Can Radahn Become S-Tier???
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- After no-hitting Radahn, I have some thoughts about what impedes him from becoming and excellent boss. There is much to recommend him, but some serious demerits as well, and I outline these in this video.
#eldenring #shadowoftheerdtree #gaming #gaminganalysis
Your expansive and vivid vocabulary really emphasises any obscenity if it does occur. “The fucking triple slash” was like a jumpscare in word form, it really took me off guard
3:00 that's the sound of the police coming to arrest you for daring to suggest he's even above F tier
Sirens at 3:11 freaked me tf out because I was listening to this while driving.
Glad more people are taking about the terrain. Its a small thing but sooooo fucking grating 😬
yeah the drawbacks of living in a city, there's always some volume issue. I was hoping it wouldn't come thru, but unfortunately it did.
i had sirens outside as i got to this part of the video, did a rewind so i could hear it properly, and then got jumpscared by them also being in the video
- Listen, General. If you want to become one of the best, you need to get rid of *these*.
- You just gestured to all of me.
- *Nods in silence*
If you can do this boss hitless then you can probably no hit every other video game boss ever. Also, don’t you hate it how ER and other Soulsbornes don’t let you refight bosses?
Thankfully mods for PC are easy to install, even though that won't work for consoles. God bless Sekiro though, that games allows you to replay bosses
I HATE IT WITH ALL MY HEART AN SOUL. Sekiro is so fuckin goated for reflections of strength. 0 CLUE WHY THEY MADE IT THEN DIDNT KEEP IT IN THE SERIES MOVING FORWARD ITS SO ANNOYING😭 I’ve explored PLENTY I wanna fight the boss man.
@@austinmc12sekiro is such a dense game aswell, really, it doesn’t need boss refights whereas a very long game like elden ring has so much empty space once you’ve seen it all, and the appropriate answer would be to let people skip it with instant boss refights but no
souls 'veterans' thinking that their games are the pinnacle of difficulty is simultaneously the funniest and the cringiest thing. My brothers in christ....there are games so much more demanding than the souls games. These games give you so many tools to obliterate every single boss.
Although, having a boss rush mode like in Sekiro is severely missed in Elden ring.
Ye technically some arcade games are significantly harder than aby souls. Like "I wanna be the boshy"
. But that's a different type of game tbf@@Butwhy23
I think my biggest gripe with radahn is exemplified in this gameplay. Radahn does such cool attacks with amazing animations, the music is by far one of fromsofts best and has the hype to an all time high, and after dodging a lot of attacks, an impaling thrust is not only all most people can do, but it’s probably the best option to put in at the bare minimum a respectable amount of damage. You can sometimes throw a light attack or two in there but that’s it, that’s the whole fight. I just wish there was more of a give and take with Radahn like how with Mohg there’s a lot of opportunites to throw some licks in while mohg could do the same if you’re not too careful. Now that we’ve had time to figure out Radahn, it feels like everybody who is fighting him with melee fights him in the exact same way unless your purposely doing a challenge run or going out of your way to fight him differently.
Radahn also becomes much more annoying when you compare him to Messmer, whom is very aggressive, but he also has a lot of moves that you can jump and many windows to attack him between his combos, which are always consistent, creating a much more dynamic fight where you can use pretty much all of your tools and mix them as you want.
@@warcoder Exaaaactly, its not even that Radahn is like a garbage fight or anything, it’s just that most of the other bosses in the DLC and even Elden Ring’s base game alone have a lot more of a dynamic fight rather than the straight answers you have to use against Radahn
Great video, I would add a few further points that might not be as obvious without datamining him or having fought him for dozens upon dozens of hours
1. His poise starts recovering after 6 seconds, this makes no sense because he has 120 poise, so going by the games normal rule it should start to recover after 9 seconds. AFAIK this is the only boss who breaks this rule, normally poise recovery timer should be tied to max Poise. Each 40 poise increases that timer by 3 seconds. This needs to be fixed ASAP because with the amount of stalling attacks that leave him not vulnerable to damage, breaking his stance is ultimately only up to RNG and not player skill. One Meteor into clones in phase 2 and his poise is already reset.
2. This brings me to my second point: The rocksling / meteor attack followed up by four clones and a ground eruption (phase 2 only) is not consistently dodgable from all positions in the arena without the use of Bloodhounds step and talisman. If you or Radahn are backed against a wall while he does this attack, you will get hit by one of the clones since you cant bring enough space between you and the clones that require you to outspace them. This needs a fix as well.
3. Radahn's AI queues up attacks for way too long. What I mean by this is that he will queue an attack because he reads your current position (usually long or mid distance) , then does a long animation attack, sometimes followed by a gapcloser, while still having the attack queued up and he will now release said attack, even if you are close range. This is mostly referring to ranged attacks such as the Lions Claw, Gravity Drill, Radagons Rings of Light and the Miquellas Disc. Have you ever had it happen he did one of those attacks while youre hugging his model, even though 99% of the time he will only do them from mid to long distance? That is exactly what I mean by him queueing attacks up way too long.
Practically this happens most of the time when Miquella casts Miquellas Light. That animation is long but he can queue up ranged attacks for longer than that. Sometimes its so bad that he will first do a gap closer and only THEN release said queued up ranged attack. You can learn this sure but it happens rarely enough that its EXTREMLY hard to react to correctly without using cheat engine to repeat the action for practice, especially the Lions Claw has a very early hitbox.
Cheers
Number 2 is soooo true and I have encountered it a billion times lol. Very frustrating.
