The way they made the map seem like the full map is exactly how I always said they should do maps. The true journey of discovery, not knowing how much more is out there is amazing!
I didn't watch any gameplay or haven't played any other similar games, I don't know how many times I thought to myself "there's no way there's more parts of the map". Really enjoyed the game but there are for sure parts of it that frustrated me and I'm yet confused about a lot of things.
@@abco9391 Yeah, I've played quite a few, and you always have the full map visible and you can imagine how much more is left. It's quite sad really and when they hide it this way, you never know if you'll find even more you know 😅
The only game I have seen do that, dynamically extend the map screen as you progress that is, was supreme commander. But frankly I found it more annoying there. Though I supppse in the context of a strategy game the meaning auddenly shifts from dixcovery to the game cheating to get one over you with aomething you couldnt have possibly prepared for.
True. However, I will say though, that the more fragments i found, the more disappointed i got with the ammount of water/unplayable areas there actually was. I mean, look at the mountantop map, for example. 75% of that is just an unplayable cliff. 7.8/10, too much water :/
@@hollowhorizon7196 probably because of the enemies that snipe you across the map with their bows and almost always hits you. I left the area early on because of that but I came back later to clear it out
@@VZapphire all you have to do is clear the middle area and you won't deal with the laser arrow for majority of the altars. they don't use charged shots point blank, just a regular arrow or axes too so bumrushing the middle is perfectly viable.
"You can blissfully loot things while on horseback, and I hope whoever pushed for that at From gets a statue in the lobby.. of themselves.. on HORSEBACK.. PICKING. UP. THEIR. CROWN." Absolutely amazing work and I completely agree.
@@rolandngom5080 You’re flat out incorrect…you have to stop and wait for a little animation to play picking up literally anything in those games. I played Forbidden West right before ER and it was such a difference.
@@JimJamTheAdmin I freaked the fuck out when I saw the dark souls designed chest near the Altus platau margit. The fucking chain scared me even though it wasn't mimic shaped
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 except it does? You can't TP out until you find a grace of your own. I left the cave and wandered the swamp before finding one near Selia
@@hombreg1 You had to literally walk past a grace at the entrance of the cave in order to do that. That does sound like a really cool experience, but unfortunately not all of us have the advantage of visual impairment.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 calling me blind. Nice argument. Point still stands, though. Teleporter traps do "trap" you in the area. What's more, they rely on "you" to figure out you can and should escape, as the myriad of "how to escape selia crystal tunnel" articles would suggest. This makes the idea even more interesting, as having grace points relatively close by teases you with exploration. You also fail to address the fact that you can't teleport until you rest, which is something the game doesn't tell you. So, if you avoid taking too much damage whilst escaping the cave, and only activate the point of grace, you could even respawn inside Caelid whilst being still unable to escape, meeting your definition of "trapped".
I just finished the game yesterday for the first time, and with torrent the fight is a piece of cake, 3rd try because in the second I was really dumb hahah
I cannot explain how far my jaw dropped when I opened that transportation chest in the weeping peninsula and got teleported to the very north side of the map…
You're one easily impressed, aren't you. "Wooooooow, map very-very big", except most of it is horse riging simulator across empty spaces between copypasted locations and bosses.
@@AikanaroSauron bro if seeing the size of the map fucking double with no indication didnt surprise you, idfk what will. Also shit is not filled with cipy pasyed content, although there obviously is some, but saying its completely empty is grossly underselling the game
@@TRDRHDB A good game for once in the current abysmal state of the industry would be a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Too bad all they make is open world trash and P2W garbage.
I would have much preferred if Elden Beast was tied to a secret ending, much like Moon Presence in Bloodborne. That way players can be rewarded for exploring and getting a final surprise as they end their game. As well as making Radagon a proper final boss, because as much as I agreed with your problems with him, I think that he's still a really good boss to end the game on.
Seriously, like Gwyn wasn't this crazy over the top anime fight, it was just a husk of a man who you were putting out of his misery. He was about the same level of intense as Radagon. Imagine if you beat Gwyn and then a gigantic fire demon climbed out of the Flame and it was this whole ridiculous 10 minute extra thing
Like it feels so close to the relationship between the hollow knight and the radiance but this time the radiance is mandatory and you don't have to do anything special to unlock her
@@Hugsloth Well, Dark soul 1 also was way, way less obsessed with Difficulty for the sake of Difficulty. True King Alant and Gwyn where ment to show a theme, once grand and powerful beings having broken down to shells that you put out of their misery. But now, all the big bosses need to be super cinematic, multiphase superbosses. Making the individual bosses way less unique.
@@plinfan6541 it’s that dark souls 3 boss design taken to its extreme. Too much extravagant anime nonsense. Just give me a good one on one. That’s why everyone loved Champion Gundyr; it was just you, and this big man with his big bardiche. No surprise phase 2 pus demons, no Elden Beast climbing out of nowhere, no 3 phase boss reviving after death
@@James-vw4jz yes, he is one of my favorites amongst content creators, who deliver extensive reviews, retrospectives or video essays. Some people speak too fast, or have an eccentric intonation in voice, use some memish-sounds or have poor mic quality. It's also nice that he doesn't emphasize mechanics or story, but talks about all the aspects of the games (usually).
@@wax3825 There's a new glitch with this patch where she can heal while doing Waterfowl Dance without hitting anything. This seems to only be with that attack, and only when playing multiplayer though.
She's always been able to because it's just lag while on mp, i fought her yesterday and she doesn't heal out of nowhere. It's kinda like when you pvp with a bit of lag you'll get status through your dodges or get bleed and not take damage
Funnily enough, the most fun I’ve had with Elden Ring was on a NG+ “speedrun” I did. The goal was to just hit the bosses and finish the storyline as quickly as possible (I’m not actually a speed runner with actual strats. Just a man who ran to the next boss as soon as the previous one was defeated). I had a great time because I essentially ran from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon with a character that had everything they needed. No exploration or side tracking was required. No wading through random locations. It was great fun because it gave me the cream from the top of what the game had to offer.
@@morganfreeman5260 True. I hope somebody makes a mod where they cut all the moronic horse riding simulator parts, empty fields and perpetually copypasted garbage out of the game. Then it could actually be good.
@@AikanaroSauron Elden Ring should've had a mechanic like that to begin with - where once you've beaten the final boss, the game gives you an option to start a NG like usual but instead skip the open world and just jump from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon, fighting each major/unique boss of the game. Of course there wouldn't really be a smooth transition to each dungeon/boss, but at least players who enjoy re-fighting the bosses won't have their time wasted. Or alternatively, just add a boss rush mode, like what they added for Sekiro. It's weird how many good, well-received mechanics Sekiro got that were never reused in ER. Especially since Sekiro seemed like a giant experimenting ground for new, innovative systems with how much it deviates from the typical Souls formula that From established.
@@chomcat1910 It wouldn't even be hard to implement. Something like a nexus from Demon Souls with portals to every "legacy dungeon" as they now call the real normal parts of the game is all that'd be required to make it good.
The more chests I opened without a mimic encounter, the more I was convinced the next chest would have one. It also didn't help that the game has several unique assets for 'generic treasure chest' which seem to be interchangeable and serve no purpose other than to make you suspicious, similar to how the level design in dungeons will often include a small cubby with no items that seems tailor made for an invisible wall that doesn't exist.
Your videos always have very valid critiques of things that don’t really proportionately ruin the same experience for me but I still love how these still manage to bring me down to earth
@@TheHeavensPride I think he means that Joseph isn't to be taken 100% at his word for his critiques because often times he overlooks many important pieces of information in order to push his perspective, even if it comes at the cost of later making him look disingenuous or in some cases even downright arrogant/pretentious. Like when he insulted his audience on twitter for finding Horror games to be scary.
@@fancypantsy2741 I don't know about that twitter story, since I don't follow social media all that much. But yeah, he has his opinion, but that's just like his own opinion, if you ask me. I like his videos in a "On paper this is true, however now I'm gonna draw my own conclusions" kinda way. For example his Mario Odyssey video. I can understand his critique on moons. Heck, I felt the same when I first started watching a friend play the game. But after playing it myself, I came to the conclusion, that it didn't break my gameplay flow as much as it did for him. In the end, it was just different perspectives. And in that sense I value his videos as they present a strong opinion, that I can use to formulate my own.
When I watched this video for the first time, I didn't really get the criticism, since Elden Ring was my first fromsoft game and it was one of the best experiences I had ever had in a videogame. But then I completed all the other fromsoft games, before I got ready for the Shadow of the Erdtree. Completing the DLC left some mixed feelings and I didn't quite figure out why. Now I watched the video again and everything became clear
It seems really natural, it's weird he's not there. Someone I talked to mentioned there should be a spiritspring activating when he leaps into the air, so you could fly up there and smack him down, and I agree 'cause that would be super hype
I literally never even tried to use it. Because I assumed I couldn't because I'm in a zone that previously I was not able to use it. I didn't even think I need it either.
1:35:18 They finally did it, you can now summon Torrent for the fight against Elden Beast. This is the first video I thought of after seeing the update, I can't believe it took them this long to implement...
I'd be surprised if it isn't revealed some day that Malenia's moveset was originally designed for a Sekiro DLC boss (maybe Tomoe?): --- She wields a katana, moves around insanely quick, almost exclusively has sword-based moves (like most human Sekiro bosses), and has visually stunning attacks that straight up would be fun to deflect in Sekiro and would complement that game's mechanics (as mentioned in the video) --- Her healing from blocking makes way more sense in Sekiro, as it would be a way to punish bad deflection timing, making her an ultimate challenge that requires complete mastery of deflection --- A lot of people have pointed out how she mirrors Wolf in many ways, wielding a katana, having a form of rot, having a prosthetic arm, and even being able to resurrect once (!!!). Malenias die twice, indeed --- There is dialogue in Sekiro implying that Tomoe is in some way connected to a dragonrot outbreak, further connecting her to Malenia in my tinfoil hat world as a mirror version of Wolf --- Not unique to Sekiro, but she does have all the attack types that define the combat of that game, including: sweeps that could be jump countered, stabs that could be mikiri countered, and of course a brutal grab that'll mess your day up. The second phase attack where those ghostly beings attack you, would be fun to learn to deflect before mikiri countering Malenias follow-up stab Data mining has revealed that the version of waterfowl we got in the final game was likely one of the last moves made for the fight. Before that, it appears she had a different version where she danced on the ground and covered much less distance. It appears they went out of their way to make waterfowl the most oppressive, unfun attack in the entire series. Boggles the mind. On the topic of Elden Beast, Joseph definitely nailed it. Why can we not ride Torrent? It not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but also from a thematic one. Here we are, at the final challenge, conquering it together with our steed who has been at our side all along (insert Ludwig neighs). We were able to take on Radagon alone, but to defeat the ultimate being in the lands between, we need our trusty companion, almost as if both Melina and Ranni knew we would have no chance of becoming Elden Lord without Torrent. And of course, almost all of Elden Beast's moves seem to be designed around horse combat, including: --- Tracking projectiles that can be outrun on horseback (fear the orb) --- Sweeping attacks and long range sweeping beams that can be jumped over --- The holy elden rings that you're meant to jump over, but can't dodge through (as if the attack was designed for a horse that can't dodge) --- Large AoEs that could be fun to ride away from on horseback --- The boss moving around a huge arena, meaning you have to chase after it on horseback, as you've done countless times against the game's dragons Truly only leaves two explanations. 1: As proposed in the video, Daenerys -- er, I mean, the devs kinda forgot about Torrent. 2: At one point in development they tested the fight without Torrent and thought the added (albeit unfun) challenge enhanced the fight and scrapped the idea of using Torrent, even though the boss was designed around this. Hopefully it's option 1, as 2 makes my blood boil.
@@RedgraveGilver No she probably wouldn't fight like that. Tomoe was all lightning and fighting like she is actually dancing, this is indicated by how the Okami warriors fight in the fountainhead palace. Waterfowl Dance is just straight up copy of Isshin Ashina's one mind except her spinny bullshit covers the entire arena and lasts 10 times longer.
@@arhamsaa Well, like OP said, data miners found that the old Waterfowl Dance was a lot more like dancing. Here's the vid showing it off: ua-cam.com/video/xywpJ26hS70/v-deo.html
Yeah, so far that's the thing I'm hating. Waiting for my turn to get a single hit it, otherwise I get knocked down. I can deal with one Margit and have fun, find it again later on I just get annoyed.
I watched some Bloodborne, yknow the really aggressive fast game, and it’s like watching pudding roll down a slope compared to the speed of Elden Ring bosses
Just a note on 19:40: there's actually a fourth way to reach the plateau, I think I've seen a few speedrunners use it but beyond that it's extremely obscure. If you get to the Erdtree roots via Nokron, beat Fia's Champions you can then take the teleporter straight into the capital proper. I loved this sort of thing about the original Dark Souls and it's great that it's back. EDIT: There's a FIFTH way. If you take the tower trap teleporter to the capital, usually there's no way down as the elevator is locked. Thing is, it turns out that an invader *can* activate the elevator for you. Requires either luck or a friend. Probably unintentional, but it makes use of regular game mechanics rather than any glitch so I'd call it valid.
@@pinou1894 you can also begin the festival by doing Ranni's questline, after talking to Blaidd in Siofra then speaking to Selivus and Sellen the festival is triggered
In Bloodborne & Sekiro I had these lightbulb moments early on where I suddenly understood what the game wanted from me and was able to act accordingly and have a fulfilling experience. Right now I’m about 55hrs into Elden Ring, and I still feel like I’m misunderstanding some fundamental aspect of it that is keeping me from enjoying it fully. Idk what it is. At the same time I’ve never played this much of a game that I think I don’t like. I’m very confused.
i know this is late but i was in a similar boat, and i started to just use 'meta' approaches such as buffing myself, abusing certain charms and physiks, and playing around stance breaking with my weapon arts. you dont have to fully min max but it at least felt like my character was dishing out damage faster than the boss most of the time
It’s the late game he’s criticising. However I believe he’s wrong in saying the fights are unfair. If u solo melee it’s not as impossible as he’s complaining so long as u engage with the bosses movesets and you observe their attacks carefully. I two handed a sword too the only boss I ended up quitting on on my first playthrough was Melania (I played the game blind and couldn’t figure out water fowl) I only beat her on ng+
Ohh its the same for me but im close to 200 hours i came from Bloodborne god damn the combat is more fun in bb . Im fighting Radagon i beat all the boss without summon but the late game piss me off so much i dont want to learn all Radagon move to fight the stupid Elden Beast after fuck that bs 😂
@@j0nnyismits not impossible but its unfair in the sense you have to spend a significant amount of time memorising the moveset. Malenia took me over like 10 hours on blind first playthrough
This would explain why my favorite boss fight would be Godfrey, he felt like a Ds3 boss and had the simple and easy to punish movement to boot. (Edit: this comment now irrelevant after patch)
The problem with bosses in this game is that they do too much; at one point, fighting radhan without a proper build, I asked myself "Cool, but when do i play?" The bosses just continue to do random bullshit and it feels they misunderstood their own design; but the seeds of this are to be seen in the ds3 last dlc with gael and midir; gigantic Damage Health Bullshit hitboxes Never ending comboes
Yep felt bosses in this game were too aggressive, I could be aggressive as I want in ds3 but in this game I could only hit one time with a strength weapon and a few times with a katana. Let me remind you that these bosses have quite a lot of health which makes the fight unnecessarily longer.
@@fabioviti7384 with Gael it was fine, because it was 3 attacks poke, 3 attacks poke. But Margit the fell, has a 5 or 6 hit combo, he's already worse than Gael or SoC and he's the first boss in the game.
@@kriegscommissarmccraw4205 and, if a krieg commissaria says something is too hard it's a problem; when maliketh is harder to kill than a chaos space marine we have problems
The observation about the "natural" world being built on ruins struck me too. Mostly because by the endgame I had noticed that almost all the lifts in the game are rising pillars instead of platforms. This is unusual among from soft games. The column lifts in cylindrical shafts gave me the distinct impression of machine pistons rising from deeper machinery.
@@Farengast I will be.. But “almost all the lifts in the game” is a pretty big exaggeration, I ain’t seen one yet and been about quite a bit in every area up to and including Lyndell.. Countless lifts, all platforms
30:00 The first dragon fight was the best boss fight experience in the game for me. Playing for the first time, I died like 10 times trying to own that dragon, but I was still coming back to try again. Like you said, it was an epic movie scene.
It's funny how apologetic Joseph gets whenever he goes off-script, like we're gonna crucify him if he says a certain amount of words that aren't on the video script that we'll never see
I cannot express enough how much I love the idea of one of the caravans being a surprise mimic boss fight and how disappointed I am it's not a thing the moment I heard Joe suggest it.
@@Killroy007 Yeah but the chest coming alive and attacking you after you spent some flasks on one of the caravan trolls and a few of the patrolling soldiers would have definitely been a memorable moment. The thing with the Night's Cavalry bosses patrolling with the caravan at night is that you can see them waaay ahead of time, so it gives you time to plan and prepare. The mimic coming alive with no warning after we spent the whole game not encountering a single mimic would definitely bring back those Sen's Fortress flashbacks.
@@SirGrimLockSmithVIII Just an addendum (you might even already know this). You don't need to kill the trolls, or even fight them at all. If you hit a troll, they'll counterattack, but sit still for a good while, where you can just pop in the back and steal their stuff. In fact, you can even jump up while the carriage is moving and steal the thing! Also, it happened to me multiple times where I'd see the trolls, but their entourage was super far back, so it was a free steal, sadly. Still such a good idea, but the implementation - especially adding a mimic carriage *UNIQUE* boss would be amazing.
@@candy-ass4915 Hell yes that's exactly what I meant. A unique boss fight mimic caravan as a surprise would've been a spectacularly memorable moment that would've been a fan favourite, especially if it was a good boss fight.
"Bosses in Elden ring will do anime acrobatics for a whole episode including attack chains that involve them taking off into the air, landing into an attack that explodes, and then taking off again into the air, because they're still not done." LOL This describes my experience playing the game so well.
