Finally someone who makes sense. I’ve beaten every Fromsoft game from Demons Souls to Elden Ring (just finished Shadow of the Erdtree as well) and it’s clear Fromsoft has swung waaay too far in one direction with difficulty. The community that used to praise these games art direction and lore now direct all that energy towards worshipping difficulty. Wish we could go back for future games
100% with you there. Theres a quote from miyazaki that I often think back to, he said something along the lines of "the difficulty was never the point, it was a way to immerse you and pull you into the world" and in some part I think From has lost sight of that vision. With every iteration of these games I've noticed a trend, each successive game has become more difficult, but less punishing. And with that loss of punishing mechanics in favor of difficulty, the sense of tension and therefore immersion is diminished. To me, thats what always made these games tick, that sense of tension that kept you on your toes and forced you to be observant, to pay attention to your surroundings. Thats what made these games so engrossing, it made you feel like you were actually there, an adventurer exploring this strange and unfamiliar land fighting for every inch of ground, always having to watch your back in fear of losing the progress you had worked so hard for. But with the additions of things like early and easily accessible fast travel, needlessly excessive checkpoints and torrent, that tension is just gone, especially in the open world, theres a complete lack of threat and I feel thats a major loss for this series, all for the sake of convenience.
@joshualouw9506 the open world is useless though. An open world should be full of life or active story elements I don't like open world for a game like this. Compare this to when assains creed decided to go open world. They put story quest everywhere, with people moving about and enemies to fight, weapons to find, caves to explore and story elements with history and lore. This game for me feels like a big open nothingness no people to talk to just kill this and read one line. I need dialog and back and forth conversations in an open world. Nah this game open world is pointless objectively because it does not change anything about the actual game it's ds3 but open world exactly. No knew story mechanics just the zone are bigger and still inter connected and that's literally it. I don't get why open world is needed for a souls game without a huge big story that's being shown in every new area it's just run on torrent fight enemies find a cookbook behind a boss then rinse and repeat. But I'm not a big fan of this genre so I know it's my time to gracefully bow out.
@@bombyo3634 Oh yeah I completely agree, the pillars of open world game design are diametrically opposed to the core mechanics and gameplay loop of the souls series. It doesnt make sense, the open world is entirely pointless and only serves to drag the game down in my opinion, I very strongly feel that elden ring has an identity crisis.
@@bombyo3634 On the flip side I never cared about Assassin's creed or its Open World because the combat bored me to tears and I never cared for stealth.
It's because a lot of the complaints are overblown or are from people demanding a different experience than what From sought to deliver. There is constructive critiques -- I have a list of my own -- but a lot of it is nitpicking based on a very narrow view of how they prefer video games.
@@bombyo3634 You mean those people who purchase an expansion to an open world game expecting the same format as the original game? I have several critiques of the DLC as a whole and agree the bosses are overtuned, but this vid is kinda ridiculous in its complaining that this isn't DS3 rather than, you know, an expansion to Elden Ring.
@sartavin yet be brought the same game and paid for it. His opinion is valid and I agree. Elden ring open world isn't needed. Open zones more focused instead of open empty areas where u just run is pointless for an open world.
@@bombyo3634 He's free to vent his spleen, and everyone else is free to explain what a doofus take it is to pay for an open world game and expect an entirely different experience. Many pre-release reviews indicated large areas that were relatively empty. Some of that on purpose (lore), others I suspect because they ran out of time. And wandering beautiful environments are only pointless if you subsist purely on dopamine drip --shrug-- first world problems tbh.
My only criticism of the dlc, is that the exploration is only good for finding and seeing the different environments. You rarely if ever find anything cool and useful
My biggest complaints with the dlc are, the zones are a bit too big for the little amount of things in them, the visual slop on screen for half the boss fights is the "hardest" part about them, and how random some fragment locations seemed to be compared to base game things like golden seeds/tears. Like fragments being at beheaded marika statues and near crosses is fine and makes sense, but then there are some on the shadow pot guys and sometimes on random corpses, like why lmao.
Yeah random trash mobs hidden in corners of the map carrying around these key upgrades, which are going to be essential for most players is just... strange.
I have close to 400 hours in Elden Ring and I would have agreed with your criticism about bosses until my playthrough to get ready for the DLC. Pretty much all the bosses from the godskin duo on till the dlc are designed to where the openings to attack are few and far between compared to previous from games. I hated this boss design until I finally took the time to learn their patterns and this has made Elden Ring bosses the most fun I had since Sekiro. Mesmer is now my favorite boss ever along Ishin.
I think you just kind of made his point ...having 400 hours in the game till you truly have fun in it is ...just not right ...I like the game and bosses and stuff but I still think its overrated ..I dont even think it really deserved to be a game of the year tbh ...sure I had a lot of fun fighting dancing lion .. After 3 hours of being frustrated because of my "playstyle" is not the one "intended" way of fighting it Its kind of like someone telling you "go watch this show ...first 5 seasons are ass but then it picks up and its fun"
@@mathewdyffryn8693 my point is that I was playing the “hardest” bosses like I played previous from games. And after I learnt a better way to fight them they became fun. Some dlc bosses took me hours just like Ishin and midier from previous games but at the end of the day, these bosses are the most memorable and satisfactory to beat.
@@cletokings4302 oh yea ..understand that ..and good for you ...I fought dancing lion for like 3 hours because I prefer light roll and was with no armor and with like 3 scoobydoo fragments ..was getting 2 taped and dealt like no damage since I dont like big slow unga bunga weapons ..it still felt good after I was figured out how to fight it ..but I can see why so many people wouldnt have fun being frustrated for like 3 hours because they cant play the way they want to ..ultimately its a videogame ..we all play videogame because we have fun playing it or strong positive emotions ..sure it felt great when I finally killed the thing ..but does it outweigh the negativity and frustration ? Thats the thing to consider ..there is one side of it being just frustratingly difficult and I respect it as a opinion ..there is another side of simple "get good and it will feel good" and I respect that opinion as well 🤷♂️
So i agree about the scadutree fragments. Yes, it rewards exploration but not if it feels mandatory. There is next to nothing to find in the open world but the fragments, revered spirit ashes and fucking cookbooks. Teardrop scarabs are few and far between and when they do show up they are clustered together.
-Never learned how to fight Elden rings bosses -Doubles down and refuses to learn or engage with the bosses moveset by cheesing with summons -Does not like to explore( In the open world game!) -Uses builds that does not like just to be done with it without learning anything -Wonders why he is not having fun What a joke
"not too hard to beat, but too hard to have fun" ......... first of all.... THATS WHAT SHE SAID secondly .... well said man, this is prob the most true thing anyone has said about the game btw review bombing is more like what all the fromsoft kaks are doing to every youtuber that makes the smallest negative comment on the game
Fromsoft *had* the Souls formula as close to perfect as possible, and it was in SEKIRO. Fromsoft have painted themselves into a corner, mechanically speaking. I’m sure there are *some* busted builds that can make short work of any boss in the expansion. But now they’re designing bosses with the assumption that you have one of those overtuned builds that do stupid DPS numbers. They got it right with SEKIRO because they said, “Nuh-uh, no one is breaking the meta in this game. We’ve already seen people do this in DARK SOULS, there are too many variables with balancing the enemies now. So we’re taking all that away and giving you a sword.” It was perfection. And now they’ve backpedaled on all of that, to my dismay.
I remember the whole discourse around "review bombing" and how people were celebrating how supposedly the DLC was "Gatekeeping" the casuals and its why I always find having any sort of meaningful discussions about the flaws in these games exhausting. No matter how many times you beat the game and are very skilled at killing the toughest bosses, if you complain about about the unfair challenge of some of the bosses fans will still respond with "Skill Issue, git gud" and other moronic crap.
I think one of the main problems about this discussion is that you cannot assess how really skillful a person is. Since the game let you learn stuff by yourself, you may have picked the most obnoxious method possible and had an awful time, despite the win.
But with all due respect, the amount of people that throw 'trash game, bad design' without any explanation to either troll or out of anger and because of not fair criticism, is just as high as the amount of people that go for 'git gud'. It goes both ways and it's unfair to compare serious criticism vs responses of the trolls, when our serious defences are also met by trolls? And in my opinion, the fact that you, even tho it's in quotations, bring up the fact that we celebrate the difficulty as gatekeeping does tell me you aren't the target audience, feel free to correct me on this, but these games are meant to be hard, does that mean every boss is perfect? Hell no... I don't enjoy beating Gaius and even tho I find the hippo very fair, the hitbox is a bit too much. But at the same time people complaining about rellana are just angry it seems, she is one of the best bosses they ever made in my opinion and I have yet to see fair points against her. But the fact remains that aside from a few wonky bosses, the majority are excellent and exactly what the community wants, and the fact that people are already beating the bosses with lv1 indicates it's really a personal issue. I'm by no means good, rellana and messmer took me hours to kill, but that's what these games should be like... It's a fromsoft game & a dlc at that, it's 100% fine if ur a casual player.. but then the dlc just isn't for them and that should be ok, and you shouldn't look down on fans for celebrating the challenge.
When bosses have attacks that come out way too fast to ever dodge. One example is Rellana's beam slash combo in her second phase where the fourth one is always hits me on the recovery frames of my third dodge roll. Malenia's waterfowl dance, giant bosses that spam spell attacks with infinite tracking and constantly roll around the entire map forcing you into a game of annoying cat and mouse.
This man speaks the truth. Elden Ring is, to me, a masterpiece in terms of art, lore and visual appeal -- but I still struggled to actually have fun in the game, overall. Sometimes it was a joyeous exploration- hell, even peak gameplay in some pockets of bliss, but... in the end, both the base game and DLC got drowned in a maelstrom of frustration.
Yea its crazy how well this guy articulated my experience on so many different points. I really hope if they insist on continuing with the open worlds going forward, that Miyazaki-san delegates another director for it, while he pursues something much tighter in scope. I'll still play whatever open world they create too, cause I know I'll still more than get my moneys worth even slogging through a single frustrating playthrough. Those peaks of bliss still remain far above anything else on the market
Honestly I feel that this DLC fixed every single peoblem I had with the base game. I do feel Radahn us a soulless fight and is just awful but ither than that I feel this DLC is nearly perfect.
No need to qualify your arguments with "I'm in the minority blah blah" NO. This mixed reaction to dlc should be seen as a wake up call to Miyazaki and all the 'get gudders' .
I agree on some points and respect your opinion. While I do believe FromSoft wanted us to explore the openworld as this is an openworld game, almost if not forcing the exploration in the form of looking for Scadutree fragments wasn't the best way to do it. When they said "Sekiro-like" levelling system, I thought it was like Defeat the boss > Gain a levelling item > Become more powerful, and for the open world exploration, I think the best rewards are items/ashes of war/armor. I think in that way, people won't be scared of overlevelling their Scadutree. I also agree with the bosses. While I don't have a problem with how the boss is designed (at least not to a degree that I would "hate" the overall game) but! I think FromSoft overly coats the bosses with particle effects and attacks that the players cannot clearly see -- this results to you just guessing if an attack is coming or not. Although I didn't google how to beat the final boss, he is the only boss that made me use 10 larval tears and resort me to using a greatshield and poke. Even though I got his first phase down to a T, I simply cannot understand what was happening in the 2nd phase consistently. Apart from that, I usually play solo (Except for moby dick cuz ahab was just toooooo Cinema not to summon) on my first playthru, for me spirit ashes are still not balanced. Let me explain, if you don't summon the boss is too hard (it's still doable, as my 3 DLC playthrus I did not summon) but if you summon spirit ashes, it's too easy now. There's really no in-between. That's why I refuse to believe that the bosses were design/balanced with summoning in mind. My only issue with openworld is not that I got lost (I did, a lot and even got frustrated at points), but I realized that, that is the point of an open world game. HOWEVER! What I am frustrated about are the loot/rewards, 1. Some sections of the openworld feels empty, there's a large section that has nothing on it. 2. When you explore enough you get to find caves, gaols, etc. And when you explore every nook and cranny you get rewarded with a cookbook or a smithing stone 1, it's disheartening. With that, I still enjoy the boss fights -- I solo'd the bosses just like what I did with DarkSouls, with Sekiro, with Lies of P, with LotF. It was doable, it took me a while. Was it enjoyable for me? Yes. Was it hard? Yes. Was it frustrating? Yes. But for me Soulsborne/like games are made for that exact reason, that you repeatedly being defeated, and once you overcome the boss you will be really hyped up. This doesn't mean I'm invalidating your points. PS: I don't agree with lords of the fallen tho, it's still janky, and unfair for me. I still believe Elden Ring is a Masterpiece, but it has some flaws. I don't hate it, in fact I love it. But I agree that some boss fights is not fun.