Yeah with number 3, the lions claw specifically i feel needs to be dealt with in a patch, the initial slam that sends him upwards happens so fast and so rarely at close range, i feel its borderline unreactable. Not to mention the damage being super high for whats essentially the windup to the actual move (but the dmg isnt something that NEEDS to be fixed since the real issue is with the attack pattern / telegraphing)
Dual swords (or dual hits) is a tricky thing to telegraph in any boss fight. In my view there are two ways to solve the issue. Gael, Dancer and base Radahn solve the problem by, when they use two swords at the same time with slightly different timings, making you use one roll to evade both slashes, while bosses like Maria, Butterfly, Pontiff and Isshin allow you to roll/deflect through each attack individually. The issue comes when both of those options are unavailable, when you can’t dodge both slashes with the same roll AND can’t spend one evasion opportunity per roll. Then the player is left with no options other than to use gimmicks or extremely niche and unintuitive positioning options.
Also the third option which would be to make one of the multiple attacks miss with positioning (like rellana's diving flurry into jumpable horizontal slash, which requires both sprinting away and dodging twice, or romina's "undodgable" three-hit centipede and halberd combo, which requires you to be sprinting toward her and then rolling inward once or sprinting back and to the left while rolling once). Sadly this option also doesn't work for Radahn unless you have lightroll or uneven terrain.
Gonna make another comment as a response after I watch the video, but here are my full two cents.
In order to make Radahn a S-Tier boss fight, he has to be an insanely good Elden Ring boss fight, and we have to ask "What does make an Elden Ring boss fight great?"
Well, for me a good Elden Ring boss fight is one who feels like an actual duel, that respond properly to what you do, that incentivices experimentation without forcing it, (aka offer freedom) while being interesting enough to keep out of your seat while feeling fair and challenging between Elden Ring duels. Im gonna base on Morgott, Rellana, and Messmer for this.
Well, the first thing I want to is to rework the frametrap. In order to do that, I won´t remove it, but what I do is to slighty nerf the damage and make the two slash come much faster, in order to be consistenly avoided on one only roll.
The second thing I would do , is to make at least 2 of the combo slashes from the combo attacks come diagonally while cleaning the hitboxes. Why? So this will incentivice a lot of experimentation and skilled player could see this as a potential window. I would make so fast attack a bit delayed so Collosal weapon users would have always a consistent attack at least of the end of 80% attacks.
Third, is to add distance based follow up instead of the two RNG based he has, so player will have to keep attention on where they are going because Radahn could screw them up just like Morgott does. He would also have one of two very delayed attacks.
Fourth is to remove all the garbage the arena has, and move it to the borders, so players will have a consintent avoid always that they are skilled enough.
And last is that the second phase is to add a minor rework to the second phase, mainly add more attacks that difficulty wise are medium between Radahn grab, and the meteor attack, mainly he will stomp on a great area so you have to jump and then come into you.
This is based on what I love about Elden Ring so much. If you have any proposal or disagree with something, feel free to comment.
Well, thats all, lets see what you propose, man!
I agree, i would also give miquella a haircut ( it is VERY difficult to try and see what move he is gonna hit you with if you get in his back in phase 2)
I finally killed radhan sl1 and god, let me tell you how rng this boss is.
Sometimes you'll get hit while doing exactly what your supposed to do cause a random lightbeam hit you because the boss tracking was a little bit ackward.
Or for example if he does his meteor projectile while your against a wall you're F U C K E D.
His furry combo sometimes hit me with a random projectiles cause the tracking was a little bit different.
And of course you have no idea when or how many 3 attack combo he will do.
This boss can do almost every attack at any range and I hate it.
And also you have to react extremly quickly to certain attack, forcing you to always be ready to react quickly.
To conclude I "liked" the boss the first time I fought it but I HATED it when I did it sl1.
And I forgot about the shitty double sword slam where it goes directly through your Iframes ...
I'm glad we can all agree that fucking triple slash is bullshit. The parry timing on it is to guess that it might be coming based on the moves it normally follows. No I'm not joking. It's nonsense.
The triple slash confuses me so much in part because this very boss has two similar two-part slashes that are also lighting quick, but absolutely dodgeable every time. His left arm horizontal inward slash, with an outward slash follow-up, and his twin spin move honestly seem like they should be *harder* to dodge than they are, since they feel like each dodge done successfully was on a knife's edge. This move archetype is not one you'd expect to be so bs, so why the triple slash?
it's such a mess of a move it blows my mind they put it in
Well everyone, looks like our prayers have been answered, since FromSoft just released a balance patch that fixes the triple slash! Out of curiosity have you fought him with this change and what are your thoughts on the boss now?
Nice video, I think this is the first critique I’ve seen that doesn’t just write the whole fight off as being too hard or unfair. In my experience I still enjoyed having to strafe constantly to dodge the triple slash, it reminded me of how you have to be hyper aware of your positioning against Malenia to dodge her waterfowl from close range.
3:08 the ambulance Asmr in the background was hilarious 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Absolutely 100% agree with every point you make after just defeating Radahn a second time with a weaker weapon and lower Scadutree level. All of these issues showed more and more the longer the fight went on. Fantastic video.
There is a chasm between (prime) Radahn who stood with his arms crossed, granting Malenia time to reattach her prosthetic arm, and Promised Consort who fights with Mohg’s unhinged fervor. And Miquella’s hanging on to Radhan’s back mimics that of Serosh, perhaps further deluding Radahn into fancying himself another Godfrey. There are some fine details and potential to this fight if FromSoft had only taken time to refine it and practiced some restraint in its execution: Oppressive movesets could have been mitigated with elemental weaknesses; powerful swings could have taxed him with recovery time; he himself could be blinded by Miquella’s hair and have limited peripheral vision, requiring him to turn around for a second to locate us before he starts swinging again.
And as many have said, the terrain could have been flat, negating the need for oversized hit-boxes.
7:17 truest shit I’ve ever heard
Subjectively speaking, despite any flaws I think he has, he’s still one of my favourite bosses of all time. Personally, I wanted the DLC to create a boss that really pushed the limits, and the fact that they incorporated that into (essentially what is) the final boss of Elden Ring makes me even happier.