They not only made Pontiff Sulyvahn’s combos and Aldrich’s arrows look tame, but also made an attack more insane than Sephiroth’s Octaslash. Multiple times. In the same game.
Absolutely agreed and genius analogy of the boss fights in Elden Ring. I started realizing this the more I fought Elden Ring Bosses. You need to be super careful and take your time as they get aggressive in order to attack. Elden ring combat systems are still great but its still has some issues with some boss fights. Sekiro and Dark souls 3 have genius great boss fight builds and reactionary combat systems That works for each other.
I never had this feeling when I played it. In fact I was thrilled that they continued the trend of making bosses more unpredictable and less turn-based Morgott is pretty much my favorite boss. Flowing flurries of attacks As opposed to the old style of “3 slashes and then pause to get hit by the player”
I'm surprised that spiders studio, a French indie developer, was able to add an FOV option to Steelrising yet Fromsoft can't be bothered to do the same or at the very least learn to pull back the camera during certain boss fights so I'm not stuck staring at the bosses toes the entire time while I guess their attacks based off what leg flinches.
Seriously the number of bosses my camera has clipped through and given me a good look underneath is just silly. Fromsoftware surely know they cant make big bosses and yet insist on making them bigger and bigger 😂.
@@basselahmed2089 Exactly. Guardian Ape and Demon of Hatred has your FOV zoomed out to give you better visuals to react to. Elden Ring you're getting crotch shots and guessing what the boss is going to do.
@@aravinds3846 It's tied to the netcode. In the patch notes you may have noticed that they did mention changes to how their networking works. The bug is probably from that. You'll be fine if you're just playing solo.
@@couchwilly5575 I mean, that's probably not such a bad thing. With Godfrey and radagon coming right before him, I would have been ok with elden beast being a spectacle fight vs what we ended up getting, but yea you're probably right it had to have been a last minute decision.
I agree. I think the combination of Radagon / Elden Beast as a final boss fight on horseback is very reminiscent of Ganondorf/ Beast Ganon in Zelda BotW. As FS took inspiration from BotW anyway these similarities don't seem arbitrary to me.
I think the issue with the bs movesets from the bosses always lead to me barely ever leaving a bossfight feeling accomplished. In the back of my mind I always had the feeling that I only won that fight because I got lucky and didnt get too many unfair moves thrown at me.
agreed in many cases, but there is still a decent number of bosses that were solid and, too me at least, they did evoke that familiar feeling from previous games - for example, Godrick, Mohg, Godfrey/Hoarah Loux, Fallingstar Beast (if you stumbled upon that fight at the "correct" level), maybe Morgott if he had more hp from these examples, it seems like they haven't forgotten how to make good bosses, but rather run out of time/resources and decided to slap on something like this for the endgame
I spent the better portion of a day on the final boss because the first phase has an aoe spam that he just would not let up with. The final final boss was cake mostly but id be depleted of my resources from the first phase... My 10 year old son gets to the final boss, first phase never even once drops the aoe attack on him and second phase stays relatively in the same spot so he beat the final bosses in one try. I felt so cheated lol.
@@ThelaziaCafe I never get the fuss about Radagon’s ‘aoe spam’. Dodging into and behind him negates 90% of those and leave you prepared for the remaining 10%.
I'd heavily disagree on that, because the moves rarely ever felt bs. The only bs boss move that's in the game, in my opinion, is malenia's waterfowl, but beyond that every other move is telegraphed and recognizable. Even Margitt telegraphs all his attacks pretty well.
@@jakubpuawski3875 I’d say that Crucible Knight is a better example of a solid boss/mini-boss then Fallingstar Beast. He’s a nice evolution of the Black Knight archetype
I love this game but wholeheartedly agree with your criticisms about the endgame bosses. A lot of them felt very haphazard and in need of rebalancing. Constantly waiting for massive unpredictable, hard to read combos to end over & over to MAYBE get a hit in just wasn't fun for me, especially when they can kill you in a couple of hits. Summons made things more manageable and 'difficulty' is a different, subjective experience for every player, but personally I kinda missed the good old 1v1 tough but fair endgame boss fights from Dark Souls 3.
"[blank boss] is just meant to be a challenge" also doesn't excuse this, since most of the time you aren't fighting the boss, you're just waiting for an opening. and not in a fluid way, it feels like you have to cheese every endgame boss by waiting for that one move you can punish reliably.
@@anonymousperson8903 the only tough but fair boss in the endgame is Horoah Loux, you can reasonably memorize his moveset and asides from high aggression he has no unreactable attacks like Maliketh does, for example
@@jooot_6850 Personally I'd add phase 1 of the final boss to that list. Him and Horah Loux were both very fun fights that seem tailored to 1v1 melee without a summon. The rest of them are still 'fun' for other builds, but it seems like ER is a victim of its own success in that it gives you so many ways to play, that they can't design bosses that accommodate every playstyle. So rather than it being a focused experience, every build will have fights that seem impossible/trivial/boring/cheap and only a few that seem to chime perfectly with their playstyle.
I realized that we basically had Sekiro bosses but we were limited to a Souls style moveset when I saw a meme on the subreddit that asked "Who would win: Wolf or Malenia". I thought about it for a sec and came to the fairly obvious conclusion that it would be Wolf simply because he could just deflect and contact poison himself to victory... Somebody seems to have misunderstood that the design of the bosses needs to fit with what we're capable of as the player.
Her flowing dance move basically makes her Genichiro on steroids. Lore wise I'd also say that it's unfitting for the central theme of the game being about us rising to the challenge of becoming Elden Lord but with no gameplay means to square up to these demigods in a show of determination and skill. Spectacle wise Godfrey/Hoarah Loux is my favourite boss fight but the fact that I spend most of the second phase running away from him makes his congratulation of my victory in the end ring hollow. If Wolf had defeated him with his combat capabilities it would've been much more fitting.
I know a lot of people loved Elden Ring, and I’m happy for them but I hated the game so much and I’ve enjoyed all of FromSoftware’s games since DS1. I just can’t get over the copy pasting of enemies, assets, and bosses. I hate the open world, and I ended up actually disliking exploring which I can’t believe even happened. The pacing feels so off for me, and I didn’t even enjoy the boss fights. Hot take, but I prefer DS2 over Elden Ring.
@Kill Bill You can't play a game wrong, if you can't enjoy an rpg with the playstyle you want and actually in the game the best thing to do is just not support the franchise anymore. Great to see this meta cuck mentallity ruin another once amazing franchise.
@Kill Bill He said that line specifically when talking about combat. You can't make the bosses fun for him, as he cannot fight them the way he likes it
@Kill Bill learn how to read that's literally not what they're saying. When you're as good as you can be and the game still isn't fun because it's made in a specific way then it's not a skill issue.
that sounds right at first glance, but it doesnt make that much sense, does that mean that if you dont have fun with a game the game is bad? no, games are a combination of freedom and challenge, part of the fun comes from adapting to the games rules and then mastering them. Joseph basically learned how to play the other dark souls games and expected the same strats to work, so when they didnt he just deemed the game unfun
I agree with the movesets of the bosses being excessive. They aren't unconquerable, they aren't even totally difficult to dodge or outright avoid, but they are absolutely excessive. Their windups are unclear at best, downright impossible to read at worse, and they often inflict unavoidable damage to you despite your best efforts in rolling and reading their acts. A perfect analogy I have for this is that boss fights are more like a mugging then a proper duel in Elden Ring. Either the boss is mugging you, or you're mugging the boss.
I feel like, part of my issue was how little room it left me to operate. If I wanted to I could dodge all of their attacks, but what's the use in that if I'm not allowed to hit back once they're done? In the other games this would have been incredibly rewarding, in ER I feel forced to bargain for hits every time I play, which is not a good way to design bosses. The only way to be guaranteed attack windows is by summoning ashes or players in your aid, which is... stupid beyond belief.
@@Solaire_of_Astora13 then there's the new players that defend the shitty boss design by saying "well it was designed with summons in mind so just use that 🤓". As if being forced to use certain items or gang up on bosses that aren't equipped to deal with multiple adversaries is good boss design lol
It feels like you spend 95% of the battle dodging and 5% attacking with some of these bosses. In the souls games it was more like 50/50. I.e it felt like an actual fight and not a fucking dodging simulator.
@@JL-lu1ul That was my problem with most of the bosses, some attacks are physically impossible to dodge unless you position yourself perfectly or you run away to position yourself (Malenias waterflow attack, Radagons attacks), also the passiveness of some bossed like elden beast took away from the experience, I spent 80% of the time chasing after the boss rather than fighting it
@@JL-lu1ul Elden beast would’ve been cooler if it was a humanoid enemy with the same attacks, most large bosses you can’t even see the attack they’re throwing at you when you only see 10% of their body up close
@@simplyzed8966 There shouldn’t have been an Elden Beast. After defeating Radagon, Marika should have taken over and shown us why she was the ruling goddess. Very disappointed I had to instead fight a cowardly cosmic Nessie.
I didn't finished it yet but just finished the video. If you don't care about seeing the main bosses, I don't think there's something here to be spoiled. Still, good luck beating the game, don't give up!
@@reggieisnotadog4841 It's more than that, you need to be in a specific range, because she's faster than you, also near the end she does a dash catching everyone that tried to keep distance. This still might not be a lot, but I feel like this is more than any other attack in the game.
Yeah, my entire time in the endgame I was just thinkining ,, Am I going insane or are there piles upon piles of unavoidable moves, I know I'm way worse at the faster pace fromsoft games than I am at the slower ones like ds 1 and 2, but this doesn't feel fair" and turns out I wasn't alone.
@@shinysnivy6604 you’re absolutely not alone. Hell, I liked the quicker pacer combat of ds3 and Sekiro, but even then a good chunk Elden Ring’s bosses were really hard to keep up with
Elden Ring Bosses felt like their 'vulnerable' animations and 'attacking' animations were completely separate. And random. if i were unlucky, i would get attacking animation after animation without any vulnerable state. With some trys being almost a cakewalk while others felt insanely relentless.
From my experience bosses kinda of lack these long windows after combos (like DS3 has it) because the combat itself ISN'T like DS3 combat. Elden Ring has a literal fuckton of boss attacks and animations that will punish players for being too passive, but reward them for being daring and rolling/moving towards the bosses, and most of those actions will give opportunities for dealing damage. If a boss doesn't seem to have a "downtime" after a combo, then the combo itself is flawed and an opportunity for you do deal damage. Is that immediately obvious? No. I also got quite frustrated with some bosses my first time around. But after defeating bosses like radagon and elden beast like 50+ times i genuinely got to appreciate them more, since it just took some time to actually understand their fights.
The thing that gets me are how attack anims are structured In every game, once you start swinging, you're swinging. But enemies will literally step over themselves and hold that initial pose for weirdly long, turning what should be reactionary in to a question of explicit knowledge, and it's MADDENING Like, fuck me I guess, I assumed a swing was, a swing, and not falling with style, so I deserve to get punished for that
Yeah the attack pattern RNG is so bad that it feels like the difference is as big as fighting O&S with sorcery vs fighting them with just a whip and no shield. You can walk through the same fog gate 10 times and get 5 Midirs, 3 Friedes, 1 Capra Demon, and 1 Covetous Demon. Which boss you get is just a dice roll when you walk through.
@@axelnova123 The boss patterns are perfectly fine, you just gotta stop approaching it as Dark Souls 4. Start being more aggressive, roll into attacks and utilise the jump more (not to just do jump r2 attacks but as a tool to avoid attacks) and don't roll preemptively, instead waiting with the roll until the attack actually is being signalled by the boss and suddenly the combat feels a lot more smoother and actually works better. Especially the last couple bosses have moves that actively punish players for rolling away and being too passive and as soon as you try to stick to them more and start being less passive they'll have a lot more openings. Malenia and Margit both have moves that are far more punishing if the player is further away with followup attacks. Radagon has a bunch of roll catches that wouldn't leave a big window of opportunity if approached passively/defensivly, but if you roll into them it's both far easier to avoid any followup damage and to deal damage. Malenia has the quick triple slash that acts as a roll catch but if rolled into it you can easily avoid the 3rd slash. Most of if not all of Fire giants melee attacks can be avoided by just running towards him while on torrent (fighting him on torrent makes the fight pretty simple). I can go on about boss behaviour and attacks, but yeah. Once you stop playing the game like Dark Souls 4 it becomes a lot more fluid and engaging to play.
@@BBQcheese And yet they added Torrent to the Elden Beast fight. So either they do care, or they actualy forgot and just were too ashamed to fix it for 2 years and tried to sneak in with the dlc, which is way "worse" than caring about feedback if you ask me.
Well, you essentially dissected the feeling I had when fighting bosses in ER that I would struggle to articulate at the time of playing - a lot of bossfights make you feel like it's the boss playing the game and you're just standing there waiting to squeeze a punish and still being reluctant about getting hit by a followup or simply not landing it due to not being fast enough. Well done, good essay as usual, keep them going
"a lot of bossfights make you feel like it's the boss playing the game and you're just standing there waiting to squeeze a punish and still being reluctant about getting hit by a followup or simply not landing it due to not being fast enough. " emphasis on your first sentence. MAKE YOU FEEL. kill that feeling and go in there. 1st playthrough, you are probably going to die wither you swing or stand so start swinging. you cant believe thr amount of guaranteed openings enemies and bosses have MID combo that you can even stagger them out of if u were aggressive enough(aka how the game actually wants you to play, hence the watered down posture system). so many bosses have such long wind ups u can smack them with a greatsword and dodge right after, so stop standing around. this game is a 2nd guesser. it constantly makes u second guess yourself. thats a deliberate design choice that makes the games combat far better than their previous games barring sekiro. the games are evolving beyond the dull and tired back and forth boss designs of ds3 and below. in this game, u can attack bosses during their wind ups, alot of bosses have shit tracking with vertical attacks and can be strafed or jumped through + jump attack rather than dodge and poke like weve been doing for 10 years. dodge into the bosses with long combos while taking notice where u end up. alot of bosses keep comboing into the wind while i either heal up close or swing. i only killed margot after i learned all this. frankly i think alot of souls veterans are just salty about this game not operating exactly like dark souls. if it was up to the fanbase, we wouldve constantly gotten dull ds1 and bb clones up until now.
@@flamingmanure Obviously, if you learn the boss proberly you will find plenty of additional openings. I did the learning for the SL1 run and even knowing speedrunning/no-hit strats there's still a lot of downtime on certain fights. Good examples of those would be Maliketh/Morgott/Malenia but at the same time fights like Mogh/Godfrey/Radagon are more similar to traditional DS bosses and guess what - they are much more enjoyable to learn and grind as a result. Even after properly learning 'new' bosses I still struggle to like those fights, they just drag too much by making you Player 2 instead of Player 1. Additionally, from what I saw, when asked about their favourite boss in ER majority of players generally name one from the second category, which should be a good indicator if you ask me.
One more comment I'd add is how frustrating uneven terrain is on many of these bosses. For instance, when you're fighting a dragon, even a slight slope, all of a sudden you can't hit his face. God forbid the boss also has big rocks they can roll on (fire giant).
they shouldve really lowered the dragons heads of centre of gravity or what have you. dragons are the only real gripe i have with this. easily the best game they made by far.
Sometimes slopes also interrupt boss move-sets. So if an enemy is finishing a 10-minute long combo and steps off a lip they'll enter an extremely short falling animation that pretty much makes them skip the recuperating animation and will allow them to transition into another chain. Effectively taking away your window
Playing Elden RIng makes me second guess the immense enjoyment I felt when playing Dark Souls 1 and 3. Those games' bosses definitely challenged me, yet I don't remember having to earn a degree in their combos just to land a single hit like in Elden Ring.
@@arynasabalenka3173 my favourite fight in the entire series is the fume Knight in ds2. He was tough to learn but I still beat him in less than 10 tries. He is imo the toughest fight in DS2 (other than the cancer that is Lud and Zallen and maybe Ancient Dragon but this fights suck so whatever) and yet he feels like a breezy walk in the park compared to some of the late game bosses in Elden Ring. Finally beating him I felt a rush I've rarely felt in my life and yet finally beating maliketh and fire giant all I felt was a rush of relief like "holy Jesus thank Christ I don't have to do this again!"
After rewatching all of his previous videos countless times over the past few years, it feels so good to see this pop up in my feed. Glad you’re back Joe!
There's another problem with radagon's teleport, it can follow-up with two different attacks. One of them you need to roll immediately after dodging the teleport blast, while the other will hit you if you roll immediately after the dodging the teleport blast. Not gonna lie, that was bullshit.
Thank you for pointing this out, I've had the exact same experience. One follow-up you have to be reactive against since it's a delay, another you have to proactively roll since it's too fast to react to. Yet another example of a fight in which victory seems to hinge on RNG.
@@17thknight I mean, it's frustrating that you to beat him over and over again to fight that blob, but overtime I managed to kill him fast and with a lot of flasks remaining. But they definetly should've been separate fights and Elden Beast should be reworked.
To double down on the ludicrousy of copy-pasting Astel, I actually found him in the ice cave FIRST. Imagine how lame it felt to finally finish the underground areas' puzzles after like 100 hours and finding a repeat boss. Also, I was struggling against the erdtree spirit at the bottom of stormveil so I decided to take a break and do something else first, and I ended up going to the fringefolk heroes grave. After working through the absolute torment of my first chariot run, I found a HARDER VERSION of the SAME BOSS I was procrastinating. And since there was only a stake of marika and not a site of grace, leaving at that point would mean I would have to go through the whole dungeon again.
Glad some one noticed the extremely odd feeling of the combat of this game. Some times I'm blown away by how the hit boxes are so spot on, but have been killed many a times through walls or other "solid" objects because the enemies weapon is just so large it clips thru every thing. The game needs to make it that all weapons, enemies, abilities and magic respect the rules that the player is forced to. Nothing more jarring when an enemy is pushed by a cliff but some how just hover on the ledge so they don't fall. Also fuck crucible knights
The player can also hit enemies through walls. Not sure what you're on about here. And so can the player hover on the ledge. Hitbox will probably be smaller but still present to permit that to happen in such cases. Especially with some animation.
