly historically inspired and I really love beaky helmets, so I'll just say that you're wrong on that part.
Of all From games that had covenents, Elden ringe made the MOST sense to be utilized due to it literally being a MAJOR part in the story. And it doesnt exist. What the hell lol.
Welp now that we’re here there’s no doubt you’re right.
crazy how a bad game gets 10/10 but good games get like 6/10
Which good game got 6/10?
The problem is that Elden Ring IS a bad game, if any other developer name was attached to it, it’d be mocked as a bad dark souls clone and then forgotten. It’s a 6.5/10 at best. It still has so many problems both mechanically and technically; it was literally unplayable on launch which people defend for some reason… it over stays its welcome but doesn’t even have anything to offer from it, the enemies feel the most boring they’ve ever been, a whole lot of nothing in the open world, limgrave is front loaded with dungeons so it feels like content but even then it’s mostly reskins, it feels like weapon arts are only they to give the illusion of combat depth, spirit summons are the intended way to play but also break the game, crafting is worthless unless you force yourself to use it, etc.
That’s not even to say I disliked playing it, it just got old fast. I’d sooner play bloodborne or ds3,2,1 again then Elden ring again and I know that the 40 DOLLAR dlc will fix nothing.
GOTY for a reason bozo
@@xEcuador1 Bozo? Your post is a bozo post.
How come spirit ashes are the inteded way to play? There are a bunch of encounters like evergaols and some field bosses that straight up don't give you an ability to summon. You summon them if you struggle, that's it
@@azamat6765 I'm thinking that maybe the ability to summon would only appear if you died three consecutive times to said boss or area.
@@azamat6765Maybe it’s their way of keeping the “git gud” culture alive 😂
People think the game is hard, but personally, I think they designed it to be a mechanical catch 22 or dodging impossible combos for 10-15 seconds at a time to only rreally barely land 1 maybe 2 attacks before BARELY having time to dodge the next onslaught of ridiculousness. I recently went back and played DS3, and noticed immediately how much more care and thought I had to put into everything compared to ER. "Git Gud" was a meh meme as well, since most of the game feels like it either requires cheese, that its not worth how long it takes to fight and thus more efficient to cheese which takes away from being able to ACTUALLY play normally and actually git gud, or its just a dodge-fest where you catch strays sometimes from the super weak but well-positioned and well-times attack from a waiting enemy that almost guarantees death.
Having pondered about what makes a game likable/dislikable to some, even more so than the actual game mechanics, really comes down to whether the individual _believes_ the fictionality portrayed. A lot of the issues EmoJon had with ER, i can appreciate bc DS2 was that for myself, i simply did not buy into the fictionality of DS2. The world design and structure just could not suspend my disbelief, it felt designed by Tecmo, not Fromsoft.
On a side note, this is why BioShock is such a well regarded title even though the actual gameplay is kinda blocky and thin. It's fictionality is highly persuasive.
this is exactly how i feel, i just played ds1 for the first time and it became one of my fav games ever, came back to see if i would have a better time in elden ring, did for a little while and got soooo burnt out by the horrible combat and enemy design. I did beat the black blade kindred which is my favorite fight in the game now, though trying to do other bosses after that i just realized most of them are just spamaholics. i want to enjoy the game so badly, i just cant
Overpraised because a couple overrated streamers said it was “a masterpiece”.
Imagine calling a linear slasher with no good story and pukey colors a “masterpiece” lol
I think it's reasonable to expect the DLC will have a feel closer to bloodborne. A big city to explore. I do share a lot of your sentiments re: PvP though. It felt like Fromsoft really turned their back on invasions in this game. I guess I'm still delusionally holding out hope there will at least be some kind of trespasser invasion area in the DLC but I think that is highly unlikely.
The wait has just made me fester. It's literally the only game I play and I barely play it. Having sub-1000 hours is something I would have never imagined pre-release. I need SotE to be everything it can be and then some.
I also hold out hope that the DLC will be a much tighter experience. Like Central Yharnam-Cathedral Ward, or the core loop of Firelink-Burg-Parish that awed us so much when we first played. No more sprawling open fields, please, something curated and claustrophobic. If it's true that it's only slightly larger than Limgrave, the number of large dungeons we've seen hints of is promising. Return to form? Please... please!
I wish this comment aged well
@@BasedChadman same
I only properly started enjoying this game by deciding to dig deep into the lore for the first time in a Souls game. I really love the mysteries. I got exhausted on my first playthrough and after that I found it quite empty until recently. I don’t invade, but I miss getting invaded at random and I hope that makes a return in the DLC.
Totally agree, and been playing SOTE just proved your points: mostly unrewarding exploration that YOU HAVE to do in order to hunt down the scadutree fragments. Also the dungeons are still repetitive.
