Why Dark Souls 3 is Better than Elden Ring (A Video Analysis)
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- Check out the monthly dank meme vid here : • B R E A D B O X │ ...
This is a video essay compiling my current thoughts on why I believe Dark Souls 3 is a better game than Elden Ring.
Check out @Swagapagos Turtle and their combat analysis video here: • Malenia doesn't play b...
00:00 - Introduction
01:32 - Bosses
06:27 - Tone
10:25 - Combat
19:42 - The Open World
23:20 - PVP
27:05 - Replayability
30:42 - End
#eldenring #videogameessay #darksouls3 - Ігри
I find Dark Souls 3 to be way way more rememberable, the bosses, the boss music, the settings, just overall more rememberable.
i agree with you. even though ds3 is mostly in castle type areas, those were more memorable and dense than almost everything in ER to me.
Yes, especially the music. Absolutely incredibly, more so than elden Ring
Well. You played it countless times. Plus this game is so much shorter than Elden Ring. Ofc it is more rememberable to you lmao
@@vvebsta6237 Is rememberable even a word?
@@3dgar2oh I guess it's not
"I don't need more runes, I need more balance."
Great line
My biggest issue with Elden Ring were how a lot of the bosses didn't feel fair. You didn't have reliable punish windows, and as a strength build, it was just frustrating. Dark Souls 3 bosses can be frustrating, but most of them feel fair.
It felt like the bosses health pools were just too high for me to feel like I can reasonably beat and have a good time unlike Sekiro, Bloodborne, and DS3, maybe my build was awful but I felt like I couldn’t progress as fun/fast as DS3
@@samsara2521 the bosses health pools are really high. For example Midir in Ds3 on NG had 16k health and Placidusax on NG has like 22k. It is balanced out with being able to put out more damage in Elden Ring though. My biggest issue is if you play both games, like play 30mins of ds3 then load up elden ring and play 30mins they feel identical in terms of combat and player movement, but the bosses are so fast and have zero openings alot of the time and also all seem to have alot of aoe. Margit for example is faster and more irratic than Gael is 😅 thats a problem
They expect you to use ashes. But a majority (not saying you are) of the playerbase's ego is too high to use them.
@@russellelton5098 i wouldnt say ego at all. Using them changes the experience alot since boss ai is still programmed for 1v1 fights with agro. Using them changes the gameplay and some dont enjoy that
@@fishnutz5196 True
The thing that's killing me right now is the replayablility aspect of this game. Once you explore the open world once, there's really no need to explore it again, yet if I want to make a new character I sit there riding my horse all over the place just ignoring every enemy to grab flask upgrades and any gear I need for my build. It's not really fun and is kinda a waste of time. The pvp is a fucking joke atm as well and I don't see it getting better without a complete overhaul.
very true
No way that you found everything in one play through. This video and everyone commenting is just a way for people to complain. Elden ring has a bigger player base than any other fromsoftware game ever. Elden ring is arguably the best in the franchise. Music? Boss design? Are you serious? Ill admit then when the game wasn't out yet i was very sceptical. Because i have a love for what the series already was. But i think you guys are scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to relive game you already played. Nostalgia will always play apart in a biased opinion, but instead of looking at the negatives of an amazing game for the sake of having the exact same game you played a million times, why not just appreciate this masterpiece for what it is.
@@marioescalante5353 "b-b-but you can't you criticize my favorite game!" Dude shut the hell up and stop sucking the games weiner for 5 seconds. After pumping 200 hours into the game myself, I can take the blinders off and not only see the incredible amount of flaws and dumb design decisions in Elden Ring, but also just how much better previous games where. And what the fuck does it have to do with nostalgia when someone has more fun eith a previous installment than the newest one? Youre foolish
@@marioescalante5353 It's not "looking at the negatives of an amazing game", it's looking at things they did right before, and decided to take a turn and mess up now.
Also, probably everybody missed a few stuff here and there, but he's probably trying to say that, as most people, for a second run we'll just go to the wiki and check the exact locations of the stuff we want/need, instead of exploring the whole thing, therefore making the whole "open world exploration" dull and pointless. Even worse if you can actually duplicate boss souls to get both spell and weapon in a single run. Then what if I actually take enough time to grab every loot possible in 1 run? What do I have to explore in a possible ng+? Other endings? Dupes of unique weapons? Alright...
By the way, having a bigger playerbase doesn't necessarily mean it's BETTER. Otherwise, Lost Ark and CSGO would be waaaaaaay better than ER (they have 400~500k users playing as I type this, while ER has "only" 72k).
@@marioescalante5353 bigger playerbase doesn't work as an argument, really. The franchise is at its highest level of popularity with ER compared to DS
Souls games are more replayable due to their level design and such. And if you love elden ring so much, I'm sure you'd at least want to replay it one more time.
And yeah, the music is certainly close to non-existent. The only memorable one was the foreskin apostles.
Champion Gundyr. A beautiful example of what is wrong with the bosses in Elden Ring. Gundyr has telegraphed attacks, grab/animation attacks, he is super agro, fast, he have imput reading, attack from long distance, AOE slam attacks, BUT, none of it is overpowered and overboosted. None of that in and of itself is bad. And this is how these things should have been handled in the Elden Ring. Proportionately
Great Video
elemar? I think i spelt that right is everything right there?
Gundyr is also excellent because not EVERY boss in DS3 is exactly like him. They aren't all that level of unrelenting and aggressive, which makes him stand out in the game as a unique challenge.
In Elden Ring, encountering most new bosses was just an overwhelming feeling of "great, THIS again".
@@aperson9847 i have no idea what you’re talking abt to be honest each boss felt different
@@Arkolob Crazy aggression, wombo combos that the boss can change at will, input reading, stupidly long wind-ups with lightning-fast attacks, false tells/lunges/delays that are designed to roll catch you if you dodge on instinct, a mix of close and long range attacks, AOEs, barely any reliable recovery windows, high levels of tracking....they're all designed around the exact same things. I noticed right off the bat how much Margit's moveset seemed designed to throw me off and screw me up, and then 80% of bosses after that felt the same way.
@@aperson9847 i mean to be honest you just described souls combat. ds3 has way more bullshit combos in my opinion where i have to wait so fucking long for the tiniest window for attacks. i don’t know to be honest maybe it’s because me coming from eldenring to dark souls and you coming ( i’m assuming from dark souls) we have different outlooks.
edit: you are correct on aoe bs and the delays but i’m so used to delays now it messes me up in ds3 lmao.
I didn’t really like the open world, it was fun the first playthrough but after that it just became a drag to get anything and most of it is just uninteresting. The best part of elden ring for me was their usual more linear level design like the big main castles and dungeons, but we just got way less of that in here because of the open world.
Of course the open world is gonna be less interesting after your first playthrough, you already know what location is worth going to and not, that's how most open worlds feel.
@@vaultboy3706 yea which I don’t like, so much wasted time coming up with dungeons that no one will care to go back to when they could have spent more time on creating better, more interesting levels. This game felt like it was quantity over quality in my opinion.
Funny how people refer to the first playthrough as a minor part of the game.
I played every Soulsborn game and probably all important rpgs throughout history and the first playthrough should make up 90% of your opinion and is the most important part of a game!
It is and should not be the intend of a rpg game to give you the most compact game experience possible just to make its replayability as high as possible but to immerse you as much as possible in the world in your first playthrough.
Of course a lot of immersive things puzzles, secret and exploration will become less important in a second playthrough but that doesn’t make them less important.
Also most people never play more than one complete playthrough (i platinumed every souls game nevertheless)
I completely agree that boss design is worse in eldenring and that ds1 had better worlddesign but your reasoning for the open world is not what contributes to a better game overall
If you are into repetetive gameloops better get into rouge-likes, mmos, or Diablo clones
Rpgs don’t live on replayability and it’s not their bigger worth its the experience which should leave a mark in your memory
Only small minded people don’t realise this and they are naturally drown to repetitive games which create a pastime or artificial feeling of fun while played but will leave nothing when you stop playing them which makes them nothing more than a distraction and waste of time from long term perspective
@@zezqiiv1221 You are 100% right. I've been playing FROMSOFT games since demon Souls and this is the worst of the series. Elden Ring with all its splendour is soul less
I am still 80 hrs into my first playthrough and still thoroughly enjoy the game. Say I finish in 100 hours. If I like the game say 9/10 now and still enjoy a second playthrough at say 7, with all the different builds and weapons, I think that's still a pretty big win. Different game than previous entries is all.
If you say elden ring’s bosses are better, just remember that the tutorial boss in ds3 was gundyr, while elden rings was soldier of godrick
Ik right?!
Uhh u mean the grafted scion, tree scentinal or margit? Bc SOG id objectively not the tut boss lol. Sounds like grasping at straws
@@floppa731 SOG IS a tutorial boss.
@@floppa731 bro its not even an opinion or anything,.... SOG is objectively the first boss, theres not grasping at straws.
@@unleashedbread6146 Both games have first bosses well suited to each game. Soldier of Godrick helps new players get to grips with the mechanics (even I struggled against him at first). The Grafted Scion and Margit teach you that coming back and trying again when you’re stronger is a valid way to win. Iudex Gundyr acts as a primer for the more fast-paced and reflex-driven gameplay of Dark Souls 3 while also being slow and predictable enough that he’s manageable for new players. They’re all perfect for what they are.
I sorta feel like Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are perfect complementary games. The boss fights and tight pacing are highlights of Dark Souls 3, while Elden Ring shines through its amazing sense of exploration and atmosphere. Each game ironically excels is most areas that the other falls short.
I'll argue both games are great at both aspects
this is a really good point, well said Earic
I don't agree, mostly useless exploration. Goes on to use one or two weapons and talismans. That isn't amazing exploration to me.
@@tod213 That's a fair take. Exploration is mostly self-driven, which isn't for everybody. At least for me, curiosity was enough to make finding things its own reward. That was an element I didn't really find in Dark Souls 3. That game felt too much like a scripted rollercoaster for my taste due to how linear and boss-focused the game is.
@@tod213 I mean, it'd kinda your fault that you didn't use what you found. But even still elden ring's exploration is more about the journey than the destination
FromSoft seem to have always wanted to have interesting and complicated fights. Duos like Ornstein and Smough, random delays like that Blue Smelter in DS2, combos like Pontiff and Fume Knight, and multiple phases.