@@Alienoiable I literally did say it was a bad excuse so. Also you're right, the same flaw can extend to players. It's stupid when my thrust animated as getting blocked on a wall but the damage goes through anyway.
You pretty much perfectly illustrated one of the only true gripes I have with this game; how boring it is to wait for the bosses to look cool for 20 seconds before trying to punish and then missing the punish because they instantly dodged away and/or decided to show off some more. A problem definitely because of Sekiro but not an issue in Sekiro due to how the combat works. Ive been trying to make this point for weeks but didn't know how to make it haha
you're given hundreds of options to deal damage while they are doing attacks. you have throwing knives, spells, incants, weapon arts, pots, perfumes, and even a good ol bow and arrow. The fact that you want to stand there and challenge yourself not to use the items GIVEN to you by the developers is on you. That's your choice. that's like deciding to never do any of the shinobi prosthetic moves, you can do that sure, but that's YOU deciding not to. and that doesn't make the games design worse for your failure to use the tools given to you.
@Hane24 yeah sure lemme just throw knives and pots at elden beast until he dies. Unpredictable combos and constant running away it totally fair in a game like this because we get throwing knives? wtf bro the fact that you want to play as sorcerer/ranged doent mean I do
@@mammy24 spells and incants are build specific and the rest are -limited -weak as fuck -prevent you from maintaining positioning so no, they aren't really options
@@mammy24 Joseph addresses this point in the video as well (starts at 1:25:28), that maybe the bosses are designed around using stuff like spells and spirit summons, but then the problem is that the bosses' AI aren't equipped to deal with some of these things and it just become boring.
@@mammy24 Except each of those attacks locks you into an animation and GOOD FUCKING LUCK to do that to somebody like malekith on phase two. He doesnt stop moving, he doesnt stop spamming attacks. HE JUST KEEPS BLOODY GOING.
I feel so validated that someone else is actually criticizing the "boss does 15 moves while I roll-dodge over and over and once they're done I have no stamina to attack". It was the most infuriating on Maliketh because after his insane Devil May Cry Bitchin' 10x in-air combo, he lands 50 feet away and is back to attacking by the time you reach him. So many late-game bosses just made me ask "is it my turn yet?"
Devil May Cry "Bitchin" 10x was freaking hilarious! I deadass laughed out loud. And I feel your pain. i said screw it and used my +10 mimic in phase 2 for that nonsense. Eff that. 😆🤣
This is literally a problem that does not exist. You are making it up lmao. Maliketh has 0 health and massive windows in 2nd phase, especially when he does the standing swipe-overhead combo, where you can literally walk under him and attack for free because the 2nd attack will always miss. He's also a boss that rewards positioning, like with the explosions that he triggers. If you position behind him, he'll jump there after the explosion, giving you a massive window for some hits. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that boss, he's a glass cannon.
When he said that this game made him felt like his play style was playing the game wrong, I lost it. I literally was explaining the same thing in almost the same exact words to a friend last night. Also I have realized that he and I have very similar play styles.
It’s interesting how this is the same in Sekiro, but in that game it is praised for forcing you to adapt and completely change playstyle. I’m not sure why this isn’t the case for Elden ring, especially for optional bosses like Malenia.
@@janterri3539 as I see it it's less about gear and/or numeric amount of things the player has to use. And a lot more about being able to use those things, however limited the amount of them is, in ways that the player finds fun. It's not inherently bad to force the player to use only a sword, in Sekiro's case, if you can use that sword in a variety of ways and with numerous paths you can take for weapon progression that allows for many different styles of play, and what's most important about those styles is that they are all viable. This is made especially true in Sekiro with the inclusion of the different prosthetic tools that each can allow for huge variations in the way the player can experience the game in a way they find enjoyable or fun. It doesn't force you to wait or huddle behind a shield because you just can't do anything else. If they want to make it so using a shield or waiting is an intended part of the experience, then they shouldn't give you options to use colossal weapons and try to only use the dodge and present them as viable when they realistically aren't in many cases. I still loved the game and definitely think it is deserving of praise, I think even He said it in this video, but I also thought that it gave me what I wanted from Breath of the Wild. However it'll never be as fun for me as Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne, or Sekiro for that matter because those games make playing it the way that I find enjoyable, viable. And do it by fleshing out their mechanics and options you have in a way that means all of the options presented will be equally viable, perhaps good and less good depending on the situation which I think is good and promotes experimentation and engagement with the games mechanics, yet nonetheless viable. Sorry for the novel response, I just really enjoy discussing games.
@@leonitus2298 I totally agree, sekiro still demands the player to adopt a more specific play style than other souls, but in doing so it provides all the tools needed to do so. Sekiro tells you in many ways through game design the general way you're supposed engage fights (the "intended way"): with a sword, deflections and trying any prosthetic tool you may have found. Elden Ring is completely different, since the beginning of the game you start finding new and different weapons, but over the course of the fame you're only provided the materiald to max out a few of those weapons (if you explore and complete almost everything in the world, farming included, you get enough to max around 10-15 weapons). What the game is telling you with this is "you have many options, you can only try a few of them, but according to your play style everything will be viable in its own way". Then comes Malenia constantly smacking you in the face and healing herself because your build is too slow. Anyways, despite the balancing issues the game is still great for many other things, I only hope they make a better combat sistem next time to suit the faster and stronger boss fights they're constantly making. Yes, I like talking about games too 😁
@@janterri3539 Sekiro is praised because it has ONE but very polished combat style. All combat encounters are built around the deflect system and aggressive gameplay. ER gives you multiple options, but 80% of them are half-baked, unbalanced. When a game gives you this much option, it also has to make sure that these option are equally strong and viable to one another.
@@janterri3539 I think you've hit upon a good point. Elden Ring is very much like Sekiro in that it wants you to play a certain way to maximize your fun. Unlike Sekiro, it gives you quite a bit of freedom to decide on that way. There are a lot of powerful tools you can use: summons, magic, ashes of war. The game wants you to experiment with those and find powerful ones that work for you, and to also make use of the new mechanics like jumping attacks as a way to avoid sweeps. I think it largely works VERY well if you recognize how to play Elden Ring on it's own terms, and don't just try to play it like it's Dark Souls.
One simple nitpick I have is a small animation thing that FromSoft did at the start but then abandoned. Godrick's transition to 2nd phase is so cool because it's a transition from gameplay to cutscene (he starts cutting his arm and then continues in cutscene), but afterwards with every boss before the 2nd phase cutscene, the game just suddenly freezes the gameplay, a black screen suddenly pops, the cutscene happens and then the game positions you and the boss in new spots.
I didn't even really think about that but you raise a very good point. That way you don't get that feeling of "Is the boss dead or is a cutscene gonna play? Oh fade to black, that's too bad"
Really like the game, but as a DeS enjoyer, not been a fan of the boss designs post-Artorias DLC, there it worked because it was in contrast to the rest of the game, not the norm. It is bad enough every boss has multiple phases but, I do feel like the phase transition cutscenes are flat-out bullshit. They are such a cop-out. If you immerse yourself into these worlds and put yourself in the shoes of your character, do the designers seriously think we are just going to stand there doing nothing while a boss gets more and more powerful? Fuckin hell, I would whale my shit on the boss because that is my chance. But no, we gotta wait and see a minute-long cutscene of them getting powerful and gawk at it like we are the audience watching a Marvel movie. Besides, why are they all getting stronger the more health they lose? Not all of them are culprits, the big ones are contextualized really well (Godrick going through immense pain, Malenia and Morgott despising their curse, Godfrey restraining himself to not lose his cool), but nearly every goddamn boss - from draconic tree sentinel to godskins to crucible knights? Feels more like a formulaic crutch to me than anything.
@@arkayv I mean... That's how game mechanics work, my man. It wouldn't be a phase 2 to the fight if they started off in phase 2. That's why Crucible Knights only start using the Aspects at half HP, why Draconic Tree Sentinels start using lightning at half HP, why the Godskins become extremely fucking annoying enemies at half HP. They start in a weaker state so a new player can get used to their standard moveset, and then become stronger later in the fight with new moves for a player to learn. It's not a crutch, it's just good game design. Not everything needs to be justified by the story.
There's the other type of transition to second phase that bosses do, which is the one that is solely gameplay focused and doesn't involve a cutscene(Radahn meteor, Godskin noble floating, etc)
You gotta be special in the head to be upset about the freaking demigod bosses having "more" moves than the base player (they dont and you have way more weapons and abilities combos available)
I felt an immense level of satisfaction during your critiques of the bosses, especially the late game bosses. I’ve had such a hard time putting my thoughts about the bosses in this game into words but I finally feel like something clicked and I have a solid understanding as to why I didn’t enjoy many of these encounters after watching this.
@@spinningninja2 Elden Ring seems like a lot of people’s entry point into the soulsborne franchise. I think the game is really accessible but unfortunately suffers from really poor endgame balance, in my opinion. The other games are for sure difficult but still felt reasonable.
@@JDPONFORTNITE NG+ in my case was finding everything ridiculously easy until getting past the flame giant. Then massive difficulty spike. I said 'f this' when I saw the red lightning dragons again. I had a great time with the game but I walked away more annoyed at the missed opportunities than anything else.
You know thinking about it, I’m surprised they didn’t bring over Sekiro parries for single swords or two handed swords as a sword art or something. They already have the stagger mechanic and they buffed everything else other than single swords
Sekiro’s Combat System Was Bar None, THE BEST!!! Getting Great At Deflects, And Timing Was The Greatest Addition I’ve Enjoyed Playing, In A FromSoft Title.
@@One_of_Many750 i gotta agree. if sekiro had rolling dodges, or better, if elden ring had parries, deflects, counters, and combo interrupts to use against enemy combos, thatd have been amazing
My biggest takeaway from this video is that you're able to switch between the above ground and underground map. I went up and down the lift to Siofra EVERY SINGLE TIME. I would then fast travel to where I needed to go once I reached the bottom/top.
I saw a negative Steam review in another language for this game, might have been Chinese. When translated it said "It only looks like the boss is having fun", which is pretty succinct. While the boss is doing these cuhrazy badass DMC-tier combos, you're still some regular chucklefuck rolling around on the ground. All this game has made me want to do is play Devil May Cry again.
Having your L2 button be the “just borrow a boss’ combo” isn’t exactly the same as actually having the dynamic fluidity and movement that these bosses have, it looks flashy and cool but you then realise it’s just a single button for a flashy move that you have limited uses of and the rest of your kit is the usual dark souls kit which at this point in the series is both getting kinda stale and ineffective against these sekiro tier spammy enemies
@@rankestdweller4239 Not to mention you immediately get shot down by a single slap while casting/charging, while the bosses can just casually superarmor through your hits. The best example of this would be Fortissaxx's lightning spears
@@Flackon some bosses have such small attack windows that ashes of war become glorified normal attacks that don't compensate for the lack of options against them.
The more I've played this game, the more I think the boss overtuning is due to how absurdly powerful the player can get if they use all the tools available to them. I will admit as someone who is much more a fan of the more focused Bloodborne and Sekiro styles of balancing, I'm also not super happy with it (even if I do personally like the Malenia fight).
@@renanfranco4594 And when you _need_ all the tools just as a baseline to defeat a boss, then it also undermines the "easy mode" option those tools were otherwise meant to provide to less hardcore players.
@@galev3955 basically, yeah. If the game was made assuming that the player would always be using summons and ranged spells/ashes of war, the bosses having long high-damage combos with minimal counterattack windows makes more sense. And even then they're still pretty easy when using everything for the most part.
@@elijahlevi6201 I mean yeah the game literally tells you to use them, but I just don't get the point when all its done is made the fights feel less cool to beat or made them extremely aids.
Thank you. I kept audibly saying “YES” while watching this video. Elden ring is an amazing game that deserves a lot of praise, but also has many flaws that a lot of people are refusing to acknowledge because they enjoy the other parts of the game so much. Hopefully in time people will appreciate this game for all its strengths AND flaws.
I know it has flaws, but they don't bother me that much, because of how I enjoy the game. A thing I love from Elden Ring is that people enjoy it or hate ir for totally different reasons lol
@@omensoffate It depends what is this 10/10 , is it 10/10 for you or unbias 10/10? Because being unbias it can't be 10/10 when it has so many big flaws that make the game not even enjoyable at certain points. By comparison other from games flaws are very minor like having to farm for vials if you keep dying or no flaws at all like in ds3 or sekiro I can't think of any real issues outside of preferances.
@@Pohatarunic6I cant speak for Sekiro because I didnt enjoy it, but 3s biggest issue (from my experience) was that it wasnt a Dark Souls game. It was a Bloodborne game with Dark Souls' limited mobility. I always felt the game needed to be slowed a tad
My main problem with this game is that I dread replaying it. I get excited once every twelve months to sink my teeth back into bloodborne or Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3. Once conquered these games can be enjoyed in bitesized portions, or if you’ve been replaying for a while like me, you can finish them in a couple of days. Elden Ring is just incredibly time consuming. And unfortunately a lot of that time is spent on a mixed bag of stuff that doesn’t quite work.
Cheats. How I did it was I chose myself 2 main weapons. One upgraded with normal smithing stones and the other with somber. I used cheats to keep all my other weapons at the same level I reached on my main weapons the legit way. I cheated to skip those boring low quality low effort caves and especially catacombs. I just gave myself whatever equipment was in them without going through that 30 minute chore of copy pasted content. This helps with increasing the variety on hand and reducing tedium. What can't be helped is knowing where all the stuff is. It's so easy to become stupidly overpowered by just running around and picking up upgrade materials. Except for the last few bosses which are a massive difficulty spike unless you use mimic tear.
I'm at the very end of my first playthrough (literally at the final boss) and I agree with almost every word. I've been playing these games since DS1, and Elden Ring's bosses just get exhausting. Beating Maliketh, Niall, Godfrey, etc. didn't give me the satisfaction of other games in the series. I would just get kinda pissed off and would think "fuck that boss" after beating them. Exploring the world was an incredible experience though.
And the amount of unbalanced dual boss fights is insane. The twin gargoyles, two Crucible Knights, a Burial Watchdog with 5 or 6 of those super annoying and mobile goblins that bleed you every 2 seconds, two Cleanrot Knights, two/three Chrystallians, two Nox dudes, two pumpkin heads, ... The game would have been better in every way with 50% less content and no bleed effect.
Indeed, as someone who plays mostly Greatswords and Colossal Weapons, I felt like the game was just punishing me for choosing the wrong weapons. Though mimic tear on NG+ with power stanced Colossal Weapons is very cathartic lmao.
In Dark Souls 3, I can no-hit Champion Gundyr and Pontiff (which I think are the 2 most aggressive bosses of that game) with any greatsword and rolls only. Almost every of their attacks can be punished easily after you know all of them. In Elden Ring however, even with straight sword, I still don't know how to manage doing that consistently with fucking Margit. Yes, I have seen a lot of video about people no-hit him at SL1 naked with a stick, but I know for the fact that they only can attack him when he does some specific certain attack or they just use parry. The only time I think I can hit him safely is when he raises his hand and does a long wind-up attack, go behind him and smack, and then wait to see if he whips his tail to roll. "Just use spirit ash and summons lol". I guess my first playthrough of Elden Ring is exactly like Joseph describes at 48:27. I know I can use them, but why? To me, they make every boss attacks become "punishable attacks", which kinda cheats the boss to me.
@@clixx13 If you've played previous souls games you really shouldn't have TOO hard a time with Margit specifically. I do think that there are problems with the design late game but Margit specifically is fine.
@@moonraven6145 True, I can see where they were coming from (a mini-boss type enemy who is more of a puzzle/detective work than a fair fight), but the execution is hit or miss IMO - I get that healing destroys them and it is interesting lore-wise, but attuning a heal spell and having a seal + requirements for them just for a single enemy that you never know when you will encounter is poor execution. The final straw for me was when I encountered the revenants in the Lunar Estate Ruins where they literally teleport on top of you while on horseback and just instantly destroy you.
@@codysellers4151 But the heal spell has to be channeled for some time while the revenant can teleport and start attacks in a split second. It's kind of a dice roll even with heal. And I think anyone who has met the revenants in Elphael knows what a problem they can be.
@@SaHaRaSquad that’s why you must try to do it as they are spawning if possible. Having Radagon’s icon will help. I’m by no means defending the royal revenants though. They are imo among the worst enemies you can find in a souls game. Frustrating to fight, and it always feels cheap when they kill you with their spammy nonsense.
I took note of your praise for Outer Wilds when watching this years ago. Hearing it compared to Ds1 in that you wished you could forget everything and experience it again for the first time was perhaps the best praise possible, and all I needed to hear. Took me years to finally get around to it, and now I feel a profound need to return and thank you
No joke. This is the first From game where I feel like my deaths are because of cheap boss tricks and sucker punches rather than because I need to learn/improve on something in some way. It's just memorizing attack combos and their tells, and reacting perfectly, or over-leveling and coming back. I think Dark Souls 3 bordered this a bit (the Dancer fight and a few others were more about learning patterns than boss quirks/personalities). I'll admit that this game facilitates going out and leveling up better than any Souls game (it's less about farming and more about exploring), but I still just hate the mentality of "git gud" being one part memorizing attacks and one part farming levels, rather than paying attention to boss quirks and their environments. But all this is from the perspective of someone who plays weapon only builds (i.e. no shields, only dodging and attacking, and I also rely on summons/ashes). I think other builds just dont have my specific problems with the game, so I can't definitively say "game bad" or anything, just express my frustration with it. My playstyle seems specifically targeted by the game balance and I can't enjoy it much because of that. Sorry for the lengthy reply, just had to get this out somewhere the environment was right, since a lot of places have the "git gud" mentality on this game still.
@@purvdragon-sensei thanks for being the “git gud” mentality that is exactly what is killing with any honest review of this game from the perspective of its audience.