Feels worse if you ask me. You didn't need all of the seeds to max out your storage. It's weird to me since the base game had more than enough golden seeds for the flasks.
This is cope haha. There is no way in hell that the DLC selling over 5 million copies is hype snowball. People actually love the game believe it or not. FromSoftware has very similar percentage completion and first boss kill rates across all their games, look that shit up. Elden Ring is actually near the top of their games % wise. Shit Sekiro's first boss completion is less than 60%, so like at least 10% lower than Elden Rings. Bloodborne first boss 64%, less than Elden Ring. So those percentages arent sobering at all haha. Shit go ahead and look at the achievement percentages for other big games. They have very low percentage completions for basic shit. God of War, the Witcher, RDR2, etc. That is how this goes.
I think the thing about bosses in elden ring that is frustrating in comparison to previous games is that in previous games you could get stuck on a boss and you could maybe farm some souls maybe try a different weapon, but eventually you had to learn the boss move set. And it was extremely frustrating and extremely rewarding when overcomed, it literally took me months to defeat slave knight Gael and I still think he's the best boss in ds3. But elden rings approach to difficulty makes it so that proper investment in build trivializes the boss. It is simultaneously the hardest and the easiest soulslike depending on the build. And when you get frustrated and use summons and status and ashes you don't get the satisfaction that you used to get from overcoming a powerful boss.
101% agree. And I'm writing this as a person for whom Elden Ring is a brilliant game (apart from the recycling of enemies). The DLC is terrible in *any* way.
lots of blind hater in the comment section personally, i think your points are valid and your worries (about the direction that fromsoft might be taking forward) are warranted
I'm not trying to dispute anything you said and I agree with your critique of the base game in the intro (haven't finished the video), but I just wanted to share my thoughts and point something out. In the video it looks like you have pretty low vigor? I think 60 vigor is a good target for 125. With Morgott's rune you get even more health. There's a bunch of talismans that make you tankier, and the two best physick tears in the base game make you tankier also. That should alleviate getting killed so fast. I'm not playing a wizard but I definitely took more than 2 hits from that early boss without dying. Not every build is the same, but I can't understate the importance of vigor and even damage negation, for _every_ build. There are tanky builds and non-tanky builds, but what differentiates the tanky builds is that they wear the class of armor that's so heavy it makes you look like a watermelon, not that they invest in a reasonable amount of vigor. I guess that's different from other games where mages are expected to be squishy - in Elden Ring your mage is going to get hit just as often as any other build. The game doesn't tell you this, so it's not players' fault for ending up underprioritizing tankiness. It leads to really lopsided PvP encounters in this game, where every host I invade has like 40 vigor or less and dies in 2 or 3 hits from a greatsword. It's quite odd because other From Soft games didn't have this problem, or didn't seem to to me. Elden Ring has lots of unique problems, which I guess makes sense because it's such a massive departure from the traditional formula. I agree with a lot of the problems you identified. The movesets are pretty ridiculous in ER. Actually, everything is. Just across the board, everything is pushed to the nth degree. The ridiculous stuff coming from the bosses is only "balanced" by the ridiculous stuff coming from you. I guess that's what happens when you keep pushing the envelop with every game, but you had already achieved an optimal balance way back in Dark Souls 1. It's the problem of "power creep," everything has to be cooler than what came before, but everything was already good before, and there is such a thing as "too cool," and it perfectly describes some of the attacks and items and spells in this DLC. It does diminish my enjoyment of the game, but the fundamentals are so good and the amount of content to enjoy is so huge that I think this game is still worth the asking price. I wish the DLC had fixed my issues rather than adding to them, but it also added some really cool content so I'm not complaining. But I hope they'll go back to the DS1/Bloodborne style of worldbuilding with their next game, and maybe just bite the bullet and reset the "power creep" in terms of movesets and stuff. I'm really burned out on bosses' comically delayed attack animations and 8+ hit combos while you have to keep mashing dodge. Completely agreed on Malenia, it is ridiculous and there is no defending it. I think most of Elden Ring is great, and I'm a dyed in the wool Souls fan since Demon's Souls, but some of the boss design in Elden Ring is ridiculous, and the way the game encourages you to get past these challenges (cheesing with AoWs, spells, spirit ashes, etc.) is not actually fun, at least not the same kind of fun you will have had while slamming your head against Lady Butterfly 30 times before finally beating her, by learning her moves and attack timings and gimmicks and all. That's the most important strength of all these games, and unfortunately Elden Ring leans out of it instead of into it. The game is instead balanced around a bunch of unsatisfying, repetitive, overpowered mechanics that are basically cheating, which would trivialize any Dark Souls game (considering DS3 the "baseline"), and this is supposed to be a Soulslike, so in order to actually have _some_ difficult bosses, they needed to ramp them up to an extraordinary degree. So some of the bosses are ridiculously hard if you approach them the way you'd approach a Sekiro boss (solo, no spirit ashes, no cheese) and comparatively boring if you approach them the way the game seems to want you to. This leads to sudden and enormous difficulty spikes. My first playthrough was frankly boring. I didn't die even once to most of the main bosses. And then out of nowhere I died like 40 times to Malenia. And then back to one-shotting everything. Turns out I was using one of the strongest spirit ashes in the game, not because I heard it was strong (I played blind) but because it was one of the few I could actually cast, having played a melee character that wasn't interested in spamming AoWs so not investing at all in Mind. The game actually kinda leads you into that lane by making this hugely overpowered cheat tool cost HP instead of FP, unlike almost all the other spirit ashes. I will say a few of the bosses are very well done, but they don't get credit for it because most players naturally summon spirit ashes right after entering the fog wall and use powerful physicks and items that totally break the parity. And a HUGE multitude of bosses/minibosses/"great enemies" are just trivially easy, which I guess is a consequence of the game being way too big for them to actually invest time into anything. So you end up fighting a boss that just has normal enemy AI but inflated health, which does not really constitute a boss. Fighting one really tanky beastman is actually _easier_ than fighting a pack of regular beastmen, since you have to deal with all of them attacking simultaneously with complex timings. So those dungeon "bosses" might as well not exist. It's especially egregious on NG+, which I agree is just... it's not poorly balanced, it's _not_ balanced. It's like they just applied a single 125% modifier to everything in the game, which makes no sense as it would make Limgrave ~level 12.5 while you are level 125. But again, probably that's due to the game being too big to actually balance it the way Souls games are usually balanced. They honestly just need to be less ambitious in the future. From Soft should return to tight, curated experiences, rather than making another "everything under the kitchen sink" "anthology of every attack animation we've ever made" "jumping on the Breath of the Wild hype train" game. But I fear they have gotten the wrong impression from the game's overwhelming success. It brought more people to their stable of games than the rest of the previous games combined. Previous Souls games were relatively niche, while Elden Ring had mainstream appeal. I find that so unfortunate. What message do you take from that? We seem to be a minority, and although From Soft is an amazing developer that has resisted many depressing trends in the games industry, they still ultimately are in this business to make money. They can't continue making games if they don't make money. So which direction will they go? I'm not totally pessimistic on this, however. I read a recent interview in which Miyazaki says Bloodborne was one of his favorite games and he's incredibly gratified that players love it so much that they've been requesting a remaster and PC port for so long. He didn't promise a PC port or a remaster, but I did get the impression that he considers Bloodborne a great success, even if it sold a tiny fraction of what Elden Ring sold. So, we could see a return to that formula, and it would probably be just as successful as Elden Ring, now that so many players have tried Elden Ring and are willing to buy any similar game released by From Soft.
Nah, they should experiment and go for broke. That leads to games like Sekiro and this one, which I vastly prefer over the DS games for a number of reasons. Most of the complaints in this vid seem to stem from a very narrow preference of gaming style, which lead to stuff like him complaining about "having to go back" to fight bosses he can't just defeat on the first few tries.
I don’t really agree with a lot of what you said, I played the dlc with no summons and just two handing my uchi, no spells or anything, but I enjoy fighting the bosses many times to learn them and I do enjoy exploring the open world. That’s fair enough that you didn’t enjoy it though. DS3 is still my favourite fromsoft game.
What do you mean by exploring? I've finally broken down recently and googled all the locations, yet I'm still only lvl 18 scadu. Radahn completely broke my will so, what do you mean by exploring? Because for me it's mostly been hound down fragments the game and come back OP. At many points I'd be just rolling around an area, chiros grave is perfect. Because I fought the spirit dude, then came found the lamenter after getting wrecked by the birds. Struggled thru that dungeon, came back and struggled thru the bird... Just to still be getting just barely 2 shot by the lion. I'm like bro, lvl 8 frag is this hard for the 1st area? Okay, struggle way past that, beat bayle because I just had to have his spell.... stomps the lion, renalla, and pretty much steam roll until the frenzy dude... My exploration was just a fugg ton of tike riding around, coming across fragments as I chase my own behind looking for ways to get to new places. The game is poorly optimized to a fault, I wasn't playing with HDR on for my 1st 25hrs, the world was so dark I never found the entrance at moorth ruins. I beat bayle, messmer, and had climbed Elim tower by frag lvl 14... How did your exploration go?
Older FromSoft boss designs feel more like a dance, like you're trying to find your rhythm. Trying to memorize the steps and when the dance allows you to add your own flair. A lot of the dlc bosses feels like you have to solve a complex puzzle. It's not the same as we're used to but once I recognised that, it became a lot more enjoyable. You kinda have rewire your line of thinking. A lot of the time it's no longer about the reactionary gameplay that could carry you through older titles. It's more like a math equation or problem that you need to sit down and really think through. But that's not something everyone enjoys, which can be very damaging when you already have such a niche audience.
"I don't like to explore'" while playing an open world game - "I arrived at the boss with what I assumed the developer wanted me to be." Just LOL takes like this all over the place. "I don't like feeling lost!" --the best part of ER & especially the DLC. For me, I love the calmer and atmospheric aspects and the mazelike content, it made ER felt far more authentic than any of the Dark Souls games (particularly 3, which was perhaps intentionally artificial given its theme). EDIT: I don't want to get down on Pliny, I love his content and he has a great voice for youtube reviews, and I agree on some of the critiques regarding bosses (I prefer the DS3/Bloodborne/Sekiro bosses)--but a lot of this video feels like grumpy old man syndrome, and I get it, I'm around the same age. But fighting the final boss forced me to change up my comfort zone build (dex/int) for the greatshield/antspur build, and in that I discovered that Unga Bunga is not only fun, it's actually a form of easy mode for ER. Now I'm busy experimenting with different weapons that I otherwise wouldn't have touched, and I want to take this discovery into a new playthrough of the base game. In any case, I prefer From to continually experiment and push themselves, Dark Souls 3 feels like a prototype in many ways to ER and especially the DLC, which has the best and most consistent level design and atmosphere of all their games except for BB and maybe Sekiro.
@@thatlonzoguy People who have skill can beat it on any build. Those with just some skill, well, there are other avenues. I do think the final boss is overtuned and needs to be nerfed, regardless.
@@thatlonzoguy its a darn rpg people really think this is just an action game some kind of hack and slash. also theres respec in ds3 so it is a thing. you are not forced to play just one way. the game encourages to try new thinjgs it has thousands of rpg mechanics. just the feather tear helped me beat radahn light rolls with heavy armor i was wondering why the hell i never used that throw some rot pots spray some aromatics golden vow people just bashing their head and then saying the game is too hard. the moment i started looking at the game like a jrpg is the moment i had the most fun in it heck in some ways is even a turn based game
You have a point saying that it isn't fun fighting these kind of chaotic bosses, ur right, i don't like it either, i hate how the roll button is just there for the i-frames and not to actually dodge anything, also if i'm being honest, i don't like the way the bosses kind of do all these crazy and cool things and we are stuck there with maybe some ash of war or dumb spell, how is that fun? from software is amazing at designing these super interesting characters yet the player always looks boring and very limited by comparison, since pontiff sulyvahn i always felt like i wanted to play as that instead. even if it's against crazier enemies to compensate, however, i don't have a problem with leveling up a bit and going back to fight a boss, i'm not actively farming to level up or searching scadutree fragments because that happens naturally just by exploring
@fl4avv721 agreed the bosses can fly jump and spirit and slide all in milliseconds but our character is so stiff that's part of what makes me so mad I want to be on even field at least with abilities of the boss and we battle each other out until I finally win. Not because they have frames that when I attack they go through my hits and I do no damage at times then they go super saying and move so fast I don't even see it.