I think Elden Ring had to be open world for the sake of mass appeal. Sekiro got GOTY awards but didn’t bring in new players who just didn’t want to experience stapling a testicle to your thigh in game form. I was one such person, but after hearing how good it was for a month and it being an open world, I said fine give me that stapler. I was sure I’d play it for a few hours then be over it as I have limited play time and give up on fishing most games out of boredom. Instead it was the first game I ever platinumed, and am now looking other staplers.
The dlc needed more crafting recipe books to find instead of interesting loot
Lies of p is amazing.
I've never played it but it looks really good, so I was disappointed to hear him dismiss every other souls like because they "just don't get it"
The best souls game outside of from software.
boring af I played it and i never finished it and its so forgetful i cant even remember the characters and the stories, which make sense since no one talk about that shitty game anymore
@@ayoubmorjane7722 you do you man.
I am not a completionist. I explore the world the way it feels natural to me. I see a road I go down it. Does it mean I missed almost 60% of thr catacombs, minor dungeons etc. Yes.
I think ER was built to promote immersion, from no hub and stamina while not in combat, to the general scale of the world, it was meant for a very natural progression, rather than like in DS games where you look at an obvious side path and explore it for cool loot.
While I can see it antagonising a vast majority of souls players, I am a new player. Started with ER.
Secondly the scale. I generally did not find the world too exhausing because of th aforementioned point. Hoonestly repeat bosses were Ok as long as they were fun to fight. Like many people consider all tree sentinels to be alike, but the have significantly different timings on many attacks.
Do I think the boos reuse is a bit much, yes. Does it make the game unfun for me... no. While I still hold ER too be my favorite as a primarily PvEer, does it mean I want another open world, no. Imo the open world is at times positively boring. However over time I have learned to appreciate the open world as an excellent 1st attempt. What I love about it is well, how open ended your routing can be. So many components for your build is often behind so many bosses in DS3, it detracts from the fun of build crafting. This was especially true for Magic builds. In DS3 magic essentially came down to forward moving prjectiles of 5 kinds go. It was boring. Also, Magic builds in these games (except DS2) need way more stats and way more items to be viable, so it meant 50% of the game b4 u can get your build set up.
ER removing attunement and adding so many items ring at the start mean most playthrough can get setup quick and fight bosses at their full potential.
I completely agree with you about the consumables. Many random exhalted fleshes could have been replaced by bell bearings for usable crafting items associated with a given faction. Throw one for Trina's lily and Miquella's lily in the snowfields. One for Aeonian and Nacent butterlies in thr Swamp of Aronia etc. It would make exploration feel more rewarding.
While I love ER to death, and I dont particularly miss the oppressive nature of the old games (I prefer oppressive boss fights over oppressive areas), I would like a return to a smaller scale world with the High Fantasy feel of ER and Sekiro.
Edit: Forgot to discuss replayability. As a PvEer, I genuinely cannot play DS3 without mods anymore. I felt in DS3 most weapons felt the same. Every weapon class was R1 with the sword. So once u have tried a class, u are mostly done. Most "unique" WAs are just reskinned basic ones. So I never really found much reason to replay DS3 PvE after my SL1. In contrast the variety of AoWs, infusions etc. In ER make it far more replayable to me personally.
6:33 That's a really narrow minded view. I did play Lies of P because I've heard a lot of good things about it, and I really liked the game, and I would in fact say, that its devs *do* get it. They do understand what makes a souls game great. Whereas I've only really heard negative things about Lords of the Fallen, so I haven't bothered.
So I get this comment in various forms a lot and all I really meant when I said they “don’t get it” is that even if they absolutely nail one aspect of the experience, they do it by completely omitting another.
Lies of P lacks character creation and most RPG aspects of progression. And on the most significant level, it lacks multiplayer (especially PVP). A souls game, at least to me, needs to have all of those things in addition to great combat, lore, storytelling, dungeons, and bosses.
It’s an incredibly high bar and I’ve never seen another developer get it right. That’s why I’m so narrow-minded about my views regarding FromSoftware. There simply isn’t an alternative.
@@emotionaljonxvx You barely even talked about multiplayer at all. I would've expected that point to be more fleshed out if it was that important to you. I didn't get to understand your view on multiplayer, because all you said about it is that it's bad. Pretty much the whole video was about the open world only.
About character creation tho, I don't really understand this complaint, like, at all. This isn't Mass Effect, or The Witcher, or KotOR... this is an action game. You aren't playing any role at all, you're going through a predetermined path in the story, and the only choice you have is what loadout you'll use- something that is available in Lies of P in great quantities. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it has a much much deeper and more complex combat system than ER, simply because of the hilt+blade weapon combination options and the legion arm options, not to mention all the quartz upgrades. If you think you're roleplaying as a mage, just because you've put points into intelligence, you're playing make-believe, it doesn't matter.