@@hollowhorizon7196 I don’t know what to tell you, most of the complaints brought up come from people who don’t make the effort to understand the mechanics or just textbook burn out. Take Mountaintops for example, people are complaining they’re taking too much damage, it’s an endgame area, what do you expect, the game gives you enough tools to mitigate damage and most of the enemies are ones you’ve already seen before, so you already know how they move and how to deal with them appropriately. Did you grind out your levels? You probably shouldn’t have, while your gaining levels, you’re not learning the necessary motor skills that will prep you for the end game, it’s not just an RPG, Malenia is proof of that. Burn out? Put the game down for a couple days, that’s what I did when I hit Zamor Ruins, I couldn’t comfortably defeat the first enemy you see in it so I put some thought into my load out and cleaned up my stats and what do you know it works wonders, I make it all the way down to Elphael and the kin of rot little shits started slapping me, and I did the same thing, I adapted to the situation again and again with Malenia. If you’re gonna be “honest” about issues, you’d talk about fundamentals and how the formula is starting to show its age, all this whining about enemies scaling to your level or nerfing bosses just ruins the game.
BRUH there are once again infinite amazing quotes in this video, here are some of my faves: "You can also blissfully loot things while on horseback, and I hope whoever pushed for that at FROM gets a statue in the Lobby. Of themselves. On horseback. Picking up their crown." "That's why she's called Malenia, because it takes a Milennia to be able to safely hit her" "From a gameplay perspective, I like that Steve can do this ~because I'm clearly biased for Sekiro~ because it's a dynamic way of mixing moves and responses" Perhaps the most important one: "The world of Elden Ring is stunning. The journey I had through it was amazing. The dungeon design is a work of genius, and the combat that filled it as it came near the end bored me to tears even if the visual feast continued."
Reminds me of the mod in Skyrim from like 2014 that let you auto loot items in a radius around you from foot or horseback (configurable to even the kind of items that get picked up) It’s such a simple idea that doesn’t get implemented for some reason in other similar games
For me most memorable quote in this video came someone near the beginning 7:00 with Joe calling the map of Elden RIng a grower compared to a shower XD.
@@leslas5747 Thank fucking god. Just because it was easy doesn't mean that it wasn't annoying as shit. I'd rather have Radagon be the real challenge. Elden Beast can suck a fat cock.
@@leslas5747No.Just no. Having to waste, (yes, waste) your stamina just to get in range of even your ranged attacks, and having to dodge a tracking holy nuke, is TEDIOUS.
@@rogalcorn734 you don’t waste your stamina it’s a gimmick boss with torrent it’s trivialized. Imagine fighting. It was essentially the dragon god boss from demons souls revamped like how they kept revamping the storm ruler fight. You’re supposed to dodge the obstacles like rings and projectiles until you reach him
I enjoyed this thorough discussion and critique of elements in this game nobody seems to be talking about or aware about, and seems to me, doing a good job of advancing the discourse around this game which was starting to stagnate. Overall this video should be shown to a lot of people stuck in the OP/cheese discussion
Omg when you listed your 5 gripes it blew my mind. These are all exactly the same issues I've had with the game, and I've felt like a crazy person because everyone else online was blindly praising the game and mentioning no flaws. I am not alone.
Well, you have to consider that a lot of people are still playing the game. Listening someone talk badly about a piece of media you're still enjoying makes that experience worse. I had nearly identical issues with the game as Joe had, but I still had my fun with it. No reason to try to sap other's enjoyment of it.
this is a great game but don't ever pay attention to anyone calling it a 10/10 flawless masterpiece cause they're either blindly praising or have not played previous fromsoft games and don't know that it's been done better before.
the way I see it, is that by trying again and again you get good and eventually you kill the boss. So your win is inevitable but there is a sweetspot during this process that the game stops being fun. ER sadly came to the point of not being fun with some of its late bosses.
To me it’s more insidious than that. I want to have the back and forth, punish/learn/focus/timing/memory/move-intuition/spacing war of wits with the boss. All the other from soft games encourage this. It is peak soulslike for me. But Elden ring instead feels balanced around the player having loads of absurd things they can do, particularly at range. Summons and spells, huge leaps, bloodhound slides, big staggers, physiks, rot breath. To balance around these overpowered player options (overpowered compared to dodging/blocking and hitting) they’ve created bosses that push you away and have giant AOEs, and mini-stuns, and mad combos, and one-shot-from-full-health potential. This in turn means the player has to use those overpowered things, because their existence makes you a fool for not using them. Why duel to the death when you could just overlevel and come back later? Why duel to the death when you can just summon a mimic, retreat and throw lightning for 5 minutes? The answer is those techniques aren’t fun. But they’re now required. Bummer.
@@Jaebird2 Joseph speaks to my soul with his choice of bosses in his critique. Malenia is essentially a fight where if I don't want to take damage, and in her case she heals if I don't correctly respond to her attack, is a boss that force me to be completely reactive instead of proactive once she gets her water dance move. If I have to always have that move in mind it turns into a waiting game where I get very little out of the fight. It the first boss in all of the series I've actually given up fighting "normally" and cheesed it with a summoning mimic, cause I didn't have the patience to go through her first phase. Which resulted in me never learning how to deal with phase 2 at all. Maliketh is case where I found his first phase to be harder, cause he actually only has one single opening after a certain move as far as I experienced the boss, and I had to use shield to make the first phase bareable.
@@ThePedram009 I know everyone has different experiences with this game but I loved I mean loved get my booty blasted by melania and maliketh I beat in like 2 tries with minimal sweat I’m not saying that to brag I’m just saying it’s a subjective topic with bosses. Some people beat Malenia solo with no armor cuz they know how too
Joseph's reviews are so clean. The severity with which he had problems with the game is not something I experienced, and can't relate to, and despite that, I so clearly understand where he's coming from and can't even disagree with things I find unrelatable because of how well he lays everything out. This man knows his opinion, and knows WHY he has it.
For me it felt like a breath of fresh air because I feel the exact way he does but nearly everything I see is praising the game as if it has no fault or acting like satan himself designed the game. It was nice to finally see something that acknowledges it’s a great game but has many flaws. I’m glad you didn’t have as many problems with it as I wish I didn’t but everyone will have a different experience
Exactly. I don't agree with his opinions, and some of the things he despised I really enjoyed, but I can't call him wrong. He explains WHY he feels the way he does about things so thoroughly
Fr. I disagree with the boss part. I loved them. Godfrey is in my top 10 souls bosses and I even adored elden beast and malenia. But I completely agree that malenia's flurry and elden beast's magic ball thing attack are bad. They just didn't ruined the fights for me.
@@shrouls Malenias flurry is not bad. That's a trash take. There's a multitude of ways to deal with it, including just knowing how to dodge it properly.
@@Gankstomper nonsense. If I am close to her and she starts doing it, I'm dead. If she had a longer wind-up for me to run then that's another story but it's just a poorly designed attack. One of the worst in the whole series in fact. I love malenia bc of her other attacks which are good and balanced
I think it's important to say that Sekiro was made by one of two teams at from software. It was made while the other team was making Elden Ring. Miyazaki said that not much was brought from Sekiro to Elden Ring, and I think that's because of the simultaneous development. Can't wait for the team that made Sekiro to make another game. Hopefully Sekiro 2. A man can dream.
@@henriklarssen1331 I replayed DS3 and Sekiro a shit ton of times but was finished with DS2 and had to physically force myself to play the DLC that I bought. Replay value is subjective. Sekiro had little build variety, but enjoyable core gameplay and eye candy. DS2 had shit tons of build variety, but the core gameplay felt kind of shitty and the game looked like ass. I played Sekiro more, because replayability is based on what you like most about a game.
Just a small correction for Malenia; Waterfowl Dance does not have a cooldown, it's pure chance, though lower than her other attacks. Ive had her use it back to back 4 times once.
@@benlambe3168 let explain, I think what OP meant with cooldown is "she has to wait at least 20 seconds to do it again, after that she can do it whenever". But the thing is people here are saying that if you get very unlucky she can do it many times with little to no gaps in between, so she doesn't even have to wait for a while before doing it again. Basically this means we're better off learning to dodge that bulls**t with bloodhound step (it's much more manageable believe me)
@@are3287 I don't wanna assume so I'll ask, did you use a melee or magic build,and what summon did u use if any..... Asking because I'm curious for the vastly different experience
@@tvgaming2132 That was the biggest sin from this game for me after playing dark souls 3 before this...it becomes tedious to win rather than difficult. Still like the game though, even if I only completed it once
@@ibadrizvi5740 really elden ring was my first souls game so I can't really say how bad melee builds are but I didn't have a good time with godrick and omen
The way they made the map seem like the full map is exactly how I always said they should do maps. The true journey of discovery, not knowing how much more is out there is amazing!
I didn't watch any gameplay or haven't played any other similar games, I don't know how many times I thought to myself "there's no way there's more parts of the map". Really enjoyed the game but there are for sure parts of it that frustrated me and I'm yet confused about a lot of things.
@@abco9391 Yeah, I've played quite a few, and you always have the full map visible and you can imagine how much more is left. It's quite sad really and when they hide it this way, you never know if you'll find even more you know 😅
@@hansa5867 Yeah it made me happy every time realizing there's more :D
The only game I have seen do that, dynamically extend the map screen as you progress that is, was supreme commander. But frankly I found it more annoying there. Though I supppse in the context of a strategy game the meaning auddenly shifts from dixcovery to the game cheating to get one over you with aomething you couldnt have possibly prepared for.
True. However, I will say though, that the more fragments i found, the more disappointed i got with the ammount of water/unplayable areas there actually was. I mean, look at the mountantop map, for example. 75% of that is just an unplayable cliff. 7.8/10, too much water :/
43:03 "I stumbled upon Siofra" with 5 giant arrows sticking out of his body was hilariously relatable.
🤣🤣🤣 yes it was
siofra is so pretty but so fucking cheap that it ruined it
@@michaelwerkov3438 what do you mean?
@@hollowhorizon7196 probably because of the enemies that snipe you across the map with their bows and almost always hits you. I left the area early on because of that but I came back later to clear it out
@@VZapphire all you have to do is clear the middle area and you won't deal with the laser arrow for majority of the altars. they don't use charged shots point blank, just a regular arrow or axes too so bumrushing the middle is perfectly viable.
"You can blissfully loot things while on horseback, and I hope whoever pushed for that at From gets a statue in the lobby.. of themselves.. on HORSEBACK.. PICKING. UP. THEIR. CROWN." Absolutely amazing work and I completely agree.
They just patched it into Horizon Forbidden West lol
Timestamp for that?
@@GreebusBleeb that has always existed in horizon it was literally in the first game. Let’s not lie now
@@rolandngom5080 You’re flat out incorrect…you have to stop and wait for a little animation to play picking up literally anything in those games. I played Forbidden West right before ER and it was such a difference.
@Taylor Womack Dude what a GREAT logo for a non-subs channel.
"Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast battle"
Patch notes 1.12
HA
Im laughing tears!
rewatched this video exclusively because of that LOL
I swear they DID forget it XD
Lmao
I love that whenever Joseph shows a chest in-game, he first hits it with his sword, because the distrust the other Souls games sowed runs deep.
Real ones check the curve of the metal chain on chests to save weapon durability.
lol I was about to write that. mimic chest still give me PTSD
@@JimJamTheAdmin I freaked the fuck out when I saw the dark souls designed chest near the Altus platau margit. The fucking chain scared me even though it wasn't mimic shaped
@@JimJamTheAdmin
@@JimJamTheAdmin
RETURN OF THE KING
Not to mention the owner of the "Wubba Lubba Sub Club"
The Witcher 3 video will probably come out after another 2 year hiatus
I cannot express the joy I feel that one of my two favorite video essayers watches the other one of my two favorite video essayers
this guy gets it 😌
He said Siofra River wrong so I get to dismiss all criticism he makes
Getting teleported to Caelid was one of the scariest moments I've had in gaming, and getting teleported to Leyndell was one of the most astounding.
I really just wish the game had the balls to actually trap you there.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 except it does? You can't TP out until you find a grace of your own. I left the cave and wandered the swamp before finding one near Selia
@@hombreg1 You had to literally walk past a grace at the entrance of the cave in order to do that. That does sound like a really cool experience, but unfortunately not all of us have the advantage of visual impairment.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 just like seths said lobotomy playtrought is the true way to play eldenring.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 calling me blind. Nice argument. Point still stands, though. Teleporter traps do "trap" you in the area.
What's more, they rely on "you" to figure out you can and should escape, as the myriad of "how to escape selia crystal tunnel" articles would suggest. This makes the idea even more interesting, as having grace points relatively close by teases you with exploration. You also fail to address the fact that you can't teleport until you rest, which is something the game doesn't tell you. So, if you avoid taking too much damage whilst escaping the cave, and only activate the point of grace, you could even respawn inside Caelid whilst being still unable to escape, meeting your definition of "trapped".
I SUFFERED WITH THE ELDEN BEAST LIKE 1000 TIMES AND NOW THEY DECIDED TO PUT TORRENT 💀💀
fromsoft what the fuck, you should have done that 2 years ago
they kinda forgot bout det
I just finished the game yesterday for the first time, and with torrent the fight is a piece of cake, 3rd try because in the second I was really dumb hahah
Elden Beast was pretty easy for me. Maybe I was overleveled. I didn't even use Torrent
I beat the game a few days ago under the assumption it still wasn't possible 😂. Probably could've saved myself some time lol
…and yet the fight hasn’t changed and it’s still better dismounted.
Continued proof nobody knows what they’re talking about.
Oh my God it's 2024 already, we have been blessed
Hi RT
Indeed we have. Was not expecting an Anderson review anytime soon.
hey RT, Godrick the Grafted smash or pass
King
hello RT
No way. 2 years Joseph, and we get an elden ring video? Man I'm just happy that you're back
He never left. Just became a weaboo a bit
@@MrIlya494 wat?
@@ADFloyd a jab on joes livestreams. He streamed a bunch of weeb games around the time the second witcher video came out.
@@MrIlya494 The Persona 4 incident monkaS
I couldn't fathom the influence Recettear had on this man's future
Certainly wasn't expecting another video before witcher 3, can't wait to watch!
@Melvin Deeply but I thought this was my comment
@@spaghett5531 I guess he bought your comment in an auction man. 🤷🏾♂
OUR comment, comrade
@Melvin Deeply damn… I call dibs on your comment then.
Wait this isn't the Witcher 3?
I cannot explain how far my jaw dropped when I opened that transportation chest in the weeping peninsula and got teleported to the very north side of the map…
And then it turns out it's not even the most north you can go, in fact it's closer to the middle!
You're one easily impressed, aren't you. "Wooooooow, map very-very big", except most of it is horse riging simulator across empty spaces between copypasted locations and bosses.
@@AikanaroSauron bro if seeing the size of the map fucking double with no indication didnt surprise you, idfk what will. Also shit is not filled with cipy pasyed content, although there obviously is some, but saying its completely empty is grossly underselling the game
@@AikanaroSauron that was such a forced statement lmao. Makes no sense with context.
@@TRDRHDB A good game for once in the current abysmal state of the industry would be a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Too bad all they make is open world trash and P2W garbage.
I would have much preferred if Elden Beast was tied to a secret ending, much like Moon Presence in Bloodborne. That way players can be rewarded for exploring and getting a final surprise as they end their game. As well as making Radagon a proper final boss, because as much as I agreed with your problems with him, I think that he's still a really good boss to end the game on.
Seriously, like Gwyn wasn't this crazy over the top anime fight, it was just a husk of a man who you were putting out of his misery. He was about the same level of intense as Radagon.
Imagine if you beat Gwyn and then a gigantic fire demon climbed out of the Flame and it was this whole ridiculous 10 minute extra thing
Like it feels so close to the relationship between the hollow knight and the radiance but this time the radiance is mandatory and you don't have to do anything special to unlock her
@@Hugsloth I’m not looking forward to fighting elden beast on higher ng+’s. The unavoidable tracking sphere projectile thing is going to hurt so bad
@@Hugsloth Well, Dark soul 1 also was way, way less obsessed with Difficulty for the sake of Difficulty. True King Alant and Gwyn where ment to show a theme, once grand and powerful beings having broken down to shells that you put out of their misery.
But now, all the big bosses need to be super cinematic, multiphase superbosses. Making the individual bosses way less unique.
@@plinfan6541 it’s that dark souls 3 boss design taken to its extreme. Too much extravagant anime nonsense. Just give me a good one on one. That’s why everyone loved Champion Gundyr; it was just you, and this big man with his big bardiche. No surprise phase 2 pus demons, no Elden Beast climbing out of nowhere, no 3 phase boss reviving after death
Finally, a new video to rewatch 8 times over in the next 6 months :)
Spot on :D
@@Simotin The mans voice is the most soothing way to fall asleep
@@James-vw4jz yes, he is one of my favorites amongst content creators, who deliver extensive reviews, retrospectives or video essays. Some people speak too fast, or have an eccentric intonation in voice, use some memish-sounds or have poor mic quality.
It's also nice that he doesn't emphasize mechanics or story, but talks about all the aspects of the games (usually).
Totally different review styles but I like Noah Cadwell Gervais. He just put out a long video on ds1-ds3 pretty good.
Need your videos to fill the void :D
"Why doesn't she just attack the air in front of her?"
AS OF PATCH 1.04 SHE DOES
Explain?
@@wax3825 There's a new glitch with this patch where she can heal while doing Waterfowl Dance without hitting anything. This seems to only be with that attack, and only when playing multiplayer though.
@@LoudWaffle I've seen her heal with other attacks like the prosthetic kick or any of her normal slashes, but it seems kind of random.
i was gonna say that lmao
She's always been able to because it's just lag while on mp, i fought her yesterday and she doesn't heal out of nowhere.
