Current Events > Some thoughts on Elden Ring (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

My playthrough topic purged, which is kind of annoying cause this morning I actually tried to measure out time from last post to deletion and I seemed to be in the clear. Mostly because I wanted to thank the people who posted along my playthrough and listening to me cry about Malenia and such.

So thanks.

Anyway, I really liked the game. I was very nervous, because I just don't like open world games. I started playing Elden Ring back in february but I bounced off it several times because of it. I finally got a firm grip on it during that topic and it just stuck. It's easily the best open world I've ever experienced, but that's not that impressive since I usually go out of my way to avoid them. It just clicked in a way they usually don't. The lack of icon and quest spam on the map, and the map itself was a really nice way to play it in that way. There was a mix of feeling like the map pointed you to certain areas, but also rewarding you for free exploration using it as a support cool. Not every cave was mapped, etc. So you never truly feel lost in the big open world but you're also encouraged to go off the road. It's really nice.

I think the crypt dungeons were a really good idea for an open world game. They were very samey, but they had a neat objective that the geometry of each of them could play pretty wildly around with which made it enjoyable to go through on the hunt for that objective. The caves were less well done, I thought. They were, I guess, more varied, but the lack of any objective in most of them other than get to the end of the path was fairly boring. I also think that while they're identical looking, the visual architecture of the crypts is more interesting as a decor than the same brown gray cliff walls inside all of them.

The story dungeon designs were really good, like top tier for the Soulsbornekiroring franchise. The world itself is probably my favourite Fromsoft world, but I do think that is in a large extent down to the visual splendor of it. Would I have liked Dark Souls more if it had an Erdtree and a golden capital? I can't say I wouldn't have. I do think the pantheon concept and character loreset is more fascinating in ER.

Been watching a bunch of videos on the game since beating and I'm planning to do a second playthrough in the near future. Within a month or two. I will be following a guide or two to make sure I complete all sidequests (or as best as one can) and discover all the secrets that I missed (apparently a lot). I'm planning on doing a magic run just to be as different as possible. Faith looks more interesting than sorcery. It has more variety. Sorcery in Souls and from what I've seen also in Elden Ring is largely about shooting blue missiles (and the moon) at enemies or do magic sword swipes.

The praise aside, I really hated Malenia. That first phase is a great boss in its own right, but having to get past it just to have a shot at the second phase where she endlessly spams you with Waterfowl Dance just broke me. But also it seems I kind of handicapped myself. Early on, before I even played, I heard and saw that jump r2 attacks were insanely overpowered, so I just never used them. But that also just unintentionally translated to me just not using the jump button in combat. Which is apparently pretty great for dodging a lot of attacks. Whoops. The more you know. Her aside, I really liked almost all the bosses in the game. I got frustrated by some, particularly, Mohg, but I still had great enjoyment with him.

I understand that the open world nature means there had to be a lot of repetition, and like I said most of the time it works well, but sometimes it is a bit much. Some bosses that shouldn't be repeated are. The Erdtree Avatar is cool once and twice, and probably alright a third and fourth time. I was really tired of the asylum demon reskin by the end. Not to mention the tree spirits. There were so many dragon bosses by the end they meant nothing to me. Probably halfway through the game they meant very little. It's not that bad, but I feel like there could have been a couple of more unique bosses. Imagine if you went through a random ass map dungeon and it was a cool as shit unique encounter at the end. I think the Erdtree Burial Watchdog is my favourite reuse boss. They had a number of configurations for it and it's just a neat encounter.

A couple of things in the open world was really annoying. Like, those specters that show the path to an overworld dungeon are soooo fucking slow. I know you can just find them yourselves, but the game is showing me the way. But why is it so slow? I just looked up the puzzles for the sealed towers. Fuck that. At times the crafting system was annoying. I ran out of herbs at some point and I just didn't come across more for the longest time. Seems that there's some ideal routes you'd run to stock up and then rest at a grace to respawn it. That's annoying to me. Mostly I enjoyed the crafting system, but yeah.

I think in terms of Souls games my list looks like this:

Demon's Souls > Dark Souls > Elden Ring > Bloodborne > Sekiro > Dark Souls II > Dark Souls III

Honorary last place: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Regardless though, the sheer size of the game thanks to its open world makes it a daunting task to replay it as often as I do my other favourite Souls games. Not sure how it will end up in comparison to how I usually play Dark Souls every two years or so.

Something I learned engaging with the community after fact is that people really hate the Elden Beast. I thought it was neat. I'd have preferred that the boss is less "random", even if it makes lore sense, but the experience was super engrossing. Everyone also hates the Godskin Duo, but I thought they were super easy, lol.

Here's a boss rank list for good measure, listing the most notable bosses for good and bad.

1) Godfrey, First Elden Lord/Hoarah Loux
2) Radagon of the Golden Order
3) Regal/ Ancestor Spirit
4) Morgott, the Omen King
5) Blackblade Kindred
6) Dragonkin Soldier (mainly Soifra one as that was the first I fought)
7) Rennala, Queen of the Fullmoon
8) Mohg, Lord of Blood
9) Elden Beast
10) Starscourge Radahn
11) Draconic Tree Sentinel
12) Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing
13) Tibia Mariner (any)
14) Commander Niall
15) Crucible Knight (Evergaol)
16) Malekith, the Black Blade
17) Godrick the Grafted
18) Fallingstar Beast (any)
19) Margit, the Fell Omen
20) Rykard, Whatever He is Called
21) Royal Knight Loretta
22) Dragonlord Placidusax
23) Ulcerated Tree Spirit (second one fought, fuck the first one in that tiny room under the tutorial)
24) Astel, Naturalborn of the Void (would be much higher if not for the grab attack)
25) Crucible Knight x2 (Ordovis)
26) Erdtree Avatar (first one)
27) Red Wolf of Radagon
28) Malenia, Blade of Miquella
29) Fire Giant
30) Tree Sentinel (start of the game)
31) Elemer the Briar
32) Valiant Gargoyles

The game is amazing but let's be honest, From is out of ideas on how to keep making these games more and more difficult without it just being pure BS.