The problem I see in Elden Ring is that they overshot it. Yes, a moveset so fluid that you can't find its pattern looks cool. Yes, it absolutely makes sense that a demigod would be able to throw an unrelenting combo in your face, killing you despite the fact you dodged. But from a gameplay standpoint, it's no fun at all. Maybe that's why they went with the "far from their prime" formula in previous games. It would be too unfair of a fight otherwise.
And the options they give you to alleviate the difficulty unfortunately make every single fight trivial. Spirit summons, NPC summons, OP weapons and magic, as you mentioned, tip the scale too much. I don't know how it can be balanced, since I am no developer, but it is something I think is worth looking into. I am surely not the first one to see this and bring it up.
Op ranged spells weapon arts: rebalance them like they did in ds3, no biggy.
Ashen summons or classic coop summons : this cannot be done because is a AI problem, you could already see how nerfing mirror tear didn't adjust nothing since you can simply wear tank gear and make your mirror be a tank.
General boss fights: just remove the imput reading mechanics and give them an actual stamina bar like they had in ds3 or sekiro.
@@MrPronGogh93There is no input reading. It’s animation based.
@@brandonman1315 in elden ring there is input reading , especially when you drink flask alot of boss read your input
Being my first soulsborne game I was expecting that smooth dance against bosses once u mastered their pattern and stuff i quickly realize it wasn’t the case and started to be more into melting bosses health bar because fighting them was more annoying than anything else ...
Lmao you chose the wrong game as an entry point
Most of the ER bosses are terrible. Only a few nail the dance-like rhythm of some of the best bosses of previous games. All the main end-game bosses in this game just never fucking stop. It's not fun waiting a full minute for them to do their 30 hit combo, only to get one single hit in before getting hit anyways because they recover way too quickly.
@@jerrodshack7610 the only fight I really enjoyed is placidusax
@@GoulaLegamer I have a feeling you will enjoy Sekiro. Try it, it has easily the best combat system of the souls series.
i feel like elden ring is a unfair turnbase game, bosses get 6 turns while you only get one chance to hit them then you gotta wait for them to stop their combos
All the points you make here helped me remember one thing: How great the pve of Bloodborne was (despite the 30 fps).
- horror and atmosphere
- great bosses (Ludwig is my fav ever, tops even gael imo)
- unique theme
- music (best ever - see again: Ludwig)
- right length to replay
- few but interesting weapons
edit: ds1 pvp ftw :)
My favorite soundtrack isn't even boss music. This is kitamura's parting gift, the track For the Dark Soul. For some reason, it hits me just as hard, if not even harder, than Herman's music.
It happened the same to me, when me and my friens started discussing Elden Ring, it just let me realize how much I love Bloodborne :)
soo good when a game make u farm ur heals and bullets, have no build variety, limited upgrade materials, and no respec, and lets not forget the wonderfull 15 fps
@@sirharrington9956 you will find negative things in every game, I'm all for atmosphere and aggressive gameplay where Melee is prefered, that's why I like bloodborne best for pve. And what is the point of 200 weapons when 150 of them have similar moveset to already existing ones? Fps is the biggest letdown tho, I'm with you here
The Base Game of Bloodborne has rly weak Bosses in my opinion so I wouldn't agree that Bloodborne has that many great Bosses Just cause of the Dlc. And Not even Close to as many as DS3 has in my opinion. The Bloodveil System sucks Ass and the Doubled Damage Inflicted while an Animation is being Cancelled is a huge flaw with the Combat system imo. So i think the only Thing Bloodborne rly does best in the Series is Art Design and Atmosphere maybe. Sekiro has better combat, DS3 has better Bosses even Sekiro has better Bosses Overall in my opinion. The best World goes to Eldenring.
Why Dark Souls 3 is Better than Elden Ring:
1. It actually launches on my PC
is ER really that bad on PC? i’ve only played it on PS5
@@unleashedbread6146 It was suffering from performance issues when it launched. I had the most problems in Limgrave but only in Limgrave and especially in the Stormhill area and the Tree Sentinel fight. After doing a few stuff to my graphics stuff it got better but it still would stutter sometimes. I'm happy to report that most of the performance issues have been patched by 1.04 which is really nice to hear. As for the game not being able to launch, I have seen people talking about an infinite white screen but most people don't have that and instead have the stuttering issues.
Great review! The only point I thought was off was the tone of the game. Dark Souls is dark and borderline horror because it’s supposed to be. By the time we come around in the Souls series it’s far too late to save the world, the Gods are gone, and everything that does instill hope is fake in some way. Dark Souls is post-apocalyptic (as everyone knows) but Elden rings world is in the process of ending. Things aren’t scary yet.
You said that Elden Ring was supposed to feel Grand, and I think that’s a great point, especially considering how the bosses differ in ER compared to DS. Elden Ring is what Dark Souls would be if we woke up on time
Ok, is there some sort of inside joke I am missing? The video was not a review. It was the worst attempt at making points, falling into every single fallacy and trap you could possibly fall into to show that you are an idiot, or straight up satire (very good one at that).
super well articulated AgnetM, thx for sharing!
In fact, I feel like elden ring covers topic such as ambition and power, the menu theme itself communicates it, the way the music begins and the way it turns to a more epic scenario, as if preparing you for what is to come. As well as that, you have the ambience music you hear while riding Torrent or exploring the world, something that was not in dark souls because of what the game was supposed to make you feel, sadness, helplessness, loneliness, and so on.
i disagree with souls combat being great it really isn especially in elden ring where all you press is L2
@@_BlackenedSun weapon arts do kinda carry but that’s really up to how people play.
The thing that makes me so sad is that in I love elden ring more than dark souls in every single way except bosses. I find I myself wanted to play elden ring for everything except what I love the most about these games which actually makes me sad. If elden rings bosses were as good as ds3s it mightve literally been the best game ever made
Isn’t the fact that there’s like the same amount of weapons and armour as ds3 but the game being 3x the size so you’re just looking around to find a mushroom that can craft one of the 40 different types of arrows just boring to play? Also not to mention that the build diversity is absolute dogshit in Elden ring
@@lordboyardee4088 I disagree with the idea that the builds are "dogshit" I mean magic has always been bad, either too strong or just pointless, but I think elden ring nailed magic
Slaveknight Gael alone makes your title accurate.
I'm a music theory major & writer and I do very much agree that DS3 has overall kuch better music than Elden Ring. Despite the "ten million bosses" that Elden Ring has, somehow it has less boss soundtracks than previous games because of how many times tracks are reused? There's a couple of stand outs for sure like Malenia & Radagons themes but many of them just don't blow me away like the compositions of previous games.
the open world ambient music was a huge let down as well, no comparison to skyrim and witcher 3 which had fantastic open world tracks
I said this and some FS Stan said I've no taste in music LOL 🤣🤣, ahh man.
Just throw your money in a ditch somewhere. Music theory major lolol
@@jarlwhiterun7478 1. My schooling wasn't that expensive I never said I had a PHD from Harvard 2. Even if it doesn't guarantee you a job necessarily if this is your passion in life and primary source of happiness it's well worth it to pursue my man.
This is one of the best critiques of Elden Ring I have seen. I also consider DS3 the pinnacle of From Softwares games and agree with pretty much every take you made.
Something I don't see mentioned much besides from you, which I think is simultanously a huge reason why ER can't compete with DS3 is the game format.
Miyazaki and From Soft in general are MASTERS at crafting 'linear' worlds while never making them feel that way. I don't think I have ever, once in my time of playing these games thought: "man, this would be better as an open world game."
I understand they want to try different new things but it's clear as day these open world projects require a TON of time and ressources and I think that came at the expense of what draws hardcore souls fans to the game: jt's epic bossfights and gritty atmosphere.
Of course Covid also happened, which probably didn't help but I think and am hopeful we can return to the old way of Soulsborne design in the future. I have high hopes for Miyazaki and I believe he does listen to the player base.
very very good points, i agree Sly.
I think FromSoftware are better at creating open linear games.
Maybe the team wanted to try something different (which they absolutely succeeded at)
But I honestly believe one format works better for their games than the other.
well said though thx
Open linesr is my favourite type of level design , an dark souls 1 did it best imo. But I haven't played dark 3 or elden. I have dark 3 installed on steam I think it is time to give it a shot
I'm glad you mention the boss osts. I thought I was the only one who thought they were lacking the oomf of Dark Souls 3. I remember when playing DS3 for the first time all the boss themes shook my soul (no pun intended) and I remember them vividly. I can't say the same for Elden Ring. Literally no song in the game other than Mohgs and the main theme is memorable tbh.
Even Iudex Gundyr is very memorable, in Elden Ring we get the Grafted Scion that two shots you with generic music. Also very different from the tragic Genichiro who you're supposed to lose to as well.
Soo, you do not liked godskin, godfrey, regal ancestor spitit, godric, rennala, radahn, fortissax and malenia's ost? I mean, those soundtrack are absolutly gorgeous, but is true that aside of some side bossfights and like mid of the main bosses you hear pretty meh music
@@jajasking9652 I relistened to the ost and the only other one that really stood out was the godskin duo track. Other than that the songs all sound pretty samey. the music in Elden Ring definitely took a hit when determining where the budget was going to go.
The point you made on linear vs open world is something I already thought about. It’s like breath of the wild vs vanilla Zelda games with dungeons and required gear to proceed. I like a good story and I don’t like to run around in circles to be sure I didn’t miss some loot.
I think Dark Souls in general is From's best work. Bloodborne was lightning in a bottle, and Sekiro was a new idea, but Elden Ring, while very cool, is entirely made out of ideas from past works, having nothing original to offer. Even the story comes from someone else.
Gawd damn 😭
Elden ring is the best and that’s coming from someone that’s never played dark souls
@@ginosko_well that’s why you have that opinion lol
@@GolAcheron-fc4ug Dark Souls 3 was my first fromsoft game and I immediately hated it. couldnt even get past the first area after gundyr and the hub world. but elden ring… I beat tree sentinel as soon as i got to limgrave and fell in love. Elden Ring is just better. Who cares if it has ideas from all of their games.
EDIT: Sekiro is still the best fromsoft game tho
My RL1 run has shown me its true colours. Normally my level 1 runs are great, and allow me to appreciate/engage with all the little mechanics and I end up loving the game that much more. ER is the exact opposite. It’s just been me being constantly frustrated by half baked and ass boss mechanics. Not fun. Sure it may be “good” but it sure as hell ain’t fun.