It's kinda like when you pvp with a bit of lag you'll get status through your dodges or get bleed and not take damage
Funnily enough, the most fun I’ve had with Elden Ring was on a NG+ “speedrun” I did. The goal was to just hit the bosses and finish the storyline as quickly as possible (I’m not actually a speed runner with actual strats. Just a man who ran to the next boss as soon as the previous one was defeated). I had a great time because I essentially ran from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon with a character that had everything they needed. No exploration or side tracking was required. No wading through random locations. It was great fun because it gave me the cream from the top of what the game had to offer.
Agreed, just playing like normal Dark Souls is the most fun in this game
@@zosonte129right? just playing any dark souls is better than replaying elden ring
@@morganfreeman5260 True. I hope somebody makes a mod where they cut all the moronic horse riding simulator parts, empty fields and perpetually copypasted garbage out of the game. Then it could actually be good.
@@AikanaroSauron Elden Ring should've had a mechanic like that to begin with - where once you've beaten the final boss, the game gives you an option to start a NG like usual but instead skip the open world and just jump from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon, fighting each major/unique boss of the game. Of course there wouldn't really be a smooth transition to each dungeon/boss, but at least players who enjoy re-fighting the bosses won't have their time wasted.
Or alternatively, just add a boss rush mode, like what they added for Sekiro. It's weird how many good, well-received mechanics Sekiro got that were never reused in ER. Especially since Sekiro seemed like a giant experimenting ground for new, innovative systems with how much it deviates from the typical Souls formula that From established.
@@chomcat1910 It wouldn't even be hard to implement. Something like a nexus from Demon Souls with portals to every "legacy dungeon" as they now call the real normal parts of the game is all that'd be required to make it good.
I love how even though there are no mimic in this game, he NEVER not hitting a chest before opening it. The sen fortress ptsd is real
I mean i do that too out of instinct
Why? The mimics have front facing chains at their side instead of the normal, backward facing chains, every other chest has. No need of hitting.
The more chests I opened without a mimic encounter, the more I was convinced the next chest would have one. It also didn't help that the game has several unique assets for 'generic treasure chest' which seem to be interchangeable and serve no purpose other than to make you suspicious, similar to how the level design in dungeons will often include a small cubby with no items that seems tailor made for an invisible wall that doesn't exist.
@@AbelMusa i DIDNT KNOW THAT
@@AbelMusa I knew that about DS1, It took me a while to learn about the chest differences in DS2 though.
0:00 Intro
2:15 World level design
21:30 THE NEGATIVE
23:05 recycled content
27:20 Boring shire style dungeons
35:03 disappointing rewards
42:10 lack of Level Scaling
46:56 late games Bosses design
1:14:14 misc negatives
1:27:57 misc
1:38:18 Conclusion
Much appreciated
👑
hope he pins this
💎
was about to comment, a video this long not split into sections is a bold strategy. real hero
Your videos always have very valid critiques of things that don’t really proportionately ruin the same experience for me but I still love how these still manage to bring me down to earth
Have you seen his Soma video? Or his subjectivity is implied video?
Heyyy I love your shit!
@@leelee8d793 What about them?
@@TheHeavensPride I think he means that Joseph isn't to be taken 100% at his word for his critiques because often times he overlooks many important pieces of information in order to push his perspective, even if it comes at the cost of later making him look disingenuous or in some cases even downright arrogant/pretentious. Like when he insulted his audience on twitter for finding Horror games to be scary.
@@fancypantsy2741 I don't know about that twitter story, since I don't follow social media all that much.
But yeah, he has his opinion, but that's just like his own opinion, if you ask me.
I like his videos in a "On paper this is true, however now I'm gonna draw my own conclusions" kinda way.
For example his Mario Odyssey video. I can understand his critique on moons. Heck, I felt the same when I first started watching a friend play the game. But after playing it myself, I came to the conclusion, that it didn't break my gameplay flow as much as it did for him. In the end, it was just different perspectives.
And in that sense I value his videos as they present a strong opinion, that I can use to formulate my own.
When I watched this video for the first time, I didn't really get the criticism, since Elden Ring was my first fromsoft game and it was one of the best experiences I had ever had in a videogame. But then I completed all the other fromsoft games, before I got ready for the Shadow of the Erdtree. Completing the DLC left some mixed feelings and I didn't quite figure out why. Now I watched the video again and everything became clear
I knew he'd bring up the ringed city at some point. When I was playing through the capital I was thinking "damn, Joseph probably loves this".
"Why doesn't she attack the air to heal as well?"
prophetic lmao
Funny how there was a glitch where she does that exact thing
Absolutely agree that the horse was meant to be used against the elden beast, first thing I did when I got into the room was try to summon torrent.
Yeah it really feels like you are supposed to be faster/jump higher to avoid attacks it really has the feel of a dragon fight
It seems really natural, it's weird he's not there. Someone I talked to mentioned there should be a spiritspring activating when he leaps into the air, so you could fly up there and smack him down, and I agree 'cause that would be super hype
its so arbitrary what's summonable where in this game sometimes lol
I literally never even tried to use it. Because I assumed I couldn't because I'm in a zone that previously I was not able to use it.
I didn't even think I need it either.
Well, NOW we can. 😂
1:35:18 They finally did it, you can now summon Torrent for the fight against Elden Beast. This is the first video I thought of after seeing the update, I can't believe it took them this long to implement...
I'd be surprised if it isn't revealed some day that Malenia's moveset was originally designed for a Sekiro DLC boss (maybe Tomoe?):
--- She wields a katana, moves around insanely quick, almost exclusively has sword-based moves (like most human Sekiro bosses), and has visually stunning attacks that straight up would be fun to deflect in Sekiro and would complement that game's mechanics (as mentioned in the video)
--- Her healing from blocking makes way more sense in Sekiro, as it would be a way to punish bad deflection timing, making her an ultimate challenge that requires complete mastery of deflection
--- A lot of people have pointed out how she mirrors Wolf in many ways, wielding a katana, having a form of rot, having a prosthetic arm, and even being able to resurrect once (!!!). Malenias die twice, indeed
--- There is dialogue in Sekiro implying that Tomoe is in some way connected to a dragonrot outbreak, further connecting her to Malenia in my tinfoil hat world as a mirror version of Wolf
--- Not unique to Sekiro, but she does have all the attack types that define the combat of that game, including: sweeps that could be jump countered, stabs that could be mikiri countered, and of course a brutal grab that'll mess your day up. The second phase attack where those ghostly beings attack you, would be fun to learn to deflect before mikiri countering Malenias follow-up stab
Data mining has revealed that the version of waterfowl we got in the final game was likely one of the last moves made for the fight. Before that, it appears she had a different version where she danced on the ground and covered much less distance. It appears they went out of their way to make waterfowl the most oppressive, unfun attack in the entire series. Boggles the mind.
On the topic of Elden Beast, Joseph definitely nailed it. Why can we not ride Torrent? It not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but also from a thematic one. Here we are, at the final challenge, conquering it together with our steed who has been at our side all along (insert Ludwig neighs). We were able to take on Radagon alone, but to defeat the ultimate being in the lands between, we need our trusty companion, almost as if both Melina and Ranni knew we would have no chance of becoming Elden Lord without Torrent.
And of course, almost all of Elden Beast's moves seem to be designed around horse combat, including:
--- Tracking projectiles that can be outrun on horseback (fear the orb)
--- Sweeping attacks and long range sweeping beams that can be jumped over
--- The holy elden rings that you're meant to jump over, but can't dodge through (as if the attack was designed for a horse that can't dodge)
--- Large AoEs that could be fun to ride away from on horseback
--- The boss moving around a huge arena, meaning you have to chase after it on horseback, as you've done countless times against the game's dragons
Truly only leaves two explanations. 1: As proposed in the video, Daenerys -- er, I mean, the devs kinda forgot about Torrent. 2: At one point in development they tested the fight without Torrent and thought the added (albeit unfun) challenge enhanced the fight and scrapped the idea of using Torrent, even though the boss was designed around this. Hopefully it's option 1, as 2 makes my blood boil.
Her waterfowl dance is clearly something Tomoe would have done based on the descriptions of how she fights. Imagine waterfowl dance with lightning.
@@RedgraveGilver No she probably wouldn't fight like that. Tomoe was all lightning and fighting like she is actually dancing, this is indicated by how the Okami warriors fight in the fountainhead palace. Waterfowl Dance is just straight up copy of Isshin Ashina's one mind except her spinny bullshit covers the entire arena and lasts 10 times longer.
@@arhamsaa Well, like OP said, data miners found that the old Waterfowl Dance was a lot more like dancing. Here's the vid showing it off: ua-cam.com/video/xywpJ26hS70/v-deo.html
Waterfowl Dance: Run away for the first flurry, dodge into the second flurry twice. Never get hit again.
@@20Gero09 Who asked?
The way you described the boss combos and punish windows was so spot on.
I'm starring to realize maybe that's why we have spirit summons since it can be hard to punish bosses
Yeah, so far that's the thing I'm hating. Waiting for my turn to get a single hit it, otherwise I get knocked down. I can deal with one Margit and have fun, find it again later on I just get annoyed.
except for beast clergyman. the attack he said is unreactable has an animation telling you its about to happen for almost a full second
I watched some Bloodborne, yknow the really aggressive fast game, and it’s like watching pudding roll down a slope compared to the speed of Elden Ring bosses
@@lilramennoodle8056 starting to? Seemed pretty clear when from gave them to you and also had a billion spam bosses.
Just a note on 19:40: there's actually a fourth way to reach the plateau, I think I've seen a few speedrunners use it but beyond that it's extremely obscure. If you get to the Erdtree roots via Nokron, beat Fia's Champions you can then take the teleporter straight into the capital proper. I loved this sort of thing about the original Dark Souls and it's great that it's back.
EDIT: There's a FIFTH way. If you take the tower trap teleporter to the capital, usually there's no way down as the elevator is locked. Thing is, it turns out that an invader *can* activate the elevator for you. Requires either luck or a friend. Probably unintentional, but it makes use of regular game mechanics rather than any glitch so I'd call it valid.
You can get to the plateau via Erdtree roots but you need to kill radahn first, and unfortunately the festival only begins once you reach the plateau
@@pinou1894 you can also begin the festival by doing Ranni's questline, after talking to Blaidd in Siofra then speaking to Selivus and Sellen the festival is triggered
@@pinou1894 Ranni's questline also activates the festival, and doesn't require getting to the plateau.
@@StormKidProductions and here I am hearing for the first time that you don't actually need Ranni to go beat Radahn
In Bloodborne & Sekiro I had these lightbulb moments early on where I suddenly understood what the game wanted from me and was able to act accordingly and have a fulfilling experience. Right now I’m about 55hrs into Elden Ring, and I still feel like I’m misunderstanding some fundamental aspect of it that is keeping me from enjoying it fully. Idk what it is. At the same time I’ve never played this much of a game that I think I don’t like. I’m very confused.
i know this is late but i was in a similar boat, and i started to just use 'meta' approaches such as buffing myself, abusing certain charms and physiks, and playing around stance breaking with my weapon arts.
you dont have to fully min max but it at least felt like my character was dishing out damage faster than the boss most of the time
It’s the late game he’s criticising. However I believe he’s wrong in saying the fights are unfair. If u solo melee it’s not as impossible as he’s complaining so long as u engage with the bosses movesets and you observe their attacks carefully. I two handed a sword too the only boss I ended up quitting on on my first playthrough was Melania (I played the game blind and couldn’t figure out water fowl) I only beat her on ng+
Ohh its the same for me but im close to 200 hours i came from Bloodborne god damn the combat is more fun in bb . Im fighting Radagon i beat all the boss without summon but the late game piss me off so much i dont want to learn all Radagon move to fight the stupid Elden Beast after fuck that bs 😂
@@j0nnyismits not impossible but its unfair in the sense you have to spend a significant amount of time memorising the moveset. Malenia took me over like 10 hours on blind first playthrough
this is exactly how i feel thank you for putting it into words
This guy is literally putting into words the feeling i had when fighting each boss in a way I wouldn't be able to express.
This would explain why my favorite boss fight would be Godfrey, he felt like a Ds3 boss and had the simple and easy to punish movement to boot.
(Edit: this comment now irrelevant after patch)
The problem with bosses in this game is that they do too much; at one point, fighting radhan without a proper build, I asked myself
"Cool, but when do i play?"
The bosses just continue to do random bullshit and it feels they misunderstood their own design; but the seeds of this are to be seen in the ds3 last dlc with gael and midir; gigantic
Damage
Health
Bullshit hitboxes
Never ending comboes
Yep felt bosses in this game were too aggressive, I could be aggressive as I want in ds3 but in this game I could only hit one time with a strength weapon and a few times with a katana. Let me remind you that these bosses have quite a lot of health which makes the fight unnecessarily longer.
@@fabioviti7384 with Gael it was fine, because it was 3 attacks poke, 3 attacks poke.
But Margit the fell, has a 5 or 6 hit combo, he's already worse than Gael or SoC and he's the first boss in the game.
@@kriegscommissarmccraw4205 yeah, one time I tought 4 hit combos were too much... now elden meme made me play mages
@@kriegscommissarmccraw4205 and, if a krieg commissaria says something is too hard it's a problem; when maliketh is harder to kill than a chaos space marine we have problems
The observation about the "natural" world being built on ruins struck me too. Mostly because by the endgame I had noticed that almost all the lifts in the game are rising pillars instead of platforms. This is unusual among from soft games. The column lifts in cylindrical shafts gave me the distinct impression of machine pistons rising from deeper machinery.
To be be fair it probably is as there are whole undrrground ruins that used to citys
Almost all the lifts are rising pillars?? 52 hours in and every lift I’ve seen has been a platform
@@Primitive01 keep playing
@@Farengast I will be.. But “almost all the lifts in the game” is a pretty big exaggeration, I ain’t seen one yet and been about quite a bit in every area up to and including Lyndell.. Countless lifts, all platforms
@@Primitive01 if you've made it to Lyndell you have absolutely ridden on many pillar lifts. They are more common later in the game though.
30:00 The first dragon fight was the best boss fight experience in the game for me. Playing for the first time, I died like 10 times trying to own that dragon, but I was still coming back to try again. Like you said, it was an epic movie scene.
It's funny how apologetic Joseph gets whenever he goes off-script, like we're gonna crucify him if he says a certain amount of words that aren't on the video script that we'll never see
I think he’s saying sorry to himself lol
Well, he IS Canadian.
@@Nightfurygaming247 lol
Saying anything remotely bad about Elden Ring will make the Reddit cabal send shadow assassins to get you.
@@Ecliptor. you mean they’ll send black knife assassins after him.
I cannot express enough how much I love the idea of one of the caravans being a surprise mimic boss fight and how disappointed I am it's not a thing the moment I heard Joe suggest it.
Isnt that somewhat the case with the caravan that's patrolled by dark knights?
@@Killroy007 Yeah but the chest coming alive and attacking you after you spent some flasks on one of the caravan trolls and a few of the patrolling soldiers would have definitely been a memorable moment.
The thing with the Night's Cavalry bosses patrolling with the caravan at night is that you can see them waaay ahead of time, so it gives you time to plan and prepare.
The mimic coming alive with no warning after we spent the whole game not encountering a single mimic would definitely bring back those Sen's Fortress flashbacks.
@@SirGrimLockSmithVIII Just an addendum (you might even already know this). You don't need to kill the trolls, or even fight them at all. If you hit a troll, they'll counterattack, but sit still for a good while, where you can just pop in the back and steal their stuff. In fact, you can even jump up while the carriage is moving and steal the thing! Also, it happened to me multiple times where I'd see the trolls, but their entourage was super far back, so it was a free steal, sadly. Still such a good idea, but the implementation - especially adding a mimic carriage *UNIQUE* boss would be amazing.
@@candy-ass4915 Hell yes that's exactly what I meant.
A unique boss fight mimic caravan as a surprise would've been a spectacularly memorable moment that would've been a fan favourite, especially if it was a good boss fight.
"Bosses in Elden ring will do anime acrobatics for a whole episode including attack chains that involve them taking off into the air, landing into an attack that explodes, and then taking off again into the air, because they're still not done." LOL This describes my experience playing the game so well.
They not only made Pontiff Sulyvahn’s combos and Aldrich’s arrows look tame, but also made an attack more insane than Sephiroth’s Octaslash. Multiple times. In the same game.
It's one of the biggest issues. You have 10% of the time to attack
Absolutely agreed and genius analogy of the boss fights in Elden Ring. I started realizing this the more I fought Elden Ring Bosses. You need to be super careful and take your time as they get aggressive in order to attack. Elden ring combat systems are still great but its still has some issues with some boss fights. Sekiro and Dark souls 3 have genius great boss fight builds and reactionary combat systems That works for each other.
@@Zephhi 2%
I never had this feeling when I played it. In fact I was thrilled that they continued the trend of making bosses more unpredictable and less turn-based
Morgott is pretty much my favorite boss. Flowing flurries of attacks
As opposed to the old style of “3 slashes and then pause to get hit by the player”
I'm surprised that spiders studio, a French indie developer, was able to add an FOV option to Steelrising yet Fromsoft can't be bothered to do the same or at the very least learn to pull back the camera during certain boss fights so I'm not stuck staring at the bosses toes the entire time while I guess their attacks based off what leg flinches.
You still need to sit at "bonfires" to continue NPC dialogues. 2000's games with 2020's graphics. Like putting lipstick on a pig.
Seriously the number of bosses my camera has clipped through and given me a good look underneath is just silly. Fromsoftware surely know they cant make big bosses and yet insist on making them bigger and bigger 😂.
The funny thing is they actually learned with sekiro. Yet, somehow, they regressed back.
@@basselahmed2089 Exactly. Guardian Ape and Demon of Hatred has your FOV zoomed out to give you better visuals to react to. Elden Ring you're getting crotch shots and guessing what the boss is going to do.
"Why doesn't she attack the air in front of her to heal as well"
This definitely didn't age well lmao
wait, what happen? did malenia get a bug that buff her after patch 1.04?
@@kooe9554 There seems to be a bug with networking where if you're playing co-op Malenia can now heal just by hitting air.