@@UsernameGeri So I think we're maybe mixing signals. My issues with Elden Ring are largely related to the open world. Multiplayer is also a sore spot for the game but because it's not as robust as it was in previous games. I make lots of videos about my issues with the multiplayer and didn't want to make that the focus of this one.
My issue with games from other developers (like Lies of P) is that they omit much of the RPG experience and only focus on action. I want a game that is a full Action RPG (ie. a souls game).
If the primary value of the games for you is their action and you don't care about the RPG elements like character creation or whatever else, that's completely fair. It's just something that's non-negotiable for me.
most of your dark souls and bloodborne playthrough is fighting. most of elden ring FEELS like just running. is it actually? I don't know I haven't timed it but it sure feels like alot of running and running and running
when I explore in elden ring I always get some shit ass item, every fucking time. another flame butterfly or mushroom
I totally agree with you on sekiro and the mountaintops. it really is just boring
if you're on PC I have a suggestion. try modding
Dark Souls 2: Seeker of Fire 2.0
Dark Souls 3: Convergence
Elden Ring: Convergence
there are more but these are the ones I've personally played and really think are worth giving a chance
AGREE
@5:34 there should have been some weapon or armor at the face of stormvale but the big special thing is the story and lore. Rewards don't always have to be items
Yeah. I know about lore. I know about the story. It's just not that special. Maybe the DLC will make Godwyn a little more interesting but as a player, I didn't get a whole lot out of finding his silly corpse and then not having any real follow-up other than "that's where deathroot comes from."
On the whole, I don't think the lore of Elden Ring is especially exciting. Certainly not bad by any means, but left me wishing there was a little more to it.
@@emotionaljonxvx I do agree some sort of item should have been there, but that's an interesting reveal. One of the biggest issues is the Lord got cut up between base game and DLC, so I hope the dlc really fills the hole since the lore feels like it's missing a huge chunk.
@@jake212 I hear ya. I just really wish Godwyn's body wasn't in two places because it really muddles the lore for me.
The addition of an Open World in ER is very much a trend-chasing effort, as all of the big high profile games (MGSV, TLoZ, Nier and many others) were all going Open World as well in recent years. Personally It's something I'm genuinely tired of seeing, it adds nothing of value and just destroys replayability.
I get the conceptual appeal, but outside of a game that is centered around zones for social player hubs and trading (MMOs, basically) I just never found it all that fun. It's all the same ideas as any other game but with a lot of extra space in between.
If you don’t like the lands between you could always… burn them... with the yellow chaos flame…👀
FUCK YES
I wish one of the endings would just lop off huge portions of the map. Actually sink the Lands Between or something to that effect.
@@emotionaljonxvx get em to drown just like Ringed City getting consumed by the deep
Elden Ring is my first experience of a From Software game. A significant amount of my friends have played their previous titles, sometimes well back into their childhoods, but I was not one of them.
Since beating the game, I have bought DS1, DS3, Sekiro, am torn between getting and not getting DS2, and I want to get Bloodborne at some point (hopefully as a PC game - someday).
Elden Ring is one of my most favourite games of all time. Be it the lore, visuals, gameplay, bosses, spectacles, exploration, what have you. DS1, so far, has not been as good of a game as I had hoped. It is a masterpiece, but it is hard to look past the lack of polish that ER has spoiled me with. At the time of writing this comment, I have beaten Seath. I know this is far from the entire game, but I've heard of how even more unpolished the later half of the game is. Truthfully, I am worried. DS1, in my eyes, is FAR from being better than Elden Ring and I mean that to the fullest extent.
I doubt that DS1 will surpass ER as a better game once I am done with it. I can respect it and its charm, but its just not as good - maybe the age is showing for me, I suppose. DS3 may be much closer to achieving that feat, but I honestly still doubt that it will overtake ER for me. Maybe I am simply a different type of player than you, but that is my view of things. I expect to be pleasantly surprised - but not enough so.
Elden Ring is a flawed game on a significant amount of levels, but what it does have to offer is so polished, beautiful and compelling that I simply can't agree that it's not one of the best/better Souls games - not completely, at least. I will never forget each of the bosses, legacy dungeons, or places like Nokron and Siofra. I know that I am mentioning the non-filler parts of the game, but still. It's just how I feel, whether warranted or not. Will that change? Unlikely I feel, but it is very possible. I still have a ways to go with its predecessors.
The PVP I enjoy, but dislike a lot as well. I realize how much better it can be and it makes me sad that it's not utilized to its fullest potential. Covenants are a system that could work well in ER's world, too, and I find that to be a missed opportunity as well - at least from what I've experienced of the system in DS1.
I expect the DLC to bring ER even higher in my own ranking. Will it fix the issues with PVP, farming and its filler? Probably not, but the singleplayer portion of the expansion I know is gonna be killer. It will be. I have experienced enough of From Software to know that.
I think to really appreciate Dark Souls you have to appreciate the sort of game it is. It's probably a lot harder to work backward through the series than forward but I don't have any insight on that front.