But god damn Fromsoft, triple-slash is the most egregious thing you’ve ever made. I heard it was even nerfed pre-launch, and people with review copies had to deal with a triple-slash that STUNLOCKED you. Holy hell.
Anyone who offline mode went through the same struggle 😂 it was torture bro but when I finally beat it the feeling was unmatched
My biggest issue with Radahn is one I haven't seen touched on a lot - how absolutely lifeless he is. Every other boss in the game show some kind of personality or humanity with their moveset, they usually have a move that creates distance or gets you off them, and their attacks mimic certain traits of theirs - the weird floatiness of Midra, the pure rage of Bayle's slams, the serpentine movements of Messmer.
But not Radahn. He's a stoic titan that swings hard and fast and does big damage and he takes little damage. He doesn't talk, he doesn't care about anything, the tag-team doesn't show teamwork like the Twin Princes' fight (which did the holy-twink-on-back idea infinitely better) and instead just shows that Miquella can shoot magic
When Radahn had his entire personality and being stripped away over a thousand years by the Scarlet rot, he still showed personality in his fight because of the inclusion of his horse. He might not have a brain left to think with, but he has a heart that cares for his steed. This Radahn doesn't have that, he lacks both brain and heart as he's no different from a robot
100% agree. And I’ll add that being charmed my Miquella doesn’t excuse this poor design choice.
I'm not sure how they would have done this from a design perspective, but almost using him to better convey the nature of Miquella's Age of Compassion would have added a lot more of an interesting aspect to his design as opposed to "prime Radahn go brrr hahah," even if it added less personality. Wish they had had the courage to go more into the visual/thematic horror of what mind control entails. Also the fact that Mohg is just "a few horns and 1 blood flame attack" is pretty lame.
Him having no dialogue doesn't help either.
Another great point. Base game Radahn has so much personality. It was impossible to improve on that, but at least an attempt could've been made to give Consort Radahn some personality.
I genuinely believe that if it weren’t for the triple slash all his other flaws probably would’ve gone nearly unnoticed by 99% of people much like other bosses with questionable things like Lady Maria. I really love the fight definitely a favorite im ER but damn that one move in particular. I think bringing the issues with the move up to bandi namco/from would honestly be a worthwhile endeavor even if to get the truly awesome final battle that will be enjoyable to more of the casual players who will play through the game only a couple times or even only once
I sincerely agree with your points in this video although i do want to say that i think the triple cross slash is way less of an issue in a normal playthrough as opposed to a no-hit run. Since you usually get hit by only one of the three attacks, it does not do much damage, but just enough to scare you into fighting him while low on health. I feel like its a way to essentially force you into healing everytime you get hit by something and therefore prolonging the fight, making it more intense as it goes on. Still, its definitely a bullshit move though.
The biggest problem for me though is how it is virtually impossible to break his posture due to how quick it regenerates. I even tried using Briar's armor set to keep up the poise damage the first time I fought him, but to no avail. It doesn't bother me now, once i learned his moveset properly, but i do feel like its kind of a cheap way to make him more difficult.
Regardless, i really like this boss as a whole and he is definitely one of my favorite fights in this game.
I think I considered him B-tier. He is a mixed bag of awful and amazing gameplay.
Another thing worth mentioning is the boss's missed potential, like having NO dialogue for Radahn, and only having 1 bloodflame attack.
What's hilarious is, as someone who entered the series with Bloodborne and DS3, my instincts to hug the enemy and rotate left kicked in, negating this attack by complete accident. I had no idea the cross slash was so overtuned and warping, and yet i STILL had an awful time with him.
Backstep is actually a very viable strategy against his triple slash. Yes you have to be standing still but this works really well because you don't have to constantly be repositioning to his knee and can use that time to instead punish him. The time inbetween punishing and you having to input is just enough for you to remember to not hold any directional input which will prepare you for when the slash comes. This does become alot harder in phase 2 though because it requires more precision since the light beams are quick enough to interrupt the backstep and thus cause damage
From my experience, the moment i noticed the boss was more tedious to do in coop than solo, I was disappointed :/
For a casual first playthrough of the DLC, where I did my best to do every quests and meet all npcs, and after an amazing team fight with Ansback and Thiollier against Leda and all the characters I met during my journey, It was very underwhelming to see that Thiollier and Ansback weren't balanced with the final boss...and would just ad him so much more HPs and die pretty quickly (Miquella's rune doesn't work on them)...
And the feeling even continued when i wanted to do jolly co-op with other players as well. Radhan is so unbalanced in co-op i wondered how it was possible and if he was even playtested in co-op:
-His first spin attack obliterate the summons outside of the arena, and so far we are all forced to wait for the audio cue before going through the fog wall to be protected by the invincibility frames.
-Phase 1 is enjoyable, but since the easiest way to dodge his attack are to roll left, we ALL end up pilling up on each other to be on that spot and one of us end up being triple slashed to death.
-Phase 2 is visually so confusing when we are all trying to dodge the same attacks. Same problem that phase 1 when we all try to roll on the left but end up pushing each other into the light beams (and the framerates drop hard).
-His aggro changes mid combo and he can chain with an AOE that cover almost the entire arena so even getting away to heal while the others keep his aggro is tricky.
-The uneven ground and the distance make it hard to see what attack he's about to do and most of the time we end up taking damages from an AOE attack.
-His double gravity attack in phase 2 is very inconsistent (his clones in general are inconsistent compared to Malenia's) and if we miss the first roll, it's over.
I never saw so many people use the Shield poke strat just to survive to the end of the fight by tanking everything for a final boss. People don't do this to disrespect the work done on this boss, but because it's the only way to be sure to survive until the end to do a happy dance...