@@0x6e95 lmao good. get poopied on "let me solo her"
@@aravinds3846 It's tied to the netcode. In the patch notes you may have noticed that they did mention changes to how their networking works. The bug is probably from that. You'll be fine if you're just playing solo.
Yeah Joseph needs to stop giving From ideas for even more broken OP bosses...
Torrent for elden beast actually makes so much sense and would have made elden beast a fun fight
You also would've been able to dodge the falling stars attack too.
I honestly think the fight was made for Torrent in mind, but was switched up last minute. Maybe the fight was too easy with torrent?
@@couchwilly5575 I mean, that's probably not such a bad thing. With Godfrey and radagon coming right before him, I would have been ok with elden beast being a spectacle fight vs what we ended up getting, but yea you're probably right it had to have been a last minute decision.
I agree. I think the combination of Radagon / Elden Beast as a final boss fight on horseback is very reminiscent of Ganondorf/ Beast Ganon in Zelda BotW. As FS took inspiration from BotW anyway these similarities don't seem arbitrary to me.
I'm actually amazed that torrent wasnt an option
I think the issue with the bs movesets from the bosses always lead to me barely ever leaving a bossfight feeling accomplished. In the back of my mind I always had the feeling that I only won that fight because I got lucky and didnt get too many unfair moves thrown at me.
agreed in many cases, but there is still a decent number of bosses that were solid and, too me at least, they did evoke that familiar feeling from previous games - for example, Godrick, Mohg, Godfrey/Hoarah Loux, Fallingstar Beast (if you stumbled upon that fight at the "correct" level), maybe Morgott if he had more hp
from these examples, it seems like they haven't forgotten how to make good bosses, but rather run out of time/resources and decided to slap on something like this for the endgame
I spent the better portion of a day on the final boss because the first phase has an aoe spam that he just would not let up with. The final final boss was cake mostly but id be depleted of my resources from the first phase... My 10 year old son gets to the final boss, first phase never even once drops the aoe attack on him and second phase stays relatively in the same spot so he beat the final bosses in one try. I felt so cheated lol.
@@ThelaziaCafe I never get the fuss about Radagon’s ‘aoe spam’. Dodging into and behind him negates 90% of those and leave you prepared for the remaining 10%.
I'd heavily disagree on that, because the moves rarely ever felt bs. The only bs boss move that's in the game, in my opinion, is malenia's waterfowl, but beyond that every other move is telegraphed and recognizable. Even Margitt telegraphs all his attacks pretty well.
@@jakubpuawski3875 I’d say that Crucible Knight is a better example of a solid boss/mini-boss then Fallingstar Beast. He’s a nice evolution of the Black Knight archetype
Considering what you said in this video, I feel like your review of Shadow of the Erdtree will be very angry and very entertaining.
Tbh id be surprised if he even touched it. Its too contentious and it has people frothing at the mouth
I hope he makes a review just like this one so people who actually research and put effort into their critiques destroy him.
Cope and seethe.
@@egoalter1276from soft normie it’s ok to dislike parts of a game you enjoy
@@lorddragonya I believe we are in agreement.
He did it. The madlad actually did it.
that was actually my comment to make :(
"He did it" is for The Witcher 3.
No, he didn't
I love this game but wholeheartedly agree with your criticisms about the endgame bosses. A lot of them felt very haphazard and in need of rebalancing. Constantly waiting for massive unpredictable, hard to read combos to end over & over to MAYBE get a hit in just wasn't fun for me, especially when they can kill you in a couple of hits.
Summons made things more manageable and 'difficulty' is a different, subjective experience for every player, but personally I kinda missed the good old 1v1 tough but fair endgame boss fights from Dark Souls 3.
"[blank boss] is just meant to be a challenge" also doesn't excuse this, since most of the time you aren't fighting the boss, you're just waiting for an opening. and not in a fluid way, it feels like you have to cheese every endgame boss by waiting for that one move you can punish reliably.
I found all of the late-game bosses to be 'good old 1v1 tough but fair endgame boss fights.'
@@anonymousperson8903 So much so that they forgot to make them fun.
@@anonymousperson8903 the only tough but fair boss in the endgame is Horoah Loux, you can reasonably memorize his moveset and asides from high aggression he has no unreactable attacks like Maliketh does, for example
@@jooot_6850 Personally I'd add phase 1 of the final boss to that list. Him and Horah Loux were both very fun fights that seem tailored to 1v1 melee without a summon. The rest of them are still 'fun' for other builds, but it seems like ER is a victim of its own success in that it gives you so many ways to play, that they can't design bosses that accommodate every playstyle. So rather than it being a focused experience, every build will have fights that seem impossible/trivial/boring/cheap and only a few that seem to chime perfectly with their playstyle.
I realized that we basically had Sekiro bosses but we were limited to a Souls style moveset when I saw a meme on the subreddit that asked "Who would win: Wolf or Malenia". I thought about it for a sec and came to the fairly obvious conclusion that it would be Wolf simply because he could just deflect and contact poison himself to victory... Somebody seems to have misunderstood that the design of the bosses needs to fit with what we're capable of as the player.
Her flowing dance move basically makes her Genichiro on steroids.
Lore wise I'd also say that it's unfitting for the central theme of the game being about us rising to the challenge of becoming Elden Lord but with no gameplay means to square up to these demigods in a show of determination and skill.
Spectacle wise Godfrey/Hoarah Loux is my favourite boss fight but the fact that I spend most of the second phase running away from him makes his congratulation of my victory in the end ring hollow.
If Wolf had defeated him with his combat capabilities it would've been much more fitting.
Well said. You nailed it. That's why this one pisses me off THAT much. And why I still think Sekiro is the real masterpiece.
Malenia fits Elden Ring much more than Demon of Hatred fits Sekiro.
Not necessarily true, Malenia is very doable m8.
I think she’d just heal off deflections. Wolf is an easy clap for her.
I know a lot of people loved Elden Ring, and I’m happy for them but I hated the game so much and I’ve enjoyed all of FromSoftware’s games since DS1. I just can’t get over the copy pasting of enemies, assets, and bosses. I hate the open world, and I ended up actually disliking exploring which I can’t believe even happened. The pacing feels so off for me, and I didn’t even enjoy the boss fights.
Hot take, but I prefer DS2 over Elden Ring.
“If you’re having fun, your playing the game right.”
Thank you
I feel like a lot of people forget that’s the main reason we game. To have fun.
@Kill Bill You can't play a game wrong, if you can't enjoy an rpg with the playstyle you want and actually in the game the best thing to do is just not support the franchise anymore. Great to see this meta cuck mentallity ruin another once amazing franchise.
@Kill Bill not exactly if the game _doesn't allow_ for him to enjoy it
@Kill Bill He said that line specifically when talking about combat. You can't make the bosses fun for him, as he cannot fight them the way he likes it
@Kill Bill learn how to read that's literally not what they're saying. When you're as good as you can be and the game still isn't fun because it's made in a specific way then it's not a skill issue.
that sounds right at first glance, but it doesnt make that much sense, does that mean that if you dont have fun with a game the game is bad? no, games are a combination of freedom and challenge, part of the fun comes from adapting to the games rules and then mastering them. Joseph basically learned how to play the other dark souls games and expected the same strats to work, so when they didnt he just deemed the game unfun
I agree with the movesets of the bosses being excessive. They aren't unconquerable, they aren't even totally difficult to dodge or outright avoid, but they are absolutely excessive.
Their windups are unclear at best, downright impossible to read at worse, and they often inflict unavoidable damage to you despite your best efforts in rolling and reading their acts.
A perfect analogy I have for this is that boss fights are more like a mugging then a proper duel in Elden Ring. Either the boss is mugging you, or you're mugging the boss.
The bosses be playing DMC5 while we have reverted back to Demon Souls. :P
I feel like, part of my issue was how little room it left me to operate. If I wanted to I could dodge all of their attacks, but what's the use in that if I'm not allowed to hit back once they're done? In the other games this would have been incredibly rewarding, in ER I feel forced to bargain for hits every time I play, which is not a good way to design bosses. The only way to be guaranteed attack windows is by summoning ashes or players in your aid, which is... stupid beyond belief.
I thought the windup's were designed like that intentionally so you can't just easily dodge roll away?
@@Mimelet read them? They’re challenging, not impossible.
@@Solaire_of_Astora13 then there's the new players that defend the shitty boss design by saying "well it was designed with summons in mind so just use that 🤓". As if being forced to use certain items or gang up on bosses that aren't equipped to deal with multiple adversaries is good boss design lol
When he said “lack of punishable attacks”…
I felt that.
It feels like you spend 95% of the battle dodging and 5% attacking with some of these bosses. In the souls games it was more like 50/50. I.e it felt like an actual fight and not a fucking dodging simulator.
@@JL-lu1ul That was my problem with most of the bosses, some attacks are physically impossible to dodge unless you position yourself perfectly or you run away to position yourself (Malenias waterflow attack, Radagons attacks), also the passiveness of some bossed like elden beast took away from the experience, I spent 80% of the time chasing after the boss rather than fighting it
@@JL-lu1ul Elden beast would’ve been cooler if it was a humanoid enemy with the same attacks, most large bosses you can’t even see the attack they’re throwing at you when you only see 10% of their body up close
@@simplyzed8966 There shouldn’t have been an Elden Beast. After defeating Radagon, Marika should have taken over and shown us why she was the ruling goddess. Very disappointed I had to instead fight a cowardly cosmic Nessie.
@@Sylentmana Agreed that would’ve been amazing, or even Miquella but that’s probably going to be DLC
Apparently joseph reads the comments here, so Hi : D
can't wait to dive into this once I've beaten the game. also so glad to see you back!
I didn't finished it yet but just finished the video. If you don't care about seeing the main bosses, I don't think there's something here to be spoiled. Still, good luck beating the game, don't give up!
So cool to see you here
I would love to see Joseph Anderson binge-play some MTG Arena games and see his thoughts, lol
@@malvonanaliseiv8629 tbh he explained how to beat the hardest attack in the game with strict strats, it's more than just seeing them.
@@reggieisnotadog4841 It's more than that, you need to be in a specific range, because she's faster than you, also near the end she does a dash catching everyone that tried to keep distance. This still might not be a lot, but I feel like this is more than any other attack in the game.
Always so fascinating seeing someone literally explain my exact feelings towards a video game far better then I ever could.
Same especially with the boss part, thought I was crazy
Yeah, my entire time in the endgame I was just thinkining ,, Am I going insane or are there piles upon piles of unavoidable moves, I know I'm way worse at the faster pace fromsoft games than I am at the slower ones like ds 1 and 2, but this doesn't feel fair" and turns out I wasn't alone.
@@shinysnivy6604 you’re absolutely not alone. Hell, I liked the quicker pacer combat of ds3 and Sekiro, but even then a good chunk Elden Ring’s bosses were really hard to keep up with
Elden Ring Bosses felt like their 'vulnerable' animations and 'attacking' animations were completely separate. And random. if i were unlucky, i would get attacking animation after animation without any vulnerable state. With some trys being almost a cakewalk while others felt insanely relentless.
From my experience bosses kinda of lack these long windows after combos (like DS3 has it) because the combat itself ISN'T like DS3 combat.
Elden Ring has a literal fuckton of boss attacks and animations that will punish players for being too passive, but reward them for being daring and rolling/moving towards the bosses, and most of those actions will give opportunities for dealing damage.
If a boss doesn't seem to have a "downtime" after a combo, then the combo itself is flawed and an opportunity for you do deal damage.
Is that immediately obvious? No. I also got quite frustrated with some bosses my first time around. But after defeating bosses like radagon and elden beast like 50+ times i genuinely got to appreciate them more, since it just took some time to actually understand their fights.
The thing that gets me are how attack anims are structured
In every game, once you start swinging, you're swinging. But enemies will literally step over themselves and hold that initial pose for weirdly long, turning what should be reactionary in to a question of explicit knowledge, and it's MADDENING
Like, fuck me I guess, I assumed a swing was, a swing, and not falling with style, so I deserve to get punished for that
Yeah the attack pattern RNG is so bad that it feels like the difference is as big as fighting O&S with sorcery vs fighting them with just a whip and no shield. You can walk through the same fog gate 10 times and get 5 Midirs, 3 Friedes, 1 Capra Demon, and 1 Covetous Demon. Which boss you get is just a dice roll when you walk through.
@@tsunamie1015 That happens when combat carries over almost 1 to 1, the boss patterns on Elden Ring are not meant to be fought with DS3's toolkit.
@@axelnova123 The boss patterns are perfectly fine, you just gotta stop approaching it as Dark Souls 4.
Start being more aggressive, roll into attacks and utilise the jump more (not to just do jump r2 attacks but as a tool to avoid attacks) and don't roll preemptively, instead waiting with the roll until the attack actually is being signalled by the boss and suddenly the combat feels a lot more smoother and actually works better.
Especially the last couple bosses have moves that actively punish players for rolling away and being too passive and as soon as you try to stick to them more and start being less passive they'll have a lot more openings.
Malenia and Margit both have moves that are far more punishing if the player is further away with followup attacks. Radagon has a bunch of roll catches that wouldn't leave a big window of opportunity if approached passively/defensivly, but if you roll into them it's both far easier to avoid any followup damage and to deal damage. Malenia has the quick triple slash that acts as a roll catch but if rolled into it you can easily avoid the 3rd slash. Most of if not all of Fire giants melee attacks can be avoided by just running towards him while on torrent (fighting him on torrent makes the fight pretty simple).
I can go on about boss behaviour and attacks, but yeah. Once you stop playing the game like Dark Souls 4 it becomes a lot more fluid and engaging to play.
Not only did they add the horse to the Elden Beast, almost every criticism he had for the base game is back for the DLC.
MIYAZAKI DOES IT AGAIN 10/10 FLAWLESS MASTERPIECE
@@MathewWithOne_TKojimer does it again.
Yeah it's almost like Fromsoft doesn't give a shit what Joe thinks...🤔
@@BBQcheese And yet they added Torrent to the Elden Beast fight. So either they do care, or they actualy forgot and just were too ashamed to fix it for 2 years and tried to sneak in with the dlc, which is way "worse" than caring about feedback if you ask me.
@@DM-Ozyou’re acting like Joe was the only one complaining about Elden beast lmao, it was a universal complaint.
Ain't no way he disappears 2/3rds through a series and comes back on an elden ring video and in 14 hours he's top 24 on gaming. Legendary
Well, you essentially dissected the feeling I had when fighting bosses in ER that I would struggle to articulate at the time of playing - a lot of bossfights make you feel like it's the boss playing the game and you're just standing there waiting to squeeze a punish and still being reluctant about getting hit by a followup or simply not landing it due to not being fast enough. Well done, good essay as usual, keep them going
"a lot of bossfights make you feel like it's the boss playing the game and you're just standing there waiting to squeeze a punish and still being reluctant about getting hit by a followup or simply not landing it due to not being fast enough. " emphasis on your first sentence. MAKE YOU FEEL. kill that feeling and go in there. 1st playthrough, you are probably going to die wither you swing or stand so start swinging.
you cant believe thr amount of guaranteed openings enemies and bosses have MID combo that you can even stagger them out of if u were aggressive enough(aka how the game actually wants you to play, hence the watered down posture system). so many bosses have such long wind ups u can smack them with a greatsword and dodge right after, so stop standing around. this game is a 2nd guesser. it constantly makes u second guess yourself. thats a deliberate design choice that makes the games combat far better than their previous games barring sekiro.
the games are evolving beyond the dull and tired back and forth boss designs of ds3 and below. in this game, u can attack bosses during their wind ups, alot of bosses have shit tracking with vertical attacks and can be strafed or jumped through + jump attack rather than dodge and poke like weve been doing for 10 years. dodge into the bosses with long combos while taking notice where u end up. alot of bosses keep comboing into the wind while i either heal up close or swing. i only killed margot after i learned all this. frankly i think alot of souls veterans are just salty about this game not operating exactly like dark souls. if it was up to the fanbase, we wouldve constantly gotten dull ds1 and bb clones up until now.
@@flamingmanure Obviously, if you learn the boss proberly you will find plenty of additional openings. I did the learning for the SL1 run and even knowing speedrunning/no-hit strats there's still a lot of downtime on certain fights. Good examples of those would be Maliketh/Morgott/Malenia but at the same time fights like Mogh/Godfrey/Radagon are more similar to traditional DS bosses and guess what - they are much more enjoyable to learn and grind as a result. Even after properly learning 'new' bosses I still struggle to like those fights, they just drag too much by making you Player 2 instead of Player 1.
Additionally, from what I saw, when asked about their favourite boss in ER majority of players generally name one from the second category, which should be a good indicator if you ask me.
@@sailor_selleru just wanna complain about anything
@@sailor_seller Mohg isn’t even like that wdym. Mohg has tons of delays
@@janterri3539 Not in second phase…
One more comment I'd add is how frustrating uneven terrain is on many of these bosses. For instance, when you're fighting a dragon, even a slight slope, all of a sudden you can't hit his face. God forbid the boss also has big rocks they can roll on (fire giant).
*Flashbacks to that Demi-Human Queen in the Volcano area*
they shouldve really lowered the dragons heads of centre of gravity or what have you. dragons are the only real gripe i have with this. easily the best game they made by far.
thank god someone mentioned it!
Sometimes slopes also interrupt boss move-sets. So if an enemy is finishing a 10-minute long combo and steps off a lip they'll enter an extremely short falling animation that pretty much makes them skip the recuperating animation and will allow them to transition into another chain. Effectively taking away your window
MHW slopes in a nutshell
I rushed here to say that in the new patch they added using horse in elden beast fight
It's insane that over two years later they decide to make such a huge change to the final bossfight of the game. But better late than never, huh?
@@Laytonmariothey probably just realised they had forgotten to include it
Playing Elden RIng makes me second guess the immense enjoyment I felt when playing Dark Souls 1 and 3. Those games' bosses definitely challenged me, yet I don't remember having to earn a degree in their combos just to land a single hit like in Elden Ring.
And what about Dark Souls 2?
@@arynasabalenka3173 We don't talk about Dark Souls 2.