I don't do SL1 myself but I remember thinking, "yeah those guys are gonna get fucked in this game, there's too many bullshit attacks to consistently progress through the game without leveling vigor or using obvious exploits".
Had the exact same experience on my RL1 run, sadly. After using summons on some bosses of my first playthrough (mainly the pumpkin head and the jellyfish for the lulz) i was so excited to learn the bosses move by move like I did in DS3. And let me tell you - my frustration-tolerance is PRETTY high (i must have died around 500 times or more to dancer in my life :D) but once i arrived at fire giant and then godskin duo - i just realized that it was just NOT FUN at all. Doable? Yes - but i felt like not your skill but your strategy is way more important in late game - which is fine but not nearly as motivating to me when doing an RL1. Maybe the Bosses in ER don't catch me nearly as much as in other fromsoft games, although their designs(artwork) are phenomenal.
oh you mean "Valiant" Gargoyles
Dark Souls 3 is my first and favourite Souls game, it has a ton of re playability, it’s got the best music, and almost none of the bosses feel unfair, I love the bosses in Dark Souls 3. I love Slave Knight Gael, and I love the atmosphere of his boss arena, the last two great warriors in a world of ash, with the remnants of once great kingdoms looking on in the background.
There’s just such a strange beauty to the world as well, despite me never playing any other Dark Souls game, it really did feel like the end to me, I felt like I was at the end of an era and it was my duty to end it, and it’s a reason why in the void of faceless protagonists, the Dark Souls 3 one is my favourite, because he’s the only one that truly makes his own decision and isn’t just told what to do.
He can choose to end the Age Of Fire, he’s not told to do this, if anything it frightens the Fire Keeper, she doesn’t know how to feel about it, the music literally changes once you give her the eyes that give you the ability to change the Age Of Fire. With the rest of endings you’re pretty much told what to do, even with the one wherein you become the Lord Of Hollows, (my least favourite ending because I find the End Of Fire just so friggin beautiful) you’re really just being told what to do. With the End Of Fire, it’s the Ashen One making his own decision, his and his alone.
I definitely like Elden Ring, but I simply love Dark Souls 3 more, not much of the music apart from the start screen music really grabbed me and it feels easily the least re playable, I realised why I liked fighting the Ulcerated Tree Spirits when I realised they were a scrapped Pus Of Man boss from Dark Souls 3. And honestly, despite being graphically a bit worse, Dark Souls 3 still has areas that have me in awe, that Dragonpeak is just so goddamn beautiful
I think the music playing during the Lorian and Lothric fight is the best I have heard. I like the abyss watchers music too.
There’s a lot more implicit tones throughout the game than you’re letting on. Various areas do a great job of building up the mystery or insufferable nature that you may find yourself in. Caelid is a great example of this. The grotesque landscape with giant skulls seemly growing out of the earth or the red and disease ridden mist that the surrounds Caelid. The underground area similarly give an effect of an ancient civilization and it stars give a mystical atmosphere. Elden ring brings a variety of tones and past games have done things similar. Just look at the ashen lake in Ds1. The calm and solace bring a lighter tone in comparison to blighttown just above. Fromsoft has always had tonality like this and you’re giving Elden less credit than it deserves in this aspect. Although some of your other points hit right on point and it’s nice to hear a conflicting opinion after listening to people give nonstop praise to Elden ring when it really should be more nuisance than that.
It’s not that elden ring doesn’t have that contrast and nuance. It’s that other games of theirs have done it better.
@@johnathonlongtin2275 I whould honestly disagree with you.
Elden Ring's areas are just as good as those in other games (most of them anyway) they all represent there lore corectly and in some cases they even forshadow bosses before you've even fought them
A good example being Maleketh. if you've met Gorank in calid you'll be able to recognize the architecture in Faram Azula as the same architecture of his room and the same architectur of the area under the clif near him, another detail I like is the fact that you can see statues of beast clergyman in Faram Azula and then who do you find at the end? Gorank/Maleketh.
That is just a single example, but there are countless others
@@speedb.bernard5404 foreshadowing aint the same as tonality. souls did a really good job of giving everything a dreary vibe with this sense of being in a world that's withering away, the only place close to that in elden ring is lindale/ashen capital but the color pallete is still too bright for a dying city
I think that that the tone varies from area to area in Elden Ring each because of a different reason, while in dark souls it can be consistent across the board. One thing I felt Elden Ring has that Dark Souls doesn't, is more of a feeling that there is some hope still in the world. It truly hasn't exactly fallen, and is more in a state of stagnation and being in limbo while slowly turning into that dark place. For example, Limgrave being the first area has golden trees, is vast and somewhat green, it has an npc there who truly wants to help the people and treat the misbegottens with respect. Farum azula is stuck in time and limbo, it's off on its own and is stuck decaying where it is. Caelid is basically hell, but it has a group of people who still care enough about their world and king to throw him a festival.
@@SoggyBacco They are different, cant compare better or worse on "dreary" because elden ring isnt about that. Elden ring is more Lord of the Rings while dark souls is an dark terror version of it. They are just different in tone, but hey both set the tome very well
I had alot I want to say but to shorten it, DSIII is still my favorite game of all time BUT this review is VERY BIASED and opinionated subjective viewpoint are somehow considered as good arguments. Tho I agree with your opinions, I can still however see them as nothing more then opinions and you can sum up this entire "video analysis" with: I liked this in DSIII more.
hi chemaogi,
i see what your saying and yes, everything is based on my opinion. what i attempted to do was show why my opinion prefers ds3 over elden ring.
just because it’s my opinion doesn’t mean i can’t back that opinion up with solid reasoning.
at the end of the day everything surrounding art criticism is just some opinion. that doesn’t necessarily make the discussion bad though.
@@unleashedbread6146 your reasoning is extremely poor and when i see video titles like this it seems like clickbait
@@sakibm6522 your reasoning is extremely poor, your comment is like clickbait
@@sakibm6522 this is not clickbate. the video is 100 percent about what the title is... don't know what you're on about
@@unleashedbread6146 the fact that its not clickbait makes it wayy worse
"I know you'll say this is subjective, but I did subjective mathematics on it to rank my personal opinion, so it's not subjective...it subjective maths. Beat that, haters."
I give your comment a 7/10 I give *my* comment a 10/10 by maths. My comment is better. I did math!
Adding numbers to your opinion and doing some basic math doesn’t make it an objective measure. Also saying that elden ring doesn’t give the dark horror vibes of dark souls 3 as a point against Elden Ring makes no sense because elden ring isn’t a dark souls game. It’s going for a more high fantasy aesthetic so how can you compare that with the dark fantasy of dark souls. They’re different and trying to achieve different things. Although I will agree that dark souls bosses had better music but tbh the first few bosses of dark souls 3 bosses were horrible.
Bro Im with you 100% bro goes “Its not a subjective opinion anymore because I did a subjective score based system to rank how good bosses are” I knew immediately this was gonna be full of horrible arguments
I don't know if it was because it was my first souls experience, but regarding your point about tone, when i played DS3 it was an awesome experience, after clearing an area and keep moving not knowing what you are about to encounter, and finding a dark swamp filled with terrifying monsters, feeling insecure about returning to the bonfire or keep moving, it's genius. That feeling was even stronger when i played Bloodborne. On the other hand, Elden Ring didn't gave me that feeling of "fear to the unknown", but the world they crafted is certainly satisfying to explore and just beautiful, the artistic director deserves a raise, same with Sekiro, i think those games offer you different things to experience than dark souls, i guess it depends on what you want of the game, my personal favorite will always be DS1 tho, that lore, those sad stories, those characters, that tone, that OST, its so perfect it changed my life.
Wow you captured perfectly what my DS3 experience was like!
Yeah, was really disappointed about the boss design and music in Elden ring. Tbh the only boss that I really liked was malakieth but even then his first phase kinda sucked. Although I think Elden ring kinda improves on most things kinda misses on some of the biggest reasons I liked the dark souls series
Also mohg was cool but the arena was pretty bad
@@FG-lp1gr completely agree with you
yea but dark souls 3 bosses were stupid easy even at lower than the average req level to beat said boss, i had more of a challenge with elden ring's bosses even the open world ones, half of 3's bosses were pretty bad, i think normal enemies are harder in dark souls series and while easier in elden ring though, 3's pvp and invasions were better overall though, not sure why they thought allowing you to have 2 summons without risking a 2nd invader was a good idea 1v3s are pretty shitty
The music is great but you do you
Finally, someone said the things I dislike the most about Elden Ring. I thought I was the only one. I heard people talk a bit about the bosses and how From reused them a lot, but no one spoke about the music. Seriously, ER has the worst Souls soundtrack. I barely remember any music from this game. The only really memorable music from this game I remember is the main menu theme. It's actually good and epic, but I hate the fact that they used it for Radagon's boss fight. They spoiled the music for the first phase of the final boss. That's unacceptable. Imagine if this happened with Gwyn's theme in DSI. It would totally affect in a bad way the feelings and impressions you get while fighting Gwyn and hearing his theme. This is the same with Elden Ring. I really hate the fact that From spoiled this music for me. Before entering the Erdtree for the first time, I was so hyped. I was really excited to hear the final boss' theme, because From makes great final boss' theme usually (I say usually cause I didn't finish Bloodborne, Sekiro and DeS.) When I heard for the first time the final theme, I was like "oh it's the main menu theme. It's good and epic, but it sucks that I've already heard it." Imagine if you got spoiled about the Soul of Cinder's theme, especially about the second phase when you hear plin plin plon... that would suck real bad. There would be no "OMG THAT'S GWYN'S THEME FROM DSI AHHHHHHHHHH GDDUSJSBDBDBDBXNDKDKDMXNDN." That would really suck (I hope I was clear enough, english isn't my native language so, sorry about the mistakes !)
Would love to see the full list of Elden Ring bosses ranked, having beat the game 4 times now I would have to say Plasidusax is definitely my favorite and feels less cheap than other end game bosses except for his hp
It's a great boss but I find kind of BS how on NG+ he is the only boss that one shots me at 65 vigor. I can even tank half of a Waterfowl Dance but 80% of Placidusax moveset one shots me, I feel he's bugged
Can I do plasidusax after I finished the game? I haven't started ng+ yet becuase I started playing the other souls after elden but everyone says this boss is one of the best and I somehow skipped it
@@ionutalexandru3645 yes you can
I had the most fun with elden ring. I spent almost 1000h on dark souls 3 . If elden ring was abit more populated it would be a 10/10
Maybe, but you'll spend an eternity in Dark Souls 1.