@@bombyo3634 Armored core was a bit closer to that, we really had some crazy tools and capabilities in that game, and somehow bloodborne too wasn't as unbalanced when it came to player/enemies, or at least it felt like that
@fl4avv721 blood borne did feel more balanced. Elden ring nemesis can basically fly and zoom all over the place yet we are baggy. Sometimes I press buttons and nothing happens
I’m having a ton of fun. I got the Solitude armor with the Milady and have been having a blast with that move set. I have a piece of paper and a pencil for making a list of things to do and go back to or items to level up etc. I definitely agree though that boss design still needs more work. Why do I have to dodge everything from them, but they don’t even react to my attacks? Feels like I’m fighting a robot lol.
You are not alone feeling this way bro. I think from has turned there games in to a estus flask chugging roll a thon.... A lot of the bosses didn't feel satisfying to me. I just felt lucky cause I out twitched them with spam attacks. Another great review homey. Ya gotta post more often man! Lol
Props for saying, "This is a great game, I just don't like it." I wish more people could have that attitude when discussing games. Personally, I loved the bosses and exploration in Shadow of the Erdtree, but I get where you're coming from. I collected about 80% of the fragments and didn't mind Googling the rest, but I get why that might not be fun for other players. I spent 6 hours learning to dodge the final boss's attacks (including a couple Phase 2 attacks that I found guides for because they're crazy fast), but I get why that might not be fun for other players. Our experiences as players aren't universal, and I think that gets lost in online discourse (e.g., people talking past each other about difficulty). Great video, thanks for sharing!
I love Elden Ring but I completely agree with your criticisms. It's incredible, but there are gameplay issues. I hope this is just an issue with Elden Ring and won't be carried over into future projects. I hope From learns the right lessons, even though the same issues persist in SotE.
They won't change anything about it sadly, because everyone gives the game a 10/10 all the time, I read many times that the DLC is "perfect" as well. People forget that the word perfect isn't something you should easily throw around, because perfect means, that there is nothing that should be changed about it. I my opinion, ER has issues, I had no fun with the game after the Capital, but everyone else calls it perfect. To me ER wasn't a masterpiece, in the end it probably makes me not like Froms games anymore. Tldr, I would love for them to improve in the next game and have something that would be fun for me again, and obviously for everybody else, but I just didn't enjoy ER, I didn't even play the DLC because of it. (why would I?)
@@umbral9911 I know where you're coming from, but I think they're still happy to try new and different things while learning some lessons from the Souls games. Sekiro and Armored Core 6 is proof of that for me. Only time will tell.
@@stevebob240 I hope you are right! at the end of the day this is From Software we are talking about, and they did make amazing games before, so I hope they keep them coming! I guess I will be carefully keeping my hopes up for something!
I was really hoping this DLC would address my problems with the base game; it unfortunately didn't. The bloated, empty areas and re-used bosses stop this DLC from being a masterpiece.
I did the whole thing twice with just melee and no summons. That’s what I enjoy but u have to agree. I feel like they are pushing you HARD into using mimic/summons and OP builds which aren’t enjoyable.
Doesn't really help the fact with that recent article which came out confirming Miyazaki himself uses Mimic/summons and whatnot to get through the game. Which I honestly feel only further proves that the ramped up difficulty isn't intuitive.
I view ER (and DLC) as more of a visual spectacle than a technical gameplay oriented game, i honestly think ER is best enjoyed while watching someone else stream it heh. Because, lets be real, they cranked everything up to 11 for maximum visual creaminess, even tho it came at a heavy gameplay cost.. Im tired of having to wait for every boss to do a 15minute flurry of vaguely telegraphed attacks only to be able to get ONE R1 in. And thats while still feeling squishy as everliving fuck while rocking 60vig. wut? Thats a tank build olol With DS3 bosses its equal bits dodging around, equal bits attacking/healing, that keeps me engaged. With ER i feel like im waiting for my turn while the boss is doing its anime shit, that does not keep me engaged.
My first playthrough of Shadow was similarly disappointing. In fact, I spoiled it due to the fact that I did the final boss before having visited large sections of the map (like the dragon area and the frenzy wood, for example). But I thought that this would not yet be the end and that there would be some twist in the story leading me to the other missing segments of the world. But I was wrong, unfortunately, and could find almost no motivation to do also the rest of the DLC. I think, too, that a Soulslike game does not really fit with an open world exploration game very well. In the main game they made it so that at least the final stages (Farum Azula and Ashen Capital) were fairly linear (almost just boss after boss), so at least one could figure out that one is approaching to the end of the game. And it was clear right from the beginning that one needs to get to the Erdtree. But here, in SotE, the main story was way less transparent and even quite disappointing at the end (because I, for instance, was expecting something very different). I think that Lords of the Fallen is not a better game than Elden Ring(+SotE), but it is a better Soulslike game. And if someone would want to try out an new Soulslike with these two games as an option I would always recommend LotF over ER to him. It is a blessing that the classical Souls games did not die with the success of the open world game Elden Ring. They live on in games by other developers, like Lies of P or Lords of the Fallen. Or the upcoming game Enotria: the Last Song. And hopefully Fromsoft's next project will be more close again to the games which made the Souls genre big. A Metroidvania level design with Souls bosses that emphasize clear and fair mechanics over visually obfuscating spectacle.
I don’t know how to feel about this DLC I have over 1000 hours in Elden ring and I generally feel like the dLC just doubled down on the issues the main game had also with a lot of the areas feeling strangely empty?
Honestly I can't stand the FromSoft community. It's just a cult at this point. It's the way they try to gaslight you into thinking that FromSoft games are some avant-garde in the gaming industry and nothing like them comes close to comparing. They claim this is gaming perfection as can be seen from the amount of Shadow of the Erdtree 10/10 reviews. There is no way that objective reviewers can pretend that Shadow of the Erdtree is a better dlc than Blood and Wine, especially when Blood and Wine was a fraction of the price. I feel like Elden Ring completely misses the point of what an open world game is supposed to be about. Open world games are supposed to feel lived-in and immersive. Elden Ring just feels empty and drab with cliffs annoyingly everywhere forcing you to go in a specific direction. This is particularly bad in Shadow of the Erdtree when you are trying to access a certain area of the map and you can only access it via some ravine on the other side of the map. It's important that you can change the pace and go off on a tangent, losing yourself in doing random shit. It's underrated how essential all the silly side quests and gimmicks are to games like Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3 and GTA. Elden Ring only has one speed and that's constant fighting, constant sombre, overbearing atmosphere. When you expect gamers to put over 100 hours into a video game, you HAVE to make it versatile so that the player can switch it up. And I know the dungeons in games like Skyrim can be tedious and repetitive but at least they try to soften this with the immersion of having a narrative involved in a quest as motivation to get through them. In Elden Ring, they're just there with the primary motivation being to farm runes from the boss. Skyrim came out in 2011 and Elden Ring in 2022. FromSoft had about two decades worth of open world games to learn from about what worked and what didn't work and they didn't add to the genre at all. In fact they did it worse, much worse, and, like I said before, completely missed the point. There are a lot of objectively bad things about FromSoft games. I grew up on Devil May Cry so i can't be brainwashed into thinking this is as good as boss fights get. On that subject, I disagree with you that Sekiro is the best action game ever. For me, it is Devil May Cry 5.
@@zzbaby228 point proven on the FromSoft cult. They just can't take criticism of their beloved franchise. They think they're elites and everyone else's opinion is unworthy.
@@zzbaby228 point proven on the FromSoft cult. You guys just can't take criticism of your beloved franchise. Heaven forbid someone might actually have a different opinion.
You're not alone. ER is good but the adulation is too much. And I think From Soft boss design has devolved into "nondescript spinning mass of bullshit".
It’s the community’s fault. They want dodge fests and less puzzle bosses like Bed of Chaos. It’s created a microcosm where every boss becomes Flame Lurker
@@kuranhelix278 And that's the stigma that has led to Promised Consort Radahn. Bed of Chaos doesn't care about your build. It doesn't care if you light roll or fat roll, or have heavy armor or a greatshield. It is a narrative boss that any character can beat. It doesnt frustrate you that you invested all your levels into faith. Promised Consort Radahn, and Flame Lurker both, teach the player that if you want to win, you gotta fast roll, you gotta have a tower shield with relevant stability and elemental resistance, or you gotta out DPS him. these are the core tarrifs that Souls players mean when they say "Get Gud". and they're antithetical to role playing games. What's the point of giving us useless build paths and gear? Either explicitidly make it so the game loop involves switching out gear and relevant items, or balance the game around every strategy being relevant at all times. Sekiro is an action game, Elden Ring is a roll playing game. it purportedly encourages you to make your own narrative. So if I made a character who doesn't like to use greatshields, and enjoys fat rolling in heavy armor, he should theoretically be capable of beating every boss.
I find it genuinely nuts how many outlets gave it a 10/10. I don’t even think the difficulty is the problem - it’s the unsatisfying exploration due to the often terrible loot. Why am I picking up smithing stone 1’s and 2’s in an endgame dlc? Blatantly shit design like this shouldn’t garner masterpiece praise.
I fucking love the dancing Lion boss. It teaches you a lot about adaptation and how bosses works throughout its phases. If you stand on its sides, it will bite you, by its head, tackle you. A move you could avoid by rolling in, now in the thunder phase, you need to roll out. So on and so forth. It took me a while to figure how to dance with it, but it was worth it.
It doesn't teach anything. Everything we was able to learn, we learn back in original game. And yes, not every boss should teach you something. Sometimes, boss much better to be an opponent, like Artorias, Fume Knight or Gale. Can we please stop all this "learning" and play the foking game already 😂
I came SO close to loving it, but I honestly ended up hating the Dancing Lion for wasting the potential it had. The concept and design is gorgeous and the music is some of my favorite in the whole series. My attempts were plagued by constant camera issues which were irritating at best or deadly at worst. By the time I won I felt like the amazing Dancing Lion fight was stolen away by a camera man 😅
I felt like I HAD to follow a guide for fragments before fighting bosses. First playthrough completed of the DLC today, had to use gimmick builds, and the entire playthrough was spent following a guide on youtube all over the map for fragments because the first boss fight I went into with 5 fragments, after the patch buff btw, I still felt too weak. So I was like "okay, it's ER, I'll just leave and since fragments are how I get stronger I guess I have to gather as many as I can before the boss." So whenever there was a boss in the way of fragments, I fought and killed it with the fragments I had, and I had to use cheese builds to do it. All the way to the end where I had to use fingerprint shield + rapier. This DLC sucks purely for that reason, much less the boss HP bloat, the difficulty tuning of bosses/damage output being ridiculous so it requires gimmick builds. Also the lack of infinite respecs to figure out what works and what doesn't with recent patches and not having infinite respecs is just... I had to install a mod for infinite respecs. Just ridiculous all around. The entire DLC is unfulfilling, the base game is 100x better.
I kinda agree. Gave up after encountering Gaius and the dragon peak. Mesmer and centipede quelaag are still there to do but I've lost the enthusiasm tbh. I loved exploring the map, finding the fragments, getting access to new areas, etc. but man those boss fights just became something I'd dread rather than look forward to. DS3, BB and Sekiro are still peak souls.
"DS3, BB and Sekiro are still peak souls." Add ER to that list and we have the same opinion. IMO the concentration of great main bosses was never higher than in the ER DLC. You still have Messmer to fight? He's literally one of the best fights From has ever done.
Messmer and especially Romina are my favorite bosses in this DLC... with Romina being my favorite boss in ER overall. They're the only "fair" ones tbh, the rest I do kinda agree (especially final boss).
@@anonymousperson8903 I've yet to fight Midra (only one left), saving the best ones for last :) I've snuck a peek into his area (Abyssal Woods), and it's looking real good already.
I cant lie this video is very accurate, I think poeole glaze Fromsoft too much they are a great player focused developer but if you have a fan base that keeps asking to be punished with unnecessary difficulty over fun they won't learn from it
I’m finding it a slog. But I just thought it was me. In retrospect, I actually think you should enter the DLC at 300+. You can’t really overlevel the DLC and the higher level will let you adapt more easily to the different fights as you don’t have to respec constantly to deal with a particular boss. YMMV. 8:51 I also hate every boss just charging you as you walk in.