@@arynasabalenka3173 my favourite fight in the entire series is the fume Knight in ds2. He was tough to learn but I still beat him in less than 10 tries. He is imo the toughest fight in DS2 (other than the cancer that is Lud and Zallen and maybe Ancient Dragon but this fights suck so whatever) and yet he feels like a breezy walk in the park compared to some of the late game bosses in Elden Ring. Finally beating him I felt a rush I've rarely felt in my life and yet finally beating maliketh and fire giant all I felt was a rush of relief like "holy Jesus thank Christ I don't have to do this again!"
@@souakadpadkid6685 Ds2 haters die mad
@@arynasabalenka3173 they were laughably easy
After rewatching all of his previous videos countless times over the past few years, it feels so good to see this pop up in my feed. Glad you’re back Joe!
This video perfectly nailed everything I ever wanted to say about this game. Thanks for coming back from the dead to make this.
2 years later, they added the horse now lol
Finally, he can unironically say that the game he is reviewing is like Dark Souls again
There's another problem with radagon's teleport, it can follow-up with two different attacks. One of them you need to roll immediately after dodging the teleport blast, while the other will hit you if you roll immediately after the dodging the teleport blast.
Not gonna lie, that was bullshit.
Thank you for pointing this out, I've had the exact same experience. One follow-up you have to be reactive against since it's a delay, another you have to proactively roll since it's too fast to react to. Yet another example of a fight in which victory seems to hinge on RNG.
Radagon and Elden Beast are terrible bosses. Not typical of Miyazaki to do that.
@@dynamicflashy Radagon is amazing, Elden Beast is trash
@@gustavomatos7338 it would have been amazing but since it's something you have to do fifty times to fight Elden Beast it becomes trash
@@17thknight I mean, it's frustrating that you to beat him over and over again to fight that blob, but overtime I managed to kill him fast and with a lot of flasks remaining. But they definetly should've been separate fights and Elden Beast should be reworked.
To double down on the ludicrousy of copy-pasting Astel, I actually found him in the ice cave FIRST. Imagine how lame it felt to finally finish the underground areas' puzzles after like 100 hours and finding a repeat boss.
Also, I was struggling against the erdtree spirit at the bottom of stormveil so I decided to take a break and do something else first, and I ended up going to the fringefolk heroes grave. After working through the absolute torment of my first chariot run, I found a HARDER VERSION of the SAME BOSS I was procrastinating. And since there was only a stake of marika and not a site of grace, leaving at that point would mean I would have to go through the whole dungeon again.
So did you beat the boss?
@@wuwei473 I ask the same.
Lmao that sounds like the 5th circle of hell
Aye, roflmfao, you mean lava chariot, don't you? I left that alone as soon as I saw it! haha😝😫😭
I also found the boss in the ice cave first. It was a terrifying and unique experience, until I realized there was another one.
I will cry real tears if Joseph ever makes a proper video on outer wilds, the best game of all time
W take
Glad some one noticed the extremely odd feeling of the combat of this game. Some times I'm blown away by how the hit boxes are so spot on, but have been killed many a times through walls or other "solid" objects because the enemies weapon is just so large it clips thru every thing. The game needs to make it that all weapons, enemies, abilities and magic respect the rules that the player is forced to. Nothing more jarring when an enemy is pushed by a cliff but some how just hover on the ledge so they don't fall. Also fuck crucible knights
the rule is: if you have a huge ass weapon and are tripple the size of the player your weapons can go through walls.
@@KaptainKerl bad excuse
@@CreativeUsernameEh nobody said it was an excuse
The player can also hit enemies through walls. Not sure what you're on about here.
And so can the player hover on the ledge. Hitbox will probably be smaller but still present to permit that to happen in such cases. Especially with some animation.
@@Alienoiable I literally did say it was a bad excuse so.
Also you're right, the same flaw can extend to players. It's stupid when my thrust animated as getting blocked on a wall but the damage goes through anyway.
You pretty much perfectly illustrated one of the only true gripes I have with this game; how boring it is to wait for the bosses to look cool for 20 seconds before trying to punish and then missing the punish because they instantly dodged away and/or decided to show off some more. A problem definitely because of Sekiro but not an issue in Sekiro due to how the combat works. Ive been trying to make this point for weeks but didn't know how to make it haha
you're given hundreds of options to deal damage while they are doing attacks. you have throwing knives, spells, incants, weapon arts, pots, perfumes, and even a good ol bow and arrow. The fact that you want to stand there and challenge yourself not to use the items GIVEN to you by the developers is on you. That's your choice. that's like deciding to never do any of the shinobi prosthetic moves, you can do that sure, but that's YOU deciding not to. and that doesn't make the games design worse for your failure to use the tools given to you.
@Hane24 yeah sure lemme just throw knives and pots at elden beast until he dies. Unpredictable combos and constant running away it totally fair in a game like this because we get throwing knives? wtf bro the fact that you want to play as sorcerer/ranged doent mean I do
@@mammy24 spells and incants are build specific and the rest are -limited -weak as fuck -prevent you from maintaining positioning so no, they aren't really options
@@mammy24 Joseph addresses this point in the video as well (starts at 1:25:28), that maybe the bosses are designed around using stuff like spells and spirit summons, but then the problem is that the bosses' AI aren't equipped to deal with some of these things and it just become boring.
@@mammy24 Except each of those attacks locks you into an animation and GOOD FUCKING LUCK to do that to somebody like malekith on phase two. He doesnt stop moving, he doesnt stop spamming attacks. HE JUST KEEPS BLOODY GOING.
I feel so validated that someone else is actually criticizing the "boss does 15 moves while I roll-dodge over and over and once they're done I have no stamina to attack". It was the most infuriating on Maliketh because after his insane Devil May Cry Bitchin' 10x in-air combo, he lands 50 feet away and is back to attacking by the time you reach him. So many late-game bosses just made me ask "is it my turn yet?"
Devil May Cry "Bitchin" 10x was freaking hilarious! I deadass laughed out loud. And I feel your pain. i said screw it and used my +10 mimic in phase 2 for that nonsense. Eff that. 😆🤣
Skill issue
Actually it’s really easy for maliketh to not have to roll if you u circle around the pillars
This is literally a problem that does not exist. You are making it up lmao. Maliketh has 0 health and massive windows in 2nd phase, especially when he does the standing swipe-overhead combo, where you can literally walk under him and attack for free because the 2nd attack will always miss. He's also a boss that rewards positioning, like with the explosions that he triggers. If you position behind him, he'll jump there after the explosion, giving you a massive window for some hits. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that boss, he's a glass cannon.
It's not the boss it's you get good
It took From 2 and a half years to make the horse playable for a boss fight in a big empty room. Truly the best video game developers of all-time.
I mean fromsoft made elden ring's hardest boss, maleina, resort to cheating to be hard. What did you expect? ID software levels of quality?
When the world needed him most, he came back
Cannot agree more!
unoriginal
When he said that this game made him felt like his play style was playing the game wrong, I lost it. I literally was explaining the same thing in almost the same exact words to a friend last night. Also I have realized that he and I have very similar play styles.
It’s interesting how this is the same in Sekiro, but in that game it is praised for forcing you to adapt and completely change playstyle. I’m not sure why this isn’t the case for Elden ring, especially for optional bosses like Malenia.
@@janterri3539 as I see it it's less about gear and/or numeric amount of things the player has to use. And a lot more about being able to use those things, however limited the amount of them is, in ways that the player finds fun. It's not inherently bad to force the player to use only a sword, in Sekiro's case, if you can use that sword in a variety of ways and with numerous paths you can take for weapon progression that allows for many different styles of play, and what's most important about those styles is that they are all viable. This is made especially true in Sekiro with the inclusion of the different prosthetic tools that each can allow for huge variations in the way the player can experience the game in a way they find enjoyable or fun. It doesn't force you to wait or huddle behind a shield because you just can't do anything else. If they want to make it so using a shield or waiting is an intended part of the experience, then they shouldn't give you options to use colossal weapons and try to only use the dodge and present them as viable when they realistically aren't in many cases. I still loved the game and definitely think it is deserving of praise, I think even He said it in this video, but I also thought that it gave me what I wanted from Breath of the Wild. However it'll never be as fun for me as Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne, or Sekiro for that matter because those games make playing it the way that I find enjoyable, viable. And do it by fleshing out their mechanics and options you have in a way that means all of the options presented will be equally viable, perhaps good and less good depending on the situation which I think is good and promotes experimentation and engagement with the games mechanics, yet nonetheless viable. Sorry for the novel response, I just really enjoy discussing games.
@@leonitus2298 I totally agree, sekiro still demands the player to adopt a more specific play style than other souls, but in doing so it provides all the tools needed to do so. Sekiro tells you in many ways through game design the general way you're supposed engage fights (the "intended way"): with a sword, deflections and trying any prosthetic tool you may have found.
Elden Ring is completely different, since the beginning of the game you start finding new and different weapons, but over the course of the fame you're only provided the materiald to max out a few of those weapons (if you explore and complete almost everything in the world, farming included, you get enough to max around 10-15 weapons). What the game is telling you with this is "you have many options, you can only try a few of them, but according to your play style everything will be viable in its own way". Then comes Malenia constantly smacking you in the face and healing herself because your build is too slow.
Anyways, despite the balancing issues the game is still great for many other things, I only hope they make a better combat sistem next time to suit the faster and stronger boss fights they're constantly making.
Yes, I like talking about games too 😁
@@janterri3539 Sekiro is praised because it has ONE but very polished combat style. All combat encounters are built around the deflect system and aggressive gameplay. ER gives you multiple options, but 80% of them are half-baked, unbalanced. When a game gives you this much option, it also has to make sure that these option are equally strong and viable to one another.
@@janterri3539 I think you've hit upon a good point. Elden Ring is very much like Sekiro in that it wants you to play a certain way to maximize your fun. Unlike Sekiro, it gives you quite a bit of freedom to decide on that way. There are a lot of powerful tools you can use: summons, magic, ashes of war. The game wants you to experiment with those and find powerful ones that work for you, and to also make use of the new mechanics like jumping attacks as a way to avoid sweeps. I think it largely works VERY well if you recognize how to play Elden Ring on it's own terms, and don't just try to play it like it's Dark Souls.
One simple nitpick I have is a small animation thing that FromSoft did at the start but then abandoned. Godrick's transition to 2nd phase is so cool because it's a transition from gameplay to cutscene (he starts cutting his arm and then continues in cutscene), but afterwards with every boss before the 2nd phase cutscene, the game just suddenly freezes the gameplay, a black screen suddenly pops, the cutscene happens and then the game positions you and the boss in new spots.
I didn't even really think about that but you raise a very good point. That way you don't get that feeling of "Is the boss dead or is a cutscene gonna play? Oh fade to black, that's too bad"
Really like the game, but as a DeS enjoyer, not been a fan of the boss designs post-Artorias DLC, there it worked because it was in contrast to the rest of the game, not the norm. It is bad enough every boss has multiple phases but, I do feel like the phase transition cutscenes are flat-out bullshit. They are such a cop-out. If you immerse yourself into these worlds and put yourself in the shoes of your character, do the designers seriously think we are just going to stand there doing nothing while a boss gets more and more powerful? Fuckin hell, I would whale my shit on the boss because that is my chance. But no, we gotta wait and see a minute-long cutscene of them getting powerful and gawk at it like we are the audience watching a Marvel movie. Besides, why are they all getting stronger the more health they lose? Not all of them are culprits, the big ones are contextualized really well (Godrick going through immense pain, Malenia and Morgott despising their curse, Godfrey restraining himself to not lose his cool), but nearly every goddamn boss - from draconic tree sentinel to godskins to crucible knights? Feels more like a formulaic crutch to me than anything.
@@arkayv I mean... That's how game mechanics work, my man. It wouldn't be a phase 2 to the fight if they started off in phase 2. That's why Crucible Knights only start using the Aspects at half HP, why Draconic Tree Sentinels start using lightning at half HP, why the Godskins become extremely fucking annoying enemies at half HP. They start in a weaker state so a new player can get used to their standard moveset, and then become stronger later in the fight with new moves for a player to learn. It's not a crutch, it's just good game design. Not everything needs to be justified by the story.
There's the other type of transition to second phase that bosses do, which is the one that is solely gameplay focused and doesn't involve a cutscene(Radahn meteor, Godskin noble floating, etc)
I mean...even in Godrick both you and the boss are repositioned.
The bosses look like they're having more fun than I am with their mobility and 10 hit combos.
This is an amazing way to describe Elden Ring.
You gotta be special in the head to be upset about the freaking demigod bosses having "more" moves than the base player (they dont and you have way more weapons and abilities combos available)
@@shadden_xwow you are either “special in the head” or a very literal person if you’re taking the comment at face value like that
@@shadden_x they didn't even say the bosses have more moves bruh
@@shadden_xif your idea of a "combo" is two light attacks before backing off I hope you never design a game
I felt an immense level of satisfaction during your critiques of the bosses, especially the late game bosses. I’ve had such a hard time putting my thoughts about the bosses in this game into words but I finally feel like something clicked and I have a solid understanding as to why I didn’t enjoy many of these encounters after watching this.
This
This is my first Fromsoft game and I felt downright vindicated. I thought this level of bullshit was just the standard way the games end
@@spinningninja2 Elden Ring seems like a lot of people’s entry point into the soulsborne franchise. I think the game is really accessible but unfortunately suffers from really poor endgame balance, in my opinion. The other games are for sure difficult but still felt reasonable.
@@JDPONFORTNITE NG+ in my case was finding everything ridiculously easy until getting past the flame giant. Then massive difficulty spike. I said 'f this' when I saw the red lightning dragons again. I had a great time with the game but I walked away more annoyed at the missed opportunities than anything else.
So true
A movie long review of Elden Ring? Count me in. I would never press the dislike button for such well articulated and entertaining commentary.
You know thinking about it, I’m surprised they didn’t bring over Sekiro parries for single swords or two handed swords as a sword art or something. They already have the stagger mechanic and they buffed everything else other than single swords
Sekiro actually started later in development than Elden Ring, hence the seemingly bare bones of Sekiro showing in this title.
@@UTOOOOOOOY sadness
@@UTOOOOOOOY They could’ve done this instead of adding more filler content.
Sekiro’s Combat System Was Bar None, THE BEST!!!
Getting Great At Deflects, And Timing Was The Greatest Addition I’ve Enjoyed Playing, In A FromSoft Title.
@@One_of_Many750 i gotta agree. if sekiro had rolling dodges, or better, if elden ring had parries, deflects, counters, and combo interrupts to use against enemy combos, thatd have been amazing
My biggest takeaway from this video is that you're able to switch between the above ground and underground map. I went up and down the lift to Siofra EVERY SINGLE TIME. I would then fast travel to where I needed to go once I reached the bottom/top.
That's rough brother 😂
I don't believe you 😂😂😂
I saw a negative Steam review in another language for this game, might have been Chinese. When translated it said "It only looks like the boss is having fun", which is pretty succinct. While the boss is doing these cuhrazy badass DMC-tier combos, you're still some regular chucklefuck rolling around on the ground. All this game has made me want to do is play Devil May Cry again.
Yes. Its very real.
Equip ashes of war
Having your L2 button be the “just borrow a boss’ combo” isn’t exactly the same as actually having the dynamic fluidity and movement that these bosses have, it looks flashy and cool but you then realise it’s just a single button for a flashy move that you have limited uses of and the rest of your kit is the usual dark souls kit which at this point in the series is both getting kinda stale and ineffective against these sekiro tier spammy enemies
@@rankestdweller4239 Not to mention you immediately get shot down by a single slap while casting/charging, while the bosses can just casually superarmor through your hits. The best example of this would be Fortissaxx's lightning spears
@@Flackon some bosses have such small attack windows that ashes of war become glorified normal attacks that don't compensate for the lack of options against them.
The more I've played this game, the more I think the boss overtuning is due to how absurdly powerful the player can get if they use all the tools available to them. I will admit as someone who is much more a fan of the more focused Bloodborne and Sekiro styles of balancing, I'm also not super happy with it (even if I do personally like the Malenia fight).
But once you use all these tools the game becomes too easy for the most
@@renanfranco4594 And when you _need_ all the tools just as a baseline to defeat a boss, then it also undermines the "easy mode" option those tools were otherwise meant to provide to less hardcore players.
@@galev3955 basically, yeah. If the game was made assuming that the player would always be using summons and ranged spells/ashes of war, the bosses having long high-damage combos with minimal counterattack windows makes more sense. And even then they're still pretty easy when using everything for the most part.
A lot of the absurdly powerful things are just flat out broken. I hope they manage to fix them over time.
@@elijahlevi6201 I mean yeah the game literally tells you to use them, but I just don't get the point when all its done is made the fights feel less cool to beat or made them extremely aids.
Thank you. I kept audibly saying “YES” while watching this video. Elden ring is an amazing game that deserves a lot of praise, but also has many flaws that a lot of people are refusing to acknowledge because they enjoy the other parts of the game so much. Hopefully in time people will appreciate this game for all its strengths AND flaws.
Everyone knows it has flaws but it’s a 10/10 game anyway
I know it has flaws, but they don't bother me that much, because of how I enjoy the game. A thing I love from Elden Ring is that people enjoy it or hate ir for totally different reasons lol
@@omensoffate It depends what is this 10/10 , is it 10/10 for you or unbias 10/10? Because being unbias it can't be 10/10 when it has so many big flaws that make the game not even enjoyable at certain points.
By comparison other from games flaws are very minor like having to farm for vials if you keep dying or no flaws at all like in ds3 or sekiro I can't think of any real issues outside of preferances.
@@Pohatarunic6I cant speak for Sekiro because I didnt enjoy it, but 3s biggest issue (from my experience) was that it wasnt a Dark Souls game. It was a Bloodborne game with Dark Souls' limited mobility. I always felt the game needed to be slowed a tad
We need more people to accept some things being said here, because that makes it more likely that they will be fixed
My main problem with this game is that I dread replaying it. I get excited once every twelve months to sink my teeth back into bloodborne or Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3. Once conquered these games can be enjoyed in bitesized portions, or if you’ve been replaying for a while like me, you can finish them in a couple of days. Elden Ring is just incredibly time consuming. And unfortunately a lot of that time is spent on a mixed bag of stuff that doesn’t quite work.