For me Dark Souls III and Elden Ring are more difficult than Dark Souls I
Honestly i believe, elden ring is great but focused the wrong things. Pvp is half the fun at this point and the pvp community got the shaft in ER. Pve is not that enjoyable either because massive dmg and hp gets handed out to every peasant.
To make the game more interesting to play, lower late game enemies hp by a good 20-30% and dmg by 15%.
Also, in terms of levels, you progress about as fast as in ds3 but need about 1.5 times the level to meet in power. It feels like youre underpowered if you dont sink in 50+ levels in damage alone.
If it was popular it still wouldn't be 10/10. They need to improve the game. The world just feels empty and boring, maybe more crucible knights and tree sentinels knights in each different locations throughout the map would make the world feel more better and deadly.
The location where Godfrey the first elden lord is at felt empty and had no enemy ai. They could of placed a couple of crucible knights and tree sentinel knights there. Elden ring was rushed and they didn't use their imagination.
@@WiseOne93 troll or do you genuinely think crucible knights make the game better?
I can still to this day remember every boss fight in DS3. Elden Ring. I remember like 4. They just are not fun. I love the grimdark hopelessness atomosthere of Dark Souls. Elden Ring is too colorful and mainstream in my opinion. Open World ruined this type of game by being able to run straight to overpowered upgrade items in the world without even fighting a single boss to get to an area. I just can’t love Elden Ring. I like it. But Dark Souls 3 will always hold its place in my heart as my all-time favorite game
Hi, nice video, you´re right on so many points.
1. As a longtime pyromancer, I can tell you, I always thought melee builds were easier. The bosses don´t simply stand there waiting for you to attack, they always are closing the distance and you try to create that distance. The fact that you are a twig ready to break at any moment puts as much pressure as being in his face. Most spells don´t travel the whole arena, you have to be in a spot where the boss can also hurt you. And you are forgetting something very important: flask management. By default, you have less hp flasks because you have to distribute them with your fp flasks, and you always have to wonder what´s the best balance. While melee builds have 14 hp flasks, we have half that amount. Not to mention, you have to use a window that normally would be used to attack, in an fp replenish flask. But some of my most memorable fights were where I ran out of flasks (hp and fp) and had to take out my mediocre sword with my mediocre streght and finish the fight. Every spell has a cost, swings of a sword are free.
What you´re complaining about is the comet of Azur, yeah, that thing is broken. I have no idea how From let that slip.
2. Sadly, you´re absolutly right, DS3 bosses are better than ER bosses in general. I loved the legacy bosses (Godrick, Radan, Rennala, Mogh) but artistically, the music was inferior.
Sadly I have to go, but I´ll keep writing later if you don´t mind.
I mean...was there ever any doubt?
Ds3 is mid af game bland af aesthetic and boring R1 spam combat ER clears.
@@makia3 said no one with brains ever
Great review. Both games are fun. I really feel your opinion on replayabillity. I played through elden ring once and started ng+ only to start a DS3 run shortly after. The magic was kinda gone for me and I found myself just running to each of the boss battles instead of exploring the open world.
Well to be fair: Dark souls 3 is "running to each of the boss battles" 100% of the game xD
Such a good video. I enjoyed every minute watching your content, and I don't think I have ever watched any of your other videos. I just stumbled upon this one, and wow. Amazing really. Well done. Great job
thank you so much esoteric. that is very kind
A better analogy would be going to a boxing match but your opponent gets to use brass knuckles!.
I agree with basically everything you said, the only thing I would add is the PVP community specifically. While the game has been made more accesable it has taken the number of gankers/cheesers in the game and multiplied it 10 fold. The number of youtube builds I see running around that can one shot you is absolutely insane. The issue with a 3v1 in Elden ring is all od them can one or two shot you even at 60 vig. But in Ds3 even in the same situation I felt comfortable and it felt relatively balanced. Personally I am taking a break after 500 hrs, I no longer which to pvp in ER, I will come back for the DLC.
While I personally find myself still preferring DS3 (I haven’t beaten Elden ring yet), you taking a break after a whopping 500 hours is a great sign for elden ring!
So you complaining about a game you played for 500 hours 😂😂
@@KingReelo I’m giving constructive criticism because I love the game. Learn the difference.
@@KingReelo use that head you got and think for a minute people don’t complain about things they don’t care about why would anyone bother they are most critical of things they are passionate about
I do agree that some of these things are individually done better in their other games---that Sekiro has the best combat system, that Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls have the best tone, that Bloodborne and Sekiro have the best overall boss lineups, and that Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 have the best PVP encounters.
But I'm curious: given that these strengths ebb and flow across all of their titles, and that it is neither their preceding release nor the lone victor of their catalogue in any category, why do you single out Dark Souls 3 in particular for this video?
I think he chosed ds3 because it is very similar to elden ring(sekiro is almost entirely different game) and ds3 is the most recently released version of dark souls . Tarnished is agile but not as agile as good hunter and sekiro and it is not as slow as ds1 chosen undead....
hey thanks for stopping by! I think other souls games have better tone (ds1, bloodborne), or combat (sekiro), but i’m arguing that DS3 has the best most balanced cross section of all these games.
@@jagernkk9875 Yes, I think it's true that the combat and movement of Elden Ring share the most in common with Dark Souls 3---although the combat does have some Sekiro DNA, and the open structure is obviously closer to Dark Souls 1 or Dark Souls 2 than any of the others.
That said, I think it's only straightforward to argue that DS3 is 'better' in _one_ of the categories included here. The rest of the categories are extremely close in quality, to the extent that I can't imagine any consensus emerging in the community. That's why I was curious why he didn't pick another game of theirs, where the quality differences would've been more pronounced across his preferred criteria.
@@TheGemsbok I think DS3 had the best set of bosses in any studio game, except maybe Sekiro. He had amazing music, great environment design and atmosphere, it expanded the knowledge of DS1 and 2, he had the best PVP experience (ER killed the invasion). I say this to everyone whose favorite game is Sekiro and ds1. It's just that Ds3 is generally a more solid game, from start to finish, which I can't say about Elden RIng with constant repetition of content and a noticeable decline in quality after the Top of the Giants.
To be honest, bloodborne didn't have the best lineup, they were all just dumb potatoes that sat there while you ate there health bar, exeltions being dlc bosses.
Late to the party but thanks for this, especially the "Tone" section. You captured something I've struggled to put into words for 18 months. Elden Ring has many beautiful areas and all that, but the tonality & themes being so varied, it's hard to glue it all together into a meaningful emotional result.
Dark Souls has had major philosophical ramifications in my own life, and for many others, because of how lore, atmosphere, combat, story, and difficulty make this wonderful compelling whole. Fire & Dark, civilisation and chaos, collective and individual, meaning and hope. Elden Ring tries to say something about cyclicality, stagnation, and history, but it's not compelling to me. Feels more like dry archaeology than exploring the human condition. Souls made us smile and cry and reconsider our lives with characters like Lucatiel, Aldia, Greirat, Oscar, and Solaire. Almost nobody in Elden Ring touches my heart like they did, because the tone is so disjointed and spread out.
Well said ianwilliams. Ironically ER feels much more like a husk of a story even compared to DS's lore-which is literally about soul-less hallowed people.
I agree with the boss attacks in the combat part, I'm doing a rune level 1 run and Morgott took me 3 hours to no hit because if I'd get hit he'd always follow up with a fast attack, same with Maliketh. I'd also add the earthquake shockwave attacks to the list as well.
yeah i agree. did you also do rl1 runs of the other dark souls games? if so how where they different in terms of combat?
@@unleashedbread6146 I did a sl1 run in Dark Souls 3 and I could tank a hit with Lloyd's shield talisman every time I was on max health, even against soul of cinder (although I didn't do the dlcs) But Elden Ring gets more difficult than ds3 ever got for me at around Morgott
@@unleashedbread6146 I did both blind sl1 and DS1 2 and 3 were all very fair and balanced. I was enthralled by ER at first but it massively falls off in boss quality and never even close to reaches previous games. It's not subjective, its fact. People will disagree, but lets be honest, they can't understand how much knowledge some people actually have, which is ok.
As someone who prefers to play as a mage. You are correct when you say magic is easy mode. ESPECIALLY if you use night comet because enemy’s don’t dodge that one.
Plus the infinite fp physick with comet azur melts slow or big bosses.
I demonstrated this perfectly in my most recent upload
Spirit summons are the easy mode, early game magic doesn't make bosses that much easier at all, plus you have to sacrifice vigor if you want to do any reasonable damage
Meteorite staff + Staff if loss + night comet kills most things in one hit.
Early bosses die in 10 casts.
People say that mage are easy and all but actually they are balanced like other classes..
The early game is a little difficult as a mage because of unavailability of spells and casts.
While the end game is also too difficult because the bosses are just so aggressive and fast that they don't give the room for casting.
Run straight to Caelid for night comet and staff of loss for big damage. The bridge dragon and tree demon are easy souls.
I tried to be as powerful as possible with my gained knowledge and it was mostly easy.
Only problem was if bosses closed the gap on you because I only had like 1k hp.
I’ve tried mage str and dex builds on ng and mage is definitely the easiest.
Mage has by far the highest dps right under bleed. I made a video demonstrating it although kinda sloppy
Elden ring is literally only fun once, I tried a few new playthroughs and ng+ but just uninstalled, the open world design is so boring and completely unneeded for a souls game, I’ve never really felt boredom in any souls game but in Elden ring it was a massive problem, bloodborne still holds the crown for me and ds3 is close behind
The linear design makes it so every inch of DS3 feels intentionally designed and memorable. The massive open world of ER makes it so that the memorable moments are rare, and if you told me that most of the landscape was randomly generated, I would believe you.
I had a blast with ER, but this difference alone makes DS3 far superior.
Also, the more linear feel gives the player a much greater sense of progress and accomplishment. The open world too often it makes it feel like you're just wandering aimlessly and little sense of progression. By the end of ER, I didn't feel like I had journeyed so far. I just felt like I had spent so many hours.