It's the sort of game where you either get it or you don't and that's what I love about it. Elden Ring has a lot more broad appeal but that has its tradeoffs. Dark Souls just told a story I cared about in a way I cared to learn it. But it was hard to learn. I assume going back now Dark Souls is remarkable easy with just how much players have learned about the series. I suspect so much of the appeal, for any of these games, comes from it being the first. Whichever you experience for the first time is the first way you'll learn to love what you're presented. Probably the same reason Elden Ring doesn't hold much charm for me. It's my sixth souls game and it's not the best take on the formula (for me, at least).
In regards to scenery, Elden Ring is pretty, no doubt. But I never wanted beauty. I wanted tone, atmosphere, setting, and to find the beauty in the dark. Elden Ring is, above most things, conventional. It's not a crime by any measure and it's an excellent game no doubt. It just isn't quite as special as I had hoped.
@@emotionaljonxvx Man there's some pissy replies in this video. I don't think anyone who didn't experience DS1 first, back in the day, can understand why it was so emotionally compelling. ER is pretty, and that's the problem. It's mostly only pretty. Finding luminous darkness and warmth in the cold is far harder. The themes, symbolism, and characters of Souls hit me like a truck. Maybe it just takes a certain type of person, and FromSoft does not want to appeal to that type anymore, or at least didn't with ER.
@@ianwilliams2632 That's fair. I get how the gritty, dark fantasy theme the earlier titles show can be more appealing and to an extent I agree.
I think what you and Jon said about experiencing what game first is exactly the case here. It's sort of a matter of bias, is how I could describe it? You struggle to understand why ER is more compelling to ME, and I find it hard to understand why DS1 is so emotionally compelling to YOU.
I find the first game's themes, symbolism and the like extremely interesting, and characters to an extent as well (I've only really noticed Solaire and the onion guy as people particularly interesting, but that's besides the point) but the game that holds those undertones is showing age. Maybe I am more strict with my view of it, or something, but I can't not be bothered with it.
ER's themes, story, and symbolism, however, are just as compelling, if not more. You can't not agree at least to a degree - the lore is absolutely great, stuff like Godwyn's corpse is some of the coolest shit I've personally ever learnt about. There's very good merits to both, and I just happen to be on the ER side here.
My reaction upon entering the consacrated snowfield was exactly like yours. I was so done by that point
Yeah man ima need dark souls 4
Nothing last forever
@@UntouchableSavage real
DS is finished. A complete story. Things stuck when they go beyond their expiration
7:48 That to me sounds like a common thing for people these days, it sounds undisciplined and demanding, not being able to commit to something just because the baby needs something new or else he's already bored -_- I've played dark souls 1 since it came out And I have NEVER been bored, in fact I ALWAYS HAVE FUN AS IF IT WAS THE FIRST DAY, look I had an addiction to video games and I wanted to quit them COMPLETELY and I did it with all video games except dark souls, dark souls for me is the only one video game that DESERVES my valuable TIME, if I couldn't play dark souls I would prefer to do SOMETHING MORE USEFUL WITH MY TIME before playing other video games
Although I want to be clear, I only play Dark Souls when I WANT, I don't play many hours in fact because I PREFER to do more USEFUL things with MY invaluable TIME
ER was my first From Soft game, and my first playthrough was absolutely magical, and I wanted to do and interact with as many things as I could possibly find. But going back in the series and playing through the Souls games, I get what you mean with enjoying being trapped somewhere and needing to push through anyway. ER was magical, but DS1 was an unforgiving and unforgettable experience and I cherished every second of it. Excellent video mate, wishing you success. Your video essays are brilliant.
Ur story ended first sentence
i agree ELDEN RING Is exhausting, saw lot of my friends who were long time players in souls series they drop the game, because it is very exhausting.
I love that there's so much in the game but it's often too much. Especially when a lot of it doesn't necessarily feel warranted. It's a tough thing for sure
It was a real phenomenon I noticed in just the first few months after release. All of ChaseTheBro's regulars in his stream chats stopped bothering to post, flooded with new people that didn't have the old souls comradeship and sense of fun. Old stalwarts like Schwa Akari tried PVPing once or twice and stopped. Amir made only one ER PVP stream and stopped. Old lore channels gave up, and the lore fanbase was consolidated into just a few people (Smoughtown, Archaeologist, etc.). The game just failed to capture the imagination of the older players. The fire fades, such is the way of things.
@@ianwilliams2632 some people argue that the lore is just a rehash of DS2 Lore with george r r martin twists
@@ianwilliams2632 another reason is because the lore is maybe not as intriguing like dark souls were, because dark souls has different countries outside the main location they taking place in.
and yeah I kinda see that ELDEN RING Is more High Fantasy than it is Dark Fantasy. i just want them to just go back and made something dark fantasy again! like anything! hell i am not mad if they want to create like roman empire era world with a dark fantasy twists on it because why not. or go back to medieval dark fantasy once again something like Demon's Souls.