The difficulty of everything in ER now comes from just memorizing boss patterns exactly. If that's your thing, cool, but I'm finding it less and less enjoyable as time goes on.

To see how far ER took things, try playing some of the older DS games and you'll see they're like child's play in comparison.

I beat Malenia a couple of nights ago.

Weirdly, I found phase 2 to be easier. It ended many a run, to be sure, but it gives you more and bigger openings. Regardless, it's usually over within a minute or two one way or another.

VirtuousWrath posted...

The game is amazing but let's be honest, From is out of ideas on how to keep making these games more and more difficult without it just being pure BS.

The difficulty of everything in ER now comes from just memorizing boss patterns exactly. If that's your thing, cool, but I'm finding it less and less enjoyable as time goes on.

To see how far ER took things, try playing some of the older DS games and you'll see they're like child's play in comparison.

I feel like most of the difficulty came from people having some pride issue with using summons. The whole nonstop, few opening thing is because the game was designed for you to share aggro with your summon.

VirtuousWrath posted...

The game is amazing but let's be honest, From is out of ideas on how to keep making these games more and more difficult without it just being pure BS.

The difficulty of everything in ER now comes from just memorizing boss patterns exactly. If that's your thing, cool, but I'm finding it less and less enjoyable as time goes on.

To see how far ER took things, try playing some of the older DS games and you'll see they're like child's play in comparison.

I don't think From was ever that interested in creating a difficult game. There's always exploits or easy mode strats they add to make the game trivial. Ash summons, particularly the mimic summon was one of it.

Even then you can just impose challenges onto yourself to make the game harder. Like using sub optimal builds or just not lving up or utilizing the super farm locals From definitely knows about but never patched.

Did it have any likeable or memorable characters? Individuals, not collectively as a pantheon.
Every character I've seen in that game comes off as really boring. Like to the point I don't even care to make up lore and in-jokes to boost them.

Squall28 posted...

I feel like most of the difficulty came from people having some pride issue with using summons. The whole nonstop, few opening thing is because the game was designed for you to share aggro with your summon.

Yup.

I think part of the problem for me was, bosses were ridiculous without summons but were then ridiculously easy with summons.

I started practicing to solo Malenia and after about 3 or 4 nights of trying, I said "fuck this" (because fuck Waterfowl) and summoned Tiche. I roflstomped her so hard it wasn't even enjoyable.

I think the spirit ash mechanic is something that makes dungeon crawling super enjoyable but absolutely ruined the boss design.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

Did it have any likeable or memorable characters?

Yes

BurmesePenguin posted...

12) Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-Knowing

LOL

VirtuousWrath posted...

Yup.

I think part of the problem for me was, bosses were ridiculous without summons but were then ridiculously easy with summons.

I started practicing to solo Malenia and after about 3 or 4 nights of trying, I said "fuck this" (because fuck Waterfowl) and summoned Tiche. I roflstomped her so hard it wasn't even enjoyable.

I think the spirit ash mechanic is something that makes dungeon crawling super enjoyable but absolutely ruined the boss design.

I think a good balance is to use the weaker summons. No Tiche, Mimic, or Dungeater.

Squall28 posted...

I think a good balance is to use the weaker summons. No Tiche, Mimic, or Dungeater.

The giant jellyfish summon was great for that. It has a lot of HP, would occasionally poison stuff and sometimes drew agro to get you a breather

Honorable mention to Giant Rats- seeing them roll out and attacks enemies on their own was funny. Oh yeah and it's a 0 FP summon, which is nice

I've done Caelid, Limgrave, Liurnia, Siofra, Deeproot Depths, both Nok cities, and just got to Altus.

I have no idea where I'm gonna go when I have access to a computer again

VirtuousWrath posted...

The game is amazing but let's be honest, From is out of ideas on how to keep making these games more and more difficult without it just being pure BS.

The difficulty of everything in ER now comes from just memorizing boss patterns exactly. If that's your thing, cool, but I'm finding it less and less enjoyable as time goes on.

To see how far ER took things, try playing some of the older DS games and you'll see they're like child's play in comparison.

I honestly think it only went overboard a couple of times. Margit and Malenia were the two standout examples.

Squall28 posted...

I feel like most of the difficulty came from people having some pride issue with using summons. The whole nonstop, few opening thing is because the game was designed for you to share aggro with your summon.

It's not a pride thing. I just think it breaks the game in a way I'm not interested in. I feel nothing beating a boss because I snuck in a shitbucket of hits while they were distracted by another character.

When From games get so absurd you basically have to summon to get through them, I'd honestly rather just quit and stick with the previous games for future playthroughs.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

Did it have any likeable or memorable characters? Individuals, not collectively as a pantheon.
Every character I've seen in that game comes off as really boring. Like to the point I don't even care to make up lore and in-jokes to boost them.

There's a few standouts but in general it's probably a weaker point of the game.

Northlane posted...

LOL

I thought he was great >_>

GranolaPanic posted...

The crayfish are the deadliest monsters in the entire game.

Honestly yes. Stopped fighting them after I killed 2 or 3 of them. Not worth the hassle, lol. Apparently one of them turns into a grafted scion when you hit it.

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