I still dont understand how this man beats bosses on average of 5 tries. Where 10 tries for Pliney is excessive. 10 tries im barely warmin uo, getting my stretches in, laying out my snack tray for a loooong season lol--when bossin' solo. Yeah, this entire genre might not be for me Im now realizing 😭
You completely misunderstood what he said. He said he used all the tools at his disposal, which is OK, and if you do that then yes, the game is probably easier than any game except Demon Souls when you know the mechanics. However the sheer difficulty of Elden Ring shines when you use a build which needs to use every attack at your disposal without summons. It's ok to play either way, but he says that it is frustrating to play in a way which can actually emphasise Elden Ring's difficulty. If you can persevere, then that is a better mindset for souls games, than I need to beat this boss in 20 tries or this boss is bullshit.
@@aayushdasgupta9754not sure if I completely* misunderstood. He often gives a similar count for other souls games. Learning the patterns, even if OPd is still the main thing. Especially if in this game the pattern is obscured by some of the more wild animations
@@diamondbracelette Fair, but in older games except Sekiro, rarely did it take me more than like 15 attempts. Only Midir, Friede, and Demon Twins took me more attempts, 25, 20 and 35 respectively.
@@aayushdasgupta9754 Nice. Yeah my baseline is the first demon's souls boss, big knight guy that took me maybe 113 tries lmao. After that I probably didn't keep track whether highi or low. Plus having companions help out. All a mixed stew. I know that in Lords of the Fallen with a broken co-op imma hurtin a bit. Did fine in Sekiro
Exactly this. Elden Ring ian't hard once you know how thr game works. Sure, the game does everything it can to make things as obscure as possible to make learning it a chore, but it ultimately revolves around learning the spreadsheet of how to stack buff on buff and status effect overload and then melting bosses in seconds. Compare this to Sekiro where the fundamental is learning how to parry, mikiri, and jump and you have why the experience feels so disjointed.
I don't have such a negative opinion about Elden Ring. I think Miyazaki actually succeeded in taking the exploration and open-world elements from Zelda BotW/TotK and combining them with souls gameplay. What I didn't like about the base game was the lack of dungeon variety. All catacombs looked very similar and were kinda short. In the DLC, we got less of them, but they're really unique experiences in turn. The boss design was also very enjoyable with a heavier emphasis being put on understanding and learning the choreography. Btw 0:40 - level scadutree blessings. In my first DLC playthrough my char was underleveled (runelevel) and quite squishy, but with that new mechanic it worked out nonetheless. It also allows you to find a sweetspot where the DLC isn't "too easy" and also not "too hard". As for replayability - I have 10 different chars/builds and the game didn't get boring for me yet. Again - want more difficulty? Do less level ups, upgrade your weapons more slowly and find ways to compensate for that limitation - this adds a nice additional layer of challenge; don't spoil yourself all the fun.
I have to agree, if the new games are going to be like Elden Ring going forward, I will probably stop buying From games, after Elden Ring I will definitely not Pre-order anything they make. I think its funny that this is probably the commercially most successful game they have made (at least everyone knows the name) yet I enjoyed it the least in its entirety. (really stopped enjoying it after the capital) Many people even started playing the game because of the DLC release. I hope that the next game From will make, will be something completely different, because if its another Elden Ring.. man..
problem is how unrewarding the exploration is. I complete a very hard dungeon all i get is a spirit summon i will never use. Zelda did this much better
That sums up this dlc pretty well: its just not that fun. They went way too crazy with the bosses, way too much empty space. Useless items, even more useless crafting.. Its wierd, to me the ridiculousness of base elden ring was balanced by you being able to create nearly any win condition by maximizing ur build. Seeing ppl adopt 4 kings strategies sealed the deal, theyve power crept all that fun and variety right out. Exploit boss weaknesses and OP mechanics OR LOSE! Did i mention 60% of my time was spent looking for fragments and ways to get around the map?
I feel bad for you man, having to switch to magic just to get some more lore and cutscene is not a good feeling. I got lucky and was able to finish the game with my greatsword, but I still ended up using Golden Vow which I had never used before
Im the biggest Elden ring fan in the world! I have over 600 hours in the base game and it remains my only plat trophy. Ive recommended it to countless people and it remains my favorite game ever made. However, I would not recommend the DLC to hardly anyone. The bosses are too aggressive, roll catch mechanics, no healing windows, and 1 shot mechanics. I quit on radahn after a week of trying on ng+4 with every build imaginable. Im out. Base game? Absolutely! DLC? Youre gonna have a bad time.
I liked the dlc but I hope they fix the camera for the giant bosses and they slow down with the AOE attacks. Radahn's long combos that end with a holy explosion almost got me to rage. I was also disappointed by the final cutscene. I beat that hard a$$ boss just for a cutscene slightly longer than Radahn's combos
Damn as someone who loves Sekiro and DS3 bosses (eapecially sl1 play throughs of DS3) i absolutely loved the bosses in SOTE much better than the base game. They were very well designed to be fought 1v1 and had extremely consistent telegraphs and movesets which were super satisfying to dodge. However im not suprised that most people dont like to die over and over to learn a difficult complex boss moveset, even if it is well designed. Im in the minority and god damn i coulent be happier about the DLC bosses
Yup man! Hit the nail right on the head! Like I loved Elden Ring and exploring the over world BUT exploring the over world just ain’t as fun on repeat playthroughs. The legacy dungeons are still the best part. Shadow Keep is an absolute achievement!! Definitely now up there with my fave From levels! And forget it, these bosses blow. 👎 And the elite enemies too.. you know, no matter how mercilessly Bloodborne curb stomped me, I never once became frustrated and physically angry from that game! But I found myself shouting obscenities and calling bull out loud at my TV almost every encounter in Elden Ring. Unfair crap, getting stun locked and your whole health bar draining, the camera getting me killed more times than I can count… ugh… Over all I really enjoyed the game, but ya it’s definitely my least favourite of From’s Souls games.
@@the.bloodless.one1312 Beating the DLC does not make one good. Your comment also tells us nothing of value about the design of the game lol. All it tells us is that you don't know how to control the camera.
@@opethmike The ability to learn move-sets in a timely manner and execute what you learn quickly and effectively. Also, some of it is just having better instincts, which may or may not come from experience.
@@austin0_bandit05 most of the builds aren’t hard unless you’re actively looking for a challenge. My first playthrough was as a lightweight and the only boss I struggled on was Balteus (before patch)
Elden Ring is a Masterpiece but the DLC exposed a lot. The DLC is 3/5 or 6.8/10 . I have finished all their Games. It was never too hard. It was unfun.
>sekiro is the best action game ever designed that's a funny way of saying you don't play/aren't qualified to analyze action games lol. sekiro is one of the most overrated action games there is. i agree with pretty much everything else you said though.
Id say theres a case to make that From games get reverse review bombed. Besides Sekiro id say their other games are all 7/10s. Yet every mainstream media journalist is tossing 9s and 10s at them
ahh yes, open worlds and their *checks notes* propensity for storytelling? Is this some sort of joke? Open worlds are infamous for not being conducive to good storytelling.
The curseblade spinner fuck is SO irritating. Don't get me started on the AMOUNT of heavy enemies 😞 Edit: I cheesed Gaius because fuck him that's why 😂
I beat all games with bows except Bloodborne (fuck u sony) the DLC make me quit all time kill lion and renalla and leave game 2 days 0 damage non good ash of war for bow and summons play for me. If I don't summon my stamina can manage the spam bosses and shoot at the same time is a run simulator.
Man you had me listening until you said what’s the point in exploring and coming back. You clearly were playing a linear way and getting frustrated that the game wasn’t designed that way. It’s just not a good criticism.
People talking bout the game being too difficult .You dont even have to play elden ring? Each game made has a certain group of gamer is caters to but it seems that whenever one game is the talk ,everyone has to play it just for them to see it was really not a game meant for them.
"An open-world core function is narrative and not gameplay" You're absolutely wrong, it can be both, it can also be gameplay, in fact it's mostly gameplay
What offered mechanics? AOWs you can't use because thr animation is too long and you can't stun bosses? Or do you mean what 90% of others do and get a big shield and poke.
It's okay if you don't enjoy the game or DLC. But most of all the things you said, like having to look things up, not wanting to explore, needing to use a specific build you find online to beat X boss. That's basically on you. Plenty of people, me included, who played the game how we wanted with or without the extra helpfull tool the game gives you. You clearly wanted a linear constructed experience like the Dark Souls games. But this isn't "Dark Souls". It's made clear the very first hour when you enter Limgrave with a very hard boss right at your feet. And a progression blocker right at the entrance of the first castle. You are meant to go explore. And for those who really want, yeah you can hit your head against the wall and push through. It's in the base game, so i don't understand people are surprised that it's in the DLC.
Buying a game, knowing full well that you're not part of its target audience, and that its mechanics and playstyles don't suit you, then complaining about that very fact and pleaing to the devs to implement adjustments in your favor, followed by leaving a negative review is kinda stupid aswell. Here's options to improve your experience: "…, …, …" People: "I don't want that, or hold any responsibility over my own gaming experience - thumbs down!" Just get the next generic Ubisoft openworld title then and be happy with it.
Having 2 play throughs through SOTE i can say that it is the worst fromsoftware DLC. But what doesn’t that mean? It means that old hunters, ringed city, ashes…etc are just near perfect. DS1 with the artorias DLC was epic. I think people get upset with the whole “worst DLC” but are forgetting that fromsoft DLC’s are peak. So its not a bad thing. If anything id say its as good or maybe a little better than scholar of the first sin. Maybe…they are all really fucking good.
Finally someone who makes sense. I’ve beaten every Fromsoft game from Demons Souls to Elden Ring (just finished Shadow of the Erdtree as well) and it’s clear Fromsoft has swung waaay too far in one direction with difficulty. The community that used to praise these games art direction and lore now direct all that energy towards worshipping difficulty. Wish we could go back for future games
100% with you there. Theres a quote from miyazaki that I often think back to, he said something along the lines of "the difficulty was never the point, it was a way to immerse you and pull you into the world" and in some part I think From has lost sight of that vision. With every iteration of these games I've noticed a trend, each successive game has become more difficult, but less punishing. And with that loss of punishing mechanics in favor of difficulty, the sense of tension and therefore immersion is diminished.
To me, thats what always made these games tick, that sense of tension that kept you on your toes and forced you to be observant, to pay attention to your surroundings. Thats what made these games so engrossing, it made you feel like you were actually there, an adventurer exploring this strange and unfamiliar land fighting for every inch of ground, always having to watch your back in fear of losing the progress you had worked so hard for.
But with the additions of things like early and easily accessible fast travel, needlessly excessive checkpoints and torrent, that tension is just gone, especially in the open world, theres a complete lack of threat and I feel thats a major loss for this series, all for the sake of convenience.
@@joshualouw9506 well said friend, couldn’t agree more
@joshualouw9506 the open world is useless though. An open world should be full of life or active story elements I don't like open world for a game like this.
Compare this to when assains creed decided to go open world. They put story quest everywhere, with people moving about and enemies to fight, weapons to find, caves to explore and story elements with history and lore.
This game for me feels like a big open nothingness no people to talk to just kill this and read one line. I need dialog and back and forth conversations in an open world.
Nah this game open world is pointless objectively because it does not change anything about the actual game it's ds3 but open world exactly. No knew story mechanics just the zone are bigger and still inter connected and that's literally it.
I don't get why open world is needed for a souls game without a huge big story that's being shown in every new area it's just run on torrent fight enemies find a cookbook behind a boss then rinse and repeat.
But I'm not a big fan of this genre so I know it's my time to gracefully bow out.
@@bombyo3634 Oh yeah I completely agree, the pillars of open world game design are diametrically opposed to the core mechanics and gameplay loop of the souls series. It doesnt make sense, the open world is entirely pointless and only serves to drag the game down in my opinion, I very strongly feel that elden ring has an identity crisis.
@@bombyo3634 On the flip side I never cared about Assassin's creed or its Open World because the combat bored me to tears and I never cared for stealth.
At this point, it isn't fun. But im stubborn and want my get back.
I like the base game but it really seems like most ER fans can't stand even a tiny amount of criticism directed at this game.
It's almost like a cult.
It's because a lot of the complaints are overblown or are from people demanding a different experience than what From sought to deliver.
There is constructive critiques -- I have a list of my own -- but a lot of it is nitpicking based on a very narrow view of how they prefer video games.
@sartavin your part of the people he is talking about. Exactly who 😂😂😂
@@bombyo3634 You mean those people who purchase an expansion to an open world game expecting the same format as the original game? I have several critiques of the DLC as a whole and agree the bosses are overtuned, but this vid is kinda ridiculous in its complaining that this isn't DS3 rather than, you know, an expansion to Elden Ring.