Byzantine dark fantasy? Yes please. I would like greek fire and armored calvary.
I wanna see them make a Lovecraftian dark fantasy kinda like bloodborne but way more.
@@_Ethereal420 MORE!
well Shadow of the Erdtree seems to be leading more into a "Dark Fantasy" scenario
@@dev4159 looking at the reveal gameplay i think it could be. i started seeing those giant flies enemy from painting world, and possibly more monsters that were berserk style
It's def not a bad game but it's also not a GREAT game let a lone a masterpiece as so many idiots on the internet seem to label it as. It's an approachable game for casuals but less so for ppl who prefer their older design philosophy of taking accountability for making poor calculated choices. The open world is there as a distraction for those who needed that mental break of what little challenge they've been forced to actually deal w/ when not being able to run away on Torrent. That's what ER is.
Having watched it now, you basically summed up all my thoughts at the end: "everything about it I found interesting, I found more interesting in an earlier title". Yes, indeed.
Here's to another 6 years...
meh, it's a totally bad game which wastes me over 300 hours
It is If It wastes this time. A good game would not be considered a waste of time... I have 500 hundred hours on Bloodborne and little of It was useless inside the game content. Elden ring is just doing stuff as a chore to not use in any content because this game multiplayer is trash... 80% of the Bosses are reused and arent EVEN good, 90% of the dungeons are reused and arent good, etc... I like Elden ring, but its the most frustrating game I ever bought.
Elden Ring was fun but lately it got me bored. Everything is so depressive and sad. I got headache out of it. Thats why i stopped playing it. But there is Mario Oddissey atleast 😄🙌🏻
The first five minutes of this video were absolutely prophetic. Because, let's be honest, how you described the DLC would turn out is completely reflective of what it is. It neglected all the issues you put forth and further emphasized what you have disdain towards. While I had my fun with the DLC and saw it as worth my time, it's also totally legit if you just sum it up as "not for me" and don't buy it.
17:00
I'd thought about it, and I feel like Elden Ring actually has *fewer* weapons than older Souls games, in a way- It feels like there are an incredibly small number of them with unique movesets
As a DS1 fan boy I can sympathize. My first play though I ran past most of the open world because it felt pointless to kill difficult enemies for no reward. In past games you had to fight to progress.
I was really burned out towards the endgame as well . I'm not even gonna bother with DLC.
I can’t stand the game it’s too slow and the camera is so annoying to use, I hate not being able to fully see what I’m fighting because it’s too big to fit in the frame
Elden ring feels like a Baby's first souls game. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a little grating if you've played the rest of the series.
There really is no excuse for how they mangled the PvP system though.
Also, the increased accessibility of this game meant that after years of trying to get my family to play souls games, they finally clicked with this one.
It's really funny because I've gotten a bunch of comments on this video (and every video, really) from people who disagree with me about whatever and then also throw in that Elden Ring is their first Souls game.
Not that it's bad or anything, everyone starts somewhere. Just a funny throughline for where my opinions hold weight and with whom they resonate.
i dont think ds3 was "indefinitely" replayable. i think i would rather clock in than play through pre pontiff ds3 again
Yeah, not in every capacity. I mostly meant in the category of multiplayer.
@@emotionaljonxvx we can only pray that the expansion will help in this regard. but we cant expect god to do all the work!
@@envylyn463 there's no multiplayer overhaul on that dlc bro 😭 they just give themselves another trouble of balancing the new weapons.
@@LyllianaofMirrah you know nothing. my dad is bill gates and works there
@@envylyn463 bill balls works at from software nah bro😭
game is an unbalanced slog. the last half is pathetic. this is the future of From. They have to keep one upping their bullshit bosses, with new bullshit moves and speed. the, "tools", they give you are as usual, useless. they, "balance", the entire game around the trash ashes of war, all of which are useless. anything that was strong, the morons nerf to death, as usual. i cant wait for the From shit to end.
20:36 You hit the nail on the head right there
Wow! You must have been super disappointed with the lackluster DLC.
I heard someone call it “skyrim on crack” but it’s more like Skyrim with no story and pukey colors 🤢
My fear is that they'll never go back and fix/rework some design choices when it comes to weapons that feel like they should've had something unique to them but instead got some aow that can be found everywhere and sometimes not even a unique moveset. Im also sure whips that arent a somber weapon have no unique aow on their own and because they are whips they are locked out of many aow that directly do damage with the weapon. I get your frustration. I've never played souls games and i love elden ring but everytime i play, instead asking why i ask "why couldn't they have done this or that" around every corner. It always feels like something is missing due to either lore reasons, game balacing or maybe they just forgot or didn't have time. It bothers me that stuff like a majority of time is in fact set and stone with no justifiable answer. But other devs for other games are fully open to reworks, redesigns and whatnot so why not elden ring? Oh and as a console player it hurts to know there are mods that probably fix many issues i have with the game but I can't access. Which is why i can only pray.