Never saw that for the hardest bosses in the souls series, even Gael.
I remember doing jolly co-op for Gael, and the only time i saw shields where when people wanted to block 1 specific move they weren't comfortable dodging yet (for me it was the crossbow bolts), but NEVER to tank the entire fight!
I would see original sets, people going with a slow weapons, magic/miracles/pyro only, no red estus only healing miracles, npc's cosplays and Gael was always fun and fair with every builds.
The fight wasn't easier, it was just fun and enjoyable to do with strangers. It would encourage us to try EVERYTHING in our inventory to see how the fight would be.
At the end of a very hyped DLC, after countless of hours, when the host and 2 summons end up behind a big shield and a cold/blood rapier poking Radhan to death against a wall, preferring to tank everything in both phases of a final boss, in my opinion, it shows that there's a problem at the root :/
true. radamiq doesn't feel like he was build to be enjoyable in coop unless you have at least one tank with a greatshield to give a modicum of survavibility to their team.
"radamiq is easier to do solo" is not even an understatement here. to the point that i come to say that the true difficulty with this boss is not to beat him hitless solo, but to beat him hitless with two people with you, preferably melee or it isn't fun ofc, or with ansbach and thiollier in your team. Gaius was already foreshadowing the problems of hitboxes and reaction time, but radamiq is just ridiculous.
you cannot coop melee him the slightest without a shield when the only safe spot is by smelling his right armpit and when almost all of his attacks cover the entirety of the area around him (fuck his ground explosion that goes behind him, fuck his light rings that cover 90 percent of the arena especially when you're too far away to even see what he's about to do, and fuck him changing target mid combo without any visual cue and whenever it pleases the queuing of his ai!).
bosses from previous games, even the fasts ones allowed for three melee build to fight them either with openings after a long recovery combo, or by taking turns quickly and smoothly enough so everyone can have at least a hit, or by NOT fcking changing agro mid combo!
three people just cannot fit under radahn's armpit for fck sake! and no matter if you time correctly your dodges, if you're not in the precise sweet spot you will still get hit (contrarily to previous games, like in ds3 where you can dodge any attack of darkeater midir no matter where you are around his body and no matter onto whom his attention is if you just time your rolls to his rythm, radamiq just doesn't let you have that).
and you cannot just wait your turn with him, because most of his attacks have a huge range, especially in phase 2 where his light pillars can reach farther than your comet azur and hit as hard if you're 3 kilometers away from him than if you're shoved up his ass, so good luck closing that distance to get one hit and save your friend when you have to run an entire marathon to even reach the boss before him starting another 20 move combo that forces you to create distance AGAIN!
with radamiq it is so hard to have fun with different builds and it's even more flagrant in coop when his hp pool and poise reach the summit of mt everest and when you're a summon your attack power just drops to the center of the earth if you're not doing a status to mitigate your poor damages. i really start to think too that he was not playtested properly in coop. it's just not fun on the long term that everyone must have a shield to survive him and that our boys thiollier and ansbach are just burdens more than they help.
and yet patch 113 gave them more hp and made their status proc more often, which tends to lend some credit to that conspiracy theory.
I've no-hit him at 17 blessings, and my current PB at 0 blessings is at 2 hits. I mostly parry him. I was going to make a similar video when I saw yours, and I was surprised to hear how people hate on the triple slash, when I find the other neutral slash from the other side starts just as fast. I find them so similar that my solution to one, works for the other. Kinda hard to explain, but I'll try anyway.
The move that kills most of my attempts is the stomp. I'm so focused on trying to spot the very quick opening slashes, and many times I twitch-parry as soon as he moves, and he ends up hitting me with the stomp instead. My approach is to stop hyper-focusing on the slashes, and watch out for the knee/left-mid section instead. If that knee moves, or if he doesn't do any sudden movements, I refrain from hitting the parry button. If he moves REALLY quick, then it's going to be one of those two slashes, and I smash the parry button. Most of the time it's enough to parry either slash. An over-simplification would be: if he moves fast, I parry. If he's a bit slow, I wait.
The moment I saw how fast his slashes come one after another, I instantly felt that I had to parry him. They gave him those quick slashes to avoid making him too easy, so I'm not sure how I'd feel if they removed it. Maybe they have run out of ideas on how to make fighting the ultimate boss feel VERY tough but, in hindsight, fair. Instead of the quick slashes, maybe they could've given him a dozen more moves with adequate speed, and more health bar/phases where you can't do certain things, gimmicks like a grab that can be broken using reusable key items, for a more memorable spectacle-filled fight that lasts for more than 5 minutes. Messmer's fight, despite being leagues easier than Radahn's, takes longer for me, since he has those cinematic snake moves, which are easy to dodge but add flavor and fun to the fight. I wouldn't mind more of those.
The only problems i have with this fight are the triple slash, the phantom attacks and the holy after attacks stunning you. If one of these components get removed, the other two wouldn't be as annoying to deal with.
Remove triple slash and you make the fight so much more free and flexible.
Remove the holy after attack stun and you wouldn't be punished as much for not having frame perfect dodging. While attacks should have punishes, the stuns lead you to get caught by the next and on higher ng+ runs where you get two shot by most attacks, you know its an immediate reset when you get stunned.
Remove the phantom attacks and you won't have to worry about getting randomly stunned and dying because you started running one millisecond too late.
But having all three (i once got stunned by the holy effects of the triple slash and because it was so blinding i couldn't notice the gravity stone leading to insta death) is extremely annoying. Phase 1 is such a good fight but phase 2 drags it down so much that i can't push it past an A tier boss.