Cheats. How I did it was I chose myself 2 main weapons. One upgraded with normal smithing stones and the other with somber. I used cheats to keep all my other weapons at the same level I reached on my main weapons the legit way. I cheated to skip those boring low quality low effort caves and especially catacombs. I just gave myself whatever equipment was in them without going through that 30 minute chore of copy pasted content. This helps with increasing the variety on hand and reducing tedium.
What can't be helped is knowing where all the stuff is. It's so easy to become stupidly overpowered by just running around and picking up upgrade materials. Except for the last few bosses which are a massive difficulty spike unless you use mimic tear.
these games are best playing co op
I loved replaying Elden Ring almost as much as I did replaying Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 2 and 3 on the other hand, not so much
Yeah I dont think I can see myself ever doing a replay of this game
i have max characters in this game that i manually have to delete to replay… i feel like this game is my favorite to replay
I'm at the very end of my first playthrough (literally at the final boss) and I agree with almost every word. I've been playing these games since DS1, and Elden Ring's bosses just get exhausting. Beating Maliketh, Niall, Godfrey, etc. didn't give me the satisfaction of other games in the series. I would just get kinda pissed off and would think "fuck that boss" after beating them. Exploring the world was an incredible experience though.
Also Elden Beast just flat out isn't fun at all. Just a baffling experience.
This is me with malenia
@@Digitalstone elden beast is the worst final boss in the franchise
And the amount of unbalanced dual boss fights is insane. The twin gargoyles, two Crucible Knights, a Burial Watchdog with 5 or 6 of those super annoying and mobile goblins that bleed you every 2 seconds, two Cleanrot Knights, two/three Chrystallians, two Nox dudes, two pumpkin heads, ...
The game would have been better in every way with 50% less content and no bleed effect.
@@thesupreme8062 If you truly believe that Elden Beast is worse than True King Allant, Nashandra, or Aldia, then you're beyond help.
“Lack of punishable attacks” this was it. This nailed it on the head
Indeed, as someone who plays mostly Greatswords and Colossal Weapons, I felt like the game was just punishing me for choosing the wrong weapons. Though mimic tear on NG+ with power stanced Colossal Weapons is very cathartic lmao.
In Dark Souls 3, I can no-hit Champion Gundyr and Pontiff (which I think are the 2 most aggressive bosses of that game) with any greatsword and rolls only. Almost every of their attacks can be punished easily after you know all of them.
In Elden Ring however, even with straight sword, I still don't know how to manage doing that consistently with fucking Margit. Yes, I have seen a lot of video about people no-hit him at SL1 naked with a stick, but I know for the fact that they only can attack him when he does some specific certain attack or they just use parry. The only time I think I can hit him safely is when he raises his hand and does a long wind-up attack, go behind him and smack, and then wait to see if he whips his tail to roll.
"Just use spirit ash and summons lol".
I guess my first playthrough of Elden Ring is exactly like Joseph describes at 48:27. I know I can use them, but why? To me, they make every boss attacks become "punishable attacks", which kinda cheats the boss to me.
@@hoangphuc7941 I've done a RL1 playthrough. Margit is actually pretty straightforward to deal with imo
@@gdn5001 A majority of people seem to not have this experience, including people who enjoy previous souls games.
@@clixx13 If you've played previous souls games you really shouldn't have TOO hard a time with Margit specifically. I do think that there are problems with the design late game but Margit specifically is fine.
Thank you for bringing attention to the Royal revenant. I don't know what they were smoking when they made that enemy, it's so poorly designed.
@@moonraven6145 True, I can see where they were coming from (a mini-boss type enemy who is more of a puzzle/detective work than a fair fight), but the execution is hit or miss IMO - I get that healing destroys them and it is interesting lore-wise, but attuning a heal spell and having a seal + requirements for them just for a single enemy that you never know when you will encounter is poor execution. The final straw for me was when I encountered the revenants in the Lunar Estate Ruins where they literally teleport on top of you while on horseback and just instantly destroy you.
Literally just get good damage
You can kill him with the heal spell, allowing you to skip the nonsense that is the actual fight. lol.
@@codysellers4151 But the heal spell has to be channeled for some time while the revenant can teleport and start attacks in a split second. It's kind of a dice roll even with heal. And I think anyone who has met the revenants in Elphael knows what a problem they can be.
@@SaHaRaSquad that’s why you must try to do it as they are spawning if possible. Having Radagon’s icon will help.
I’m by no means defending the royal revenants though. They are imo among the worst enemies you can find in a souls game. Frustrating to fight, and it always feels cheap when they kill you with their spammy nonsense.
I took note of your praise for Outer Wilds when watching this years ago. Hearing it compared to Ds1 in that you wished you could forget everything and experience it again for the first time was perhaps the best praise possible, and all I needed to hear. Took me years to finally get around to it, and now I feel a profound need to return and thank you
❤❤❤❤ literally one of the best games ever made in a conceptual level.
“I finally finished Noah’s 5-hour Dark Souls essay, now I can go outside”
How naive I was.
I was just about to start that one before seeing this 😂
Was going to say the same thing lol!
Noah's essay is indeed a masterpiece to behold.
Lol.
Agreed with all the above statements. That 5 hour video was really enjoyable.
Happy to see someone with an audience talk about the issues with Moonveil and boss patterns.
It’s become a series where you anticipate the boss’ attacks rather than reacting to them.
No joke. This is the first From game where I feel like my deaths are because of cheap boss tricks and sucker punches rather than because I need to learn/improve on something in some way. It's just memorizing attack combos and their tells, and reacting perfectly, or over-leveling and coming back. I think Dark Souls 3 bordered this a bit (the Dancer fight and a few others were more about learning patterns than boss quirks/personalities).
I'll admit that this game facilitates going out and leveling up better than any Souls game (it's less about farming and more about exploring), but I still just hate the mentality of "git gud" being one part memorizing attacks and one part farming levels, rather than paying attention to boss quirks and their environments.
But all this is from the perspective of someone who plays weapon only builds (i.e. no shields, only dodging and attacking, and I also rely on summons/ashes). I think other builds just dont have my specific problems with the game, so I can't definitively say "game bad" or anything, just express my frustration with it. My playstyle seems specifically targeted by the game balance and I can't enjoy it much because of that. Sorry for the lengthy reply, just had to get this out somewhere the environment was right, since a lot of places have the "git gud" mentality on this game still.
@@Caboose2711
I beat the game with the exact same play style, the only time it got noticeably “harder” was the mountaintop.
@@purvdragon-sensei thanks for being the “git gud” mentality that is exactly what is killing with any honest review of this game from the perspective of its audience.
@@hollowhorizon7196
I don’t know what to tell you, most of the complaints brought up come from people who don’t make the effort to understand the mechanics or just textbook burn out.
Take Mountaintops for example, people are complaining they’re taking too much damage, it’s an endgame area, what do you expect, the game gives you enough tools to mitigate damage and most of the enemies are ones you’ve already seen before, so you already know how they move and how to deal with them appropriately. Did you grind out your levels? You probably shouldn’t have, while your gaining levels, you’re not learning the necessary motor skills that will prep you for the end game, it’s not just an RPG, Malenia is proof of that. Burn out? Put the game down for a couple days, that’s what I did when I hit Zamor Ruins, I couldn’t comfortably defeat the first enemy you see in it so I put some thought into my load out and cleaned up my stats and what do you know it works wonders, I make it all the way down to Elphael and the kin of rot little shits started slapping me, and I did the same thing, I adapted to the situation again and again with Malenia.
If you’re gonna be “honest” about issues, you’d talk about fundamentals and how the formula is starting to show its age, all this whining about enemies scaling to your level or nerfing bosses just ruins the game.
BRUH there are once again infinite amazing quotes in this video, here are some of my faves:
"You can also blissfully loot things while on horseback, and I hope whoever pushed for that at FROM gets a statue in the Lobby.
Of themselves.
On horseback.
Picking up their crown."
"That's why she's called Malenia, because it takes a Milennia to be able to safely hit her"
"From a gameplay perspective, I like that Steve can do this ~because I'm clearly biased for Sekiro~ because it's a dynamic way of mixing moves and responses"
Perhaps the most important one:
"The world of Elden Ring is stunning. The journey I had through it was amazing. The dungeon design is a work of genius, and the combat that filled it as it came near the end bored me to tears even if the visual feast continued."
Reminds me of the mod in Skyrim from like 2014 that let you auto loot items in a radius around you from foot or horseback (configurable to even the kind of items that get picked up)
It’s such a simple idea that doesn’t get implemented for some reason in other similar games
For me most memorable quote in this video came someone near the beginning 7:00 with Joe
calling the map of Elden RIng a grower compared to a shower XD.
Absolute torrent of Torrent being usable in the final boss room now comments, you love to see it.
Yeah but it trivializes the boss. Elden beast was an easy boss and a fun gimmick fight torrent trivializes its attacks
@@leslas5747 Thank fucking god. Just because it was easy doesn't mean that it wasn't annoying as shit. I'd rather have Radagon be the real challenge. Elden Beast can suck a fat cock.
@@leslas5747No.Just no. Having to waste, (yes, waste) your stamina just to get in range of even your ranged attacks, and having to dodge a tracking holy nuke, is TEDIOUS.
@@rogalcorn734 you don’t waste your stamina it’s a gimmick boss with torrent it’s trivialized. Imagine fighting. It was essentially the dragon god boss from demons souls revamped like how they kept revamping the storm ruler fight. You’re supposed to dodge the obstacles like rings and projectiles until you reach him
I enjoyed this thorough discussion and critique of elements in this game nobody seems to be talking about or aware about, and seems to me, doing a good job of advancing the discourse around this game which was starting to stagnate. Overall this video should be shown to a lot of people stuck in the OP/cheese discussion
You mean the main discourse which distills down to “Elden Ring is the best game of the year, maybe the decade”.
The end.
if you do look at the few negative steam review there are a lot of the top ones do and have shared a lot of the sentiments he talks about here
Omg when you listed your 5 gripes it blew my mind. These are all exactly the same issues I've had with the game, and I've felt like a crazy person because everyone else online was blindly praising the game and mentioning no flaws. I am not alone.
If a game gets overhyped to a level like this then people will hail it the second coming of Christ when it turns out to not be a huge disappointment.
SAME, BROTHER!
@@eugenekrabs6400 having flaws =\= huge disappointment
Well, you have to consider that a lot of people are still playing the game. Listening someone talk badly about a piece of media you're still enjoying makes that experience worse.
I had nearly identical issues with the game as Joe had, but I still had my fun with it. No reason to try to sap other's enjoyment of it.
this is a great game but don't ever pay attention to anyone calling it a 10/10 flawless masterpiece cause they're either blindly praising or have not played previous fromsoft games and don't know that it's been done better before.
the way I see it, is that by trying again and again you get good and eventually you kill the boss. So your win is inevitable but there is a sweetspot during this process that the game stops being fun. ER sadly came to the point of not being fun with some of its late bosses.
Which bosses?
To me it’s more insidious than that. I want to have the back and forth, punish/learn/focus/timing/memory/move-intuition/spacing war of wits with the boss. All the other from soft games encourage this. It is peak soulslike for me. But Elden ring instead feels balanced around the player having loads of absurd things they can do, particularly at range. Summons and spells, huge leaps, bloodhound slides, big staggers, physiks, rot breath. To balance around these overpowered player options (overpowered compared to dodging/blocking and hitting) they’ve created bosses that push you away and have giant AOEs, and mini-stuns, and mad combos, and one-shot-from-full-health potential. This in turn means the player has to use those overpowered things, because their existence makes you a fool for not using them. Why duel to the death when you could just overlevel and come back later? Why duel to the death when you can just summon a mimic, retreat and throw lightning for 5 minutes? The answer is those techniques aren’t fun. But they’re now required. Bummer.
@@Jaebird2 Joseph speaks to my soul with his choice of bosses in his critique. Malenia is essentially a fight where if I don't want to take damage, and in her case she heals if I don't correctly respond to her attack, is a boss that force me to be completely reactive instead of proactive once she gets her water dance move. If I have to always have that move in mind it turns into a waiting game where I get very little out of the fight.
It the first boss in all of the series I've actually given up fighting "normally" and cheesed it with a summoning mimic, cause I didn't have the patience to go through her first phase. Which resulted in me never learning how to deal with phase 2 at all.
Maliketh is case where I found his first phase to be harder, cause he actually only has one single opening after a certain move as far as I experienced the boss, and I had to use shield to make the first phase bareable.
@@ThePedram009 I know everyone has different experiences with this game but I loved I mean loved get my booty blasted by melania and maliketh I beat in like 2 tries with minimal sweat I’m not saying that to brag I’m just saying it’s a subjective topic with bosses. Some people beat Malenia solo with no armor cuz they know how too
@@Jaebird2 Feel free to link me any no hit kills with heavy weapons on this boss. Cause that was my build and I didnt know what to do with that fight
You must feel so vindicated after the update today lol
Best day in a while. :D
@@JosephAndersonChannel Came here looking for this comment lmfao
@@JosephAndersonChannel greetigns Joseph Anderson
@@JosephAndersonChannellmaooooo
@@JosephAndersonChannel Joe! You're alive!
I actually love the more "off script" nature of this one, and would love to have more of this tome come through in future videos
Joseph's reviews are so clean. The severity with which he had problems with the game is not something I experienced, and can't relate to, and despite that, I so clearly understand where he's coming from and can't even disagree with things I find unrelatable because of how well he lays everything out. This man knows his opinion, and knows WHY he has it.
For me it felt like a breath of fresh air because I feel the exact way he does but nearly everything I see is praising the game as if it has no fault or acting like satan himself designed the game. It was nice to finally see something that acknowledges it’s a great game but has many flaws. I’m glad you didn’t have as many problems with it as I wish I didn’t but everyone will have a different experience
Exactly. I don't agree with his opinions, and some of the things he despised I really enjoyed, but I can't call him wrong. He explains WHY he feels the way he does about things so thoroughly
Fr. I disagree with the boss part. I loved them. Godfrey is in my top 10 souls bosses and I even adored elden beast and malenia. But I completely agree that malenia's flurry and elden beast's magic ball thing attack are bad. They just didn't ruined the fights for me.
@@shrouls Malenias flurry is not bad. That's a trash take. There's a multitude of ways to deal with it, including just knowing how to dodge it properly.
@@Gankstomper nonsense. If I am close to her and she starts doing it, I'm dead. If she had a longer wind-up for me to run then that's another story but it's just a poorly designed attack. One of the worst in the whole series in fact. I love malenia bc of her other attacks which are good and balanced
I think it's important to say that Sekiro was made by one of two teams at from software. It was made while the other team was making Elden Ring. Miyazaki said that not much was brought from Sekiro to Elden Ring, and I think that's because of the simultaneous development. Can't wait for the team that made Sekiro to make another game. Hopefully Sekiro 2. A man can dream.
God I need sekiro 2 so badly
I need the sekiro team to make a Bloodborne
This...
There are a couple bosses in Elden Ring that are 100% sekiro inspired.
@@TheKillaShow I want malenia in sekiro, that’d be soooooo fun
They actually added the horse to the final boss. Madlad joseph
Edit : This comment was featured in his new video. I feel so validated lol
This is a 2 year old video.
@@HongryMan what
I just tried it and you die if you stay on the horse. The beast does some combo's that you have to be dismounted for, so gg I guess.
@@NiekVL the horse is designed for mounting and dismounting during combat. Bind it to a D-pad pouch slot for quick access.
You perfectly encapsulated my feelings with this game. Elden Ring may be the best game I never want to play again.
Perfectly encapsulated
very nicely said
I hoped it would have the insane replay value of DS2, but sadly with my first no death run i think iam already done with the game.
never want to play again? I'm on my 5th playthrough and I can't even get out of it.
@@henriklarssen1331 I replayed DS3 and Sekiro a shit ton of times but was finished with DS2 and had to physically force myself to play the DLC that I bought. Replay value is subjective. Sekiro had little build variety, but enjoyable core gameplay and eye candy. DS2 had shit tons of build variety, but the core gameplay felt kind of shitty and the game looked like ass. I played Sekiro more, because replayability is based on what you like most about a game.
Just a small correction for Malenia; Waterfowl Dance does not have a cooldown, it's pure chance, though lower than her other attacks. Ive had her use it back to back 4 times once.
@Indiedev probably worse, now it's not boring and unfair, it's unfair and unpredictable
I've has her do it 3 times in a row after only using 1 one light attack or dodge un between. A truly garbage boss fight.
He never said it had a cool-down he said it would at least be more predictable if she did
@@benlambe3168 let explain, I think what OP meant with cooldown is "she has to wait at least 20 seconds to do it again, after that she can do it whenever". But the thing is people here are saying that if you get very unlucky she can do it many times with little to no gaps in between, so she doesn't even have to wait for a while before doing it again.
Basically this means we're better off learning to dodge that bulls**t with bloodhound step (it's much more manageable believe me)
@@gianmariaforte2433 Ah fair
I feel so validated
I love elden ring but a lot of it really became a chore at some point towards the end
I feel the opposite. It really got smooth by the end, but all the early stuff was a lot.
@@are3287 I don't wanna assume so I'll ask, did you use a melee or magic build,and what summon did u use if any..... Asking because I'm curious for the vastly different experience
@@ibadrizvi5740 I use a melee build, it's a pain to fight sometimes
@@tvgaming2132 That was the biggest sin from this game for me after playing dark souls 3 before this...it becomes tedious to win rather than difficult. Still like the game though, even if I only completed it once
@@ibadrizvi5740 really elden ring was my first souls game so I can't really say how bad melee builds are but I didn't have a good time with godrick and omen
THEY ENABLED TORRENT IN THE ELDEN BEAST FIGHT LMAO