Scold
In all seriousness, I also had a very mixed experience with ER. Not the same as you, but I think that's a matter of taste. But i also experienced the fatigue of playing through as i neared the end. I largely attribute that to trying to binge the game rather than approach it from a reasonable pace for me.
I also played the game so much when it came out that exhaustion was all but guaranteed. It's just too much to do in a reasonable amount of time first time around.
Then again, I did it with every other souls game and never had an issue. Elden Ring definitely tested my patience to the point of breaking them outright and that's really where so much of my frustration with the playthrough experience comes from.
Everything else is all about how they backstepped on multiplayer. I'd forgive everything else if they just left the multiplayer like how it was in Dark Souls 3 or, even better, improved it.
Your points about rewards is inconsistent if you apply the same argument to any other souls game. Take DS1 for example. What is the "reward" for getting down to ash lake? A semi-interesting covenant with a mid (at best) sword? No. Your "reward" is the majesty and mystery of the place. The atmosphere. The music suddenly coming in. The story of it all. Now let's get back to Elden Ring. What is your "reward" for getting to the base of Stormviel? Is it the golden seed that's dropped by the spirit? The talisman? No, its the horror and mystery of seeing Godwyn the Golden's undying corpse. It's the almost lovecraftian design that evokes an almost otherworldly atmosphere. Its the subtle horror of seeing a bloodstain that is clearly different from the rest but still extremely cryptic as to what it entails which you don't find out till much later.
The fact that you can ignore all of that and say, "lol no reward," has me questioning why you even played these games pve in the first place. Or what you enjoyed about them. Or if this whole thing is just some bitter cope and seethe session with almost no valid pve points (or points that are so subjective to the point of absurdity) because you hate the pvp (I do as well). DS3 has an almost identical ratio of enemy reuse as Elden Ring especially with the high wall of Lothric proportioned with the games size as a factor. It just seems like the only "criticism" is that you have a preference for more "cramped, tighter" level design... Except that the legacy dungeons in the game dwarf ANY zone in previous games in terms of enemy density, complexity, and overall layout. Leyndell is one of the most complex 3D spaces in video game history. No issue you raised with elden ring aside from maybe boss repetition seems to hold up to even the slightest scrutiny or consistent standards that you judge other "better" souls games by(aside from pvp stuff obviously).
I think the rewards are all subjective, as is the enjoyment of the game. I didn't care for what I found throughout Elden Ring because it just didn't hit the same way. I'm sure a lot of it comes down to a repeating formula but I think it's more complicated than that.
I think everyone is going to get something out of the game but what I find lacking in Elden Ring is the player engagement through the lore and atmosphere. It's not like it does a bad job, and as I said I do love the all said, but it just doesn't work for me the same way it had in previous entries.
I think Dark Souls 3 is weaker in a lot of these regards than Dark Souls 1, but at least 3 gave me a lot of things to do once I was past the PVE. I'm a PVP focused player, so I'm sure most of my issues stem from that. Elden Ring has very few systems for PVP and it's a major backstep from DS3. If it had better multiplayer, as I said in the video, I think I wouldn't care half as much.
If you like the game, that's great, but criticism doesn't have validity based on what you find true. It's going to be subjective for each person. I think there are more objective criticisms but I can get past a lot of the stock asset use and copy-paste landscapes when I'm enthralled with the rest of the game. Elden Ring just has a lot of downtime for an Action RPG and virtually non-existent endgame/multiplayer so I spend most of my time with the game staring at everything that left me wanting.
Sorry if that doesn't strike a chord with you though. I appreciate any discourse about this sort of thing and I obviously love talking about it. I just wanted to vent a bit before the DLC because I think the game gets a little too much praise and that can encourage complacency.
Only played this game for 1 hour 30 min before uninstalling. I want normal game not some controller game where you need to lock onto enemy, game in unplayable otherwise. I played dark souls 1, 2, 3 and with each new game combat was getting worse. This feels so bad its not worth my time.
the bigger FROM gets the more these type of games will suffer that’s pretty much a given at this point.
First thing I thought when I saw the 10/10 reviews and huge sales in the first weeks. "We finally made casual souls, please make us rich now". And they did. I sense Bandai behind a lot of this.
You guys realize your opinions on the souls series are entirely subjective right? You argue the games are suffering but this is the most popular game by From and it gets way more love than hate this isn't a DS2 situation where majority agree the game sucks most are in agreeance this game is sick.
Also it makes no sense wanting this game to be something it's not, it's not Dark Souls, it's Elden Ring just like how Sekiro is Sekiro, a lot of people in the comments are forgetting this.