There’s a few things I hate about souls games, but nothing makes me more annoyed than needing to damn near re work my brain to get around ONE ATTACK. I can dodge everything else he can throw at me but this one attack ruins the whole fight an there’s 0 chance they didn’t know what they were doing. Difficulty is one thing but this is just pure bullshit. An like you said with deflecting an backstepping, the attack comes out so damn fast I can hardly see it coming consistently to deflect. An backstepping like you said can’t stay still for too long I’m constantly moving. If it’s skill issue I’m down anyday to learn an improve but this just feels like they don’t want me to learn just take damage and keep pushing, expect if I go outa my way to change my mindset on avoiding ONE ATTACK. thanks for coming to my ted talk. Fook u Radahn glad ur being controlled 😂😭 great video man!
I know this fight very well, and despite beating him multiple times I still think the learning process and the readability make him a bad boss. You can make him great, but you have to know the fight cause the fight doesn’t teach you anything about its mechanics, it’s a purely trial and error fight and it goes against the most important thing in a fight, how readable the boss is and how fun it is to learn. By design, it’s a terrible fight that is only fun if you know it before hand
I noticed pretty much every issue you brought up here as well as many being discussed in the comments. It's a shame because I really like the fight but going for that RL1 hitless made so many of its issues apparent to me. Hopefully Radahn gets some much needed changes.
The triple slash also having the problem of being the fastest move, while his other moves just doesn’t have that same speed at all, making it feel awkward to time both reactionary and mentally too
Its so crazy that one move can tarnish a whole fight
Feel like miquellas hair is a little unnecessary, blocks a lot of his moves and makes me feel like im just identifying comboes and guessing when to dodge based on timing from the first phase and not reacting to his attacks in the moment. takes away that feeling of the fight being a duel which is what i find to be most fun
Moreover about the arena, sometimes it causes the I-frames on your rolls to end earlier than usual. This is most apparent in his two hit attack that laucnhes you in the air.
IDK if you're I frames are ending earlier than usual.
With this attack the second part of the attack actually has two hitboxes and the hitbox further up the sword actually completely ignores I frames. They wanted the attack to juggle the player but you normally have I frames while knocked up so they made it hit through I frames and the terrain can actual push you put into the second part of the hitbox.
In any case it's janky...
The janky terrain causes you to get hit through block in some instances as well.
This would explain why even though I am of the opinion to have mastered dodging this particular attack, I very rarely still get hit and am always like "What!?".
If they made the second swipe of the triple slash quicker so you can dodge the first 2 attacks with one dodge, the fight would be so much better
The first and most glaring issue is that there is not a single move of his that has more than 2 frames of recovery. There is no "ok now" moment to him. Compare this to Messmer, who is perfect. I picked up naturally how to beat Messmer, especially dodging into the second flurry of his assault. Then we have the frame rate issues of phase 2 + how you can't even see half the moves he does. THEN we have the ridiculous level curve and Scadutree coping mechanism that the entire DLC forced onto us. This DLC sucked due to that enormous level curve but when you get past that there's tons of great fights. This fight embodies everything that's wrong with the DLC and unlike the other fights there's not a moment where it's forgiven
So I no hit radahn at RL1 and just relied on staying on his right to dodge the triple slash.
I think a good remedy would be to make his second swing faster so you can semi-reliably roll through both attacks if your reaction time is on point. It is actually possible to dodge both his slashes with one dodge without the help of elevation. I did it maybe 2 times within all my attemps so it is unfeasibly difficult. I dont think you necessarily need extreme reaction time to dodge the attack, the problem is that because of his cape and fucking miquella's hair your brain takes a while to register which move he is actually doing. This results in your response being delayed. I found his triple slash to be relatively consistent to dodge in the first phase because you can actually tell wtf he is doing.
The other problem is the elevation as it actually affects the second phase a lot.
Other than that i think he is fine as a good challenge, simply dodging at the right time doesnt cut it and you need very good positional skills to no hit him. You also cannot memorize your way through the fight as he will often mixup attacks to make responding to them harder so you have to improvise some of your responses. He will do his backflip at close range, combo his ring of light with his clone attack etc.
With all that being said though he is a solid A tier boss though not as fun to fight as bayle, rellana or malenia because of the triple slash. You are simply not allowed to fight him on your terms, triple slash demands that you fight him with very specific methods. This makes the fight tedious.
I think one of the worst parts is that he is boring. He has a very limited move set. After fighting him for ages to get a no hit scadu 0 level 1 fight, i was just bored from how many times im performing the same dodges over and over again. I did not feel this way for any other fight in the game.
Your video is the most genuine approach to the problems with Radahn, but I fear not a lot of people will hear or agree with it since they are more worried about complaining about the subejctive experience or opinions or how they had to beat Radahn.
Remove the x slash completely and remove the poise damage that the aoe lasers do thats what i would take out
first of all: congrats for having the dedication to solo hitless radamiq. i salute the huge amount of time and efforts you put into learning this boss to a surgical point.
i wish i could have fun against him messing around with different builds casually and not fall back into the easy strat of big shield + antspur rapier.
but as a coop enjoyer i'd also wish that he had been more playtested. PCR just feels like he was made only for solo players to beat and be challenged and the team just went "it's fiiiine, if they have other people to help them it will become easy so no need to test the coop~"
it's an entire different story to have a fun and cinematic fight against PCR with strangers when he can change target mid combo without any visual cue, can touch you trough the fog gate full force, has attacks that can reach behind him and way further than any comet azure or projected heal can do, and when you cannot even use miquella's rune to cure the enchantment on thiollier and ansbach who cannot do it themselves, and when as a summon your attack power drops as low as the framerate if you don't have a status to compensate.
if i were to recomend a challenge to you it would be daring you to hitless PCR in coop with two people. you can decide who is a caster from who is not, but three melees builds would rank up the difficulty in my opinion. you can be one the summon yourself i you wish so to reduce your damage and enjoy betting onto whom PCR will queue his aggro whenever he feels like it xD. you can use a shield or not depending if you consider damageless and hitless to be the same thing. you can decide if only you has to do the hitless or if all you three can beat PCR hitless (ngl all three hitlessing would be far funnier and nightmare inducing i do think).
or even more difficult, you can try to hitless PCR with thiollier and Ansbach with you, but you cannot heal them (or build your strategy only around healing them and letting them do the damage, even though this task is already difficult in itself since they can be grabbed and charmed) and they have to be alive by the end to do a victory dance with you xD
honestly, i would love to be proven wrong with radamiq being too difficult and not fun in coop melee. i don't seriously expect you to take my challenges up to word, solo hitless PCR is already insanely difficult, but if you ever consider the idea, i would love to see a video of you succeeding :)
have a nice day and good continuations! and gg again!
