Current Events > Now that Elden Ring has been out for almost 2 months

(+) Yeah! (+)

And the hype has died for the game, what do you think about the game? What are its biggest flaws? Where do you rank it amongst the other Souls games?

Its only a 7 minute game, not worth 60 bux

Its too long and too easy to burn out, and some of the later areas arent up to the standard set by the early-mid game.

Its excellent, but really does feel like a step back compared to Sekiro in terms of player movement.

Bump.

I only just bought it last weekend, but am greatly enjoying it so far.

i loved it. my main issue with it is how bosses seem to be designed around you having a summon to draw aggro. some of them were so fucking hard solo, then once i summoned a spirit it was EZ-PZ.

The open world was nice at first but eventually I couldnt find where to go next and stopped playing.

Great game but Im burnt out on it. Not sure if Ill ever go back. It held my attention longer than most games do these days though.

Pretty great game.

I liked it enough to platinum it, but unlike the other ones I platinumed I will never play it again.

Killmonger posted...

What are its biggest flaws?

The open world is boring and kills the pacing
FAR too much recycled content
Balance is abysmal
No difficulty
Poorly designed questlines that require the use of a wiki to figure anything out

However, still better than Dark Souls 2

It was my favorite game that I have played as an adult. Hard to compare vs being a kid or teen

No change from first day, first week, forst month. Best Fromsoft game, overall great game with some flaws. Deserved every sale and ever review score.

Only complaint are gimmicky duo/trio boss fights. It was fine the first couple of times but then it started to feel like the artificial difficulty (that didn't exist) that newbies complained about in the other souls games.

Oh and Malenia healing from every attack while being super aggressive, but that's just a minor annoyance compared to the above

MacadamianNut3 posted...

Oh and Malenia healing from every attack while being super aggressive, but that's just a minor annoyance compared to the above

That is why Malenia is my favorite boss in the game

I just have small gripes.

Like fall damage. So much of the talk is about unfair bosses but I'd rather die a hundred times to a boss than die one more time from falling with Torrent.

Turtlemayor333 posted...

I just have small gripes.

Like fall damage. So much of the talk is about unfair bosses but I'd rather die a hundred times to a boss than die one more time from falling with Torrent.

That's level design. You have to figure out how to get to those lower places.

Turtlemayor333 posted...

I just have small gripes.

Like fall damage. So much of the talk is about unfair bosses but I'd rather die a hundred times to a boss than die one more time from falling with Torrent.

I'm curious. If you do a double jump with Torrent right before you make contact with the ground, do you still die from large heights?

The hype hasnt died lol

Its on track to being the best dark souls game depending on the dlc. Its easily the best base game.

easily one of the best video games I have ever played, cant remember the last time a game has drawn me in like this, probably not since I was a teenager.

combat is tight, the world is so fun to explore, there are tons of great weapons and items to customize your play, boss battles are (mostly) challenging and fun, and I find the lore and worldbuilding very interesting.

i also appreciate the quality of life + accessibility features elden ring has, it's (IMO) a really hard game but it's something anyone who is up for a challenge can play. i love that fromsoft basically eliminated the long boss corpse runs, multiplayer is easily available for anyone who wants to do it, spirit ashes, etc.

it is honestly hard for me to think of complaints. the one thing that comes to mind would be the lack of any sort of quest log, i find a lot of the quests are overly obscure and basically impossible to do without a wiki. wish there was something like the journal in Morrowind. i also dislike how there are a finite number of respec items. you should be able to do this an unlimited time imo, that way you can try different builds and people will stick with the pvp

Kind of mid, honestly. Every single mini dungeon feels like it's either a cave or a crypt. I'm not sure I've found anything aside from those, and they're all laid out in exactly the same way. Caves have a hole in the ground with a series of platforms that are always arranged in the same pattern. Cryptst always have stairs leading down to a door that you turn left at to go through some hallways to find the lever that opens the door. Crypts come in two flavors, little gargoyle guys or skelemans. If you're lucky you might fight skeletons controlled by a necromancer. The caves come in two flavors. Normal cave, and Rot / Poison cave. That one is far rarer though. There's also mineshafts but those are so rare they may as well not exist and the only cool one is the one leading up to the Altus Plateau. Those also have the problem of having elevator shafts which all have the exact same copy and pasted ledges in them. At one point even using the same mine shaft three times in the same dungeon.