This is a really good essay and I like your style. It's a brief take, but I think it's good for that. You should make more of these!!
thanks so much
You can actually dodge through that one attack you’re talking about at 18:00! It’s actually pretty satisfying once you get the timing down!
Yeah, you just to immediately dodge after you dodge the attack before it
@@oniisaan3943no, the fun thing is that you have to use just one roll to dodge both the swings!
EDIT: here is me doing it at 0:40
ua-cam.com/video/rsDpYkSRLhs/v-deo.html
@@saucyjack4936 yup, that's what i meant and i was actually agreeing with you
@@oniisaan3943 oh okay, my bad
i agree with alot of your points. im surprised you didnt touch on the countless reused bosses in the game. its my biggest gripe by last 3rd/4th of the game you barely see anything new. its an amazing game in most aspects but a few things fall short.
hi kumo, yeah i agree. I think i would have appreciated 25 percent less game if that meant 25 percent more work on the quality of existing bosses/music/dungeons.
I can play DS3 or DS1 anytime and often do. When I finished Elden Ring I was like, thank God that is over, I'll never play that again.
I feel the same way. The bosses in Dark Souls 3 are peak FromSoft design. They've set the bar so high with DS3 and Bloodborne that the majority of the bosses in Elden Ring don't reach those levels. Don't get me wrong Elden Ring has multiple S tier bosses but way less than DS3 and Bloodborne. Like from the top of my head I can really only think of like 6 S tier bosses for ER and DS3 has around 11. That gap may not seem like a lot but keep in mind that Elden Ring has like 60-70 bosses compared to DS3's what, 25 bosses? Also, if we're talking about bad bosses, ER has way more bad bosses than DS3. Only the Greatwood, Deacons, and Ancient Wyvern were bottom-tier bosses for me.
Dark Souls 3 also has a better overall tone and atmosphere compared to Elden Ring. But that's just my bias towards the bleak and depressing world of Dark Souls. Also, I feel like Dark Souls 3 has better lore than Elden Ring, especially in the character aspects. Abyss Watchers, Nameless King, Twin Princes, and Gael have such sick backstories for example.
But I wish to make a case for Elden Ring's combat. It's much more versatile than Dark Souls 3. The ability to actually jump without having to run and having multiple ways to open up attacks feel really good. There are also a lot of ashes of wars (weapon skills) that can be used in different situations whereas in Dark Souls 3, you mainly just spam R1 and get things over with. Sure you could spam R1 in Elden Ring too but it's way better to use different types of attacks and ashes of war which gives the combat more variety. Additionally, the build variety in Elden Ring is so much better than Dark Souls 3. The number of weapons and spells and incantations are amazing and there are so many types of them which means the amount of builds you can make with Elden Ring is way more than Dark Souls 3.
I'd rank Elden Ring as an 8.5 or 9/10 but Dark Souls 3 as a 9.5/10. I know a lot of people hate Dark Souls 3 but I would say that it's the peak Souls experience.
ER has 165 bosses. Most are rehashed but there are 165 instances where you see a boss health bar.
DS3 certainly has the best bosses, but I find everything else to be so much less interesting than ER or even DS1, especially in the level design and environment variety. Very polished, but devoid of any new ideas.
Imo the ones that hate dks3 are for the most part pvpers and dks2 white knights, so take their opinion on the game with a grain of salt.
Dks3 isn't perfect, but it's a damn fine game for sure
Who the hell hates Dark Souls 3?! It's glorious!
@@warsmithkarnak7960 that’s what i’m saying!! i don’t know how so many people hate it so much
Every time somebody mentions how “easy” being a mage is, I just look at my 9 days played on my mage build and have PTSD of how terrible spells and incantations were until NG+.
Most ranged spells are so weak and have such low radius that you still have to learn how the boss operates because at any moment they’ll lunge at you or shoot out their own ranged attack that one shots you.
Not to mention all the grinding and effort it does take to level up a staff, find the spells, and have the int/faith required to use them while also maintaining decent mind and vigor.
Mage is certainly OP once you’re all settled in, but so are the dual hammer unga bunga builds and dual katana bleed builds lol
Tbh to sum it up mages are weak early and Op late, strength are good early and not that great late.
@@user-ck5kt1ci6k strength has great lategame, good damage, alot of utility and versatility. Just gotta know how to build 👍
Mage is easier because you get more damage for less stat investment. Plus magic = range. Range means less risk overall. The game os designed to counter range fights, but not very well
@@tzebet8707 Ahh I mean thats what I've heard from others am just new, so mb on not stating that.
@@user-ck5kt1ci6k no problem baby 🐸
I went from trying to hear the music in ER to "dam is it really gonna be the same track again?" personally the only rememberable boss in ER was maliketh and it was soley due to how that cut scene reminded me of Artorias. I love the options in pvp but I hate how most bad players gravitate to the weapon arts that play the game for them and FROM is rewarding that. I think pvp can be fixed easily by nerfing all player damage by at least 25%, nerfing percentage status effect damage by half (ie bleed, frost, and madness) to other players, increase poise breaks on weapons and double the poise breaks when power stanced and two handing, increasing the player limit so it's HIGHER than ds3's (bigger world plus it'll help blues to be actually be summoned in), making it so invaders don't have to be at a specific grace to invade a host who so happens to have that same grace, there's a lot more than that but i won't get into it.
I felt the same with music being a little lackluster in some fights with the exception of Rennala and the Ancestral Spirit deer. I just liked how it was a change of pace from the hyper aggressive bosses that I was able to enjoy the atmosphere and music of the arena
You make some great content I hope you blow up! All I do while I'm working is listen to videos and as weird as it sounds your voice is easy to listen to lol! Keep it up my man!!
thank you dalton. much thanks! iI plan on making some more longer gaming reviews in the near future-if you are interested.
Morgott has an instant kill combo which he will use if you hit him once after he has used a move. You time your roll earn your hit and retreat but no, He will pull out this instant kill combo but only sometimes.
Even though I don't entirely agree with all the points on this video (I'm not going to say what and why, since it will take way to long)
I do love that you gave Godrick the grafted the highest score out of all the main elden ring bosses. I feel like he gets overlooked by so many people when in reality, he's such a fundamental boss and an amazing "introductory boss" to elden ring. Like this boss teaches so many things that you are going to continue using throughout the game like jumping to dodge ground slams or staggering. He's not insanely complex, yet still has a varied moveset and doesn't have a lot of delayed attacks which end in something that you almost cannot dodge. The music is amazing, the boss arena is great (maybe not my favourite, but still good). I'd have to agree that Godrick is definitely among the top 3 bosses if I were to rank them (I still think however that rykard was way to fun of a gimmick fight to not place it on the first spot imo, But I'm just someone that loves gimmick fights that are well made.)
I thought Mohg was peak FromSoft. Delayed attacks, sure, but at least it feels right with him, no permanent lifesteal, perfect boss.
I'm still in the combat session of this video, but I just want to say THANK YOU. This is probably the best compilation of comparisons and pointing out of flaws I've ever seen about Elden ring. As someone that just finished the game, I agree with you 100%, especially about trying to dodge some bullshit attacks from these bosses. It totally takes off the fun of engaging and taking the Boss fight as melee as possible. With that in mind, I also fear the future of from softwares bosses, cause despite these still have patterns, their move set and speed are so fast, that we can only rely on waiting for these attack animations to end and attack and back off(almost completely running away), because some are just impossible to avoid.
Thanks mate. I know so many people love this game, but i honesty don’t feel like they know how many h better combat is in the other games. We will see what the future favors
Great video! Which From Software game would you recommend a person to start with first?
I went into Elden Ring blind and now after beating it I have more time in Sekiro than ER. Thinking about trying DS3 next. The fact Bloodborne is only on Playstation should be a crime
thanks mate! so i honestly would recommend DS1 or DS3 next. (bloodborne if you gotta playstation available, but i think they might release a remaster of it soon)
DS1 if you want to experience the memorable birth of the Dark Souls franchise.
DS3 if you want a more refined modern experience.
They are honestly both must plays in my opinion
Lost me at Godrick being the best boss in Elden Ring
good comprehensive view. Completely on point of DS3 having a more consistent darker mood, which fans had grown to love, despite ER being visually more beautiful. Also, indeed the vastness of the world makes it less valuable. I feel like this comparison makes sense: Imagine DS3 is a small independent book store, where books are stacked everywhere and it feels very cozy, yet full of mystery. ER on the other hand is a big corporate book store, it has amenities like computer lookup system for stock, has lots of sections, even the second floor and an escalator between the levels, has everything that you like, but a bit less soul, or a bit less dark soul in that case. Both are great, and I am very thankful for the team and the amount of craft that went into the game, to me DS3 still is more dear. Open world is a different formula, and in ER it is too easy to level up fast and walk over most of the bosses and encounters. It is a blast for the first time, but replayability is limited indeed. I think I will return to it, after revisiting DS3 and then I can compare again.
really great bookstore analogy
@@unleashedbread6146 thanks!
While I think the arguments can use some work I definitely agree with your overall assesment and I think that the big issues were with it being open world so you can get way op easier than in dark souls, the horse trivializes some fights, and the story is generally less cohesive and harder to keep track of, although I still really enjoyed the game and liked a lot of the even more ambiguous conflicting narratives of the gods in a bloodborne like manner.
Less cohesive than DS3? DS3 is fan service fest for DS1 and doesn’t have interesting characters and storylines AT ALL. People can say whatever about bosses in ER (even though they improved on some ideas like Renala is much better than Deacons and Rykard just destroys Yhorm), but world, characters, their storylines are WAY better and more original than anything in DS3.
@@miramaxcinemax5512 yeah no this video is def biased there are good points as to the short comings of elden ring but this video is not it for the most part
"that the big issues were with it being open world" the best joke. Elden Ring is good cause it's open world. open world is the strongest point of Elden Ring.
you can choose not to be OP, and you can choose not to use the horse. guess what? the average player doesn't rush to be OP.
the story is less cohesive than Dark Souls? nice joke you gave me good laughs.
@@SapiaNt0mata Elden Ring is good because its open world but DSIII is better because it isn't an open world. Did you even understand what the video was about? It wasn't saying Elden Ring is a bad game alone. It was comparing it to another game, showing how that other game did things better.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 nope. i watched the video, but i'm not obligated do agree. just how he has his opinion i have mine, and i disagree. this guy said that Dark Souls 3 is better cause it's dark. this is utterly ridiculous. and you ask me if i undesrtand what the video is about? how about ask if this guy is stupid with these strawman arguments cause he is salty that Elden Ring is more popular and the most successful From Soft game instead of Dark Souls 3.