@sartavin yet be brought the same game and paid for it. His opinion is valid and I agree. Elden ring open world isn't needed. Open zones more focused instead of open empty areas where u just run is pointless for an open world.
@@bombyo3634 He's free to vent his spleen, and everyone else is free to explain what a doofus take it is to pay for an open world game and expect an entirely different experience. Many pre-release reviews indicated large areas that were relatively empty. Some of that on purpose (lore), others I suspect because they ran out of time. And wandering beautiful environments are only pointless if you subsist purely on dopamine drip --shrug-- first world problems tbh.
My only criticism of the dlc, is that the exploration is only good for finding and seeing the different environments. You rarely if ever find anything cool and useful
My biggest complaints with the dlc are, the zones are a bit too big for the little amount of things in them, the visual slop on screen for half the boss fights is the "hardest" part about them, and how random some fragment locations seemed to be compared to base game things like golden seeds/tears. Like fragments being at beheaded marika statues and near crosses is fine and makes sense, but then there are some on the shadow pot guys and sometimes on random corpses, like why lmao.
Yeah random trash mobs hidden in corners of the map carrying around these key upgrades, which are going to be essential for most players is just... strange.
4:36 "I beat SotE with relative ease, I don't think any boss took me more than 8-10 tries"..
- uses mimic tear.. hmm I wonder why it felt easy
I have close to 400 hours in Elden Ring and I would have agreed with your criticism about bosses until my playthrough to get ready for the DLC. Pretty much all the bosses from the godskin duo on till the dlc are designed to where the openings to attack are few and far between compared to previous from games. I hated this boss design until I finally took the time to learn their patterns and this has made Elden Ring bosses the most fun I had since Sekiro. Mesmer is now my favorite boss ever along Ishin.
I love messmer so much. Such a fun fight!
Good FromSoftware bosses are like a dance with the devil.
I think you just kind of made his point ...having 400 hours in the game till you truly have fun in it is ...just not right ...I like the game and bosses and stuff but I still think its overrated ..I dont even think it really deserved to be a game of the year tbh ...sure I had a lot of fun fighting dancing lion ..
After 3 hours of being frustrated because of my "playstyle" is not the one "intended" way of fighting it
Its kind of like someone telling you "go watch this show ...first 5 seasons are ass but then it picks up and its fun"
@@mathewdyffryn8693 my point is that I was playing the “hardest” bosses like I played previous from games. And after I learnt a better way to fight them they became fun. Some dlc bosses took me hours just like Ishin and midier from previous games but at the end of the day, these bosses are the most memorable and satisfactory to beat.
@@cletokings4302 oh yea ..understand that ..and good for you ...I fought dancing lion for like 3 hours because I prefer light roll and was with no armor and with like 3 scoobydoo fragments ..was getting 2 taped and dealt like no damage since I dont like big slow unga bunga weapons ..it still felt good after I was figured out how to fight it ..but I can see why so many people wouldnt have fun being frustrated for like 3 hours because they cant play the way they want to ..ultimately its a videogame ..we all play videogame because we have fun playing it or strong positive emotions ..sure it felt great when I finally killed the thing ..but does it outweigh the negativity and frustration ? Thats the thing to consider ..there is one side of it being just frustratingly difficult and I respect it as a opinion ..there is another side of simple "get good and it will feel good" and I respect that opinion as well 🤷♂️
I dislike how difficulty got the main stage, when the real issue was unbalanced combos.
So i agree about the scadutree fragments. Yes, it rewards exploration but not if it feels mandatory. There is next to nothing to find in the open world but the fragments, revered spirit ashes and fucking cookbooks. Teardrop scarabs are few and far between and when they do show up they are clustered together.
-Never learned how to fight Elden rings bosses
-Doubles down and refuses to learn or engage with the bosses moveset by cheesing with summons
-Does not like to explore( In the open world game!)
-Uses builds that does not like just to be done with it without learning anything
-Wonders why he is not having fun
What a joke
"not too hard to beat, but too hard to have fun" .........
first of all.... THATS WHAT SHE SAID
secondly .... well said man, this is prob the most true thing anyone has said about the game
btw review bombing is more like what all the fromsoft kaks are doing to every youtuber that makes the smallest negative comment on the game
Fromsoft *had* the Souls formula as close to perfect as possible, and it was in SEKIRO.
Fromsoft have painted themselves into a corner, mechanically speaking. I’m sure there are *some* busted builds that can make short work of any boss in the expansion. But now they’re designing bosses with the assumption that you have one of those overtuned builds that do stupid DPS numbers.
They got it right with SEKIRO because they said, “Nuh-uh, no one is breaking the meta in this game. We’ve already seen people do this in DARK SOULS, there are too many variables with balancing the enemies now. So we’re taking all that away and giving you a sword.”
It was perfection. And now they’ve backpedaled on all of that, to my dismay.
I remember the whole discourse around "review bombing" and how people were celebrating how supposedly the DLC was "Gatekeeping" the casuals and its why I always find having any sort of meaningful discussions about the flaws in these games exhausting. No matter how many times you beat the game and are very skilled at killing the toughest bosses, if you complain about about the unfair challenge of some of the bosses fans will still respond with "Skill Issue, git gud" and other moronic crap.
"complain about about the unfair challenge"
Examples of unfair challenge that aren't the last boss?
"I remember"
Ah, yes, those ancient times of 10 days ago...
I think one of the main problems about this discussion is that you cannot assess how really skillful a person is. Since the game let you learn stuff by yourself, you may have picked the most obnoxious method possible and had an awful time, despite the win.
But with all due respect, the amount of people that throw 'trash game, bad design' without any explanation to either troll or out of anger and because of not fair criticism, is just as high as the amount of people that go for 'git gud'. It goes both ways and it's unfair to compare serious criticism vs responses of the trolls, when our serious defences are also met by trolls?
And in my opinion, the fact that you, even tho it's in quotations, bring up the fact that we celebrate the difficulty as gatekeeping does tell me you aren't the target audience, feel free to correct me on this, but these games are meant to be hard, does that mean every boss is perfect? Hell no... I don't enjoy beating Gaius and even tho I find the hippo very fair, the hitbox is a bit too much. But at the same time people complaining about rellana are just angry it seems, she is one of the best bosses they ever made in my opinion and I have yet to see fair points against her.
But the fact remains that aside from a few wonky bosses, the majority are excellent and exactly what the community wants, and the fact that people are already beating the bosses with lv1 indicates it's really a personal issue. I'm by no means good, rellana and messmer took me hours to kill, but that's what these games should be like... It's a fromsoft game & a dlc at that, it's 100% fine if ur a casual player.. but then the dlc just isn't for them and that should be ok, and you shouldn't look down on fans for celebrating the challenge.
When bosses have attacks that come out way too fast to ever dodge. One example is Rellana's beam slash combo in her second phase where the fourth one is always hits me on the recovery frames of my third dodge roll. Malenia's waterfowl dance, giant bosses that spam spell attacks with infinite tracking and constantly roll around the entire map forcing you into a game of annoying cat and mouse.
This man speaks the truth. Elden Ring is, to me, a masterpiece in terms of art, lore and visual appeal -- but I still struggled to actually have fun in the game, overall. Sometimes it was a joyeous exploration- hell, even peak gameplay in some pockets of bliss, but... in the end, both the base game and DLC got drowned in a maelstrom of frustration.
Yea its crazy how well this guy articulated my experience on so many different points. I really hope if they insist on continuing with the open worlds going forward, that Miyazaki-san delegates another director for it, while he pursues something much tighter in scope. I'll still play whatever open world they create too, cause I know I'll still more than get my moneys worth even slogging through a single frustrating playthrough. Those peaks of bliss still remain far above anything else on the market
Honestly I feel that this DLC fixed every single peoblem I had with the base game. I do feel Radahn us a soulless fight and is just awful but ither than that I feel this DLC is nearly perfect.
No need to qualify your arguments with "I'm in the minority blah blah" NO. This mixed reaction to dlc should be seen as a wake up call to Miyazaki and all the 'get gudders' .
I agree on some points and respect your opinion. While I do believe FromSoft wanted us to explore the openworld as this is an openworld game, almost if not forcing the exploration in the form of looking for Scadutree fragments wasn't the best way to do it.
When they said "Sekiro-like" levelling system, I thought it was like Defeat the boss > Gain a levelling item > Become more powerful, and for the open world exploration, I think the best rewards are items/ashes of war/armor. I think in that way, people won't be scared of overlevelling their Scadutree.
I also agree with the bosses. While I don't have a problem with how the boss is designed (at least not to a degree that I would "hate" the overall game) but! I think FromSoft overly coats the bosses with particle effects and attacks that the players cannot clearly see -- this results to you just guessing if an attack is coming or not. Although I didn't google how to beat the final boss, he is the only boss that made me use 10 larval tears and resort me to using a greatshield and poke. Even though I got his first phase down to a T, I simply cannot understand what was happening in the 2nd phase consistently.
Apart from that, I usually play solo (Except for moby dick cuz ahab was just toooooo Cinema not to summon) on my first playthru, for me spirit ashes are still not balanced. Let me explain, if you don't summon the boss is too hard (it's still doable, as my 3 DLC playthrus I did not summon) but if you summon spirit ashes, it's too easy now. There's really no in-between. That's why I refuse to believe that the bosses were design/balanced with summoning in mind.
My only issue with openworld is not that I got lost (I did, a lot and even got frustrated at points), but I realized that, that is the point of an open world game. HOWEVER! What I am frustrated about are the loot/rewards, 1. Some sections of the openworld feels empty, there's a large section that has nothing on it. 2. When you explore enough you get to find caves, gaols, etc. And when you explore every nook and cranny you get rewarded with a cookbook or a smithing stone 1, it's disheartening.
With that, I still enjoy the boss fights -- I solo'd the bosses just like what I did with DarkSouls, with Sekiro, with Lies of P, with LotF. It was doable, it took me a while. Was it enjoyable for me? Yes. Was it hard? Yes. Was it frustrating? Yes. But for me Soulsborne/like games are made for that exact reason, that you repeatedly being defeated, and once you overcome the boss you will be really hyped up. This doesn't mean I'm invalidating your points.
PS: I don't agree with lords of the fallen tho, it's still janky, and unfair for me.
I still believe Elden Ring is a Masterpiece, but it has some flaws. I don't hate it, in fact I love it. But I agree that some boss fights is not fun.
Well said. From-soft is my favorite and I have played every souls born and beat most but I miss the old days. This direction is frustrating.
Calling the Scadutree fragments Korok seeds really hits the nail on the head.
Feels worse if you ask me. You didn't need all of the seeds to max out your storage. It's weird to me since the base game had more than enough golden seeds for the flasks.
For Gaius fight the charge is can only be dodged by rolling exactly to side.
Selling well is just the hype snowball. Look at the completion rate of even "did the first boss" achievements across platforms - quite sobering
This is cope haha. There is no way in hell that the DLC selling over 5 million copies is hype snowball. People actually love the game believe it or not.
FromSoftware has very similar percentage completion and first boss kill rates across all their games, look that shit up. Elden Ring is actually near the top of their games % wise. Shit Sekiro's first boss completion is less than 60%, so like at least 10% lower than Elden Rings. Bloodborne first boss 64%, less than Elden Ring. So those percentages arent sobering at all haha.
Shit go ahead and look at the achievement percentages for other big games. They have very low percentage completions for basic shit. God of War, the Witcher, RDR2, etc. That is how this goes.
>"every boss 2 shots me"
>has soreseal on in ng+
Poor attempt at dismissal of the actual argument.
Some OG players that have mages dont wanna level up to 300+ so soreseals are needed at times.
@@jaytico5835 you do not need a soreseal past level 60, what are you saying?
@@5chneemensch138 explain
@@rslrandy yes obviously its good for low level builds or twinks.
I think the thing about bosses in elden ring that is frustrating in comparison to previous games is that in previous games you could get stuck on a boss and you could maybe farm some souls maybe try a different weapon, but eventually you had to learn the boss move set. And it was extremely frustrating and extremely rewarding when overcomed, it literally took me months to defeat slave knight Gael and I still think he's the best boss in ds3.
But elden rings approach to difficulty makes it so that proper investment in build trivializes the boss.
It is simultaneously the hardest and the easiest soulslike depending on the build.