The combat is extremely basic compared to a game like Monster Hunter, but it technically has a little bit more going for it than say Breath of the Wild. Though BotW had Runes and a Physics system that were far more fun to engage with than anything this game has offered so far. I'm also not a fan of this games complete lack of scaling features. BotW had a hidden World Level that would cause enemies and items to scale as the player became more experienced. Elden Ring doesn't, so if you're like me and went to Liurnia as the second zone then by the time I found South Limgrave the whole zone was a joke with zero difficulty. In BotW enemy drops also mattered. Link could wield anything, and because my weapons would break I was required to engage with enemies to replenish my stock. Once you were good enough going Lionel Hunting was the best way to get the best weapons, but even that was more thrilling than going through a mini dungeon full of copy and pasted content to get a talisman that has zero impact on my build.

I feel like if I were to try and play Elden Ring again I would end up skipping 90% of the content as it's not relevant to my character build. I'd probably do something like
1 Do Vare's quest line for a grinding spot
2 Go straight for the items I need
3 Do the requisite quest(s) for the ending I want
4 Kill the bare minimum number of bosses needed to finish the game.

In spite of that I'm still having fun with the game. But I don't think I'd ever return to it save for DLC maybe. If this is seriously meant to be the best in the whole soulslike series I doubt I'll be touching any of the others. Especially the Dark Souls style since this game seems to follow that one most closely. Except for the late game bosses that all look ripped from Sekiro without giving players the tools Sekiro had for dealing with them.

I like what I'm seeing from the hour I've been able to play of it

There's a ton of bosses, but the majority of them kind of suck. I prefer methodical bosses where I need to learn their moves. Like 2/3rds aren't like that at all.

Great game, but not as good as Bloodborne.

I'm like 350 hours in ATM, and I think I've finally run out of shit to do on NG. Farmed literally every weapon and armor in the game available to me, killed every boss, cleared every dungeon. The only thing I don't have is all of the spirit ashes AFAIK, because there's a certain quest that is multiple choice.

11/10 game. I wish there was more and I can't wait for the DLC. Been spending my time doing fashion souls, and it's fuckin on point in this game. A lot of people disagree, but I'm just stoked I can finally make a character that looks like a human being rather than some weird uncanny valley monstrosity.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/7/AADGjTAADIVX.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/8/AADGjTAADIVY.jpg

Uta posted...

Kind of mid, honestly. Every single mini dungeon feels like it's either a cave or a crypt. I'm not sure I've found anything aside from those, and they're all laid out in exactly the same way. Caves have a hole in the ground with a series of platforms that are always arranged in the same pattern. Cryptst always have stairs leading down to a door that you turn left at to go through some hallways to find the lever that opens the door. Crypts come in two flavors, little gargoyle guys or skelemans. If you're lucky you might fight skeletons controlled by a necromancer. The caves come in two flavors. Normal cave, and Rot / Poison cave. That one is far rarer though. There's also mineshafts but those are so rare they may as well not exist and the only cool one is the one leading up to the Altus Plateau. Those also have the problem of having elevator shafts which all have the exact same copy and pasted ledges in them. At one point even using the same mine shaft three times in the same dungeon.

The combat is extremely basic compared to a game like Monster Hunter, but it technically has a little bit more going for it than say Breath of the Wild. Though BotW had Runes and a Physics system that were far more fun to engage with than anything this game has offered so far. I'm also not a fan of this games complete lack of scaling features. BotW had a hidden World Level that would cause enemies and items to scale as the player became more experienced. Elden Ring doesn't, so if you're like me and went to Liurnia as the second zone then by the time I found South Limgrave the whole zone was a joke with zero difficulty. In BotW enemy drops also mattered. Link could wield anything, and because my weapons would break I was required to engage with enemies to replenish my stock. Once you were good enough going Lionel Hunting was the best way to get the best weapons, but even that was more thrilling than going through a mini dungeon full of copy and pasted content to get a talisman that has zero impact on my build.