You realise your opinions are entirely subjective too, right? That's the nature of an opinion. It's not clever to point that out.
Anyway, who cares if it's popular or not? We can dislike things about it no matter what millions of other people may think. Going by your standard here, Fortnite or Skyrim get way more love than Elden Ring, so they must be better, right?
Yeah ER is something different. And it could've done that something different a lot better than it did. That's my point, and I assume Emotional Jon's too.
@@ianwilliams2632 This is NOT a casual souls game. The difficult encounters can be trivialized easily with a bit of prep, but this is a choice. Underneath the OP builds are boss mechanics that put their other games to fucking shame. Seriously. DS3,2,1, DS, and BB bosses are pathetic joke encounters that hardly compare to even the lowest quality ER bosses. Not. Even. Close.
This is not sensationalizing. Do a RL1 no hit with like +8 regular weapons. Then play any other FS game. Playing older FS games feels like playing fucking Oblivion. There hasn’t been a difficult FS game until ER (maybe Sekiro, but once you learn the trick, too many Boss combos last only 1-2 moves), and I respect them for it.
They didn’t figure out how to design a boss mechanically until Sekiro. They didn’t implement that philosophy into Souls style games until ER. This is the ONLY FS game besides Sekiro that has complex, organic, difficult boss fights. In order to quickly no hit them, you need to use stance break on bosses that may not stop attacking even once in their entire fight.
Hello Jon, glad to hear your thoughts reflect my opinion also! My biggest gripe I have is actually balance.
If you play anything other than collosal weapons or strength oriented weapons, R1s are significantly nerfed to a point where it makes to sense to use them. I tried to start a Dagger only run for fun, only to hit the wall immediatly seeing that R1s on it don't deal any significant poise or single hit damage. In DS3, I never had such an issue that I would need to hit a boss 40 times with R1s with the latest upgrades you can get before they die. Here in Elden Ring, this is a reality. Bosses have overinflated health, hold their weapons over their head for 5 seconds to roll catch. Why would anyone in real combat "charge" their weapon over their head for multiple seconds? It makes the fights not believable and unserious.
L2s (Ashes of War) make the use of ANY other means or way to deal damage obsolete. The amount of damage you do with Ashes of War is absolute nuts and 100% the reason HP from bosses got power creeped. Why would I dare do any other action? I can press L2 once and deal around 5k damage lategame. There also seems to be no tradeoff, the FP cost is negligable. They honestly could skip this part entirely, no one has ever asked for this. Dodge rolling and R1s have been core for all Souls games so far, we don't need to re-invent the wheel.
Thanks Jon again
25:14 Sorry, but I don't agree with you. The developers are not our relatives and they do not owe us anything. I'm sure that if it weren't for Namco, fromsoftware would have been working in other genres. And that's wonderful, isn't it? I'm an old AC fan. And I waited too long for AC6 to then hear the opinion that should continue to make games only in those genres that appealed to modern audiences. But there is also an old audience, there is an audience that has not touched these games at all. Give others a chance, don't be selfish. Enjoy what you have now, not what you didn't get. Try Sekiro, try AC6, play the studio's old games - Kuon or Kingsfield. And understand how wrong you are and how fixated you are on one thing.
I appreciate your content, but I think sometimes you need to stop whining. You need to accept reality as it is. If Namco or Sony make an order, we will get another action RPG in the style of dark fantasy. If not, then the developers will choose their own path. When talking about the identity of the Dark Souls series, do not forget about the identity of the studio - this is more than 25 years of history, respect the heritage.
P.S. sorry for my English, my native language is Ukrainian. Thanks for the content, I didn't mean to offend you with this comment.
At the same time, fans of the genre have somewhere to go. Give other studios a chance. Play Surge, for example. By supporting other developers you can help the entire genre. And by saying that no one can do what fromsoftware does, you are forcing your favorite studio into a framework. This is just a stereotype, everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
Hey, I get where you're coming from and I appreciate the engagement. What I'm trying to express is that not a single studio other than FromSoftware makes games I like. I don't want to (and obviously can't) force them into making any type of game. I'm just voicing my issues with how they're handling the games they do make.
I've played Soulslikes in the past and they're all not very good. But even if they excel in one area, my problem is that they need to be good at every part to be worth my time.
They have to have single player, multiplayer, pvp, character creation, build making, and tight combat that makes me want to play. It's a big, tough list to get right and only FromSoftware have been doing it.
I'd play Elden Ring a lot more if the PVP and multiplayer were better focuses, they just didn't make those things a focus and it might be years and years till another title does.
So far the biggest complaint i have is who the hell decided to make the X button, the button you normally use to interact with everything in every Soulsborne game... THE JUMP BUTTON. I immediately swapped triangle and x.