And when you get frustrated and use summons and status and ashes you don't get the satisfaction that you used to get from overcoming a powerful boss.
101% agree. And I'm writing this as a person for whom Elden Ring is a brilliant game (apart from the recycling of enemies). The DLC is terrible in *any* way.
lots of blind hater in the comment section
personally, i think your points are valid and your worries (about the direction that fromsoft might be taking forward) are warranted
I'm not trying to dispute anything you said and I agree with your critique of the base game in the intro (haven't finished the video), but I just wanted to share my thoughts and point something out. In the video it looks like you have pretty low vigor? I think 60 vigor is a good target for 125. With Morgott's rune you get even more health. There's a bunch of talismans that make you tankier, and the two best physick tears in the base game make you tankier also. That should alleviate getting killed so fast. I'm not playing a wizard but I definitely took more than 2 hits from that early boss without dying. Not every build is the same, but I can't understate the importance of vigor and even damage negation, for _every_ build. There are tanky builds and non-tanky builds, but what differentiates the tanky builds is that they wear the class of armor that's so heavy it makes you look like a watermelon, not that they invest in a reasonable amount of vigor. I guess that's different from other games where mages are expected to be squishy - in Elden Ring your mage is going to get hit just as often as any other build.
The game doesn't tell you this, so it's not players' fault for ending up underprioritizing tankiness. It leads to really lopsided PvP encounters in this game, where every host I invade has like 40 vigor or less and dies in 2 or 3 hits from a greatsword. It's quite odd because other From Soft games didn't have this problem, or didn't seem to to me. Elden Ring has lots of unique problems, which I guess makes sense because it's such a massive departure from the traditional formula. I agree with a lot of the problems you identified. The movesets are pretty ridiculous in ER. Actually, everything is. Just across the board, everything is pushed to the nth degree. The ridiculous stuff coming from the bosses is only "balanced" by the ridiculous stuff coming from you. I guess that's what happens when you keep pushing the envelop with every game, but you had already achieved an optimal balance way back in Dark Souls 1. It's the problem of "power creep," everything has to be cooler than what came before, but everything was already good before, and there is such a thing as "too cool," and it perfectly describes some of the attacks and items and spells in this DLC. It does diminish my enjoyment of the game, but the fundamentals are so good and the amount of content to enjoy is so huge that I think this game is still worth the asking price.
I wish the DLC had fixed my issues rather than adding to them, but it also added some really cool content so I'm not complaining. But I hope they'll go back to the DS1/Bloodborne style of worldbuilding with their next game, and maybe just bite the bullet and reset the "power creep" in terms of movesets and stuff. I'm really burned out on bosses' comically delayed attack animations and 8+ hit combos while you have to keep mashing dodge. Completely agreed on Malenia, it is ridiculous and there is no defending it. I think most of Elden Ring is great, and I'm a dyed in the wool Souls fan since Demon's Souls, but some of the boss design in Elden Ring is ridiculous, and the way the game encourages you to get past these challenges (cheesing with AoWs, spells, spirit ashes, etc.) is not actually fun, at least not the same kind of fun you will have had while slamming your head against Lady Butterfly 30 times before finally beating her, by learning her moves and attack timings and gimmicks and all.
That's the most important strength of all these games, and unfortunately Elden Ring leans out of it instead of into it. The game is instead balanced around a bunch of unsatisfying, repetitive, overpowered mechanics that are basically cheating, which would trivialize any Dark Souls game (considering DS3 the "baseline"), and this is supposed to be a Soulslike, so in order to actually have _some_ difficult bosses, they needed to ramp them up to an extraordinary degree. So some of the bosses are ridiculously hard if you approach them the way you'd approach a Sekiro boss (solo, no spirit ashes, no cheese) and comparatively boring if you approach them the way the game seems to want you to. This leads to sudden and enormous difficulty spikes. My first playthrough was frankly boring. I didn't die even once to most of the main bosses. And then out of nowhere I died like 40 times to Malenia. And then back to one-shotting everything. Turns out I was using one of the strongest spirit ashes in the game, not because I heard it was strong (I played blind) but because it was one of the few I could actually cast, having played a melee character that wasn't interested in spamming AoWs so not investing at all in Mind. The game actually kinda leads you into that lane by making this hugely overpowered cheat tool cost HP instead of FP, unlike almost all the other spirit ashes.
I will say a few of the bosses are very well done, but they don't get credit for it because most players naturally summon spirit ashes right after entering the fog wall and use powerful physicks and items that totally break the parity. And a HUGE multitude of bosses/minibosses/"great enemies" are just trivially easy, which I guess is a consequence of the game being way too big for them to actually invest time into anything. So you end up fighting a boss that just has normal enemy AI but inflated health, which does not really constitute a boss. Fighting one really tanky beastman is actually _easier_ than fighting a pack of regular beastmen, since you have to deal with all of them attacking simultaneously with complex timings. So those dungeon "bosses" might as well not exist. It's especially egregious on NG+, which I agree is just... it's not poorly balanced, it's _not_ balanced. It's like they just applied a single 125% modifier to everything in the game, which makes no sense as it would make Limgrave ~level 12.5 while you are level 125. But again, probably that's due to the game being too big to actually balance it the way Souls games are usually balanced.
They honestly just need to be less ambitious in the future. From Soft should return to tight, curated experiences, rather than making another "everything under the kitchen sink" "anthology of every attack animation we've ever made" "jumping on the Breath of the Wild hype train" game. But I fear they have gotten the wrong impression from the game's overwhelming success. It brought more people to their stable of games than the rest of the previous games combined. Previous Souls games were relatively niche, while Elden Ring had mainstream appeal. I find that so unfortunate. What message do you take from that? We seem to be a minority, and although From Soft is an amazing developer that has resisted many depressing trends in the games industry, they still ultimately are in this business to make money. They can't continue making games if they don't make money. So which direction will they go? I'm not totally pessimistic on this, however. I read a recent interview in which Miyazaki says Bloodborne was one of his favorite games and he's incredibly gratified that players love it so much that they've been requesting a remaster and PC port for so long. He didn't promise a PC port or a remaster, but I did get the impression that he considers Bloodborne a great success, even if it sold a tiny fraction of what Elden Ring sold. So, we could see a return to that formula, and it would probably be just as successful as Elden Ring, now that so many players have tried Elden Ring and are willing to buy any similar game released by From Soft.
Nah, they should experiment and go for broke. That leads to games like Sekiro and this one, which I vastly prefer over the DS games for a number of reasons. Most of the complaints in this vid seem to stem from a very narrow preference of gaming style, which lead to stuff like him complaining about "having to go back" to fight bosses he can't just defeat on the first few tries.
Honestly the game is great until you reach the Mountains of giants and after not so much
I don’t really agree with a lot of what you said, I played the dlc with no summons and just two handing my uchi, no spells or anything, but I enjoy fighting the bosses many times to learn them and I do enjoy exploring the open world. That’s fair enough that you didn’t enjoy it though. DS3 is still my favourite fromsoft game.
What do you mean by exploring? I've finally broken down recently and googled all the locations, yet I'm still only lvl 18 scadu.
Radahn completely broke my will so, what do you mean by exploring?
Because for me it's mostly been hound down fragments the game and come back OP.
At many points I'd be just rolling around an area, chiros grave is perfect.
Because I fought the spirit dude, then came found the lamenter after getting wrecked by the birds. Struggled thru that dungeon, came back and struggled thru the bird...
Just to still be getting just barely 2 shot by the lion. I'm like bro, lvl 8 frag is this hard for the 1st area?
Okay, struggle way past that, beat bayle because I just had to have his spell.... stomps the lion, renalla, and pretty much steam roll until the frenzy dude...
My exploration was just a fugg ton of tike riding around, coming across fragments as I chase my own behind looking for ways to get to new places.
The game is poorly optimized to a fault, I wasn't playing with HDR on for my 1st 25hrs, the world was so dark I never found the entrance at moorth ruins. I beat bayle, messmer, and had climbed Elim tower by frag lvl 14...
How did your exploration go?
Older FromSoft boss designs feel more like a dance, like you're trying to find your rhythm. Trying to memorize the steps and when the dance allows you to add your own flair. A lot of the dlc bosses feels like you have to solve a complex puzzle. It's not the same as we're used to but once I recognised that, it became a lot more enjoyable.
You kinda have rewire your line of thinking. A lot of the time it's no longer about the reactionary gameplay that could carry you through older titles. It's more like a math equation or problem that you need to sit down and really think through. But that's not something everyone enjoys, which can be very damaging when you already have such a niche audience.
The base game is still one of the greatest ever. The dlc was just too empty. I'm working hard without a worthy reward. But I'm still here for it.
"I don't like to explore'" while playing an open world game - "I arrived at the boss with what I assumed the developer wanted me to be." Just LOL takes like this all over the place. "I don't like feeling lost!" --the best part of ER & especially the DLC. For me, I love the calmer and atmospheric aspects and the mazelike content, it made ER felt far more authentic than any of the Dark Souls games (particularly 3, which was perhaps intentionally artificial given its theme).
EDIT: I don't want to get down on Pliny, I love his content and he has a great voice for youtube reviews, and I agree on some of the critiques regarding bosses (I prefer the DS3/Bloodborne/Sekiro bosses)--but a lot of this video feels like grumpy old man syndrome, and I get it, I'm around the same age. But fighting the final boss forced me to change up my comfort zone build (dex/int) for the greatshield/antspur build, and in that I discovered that Unga Bunga is not only fun, it's actually a form of easy mode for ER. Now I'm busy experimenting with different weapons that I otherwise wouldn't have touched, and I want to take this discovery into a new playthrough of the base game. In any case, I prefer From to continually experiment and push themselves, Dark Souls 3 feels like a prototype in many ways to ER and especially the DLC, which has the best and most consistent level design and atmosphere of all their games except for BB and maybe Sekiro.
You shouldnt have to change builds to beat consort radahn.. thats never been a thing in souls games till elden ring
@@thatlonzoguy People who have skill can beat it on any build. Those with just some skill, well, there are other avenues. I do think the final boss is overtuned and needs to be nerfed, regardless.
@@thatlonzoguy its a darn rpg people really think this is just an action game some kind of hack and slash. also theres respec in ds3 so it is a thing. you are not forced to play just one way. the game encourages to try new thinjgs it has thousands of rpg mechanics. just the feather tear helped me beat radahn light rolls with heavy armor i was wondering why the hell i never used that throw some rot pots spray some aromatics golden vow people just bashing their head and then saying the game is too hard.
the moment i started looking at the game like a jrpg is the moment i had the most fun in it heck in some ways is even a turn based game
Well said
You have a point saying that it isn't fun fighting these kind of chaotic bosses, ur right, i don't like it either, i hate how the roll button is just there for the i-frames and not to actually dodge anything, also if i'm being honest, i don't like the way the bosses kind of do all these crazy and cool things and we are stuck there with maybe some ash of war or dumb spell, how is that fun? from software is amazing at designing these super interesting characters yet the player always looks boring and very limited by comparison, since pontiff sulyvahn i always felt like i wanted to play as that instead. even if it's against crazier enemies to compensate, however, i don't have a problem with leveling up a bit and going back to fight a boss, i'm not actively farming to level up or searching scadutree fragments because that happens naturally just by exploring
@fl4avv721 agreed the bosses can fly jump and spirit and slide all in milliseconds but our character is so stiff that's part of what makes me so mad I want to be on even field at least with abilities of the boss and we battle each other out until I finally win. Not because they have frames that when I attack they go through my hits and I do no damage at times then they go super saying and move so fast I don't even see it.
@@bombyo3634 Armored core was a bit closer to that, we really had some crazy tools and capabilities in that game, and somehow bloodborne too wasn't as unbalanced when it came to player/enemies, or at least it felt like that
@fl4avv721 blood borne did feel more balanced. Elden ring nemesis can basically fly and zoom all over the place yet we are baggy. Sometimes I press buttons and nothing happens
I’m having a ton of fun. I got the Solitude armor with the Milady and have been having a blast with that move set. I have a piece of paper and a pencil for making a list of things to do and go back to or items to level up etc. I definitely agree though that boss design still needs more work. Why do I have to dodge everything from them, but they don’t even react to my attacks? Feels like I’m fighting a robot lol.