I feel like if I were to try and play Elden Ring again I would end up skipping 90% of the content as it's not relevant to my character build. I'd probably do something like
1 Do Vare's quest line for a grinding spot
2 Go straight for the items I need
3 Do the requisite quest(s) for the ending I want
4 Kill the bare minimum number of bosses needed to finish the game.

In spite of that I'm still having fun with the game. But I don't think I'd ever return to it save for DLC maybe. If this is seriously meant to be the best in the whole soulslike series I doubt I'll be touching any of the others. Especially the Dark Souls style since this game seems to follow that one most closely. Except for the late game bosses that all look ripped from Sekiro without giving players the tools Sekiro had for dealing with them.

Tldr: They really like BotW.

I didnt play much of the other souls games so im not gonna compare elden ring to them.

Playtime: 184 hours total. Played as a mage and then bleed build my first two playthroughs. Currently a str build colossal weapons user on my 2nd character and can beat the game within the next 3 hours if i wanted to rn but want to collect some things first.

Main gripes:

• graphics are kinda bad. I also disagree with the game having a great artstyle. To me 90% of the time the game looks ugly. There are only a few areas and under certain circumstances where it looks good (not raining, no fog, and sunlight hitting a specific angle)

i played the game at 4k resolution high preset with max textures. Ive gone back and forth from max everything presets to my custom presets and it visually looks the same to me lol.

• Sidequests instructions are too vague and many quests just dissapear if you progress too much in certain areas. I dislike this part about the game and I had this same gripe with dragon's dogma. There are crpgs from mid 90s to early 2000s that are a better examples of having non handholding quests beatable without a guide. Idk why elden ring doesnt even have a journal to keep track of stuff. Heck fallout 1 a 1997 game had a quest journal ffs.

What i liked:
The combat mainly. I dont mind the repetitive dungeons. The only problem is that you can get overpowered really fast which makes the early and midgame dungeons a cake walk and not really fun to explore anymore. I can sorta understand why some players opt to staying at a lower level. Might be something worth considering for me in the future.

It is still a 9/10 game to me because it is fun most of the time.

MarthGoomba posted...

The open world is boring and kills the pacing
FAR too much recycled content
Balance is abysmal
No difficulty
Poorly designed questlines that require the use of a wiki to figure anything out

However, still better than Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 2 atleast embraced multi-player, Elden Ring crippled it with mandatory ganking and useless rewards. Then further incentives hiding in areas that require torrent for the sake of afk farming runes and multi-player items since an invader just needs to leave.

Elden Ring is pretty goodish at best gameplay wise, and only great because of the amount of content in it. Everything else in it ranges from good, or decent to mediocre and even some bad....

The game reuses tons of Souls assets despite having a different name. It's basically Souls all over again story wise too.... Someone and / or something did something and the world has gone insane, and you have to kill your way through it all and then decide to perpetuate the cycle or destroy it all. Somehow, it has the worst opening cinematic of any modern Soulsborne game that isn't a remake considering it's a lazy 2D slideshow. The story could have been more cinematic and engrossing like Sekiro, but they didn't even try.

The world is too damned big for no good reason and there isn't anything really good or cool to do in it. Lots of copy / paste in overworld and dungeon areas. It doesn't feel like it can be lived in and hardly has any real culture of it's own. It has numerous story / main story lore irrelevant areas that feel like they could have been unused areas from other From Software games and were thrown in as filler.

Most enemies and even some tough ones have shit rune and item rewards that it's not worth the time or effort to fight them. Lots of reused and reskinned enemies and bosses. Some tough enemies and bosses have cheap AI and attacks with absurd damage, range, tracking and also have infinite stamina and FP and input read. Enemy AI is robotic as hell and doesn't feel alive or remotely realistic as they can be incredibly dumb in some instances or frightfully accurate in others.