It’s hard for me to compare the two, cause I’ve beaten dark souls 3 probably 30 times or more, and ive only beaten Elden ring twice now. So going through the gaming and feeling like the bosses in Elden ring aren’t as good as the bosses in ds3 should be expected until i beat Elden ring as many times as ds3
I don't mean to be that guy but couldn't the boss part still be up to personal opinion. And, the tone part is mostly due to change since Elden Ring's world isn't in a "dying state" but in a "restorable state" if that makes sense.
nah if you’ve played past soulsborne games you’d definitely feel the same, although there are MANY different bosses in elden ring many are rehashes with slightly different move sets and slightly different designs. The main bosses definitely deserve praise (morgott, radhan, godfrey) as they are enough challenge while also very fun and cool as hell.
well isn’t any criticism or praise of anything just based on personal opinion though? I tried to do the scoring system with the bosses so that i could actually think out and process why i feel like the ER bosses felt so bland or lackluster to me.
the tone shift makes sense totally, i’m just arguing that it’s not better
@@unleashedbread6146 Everyone always will like something different than others so I can't really knock you down for that. Enjoy what you want to enjoy!
@@azuln.3760 Well I'm starting to play bloodborne (My second Soulslike game). I have beaten the first two bosses so I can somewhat feel different in terms of bosses and the feel of the games. But I'm only at the beginning, so hopefully, I'll enjoy it.
So I started ds3 last year for the first time, got my ass kicked in the area after the tutorial boss, I quit. Played elden ring and it was fun, I actually went back to ds3 and I actually beat the game yesterday, I liked it so much better, it was linear (I’m in the military so I don’t really have too much time to sit down and game for long hours), I actually had to learn the boss moves instead of relying on my summon or spamming the same moves (I played strength for both games) I felt like I accomplished something, the pvp is also better, it’s not the same people with the same weapons. What other soulsborne game should I play next? Also I would rather replay ds3 than elden ring.
Excluding the pvp, you know you can do the same with elden ring right? Just don’t use summons and learn the bosses move set. Same thing
@@slb2219 yeah I’ll have to go back and do that. Thanks for the input
@@slb2219 except the elden ring boss movesets with a few exception s are not fun or fair
@@slb2219 i mean you can do that for sure with ER bosses, the problem is because some of them are unfair, the fun is taken out of mastering the boss fights. it just feels like a chore to me-unlike DS3
I’d recommend bloodborne next if you haven’t played it!
The worst disappointment for me is the replayability. Im forcing myself on a journey 2, but it's really very uninteresting. I'm even trying ERR which is a mod that changes a lot of balance things but it's still very unfulfilling.
Só now Im back with Ds3, convergence mod. Having a blast!!
Cool and great arguments on your evaluation, congrats!!!
Ffs, No one can say anything bad about Elden Ring without getting mogged.
I was laughing the whole time atcthis nonsense, but when you called abyss wather an S tier boss, I straight up lost it. And get this, it was done by "math"
I agree. Elden ring open world is cool. Especially up to the capital. All snow and haligtree aprts are TERRIBLE. But I much prefer more curated, foused, crafted experience like ds1,2,3
absolutely agree hiczok
At the very beginning of ER I realized that pvp would be a battle of ashes of war, and I would lose most of the melee
I think overall movement is better in elden ring even as a pure melee. Also the ability to level endurance with equip load instead of vitality is better. Otherwise I agree with the video
yeah i agree with you the movement feels super great and fresh-i especially noticed this after replaying DS2 again.
and elden ring does a lot of great things to help the user ai and streamline the experience. i wonder how far they can take it though before it erodes the quality of the games. i can’t complain too much though- they are doing a great job overall
The combat is being experimented with in elden ring, somethings could use a touch up but I like the innovation, radagon teleporting right as I’m about to hit him feels like fuck guys a god and tough to hit, and Melania being lightining fast out of a stagger makes sense since she is the ultimate sword fighter, it feels like too many people could get away with no hit runs in ds3 while elden ring bosses make it tough with their lore friendly super aggression
I mean I kinda agree but these innovations which make sense from a lore perspective don’t make the game better while I agree ds3 is significantly easier to beat than Elden ring at least when you compare a ds3 no summon melee character to an Elden ring no summon melee character fromsoft hasn’t increased the difficulty in a fair way Malenia being lightning fast while the player is stuck at a slower speed makes the fight unfair kinda similar to Sister Friede in ds3 cause she was faster than the player but Malenia just has so many other things going for her that I don’t think making her faster than the player was necessary, healing when hit or when you block the attack scarlet rot buildup in her second phase crazy long combos super aggression an infinite poise kick and cancelling attacks it isn’t fair to the player if Malenia can cancel attacks victory is no longer determined by raw skill but by rng the player has to ram their head into Malenia till they can finally get good rng so they don’t die when the game is based on luck and not skill that makes it less fun because you die not because of your mistakes but because the game fucked you over unfairly
Umm no bruh do you want to know exactly why elden ring bosses seem that way? They are input reading. Even with unpredictable timing they will do a specific move if you heal at all. If you move a certain way, if you attack and miss. They are fake. They barely have ai. Elden ring bosses are abusable if you just know about the input reading. The hard bosses, because of that feature, are now just long bosses. Its a game of attrition, its boring and not fun, which is probably why they balanced the game to just let you one shot everything.
@@shnouth5391Elden Ring only use animation reading to punish players who heal during neutral. The bosses use combo flowcharts to respond to whatever the player does and rewards them with an opening eventually. They don’t input read.
this video honestly just makes me wanna replay ds3. i had no urge to replay elden ring after beating it
i felt the same way at first, and i have gone back to do a melee only build. and let me tell you it is an un-fun chore becuase of the unfair boss moves.
@@unleashedbread6146 melee only build was my first playthrough like every other soulsborne game ive gone into but this is the only one where i was constantly getting my ass kicked as a str build lol and the game became so tedious and annoying to play by the last like quarter of the game
Great video. I like your analysis. Direct and to the point. Little humor here and here
Should make more videos
Would love to hear your take on Bloodbourne...I definitely enjoyed it but it didn't come close to DS3 or ER for me personally
thanks man! im working on another long video like this one rn so stay posted. Im hoping to make a bloodborne video with my controversial takes whenever they make a PC version or remake. Im pretty mixed on BB
Underrated, sure I’m not a bot and don’t agree with everything, but some points are very strong and people will agree in the future.
I don’t agree with the boss rankings given on the video, yet I think most agree that DS3 has better boss design than ER (unless the DLC gives us the best boss ever). This is almost a fact cause ER has been full of stealth balance nerfs on bosses! Elden Stars, the most broken attack in all the games, finally got fixed by having a new tech of it being slower than the player character instead of a homing missile. The Godskin duo AI got tweaked to give openings, Radahn hitbox was the true problem, damage was never the issue and Fromsoft agrees. And some more hidden changes here and there. Compare that to, at least on my experience, DS3 were the only change I believe they did was nerfing the angel Machine gun on DLC 2. Not even a boss change and you barely see anyone wanting to see them get unnerfed, specially those who were on NG+7.
And the replay ability of the open world. I’ve done all 10 characters and some are max NG+, and good god I find myself rushing to get to the “dungeons”. The small places like frenzied village and the caves become a pain to explore, I have no doubt 10% of my playtime is riding Torrent with 0 dangers and basically wasting my time, at least running past enemies on dungeon makes you dodge occasionally and give you some semblance of entertainment.
I love both games but I see the flaws to my personal experience.
I agree on everything here. I really like that you pointed out that even the music sucks. You're the first person that I've heard mention that. It's just generic boss music. It doesn't stand out. Also, you nailed it with your description of Maliketh. The bosses have moves that are faster than the amount of times you can dodge.
Hey UnleashedBread, I took your advice to heart and made a video in response to this. Would appreciate it if you checked it out and would love to hear your thoughts!
If anybody who disagrees my video wants to see somebody roast my arguments watch this rebuttal. He deserves more subs
Thing I hate most about Elden Ring is what you mentioned about undodgeable attacks. You can roll through the first hit of Margit’s multi hit combo, but will always get hit by the second because your character hasn’t fully recovered from his first roll. I also hate the excessive use of unnaturally delayed attacks. The delayed attacks in DS3 at least looked natural and weren’t obnoxious.
Talking about the damage aspect, something I realized on my SL1 run in ER is that even in midgame you will start to die in one hit.
Something that e.g. was an exception in DS3 or any soulsborne game for that matter, even Gael couldn't kill you in one hit if you ran some armor and prisoner's chain. The only one that could were some exceptions like Orphan (in BB) or NK iirc, and mostly only a few attacks if any.
In ER tho every little swipe or glancing blow will knock you out if you have the same setup (armor and radagon's seal). Which feels so off, compared to any of the soulsborne games and makes SL1 running far more frustrating, for you now have to play every boss from midgame onwards flawless while having access to so little things.
yes, theres a pretty bad balancing issue. even with rune drops as well like dunkey pointed out
I mean the game is way bigger. Tough to call it a balancing issue when you get one shit at a level Lowe then what most people.start the game at. Yes there is a balancing issue in some areas but this game is huge. They needed to account for that and they knew people would be way higher level than other games so had to make them hit harder. Dark souls is better sl1 er is better on a normal build. Nothing wrong with that
@@RealMonkeyDKirby Er is not better at normal build. Too many exploits. If they didn't make the game that big with 50 reused bosses in each level. They did open world for traction. Nothing wrong with linear design.
@justaguy1071 that doesn't even mlae sense...just trying to repeat some shit you heard some shit streamer say who cuts at the game
@@RealMonkeyDKirby or Maybe I own both games. And I've actually played them both for 200 hours each. 🙃. It also does make sense since replaying Elden ring is a goddamn chore. While I have fun replaying dark souls 3 for the billionth time.
P.s this is a problem with all open world games. It's all the same repetitive nonsense. The only games that did it well was batman arkham city and Knight.