You are not alone feeling this way bro. I think from has turned there games in to a estus flask chugging roll a thon.... A lot of the bosses didn't feel satisfying to me. I just felt lucky cause I out twitched them with spam attacks. Another great review homey. Ya gotta post more often man! Lol
Props for saying, "This is a great game, I just don't like it." I wish more people could have that attitude when discussing games. Personally, I loved the bosses and exploration in Shadow of the Erdtree, but I get where you're coming from. I collected about 80% of the fragments and didn't mind Googling the rest, but I get why that might not be fun for other players. I spent 6 hours learning to dodge the final boss's attacks (including a couple Phase 2 attacks that I found guides for because they're crazy fast), but I get why that might not be fun for other players. Our experiences as players aren't universal, and I think that gets lost in online discourse (e.g., people talking past each other about difficulty). Great video, thanks for sharing!
I love Elden Ring but I completely agree with your criticisms. It's incredible, but there are gameplay issues. I hope this is just an issue with Elden Ring and won't be carried over into future projects. I hope From learns the right lessons, even though the same issues persist in SotE.
They won't change anything about it sadly, because everyone gives the game a 10/10 all the time, I read many times that the DLC is "perfect" as well. People forget that the word perfect isn't something you should easily throw around, because perfect means, that there is nothing that should be changed about it. I my opinion, ER has issues, I had no fun with the game after the Capital, but everyone else calls it perfect. To me ER wasn't a masterpiece, in the end it probably makes me not like Froms games anymore.
Tldr, I would love for them to improve in the next game and have something that would be fun for me again, and obviously for everybody else, but I just didn't enjoy ER, I didn't even play the DLC because of it. (why would I?)
@@umbral9911 I know where you're coming from, but I think they're still happy to try new and different things while learning some lessons from the Souls games. Sekiro and Armored Core 6 is proof of that for me. Only time will tell.
@@stevebob240 I hope you are right! at the end of the day this is From Software we are talking about, and they did make amazing games before, so I hope they keep them coming! I guess I will be carefully keeping my hopes up for something!
I was really hoping this DLC would address my problems with the base game; it unfortunately didn't. The bloated, empty areas and re-used bosses stop this DLC from being a masterpiece.
100% agree.
Love your stuff as always. Really appreciate you talking about the difference between review bombing and bad reviews.
I did the whole thing twice with just melee and no summons. That’s what I enjoy but u have to agree. I feel like they are pushing you HARD into using mimic/summons and OP builds which aren’t enjoyable.
Exactly .push you to use mimic
No? I'm going through at lvl 120 with just a longsword and no skadutree, and not ONCE did I feel pushed to use summons or anything OP.
Skill issue
Doesn't really help the fact with that recent article which came out confirming Miyazaki himself uses Mimic/summons and whatnot to get through the game. Which I honestly feel only further proves that the ramped up difficulty isn't intuitive.
@@hydrophobia936 I already explained I finished it. And I’m a veteran
I view ER (and DLC) as more of a visual spectacle than a technical gameplay oriented game, i honestly think ER is best enjoyed while watching someone else stream it heh.
Because, lets be real, they cranked everything up to 11 for maximum visual creaminess, even tho it came at a heavy gameplay cost.. Im tired of having to wait for every boss to do a 15minute flurry of vaguely telegraphed attacks only to be able to get ONE R1 in.
And thats while still feeling squishy as everliving fuck while rocking 60vig. wut? Thats a tank build olol
With DS3 bosses its equal bits dodging around, equal bits attacking/healing, that keeps me engaged.
With ER i feel like im waiting for my turn while the boss is doing its anime shit, that does not keep me engaged.
My first playthrough of Shadow was similarly disappointing. In fact, I spoiled it due to the fact that I did the final boss before having visited large sections of the map (like the dragon area and the frenzy wood, for example). But I thought that this would not yet be the end and that there would be some twist in the story leading me to the other missing segments of the world. But I was wrong, unfortunately, and could find almost no motivation to do also the rest of the DLC. I think, too, that a Soulslike game does not really fit with an open world exploration game very well. In the main game they made it so that at least the final stages (Farum Azula and Ashen Capital) were fairly linear (almost just boss after boss), so at least one could figure out that one is approaching to the end of the game. And it was clear right from the beginning that one needs to get to the Erdtree. But here, in SotE, the main story was way less transparent and even quite disappointing at the end (because I, for instance, was expecting something very different).
I think that Lords of the Fallen is not a better game than Elden Ring(+SotE), but it is a better Soulslike game. And if someone would want to try out an new Soulslike with these two games as an option I would always recommend LotF over ER to him. It is a blessing that the classical Souls games did not die with the success of the open world game Elden Ring. They live on in games by other developers, like Lies of P or Lords of the Fallen. Or the upcoming game Enotria: the Last Song. And hopefully Fromsoft's next project will be more close again to the games which made the Souls genre big. A Metroidvania level design with Souls bosses that emphasize clear and fair mechanics over visually obfuscating spectacle.
I don’t know how to feel about this DLC I have over 1000 hours in Elden ring and I generally feel like the dLC just doubled down on the issues the main game had also with a lot of the areas feeling strangely empty?
Honestly I can't stand the FromSoft community. It's just a cult at this point. It's the way they try to gaslight you into thinking that FromSoft games are some avant-garde in the gaming industry and nothing like them comes close to comparing. They claim this is gaming perfection as can be seen from the amount of Shadow of the Erdtree 10/10 reviews. There is no way that objective reviewers can pretend that Shadow of the Erdtree is a better dlc than Blood and Wine, especially when Blood and Wine was a fraction of the price.
I feel like Elden Ring completely misses the point of what an open world game is supposed to be about. Open world games are supposed to feel lived-in and immersive. Elden Ring just feels empty and drab with cliffs annoyingly everywhere forcing you to go in a specific direction. This is particularly bad in Shadow of the Erdtree when you are trying to access a certain area of the map and you can only access it via some ravine on the other side of the map. It's important that you can change the pace and go off on a tangent, losing yourself in doing random shit. It's underrated how essential all the silly side quests and gimmicks are to games like Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3 and GTA. Elden Ring only has one speed and that's constant fighting, constant sombre, overbearing atmosphere. When you expect gamers to put over 100 hours into a video game, you HAVE to make it versatile so that the player can switch it up. And I know the dungeons in games like Skyrim can be tedious and repetitive but at least they try to soften this with the immersion of having a narrative involved in a quest as motivation to get through them. In Elden Ring, they're just there with the primary motivation being to farm runes from the boss. Skyrim came out in 2011 and Elden Ring in 2022. FromSoft had about two decades worth of open world games to learn from about what worked and what didn't work and they didn't add to the genre at all. In fact they did it worse, much worse, and, like I said before, completely missed the point.
There are a lot of objectively bad things about FromSoft games. I grew up on Devil May Cry so i can't be brainwashed into thinking this is as good as boss fights get. On that subject, I disagree with you that Sekiro is the best action game ever. For me, it is Devil May Cry 5.
Ubisoft employee spotted.
@@ricklubbers1526 lol cope. Ubisoft suck.
Donkey of the Day
@@zzbaby228 point proven on the FromSoft cult. They just can't take criticism of their beloved franchise. They think they're elites and everyone else's opinion is unworthy.
@@zzbaby228 point proven on the FromSoft cult. You guys just can't take criticism of your beloved franchise. Heaven forbid someone might actually have a different opinion.
Agree completely, went back to ER many times as everyone says how good it is but it’s just not for me. Finally gave up and not interested in the DLC.
You're not alone. ER is good but the adulation is too much. And I think From Soft boss design has devolved into "nondescript spinning mass of bullshit".
It’s the community’s fault. They want dodge fests and less puzzle bosses like Bed of Chaos. It’s created a microcosm where every boss becomes Flame Lurker
Bed of chaos is absolute horse shit@@Garl_Vinland
@@kuranhelix278 And that's the stigma that has led to Promised Consort Radahn.
Bed of Chaos doesn't care about your build. It doesn't care if you light roll or fat roll, or have heavy armor or a greatshield. It is a narrative boss that any character can beat. It doesnt frustrate you that you invested all your levels into faith.
Promised Consort Radahn, and Flame Lurker both, teach the player that if you want to win, you gotta fast roll, you gotta have a tower shield with relevant stability and elemental resistance, or you gotta out DPS him. these are the core tarrifs that Souls players mean when they say "Get Gud". and they're antithetical to role playing games. What's the point of giving us useless build paths and gear? Either explicitidly make it so the game loop involves switching out gear and relevant items, or balance the game around every strategy being relevant at all times.
Sekiro is an action game, Elden Ring is a roll playing game. it purportedly encourages you to make your own narrative. So if I made a character who doesn't like to use greatshields, and enjoys fat rolling in heavy armor, he should theoretically be capable of beating every boss.
I find it genuinely nuts how many outlets gave it a 10/10. I don’t even think the difficulty is the problem - it’s the unsatisfying exploration due to the often terrible loot. Why am I picking up smithing stone 1’s and 2’s in an endgame dlc? Blatantly shit design like this shouldn’t garner masterpiece praise.
@@christopherlyndsay8611 Did you like Bloodborne?
I fucking love the dancing Lion boss. It teaches you a lot about adaptation and how bosses works throughout its phases.
If you stand on its sides, it will bite you, by its head, tackle you. A move you could avoid by rolling in, now in the thunder phase, you need to roll out. So on and so forth.
It took me a while to figure how to dance with it, but it was worth it.
Not the mwntion the spinning thunder and smoke moves teach you you can jump over attacks lol
It doesn't teach anything. Everything we was able to learn, we learn back in original game.
And yes, not every boss should teach you something. Sometimes, boss much better to be an opponent, like Artorias, Fume Knight or Gale.
Can we please stop all this "learning" and play the foking game already 😂
I came SO close to loving it, but I honestly ended up hating the Dancing Lion for wasting the potential it had. The concept and design is gorgeous and the music is some of my favorite in the whole series. My attempts were plagued by constant camera issues which were irritating at best or deadly at worst. By the time I won I felt like the amazing Dancing Lion fight was stolen away by a camera man 😅
@@oldensad5541 what I mean it is all condensed on one boss. And maybe it is just a reminder to dust off things we knew, yea
@@nickpapazyan2807 true stuff, sadly. I avoided walls like the plague cause of this
I felt like I HAD to follow a guide for fragments before fighting bosses. First playthrough completed of the DLC today, had to use gimmick builds, and the entire playthrough was spent following a guide on youtube all over the map for fragments because the first boss fight I went into with 5 fragments, after the patch buff btw, I still felt too weak. So I was like "okay, it's ER, I'll just leave and since fragments are how I get stronger I guess I have to gather as many as I can before the boss." So whenever there was a boss in the way of fragments, I fought and killed it with the fragments I had, and I had to use cheese builds to do it. All the way to the end where I had to use fingerprint shield + rapier. This DLC sucks purely for that reason, much less the boss HP bloat, the difficulty tuning of bosses/damage output being ridiculous so it requires gimmick builds. Also the lack of infinite respecs to figure out what works and what doesn't with recent patches and not having infinite respecs is just... I had to install a mod for infinite respecs. Just ridiculous all around.
The entire DLC is unfulfilling, the base game is 100x better.
I kinda agree. Gave up after encountering Gaius and the dragon peak. Mesmer and centipede quelaag are still there to do but I've lost the enthusiasm tbh. I loved exploring the map, finding the fragments, getting access to new areas, etc. but man those boss fights just became something I'd dread rather than look forward to.
DS3, BB and Sekiro are still peak souls.
"DS3, BB and Sekiro are still peak souls."
Add ER to that list and we have the same opinion. IMO the concentration of great main bosses was never higher than in the ER DLC.
You still have Messmer to fight? He's literally one of the best fights From has ever done.
Messmer and especially Romina are my favorite bosses in this DLC... with Romina being my favorite boss in ER overall.
They're the only "fair" ones tbh, the rest I do kinda agree (especially final boss).
@@deadsea2004 You don't think Midra is fair?
@@anonymousperson8903 I've yet to fight Midra (only one left), saving the best ones for last :)
I've snuck a peek into his area (Abyssal Woods), and it's looking real good already.
I cant lie this video is very accurate, I think poeole glaze Fromsoft too much they are a great player focused developer but if you have a fan base that keeps asking to be punished with unnecessary difficulty over fun they won't learn from it
I’m finding it a slog. But I just thought it was me. In retrospect, I actually think you should enter the DLC at 300+. You can’t really overlevel the DLC and the higher level will let you adapt more easily to the different fights as you don’t have to respec constantly to deal with a particular boss. YMMV.
8:51 I also hate every boss just charging you as you walk in.