Like all other modern From Software action games it was made on the same dated modified engine they have been using since Demon's Souls PS3 since around 2009. So it has a lot of the same problems as past games had with lock on, lock on when a target goes behind a object for a few seconds, lock on camera while fighting a large enemy, etc.., not being able to aim straight up or down with bows, not even being able to freely aim crossbows in first person, and no aiming cursor when free aiming.

Some of the NPC questlines were incomplete at launch, and some still are after updates and some are still bugged.

PvP was a mess at launch and still is even after updates to alleviate some of the issues.

Overall Elden Ring is 8/10 at best and is one of the weakest Souls games ever made when it comes to how it all balances out and the game's overall quality. The game is flawed and rushed and mad overrated by "professional" western critics with their ridiculous 10/10s and even 9.5/10s and they honestly can't be trusted to be objective as they are corporate mouthpieces first and foremost. As a longtime Souls fan the game disappointed me.

I think it's pretty fantastic and possibly has the best designed open world of all time. I'm around Leyndell capital at the moment. It has its issues (lack of pause, quests rely too much on either random luck or letting the player look it up, repetitive crypts and mines) but I think it accomplishes what basically every open world game beforehand hasn't really managed to do. Giving the player surprises that aren't plot related. The design constantly finds way to catch you off guard and open world games tend to fall for formulas very easily.

The side tombs and the like do falter that a bit but the open world itself more than makes up for it.

It's the best video game to come out since BotW, easily.

It's just a very good Dark Souls game, but you chart your own path through the game. The variety of character builds is huge, the environments are all interesting and often, much like BotW, just when you thought you had seen everything, the game shows you something new, or surprises you. Like people complaining about the mini-dungeons...idk, to me it seemed like the further into the game you got the easier it was to find mini dungeons that actually become pretty complex and varied. Different scenarios, setups, idk I'm always excited to find a cave.

idk it's hard for me to sum up, it's just an open world game that REALLY doesn't want to waste your time which makes the open world a part of the design rather than just a spectacle, though a spectacle it is.

My only complaint with the game is they didn't QUITE nail the balancing. Even dumping tons of points into vigor, you're still gonna get two or three shot by bosses... this is sorta mitigated by your expanded toolset and access to more healing, but, it's still frustrating that it feels like the difference between the best, heaviest armor and some decent medium armor isn't even one extra hit from a boss, so why ever use heavier armor?

Some weapon arts are OP compared to others.

Annand there are still minor technical issues (on my medium ranged PC i still get some stutter, though I get 45 to 60 fps @ 1080p despite my 7 year old processor after the game "settles in" and stops stuttering)

And there are sever bugs/glitches that can prevent extended play with friends. I wish there was some sort of dueling lobby because it's super fun but waiting 3 minutes just to get two shot can be frustrating.

I have a love/hate relationship with how understated the story is, and also how hidden some of the optional, powerful relics are. On the other hand, it's like, they KNEW people would be looking at guides so they purposefully designed some secrets in such a way that would be hard to describe.

Still despite these flaws, this game on so many levels is so far superior to the open world derivative drivel we've been getting the last 10 years. And no microtransactions or DLC. Despite the game having a persistent online world you can still play it in offline mode. TAKE A HINT DEVS. The only extra content will like be some DLC in the future--and I mean, real, 1999 style DLC not two swords and a new NPC that sends on boring fetch quests ala EA.

No bangers
Post Capital every enemy is on NG++
Manageable but a little off on balancing.
Best fashion, lots of fun weapons to use.
Ash/affinity setup really ups the build types.
Too many Faith weapons, maybe its a lore thing.
BHStep was a mistake, jk but it needs to be tweaked. Cheaper than any weapon or spell.
Tracking is a little much. Enemy switching attack location in air is a bit wacky.
Lots of infinite stamina, non staggering enemy types. Love fighting mages with hyper armor.
Input reading may be a thing which is cheesy af if true.
RNG or Discovery just doesnt seem to work. I get rare drops with minimal stats.
Elden Stars needs a buff but overall Faith line is solid.
A ton of network issues but this is still early days.

7.5/10

Expecting more balancing down the line. Classic FROM start. Theyve jumped the shark.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/9/AAXtH0AADI5p.jpg