I want need them to fix it I can’t fully enjoy the complete perfection that is the OST for this boss knowing it has a straight up broken mechanic that really ruins it
His stomp is the attack that gets me every time, it’s a weird timing on it. I can actually consistently dodge his triple slash. That’s just me tho 😅
A lot of what you complained about here is how pretty much most of the Elden Ring boss roster operates. Completely counter intuitive, robotic and can be dealt with only by developing muscle memory.
I think all they need to do is speed up the second swing of the cross slash. It would essentially turn that move into Rellana’s quick 1-2 with her flame sword, simply requiring a more precise dodge timing in order to not get clipped
The things you mentioned that can be strafed or jumped are true, but you also can't really meaningfully engage with him because he is either too far away to attack with his side dash clone attack, or aerial clone attacks, or is literally intangible until full resolution(clone dash). His aggrssive tracking feels so out of place in a game like this where non-roll options to outspace attacks are avenues for further expressiveness, and freedom, along with the jumps not being viable when face to face. It's such a limiting fight, which is his biggest sin, not his difficulty.
Radahn has so many fundamental issues for me to even consider him passable let alone good (yapping alert)
First of all Radahn being the final boss isn't good, it's a character we've already met, a character that we're familiar with it and its powers, a character that its story was complete and had nothing to do with the story of this dlc, a dlc where entire regions like abyssal woods and jagged peak solely exits to build up the reveal of their end boss, a single hint in an optional quest is not a build up, that's why the first reaction to radahn is almost always confusion, fromsoft usually has a unique way of using the visual design, gameplay and music to tell their stories, even if you don't know the exact story behind the fight at the time you get a feel for what they're going for with context you get afterwards enhancing that, I didn't get this feeling with radahn and even if you find the game's explanation afterwards satisfying (I don't) your first experience will most likely be tarnished forever
Second the fight feels really jarring, the whole dlc is about the duality of light and shadow yet radahn for some reason uses gravity and light? One of the reasons radagon lands so well is that he's a god of gold at the end of a game all about the brilliance and strength of gold, actually apply that to every previous dlc boss, manus is a crazed corrupted being with abyssal powers in a dlc all about the corrupting nature of the abyss, orphan is a horrifying abomination in an eldritch nightmare dimension, gael is both hollow and uses the namesake of the entire franchise, in this context radahn falls short not only in his own dlc but compared to the others as well
Third and probably my biggest issue is that it's so uninspired and unoriginal, think about it this way:
It's radahn... again
He's donning the same armor, swords and is using gravity magic again
He's using the same animations from the story trailer as his introduction again
He has the same music for his first phase again
Most of his animations are from other bosses, sword swipes and slams from the first radahn, ground stump from Godfrey, the gravity drill and gravity aoe from gaius, the flip from artorias, the bloodflame from mohg and the 6 hit combat from Pontiff sulyvahn of all people, it screams to me rushed development, it uses so much from so many other fights without adding anything to them that the fight loses its identity
Finally the fight mechanically is a mess, the hitboxs are bad and misleading at times, the camera is surprisingly bad for a boss that's not that big due to the uneven terrain, the visibility in phase 2 is awful with the amount of particles and miquella's hair obscuring alot of the model, the light beam stunlock is not fair, and the biggest sin of elden ring bosses: bullshit moves, the cross slash, the after image attacks, the massive pillar of light and the comet are all some of the worst attacks in the game
The strangest thing about radahn is that for as many attacks he has and as aggressive and hard he is he's really boring, he's in this weird limbo of extremely aggressive yet extremely predictable at the same time and that's not a feeling I should be getting from a final dlc boss, I wanted something that inspires awe and will leave me thinking about it for many years to come, instead I'll keep thinking... what went wrong?
Yeah like all i wanted was the boss to have a unique and memorable moveset/design, something like orphan or manus. Orphan jumping backward in the air and dragging the wep across the ground at once, or getting right in your face then waiting a second to whip upward, or (in p2) sprinting on all fours like a beast and doing kartwheel slams and stuff. Or with manus, jumping and spinning into his own slams, or calling darkness from everywhere with his staff, or the whole left arm. Radahn (and its a problem i had with p2 gael too) just has a super bland moveset. Basic horizontal sword slashes, basic vertical slashes, fly up and do a standard vertical slam, etc. And to top that off its just a dude in armor. A dude in armor we ALREADY FOUGHT in base game. Its just crazy to me to end the dlc that way, esp with bosses like dancing lion or putrescent knight in the same dlc
Agree. For a final boss he feels very underwhelming, especially after a very intense npc fight where we fight all our friends and hear them talking to each other.
And the things we get after beating him is : 1. A cutscene that reveal nothing, only kinda repeat things that Miquella says in the fight cutscene. 2. two swords that looks cool and hit hard but are the SAME that the two we already have, plus a third from Freya. So we end up with 5 variants of the same sword. And it's pretty awkward when the swords are supposed to be the ones he used when he was young. How those swords and armor can have better stats than the ones he has when he is Starscourge Radhan? They could have at least say in the description that they are corrupted, too used, which explain why they are weaker.