I mostly agree with you in regards of ER in comparison to past souls games. I just recently started a new playthrough (after my initial release 120hr playthrough) due to the hype around the expansion and I thought after my long hiatus I could jump in and experience the game a new to hype myself up for the DLC but.......nope. What ended up happening was me kind of enjoying the first few hours until I came to the realization I was not really having fun, and everything felt pointless to interact with outside of the main dungeons and main bosses.
The reason why I was not having much fun is because essentially everything that made me enjoy the previous souls game is 100% missing in ER:
- After one playthrough, exploration is useless and the game becomes bee lining it to the items you need to make your build and pretty much boss rushing the game.
- The premium zones like the initial castle are WEAK imitations of past FS level design because the combat puzzles of the past games are completely GONE in ER, as you can just run past everything and its easier then ever thanks to the new jump button.
- The addition of a jump button and how high it lets the player jump, gives the player too many movement options to avoid enemies which essentially turns the game into one of the easiest of the FS souls-likes (also I hate how powerful jumping heavy attacks are compared to everything else).
- Every enemy in the open world has no meaning outside of the few world bosses (dragons, birds, ...etc) because your horse can literally outrun anything, they have no special drops, they don't give much runes, and there is literally no incentive to attack or fight them.
- There is no risk to entering higher level zones early because you can teleport at whim and once again you can ride past the most dangerous enemies with no risk of geting stuck or having to fight your way out of that harder zone.
- Combat while clearly visually better looking, is the worst Feeling its ever been imo, as everything just feels too loose and floaty for my taste, and I believe this onec again goes back to the addition of the jump button which gives the player a little too much freedom in a game like this.
I could go on and on, but let me stop here. Also let me note my whole perspective is 100% as a pve only player as I personally have never liked the souls PVP side of things because of usualy terrible netcode (I like the invasions, but not really the area type stuff).
I don't think ER is a "bad game" (like you said), but it is a bad "souls-like" for sure and was clearly made to cater to much more casual audiences, which explains why it blew up in popularity so fast and attracted many of the people who never liked the original 4 Souls games. FS actuall game the people the "difficulty options" they wanted by making 99% of the content either brain dead easy or pointless to interact with.
To end this long comment, I am 100% disagreement with you on your view of other souls-likes "not getting it" as there are many of them that get the CORE of the souls-like feel but they do their own take on it. Like Surge 1, which is a souls-like in terms of combat, leveling, level design, progression, boss fights,..etc, but almost feels like a dead space spin off with its errie scifi world the devs created.
Also I actually enjoyed the Lords of the Fallen game A LOT (much more then ER) because I as a player that has played Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3,....etc, LotF actually NAILS that feeling I had when I booted up DS1 for the first time and got lost in the world cray world they laid out before me. I understand the viewpoint that no game can get the FS feel, but imo a game does not need to copy FS to be a good "souls-like" it just needs to get the core elements and build something unique/interesting around it. I should note that while I love the souls series I play A LOT more games/genres then just those, so I know there are thos die hard FS fans that literally play nothing else, to each their own I say.
Great video though!
Good to hear from the PVE crowd for stuff like this. As far as other games "not getting it" I've just never found one that managed to tick every single box for me and make me consider it as a worthy addition/replacement.
I'm very picky, but if a game can't get the core functions of the single player and multiplayer and PVP and lore and combat and setting and etc etc etc then I find I'm generally pretty dismissive. Not that I'm being all that fair to other developers but From set the bar pretty high when it comes to my very silly expectations.
Thanks for the comment!
I only have this to say as a long time souls borne player. Elden ring is big dark souls 2, with worse pvp and multiplayer.
Dark souls 1 was my first souls game, and it will forever be the best to me.
Elden ring is in no comparison to ds2, ER is pure trash
One of my main problems with the game isn't that there are so many reused enemies, bosses and assets overall, but that they created the most terrible enemies in any game to ever exist and reused THEM. Exploration also often felt disappointing for the same reasons you mentioned - when I thought that maybe I uncovered a secret area or path my reward would either be nothing or something very insignificant. Sometimes just uncovering a secret area or pretty view is enough of a reward, but if it's done so frequently, it discourages exploration. So basically the worst thing about this game is not reusing, but reusing bad stuff. I also feel very strongly both negatively and positively about the game(like I loved Leyndell and exploring the underworld, but even though this game consistently looked good in the design of the areas themselves, the areas, especially late game, were overcrowded with annoying and very powerful enemies that made the experience literal hell and I found very few bosses good and fun to fight... about a game that has over a hundred bosses, that's saying something...)
I also not fan of open world design in souls game. Doesn’t feel right.
20:32 This is my least thoughtful comment of all, but did you know that in Dark Souls 3 you can have 7 people in the world without hacks, it's crazy and I KNOW how to provoke it CONSISTENTLY (sometimes 8 but I've only seen it 3 times and I don't know how to provoke it without hacks (game on play)
How and why did you get such an audiwnxw just by talking over gameplay? What did you do exactly to get all of this?