Having watched this video, I think what you're most wrong about is the combat. Whether or not you use magic is on you. Whether or not you use ashes of war is on you. Regardless of whether something is perfectly balanced or not, the combat is such an evolution over Dark Souls I/II/III that in isolation, in a vacuum, it's completely better. The addition of jump attacks, reintroduction of powerstancing, the increased amount of movesets that can be applied via ashes of war, etc just add an absolute ocean of depth to the combat as a gameplay loop that I really don't think you can even argue this aspect of the game. I also think this impacted boss and mob design because I don't think From really knew what to do with all the options they gave the player. It's definitely set the skill floor of the game way higher than it was previously, and I think there's merit to saying this isn't necessarily a wholly positive decision. Some bosses are very guilty of not necessarily demanding the player realize what part of the game mechanics they're an extension of and instead just memorize the fight. If you want the former (and in no way am I saying this is a baseless or meritless desire) I'd agree that DS III has a much better boss roster and probably the best boss roster we've ever seen in a game by From full stop. Also, DS II was way better for PvP than DS III. Without the top tier broken stuff, I'd say ER has better PvP too-but it's important to acknowledge that rivers of blood and moonveil exist lol.
Elden Ring is far beyond anything the Dark Souls games ever were. Its evolution at its finest.
No matter how many options you have if there's no balance in those. Not saying people should always pick what's better but people who don't will know they are challenging themselves and not by the game
The combat itself is a straight upgrade but the enemies are not properly balanced around it.
@@heibk-2019 ..Because its an open World. Trust me, you don't want the World to level with you. That would be boring.
Having more options doesn't make a game better, so no. If that was the case, Sekiro would be the worst of them all because you doesn't have the power to customize your character and playing style. Also, "powerstance" like Dark Souls 2 was far from being really a good thing, power stance just transform two weapons into a solo new weapon, but most of them (blades, maces/axes, polearms/spears etc.) just share the exact same moveset, whatever you are actually mixing. They not necessarily do better dps and you have a slower recovery time for roll. Things aren't that simple are "more options means better".
Elden Ring combat system doesn't works that well, because the balance between different build is broken. Yes, you can chose to do magic or not. I've done a run with an ultra greatsword without magic and summon, and massive armor. You know what? I was taking as much as damages as I were naked, and I was doing less damages than someone with a shittons of magic spells or just bleed and fast weapons. There is no point in using two-handed weapons, because after reaching the hard cap, which is easy considering how long the game is, the bonus for actually using a weapon two-handed is so weak that playing at one hand is more or less the same, and it was with a weapon with a S-scaling in strength. The way bosses works, without real stamina, without any time to actually breath, means slow weapons are at their worst because you can't attack 95% of the time, even after a combo. Add to that the delayed attacks and random number of attacks in a moveset, and just pray your gods.
Jumps attacks doesn't make the game better : they are actually SO strong, especially for slow weapons, that you end up most of the time just spamming them. They make all your other moves irrevelant. Ashes of war are more or less the same, those who buff or give special abilities are nice, those who just do magic shit with your weapon have the same problem as magic and jumping attack : too strong and makes your moves irrevelant. It's like Zelda 64. The jumping attack do the double amount of damages of your other attacks. Why the hell would you use anything else when you have basically no real downside?
A game is better with two solid options who provide you a real need of adaptation and a real learning curve than 46 options with one being the optimal choice in 99% of the fights and the other being here just to make your life complicated without any reasons.
And I will not even start about how health is damn useless, healing isn't rewarding anymore, or stamina should just have gone considering there is no point in that bar anymore with the replenishment rate.
In the end, the global philosophy and pacing of Dark Souls (the first one especially) has nothing to do with the ones from Elden Ring. You can't just say "it's completely better" because it's fundamentaly false. The way the rules works for those game are different. Like Bloodborne is more agressive and fast paced than Dark Souls 3, which doesn't mean Bloodborne is better. What is important here is how the mechanics actually works in their own game. And Elden Ring failed with a LOT of things.
People spam the exact same builds and destroyed everything in pve and pvp with an absurd ease for a reason. I will not say Dark Souls 3 doesn't have op things in it's time and prime, but nothing has been that broken to the two differents aspect of the game at the same time. The meta shield at the beginning was ridiculous, but some options has been able to counter it, and as strong as it was in pvp, it wasn't that strong in pve.
But because the overall balance of the game is totally flawed, you have to use op things. Malenia and the Elden Beast are just absurd in every way that they clearly state you need to play with those limited broken options, otherwise you just throw yourself in the poop for the sake of it.
And even if combat were actually better in Elden Ring, if nothing support it, then there is no point to be good to begin with. The Soul of Cinder was actually a pretty enjoyable fight who lets you use a lot of options, was fair, not really hard but at least forced you to not failed to much. It's adaptative playstyle during P2 let you adapt yourself depending of your build. The Elden Beast, in comparison, just blast you from kilometers away without even playing with the same rules at you. The combat of Dark Souls 3 was good because I was able to actually use all of it. The combat in Elden Ring isn't good because against most of the real foes, I have to run like a retard or spam myself jumping attack/ranged spells/weapon arts.
Mechanical depth is cool. Real application is better.
Dark Souls 1/3 > Elden Ring.
Sorry. But as designer i strongly disagree with your point 2. Dark souls 3 was 50 shades of brown. End of the world doesn't suppose to look all dark and gloooooom. Live goes on sun still comes up even if every one will be dead. Im so happy Elden ring finally understood it and matured enough to get out from it 2000's goth phase. I as Eastern European whole my childhood was reading tales and myths. We got so much dark shit going on in them yet they all look cheery and is told to kids.
Elden ring is like you stepping into one of that myth paintings. While dark souls was just playing some goth kids notebook scribes.
completely agree. i found the argument very weak. i don´t want every from game to have the exact same atmosphere and look and saying that the fact they switched it up in ER is a bad thing is really dumb
i guess im more of a goth kid notebook aestetic than fairytale mythical painting guy. to each his own in your valuation of the tone (nothing is right or wrong when it comes to what your emotions tell you. its super subjective. My argument is that the dark combat works better with a dark tone. Elden ring has the brutal combat, but not the brutal tone so it is less emotionally concise to me.
I agree with a lot of the points you made, especially about replayability, boss design, music/sound design, and to some extent the “unbreakable” rules of combat. That said, I don’t think it’s a big deal at all that fromsoft provides the player with optional features such as spells and summons that make the game super easy. You don’t have to use them after all. (I do agree that most people would probably have more fun doing a melee build with no summons though). I also think the point about the story was a little strange. I agree that the story for elden ring is less interesting and for whatever reason isn’t as captivating (I honestly don’t really care about it), but I’m not sure how much this has to do with delivery, or that some things are optional. It doesn’t really impact the story that you kill vordt first, then the giant tree, then the abyss watchers, and so on in ds3 just like it doesn’t really matter that you kill Godrick before radahn and malenia. If you decided to kill malenia before radahn for some reason, what parts of the story does that alter, exactly?
Did you use Champion's Ashes lighting or a lighting overhaul for DS3?
wow you have a great eye, i actually forgot i had that installed when getting some of the footage! yeah i believe i hav champions ashes
@@unleashedbread6146 are you selectively using just the lighting or the whole mod?
I'm glad you mentioned the music. I went into Elden Ring expecting some more masterpieces, and only got like 3 slightly memorable pieces. The main theme of ER straight up fucking sucks compared to DS3's main theme. I think the best theme in ER is Malenia's 2nd phase theme. Only music that had me wowed in the entire game, whereas DS3 did that countless times.
Yeah agreed I hate the main theme and the roundtables theme.
I do really like godrick the grafted though, and the theme of the castles when you explore them. It fits
You are biased ds 3 fanboy. The music in ds 3 is so boring. Like most of it is monotone and tracks like each other.
Only Abyss Watchers and Deacons if the Deep worth something. Other tracks are mediocre and overestimated af.
Main theme in ER is very good. I doubt you have a good ears to say that main menu music in ER sucks. Your opinion sucks, not the music. You are nobody to understand how good this music is because I more than sure that you are not a musician, not even close. Nostalgia is what maters only for you.
There are plenty of good and memorable tracks in Elden Ring. You just have a bad taste and have no good ears
@@vvebsta6237 lmao dude I only played DS3 once.
What a dogshit opinion I'm sorry
I agree Godrick was probably top 10/10 thematic anime moments. I also think jumping in combat made the fights take an aesthetic hit
I think the jumping mechanic is great for exploring levels for sure. it feels like a less cool version of a backstab or the awesome plunging attack though. It feels regressive in combat
@@unleashedbread6146 How does it feel regressive? You add an extra layer to your defensive option. Just a raw straight improvement to a games combat depth. I get you want to hate the game but at least try to not jump on every bandwagon without thinking about if it actually makes sense.
@@tinminator8905 its regressive that they took away elements from previous melee combat. like i said in my comment-plunging attack and more noticeably the backstab. You could argue that the jumping in combat adds 1 extra layer to combat depth, but they took 2 layers away by exluding the attacks previously mentioned. 2 is greater than one. 2 means more melee combat depth. 2 is more than 1, therefore regression.
@@unleashedbread6146 You do not want to go down that route. ER weapons have way more unique attacks. But from watching your video I know that trying to argue with you is pointless, as the arguments made were so laughably weak and manipulative instead of substantive that I assume you will try to strawman me constantly, not actually reflecting or trying to get to a conclusion. Try to avoid changing your arguments and try to keep a coherent train of thought. Also do not introduce strawmans like: "If you believe Elden Ring bosses are better than DS3 bosses, you believe Renala is an S Tier boss." This probably won't change anything but I just wanted to give some genuine advice if your terrible video (from an argumentative stand point) was not satire and you were being genuine.
@@tinminator8905 do you think Elden Ring has more S tier bosses than Dark Souls 3. (i’m assuming you’ve played them both. what do you mean i don’t want to go down that path, I literally made a 30 minute video about elden ring and i took the time to replying to Your comments.
I think the key difference with bosses is how ER lets you play how you want vs DS which sort of dictates things. So you can go at bosses in ER overlevelled - not so easy to do with DS. So boss fights seem somewhat underwhelming.
26:28 what shield is this? I've played hundreds and hundreds of hours of ds3 and I don't think I've seen this
that is the great shield of glory. you have to get it from the profaned capital inside of a mimic chest.
it’s one of my favorite looking shields
@@unleashedbread6146 thank you, it looks like the tower knight shield from demons souls, I can't believe I don't have this one lol
I think my biggest complaint with elden ring is the boss design. I agree with all the other points you made but for me the bad boss design left a really bad taste in my mouth. I was expecting epic fights like gael and nameless king with well telegraphed attacks and aggression on a reasonable level. But instead I got fights like malenia and godfrey with bs attacks like waterfowl and aggression that feels extremely unfair. I mean some attacks like you said are so fast you don't have enough time to react and you're just forced to take a hit. That's not a fun boss I'm interested in mastering. It honestly felt like I got through the end game bosses through luck and summons instead of dodging perfectly and striking at the correct moments.