I’ve found the best thing to do is deflect the first one or two attacks of any given combo in case he does the triple slash. Not sure how viable this is for no hit runs though, but this method worked the best for me out of the three kills I’ve completed
You have to dodge his blood flame the same way you dodge the charged one mohg does
9:36 the combo is only a problem if you haven't played ds3 since it's basically the same as Pontiff Sulyvahn's combo, just without a sword that thrusts, But for someone who's never played ds3 that attack will be a far bigger problem because you don't have the muscle memory to dodge it, so depending on the order of the games someone plays that attack could be the easiest or hardest to dodge.
today they released patch 1.14 and i think he is now S-tier
The only consistent way I tend to win against him is just parrying sadly, however the triple slash still ruins my attempts like half the time. The window of parrying just that move is really demanding of your reaction time, moreover the atrocious consequences for failing to parry this fast move is way too much.
But on the other hand, if we ignore this one particular move and occasionally terrain issues, this boss is one of my favorite. Maybe not gameplay wise but it’s definitely visually stunning and a more cinematic fight. He ultimately ranks second only to Mesmer in the shadow of the DLC in my humble opinion.
He was S tier in the base game. This one is just unnecessary and uncalled for.
Gayest boss fight ever. Period.
I also feel like something that makes Radahn feel unenjoyable are just the design behind phase 1 being more flexible, then phase 2 starts punishing you for the habits you developed. I can think of no other boss that does this in Elden Ring. Phase 2 tends to unlock entirely new attacks to deal with, but doesn't worsen any particular combo. The closest you get are things like Malenia adding a *very* delayed additional hit onto a combo that you can react to. *But Radahn?* You said it best with the boulder attack example: you can be flexible in phase 1, and then in phase 2, you will be punished unless you're doing a very specific solution. This means the game is likely training 80% of players to develop a bad habit, then punishing them for it. It would've been preferable if the boulder attack were equally punishing from start to finish, even if that means the clones were also a thing in phase 1.
A lot of phase 2 is like this. It doesn't really change his moveset much, but adds on all kinds of new bells and whistles that will punish you for behavior that worked perfectly fine in phase 1. By design, this is extremely frustrating and can lead to the disappointment of discovering that learning the fight will take MUCH longer than anticipated.
Not gonna lie the fact that in spite of knowing it has the bullshittiest attack of them all I like the boss makes the fact that it missed A tier over said attack makes it 10x more tragic for me.
Good video and goes through him quite well.
Main issue would be the dodging left simulator. So much of the fight in phase 2 requires dodges specifically to the left to avoid the holy damage which is really annoying and you say it limits player freedom. Maybe some people can dodge to the right by sticking up close but then that makes it difficult to see and doesn’t seem all that intuitive.
Other than that - think the fight is pretty great and reflects the difficulty I think people expected even if they don’t realise it yet (people were saying Miquella would be Malenia 2.0 and that he could have a harder move than Waterfowl - and I think what we got isn’t as difficult as a harder Malenia)
As for the X swipe, yeah it’s a troubling move - comes out so fast it’s difficult to react to and could have been handled better but I think it doesn’t deal enough damage to justify the amount of backlash it’s gotten in my unpopular opinion. A really hard move but Radahn surprisingly lets us heal for the most part I wanna say. So it’s like even if you get hit by it - can always dodge roll away and generally he lets you get two heals off.
It is troubling for no hit runs but at that point I think it’s fair to say we’d be looking up strats after beating him to see what the solution is to certain moves we don’t know how to deal with and we’d be gaining knowledge on how to position against it dodge wise or deflect or parry anyways so whilst it might ultimately be an unfair move - I’ve seen worse I think.
I know it’s a really unpopular opinion, but I’m just coming at it from the perspective of seeing how many people thought we would get a harder move than Waterfowl Dance and I personally don’t think it is. (Even though it is a really hard move)
How to fix radahn:
First phase is already good. No changes.
Right before 2nd phase, you have the option use the rune of miquella to free radahn for the good ending.
Then the 2nd phase you get to fight miquella WITH radahn and all your friends from the radahn festival. Meanwhile miquella is an absolute bullet hell raid boss. After defeat, you get to actually talk to radahn as he lore dumps some of the loose ends.
Perfect ending to the dlc and would make it so much better.
Hey I sent a message to bandai support pointing out some flaws with radahn (mainly triple slash)
They said they would pass on the feedback to the dev team. Idk if they will change anything but I thought it was worth a shot. Hopefully if enough people talk about this it will get changed.
Pls fromsoft 🥺🙏
Erm if you fought him a billion times that would take much longer than a week please be more accurate
Is the Triple Slash a dogshit move? Of course. But letting it ruin the fight for you is on you.
Hitless is an awful metric in a game that has no punishment for getting hit, and centralises around avoiding dying. You mentioned you played a damage mitigation strategy, which I would consider quite different to a strategy which aims to avoid damage entirely. Like you said, use deflect tear, use a shield, use one of the many, many, AoW that give i-frames, etc. Or if players are too good to use "scrub" mechanics, and want to just use a weapon and nothing else... just tank it. The game gives 14 flasks + Physick, if you are so good that it is only that 1 attack that is beating you, then you should easily be able to defeat him before he uses Triple Slash 16 times.
Promised Consort Radahn is an unfair boss, and thats a good thing. So is Malenia, so is Mohg, so is Isshin, Friede, Orphan, Manus, Allant. Souls games have never been about fighting in a fair world, actually they have been quite the opposite. You are fighting literal Gods, Demigods, Walking Machines of War with a glock and Katana, etc. It would frankly be a letdown and a massively disjointed affair if these imposing figures were fighting on the same terms as the player. This is what Souls games have literally ALWAYS been about and is exactly what has made them the GOATs that they are.