I still dont understand how this man beats bosses on average of 5 tries. Where 10 tries for Pliney is excessive. 10 tries im barely warmin uo, getting my stretches in, laying out my snack tray for a loooong season lol--when bossin' solo. Yeah, this entire genre might not be for me Im now realizing 😭
Cause he’s using the mimic tear
You completely misunderstood what he said. He said he used all the tools at his disposal, which is OK, and if you do that then yes, the game is probably easier than any game except Demon Souls when you know the mechanics.
However the sheer difficulty of Elden Ring shines when you use a build which needs to use every attack at your disposal without summons.
It's ok to play either way, but he says that it is frustrating to play in a way which can actually emphasise Elden Ring's difficulty.
If you can persevere, then that is a better mindset for souls games, than I need to beat this boss in 20 tries or this boss is bullshit.
@@aayushdasgupta9754not sure if I completely* misunderstood. He often gives a similar count for other souls games. Learning the patterns, even if OPd is still the main thing. Especially if in this game the pattern is obscured by some of the more wild animations
@@diamondbracelette Fair, but in older games except Sekiro, rarely did it take me more than like 15 attempts. Only Midir, Friede, and Demon Twins took me more attempts, 25, 20 and 35 respectively.
@@aayushdasgupta9754 Nice. Yeah my baseline is the first demon's souls boss, big knight guy that took me maybe 113 tries lmao. After that I probably didn't keep track whether highi or low. Plus having companions help out. All a mixed stew. I know that in Lords of the Fallen with a broken co-op imma hurtin a bit. Did fine in Sekiro
Exactly this. Elden Ring ian't hard once you know how thr game works. Sure, the game does everything it can to make things as obscure as possible to make learning it a chore, but it ultimately revolves around learning the spreadsheet of how to stack buff on buff and status effect overload and then melting bosses in seconds. Compare this to Sekiro where the fundamental is learning how to parry, mikiri, and jump and you have why the experience feels so disjointed.
I don't have such a negative opinion about Elden Ring. I think Miyazaki actually succeeded in taking the exploration and open-world elements from Zelda BotW/TotK and combining them with souls gameplay. What I didn't like about the base game was the lack of dungeon variety. All catacombs looked very similar and were kinda short. In the DLC, we got less of them, but they're really unique experiences in turn. The boss design was also very enjoyable with a heavier emphasis being put on understanding and learning the choreography.
Btw 0:40 - level scadutree blessings. In my first DLC playthrough my char was underleveled (runelevel) and quite squishy, but with that new mechanic it worked out nonetheless. It also allows you to find a sweetspot where the DLC isn't "too easy" and also not "too hard". As for replayability - I have 10 different chars/builds and the game didn't get boring for me yet. Again - want more difficulty? Do less level ups, upgrade your weapons more slowly and find ways to compensate for that limitation - this adds a nice additional layer of challenge; don't spoil yourself all the fun.
bro you are 100% correct this game has a broken balance and a big empty world and nothing is more fun than getting 1/2 hitted while having 2k+ hp
Yay, new Pliny video!
MOONVEIL BROTHER Bloodborne>DS2 (the DLC elevates the base campaign)>Dark Souls 1>Elden Ring>Demon Souls>Dark Souls 3
Couldn't agree more
I have to agree, if the new games are going to be like Elden Ring going forward, I will probably stop buying From games, after Elden Ring I will definitely not Pre-order anything they make. I think its funny that this is probably the commercially most successful game they have made (at least everyone knows the name) yet I enjoyed it the least in its entirety. (really stopped enjoying it after the capital) Many people even started playing the game because of the DLC release. I hope that the next game From will make, will be something completely different, because if its another Elden Ring.. man..
problem is how unrewarding the exploration is. I complete a very hard dungeon all i get is a spirit summon i will never use. Zelda did this much better
Now this is a legitimate criticism that I also felt
That sums up this dlc pretty well: its just not that fun.
They went way too crazy with the bosses, way too much empty space. Useless items, even more useless crafting..
Its wierd, to me the ridiculousness of base elden ring was balanced by you being able to create nearly any win condition by maximizing ur build.
Seeing ppl adopt 4 kings strategies sealed the deal, theyve power crept all that fun and variety right out.
Exploit boss weaknesses and OP mechanics OR LOSE!
Did i mention 60% of my time was spent looking for fragments and ways to get around the map?
For some of us, the joy is to learn the boss and master, not cheese
I prefer ds1 and ds2. The slower telegraphed combat can still be challenging and a lot more fun at the same time.
Fans of souls games make me hate this game more then the actual bosses do. Yall annoying.
Im about to.beat this dlc never playing again
Great video, Grampus!
During the big AoE attacks of the final boss, you have to run away as quickly as posible, that's how you avoid it.
I feel bad for you man, having to switch to magic just to get some more lore and cutscene is not a good feeling. I got lucky and was able to finish the game with my greatsword, but I still ended up using Golden Vow which I had never used before
Im almost done with Lies Of P now. It was soo refreshing. You read my mind Dude. Hopefully they go back to their roots.
Im the biggest Elden ring fan in the world! I have over 600 hours in the base game and it remains my only plat trophy. Ive recommended it to countless people and it remains my favorite game ever made. However, I would not recommend the DLC to hardly anyone. The bosses are too aggressive, roll catch mechanics, no healing windows, and 1 shot mechanics. I quit on radahn after a week of trying on ng+4 with every build imaginable. Im out. Base game? Absolutely! DLC? Youre gonna have a bad time.
I think Fromsoft designed the DLC to be as difficult as possible for players who refuse to block or summon.
From peaked with Sekiro. It's all going to be downhill from there I'm afraid.
Sekiro was amazing. Best combat they’ve ever done.
Probably best story in terms of direct delivery.
Nah I reckon the next AC game will be just as good. AC6 was almost Sekiro level, the balancing was just off
I liked the dlc but I hope they fix the camera for the giant bosses and they slow down with the AOE attacks. Radahn's long combos that end with a holy explosion almost got me to rage. I was also disappointed by the final cutscene. I beat that hard a$$ boss just for a cutscene slightly longer than Radahn's combos
Any real criticisms?
Ur mums a real criticisms
I've had discussions with my friend and we've had THE EXACT same issues with the game
Damn as someone who loves Sekiro and DS3 bosses (eapecially sl1 play throughs of DS3) i absolutely loved the bosses in SOTE much better than the base game. They were very well designed to be fought 1v1 and had extremely consistent telegraphs and movesets which were super satisfying to dodge.
However im not suprised that most people dont like to die over and over to learn a difficult complex boss moveset, even if it is well designed. Im in the minority and god damn i coulent be happier about the DLC bosses
Yup man! Hit the nail right on the head! Like I loved Elden Ring and exploring the over world BUT exploring the over world just ain’t as fun on repeat playthroughs. The legacy dungeons are still the best part. Shadow Keep is an absolute achievement!! Definitely now up there with my fave From levels! And forget it, these bosses blow. 👎 And the elite enemies too.. you know, no matter how mercilessly Bloodborne curb stomped me, I never once became frustrated and physically angry from that game! But I found myself shouting obscenities and calling bull out loud at my TV almost every encounter in Elden Ring. Unfair crap, getting stun locked and your whole health bar draining, the camera getting me killed more times than I can count… ugh…
Over all I really enjoyed the game, but ya it’s definitely my least favourite of From’s Souls games.
Nothing unfair about it bro, and the camera is fine when you learn to unlock.
Tl;dr: Get Good.
@@anonymousperson8903 I got good. I beat the DLC. Your comment tells us absolutely nothing of value about the design of the game.
Tl;dr git a brain
@@the.bloodless.one1312 Beating the DLC does not make one good.
Your comment also tells us nothing of value about the design of the game lol. All it tells us is that you don't know how to control the camera.
@@anonymousperson8903 What makes one good?
@@opethmike The ability to learn move-sets in a timely manner and execute what you learn quickly and effectively. Also, some of it is just having better instincts, which may or may not come from experience.
I think From's shtick is getting old. They became known as the studio that made "hard" games and then seemed to have made that their whole identity.
But Elden ring really isnt that hard
They defined a whole genre buddy, maybe it ain't for you
I’d agree if they didn’t literally release AC6 last year. The game was fun asf but not hard.
@@christopherlyndsay8611 AC6 can be very hard. It depends on the build
@@austin0_bandit05 most of the builds aren’t hard unless you’re actively looking for a challenge. My first playthrough was as a lightweight and the only boss I struggled on was Balteus (before patch)
Its fun to learn and overcome it instead of using chesses
Hard agree!
I enjoy the exploration here more than in zelda botw/totk
Elden Ring is a Masterpiece but the DLC exposed a lot. The DLC is 3/5 or 6.8/10 . I have finished all their Games. It was never too hard. It was unfun.
Well we know why this guys not a welder anymore got fired bitching about why he has to weld like this instead of that
>sekiro is the best action game ever designed
that's a funny way of saying you don't play/aren't qualified to analyze action games lol. sekiro is one of the most overrated action games there is. i agree with pretty much everything else you said though.
Id say theres a case to make that From games get reverse review bombed. Besides Sekiro id say their other games are all 7/10s. Yet every mainstream media journalist is tossing 9s and 10s at them
ahh yes, open worlds and their *checks notes* propensity for storytelling? Is this some sort of joke? Open worlds are infamous for not being conducive to good storytelling.
youre very clearly supposed to JUMP during rellanas moon atack, and its very easy to do so. Theres no running away.
You can also dodge if you time it right
The curseblade spinner fuck is SO irritating. Don't get me started on the AMOUNT of heavy enemies 😞
Edit: I cheesed Gaius because fuck him that's why 😂
Thank you for your opinion. dont agree with it, but i respect it anyway. I also apreciate the content.
My biggest disappointment was that there were no dungeons as good as Stormveil. None had the depth in lore or exploration and most were short asf.
Shadow Keep is close, but yeah Stormveil still clears.
I beat all games with bows except Bloodborne (fuck u sony) the DLC make me quit all time kill lion and renalla and leave game 2 days 0 damage non good ash of war for bow and summons play for me. If I don't summon my stamina can manage the spam bosses and shoot at the same time is a run simulator.
Man you had me listening until you said what’s the point in exploring and coming back. You clearly were playing a linear way and getting frustrated that the game wasn’t designed that way. It’s just not a good criticism.
People talking bout the game being too difficult .You dont even have to play elden ring? Each game made has a certain group of gamer is caters to but it seems that whenever one game is the talk ,everyone has to play it just for them to see it was really not a game meant for them.
great review. agree on a lot of this
"An open-world core function is narrative and not gameplay"
You're absolutely wrong, it can be both, it can also be gameplay, in fact it's mostly gameplay
they hated him because he spoke the truth
HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 😆 Cheesing with a Greatshield using Summons and Complaining afterwards is Hilarious
You are playing an RPG, but refuse to engage with any of the offered mechanics. Usung dodge roll and R1 exclusively is fun?
What offered mechanics? AOWs you can't use because thr animation is too long and you can't stun bosses? Or do you mean what 90% of others do and get a big shield and poke.
I like ER and dlc because I can spam magic attacks 😊 which offer a different way to beat the game.
It's okay if you don't enjoy the game or DLC. But most of all the things you said, like having to look things up, not wanting to explore, needing to use a specific build you find online to beat X boss.
That's basically on you. Plenty of people, me included, who played the game how we wanted with or without the extra helpfull tool the game gives you.
You clearly wanted a linear constructed experience like the Dark Souls games. But this isn't "Dark Souls". It's made clear the very first hour when you enter Limgrave with a very hard boss right at your feet. And a progression blocker right at the entrance of the first castle. You are meant to go explore. And for those who really want, yeah you can hit your head against the wall and push through.
It's in the base game, so i don't understand people are surprised that it's in the DLC.
Mmmm delicious delicious copium
Buying a game, knowing full well that you're not part of its target audience, and that its mechanics and playstyles don't suit you, then complaining about that very fact and pleaing to the devs to implement adjustments in your favor, followed by leaving a negative review is kinda stupid aswell.
Here's options to improve your experience: "…, …, …" People: "I don't want that, or hold any responsibility over my own gaming experience - thumbs down!"
Just get the next generic Ubisoft openworld title then and be happy with it.
Having 2 play throughs through SOTE i can say that it is the worst fromsoftware DLC. But what doesn’t that mean? It means that old hunters, ringed city, ashes…etc are just near perfect. DS1 with the artorias DLC was epic. I think people get upset with the whole “worst DLC” but are forgetting that fromsoft DLC’s are peak. So its not a bad thing. If anything id say its as good or maybe a little better than scholar of the first sin. Maybe…they are all really fucking good.