@Char Aznable I felt the same way about the spirit ashes as well. It almost feels like the bosses got way too aggressive and powerful to counteract the ability to summon in every boss. However this ruins the experience for people who don't want use or didn't bother to upgrade summons. And I was one of those people. Before elden ring I had beaten dark souls 3 on max difficulty so I thought that for my first playthrough I wouldn't use those summons that everyone is talking about. But I actually gave up after I encountered Malenia. Cause literally every end game boss like her has a shit ton of health, deals an incredible amount of damage, which is a problem cause your health feels so much nerfed compared to previous titles, and is really aggressive, spamming attacks without end like stamina doesn't matter. It honestly feels unfair if you don't use spirit ashes.
I think what took away from the bosses the most for me was them being reused (only really had a problem with this being done to main bosses ie godskin duo) or looking similar in design to previous enemies/encounters(ie morghott/margit and mohg the omen/mohg lord of blood) and the BS movesets some of them had especially in the late game. I found a lot of the bosses had really cool looking moves but that didnt make them fun to fight most notably the AOE moves they had. Also the lacklustre final boss did kind of suck, i would have much rathered a pushover, like Gwyn from ds1, with cool atmosphere and music than the boring chase fight we got.
Demon Prince deserves an S tier ranking too. One of my personal favorite boss fights of all time. Not particularly difficult, but the arena and the sound of the Prince screeching at the start of phase two always, and I mean always, gives me goosebumps! Fully agree with your opinions here too by the way.
I think all these problems stem from the game being open world. It is impossible to make a balanced progression system if you can do anything at anytime. I think fromsoft tried to compensate for this by making enemies and bosses extremely high damaging and agressive
The bosses and levels are fixed per zones of progression, it's well balanced in early zones, kinda ok in mid zones (Upper caelid, Altus, leyndell) and sorta busted in late game zones (FA, Haligtree, leyndell ash) as its balanced around you being at 60 vigor and using summons. More than the world, its the inclusion of summons is what makes the game esp in the late zones kinda busted, they most likely ran out of time.
@@Shane-gg3hl Yh the late game bosses ,some boss recycling and vigor issues are the most common complaints I've seen.
"These boss ranking aren't subjective"
*Uses music and fun as categories when ranking them, which are extremely subjective*
I got the impression that he was being facetious in saying that. He’s obviously using his own personal scoring system, which is itself entirely subjective.
@@nickjanecke6688 ye
my boss rankings are facts and true for everybody else on the earth or in space. complely objective. I'm glad you pointed this very true and not sarcastic sentence in my video
@@unleashedbread6146 not that, from what I heard of the boss rankings you mentioned, I’d be inclined to disagree with you 😆
Very interesting video!! Provided a lot of food for thought!
thanks for watching ben
This is exactly how i felt. I played through ds1 and 2 sotfs(dont have 3 anymore) in anticipation of elden ring release, and sure enough. Immediately after beating those 2 back to back, i noticed that while i love the game, the bosses have little to no real mechanics to actually get around. Godrick was cool radahn was neat on horseback but fighting him on foot was just a death sentence, and in general engaging hime was bs. Renalla was a bit gimmicky but really just run and hit. Mohg the lord of blood was probably my favorite. Godskins have the coolest soundtrack, but apostle just kinda walks around while the noble outpaces him allowing to lure away. Dragons where pretty epic if im being honest, best since ds2 dlc sinh. I really love elden ring but its definitely a bit weird in some places. The game feels more spammy than any of their previous titles. Its not hard but once been spammed down its super irritating to take 5+ seconds to get back up. Parkour should be illegal, atleast the ones where you die and have to backtrackjust to fail jump AGAIN. Shunning grounds to deeproot was my biggest offender for parkour.
This just isn't true. In ds1 and ds2 there's no real mechanics to yet around. They literall6 just stand there lol. The er bosses are way more complex and younactually need to understand the mechanics to beat them
Man this is what I felt yesterday the first time! I agree with all the points! If you liked the DS and Bloodborne (my fav) for its set rules and challanges, Elden Ring is not that fun! I blamed myself at first like I lost interest in this genre, but played some DS3 recently and boom! It was FUN! I starting to worry a bit that maybe becouse of the success of ER they may apply these types of mechanics in the future as you said.
They won’t. They’re very good at introducing new mechanics for certain ip’s and leaving them in that ip, sometimes implementing some things from other games but usually they give their games their own identity
I’ve had way more fun in ER than I did in DS3.
I clocked in around 300 hours in DS3
But I’m already 400 hours into Elden Ring and still going strong doing invasions, helping players kill bosses, making low lvl pvp characters etc.
Bloodborne will always be at the top for me at 800 hours playtime.
I can usually tell which games I enjoyed more based on time spent playing them.
I’ll probably feel a bit burned out by the 500 hour mark and will wait for the DLC to jump back into it again.
I’ve absolutely adored Elden Ring and everything it accomplished. It’s got flaws for sure but is hands down one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.
I’m the complete opposite. I spent almost a year playing DS3 starting new play throughs and doing pvp a lot at the same time while with ER I did only one play through, explored everything and got burned out didn’t even feel like doing pvp in it
I agree I fucking love ER and definitely will be doing a NG+ play through but BB will always be my first love when it comes to souls. Just a perfect game
And? That's cool for you, I've personnally left Elden Ring after 70 hours, because the mountain zone was dogshit, and I have like +400 hours in Dark Souls 1 and 3. That doesn't bring anything on the table when we are talking about the qualities of the actual games.
Enjoy the game all you want, I would have love to actually like Elden Ring, believe me. But the game has a lot of flaws, and big ones.
U probably had fun with it bcoz of exploration and multiple builds
Honestly i don't care.
The issue with invasion balance in ER, is they removed the solo player invasions, that had been present in all the soulsborne games, save Sekiro.
On the replayability aspect. I feel it's due to not having reason to do multiple playthroughs. You can get everything in 1 go. So what's the point of ng+ and beyond, other than the 2 other endings?
exactly, the 30 different cutscene isn’t as fulfilling to me.
About the Open World, I believe too that the transition of the Souls narrative into an open setting asks for some narrative adjustments. Overall I like the no handholding philosophy, but when you have a game of this size, non linear, we need some form of back tracking at least. NOT tracking like quest logs / markers, BACK tracking like an event log where everything relevant can be reviewed later. Then it's still up to the player to piece together the info, but goddamn how am I supposed to remember every NPC or boss name to be able to progress a quest? Early example: Blaidd quests ask you to find Darriwil, which was a miniboss I killed 10 hours before in an Evergaol. Blaidd next location was next to the entrance of the Evergaol. I had to look that step up on google, otherwise I would never though to go check there. That is LAME to be gentle, why the hell should I need google to finish up a quest. Instead if I had a log of activities done where it said "I killed Darriwil in this location" I could connect the dots. After that episode I literally bought a notepad to write down every relevant name / location for backtracking later on. WTF.
That's all I ask, I LOVE games where I have to connect the dots, but give me the tools to be able to do so without being intrusive.
Not having covenants DS3 style was a mistake. Having 6 people in a game, not knowing if the neutral people would kill you or not was a lot of fun
DS3 style covenants were the worst, most one dimensional in all of their games. All were the same but gave you a different phantom color. At least do something creative like the previous games instead of the half assed knock off mechanic DS3 had. I would prefer none to what DS3 did.
@@tinminator8905 the purple phantoms where the only creative mechanic tbh
DS3 has the overall best bosses of any soulsborne game, in my opinion. Elden is fantastic but mostly for other reasons.
what is your magic build cuz that hits different
I feel like the world doesn't change that much as you progress. Getting to the altus plateau you realise that it is basically yellow limgrave. In ds3, exploring farron keep is far different from exploring irithyll which is far different from the high wall. They all have different enemies and layouts and ask you to approach them differently. In elden ring you are fighting the same couple enemies almost the whole way through. In the open world there is no reason not to just walk around every enemy and every linear area has the same layout with the same enemies. You never have to change your approach or grapple with enemy or world mechanics and when you do, you can bet that that mechanic will be repeated one to one across the next 30 dungeons and ruins across the map. I don't want to describe the world as flat because that isn't true, but the topography of each area isn't varied enough to make them all stand out. There are some exceptions, and there are some things that this game achieves that a linear game could not such as opening the map after being teleported to caelid or the capital, or entering the siofra well and realizing there is an entire underground section too (not to mention just seeing the sky there after taking that long ass elevator). I think the game would have been over all better if it were just a bit smaller. You would lose a lot of magic in the exploration and discovery the first time through, but if all of the areas were a little more distinct enemy and layout wise, and there were more unique bosses and ruin layouts throughout I think the experience would be much more consistent. I also miss some of the more linear exploration from the past games. Exploring central yharnam for the first time you really have to push through the enemies, and finding all of the shortcuts feels so rewarding. It feels like you mastered and conquered the area. Stormveil castle is the closest elden ring comes to something like this, but even then it is still missing something.
Another thing is that exploring feels so weird. At first I wanted to explore to find all of the bosses and unique items, but 99% of the items you find can't be applied to your build and the majority of bosses and enemies you find are reused from other areas. In the first couple areas this is not an issue, but as I progressed my drive to explore really weakened and it began to feel like busy work. I have yet to play the game again but I would imagine that that would persist through playthroughs. Now that I know that the only thing I get from exploring are ruins, why would I explore, the magic is gone. Maybe it's time to do away with some of the restrictions on builds. Let me use this random weapon I just found despite me not having leveled it up 20 times for its damage to be usable. Let me use this cool spell I just found despite me not having put 50 levels of faith or int into my character.
Um 99% of the items you find can be applied to your build.... If you chose intelligence 🤣
You aren’t wrong on radagon, I’ve pointed out the same problem to people who think it’s a perfect boss. He can do an attack that you literally cannot react to after the teleport so you have to predict it and dodge before you see it, but he also has a chance of doing another attack that will roll catch you which is completely unfair.