Radahn is the definition of an S tier boss, and if Fromsoft fixes the Triple Slash it will be the best they have ever made, if it isn't already.
Love your videos man, while I disagree with the premise of you critique I still think this is one of the most competent critiques of the boss/game out there as you don't make up issues that don't exist.
Friede, Isshin, Manus and Mohg are unfair Bosses? We live in different dimensions bro and I'm so glad I don't live in yours.
'in a game that has no punishment for getting hit and centralizes around avoiding dying '
You fucking die from getting hit... What are you on about?
@@BBQcheese and your punishment from dying is losing your runes/souls. Aint no punishment from getting hit bud.
@@suchar7175 memorising 20+ attacks with very strict, unintuitive timings IS unfair. But it is a type of unfairness that Souls "Veterans" have become accustomed to, so now you think its not unfair.
People seem to have the notion that unfair=bad when it is quite the opposite.
I think we just don't have the same definition of what is and isn't fair in a souls context.
Even as a Radahn enjoyer myself, I agree that the triple slash should be adjusted asap. Either that or give us deflecting as a base mechanic so people can stop feeling forced to use the tear 😅
(despite what you said, I never found the deflection timing any difficult. And since it not only maxes the tear boost but ALSO gives a big opening afterwards, it's one of the best damage windows in the fight)
"Required" is the word that makes him unenjoyable, IMO. In a game that welcomes freedom, they tried to crank Radahn's "git gud" meter up so high that he ends up being suffocating. STR, DEX, INT, Arcane, Faith...none of it matters, because we all become the same player and follow the same steps to beat Radahn with no deviation. (unless you equip a shield, which is wildly popular for that exact reason: it unlocks flexibility)
I get what they were going for, but what this turned into is kaizo difficulty where there's a very specific solution to the fight, and it's surprisingly unfulfilling to beat. Malenia, Maliketh, Putrescent Knight, Messmer, Radagon...all of them offer varied approaches despite being difficult, and that lack of variance just makes Radahn feel stale, unfortunately.
Well, yes, I completely agree with, I consider it would need even more rework, those things you mentioned are the biggest factors regardless.
Radahn has way more problems than this.
- He has a total of four attacks against which the only reliable solution is to run far, far away (leading to all kinds of problems besides being annoying).
- Miquella's hair completely obstructs our view.
- The lightbeams become obnoxious very quickly because they happen after literally-every-single-attack.
Imagine fighting against Malenia, but someone is holding their hand in front of your face and constantly snapping their fingers. That is basically Radahn in a nutshell.
My opinion is that no amount of fixing is going save this fight. It's so dogshit that Fromsoft can never recover it from the bottom of the barrel. It is quite literally the sole reason why I don't want to do another DLC playthrough.
And this is not because I find this fight too difficult, it has absolutely nothing to do with that. Radahn is just quite literally one of the most poorly designed boss fights in all of Fromsoft history.
And that doesn't even touch on the perplexing lore.
I can understand your perspective even if I don't really agree!
For me actually the biggest issue was Radhan’s holy beams. They are extremely bright and sometimes hide Radhan’s moveset behind them. And more importantly- they have no intuitive pattern behind them. Every souls afterteffect had some pattern - Abyss Watcher’s fire mimicked his sword, Gael’s cloak always move from his right side. Radhan’s holy beams sometimes hit right in front of him, sometimes around him and you cannot intuitively predict their direction unless you have learned his moveset in full
Def agree with this comment. Also miquella’s hair gets in the way a lot.
@@ДенисЖолоб-с1ю from what I've gathered, the light beam follow up goes along the origin of the swing, but in a straight line instead of an arc like the sword swing itself. I'd have liked it better if it did follow the whole swing arc tho
I find it funny how the "visual and mechanical spectacle" was the bane of my existence because of the cloning attack and the beams of light even though I eventually got a somewhat reliable way of dodging it but the super fast triple slash wasn't as big of a problem for me as you made it out to be because the only time I beat him was with parry strats and the move is pretty frequent (and I think he responds with it more when you're on his right) at the end I got quite comfortable with parrying it but it's true that at first I also hated that move and wasn't even sure it was possible to parry
I still do think that they went overboard with the difficulty on this one at the cost of enjoyability (or maybe I should've gotten all the fragments)
The more annoying part of the holy lasers is the fucking poise damage that can ultimately combo you into oblivion
Nothing can make this fight S-tier because the lore is abysmal, the arena is boring, and the cutscenes add nothing to the story and don’t even approach the spectacle of the original fight with Radahn. Even if it was mechanically stellar, and it’s not, it would be D-tier at best.
I’m not a huge PCR fan but you’re being kind of a hater ngl
@@ClydeNut nah, I’m criticizing a poor story and boss design choice in one of my favorite games by my favorite developer. That’s not being a hater.
You are listing subjective opinions as if they are factual. Opinion ignored.
With so many GENUINELY FUNDAMENTAL things to complain about Radahn such as frametraps and visibility issues, the discussion ends up being drowned by stupid arguments such as yours.
@@RosuVT no, I’m literally sharing my opinion. Sorry you don’t know what words mean.
@@thrashhhhh
>Nothing can make this fight S tier
Sounds like a pretty direct statement about an implied fact. Hiding these statements as critiques when these critiques are more just your opinion and a review is a ginourmous problem with today's gaming communities.
A reviewer is not a critic, and an opinion is not a critique. When you make a critical analysis of something, you need to give merit where merit is present, and most people who are self proclaimed critics are just opinionated reviewers cosplaying as more intelligent than they actually are - overstating problems and understanding merits.
Let me give you an example of an objectively terrible boss: Valiant Gargoyle duo. They **objectively** do not function well due to how their AI forces you to disengage the fight for long periods of times through an AOE that is undodgeable and unpunishable.
Radahn is not perfect, but he is far from the bottom of the barrel like people like you tend to say.